EIGHT

TRUMAN’S OCTOBER SURPRISE

In the fall of 1946, the refugee crisis continued to haunt Truman, from both a humanitarian and political standpoint. As the head of the Democratic Party, he could not ignore the political fallout from the lack of progress. In a letter to Bess, he complained that all his top men were focused on politics. Henry Wallace had his eyes only on 1948 and the presidential election. Democratic Senator Jim Mead, who was running for governor in New York, had come to him about the New York elections and “shot off his mouth.” Worst of all, he confided to his wife, “the Jews and the crackpots seem to be ready to go for Dewey,” the Republican gubernatorial candidate in New York. If they did, the Democratic Party would be left grasping at straws. “There’s no solution for the Jewish problem,” he sadly confided to Bess.¹

Nevertheless, Truman would have to keep trying. Ever since the Jewish Agency’s partition proposal had received a favorable reception in the United States, Truman had been prevailed upon to give it his support. At Goldmann’s instructions, Eliahu Epstein had been working at trying to get a statement from Truman.² Robert Hannegan joined the effort. Hannegan was a St. Louis politician and Truman’s friend, whom Truman had proposed be appointed chairman of the Democratic National Committee early in 1944. Hannegan’s subsequent support had helped Truman gain the nod to be FDR’s vice presidential choice at the 1944 Democratic convention.³ Hannegan now sent Truman a note with an attached letter from Bartley Crum. Crum urged Truman to request that the British immediately issue visas for the 100,000 DPs on humanitarian grounds, so as not to prejudice the ultimate political status of Palestine. The president, Crum advised, should also make it clear that U.S. policy was to back the partition proposals of the Jewish Agency. All the Jewish groups—with the exception of the anti-Zionist American Council on Judaism—were making “a united Jewish front” on behalf of partition.⁴

On October 1, Truman met with Max Lowenthal. Truman had first met Lowenthal as a senator, when he had joined Senator Burton Wheeler’s subcommittee, then investigating the railroad industry’s finances. Lowenthal had served as counsel to the subcommittee. A protégé of Justice Louis Brandeis, Lowenthal had taken Truman to a salon in the form of teas at Brandeis’s home in the 1930s.⁵ Later, Lowenthal had also been helpful in securing Truman’s nomination as vice president, especially in gaining the support of labor. Born in Minneapolis in 1888, Lowenthal went on after college to study law at Harvard Law School, where he became editor of the Law Review. After graduating, he became law clerk for U.S. Circuit Judge Julian W. Mack and also worked with Felix Frankfurter on labor cases and on the War Labor Board during World War I. Frankfurter found his young protégé to be a “very sensitive fellow, particularly responsive to cruelty and hardship, and a very fine disciplined brain.”⁶

Lowenthal was, Freda Kirchwey wrote in her Nation obituary in 1971, “a notoriously modest man. His benefactions, to individuals and institutions, were always anonymous. He did not want it known that most of his many services for government agencies had been performed without compensation…[and] he liked to keep up the amiable pretense that he had done nothing of serious public consequence.” Over the years he worked as counsel to various government commissions and as a consultant for individuals in all the branches of the government. After World War II, he was legal adviser to General Lucius D. Clay, the high commissioner of Germany. Later, in 1950, Lowenthal wrote the first critical book on J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, The Federal Bureau of Investigation, an act that infuriated Hoover and led to Lowenthal’s being called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.⁷

“Is the situation as bad there as I have been told?” Truman now asked him, referring to the plight of the European DPs. It would not be so bad, Lowenthal answered, “provided that they could have an exit soon and…be given hope.” The issue, Truman told him, was being taken up by the Jewish organizations in America, and he was working on the problem right at this moment. Then Lowenthal turned to domestic politics. The important thing politically, he emphasized to Truman, “was to have authorization before the election for the admission of a large number of the displaced persons in Palestine.” If they managed to get this done, Lowenthal was certain, “it would bury the Republican party in this election.” The situation in New York was very bad, he told the president, “and we need real help.”⁸

Around the same time, Abe Feinberg went to see Truman at the White House. The wealthy businessman and Democratic contributor had met then–Vice President Truman in 1945, when Robert Hannegan had introduced them at a cocktail party in New York City. When Feinberg asked Truman how he would like to be addressed, Truman joked, “Call me Senator, I liked that job best.” They got to talk further over dinner, and Feinberg found that Truman “was a very warm man, if he liked you.” When Truman became president, Feinberg was welcome at the White House, where he got to know David Niles and Truman’s appointments secretary, Matt Connelly.⁹

Feinberg had met Ben-Gurion in 1945 during one of Ben-Gurion’s visits to the United States. He had listened carefully to the scenario that Ben-Gurion laid out about the probability of Arab attacks on the Yishuv and responded to his call to create an American branch of the Haganah that would raise money and supplies. Feinberg had been horrified by the Holocaust, strongly believed that the Jews should be able to defend themselves, and wanted to see the conditions in the refugee camps for himself. With the Haganah’s help, he went to visit the Jewish DPs in various European camps, where he saw them being held in unbearable conditions. Almost everyone he spoke to wanted only to go to Palestine. Feinberg then took direct action: he became involved in purchasing and outfitting ships that could take the refugees from France and Italy to Palestine. He was actually in Palestine when the British made the decision to round up the Jewish leadership. They also arrested him, on the accurate grounds that he was smuggling out British military information to give to the Haganah. According to him, it was only because of his personal relationship with President Truman that the British military authorities released him. When he returned to the United States, he gave David Niles and Truman a firsthand account of the repressive measures the British were using.

