PALO ALTO –“The Truman administration really crossed a line here. It’s one thing
to have a policy that is anti-Zionist, but to threaten and intimidate American
Jews goes beyond the bounds of the legitimate political world,” said Dr. Rafael
Medoff of a disturbing historical discovery he recently made.
In the
course of conducting research in 2011 for his new book, Herbert Hoover and the
Jews: The Origins of the ‘Jewish Vote’ and Bipartisan Support for Israel,
Medoff, who is also a Jerusalem Post columnist, uncovered heretofore unpublished
evidence that in late April 1948, two weeks before Israel declared independence,
the State Department threatened to incite a wave of anti-Semitism in the United
States if Zionist leaders proclaimed the State of Israel.
The evidence
was contained in a nine-page report of a conversation between undersecretary of
State Robert A. Lovett and Zionist official and World Jewish Congress co-founder
Nahum Goldmann that the scholar found in Goldmann’s papers in the Central
Zionist Archives in Jerusalem.
“I’m not the first person to have looked
at Nahum Goldmann’s papers,” Medoff told the Post, “but it appears that no one
had previously taken notice of this critical section in the middle of this
particular report.”
Although Truman had supported the UN Partition Plan
in November 1947, by March 1948, his administration, fearful that partition
could not be successfully implemented, had changed its position and was calling
for an international trusteeship of Palestine (referred to as “the truce” in
Goldmann’s report).
Goldmann reported that Lovett said to him: “As the
situation is now, we must have a truce. If you prevent it we will become very
tough. We will wash our hands of the whole situation and will prevent any help
being given to you. We will publish a White Paper, which is already in
preparation.”
Lovett went on to say that this White Paper would
incriminate the Arabs, the British and the Jews.
“Anti-Semitism is
mounting in an unprecedented way in groups and circles which are very
influential and were never touched by Anti-Semitism. Such a White Paper
would do great harm to the Jews in this country, and once it is published, I am
not sure that outstanding Jewish leaders who are helping you today would go
along with you,” Lovett threatened Goldmann and the Zionist
leadership.
These intimidating remarks came within the context of the
State Department’s demand for an indefinite postponement of the declaration of
the State of Israel.
A week after Goldmann’s meeting with Lovett, Zionist
leaders from the US and the Yishuv met in New York to decide how to proceed in
light of the State Department’s threats.
“Goldmann was in favor of giving
in to the American demands,” Medoff said. “But the majority voted to go ahead
with the state.”
One of those who were vocal about proceeding was
then-Zionist Organization of America president Emanuel Neumann, who wrote in his
1976 memoir, In the Arena: “I dwelt upon the historic significance of May 14,
1948, a moment which had to be seized to proclaim the Jewish state; not a week,
nor a day, nor an hour should be allowed to intervene.... this might be our last
chance.”
He said he was certain that the US government would not carry
through on its threats.
“As for the veiled or open threats from the State
Department, I was sure they did not have to be taken seriously,” he said. “With
a presidential election due that November, it was out of the question that the
Truman administration would attempt to harass us – with the vast and bitter
repercussions that this would create in the American Jewish
community.”
Lovett himself alluded to this fear of losing Jewish votes to
the more pro- Zionist Republicans, in his conversation with
Goldmann.
“Jewish political power began emerging in a significant way
after the war. The Democrats were worried about the defection of Jews to the GOP
because of the Democrats’ Holocaust policies,” Medoff noted. “We would have
published it already if we hadn’t been afraid of grave repercussions in the
United States,” Lovett told Goldmann in reference to the proposed White
Paper.
In his research, Medoff did not come across any documents spelling
out exactly what would have been in that White Paper, but he thinks it would
have included suggestions of dual loyalty. In addition, it might have reiterated
the warning to the Zionists by both presidents Harry Truman and Franklin
Roosevelt that the Zionists would be responsible for America being compelled to
send troops to the Middle East, resulting in American lives being lost due to
Arab attacks there.
“The State Department was not acting in opposition to
Truman. On the contrary, it was implementing presidential policy,” Medoff
explained.
“Truman did not want a major international conflict that would
draw the Soviet Union in, and then necessitate American intervention. He didn’t
have a plan to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. He just wanted to keep
things calm.” In the end, even when the War of Independence did break
out, the US never did have to send in troops. “For Truman, it was simply
a problem of timing,” Medoff said. With the election just months away, he
acceded to his political adviser’s urging to support the establishment of the
Jewish state.
Regardless of how history played itself out, Medoff finds
the document he unearthed “most troubling.”
“It’s one thing for diplomats
to get rough with one another. Threats can be made between the arguing parties,”
he remarked. “But to threaten to harm bystanders? That is
unprecedented.
It is deeply disturbing that the State Department would go
to such extremes. Threatening to provoke racial hatred against American citizens
should have been beyond the pale.”
Herbert Hoover and the Jews was
authored by Medoff together with US foreign relations professor Dr. Sonja
Schoepf Wentling. It was published this month by The David S. Wyman Institute
for Holocaust Studies in Washington, of which Medoff is the founding
director.
In addition to revealing how concern about the Jewish vote
influenced Truman to recognize the newborn State of Israel in 1948, the book
documents efforts by Hoover and other top Republicans in the 1930s and 1940s to
promote rescue of Jews from the Holocaust and creation of a Jewish state. It
shows how the GOP’s adoption of a pro-Zionist plank in its 1944 platform forced
the Democrats to do likewise, marking the first competition by the two parties
for the Jewish vote.
Medoff believes that the newly revealed information
and the events surrounding it are not only pertinent to the past.
“It’s
possible to see 1948 in recent developments,” he suggested. “The intimidating of
American Jewish Zionists for the possible loss of American lives is happening
today. Like when Vice President Biden made a statement that the construction of
apartments in certain neighborhoods of Jerusalem could lead to attacks on
Americans. The tactic of using leaks to the media to try to pressure Israel not
to take steps to defend itself against Iran does the same thing.”
“It’s
the same implicit threat that the Jews will be blamed for the death of American
soldiers,” Medoff said. “Is it a coincidence, or is it a pattern? Whatever it
is, it’s as troubling now as it was then.”