No matter how it was spun, trusteeship, even if temporary, was the United States’ new position on Palestine. It would be up to historians to decide whether Truman had approved Austin’s speech but not the timing of it; had approved the speech but hadn’t looked carefully enough at what he was signing or at its implications; or as Clark Clifford maintained, had believed he was signing on to a contingency plan that would probably never be activated. In any case, the government’s anti-partition forces had succeeded, but at the price of earning Truman’s enmity. Although Truman maintained that his long-term goal was partition, in the short run he did not want to see violent conflict or U.S. troops in Palestine. He decided to let State’s trusteeship and then truce proposals wind their way through the U.N. Security Council. In any case, for the moment, he didn’t have a choice.
The State Department had two months to achieve its trusteeship and truce plan before the British left, the Jews proclaimed their state, and anarchy reigned in Palestine. Henderson thought that for the scenario to work, Britain would have to be convinced to maintain its Mandate beyond May 15. On March 27, Henderson met with Sir John Balfour and Mr. Bromley of the British Embassy. Henderson stressed the importance of Anglo-American cooperation in regard to Palestine. Just because the British were pulling out, Henderson told them, they could not ignore their responsibility to try to restore tranquillity to the Middle East. The U.S. government “hoped that the British Government would be willing to maintain British troops in Palestine beyond May 15.” He then asked the diplomats for some “private assurances” that it would. Soon a top secret message arrived for him from the British Foreign Office. The U.S. proposals were giving them “great difficulty,” it said. But although Britain sympathized with the efforts of United States to avert a civil war in Palestine, it was going to maintain its current line of “abstention” and would not be drawn into the fray again.1
On April 2, confident of its course of action, the State Department prepared a draft of a Trustee Agreement. It called for the appointment of a governor-general for Palestine with a three-year term, who would be appointed by the Trusteeship Council. There would also be a bicameral legislature (a House of Representatives and a Senate), and a prime minister, who would choose a cabinet and a judiciary.2 When the U.S. delegation submitted these “tentative” proposals to the Security Council, both the Jews and the Arabs immediately raised strong objections. A spokesman for the Jewish Agency said the plan was “merely an attempt to perpetuate under UN auspices the White Paper policy of 1939” and would “meet with the most determined opposition of the Jewish people.” Faris al-Khouri, the representative of Syria, said the plan was unacceptable to the Arabs, as did Jamal Husseini of the Arab Higher Committee.3
The United States faced greater embarrassment when the Soviet Union denounced trusteeship and adamantly defended partition. Speaking before the Security Council, Andrei Gromyko called partition a just solution that could be carried out peacefully. However, it was clear to him that the United States was now trying to bury it and to justify the new trusteeship proposal. If the United States wrecked partition, he bellowed, it would be because “of their own oil interests and military-strategic positions in the Middle East.” The new U.S. trusteeship proposals, he told the Security Council, were meant to “convert Palestine into a military strategic base of the United States and England under the pretext of maintaining order in that country.”4
Finding that trusteeship was gaining little traction, State decided to shift its focus to getting a truce and, once that was accomplished, to propose trusteeship. But this too was met with resistance. Speaking for the Jewish Agency, Moshe Shertok took the position that the quest for peace could not start with a truce. Rather, any plan had to take notice of the constant “Arab aggression from outside,” sponsored by Arab states that were full U.N. members, which were trying to alter the U.N. resolution of November 1947 by force. What he preferred was that the United Nations curb the aggression or condemn it for the record. As for trusteeship, the Zionists were dead set against it. His people were “ripe for independence” and would refuse to accept its postponement after the Mandate came to an end.5 An equally strong reason was given by Rabbi Silver, who was representing the Agency at the United Nations. Trusteeship, he pointed out, would need to be enforced by troops. The United States was not willing to use them to enforce partition; why would it now use them to enforce a trusteeship? The British, he argued, had had a trusteeship for twenty-five years and had not been able to produce a solution for Palestine.6
Undeterred, State brought the representatives of the Jewish Agency and the Arab Higher Command together at Lake Success to talk under U.N. auspices. But it took only one day for the negotiations to collapse. Shertok insisted that the negotiations had to be on the basis of the General Assembly’s partition plan, while the Arab League said that the plan had to be “irrevocably” dropped by the United Nations.7
While success was eluding the State Department at the United Nations, the Yishuv was taking concrete steps to create a provisional government that would have all the trappings of an actual state. Dana Adams Schmidt, The New York Times’ correspondent in Jerusalem, observed that “the problem of a Jewish state is no longer really one of being born but of getting a birth certificate.” The Jewish state already exists, she wrote, “certified or uncertified.” The Jews were going ahead with the organization of their state in accordance with the timetable set up by the November 29 U.N. resolution. They had agreed to a provisional council of government and had submitted it to the U.N. Palestine Commission well before the April 1 deadline. In addition, the Jewish Agency and the Vaad Leumi (Jewish National Council) had announced that on May 15 a provisional Jewish government would begin to function, consisting of a premier and twelve ministers, representing a coalition. They would then ask for international recognition and would prepare to hold elections. The Jews didn’t lack for administrative staff. “Already they have a department for everything,” Schmidt reported. But they would need international recognition mainly for financial matters. Schmidt asked, “Would the ordinary commercial banks lend the Jewish state money without the approval of the US Government?”8
In April, the Haganah began to turn the military situation around. It could not afford to continue to take a defensive stance, waiting it out until the British left. If it was doing so poorly now, what would happen when the expected Arab armies arrived on May 16? Ben-Gurion insisted they go on the offensive. The Haganah High Command put forth a new strategy. Its Plan D called for defending and capturing the areas lying within the proposed Jewish area. Especially important was seizing control of “Palestine’s interior road network, as well as the country’s important heights.” The operation would require the capture of all Arab towns dominating vital arteries and communications, something new for the Haganah.9
The Haganah also began to receive the weapons it desperately needed. On April 1, the first transport plane containing arms from Czechoslovakia landed. Two days later a ship arrived with even more weapons, which were used to break the grip of the Arab forces that controlled the road to Jerusalem. The Haganah now had thousands of rifles and hundreds of machine guns. As Aubrey Eban later wrote, “We were reaping the fruits of Soviet support.”10 Between April 5 and May 14, 1948, four of the five cities of Palestine (Tiberias, Haifa, Jaffa, and Safed) had been conquered or had surrendered.11
The Jews launched another operation from April 5 to April 15, called Operation Nachshon, named after the first man to enter the Red Sea during the exodus from Egypt. The Haganah’s mission was to clear the road to Jerusalem so that supplies could get through to the besieged Jews in Jerusalem’s Old City. It was then that a major tragedy took place. The last Arab village along the western approach to the city was Deir Yasin, which had a nonaggression pact with the Haganah. Violating that agreement on April 9, the Irgun and Stern Gang decided to attack it.12 During the fighting events took place that would shake the moral conscience of the world. Two hundred fifty people—half of them women and children—were killed by the Jewish forces. The Deir Yasin massacre, as it came to be called, would reverberate for decades. To the Arabs, it became the symbol of Jewish barbarism. The U.S. consul reported that the Arabs were indignant and resentful and determined to avenge the massacre, making any cease-fire or truce even more remote.13 News of it spread and contributed to the flight of the Arabs from Palestine.
