A Safe Haven

ONE

FDR’S LEGACY: PALESTINE, THE JEWS, AND THE ARABS

Franklin D. Roosevelt and his new vice president, former Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri, were sworn in as the nation’s top executive officers on January 20, 1945. FDR made history that day, becoming the first man to be inaugurated for a fourth term as president and the first president-elect to be inaugurated at the South Portico of the White House. Unlike most inaugurations, the event was toned down, coming as it did in the midst of a brutal world war.

Because the inaugural took place in the middle of the war, as The New York Times reported, there were no “long, colorful parades, silk hats, resplendent uniforms, fireworks and receptions.” The nation did not witness an inaugural parade at all, as the president knew that such a display would be considered an insult to the half-frozen soldiers in tanks and foxholes on Europe’s battlefields. Instead, fewer than five thousand invited guests—far less than the eight thousand originally expected—sat on the snow-covered White House lawn, gritting their teeth to shield themselves from the bitter Washington cold.¹

The president, weak from a tough eight years of guiding the nation through depression and war, and physically in pain from his polio, nevertheless strode to his balcony podium, helped by his son, Colonel James Roosevelt. James offered his father a cape to shield him, but, turning it down, the president spoke bareheaded, wearing a dark business suit. The other guests, including Harry Hopkins, Bernard Baruch, governors, and cabinet officers, all wore heavy overcoats. The audience was respectfully somber, pausing only to applaud when the new vice president, Harry S. Truman, took the oath of office administered by the outgoing holder of that office, Henry A. Wallace.²

Anxious to get started, the new vice president slipped away from the one event scheduled for some of the distinguished guests, a post-inaugural luncheon at the White House. Hitching a ride to Capitol Hill from the sergeant-at-arms of the Senate, Truman sat at his desk, reading through his voluminous mail and thinking about the issues he would be dealing with in his new position.³

Among the immediate decisions to be made by the administration was planning for the Allied coalition’s final blow that would lead to the collapse of the Axis powers. Once that was out of the way, top priority would be given to the creation of a new world organization, which the president in particular hoped would become a mechanism to guarantee a peaceful postwar world. Beneath the surface, wartime tensions with the United States’ Soviet ally were destined to come to a head, creating a dangerous situation that might sully the dream of postwar unity. At home FDR faced having to shift the nation’s economy from wartime production to peacetime stability and continued full employment, thereby fulfilling his promise to realize his famous “Four Freedoms,” including freedom from want and poverty.

As Roosevelt and Truman took their oaths, the full scope of the war’s horrific death toll and looming refugee crisis were yet to be fully revealed. Historians would eventually estimate that some 36.5 million Europeans had died as a result of the war between 1939 and 1945. Over half those, 19 million, were civilian casualties.⁴ Of these, no one group suffered proportionately more than the Jews. What made the war against the Jews unique, wrote the Zionist leader Meyer Weisgal (who became the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann’s personal representative in the United States), was that this genocide was not for a “ruth less seizure of territory,” it was “for the sake of extermination as a principle.”⁵

By 1942, Adolf Hitler’s campaign of legal restrictions, expulsions, and pogroms against the Jews had escalated to the Jews’ physical destruction. During the war, however, many still hoped that stories about Hitler’s Final Solution were grossly exaggerated. Those who sought the truth, if they looked, were able to learn about the terrible reality. Stories buried inside The New York Times were beginning to tell a very grim tale. Dr. Joseph Schwartz, the European director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, wrote that perhaps only 500,000 out of Europe’s 6 million Jews had escaped destruction by emigration and that “only one to one and a half million of Europe’s 6 million Jews were now left on the Continent.⁶ “At the worst of times,” wrote Weisgal, “we had never believed that the diabolic mind of Hitler would translate into those facts…. The worst of our forebodings paled before even the partial revelation.”⁷ By the final tally, one third of the entire Jewish people and almost two thirds of European Jewry had been destroyed.

The situation of the Jewish masses, though never very good, had looked brighter during the waning days of World War I. Britain, seeking to gain the Jews’ support for the Allied cause, held out the promise to them of Palestine, the homeland Diaspora Jews had longed for since they had been defeated by the Romans in 70 B.C., almost 2,000 years before. More immediately, the British war cabinet hoped the incentive would cause Russian Jews to encourage their country to stay in the war and for American Jews to work for rapid entry of U.S. troops into the battle.⁸

The idea of a British protectorate over a Jewish homeland in Palestine was not only attractive to the Jews but would give Britain a presence in the Middle East once Turkey was defeated and its Ottoman Empire dismantled. Not least, the concept of the Jews’ return to their ancient homeland as prophesied in the Bible appealed to the faith of many of Britain’s restorationist statesmen. Among them was Lord Arthur James Balfour, Britain’s secretary of state for foreign affairs. In 1917, Balfour had negotiated an agreement with Dr. Chaim Weiz mann, lending British support to the establishment of a “National Home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.⁹

Before proceeding, the British wanted to secure American support for the plan. They were successful when President Woodrow Wilson, encouraged by Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis—the leader of American Zionism at the time—approved a draft of the declaration. Wilson claimed he “had been influenced by a desire to give the Jews their rightful place in the world; a great nation without a home is not right” and then added, “My personal hope is that all the Jews will make good and eventually found a Jewish State.”¹⁰ Despite Wilson’s remark, exactly what a “National Home” meant would become a subject of major debate.

This unheard-of compact between a sovereign state and a stateless people, which met great resistance from many of Britain’s wealthier assimilated Jews, who did not want to be perceived as having dual loyalty, probably would not have been achieved without the efforts of Dr. Chaim Weizmann. Born in 1874 in the little town of Motol in czarist Russia’s Pale of Settlement, Weizmann, the son of a timber merchant, experienced the oppression of Eastern European Jewry firsthand. At eighteen, like thousands of Russian Jewish students in what he likened to “a sort of educational stampede,” he left for the West.¹¹ After earning his doctorate in Germany in chemical engineering, he settled in Manchester, England, where he was able to pursue his two lifelong interests, science and Zionism. The former led him to develop a process for manufacturing synthetic rubber (acetone) that was needed to make changes in the production of naval guns, greatly benefiting Great Britain during World War I and earning the gratitude of the British establishment.¹² At home in the culture of Eastern European Jewry as well as that of the West, Weizmann spoke fluent English, German, Yiddish, French, Hebrew, Russian, and Italian.¹³

Weizmann’s rise as a Zionist leader was aided by his passionate, almost messianic belief in his cause, his eloquence, and his great charm. “Weizmann was an overwhelming figure,” wrote the Zionist leader Nahum Goldmann. “Anyone who encountered him fell under his spell.”¹⁴ He was, Justice Felix Frankfurter later wrote, “among the great men of our time.” When he spoke, he seemed taller than he already was, giving the impression of a man who “had that something that makes a difference, that makes a great man,” who had “something electric about him.”¹⁵ Balfour would not be the last statesman to be influenced by Weizmann and his Zionist vision.

