Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, Volume 1 (53 page)

Marshall was also concerned with the standing of the Presidency itself. If the President did what Clifford was proposing, “the great dignity of the office would be seriously diminished.”

According to his own account of the conversation Marshall summed up his position in the following way: “I said bluntly that if the President were to follow Mr. Clifford’s advice and if in the elections I were to vote, I would vote against the President.”

Clifford later described himself as being “enraged”. Marshall, he said, had spoken “in a righteous God-damned Baptist tone.”
⁷¹

While Marshall glared at Clifford, Lovett continued the attack on what the Special Counsel to the President was proposing. It would be, he said, “highly injurious to the UN to announce recognition of the Jewish state even before it comes into existence and while the General Assembly, which was called into being at the request of the U.S., is still debating the future government of Palestine.”
⁷²
More or less echoing Marshall, Lovett also said it would be “injurious to the prestige of the President.”
⁷³

Finally, Lovett said, there was this to consider: “To recognise the Jewish state prematurely would be buying a pig in a poke. How do we know what kind of Jewish State would be set up?”
⁷⁴

At the back of Lovett’s mind and troubling him were the assurances he had sent weeks previously to King Ibn Saud and Egypt’s King Farouk. After the rigged vote at the General Assembly in favour of partition, it had fallen to Lovett as Undersecretary of State to give those two monarchs some comfort. In cables to Jeddah and Cairo, Lovett had instructed U.S. Ambassadors to tell them the following:

It is understood that one of the reasons for Arab resentment at the General Assembly decision is concern lest the Zionists intend eventually to use their state as a base for territorial expansion in the Middle East at the expense of the Arabs. It is the conviction of the U.S. government, based on conversations with responsible Zionist leaders, that they have no expansionist designs and are most anxious to live with the Arabs in the future on cordial terms and to establish with them relations of a mutually advantageous character... If at a later time, persons or groups should obtain control of the Jewish state who have aggressive designs against their neighbours, the U.S. would be prepared to firmly oppose such aggressiveness in the United Nations and before world opinion.
⁷⁵

I think it is reasonable to imagine that Lovett, when he made his “pig in a poke” comment, was entertaining the fear that the assurances he had given the Arabs would prove to be not worth the paper they had been written on.

President Truman, apparently neutral throughout the confrontation in the White House, brought the meeting to an end by suggesting that he was “inclined to side with Secretary Marshall” and that they should “sleep on it.”
⁷⁶

At his scheduled press conference the following day, 13 May, Truman did not make the statement Niles and Clifford had wanted. It was later to emerge that he had been impressed by a memorandum from the State Department’s Legal Adviser, Ernest M. Gross. This memorandum confirmed the view Lovett had represented at the showdown meeting— that premature recognition of the Jewish state would be “wrongful in international law”; and that even recognition immediately after Israel came into being “could not meet the State Department’s standard requirements for recognition.”
⁷⁷

After the White House showdown meeting, Lovett had instructed Gross to send the memorandum to Clifford; and Clifford had had no choice but to show it to the President or brief him on it.

The Gross memorandum laid out “the deciding criteria which have in the past been employed in granting or withholding recognition”. There were three:

1. (a) de facto control of the territory and machinery of the state, including the maintenance of public order;
   

2. (b) the ability and willingness of a government to discharge its international obligations; and
   

3. (c) general acquiescence of the people of the country to the government in power.
   

It was natural, the memorandum added, that after the creation of a new state, some time would be required to ascertain whether the criteria were being met by the government in power. But there was one consideration above all others. “
A prerequisite for all criteria is receipt of the request for recognition from the government itself
.”

In principle there was no way President Truman could recognise the new Jewish state (if that was to be his decision) unless and until it was in existence and its government had submitted a request for recognition. But that was not the way it happened.

When President Truman did not announce on 13 May that he was intending to recognise the Jewish state, he received another letter from Weizmann.

For several days previously, and as he noted in his diary, Weizmann had been strengthening contacts “with our friends in Washington.”
⁷⁸
The friends were Niles and Clifford; and it was Niles who told Weizmann there was a tactical need for another powerful letter from him to the President.
By this time, it must have been more than obvious to Niles, the President was being torn apart by his desire to work for “the best interests of the whole nation” (Truman’s own words) and the necessities of domestic politics—the need to appease the Zionist lobby in order not to lose Jewish campaign funds and votes.

My guess is that Niles, witnessing Truman’s agony, was concerned that the President might not feel able to recognise a Jewish state that came into being on the basis of a unilateral declaration of independence.

I can imagine Niles asking himself: “Are we really about to win (the struggle to determine who would have most influence on Truman) or, finally, will the President be swayed by the argument that the creation of a Jewish state in the face of total Arab opposition is not in America’s best interests?” Niles was realistic enough to know that, in normal circumstances, the idea of the President of the United States of America going against the consistent advice of his Departments of State and Defence, and the intelligence community, was preposterous. That was on the one hand. On the other hand, the fact was that the circumstances were not normal because of the Nazi holocaust and leverage it had given the Zionists to influence Truman during the End Game, through Weizmann especially. Praise the Lord for Eddie Jacobson.

So I can also imagine Niles thinking to himself that another letter from Weizmann was needed at this most critical of moments to tip the balance of the President’s mind in Zionism’s favour.