Ben-Gurion and the mainstream Zionist leadership strongly condemned the massacre, but the Arabs’ revenge was swift in coming. Their forces ambushed an armored convoy heading to the Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus, wounding seventy-six people and killing thirty-four, most of them doctors, nurses, or other professionals. The Arab forces came with Sten and Bren guns and hand grenades, which hit the immobilized vehicles. The Jews fought for an hour, using machine guns and automatics, but eventually their armored cars and buses burst into flame and the occupants were shot down trying to escape. “The street,” one reporter wrote, “was littered with dead bodies.”14
Immediately, a group of eighty-six distinguished American scientists signed a letter of protest to the president. The convoy had been making a “routine journey with medical supplies, personnel and patients” to the Hadassah Hospital, considered the best medical facility in Palestine. “The whole Near East is bereft,” they wrote. Moreover, the attack had been a gross violation of the Geneva Convention, which stated that all medical vehicles and personnel were immune to attack.15 The next day, Truman agreed to meet with Dr. Louis Dublin of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, who presented him with the letter. “Those in whom we had placed all the hope of the future in building up a great medical center,” he told Truman, “had been wiped out in spite of the fact that they were travelling towards the hospital on a mission of mercy, contrary to medical conventions and every instinct of decency.”
Truman’s response surprised Dr. Dublin. It appeared he hadn’t known about the attack and “was horrified” when he heard about it. “What does it gain them,” he said, “to do that sort of thing?” After making that comment and receiving the letter, Truman turned to other matters. Rather than address the issue that Dublin had come to talk about, “he immediately unburdened himself of his troubles,” complaining of all he had gone through on the Palestine issue the previous months. “He wanted my sympathy,” Dublin said, “as I wanted his.” First he complained about the lack of unity among Jewish groups and argued that “they have engaged in very questionable practices themselves.” He was upset that the Jews would not consider a truce. His main concern was what would happen on May 15 and thereafter. “All of his directions,” Dublin thought, “were now bent in the direction of achieving peace in Palestine.”
Dublin answered that he thought making the American public aware of what the Arabs were doing would help to mobilize public opinion. It seemed like minutes before Truman said anything. Finally Truman said “he was fearful that the publication of the letter…would embarrass him;…that it would be one more inflammatory incident; that there would be recriminations from the other side” and would work to hold up a truce. Truman pledged to read the letter again and take it up with Charlie Ross and see “if we can’t issue a statement that would meet the situation.”
Dublin knew that Ross and David Niles wanted the letter made public. Yet when Dublin opened the next day’s newspaper, there was nothing in it about the letter. Realizing that Truman did not want their message to get out, Dublin advised Hadassah, the Zionist women’s organization whose funds supported the hospital, to withdraw it from circulation and not publish it at that time. “If we take the matter into our own hands and issue the letter,” he wrote, “it will have the effect of being one more insult.” Truman felt that he had been “subjected to a series of insults” and that the Jewish groups’ activities “nullified many of the things he hoped to accomplish.” If they issued a letter, he concluded, it could result in having Truman “throwing his weight in the direction where we wouldn’t want it.” Rather than make it public immediately, Dublin suggested waiting a reasonable length of time and then making known what had happened. Then they could appeal to “the conscience of America.”16 Following his suggestion, Hadassah waited until April 26 to release the text of the letter, noting only that it had been sent to the White House at an earlier date.17
In mid-April, Warren Austin introduced a resolution at the U.N. special session for a temporary trusteeship that, he explained, was meant only “to ensure public order and the maintenance of public services.” It would continue while there were negotiations on a final political settlement.18 Austin’s effort gained little support. No country would provide military support to enforce the plan, and hence no member states could support it. Secretary-General Trygve Lie observed that “skepticism about the practicality of trusteeship was everywhere.” Many of the member states wanted the United Nations to implement partition, rather than go on talking. The representative from New Zealand, Sir Carl A. Berendsen, “called on the Assembly not to abandon partition in a capitulation to threats and violence” and declared “what the world needs today are not resolutions, it is resolution.”19 Nevertheless, the General Assembly ended its meeting by adopting three resolutions: it affirmed its support of the Security Council’s efforts to bring about a truce in Palestine; it empowered a U.N. mediator to use his offices to promote a peaceful resolution of the situation and ensure protection of the holy places; and it relieved the Palestine Commission of further responsibilities. Most important, it did not rescind or amend the partition resolution of November 29, 1947.20
The State Department pressed for the British government to change its mind and continue on in Palestine. To accomplish this, Marshall and Lovett sent Lewis Douglas, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, on a number of missions to Ernest Bevin. On April 20, Douglas reported to Marshall on a long talk he had had with Bevin. Bevin was concerned, he informed the secretary, that the United States thought Britain was not cooperating, but he was at his “wit’s end to know what to do.” Churchill told Bevin that the Conservative Party would vigorously oppose any suggestion that British troops remain in Palestine. Most Labour members of Parliament would be equally opposed. The British public demanded that its troops be withdrawn from Palestine. It seemed that in Britain, as in the United States, public opinion had its influence on foreign policy.21 Bevin explained to Lewis that trusteeship would require force to implement it and Britain would not use force against either the Jews or the Arabs to impose it.22
At the end of April, Robert McClintock, Dean Rusk’s assistant in the State Department’s U.N. Office, told Rusk that trusteeship was a bust and that they should focus on a French proposal to save Jerusalem. At least it would look as if they had accomplished something. He also wrote to Lovett that if there were security from Jerusalem to the sea it would bring about a de facto partition, with the Jewish state centered on Tel Aviv and extending north along the coast. Fatigued by the whole thing, he confided, “I should not care if Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt took over the rest of the country.”23