After the war, the League of Nations awarded Britain a mandate over Palestine. Using the spirit of the Balfour Declaration as its cornerstone, the Mandate charged Britain with facilitating the creation of a Jewish national home. It established a Jewish Agency to administer Jewish Palestine and supervise its relations with both Britain and world Jewry. Other countries soon gave their approval. By 1922, fifty-two governments had endorsed the major goals of world Zionism.¹⁶ However, Arab protests led the British to issue a White Paper reassuring them that although the Jews were to be in Palestine as a matter of right, not of sufferance, the Jewish national home did not necessitate a Jewish majority or the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Weizmann recognized that the state he so desired could not be created by decree. “Even if all the governments of the world gave us a country,” he wrote, “it would be a gift of words, but if the Jewish people will go and build Palestine, the Jewish state will become a reality and a fact.”¹⁷ One project especially dear to Weizmann was the creation of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which he hoped would be a “partial solution” for Russian Jewish youth, who were excluded from Russian schools.”¹⁸ He found success when the university was inaugurated on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem in 1925. Balfour himself attended the opening ceremony and had tears in his eyes when he saw the progress that the Jews of Palestine had made.¹⁹

There had always remained a small Jewish presence in Palestine, but now the Yishuv, as the Jewish community in Palestine was called, grew in size. At the end of the First World War, there were 50,000 Jews in Palestine. But under the terms of the British Mandate, along with British protection, immigration to Palestine began to increase. By 1928, the Jewish population numbered 160,000 and made up 20 percent of the total population, with 70 percent Muslim and 10 percent Christian. By the time the Second World War came to an end, the Jew ish population of Palestine had exploded to 600,000, while the Arab population increased to twice that number.²⁰

By 1945, the Yishuv had its own schools, public services, trade unions, and army. It was, for all purposes, a “state within a state.”²¹ Yet, due to Arab resistance, including deadly riots, British pledges to aid in the development of the Jewish national home had become a burden. In 1939, Britain adopted a White Paper that limited Jewish immigration to 75,000 over a five-year period, to be continued only with the consent of the Arabs, who were unlikely to grant it. Britain also sought to halt the growth of the Yishuv by limiting land sales to Jews. This meant that at a time when many Jews were trying to escape from Hitler’s clutches, the door to Palestine was closed to them, condemning multitudes to death. While the Arabs saw the White Paper as a promise to stop the Zionists, whom they viewed as intruders taking over their land, the Jews saw it as a betrayal of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate established by the League of Nations. The League’s Permanent Mandates Commission refused to sanction it, saying that Britain’s new policy was not in accordance with their interpretation of the Palestine Mandate.²²

While Hitler proceeded to annihilate Europe’s Jews with diabolical efficiency, the American Jewish community became by default the largest and wealthiest in the world. Even the most assimilated Jewish American, who might barely identify as a Jew, realized that it could very well be him-or herself in Hitler’s gas chambers. And many of their relatives indeed were. The guilt was enormous, especially torturous for those who had friends or family frantically writing for help to get out of Europe. America’s Jews, never very united, cast about for a solution.

One response was to place their faith in Franklin D. Roosevelt. The overwhelming majority of American Jews voted for and loved Franklin D. Roosevelt—they were, after all, part of the labor/liberal coalition that gave the president continued electoral victories in the North and the East. FDR had personally given assurances to Jewish leaders. He had told Brooklyn congressman Emanuel Celler that after the war ended, British prime minister Winston Churchill was going to abrogate the British White Paper on Palestine, and allow Jews to go to Palestine without restriction. Celler concluded that Roosevelt “would supply the impetus that would open the gates of Palestine to the Jews fleeing murder.”²³ Roosevelt, moreover, ran on the Democratic Party platform that promised the Jews the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine. In a letter to Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York, FDR said that he was convinced that the American people gave their support to the establishment of a Jewish “commonwealth” in Palestine and pledged that, if reelected, “I shall help to bring about its realization.”²⁴

Blame for not rescuing more Jews from Hitler’s clutches has been laid at FDR’s feet. Today, many historians and observers have concluded that FDR could have done more to save Europe’s Jews and that his policies have been found wanting. Scholars have criticized the president’s handling of his refugee policy in waiting until 1944 to establish the War Refugee Board, deciding not to bomb the railroad tracks leading to Auschwitz, and failing to aid the Jewish passengers fleeing Hitler on board the ocean liner St. Louis when they were denied entry into Cuba and forced to return to Europe in 1939. In short, it has been argued Roosevelt had done too little too late.²⁵ At the time, however, most Jews believed they had a friend in FDR. They had the utmost confidence in their commander in chief. He regularly advised them to be patient, to put their demands on hold, and that the best way to help Europe’s Jews was to win the war as quickly as possible.

A fervent believer in FDR’s promises was Weizmann’s contemporary Rabbi Stephen Wise, whose reputation rested on his willingness to champion the cause of Zionism when few young Reform rabbis in America would risk their future careers on a cause so unpopular with the Reform Movement.²⁶ Wise was chief rabbi of a new Reform congregation, the Free Synagogue, which he founded in New York City in 1907. Among the many leadership roles in the Zionist movement that he took on were the presidencies of both the World and American Jewish Congresses.

Eliahu Epstein (Elath), a representative of the Jewish Agency in Washington and later Israel’s first ambassador to the United States, regarded Wise as the dominant figure among America’s Jewish leadership when he met him in 1945. A man with “personal charm, brilliance in conversation, and great talent for public relations,” Wise was one of the only Zionist leaders with direct access to the president. However, his very closeness to Roosevelt, Epstein observed, “often prevented his being firm enough in his demands.”²⁷ Wise completely believed in FDR’s promises; the Jews had a “great, good friend” in Washington who was thinking about them and planning for their future.²⁸

Hitler’s escalating war against Europe’s Jewish population, however, led many American Jews to take a more militant stance. They were frustrated with the Jewish establishment’s inability to make FDR intervene. Instead of relying on the personal diplomacy of men such as Weizmann and Wise, many Zionists were attracted to leaders with a more activist program, such as that advocated by Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver. Born in Lithuania in 1893, Silver came from a long line of rabbis. After gaining his own rabbinical degree in 1915, he joined the Temple Tifereth-Israel in Cleveland, Ohio, the largest Reform congregation in the United States. An active and committed Zionist, Silver loathed the quiet diplomacy of his counterpart Stephen Wise, with whom he vied for control of the Zionist movement.

To his regret, in 1942 Weizmann had encouraged Silver to take a leading role in the Zionist movement. Now he was changing the rules on Zionism’s elder statesmen. Silver was not only confrontational and unyielding, but, unlike Weizmann and Wise, he was not charming. Many people who had contact with him found him abrasive and did not particularly like him, a group that unfortunately included both FDR and Truman. But Silver was a very effective political strategist and organizer. He was an inspired speaker whose “baritone-voiced oratory,” a New York Times reporter wrote, “would do credit to a Shakespearean actor.”²⁹

In 1942, the year Hitler’s Final Solution was made known to the world, six hundred American Zionists met at New York City’s Biltmore Hotel. The presence of Chaim Weizmann and the Palestinian leader David Ben-Gurion added to the importance of the event and signified that the United States had replaced Great Britain as the Zionist movement’s center of gravity. At the conference Silver launched an effective attack on the opponents of political Zionism. Silver argued that the only solution for the Jews was to establish their own state and that this should be their top priority. By the end, the attendees unanimously adopted what came to be known as the Biltmore Declaration, which stated for the first time (at least officially among American Zionists) that “Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth.”

Silver, accused by many of his opponents of being a Republican, actually denied belonging to either party. He believed that both major political parties should be made to vie for Jewish support.³⁰ It was a mistake, he thought, to be in the pocket of the Democratic Party and be taken for granted. To the chagrin of the Democrats, Silver proceeded to form a close alliance with Republican Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, a strong supporter of Zionist goals.

Silver also argued that the Zionists’ focus should be on creating a climate of public opinion in the United States that would move non-Zionist Jews to support the goal of establishing an independent Jewish state in Palestine. They should reach out and educate the non-Jewish majority, convince journalists, and put pressure on Congress and through it the administration. In a democracy, the people, Silver and his followers hoped, would have to be listened to.

