Palestine to Israel: Mandate to State, 1945-1948 (Volume I): Rebellion Launched, 1945-1946 9781618118752

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PALESTINE TO ISRAEL Mandate to State, 1945-1948

Touro University Press Books

Series Editors Michael A. Shmidman, PhD (Touro College, New York) Simcha Fishbane, PhD (Touro College, New York)

PALESTINE TO ISRAEL Mandate to State, 1945-1948 Volume I: Rebellion Launched, 1945-1946

Monty Noam Penkower

New York 2019

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Penkower, Monty Noam, 1942- author. Title: Palestine to Israel : mandate to state, 1945-1948 / Monty N. Penkower. Description: New York, NY : Touro University Press, 2019. | Series: Touro University Press books Identifiers: LCCN 2018023261 (print) | LCCN 2018032209 (ebook) | ISBN 9781618118752 (ebook) | ISBN 9781618118738 | ISBN 9781618118738 (volume 1 : hardcover) | ISBN 9781618118745 (volume 1 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781618118769 (volume 2 : hardcover) | ISBN 9781618118776 (volume 2 : paperback) Subjects: LCSH: Palestine—History—1929-1948. | Israel—History—1948-1967. Classification: LCC DS126.4 (ebook) | LCC DS126.4 .P435 2018 (print) | DDC 956.94/04—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018023261 ISBN (hardback) 9781618118738 (vol. I) ISBN (hardback) 9781618118769 (vol. II) ISBN (paperback) 9781618118745 (vol. I) ISBN (paperback) 9781618118776 (vol. II) ISBN (electronic) 9781618118752 Book design by Kryon Publishing Services (P) Ltd. www.kryonpublishing.com Cover design by Ivan Grave ©Touro University Press, 2019 Published by Touro University Press and Academic Studies Press. Typeset, printed and distributed by Academic Studies Press. Touro University Press Michael A. Shmidman and Simcha Fishbane, Editors 320 West 31st Street, Fourth Floor, New York, NY 10001, USA [email protected] Academic Studies Press 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com

To the Cherished Memory of Yael Goodman Penkower (1945–2016) “Most blessed of women be Yael” (Judges 5:24)

Table of Contents

Volume I: Rebellion Launched, 1945–1946 Preface vii  1. The 100,000  2.  Tenuat HaMeri HaIvri

1 72

  3.  The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry

141

  4.  “Black Sabbath” to the Hotel Royal Monceau

210

 5.  Truman, Bevin, and the World Zionist Congress

275

Volume II: Into the International Arena, 1947–1948   6.  To the United Nations

341

  7.  UNSCOP, Two Sergeants, and the Exodus 1947 405  8. Partition

472

 9. Civil War

546

10.  Statehood at Long Last

619

Conclusion 696 Bibliography 741 Appendix 772 Index 773

Preface

“A large problem in a small place.” Palestine, Martin Charteris later recalled of his service there as head of Military Intelligence in 1945–1946 for the local British authorities, had long been a worrisome conundrum for His Majesty’s Government.1 Ever since the 1917 Balfour Declaration pledging David Lloyd George’s World War I cabinet to facilitate “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” to be followed by receipt of the Palestine Mandate from the League of Nations in 1922, different ministers wrestled with Jewish and Arab competing claims to the biblical Promised Land. The struggle between these two communities for political sovereignty, emerging with force in the nineteen thirties then put on hold during World War II, surfaced again after the Allied victory in Europe of May 1945. Traumatized by the Holocaust, the hitherto unimaginable, ultimate confirmation of Jewry’s historical status as the consummate victim, Jews worldwide nailed their colors to the Zionist mast in demanding independence for Eretz Israel and thus end the curse of exile. With a thread that spooled back 3,000 years to an unbroken connection with the land which had seen their birth as a people, they noted that the Jewish foothold had never been broken when Palestine passed under many conquerors: Babylonians, Romans, Arabs, Seljuks, Crusaders, Mamelukes, Ottoman Turks, and Great Britain. The neighboring Arab states, for their part, rallied with implacable steadfastness to have what they called Falastin granted freedom. The country’s Arabs, they observed, outnumbered the Jews by more than 2:1. The remnant who survived European Jewry’s destruction, facing the anguish of irreparable loss, should be settled elsewhere, their welfare the responsibility of other powers. Democracy, whose cause had triumphed against Adolf Hitler and his comrades-inarms, demanded that the principle of national self-determination be honored and implemented for the Arab majority without further delay. — vii —

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Caught in the vortex of these conflicting appeals at a time when the Empire’s finances had been impoverished by the global war, the Labour Party chieftains who took over the reins of government in July 1945 sought to temporize. The unexpected, singular response of the new occupant of the White House, Harry S. Truman, to the grim plight of the officially designated Jewish “Displaced Persons” led London and Washington to join hands in an Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine. The yishuv (Jewish community of Eretz Israel), viewing this step as a further delay in realizing its dream of statehood, and furious that co-religionists fleeing the graveyard of Europe were denied immediate entry into the one haven of hope prepared to receive them, launched a united resistance against the mandatory. Its continued determination, along with constant attacks by underground insurgents and a firm aliya bet immigration movement for Holocaust survivors that won widespread sympathy in light of the appalling revelations of the death camps, escalated into what Winston Churchill would call in the House of Commons on March 12, 1947, the “senseless, squalid war” of 100,000 British troops (including 20,000 policemen) stationed in Palestine against the native Jewish population.2 Eminent voices on both sides of the aisle joined the leader of the Conservative opposition in calling for HMG’s prompt withdrawal. When both the Arabs and the Jews rejected provisional autonomy schemes advanced by Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, the cabinet decided on February 14, 1947, to turn to the United Nations for advice. This internationalization of the Palestine imbroglio, coinciding with the British exit from India and elsewhere, would prove decisive in the long run. Still, with strong backing from Prime Minister Clement Attlee, Bevin persisted in his preference for a binational state that would not jeopardize British military bases and oil interests in the Middle East. The Chiefs of Staff, like their American counterparts, championed this course, all the while concerned about possible Soviet incursion into the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf. In February 1948 they suggested the incorporation of the southern and eastern parts of Palestine into Jordan and the northern part into Syria/Lebanon, effectively leaving a Jewish enclave around Tel Aviv. The U.S. State Department accepted Whitehall’s assessment, but one man’s decision against what he contemptuously labeled the “striped-pants boys” in Foggy Bottom, coupled with his deep resentment against Bevin’s casting aspersions about this Chief Executive catering to the Jewish vote, weighed heaviest in the — viii —

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balance. Truman, joining his humanitarian impulses to electoral needs, bi-partisan Congressional support, a desire to forestall the Soviets in recognizing a new state that had already proven itself on the battlefield, and a wish to strengthen the UN’s future, was ultimately persuaded by an intimate circle of friends and advisors to lend his crucial support for the Jewish dream of national revival. In 1949, Simha Asaf, then rector of the Hebrew University and a member of Israel’s first Supreme Court, had to choose an awardee for the prize given by one American Jew to the individual having rendered the greatest service to Israel during the previous two years. Not surprisingly, David Ben-Gurion, who had spearheaded the crusade for statehood as chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine executive, received the honor. The other serious candidate, Asaf indicated on that occasion with a touch of sarcasm, was Ernest Bevin. This Britisher’s obstinacy and arrogance, best reflected in his order to send the Exodus 1947’s 4,554 refugee passengers back to Germany, dominated HMG’s policy. The Foreign Secretary believed that the Jewish state would eventually become Communist, and on another occasion used the phrase “international Jewry” with its connotation of conspiracy. While focusing on forging a strong postwar alliance with Washington, he confessed to Ambassador Halifax in October 1945 that he viewed the United States as “the untried devil.” In early 1949, Bevin summed up his exasperation as well as what Wm. Roger Louis terms the final “British perspective” on the Palestine problem with a tempestuous response. The American attitude appeared to be not only “let there be an Israel and to hell with the consequences,” he wrote on a draft to Ambassador Oliver Franks in Washington, but also “peace at any price, and Jewish expansion whatever the consequences.” Every Israeli city and settlement should erect a statue to Bevin, Abba Eban mused years later.3 The creation of Medinat Yisrael on May 14, 1948, celebrating Jewry’s heritage and restoration, was based on the fundamental premise that lay behind the Zionist revolution—lack of an independent state had accounted for endless persecution, dehumanization, and martyrdom at the hand of host countries. Imminent doom had been a feature of Jewish life ever since the Assyrian conquest of the Israelite Northern Kingdom in the year 722 BCE. The wandering Jew, cast out for millennia from Eretz Israel and subsequent, temporary places of refuge, validated Isaac Deutscher’s epithet “Trees have roots, Jews have legs.” “The Jews have taught me how to wait,” wrote an admiring Henrik Ibsen — ix —

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in the play Peer Gynt (1867). Keepers of the faith, praying “Next year in Jerusalem!,” waited for the Messiah to return them home. Writing to his friend Max Brod, Franz Kafka described Jews “with their hind legs fastened to the Jewish traditions of their fathers and with their forelegs getting no ground under their feet. The despair thus ensuing translates into inspiration.” In February 1942, Stefan Zweig, with fond memories of Vienna’s glamour and grace depicted in his subsequently published The World of Yesterday, thanked Brazil for giving him and his wife Elizabet shelter from the Nazi obsession to kill every Jew. He added that with his spiritual home, Europe, “having destroyed itself,” “unusual powers are needed in order to make another wholly new beginning. Those that I possess have been exhausted by long years of homeless wandering.” He and his wife, holding hands, then took their own lives.4 “Homelessness and hopelessness, that is the lot of our brethren!” observed U.S. Army Chaplain Abraham J. Klausner in Munich to a fellow rabbi in the United States while trying to meet the basic needs of 34,000 of the 45,000 survivors living in the American occupied zone of Germany in February 1946. Rejecting any further delay, the heralds of Zionism sought to bring an end to their people’s homelessness, the “pariah condition” which Nahum Goldmann told United Nations Special Committee on Palestine chairman Emil Sandström could no longer obtain after the Holocaust.5 The belief in education and assimilation, which sustained so many European Jews and to which Bevin and colleagues sedulously adhered, had foundered catastrophically on the shoals of the Shoah. Before it was too late, Zionist champions insisted, Auschwitz obliged Jews to summon a future of national identity and purpose into being. Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, had concluded his manifesto Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews) in February 1896 with a conviction: “If you will it, it is no dream.” The time had come to transform this assertion into reality, ground a distinct people to roots in their ancestral soil, give them sanctuary, and lighten the darkness. To achieve this objective, the new beginning of which Zweig had despaired, appeared nothing short of fantasy after the Holocaust. The Zionists’ task would be Herculean. Arab intractable animosity, both in Palestine and beyond its borders, became quickly manifest. Consistent British opposition turned into a dialogue of the deaf. The stance of the Kremlin, long averse to Jewish nationalism and, consequently, that of — x —

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its satellite countries offered scant promise even as the Cold War escalated between Moscow and the West. Once Attlee’s government decided to lay the Palestine dilemma at the feet of the UN, the chances of securing the requisite two-thirds majority vote at the General Assembly for Palestine’s partition into two states—which the Jews, but not the Arabs, were prepared to accept as a compromise—seemed highly remote. U.S. State and Defense Department officialdom remained hostile, also doubting the survival of the Jewish state. Truman’s position shifted over time, and in early 1948, furious at the unrelenting pressure leveled by Abba Hillel Silver and the American Zionist Emergency Council, the President wished to wash his hands of the entire matter. Ben-Gurion, conceiving a state, as he told Harold Laski in February 1946, as “an essential condition for fulfilling teudat hayeinu—to live according to the ideal which we presented to ourselves,” understood early on that any prospect of success depended upon three factors. These included the yishuv’s resolve; the willingness of the survivors, Europe’s forsaken, to brave considerable obstacles in making their way to the Holy Land; and the readiness of American Jewry, the one large community spared Hitler’s murderous zeal at systematic slaughter, to unite in contributing significantly—at times illegally—to its realization. He realized that the UN resolution of November 29, 1947, to partition Palestine into two states would lead to war, but still he told the Mapai Central Committee a few days later that he knew of “no greater achievement” by world Jewry “in its long history since it became a people.” With uncharted waters looming, recurrent difficulty and considerable strife were certain. “Breakers ahead” was Moshe Sharett’s turn of phrase when cabling Silver on May 13, 1948, that “Israel” would be the state’s new name.6 A story told at the time, when the yishuv had its back to the wall, related the words of a seventeen-year-old Palmah soldier who said this to his seventy-year-old grandfather: “Sabba, I may not live to see the Jewish state, but I’m sure that you will.” Amitai Etzioni recalled that his Palmah unit in Jerusalem faced Jordanian tanks with no antitank weapons, armed only with Czechoslovak rifles for which they had no armor-piercing bullets. Many of his fellow soldiers were Holocaust survivors, so new off the boat that they did not understand most commands in Hebrew and were still wearing the drab clothing they arrived in. On March 27, 1948, 47 fighters of the Hagana’s Carmeli Brigade, part of a — xi —

Preface

90-man convoy sent from Nahariya to besieged Kibbutz Yehiam, were killed, many of the bodies mutilated, in an ambush by 250 Arabs near al-Kabri seven miles north of Acre. A British flying column failed to reach the trapped Jews, and the Arabs only withdrew when British artillery opened fire with 12-lb and 25-lb high-explosive shells. On April 9, an Irgun-LEHI assault on Deir Yassin resulted in close to 110 Arab dead. Four days later, in retaliation for Deir Yassin and the death in battle at al-Qastal of commander Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini, an Arab attack on a convoy to Hadassah Hospital left 78 dead, including 20 women. On May 12, two Arab Legion companies and hundreds of Arabs from nearby villages killed 24 Kfar Etzion badly outgunned defenders, murdering the next day 106 men and 27 women, including some after they had surrendered. Four defenders remained alive. They were among the 260 pioneers of isolated Gush Etzion, including those of Ein Tzurim, Masuot Yitzhak and Revadim, who were taken into captivity in Jordan, where they would stay for nine to eleven months; women were released earlier. Triumph at this point by either side was hardly a given.7 A sense that they had no choice (ein breira) filled Ben-Gurion and others with a desperate energy, driving them forward. As early as September 1947, Eban presciently observed to US Ambassador in London Lewis W. Douglas an additional reason: the urgent need had arisen now “to entrench ourselves” in order to withstand the pressure of a growing “Pan-Islamism,” which had made “Pan-Arabism” out of date. Asked by King Abdullah of Jordan, in the course of their secret meeting in his Amman palace on May 10,1948, to “wait a few years” and not be “in such a hurry to proclaim an independent state,” Golda Meir responded that a people who had waited 2,000 years should not be described as being “in a hurry.” Four days later, one week after issue of the first Jewish postage stamps, labeled “doar Ivri” (Hebrew mail) because the state’s new name had not yet been selected and displaying coins of the Great Revolt and that of Bar-Kokhba later against Roman rule with their inscription “Jerusalem the Holy,” Ben-Gurion could turn with justification to Jon Kimche upon reading Israel’s Declaration of Independence and announcing the new state’s first government decree abolishing the mandatory’s pro-Arab 1939 White Paper, and make a brief observation. “You see, we did it,” he said. While crowds were out celebrating in the streets, the new Israeli police made their first arrest, placing a book thief in custody.8 — xii —

Preface

Quite a number of studies have explored various aspects of this drama, and I have profited greatly from them. At the same time, a thorough analysis of the issue in all its complexity has been lacking to date. This would include developments in Palestine and in the Arab states, including how Palestine became a pawn in inter-Arab feuds; British and American responses both official and public; the role of the survivors; the context of the Cold War; and the saga as it unfolded—long overlooked by historians—in the corridors of the United Nations. Thinking that the Holocaust and the rise of the State of Israel are the seminal events of modern Jewish history, if not of the entire Jewish experience since the end of the Second Jewish Commonwealth, I have devoted my own scholarly energies over the years to these two themes. Ultimately, I chose to focus upon the period spanning from Hitler’s rise to power in Germany until Israel’s rebirth as a sovereign entity, the pivotal stage when the conflict between the two contending parties for Palestine’s future destiny found its climactic resolution. Palestine in Turmoil: The Struggle for Sovereignty, 1933–1939 and Decision on Palestine Deferred: America, Britain, and Wartime Diplomacy, 1939–1945 served as the first two parts of this examination.9 After almost five decades of research and writing, in addition to authoring other related publications, my projected trilogy now draws to a close with Palestine to Israel: Mandate to State, 1945–1948. The loom on which the narrative was woven is large. With my quest resting on primary documentation, a very long stretch had to pass before I felt assured that the subject was given its proper due. Numerous archivists around the globe have been extremely helpful, but I wish to single out the staff of the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem, who provided much enthusiastic service over the years, and David Clark of the Harry S. Truman Library for ready assistance in the final stages of this endeavor. Books and articles by specialists on specific issues connected to the inquiry, as well as oral histories, furnished valuable information. Many of my interviews with leading participants, some of whom graciously opened their private files to inspection, added a good deal to the final result. The aid of research assistants and secretaries was not called upon, but a number of fellowships and grants, acknowledged in the first two segments of this trilogy, eased the burdens of travel and accommodation. Professor William E. Leuchtenburg, my mentor in the History department of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, taught me much about seeking to join wide-ranging — xiii —

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research and an objective approach to a limpid prose. Michael Popkin, a former academic colleague who chaired the Touro College Humanities Department, read the entire manuscript, as he did its predecessors, for clarity of style. He is a highly valued friend. Most significantly, a caring family’s encouragement eased the daunting task. My late parents, Rabbi Murry S. Penkower and Lillian Stavisky Penkower, provided an initial love of scholarship and of Zionism. My sisters Andrea and Sharon, my brother Jordan, and my brothers-in-law David and Joseph regularly offered support in different ways. So did my children, Avi, Talya, Yonina, Ayelet, and Ariel, and spouses Rochelle, David, Mark, and Shifi. The many grandchildren of whom this sabba is very proud, and who, along with their parents, all live in Israel, are a constant source of joy. My dear wife, Phyllis Mayer, is a wonderful new companion who shares fully in all that I undertake. These concluding two volumes are dedicated to the cherished memory of Yael, with whom I relished a blissful marriage of almost forty-seven years. Like the very existence of Israel, her birthplace, this bat Yerushalayim and extraordinary woman was testimony to the human capacity to dream and to imagine. She accompanied me with our firstborn, Avi, in the summer of 1972 to the Jewish state resurgent, where I took my initial steps on what would be a long journey of discovery about my two chosen fields of study. When I had to leave for London one month later to begin work in the newly opened, voluminous World War II files at the Public Record Office, she and my brother interviewed Ben-Gurion on my behalf. The Jews Were Expendable, providing a decade later the first overview of how the free world responded during the Holocaust, was most aptly dedicated to her.10 My aliya to Israel and Yael’s returning home on July 1, 2002, fulfilled our long-held hope, and gave us the very best years of our lives together. Throughout, she always extended devotion and understanding, and her passing leaves a great void in the lives of everyone privileged to have been graced by her presence. In harmony with Chapter 126 of Psalms, we embraced the hope that Zion’s fortunes would be restored, and we reveled in that story of remarkable achievement. Alas, no resolution to the long-standing Arab-Jewish conflict is in prospect. Already in January 1946, Gershom Scholem had taken Hannah Arendt to task for championing what he termed “a patently anti-Zionist, warmed-over version of Communist criticism, infused — xiv —

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with a vague galut nationalism.” Her public call for universalism against “reactionary” Zionism and “something that is for the Jewish people of life or death importance,” observed the pioneering scholar of Jewish mysticism, neglected what he termed the “eternity” of antisemitism, as well as the fact that the Arabs, rejecting any solution that included Jewish immigration, were “primarily interested not in the morality of our political convictions but in whether or not we are here in Palestine at all.” On the last day of 1947, the American philosopher and popularizer of “cultural pluralism” Horace Kallen, feeling that his fellow Jews stood “absolutely alone and that no power cares what happens to us except to use us as a tool or a scapegoat,” concluded that “the wisest thing we can do is to stand up bravely and firmly like Job.”11 Confronted years later by the ongoing bleak stalemate with the Arab world and Balfour’s vision of coexistence yet to be fulfilled, Israel’s Jewish citizens continue to long for an honest dialogue with their neighbors that just might result in peace. At the same time, they choose to determine the nature of their public space. Their air streams with possibility. As the Third Jewish Commonwealth celebrates its seventieth birthday, it can be said that the psalmist’s declaration has come true in our time: “They who sow in tears shall reap with songs of joy.” Jerusalem May 14, 2018

Endnotes 1 2 3

Hadara Lazar, Out of Palestine, The Making of Modern Israel (New York, 2011), 112. Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 484, col. 1346. Norman and Helen Bentwich, Mandate Memories, 1918–1948 (London, 1965), 177; Bevin to Halifax, October 12, 1945, FO371/45381, Public Record Office, Kew, England; Wm. Roger Louis, “British Imperialism,” in Wm. Roger Louis and Robert W. Stookey, eds., The End of the Palestine Mandate (Austin, TX, 1986), 23, 27; Eban interview with the author, December 4, 1974. 4 Anne-Marie O’Connor, The Lady in Gold (New York, 2012), 175–176. 5 Klausner to Silverman, February 7, 1946, P68/3, Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem; Goldmann to Sandström, August 21, 1947, 93.03/2270/12, Israel State Archives (hereafter ISA), Jerusalem. — xv —

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  6 Ben-Gurion talk with Laski, February 13, 1946, David Ben-Gurion Archives, Sdeh Boker, Israel; Yehoshua Freundlich, MeiHurban L’Tekuma (Tel Aviv, 1994), 199; Shertok to Silver, May 13, 1948, 88/15–Het Tsadi; May 12, 1948, ISA. For Laski’s changing views as a result of the Holocaust, see Michael Newman, Harold Laski, A Political Biography (London, 1993), chap. 12.   7 Meltzer to Montor, June 1, 1967, A371/40, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem; Etzioni letter to the Book Review editor, New York Times, December 12, 1999; The Scotsman, March 29, 1948; Kibbutz Yehiam memorial; Eliezer Tauber, Deir Yassin: Sof HaMitos (Jerusalem, 2017); Yehuda Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, vol. 3, part 2 (Tel Aviv, 1973), 1397–1398; Benny Morris, 1948 (New Haven, CT, 2008), 169–171; Dov Knohl, ed., Gush Etzion B’Milhamto (Jerusalem, 1954). A special monument is located at the end of the trail that connects Israel’s Yad Vashem, the official memorial to Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and Mount Herzl, the national cemetery for Israeli leaders and fallen soldiers. Known as the “Memorial for the Last of Kin,” it commemorates the Holocaust survivors who fought and fell during Israel’s War of Independence.   8 Douglas to Marshall, September 18, 1947, 867N.01/9-1857, State Department files, National Archives, Suitland, Md.; Minhelet Ha'Am, Ginzakh HaMedina (Jerusalem, 1978), 37–119, ISA; Itamar Atsmon, “Simanim Shel Tekuma,” Segula 36 (May 2013): 64–67; Jon Kimche, Seven Fallen Pillars, The Middle East, 1915–1950 (London, 1950), 228; Elon Gilad, “Israel—Day One: The Story of the Day of Independence,” HaAretz, May 5, 2014.   9 Monty Noam Penkower, The Holocaust and Israel Reborn: From Catastrophe to Sovereignty (Urbana, IL, 1994); Monty Noam Penkower, Palestine in Turmoil: The Struggle for Sovereignty, 1933–1939 (Boston, MA, 2014); Monty Noam Penkower, Decision on Palestine Deferred: America, Britain, and Wartime Diplomacy, 1939–1945 (London, 2002). My first published study, which argued that the lack of a state made Jews vulnerable to persecution throughout their history, culminating in the Holocaust, appeared in Monty Noam Penkower, “The 1943 Joint Anglo-American Statement on Palestine,” in M. Urofsky, ed., Essays in American Zionism, Herzl Year Book 8 (New York, 1978), 212–241. For the impact in the 1930s of Jewish powerlessness, see Monty Noam Penkower, The Swastika’s Darkening Shadow, Voices before the Holocaust (New York, 2013). 10 Monty Noam Penkower, The Jews Were Expendable: Free World Diplomacy and the Holocaust (Urbana, IL, 1983). 11 Scholem to Arendt, January 28, 1946, in A. D. Skinner, ed. and trans., Gershom Scholem, A Life in Letters, 1914–1982 (Cambridge, 2002), 330–332; Kallen to Billikopf, December 31, 1947, 13/13, Jacob Billikopf MSS, American Jewish — xvi —

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Archives, Cincinnati. Arendt was not persuaded, charging two years later that the Jewish homeland could still be saved if the U.S. trusteeship plan were adopted at the UN and a limited immigration of Jews in numbers and in time be approved, looking towards Judah Magnes’s advocacy of binationalism. Otherwise, she declared, even if the Jews were to emerge victorious in an allout war with the Arabs, they would be absorbed with physical self-defense, surrounded by “an entirely hostile Arab population,” “to a degree that would submerge all other interests and activities.” Hannah Arendt, “To Save the Jewish Homeland: There is Still Time,” Commentary 5 (May 1948): 398–406. Her long-time friend, the German philosopher Karl Jaspers, entertained similar views, expressing to her in July 1947 his worry that the Jewish people “could lose their soul” in Palestine: “Perhaps the solution is to desire Palestine but not go there, because the task is to live among all the peoples of the world, with them and against them as long as they are content to remain peoples and nothing more. This would be a new form of that influence ‘from afar’ which has perhaps always been characteristic of biblical religion. And from that comes the tension and the excitement and the truly infinite nature of the task.” Jaspers to Arendt, July 20, 1947, in L. Köhler and H. Saner, ed., Hannah Arendt—Karl Jaspers Correspondence 1926–1969 (New York, 1992), 94–95. For her response two months later, in essential agreement, see 98–99.

— xvii —

1. The 100,000

The stench of death hung heavy in the air that spring of 1945. It clung to the nostrils of Allied liberators of the concentration camps on German soil as World War II in Europe drew to a close. Often stumbling across these centers of carnage in their race to Berlin, American and British soldiers reacted with shock, horror, revulsion. Nothing had prepared them for still-smoldering crematoria, thousands of unburied corpses— many stacked like cordwood, mass pits filled with skeletal remains, or sixty-pound, hollow-eyed prisoners ridden with typhus, tuberculosis, dysentery, and starvation. Of Bergen-Belsen’s 40,000 inmates yet alive when a combined British-Canadian armored unit entered, 13,000 would die before that camp was burned to the ground six weeks later. After viewing Ohrdruf, an auxiliary camp at Buchenwald, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) commander Dwight D. Eisenhower cabled Washington and London to send officials and prominent editors to serve as eyewitness to the “unspeakable conditions,” “where the evidence of bestiality and cruelty is so overpowering as to leave no doubt in their minds about the normal practices of the Germans in these camps.” Stomach-turning photographs that followed, filling newspapers and magazines across the globe, at last provided unequivocal, timeless testimony to the core of Nazi barbarism—its reduction of human beings to ash and anonymity.1 In this “dire sink of iniquity,” the phrase of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Europe’s Jews particularly remained faceless in the eyes of the outside world. Military statistics of the period categorized them as “Others,” “Unclassified,” or “Victims of Nazi persecution by race, religion, or political affiliation.” Most often, just as the Allies had officially designated Jews nonpersons while Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich and collaborator nations made Europe the cemetery of the Jewish people,

Volume I: Rebellion Launched, 1945–1946

they received notice along with other “Displaced Persons” (DPs) according to their countries of birth. Although Jews composed more than half of Belsen’s inmates before repatriation to former homes began, the sign set up in English and German at the entrance gate after the camp was liquidated acknowledged the dead there as “all of them victims of the German New Order in Europe and an example of Nazi Kultur.” The U.S. Congressional delegation’s report, once its twelve U.S. President once its twelve members had visited Buchenwald, Nordhausen, and Dachau, concluded that “a colossal scheme of extermination was planned and put into effect against all those in occupied countries who refused to accept the principles of nazi-ism [sic] or who opposed the saddling of the Nazi yoke on their countries.” Very few news accounts on the camps’ liberation even mentioned Jews, let alone connected them to the Holocaust; no story of a Jewish survivor appeared in the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, or the Washington Post throughout 1945.2 It seemed that the one people targeted for systematic slaughter in the Second World War would continue to be denied the sense of communal distinction that had accounted for its mysterious survival these past 4,000 years. For Zionists, the bi-millennial lack of national sovereignty had doomed a powerless people to its most tragic hour, the calculated, premeditated murder of 6,000,000 Jews, while the free world stood by. Weeks before the unexpected death of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) on April 12, American Zionist leader Abba Hillel Silver urged his followers not to rely exclusively on FDR and Churchill, but to sway public opinion in the democracies to the need for “the Jewish state now!” Moshe Shertok (later Sharett), head of the Jewish Agency for Palestine’s political department, made the same point in personally pressing Pope Pius XII to sanction the return to their people of all Jewish children hidden in Catholic monasteries during the war, hopefully to Eretz Israel and the possibility of “full Jewish lives.” On April 26, a coalition of Jewish survivors, partisans, and ghetto fighters resolved to struggle for statehood in an undivided Palestine, unrestricted immigration, and an end to their people’s long history of exile (galut) and exclusion. 3 Understandably, while the victorious Allied coalition celebrated Germany’s unconditional surrender on May 8, Jewish Agency Executive chairman David Ben-Gurion penned in his diary that day “sad, very sad.” This laconic reaction, he wrote to his wife Paula, had occurred to — 2 —

1. The 100,000

him once before—at the time of the first Russian Revolution in 1905. Home lay only in Eretz Israel, he had suddenly realized then, a conviction the Mapai Party laborite tribune expounded upon now in a lengthy public statement: It is a great victory, but it is not yet our victory. Europe is liberated; but it is not yet the liberation of the Jewish remnant. And it is not only the fate of the few European survivors which is at stake; it is the fate of the whole Jewish race. For is there any assurance that this catastrophe will not be repeated? In addition, Ben-Gurion went on, world Jewry could not rejoice because the British White Paper of May 1939 closed the gates to its eternal homeland. (That legislation also had provided for a single Palestine state of Arabs—then the clear majority—and Jews within ten years in treaty relations with Great Britain, and, as of 1940, prohibited Jewish land purchase in 64 percent of Palestine, setting restrictions within another 31 percent.) This condemned Jews to remain a minority in the National Home promised in Great Britain’s 1917 Balfour Declaration and the subsequent Palestine Mandate entrusted to His Majesty’s Government (HMG) in London by the League of Nations in 1922: Tens of thousands of Jewish lives were sacrificed when the only escape from Nazi extermination was denied them. Racial discrimination—the denial of elementary equality before the law—was introduced into the laws governing the settlement of land. And, worst of all, the Jewish people, as a people, has been denied its right to its own Home, and a solemn promise and international obligation turned into a scrap of paper. “Historic justice and international good faith alike” called for the immediate establishment of Palestine as a Jewish commonwealth. This, Ben-Gurion concluded, “is the only solution of that great tragedy—the Jewish Problem.”4 Jews and Arabs marked V-E (Victory over Europe) Day in very different fashion. While Zionist blue and white banners flew alongside — 3 —

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the Union Jack in Palestine’s major cities, the general jubilation was overshadowed by disappointment at the failure to secure free immigration to the biblically covenanted Promised Land. Emphasis was placed on the unique suffering of European Jewry, the significant contribution of the yishuv (Palestinian Jewish community) to the war effort, and repudiating the possibility of rehabilitating Jewish communities on the Continent. The killing of three-quarters of Europe’s Jews, declared the manifesto of the Jewish Agency, made it necessary that the Jewish people be enabled “to take its rightful place in Palestine in the concert of the free nations of the world” and have “the Jewish State of Palestine be one of the fruits of victory.” The country’s Arabs, by contrast, displayed a lack of interest in the celebrations, except for what High Commissioner John Gort labeled “extreme nationalists” stirring up anti-Jewish feeling among the masses. In Damascus, attempts were made to break into the Jewish quarter. In Beirut, Palestinian Arab soldiers serving with the Royal Kentish Fusiliers (the “Buffs”) marched through the Jewish quarter carrying at the head of their procession a photograph of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the former Grand Mufti of Palestine who had instigated riots against the yishuv in 1920–1921 and 1929, spearheaded an unremitting groundswell of hatred towards the Zionist endeavor during the Arab Revolt of 1936–1939, and had actively collaborated with Germany during the war.5 By then, reason existed for the editors of The New Judea to assert that Jewry’s post-war position caused hallelujahs to fade from their lips and that “we are in danger of becoming a death’s-head at the feast.” As early as April 6, World Zionist Organization (WZO) president Chaim Weizmann had received an extensive report from the Jewish Agency Executive in Jerusalem that approximately 1,250,000 of Europe’s Jews had survived Hitler’s relentless design at total annihilation. Their current physical and economic condition was “precarious in the extreme.” Robbed of all their possessions, driven from their homes and decimated by hunger and disease, they faced virulent antisemitism. Poles stated quite frankly that “although the Germans have committed many evil things, they have done a good thing in exterminating the Jews,” and that “it is only a pity that they were not able to complete the job.” This applied equally to Hungary, where the native population had actively aided the Nazis in the mass deportation and murder of the country’s Jews. Grave reports had also been received from Yugoslavia. — 4 —

1. The 100,000

Within three days of the opening of the Agency’s office in Rumania, 30,000 Jews had filed application for admission to Palestine. Day after day, the Agency was being beseeched from Belgium and Holland, France and Switzerland, the Balkans and Poland for immigration certificates. Aside from the “procrustean limits” of 10,300 legal permits remaining and already allotted from the maximum of 75,000 granted in the White Paper, new regulations in the exit or transit countries had held up transports indefinitely. “Stark despair” was gripping the survivors. “If another major disaster is to be prevented,” the report ended, the British authorities had to take “an entirely new approach to the immigration problem.”6 Churchill’s Cabinet Committee on Palestine had resolved at this same moment, however, to defer once again a decision on the Palestine imbroglio. Minister Resident Middle East Edward Grigg, supported by Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, recommended that an international body (together with two Jews and two Arabs) frame a mandate or trusteeship for an undivided Palestine with a legislative council, and HMG retaining its present responsibility for administration and security. The last proviso echoed the Chiefs of Staff Subcommittee’s 1943 memorandum that “the continued occupation of Palestine by British forces and the control of air bases and means of communication in that country after the war are essential.” This stance received a recent endorsement from the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, London, in favor of continuing the White Paper to secure Arab support of Britain’s long-range strategic and economic interests in the region. In like vein, High Commissioner Gort insisted on a maximum 2,000-monthly immigration quota for Jews until the global war’s end. Colonial Secretary Oliver Stanley, although convinced that partition remained the only realistic solution for Palestine, was prepared to accept Gort’s proposal on the amount of future certificates per month. HMG’s Middle East ambassadors and military authorities preferred to defer any major policy changes for as long as possible, adhere to the White Paper policy, and have Britain holding executive control. The Cabinet Committee, also hearing Viceroy for India A. P. Wavell’s observation that that country’s 90 million Muslims would greatly resent any solution which would be “manifestly unacceptable” to Arab interests, decided on April 11 to postpone its deliberations until Eden returned from the convening in San Francisco of the Constituent Assembly of the United Nations Organization.7 — 5 —

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The San Francisco Conference, begun two weeks later, provided a further example of Jewry’s anomalous position as a homeless and stateless people. “We are here as uninvited and unwanted guests,” wrote the Jewish Agency’s Reuven Zaslani (later Shiloah) in great depression to Teddy Kollek, his successor as head of the Agency’s Intelligence Section. What Ben-Gurion called “the Jewish problem” did not appear on the agenda, and official status was denied all Jewish organizations. Yet the last-minute entry into the Allied camp alongside Iraq of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon before Germany’s defeat, the pro-Nazi wartime record of three of these countries notwithstanding, gave five Arab states full representation. (The U.S. Standard Oil Company, a lawyer for the big oil companies in Colombia later informed the Agency, engineered the invitation to the Arab delegates and paid their expenses.) Consequently, while the Agency could only circulate its memorandum calling for open immigration and Jewish sovereignty, that of the Arab League (created on March 22 in Cairo with British backing) was entered into the official record. The Arab League protocol, also signed by non-states Yemen and Transjordan, reflected a semblance of Arab union. In actuality, each member maintained its own independence, reflecting the traditional rivalry between Egypt (supported by Saudi Arabian monarch Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud) and Iraq (backed by Transjordan’s Emir Abdullah bin al-Hussein). At the same time, all joined hands in seeking to end French control in Syria and prevent Zionist domination of Palestine. Palestine’s inclusion in the League was justified in an appendix by the assertion that “in the eyes of the Arabs,” because that country’s independence had been confirmed by the postwar Treaty of Lausanne of 1919, Palestine could “take part” in the work of the League council.8 Since the five major powers had resolved beforehand that no specific territorial issue could be considered at the deliberations, Jewish Agency spokesmen focused on safeguarding the yishuv’s rights under the Mandate. Thanks particularly to the firm hand of Peter Fraser, New Zealand’s prime minister and chairman of the Trusteeship Territories Commission, the final clause (bearing the phrase all “peoples”, rather than the Arab formulation of all “people” in accordance with the principle of national self-determination by the current majority of a country’s population) affirmed in effect the sui generis nature of the Palestine Mandate in its pledge to Jews worldwide. Various amendments proposed by Egypt and — 6 —

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Syria attempting to grant independence to territories under the new trusteeship plan (such as Palestine, although that word was never mentioned) were defeated, receiving no support from the other delegates. The American, British, and French governments wished to avoid any threat to the stability of countries with diverse populations and, for the last two powers, a direct challenge to their colonial regimes. U.S. delegate John Foster Dulles stated that only Britain, France, and America would make “the final decision on the status of Palestine.” With the expert legal advice of the World Jewish Congress’s Jacob Robinson, Jewish delegations helped secure paragraph 1 in Article 80 of the United Nations Charter, signed on June 26, which maintained the prior obligations of mandatories.9 Zionist champions at San Francisco discovered other encouraging signs for their cause. The public relations campaign of the umbrella-group American Zionist Emergency Council (AZEC) reached its zenith with a rally in New York City’s Lewisohn Stadium drawing more than 60,000 and an overflow crowd outside which heard Senator Robert Wagner (D, NY) label Britain’s Palestine policy a revival of “the disease of appeasement.” Coming hard on the heels of the Congressional tour of some concentration camps, a Princeton Office of Public Opinion Research found that 59 percent of a national cross-section approved the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine. The American Christian Palestine Committee forwarded to Roosevelt’s successor a petition from 39 governors, the resolutions of 33 state legislatures, and a letter bearing the signatures of 54 senators and 256 representatives favoring Jewish immigration to, and sovereignty in, the Promised Land. In a speech to the Hadassah women’s Zionist organization which Nation published that same month, former Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles praised Weizmann’s “highest qualities of statesmanship,” and judged an independent Palestine as a “National Jewish Homeland” an objective “inherently right and just.” Although continuing to reject the concept of Jewish independence in Palestine, Joseph Proskauer, president of the small but influential non-Zionist American Jewish Committee, pressed during the San Francisco meetings for open immigration to Palestine in light of the Holocaust. Delegates from Chile, Mexico, South Africa, Holland, New Zealand, and Australia at the San Francisco Conference proved sympathetic to Zionist claims as well.10 — 7 —

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Yet, Arab nationalist aspirations appeared to fare better at this juncture. State Department officials at the Conference sought to insure U.S. companies’ exploitation of Saudi Arabian oil deposits, as well as to halt Soviet penetration into the region. These objectives led them to accept the kindred thesis of Foreign Office representative Harold Beeley (formerly of Chatham House) that HMG, the most influential power in the Middle East, had to arrive at a lasting understanding with the Arab governments. American oil companies subsidized Arab propaganda and activities at San Francisco. In discussions during the Conference with Jewish Agency Arabist Eliyahu Epstein (later Eilat), Iraq’s Fadhil al-Jemali and Syria’s Fares al-Khoury confidently declared that the Arab League, its creation annulling the Balfour Declaration, would defeat Zionist desires with the aid of international companies having oil and other interests in the region. Arab offices of information were being set up in Europe and soon a permanent one appeared in Washington, D.C., Greece and Turkey, taking into account their large Muslim populations and worried over Soviet designs, maintained a neutral position. So did France, concerned about the Arab populations in its North Africa colonies. Moscow’s stance on Palestine had not yet emerged, but at one point its delegation had backed the Arab clause favoring self-determination by the current majority populations. “The international horizon is gloomy,” Epstein concluded in a private letter, “and time is not working in our favor.”11 Given these circumstances, Epstein and Nahum Goldmann, the primary Jewish Agency representatives at San Francisco, agreed fully with Shertok that the immediate establishment of a Jewish state was “more imperative than ever.” This alone would give the Zionist movement representation and membership within the new world organization. Their cause could not wait for a successful resolution at the Peace Conference, Epstein observed, where the Arab states would exert influence and “buy and sell” their votes as equals while the Zionists, lacking formal standing, will appear as “bothersome or plotters.” Goldmann championed pushing for the 1942 Biltmore Program, which called for the Jewish Agency to have control over immigration and Palestine’s economic development, and “that Palestine be established as a Jewish commonwealth, integrated in the structure of the new democratic world.” Without a Jewish state, he contended, “we will have a Mandate; we may not have a Churchill.” London and Washington would decide the — 8 —