By May 4, Lovett, admitting defeat, instructed the U.N. delegation to stop trying to “adjust” the November 29 partition vote. It should just concentrate on trying to get a truce agreement. A bigger problem was beginning to concern State: the real possibility of an Arab invasion of Palestine after May 15. The American consul in Cairo had sent his secretary to Damascus to ascertain Arab views about a new U.S. initiative: an informal truce agreement and ten-day cease-fire. When he met with Azzam Bey, the head of the Arab League, he asked him if the Arabs had “considered the grave responsibilities which they were assuming before the world in invading Palestine when the matter was before the UN.” Yes, Azzam Bey replied, they had given very serious consideration to all of the consequences and had determined that they had no choice but to send armed forces into Palestine. The Arab armies were poised and ready to enter Palestine on May 15. And, he told the secretary, if they failed to invade Palestine, it would lead to “dissatisfaction and mutual recriminations” among Arabs; relatively moderate elements of the Arab League, including Azzam Bey himself, would be overthrown; and the unity of the Arab League would be endangered. He was also apprehensive that some Arab governments might be overthrown as a result of “rising passions among the Arab population.”24
The Zionist response was equally negative. Warren Austin’s deputy, John Ross, told him about a talk he had had with Silver and Shertok. They had discussed the idea for a truce for an hour, including the proposal for a ten-day extension of the mandate. Silver told him that the Jews “were not trying to shoot Arabs out of the Arab state but Arabs were trying to do this to the Jews.” If the Arabs stopped their aggression and stopped shooting, the Jews would stop. He said they would not attempt to “take new positions nor attack Arab communities.” Most important, Silver claimed, they would agree to postpone announcing a Jewish state if they could establish a provisional government “provided there was guarantee that at the end of the truce period they could go ahead and establish their state.” Ross tried to argue him out of this position, but Silver, who by now was angry, told him he considered the U.S. government as a “hostile” government in which they had no confidence at all. Silver asked Ross, “How could we ask them to accept a truce and pretend to be friendly in doing so if we were not prepared to support the creation of a Jewish state and defend it against external aggression?”25
The State Department’s plan to derail partition had proven to be an embarrassing failure. Austin acknowledged this when he told Marshall that the U.S. delegation would be in “a very weak and vulnerable position” in terms of American public opinion and at the United Nations if it didn’t come up with any acceptable suggestions before the General Assembly session ended. If it did not, it would “make the United States vulnerable to accusations either of incredible naiveté or power-politics machinations.”26
While the State Department’s proposals were floundering at the United Nations, the president was going in another direction. On April 12, Eddie Jacobson visited Truman at the White House. Jacobson was relieved to hear “from my friend’s own lips” what had really happened after Truman’s meeting with Weizmann, when Truman had assured Weizmann of his support for partition, only to have it reversed by Austin at the United Nations the next day. Then, Jacobson said, Truman “reaffirmed, very strongly, the promises he had made to Dr. Weizmann and me; and he gave me permission to tell Dr. Weizmann so.” Jacobson also discussed the matter of recognizing the new state with Truman, and “to this he agreed with a whole heart” 27 (emphasis in Jacobson’s article).
Eleven days later, Truman sent another message to Weizmann, this time using Sam Rosenman as his emissary. Rosenman, who was laid up with a leg injury, called Weizmann to his hotel. He told him that he had been to see Truman and the president’s first words to him had been “I have Dr. Weizmann on my conscience.” Truman wanted Weizmann to know that “he would recognize the Jewish State as soon as it was proclaimed,” but he asked Weizmann to keep it secret. Upon hearing that news, Weizmann for the first time felt certain that a Jewish state could be created. Rosenman added that Weizmann should write a letter to Truman requesting that he recognize the new state a few days before the end of the Mandate.28
Bartley Crum confirmed Truman’s intentions. He had seen Truman on May 7 and told the Weizmanns that the president intended to recognize the Jewish state at six o’clock on May 14. Vera Weizmann wrote in her diary, “The President is anxious to do so before the Russians. What a joke.” However, Crum advised them not to be too optimistic, because he said, “one never knows what influence will be brought to bear on the president by the British, the State Department, and anti-Zionists.” “It was almost zero hour,” she wrote, and she hoped Truman would carry out his plan on schedule because “the President will have no credit in the Jewish State’s birth if his recognition comes too late.”29
Weizmann confided Truman’s intentions only to his closest associates. Eban and the Jewish Agency delegates at the United Nations got the message that they could not afford to lose the fight against the U.S. trusteeship proposal. Truman would be able to act on his pledge only if trusteeship were abandoned as an option. Eban didn’t believe that Truman would “compete” with the United Nations in determining the “legal status of a previously mandated territory.”30
Carrying forth with this agenda, Eban drafted a speech for Shertok to be given at the United Nations arguing why trusteeship was a bad idea. Shertok, in what Eban thought was a very generous gesture, asked Eban to give the speech he had written himself. It was par for the course to have a staff member write a speech for the head of a delegation. For the first time Eban gained visibility as a spokesman for the Zionist cause, and he would consider it one of the major turning points in his own life and career. Jewish statehood, Eban told the General Assembly, was a reality in everything but name. “More force would now be needed to prevent Jewish statehood than to let it take its course…. How absurd it would be,” Eban said, “to ask a nation that had advanced to the threshold of independence to retreat back to tutelage!…The flight from partition would be a blatant acceptance of illicit force as the arbiter of international policy.” Suddenly thrust into the limelight of international renown, Eban was invited that day to go to lunch with other Agency leaders and U.N. delegates at Trygve Lie’s apartment. Among the other guests were Ernest Bevin and Andrei Gromyko. The Soviet representative came up to Eban and said, “Congratulations. You have killed American trusteeship.” Bevin and his wife gave him icy looks.31
The Arabs were jockeying over who was to have power over Palestine once the British left. King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan pledged to take personal command of his own army, along with those of Syria and Lebanon, and move into Palestine when the Mandate ended. The Yishuv leadership had been hopeful that it could work out some kind of an agreement with Abdullah whereby he would take over the areas of Palestine designated for the Arab state but leave the Jewish areas alone. But now, referring to meetings he had had with Golda Meyerson in which they had agreed that the Mufti was their mutual enemy, Abdullah proclaimed, “I have advised the Jews before to content themselves and live as citizens in an Arab state, and my army is an Arab army. I shall do as I please.”32
That same day, Jamal Husseini, the vice chairman of the Arab Higher Committee, announced that the Arabs would immediately set up their own state on May 15. Their goal was the creation of “a single democratic state” for all of Palestine. But despite their bravado, the Arabs lacked leadership and organization. When the United Nations searched for someone from the Arab Higher Committee in Palestine with whom it could discuss the truce proposal, it could not find anyone there to talk to.