This ambitious effort was coordinated by an umbrella group of American Zionist organizations, the American Zionist Emergency Council (AZEC), which had been formed in 1939 with Wise as its leader. In 1943, with Wise’s encouragement, Silver and Wise became cochairmen in the hope that the organization would become more effective. AZEC’s two main goals in 1943 and 1944 became pressuring government and media figures to help rescue the remnant of Europe’s Jewry and convincing them at the same time that Palestine had to be opened to receive them. Their hope was that such settlement would eventually build support for creating a Jewish state.³¹

AZEC then set about organizing a conference consisting of democratically elected delegates from organized American Jewry. Not all were Zionists. On August 29, 1943, the American Jewish Conference opened at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City. More than five hundred delegates were present, representing sixty-five different national organizations. In one of his most electrifying speeches, Silver convinced his audience to support the Biltmore Declaration. His success now proved that the majority of organized American Jewry was behind the effort to bring about a Jewish state in Palestine.³²

The lone dissenter at the conference was the American Jewish Committee (AJC), a small organization founded in 1906 that fought anti-Semitism in America and worked to secure Jewish rights abroad. Made up mostly of affluent East Coast Jews of German descent, the AJC had a much greater influence than its numbers suggested, largely because of the economic and social position of its membership. Represented by Judge Joseph M. Proskauer, the head of its anti-Zionist wing, the AJC seceded from the American Jewish Conference after its confirmation of Biltmore, claiming that no one organization had the right to speak for all Jews on the important topic of a Jewish homeland. Although Proskauer would later change his mind, during the war he sought to convince FDR that “the idea of a state based on religion was anachronistic and against the spirit of the age.” It would produce a theocracy, contrary to American principles. Worse, he thought the demand for a Jewish state was “an admission…of despair.” Jews should fight for the right to live anywhere and go back to their homes after the war. The State Department, which also opposed the Zionist solution, found the AJC a useful counterweight to the growing popularity of the Zionist movement.³³

In January 1944, it looked as though the Zionists’ campaign was getting results. Zionist groups worked to have resolutions introduced in the Senate and House of Representatives supporting the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine and the abolishment of the British White Paper. But their hopes were dashed when the resolutions, which had substantial support in both houses of Congress, were opposed by Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, and FDR, who argued that their passage would hurt the war effort.³⁴

The war had not as yet been won, they said, and passage of the resolution by Congress might throw a monkey wrench into operations in the Middle East, which was a major supply route for the European theater. Both the War Department and the State Department were pressing the case that Arab nations would be alienated by such a resolution, and their support was needed for victory in the war against the Germans. The Middle East Supply Center was located in Cairo, as was the Persian Gulf Command, through which Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union passed. And should the resolution lead to conflict between Arabs and Jews, troops might have to be diverted from the European theater to control the disturbances.³⁵

However, in June and July, Silver’s strategy of making the parties compete for Jewish support achieved success. Both the Republican and Democratic Partys’ conventions included pro-Zionist planks, which were then endorsed by the two party’s presidential candidates, Thomas E. Dewey and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

When Stimson finally withdrew his objections to the shelved congressional resolutions in October, they were resurrected and introduced in the Senate again by a bipartisan resolution bearing the names of Senators Robert F. Wagner of New York and Robert Taft of Ohio, who was nicknamed by his conservative supporters “Mr. Republican.” Once again, problems arose when the resolution was brought before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. There were objections to the phrase “Jewish Commonwealth.” Roosevelt, who wanted room to maneuver with the Arabs after the war, agreed with Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., who had told him that “putting the resolution through now would just stir things up.”³⁶

Indeed, the administration was angry that the Zionist leaders had pushed for the reintroduction of the resolution without consulting the White House. Judge Samuel Rosenman, FDR’s special counsel and unofficial adviser on Jewish affairs, tried to intercede. Rosenman believed in going through official channels and did not care for the tactics of “extreme Zionists” such as Silver.³⁷ Meeting with the Jewish Agency’s representative, Nahum Goldmann, Rosenman complained that no one had even told him or Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, a major figure working for the Zionist cause behind the scenes, about the resolution. How could he help the Zionists or give them advice, he asked, “when they are neither informed of, nor consulted about…the resolution?” Had they done so, Rosenman continued, they would have seen “that such a step was impossible at the moment, and such a resolution could not have been passed.”³⁸

Wise had been informed of the president’s request that the pro-Zionist congressional resolution be put off for the time being and he had tried to forestall it. Roosevelt had said that if Congress could just give him more time, when he was at Yalta, he would be able to “unravel this whole situation on the ground.”³⁹

Silver, however, was determined to press ahead on the resolution. He was furious at Wise and those in AZEC who supported him, who had gone to Washington, willingly collaborating with the State Department to keep Congress from “expressing itself in favor of the Jewish Commonwealth.” It was not the “charm, winsomeness or eloquence” of individual leaders that would help them, Silver said, nor the promise of support for a candidate in an election. Such intercession was an anachronism. Putting it as sharply as possible and alluding to Wise, Silver bellowed in a speech, “It is too late for Court Jews.”⁴⁰

Roosevelt, as one might imagine, resented Silver. “The President,” Rosenman informed Jewish Agency Representative Nahum Goldmann, “is becoming antagonized by Dr. Silver’s takeover of the Zionist political leadership, instead of Dr. Wise.” It was crazy to shift leadership to “a man like Dr. Silver whom the President dislikes.” Moreover, Silver’s tactics were getting to FDR, who was “antagonized by the fact that all the hostile [Republican] elements in Congress are poised to make Zionist speeches.” The result was ominous for the Zionists, Rosenman said. FDR, “who always thought of Palestine as a noble and idealistic venture, is beginning to think of it as a nuisance.” Rosenman’s advice was that “Dr. Wise should appear more on the Washington scene and assume active political leadership.”⁴¹

Turf battles soon arose between AZEC and the Jewish Agency. When Goldmann had the temerity to see Stettinius without clearing it with Silver, Silver was furious. Calling Goldmann, who functioned as sort of an international ambassador of the future Jewish state repre senting both world and American Jewry, “an international gigolo” and a “damn nuisance,” Silver threatened to resign.⁴²

Silver’s childhood friend and associate Emanuel Neumann appealed to Weizmann for help. It was true, Neumann wrote, that Silver “lacks the flexibility required in dealing with internal situations. But his firmness and boldness, and if you like, his inflexibility are also the qualities which made him such an undaunted champion of our cause in the world at large.”⁴³ Weizmann should not abandon the difficult Silver, Neumann told Weizmann, because whatever his faults, he had “revolutionized the American Zionist movement from a weak conglomerate, unaware of its own potential and somewhat uncertain of the direction it should take, into a political force to be reckoned with.”⁴⁴

FDR’s wish regarding Silver and Wise appeared to be coming true. A split in the Zionist ranks was inevitable. Silver resigned from AZEC in December 1944, forfeiting the leadership to Wise and his allies, only to be brought back at the demand of the members, who appreciated the fiery Silver.

One group that was not going to wait for Roosevelt to save the Jews of Europe was the “revisionist” Vladimir Jabotinsky and his followers, who arrived in America from Palestine in 1940 and began a dramatic crusade. Jabotinsky died soon after, and his mantle was taken up by Hillel Kook. The nephew of Palestine’s chief rabbi, Kook was born in 1915 in Lithuania, but his family soon moved to Palestine. By the time he was a young man, Kook had become a member of the Irgun, the underground militia in Palestine founded by Jabotinsky. At the Irgun leader’s suggestion, Kook moved to the United States, where he took the name Peter Bergson, because, he said, he did not want to cause his family any embarrassment.⁴⁵

Bergson quickly learned that in America, the way to gain attention was to use the techniques so well developed by Hollywood and Broadway, as well as the American advertising industry. He became a master of fund-raising, created new committees that included Jews and non-Jews, and took out full-page ads in the nation’s leading newspapers. Gaining the support of the playwright Ben Hecht, Bergson got Billy Rose to pro duce an extravaganza in 1943, We Will Never Die, which packed Madison Square Garden and toured the nation. One of the actors appearing in it was a young novice named Marlon Brando. More established performers included Edward G. Robinson and Paul Muni. An estimated 100,000 people saw the company in its tour of major cities.⁴⁶

