The History of US-Israel Relations Part One A
The modern Israel Lobby is born
The immediate precursor to today’s lobby began in the early 1940s under the leadership of Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, originally from Lithuania. He created the American Zionist Emergency Council (AZEC), which by 1943 had acquired a budget of half a million dollars at a time when a nickel bought a loaf of bread.
In addition to this money, Zionists had become influential in creating the United Jewish Appeal in 1939, giving them access to the organization’s gargantuan financial resources: $14 million in 1941, $150 million by 1948. [64]
With their extraordinary funding, AZEC embarked on a campaign to target every sector of American society. In the words of AZEC organizer Sy Kenen, they launched “a political and public relations offensive to capture the support of Congressmen, clergy, editors, professors, business and labor.” [65] [66]
AZEC instructed activists to “make direct contact with your local Congressman or Senator” and to go after union members, wives and parents of servicemen, Jewish war veterans. They were provided with form letters to use and schedules of anti-zionist lecture tours to oppose and disrupt.
When Silver disliked a British move in 1945 that would be harmful to Zionists, AZEC booked Madison Square Garden, ordered advertisements, and mailed 250,000 announcements – the first day. By the second day they had organized demonstrations in 30 cities, a letter-writing campaign, and convinced 27 U.S. Senators to give speeches. [67]
Zionist action groups were organized at the grassroots level with more than 400 local committees under 76 state and regional branches. Books, articles and academic studies were funded by AZEC; millions of pamphlets were distributed. There were massive petition and letter writing campaigns. They targeted college presidents and deans and managed to get more than 150 to sign one of their petitions. [68]
As Rabbi Elmer Berger describes in his memoirs, there was a “ubiquitous propaganda campaign reaching just about every point of political leverage in the country.” [69]
In its 48th Annual Report the Zionist Organization of America bragged of the “immensity of our operations and their diversity. We reach into every department of American life...” [70]
Berger and other anti-Zionist Jewish Americans tried to organize against “the deception and cynicism with which the Zionist machine operated,” but failed to obtain anywhere near their level of funding. Among other things, people were afraid of “the savagery of personal attacks” anti-Zionists endured. [71]
When Berger and a colleague from the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism opposed a Zionist resolution in Congress, Emanuel Celler, a New York Democrat who was to serve in Congress for almost 50 years, told them: “They ought to take you b...s out and shoot you.”
Jacob Javits, another well-known Congressman, this one a Republican, told Zionist women: “We’ll fight to death and make a Jewish State in Palestine if it’s the last thing that we do.” [72]
When Jewish schools didn’t sufficiently promote the Zionist cause, Zionists would infiltrate their boards of directors. When this didn’t work, they would start their own pro-Zionist schools. [73]
In 1943-44 the ZOA distributed over a million leaflets and pamphlets to public libraries, chaplains, community centers, educators, ministers, writers and “others who might further the Zionist cause.” [74]
Zionist monthly sales of books totaled between 3,000 and 4,000 throughout 1944-45. Books by non-Jewish authors were subsidized by the Zionists and promoted jointly with commercial publishers, some making the nation’s best seller lists. [75]
Christian support is actively pushed
Silver and other Zionists played a significant role in creating Christian support for Zionism, a project Brandeis encouraged. [76] Secret Zionist funds, eventually reaching $150,000 in 1946, were used to revive an elitest Protestant group, the American Palestine Committee. Silver’s headquarters issued a directive:
“In every community an American Christian Palestine Committee must be immediate organized.” [77]
As an historian notes, their operations “were hardly autonomous. Zionist headquarters thought nothing of place newspaper advertisements on the clergymen’s behalf without bothering to consult them in advance, until one of the committee’s leaders meekly asked at least for prior notice before public statements were made in their name.” [78]
AZEC formed another group among clergymen, the Christian Council on Palestine. An internal AZEC memo stated that the aim of both groups was to “crystallize the sympathy of Christian America for our cause.” [79]
By the end of the World War II the Christian Council on Palestine had grown to 3,000 members and the American Palestine Committee boasted a membership of 6,500 public figures, including senators, congressmen, cabinet members, governors, state officers, mayors, jurists, clergymen, educators, writers, publishing, civic and industrial leaders.
Historian Richard Stevens points out that Christian support was largely gained by exploiting their wish to help people in need. The Zionists proclaimed “the tragic plight of refugees fleeing from persecution and finding no home,” thus linking the refugee problem with Palestine as allegedly the only solution. [80]
Steven explains:
“The reason for this was clear. For while many Americans might not support the creation of a Jewish state, traditional American humanitarianism could be exploited in favor of the Zionist cause through the refugee problems.” [81]
Few if any of these Christian supporters had any idea of the nature of Zionism and that the creation of the Jewish state would entail a massive expulsion of hundreds of thousands of the non-Jews who made up the large majority of Palestine’s population, creating a new and much longer lasting refugee problem.
Nor did they learn that during and after Israel’s founding 1947-49 war, Zionist forces attacked a number of Christian sites. Author Donald Neff reports: [82]
“...after the capture by Jewish forces of Jaffa on May 13, 1948, two days before Israel’s birth, there was desecration of Christian churches. Father Deleque, a Catholic priest, reported:
“‘Jewish soldiers broke down the doors of my church and robbed many precious and sacred objects. Then they threw the statues of Christ down into a nearby garden.’ He added that Jewish leaders had reassured that religious buildings would be respected, ‘but their deeds do not correspond to their words.’
“On May 31, 1948, a group of Christian leaders comprising the Christian Union of Palestine publicly complained that Jewish forces had used 10 Christian churches and humanitarian institutions in Jerusalem as military bases and otherwise desecrated them. They added that a total of 14 churches had suffered shell damage, which killed three priests and made casualties of more than 100 women and children.
“The group’s statement said Arab forces had abided by their promise to respect Christian institutions, but that the Jews had forcefully occupied Christian structures and been indiscriminate in shelling churches.
“It said, among other charges, that ‘many children were killed or wounded’ by Jewish shells on the Convent of Orthodox Copts on May 19, 23 and 24; that eight refugees were killed and about 120 wounded at the Orthodox Armenian Convent at some unstated date; and that Father Pierre Somi, secretary to the Bishop, had been killed and two wounded at the Orthodox Syrian Church of St. Mark on May 16.” [83]
After Zionist soldiers invaded and looted a convent in Tiberias, the U.S. Consulate sent a bitter dispatch back to the State Department complaining of “the Jewish attitude in Jerusalem towards Christian institutions.’” [84]
State Department & Pentagon opposition
State Department and Pentagon analysts consistently opposed Zionism, considering it deeply harmful to US interests and counter to fundamental American principles. The view of American career Foreign Service Officer Evan M. Wilson, who had served as Minister-Consul General in Jerusalem, was typical:
“I came to the conclusion that for our government to advocate the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine against the will of the majority of the inhabitants of that country (the Arabs) would be a mistake that would have an adverse effect upon world peace and upon U.S. interests.” [85]
Loy Henderson, director of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, was one of a many career American diplomats who frequently wrote of this. In a memo to Secretary of State James Byrnes after World War II, Henderson stated:
“....support by the Government of the United States of a policy favoring the settling up of a Jewish State in Palestine would be contrary to the wishes of a large majority of the local inhabitants with respect to their form of government. Furthermore, it would have a strongly adverse effect upon American interests throughout the Near and Middle East....
He went on to emphasize:
“At the present time the United States has a moral prestige in the Near and Middle East unequaled by that of any other great power. We would lose that prestige and would be likely for many years to be considered as a betrayer of the high principles which we ourselves have enunciated during the period of the war.” [86]
When Zionists began a campaign to push a partition plan through the UN, in which 55 percent of Palestine would be given to a Jewish state, even though Jews represented only 30 percent of the inhabitants and owned only about 6 percent of the land,[87] Henderson strenuously recommended against supporting their proposal.
