Full text of "What Price Israel"

Full text of "What Price Israel"

THE State of Israel exists. Zionism 

has ostensibly achieved its long- 

dreamt-of goal. What are the conse- 

quences of the creation of this new 

state in terms of the million displaced 

Arabs on Israel's border, in terms of 

Israel's own future and the future of 

Jews in other countries, in terms of 

America’s policy in the Middle East? 

American Jewry has been divided 

into two camps as a result of the es- 

tablishment of the State of Israel. The 

Zionists have applied political pres- 

sures and anti-Zionists charge that 

they have suppressed a frank and 

free discussion of the implications of 

the new Jewish homeland for all Jews. 

Alfred M. Lilienthal, an American of 

Jewish faith, explores in this book the 

political, religious, and moral prob- 

lems posed by the creation of a state 

based on the theory of Jewish nation- 

ality. He reviews the background of 

Jewish religious tradition and its in- 

herent conflicts with political Zionism. 

He takes issue with certain claims of 

Zionism as they affect him aud his 

fellow Jews in this country. 

Mr. Lilienthal reports the long battle 

beginning with the launching of the 

Zionist movement in the middle of 

the last century, through the Balfour 

Declaration to the partition of Pales- 

tine, a decision in which the U. S. and 

U.S.S.R. voted side by side. In a de- 

scription of the last round that reached 

into the chancelleries of the world, he 

analyzes the threat of the so-called 

‘Jewish vote,” the triumph of the 

White House over the State Depart- 

ment with the precipitate recognition 

of the State of Israel and the conse- 

quent repercussions in the Arab and 

Moslem world. He is acutely sensitive 

to the horrors of the persecutions 

which befell the Jews of Europe, but 

asserts there were other solutions for 

the uprooted and displaced, solutions 

more in keeping with universal Juda- 

ism and less fraught with danger both 

for the refugees and for the cause of 

the free world. 

About the Author 

Alfred M. Lilienthal is a graduate of 

Cornell University and Columbia Law 

School. He served with the State De- 

partment before and after his tour of 

Army Duty in the Middle East. His 

article ‘Israel's Flag is Not Mine” in 

the READER'S DIGEST brought re- 

sponse from all over the world. In 

1953 he traveled extensively through- 

out the Arab countries and Israel. 

| re shall not live on one soil but in the souls of 

men chastened and transfigured, in laws and institu- 

tions of righteousness, in human relations ennobled 

and disciplined by a sense of responsibility. And men 

shall then look into each other's eyes and see the re- 

flection of their own unfulfilled longings, and the 

hearts of men shall go out to each other in under- 

standing, for they will know that all suffer burt and 

heartache and dream the same dreams of freedom, 

security and peace. And together they shall build the 

Kingdom of God. 

MORRIS LAZARON 

What Price Israel 

by Alfred M. Lilienthal 

HENRY REGNERY COMPANY 

Chicago + 1953 

Seventh Printing, 1962 

-----

FOREWORD 

if 1948, A NEW WHITE FLAG with a single blue six- 

pointed star was hoisted to a mast on the east coast of 

the Mediterranean Sea. Thus was born the national 

state of Israel, with its own government, army, foreign 

policy, language, national anthem and oath of allegiance. 

The resulting confusion has seriously affected the posi- 

tion of the free world in the Middle East, has danger- 

ously complicated the lives of Jews everywhere, and 

now endangers Judaism, the oldest monotheistic faith 

in the world. 

The ancient cry “next year in Jerusalem,” resounding 

down the centuries, made Judaism indestructible. It 

held forth a perpetual goal not to be achieved through 

human intervention. Judaism’s power to survive de- 

pended on its being unrelated to any particular geo- 

graphic tract. States could come and go; but a set of 

beliefs, isolated from temporal happenchance, could 

forever endure. A “Kingdom of God” was never at 

the mercy of physical force. 

Judaism has been a universal religious faith to which 

loyal citizens of any country could adhere. By contrast, 

Zionism is a nationalist movement organized to recon- 

stitute Jews as a nation with a separate and sovereign 

homeland. The establishment of the State of Israel has 

consequently freed the Jews “to do what they could 

not do before,” to use the words of Arthur Koestler in 

Promise and Fulfillment “to discard the knapsack and 

go their own way with the nation whose life and cul- 

ture they share, without reservations or split loyalties”; 

or else they could choose the only alternative—emi- 

grate to the sovereign State of Israel. 

But this one and only set of alternatives has not been 

accepted by American Jewry. For the mere declara- 

tion “I am not a Zionist” (while others in Israel and 

in the United States were continuing to speak and to 

act in the name of the “Jewish people”) has not con- 

stituted a decision. The word “Jew” is now being 

used simultaneously to denote a universal faith and a 

particular nationality; and the corresponding allegiances 

to religion and to state have become confused. 

For centuries before he was granted political equality 

in Western Europe and in the United States, the Jew 

lived under the discipline both of the sovereign state 

in which he was physically located and of the religio- 

political community to which he belonged. In that 

past, religious ties were intimately linked with political 

status. And this past continues to cast its shadow, even 

on fully emancipated Americans, particularly those 

who have come from eastern Europe. 

Suppose Israel had, as seemed quite possible for several 

years, joined the Soviet bloc or fallen behind the iron 

curtain. It would not be difficult to imagine the situa- 

tion in which this would have placed Jewry in the 

United States. 

During the events which altered the relationship be- 

tween the Kremlin and Israel the reaction in this coun- 

try was to treat the Israeli crisis as if it were the crisis 

of the Jewish people all over the world. But if the 

political problems of Israel continue to be the political 

responsibility of Jews in the United States, disaster 

must follow. Innumerable situations will involve Israel 

in policies and politics which nationals of no other coun- 

vi 

FOREWORD 

try may dare underwrite. Next time, the enemy of 

Israel may not be the enemy of the United States. 

In the United States, a number of people may indeed 

achieve something of a separate group identity merely 

by believing they do belong together; but American 

tolerance toward separatism ceases when group thought 

and group action run counter to the mores and interests 

of America. And the moment has come for the Ameri- 

can Jew, I think, to free metaphysical practices, essen- 

tial to worshiping God, from his nationalist activities 

related to a foreign state. 

This book has been written, against the concerned 

counsel of many who are close and dear to me, because 

I feel I owe a duty to my country above any duty I 

owe to my family and friends. The question “What is 

a Jew?” is now tied to the more important question 

“How can we hold the Middle East?” My determina- 

tion to complete this book was strengthened by the 

knowledge that no American Christian could, nor any 

Jew would, write it. Some of my material has been 

the subject of whispers, and I decided it was time that 

muted talk be brought to the surface and be debated. 

I have received innumerable admonitions “not to say 

anything that might harm the Jewish people.” But, in- 

deed, my efforts are intended to benefit American 

Jewry. Criticism expressed in these pages and directed 

against guilty leadership could involve all Jews only 

by the process of generalizing—the favorite weapon of 

anti-Semites. 

And yet, I do not underestimate for one moment the 

wrath that will descend upon me for having written 

this book. Every conceivable kind of pressure will be 

exerted, I am afraid, to prevent a fair consideration of 

the material set forth in its pages. But the gravity of 

vii 

FOREWORD 

the problems discussed, and their far-reaching conse- 

quences for the United States as well as for Judaism, 

merits a minimum of group emotionalism and a maxi- 

mum of individual thought. Such an approach is what 

I request from my readers. 

I am thinking of them, and of my subject, in the 

spirit of Western man. The significance and, indeed, 

the meaning of Western man is his free will. The 

American way of life, drawing upon the Judeo-Chris- 

tian heritage, is nothing if it is not the person’s right 

to choose freely and the person’s duty to face the con- 

sequences of his choice. And what is totalitarianism 

if it is not a vice of determinism, of having an irrevocable 

choice made for the individual even before he is born? 

I have written this book because I, an American of 

Jewish faith, have not the slightest doubt that Ameri- 

can Jewry, too, has a free choice—and must face the 

consequences of whatever it will choose. 

During the Palestine controversy of 1947, world 

opinion was polarized into two contrary viewpoints— 

“the Zionist case” versus “the Arab case.” The third 

position—that of the integrated American (English- 

man, Frenchman, etc.) of the Jewish faith—seemed 

swallowed up by what appeared to be the overwhelm- 

ing tide of “Jewish unity.” But the response I received 

to a magazine article, “Israel’s Flag Is Not Mine” ( Read- 

er’s Digest, 1949), indicated that there must be untold 

thousands who live in this alleged no man’s land. It is 

time for them to speak up and tell their self-appointed 

leadership: “So far and no further.” 

To these as yet inarticulate Americans of Jewish 

faith, this book is dedicated—to them and to the Ameri- 

cans of Christian good will who gladly grant their Jew- 

ish fellow citizen equal though not special rights. 

Vit 

Contents 

CHAPTER 

Foreword 

The Historic Duality 

Haven or State? 

The Unholy Partition of the Holy Land 

A State is Born 

Wooing the Jewish Vote 

The Magic and Myth of the Jewish Vote 

Smears and Fears 

There Goes the Middle East 

The Mugwumps and the Cult of Doom 

Israelism—A New Religion? 

Operation “Ingathering” 

The Racial Myth 

Shadow and Substance 

Agenda for Jews 

Notes 

Index 

CHAPTER I The Historic Duality 

HE FATHER of the new state of Israel lies in 

an unknown grave. For without the anonymous 

poet who wrote the 137th Psalm, there would 

be no “Jewish State” today. 

After the Northern Kingdom of Israel was swept 

away by the Assyrians in 721 B. C., and the Second 

Jewish Commonwealth was destroyed by the Romans 

in 70 A. D., the nation concept of Judaism was kept 

alive through the words of this psalmist: 

By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down; yet we 

wept when we remembered Zion. How shall we 

sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget 

thee, O Jerusalem, let my right band forget her cun- 

ning; let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, 

if 1 remember thee not; if I set not thee Jerusalem 

above my chiefest joy. 

Here is the seed of nationalist-segregationalist Zionist 

thinking. Yet there was another tradition deeply im- 

bedded in the minds of the followers of Yahweh, the 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

name by which the monotheistic God Jehovah was first 

known. In their Babylonian captivity, into which the 

Judeans were taken in 586 B. C. by Nebuchadnezzar, 

the prophet Jeremiah spoke to them in these words of 

advice: 

Build ye houses and dwell in them and plant gardens 

and eat the fruit thereof; take wives and beget sons 

and daughters. ... And seek the peace of the city 

whither I have caused ye to be carried away captives 

and pray unto the Lord for that city, for in the peace 

thereof shall ye have peace. (Jer. 29:5-7) 

This is the philosophy of integration around which 

the universal precepts of the Judaic faith were built. 

The Hebrew prophets, Amos, Jeremiah, Micah, Hosea, 

the two Isaiahs and Elijah (to which exalted number 

Jesus properly belongs) were not interested in the res- 

toration of political power. They were concerned 

with the injustices of their day, the remedy for which, 

they believed, could be found only in a universal God 

of mercy, of justice and righteousness. This God de- 

manded an undeviating code of moral values. 

The second Isaiah, writing circa 536 B. C., endowed 

the burgeoning faith with a vision of the Messianic 

coming. His “next year in Jerusalem” was unrelated 

to any particular nation or sovereignty, and referred to 

a Kingdom of God which would bring forth a perfected 

society of perfected men. In the Old Testament, this 

prophet described the mission of the Judeans as their 

duty “to open the blind eyes” and “‘to serve for a light 

of the Gentiles . . . For my House shall be called a 

House of prayer for all people.” 

The history of the peoples who came after the Ju- 

2 

THE HISTORIC DUALITY 

deans and who became known, many generations later, 

as “Jews,” is a continuous struggle between these con- 

flicting ideologies—nation versus faith—chosen people 

versus universality—segregation versus integration. 

When Cyrus the Persian crushed Nabonidus, the 

last Babylonian king, permission was granted to the 

captives (in 538 B. C.) to return home and rebuild 

the Temple. Some returned,’ but the great majority 

preferred to remain in exile. Many had prospered and 

progressed in the stimulating atmosphere of Babylon. 

They had learned to pray elsewhere than in the Temple 

of Jerusalem and they began to develop what later be- 

came the modern Jewish synagogue, the mother of the 

Christian and the Mohammedan service. “Israel” came 

to designate the worship of Yahweh. 

Greek and Syrian and Roman sway followed Persian 

suzerainty over Judea. Those who returned to Jerusa- 

lem had developed in exile the nationalist spirit and 

the chosen-people complex—the idea of preeminence 

and predestination. This concept was kept alive by 

their leaders who governed them as a nation within 

the Persian empire. The priest Ezra, and after him 

Nehemiah (the former cupbearer to Artaxerxes I who 

became Persian Governor and rebuilt the walls of Jeru- 

salem), attempted to break up Judean intermarriages 

with semi-heathen peoples and Babylonian conquerors.” 

The Temple became the center of both national and 

religious Judean life. 

But the almost continuous foreign rule exposed Ju- 

deans to alien mores and ways of life. The flourishing 

Greek civilization made a particular impression upon 

Judeans in Jerusalem. There were those who preferred 

the less regimented life of the Greeks, enjoyed Greek 

literature, Greek clothes, Attic architecture. These 

3 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

Hellenists strove to bridge the gap separating those 

who believed in Yahweh from those pagans who cele- 

brated Hellenic life. 

Such Hellenists were opposed by the Pietists or Ha- 

sidim, who insisted on strict observance of the laws 

and customs set forth in the Torah (and later prescribed 

in the Mishnah and the Talmud). This legislation regu- 

lated hygiene, inheritance, property, agriculture, dress, 

diet and business exactly in the Judean fashion of ten 

centuries before. 

The Hasid would call the Hellenist a traitor, and 

in return he would be called an old fogey. But be- 

tween the articulate extremists of Hassidism and Hel- 

lenism was a majority who refused to take sides. Yet 

it was a passive majority who left it to their priests to 

decide for them. When the Hellenists wished to build 

a Greek gymnasium in which to practice Greek ath- 

letics, the priests refused permission on the grounds 

that the proposed activity was repellent to Judean pu- 

ritanism. The cruelty of Antiochus Epiphanes, the 

Syrian ruler of Palestine, further weakened the case of 

the Hellenists. 

The last years of Judea under Roman rule were 

characterized by the struggle between the aristocratic 

priestly sect of the Sadducees, who believed in the most 

literal interpretation of the written law, and the religious 

Pharisees, who added the oral law and the interpretative 

process. Jesus, said to have been a Pharisee, inveighed 

against the reactionaries who had captured his party 

and made it scarcely distinguishable from the Sadducee 

opposition. 

The Nazarene opposed the subordination of spirit 

and substance to law and form: “The Sabbath was made 

for man—not man for the Sabbath.” The human failing 

4 

THE HISTORIC DUALITY 

of exalting one’s own creed and nationality, as illus- 

trated in the parable of the Good Samaritan, offended 

Christ’s sense of universality. But the admonition fell 

on ears as deaf as had been those unpenetrated by Amos’ 

cry before: “Are ye not as children of the Ethiopians 

unto me, O children of Israel?’ 

The Judeans rebuked Jesus as they had rebuked their 

other prophets. They were far more concerned with 

political deliverance from Roman control than with 

religious reform. They willingly embraced successive 

Messianic imposters—politicians in religious disguise. 

Unsuccessful revolutions against Rome, led by the ultra- 

nationalist patriots, the Zealots, only succeeded in re- 

ducing a crushed Judea to a Roman province. 

In an uprising (132 A. D.) against the emperor Had- 

rian, Bar Kokba, supported by Rabbi Akiba, attempted 

to rally his countrymen around the flag of statehood. 

Three years later the revolt collapsed and the procurator 

Tinnius Rufus had Jerusalem plowed under. On the 

site of the ancient Temple a new edifice was erected 

in honor of Capitoline Jupiter. 

During the Second Commonwealth, the Judeans were 

governed by the Kohen Gadol, the rabbi-priests who 

claimed to be in direct line of descent from the priest 

Zadok* of Samuel’s day; or by the Hasmonean Kings 

(as the family of the Maccabees was known); or by 

the Council of the Sanhedrin. But all the time there 

was constant strife. One sect was always purging an- 

other to gain control. 

Neither the two kingdoms nor the united nation 

displayed, in more than nine centuries, any particular 

genius for government. As Dr. Julian Morgenstern 

has pointed out, there were “only two brief simultane- 

ous periods in the life of each kingdom, neither lasting 

5 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

more than fifty years, when there was any indication 

of national strength and glory.”* The singular feature 

of true spiritual worth was the development of obstinate 

and unwavering monotheism. 

When Ptolemy Lagi returned to Egypt, after the con- 

quest of Judea in 320 B. C., many Judeans accompanied 

him. By 250 B. C., Alexandria contained the largest 

number of Judaists in the world (far outstripping Jeru- 

salem). Many had fled to the land of the Nile, three 

hundred or more years before, upon the Babylonian in- 

vasion; and these Alexandrians of Palestinian origin 

never returned to Jerusalem. They were influenced by 

their Greek surroundings and in turn influenced it with 

their religion. The Bible was translated into Greek be- 

cause that language had replaced Aramaic and Hebrew 

among the Judeans in Egypt. 

Philo, himself a Jew, heaped praise upon the Prose- 

lytes. In his Letter Against Flaccus he discerned that 

the “Jews considered Jerusalem where the Holy Temple 

is situated as their home, but regard as their country 

the country in which they have been living since the 

times of their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grand- 

fathers, and in which they themselves were born and 

brought up.”® 

As the sole monotheistic religion in a pagan world, 

Judaism had made converts in many lands. The uni- 

versal aims of the second Isaiah had found expression 

in great missionary activities. Judean traders spread 

their faith eastward, as far as India and China, and others 

carried the religion to what is now Italy and France. 

Whole peoples of varying ethnic strains became pros- 

elyte Judaists, especially during the two centuries be- 

fore the birth of Christ. Judeans migrated to the Ara- 

bian desert and converted semitic peoples in Yemen. 

6 

THE HISTORIC DUALITY 

Pagans as distant as those of the Kerch Strait and the 

Crimea accepted Yahweh.’ 

In Roman days, there were already more people of 

the Judaic faith throughout the world than in the Holy 

Land.’ Many Romans, including members of the no- 

bility, embraced the simple teachings of Judaism, won 

by the appeal of what Jewish historians have called a 

“system of morals, anchored in the veneration of the 

One and Holy God” and “the purity of Judean home 

life.*° Most of the proselytes accepted the idea of mono- 

theism and the moral law without the ceremonial pre- 

cepts. A smaller number, called “proselytes of right- 

eousness,” respected the initiatory rites of Judaism and 

all its law and custom. 

With the advent of Christianity, the parent faith 

ceased proselytizing. Monotheism was now carried to 

the pagan world by the disciples of Jesus (and later by 

Islam). The Apostle Paul, born Saul of Tarsus, re- 

moved the ceremonial law and freed those who were 

willing to accept Christianity from the minute formal- 

ization of the ancient worship of Yahweh. 

Judaism now concentrated on keeping its own flock. 

In Babylonia, the friendly Persians welcomed the Ju- 

dean emigrees from the rival Roman Empire, and here 

they joined their coreligionists who had remained “in 

exile.” These former Judeans were ruled by a prince 

of their own (supposedly of the House of David) who 

was called Resh Galuta, “head of the exiles”; for their 

separate mode of life required some such self-govern- 

ment regulated in accordance with the Talmud, their 

own compilation (and rearrangement in Aramaic) of 

the written and oral laws. The spiritual leadership of 

Judaism was centered in that “state within a state” in 

Babylonia. 

| 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

The marked trend toward adjustment to the habits 

of the people amongst whom the Judaists lived was cut 

short by the clash between Judaism and Christianity. 

The sacred Judaistic mission of carrying the monothe- 

istic message to all people was now buried underneath 

the formal law and ceremony. The Jewish leadership 

insisted upon separateness, to keep out, first, the Hellenic 

influence, and then, the Christian competition. This 

dovetailed with the intents of the growing Christian 

Church. The Edict of Milan (313) granted toleration 

to the Christian Church; the Code of Theodosius II 

brought, in 492, Church and State closer together; and 

the Code of Justinian discriminated, in 555, against the 

older faith. These decrees, and others that followed, 

built a wall between Christians and non-Christians. 

They built a wall, too, around the “nation within a 

nation.” They emphasized that members of the older 

monotheistic faith belonged to a particular and peculiar 

group which now received the distinctive label “Jews.” 

Segregation, initiated by intolerance from without, and 

not discouraged by vested interests from within, had 

started. 

In Western Europe, the Jews almost invariably were 

settled in certain quarters of the towns to protect them 

against an unfriendly world; but far from all of these 

Jewish quarters were surrounded by ghetto walls. In 

Spain, where some Sephardic’ Jews had lived since 

about 300 A. D., they had, in 711, helped Islam to move 

into the country and win over the Peninsula. In the 

struggle between the conflicting powers of Moham- 

medanism and Christianity, Spanish Jewry held the bal- 

ance of power. They thrived in business and held im- 

portant public posts in the Moslem land. The poet, 

Judah Halevi, and the philosopher, Moses Maimonides, 

8 

THE HISTORIC DUALITY 

helped to bring their coreligionists closer to the people 

amongst whom they dwelt. 

This Golden Era in Spain came to an end when a 

Mohammedan factional struggle brought to the throne 

Almohades, who hated Jews as much as Christians. The 

Judaists’s choice was either conversion to Mohammed- 

anism or expulsion. And many Judaists were willing to 

accept the prayer “God is one and Mohammed is his 

prophet” which sounded not unlike their own brand 

of monotheism. 

Christian rulers finally pushed down from the north 

to dislodge the Mohammedan Moors from Spain, and 

they first protected the Judaist colony. But then the 

religious fanaticism of the day prevailed in Spain, too. 

The terrible cry of “Christ killers,” or “‘deicides,” was 

then being heard throughout Europe and soon reverber- 

ated in the land of Castile and Aragon. Some Spanish 

Jews were willing to give up their “Jewish way of life” 

though not their religious beliefs: they moved out from 

the Juderias, the special “Jewish Community,” and pre- 

tended to have become Christians, though secretly they 

continued to worship their own God. Culturally and 

politically integrated, these “Marranos” nevertheless 

went underground (to use the modern parlance)—not 

for nationhood, but for faith. In point of fact, history 

ought to have coined a more flattering word for these 

faithful Judaists: in Spanish, “Marranos” means the 

“Accursed Ones”—a name applied in contempt by Jews 

of their day to those who betrayed the Jewish ritual but 

held fast to the ethical concepts of Judaism. The In- 

quisition banned from Spain all Mohammedans, Jews 

and heretics. The Marranos fled to other parts of Eu- 

rope, to North Africa and even to South and Central 

America. But the Marranos who came to Bordeaux and 

9 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

Marseilles still called themselves “nation Portugése.” 

Rabbi Solomon-ibn-Adret spoke of Spain as his coun- 

try. Maimonides went to Egypt—and still signed his 

name “Moses, son of Maimon, the Spaniard.” So deeply 

rooted was the tradition of integration. 

In the rest of Europe, the abandonment of Judaism 

was the price Judaists had to pay for sharing the limited 

cultural, social and political blessings of the feudal peas- 

antry. The only rights possessed by unconverted Jews 

were the group rights of the ghetto which was recog- 

nized by the State as a corporate medieval entity.” The 

ghetto leaders made their contractual arrangements with 

the Church-State for their closed corporation and ruled 

“their own.” There was joint ghetto responsibility for 

obligations, and taxation often was on a unit basis. Jew- 

ish courts had all civil jurisdiction, Rabbinic law gov- 

erned all business, synagogue life, dance, dress and mor- 

als. The Jew was immersed in the Talmudic details 

within the ghetto and hardly thought of the Christian 

outside world save to hope that it would permit him 

to live unmolested. 

Where ghetto walls were not erected, nationalist- 

minded Jewish leaders strove for complete segregation. 

A Jewish “deputation” approached the rulers of the 

city of Speyer, in 1084, requesting that a ghetto be set 

up.’”® No less a scholar, and nationalist, than Professor 

Salo Baron points out, in his history of Jewry, that “Tal- 

mudic rabbis insisted upon separatism on practical as 

well as ritualistic grounds,” and that the general laws 

regulating ghetto life in Portugal had been adopted 

upon a nationwide Jewish request. 

There was one Judaist who tried the different ap- 

proach of knocking down the ghetto walls. Moses Men- 

delssohn, whose contribution to the triumph of Human 

10 

THE HISTORIC DUALITY 

Rights predates the French Revolution, led a fully in- 

tegrated life amongst the Christians of Berlin, and at 

the same time maintained his faith. Mendelssohn be- 

lieved that some of the barriers of prejudice could be 

hurdled if Jews spoke and wrote the language of the 

country in which they lived. German Jews were then 

using Hebrew or Yiddish (German dialect written in 

Hebrew characters). Mendelssohn opened a school for 

Jews in Berlin, where French and German were included 

in the studies. He himself translated the Pentateuch 

into German and implored the German Jews to take 

advantage of the 1782 Patent of Toleration, to send 

their children to public schools where they could learn 

a trade. In his book Jerusalem, Mendelssohn pleaded for 

more compliance of the ancient Jewish law with the 

customs of the country. But the Jewish adjustment 

he sought was refused by the Rabbinate. A rabbinical 

edict forbade members of their congregations to read 

or own a copy of Mendelssohn’s Pentateuch translation. 

The French Revolution ushered in the gradual eman- 

cipation of western Jewry. Revolutionary France’s 

great intellectual spirits—Mirabeau, Abbé Grégoire and 

Saint-Etienne—fought to assure that “equality” and 

“fraternity” was extended to all religious groups of 

France. Their attitude was summed up in these words 

of Clermont-Tonnerre, delegate to the French National 

Assembly: “To the Jews as a nation we grant nothing; 

to the Jews as men we grant all.” And the Jews of 

France were given complete equality. As Napoleon 

Bonaparte cut through Europe, he imposed Jewish 

equality everywhere. In 1807, he convened a Sanhedrin 

of Jewry from all parts of his Empire. When these 

representatives were asked whether or not they regarded 

France as their country, and Frenchmen as their broth- 

II 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

ers, they answered: “Aye, even unto death.” They 

specifically promised the Emperor to recognize their 

fellow citizens of other faiths as their brethren. There 

has never been, since Napoleon, Jewish nationalism in 

France. 

By 1874, full rights had been granted to Jews in Eng- 

land, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, 

Austria and Switzerland. The Jews of Western Europe 

had won the right to profess their religion and to be 

otherwise considered fully privileged nationals of the 

countries in which they resided. 

But while this great transformation was taking place 

in the West, the ghetto walls of Eastern Europe had 

not been scaled. Prior to the Hitler mass slaughter, the 

followers of Judaism throughout the world totalled 

sixteen million, and almost one half of them lived in 

Eastern Europe. For centuries the Jews in Poland had 

been meticulously organized into “kehillahs,” governed 

by their own all-powerful Joint Councils, the Va-ad 

Arba Aratos. With the three partitions of Poland, Rus- 

sia inherited the world’s largest body of Jews. The 

Czars confined them to living in Russia’s western prov- 

inces within the “Pale of Settlement” and its strong in- 

ternal organization. Poland and Russia remained virtu- 

ally untouched by the emancipation. 

When the teachings of Moses Mendelssohn began to 

impress some eastern scholars, their efforts to spread 

these ideas were stymied by rabbinical and lay leaders 

of eastern Jewry who feared cultural integration. In 

the middle of the 19th century, the German rabbi, Max 

Lilienthal, tried to set up modern Jewish schools in 

Russia where the Russian language and several secular 

subjects were to be taught. He was defeated by rab- 

binical suspicion combined with Czarist repression. 

12 

THE HISTORIC DUALITY 

Rather, the eastern Jew turned to Jewish Nationalism 

for his emancipation: the political rights he wanted he 

was taught to see as group rights and they were to be 

won in Palestine. Zionism began to transform religious 

hopes and a yearning for individual freedom into a po- 

litical program of nationalist utopia. 

The first presentation of Zionism was given by Moses 

Hess in his book Rome and Jerusalem (1862). The next 

philosopher of Zionism was Leo Pinsker who, twenty 

years later, wrote in his Auto-Emancipation that the 

Jews formed, in the midst of the nations among whom 

they reside, a distinctive element which cannot be read- 

ily digested by any country. (Strangely, these were 

practically the same words for which the Dearborn 

Independent and Henry Ford, Sr. were to be sued more 

than sixty years later, by American Jews of Zionist 

leanings.) Pinsker’s goal was a “land of our own,” 

though not necessarily the Holy Land. Under his lead- 

ership, a first Jewish National Conference” met in 1884 

at Katowice in Silesia—thirteen years before Theodor 

Herz] invoked the First Zionist Congress at Basel in 

Switzerland. 

Herzl, an Austrian journalist, had attended the trial 

of Alfred Dreyfus in Paris and was moved by this re- 

volting experience to write his famous Judenstaat (“The 

Jewish State”), one of those pregnant political pam- 

phlets that make history. The Basel Congress called 

for a “publicly recognized and legally secured Jewish 

home in Palestine.” The concept of minorities upon 

which the Austro-Hungarian Empire was based, mo- 

tivated another Austrian, Count Kalergi, to conceive 

a Pan-European federation of European man; but 

Herzl’s Jewish reaction was to affirm the “right to sepa- 

rateness” and build a narrow State around them. For 

13 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

hood. 

rather than “nation.” 

a religion and a national community. 

him, the “Jewish question” existed wherever Jews lived 

in perceptible numbers: they had to be given “a portion 

of the globe” to satisfy their right to sovereign nation- 

Aware of the difficulty of winning converts to the 

undisguised doctrine of a “Jewish nation” in emanci- 

pated Western Europe and the United States, the Basel 

platform (the first official pronouncement of modern 

Zionism) talks of a “home” and of “the Jewish people” 

An organized political movement had now replaced 

the Messiah in leading “the Jewish people back to Pales- 

tine.” The Messianic coming, nurtured as it had been 

for centuries in the tribal life of the ghetto, had bred 

a deep national consciousness among the Eastern Jewry. 

The Zionist program could thus easily arouse the emo- 

tions of those who had for centuries been parts of both 

In the meantime, Jewish strength had moved west- 

ward. Europe’s persecuted had been arriving in the 

American colonies, and amongst them were of course 

Jews. At the time of the War of Independence, there 

were 2500 Jews in America (principally from the Iber- 

ian Peninsula), and the five synagogues of New York, 

Newport, Philadelphia, Charleston, and Savannah. 

Between 1830 and 1880, Judaist immigrants came main- 

ly from Germany, and many American towns bear 

their names as they pushed on over the country. 

Jewish immigration from Western Europe ceased 

with the granting of complete political emancipation 

in the western parts of the Old World. There were 

by then about 230,000 Judaists in the United States, 

strongly imbued with the philosophy of integration 

with America. Like most other early immigrants to 

14 

| 

| 

THE HISTORIC DUALITY 

America, they had fled the religious bigotries of the 

Old World. Enjoying equal rights of personal citizen- 

ship, the early Jewish settlers in the United States were 

not concerned with group rights, nor had they any 

desire for a segregated cultural existence. 

Reform Judaism freed religious practice from some 

outmoded encrustments to make Judaism again a faith 

rather than a separate way of life. As early as 1824, 

twelve members of the Charleston congregation, led 

by the journalist Isaac Harby, organized an abridged 

service, part of which was in English. They formed 

the congregation of Beth Elohem and built a new syn- 

agogue, in 1841, which used the first organ in an Ameri- 

can Judaist service. In his dedicatory sermon Dr. Gus- 

tavus Poznaski announced: “This synagogue is our 

Temple, this city is our Jerusalem, this happy land our 

Palestine.”’*® 

In Germany, the movement for reform was led by 

Gabriel Riesser (who firmly avowed there was no such 

thing as a Jewish nation with its own corporate exist- 

ence), and Abraham Geiger. The movement failed, 

suffocated by the dead hand of ancient European tra- 

ditions. But it took hold in the United States where 

under the leadership of Isaac M. Wise, Reform Judaism 

became a major religious force. At the Pittsburgh Con- 

ference in 1885, eight basic principles of Reform Ju- 

daism™ carried this solemn message: “We consider our- 

selves no longer a nation, but a religious community, 

and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor 

the restoration of a sacrificial worship under the Sons 

. Aaron, or of any of the laws concerning the Jewish 

tate.” 

Twelve years later, after Herzl’s Zionism had begun 

to fascinate Europe, the Central Conference of Ameri- 

45 

H" 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

can Rabbis passed a resolution which stated disapproval 

of any attempt to establish a Jewish State. “Such at- 

tempts show a misunderstanding of Israel’s mission 

which from the narrow political and national field has 

been expanded to the promotion among the whole hu- 

man race of the broad and universalistic religion first 

proclaimed by the Jewish prophets.”** The reform 

congregations likewise voiced their “unalterable oppo- 

sition to political Zionism,” declaring themselves to be 

“a religious community.” The declaration added: “Zion 

was a precious possession of the past . . . as such it is 

a holy memory, but it is not our hope of the future. 

America is our Zion.” Zionism was regarded as a “phi- 

losophy of foreign origin” with little “to recommend 

itself to Americans.”’® The Reform paper, the Ameri- 

can Israelite, was able to say that all Jewish newspapers 

edited or controlled by native Americans were “strongly 

anti-Zionist.” In 1904, this paper noted that “there 1s 

not one solitary prominent native Jewish-American who 

is an advocate of Zionism.” 

Between 1881 and 1924, the third wave of Jewish im- 

migration brought two and a half million Jews from 

Central and Eastern Europe who settled in the larger 

eastern cities. Most of these new immigrants were Or- 

thodox and inclined toward Zionism. 

The concept of Jewish nationality was a product of 

Central and Eastern Europe, and of the Byzantine Em- 

pires, where ethnic and religious groups had received 

their rights as national minorities. Herzl’s homeland, 

the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was a multi-national 

state, a kind of holding company of cohesive ethnic 

groups who possessed an acute sense of nationhood. 

(“Minorities” were represented in the legislature by 

their own political parties.) The United States Con- 

16 

THE HISTORIC DUALITY 

stitution, of course, is built on quite different political 

principles. Here, as Dorothy Thompson phrased it, 

“nationhood and statehood are conjoined.” 

The law of America knows no majorities, no minori- 

ties, and no special rights for any citizens. But Eastern 

Europeans, of all creeds, were accustomed to a complex 

minority status, even more deeply rooted in the Jewish 

mind by painful recollections of persecution. These 

Fast-European Jews had not only lived as a separate 

nationality but had voted as Jews for other Jews to 

represent them in governments. They mostly had 

spoken a language other than their environment’s, and 

lived in a mental ghetto to “balance the physical ghetto 

around them.”” The Jews from these countries had 

been a nation within a nation; so that, when they came 

to the United States as emancipated persons, the nation 

complex had come with them. 

By sheer numbers these newcomers soon began to 

dominate their American coreligionists, taking over some 

older organizations and starting new groups of every va- 

riety. In 1918, with the creation of the nationalist- 

minded American Jewish Congress, the hegemony of 

the earliest Judaist settlers, the Sephardic and German 

Jews, had ended. 

Reform Judaism continued to struggle in America 

against political Zionism. When Lloyd George granted 

the Balfour Declaration which called for the “establish- 

ment of a national home in Palestine,” some Orthodox 

and Conservative segments of American Judaism opposed 

the a-religious and secularized methods of the return, 

but Reform theology refused the objective itself on the 

grounds that the call of Judaism (the call to carry to 

the world the universal message of the prophetic ethics) 

excluded a mass return. Reform leadership expressed a 

ay. 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

willingness to cooperate with Zionists in making Pales- 

tine a place of refuge, and a spiritual center, but Reform 

rabbis told a Congressional Committee in 1922 they 

could not concede that anything but the world was the 

Jewish homeland.” Their slogan, “Scrap Zionism and 

Build Palestine,” led American Jewry to a growing em- 

phasis on the latter aim and the emergence of a non- 

Zionist rather than an anti-Zionist position. 

Until 1933, Zionism itself had made little progress 

in the United States. It had picked up certain momentum 

with the keen American interest in the plight of Russian 

Jewry before World War I, but this concern vanished 

with Czar Nicholas II and with the appearance of a new 

Russian regime which granted “equal rights” to all its 

citizens. But Hitler’s drive against European Jews en- 

couraged Zionists to transform American Judaist sym- 

pathies with oppressed coreligionists across the Atlantic 

into organizational strength. By 1943 there were in 

America 59,000 registered Zionists” whose total nu- 

merical periphery of affiliated and constituent organiza- 

tions numbered some 207,000—less than 5 per cent of 

American Jewry. 

The increasing concern over European Jewry 

drowned out scattered Judaist protests against Zionist 

nationalism. For, as Rabbi James Heller told the House 

Foreign Affairs Committee in 1944, “there is no reli- 

gious duty more sacred than that of saving the sons of 

our people.” That distressed compassion, and the result- 

ing call for Jewish unity, brought to the side of Zionism 

hundreds of America’s Jewish organizations. 

But through the centuries, whenever the Jews faced 

trials and tribulations, there had been hardly a notice- 

able return to Palestine. At the end of the nineteenth 

century, Palestine’s Jewish population was a little less 

18 

THE HISTORIC DUALITY 

than 50,000. Two years after the Balfour Declaration, 

there were 65,000 Jews in Palestine, about 7 per cent 

of the population which, in 1922, consisted of 78 per cent 

Moslems, 11 per cent Jews and about 10 per cent Chris- 

tians. In the twelve years from 1920 to 1932, 118,378 

Jews (or 34 of 1 per cent of the world’s Jewry) volun- 

tarily returned to their reputed “home.” In the first 

twenty years after the Balfour Declaration, Palestine re- 

ceived approximately 500 American Jews a year. 

Throughout the entire Christian era, the bulk of Pales- 

tine’s population continued to be Arab. For 600 years 

these Arabs had conscientiously cared for the Holy 

Places, sacred to the parent religion and its two daughter 

faiths. These people and their neighboring coreligionists 

had never questioned for a moment that Palestine was 

theirs. They referred to the land as “that part of southern 

Syria which is known as Palestine.”* 

And then, in an emotional response to European bar- 

barism, American Jewry suddenly staked its claim to a 

part of the Arab world. Political Zionists knew what 

they were doing. But thousands of non-Zionist Ameri- 

can Jews supported them, totally unaware of the fact 

that they were thus being linked to a vibrant foreign 

nationalism—totally unaware of the mortal danger that 

such an emotional support of political Zionism could 

undo their efforts toward American integration. 

CHAPTER II Haven or State? 

lently opposed to the Czarist regime, had at- 

tempted to work out a deal with Germany. The 

United States was not yet in the fight, and these Zionists 

hoped a victorious Germany would give Zionism Pales- 

tine. But the negotiations fell through and, in 1916, the 

World Zionist Organization began to look elsewhere. A 

memorandum was directed to the London Foreign Of- 

fice urging support of Zionism on political and military 

grounds." 

It has been alleged that in the Balfour Declaration the 

British granted a Jewish foothold in Palestine as a quid 

pro quo for a secret agreement whereby world Jewry 

promised to support the Allies, even to the extent of 

trying to bring the United States into the war. Whether 

there was actually such a precise agreement is not verifi- 

able. However, Lloyd George, then Prime Minister, and 

a strong supporter of Chaim Weizmann, was quoted by 

the Palestine Royal Commission, Report of 1937, as 

follows: “Zionist leaders gave us a definite promise that, 

if the Allies committed themselves to giving facilities 

for the establishment of a national home for the Jews in 

E ARLY in World War I, some Zionist leaders, vio- 

20 

HAVEN OR STATE? 

Palestine, they would do their best to rally Jewish senti- 

ment and support throughout the world to the Allied 

cause. They kept their werd.” This statement of the 

British member of the “Big Four” alluded to a period in 

1917 when the Allied position was most serious. The 

Germans were reported to have been considering a sim- 

ilar gesture to woo Zionism.’ Lloyd George, on his own 

word, was also motivated by gratitude to Weizmann for 

his ingenious process of developing trinitrotoluol needed 

for the manufacture of cordite.* Yet Emanuel Neumann, 

former President of the Zionist Organization of America, 

stated that for all “his personal charm, persuasiveness 

and skill, Weizmann would have failed but for the fact 

that Britain, hard-pressed in the struggle with Germany, 

was anxious to gain the wholehearted support of the Jew- 

ish people: in Russia on the one hand, and in America, 

on the other. The non-Jewish world regarded the Jews 

as a power to reckon with, and even exaggerated Jewish 

influence and Jewish unity. Britain’s need of Jewish 

support furnished Zionist diplomacy the element of 

strength and bargaining power which it required to back 

its moral appeal.”” And Lloyd George fully realized the 

propaganda value the Declaration held: leaflets explain- 

ing it were “dropped from the air on German and Aus- 

trian towns and widely distributed from Poland to the 

Black Sea.”® 

There is much evidence that the British Government 

issued the Balfour Declaration for more practical rea- 

sons than a mere belief in the justice of “Jewish rights.” 

The Suez Canal needed a protective base in a nearby 

territory where, as Professor Temperley states in his 

History of the Peace Conference,’ “important elements 

would not only be bound to (Britain) by every interest, 

but would command the support of world Jewry.” C. P. 

21 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

Scott, the editor of the Manchester Guardian, who be- 

came a pillar of strength to the Zionist cause, spoke of 

the “national home” as a security measure for British 

Suez.* Weizmann himself describes an interview with 

Lord Robert (later Viscount) Cecil of Chelwood, the 

Assistant Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in which 

the Zionist pleader stressed the point that a “Jewish Pal- 

estine would be a safeguard to England, in particular in 

respect to the Suez Canal.” In July, 1937 Churchill, 

speaking of the Balfour Declaration in the House of Com- 

mons, said: “It is a delusion to suppose this was a mere 

H! act of crusading enthusiasm or quixotic philanthropy. 

On the contrary, it was a measure taken . . . in due need 

of the war with the object of promoting the general vic- 

tory of the Allies, for which we expected and received 

valuable and important assistance.”””° 

Whatever the motivation, the Government of Lloyd 

George gave the go-ahead signal for Jewish colonization 

of Palestine. The draft of the Balfour Declaration, as 

originally submitted by Weizmann, called for a recog- 

nition of “Palestine as the national home for the Jewish 

people” and the “re-establishment” of the country. The 

Foreign Office, and the Prime Minister, accordingly sub- 

| mitted to the War Cabinet the proposal that “Palestine 

should be reconstituted as the National Home of the 

Jewish people.” This phrase was changed to “His Maj- 

| esty’s Government view with favour the establishment 

in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people 

| and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achieve- 

ment of this object.” The alteration followed an impas- 

sioned anti-Zionist address by Edward Montagu, the 

| Secretary of State for India,” who then accepted the re- 

| phrased Declaration merely as a “military expedient.” 

The obvious significance of the re-phrasing was not 

22 

HAVEN OR STATE? 

lost on Weizmann. His memoirs note disappointment 

in the “painful recession” from “Palestine as the national 

home” to the limited character of ‘a national home in 

Palestine.” Outstanding Jewish organizations in Britain, 

such as the Anglo-Jewish Association and the Board of 

Deputies, were led by Montagu, by Claude Montefiore, 

and David Alexander, who as Jewish Englishmen op- 

posed Zionism as “traitorous disloyalty to their native 

lands.” Concerning these opponents, Weizmann wrote: 

“The gentlemen of this type have to be told the candid 

truth and made to realize that we and not they are the 

masters of the situation.””* 

Moreover, on Supreme Court Justice Brandeis’ in- 

sistence, the phrase “Jewish race,” which Weizmann had 

won as a sop for concessions denied to him, was changed 

in the Balfour Declaration to “Jewish people.” This 

was further restricted by the additional clause, “it being 

clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may 

prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing 

non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and 

political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” 

Ahad Ha-am (meaning “One of the People”), a close 

friend of Weizmann and the leader of the spiritual (as 

contrasted to political) Zionists, contended that in its 

final wording the Balfour Declaration was a rejection 

of Jewish historic rights to Palestine. He wrote (in June, 

1920): “If you build your house not on untenanted 

ground, but in a place where there are other houses, you 

are sole master only as far as your front gate. National 

homes of different people in the same country can de- 

mand only national freedom for each one in the internal 

affairs and affairs of the country which are common to 

all are administered by all householders jointly... . Our 

leaders and writers ought to have told the people this.”"* 

In other words, the Balfour Declaration was not a 

blank check but a conditional credit. There were no 

grounds for implying, as some have done,” that the in- 

tentionally obscure term “a national home” indicated 

the British had granted Zionists the right to develop a 

state in all, or part, of Palestine. “National home” and 

“political state” are not synonymous. 

But even if the Declaration had been framed “in the 

Zionist interest’”—the avowed Zionist interest was, at 

that time, anything but statehood. Nahum Sokolow, then 

President of the World Zionist Organization, declared 

in the introduction to his two-volume History of Zion- 

ism, written in 1918: “It has been said, and is being ob- 

stinately repeated by anti-Zionists again, that Zionism 

aims at the creation of an independent ‘Jewish state.’ But 

this is wholly fallacious. The ‘Jewish state’ was never 

a part of the Zionist programme. The ‘Jewish state’ was 

the title of Herzl’s pamphlet which had the supreme 

merit of forcing people to think. The pamphlet was fol- 

lowed by the first Zionist Congress which accepted the 

Basel Programme—the only programme in existence.”** 

A week before the Balfour Declaration was issued, 

Lord Curzon, who was to succeed the Earl of Balfour 

as Foreign Minister, wrote Lloyd George an extensive 

outline of what he believed the grant to the Zionists 

should contain: “European administration (not Jewish) 

over the country”; machinery to safeguard and secure 

order and protection of Christian, Jewish and Moslem 

holy places; and “to Jews, but not to Jews alone, equal 

civil and religious rights with other elements of the pop- 

ulation.”*? Lord Curzon added this comment: “If this 

is Zionism, there is no reason why we should not all be 

Zionists.” 

The Balfour Declaration and the Mandate cannot pos- 

24 

HAVEN OR STATE? 

sibly be viewed as calls for a Jewish State. On the con- 

trary, whatever the interpretation of “A National 

Home,” the phrase was clearly and specifically intended 

to be less than what the Zionists had asked for—which 

had not been statehood. And even those English Jews 

who supported Weizmann (conspicuously the Roths- 

childs) were first and above all loyal Britons who had 

no intention of endangering their clear and undivided 

loyalty. Outside the synagogue, the word “Jew” had 

little meaning to them. ‘‘A national home” they under- 

stood as some sort of a “spiritual centre.”’* That much 

they indicated in a manifesto, answering their more con- 

servative coreligionists who had opposed the Balfour 

Declaration in a strong letter to the London Times (May 

24, 1917). And that some kind of “spiritual centre” was 

indeed the intended meaning of “national home” is em- 

phasized by Lord Balfour himself who thus interpreted 

his Declaration: ‘National home meant some form of 

British, American or other protectorate to give Jews a 

real centre of national culture,” the final form of govern- 

ment of which was a “matter for gradual development 

in accordance with the ordinary laws of political evolu- 

tion.”!” 

Churchill, in the 1922 White Paper, also talked of the 

“further development of the existing Jewish commu- 

nity” of Palestine “to become a centre.”*° As Colonial 

Secretary, he assured a deputation of Arabs that a Jewish 

national home did not mean a “Jewish government to 

dominate Arabs. We cannot tolerate the expropriation 

of one set of people by another.”** Viscount Reading, 

Lord Chief Justice of England and at the time of the 

Declaration British Ambassador to the United States, 

could find no objections to the Balfour Declaration de- 

spite his profound opposition to the very idea of a Jewish 

25 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

nation; he believed that only a cultural home was being 

established. Before the Council of the League of Nations, 

Lord Balfour argued against those “who hope and those 

who fear that what, I believe, has been called the Balfour 

Declaration is going to suffer substantial modifications. 

... The fears are not justified, the hopes are not justi- 

fied. .. . The general lines of policy stand and must 

stand.”*? And the British Mandate for Palestine, adopted 

in 1923 by the League of Nations, did not modify the 

Balfour Declaration.” 

The Mandatory Instrument incorporated the British 

Palestine Policy Statement and did not enlarge the scope 

of the grant. All clauses safeguarding Arab and non- 

Zionist rights were specifically repeated. Emir Feisal, 

who represented the Arab Kingdom of the Hejaz, signed 

an agreement with Dr. Weizmann, representing the 

Zionist Organization. The Arabs accepted the Balfour 

Declaration and permitted the encouragement of Jewish 

immigration into Palestine, but only on the specific con- 

dition of acknowledged and guaranteed Arab independ- 

ence. 

True, some responsible members of the British and 

U.S. Governments believed that a Jewish majority 

might develop in Palestine in the course of time, and 

that a Jewish State might thus be the ultimate outcome 

of the Balfour Declaration. But in 1919, the Jews consti- 

tuted not more than one tenth of Palestine’s population. 

And the British Government accepted only one respon- 

sibility concerning any future population policy in Pal- 

estine—the solemn assurance given to the Arabs, through 

Sherif Hussein of Mecca, that nothing would be done 

which was not “compatible with the freedom of the ex- 

isting population, both economic and political.”** This 

commitment of the Foreign Office was delivered by 

26 

HAVEN OR STATE? 

Commander D. G. Hogarth to the disturbed Arabs who 

at the time were being rallied by Lawrence of Arabia 

against their Turkish overlords. Hogarth, a famous 

scholar and archaeologist, was dispatched to Jedda, a 

few weeks after the passage of the Balfour Declaration, 

to reiterate for the future king of Hejaz, Hussein, what 

the British Government had officially communicated to 

him in January, 1916. (Britain had then promised “that 

so far as Palestine is concerned, we are determined that 

no peoples shall be subjected to another.””) Hogarth, 

in reporting on his mission to the British High Commis- 

sioner in Cairo, commented: “The King would not ac- 

cept an independent Jewish state in Palestine, nor was 

I instructed to warn him that such a state was contem- 

plated by Great Britain.””’* On the other hand Hussein, 

whose great-grandchildren now occupy the thrones of 

Iraq and Jordan, was reported to have agreed that “as 

far as the aim of the Declaration was to provide a refuge, 

he would use all his influence to further that aim.””” And 

T. E. Lawrence informed the Cabinet that Hussein 

“would not approve Jewish independence for Palestine, 

but would support Jewish infiltration, if it is behind a 

British, as opposed to an international, facade.” 

The text of what has come to be known as the Hogarth 

message was not published until twenty-two years later 

and was totally unknown outside of the Arab world.” 

In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson sent the King- 

Crane Commission® to Palestine and other places in the 

Near East for an American survey of conditions in the 

former Ottoman Empire. On its return, the Commission 

declared that a “National home for the Jewish people is 

not equivalent to making Palestine a Jewish State” and 

that such a “State could not be erected without the grav- 

€st trespass upon the civil and religious rights of existing 

27 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” This report was 

the only official American study of the Palestine prob- 

lem until 1946. 

But the protective guarantees to the Arabs of Palestine 

(and to non-Zionist Judaists of the world), as contained 

in the Balfour Declaration and in subsequent agreements, 

were gradually whittled away. Finally in 1947, the 

United Nations acted just as if the original Weizmann 

draft had been fully embodied in the Balfour Declara- 

tion. And nothing contributed so much to this unprece- 

dented breach of binding diplomatic promises as the 

political abuse of a staggering human emergency—the 

plight of Jewish refugees in Europe. 

The end of World War []—if end it did—created in 

Europe that epitome of distress, the Displaced Person. 

These refugees from Hitler’s gas chambers were actu- 

i ally, not theoretically, homeless. They came from many 

Jands: Austria, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Roumania, 

} the Baltic Countries. They were of all faiths: about 500,- 

ooo Catholics, 100,000 Protestants, and 226,000 Jews.” 

Of these last, some 100,000 were in the assembly camps 

of Germany, Austria and Italy; 50,000 undetained in 

the United Kingdom; 12,000 in Sweden; 10,500 in 

Switzerland; the rest scattered over the Continent. 

On August 31, 1945, President Truman wrote Brit- 

ain’s Prime Minister Clement Attlee that the issuance of 

100,000 certificates of immigration to Palestine would 

help to alleviate the refugee situation. This letter was 

made public in the United States by Senator Guy Gil- 

lette of Iowa on September 13, 1945. In a policy state- 

ment of November 1945, the British Government de- 

clared it would not accept the view “that Jews should 

be driven out of Europe or that they should not be per- 

mitted to live again in these countries without discrimi- 

28 

HAVEN OR STATE? 

nation, contributing their ability and talent toward re- 

building the prosperity of Europe.” The Prime Minister 

invited a joint inquiry into these matters by representa- 

tives of the United States and the United Kingdom. This 

proposal was favorably received by President Truman. 

But Zionists called it “a fresh betrayal” to which they 

would never submit.*? 

The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Pales- 

tine was set up on December 10, 1945, with six American 

and six British members. It was empowered to “examine 

political, economic and social conditions in Palestine 

as they bear upon the problem of Jewish immigration 

and settlement therein,’ and “to examine the position 

of European Jews” in terms of estimating the possible 

migration to Palestine or elsewhere outside of Europe. 

Among the Committee members were U. S. Federal 

Judge Joseph C. Hutcheson, (Chairman); Dr. Frank 

Aydelotte, Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies 

at Princeton; former American Ambassador to Italy, 

William Phillips; Bartley C. Crum; James C. McDonald 

(later to be the first American Ambassador to Israel); 

and R. H. S. Crossman, prominent Laborite member of 

Parliament. The first meeting was held in Washington 

early in January, 1946. Representatives of Jewish organ- 

izations as well as those who expressed the Christian and 

the Arab viewpoints were heard. Sessions were resumed 

in London in January, 1946 and several sub-committees 

carried on investigations in various countries of Europe. 

The full Committee held further sessions in Egypt, at 

which the Jewish Agency (the official liaison body be- 

tween the Palestinian Jewish community and Jewry out- 

side) and organized Arab groups were heard. Sub-com- 

mittees also visited the capitols of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, 

Saudi Arabia and Jordan. These exhaustive deliberations 

29 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

were completed in Switzerland and a report, unanimous- 

ly signed at Lausanne, was made public in London and in 

Washington on April 30, 1946.” 

The principal recommendation (No. 2 in the Com- 

mittee report) called for the immediate issuance of en- 

trance certificates into Palestine for 100,000 Jews “who 

had been the victims of Nazi and Fascist persecution.” 

Had these 100,000 admissions actually been granted, the 

overwhelming majority of Jewish Displaced Persons 

whose situation required immediate action would have 

been saved and the revolting D. P. Centers could soon 

have been closed. The report went on to state that “Jew 

shall not dominate Arab and Arab shall not dominate 

Jew in Palestine, which shall be neither a Jewish State 

nor an Arab State... . Palestine is a Holy Land, sacred 

to Christian, to Jew and to Moslem alike, and because 

it is a Holy Land, Palestine is not, and can never become 

a land which any race or religion can justly claim as its 

very own.” 

But a Palestine which guarded “the rights and interests 

of Moslems, Jews and Christians alike,” to quote the 

Committee, was never acceptable to Zionists. To the 

leaders of political Zionism, nationalist politics were im- 

measurably more important than humanitarian concerns. 

For, indeed, Zionism has never been refugeeism and ref- 

ugeeism never Zionism. 

When the Kerensky government overthrew the Czar- 

ist regime in Russia, Weizmann minimized the effect an 

emancipation of Russian Jewry would have on the Zion- 

ist cause: “Nothing can be more superficial and nothing 

can be more wrong than that the sufferings of Russian 

Jewry ever were the cause of Zionism. The fundamental 

cause of Zionism has been, and is, the ineradicable na- 

tional striving of Jewry to have a home of its own—a 

30 

HAVEN OR STATE? 

national center, a national home with a national Jewish 

life.’”** This thought was later echoed by Mrs. Moses P. 

Epstein, national president of the American Jewish wom- 

en’s organization, Hadassah: “The Zionist movement is 

a revolutionary program organized to bring about a rad- 

ical and fundamental change in the status of the Jews 

the world over. The sooner the world knows it, the 

better.’’? 