Weizmann’s letter was a passionate plea for the U.S. to “promptly recognise the Provisional Government of the new Jewish state.”
⁷⁹

There is nothing in the known record of events to suggest that Truman had made up his mind to recognise the Jewish state (when it came into existence) before his receipt of Weizmann’s letter of 13 May. It would seem that the President made his decision in the late evening of that day or the early morning of the next.

My own interpretation is that the Weizmann letter and all it represented emotionally did tip the balance of President Truman’s mind. And I think that was as good as confirmed nearly 20 years later (in June of 1965), when former President Truman sent a message to the B’nai B’rith Convention in Tel Aviv. “It is a fact of history”, the message said, “that Eddie Jacobson’s contribution was of decisive importance.”
⁸⁰
One possible inference was that if Eddie had not persuaded Harry to open his door to Weizmann, the President’s final decision might have been a different one. Put another way, Weizmann’s influence on Truman—actually on his emotions—was far greater than even the Zionists themselves, with one exception, could have believed. The exception was Niles. He knew that the elderly and sick Weizmann was his trump card and he knew when and how to play it to best advantage.

It was, however, Clifford who masterminded what can be called the
Recognition Sting
.

Precisely what happened and why in Washington on 14 May 1948 remains something of a mystery to this day.

At about 11.30 in the morning Clifford communicated with Eliahu Epstein. He was the representative in Washington of the Jewish Agency and, as Eliahu Elath, would shortly become the first Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. According to John Snetsinger’s account in
Truman, The Jewish Vote and the Creation of Israel
, Clifford’s communication with Epstein was by telephone. But according to George Elsey, Clifford’s assistant, Epstein met with Clifford in the White House.

Clifford informed Epstein that the U.S. was prepared to recognise the Jewish state upon the declaration of its independence but…
The U.S. move would have to be in response to a formal request for recognition from the government of the new state, and the request was wanted that afternoon!

Initially, Epstein might have wondered if Clifford had taken leave of his senses. Technically the new Jewish state could not come into existence before midnight in Palestine, 6.00 p.m. Washington time (i.e. when the British Mandate formally expired). A provisional government that could not be in existence before then could not submit a formal request for recognition that afternoon! Epstein knew, of course, that Ben-Gurion was intending to make the unilateral declaration of independence at 4.00 p.m. Palestine time, before the start of the Sabbath which would prevent orthodox members of the provisional government-in-waiting from travelling by car or even affixing their signature to a proclamation of independence; but that did not change the technical reality—a unilaterally declared Jewish state would not make a request for recognition until midnight in Palestine, 6.00 p.m.Washington time.

The two men then agreed that Epstein would take responsibility for fabricating a formal request for recognition—i.e. on behalf of a government that did not exist of a state that did not exist.

In the fabricated letter of request delivered to Clifford at the White House, Epstein said he had been authorised by the (non-existent) provisional government of the (non-existent) Jewish state “to express the hope that your government will welcome the Jewish state into the community of nations.”

At Clifford’s request, in order to improve the prospects of Truman going against the advice of Marshall and Lovett supported by the Gross memorandum, Epstein took upon himself the responsibility for declaring that Israel would accept the boundaries as defined by the partition resolution. (He also knew, of course, that Ben-Gurion had no such intention).

Question:
Why was it necessary to fabricate a request for recognition?
Put another way: Why was it that Clifford (and President Truman?) could not wait for the real thing to come from the provisional government of the Jewish state?

There is only one plausible answer.

The idea to fabricate the letter of request for recognition was born in Clifford’s mind. His logic? The instant the Jewish state came into existence (making the proceedings of the General Assembly an irrelevance), Truman would come under the most intense pressure ever to recognise it. If he had then to say he was waiting for a formal request for recognition, his position could easily be misrepresented, all the more so if for any reason the provisional government took time to get its act together or the request for recognition was delayed for whatever reason, including war. In this scenario Clifford feared the cry would go up that President Truman was reluctant to recognise the Jewish state. That would seriously damage his re-election campaign and the prospects of many other Democrats running for office. But with the fabricated letter of request the President would have scope enough, for the sake of appearances, to recognise the Jewish state within minutes of its coming into being. At a stroke that would remove Zionism’s threat to the President and his party. There would have been a worst-case scenario in Clifford’s mind. If U.S. recognition was delayed for any reason, it might never be given.

The probability is that Clifford was acting entirely on his own initiative to serve what he regarded as his President’s best interest. Getting re-elected. But it may well have been that Truman had expressed to Clifford his private fear that, if he did not recognise the Jewish state within moments of its birth, he would be crucified.

The charitable assumption is that Clifford did not ask the President to authorise or in any way approve the fabrication strategy, and that the fabricated letter was not placed before Truman until moments after midnight Palestine time. In other words, Truman assumed it was an actual request from the actual provisional government of Israel.

But would Clifford have taken such an initiative without at least a nod and a wink from the President? If Truman did have advance knowledge of the fabrication strategy, it would have to be said that he was, out of desperation, a party to a conspiracy.

There is no certainty about when others in the Truman administration at Executive level—most notably Secretary of State Marshall—were informed of the President’s decision to give instant recognition to the Jewish state. Early in the afternoon, when Epstein was completing his work on the fabricated letter of request, Clifford was still indicating that the President had not made up his mind.

After lunch at the F Street Club, Clifford had a conversation with Lovett whom he, Clifford, regarded as the enemy.