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issue; he thought that Russia would not help the Zionists by taking the initiative, but Moscow would not oppose them. A resolution in the U.S. Congress and the mobilization of a maximum of Jews were essential now. Goldmann concluded: “The real fight for the new status, that of a Jewish Commonwealth, must begin.”12 Goldmann and elder American Zionist leader Stephen Wise pressed this thesis on Viscount Cranborne, Secretary of State for the Dominions and British representative on the trusteeship committee who asserted that the White Paper “must stand.” With the war over and six million Jews killed, they declared, “we have no more to lose.” If HMG did not solve the Palestine question immediately within the next six months, “five million Jews in the United States would become the Irishmen of America and there would be trouble in Palestine.” Indeed, on May 13 Moshe Sneh (formerly Kleinbaum), head of the National Command of the Jewish Agency’s Hagana defense force in Eretz Israel, publicly announced that the yishuv would stand firm against the White Paper and defend itself against any attack. The following day, the right-wing dissident Etzel—Irgun Tsva’i Leumi (National Military Organization)— under Menahem Begin posted notices warning “the government of oppression” to evacuate all its offices and dwellings, with the civilian population to stay away from these buildings. The police soon uncovered Irgun-constructed mortars in three locations. On May 16, the Acting Chief Secretary warned Shertok in Gort’s name that in the event of a new outbreak, Churchill and British public opinion would not differentiate between the activities of the Irgun, the Hagana, or the yishuv in general. The High Commissioner was prepared to resort to “very drastic measures” if faced with a new wave of terrorism, but was “most anxious” to avoid this necessity. Any attempt to resort to “wholesale anti-Jewish reprisals,” Shertok countered, would have “disastrous effect generally” and, as far as terrorism was concerned, would do “infinitely more harm than good.”13 The Colonial Secretary decided, nonetheless, to adhere for the present to the White Paper in principle. He had Agency headquarters at London’s 77 Great Russell Street informed on May 17 that a further 3,000 certificates would be issued beyond the 10,300 places already allotted on the understanding that the monthly entry of Jewish immigrants would be maintained at 1,500 a month. At a meeting of the Secretary’s senior staff a week later, Chief Secretary of Palestine John Shaw supported — 9 —

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Minister Resident Grigg’s proposal to abolish the Jewish Agency, which he characterized as a “parallel government in operation” “largely controlled” by the laborite Histadrut organization’s 150,000 membership. In his view, most Jews would accept the 1,500 monthly quota, and “the end of the European war had removed the sentimental pressure for the entry of Jews into Palestine.” Stanley suggested that in a few years’ time the Jewish case for large-scale immigration to Palestine might be much weaker, “as they might not be able to get immigrants.” In the meantime, the Foreign Office and the Chiefs of Staff would be requested to submit as soon as possible their respective view on partition, Grigg’s proposals, standing by the White Paper, and permitting immigration to continue without any new declaration of policy. Stanley saw no prospect of an explicit reaffirmation of the White Paper, which Churchill in 1939 had pronounced a breach of faith with the Jews. Whitehall would also be asked for an appreciation of the reactions especially of Russia and the United States to any future policy undertaken.14 While Joseph Stalin’s stance remained a mystery, that of Harry S. Truman, now the thirty-third President of the United States, towards Jewish needs was clear. Speaking as a Senator, he had protested the May 1939 White Paper as but another example of British “surrender to the Axis powers.” Addressing a rally on April 14, 1943, in Chicago Stadium to “Demand Rescue of Doomed Jews,” Truman urged that “today—not tomorrow—we must do all that is humanly possible to provide a haven and place of safety for all those who can be grasped from the hands of the Nazi butchers.” Yet, he immediately resigned from the militant, Irgun-inspired Committee for a Jewish Army when it condemned the Anglo-American Bermuda Conference on Refugees that same month for indifference to Jewry’s systematic slaughter across Nazi-occupied Europe. “The Jewish Congregations,” he admonished a rabbi that December, should “support wholeheartedly the foreign policy of our government.” He likewise accepted the administration’s stance against a pro-Zionist Congressional resolution in early 1944, using a mixed metaphor to explain himself to disturbed constituents: with London and Washington “absolutely necessary to us in financing the War, I don’t want to throw any bricks to upset the applecart, although when the right time comes I am willing to make the fight for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.” A few months later, shortly before being chosen by FDR as his running mate, Truman endorsed a resolution in the Democratic Party’s election plank — 10 —

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to favor the opening of that country to “unrestricted Jewish immigration and colonization, and such a policy as to result in the establishment there of a free and democratic Jewish Commonwealth.”15 Untried as yet in foreign affairs, the new occupant of the Oval Office had authorized a Zionist delegation led by Wise on April 20 to say that he was carrying out his predecessor’s policies, and that “we, his visitors, knew what Mr. Roosevelt’s policy in regard to Palestine had been.” Given the actual uncertainty in FDR’s position, Secretary of State Edward Stettinius had weighed in four days earlier with a memorandum to Truman about present government policy that both Arabs and Jews should be consulted before a definite settlement was reached, with the primary responsibility resting in Britain’s hands. A “distinction” was to be made between Palestine as such and the question of Jewish refugees, the Secretary added, for whom we afford “the greatest possible assistance” through such agencies as the U.S. War Refugee Board (WRB) and the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (IGCR). Two weeks later, Acting Secretary Joseph Grew disclosed to Truman FDR’s assurances during World War II to Arab leaders. These included that no decision on Palestine would be reached without “full consultation with both Arabs and Jews”; Roosevelt’s private communication on April 5, 1945, to Saudi Arabia monarch Ibn Saud that he would take no action “which might prove hostile to the Arab people”; and his recent acknowledgment to a State Department official that a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine could be created and maintained “only by military force” in light of Arab hostility throughout the region to Zionism. On May 17, Truman renewed, to Emir Abdullah, Roosevelt’s assurances that “no decision should be taken respecting the basic situation” in Palestine without full consultation with both Arabs and Jews. The President of the Egyptian Council of Ministers would receive a similar assurance from Truman not long thereafter.16 Unaware of these developments, the Zionist camp found promising some private evaluations of Truman’s fundamental character. Senator Wagner, chairman of the American Palestine Christian Committee, informed the Jewish Agency’s Epstein that the sixty-one-year-old Missourian was blessed with a sense of fairness, and, after what had befallen the Jewish people under Hitler, would understand the Jewish problem from a humane perspective. Congressman Emanuel Celler of Brooklyn had been doubtful of Roosevelt’s Zionist commitment, — 11 —

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and privately entertained misgivings about the “not yet sufficiently informed” Truman. However, after discussing the issue with the new President, he announced to the press on April 26 that Truman “will not deviate one iota” from the pro-Zionist plank in the 1944 Democratic platform. Celler particularly admired Truman’s straightforward nature, which he judged was rooted in religious and socially progressive principles. Further, the Chief Executive’s request of David K. Niles (born to the Russian-Jewish immigrant Neyhus family of Boston), a former advisor to FDR on labor and minority issues, to stay on as an Administrative Assistant to the President while dismissing every other Roosevelt aide but one showed Truman’s trust in the unassuming, lifelong bachelor. (“It will be of great service to have the benefit of your ability and conscientious service,” Truman’s letter of appointment read, “and the experience and information you have acquired during these years will be most valuable.”) Niles’s close ties to Wise and Supreme Court Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter, Epstein discovered, might well prove helpful in the future.17 On May 22, an anxious Weizmann submitted the Jewish Agency’s memorandum to Churchill, demanding the early establishment of a Jewish commonwealth and the quick immigration of the first million Jews from Europe and the Muslim world into Palestine. Had not the Conservative Party herald promised, during their last meeting the previous November, a substantive pro-Zionist solution when the war against Germany ended? The White Paper still stood, “prolonging the agony of the Jewish survivors.” The situation of Jews in liberated Europe was “desperate,” Weizmann pleaded, and his own position as President of the Jewish Agency was becoming “untenable.” That same day, at the Annual Conference in Blackpool, past President of the Board of Trade Hugh Dalton had reiterated the British Labour Party’s earlier declared commitment to facilitate entry into “the Land of Promise and Hope” for any Jew desiring to go there, and suggested that steps be taken to obtain American and Soviet consent for a policy “which will give us a happy, a free and prosperous Jewish State in Palestine.”18 The announcement one day later of a General Election, once Labour Party leader Clement Attlee turned down Churchill’s request to preserve the Cabinet coalition until the end of the war with Japan, meant further delay. Weizmann conveyed to the Prime Minister’s private secretary the necessity for an early Palestine settlement in view of both the “desperate — 12 —

1. The 100,000

needs” of the surviving Jewish communities in Europe and the “increasingly dangerous temper” in the Middle East. Unable to control developments within the Zionist movement, the Anglophile, whose moderate political stance had long rested on faith in His Majesty’s Government, contemplated resignation. Independently, Hagana National Command Chief Sneh pressed Ben-Gurion on May 21 to travel with Jewish Agency treasurer Eliezer Kaplan to the United States in order to raise a fund of 5–10 million dollars to defend the yishuv in the event of attack. For his part, the Agency Executive chairman urged his colleagues to convene immediately in London after the General Election, where delegates from Palestine, the European countries, and the United States would present to HMG and public opinion in Great Britain a united expression of the “whole living movement.”19 Ultimately, it was decided that the conference, intended as a political demonstration and acting in an advisory capacity to the Zionist Actions Committee, would take place at the beginning of August. But what to do now, pondered U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. and his staff, for the survivors of the Holocaust, who were either stateless or citizens of former enemy countries with none to intercede on their behalf? Reports had been received that while thousands were dying from disease each week in the very concentration camps where they had been incarcerated by the Germans, those still alive were wearing the same thread-bare clothing and receiving food rations lower than those allocated to Germans. The WRB, whose creation had largely arisen from Morgenthau’s confrontation with FDR in January 1944 and which had saved many thousands of Jews from Hitler’s apocalyptic plan of mass murder, would soon expire. He therefore proposed to Truman on May 23 that a new Cabinet Committee be formed to investigate the survivors’ needs. There were many reasons why he (a Jew of German ancestry) should not be on the committee, the Secretary told his associates: “We’re not kidding ourselves. It gets down largely to Palestine.” Truman penned an immediate, private reaction: “What good would such a board accomplish?”20 SHAEF’s revised administrative memorandum of April 16, 1945, had distinguished between “refugees,” “displaced persons,” and “stateless persons” in Germany. The first were German civilians within Germany, temporarily homeless because of the war, while the second were civilians outside of the boundaries of their country who wished to — 13 —

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return home but could not without assistance. “Stateless” persons, to include persons of enemy or ex-enemy origin, by law or in fact “lacked protection of any government”; only after every effort to determine nationality failed should individuals be relegated to this category. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) had been authorized by the United Nations to undertake the care, relief, and repatriation of displaced persons. The IGCR was responsible for the resettlement of persons, including stateless, who “have been obliged to leave their homes for reasons of race, etc.” UNRRA had agreed to care for these for a period of time to be agreed upon, after which the IGCR would assume responsibility for those not repatriated or resettled. SHAEF recognized that it was “normally desirable” to accommodate non-repatriable persons in separate assembly centers with a view to “relatively permanent occupation”; special welfare, educational, and medical staff should operate there when possible. German residences would, as necessary, be requisitioned, vacated, and used to provide accommodation.21 This approach did not sit well with the British authorities. The American Embassy in London cabled to State, American IGCR representative Earl Harrison, and the WRB on May 28 a Foreign Office spokesman’s declaration that Cabinet ministers had decided not to engage in any discussion of the broad problem of resettlement at present, and to treat this matter “passively”. Every effort should be made, they felt, to repatriate the refugees, in this way reducing the IGCR’s responsibilities. The refugees might be encouraged to refuse to return to their country of origin if the matter of resettlement were raised at present. “Very strict” tests should be made as to non-repatriability. Finally, beyond their present financial commitments for the operating expenditures of the IGCR for 1945, “British authority will not go.”22 Indeed, on June 2 the Foreign Office’s specialist in such matters confirmed this decision to IGCR director Herbert Emerson. A meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Refugees, reported Paul Mason, concluded that it was “probably premature” to assume that a “hard core of considerable magnitude” of non-repatriable refugees would be found. Its members “favored the assumption that all refugees were repatriable.” The problem, therefore, should not at present be considered on “an international footing.” The same day, Truman wrote Morgenthau that he had “about made up my mind” not to appoint any committee — 14 —

1. The 100,000

about the refugee program. The next time the two met, he added, they would discuss it further.23 Pointedly, all of these confidential memoranda (including Morgenthau’s to Truman for a Cabinet Committee) masked the identity of Hitler’s prime target of racist hatred at a time when Jewish organizations in Great Britain and the United States unsuccessfully pressed their respective governments to aid the survivors. HMG’s War Office dug in its heels, opposing delegations of visitors to the camps. Thanks to harrowing reports from chaplains in the U.S. Army, the American Jewish Conference got six Congressmen to cable Eisenhower on May 10, asking him to “appoint Jewish liaison officers under military assignment and control” to act as consultants with SHAEF and to deal with “displaced persons and their repatriation and resettlement.” The Conference and the Board of Deputies of British Jews volunteered to prepare a list of qualified personnel. Eisenhower’s reply came on May 29, assuring the Congressmen that the survivors’ plight had been brought to the attention of his headquarters, and that UNRRA had arranged for voluntary agencies to care for specific problems. The request for Jewish liaison officers was rejected. 24 One day earlier, Acting Secretary of State Grew had sent Truman a memorandum on Palestine. The American Christian Palestine Committee, which included a number of distinguished non-Jews, was requesting all members of Congress to have the President endorse unlimited Jewish immigration and statehood in Palestine now that the war in Europe had ended. Palestine, Grew noted, might be included among the dependent areas for which a system of trusteeship was being evolved at San Francisco, and definite arrangements regarding specific territories were to be considered later. Given the current crisis in Syria and Lebanon and renewed outbreaks of terrorism in Palestine itself, any action by the U.S. government along the lines desired by the American Christian Palestine Committee would “increase the prevailing tension in the Near East.” Truman agreed that such an endorsement would have “most unfortunate” repercussions at present. At his first official dinner, that evening, the President received the regent of Iraq, who would be publicly told by Special Departmental Assistant William Phillips that the government welcomed the Arab League’s formation as not only benefiting the Arab countries, but making “important and constructive contributions to the great tasks awaiting the United Nations.” The following day, — 15 —

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Truman “approved in principle” the efforts of the Departments of State, War, and the Navy, sanctioned by FDR in January, to seek Congressional aid for Saudi Arabia’s urgent financial requirements.25 Weizmann’s anxious letter on June 7 to Meyer Weisgal, his closest confidant, would alter this turn of events dramatically. Churchill had still not replied to his latest appeal, while the results of a General Election, scheduled for early the next month, could not be forecast. “I wonder,” Weizmann asked, “whether the situation is being made clear to Talboker?” (This Hebrew coded reference to the German “Morgenthau” would not be lost on Weisgal.) The delay in reaching a decision on Palestine, he added, “is costing many Jewish lives from the poor remnant that remains to us, and the longer they wait, the more difficult everything will become.” Weizmann would try to do something in London in the course of the next few weeks, but Weisgal had “to help from your side, too.”26 Weisgal, then in New York, lost little time in contacting the Treasury Department head via Henrietta Stein Klotz, Morgenthau’s secretary since 1922 and watchdog over all of the stolid official’s appointments. This daughter of an Orthodox Jewish home of Polish-born parents had first inculcated in the man Washington dubbed “Henry the morgue” some appreciation of the Jewish heritage, and cultivated her boss’s budding association with Weizmann and Weisgal during the war years. Weisgal proposed that a thorough survey by a Presidential emissary be made of the current position of the Jews in Europe, covering their needs, prospects, and hopes. He suggested James McDonald, first League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from Germany (1933–1935), and in one day obtained the “unqualified approval” from a cross-section of American Jewish leadership for this mission. Assuming that McDonald’s embrace of Zionism during the war would be anathema to State’s anti-Zionist Near Eastern department, Morgenthau thought Earl Harrison a better choice. On the morning of June 11, the Secretary telephoned Grew, asking him to meet for five minutes with his Special Assistant John Pehle, first director of the WRB, to consider the IGCR official going to see “how the Jews are being treated in Europe.” Some of Morgenthau’s Jewish friends were saying that the survivors were being treated “as badly as they were before we defeated Germany.” He did not know whether this was true or not, but thought that “we had better find out the facts.”27 — 16 —

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The proposal had to be cleared with Eisenhower in the first instance, as well as Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Grew responded. If it is a question of a cable, retorted Morgenthau, a talk with Pehle could determine what kind of telegram to send. Since Grew was tied up almost every hour that day, William Phillips, who was “running that side of the show,” could see Pehle. Wanting the cable to be dispatched the same day authorizing Harrison to go, and with Phillips a personal friend, Morgenthau agreed. That same afternoon, after Pehle saw Phillips, Grew sent a telegram for Eisenhower’s “immediate” attention seeking permission to have Harrison travel, possibly with the WRB’s Roswell McClelland in Switzerland, to “ascertain certain facts with regard to displaced persons particularly Jews” as a matter which should have the government’s “wholehearted support.” A delighted Morgenthau had Klotz inform Weisgal of this swift development. Regardless of who else might accompany Harrison, Weisgal wrote the Secretary on June 14, he should have someone who is familiar with Jewish history and tradition, “one who has deep roots in Jewish life” and is equipped to talk directly with some of the Jews who must be dealt with in arriving at conclusions with respect to “the European Jewish problem.” If permitted to do so, Weisgal would be pleased to submit certain suggestions in this regard. To “Henrietta,” “Meyer” added that “our people” were deeply appreciative of Morgenthau’s ready response in this matter: “There is such a deep sense of despair with regard to the position of the remaining Jews in Europe that the mere knowledge of his interest and solicitude in the matter is a source of great comfort to us.”28 The 46-year-old Harrison, a leading trial lawyer in Philadelphia, had entered government service when appointed Commissioner of Alien Registration in 1940 at the suggestion of Solicitor General Francis Biddle. In that capacity, he imaginatively had suggested the use of post offices for registration and fingerprinting for approximately 5,000,000 non-citizens, and the success of that program led to his appointment as Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization in July 1942. During the next two years, the friendly, hard-working University of Pennsylvania law school graduate oversaw the largest number of applications for citizenship in the history of the service. Harrison had direct charge and responsibility for the nation’s detention centers for aliens whose loyalty was in doubt, as well as for many special wartime duties. Visiting every one of 22 district offices, he displayed an open, warm demeanor — 17 —

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and noteworthy administrative abilities. These, together with firsthand knowledge of various social agencies, led wartime Attorney General Biddle to praise his “extraordinarily human heart” for making foreigners in the country “understand how much they contributed to us.” For a record of remarkable achievement in solving problems under his jurisdiction, the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born awarded Harrison its annual medal in April 1943. On March 15, 1945, FDR appointed this Republican and Presbyterian the U.S. representative on the IGCR, which placed him in close touch with the immense refugee problems thrown up by the persecutions and dislocations across the war-torn Continent of Europe. Weisgal cabled the Jewish Agency office in London that Harrison was “very sympathetic and friendly” and should be seen. He is “a good man,” Justice Frankfurter told Weisgal.29 The possible appointment of this objective but idealistic former law professor could not have come at a better time for Weizmann, who had finally received word from Churchill on June 9. The Prime Minister’s curt answer—“There can be no possibility of the question being effectively considered until the victorious Allies are definitely seated at the Peace table”—came as a “great shock.” This, Weizmann wrote back six days later, “substituted some indefinite date in the future.” Continuance of the White Paper, barring Palestine’s doors to “the surviving remnant” of European Jewry, was also “unbearable” to Jews confined to “a territorial ghetto” consisting of five percent of the area of Western Palestine. The earnest plea drew no reply, although Randolph Churchill soon told Weizmann that his father realized the urgency of the Jewish question, but felt he must obtain American support. Hearing this, Weizmann wrote Weisgal “now it is essential that your chief [Truman] should be fully briefed about the situation, and convinced of the need for taking some sort of decision at the earliest possible moment.” To colleagues in London, Weizmann had expressed his opinion that Truman was “an honest man” who, if he made a promise, “would keep it.” In his view, Palestine would be discussed at the forthcoming Big Three meeting in Potsdam, Germany, of Truman, Churchill, and Stalin. It was therefore all the more crucial, he added to Weisgal, “to have your chief’s full weight on our side: perhaps only he can really swing the balance.”30 Having obtained Eisenhower’s approval, Grew acknowledged Morgenthau’s initiative when endorsing the Harrison mission in a — 18 —

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letter to Truman on June 21. By then, Frankfurter had arranged for Morgenthau to receive an update from Gershon Agronsky (later Agron), founder in 1932 of the Palestine Post, on opposition to the White Paper both from the yishuv and American Jewish Committee president Proskauer. Expressing in a letter to Harrison the next day a personal wish for every success and his looking forward to the report, the President noted that the envoy would proceed abroad “to inquire into the needs of stateless and non-repatriable refugees among the displaced persons in Germany and to determine the extent to which those needs are now being met by military, governmental and private organizations.” “It is important to the early restoration of peace and order in Europe,” Truman added, “that plans be developed to meet the needs of those who for justifiable reasons cannot return to their countries of pre-war residence.”31 A decade later, Truman’s memoirs record that he did not think the State Department’s approach in 1945 towards the Palestine question “would solve the basic human problem.” The fate of thousands of Jews in Europe—“really only a fraction of the millions whom Hitler had doomed to death”—was “a primary concern.” They had suffered “more and longer” than any other group which had been displaced by the Second World War, yet their condition “had barely improved since the fighting had ended.” He intended the Harrison mission to investigate their present condition. Other than Truman’s basic humanitarian concern, the appointment appeared justified on political grounds, responding positively to the concerns of organized American Jewry. Finally, as aired years later on CBS Reports, a personal memory was recalled to explain his response. Truman related how members of his own family in Jackson County had been displaced from Missouri in August 1863 by Union Order No. 11, intended to deprive pro-Confederate guerrillas of material support from the rural countryside, and then he declared: It was my attitude that the American government could not stand idly by while the victims of Hitler’s madness were not allowed to build new lives. Hitler had been murdering Jews right and left. It’s been estimated that he killed six million Jews—burned most of them up in furnaces. It was a horrible thing. I saw and I dream about — 19 —

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it even to this day. On that account, the Jews needed some place where they could go.32 Weisgal sat down with Harrison in Philadelphia on June 23, bringing along his close friend Henry Montor. The two had first met soon after Montor moved from Cincinnati to New York City in 1925 to become assistant editor under Weisgal of the Zionist Organization of America’s New Palestine magazine. He subsequently established the PALCOR news agency, meant to feature news of Palestine, and became publicity director of the United Palestine Appeal. At Montor’s suggestion, Weisgal took the lead in organizing the highly successful Jewish Palestine Pavilion at New York’s 1939 World’s Fair. Since the creation of the United Jewish Appeal (UJA) that same year, Montor had proved to be a highly gifted fundraiser in his capacity as its executive vice-chairman. Weisgal and Montor intended to impress upon Harrison that an enduring solution had to be found for the survivors of the Holocaust, and that it rested in Palestine.33 Weisgal and Montor were “deeply reassured” to find Harrison in “obvious” sympathy with European Jewry’s plight and the prospects that he was to survey. He agreed to the suggestion that he meet with Weizmann in London, and that Joseph Schwartz of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) join in the mission, if possible. The pair stressed that Harrison’s rendered service could be “truly historic,” as Weisgal put it, laying the foundations “for a sound, constructive solution of a problem that has so long eluded the world and bedeviled the Jewish people.” A maximum of time, preferably eight weeks, ought to be allowed for his mission, and Jewish survivors themselves should be “free of duress” so they could talk to Harrison without constraint during his trip abroad. A long-range solution had to be found, rather than the temporary and unhappy solutions that had been offered Jews for thousands of years, since the lack of a permanent home lay at the root of the “Jewish problem.” Weisgal urged Harrison to go to Palestine to study for himself what had been done and what could be done in order to meet the problem of Jews who desired a lasting haven, and wished him good fortune on the “momentous journey.” A subsequent memorandum from Weisgal emphasized that the majority of the Jews of Europe would wish to go to Palestine if given the opportunity to do so, a land “which they can call their own — 20 —

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and where they are welcome and within which they can develop themselves as a permanent, free, secure basis.”34 Harrison, who agreed to have Schwartz accompany him as “the most capable person for such a mission,” would leave for Europe at the month’s end. Schwartz, the JDC’s most influential personality in Europe during World War II and a firm Zionist, joined him not long thereafter. Weisgal cabled to Weizmann Morgenthau’s success in obtaining Harrison’s assignment, along with the Secretary’s request that “his messenger” be given all the attention possible. Weizmann replied that he would certainly give Harrison his fullest attention. Yet he thought the enquiry coming “rather late in the day.” To his Jewish Agency colleagues in London, the WZO avatar declared that Truman, “about whom they knew nothing,” had to be approached before the Allied leaders’ meeting at Potsdam. Any delay would be dangerous, because Weizmann considered the position “untenable.” In fact, as the Zionists had been “deceived and let down” by Churchill and Roosevelt, Weizmann seriously considered resigning his post. He had no confidence in the Big Three: “Nobody cared what happened to the Jews. Nobody had raised a finger to stop them from being slaughtered. They did not bother even about the remnant which had survived.”35 The Jewish Agency’s other most prominent leaders, Shertok and Ben-Gurion, harbored similar convictions. On June 18, Shertok had officially requested High Commissioner Lord Gort, in light of the unprecedented “campaign of extermination” that had destroyed over six million European Jews, for 100,000 immigration permits (25 percent for children) to be placed immediately at the Agency’s disposal. A detailed memorandum indicated that a settlement of this size was not only practicable, but would generally benefit the economic structure of the country. Gort did not arespond with alacrity, however. BenGurion went further, declaring in press conferences abroad that only “a regime of bloody terror” would be able to maintain the White Paper, and that the yishuv had to unite for a Jewish state immediately and so “redeem the Jewish people.” Churchill’s letter of June 9, he had pointed out to Agency associates, did not say that the White Paper would not stand, and “more and bigger problems” would crowd out Palestine at the Peace Conference; the Prime Minister, who had the Middle East “in his pocket,” would always find an excuse to do nothing for the Zionists. If their demands were not met, Ben-Gurion told State’s Near Eastern and — 21 —

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African Affairs (NEA) office director Loy Henderson on June 27, the Jews would fight in defense of their rights “and the consequences would be on Great Britain’s head.”36 At this point, Morgenthau’s departure from Washington was not long in coming. Truman, not an ideological New Dealer like the Secretary, wanted pragmatic, middle-of-the-road Congressional friends in the Cabinet who could help him on Capitol Hill. He disagreed with the Morgenthau Plan’s emasculation of German industry; the Secretary’s criticism that Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson’s ideas for the projected Allied trial of German war criminals at Nuremberg would postpone indefinitely any convictions; and his wish to get involved in postwar foreign policy. In Stimson’s opinion, the Morgenthau Plan derived first and foremost from his cabinet colleague’s “Semitic grievances,” and “a man of his race” should be forbidden to deal with Germany. When the Secretary of War strongly objected to Morgenthau’s being part of the U.S. delegation to Potsdam (codename “Terminal”), Truman responded: “Don’t worry, neither Morgenthau nor [Bernard] Baruch nor any of the Jew boys” would be going there.37 Coming from a prejudice-ridden small town in the Midwest, the Baptist now in the White House had embraced, in some of his private correspondence, negative stereotypes about the business acumen of “Hebrews and kikes.” His mother-in-law and his wife, Bess, never hosted a Jew in their house. On the other hand, Truman and Eddie Jacobson, who first operated a highly successful Army canteen together during World War I and then jointly ran a men’s clothing store in Kansas City until it went bankrupt in the inflationary 1920s, remained close friends. A notation in Truman’s diary for June 1 questioned the Jewish claim to be picked out for “special privilege,” and averred that “any race, creed or color can be God’s favorites if they act the part—and very few of ‘em do that.” The remark one month later about “Jew boys” (although Baruch opposed the Morgenthau Plan) also found its way into Stimson’s diary. Still, Truman’s foreign policy on Palestine remained unclear, while he had just approved the Harrison mission. Public actions, not private words, would be the true test of decision.38 On July 5, after a tense half-hour in the Oval Office, Morgenthau submitted his resignation. In their meeting, Morgenthau had requested a letter saying that the President asked him to stay until V-J (Victory over Japan) Day. When Truman responded that he needed time to think — 22 —

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it over, not wanting to be rushed and pressured, Morgenthau understood this was “the tip-off” that Truman was “dodging for time” and might want a new head for Treasury. The Secretary suggested that he would write a letter of resignation for that evening’s distribution to the press, and “break in” the President’s clear choice, his regular poker-playing friend Fred Vinson, director of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, while Truman was at the Potsdam Conference. While associates drafted a letter detailing Morgenthau’s many successes in the department during the past twelve years, Truman made the announcement himself that afternoon. The President’s later recollection of their meeting states that he fired Morgenthau when the Secretary insisted on going to Potsdam or he would resign. Morgenthau’s diary, which made no mention of the Potsdam issue, notes that he soon explained to a few prominent editors how he “forced the issue” in the face of Truman’s evasiveness with the request to stay until Japan’s defeat. The next evening Truman announced Vinson as his choice. With Vinson remaining in Washington, Truman had aide Samuel Rosenman, FDR’s lawyer and one of his speech writers, arrange to have Morgenthau step down without further delay.39 On July 17, the Senate confirmed the new Treasury Secretary. The fate of Harrison’s mission, a venture made possible by Morgenthau’s direct intervention, would now rest in the hands of others. The problem of an estimated 1,500,000 survivors could not wait, Weizmann informed Harrison when they met in London on June 30. Palestine’s doors would soon be closed, as only 3,000 Palestine certificates remained under the White Paper. The British would not move alone to solve the problem; they needed the support and “prodding” of the United States. Churchill’s hands would be strengthened by the Americans, who would be responding to a humanitarian, not a political, interest. The idea that Washington would share with London in the Mandate was “absurd”; it would mean a double administration, a condominium; the Jews would “fall within [sic] two stools” and nothing would happen. The Americans could say they wanted a settlement and were willing to help economically in Palestine’s development. Hearing that Harrison had read a recent book by Walter Lowdermilk, which claimed that certain projects such as a Tennessee Valley Authority-type reclamation project for the Jordan Valley could settle an additional five — 23 —

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million people in Palestine, Weizmann suggested that they would be able to arrange a loan of $200 million in America for this purpose. Two armed divisions were “ample” to hold the Arabs, but the matter could be worked out with them, particularly with US aid, if the “will to do” existed. Weizmann “heartily” endorsed Schwartz, having had many personal experiences with him. A good percentage of the survivors could be taken care of with an increase of 300,000 immigrants to the yishuv, thereby approaching the Arabs’ current numerical strength. He saw “no other place to go.”40 Weizmann colleagues Selig Brodetsky, Berl Locker, and Joseph Linton expanded on his stance in a ninety-minute interview with Harrison. The day that Hitler entered Prague in March 1939 thanks to Western appeasement, they observed, also signaled Britain’s adoption soon thereafter of the White Paper. Widespread antisemitism in Europe, beginning with Poland, confronted Jews at present; SHAEF refused Jewish organizations entry into refugee camps. The Zionists were requesting 100,000 additional certificates to Palestine. At present, 12,000 certificates were blocked in Rumania and Bulgaria, where Jews had trouble with exit permits. Of some thousands of survivors admitted to Sweden, many were already asking for Palestine certificates. Russia appeared “friendly” to their concerns. Temporary solutions could not meet the crisis, while speed was necessary. The issue must be faced now. Keep in mind the needs of Jews outside of Europe, the group continued. This included 750,000 Jews in Arab and Muslim countries, North Africa, and Asia, whose condition was not as bad as that of the Jews of Europe. As for the Jews of Palestine, once having received international promises in the Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate to support the creation of a Jewish National Home, they did not wish to remain a minority. “Ghetto rule,” according to Palestine’s Land Transfer Regulations of 1940, restricted them to 5 percent of the country, along with discriminatory tax legislation. (Article 6 of the Mandate had called for the British administration, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency, to encourage the “close settlement” by Jews throughout the land.) The position in Palestine, not static, would revert to uprisings—the Jews “will take matters into their own hands”—if immigration stopped. Altogether, aside from ideological grounds, they declared, Palestine was the only possible solution—“no other place” wanted the Jews. Brodetsky — 24 —

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concluded that Harrison, who took copious notes, knew a lot about the situation, was not new to the subject, and seemed very interested in what they told him. “Obviously Harrison was a new factor in the situation,” Weizmann informed his associates.41 While Harrison proceeded on his mission following what he considered an “inspiring helpful hour with Dr. Weizmann,” Ben-Gurion noted to the AZEC Executive Committee that the U.S. executive branch “is vital.” At Potsdam, he urged, Truman had to tell Churchill that the Prime Minister would be “tested by his words” against the White Paper. Although unable to get an interview with Truman before that conference, Wise and colleague Carl Sherman found Postmaster General Robert Hannegan “very sympathetic” to their plea, and appreciative of the support which American Jews had given the Democratic Party in the last election. Even as Hannegan passed on their memorandum to the President and to newly appointed Secretary of State James Byrnes, Truman informed Wagner (who told Wise) of his “continued sympathy”; while he wished that the pro-Zionist petition to him from a majority of both houses of Congress not be publicized at this time, the President also told the New York Senator that he would do “everything he could” at the Big Three meeting. A Jewish Agency memorandum also reached Truman, as did a letter from Proskauer supporting “the liberalization of Jewish immigration into Palestine, for that may become necessary for the relief of many thousand stricken European Jews.”42 The man of whom Truman in his memoirs wrote “it would be hard to find a truer friend,” a member of B’nai Brith and a Mason, shared Proskauer’s sentiments. Not a Zionist, Eddie Jacobson had told the spiritual head of the Reform Congregation B’nai Jehudah in Kansas City that while he would never ask the White House occupant for a favor, “I will always be glad” to urge Truman “to use every influence he has to rescue and save as many of the desperate and homeless Jews of Europe as possible. But he doesn’t need me to urge him, his broad sympathies and kindly heart will prompt him to do that anyway.” Jacobson and other World War I Army buddies were too rushed during their visit to the Oval Office on June 18 for him to speak in private about “the Jewish situation in Europe,” but he assured Rabbi Samuel Mayerberg that when Truman visited his new haberdashery shop the following week “I will certainly appeal to him to get the British government to relax their restrictions for those entering Palestine.” On his way to the West Coast, — 25 —

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Truman stopped by ten days later and purchased three white shirts from his former business partner. The full retinue of aides and secret service men, accompanied by numerous news reporters who took a photograph that received worldwide coverage of the two men at Jacobson’s counter, did not allow for lengthy discussion. Just before Truman’s visit, however, Jacobson had been impressed by a talk with Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld of Omaha, director of the Committee on Unity for Palestine, an arm of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), and, after additional meetings, agreed to take Lelyveld with him to see Truman at the next available opportunity.43 Gordon Merriam, the State Department’s Chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs, did not feel “particularly alarmed” at this time as to the “opening round” between the conflicting presentations of Wise and Stettinius to Truman soon after FDR’s death. “We knew that Roosevelt had two Palestine policies,” he wrote to Henderson’s predecessor, the stridently anti-Zionist Wallace Murray. Truman he judged to be “a very sensible and reasonable man.” Having briefed him on two occasions, the department now felt that Truman was “very well grounded in the essentials of the Palestine question, and will go pretty slow in the future.” The Regent of Iraq, who had a brief talk with the President about Palestine, was “perfectly satisfied” with his attitude. His personal impression, Merriam concluded, was that “President Truman is a straight shooter, and that, now that he knows the difficulties and dangers, we will hear much less about Palestine in the future, unless there is something important and well-considered to say.” One day later, Grew advised Truman not to raise Palestine with Churchill at Potsdam, since it was a British responsibility, a long-term settlement had to come through the UN, and nothing should be done without consulting both Arabs and Jews.44 Isaiah Berlin, then serving as the British Embassy’s observer on American and Jewish affairs, presented a more complex assessment of FDR’s successor. To a friend in the Ministry of Information, he averred that the President’s qualities—“clearly sincere, decent… and liberal in a provincial Midwestern way”—were “on such a minor scale, such a Dutch interior, that all these virtues cannot provide for the first really big crisis which general principles do not solve.” Truman’s predilection was for “respectable, unfrightening hacks.” Reporting to his superiors, Berlin praised Truman’s acting with “honesty, firmness and dispatch,” carrying on “faithfully along the general lines so firmly — 26 —

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developed by his predecessor.” Moreover, his relations with Congress and the press were conspicuously better than were Roosevelt’s, particularly during the latter’s two terms. His personal staff, however, represented “a collection, at best, of worthy and honourable mediocrities.” More serious was the uncertainty still prevailing with regard to the conduct of foreign affairs; Byrnes lacked wide or deep experience in this area. Consequently, despite Truman’s “obvious integrity and very sound general views on international affairs” and the good influence upon him of a few sincere internationalists in the Senate, Berlin believed that “a period is likely to ensue, not indeed of drift or apathy, but at any rate of a passive absence of the vast purposes and energetic drive provided by the late President.” “Missed opportunities and neglected acts” would likely be witnessed, Still, he concluded, HMG had no cause to complain at the line taken by Truman so far in dealing with day to day problems: “His approach so far has been firm, courageous and quick.”45 Ben-Gurion could not wait for possible help from Truman. On the morning of July 1, thanks to Montor’s UJA contacts, he convened a meeting of wealthy Jews in order to transmit “a very grave message” for American Jewry regarding the yishuv’s future. The twenty invitees who came from across the United States to the New York City upper East Side penthouse of Rudolf G. Sonneborn heard the Agency Executive chairman explain that the Labour Party would win the General Election, but it would, like Churchill’s government, renege on past promises made. The British would have to depart Palestine in two to three years, he predicted, leaving the yishuv, while prepared to make supreme sacrifices in order to retain the right of possession of the country, to face a united attack from the surrounding Arab armies. The demoralized survivors, alone able to give the Jewish state a majority to survive, had no haven but Palestine. Agency officials Kaplan and Zaslani provided further details that afternoon. The group, sworn to secrecy, pledged their unequivocal support to the charismatic, inspiring leader for whatever would be asked of them in the future. Less than two weeks later, Sonneborn and Samuel Cherr dispatched a letter from the Agency’s New York office in Suite 1205, 342 Madison Avenue. Recalling their “stimulating gathering”, the pair asked those present to immediately but secretly contact other “trustworthy individuals” to contribute funds and certain war materiel for the Jewish Agency, with several lists of needed equipment to follow. Before long, — 27 —

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Materials for Palestine would emerge as the organization dedicated to meet Ben-Gurion’s fervent charge.46 The same day of the Sonneborn meeting, British Ambassador Lord Halifax in Washington suggested to Eden that, given the improbability that HMG could find a permanent solution acceptable to Jews and Arabs, the United States especially or another Great Power should be offered a share in handling that dilemma. The Foreign Office, still opposing partition, thought that a 1,500-monthly immigration quota would “draw the sting of Zionist protests and would probably deprive them adequate pretext for resort to violence.” Sticking to his own plan, Grigg urged that American cooperation should be sought to develop Palestine as “an undivided bi-racial state.” London could not compete, nor should it, with Washington regarding Saudi oil and air bases, he advised, while American good will and understanding would be important to HMG’s final settlement regarding Egypt, Palestine, and Iraq.47 Churchill agreed with Halifax, as he put it in a short note on July 6 to the Colonial Office and the Chiefs of Staff, that HMG should not take responsibility for “managing this very difficult place while the Americans sit back and criticize.” One week earlier, a reply which he had dictated but not sent to Weizmann suggested that perhaps the Mandate should be transferred to the United States, which, “with her great wealth and strength and strong Jewish elements, might be able to do more for the Zionist cause than Great Britain.” “I need hardly say,” that draft went on, “I shall continue to do my best for it. But, as you will know, it has few supporters, and even the Labour Party now seems to have lost its zeal.” His short note of exasperation added the following: “I am not aware of the slightest advantage which has ever accrued to Great Britain from this painful and thankless task. Somebody else should have their turn now.” Churchill’s primary concern, as he had told Truman envoy Joseph Davies, lay in increased efforts by Stalin to communize Europe if U.S. forces were withdrawn from the liberated Continent. A “steel curtain” of the Soviets, which he viewed with horror, was being “clamped down” on Eastern liberated areas, with propagandists and leaders “sent like locusts” in advance of the Red Army to establish communist cells. He looked forward to an understanding with Truman at Potsdam.48 Stanley concurred with Churchill as to turning over the Mandate, but Whitehall Arabist Harold Beeley cautioned on July 10 that “abdication in Palestine” might “set in motion a process which would result in the — 28 —

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crumbling away of our influence throughout the region.” The military, fearing the loss of Britain’s predominant position in the Middle East, and the “incalculable” psychological effects of this on world opinion if the Americans took over the Mandate, nodded assent the same day. The Minister Resident in the Middle East still thought his plan, adhering temporarily to the White Paper policy and after the exhaustion of the quota to admit no further Jewish immigration without Arab consent, with an international commission to resolve the Palestine conundrum, the best solution. The whole question “must be settled at the Peace Table,” Churchill’s note of July 6 had read, “though it may be touched upon at Terminal.” Perhaps the victorious wartime allies would agree once they sat down at Potsdam’s Cecilienhof Palace, the last palace built by the Hohenzollern dynasty, for their first negotiations on July 17.49 Most survivors, some making their own way to the American zone in a divided Germany, had few doubts about Palestine. The first large boatload to reach Haifa harbor after V-E Day, including 242 orphans from Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Bergen-Belsen, hoisted a Zionist flag when arriving aboard the Mataroa on July 15. Two days later, Vilna partisan leader Abba Kovner urged the Jewish Brigade center in Italy to achieve a mass exodus from Europe to the Promised Land. The Brigade, having performed heroically against German forces ever since its formation as a contingent of the British Army in September 1944, had already begun taking clandestine steps to move what Jews called the “surviving remnant” (Sh’eirit HaPleita) across borders for ultimate embarkation to Palestine. The first conference of this remnant, convening on July 25 at St. Ottilien and representing 40,000 Jews from DP camps in Germany and Austria, demanded “the immediate establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine, the recognition of the Jewish people as an equal with all the Allied nations, and its inclusion in the peace conference.” Harrison, after visiting a number of DP camps and meeting with dynamic American chaplain Abraham Klausner, Bergen-Belsen leader Josef (“Yossele”) Rosensaft, Auschwitz survivor Norbert Wolheim, and British head Jewish chaplain Isaac Levy, had also come to realize that “a high percentage” of survivors wanted prompt emigration, preferably to Palestine.50 A concerned Loy Henderson, receiving reports of rising support in the United States and abroad for extreme Zionism and of the “likely” outbreak of disorders in Palestine resulting from a British decision — 29 —