The Anglo-American Committee had found that Pal- 

estine alone could never meet Jewish emigration needs 

and that the United States and British Government, in 

association with other countries, must endeavor to find 

new homes for displaced persons. And this, more than 

anything, doomed the Committee, so far as Zionism was 

concerned. The Jewish Agency rejected the humanitar- 

ian acts offered by the report because “the central prob- 

lem of the homeless and stateless Jewish people had been 

left untouched.”** That “central problem,” of course, 

was the Zionists’ need for a national state. 

Organized Jewry was willing to endorse the Com- 

mittee’s plea for the admission of 100,000 Jews to Pal- 

estine, but opened fire against the report’s other nine 

recommendations of which the accepted one was an in- 

tegral part. The American Zionists in New York, the 

British Zionists in London, and the Jewish Agency in 

Jerusalem, insisted in the Committee hearings that noth- 

ing less than Jewish statehood would do. This was in 

accordance with the Biltmore Program adopted in New 

York four years earlier by Zionist groups. 

Early in 1947, the British Government tried to make 

a last attempt to conciliate the Arab and the Zionist po- 

sitions. The new proposal stipulated the admission into 

Palestine of 4,000 Jews per month for two years, and 

subsequent admissions depending on the future absorp- 

31 

q 

| 

i 

| 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

tive capacity of the country. This second offer for the 

rescue of almost 100,000 Jews was spurned, too: the 

Jewish Agency denounced it as incompatible with Jew- 

ish rights to immigration, settlement and ultimate state- 

hood. 

There were other lands, besides Palestine, to which 

the displaced persons could have gone. President Roose- 

velt was deeply concerned with the plight of the Euro- 

pean refugees and thought that all the free nations of 

the world ought to accept a certain number of immi- 

grants, irrespective of race, creed, color or political be- 

lief. The President hoped that the rescue of 500,000 

Displaced Persons could be achieved by such a generous 

grant of a worldwide political asylum. In line with this 

humanitarian idea, Morris Ernst, New York attorney 

and close friend of the President, went to London in 

the middle of the war to see if the British would take 

in 100,000 or 200,000 uprooted people. The President 

had reasons to assume that Canada, Australia and the 

South American countries would gladly open their 

doors. And if such good examples were set by other na- 

tions, Mr. Roosevelt felt that the American Congress 

could be “educated to go back to our traditional position 

of asylum.” The key was in London. Would Morris 

Ernst succeed there? Mr. Ernst came home to report, 

and this is what took place in the White House (as 

related by Mr. Ernst to a Cincinnati audience in 1950): 

Ernst: “We are at home plate. That little island [and 

it was during the second Blitz that he visited England | 

on a properly representative program of a World Im- 

migration Budget, will match the United States up to 

150,000.” 

Roosevelt: “150,000 to England—150,000 to match 

that in the United States—pick up 200,000 or 300,000 

ae 

32 

HAVEN OR STATE? 

elsewhere, and we can start with half a million of these 

oppressed people.” 

A week later, or so, Mr. Ernst and his wife again vis- 

ited the President. 

Roosevelt (turning to Mrs. Ernst): ‘Margaret, 

can’t you get me a Jewish Pope? I cannot stand it any 

more. I have got to be careful that when Stevie Wise 

leaves the White House he doesn’t see Joe Proskauer 

on the way in.” Then, to Mr. Ernst: “Nothing doing 

on the program. We can’t put it over because the domi- 

nant vocal Jewish leadership of America won’t stand 

FOE Ite" 

“It’s impossible! Why?” asked Ernst. 

Roosevelt: “They are right from their point of view. 

The Zionist movement knows that Palestine is, and will 

be for some time, a remittance society. They know that 

they can raise vast sums for Palestine by saying to donors, 

‘There is no other place this poor Jew can go.’ But if 

there isa world political asylum for all people i irrespective 

of race, creed or color, they cannot raise their money. 

Then the people who do not want to give the money 

will have an excuse to say ‘What do you mean, there 

is no place they can go but Palestine? They are the pre- 

ferred wards of the world.’ ” 

Morris Ernst, shocked, first refused to believe his 

leader and friend. He began to lobby among his influ- 

ential Jewish friends for this world program of rescue, 

without mentioning the President’s or the British re- 

action. As he himself has put it: “I was thrown out of 

parlors of friends of mine who very frankly said ‘Morris, 

this is treason. You are undermining the Zionist move- 

ment.’ ”’*® He ran into the same reaction amongst all a 

ish groups and their leaders. Everywhere he found “ 

deep, genuine, often fanatically emotional vested i ee 

33 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

in putting over the Palestinian movement” in men “who 

are little concerned about human blood if it is not their 

own: *” 

This response of Zionism ended the remarkable Roose- 

velt effort to rescue Europe’s Displaced Persons. 

On December 22, 1945, President Truman directed 

the Secretaries of State and War, and certain other fed- 

eral authorities, to speed in every possible way the grant- 

ing of visas and “facilitate full immigration to the United 

States under existing quota laws.” Congress, which had 

often shown its vulnerability to Jewish pressure groups, 

did not implement the President’s request regarding the 

application of unused quotas to uprooted Europeans. 

Finally, a bill was introduced by Congressman William 

G. Stratton in the so-called “Do-Nothing” 80th Repub- 

lican Congress, in 1947, to admit Displaced Persons “in 

a number equivalent to a part of the total quota num- 

bers unused“ during the war years.” Under the Stratton 

Bill, up to 400,000 displaced persons of all faiths would 

have been permitted admission into the United States. 

The Committee hearings on this legislation (HR 2910) 

lasted eleven days and covered 693 pages of testimony. 

But there were exactly 11 pages of testimony given by 

Jewish organizations. They seemed, in fact, profoundl 

uninterested. But in 1944, when the House Foreign Af- 

fairs Committee was considering the Wright-Compton 

resolution that called for the establishment of a Jewish 

Commonwealth, there had been scarcely a Zionist or- 

ganization that had not testified, sent telegraphed mes- 

sages, or had some Congressman testify in their behalf. 

In support of the Wright-Compton resolution, 500 pages 

of testimony were produced in four days, the vast bulk 

by Zionists and their allies. 

Yet on the Stratton Bill, which would have opened 

34 

HAVEN OR STATE? 

America’s doors to 400,000 Displaced Persons, the pow- 

erful Zionist Washington lobby (otherwise most articu- 

late) was virtually silent. Only one witness appeared 

for all the major Jewish organizations—Senator Herbert 

Lehman, then the ex-Governor of New York. In addi- 

tion to Lehman’s statement, there was a resolution from 

the Jewish Community Councils of Washington-Heights 

and Inwood, and the testimony of the National Com- 

mander of the Jewish War Veterans. Not a single word 

was volunteered in behalf of Displaced Persons by any 

of the Zionist organizations which were at that moment 

recruiting members and soliciting funds “to alleviate hu- 

man suffering.” 

To a meeting at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, 

Congressman Stratton expressed his surprise at the lack 

of support from certain organizations which normally 

ought to have been most active in liberalizing the immi- 

gration law. Obviously, the Illinois Representative (now 

Governor) had never heard the President of the Zionist 

Organization of America exhort his membership: 

I am happy that our movement has finally veered around 

to the point where we are all, or nearly all, talking about 

a Jewish State. That was always classical Zionism... . 

But I ask . . . are we again, in moments of desperation, 

going to confuse Zionism with refugeeism, which is likely 

to defeat Zionism? . . . Zionism is not a refugee movement. 

It is not a product of the second World War, nor of the 

first. Were there no displaced Jews in Europe, and were 

there free opportunities for Jewish immigration in other 

parts of the world at this time, Zionism would still be an 

imperative necessity. 

The generous admission of Jewish Displaced Persons 

to the United States, and other countries, would have 

35 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

eradicated the necessity for a “Jewish State.” Yet the 

human flotsam in former concentration camps impressed 

the Zionist only in two respects—as manpower and as 

justification for Jewish Statehood. 

This is what a Yiddish paper* had to say on the dis- 

tressing subject: ““By pressing for an exodus of Jews from 

Europe; by insisting that Jewish D. P.’s do not wish to 

go to any country outside of Israel; by not participating 

in the negotiations on behalf of the D. P.’s; and by re- 

fraining from a campaign of their own—by all this they 

[the Zionists] certainly did not help to open the gates 

of America for Jews. In fact, they sacrificed the interests 

of living people—their brothers and sisters who went 

through a world of pain—to the politics of their own 

movement.” 

And this is what the Jewish Forward, largest Yiddish 

newspaper in the world, had to say on December 11, 

1943: “The Jewish Conference is alive only when there 

is something in the air which has to do with a Common- 

wealth in Palestine, and it is asleep when it concerns res- 

cue work for the Jews in the Diaspora.” 

Dr. Louis Finkelstein of the Jewish Theological Sem- 

inary in Manhattan, one of the country’s most renowned 

theologians, stated in an interview in 1951 it had always 

been his feeling that “if United States Jews had put as 

much effort into getting D. P.’s admitted to this country 

as they put into Zionism, a home could have been found 

in the New World for all the displaced Jews of Europe.” 

Speaking at the Eightieth Anniversary of the Miztah 

Congregation at Chattanooga, Tennessee, New York 

Times publisher Sulzberger pleaded that “plans to move 

Jews to Palestine should be but part of larger plans to 

empty these camps of all refugees, Jew and otherwise.” 

36 

HAVEN OR STATE? 

He called for a reversal of Zionist policy that put state- 

hood first, refugees last: “Admitting that the Jews of 

Europe have suffered beyond expression, why in God’s 

name should the fate of all these unhappy people be 

subordinated to the single cry of Statehood? I cannot 

rid myself of the feeling that the unfortunate Jews of 

Europe’s D. P. camps are helpless hostages for whom 

statehood has been made the only ransom.””** 

All these voices of reason and honest compassion were 

lost in the nationalist emotionalism of the day. Zionism’s 

real objective was hidden behind the incessant denuncia- 

tions of the British and anyone else who opposed Zionist 

aspirations in Palestine. The non-Zionist American of 

Jewish faith was engulfed by frenzied sentiment. A let- 

ter to the Editor of the Washington Post, pointing out 

that “‘it ill behooved Zionist sympathizers to shed croco- 

dile tears over the displaced persons,” resulted in a vio- 

lent fist fight on Pennsylvania Avenue. Dissenting whis- 

pers against the partition of Palestine invariably were 

hushed by the stereotyped reminder: “How can you be 

so cruel as to prevent those poor refugees from finding 

a home?” 

Only after Israel had come into being was a drastically 

limited Displaced Persons Bill enacted. The ensuing long 

fight by the Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons to 

liberalize this legislation was successful two years later. 

The devoted man who organized this Committee, and 

rescued thousands of homeless of all faiths, was Lessing 

Rosenwald, the most maligned Jewish American oppo- 

nent of political Zionism. 

As the Palestine crisis developed, unity and cohesive 

action amongst Jewish organizations in America was 

achieved through a virulent “Hate Britain” campaign. 

37 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

Completely forgotten were the consistent British acts 

of friendship in Palestine, dating back to the Balfour 

Declaration and the Mandate.** 

The Churchill White Paper of 1922 had disclaimed 

any intention of creating a Jewish State in Palestine. It 

defined the “National Home” in terms of a “culturally 

autonomous Jewish community” and looked toward an 

ultimate bi-national Palestine. The White Paper spe- 

cifically denied that there would be any “imposition of 

a Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine 

as a whole” or that there was any intent that Palestine 

should become “as Jewish as England is English.” 

Weizmann himself characterized the Churchill White 

Paper “‘as a serious whittling down of the Balfour Dec- 

laration.”* Article 6 of the Palestine Mandate made 

Great Britain responsible for facilitating Jewish immi- 

gration under suitable conditions, while insuring that 

the rights and position of other sections of the popula- 

tion be not prejudiced. The Churchill White Paper 

construed this article to mean that Jewish immigration 

could not exceed whatever might be the economic ca- 

pacity of the country to absorb new arrivals. These re- 

strictions, accepted at the time by the Executive of the 

Zionist Organization, were the basis for the subsequent 

Passfield White Paper and for the British policy that 

followed. 

As the population of the Palestinian community grew, 

Arab demands for independence began to harass the 

British Government. Successive Royal Commissions 

were unable to devise a workable plan for partition which 

would have been acceptable to both Arab and Jew. Two 

conflicting nationalisms in a territory as large as Wales 

were demanding sovereignty. 

Increasingly serious disorders brought the Peel Royal 

38 

HAVEN OR STATE? 

Commission to the Holy Land in 1937. The Commission 

recommended a tripartite division into Arab and Jewish 

states and a permanent British mandate to include Jeru- 

salem and surroundings. This solution, resolving what 

the Commission declared were “irreconcilable obliga- 

tions,” was rejected by Arabs and Zionists. 

The MacDonald White Paper of 1939 followed the 

lead of the earlier Churchill and Passfield documents and 

called for a unitary Palestinian state in which control 

was to be shared by Zionists and Arabs. In such a Pales- 

tine State, “Jews and Arabs would be as Palestinian as 

English and Scottish in Britain are British.” 

The British Government had found it necessary to 

limit Jewish immigration to Palestine in order to fulfill 

its protective guarantees given the Arabs in the Balfour 

Declaration. Seventy-five thousand Jews were to be ad- 

mitted during the succeeding five years, further immi- 

gration depending on Arab agreement. But when the 

Germans invaded Poland, thousands of Jews were ad- 

mitted to Palestine, far above and beyond the legal quota. 

And while the U. S. Congress was expressing its sympa- 

thy for persecuted Jewry in resolutions, tens of thousands 

of refugees from Nazi barbarism were being received in 

England and many of them supported with Government 

funds. During the war, when the English people were 

themselves hard pressed for shelter and supplies, thou- 

sands of other a te were allowed to enter Britain. 

And what other acts did the British commit to justify 

the charge of anti-Semitism? Under the administrative 

system established by Britain in Palestine, self-governing 

Jewish institutions were permitted to develop, a Jewish 

Agency was established, and Jewish immigration was 

facilitated. Almost 500,000 new Jewish immigrants had 

been brought into Palestine by the end of World War 

Beg 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

II, despite the continued Arab unrest which the British 

sought to allay. (Palestine’s Jewish population increased 

from 11% in 1922 to 32% in 1945.) The British gave 

arms and other equipment to the Jews in Palestine so 

that they might be prepared for their own defense. ‘The 

British Eighth Army, under Montgomery, broke the 

back of General Rommel’s Nazi forces and thus saved 

the Jewish Palestinian community from extermination. 

Yet the British Government, of course, was unable 

to yield to the Zionist demand that Palestine be made a 

Jewish State, though it expressed its ‘willingness to ac- 

cept any reasonable settlement on which both the Zion- 

ists and the Arabs would agree. The conflict between 

uncompromising Jewish Nationalists and the Mandatory 

Administration led after World War IJ to illegal immi- 

gration, violence and sabotage. The Holy Land soon be- 

came an armed camp. The Arab Higher Committee was 

buying arms for its adherents. On the Jewish side, there 

was not only the Haganah (the more restrained and 

semi-official army of the Jewish Agency) but also the 

Irgun Zvai Leumi, the terrorist group which, since 1943, 

had been bombing Government buildings and installa- 

tions. 

The most vicious of the illegal bands was the Stern 

Gang** which had broken away from the Irgun. 

Throughout World War II, its members engaged in 

a series of outrages, climaxed by the assassination of the 

British Minister of State for the Middle East, Lord 

Moyne, in Cairo in November, 1944. Weizmann at this 

time wrote to Churchill: “I can assure you that Palestine 

Jewry will, as its representative bodies have declared, 

go to the utmost limits of its power to cut out, root and 

branch, this evil from its midst.”*’ Two years after that 

40 

| 

HAVEN OR STATE? 

assurance, the Anglo-American Committee was still re- 

questing the Jewish Agency “to resume active coopera- 

tion with the Mandatory Authority in the suppression 

of terrorism and of illegal immigration and in the main- 

tenance of that law and order throughout Palestine which 

is essential for the good of all including the new immi- 

grants.) 

In Europe, a well organized movement, supported by 

large financial contributions from Zionist sources, had 

set up “the underground railway to Palestine.” Jews 

from all over Europe were moved down to ports on the 

Mediterranean. There they were placed on ships, often 

overcrowded and unseaworthy, under conditions of ut- 

most privation and squalor. A very large proportion of 

this human freight was brought from countries of Com- 

munist-dominated Eastern Europe. For, indeed, the 

Kremlin had begun to play its Middle Eastern game of 

sowing unrest in the Arab world and pushing Britain 

out. 

To most Americans, however, the Palestinian struggle 

was merely a drama of refugees fighting for homes—this 

time against their new English oppressors. When the 

British terminated all entry into Palestine, anti-British 

feelings mounted in the United States. 

Organized American Jewry exerted utmost pressures 

on public opinion and politicians. This, everyone was 

reminded, was the same kind of war the American Revo- 

lutionists had waged against the very same imperialist 

power. The tactics of the British in Palestine were com- 

pared with those used for a long time against Ireland’s 

fighters for freedom. The blowing up of the King David 

Hotel in Jerusalem and the mob hanging of two British 

Sergeants brought this hussah from Hollywood’s Ben 

41 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

Hecht: “Every time you let go with your guns at the 

British betrayers of your homeland, the Jews of Amer- 

ica make a little holiday in their hearts.” 

It was perhaps unfortunate that throughout this trying 

period Britain’s Foreign Minister was Ernest Bevin. This 

onetime Welsh miner’s temperament was hardly suited 

to reconcile two such intransigent forces as the Arabs 

and the Zionists. Nor was he able to demonstrate to 

public opinion, particularly in the United States, just 

how Britain was being squeezed between two flaring 

nationalisms. At Bournemouth, before a Labor Party 

gathering 1 in 1946, Bevin charged that the United States 

was pressing Britain to allow more Jews into Palestine— 

because we did not want to allow them into America. 

While he meant to attack the political exploitation of 

human suffering, he brought down upon himself the 

totally unjustified charge of being anti-Semitic. His 

quick temper constantly handicapped his efforts to sepa- 

rate the problem of displaced European Jewry from the 

political question of Palestine. 

By early 1947, events in Palestine clearly demanded 

international intervention. Zionists were more than ever 

insisting on a Jewish majority in Palestine in order to se- 

cure a Jewish Commonwealth. The British were resisting 

all efforts to force them into a new policy. The Arabs, 

fighting both the British and the Jews, were demanding 

an independent Palestinian state. 

In the United States, audible public opinion supported 

illegal immigration. Such organizations as the American 

League for a Free Palestine, the Hebrew Committee for 

National Liberation, and the Political Action Commit- 

tee for Palestine, were each raising funds for their own 

Palestinian terrorist group. Their competitive advertise- 

42 

HAVEN OR STATE? 

ments defended terrorism and stressed the tax exempt- 

ability of contributions for terrorist organizations. In 

New York, Congressman Joseph C. Baldwin, scion of 

one of the city’s oldest families, and public relations ad- 

viser to the Irgun, defended the flogging of four British 

soldiers and assured Menachem Begin, Irgun leader, that 

he, Baldwin, would do everything to make his, Begin’s, 

position clear in this country. A confused public became 

even more confused by the verbal barrages exchanged 

between various Jewish factions. “Wise attacks Silver” 

—‘‘Ben-Gurion blasts the Hebrew Committee for Na- 

tional Liberation” —‘‘American League for a Free Pal- 

estine assails the Jewish Agency”—‘“‘Haganah and Irgun 

members clash.” 

And then the British decided to give up the Palestinian 

ghost. The Anglo-Arab Conferences, which had started 

in September 1946, and had adjourned to January, 1947, 

proved a total failure. A total failure, too, was the so- 

called Bevin Plan which, revising the earlier Morrison- 

Grady Plan, suggested semi-autonomous Arab and Jew- 

ish cantons for a five-year period and the admission into 

Palestine of 100,000 Displaced Persons. Both Parties ob- 

jected, whereupon Britain announced it was not her in- 

tention to enforce any plan. At the same time, the Zion- 

ist Jewish Agency proclaimed its refusal to cooperate 

with Mandatory authorities in any action against terror- 

ists. Britain felt that there was nothing left but to place 

the controversy before the United Nations. A special 

meeting of the General Assembly was called by the U. N. 

Secretary-General Trygve Lie. 

Submitting the dispute to international adjudication, 

Bevin let loose with a characteristic barrage of words. 

He accused American politicians of wrecking any 

43 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

chance for an amicable solution of the Palestine problem 

and, quite undiplomatically, pointed the finger at the 

White House. “I did reach a stage, however, in meeting 

the Jews separately . . . when things looked more hope- 

ful,” Bevin explained to the House of Commons. “There 

was a feeling ... when they left me in the Foreign Office 

that day, that I had the right approach at last. I went 

back to the Paris Peace Conference, and the next day 

...—I believe it was a special day of the Jewish religion 

—my right honourable friend, the Prime Minister, tele- 

phoned me at midnight and told me that the President 

of the United States was going to issue another statement 

on the hundred thousand. I think the country and the 

world ought to know about this... . ”*° Bevin was re- 

ferring to the Day-of-Atonement plea of President Tru- 

man to admit 100,000 refugees. The Paris Peace Con- 

ference was then in session and Bevin implored Secre- 

tary Byrnes to intercede with President Truman not to 

issue a statement which might upset current delicate ne- 

gotiations. Whereupon the Secretary of State told him 

that “if the President did not issue a statement, a com- 

petitive statement would be issued by Dewey.” 

In the New York Times of October 7, 1946, James 

Reston disclosed that several Administration advisers 

had opposed the Truman statement in view of the fact 

that Britain was on the verge of reaching a truce with the 

Zionists. Attlee himself had asked the President to with- 

hold the statement, but the President made it neverthe- 

less. It was believed that Mead and Lehman, the Demo- 

cratic candidates for Governor and Senator in New 

York, would be helped by the Truman declaration. On 

October 6th, Governor Dewey outbid Truman by de- 

claring the British should admit “not 100,000 but several 

44 

HAVEN OR STATE? 

hundred thousand Jews.” Senator Taft also joined in 

the fun of raising the ante. It was all part of the national 

campaign which had elected what Truman was later to 

call the “Republican Do-Nothing Congress.” 

Whether the British talks with the Zionists would have 

been successful if domestic American politics had not 

interfered, is questionable. But the whole episode was 

extremely characteristic of the political pattern which 

the U. S. Government was following whenever Israel 

and the Middle East were involved. 

The Arabs were as clearly inept in propaganda tech- 

niques as the Jewish Nationalists were masters. But 

American national politics being what they are, the 

chances of impressing this country with the Moslem 

point of view were at best slim: there is a rather negligible 

Arab vote in the U. S. Whatever the rights of Palestine’s 

indigenous inhabitants may have been, they were com- 

pletely dismissed in the worldwide propaganda battle 

between the Mandatory Administration and the Jewish 

Agency. 

The British were determined to maintain law and or- 

der, ene the United Nations decision over the ulti- 

mate fate of the Holy Land. The Zionists continued to 

present their power play to the confused world in 

terms of humanitarianism. Continuous clashes between 

wretched would-be immigrants and the armed British 

authorities were the only issue really discussed in the 

American press. The S.S. “Abril,” Ben Hecht’s boat, 

crowded with refugees, was seized by the British. Three 

British were killed and several injured in an effort “to 

rescue or capture” (as the U.S. press reported) refugees 

who plunged into the sea. Terrorists blew up the Iraq 

Petroleum Pipeline. The Irgun declared open warfare. 

45 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

Dov Gruner and three other terrorists who had attacked 

a Palestine police station were hanged. The Stern Gang 

promised retaliation. 

And all that time, the only contribution of the U. S. 

Government were words. There was much talk about 

Displaced Persons and human suffering, but no real ef- 

fort to bring them into the United States. Everybody 

knew, and said, what Britain should or should not do. 

Every politician hurried to get in on the act, to exploit 

“humanitarianism” for votes. Everybody urged unlim- 

ited immigration to the Holy Land. Eleanor Roosevelt 

urged a luncheon meeting of the Women’s Division of 

the United Jewish Appeal to tell Congress what to do 

on Palestine. ““The time has come,” she said, “when we 

have to stand up and be counted. You have not told 

Congress so they would hear one unmistakable voice.” 

Did organized Jewry really need such a reminder? 

Day in and day out the press carried such headlines as 

“The American Jewish Congress demands”—“Senator 

Lehman again renews his plea to open up Palestine” — 

“Congressman Javits of Manhattan suggests a Congres- 

sional junket to Palestine to foster the establishment of 

a Jewish commonwealth.” The British Empire building 

in Radio Center was picketed while William O’Dwyer, 

not yet a refugee in Mexico, excoriated the British be- 

fore the National Council of Young Israel. Zionists 

flooded the capitol with letters trying to link Palestine 

with aid to Greece and Turkey. “Tell the British,” some 

letters said, “there will be no aid for the British policy 

in Greece and Turkey unless they follow the United 

States lead on Palestine.” 

The State and War Departments, it is true, were con- 

stantly cautioning the White House and Congress that 

an irresponsible vote-chasing policy for Palestine might 

46 

HAVEN OR STATE? 

irreparably damage the American position in one of the 

world’s most strategic areas. But politicians, when fol- 

lowing the scent of “‘blocs,” seem to be beyond the reach 

of reason. At the climax of the Palestine crisis, at any 

rate, elections were just around the corner (they always 

seem to be in this blessed country of ours), and both 

parties were convinced that their eloquent support of 

statehood for Israel was a prerequisite for their conquest 

of pivotal states. There was, in fact, no need for the 

Zionists to refute the solemn warnings that were coming 

from the War and State Departments. All the Zionists 

had to do was to make sure that the politicians remained 

hypnotized by “the Jewish vote.” Perhaps for the first 

time in history, a decisive battle could indeed be won 

with the tools of propaganda. It is to the credit of the 

Zionists’ acumen that they grasped their chance. But 

it is perhaps less to the credit of America’s non-Zionist 

Jewry that it permitted its self-appointed Zionist leaders 

to bet the future of American Judaism on the roulette 

of power politics. 

47 

CHAPTER III 

The Unholy Partition 

of the Holy Land 

eral Assembly of the United Nations convened 

in New York to consider Palestine. Initial de- 

liberations were comparatively brief, most of the time 

being consumed in procedural snarls. Permission to tes- 

tify before a plenary meeting of the General Assembly 

was refused to the Jewish Agency. Hearings were held 

before the Political and Security Committee of the Gen- 

eral Assembly, at which the position of both the Jewish 

Agency and the Arab Higher Committee were pre- 

sented. No other Jewish factions were permitted to 

present their views, the requirement being that an or- 

ganization, to be heard, should represent a considerable 

element of Palestine’s population. A Committee was then 

appointed to investigate the situation in Palestine and 

report to the second regular session of the General As- 

sembly in September, 1947. 

Soviet Russia proposed to seat the Big Five on this 

fact-finding United Nations Special Committee on Pal- 

O w April 28, 1947, the Special Session of the Gen- 

48 

THE UNHOLY PARTITION OF THE HOLY LAND 

estine (UNSCOP), but the suggestion was rejected. The 

United States contended that the presence of the largest 

powers on the initial committee of inquiry would raise 

an “obstacle to a fair, impartial report.”’ So the Commit- 

tee was constituted of eleven smaller nations (Australia, 

Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, India, Iran, Neth- 

erlands, Peru, Sweden, Uruguay and Yugoslavia), with 

Justice Emil Sandstrém of Sweden as chairman. 

Zionist pressures were incessantly exercised during 

the U.N. session and the Committee inquiry. The Chief 

Rabbis of Palestine jointly urged United Nations action 

favorable to the Jews. The C. I. O. pledged its support. 

The American Jewish Conference, the American Jew- 

ish Committee, Eleanor Roosevelt, the American Chris- 

tian Committee for Palestine and the Jewish National 

Council issued simultaneous statements in the same tenor. 

The reputedly non-Zionist American Jewish Commit- 

tee issued a statement that it “deplored” Ben Hecht’s 

blood-thirsty statements. Dr. Israel Goldstein, later to 

become the head of the American section of the Jewish 

Agency, declared that efforts to create a Jewish State 

would continue regardless of what the United Nations 

decided. Additional religious sanction to Jewish nation- 

alism was formally given by the Rabbinical Council of 

America, the organization of conservative rabbis. The 

Palestine Economic Corporation, a private American 

Company, added the business touch by announcing that 

the Negeb desert could be irrigated within one year. 

The Nation magazine associates, charging that the Arabs 

had been Axis aides, urged the General Assembly to 

establish two independent States in Palestine. Henry 

Wallace and the New Republic ran advertisements ap- 

pealing for funds to aid Palestine terrorists. 

Shortly after the Committee of inquiry arrived in Pal- 

49 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

estine, the case of S.S. “Exodus, ’47” seemed to black 

out all other Palestine news. From the moment this old 

(renamed) Chesapeake Bay excursion boat had sailed 

from the French port of Séte, there was no question of 

what would happen: she carried illegal immigrants who 

would be intercepted by the British. But the Jewish na- 

tionalists had sagely mounted the props, brought in the 

players and solicited a world audience. If anyone was ul- 

timately surprised, it can only have been the refugees 

whose misery was being exploited. They, at least, were 

really hoping to gain a haven. 

As in the previous instances of the “Patria” (in 1940) 

and the “Struma” (in 1942), the British law required 

the detention of illegal immigrants. But the “Exodus” 

passengers were not simply interned in Cyprus (the es- 

tablished routine in most previous cases of the kind). 

They were bodily removed from the “Exodus” to three 

British transports, after a three-hour battle in which 

three persons were killed and 217 injured. There was 

no movie house in the United States that did not carry 

a newsreel shot of those distraught faces on “that long 

voyage home.” The haven offered by the French Gov- 

ernment was rejected by the refugees whom the British 

finally landed at Hamburg—not before a few swastikas, 

painted over the boat’s Union Jack, and a hunger strike 

had made additional frontpage headlines. 

The trip of the “Exodus” paid immediate dividends 

of almost insane Anglophobia. Swastikas were painted 

on British consulates in New York City and elsewhere. 

The garrotted bodies of the two British sergeants were 

found hanging near Nathanya’ (named after one of 

its benefactors, the American philanthropist, Nathan 

Straus). But Judge Joseph Proskauer, head of the Amer- 

ican Jewish Committee, attributed this Irgun action to 

50 

THE UNHOLY PARTITION OF THE HOLY LAND 

the British White Paper of 1939, while Rabbi Silver 

stated it had been provoked by the British. 

There was only one small Jewish voice that sounded 

out above all that physical and moral horror. While 

everyone else fell in line with ugliness, the conscience of 

Judaic ethics found expression alone through Dr. Judah 

L. Magnes, the President of the Hebrew University in 

Palestine. Dr. Magnes, as he had proved throughout his 

entire venerable life, was seeking, not political power, 

but a solution to a difficult and complex problem. He 

pleaded for a bi-national State that would not divide 

Palestine and would reconcile both nationalisms. The 

regenerated Jerusalem for which he prayed was to be 

gained only through “understanding and cooperation 

between Jew and Arab,” never through a “moratorium 

on morality.” 

In opening the twenty-third year of the University, 

Dr. Magnes referred to “Zionist Totalitarianism” which 

is trying to bring “the entire Jewish people under its in- 

fluence by force and violence. I have not yet seen the 

dissidents called by their rightful names: Killers—bru- 

talized men and women.” “All Jews in America,” he 

added, “‘share in the guilt, even those not in accord with 

the activities of this new pagan leadership, but who sit 

at ease with folded hands. . . . If we raise the alarm, we 

do so with muffled voices. If our voices be raised, it is 

because of anxiety for the national discipline, not for 

anxiety concerning discipline to the spirit of Israel and 

the timeless values of Israel’s tradition.” 

Not too long afterwards, Dr. Magnes came to the 

United States—never again to return to his beloved Jeru- 

salem. He who had done so much to build Palestine, died 

in virtual exile: his family and friends did not permit 

him to run the risk of a Zionist terrorist’s bullet. 

51 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

Judah Magnes’ commentary on the accomplishments 

of these terrorists will never be forgotten: “We had al- 

ways thought that Zionism would diminish anti-Semitism 

in the world. We are witness to the opposite.” And in- 

deed, in England, where there never had been even social 

discrimination against British Jewry, prejudice flared. 

Anti-Jewish outbreaks rose with the succession of British 

casualties in Palestine. The police were forced to guard 

British synagogues. Three British police were killed by 

a bomb in London. 

An article in the U. S. magazine on Jewish affairs 

Commentary (May 1947), entitled “British Jews in 

Heavy Weather,” squarely faced the facts: British opin- 

ion was “hardening not only against the Jews of Pales- 

tine, but also against the Jews of Britain, who are felt, 

inevitably, to be in some kind of sympathy with these 

foreigners who are shooting British Tommies in cold 

blood... . The man-in-the-street cannot be expected to 

analyze all the facts; and while no violent reaction has 

yet occurred, it is quite certain that anti-Jewish sentiment 

is being stored up, with great potential danger to the 

Jewish community of Britain unless a satisfactory solu- 

tion can quickly be found.” 

It was in this sickening atmosphere, and against this 

background, that the United Nations Special Commit- 

tee On Palestine (UNSCOP) conducted its inquiry and 

reported its findings to the Second Session of the Gen- 

eral Assembly. Between May 26th and August 31st, the 

day on which its report was signed, the Committee had 

held sixteen public and thirty-six private meetings at 

Lake Success, Jerusalem, Beirut and Geneva. Oral and 

written testimony had been received from governments, 

political organizations, religious bodies and individuals. 

The Committee was unable to present unanimous 

52 

THE UNHOLY PARTITION OF THE HOLY LAND 

findings. A majority (Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guate- 

mala, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden and Uruguay) pro- 

posed partition of Palestine. A minority (India, Yugo- 

slavia and Iran) suggested a single state with a federal 

structure. Australia supported neither plan: her repre- 

sentative on the Committee, John D. L. Hood, con- 

tended that a committee of inquiry ought to present any 

suggestions in a form which did not prejudice judgment 

by the General Assembly—and this principle, he felt, 

had been violated by both sides in the Committee. 

On September 3, 1947, the General Assembly desig- 

nated an Ad Hoc Committee to consider the two sug- 

gestions. All member states of the U. N. were represented 

on this Ad Hoc Committee which elected the Australian 

Minister for Foreign Affairs, Herbert V. Evatt, its 

chairman. The new Committee held thirty-four meet- 

ings between September 25 and November 25, 1947. 

The Jewish Agency and the Arab Higher Committee 

were given an additional opportunity to be heard. The 

majority (partition) report was mainly defended by Gar- 

cia Granados of Guatemala and Rodriguez Fabregat of 

Uruguay, whose arguments were astonishingly replete 

with Zionist philosophy, data and symbols. 

These two South American diplomats refused to join 

in an otherwise unanimous Committee recommendation 

that “it be accepted as incontrovertible that any solution 

for Palestine cannot be considered as a solution of the 

Jewish problem in general,” a provision denounced by 

the Jewish Agency spokesman as “unintelligible.” Gra- 

nados later wrote a book, The Birth of Israel: The drama 

as I saw it, widely publicized and distributed by Zionists. 

Both he and Fabregat have lectured for Zionist groups, 

and in Israel today there are streets bearing their names, 

an honor these diplomats undoubtedly earned. 

53 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

The United Kingdom representative, Arthur Creech- 

Jones, clarified at the outset that his Government had 

no intention of implementing any U. N. plan with Brit- 

ish forces unless both sides to the contention accepted 

the plan. In the face of their already tremendous losses, 

in pounds as well as manpower, they’d “had it.” The 

British stand placed an even greater responsibility on the 

other delegates: they had to arrive at some solution 

which could be implemented and would not further up- 

set the disturbed peace. But while the delegates recog- 

nized the limited power of the U. N. to enforce a recom- 

mendation, and the grave lack of authority once the Brit- 

ish withdrew, they refused to be unduly deterred. The 

United States representative, Herschel Johnson, said 

something about a recruited force of volunteers to carry 

out the partition decision. But if the implication was that 

his country was in any frame of mind to dispatch armed 

volunteers, it was obviously an insincere and politically 

gauged utterance. 

Sir Mohammed Zafrullah Khan, Foreign Minister of 

Pakistan, bore the brunt of the Arab fight against par- 

tition. He emphasized that the right of Palestine’s 1,200,- 

ooo Arabs to choose the form of government under 

which they wished to live was guaranteed by the Charter 

of the United Nations. The United Nations could ef- 

fectively prescribe, Sir Mohammed pointed out, the con- 

ditions which would secure for the country’s 625,000 

Jews complete religious, linguistic, educational and so- 

cial freedom within the independent state of Palestine.’ 

But the U. N. could hardly prescribe more. 

The partitionists, influenced by the majority report 

and the Jewish Agency’s brilliant argumentation pre- 

sented by Rabbi Silver and Professor Weizmann, were 

54 

THE UNHOLY PARTITION OF THE HOLY LAND 

not satisfied with such a solution. The international com- 

mitments with regard to the Jewish National Home, as 

provided in the Mandate, and the religio-historic ties 

of the Jewish people with Palestine were held strong 

enough to override all Arab objections. 

One of the main props of the partition concept was 

the envisaged economic union between the Jewish and 

Arab States. The majority report had made that union 

an essential part of its final recommendations; and the 

plan adopted by the General Assembly of the United 

Nations in November, 1947, was not just for Partition, 

but for Partition with Economic Union. For no less than 

60 per cent of Palestine’s best territory and half a million 

of its inhabitants had been placed under the rule of one 

third of the people; consequently, at least the security 

of the Arabs was to be safeguarded through an economic 

union with that viable part of Palestine, under a Joint 

Economic Board. Even Mr. Shertok of the Jewish 

Agency stressed in his testimony the importance of the 

“closest economic ties between the states”: the viability 

of both states was to depend on their economic oneness. 

But the very moment partition was resolved, this major 

justification for the U. N. surgery was completely for- 

gotten. 

The two working subcommittees of the Ad Hoc Com- 

mittee were peculiarly constituted. For some inexplicable 

reason, Chairman Evatt refused to permit neutral dele- 

gates on these drafting committees, so that each subcom- 

mittee represented one monolithic and extreme view. No 

real contact between the two subcommittees was estab- 

lished. The so-called Conciliation group, headed by the 

Chairman himself, did nothing except write a letter to 

Prince Feisal of Arabia suggesting a meeting between His 

55 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

Excellency and the U.S. Secretary of State, George 

Marshall. (Feisal agreed to such a meeting, but nothing 

further was heard of the proposal.) 

According to the plan for partition with economic 

union, Jerusalem was to be an international city under 

United Nations rule. The only change requested by the 

Jewish Agency was the deletion of a clause that the gov- 

ernor of the city could “neither bea Jew nor an Arab,” on 

the grounds that this could be discriminatory: the word 

‘‘Jew,” it was pointed out, had both an ethnic and reli- 

gious connotation, whereas the use of the word “Arab” 

would permit a non-Arab Moslem to become governor. 

Finally, in November 1947, everybody was talked out 

and the Ad Hoc Committee started voting. It first turned 

to the resolutions of Subcommittee Two which con- 

tained the Arab viewpoint. By a vote of 25 to 18, with 11 

abstentions, the full Committee rejected the proposal that 

six questions concerning the Balfour Declaration and the 

Mandate be submitted to the International Court of 

Justice. By the even closer vote of 21 to 20 the Ad Hoc 

Committee dismissed the question of the competency of 

the U.N. to enforce, or recommend the enforcement of, 

partition without the consent of the majority of the 

people of Palestine. On both these issues Argentina, 

Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Greece, Haiti, Liberia and 

India supported the Arab states. 

The Committee then adopted resolutions which re- 

quested all members of the United Nations to take back 

those Jewish refugees and Displaced Persons who be- 

longed to them and desired repatriation, and to absorb 

others in proportion to the area and economic resources 

of each country. These were only recommendations, but 

they advocated absorption of refugees in countries other 

56 

THE UNHOLY PARTITION OF THE HOLY LAND 

than in Palestine. So the United States voted against these 

resolutions. 

On the next vote, which would have implemented 

these resolutions with a quota resettlement scheme, parti- 

tion proponents defeated the idea 18 to 15. The establish- 

ment of a unitary Palestine was voted down 29 to 12 with 

14 abstentions. The opposition consisted of the seven 

Arab states, Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan, Liberia and 

Cuba. At the concluding meeting, the partition plan itself 

easily passed by a vote of 25 to 13 with 17 abstentions. On 

every single resolution considered by the Committee, the 

United States and the Soviet Union had voted together. 

But despite that suspect harmony, the partition plan 

going before the General Assembly was actually a mi- 

nority proposal. A majority of 32 had either voted nay, 

or abstained, or were absent (including three of the Big 

Five—France, China, and the United Kingdom). 

The work of eighteen commissions and investigations 

over a span of 25 years, and of the United Nations for 

seven months, was nearing completion. The scene shifted 

from Lake Success, Long Island, to Flushing Meadows, 

Queens, where the partition proponents would have to 

meet their most formidable difficulty: while a bare 

majority sufficed in Committee voting, a two-thirds ma- 

jority was needed in the General Assembly. And judging 

by the last vote in the Ad Hoc Committee, partition was 

one vote short of passage, if delegations did not change 

their mind. And the Philippine delegates, who had ab- 

sented themselves on all Committee ballots, announced 

they still had received no instructions. 

The General Assembly heard thirty-odd speakers. 

With the exception of the two gentlemen from South 

America, Granados and Fabregat, who presented the 

57 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

straight Jewish Agency line, and the delegates of the 

Soviet Union and the United Sure the advocates of par- 

tition were full of doubts, regret and even apologies. 

The delegate from Sweden, the country which had 

headed the Special Committee of Inquiry, admitted that 

the plan “has its weak sides and some dangerous omis- 

sions,”* but that Sweden was supporting partition be- 

cause, if no decision were taken, this would have still 

more serious consequences. 

The Canadian speaker supported the partition plan on 

the grounds that it was the “best of four unattractive and 

difficult alternatives.”* He stated that the establishment 

of a well-rooted community of nearly 700,000 Jews in 

Palestine, the investment of $600,000,000 and “the devo- 

tion on the part of Jews all over the world to the idea of 

a Jewish national home in a country which, once at least, 

was a Jewish land,” made the Palestine problem sui 

generis and unique; and that this set of circumstances 

constituted a vital flaw in the otherwise unanswerable 

Arab case. Then he added: “We support the plan with 

heavy hearts and many misgivings.” 

New Zealand’s Ambassador talked of the “grave in- 

adequacies of the present proposal,”® while Belgium’s 

Foreign Minister Van Langenhove said this of the parti- 

tion plan: “We are not certain that it is completely just; 

we doubt whether it is practical; and we are afraid that it 

involves great risks. .. . But what is the alternative? The 

solution proposed or no solution at all; that is to say, still 

more serious troubles, if not utter chaos. We do not want 

to assume the responsibility for that, either by a negative 

vote or even by an abstention. That is why we are re- 

signed to voting with the majority.”” Of all delegates 

heard in this discussion, the Belgian alone hit at the very 

58 

- 

THE UNHOLY PARTITION OF THE HOLY LAND 

idea of Zionist segregation: “The Palestinian question is 

particularly disturbing for the Belgians. They have to 

make an effort to understand Zionism. The national home 

of our Jewish patriots is in Belgium. No one has treated 

them in such a way as to make them want to find another 

home in Palestine.”* But still, Belgium voted for partition. 

Herschel Johnson for the United States tried to con- 

tend that this was not partition in reality, because of the 

provisions for economic union and for the international- 

ization of Jerusalem. He naively envisaged that the 

boundary between the two new states “will be as friendly 

as the boundary which runs for three thousand miles 

between Canada and the United States.’”® 

As in the Ad Hoc Committee, the oratory of Zafrullah 

Khan dominated the debate. He advised the Western 

powers to “remember that you may need friends tomor- 

row, that you may need allies in the Middle East. I beg of 

you not to ruin and blast your credit in those lands.” He 

questioned the viability of the proposed Jewish State and 

the sincerity of the U.S. and the Western nations. They 

who gave lip service to humanitarian principles, he 

pointed out, were at the same time closing their doors to 

the “homeless Jew,” and yet insisted on Arab Palestine 

providing not only “a shelter, a refuge but also a State so 

that he (‘the homeless Jew’) shall rule over the Arab.” 

Sardonically, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister referred to the 

proposal that unrepatriated Displaced Persons be allo- 

cated to Member States in accordance with their capacity 

to receive such refugees: “Australia, an overpopulated 

small country with congested areas says no, no, no; Can- 

ada, equally congested and overpopulated, says no; the 

United States, a great humanitarian country, a small area, 

with small resources, says no. This is their contribution to 

59 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

the humanitarian principle. But they state: let them go 

into Palestine, where there are vast areas, a large economy 

and no trouble; they can easily be taken in there.” 

The final vote was scheduled for November 26, fol- 

lowing a night session at which the debate was to be 

concluded. But that night session was cancelled, and the 

balloting called off, after the Zionists had ascertained that 

they lacked positive assurance of the necessary two thirds. 

The move bor adjournment skimmed through by a vote 

of 24 to 21. November 27 was Thanksgiving Day, so 

that the delay provided forty-eight additional hours in 

which to lobby. And November 27, 1947, may have been 

restful Turkey Day for the nation, but the United Na- 

tions quarters resembled the smoke-filled room of the 

most hectic National Convention. As a leading Zionist 

later wrote: “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.””® 

General Carlos Romulo announced that the Philip- 

pine delegation, who had abstained from voting in the 

Ad Hoc Committee, had at last received word from 

home. The decision: not to vote in favor of partition. 

To add to the Zionists’ shock, the General at the same 

time gave one of the most effective speeches against par- 

tition. He passionately defended the inviolable “primor- 

dial rights of a people to determine their political future 

and to preserve the territorial integrity of their native 

land... . As I pronounce these words ‘without distinc- 

tion as to race, sex, language or religion,’ I think of our 

own United Nations charter; for these are words which 

occur in that instrument over and over again. And the 

reason is simple; they look forward rather than back- 

ward. ... We cannot believe that the majority of this 

General Assembly would prefer a reversal of this course. 

60 

THE UNHOLY PARTITION OF THE HOLY LAND 

We cannot believe that it would sanction a solution to 

the problem of Palestine that would turn us back on 

the road to the dangerous principles of racial exclusive- 

ness and to the archaic documents of theocratic govern- 

ments. ... The problem of the displaced European Jews 

is susceptible of a solution other than through the estab- 

lishment of an independent Jewish state in Palestine.” 

To compound the Zionist consternation, Haiti’s rep- 

resentative, Antonio Vieux, had told the General As- 

sembly hate ‘the principle of sovereignty of states, which 

is a particular means of defense for small nations, was 

in opposition to the adoption of the special Committee’ s 

plan,” and that Haiti, therefore, would vote in the nega- 

tive. But Haiti, like thie Philippines, was not impervious 

to American influence. Clearly, utmost pressures had 

now to be applied. 

And so, while Macy’s Thanksgiving parade was pro- 

ceeding up New York’s Great White Way, the Siamese 

Embassy in Washington got word that the credentials 

of the delegate who had voted against partition in the 

Ad Hoc Committee had been cancelled. And new cre- 

dentials would not be forthcoming in time. Consequent- 

ly, Siam’s negative vote was simply invalidated in this 

“but-for-the-loss-of-a-shoe” story of the partition of 

Palestine. 

Greece, too, had made known that she would join 

the opposition to the American-Soviet bloc. It was also 

considered likely that Liberia, who in previous tests had 

either abstained or voted with the Arab states would vote 

in the negative. The antipartitionists could count, even 

after the magic disappearance of Siam, on fifteen or six- 

teen negative votes; and this would have necessitated the 

mobilization of thirty or thirty-two votes for partition. 

At this crucial moment the partition forces were able 

61 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

to announce that Belgium, the Netherlands and New 

Zealand would vote a reluctant yes, and that Luxembourg 

was swaying in the same direction. These countries had 

previously abstained. The ever-absent Paraguay was still 

in neither corner, but her delegate was being closeted 

in secret conferences. 

The General Assembly reconvened on Friday, No- 

vember 28, and first listened to a few final speeches. Co- 

lombia’s Dr. Lopez made a final bid for a peaceful so- 

lution by moving that the Ad Hoc Committee be re- 

convened and authorized to attempt conciliation for an- 

other three months. French Ambassador Parodi offered 

a substitute motion for a twenty-four hour adjournment. 

Venezuela, Luxembourg and Denmark supported the 

French proposal enthusiastically, in a spirit of “Where 

there is life, there is hope,” and the Assembly was ad- 

journed by a 25 to 15 vote. It is difficult to establish in 

whose interest this additional breather was proposed: 

supporters and opponents of partition were voting on 

both sides. But whatever the intention, the delay yielded 

satisfactory results for the partition forces. 

On the morning of November 29, Dr. Oswaldo Aranha 

of Brazil, Assembly President, told reporters he was 

convinced that a two-thirds majority would be obtained 

for the majority report. As the session opened, the Zion- 

ists confidently announced partition was the absolute 

irreducible minimum, while the Arabs meekly indicated 

they might accept a cantonal state such as the Minority 

UNSCOP-Report had recommended. 

After a few parliamentary maneuvers, the vote was 

taken and partition was decreed by 33 to 13 with 10 

abstentions and 1 absent. Luxembourg voted aye. That 

Liberia should have shifted was astonishing enough; but 

truly sensational were the affirmative votes of Haiti and 

62 

THE UNHOLY PARTITION OF THE HOLY LAND 

the Philippines who only 24 hours before had been fierce- 

ly attacking the majority proposal. 

When the vote was announced, a rabbi cried ecstat- 

ically: “This was the day the Lord hath made. Let us 

rejoice in it and be glad.” Captain Bernard Marks, of the 

S.S. “Exodus, 1947,” burned a copy of the British Man- 

date to the delight of a jubilant crowd. 

The New York Times commented editorially: 

“Doubts of the wisdom of erecting a political state on 

the basis of a religious faith must yield to the fact of a 

decision made by a necessary two-thirds vote.” A few 

editors looked farther ahead and confessed to an appre- 

hension that “the outcome may wreck the political world 

as it stands.”’” 

In the tumult and turbulence of the moment, the dec- 

larations of the Arab states that they would not be bound 

by the decision of the U. N. were scarcely noticed. But 

the breach between the West and the Arab-Moslem 

world had commenced. Its repercussion was to be tur- 

moil in the Middle East. From Marrakech in Morocco 

to Karachi in Pakistan, American prestige, together with 

that of her allies, has sunk to its lowest ebb in history. 

Clearly, the two-thirds majority in favor of partition 

did not express the unmistakable sentiment of the United 

Nations. And yet, just as clearly, that decisive two-thirds 

majority was somehow obtained. How? What had been 

the pressure? 

While the final vote was still in doubt, New York’s 

Congressman Emanuel Celler attacked the U. S. delega- 

tion to the U. N. for having been restrained by the State 

Department, specifically by Under-Secretary Robert 

Lovett. And Zionist Celler’s strange complaint was jus- 

tified: neither the U. S. permanent delegation to the 

U.N. nor the State Department had directly exerted un- 

63 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

due pressures on any member of the United Nations. 

The compulsion and coercion came in much more re- 

fined ways. 

While Senator Warren Austin, the Head of the U. S. 

delegation to the U. N., could express his sincere grati- 

tude that at least the American anti-Zionists were pre- 

senting their views to foreign delegates exclusively 

through the proper channels of their own Government, 

the Zionists reached boldly into the chancelleries of for 

eign countries. “Operation Partition” was executed by 

a strategy board of immense international influence 

whose three American master minds were New York’s 

Judge Joseph Proskauer, head of the American Jewish 

Committee, Washington economist Robert Nathan, and 

White House Assistant “for minority affairs,’ David 

Niles. 

These three, speaking to foreign governments and 

diplomats always as “‘mere private citizens,” were men 

of impressively good connections in public affairs. Rob- 

ert Nathan, for instance, knew precisely how to weaken 

Liberia’s objections to partition. The Liberian delegate, 

Mr. Dennis, was simply told that Nathan would go after 

his good friend Stettinius, former Secretary of State, 

who at that time was attending to his enormous business 

interests in Liberia. The Liberian diplomat considered 

this to be attempted intimidation and so reported to the 

Department of State. Finally, however, by some strange 

coincidence, Liberia’s vote was cast in favor of partition. 

And formed hints to various South American dele- 

gates that their vote for partition would greatly increase 

the chances of a Pan-American Road project, then under 

consideration, seem to have improved traflic in the Gen- 

eral Assembly. 

Eleanor Roosevelt, too, inexhaustibly worked on the 

64 

THE UNHOLY PARTITION OF THE HOLY LAND 

many friends she had among the foreign delegates to 

the U. N. And she was incessantly prodding her hus- 

band’s heir, Harry S. Truman, to put pressure on the 

State Department, whose officers were properly limiting 

their efforts to peaceful debates with foreign delegates. 

When partition prospects looked particularly grim, 

Bernard Baruch was prevailed upon to talk with the 

French who could not afford to lose Interim Marshall- 

Plan Aid. Other important Americans “talked” to other 

countries such as Haiti, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Para- 

guay, and Luxembourg, all dependent on the United 

States. Drew Pearson, an old friend of the Zionists, told 

in his “Merry-Go-Round” column how Adolph Berle, 

legal adviser to the Haitian Government, “talked” on 

the phone to Haiti’s President, and how Harvey Fire- 

stone, owner of vast rubber plantations in Liberia, 

“talked” with that government. 

In discussing the partition vote at a Cabinet luncheon 

on December 1, 1947, Robert Lovett said that “never 

in his life had he been subjected to as much pressure as 

he had in three days beginning Thursday morning and 

ending Saturday night. Herbert Bayard Swope and Rob- 

ert Nathan were amongst those who had opportuned 

him.”** The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, ac- 

cording to Lovett, made use of its concession on Liberia 

and had transmitted “a message to their representative 

there, directing him to bring pressure on the Liberian 

Government to vote in favor of Partition.” Lovett re- 

marked that Jewish zeal was so intense that it ‘“‘almost 

resulted in defeating the objectives” sought. 

And no pressure was sadder, or more cynical, than 

that put on the Philippines. General Romulo left the 

United States shortly after delivering his fiery speech 

against partition. Ambassador Elizalde had spoken by 

65 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

telephone to President Roxas and told him of the many 

pressures to which Romulo and the delegation had been 

subjected. The Ambassador’s own view was that, though 

partition was not a wise move, the United States was 

determined on partition. It would be foolish to vote 

against a policy so ardently desired by the U. S. Admin- 

istration at a time when seven bills were pending in the 

U. S. Congress in which the islands had a tremendous 

stake. The Ambassador and President Roxas agreed (this 

was all subsequently reported in a lengthy cable from 

the U. S. Ambassador in Manila to the State Depart- 

ment) that the Philippines must not risk the antagonism 

of the United States when support could be gained so 

easily by a proper vote on Palestine. A joint telegram 

from twenty-six pro-Zionist U.S. Senators, drafted by 

New York’s Robert F. Wagner, was a particularly im- 

portant factor in changing the Philippine vote. 

That senatorial telegram, sent to twelve other U. N. 

delegations, changed four votes to yes, and seven votes 

from nay to abstention. Only Greece risked antagoniz- 

ing the United States Senate, and stuck to no. 

Sir Mohammed Zafrullah Khan was speaking for many 

of his fellow U. N. delegates when he declared in a post- 

vote statement: “In the words of the greatest American 

‘We have striven to do the right as God gives us to see 

the right.’ We did succeed in persuading a sufficient 

number of our fellow representatives to see the right 

as we saw it, but they were not permitted to stand by 

the right as they saw it... . We entertain no sense of 

grievance against those of our friends and fellow repre- 

sentatives who have been compelled under heavy pres- 

sure to change sides and to cast their votes in support 

of a proposal the justice and fairness of which do not 

commend themselves to them. Our feeling for them is 

66 

g 

THE UNHOLY PARTITION OF THE HOLY LAND 

one of sympathy that they should have been placed in 

a position of such embarrassment between their judg- 

ment and conscience, on the one side, and the pressure 

to which they and their Governments were being sub- 

jected, on the other.”* 

A few months later, Dean Rusk, then Director of the 

State Department’s Office of United Nations Affairs and 

now President of the Rockefeller Foundation, admitted 

to a meeting of representatives of national organizations 

that, while the U. S. “never exerted pressure on coun- 

tries of the U. N. in behalf of one side or another, cer- 

tain unauthorized officials and private persons violated 

propriety and went beyond the law” to exert such pres- 

sure. As a result, Mr. Rusk pointed out, partition was 

“construed as an American Plan” in the eyes of certain 

countries, and the decision was robbed of whatever 

moral force it might otherwise have had. 

