HARRY TRUMAN FACED more consequential crises in his first years in office than any president in US history, with the notable exceptions of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Truman spent his first few months guiding the United States to victory over Hitler, making the fateful decision to end the Pacific War through the use of two atomic bombs, and working through the details of a postwar world order. Within two years, his administration would have little choice but to confront Stalin and the Soviets, alleviate the worst refugee crisis in history, and launch unprecedented efforts to keep Western Europe free from communism. The Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and the formation of NATO were just three of the many policies that helped FDR’s successor launch a revolution in US foreign policy. A decision the president would make in 1948 would prove to be equally profound on the shape of world history when Truman decided to recognize Israel’s existence following Britain’s rapid withdrawal in 1948 from Palestine. In contrast with the Truman administration’s unified approach on the Truman Doctrine, the internal debate over Israel was sharp and bitter. Truman found himself in the uncomfortable position of overruling one of his chief advisers, whom he held in the highest regard. Had the same level of dissension been present during the Doctrine’s development, Greece and Turkey might well have been abandoned to their fate.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, alarmed by growing anti-Semitism on the continent, many European Jews began to emigrate to the United States and the United Kingdom. A smaller number, wishing to return to the land ruled by Jews for several centuries until their expulsion by the Romans, went to Palestine. The ancient Jewish homeland was then a possession of the Ottoman Empire, and within it lived hundreds of thousands of Arabs scattered in villages throughout the territory. Many Palestinian residents understandably viewed the Jewish influx with alarm.
Palestine had been a contested battleground in the First World War. The Ottoman Empire, centered in Turkey, had allied itself with the Germans, when the British invaded and occupied Palestine in 1917. In an effort to solicit Arab support against the Turks, the British held out the promise of a united Arab state in the region.
But Jewish immigrants to the area were growing in number and winning the support of Jews in Britain and around the world for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. This movement, known as Zionism, was endorsed by Winston Churchill, who as early as 1908 declared himself in “full sympathy” with the creation of such a state. The leader of the movement was Chaim Weizmann, a Russian-born Jew and noted chemist who emigrated to England and lobbied the government on behalf of a Jewish homeland. He grew close to the foreign secretary (and former Conservative prime minister), Arthur Balfour; their friendship would have a profound effect on the Middle East’s future.
The British government briefly considered the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Uganda, to avoid antagonizing the Arabs in Palestine. Weizmann rejected this, asking Balfour: “Would you give up London to live in Saskatchewan?” The foreign secretary replied by saying that the English people had always lived in London. To this, Weizmann responded, “Yes, and we lived in Jerusalem when London was still a marsh.”
The Zionist movement continued growing in influence and counted among its supporters some of the most prominent figures in British public life. One of them was Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild, heir to the vast banking fortune and for more than a decade a member of Parliament. A friend of Weizmann’s, he lent his name and resources to the campaign.
In a letter to Lord Rothschild on November 2, 1917, Balfour announced: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” This momentous document, soon to become known as the Balfour Declaration, would have consequences far beyond those envisioned by its author. The still-mighty British Empire had pledged itself to create a home for the Jews, but few could have foreseen the founding—two decades later—of a small but powerful nation that the US government would view as a bulwark of Western interests in an authoritarian Middle East.
At the conclusion of the Great War, the League of Nations assigned Palestine to the care of the United Kingdom. This “mandate” was to last throughout the interwar period and the even more terrible war to follow. But the same retrenchment that led Britain to withdraw aid from Greece and Turkey after the war meant that this British mandate would soon come to an end. In 1947, the new United Nations would decide the fate of Palestine, and President Truman, already consumed with crises around the world, would play an enormous role in what happened next. Jews continued moving into Palestine and their Zionist dream began looking more like a possibility than ever before.
