Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, Volume 1 (33 page)

On 9 January 1945, at the start of his fourth and unprecedented term as president, Roosevelt received some honest advice from James Landis. He was the State Department’s Director of Economic Operations and a former Dean of the Harvard Law School. He was admired by some and despised by others because he was a liberal. His advice, actually a warning, was that any presidential action with regard to Palestine that did not go to the root of the matter “was not likely to advance very far” and that, for this reason, “it might be well for the President to avoid the issue entirely unless he was prepared to make some far-reaching proposals.”
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The essence of Landis’s advice to the President was revealed in the documents declassified in 1964:

A vacillating policy with reference to Zionism as in the past 20 years has proved to be the equivalent of no policy… The approach to the problem must start from the insistence that the objective of the Jewish commonwealth or the Jewish state as distinguished from the Jewish national home must be given up. The political objective implicit in the Jewish state idea will never be accepted by the Arab nations… But given an adequate conception of the Jewish national home, together with the political limitations that must be placed on that conception, it should be possible to sell that to the Jews and Arabs as well.

Of course, the one great stumbling block is the question of immigration. That question at present possesses a significance that it should not possess because of its relationship to the political as distinguished from the economic future of Palestine. In other words, if the extent of immigration can be related to the economic absorptive capacity of Palestine rather than to the political issue of the Jewish minority or majority, there is hope for striking an acceptable compromise even on the immigration question with the Arabs. This is particularly true now, for I believe the economic absorptive capacity of Palestine has been grossly exaggerated.
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While he studied that advice President Roosevelt was preparing for a summit with Churchill and Stalin. The world’s Big Three were to meet in Yalta in early February mainly for the purpose of discussing how to divide post-war Europe into agreed spheres of East-West influence; but they were also scheduled to discuss all outstanding problems including Palestine. And it was known that after the Yalta summit Roosevelt and Churchill were to have separate meetings with King Ibn Saud.

For the first time in Roosevelt’s long presidency the zealots in Zionism’s leadership were seriously worried. As Lilienthal noted, they were not fooled by Roosevelt. They knew that whatever he said for the purpose of preventing the Zionist lobby being mobilised against his party, he was not a supporter of the Zionist enterprise. Rabbi Neumann would later write that Roosevelt had “little time and thought” for the Zionist cause; and that, Neumann added, was why Zionism’s leaders in America had concentrated their pressure on those they could influence in both parties in both houses of Congress.
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The main purpose of the introduction of various pro-Zionist resolutions in Congress, plus the work the Zionists put into getting both main parties committed to Zionism in their 1944 election manifestos, had been to create a political environment in which Roosevelt would not be free to support a settlement of the Palestine problem that denied Zionism a state.

But on the eve of the Yalta summit Zionist zealots entertained the fear that President Roosevelt, under pressure from the State Department, might agree to a settlement of the Palestine problem that would put an end to Zionism’s ambitions.

Zionism viewed the State Department as being rabidly pro-Arab. True or false? First and foremost the State Department was what it was supposed to be—pro-America, which meant putting the American interest first. In that context the senior professionals in the State Department regarded the Zionist enterprise as a threat to American interests. Not an amazing position given that the whole Arab and Muslim world was opposed to the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. In that context the State Department was effectively anti-Zionist.

While President Roosevelt was making his final preparations for Yalta, the Zionists subjected the State Department and the White House to immense and intense lobby pressure. Its main purpose was to remind the President that his party had committed itself to Zionism and to demand unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine.

As it happened Palestine was not discussed by the Big Three at Yalta. The subject of what to do about Palestine was left, at Roosevelt’s request, for the discussions he and then Churchill were to have with Ibn Saud. (Stalin was happy to oblige because he had not yet made up his own mind about how to play the situation in Palestine for his own purposes. If the Americans ended up backing the Zionists, he would have the option of backing the Arabs. Perhaps).

Roosevelt’s meeting with the Saudi monarch took place on board the
U.S.S. Quincy
on the Great Bitter Lake in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Ibn Saud summarised the Arab case and explained to Roosevelt why it was that continued Jewish immigration and the purchase of land constituted a “grave threat” to the Arabs. After the meeting Roosevelt told his staff that he had learned more about the Arab-Jewish situation from Ibn Saud in five minutes than he had understood all his life. He also said he had been “deeply impressed by the intensity of the Arab feeling with regard to Palestine.”
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In response to Ibn Saud’s summary of the Arab case, President Roosevelt said he wished to assure His Majesty that he would “do nothing to assist the Jews against the Arabs” and would make “no move hostile to the Arab people.”
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The implication of what Roosevelt went on to say is that Ibn Saud expressed some doubts about what the President’s assurances were worth given the influence of the Zionist lobby in American politics and its ability to have pro-Zionist resolutions introduced in Congress. Roosevelt explained to the leader of the Arab world that it was impossible to prevent resolutions and speeches in Congress, but that, he said, was not the point. It was that the assurances he had given to His Majesty “concern my own future policy as Chief Executive of the United States Government.”
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Though there is nothing in the available record to support it (so far as I am aware), the evidence of events is that Roosevelt sought and obtained from Ibn Saud, in return for the presidential assurance, a promise that whatever it might say in public, Saudi Arabia would never use the oil weapon to put pressure on the U.S. (As we shall see, the evidence of events is also that at least one of Ibn Saud’s sons, Foreign Minister and King-to-be Feisal, thought that his father should not have given any such promise).