In many instances, no pressure was necessary. Certain 

delegates quite consciously permitted moral considera- 

tions to override the legal. Through these diplomatic 

representatives, Christendom was determined to expiate 

what it recognized as the long persecution of the Jewish 

people. Not a few were influenced by their upbringing 

in the Old ‘Testament. There was a strong appeal in 

helping the “return to Zion” and a very romantic excite- 

ment in recreating a State which had existed 2000 years 

ago. This biblical sentimentality, a factor in the thinking 

of Far] Balfour and General Smuts, accounts for the 

manner in which such men as Carl Berendsen of New 

Zealand, and other astute students of international law, 

permitted their grave misgivings to be allayed. 

“The historical connection of the Jewish people with 

Palestine,” words which first appeared in the preamble 

of the League’s Mandate in 1922, were a hypnotizing 

67 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

phrase in the battle for partition. Rabbi Silver, in his 

masterful presentation to the Ad Hoc Committee, placed 

great emphasis on this phrase and its counterpart, “re- 

constituting their national home.” This wording, re- 

jected in the Balfour Declaration, bolstered the claim to 

the continuity of the “Jewish people.” The majority 

of the United Nations Assembly anxiously grabbed such 

ringing statements, rather than inquire into the factual 

support for the contention of Jewish historical continu- 

ity. It seemed to matter little that the term “‘a national 

home in Palestine” —used, but never defined, in the Bal- 

four Declaration and the Mandate—was obviously not 

equivalent to “the Jewish State in Palestine” (which 

words should have been employed had that been the 

intended meaning). Nor did it make any difference that, 

whatever this promise to the Zionists implied, an in- 

consistent promise had been made to the Arabs even 

earlier. 

The Zionist apathy toward the Stratton Displaced 

Persons Bill, and Zionist opposition to the negotiations 

of the Freeland Organization for the transfer of 30,000 

Jewish refugees to Netherlands Guiana, in South Amer- 

ica, had illuminated the real motivation of Zionist 

leadership. But the alliance of American- and Soviet- 

dominated delegations acted as if they were supporting 

Zionism for ‘‘humanitarian” reasons. 

These diplomats were not unaware that the “national 

home in Palestine” did not require partition: under a 

British mandate, a desert had been made to bloom, and 

clean new cities had azisen out of age-old sand dunes, 

wonders that had come to pass while only a few fanatics 

were talking of statehood. 

The 600,000 Palestinians, and the 200,000 additional 

68 

THE UNHOLY PARTITION OF THE HOLY LAND 

Jewish Displaced Persons, could have been guaranteed 

adequate protection under a bi-national unitary state, 

or a federal state such as Switzerland. Within the Swiss 

Republic, four diverse ethnic groups, speaking four dif- 

ferent languages, live in separate cantons, are all afforded 

equal rights, and are all harmonious parts of the same 

political entity. If Swiss of Italian, French and Germanic 

origin could live peacefully side by side, through two 

world wars within the framework of their republic, 

Arab and Jew, who both speak a Semitic tongue, could 

have done likewise. 

So long as it appeared that statehood was demanded 

by “all Jews,” the conscience of Christendom could feel 

that by creating Israel, all sins committed against Jewry 

could be fully expiated. The Ambassadors of Argentine, 

Colombia, Peru, and Norway admitted in private con- 

versations with the author that a manifestation of real 

Jewish opposition to Zionism would have gone a long 

way towards weakening the plea. Ambassador Muniz, 

of Brazil, and many other delegates felt that the Zionist 

movement was a “regression from a universal spiritual 

force to a national political faction,” and that the estab- 

lishment of the Jewish State might “encourage the tend- 

ency toward non-integration shown by those of Jewish 

faith in my country” (as the Peruvian Ambassador to 

the United Nations put it). But these were arguments 

that could not be effectively advanced by “non-Jews.” 

Such doubts could have been turned into effective con- 

viction only by a militant Jewish opposition to partition. 

Instead—fearful lest they emulate the pressure tactics 

of the nationalists which they were condemning—the 

anti-Zionist followers of Lessing Rosenwald kept their 

case practically to themselves. They submitted a single 

69 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

lengthy memorandum which, of course, soon disap- 

peared among the thousands of pieces of paper presented 

to the United Nations. 

As to the U. S. pro-Zionist pressure lobby, Weizmann 

himself found words of the highest praise for the lobby- 

ing assistance given to him, not only by Zionist leaders 

and the non-Zionist American Jewish Committee, but 

by Bernard Baruch and Herbert Bayard Swope. Yet 

these two gentlemen scarcely fit into the picture. Baruch 

enjoyed then—as he does today—the nation’s undivided 

confidence, and could gain little additional prestige, 

while risking a great deal. He was far removed from 

Jewish organizational life. Churchill had told Weizmann 

in 1944 that his “friend Bernard” was opposed to Jewish 

statehood. And the adviser to Presidents had publicly 

declared, only the year before the U. N. debate, that 

he was no political Zionist. Baruch’s parents worshipped 

as Jews, but he does not now practice the Jewish faith. 

Had he, in his own way (as had nations), found expiation 

in the Palestine controversy? Was his conscience upset 

by a guilt feeling that he had deserted the faith of his 

forefathers? 

One week before the U. N. vote was taken, Weizmann 

visited President Truman to reinforce the Zionist posi- 

tion and to make sure that the Bay of Akaba, gateway to 

the Indian Ocean, was not sliced away from the “Jewish 

State.” Close contact had been maintained at all times 

between the White House and the Zionists through 

David Niles and Edward Jacobson, the President’s old 

Kansas City business partner, to whom the Israeli chief- 

tain acknowledged a deep debt of gratitude. Atthe U.N., 

just as Ambassador Herschel Johnson and Major General 

John H. Hilldring were giving Jewish Agency repre- 

sentatives some sad news concerning Akaba Bay, the 

790 

THE UNHOLY PARTITION OF THE HOLY LAND 

telephone rang. It was the President, conveying instruc- 

tions that the Bay be handled exactly as Weizmann de- 

sired.”® 

The partitioning of Palestine was the first and only 

major issue on which the U. S. and the U. S. S. R. had 

worked together in the closest harmony since the forma- 

tion of the United Nations. This fact alone should have 

cautioned against the policy the United States was pur- 

suing. But like the Venezuelan delegate, Sr. Zuloaga, 

who naively declared that this Russian-American amity 

on Palestine was “the most important historical event in 

the life of the U. N.,” the U. S. Government demon- 

strated once more a complete lack of comprehension of 

Communist tactics. Why was the Kremlin permitting, 

and even encouraging, the emigration of Jewish refu- 

gees to Israel from satellite countries?’ Why would the 

Kremlin allow the concentration of 30,000 immigrants 

for Palestine in Black Sea ports (as reported by the New 

York Times on October 15, 1947) if this did not some- 

how serve Soviet ends and fit into their plans for the 

Middle East? These and other implications of Soviet 

pro-Zionism were stressed in reports sent home by U. S. 

diplomatic representatives in the field, but their warn- 

ings remained completely ignored in Washington. 

Soviet Russia had pressed the United Nations for the 

earliest possible withdrawal of the Mandatory Power, 

and for obvious reasons: the earlier the evacuation, the 

sooner the collapse of law and authority; and the greater 

the chaos in the interim period between the two admin- 

istrations, the better the chances for Communist schem- 

ing in the area. January 1, 1948, was the date advanced 

by the Soviet Union for British departure but she was 

finally satisfied with May 15."7 

Why did no one in America pay attention to the trans- 

71 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

parent objectives of the pro-Zionist Soviet gambit? Be- 

cause no portion of the globe has been concealed from 

American view by a thicker veil of ignorance and mis- 

information than the Middle East. Americans have some 

knowledge of Europe and even of the Orient. But the 

Middle East, Americans customarily envision as a land 

mass inhabited by glaucoma-ridden, shiftless Bedouins 

who neither could nor would ever be of importance to 

the United States. A powerful propaganda machine con- 

sciously nurtured the widespread misconception that 

basic needs of the people of this region could be sacri- 

ficed without jeopardy to the national security of the 

United States. And as there was, thus, no danger for 

the U. S. ina partition of Palestine, well-meaning Ameri- 

cans could afford making amends at the expense of those 

inconsequential Arabs, to the Jews who had suffered 

so many injustices. This was so obviously a most con- 

venient course to pursue that nobody wanted to be both- 

ered by the ominous Soviet policy. 

Yet Christian support of partition came also from less 

well-meaning sources. The Zionist position was wel- 

comed and accepted by some Americans because it 

seemed to vindicate their bias. The establishment of the 

new Jewish state seemed a good way of getting rid of 

the Jews in America. In this sense, Israel became the 

anti-Semite’s Mecca. The bolder the Zionist pressures, 

the stronger the ties between Israel and American Jewry, 

the broader the grin on the face of the American anti- 

Semite. His charges of a “nation within a nation,” of 

“the dual loyalties of Jews,” were now being given a 

grade of authenticity by the very objects of his spleen. 

To summarize, the United Nations dealt a severe blow 

to the prestige of international law and organization by 

its hasty, frivolous and arrogant treatment of the Pales- 

72 

THE UNHOLY PARTITION OF THE HOLY LAND 

tine question. The General Assembly turned down the 

only two reasonable suggestions—a referendum in Pal- 

estine and submission of the legal problems to the In- 

ternational Court of Justice. The Displaced Persons 

Problem was handled with outrageous thoughtlessness. 

For persons displaced by World War II, whatever their 

faith, were surely a responsibility of international wel- 

fare organizations—not pawns in a whimsical power play 

of Jewish nationalists. 

The nearly unanimous recommendation of the U.N. 

Special Committee, that no settlement of the Palestine 

problem could be considered a solution of the Jewish 

problem, was ignored. The U.N. flouted the protective 

injunction of the Balfour Declaration, the Mandate and 

the recommendations of the Anglo-American Commit- 

tee of Inquiry, that Jewish statehood was not to be 

granted so long as hostility existed between Jews and 

Arabs. It was under this same provision that Judah 

Magnes, Ahad Ha-am, Louis Brandeis and Albert Ein- 

stein had lent their support to varied cultural activities 

in the Holy Land. 

The United Nations tied the establishment of Jewish 

and Arab States to the acceptance of an economic union 

and the internationalization of Jerusalem. But six years 

after the fateful decision, there is no Arab Palestinian 

State; there is no economic union; there is no interna- 

tionalized city of Jerusalem; there are no boundaries; 

there is no peace and stability in the Holy Land. 

There is an independent State of Israel, deep in eco- 

nomic distress. There are armistice lines. There is a Holy 

City divided in two by a 50 foot strip of noman’s land. 

There are almost one million new refugees—Arabs, scat- 

tered throughout the Middle East, who have become 

dangerously infested with vermin and Communism. 

73 

CHAPTER IV 

A State is Born 

vember 29, 1947, confusion turned into pandemo- 

nium and bloodshed. Seventeen hundred persons 

were killed in Palestine during the first 100 days that 

followed the partition recommendation. 

The General Assembly had prescribed the “what” for 

Palestine but had not given the remotest idea as to the 

“how.” The Arabs abided by their pledge to ignore the 

U.N. decree, and were intransigent. The United King- 

dom stuck to its decision not to enforce any plan for 

Palestine that did not have the joint approval of the Jews 

and the Arabs. The United States kept optimistically 

hoping that the Jews and Arabs of Palestine would mi- 

raculously get together and arrive at some genuine agree- 

ment. Consequently, lawlessness in the Holy Land in- 

creased so much, and so fast, that some international ac- 

tion could no longer be evaded. The proponents of par- 

tition were urging armed intervention—if not by the 

United Nations, then by the United States alone. Mrs. 

Roosevelt, Sumner Welles, and Senators Herbert Leh- 

man and Elbert Thomas called for the use of force, while 

Senator Taft specifically suggested a Palestine Army. 

] N THE Holy Land, after the fatal U. N. vote of No- 

74 

A STATE IS BORN 

The U. N. Security Council was meeting at Lake 

Success when the American Ambassador to the United 

Nations, Warren Austin, went to Washington to confer 

with Secretary Marshall. On his return to Lake Success, 

Ambassador Austin expressed the view that the Council 

was not empowered by the Charter to enforce partition, 

and could act only if deciding that a breach of the peace 

had been committed in the Holy Land. The U.S. policy, 

it seemed, was to distinguish between permissible use 

of force to keep the peace and non-permissible force to 

compel partition—a strictly legalistic interpretation, ob- 

viously thought up to evade the decision which had to 

be faced. As an unofficial diplomatic observer caustically 

remarked, the United States was saying, “Let’s do noth- 

ing at once.” 

The new United States approach had been under dis- 

cussion in Washington for several weeks. A movement 

for a bipartisan policy on the Holy Land was reported 

underway, motivated by a growing military concern 

over the oil shortage and the political fear that Zionism 

would go to any length in enlisting the support of pro- 

Zionist groups in the U. S. For days before the Austin 

statement, United Nations headquarters had been seeth- 

ing with rumors about a new U. S. plan for a Palestine 

truce.’ The press of the nation kept reporting that the 

President was under great pressure from New York’s 

political leaders to take a stronger pro-Israel stand.” The 

normally Democratic 24th Congressional District in the 

Bronx, with a heavily Jewish population, had been car- 

ried by a Labor Party candidate, Leo Isacson, who ad- 

vocated repeal of the arms embargo and the dispatch of 

U. S. troops to enforce the partition. Once more, the 

White House was caught between the machine bosses 

who wanted “the Jewish Vote” and the State Depart- 

75 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

ment that wanted to avoid both bloodshed in Palestine 

and the necessity of committing U. S. troops. President 

Truman was very mindful of public objections to a uni- 

lateral military American commitment in Palestine and 

perfectly aware of the fact that a U. N. intervention 

would require an international force with Soviet par- 

ticipation. His National Security Council and his De- 

fense Department were vigorously opposed to any step 

which would have opened the Middle East to Soviet 

military penetration under U. N. sanctions. Caught in 

such dilemmas, the Truman Administration picked on 

the extremely fine point of “legal limitations of permis- 

sible remedies.” 

The Big Five were split wide open. The British were 

neutral and remained aloof from the discussion. Soviet 

Russia was not dissatisfied with things as they were: chaos 

in Palestine was the Soviets’ aim, and chaos they had. The 

French wished to bring about some kind of conciliation. 

The Chinese were demanding an immediate political- 

military truce and equal treatment of Jews and Arabs. 

Only the U. S. and the U.S. S. R. were willing to as- 

certain that a threat to peace existed in Palestine. Under 

these circumstances, the Security Council could not pos- 

sibly resolve economic sanctions or some other affirma- 

tive action to enforce an Arab-Zionist compromise: 

Seven votes were needed in the Council, but no propar- 

tition policy had ever aligned more than six. 

On March 19, 1948, Ambassador Austin called in the 

Security Council for suspension of all efforts towards 

partition, for a truce in Palestine and a special session of 

the General Assembly to approve a U. N. trusteeship 

for Palestine. This seeming change of U. S. policy was 

dictated by the total failure of the U. N. Commission 

on Palestine to secure order in Palestine. Of equal impor- 

76 

A STATE 1S BORN 

tance was, unquestionably, a report of the National Se- 

curity Council which warned that the Palestine turmoil 

was acutely endangering the security of the United 

States. A report of the Central Intelligence Agency 

stressed the strategic importance of the Middle East and 

its oil resources. ‘he President, who had just asked the 

nation to support the draft legislation, could not possibly 

ignore such military warnings. 

The shift of U. S. policy—from partition to trustee- 

ship—had been sudden. Only the day before, the United 

States was still supporting partition and had gone so far 

as to propose consultations of the great powers with the 

U.N. Military Staff Committee. There was talk, the 

next day, that Ambassador Austin had acted without di- 

rect knowledge of the White House. In point of fact, 

Austin’s statement had been sent to the White House for 

clearance and Robert McClintock, a top-ranking officer 

in the Department of State’s U. N. Liaison Division, was 

told by one of Truman’s assistants that it was O. K. Mc- 

Clintock noted on the statement that it had been cleared 

in the White House. 

But no sooner had Mr. Austin finished reading the 

statement of the new U.S. position to the Security Coun- 

cil than there began the conventional “bombardment” 

of the White House. The President immediately asked 

for the text. It was produced from a pile of papers on 

his desk. A member of the White House staff had taken 

for granted that, as no objection had been raised, it had 

been cleared. The State Department, accordingly, au- 

thorized the announcement of a vital change in U. S. 

olicy. 

i While Secretary Marshall issued a statement endors- 

ing trusteeship as the only way to prevent bloodshed, 

Democratic Congressman Arthur Klein, of Brooklyn, 

V7 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

labelled the move ‘“‘as the most terrible sellout of the 

common people since Munich,” and Republican Gover- 

nor Thomas E. Dewey of New York attacked the bun- 

gling of the administration. The President of the Zionist 

Organization of America, Dr. Neumann, threatened that 

any U. N. abandonment of partition would only revive 

Jewish claims to all of Palestine. The New York Times 

and other papers added to the confusion by disclosing 

that President Truman “would deliver a strong statement 

paving the way for the recognition of the Jewish state.” 

But Charles Ross, Presidential Press Secretary, retorted, 

“This is news to me.” Rumors and counterrumors flew 

as pressures and counterpressures were exerted. Senator 

Carl Hatch of New Mexico quoted the President as say- 

ing he was “casting aside politics and will do what is right 

without regard to political consequences.” Two days 

later, the President himself spoke up. He urged a tempo- 

rary trusteeship, but denied that the partition plan had 

been abandoned. 

This seemed to imply a retreat from the Austin dec- 

laration of a new U.S. policy. Ambassador Austin, Dean 

Rusk, and other spokesmen te the American U. N. dele- 

gation, re-echoed the Truman theme that the proposed 

trusteeship was not a substitute for the partition plan, 

but just a temporary measure to comply with the vacuum 

which must develop in Palestine upon the withdrawal 

of the British Mandatory Administration: Had not the 

majority report of UNSCOP, supporting partition, fore- 

seen an initial period of trusteeship unul an agreement 

could be reached between the Arabs and the Jews? But 

neither this explanation, nor any other voice that en- 

dorsed trusteeship as a means for saving the Holy Land 

from becoming a tinderbox for World War III, abated 

the wrath of U. S. Zionism and its allies. Even the New 

78 

A STATE IS BORN 

York Times, heretofore extremely cool to the Zionist 

program, now joined the critics of the trusteeship pro- 

osal.* 

On April 20, 1948, the U. S. informally submitted to 

the Second Special Session of the General Assembly a 

working paper, entitled “Draft Trusteeship Agreement 

for Palestine” (US Press Rel. 411), that embodied trus- 

teeship proposals similar to those previously presented 

to the Security Council. The proposal failed to obtain 

the required two-thirds majority. A combination of po- 

litical pressures in this country, and early military suc- 

cesses of the Jewish Army (the Haganah) had made a 

convincing case for the feasibility of partition. 

The Truman Administration was assailed for its “be- 

trayal of humanitarianism” by the preponderantly Re- 

publican press which could not resist the temptation of 

profiting from Democratic blunders. In the large cities, 

organized Jewry once again mobilized public opinion. 

The story of the courageous fight of the Palestinian Jews 

crowded newspapers and radio. In New York City, Com- 

munist and left-wing labor leaders ran a “Palestine Pro- 

test Rally” in Madison Square Park, attended by 10,000, 

at which “oil politics” was attacked. On April 8th, spe- 

cial services were held in more than 8,000 Jewish houses 

of worship throughout the nation, in protest of the U. S. 

stand on Zion. 

Invaluable support was given the Zionists by the 

American Association for the United Nations, a key 

group for swinging U. S. public opinion—not alone be- 

cause of its own affluent membership, but also because 

it was in a position to mobilize other influential national 

organizations. Clark Eichelberger, the head of the As- 

sociation, was a determined supporter of partition. Sum- 

ner Welles, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt and other distin- 

79 

Oa ee ee ee ee ore 

aoa 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

guished Association members blocked Mrs. Kermit 

Roosevelt’s attempt to prevent the organization from al- 

loting funds for such propartition advertisements as the 

full-page Association ad in the New York Times, “Pro- 

gram To Save The U. N. and Settle the Palestine Crisis.””* 

Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter-in-law fought hard, but it 

was a losing battle. 

In the Association’s contention, the prestige of the 

United Nations demanded that the partition plan be car- 

ried out. But the U. N. General Assembly had merely 

recommended the partition of Palestine—it had neither 

decided, nor ordered, nor enacted anything. The Gen- 

eral Assembly was not then—no more than it is today— 

either a legislative or a judicial body. It possessed no ma- 

chinery for implementing proposals. If the partition plan 

was unworkable, as it then seemed, to take a new course 

might have been less damaging to the world organization 

than to insist on the execution of unreasonable and cruel 

plans. It was particularly ironic that the American As- 

sociation for the United Nations, which had fought any 

revision of the U. N. Charter, should claim for the Char- 

ter, as it stood, in the Palestine issue the very power which 

they refused to grant in general amendments. 

As the date approached on which the British were to 

yield the mandate, armed conflict in Palestine and public 

hysteria in the United States increased. Dr. Judah Magnes 

was refused permission to bring his views of bi-national- 

ism before the U. N. General Assembly: the Jewish 

Agency alone was to be recognized as spokesmen for 

the “Jewish people.” Albert Einstein, in supporting the 

position of Dr. Magnes, made this public declaration: 

We appeal to the Jews in this country and in Palestine 

not to permit themselves to be driven into a mood of 

despair or false heroism which eventually results in sui- 

80 

A STATE IS BORN 

cidal measures.” Of course, the Zionists, who had pre- 

viously exploited Einstein statements for their publicity 

purposes, ignored these wise words. 

‘Americans for Haganah,” the “Palestine Resistance 

Committee,” and the “Red Mogen Doved” continued 

to raise funds for partition propaganda—always, of 

course, in the name of the “Displaced Persons.” New 

York’s Republican Representative, Jacob K. Javits, told 

Zionist women, “We'll fight to death and make a Jewish 

State in Palestine if it’s the last thing that we do.” The 

non-Zionists, led by Judge Proskauer (who had previ- 

ously performed services in “putting the squeeze” on 

some smaller U. N. nations), added to the clamor by in 

sisting that the U. S. sell arms to the Haganah (‘ Heaoee 

who are defending the decision of the United Nations”). 

A National pilgrimage to Washington of the ‘United 

Committee to save the Jewish State and the United Na- 

tions” visited Congressmen and picketed the White 

House. 

Against this organized hue and cry, voices recom- 

mending reason, moderation, and compromise were lost. 

But there were such voices. William Tuck, executive 

secretary of the International Refugee Organization, 

tried to explain why Palestine cannot be considered a 

haven of any importance for D. P.’s. On May 5, the N ew 

York Times reported from ‘ ‘unimpeachable sources” 

that, whereas in 1947 a vast majority of Jewish D, P.’s 

wished to go to Palestine, 80 per cent of them now were 

saying they wanted to go to the United States and were 

specifically adding that they “do not want to go to the 

Holy Land.” Yet it was too late for such truthful state- 

ments to make any impression. The appointment of Gen- 

eral John Hilldring as Special Assistant for Palestine, to 

the Secretary of State, was an indication of the turn U. S. 

81 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

policy was taking: two days before he was appointed, 

the General, in a speech before the Jewish Welfare 

Board, stated that he unmistakably favored partition. 

The Mandate had but a few more days to run when, 

as Weizmann said, “I strengthened our contacts with 

our friends in Washington, and affirmed my intention of 

going ahead with a bid for recognition of the Jewish 

State as soon as it was proclaimed.”° Then, on May 13, 

1948, he wrote a personal letter to President Truman 

asking that the United States “promptly recognize the 

Provisional Government of the new Jewish State.” Up 

to that day, the General Assembly had neither revoked 

nor reaffirmed the partition resolution of November, 

1947, and was still wrestling with the problem of how 

to save lives in Palestine. The Arab armies were threat- 

ening an invasion of the Holy Land. The United States 

Government was still committed to “truce and tempo- 

rary trusteeship,” the policy dictated by the military 

security of the United States. But on the morning of 

May 14, 1948, Clark Clifford, the President’s Counsel 

(who had been in constant touch with Democratic lead- 

ers as well as Zionist spokesmen), persuaded the Presi- 

dent that something must be done at once to get the 

Democratic Party off the election hook. The political 

bosses had convinced Clifford that the U. S. shift to 

trusteeship would defeat Truman, adducing as evidence 

the special Congressional Election in New York and 

sentiment in other pivotal states. A serious political re- 

volt threatened the President within his own Party.” The 

Jewish vote had to be kept in line, Clifford felt. On 

May 14, the President was closeted with his intimate 

advisers. One of the few callers he received that day was 

Frank Goldman, President of the B’nai B’rith, an or- 

ganization whose membership prominently included 

82 

A STATE IS BORN 

Mr. Truman’s intimate friend and old Kansas City part- 

ner, Eddie Jacobson. Congressman Sol Bloom of New 

York, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Commit- 

tee, had wired the President that the U. S. had better 

take the lead in recognizing the new Jewish State in order 

to “help keep Palestine and the Near East from Soviet 

influence and domination.” All during the day, the 

White House maintained rigid silence on the develop- 

ments in Palestine. 

Around eleven-thirty that morning, Eliahu Epstein 

(tater, as Eliahu Elath, the first Israeli Ambassador to 

the U.S.) was called to the White House. Epstein, then 

representative of the Jewish Agency in Washington, 

was told that the U. S. would like to accord de facto 

recognition immediately upon the declaration of Israel’s 

independence, but that, obviously, a request for such 

recognition would have to be received first. Epstein 

pointed out, quite reasonably, that the new State could 

not send such a request prior to its birth (which was not 

expected before midnight, i.e., 6 p.m. Washington time). 

He also promised that he would advise Tel Aviv at once 

of Truman’s desire and haste. 

At this morning session of May 14, it was also decided 

that the President would not inform Secretary of State 

Marshall, or anyone else in the Department of State, of 

the contemplated recognition until fairly late in the after- 

noon, to avoid a news leak and any objections General 

Marshall might raise. For Niles and Clifford wanted to 

make absolutely sure that the President would not be 

persuaded to delay the recognition. Sometime between 

three and four that afternoon, General Marshall was told 

that the President would release a statement recognizing 

Israel shortly after 6 p.m. that evening. The General was 

instructed neither to impart this information to anyone 

83 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

else in the State Department nor to send it in any form 

to New York City where the United Nations, at that 

very moment, was debating the question of trusteeship. 

Specifically, Ambassador Austin was not to be notified 

over the Department’s direct wire to the American U. N. 

Delegation. 

Shortly before six, Secretary Marshall told a few of 

his immediate aides what was about to happen. At six 

o’clock, Washington Eastern Daylight Time, the British 

mandate expired. At 6:01 P.M. the new State of Israel 

came into existence. And at 6:11 P.M. the United States 

accorded recognition. Charles Ross, Presidential Press 

Secretary, had summoned reporters to his office in the 

White House shortly after six and read, at 6:11 P.M., the 

two-paragraph announcement of President Truman that 

accorded de facto recognition to the new state of Israel. 

Coupled with the announcement was an expression of 

hope for peace. But as the Administration was in Wash- 

ington, recognizing the sovereignty of Israel, United 

States representatives at the United Nations were still 

proposing trusteeship for Palestine! 

Around six o’clock, Dean Rusk, Director of the State 

Department Office of United Nations Affairs, was re- 

quested to inform Ambassador Austin of the Presiden- 

tial step. At that hour, Austin was not at the General 

Assembly where members of his staff were devotedly 

debating trusteeship. He received the incredible Wash- 

ington news in his rooms at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. 

He was outraged. 

A variety of wild rumors had been circulating at 

Flushing Meadow where the 135th Plenary Meeting of 

the General Assembly was in session to receive a report 

of its First Committee. The General Assembly did not 

convene until 4:30 p.m. With Dr. Arce of Argentine in 

84 

A STATE IS BORN 

the chair, the delegates were considering the question of 

the internationalization of Jerusalem. The appointment 

of a U. N. Commissioner for the Holy City had just been 

voted, and it was approximately six o’clock when the 

Colombian delegate, Mr. Gonzalez Fernandez, asked the 

U. S. representative whether he was in a position to 

confirm the information given to the press that a Govern- 

ment of a Jewish State had been recognized by the 

United States.® Francis B. Sayre, former Assistant Sec- 

retary of State, and one of the three U. S. representatives 

on the Permanent Mission to the United Nations, re- 

plied that for the time being he had no official informa- 

tion on that subject. Betty Gough, one of the Assistants 

from the International Organization Division of the State 

Department, was sent out for the latest news. The dis- 

cussion continued with Cuba’s Ambassador, Dr. Guil- 

lermo Belt, expressing his surprise that the U. S. repre- 

sentative had no information. It appeared to the Cuban 

delegate “that the representatives of the USSR and Po- 

land were better informed on events in Washington,” 

and that further consideration of the resolution under 

debate was pointless since the “U. S. Government had 

recognized the new Jewish State.” 

Some time later, a rather confused and embarrassed 

Professor Philip C. Jessup, Deputy U. S. Representative, 

arose to announce that the “U. S. delegation was now 

able to communicate to the Assembly the text of the 

statement by the President of the United States.” Hold- 

ing in his hand the clipped-off portion of press-ticker 

tape Miss Gough had handed to him, Professor Jessup 

read as follows: “This Government has been informed 

that a Jewish State has been proclaimed in Palestine and 

recognition has been requested by the provisional Gov- 

ernment thereof. The United States recognizes the pro- 

85 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

visional Government as the de facto authority of the new 

State of Israel.” 

This is how the American delegation to the United Na- 

tions received word of the President’s historic decision. 

To be sure, the Presidential statement that “recognition 

has been requested by the provisional Government 

thereof” was hardly the truth. The only communi- 

cation the President had before him at the time his 

statement was issued, was a letter, dated May 14, 1948, 

and written on the letterhead of the Jewish Agency for 

Palestine, saying that such a State “will be set up at mid- 

night.” It was signed by Eliahu Epstein as Agent of the 

Provisional Government; but there was then no such 

Government. The only legal authority over Palestine, 

at the time the letter was written and received, was the 

British Mandate. It was only after the ink had dried on 

the Presidential signature that the Provisional Govern- 

ment of Israel came into being. Almost twenty-four 

hours after the President’s indecently hasty action, the 

Department of State received a cable from the Phar 

sional Government of Israel requesting recognition. 

At what was one minute past midnight of May 15, 

1948, in Palestine, the first flag of Israel was unfurled 

at the Washington headquarters of the Jewish Agency 

for Palestine. In Israel, British High Commissioner Gen- 

eral Sir Alan Cunningham’s departure from Haifa was 

bringing to a close twenty-six years of the Mandate. At 

that precise moment, Zionists were proclaiming the new 

State of Israel in these words: “.. . This recognition by 

the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to 

reestablish their independent state may not be revoked. 

It is moreover, the self-evident right. of the Jewish people 

to be a nation, as all other nations, in its own sovereign 

state. Accordingly, we, the members of the National 

86 

A STATE IS BORN 

Council, representing the Jewish people in Palestine and 

the Zionist movement of the world, met together in 

solemn assembly, by virtue of the national and historic 

right of the Jewish people and of resolution of the Gen- 

eral Assembly of the United Nations, hereby proclaim 

the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, to be 

called Israel. Our call goes out to the Jewish people all 

over the world to rally to our side in the task of immigra- 

tion and development and to stand by us in the great 

struggle for the fulfillment of the dream of generations— 

the redemption of Israel.” 

And people danced in the streets of Tel Aviv, Wash- 

ington, New York, and elsewhere. On the capitol’s Mas- 

sachusetts Avenue, Americans wept, sang the Jewish 

national anthem, danced the Palestinian Hora, cried 

“Mazeltov” (good luck) and waved small Israeli flags. 

Yet the mood was not entirely happy everywhere. The 

Pittsburgh (Pa.) Post Gazette, in an editorial, “Laugh- 

ter at Lake Success,” noted: ““The Administration’s han- 

dling of the Palestine problem has been so inept that the 

American delegation has become a laughing stock in the 

United Nations. The President’s precipitous decision to 

recognize Israel left our allies in the dark, plunged the 

State Department into confusion and in general made 

us look wholly irresponsible.” The Richmond Times 

pointed to New York’s momentous electoral votes in 

the coming election, while the St. Louis Post Dispatch 

said: “The White House says it (recognition) is not a 

snap judgment, but the United Nations delegation bit- 

terly thinks otherwise. They cannot avoid taking it for 

what it seems—shameless junking of international inter- 

ests to regain the Jewish votes the recent Bronx election 

showed had been lost.” 

87 

CHAPTER V 

Wooing the Jewish Vote 

the League of Nations in 1922. Though the 

United States was not a member of the League, 

and therefore not a party to this act, a Joint Resolution 

of Congress formally sanctioned, the same year, the idea 

of a “Jewish National Home.’”* 

Similar resolutions were thereafter introduced in a 

number of State legislatures and passed in a routine man- 

ner, without opposition. Several Presidents paid lip serv- 

ice to Zionist aspirations. The sixty-seven ambiguous 

words in the Balfour Declaration, carried over into the 

Mandate, made it simple for the vote-hungry politicians 

in league with Jewish nationalists to embroider each con- 

secutive White House endorsement. As elsewhere in the 

story of Zionism, loose semantics played an important 

part. 

In the hearings before the House Committee on For- 

eign Affairs on the Wright-Compton Palestine Resolu- 

tions’ in 1944, Chairman Sol Bloom quoted this alleged 

statement of President Woodrow Wilson: “I am per- 

suaded that the Allied Nations, with the fullest concur- 

T HE British Mandate over Palestine was issued by 

88 

WOOING THE JEWISH VOTE 

rence of our Government and our people, are agreed 

that in Palestine shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish 

commonwealth.”* This alleged declaration of Wilson 

has been repeated ad infinitum in Zionist propaganda. 

But Woodrow Wilson never did make that statement. 

In March 1919, President Wilson had momentarily 

returned from the Paris Peace Conference to the United 

States. The Egyptian press published a copy of a tele- 

gram dated Washington, March 4, as an official Ameri- 

can communique from the American Diplomatic Agency 

in Cairo: 

A Jewish Delegation headed by Judge Julian Mack of 

Chicago interviewed the President regarding the future of 

Palestine. The President expressed his sympathy with the 

principle of the incontestable right of the Jewish people 

everywhere to equality of status and recalled that he had 

previously expressed his personal approval of a declaration 

to the British Government respecting the historic claims 

of the Jews regarding Palestine. He said he was persuaded 

that the Allied Nations with the fullest concurrence of 

the American Government were agreed that the founda- 

tions of a Jewish Commonwealth should be laid in Pales- 

tine.* 

At one of the daily meetings of Commissioners Pleni- 

potentiary in Paris, at which Secretary of State Robert 

Lansing represented the U. S., the question of the au- 

thenticity of that statement was raised. The official min- 

utes of this meeting of April 12, 1919, read as follows: 

The Commissioners very much doubt whether the Presi- 

dent had ever made any such statement, but requested 

that it be sent to the President with the statement as to 

its source. They desired that the President be asked whether 

89 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL x 

this quotation were correct, and that it be added that in 

case it were not correct, they were of the opinion that 

it should be denied at once.® 

On April 13, Mr. Lansing submitted to President Wil- 

son, who had returned to Paris, a copy of the telegram 

published in Egypt, asking “whether the quotation con- 

tained therein is correct.”® 

On April 16, President Wilson sent the following note 

to Secretary Lansing who was staying at the Hotel Cril- 

lion: 

My dear Lansing: 

Of course I did not use any of the words quoted in the 

enclosed and they do not indeed purport to be my words. 

But I did in substance say what is quoted, though the ex- 

pression “foundation of a Jewish Commonwealth” goes a 

little further than my idea at the time. All that I meant 

was to corroborate our expressed acquiescence in the posi- 

tion of the British Government with regard to the future 

of Palestine. 

Faithfully yours, 

(s) Woodrow Wilson.” 

So much about the accuracy of Zionist propaganda. 

Although the Wright-Compton resolutions were 

shelved (out of deference to the considered judgment 

of Secretary Stimson and the War Department that 

“such action would be prejudicial to the successful pros- 

ecution of the War”’),* the propaganda value of the hear- 

ings was to be fully exploited. At Congressman Bloom’s 

suggestion, a 512-page volume of testimony was pub- 

lished and widely distributed. The many Congressmen 

who had testified in behalf of Zionist groups back home 

90 

WOOING THE JEWISH VOTE 

were only too happy to put themselves on record as 

firm supporters of President Wilson’s manipulated dec- 

Jaration. 

In 1945, another Congress resolution endorsed the 

free entry of “Jews” into Palestine “to the maximum of 

its agricultural and economic potentialities . . . so that 

they may freely proceed with the upbuilding of Pales- 

tine as the Jewish national home.” By substituting “the” 

for “a”, Congress in effect had broadened the obligation 

contained in the Balfour Declaration and the League 

Mandate (to which the United States was not a party). 

President Roosevelt, always the adroit politician, had 

the great knack of seeming to say “Yes” to everyone. 

He told Weizmann in 1942 that he wanted the Palestine 

problem settled. ‘To Ibn Saud, the President sent a con- 

fidential message in May of 1943, stating that there would 

be no change in Palestine “without full consultation with 

both Arabs and Jews.” At Malta in 1945, en route to 

Yalta, the President revealed to Winston Churchill his 

desire “to bring about peace between the Arabs and the 

Jews,” and spoke of his plan to visit Ibn Saud. James 

Byrnes relates in his autobiography” the British Prime 

Minister’s pessimism on this score: “Churchill wished 

him good luck, but didn’t seem very hopeful that the 

President would meet with success.” 

Following the Yalta Conference, F.D.R. held his 

colorful meeting—goats and all—with Ibn Saud aboard 

the heavy cruiser U.S.S. Quincy in the Eastern Mediter- 

ranean. Roosevelt assured the ruler of Saudi Arabia that 

he “would sanction no American move hostile to the 

Arab people.” As Elliott Roosevelt phrased it,"® the Pres- 

ident later admitted to Bernard Baruch that “‘of all the 

men he had talked to in his life, he had got least satis- 

faction from this iron-willed Arab monarch.” Pro-Zion- 

gI 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

ist British Parliament member Crossman sarcastically 

noted that the President then hurried back from the Cri- 

mea to Washington to assure Zionists that his attitude 

toward them was the same. But a week before he died, 

the President confirmed by letter to Ibn Saud his prom- 

ise of fair treatment for the Arabs. 

The Zionists, it is interesting to note, felt that during 

Roosevelt’s Administration they had made little head- 

way at the White House. The story of their relationship 

with Presidents Roosevelt and Truman is frankly ex- 

pounded in a revealing tribute to Dr. Silver by Eman- 

uel Neumann entitled “Abba Hillel Silver: History 

Maker.” Roosevelt’s friendship toward Jews was in- 

disputable, but for the Zionist cause “‘we had little time 

and less thought,” says Dr. Neumann. 

The American Zionist Emergency Council formed 

the American Palestine Committee, numbering hundreds 

of U. S. Senators, Representatives, cabinet members, 

Governors and influential personalities from all walks 

of life. In December 1942, 63 Senators and 181 Con- 

gressmen called on Roosevelt, in a joint statement, “to 

restore the Jewish homeland.” But the President, the 

Zionists now relate, had a “deep-seated skepticism about 

Jewish Palestine and a cool indifference,” which Silver 

described as an attitude of “uninvolved benignancy.” He 

was “unwilling to act,” and the Zionist leadership dared 

not oppose his views for reasons Dr. Neumann admitted 

quite frankly: 

“To the Jewish masses in America and throughout 

the world, Roosevelt loomed as the great friend and 

champion of their people. Now could such a friend op- 

pose or ignore Jewish national aspirations? Not only was 

it difficult to accept such a painful thought—there was 

a strong psychological need to reject it. In a tragic hour 

92 

WOOING THE JEWISH VOTE 

and a hostile world there simply had to be a champion 

and protector. If it was not Stalin or Churchill, it had 

to be Roosevelt. This emotional dependence on Roose- 

velt was reinforced by eminently practical considera- 

tions. He might be re-elected, and he was re-elected for 

a fourth term. His would be the power to shape the 

postwar settlement. To cross him, to offend him, to alien- 

ate his affection was to court disaster for the Zionist 

cause.” 

The “going became easier” after Harry Truman took 

office. The successor to F.D.R., we are told, “was a far 

less complex personality than his illustrious predecessor 

—less adroit and sophisticated, simpler and more straight- 

forward. He accepted the Zionist line reluctantly and 

under pressure, at first, but having accepted it, he fol- 

lowed through honestly and firmly. In the end he found 

himself in direct conflict with Britain’s Bevin. He did not 

shrink from the encounter, but, supported by popular 

opinion, he stuck to his guns and forced the State De- 

partment to acquiesce in his pro-Zionist policy.” 

Organized nationalist Jewry could count on a strong 

link in the Executive Office of the White House to keep 

the President interested in Zionism. As the national press 

noted when he passed away in the fall of 1952, David 

K. Niles was a key factor in the drive for Israel’s state- 

hood. The protegé of Harry Hopkins, Niles became an 

executive assistant to President Roosevelt after the 1940 

elections. He was a member of a select group of confi- 

dential advisers with an often-quoted “passion for ano- 

nymity.” Niles, at any rate, though occasionally publi- 

cized as “Mr. Truman’ s Mystery Man,”””* remained to- 

tally unknown to the public. 

First, Roosevelt assigned certain problems relating to 

minority groups to Niles for briefing; but gradually the 

93 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

President, weighed down by war responsibilities, turned 

such problems over to Niles for action. Niles, in fact, 

developed into what amounted to the first Jewish Ambas- 

sador to the White House. When Truman succeeded 

Roosevelt, the Palestine issue was placed in Niles’ lap. 

The President’s old Kansas City partner, Eddie Jacob- 

son, very active in B’nai B’rith and a passionate believer 

in Jewish nationalism, gave Zionism no less valuable 

service. What the combination Tinkers to Evers to 

Chance was to baseball, Jacobson to Niles to Truman 

was to Israel. Niles was the “pivot” man, with direct 

access to the President, Jacobson and Truman were part- 

ners again, this time in the more serious pursuit of creat- 

ing a new State. 

There were many ways in which Niles served the 

State of Israel after partition, too. Early in 1950, when 

the United States first awoke to the Soviet danger in the 

Middle East, our Government requested the various 

Arab countries for information regarding troops, equip- 

ment and other confidential military data. These statistics 

were necessary in order to plan possible assistance under 

the Mutual Security Act. The Arab nations were natu- 

rally assured that the figures, supplied for the Chief of 

Staff, would be kept secret. 

Late that year, military representatives of the Middle 

East countries and of Israel were meeting in Washington 

with General Riley, who headed the United Nations 

Truce Organization. Trouble had broken out over the 

Huleh Marshes, and charges and countercharges of mili- 

tary aggression were exchanged between Israel and the 

Arab countries. The Israeli military representative 

claimed that Syrian troops were employed in a certain 

manner, and General Riley remarked: “That’s not pos- 

94 

WOOING THE JEWISH VOTE 

sible. The Syrians have no such number of troops.” 

Whereupon the Israeli representative said: “You are 

wrong. Here are the actual figures of Syrian military 

strength and the description of the troops.” And he pro- 

duced the confidential figures, top secret Pentagon infor- 

mation. General Riley himself had not been shown the 

new figures given by the Syrian War Ministry to his 

superiors. 

When the question of Egyptian military strength was 

raised, a similar security leak appeared. It was obvious 

that top-secret figures had been passed on to the Israeli 

Government. Both the Central Intelligence Agency and 

Army G-z investigated the security breach but discov- 

ered only that these figures had been made available to 

the White House. How and through whom they leaked 

out of the White House remained forever obscure. How- 

ever, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Omar 

Bradley, reportedly went to the President and told the 

Chief Executive that he would have to choose between 

him (Bradley) and Niles. Not too long after this re- 

ported intervention, David Niles resigned from his post 

as Executive Assistant to the President and went on a 

visit to Israel. 

Thirty-two of the nations which voted for the parti- 

tion of Palestine could possibly justify their position in 

terms of humanitarian considerations. But the thirty- 

third, the United States, so responsible for the votes of 

many of the other U. N. members, can not. The true 

motivation of U. S. Palestine policy was correctly stated 

by Ernest K. Lindley in the Washington Post: “The 

policy and tactics of the United States in the Palestine 

controversy were, of course, influenced greatly by 

American Zionists. Domestic politics rather than a con- 

95 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

sidered analysis of the interests of the United States had 

been the predominating factor in our policy concerning 

Palestine.” 

Any doubts that American decisions on Palestine were 

determined by the calculating consideration of domestic 

politics, rather than the good Samaritan’s concern for 

refugees, were dispelled with the publication of the For- 

restal Diaries." 

At a cabinet luncheon, on September 4, 1947, Post- 

master General Hannegan briefed the President on the 

necessity of making a statement in favor of the entrance 

of 150,000 Jews into Palestine. As reported by Forrestal, 

Hannegan said, “he didn’t want to press for decision 

one way or the other. He simply wanted to point out 

that such a statement could have a very great influence 

and great effect on the raising of funds for the Demo- 

cratic National Committee. He said that very large sums 

had been obtained from Jewish contributors and that 

they would be influenced in either giving or withholding 

by what the President did on Palestine.”*® Forrestal re- 

minded Hannegan that the President’s remarks a year 

ago (which had brought forth the attack against Tru- 

man in the House of Commons by Foreign Secretary 

Ernest Bevin), did not have the expected effect in the 

New York election—a reference to the 1946 campaign 

in which Governor Dewey had matched Truman’s of- 

ferings to “the Jewish Vote” and had emerged victorious. 

Forrestal was determined to obtain an agreement of 

both parties to lift the Palestine question out of the po- 

litical contest. But the Democratic National Chairman, 

J. Howard McGrath (later U. S. Attorney General), 

did not like the idea. He stressed the fact that a substan- 

tial part of the contributions to the Democratic National 

Committee came from people who “wanted to be sure to 

96 

WOOING THE JEWISH VOTE 

have an opportunity to express their views and have them 

seriously considered on such questions as the present Pal- 

estine question.”’* And a national election, for which the 

party coffers had to be filled, was just around the corner. 

McGrath insisted that, furthermore, there were two or 

three pivotal States which could not be carried without 

the support of people who were deeply interested in the 

Palestine question, some of whom felt that the United 

States was not doing all it should “to solicit the votes 

in the U. N. General Assembly” for partition. Mc- 

Grath could not understand Forrestal’s reasoning that 

he “would rather lose those states than run the risks 

which, he felt, would ensue from that kind of handling 

of the Palestine question,” and that “no group in this 

country should be permitted to influence our policy to 

the point where it could endanger our national secu- 

rity.”** Even when the report on Palestine, prepared by 

the Central Intelligence Agency, was read to McGrath, 

the politician would not change his mind. 

Forrestal tells of his talks with the former Secretary 

of State, James Byrnes, “who recalled the fact that he 

had disassociated himself from President Truman’s de- 

cision a year ago to turn down the Grady report which 

had recommended a federated state for Palestine or a 

single Arabian state.”’® The ex-Secretary of State de- 

scribed how the President’s political criticism of the Brit- 

ish “for their conduct of Palestine affairs had placed 

Bevin and Attlee in a most difficult position.” Byrnes at- 

tributed the chief responsibility to David Niles and Sam 

Rosenman, both of whom had warned Truman of Dew- 

ey’s impending endorsement of the Zionist position on 

Palestine and the loss of New York state to the Demo- 

crats unless Dewey’s move was anticipated. Mr. Byrnes 

cast a damper on Forrestal’s hope that the Republican 

97 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

leadership would ever agree to a non-partisan handling 

of the Palestine question because “of the fact that Rabbi 

Silver was one of Taft’s close associates, and because 

Taft followed Silver on the Palestine question.” 

However, the growing antagonism of the Arab coun- 

tries made Forrestal redouble his efforts toward bi-parti- 

sanship. He sought to win from both parties an accord 

that future decisions would rest on the sole considera- 

tion of what was in the best interests of the United States 

as a whole. He suggested that Dewey, Stassen, Taft, 

McGrath and General Bradley be briefed on the strate- 

gic importance of the Middle East and the danger of 

Soviet penetration.” Forrestal labored for months, but 

his efforts to persuade such Republicans as Governor 

Thomas E. Dewey, John Foster Dulles, Winthrop Al- 

drich, and even Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, the fa- 

ther of bi-partisanism in U. S. foreign policy, remained 

fruitless. 

One of the staunchest advocates of a strong pro-Israel 

policy was at that time the newly elected Congressman, 

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. Forrestal told young Roose- 

velt of his present efforts and of the “methods used by 

people outside of the executive branch of the Govern- 

ment to bring coercion and duress on other nations of the 

General Assembly which bordered closely on to scan- 

dal.”*! F.D.R. Jr. said it was impossible to get the two 

parties to agree not to press the issue and that “the Demo- 

cratic Party would be bound to lose and the Republican 

gain by such an agreement.” Forrestal’s significant an- 

swer was: “I think it is about time that somebody should 

pay some consideration to whether we might not lose the 

United States.”’* 

These were the motivations of Forrestal who was soon 

to be vilified as the favorite whipping boy of the Zionist- 

98 

WOOING THE JEWISH VOTE 

dominated press. From Bernard Baruch, his good friend, 

Forrestal received a warning not to become too active 

in this matter as he (Forrestal) was already identified to 

a dangerous degree with the opposition to the U. N. 

policy on Palestine. Forrestal ignored Baruch’s advice. 

He sensed the immense strategic importance of the Mid- 

dle East. His military advisers were agreed that the with- 

drawal of the British from Palestine would result in se- 

rious trouble, which could only help the Soviet Union. 

It was this fear that prompted Forrestal’s lonely attempt 

to retain a modicum of Arab friendship for the U. S. 

An ardent pro-Zionist was later to write of Forrestal: 

“He was in no sense anti-Semitic or anti-Israel, nor in- 

fluenced by oil interest. He was convinced that partition 

was not in the best interests of the U. S. He certainly 

did not deserve the persistent and venomous attacks on 

him which helped break his mind and body; on the con- 

trary, these attacks stand out as the ugliest examples of 

the willingness of politicians and publicists to use the 

vilest means—in the name of patriotism—to destroy 

self-sacrificing and devoted public servants.” These 

words were written by the first Ambassador of the 

United States to Israel, James G. McDonald, in his “My 

Mission to Israel.’’** 

Forrestal, in short, was perspicacious enough to look 

ahead and realize that Middle East would replace the 

Caribbean resources as the West’s most important oil 

repository in the forthcoming world battle against Com- 

munism. What hurt this sensitive man so deeply and 

contributed to his taking his own life was not his failure 

to achieve a bi-partisan Palestinian policy, but the fact 

that his motivation should have been impugned with the 

smear, “tool of the oil imperialists.” The facts surround- 

ing the Palestine Affair, as they have now been unearthed, 

99 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

and the subsequent events in the Middle East have for- 

midably increased the stature of James V. Forrestal. 

Two weeks before the Democratic Convention of 

1948, President Truman ordered the State Department 

to announce the appointment of James G. McDonald 

as Minister to the new nation of Israel. McDonald had 

been long active in behalf of Jewish nationalism and 

the United Palestine Appeal. When Under-Secretary 

of State Lovett questioned the choice of McDonald “be- 

cause of his close identification with the Zionists,” he 

was told by Clark Clifford that the “President did not 

want any discussion of the matter but to have action fol- 

lowed at once in the form of an announcement that after- 

noon from the State Department.”” The appointment 

had been decided, according to McDonald himself, only 

the day before at a meeting at which David Niles, Clark 

Clifford and General Hilldring were present. Secretary 

of State Marshall resented the appointment as well as the 

fact that it was made without even consulting the respon- 

sible Cabinet member. 

McDonald’s position was singular. More than being 

American Ambassador to Israel, he was from the outset 

the Democratic Administration’s Ambassador to the na- 

tionalist Jews. His unprecedented pro-Zionist conduct 

was meant to produce ammunition for the President and 

the Democratic Party in their fight for the control of 

the so-called “Jewish Vote.” In a letter wishing Mc- 

Donald “God speed in your important mission,” writ- 

ten July 21, 1948, Truman said: “I shall expect you to 

keep me informed on such matters as relate to the Arms 

Embargo, the appropriate time for full recognition and 

the types of assistance as may be required by and can 

properly be granted to the new State.””’* But the very 

moment the President thus promised full recognition, 

100 

WOOING THE JEWISH VOTE 

Under-Secretary Lovett, and other State Department 

officials, were instructing the new Ambassador on the 

tremendous complications in the way of de jure recog- 

nition. The State Department was properly concerned 

with assurances of stability and representativeness of the 

Israeli Provisional Government, while the White House 

was subordinating such ee aual concerns of interna- 

tional policy to the whims of party politics. 

The new Ambassador proceeded to Tel Aviv via 

London, Geneva and Rome—stop-overs in which he re- 

vealed early symptoms of a peculiar conditioning that 

was later to be viewed as too pro-Zionist even by the Is- 

raeli Government. McDonald was an Ambassador from 

Israel before he had been accredited as Ambassador to 

Israel. Accompanied by the American Ambassador to the 

Court of St. James, Lewis Douglas, McDonald called 

upon Ernest Bevin to inquire why the British Govern- 

ment had not recognized the State of Israel. When the 

American Ambassador to Israel hinted gently to the Brit- 

ish Foreign Secretary “that it would be helpful for me to 

have a British colleague in Tel Aviv,” “Bevin flushed, the 

color mounted to his cheek.”—‘This is something 

which I can’t discuss,” was Bevin’s retort— “I’m sorry, 

I wasn’t asking a leading question. I merely wanted to 

state a fact,” was McDonald’s inept parting shot.” 

Before leaving London, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel 

expressed his desire for British recognition to other mem- 

bers of the Foreign Office. In Rome, McDonald worked 

on Count Carlo Sforza, Italy’s Foreign Minister, who 

was hesitant about “a pro-Israel announcement which 

might cause disturbances amongst the Moslem popula- 

tion of the former Italian colonies.”*® But it was, of 

course, inconsiderate of the Italians and the French to 

worry about the Moslems of North Africa, and of the 

1or 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

British to fret about the Arabs, instead of helping Tru- 

man to the “Jewish Vote” in the United States. 

Ambassador-designate McDonald stopped in Geneva 

to see Chaim Weizmann, President of the Provisional 

Israeli Government, who was ill and begged McDonald 

“co remind his colleagues at home to write to him.” Ap- 

parently he was not receiving information from the 

Government he was supposed to head. And indeed, 

McDonald did on his arrival in Tel Aviv intercede with 

Golda Myerson, Israeli Ambassador to Moscow, who 

told him that Weizmann’s grievance stemmed from the 

refusal of his colleagues to accept his ideas of a strong 

presidency. 

In the Holy Land, McDonald continued to fill the ex- 

traordinary role of Ambassador for rather than to Israel. 

He reported not to the Department of State, but to the 

White House. 

On August 24, 1948, McDonald wrote to Washing- 

ton: “My conclusion is that since the President and the 

Department want peace, they should concentrate on get- 

ting peace negotiations started. . . . On this issue I do not 

think the U.S. should be overly influenced by the views 

of either the mediator or the British. The former, so far as 

I can judge, is almost completely discredited not only 

among the Jews but among the Arabs. His inability to 

enforce decisions and his wordy pronouncements have 

left him neither substantial moral authority nor dig- 

nity.””” The American Ambassador was burying Count 

Bernadotte even before the U. N. mediator was killed by 

Zionist terrorists.” 

The task of Niles et al. was considerably facilitated by 

the peculiar fact that Americans are the world’s most 

eager joiners. The success of any extremist movement in 

this country can, at least in part, be traced to the weak- 

102 

WOOING THE JEWISH VOTE 

ness of “prominent” Americans to join promiscuously 

any organization smart enough to pick a sweet-sounding 

name. The Reception Committee for Mr. Menachem 

Begin was just such an organization. 

It was dreamed up by the American League for a Free 

Palestine. Its leading figures were author Louis Brom- 

field, writer Ben Hecht, and U. S. Senator Guy Gillette. 