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regarding immigration, warned his superiors that “we might be faced with a very difficult situation.” Goldmann had just conveyed that he, Weizmann, Wise, and other moderates could easily lose control to Silver and “those not averse to violence” in Palestine. On July 13, the Irgun ambushed a British Army truck carrying gelignite fuses, killing a constable in the attack. Not long thereafter a bridge on the Lydda-Kantara railway was blown up. Ben-Gurion expressed full confidence to Henderson that the yishuv could “deal with the Arabs,” but was that certain? On July 20, U.S. Consul-General in Jerusalem Lowell Pinkerton informed State that “a whispering campaign” had begun in Arab villages that HMG would welcome Arab reaction to Jewish terrorism. With the Arabs very subject to mob psychology, he advised, only a spark was needed to bring it to open violence. If a British decision on immigration were unfavorable to the Jews, predicted the Inspector of Police, large-scale illegal immigration (aliya bet in Zionist parlance) would occur. In the opinion of some senior British officials, reported the Jerusalem correspondent of the London Times, Palestine “is living on the slopes of a volcano.” The country’s Jews awaited the results of the General Election, he added, and if their hopes were not immediately fulfilled, it “could easily result in trouble.”51 Palestine’s Arabs, the same correspondent claimed, were “hopelessly divided and cannot present a united front on a single question.” A Palestinian Arab trade delegation, seeking direct contact between British manufacturers and nearly fifty million Arab customers, had urged the Colonial Office in May that Jamal al-Husseini (a major activist in the Arab Revolt and the pro-Nazi 1941 insurrection in Iraq) be allowed to return from prison abroad. Yet the Husseini clan’s opposition had blocked all efforts during World War II to attain Palestinian Arab unity—a cause further weakened by the Mufti’s alignment with Hitler. Recently, its Palestine Arab Party warned local branches not to cooperate with Rashid Haj Ibrahim, Elias Koussa, and others active in the Arab Front’s activities in Jaffa and Haifa. An Arab Front manifesto, countering the Husseinis’ party, urged “the Arab Nation to drop its selfishness, personal and partisan disputes and to unite to face serious events.” The formation of a company for purchasing land in Palestine against Zionist designs also stalled due to the Istiklal party’s Umma (National) Fund withdrawing support from the competing plans of Husseini relative Musa al-Alami, then the Palestinian Arab envoy to the — 30 —

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Arab League. Auni Abdul Hadi, Istiklal’s leader, and the Reform Party’s Husayn Khalidi criticized al-Alami as well for failing to make the Arab League adopt a more definite attitude towards the Palestine problem and to accord equal rights with the other Arab countries as to representation on the League. Consequently, reported the mandatory’s Criminal Investigation Division, al-Alami chose not to attend the first meeting of the Arab League Council despite a summons from Cairo.52 A secret “feeler” to the Zionists from the Egyptian government had suggested a possible breakthrough. On June 27, following a talk with Congressman Celler, Judge Zulfikar Pasha told the Jewish Agency’s Zaslani that Cairo, seeking its full independence from HMG, would support a Jewish state in Palestine if the Zionists “really meant to be independent and not to serve” British imperial interests in the Middle East. The irreconcilable anti-Zionist Ibn Saud would oppose this détente, King Farouk’s father-in-law admitted, but he would not live much longer and his son, far more aware of the need for progress in the region, would support it. The Syrians told him that they would welcome such an arrangement; the Iraqis would not, given the annexationist aspirations of former Prime Minister Nuri Sa’id and others, but he believed that their opposition could be overcome. The rejection of Palestine’s Arabs “would not be worth much” without the support of their neighbors, and once the Arab world leaders made up their minds, the former would have to accept. Zaslani responded that Weizmann and the yishuv’s leadership always welcomed such discussions, and he suggested that the Egyptian speak of this further with Shertok, who often came to Cairo. There the matter rested.53 For their part, Palestinian Jewish spokesmen expressed grave worries regarding British policy. The BBC Arabic Service frequently referred to “His Eminence, the Grand Mufti of Palestine” just when the Colonial Office agreed that Haj Amin would be a great danger if allowed to return to Palestine. Having received no reply to his request in May of Chief Secretary Shaw that the Jewish Brigade now be transferred to Palestine, Shertok pointed out on July 9 that the presence in or near Jewish settlements of large numbers of the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force, for all practical purposes an Arab formation, and the heavily armed Arab Legion caused “great anxiety” to the Jewish community. This anomalous situation, he noted to Shaw, was revealed with particular poignancy when the public witnessed a massive display of Arab armed strength at the recent — 31 —

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King’s Birthday parade in Jerusalem, with only a small Jewish military unit placed at the tail-end of the long military procession. War Cabinet Home Secretary Herbert Morrison, calling himself “an old Zionist,” cautioned Locker that “you chaps are in for a tough time” because all the government officials “are against you.” Chief Palestine Information Officer Christopher Holme, reported the head of the European staff of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), “is pained by the word Jews,” and referred to the inhabitants of Palestine as “the Arabs and others.” The Zionists could not have known of the private comment by Colonial Office Principal Assistant Secretary Christopher Eastwood to colleagues about the “secular Nazified nationalists who control the Jewish Agency.”54 The Palestinian Arab press found fewer faults with the mandatory power. The Christian Arabic Falastin, a Jaffa morning newspaper close to the Husseinis’ rival Nashashibi clan, fulminated against Gort’s decision to transfer Jerusalem’s affairs to a British commission of five, after the Arabs unconditionally objected to rotating the Jewish mayoralty each year between a Muslim, a Jew, and a Christian, and to the city’s possible partition into separate Arab and Jewish municipal corporations. The weekly Al Widha, on the other hand, welcomed censor Holme’s statement that Palestine’s Jews should not demand any reward for their contributions to the war effort because “no better award could be expected than a victory over Hitler.” In addition, the Husseini’s Al-Difa’a reminded its readers that a Labour Government had issued the anti-Zionist HopeSimpson report and 1930 Passsfield White Paper. Imperial interests and the Arab League’s formation, as well as Allied safeguarding of Jewish rights against future persecution abroad, assured that newspaper’s editors that an Attlee victory would not betray Labour’s lofty principles of world peace “in the interest of a predatory movement.”55 In Potsdam, his first meeting with Truman convinced Churchill that the American Chief Executive was a man of “immense determination,” placing his foot “down firmly” on delicate ground. Truman listened attentively when the two lunched privately as the Prime Minister spoke of HMG’s “melancholy” financial position, amounting to a great external debt of three thousand million pounds. The President noted the Allies’ “immense” obligation when Britain had fought alone against Hitler, and expressed the earnest hope that the relations which Churchill had enjoyed with Roosevelt would continue between them. Truman’s “modesty and simple ways are certainly disarming,” wrote — 32 —

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Lord Moran, Churchill’s attending physician, in his diary. On his way out, the American passed a piano in one of the rooms and, pulling up a chair, played for a while.56 Thinking this the “beginning of a fruitful friendship,” the British warlord was therefore completely unprepared for a memorandum from Truman dated July 24 and typed on White House stationary. The President began by mentioning the United States’ “great interest” in the Palestine problem, and the “passionate protest” raised there against the “drastic restrictions” which “deny to Jews, who have been so cruelly uprooted by ruthless Nazi persecutions, entrance into the land which represents for so many of them their only hope for survival.” Knowing of Churchill’s “deep and sympathetic interest” in Jewish settlement in Palestine, he expressed the hope that the British government “may find it possible without delay to take steps” to lift these restrictions, and that they could discuss the problem together “in concrete terms” at a “not too distant date.” The thoroughly exhausted Prime Minister did not reply to Truman’s dramatic step, a personal appeal taken without State Department knowledge.57 On July 26, the same day that Colonial Office’s George Gater told Shertok that he could not expect an immediate reply to the request for an additional 100,000 immigration certificates, Churchill’s party lost Britain’s General Election in a landslide. He and Attlee had both expected a Conservative majority of at least 40 seats, but the victors and their associates received an overall majority of 180 in the new House of Commons. The Tory Party was blamed for the whole period in which it had held office between the two world wars, a rule popularly identified with the sense of insecurity, due mainly to war and unemployment, that the distrustful masses now wished to be changed. Years later, Truman would hail Churchill as the man who “lion-hearted—held half the world at bay, until the other half was shocked into comprehension of the truths which he had long preached in vain.” Now he wrote to his mother, Martha, “It’s too bad about Churchill, but it may turn out to be all right for the world.” That evening, Attlee left a late tea with his family at the Great Western Hotel, Paddington, to arrive at Buckingham Palace, where he received the commission from a sad King George VI to form a government. A hard road lay ahead, including the shortage of manpower, raw materials, industrial power and equipment. Against this grim, post-war — 33 —

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background, the King’s main advisors persuaded him to suggest to Attlee that wartime Minister of Labour and National Service Ernest Bevin, rather than Attlee’s original thought of Dalton, should head the Foreign Office as “the most important subject at the moment.” Attlee agreed, also thinking Bevin more suited by temperament to deal with the Russians, whom he considered would be “tough, aggressive and uncooperative.” Within two days, he added four other principals to his Cabinet, and on July 28 he and Bevin flew to Berlin.58 Heading across the Atlantic aboard the Queen Elizabeth for the World Zionist Conference, most American Zionist leaders aboard were delighted with Labour’s victory. In London, Shertok opined that the triumph would save the Conference, and “should remove fear of any Jewish upheaval in Palestine.” Ben-Gurion thought otherwise, fearing that despite Dalton’s speech in May the party would vacillate on Palestine. Yet “the blood of the six million” and the sufferings of the Jews in the so-called liberated countries did not give us rest, he concluded; a Jewish state had to be established immediately. The yishuv press maintained a sense of sober satisfaction rather than jubilation, waiting to see if Labour would fulfill its May declaration. Representatives of Palestine Jewish labor made the same point to a sub-committee of the National Executive of the Labour Party, Locker asserting that the Palestine problem “is a test case” for the Cabinet. Meeting separately on July 30 with new Lord Privy Seal Arthur Greenwood, he warned that the appointment of George Hall as Colonial Secretary, a man “entirely dominated” during the war by his officials when serving as Parliamentary UnderSecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, would be seen by Zionists as “the first blow given us by the new government.” Would HMG put up on Palestine’s gates the words at the entrance to Dante’s hell “Abandon all hope, you who enter here”? Antisemitism and devastation in Europe had to be taken into account, as well as the two 1944 American party planks, the state governors’ petition to Truman, and the strong support for Zionism among American Jewry. A sympathetic Greenwood said he understood the situation “very well.”59 What would be HMG’s next move? wondered State Department mandarins. In Henderson’s assessment, Labour’s victory suggested that the new government would modify the White Paper. Of the 179 members in the House of Commons who had voted against that legislation in 1939, 137 were from the Labour Party, including present Cabinet — 34 —

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members Attlee, Dalton, Greenwood, Lord President of the Council Morrison, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Philip Noel-Baker, and Minister of Fuel and Power Emanuel Shinwell. On July 25, Merriam sent Henderson a memorandum, prepared by the Near East Division’s William Yale, concluding that London would propose to the UN the placing of Palestine under a trusteeship system. If Attlee’s government wished to do so, Washington had to formulate a policy and make certain that its own interests were protected. Three days later, Merriam reminded his colleagues of State’s January 1945 recommendation that Britain become the trustee over Palestine, with a Board of Overseers composed equally of the local Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities to function in an advisory capacity. Arabs and Jews would be granted self-government in all areas where they predominated, with the future immigration of Jews limited by the trustee government until the country witnessed a large expansion of industry. This plan would eliminate conflicting commitments of the past, place Palestine outside the bounds of “nationalist and imperialist ambitions,” and foster Arab-Jewish cooperation essential to the ultimate independence of Palestine.60 Safeguarding U.S. interests in the Near East, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal told Byrnes in Berlin, included “a matter of first importance”—getting the benefit of Saudi Arabia’s oil fields. In a lengthy memorandum to the Secretary of State a few days later, he argued that within the next twenty-five years the United States would face very sharp declining oil reserves. Since oil and all of its by-products were the foundation of the ability to fight a modern war, he considered this to be one of the most important problems of the government. American companies should develop the Saudi reserves; a method of joint action with the British, whose interests lay in Iran and Iraq, could probably be worked out. The Secretary of the Interior, Forrestal thought, shared the Navy’s belief that this question should be followed “vigorously”, and he advised that the three Secretaries meet when Byrnes returned from Potsdam to outline a course of action.61 Grew and Henderson acknowledged the importance of good relations with Saudi Arabia, wishing to provide “all possible economic and advisory assistance” to that country without any interference in her political affairs, and to take “definite and concrete actions which we believe will be pleasing to King Ibn Saud and his Ministers.” That monarch’s heir and foreign minister, Crown Prince Feisal, expressed — 35 —

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to them on July 31 his father’s “absolute confidence” in the United States, and therefore entrusted oil and other areas of development to the Americans. “Deeply distressed” at Roosevelt’s death, Ibn Saud had taken some comfort in reports that Truman, like his predecessor, was “a man of integrity and ability,” and had an interest in the welfare of the peoples of the Middle East. The next day, Feisal expressed the hope that Washington would not place the Arabs of Palestine “under the domination of a Jewish government.” Grew and Henderson assured their guest that no change in Roosevelt’s “well known” policy for Palestine was being contemplated, and they conveyed Truman’s “sincere good wishes” for the King’s “good health and for the happiness and prosperity” of his people.62 Henderson assumed that Attlee’s government would consult both Washington and Moscow before putting into execution a future Palestine policy, but Soviet current intentions remained uncertain. When Roosevelt had volunteered on February 10 at the Yalta Conference’s last dinner that he was a Zionist and asked Stalin if he were one, the Georgian answered warily that he was one “in principle” but he “recognized the difficulty.” In actuality, the USSR Commission for Preparation of Peace Agreements and Postwar Settlement, chaired by Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs Maxim Litvinov (born Meir Henoch Moiseevich Wallach-Finkelstein), secretly concluded on July 27 that the Palestine question “cannot be resolved satisfactorily without infringing upon the rights and wishes either of the Jews or of the Arabs, or perhaps of both.” The British and U.S. Governments, unlike the Soviet Union, were exposed to simultaneous pressures from the Arab states and from world Jewry. With Palestine guarding the approaches to the Suez Canal and having on its territory the outlet for Iraqi oil, HMG would not likely agree to the temporary transfer of Palestine into the hands of another state. The collective trusteeship of the USSR, the United States, and Great Britain, however, could take the necessary decisions without deferring to Palestinian Arab or Jewish opinion, Litvinov declared, solving the problem “justly in accordance with the interests of the population as a whole and the new requirements of political life and general security.” In any event, Stalin’s decision had yet to be given.63 Truman’s memorandum to Churchill of July 24 reached Attlee the day he moved into 10 Downing Street. The new Prime Minister chose not to be rushed in the matter, following the advice of his forceful — 36 —

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Foreign Secretary. Bevin’s primary adviser on the Middle East, Harold Beeley, had bemoaned to colleagues after reading Truman’s missive to Churchill: “The Zionists have been deplorably successful in selling the idea that even after Allied victory immigration to Palestine represents for many Jews their only hope for survival.” “One advantage in temporizing,” Beeley added, would be the “dissipation of this idea.” Attlee responded to Truman’s request with a brief communication one week later: “You will I am sure understand that I cannot give you any statement on policy until we have had time to consider the matter, and this is simply to inform you that we will give early and careful consideration to your memorandum.” The same day, the new Arab Bureau in London announced that the Arab world would never accept a Jewish homeland in Palestine, even with the Big Three’s approval; any reversal of the White Paper would cause “the utmost prejudice to Anglo-Arab relations.”64 Harrison’s lengthy report of July 28 to the Secretary of the Treasury appeared to put into question the course of British procrastination. In general, Truman’s personal envoy found “complete confirmation of disturbing reports” concerning the approximately 50,000 Jews in the SHAEF zone of Germany. Most authorities refused to recognize them as a separate category in spite of “admitted greater suffering,” preferring to treat all groups by nationality alone and to force repatriation by maintaining unpleasant surroundings and conditions. A high percentage of Jews, especially Poles, wished a prompt evacuation from Germany, preferably to Palestine. If this were not possible within the reasonable future, greater and special attention should definitely be given to their billeting. Unfortunately, military government personnel seemed reluctant to inconvenience the German civilian population for the benefit of Displaced Persons either through requisitioning apartments or portions of houses, saying they must live with the German population while the DPs’ stay was probably temporary. If, as likely, taking over buildings would not meet all requirements, he urged that a program of separate camps for Jews be pushed more vigorously. SHAEF had accepted the concept of special camps for non-repatriables, Harrison observed, but its policy was not being pushed hard enough and was “recited” at many points in the field where, in fact, repatriation continued to be the military’s only interest. Many present quarters were unsuitable for winter occupancy. The military had UNRRA assume responsibility, but were not giving it adequate assistance in such — 37 —

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matters as headquarters and transports. Finally, communication and tracing of relatives should be pushed as aggressively as possible in order to prevent the “complete breakdown” of morale among Jewish families, who had been separated for years. Sporadic efforts by Jewish chaplains and the JDC had helped, but official recognition and assistance were sorely needed.65 Morgenthau’s successor lost little time in dealing with Harrison’s cable. Vinson sent a copy to Grew on August 1, summarized its contents, and then added: “I am sure you will agree that prompt steps should be taken to remedy the distressing situation which Harrison has reported, and I should like to be advised as to what action is taken.” He also decided to send a copy of the cable to the War Department. That department’s top echelon, both Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army George Marshall and Secretary Stimson, soon cabled Eisenhower about Harrison’s preliminary findings. On August 3, Marshall asked him to verify the accuracy of Harrison’s conclusions, and to furnish the department the results of his investigation. Along with Grew and Vinson “extremely concerned about its implications,” Stimson pointedly noted to the U.S. Forces European Theater (USFET) commander the importance “we attach to this problem and request that everything possible be done to improve present situation.”66 As Harrison realized, the implementation of SHAEF’s humane and unmistakable directives depended on how Army Group officers in the field responded. On August 4, in replying to complaints from Leon Kubowitzki, Secretary General of the World Jewish Congress, the War Department’s Civil Affairs Division asserted that it intended to correct “some cases of neglect and injustice… as rapidly as possible.” The following day, Lt. Col. Charles I. Schottland, a Jew who served in Germany as chief of the Processing Center Section of the successor to SHAEF’s former Displaced Persons Branch, delineated the many special SHAEF directives that had been issued since mid-April to indicate that “the care of displaced persons was a principal Allied objective.” Indeed, the Seventh Army in Northern Germany allowed camp residents to move about freely, little looting took place, and morale was good. By order of General George S. Patton, Jr., however, commander of the Third Army in Southern Germany where most of the DPs in the American zone resided, all camps were manned by armed guards. His diary includes Patton’s view that the DP was not a human being, “and this applies particularly to the Jews who are lower than animals.” — 38 —

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They had to stay behind barbed wire lest they “spread over the country like locusts, and would eventually have to be rounded up after quite a few of them had been shot and quite a few Germans murdered and pillaged.” As confirmed at the end of July by Victor Bernstein’s columns in the American newspaper PM, of which Harrison took note, the U.S. Army had to “enforce a uniform policy everywhere.”67 On August 1, 1945, the first world Zionist conference to meet since the last Congress in August 1939 opened its sessions in London’s Examination Hall of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons. Attendees represented not only 17 countries, but also, as Weizmann put it, the pervading “ghosts of our six million dead.” Following a prayer for the victims of the Holocaust, the WZO president observed that probably the most tragic result of the White Paper had been the preventable loss of life of many tens of thousands. The existence of the Jewish remnant in Europe could not be rebuilt “among the tombstones of the exterminated millions.” A comprehensive solution of the Jewish problem—100,000 Jews as “a first installment” into Palestine now and that country’s transformation into a Jewish state—was the “imperative need” of the hour. Important schemes of irrigation and industrial development had been prepared. While vitally interested in cooperating with Arab neighbors, the yishuv could only do so effectively if firmly established in its own country on a footing of equality with nearby countries. In San Francisco, some states were admitted which had not lifted a finger to help in the war, as opposed to the yishuv’s 35,000 volunteers, the Jewish Brigade, and the over one million Jewish soldiers in all Allied armies. While HMG still had to carry out the pledges of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, Zionists appealed to the conscience of all the United Nations, and particularly the United States and the USSR, to give their approval and active support for the righting of an ancient wrong. The yishuv’s vanguard, Weizmann concluded, should set its face against attempts by a handful of irresponsible men to distort our legitimate political struggle by “a suicidal resort to terrorism,” “clear-headed determination” to be the Zionist watchword.68 The conference then went into closed session, with Ben-Gurion speaking first for two hours on the theme that a people cannot exist without statehood. Unless something were done immediately, he warned, it would be impossible to maintain control of the Jews in Palestine except by force. If the Labour government did not scrap the — 39 —

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White Paper, and he remained skeptical that it would, the Jews in Palestine would not fear to fight the mandatory power. Thinking this madness, Weizmann exclaimed that Palestine as a Jewish state would be one of the fruits of victory. Yet since that would take five years, the ever-cautious leader immediately went on, the important thing was to get the 100,000 immigration certificates. “This man is speaking in his own name,” Ben-Gurion riposted, and had no authority to advance anything “totally opposed” to the decision of the Agency Executive in Eretz Israel. An uproar ensued, the session ending with a ringing endorsement of the Biltmore Program. A Committee of Eight, four American members each from the Agency and the AZEC Executive boards, would henceforth oversee Zionist activity in the United States.69 Silver and Sneh carried the flag of resistance aloft. Co-chairing with his rival Wise but really dominating the AZEC, the American hinted broadly at the failed reliance of Weizmann on a particular British party. In his view, “struggle” by all means with no illusions, rather than the personal diplomacy of yesterday, could alone suit the hour. Sneh agreed with the clear majority (87–20) to reject the religious-Zionist Mizrachi organization’s call for the Executive’s resignation, but he advocated an activist politik that did not worry about confrontation with HMG. New approaches had to be taken against the White Paper, he insisted, as if that legislation did not exist. Informal meetings that followed during the conference strengthened the tie between Sneh and Ben-Gurion, who pressed successfully for Sneh’s joining the Jewish Agency Executive. Weizmann preferred that this militant tone, particularly given the Hagana commander-in-chief’s responsible position, should not be made public. His moderation did not sit well with most of the delegates, however. Those assembled unanimously adopted a fundamental resolution calling for “the speediest settlement” of the Sh’eirit HaPleita and Jewish independence in Eretz Israel.70 Sneh’s urging at the conference that “the strength of revolt” (koah haMeri) had to be added to political efforts reflected the initial steps taken by the Hagana high command for an uprising in Palestine. He, Yisrael Galili, Yaakov Dori, and Shaul Meirov (later Avigur) drew up a confidential memorandum shortly before Sneh left for the conference. It included the freeing of survivors who were imprisoned after reaching Palestine as ma’apilim via aliya bet; helping them reach Eretz Israel and preventing their deportation; preventing arms searches by the — 40 —

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British; disobeying curfews; public demonstrations; sabotage; and terrorism. Printing presses would also be set up to spread the Hagana’s message, and the underground radio broadcasts of Kol Yisrael (Voice of Israel) were to be renewed. The elite strike force of the Hagana, the Palmah, would carry out most of these operations. Reaching London, Sneh undoubtedly shared this memorandum with a responsive ­Ben-Gurion. Now the two activists waited, impatiently, for Britain’s response.71 The Arab reaction to the conference left scant room for compromise. The Zionists seek the abolition of the White Paper, Al-Difa’a noted, but the “slightest deviation” from that legislation would constitute “a dangerous precedent fraught with grave consequences.” If the Labour government met the conference’s demands to whatever small extent, it would commit “a gross blunder” and convince the Arabs that the British government does not honor its pledges. The Communist nationalist weekly, Al-Ittihad, functioning as an organ for the National Liberation League in Palestine, viewed Zionism as a reactionary element that thwarted all efforts of the country towards independence. This stand reflected the growing estrangement between the Jewish and Arab communists in Palestine, with the latter openly demanding the cessation of Jewish immigration, the implementation of the White Paper, and the curbing of Jewish industry and trade. (From September onwards the newspaper would be published in the name of the Arab Workers’ Congress.) The conference appeared to be pursuing an “extremist policy,” declared Tawfiq Assuwidi Bey, chairman of the Arab League’s Economic Committee, one opposing the White Paper’s “fair solution” for Palestine’s transformation into an Arab state with safeguarding the rights of the Jewish minority “in a reasonable manner.”72 The day that the conference ended, the London Times, in the longest editorial it had ever carried on Palestine, declared that HMG had to take “urgent action” “as the only hope of avoiding serious trouble.” There “can scarcely be a limit to the reparations which the civilized world owes to the Jewish people so grievously wronged,” Yet British policy with regard to Palestine “formed the vulnerable joint in the Middle Eastern armour through which the arrows of Axis propaganda shrewdly struck,” as shown by the seditious activities of the ex-Mufti and Rashid Ali al-Gailani’s 1941 pro-German revolt in Iraq. The original recommendation in 1937 of the Peel Commission to partition that country, the august — 41 —

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newspaper proposed, offered the only way to reconcile the growth of the Jewish National Home with the right of the Arab community to secure the pursuit of its own national political development. The independent Palestinian Arab part might eventually join the other Arab countries on a federated basis. The holy places should be separated from both states. Great Britain was entitled to expect from her Allies, whether West or East, recognition of “the honesty of her purpose and appreciation of the difficulties involved.” This was essential, the lead editorial ended, for the successful accomplishment of international security.73 For Henderson, present U.S. policy was to keep in mind the different commitments made to Arabs and Jews while protecting America’s cultural ties in the Middle East. Washington had to work in close cooperation with London to find a solution to this difficult question, he added to associates, and to obtain at least Moscow’s concurrence in any solution which may be reached. The creation of a Jewish state in Palestine at this time would be “a very serious error,” William Yale cautioned, while the Arabs there were not “mature politically sufficiently” to govern a state at present. Not long thereafter, Yale obtained superiors’ approval for his argument that the United States refrain from supporting a policy of large Jewish immigration to Palestine. Officially, in a communication to the American Federation of Polish Jews, the State Department considered the Palestine problem “difficult and complex,” but was giving “constant attention” to those aspects which may concern the United States. The department was “keenly aware” of the problems facing the survivors in Europe, and interested in helping them. Measures of relief had been going forward actively, and were being intensified now that both Germany and Japan had surrendered to the Allied armies. Accordingly, the Near East division requested the British Embassy in Washington on August 13 to inform it of what HMG expected to do when the White Paper quota soon ran out, as well as its longer range plans for a more permanent solution.74 By then, Eisenhower’s reply to Stimson’s telegram regarding the Harrison cable had reached Washington. Eisenhower, who had just turned down Wise’s request that he appoint a Jewish liaison officer on the grounds that such personnel were selected “on a nationality basis,” wired Stimson on August 10 that he would appoint a Jewish chaplain as his “special advisor on affairs dealing with displaced persons.” He suggested that the War Department select some “broad-gauge” Jewish representative to serve as investigator and adviser. It was impossible to — 42 —

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consider every Jew as stateless, Eisenhower angrily added, and the tenor of the July 28 report was “completely different” from what Harrison had transmitted to his headquarters. (Harrison had in fact emphasized to Eisenhower’s top aides in Frankfurt the major points contained in his report, but they apparently had not passed this on to their superior.) Still, he conceded Harrison’s allegation that “this headquarters makes no differentiation in treatment of displaced persons.” As to other criticisms, Eisenhower informed Stimson of SHAEF’s official policy regarding stateless non-repatriables and displaced persons; USFET directives giving priority in adequate housing to Jews; the creating of special centers for Jews along the model of the Feldafing DP camp; the functioning of a Central Tracing Bureau to unite relatives and families; and the making of arrangements to have UNRRA assume “maximum operating responsibility” by October 1.75 On August 16, Truman made an extemporaneous statement that brought Palestine back into public focus. The President informed a White House press conference questioner that he had discussed Palestine with Churchill and Attlee at the Potsdam Conference, and they were still discussing it. In reply to another question, he emphasized that the Palestine issue had not been discussed with Stalin, as there was nothing that the Marshal could do about it. “The American view,” he went on after a few seconds of reflection, is that “we want to let as many of the Jews into Palestine as it is possible to let into that country.” The matter would have to be worked out diplomatically with the British and the Arabs, so that “if a state can be set up they may be able to set it up on peaceful bases.” He quickly added “I have no desire to see 500,000 American soldiers there to make peace in Palestine.”76 Truman’s declaration signaled a major shift in the stand of the United States on the issue. Although Henderson cautioned Epstein that the extemporaneous nature of the President’s remarks meant that “not too much attention” should be given to the specific wording used, various Washington circles interpreted it as an official denunciation of the White Paper. “This is the first forthright enunciation of policy by this government on that controversial question,” declared a New York Herald Tribune editorial. His qualification relating to the maintenance of civil peace is “new and important,” noted Harold Beeley. Yale, who prepared the State Department’s memoranda for Byrnes on four possible Palestine solutions, later concluded that in August 1945 “Mr. Truman — 43 —

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took into his own hands the formulation of United States policy with respect to a Palestine settlement.” And now the President, acting independently, had linked that dilemma to the plight of the Holocaust survivors in Europe.77 The Jewish Agency expressed gratification with Truman’s statement, although asserting that it would not be necessary for the United States to send large military forces to maintain order in Palestine. The latter notion had “no relation to the realities of the situation.” The entire issue concerned the Jewish people, the Arabs of Palestine, and the Great Powers. The neighboring Arab states had no other status in Palestine than all other members of the United Nations. As the representative of world Jewry in matters Palestinian, the statement closed, the Jewish Agency must claim to be a party to all discussions and negotiations on equal footing with any national government.78 “Palestine is an Arab country and will remain Arab despite all the efforts of the Zionists,” countered Iraqi Premier Hamdi al-Pachachi. Former Egyptian Premier Nahas Pasha released a statement that Palestine was an Arab nation, and its problem concerned all Arabs. “A sudden move” by the great powers prejudicial to Arab interests, Henderson heard from Egyptian Legation Counselor Mahmoud Fawzi, “might well set the Arab world in motion and result in violence on a wide scale.” The entire Arab press in Syria carried belligerent articles in connection with Truman’s statement. These responses followed on the heels of a warning issued by Arab League secretary general Azzam Bey Pasha that a “holy war” (jihad) between the Muslim and Christian worlds might break out if Palestine were reopened to large-scale Jewish immigration. President Roosevelt had promised Ibn Saud that he would not support the Jews in Palestine, he added, and “that Russia was not consulted is not understandable here.” The Husseinis’ Palestine Arab Party issued a resolution that HMG immediately surrender its Mandate over Palestine and declare it an independent country. It also called on the Arab governments to intervene with London to allow the return of the former Mufti and other exiled Arab leaders, and to have the Arab League discuss the Palestine problem without delay.79 The British Cabinet continued to temporize. The limited 1,500 monthly certificate quota would continue, Shertok was informed on August 14. Snubbed by Attlee’s reply that it would be preferable for a Zionist deputation to see the Colonial Secretary, Ben-Gurion and — 44 —

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colleagues heard nothing further from Hall when they met two days later other than that their representations would be “carefully examined” and brought to HMG’s notice by himself. During the first debate on Palestine in the House of Commons since the General Election, Bevin reported on the new government’s foreign policy with nary a reference to the Palestine issue. Further, noting that Eden for the Conservative opposition endorsed the Foreign Secretary’s emphasis on maintaining British interests, the Baltimore Sun concluded that the new Cabinet did not become King George VI’s ministers (to use the ringing words of Churchill in November 1942) “in order to preside over the liquidation of the Empire.” The government, Attlee announced on August 22, did not intend to make any statement at present with regard to Palestine. HMG’s mind was “quite open at the moment,” Bevin told the Regent of Iraq and Nuri Sa’id, and added that until a decision had been taken, “the policy remained as before.”80 Bevin’s record heretofore on Palestine gave no indication of what would follow. At the request of yishuv Labor leader Dov Hos, he had intervened successfully in 1930 as Secretary of Britain’s most powerful union, the Transport and General Workers’ Union, to secure modification of the anti-Zionist Passfield White Paper. In his presidential address to the Trades Union Congress seven years later, he had spoken warmly of the yishuv settlements’ successes; in 1940, he had obtained cancellation of the deportation order against the Jews aboard the Patria who had fled Hitler. A year later, he advocated some form of a Jewish state or autonomy in Palestine rather than the creation of a Jewish Army to fight alongside the Allies. He did not object when the Cabinet Committee on Palestine in 1944 proposed partition of the country, nor when Dalton called at his party’s Annual Conference in May 1945 for a Jewish state. Yet, brought up as a Baptist to consider Jews as members of another religious group, Bevin could not see them as a separate nationality, a people no longer relying on humanitarian appeals that had reaped little but asserting, in the phrase of Bevin biographer Alan Bullock, “the political will of a nation in the making.” And now, as Foreign Secretary, he had to take account of the entire Middle East just when the Holocaust galvanized Jews and non-Jews to embrace Zionism as the answer to one people’s bi-millennial history of persecution and exile. His predecessors had faced far fewer difficulties in this regard.81 — 45 —

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Bevin and his Cabinet colleagues also had to acknowledge that Great Britain was virtually bankrupt. During the war years, expenditures had been half as much again as income. A quarter of all overseas investments had been sold, and £5 billion of assets had gone. International debts amounted to £3.5 billion, and even to get back to the poor export revenue of 1939 goods would have to be sold overseas with an increase of 175 percent over the figures for the last months of war. The new government had to face maintaining occupation forces in Europe and the Far East at a cost of more than £200 million a year; supplying immense quantities of grain to India and Malaysia where famine was imminent; and paying for scarce food and coal for United Kingdom consumption. A major loan was necessary from the only country capable of lending it. When Washington shocked London the same month, however, by suddenly ending Lend-Lease, Lord Keynes expressed optimism that he could negotiate a loan on easy repayment terms of between $5 billion and $8 billion from the U.S. Government. He set sail, his opening bid clear in his mind: £1.5 billion as a free gift or, at worst, an interest-free loan. The Foreign Secretary, who could not bear the prospect of Britain being anybody’s pensioner, thought this a delusion: “When I listen to Lord Keynes talking, “I seem to hear those coins jingling in my pocket, but I am not so sure that they are really there.”82 Truman’s receipt on August 24 of the final Harrison report, which also incorporated Schwartz’s findings, would challenge HMG’s position on Palestine directly. The next morning, the President informed his cabinet that he had read the document the previous night, and “it made him sick.” The three-sentence paragraph which Harrison had inserted in section four, and which Truman underlined, made a particular impression: As matters now stand, we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them. They are in concentration camps in large numbers under our military guard instead of SS troops. One is led to wonder whether the German people, seeing this, are not supposing that we are following or at least condoning Nazi policy. This striking—and excessive—insertion, as well as the recommendation that the entry of 100,000 survivors in Europe to Palestine — 46 —

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would resolve the DP crisis, stirred Truman. “It was a moving document,” he subsequently recalled: “The misery it depicted could not be allowed to continue.” As a consequence, on August 31, enclosing a copy of the report, he wrote a long letter to Eisenhower which emphasized the stinging paragraph, and stressed that SHAEF policy was not being implemented in the field. “I know you will agree with me that we have a particular responsibility toward these victims of persecution and tyranny who are in our zone,” Truman added, requesting also a response as soon as possible on the steps Eisenhower was able to take “to clean up the conditions” mentioned in the Harrison report. He was communicating directly with the British government in an effort to have Palestine’s doors opened “to such of these displaced persons as wish to go there.”83 Most significantly, Truman wrote a letter on August 31 for Byrnes to give Attlee, together with a copy of Harrison’s ultimate report, informing the British leader of his emissary’s investigation in the American and British zones in Germany. Calling the Prime Minister’s attention to its recommending the entry into Palestine of 100,000 Jews, Truman concurred in the belief that “no single matter is so important for those who have known the horrors of concentration camps for over a decade as is the future of immigration possibilities into Palestine.” The postwar peace of Europe depended in large measure upon our finding sound solutions to such issues, he declared, and “no claim is more meritorious than that of the groups who for so many years have known persecution and enslavement.” Accordingly, Truman called for “the quick evacuation” to Palestine of as many as possible of the non-repatriable Jews who wished that choice. Paraphrasing the joint conclusion of Harrison and Schwartz, he closed: “If it is to be effective, such action should not be long delayed.” The ball was once again in HMG’s court.84 The time had come, Bevin informed the Cabinet at the end of August, to summon to London without delay His Majesty’s representatives in the Middle East. Should the government continue to assert its political predominance in the region and its overriding responsibility for its defense, or seek the “extensive assistance of other Powers” in that defense? An important decision on HMG’s Palestine policy, such as might affect the British position throughout the Middle East, also had to be considered. He was anxious to propose a new policy — 47 —

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covering the area as a whole, specifically schemes of economic development and medical care that would benefit the common people, with technical assistance which Great Britain should eventually be able to provide.85 As for Palestine, the Foreign Secretary sought responses from his own department to two personal lines of thought. First, HMG should aim for a Palestine State under an Arab king, such a state perhaps eventually to join in a federation with the other Arab governments and the Levant. Second, it might be feasible to set a final overall figure as to Jewish immigration into Palestine, maybe 100,000 or 500,000 over a fixed term of years, say 5, 7, or 10. In reply, Beeley and Charles W. Baxter quickly noted the difficulty that a suitable ruler could be found at present whose nomination would not create discord within the Arab League. The Arab states were not ready for a federation; “a greater Syria” would pit Ibn Saud against Abdullah; any proposal involving closer union with Syria would split Lebanon “from top to bottom.” As for Jewish immigration, Beeley observed, a unilateral statement by HMG on this issue would have to be strengthened either with the new trusteeship agreement for Palestine or in a treaty between HMG and the members of the Arab League. In determining the scale of Jewish immigration in the next few years, one also had to take into account that Palestine’s population now stood about 1.2 million Arabs and 550,000 Jews, with natural increase appreciably higher among the Arabs. The number of Jews for Palestine, Baxter added, should be related to the numbers of Jews whom the United States and the British Empire would take as a settlement of the problem of European Jewry and “its sufferings during the war.”86 With no “halfway house” between British responsibility and handing back the Mandate to the UN, Hall suggested to his colleagues on September 1 the division of Palestine into two provinces, each with a degree of local autonomy. The plan, drawn up by mandate expert on absorptive capacity Douglas G. Harris, left the door open to partition or to regional federation in which the “two races” could take part. There might not, at the same time, be a need for the “drastic and irrevocable” change of policy involved in partition, as there may no longer be a great number of European Jews entering Palestine after the Holocaust and the Soviets might put restrictions on mass movement. An announcement on short-term policy should be made by November at the latest, he advised — 48 —

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Bevin, since security conditions in Palestine will undoubtedly go “from bad to worse.”87 On September 6, Whitehall’s Middle East ambassadors and ministers agreed with the Foreign Secretary on a reaffirmation of the White Paper, seeking the Arab states’ acquiescence to 1,500 certificates a month for Jewish entry, with no time limit until a “general settlement” could be reached. Partition was deemed out of the question; the group raised questions about Bevin’s preference for a federal state under an Arab king. Federalization would appeal to the American mind, he argued, and with the approach of an election year in the United States, agreement with Washington on the Palestine issue would become “more difficult.” The growth of Russian interest in the region introduced “a new factor of disturbance,” pointed out Ambassador to Iran Reader Bullard. Bevin’s assumption that a million acres of the Negev could be irrigated also drew challenge. The invitees concurred with High Commissioner Gort’s point that attention should be drawn to the need for an “adequate garrison” in Palestine before any new policy was announced.88 The same day, the first meeting of the reconstituted ministerial Cabinet Committee on Palestine heard Bevin’s preference to have Transjordan and possibly the Negev added as a third province to the area under consideration, offering more chance of irrigation and development. All agreed that HMG bore a “dual obligation” in the Mandate to Jews and Arabs and that the Middle East was a region of “vital consequence” for Britain and the British Empire. The committee ultimately decided to conform in the short term, hopefully for a period not to exceed six months, to the existing immigration arrangements as prescribed in the White Paper (1,500 certificates per month); to inform the United States of this, as well as of HMG’s “urgent consideration” in working on a long-term policy and then referring it to the UN, before seeking the Arab states’ approval; and that the Chiefs of Staff take immediate steps to reinforce the Middle East with two divisions in order to meet the military requirements involved in adopting the interim policy. The latter increase was advised in light of “more serious trouble” from the Jews, with “a recrudescence of terrorism,” as well as increased efforts at illegal immigration that might lead to deadly clashes with British forces, expected to follow. Assuming that the illegal traffic would be “intensified,” the Chiefs also thought it desirable that such ships be stopped before they left port, rather than off the coast of Palestine.89 — 49 —