Now Feinberg gave Truman some advice: if he wanted to make his position known to the Jewish people, a good time to do it would be “just before the holiest day in the Jewish year, Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. Even unobservant Jews, such as myself,” he told the president, “tend to go to the synagogues on the night before, which is a most somber night.” The services included a liturgy, and he told Truman that “the rabbis use their most dramatic efforts in the sermons…. if you will make the announcement before that night, every single Rabbi in every single synagogue will broadcast what you say.” Truman, he added, should forget the newspapers and other media; he would be getting word directly to the Jewish people.¹⁰

On October 3, the British announced that they were going to postpone the conferences with the Arabs and the Jews (with whom they were still negotiating) until December 16. This meant yet more delays on the refugee issue. That evening Acheson sent for British Ambassador Lord Inverchapel and gave him a copy of a statement that Truman planned to make public the next day. Acheson told him that “elements within the Democratic” had “blown up” when news of the British delay was announced and that Truman anticipated political attacks from Republican candidates in the upcoming midterm New York elections.¹¹ Truman then sent Attlee a direct communication. In view of the deep sympathy Americans had for the Jewish victims of Nazism, he wrote the prime minister, he found it necessary to make a further statement on the problem immediately.¹² Truman included in his telegram the text of the statement he would make public on Yom Kippur.

Truman began his statement by saying that he had learned with deep regret that the Palestine meetings in London had been postponed. In light of this, he felt, it was appropriate to examine the record of his administration’s efforts and to state his views on the situation. Truman reminded Americans of his many attempts to gain admission to Palestine for the 100,000 Jewish DPs, recommended to him by Earl Harrison’s investigation of the DPs and the unanimous report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. He had then formed a cabinet committee on Palestine, which had traveled to London to see how the Anglo-American Committee’s recommendations could be best implemented. The result had been the Morrison-Grady scheme for provincial autonomy, which would lead to either a binational state or partition. This plan, he reminded the country, was strongly opposed by a majority of Americans and faced major opposition in Congress. He therefore could not give his support to it.

The British then announced that they would hold a conference on Palestine in London. With the participation of both Arabs and the Jews, they would see if they could come to some kind of agreement using the Morrison-Grady scheme as a basis of negotiations. Truman continued:

Meanwhile, the Jewish Agency proposed a solution of the Palestine problem by means of the creation of a viable Jewish state in control of [a part of] Palestine instead of the whole of Palestine. It proposed furthermore the immediate issuance of certificates for 100,000 Jewish immigrants. This proposal received widespread attention in the United States…. From the discussion which ensued it is my belief that a solution along these lines would command the support of public opinion in the United States. I cannot believe that the gap between the proposals which have been put forward is too great to be bridged by men of reason and goodwill. To such a solution our Government could give its support.¹³ (Our emphases.)

When he learned what Truman was going to say in his statement, Attlee asked him to postpone it until he had time to meet with Foreign Minister Bevin.¹⁴ Truman immediately let Attlee know that he would not comply with his request and that he felt it “imperative” to make it public as scheduled.¹⁵ The usually mild-mannered prime minister, Time reported, was in a “towering rage.”¹⁶ Reiterating that he was in the midst of meeting with Jews and Arabs in an attempt to defuse the dire circumstances in Palestine, Attlee told Truman he was stunned that Truman did not give his foreign secretary “even a few hours grace,” even though Britain had “the actual responsibility for the government of Palestine.” And, he added, he was “astonished that you did not wait to acquaint yourself with the reasons for the suspension of the conference with the Arabs.” Truman, he claimed, obviously had incorrect information about the events. Conversations with leading Zionists were taking place informally with a view to their participation that showed good prospects of success. With sarcasm, Attlee concluded that he would wait with interest to learn what the imperative reasons were that compelled Truman to issue his statement when he did.¹⁷

The next day, Inverchapel had an answer for his prime minister. In his opinion, Truman would not hold up his statement because Dewey was preparing to issue a statement of his own on October 6 “designed to catch the whole Jewish vote in the five eastern states.” That is why, he explained, Truman “dare not keep quiet.”¹⁸ This became the stock answer as to why Harry Truman issued his Yom Kippur statement, a statement of great importance because it was the first time an American president had mentioned partition as a solution to the Palestine situation. He did it to gain the Jewish vote.¹⁹