On its National Committee (In Formation) were such 

dignitaries as Senators Arthur Capper of Kansas, Theo- 

dore Green of Rhode Island, Herbert O’Conor of 

Maryland, a score of Governors, men of letters, and 

clergymen of all faiths. The invitations, calling upon the 

recipient to add his name to the list of distinguished 

Americans welcoming Menachem Begin to the United 

States, said: 

As Commander-in-Chief of the Irgun Zvai Leumi, he led 

one of the most glorious and successful resistance move- 

ments in history. A little defenseless community, a people 

who, in the course of almost two thousand years of disper- 

sion, had lost the art of military defense, was transformed 

under the miracle of his leadership into a fighting and 

heroic nation. It was through the Hebrew Underground 

under his command that the hitherto parish people of the 

world, the Jews, won back their dignity and self-respect 

and the respect of the civilized world. It was because of 

the valiant fight waged by the Irgun that the whole struc- 

ture of the British regime in Palestine collapsed, making 

possible the proclamation of Hebrew sovereignty and the 

establishment of the State of Israel. 

The two-page letter neglected to mention that Mr. 

Begin had publicly claimed credit for such deeds as the 

blowing up of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, placing a 

time bomb in the British Colonial office in London, the 

garrotting and hanging of the two British Sergeants at 

103 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

Nathanya, and the massacre of Arab women and children 

at Deir Yassin. But according to the Reception Com- 

mittee, Begin was the hero of Israel and the Freedom 

Movement’s candidate for Prime Minister. This, coinci- 

dentally, was the Fall of 1948—the time of an important 

national election in the United States. And, as a member 

of the House Foreign Affairs Committee remarked, “Put 

any petition with the name Jew on it before a candidate 

in an election year, and you can get anyone to sign any- 

thing!” At any rate, within a few weeks the Welcoming 

Committee had grown to include eleven Senators, twelve 

Governors, seventy-odd Congressmen, seventeen Jus- 

tices and Judges, and educators, public officials, and 

mayors by the scores. These more or less celebrated 

names emblazoned a huge advertisement in the New 

York Times under the headline: ‘““The Man Who Defied 

an Empire and Gained Glory for Israel—Menachem 

Beigin,” former Irgun Commander-in-Chief, arrives on 

Good-Will Mission Today.” The usual Waldorf-Astoria 

Dinner was to follow, also an official welcome at City 

Hall. The main object of the visit was to obtain funds for 

electing Begin as Prime Minister of Israel. His political 

platform called for the incorporation of most of Jordan 

and other adjacent territories into Israel so that the new 

State would include the original boundaries of Canaan 

(or Eretz Israel). 

Begin’s record was well known in the State Depart- 

ment. Consequently, his visa application was rejected by 

two intelligent and competent officials—the Director of 

the Office of Near Eastern, South Asian, and African 

Affairs, and the Chief of the Visa Division. But from Key 

West, where President Truman was vacationing after his 

election victory, came a presidential order to grant the 

visa. 

104 

WOOING THE JEWISH VOTE 

Some of the violence and lawlessness during the last 

months of the British Mandate was at least emotionally 

understandable, but the premeditated hanging of the two 

British Sergeants could justify no conceivable defense. 

Yet the arrival in the United States of the man who 

planned this crime, and avowedly aimed to overthrow 

the United Nations-United States partition proposals, 

was exuberantly heralded by U. S. officialdom. It was 

only some time after Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin, Father 

John La Farge and Rabbi Morris Lazaron had publicly 

warned the duped U.S. politicians and called for the re- 

pudiation of Begin that the Welcoming Committee 

disintegrated. 

Senator Arthur Capper claimed he did not know how 

his name happened to appear in a newspaper advertise- 

ment concerning the Begin affair. Senator Herbert R. 

O’Conor, Democrat of Maryland, asserted that he had 

never approved acts of terrorism and that the only pos- 

sible connection he had with the Begin shindig was his 

concern with “the general Palestinian problem in fur- 

thering the United States policy on the new State of 

Israel.” Congressman (later U.S. Senator) John F. Ken- 

nedy from Massachusetts wired Louis Bromfield: “Be- 

latedly and for the record I wish to withdraw my name 

from the reception committee for Menachem Begin, for- 

mer Irgun Commander. When accepting your invitation, 

I was ignorant of the true nature of his activities, and I 

wish to be disassociated from them completely.” The 

office of Congressman Joe Hendricks of Florida revealed 

that the Congressman had been out of town and thus his 

name “had been given” to the Begin Committee. Several 

other Congressmen could not recall later whether they, 

or their office, had ever authorized the use of their names. 

Dr. Harry C. Byrd, President of the University of Mary- 

105 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

land, said: “Some people I know asked me if they could 

use my name as a member of the reception committee and 

I said they could. I didn’t know who he was. I am not 

going to New York.” Hugh H. Bennett, Chief of the 

Soil Conservation Service of the Agricultural Depart- 

ment, told the Washington Evening Star that he “occa- 

sionally is asked to sponsor various functions and some- 

times authorizes the use of his name because this seems 

the easiest out.””** And so it went—after the damage was 

done. 

Professor Albert Einstein, Professor Sidney Hook, 

and others, denounced the Begin-Freedom-Party as an 

“admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism and 

racial superiority. .. . They have pressed for the destruc- 

tion of Free Trade Unions.” This made Philip Murray, 

then President of the C. I. O. and one of the original 

members of the Welcoming Committee, suddenly real- 

ize that he had never authorized the use of his name— 

after his name had appeared for weeks, on thousands of 

letters and a great number of advertisements. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Begin was touring the United States, 

meeting with financial advisers and holding sensational 

press interviews. Questioned about the bombing of the 

King David Hotel, the Irgun leader laid the responsibility 

squarely on the shoulders of the British Palestine Admin- 

istrator, ‘“who,” he declared, “had been warned of the 

bombing and had refused to evacuate the hotel.” (To 

Walter Deuel, of the Chicago Daily News,” Begin con- 

fided that the British had all of thirty minutes in which 

to evacuate their headquarters). Mr. Begin also belittled 

the charge that he had been a deserter from the Polish 

Army and a Soviet agent in Spain and China before go- 

ing to Palestine. While in the United States, and later 

in his book,** Begin ridiculed the accusation that 250 

106 

WOOING THE JEWISH VOTE 

Arab inhabitants of Deir Yassin had been massacred. 

(This slaughter had brought forth, at the time, an apol- 

ogy from Premier Ben-Gurion to King Abdullah and 

a statement from the Jewish Agency that it deplored 

“the commission of such brutalities by Jews as utterly 

repugnant.”’) He claimed that “this atrocity charge” was 

a combined Zionist-Arab propaganda story—quite a 

trick for warring nations. But throughout The Revolt, 

Begin boasts of the daring deeds he committed. He re- 

fers to “the military victory at Deir Yassin” and admits 

that the subsequent wild tales of Irgun butchering re- 

sulted in the “maddened, uncontrollable stampede of 

635,000 Arabs, ... The political and economic signifi- 

cance of this development can hardly be overesti- 

mated.’”*6 

While the American Zionist Organizations did not 

officially participate in the Begin parade—they had their 

own candidates for Israeli Premiership—neither did they 

repudiate him. In his memoirs, Begin tells how the Zion- 

ist Emergency Council was urged from many quarters to 

denounce the “‘dissidents” and how Abba Hillel Silver 

rejected these proposals and prevented their adoption. 

The Cleveland Zionist Rabbi is quoted as having said, 

“the Irgun will go down in history as a factor without 

which the State of Israel would not have come into be- 

ing.” From his pulpit, another nationalist Rabbi took 

up the defense of the Irgun. Dr. Neumann, holding the 

post of official observer for the Central Conference of 

American Rabbis at the United Nations, labelled the 

Coffin-LaFarge-Lazaron letter as “only another attempt 

to sabotage the progress of Palestine Jewry . . . in direct 

succession to the other anti-Jewish monuments of the 

last several years organized by Lazaron.” (Morris Laza- 

ron is an anti-Zionist Rabbi.) 

107 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

The one voice that would not have been stilled by the 

Zionist clamor was now quiet forever. Dr. Judah Magnes 

was dead, and there was no one else to awaken the con- 

science of Jewry. No one had the courage to throw at 

Bloody Begin what the late President of the Hebrew 

University in Jerusalem had written months before to 

the New York Times: “It is very easy to join in the cry 

that Jewish terrorists are responsible for this atrocious 

crime. But who has been responsible for the Terrorists? 

We all bear some responsibility. Certainly the large 

number of American supporters do—the Senators and 

Congressmen, the newspaper publishers and writers and 

the large number of Jews and others who have supported 

terrorists morally and financially.”*” 

Attorney General Tom Clark, now Supreme Court 

Justice, was called upon to investigate Begin’s activities 

in the United States and the tax-free status of the organ- 

izations sponsoring him in this country: though money 

contributed to Begin’s activities was obviously for po- 

litical, and not humanitarian, purposes, the Begin group 

(as so many others) was permitted to collect such money 

as tax-free donations. But the Attorney General of the 

United States refused to intervene. 

Menachem Begin has since achieved the honorable 

position of membership in the Knesset (the Israeli Par- 

liament). He and Nathan Friedman Yellin, the leader of 

the Stern Gang (released from jail in time to be sworn 

into office), sit side by side. From the Knesset, Begin di- 

rects the extreme right-wing Herut Party which pro- 

motes a vast expansion of the borders of Israel. Should he 

ever wish to pay another visit to the United States, un- 

doubtedly as glittering an array of political names could 

again be rounded up to welcome this man with blood 

on his hands, 

108 

CHAPTER VI 

The Magic and Myth 

of the Jewish Vote 

Washington is better entrenched than the bro- 

kers of the “Jewish Vote.” The Zionists have 

managed to frighten the politicians, but there is little to 

back up their threats. With the possible exception of its 

response to the Hitler terror, American Jewry has been 

as divided on basic issues as have been other religious de- 

nominations. Yet the mythical unity attributed to the 

“Jewish people” by Zionist propagandists caused the 

American politician’s surrender to Jewish nationalism. 

For the professional politician is too cowardly to call the 

bluff of the “professional Jew,” and the individual Jew 

will not take the Zionists to task for usurping his voice 

and peddling his vote. Thus, the happy alliance between 

American politicians and Zionists. 

It would, of course, greatly simplify the American 

politician’s life if he could purchase what is claimed to 

be a group vote rather than sell himself to a multitude 

of individuals. That is why the American melting pot 

is replaced in national campaigns by separate national 

N*® of the many powerful political lobbies in 

109 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

’ 

and religious frying pans—the “Polish Division,” the 

“Negro Division,” the “Jewish Division,” the “Catholic 

Division.” And the politicians are particularly fascinated 

by the fact that 75 per cent of the American Jewry live 

in fourteen cities, and more than 42 per cent in the city 

of New York. The Empire State, with its 45 electoral 

votes, remains a top prize in every national election. 

Though there is little evidence that a “Jewish Vote” 

exists and is deliverable to any party, or a particular can- 

didate, the myth survives. It is easy to believe in it, par- 

ticularly if one is paid for doing so. And indeed, financial 

compensation has been an additional incentive to U. S. 

officialdom’s activities in behalf of Jewish nationalism. 

Under the Truman Administration, Vice-President 

Barkley, several Cabinet Members, innumerable heads 

of federal agencies and members of Congress helped fill 

the air with Zionist speeches, mostly for a fee. (Mr. 

Barkley received as much as $1500 per speech.) And it 

is of course quite pleasant politicking—not only with 

vote potentials, but with hard cash too. 

The only bipartisan policy developed in things Jewish 

is the firm resolution of both major parties to grab the 

“Jewish Vote” with sacrificial offers to Israel. When the 

Senate Foreign Relations Committee needed a study of 

Palestine and the Arab States, the job was turned over to 

Senator Guy M. Gillette, Democrat from Iowa, an 

avowed pro-Zionist who had headed the American 

League for a Free Palestine (the sponsors of Begin). 

When the House Foreign Affairs Committee required 

a similar report, the task was assigned to Republican 

Congressman Jacob K. Javits of New York, a staunch 

advocate of Jewish Nationalism. His views were well 

known, but Javits requested and received this assign- 

ment as a tacit acknowledgment by his Republican col- 

110 

THE MAGIC AND MYTH OF THE JEWISH VOTE 

leagues that objectivity on this subject was impossible as 

well as undesirable. 

In this unprincipled quest for the “Jewish Vote,” the 

Republican Party has been as arduous as have been the 

Democrats. Doris Fleeson, commenting upon the defeat 

of Republican Senator Owen Brewster in the Maine pri- 

maries of 1952, alluded in her syndicated column to cer- 

tain foreign interests Brewster had openly supported: 

“The flag is flying at half mast over the Spanish Em- 

bassy and Pan-American Airways.” Miss Fleeson, per- 

haps significantly, forgot to mention that the flag ought 

also to have been flying at half mast over Zionist head- 

quarters: Brewster was one of the fiercest Congres- 

sional advocates of Jewish nationalism. Through him, 

Senator Taft, and Governor Dewey, the Republican 

Party was committed to Zionism. 

The two major parties have continually attempted to 

outbid each other for the “Jewish Vote” with favorable 

planks in their national platforms. In 1944, the Demo- 

cratic platform spoke of a “free and democratic Jewish 

commonwealth,” while the Republican plank used the 

phrase “a free and democratic commonwealth,” omitting 

the word “Jewish.” In the ensuing campaign, Candidate 

Dewey declared his party stood for the “reconstitution 

of Palestine as... a Jewish commonwealth.” The Zion- 

ist key word was speedily restored. 

In 1948, Israel had already been accorded de facto 

recognition when the Republican Convention met in 

Philadelphia. The platform committee, headed by Sen- 

ator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, heard repre- 

sentatives of the anti-Zionist American Council for Ju- 

daism who argued against inserting what they called an- 

other obvious bid for the “Jewish Vote.” The State De- 

partment, too, had advised Senator Vandenberg not to 

Ill 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

adopt a stand which would further alienate the Arab 

world. Consequently, the first draft of the Republican 

foreign policy plank merely extended greetings to the 

new State of Israel, but omitted support of Israel’s bound- 

ary claims and her admission into the United Nations. 

The Zionists immediately went to work and, within 

twenty-four hours, corrected the situation. Governor 

Dewey, the candidate-to-be, and an old hand at playing 

the minority-group angle, used his influence with John 

Foster Dulles and other architects of Republican foreign 

policy. Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver went into conference 

with Senator Taft and made clear, in unmistakable 

words, that he would not deliver his scheduled invoca- 

tion and would publicly walk out of the Republican 

Party, unless a more pronounced pro-Israel commitment 

was inserted. New York Senator Irving Ives criticized 

the original draft for “saying less than a New Year’s 

greeting card.” And under the guidance of the New 

York Senator, the Resolutions Committee rewrote the 

original Republican Palestine plank, making it perfectly 

suitable to the most ardent Jewish nationalist. 

The Democrats, for sixteen triumphant years masters 

in the art of exploiting minority-group consciousness 

(Roosevelt and Truman had an assistant specifically as- 

signed to the task), were from the start free of their rival’s 

indecisiveness. The Democratic platform of 1948 went 

beyond the G.O.P. policy promises by offering “finan- 

cial aid” for Israel and a repeal of the U.S. arms embargo: 

the Truman Administration did not intend to let the 

electorate forget just who had been the best friend of 

the “Jewish people.” 

During the campaign itself, Governor Dewey tried 

hard to reduce the Truman handicap. Secretary of State 

General Marshall supported at the September session of 

1t2 

THE MAGIC AND MYTH OF THE JEWISH VOTE 

the United Nations a compromise Palestine plan as pro- 

posed by Count Folke Bernadotte (who had been assas- 

sinated that very month). The Bernadotte Plan would 

have altered the original partition proposal by giving the 

Negeb area in Southern Palestine to the Arabs. John Fos- 

ter Dulles, Governor Dewey’s chief adviser on foreign 

policy, was a member of the delegation. Members of offi- 

cial U. S. delegations are normally bound by the deci- 

sions of the delegation, but this time there was an under- 

standing that Dulles could publicly clarify his own de- 

cision whenever it had any domestic political signifi- 

cance. And Dulles immediately issued a statement that 

he—and Governor Dewey, by implication—were not 

bound by Marshall’s approval of the Bernadotte Plan. 

On October 22, Candidate Dewey declared himself in 

favor of giving the Negeb area to Israel. A few days later, 

President Truman declared that no change in the orig- 

inal United Nations partition plan should be made un- 

less acceptable to Israel—a considerable step beyond 

what Dewey had advocated. 

John Foster Dulles, the first Republican Secretary of 

State since 1932, had built a curious record on the Israel 

issue. His personal views, influenced by his lasting affili- 

ation with the National Council of Churches, should 

have left him unaffected by Zionism, but his close ties 

to New York politics often balanced the scales. 

The Christian Churches have been understandably 

intent on the provisions of the U. N. resolution which 

call for the internationalization of Jerusalem. When 

Dulles was a candidate in 1949, to succeed himself as 

New York State’s Senator in a contest with Lehman, 

he rejected the request that he support the administra- 

tion of Jerusalem by the Israeli Government. Dulles 

courageously announced his position at a luncheon ar- 

113 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

ranged by 200 Jewish civic, business and professional 

leaders in “tribute to his contributions toward the crea- 

tion of the Jewish State and in support of his candidacy 

for the Senate.” Although obviously on the spot, Dulles 

endorsed the internationalization of the Holy City, twice 

decreed by the United Nations. 

But Dulles’ refusal to change his views in regard to 

Jerusalem seem to have contributed to his losing the New 

York election by a margin of 197,000 votes; and ever 

since he seemed anxious to remember the painful lesson. 

He certainly remembered it while he was building the 

foreign policy plank of the 1952 Republican National 

Convention. 

During the open hearings on that plank, a representa- 

tive of the American Council for Judaism urged the Re- 

publican Party not to make any special promises to Israel 

but rather to treat the entire Middle Eastern area from 

only one point of view: What was in the best interests 

of “all American people and the entire free world.” Con- 

gressman Javits, voicing the position of the American Z1- 

onist Council, advocated special preference for Israel. 

At the end, and with Mr. Dulles’ at least tacit consent, 

the 1952 Republican plank outbid any previous Demo- 

cratic platform in its hunger for the “Jewish Vote.” 

After devoting an entire sentence to the Middle East 

and Africa, the platform discussed in three paragraphs 

the necessity of aiding Israel and went on: 

The Republican Party has consistently advocated a na- 

tional home for the Jewish people since a Republican 

Congress declared its support of that objective thirty years 

ago. In providing a sanctuary for Jewish people rendered 

homeless by persecution, the State of Israel appeals to our 

deepest humanitarian instincts. We shall continue our 

114 

THE MAGIC AND MYTH OF THE JEWISH VOTE 

friendly interest in the constructive and inspiring under- 

taking. We shall put our influence at the service of peace 

between Israel and the Arab states and we shall cooperate 

to bring economic and social stability to that area. 

While the Dulles platform did not entirely follow the 

Javits-Zionist formula, which was calling for the reset- 

tlement of the Arab refugees in neighboring Arab coun- 

tries, it simply failed to mention, even in a single word, 

the existence of hundreds of thousands of wretched Arab 

refugees. 

Two weeks later, the Democrats nominated Governor 

Adlai Stevenson. This time, the Democratic plank on 

the Middle East properly treated the area as a whole 

and spoke of the “people of the Middle East.” What aid 

was promised to Israel and her refugees was equally as- 

sured to the “Arab states and the Palestinian refugees.” 

This represented a considerable toning down of past 

Democratic commitments to Zionism and an awareness 

of the real forces in the Middle East. 

Political platform promises, like international treaties, 

are not necessarily worth more than the paper they are 

written on, but the change of Democratic tone from 

Roosevelt-Truman Zionism to Stevenson aloofness was 

in itself significant. The latest Democratic plank on the 

Middle East had not been dictated, as usual, by a White 

House open to political expediency, but by Department 

of State personnel trained in foreign affairs. Stevenson 

had served with the U. S. delegation to the United Na- 

tions and was fully aware how policy decisions, wher- 

ever Israel and the Arab States were concerned, were 

invariably denied to the Secretary of State. Byrnes had 

complained that the State Department’s sole authority 

in regard to the Palestine problem was to transmit mes- 

115 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

sages for and from the President. Marshall had not even 

been advised on the forthcoming Presidential decision 

to leave the Negeb to Israel. Both Secretaries of State 

were several times on the verge of openly breaking with 

their Chief on Palestine policies. 

The nomination of Adlai Stevenson ended, so far as 

the Democratic Party was concerned, this complete 

domination of U.S. Middle East policies by party hacks. 

Had he been elected, he would hardly have yielded to 

the political pressures that persuaded President Truman 

to neglect the best interests of the nation. Throughout 

his campaign, Stevenson refrained from making any spe- 

cial bid to the “Jewish Vote” and declared his complete 

independence from minority pressure-groups of all 

kinds. In fact, this frankness may have contributed to 

the size of Stevenson’s defeat. On his 1953 visit to the 

Middle East there was some indication, however, that 

the former Governor of Illinois may change his tactics 

and that any new policy for the area by the Eisenhower 

Administration might be met with the usual Democratic 

play to the “Jewish bloc.” 

In his vituperative whistle-stop campaign President 

Truman, however, was true to form by injecting his 

conventional appeal to the “Jewish Vote.” In a letter to 

the Jewish Welfare Board’s National Mobilization for 

G.I. and Community Services, the President charged 

General Eisenhower with a willingness to accept “the 

very practice that identified the so-called master race.” 

The President was referring to the aid Republicans had 

given to the Immigration Act of Democratic Senator 

McCarran and charged that General Eisenhower's fail- 

ure to repudiate these members of his Party indicated 

his support of their views. Within thirty-six hours of the 

publication of the Truman letter, Rabbi Abba Hillel 

116 

I E———————— ae 

THE MAGIC AND MYTH OF THE JEWISH VOTE 

Silver had met with General Eisenhower at his Colum- 

bia University home and letters previously exchanged 

between the Zionist leader and the Republican Presiden- 

tial nominee were immediately released. Rabbi Silver 

had written to thank the General for the inclusion in 

the Republican Party platform of the strong endorsement 

of the State of Israel; and the General, in turn, indicated 

how deeply he was concerned with Israel’s problems and 

how “vigorously and effectively Republican Senators 

and Congressmen, Governors and State legislatures had 

supported the cause [of Israel].” 

On the whole, Eisenhower’s campaign followed much 

more closely than Stevenson’s the “bloc vote” pattern 

which Presidents Roosevelt and Truman had set and 

Governor Dewey had previously tried to emulate. (In 

Eisenhower’s headquarters at New York’s Commodore 

Hotel there were office rooms reserved for the “Jewish 

Division of the Republican National Committee.”) In 

the past, such campaign emphasis has resulted in obliga- 

tions which required a pay off. Yet it is too early to spec- 

ulate whether the new Republican Administration will 

maintain the traditional White House alliance with Zi- 

onism. Secretary Dulles’ tour of the Arab world and the 

facts he reported to the President have caused consider- 

able consternation in Zionist circles. 

President Eisenhower, if he wants, can call the bluff 

of the Jewish nationalists and give the lie to the conten- 

tion of a “Jewish Vote.” For the General’s overwhelm- 

ing victory can hardly be credited to any one vote bloc. 

In 1948, of the twenty-odd million votes cast in the 

five largest states where “the Jewish Vote” is claimed 

to center, only 150,000 votes (three fourths of one per 

cent!) separated the two parties. What did this prove 

about the “Jewish Vote”? Obviously, if it existed, it 

117 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

would have much more weightily supported an Admin- 

istration which had so well served, in deed and word, 

Jewish nationalism. Yet despite all the favors they had 

done for Zionism, the Democrats carried, of the four 

pivotal states, only Illinois and California, and lost the 

larger electoral votes of Pennsylvania and New York. 

Nor was Rabbi Silver able to deliver Ohio, the fifth 

state, to the G.O.P. candidate he supported. In short, 

the election statistics disproved the myth of the “Jewish 

Vote” even in 1948—at the peak of Zionist hysteria. 

These same five pivotal States gave Eisenhower, in 

1952, an approximate plurality of 2.7 million votes out 

of some 23.5 million votes cast—a differential of better 

than 10 per cent. The swing from the Democrats to the 

Republicans was so tremendous that it is difficult to 

separate the details of the landslide. But there can be no 

doubt that innumerable formerly Democratic Catholics 

must this time have voted Republican. And there is every 

reason to believe that tremendous numbers of Jewish 

votes went to Eisenhower. 

A study Columbia University made for Life magazine 

in 1952 revealed that 37 % of the Catholics, 36% of the 

Jews and 23% of the Protestants are affiliated with the 

Democratic Party; and only 6% of the Jewish Voters 

are registered Republicans, as compared to 22 % of the 

Catholics and 45 % of the Protestants. But the most sig- 

nificant revelation of this study is that 58% of Jewish 

Americans are affiliated with neither party. Consequent- 

ly, neither party has a first mortgage on the votes of Jew- 

ish Americans. 

Indeed, all past statistical election analyses have shown 

that the factors determining the choice of so-called mi- 

nority groups were never different from those which 

influenced the vote of all other socially comparable 

118 

—- ”. 

THE MAGIC AND MYTH OF THE JEWISH VOTE 

groups. For if there ever has been any noticeable bloc 

voting, it always followed economic division lines cut- 

ting through religious affiliations. The strong democratic 

majority for Stevenson in New York’s Lower East Side 

was a working-class vote rather than a “Jewish Vote”: 

this is where the effectively organized needle workers 

live. But in the economically more substantial and almost 

equally Jewish West-End-Avenue-Manhattan districts 

of New York, Eisenhower received close to 45 % of the 

total vote. 

There is, of course, an indeterminate number of voters 

who, in the past, have supported a candidate because 

“he is good for our people.” Yet, interestingly enough, 

this type of thinking has been much more prevalent i in 

a negative sense, i.e., when a “minority group” felt un- 

easy about one of j its own members. For example, when 

Albert Ottinger ran as Republican candidate for the New 

York Governorship, 1 in 1928, against Roosevelt, he was 

the victim of a whispering campaign concerning the 

quality of his “Jewishness” which undoubtedly resulted 

in his defeat (by an extremely narrow margin in an elec- 

tion which otherwise swept Herbert Hoover and the 

rest of the Republican ticket into office). On the other 

hand, considerably more New York Jews voted in 1945 

for the Catholic Democrat William O’Dwyer than for 

the Jewish Republican, Judge Jonah Goldstein. Where 

there is a Jewish candidate running against a non-Jewish 

opponent, certain Jews will no doubt be influenced in 

favor of “one of their own,” but this die-hard Jewish 

vote is only as large as is Jewish nationalism itself. 

All things being equal, and neither candidate “of the 

faith,” there has never been conclusive proof that the 

votes of Jews can be delivered, as a bloc, to any candidate. 

In 1948, when he was supporting Dewey for President, 

119 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

Rabbi Silver’s Ohio home county, Cuyahoga (which in- 

cludes Cleveland), went to Truman by 43,000 votes. In 

the same county Stevenson trailed Eisenhower in 1952 

by some 5200 votes. There is evidence that this large 

shift represented the failure of labor to deliver for the 

New Deal rather than Dr. Silver’s sudden ability to de- 

liver “the Jewish Vote” to the Republican ticket. The 

Korean issue, if any one factor, seems to have been the 

responsible factor for the Anti-Truman revulsion in 

Cuyahoga County, as most everywhere in the U. S. 

From the synagogue, there came in 1952 one voice 

of the rabbinate which made particularly good sense. 

Rabbi Joseph Lookstein, of Manhattan, pointed out that 

the “grave error” of his colleague Dr. Silver “might have 

been avoided had he on that morning (Saturday) been 

where a rabbi should be—in the synagogue. . .. When 

a religious teacher enters the arena of a political campaign 

he does a candidate little good and religion much 

hari 

CHAPTER VII 

Smears and Fears 

ce BELIEVE,” wrote Learned Hand, the retired Chief 

Judge of the Second Federal Court of Appeals, 

“that the community is already in the process of 

dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor 

as a possible enemy, where non-conformity with the 

accepted creed, political as well as religious, is a mark 

of disaffection, where denunciation, without specifica- 

tion or backing, takes the place of evidence; where or- 

thodoxy chokes freedom of dissent; where faith in the 

eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that 

we dare not enter our convictions in the open lists to 

win or lose.’”* 

This concise statement of a noble man’s dreads can 

be applied, without the slightest change, to the precari- 

ous position of the anti-Zionist American Jew within 

American Jewry. 

At the end of World War II, when the partition of 

Palestine began to look feasible, it became virtually im- 

possible to raise doubts as to the merits of the proposition. 

Since the State of Israel was created, its policies, and the 

activities of U. S. organizations assisting the new sover- 

eignty, have been placed beyond the pale of criticism. 

121 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

Christian would-be critics were speedily silenced with 

the smear-word “Anti-Semitism”; and any latent Jewish 

opposition to Zionist nationalism has been throttled by 

the fear of being labeled “treason to Jewry.” Crushed 

between the smear and the fear is American foreign pol- 

icy in the Middle East. 

There has developed within American Jewry—as, in- 

deed, throughout our entire civilization—a horrible 

readiness to bow before the fetishes of words, to surren- 

der personal thought to group jargon, individual respon- 

sibility to group emotionalism. People (and American 

Jews are people) seem to abhor nothing so much as the 

apparently unpleasant process of personal rationalizing. 

Rather, they accept cleverly manufactured catchwords 

as self-evident truths which must not be, ever, exposed 

to intellectual analysis. And no tragedy in the long and 

tragic history of Judaism could have been more appalling 

than the meekness with which the religious community 

that gave Monotheism to a pagan world seems to be 

yielding to the savage paganism of word fetishes. 

Zionism, in short, won its blitzkrieg over American 

Jewry simply because it was permitted to put the label 

“Humanitarianism” on the power politics of Jewish na- 

tionalism. There are tens of thousands of American Jews 

who detest rabid nationalism, Jewish or otherwise; but 

there is hardly an American Jew who would want to be 

thought “antihumanitarian.” Consequently, Zionism did 

not waste time or energy on proving its extreme program 

to be morally and historically sound. All it had to do was 

to equate it with man’s compassion for the victims of 

history’s most cruel pogrom. And this, Zionism did ex- 

tremely well—with unprecedented aggressiveness, and 

with the help of an easily frightened American press. 

The capture of the American press by Jewish national- 

122 

SMEARS AND FEARS 

ism was, in fact, incredibly complete. Magazines as well 

as newspapers, news stories as well as editorial columns, 

gave primarily the Zionist views of events before, during 

and after partition. And there was little incentive to re- 

sist the Zionist pressure exerted on the U. S. press. Arab 

readership was negligible, and latent Jewish opposition 

to Zionism remained inarticulate. If the Zionist story 

could not be presented straight, it could always be smug- 

gled in under humanitarian disguise. Even the most ob- 

jective story on Displaced Persons carried a Zionist prop- 

aganda message. 

The American press, to be sure, was happy to comply 

with the Christian desire of making at least partial amends 

for the persecution of European Jewry; and its special 

contribution was obviously to handle news in a manner 

the articulate (i.e., Zionist) Jews would consider sym- 

pathetic. If voluntary compliance was not “understand- 

ing” enough, there was always the matter of Jewish ad- 

vertising and circulation. The threat of economic recrim- 

inations from Jewish advertisers, combined with the fact 

that the fatal label of ““Anti-Semite” would be pinned on 

any editor stepping out of line, assured fullest press co- 

operation. 

A modicum of newspaper space was occasionally 

given to such anti-Zionists as the American Council for 

Judaism or the Christian Group headed by Dean Vir- 

ginia Gildersleeve and Bayard Dodge. But each time a 

New York newspaper published a news item unfavorable 

to Zionism—even a reader’s critical letter to the editor— 

the pressure was applied: innumerable telephone calls 

to the editor, the news desk and the advertising depart- 

ment, and a flood of protesting letters. Newspaper offices 

are not overly sensitive to that type of pressure; but in 

this particular case, their power of resistance was greatly 

123 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

reduced by the unnerving fact that the ugly charge of 

“Anti-Semitism” was accompanying the coercive acts. 

In the lobby of the New York Times hangs a plaque 

with these words inscribed: “To give the news impar- 

tially without fear or favor, regardless of any party, sect 

or interest involved.” And the Times, of all papers, has 

most nearly lived up to that maxim, even when under 

Zionist pressure. In November 1946, the Times pub- 

lisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, said publicly: “I dislike 

the coercive methods of Zionists who in this country 

have not hesitated to use economic means to silence per- 

sons who have different views. I object to the attempts 

at character assassination of those who do not agree with 

them.” This, coming from an American of the Jewish 

faith and the publisher of the most influential and, thus, 

most vulnerable American newspaper, was courage in- 

deed. The Times was then opposing the partition of Pal- 

estine and feeling the whip lash of the pressure group 

who had declared a virtual boycott of the New York 

Times. The details of that boycott action remained one 

of the guarded secrets on Times Square. There is a heavy 

file tucked away in Mr. Sulzberger’s safe and no one will 

today talk about the frightening experience. Yet the 

Times continued to report the news impartially and, on 

the whole, it still endeavors to be as objective as it can 

vis-a-vis the State of Israel. (Personally, Mr. Sulzberger 

is a non-Zionist rather than an anti-Zionist. ) 

The big Republican rival of the New York Times, the 

New York Herald-Tribune, was not slow in taking ad- 

vantage of the difficult position in which the non-Zionist 

but Jewish-owned Times had been placed by the Pales- 

tine controversy. In New York City, there were over 

2 million Jewish readers at stake, and the Herald-Tribune 

did its best to cut into the Times circulation. The paper 

124 

SMEARS AND FEARS 

went overboard in its support of partition. Its “report- 

ing” of Palestine news outslanted* even the New York 

Post’s Jewish nationalism. Chaim Weizmann’s diaries 

were serialized. For the first time in its history the Her- 

ald-Tribune, in fact, threw aside its Anglophilia to re- 

place it with Zionism’s evaluation of Britain’s “colonial 

policy.” 

When Dr. Harry Gideonse, the President of Brook- 

lyn College, warned that an exclusive preoccupation 

with Israeli concerns, and a disregard for legitimate 

American Jewish national interests in the Middle East, 

could be a dangerous stimulant to the growth of bigotry 

and intolerance, he was furiously attacked in the New 

York press. The New York Post called Dr. Gideonse 

editorially “an apologist for encouragement of Arab ag- 

gression against Israel” and refused to publish his reply 

to the slander. In the New York Jewish Day, Dr. Sam- 

uel Margoshes pilloried the Brooklyn educator with wild 

references to Wall Street, the house of Dillon, Reed and 

Company and the “pro-Arab cabal” in the State Depart- 

ment, topping it all off with an appeal to Brooklyn stu- 

dents not to permit Dr. Gideonse to get away with his 

impudent frankness. 

In other parts of the country, the press was similarly 

knuckling down. The National Public Opinion Re- 

search Center of Denver, Colorado, interviewed a rep- 

resentative group of daily and weekly newspaper editors 

at the height of the public debate over Palestine (Octo- 

ber, 1947). Opinion News, the official publication of the 

Research Center, reported that 50% of the editors op- 

posed partition and favored a unitary Palestine; 30% 

went along with the UNSCOP majority; and 10% fa- 

vored a federalized State. But these personal opinions of 

the editors hardly showed in their papers. The news cov- 

125 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

erage of the Palestine story carried a clear pro-Zionist 

slant throughout the country. And by November, 1947, 

more than 57% of surveyed national papers had re- 

frained from any editorial comment on the Palestine 

question.* 

Since summer 1948, one million distraught Arab ref- 

ugees had been exposed to hunger, privation and the 

“happy talk” of the Communists. But because these peo- 

ple were Arabs, the U. S. press had little space for their 

problems. This indifference may have been due, to some 

extent, to the belief that American readers would not 

be interested in this far-away story. But, alas, there can 

be no doubt that U. S. editors wanted, above all, to 

avoid a “sticky” humanitarian problem that contained 

embarrassing political connotations. And whenever they 

were mentioned in the U. S. press, the Arabs were some- 

how depicted as tools of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, 

as Pro-Nazi Falangists, or as desert marauders. 

Volume after volume espousing the Zionist position 

from every possible angle inundated the book stores. 

More important, the books by James McDonald, Bart- 

ley Crum, Richard Crossman, William Ziff, Sumner 

Welles, Robert Nathan, Robert Capa, Pierre Van Paas- 

sen, Walter Lowdermilk, and Herbert Evatt, received 

enthusiastic national press attention. Even Carlson’s 

Cairo to Damascus, a veritable hatchet job, enjoyed 

glowing reviews. But less pro-Zionist books, like the 

one Willie Snow (Mrs. Mark) Ethridge wrote, met a 

vastly different reception. Mrs. Ethridge, the wife of 

the publisher of the Louisville Courier-Journal, had ac- 

companied her husband to his post in the Holy Land 

as U. S. member of the United Nations Conciliation 

Commission. In Going to Jerusalem, she not only gave 

an account of Jewish suffering in Israel, but also described 

126 

SSS ee 

SMEARS AND FEARS 

the misery of the Arab refugees. And just for that, a 

Washington Post review written by the publisher him- 

self, called her “wide-eyed” and accused her of giving 

a “distorted, if different view of the situation.” Particu- 

lar exception was taken to the perfectly fair remark Mrs. 

Ethridge attributes to her husband: “The Arabs are not 

lily-white and neither are the Jews. It is a confused, com- 

plex situation.” The review in the New York Herald- 

Tribune took even more violent exception to Mrs. Eth- 

ridge’s description of the contentious land in which more 

than 900,000 Arabs were forced to relinquish beautiful 

orchards and villages. 

Mrs. Ethridge, by the way, was invited to address the 

Maryland Teachers Association in Baltimore and chose, 

several weeks in advance, Going to Jerusalem as the sub- 

ject of her speech. Four days before her scheduled talk, 

the secretary of the Maryland Teachers Association in- 

formed her that she must not give that particular speech. 

Despite her willingness to submit its full text beforehand, 

the secretary would not change his mind; so much pres- 

sure had been brought to bear on him, he explained, that 

he would lose his job if Mrs. Ethridge insisted on the 

delicate subject. Mrs. Ethridge, a lady of compassion, 

changed it finally to “The Balkans Balk.” 

Other expressions of plain sympathy for the new Dis- 

placed Persons of the Middle East were similarly re- 

ceived. Professor Millar Burrows of the Yale School of 

Divinity, a distinguished Bible student and archaeologist, 

has always enjoyed an unchallenged reputation for scru- 

pulous objectivity in his scholarly pursuits—until 1949, 

when the Westminster Press published his book, Pales- 

tine Is Our Business. And his case is indeed a frightening 

example of Zionist tactics. 

In Land Reborn, the house organ of the American 

127 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

Christian Palestine Committee, Professor Burrows was 

promptly accused of “careless writing, disjointed report- 

ing and extremely biased observation.” The publishing 

firm, according to the Land Reborn reviewer (a Chris- 

tian minister) “should have rejected the manuscript of 

this shoddy piece of work which ill becomes a distin- 

guished Bible scholar.” (The same magazine had de- 

scribed Mrs. Ethridge’s work as “cloying and tiresome.’’) 

The American Zionist Council really gave full treatment 

to Professor Burrows’ book. In an interpretative survey 

of Arab propaganda, prepared and distributed by the 

Zionist Council,* Dr. Burrows was labeled an “‘out and 

out anti-Zionist” and his book “an anti-Semitic opus.” 

Everyone who had ever dared to raise his voice against 

the one-sided presentation of the Middle Eastern picture 

was accused in this same pamphlet of being part of a 

“pro-Arab campaign in America, stretching from the 

intellectual and philanthropic circles at the top, through 

various religious groups and into the cesspool of anti- 

Semitism.” Dorothy Thompson, Vincent Sheean, Pro- 

fessor William E. Hocking, the Presidents of the Amer- 

ican Universities in the Middle East, Reader’s Digest, 

Time, Atlantic Monthly and Stewart Alsop were all 

lumped together with Gerald L. K. Smith and Merwin 

K. Hart in this “propaganda ring” allegedly after Israel 

and the Jews in this country. 

In a protesting letter to the Zionist Council, Professor 

Burrows pointed out that he had been one of the organ- 

izers, and for some time a vice-president, of the National 

Committee to Combat Anti-Semitism; that he had been 

active in the inter-faith movement in New Haven; and 

that “strong differences in political convictions are com- 

patible with personal respect and honesty.” The execu- 

tive director of the Zionist Council, Rabbi Jerome Un- 

128 

SMEARS AND FEARS 

ger, admitted in his reply to Dr. Burrows: “You most 

certainly should not be charged with anti-Semitism.” 

Then, with argumentative finesse, the Rabbi added: 

“You will readily admit, of course, that in the make-up 

of many anti-Zionists—indeed, some of the leading ones 

—anti-Semitism is a strong component part. It is always 

very difficult to sift out one from the other but I feel 

certain that, in your case, it requires very little sifting.” 

But beyond this ambiguous admission, in a letter, there 

was no apology and of course no public retraction to 

undo the harm that had been done to Dr. Burrows. 

In the fall of 1949, the Holyland Emergency Liaison 

Program was organized to bring the plight of the Arab 

refugees to the attention of the American public. The 

organization was headed by the former President of the 

Union Theological Seminary, Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin, 

and assembled on its National Council thirty prominent 

clergymen, judges, college presidents, philanthropists, 

diplomats and writers. In its initial statement of Septem- 

ber 12, 1949, H.E.L.P. (as the group came to be known) 

called for an immediate solution of the Arab refugee 

problem. Lest the intent of the organization be construed 

as political, or aimed against Israel, H.E.L.P. explicitly 

stated that “our concern is not with how or why the Arab 

refugees came into being. They exist, and the Holyland 

Emergency Liaison Program intends to focus public at- 

tention on their plight.” 

The general press of the country (where was now its 

humanitarian purport?) devoted a ludicrously small 

amount of space to the activities of H.E.L.P., but the 

Yiddish press assailed the organization with furor. When 

Dorothy Thompson joined the group, the headlines of 

the Jewish Examiner screamed: “‘Miss Thompson heads 

Pro-Arab Hate Group.” Her previous support of Zion- 

129 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

ism and her leadership in the country’s mobilization 

against Nazism were wiped out by Miss Thompson’s 

impudence to sympathize with human suffering even 

when the sufferers were Arabs. 

Throughout its brief existence, H.E.L.P. persisted in 

its non-political objective and never blamed Israel for 

the creation of the Arab refugee problem. But the very 

existence of H.E.L.P. was anathema to Zionism: it ex- 

posed the guilty conscience of Jewish nationalist lead- 

ers. Men and women in public life were advised not to 

join this movement; and those who had already done so, 

received more than mere advice to get off. Governor 

Christian Herter of Massachusetts, for instance, had ac- 

cepted the post of Vice-Chairman of H.E.L.P. when he 

was a Congressman from Boston. Less than three weeks 

after H.E.L.P.’s statement of objectives had been re- 

leased, Herter sent a letter of resignation to Dr. Coffin. 

In this letter, the Congressman stated that “my own po- 

sition on the Council (of H.E.L.P.) has already given 

the erroneous impression that I have chosen to take sides 

against Israel.”* On the telephone, and in conversation 

with officers of H.E.L.P., Mr. Herter indicated that pres- 

sures from constituents were tremendous and that his 

political career was in the balance. A delegation headed 

by a rabbi from Herter’s Congressional district had come 

to Washington to demand that he resign. His mail had 

been heavy with letters, including one from the Jewish 

War Veterans, accusing him of selling out to the Arabs. 

An editor of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency had in- 

formed the Congressman (without giving him a copy of 

the alleged monitorings) that Arab radio broadcasts had 

boasted H.E.L.P. “was going to drive the Israelites back 

into the Sea.” Herter was finally impressed by a Hebrew 

130 

SO a 

SMEARS AND FEARS 

broadcast which asserted that “the task of the new in- 

stitution (H.E.L.P.) . .. is to exercise pressure on Con- 

gress to fulfill Arab demands.” In such manner, a pres- 

sure group drove a politician to cover. On resigning, 

Congressman Herter issued a press statement taking a 

critical view of the “political objectives” of H.E.L.P.— 

after he had assured the organization that there would 

be no press release on his withdrawal. A quiet resigna- 

tion, of course, would scarcely have satisfied those who 

wished to destroy H.E.L.P. 

Trouble Makers,’ a book sponsored by the Anti- 

Defamation League (whose avowed task is to fight “the 

causes and effects” of prejudice), tells of a secret meeting 

between Azzam Pasha, then Secretary General of the 

Arab League, and members of H.E.L.P. who conspired 

with Azzam Pasha in his anti-Jewish propaganda. No 

such meeting ever took place: at the time of the alleged 

meeting, H.E.L.P. had ceased to exist for more than 

three months. 

Volume VIII of The Facts, published in May, 1948, 

by the Anti-Defamation League’s Civil Rights Division, 

dealt with “Anti-Semitism and the Palestine Issue”— 

and listed under that title the activities of Dean Virginia 

Gildersleeve, Kermit Roosevelt, Bayard Dodge, and Max 

Thornburg. “Their espousal of the Arab cause in oppo- 

sition to Zionism has been marked by an increasingly 

hostile attitude towards the Jewish people themselves. 

While anti-Zionism and sympathy for the Arab cause 

are not necessarily indications of anti-Semitic prejudice, 

there are many whose pro-Arab utterances and activities 

have contained sufficiently expressed or implied anti- 

Semitism to give cause for genuine alarm.’”® 

Was there ever a weaker case of “guilt by association” 

131 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

or, rather, guilt by juxtaposition? The evaluation of these 

men and women whose motivation the Anti-Defama- 

tion League concedes might be sincere is intermixed with 

an analysis of Coughlin, Gerald L. K. Smith, and others 

patently insincere. 

The Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy 

Land, to which many opponents of the partition proposal 

belonged, was attacked with similar insinuations and the 

double-bottomed “concession” that “‘on the other hand 

anti-Semitism has been read into some anti-Zionist at- 

titudes, which stem from ostensibly sincere opposition 

to the establishment of a Jewish State.” Final conclusion: 

“They and the Committee have aligned themselves with 

the official Arab propaganda line in this country (both 

opposed partition) which sometimes has gone beyond 

bounds. .. . They may be contributing wittingly or un- 

wittingly to an increase of anti-Jewish sentiment in the 

United States.” 

“While there has been no evidence that Dean Gilder- 

sleeve or any member of her Committee has been de- 

liberately anti-Semitic (We all have intimate Jewish 

friends, Dean Gildersleeve explained in her letter,)?° it 

is an unquestionable fact that less scrupulous endorsers 

of the Arab cause have taken advantage of the Com- 

mittee’s propaganda activities,” the Anti-Defamation 

League asserted. Intolerance was charged to Miss Gil- 

dersleeve because of her claim that “Palestine Jews are 

capable of doing very wicked things”—a contention in 

which she has the support of Sulzberger, Einstein, and 

Magnes (amongst other “‘anti-Semites”): Miss Gilder- 

sleeve had been appalled by the Israeli burnings of 

George Antonius’ The Arab Awakening, a historical 

exposition of Arab nationalism. 

132 

a 

SMEARS AND FEARS 

The Anti-Defamation League’s evidence against Ker- 

mit Roosevelt was that the Arab office in Washington 

had suggested his name as a speaker who would be friend- 

ly to the Arab cause. 

The Anti-Defamation League’s proof of the un- 

American nature of Dr. Bayard Dodge consisted of the 

fact that he had been the President of the American 

University of Beirut and had stated: “I am not anti-Jew- 

ish, but Americans must study carefully the conse- 

quences of aggressive support of extreme Zionists.”** 

The Anti-Defamation League’s study of the Palestine 

issue, and its subsequent “Survey of the Reaction to the 

Establishment and Recognition of Israel,” attributed 

anti-Semitism to any portion of the press which dared to 

point out that the Administration had backed the par- 

tition of Palestine primarily to get Jewish votes at home. 

Editorials of the Richmond Times and St. Louis Post 

Dispatch were singled out on this score, as were the Eve- 

ning Record of Jersey City and the Tucson (Arizona) 

Daily Star which pondered editorially that the creation 

of Israel might raise the question of dual loyalties. The 

Saturday Evening Post came under fire for a brief edi- 

torial, “Let’s Suppose Partition Came Home to Roost,” 

in which the question was asked how the U. S. would 

react if the U. N. proposed an all-Negro state. Dr. Peter 

Marshall, the universally respected chaplain of the U. S. 

Senate (whose sermons were posthumously published in 

the best-selling A Man Called Peter) was attacked for 

a sermon given in the Church of the Presidents. Dr. Mar- 

shall spoke of “The Paradox that is America” and noted 

that the British were out of Palestine and we were in. 

“Our President,” he then said, “‘put us in by his immediate 

recognition of the Jewish State of Israel and it is going 

133 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

to cost us something, you may be sure of that.” This 

moderate, correct and perfectly sensible statement gave 

Dr. Marshall the complexion of an untouchable. 

* * ¥ 

However harsh the treatment the Zionists were giving 

non-Jewish opponents of a Jewish State in Palestine, it 

was sheer tenderness compared to the fate of Jewish non- 

Zionists. 

Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, President of the Jewish The- 

ological Seminary was only a non-Zionist. But when he 

refused to allow his students to sing the Israel National 

Anthem at commencement in 1945 (on the ground that 

a political song had no place at a religious ceremony), 

a storm of resentment descended upon him throughout 

the organized Jewish community in the U. S. (At least 

one large contributor to the Seminary tore up his annual 

check.) *? 

From the outset, even the U. S. rabbinate was deter- 

mined to silence all who disagreed with Zionist tenets. 

When the Biltmore Program (calling for the estab- 

lishment of a Jewish State) was publicly opposed by a 

small Jewish organization, four rabbis branded the op- 

position statement, before a meeting of the American 

Jewish Conference, as “impertinent attempt to sabo- 

tage,” “outrageous action,” “treachery to the cause of 

Israel” by men “who placed themselves outside of the 

pale of Israel.” 

The Central Conference of American Rabbis not only 

rejected the assertion that Zionism was incompatible 

with Reform Judaism, but tried to eliminate all organ- 

ized opposition to the prevailing Zionist sentiment. 

When the American Council for Judaism was organ- 

134 

SMEARS AND FEARS 

ized to represent the Judaists who reject Jewish nation- 

alism, the Central Conference adopted, by 137 to 45 

votes, a resolution which ended with these words: 

“Therefore without impugning the rights of Zionists 

and non-Zionists to express and to disseminate their con- 

victions within and without the Conference, we, in the 

spirit of amity, urge our colleagues of the American 

Council for Judaism to terminate this organization.” 

The record of Zionist pressures exerted against Jews 

who shared the views of the American Council for Juda- 

ism is long, sad and continuous. This writer, no matter 

how hard he would try, could never present that record 

in its massive entirety—for the good and forceful reason 

that the more submissive victims of Zionist pressures are 

usually too ashamed or too afraid to publicize their ex- 

perience. I have therefore decided to confine the rest 

of this chapter to my own experience—not because I 

consider it extreme (I know of worse case histories), and 

certainly not because of any pride in martyrdom, but 

simply because I know that story particularly well and 

can tell it freely. 

In 1949, I grew tired of the self-appointed spokesmen 

who purported to speak for me. I did not feel that a yen 

for Jewish Statehood was a necessary component of either 

my Jewish faith or my compassion for Hitler’s victims. 

And I sincerely resented the Zionist propaganda which 

wanted to make my Christian fellow citizens believe that 

all American Jews, in a fictitious “unity,” desire a po- 

litical separation of “the Jewish people.” I wrote an ar- 

ticle to express my attitude (which, I felt, must be that 

of innumerable other Americans of the Jewish faith) 

and sent it to the Saturday Evening Post. 

Several years before, the Saturday Evening Post had 

published a provocative article by Milton Mayer, en- 

135 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

titled “The Case Against the Jews,” in which Mayer 

criticized the self-segregating habits of many American 

Jews but showed his authentic devotion to the universal 

tenets of his Jewish faith. (The editors also gave the 

floor to two other American Jews, Judge Jerome Frank 

and author Waldo Frank, to present divergent views on 

the same subject.) The publication of Mayer’s article 

exposed the Saturday Evening Post to what was perhaps 

the worst ordeal in the magazine’s venerably long his- 

tory: tremendous and quite often venomous mail flooded 

the editorial offices, subscriptions were cancelled and ad- 

vertising was withdrawn in an obviously organized 

drive. L’affaire Mayer, still nervously remembered in the 

publishing world, was to establish once and for all the 

rule that no national magazine must dare present an ar- 

ticle which, even remotely, attacks Jewish nationalism— 

unless the magazine was courageously prepared for a se- 

rious and prolonged battle. The Saturday Evening Post 

evidently was not. Its editors returned my manuscript 

with these kind remarks: “Let us promptly concede that 

this is a good and eloquent article, but it is not one we 

can use. The pity is that, if all Jews were as broad-minded 

as this author, there would be no Zionist problem.” 

The piece was later rejected, with similar explanations, 

by other national magazines—until it reached the Read- 

er’s Digest whose editors wanted it. The Digest, with 

its colossal circulation, could run the risk of publishing 

a controversial article, because the magazine’s U. S. edi- 

tion carries no advertising. But even the Digest had to 

protect itself. Though the Jewish nationalist story had 

appeared in print a thousand times, the Digest editors 

decided to present the two opposing views in the same 

issue. So Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver’s ““The Case for Zion- 

ism” appeared in the September, 1949, issue of the Read- 

136 

SMEARS AND FEARS 

er’s Digest with my “Israel’s Flag Is Not Mine.” But 

even that impartiality was not deemed sufficient protec- 

tion against the displeasure of Zionism. Twelve promi- 

nent Americans of the Jewish faith were invited, and 

agreed, to testify in that Digest issue: “We feel that 

presentation of both sides of the Zionist Question by the 

Reader’s Digest is an important public service.” All 

twelve were anti-Zionists, but the magazine could at 

least show some impressive Jewish support for the pub- 

lication of both articles. 

One of those who declined to join this group endorse- 

ment was Rabbi Isadore Hoffman, Counselor to Jewish 

Students at Columbia University. Dr. Hoffman wrote 

William L. White, the Digest Editor in charge of the 

two articles, that he resented “the efforts of some extreme 

Jewish Nationalists to intimidate or silence those of the 

Jewish faith who differ with them,” but because of the 

position he held, Rabbi Hoffman had to refrain from pub- 

licly approving that an American of the Jewish faith re- 

ceived a chance to express his non-conformist views on 

Zionism. 

These unprecedented safeguards in publishing a sim- 

ple and in itself anything but “explosive” article did not, 

however, save its author from an ordeal of considerable 

magnitude. From the Synagogue pulpits and from the 

Anglo-Jewish and Yiddish press, throughout the nation, 

the heaviest barrages were fired against the article and 

its author. 

The Jewish Post of Louisville, Kentucky, announced 

gravely that it was time for United States Jewry to take 

action against those who charge dual loyalty. The Den- 

ver, Colorado Intermountain Jewish News called on the 

Anti-Defamation League, and other defense agencies, 

to recognize that “Jews can be anti-Semitic and crack 

137 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

down on those who carp about dual loyalty in the public 

press.” What hurt and enraged these papers particularly 

was that the huge Christian readership of the Digest was 

for the first time informed that “Jewish unity” (what- 

ever that is) was fictitious. As the B’nai B’rith Messenger 

of Los Angeles, California, put it: “When they (anti- 

Zionists) go to the non-Zionists, go to the non-Jewish 

press with lies, false logic and implied appeal for them 

to destroy the American Jewish community, then it be- 

comes a serious menace, not only to the Jewish but to 

the general community.” 

