Truman Was Saving His Own Skin

Sidney Zion explains the real meaning behind the revelations of President Harry S Truman's anti-Jewish comments.

The early returns indicate that Truman gets a grudging pass [over his anti-Jewish comments], 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.
...
What really clinched the deal [that Truman's motivations for recognizing Israel were purely political] was that [advisor Clark] 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.