Truman further laid out his reasons, and his frustration with British policy, in his response to Attlee’s letter. It had been more than one year, Truman emphasized, since he had brought the Harrison report to the British government’s attention. Yet even after the recommendation of the Anglo-American Committee nothing had been accomplished. He had tried to be restrained, not doing anything to interfere with British attempts to carry on negotiations on the issue. Now he had no alternative but to “express regret at this outcome.” The feeling of despair and hopelessness faced by the Jewish DPs was intensified with the approach of Yom Kippur, and he told Attlee he was certain that “you will agree that it would be most unfair to these unfortunate persons to let them enter upon still another winter” without their being allowed to proceed to Palestine, “where so many of them wish ardently to go.” He realized that Britain alone had the mandatory responsibility for Palestine, but he reminded Attlee that the purpose of “the Mandate was to foster the development of the Jewish National Home,” a step in the United States maintained “a deep and abiding interest.” That had no meaning without new Jewish immigration and settlement into Palestine.²⁰

Dean Acheson denied that the statement was politically motivated. Truman was very serious about resolving the refugee issue and had been working at it for a whole year. Acheson supported the president’s desire to give the speech and had helped him draw it up. He thought it was important that Truman clarify his views and recount his actions for the American public and the international community. Because Yom Kippur was such a major day in the Jewish religion, Acheson argued that Truman “chose it as a fitting occasion to announce that he would continue his efforts for the immigration of the one hundred thousand into Palestine,” as well as support “some plan for Palestine based upon partition.” Since that time, Acheson wrote, “the statement was attacked…as a blatant play for the Jewish vote in Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York in the congressional elections only a month away and an attempt to anticipate an expected similar play by Governor Dewey.” He did not believe that it had had any such purpose. Acheson’s bottom line: Truman “never took or refused to take a step in our foreign relations to benefit his or his party’s fortunes. This he would have regarded as false to the great office that he venerated and held in sacred trust.”²¹

Obviously, political considerations were important, and those around him constantly reminded Truman of the political impact of his actions. The timing of an important presidential statement could be crucial. But in the broad sense, Acheson’s point holds. It was cathartic for Truman to lay out all he had tried to do for the DPs and to try to facilitate some kind of settlement in Palestine, even if his efforts had not yet met with success. Harry Truman did not say anything he didn’t believe. He was still trying to get the 100,000 DPs out of the camps. To his regret, the Anglo-American Committee and Morrison-Grady recommendations had been shot down, but now there was a consensus around partition, which he acknowledged. Truman’s words had been based on his assessment of what was needed to break the deadlock on Palestine, not because of the sole desire to get the Jewish vote. But if the timing of the statement helped the Democrats at the polls, all the better.

That the refugee issue was very much on Truman’s mind is revealed in a letter he wrote to Senator Walter F. George of Georgia the day after he delivered his statement. George wrote to him about another matter but added his view on Palestine: “It would be decidedly unwise for our government to take any position with reference to Palestine which will call for a large appropriation of money or especially the use of American troops in Palestine.” Truman answered, “I sincerely wish that every member of the Congress could visit the displaced persons camps in Germany and Austria and see just what is happening to Five Hundred Thousand human beings through no fault of their own.” He continued, “We must make every effort to get these people properly located.” Only 20 percent of them were Jewish, he noted, and the rest came from throughout Eastern Europe. “There ought to be some place for these people to go,” Truman repeated. Addressing the issue of the Jewish refugees, he added, “There isn’t a reason in the world why one hundred thousand Jews couldn’t go into Palestine” and that the United States couldn’t allow others to come to America. As he wrote, he noted the government was trying to arrange for 100,000 to go to South America. He told the senator, “I am not interested in the politics of the situation, or what effect it will have on votes in the United States. I am interested in relieving a half million people of the most distressful situation that has happened in the world since A. Hitler made his invasion of Europe” (our emphasis). Expressing his frustration at the failure of Congress to loosen America’s immigration laws, Truman reprimanded the senator, “Your ancestors and mine, if I remember correctly came to this country to escape just such conditions.”²²

At any rate, Truman’s statement did not help the Democrats, who were trounced in the New York elections. Governor Thomas Dewey not only won, he received 650,000 more votes than Senator Mead, who had hoped that a statement by the president would turn the tide in his favor. And Herbert Lehman was bested by Irving M. Ives in his race for the Senate by 250,000 votes.²³ New York City, the Jewish capital of the world and a bastion of FDR’s old labor-liberal coalition, had gone with the rest of the nation to create a Republican Congress. The vote clearly indicated a rejection by the nation’s voters, including those of New York, to the traditional liberal agenda of the East Coast Democrats.