In contrast, the Yishuv was a model of efficiency and organization. Its “blue and white flags were hoisted over public buildings in Tel Aviv and elsewhere, and the Jewish authorities began to issue their own stamps and levy their own taxes.”33 The U.S. consul at Jerusalem, reporting to Marshall, noted that “preparations for establishment of a Jewish State after termination of the Mandate are well advanced.” The Jews had great confidence in their future, and the population’s support for its leaders was simply “overwhelming.” Once defensive operations by the Haganah had changed to offensive ones, its morale had increased due to its military victories and the flight of thousands of Arabs out of Palestine. True to the partition line, the consul reported, the Jews had not tried to seize any territories outside the boundaries proposed in the partition resolution.34
The consul’s observations were reinforced in a lengthy memo on “The Future of Palestine” written by John E. Horner, an adviser to the U.S. delegation who was on loan from the State Department’s Office of European Affairs. Trusteeship, he reported, had been totally abandoned by everyone at the United Nations. It was no longer an option. Most delegates were distrustful of what they felt was the oscillating policy of the United States and did not want to commit themselves to any U.S. program, fearing the United States would “suddenly commit an about-face, leaving them in an untenable position.” One option might be considered, Horner thought: the annexation by Trans-Jordan of the area promised the Arabs in the partition resolution. Such a step would satisfy most of the parties and would end the influence of the Grand Mufti among Palestinian Arabs. Most important, Horner stressed, such a measure would force all sides to “face up to the inescapable fact that a Zionist State already is in being in Palestine” 35 (Horner’s emphasis).
A few days later the State Department formally proposed a ten-day truce in the fighting between Jews and Arabs that would commence on May 5. Its purpose would be to fly Jewish Agency leaders on the president’s plane Sacred Cow from New York to negotiate in Palestine with the Arab and Jewish authorities already there. It was hoped that once in Palestine, they would be able to negotiate a still longer truce and then begin negotiations for a “final political settlement,” which obviously did not include creation or recognition of a Jewish state.36
The Jewish Agency was not buying into it. Shertok nevertheless took the proposal to his colleagues. “We do not consider,” he answered Dean Rusk, “that the somewhat spectacular proceeding now suggested is warranted.” The Jews of Palestine would accept a genuine cease-fire, he told Rusk, provided the Arabs did likewise. But Rusk’s proposal for a plane flight to Jerusalem violated the action taken by the Security Council and would mean extension of the British Mandate.37 Rusk understood, as he wrote Lovett, that Shertok’s refusal “reveals the intention of the Jews to go steadily ahead with the Jewish separate state by force of arms…and rely on its armed strength to defend that state from Arab counterattack.”38
Dean Rusk was becoming more realistic about the poor chances of the Arabs and the Jews reaching an agreement. The British couldn’t do it, he reflected; perhaps it was hubris to assume that the Americans could do it in two months. A meeting with Prince Faisal of Saudi Arabia in New York confirmed this. Rusk told the prince, “I would not be frank…if I did not say that the President considers partition a fair and equitable solution for Palestine.” The Arab states, Faisal answered, “could not ever accept a Jewish State,” which would be nothing less than an “abscess to the political body of the Arabs.”39
Truman and the White House staff were making their own preparations. David Niles had already written an announcement for the president on recognition of a Jewish state. He proposed that Truman say that he rejected trusteeship and that “Secretary Marshall and I have concluded that we should recognize the practical reality, since it conforms to the resolution of the U.N., to the security interests of the U.S., and to the announced and oft repeated objective of the U.S. Government.” The president would then announce the intention of the United States “to accord formal recognition to the Jewish Government in Palestine when it is established.”40 Truman did not take Niles’s advice and never gave any statement or speech making these points.
Even without a formal speech to that effect, the indications were that Truman was going to recognize the Jewish state. But how was he to explain yet another policy change to the American people? Other people were apparently pondering the same question. On May 5, Truman’s military aide, General Harry Vaughan, received a letter from Dean Alfange, who headed the American Christian Palestine Committee in New York City. Vaughan passed the letter on to Truman. Alfange wrote from the perspective of politics and the potential fortunes of the Democratic Party in New York and throughout the nation. “Frankly,” he said to Vaughan, “the President could not carry the State of New York in the present circumstances. The Jewish vote against him would be overwhelming.” There was a dramatic step he could take that would “electrify the Jewish people”: recognize the State of Israel when it was announced and nominate an American minister to it. Truman, he argued, would be on firm legal ground because the U.N. partition plan was “legal fact.” As for the would-be temporary trusteeship, which the president had gone on record as supporting, Alfange noted that “recent events have knocked the props from under the Trusteeship proposal.” It was “no longer tenable…because the Jewish military forces have since demonstrated by their decisive victories over the Arabs, that they can implement partition singlehanded.”
This change in the situation, Alfange continued, gave Truman a justification for a policy change. He could tell the nation that “events and not he have reversed the Trusteeship plan and that the UN decision can be best carried out by recognizing the new Jewish State.” Should Truman not want to do that, he could appoint a personal ambassador and send him to Palestine with the president’s authority to negotiate a settlement on the basis of the U.N. partition plan. The Arabs, Alfange argued, “have been rudely awakened to the fact that they cannot dispose of the Jews as easily as they had thought.” King Abdullah of Jordan was a realist, he thought, and knew that his British-trained Arab Legion was no match for the Jewish forces, which now numbered 75,000 “disciplined and zealously devoted young men and women.” Indeed, Alfange thought that the Haganah could beat the entire combined forces of the Arab League. Apart from Abdullah’s British-trained legion, the other Arab forces were divided and hostile to one another, a fact that precluded any meaningful unity. Thus Truman could negotiate even with Abdullah, who Alfange thought was the “most practical and best situated of all the Arab leaders” and who desired “authority and influence over the Arab portion of Palestine” and thus would accept partition.41
Before Truman took any action, he had to deal with the State Department. At the beginning of May, Truman summoned Clark Clifford to his office and told him that he was scheduling an important meeting. “This temporary situation in the Middle East” would soon be coming to an end, Truman said, and it was very likely that there would be the announcement by the Jewish state declaring its independence. The meeting would be with Marshall, among others, on May 12, and he wanted Clifford to prepare an oral argument for recognition “just as though you were going to make an argument before the Supreme Court. Consider it carefully, Clark, organize it logically. I want you to be as persuasive as you possibly can be.”
Clifford had come to the meeting already prepared with an outline of arguments for why the United States should recognize the new Jewish state when it was proclaimed:
PALESTINE
The forty-one-year-old Clifford was being asked to debate General Marshall. “Virtually every American,” Clifford thought, “regarded General Marshall, then sixty-seven, with respect bordering on awe.” Truman could not afford to lose Marshall. But General Marshall did not like Clifford and considered him a domestic political adviser who had no business interfering in foreign affairs. In this, Clifford thought he was mistaken. The position of national security advisor had not yet been created, but Clifford functioned in that role and had been very involved in the White House’s Middle East policy. Nor did Clifford think very highly of the State Department, which, he believed, had “done everything in their power to prevent, thwart, or delay the President’s Palestine policy…. Watching them find various ways to avoid carrying out White House instructions, I sometimes felt, almost bitterly, that they preferred to follow the views of the British Foreign Office rather than those of their President.”43 Knowing that he had Truman on his side gave Clifford the confidence he needed to carry out the daunting assignment.