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Bevin brought the committee’s conclusions on September 10 to the second meeting of HMG’s Middle East representatives, who continued to rule out his idea for a monarchical solution to the Palestine imbroglio. Lord Gort objected to the Colonial Office’s advocating provincial autonomy, seeing it as amounting in effect to partition. Opinion in the United States had to be considered, the Foreign Secretary observed; the Jewish vote, especially in New York, was still important to American governments. It would therefore be advantageous to postpone a decision on long-term policy for “as long as possible,” because, in his opinion, the pressure for Jewish immigration into Palestine was likely to diminish. The assembled agreed that the final draft to the Arab states would have HMG continue to advocate the White Paper’s current rate of 1,500 certificates for Jews until the government agreed upon a Trusteeship Agreement. Superseding the existing Mandate, that agreement would control HMG’s future policy “in their capacity as trustees for Palestine.” As to increasing signs of Soviet advances in the region, which were viewed with “extreme apprehension” there, the most effective counter was to advance the economic and social betterment of the peoples in those countries by encouraging each government to develop its own plan of development and to assist them in formulating these schemes.90 Byrnes handed Attlee the August 31 letter from Truman that same day. On September 14, the U.S. Secretary of State informed Bevin that Truman would publicly endorse some of Harrison’s recommendations that evening. Not yet having written his reply for Attlee’s signature, the Foreign Secretary responded that if the President pressed for the admission of 100,000 Jews to Palestine, he would announce in the House of Commons that he expected the Americans to provide four divisions to maintain order in Palestine. Byrnes quickly telephoned his chief, and persuaded him to hold off. The same day, former Senator Guy Gillette (D, Iowa) publicly revealed the contents of Truman’s letter to Attlee, who confidentially wired Truman that a statement favoring the 100,000 would “do grievous harm to relations between our two countries.”91 The official British response could be foretold, particularly given HMG’s consistent refusal to recognize Jews as a separate nationality. The Foreign Office insisted that UNRRA adhere to this position, and “was strongly of the opinion that at least all persons displaced as a result of the war must be regarded as eventually or politically repatriable.” The deputy military commander of the British occupied zone — 50 —

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in Germany had objected to giving Holocaust survivors preferential treatment, asserting on July 26 that this would be unfair to “many other sufferers,” while resulting in “a large group of Jews of many nationalities” who would refuse repatriation “and constitute a continuous embarrassment.” Writing on behalf of the Chief of Staff of the British Element of the Control Commission for Germany, Major-General R. H. Dewing informed the War Office three weeks later that “it is undesirable to accept the Nazi theory that the Jews are a separate race.” Under these circumstances, Eisenhower’s order on August 22 to create separate camps with a high standard of accommodation in the U.S. zone of Germany as soon as possible for stateless Jews, Major Judah Nadich soon commanded as his special adviser to investigate conditions of the Jewish DPs there, made no impression on British authorities. HMG ruled out Jewish liaison officers attached to military staffs, Refugee Department head Paul Mason informed the Board of Deputies of British Jews, since London deemed it not possible “to treat Jewish persons as possessing a separate Jewish national status.”92 On September 16, one day after the British press reported that the 1939 White Paper policy would continue, Attlee’s full reply to Truman asserted that “there appears to have been little difference in the amount of torture and treatment” suffered by Jews and other DPs. If Jews were placed in a special racial category “at the head of the queue,” other groups in the camps would react violently against them. Immediate relief could be given for 35,000 Jews with two camps in North Africa. As to Palestine, HMG also had to consider the Arabs and the “easily inflamed” 90,000,000 Muslims in India. The Jewish Agency, Attlee added, refusing the 1,500 Palestine certificates available this month on the grounds that it indicated acceptance of the White Paper, insisted on the immediate granting of 100,000 quite regardless of its effect on the situation in the Near East. “It is hoped,” a more cautious Truman replied the next day, that we can work out a successful program” which would provide for the Jews and other displaced persons in Europe “some measure of relief at an early date.” He added that he would take no further action until Byrnes’s return to Washington.93 Truman had to be seen without delay, Weizmann urged Silver in a brief telephone call, “the Chief” to tell Attlee that he was prepared to take moral and perhaps also financial responsibility in helping HMG resolve the Palestine issue. Rumor had it that Attlee “is not too friendly,” and — 51 —

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encouragement from Washington—not the kind when the President spoke about the need of 500,000 US soldiers—must be made clear. In fact, a few weeks earlier, Truman had qualified his August 15 statement to the press, telling Representative Adolph J. Sabath of Illinois that his effort to secure “fair, just, and equitable treatment” for Jews everywhere in the world would lessen the pressure for Jewish emigration to the Promised Land. The President had also expressed concern to the elderly Jewish congressman over the trouble in store by reason of Arab opposition, but he was still trying to enlarge opportunities for emigration there. “The President is working at it both ways,” Sabath told the JTA.94 From his station in the Agency’s Washington office, Goldmann warned that any joint scheme by the Anglo-American allies aimed at tying up large immigration opportunities to Palestine with a possible British trusteeship regime “is de facto a trap.” Throwing the whole question thus into the lap of the UN would mean an indefinite postponement of the real solution, he wrote to Ben-Gurion and Silver on September 18, which could not wait. Without a Jewish state, it might even be impossible to organize, finance, and absorb a large immigration in order to attain a majority of the population in Palestine. The Zionist leadership might have to think actively about partition versus trusteeship, with the yishuv to state in words and action that it was not prepared to continue living under any foreign regime in a minor status. All our forces had to be mobilized now to make America aware of this greatest danger which threatens us “so that we do not miss the boat,” Goldmann pressed, and to get the British and American governments to realize the need to secure the “immediate radical solution” of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine.95 In light of information received that HMG refused to abandon the White Paper policy and that Attlee had rejected Truman’s request regarding the 100,000, Ben-Gurion proposed to the Agency Executive in London on September 20 that all talks with British officials except Bevin be halted and Weizmann’s resignation be announced. In addition, the actions of the Hagana and illegal immigration should be intensified, and a propaganda campaign in Britain, the Commonwealth, and the United States should be launched. Agreeing in general with this approach, Weizmann advised to postpone the decision until the conference of the British Zionists. A letter from the WZO President to Attlee, the meeting finally decided, would be — 52 —

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drafted, along with a declaration to the Jewish people. The following day, Weizmann’s communication expressed to the Prime Minister his associates’ alarm at not being consulted while discussions on Palestine’s future were apparently in progress. He closed by noting that those whom he represented had labored to prevent Jews from giving way to despair; to preserve belief in the desire of the British nation to “deal justly with the sorely-tried Jewish people”; and to maintain faith in “the earnestness of purpose” of the Labour Party to abolish, when in power, the White Paper and inaugurate “a new era for Palestine and our people.”96 Weizmann saw Byrnes in London on September 21, to be told that since Truman himself was handling the whole Palestine matter “to a considerable degree,” the Secretary had to exercise care not to make statements to which the President might raise objection. In answer to Byrnes’ query, Weizmann estimated eighteen months as the time needed to bring the 100,000 to Palestine. Given that country’s clement climate, the arrivals could live temporarily under canvas and in barracks. The Secretary thought that the Agency should have taken the 3,000 certificates offered and asked for more. Perhaps the United States could send a token force to help the mandatory authorities, Weizmann threw out, but a large development project like the Lowdermilk plan as worked on by two distinguished American engineers appeared to him the best way America could show its interest. Although he had no right to speak on Truman’s behalf, Byrnes assured the Zionist chieftain that “their people would help.”97 An American Zionist delegation had already voiced its concern to newly appointed Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson about reports of secret negotiations between the two governments on Palestine. Silver associate Emanuel Neumann particularly noted the bitterness felt by 5,000,000 American Jews that the pro-Zionist pledges of Roosevelt and the 1944 Democratic convention plank were not being implemented by government officials, and he indicated their determination to use “all means at their disposal” to force appropriate officials to live up to these pledges. A visibly irritated Acheson denied any knowledge of such talks about Palestine at the present time. The U.S. government, he added to the group, had made it clear that both Jews and Arabs should be consulted in connection with any basic decision, and he was confident this would continue to be the case. Their concerns not allayed, Wise and Silver sent a telegram to Truman the same day, asking for an urgent meeting in the matter.98 — 53 —

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The entire turn of events much exercised Henderson and his associates. Speaking off-the-record to the AZEC’s Benjamin Akzin, the NEA office director assumed that Truman acted independently on Palestine “in response to internal political pressures.” Had Henderson been asked an opinion as a matter of foreign policy, he would have said that any move by Washington to endorse the immediate entry of 100,000 Jewish refugees into Palestine would involve “certain difficulties” for the United States in the Middle East. Personally, he was not in favor of a Jewish state in Palestine, and would make it just as clear when talking to Arab representatives that he was not inclined to fight for the establishment of such a state. If, however, Truman or Byrnes decided that support of a Jewish commonwealth should be made part of American policy, he and every officer under him would “wholeheartedly” work to carry out that directive. Reporting back to AZEC Executive Director Harold Shapiro, Akzin concluded that our main, practically the only, hope was to get at the President “through channels of domestic politics.” Zionists could find little backing in the Department of State, he concluded, and practically no hope for support existed in the Near Eastern Division.99 Seeking to get U.S. policy “out of its present impasse and on to a workmanlike basis,” Merriam asked Henderson on September 26 to prepare a memorandum to bring about a “more unified and positive” government policy on Palestine. The proposed statement, noting the Harrison report and its prompting the President to intervene with the British government, would say that the British had decided that it would be impossible in present circumstances to allow any large number of Jewish refugees to Palestine. The U.S. military were taking steps to improve conditions in the DP camps, and to get the Jews out of the internment centers as soon as possible. Those refugees willing to return to their former homes should be assisted to do so, while the Allied governments should administer to the “hard core” of stateless and non-repatriable persons. Some Jews could come to the United States under existing immigration quotas, and temporary places of refuge should be developed for the ultimate remainder. As for Palestine, that country was primarily a British responsibility. At the same time, the American government “naturally has a deep interest” in reaching an equitable solution of the different problems involved, with no decision affecting the basis situation of Palestine to be taken without full consultation with both Arabs and Jews.100 — 54 —

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As Merriam feared, the Department was quickly “bombarded” by protests from the Arab world over Truman’s direct appeal to Attlee. Iraq’s Prime Minister had no doubts that the Zionists intended to invade other countries after they overran Palestine, and he warned that the Arab nation was resolved to use “all means at its disposal” to defend its existence, and safety and security in the homeland. “Truman is a man with an olive branch in one hand and an atom bomb in the other,” fumed the most widely read Arab weekly, Cairo’s Akhbar Al-Yom. President of Lebanon Bechara El Khoury cautioned HMG’s minister that a pro-Zionist decision “would alienate every Arab,” including Britain’s best friend, Ibn Saud. Ibn Saud, reported U.S. Minister William Eddy from Jidda, was seeking clarification of radio reports that Truman at a press conference on the 26th remarked that he had no record of Roosevelt’s pledge to the Sunni monarch regarding Palestine; Abdullah wrote the President about the “great anxiety” in Transjordan caused by press accounts of the request for 100,000 immigration certificates to Jews, and he hoped to receive a favorable reply that would remove this anxiety. Objecting to any Jewish immigration beyond the 1939 White Paper, the first statement issued by the new Arab Office in Washington declared that “the Arab World insists on the immediate establishment of a democratic Arab state based on the will of all the inhabitants in Palestine.”101 Britain’s insistence on maintaining the White Paper policy despite the Holocaust strengthened Sneh’s resolve to try and unite the yishuv’s different armed forces in protest. On September 23, he sent a message from Jerusalem to Ben-Gurion in London that the small rightwing Stern Group (LEHI, the acrostic for Lohamei Heirut Yisrael) had expressed its willingness to join with us “completely,” while good prospects existed for working as well with the more substantial Irgun forces. (This despite the fact that, on August 16, twenty-seven Irgun members and many weapons were captured at Shuny near Binyamina thanks to prior information given to the British MI5 intelligence agency by the Agency’s Kollek, code-named “Scorpion.”) By then, Meirov and other Labor Mapai activists in the yishuv were calling for struggle against the mandatory on all fronts, a position endorsed by the Agency Executive in Jerusalem under the slogan “tenuat meri Ivri” (Hebrew resistance movement). No declaration was considered necessary, Sneh had openly announced earlier, since the White Paper is “a declaration of war against the Jewish nation.” As this step required winning over public opinion, — 55 —

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Sneh suggested to Ben-Gurion that “one serious incident” caused by the Hagana would incite the British to react aggressively, which in turn would legitimize the yishuv’s full-blown struggle.102 Ben-Gurion had concluded, so he replied to Goldmann on September 27, that the yishuv’s fate depended on its efforts and the help it received from the United States and other countries. Placing no faith in the Attlee government, he advised that the London Agency office be closed (another indication of the growing divide with Weizmann), Zionism to be solely directed henceforth from Palestine. Any official negotiations, including with the Arabs, should be refused until the White Paper was abrogated. The general line to be adopted now was the unification of the yishuv “in solidarity with the resistance movement and an effective long-term plan.” A final paragraph in his letter, added by hand, called for $250,000 to be gotten immediately (the writer’s emphasis) for “special activities.” The same day, he cabled a meeting of Jewish representatives in Palestine to resist the continued British enforcement of the White Paper now that the war had ended, announcing that “we cannot submit any longer to this cruel and humiliating treatment.” They agreed, declaring that HMG’s ban on immigration was “tantamount to a death sentence” upon those liberated Jews “still languishing in the internment camps of Germany”; the Hebrew Book of Books would, “by its eternal strength,” destroy the White Paper; and “the Jewish State will be established.”103 Attlee’s reply one week after the Weizmann communication of September 21 made it clear that the government saw no “useful purpose” at this stage for further consultations with the Jewish Agency. The Zionists’ general views had been made “abundantly clear” both publicly and by deputations to the Colonial Secretary. All statements on this subject, the Prime Minister felt the need to point out, “are entirely unauthorized.” The same day, an open letter from the AZEC co-chairmen, published in fifty leading newspapers across the United States, cautioned Attlee that the Zionists were “at the very end of our patience,” and that “no palliative solutions will be accepted by American Jewry or by what is left of European Jewry.” The entire Christian world bore the responsibility for allowing Hitler to massacre hundreds of thousands of Jews, Wise and Silver asserted, and Britain particularly because of the White Paper. Recalling the Labour Party’s pro-Zionist stand before the General Election, they demanded that it fulfill its pledges, permit open immigration into Palestine, and proclaim a Jewish state.104 — 56 —

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At 10:00 in the morning of September 29, Truman received Wise and Silver of the AZEC, followed one hour later by Proskauer and Jacob Blaustein of the American Jewish Committee. The former declined to say anything when leaving the White House, but the AJC executives indicated that they had informed Truman of Committee reports from Europe indicating that the question now was not one of “political ideology” (Jewish statehood) but the giving of hope to the remnants of European Jewry who had managed to survive the Nazi horror. (Days before, Proskauer had written Truman that the failure to open Palestine to considerable Jewish immigration at the present time “will result in further death, destruction and human misery.”) The President, they noted, had expressed his “deep interest” in saving human life by securing a “substantial” number of certificates for Jewish immigration into Palestine, and that he was using “the good offices of this country to effectuate that result.” “I had a very satisfactory talk with the President,” Proskauer soon wrote to past chairman of the Democratic National Committee James Farley, “and found him a charming and wise person.”105 According to Weisgal’s coded cable to Weizmann, Truman had reiterated to Wise and Silver his insistence on “100,000 dollars investment as first immediate step.” At the same time, the President made no commitment whatever to them regarding “Mr. Medinah” [establishing a Jewish State], stating categorically that general conditions did not permit consideration setting up “new corporation.” He was very outspoken, Goldmann reported to Ben-Gurion, remarking to the AZEC co-chairmen that the internal situation was very serious, and “he would not allow us to push him,” “to upset the apple cart.” When told the war was over, he responded that only the shooting was over, but not the war. There were many minority groups in America who tried to run it, like the Poles and the Italians, Truman went on (a clear warning, Goldmann understood, that the Jews should not attempt to do likewise). The President said he was a friend, but that he would choose the time and method for action, and would not be pushed into doing what he considered undesirable. The new boss, concluded a pessimistic Goldmann, “appears to be a strong man who knows what he wants and will not easily be influenced to take action which he does not want to take.”106 The last day of the month, Truman had the State Department release to the press Harrison’s final report, along with the reprimanding — 57 —

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letter of August 31 to Eisenhower. In Ambassador Halifax’s assessment, the sudden move seemed to be influenced by the mass Zionist rally in New York City’s Madison Square Garden, scheduled for the next evening, at which there might otherwise have been much criticism of the administration for its silence on the Jewish remnant in Europe and on Palestine. The Truman circle, he pointed out to Bevin, was as alive as its predecessor, and perhaps more so, to the necessity to “propitiate” the one million Jewish voters in New York State at a time when the New York City mayoralty election was pending and the Republican candidate was a Jew.107 Whatever the accuracy of this seasoned diplomat’s evaluation, the thorny issue of Palestine remained far indeed from resolution. The Cabinet Committee had yet to examine HMG’s long-range policy. The situation in the Holy Land appeared increasingly volatile, “most critical” in Ben-Gurion’s judgment, just when contingents of the Sixth Airborne Division arrived as the vanguard of two divisions to augment the division currently there, and the U.S. War Department estimated the need of a force of 400,000 men actively employed to maintain order against Arab “disturbances and/or armed intervention” in the wake of increased Jewish immigration. Should the Americans provide half, an “indefinite delay” would be caused in the planned demobilization of U.S. armed forces in Germany and Japan. A secret G-2 Military Intelligence division report added ominously that “imposition” of the Jews on the Arabs by force of Anglo-American arms would “quite inevitably” throw the majority of Arabs of all classes into the arms of Soviet Russia. As for Truman, his basic humanitarian impulse regarding the survivors of the Holocaust had been made clear in the personal July 24 letter to Churchill—one full month before he received the Harrison report. In officially dissolving the War Refugee Board in mid-September, the President similarly had declared that steps needed to be taken “for the immediate rehabilitation of these survivors of Nazi savagery, as well as for a humane and natural solution of their ultimate resettlement.”108 Whether that sentiment would translate into a firm political decision remained to be seen.

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Endnotes 1 Robert H. Abzug, Inside the Vicious Heart Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps (New York, 1985); Jon Bridgman, The End of the Holocaust, The Liberation of the Camps (Portland, 1990); A. D. Chandler, Jr. et al., eds., The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, The War Years, vol. 4 (Baltimore, MD, 1970), 2623. 2 Bridgman, The End of the Holocaust, 118; Herman Dicker, “The U.S. Army and Jewish Displaced Persons,” Chicago Jewish Forum, 19:4 (Summer 1961): 290; Hagit Lavsky, “The Day After: Bergen-Belsen from Concentration Camp to the Centre of the Jewish Survivors in Germany,” German History 11:1 (1993): 46, 49; Atrocities and Other Conditions in Concentration Camps in Germany (Washington, D.C., 1945), 14; Laurel Leff, “‘Liberated by the Yanks’: The Holocaust as an American Story in Postwar News Articles,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 42:4 (Fall 2003): 407–430. For the overall Allied response during the Holocaust, see Monty Noam Penkower, The Jews Were Expendable: Free World Diplomacy and the Holocaust (Urbana, IL, 1983). 3 Abba Hillel Silver, “We Need the Jewish State NOW!,” Jewish Spectator, May 1945, 15–18; Shertok report to Jewish Agency Executive Jerusalem (hereafter JAEJ), April 22, 1945, S25/9909, Central Zionist Archives (hereafter CZA), Jerusalem; Resolutions of “Hativat Seridei Mizrah Eiropa,” April 26, 1945, S25/5215, CZA. 4 Ben-Gurion diary, May 8 and 11, 1945, David Ben-Gurion Archives (hereafter BGA), Sdeh Boker, Israel; David Ben-Gurion, “The Only Solution,” New Judea (May 1945): 107–110. For the genesis of the 1939 White Paper, see Monty Noam Penkower, Palestine in Turmoil: The Struggle for Sovereignty, 1933–1939 (Brighton, MA, 2014), chap. 10. 5 Gort to Colonial Secretary, May 30, 1945, Foreign Office (hereafter FO) 371/45415, Public Record Office (hereafter PRO), Kew, England; Jewish Agency statement, May 8, 1945, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives (hereafter JDC), General-Jewish Agency files, New York City; “Arab Political News,” May 16, 1945, S25/9228, CZA. For Palestinian Jewry’s war contribution, see Penkower, The Jews Were Expendable, chap. 1. For the Mufti’s activities during World War II, see Penkower, Decision on Palestine Deferred, 79–80, 91–92, 108, 131–132, 187, 189, 285. 6 New Judea, 21:8 (May 1945), 105–106; Kohn to Weizmann, April 6, 1945, Z4/30025, CZA. These figures of Holocaust survivors were repeated by the Agency one month later. Dobkin to Goldmann, May 1, 1945, Z5/973, CZA. — 59 —

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7 Monty Noam Penkower, Decision on Palestine Deferred: America, Britain, and Wartime Diplomacy, 1939–1945 (London, 2002), 337–339; “British Strategic Needs in the Palestine Area After the War,” PMP (43) 6, August 25, 1943, Cabinet (CAB) 95/14, PRO. 8 Zaslani to Kollek, May 3, 1945, Z5/5334, CZA; Killearn to Eden, March 28, and April 23, 1945, copy in RG25. Ser/ A-12. Vol. 2093, Pt. 1, Public Archives of Canada (hereafter PAC), Ottawa; Adelson to Goldmann, September 18, 1946, Z6/94, CZA; Lind memorandum, January 26, 1945, 890f/00/1-2645, US Department of State (hereafter SD) records, National Archives (hereafter NA), Washington, D.C. (transferred to Suitland, Md.); February 4, 1945 report, L52978; February 16, 1945 report, 116176C; both in RG 226, NA; Sasson report, May 13, 1945, A291/6, CZA; Jewish Agency supplementary memorandum, May 4, 1945, S25/5329, CZA.   9 Eliyahu Eilat, Yoman San Francisco (Tel Aviv, 1971), 54, 63, 95–96, 115, 119, 132–133, 139, 157, 175, 185; UK delegation to Foreign Office, May 29, 1945, PREM 4/52/5, 1–2, PRO; Goldstein report, May 16, 1945, American Jewish Conference files, Abba Hillel Silver MSS, The Temple, Cleveland; Lipsky, Shulman, and Goldmann reports, May 30, 1945, American Zionist Emergency Council minutes, Zionist Archives (hereafter ZA), New York (now at the CZA); Goldmann report, June 11, 1945, Z5/5334; Goldmann to Fraser, June 14, 1945, Z6/2336; both in CZA; Robinson report to Office Committee, June 7, 1945, 2A/11, World Jewish Congress Archives (hereafter WJCA), New York City (now at the American Jewish Archives (hereafter AJA), Cincinnati. The International Court of Justice has consistently recognized that the Mandate survived the demise of the League of Nations. 10 New York Times, April 30, 1945; Foster memorandum, May 17, 1945, 867N.01/5-1745, SD; David M. Leith, “American Christian Support for a Jewish Palestine,” 76–77 (Senior thesis, Princeton University, 1957); Sumner Welles, “New Hope for the Jewish People,” Nation 160 (1945): 511–513; Eilat, Yoman San Francisco, 56, 85, 95, 107, and 118. 11 Eilat, Yoman San Francisco, 66–67, 70–71, 79, 81, 83, 91–92, 109, 129, 116– 117, 165; Goldmann to Gromyko, May 30, 1945, Z6/2298; Epstein to Sharef, May 30, 1945, S25/5334; both in CZA. 12 Epstein to Sharef, May 30, 1945, S25/5334; Goldmann to Shertok, May 29 1945, Z6/2323; Goldmann report, May 30, 1945, and June 11, 195; both in S25/5334; Goldman report, June 25, 1945, Z6/13; all in CZA. For the passage of the Biltmore Program, see Penkower, Decision on Palestine Deferred, 117–118.

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13 Jewish Agency Executive London (hereafter JAEL), June 11, 1945, Z4/302/29, CZA; Goldmann report, May 30, 1945, S25/5334, CZA; Yehuda Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, vol. 3, part 2 (Tel Aviv, 1973), 836–837; Irgun proclamation, May 14, 1945, IR-085, Menahem Begin Archives, Menahem Begin Heritage Center, Jerusalem; JAEJ, May 17, 1945, CZA; Shertok to Weizmann, May 22, 1945, Z4/1525, CZA. 14 Eastwood to Jewish Agency, May 17, 1945, Z4/31263, CZA; Meeting, May 25, 1945, Colonial Office (hereafter CO) 733/461/75872/2, PRO. 15 Congressional Record, 76th Congress, First session, 1939, vol. 84, pt. 13, appendix, 2231–2232; Mel Schiff, “President Truman and the Jewish DPs, 1945–46, The Untold Story,” American Jewish History 99 (October, 2015), 330; Truman to Bergson, May 7, 1943; Truman to Smoller, December 12, 1943; Truman to Levin, February 16, 1944; all in Senatorial and Vice-Presidential File 71, Harry S. Truman Library (hereafter HSTL); Reuben Fink, America and Palestine (New York, 1944), 420–421. On the Committee for a Jewish Army and other groups organized by Hillel Kook (Peter Bergson) in the war years, see Monty Noam Penkower, The Holocaust and Israel Reborn: From Catastrophe to Sovereignty (Urbana, IL, 1994), chap. 4. 16 New York Herald Tribune, April 21, 1945; Stettinius memorandum, April 16, 1945, PSF 159, HSTL; Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), 1945, vol. 8 (Washington, D.C., 1969), 705–709. For Roosevelt’s shifting positions regarding Palestine during World War II, see Penkower, Decision on Palestine Deferred, passim. For the creation of the WRB, see Monty Noam Penkower, The Jews Were Expendable: Free World Diplomacy and the Holocaust (Urbana, IL, 1983), chap. 5. For the creation of the IGCR, see A. J. Sherman, Island Refuge, Britain and Refugees from the Third Reich, 1933–1939 (London, 1973), chap. 5. 17 Eilat, Yoman San Francisco, 199–200, 203, 207, 211; Celler to Billikopf, April 25, 1945, Jacob Billikopf MSS, AJA; New York Times, April 26, 1945; Truman to Niles, July 17, 1945, FO371/65849 PRO. 18 Weizmann to Churchill, May 22, 1945; Weizmann-Churchill talk, November 4, 1944; both in Weizmann Archives (hereafter WA), Rehovot; Dalton speech extracts, May 1945, International Department files, Seq. 1, Box 5, Labour Party MSS, Transport House, London. 19 John Colville, The Fringes of Power, 10 Downing Street Diaries 1939–1955 (London, 1985), 601; Martin to Churchill, May 26, 1945, PREM 4, 52/3, PRO; May 21, 1945, Ben-Gurion Diaries; Ben-Gurion to Zionist Executive, May 9, 1945; Ben-Gurion to Shertok, June 5, 1945; both in S25/1912, CZA.

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20 May 21, 1945, vol. 848, Henry Morgenthau, Jr. Diaries (hereafter MD), Franklin D. Roosevelt Library (hereafter FDRL), Hyde Park, New York; Memorandum, May 22, 1945; Morgenthau memorandum for the President, May 23, 1945; both in vol. 849, MD; McKim to Truman, and Truman’s penned notation, May 28, 1945, HSTL. For the WRB’s activities in World War II, see David Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941–1945 (New York, 1984), part IV. 21 SHAEF Administrative memorandum 39, revised April 16, 1945, Earl Harrison Diary, RG-10.088, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. I thank Benton Arnovitz for making this diary available to me. 22 Winant to State, May 28, 1945, vol. 849, MD. 23 Mason to Emerson, June 2, 1945, Harrison Diary; Truman to Morgenthau, June 2, 1945, vol. 851, MD. 24 Arieh J. Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics: Britain, the United States, and Jewish Refugees, 1945–1948 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2001), 33; Alex Grobman, Rekindling the Flame: American Jewish Chaplains and the Survivors of European Jewry, 1944–1948 (Detroit, MI, 1993), 70–71. Numerous reports by chaplains can be found in the Jewish Welfare Board Archives, New York City. The American Jewish Conference, created in August 1943, served as an umbrella group of most Jewish organizations in the United States. When the Conference adopted a pro-Zionist stance, the American Jewish Committee departed its ranks. See Penkower, The Holocaust and Israel Reborn, chap. 3. 25 May 28, 1945, PSF 82, HSTL; Halifax to Foreign Office, June 3, 1945, Foreign Office (hereafter FO) 371/45239, Public Record Office (hereafter PRO), Kew, England; Truman notation, May 29, 1945, on Grew memorandum, May 23, 1945, copy in L35/A116, CZA. 26 Weizmann to Weisgal, June 7, 1945, WA. Morgenthau’s family name is literally translated as “morning dew,” while “morning” is boker in Hebrew, and “dew” is tal. 27 Klotz interview with the author, Mar. 14, 1977; Weisgal to Klotz, June 12, 1945; Morgenthau-Grew telephone call, June 11, 1945; both in vol. 854, MD. An earlier draft of a memorandum, dated June 8, by Morgenthau’s staff for Grew to give Truman had proposed that McDonald be assisted by Harrison. June 8, 1945, Box 11, WRB files, FDRL. For McDonald, see Monty Noam Penkower, “Honorable Failures against Nazi Germany: McDonald’s Letter of Resignation and the Petition in its Support,” Modern Judaism 30:3 (October 2010): 247–298; James G. McDonald, “The Time for Decision is Past,” New Palestine 33 (March 1943): 5–7.

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28 Morgenthau-Grew telephone calls; Morgenthau-Pehle telephone call; PehleMorgenthau telephone call; Phillips to Murphy; all June 11, 1945, vol. 854, MD; Weisgal to Morgenthau, June 14, 1945, Z5/991, CZA; Weisgal to Klotz, June 14, 1945, Z5/1046, CZA. 29 Lewis M. Stevens, “The Life and Character of Earl G. Harrison,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 104:5 (March 1956): 591–602; Weisgal to Linton, April 6, 1945, Z5/991; Frankfurter to Weisgal, June 28, 1945, Z5/967; both in CZA. 30 Churchill to Weizmann, June 9, 1945; Weizmann to Churchill, June 15, 1945; Linton to Namier, June 18, 1945; JAEL, June 13, 1945, CZA; Weizmann to Weisgal, June 18, 1945; all in WA. 31 Grew memorandum to Truman, and draft letter attached, June 21, 1945, Box 11, WRB; Agronsky note, June 19, 1945, A209/3, CZA; Truman to Harrison, June 22, 1945—a copy sent by Pehle to Morgenthau, June 27, 1945; vol. 859, MD. The State Department’s eventual public announcement declared that Harrison’s mission was to ascertain the extent to which the needs of nonrepatriables, who include “many Jewish survivors of Nazi persecutions,” were now being met by the military authorities. Jewish Telegraphic Agency (hereafter JTA), July 9, 1945. 32 Harry S. Truman, Memoirs by Harry S. Truman, vol. 2, Years of Trial and Hope (New York, 1965 ed.), 163; Leonard Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust (New York, 1982), 36–38; Michael T. Benson, Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel (Westport, CT, 1997), 63–64. 33 Montor interview with the author, June 8, 1977. The United Jewish Appeal for Refugees and Overseas Needs combined the efforts of American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, led by Rabbi Jonah Wise; the United Palestine Appeal, led by Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver; and the National Coordinating Committee Fund, led by William Rosenwald. While the organizations would raise funds together, the Joint Distribution Committee would assist Jews in Europe, the United Palestine Appeal would aid the Jewish community in Palestine, including refugees from Europe arriving there, and the National Coordinating Committee Fund would assist refugees arriving in the United States. New York Times, January 13, 1939. 34 Weisgal to Harrison, June 25, 1945; Weisgal memorandum, June 25, 1945; both in Z5/991, CZA. 35 Weisgal to Morgenthau, June 26, 1945, Z5/861, CZA; Penkower, The Jews Were Expendable, 159, 174, 201, 213; Yehuda Bauer, American Jewry and the Holocaust,

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The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1939–1945 (Detroit, 1981); Weisgal to Weizmann, July 3, 1945, WA; Weizmann to Weisgal, June 28, 1945, WA; JAEL, June 25 and 27, 1945; both in Z4/30017, CZA. 36 Shertok to Gort, June 18, 1945, Jewish Agency confidential files, ZA; Gort to Stanley, March 17 and 19, 1945, CAB 95/14, PRO; Zionist Review, June 15, 1945; JTA, June 22 and 26, 1945; JAEL, June 11 and 13, 1945, Z4/302/29, CZA; FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 713–715. 37 Robert J. Donovan, Conflict and Crisis, The Presidency of Harry S Truman, 1945– 1948 (New York, 1977), 26–28, 76–77; MD, vol. 848, April 16, 1945; Truman, Memoirs, vol. 1, Year of Decision (New York, 1955), 235–236; Arnold A. Offner, “Research on American-German Relations: A Critical View,” in Joseph McVeigh and Frank Trommler, eds., America and the Germans: An Assessment of a ThreeHundred-Year History (Philadelphia, PA, 1990), vol. 2, 176; May 23, 1945; Morgenthau Presidential Diaries (hereafter MPD), FDRL, June 1, 13, 16, 18, 1945; Henry L. Stimson Diaries, vol. 52, July 3, 1945, Sterling Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT; Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, chap. 3; Edward N. Peterson, The American Occupation of Germany: Retreat to Victory (Detroit, MI, 1978), 37–44; Michael R. Beschloss, The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1941–1945 (2002), 246. 38 R.H. Ferrell, ed., Off the Record, The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman (New York, 1982 ed.), 41. For Jacobson’s role, see Frank J. Adler, Roots in a Moving Stream (Kansas City, MO, 1972). 39 MD, July 5–6, 1945, vol. 862; MPD, July 11 and 13, 1945, FDRL; MD, vol. 863, July 13–14, 1945. 40 JAEL, July 3, 1945, Z5/30017, CZA; “Conversation with Dr. Weizmann,” Harrison diary; Walter Lowdermilk, Palestine, Land of Promise (New York, 1944). 41 JAEL, July 3, 1945, Z5/30017, CZA; “Conversation with Brodetsky-LockerLinton,” Harrison diary. 42 Harrison to Weisgal, July 1945, Z5/991, CZA; AZEC Executive Committee, June 22, 1945, ZA; Shulman report, July 12, 1945, CF AZEC files; memorandum on Palestine, July 3, 1945, President’s file; both in ZA; Silver to Wagner, September 6, 1945, Robert Wagner MSS, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.; Proskauer to Truman, July 6, 1945, American Jewish Committee Archives (hereafter AJC), New York. 43 Truman, Memoirs, vol. 2, 189; Samuel K. Mayerberg, “President Truman’s Buddy,” Kansas City Jewish Chronicle, September 21, 1945; Adler, Roots in a Moving Stream, 204–205. (the book was cited in full earlier, note 38) — 64 —

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44 Merriam to Murray, June 15, 1945, 867N.01/6-1545; Grew to Truman, June 16, 1945, 867N.01/6-1645; both in SD. For Murray’s consistent position visà-vis Palestine, see Penkower, Palestine in Turmoil and Decision on Palestine Deferred, passim. 45 H. Hardy, ed., Isaiah Berlin, Letters 1928–1946 (Cambridge, MA, 2004), 552– 558. 46 Ben-Gurion diary, July 1, 1945, BGA; Montor interview with the author, June 8, 1977; Montor to Steinglas, June 1961, A371/538, CZA; Fligelman to the author, February 6, 1978; Shepherd Broad interview with the author, November 16, 1977; Sonnenborn and Cherr to Cohen, July 13, 1945, BGA; Ben-Gurion to Sonnenborn, February 18, 1955, SC-11769, AJA. A dramatic account of the group’s activities is offered in Leonard Slater, The Pledge (New York, 1970). 47 Halifax to Eden, July 1, 1945; FO memorandum E5452, July 1945; both in FO 371/45378; Grigg memorandum, July 2, 1945, CAB 66; all in PRO. 48 Churchill minutes, July 6, 1945, FO 371/45378, PRO; Martin Gilbert, Exile and Return, The Struggle for a Jewish Homeland (Philadelphia, PA, 1978), 273; Davies memorandum to Truman, June 12, 1945, PSF—GF 117, HSTL. 49 Stanley to Churchill, July 13, 1945, CO 733/463/I, PRO; Beeley memorandum, July 10, 1945, JP (45) 167 memorandum, July 10, 1945; Harris to Baxter, July 11, 1945; all in FO 371/45378, PRO. 50 Heller to Montor, July 17, 1945, S25/1875, CZA; Abba Kovner, “Shlihutam Shel HaAharonim,” Yalkut Moreshet 16 (1973): 35–42; minutes of conference July 25, 1945, 272/92, WJCA; Harrison diary, July 1945. For some of the activities of the Brigade, Klausner, and others, see Yehuda Bauer, Flight and Rescue, Brichah (New York, 1970). Later reminiscences can be found in Carmi Pta’el, ed., HaKefilim: BeShlihut Hatsala Aluma (Tel Aviv, 1990). 51 Henderson memorandum, June 22, 1945, 867N.01/6-2245; Wilson memorandum, June 27, 1945, 867N.01/6-2745; both in SD; Gilbert, Exile and Return, 273; Pinkerton to State, June 10, 1945, 867N.01/7-1045; Pinkerton to State, July 20, 1945, 867N.01/7-2045; both in SD; JTA, July 24, 1945. 52 JTA, July 24, 1945; memorandum, May 1945, Z4/14519, CZA; Eastwood memorandum, May 15, 1945, CO 733/461/75872/I, PRO; Issa Khalaf, Politics in Palestine: Arab Factionalism and Social Disintegration, 1939–1948 (Albany, NY, 1991), 90–98; “Arab Political News,” May 16 and 24, 1945, S25/9228, CZA; Palestine Report, no. 2, June 1945, Correspondents file, AJC; “Arab Political News,” July 13, 1945, S25/9228, CZA; Arab Front manifesto, June 10, 1945; CID report, June 16, 1945; both in 47/783, Hagana Archives (hereafter HA), — 65 —

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Tel Aviv. For Abdul Hadi’s protest to the Arab League regarding the annex to Palestine, as well as al-Alami’s defense (published in the Palestinian Arab press on June 19), see S25/9226, CZA. 53 Zaslani note, June 27, 1945, BGA. 54 Eastwood-Locker talk, June 21, 1945, CO 733/461/75872/26D; Shertok to Shaw, May 9, 1945, FO 371/51532; both in PRO; Shertok to Shaw, July 9, 1945, A289/84; JAEL, July 17, 1945, Z4/10379/I; both in CZA; JTA, July 24, 1945; Eastwood note, July 25, 1945, CO 733/459/75339, PRO. 55 Palestine’s Reaction to British Election Results,” Correspondents file 1945, AJC; JTA, July 24, 1945. In the wake of the 1929 Arab riots, Colonial Secretary Lord Passfield (Sidney Webb) charged that HMG had obligations to both Jews and Arabs regarding Palestine, accepted the conclusion of a report by Sir John Hope-Simpson that “no margin of land” remained in that country for agricultural settlement by new immigrants, and concluded that Jewish immigration would be suspended if it prevented Arabs from obtaining employment. Four months later, Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald cancelled much of the Passfield White Paper’s anti-Zionist implications. 56 Charles McMoran Wilson, Churchill, Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran (Boston, 1966), 293–294. 57 Ibid., 295; FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 716–717, 719 (and FO 800/481, PRO). Proof that State was not consulted can be seen from the department’s obtaining a copy from the Truman Presidential Library for its official documentary history. Ibid., 716n7. 58 Gater-Shertok interview, July 26, 1945, CO 733/462/75872/26C, PRO; Francis Williams, Twilight of Empire (New York, 1962 ed.), 1–2; John W. Wheeler-Bennett, King George VI, His Life and Reign (New York, 1958), 634–639; Colville, Fringes of Power, 611–613. For the loser’s response to the crushing blow, see McMoran Wilson, Churchill, 306–311. 59 David Ben-Gurion, “British Socialists Win Election,” Jewish Observer and Middle East Review (hereafter JOMER), June 26, 1964, 17–19; N. A. Rose, ed, Baffy, The Diaries of Blanche Dugdale, 1936–1947 (London, 1973), 223; “Palestine’s Reaction to British Election Results,” July 1945, AJCA; Minutes of meeting, June (should be July) 1945; Locker-Greenwood interview, July 30, 1945; both in A263/19, CZA; Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy (1320), canto 3, line 9: “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.” 60 Henderson memorandum to Grew, July 30, 1945, 867N.01/7-3045; Merriam to Henderson, July 25, 1945, 867N.01/7-2545; Merriam memorandum, July 28, 1945, 867N.01/7-2845; all in SD. — 66 —

