Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, Volume 1 (32 page)

Shortly after America entered the war, Roosevelt agreed in principle with Churchill (then prime minister) that they needed to say something which, they hoped, would lower the rising temperature of Arab anger; anger that was being generated by continuing Jewish immigration into Palestine and the fact that resolution of the Palestine problem was being delayed until the war was over. Churchill and Roosevelt feared that an explosion of Arab anger could jeopardise the Allied war effort. There were, in fact, many Arabs who were hoping that the enemy (Nazi Germany) of their enemy (Britain) would win the war. Roosevelt also wanted to make a statement which he hoped would be sufficient to persuade the Zionist lobby to call off its political bombardment of the White House while the war was in progress.

After lengthy consultations in London and Washington the text of a joint Anglo-American statement was prepared for release to the public. It assured both Arabs and Jews that though a resolution of the Palestine problem was being delayed until after the war, no decision about the future of Palestine would be reached without prior consultation with both. And it emphasised that “no changes brought about by force in the status of Palestine or the administration of the country would be permitted or acquiesced in.”
¹⁴

As a holding statement designed to underpin the British and American war effort, it was both reasonable and fair;
but it was not what Zionism wanted and it was not released
. Before it could be made public, the text was leaked to the Zionists and they arranged for the highest government officials to be flooded with protests.
¹⁵
And Roosevelt, for reasons of domestic politics, acquiesced in the suppression of the joint Anglo-American statement.

The real zealots in the American Zionist camp saw this as a sign of weakness on Roosevelt’s part and determined to turn their heat on him up. By now they were enjoying and benefiting from the inspirational assistance of Ben-Gurion himself.

In his epic book, Israel,
A Personal History
, Ben-Gurion wrote:

America’s entrance into the war left no room for doubt that after the war the United States rather than England would call the tune. In my capacity as Chairman of the Executive in Jerusalem, I travelled to the United States in 1940 and 1942 to enlist the support of American Jewry in the struggle to cancel out the White Paper and establish a Jewish state after the war.
¹⁶

The extent to which organised American Jewry did rally to that cause was apparent when American Zionist organisations endorsed what became known as the Biltmore Program. In 1942 the first ever conference of the American Zionist Movement took place in New York’s Biltmore Hotel. The conference approved the following program:

 


1. 1. That the gates of Palestine be opened to Jewish immigration.
   

2. 2. That the Jewish Agency be vested with control of immigration into Palestine and with the necessary authority for up-building the country, including the development of its unoccupied and uncultivated lands.
   

3. 3. That Palestine (all of it) be established as a Jewish Commonwealth integrated into the structure of the new democratic world.
   ¹⁷
   

As Ben-Gurion noted, the Biltmore Program “became the official platform of the WZ0.”
¹⁸
By this time Weizmann’s influence on world Zionism was declining and Ben-Gurion’s was increasing.

One of the products of Zionism’s awesome mobilising ability was the formation of what was called the American Palestine Committee (APC). It had a top-tier membership of hundreds including Cabinet members, politicians in both branches of Congress, governors, mayors, other elected officials and influential personalities from all walks of life. The task of APC people on behalf of Zionism was to exert pressure everywhere it counted, with special attention, in addition to Congress and the White House, to the media and advertising worlds. (In the newspaper world editorial lines can be determined, and content can be suppressed, by pressure from advertisers).

In December 1942 American Zionists fired what was effectively the first shot in their campaign to have Roosevelt do their bidding. It took the form of a joint statement signed by 63 Senators and 181 members of the House of Representatives. It called on the President “to restore the Jewish homeland.” Most if not all of those who signed would have been aware that “homeland” was the euphemism for “state”; and some would have known, as Hurley had reported to Roosevelt, that the state the Zionists in Palestine had in mind was one that embraced all of Palestine and probably Transjordan, with provision for the Arabs of Palestine to be transferred to Iraq. The Senators and Representatives who signed the joint statement were effectively asking President Roosevelt to read the riot act to the Arabs on Zionism’s behalf.