Bergson got the attention of the White House, Congress, and American Jews when he agitated for a brash new proposal, the creation of a Jewish army, which would allow Jews in Palestine and Europe to contribute to the Allied war effort. His technique for gaining support was described well by Jabotinsky’s son Ari: “We bought a page in The New York Times and advertised the Committee for a Jewish Army just as you would advertise Chevrolet Motors or Players cigarettes.” Fund-raising was so successful, young Jabotinsky continued, that “we became the best known Jewish organization among the Gentiles.”⁴⁷

Bergson created yet another new group in 1943, which he called the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe. His genius was to focus the group’s attention on one goal, in this case actions to save Jews from Hitler. Consciously downplaying the issue of Palestine and its independence, Bergson got major American figures from all points of view to sign on, including the conservative radio personality Lowell Thomas, the left-wing producer Erwin Piscator, and the pro-Communist intellectual Mary Van Kleeck.⁴⁸

FDR took notice, and let it be known to the official Zionist leadership that he was disturbed by Bergson’s dramatic advertisements in The Washington Post for his Emergency Committee to save the Jewish People of Europe. They were “doing a great deal of harm,” the president thought, and the “time had come for the responsible Jewish groups to come out with a statement…making it clear that they have no connection with the Jewish Army Committee group or its statements.” He wanted either the Zionists or the American Jewish Committee to take action and to inform all members of Congress. FDR even met with Washington Post publisher Phil Graham and asked him to stop running Bergson’s ads.

Wise agreed, and when Harold Ickes, the secretary of the interior, accepted the position of honorary chairman of the Emergency Committee’s Washington Division, Wise wrote to him, “I wish I could have seen you before you gave your consent. I know that your aim is to save Jews, but why tie up with an organization which talks about saving Jews, gets a great deal of money for saving them, but in my judgment, has not done a thing which may result in the saving of a single Jew.”⁴⁹

When Bergson organized a march on Washington of four hundred rabbis on October 6, 1943, to demand immediate action by the government to rescue European Jews and to open Palestine to them, the president, on the advice of Stephen Wise and Samuel Rosenman, refused to meet with them. Rosenman told FDR that “the group behind this petition [was] not representative of the most thoughtful elements in Jewry” and that he had tried without success “to keep the horde from storming Washington.” Moreover, he told the chief, “The leading Jews of his acquaintance opposed this march on the Capitol.”⁵⁰

After the rabbis’ march on the capital, when Rosenman met with Silver and complained about Bergson, the rabbi told him that “our failure to get anywhere with the present administration…was responsible for the success of the strategy and tactics of the Bergson group.” An hour later, Silver met with the inventive Bergson, who told him about yet another new project: the American League for a Free Palestine. The underlying idea, said Bergson, was that Palestine was already a Jewish state that needed to be freed from enemy occupation, like Holland or France. Silver brought up the possibility of the Zionists and the Bergson group cooperating, but Bergson “had no reaction.” Silver ended the meeting by telling the young man that since his group had failed at both his campaign for the Jewish army and the rescuing of European Jewry, “he should reconsider the validity of his technique on the American scene.”⁵¹

Bergson further alienated America’s Jewish leadership when he bought a former embassy building in Washington and made it the headquarters of his new group, the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation. Declaring it “the government-in-exile” for the yet-to-be-created Jewish state, Bergson claimed his new committee was the “au thentic representative of Palestine Jewry and those stateless Jews hoping to immigrate to the Holy Land.” This was a direct challenge to the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency, “which considered themselves the sole legitimate representatives of the Palestine Jewish community.” Bergson also tried to allay the fears of many assimilated Jews, who worried that they would be accused of dual loyalty if a Jewish state should arise. He called for a distinction to be made between “Hebrews,” which he said referred to Jewish residents of Palestine and European Jewish refugees, and “Jews,” which referred to Diaspora Jews, indicating only their religion. But this distinction further angered Zionist leaders “since it undermined the basic Zionist tenet of international Jewish solidarity.”⁵²

Bergson, nevertheless, gained a large group of congressional supporters who met with him and endorsed his organizations, despite the State Department’s opposition and that of mainstream Zionists, who considered him dangerous and sought to marginalize him. Yet Bergson managed to touch a raw nerve on the part of American Jews, because he alone appeared to be doing something to stop the slaughter of Europe’s Jews. Bergson ironically forced the established Zionist groups to meet him halfway, by changing their tactics and assuming a more militant position.⁵³

Prior to 1943, the United States had no clearly defined policy toward Palestine and generally regarded it as a British responsibility. FDR had been postponing decisions on the issues of the Jewish refugees and U.S. support for the creation of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine. Despite his promises to Jewish leaders and unbeknown to them, the president had pursued a policy that tried to please the Arabs, the Department of State, and the Jews simultaneously. His favored technique was to assure representatives of the various groups that he stood with them, giving all a false hope that the president shared their agenda.⁵⁴

Up until the end of the war, the State Department had functioned like a nineteenth-century exclusive club. This sedate, unhurried workplace was housed in an “ornate building, dating from the 1870s, with high ceilings, white-painted swinging doors, and long corridors paved with black and white marble.” There, Palestine came under the jurisdiction of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, which was headed by Wallace S. Murray, who regarded the Zionists as intruders in an otherwise calm Near East and was alarmed at their increasing success in swaying the American public to support the creation of a Jewish state. Arab leaders too were anxiously watching the situation and started to question the U.S. government’s position.⁵⁵

But this state of affairs could not last forever. Acting on FDR’s order in 1943, Murray sent Colonel Harold B. Hoskins to the region. Hopkins spoke fluent Arabic and was told by State to consult various Arab leaders, including King Saud of Saudi Arabia. What the Arabs feared above all, Hoskins reported, was that a Jewish Palestine would be forced on them by the Great Powers. Such a result, Hoskins argued, could not be attained “without outside assistance from British or British and American military forces.” Because the Arabs so strongly opposed a Jewish state, he advised Roosevelt to make it “very clear to the American people…that only by military force can a Zionist State in Palestine be imposed upon the Arabs.” It was therefore important that support for aid to the persecuted European Jews not be tied up with the Zionist effort to create a Jewish state in Palestine. One thing had to be done: a simple statement should be issued that “any post-war decisions will be taken only after full consultation with both Arabs and Jews.”⁵⁶

Hurley was most disturbed that David Ben-Gurion, the Palestinian Zionist leader, was going everywhere saying that the United States supported a Jewish state in Palestine. Hurley asked that the president clarify the issue and point out that the United States consented only to the British Mandate for a Jewish national home that would not trespass on the rights of non-Jews in Palestine. Moreover, Hurley claimed, the Jews were seeking a state that could be imposed only by removing Arabs already there by force, even if the Jews had once had a historical claim to Palestine themselves. If the United States supported such a claim, Hurley argued, Mexico could then argue that it was entitled to restitution for the United States’ having taken much of what was once its land and was now in the American West and Southwest.⁵⁷

Such reports led Roosevelt to tell his friend Senator Robert F. Wagner, Jr., New York’s leading Democrat, about his fears. There were about half a million Jews in Palestine, he wrote the senator, and on the other side were “seventy million Mohammedans who want to cut their throats the day they land.” His main goal was thus to avoid a massacre, and he hoped the situation could be resolved through negotiations. Anything done such as action toward a Jewish state, FDR implied, would only “add fuel to the flames.” American hopes were one thing. “If we talk about them too much,” he cautioned Wagner, “we will hurt fulfillment.” Better to keep discussions on the matter under the radar.⁵⁸

The result of both missions was to be found in the president’s reply to Ibn Saud on May 26, 1943, a note that echoed Hurley’s conclusions and even used Hoskins’s exact words. No decision regarding Palestine would be taken, Roosevelt assured Ibn Saud, “without full consultation with both Arabs and Jews.” That statement quickly became the cornerstone and mantra of U.S. policy toward Palestine for the next few years.⁵⁹