He stated that such a partition would have to be implemented by force and emphasized that it was “not based on any principle.” He went on to write:
“...[partition] would guarantee that the Palestine problem would be permanent and still more complicated in the future....[proposals for partition] are in definite contravention to various principles laid down in the [UN] Charter as well as to principles on which American concepts of Government are based. These proposals, for instance, ignore such principles as self-determination and majority rule. They recognize the principle of a theocratic racial state and even go so far in several instances as to discriminate on grounds of religion and race...” [88]
Henderson noted that this was a fundamental violation of American principles, stating: “We have hitherto always held that in our foreign relations American citizens, regardless of race or religion, are entitled to uniform treatment.” [89]
On Nov 24th Loy Henderson circulated yet another anti-partition memorandum:
“I feel it again to be my duty to point out that it seems to me and all the members of my Office acquainted with the Middle East that the policy which we are following in New York at the present time is contrary to the interests of the United States and will eventually involve us in international difficulties of so grave a character that the reaction throughout the world, as well as in this country, will be very strong...” [90]
Zionists attacked Henderson virulently, calling him “anti-Semitic,” demanding his resignation, and threatening his family. They tried to pressure the State Department to, as one analyst described it,
“...play with him the historic game of musical chairs” in which officials who recommended Middle East policies “consistent with the nation’s interests were transferred to theatres of diplomatic activity where the Middle East was not an issue.” [91]
In 1948 Truman sent Henderson to the slopes of the Himalayas, as Ambassador to Nepal (then officially under India). (In recent years, virtually every State Department country desk has typically been directed by a Zionist.)
Henderson was far from alone in making his recommendations. He emphasized that his views were not only those of the entire Near East Division but were shared by “nearly every member of the Foreign Service or of the Department who has worked to any appreciable extent on Near Eastern problems.” [92]
He wasn’t exaggerating. Official after official and agency after agency opposed Zionism.
In 1947 the CIA’s “Review of the World Situation as It Relates to the Security of the United States” reported that Zionist leadership, “exploiting widespread humanitarian sympathy” with Jews, was pursuing objectives that would endanger both Jews and “the strategic interests of the Western powers in the Near and Middle East." [93]
George F. Kennan, the State Department’s Director of Policy Planning, issued a top secret document entitled “Report by the Policy Planning Staff on Position of the United States with Respect to Palestine” on January 19, 1947 that outlined the enormous damage done to the US by the partition plan.
He cautioned that “important U.S. oil concessions and air base rights” could be lost through US support for partition and warned that the USSR stood to gain by the partition plan.
Kennan pointed out that because of Zionist-induced sponsorship of partition:
“U.S. prestige in the Muslim world has suffered a severe blow and US 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....” [94]
Henry F. Grady, who has been called “America's top diplomatic soldier for a critical period of the Cold War” and who headed up a 1946 commission to try to come up with a solution for Palestine, later wrote about the power of the Zionist lobby in countering their efforts:
“I have had a good deal of experience with lobbies but this group started where those of my experienced had ended..... I have headed a number of government missions but in no other have I ever experienced so much disloyalty”...... “in the United States, since there is no political force to counterbalance Zionism, its campaigns are apt to be decisive.” [95]
Grady concluded that without Zionist pressure, the U.S. would not have had “the ill-will with the Arab states, which are of such strategic importance in our ‘cold war’ with the soviets. [96]
Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson was another who strenuously opposed what he felt was a potentially disastrous Zionist agenda. Acheson biographer Robert Beisner writes that Acheson’s sympathies “were with Marshall and the Department professionals” and reports that Acheson “worried that the West would pay a high price for Israel.” Author John Mulhall reports Acheson's strong opinion:
“...to transform [Palestine] into a Jewish State... would vastly exacerbate the political problem and imperil not only American but all Western interests in the Near East.” [97]
Secretary of Defense James Forrestal also tried, unsuccessfully, to oppose the Zionists. He was outraged that Truman’s Mideast policy was based on what he called “squalid political purposes,” asserting that “United States policy should be based on United States national interests and not on domestic political considerations.” [98]
Forrestal represented the general Pentagon view when he said “no group in this country should be permitted to influence our policy to the point where it could endanger our national security.”
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr., a young Congressman, warned that the democratic party would lose if an anti-partition plan were proposed, Forrestal responded: “I think it is about time that somebody should pay some consideration to whether we might not lose the United States.” [99]
Zionists attacked Forrestal, who had been a WWI Naval aviator, venomously, and Berger recalls that Forrestal became “the favorite whipping boy of the Zionist-dominated press.”
Zionist Walter Winchell and pro-Soviet Drew Pearson (Forrestal also opposed Stalin) launched vicious personal attacks. [100] At odds with Truman on a number of issues, in 1949 Forrestal was hospitalized in the National Naval Medical Center with a diagnosis of severe depression, where it was reported that he committed suicide. His brother, a businessman, did not believe this cause of death. A number of authors and analysts question this conclusion.[101]
The head of the State Department’s Division of Near Eastern Affairs, Gordon P. Merriam, was yet another high level official who warned against the partition plan:
“U.S. support for partition of Palestine as a solution to that problem can be justified only on the basis of Arab and Jewish consent. Otherwise we should violate the principle of self-determination which has been written into the Atlantic Charter, the declaration of the United Nations, and the United Nations Charter–a principle that is deeply embedded in our foreign policy. Even a United Nations determination in favor of partition would be, in the absence of such consent, a stultification and violation of UN’s own charter.” [102]
Merriam added that without consent, “bloodshed and chaos” would follow, a sadly accurate prediction.
A report by the National Security Council warned that the Palestine turmoil was acutely endangering the security of the United States. A CIA report stressed the strategic importance of the Middle East and its oil resources. [103]
An earlier State Department legal memo had noted with displeasure Zionist actions “to deplete the national wealth by contribution of funds or investment of funds in foreign countries.” [104]
Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt’s nephew and a legendary intelligence agent, was another who was deeply disturbed by events, noting:
“The process by which Zionist Jews have been able to promote American support for the partition of Palesine demonstrates the vital need of a foreign policy based on national rather than partisan interests... Only when the national interests of the United States, in their highest terms, take precedence over all other considerations, can a logical, farseeing foreign policy be evolved. No American political leader has the right to compromise American interests to gain partisan votes...” [105]
He went on:
“The present course of world crisis will increasingly force upon Americans the realization that their national interests and those of the proposed Jewish state in Palestine are going to conflict. It is to be hoped that American Zionists and non-Zionists alike will come to grips with the realities of the problem.”
When Eleanor Roosevelt, who was heavily influenced by Zionists, [106] and others on an the “American Association for the United Nations” decided to allot funds for pro-partition ads in the New York Times, Kermit’s wife tried to prevent the disbursement. As usual when one tried to oppose Zionists, she failed. [107]
An internal State Department memorandum accurately predicted beforehand what actually came to pass:
“...the Jews will be the actual aggressors against the Arabs. However, the Jews will claim that they are merely defending the boundaries of a state which were traced by the UN...In the event of such Arab outside aid the Jews will come running to the Security Council with the claim that their state is the object of armed aggression and will use every means to obscure the fact that it is their own armed aggression against the Arabs inside which is the cause of Arab counter-attack.” [108]
American Vice Consul William J. Porter, predicted, with deadly accuracy, that there would be no Arab State in Palestine. [109]
Pro-Israel agenda dominates US policies
In 1949 US Consul Burdett reported that Israeli officials were openly bragging about the power of the Jewish American community to influence US policy. He reported: “Israel eventually intends to obtain all of Palestine....” [110]
American Ambassador Lewis W. Douglas tried to convince Truman not to accede to Zionist wishes, arguing: “...no public office, however great its prestige, is worth gambling with the vital interests of the US.” [111]
Opposing such analysts was Truman’s political advisor, Clark Clifford, who believed that the Jewish vote and contributions were essential to winning the upcoming presidential election. Truman’s opponent, Dewey, took similar stands for similar reasons.
Truman’s Secretary of State George Marshall, the renowned World War II General and author of the Marshall Plan, was furious to see electoral considerations taking precedence over policies that were in the national interest. He condemned what he called a “transparent dodge to win a few votes,” which would cause “[t]he great dignity of the office of President [to be] be seriously diminished.”
Marshall wrote that the counsel offered by Clifford “was based on domestic political considerations, while the problem which confronted us was international. I said bluntly that 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...”
Truman wrote in his memoirs: “I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance.” There were now about a million dues-paying Zionists in the U.S. [112]
Then, as now, in addition to unending pressure there was financial compensation, Truman reportedly receiving a suitcase full of money from Zionists while on his train campaign around the country. [113]
Personal influences
One person key in such Zionist financial connections to Truman was Abraham Feinberg, a wealthy businessman who was later to play a similar role with Kennedy and Johnson.
While many Americans at the time and since have been aware of Truman’s come-from-behind win over Dewey, few people know about the critical role of Feinberg and the Zionist lobby in financing Truman’s victory.