Instead of doing that President Roosevelt welcomed a State Department initiative to send a special emissary for talks with the leader of the Arab world, Saudi Arabia’s founding father, King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, to find out if he had any suggestions that might form the basis for a settlement of the Palestine problem.

Saudi Arabia was the most important and influential Arab country; this on account of its role not only as the Guardian of Islam’s Holy Places, but its oil and thus the money which enabled Saudi Arabia’s rulers to buy off Arab troublemakers—states as well as groups.

The State Department’s special emissary for the meeting with Ibn Saud was Colonel Harold B. Hoskins. Early in 1943 he had headed a mission to the Middle East and North Africa. It was decided that he was the best person to engage with Ibn Saud because of his intimate knowledge of the region and the fact that he spoke Arabic fluently.

When Hoskins set out on his mission in August 1943 the State Department was fully informed—by its resident representative in Riyadh, James Moose—of Ibn Saud’s position. He was, as Moose had reported, totally opposed to the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine and “vehemently opposed” to further Jewish immigration.

President Roosevelt’s input to the Hoskins mission was the suggestion that Ibn Saud be asked to consider the proposition that he should meet with Weizmann.

Hoskins had conversations with the Saudi monarch every day for a week. In the course of them Ibn Saud rejected the idea of a meeting with Weizmann on the grounds that his position of leadership in the Arab world did not permit him “to speak for Palestine, much less deliver Palestine to the Jews.”
¹⁹
But there was more to it. Ibn Saud told Hoskins that during the first year of the war Weizmann had “impugned his character and motives” by attempting to bribe him with an offer of £20 million (pounds sterling).
²⁰
And still there was more. Ibn Saud had been told, he informed Hoskins, that Weizmann’s promise of payment had been guaranteed by President Roosevelt himself. When this story was relayed to Roosevelt he was furious at the use of his name “as a guarantor of payment” when there was, he said, “no basis in fact for doing so.”
²¹
(Was the politician
par excellence
telling the truth?)

Ibn Saud also showed Hoskins evidence of the floods of telegrams and congratulations he had received from Arabs and Muslims all over the world for his anti-Zionist stance. Hoskins concluded that the Saudi monarch “could never afford to support Jewish claims to Palestine.”
²²

Because of Saudi Arabia’s growing strategic significance, President Roosevelt was profoundly troubled by the strength of Ibn Saud’s total opposition to the Zionist enterprise. So troubled that towards the end of 1943 he wrote a personal and private letter to the Saudi monarch. It gave him the assurances that were contained in the joint Anglo-American statement the President had shelved because of Zionist pressure. In fact Roosevelt sent similar personal and private letters to other Arab leaders. To this point America’s Zionist leaders were not too dismayed by Roosevelt’s refusal so far to commit himself to their cause. Why? 1944 was an election year and Zionism’s leaders knew that during the election campaign many candidates running for office, including their party leaders, would be at their most vulnerable so far as Zionist pressure was concerned. (By the 1970’s it was reckoned that candidates running for the White House needed campaign funds in excess of $50 million, those running for the Senate about $15 million and those running for the House of Representatives about $10 million. At the time official statistics showed that Jewish Americans were about three percent or less of the population and were contributing nearly 50 percent of campaign funds. The amounts needed in 1944 were, of course, smaller, but the political buying power of the Zionist lobby was and is a constant of American politics).