The loosely worded pledge to King Saud, however, became a virtual political football. When American Zionists elicited a positive response to their demands from the White House, as they invariably would, the Arab states and leaders immediately protested. The Division of Near Eastern Affairs at State would then reassure the Arabs that policy had not changed; nothing would be done without consulting them and looking out for their interests. The evidence indicates that FDR approved this strategy and that reassuring messages to the Arabs had not been sent out by State against his wishes.⁶⁰

It was clear that the president was highly ambivalent, giving assurances to both the Arabs and the Jews about the possibilities for the future. Foreign policy was one thing; pacifying a key component of the coalition that had given him electoral victory was another. In March 1944, FDR had reiterated his good intentions to Wise and Silver. Emerging from a White House meeting, the two rabbis told the press that FDR had told them the U.S. government had not approved the British White Paper of 1939 limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine. The president was happy, they reported, “that the doors of Palestine are today open to Jewish refugees, and that when future decisions are reached, full justice will be given to those who seek a Jewish national home.”⁶¹ The Zionist leaders presented this as a major victory, receiving cheers from the audience when they spoke at a Zionist dinner in New York that evening.

They were unaware, of course, that almost immediately, Secretary of State Cordell Hull had sent out a reply to the Arab states. In FDR’s comments to the rabbis, Hull stressed, “the president pointed out that the statement mentioned only a Jewish National Home, not a Jewish Commonwealth, and added that although the United States had never approved of the White Paper, it had never disapproved of it either.”⁶² As usual, the president carefully pursued his policy of obfuscation and again was successful at keeping all the adversaries at bay.

FDR, believing in his personal charm and powers of persuasion, was convinced that if he could just sit down with King Saud of Saudi Arabia, whom he considered to be the leader of the Arabs, he would be able to iron out the Palestine situation.⁶³ He had told his cabinet that after the wartime meeting of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union at Yalta, he would meet with Ibn Saud and “try to settle the Palestine situation.” Back in Washington, the economist and White House consultant Herbert Feis was amazed that Roosevelt “cherished the illusion that presumably he, and he alone, as head of the United States, could bring about a settlement—if not a reconciliation—between Arabs and Jews.” Feis remembered thinking as he left the White House after hearing the president talk about Middle Eastern affairs, “I’ve read of men who thought they might be King of the Jews and other men who thought they might be King of the Arabs, but this is the first time I’ve listened to a man who dreamt of being King of both the Jews and the Arabs.”⁶⁴

It is difficult to know what FDR truly believed. The president told Rosenman that the issue of Palestine could be settled by “letting the Jews in to the limit that the country will support them—with a barbed wire fence around the Holy Land.” Rosenman mused back that it might work: “if the fence was a two-way one to keep the Jews in and the Arabs out.”⁶⁵

In his diary on November 10, 1944, the handsome, gray-haired, ex–steel executive Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., now acting secretary of state, wrote that in a private meeting with FDR, the president had told him he was “confident” that he “will be able to iron out the whole Arab-Jewish issue on the ground where he can have a talk.” The president’s own position, he told the Stettinius, was that “Palestine should be for the Jews and no Arabs should be in it, and he has definite ideas on the subject. It should be exclusive Jewish territory.”⁶⁶ Not even the most militant Zionists, it must be said, had ever called for such a drastic solution to the Palestine issue.

Two months later the president told Stettinius, who had replaced the ailing Cordell Hull as secretary of state, that he planned to meet with Ibn Saud during his trip to Yalta. Stettinius told him that he thought this would be an excellent idea “because sooner or later we would have to take a definite position in regard to the Arabian-Jewish difficulties and to the Jewish national home in Palestine.” FDR then told him his plan: he was going to take a map with him showing the “Near Eastern area as a whole and the relationship of Palestine to the area and on that basis to point out to Ibn Saud what an infinitesimal part of the whole area was occupied by Palestine and that he could not see why a portion of Palestine could not be given to the Jews without harming in any way the interests of the Arabs with the understanding, of course, that the Jews would not move into adjacent parts of the Near East from Palestine.”⁶⁷

Roosevelt hoped that a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine would emerge that would aid the economic development of Arab lands. Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, for one, claimed in his memoir that Roosevelt thought a Jewish state could be a model of social policy and would help raise living standards throughout the Middle East. He had anticipated, Welles wrote, that once a Palestinian Jewish commonwealth was created, “far-reaching projects for irrigation, power development and the construction of communications” could be carried out. Perhaps the Arab countries would find this an inducement and their people and leaders would “overcome racial antagonism.”⁶⁸

This vision came in part from Walter Clay Lowdermilk, who was assistant chief of the Soil Conservation Service of the United States. A former Rhodes Scholar, Lowdermilk was a religious Methodist who had first visited Palestine in 1938, when he had sought to gather information that might help him understand what factors had led to the devastating dust bowl that had hit the American heartland in the 1930s.

Lowdermilk’s report, later turned into the best-selling book Palestine: Land of Promise, argued that engineering miracles such as the TVA had proved that “modern engineers can harness wild waters to produce cheap power for industry and scientific agriculture to make over waste lands into fields, orchards and gardens, to support populous and thriving communities.” Surveying the Jordan Valley in the Near East, Lowdermilk argued that the “combination of natural factors and a concentration of resources” there made it viable for a new, far-reaching reclamation project that would surpass what the TVA had done in the Tennessee Valley. As Lowdermilk put it, “The Holy Land can be reclaimed from the desolation of long neglect and wastage and provide farms, industry and security for possibly five million Jewish refugees from the persecutions and hatreds of Europe in addition to the 1,800,000 Arabs and Jews already in Palestine and Trans-Jordan.”⁶⁹

Lowdermilk’s conclusions delighted the Zionists. Here was a scien tific study that offered evidence that Palestine could support a much larger Jewish population. Moreover, Lowdermilk was obviously sympathetic to the Zionist goals. “Some place must be found,” he emphasized, to “reinstate the Jews long without a country among the peoples of the earth.” And that place could only be Palestine. “They have nowhere else to go.”⁷⁰

Lowdermilk was impressed by what the Jews had already accomplished. They have “demonstrated the finest reclamation of old lands that I have seen in three continents,” he wrote. And “they have done this by the application of science, industry and devotion to the problems of reclaiming lands, draining swamps, improving agriculture and livestock and creating new industries,” all done against “great odds and with sacrificial devotion to the ideal of redeeming the Promised Land.”⁷¹

On the other hand, when he took an 18,000-mile car trip through Arab lands he found neglected and desolate wasteland. “The Arabs,” Lowdermilk concluded, “have not the genius or ability to restore the Holy Land to its possibilities.” He did not call for a formal Jewish homeland, but his implication was clear. Settling millions of Jewish refugees in Palestine, he concluded, “would erect an eternal memorial to our victory in this world struggle for democracy and world freedom.” The Jews had to become “custodians of a new Palestine.”⁷²

Despite what the president had told some of his confidants, he had his doubts about the viability of Lowdermilk’s analysis. His hesitation was strengthened by the State Department. Writing to the president in January, Stettinius warned him that other credible experts showed “that from a purely technical standpoint there are serious obstacles to” Lowdermilk’s plan.⁷³ Lowdermilk’s chief opponent was Dr. Isaiah Bowman, the president of Johns Hopkins University, who headed a State Department advisory group. Not only was Lowdermilk incorrect, Bowman argued, but Palestine could not support even its current population satisfactorily. Bowman’s arguments influenced even Eleanor Roosevelt, who was otherwise more than sympathetic to the plight of Europe’s Jews.⁷⁴ If such was the case, it was obviously out of the question for Zionists to advocate a major increase of Jewish immi grants, since it would be virtually impossible for them to sustain themselves.