An individual inside the US government who worked to influence policy was David K. Niles, executive assistant first to FDR and then to Truman. Niles, according to author Alfred Lilienthal, was “a member of a select group of confidential advisers with an often-quoted passion for anonymity. Niles... though occasionally publicized as Mr. Truman’s Mystery Man, remained totally unknown to the public.” [114]
Behind the scenes
was regularly briefed by the head of the Washington Office of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA).
When it was discovered that top secret information was being passed on to the Israeli government, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Omar Bradley told Truman he would have to choose between Bradley and Niles. Not long after, Niles resigned and went on a visit to Israel. [115]
Another who helped influence Truman was his old Kansas City friend and business partner, Eddie Jacobson, active in B’nai B’rith and “a passionate believer in Jewish nationalism,” who was able to procure Zionist access to the President at key times. [116] Truman credited Jacobson with making a contribution of “decisive importance.” [117]
Evan M Wilson, a longtime diplomat who had been U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem, later wrote that Truman had been largely motivated by “domestic political considerations.” [118] At least one of Truman’s key policy speeches had been drafted primarily by the Washington representative of the Jewish Agency .[119]
Acting Secretary of State James E. Webb in a dispatch to Secretary of State Acheson noted the obvious: “Past record suggests Israel has had more influence with US than has US with Israel.” [120]
Pushing through the UN Partition Plan
Just as Zionists had succeeded in pushing U.S. support of the partition strategy over the objections of US experts, they managed to push it through the UN using an orchestrated campaign of bribes and threats.
Robert Nathan, who had worked for the government and was particularly active in the Jewish Agency, wrote afterward, “We used any tools at hand,” such as telling certain delegations that the Zionists would use their influence to block economic aid to any countries that did not vote the right way. Another Zionist proudly described their activities:
“Every clue was meticulously checked and pursued. Not the smallest or the remotest of nations, but was contacted and wooed. Nothing was left to chance.” [121]
Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, along with ten senators and Clark Clifford, threatened the Philippines (seven bills were pending on the Philippines in Congress). David Niles organized similar pressure on Liberia; Harvey Firestone pressured Liberia. Bernard Baruch told France they would lose U.S. aid if they voted against partition. Latin American delegates were told that the Pan-American highway construction project would be more likely if they voted yes. Delegates’ wives received mink coats (the wife of the Cuban delegate returned hers); Costa Rica’s President Jose Figueres reportedly received a blank checkbook. Haiti was promised economic aid if it would change its original vote opposing partition. [122]
Before the vote the Philippine delegate had given a passionate speech against partition, defending the inviolable “primordial rights of a people to determine their political future and to preserve the territorial integrity of their native land...” He went on to say that he could not believe that the General Assembly would sanction a move that would place the world “back on the road to the dangerous principles of racial exclusiveness and to the archaic documents of theocratic governments.” [123]
Twenty-four hours later, after intense Zionist pressure, the delegate was forced to vote in favor of partition.
Even the U.S. delegation to the U.N. was so outraged at supporting partition that the State Department director of U.N. affairs was sent to New York to “prevent the U.S. delegation from resigning en masse.” [124]
33 massacres later, Israel comes into existence
The passing of the partition resolution in November 1947 trigged the violence that State Department and Pentagon analysts had predicted and for which Zionists had been preparing. There were at least 33 massacres of Palestinian villages, [125] half of them before a single Arab army joined the conflict. Zionist forces were better equipped and had more men under arms than their opponents [126] and by the end of Israel’s “War of Independence” over 750,000 Palestinian men, women, and children were ruthlessly expelled. Zionists had succeeded in the first half of their goal: Israel, the self-described Jewish State, had come into existence. [127]
notes
[64] Berger, Elmer. Memoirs of an Anti-Zionist Jew. Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1978. 9. Christison, 73.
[65] Neff, 23.
[66] Tivnan, Edward. The Lobby: Jewish Political Power and American Foreign Policy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987. Print. 24.
[67] Tivnan, 24
[68] Neff, 23.
[69] Berger, 11.
[70] Stevens, 101.
[71] Berger, 16-17.
[72] Lilienthal, 63.
[73] Stevens, 24.
[74] Stevens, 22.
[75] Lilienthal
[76] Urofsky, Melvin Irving. We Are One: American Jewry and Israel. Garden City, N.Y: Anchor/Doubleday, 1978. Print. 37.
[77] Neff, 23-24.
[78] Grose, 173.
[79] Neff, 23.
[80] Stevens, 28.
[81] Researchers may wish to explore an interesting though speculative discussion about what may be an earlier effort by Zionists to influence Christians. Many years before AZEC targeted Christians, an annotated version of the bible known as the Scofield Reference Bible had been published, which pushed what was a previously somewhat fringe “dispensationalist” theology calling for the Jewish “return” to Palestine.
Some analysts have raised questions about Scofield and how and why the Oxford University Press published his book. Scofield, who had been something of a shyster and criminal and had abandoned his first wife and children, mysteriously became a member of an exclusive New York men’s club in 1901. Biographer Joseph Canfield (The Incredible Scofield and His book) comments:
“The admission of Scofield to the Lotus Club, which could not have been sought by Scofield, strengthens the suspicion that has cropped up before, that someone was directing the career of C. I. Scofield.”
Canfield suggests that Wall Street lawyer Samuel Untermeyer, who was also a member of the Lotus Club, may have played a role in Scofield’s project, writing that “Scofield’s theology was most helpful in getting Fundamentalist Christians to back the international interest in one of Untermeyer’s pet projects – the Zionist Movement.”
Prof. David W. Lutz, in “Unjust War Theory: Christian Zionism and the Road to Jerusalem,” writes: “Untermeyer used Scofield, a Kansas city lawyer with no formal training in theology, to inject Zionist ideas into American Protestantism. Untermeyer and other wealthy and influential Zionists whom he introduced to Scofield promoted and funded the latter’s career, including travel in Europe.”
Irish journalist Maidhc O Cathail ("Zionism's Un-Christian Bible") suggests
“Absent such powerful connections, it is hard to imagine ‘this peer among scalawags’ ever getting a contract with Oxford University Press to publish his bible.”
[82] Neff, Donald. Fifty Years of Israel. Washington, D.C.: American Educational Trust, 2000. Print. 200. Available online at: http://ifamericansknew.org/history/rel-christians.html
[83] Neff, Fifty years, 200.
[84]
[85] Wilson, Decision. xiii-xiv.
[86] Neff, 31.
http://ifamericansknew.org/history/maps.html
Abu-Sitta, Salman H. The Atlas of Palestine 1917-1966 (2010 Edition). London: Palestine Land Society, 2010. http://www.plands.org/atlas/index.html
McCarthy, Justin. The Population of Palestine. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.
Israel was also getting much richer land: “85 percent of all the citrus lands, almost all the industries, the deep water port and the railway, most of the coastline, practically all the water resources,” according to U.S. diplomat Henry F. Grady, Adventures in Diplomacy, p. 170. An unpublished manuscript in the Truman Museum can be viewed at: http://fwd4.me/0xuL
To learn more about Grady see The memoirs of Ambassador Henry F. Grady:
From the Great War to the Cold War, by Henry Francis Grady, John T. McNay, 2009, University of Missouri Press. http://fwd4.me/0xuK
In 1984 a book was published by Harper & Row entitled From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine. The author is given as Joan Peters. The book’s “Acknowledgements” section lists historians Bernard Lewis, Philip M. Hauser, Martin Gilbert, and Walter Laqueur as having assisted in the project.
This book, making the astounding claim that there were virtually no indigenous Palestinians, that Arabs had largely come only after Zionists’ wonderful entrepreneurial skills provided them jobs, was given rave reviews by Barbara Tuchman, Theodore H. White, Elie Wiesel, Lucy Dawidowicz Arthur J. Goldberg (former Supreme Court Justice and U.S. ambassador to the UN), Saul Bellow, and virtually every major book review section in the U.S.: New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, National Review, New Republic, Atlantic Monthly, Los Angles Times, etc.
However the book was shown to be fraudulent when researcher Norman Finkelstein investigated its footnotes and found them to be less than honest; book reviewers in Britain and Israel called the book “preposterous” and a “web of deceit.” Harper & Row eventually stopped publishing the book, but it can still be found in bookstores, now published by something called “JKAP Publications” located in Chicago. “Historian” BarbaraTuchman continued to claim that the Palestinian people were a “fairy tale.”