The Digest came in for such accusations as “‘snide re- 

marks—twisted attitude toward Israel and Zionists—pro- 

fascistic editorial position in general.” In an open letter, 

the Jewish Times of Philadelphia insisted that the “‘pub- 

lication of such stuff presents a case for organizations 

which fight anti-Semitism,” while the Jewish Floridian 

charged that an alliance of traitors and anti-Semites had 

made the publication of the vicious article possible. ‘The 

National Jewish Post of Indianapolis and the Detroit 

Jewish Chronicle called for a holy war against, and ex- 

communication of, the American Council for Judaism 

for distributing free reprints of the Digest article. The 

National Community Relations Advisory Council 

(which is the co-ordinating body for the American 

Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, the 

Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish War Veterans, 

Jewish Labor Committee of 25, Hebrew Congregations, 

and 27 local Community Councils) passed this resolu- 

tion: “The Executive Committee is directed to take ap- 

propriate measures with the American Council for Juda- 

ism looking toward the discontinuance by the American 

Council of its false and unwarranted charges impugning 

the loyalty of American Jews.” Neither the accused 

138 

SMEARS AND FEARS 

organization (which had never sponsored my article) 

nor the man whose article was so attacked were given 

an opportunity to challenge the accusation and to prove 

that not the Digest article but Jewish nationalism had 

raised the very real issue of dual loyalties. They were 

condemned, instead, in star-chamber fashion that would 

have done justice to the combined efforts of a Cromwell, 

a Hitler, and a Stalin. 

Moreover, I was excoriated from some fourteen pul- 

pits in various parts of the country. No rabbinical attack 

was more bitter than that by Rabbi Abraham Feldman 

of Temple Beth Israel in Hartford, Connecticut, deliv- 

ered on the evening of September 30, 1949. Now Hart- 

ford, a wonderful town, has always been very close and 

dear to me. A good part of my family comes from there, 

including an uncle from whom I was inseparable 

throughout his life. I had known a boy’s happiness in 

this humid city on the Connecticut River. And in Hart- 

ford, of all places, at the momentous Friday night service 

before the Day of Atonement, Rabbi Feldman took for 

the title of his sermon “Israel’s Flag Is Not Mine.” The 

Rabbi had his sermon printed and distributed, with the 

compliments of a Zionist leader, throughout Hartford. 

Using the pulpit of God, and high office, the Rabbi 

distorted my view. Just as his colleague, Rabbi Silver, 

had done in the Digest, Rabbi Feldman presented Zion- 

ism as a purely philanthropic, not at all nationalist, move- 

ment. I was depicted as a kind of monster, completely 

callous to the needs of suffering fellow Jews, rather than 

merely opposed to a political machine which was selling 

extreme Jewish nationalism. But the Digest article had 

centered on the serious issue whether the new State had 

created “a collective Jewish nation with its center in 

Israel,” to which all members of the Jewish faith owe 

139 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

obligations and unswerving political aid; and this central 

question Dr. Feldman did not even try to answer. Rath- 

er, the Rabbi advised me to “pray penitently and fer- 

vently for Divine forgiveness for the cruel and reckless 

injury” I had done “‘to all American Jews.” 

The powers of propaganda and emotion being what 

they are, most of his audience that Friday night readily 

accepted Rabbi Feldman’s interpretation of what I had 

actually written. In the Jewish community of Hartford, 

I was adjudged guilty of the heinous crime of treason to 

the new State of Israel by proclaiming the indivisibility 

of my American citizenship. For months thereafter, some 

members of my family would not talk to me (including 

a relative who, though Protestant, allowed emotionalism 

to sweep aside her usually sound judgment). Ten months 

later, when I visited Hartford for the first time since 

the “cause celébre,” some old friends would still have no 

part of me. A few sidled over to me and whispered that 

they shared my views; but they only whispered. 

A written request was submitted to let me, consonant 

with the American tradition of fair play, present my side 

of the quarrel to Rabbi Feldman’s congregation who, for 

years, had been indoctrinated in Jewish nationalism. The 

request resulted merely in a bitter exchange of corre- 

spondence which, for all practical purposes, netted the 

answer Dr. Feldman was reputed to have previously 

given to an intermediary: “It will be over my dead 

body.” And indeed his Hartford community has re- 

mained solidly in the Jewish nationalist camp. In pass- 

ing, an ironic “switch” occurred several months later 

when Rabbi Feldman visited the State of Israel. Because 

Israeli law has given complete control of religious life 

to the Orthodox Rabbinate, Conservative or Reform 

Judaism was not then, and still is not, permitted in the 

140 

aE 

SMEARS AND FEARS 

new State.’* Consequently, on his return to the United 

States, Dr. Feldman bitterly attacked Israel and its prac- 

tices in a statement, published throughout liberal Judaist 

circles, which far outdid any known criticism of the 

new State by anti-nationalists. Criticism of Israel, wher- 

ever an American Zionist vested interest is involved, is 

of course permissible. 

There was, however, one servant of God who dem- 

onstrated his belief in the American tradition of free 

speech. Rabbi William F. Rosenblum of the Temple 

Israel in New York City, where I had taken my vows 

to universal Judaism at the age of thirteen, made the 

pulpit available for me to answer my critics. When it 

became known that, for the first time, a pulpit in the 

United States was being given, during Friday evening 

services, to a sermon on the anti-nationalist point of view, 

the Zionist steamroller started moving. Dr. Rosenblum 

was approached by the Executive Director of the Ameri- 

can Zionist Council who, by persuasion and other means, 

tried to get my privilege cancelled. But the Rabbi of 

Temple Israel, who is neither a Zionist nor an anti-Zion- 

ist, indignantly rejected coercion when he introduced 

me to his synagogue audience on March 3, 1950. 

Three days later, the American Zionist Council direc- 

tor, Dr. Jerome Unger, wrote a letter to Rabbi Rosen- 

blum in which he said: “I yield to no one in my devotion 

to a free pulpit and to the right of freedom of speech. 

It is a nice question, however, which is giving many 

Americans serious concern today, as to just how far lib- 

eralism must go in providing freedom for those who 

would attack and undermine the very foundation of a 

free society (of course, I don’t put Mr. Lilienthal in 

this latter class).” Dr. Unger noted that the New York 

Times had reported my speech and expressed fear that 

141 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

encouragement had been given me “to seek opportuni- 

ties in other places equally receptive to his remarks.” “T 

repeat what I said to you over the telephone—that it is 

too bad you had to let this come to pass. Somebody sug- 

gested that a good text for Mr. Lilienthal’s address, since 

last Friday night was still Purim, might have been ‘Esther, 

Chapter 3, Verses 8-9’. Maybe you would like to suggest 

to your confirmant his perusal of these verses and study 

of their implication.” I took the hint and read: “And 

Haman said unto King Ahasuerus, There is a certain 

people scattered abroad and dispersed among the people 

in all the provinces of thy kingdom, and their laws are 

diverse from all people; neither keep they the king’s 

law: therefore it is not for the king’s profit to suffer 

them. If it please the king, let it be written that they may 

be destroyed: and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver 

to the hands of those that have the charge of the business, 

to bring it into the king’s treasuries.” (Esther 3:8-9.) 

Here at least was a frank and open declaration of Zion- 

ist dogma for which I was grateful. The obvious impli- 

cation to be drawn from the recommended passages is 

the inevitability of the persecution of Jews, and the last- 

ing necessity of Jewish segregation and separateness: Be- 

cause some 2350 years ago a cruel Persian ruler, Ahasuer- 

us, was almost persuaded to destroy the Jews of that 

country, it must follow, contend the Zionists, that fully 

emancipated Jews, related to those Judaist Persians only 

in Zionist fancy, can never become integrated today and 

can live happily only in Israel! 

At any rate, the sermon on “Israel’s Flag Is Not Mine,” 

delivered in New York’s Temple Israel in spite of Zion- 

ist attempts to prevent it, was reprinted in Vital Speeches 

of the Day (April 15, 1950), together with addresses of 

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bernard Baruch, and J. How- 

142 

SMEARS AND FEARS 

ard McGrath, and it seemed that the truth, if not yet on 

the march, was at least beginning to toddle along. 

It had been an up-hill struggle since that early Sunday 

morning two years earlier in Washington. The phone 

had startled me from a sound sleep, and a voice with a 

slightly foreign accent said: 

“Are you the rat who wrote that letter to the Post 

which appeared this morning?” 

“Who ts this?” 

“This is Joseph Halutz of the Haganah. If you don’t 

stop, we will have you killed because you are undoing 

everything that we have been struggling for. You are 

killing innocent people.” 

“What did you say your name was?” 

“It doesn’t matter—just lay off what you are doing.” 

The Zionists, who had fought so hard to stifle any 

public suspicion that no one group could speak for all 

American Judaists, only intensified their activities. 

A tremendous problem (at that time, and ever since) 

in need of public attention in America was the plight 

of the Arab refugees. The U. N. General Assembly was 

told by its Palestine Relief and Works Agency in 1952 

that 880,000 Arab refugees from Palestine were placing 

a huge social and economic blight on the entire Middle 

East.” Why had this humanitarian question, loaded with 

momentous political implications for America, remained 

virtually unreported to the American public? A letter 

written in 1949 by the press adviser to Israel’s Wash- 

ington Embassy perhaps supplies part of the answer: it 

advised that anyone interested in the Arab refugee prob- 

lem was to be considered “pro-Arab oriented” and hence 

“anti-Semitic.” 

As far back as 1949, this writer was anxious to tell 

about the Arab refugees in a national publication. The 

143 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

Saturday Evening Post and Collier's were simply not 

interested. The Reader’s Digest, as its editor-in-chief 

wrote to me, felt the situation was “so many-sided and 

provocative of violent opinions that it is particularly 

hard to handle.” And not before the spring of 1952 did 

the otherwise so alertly edited Digest run an instructive 

article on the Middle East (by Dr. Stephen Penrose of 

the American University in Beirut), part of which was 

devoted to the Arab refugees. Mrs. Ethridge, by the 

way, had written a first-hand account of the Arab plight 

even prior to the publication of her book; but although 

practically everything she has ever written was readily 

published, this one piece was rejected by every U. S. 

magazine to which it was sent. 

In the summer of 1952, the Freeman magazine re- 

turned an article which had been previously commis- 

sioned. The managing editor explained that the publica- 

tion was simply too crowded for “Why We Are Losing 

the Middle East.” Attached by sheer accident to the 

manuscript was a chit from one of the members of the 

staff to the editor saying that if the article was to run, 

“you must know of the powerful Zionist bloc against 

” 

. 

the Freeman... 

The same article was then sent to Esquire and bounced 

back with these six words penned in explanation: “Not 

for us for one second.” 

Most of whatever I myself have managed to get into 

print on the subjects of Zionism and the Middle East 

has appeared in what “liberals” call “reactionary” pub- 

lications."* And Willie Snow Ethridge once expressed 

her sincere regrets that “these articles did not appear 

in liberal magazines.” But she is by now certainly aware 

that the terms “liberal” and “reactionary” have been re- 

duced to empty slogans, meaningful only as emotional 

144 

eee ——————— 

SMEARS AND FEARS 

stimuli, particularly in the area with which this book is 

concerned. When a reactionary and repressive move- 

ment of fanatical nationalists wrapped itself in “liberal 

humanitarianism,” it could immediately command the 

liberal press, exploit its venerable clichés and ensnare 

its unthinking audience. Even worse, the traditionally 

liberal press of this country has, at least in the Palestine 

controversy, sinned more than anybody else against the 

very essence of liberalism—the appeal to the reasoning 

and open mind in an honest debate of opposing views. 

My accusation is mot against the liberal press support 

of the creation of a Jewish State. As a Herald-Tribune 

editor once reminded this writer, it has been indeed an 

old and liberal tradition of this country to extend a help- 

ing hand to struggling small nations. Yes, it is only natu- 

ral that American editors have been led to give warm 

encouragement to a new country, many of whose set- 

tlers had escaped the gas chambers, a country whose 

desert pioneering had been widely admired. But the ter- 

rible shame of American liberalism is that it has fero- 

ciously suppressed, at least within its own orbit, even 

the most moderate and most sympathetic opposition to 

high-pressure Zionism. 

Who, I ask, are the liberals? The Nation Associates, 

Freda Kirchway, Henry Wallace, Clark Eichelberger, 

Alben Barkley, William O’Dwyer, Ludwig Lewisohn, 

Abba Hillel Silver, all of whom have intolerantly and 

ardently supported Zionism? Or Norman Thomas, Ar- 

thur Garfield Hayes, Morris Ernst, Leo Cherne, Vin- 

cent Sheean, Willie Snow Ethridge, Henry Sloane Cof- 

fin, Dorothy Thompson and Virginia Gildersleeve, who 

have fought this (as any other) extreme nationalism with 

an honest appeal to reason and with a burning compas- 

sion for the persecuted? If those who practice Voltaire 

145 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

are eliminated from the ranks of the liberals, only those 

who give lip service and refuse to shuck liberalism of its 

blind dogmatism will remain. 

I have started to tell my own experience, and I can- 

not finish that story without mentioning another writer 

—a writer of considerably greater fame and merits than 

I can ever hope to achieve. Herman Wouk, the author 

of Caine Mutiny, and I sat next to each other in New 

York’s Townsend Harris School. In those days, our dis- 

putes were about the Yankee who deserved to win the 

year’s Most Valuable Player Award. Quite a few years 

later, I saw Wouk’s stirring play Tbe Traitor on Broad- 

way. In that play, my old schoolmate expressed his pas- 

sionate devotion to freedom of thought and warned of 

the dangers resulting from attempts to curtail it. I wrote 

Herman an enthusiastic congratulatory note. Some time 

later, I sent him a copy of my article, “Israel’s Flag Is 

Not Mine.” And I got an entirely unexpected answer. 

Commencing with a flat statement that he was not a 

Zionist, Wouk wrote: “In my opinion you have com- 

mitted a terrible personal blunder, probably the worst 

of your life..., by carrying your private opinion against 

the Jewish party called Zionists into the potent Ameri- 

can forum of the Digest. I’m sure you acted in good faith. 

Hitler acted in good faith—he believed in what he did. 

You haven’t committed murder, of course. But your 

error of judgment has been magnified to a stupendous 

scale, at the cost of your co-religionists.” Then Wouk 

went on to say that there was no point in discussing the 

argument I had advanced. “The better your case, the 

worse your error would have been. Your proper course, 

if you felt so strongly about this, was to dedicate your 

days to spreading your view in Jewish circles, as the 

Zionists do.” (Wouk significantly ignored the incessant 

146 

SMEARS AND FEARS 

propaganda Zionism carried before the general Ameri- 

can public; and just as significantly, he axiomatically as- 

sumed the inherent separateness of the Jew.) Then 

Wouk cited laffaire Mayer, noting that in the ensuing 

furor “the Editor of the Post was replaced, the Post 

apologized, and Mayer vanished into a vague infamy.” 

And this is how Wouk closed his long, angry, and re- 

markable letter to me: “Recantation would do no good. 

... 1 don’t think you're evil or a traitor. But I think you 

have been a fool and have blared out your folly irrep- 

arably. The American Jewish community will survive 

the occurrence, but I cannot think your reputation will. 

... Lalways thought of you kindly. Though I have spo- 

ken bluntly, I feel sorry for you. I hope you will in the 

painful aftermath find some way, that I can’t see, to re- 

store in some measure the damage to yourself and to 

Americans of Jewish faith.” 

In defense of my old schoolmate, I hurry to admit 

that obvious space limitations prevented my Digest ar- 

ticle from giving Herman Wouk, the Pulitzer Prize win- 

ner, the full measure of the issues under discussion. This 

book, a fuller treatment, will help him in recovering his 

celebrated judiciousness. Or so I hope. That I am not nec- 

essarily “evil or a traitor,” Wouk has generously under- 

stood from the start. Perhaps he will now learn to under- 

stand that my position is simply this: American Jews 

should no longer be forced, by smears and fears, to have 

a foreign policy separate from that of Methodists or 

Episcopalians. Their country cannot afford such a di- 

chotomy. 

147 

CHAPTER VIII 

There Goes the Middle East 

and Africa—commands the world’s airways. 

And in that strategic area, pregnant with deci- 

sion, forty-five million Arabs, supported by two hun- 

dred and fifty million Moslem coreligionists throughout 

the world, are seething with hatred of the West. ‘Their 

antagonism endangers the vital interests of the United 

States. 

For the Russian Empire, whose westward expansion 

has been stopped on the Elbe, the Middle East must con- 

stitute a temptation of first magnitude. A thrust south- 

ward over the border to Azerbaijan, the northwesterly 

province of Iran, or down the Caspian Sea to Teheran, 

would secure wealthy oil lands. A Soviet penetration 

of the Middle East would force our position in Greece 

and Turkey. Russian strategy would then undoubted] 

call for a further drive, through Egypt, into North Af- 

rica. The Soviet envelopment of Europe, in short, pre- 

supposes the conquest of the Middle East. 

The Kremlin has long been interested in this part of 

the world. In November 1940, Molotov proposed to 

the Nazi Ambassador in Moscow an agreement between 

Ts Middle East—the junction of Europe, Asia 

148 

THERE GOES THE MIDDLE EAST 

Berlin and Moscow whereby the USSR would be as- 

signed the sphere of influence “south of Batum and Baku 

in the general direction of the Persian Gulf, as the center 

of the aspirations of the Soviet Union.” At the end of 

World War II, the Soviets renewed their old claim for 

a direct share in the control of the Turkish Straits. When 

this was rejected by the Western powers, a Red coup 

flared up, in 1946, with the assistance of the Iranian Tu- 

deh Party in Azerbaijan. It failed. But the Soviet aspira- 

tions have never been shelved. 

After her temporary failure in Iran, Soviet Russia 

waged a war of nerves against Turkey, made demands 

for a trusteeship over part of Italy’s African colonies, 

and otherwise started stirring up the Arab caldron. The 

aim of the Soviet vote in favor of the partition of Pales- 

tine was simply to drive the British out—the first step 

towards the larger goal of creating a vacuum throughout 

the entire Arab world and of forcing total Western with- 

drawal from the Middle East and North Africa. The 

creation of Israel could not fail to multiply the havoc 

in the area and, consequently, satellite Czechoslovakia 

was permitted to arm the infant state of Israel to insure 

the continuance of such a happy situation. Also, a dis- 

ruptive wedge could be driven between the American 

and the British people by sharpening the Palestine issue. 

Only recently has the U. S. government begun to ap- 

preciate that James Forrestal was six years ahead of his 

time. The Arab Land contains between 50 and 55 per 

cent of the estimated crude oil reserves of the world. 

Even today, some 1.9 million barrels of oil are produced 

daily in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Bahrein, 

while Russian production of oil, in the Soviet Union and 

the satellite countries, hardly exceeds a million barrels 

per day. This fact alone explains why the Soviets keep 

149 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

looking so enviously southward across the Caspian Sea. 

It is this Arab oil upon which Western Europe has been 

increasingly relying for its recovery and rearmament. 

In 1938, Western Europe imported 25 % of its oil from 

the Middle East. By 1948, this figure had reached 62 % ; 

in 1950, 85 %; and it is estimated that, in 1953, Western 

Europe will draw 97% of its requirements from the 

Arab world. 

The area’s strategic importance is tremendous. The 

air bases at Habbaniya (Iraq), Shu’aiba (Iraq), Dhah- 

ran, Bahrein and Heliopolis (an old American base on 

Payne Field, outside of Cairo), provide a crucial check 

to Soviet expansionism so long as they remain in anti- 

Communist hands: vital Soviet industries are within easy 

flying range of these Arab air bases. 

Britain’s capitulation in the Palestine dispute was a 

public confession of her declining power in the area. “If 

the Israelis can push the British out, why can’t we?” be- 

came the theme of Iranian and Egyptian politics. The 

events in the Middle East encouraged the North African 

uprisings against French rule. There, the demands for 

“liberation from colonial oppression” were carried to 

such extremes that an amicable compromise seems in- 

conceivable. The United States no longer commands . 

enough respect to serve as a conciliator. The inhabitants 

of Tunisia and Morocco have been so thoroughly incited 

that their leaders are reluctant to accept a status within 

the French Union comparable to that enjoyed by the 

new sovereign states in Southeast Asia. And this area 

impinges vitally on the North Atlantic defense commu- 

nity. (Morocco contains five decisive U. S. strategic air 

bases. ) 

The triumph of Zionist nationalism in the Holy Land 

has awakened the Arab World. At first, the Arab states, 

150 

THERE GOES THE MIDDLE EAST 

completely disunited in their fight against Israel, were 

routed. But their hatred of the new State, combined 

with fear of its possible aggressive designs, drove them 

together. The Arab League was strengthened, and a 

collective-security pact signed by the seven Arab States. 

An exclusively Islamic bloc, stretching from Turkey 

to Indonesia, had not emerged as Secretary General of 

the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, had hoped. 

However, fifteen African and Asian nations are in 

the process of building a powerful “neutral” group, 

which includes the Philippines, India, Burma and Ceylon. 

This bloc tries to keep out of the gathering East-West 

conflict, but it dreads the further expansion of Commu- 

nist influence. The “bloc” is still an informal affair, but 

has considerably solidified. By 1952, it was showing a 

great deal of cohesiveness, standing closely together on 

the Tunisian and Morrocan questions as well as the con- 

troversies over “apartheid” and the treatment of Indians 

in South Africa. 

Not so long ago, the United States was in a promising 

position to upset Soviet strategy. The ancient Arab ani- 

mosity against the West (against the “‘infidels”) had been 

gradually dissolving over the years. American mission- 

ary enterprises, and generous educational, health, and 

social institutions in the area were beginning to pay off. 

The Boston Jesuit College in Baghdad, the Aleppo Col- 

lege,” the American universities at Cairo and Beirut, were 

educating Arab leaders well-disposed to Western ideas. 

Missions, the YMCA and YWCA, and the Near East 

Foundation were building good will, and the innate 

Arab suspicion of the West was dying out. 

But virtually everything that private philanthropic 

effort had accomplished was swept away by the U. S. 

Government's Palestine policy: the United States com- 

151 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

pletely disregarded the Arab viewpoint in the Palestine 

controversy and forced partition down the throats of all 

smaller nations. Friendly U. S. mediation could have 

quelled the extreme nationalist outbreaks, but the U. S. 

Government chose precisely the role the Soviets wanted 

it to play—the role of the Zionist strongman. 

The bitterness of the Arab states toward Israel is ex- 

pressed in the fanatical saying one can currently hear 

throughout the Arab world: “We would rather have 

a Russian alliance than countenance a Jewish state on 

Arab soil.” The United States never took this threat se- 

riously, but the Soviets did. They are drawing closer to 

the Arabs and driving the West farther away. The vio- 

lence which engulfs the entire Moslem world in a vir- 

tual holy war has been encouraged by an increasing num- 

ber of Communist agents; indeed, the Party is evident 

in every street fight. 

Arab nationalism would have flowered eventually, 

even without the partition of Palestine. But the U. S. 

partisanship in favor of Israel made it impossible to mod- 

erate the nationalistic movements of the Middle East. 

And what the partition policy left undone in arousing 

the Arab world’s anti-Western passions, the U. S. has 

finally accomplished with its callous neglect of the Arab 

refugees from Palestine. 

Almost one million Arabs were displaced from their 

homes or totally impoverished by the Holy Land War 

of 1948, scattered throughout the hills of Judea and Sa- 

maria, in the Gaza region of Philistia, in the Jordan Val- 

ley, in the highlands of Ammon and Gilead. ‘The United 

Nations, which had in two solemn resolutions guaran- 

teed the return of these refugees, first provided seven 

cents a day per refugee, and then recommended a pro- 

gram of combined relief and work projects. At the U. N. 

152 

THERE GOES THE MIDDLE EAST 

session of 1951, another relief program was voted—but 

nothing effective has been accomplished to this day. 

Meanwhile, the Arab refugees are being subjected to 

anti-Western propaganda which argues, with great ef- 

fectiveness, how generously America has customarily 

treated refugees who had not been her responsibility— 

and how terribly she neglects those Arab refugees who 

are a direct American responsibility: are they not vic- 

tims of U. S. pressure on the United Nations? 

Officially, the Communist Parties are outlawed in the 

Arab states, but they operate underground and, on many 

fronts, publicly. They have deeply infiltrated the na- 

tionalist movements, perhaps beyond any chance of sep- 

aration, But with some help and encouragement from 

us, they could have been checked. Instead, the U. S. 

Government did everything to encourage the marriage 

of convenience between the Communists and the ex- 

treme nationalists. 

Charles Malik, Ambassador to the United States from 

Lebanon, and Chairman of the Human Rights Commis- 

sion of the U. N. (a true statesman and a profound phi- 

losopher), wrote in the Foreign Affairs Quarterly (Jan- 

uary, 1952): “If the present arrogance, defiance and am- 

bition are to persist, and if Israel is to be again and again 

confirmed in her feeling that she is to be favored—just 

because the U. S., owing to the position of the Jews in 

this country and to certain well-known peculiarities in 

the American political and social system, to widespread 

ignorance in the United States of real conditions in the 

Near East and also to a certain genuine, well-meaning 

goodness of heart on the part of American people, will 

at the crucial moment always decisively side with Israel 

against her immediate world—then I am afraid there will 

never be peace in the Near East and the U. S. cannot 

153 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

be altogether innocent of responsibility for that situa- 

tion.” There has seldom been a more complete diagnosis 

of a complete mess. 

Between November 1948 and June 1953, the new 

State of Israel received from this country, in govern- 

mental grants, loans, Point Four assistance, and U. S. 

surplus agricultural commodities, some 295 million dol- 

lars.* This, of course, is over and beyond the more than 

600 million dollars contributed by private American 

sources, and the revenue from the sale of Israel Bonds 

(a three-year program of an additional 500 million dol- 

lars). After the 1950 Washington Conference of Jewish 

groups, Israel’s financial influx from the U. S. for 1950- 

1953 was set at one billion dollars. This is the aid given 

a country of 1,600,000 inhabitants, a country of approxi- 

mately 7,800 square miles, or about three quarters of the 

size of the State of Vermont. 

The seven Arab countries which surround Israel have 

a combined area three hundred times as large and a popu- 

lation thirty times as numerous. From November 1948 

to June 1953, the governments of Egypt, Yemen, Saudi- 

Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan have been given 

88 million dollars for economic development by way of 

U. S. grants, loans and Point Four assistance. Another 

153 million dollars was contributed to Arab refugee re- 

lief (not to the individual states where the refugees are 

subsisting, but to a United Nations agency). But this 

latter sum has been spent on keeping Arabs alive who 

had been displaced from their homes in Israel—not on 

coepe the Arab countries. Remittances to the Arab 

states from private U. S. sources have of course been 

negligible. The staggering financial U. S. support to 

Israel was noted in a magazine article “Washington 

Comes to Israel’s Economic Rescue’* by Hal Lehrman, 

154 

THERE GOES THE MIDDLE EAST 

a staunch defender of U.S. Israeli policies. Mr. Lehrman 

showed that Israel heads the list of all countries aided by 

the United States on “‘a per capita basis, with the possible 

exception of Greece, in terms of total cash made avail- 

able for every man, woman and child.” And this calcu- 

lation refers only to public U. S. funds, not to the con- 

siderably greater sums that have flown into Israel through 

the channels of private American philanthropy, invest- 

ment and loans. 

The conventional rationale for U. S. favoritism to- 

wards Israel is the new State’s democratic nature. Mark 

Ethridge, the publisher of the Louisville Courier Journal, 

made a pertinent observation on that subject, in an ad- 

dress before the University of Virginia’s Institute of 

Public Affairs, in 1952. Though a staunch defender of 

the Truman foreign policy in other areas, Mr. Ethridge 

said: “The cliché that Israel is the bulwark of democracy 

in the Middle East is the veriest nonsense. Israel cannot 

be a bulwark as long as she is propped up with gifts and 

loans, imported oil from Venezuela and meat from Ar- 

gentina, and is not at peace and trade with her Arab 

neighbors.”* Indeed, if a proportionate amount of money 

had gone into the Arab world, the U.S. would be amazed 

how much difference some twenty-five billion dollars 

can make in the “democratic” posture of backward 

countries! 

More than two fifths of Israel’s population are people 

from Arab states and from North Africa, and this pro- 

portion is steadily increasing.° If the Israelis from Russia 

and Eastern Europe (who never experienced democ- 

racy) are added to these Middle Easterners, the social 

basis for an indigenously democratic structure shrinks 

perceptibly. 

The real failure of the Truman Administration was its 

155 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

lack of a global plan into which all regional policies 

ought to have fitted. If the containment of Communism 

was the primary goal, all foreign policies ought to have 

been subordinated to this end. Once Communist expan- 

sion had been recognized as the central danger, it should 

have been obvious that the balance of world power 

rested with the Arab-Asian nations whose vast populace 

and natural resources separate the free and the enslaved 

spheres. Among these nations, the U. S. Palestine policy 

has made many enemies, and no friend, It was never ade- 

quately appreciated in this setae) that the United Na- 

tions Palestine decision had the afhrmative support—and 

much of it lukewarm—of nations with the population 

of only 560 million (including the Soviet Union’s 193 

million). The representatives of 480 million people op- 

posed it, while the abstaining eleven delegations repre- 

sented no less than 620 million people. In other words, 

the U. S. pursued a course which only 33.5% of the 

total world population approved, while 28.9% opposed 

it and 37.5 % had abstained from expressing their pee 

erence. The U. S. position deteriorates even more if one 

considers the more than 400 million people of North 

Africa, Burma, Manchuria, Indonesia and Japan, who 

were not members of the U. N. in 1947. The plain truth 

is that the United States has put all its eggs in one of the 

Middle East’s smallest baskets. 

The complaints of Morocco and Tunisia against 

France, brought before the United Nations by the Arab- 

Asian-African bloc, further complicated the West’s re- 

lationship with these countries. On December 13, 1951, 

the United States voted in the U. N. General Assembly 

for the postponement of the Moroccan issue; in April 

1952 it refused to take up the question of Tunisia in the 

Security Council and, a few weeks later, it refrained from 

156 

SS 

THERE GOES THE MIDDLE EAST 

joining a request for a Special Session of the General 

Assembly to consider these issues. The Moroccan and 

Tunisian questions were finally placed on the agenda 

of the 7th General Assembly, but in the subsequent de- 

bate and vote, the United States found it proper to es- 

pouse the French position. 

At that General Assembly session a group of eight 

smaller powers offered a resolution inviting Israel and 

the Arab States to settle their differences. The Arab 

states opposed this proposal on the ground that past di- 

rectives of the United Nations, concerning the interna- 

tionalization of Jerusalem and the rights of the Arab 

refugees, had first to be accepted by Israel before any 

further negotiations could be justified. Still, the Special 

Political Committee adopted the resolution by 32 to 13 

votes, the Soviet bloc abstaining. In the General Assem- 

bly, where a two-thirds majority was required, the reso- 

lution was defeated. Seven Latin-American countries’ 

had joined the Arab side, quite likely influenced by a 

New York Times interview with David Ben-Gurion in 

which the Israeli Prime Minister declared that the status 

of Jerusalem was a settled fact and no issue for further 

talks. This was in clear defiance of the United Nations 

which had on three occasions voted for the internation- 

alization of Jerusalem and authorized the Palestine Con- 

ciliation Commission and the Trusteeship Council to 

draw up the necessary statute.” In 1950, the General As- 

sembly rejected a Swedish Draft resolution which would 

have provided an international regime over the Holy 

Places only, rather than over the entire city. The obvi- 

ous intent of the U. N. has been effectively sabotaged 

to this day. With Jordan holding the old city, the new 

city of Jerusalem has become, for all practical purposes, 

the capital of Israel; however, the U. S. and some other 

EDT. 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

countries, including those of South America, have re- 

fused to move their diplomatic staffs from Tel Aviv, 

hoping that the thrice resolved internationalization will 

eventually be realized. 

In the final balloting on the resolution calling for direct 

talks between Israel and the Arab states, the Arabs also 

received the five votes of the Soviet bloc which, as in 

the voting on the North African questions, supported 

the Arab-A frican-Asian bloc against Britain, France and 

the United States. Each of the Arab Foreign Offices filed 

a protest with their respective British Ambassador 

against Britain’s pro-Israel vote. The attitude of the 

Naguib Government toward the British stiffened, and 

U. S. prestige in the Arab countries dwindled further. 

Arab faith in the principles of democratic government 

as practiced by the West was once more weakened, and 

the Russians were made to appear champions of freedom. 

Throughout its existence, from 1917 to 1953, the So- 

viet Government has been anything but pro-Zionist 

though shrewd tactical calculations made it vote in favor 

of Palestine partition. But even when supporting parti- 

tion in 1947, Soviet Ambassador Gromyko reminded 

the Arab representatives in the General Assembly that 

the USSR and the Soviet people “still entertain a feeling 

of sympathy for the national aspirations of the Arab 

East... . The USSR is convinced that the Arab States 

will still on more than one occasion be looking toward 

Moscow and expecting the USSR to help them in the 

struggle for their lawful interest, in their efforts to cast 

off the last vestige of foreign dependence.” 

Within Israel, it is the Jewish Communists who ex- 

press the deepest concern for the Arab refugees and 

object to the imposition of second-class citizenship on 

the Arab minority centered in and around Nazareth. 

158 

THERE GOES THE MIDDLE EAST 

The Soviet Union’s diplomatic break with Israel and the 

Cominform’s fervid anti-Zionist propaganda could not 

help but please the Arabs, however suspicious their more 

enlightened leaders may have been of Soviet motives. 

While Soviet Russia made her Eastern Zone of Ger- 

many court the Arabs, Western Germany, under U. S. 

influence, courted the State of Israel. After lengthy ne- 

gotiations, the Bonn Government agreed in September, 

1952, to pay 715 million dollars towards the cost of ab- 

sorbing uprooted victims of Nazism in Israel, and to 

give an additional 107 million dollars to 22 Jewish organ- 

izations in the United States, as a payment for heirless 

and unclaimed Jewish assets in Germany. The payments 

are to be made in goods, over a twelve-year period, to 

bolster the Israeli economy. And to meet these obliga- 

tions, West Germany would seek a loan—presumably 

in the United States. 

But the claim of Jewish organizations in the United 

States to the property of deceased and heirless Jewish 

individuals in Europe—a claim resting upon the premise 

of the existence of a Jewish racial and national commu- 

nity—perpetrates the very racialism which destroyed 

these individuals. Restitution to surviving victims of 

Nazi bestiality, and to the families of those who were 

murdered, is a German moral obligation to individuals— 

not to the State of Israel or to American organizations. 

The Arab states, still technically at war with Israel, 

claimed that such German payments to Israel would 

be a breach of German neutrality. Nor were the Arab 

leaders unmindful that the Communist East-German 

Government had rejected a 500 million dollar repara- 

tions claim of the Israeli Government. 

Another calculated effect of the Soviet Government’s 

quarrel with the Israeli Government was Arab panic 

159 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

over Israel’s demand, supported by thirty-one Zionist 

organizations in the United States, that two and a half 

million Jews from behind the Iron Curtain be moved 

to Israel. To the Arabs, this implied Israeli expansion 

into the neighboring Arab countries: the “Greater Is- 

rael” idea, long held by Begin, Jabotinsky and other 

Zionist “revisionists,” would receive an enormous impe- 

tus by such a fantastic wave of immigration. 

The sweeping American analogies drawn between re- 

cent Soviet policies and the anti-Semitism of Hitler 

served still another Soviet objective: the more that Soviet 

policy was interpreted as anti-Semitism, the more deeply 

grew American sympathies for Israel and, conversely, 

the more the United States stiffened against any rap- 

prochement with the Arab countries. And nothing could 

please the Soviet Government more. 

160 

CHAPTER IX 

The Mugwumps and 

the Cult of Doom 

@ LL Palestine problems revolve around the question: 

What is a Jew? Israel now contains a people with 

4 Xa common language (modern Hebrew), with a 

land and a government of its own, and with a common 

history. Israel, in short, is truly a nation. 

There are people of the Judaic faith who live in Israel 

and are Israelis. Many more people who practice the 

same faith live outside that small Middle Eastern State, 

and clearly do not belong to that nation. There is nothing 

extraordinary in this. The entire Western world is popu- 

lated by peoples who share religion, but not nationality, 

with other peoples. 

Yet the attitude of the new State of Israel towards the 

Jews in the rest of the world, and of those Jews toward 

that state, involves a concept of Jewish nationalism, not 

Israeli nationalism. 

Nationalism is a sentiment of a group of people who 

desire to become, or to develop even more distinctly 

into, a separate nation. The core of Jewish nationalism 

is the belief that there is a world-wide Jewish people 

161 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

which constitutes a distinct Jewish nation. Although the 

Jewish nation had ceased to exist in 70 A. D., a sentiment 

has persisted down through the ages that it still was alive, 

though in exile and without a country. And with the 

birth of Israel, the collective nation is said to have been 

“reconstituted” in that State, the reputed national home 

of every Jew. Jewish nationalism is that composite con- 

cept of race, nation, people, culture and community, 

often described with such adjectives as separate, distinct, 

different and chosen. 

Diaspora (meaning dispersion) is the term used by 

Jewish nationalists to describe the status of those Jews 

who live outside of Israel. The term of course implies 

that this status is unnatural; and Zionism indeed refers 

to these Jews as living in the Galut (in exile). Diaspora 

nationalism insists that these exiles, wherever they may 

be, nevertheless constitute a nation and that they are to 

be “‘ingathered” into Israel by the process of Kibbutz 

Galloyot. 

The propagation of Jewish nationalism is not confined 

to the Zionist movement. Historical, anthropological, 

sociological, psychological, theological and philanthrop- 

ic factors constantly generate this nationalism. Zionism 

is merely its political arm. It seeks to transform Judaism, 

the religion, into a world-wide Jewish nation with its 

political center in Israel: while many Jews will not be 

living there immediately, the established State is, never- 

theless, to be regarded as the central reality around which 

their existence is to revolve. The long-term goal of Zi- 

onism is the liquidation of the diaspora and the eventual 

return of all Jews to Zion. 

Like the biblical Joseph, Jewish nationalism wears a 

coat of many colors. It cannot be analyzed solely in terms 

of conscious allegiance to Israel. ‘There are subtler forms 

162 

THE MUGWUMPS AND THE CULT OF DOOM 

of allegiance, a vaguer and less tangible acceptance of 

unity and oneness: the waving of the Israeli flag; the 

singing of the “Hatikvah”; claims that Jews are “One 

people” and Israel “The Jewish State”; the assertion that 

there is a political unity amongst Americans of Jewish 

faith; the use of that alleged unity to pressure the Ameri- 

can government; the many separatist political activities 

of Jews as Jews. Less subtle are the Zionist campaigns 

to introduce modern (not biblical) Hebrew and Israeli 

customs onto the American Jewish scene. 

Israeli nationalism is a communal sentiment of people 

who live within the borders of Israel]. Jewish nationalism 

knows no borders. Israeli nationalism is natural and un- 

derstandable. Jewish nationalism is abnormal and incom- 

prehensible. 

Jewish nationalists are fervent propagandists of their 

secular faith. This was true even when the British still 

governed Palestine. I first realized this in 1944, when a 

young man from Henrietta Szold’s office conducted me 

through the modern city of Tel Aviv. I was then an 

American soldier in the Middle East, stationed in Cairo, 

and had flown on leave to the U. S. rest camp of Tel Le- 

vinsky, just outside the city. I found in Palestine tremen- 

dous human achievement, turning a desert into a flour- 

ishing community, and I expressed my admiration to the 

guide. Whereupon he never stopped for a minute his 

efforts toward converting me. His love of his hard- 

worked Palestinian soil was a wholesome manifestation 

of Israeli nationalism. But his attempt to make me, an 

American soldier on leave, feel his, a Palestinian’s pride, 

his sense of belonging, and his responsibility for the 

State-to-be, was Jewish Nationalism. 

While in Jerusalem, I visited Mr. and Mrs. Jacob 

Steinhardt, refugees from Germany who would not 

163 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

think of living in the United States because of “the 

American pogroms” about which they had been told. 

Mr. Steinhardt is a distinguished artist, one of Israel’s 

finest, and the couple lived in an attractive studio house 

near Ben Yehudah Street. But when I saw them, they 

(particularly Mrs. Steinhardt) did not like Palestine. 

They felt little kinship with the people around them and 

almost yearned for Germany. Then came the proclama- 

tion of Israeli statehood and the war with the Arabs. And 

a few years later, it was quite a different Mrs. Steinhardt 

whom I met in New York at an exhibition of her hus- 

band’s woodcuts and paintings. Her previous apathy to- 

wards Palestine had been supplanted by love of the na- 

tion for whose birth she had helped to fight. The over- 

flowing idealism that now filled her soul was in no way 

a religious feeling. It was political love of country. She 

had found her new Germany in Israel. The only thing 

that I thought objectionable was her intense impatience 

with any criticism of Israel, or its leaders, and her re- 

sentment that anyone who called himself a Jew should 

not feel precisely as she did. More than a modicum of 

Jewish nationalism had crept into her Israeli nationalism. 

Mrs. Steinhardt was honestly convinced that Jewry in 

the United States was far from being safe from another 

Hitler—“if it happened to us in Germany, certainly it 

could happen to you in America.” 

While Americans were led to believe that an Israeli 

State had been set up as a refuge, and were accordingly 

contributing hundreds of millions of dollars, thousands 

of Steinhardts in Israel were led to believe that the finan- 

cial support from the United States rested, not upon 

philanthropy, but upon an acceptance of their nationalist 

dogma. To those people in the new Middle Eastern State, 

the “Jewish People,” United Jewish Appeal, and Zion- 

164 

THE MUGWUMPS AND THE CULT OF DOOM 

ism were all one and the same. It all merely represented, 

to them, varying facets of the distinct and separate 

world-wide entity, of which Israel was the embodiment. 

Now it is Sunday evening, May 1945, in San Francis- 

co. Diplomatic leaders of the victorious allied countries 

have gathered to set up the United Nations Organiza- 

tion. Many of these delegates, some of whom were thirty 

months later to decide the Palestine question at Lake 

Success, are part of a distinguished audience that over- 

flows an auditorium. And this is what they hear: “We 

want to go home... home... home. We must go home!” 

This was not the pathetic cry of a homeless war vic- 

tim, not the wail of a lost child. This came from the lips 

of one of America’s most gifted orators, the world-re- 

nowned Rabbi Stephen Wise, “speaking in the name of 

ten million Jews.” His claim: that the widely scattered 

followers of a universal religious belief, members of many 

nationalities, were all descendants of the ancient He- 

brews, and hence members of a world-wide Jewish na- 

tion with its center in Palestine. 

No one in the United States had a more profound in- 

fluence on American Jewry than Dr. Wise. As a Rabbi 

of the Reform Movement, he was able to reach and 

persuade many who would have rejected the straight 

Zionist approach. It was he who announced from the 

pulpit: “I am not an American citizen of Jewish faith. 

Iam a Jew. Iam an American. I have been an American 

63/64ths of my life, but I have been a Jew for 4000 

years.” 

But the American Jews whom Rabbi Wise converted 

to Jewish nationalism seemed to like, personally, their 

“diaspora.” Only a corporal’s guard had availed them- 

selves of the opportunity “to go home to Palestine.” And 

those who did, went to colonize the Holy Land—not to 

165 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

found a State. When Sir Moses Montefiore visited Pal- 

estine in 1837, there lived some 9,000 Jews in Jerusalem, 

Safad, Tiberias and Hebron. This wealthy Englishman, 

who died at the age of 101, spent the last half of his long 

life in helping those who wished to “return for the ob- 

servance of the holy religion.”” The settlements he 

started, and the ones Baron Edmond de Rothschild sup- 

ported after him, benefited the new colonists and threat- 

ened no Arab settler. 

It was not until the decade before World War I that 

nationalist settlements were started in Palestine. The ini- 

tial goal of the Zionist organization was the modest one 

of obtaining a “legally secured home for the Jewish 

people.” At first, Jewish nationalists were interested in 

the existence, vot the location, of such a “home.” Herzl 

almost broke up the Zionist organization in 1903 by his 

willingness to accept a British offer to establish that “na- 

tional home” in Uganda (or Kenya, as it is known to- 

day) in British East Africa. Just so, the British offer of 

an autonomous territory made by Joseph Chamberlain 

and Lord Lansdowne to Herz] constituted the diplomatic 

recognition Zionism had been seeking: it was the first 

time that a big power had officially negotiated with the 

representatives of “the Jewish people,” and it came at 

a time when the civilized world, anguished by the Ki- 

shinev Pogrom of 1903, felt a sincere moral obligation 

to rescue persecuted Jews. 

A young Russian from the townlet of Motol, in the 

province of Minsk, led the opposition at the Seventh 

Zionist World Congress, in 1905, that finally killed the 

British proposal. His name was Chaim Weizmann. Weiz- 

mann’s own father had voted in favor of the Uganda 

proposal at the Congress of 1903, but the other dele- 

gates voted almost solidly against it, the younger Weiz- 

166 

ayers 

THE MUGWUMPS AND THE CULT OF DOOM 

mann among them. When the Ugandists scored a tem- 

porary victory with the appointment of an investigat- 

ing committee, the Russian intransingents walked out. 

Herzl, whose ingenuity and leadership had given Zion- 

ism its first impetus, died shortly thereafter, a profound- 

ly disappointed man. 

There have been other Jewish nationalists who did 

not insist on Zion as the only acceptable site for the Jew- 

ish State. Probably the best known of these was Israel 

Zangwill who broke with the Zionist World Organiza- 

tion when it rejected, in 1904, all colonizing activities 

outside of Palestine, the Uganda offer in particular. Zang- 

will and his followers formed the Jewish Territorial Or- 

ganization “for those Jews who cannot and will not re- 

main in the land in which they live at present.” This 

organization was disbanded after the British had granted 

the Balfour Declaration. 

But for Weizmann, and the Eastern European Zion- 

ists, it was Palestine or nothing. Their concept of nation 

was one of fated racialism: to them, what made a person 

a Jew was not his practice of the Judaistic faith (many 

of them being, in point of fact, unabashed atheists) ; suf- 

fice he was born “a Jew”—and once a Jew, always a Jew. 

Underlying that concept was a deep despair, a cult of 

exclusivity combined with a sense of doom. Its central 

tenets were the axiomatic conviction that anti-Semitism 

can not be erased from this earth, and the equally axio- 

matic assumption that Jews cannot live a normal life out- 

side Israel. 

This philosophy of despair has become, and has re- 

mained, the philosophy of Zionism. The State of Israel 

has been created by a movement which believes that 

Jews can live in dignity only when settled in a land of 

their own, a land totally Jewish in language, custom, 

167 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

culture, and government. Religion has not been per- 

chance omitted from this listing: Zionism is more than 

ever profoundly indifferent to the Judaist faith. But in 

order to sell itself in a Western world, which had long 

ago liberated the Jews from the confinements of the 

ghetto, that political cult of doom assumed the vernacular 

of compassionate humanitarianism. Power politics were 

made up to look like philanthropy. 

In America, it was particularly difficult to plant Zion- 

ism as a reaction to inexorable anti-Semitism. What real 

persecution have Jews experienced in this country, save 

in the recesses of their imagination? But some American 

Jews are able to imagine so vividly that the lash of Euro- 

pean anti-Semitism burrowed much more deeply into 

their skins than it affected the inmates of Dachau. Thou- 

sands of Dachau graduates came to this country and revel 

in its air of freedom. Thousands of Displaced Persons 

refused to think that their Zion could be anywhere but 

here. But American Jews, who had known nothing but 

the comforts of this land, became Zionists. That a phi- 

losophy which insists upon reviving the self-segregating 

notions of Europe’s ancient ghettos, should have taken 

any hold in the United States, where religious Judaism 

for generations had the opportunity of flowering with 

magnificence and dignity, is no doubt one of the strang- 

est paradoxes of the age. Nevertheless, it is a fact of 

American life; and a fact of perilous explosiveness. 

If VW eiznann was the political genius of Zionism, and 

Herzl its philosopher, Ahad Ha-am (born Asher Cine 

berg) was its spiritual father. His concern was Jewish 

cultural development. Without an inner rehabilitation, 

he argued, there was no sense in any political solution 

of the problems of European Jewry. He trusted that 

spontaneous influences would emanate from a spiritual 

168 

THE MUGWUMPS AND THE CULT OF DOOM 

Jewish society, “‘so that the word of the Lord could go 

forth once more from Zion.” In a letter to Weizmann, 

in 1918, Ha-am spoke of a “University which from the 

very beginning will endeavor to become the true em- 

bodiment of the Hebrew spirit of old.” And seven years 

later, indeed, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem came 

into being. 

The early leaders of American Zionism were humani- 

tarians, scholars and intellectuals who, like Ahad Ha-am, 

were interested, not in politics and statehood, but in edu- 

cation and culture. Much of the early American money 

contributed to Palestine went to the University. Dr. Ju- 

dah L. Magnes, Professor Albert Einstein, and Supreme 

Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, whose attachment to 

Palestine centered on the University, were vigorously 

opposed to the conception of Jewry as a political entity. 

A great legend has been built around Supreme Court 

Justice Brandeis by Jewish nationalism. However broad- 

ly he may have interpreted legal language on the Su- 

preme Court bench, the Justice believed in a literal in- 

terpretation of the Balfour Declaration. As firmly as he 

supported the Jewish colonization of Palestine, he op- 

posed Jewish Statehood. Once the British Government 

had granted the Declaration, and the development of a 

cultural center had commenced in the early twenties, 

Brandeis believed there was no longer need for Zionist 

political work.’ This won him Weizmann’s deep-seated 

enmity. 

When Weizmann sought U. S. financial support for 

the Zionist budget, he was distressed by the low figure 

of $500,o00o—the maximum Brandeis would grant from 

the United States.* Weizmann managed to raise two 

million dollars the very first year; and the breach between 

the two men widened. 

169 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

Brandeis rejected the concept of an organic unity of 

World Jewry and opposed a World Zionist Organiza- 

tion: he advocated separate and clearly defined respon- 

sibilities of autonomous country organizations rather 

than the centralism of one international organization. 

Weizmann’s Palestine Foundation Fund in the United 

States was set up, in 1921, over the bitter protest of 

Brandeis whose Zionism was humanitarian, not a “folk 

renaissance.” 

Weizmann himself approvingly notes that the Bran- 

deis-Weizmann schism was popularly marked “Wash- 

ington vs. Pinsk”—a rather apt formula to describe the 

fact that here, indeed, American free society had col- 

lided with the Russian ghetto. This is how a pro-Zionist 

1949 study of the conflict® summarized the Brandeis po- 

sition: “The Brandeis conception stripped Zionism of 

the literary nationalism upon which so many of its ad- 

herents thrived. He wanted to rebuild Palestine for those 

Jews who needed a homeland plain and simple. It was 

‘a Zion without Zionism,’ his critics said... . In his con- 

centration on Palestine, he refused strong support for 

Hebrew education in the countries of the diaspora and 

was cold towards Jewish relief organizations.” Justice 

Brandeis looked askance at the “looseness of many budg- 

etary practices” and the intermingling of funds collected 

for charitable, cultural, economic and political purposes. 

And yet, in spite of this unmistakable record, the name 

of Justice Brandeis has been recklessly exploited by Zi- 

onism here and abroad—in this manner, for instance: 

“Again we must emphasize that Camp Brandeis (near 

Hancock, N. Y.) is a miniature Palestine and that the 

pattern of life in it is that of Eretz Israel—Reveille is 

sounded at 6 in the morning and at 6:10 the Stars and 

Stripes and the Blue-White flags are hoisted to the tunes 

170 

~ 

ee 

THE MUGWUMPS AND THE CULT OF DOOM 

of ‘Star Spangled Banner’ and the ‘Hatikvah.’” Regret- 

tably, none of the Justice’s family and friends protested 

against the abuse of his name for an enterprise that 

teaches American youngsters allegiance to a foreign flag. 

On the death of Chaim Weizmann (November 9, 

1952), Professor Albert Einstein was informally offered 

the Presidency of Israel. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion in- 

structed Israeli Ambassador, Abba S. Eban, to ascertain 

whether Einstein would accept if elected. Dr. Ezriel 

Carlebach, the editor of Maariv, largest newspaper in Is- 

rael, nominated Einstein with the assertion, “he belongs 

to us, not to Princeton University.” 

But even the least careful study of Dr. Einstein’s at- 

titude towards Israel should have shown how little he 

did belong to “us.” Dr. Einstein was always intensely 

interested in the Hebrew University. When Dr. Weiz- 

mann went on his first visit to the United States, in April 

1921, Professor Einstein was invited to come along, with 

“special reference to the Hebrew University.”* This 

was the time of Weizmann’s fight with Brandeis over the 

scope of Zionism, and Einstein privately sympathized 

with the Brandeis position which “reflected a denial of 

Jewish nationalism” (Weizmann’s words). Yet FEin- 

stein’s sole interest was the University, and he refrained 

from participation in the political battle royal. In 1950, 

when the American Joint Board of Directors merged 

with the Weizmann Institute of Science, he became its 

President. His statements in support of the Hebrew Uni- 

versity were continually blown up by Zionist publicity 

into endorsements of Zionism. They never were any 

such thing. 

Testifying before the Anglo-American Committee of 

Inquiry in January, 1946 (in answer to the specific ques- 

tion whether refugee settlement in Palestine demanded 

171 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

a Jewish State), Dr. Einstein stated: “The State idea 

is not according to my heart. I cannot understand why 

it is needed. It is connected with narrow-mindedness and 

economic obstacles. I believe it is bad, I have always been 

against it.” He derided the Jewish Commonwealth con- 

cept as “an imitation of Europe, the end of which was 

brought about by nationalism.” 

In 1948, Einstein publicly and wholeheartedly sup- 

ported the views of the Dr. Magnes who favored the 

establishment of an Arab-Jewish bi-national State in 

Palestine and attacked Zionist terrorism and violence. 

In a letter to the New York Times, Dr. Einstein thus 

endorsed the position of Dr. Magnes and his followers: 

“Besides the fact that they speak for a much wider circle 

of inarticulate people, they speak in the name of prin- 

ciples which have been the most significant contribution 

of the Jewish people to humanity.”® 

On April 1, 1952, Dr. Einstein spoke (in a message 

to the Children To Palestine, Inc.) of the necessity to 

curb “a kind of nationalism” which has arisen in Israel 

“Sf only to permit a friendly and fruitful co-existence 

with the Arabs.” Olivia Terrell, Executive Secretary of 

the organization, later admittedly censored this portion 

of Einstein’s message in the press release. Her explana- 

tion: “Our only concern is with the welfare of children 

. .. not with any political aspects. A Children-To-Pal- 

estine dinner is no place for a statement like that.”?° 

This act of Zionist censorship took me to Princeton 

to seek Professor Einstein’s views on the incident. Dr. 

Einstein told me that, strangely enough, he had never 

been a Zionist and had never favored the creation of the 

State of Israel. Also, he told me of a significant conver- 

sation with Weizmann. Einstein had asked him: “What 

about the Arabs if Palestine were given to the Jews?” 

172 

THE MUGWUMPS AND THE CULT OF DOOM 

And Weizmann said: ““What Arabs? They are hardly 

of any consequence.” 

Professor Einstein’s Out of My Later Years (N. Y.: 

Philosophical Library, 1950), contains this unequivocal 

statement of his position: “I should much rather see a 

reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of liv- 

ing together than the creation of a Jewish state. Apart 

from practical considerations, my awareness of the es- 

sential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state 

with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power 

no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage 

Judaism will sustain.” 

In his authoritative book," Professor Philipp Frank 

speaks of Einstein’s deep opposition to nationalism which 

found succinct expression in his opposition to “‘substi- 

tuting a Jewish nationalism for a German nationalism.” 

According to Dr. Frank, Einstein had the goodhearted 

weakness to lend his name to the whole of the Zionist 

platform though he believed in only one of its planks. 

He hesitated to rebuke Zionists here or in Israel for fre- 

quent manipulations of his views. In his modest manner, 

he declined the Israel Presidency on the limited ground 

that he was not qualified in the area of human relation- 

ships. And the Zionists continue to use Einstein’s name 

to enhance their prestige and their political purse. 

There is a considerable symbolic meaning in the ac- 

cidental fact that Weizmann, the creator of modern Zi- 

onism, was a great chemist. For his political Zionism 

was concocted of the strangest and A ae hardly com- 

patible elements: the clannishness of the nationalist Jew; 

the propitiatory uneasiness of the “reluctant Jew” (Wal- 

do Frank, in his The Jew In Our Day,” calls him “‘in- 

ertial Jew”); the conscience of a disturbed Christian 

world, the philanthropy of the rich; the need of the poor 

173 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

to cluster together; the generosity of America; the or- 

thodoxy of the religious Judaist; the political passion of 

the atheist; the modern dread of loneliness; the pride of 

the socially frustrated and therefore politically ambi- 

tious intelligentsia; the romanticism of the “cultural 

Jew”; the hardboiled greed of the metropolitan profes- 

sional politician. All these, and more, components Weiz- 

mann mixed thoroughly, and then he added the master- 

ful final touch—the coloring of humanitarianism which 

protected his extraordinary concoction against any ana- 

lytical criticism. 

