Truman was saving his own skin

Jewish World Review ^ | July 21, 2003 / 21 Tamuz, 5763 | Sidney Zion

[presidio9]

Do we let Harry Truman off the hook because, despite his self-recorded anti-Semitism, he bucked his State Department and recognized Israel?

That is the question in the aftermath of the discovery in the Truman Library of the most vicious remarks ever made about Jews by an American President.

The early returns indicate that Truman gets a grudging pass, since his deed of recognizing Israel overcomes, if not obliterates, his private words.

The underlying assumption is that by his decision to recognize the Jewish state, Truman was responsible for saving and even creating Israel. Against that, who cares what he thought? It's to his credit that he pushed away his prejudices, no matter how primitive.

The trouble with this analysis is that it ignores the fact that Truman imposed a harsh arms embargo on the Jews of Palestine, before, during and after his so-called brave recognition of Israel.

Truman styled it as an embargo on all arms to the Middle East, as if it were evenhanded, but he knew that the Brits were heavily arming the Palestinian Arabs, who went to war with the Jews the day after the United Nations voted to partition the Holy Land into Jewish and Arab states.

By his arms embargo, Truman left the Jews to their fate, which the Brits were sure would finish them off. With America laying off, the odds were overwhelming that 2,000 years of yearning would end with the final Jewish Kaddish.

The Palestinian Jews turned to the Soviets, who armed them through their Czechoslovakian clients. But all the while, the Truman administration not only deprived the Jews of guns, it attempted to double-cross them in the UN.

Months before Israel declared its statehood, the U.S. pushed for a trusteeship, abandoning the partition plan.

The end we know. Israel made it, against all odds - and against Truman. What we forget is the means by which a discarded, wiped-out people finally got a tiny piece of its ancient homeland.

And, irony of ironies, Truman ended up with the credit.

The story told is that Truman, pressed by his old haberdashery partner, Eddie Jacobson, met with Chaim Weizmann, who later became the first president of the Jewish state, and, bingo, there came Israel.

The story also has it that Clark Clifford, the President's young political adviser, convinced Truman that recognizing Israel was the only humane way to go.

Meanwhile, Gen. George Marshall was threatening to quit over the issue. Marshall, then secretary of state, believed that if Truman recognized Israel, it would simply be caving in to political pressure.

Now Truman's diary shows us that Marshall was right - it was all political. And we know that the story about Truman making his decision because he was convinced it was the only humane way to go was off the mark, too.

What really clinched the deal was that Clifford told Truman that he'd lose the 1948 election unless he recognized Israel. And that he'd better do it immediately, because New York Gov. Thomas Dewey, the Republican who would be his opponent, would demand it and take the Jewish vote. Moreover, the Russians were going to recognize Israel, too.

None of this would bother me today if the apologists for Truman would recognize why he did it, this man who wrote in that diary that "neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on" Jews with power.

[Tacis]

"Do we let Harry Truman off the hook because..."

We let Harry off the hook because he was a democrat!! Had Truman been a Republican, his few words in an old diary would be enough to crucify his memory and tear down any memorial that might have been built for him.

In today's world, no ultra-left wing, extremist liberal media organization will DARE do/say anything that might be viewed as criticism of the current neocommunist democrats.

[MEG33]

Interesting read.The Irony of the Russians arming Israel.I need to revisit the history of this.

[gaspar]

Check Michael Cohen's "Truman and Israel", UCalifornia Press, 1990.

[Courier]

Most take it as a given that the United States is/was always very supportive of Israel.

I can say without hesitation that knowing the truth would shock many.

During all its existence, the foreign policy establishment of the United States has been very hostile to Israel.

As this article mentions, at first for many years, there was an arms embargo on Israel.

In the 50's, there was a land for peace plan. But Israel didn't have the West Bank in the 50's. No, but Dullas, the Sec of State at the time proposed Israel give the Negev to Egypt for "peace".

The 67' war could have been avoided if the US had publicly stated that the security of Israel was a vital American interest. The US refused.

The first time the US did anything overtly pro-Israel was when Nixon sent supplies during the 73' war.

To this day, the US foreign policy establishment just wishes Israel would disappear.

Sometimes, who ever is President, is more or less attuned to that desire.

[MEG33]

A constant thorn maybe but any President who endangered Israel as a sovereign state..its right to exist would pay heavy price.Many of us want peace,despair that any solution exists and get discouraged but are passionate about Israel's survival.