Before leaving for Yalta, Roosevelt met with Wise and asked him for his opinion of Lowdermilk’s optimistic projections for the development of the Jordan Valley. Wise admitted that some had called it impractical but that TVA chief David Lilenthal saw it as “extremely practical and desirable.” The president was also concerned about Arab fears that the Jews would “seek to infiltrate the surrounding Arab countries.” In truth, Wise responded, the reverse was taking place: the Arabs were migrating to Palestine in order to take advantage of its rapid development. Most important, Wise assured FDR, “the Jews have not the slightest desire or intention to colonize the Arab lands outside Palestine.” Jews living in Arab lands would undoubtedly themselves leave for Palestine, since Jews in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen were ready to go at a moment’s notice. As for the president’s fear that the Soviets would oppose a Jewish state, Wise informed Roosevelt that President Edvard Beneš of Czechoslovakia, whom he called a “Zionist of long standing,” had personally been told by Joseph Stalin that if Britain and the United States had no objections to the creation of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine, neither would Russia.⁷⁵

In preparing for Yalta, the president also asked James Landis, his director for Middle East operations, what he might say to King Saud regarding “a rapprochement to the Palestine problem.” Ibn Saud felt strongly about the topic, Landis told FDR, and was adamant that he would not accept any middle ground. Unless the president was ready to offer new and far-reaching proposals, he suggested that FDR steer clear of the issue altogether. Indeed, Landis admitted that for the past twenty years, the State Department in effect had had “no policy” on the Palestine issue at all, considering it a British responsibility. To develop a new one, it had to start from the assumption that the goal of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine had to be entirely given up, since “the political objective implicit in the Jewish state idea will never be accepted by the Arab nations.” Such a stance might indeed be inconsistent with both Balfour and the Atlantic Charter, Landis advised. Nevertheless, one had to accept the clear “political limitations” facing the United States. His hope was that a Jewish home, rather than a state or commonwealth, could be found acceptable to both Arabs and Jews.⁷⁶

Reinforcing Landis’s opinion of King Saud’s attitude toward the idea of a Jewish state, the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, William E. Eddy, forwarded another missive. He reported that King Saud had told him that “if America should choose in favor of the Jews, who are accursed in the Koran as enemies of the Muslims until the end of the world, it will indicate to us that America has repudiated her friendship with us.”⁷⁷ Stettinius reiterated to the president that Ibn Saud “regards himself as a champion of the Arabs of Palestine and would himself feel it an honor to die in battle in their cause.”⁷⁸

Now the State Department offered its own proposal: Palestine should become an international territory under trusteeship of the British, with a charter granted it by the new United Nations. This arrangement would supersede all previous agreements on Palestine, including those promised by the British in the Balfour Declaration.⁷⁹ Trusteeship would remain the State Department’s favored policy for Palestine.

Two days after the inauguration, the president left on the long trip to the Yalta Conference at a Black Sea resort, a journey that would only drain the energy of the already ill leader. The main task addressed at the conference centered on the dismemberment, disarming, and demilitarization of defeated Germany. The Big Three—the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union—agreed in principle to dismantle Germany, to reestablish the so-called Curzon Line as the border between Poland and the Soviet Union, to recognize Josip Broz Tito’s authority in Yugoslavia, and to give the Soviets access to the Baltic in the former German port city of Königsberg. Most important, Stalin and Roosevelt agreed in principle to the holding of free elections in Poland and Eastern Europe, in the lands that had been liberated from Nazism. The situation of the Jews, it appeared, had been pushed aside.

At Yalta, concern for the Jewish refugees and their future in Palestine was not taken up by the Big Powers’ delegates in their official deliberations. However, Roosevelt tried to find out where Stalin stood on Zionism. After dinner on February 10, Roosevelt asked Stalin if he supported the Zionist program. Stalin answered warily: yes, in principle, but he recognized the difficulty of solving the Jewish problem. “The Soviet attempt to establish a Jewish home at Birobidzhan,” the Soviet dictator explained, “had failed because the Jews scattered to other cities. Only some small groups had been successful at farming.” FDR then told him he was going to see Ibn Saud after the Yalta Conference. What, Stalin asked, was he going to give Ibn Saud when he saw him? He had thought of only one concession, the president quipped to Stalin; “to give Ibn Saud the six million Jews in the United States.” FDR was being facetious, but Stalin evidently did not realize it. That would be difficult, Stalin replied seriously, since Jews were “middlemen, profiteers and parasites.”⁸⁰ Roosevelt, however, came away from the conversation pleased that Stalin did not seem opposed to Zionist aims in Palestine.

The president had been duly warned by the State Department and his advisers about the implacability of the Arab states to Zionist demands, as well as the hostile position taken by King Saud. Ever the optimist, FDR still believed that his charm and commitment to negotiation could work and that he would be able to make a breakthrough that would be acceptable to all sides.

It was in this context that the president decided, at the end of the Yalta Conference, to meet with Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, King Farouk of Egypt, and, most important, King Saud of Saudi Arabia. Palestine was not the only subject on the agenda. Roosevelt was fully informed about the importance of the Saudi oil reserves. These were considered essential to American security, given the awareness that both increased demand for oil in the West, along with the dwindling of domestic reserves, made the securing of Middle Eastern oil a key necessity of an American foreign policy at the war’s end. He knew that oil industry executives in particular were waiting for the war’s conclusion, at which time they looked forward to exploiting the vast oil reserves found in Arabia. While the war was still on, FDR had to be careful not to antagonize the Arab leaders, since a major supply line to the Soviet ally ran through Arab territory on the Persian Gulf.

Already American interests in Saudi oil were being developed. The Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO), The New York Times reported, which had invested $100 million in Saudi Arabia, was expected to expand the amount tenfold in the next decade. American wartime airfields were being surveyed for use in the future by commercial aircraft, and American banking firms were studying the potential for opening bank branches.⁸¹

One can only be impressed by the insistence of the physically weak president to carry out this mission. After the strenuous eight-day meeting with Stalin and Churchill at Yalta, FDR took a five-and-a-half-hour flight to Egypt, where he boarded a Navy cruiser, The Quincy, at Great Bitter Lake on the Suez Canal. That body of water, the historian Frank Freidel pointed out, was “called Mara in biblical times, and was an ironic location for Roosevelt’s debate with Ibn Saud over the fate of Jewish refugees, for (as he knew) Moses had stopped there with the Israelites on the flight from Egypt toward the promised land.”⁸² The next day, he entertained both King Farouk and Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, waiting anxiously for the really important meeting—the one scheduled the following day: February 14, 1945.

The president went all out to impress Ibn Saud. The New York Times reported in a banner headline that the warship had been made into an “Arab Court in Miniature.” The display was “without precedent in American naval annals.” The ship’s crew had spread dozens of thick Oriental carpets on the deck and set up a royal tent in front of the forward gun turret.⁸³ Ibn Saud “lived in it as he were making a pilgrimage somewhere in the vast desert regions of Arabia.”⁸⁴ Aware of the eating habits of the Muslim monarch, they built a sheep pen at the fantail, large enough to feed the entire royal party.