Among the diplomats as well as the White House, a fear was developing that the Soviets might be the first to recognize a new Jewish state. Dean Rusk thought that if the Soviets recognized the Jewish state, as it was contemplating doing, it would allow them to come to the new state’s defense if it were attacked by the Arabs. In light of this, Rusk thought that the United States had better be prepared to take a position once the new Jewish state was proclaimed.44
Before the May 12 meeting, Clifford requested a report from the State Department on its recent activities regarding Palestine. The department prepared a summary for him, going through all the measures it had proposed as an alternative to partition, including proposals for a truce and trusteeship as well as efforts to convince the British not to give up their Mandate authority. It mentioned its attempts to convince the Jewish Agency not to declare a Jewish state after May 15. Finally, they had imposed an arms embargo to the Middle East. That last step had been the only one implemented.45 Clifford thought the only thing the State Department had managed to do was to embarrass the president.
May 15 was fast approaching, and Shertok requested a final audience with Marshall and Lovett before he left for Palestine, where plans were being made to announce the new Jewish state. Accompanying him was the Agency’s U.N. representative, Eliahu Epstein. The Jewish Agency wanted clarification of the U.S. position. Rusk was also there. Sources had told him that there was a major debate taking place within the Jewish Agency on whether or not it should accept proposals for a truce or proceed with its announced intention to proclaim a Jewish state when the Mandate ended. Epstein and Shertok, Rusk thought, favored a truce. They were being opposed, however, by “more extreme elements such as Rabbi Silver and Ben-Gurion,” who were “pressing for the immediate establishment of the Jewish State by force if necessary.”46
The Jewish Agency had hoped to have the United States at its side when the new state was announced, but Marshall did not appear to favor it. Shertok told him that as much as the Agency wanted America’s support, it would not “commit suicide to gain friendship.” The main problem they had, Shertok candidly put it, was that to date the Jewish Agency did not know whether “the United States Government wanted or did not want a Jewish state to arise.”47
State’s U.N. truce proposal appeared to be based on the Jews of Palestine forgoing the announcement of a Jewish state when the Mandate ended. That “was tantamount to asking us to renounce our fundamental right,” and if they did as State wanted, they might never have another chance. They were “on the threshold of the fulfillment of the hopes of centuries,” and a new state “was within our physical grasp.” Marshall was asking the Jews of Palestine to become a party to their own undoing. Now that the Jews were winning, the State Department wanted them to call a halt, which could be fatal. They had accomplished this on their own, without outside help. The U.S. truce proposal, in their eyes, would allow the Arabs to regroup and consolidate their forces. Shertok asked, “not having helped us, why should the United States Government now try to prevent us from attaining what was so imminently within our reach?”
Lovett and Rusk then joined in and cautioned that if the Jews fought the Arabs, the Arab Legion might wage a guerrilla campaign that would be costly to the Yishuv. A truce was preferable to any war. The Jews were taking great risks, Lovett argued. “The risk of forfeiting the chance of statehood,” Shertok responded, “was graver.” An hour and a half into the meeting, Secretary Marshall spoke up for the first time. It was 3:25 P.M., and Shertok’s plane for Jerusalem was due to leave in ten minutes. Marshall phoned the airport to hold the departure and offered his own State car to take him to the airport.
Finally, Marshall expressed his opinion: The Zionists kept speaking out and engaging in “political pressure…blustering…misleading assurances.” He had heard from the many Jews he knew that if partition occurred, peace and quiet would be a reality in Palestine. This had “turned out to be quite untrue.” Second, Marshall complained about the continuing illegal immigration into Palestine, which was obviously sanctioned by the Jewish Agency and which caused him “no end of difficulty.” Every time the U.S. tried to get Britain to act in a different fashion the Foreign Office would throw the illegal immigration in their face.
Then Marshall came to his main point, which was to address the “present dilemma.” He used his experience as an intermediary between Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung when he had tried to intercede in the Chinese Civil War. Shertok later summed up what Marshall had said:
We [the Jews] had scored an initial military success; we should beware of relying on it. He could not help thinking about his experience in China when he went there as an intermediary. The analogy was striking. He had almost succeeded in arranging for a truce…during which time the Government was supposed to absorb the other people. But at that time the Government forces had just scored a success in the field and they were afraid that they would lose more than they would gain by the truce. The same thing happened on the other side and they too had the same fear. As a result the truce did not come off, and here, two years since…the outbreak of war in China…the Government in the meantime had lost Manchuria. He himself was a military man, but he wanted to warn us against relying on the advice of our military people. He indicated that flushed by victory, their counsel was liable to be misleading. If we succeed, well and good. He would be quite happy; he wished us well. But what if we failed? He did not want to put any pressure on us. It was our responsibility and it was for us to face it. We were completely free to take our decision, but he hoped we do so in full realization of the very grave risks involved.
Shertok was thrown by Marshall’s presentation. The secretary had given military reasons to doubt the possibility of succeeding. He had not reiterated the arguments given by Loy Henderson or Robert Lovett. Indeed, he even seemed sympathetic to their cause. Shertok promised him that if the Jewish Agency decided to proceed with the announcement of a new state once he returned to Palestine, it would not be because they did not take his advice under consideration. Marshall’s presentation so bothered him that Shertok was now questioning the Agency’s plans.
Before Shertok was to leave for Palestine, Weizmann called to give him a message that he should also deliver to Ben-Gurion. “Moshe, don’t let them weaken,” he told Shertok, “don’t let them swerve, don’t let them spoil the victory—the Jewish State, nothing less.” When he arrived at New York’s International Airport, Shertok was surprised to be called to the phone. It was Weizmann again, with another message for him to deliver to Ben-Gurion: “Proclaim the Jewish State, now or never!”48 Weizmann was putting his trust in Truman’s word. Some sources have alleged that Shertok took Marshall’s warning to heart and now supported putting off the creation of a Jewish state. Whether or not this is true, when the vote came before the National Council of Thirteen, the new ruling body in the Yishuv, Shertok took a strong stand for its creation and gave a forceful speech that turned the tide against the few moderates who wished for postponement. The vote was six to four to reject the truce. Shertok’s vote in favor of proclaiming a state was the decisive one.49
Meanwhile, the important May 12 White House–State Department meeting was only a few days away, and Clifford turned to David Niles and especially Max Lowenthal for help with research and drafting his presentation. Lowenthal wrote at least six reports to help prepare Clifford for the meeting.50 Later Truman would give Lowenthal credit for all the work he had done in bringing about the recognition of Israel, but, preferring to stay out of the limelight even decades later, Lowenthal claimed to have only heard about it secondhand from an anonymous source at the White House.51 However, realizing the historic nature of the events taking place, he kept a detailed diary of the behind-the-scenes activities at the White House in the days running up to the announcement of the Jewish state.