Astoundingly, Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz seems to have appropriated, without attribution, Peters’ material in his 2003 book, The Case for Israel, published by John Wiley & Sons.
For more information see Norman G. Finkelstein’s Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, and his article “Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peters’s From Time Immemorial,” in Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, edited by Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens. Pp. 33-69. This article is online at: http://fwd4.me/0xuN
[88] Neff, Pillars, 46.
[89] Neff, p. 47.
[90] Neff 49.
[91] Berger, 21.
Berger writes that in a personal conversation with him, Henderson had said:
“I hope you and your associates will persevere. And my reason for wishing this is perhaps less related to what I consider American interests in the Middle East than what I fear I see on the domestic scene. The United states is a great power. Somehow it will surmount even its most foolish policy errors in the Middle East. But in the process there is a great danger of creating divisiveness and anti-Semitism among our own people. And if this danger materializes to a serious extent, we have seen in Germany and in Europe that the ability of a nation to survive the consequences is in serious question.”
[92] Neff, 46. Wilson, Decision,117.
[93] Green, Stephen. Taking Sides, America's Secret Relations with a Militant Israel. Brattleboro: Amana, 1988. Print. p. 20.
[94] Neff, 57.
Grady, Henry F. Adventures in Diplomacy, p. 170. Unpublished manuscript in the Truman Library, which can be viewed at: http://fwd4.me/0xuL
Grady, Henry Francis, and John T. McNay. The Memoirs of Ambassador Henry F. Grady: from the Great War to the Cold War. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri, 2009. Print. http://fwd4.me/0xuK
[96] Grady, Adventures,166.
[97] Mulhall. P.130.
Beisner, Robert L. Dean Acheson: a Life in the Cold War. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Print. accessed at: http://fwd4.me/0xuJ
[98] Neff, Pillars, 29.
Author John Snetsinger writes: “Truman’s Palelstine-Israel policy offers an extraordinary example of foreign policy conducted in line with short-range political expediency rather than long-range national goals.” Snetsinger, John. Truman, the Jewish Vote, and the Creation of Israël. Stanford Calif.: Stanford Univ., 1974. Print. 140.
[99] Lilienthal, p. 75.
[100] Lilienthal, p. 75.
http://www.dcdave.com/article4/030528.html
[102] Neff, pp. 42-43.
[103] Lilienthal, p. 60.
[104] Grose, 100.
[105] Ball, George W., and Douglas B. Ball. The Passionate Attachment: America's Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present. New York: W.W. Norton, 1992. Print. 22. Some examples:
Edwin Mr. Wright, a State Department expert on the Middle East who was assisting the U.N./U.S. delegation as a staff member, reports that Eleanor Roosevelt, who was on the U.N. delegation, received a letter telling her that Wright was “anti-Semitic and in Arab pay.” – p. 43.
“Rabbi Stephen Wise, the pre-eminent spokesman for American Zionism, and his daughter Justine Polier, were personal friends of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt with as much access to the White House as anyone.” - William J. vanden Heuvel, "America, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust." Keynote address of the fifth annual Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Distinguished Lecture, Oct. 17, 1996 at Roosevelt University in Chicago.
http://newdeal.feri.org/feri/wvh.htm [accessed July 22, 2011]
Lilienthal, p. 62: Eleanor Roosevelt, convinced by Zionists of their cause, had strongly opposed Loy Henderson. When Henderson had warned, accurately, that partition would provoke violence, Eleanor responded:
“Come now, come, Mr. Henderson, I think you’re exaggerating the dangers. You are too pessimistic....I’m confident that when a Jewish state is once set up, the Arabs will see the light; they will quiet down; and Palestine will no longer be a problem.” (Neff, Pillars, 64) (Wilson, 116)
There is no evidence that Eleanor ever acknowledged her error.
[106] Neff, Pillars, 64. Wilson, 116.
[107] Neff, 64.
[108] Neff, p. 65, citation: “Draft Memorandum by the Director of the Office of United Nations Affairs (Rusk) to the Under Secretary of State (Lovett),” Secret, Washington May 4, 1948, FRUS 1948, pp. 894-95.
[109] Wilson, p. 131
[110] Neff, Pillars, 96.
[111] Neff, Pillars, p. 90. Citation: “The Ambassador to the United Kingdom (Douglas) to the Secretary of State,” Top Secret, NIACT, US Urgent, London, October 14, 1948–3 pm., FRUS 1948, pp. 1474-76.
[112] Neff, Pillars, p. 50
[113] Gore Vidal wrote: “Sometime in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and occasional historian, John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948, Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president. Then an American Zionist brought him two million dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign train. 'That's why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.'” --Foreword, Shahak, Israel. Jewish History, Jewish Religion: the Weight of Three Thousand Years. London [etc].: Pluto, 1997. Print. pp. vii-viii
Online at:
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/shahak.html#vidal
[114] Lilienthal, pp.71-72.
Snetsinger provides considerable information on Niles' close relationship with Zionists and quotes his memos on their behalf. 35-31, etc.
[115] Lilienthal, pp. 72-73.
Stephen Green, in Taking Sides, pp. 53-54, describes a May 1948 investigation into “someone in the Pentagon” who was making files available to the pre-Israeli military known as the Haganah. Evidence pointed to Lt. Col. Elliot A. Niles. “According to the agent report on the investigation,” Green writes, “Niles was ‘an ardent Zionist, formerly a high official of the B’nai B’rith, and lately in charge of veterans liaison for the Veterans Administration.’” Investigators concluded that Niles and another person had photostated files and sent them to the Haganah. “This particular report” Green writes, “was adjudged by its author to be rated A-2, i.e., A for ‘source completely reliable,’ and 2 for ‘information probably true.’”
[116] Lilienthal, What Price Israel, 72.
[117] Christison, 69
[118] Wilson, Decision, 149.
Wilson served in the U.S. Foreign Service from 1937-67, many of those years involved with Palestine. Upon retirement he was given the Department of State’s Superior Honor Award.
[119] Wilson, 98.
[120] Neff, Pillars, 96.
[121] Lilienthal, 47, citation: Emanuel Newmann, in American Zionist, February 5, 1953.
[122] Wilson, 125-127. Mulhall, pp.140-145. Bitter Harvest: Palestine 1914-1979, by Sami Hadawi, Caravan Books, 1979, 72-73. Stevens, 178-182.
[123] 118. Lilienthal, pp. 47-49
[124] Lilienthal, Alfred M. The Zionist Connection: What Price Peace? New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978. Print. p. 87.
[125] Al Abbasiyya (4 May ‘48), Abu Shusha (14 May ‘48), Ayn az Zaytun (2 May ‘48), Balad ash Sheikh (25 April ‘48), Bayt Daras (11 May ‘48), Beer Sheba (21 Oct ‘48), Burayr (12 May ‘48), Al Dawayima (29 Oct ‘48), Deir Yassin (9 April ‘48), Eilaboun (29 Oct ‘48), Haifa (21 April ‘48), Hawsha (15 April ‘48), Husayniyya (21 April ‘48), Ijzim (24 July ‘48), Isdud (28 Oct ‘48), Jish (29 Oct ‘48), Al Kabri (21 May ‘48), Al Khisas (18 Dec ‘48), Khubbayza (12 May ‘48), Lydda (10 July ‘48), Majd al Kurum (29 October ‘48), Mannsurat al Khayt (18 Jan ‘48), Khirbet, Nasir ad Din (12 April ‘48), Qazaza (9 July ‘48), Qisarya (15 Feb ‘48), Sa’sa (30 Oct ‘48), Safsaf (29 Oct ‘48), Saliha (30 Oct ‘48), Arab al Samniyya (30 Oct ‘48), Al Tantoura (21 May ‘48), Al Tira (16 July ‘48), Al Wa’ra al-Sawda (18 April ‘48), Wadi ‘Ara (27 Feb ‘48).
http://ifamericansknew.org/history/ref-qumsiyeh.html
[126] Christison, p. 81.
Numerous other histories of this period also report on this. See Stephen Green, Taking Sides, 47-75, for a discussion of troop strengths, armaments, and Zionist efforts, largely successful, to distort the facts on these in the press and in various books, including O Jerusalem, by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre,” still widely marketed.