[Courier]

I'm sure you and I disagree.

But I see an independent sovereign Palestinian State as a danger to continued Israeli existance.

[MEG33]

If they continued to attack Israel from a state of Palestine..the world and commie..proPalis can't use the usual rhetoric against Israeli retaliation ( one benefit).It would erase the freedom fighter myth.Arafat and the terrorist don't want peace..they want Israel to not exist.My hope always is there..We try because we must..but Arafat has got to go.

[tang-soo]

The story also has it that Clark Clifford, the President's young political adviser, convinced Truman that recognizing Israel was the only humane way to go.

Isn't Clifford the guy who died a few years ago and was let off the BCCI investigation because he was supposed to have Alzheimer's. In the mean time, the husband of Wonder Woman took the full brunt of the prosecution - Cant't remember his name and not sure what happened to him. Seems like so many threads point back to BCCI.

[Cicero]

There was another incident posted here a couple of days ago. A famous Jew (I don't recall who) came frequently to interview HST at his house in Missouri for a book he was writing, and wondered why he was always kept waiting on the front porch until the great man emerged to meet him. He finally asked Truman why he was always kept waiting outside, and Truman replied that no Jew had ever entered his house since it was built and no Jew ever would. Then he proceeded to blame this policy on his wife.

[Question_Assumptions]

A lot of conservatives let Harry Truman off the hook because he had the guts to nuke Japan and stopped the Russians from entering that theater of the war in full force.

[Marysecretary]

All of us have prejudices of one kind or another. It's doing the RIGHT thing that counts. He did the right thing.

[Marysecretary]

So do I. These people want to wipe Israel off the map and we want to give them a state? Nooo,nooo.

[CatoRenasci]

Interesting, if documented. I would be curious to see it. No gentleman, even if he held such views, would ever give offense to a guest - even a professional one - by saying such things to their face. But, then, I have never thought Truman as a gentleman (except by Act of Congress as an artillery officer in WWI).

Truman, like H.L. Mencken, was a man of his times. Most Americans from the mid-19th century through the mid-20th century held negative stereotypes of Jews - views we would today label antisemitic. Likewise, they held similar views of blacks, Asians, Southern Europeans and Slavs. Curiously, before the large scale immmigration of poor Jews from Eastern Europe, prejudice against Jews in the United States was not great. Oh, the usual cultural stereotypes existed, to be sure, but Jews were active in public and business life. Curiously, the situation in the South may have been better than in the North.

I think the important test is of behavior, not inner feelings.

[Courier]

The story of never being allowed into Truman's home with Truman claiming his wife refused to host a Jew at her home comes from David Susskind while he was producing this;

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/decision/videos.htm

[CatoRenasci]

Is the story documented? And, if it was in fact his wife, can anyone really blame him for prefering domestic harmony?

[MEG33]

I'm a Texan and there was a lack of anti semitism in my world.I really can't picture Truman being so insulting.

[CatoRenasci]

The closest my Southern-raised grandmother ever came to anti-semitism were rare rants about Wall Street moneymen - which some people would have seen as veiled anti-semitism. However, these rants were in the context of her reminiscences, and if you heard the names of the 'malfactors' she was denouncing there warn't nary a jew in the lot: Morgan, Vanderbilt, Harriman, etc. She was thoroughly unreconstructed, a yellow dog Democrat, and she saved her greatest scorn for carpetbaggers, scalliwags and Republicans. The only time she didn't vote a straight Democratic ticket before 1964 (she liked Goldwater) was 1928: and she voted against Al Smith because he was a Wet, not because he was Catholic.

[MEG33]

My family was similar.

[x]

Truman was hardly the cuddly figure of latter-day mythology. He was a petty, vindictive, bigoted, highly partisan Democrat.

But he did give Israel valuable support at a time when most Americans wouldn't have done so or didn't care. Surely as in Nixon's case, actions matter more than words, especially words written in private which may have been intended for no reader other than oneself.

Like Nixon, Truman was an embittered "little man" who needed to vent. Other political leaders, perhaps bigger and less bitter, have had the same need. What matters is the choice made in the end, not the private release of frustration.

The anger Truman expressed at Zionists was not strong enough to make him take the other side, even when there was much pressure and real reasons to do so.