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61 W. Millis, ed., The Forrestal Diaries (New York, 1951), 81; Forrestal memorandum to Byrnes, August 1, 1945, RG 80, Box 69, NA. 62 Grew memorandum, July 30, 1945; Grew diary, July 31, 1945, and August 1, 1945; all in vol. 7, Joseph Grew MSS, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Feisal soon told a newspaper reporter that he found “a most helpful and cooperative attitude” on the part of Grew and Henderson. Tuck to State, September 6, 1945, 890F.00/9-645, SD. For Ibn Saud’s request for US economic aid and the War Department’s interest in building an air field at Dhahran, see Memorandum, July 1, 1945, CCS 38.1 Saudi Arabia (2-7-45) and attached documents, Sec. 1, RG 218, NA. 63 Henderson memorandum to Grew, July 30, 1945, 867N.01/7-3045, SD; Joseph Heller, “Roosevelt, Stalin and the Palestine Problem at Yalta,” Wiener Library Bulletin 30 (1977): 25–35; Documents on Israeli-Soviet Relations, 1941–1953, vol. I (London, 2000), 100–105. The reference to Palestine’s having an outlet for Iraqi oil alluded to the pipeline that went from the Kirkuk crude oil fields (located in the former Ottoman vilayet of Mosul in northern Iraq), via Jordan, to the terminal in Haifa. The oil was distilled in the Haifa refineries, stored in tanks, and then put in tankers for shipment to Europe. 64 Beeley note, July 26, 1945, FO 371/45378; Bevin to Attlee, July 30, 1945, FO 800/484; both in PRO; Attlee to Truman, July 31, 1945, FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 719; New York Times, July 31, 1945; Hare to State, Aug. 3, 1945, 867N.01/8-345, SD. 65 Harrison to Secretary Treasury, July 28, 1945, Box 11, WRB. 66 Vinson to Grew, August 1, 1945, Box 11, WRB; AGRAW to USFET Main, August 3, 1945, Box 45, Ha-Harr (misc.) file, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, KS. 67 Kubowitzki to McCloy, July 26, 1945; Chanler to Kubowitzki, August 4, 1945; both in file 267/16, WJCA; Schottland memorandum, August 5, 1945, file P68/9, Abraham Klausner MSS, Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem; Martin Blumenson, The Patton Papers, 1940–1945 (New York, 1966 ed.), 751; Leo Schwarz, The Redeemers: A Saga of the Jews, 1945–1952 (New York, 1953), 24–25; Bernstein columns, PM, July 24, 26, and 30, 1945, in Harrison diary. For the far more sympathetic attitude of General Mark Clark, then commander of the American zone in Austria, and his staff to the survivors, see Mel Schiff, “President Truman and the Jewish DPs, 1945–46, The Untold Story,” American Jewish History 99 (October 2015): 340–347. 68 Weizmann address, August 1, 1945, A330/680, CZA. — 67 —

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69 Winant to State, August 3, 1945, 867N.-1/8-345. SD; Dan Kurzman, BenGurion, Prophet of Fire (New York, 1983), 261; Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion, A Biography (New York, 1978). 70 Eli Shaltiel, Tamid B’Meri: Moshe Sneh, Biografiya: 1909–1948 (Tel Aviv, 2000), 192–194; R. Bashan, Sihot Hulin Shel Weizmann (Jerusalem, 1963), 23; Political Resolutions, August 14, 1945, S25/1912, CZA. 71 Shaltiel, Tamid B’Meri, 199–200; “Tokhnit Bet,” September 1945, S25/22856, CZA. Ma’apilim was the name for those who defiantly sought to go to Eretz Israel, the concept taken from Numbers 14:40–45. 72 “World Zionist Conference in London,” Political reports, August 1945, Correspondents file, AJCA; “Communist Activity in Palestine,” Aug. 2, 1945, file XL 24249, RG 226, NA. 73 The Times, August 15, 1945. A farhud (pogrom) against Baghdad’s Jews, incited by Husseini and several Nazi trained and subsidized Arab agents, led to the deaths of more than 140 Jews, with more than 700 wounded and almost 600 stores destroyed. Penkower, Decision on Palestine Deferred, 80. 74 Henderson memorandum, August 3, 1945, 867N.01/8-345; Yale memorandum, August 4, 1945, 867N.01/8-445; Merriam to Henderson, August 31, 1945, 867N.01/8-3145; all in SD; JTA, August 15, 1945; Kohler memorandum, August 13, 1945, 867N.01/8-1345, SD. 75 A. D. Chandler, Jr. and L. Galambos, eds., The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower: Occupation, 1945, vol. 6 (Baltimore, MD, 1978), 266–267; Judah Nadich, Eisenhower and the Jews (New York, 1953), 34–40; Discussion with Generals Adcock and Mickelson, July 24, 1945, Harrison diary. 76 JTA, August 17, 1945; Palestine Post, September 2, 1945. 77 Henderson-Epstein meeting, August 17, 1956, Confidential files, ZA; 867N.01/81945 and 867N.01/8-2045, SD; Beeley note, August 20, 1945, FO 371/453379, PRO; Yale memorandum, Apil 23, 1948, Box 2, William Yale MSS, Boston University, Boston. For Yale’s four memoranda, see FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 727–733. 78 JTA, August 19, 1945. For the Jewish Agency’s analysis of Truman’s statement, see “Observations,” n.d., Z6/2302, CZA. Ben-Gurion urged his colleagues in London to ask for a provisional Jewish state in a certain part of the country “at once,” and given the “first installment” of 100,000 survivors. August 17, 1945, JAEL, CZA. 79 JTA, August 19, 21, and 23, 1945; Henderson memorandum, August 17, 1945, 867N.01/8-1745, SD; “Arab Political News,” August 21, 1945, S25/9928, CZA. For Azzam Pasha’s thinking at this time, see Jon Kimche, Seven Fallen Pillars, The Middle East, 1915–1950 (London, 1950), 51. — 68 —

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80 Martin to Shertok, August 14, 1945, Z4/31263, CZA; Shertok to Weizmann, August 15, 1945, WA; Hall-Jewish deputation meeting, August 16, 1945, CO 733/461/75872X, PRO; Baltimore Sun, August 22, 1945; JTA, August 22, 1945; Bevin memorandum, August 24, 1945, FO 371/45393, PRO. 81 Alan Bullock, Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary, 1945–1951 (Oxford, 1985), 165– 167. For Bevin’s role in 1930, see N. A. Rose, The Gentile Zionists, A Study in Anglo-Zionist Diplomacy, 1929–1939 (London, 1973), 37–39. For the Patria, see Monty Noam Penkower, The Jews Were Expendable: Free World Diplomacy and the Holocaust (Urbana, 1983), chap. 2. 82 Emanuel Shinwell, I’ve Lived Through It All (London, 1973), 183–184; Peter Hennessy, Never Again, Britain, 1945–1951 (New York, 1993), 96; Williams, Twilight of Empire, 128–134. 83 Harrison report, August 24, 1945, and Truman to Eisenhower, August 31, 1934, Department of State Bulletin 13, No. 327; Eben Ayers diary, Aug. 25, 1945, HSTL; Truman, Memoirs, vol. 2, 164; Nadich, Eisenhower and the Jews, 113–114. Publicly, Harrison asserted that Truman had manifested real interest in the report; that the desire of the survivors as to their future destination “revealed a definite trend” (he declined to mention Palestine); and that no substantial number expressed a wish to come to the United States. “We are known as a restrictive country,” he added. JTA, August 26, 1945. Harrison was led to believe, so he told Wise, that his report would be published immediately. Wise to Billikopf, October 3, 1945, Box 104, Wise MSS. 84 FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 737–739. 85 Bevin memorandum, C.P. (45) 130, August 28, 1945, CAB 129/1, PRO. 86 FO 371/45379, PRO. 87 Hull memorandum, September 1, 1945, CAB 95/14; Hall to Bevin, September 4, 1945, FO 371/45380; both in PRO. In meeting with Ben-Gurion and colleagues, Hall dodged their requests once again by saying that their view were “under consideration.” Hall memorandum, September 7, 1945, CO 733/461/75872x, PRO. 88 Meeting, September 6, 1945, FO 371/45379, PRO. 89 Meeting, September 6, 1945; Morrison report, September 8, 1945; both in CAB 95/14; Hall memorandum regarding security conditions in Palestine, September 10, 1945, CAB 129/2; Cabinet meeting, September 11, 1945, CAB 128/3a; Chiefs of Staff memo, September 9, 1945, FO 371/45379; all in PRO. 90 Meeting, September 10, 1945, FO 371/45379; Bevin memo, September 17, 1945, CAB 129/2; both in PRO. — 69 —

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91 Martin minute, September 18, 1945, CO 733/463-I/75872/134, PRO; JTA, September 14, 1945; FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 739. Gillette soon denied the statement (JTA, September 19, 1945), but few doubted its veracity. 92 Nadich, Eisenhower and the Jews, 42–49; Beeley minute, July 27, 1945, FO 371/45378, PRO; FRUS, 1945, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C., 1967), 1178– 1179, 1183, 1184; Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 33–37; Mason letter, September 20, 1945, World Jewish Congress Archives, London. Wishing to avoid a postwar influx of Jews into Palestine, the Foreign Office’s Refugee Department had already expressed the fear in March 1944 that British trials of Germans on charges of crimes against humanity committed against Jews would make it difficult for Jews to return to the native countries after the war. Priscilla Dale Jones, “British Policy Towards German Crimes Against German Jews, 1939–1945,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 36 (London, 1991), 351.  93 FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 740–741. Gillette’s leaking of Truman’s letter to Attlee, along with the elections for the New York City mayoralty in November, led the White House to issue a press release on September 29 which published excerpts from Harrison’s report and the substance of Truman’s letter. The release also stated that Attlee had not answered Truman’s communication, forcing the Prime Minister to inform the British public on October 2 that he had, in fact, done so, and that he understood that no action would be taken further until Byrnes’s return. FO 371/45380, PRO; FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 753.  94 Weizmann to Silver, September 15, 1945, file 93.03/2270/7, Israel State Archives (hereafter ISA), Jerusalem; JTA, August 23, 1945.  95 Goldmann to Ben-Gurion, September 18, 1945; Goldmann to Silver, September 18, 1945; both in Z6.302, CZA.   96 September 20, 1945, JAEL, Z4/302/20, CZA; Weizmann to Attlee, September 21, 1945, WA. Speaking to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain, a bitter WZO president went so far as to say this: “Now just one million are left, and this million only because Hitler could not finish his job, and if present policy goes on, this job may yet be finished.” Weizmann remarks, Sept. 24, 1945, F13/618, CZA.   97 September 24, 1945, Z5/1720, CZA.   98 Acheson-delegation talk, September 20, 1945, 867N.01/9-2045, SD; WiseSilver to Truman, Sept. 24, 1945, Z6/2302, CZA.   99 Akzin to Shapiro, September 24, 1945, Z5/781, CZA. 100 Merriam to Henderson, Sept. 26, 1945, 867N.01/9-2645, SD.

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101 FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 744–745, 749–750; Epstein to Goldmann, October 5, 1945, file 4/3, Silver MSS; Beirut to FO, September 25, 1945, FO 371/45380, PRO; Epstein to Goldman, October 3, 1945, L35/102, CZA. 102 Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 840–841; Shaltiel, Tamid B’Meri, 205. Kollek’s information had also led to the capture of LEHI commander Ya’akov Meridor on February 13, 1945. Ronen Bergman, “The Scorpion File,” Yediot Aharonot, Sheva Yamim magazine, March 30, 2007, 21–28; Christopher M. Andrew, In Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (London, 2009), 356. 103 Ben-Gurion to Goldmann, September 27, 1945, Z6/302, CZA; JTA, September 27, 1945; Palestine Post, September 28, 1945. 104 Attlee to Weizmann, September 28, 1945, S25/1689, CZA; JTA, September 28, 1945. 105 JTA, October 1, 1945; Proskauer to Truman, September 26, 1945; Proskauer to Farley, October 1, 1945; both in Box 8, Joseph Proskauer MSS, AJC. 106 Weisgal to Weizmann, September 30, 1945, WA; Goldmann to Ben-Gurion, October 2, 1945, Z4/14482, CZA. 107 Halifax to Bevin, October 7, 1945, FO 371/45438, PRO. 108 JTA, September 27, 1945; Reid to Lyon, September 19, 1945, Box 396/383.7; G-2 report, September 7, 1945, Box 949; both in RG 165, NA; JTA, September 16, 1945.

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On October 1, 1945, Ben-Gurion (code name “Avi Amos”) sent instructions on his own to Sneh, agreeing to launch a resistance movement against the British mandatory in Palestine. Having concluded that “there was no glimmering of hope” from the Attlee government, he particularly urged the arrangement of aliya gimel (in addition to aliya bet). In this immigration, every convoy of Jewish refugees would be accompanied by an armed group, led by a Hagana member, prepared to fight the police at sea or on shore. A central command in Paris, already operating as the Mosad L’Aliya bureau under the leadership of Shaul Meirov and aide Georg Ueberall (later Ehud Avriel), would be set up to direct all operations, including the purchase of boats, training, finance, radio communications, transfer, and recruitment. These actions should not wait for a responding declaration from HMG, Ben-Gurion thought, since the maintenance of the White Paper signaled war against the Jewish people, a policy which had to be fought “with all the means at our disposal.” Acts of powerful sabotage and retaliation must also be undertaken—not personal terror, retribution for every Jew murdered by the White Paper forces. Every care should be taken to avoid loss of life. The two rival groups of yishuv activists (Irgun and LEHI), BenGurion’s two-page letter went on, should be invited to agree to full cooperation on condition of a single authority and “absolute discipline.” A constant effort to insure unity amongst Palestinian Jewry was essential, but above all within the ranks of the fighters. Resistance for “a considerable period” should be continual, bold, and calculated. Neither a final battle nor the expectation of “a rapid and easy victory” was to be expected. The maximum effort had to be made to preserve the Zionist movement’s constructive work without recoiling from “inevitable sacrifices and losses.” Zaslani was heading for New York with instructions; “the engineer” (Haim Slavin) to oversee weaponry purchases would follow.

2. Tenuat HaMeri Halvri

Of almost equal importance to the action itself, world public opinion had to be aroused, which above all meant the resumption of Kol Yisrael radio broadcasts in Palestine, Great Britain, France, and the United States. Information on British coastal patrol boats had to be conveyed regularly to the Mosad L’Aliya’s headquarters in Europe. Ben-Gurion intended now to go to France in order to arrange matters with those responsible for what HMG deemed illegal immigration, and then to visit the DP camps in Germany’s American and British zones before returning home.1 That same evening, at least 67,000 people attended the AZECsponsored demonstration at Madison Square Garden for a Jewish Palestine. The auditorium was hung with American and Zionist flags and signs reading: “Is Attlee Another Chamberlain?,” “When Will the War Be Over for the Jewish People?,” “Aren’t Six Million Jewish Dead Enough?,” and “America Is For Palestine. Why Doesn’t the State Department Act?” Silver told the audience that his interview with Truman two days earlier had occurred in a cordial, pleasant atmosphere. He expressed the hope that the U.S. Chief Executive would “not be misled by a few highplaced, shell-shocked Jews who … speak for an insignificant number of our people, those who are afraid lest the establishment of a Jewish State will endanger their own comfortable existence here.” Silver called on all American Jews to back a total mobilization “in the war which has been called against us,” particularly the illegality of the British government’s attempt to prevent the entry of Jews into their National Home. As he finished, the entire auditorium arose and spontaneously sang the Zionist anthem, HaTikva. New York State Governor Thomas E. Dewey pointed to the sufferings of the Jews currently confined to camps in Europe, to the magnificent achievements of the Jews in Palestine and to their contributions to the war effort, and declared that they were entitled to a homeland. He urged free immigration without delay, but refrained from demanding the creation of a Jewish commonwealth. Justice for the Jews, Wise asserted, meant the admission of Palestine to the United Nations as a Jewish state. He predicted that he would live to see the establishment of Jewish sovereignty, and added that after his interview with the President in the company of Silver he was not “without hope.”2 In London, writing to Egyptian Foreign Minister Abdul Hamid Badawi Pasha on October 1 after spending two weeks there, Azzam Pasha suggested that the Arab League demand the White Paper’s continuation — 73 —

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without taking “an extreme attitude” toward the Jews. The Labour Party sought to assure British influence in the Arab nations while satisfying Zionist demands, he observed, a clear contradiction which explained why the Attlee government hesitated in coming to a decision. Russia had not yet decided on supporting the Arab League. With “hundreds of thousands” of European Jews now in “concentration-camp conditions,” the League had to explain its case in reconciliatory terms. It would be necessary to come to an understanding with the Zionists “if they will agree to a compromise based on justice and historical rights.” Azzam deemed “totally illogical” a new report that Bevin was suggesting the Arab states and Palestine absorb 100,000 Jews; while not as bad as Truman’s “ridiculous” suggestion—which “comes out of imperialistic considerations,” it would not be approved by the Arabs. The U.S. government would undoubtedly refuse this idea, as their aim was economic development in Palestine joined to support of Zionism. “I am convinced,” he concluded, that the Americans “are sincere in their demand for a Jewish State,” and would not accept the British suggestions aimed at preventing troubles in the Middle East.3 Azzam’s sober impressions differed from a more optimistic note which he had privately sounded three weeks earlier on the eve of his departure from Cairo for the British capital. In a letter to Egyptian Prime Minister Nokrashi Pasha, he noted that the Arabs in Iraq, Transjordan, and Arabia were especially embittered about Truman’s letter advocating the entry of 100,000 Jewish refugees into Palestine. Ibn Saud informed him that he would impede oil concessions to the United States; write Truman that the Arabs will unite against American interests in the Middle East; and tell the American representatives in Arabia that an Arab army under the supervision of the Arab League will be mobilized against Palestine. Azzam thought the monarch’s attitude ­“exaggerated,” because “destruction of the Jews by force is not a solution to the Palestine conundrum.” Not only were we dependent on the big powers from a military point of view, he explained, but they would not consent to an Arab war against the Jews. Aware of the seriousness of the s­ ituation, the Arab leaders were afraid of “an explosion” which could spread to the whole region. Attlee’s suggestion to bring the Palestine problem to the United Nations (UN) Azzam judged to be a good one, acceptable to the Arabs. The Americans worsened the situation, however, only wanting publicity at the expense of the British. The “tragic situation” of the Jews was not — 74 —

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due to conditions in Europe, he argued, but to the intervention of the United States.4 The State Department’s release of Earl Harrison’s final report, along with Truman’s letter to Eisenhower, elicited predictable reactions. Weizmann cabled Harrison “greatly impressed your humane document. In these sad times sympathy brings some measure consolation.” “You have attacked the problem with vision, humanity and statesmanship,” Weisgal wrote him. The National Council of Jewish Women urged its members to write to Truman, praising his firm stand. Some Refugee Department officials in Whitehall, on the other hand, wondered if Harrison could be an “impartial witness.” On October 6 the State Department officially heard that London was “unwilling to recognize Nazi attempts to deprive Jews of their German or any other nationality, or Jewish attempts to regard Jews as possessing any separate or over-riding nationality of their own or distinct from their political nationality.” The Daily Telegraph and other British newspapers editorialized that Harrison made his statement “purely on a humanitarian basis” without reference to ideological or political considerations, particularly Arab protests. Echoing Muslim capitals across the region and Muhammad Ali Jinah of the All-India Muslim League, Azzam announced that there should be no more Jewish immigration to Palestine or additional alienation of Arab land, but democratic elections and self-government with independence for the Arab majority.5 HMG especially viewed Harrison’s recommendation that the survivors be segregated pending their removal to Palestine or elsewhere outside of Europe, a policy now adopted in the U.S. zone in Germany, “with grave concern.” That policy, read an aide-mémoire from the British Embassy in Washington to State on October 9, suggested acceptance of the Nazi regime’s contention that there should be no place for Jews in Europe. Rather, our two governments should improve conditions whereby Jews, “not the only persecuted group,” would “feel natural and right to go home.” This stance was taken despite a recent conference of survivors at Bergen-Belsen, the largest DP camp in the British zone of Germany, which called for the adoption of the Zionists’ Biltmore Program. State countered by observing that the mere fact that Jews who did not want to return to their home countries were presently housed in separate camps did not constitute a decision as to their repatriability. Such housing had no relation, the British conclusion not with standing, — 75 —

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to “the wholesale removal of European Jews to Palestine.” Washington and London should explore the possibility, the department recommended, of “a more positive approach” to the problem of those groups of DPs who had expressed unwillingness to return to their homes.6 Reports of Truman’s initiative to pressure the British government for the immediate admission to Palestine of 100,000 Jewish refugees “deeply concerned” State’s Near Eastern experts, forced to contend with the resultant repercussions. Summarizing the many protests from Arab capitals, Henderson warned Acting Secretary of State Dean Acheson on October 1 that an official statement had to be released assuring Arabs and Jews that they would be consulted, as Roosevelt had declared and Truman confirmed, before any final decision. One day later, Acheson sent the President a memorandum pointing out Roosevelt’s “most categorical” assurance to Ibn Saud on April 5 of “full consultation with both Arabs and Jews,” together with Truman’s repeated assurance in his letter to Abdullah of May 17. The President’s personal proposal to Attlee, failing to carry out previous pledges of consultation with the contenders for Palestine sovereignty, would constitute “the severest kind of blow to American prestige” not only in the Near East but elsewhere. The “very serious threat” to vital American interests from “a hostile Arab world” was also at stake. Finally, Acheson pointed out, the smaller nations of the world, who looked to Washington for leadership and on whose support the United States counted so heavily at the San Francisco conference, would be “sadly disillusioned if we violated our word in this conspicuous instance.” That same day, Ibn Saud requested Truman’s “indulgence” to publish his conversation with Roosevelt on February 14 and FDR’s reply of April 5, thereby attesting to the world the impossibility that the United States “would support the expulsion of a nation from its country so as to replace it without another nation by means of might and force, and under the protection of military forces.”7 With “the tempo of agitation over Palestine” rising in the United States, Halifax proposed to the Foreign Office on October 3 that the problem of immigration be placed as soon as possible before the United Nations, and to continue the 1,500 immigration monthly level in the interval. (State and the British Embassy in Washington were receiving 20,000 AZEC-inspired telegrams a day endorsing the resistance of the yishuv, while a recent Elmer Roper survey found that 8 out of 10 American Jews favored a Jewish state in Palestine.) The step — 76 —

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appeared a more practical alternative to asking Washington, which until now could “criticize us quite irresponsibly from the sidelines,” to share this task. The Zionists would continue their attacks on HMG despite an official announcement to this effect. Further, it seemed hardly possible that the UN would consider the matter before January or February, giving London no answer to humanitarian arguments concerning the plight of the remnant of European Jews during the coming winter of hardship. The risk of British troops obliged to fire on Arabs or Jews until then also remained. Still, it would at least have the advantage that a Palestine immigration policy would be “the corporate responsibility” in the coming years of the UN. Hopefully, it would also follow that enforcement of the decision would, if necessary, be made by UN forces or by British forces acting with that world organization’s authority. In any case, the Ambassador observed, a situation would be avoided in the event of trouble in Palestine that HMG would become a defendant before the UN should any power wish “to put us into the dock.”8 Weizmann conveyed to Byrnes the same day the Jewish Agency’s memorandum about a press report that HMG had decided to seek UN approval for the new Palestine policy it intended to adopt, even while asking the Secretary of State’s help to “abrogate” the entire White Paper regime. The Agency had no objection to the Palestine matter being raised at the UN, the official response stated. That could not, at the same time, be made an excuse for maintaining until then the White Paper restrictions, which had been unilaterally introduced by Britain and pronounced by the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations as incompatible with the terms of the Mandate. Both Churchill and the Labour Party had objected to the White Paper, the latter also charging in the May 1939 House of Commons debate that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had concealed the Commission’s disapproval of that legislation. The “breach of faith” was committed by the British government, the Agency’s note closed, and by them it must be undone.9 Arab spokesmen stepped up their activities as well. Ahmad Shukeiri, director of the new Arab Office in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the Arab League, held a first press conference which called for “the immediate establishment of a democratic Arab state based on the will of all the inhabitants of Palestine.” “When the Jews relinquish the Zionist idea,” he pronounced, “then they can be sure of living in peace in a democratic Arab state.” The office also arranged a visit on October 3 — 77 —

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of all the Arab ministers in the capital with Acheson, who promised to convey their views to Byrnes when the Secretary returned from London. Azzam’s public declaration that the Arabs would no longer tolerate the daily landing of Jews in Palestine received wide notice in the British press, although the London Times editorialized that “the extremists on either side” erred in holding that it rested with Britain alone to do justice to their claims. Jaffa’s Falastin asserted that the “rawness” with which Truman had been tackling the Palestine problem offered the best example of the “boyish mentality” which was taking charge of settling postwar issues, and its editor wondered why the President did not give some of the big US territories to the Jews. Arab Propaganda Bureau head Musa Alami, currently under attack by Istiqlal and Reform Party leaders seeking to undermine his position, informed the pro-Zionist Senator Claude Pepper (D, Fla.) that every Arab regarded “every inch of Palestinian soil as sacred.” With Arab patience against the “aggression” of the Jews “bound to expire,” he advocated a cessation of Jewish immigration for at least 10–20 years, and then trouble between Jew and Arab would resolve itself during this time.10 Bevin took the lead when offering what he termed a “fresh approach” at the Cabinet’s meeting on October 4. A telegram just received from Halifax had warned of mounting American Zionist agitation, which focused on humanitarian grounds; the political pressures brought on Truman by the November Congressional elections; and bi-partisan calls against the White Paper in a Senate debate two days earlier that sought effective relief for the “first victims of Hitler terrorism.” The British Ambassador further relayed that while Truman had no alternative but to accede to the Saudi request to publish Roosevelt’s letter of assurance to Ibn Saud, the President wished to counter the possible public backlash with another statement that he still hoped the British would accept his proposal for the 100,000 to be admitted into Palestine.11 British difficulties regarding the immediate problem of immigration, Attlee remarked to his colleagues that morning, were not clearly understood in the United States. In addition, the government could no longer defer an announcement beyond the reassembling of Parliament in mid-October. All agreed with Shinwell, the one Jew in the Cabinet, that the facts had to be ascertained regarding the treatment of Jews in the DP camps. As for Palestine, Morrison observed that no solution could please both sides, and they certainly “are lining up for trouble” — 78 —

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there. Whatever decision were taken, Lord Chancellor William Jowitt hoped that the government would not tie itself to the White Paper—the “last essay in appeasement.” The Prime Minister agreed, but wondered “what is [the] understanding with the Arabs?” Truman, like Roosevelt, promised consultation, Bevin replied, and he would have to publicly declare “US electoral ramp” if Washington went on pressing the issue. “Big trouble,” he added, would arise if British troops had to go in and start fighting. In light of this morning’s discussion, he could not help thinking (“without wishing to pass the buck”) that there was no use saying we will put the issue to the UN; this will be taken as delay. At this point in the discussion the Foreign Secretary proposed the immediate creation of an Anglo-American Commission. Its charge would be to examine what could be done quickly to ameliorate the position of Jews now in Europe; to consider how much immigration into Palestine could reasonably be allowed in the future; and to examine the possibility of relieving the position in Europe by immigration into other countries, including the United States and the Dominions. Arabs and Jews would be consulted in conference on immigration in the immediate future and on long-term policy, with a view to making recommendations to the UN. The Cabinet invited Bevin and Hall to prepare revised proposals “formulated as a matter of urgency” on the lines of Bevin’s suggestion, these to be given to the Palestine Committee for consideration at its next meeting in four days’ time. A final report was to be submitted to the Cabinet early the following week.12 The same day, Goldmann replied to Ben-Gurion’s letter of September 27 by emphasizing the need “to talk to the decisive people very bluntly.” He had done so in an off-the-record talk with Henderson and later with Lt. Col. Robert H. McDowell, chief of the Russian Division in the War Department’s Military Intelligence division. When the former, hearing that Palestine Jewry would not submit to trusteeship or any foreign regime, proposed a partition that would give the “triangle” of JeninTulkarm-Nablus to the Arabs, Goldmann replied that such an offer could be discussed with the Arab leaders once the Anglo-American governments finally decided on a Jewish state in principle. To McDowell’s concerns about fighting in the region, Goldmann retorted that Security Council forces, which would include American troops reflecting the United States’ commitment as a UN member, had to maintain law and order once the big powers reached a decision on Palestine. If Washington took a firm stand, — 79 —

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Ibn Saud, as interested in selling his oil to America as America was interested in getting this vital resource, would prevent any threat to pipelines in his kingdom. Speaking “very realistically” in this manner, rather than the standard Zionist delegations’ appeal to sentiment, commitments, and the Jewish vote, was essential now. Instead, the Zionists must concentrate in getting the key people to realize, Goldmann concluded, that they should not have a “piecemeal decision” dragged out for a number of years, and that they should be ready to accept responsibility, not only in financial terms.13 On October 5, Weizmann met with Bevin for the first time, together with Hall. The Foreign Secretary immediately began on a tense note: why had the Jewish Agency refused the 3,000 certificates? They were “holding a pistol to the heads” of the government, and he did not wish British boys to go on fighting. Their boys had been fighting as much as the others, Weizmann retorted, and this did not affect the issue. Bevin then became more amiable, saying that the entry of 100,000 would set the whole Arab world against the British. Partition of Palestine was not economically viable, and he thought that establishment of the Jewish state would take a long time. If the government only granted 1,500 certificates a month, Weizmann argued, the Jews would not accept it and the Arabs would be dissatisfied with any number given. The Jews and Arabs in London should meet, Bevin threw out, sparking Weizmann’s recall of the disastrous 1939 London Conference. The Foreign Secretary shifted to criticizing Truman for not wishing to take responsibility while “merely trying to gain votes.” Truman had acted on information given him by “a serious investigator” (a reference to Harrison) and considered the problem from a humane point of view, Weizmann retorted, and HMG would find that once the President had “put his teeth into a problem he would not easily let go.” Bevin ended by saying that he was anxious to find a solution, and would like to discuss the matter further with Weizmann and his friends. He was going to America but his associates would remain in London, the WZO chieftain responded, and any delay in discussion would result “in the loss of more lives.”14 Having heard the gist of Weizmann’s conversation with Bevin, Ben-Gurion proposed to Jewish Agency Executive colleagues in Jerusalem that they vote to break off all contacts with the government in London so long as the White Paper policy continued. His earlier plan of action, given to the London Agency Executive on September 27, was — 80 —

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not followed. Blood had since been spilt in Palestine: on October 4, during the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force’s search at Kfar Giladi in the Upper Galilee for more than 50 “illegal” immigrants whom the Mosad L’Aliya helped cross the Lebanon border, seven Jews from neighboring settlements who had come to assist were injured by gunfire. This blood lay on the hands of the Attlee government, a point Ben-Gurion repeated to associates immediately after the Weizmann-Bevin interview when urging that the Agency do nothing contrary to the underground yishuv resistance movement. While Shertok called for a letter to Bevin explaining their position, Weizmann said that he had the “deepest sympathy” with Ben-Gurion’s sentiments. Nevertheless, they must remember that the mandatory government could in one week “ruin the state of affairs” in Palestine to an extent that it would take the movement years to repair. Having one week earlier written to Agency legal adviser Bernard Joseph (later Dov Yosef) in Jerusalem of “the vital importance of keeping things steady in Palestine during our political struggle here,” Weizmann warned his associates now that the steps proposed by Ben-Gurion might have to be taken, but only as “an absolute last resort.”15 Ben-Gurion could no longer take part in the London Executive’s meetings, he would soon inform Weizmann, being unable to share in “a fictitious responsibility.” His brief trip to Paris had shown aliya gimel, however great the practical difficulties, to be a possibility. He saw there a copy of the Hagana’s detailed plan for revolt, while Sneh cabled him that the yishuv stood behind Ben-Gurion’s militant leadership. Only a small minority of moderate Zionists supported Weizmann at this point, notably the Aliya Hadasha party (founded in 1942 by former German Jews) and the Ihud organization spearheaded by Hebrew University president Judah Magnes and Martin Buber. Even the leftwing HaShomer HaTsa’ir, like Ihud advocating a bi-nationalist state in Palestine, approved attacks on British obstacles to immigration and settlement. On October 8, four days after Kol Yisrael resumed underground radio transmission, mass protests were held throughout Palestine against the White Paper, one procession headed by men in the striped pajamas of Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz and another in Tel Aviv drawing some 60,000 people despite the sultry weather. There were no “untoward incidents,” reported Vice-Consul Malcolm Hooper in Jerusalem to Byrnes, but strong statements affirmed that “Jewish — 81 —

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Community stands ready at command of national institutions for whatever called upon to undertake.”16 During the same period, Azzam Pasha championed the Arab League’s cause in numerous London encounters. Several meetings with Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs Hector McNeil, as well as conferences with British press editors, MPs, the Cambridge Union, and members of Chatham House, culminated in an interview with Bevin on October 8. The Foreign Secretary referred to the terrible conditions in Europe due to racial hatreds, the Jews standing out as “the prime sufferers on this score.” As they were “first cousins” to the Arabs, he observed, could not the Arabs “come to look upon them as friends?” Azzam agreed that this was the correct approach, adding that “God has punished the Germans for what they have done to the Jews.” What were the chances of Arab and Jewish world representatives, Bevin asked next, meeting with me and talking over the present problem? Azzam responded much as Weizmann had when he referred disdainfully three days earlier to the 1939 London Conference. According to his own notes, Azzam declared that the Arabs did not harbor the same enmity towards Jews exhibited by the Americans and the British, but the Zionists wished to rule over Palestine’s Arabs “in the name of race and religion.” The Foreign Secretary pointed out that it might take “a dozen talks to accomplish anything,” but he wondered if the Arabs would participate. They would, his guest replied, if they were approached in the right way. Azzam asserted that the Arab League represented an independent movement that wished peace, and he expressed gratitude at being received and at Bevin’s talking so frankly.17 Meeting with Weizmann on October 10 for a second talk before leaving for a few days’ rest, Bevin expressed the wish that he could relay before Weizmann’s departure for America the immediate steps that the government proposed to take. Hopefully, this would lead to what he labeled “a truce.” The WZO president noted that every day lives were being lost, and the White Paper, “born in sin,” had to be annulled. Bevin doubted that a 100,000-entry grant would correctly “set about the business.” He would be “taking his political life into his hands” by tackling the Palestine problem, which everyone told him was insoluble. This was rubbish, Weizmann retorted; a solution could be found with the requisite amount of goodwill. If a certain course continued, the British would find themselves one day ejected from Egypt, Iraq, and Palestine, with — 82 —

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no one in the UN lifting a finger to help them. Bevin would probably say that the Zionists were losing control over their followers, Weizmann continued, but the Foreign Secretary did not seem to be in control either—witness the dockers’ strike and the protest procession of building workers in London. In any event, it was “useless” for him to go to his people with “empty hands.” At the end, Weizmann again stressed the imperative of revoking the White Paper.18 That afternoon, Bevin and Hall presented their memorandum before the Palestine Committee. The Colonial Office thought that an Anglo-American commission would pre-judge the issue in light of Truman’s push for the 100,000, and thus inflame the Muslim world. Taking this into consideration, as well as the India Secretary’s paper about probable Muslim opinion in India about the Palestine problem, the Committee recommended that the proposed commission focus on exploring the current position of European Jewry, as well as examine possibilities of the immigration of non-repatriables to other countries outside Europe, including the United States. An investigation of conditions on the spot in Palestine should also be undertaken, with its recommendations taken into account by HMG for “some satisfactory interim settlement” and a “permanent application” thereafter. The latter, calling for Palestine to be placed under Trusteeship, would be presented to the UN for approval. The 1,500 monthly quota would continue in the interim, consultation with Arabs and Jews to occur in conference if possible. Bevin hoped to delay an announcement until the week beginning October 21st, by which time American agreement would have been obtained.19 The first specific anti-Government operation of what the yishuv would soon call Tenuat HaMeri HaIvri (the Hebrew resistance movement) occurred late that night, when more than 100 Palmah fighters, commanded by Nahum Sarig and 23-year-old Yitshak Rabin, descended on the Atlit detention camp south of Haifa and freed the 208 “illegal” immigrants detained there. They all escaped to settlements nearby; a British Constable was killed in an ambush against a police car on its way there. Tense hours followed when large forces of police surrounded Beit Oren and Yagur, and hundreds of factory workers, office employees, and schoolchildren from Haifa came to the aid of these agricultural kibbutz settlements. Finally, the police withdrew in the afternoon. The same day, a search near Tel Aviv for what the police termed were terrorists — 83 —

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but locals thought was intended against aliya bet arrivals (ma’apilim) was called off when showers of stones pelted the British army and police, who withdrew with three suspects whom they had arrested before the trouble began. Shertok cabled the Hagana his appreciation for the Atlit operation, with Ben-Gurion sending a short message the next day: “May your hands be strengthened.” Passive resistance to mandatory rule had come to an end.20 Quickly sending for the Jewish Agency Executives Kaplan and Joseph and Va’ad HaLeumi (National Council) president Yitshak BenZvi, Gort labeled the Atlit operation an act of hooliganism, rebuked the yishuv press for incitement, and warned that he would have to carry out the law with “a strong hand” if they did not help restore quiet. The High Commissioner reminded them, as he wrote bitterly to his predecessor Harold MacMichael, that their twisting the lion’s tail “will cause that long-suffering king of beasts to roar.” He feared that Weizmann and his counsels of moderation were “out of fashion,” and that Ben-Gurion and “the wilder men” had taken over control. He suspected that the Colonial Office, with “so much on its plate,” dared not show preference for one side or the other. “We must just hope for the best and trust to Providence to guide us as we shoot down the rapids,” Gort went on. Truman’s desire for the 100,000 represented one-sixteenth of Palestine’s current population; based on this figure, the United States should open its doors to 8.1 million immigrants and “the distressed Jewish problem is then solved.” Anyway, he concluded, HMG was the “plaything” of American internal politics. Attlee’s Cabinet had a “very definite grievance” that the Conservative governments continuously stalled to the eleventh hour, and also knew that the U.S. Congressional elections would occupy the stage from then onwards until November 1946.21 On October 11, the Cabinet endorsed the Palestine Committee’s new draft of recommendations for an Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry. Bevin refused to accept Truman’s endorsement of the Harrison report that the bulk of the survivors should quickly be settled in Palestine, but some account of the Jews’ great suffering had to be taken. In the Foreign Secretary’s firm opinion, Truman was merely trying to gain votes by his stance, which risked “poisoning” relations between the two countries in other fields. The U.S. must take its share of those Jews who had to be removed from Europe. A Palestine solution should be sought as part of HMG’s policy for the Middle East as a whole. Noel-Baker hoped that the — 84 —

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UN Trusteeship Council would be sufficiently well established by January to be ready to consider any proposals submitted by the government for an agreement placing Palestine under trusteeship. Thanking Bevin on behalf of the Cabinet for the “time and energy” which he had devoted to the problem, Attlee wished the final statement to show that this was a new approach, as well as that the Americans were committed to consulting with the Arabs on Palestine. The Dominions, the Government of India, and the High Commissioner for Palestine would be informed, and the United States invited to join the proposed investigation. Utmost secrecy had to be observed, with an announcement in Parliament postponed, if necessary, until the week (as Bevin had suggested) beginning October 21.22 Transmitting this decision to Halifax the next day, Bevin observed that the dangers of Soviet penetration into the Middle East had led him to turn the whole of HMG’s foreign policy there onto a basis of “partnership” with the neighboring countries. As for Palestine, the United States had been “thoroughly dishonest,” Truman playing on “racial feeling for the purposes of winning an election.” Bevin was not satisfied with the Harrison report and its recommendation for a mass exodus to Palestine of the Jewish refugees: had not the Allies fought Hitler to rid Europe of racism? An impartial commission ought to examine this issue, along with Palestine’s ability to absorb refugees and the practicability of the Lowdermilk scheme, and show the Arabs that the admission of more Jews “will not necessarily increase the pressure.” The entire problem must be settled, Bevin ended: “It is a terrible legacy and one may fail, but the fear of failure has not daunted me in trying to face everyone up to the problem, and to pursue it to a final solution.” Weizmann had spoken to him about a bi-lingual state with cantons, which had always appealed to the Foreign Secretary. The propaganda in New York, however, destroyed what seemed a few weeks ago as a “reasonable atmosphere” in which Jews and Arabs could get together, “because obviously we must have a conference with Arabs and Jews in the same room anyhow.”23 Replying that Washington would probably accept the invitation, Halifax reported a growing sentiment expressed by internationalist Senator Joseph H. Ball (R, Minn.) and some other Congressmen that the U.S. government ought not to “shirk” all responsibility, together with his opinion that this would “greatly strengthen” HMG’s position. — 85 —

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A few days earlier, Goldmann, criticizing Washington’s confining itself to tendering advice, had told a member of the Embassy staff that he and colleagues favored partition over a trusteeship, Palestine to absorb some 750,000 Holocaust survivors from Europe and some 300,000–400,000 from North Africa and Middle East countries. Halifax suggested to his superior that it would be of great importance for the American side, when he spoke to Truman and Byrnes, to mention the names of some objective British members likely to be chosen. In addition, a specific timetable should be announced, both for the Commission’s recommendations and for HMG to present its trusteeship terms to the UN.24 By now, the “surface calm” of Palestine’s population, reported by Hooper in Jerusalem to Byrnes earlier that month, had unraveled quickly. The Arab press unanimously blamed the government for permitting the Jewish illegal arrivals to remain in the county, Falastin going so far as to tell the English to leave if they lacked the ability and the desire to suppress the Jewish revolt with an iron hand. Mass demonstrations in Syria and Lebanon evoked sympathy for Palestinian co-religionists. To prevent the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, former mayor of Jerusalem Hussein Khalidi expressed to the New York Times, “the Arabs will fight until we are exterminated.” The Arabs could not keep out of the struggle between the Jews and the British, Istiqlal’s Auni Abdul Hadi said to U.S. Consul-General Pinkerton, if they were attacked directly by Jews or “suffer in any way” by a British compromise with the Jews. On the other side of the divide, even Magnes told Pinkerton flatly that he would help any illegal immigrants “with all the means at his disposal.” The three yishuv armed movements had not yet united, Chief Secretary Shaw told Hooper, but they would “inevitably” do so. Sneh had not yet achieved that objective when the Irgun, on the morning of October 11, staged a daring raid upon a military installation near Rehovot, seizing 219 rifles, 9 Bren machine guns, several sub-machine guns, and a large quantity of ammunition. The next day, Shertok cabled Joseph in code that the Jewish Agency Executive in London, while seeking to avoid a general conflict with the mandatory, approved “isolated actions.”25 The probable increase in the influx of unsanctioned Jewish immigrants led to the Colonial Office’s first discussion with the Admiralty and the Foreign and War Offices about how to halt this traffic from the Mediterranean. (The troubled Commanders-in-Chief Middle East had actually first raised the issue to the Chiefs of Staff two months earlier.) — 86 —