[127] There are numerous excellent books on this period. Three of the finest are: Sami Hadawi, Bitter Harvest: Palestine 1914-1979; Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948; and Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
The modern Israel Lobby is born
The immediate precursor to today’s lobby began in the early 1940s under the leadership of Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, originally from Lithuania. He created the American Zionist Emergency Council (AZEC), which by 1943 had acquired a budget of half a million dollars at a time when a nickel bought a loaf of bread.
In addition to this money, Zionists had become influential in creating the United Jewish Appeal in 1939, giving them access to the organization’s gargantuan financial resources: $14 million in 1941, $150 million by 1948. [64]
With their extraordinary funding, AZEC embarked on a campaign to target every sector of American society. In the words of AZEC organizer Sy Kenen, they launched “a political and public relations offensive to capture the support of Congressmen, clergy, editors, professors, business and labor.” [65] [66]
AZEC instructed activists to “make direct contact with your local Congressman or Senator” and to go after union members, wives and parents of servicemen, Jewish war veterans. They were provided with form letters to use and schedules of anti-zionist lecture tours to oppose and disrupt.
When Silver disliked a British move in 1945 that would be harmful to Zionists, AZEC booked Madison Square Garden, ordered advertisements, and mailed 250,000 announcements – the first day. By the second day they had organized demonstrations in 30 cities, a letter-writing campaign, and convinced 27 U.S. Senators to give speeches. [67]
Zionist action groups were organized at the grassroots level with more than 400 local committees under 76 state and regional branches. Books, articles and academic studies were funded by AZEC; millions of pamphlets were distributed. There were massive petition and letter writing campaigns. They targeted college presidents and deans and managed to get more than 150 to sign one of their petitions. [68]
As Rabbi Elmer Berger describes in his memoirs, there was a “ubiquitous propaganda campaign reaching just about every point of political leverage in the country.” [69]
In its 48th Annual Report the Zionist Organization of America bragged of the “immensity of our operations and their diversity. We reach into every department of American life...” [70]
Berger and other anti-Zionist Jewish Americans tried to organize against “the deception and cynicism with which the Zionist machine operated,” but failed to obtain anywhere near their level of funding. Among other things, people were afraid of “the savagery of personal attacks” anti-Zionists endured. [71]
When Berger and a colleague from the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism opposed a Zionist resolution in Congress, Emanuel Celler, a New York Democrat who was to serve in Congress for almost 50 years, told them: “They ought to take you b...s out and shoot you.”
Jacob Javits, another well-known Congressman, this one a Republican, told Zionist women: “We’ll fight to death and make a Jewish State in Palestine if it’s the last thing that we do.” [72]
When Jewish schools didn’t sufficiently promote the Zionist cause, Zionists would infiltrate their boards of directors. When this didn’t work, they would start their own pro-Zionist schools. [73]
In 1943-44 the ZOA distributed over a million leaflets and pamphlets to public libraries, chaplains, community centers, educators, ministers, writers and “others who might further the Zionist cause.” [74]
Zionist monthly sales of books totaled between 3,000 and 4,000 throughout 1944-45. Books by non-Jewish authors were subsidized by the Zionists and promoted jointly with commercial publishers, some making the nation’s best seller lists. [75]
Christian support is actively pushed
Silver and other Zionists played a significant role in creating Christian support for Zionism, a project Brandeis encouraged. [76] Secret Zionist funds, eventually reaching $150,000 in 1946, were used to revive an elitest Protestant group, the American Palestine Committee. Silver’s headquarters issued a directive:
“In every community an American Christian Palestine Committee must be immediate organized.” [77]
As an historian notes, their operations “were hardly autonomous. Zionist headquarters thought nothing of place newspaper advertisements on the clergymen’s behalf without bothering to consult them in advance, until one of the committee’s leaders meekly asked at least for prior notice before public statements were made in their name.” [78]
AZEC formed another group among clergymen, the Christian Council on Palestine. An internal AZEC memo stated that the aim of both groups was to “crystallize the sympathy of Christian America for our cause.” [79]
By the end of the World War II the Christian Council on Palestine had grown to 3,000 members and the American Palestine Committee boasted a membership of 6,500 public figures, including senators, congressmen, cabinet members, governors, state officers, mayors, jurists, clergymen, educators, writers, publishing, civic and industrial leaders.
Historian Richard Stevens points out that Christian support was largely gained by exploiting their wish to help people in need. The Zionists proclaimed “the tragic plight of refugees fleeing from persecution and finding no home,” thus linking the refugee problem with Palestine as allegedly the only solution. [80]
Steven explains:
“The reason for this was clear. For while many Americans might not support the creation of a Jewish state, traditional American humanitarianism could be exploited in favor of the Zionist cause through the refugee problems.” [81]
Few if any of these Christian supporters had any idea of the nature of Zionism and that the creation of the Jewish state would entail a massive expulsion of hundreds of thousands of the non-Jews who made up the large majority of Palestine’s population, creating a new and much longer lasting refugee problem.
Nor did they learn that during and after Israel’s founding 1947-49 war, Zionist forces attacked a number of Christian sites. Author Donald Neff reports: [82]
“...after the capture by Jewish forces of Jaffa on May 13, 1948, two days before Israel’s birth, there was desecration of Christian churches. Father Deleque, a Catholic priest, reported:
“‘Jewish soldiers broke down the doors of my church and robbed many precious and sacred objects. Then they threw the statues of Christ down into a nearby garden.’ He added that Jewish leaders had reassured that religious buildings would be respected, ‘but their deeds do not correspond to their words.’
“On May 31, 1948, a group of Christian leaders comprising the Christian Union of Palestine publicly complained that Jewish forces had used 10 Christian churches and humanitarian institutions in Jerusalem as military bases and otherwise desecrated them. They added that a total of 14 churches had suffered shell damage, which killed three priests and made casualties of more than 100 women and children.
“The group’s statement said Arab forces had abided by their promise to respect Christian institutions, but that the Jews had forcefully occupied Christian structures and been indiscriminate in shelling churches.
“It said, among other charges, that ‘many children were killed or wounded’ by Jewish shells on the Convent of Orthodox Copts on May 19, 23 and 24; that eight refugees were killed and about 120 wounded at the Orthodox Armenian Convent at some unstated date; and that Father Pierre Somi, secretary to the Bishop, had been killed and two wounded at the Orthodox Syrian Church of St. Mark on May 16.” [83]
After Zionist soldiers invaded and looted a convent in Tiberias, the U.S. Consulate sent a bitter dispatch back to the State Department complaining of “the Jewish attitude in Jerusalem towards Christian institutions.’” [84]
State Department & Pentagon opposition
State Department and Pentagon analysts consistently opposed Zionism, considering it deeply harmful to US interests and counter to fundamental American principles. The view of American career Foreign Service Officer Evan M. Wilson, who had served as Minister-Consul General in Jerusalem, was typical:
“I came to the conclusion that for our government to advocate the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine against the will of the majority of the inhabitants of that country (the Arabs) would be a mistake that would have an adverse effect upon world peace and upon U.S. interests.” [85]
Loy Henderson, director of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, was one of a many career American diplomats who frequently wrote of this. In a memo to Secretary of State James Byrnes after World War II, Henderson stated:
“....support by the Government of the United States of a policy favoring the settling up of a Jewish State in Palestine would be contrary to the wishes of a large majority of the local inhabitants with respect to their form of government. Furthermore, it would have a strongly adverse effect upon American interests throughout the Near and Middle East....
He went on to emphasize:
“At the present time the United States has a moral prestige in the Near and Middle East unequaled by that of any other great power. We would lose that prestige and would be likely for many years to be considered as a betrayer of the high principles which we ourselves have enunciated during the period of the war.” [86]
When Zionists began a campaign to push a partition plan through the UN, in which 55 percent of Palestine would be given to a Jewish state, even though Jews represented only 30 percent of the inhabitants and owned only about 6 percent of the land,[87] Henderson strenuously recommended against supporting their proposal.