At the time of the meeting and after it, media reports asserted that President Roosevelt had urged the Saudi monarch to agree that more Jews should be admitted to Palestine. Roosevelt made no such pitch. But he did mention a possibility he knew Churchill was going to raise when he met with Ibn Saud—that some of the uprooted Jews of Nazi-ravaged Europe might be resettled in Libya. When Ibn Saud objected on the grounds that it would be unfair to the Muslims of North Africa, the two leaders agreed that the Jewish refugees would best be resettled “in the lands from which they were driven” and mainly Poland.

It is evident from the record that Roosevelt handled the Saudi monarch with great care and courtesy. Churchill’s approach a week later could not have been more different. Was it a pre-planned “good cop” (Roosevelt) “bad cop” (Churchill) routine? I think not. Churchill was by nature arrogant and a bully. He was also strongly pro-Zionist and something of a racist, especially with regard to the Arabs. He had once described them as “eaters of camel dung”.

According to what Ibn Saud later told William Eddy, America’s Chief of Mission in Saudi Arabia, Churchill arrived “confidently wielding a big stick.”
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That was a reference to the fact that Churchill began his meeting with the Saudi monarch by telling him that he probably would not have been King, or remained King, without Britain’s support. Churchill was more right than wrong. Ibn Saud had founded his country and his dynasty by the sword. Without British support, guns and money, Ibn Saud might not have been able to see off the competing tribes including the Hashemites.

Ibn Saud was smart enough to acknowledge (instead of disputing for reasons of face) the truth of what Churchill had said. It was the case, he replied, that British support for 20 years had enabled “my reign to be stable and fend off potential enemies on my frontiers.”
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But now he was the King, and the leader of the Arab world, he wanted from Churchill an assurance that Jewish immigration to Palestine would be stopped.

Churchill refused to give such an assurance, but he did say he would “not drive the Arabs out of Palestine or deprive them of their means of livelihood there.”
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How generous of him.

The previous year the National Executive Committee of the British Labour Party, then in Zionism’s pocket and on the brink of taking power from Churchill, had called for the Arabs to be transferred out of Palestine. In its report to the party’s 1944 annual conference, the National Executive Committee had said, “Let the Arabs be encouraged to move out as the Jews move in.”
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The report was officially adopted by the annual conference. As Michael Adams and Christopher Mayhew noted in
Publish It Not—The Middle East Cover-Up
, the British Labour Party “is probably the only political party in the world to have openly advocated that the Palestinians should be exiled from their homeland to make way for the future Israelis.”
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Even the pro-Zionist and to a degree anti-Arab Churchill was not prepared to go that far. (I believe that Churchill’s pro-Zionist preference was not due to with any great affection for Jews or sympathy with the Zionist cause for its own sake. I believe Churchill was pro-Zionism only because he saw it as a force to assist with the maintenance of the British Empire.)

In essence Churchill was telling Ibn Saud that he owed the British a debt of gratitude and that Britain was now requiring repayment of that debt. What Britain wanted by way of repayment was Arab moderation and a realistic compromise with Zionism.

That made Ibn Saud angry. He later told Eddy that what Churchill had demanded of him was not gratitude or even help. “He was requiring me to wipe out my honour and destroy my soul.”
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Ibn Saud told Churchill that he would not make a compromise with Zionism and “in the preposterous event that I was willing to do so, it would not be a favour to Britain since the promotion of Zionism from any quarter must indubitably bring bloodshed and widespread disorder in the Arab lands with certainly no benefit to Britain or anyone else.”
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After that, according to what Ibn Saud told Eddy, “Churchill laid down his big stick.” The Saudi monarch then said to Churchill: “You British and your allies will be making the wrong choice between a friendly and peaceful Arab world and a struggle to the death between Arabs and Jews if unreasonable immigration of Jews to Palestine is renewed. In any case the formula must be arrived at by and with Arab consent.”
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Those words seem to me to be profoundly significant. They almost demand the conclusion that there
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circumstances in which Ibn Saud as leader of the Arab world was prepared to compromise to the extent of allowing more Jews to enter Palestine. But the right circumstances would be created only if Roosevelt and Churchill took the advice offered by Landis (and others) and told the Zionists that the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine had to be dropped. I think Ibn Saud was signalling that, in such circumstances, the Arabs, provided they were consulted on “the formula”, would be prepared to acquiesce in the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine—the national home of the Balfour Declaration as envisaged by Ahad Ha-am.

Unfortunately the first thing President Roosevelt did when he got back to Washington after his meeting with Ibn Saud was to authorise Rabbi Wise to say that he, the President, was still in favour of unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine and the creation there of a Jewish state!

Again the media’s reporting of President Roosevelt’s position as stated by Rabbi Wise and other leading Zionists led to anger and protests, and confusion at leadership level, in the Arab world. And again the State Department had to resort to behind-closed-doors crisis management. This time America’s Chiefs of Mission in the Arab world were instructed to tell Arab leaders in private not to panic and to appreciate that, for reasons of domestic politics, the President had to play games with the Zionists.

By now the most senior and responsible officials in the State Department were greatly alarmed by what Landis had correctly described as their country’s “vacillating policy with reference to Zionism”; and they began to press for a definitive Palestine policy that would “give full consideration to U.S. long-term interests.”

On 10 March President Roosevelt received letters simultaneously from King Ibn Saud and other Arab leaders. The letters were detailed presentations of the Arab case—the historical, legal, political and moral basis of Arab rights to and claim on Palestine. Also signalled was the willingness of the Arabs to fight if necessary to defend their position in Palestine.

Shortly after President Roosevelt had read the Arab letters, the State Department warned him of how dangerous the situation was becoming. A position paper written by Wallace Murray, the Director of the office of Near Eastern Affairs in the State Department, said this: “The President’s continued support of Zionism may thus lead to actual bloodshed in the Near East and even endanger the security of our immensely valuable oil concession in Saudi Arabia.”
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