In a May 9 memo, Lowenthal provided Clifford with his most powerful arguments: The Jews had on their own made partition a reality. Not only had they controlled the Jewish part of Palestine militarily, they had maintained and run what was in effect a government. Partition was a reality; the only question was whether it could be reversed. That would be impossible. The bottom line was that “it is unrealistic to believe that the Jews of Palestine could be persuaded to relinquish the State which they achieved largely through their own efforts.”52
The best thing for Truman to do, Lowenthal argued, would be to make a statement announcing that he intended to recognize the Jewish state as soon as it was announced. That act alone “would retrieve the prestige which has been lost on this issue during the past few months by the President.” It might also force the Arabs to accept what was inevitable, once they saw the U.S. support. In addition, most of the U.N. delegates had come to see that the State Department’s proposals were “grandiose as well as futile.” If Truman did not act, the Soviet Union certainly would, and any similar action by the United States would “seem begrudging—no matter how well-intentioned” and would amount to a “diplomatic defeat.”
On the eleventh, a day before the critical meeting, Lowenthal sent Clifford another long memo, writing on the front, “Clark: Please do not let anyone else read this dynamite.” Lowenthal reviewed the alternatives confronting the president and posed some serious questions: What was the actual state of the Palestinian Jews’ military preparedness? Was the United States “trying to advise the Palestinian Jews as their friends, or are we seeking to embark on a course of opposition…or of neutrality or of force?” How much further would the United States go? he asked? Would the United States issue economic sanctions against a Jewish state, would it send warships to blockade Jewish Palestine, and would it allow the Jewish immigrants to disembark in Palestine? The memo demonstrated that if the United States did not support a Jewish state, the alternatives would lead to a more difficult and eventually impossible situation in the Middle East.53
The day of the meeting, Clifford called Lowenthal and Niles into his office at 11:30 A.M. He wanted them to prepare two items for him before the 4 P.M. meeting. The first was a statement the president could make the next day announcing that he would grant recognition. The second was an analysis of the objections that the State Department would likely have to issuing such a statement.54
Clark Clifford called the May 12 meeting “Showdown in the Oval Office.” On a “cloudless sweltering day,” Clifford wrote in his memoir, the group met in the Oval Office. Truman “sat at his desk, his back to the bay window overlooking the lawn, his famous THE BUCK STOPS HERE plaque in front of him on his desk. In the seat to the president’s left sat Marshall, austere and grim, and next to Marshall sat his deputy, Robert Lovett.” Dean Rusk and Loy Henderson were supposed to be present. But Lovett, knowing that their very presence in the room would be inflammatory to Clifford and perhaps to Truman, had told them not to attend and to send their deputies Robert McClintock and Fraser Wilkins instead. To the right of Truman sat Clifford, Niles, and Truman’s appointments secretary, Matthew Connelly.
Although the meeting began calmly enough, Clifford recalled, it soon developed into the most “confrontational and hostile” meeting he had ever attended during his five years in the Truman administration.55 Truman did not raise the recognition issue when he opened the meeting. He wanted Clifford to do this, but only after Marshall and Lovett had their say. That way Truman would be able to see what Marshall really thought before Clifford revealed the White House’s cards. The meeting started with a presentation from Robert Lovett. He reported that at his meeting on May 8 with Shertok and Epstein, the Jewish Agency had been optimistic that it could work out a deal with King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan, giving the king the Arab portions of Palestine and the Jews the Jewish areas already in their hands. As a result, the Jewish Agency was confident that the Jews would be able to establish their own state without having to agree to a truce.56
At that point, Secretary Marshall spoke up. He told the president and the others what he had told Shertok, “that it was extremely dangerous to base long-range policy on temporary military success” and that “they were taking a gamble.” He also told Shertok that he was giving them notice that if the Jews got into trouble and came “running to us,” there was no “warrant to expect help from the United States, which had warned them of the grave risk they were running.”
As he spoke, an urgent message came from one of Marshall’s aides, reporting on a press dispatch from Tel Aviv that Shertok had arrived in Tel Aviv, bearing Marshall’s personal message to David Ben-Gurion. Marshall said he had not sent any message to Ben-Gurion and, furthermore, he had never heard of Ben-Gurion. This was a strange statement, since Ben-Gurion was the leader of the Jewish Agency and about to become the new state’s prime minister. Marshall said he had no comment on the story and ended his presentation by saying he thought the United States should continue its efforts to support a U.N. trusteeship and not make any decisions on recognition at present.
Next, it was Clifford’s turn to speak. Clifford’s own account dovetails with that in Secretary Marshall’s summary of the meeting. First, he announced his disagreement with State’s position, which recommended efforts to gain a truce in Palestine. Rusk had said back on March 24 that he would be able to get one in two weeks; he still had not.
Second, Clifford noted that trusteeship, which the State Department favored, presupposed a single Palestine. “That,” Clifford said, “is unrealistic. Partition into Jewish and Arab sectors has already happened. Jews and Arabs are already fighting each other from territory each side presently controls.”
“Third, Mr. President,” Clifford said, “I strongly urge you to give prompt recognition to the Jewish state immediately after the termination of the British Mandate on May 14. This would have the distinct value of restoring the President’s firm position in support of the partition of Palestine. Such a move should be taken quickly, before the Soviet Union or any other nation recognizes the Jewish state.” He should explain that since the Jewish Agency had complied with U.N. resolutions calling for a democratic government, recognition posed no problem. Furthermore, Truman should announce at his scheduled press conference the next day that he intended to recognize the new state when it was declared. He then handed his proposed press statement out to the group.
Finally, Clifford told the group that since the Balfour Declaration, the “Jewish people the world over have been waiting for thirty years for the promise of a homeland to be fulfilled. There is no reason to wait one day longer. Trusteeship will postpone that promise indefinitely…. The United States has a great moral obligation to oppose discrimination such as that inflicted on the Jewish people.” Taking words directly from a speech Truman had given as a senator in 1943, he added, “There must be a safe haven for these people.” A land of their own, he told them, would be one way of atoning for the atrocities committed by the Nazis. Addressing the issue of the United States’ national interest, Clifford pointed to how important it was for the United States to have one friendly democracy in the Middle East “on which we can rely.”57
As Marshall sat listening to Clifford’s words, Clifford noticed that his face was turning red. When he finished, Marshall launched into what seemed to Clifford a furious, “emotional attack on the positions I had taken.” “Mr. President,” Marshall said, “I thought the meeting was called to consider an important and complicated problem in foreign policy. I don’t even know why Clifford is here. He is a domestic policy adviser, and this is a foreign policy matter.”