He stated that such a partition would have to be implemented by force and emphasized that it was “not based on any principle.” He went on to write:
“...[partition] would guarantee that the Palestine problem would be permanent and still more complicated in the future....[proposals for partition] are in definite contravention to various principles laid down in the [UN] Charter as well as to principles on which American concepts of Government are based. These proposals, for instance, ignore such principles as self-determination and majority rule. They recognize the principle of a theocratic racial state and even go so far in several instances as to discriminate on grounds of religion and race...” [88]
Henderson noted that this was a fundamental violation of American principles, stating: “We have hitherto always held that in our foreign relations American citizens, regardless of race or religion, are entitled to uniform treatment.” [89]
On Nov 24th Loy Henderson circulated yet another anti-partition memorandum:
“I feel it again to be my duty to point out that it seems to me and all the members of my Office acquainted with the Middle East that the policy which we are following in New York at the present time is contrary to the interests of the United States and will eventually involve us in international difficulties of so grave a character that the reaction throughout the world, as well as in this country, will be very strong...” [90]
Zionists attacked Henderson virulently, calling him “anti-Semitic,” demanding his resignation, and threatening his family. They tried to pressure the State Department to, as one analyst described it,
“...play with him the historic game of musical chairs” in which officials who recommended Middle East policies “consistent with the nation’s interests were transferred to theatres of diplomatic activity where the Middle East was not an issue.” [91]
In 1948 Truman sent Henderson to the slopes of the Himalayas, as Ambassador to Nepal (then officially under India). (In recent years, virtually every State Department country desk has typically been directed by a Zionist.)
Henderson was far from alone in making his recommendations. He emphasized that his views were not only those of the entire Near East Division but were shared by “nearly every member of the Foreign Service or of the Department who has worked to any appreciable extent on Near Eastern problems.” [92]
He wasn’t exaggerating. Official after official and agency after agency opposed Zionism.
In 1947 the CIA’s “Review of the World Situation as It Relates to the Security of the United States” reported that Zionist leadership, “exploiting widespread humanitarian sympathy” with Jews, was pursuing objectives that would endanger both Jews and “the strategic interests of the Western powers in the Near and Middle East." [93]
George F. Kennan, the State Department’s Director of Policy Planning, issued a top secret document entitled “Report by the Policy Planning Staff on Position of the United States with Respect to Palestine” on January 19, 1947 that outlined the enormous damage done to the US by the partition plan.
He cautioned that “important U.S. oil concessions and air base rights” could be lost through US support for partition and warned that the USSR stood to gain by the partition plan.
Kennan pointed out that because of Zionist-induced sponsorship of partition:
“U.S. prestige in the Muslim world has suffered a severe blow and US 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....” [94]
Henry F. Grady, who has been called “America's top diplomatic soldier for a critical period of the Cold War” and who headed up a 1946 commission to try to come up with a solution for Palestine, later wrote about the power of the Zionist lobby in countering their efforts:
“I have had a good deal of experience with lobbies but this group started where those of my experienced had ended..... I have headed a number of government missions but in no other have I ever experienced so much disloyalty”...... “in the United States, since there is no political force to counterbalance Zionism, its campaigns are apt to be decisive.” [95]
Grady concluded that without Zionist pressure, the U.S. would not have had “the ill-will with the Arab states, which are of such strategic importance in our ‘cold war’ with the soviets. [96]
Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson was another who strenuously opposed what he felt was a potentially disastrous Zionist agenda. Acheson biographer Robert Beisner writes that Acheson’s sympathies “were with Marshall and the Department professionals” and reports that Acheson “worried that the West would pay a high price for Israel.” Author John Mulhall reports Acheson's strong opinion:
“...to transform [Palestine] into a Jewish State... would vastly exacerbate the political problem and imperil not only American but all Western interests in the Near East.” [97]
Secretary of Defense James Forrestal also tried, unsuccessfully, to oppose the Zionists. He was outraged that Truman’s Mideast policy was based on what he called “squalid political purposes,” asserting that “United States policy should be based on United States national interests and not on domestic political considerations.” [98]
Forrestal represented the general Pentagon view when he said “no group in this country should be permitted to influence our policy to the point where it could endanger our national security.”
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr., a young Congressman, warned that the democratic party would lose if an anti-partition plan were proposed, Forrestal responded: “I think it is about time that somebody should pay some consideration to whether we might not lose the United States.” [99]
Zionists attacked Forrestal, who had been a WWI Naval aviator, venomously, and Berger recalls that Forrestal became “the favorite whipping boy of the Zionist-dominated press.”
Zionist Walter Winchell and pro-Soviet Drew Pearson (Forrestal also opposed Stalin) launched vicious personal attacks. [100] At odds with Truman on a number of issues, in 1949 Forrestal was hospitalized in the National Naval Medical Center with a diagnosis of severe depression, where it was reported that he committed suicide. His brother, a businessman, did not believe this cause of death. A number of authors and analysts question this conclusion.[101]
The head of the State Department’s Division of Near Eastern Affairs, Gordon P. Merriam, was yet another high level official who warned against the partition plan:
“U.S. support for partition of Palestine as a solution to that problem can be justified only on the basis of Arab and Jewish consent. Otherwise we should violate the principle of self-determination which has been written into the Atlantic Charter, the declaration of the United Nations, and the United Nations Charter–a principle that is deeply embedded in our foreign policy. Even a United Nations determination in favor of partition would be, in the absence of such consent, a stultification and violation of UN’s own charter.” [102]
Merriam added that without consent, “bloodshed and chaos” would follow, a sadly accurate prediction.
A report by the National Security Council warned that the Palestine turmoil was acutely endangering the security of the United States. A CIA report stressed the strategic importance of the Middle East and its oil resources. [103]
An earlier State Department legal memo had noted with displeasure Zionist actions “to deplete the national wealth by contribution of funds or investment of funds in foreign countries.” [104]
Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt’s nephew and a legendary intelligence agent, was another who was deeply disturbed by events, noting:
“The process by which Zionist Jews have been able to promote American support for the partition of Palesine demonstrates the vital need of a foreign policy based on national rather than partisan interests... Only when the national interests of the United States, in their highest terms, take precedence over all other considerations, can a logical, farseeing foreign policy be evolved. No American political leader has the right to compromise American interests to gain partisan votes...” [105]
He went on:
“The present course of world crisis will increasingly force upon Americans the realization that their national interests and those of the proposed Jewish state in Palestine are going to conflict. It is to be hoped that American Zionists and non-Zionists alike will come to grips with the realities of the problem.”
When Eleanor Roosevelt, who was heavily influenced by Zionists, [106] and others on an the “American Association for the United Nations” decided to allot funds for pro-partition ads in the New York Times, Kermit’s wife tried to prevent the disbursement. As usual when one tried to oppose Zionists, she failed. [107]
An internal State Department memorandum accurately predicted beforehand what actually came to pass:
“...the Jews will be the actual aggressors against the Arabs. However, the Jews will claim that they are merely defending the boundaries of a state which were traced by the UN...In the event of such Arab outside aid the Jews will come running to the Security Council with the claim that their state is the object of armed aggression and will use every means to obscure the fact that it is their own armed aggression against the Arabs inside which is the cause of Arab counter-attack.” [108]
American Vice Consul William J. Porter, predicted, with deadly accuracy, that there would be no Arab State in Palestine. [109]
Pro-Israel agenda dominates US policies
In 1949 US Consul Burdett reported that Israeli officials were openly bragging about the power of the Jewish American community to influence US policy. He reported: “Israel eventually intends to obtain all of Palestine....” [110]
American Ambassador Lewis W. Douglas tried to convince Truman not to accede to Zionist wishes, arguing: “...no public office, however great its prestige, is worth gambling with the vital interests of the US.” [111]
Opposing such analysts was Truman’s political advisor, Clark Clifford, who believed that the Jewish vote and contributions were essential to winning the upcoming presidential election. Truman’s opponent, Dewey, took similar stands for similar reasons.
Truman’s Secretary of State George Marshall, the renowned World War II General and author of the Marshall Plan, was furious to see electoral considerations taking precedence over policies that were in the national interest. He condemned what he called a “transparent dodge to win a few votes,” which would cause “[t]he great dignity of the office of President [to be] be seriously diminished.”
Marshall wrote that the counsel offered by Clifford “was based on domestic political considerations, while the problem which confronted us was international. I said bluntly that 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...”
Truman wrote in his memoirs: “I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance.” There were now about a million dues-paying Zionists in the U.S. [112]
Then, as now, in addition to unending pressure there was financial compensation, Truman reportedly receiving a suitcase full of money from Zionists while on his train campaign around the country. [113]
Personal influences
One person key in such Zionist financial connections to Truman was Abraham Feinberg, a wealthy businessman who was later to play a similar role with Kennedy and Johnson.
While many Americans at the time and since have been aware of Truman’s come-from-behind win over Dewey, few people know about the critical role of Feinberg and the Zionist lobby in financing Truman’s victory.