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On October 14, John M. Martin, past secretary to the Peel Commission, explained that attempts to do so could be made at the ports of embarkation, on the high seas, and in Palestine’s territorial waters. At present, embarkation had taken place from Italian ports, but Greek ports would likely be also used. The War Office personnel present thought an approach to the Italian government would hardly be effective, and the boats could not be confiscated in Italy. The Jewish organizers were, in any case, “experts” at forging documents and bribery was “rife.” As for the high seas, the Admiralty was anxious about the legality of such action and the political repercussions from the United States and elsewhere. The Foreign and Colonial Office spokesmen suggested that if the boats were intercepted, they should be taken to Cyprus for forfeiture and the refugees returned to Italy. The arrival of large ships in Palestine would be “most undesirable,” Martin observed, reminding the group of what HMG had to face at the end of 1940 when unauthorized Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler who reached Haifa Bay were sent to a prison camp in Mauritius (where some were buried), and only allowed to enter Palestine in August 1945. The assembled eventually agreed that the Colonial Office and Admiralty should prepare drafts informing their respective agents abroad and explore the issue further.26 While in Paris, Ben-Gurion received details on this clandestine operation from aliya bet veteran Ze’ev “Dani” Shind. According to his computation, five vessels with 500 refugees had reached Palestine from Italy since the war’s end, with 40 arriving from Greece. Two large ships were slated to sail from Italy. Negotiations had begun in the United States aimed to secure boats with Honduras and Panama flags, hoping to transfer from French or Italian shores up to 10,000 survivors. Each oleh (a Jew “ascending” to Eretz Israel) would cost the Mosad L’Aliya $200. The first ship would take 600 aboard at a total cost of $70,000, with the captain and crew paid $125,000. These plans, if successful, would justify the Colonial Office’s fear of large-scale efforts in the near future. The united yishuv would defend its rights against the White Paper policy “by force of arms if necessary,” Ben-Gurion told a press conference. Yet a vital question remained: Would the survivors be up to the dangers and privations of these rigorous sea voyages? To find the answer, the Agency Executive chairman set out to visit the DP camps in Germany and see for himself.27 Palestine had put Truman in a bind. A rise in pro-Zionist sentiment across the country could not be denied. Over 1,000 American Orthodox, — 87 —

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Conservative, and Reform rabbis, the largest number ever to have signed their names to any single document, appealed to the “conscience of Great Britain” to open Palestine’s doors immediately to the Jews of Europe. The President received a report by Robert Nathan, former chairman of the War Production Board’s planning committee, and economist Oscar Gass indicating Palestine’s ability to absorb up to another 1,125,000 Jews in the next decade. The executive council of the American Federation of Labor adopted a resolution urging Britain to accede to Truman’s request for increased immigration of Jews into Palestine, “looking towards establishment of a democratic state there.” Strong bi-partisan appeals in the House of Representatives made a similar claim. At the same time, following a suggestion from Henderson, who declared that estimates of troops needed in case Arab disturbances arose due to Jewish immigration made HMG’s opposition “understandable,” Byrnes met the ministers of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon to assure them that Arabs and Jews would be consulted before any change in U.S. policy regarding Palestine. Also listening to his Middle East experts, the Secretary advised Truman to approve publication of the Roosevelt-Ibn Saud correspondence.28 Truman agreed with Byrnes, not Presidential advisor Rosenman, about the inevitability of publication, but he continued to champion the 100,000. Rosenman unsuccessfully argued that Truman had never taken any position which would support FDR’s letter of April 5; the admission of 100,000 was not “a change in the basic situation”; FDR had not intended that he would have to obtain Arab-Jewish consent before taking action; and State should immediately postpone publication of Roosevelt’s letter until after the November elections. On October 18, with Saudi approval, Byrnes released the Roosevelt-Ibn Saud letters, noting that “full consultation” with both Jews and Arabs before supporting a final decision on Palestine remained the government’s position. “General agreement” existed between Washington and London, his public statement added, “that it is our duty to take energetic measures to assist” the displaced Jews in Europe, “these unfortunate victims of Nazi persecution.” At a press conference the same day, Truman accepted Rosenman’s proposal to declare that he was asking HMG for the additional certificates. The Prime Minister had not agreed to his “reasonable” request for the 100,000, he revealed, the matter was “still under consideration,” and he did not want to appear to be pushing the British unduly.29 — 88 —

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Without denying the harm caused by publication of the two letters, Niles told the Jewish Agency’s Epstein to continue political pressure through all channels. He expressed his entire agreement with a memorandum that Silver and Wise sent to Byrnes pressing for the 100,000. Together with co-religionist Isador Lubin, head of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, he emphasized the need of a large program for enlightening the American public about Zionist contributions to progress in the Middle East. Strong public support, the two argued, was essential to sway Congress and, even more so, the President. Frankfurter, confused by the correspondence between Ibn Saud and the Justice’s good friend Roosevelt, seconded Niles’s warning that the Jewish Agency should not make tactical mistakes which might harm the cause with Truman—“the man who is to decide what is to be done.”30 For the Colonial Secretary, as he told Weizmann on October 19, the incidents at Kfar Giladi and Atlit showed widespread organization amongst the Jewish community as a whole, and must be regarded as “acts of war” against the Palestine government. This “intolerable” flouting of the mandatory’s authority could not continue. Noting that he had always embraced patience, the WZO head nonetheless replied that the yishuv was suffering from “profound disappointment”; public sympathy was “perfectly natural.” He and Agency Executive colleagues in London had no prior knowledge of these recent events in Palestine, and if he went there he would “at least have the choice of three bullets— British, Jewish, or Arab.” Many had told him that his resignation from office would be a signal for increased violence, because that step would be regarded as the defeat of all moderate policies. Bloodshed would be inevitable if HMG continued to defer decision on the country’s future and blocked Jewish immigration. He suggested that Ben-Gurion and Shertok, whose views were not identical with his and who were steeped in Palestinian life, be seen. “It was in difficult times like these,” Hall ended the interview, “that courageous leadership really counted,” and he counted on Dr. Weizmann to exert his “great influence.” A “caddish sort of fool,” Weizmann confidante and Lord Balfour’s niece, Blanche “Baffy” Dugdale, recorded in her diary about Hall, who tried to “browbeat” the elder Zionist statesman and possibly seek his resignation as an excuse for “short-circuiting” the Jewish Agency.31 Across the Atlantic, Halifax presented the Cabinet’s proposal for an Anglo-American Commission to Byrnes that day, along with Bevin’s — 89 —

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wish to make a statement in Parliament six days later. Over the course of the next week, the Secretary impressed upon the Ambassador that because Truman “still adheres” to the views he expressed to Attlee about the 100,000, the terms of reference had to speak of Jewish immigration to Palestine. The Americans insisted that the bland first phrase in the British terms of reference—“to examine the position of the Jews in Europe,” making no mention of Palestine, include “and to make estimates of those who wish, or will be impelled by their conditions to migrate to Palestine or other countries outside Europe.” The British reluctantly agreed, but Byrnes then raised the need to postpone a joint statement until after the New York City mayoralty elections on November 6, a consideration which Rosenman had suggested to Truman. (Aside from any politics, this White House advisor had written to the President on October 23, the British were merely “temporizing, appeasing, and seeking to delay the settlement of the issue,” which should be limited to how many Jews could be absorbed into Palestine per month.) By the month’s end, with Byrnes worried that the commission’s examination of refugee immigration options not only in Palestine would delay alleviating a situation which required “prompt remedial action,” he expressed to Halifax the hope that when Attlee visited Washington during the course of November, an agreement would be reached.32 Harold Laski, chairman of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee, and three other colleagues tried to impress upon Attlee, Bevin, and Hall in a two-hour interview on October 22 that the Executive could not possibly acquiesce in a Palestine policy that ran contrary to Dalton’s having heralded a Jewish state at the party’s Annual Conference in May. Informed that they had been “much impressed” by their earlier meeting with a delegation including Shertok and Locker, Attlee, “aloof and cold,” replied that the Cabinet ministers could not disclose government policy before making a statement in the House of Commons. Bevin commented that he strongly resented America’s continuous moralizing without offering to contribute anything concrete, and that not all Jews could go to Palestine. They had to see to it that Jews had equal rights wherever they lived; he was against a Jewish state. Hall spoke about Jewish illegal actions in Palestine, and Attlee, before departing with Bevin, stated that their policy was based on the principle of abolishing the White Paper. As a Jew, Laski proceeded to tell Hall, he did not like Jews being killed just because they were Jews. If rumors of HMG’s future policy were — 90 —

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correct, the Government would have to kill Jews, because every Jew would do everything possible to bring as many Jews as possible into Palestine. Also disagreeing completely with the combined Bevin-Attlee foreign policy vis-à-vis Europe, Laski wrote to American journalist Max Lerner that “there is just ahead the betrayal of the Jews over Palestine.” “It is all sheer cowardice,” he thought, as well as “the vanity of men who want to be well-spoken of by their enemies.”33 Truman’s private talk on October 24 with a personal friend of many years, Rabbi Samuel Thurman of St. Louis’s United Hebrew Congregation, disclosed his present concerns on Palestine. He would try not to “back down” on the request to Attlee for 100,000 certificates, but the Palestine situation “is a tinder box.” In his view, the main difficulty lay in the Soviets increasing their activity in the Middle East, and they were about to occupy Iran. The British needed our help, he continued. While “quite impressed” by the humanitarian side of the matter as it related to the Jews in Europe, he feared a large-scale Arab uprising due to widespread Muslim opposition to Zionism. (Other than State Department reports, a confidential memorandum to him the next day from House members Karl Mundt (R, South Dakota) and Frances Bolton (R, Ohio), after their tour of the region, also spoke of determined “military resistance” by “millions of Mohammedans” to a pro-Zionist settlement.) When Thurman mentioned that many Jewish voters might well doubt their long-time support for the Democratic Party, the President looked sharply at his visitor. He seemed irritated by the constant amount of pressure facing him on the Palestine issue. Concluded AZEC Washington representative Benjamin Akzin to Silver, the talk, while quite useful, showed that Truman was still essentially unconvinced that a pro-Zionist solution could be had without running into “very serious” international difficulties.34 By then, Ben-Gurion’s doubts about the Holocaust survivors had vanished. He had arrived in the Zeilsheim DP camp on October 19, the same day that Allied prosecutors at the International War Crimes Tribunal charged twenty-four Nazi leaders and the German High Command with the murder of 5,700,000 Jews in Europe since the outbreak of World War II. Seeing ecstatic hundreds who greeted him with singing the HaTikva, their deeply stirred guest assured them that the yishuv would bring them home to a warm welcome. Dachau’s crematoria and Bergen-Belsen’s cemetery also made a lasting personal impression. In Frankfurt, Eisenhower — 91 —

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acknowledged to Ben-Gurion that the Jews in the camps wished to go to Palestine, a fact confirmed to him by American Red Cross chairman Hugh Gibson, but his official responsibility as Military Governor of the U.S. zone was to ease their current plight. He authorized implementation of Ben-Gurion’s suggestions for agricultural, vocational, and cultural training, but rejected the idea of congregating all the Jews in one area. (Eisenhower gave Judge Simon Rifkind, his newly appointed Personal Advisor on Jewish Affairs, an open hand at the same moment in resolving any departure from SHAEF policy towards the survivors.) Ben-Gurion called Locker in London, ordering that the young yishuv emissaries in charge of moving refugees across Europe’s borders (briha) not shift Jews from the American zone elsewhere, since the top U.S. military authorities were prepared to let Jews fleeing constant antisemitic attacks in Poland enter that area. A subsequent entry in his diary proclaimed that the yishuv and its strength, America, and the DP camps in Germany constituted Zionism’s three major forces. Under Ben-Gurion’s leadership, the survivors would be forged into a “political factor” of prime importance.35 In Palestine, the country’s Arabs, although not fully united, now took their first postwar political steps against the Zionist endeavor. At the invitation of the Arab Front Party, an estimated 3,000 persons representing five of the country’s Arab political parties gathered in Jaffa’s Alhambra Cinema on October 26. They adopted resolutions urging an economic boycott of Jewish goods with a request that all the Arab countries enforce this; demanding bans on future Jewish immigration and the sale of land to non-Arabs; and calling for the disarming of Jews and the dissolution of Jewish military organizations. All rose when the resolution was solemnly read out in favor of establishing an independent and democratic Arab state in Palestine. The Husseinis’ Palestine Arab Party did not attend because it stated that the parley had been organized by pro-British elements, but the meeting voted to reserve for the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem the presidency of the Arab Higher Committee, dissolved by the mandatory during the Arab Revolt of 1936–1939 and which the attendees decided must be re-established. Three delegates, broadcast Kol Yisrael, left for France, where Haj Amin al-Husseini was ensconced in a villa in a Paris suburb, to invite him to “revert to his former activities.” All parties called for sympathy strikes in neighboring Arab states a week hence, the twenty-eighth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, in conjunction with a general strike of Arabs in Palestine on November 2.36 — 92 —

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The possible creation of an Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine seemed more perturbing to American Zionist leaders, AZEC co-chairmen Wise and Silver charging that it would “further complicate the situation, make for interminable delays, and lead to confusion worse confounded.” Urging Truman on October 30 to help implement his request for the immediate admission of 100,000 survivors into Palestine as advocated in the Harrison report, and the British government to abandon or revoke forthwith the 1939 White Paper, they called on the two major Western powers to fulfill the international pledge given to the Jewish people, “based on their historical connection with Palestine,” to reestablish in that country “their national home.” One day later, former U.S. Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles publicly endorsed “an independent Jewish commonwealth in Palestine,” America to assume responsibility towards the outcome, with HMG transferring the mandate to the UN for the Trusteeship Council to arrive at an ultimate solution. No people in the history of mankind have suffered more grievously than the Jewish people, he closed, which must receive “something better than illusory promises—something more tangible than hollow assurances of sympathy.” Yet, the President’s memoirs record, Truman thought that the aims and goals of the Zionists at this stage to set up a Jewish state “were secondary to the more immediate problem of finding means to relieve the human misery of the displaced persons.”37 The necessary means to resolve that pressing issue were still to be discovered. The “one serious incident” which Sneh had cabled in code to ­Ben-Gurion on September 23, intended ultimately to legitimize the yishuv’s revolt against HMG, occurred during the night of October 31– November 1. Although the yishuv politicians had still not signed the Tenuat HaMeri agreement, the Hagana coordinated its operations with the Irgun and the LEHI. While the Irgun attacked the Lydda railway and LEHI the Haifa oil refinery, the Hagana focused on the Palestine railway and the Palmah on the coast guard. Systematic sabotage blew up the permanent railway in 153 places; one locomotive was completely wrecked and six damaged at the Lydda railway; three police patrol boats in the Haifa and Jaffa ports were blown up; an explosion (but no damage) occurred at the Consolidated Refinery tank installations in the Haifa area. “The paralyzing of the Railways all over the country… serves as a warning to the Government of the White Paper,” announced Kol Yisrael. LEHI’s newspaper HaMa’as applauded this first action by the Hebrew — 93 —

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Resistance Movement, a fact confirmed by a coded message from the Jewish Agency Executive in Jerusalem to its counterparts in London that “we have come to a working arrangement with the dissident organizations according to which we shall assign certain tasks to them under one command.” British military spokesmen announced that the casualties included one soldier killed and another wounded, six railway workers killed and six wounded (one critically), and several other persons not immediately identified. Given the scope and intensity of the incident, none could deny that the yishuv’s war had been launched in dramatic fashion.38 The Jewish Agency’s Political Department, most of whose members were in London, issued a statement repudiating “recourse to violence as an instrument of the political struggle, but finds its capacity to impose restraint severely tried by the maintenance of a policy which the Jews regard as fatal to their future.” Weizmann threatened to resign unless his colleagues made this rejection of violence crystal clear. The Palestine Post editorialized that “it is difficult to see how any Jew can be dissociated in thought, if not in fact, from what has happened,” while the proWeizmann HaAretz expressed misgivings that “despair begins to be our counselor” even while calling on London to open Palestine’s gates for the Jewish people. Ben-Gurion, on the other hand, privately hailed the “night of the railways” as done with “skill, ability, and taste.” The Arab Office in London declared that if any widespread revolt broke out in Palestine, it would be that of the Zionists against the Palestine Government, “and not a civil war between the Arabs and the Jews.” A dusk-to-dawn curfew was immediately imposed on the roads, as well as a night curfew on the districts of Samaria and Haifa, for all vehicular traffic outside municipal areas. It would remain in force for three weeks.39 On November 2, coinciding with the yishuv’s celebration of Balfour Day, all sections of Palestine’s Arabs went on strike and held mass meetings in Jerusalem’s Mosque of Omar, with large demonstrations of Arabs in Haifa, Nablus, and Gaza shouting anti-Jewish slogans. In Damascus, Baghdad, and Beirut, marchers through the streets threatened to wage a jihad (holy war) against the Jews. In Egypt, following a mass demonstration spearheaded by the Muslim Brotherhood with a number of soldiers taking part, synagogues were sacked and Torah scrolls publicly burned; sulphuric acid poured from the rooftops onto — 94 —

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the winding streets of Cairo’s Jewish quarters; Jewish department stores looted; and every shop window in predominantly Jewish downtown shopping centers in the city, as well as in Alexandria, smashed. A number of Jews and Christians were murdered. These riots were the occasion of “great rejoicing” among the Arabs of Palestine, and several political parties and other organizations sent messages of gratitude to the Egyptian government for the “splendid manifestation of solidarity.” Two days later, savage attacks with sticks, clubs, and knives in Tripoli that lasted for almost four days left 121 Jews and 5 Arabs dead, with 219 Jews and 36 Arabs wounded. British authorities in Libya’s largest city were slow and indecisive during the first 36 hours in taking severe measures against the mobs, and many of the members of the police force (largely manned by Arabs) showed a greater sympathy for the rioters than for law and order. “There is no guarantee—and very little indication,” concluded an investigatory report, “that these riots will not be repeated.”40 The yishuv underground’s concerted attack infuriated a tense Bevin, who told Weizmann and Shertok on the morning of November 2 that if the Jews had now decided to settle the Palestine problem by force, then the British government “must take that into account.” He regarded the recent events as “a declaration of war,” to which Shertok retorted that the 1939 White Paper, a policy still maintained, was in itself an act of war against the Jews, who were waiting with “great impatience” for a fresh statement of policy by the present government. The last phrase of the Jewish Agency’s statement condoned violence, Bevin insisted, and the simultaneous actions showed careful planning beforehand by “all the aggressive organizations” in Palestine. When Weizmann noted the unparalleled case of Holocaust victims and Shertok the continuing deaths in DP camps, Bevin responded that he was not impressed by the constant protestations about Jewish exasperation. He would not stand for British “Tommy” soldiers being killed; they were his compatriots and fellow-workers. The Foreign Secretary then pilloried Truman’s pressing for the immediate entry of 100,000 Jews to Palestine, a claim done for “electoral purposes” but complicating matters and “disastrous to the cause of Jewry.” Weizmann responded that he would do what he could, to which the Foreign Secretary indicated that the government would have to reexamine its position in light of this “outrage,” and its future course would be determined to a large extent by whether this — 95 —

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kind of policy was not only denounced but stopped. “It is clear to me,” Bevin added to Halifax, who at his instruction so informed Byrnes, that the Jewish Agency could no longer be regarded as “an innocent party” in relation to these outbreaks in Palestine.41 At Bevin’s request, Weizmann, who had stated during the meeting that the Agency could not control the Hagana, which he characterized as an arm of the yishuv, agreed to issue without delay a categorical denunciation of violence. With a heavy heart and in consultation with Shertok, he felt the need to send a personal message to Palestinian Jewry just before leaving for the United States. “Your patience has been sorely tried” at the impact of “the iniquities and disastrous results of the White Paper policy,” he acknowledged, “but let me assure you that despite the disappointments there is no justification for counsels of despair.” Registering his “complete disapproval of violence as a means of attaining our legitimate ends,” the WZO president declared that friends on both sides of the Atlantic firmly believed in the justice of Zionism’s cause. With their support, the movement had to continue its struggle by means of “persuasion, negotiation and constructive effort” until the Jewish state became a reality. No force in the world could make the Jews of the world turn their backs on Palestine, or bar that country’s doors in the face of “the homeless Jews.” The “overwhelming moral force of our cause,” he concluded, “must ultimately triumph.”42 Weizmann’s statement showed that he was out of touch with Palestine reality. The same day, a crowd of about 1,000 from Ramat HaKovesh and settlements nearby forced the police, following tracks from the damaged railway line to that kibbutz, to withdraw. A few days later, passers-by overpowered police and freed an illegal Jewish immigrant in Tel Aviv who had been arrested. Weizmann’s press release on the disturbances in Palestine, Silver warned Goldmann, led the AZEC Executive to conclude that he was still pursuing the “soft-appeasement line,” which would “only serve to confuse our people and the Government.” On November 2, the British Mideast Theatre command cautioned the War Office that reports from Greece and Rumania indicated large-scale movement of Jews southward to ports of embarkation in vessels of all sizes for unauthorized movement to Palestine. With the arrival in Haifa Bay on November 9 of 789 certified Jewish immigrants, including 300 orphans, aboard a British warship from Italy, the 1939 White Paper quota of 75,000 had come to an end. David Horowitz, head — 96 —

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of the Agency’s Economic Department, told Ben-Gurion that all in the yishuv were united on the need to defend aliya and settlement while eschewing terror. Future plans included setting up 14 new settlements and a program for 10,000 ma’apilim to arrive in the course of the next six months.43 On his way back to Palestine, Ben-Gurion stopped in Paris to further his activist agenda. He asked Georg Ueberall to join aliya bet colleague Ruth Kluger (later Aliav) and Nahum Krämer (later Shadmi), the former commander of the Hagana in Jerusalem, in coordinating Tenuat HaMeri across Europe. He also called on Jewish soldiers in the Allied armies, meeting on November 11 in the Grande Synagogue de la Victoire, to gather under the banner of the Jewish state that would arise in Eretz Israel. The same day, Foreign Minister Georges Bidault informed him that the French government was sympathetic to Zionism, and that Provisional Government head General Charles de Gaulle had asked Bidault to tell Bevin a while ago that when last in Palestine he saw that “the Jews were the only force developing the country.”44 Asked on the morning of November 10 by the State Department’s Chiefs of Mission in the Near East to say what American policy was toward political Zionism, Truman smiled and answered: “That is the sixty-four-dollar question.” He simply could not answer at the present time, but confessed that it had been causing him and Byrnes “more trouble than almost any other question” facing the United States. Both major parties last year had made certain pledges regarding Palestine which did not give consideration to the international political situation in the region. He was working on the matter, and hoped that something could be agreed upon with Attlee as a result of discussions with the British, as well as with the Jews and the Arabs. The issue was a “burning issue” in the domestic politics of the United States, and his government would try to resolve the whole issue on an international plane. If Palestine could only take some refugees from Europe to relieve the pressure, it would alleviate for the time being the situation, and might satisfy some of the demands of the “humanitarian” (so he dubbed them) Zionists. This would give Washington an opportunity to focus on a permanent solution of the political problem. In his opinion, there could be no immediate solution; Palestine would probably be an issue during the election campaigns of 1946 and 1948 and in future campaigns. Henderson noted that the creation of an Anglo-American Commission — 97 —

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had finally been agreed upon the previous day, which “might well go far” to take the Palestine problem out of domestic politics, to which Truman concurred. The problem should be put on “a high plane” above political issues, he stressed, and as long as he was President, the Administration would assume responsibilities, both in the Near East and on an international scale.45 Three days later, Bevin announced in the Commons the setting up of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine to investigate conditions in that country “as they bear upon the problem of Jewish immigration and settlement therein and the well-being of the peoples now living therein,” and to survey the Jewish refugee problem in Europe. After hearing competent witnesses and consulting with Arabs and Jews, the Committee would make ad interim and permanent recommendations to the two governments. The ensuing brief discussion, U.S. Ambassador John Winant informed Byrnes, contained assurances by Bevin of the “sincerity of efforts” being made to arrive at a solution of the Palestine problem, and that he would be willing to “stake my political future” on resolving this issue. Yet the Foreign Secretary’s more than ordinary bluntness—the distinction he made between “Jewry as a whole” and “Zionists,” comments about emigration possibilities for Jews all over the world and the eventual creation after a temporary trusteeship of a “Palestinian, not Jewish State,” and his suggestion that Jews would be well employed in the rebuilding of Poland and Germany—all reflected a bias and a pre-judgment of the very terms of reference assigned to the new Committee. Particularly revealing was one pronouncement made during Bevin’s talk with the Dominions’ press immediately thereafter: “The keynote of the statement I made in the House today is that I want the suppression of racial warfare, and therefore if the Jews, with all their sufferings, want to get too much at the head of the queue, you have the danger of another anti-Semitic reaction through it all.” HMG “had never undertaken to establish a Jewish State in Palestine,” he added, thereby misrepresenting the charge of the Mandate and repudiating the electoral platform of his own party.46 Across the Atlantic, Truman’s public statement some hours later noted his own request of Attlee (the private communication now released to the press) for the 100,000, and that he continued to “adhere” to the views expressed in that letter. In view of the government’s “intense interest” in the whole question and its belief that such a joint — 98 —

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committee would help in finding a solution which will be “both humane and just,” Washington had acceded to the British request for creating this exploratory body. The President then gave the terms of reference agreed upon, emphasizing both Palestine’s possible role as it bore upon future Jewish immigration and the Committee’s “prompt review of the unfortunate plight” of the Jews in those countries in Europe where they had been subjected to persecution. He concluded in the same fashion as his last letter to Attlee after having received the Harrison report: “The situation faced by displaced Jews in Europe during the coming winter allows no delay in this matter. I hope the Committee will be able to accomplish its important task with the greatest speed.”47 While the British press overwhelmingly supported the Foreign Secretary’s statesmanship and Attlee penned him a complimentary note, the official Zionist reaction came as no surprise. Weizmann wrote Frankfurter that Bevin’s speech was “brutal, vulgar, and anti-semitic”; publicly, addressing the ZOA convention in Atlantic City a few days later, he asked: “Is it ‘getting too much at the head of the queue’ if, after the slaughter of six million Jews, the remnant of a million and a half implore the shelter of the Jewish Homeland?” The Agency Executive in London declared that the Jewish problem, historically “a world problem,” necessitated “the re-establishment of the Jewish State.” Sneh, holding the security portfolio with its Agency counterpart in Jerusalem, thought that HMG intended to “wipe out” the Jewish race, and he urged an open revolt by the yishuv; Ben-Zvi considered Bevin’s statement the “biggest defeat for Zionism since the Balfour Declaration.” Speaking for a broadly representative delegation selected by the Agency, Joseph confined their collective response to telling Shaw “we were deeply disappointed. The yishuv will not submit to this.” Attacking the speech’s continuation of the White Paper policy, Ben-Gurion declared that Jews “will never renounce their claim” for statehood. At a demonstration in Munich, almost 2,000 Holocaust survivors recited the oath from Psalms 137:5: “If I forget thee, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning.” Wise and Silver, believing that the joint body would serve “no useful purpose” and only lead to “a continued cost of human life and misery,” earnestly urged Truman once again to press Attlee for immediate action on the 100,000.48 Nor were the Arabs pleased with Bevin’s announcement. Musa Alami had already told the Daily Telegraph that Palestine’s Arabs sought — 99 —

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independence, not “Palestine reduced to a trustee state comparable to Danzig and Tangiers.” Having been informed one day earlier of its contents, Azzam Pasha informed London and Washington that the Arab League states could not agree to “any” attempt to renew Jewish immigration into Palestine (including the 1,500 refugees per month). Ibn Saud’s initial reaction was one of worry that the Foreign Secretary’s statement opened anew the questions which the Saudi monarch had thought were settled by the 1939 White Paper, particularly immigration (which he termed “the basic trouble”).”Are not the Americans Jewish tools?” asked Falastin, charging that postwar developments had left Britain, incapable of acting independently, open to submit to American recommendations. Former U.S. President Herbert Hoover’s current proposal to transfer the Arabs from Palestine to Iraq, the “Great Powers” financing the irrigation of the once fertile Tigris and Euphrates valleys there, was blasted in all of that country’s newspapers as a “fiendish American proposal” and “a hateful statement” to achieve Zionist aims.49 Matters turned violent during the yishuv’s protest strike on November 14. After a crowd of 30,000 attended a rally on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, some broke into government offices and the Central Post Office. After four hours of rioting, troops opened fire, killing two Jews and wounding several more. Disregarding the curfew, masses stoned police and military vehicles the next morning. Three Jews were shot dead, scores wounded, and over forty taken to hospital; thirty-seven soldiers were wounded, three of them seriously. A surprising number of civilian casualties were children, leading the laborite Davar to feature a cartoon showing a surgeon in a ward remarking to his assistant: “Good marksmen, these English, not to miss such small targets.” The same day, the Chief Rabbinate declared a Day of Prayer and Fasting, observed like Yom Kippur with the blowing of the shofar in synagogues across the country. Over the next ten days, four more Jews died in the hospital of their wounds. On the 20th, the curfew was lifted fully.50 None of this fazed Bevin, as Laski confided to Ben-Gurion on November 17. When the Jewish Agency Executive chairman told Laski that the yishuv’s members would give their lives for freedom of immigration and political independence, Laski interrupted him and revealed that during a private three-and-a-half hour meeting with Bevin the previous day, an outburst from the Foreign Secretary revealed some of his inner feelings. He cursed and swore at Laski as a trouble maker and — 100 —

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“an agent of the Jewish Agency” who was undermining his position. In their mounting quarrel, Laski replied: “I know you hate me because I am a Jew, because I am an intellectual, and became I am Chairman of the Party.” He asked for the immediate abolition of the White Paper’s Land Regulations, and an increase in the 1,500 monthly immigration quota by another 4,000 so that at least half of the people in the DP camps should get into Palestine this year, and the rest know that they had some hope. He added that Bevin did not understand that no other country in the world had “the same spiritual and moral significance” as Palestine, while the Jewish enterprise there need fear no investigatory committees, for past committees had already investigated everything. Bevin, soon to tell the press that he staked his future on the successful outcome of his endeavors vis-à-vis Palestine, would not be moved.51 At this point, the British military command in London considered a full-scale operation to disarm the yishuv. The Defence Committee asked General Headquarters (GHQ) Middle East to appraise the situation and the number of troops needed in such an effort. On November 14, the Chiefs of Staff were informed that the move would “sooner or later” be required against Palestine’s whole population. The High Commissioner should issue a statement as soon as possible making plain that participation in illegal organizations and the acquisition and holding of illegal arms had never been condoned by HMG, even while making it clear that “adequate arrangements” would be made to protect the Jewish colonies and settlements. (One day later, the official Palestine Gazette proclaimed that possessing unlawful weapons was punishable with life imprisonment, and the carrying or using them with a sentence of death.) Reaction in Palestine, GHQ went on, would be violent whether action were taken forthwith or London waited for the Jewish reaction to HMG’s announcement. Bevin’s scrawled response appeared directly on the cipher telegram: “I am inclined to take a risk on this matter unless violence gets worse and especially until this [Anglo-American] commission makes its recommendations. It may be they will say something about it.” The Defence Committee decided on the 25th to defer action for the time being, unless terrorist activities made such a course “obviously necessary and justifiable.”52 Ben-Gurion left Sir Alan Cunningham, recent successor to the moderate, seriously ailing Gort, with no illusions about the yishuv’s determination when speaking frankly on November 23 on behalf of — 101 —

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a delegation of Palestinian Jewry. The White Paper represented a “breach of confidence,” and only in Palestine did its Land Regulations discriminate against Jews. Telling of his visit to the DP camps in Germany, Ben-Gurion then explained the significance of the slaughter of six million Jews, in addition to the yishuv’s battlefield losses. Our bond with the Land of Israel had lasted for 4,000 years, he continued, a desolate territory which the Zionists wanted to rebuild. Even if the yishuv’s leaders made a demand against violence, the youth would not obey. If a Jew came here without a certificate, we would help him, every one of us. “Will you break the law?” asked the 58-year-old Irish-born Lt. General whose forces had retaken Addis Ababa from the Italians in 1941 but who was relieved of command in the Libyan Desert when he recommended halting the failed British offensive there against the German Wehrmacht later that year. “It is we who have been keeping the law for over 3,000 years, ever since we stood before Mount Sinai,” Ben-Gurion riposted, “but we believe that the obstruction of immigration is a breach of the law.” After he invited Cunningham to visit the Jewish settlements, the two parted in what Ben-Gurion characterized as “strained politeness.”53 Chief Secretary Shaw took great exception to a cable from the Histadrut (General Federation of Jewish Labor) to the Labour Party that British forces in Palestine were “hunting down ‘illegal’ immigrants,” but that is what happened in the early hours of November 23. Ueberall and Mosad veteran Levi Schwartz had succeeded in sending 211 refugees aboard the Demetrios, a Greek boat renamed the Berl Katznelson after the Mapai ideologue and champion of aliya bet at the 1939 World Zionist Congress, to the bay near kibbutz Shefayim. All but twenty had safely disembarked in little landing boats of the Palyam (the Palmah’s sea unit) when sailors from the British sloop HMS Peacock boarded the vessel. This remainder, together with the five Greeks and their captain, who for refusing to give any information would be sentenced to two years in Acre Prison, were taken to the Atlit detention camp. The youngster is charge of the voyage, having managed to swim to safety, proposed that the British ship be taken over as it passed the Palyam base of Caesarea, but commander David (“Davidka”) Nameri brushed the suggestion aside. The Hagana, anticipating that the British would intercept an aliya bet boat, had already decided that it would retaliate against the first interception by the British since the end of the war with — 102 —

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the principle of “related struggle.” HMG would very soon be shown that free immigration was not negotiable.54 The American Zionist leadership, whose ever-growing adherents were “in a fighting mood,” kept up the pressure. Fearing, as he put it to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Herbert Bayard Swope, that the Administration “is giving the Jews of America another double cross,” Silver declared at the ZOA convention that Zionists could not be bound by the Anglo-American Committee’s findings. The AZEC succeeded in having Senators Robert Wagner and Robert Taft (R, Ohio) re-introduce a 1944 joint resolution favoring unrestricted Jewish immigration and settlement in a free and democratic Palestinian commonwealth ­(implying one not prematurely created on the basis of a current Arab majority but an eventual Jewish state). Both Senators publicized the recent Roper poll, indicating that Bevin’s distinction between “Jews” and “Zionists” was now, as Halifax reported home, “authoritatively proven to have been wholly without foundation.” As if to confirm this, the non-Zionist American Jewish Committee again reiterated to Byrnes that the joint commission’s creation should “in no way” preclude or delay the chief executive’s request for the 100,000. The few anti-Zionists of the American Council for Judaism (ACJ), Arthur Lelyveld told a Hadassah convention when citing the Roper conclusion that American Jews overwhelmingly embraced Zionist aims, “will not succeed in separating their destiny from that of the Jewish people as a whole.” (In an AZEC advertisement, Albert Einstein charged the ACJ with “betraying free Jewish ideals.”) Congressman Celler urged the President to set a ninety-day deadline for the Commission to report, reminding him that “your Democratic Platform” called for free Jewish immigration into Palestine and its eventual establishment there of a democratic Jewish State.55 All this pressure irritated Truman, as he recorded in a diary notation on November 24, newly discovered fifty-eight years later. Writing that day to Senator Ball, he repeated earlier personal concerns:56 I told the Jews that if they were willing to furnish me with 500,000 men to carry on a war with the Arabs, we could do what they are suggesting in the [Senate] Resolution—otherwise we will have to negotiate awhile. It is a very explosive situation we are facing, and naturally I regret it very much, but I don’t think that you, or — 103 —

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any of the other Senators, would be inclined to send half a dozen Divisions to Palestine to maintain a Jewish State. What I am trying to do is to make the whole world safe for the Jews. Therefore, I don’t feel like going to war for Palestine.

That Truman’s commitment both to the 100,000 and to the AngloAmerican Committee of Inquiry on Palestine found an echo in his answer to Eleanor Roosevelt’s concerns on the matter came as no surprise. Hearing from actress Helen Waren that most Jewish DPs whom she recently met in Europe had fled from “violent” antisemitism to the U.S. zone in Germany and wanted to go to Palestine, FDR’s widow had just written to Truman of her great distress that Great Britain once again sought “to have someone pull her chestnuts out of the fire.” If the few remaining Jews in Europe were not allowed to enter Palestine, she argued, they certainly could have been apportioned among different UN nations, and “not have on our consciences the death of at least 50 of these poor creatures daily.” To the “First Lady of the World,” an appellation Truman would later bestow upon her, the President replied on November 26: “I am very hopeful we shall be able to work something out for Palestine. At the same time we continue to try to get as many Jews as we can into Palestine as quickly as we can.” The same day, London and Washington finally agreed to final terms, including the American’s insistence on a time limit of 120 days for the Committee to report.57 The Hagana’s response to the seizure of the Berl Katznelson came in the early hours of November 25, when Palmah units attacked police stations of the British coast guard at Sidna Ali (near Herzlia) and Givat Olga (near Hadera). Early warnings were given, but the police decided to fight it out. The two police barracks were blown up, while six British and eight Arab policemen sustained slight injuries. In retaliation, a curfew was imposed on extensive areas in the Sharon Plain and Emek Hefer; searches began that day and the next, accompanied by brutality, in Givat Hayim, Hogla, Rishpon, and Shefayim near the targeted police stations. Unarmed hundreds of Jewish settlers hastened to the aid of these cordoned off settlements and villages. In clashes with an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 troops, eight Jews were killed. Reporting these events, the Jewish Agency Executive in Jerusalem cabled Jowitt, Laski, Churchill, the pro-Zionist Eleanor Rathbone MP, Byrnes, and the — 104 —

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AZEC on the 26th of the growing impression that the mandatory government “is introducing regime of terror with view intimidating Jews of Palestine into submission to White Paper policy and cessation Jewish ­immigration.” That day, Dugdale noted that Weizmann, in America, would not be present when the “whole Yeshiva” in London would depart for the crucial Agency Executive meeting in Jerusalem to consider a full reply to Bevin’s statement. “It is the great Fade Out,” she sadly predicted: “I do not think he can again recover real leadership.” All told, 357 Jews were detained, releases taking place over a period of two-anda-half months. A full inquiry, demanded by the yishuv press, was not undertaken.58 At this same moment, Palestine’s Arabs achieved a semblance of unity thanks to the efforts of Jamal Mardam, Syrian Minister to Egypt. The various political parties were reconciled on November 22 to reconstitute the Arab Higher Committee, but the Husseini majority insisted that the chairmanship remain vacant for Haj Amin, with his cousin, Jamal Husseini, still imprisoned by HMG in the Seychelles for his active role in the Arab Revolt of 1936–1939, not to be excluded. The next day, Cunningham received their delegation, one spokesman affirming that “the Arabs of Palestine would never acquiesce in a single Jew entering Palestine after exhaustion of [the 1939 White Paper limit of] 75,000.” Even Azzam Pasha, representing the “moderate” group in the Arab League, informed U.S. chargé in Egypt Cecil B. Lyon that it would be willing to await the findings of the Anglo-American Committee with the understanding that no immigration would take place beyond the White Paper quota. “The Arabs might be forced to accept Jewish immigration now,” he warned, “but their ire will break forth in massacres and slaughter years hence.”59 The Husseinis and Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan el Banna in Egypt asked London for the return of Haj Amin, as well as other “national leaders,” to Palestine, but the Colonial Office particularly rejected this in the ex-Mufti’s case. Already in May and June, Hall informed the Cabinet on November 21, “strong representations” had been made without success to France that Haj Amin should be given over to SHAEF in view of his wartime collaboration with Germany. After that Allied body dissolved, a further formal request was made to Paris in October, with similar results. (The Jewish Agency’s Epstein had “very good evidence” that some French high officials in Beirut were assisting Haj Amin’s rehabilitation in the belief that he could — 105 —

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be used as a meilitz yosher (advocate) in their favor vis-à-vis the Muslims.). Since a trial would have “political repercussions very damaging to us” because many Arab and Muslim peoples regarded him as a religious leader and “an honest patriot” inspired more by anti-Zionist than anti-British intentions, Hall added, the most satisfactory course would be to send Haj Amin to the Seychelles, where he could be legally detained as a political prisoner. There the vexing matter rested, with the Manchester Guardian asking whether the Colonial Office, in its “pathetic timidity” towards anything Arab, would not yet permit Haj Amin to come back to Jerusalem. If Britain recognized him as chairman of the revived Arab Higher Committee, its editorial concluded, “it will become a scandal and Nuremberg [the war crimes trials] will become a mockery.”60 In Bevin’s view, there “need be no trouble” about the place of Jews in Europe if they were prepared to regard Judaism as a religion, rather than a question of race. To a delegation from the American League for a Free Palestine, a group spearheaded by Irgunist leader Hillel Kook (a.k.a. Peter Bergson) which distinguished between “Jews” as a religious entity and “Hebrews” composed of the yishuv and Holocaust survivors entering Palestine, he argued on November 26 that Jews would solve their problems if they accepted the nationality of the country in which they lived. He “unalterably” opposed their segregation in separate DP camps as proposed in the Harrison report, which he thought might prove to be a new form of antisemitism. Palestine, a country smaller than Wales, could not absorb a “sudden inrush” of immigrants; much of the advice which he received on this subject would mean driving the Arabs out of the country, and any such action would be “naked and unashamed aggression.” Palestine had to be viewed as part of the Middle East, and one had to consider that region’s relation to a “Mohammedan problem” affecting India and Asia as a whole. If the Jews accepted the idea of a Jewish National Home and not a Jewish state, the Foreign Secretary opined, many other fortunate developments might be possible. He personally favored the idea of a Greater Syria including Syria, the Lebanon, Palestine, and possibly Transjordan, with irrigation provided on a united, regional basis. The Anglo-American Committee would study this and related issues, Bevin declared, and he knew of no reason why an interim report should be unduly delayed.61 — 106 —

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For Ben-Gurion, on the other hand, Judaism uniquely joined faith and political independence. Convinced to his core that Zionism was a legitimate movement of national return by world Jewry to its ancient homeland, he replied to Bevin’s November 13 statement in the Commons with a lengthy address fifteen days later before an extraordinary session of the Aseifat HaNivharim (Elected Assembly), the supreme representative body of the yishuv. After bringing a message from the survivors whom he had met in Germany that called for the unity of Israel and a Jewish state, he reviewed the pledges of the Balfour Declaration, of the Mandate, and of the Labour Party itself to the Jews, as well as the “imaginary perturbation” of 90 million Muslims over Palestine and the yishuv’s actual benefit to the entire region. Despite the teachings of Hitler and his disciples, the Jews were also entitled to live as individuals and as a people. Ben-Gurion concluded with this ringing challenge from the Hebrew University campus on Jerusalem’s Mt. Scopus:62 But again, like the British, there are things we value above life itself, things for which we are ready to die rather than surrender: freedom to enter Palestine, the prerogative to remake the wastes of our Land, and a sovereign Jewish nation in its own land.

