Success Has Many Parents, a Review of A Safe Haven, Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel by Allis and Ronald Radosh

by Daniel E. Levenson
May 9, 2010 

The period immediately after World War II was a time of great political change across the globe, and an ascendant America found itself grappling with the implications of an increasingly aggressive Soviet Union amidst the waning of several traditional colonial powers, chief among them, Great Britain. At the same time, the world was becoming more and more aware of the scale of the horrific acts perpetrated by the Germans and their allies throughout war-time Europe and the Middle East. The majority of the Jewish survivors of these unspeakable acts of barbarism wanted to leave Europe and go to Mandatory Palestine, but with the balance of power shifting dramatically between nations, the plight of the Jews seemed likely to go unheeded. There were a number of important figures who played a key role in ensuring that the Zionist dream would become a reality, ranging from David Ben-Gurion to former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

In a new book about this tumultuous period, the authors of A Safe Haven, Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel, take a close look at the actions of this accidental president, and seem to feel quite strongly that if it were not for the actions of President Truman, that the State of Israel would never have come into existence. To say, however, that history might have gone one way or another if not for the actions of a single individual is a difficult case to make. Authors Allis and Ronald Radosh do come to this conclusion, however, at the end of their well-written look at the actions of the Truman administration in the period shortly before the end of World War II up until the birth of the modern State of Israel. In doing so, they present a clear portrait of the turbulent period after World War II and do a good job along the way of providing necessary background information without slowing the narrative flow.

 
In order to understand the foreign policy legacy that Truman would inherit from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it is important to get a sense of FDR’s views on the Middle East, as well as the complicated state of trans-Atlantic relations in the aftermath of World War II. The authors seem to have a good grasp of the circumstances and events of this period, and provide a lucid account of Roosevelt’s interactions with both Arab and European leaders vis-à-vis the idea of a Jewish state in the Middle East.

Equally important to this telling of the story of the relationship between President Truman and the Zionist cause is their description of key Jewish leaders and organizations in both the United States and Mandatory Palestine. Chaim Weizman, for example, comes across as a wise and dedicated eminence gris of the Zionist movement, working tirelessly to lobby Truman on behalf of the Jewish leadership in Palestine. Likewise, their descriptions of Golda Meyer, David Ben-Gurion, Rabbi Stephen Wise and US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter are also quite engaging and help to paint a more complete picture of the period. Such descriptions would have been even more interesting if the authors had provided greater insight into how they themselves viewed Truman and his actions, as opposed to just telling us mainly how Truman saw them.

 
Many of these key leaders in the American Jewish community were instrumental in convincing President Truman both of the necessity of a Jewish state and of the importance of establishing such a state in the historical homeland of the Jewish people. One of the most interesting, and perhaps least likely, American Jews to play a pivotal role in helping to create connections between the White House and the Zionist leadership was an old business partner of Truman’s named Eddie Jacobson. Jacobson comes across as an admirable figure, someone who was deeply moved by the plight of his fellow Jews in Europe and the Middle East, and felt compelled to do something about it. The authors make it quite clear that Jacobson placed a high value on his friendship with Truman, and it was only in the interest of saving lives and preventing a further massacre of Jews that he was willing to make use of his unique channel to the White House.

This book also explores the complex and often quite strained relationship between Truman and the US State Department (which had a decidedly pro-Arab bent when it came to Mid-East policy) as well as the difficulties that the President faced in trying to coordinate any kind of policy on Mandatory Palestine with the British. For the British government this was a particularly frustrating period both domestically and abroad. They had been in control of Palestine since the end of World War I and found it increasingly difficult to govern as tensions rose between Jewish and Arab nationalists who clashed with each other as well as the British administration in Mandatory Palestine.  As the authors note, this put the British in a different position than their former allies across the Atlantic when it came to the idea of a Jewish State in the Middle East, and such differences were a significant source of tension between the White House and Whitehall.

The authors also do a thorough job of chronicling the consistent opposition by Arab leaders to the creation of a Jewish state in the Middle East, noting that the most violent rejection of the idea came from the Saudi King, Ibn Saud, who flatly rejected the idea that such a nation had any place in the region.  One of the most disturbing possibilities that the authors present is the idea that Haj Amin Al-Huseeini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, was in a position to possibly become the leader of a new Arab state in Palestine. The actions of the Grand Mufti in relation to the Jews of both the Middle East and Europe are presented as particularly horrifying, and rightly so.  The evidence shows that even prior to World War II, he had been in league with the Nazi party, receiving funds from the organization which he used to instigate riots in Mandatory Palestine in 1936. During the war, the authors note that he was involved in causing the deaths of 400 Jews in Iraq, helped organize Arab Nazi military units while living in Germany, visited the gas chambers at Auschwitz and wrote a letter to Himmler, chastising him for being “too lenient” with the Jews.