Truman answered simply, “Well, General, he’s here because I asked him to be here.” Marshall quickly retorted, “These considerations have nothing to do with the issue…. he [Clifford] is pressing a political consideration with regard to this issue. I don’t think politics play any part in this.”
At that point, Lovett added, it would be injurious to the United Nations to recognize the Jewish state before it actually existed “and while the General Assembly…was still considering the question of the future government of Palestine.” It would also harm the president’s prestige, being “a very transparent attempt to win the Jewish vote,” which would actually “lose more votes than it would gain.” The United States also did not know what kind of a Jewish state the Agency would establish. Lovett then pulled out intelligence reports claiming that the Soviet Union was sending Jewish Communist agents into Palestine. The reports had emanated from the British Foreign Office. Clifford found them ridiculous on their face and pointed out that no evidence had ever emerged to indicate that this was being done by the Soviet Union. As Weizmann and others had pointed out, Jewish Communists were a small minority in the Yishuv, and many Jews going to Palestine from Eastern Europe were in fact fleeing communism.58
When Lovett finished, Marshall again erupted, saying, “If the President were to follow Mr. Clifford’s advice and if in the elections I were to vote, I would vote against the President” 59 (our emphasis). There was utter silence in the room. If Marshall’s threat should become public, thought Clifford, it “could virtually seal the dissolution of the Truman Administration and send the Western Alliance, then in the process of creation, into disarray.”60 It would certainly ensure Truman’s defeat in the upcoming presidential election. Truman ended the meeting quickly. Marshall was still agitated, and Truman turned to him and said, “I understand your position, General, and I’m inclined to side with you in this matter.” When they had left, Clifford, who thought he had failed the president, picked up the papers he had brought with him for his presentation. Truman told him, “Well, that was rough as a cob. That was as tough as it gets. But you did your best.” “But Boss,” Clifford replied, “this isn’t the first case I’ve lost. I never expected to win them all.” Truman replied, “Well, let’s don’t proceed on the assumption, Clark, that you’ve lost it. Let the dust settle. I still want to do it. But be careful. I can’t afford to lose General Marshall.”
Max Lowenthal got a rundown of the meeting from Matt Connelly. “The last 24 hours have been something,” Lowenthal wrote in his diary. Clifford wanted the administration to announce in advance that it intended to recognize a Jewish state when it was proclaimed; the State Department “wanted approval instead of a new resolution to be offered in the UN Assembly which I think it offered in part, to throw some taint of illegality on any declaration.” State had “won the argument, saying that there was no precedent for this Government stating in advance of an application by a state for recognition, that recognition would be granted.” Nevertheless, Connelly was hopeful because the State Department had not taken the “position that recognition should be refused after application made.”61
Lowenthal also wrote in his diary that after he left the meeting, Clifford phoned Lovett to concede that State had won the decision on not announcing that the United States would recognize a Jewish state before it was proclaimed. But that did not mean that the United States should not recognize a state immediately after it was proclaimed. On Friday, Clifford phoned Lovett again and, at Lovett’s invitation, joined him for lunch. Lovett showed him a draft, which said the president would consider recognition. “That won’t do,” Clifford told him. “Let’s talk plainly…your staff placed the President in a very unfair position.” The two men worked out a stronger draft and immediately showed it to Chip Bohlen, George Kennan, and Dean Rusk.62
Clifford’s recollection years later of what happened was somewhat different from Lowenthal’s. As Clifford recalled, he got a phone call from Lovett. “I have been deeply worried ever since the meeting,” he told Clifford, “and I’m very concerned about it.” It would be very unfortunate “for Truman and Marshall to have an open break.” Clifford agreed and sought a way to calm things down. He went to Lovett’s house. Despite his opposition to the policies Lovett espoused, Clifford considered him to be a reasonable person and a friend. Lovett made it clear that he and the others at the State Department were holding to their views. “Do you think,” he asked Clifford, “that perhaps if you were to present these views to the President that the President might be persuaded to moderate his position and work out something with General Marshall?” Clifford said, “Bob, there is no chance whatsoever that the President will change his attitude…we’ve been in it for months, years maybe. I know how strongly he feels about it.” Truman had asked him to speak at the meeting. “My views, Bob,” Clifford stressed, “were the President’s view…if anybody’s going to have to give, it’s going to have to be Marshall.” Truman was “not going to give an inch.”
The president, however, kept his word about not issuing a statement about his intention to recognize the Jewish state. At a press conference held on the thirteenth, Truman was asked whether or not the United States would recognize a Jewish state. “I will cross that bridge when I get to it,” he replied.63 Niles had a chance to speak with Truman afterward and later that day told Lowenthal about their conversation. Truman had told him, Niles said, that he thought that Marshall and Lovett meant well but they had “followed their subordinates.” Moreover, he didn’t buy Lovett’s argument that the Soviet Union was sending Jewish Communists into Palestine.
That was good news, but Niles was still unsure about Truman’s plans once the Jewish state was declared. He told Truman that he thought the United States should recognize the Jewish state before the Soviets or their satellites did. Truman, replied, “That is right, the western recognition should precede the Soviet bloc’s recognition, so as to give it the right slant from the beginning.” Niles also told Truman about all of the mass meetings of Jews that were going to be held to celebrate the Jewish state and of the great “opportunity of acclaim” for him if he recognized the Jewish state before the meetings. Truman said Ed Flynn had already called him to say that there were going to be at least three hundred mass meetings throughout the country. Niles then said that he and Lowenthal “were trying to prevent any adverse references to him at those meetings, that we were sure the President would work this whole affair out satisfactorily.” Truman answered that someday he was going to show them “how much he appreciates what we have been doing.”64
Clifford and Lovett knew a split between Truman and Marshall would be disastrous and had to be avoided. There were many important foreign policy issues that the White House and the State Department had to work closely on, chief among them the developing Cold War. The Berlin crisis was in full swing. To save Berlin from collapse when the Soviets closed down the city, the administration had airlifted food and supplies into the city on a round-the-clock basis. The negotiations continued. Lovett called Clifford and told him he had met with Secretary Marshall. Couldn’t the president announce that he would recognize the new state but not announce it right away and hold off for an unspecified period? Again, Clifford rejected that offer. He had spoken with Truman, and the president was not going to budge.