The Saudi monarch wrote an irate letter to Truman protesting his statement. Ibn Saud reminded Truman that his position had not changed since he had written to FDR claiming the Arabs’ “natural rights” to Palestine and declaring the Jews as “only aggressors, seeking to perpetrate a monstrous injustice…in the name of humanitarianism,” who would later try to get their way by “force and violence.” Their demands, he told the president, included not only Palestine but all the Arab lands, including their holy cities. Because of this, Ibn Saud said, he had been astonished to read Truman’s Yom Kippur statement, which, if put into policy, would “alter the basic situation in Palestine in contradiction to previous promises.” He did not understand how the American people could support “Zionist aggression against a friendly Arab country.”²⁴

Truman, writing in cordial and appropriate diplomatic niceties (“I feel certain that Your Majesty will readily agree…”), did not seek to assuage Ibn Saud as FDR had. The Jews of Europe, the president reminded him, “represent the pitiful remnants of millions who were deliberately selected by the Nazi leaders for annihilation,” and many of them “look to Palestine as a haven,” where they could assist “in the further development of the Jewish National Home.” It had always been American policy to support such an objective and therefore was only natural that the United States would favor the entry of Jewish DPs into Palestine. For that reason it had been trying to get the British to agree to the immediate entry of 100,000 Jewish DPs into Palestine. His statement of October 4, he told Ibn Saud, was in no way inconsistent with any previous American policy statements. “I am at a loss,” he wrote, “to understand why Your Majesty seems to feel that this statement was in contradiction to previous promises or statements made by this Government.” It did not in any sense represent a contradiction to previous promises made by the United States, nor was it “an action hostile to the Arab people.”²⁵

Truman was facing burnout on the Palestine issue when, at the end of October, he received a letter written earlier in the month by Edwin W. Pauley, the Democratic National Committee treasurer and wealthy California oil magnate. Pauley enclosed a report by Joseph Dubois on the situation facing the Jews still in Europe that he had helped Dubois edit but that bore Pauley’s name as author. The report seconded the observations made a year earlier by Harrison, though in some respects it was even stronger. “The more one hears about the wanton murder of the Jews by the Germans,” Pauley wrote, “the more one wonders why this great crime has not shocked the conscience of mankind more than it has.” Pauley’s report concentrated not on the situation of the DPs, but on the nature of the crimes of the Nazis. One report Dubois had seen, signed by Heinrich Himmler, bore the account of “progress” made in one day in Warsaw: “Jews disposed of—59,340—our losses none.” “We cannot bring five million dead bodies to life,” Pauley told Truman, “…but we can…make certain that the over one million European Jews who survived the Nazi terror are given a chance to live.” The Allies had saved them from death, but they “have not yet given them a chance to live.” Like Harrison and Crum, Pauley asked for the immediate settlement of the 100,000 DPs in Palestine, as well as financial aid and economic assistance from Germany, given as reparations, restitution, or an export payable in currency.²⁶

When Truman had read the Harrison Report, he had been both shocked and deeply moved. Now his response changed. Truman was not happy to get Pauley’s report, which had taken almost two weeks to reach his desk. “I am sorry you took the trouble to send me the Jewish report,” he wrote Pauley, “although it was an interesting one. “I have spent a year and a month trying to get some concrete action on it.” The British were “muddling the situation,” Truman added, “but the Jews themselves are making it almost impossible to do anything for them. They seem to have the same attitude toward the ‘under dog’ when they are on top as they have been treated as ‘under dogs’ themselves,” which he attributed to “human frailty.” To Truman, the Jews were acting in much the same way as big business and labor in the United States. The only one suffering, he thought, was “the innocent bystander who tries to help,” and one could guess who that was. As for himself, he told Pauley, he would spend the rest of his time as president working for the best interest of the whole country, a phrase that indicated that he thought following the Zionist agenda would be serving a particular interest.²⁷

Although the British generally were attributing Truman’s statement to electoral politics, Hugh Dalton, the chancellor of the Exchequer, visiting America in October, had his doubts. “Truman isn’t just electioneering in this endless repetition on the one hundred thousand,” he wrote in his diary. “This is part of the general outlook of Americans of both parties.”²⁸

As December approached, a meeting of foreign ministers was scheduled to take place at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City, and Ernest Bevin would be attending. The foreign secretary had been briefed on what to expect on the Palestine issue in the United States. Ambassador Inverchapel had sent him a report, anonymously written, titled “Jewish Affairs in the United States,” providing him with an analysis on the one major issue—Palestine—that was increasing tension between the two Western allies. Zionist sentiment, Bevin was told, was concentrated primarily on the two coasts and had general support among liberal intellectuals—professors, teachers, social workers, and the like—all people whose humanitarian concerns motivated them to act on behalf of the remaining European Jews. In the other regions, the Midwest and the South, any concern with Palestine was either absent or tainted by very real anti-Semitism.²⁹

Moreover, the report’s unnamed author claimed that Truman’s motivation on behalf of the Jews was “prompted by domestic politics, rather than innate conviction.” Truman would have supported Morrison-Grady but had been told that all support for Democrats running for reelection would vanish if he did. Truman was “so irritated and exhausted,” it went on, that he “went on a cruise, mainly to escape from the storm.” So strong was the pro-Zionist sentiment that newspapers would not print Arab League advertisements. And the picture painted of Arabs was that their countries were controlled by “feudal overlords” and that Arabs lived amid “dirt, disease and ignorance.” Commentators always seemed to portray Palestinian Jews as progressive and modern, a people whose young men had fought with the Allied powers during the World War. Arabs, in contrast, were being portrayed as backward and pro-Axis, as the wartime role of the Grand Mufti proved.