Alone, the Zionists would never have settled Pales- 

tine. Palestine was settled by the coalition efforts of 

Anglo-Saxon Christians (such as Balfour, Lloyd George, 

Winston Churchill), who were powerfully moved by 

the Anglo-Saxon’s devotion to the Old Testament, and 

outstanding non-Zionist Jewish families of the Western 

world, whose Judaic traditions made philanthropy the 

crowning justification of their wealth. But the Monte- 

fiores, the Rothschilds, the Schiffs, the Warburgs, the 

Rosenwalds, the Marshalls, the Lehmans and the Mor- 

genthaus have, until a few years ago, always detested 

political Zionism. 

In a speech at the Menorah Society Dinner in Decem- 

ber, 1917, Chief Judge Irving Lehman, brother of U. S. 

Senator Herbert H. Lehman, welcomed the position 

of the British Government on Palestine, but added that 

“ardent Zionists though some of you may be, I feel that 

you agree with me that politically we can be part of one 

nation only, and that nation is America.”** And: “Not 

as a group apart must the Jews survive here, but they 

must maintain here, as elsewhere, their ancient ideals 

and traditions and contribute to the culture of the Amer- 

ican people, of which they form an integral part, the 

174 

THE MUGWUMPS AND THE CULT OF DOOM 

strength of their ideals and the strength of their tradi- 

tions.” Judge Lehman recognized that the problem of 

Judaism—unsolved to this day—was how to keep the 

faith alive now that “it has become a part and not, as 

formerly, the whole of our lives.” He went on: “TI can- 

not for an instant recognize that the Jews as such con- 

stitute a nation in any sense in which that word is recog- 

nized in political science, or that a national basis is a 

possible concept for modern Judaism. We Jews in Amer- 

ica, bound to the Jews of other lands by our common 

faith, constituting our common inheritance, cannot as 

American citizens feel any bond to them as members 

of a nation, for nationally we are Americans and Ameri- 

cans only, and in political and civic matters we cannot 

recognize any other ties. We must therefore look for 

the maintenance of Judaism to those spiritual concepts 

which constitute Judaism.” 

Henry Morgenthau, Sr. (the father of the man who 

now heads the Israeli Bond drive), stated in his autobi- 

ography: “Zionism is the most stupendous fallacy in 

Jewish history. It is wrong in principle and impossible 

of realization; it is unsound in its economics, fantastical 

in its politics and sterile in its spiritual ideals. Where it 

is not pathetically visionary, it is cruel, playing with the 

hopes of a people blindly seeking their way out of age- 

long miseries.’ 

Jacob Schiff, Julius Rosenwald, Felix Warburg and 

Henry Morgenthau, Sr., would not have permitted all 

the Hitlers in the world to change their basic philosophy. 

These men were not just non-Zionists; they were pas- 

sionate antinationalists. How chagrined they would be 

to see those who inherited their fortunes and their good 

names, so cruelly deceived and exploited by nationalists 

in humanitarian clothing! Weizmann, by the way, ex- 

175 

ae 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

plains, rather cynically, how it happened that so many 

antinationalist U. S. Jews erected on the American scene 

the very props of a separatist movement of which they 

wanted no part: “Those wealthy Jews who could not 

wholly divorce themselves from a feeling of responsibil- 

ity toward their people, but at the same time could not 

identify themselves with the hopes of the masses, were 

prepared with a sort of left-handed generosity, on con- 

dition that their right hand did not know what their left 

hand was doing. To them the university-to-be in Jeru- 

salem was philanthropy, which did not compromise 

them; to us it was National Renaissance. They would 

give—with disclaimers. We would accept—with reser- 

vations.””?* 

These reservations were carefully concealed from the 

donors. Weizmann realized the enormity of his task, and 

his need to win the financial support of antinationalist 

U.S. Jews. To Louis Marshall, he had this to say (when 

Marshall suggested that it would cost half a billion dollars 

to build up Palestine): “We'll need much more. The 

money is there, in the pockets of the American Jews. 

It’s your business and my business to get at some of it.”””* 

And get at it the Zionists did. In 1929, the Jewish 

Agency (the official liaison between Palestine Jews and 

Jewry outside) was enlarged to include Americans 

whose deep concern for coreligionists abroad had here- 

tofore been expressed solely through the philanthropy 

of the Joint Distribution Committee. Many heretofore 

antinationalist U. S. Jews were now neutralized to be 

merely non-Zionists. More stubborn anti-Zionists soon 

tired of being outvoted in the Jewish Agency and sur- 

rendered their seats, which were immediately filled by 

nationalists. 

In 1939, the non-Zionist Joint Distribution Commit- 

176 

= 

a ne 

THE MUGWUMPS AND THE CULT OF DOOM 

tee (J.D.C.) and the Zionist United Palestine Appeal 

virtually merged in a single fund-raising drive, the United 

Jewish Appeal (U.J.A.). The J.D.C. then received ap- 

proximately 60 per cent of funds raised. Yet the 1952 

agreement between the two groups gave the J.D.C. about 

20 per cent of the first 55 million dollars raised, and 

less than 10% of all receipts above that figure. The over- 

whelming remainder now goes to the United Israel Ap- 

peal (successor to the United Palestine Appeal). The 

nationalists had captured the fund-raising machinery. 

The American Jewish Committee, whose purpose is 

“to prevent the infraction of the civil and religious rights 

of Jews in any part of the world,” was formed with the 

same non-nationalist intent originally behind the J.D.C., 

and by some of the same men. The A.J.C. courageously 

resisted the continued pressure to bring about a Zionist- 

controlled holding company of all Jewish organizations, 

“speaking for American Jewry.” At the UN Conference 

at San Francisco, A.J.C. Chairman, Judge Joseph Pros- 

kauer, frowned on the Zionists lobbying for statehood. 

While the A.J.C. theoretically still opposes the Zionist 

brand of Jewish nationalism, practically, however, the 

A.J.C. has become the most effective force in promoting 

nationalist political goals, both before and since the cre- 

ation of Israel. 

For many years, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise had been on 

the closest terms with President Roosevelt—until the 

President became tired of his dramatic antics and inces- 

sant rantings over “inadequate political support being 

given to the Zionist cause.” Wise became too virile a 

desk-pounder even for the sympathetic Roosevelt. When 

F.D.R. refused to see Wise, non-Zionists filled the gap. 

Eugene Meyer, former Chairman of the Board of the 

Reconstruction Finance Corporation and owner of the 

ERT 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

Washington Post, frequently acted as an intermediary 

between A.J.C. and the White House. Under Truman, 

a much more direct liaison was maintained between the 

White House Executive Office and the Committee. In 

his report’® to the annual meeting, the A.J.C. President 

boasted “‘of the ready access to the White House and of 

serving as a catalyst between our Government and the 

Jewish Agency.” The Zionists would have been power- 

less without A.J.C. help in the crucial days of November, 

1947, when extra votes were needed to insure a two- 

thirds majority in the United Nations. 

The American Jewish Committee has vigorously op- 

posed anti-Zionist criticism. Its pamphlets, justifying 

the Israeli position both on the Arab refugee problem and 

on the internationalization of Israel (in direct opposition 

to the United Nations), have been widely distributed. 

In its own words, the A.J.C. “continues to stimulate 

pro-Israel feeling among the American people, particu- 

larly over radio and television.”*’ Speaking to a group 

of Yiddish writers and journalists, A.J.C.’s Mr. Jacob 

Blaustein told his listeners that ‘““American Jews must 

labor with all their might to guarantee the existence of 

the Israeli State. . . . Israel’s failure would be a terrible 

blow for American Jews. ...”’* This A.J.C. leader also 

referred to the assistance given to Israeli diplomats in 

Washington by his organization, and assailed the Rosen- 

wald group for raising an “artificial issue of ‘divided 

loyalty’.” The American Jewish Committee helps force- 

fully in the U.J.A. drive and was the vital force behind 

the Israeli Bond sale in the U.S. 

A few times, the A.J.C. clashed with the official lead- 

ers of political Zionism—usually when openly Zionist 

organizations tried to gain undue organizational advan- 

tages in relationship to Israel. In its official statements, 

178 

————— 

THE MUGWUMPS AND THE CULT OF DOOM 

the A.J.C. still proclaims an antinationalist philosophy. 

But political attachment to Israel is the only feasible test 

for judging what constitutes Jewish nationalism. And, 

short of political allegiance to Israel, the A.J.C. encour- 

ages political nationalist activities. The “I-am-not-a- 

Zionist-but” approach of the A.J.C. has helped the Is- 

raeli Government more than any openly Zionist activity 

in America. For the overwhelming majority of Ameri- 

can Jews, who are neither Zionists nor anti-Zionists, have 

been impressed and swayed by the A.J.C. 

The Weizmann-Silver-Wise school of Zionism has 

been able to make gigantic strides in the United States 

only because of these mugwumps in U. S. Jewry. For in 

Zionism as elsewhere, it is not the over-zealous bearer 

of a membership card who accomplishes most for the 

party. It is the fellow traveler. Because it recoiled from 

translating its doubts about Zionism into positive oppo- 

sition, American non-Zionism has become the fellow 

traveler of Jewish nationalism. 

CHAPTER X 

Israelism — A New Religion? 

HE average Jew has only the scantiest personal 

knowledge of his religion, Judaism. A heritage 

has been handed down, for generations, from 

parent to child and learned by rote: “You are different— 

you are a Jew—you must help other Jews.” This, rather 

than positive metaphysical insight, is all the average Jew- 

ish child ever learns about its being Jewish. 

The predisposition to accept nationalism as religion 

is deeply ingrained in such a child. The mind will retain, 

even after maturity, irreconcilable contradictions so long 

as they have been implanted before the logical faculties 

became dominant. 

Zionism has striven to supplement the early condition- 

ing that Jewish children receive at home. This is the 

Zionist educational program as explained by Louis A. 

Falk, Vice-President of the Zionist Organization of 

America: ““We must expand our educational activities. 

We must strengthen the youth movement and spread 

Hebrew education throughout the land; support insti- 

tutions in which the teaching is carried out in our spirit, 

improve the existing Zionist Summer Camps and build 

new ones under Z.O.A.’s auspices; organize a net of eve- 

180 

ISRAELISM—A NEW RELIGION? 

ning courses throughout the country, headed by pro- 

fessional (Zionistically speaking) pedagogues; strength- 

en the Hebrew press and institute chairs for Hebrew in 

the American Colleges and Universities. ...””* 

The “right” kind of a Sunday school text book for 

those who attend religious instruction could of course 

play an important role, but the nationalist objective can 

be better accomplished in summer camps, when the chil- 

dren are more relaxed and more receptive. Camp di- 

rectors throughout the country are sent a selective range 

of program material from the Camp Service Bureau of 

the Zionist Youth Commission. Most of these pamphlets 

bear the imprint of the Jewish National Fund, an in- 

direct beneficiary of the U.J.A. The purpose of the vari- 

ous programs is to develop in the child during the sum- 

mer months an emotional and personal identification with 

Israel’s national development. The material involves the 

children in Israeli map-making, painting murals of Is- 

rael’s scenery, and building models of Israeli’s colonies. 

By brush, paint and paper, hammer, chisel and scissors, 

youthful American summer campers are to be familiar- 

ized with Israel’s geography, her agricultural and indus- 

trial community, her political and military institutions. 

Children of age level five to eight are given twelve 

Palestine landscapes to be finished with water colors or 

colored crayons. Among other games offered for the 

camps are jig-saw puzzles of Israel and playing cards 

portraying great Zionist leaders and historic places in 

Israel. For youngsters bent on stage-acting, full-length 

plays are mailed out, dealing with events and personali- 

ties of Jewish history and surcharged with Jewish na- 

tionalism. A special dramatic program for Herzl Day 

in commemoration of the father of Zionism is stressed. 

The camp libraries are offered, free of charge, books and 

181 

ee a SD <a Ts 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

magazines about the pioneer youth movement in Israel 

and travelogues of modern life in the Gallilee. Palestinian 

songs, folk-dance series, films and film slides are distrib- 

uted, mostly rental free. Among the film titles: Home- 

coming 1949; Land of Hope; Israel in Action; and If 

I Forget Thee. Finally, the camps are offered trained 

counselors “especially skilled in introducing Jewish con- 

tent into camp activities.” 

The American Zionist Youth Commission’? oversee- 

ing this program is a joint agency of the Zionist Organ- 

ization of America and of Hadassah. In behalf of the 

latter, thousands of women throughout the country 

think they are doing unpolitical philanthropic works 

in the interests of oppressed coreligionists abroad, and 

few of these women realize how much of the money 

they collect goes into the nationalist indoctrination of 

their own children. The Zionist circular letter that of- 

fers Zionist indoctrination material to American camps 

quite appropriately ends on quoting the maxim: “As 

the twig is bent, the tree will grow.” Further twig bend- 

ing includes the persistent attempts to introduce modern 

Hebrew into the public high schools and, through the 

“Halutziut” movement, to urge young American Jews 

above the age level of 18 to go to Israel, at least for a 

training period. 

After the United Jewish Appeal (U.J.A.) fell under 

the virtual control of Zionist-minded leadership, it be- 

came increasingly difficult to determine how many mil- 

lions of U. S. charity dollars go each year to Jewish na- 

tionalism for propaganda purposes. Nor is it possible to 

estimate the subtle nationalist conditioning performed 

with a million-dollar advertising that purports to seek 

philanthropy. All that advertising copy is aimed to make 

the reader feel he is part and parcel of Israel, for instance 

182 

arr 

ISRAELISM—-A NEW RELIGION? 

by asking him to “help the greatest homecoming in his- 

tory ... to strengthen Israel’s economy and democratic 

way of life.” But charity dollars are also being used for 

political indoctrination in a much more direct manner. 

The United Israel Appeal is the source of revenue for 

the Jewish National Fund and the Palestine Foundation 

Fund,’ nationalist Israeli institutions whose open purpose 

has always been to help build a Jewish State. The United 

Israel Appeal turns its share of U.J.A. money over to 

the Palestine Foundation Fund which finances the 

World Zionist Organization, including its executive 

arm, the Jewish Agency. It was the Jewish Agency 

which argued the case for a Jewish State before the 

United Nations in 1947. It is now registered with the 

U.S. Justice Department as a foreign agent. As the New 

York Yiddish Daily, the Morning Journal,* pointed out, 

U.J.A. money is finding its way directly into the Treas- 

ury of the State of Israel through the purchase of govern- 

ment-owned land by the Jewish National Fund. 

Another aspect of this intermingling of philanthropic 

and political funds was discussed by the Menorah Jour- 

nal, a scholarly monthly magazine of Jewish opinion. 

For years, the United Jewish Appeal of Greater New 

York (a corporation separate from the national U.J.A.) 

distributed part of the money it raised to agencies in this 

country. Its newspaper appeals were couched entirely 

~ in terms of aid to Jewish refugees abroad; and the char- 

itable contributors, many of them Christian, never knew 

that 7 per cent of the funds collected went to Jewish 

defense agencies such as the Anti-Defamation League 

operating in the United States. (While this practice 

ceased in New York City, it continues in Washington, 

D. C., and elsewhere. ) 

Religious symbols have been deliberately used to 

183 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

heighten the impression that the small sovereign Middle 

East State of Israel is actually identical with world 

Jewry. The Zionist Organization of America proclaimed 

the Jewish New Year of 1952 as Jerusalem Year and 

regional Zionist branches were directed to induce U. S. 

municipalities to name a street or avenue after Jerusalem. 

At Passover 1952, full-page advertisements of the United 

Jewish Appeal carried the emblazoned caption: “Where- 

fore is this day different from all other days?”, a polit- 

ical play on the venerable question prescribed for the 

religious Passover service. 

Any country in the world that faces an economic 

crisis tries to obtain a foreign loan from another govern- 

ment or through the Export-Import Bank. In some in- 

stances, securities are sold directly to citizens of other 

countries as an investment opportunity; bankers and 

specialists in international finance, rather than leaders of 

a particular segment of foreign communities, are nor- 

mally concerned with the floating of such bond issues. 

Yet none of these normal practices in the marketing of 

securities has been pursued in the instance of Israel: Is- 

rael Bonds have been sold exclusively through the na- 

tionalist appeal to an alleged “special responsibility of 

the Jewish people” in the U.S.A. 

To dispel all possible misunderstandings, Israeli Fi- 

nance Minister, Eliezer Kaplan, told the Knesset that Is- 

rael’s position was different from countries who had not 

succeeded in selling their bond issues in the United 

States, because there were five million Jews in America 

“whose fate is linked with ours.” The bond issue pros- 

pectus, filed with the Security Exchange Commission in 

Washington, recited the nationalist version of Jewish 

history: that the State of Israel “brought to realization 

hopes and prayers that had their origin many centuries 

184 

ISRAELISM——-A NEW RELIGION? 

ago; the exodus from Palestine scattered the Jews in 

all directions, but for many centuries they sought to live 

as close to their homeland as possible.” In a letter dated 

January 11, 1951, former Secretary of the Treasury 

Henry Morgenthau, Jr. opened the Israel Bond drive 

with the assertion that it was a matter of the utmost 

“patriotism as Americans and as Jews to see to it that 

this Israel Government Bond issue is a success.” But, one 

may politely ask, since when is the private financing of 

a foreign government a patriotic American duty? 

Zionist propaganda has constantly equated adherence 

to Judaism with financial support of Israel. A series of 

advertisements called on Jewry to “Give a bond for 

Chanukah,” implying that the spirit of this holiday im- 

posed upon Jews everywhere the support of Israel. On 

the eve of another Jewish holiday, Purim, Chairman 

Morgenthau said in the Bonds of the Israel Government 

(B.1.G.) Newsletter:® “On Sunday, March ninth, an un- 

usual event will take place in hundreds of Committees 

throughout America. On that day just prior to Purim, 

thousands of men and women will visit the homes of 

neighbors to solicit their purchase of Israel Bonds. The 

cable (attached) from the President of Israel makes clear 

the importance which Israel attaches to this enterprise 

which is so vital for the economic growth of the coun- 

try.” For Rosh Hashonoh and Yom Kippur, the most 

sacred holidays of Judaism, synagogues throughout the 

nation were called upon in 1952 “to mobilize their 

strength for the State of Israel and to sponsor the sale of 

Israel Bonds during synagogue services.” The chief rab- 

bi of Israel, Dr. Halevi Herzog, had urged this action 

in a letter read at a rally at the Israeli Exhibition, attended 

by U.S. rabbis and synagogue leaders. The head of the 

Mizrachi Organization (the American Zionist religious 

185 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

party) declared that letter to be of “historical signifi- 

cance,” while another leading Orthodox rabbi declared 

it was the “religious duty of all Jews to buy the bonds 

on the awe-inspiring and holy days.”’ Orthodox rab- 

binical authorities sanctioned this extraordinary exploita- 

tion of holiest holidays as being “within the framework 

of traditional observances.” But the prophet Isaiah would 

have observed: “Behold, in the Day of Your Fast, Ye 

pursue your Business.”* 

The pressures, propagandistic, economic, and other- 

wise, to purchase Israel Bonds have been enormous. Syn- 

agogues, B’nai B’rith Lodges, Hadassah groups and coun- 

try clubs have been mobilized as bond salesmen. For 

most U. S. Jews it has been made practically impossible, 

short of social suicide, to resist the compulsions to buy. 

More than 32,000 crowded Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field on 

the night of April 30, 1952, for an extraordinary celebra- 

tion. Mr. Morgenthau presided, Mrs. Roosevelt, Mayor 

Impellitteri, Israeli Ministers Dov Joseph and Golda My- 

erson and Rabbi Goldstein, were among the speakers. 

Billy Rose staged the event and the star-studded pro- 

gram included Milton Berle, John Garfield, Hazel Scott, 

Sid Caesar and others. This was Israel’s fourth anniver- 

sary. Even in Texas, where folks allegedly think of them- 

selves as Texans first, the “largest attendance in the his- 

tory of the Jewish community of San Antonio” was 

noted at a similar “Independence Day” celebration at 

the Municipal Auditorium.? 

Governor Theodore F. McKeldin of Maryland, who 

placed President Eisenhower’s name in nomination at 

the Chicago Republican Convention, was enrolled in the 

Bond Drive. The Governor wrote that the purchase 

of bonds involved no act of allegiance to Israel. But his 

curiously defensive analogy between “American Jews” 

186 

SS 

ISRAELISM—A NEW RELIGION? 

who purchase Israel Bonds and other Americans who 

purchase “British, Argentine, or other foreign bonds” 

just as curiously overlooked the pressuring propaganda 

and religious appeals behind the Israel Bond drive. Pur- 

chasers of other foreign bonds have not been pushed into 

their investment via any duality of status—the principal 

appeal in the selling of Israel Bonds. 

Paying Israel’s way either by contribution or bond 

purchase does not end the alleged obligation of Ameri- 

cans “as Jews.” As Zionism sees it, it is also their duty 

to engage in U. S. politics as a Jewish bloc “to create a 

climate of public opinion favorable to Israel’s legitimate 

political and economic needs”*°—the pledge with which 

the new President of the Zionist Organization of Amer- 

ica responded to a cabled message from Israeli Prime Min- 

ister Ben-Gurion. American Jewry was warned “that 

only an alert and militant Zionist Organization can swing 

American public opinion to come to Israel’s aid and exert 

pressure on our Administration of the kind which proved 

successful in 1947 and 1948 and without which the State 

would not have come into being. . . . Every Jew the 

world over will see his status enhanced or reduced by 

what Israel accomplishes.’”* 

Where such political action is not taken by Jews vol- 

untarily, Zionists have moved “to democratize™ the Jew- 

ish communities,” another way of saying to capture lo- 

cal community councils and local funds. A priority for 

Israeli needs over the requirements of American insti- 

tutions was the confessed goal.”* 

The assumption of responsibility for the State of Is- 

rael has not been confined to Zionist groups. The Ameri- 

can Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, 

and other organized bodies of U. S. Jewry have added 

their strength to Israel’s political cause. A virtual air lift 

187 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

has been operating to bring Cabinet members and other 

important Governmental officials from the new Middle 

East State to this country. At times it might have been 

easier to obtain an Israeli cabinet quorum in New York, 

or in Washington, than in Tel Aviv. 

Another unique facet in the “tale of two countries” 

is important. Every political party in Israel has its own 

political counterpart in this country; and the Zionist po- 

litical parties in the United States perform as the U. S. 

branches of those Israeli factions. The principal ones are 

the General Zionists (better known as the Zionist Or- 

ganization of America), the Mizrachi, the Labor Zion- 

ists, the Revisionists and the Progressive or Labor Zion- 

ists Leftists. The Israeli opposite numbers are the Gen- 

eral Zionists (sometimes split into wings A and B), the 

Mizrachi, the Mapai, the Herut and the Mapam. In the 

meetings of the World Zionist Congress, each Israeli 

sea and its American facsimile work closely together 

or their particular economic, political and social creeds. 

The intensity of Zionist pressure is most noticeable 

in New York City where billboards on streets and sub- 

ways fiercely put the stamp of nationality on Judaism. 

At one end of the Eighth Avenue subway entrance at 

Columbus Circle, one could find a large poster: “Give 

to the U.J.A.: Give to the U.J.A.: Give to the U.J.A.”; 

an equally imposing poster on the other side plugged: 

“Buy Israel Bonds—Pay More Than 334%.” Down 

a block or two, a tremendous fifty-foot U.J.A. banner 

spans Broadway imploring those both to the north and 

to the south “to give.” And across town, plush Fifth 

Avenue stores disrupt the otherwise commercial decor of 

their display windows with a small, elegant “Give to 

the U.J.A.” flag. The metropolitan press is filled each 

day with such stories as “1800 at Eddie Cantor’s Birth- 

188 

we 

eee 

ISRAELISM—A NEW RELIGION? 

day Party Buy $2,616,000 in Israel Bonds to Get In.” 

Or it may be a full-page advertisement calling for the 

“maintenance of the Z.O.A. colonies in Israel.” On one 

day, the New York Times carried stories of the Zionist 

Council’s new five-year plan; the needs of the Joint Dis- 

tribution Committee to help Jews in Europe; the visit 

of the Tel Aviv Police Chief to the United States in con- 

nection with the Bond drive; statements of the Israel 

Foreign Minister regarding the country’s objectives in 

the controversy with the Arab States; and a half-page 

advertisement: ‘Get Bonds at the Israeli Exposition.” 

In the New York Times Index for 1947, 1948, and 

1949'* Palestine (without “Jewish” listings) was ac- 

corded more pages than Great Britain and France com- 

bined. Indonesia, with a population of 78 million people, 

achieved its independence on November 2, 1949, after 

prolonged fighting with the Dutch, and protracted 

United Nations negotiations in which the United States 

was heavily involved; but that crucial country’s listings 

in the New York Times Index totalled 3 pages against 

the ro pages given to Palestine and Israel the same year. 

In 1950 and 1951, the Times space given Israel still ex- 

ceeded Great Britain’s news allotments. 

The press and radio rarely distinguish between the 

words “Jew” and “Israeli,” “Judaism” and “Zionism”— 

in other words, between religion and nation. They talk 

of the Jewish State, the Jewish Flag, the Jewish Premier, 

etc. This deplorable semantics of the U. S. press is just 

what the Zionist doctor ordered: in such way, U. S. 

Jewry is inexorably linked to Israel at any moment of 

Israeli crisis. And, of course, each year, as the one be- 

fore, the Zionist cry is: “This is the year of crisis.” That 

cry has become as much a part of the American scene 

as the ritual throwing out of the ball at the start of the 

189 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

season or the opening of the Metropolitan Opera. The 

head of the American section of the Jewish Agency was 

honest enough to say, at least to other Zionists: “‘All the 

campaigning which is today based on the thesis that ‘this 

is the last difficult year’ is a dangerous method of propa- 

ganda. The truth is that Israel will need help for years 

and years.”?* 

William Zuckerman, editor of the Jewish Newsletter, 

dubbed the climate of the American Jewish community 

as “Campaign Judaism,” which, he said “‘has almost con- 

sciously emptied itself of all higher aspirations and spirit- 

ual needs and has willingly limited itself to the role of a 

financial milk cow for others. ... How can a community 

such as this, whose highest ideal is mechanical fund- 

raising, be the source of nobility and greatness? Can the 

interminable big-and-even-bigger Bond and UJA drives, 

the Hadassah teas, the gaudy banquets, the garish public- 

ity and appalling bad taste, be the soil from which great- 

ness will spring? Can salesmanship, even when clothed 

with the mantle of philanthropy, be anything but shallow 

and sterile?’’® 

The significance of all these manifestations is that, for 

the past ten years, Yahweh, the God of Judaism, has 

been supplanted in the Jewish American life by nation- 

alist-minded politicians. The Decalog’s Second Com- 

mandment once committed the Jews: ‘“Thou shalt have 

no other Gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto 

thee any graven image.” In contemporary Judaism, the 

worship of the State of Israel is crowding out the wor- 

ship of God. 

190 

CHAPTER XI 

Operation “Ingathering” 

N SOLEMN policy declarations, David Ben-Gurion 

| publicly announced what Jewish nationalists have 

privately been saying since the days of Herzl: that 

all the world’s Jews must “go home.” These were not 

extemporaneous remarks of an irresponsible person; 

these were statements of the Prime Minister of the sov- 

ereign State of Israel who, as the top leader in the World 

Zionist movement, speaks with ultimate authority on 

Zionist dogma. 

On August 31, 1949, David Ben-Gurion had this to 

say to a group of Americans visiting Israel: “Although 

we realized our dream of establishing a Jewish State, we 

are still at the beginning. Today there are only 900,000 

Jews in Israel, while the greater part of the Jewish people 

are still abroad. It consists of bringing all Jews to Israel. 

We appeal to the parents to help us bring their children 

here. Even if they decline to help, we will bring the youth 

to Israel; but I hope that this will not be necessary.” 

How many of these American children did he want? 

Mr. Ben-Gurion explained this upon his arrival in the 

USS., in May 1951. He envisaged an influx of an addi- 

tional four million Jews into Israel in the next ten years, 

IQ! 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

and he left little doubt from where the bulk of these new 

settlers were expected to come. The large immigration 

waves from Iraq, Yemen and Bulgaria had subsided, and 

Israel made clear that she no longer wanted the weak and 

infirm, but the healthy youth from the United States. 

Ben-Gurion asserted that the “establishment of a new 

state was never the fulfillment of Zionism and that the 

movement was more necessary now than ever.’ He 

pointed out that, whereas the sovereignty of the State 

was limited to citizens within its borders, the Zionist 

movement embraced all Jews throughout the world. 

In December 1951, the Israeli Premier discussed in the 

Knesset immigration problems of Israel. He charged 

American Zionist leadership with having gone bankrupt 

after the founding of the State, because they had failed 

to migrate in large numbers. Ben-Gurion cried: “There 

were not five leaders who got up to go to Israel after 

the State was established. I don’t maintain they would 

have been followed by masses, but they would have 

proved that Zionism was not void of meaning, at least 

in the eyes of its leaders.” 

In a rebuttal to this charge, Benjamin Browdy, then 

President of the Zionist Organization of America, 

pointed to the ten trade schools and the business college 

that had been established for Israel in this country, to 

the recruiting of skilled Americans for teaching in Is- 

rael, to the shipment of U. S. food, clothing and materi- 

als. He could also note his movement’s attempts to instill 

what Browdy called “an exodus psychology” within 

U.S. Jewry as proof that they were not merely “charity 

Zionists.” Dr. Israel Goldstein, in the guise of voicing 

Israeli complaints against American Jews asked: “What 

are American Jews waiting for? Are they waiting for a 

Hitler to force them out? Do they imagine that they will 

192 

Ni ite at 

OPERATION “‘INGATHERING”’ 

be spared the tragedies which have forced Jews of other 

lands to emigrate?’”* 

In his parliamentary address Mr. Ben-Gurion had 

taken the immigration problem off the humanitarian 

level. It was now squarely posed as an Israeli national 

manpower problem—no longer as a philanthropic re- 

sponsibility. The Premier said that Israel needed nurses, 

teachers and other technicians, and went on: “I am sure 

they will come. There are economic factors to induce 

them. A Jewish engineer in America will not easily ob- 

tain employment in a non-Jewish firm and there are not 

enough Jewish firms to absorb all intellectuals.” Here at 

last was the crescendo to the doom music of Herzl, 

Weizmann, Wise, Silver, and all Zionist theoreticians. 

Any American Jew ought to have resented the innu- 

endo of a foreign politician that his, the American Jew’s, 

attachment to the United States could be altered by job 

trouble or the manpower needs of a foreign nation. No 

bigot could have made a meaner charge. And how did 

the American Jewish Committee protect U. S. Jewry 

against the outrageous assertion of the leader of a foreign 

state that the relationship of American Jews to the 

United States was anything but unqualified and perma- 

nent? After Ben-Gurion’s first “ingathering” declara- 

tion, Jacob Blaustein, the A.J.C. President, went to Is- 

rael for a retraction—only to reassure, on his return, that 

everything was all right. And so it was—for Jewish na- 

tionalism. The movement continued to march along the 

chosen “ingathering” path. 

From the outset, immigration to Palestine has been ar- 

tificially stimulated. For even Europe’s Displaced Per- 

sons had to be powerfully “convinced” that Israel was 

the only place where they could build their lives anew. 

There were, in 1948, between 100,000 and 114,000 dis- 

193 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

placed Jews in the American Zone of Germany; from 

among that group, more than 55,000 applications for 

emigration to the United States had been filed by the fall 

of 1947, and a majority of these people specified a pref- 

erence of going anywhere but Palestine.* This was in 

the face of most intense propaganda work of the Jewish 

Agency amongst the inmates of the D.P. camps. In a 

report to the Zionist-controlled American Jewish Con- 

ference (which included every organization save the 

American Jewish Committee), Chaplain Klausner dis- 

cussed quite frankly how to deal with these stubborn 

Displaced Persons. Worked out after consultations with 

the former Advisers on Jewish Affairs to the U. S. High 

Commissioner, Judges Simon Rifkind and Louis Levin- 

thal and Rabbi Philip Bernstein, the Klausner report 

submitted this pertinent observation: “I am convinced 

that the people must be forced to go to Palestine. They 

are not prepared to understand their own position nor 

the promises of the future. To them, an American dol- 

lar looms as the greatest of objectives. By ‘force’ I sug- 

gest a program. It is not a new program. It was used 

before, and most recently. It was used in the evacuation 

of the Jews from Poland and in the story of the ‘Exo- 

dus.’ ” 

“The first step in such a program,” the Klausner re- 

port went on, “is the adoption of the principle that it is 

the conviction of the world Jewish community that these 

people must go to Palestine. The second step is the trans- 

mittal of that policy to the Displaced Persons. The third 

step is for the world Jewish community to offer the peo- 

ple the opportunity to go to Palestine. By opportunity, it 

is to be understood that any means put at the disposal 

of the people is to be considered an adequate opportu- 

nity. Those who are not interested are no longer to be 

194 

SS 

OPERATION “INGATHERING” 

wards of the Jewish community to be maintained in 

camps, fed and clothed without their having to make 

any contribution to their own subsistence. To effect this 

program, it becomes necessary for the Jewish commu- 

nity at large to reverse its policy and instead of creating 

comforts for the Displaced Persons to make them as un- 

comfortable as possible. The American Joint Distribu- 

tion Committee supplies should be withdrawn. I have 

taken the time to indicate the type of help that the Joint 

has been giving. My purpose was to be able to indicate 

that the supplementary aid of the Joint may be termed 

‘luxury items’ in that this aid serves as a means to put 

the individual in business. A further procedure would 

call for an organization such as the Haganah to harass 

the Jew. Utilities would be tampered with and all pro- 

tection now given by the Adviser on Jewish Affairs, 

D.P. Chaplains, and Agency personnel be withdrawn. 

Of course, it is to be understood that there are certain 

problems that persist even in the most normal of societies 

which must be cared for by one or more agencies.” 

“It must be borne in mind,” continued Rabbi Klaus- 

ner, “that we are dealing with a sick people. They are 

not to be asked, but to be told, what to do. They will 

be thankful in years to come. Too many times have I 

been cursed in the evening, while moving masses of peo- 

ple, only to be thanked the following morning for hav- 

ing transferred them from an abominable site to a more 

comfortable location. The cooperation of all agencies 

is imperative. The principle must be whole-heartedly 

accepted by all Agencies involved. The AJDC must set 

aside the funds now allocated to Germany to be used for 

the execution of this program. If this program is not ac- 

cepted, let me assure this Conference that an incident 

will occur which will compel the American Jewish com- 

195 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

munity to reconsider its policy and make the changes 

herein suggested. At that time, there will have been much 

more suffering, a greater wave of anti-Semitism and a 

tougher struggle to accomplish what might perhaps be 

accomplished today.” 

The then Adviser on Jewish Affairs to the High Com- 

missioner in Germany, William Haber, called attention, 

in a letter to the Conference, to Klausner’s “all consum- 

ing passion for Zionism” which explained his resentment 

against the Displaced Persons for not seeing that Israel 

was their only hope. Haber agreed without reservation 

that these people ought to be evacuated, but took issue 

with the suggestion that the D.P.’s be made uncomfort- 

able and be harassed. Mr. Haber referred to the “‘some- 

what compulsory form” of conscription for the Palestine 

Army that already was being applied in the camps, and 

to the “social pressures” used to persuade young and 

able-bodied D.P.’s “to volunteer” for the Haganah. 

Reports that acts of terror and discrimination were 

committed in D.P. camps against Jews who disagreed 

with Zionism had been received from time to time in 

the United States. An important U. S. labor leader re- 

ported in the summer of 1948° that Jewish relief organ- 

izations responsible for administering the camps were 

engaged in a general campaign “to force D.P.’s to accept 

Zionism, to join the Palestine Jewish Army, and to give 

up legitimate political differences.” The means employed 

towards these ends included confiscation of food rations, 

dismissal from work, smashing of machines sent by 

Americans to train D.P.’s in useful skills, taking away 

legal protection and visa rights from dissenters, expul- 

sion from the camps of political opponents and, in one 

instance, even the public flogging of a recalcitrant re- 

cruit for the Israel Army. Trucks of the Jewish Agency 

196 

eeeeeeE——— 

OPERATION “INGATHERING”’ 

were known to drive through the Jewish camps in Ger- 

many, “picking up” boys and young men. Strange trans- 

ports lett Germany every week for France where, as a 

first step en route to Israel, the herded people were kept 

in camps established at Marseilles. In Germany’s D.P. 

camps, stories were spread that pogroms were taking 

place in parts of the United States. Artist Steinhardt and 

his wife, of whom I have told in a previous chapter, 

would stop believing in the reality of anti-Semitic vio- 

lence in the United States only after their visit to this 

country. 

In this manner, the “ingathering of the exiles” began. 

At the Israeli Cabinet meeting of August 15, 1948, Pre- 

mier Ben-Gurion stated: “Generations have not in vain 

suffered and struggled to see only 800,000 Jews in this 

country. It is the duty of the present generation to re- 

deem the Jews in the Arab and European countries.” 

After the 1949 Israeli elections, Ben-Gurion stated this 

objective in a different manner: “We must save the rem- 

nants of Israel in the Diaspora. We must also save their 

possessions. Without these two things, we shall not build 

this country.” 

The Arab-Israeli war afforded an opportunity for “re- 

demption.” After the European D.P. camps were emp- 

tied, more than 80 per cent of the subsequent immigrants 

came from the Soviet-Satellite countries and the Arab 

States of the Middle East and North Africa. Where 

these Jews did not willingly immigrate, a combination 

of pressure and propaganda forced them to move. 

In the instance of the 110,000 Iraqi Jews, their life 

was made miserable by the intensified political conflict 

between a small hard core of Zionists in their midst and 

the Moslem Government. The Jews had been brought 

to the land of Iraq by Nebuchadnezzar after the destruc- 

197 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

tion of the Kingdom of Judah. Here the Babylonian 

Talmud had been written and the captives had found 

the “peace of the city” prophesied for them. Here their 

leaders served as counsellors and advisers to Sultans and 

Pashas, and had gained civic and financial prestige. Here 

the Jewish community enjoyed economic and religious 

freedom for centuries. In the twenties there had been a 

Jewish Finance Minister in the cabinet. ‘There were some 

sixty synagogues. In fact, representatives of Middle 

Eastern Jewry, including Iraqi’s, had appeared before 

the Anglo-American Committee in 1946 to express the 

fear that their friendly relations with Mohammedan 

Arabs were endangered by political Zionism. And at 

that time, there were more persons of Jewish faith in 

the Arab countries, including North Africa, than in 

the Promised Land. 

There were forces within the Jewish Iraqi community 

which were stirred by Zionist agents who sought to 

make Iraqi Jewry conscious of their ties with Palestine. 

The Jewish Community Council in Baghdad had at- 

tacked Zionism on several occasions. Iraqi’s Chief Rabbi, 

Khedouri Sassoon, who had guided his flock for forty- 

eight years, issued a statement which said: “Iraqi Jews 

will be forever against Zionism. Jews and Arabs have 

enjoyed the same rights and privileges for tooo years and 

do not regard themselves as a distinctive separate part 

of this nation.” Despite these warnings, Zionist agents 

effectively produced trouble in Iraqi. Rabbi Sassoon 

himself was badly beaten by coreligionists. 

With the outbreak of the war between Israel and the 

Arab States, Israel became the proclaimed enemy of 

Iraq, and many innocent Jews were mistaken for Zion- 

ists. It is hard to assess all the facts except that passions 

flared on both sides, leading to incidents. Acts of extrem- 

198 

Ee 

OPERATION “INGATHERING” 

ists led to a gradual deterioration of relations between 

the Iraqi Jews and Moslem. The breach widened when 

the Iraq Parliament passed the Option Law permitting 

those who wished to leave to do so, but not making the 

exodus mandatory. 

As Foreign Minister Tewfik Sweidi, who as prime 

minister had promulgated the law, explained to me in 

Baghdad in June, 1953: “We could not help but feel 

that some Jews had become foreigners and were poten- 

tial fifth columnists. We protected them but gave them 

the choice of going to Israel or remaining as loyal citi- 

zens of Iraq. At the end of the first eleven months only 

30,000 had registered for emigration. One of the buses 

carrying Jews to the airport was bombed—Zionists were 

accused of this act—and within two months more than 

80,000 had expressed the desire to depart.” 

One of the approximately 4,500 who still remain in 

Iraq told me: “Many parents who left did so only be- 

cause their more Zionist-minded children insisted that 

they quit the country for Israel.” At the end of the exo- 

dus, a cache of bombs and guns was found concealed in 

a synagogue. 

To Americans, Operation Ali Baba (as the exodus 

from Iraq was named) was a challenge to give money for 

the rescue of oppressed peoples. But for more than 100,- 

ooo Iraqi Jews, this was a forced rescue from the land 

in which their fathers had prospered for many centuries. 

As Dorothy Thompson has pointed out, these “rescued” 

Jews from Iraqi were imitating their ancestors, the Bib- 

lical exiles in Babylon—only in reverse: these new Is- 

raeli settlers now sat by the river of Jordan and wept 

for their homes in Babylon. 

The Yemenite Jews came from a medieval Middle 

Eastern civilization which they shared with their Mos- 

199 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

lem neighbors. It has been reported that only five people 

in all of Yemen owned automobiles, and one of them 

was a Jew. This medieval state on the Red Sea was built 

on a quasi-caste system in which the Jews, centuries ago, 

had taken over the arts and crafts (to a certain extent 

also small shopkeeping) and were engaged in agricul- 

ture. It has been said that these Yemenite Jews held a 

key position because in Yemen “the artisan is king.”* At 

any rate, their existence as artisans led to extreme sol- 

idarity and strictest religious discipline. They lived the 

old Talmudic law to the letter and bore the closest re- 

semblance to the original Jews of Palestine by whom they 

had been converted to Judaism. Like other Yemenites, 

the Yemenite Jews lived, by Western standards, under 

sub-normal conditions; but the Yemenite Jews were no 

worse off than their neighbor. 

These Yemenite Jews were transported to Israel, in 

an operation colorfully labelled “The Magic Carpet,” 

in two stages (December 1948 to March 1949, and July 

1949 to September 1950), at a cost of approximately 

5% million dollars. The Near East Air Lines handled 

this air lift with five Skymasters and one Tudor. These 

medieval people, most of whom had never seen a plane 

before, wished to hurry to Israel largely for religious 

reasons: once the State was created, it was quite natural 

for these primitively pious Jews to see the Messianic 

promise in their speedy return to the land of the Bible. 

But once in Israel, the Yemenite was immediately la- 

belled with the usual clichés of prejudice such as “child- 

ish,” “imbecilic,” “shiftless,” “dirty” and “unwilling to 

work.” 

Oriental Jews now constitute approximately 45 % of 

Israel’s total population. More than 665,000 newcomers 

had swarmed into Israel until the Jewish Agency aban- 

200 

OPERATION “INGATHERING” 

doned, in November 1951,’ unrestricted immigration 

for selective immigration with an admitted preference 

for the young, the able-bodied, and those with special 

professional skills. 

Despite this temporary curtailment of immigration, 

the “ingathering” goal of Jewish nationalism has not 

altered a whit. Speaking before the Annual Convention 

of the Labor Zionists of America in July, 1952, Israeli 

Foreign Minister Sharett said that Israel must have a 

popalaon of not less than four million.’ But, he added, 

or the truly desirable influx, Israel was now looking 

to the countries of North and South America. The For- 

eign Minister was merely spelling out what his chief 

had previously announced in broad principle to the 

World Zionist Organization: “This State is the only one 

which is not an end in itself, but serves as a means for 

the fulfillment of Zionism, the ingathering of the exiles. 

It is not a State for its citizens alone, but for the whole 

Jewish people.” At the same time, incongruously 

enough, the United Jewish Appeal issued an emergency 

call in behalf of the most recently “ingathered” 240,000 

Israelis who desperately needed shelter. 

South America, indeed, has not been neglected as a 

supply source of future Israeli citizens. As a first step, 

the Jewish community in Mexico has been reduced to 

an Israel colony. There, the Zionists control most Jew- 

ish communal institutions, including the important 

school system, and dominate all funds. This did not just 

happen. When they were raising money for the United 

Zionist Fund (the Mexican equivalent of the U.J.A.) 

the Zionists published the names of those Jews who had 

not yet contributed. Other advertisements warned that 

no Jew who wished to visit Israel could obtain a visa 

without proving that he had contributed adequately to 

201 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

the United Zionist Fund. A gathering of Mexican Jews 

was told that the “pogrom” from which the Costa Rican 

Jews had been barely rescued would, sooner or later, 

be the lot of all Jews in Mexico; therefore, “it is only 

sound policy to provide themselves with a place of ref- 

uge and especially a refuge for their possessions,”® and 

an investment in Israeli Bonds would naturally be a good 

means of transferring their Mexican property. 

It has taken the Zionists in Mexico five years to ex- 

punge all opposition to their totalitarianism. In the Spring 

of 1948, the United Zionist Fund in Mexico City an- 

nounced that those who refused to contribute, or failed 

to contribute sufficiently large sums, would be judged 

at an “open trial.” The names of the “guilty” were read 

at a pre-trial meeting attended by over 500 men and 

women. “There was great tumult in the hall and people 

were standing ready with pencil and paper to record the 

names as they were read.”*° A jury of eleven had been 

hand-picked two weeks before the first “trial” which 

began on June 16. Die Stimme, in its issue of June rgth, 

describes the “lynch spirit” stirred up by Zionist “pros- 

ecutors” of “delinquents.” One of the accused was badly 

beaten.”* While the “trial” proceeded, the Zionist head- 

man in Mexico City conducted “back-stage bargaining 

negotiations with those willing to pay last-minute hush 

money rather than face public denunciation.” 

The following sanctions were imposed upon those 

declared guilty: 

(1) Exclusion from all social institutions of which 

the delinquent is a member or would like to be a 

member; 

(2) Demand on all his friends to break off relations 

with him; 

202 

OPERATION “INGATHERING”’ 

(3) Refusal of all local institutions to accept any con- 

tributions to any enterprise from the guilty one; 

(4) “The names of all declared guilty to be sent to 

the Government in Israel in order that they be 

inscribed in the list kept for that purpose”; 

(5) No local Jewish publication to be permitted to 

publish any defense of persons judged guilty. 

The Kangaroo Court of Mexico City has been ex- 

tended into other Jewish communities of Latin America. 

In Montevideo, recalcitrant Uruguayans who, in 1949, 

refused to contribute the 2 per cent tax levied by Zion- 

ist leaders on all their wealth, were denied entrance to 

the synagogue and the right to obtain the service of a 

Rabbi or Cantor at marriage, death and circumcision 

ceremonies.” Essentially the same outrage was reported 

from Brazil, Argentina, and Peru.* In Argentina, the 

largest and most powerful Jewish fraternal and burial 

society announced that Jews who did not give to the 

fund would not be buried in Jewish cemeteries.’ 

At the Mexican “trial,” the head of the Mexican 

branch of the Joint Distribution Committee took the 

floor to incite the crowd and urge sanctions. The “‘de- 

fendants” subjected to this kangaroo court formed a De- 

fense Committee, appealed to American organizations 

for assistance, and protested to the main office of the 

Joint Distribution Committee.” In a reply to their letter, 

the Secretary of the Latin American J.D.C. washed his 

hands of “strictly a community matter” and asserted 

“that, as you probably know, similar fund raising efforts, 

and methods similar to those about which you complain, 

have been employed by communities in this country.””"7 

Moses A. Leavitt, executive vice-chairman of the Joint 

Distribution Committee added in a reply of his own: 

203 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

“We have nothing to apologize for and obviously we 

cannot jeopardize the lives of people overseas by refus- 

ing to accept funds which any Jewish community feels 

it wishes to offer to us....””* 

Operation “Ingathering” has been codified by the 

Jawmakers of Israel. This is Article 3 of the proposed 

Constitution not yet adopted, as there has been no de- 

cision yet whether Israel is to have a written Constitu- 

tion like the United States or an unwritten one like Brit- 

ain: “The state of Israel is designed to be the National 

home of the Jewish people and shall admit every Jew 

who desires to settle within its territory subject to such 

regulatory provisions as may from time to time be en- 

acted by the Chamber of Deputies.” The Knesset on 

July 5th, 1950, implemented this constitutional provision 

with the Law of Return which endows every Jew with 

the right to come to Israel for permanent settlement. 

The new Nationality Bill of Israel went into effect on 

July 14th, 1952, (coincidentally, as Norman Thomas 

pointed out, “Bastille Day in France, the beginning of 

Jewish emancipation in the Western democratic states 

a century and a half ago”).’® Under this law, all Jews 

of Israel automatically become citizens of the State, but 

none of the 170,000 Arabs in that country can so be- 

come an Israeli citizen without proving first that he was 

a Palestinian citizen up to May 14, 1948, and that he had 

lived there continuously since the establishment of the 

State in Israel, or entered Israel legally after the estab- 

lishment. To become a naturalized Israeli citizen, the 

Arab must fulfill six requirements—from which a Jew 

in Israel, or anywhere else in the world, 1s exempt—such 

as giving proof that he has resided in Israel for three of 

the five years preceding the application, possesses knowl- 

204. 

a — 

OPERATION “INGATHERING”’ 

edge of the Hebrew language, and has renounced prior 

nationality. Of course, only a small proportion of Israel’s 

170,000 Arabs can offer the proofs necessary for auto- 

matic citizenship.” 

While the Arab born in Palestine is thus deprived of 

equality of citizenship, the American Jew (or the Jew 

from any other country) residing in Israel is automat- 

ically endowed with Israeli citizenship regardless of 

whether or not he renounced his original citizenship. 

The new law made it explicitly incumbent upon him to 

disclaim this Israeli “endowment.” Most Americans liv- 

ing in Israel rushed to reject the privilege of dual citizen- 

ship, specifically declaring their unwillingness to become 

Israeli citizens.** U. S. consulates have been besieged by 

U. S. Jews seeking confirmation that their American 

citizenship was in good order. The precarious position 

of American Jews in Israel was further complicated by 

the McCarran Act which stipulates that Americans lose 

U. S. citizenship by service in a foreign army. Inasmuch 

as a number of Americans (males between the ages of 

18 and 45, and American women between the ages of 

18 and 35) have been subjected to Israel’s universal draft 

and permitted to serve without swearing allegiance to 

Israel, their U. S. citizenship was seriously jeopardized. 

The second-largest group of Israeli residents who 

showed a stubborn unwillingness to become Israelis are 

Tunisian and Moroccan Jews “rescued” into Israel by 

various “ingathering” techniques. 

About the Israeli Nationality Act, U. S. Socialist 

Norman Thomas had this to say: “An Arab, without 

too much exaggeration, can complain that the Jews were 

practicing Hitlerism in reverse. He can certainly main- 

tain that the volume of Jewish criticism of the bad Mc- 

205 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

Carran Immigration Bill—now, alas, a Law—in Amer- 

ica, comes with extraordinary bad grace from such 

‘American Zionists as might support or apologize for 

Ben-Gurion’s law of nationalism.” Verily, the Israeli 

Knesset ignored the Biblical direction: “And ye shall 

love the stranger, for ye were strangers in the land of 

Egypt, and as one of the citizens shall be unto you the 

stranger that sojourneth in your midst, ye shall love him 

as thyself.” 

Jewish nationalists have defended the Israel National- 

ity Law in this rather hard-boiled and somewhat Nazi- 

like manner: “No one will deny that essentially the (Na- 

tionality) Law of Israel contains some discrimination 

against the Arabs, because Jews become citizens auto- 

matically, while Arabs must bring proof. But the dis- 

crimination is a result of an event which has been de- 

layed for over a thousand years. The Nationality Law 

is the first law of its kind in a land which was in our 

times taken over by sword and conquest. Let us not de- 

ceive ourselves; one is either against such historical 

‘primitivism’ in our times, or one accepts it and remem- 

bers that everything that happens, no matter how un- 

pleasant the happening, characterizes a land in the proc- 

ess of being created after it was conquered in order to re- 

establish the historical home of the Jewish people.”” 

Most Americans would vehemently resent any doubt 

of the indivisibility of their citizenship, but the U. S. 

Zionists do not find the idea of an American Jew’s auto- 

matic citizenship in Israel altogether repellent. Some- 

thing else disturbs them much more. Not so long ago, 

this mordant definition of a “Zionist” was making the 

rounds: “A Zionist is a Jew who will give money to a 

second Jew to send a third Jew to Israel.” And the Amer- 

206 

OPERATION “‘INGATHERING” 

ican Zionist was suddenly facing the fact that be might 

be that third Jew. To bring about the exodus of other 

Jews from their countries was fine; but most U. S. Zion- 

ists balk at the idea that the “ingathering” might include 

themselves. Theirs is strictly an “after you, my dear 

Alphonse” attitude. Only some three thousand Ameri- 

can Zionists have made their permanent homes in Israel. 

The rest, no matter how imbued with a love of their 

“homeland” over there, seem to prefer activities in its 

behalf in the comfort of the United States. 

This has temporarily discouraged the Israeli leader- 

ship, but it has not daunted their plans. The forced “ 

gathering” of the Iraqi and other Middle Eastern Jewry 

is a pattern which the Zionists would like to repeat in 

the West, though they have not managed as yet to cre- 

ate the necessary incidents to explode Western Jewish 

communities. That they will continue to try is proven 

by an article in Davar, the official organ of the Socialist- 

Labor (Mapai) Party in Tel Aviv, the newspaper of 

Israel’s governing party. Here is what was said in Prime 

Minister Ben-Gurion’s own paper: “I shall not be 

ashamed to confess that, if I had power, as I have the 

will, I would select a score of efficient young men— 

intelligent, decent, devoted to our ideal and burning 

with the desire to help redeem Jews, and I would send 

them to the countries where Jews are absorbed in sinful 

self-satisfaction. The task of these young men would 

be to disguise themselves as non-Jews, and, acting upon 

the brutal Zionism, plague these Jews with anti-Semitic 

slogans, such as ‘Bloody Jew,’ ‘Jews go to Palestine,’ and 

similar ‘intimacies.’ I can vouch that the results, in terms 

of a considerable immigration to Israel from these coun- 

tries, would be ten thousand times larger than the results 

207 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

brought by thousands of emissaries who have been 

preaching for decades to deaf ears.” 

As Israeli leaders have complained, too few American 

Zionists have practiced what they preach. Nevertheless, 

they still preach. They still are an integral part of a world 

organization pledged to a task which will not be com- 

pleted until, to use the words of Rabbi Silver, “the proc- 

ess of ingathering of the exiles encompasses the entire 

Jewish people.” 

The future of the American Jew was carefully 

charted in Jerusalem during the 23rd World Zionist 

Congress of 1951, the first to convene since the estab- 

lishment of the State of Israel. Fifty-four years had 

passed since the Basel Platform of 1897. A new program 

had to be formulated. For, if the creation of a sovereign 

state had been the only goal of Zionism, its work would 

be judged completed and the organization would have 

to be disbanded. But meeting in Israel, at a safe distance 

from the American press, the heart and core of Zionism 

was laid bare, undisturbed by fears that a forthright ex- 

position of true Zionist goals might endanger American 

fund raising. 

The nationalization of one part of the “Jewish people” 

had been achieved, and the remaining problem was how, 

not whether, to ‘‘nationalize” the Jews who still lived 

outside Israel. Because of the vital financial contributions 

and the political assistance they had rendered and were 

continuing to render Israel, American Zionists demanded 

a decisive role in governing Israel’s affairs. Rabbi Silver 

and his friends argued that they were the fountainhead 

from which flow American dollars, and they demanded 

an equal voice in “management.” Mrs. Golda Myerson, 

on the other hand, pressed Ben-Gurion’s official conten- 

tion that “the only persons who had the right to influ- 

208 

OPERATION ‘“‘INGATHERING”’ 

ence Israel policy were those who lived in this coun- 

try.” The Israeli Zionists insisted that the tag “exiles” 

be applied to all Jews outside Israel, while the U. S. Zi- 

onists refused to accept personal residence in Israel as 

the sole criterion for control. The following resolution, 

adopted by a vote of 286 to 0, finally pleased everyone: 

“The task of Zionism is the strengthening of the State 

of Israel, the ingathering of the exiles in Eretz Israel and 

the fostering af the unity of the Jewish people.” 