Finally Clifford received the call he was waiting for. After meeting several times with Marshall, Lovett told him, “General Marshall says he cannot go along with Truman’s policy…but he will not publicly oppose it.” An open break between the president and the secretary of state had been avoided. Lovett even agreed to work with Clifford on the statement Truman would make announcing recognition. What had changed Marshall’s mind? Years later, Lovett informed Richard Holbrooke that when he had gone to see Marshall on the thirteenth, “I told him it was the President’s choice.” Marshall, a good soldier, had accepted this. Some of Marshall’s friends had urged him to resign, but he had replied, “No, gentlemen, you do not accept a post of this sort and then resign when the man who has the Constitutional authority to make a decision makes one. You may resign at any time for any other reason but not that one.”
The administration did make one concession to the State Department. Truman agreed to give the new state de facto recognition and not de jure recognition. The difference meant little to the public but a great deal to State Department lawyers and opponents of partition. New York Times columnist Arthur Krock explained it to the paper’s readers.65 He based his article on a memo written to the administration by the Jewish Agency counsel in Washington, David Ginsburg, before recognition was declared.66 By recognizing Israel de jure, Krock wrote, the United States would be finding “that the provisional government is permanent” and its boundaries recognized. It would be conditional on the new state holding elections.
Recognizing it de facto meant it was simply acknowledging that the Jewish state existed, that the new government could carry out its international obligations, and the country’s inhabitants accepted its government. It was standard policy, Krock noted, going back to the 1790s. Not willing to give up, Lovett asked Clifford if the declaration could be delayed a day or two, because the United States might “lose the effects of many years of hard work in the Middle East with the Arabs and that it would jeopardize our position with the Arab leaders” as well as bring Americans in the Middle East into personal danger. Should we at least not warn Austin and the U.S. delegation to the United Nations in advance? he asked. Clifford answered that the president “could not afford to have any such action leak and that we should try to insure against it.” Couldn’t the U.S. announcement of recognition at least be delayed until the U.N. General Assembly was through meeting for the day? Again Clifford’s answer was no. As it turned out, Lovett was given permission to phone Ambassador Austin with the news that recognition was forthcoming only at 5:45 P.M., a brief fifteen minutes before Truman was set to make his announcement. Lovett was upset. “My protests against the precipitate action and warning as to consequences with the Arab world,” he wrote, “…have been outweighed by considerations unknown to me.” He could only conclude “that the President’s political advisers, having failed last Wednesday afternoon to make the President a father of the new state, have determined at least to make him the midwife.”67
On May 14 at 4 P.M., the Jewish Agency leaders in Palestine, meeting at the Tel Aviv Art Museum, proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel as of midnight, May 15. In order for the United States to grant recognition, someone representing the new Jewish state would need to formally apply for it. Clifford Clark had tried to reach David Niles but had been unable to. Failing to reach Lowenthal as well, he had then reached Ben Cohen, who in turn had called Eliahu Epstein. Epstein then called in David Ginsburg, and Clifford and Ginsburg worked together to draft the official request for recognition. When it was finished, Epstein submitted it on behalf of the provisional government of the new state and phoned Agency leaders in Palestine to ask their approval.68
The request was handed to the office of Secretary of State George C. Marshall. It informed State that the Act of Independence would be declared at one minute after 6 P.M. on the evening of May 14, Washington, D.C., time. Epstein was authorized by the provisional government to “express the hope that your government will recognize and will welcome Israel into the community of nations.”69 President Truman then announced the U.S. recognition at 6:11 P.M. on May 14, slightly after midnight in the time zone of the new State of Israel. Truman turned to one of his aides and said, speaking of Chaim Weizmann, “the old Doctor will believe me now.”70 He then called David Niles. Truman wanted him to know that he had just announced recognition. “You’re the first person I called,” he said, “because I knew how much this would mean to you.”71
Truman’s announcement, making the United States the first nation to recognize Israel, stunned everyone. Most surprised were Warren Austin and the U.S. delegation to the United Nations. At 5:45 P.M. on the fourteenth, Clark Clifford phoned Dean Rusk to tell him that the president would be recognizing Israel a short while later. Clifford asked Rusk to tell the U.S. delegation. Rusk was aghast: “But this cuts across what our delegation has been trying to accomplish in the General Assembly,” referring to its efforts to attain a truce and then trusteeship. “Nevertheless,” Clifford instructed him, “this is what the President wishes you to do.” Rusk phoned Austin from Washington. Austin had to leave the floor of the General Assembly to take his call, and, after hearing the shocking news and without informing anyone in the U.S. delegation, he went home.
Then the acting ambassador of the United States, Francis Sayre, took the podium and told the delegates the news and that he had known nothing about Truman’s recognition. The entire General Assembly was in a “state of pandemonium,” as Rusk put it. Philip Jessup then came in to confirm that the news was accurate. One U.S. delegate physically restrained Cuba’s delegate from going to the podium and withdrawing Cuba’s membership in the United Nations. A few minutes after the president had made recognition public, Rusk received a phone call from Secretary Marshall. “Rusk,” he said, “get up to New York and prevent the U.S. Delegation from resigning en masse.” Rusk quickly got to the United Nations but by the time he arrived found that tempers had settled down.72
The next day, Truman heard from his friend Abe Granoff, who wrote on behalf of himself and Eddie Jacobson. “Of course,” Granoff wrote, “you know that Eddie Jacobson’s and my confidence in you on Palestine never wavered…. We felt that you were doing everything possible for the Jewish people abroad, consistent however with our own Country’s best interests. We always recognized your anxiety to avoid bloodshed…. If Eddie and I and others shed a tear of gratitude, you above all can understand. So also will you understand if Chaim Weizmann’s eyes were moist when he talked to Eddie a few minutes ago.” He and other American Zionist leaders, Granoff wrote, had “never questioned [your] forthrightness. In short, Mr. President, if all American citizens of the Jewish faith throughout this land do not bless your name tonight in their houses of worship, then there is no gratitude in this world.”73
Later, Truman recalled, after he had recognized Israel, Lovett said to him, alluding to his colleagues at the State Department, “They almost put it over on you.” Noting that some at State had told him the announcement had come as a surprise, Truman wrote, “It should not have been if these men had faithfully supported my policy.” Truman saw it all as part of his fight as president against those who sought to thwart the executive’s right to make U.S. foreign policy. “No one in any department,” he said, “can sabotage the President’s policy.”74
Celebrations of Israel’s birth were numerous and dampened only by the apprehension of what was to come. As the next day dawned, Egyptian aircraft bombed Tel Aviv and the armies of five Arab countries began to mount an assault.