An individual inside the US government who worked to influence policy was David K. Niles, executive assistant first to FDR and then to Truman. Niles, according to author Alfred Lilienthal, was “a member of a select group of confidential advisers with an often-quoted passion for anonymity. Niles... though occasionally publicized as Mr. Truman’s Mystery Man, remained totally unknown to the public.” [114]
Behind the scenes
was regularly briefed by the head of the Washington Office of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA).
When it was discovered that top secret information was being passed on to the Israeli government, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Omar Bradley told Truman he would have to choose between Bradley and Niles. Not long after, Niles resigned and went on a visit to Israel. [115]
Another who helped influence Truman was his old Kansas City friend and business partner, Eddie Jacobson, active in B’nai B’rith and “a passionate believer in Jewish nationalism,” who was able to procure Zionist access to the President at key times. [116] Truman credited Jacobson with making a contribution of “decisive importance.” [117]
Evan M Wilson, a longtime diplomat who had been U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem, later wrote that Truman had been largely motivated by “domestic political considerations.” [118] At least one of Truman’s key policy speeches had been drafted primarily by the Washington representative of the Jewish Agency .[119]
Acting Secretary of State James E. Webb in a dispatch to Secretary of State Acheson noted the obvious: “Past record suggests Israel has had more influence with US than has US with Israel.” [120]
Pushing through the UN Partition Plan
Just as Zionists had succeeded in pushing U.S. support of the partition strategy over the objections of US experts, they managed to push it through the UN using an orchestrated campaign of bribes and threats.
Robert Nathan, who had worked for the government and was particularly active in the Jewish Agency, wrote afterward, “We used any tools at hand,” such as telling certain delegations that the Zionists would use their influence to block economic aid to any countries that did not vote the right way. Another Zionist proudly described their activities:
“Every clue was meticulously checked and pursued. Not the smallest or the remotest of nations, but was contacted and wooed. Nothing was left to chance.” [121]
Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, along with ten senators and Clark Clifford, threatened the Philippines (seven bills were pending on the Philippines in Congress). David Niles organized similar pressure on Liberia; Harvey Firestone pressured Liberia. Bernard Baruch told France they would lose U.S. aid if they voted against partition. Latin American delegates were told that the Pan-American highway construction project would be more likely if they voted yes. Delegates’ wives received mink coats (the wife of the Cuban delegate returned hers); Costa Rica’s President Jose Figueres reportedly received a blank checkbook. Haiti was promised economic aid if it would change its original vote opposing partition. [122]
Before the vote the Philippine delegate had given a passionate speech against partition, defending the inviolable “primordial rights of a people to determine their political future and to preserve the territorial integrity of their native land...” He went on to say that he could not believe that the General Assembly would sanction a move that would place the world “back on the road to the dangerous principles of racial exclusiveness and to the archaic documents of theocratic governments.” [123]
Twenty-four hours later, after intense Zionist pressure, the delegate was forced to vote in favor of partition.
Even the U.S. delegation to the U.N. was so outraged at supporting partition that the State Department director of U.N. affairs was sent to New York to “prevent the U.S. delegation from resigning en masse.” [124]
33 massacres later, Israel comes into existence
The passing of the partition resolution in November 1947 trigged the violence that State Department and Pentagon analysts had predicted and for which Zionists had been preparing. There were at least 33 massacres of Palestinian villages, [125] half of them before a single Arab army joined the conflict. Zionist forces were better equipped and had more men under arms than their opponents [126] and by the end of Israel’s “War of Independence” over 750,000 Palestinian men, women, and children were ruthlessly expelled. Zionists had succeeded in the first half of their goal: Israel, the self-described Jewish State, had come into existence. [127]
notes
[64] Berger, Elmer. Memoirs of an Anti-Zionist Jew. Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1978. 9. Christison, 73.
[65] Neff, 23.
[66] Tivnan, Edward. The Lobby: Jewish Political Power and American Foreign Policy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987. Print. 24.
[67] Tivnan, 24
[68] Neff, 23.
[69] Berger, 11.
[70] Stevens, 101.
[71] Berger, 16-17.
[72] Lilienthal, 63.
[73] Stevens, 24.
[74] Stevens, 22.
[75] Lilienthal
[76] Urofsky, Melvin Irving. We Are One: American Jewry and Israel. Garden City, N.Y: Anchor/Doubleday, 1978. Print. 37.
[77] Neff, 23-24.
[78] Grose, 173.
[79] Neff, 23.
[80] Stevens, 28.
[81] Researchers may wish to explore an interesting though speculative discussion about what may be an earlier effort by Zionists to influence Christians. Many years before AZEC targeted Christians, an annotated version of the bible known as the Scofield Reference Bible had been published, which pushed what was a previously somewhat fringe “dispensationalist” theology calling for the Jewish “return” to Palestine.
Some analysts have raised questions about Scofield and how and why the Oxford University Press published his book. Scofield, who had been something of a shyster and criminal and had abandoned his first wife and children, mysteriously became a member of an exclusive New York men’s club in 1901. Biographer Joseph Canfield (The Incredible Scofield and His book) comments:
“The admission of Scofield to the Lotus Club, which could not have been sought by Scofield, strengthens the suspicion that has cropped up before, that someone was directing the career of C. I. Scofield.”
Canfield suggests that Wall Street lawyer Samuel Untermeyer, who was also a member of the Lotus Club, may have played a role in Scofield’s project, writing that “Scofield’s theology was most helpful in getting Fundamentalist Christians to back the international interest in one of Untermeyer’s pet projects – the Zionist Movement.”
Prof. David W. Lutz, in “Unjust War Theory: Christian Zionism and the Road to Jerusalem,” writes: “Untermeyer used Scofield, a Kansas city lawyer with no formal training in theology, to inject Zionist ideas into American Protestantism. Untermeyer and other wealthy and influential Zionists whom he introduced to Scofield promoted and funded the latter’s career, including travel in Europe.”
Irish journalist Maidhc O Cathail ("Zionism's Un-Christian Bible") suggests
“Absent such powerful connections, it is hard to imagine ‘this peer among scalawags’ ever getting a contract with Oxford University Press to publish his bible.”
[82] Neff, Donald. Fifty Years of Israel. Washington, D.C.: American Educational Trust, 2000. Print. 200. Available online at: http://ifamericansknew.org/history/rel-christians.html
[83] Neff, Fifty years, 200.
[84]
[85] Wilson, Decision. xiii-xiv.
[86] Neff, 31.
http://ifamericansknew.org/history/maps.html
Abu-Sitta, Salman H. The Atlas of Palestine 1917-1966 (2010 Edition). London: Palestine Land Society, 2010. http://www.plands.org/atlas/index.html
McCarthy, Justin. The Population of Palestine. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.
Israel was also getting much richer land: “85 percent of all the citrus lands, almost all the industries, the deep water port and the railway, most of the coastline, practically all the water resources,” according to U.S. diplomat Henry F. Grady, Adventures in Diplomacy, p. 170. An unpublished manuscript in the Truman Museum can be viewed at: http://fwd4.me/0xuL
To learn more about Grady see The memoirs of Ambassador Henry F. Grady:
From the Great War to the Cold War, by Henry Francis Grady, John T. McNay, 2009, University of Missouri Press. http://fwd4.me/0xuK
In 1984 a book was published by Harper & Row entitled From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine. The author is given as Joan Peters. The book’s “Acknowledgements” section lists historians Bernard Lewis, Philip M. Hauser, Martin Gilbert, and Walter Laqueur as having assisted in the project.
This book, making the astounding claim that there were virtually no indigenous Palestinians, that Arabs had largely come only after Zionists’ wonderful entrepreneurial skills provided them jobs, was given rave reviews by Barbara Tuchman, Theodore H. White, Elie Wiesel, Lucy Dawidowicz Arthur J. Goldberg (former Supreme Court Justice and U.S. ambassador to the UN), Saul Bellow, and virtually every major book review section in the U.S.: New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, National Review, New Republic, Atlantic Monthly, Los Angles Times, etc.
However the book was shown to be fraudulent when researcher Norman Finkelstein investigated its footnotes and found them to be less than honest; book reviewers in Britain and Israel called the book “preposterous” and a “web of deceit.” Harper & Row eventually stopped publishing the book, but it can still be found in bookstores, now published by something called “JKAP Publications” located in Chicago. “Historian” BarbaraTuchman continued to claim that the Palestinian people were a “fairy tale.”
