A History of Zionism (102 page)

There was the risk that the Zionist organisation would be outflanked by the revisionists, but a much more formidable danger facing American Zionism was the lack of unity among the various Jewish bodies. The Zionists had agreed among themselves on the Biltmore formula, but they understood - and none better than Weizmann and Ben Gurion - that they would be able to exert real political influence in Washington only if they succeeded in gaining allies. It was not too difficult to win over the powerful Bnai Brith, headed at the time by Henry Monsky, a Zionist; the American Jewish Committee, on the other hand, was much less willing to give political support. Ben Gurion had reached agreement with Maurice Wertheim, then president of the American Jewish Committee, to act in common for maintaining Jewish rights in Palestine. But the AJC was in no circumstances willing to subscribe to the Biltmore formula, and Judge Proskauer, Wertheim’s successor, showed no enthusiasm for any common action.

After much bickering and protracted negotiations, the various Jewish bodies agreed to convene a representative American Jewish conference in New York in 1943. Among the 502 delegates at this meeting the Zionists had a large majority, but they had agreed beforehand on a moderate approach, with the stress on the elements common to all Jewish groups rather than the divisive features. For that reason it was decided not to raise the issue of Jewish statehood but to concentrate instead on rescue operations. This gentlemen’s agreement was broken by Rabbi Silver, who was not scheduled to speak but who decided nevertheless to make the most of the occasion. In a fiery speech he asserted that to refrain from expressing their convictions was to show neither statesmanship nor vision, neither courage nor faith: ‘We cannot truly rescue the Jews of Europe unless we have free immigration into Palestine. We cannot have free immigration into Palestine unless our political rights are recognised there. Our political rights cannot be recognised unless our historic connection with the country is acknowledged and our right to rebuild our national home is reaffirmed. These are inseparable links in the chain. The whole chain breaks if one of the links is missing.’
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With this speech Rabbi Silver staked his claim to the leadership of American Zionism. It was received with thunderous cheers. Many wept, and at the end of the conference a resolution submitted by Silver was adopted by 497 votes against four. The political effect of the performance was problematical, for as a result the AJC withdrew from the united front and much effort had to be spent in later years to restore unity of action.

Rabbi Silver’s militant tactics caused division even within the Zionist ranks. He did not get along well with the Washington office of the Jewish Agency, headed by Nahum Goldmann and Louis Lipsky, which had been established in May 1943. There were constant disputes about prerogatives and the division of labour. He quarrelled with Stephen Wise in 1944 and was forced to resign in late 1944 for having by his impetuosity brought a major diplomatic defeat on the Zionist cause. Silver was a Republican, whereas Wise, a lifelong Democrat, had advised the Zionist movement to put its trust in Roosevelt’s goodwill. Silver believed in a bi-partisan approach, distrusted ‘quiet diplomacy’, and was firmly convinced of the wisdom of the maxim: ‘Put not your trust in princes’. Silver pressed for bringing a pro-Zionist resolution to Congress without the approval of the president and the State Department. The resolution was defeated and Silver had to resign, but since he had such strong support among the Zionist rank and file he was back in office by July 1945.

Despite the many activities of American Zionism, despite the sound and fury of Bergson and Hecht, the results achieved during the war years were meagre. Roosevelt and his administration had the confidence and the warm support of the overwhelming majority of American Jewry. He was the champion of the common man; a good many Jews were appointed to public office during his presidency. After his death a poem appeared in the Zionist
New Palestine:

He was our friend when friends were few indeed

He raised his voice - when few his voice would heed

To stir the conscience of the world, to plead

That ancient wrongs be righted and our people freed.
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Yet on the two most vital issues, on Palestine and the admission of refugees, Roosevelt said little and did less. His conduct was anything but unequivocal. By comparison with American policy on Palestine, the British record was, as one historian has put it, one of almost Buchmanite honesty and straightforwardness. David Niles, who was assistant to Roosevelt and later on to Truman, wrote that he seriously doubted whether Israel would have come into existence if Roosevelt had lived. Roosevelt was a consummate politician. He knew that a determined effort on behalf of the Jews would have reaped few tangible rewards, for the Jewish vote was in any case his. At the same time it would have caused a great many difficulties and complications both at home and abroad. Roosevelt’s attitude towards the Jews was certainly not unfriendly, he was simply unwilling to go out of his way to help them. There was in him nothing like the vision and the moral conviction which had motivated men like Balfour or Lloyd George. If even a confirmed Zionist like Churchill claimed that nothing could be done for Zionism during the war there was no reason to expect support from an American president who had no firm convictions on the subject.

Roosevelt was at his most charming when he saw Weizmann in June 1943 and proposed a Jewish-Arab conference at some future date, possibly in his and Churchill’s presence - as if such a meeting would have served any useful purpose. He authorised Wise and Silver in March 1944 to announce that the American government had never given its approval to the White Paper. He declared that when a decision was reached in the future, justice would be done to those who sought a Jewish national home, for which the American government and people had always had the deepest sympathy. Yet in his communications with Arab rulers at the same time, assurances were given that the president did not really mean what he said. When Sir John Singleton, a member of the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry of 1946, saw the State Department files, he commented that Britain had not been the only power to promise the same thing to two different groups.
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A good deal of effort was put into a bi-partisan resolution to be submitted to Congress expressing clear support for Zionist aims. It was tabled by representatives Wright and Compton, and Senators Wagner and Taft. It proposed that the doors of Palestine should be opened and full opportunity be given for colonisation ‘so that the Jewish people may ultimately reconstitute Palestine as a free and democratic Jewish commonwealth’. But the initiative soon ran into trouble: anti-Zionist Jewish groups opposed it, as did Arab representatives. Above all, the State Department and the army registered their objections. General Marshall, the chief of staff, announced that he could not be responsible for the military complications in the Moslem world if the resolution were passed. Cordell Hull, secretary of state, said that it might disrupt negotiations with Saudi Arabia concerning the building of an oil pipeline. Hull suggested that the president himself should intervene if there was a real danger that the resolution would be adopted.
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The legislative decided to postpone hearings on the resolution for reasons of military expediency. Seven months later, the secretary of war informed Senator Taft that the military considerations which had led to his department’s veto were no longer so strong as before and that the issue should now be judged on its political merits. But the president and the State Department were still opposed, and Rabbi Silver’s attempt to circumvent them ended in failure. A third attempt to push the resolution through was made in October 1945 and succeeded (for what it was worth). President Truman, who had initially favoured it, withdrew his support when the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry was set up and it was feared that the resolution might interfere with its work.

In 1944 the Zionists succeeded in having pro-Zionist planks inserted in the electoral platform of the two big parties. It made little impression on President Roosevelt: when Senator Wagner suggested to him that Jewish displaced persons should not be returned to their countries of origin but allowed to proceed to Palestine, the president replied that about a million Jews were willing to go to Palestine, but that seventy million Moslems were eager to cut their throats, and he wanted to prevent such a massacre.

Roosevelt’s opposition was reinforced by his meeting with King Ibn Saud after the Yalta conference. He declared that he had learned more about the Jewish and Moslem problem in talking to the desert king for five minutes than in long exchanges of letters. Stephen Wise, as agitated as the other Jewish leaders about the absence of any reference to the Jewish tragedy in the president’s attitude, registered a protest. Whereupon the president assured him that he still favoured unrestricted immigration into Palestine. But again messages went out to Arab leaders that the United States would not countenance any change in the status of Palestine which would be objectionable to the Arabs.