One of the more interesting developments that the authors explore is the creation of the “Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry,” which was a joint commission made up of US and British officials, tasked with exploring issues surrounding the movement of Jews from Europe to Mandatory Palestine and the feasibility of creating a Jewish state there. The committee traveled extensively in their investigations, but what seems to have made the most profound impression on some of the commissioners was their visit to the DP (Displaced Persons) camps in Europe. The authors note that “All of the committee members had been extremely moved by their experiences in Europe. The majority had concluded that Anti-Semitism was still very strong; that little less than death would destroy the wish of the Jewish Displace Person to go to Palestine …” Once the work of the committee was complete, they decided to call for the creation of not separate Arab and Jewish states, but one state.  More importantly, they came to the conclusion that the British government should allow for 100,000 Jewish DP’s to immigrate to Palestine right away. The question of partition vs. the creation of one state (to be shared by both Jews and Arabs) was at the center of the debate about how to proceed once it became clear that neither Arabs nor Jews living in Mandatory Palestine intended to voluntarily give up their own national aspirations. The Arab leadership was adamant in its refusal of any partition plan, while the Jewish leadership was internally divided on the issue, with some Jewish leaders pushing for a solution that would give them all of the land they felt they needed to ensure the creation of a viable state, while others thought they should work to build up the state in areas of mandatory Palestine where the majority of the population was already Jewish.

 
This raises an interesting question as to how things might have been different if the Arab leadership had at least been willing to discuss the possibility of partition. The end result may still have been the same, but the outright rejection of any contingency besides a fully Arab state in Mandatory Palestine and a promise of war in all other cases, gave the Jews little choice but to declare their own nation and fight to defend it. One interesting question the authors might have asked is whether the Saudis could have somehow also tried to lay down a framework for future diplomatic discussions between the Arab powers and the Jews, instead of taking such a deeply intractable position which set the stage for a seemingly endless stream of conflicts which have continued up to the present day.

Ultimately, Truman chose to grant de facto recognition to the State of Israel after Arab leaders rejected the United Nations decision and made good their threat of war launching a massive military campaign against the fledgling Jewish state. Truman faced immense pressure from Secretary of State George Marshall, who was very vocal in his opposition to US recognition of Israel after Zionist leaders in Palestine declared statehood. The authors provide a vivid account of one especially tense meeting in the Oval Office on this issue, between the president and Marshall in which Marshall’s behavior bordered on outright insubordination, and the moment really comes alive on the page.

In the end, the authors come to the conclusion that the State of Israel would not have come into existence except for the actions of Truman, chief among them, his willingness to grant de facto recognition to the Jewish state. Recognition by the United States was certainly important, but to say that he was the one individual upon whom the entire enterprise depended is to overstate does not seem like a credible assertion. Even the authors admit that while the majority of evidence points to the idea that Truman was a supporter of the Zionist cause, there were certainly times when his support wavered, especially when he became frustrated with what he saw as excessive pressure coming from Zionist leaders.

 
The pursuit of the Zionist dream has always consisted of the work of many individuals and groups. Theodore Hertzel and his ability to beautifully articulate his vision of the rebirth of the Jewish people as a political entity, as well as those who made up the first Alyah in the late 19th century, were all vital for jumpstarting modern Zionism, and the work of people such as Chaim Weizman, Golda Meyer, and the leaders of the Hagganah and the Jewish Agency kept it alive in the first half of the twentieth century. In the United States those who helped make the State of Israel a reality ranged from former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Truman friend Eddie Jacobson to White House Adviser Clark Clifford, Christian Zionist leaders, Rabbi Stephen Wise,  and the United Nations.

The authors provide such a rich and detailed portrait of the role that all of these remarkable men and women played in helping to establish the State of Israel, and yet they seem to lose sight of this in their assertion that Truman was the one key figure who made it all possible. This is a fine book, and offers a well-written and interesting look at some of the major events leading up to the founding of the State of Israel, but it would have benefited greatly from a more detailed look at the role that other leaders in the United States, Great Britain and the Middle East played in the difficult period surrounding the establishment of the first democracy in the Middle East.

A Safe Haven, Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel by Allis and Ronald Radosh. HarperCollins: New York, 2009.

Copyright Daniel E. Levenson 2010