On November 29, 1947, amid much controversy, the United Nations announced the “partition” of Palestine into two states, one for Jews and the other for Arabs already living in the country. Truman had lobbied quietly for this partition, despite opposition from the Arab states, the British, and his own State Department. He wrote later of his belief that partition “could open the way to peaceful collaboration between the Arabs and the Jews.” Six months later, the British formally withdrew, and the partition went into effect in May 1948.
Jews around the world rejoiced, but Arab leaders were understandably enraged and threatened war. Despite his support for partition and sympathy for the plight of Jews, Truman was cautious about offering public support for Zionism. Given the growing tension in the region, he thought it was in America’s best interest for their president to be seen as an honest broker in the conflict. Truman even refused to meet Chaim Weizmann and other Jewish leaders in the White House despite Weizmann’s urgent pleas, and their previously warm relationship. The American president was vexed by the intensity of the Jewish campaign, later recalling,
Individuals and groups asked me, usually in rather quarrelsome and emotional ways, to stop the Arabs, to keep the British from supporting the Arabs, to furnish American soldiers, to do this, that, and the other. I think I can say that I kept the faith in the rightness of my policy in spite of some of the Jews.
As early as 1946, before the crisis became more acute, Truman exploded in a cabinet meeting over his frustration regarding the region. “If Jesus Christ couldn’t satisfy the Jews while on earth, how the hell am I supposed to?”
An old friend who played a key role in Truman’s earlier life softened his views on the subject. His partner in the haberdashery business, Eddie Jacobson, came to the White House on March 13 to quietly lobby the president on the topic of Israel. He had remained a loyal friend through the long and turbulent years of Truman’s ascent, and had never tried to take advantage of his relationship with the president for personal gain. But as a Jew and an admirer of Weizmann, he felt compelled to make the case for a Jewish homeland. Sitting in the Oval Office, he pointed to a small statue of Andrew Jackson, one of Truman’s heroes, and told the president that he admired Weizmann as much as Truman admired Old Hickory. As Jacobson later recalled, he told Truman that Weizmann was “the greatest Jew who ever lived,” and urged him not to let the political attacks he had suffered from other Jewish leaders impact his relationship with Weizmann. The appeal to friendship and Jacobson’s Jacksonian reference had the desired effect. Truman looked across the desk at his old friend and said, “You win, you baldheaded son-of-a-bitch. I will see him.” Truman soon welcomed Weizmann back to the White House—but the Zionist leader was spirited in through the East Wing, and his visit remained off the record. While the White House meeting was “off the books,” it proved more than worthwhile for Weizmann, who secured a pledge from the American president that he would continue supporting the partition between Israel and Palestine.
But the State Department’s continued steadfast opposition to any further support for the Zionist enterprise made Truman’s promise more difficult to keep. Like Britain’s Foreign Office, State had an institutional bias in favor of the Arabs, and as a military man, George Marshall was unwilling to risk any action that might threaten oil supplies, especially if a future conflict with the Soviet Union should require them. Marshall was supported in his position by Loy Henderson and George Kennan, who had played a vital role in State’s efforts regarding the Truman Doctrine the previous year. The latter two wrote a memo to the secretary explaining their views regarding Israel, in which they warned:
As a result of U.S. sponsorship of UN action leading to the recommendation to partition Palestine, U.S. prestige in the Moslem world has suffered a severe blow and U.S. strategic interests in the Mediterranean and Near East have been seriously prejudiced. Our vital interests in those areas will continue to be adversely affected to the extent that we continue to support partition.
State’s strategic concerns led to an open conflict between the State Department and the White House. Henderson faced off against the president’s aide, Clark Clifford, who was a passionate advocate for the Zionist cause. These two powerful players in Truman’s administration, who had worked closely and effectively together just months earlier on Truman’s doctrine, were now bitterly opposed.
Truman remained in a state of denial regarding Marshall’s position. When Clifford and others warned the president about the secretary of state’s grave concerns, he would brusquely respond that Marshall knew how he felt, which may have been true but mattered little in this instance. And when the American ambassador to the United Nations, without warning or presidential approval, called on the General Assembly to reverse its decision regarding partition, the uproar was overwhelming. Jewish groups around the country reacted with fury at the seeming betrayal, and many forecast doom at the polls that November.