The Zionists clearly were not very successful in their attempts to win Roosevelt for their cause, and it is tempting to speculate how the president, had he lived longer, would have retained the friendship of both Jews and Arabs. The Zionists managed to create a climate of opinion favourable to Zionism among legislators, church dignitaries, journalists and the public in general. The fate of European Jewry aroused sympathy among non-Jews, the efforts of a pioneering community in Palestine appealed to many Americans. But once the Zionists came up against the State Department, the Pentagon, and the White House, they faced interests and forces superior to their own, and references to the tragedy of the Jewish people did not cut much ice. The president himself, a curious mixture of patrician and popular tribune, of naivety and sophistication, of honesty and duplicity, clearly regarded the whole issue as a minor nuisance.

The last stage

In Palestine during the latter part of the war things were going from bad to worse. Twenty members of the Stern gang escaped from Latrun prison camp, their leader having been shot by British police in a raid in February 1942. They carried out bank robberies and other acts of terror on a small scale. The highlights of their activities were the attempt to kill the high commissioner, Sir Harold MacMichael, in the course of which his
aide-de-camp
was seriously injured, and the murder of Lord Moyne in Cairo by two of their members. The Zionist authorities cooperated with the British police in rounding up the terrorists, whom they regarded as a menace not so much to British rule as to the Jewish community. The ultra-patriotism of the Stern gang had manifested itself even earlier in totally indefensible actions, such as their attempts in 1941 to contact German emissaries in Beirut in order to establish a common anti-British liberation front.

IZL, which decided in winter 1943–4 to renew its anti-British activities, was a problem of a different order. During the early part of the war it had participated in the war effort. Several of its leading members had been killed in special operations undertaken on behalf of the British army command. By late 1943 the new leadership of IZL thought the time was ripe for resuming its attacks on the British. The danger of a German invasion had faded, and the British authorities continued to carry out the White Paper policy. IZL attacked the Palestine broadcasting station at Ramalla and various police stations in the Tel Aviv and Haifa area during 1944. More than two hundred of its members were arrested and exiled to Eritrea. The British authorities demanded the full support of the Jewish Agency in stamping out terrorism. Such assistance was given, albeit with some reluctance. The IZL had the support not only of the revisionists, but also, to a certain extent, of members of the religious parties and the right-wing General Zionists. Even sections of the Zionist Left were so exasperated by the lack of any effective help for European Jewry on the part of the British that the terrorist acts were sometimes understood if not condoned in these circles. What induced the Zionist leaders to turn against the terrorists was the overriding political consideration: the dissidents were doing grave, perhaps irreparable harm to Zionist policy. How could a Zionist foreign policy be formulated and carried out if the terrorists refused to accept internal discipline, trying to dictate their own line to the elected leadership of the yishuv?

The acts of terror were defended by some as desperate attempts to draw attention to the plight of the Jewish people. The world had ignored countless Zionist memoranda and declarations. Perhaps it would be more responsive to bullets and bombs? It was a mistaken assumption: while the war was on no one was likely to be favourably impressed by the assassination of a few British policemen.

It was not, however, only among some hot-headed youngsters that frustration and despair was spreading. When Weizmann came to Palestine in November 1944 he sensed the prevailing bitterness of the yishuv, reflected in official policy statements: Ben Gurion declared that in contrast to Weizmann and the Hashomer Hatzair he was firmly convinced that a political solution could not wait and that the speedy transfer of the displaced persons to Palestine was a most urgent necessity.
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Weizmann found it necessary to reiterate his belief in the coming of a Jewish state: ‘I don’t know when the Jewish state will come,’ he said in Tel Aviv on 30 November, ‘but it will not be long delayed.’ A few days later he was uttering words of warning against forcing the issue; a time of transition was needed; five or six years were nothing in a period such as the world was then going through. But this was exactly what the yishuv no longer wanted to hear. To a people not very patient at the best of times, five or six years now seemed an eternity. Weizmann again argued that he did not believe in sudden ‘jumps’. But how, the critics asked, was a basic change to be made if not by a sudden jump? Did he really believe that a Jewish state would somehow emerge as the result of patient negotiations, backstage diplomacy, hard work, persuasion and political pressure?