The writer maintained that Truman’s sentiments, whatever its causes, were genuine and could not be ignored by Britain, if the British government wanted good relations with the United States. The British could not feel happy about the election results either. The Republican victory in Congress meant that now the Republican Party would promise Jews the moon, since their defection in New York to the Republican candidate obliged the Republicans to cater to them. That meant the Democrats would have to go even further to gain back their vote. “Both parties,” it concluded, “may overestimate the importance of Palestine to the Jewish electorate, but in present circumstances will not feel able to take a chance on it.”

Thus prepared, Bevin anticipated meeting with James Byrnes and perhaps the president to discuss the issue. Bevin was not very popular in New York, as he quickly found out. New Yorkers had not forgotten his unfortunate remark that the only reason America wanted to get the Jews into Palestine was that they didn’t want any more of them in New York. They also blamed the British government for the continued suffering of the Jewish DPs still in the detention camps—more than a year after their liberation. Bevin was taken aback by the hostility shown him and, by extension, his Labour government on the part of American organized labor. Dockworkers from the Communist-led National Maritime Union would not touch his luggage. When he attended a football game, the crowd booed when his presence was announced on the loudspeakers. Bevin was also upset to find full-page ads in the New York papers from Zionist groups, loudly denouncing him for Britain’s immigration policy in Palestine, as well as its repressive military action against the Yishuv.³⁰ Looking at New York’s liberal, pro-Zionist tabloid the New York Post, he saw an ad from the United Zionist Revisionists of America, one of the militant factions on the hard-line Zionist right wing that supported the Irgun. “We want Mr. Bevin to know,” it stated, “that many Americans, irrespective of race and creed, and above all, the overwhelming majority of American Jews…do not believe that he is entitled to the traditional hospitality of this great city of New York. We believe he deserves to be told the plain truth: ‘If anyone is not wanted here, thou are the man.’”³¹

On December 8, Bevin finally had the chance to meet Truman at the White House. The president informed the foreign minister about his meetings with Ben-Gurion and Nahum Goldmann but quickly turned to complaining about the pressures put on him by American Zionists. “I can get nowhere with Dr. Silver,” Truman said; “he thinks everything I do is wrong.” In contrast, Truman agreed with Bevin’s observation that Chaim Weizmann was “the most intelligent of all the Jewish leaders.” Bevin was most sympathetic to Truman’s plight. The Jews, he told the president, “somehow expect one to fulfill all the prophecies of all the prophets…. I tell them sometimes that I can no more fulfill all the prophecies of Ezekiel than I can those of that other great Jew, Karl Marx.”³²

The other problem they had, Bevin continued, was with the Arabs. The truth was that “they would not be able to maintain the status quo in Palestine as they wanted.” It would be easier for him to help move towards a settlement, Truman responded, now that the midterm elections were over. Truman, the recording secretary wrote, “then went out of his way to explain how difficult it had been with so many Jews in New York.” “If the British Government reached an accord over Palestine,” Truman said, “the U.S. Government would be very pleased to give any help they could, including finance.” Bevin was not optimistic. “It would never be possible to get Jews and Arabs to agree with each other over this,” he answered. The two leaders concurred that their countries had possibly made a major error: both had given contradictory pledges to both sides regarding the dispute. Their aim, Bevin replied, had to be to try to narrow the difference so that they could arrive at a solution both Jews and Arabs could live with. Finally, Bevin turned to the issue of the 100,000 DPs and Jewish immigration. The problem was that everyone was concentrating on Palestine, since the European Jews “had nowhere else to go.” If only they had another destination, he pleaded with Truman, “this would reduce the tension.”

A week after Bevin’s visit, Truman and Acheson met with one of the most militant of Ibn Saud’s sons, His Royal Highness Prince Faisal. Faisal, Acheson wrote, “striking in white burnoose and golden circlet, which heightened his swarthy complexion, with black, pointed beard and mustache topped by a thin hooked nose and piercing dark eyes, gave a sinister impression, relieved from time to time by a shy smile.”³³ Faisal told the president that the Zionist goal was to take away the land from those who had lived on it for centuries. His goal, Truman replied, was simply to help create peace in the region and a fair and just settlement of the Palestine issue. Moreover, Truman answered, “the plight of hundreds of thousands of displaced persons in Europe…must appeal to all men of good will.” He was trying to get Congress to allow many of them to come to the United States and was hoping others would go to South America and South Africa. But some of them, he told Faisal, “desired to go and…could well be received in Palestine.” To that, Faisal argued that they were “bad people,” which had been proved by the terrorist attacks against the British in Jerusalem. “The pitiful remains” of the Jewish people, the president responded, could not be among those of whom Faisal had just spoken. When he spoke as president, it was “for the oppressed who had suffered so cruelly before and during the war and who were now seeking a home.” Faisal argued that the real problem was their desire to create a Jewish state, when Palestine should become independent and controlled by the majority, who happened to be Arab. Until then, “immigration should cease.” Truman ended by striking a positive note, ignoring his last remarks and saying he agreed with his sentiment that Jews and Arabs could live together in the region.³⁴