The meeting was difficult for both leaders. The ailing king could not walk up the gangplank and was hoisted onto the ship in a lifeboat. Roosevelt’s polio, bad health, and the stress of the Yalta Conference had left him weak and tired. He waited to receive the king sitting on an armchair put up under the Quincy’s forward guns. The monarch’s chair, unlike that of the president, was a gilt armchair, on which he sat for most of his meetings, “guarded by barefoot Nubian soldiers.” Ibn Saud’s party also included, the diplomat Charles E. “Chip” Bohlen observed, a royal astrologer, a coffee server, and “nine miscellaneous slaves, cooks, porters and scullions.”⁸⁵

The president, realizing the high stakes, tried to charm the Saudi monarch. He was “in top form,” his translator and the future ambassador to Saudi Arabia, William A. Eddy, wrote, “as a charming host, witty conversationalist, with the spark and light in his eyes and that gracious smile which always won people over whenever he talked with them as a friend.”⁸⁶ As a guest of the president, Ibn Saud waited for his host to bring up topics for discussion. Roosevelt immediately introduced the problem of the Jewish refugees’ plight, for which he had obvious sympathy. FDR expressed his admiration for their role in developing the land in Palestine. But he prefaced his comments by stating that he had “a serious problem in which he desired the King’s advice and help,” namely, the rescue and settlement of the remnant of European Jewry. “What would the King suggest?” FDR asked.⁸⁷

Simply introducing the topic of the Jews met with a negative reaction from Ibn Saud, who told the president that “in his opinion the Jews should return to live in the lands from which they were driven.” If that was impossible because their homes were destroyed, the answer was to give them “living space in the Axis countries which oppressed them.” Moreover, he was not impressed with FDR’s claim that Jewish farmers had developed the land in Palestine. That had been accomplished with American and British capital, he claimed, and only the Jews would gain from the prosperity. The truth was, Ibn Saud continued, that Arabs and Jews “could never cooperate, neither in Palestine, nor in any other country.” Arabs would rather die, he told FDR, “than yield their land to the Jews.”⁸⁸ As far as he was concerned, the Arabs had done no wrong to Europe’s Jews. The cost of helping them had to be carried out exclusively by the defeated Germans. Said the monarch, “Make the enemy and the oppressor pay; that is how we Arabs wage war.”⁸⁹ The king’s expectation was that the United States would give him full support.

FDR, who had come to the meeting hoping to convince the king to accept some kind of compromise, decided immediately that it was best to assure Ibn Saud that he would get precisely the support he expected from the United States. He would never, he assured the concerned monarch, help the Jews at the expense of the Arabs. King Saud immediately seemed relieved.

The president then explained to Ibn Saud that he was talking as the chief executive but it was impossible for him to prevent speeches made on behalf of the Zionist project or to stop resolutions in favor of a Jewish homeland passed by Congress. He should not confuse these outbursts, FDR emphasized, with U.S. policy. His own future policy, he assured King Saud, would be one friendly to the interests of the Saudi monarchy.⁹⁰ His chief adviser, Harry Hopkins, was not happy. On the Quincy, Hopkins had remained in his cabin, too sick to attend the meeting itself. When he heard the outcome, Hopkins thought that the president’s ill health had led him to be “overly impressed” with Ibn Saud and had caused him to abandon his earlier pro-Zionist position far too easily.⁹¹

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was riled at the news of FDR’s meeting with Ibn Saud. An American-Saudi alliance, he feared, might be a potential threat to British dominance in the Middle East. Hence he decided to meet the three leaders that the president had just seen. Churchill had made his own promises to the Zionists, and he considered himself to be one, if somewhat inconsistently. During a visit to Palestine in 1921, as colonial secretary, Churchill had been impressed by the achievements of the Jewish pioneers in Palestine. After visiting Rishon Le-Zion, one of the oldest Jewish agricultural villages, founded in 1882, he enthusiastically told the House of Commons, “Anyone who has seen the work of the Jewish colonies…will be struck by the enormous productive results which they have achieved.” “From the most inhospitable soil, surrounded on every side by barrenness and the most miserable form of cultivation,” he was driven during his visit “into a fertile and thriving country estate, where the scanty soil gave place to good crops and good cultivation, and then to vineyards and finally to the most beautiful, luxurious orange groves, all created in 20 or 30 years by the exertions of the Jewish community who live there.”⁹²

Churchill had his own plans for Palestine after the war. In 1943, he told Chaim Weizmann that he wanted Britain to offer Ibn Saud the leadership of a Middle Eastern Arab Federation, for which he would be paid £20 million a year. In exchange, the king would have to give his support for a Jewish state in Palestine.⁹³ Later Churchill proclaimed the 1939 White Paper a “gross breach of faith” and told Chaim Weizmann that after victory he would see to it that Jewish refugees would be able to go to Palestine. The promise of a Jewish homeland, Churchill said, was “an inheritance left to him by Lord Balfour and he was not going to change his attitude.” After Hitler’s defeat, he added, “the allies will have to establish the Jews in the position where they belong.” The Jews and the Zionists should not worry, the prime minister assured Weizmann, because they had a “wonderful case.” He hadn’t changed his views, and he promised that “he would bite deep into the problem and it is going to be the biggest plum of the war.”⁹⁴

But Churchill fared no better with Ibn Saud than Roosevelt had. He began the meeting by reminding the Saudi monarch that Great Britain had “supported and subsidized” him for twenty years and had made his reign possible “by fending off potential enemies.” Therefore Britain, Churchill argued, was entitled to ask for Ibn Saud’s help “in the problem of Palestine, where a strong Arab leader can restrain fanatical Arab elements, insist on moderation in Arab councils, and effect a realistic compromise with Zionism.” Churchill expected both sides to make concessions, and he expected the Saudi monarch to do his part.

What Churchill suggested, Ibn Saud answered, would not help the Allies or Britain, “but [was] an act of treachery to the Prophet and all believing Muslims which would wipe out my honor and destroy my soul. I could not acquiesce in a compromise with Zionism much less take any initiative.” Furthermore, “the British and their Allies would be making their own choice between 1. a friendly and peaceful Arab world, and 2. a struggle to the death between Arab and Jew if unreasonable immigration of Jews to Palestine is renewed. In any case, the formula must be one arrived at by and with Arab consent.”⁹⁵ Churchill, Rabbi Stephen Wise commented, had the same problem that FDR faced: he was unable to make an impression on King Saud. “It may have been his own fault,” Wise later wrote Weizmann, “because he set out to browbeat the old man for two hours, after which he changed his tack and was sweet as honey with him, but nothing availed.”⁹⁶

On March 1, FDR’s acquiescence to Ibn Saud was made clear when he reported on Yalta in a speech to Congress. The country could see the toll his trip had taken. The president, despite his polio, had always given his speeches standing up. He delivered this one sitting down, apologizing for his “unusual posture” but telling his nationwide audience and the members of Congress that “I know you will realize it makes it a lot easier for me in not having to carry about ten pounds of steel around the bottom of my legs, and also because I have just completed a 14,000 mile trip.”⁹⁷

Truman commented years later that all could see that “the famous Roosevelt manner and delivery were not there. And he knew it.” Yet both houses of Congress were “awed by his dramatic display of sheer will power and courage.”⁹⁸ In the speech, FDR made the comment that would shock the Zionist activists, as well as the entire nation, whose citizens overwhelmingly favored a Jewish homeland in Palestine. At the meeting with Ibn Saud, he noted, “I learned more about the whole problem of Arabia—the Moslems—the Jewish problem—by talking to Ibn Saud for five minutes than I could have learned in the exchange of two or three dozen letters.”⁹⁹ In saying this, he was undoubtedly referring to the extremely negative—some would say fanatical—response of the Wahhabi king on the subject of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

The American Jewish community and all of its representative groups were horrified. FDR had thrown in the comment toward the end of the speech, almost an aside to a presentation of what had been attained at Yalta. The pro-Zionist American Jewish Congress accused the president of reneging on his preelection endorsement of the Democratic Party’s platform. Congressman Emanuel Celler bitterly complained that of all the great issues discussed by the Big Three at Yalta, not one of the world’s leaders had seen fit even to mention the catastrophe overtaking Europe’s Jewry. Celler was especially irked that the president had gone out of his way to meet with Ibn Saud but had had no time for the Jewish leaders in Palestine. As Celler wrote in his autobiography, “I listened with dismay and disbelief to his implied repudiation of the Jewish claim to Palestine.”¹⁰⁰ Senator Edwin C. Johnson (D.–Colorado), a member of the pro-Zionist American Christian Palestine Committee, commented that “the choice of a desert king as an expert on the Jewish question is nothing short of amazing.” Johnson added that he thought even FDR’s dog, his beloved Fala, “would be more of an expert.”¹⁰¹ Only Sumner Welles, the president’s assistant secretary of state and his good friend, stood by his boss. Calling the charge that FDR had backed down on his support of a Jewish Palestine “malicious,” Welles tried what today would be called spin: FDR, he wrote, “did not modify in one iota the basic principles that he had constantly supported…the kind of settlement…that would provide the Jews with their promised national homeland.”¹⁰²