The next day, Truman’s endorsement of the Anglo-American Committee led him to tell a press conference that he no longer favored the Wagner-Taft resolution on Palestine which he had supported when Vice-President, since if this were passed now there would be no need for the joint inquiry. In a letter to his mother that same month, thirty-nine year old Clark Clifford, recently appointed Assistant Naval Aide to fellow-Missourian Truman, characterized his superior as “intelligent, forthright, and reasonable.” At this juncture, Zionists thought otherwise. Currently in Jerusalem for the critical Jewish Agency Executive meeting, Silver cabled Truman that the recent killing of eight Jews by British troops would be followed by increasing violence and bloodshed unless the doors to Palestine were opened, and that the joint Committee, no substitute for the 100,000, was “only fanning the flames in the Holy Land.” A disillusioned Wise would soon go further, charging that the chief executive’s opposition to the Congressional Resolution, reversing the Democratic Party’s 1944 election platform — 107 —

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on Palestine, “will give countless American citizens, non-Jews as well as Jews, reason for pause and reflection.” His public statement closed with a query: “Will this not lend unhappy confirmation to the charge that political promises made to the electorate in the interest of the Jewish people have been no more than mere vote-getting devices?”63 The question remained open. Meeting with Truman on December 4 for the first time, an interview arranged by Niles, Weizmann presented the Zionist case in forthright terms. He thanked Truman for demanding that HMG admit 100,000 Holocaust survivors to Palestine; sharply rejected London’s quota of 1,500 per month; and requested that a million and a half Jews be transferred from Europe to the biblical Promised Land. His claim that recent industrial, agricultural, and irrigation surveys showed the country could absorb another 4,000,000 inhabitants sparked Truman’s interest and questions, which Weizmann answered. A Jewish commonwealth was essential, he continued, in order to fulfill the Zionist ideal of receiving and settling new immigrants; only the Zionists would do this because for them it constituted a matter of “existential necessity.” A new committee of inquiry could not bring to light any new facts about “probably the most investigated country in the world.” Truman interjected: did the Jews wish to set up a theocratic state? Weizmann shot back: there was no such intention; the status of all religious communities there would be equal. Arabs’ hatred of the Jews was highly exaggerated, Weizmann declared, used as an excuse to prevent a pro-Jewish solution. Washington and London, having given the Arabs all they had gained in independence as a result of the two world wars, should tell them frankly not to hinder the solution to world Jewry’s homelessness—sovereignty in Palestine. For their part, the Jews, who had never harmed another group, were prepared to guarantee that the status of the Arabs would not suffer. Rejecting Bevin’s advice that they should contribute to Europe’s reconstruction, he emphasized that the Jews had appealed over the past 2,000 years for Eretz Israel to belong to their entire people. Weizmann hoped that past expressions of American official and public sympathy for Jewish sufferings and national aspirations would ultimately help enable Palestine to become, as he would soon write to Truman, “a Jewish democratic commonwealth giving shelter, sustenance, peace and freedom to Jews and Arabs alike.”64 — 108 —

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Despite a lengthy letter in which Weizmann expressed sincere appreciation to his host for “the sympathetic hearing” accorded him in their half-hour meeting, grave doubts remained. He was furious that Byrnes had arranged for Truman to see earlier that same morning both American Council for Judaism president Lessing Rosenwald and pro-Bergson editor of the Philadelphia Record David Stern. Both later told the press that the President, as they also advocated, would oppose a Jewish state because he believed that no government should be established “on religious or racial lines.” These two meetings were a slight on the WZO p ­ resident’s standing, as well as demonstrating Byrnes’s anti-Zionist leanings. Further, the brief presentations of these two men had confused Truman, who, in Weizmann’s evaluation, was confused anyway. As he saw it, an angry President, then confronted by disputes with the American labor unions, was hardly pleased with the Jews for adding to his problems. Weizmann’s anxiety received confirmation in reports from Epstein, who concluded that the Jews lacked “a single friend” in the Administration, while the Arabs and the Bergsonites were very active and successful. Former President Hoover warned him that if the Palestine question were not solved in the next six months, the Zionists “would be lost, because we have become a nuisance to all.” From columnist Drew Pearson and former New Deal executive Oscar Cox he heard that many opponents of Zionism, not only the oil interests, surrounded Truman, with the military advising the White House occupant not to get involved over the Palestine problem. The Zionists, Epstein concluded to his superiors, “are in a wretched situation in Washington.”65 The Arab League, stepping up the pressure, had just resolved to boycott all products of Jewish industry in Palestine. Noting that funds to establish such industry had been “contributed for political ends” in order to constitute a Jewish state there, the League Council called on Arabs everywhere, Muslims and Christians, to collaborate in adopting this resolution. Jews in Arab countries who exhibited no “Zionist tendencies,” Azzam Pasha added, would not necessarily be boycotted. Goods of European and American origin would fall under this edict if they were produced by industries having Zionist connections. Two days later, the Council invited up to three Palestinian Arab representatives to participate and vote on all matters relating to the Palestine issue.66 Reports from two Arab capitals, their rulers’ traditional rivalry notwithstanding, confirmed a growing anti-Zionist stance. The Transjordanian — 109 —

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Prime Minister informed British Ambassador Lord Killearn in Cairo that there was not “the slightest chance” that the Arabs would sanction any further Jewish immigration. Each delegate in the Arab League, he confessed, might be “reasonable” when speaking individually, but when two or more were together no one dared agree to Bevin’s proposal on this fundamental issue. It was particularly hard for Abdullah or the government in Amman to do so, he noted, in view of charges that they wanted to be “accommodating” to Jewish companies. Ibn Saud, speaking to the diplomatic corps in Jedda, announced that the Arabs did not fear the Jews. They only feared that the Palestine issue might prejudice ­relations with the British and the Americans, who were looked upon as the friends of the Arabs. Arab opposition to Jews derived not only from the clash of religions, the Wahhabi monarch pointed out, but also because Jews sought to “usurp” on Arab territory. When Roosevelt had offered him during their meeting in February agricultural machinery and irrigation in return for support of Zionist aspirations, he replied then that he would rather stay poor than “risk for our children the heritage of Jewish infiltration.”67 On December 5, the Arab League formally responded to Bevin’s November announcement in the House of Commons. While it welcomed his intention of not supporting a Jewish commonwealth and his distinguishing between Jews and Zionists, the members rejected his continuing of Jewish immigration to Palestine. In the twenty-six years since the Balfour Declaration, the statement declared, it had become clear that curing persecution by another sort of persecution was impossible. If the Jews got their wish, the Arabs would definitely lose their national rights to determine their own fate in the land handed over to them by their ancestors “from time immemorial.” This in itself was “not less cruel” than the “lamented” persecution suffered by Jews in other countries. The Zionist attempt to force a Jewish majority and create a Jewish state in Palestine made the finding of a compromise out of the question, while it had created “a permanent friction” between both parties, leading to a struggle between Jews against Arabs and Muslims which had no precedent in history. Since Europe’s Jews were now in the “safe trust” of the Allied powers, the League saw no reason for further “exceptional” measures to take care of them against the Arabs of Palestine. The victory of the democracies in the last global conflict made it possible for the persecuted Jew to settle down in Europe “in the proper — 110 —

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homes with whose communities he shares the same languages, cultures and traditions.” A “great number” of Jews in Palestine opposed “Nazi Zionist terrorism,” and HMG should help in facilitating their desire to leave for the United States and elsewhere. All investigation by the joint Committee was not justified, the statement concluded, while the democratic principles on whose basis the League states cooperated with the United Nations would cast no doubt on Arab rights in Palestine or on their desire for self-determination and independence.68 These decisions, wrote High Commissioner Cunningham to Hall, reflected yet another example of the failure of Arab statesmen to stand up against “the more violent leaders and agitators.” He assumed that the League members found themselves unable to guide Palestinian Arabs up “a more constructive path.” Palestine had already made a notable contribution to the rescue of Jews from Nazi oppression, but it alone could not end the “world tragedy” of the Jews. To foster the growth of “wisdom and understanding” among Abdullah and a number of other League advocates of “reasonableness,” he suggested that HMG had the right to ask the Arabs and the other peoples of the world for their assistance and generosity toward the Jews. Local Jewish leaders, Cunningham observed, were “intransigent and intractable,” carrying on together with the press intensive propaganda vilifying the mandatory’s use of force while praising the resort to violence by the yishuv itself. A very high percentage of Palestinian Jewry desired offensive armed action against the British. In this “highly emotional and hysterical state,” appeals to logic or reason had little effect. Open fighting might yet be averted, but he considered this more likely to be brought about by influencing world opinion rather than “by anything we can do here.” Seeking a long-term policy, London’s referring the Palestine Mandate to the Trusteeship Council was entirely in conformity with the principles of the UN Charter. A short-term policy, vital both as a preliminary step to achieve that end and to preserve the peace in the interim period, would thus not seem open to criticism. Unfortunately, the High Commissioner observed, both contending peoples in Palestine regularly ignored these two crucial considerations.69 Bitterness between British soldiers stationed in Palestine and the Jews, read a lead story at this time in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, was reported to be reaching “dangerous proportions.” The former blamed the yishuv for their extended stay in the army now that the world war — 111 —

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had ended, while the latter realized that the military would be used in an attempt to force acceptance of a policy the Jews considered unacceptable. “Palestine would be almost ideal if there were only the Arabs and ourselves here,” Assistant District Commissioner Ivan Lloyd-Phillips wrote to his father. On the other side of the divide, a Jew who had fought in the British Army during World War II found himself placed on trial on charges of printing and distributing a leaflet among British soldiers which noted that the Jews were not their enemy. Sketching the fate of Jews in Hitler’s Europe and the Jewish position on the White Paper, this veteran had concluded: “We are only stretching forth our hands to give refuge to the starving survivors of our people. Will you come between us?”70 Battle lines in the sand appeared increasingly in Palestine between the mandatory government and the yishuv. Chief Secretary Shaw announced on December 7 that 427 Jewish illegal immigrants had been apprehended in the country since V-E Day. Measures for dealing with this pressing matter engaged the government’s “constant attention.” Censors had been instructed to exercise strictness, he added, but that would not absolve editors of newspapers from responsibility for publication of inflammatory matter endangering public security. The Jewish Journalists’ Association declared, in turn, that if any newspaper were suspended by the government for publishing copy which had been approved by the censor, the remaining Jewish papers would cease publication in protest. The same day, the Va’ad HaLeumi warned HMG that the yishuv’s “full moral and practical” strength would be used to “save the remnants of European Jewry” and resist all attempts to “condemn the Jewish nation to dispersion.”71 A rapid influx of that remnant into Germany could readily be seen. Approximately 200 Jews were streaming daily into Berlin from Poland, the main representative there of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) relayed to New York headquarters early that same month. Fleeing pogroms that had already claimed many lives, they wished to immigrate to Palestine, but in the meantime hoped to enter the American zone. Facilities, particularly housing, he characterized as “impossible.” In two weeks, the number would reach 500 a day, with 300 arriving daily in Munich. Returning from a five-week tour of Poland, Joseph Schwartz accused the Polish people of being disappointed that the Germans did not “settle the Jewish problem for them,” — 112 —

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and asserted that the Jews’ consciously chosen destination would be Palestine. Concluding that continued living in the German camps “can only lead to physical and moral deterioration,” a three-man delegation from the American Jewish Committee publicly stated that the displaced Jews must be taken out of Germany immediately “if there is to be any hope for them.”72 The response of the local American and British military heads to this burgeoning crisis differed sharply. At the end of November, the U.S. Army created camps in the neighborhoods of Linz and Salzburg for east European Jews who, using briha routes, mainly through Czechoslovakia with the JDC’s financial support, had arrived from Vienna. General Joseph T. McNarney, successor to Eisenhower, announced in December that Jewish refugees from Poland recently “infiltrating” into the U.S. zone in Germany would be “temporarily” cared for in “segregated installations” pending the determination of American policy. By contrast, a very concerned Rifkind reported to the Chief of Staff on December 6 that the British had peremptorily stopped the movement of Jews from Berlin to a camp in the British zone, from where they “found their way by various means” into the U.S. zone. At present, he observed, there were about 3,000 “transit Jews” in Berlin, a “log-jam” which was increasing daily, not including the 3,000 native German Jews. Two days later, the commander-in-chief of the British Forces in Berlin explained to the Foreign Office the reason behind this decision. As he saw it, the 6,000 Polish Jews who had reached Berlin in the previous month were neither “displaced from their homes by reason of the war” nor “refugees from persecution instigated by Germany or her allies” (sic!). “We are therefore,” he declared, “refusing them food and accommodation in our sector of Berlin and onward transit into our zone.”73 This movement, having in his view “already aggravated the general long term problem of non-repatriables,” greatly worried H. W. Emerson. The Director of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees proposed to an official at the U.S. Embassy in London, as well as to the Foreign Office, that “preventive measures” be taken now insofar as they might be possible to check the great exodus flow. First, the Polish government should be asked to take more active measures than heretofore to combat antisemitism “now prevalent” among the population, and to create conditions in which the Jews would be encouraged to stay — 113 —

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in their own country. Second, some method of restitution to the Jews would mitigate the effect of depriving “third parties” of Jewish property “which they have been in possession for some years.” While appreciating the theoretical objections to such a course, Emerson thought that they were outweighed by the practical advantages and the necessity of “quick and effective action.”74 Aleppo-born Eliyahu Sasson, the Jewish Agency’s chief Arab expert, viewed the situation in a very different light. Just before the Agency Executive was to meet in almost full assemblage and possibly determine the fate of the yishuv and of the Zionist movement for a very long time to come, he gave Shertok his thoughts as to future action. If the fate of the Holocaust survivors and that of Jews in Arab lands was of “real concern” to the Executive, and their immigration to Israel “the most important thing” in its consideration, then appropriate efforts had to be made— and definite possibilities existed—to come to an agreement with the Arab world on one of three principles. These were: a bi-national state in Palestine in its present borders on the basis of parity; the country’s partition and the proclamation of the Jewish part as a Crown Colony within the British Empire; and the annexation of Palestine to Transjordan and the establishment of a Palestine state, neither Arab nor Jewish, under Emir Abdullah as the ruler in his lifetime, with Jewish immigration permitted throughout that territory until parity were achieved. Any one of these solutions, Sasson stressed, would insure British interests in the region and enable the Zionists to bring over thousands of Jews. It also would “pave the way,” if not in this then in the next generation, for future Jewish political independence. “If you will it,” he ended with Herzl’s ringing declaration in the classic political Zionist manifesto Der Judenstaat, “it is not a dream.”75 Truman’s continuing to oppose Senate Joint Resolution No. 112 on Palestine, conveyed in closed session by chairman Tom Connally (D, Texas), drew a stiff letter to the Chief Executive on December 6 from co-sponsors Wagner and Taft. The charge, made in an “insidious campaign” to influence the Administration, that it proposed to establish a “theocratic” state or a state based upon religious or racial discrimination they labeled “astounding and baseless.” Their resolution reflected the 1944 party planks of both major parties, representing the great majority of the country’s citizens. The expression “Jewish Commonwealth,” antedating the Palestine Mandate, had been used repeatedly by the — 114 —

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l­eading statesmen of Great Britain and the United States before and after the 1919 Peace Conference at Versailles—a fact confirmed by the Peel Commission. The resolution, just as the Zionist movement had always averred, called for Palestine to become a Jewish state where “all men, regardless of race or creed, shall enjoy equal rights.” If the country’s pledges to the Jewish people and embodied in international covenants would be honored thus, and the proposed Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry proceeded on that assumption, its hands would be strengthened by the resolution’s passage. If the Committee did not, they concluded, it was all the more necessary that the traditional and basic U.S. position regarding Palestine should be reaffirmed so far as it lay in the power of Congress to do so.76 Thinking it “inadvisable” to pass the joint Senate resolution until the Anglo-American Committee completed its inquiry and reported back to Washington and London, Truman announced the composition of the six U.S. members five days later. Sixty-six-year-old Judge Joseph C. Hutcheson of the Fifth Circuit at Houston, Texas, a Democrat and Presbyterian, would serve as chairman. His associates included Frank Aydelotte, former president of Swarthmore College, current Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University and American Secretary of the Rhodes Trust; editor of the Boston Herald Frank W. Buxton; O. Max Gardner, past Governor of North Carolina; James G. McDonald, former League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and chairman of Roosevelt’s Committee on Political Refugees; and William Phillips, former U.S. Under-Secretary of State and ex-Ambassador to Italy. Each received a letter from the President outlining the Committee’s terms of reference. McDonald immediately wrote to Hutcheson, pleased that he, as chairman, would be attempting to solve a “hitherto unsolvable problem” which required precisely the “straightforward and serious approach which men have come to expect from you.” At the same time, as confided to a JDC executive, McDonald thought the job “so difficult that the chances for success must be rated considerably less than even.”77 Simultaneous with Truman’s public announcement, Bevin presented HMG’s six-man delegation before the House of Commons. Its chairman would be Justice John E. Singleton, 60-year-old judge of the King’s Bench Division of the High Court of Justice and the one bachelor in the combined group. He would be joined by Lord Morrison, until recently — 115 —

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Labour MP for North Tottenham; Sir Frederick Leggett, former Deputy Secretary of the Ministry of Labour and National Service; Major R. E. Manningham-Buller, Conservative MP for Daventry; W.P. Crick, economic advisor to the Midland Bank; and Richard Crossman, Labour MP for East Coventry, Assistant Editor of the New Statesman and Nation (the Labour Party weekly), and the youngest member at only thirty-eight years of age. The British and U.S. Governments, the Foreign Secretary stated, wished to urge on the Committee the need for “utmost expedition” and to report within 120 days of the start of the investigation. The twelve men would determine the procedure, and would perform (so he replied to a question from Samuel Silverman, Labour MP) all interim, ad hoc, and permanent tasks which Bevin had referred to in the terms of reference.78 A full-dress debate on the Palestine issue immediately took place in the House of Lords. Lord Altrincham, formerly British Minister of State in the Middle East Sir Edward Grigg, blasted the Jews for their “unscrupulous abuse” of the British police and military services in Palestine. Viscount Samuel, Palestine’s first High Commissioner, charged that 100,000 Jews could have been saved from Hitler if not for the White Paper, and denounced the manhunt for Jewish refugees. Opposing Jewish statehood, however, he suggested instead a temporary trusteeship, with Muslim, Jew, and Christian communities controlling their educational and religious affairs. The Archbishop of York warned against the “un-Christian, irrational anti-Semitism which is noticeable even in England,” and appealed to Jewish leaders to curb anti-British attacks in the Holy Land. Lord Cranborne, former Colonial Secretary, repeated that appeal. Lord Strabolgi appealed to HMG to halt the violent Jewhatred in Poland, suggested that the Soviet Union be invited to the Committee of Inquiry, and said that the Palestine dilemma would only be solved when the country received dominion status. Jowitt, replying for the government, responded that the mandatory power would not be deterred by threats of violence from carrying out its duty of maintaining law and order in Palestine.79 American Zionist factions quickly reiterated their objections to the joint inquiry. In the AZEC’s view, Bevin had prejudged the investigation with his November 13 statement in Commons; a further “unconscionable delay” at best would ensue for the thousands of stricken Jews in Europe. The umbrella organization could not fail to express its sense of — 116 —

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“shock and resentment” that the U.S. government would fall prey to the Foreign Secretary’s attempt to “enmesh” Washington “in the toils of British policy and to make the country a partner of British betrayal.” In even sharper language, an advertisement in the New York Post by RevisionistNew Zionist Organization (NZO) spokesman Ben-Zion Netanyahu lashed out against Truman’s acceptance of “British imperialist policies” and the influence upon his State Department of “some oil big-wigs who are ever ready to trade oil for blood.” The President thereby encouraged the Colonial Office to “intensify its reign of terror” in Palestine. The NZO condemned the joint Committee as “a mockery to the martyred and starving Jews of Europe.” The Chief Executive, Netanyahu concluded, having now voiced his outright opposition to the creation of a Jewish state, committed an act of “bad faith” toward all those who trusted the word of the administration and the Democratic Party. Would Democrats in and out of Congress still adhere to the 1944 platform on which they were elected or accept Truman’s repudiation and “take the consequences in the judgment of the people?”80 The attendees at the decisive closed meetings in Jerusalem of the Zionist Inner Actions Committee (HaVa’ad HaPoel HaMetsumtsam) on December 11 and 12 hotly debated the Jewish Agency’s response to the new Anglo-American investigation. Following reports about developments in Great Britain from Selig Brodetsky, Goldmann on the United States, and Ben-Gurion on Palestine, the discussion veered to the question of appearing before the new joint body. Sneh and Silver spoke for those opposed; Shertok, claiming “ein breira” (“we have no choice”), stood for participation in the same way that the movement had taken part at the abortive 1939 London Conference. Ben-Gurion strongly advocated that the Agency Executive, as an act of protest, decide not to present itself to the twelve-man delegation when it arrived in the country. Ultimately, the voices of cooperation, arguing that the yishuv had to do everything in its power to have the Committee reach a true and just verdict, achieved a majority.81 The same gathering approved the Jewish Agency’s official reply to Bevin’s November 13 statement of policy. It again repudiated the White Paper’s continued restrictions on immigration for an indefinite period and on land purchase, the second a measure of racial discrimination against Jews without parallel in the democratic world. This statement of December 12 proceeded to observe that Bevin ignored the ­traditional — 117 —

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homelessness of the Jewish people, the “true character” of the Jewish problem. By declaring that Palestine by itself could not grapple even with the current crisis of the Jews in Europe, he “one-sidedly forestalled” the findings of the Committee of Inquiry. His urging that Jews be dispersed to overseas countries implied the abandonment, as well as a violation, of the “comprehensive solution” pledged in the Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate. If the latter’s sole basis of legality for HMG’s exercise of authority in Palestine would be jettisoned, then British rule there was “reduced to one of force alone.” The Jewish people would not halt its struggle for the attainment of “a new life of national freedom and dignity in its own country.” No effort and sacrifice, the Agency pronounced, would be spared until “the restoration of the Jewish Commonwealth of Palestine” had been achieved.82 The Arab League’s early objection to the Anglo-American Committee found echoes elsewhere in the Muslim world. The Iraqi Foreign Ministry opposed both its formation and the creation in Palestine of a Jewish state however small. Ibn Saud protested to the pro-Arab American Minister William Eddy that HMG should disarm Palestine’s Jews and halt all Jewish immigration pending agreement on a final settlement, “otherwise the forbearance and patience of the Arabs will have been abused.” The Arab Higher Committee of Palestine, meeting in Cairo, announced that no foreign power had the right to discuss or inquire into the country’s fate; stated that the United States had no legal standing to be on this committee (which should have had Arab members); and warned that “inevitable bloodshed and disturbance” would occur if Jewish immigration of any sort continued. The Muslim Imam of New York wrote to Truman that McDonald, advocate of the Zionist cause, was “an uncompromising partisan.” Since the Near Eastern Division had no voice in the selection of the American members, and did not wish to comment about those chosen, Henderson (who privately objected to the appointment of pro-Zionist McDonald) received Acheson’s approval to merely mark this letter “file.”83 The American members met for the first time at the State Department on December 13. (Gardner, not present and soon to withdraw, would be replaced at Niles’s suggestion to Truman by the liberal Republican lawyer Bartley Crum of California.) To McDonald’s surprise, the Near Eastern Division unsuccessfully tried to have them choose an anti-Zionist as their secretary, but Hutcheson finally selected the War Department’s — 118 —

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Lt. Col. Leslie Rood, with Evan Wilson of State’s Palestine desk to serve as one of their research assistants. Hearing that some had expressed a desire to defer their duties until after Christmas, Henderson submitted a memorandum for Acheson to give Truman so that the President could impress upon them the importance and urgency of their task. Truman, receiving the appointees two days later in the White House, did just that. “Most cordial,” read McDonald’s diary, he told them of his great interest in the project, emphasized its significance and the need to keep to the 120-day deadline for their report, and expressed his confidence in their future efforts. Emerging from that meeting, the soft-spoken, white-haired Hutcheson had this to say: “The President knows that we have a hard job to do, but he has both hope and faith that we shall succeed.” The same day, three major newspapers featured a Gestapo report, just then presented by the U.S. prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials, which gave the figure of 6,000,000 Jews murdered–together with the opinion of architect of the Holocaust Heinrich Himmler that the number was too low according to facts given him by Adolf Eichmann.84 Where the Committee of Inquiry on Palestine would begin its hearings presented a first challenge. Aydelotte, backed by Acheson, suggested Washington: the investigation was concerned with “the future of the Jewish race,” and half of the world’s Jews lived in the United States. In addition, the public relations aspect of the Committee’s work was important, and it was hoped that one of the results would be to remove “an irritant” in Anglo-American relations. Hutcheson told Halifax that they had better start in Washington since the “extremely vocal” groups in the country would have to be heard sometime, and it was in the Committee’s best interests to “get this over with.” Good counsel, he advised fellow judge Singleton in a telephone conversation, strove to have the last word, not the first.85 Whitehall dragged its feet. Opinion in Great Britain and perhaps elsewhere, Halifax was informed, would be surprised that the British half of the Committee should start by moving away from the scene of their investigation, instead of the American half moving towards it. In addition, the attitude of the two communities in Palestine to the Committee was not yet known. The Foreign Office feared that Arab confidence in its impartiality would be shaken if it were to take evidence from the American Jewish organizations before examining the problems on the spot in Palestine. This might undermine the authority of its — 119 —

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r­ ecommendations. Singleton argued to Hutcheson that the Committee could “get to grips” with its task more speedily if it investigated the problem at first hand in London. As an alternative, he suggested that the members meet some place en route, such as Rome, Tangier, or Berlin. Washington would come at a later stage, after the Committee had examined the problem at first hand.86 On December 19, the British came round. Halifax had thought it wise to get the hearings in the United States out of the way at the beginning, and in having the Committee removed from “the American atmosphere” for the remainder, and particularly for the final phrases of its work. Hutcheson, he argued to Bevin, had no thought in mind except the effective working of the Committee under the most favorable conditions. Moreover, Hutcheson had told him that the American members would not be influenced by agitation in Congress, where “electoral motives” were behind the current pro-Zionist resolution. Convinced, Bevin wrote to Attlee that, for the “tactical effect” on the United States, we ought to agree to this proposal. Hutcheson would be informed of this decision by Singleton one day later.87 The pro-Zionist Senate resolution passed by an overwhelming vote on the evening of December 17, Truman’s objections notwithstanding. “We do not want the Committee to substitute the judgment of a few men, however worthy, for the intent and determination of the American Congress and the American people,” Wagner declared. Taft added: “We intend this resolution to be a reaffirmation of the Balfour Declaration. We are clearly committed by promise and obligation as solemnly as possible to carry this through.” Majority Leader Alben Barkley (D, Kentucky) also spoke in its favor. On the other side of the Capitol, the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously adopted an identical resolution introduced by Daniel Flood (D, Penn.). He considered a suggestion from Rosenwald, who opposed the resolution, that the Soviet Union and the United States admit many Jewish refugees “dangerous and inimical.” John W. McCormack, majority leader, and John W. Martin, Jr., minority leader, both of Massachusetts, urged the immediate adoption of the Flood resolution. Everett Dirksen (R, Illinois), the first witness at the hearing, made a strong plea in its favor, saying that during his recent visit to Palestine he saw that the industrial potentialities of the land had been hardly scratched, and that its a­ gricultural production was of the highest quality. “The Jews in Palestine have showed — 120 —

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a positive genius for building up and cultivating the land,” Dirksen pronounced, and he urged that the Jews should have the right to buy land and expand their operations.88 Palestine’s Arab and Jewish newspapers reacted to this turn of events in predictable fashion. For Falastin, the Senate was committed a crime “which neither Hitler nor Mussolini dared committing” (sic), with America’s cowing the Arabs easily accomplished because the United States alone possessed the Atomic Bomb. Al-Difa’a lashed out against the “brazen frivolity” of the Senate resolution. On the other side, the conservative independent HaAretz noted that the resolution, although not speaking of a definite program, mainly expressed the feeling of the American public. While a wide gap existed between that resolution and Truman’s actual course, noted HaShomer HaTsa’ir’s Al HaMishmar, it “constitutes some comfort,” clearly showing that the majority of American Jewry was Zionist and its power great. The General Zionists’ HaBoker cautioned, however, that the resolution lacked binding legal force, exactly the same point that Hutcheson made privately to Halifax.89 The State Department did not have to pay any attention to resolutions of Congress, a “very friendly” Ralph Bunche, Assistant Chief of State’s Division of International Organizations, cautioned the AZEC’s Benjamin Akzin. (State would quickly assure the anxious Ibn Saud that the recent concurrent resolution “in nowise binds the Executive.”) While his Division would not get the Palestine matter until higher ups decided to prepare a trusteeship agreement, Bunche hinted that several delegates would raise the issue at the forthcoming meeting of the UN General Assembly early next month. A vote there on a definite recommendation was not entirely excluded, Bunche noted; any such discussion could have important influence on the situation. The American and British delegations, both men agreed, would most probably maintain silence, giving the joint Committee inquiry as an excuse. Akzin lost no time in advising AZEC Executive Director Shapiro that the Jewish Agency should immediately contact the various delegations friendly to the Zionist point of view to speak out in its favor, these efforts to focus on the Latin American countries, Western European countries, and those of the so-called “Russian bloc.” “No time is to be lost,” he insisted.90 The annual conference of the United Jewish Appeal, held between December 16 and 18 at Atlantic City’s Hotel Chelsea, confirmed the — 121 —

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overwhelming unity now prevailing in American Jewry’s ranks. They heard Schwartz emphasize that the Jews from Poland and other east European countries were on the march to Palestine, “and nothing will stop them.” Harrison appealed for the maximum aid to be given to the JDC and those agencies enabling survivors to go to Palestine. The yishuv, Agency treasurer Eliezer Kaplan stated, “is willing, ready and able to defend the Jewish right to immigration.” Josef Rosensaft, speaking on behalf of the 80,000 displaced Jews in the American, British, and French Zones in Germany, stirred his listeners to tears when speaking of the extreme dangers facing his fellow survivors this winter; conveying their wish to leave a European soil drenched with the blood of whole families; and pleading that all join in their struggle to find a new life in Palestine. Reports about the dire conditions facing Jews in Italy, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia followed. The conference’s major resolution, adopted by the more than 600 Jewish leaders from all over the country, called for an unprecedented drive to raise $100 million to aid Europe’s Jews and to develop Palestine’s settlement. This call vindicated Weizmann’s expression of great satisfaction that the Jews of the United States had joined together in order to bring to Palestine the maximum number of Holocaust survivors. Only in Palestine, he concluded to this receptive audience, could Jews begin life anew in dignity.91 Faced with the latest stream of approximately 550 Jews daily from Poland into the U.S. zone in Germany, Secretary of War Robert Patterson asked Acheson on December 19 for an interim decision (pending a final policy) on McNarney’s recent action in receiving such refugees on humanitarian grounds. Earlier that month, Major General John H. Hilldring, Director of the Army’s Civil Affairs Division administering liberated and occupied areas in Europe, had first sought “a firm policy” as to whether that zone was to serve as a haven for “racial, religious and political refugees.” This was essentially an American problem, he explained to Patterson: the Jews gravitated to the U.S. zone; the British could be expected to oppose a haven policy “because it would emphasize the Jewish need for Palestine”; and the Polish government would object as well because it would consider such a policy as a negative reflection upon itself. (In November he informed Eisenhower that the desire of most Jewish DPs to go to Palestine “has been widely confirmed.”) Eisenhower and Hilldring had defended McNarney’s position — 122 —

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when speaking to the American members of the joint Committee, and also assumed full responsibility for his order. Prior to that meeting, an internal War Department memorandum to Hilldring pointed out that UNRRA and the IRC had not been at all helpful as to the resettlement of any DPs, including Jews, and that all reports confirmed that the “overwhelming percentage” of Jewish refugees in the U.S. zone in Germany desired to go to Palestine. Hilldring’s expert on DPs and especially Jewish DPs, thirty-year-old lawyer Lt. Herbert A. Fierst, had authored Patterson’s letter to Acheson in the hope that the flow of his fellow Jews could be continued if allowed on an interim basis.92 In a memorandum to Acheson, Elbridge Durbrow of State’s Division of Eastern European Affairs and two colleagues called for stopping the flow, claiming that the swelling numbers had “every appearance” of a movement being organized by the Zionists or others, and could not have taken place without the approval of the Polish and Soviet Governments. This could be accomplished either by setting a date to close off entry, or a ceiling of population in the U.S. zone which, when reached, would “terminate” the acceptance of further refugees, and then informing the Polish, Soviet, and Czechoslovak Governments. If Warsaw permitted this exodus to continue, Durbrow suggested, Washington would be forced to make public the fact that 15,000 people a month were leaving Poland because of persecution or fear of persecution in that country. Such action by State with War Department approval, he concluded, would “undoubtedly” stop the flow.93 The War Department, State’s expert on refugee matters George Warren informed Acheson and other associates on December 21, feared that it would be again subject to criticism when the worsening of conditions soon became “unavoidable” if the influx from Poland into the U.S. zone were to continue. Deputy Director of European Affairs John Hickerson acknowledged that the Polish government was too weak to control the “undoubted” antisemitic manifestations exhibited by its citizens, and that Warsaw was “at least passive” toward the departure of the Jews. He agreed that closing off the flow would lead Warsaw to blame Washington. No clear appraisal of Moscow’s attitude seemed possible, those present agreed, while Prague probably looked upon the movement as a problem to be solved by the Soviet, Polish, U.S., and British governments. The attendees resolved that Warren would advise Hilldring that the military’s humanitarian action was “understood” and — 123 —

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temporarily approved, with a final decision on policy to be determined after Christmas. Acheson would explain the situation to the President, while the interested divisions within State would proceed immediately on December 26 to decide upon a permanent policy.94 Hutcheson pressed on with the inquiry’s task, cabling Singleton on the 22nd that his group had contacted interested organizations and individuals, inviting them to submit written statements and be prepared to supplement these with oral testimony at hearings to begin January 7, 1946. A press release by State, as agreed upon between the two chairmen, made it clear that the Committee would be glad to receive the views of any other appropriate groups whom it might have inadvertently omitted. The hearings, Hutcheson opined, would not be extensive, since the major part of the expositions would be made in writing and filed in advance. Representatives of the interested groups would be held as closely as possible to the minimum time needed to make their presentations. The hearings themselves, to be either public or private as the Committee might desire, would be held in the Conference Room of the State Department. The same day, the Colonial Secretary informed Cunningham and all British Ambassadors in the Middle East of the meeting of minds between London and Washington.95 All this time the Hagana did not let up with its focus on aliya bet, bringing 252 ma’apilim, mostly young men and women from Poland, aboard the Hannah Szenes to the shore of Nahariya on the evening of December 25. The 250-ton metal ship, originally named Andarta, purchased in Italy by the Mosad L’Aliya for $40,000, set sail on the 14th near the port of Savona. Its name was changed en route in memory of the 23-year-old Hungarian-born female parachutist and poet from kibbutz Sdot Yam who had been dropped behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia during World War II by the British Special Operations Executive, where she was captured and ultimately killed by a German firing squad in Budapest. While the ship hit a rock on arrival and keeled over twenty five yards out in the stormy sea, Palyam operatives and town citizens helped the passengers to safety, including by the use of rope lines in a human chain. The national poet Natan Alterman extolled the episode in a poem honoring the Italian captain Ansaldo, which ended with a toast to “the boats that are on the way.” On the beach, for the British authorities to see, the capsized vessel flew a blue-and-white Zionist banner — 124 —

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with the inscription: “Here the Hagana landed one of the surviving remnants of the six million dead.”96 The British would intensify their efforts to halt the aliya bet vessels by soon exchanging the police coastal patrol boats for the services of His Majesty’s Royal Navy Flotilla called “The Palestine Patrol,” but they faced a far more lethal challenge from the Irgun and LEHI. On the evening of December 27, a combined operation of these underground groups attacked police headquarters in Jerusalem and the district police headquarters in Jaffa, as well as a military workshop at the Tel Aviv Exhibition grounds where a large number of Thompson sub-machine guns were reportedly stored. The final toll of British security forces that night came to nine dead and eleven wounded. The British army and police quickly mounted a huge cordon and search operation, cages set up in suspected areas. A curfew in Jerusalem was put into effect between 4 p.m. to 8 a.m., during which 559 men out of 1,445 suspects were detained. During an entire day, 4,000 Jerusalemites under guard lacked food and bedding for sleep, some even ordered to clean bathrooms. All of Tel Aviv came under curfew. In Ramat Gan, 38 of the 682 males brought in for questioning were detained and 30 arrested for breaking curfew. In all, some 60 males were ultimately sent to the Latrun prison. The harassing of the civilian population—none of the perpetrators of the operation were found—created what correspondent Jon Kimche called “at least passive support” amongst the yishuv for the dissident right-wing militants.97 The following morning, Ben-Gurion and Shertok were urgently brought in to be lectured by Cunningham. Although the Tenuat HaMeri had not sanctioned the attack, which the Hagana publicly denounced in strong language, the High Commissioner insisted that they aid the mandatory in searching for the attackers. The two replied that they had no connection to what had taken place, and expressed their deep sorrow at the loss of lives. At the same time, they declared that British actions, which in the last weeks had led to the deaths of innocent Jews, Britons, and others, rendered “futile” their ability to prevent such assaults in the future. It was difficult to ask the yishuv to keep the laws, they added, when the government itself “systematically” violated the fundamental law of the land embodied in the Palestine Mandate. Their assertion found an echo even in the anti-terrorist Davar, which found — 125 —

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an ­explanation. As HaAretz noted, the real cause was the “stranglehold around Palestine.”98 Cunningham was unconvinced. Writing to Hall not long thereafter, he concluded that Ben-Gurion and Shertok had admitted the Jewish Agency could not “control the people.” The Agency’s public statement on December 30 declared that the mandatory government was no longer entitled to rule. Since the Agency did provide funds for illegal, para-military immigration, a “retaliatory measure” was fully justified. Buildings of the Agency should be occupied, with its Executive placed under at least police supervision. “I am fully sensible of world reaction,” the High Commissioner went on, and the suggested action might preclude the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry from carrying out its activities in Palestine. Yet he wished to go on record that “this defiant attitude” of the Agency could not be ignored.99 The Foreign and Colonial Office, receiving Chief Secretary Shaw’s complaint about the differences between the British and American approaches to the Palestine question, welcomed the Committee’s formation. Assistant Undersecretary Robert Howe worried about the impact on U.S. policy of “the large and powerful” Jewish vote—and practically no Arab vote at all. Yet he and colleagues thought the American members “at first sight” to be a carefully selected and reasonably unprejudiced team. McDonald’s pro-Jewish views were the exception, but his inclusion was not “a high price” to pay for U.S. participation. Colonial Secretary Hall concurred, observing that the investigation would perforce bring the Americans into closer contact with the “stubborn facts” of the situation, including those which arose from Arab opposition. (Henderson’s superior, Gordon P. Merriam, approvingly noted at this time that the joint inquiry “was expected to knock over a number of Zionist contentions.”) In addition, Washington, which had recently insisted on granting a loan to HMG of $3.75 million at 2 percent interest on condition that all holders of sterling should be able to convert their pounds within a year of Congressional ratification, could hardly avoid some share of responsibility for any decision when the final report came to light.100 The British members sailed for Washington just after Christmas on the Queen Mary with no idea of their government’s policy—neither Attlee nor Bevin had received them—other than it was their duty to try and achieve what Crossman called “an honest unanimity” with their — 126 —