Listening to the two talk, Acheson observed that “their minds crossed but did not meet.” Faisal was concerned with the Near East and Truman with the plight of Europe’s dispossessed Jews. Both men, he thought, could not grasp “the depth of the other’s concern; indeed each rather believed the other’s was exaggerated.” The meeting ended with platitudes by both, Acheson thought, which the president seized upon to proclaim an agreement. Acheson found the meeting disturbing. Faisal impressed him “as a man who could be an implacable enemy and who should be taken very seriously.”³⁵

While the Arabs presented a defiant united front, the Jews, holding their twenty-second World Zionist Conference in Basel, Switzerland, struggled to formulate their position. The first world conference to be held since 1939 was a grim reminder once again of the decimation of European Jewry. The majority of delegates were from Palestine and America because most of the European delegates who had previously filled the seats were gone. The conference was taking place against the backdrop of turmoil in Palestine as the British used repressive measures against Zionist terrorists, who were employing road bombs, explosives, and kidnapping and even hanging of captured British troops in a dangerous cycle of violence.

The mood at the conference was militant. The Jews of Palestine considered Britain’s actions to stop the refugees from landing in Palestine illegal. Its mandate was to facilitate the building of the Jewish national home, not to prevent Jews from reaching it by detaining them and shipping them to camps in Cyprus. Moreover, intelligence suggested that the British army was gearing up for a war against the Yishuv and its leadership. Beloved as Chaim Weizmann was, his continual pleas for moderation and patience were wearing thin. As he himself acknowledged at the meeting, the absence of “faith, or even hope, in the British Government” led Palestine’s Jewish leaders to “rely on methods never known or encouraged among Zionists before the war.” Some may have called their tactics resistance; others defense; still others a needed offensive. For Weizmann, whatever terms they used, the reality was that of a call to fight with arms against British authority in Palestine.

Weizmann rejected terrorism. For his position, Weizmann said, he had become “the scapegoat for the sins of the British Government.” Not only was it tactically wrong, he argued, it was philosophically immoral. It was not the Jewish way. His words to the conference were bitter, passionate, and eloquent:

I warn you against bogus palliatives, against short cuts, against false prophets…. If you think of bringing the redemption nearer by un-Jewish methods, if you have lost faith in hard work and better days, then you are committing idolatry and endangering what we have built…. Zion shall be redeemed in righteousness and not by any other means…. Masada for all its heroism, was a disaster in our history. It is not our purpose or our right to plunge to destruction in order to bequeath a legend of martyrdom to posterity. Zionism was to mark the end of our glorious deaths and the beginning of a new path, leading to life.³⁶

Weizmann had carried the struggle far and would be called upon again, but Rabbi Silver, Ben-Gurion, and their supporters believed he was obstructing progress and had to go. The issue that allowed this split to surface was whether the Zionist conference would endorse formally taking part in the British conference on Palestine’s future in London. Weizmann’s motion to participate was defeated by a small majority.

Silver told the conference that the Jewish Agency’s office in Paris had been derelict in proposing its partition plan without having put the issue to a vote at the World Zionist Conference. Nahum Goldmann came under particular criticism by Silver, since he had previously agreed never to tell any American government official that AZEC would support partition. But much of this opposition to partition and calls for fidelity to the Biltmore Declaration was hyperbole. Ben-Gurion and Silver both spoke out against partition publicly, though privately they were willing to consider it as the basis of a settlement. They adhered to the position that if they gave their support to partition, the Arabs would certainly reject it and the British would whittle it down further. You could always give up something, but you could not get back what you had already relinquished.

The conference voted Rabbi Wise out of the leadership and made Rabbi Silver president of the American branch of the Jewish Agency. Out of respect for Weizmann and his years of service to the movement, however, the conference left the World Zionist Movement’s office of president vacant. It was clear enough that Silver and Ben-Gurion were now in command.³⁷ Although Weizmann and Wise were removed from power, an observer reported to the State Department that Ben-Gurion and Goldmann, with the support of Moshe Shertok, were able to elect an executive board of which a majority actually supported partition as well as attending the forthcoming London conference.³⁸