The original wording “the redemption of the Jewish 

people through the ingathering of the exiles,” was de- 

leted. The call for “ingathering” had been toned down 

to make it one task of Zionism, rather than the sole in- 

strument of Jewish redemption. In such manner, those 

who did not wish to be “ingathered” themselves, at the 

moment, were enabled to continue their proselytizing 

of American Jewry. 

Another resolution unanimously called upon the 

youth of the Jewish communities, particularly those in 

the United States, to emigrate to Israel. The American 

Zionists, sensitive to U.S. public opinion, indicated that 

they would concentrate on youth education, which 

would ultimately result in emigration to Israel, rather 

than an open recruiting of immigrants in the United 

States. Mrs. Samuel Halprin, head of the Hadassah, op- 

posed direct recruiting of youth for pioneer work in 

Israel now. “In ten or fifteen years it may be right and 

proper. But now? Is this the correct timing?” 

But the head of the American section of the Jewish 

Agency, Dr. Nahum Goldmann, was able to say tri- 

umphantly after the Jerusalem meeting: “We accom- 

plished a great job. American Jews have always been 

asked for money and came through beautifully. Now 

we shall ask them for children, and I am confident they 

209 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

will come through after much education and effort.”’® 

The 23rd World Congress strengthened the links be- 

tween Zionists inside and outside Israel. The World Zi- 

onist Organization won a grant of both a special legal 

status within Israel with a voice in important areas of 

the State’s internal development, and recognition outside 

of Israel as the agency through which the State could 

make its demands on “the Jewish people.” However, 

Prime Minister Ben-Gurion stipulated certain conditions 

for granting that special status, the most important of 

them being the “collective obligation of all national Z1- 

onist Organizations to aid the Jewish state under all cir- 

cumstances and conditions even if such an attitude 

clashes with their respective national authorities.’® At 

the World Congress, this was referred to as “uncondi- 

tional cooperation with the State and the Government 

of Israel.” Israeli opponents warned that the granting 

of a special status to the Zionist World movement will 

estrange many Jews outside of Israel “who will with 

some justification fear the charge of double loyalty." 

The momentous meaning of the Prime Minister’s stip- 

ulation was emphasized by the President of the Zionist 

Organization of America as a pledge “to mobilize World 

Jewry in behalf of the Jewish State, and to keep it mo- 

bilized as a striking force at all times.” The grant of 

special status, according to Ben-Gurion, “in effect en- 

abled the Zionist organization to act in place of the state 

(of Israel) in matters of emigration and settlement.” It 

also gave organized Zionism, at least in the sphere of 

“ingathering,” actual control over non-Zionist Jewish 

organizations which were interested in re-settlement 

work. 

For this reason, the non-Zionist American Jewish 

Committee balked, at its meeting of 1951, against the 

210 

ee 

—_ 

OPERATION “INGATHERING” 

World Congress arrangements, and the Knesset was 

sufficiently impressed to postpone implementing legis- 

lation until November 1952. Moreover, the Zionist Or- 

ganization of America is the alter ego of the General 

Zionists, an Israeli party which has vied for political su- 

premacy with Ben-Gurion’s Socialist Mapai Party. It 

was not until Ben-Gurion had moved to appease the 

financially potent American Zionists and had brought 

the General Zionists into the Israeli Government that 

the World Congress agreements were given any effect. 

But once the new coalition government was formed, 

in deference to U. S. Zionism, the path was cleared for 

a speedy enactment of the political pact between World 

Zionism and Israeli Government. 

The Middle East State of Israeli and the Zionist move- 

ment of the world are now contractually united in the 

pursuit of their common “ultimate goal and principal 

purpose—the ingathering of the exiles” (meaning, 

among others, more than five million American citizens 

of the Jewish faith). This is the official wording of Is- 

raeli-Zionist policy. And as if to dispel all possible doubts 

of those Jews who still cling to the illusion that their 

contributions to Zionist causes are merely philanthropic 

donations, the Chairman of the Jewish Agency, Mr. 

Berl Locker, made in 1950 this formal statement before 

the Action Committee of the World Zionist Organiza- 

tion: “Israel’s flag is our flag and it is often necessary to 

suffer for a flag. We must see to it that the Zionist flag 

which has begun to fly above the State of Israel is hoisted 

aloft over the entire Jewish people until we achieve the 

completion of the ingathering of the exiles.” 

This is clear and unequivocal language. The Zionists

at least cannot be accused of dodging the issue: they

demand, openly and consistently, the allegiance of







211

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

American Jews to the flag of Israel. Zionism may be a 

heretical creed, but the Zionists have at least the courage 

of their convictions. The truly objectionable, the pa- 

thetically irresponsible people are those American Jews 

who reject Israel’s claim to their allegiance, and yet, sup- 

ort the Zionist crusade—simply because they refuse to 

face the facts and to live by the principles they profess. 

212 

CHAPTER XII 

The Racial Myth 

T Is strange that the fallacious obsession of a van- 

I quished enemy should dominate the surviving 

group’s philosophy. It was Hitler who, in imposing 

Nazism on country upon country, said: “You are not 

a German—you are a Jew. You are not a Czech—you 

are a Jew. You are not a Pole—you are a Jew. You are 

not a Frenchman—you are a Jew.” And Nazi law de- 

fined how many generations back a modicum of special 

blood would establish future membership in the race. 

But Nazism was at least consistent. To Hitler, it was 

not only “once a Jew, always a Jew,” but also “once 

a German, always a German.” It was the contention of 

the Third Reich that, throughout the world, a person 

of German ancestry had a perpetual obligation to the 

German state and could not shed his German allegiance. 

And this was so because, for Nazism, every German be- 

longed to his distinct and chosen Aryan race. 

There is no reputable anthropologist who will not 

agree that Jewish racialism is as much poppycock as 

Aryan racialism. As far back as December 1938, the 

American Anthropological Association, at its annual 

conference in New York, condemned Aryanism as a 

213 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

fallacy and stated that both, “Aryan” and “Semitic,” 

were linguistic terms without any racial significance. 

Race involves the inheritance of specific physical fea- 

tures by large groups of mankind, such as hair texture, 

head form, color of eyes and skin, stature, the shape 

of the nose, etc. Hitler, Weninn: cartoonists and 

other creators of “Jewish” prototypes notwithstanding, 

there is no Jewish or Semitic race. 

Anthropological science divides mankind into three 

recognized races: Negro, Mongolian or Oriental,’ and 

Caucasian or White (although some authorities refer to 

a fourth race—the Australoids).* Each race is divided 

into branches and subdivisions possessing special char- 

acteristics, invariably present, from generation to gen- 

eration. Members of the Jewish faith are found in all 

three races and in their subdivisions. 

The terms Aryan and Semite have no anthropological 

connotation. “Aryan” refers to a group of Indo-Euro- 

pean languages, including Russian, English, German, 

French, Persian, and the language spoken by the Hindus 

of Northern India. The principle Semitic languages, 

closely related to the Hamitic languages of ancient Egypt 

(the Coptic and Berber tongues), are Hebrew, Syrian, 

Abyssinian and Arabic. The ancient Assyrians, Phoeni- 

cians and Babylonians also spoke Semitic languages. The 

Semitic-speaking peoples are members of the Caucasian 

race. 

The word “Semite” originally designated a descend- 

ent of Shem, one of the sons of Noah, and has been ap- 

plied to certain ancient (no longer existing ) people as 

well as to Arabs and Jews. Incorrect semantic usage has 

given a racial meaning to a linguistic term, and a further 

malapropism has included in that meaning all followers 

of the Judaistic faith, most of whom do not understand 

214 

THE RACIAL MYTH 

ancient or modern Hebrew. And, surely, a knowledge 

of Yiddish could not make a person a Semite: that dia- 

lect (rather than a language) is a combination of the dia- 

lect spoken in lower Germany with Hebrew and Slavic.’ 

As races have intermarried throughout history, man- 

kind has become more and more an admixture of strains. 

Even “the proud Anglo-Saxon race” is a misnomer: very 

few English can claim the pure blood of the Angle and 

the Saxon invaders; most others will have to be satisfied 

with Celtic and Iberian forebears.* The Jews have min- 

gled most: Until the middle of the fifth century B. C., 

intermarriage was a normal phenomenon in Israelite 

life, and the ensuing Judaist proselytizing over the globe 

brought peoples of all races into the Jewish faith. 

Today, to trace anyone’s descent to ancient Palestine 

would be a genealogical impossibility; and to presume, 

axiomatically, such a descent for Jews, alone among all 

human groups, is an assumption of purely fictional sig- 

nificance. Most everybody in the Western world could 

stake out some claim of Palestinian descent if geneal- 

ogical records could be established for two-thousand 

years. And there are, indeed, people who, though not 

by the widest stretch of imagination Jewish, proudly 

make that very claim: some of the oldest of the South’s 

aristocratic families play a game of comparing whose 

lineage goes farther back into Israel. No one knows what 

happened to the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, but to specu- 

late on who might be who is a favored Anglo-Saxon pas- 

time, and Queen Victoria belonged to an Israelite So- 

ciety that traced the ancestry of its membership back to 

those lost tribes. 

Twelve tribes started in Canaan about thirty-five cen- 

turies ago; and not only that ten of them disappeared— 

more than half of the members of the remaining two 

215 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

tribes never returned from their “exile” in Babylon. How 

then, can anybody claim to descend directly from that 

relatively small community which inhabited the Holy 

Land at the time of Abraham’s Covenant with God? 

The Jewish racial myth flows from the fact that the 

words Hebrew, Israelite, Jew, Judaism, and the Jewish 

people have been used synonymously to suggest a his- 

toric continuity. But this is a misuse. These words refer 

to different groups of people with varying ways of life 

in different periods in history. Hebrew is a term cor- 

rectly applied to the period from the beginning of Bib- 

lical history to the settling in Canaan. Israelite refers cor- 

rectly to the members of the twelve tribes of Israel. The 

name Yehudi or Jew is used in the Old Testament to 

designate members of the tribe of Judah, descendants 

of the fourth son of Jacob,° as well as to denote citizens 

of the Kingdom of Judah,° particularly at the time of 

Jeremiah’ and under the Persian occupation.* Centu- 

ries later, the same word came to be applied to anyone, 

no matter of what origin, whose religion was Judaism. 

The descriptive name Judaism was never heard by the 

Hebrews or Israelites; it appears only with Christianity. 

Flavius Josephus was one of the first to use the name 

in his recital of the war with the Romans’ to connote 

a totality of beliefs, moral commandments, religious 

practices and ceremonial institutions of Galilee which 

he believed superior to rival Hellenism. When the word 

Judaism was born, there was no longer a Hebrew-Israel- 

ite state. The people who embraced the creed of Juda- 

ism were already mixed of many races and strains; and 

this diversification was rapidly growing. 

From the very outset, /srael signified something other 

than a racial kinship. There is plenty of evidence upon 

which scholars support the lineal diversity of even the 

216 

"pcan 

THE RACIAL MYTH 

earliest Hebrews. Their name comes from the word 

Ibbri, meaning one who comes from beyond, or from 

the other side. Abraham earned the name for himself 

when he crossed the Euphrates River on his way from 

Ur of the Chaldees to Palestine, then known as Canaan. 

Abram (the passer-over or immigrant) is the sense in 

which Hebrew is used in the Book of Genesis.”® The ref- 

erence to his tribe as to Hebrews is therefore appelative 

(carrying a connotation of foreignness) and in no man- 

ner ethnic or racial. Biblical students are agreed that the 

Exodus story of Moses leading a united people out of 

Egypt into the Promised Land is the simplification of 

a long and complicated history of tribal invasions of 

Canaan (Palestine). One Hebrew tribe may have drifted 

down into Egypt and become enslaved, while others 

were attacking the outlying Canaanite cities. Most schol- 

ars assume three such migratory waves. There is much 

dispute over their historical dates, but certainly a period 

of three to six centuries separated Abraham from Moses. 

Few historical figures have been so deeply shrouded 

in mystery as was Moses. Of unknown origin, he mar- 

ried Zipporah, the daughter of a Midianite” priest, Jeth- 

| ro. It was at the home of his father-in-law that he dis- 

' covered Yahweh and learned the ritual of worshiping 

the God of the first monotheistic faith. Was Moses of 

Egyptian blood, as some historians, such as James Henry 

Breasted, maintain?’* His name could have been derived 

from the Egyptian Mose, meaning child, which appears 

in the name of such rulers of the Nile as Ah-Mose and 

Ra-Mose (Greek translation and contraction turning it 

into ““Ramses”). Who were the people Moses brought 

to the threshold of Canaan? Partial light is shed on their 

origin by the Biblical story of Joseph. There was at the 

time (1600-1500 B. C.) a famine in the fertile crescent 

217 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

(Palestine, Syria, Lebanon), and certain nomadic peo- 

ples, undoubtedly of Babylonian and Aramean ancestry, 

moved into Egypt. Subsequently enslaved, or otherwise 

dissatisfied with their lot, they left the land of the Nile 

together with other Semitic-speaking people such as the 

Moabites, Edomites and Ammonites. Moses, who had 

been exiled earlier, for some reason returned to his birth- 

place after Yahweh had revealed Himself to him through 

the burning bush at Mount Horeb in Sinai. 

Canaan was only gradually absorbed, and the blood 

of the invaders was blended with the Canaanite blood, 

itself a composite of many strains. The tribe of Judah 

grew out of an Israelite-Canaanite marriage. Joseph mar- 

ried Osnath, and the tribes of Ephrain and Manasseh 

were largely Egyptian. A whole clan of Simeon was 

called Saul after the son of a Canaanite woman. The Old 

Testament, in the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and 

the Kings, tells how the newcomers to Canaan mixed 

with the Philistines and the Hittites. Half of those to- 

day calling themselves “Jews” may be descendents of 

these Hittites, another of the conquered nations or tribes 

of Canaan. And the most direct descendents of the an- 

cient Hittites are today the Christian Armenians, 

Carefully drawn pictures on ancient Egyptian monu- 

ments portray a substantial fraction of Hebrews as hav- 

ing had blue eyes and blonde hair—physical character- 

istics of the tall fair-haired Amorites, one of the seven 

peoples who inhabitated Canaan before and after the 

first Hebrew invasion. The dynasty of David descended 

from Ruth, a daughter of the Moabites.”* Still later, there 

were many non-lsraelite converts amongst those return- 

ing from the exile in Babylon. Moreover, innumerable 

Judeans had intermarried, both in Babylonia and at 

home, with their conquerors and other “foreign” peo- 

a 

THE RACIAL MYTH 

ples. This brought down upon them the wrath of Ezra 

who lists the non-Israelite strains'* whose daughters and 

offspring must be banished by their Israelite husbands 

and fathers. This offspring included Canaanites, Hit- 

tites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyp- 

tians, and Amorites.”° 

Despite the narrow nationalism of some post-exilic 

leaders, Judaism became a tremendous proselytizing 

force’® in the pagan world. Those who carried the re- 

ligion of Yahweh to other parts of the globe were hardly 

more than a drop in the ocean of foreign peoples who 

had never possessed any racial, lingual or cultural affin- 

ity with Israel, and, nevertheless, became members of the 

Judaic monotheistic faith. These converts included such 

diverse peoples as Yemenites and Greeks, the Queen of 

Sheba, the people of Adiabene (a Hellenistic state on 

the Tigris). Conversions to Yahweh in Rome had car- 

ried Judaism through Italy into France, the Rhone Val- 

ley and the Rhine Basin. Mass conversions of Germanic 

tribes spread Judaism into Central and Eastern Europe, 

eras Poland and Western Russia. Friedrich 

ertz, in his Race and Civilization, notes that, “not with- 

standing all obstacles even in the Middle Ages and mod- 

ern times,”*” there have been occasional conversions in 

Slavic countries which account for unmistakable Slavic 

facial characteristics of Polish and Russian Jews. Conver- 

sions to Judaism are reported in Hungary as late as 1229." 

Perhaps the most significant mass conversion to the 

Judaic faith occurred in Europe, in the 8th century 

A.D., and that story of the Khazars (Turko-Finnish 

people) is quite pertinent to the establishment of the 

modern State of Israel. This partly nomadic people, 

probably related to the Volga Bulgars,’” first appeared 

in Trans-Caucasia in the second century. They settled 

in what is now Southern Russia, between the Volga and 

the Don, and then spread to the shores of the Black, 

Caspian and Azov seas. The Kingdom of Khazaria, ruled 

by a kbagan, or khakan, fell to Attila the Hun in 448, 

and to the Muslims in 737. In between, the Khazars 

ruled over part of the Bulgarians, conquered the Crimea, 

and stretched their kingdom over the Caucasus farther 

to the northwest to include Kiev, and eastwards to Der- 

bend. Annual tributes were levied on the Russian Sla- 

vonians of Kiev. The city of Kiev was probably built 

by the Khazars. There were Jews in the city and the 

surrounding area before the Russian Empire was founded 

by the Varangians whom the Scandinavian warriors 

sometimes called the Russ or Ross (circa 855-863). 

The influence of the Khazars extended into what is 

now Hungary and Roumania. Today, the villages of 

Kozarvar and Kozard in Transylvania bear testimony 

to the penetration of the Khazars who, with the Magyars, 

then proceeded into present-day Hungary. The size and 

power of the Kingdom of Khazaria is indicated by the 

fact that it sent an army of 40,000 soldiers (in 626-627) 

to help Heraclius of the Byzantines to conquer the Per- 

sians.”° The Jewish Encyclopedia proudly refers to Kha- 

zaria as having had a “‘well constituted and tolerant gov- 

ernment, a flourishing trade and a well disciplined army.” 

Jews who had been banished from Constantinople by 

the Byzantine ruler, Leo III," found a home amongst 

these heretofore pagan Khazars and, in competition with 

Mohammedan and Christian missionaries, won them over 

to the Judaic faith. Bulan, the ruler of Khazaria, became 

converted to Judaism around 740 A. D. His nobles and, 

somewhat later, his people followed suit. Some details of 

these events are contained in letters exchanged between 

Khagan Joseph of Khazaria and R. Hasdai Ibn Shaprut 

220 

a 

| THE RACIAL MYTH 

of Cordova, doctor and quasi foreign minister to Sultan 

Abd al-Rahman, the Caliph of Spain. This correspond- 

ence (around 936-950) was first published in 1577 to 

prove that the Jews still had a country of their own— 

namely, the Kingdom of Khazaria. Judah Halevi knew 

of the letters even in 1140. Their authenticity has since 

been established beyond doubt. 

According to these Hasdai-Joseph letters, Khagan 

Bulan decided one day: “Paganism is useless. It is shame- 

ful for us to be pagans. Let us adopt one of the heavenly 

religions, Christianity, Judaism or Islam.” And Bulan 

summoned three priests representing the three religions 

and had them dispute their creeds before him. But, no 

priest could convince the others, or the sovereign, that 

his religion was the best. So the ruler spoke to each of 

them separately. He asked the Christian priest: “If you 

were not a Christian or had to give up Christianity, which 

would you prefer—Islam or Judaism?” The priest said: 

“If I were to give up Christianity, I would become a 

Jew.” Bulan then asked the follower of Islam the same 

question, and the Moslem also chose Judaism. This is 

how Bulan came to choose Judaism for himself and the 

people of Khazaria in the seventh century A. D., and 

thereafter the Khazars (sometimes spelled Chazars and 

Khozars) lived according to Judaic laws. 

Under the rule of Obadiah, Judaism gained further 

strength in Khazaria. Synagogues and schools were built 

to give instruction in the Bible and the Talmud. As Pro- 

fessor Graetz notes in his History of the Jews, “A suc- 

cessor of Bulan who bore the Hebrew name of Obadiah 

was the first to make serious efforts to further the Jewish 

religion. He invited Jewish sages to settle in his domin- 

ions, rewarded them royally . . . and introduced a divine 

service modeled on the ancient communities. After Oba- 

diah came a long series of Jewish Chagans (Khagans), 

for according to a fundamental law of the state only Jew- 

ish rulers were permitted to ascend the throne.” 

Khazar traders brought not only silks and carpets of 

Persia and the Near East but also their Judaic faith to 

the banks of the Vistula and the Volga.” But the King- 

dom of Khazaria was invaded by the Russians, and Itil, 

its great capital, fell to Sweatoslav of Kiev in 969. The 

Byzantines had become afraid and envious of the Khazars 

and, in a joint expedition with the Russians, conquered 

the Crimean portion of Khazaria in 1016. (Crimea was 

known as “Chazaria” until the 13th century). The Kha- 

zarian Jews were scattered throughout what is now Rus- 

sia and Eastern Europe. Some were taken North where 

they joined the established Jewish community of Kiev. 

Others returned to the Caucasus. Many Khazars remar- 

ried in the Crimea and in Hungary. The Cagh Chafut, 

or “mountain Jews,” in the Caucasus and the Hebraile 

Jews of Georgia are their descendants. These “Ashke- 

nazim Jews” (as Jews of Eastern Europe are called), 

whose numbers were swelled by Jews who fled from 

Germany at the time of the Crusades and during the 

Black Death, have little or no trace of Semitic blood. 

That the Khazars are the lineal ancestors of Eastern 

European Jewry is a historical fact. Jewish historians” 

and religious text books acknowledge the fact, though 

the propagandists of Jewish nationalism belittle it as pro- 

Arab propaganda.” Somewhat ironically, Volume IV 

of the Jewish Encyclopedia—because this publication 

spells Khazars with a “C” instead of a “K”—is titled 

“‘Chazars to Dreyfus”: and it was the Dreyfus trial, as 

interpreted by Theodor Herzl, that made the modern 

Jewish Khazars of Russia forget their descent from con- 

222 

THE RACIAL MYTH 

verts to Judaism and accept anti-Semitism as proof of 

their Palestinian origin. 

For all that anthropologists know, Hitler’s ancestry 

might go back to one of the ten Lost Tribes of Israel; 

while Weizmann may be a descendant of the Khazars, 

the converts to Judaism who were in no anthropological 

respect related to Palestine. The home to which Weiz- 

mann, Silver and so many other Ashkenazim Zionists 

have yearned to return has most likely never been theirs. 

““Here’s a paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox”: 

in anthropological fact, many Christians may have much 

more Hebrew-Israelite blood in their veins than most of 

their Jewish neighbors, 

Race can play funny tricks on people who make that 

concept the basis for their likes and dislikes. Race-ob- 

sessed people can find themselves hating people who, in 

fact, may be their own racial kith and kin. The most 

persuasive argument the Jewish nationalist could advance 

for Zionism is based on the hypothesis of a ““Hebrew- 

Semitic race.” But most members of such a “race” would 

be found amongst the Arabic peoples of the Middle East, 

the overwhelming majority of whom do not profess the 

Jewish faith. The Arabs, bitter enemies of the Israelis 

who have returned to their reputed “racial home,” most 

closely resemble those Jews who are indigenous to Pal- 

estine and the Middle East; for they are of purer He- 

brew-Israelite blood than most of those who have been 

“ingathered.” 

It is Saudi Arabia’s King Ibn Saud who is the modern 

Semitic prototype of the patriarch Abraham. The alle- 

gation that Arabs are anti-Semitic is somewhat ludicrous. 

The Moslems of the Arab world call the Middle East 

Jews “the sons and daughters of my uncle.” Conversely, 

223 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

anthropologists have not the slightest doubt that most 

German Jews in the Holy Land resemble other Germans 

much more closely than their Palestinian coreligionists 

of Khazar or Yemenite origin. 

W. Z. Ripley, in his Races of Europe, points out that 

the “original Semitic stock must have been in origin 

strongly dolichocephalic,” that is to say, African, from 

which it follows that about nine-tenths of the contempo- 

rary Jews are as widely different in headform from that 

“parent stock” as they possibly could be. Anthropologist 

Friedrich Hertz speaks of a Jewish ‘“‘racial compound,” 

and Eugene Pittard, Professor of Anthropology at the 

University of Geneva, notes in his Race and History 

that the Jews “constitute a very powerful religious and 

social community”’ whose elements are extremely heter- 

ogeneous.””” Dr. Pittard categorically states: “There is 

no more a Christian race than a Musulman race, and 

neither is there such a thing as a Jewish race.’””* The same 

conclusion is reached in a 1952 study of the United Na- 

tions Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.” 

Columbia University anthropologists say in “The Races 

of Mankind”:*° “Jews are people who acknowledge the 

Jewish religion. They are of all races, even Negro and 

Mongolian. European Jews are of many different bio- 

logical types. . . . The so-called Jewish type is a gen- 

eralized type common in the Near East in countries bor- 

dering on the Mediterranean.” 

It is, in fact, the unanimous conclusion of all anthro- 

pologists, from Weissenberg, Hertz and Fishberg (them- 

selves Jews), to Boas, Ripley, Mead, Pittard and others, « 

that wherever Jews are found, they closely resemble 

the people amongst whom they live. Even those of com- 

mon family names, supposedly traceable to the ancient 

Hebrew tribes, such as Levites (Levy) and Kohanim 

(Kohn, Cohen, Cohn), have little physical resemblance 

to one another. There is not one racial characteristic 

common to all who profess to be Jews. 

Weissenberg suggests two most common types of 

Jews—the Semitic or dark type, of Mediterranean ori- 

gin, with a fine nose; and the Armenoid type, with a 

coarser nose and an appearance of blondness—the Tar- 

tar-Khazar type, mostly found in Eastern Europe. The 

Armenians and the people of Anatolia are rather proud 

possessors of what is called a “‘Jewish nose.” Julian Hux- 

ley® notes that the Armenoid, with his heavy nose and 

pronounced nostrils, resembles the ancient Hittites. 

The results of Jewish migration and hybridization 

with other peoples are spectacularly evident in Israel 

where Jews have brought, from every segment of the 

globe, the widest range of racial traits. On my first visit 

to Jerusalem in 1944, I was struck by the overwhelming 

visual proof that ridicules Jewish racialism. At a glance, 

I could distinguish the Ashkenazim of Poland from the 

Sephardic Jews of the Iberian Peninsula or North Africa, 

the Yemenite Jews, the German Jews—all different, not 

only in anthropological features, but also in dress, lan- 

guage, manners and mental attitudes. The common de- 

nominator of persecution did not change the fundamen- 

tal fact that, in essence, they were Poles, Portuguese, 

Germans, etc. The Sephardic Jews from Southern Eu- 

rope bear the physical traits of such Mediterranean peo- 

ple as the Arabs, Italians and Greeks. The Western Eu- 

ropean Jew resembles his coreligionist in Eastern Europe 

as little as the Spaniard resembles the Slav. Forty-five 

per cent of the Polish Jews have light eyes, and 29 per 

cent of the Lithuanian Jews blond hair. The physical 

differences between the European, Indian, Yemenite 

and Ethiopian Jews are greater than those between Teu- 

225 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

tons, Slavs and Latins. There are tall blond Jews with 

blue eyes from Central Europe and the Baltic and Scan- 

dinavian countries; woolly-headed Algerian Jews; brown 

Falasha Jews with the curly hair of Abyssinia; the yel- 

low Jews of China; and the black Tamels of India, who 

have dwelt in the heart of Asia for seventeen centuries. 

Jean-Paul Sartre, the French existentialist, wrote of 

a German friend of his, a Jew who was blond, lean, and 

phlegmatic, and amused himself, at the beginning of the 

Nazi regime, by going out with SS men one of whom 

bragged: “I can tell a Jew a hundred yards away.””** But 

another German friend of Sartre’s, a Corsican Catholic, 

was short and fat, had dark curly hair, and a Bourbon 

nose. So, naturally, German children called him “Jude” 

and threw stones at him. And indeed, there are as many 

Jews who do not resemble the “Jewish Prototype” as 

there are Christians who do, Certain physical character- 

istics, which can be found in Christians as well, will iden- 

tify the Jew only because of a cultural association with 

acquired mannerisms, names, bearing, and manner of 

speech. These “Jewish traits” are accentuated by Jewish 

herding-together: they result from social isolation and 

protracted inbreeding which has tended to perpetuate 

patterns as in “ruling dynasties, castes and in areas of 

local isolation.”** These traits are anything but racial; 

and they disappear where integration is practiced.** 

Within the Jewish fold in the United States, there are 

constant and ample manifestations that Judaism is merely 

a religious kinship. Just as it is said of the Cabots and 

the Lowells in the land of the cod, the German-Ameri- 

can Jew speaks only to the Sephardic-American Jew, 

who speaks only to God; and they both look with dis- 

dain upon the Ashkenazim Jew from Poland or Russia. 

But the cultural chasm and basic differences amongst 

226 

THE RACIAL MYTH 

Jews of varied ethnic origin has shown nowhere worse 

than in Israel. When Israelis speak of the “disturbing 

colored problem,” they are referring to the Oriental 

Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. The Is- 

raeli of German or French origin often insists that he 

has a little more in common with the Zulus of deep Africa 

than with the Yemenite Jews. And the irony deepens 

when the descendants of converted Khazars become re- 

luctant to accept as equals*® “ingathered” brethren who 

can stake out a relatively plausible claim to ancient Pal- 

estinian descent. 

The Jewish immigrants from Yemen resisted the at- 

tempts of the Israeli Government to enroll their children 

in the non-religious school system. In Yemen, girls marry 

at the age of 12 and even younger, and men are allowed 

several wives. When the Israeli Parliament outlawed 

polygamy in 1950 and set 17 as the minimum age for 

marriage, the Yemenite resentment was just as deep as 

that of some Oriental immigrants to Israel who were 

now forcibly restrained from sacrificing live animals in 

their religious rites.*’ The Iraqis, most of whom entered 

Israel in 1950 and 1951, now constitute more than one 

tenth of the Israeli population (being outnumbered only 

by the Poles and Roumanians). They have bitterly com- 

plained of discrimination. In July 1951, Iraqi Jews staged 

in Tel Aviv a mass demonstration against “‘race discrim- 

ination in the Jewish state, the first of its kind.”** When- 

ever assaults occur on the dark streets, certain Tel Aviv 

papers customarily report “The assault is thought to have 

been committed by a North African”—a reference to 

the 50,000 new Jewish immigrants from Morocco, Tu- 

nisia and Algiers. In November 1951, a group of 130 

Indian Jews expressed the desire to be repatriated to In- 

dia. In Israel, they claimed, they were being forced to 

227 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

do the lowest kind of labor, were called “black” by the 

rest of the populace.” They even insisted they were per- 

mitted only black bread. Speaking for this group of In- 

dians, Isaac Joseph, an insurance salesman, said: “In 

India there is no discrimination. In Israel we are Eastern- 

ers and apparently inferior.” 

Despite such fierce internal variances and stresses, a 

fictional Jewish oneness is presented to the outside world. 

This unity is cemented by anti-Semitism. For the aver- 

age Jew it is, from childhood, a world of “we” and 

“they.” He is brought up, at home and in religious school, 

to believe in beng something (“be proud you area Jew”) 

rather than to believe in something (“be proud of Juda- 

ism”). Little wonder he is such easy prey for the Zion- 

ists whom Professor Arnold J. Toynbee has succinctly 

called “a fragment of a fossil.” 

228 

is 

CHAPTER XIII 

Shadow and Substance 

vast number of American Jews were split in two by 

the same political act. And no one has stated the 

ugly problem—the problem of a citizen’s insufferable 

dual loyalty—more succinctly than Israel’s Jewish 

Agency in this official statement: “Once there is a (Jew- 

ish) State, clashes inevitably arise with the needs and 

demands of other countries to which Jews owe loyalties. 

The problem of double loyalty cannot lightly be dis- 

missed merely by saying that it does not exist. . . . It will 

become more difficult to fight in behalf of Israel’s po- 

litical demands when these demands do not conform with 

the policy of the State of which the Jews are citizens.” 

To which Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, addressing the 

Zionist Action Committee in Jerusalem, added: ‘‘Zion- 

ists in other countries ought to have the courage to stand 

up for the State (of Israel) even if their Governments 

are against it.” 

An American citizen’s right to sympathize with Israel, 

and give aid to the needy in that country, can be chal- 

lenged by no reasonable person. But this is not the con- 

[ 1s not Palestine alone that has been partitioned. A 

229 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

duct to which Zionism has been committing American 

Jewry. Zionism, with fantastic success, has been pledg- 

ing American Jewry to the unreserved political support 

of a sovereign foreign State. 

This, and this alone, is the issue: Will American Jews 

allow Zionism to separate them from America as a special 

collective whose fate is outside and beyond the Ameri- 

can fate? This, I repeat is the sole issue; and it cannot 

much longer be hidden behind the banal contention that, 

after all, America’s Irish are fully free to display their 

special passions for Ireland—and why, then, should not 

America’s Jews, too, be free to feel the same way about 

Israel? —The sentimental affection that Americans of 

Irish (or Italian, or French) birth have for their country 

of origin offers no analogy to the feeling toward Israel 

exhibited by many American Jews. The Irish are a na- 

tion, and Judaism is a religion. The Irish who are in the 

United States left Ireland only in recent generations, 

while the Jews left Roman Palestine two millenniums 

ago, centuries before the first Angles and Saxons set foot 

on England, and they have come to America not from 

Israel, but from every country in Europe. 

An even more telling point of difference is, simply 

and clearly, that no Irish Government has ever dared de- 

mand from America’s Irish one tenth of the allegiance 

the Israeli Government demands from America’s Jews 

as a matter of course; or claim one tenth of the sovereign- 

ty over “Diaspora Irish” the Israeli Government has 

stipulated of “Diaspora Jews” in Israel’s constitutional 

law. Would an Irish Chief of State have dared declare 

the “ingathering” of America’s Irish, as an Israeli Chief 

of State has declared the “ingathering” of the world’s 

Jewry to be the supreme political goal of Israel? It is 

beneath anybody’s self-respect to go on pretending that 

230 

be 

SHADOW AND SUBSTANCE 

Zionism was merely an attempt to enrich American folk- 

lore by promoting a Jewish counterpart to the St. Pat- 

rick’s Day Parade. Zionism is a hard-headed political 

creed which proposes to subject America’s Jews to the 

sovereignty of Israel. 

Unlike the thousands of American Jews who blind 

themselves to that disturbing fact with a fuzzy indiffer- 

ence, and with protestations of their solely philanthropic 

ties with Israel, most American Zionists know what they 

want and what they are doing. Speaking to American 

Zionists on ““The State and the Future of Zionism” in 

1950, Ben-Gurion thus defined their duties: ““The basis 

of Zionism is neither friendship nor sympathy but the 

love of Israel, of the State of Israel. . . . It must be an 

unconditional love. There must be complete solidarity 

with the State and the people of Israel.”* 

And this is not just the conduct expected of those who, 

by a conscious act of dedication, have pledged their al- 

legiance to the State of Israel. In Ben-Gurion’s eyes, all 

Jews, all over the world, are implicitly Zionists; the job 

of the ubiquitous Zionist machine is merely to make this 

fact explicit. And the success of that tireless effort can 

be measured in the educational field as, for instance, re- 

ported by Charles G. Spiegler, a New York high school 

and college teacher, in the Chicago Jewish Forum, 

United Jewish Appeal, Vol. IV, No. 1, January 18, 

1949. Mr. Spiegler tells of a questionnaire “submitted 

to two-hundred average American high school students 

between the ages of 15 and 16” in which he asked these 

questions: “Do you eventually want to visit Israel? 

Why?” All students, of course, wanted to visit Israel. 

But why? Among the answers Mr. Spiegler proudly 

quotes: “I want to see what my homeland 1s like”; and: 

“It is our country.” The same article describes an emo- 

231 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

tional intensity, translated into action, which is as deep 

or deeper than any feeling expressed toward the United 

States: “There are thousands, even as young as eight or 

nine, who stand on street corners, march through trains, 

enter swank business offices, where they deliver sincere 

one-minute talks on why every Jew must help.” 

In a bulletin of the Washington Heights, N. Y., Sun- 

day School of the Y.M.H.A. and Y.W.H.A. (Sunday 

School Life, Chanukah Issue), one reads this extraordi- 

nary pledge of young Americans: “Here Is Our Pledge, 

Israel: I pledge my loyalty to God, to the Torah and 

to the Jewish people and to the Jewish state....” 

When a questionnaire was issued to the pupils of the 

public school system in Galveston, Texas, 102 students 

answered the question “What is your nationality?” with: 

“Jewish.” 

The final word on this subject has been said by Wood- 

row Wilson almost forty years ago: “You cannot be- 

come true Americans if you think of yourselves in 

groups. America does not consist of groups. A man 

who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular na- 

tional group has not yet become an American. And the 

man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality 

is not worthy to live under the Stars and Stripes.”? But 

that man still “goes among us”—and he is even a teacher 

in America’s public school system! And he, the Zionist, 

is not unduly impressed by Woodrow Wilson’s injunc- 

tion that the trader “upon your nationality is not worthy 

to live under the Stars and Stripes”; he proudly hoists, 

on American soil, the Flag of Israel. (An editorial in the 

magazine of the Intercollegiate-Zionist Federation of 

America proclaimed officially: “Of course the Israeli 

flag is a flag of a foreign state. So is Hebrew the language 

of that state, Chanukah one of its holidays. . . . But all 

232 

SHADOW AND SUBSTANCE 

these are ours as well. The future of the Jews is bound 

up with that of Israel.”) 

His own compliance with Jewish unity involves the 

non-Zionist in these declarations and activities of the Zi- 

onists. The failure to appreciate that Israel is as much a 

foreign state as France or Germany has led Jews into pit- 

falls which others not afflicted with the aged duality 

would easily have seen. Dual loyalties do not necessarily 

involve the conscious process of reasoning: “This is in 

the interests of the United States; that is in the interests 

of Israel, and I choose that.” This is the obvious, rare 

case. Much more common is the unconscious choosing 

of that without any consideration of this. 

In 1948, when the recovery of Europe through the 

Marshall Plan was the fundamental keystone of Ameri- 

can bipartisan foreign policy, the core of an envisioned 

reconstructed Europe was to be Britain. Strong Commu- 

nist Parties in Italy and France were doing everything 

in their power to interfere with the operations of the 

Plan, while the Russians themselves were creating ob- 

stacles by means of the airblock of Germany. 

At this time there was an attempt to mobilize Ameri- 

can public opinion behind a boycott of British goods. 

Signs were plastered in stores throughout New York 

City, and the Sons of Liberty Boycott Committee was 

formed. From the pulpit and in resolutions, support was 

given to this anti-Briush activity. This was, in practical 

effect, as much an attempt to sabotage foreign policy, as 

were any of the Communist efforts in Europe. While 

Uncle Sam was pouring out hundreds of millions from 

the national coffers to place her closest ally in a better 

dollar position, there were many Jews who cancelled 

plans to include England on their trips abroad because 

they refused to leave dollars there. 

233 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

The problem of how to use Germany in the common 

defense against Communism is a complicated enigma. 

It was not easy to arrive at the decision that Germany 

should be rearmed and integrated into the Western Fu- 

ropean community. The spectre of a remilitarized Ger- 

many was frightening in itself without adding to it Jew- 

ish sensitivity and the prejudices of the state of Israel 

toward the successors to the Hitler Government. Zion- 

ism injected the issue of the special Jewish peril into 

the question, even coupling the indemnification rights 

of Israel against Germany. When the Knesset in Israel 

recessed as a protest against the signing of the peace 

treaty between West Germany and the Western Allies, 

no Jewish group stepped forward to disassociate itself 

from what was publicly stated to be “the Jewish posi- 

tion.” 

On still another occasion the split personality revealed 

itself. In the fall of 1949, the question of the interna- 

tionalization of Jerusalem rested on the agenda of the 

United Nations’ General Assembly. Israel’s Foreign 

Minister Sharett, on his arrival in the United States from 

Tel Aviv, called for the support of “World Jewry” for 

Israel’s position. American Jews were called upon by 

their leaders to take a “High Holiday Oath” not to for- 

sake thee, Jerusalem. The major rabbinical bodies were 

announced as solidly united against internationalization. 

A campaign carried this view to the Congress, the State 

Department, and the American Delegation to the United 

Nations. 

During the debate and ensuing vote the United States 

sided with Israel. Having been outvoted in the General 

Assembly, the United States abided by the majority de- 

cision and warned Israel against making any rash moves. 

In direct defiance of the U. N. resolution—a reaffirma- 

234 

SHADOW AND SUBSTANCE 

tion of the 1947 decree—Premier Ben-Gurion declared 

in Tel Aviv that his government offices were being trans- 

ferred to the Holy City. As one voice, Jewish organiza- 

tions sided with the foreign government in a much pub- 

licized statement: “The Jews fully support the Jews of 

Israel in whatever steps they may take to defend the 

integrity and centrality of Jerusalem as their ‘National 

Capital.’ ” 

Amazingly enough, Zionism has been successful in 

persuading non-Jewish America, or at least most of 

America’s politicians and press, that the Jews have a 

special dispensation from the otherwise universal Amer- 

ican tenet, “America does not consist of groups.” Small 

wonder that American Jewry seems axiomatically con- 

vinced of its special destiny above and beyond the des- 

tiny of America. It is, of course, an immensely perilous 

assumption; but it is deeply rooted in the history of Juda- 

ism—an experience in which the religious substance and 

the nationalist shadow blend most confusingly. 

* * * 

Religion, to the theologian, is a set of metaphysical 

doctrines concerning the nature of the universe and the 

meaning of human life. In a less technical sense, religion 

involves man’s attitude towards a controlling supernatu- 

ral power that demands reverence and organized wor- 

ship. Judiasm is of course a religious faith, but very few 

of those who think of themselves as Judaists possess true 

title to that designation. Statistics on U. S. synagogue 

membership vary, but no reliable source places the total 

membership above one and a half million.’ Adding an 

approximate 250,000 who worship at least on the two 

High Holy Days, New Year (Rosh Hashonoh) and 

235 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), there is a total of 

1,850,000 practicing Judaists in America. In other words, 

of the more than five million Americans who list them- 

selves as Jews, three-and-a-quarter million, or 65 per 

cent, do not participate in the synagogue. 

Attendance at worship, of course, is quite a different 

thing from synagogue membership. Only one half of the 

Conservative synagogues (modified Orthodox) are hold- 

ing daily service, and this mostly for mourners.‘ Fifty- 

seven per cent of the synagogues reported less than fifty 

regular worshippers, seventy per cent less than one hun- 

dred. While young people were notably absent from 

religious service, the synagogues served as centers of 

their social life. Clearly, what links together American 

Jewry is something other than religion. To put it blunt- 

ly, an individual is counted as a member of the Judaic 

faith because he feels at home with people who also con- 

sider themselves to be Jews. 

In his Basic Judaism,° Milton Steinberg speaks of “the 

seven strands of Judaism,” of which only two are truly 

concerned with God, the universe and man, with a moral 

code for individuals and society. The other five are solely 

concerned with rites, custom and ceremony, law and 

literature, and with social institutions through which 

these find expression—for the most part hang-overs from 

ancient times when the word “Jew” referred to both 

a religion and a nation. There are few Jewish Holidays 

which are holy days in the spiritual sense, and not mere 

anniversaries of some event in Jewish national history 

(such as the destruction of the Temple or Esther’s suc- 

cessful campaign against Haman). In that sense, recent 

attempts to link Jewish Holidays with economic and 

political needs of Israel are by no means against the tra- 

ditional grain. 

236 

SHADOW AND SUBSTANCE 

Judaism has no dogma and no precisely stated credo 

which an adherent must profess. The belief that he is 

of a different, chosen and distinct people—in other 

words, that he is a Jew—has, for the individual, gradu- 

ally assumed the place of defined theological convictions. 

Aside from being the first monotheistic creed, the true 

attractiveness of Judaism always rested in its simplicity. 

The prophets’ idea of justice and the moral law gave 

Judaism its chance to grow from a national deism into 

a universal creed. But in historic reality, Judaism has 

shrunk to a nationalist rite. 

The personification of Jesus gave Christianity a spir- 

itual warmth which formalistic and legalistic Judaism has 

always lacked: A “God with a face” is a Divine Being of 

immediate and intimate meaning to humans. Moses was 

only another man with few characteristics of sanctity, 

and the Jewish prophets were never accorded the status 

the apostles hold in Christianity. To counterbalance such 

advantages of Christianity, Judaism could have stressed 

its direct approach to God, without the oppressive need 

of an intermediary. However, gradually the “Jewish 

people” itself became the intermediary between Yahweh 

and those who would worship him: the “chosen people” 

concept smothered universality, 

In response to the growing appeal of Christianity, the 

older faith became increasingly exclusive and secular. 

Proselytizing ceased and emphasis shifted to Judaism’s 

imaginary blood ties with an extinguished Hebrew-Is- 

raelite nation. Practices prevailed over beliefs. The mores 

of a vanished people were handed down from generation 

to generation. The Jewish historian, Heinrich Graetz, 

thus described the Talmud: “The sublime and the com- 

mon, the great and the small, the grave and the ridicu- 

lous, the altar and the ashes, the Jew and the heathen, 

237 

WHAT PRICE ISRAEL 

be discovered side by side.”* (Kosher dietary laws are 

to these days based upon sanitary necessities of two mil- 

lenniums ago.) Though these codifications bore only 

the barest touch of spirituality, they were accepted in 

lieu of a religion and observed in proud respect for his- 

toric practice—an expression of “oneness” of the so- 

called Jewish people rather than a set of theological 

convictions. 

Patriarchs and rabbis, jealously ruling their walled-in 

sovereignties of the ghetto, developed a nostalgia for 

that portion of the Jewish past which knew of noble 

warriors, kings and nationhood. The sacred mission of 

carrying a universalist message to all people was buried 

under ceremonial concepts of peoplehood, concepts 

which persecution and prejudice made even more stub- 

born. The Kingdom of God, the transfigured society, 

came to mean a clannish promise for the privileged few. 

Particularism triumphed, and Judaism made a “racial 

hoard of God.” 

Thus, the Zionist movement found it quite easy to 

transform the spiritual concept of a return to Zion into 

a literal rebirth of a political past. But its very success is 

now confronting Judaism with this ultimate alternative: 

Can Judaism survive as a religious force, divorced from 

Israel, proving that the nation-concept was merely a 

historic means of keeping a spiritual faith alive? Or will 

Judaism, having served its purpose as the handmaiden 

of nationalism, now have to fade away? 

Yet the heart of the universal Judaistic faith in a uni- 

versal God is still beating. In the words of Micah’ and 

Leviticus:° “It hath been told thee, O Man, what is good 

and what the Lord doth require of thee—only to do 

justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy 

God. .. . Love thy neighbor as thyself.” And in the 

238 

SHADOW AND SUBSTANCE 

words of Isaiah: “For my house shall be called a House 

of prayer for all people.”’° These remain the unfulfilled 

goals of Judaism—and of mankind. The need for the 

spiritual revival of Judaism was never greater. By re- 

turning to active proselytizing and competing with other 

religions for the inner convictions of man, the American 

rabbinate could offer concrete evidence that a vibrant 

Judaistic faith yet exists. 

In this one sense, the establishment of the State of 

Israel may yet prove to have been a providential bless- 

ing: now that those Jews who crave their separate na- 

tionhood can go to Israel, the last reason has been re- 

moved for the pernicious Jewish duality outside the Holy 

Land. Now each American Jew has been given a free 

choice to be either an American of Jewish faith or a 

nationalist Israeli in his own Middle East State. He can 

not be both. For him who cherishes the clannishness of 

particularism above everything else, there is only one 

honorable course—to emigrate to Israel. And the Ameri- 

can Jew, who desires to harmonize his special religious 

beliefs with the universal pattern of American existence, 

will now have to cut all political tes with Zionism and 

the State of Israel. For American Judaism can survive 

only when it is so completely divorced from Israel as 

American Protestanism is divorced from England. 

239 

CHAPTER XIV 

Agenda for Jews 

young State must learn what so many Jews have 

never learned—to live not only within but with 

their environment. Today, the Arabs of the Middle East 

think themselves committed to an unending struggle 

against Zionism. 

“When we die, we shall pass the torch to our children” 

is the new Muslim motto. And yet, there still is reason- 

able hope for a peaceful coexistence of Arabs and Israelis 

—>provided Israel desires such coexistence and Interna- 

tional Zionism does not endanger it. The reconciliation 

agenda for Jews (and it would be an Arab’s job to sketch 

those for Arabs) are inextricably set by the errors of the 

past and the needs of the future. 

Above all, Israel must achieve complete national nor- 

malcy by ceasing to be the Jewish and becoming the 

Israeli state. The State of Israel, to be normal, must sol- 

emnly withdraw all claims to the fealty of anybody but 

its own citizens. For unless a State’s sovereignty ends at 

its borders, it is an abnormal fraud and a dangerous freak. 

Unless the State of Israel severs its umbilical ties with 

private political and propaganda organizations outside 

Gf HERE are millions of Arabs around Israel, and the 

240 

AGENDA FOR JEWS 

its borders, it deserves neither the recognition of the civ- 

ilized world nor the co-operation of its Arab neighbors. 

Specifically, Israel must, for a start, at least execute the 

various decrees of the United Nations which created 

that State. These orders stipulated an economic union 

of Palestine, an international rule over the city of Jeru- 

salem which is the holy home of three world religions, 

and a just settlement of the Arab refugee problem. They 

also provided certain boundaries for the new nation. 

No nation has ever been under a greater moral obliga- 

tion to alleviate the plight of refugees than the State of 

Israel. Not only did Israel’s political acts create that 

plight for the Arabs of Palestine, but the international 

rationale for the very existence of Israel was the world’s 

desire to save refugees. Who, then, if not Israel must 

fully honor the right of displaced persons to return home 

in peace? And, just as saab full compensation must 

be granted to those Arab re ugees whose return is not 

feasible. A United Nations Commission should super- 

vise the assessment of their sequestered Palestine prop- 

erty and enable these refugees to find permanent reinte- 

gration in Arab lands. If need be, Israel should finance 

that restitution out of the reparation funds she is re- 

ceiving from Germany. 

The economic union of a politically partitioned Pal- 

estine was proposed by the United Nations just as much 

in the interest of Israel as in the interest of Arab Pales- 

tine. For, without such a union, the new State can never 

overcome its “reliance on gift capital and political mo- 

tivations behind many of the development schemes with 

little regard to economic consideration.”* To assume a 

trusted place in a peaceful Middle East, Israel must settle 

down to peaceful and mutually beneficial trade with her 

Arab neighbors. That trade, and not perpetual aid from 

American Jewry, is Israel’s road to economic viability. 

Once the Arab refugee problem has been solved, Jeru- 

salem internationalized, Palestine’s economic union es- 

tablished, and Israel’s sovereignty clearly confined to 

her territory, all other differences between Israelis and 

Arabs could be easily resolved in neighborly coexistence. 

Confronted with Israel’s good will, the Arab world 

would learn to accept what it now considers an insuffer- 

able reversion of two Arab millenniums. And no longer 

incited by the “Arab Peril,” busy Israelis might soon 

silence the fanatics in their midst who preach imperial- 

istic Israeli expansion into Arab lands. (As a matter of 

fact, most sabras, or native-born Israelis, are even today 

totally indifferent to both Jewish nationalism and, alas, 

Jewish religion.) The Shalom Aleichem, the “‘peace be 

with you” of Hebrew, would then merge with the 

Salaam Alaikum of the Arabic. 

As to American Jewry, they must realize, fast and 

unequivocally, that the survival of Israel is solely Israel’s 

responsibility. American Jews who want to share in that 

responsibility will have to do so in Israel; that is, become 

Israeli Jews. They cannot live with one foot in the United 

States and one foot in Israel. It can not be repeated often 

enough that there is, for an American Zionist, no honor- 

able way other than to have the courage of his conviction 

and invest himself as well as his capital in Israel. 

American Jews who want to remain just that—Amer- 

icans of the Jewish faith—will then at last be able to 

normalize their lives. An end will be put to all those 

“drives” which disguise a fanatical nationalism, tied to 

a foreign State, as philanthropy. For American Jews, to 

live normally will mean to free themselves of the spell 

of “‘unity”—the fallacious contention that Jews are less 

divided on secular issues than Baptists or Presbyterians, 

and that their security depends on the maintenance of 

this fiction. It will mean, above all, that American Jews 

can live at inner ease with their countrymen: When the 

last reservation is erased in their minds, when Jewish 

Americans are satisfied in their hearts that this, the 

United States, is their home for ever, they will have 

achieved the inner strength to laugh at the fossils of 

bigotry. 

The desire of some Jews to maintain Israel as their in- 

surance policy, “because it can also happen here,” can 

only lead to increased misunderstanding. The establish- 

ment in a sensitive part of the world of what is claimed 

to be the political center of the “Jewish people” has al- 

ready added, not lightened, existing tensions and preju- 

dices. And as Caroll Binder, the editor of the Minneapolis 

Star, pointed out at the time of partition: “If the struggle 

for a Jewish State would eventually have to cost the 

democratic countries the oils of the Middle East, the 

Jews of the United States would most properly have to 

pay dearly for it.” 

Jewry will also have to insist on somewhat tidier se- 

mantics in America—on a clear distinction between Is- 

raelis, Zionists and Jews. The U. S. press notwithstand- 

ing, the Government of Israel is zot Jewish; nor is the 

State of Israel. A synagogue is Jewish. So is the Deca- 

logue. Jews are individuals who profess Judaism. Officers 

and citizens of the sovereign State of Israel are Israelis; 

and some of them are Jews. Also, some individual Amer- 

ican Jews are Zionists, which means that they are on 

their way to exchange American for Israeli nationality. 

Except ie those individuals, who propose to do what 

all Americans once have done—namely, to assume a new 

citizenship—American Jews are Americans who wor- 

ship God in Judaistic ways. And the U. S. press had 

better clean up the sloppy language of the headlines. 

There is no effective provision in international law 

by which the Israeli Government can be forced to repeal 

legislation that impairs the indivisibility of the citizen- 

ship of Jewish citizens of other nations. The American 

of Jewish faith has little means of protecting himself 

against claims of attachment made by a foreign govern- 

ment and its various agencies, short of divorcing himself 

completely from everything Jewish. But what an indi- 

vidual American citizen cannot redress through legal 

process, the U. S. Government surely could achieve po- 

litically. For instance the U. S. Government might seek 

the repeal of Israeli laws that establish abnormal ties, 

such as the automatic right of Jews alone to Israeli citi- 

zenship and the imposition of dual citizenship on Jewish 

Americans in Israel. If as in the past our government 

hesitates to reject, in a solemn and strong declaration 

of U. S. policy, all Israeli claim to any kind of special 

relationship with Jewish Americans, America will re- 

main paralyzed in the Middle East. 

Yet a real and lasting change of America’s attitude 

towards the Middle East can be brought about only by a 

change of the climate that conditions American Jewry. 

This country’s political obsession with “the Jewish vote” 

will haunt the nation’s foreign policy in the Middle East, 

perhaps catastrophically, until American Jewry itself 

exposes the fraud. To that end, American Jews must 

make unmistakably clear that the Zionist speaks for no 

one but himself. With this action American foreign pol- 

icy for the Middle East could be liberated to develop in 

the national interest. 

From Haym Solomon of the American Revolution 

through Judah P. Benjamin, Secretary of State for the 

Confederacy, down to the present, there have been many 

who have made vital contributions to the American 

melting pot: Flexner; Brandeis, Cardozo and Frank- 

furter; Gershwin and Berlin; Pulitzer and Ochs; Louis 

Untermeyer, Fannie Hurst and Edna Ferber; Heifetz, 

Elman, Zimbalist, Milstein; Horowitz, Rubinstein and 

Serkin; George S. Kaufman, Moss Hart and Elmer Rice; 

the Guggenheims, Schiffs, Strausses, Lewisohns, War- 

burgs, and Rosenwalds. Some of these were born here 

and others were not, but the attainments of all these men 

and women were as individual Americans and not as 

part of a separate people. 

The American Jew wants integration, not segregation. 

He measures the friendship of his Christian fellow citi- 

zens, not by what they are willing to do for the foreign 

State of Israel, but by their devotion to the Christian 

Commandment of love for their neighbor. The Ameri- 

can Jew, irrevocably committed to the political ideals 

of America and the Commandments of his God, wants 

no special rights. He wants equal rights. His personal 

God is the God of Moses, his national home America. 