Astoundingly, Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz seems to have appropriated, without attribution, Peters’ material in his 2003 book, The Case for Israel, published by John Wiley & Sons.
For more information see Norman G. Finkelstein’s Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, and his article “Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peters’s From Time Immemorial,” in Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, edited by Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens. Pp. 33-69. This article is online at: http://fwd4.me/0xuN
[88] Neff, Pillars, 46.
[89] Neff, p. 47.
[90] Neff 49.
[91] Berger, 21.
Berger writes that in a personal conversation with him, Henderson had said:
“I hope you and your associates will persevere. And my reason for wishing this is perhaps less related to what I consider American interests in the Middle East than what I fear I see on the domestic scene. The United states is a great power. Somehow it will surmount even its most foolish policy errors in the Middle East. But in the process there is a great danger of creating divisiveness and anti-Semitism among our own people. And if this danger materializes to a serious extent, we have seen in Germany and in Europe that the ability of a nation to survive the consequences is in serious question.”
[92] Neff, 46. Wilson, Decision,117.
[93] Green, Stephen. Taking Sides, America's Secret Relations with a Militant Israel. Brattleboro: Amana, 1988. Print. p. 20.
[94] Neff, 57.
Grady, Henry F. Adventures in Diplomacy, p. 170. Unpublished manuscript in the Truman Library, which can be viewed at: http://fwd4.me/0xuL
Grady, Henry Francis, and John T. McNay. The Memoirs of Ambassador Henry F. Grady: from the Great War to the Cold War. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri, 2009. Print. http://fwd4.me/0xuK
[96] Grady, Adventures,166.
[97] Mulhall. P.130.
Beisner, Robert L. Dean Acheson: a Life in the Cold War. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Print. accessed at: http://fwd4.me/0xuJ
[98] Neff, Pillars, 29.
Author John Snetsinger writes: “Truman’s Palelstine-Israel policy offers an extraordinary example of foreign policy conducted in line with short-range political expediency rather than long-range national goals.” Snetsinger, John. Truman, the Jewish Vote, and the Creation of Israël. Stanford Calif.: Stanford Univ., 1974. Print. 140.
[99] Lilienthal, p. 75.
[100] Lilienthal, p. 75.
http://www.dcdave.com/article4/030528.html
[102] Neff, pp. 42-43.
[103] Lilienthal, p. 60.
[104] Grose, 100.
[105] Ball, George W., and Douglas B. Ball. The Passionate Attachment: America's Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present. New York: W.W. Norton, 1992. Print. 22. Some examples:
Edwin Mr. Wright, a State Department expert on the Middle East who was assisting the U.N./U.S. delegation as a staff member, reports that Eleanor Roosevelt, who was on the U.N. delegation, received a letter telling her that Wright was “anti-Semitic and in Arab pay.” – p. 43.
“Rabbi Stephen Wise, the pre-eminent spokesman for American Zionism, and his daughter Justine Polier, were personal friends of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt with as much access to the White House as anyone.” - William J. vanden Heuvel, "America, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust." Keynote address of the fifth annual Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Distinguished Lecture, Oct. 17, 1996 at Roosevelt University in Chicago.
http://newdeal.feri.org/feri/wvh.htm [accessed July 22, 2011]
Lilienthal, p. 62: Eleanor Roosevelt, convinced by Zionists of their cause, had strongly opposed Loy Henderson. When Henderson had warned, accurately, that partition would provoke violence, Eleanor responded:
“Come now, come, Mr. Henderson, I think you’re exaggerating the dangers. You are too pessimistic....I’m confident that when a Jewish state is once set up, the Arabs will see the light; they will quiet down; and Palestine will no longer be a problem.” (Neff, Pillars, 64) (Wilson, 116)
There is no evidence that Eleanor ever acknowledged her error.
[106] Neff, Pillars, 64. Wilson, 116.
[107] Neff, 64.
[108] Neff, p. 65, citation: “Draft Memorandum by the Director of the Office of United Nations Affairs (Rusk) to the Under Secretary of State (Lovett),” Secret, Washington May 4, 1948, FRUS 1948, pp. 894-95.
[109] Wilson, p. 131
[110] Neff, Pillars, 96.
[111] Neff, Pillars, p. 90. Citation: “The Ambassador to the United Kingdom (Douglas) to the Secretary of State,” Top Secret, NIACT, US Urgent, London, October 14, 1948–3 pm., FRUS 1948, pp. 1474-76.
[112] Neff, Pillars, p. 50
[113] Gore Vidal wrote: “Sometime in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and occasional historian, John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948, Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president. Then an American Zionist brought him two million dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign train. 'That's why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.'” --Foreword, Shahak, Israel. Jewish History, Jewish Religion: the Weight of Three Thousand Years. London [etc].: Pluto, 1997. Print. pp. vii-viii
Online at:
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/shahak.html#vidal
[114] Lilienthal, pp.71-72.
Snetsinger provides considerable information on Niles' close relationship with Zionists and quotes his memos on their behalf. 35-31, etc.
[115] Lilienthal, pp. 72-73.
Stephen Green, in Taking Sides, pp. 53-54, describes a May 1948 investigation into “someone in the Pentagon” who was making files available to the pre-Israeli military known as the Haganah. Evidence pointed to Lt. Col. Elliot A. Niles. “According to the agent report on the investigation,” Green writes, “Niles was ‘an ardent Zionist, formerly a high official of the B’nai B’rith, and lately in charge of veterans liaison for the Veterans Administration.’” Investigators concluded that Niles and another person had photostated files and sent them to the Haganah. “This particular report” Green writes, “was adjudged by its author to be rated A-2, i.e., A for ‘source completely reliable,’ and 2 for ‘information probably true.’”
[116] Lilienthal, What Price Israel, 72.
[117] Christison, 69
[118] Wilson, Decision, 149.
Wilson served in the U.S. Foreign Service from 1937-67, many of those years involved with Palestine. Upon retirement he was given the Department of State’s Superior Honor Award.
[119] Wilson, 98.
[120] Neff, Pillars, 96.
[121] Lilienthal, 47, citation: Emanuel Newmann, in American Zionist, February 5, 1953.
[122] Wilson, 125-127. Mulhall, pp.140-145. Bitter Harvest: Palestine 1914-1979, by Sami Hadawi, Caravan Books, 1979, 72-73. Stevens, 178-182.
[123] 118. Lilienthal, pp. 47-49
[124] Lilienthal, Alfred M. The Zionist Connection: What Price Peace? New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978. Print. p. 87.
[125] Al Abbasiyya (4 May ‘48), Abu Shusha (14 May ‘48), Ayn az Zaytun (2 May ‘48), Balad ash Sheikh (25 April ‘48), Bayt Daras (11 May ‘48), Beer Sheba (21 Oct ‘48), Burayr (12 May ‘48), Al Dawayima (29 Oct ‘48), Deir Yassin (9 April ‘48), Eilaboun (29 Oct ‘48), Haifa (21 April ‘48), Hawsha (15 April ‘48), Husayniyya (21 April ‘48), Ijzim (24 July ‘48), Isdud (28 Oct ‘48), Jish (29 Oct ‘48), Al Kabri (21 May ‘48), Al Khisas (18 Dec ‘48), Khubbayza (12 May ‘48), Lydda (10 July ‘48), Majd al Kurum (29 October ‘48), Mannsurat al Khayt (18 Jan ‘48), Khirbet, Nasir ad Din (12 April ‘48), Qazaza (9 July ‘48), Qisarya (15 Feb ‘48), Sa’sa (30 Oct ‘48), Safsaf (29 Oct ‘48), Saliha (30 Oct ‘48), Arab al Samniyya (30 Oct ‘48), Al Tantoura (21 May ‘48), Al Tira (16 July ‘48), Al Wa’ra al-Sawda (18 April ‘48), Wadi ‘Ara (27 Feb ‘48).
http://ifamericansknew.org/history/ref-qumsiyeh.html
[126] Christison, p. 81.
Numerous other histories of this period also report on this. See Stephen Green, Taking Sides, 47-75, for a discussion of troop strengths, armaments, and Zionist efforts, largely successful, to distort the facts on these in the press and in various books, including O Jerusalem, by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre,” still widely marketed.
[127] There are numerous excellent books on this period. Three of the finest are: Sami Hadawi, Bitter Harvest: Palestine 1914-1979; Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948; and Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.