At home, a major change was about to take place in the State Department. Secretary of State James Byrnes had handed in his resignation. The president had not accepted an earlier resignation letter from him, but this time he did.³⁹ In his private diary, Truman noted, “Byrnes is going to quit on the tenth and I shall make Marshall Secretary of State…. Marshall is the ablest man in the whole gallery.”⁴⁰ When the papers broke the story, Truman reflected that he was “very sorry Mr. Byrnes decided to quit. I’m sure he’ll regret it—and I know I do. He is a good negotiator—a very good one.” Referring to Byrnes’s doctor’s recommendation that he retire for reasons of health, the president wrote, “I don’t want to be the cause of his death…. So much for that.” His regret was offset by the news that General George C. Marshall was confirmed with the unanimous consent of the Senate, “a grand start for him.” Marshall, Truman thought, was “the greatest man of World War II,” who had managed to get along with “Roosevelt, the Congress, Churchill, the Navy and the Joint Chief[s] of Staff.” Alluding to all the troubles he had had with State, he wrote, “We’ll have a real State Department now.”⁴¹

The atmosphere in London was dark and dreary as the British finally resumed their conference with the Arabs on January 27. England was in the midst of a coal crisis, which meant that buildings had no electricity and people were working by candlelight. It literally was “darkness at noon,” observed Emanuel Neumann. Elevators did not work, factories were at a standstill, and millions were out of work.⁴² The British-Arab talks were generally gloomy as well. Faris al-Khouriy, the head of the Syrian delegation, informed Bevin that the Arabs had already submitted their views to the British government and did not want to have any more discussions until they had received a response to their proposals. At the talks, the Palestinian Arabs were represented by the Arab Higher Committee, led by Jamal Husseini, who was operating under the direct supervision of the Mufti, who was giving him orders and directives from his exile in Egypt. There would be no compromise forthcoming from Jamal Husseini. Azzam Pasha and some other members of the Arab League did not even attend, because they believed that the conference was bound to fail. Indeed, their own private view was that Britain had secretly decided upon partition as a solution, which to them meant “violence and law-breaking” since it proved that Britain had yielded to Zionist demands.⁴³

Meanwhile, the Jewish Agency and the British government were carrying on private negotiations to see if they could form a basis for more formal talks. The British were represented by Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech-Jones, Hugh Dalton, the Labourite Aneurin Bevan, Prime Minister Attlee, and Herbert Morrison. The Jewish Agency contingent included David Horowitz, Moshe Shertok, Nahum Goldmann, Aubrey (later Abba) Eban, David Ben-Gurion, and the Haganah chief, Moshe Sneh. The Zionists disagreed among themselves. Sneh favored an uncompromising demand for all of Palestine, as outlined in the Biltmore Declaration. Goldmann supported partition, which he saw as the last hope for any kind of Jewish state. Ben-Gurion and Shertok were ready for armed action against the British in Palestine but not before publicly seeking a peaceful resolution. But even though they would support partition, they did not want to come out for it at the start.⁴⁴

When the Zionists sat down with the British at the Colonial Office for informal talks, Bevin declared that he was against partition, which he saw as not being in the Mandate and unfair to the Arabs. David Horowitz thought that the foreign secretary had really lost any interest in compromising with the Jews when he saw how uncompromising the Arabs were. The Arabs demanded that the British leave Palestine, preferring to solve the Palestine problem by way of an armed conflict between Arabs and Jews. Bevin’s hope, Horowitz thought, was to scare the Jewish Agency into submission, out of fear of having to face the Arabs alone. Finally, Horowitz decided that what Bevin really wanted to do was to rid Britain of the problem and put Palestine into the hands of the United Nations.⁴⁵

On February 7, Bevin made his last suggestion for a solution. He proposed a modified version of the Morrison-Grady Plan as the only realistic alternative. It was a variation on a binational state: division of Palestine into Arab and Jewish provinces, which would have local self-government. Britain would remain as the mandatory for five years. Immigration would be permitted for the first two years at the rate of 4,000 a month. The Arabs would have to be consulted about any further immigration, but the final decision would remain with the high commissioner and the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations. The Arabs and the Jews both rejected the plan.

There was much talk but no compromise and no solution. The Jewish Agency did not officially attend the conference, and its representatives insisted that any plan they could accept would have to leave open the eventual creation of a Jewish state. The Arabs made it clear that they would accept nothing less than an Arab Palestine, with a Jewish minority living under its laws. “We have now decided,” Bevin wrote to Marshall, “that a time has come when the peoples living in Palestine must be made to accept responsibility for their own fate. We cannot,” Bevin stressed, “go on forever maintaining an alien rule over that country.”⁴⁶ The costs of doing so were becoming too steep. By the end of January, when Jerusalem stood at the boiling point, the British government announced that it would remove all women, children, and nonessential males working for Great Britain from Palestine, in order to free the army to devote all its time to restoring order.⁴⁷