245 

Notes and Index 

Notes 

CHAPTER I 

1. The number of those who returned is not known. There 

was no single mass return but a dribbling back, a little at a 

time. 

2. See Jewish Encyclopedia, V1, 602. 

3. Amos 9:7. 

4. In the coronation ceremony of Elizabeth II, the Arch- 

bishop of Canterbury anointed his sovereign saying: “And as 

Solomon was anointed by Zadok, the priest. . . .” 

5. See Dr. Julius Morgenstern, As a Mighty Stream (Phila- 

delphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1949). 

6. Nevill Barbour, Nisi Dominus, A Survey of the Palestine 

Controversy (London: Harrap, 1946), cited on p. 20. 

7. Max L. Margolis and Alexander Marx, A History of the 

Jewish People (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of 

America, 1927), p- 525. 

8. Ibid., p. 233. 

g. Ibid., p. 289. 

10. Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, X, 531; also Vol. IX. 

11. “Jews” called the Spanish peninsula a “Sepharad.” 

12. Salo W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the 

Jews (3 vols., 1937). 

13. Elmer Berger, A Partisan History of Judaism (New 

York: Devin-Adair, 1951). 

14. Baron, op. cit. 

15. Chovevei Zion, or Lovers of Zion, formed in 1881. 

16. Allen Tarshish, Not by Power (N.Y.: Bookman Asso- 

ciates, 1952), p. 239. 

17. Yearbook, Central Conference of American Rabbis, I, 

80-125. 

18. Naomi Wiener Cohen, The Reaction of Reform Juda- 

ism in America to Political Zionism (1897-1922) (Publications 

of the American Jewish Historical Society, June, 1951), p. 365. 

249 

NOTES TO PAGES 16-23 

19. Ibid., p. 371. 

20. Ibid., p. 368. 

21. Solomon Grayzel, A History of the Jews (Philadelphia: 

Jewish Publication Society, 1947). 

22. Dr. David Philipson and Dr. Isaac Landman, before a 

hearing of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of 

Representatives, relative to The Fish Resolution. (See The 

Reaction of Reform Judaism, pp. 389-90.) 

23. American Jewish Year Book, 1943. 

24. Resolution of the General Syrian Congress, Damascus, 

July 2, 1919. 

CHAPTER II 

1. See Barbour, Nisi Dominus: A Survey of the Palestine 

Controversy (London: Harrap, 1946). 

2. Palestine Royal Commission Report, Cmd. Paper 5479, 

Great Britain Parliamentary Papers (London, 1937), p. 23- 

3. David Lloyd George, The Truth About the Peace Treaties 

(London: Gollancz, 1938), II, 1121. 

4. Ibid., XI, 1117. 

5. The American Zionist, February 5, 1953. 

6. Palestine Royal Commission Report, p. 23. 

7. J. W. V. Temperley, History of the Peace Conference, 

IV, 170. 

8. See William I. Cargo, The Origins of the Balfour Decla- 

ration, Vol. XXVIII, “Papers of the Michigan Academy of 

Science, Arts and Letters” (1942), pp. 597-612. 

g. Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error (New York: Harper 

and Brothers, 1949), p. 192. 

1o. Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, Vol. 326, 

col. 2330. 

11. Weizmann, op. cit., p. 203. 

12. In David Lloyd George’s The Truth About the Peace 

Treaties (pp. 1133-34), Montagu is quoted by his Chief as 

saying that he had “striven all his life to escape from the 

Ghetto.” 

13. Weizmann, op. cit., p. 163. 

14. Albert M. Hyamson, Palestine: a Policy (London: Me- 

thuen, 1942), p. 110. 

250 

NOTES TO PAGES 24-29 

15. See J. C. Hurewitz, The Struggle for Palestine (New 

York: W. W. Norton, 1950), pp. 18-20. 

16. Nahum Sokolow, History of Zionism (London: Long- 

man’s 1919), I, pp. xxiv and xxv. 

17. Lloyd George, op. cit., II, 1132. 

18. Albert M. Hyamson, op. cit. 

i9. Lloyd George, op. cit., II, 1137. 

20. Great Britain Parliamentary Papers, 1922, Cmd. Paper 

1700, pp. 12-21. 

21. Hyamson, op. cit., n., p. 112. For similar assurances, see 

also Earl Balfour's defense of the Mandate in the House of 

Lords, June 1922, reported on page 95 of Hyamson. 

22. Charles H. Levermore, Third Year Book of the League 

of Nations (1922), p. 137- 

23. The Preamble of the Mandate contained Weizmann’s 

“reconstitute the national home,” but Article II used the exact 

phraseology of the Balfour Declaration. 

24. Great Britain Parliamentary Papers, 1939, Comm. Paper 

5964. 

25. Lloyd George, op. cit., pp. 1141-42. 

26. For more on the Hogarth Message, see George Anto- 

nius, The Arab Awakening (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1939), 

pp. 267-8; also Barbour, op cit., n. p. 69. 

27. Antonius, The Arab Awakening, p. 268. 

28. Letters of T. E. Lawrence, edited by David Garnett 

(London: Jonathan Cape, 1939), p. 269. 

29. Hyamson, op. Cit., p. 103. 

30. The Commission consisted of Dr. Henry Churchill King, 

President of Oberlin College, and Mr. Charles R. Crane, Chi- 

cago industrialist and member of the American Commission to 

Russia in 1917. The report was suppressed until December 

1922 when the N. Y. Times and Editor & Publisher made it 

available. 

31. Official survey of the Anglo-American Committee of 

Inquiry. 

32. Times (London), Nov. 15, 1945. 

33. Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Report to the 

United States Government and His Majesty’s Government of 

the United Kingdom (Pub. by Department of State, 1946), 

Preface. 

251 

NOTES TO PAGES 30-54 

34. Three of the signers of these unanimous recommenda- 

tions later became the most ardent Christian supporters of 

Jewish Nationalism: Bartley Crum, R. H. S. Crossman and 

James G. McDonald reversed their position complete, even 

before Israel became a political reality. 

35. Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Recommenda- 

tion, No. 3, p. 4. 

36. Weizmann, op. cit., p. 201. 

37. New Palestine, October 27, 1944. 

38. Hurewitz, op. cit., p. 249. 

39. For a full discussion of the refugee problem, see Morris 

L. Ernst, So Far So Good (New York: Harper, 1948), pp. 

170-77. 

40. Ibid., p. 176. 

41. Fiscal Year 1942, only 10% of quotas used; 1943, 5%; 

1944, 6%; 1945, 77%. 

42. Yiddish Bulletin, Free Jewish Club, May 19, 1950. 

43. New York Times, October 27, 1946. 

44. The Supreme Council of the allied powers agreed to 

assign the Mandate for Palestine to Great Britain, April 25, 

1920. The draft Mandate was confirmed by the Council of 

the League of Nations, September 29, 1923. 

45. Weizmann, op Cit., p. 290. 

46. The founder of this group, Abraham Stern, was a Pole 

who had settled in Palestine in 1925. He is reputed to have 

written Hebrew poetry between acts of greatest violence and 

was killed in 1942 by Palestine Police. 

47. Weizmann, op. cit., pp. 437 and 438. 

48. Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry Recommenda- 

tions, No. ro at p. 12. 

49. United Nations, Official Records of the 2nd Session of 

the General Assembly (Lake Success, 1947), II, 139. 

CHAPTER III 

1, On the author’s 1953 visit to the Middle East, he encoun- 

tered an eye witness to this violence who is an Arab refugee in 

Lebanon. 

2. “Ad Hoc Committee of the Palestinian Question,” Sum- 

mary Record of Meetings, 25 September-25 November, 1947, 

252 

a 

NOTES TO PAGES 58-85 

United Nations Official Records of the Second Session of the 

General Assembly (New York, Lake Success), p. 40. 

. Plenary Meetings of the General Assembly, UH, 1312. 

. [bid., p. 1317. 

. [bid., p. 1319 

. [bid., p. 1357. 

. [bid., p. 1365. 

. [bid., p. 1364. 

. Lbid., p. 1327. 

10. Emanuel Newmann, in American Zionist, Feb. 5, 1953. 

11. Plenary Meetings of the General Assembly, Il, 1314-15. 

12. Dallas Morning News of Dec. 1, 1947: “There is mordant 

humor in the fact that philanthropic world thought has been 

manoeuvered into a cul-de-sac. . . . Palestine is as much of a 

catastrophe as a problem.” 

13. Forrestal Diaries (Viking Press), pp. 346-47. 

14. Plenary Meetings of the General Assembly, II, 1426. 

15. The only condition of the Dutch and Surinam Govern- 

ments was that the area of 500,000 acres was to be settled by 

the refugees as Surinam citizens, in equality with others in 

the Netherland territory, and not as any kind of “Jewish 

citizens.” 

16. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 459. 

17. The General Assembly stipulated a date “not later than 

August 1” for the termination of the Mandate, but the Man- 

datory Power, anxious to relieve itself of the burdensome re- 

sponsibility, withdrew even earlier. 

Oo On An Dw 

CHAPTER IV 

1. See Mallory Browne’s dispatch in the New York Times, 

February 21, 1948. 

2. See New York Times, February 20 and February 21, 1948. 

3. Editorial of March 22, 1948. 

4. February 26, 1948. 

5. Ibid., April 18, 1948. 

6. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 477. 

7. See New York Times, March 22, 1948: “Revolt on Tru- 

man Emerges”; also New York Times, March 25, 1948. 

8. See Official Records of the Second Special Session of the 

253 

NOTES TO PAGES 88-98 

General Assembly, Vol. I, Plenary Meetings of the General 

Asembly, April 16-May 14, 1948, Summary Record of Meet- 

ings (New York, Lake Success). 

CHAPTER V 

1. Resolution of the 76th Congress, adopted on June 30, 

1922. A Convention of December 3, 1924, between Great 

Britain and the United States, safeguarded American interests 

in the Holy Land. 

2. House Resolutions, 418 and 419, 78th Congress, Second 

Session (1944). 

3. Hearings Before Committee on Foreign Affairs, House 

of Representatives, on the Wright-Compton Palestine Resolu- 

tions, Washington, D. C. (February 8, 9, 15, 16, 1944) (U.S. 

Government Printing Office, 1944), p. 144. 

4. Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United 

States, The Paris Peace Conference (1919), XI, 150-55. 

5. Paris Peace Conference. 

6. Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United 

States, The Paris Peace Conference (1919), XI, 150-55. 

7. Ibid. 

8. Letter, Hon. Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War to 

Hon. Sol. Bloom, Chairman Foreign Affairs Committee, House 

of Representatives, Washington, D. C., March 17, 1944. 

g. James F. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly (New York: Harper, 

1947). 

10. Elliott Roosevelt, As I Saw It, p. 245. 

11. The American Zionist, Feb. 5, 1953. 

12. lbid. 

13. Alfred Steinberg, “Mr. Truman’s Mystery Man,” Sat- 

urday Evening Post (December 24, 1949). 

14. Forrestal Diaries (New York: Viking Press, 1950). 

15. [bid., p. 309. 

16. [bid., pp. 344-45. 

17. Ibid. 

18. Ibid. 

19. lbid., p. 346. 

20. [bid., pp. 376-77. 

21. [bid., p. 363. 

254 

NOTES TO PAGES 98-125 

22. [bid., p. 364. 

23. Ibid. 

24. My Mission to Israel, Simon and Schuster, N. Y., 1951. 

25. Forrestal Diaries, pp. 440-41. 

26. James G. McDonald, My Mission to Israel, p. 17. 

27. Ibid., p. 25. 

28. Ibid., p. 32. 

29. Ibid., p. 52. (A complimentary copy of this book was 

sent to every Rabbi in the United States.) 

30. In “Lying In State” (N. Y.: Doubleday, 1952), former 

U. S. Ambassador to Egypt, Stanton Griffis, contends (p. 

213) that the Israeli Government knew the murderers of Count 

Bernadotte who were given passports by the Czechoslovak 

Government within 24 hours after Bernadotte died. 

31. His supporters spelled the name “Beigin,” whereas the 

official spelling was “Begin.” 

32. Washington Evening Star, December 1, 1948. 

33. lbid. 

34. Chicago Daily News, December 8, 1948. 

35. Menachem Begin, The Revolt: Story of the Irgun (New 

York: Henry Schuman, 1951). 

36. Ibid., p. 164, note 1. 

37- New York Times, September 28, 1947. 

CHAPTER VI 

1. New York Times, October 26, 1952. 

CHAPTER VII 

1. New York Times, October 24, 1952. 

z. Commenting on an editorial entitled “The Charge of 

Bigotry,” which appeared in the Herald-Tribune during the 

Dulles-Lehman Senatorial campaign, the author wrote to his 

old friend Whitelaw Reid, the publisher of the paper. A sig- 

nificant portion of that letter read: “The support given to 

Jewish nationalism has undoubtedly been one of the factors 

in nurturing the very religious and racial issues which you 

rightly decry. . . . By emphasis, yes even shading and color- 

ing, your writers have presented an over-glorification of what 

255 

NOTES TO PAGES 126-149 

actually exists in Israel, and thus you have inflamed the emo- 

tions of your readers. Day by day your paper has encouraged 

Jews to think as Jews and to be more conscious of their 

Jewishness in the secular sense... . ” 

3. Public Opinion Quarterly, Spring, 1948. 

4. Arnold K. Isreeli, Pro-Arab Propaganda in America (Feb., 

1952). 

5. New York Times, September 12, 1949. 

6. September 30, 1949. 

7. A. Forster and B. Epstein, Trouble Makers (New York: 

Doubleday, 1952). 

8. The Facts (Civil Rights Division of Anti-Defamation 

League, 1948), Vol. III, Part V. 

9. Ibid. 

10. This use of a stock apologetic phrase universally attrib- 

uted to anti-Semites reads like an innuendo. 

11. The Facts, Vol. Ill, Part V. 

12. Time, October, 1951. 

13. Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, 

House of Representatives, Washington, D. C., February 8, 9, 

15 and 16, 1944 (Washington: U. S. Govt. Printing Office), 

Pp. 210. 

14. Rabbi Benjamin Mintz, President of the World Miz- 

rachi, warned Reform Judaism that any attempt to introduce 

their creed in Israel would be met by a “war” (Jewish News- 

letter, August 4, 1952). 

15. New York Times, September 29, 1952. 

16. The Reader's Digest, The American Mercury, The 

American Legion Magazine, Human Events. On other sub- 

jects, articles of mine have appeared in the Foreign Policy As- 

sociation Headline Series, the Washington Post and the Wasb- 

ington Star. 

CHAPTER VIII 

1. Nazi-Soviet Relations 1939-1941; Documents from the 

Archives of the German Foreign Office, (“Department of State 

Publications,” 3003), pp. 217-59. 

256 

NOTES TO PAGES 151-157 

2. These colleges are preparatory schools. 

3- This included a 135 million dollar loan from the Export- 

Import Bank, technical assistance aid, and grants under the 

Mutual Security Program. 

4. Commentary, October, 1952. 

5. New York Times, July 2, 1952. 

6. The oriental influx into Israel was 6% of immigrants in 

1948, 46% in 1949, 50% in 1950 and 70% in 1951. Including 

the Arabs, there are now more Orientals than Occidentals in 

Israel. 

7. Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, 

Haiti, Honduras, Venezuela. 

8. In November 1947, the General Assembly recommended 

the establishment of Jerusalem as a separate entity adminis- 

tered by the U. N. with the Trusteeship Council as the ad- 

ministering authority. At its second session in April, 1948, 

the Trusteeship Council completed a draft of the Statute, 

but postponed formal approval and transmitted the text to the 

Second Special General Assembly for advice. At that time, 

violence broke out in Jerusalem, and the General Assembly 

requested the Trusteeship Council to take action for the pro- 

tection of the City, but failed to give further instructions 

concerning the Statute. The Trusteeship Council reported to 

the General Assembly that the parties had agreed to a cease- 

fire within the walled City, and recommended appointment 

of a special Municipal Commissioner. The General Assembly 

approved this recommendation, but shortly thereafter armed 

conflict broke out and the Commissioner was never able to 

function effectively. On December 11, 1948, the General 

Assembly established the Palestine Conciliation Commission 

and requested it to draw up a plan for the internationalization 

of Jerusalem. This plan was prepared during 1949 by the 

Palestine Conciliation Commission and presented to the 4th 

General Assembly. However, on December gth, 1949, the 

General Assembly reiterated its decision of November, 1947, 

concerning Jerusalem and requested the Trusteeship Council 

to proceed with the preparation of a Statute. No action was 

taken on the Palestine Conciliation Commission plan. At its 

6th session in April, 1950, the Trusteeship Council completed 

257 

NOTES TO PAGES 165-182 

its draft Statute but did not take steps to implement it, due to 

disagreement between the parties concerned. 

CHAPTER IX 

1. Newsweek, May, 1949. 

2. Barbour, Nisi Dominus, p. 33, cites this phrase from Sir 

Moses Montefiore’s diary. 

3- Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 219. 

4. Ibid., p. 262. 

5. [bid., p. 268. 

6. The Realities of American-Palestine Relations (Public 

Affairs Press, 1949). 

7. Dr. Beracah Reis-Reichel, “Life in the Brandeis Camp,” 

The Morning Journal (New York: April 7, 1946). 

8. Weizmann, op cit., p. 266. Einstein’s secretary who ac- 

companied him to the United States was Simon Ginsberg, son 

of Ha-am, the cultural Zionist. 

g. New York Times, April 18, 1948. Rabbi Leo Baeck co- 

signed the letter. 

10. New York Daily News, April 1, 1952. 

11. Dr. Philipp Frank, Einstein (New York: Knopf, 1947). 

12. (Boston: Little Brown, 1944.) 

13. Originally published in Menorah Journal, Feb. 1918, 

and reprinted in Menorah Journal, autumn 1950, pp. 116-18. 

14. Weizmann, op cit., p. 77. 

15. Ibid., p. 309. 

16. Annual Reports of American Jewish Committee, 1950 

and 1951. 

17. Look magazine, June, 1952. 

18. Forward (New York), March 13, 1950. 

CHAPTER X 

1. Dos Yiddish Folk (official organ, Z. O. A., N. Y.), Octo- 

ber, 1951. 

2. A holding organization of Young Judes, Junior Hadassah, 

and the Inter-Collegiate Zionist Federation of America. 

258 

NOTES TO PAGES 183-189 

3. Keren Kayemeth, the Jewish National Fund, purchases 

land for agricultural settlers, while the Keren Hayesod, the 

Palestine Foundation Fund, finances immigration. 

4. Morning Journal (New York Yiddish daily), December 

2, 1949. 

5. See “Our Philosopher-Protectors,” Menorah Journal, Au- 

tumn, 1947; also “An A into the Joint Defense Appeal 

etc.,” in same issue, and “Mid-Century Inventory,” Autumn 

1950. 

6. Vol. Il, No. § (1952). 

7. The Day (New York), September 4, 1952. 

8. Isaiah 58:3. 

9. B. I. G. (Bonds of Israel Government) News, New York, 

Vol. Il, No. 8, (1952). 

10. Address of Rabbi Irving Miller, at the 55th Annual 

Convention of the Z. O. A., at Manhattan Center, 1952. 

11. Bulletin, Manhattan Chapter, Zionist Organization of 

America (1951). 

12, An executive of the Jewish Agency interpreted this 

frankly as an effort “to Zionise world Jewry . . . to establish 

Zionist hegemony over the developing Jewish communities 

throughout the world.” 

13. Dr. Nahum Goldmann claims Zionist credit for check- 

ing a “tendency” to worry about domestic needs and to re- 

sist the priority for Israeli needs. See Mid-Century Inventory, 

p. 131, reporting on the meeting of Zionist leaders in New 

York, May 24, 1950. 

14. 1947 New York Times 

Index: 1048 New York Times Index: 

Palestine 27 pages Palestine 24 pages 

Great Britain 11 pages Israel 2 pages 

France 13 pages Great Britain 5 pages 

Greece (Truman Doc- France 6 pages 

trine proclaimed) 11 pages Greece 4 pages 

“Jewish” & “Jews” “Jewish” & “Jews” 

(listings) 6 pages listings 3 pages 

259 

NOTES TO PAGES 190-202 

1949 New York Times Index: 

Palestine 7 pages France 3 pages 

Israel 3 pages Greece 2 pages 

Great Britain 5 pages “Jewish” & “Jews” 

listings 3 pages 

15. The New Partnership. Zionism and the State, a report 

on the Sessions of the Actions Committee in Jerusalem, May, 

1950, published by the Jewish Agency in Palestine (11 E. 66th 

Street, New York City). 

16. Jewish Newsletter (New York), Vol. VIII, No. 18 

(Sept. 1, 1952). 

CHAPTER XI 

1. New York Times, May 30, 1951. 

2. Ibid., December 13, 1951. 

3. The Day (New York), March 15, 1950. 

4. Chaplain Klausner says in his report on “Jewish Dis- 

placed Persons in the American Occupied Zone of Germany” 

to the American Jewish Conference, May 2, 1948: “The Jews 

as a group are not overwhelmingly desirous of going to Pales- 

tine .... we may predict that perhaps 30% of the people will 

go to Palestine.” In his letter of May 26, 1948, William Haber, 

Adviser on Jewish Affairs to the High Commissioner in Ger- 

many, disputes Klausner’s estimate and claims accuracy for 

the Jewish Agency figure of 70%, but admits that a great 

number of the people who registered for migration to Pales- 

tine also registered for migration to other countries. 

5. The New Leader, letter of Louis Nelson, then Manager, 

Knit Goods Workers Union, later Vice-President of the In- 

ternational Ladies Garments Workers Union (New York, 

August 21, 1948). 

6. See S. D. Goiten, “The Transplantation of the Yemenites: 

The Old Life They Led,” Commentary, July, 1951. 

7. During the following year, the number of persons who 

migrated to Israel was not much greater than the number of 

those who emigrated from Israel. 

8. Forward, July 5, 1952. 

g. See Foreois (Mexico City), September 1, 1952, and Jew- 

ish Newsletter (New York), October 27, 1952. 

260 

NOTES TO PAGES 202-214 

10. Die Stimme (Mexico City), June 9, 1948. 

11. See Correspondence of Mexican Defense Committee, 

sent to all Jewish organizations, particularly the letter of June 

23, 1948, from Mexico City. 

12. Die Stimme, June 9, 1948. 

13. Jewish Post, April 22, 1949. 

14. See Imprensa Israelita (Rio de Janeiro), July 23, 1948; 

Nossa Voz (San Paulo), July 28, 1948. 

15. Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Buenos Aires, August 2, 

1948. 

16. See letter of Defense Committee, August 11, 1948. 

17. See letter, Philip Skorneck, Secretary, Latin American 

Committee of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Com- 

mittee, New York, July 12, 1948. 

18. See letter, Moses A. Leavitt, Executive Vice-Chairman,

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, July 19, 1948.




19. Council News, American Council for Judaism, Septem-

ber, 1952.




20. The discrimination of the Citizenship Law was attacked

by the Haaretz (Tel Aviv), April 3, 1952; Forward (New

York), April 26, 1952; and The Day (New York), May 3, 1952.




21. See Forward, New York, July 16, 1952.




22. Jewish Morning Journal (New York), September 15,

1952.




23. Quoted in Kemper, Yiddish paper (New York), July

II, 1952.




24. Reported in Zionist Newsletter, Nov. 27, 1951.




25. Press Bulletin, 23rd World Zionist Congress (Jerusa-

lem), Aug., 1951.




26. Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Aug. 8, 1951.




27. See “Official Minutes,” 23rd World Zionist Congress,

1951.




28. “Mid-Century Inventory,” Menorah Journal, Autumn,







1950, p. 131.

CHAPTER XII







1. The indigenous American population, the Indians, be-

longed to the Mongolian race.

2. Australians who were on the island before Europeans ar-







261


































NOTES TO PAGES 215-222







rived. See Diana Tead and Jane Eakin Kleinman, What Is

Race (Paris: UNESCO House, 1952).




3. Jews of the Middle Ages used Hebrew characters in writ-

ing the spoken language of their environment. Ladino is the

corresponding language mixture of Spanish and Hebrew.




4. See “Statement on the Nature of Race and Race Differ-

ences by Physical Anthropologists and Geneticists,” What Is

Race: “We agreed that all races were mixed and that intra-

racial variability in most biological characters was as great if

not greater than inter-racial variability.”




5. I Chron. 4:18. The feminine form “Jehudijah” is used

here.




6. Il Kings 16:6 and 25:25.




7. Jer. 32:12; 38:19; 4o:11; 43:9.




8. Neh. 1:2; 3:33; 4:6; Esther 2:53 3:4; 5:13.




9. Flavius Josephus, History of the Jewish War, written in

both Hebrew and Greek, in seven volumes.




10. Gen. 14:13.




11. Sometimes called Kenite.




12. James H. Breasted, The Dawn of Conscience (New

York: Scribner, 1933), p. 350.




13. Ruth 13:22.




14. Ezra g and to.




15. Ezra 9:1.




16. See Encyclopedia Britannica, XIII, 165 (1952); also Uni-

versal Jewish Encyclopedia, pp. 1-3 (1943).




17. Frederich Hertz, Race and Civilization (London: Trench

and Trubner, 1928).




18. William Z. Ripley, Races of Europe (New York: Ap-

pleton, 1898), p. 392.




19. Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, V1, 375-78.




20. Jewish Encyclopedia, IV, 1-7 (1903).




21. Constantine VI, the Son of Leo III, married the Khazar

Princess, Irene.




22. Heinrich Graetz, History of the Jews (Philadelphia

Jewish Publication Society, 1895), IH, 140-41. Also in the

popular edition published in 1919 where it was stated that the

Khazars were of pagan and not Israeli descent (III, 109).




23. Henry Hoble Hall, Why Palestine (New York, 1946),

p- 14. (Pamphlet.)







262
















NOTES TO PAGES 222-232







24. In addition to Schecter and Graetz, see History of Jews

in Russia and Poland, S. M. Dubnow (Jewish Publication So-

ciety of America, Philadelphia, 1916), pp. 19-29, Margolis &

Marx, pp. 525-26, Encyclopedia Britannica (1952), XIII, 362-

63; Ripley, p. 391.




25. See, for example, the Trouble Makers, an Anti-Defama-

tion League report by Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Ep-

stein (New York: Doubleday, 1952), p. 96.




26. Eugene Pittard, Les Races et L’Histoire (Paris: La

Renaissance Du Livre, 1924), p. 413.




27. Ibid., p. 430.




28. Ibid., p. 430. See also Appendix III of What is Race, a

pamphlet published by UNESCO (Paris, 1952).




29. What is Race.




3o. Ruth Benedict and Gene Weltfish, The Races of Man-

kind, Public Affairs Committee, New York, 1943 (New York:

Viking, 1945), p. 177.




31. Julian Huxley and A. C. Haddon, We Europeans (Lon-

don: Jonathan Cape, 1953).




32. What is Race, p. 74.




33. Jean-Paul Sartre, Jew and Anti-Semite (New York:

Schocken Books, 1948), pp. 61-62.




34. Hertz, op. cit., p. 135.




35. [bid.; also, Benedict and Weltfish, op. cit., p. 177.




36. See Dr. Joseph B. Schechtman, “Is There Discrimina-

tion in Israel,” Alliance Review, March 1952, and January 1953,

published by the American Friends of the Alliance Israelite

Universelle, New York.




37. Leonard J. Schweitzer, “Israel, a Kingdom Divided,”

The Sign, January, 1953.




38. Schechtman, op. cit.




39. See New York Times, November 22, 1951; January 12,

1953; March 27, 1952; and March 31, 1952.







CHAPTER XIII







1. Action Committee, World Zionist Organization, Jerusa-

lem, April 25, 1950.




2. Address in Philadelphia, May 10, 1915, from The Public

Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Vol. 2, Part 1.







263

























NOTES TO PAGES 235-241







3. See American Jewish Yearbook 1951 and 1952, prepared

by the American Jewish Committee and published by the

Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia. Dr.

Mordecai M. Kaplan, the head of the Reconstruction Move-

ment, places the number at only 600,000. According to the

1951 Yearbook, affiliated with national organizations were 500

orthodox hues ae (with a membership of 100,000 fami-

lies); 400 modified Orthodox or Conservative synagogues

(with 150,000 families); and goo Reformed with houses of

worship (with 100,000 families). In addition, there were 2,000

independent congregations of various sizes, mostly Orthodox.




4. See American Jewish Yearbook, 1952, p. 156. Thirty-

one per cent of the congregation members claimed “quite

regular attendance,” seven per cent “never,” forty-one per

cent “occasionally” and twenty-one per cent “often, but not

regular.”




5. (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1947).




6. Heinrich H. Graetz, History of the Jews, II, 632.




7. In A Partisan History of Judaism (New York: Devin-

Adair, 1951), Dr. Elmer Berger points out that Exodus 34:26

is the only authority for these laws and that interpretations

of later rabbis greatly broadened the biblical interdictions re-

garding food, in order to make Judaist practices still more

different.




8. Mic. 6:8.




9. Lev. 19:18.




10. Isa. 56:6,







CHAPTER XIV







1. Report of the United Nations Special Committee on

Palestine, Chapter I, p. 32.







264







Index







A Man Called Peter, 133




Abd al-Rahman, 221




Abdullah, King, 107




Ad Hoc Committee, 53, 55, 56,

57> 59, 61, 62, 68




Akaba Bay, 70




Akiba, Rabbi, 5




Aldrich, Winthrop, 98




Aleppo College, 151




Alexander, David, 23




Almohades, 9




Alsop, Stewart, 128




American Anthropological As-

sociation, 213 ff.




American Association for the

United Nations, 79, 80




American Christian Committee

for Palestine, 49, 128




American Council for Judaism,

III, 114, 123, 134-5, 138




American Diplomatic Agency in

Cairo, 89




American Israelite, 16




American Jewish Committee, 49,

50, 70, 138, 177-9; 187, 193, 194,

210




American Jewish Conference, 49,

134, 194




American Jewish Congress, 17,

138, 187




American League for a Free Pal-

estine, 42, 43, 103, [10




American Palestine Committee,

92




American University at Beirut,

144, 151




American University at Cairo,

151







American Zionist Council, 128,

141




American Zionist Emergency

Council, 92




Americans for Haganah, 81




Anglo-American Committee of

Inquiry on Palestine, 29-31, 41,

435 171




Anglo-Arab Conferences, 43




Anglo-Jewish Association, 23




Anti-Defamation League, 131-3,

137, 138, 183




Antiochus Epiphanes, 4




Antonius, George, 132




Arab Awakening, The, 132




Arab Higher Committee, 40, 48,







53

Arab League, 131, 151

Arab Nationalism, 148 ff.

Arabian oil, 149 ff.

Aranha, Oswaldo, 62

Arms Embargo, 100

Artaxerxes I, 3

Ashkenazim Jews, 222, 225, 226

Attlee, Clement, 28, 44, 97

Austin, Warren, 64, 75, 76, 78, 84

Auto-Emancipation, 13

Aydelotte, Frank, 29







Bahrein air base, 150




Baldwin, Joseph C., 43




Balfour Declaration, 17, 19, 20-7,

38, 39, 56, 68, 73, 88, 91, 167,

169




Balfour, Lord, 24, 25, 67, 174




Bar Kokba, 5




Barkley, Alben, 110, 145







265

























WHAT PRICE ISRAEL







Baron, Salo, 10




Baruch, Bernard, 65, 70, 91, 99,

142




Basel Congress, 24




Basel Platform, 208




Basic Judaism, 236




Begin-Freedom-Party, 106, 160




Begin, Menachem, 43, 103-8, 110




Belt, Guillermo, 85




Ben-Gurion, David, 43, 107, 157,

171, 187, 191-3, 197, 206-8, 210,

211, 229, 231, 235




Benjamin, Judah P., 244




Bennett, Hugh H., 106




Berendsen, Carl, 67




Berle, Adolph, 65




Berle, Milton, 186




Berlin, Irving, 245




Bernadotte, Folke, 102, 113




Bernstein, Philip, 194




Beth Elohem, 15




Bevin, Ernest, 42, 43, 93, 96, 97,

101




Bevin Plan, 43




Biltmore Program, 31, 134




Binder, Caroll, 243




Birth of Israel: The drama as I

saw it, The, 53




Blaustein, Jacob, 178, 193




Bloom, Sol, 83, 88, 90




B'nai B’rith, 82, 94, 186




B’nai B’rith Messenger, 138




Boas, 224




Boston Jesuit College in Bagh-

dad, 151




Bradley, Omar, 95, 98




Brandeis, Louis, 23, 73, 169-71,

245




Breasted, James Henry, 217




Brewster, Owen, 111




British Eighth Army, 40




British Palestine Policy State-

ment, 26




British White Paper of 1939, 51







Bromfield, Louis, 103, 105

Browdy, Benjamin, 192

Bulan, 220




Burrows, Millar, 127-9

Byrd, Harry C., 105

Byrnes, James, 44, 97, 115







Caesar, Sid, 186




Cagh Chafut, 222




Caine Mutiny, 146




Cairo to Damascus, 126




Camp Brandeis, 170




“Campaign Judaism,” 190




Cantor, Eddie, 188




Capa, Robert, 126




Capper, Arthur, 103, 105




Carlebach, Ezriel, 171




Case Against the Jews, The, 136




Case for Zionism, The, 136




Cecil, Robert, 22




Celler, Emanuel, 63




Central Conference of American

Rabbis at the United Nations,

15-16, 107, 134




Central Intelligence Agency, 77,

95,97




Chamberlain, Joseph, 166




Cherne, Leo, 145




Children To Palestine, Inc., 172




Churchill White Paper, 25, 38




Churchill, Winston, 22, 25, 40, 70,

91, 935 174




Citizens Committee on Displaced

Persons, 37




Clark, Tom, 108




Clermont-Tonnerre, 11




Clifford, Clark, 82, 83, 100




Code of Justinian, 8




Code of Theodosius II, 8




Coffin, Henry Sloane, 105, 107,

129, 130, 145




Cominform, anti-Zionist propa-

ganda of, 158 ff.







266


































INDEX







Commentary, 52




Committee for Justice and Peace

in the Holy Land, 132




Communism in the Middle East,

148 ff., 233 ff.




Cardozo, 245




Coughlin, 132




Council of The League of Na-

tions, 26




Council of the Sanhedrin, 5




Creech-Jones, Arthur, 54




Crossman, R. H. S., 29, 126




Crum, Bartley C., 29, 126




Cunningham, Alan, 86




Curzon, Lord, 24




Cyrus, the Persian, 3







Davar, 207




Dearborn Independent, 13




Devel, Walter, 106




Dewey, Thomas E., 78, 96, 98,

111, 112-3, 117, 119




Dhahran air base, 150




Displaced Persons Bill, 37




“Do-Nothing” Eightieth Repub-

lican Congress, 34, 45




Dodge, Bayard, 123, 131, 133




Douglas, Lewis, 101




Draft Trusteeship Agreement

for Palestine, 79




Dreyfus, Alfred, 13




Dulles, John Foster, 98, 112-7







Eban, Abba S., 171




Edict of Milan, 8




Eichelberger, Clark, 79, 145




Einstein, Albert, 73, 80-81, 106,

171-3




Eisenhower, Dwight D., 116-20,

142, 186




Elath, Eliahu, 83




Elizalde, Ambassador, 65




Elman, Mischa, 245




Emperor Hadrian, 5







Epstein, Eliahu, 83, 86




Epstein, Mrs. Mose P., 31




Ernst, Morris, 32-34, 145




Ethridge, Mark, 155




Ethridge, Willie Snow, 126-8,

144, 145




Evatt, Herbert V., 53, 55, 126







Fabregat, Rodriguez, 53, 57




Facts, The, 131




Falk, Louis A., 180




Feisal, Emir, 26, 55




Feldman, Abraham, 139-q1




Ferber, Edna, 245




Fernandez, Gonzalez, 85




Finkelstein, Louis, 36, 134




Firestone, Harvey, 65




First Zionist Congress (Basel

Congress), 13-14




Fishberg, 224




Flavius Josephus, 216




Fleeson, Doris, 111




Flexner, 245




Formation of Jewish State, 74-87




Forrestal Diaries, 96




Forrestal, James V., 96-100, 149




Forward, 36




Frank, Jerome, 136




Frank, Philipp, 173




Frank, Waldo, 136, 173




Frankfurter, Felix, 245




Freeland Organization, 68




French National Assembly, 11




French Revolution, 11







Galut, 162




Garfield, John, 186




Geiger, Abraham, 15




General Zionists, 188, 211




Gershwin, George, 245




Gideonse, Harry, 125




Gildersleeve, Virginia, 123, 131,

132, 145




Gillette, Guy, 28, 103, 110







267
















WHAT PRICE ISRAEL







Ginsberg, Asher, 168

Going to Jerusalem, 126-7

Goldman, Frank, 82

Goldmann, Nahum, 209

Goldstein, Israel, 49, 186, 192

Goldstein, Jonah, 119

Gough, Betty, 85




Graetz, Heinrich, 221, 237

Granados, Garcia, 53, 57

Green, Theodore, 103

Gregoire, Abbé, 11

Gromyko, Andrei, 158

Gruner, Dov, 46

Guggenheim, 245







Ha-am, Ahad, 23, 73, 168-9




Habbaniya air base, 150




Haber, William, 196




Hadassah (American Jewish

women’s organization), 31,

182, 186, 190, 209




Hadrian, emperor, 5




Haganah, 40, 43, 79, 81, 143, 195




Halevi, Judah, 8, 221




Halprin, Mrs. Samuel, 209




Halutz, Joseph, 143




Hand, Learned, 121




Hannegan, 96




Harby, Isaac, 15




Hart, Merwin K., 128




Hart, Moss, 245




Hasidim, 4




Hatch, Carl, 78




Hayes, Arthur Garfield, 145




Hebraile Jews, 222




Hebrew Committee for National

Liberation, 42, 43




Hebrew University of Jerusa-

lem, 169, 171




Hebrew University in Palestine,

51, 108




Hecht, Ben, 41-42, 45, 103




Heifetz, Jascha, 245




Heliopolis air base, 150







Hellenism, 3-4




Helier, James, 18




Hendricks, Joseph, 105




Heraclius, 220




Herter, Christian, 130




Hertz, Friedrich, 219, 224




Herut Party, 108, 188




Herzl, Theodore, 13-14, 15, 16,

24, 66, 167, 168, 191, 193, 222




Herzog, Halevi, 185




Hess, Moses, 13




Hilldring, John H., 70, 81, 100




History of the Jews, 221




History of the Peace Conference,

21




History of Zionism, 24




Hitler, Adolf, 12, 28, 109, 135,

139, 146, 164, 192, 213, 214, 223,







234




Hocking William E., 128




Hoffman, Isadore, 137




Hogarth, D. C., 27




Holyland Emergency Liaison

Program (H. E. L. P.), 129 ff.




Homecoming 1944, 182




Hood, John D. L., 53




Hook, Sidney, 106




Hoover, Herbert, 119




Hopkins, Harry, 93




Horowitz, Vladimir, 245




Hosea, 2




Huleh Marshes, 94




Human Rights Commission of

the United Nations, 153




Hurst, Fannie, 245




Hussein, Sherif, 26-27 ‘




Hutcheson, Joseph C., 29




Huxley, Julian, 225







Ibn-Adret, Solomon, 10




Ibn Saud, 91, 223




Ibn Shaprut, R. Hasdai, 220-1

lf I Forget Thee, 182







268

























INDEX







Immigration Act (McCarran),

116




Impellitteri, Mayor, 186




Institute of Advanced Studies, 29




Intercollegiate - Zionist Federa-

tion of America, 232




International Refugee Organiza-

tion, 81




Iraq Petroleum Pipeline, 45




Irgun Zvai Leumi, 40, 43, 45, 50,

103, 104, 105, 107




Isacson, Leo, 75




Isaiah, 2, 6




Israel in Action, 182




Israel, present moral obligations

of, 240 ff.




Israeli nationalism versus Jewish

nationalism, 161 ff.




Israeli Nationality Act, 204-7




Israeli Provisional Government,

101, 102




Israelism versus Judaism, 180-90




Israel’s Flag Is Not Mine, 137 ff.,

146




Ives, Irving, 112







Jabotinsky, 160

Jacobson, Edward, 70, 83, 94

Javits, Jacob K., 46, 81, 110, 115

Jeremiah, prophet, 2

Jerusalem, 11

Jessup, Philip C., 85

Jesus, 2, 4 ff., 237

Jew In Our Day, The, 173

Jewish Agency, 29-31, 39, 40 ff.,

48 ff., 80 ff., 176, 178, 183, 190,

196-7, 200, 209, 211, 229

Jewish Community Councils, 35,

198

Jewish Day, 125

Jewish Displaced Persons, 28-30,

69, 73

Jewish Encyclopedia, 220, 222

Jewish Labor Committee, 138







Jewish National Conference, 13




Jewish National Council, 49




Jewish National Fund, 181, 183




Jewish nationalism versus Israeli

nationalism, 161 ff.




Jewish Newsletter, 190




Jewish “racial” myth, 213-28




Jewish State, formation of, 74-87




Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 130




Jewish vote in the United States,

109-20




Jewish War Veterans, 130, 138




Jewish Welfare Board, 82, 166




Jews, physical variations of,

224 ff.




Jews, racial diversity of, 213 ff.




Johnson, Herschel, 54, 59, 70




Joint Distribution Committee,

176-7, 178, 189, 195-6, 203




Joseph, 217-8




Joseph, Dov, 186




Joseph, Isaac, 228




Joseph of Khazaria, 220-1




Judaism versus Israelism, 180-go




Judaism, a religious kinship,

213 ff., 235-9




Judenstaat, 13




Juderias, 9







Kalergi, Count, 13




Kangaroo Court, 203




Kaplan, Eliezer, 184




Kaufman, George S., 245

Kennedy, John F., 105




Kerch Strait, 7




Kerensky government in Russia,







30




khagan (also khakan), 220




Khan, Mohammed Zafrullah, 54,

59, 66




Khazars, history of, 219 ff.




Kibbutz Galloyot, 162




King-Crane Commission, 27-28







269







WHAT PRICE ISRAEL







Kirchway, Freda, 145




Kishinev Pogrom, 166




Klausner, Chaplain, 194-6




Klein, Arthur, 77




Knesset (Israeli Parliament), 108,

184, 192, 204, 206, 211, 234




Kohen Gadol, 5







Labor Zionists, 188, 201




La Farge, John, 105, 107




Land of Hope, 182




Land Reborn, 127-8




Lansdowne, Lord, 166




Lansing, Robert, 89-90




Lawrence, T. E., 27




Lazaron, Morris, 105, 107




League of Nations, 88




Leavitt, Moses A., 203-4




Lehman, Herbert, 35, 44, 46, 74,

174




Lehman, Irving, 174-5




Lehrman, Hal, 154-5




Leo III, 220




Letter Against Flaccus, 6




Levinthal, Louis, 194




Lewisohn, Ludwig, 145, 245




Lie, Trygve, 43




Life magazine, study of political

party affiliations, 118




Lilienthal, Max, 12




Lindley, Ernest K., 95




Lloyd George, David, 17, 20 ff.,

174




Locker, Berl, 211




Lodge, Henry Cabot, 111




Lookstein, Joseph, 120




Lopez, 62




Lovett, Robert, 63, 65, 100, 101




Lowdermilk, Walter, 126







Maariv, 171




McCarran Act, 205, 206

McCarran, Pat, 116

McClintock, 77
















McDonald, James C., 29, 99, 100-

2, 126







McDonald White Paper of 1935







39

McGrath, J. Howard, 96, 97, 143

McKeldin, Theodore F., 186

Magic Carpet, The, 200

Magnes, Judah L., 51-52, 73, 80,

108, 132, 169, 172

Maimonides, Moses, 8, 10

Malik, Charles, 153-4

Manhattan Jewish Theological

Seminary, 36

Mapai, 188, 207, 211

Mapam, 188

Margoshes, Samuel, 125

Marks, Bernard, 63

“Marranos,” 9

Marshall, George, 56, 75, 77, 83-

84, 100, 112, 116, 174

Marshall, Louis, 176

Marshall, Peter, 133-4

Marshall Plan, 65, 233

Mayer, Milton, 135-6, 147

Mead, Margaret, 224

Mendelssohn, Moses, 10-11, 12

Menorab Journal, 183

Meyer, Eugene, 177-8

Micah, 2

Middle East dispute, 148 ff.

Milstein, Nathan, 245

Mirabeau, 11

Mishnah, 4

Mizrachi Organization, 185-6,

188

Molotov, Vyacheslav, 148

Montagu, Edward, 22

Montefiore, Claude, 23

Montefiore, Moses, 166, 174

Montgomery, 40

Morgenthau, Henry, Jr., 185

Morgenthau, Henry, Sr., 175

Morgenstern, Julian, 5

Morrison-Grady Plan, 43







270
















INDEX







Moses, 217-8, 237, 245




Moyne, Lord, 40




Muniz, Ambassador, 69

Murray, Philip, 106




Mutual Security Act, 94

Myerson, Golda, 102, 186, 208







Nabonidus, 3




Napoleon Bonaparte, 11




Nathan, Robert, 65, 126




Nation, 49, 145




National Committee to Combat

Anti-Semitism, 128




National Community Relations

Advisory Council, 138




National Council of Churches,







113




National Council of Young Is-

rael, 46




Nationalism, Jewish versus Is-

raeli, 161 ff.




Nationality Bill of Israel, 204-7




Near East Foundation, 151




Nebuchadnezzar, 2, 197




Nehemiah, 3




Neumann, Emanuel, 21, 78, 92,







107




New Republic, 49




New York Herald-Tribune on

Zionism, 124 ff.




New York Post on Zionism, 125




New York Times on Zionism,

124 ff., 141-2




Nicholas II, Czar, 18




Niles, David, 70, 83, 93-95, 100,







102




North Atlantic Defense Com-

munity, 150




Northern Kingdom of Israel, 1







Obadiah, 221




Ochs, Adolph, 245




O’Conor, Herbert, 103, 105

O’Dwyer, William, 46, 119, 145







Oil in the Middle East, 149 ff.




Operation Ali Baba, 199




Operation “Ingathering,” 191 ff.,

204




Opinion News, 125




Option Law of Iraq, 199




Ottinger, Albert, 119




Out of My Later Years, 173







“Pale of Settlement,” 12




Palestine Foundation Fund, 170,

183




Palestine Is Our Business, 127




Palestine Jewish Army, 196




Palestine, partition of, 48-73, 124




Palestine Relief and Works

Agency, 143




Palestine Resistance Committee,

81







Palestine Royal Commission, z0







Pan-European federation of Eu-

ropean man, 13




Paris Peace Conference, 44, 89




Parodi, French Ambassador, 62




Partition of Palestine, 48-73, 124




Pasha, Azzam, 131, 151




Patent of Toleration of 1782, 11




Pearson, Drew, 65




Peel Royal Commission, 38-39




Penrose, Stephen, 144




Pentateuch, 11




Pharisees, 4




Phillips, William, 29




Philo, 6




Pietists, 4




Pinsker, Leo, 13




Pittard, Eugene, 224




Pittsburgh Conference, 15




Point Four assistance, 154




Political Action Committee for

Palestine, 42




Poznaski, Gustavus, 15




Progressive Zionists, 188




Proskauer, Joseph, 50, 64, 81, 177







271

























WHAT PRICE ISRAEL







Ptolemy Lagi, 6

Pulitzer, Joseph, 245







Rabbinical Council of America,







49




Race and Civilization, 219




Race and History, 224




Races of Europe, 224




Races of Mankind, The, 224




Reader’s Digest, 128, 136-9, 144,

146




Reading, Viscount, 25




Reconstruction Finance Corpo-

ration, 177




Red Mogen Doved, 81




Reform Judaism, 15




Resh Galuta, 7




Reston, James, 44




Revisionists, 188




Revolt, The, 107




Rice, Elmer, 245




Riesser, Gabriel, 15




Rifkind, Simon, 194




Riley, General, 94-95




Ripley, W. Z., 224




Rome and Jerusalem, 13




Rommel Erwin, 40




Romulo, Carlos, 60-61, 65, 66




Roosevelt, Eleanor, 46, 49, 64-65,

74, 79, 186




Roosevelt, Elliott, 91




Roosevelt, Franklin D., 32, 91 ff.,

98, 112, 115, 117, 119, 177, 186




Roosevelt, Kermit, 131, 133




Rose, Billy, 186




Rosenblum, William F., 141




Rosenman, Sam, 97




Rosenwald, Julius, 175




Rosenwald, Lessing, 37, 69




Ross, Charles, 78, 84




Rothschild, Edmond de, 166, 174




Roxas, President, 66




Rubenstein, Artur, 245




Rusk, Dean, 67, 78, 84







sabras, 242




Sadducees, 4




Saint Etienne, 11




Samuel, 5




Sandstrom, Emil, 49




Sanhedrin of Jewry, 11




Sartre, Jean-Paul, 226




Sassoon, Khedouri, 198




Saturday Evening Post, The, 135-

6, 144




Saul of Tarsus, 7




Sayre, Francis B., 85




Schiff, Jacob, 175, 245




Scott, C. P., 21-22




Scott, Hazel, 186




Second Jewish Commonwealth,







£5




Sephardic Jews, 8, 225, 226




Serkin, Rudolf, 245




Seventh Zionist World Congress,

166




Sforza, Carlo, 101




Sharett, 201, 234




Sheean, Vincent, 128, 145




Shertok, 55




Shu’aiba air base, 150




Silver, Abba Hillel, 54, 68, 92,

107, 112, 117, 118, 120, 136, 139,

145, 179, 193, 208, 223




Smith, Gerald L. K., 128, 132




Smuts, Jan, 67




Socialist Labor Party (Mapai),

188, 207, 211




Sokolow, Nahum, 24




Solomon, Haym, 244




Sons of Liberty Boycott Com-

mittee, 233




Spanish Inquisition, 9




Spiegler, Charles G., 231




Stalin, Josef, 92, 139




Stassen, Harold, 98




State Department Office of Unit-

ed Nations Affairs, 67, 84




Steinberg, Milton, 236







272
















INDEX







Steinhardt, Jacob, 163-4, 197




Stern Gang, 40, 46, 108




Stevenson, Adlai, 115, 116, 119,

120




Die Stimme, 202




Stimson, Henry, 90




Stratton Bill, 34-35, 68




Stratton, William G., 34-35




Straus, Nathan, 50




Sulzberger, Arthur Hays, 36, 124




Sweidi, Tewfik, 199




Swope, Herbert Bayard, 65, 70




Szold, Henrietta, 163







Taft, Robert A., 45, 74, 98, 111,

112




Talmud, 4, 7, 198, 237




Temperley, 21




Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, 215,

223




Terrell, Olivia, 172




Thomas, Elbert, 74




Thomas, Norman, 145, 204, 205




Thompson, Dorothy, 17, 128,

129, 145, 199




Thornburg, Max, 131




Time, 128




Tinnius, Rufus, 5




Torah, 4




Toynbee, Arnold J., 228




Traitor, The, 146




Trouble Makers, 131




Truman, Harry S., 28-29, 34, 44,

65, 79-71, 76, 78, 82 ff., 92,

93 ff., 104, 110, 112, 113, 115,

116, 117, 120, 178




Tuck, William, 81







Uganda proposal, 166 ff.




Unger, Jerome, 128-9, 141




United Israel Appeal, 177, 183




United Jewish Appeal, 46, 100,

164, 177, 182-3, 184, 188, 201,

231







United Nations, 43, 48, 49, 55 ff.,







74 ff., 143, 152 ff., 178 ff., 224

234, 241 ff.

United Nations Educational,







Scientific and Cultural Or-

ganization, 224




United Nations Special Commit-

tee on Palestine, 48-49, 52 ff.,

78, 125




United Nations Truce Organiza-

tion, 94




United Palestine Appeal, 177




United States recognition of Is-

rael, 85 ff.




United Zionist Fund, 201




Untermeyer, Louis, 245







Va-ad Arba Aratos, 12




Van Langenhove, 58




Van Paassen, Pierre, 126

Vandenberg, Arthur A., 98, 111

Vieux, Antonio, 61




Vital Speeches of the Day, 142







Wagner, Robert F., 66




Wallace, Henry A., 49, 145




Warburg, Felix, 174, 175, 245




Washington Post, 127




Weissenberg, 224




Weizmann, Chaim, 20 ff., 28, 30,

38, 40, §4, 70, 82, 91, 102, 125,

166-74, 175, 179, 193, 214, 223




Weizmann Institute of Science,

171




Welles, Sumner, 74, 79, 126




White Paper of 1922, 25, 38




White, William L., 137




Wilson, Woodrow, 27, 88-90,

232




Wise, Isaac M., 15




Wise, Stephen, 165, 177, 179, 193




World Zionist Congress, 188, 208,

210 ff,







273







WHAT PRICE ISRAEL







World Zionist Organization, 20,

24, 167, 170, 201, 210, 211




Wouk, Herman, 146-7




Wright-Compton resolution, 34,

88-90







Yalta Conference, 91

Yellin, Nathan Friedman, 108







Zadok, 5




Zangwill, 167

Zealots, The, 5




Ziff, William, 126

Zimbalist, Efrem, 245







Zionism and the problem of

double loyalty, 229 ff.




Zionist Action Committee of

Jerusalem, 229




Zionist Emergency Council, 107




Zionist Organization of America,

21, 35; 78, 107, 180-2, 183, 184,

187 ff., 192, 210, 211




Zionist program, 14




Zionist Summer Camps, 180-2




Zionist United Palestine Appeal,







177

Zionist Youth Commission, 181-







2

Zuckerman, William, 190

Zuloaga, 71
















What they say abouf WHAT PRICE ISRAEL:







"Alfred M. Lilienthal, writing with a moral authority that no Gentile could,

has performed a service in reminding us Jews and Gentiles of the price

paid for Israel. Here is a brave, intelligent, well documented narrative by

a man with a mission. Critics may fairly point to some omissions or inade-

quate emphasis; they cannot, however, by mere denunciation answer the

author’s statements of fact.''"—NORMAN THOMAS, Excerpt, Mirror Enterprises

Syndicate







“The book is fascinating and full of information, new even to a person like

myself who has studied the pro's and con’s of Zionism for many years—

and changed opinions originally based on insufficient knowledge. Were

this a book on any other subject | should trust it to find its way, but in the

present constellation of opinion and pressures, i am very much afraid that

it will be among the books avoided by objective critics and burned by the

silent treatment of burial under book counters. It should be on the book-

shelves of everybody who wants to know unpublicized facts about certain

inescapable problems." —DOROTHY THOMPSON







“Mr. Lilienthal has some firm convictions, and he writes with frankness and

fervor... . That his book will increase the blood pressure of many of his

co-religionists is a foregone conclusion. That it will win a certain measure

of support is also certain.""—New York Times Book Review







“Mr. Lilienthal’s book gives us more of the ‘other side’ of the Israel-Arab

controversy than is to be had in the writings of the professional propa-

gandists of both groups. It is a stimulatingly written, sometimes provocative

book, but which every person interested in the solution of the problem

should read.''—RABBI WILLIAM A. ROSENBLUM, Temple Israel, N. Y., C.







“tT have read Alfred Lilienthal's book, What Price Israel, with keen interest.

For a man of Lilienthal’s background to write a book of this kind requires a

high degree of courage and integrity. | congratulate the author on his clear

and well documented presentation of his perfectly logical point of view."




—SIR MUHAMMAD ZAFFRULA KHAN, the Foreign Minister of Pakistan







“What makes Lilienthal’s book especially welcome is the fact that most

of the literature on Israel is one-sided and favorably slanted. Students and

teachers here will certainly be making good use of What Price Israel in

their investigation of the endless problems connected with the subject."’

—DR. PHILIP HITTI, Department of Oriental Languages and Literature, Princeton

University







“Whai Price Israel is a courageous, straight-from-the-shoulder exposition

of facts concerning which the American public, both Jewish and Christian,

is woefully ignorant.'"—DR MILLAR BURROWS, Chairman, Department of Near

Eastern Languages & Literature, Yale University







“Mr. Lilienthal has condensed a mass of confused and complex material

into a clear and authoritative statement of events about which much

ignorance centers. He has done a service to our country and all its citizens."







—RABBi MORRIS S. LAZARON