Realizing the harm his comments had caused in the Jewish community, FDR tried to minimize the damage. Once again, he turned to the Zionist leader he most trusted, Rabbi Stephen Wise. The rabbi in turn provided a detailed account of their meeting to Chaim Weizmann. Wise began his meeting with the president by “congratulating him upon a gloriously successful mission,” referring to the Yalta Agreement. Knowing full well that Wise’s central concern was the Zionist project, Roosevelt mournfully and candidly acknowledged, “I have had a failure. The one failure of my mission was with Ibn Saud.” The president felt especially bad about this, he told Wise, because he had “arranged the whole meeting with him for the sake of your cause.” FDR continued, “I tried to approach the Jewish question a number of times. Every time I mentioned the Jews he would shrink and give me some such answer as this—‘I am too old to understand new ideas!’ When, for example, the President began to tell him about what we have done for Palestine through irrigation and the planting of trees, Ibn Saud’s answer was, ‘My people don’t like trees; they are desert dwellers. And we have water enough without irrigation.’ The President added, ‘I have never so completely failed to make an impact upon a man’s mind as in his case.’”

The rabbi accepted FDR’s explanation, telling Weizmann that Roosevelt had seen Ibn Saud “for our sake” but had come out of the meeting fearful that if the king united the Arab armies, he could easily defeat all the Jews of Palestine. The president did give Wise some good news: “Stalin is all right and he is with us,” and as far as Churchill went, there had been no change “with regard to Zionist plans.” Moreover, he assured Wise, Churchill was equally concerned with the plight of European Jewish refugees who sought entry to Palestine but were being sent elsewhere against their will. The prime minister had said he would simply avoid talking about the harshness of the White Paper and “let the Jews come in.”

Finally, the president told Wise that he was seeking another way to deal with the Saudi ruler. “He is seventy-five years old,” the president commented, “and has swollen ankles, so that perhaps we had better wait until he goes!” Wise “instantly demurred” and, given the pressing situation of the Jews, told the president that he had to act quickly and in a firm manner. Then FDR thought that perhaps there was “another way of dealing with the problem. Since we cannot move I.S., and since the other Arab chiefs will go along with him, I have been thinking about the plan of our putting the case up to the first meeting of the Council of the United Nations, whenever it meets.” Ever loyal to FDR and his intentions, Wise concluded that “the President is dead in earnest about this, and that if we were to agree with him, he would feel that he and Churchill must put it up to their associates and urge the imposition of a Jewish State on I.S. and his associates by the Council of the United Nations.” “The President,” Wise confidently told Weizmann, “remains our friend as much as ever.”¹⁰³

On the issue of Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, the State Department was firm in its belief that Arab goodwill would lead to increased American influence, proven especially by King Saud’s preference for American investment in Arabia.¹⁰⁴ Near Eastern Office Chief Wallace Murray’s feathers were therefore ruffled when he heard that the president had told Rabbi Wise that he still favored a Jewish state in Palestine. Warning the president that such a step would have “serious repercussions in the Middle East,” Murray noted that it could even lead to bloodshed as well as “endanger the security of our immensely valuable oil concession in Saudi Arabia.” Finally, he argued, Stalin was actually opposed to a Jewish state, and continued American endorsement of the Zionist goal by the president might result in throwing the entire Arab world into the arms of the Russians.¹⁰⁵

The president, bombarded by Wise and the Zionists on the one hand and the opponents of Zionism in the State Department and Arab leaders on the other, felt increasingly gloomy about the prospects for any kind of Middle East settlement. At a luncheon he held with the first lady and Colonel Harold Hoskins, he reiterated sadly how opposed King Saud was to Jewish concerns, even with a proposal floated by the president to settle Jews in Libya. Eleanor was as usual more sympathetic to the plight of the dispossessed Jews and tried to lift her husband’s gloom by noting the “wonderful work that had been done by the Zionists in certain parts of Palestine.” Her comments did not impress the president. Except along the coastal plain, he replied, “Palestine looked extremely rocky and barren to him as he flew over it.” But the Zionists were stronger, the first lady responded, and “were perhaps willing to risk a fight with the Arabs at Palestine.”

That, precisely, is what upset FDR. “There were many more Arabs than Jews in and around Palestine,” the president noted, “and in the long run, he thought these numbers would win out.” Hoskins recalled that he had been attacked by American Zionists when he had said in 1943 that the only way to establish a Jewish state in Palestine would be by force. Now Hoskins asked the president if he agreed with this conclusion, and he said he did. The answer, Hoskins still maintained, lay in State’s plan for a trusteeship and the establishment of Palestine as an international territory sacred to Muslims, Christians, and Jews. FDR concurred and “said he thought such a plan might well be given to the” newly created United Nations.¹⁰⁶

A favorable conclusion to the Palestine issue seemed to lie far in the future. In the meantime, Roosevelt sought both to contain the damage from his spontaneous comment about Ibn Saud and to assure American Zionists that his true sympathies lay with their cause. In his heart, Roosevelt may well have thought he had done what he could on their behalf.

All of FDR’s contradictory positions and vacillations created havoc at the State Department. State’s deputy director of Near Eastern and African affairs, Paul H. Alling (who was actually the nominal chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs at State),¹⁰⁷ thought that FDR’s indecision was producing political instability in the Near East and having a negative effect on America’s standing in the entire region. Even worse was the president’s meeting with Wise and Silver, which on March 9 had allowed the two to claim at a press conference that FDR’s promises to them “appeared to affirm the President’s support of the Zionist position.” And when FDR wrote Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York that he gave his support to the Democratic Party’s Palestine plank—one sympathetic to Zionist aims—it further raised doubts for the Arabs about the veracity of Roosevelt’s pledges to them.

The very last meeting the president held before departing for Warm Springs, Georgia—where he was to get some much-needed rest—was with American Jewish Committee leaders Jacob Blaustein and Joseph Proskauer. The president told them that he had previously warned Rabbi Wise “that he gravely feared a continuation of the agitation for a Jewish state,” because it might cause a world war as well as well as strife in Palestine. What he did not tell Wise, and what he did tell Proskauer and Blaustein, was that after talking with Ibn Saud, he had been “frightened,” and he wanted them “to talk to the Zionist leaders about it.”¹⁰⁸ Most important, FDR told Blaustein and Proskauer of his “belief that the project of a Jewish state in Palestine was, under present conditions, impossible of accomplishment” and that the Jews’ objective should be to secure liberal immigration into Palestine and work for the rights of Jews in all nations through the auspices of the new United Nations. Admitting that his new view was “somewhat at variance with his public utterances,” Roosevelt explained that he had “learned a great deal at Yalta” and hence supported the American Jewish Committee’s attempts to “moderate the sharpness of the propaganda of the extreme Zionists.”¹⁰⁹

FDR’s view of the Palestine situation was ambiguous. At times he seemed sympathetic to the creation of a Jewish state; at others, he seemed to suggest that it could not be built without using military force, a commitment he did not want to make. When Harry S. Truman assumed the presidency, his only knowledge of what FDR thought would come from his public statements on Palestine. As on other issues, Truman had been left out of the loop. Now he would find that Palestine would become one of his most difficult problems.