To create a pressure point early in the 1944 election campaign the Zionist lobby arranged for the Wright-Compton resolution to be introduced in Congress. It called for unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth there. The Wright-Compton resolution became the subject of lengthy hearings before the Foreign Affairs Committee and it took a letter from the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, to get the hearings suspended and the resolution shelved. In his letter to Committee Chairman Sol Bloom asking for the resolution to be shelved, Stimson said the hearings were vastly complicating the Middle East picture, and that continuing with them “would be prejudicial to the successful prosecution of the war.”
²³

The vastly complicating factor was the protests including riots that were rocking the Arab world as a consequence of the introduction of the Wright-Compton resolution and the hearings on it. The State Department was so alarmed that it sought and obtained President Roosevelt’s approval to issue the suppressed Anglo-American statement. But before it could be issued, Roosevelt was obliged to receive two of American Zionism’s most powerful and influential leaders—Rabbi Stephen Wise and Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver.

Rabbi Wise was polite and courteous, a gentleman who wrote “Dear Boss” letters to Roosevelt; and who had long been troubled by what Zionism was becoming and where it would take the Jews and Judaism. Rabbi Silver was a ranting extremist, a true zealot not open to compromise of any kind. It could have been said that Wise was Rabbi Nice and Silver was Rabbi Nasty. The question waiting for an answer was: Which of the two of them would emerge victorious from the internal struggle to determine how far American Zionism should go in compelling, effectively blackmailing, the government of the United States of America to support the creation of a Jewish state? At the State Department the hope was that Rabbi Nice would be able to stay in control of events in the American Zionist camp.

The two rabbis emerged from their meeting with Roosevelt to proclaim to the waiting media, and through it the world, that the President had affirmed his support for Zionism’s position as in the Biltmore Program. In other words, President Roosevelt was for a Jewish state. Or so he was saying through Rabbis Wise and Silver. Apparently.

In the Arab world reports of President’s Roosevelt’s support for the Zionist position as stated by the rabbis added anger to anger and raised the possibility of serious anti-American and anti-British disturbances in the region.

What happened next was revealed by the documents declassified in 1964. With the President’s agreement, the State Department resorted to behind closed-doors crisis management. It prepared and distributed for the use of American Chiefs of Mission in all Arab countries a “confidential interpretation” of the statements made by Rabbis Wise and Silver. Its purpose was to enable American Chiefs of Mission to tell Arab leaders in private that the President’s real position was unchanged—i.e. that he stood by his earlier assurances to them. The implication conveyed to Arab leaders was that a Jewish state was out of the question unless they agreed to it. At leadership level in the Arab world the damage done by the statement of the two rabbis was contained. But that was not the case in America. The truth about President Roosevelt’s real position had been conveyed to Arab leaders in private and remained a secret for many years. The only thing known to American public opinion in 1944 was that President Roosevelt supported the Zionist position—because Rabbis Wise and Silver had said so and the media had spread their statement and its pro-Zionist implications.

For the American election of 1944 both the major parties— Roosevelt’s Democrats and Governor Thomas E. Dewey’s Republicans— had a pro-Zionist plank in their campaign platforms. The Democrats’ campaign pledge was support for “a free and democratic Jewish commonwealth” in Palestine. The Republican campaign propaganda had referred only to “a free and democratic commonwealth”; but New York’s Governor Dewey, running against Roosevelt, and pressed by Rabbi Silver, subsequently made it clear that the commonwealth was to be a Jewish one.

Thus, in complete ignorance of what the Palestine problem was all about, the people of America were offered a choice between pro-Zionism and pro-Zionism. And this at a time when their President of the moment, and the man who was to be their President again, was privately of the view that, whatever else it might be, Zionism was not in America’s longer term best interests.

With the election won President Roosevelt moved quickly to try to prevent Zionism’s mouthpieces in Congress making the situation in the Middle East more dangerous than it already was. He asked his Secretary of State, Edward R. Stettinus, to tell Rabbi Wise and congressional leaders that the introduction of pro-Zionist resolutions in Congress was not desirable. That plea fell on deaf ears and pro-Zionist resolutions were introduced. It finally took a personal appearance by Stettinus before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to defeat proposed pro-Zionist legislation. Behind the scenes Roosevelt played his own part by telling key senators and Rabbi Wise that pro-Zionist resolutions could lead to bloodshed between Jews and Arabs.