Truman himself was furious, writing in his diary:
This morning I find that the State Dept. has reversed my Palestine policy. The first I know about it is what I see in the papers! Isn’t that hell? I’m now in a position of a liar and a double-crosser. I never felt so low in my life. There are people on the 3rd and 4th levels of the State Department who have always wanted to cut my throat. They are succeeding in doing it.
The president suddenly looked weak, dishonest, and not in charge of his own administration. But Chaim Weizmann, recalling Truman’s personal pledge at their past meeting, stood firm, writing to Truman, “The choice for our people, Mr. President, is between statehood and extermination. History and providence have placed this issue in your hands, and I am confident that you will yet decide it in the spirit of the moral law.”
The internal crisis over Israel’s existence finally came to a head in the Oval Office on the afternoon of May 12, when Marshall and his aides confronted Clifford and his colleagues. The president sat behind his desk and allowed his men to have their say. The argument grew heated as Clifford made the case for recognition, telling those assembled, “No matter what the State Department or anybody thinks, we are faced with the actual fact that there is going to be a Jewish state,” and that the United States had a moral duty on behalf of the Jews to support it.
Marshall reacted with cold fury, even suggesting in his diary that he would vote against Truman in future elections if the president he currently served continued to support Israel.
The suggestions made by Mr. Clifford were wrong. . . . To adopt these suggestions would have precisely the opposite effect from that intended by Mr. Clifford. The transparent dodge to win a few votes would not in fact achieve this purpose. The great dignity of the office of the President would be seriously diminished. The counsel offered by Mr. Clifford was based on domestic political considerations, while the problem which confronted us was international. . . . 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.
There was nothing else to say. The man whom Truman revered above all others had just delivered a damning assessment of the president’s Israel policy. Though he rejoiced in having Marshall by his side in all other political disputes, Truman would now have to choose between backing the fervent advice of his most trusted lieutenant or keeping his pledge to Weizmann. The Department of State and his White House aides had had their say. Both sides stalked out of the room, with a fuming Clifford saying later of Marshall that the remarkably gifted statesman “didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.”
ISRAEL’S FATE NOW rested with the president of the United States. On his desk in the Oval Office was a sign that read, “The Buck Stops Here,” and as Truman would later observe, “The President—whoever he is—has to decide. He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That’s his job.” Thus, when the British formally withdrew from Palestine and the Jewish state was declared on May 14, Truman had to make the call. Marshall, at least, had assured him that he would keep his opposition private, but the risk of the secretary of state’s grave reservations being leaked to a newspaper reporter or magazine editor was still high. To go back on his word to Weizmann and Jacobson, however, would be anathema to Truman. And he knew that the horror of the Holocaust cried out for redress, and that only a Jewish homeland could provide safe harbor for Jews seeking shelter and safety around the world. How long would Harry Truman agonize over this fateful decision?
It took eleven minutes.
At six p.m., Washington time, the new state was declared in Palestine, and given the name of Israel. It could not survive without the recognition and support of the most powerful country in the world. At 6:11, the White House announced that the United States would do just that by recognizing Israel’s existence. The Israeli nation was born, and America was the first to acknowledge it. Chaim Weizmann, who not long before had slipped into the White House unseen, was to be the first president of Israel.
ALMOST IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING the declaration, Israel’s new neighbors attacked in concert: Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan invaded in an attempt to deal Zionism an instantaneous death blow. In a remarkable display of military skill and determination against overwhelming odds, made more impressive given the arms embargo maintained by the United States—the nascent Israeli army repulsed the invading countries. The fighting would continue periodically for another forty years until the 1979 Camp David Accords. Because of that diplomatic breakthrough, there would be no major ground war between Israel and its Arab neighbors over the next forty years.