On February 18, Ernest Bevin announced in the House of Commons that Britain was referring the Palestine question to the United Nations without recommendations. He had once said he would stake his political future on his ability to solve the Palestine issue. By his own terms, he had failed. Bevin did not, however, want to take the blame. Seeking a scapegoat, he found an easy one: Harry S. Truman, his administration, and the U.S. government. U.S. policy, he told the British parliamentarians on February 25, had “set the whole thing back.” The United States, he charged, seemed not to realize that Britain was the mandatory power and thus had the responsibility for issues such as immigration. “If they had only waited to ask us what we were doing we could have informed them but instead of that a person named Earl Harrison was sent out to their zone [of Germany].” The Harrison Report had “destroyed the good feeling which the Colonial Secretary and I were endeavoring to produce in the Arab states.” Britain had been magnanimous. Even though it held the Mandate for Palestine, its government had invited the United States to join it in establishing the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. Then Bevin had been criticized by Americans for not accepting their final report. Yet, he argued, “none of the report was accepted by the United States except one point, namely, admission of 100,000 immigrants.” He had pleaded with James Byrnes to dissuade Truman from issuing the demand for their admission to Palestine; his attempt had been futile. Then, just as he was on the verge of success in negotiating with the Arabs and the Jews, Truman had issued his declaration demanding their admission, thus spoiling the talks in progress with Jewish leaders. Bevin told Byrnes, “I believed we were on the road if only they would leave us alone.” I begged him that Truman not make his statement public, he told Parliament, but was then told by Byrnes that the president’s act was purely political: if he did not issue it, “a competitive statement would be issued by Mr. Dewey.” Thus the British problem had been made “the subject of local [American] elections.”⁴⁸

Bevin’s speech, Truman later wrote, was “a very undiplomatic—almost hostile—statement for the Foreign Secretary of the British Government to make about the President of the United States. He knew this had been my position all along.” Therefore, Truman explained, he was “outraged by Mr. Bevin’s unwarranted charge.” Truman had his press secretary, Charlie Ross, draw up what Truman called a “very moderate, entirely impersonal statement that pointed out that the matter of getting one hundred thousand Jews into Palestine had been the cornerstone of our Palestine policy since my first letter to Attlee in August 1945.” In addition, Truman condemned Bevin’s February 18 statement, in which he had said of the refugees that “after two thousand years of conflict, another twelve months will not be considered a long delay.” For Truman, “the callousness of [Bevin’s] statement and its disregard for human misery” were what led Americans to demand immediate action.⁴⁹

Bevin’s frustration at Truman was due in part to his having to oversee the dismantling of the British Empire. At the end of March 1947, the Attlee government gave up control of Greece and Turkey and would give India its independence by June 1948. With U.S. help it might have been able to forestall the same outcome in Palestine, but the Americans had not cooperated.

For the British army, Palestine had become a giant nuisance and fiscal drain. “One gets the impression,” Clifton Daniel wrote in The New York Times, “that the British are besieged in their own fortress and are appealing to the United Nations to rescue them.” Daniel continued:

With thickets of barbed wire and blockhouses of sandbags they have created in Jerusalem a modern version of a medieval walled and moated city…. Only eleven Britons in the whole country are allowed to live outside security zones, and two of them are under constant guard. Those within the zones are confined from nightfall until daylight…. The Jews find a certain sardonic humor in the British predicament. Jerusalem is brimming with jokes about British ghettos, British displaced persons and Britons behind barbed wire.⁵⁰

All these precautions, including the creation of barbed-wire-enclosed zones in Jerusalem, were a response to continuing terrorist attacks. In addition, all of Palestine’s Jews, moderates as well as radicals, supported the continuing illegal immigration of European Jews, who were being smuggled into Palestine. Their argument was simple: Britain, and not the Jews, was violating the terms of the original Mandate, which called for Jewish immigration and the establishment of a Jewish national home. In response, Britain announced a new martial law. Communications and transportation ground to a halt, and Tel Aviv’s thriving commercial life came to a standstill. Closing down Tel Aviv, Jewish Palestine’s industrial hub, meant that entire areas would be paralyzed. Rather than working to the satisfaction of Britain’s military authorities, the increased repression hardened the public temper and worked to the benefit of the Jewish extremists.⁵¹

Despite Britain’s travails in Palestine, the Jewish Agency was not sure what to make of its desire to hand it over to the United Nations when it had gone to such great lengths to keep it. David Horowitz scheduled a lunch in London with Harold Beeley, the Foreign Office’s desk officer for Palestine and Bevin’s chief adviser on the Middle East. Why did Britain want to turn the Mandate over to the United Nations, Horowitz asked? Beeley answered that the U.N. Charter dictated that policy could not be made until the United Nations achieved a two-thirds majority of the members’ votes. The only way a majority vote on Palestine could take place was if the United States and the Soviet bloc nations joined together and supported the same resolution. “That has never happened,” Beeley proclaimed, “it cannot happen, and it will never happen!” Horowitz thought he understood Britain’s strategy. The United Nations would do nothing; Palestine would be lost in a fight between the East and the West. Then the “White Paper would be upheld and the Mandatory [Britain] would return to discharge its functions, this time with all the force and authority of the United Nations behind it.”⁵² The United Nations, in other words, would be forced to come to Britain’s rescue. The question was, would it?