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American counterparts. They began with a virtually anti-Zionist feeling, Crossman arguing to his colleagues that the few survivors should be liberated from that “awful separateness” advocated by Zionism, and be reconstituted Europeans with full rights and duties. A diary recorded his further view that Palestine was full of insecurity, particularly now that Russia had re-entered the Middle Eastern field of politics, and he concluded: “There could not be a worse refuge and home for a persecuted people than this strategic point in which the whole Arab world is also against them.” Singleton objected to his suggestion that the Committee get to Hungary and Rumania, doubting that its members could receive any reliable information with Moscow in charge there and hampered by their not knowing the two foreign languages. This is equally true of Hebrew and Arabic, the Labourite countered, yet we are going to Palestine. Yes, Singleton retorted, but there information is available. Peevishly, Crossman replied: “I doubt whether Americans will trust British officials in Palestine much more than Russians in Rumania.” Upon that note, the British chairman closed the meeting.101 The delegation’s initial views would be strengthened by the presence of Harold Beeley. A former lecturer at Queens College and author of a short biography on Benajmin Disraeli, the tall 36-year-old with poor eyesight had spent World War II authoring surveys of the Middle East for the Royal Institute of International Affairs (popularly known as Chatham House) under Arnold Toynbee. The Cairo Group of this highly influential research group had concluded the previous February that HMG had to adhere to the White Paper as “the only possible compromise” regarding Palestine while helping to create the modern “Arab community,” and so protect British power in the entire region. Beeley subsequently moved on to Whitehall’s Research Department, and then worked on the Preparatory Commission of the UN in San Francisco with Ralph Bunche to help design the Trusteeship Council. Bevin’s choice to counsel him on Palestine, Beeley now joined the British team as its secretary. That same moment, his former Chatham House colleagues began drafting a paper for the Anglo-American Committee which started with the bi-nationalist proposals championed by Judah Magnes, coupled with an extension and adaption of the Ottoman Millet system giving Arab and Jew a measure of autonomy. The Jewish Agency had no inkling of this, but Epstein just then received a confidential report of the Cairo Group’s three February memoranda. Its authors, he warned, — 127 —

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were responsible to “a great extent” for the British government’s policies in the Middle East, both during and after the war. The pro-Arab Beeley, then and later, personified the Chatham House perspective.102 Crossman’s observation that Moscow had re-entered this particular field of “power politics” also had to be taken into account. In September, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Stalin had stated in December 1944 to Emil Sommerstein, member of the Polish Provisional (Lublin) Government and leader of the Jews in Poland, that the Soviet government would be “seriously” interested in an international solution of the Jewish problem. When Sommerstein had asked the Soviet dictator whether he knew what the Germans did to Polish Jewry, his host in the Kremlin replied: ‘Yes, and we shall avenge it!” (The Jewish Agency was informed that at that encounter, Stalin told Sommerstein that he was “positive” about the building up of a Jewish National Home in Palestine and could publicize this statement.) One year later, correspondent Yanchenko of the Russian newspaper agency TASS told a Jewish Agency contact in Cairo that the talks about Iran between Bevin and Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov failed when the latter stated that Moscow was prepared to evacuate Iran if Great Britain would evacuate Egypt and Palestine. Our sympathy will be with your “progressive experiment,” as opposed to the Arabs’ “backwardness”, the Russian journalist said. “The day is near,” he exclaimed, “when Russia will have her say in the Middle Eastern affairs.” “We must do everything to help you,” Yanchenko ended, “and when you will have the Jewish State don’t forget that I am one who deserves a medal for the help in establishing this state.”103 As the month drew to a close, the British Commander-in-Chief Middle East gave the War Office his cautious appraisal of what lay in store for the very troubled Promised Land. While any large scale anti-British action would be unlikely until after the joint Committee had declared its findings, the interim period might not necessarily be quiet. Arabs would make efforts to unite Arab countries and keep a “sharp watch” on Jewish illegal immigration, while the Arab League had declared a boycott on Jewish trade. The Jews would concentrate on pro-Zionist propaganda in America and England, as well as encourage immigration—by force if necessary—into Palestine. If that second endeavor proved successful, land settlement might also be attempted. At any time, the Stern Group and the Irgun, reinforced by some Palmah — 128 —

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fighters, might cause “incidents.” Three days later, Jamal Husseini, in an interview with Clifton Daniel of the New York Times, predicted an armed Palestinian Arab uprising if the Arabs’ last hope of defeating Zionism by political tactics failed. The neighboring Arab states would probably not give formal assistance, but the country’s borders, he added, would be “crowded” with volunteers rallying to the anti-Zionist battle. Responding officially to Cunningham’s request to consent to a 1,500 monthly Jewish immigration quota during the Anglo-American Committee’s projected four months of work, leading Palestinian Arab leaders refused “to allow even one Jewish immigrant to enter.”104 The French authorities did not contribute to easing this volatile situation. They continued to refuse repeated British requests to hand over the ex-Mufti. Foreign Office Permanent Under-Secretary Alexander Cadogan informed Paris in confidence that they did not propose to bring him to trial (and thus no question existed of his being sentenced to death), but to send him to some British territory far from the Middle East, “where he will have no opportunity to cause further trouble.” The French balked, explaining that to do so might inflame Arab opinion throughout their spheres of influence in the Middle East and North Africa. In Italy, concerned U.S. officials witnessed the number of Central European Jews rising from some 1,500 to 8,000 in Allied Commission centers and UNRRA camps, with more than 3,000 recently having entered the country and living precariously in various Italian cities. More than 100 had just arrived from the French zone of Austria via the Brenner Pass. They carried a group document, purporting to have been issued by the French military authorities, under the heading “les personnes suivants partent via Innsbruk/Italia pour Palestine.” Appropriate measures, Allied Forces Headquarters requested, had to be made by State and Whitehall to Paris inducing those authorities to stop the illegal infiltration across the Italian frontier. The movement, Ambassador Alexander Kirk informed State, appeared to be part of “a very large organization” with the object of using Italy and Austria as “transit camp” between Central Europe and Palestine.105 The last day of 1945 saw no change for the better in Palestine. The stoppage of Jewish immigration had become “a definite fact,” Shertok told the press. Mandatory officials had distributed the last 1,400 certificates themselves, and in all countries there now remained about 750 certificate holders who had not yet been able to get to Palestine, 500 of them — 129 —

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in Bulgaria. In a private interview with Cunningham, Ben-Zvi reiterated the yishuv’s feeling of deep bitterness and despair, with every day bringing more korbanot (victims). The High Commissioner asked for patience while the Anglo-American Committee would explore every aspect of the matter. Unmoved, Ben-Zvi recalled that Neville Chamberlain’s cabinet had appeased the Arabs at the 1939 St. James Conference and made peace with Hitler over Czechoslovakia and Poland, “and we fell victim.” In May 1945, the Labour Party had promised to fulfill the “just demands” of the Jews, but it reneged on this pledge. Cunningham: The yishuv had to remember that “there is another side”—the Arabs, and the government’s job was to “find the path between them.” Ben-Zvi remarked that there was a time when the Jews could talk face to face with Arabs, but how could the Arabs agree to it now after the British government “sold them the merchandise more cheaply,” stopping immigration and settlement? He was ready to do what he could, the High Commissioner declared, but not all rested in his hands. On that uncertain note, with the Palestine dilemma as far from resolution as ever, the year drew to an end. 106

Endnotes 1 Ben-Gurion letter, October 1, 1945, BGA; David Ben-Gurion, “First Conflict with Labour Government,” Jewish Observer and Middle East Review (hereafter JOMER), July 17, 1964, 15–16. 2 JTA, October 2, 1945; Yehuda Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, vol. 3, MiMa’avak L’Milhama, part 2 (Tel Aviv, 1973), 806; Silver to Levinthal, October 5, 1945, 4/3, Silver MSS. 3 Jon Kimche, Seven Fallen Pillars, The Middle East, 1915–1950 (London, 1950), 52–53. 4 Kimche, Seven Fallen Pillars, 51. A while later, Ben-Gurion received from a Jewish Agency source in Egypt a copy of Azzam’s two letters. Ben-Gurion Diary, November 6, 1945. 5 The Department of State Bulletin, September 30, 1945, part 13: 455–463; Martin to Shertok, August 25, 1945, Z4/31263; Weizmann to Harrison, October 1, 1945, WA; Weisgal to Harrison, Z5/991; Z4/31263; both in CZA; Weizmann to Harrison, October 1, 1945, WA; Welt and May to Section Presidents, October 3, 1945, National Council of Jewish Women MSS, New York City; October 6, 1945, — 130 —

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FO371/45400, PRO; Merrell to State, October 4, 1945, 867N.01/10-445, SD; Halifax to FO, October 7, 1945, FO 371/45438, PRO; FRUS, 1945, vol. 2, 1193– 1194; Winant to State, 867N.01/10-145; 867N.01/10-545; both in SD, NA.   6 FRUS, 1945, vol. 2, 1195–1196, 1199–1200; Report on “Jewish Congress,” September 25–27, 1945, FO 371/51125, PRO. At the end of December, the British conveyed to State their stance against separate camps for German Jews. Aide-memoire, December 28, 1945, 800.4016, DP/12-2945, SD.   7 FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 751–756.  8 Halifax to Foreign Office, October 3, 1945; Donnelly note, October 1, 1945; both in FO 371/45400, PRO; Elmer Roper, “A Survey of American Jewish Opinion on a Jewish State in Palestine,” October 1945, Zionist Archives (hereafter ZA), New York City.  9 FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 758–759. 10 Epstein to Goldmann, October 3 and 8, 1945, Confidential files, ZA; Palestine press extract, October 19, 1945, 47/785, HA; FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 756–758; “Arab Political News,” October 2, 1945, S25/9229, CZA; Epstein to Goldmann, October 8 and 16, 1945; both in Confidential files, ZA; Moreland to Secretary, October 9, 1945, 867N.01/10-945, SD. 11 Halifax to Foreign Office, October 4, 1945, FO 371/45400, PRO; JTA, October 3, 1945. 12 Meeting, October 4, 1945, CAB 128/1; Secretary’s notes, October 4, 1945, CAB 195/3; both in PRO. 13 Goldmann to Ben-Gurion, October 4, 1945, Z6/2762, CZA. 14 Jewish Agency Executive London (hereafter JAEL), October 8, 1945, Z4/302/30, CZA. For the 1939 St. James Conference in London, see Monty Noam Penkower, Palestine in Turmoil: The Struggle for Sovereignty, 1933-1939, vol. 2; Retreat from the Mandate, 1937–1939 (New York, 2014), chap. 10. 15 Ben-Gurion to Jewish Agency Executive Jerusalem (hereafter JAEJ), October 8, 1945, S25/1495; Meeting, JAEL, October 8, 1945, Z4/302/30; both in CZA; Weizmann to Joseph, October 1, 1945, WA. For Kfar Giladi, see Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 843–843. 16 Ben-Gurion diary, October 6, 7, and 10, 1945; Daphne Trevor, Under the White Paper (Jerusalem, 1948), 152; FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 761. 17 Bevin cable, October 8, 1945, MG 25, 54, vol. 284, PAC, Ottawa; Azzam Pasha notes of Bevin interview and of conferences, February 2, 1946, and April 4, 1946; both in S25/9020, CZA. While publicly Azzam continued to object to any further Jewish immigration into Palestine, privately he considered a meeting with Weizmann. He ultimately ruled it out, fearing that one photograph of — 131 —

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that event would lead to his being “blackmailed out of all influence.” “Too bad,” concluded the New York Times’s C. L. Sulzberger: “I see no way of avoiding the Palestine storm.” See Interview, October 20, 1945, L35/102, CZA; C. L. Sulzberger, A Long Row of Candles, Memoirs and Diaries, 1934–1954 (New York, 1969), 268–269. 18 Weizmann-Bevin interview, October 10, 1945, S25/7689, CZA. 19 Bevin-Hall memo, October 9, 1945; Minutes of Palestine Committee, October 10, 1945; both in CAB 95/14, PRO. 20 Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 844–848; Z. Gilad, ed., Sefer HaPalmah, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv, 1957), 629–640. 21 JAEJ, October 11, 1945; Gort to MacMichael, October 10, 1945, Harold MacMichael MSS, Middle East Centre, St. Anthony’s College, Oxford. 22 Meetings, CAB 195/3; CAB 128/1; CAB 95/14, October 11, 1945; all in PRO. 23 Bevin to Halifax, October 12, 1945, FO 371/45381, PRO. 24 Halifax to Foreign Office, October 13, 1945a, FO 800/484; Halifax to Foreign Office, October 10, 1945, FO 371/45400; both in PRO. 25 Hooper to Byrnes, October 13, 1945, report XL 24351, RG 226, NA; Aryeh to Shertok, October 11, 1945, Z4/30967; “Arab Political News,” October 16, 1945, S25/9229; both in CZA; New York Times, October 14, 1945; Epstein to Goldmann, October 18, 1945, Z4/153022, CZA; Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 852; Palestine: Statement of Information Relating to Acts of Violence (London, 1946), 4. 26 Meeting, October 12, 1945, FO 371/45382; Cable, August 23, 1945, FO 371/45379; both in PRO. For the 1940 Patria tragedy and the expulsion to Mauritius, see Monty Noam Penkower, The Jews Were Expendable: Free World Diplomacy and the Holocaust (Urbana, IL, 1983), chap. 2. 27 Ben-Gurion diary, October 15, 1945; JTA, October 18, 1945. The official Hagana history lists six successful voyages on four boats from August through October 1945, carrying a total of 569 immigrants. Aside from the Dalin and the Gabriela, the Natan and the Peter (Pietro) made two undetected trips each. Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 1103, 1115–1116. 28 JTA, October 8, 17, and 19, 1945; Nathan-Gass memorandum, October 3, 1945, OF 204 misc., Box 772, Harry S. Truman Presidential Library (hereafter HSTL); FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 762–764, 769. 29 Rosenman to Truman, October 17, 1945, Box 2, Samuel Rosenman MSS, HSTL; FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 770–771; JTA, 19, 1945. For Wise, considering his great faith in Roosevelt, the correspondence was “the greatest shock he had had for years.” Goldmann to Epstein, October 22, 1945, Z4/30967, CZA. — 132 —

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“The friends of Zionism have no right to rely on Rabbi Wise,” wrote a bitter Congressman Emanuel Celler after concluding that FDR “gave us the doublecross,” “who in turn relied on his friendship with FDR.” Celler to Billikopf, October 27, 1945, Celler file, Jacob Billikopf MSS, American Jewish Archives (hereafter AJA), Cincinnati, OH. 30 Epstein to Shertok, October 24, 1945, L35/92, CZA. For Silver’s public comments after he and Wise met with Byrnes, see Statement, October 23, 1945, S5/778, CZA. 31 G.H.G. (Gater) memo, October 19, 1945, FO 371/45419, PRO; October 22, 1945, JAEL, Z4/302/30, CZA; Rose, Baffy, 226. 32 FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 771–783, 785–786, 788–790, 794–801; Halifax to Bevin, October 19 and 20, 1945, FO 371/45381; Halifax to Bevin, October 21, 1945, FO 371/44539; Halifax to Bevin, October 22, 27, and 29, 1945, FO 371/45382; all in PRO; Rosenman to Truman, October 23, 1945, Palestine-1945 folder, Box 2, Rosenman MSS; Halifax-Byrnes talk, October 29, 1945, 867N.01/10-2945, SD. 33 Laski notes, October 22, 1945, LP/LAS/38/32; Meeting with a Zionist delegation, October 5, 1945, LP/LAS/38/31; both in Harold Laski MSS, Labour Party Archives, Transport House, London; JAEL, October 23, 1945, Z4/30018, CZA; Laski to Lerner, October 20, 1945, Box 5, Max Lerner MSS, Sterling Library, Yale University, New Haven. Laski forwarded to Bevin a copy of the minutes of the National Executive Committee’s meeting with Shertok, Locker, and Nathan Jackson, Secretary of Poalei Zion in Great Britain. See FO 800/484, PRO. At the same time, he supported the proposed Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry of Palestine, prepared to await its conclusions. Palestine Post, December 26, 1945. 34 Akzin to Shapiro, October 25, 1945, Z5/400, CZA; Bolton-Mundt memo to Truman, October 25, 1945, PSF 186, HSTL. Postmaster General Robert Hannegan subsequently informed Thurman that Truman was “favorably impressed” by this visit. Thurman to Silver, November 7, 1945, Drawer 4, file 3, Abba Hillel Silver MSS, The Temple, Cleveland. Hearing of the MundtBolton memorandum, as well as reviewing some recent American press opinion, Beeley concluded that HMG had a better chance than in the past “of getting a fair hearing” in the United States. Beeley note, October 19, 1945, FO 3711/45400, PRO. 35 JTA, October 19, 1945; Leo W. Schwarz, The Redeemers, A Saga of the Years 1945–1952 (New York, 1953), chap. 7; Nadich, Eisenhower and the Jews, 230–232; Ben-Gurion diary, October 24, 25, and 29, 1945; JTA, October 28, 1945; memoranda, October 23 and 25, 1945, Simon Rifkind MSS (courtesy of Judge Rifkind); Ben-Gurion report, Nov. 6, 1945, B8/2, Robert Weltsch MSS, — 133 —

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Leo Baeck Archives, Center for Jewish History, New York City; Joseph Heller, The Birth of Israel, 1945–1949: Ben-Gurion and His Critics (Gainesville, FL, 2000), 114–115; Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion, The Burning Ground, 1886–1948 (Boston, MA, 1987), 873. 36 CID reports, October 26 and 31, 1945; both in 47/608, HA; “Arab Political News,” October 30, 1945, S25/9229, CZA; HaAretz, October 28, 1945; JTA, October 29, 1945. For the Arab Revolt and the Mufti, see Monty Noam Penkower, Palestine in Turmoil, The Struggle for Sovereignty, 1933–1939, vols. 1 and 2 (New York, 2014). 37 Wise and Silver to Truman, October 30, 1945, Z5/1206, CZA; Truman, Memoirs, 166, 170–172; New York Herald Tribune, October 31, 1945; Goldmann to Welles, October 31, 1945, Z6/280, CZA. Welles repeated this position when accepting the Maryland chairmanship of the American Christian Palestine Committee. New York Times, December 24, 1945. A few years later, Truman told Eliyahu Elath that his initial assistance for Holocaust survivors in Europe had been motivated by humanitarian considerations, and only Bevin turned it into a political issue. Heller, The Birth of Israel, 47. 38 Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 858–859; Palestine, Statement of Information Relating to Acts of Violence, 5–6. 39 Trevor, Under the White Paper, 158–159; Rose, Baffy, 226; Palestine Post, November 2, 1945; Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 859. 40 Cairo cable, November 3, 1945, Confidential files-Elath, ZA; “Arab Political News,” November 7, 1945. S25/9229, CZA; Thomas Mayer, “The Military Force of Islam: The Society of the Muslim Brethren and the Palestine Question, 1945–48,” in E. Kedourie and S. G. Haim, eds., Zionism and Arabism in Palestine and Israel (London, 1982), 106; “The Anti-Jewish Riots in Tripolitania,” December 1, 1945, SC-14070, AJA; Coy report, November 5, 1945, Rifkind MSS; London Jewish Chronicle, November 16, 1945. 41 Bevin note, November 2, 1945, FO 371/45383, PRO; Shertok memo, November 2, 1945, S25/7566; JAEL, November 2, 1945, Z4/302/30; both in CZA; Bevin to Halifax, November 6, 1945, FO 371/45383, PRO; FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 812–813. 42 Weizmann to the yishuv, November 2, 1945, Weizmann Archives (hereafter WA); Shertok memo, November 2, 1945, S25/75666, CZA. 43 Trevor, Under the White Paper, 159; Silver to Goldmann, November 6, 1945, Z6/69, CZA; FRUS, 1945, 806–807; JTA, November 9, 1945; Ben-Gurion Diary, November 5, 1945.

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44 Ehud Avriel, Open the Gates!, 253–254. Ben-Gurion diary, November 10, 1945. On November 12, a conference of briha workers agreed that each border point would be placed under the authority of “a Jewish soldier” from Eretz Israel. Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 1009, 1038. 45 FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 10–18, 815–816. Truman’s emphasis on international responsibility had been recently iterated during a speech in New York City’s Central Park on October 27, in connection with the celebration of Navy Day. He paid tribute to the four million men and women in the Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard and to the ships which carried them to victory in World War II. He then described the fundamentals of American foreign policy, all of which were directed not toward war or conquest, but rather toward the free choice of self-government for all peoples prepared for it and toward a lasting peace. 46 Bevin statement in Commons, November 13, 1945, P575/29II, Leo Kohn MSS, Israel State Archives (hereafter ISA); FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 821; Bevin talk, November 13, 1945, FO 371/45387, PRO; Jewish Chronicle report of press conference, November 13, 1945, F13/573, CZA; The Times, November 14, 1945. Bevin’s private secretary wrote in his diary about Bevin’s later conference with the American press, “with whom he was truculent and defensive—a mistake but difficult to eradicate.” Piers Dixon, Double Diplomat (London, 1968), 198. 47 FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 819–820; Jewish Agency London Press Conference, November 14, 1945, FO 371/45419, PRO. 48 Attlee to Bevin, November 18, 1945, FO 800/484, PRO; Weizmann to Frankfurter, November 16, 1945, WA; JTA, November 20, 1945; Statement, November 13, 1945; Z4/15003; JAEJ, November 14, 1945; both in CZA; Interview with O.A.G. Shaw, November 13, 1945, WA; JTA, November 15, 1945; Schwartz, The Redeemers, 75–76; Wise-Silver to Truman, November 15, 1945, Ben-Gurion Archives. For the yishuv press, see Report, December 12, 1945, F13/573, CZA. 49 Alami interview, November 11, 1945, P575/29, Leo Kohn MSS; Azzam note, November 11, 1945, FO 371/45395; FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, 817–819; Grafftey-Smith to Bevin, November 14, 1945, FO 371/45384, PRO; Hooper to Byrnes, November 21, 1945; Moose to State, November 21, 1945; both in 867N.01/11-2145, SD; “Arab Political News,” November 15, 1945, S25/9229, CZA. For the Hoover plan, see Rafael Medoff, “Herbert Hoover’s Plan for Palestine: A Forgotten Episode in American Middle East Diplomacy,” American Jewish History 79 (Summer 1990): 449–476; New York World-Telegram, November 19, 1945. 50 Trevor, Under the White Paper, 161–162; OAG to Colonial Secretary, November 15, 1945, FO 371/45385, PRO.

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51 Ben-Gurion diary, November 17, 1945; Kimche, Seven Fallen Pillars, 144. 52 Cohen, Palestine and the Great Powers, 75; GHQ Middle East to Cabinet Offices, November 14, 1945, and Bevin notation, FO 371/45385, PRO; Scott (Acting Chief Secretary) proclamation, November 15, 1945, S25/5601, CZA. 53 Ben-Gurion diary, November 23, 1945; Cunningham to Colonial Secretary, November 24, 1945, FO 371/45386, PRO. 54 Avriel, Open the Gates!, 220–228; Trevor, Under the White Paper, 163–164. For more information, see Histadrut cables of November 22, and 24–25, 1945, International Department, Sequence 1, Box 5, Labour Party Archives, Transport House, London. 55 Linton to Bakstansky, November 21, 1945, Z5/829, CZA; Silver to Swope, November 21, 1945, Harold Manson files; Sack to Hatch, November 17, 1945; both in Silver MSS; Halifax to Bevin, November 16, 1945; Halifax to Bevin, November 23, 1945; both in FO 371/45402, PRO; Einstein statement, November 28, 1945, ACJ files, ZA; Memorandum to Byrnes, November 23, 1945, Refugees-Rescue of file, AJC; Celler to Truman, November 15, 1945, OF 204 misc., Box 5, HSTL. For the genesis of the ACJ and its efforts during World War II, see Penkower, Decision on Palestine Deferred. 56 Truman diary, November 24, 1945 (cited in the Jerusalem Post, July 13, 2003). 57 Hilldring to Chief of Staff, November 17, 1945, CAD 383. July 7, 1945– November 30, 1945 (SCC I). RG 165, NA; E. Roosevelt to Truman, November 20, 1945; Truman to E. Roosevelt, November 26, 1945; both in Eleanor Roosevelt MSS, FDRL. 58 Trevor, Under the White Paper, 164–171 (giving a total figure of about 75 settlers wounded); Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 861–864; Z. Gilad, Sefer HaPalmah, 641–642; Avriel, Open the Gates, 222–229; Baffy, 227. The military attack on Givat Hayim led to the deaths of seven young men and women, the serious wounding of 26, with a total of 57 casualties. See “The Siege on Givat Haim,” December 4, 1945, International Department, Seq. 1, Box 5, Labour Party Archives. 59 OSS report, November 20, 1945, XL 30447, RG 226, NA; “Arab Political News,” November 21, 1945, S25/9929, CZA; CID report, November 22, 1945, 47/802; Jerusalem report, November 27, 1945, 47/582; both in HA; Cunningham to Colonial Secretary, November 24, 1945, FO 371/45386, PRO; Lyon to State, November 26, 1945, 867N.01/11-2645, SD. 60 El Banna to British Ambassador, November 5, 1945, FO 371/45395; Hall memo, November 21, 1945, CAB 129/4; both in PRO; Epstein to Fisher, — 136 —

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61

62

63

64

65

66 67 68 69 70

71 72

November 30, 1945, Z6/268, CZA; Winant to State, November 26, 1945, 867N.01/11-2645, SD. For the Mufti’s collaboration with Germany during World War II, see Penkower, Decision on Palestine Deferred, 79–80, 91–92, 108, 131–132, 187, 189, 214, and 285. Bevin record, November 26, 1945, CO 733/461, PRO. For the delegation’s subsequent meeting with the Colonial Secretary, see Memo, November 28, 1945, CO 733/ 461/75872/14B, PRO. The ideological division between “Jews” and “Hebrews” was first advocated by Hillel Kook (Peter Bergson) and his small group of Irgun representatives in the United States during 1944. For their activities during the Holocaust years, see Monty Noam Penkower, The Holocaust and Israel Reborn: From Catastrophe to Sovereignty (Urbana, IL, 1994), chap. 4. David Ben-Gurion, Rebirth and Destiny of Israel, M. Nurock, trans. and ed. (New York, 1954), 151–175. Also see Ben-Gurion’s interview, November 28, 1945, P75/20II, Leo Kohn MSS, ISA. JTA, November 29, 30, 1945; Clark Clifford, with Richard Holbrook, Counsel to the President, A Memoir (New York, 1991), 63; Silver to Truman, November 29, 1945, 867N.01/11-2945, SD; JTA, December 3, 1945. Report, Weizmann-Truman interview, December 4, 1945, S25/7497, CZA; Weizmann to Truman, December 12, 1945, WA; Shertok report at Jewish Agency Executive, Jerusalem, December 16, 1945, CZA. Weizmann to Truman, December 12, 1945, WA and Official Files (OF), HSTL; Rosenwald memo to Truman, December 4, 1945, 867N.01/12-446, SD; JTA, December 5, 1945; Epstein report, December 18, 1945, S25/7497, CZA. Killearn to Foreign Office, FO 371/45396, PRO; Muhammad Khalil, ed., The Arab States and the Arab League (Beirut, 1962), 161. Killearn to FO, December 3, 1945; Smith to FO, December 5, 1945; both in FO371/45396, PRO. Arab League statement, December 5, 1945, FO 371/45396, PRO. Cunningham to Hall, December 4, 1945, FO 371/45388, PRO. JTA, December 2, 1945; A.J. Sherman, Mandate Days: British Lives in Palestine, 1918–1948 (New York, 1998), 173. For a letter from a British officer to the Jewish Agency Executive’s Berl Locker about British antisemitism in Palestine, see Officer to Locker, December 3, 1945, FO 371/45387, PRO. JTA, December 7, 1945. Skorneck reports, December 1 and 6, 1945, Simon Rif kind MSS; Klausner to Stein, December 8, 1945, Klausner MSS, Central Archives of the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem; JTA, December 13, 1945; Schwartz address, December 9, 1945, Paul Baerwald MSS, Rare Books and Manuscript — 137 —

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Collections, Columbia University, New York City; American Jewish Conference report to Rifkind, December 13, 1945, S6/4685, CZA; Gottschalk press release, December 13, 1945, German Mission, Box 66,021, UNRRA files, UN Archives (hereafter UNA), New York City. 73 Slutzky, Sefer HaHagana, vol. 3, part 2, 1053; McNarney directive, December 9, 1945, German Mission, Box 66, 480, UNRRA files, UNA; Rifkind memo, December 15, 1945, Rifkind MSS; Martin Gilbert, Exile and Return: The Struggle for a Jewish Homeland (Philadelphia, PA, 1978), 275. 74 Emerson to Johnson, December 13, 1945, 840.48 Refugees/12-1545, SD. The Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, established as a result of the Evian Conference on Refugees in July 1938, did little to alleviate the unparalleled tragedy which befell European Jewry during the Holocaust. 75 Sasson to Shertok, December 7, 1945, S25/2966, CZA. For Der Judenstaat, the 1896 manifesto by the founder of political Zionism, see Monty Noam Penkower, The Emergence of Zionist Thought (Millwood, NY, 1986), chap. 5. 76 Wagner-Taft to Truman, December 6, 1945, S25/7497, CZA. Halifax reported to the Foreign Office that Wagner, who had received Truman’s approval in midOctober to reintroduce the 1944 resolution, was so angry at the President’s reversal that he emerged from the secret session “white-faced and tightlipped.” Halifax to FO, December 5, 1945, FO 371/45403, PRO. 77 Epstein to Shertok, December 18, 1945, S25/7497, CZA; Palestine Post, December 11, 1945; Truman to Phillips, December 10, 1945, OF 204-B, Box 775, HSTL; McDonald to Hutcheson, December 11, 1945; McDonald to Goldwater, December 12, 1945; both in James G. McDonald MSS, Herbert H. Lehman Collections, Columbia University. For more on the American delegation, Allen Howard Podet, The Success and Failure of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, 1945–1946: Last Chance in Palestine (Lewiston, ME, 1986), 97–112. 78 Palestine Post, December 11, 1945. For more on the British delegation, see Podet, Success and Failure, 83–94. 79 JTA, December 11, 1945. 80 JTA, December 11, 1945; New York Post, December 11, 1945. 81 Speeches, December 11–12, 1945, S5/363; Goldmann’s full report. December 11, 1945, S25/1785; both in CZA. 82 Jewish Agency declaration, December 12, 1945, S25/10488, CZA. 83 Moose to State, November 27, 1945, 867N.01/11-2745; Eddy to State, December 16, 1945, 867N.01/12-1645; Tuck to State, December 12, 1945, 967N.01/121245; Henderson to Acheson, December 12, 1945, 867N.01/12-1245; all in — 138 —

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SD; Norman J. W. Goda, Surviving Survival: James G. McDonald and the Fate of Holocaust Survivors (Washington, D.C., 2015), 4. 84 McDonald diary, Memorandum No. 1, McDonald MSS; Podet-Henderson interview, August 5, 1975, RG163, 2/4, AJA; Henderson to Acheson, December 11, 1945, OF 204-B, Box 775, HSTL; Epstein to Jewish Agency Executive, December 28, 1945, Confidential files-Epstein, ZA; JTA, December 16, 1945. 85 Halifx to Bevin, December 15 and 18, 1945, FO 371/45389, PRO. 86 FO to Halifax, December 17, 1945, CO 733/463/75872/138; Singleton to Hutcheson, December 17, 1945, FO 371/45389; both in PRO. 87 Halifax to FO, December 18, 1945, CO 733/563/75872/138; Halifax to FO, December 19, 1945; Bevin to Attlee, December 19, 1945; both in FO 371/45389; all in PRO. 88 JTA, December 18, 1945; Epstein to Shertok, December 19, 1945, S25/7497 CZA. 89 Pinkerton to State, December 22, 1945, 867N.01/12-2245, SD. For strong reactions in Arab capitals, see Mattison to State, December 21, 1945, 867N.01/12-2145; Porter to State, December 22, 1945, 867N.01/12-2245; both in SD. 90 Akzin to Shapiro, December 20, 1945, Z4/10207, CZA; State to Eddy, January 5, 1945, 867N.01/12-3145, SD. 91 JTA, December 17 and 18, 1945. 92 Hilldring to Patterson, December 3, 1945; Davis to Hilldring, December 13, 1945; both in CAD 383.9, scc 2; Hilldring to Eisenhower, November 17, 1945, CAD 383.7, scc. 1; all in RG 165, War Department Records, NA; Herbert A. Fierst memoirs, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Wash., D.C., January 1, 1972, 39–40. 93 Durbrow to Acheson, December 20, 1945, 840.48 Refugees/12-1945, SD. 94 Warren to Acheson, December 21, 1945; Memo of Conversation, December 21, 1945; both in 840.48 Refugees/12-1945, SD. 95 Hutcheson to Singleton, December 22, 1945, FO371/45389; Hall to Cunningham, December 22, 1945, CO 733/463/75872/138; both in PRO. 96 Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 1119–1120; Gilad, Sefer HaPalmah, 685–686; Kimche, Seven Fallen Pillars, 163–167; Zvi Ben-Tsur, “The Voyage of the ‘Hannah Senesh,’” Palmah Information Center, Tel Aviv. 97 Official Communique No. 37, December 28, 1945, S25/5601, CZA; J. Bowyer Bell, Terror Out of Zion (New York, 1977), 151–152; Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 865; Kimche, Seven Fallen Pillars, 168. 98 Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 866; Bell, Terror Out of Zion, 152. 99 Cunningham to Hall, December 30, 1945, FO 371/45389, PRO. — 139 —

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100 Howe to Martin, December 28, 1945, FO 371/45388, PRO; Goda, Surviving Survival, 3. On December 4 the Cabinet accepted these stringent loan terms, Attlee maintaining until his death that it had no alternative. Peter Hennessy, Never Again, 1945–1951 (New York, 1993), 97. 101 Richard Crossman, Palestine Mission: A Personal Record (New York, 1947), 17–19; Crossman diary, December 30, 1945, Richard Crossman MSS, St. Antony’s College, Oxford. 102 Manchester Guardian, July 31, 2001; Elphinston to Bentwich, December 10, 1945, A255/622; Epstein to members, December 28, 1945, L35/98; both in CZA. His anti-Zionist bias, evident in Beeley’s assessment of the Palestine question for Chatham House’s Survey of International Affairs 1938, had been pointed out three years earlier by Louis B. Namier, Conflicts: Studies in Contemporary History (London, 1942), 116–117. Also see Elie Kedourie, The Chatham House Version and Other Middle-Eastern Studies (New York, 1970). For Magnes’s support of the Anglo-American Commitee, see Magnes to Hinden, December 27, 1945, folder 221, Judah Magnes MSS, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. 103 JTA, September 4, 1945; Linton to Executive, n.d., Z4/30701; P. letter no. 11, January 1, 1946, S25/8004; both in CZA. 104 C-in-C Middle East to War Office, December 29, 1945, Air 20/4963, PRO; New York Times, December 31, 1945; Palestine Post, January 10, 1946. 105 Cadogan to Massigli, December 8, 1945, FO371/45421, PRO; Hare to State, January 1, 1946, 867N.01/12-2945; Kirk to State, December 18, 1945 840.48 Refugees/12-2845; both in SD. 106 Trevor, Under the White Paper, 177; Ben-Zvi report, Ben-Gurion diary, January 1, 1945, BGA.

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3. The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry

On New Year’s Day 1946, the British Cabinet chose to defer a forceful confrontation with the yishuv and its leadership. Cunningham’s recommended plan of action against the Jewish Agency, persuasively argued the Colonial Office’s Parliamentary Undersecretary Arthur Creech Jones, would strengthen the extremists, produce a backlash in the United States, and lead the Agency to reject all participation with the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. The High Commissioner’s second proposal to continue Jewish immigration into Palestine at 1,500 per month, a measure that he thought might diminish “the dangerous hysterical and emotional masses,” met with approval. Halifax had warned that otherwise an anti-British campaign would ensue, and Truman the very same day asked Attlee how many certificates were currently being issued each month by the mandatory. Pressed by the Colonial Office and Bevin, the Prime Minister agreed not to announce the new immigration quota until the concurrence of the Arab states was again sought. HMG would “in the last resort” take its own decision in the matter.1 In light of the Agency’s announcement that it was not prepared to cooperate with the government in the suppression of terrorism, Cunningham’s Executive Council met at the same time in Jerusalem to consider future steps. Ben-Gurion had just confirmed this refusal in a private letter to the High Commissioner, deeming the present policy pursued by the government to be “primarily responsible for the tragic situation which has developed in Palestine,” even while again expressing his colleagues’ “complete and emphatic dissociation” from the dissident groups’ attacks on December 27. The Colonial Secretary’s authority, those present understood, would be required for the withdrawal of

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recognition from the Agency, perhaps coupled with measures against certain of its members, the assumption of control of its funds, and/ or the physical occupation of its premises. They resolved to consider preparing a memorandum setting out the manner in and occasions on which the Agency had failed to discharge its obligations under Article 4 of the Mandate, this to serve as the basis of an announcement of the grounds on which strong steps had been taken against that body. With the Council’s agreement, Cunningham would also request Hall to ask the Arab states to desist from boycotting Zionist goods, with the possibility of reprisals if such representations failed, and to put an end to the difficulties experienced by Jewish inhabitants of Palestine in obtaining visas for Iraq, Syria, and Egypt.2 Cunningham’s hope to drive a wedge between the political and humanitarian issues relating to Palestine by continuing immigration on a small scale appeared naïve. On January 3, Chief Secretary Shaw announced that no more entry visas would be issued “for the time being” to Jewish immigrants, London to decide whether this would be granted during the period that the Anglo-American Committee conducted its investigations. Wagner quickly cabled Byrnes that the official announcement was a “contemptuous disregard” of the agreement between the two governments prior to the Committee’s appointment. He considered this to be in line with the “insidious” effort of British worldwide propaganda before the inquiry began in order to prejudice the yishuv’s rights to development. Even the ACJ’s Rosenwald appealed to the British government via Halifax, with a copy to Byrnes, to continue the immigration of Jews to Palestine in accordance with the statements of Attlee and Bevin on November 13, 1945, and Truman’s recent pronouncement. In his view, the joint Committee’s difficult task should be undertaken under “the most favorable auspices.” The newly announced restrictive policy, he added, would likely hamper the Committee’s effectiveness” by generating “an atmosphere of hostility and discord.”3 The “Morgan affair” reflected the great difficulty in separating Palestine’s destiny from the plight of Holocaust survivors across Europe. On January 2, Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick E. Morgan, former head of the Allied staff in London to organize the June 1944 Overlord invasion at Normandy and currently UNRRA director in Germany, publicly emphasized the need for a definite international effort to resettle the “hard core” problem of Baltic nationals and Jewish DPs. In an unguarded — 142 —

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reply to a questioner at the press conference, he then spoke of seeing Jews arriving in Berlin from Poland who were “well dressed, well fed, rosy cheeked, and have plenty of money.” He believed that the Jews of Europe were “growing into a world force” aiming to get out of the Continent, and that the conundrum of Palestine was closely linked to this mass movement. Morgan reiterated that his was merely a fleeting glimpse of the problem, and other qualifying remarks indicated his concern for the Jewish refugees. The controversial comments were taken out of context, however, and spread across the media. Morgan’s subsequent, formal expression of sympathy went unnoted. Weizmann, the AZEC, the World Jewish Congress, the American journalist I. F. Stone, and others soon branded Morgan’s conference reply as utterly false, and several linked the conspiracy charge to British anti-Zionism and even Nazi doctrine. Prime Minister Edward Osóbka-Morawski acknowledged in the Sejm that pogroms had occurred in Poland, and expressed sympathy for Zionist aspirations; UNRRA central headquarters withheld comment. Ultimately, with support from Eisenhower, Rifkind, and the intercession of well-connected lawyer Fanny Holtzman of New York, UNRRA Director-General Herbert Lehman decided to keep Morgan, who offered his resignation the next month, in his post.4 Valid grounds existed for Morgan’s warning of a “second Exodus” of Jews, but most survivors had good cause to flee. Mosad L’Aliya headquarters in Paris, aided by soldiers of the Jewish Brigade, Hagana operatives, and Zionist youth groups, began briha crossing of borders from Rumania to Yugoslavia and Hungary. JDC funding proved essential in this regard, reflecting Schwartz’s commitment the previous month to Kaplan of the Jewish Agency to continue defraying transportation costs of aliya bet to the extent of £40 per person. UNRRA representatives in Munich reported that 500 children had arrived from Hungary, with thousands more expected shortly in Bavaria. Polish Ambassador to Washington Oscar Lange confirmed that the chief reason for the departure of Jews from his country was the fact that many found it impossible to live in a place “which is a cemetery” of relatives and friends, while reactionary underground groups continued with antisemitic assaults. “Acute” Jew-hatred existed not only in Poland, but also in Latvia, Lithuania, and the western portion of the USSR, reported a U.S. Army captain to the State Department’s Political Advisor for Germany, Robert D. Murphy. In addition to “unsettled” conditions in Poland, observed — 143 —

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the weekly intelligence report of the U.S. Third Army, another reason for the movement of Jews into the American zone was “traditional longing of the European Jew for [the] establishment of a Jewish State as [a] home for himself and his children and his children’s children.”5 Throughout the month, the issue of Jewish “infiltrees” continued to bedevil the U.S. State and War Departments. A letter from Byrnes on January 7 to Acting Secretary of War Kenneth C. Royall conveyed his associates’ judgment that it would be best to close the borders as of “a date sufficiently far in the future” such as January 25, giving them sufficient time to notify the governments of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union. Two days later, State’s refugee expert explained to James E. Doyle, a young lawyer serving under Byrnes’s Counselor Benjamin V. Cohen, that unless the movement were halted, anywhere up to 200,000 Polish Jews would enter the U.S. zone in Germany within the next six months to a year, and many “might be motivated primarily” to congregate in an strategic area where their very presence would constitute “a strong pressure” on London and Washington, “particularly in connection with Palestine.” In immediately ensuing conversations, the two departments came to understand that the closing of the borders would await Hilldring’s determination that the “population saturation point” had been reached in the U.S. zone. As a consequence, Fierst and colleagues “managed” to interpret Byrnes’ letter to mean that the borders would be closed at some time in the future, the matter first to be reviewed again or, at any event, adequate preparations might be made for the “consequences.” This informal sense was communicated in a directive to Generals McNarney in Germany and the sympathetic Mark Clark in Austria, declaring that three weeks’ advance notice would be given to them before the borders were to be closed.6 In the meantime, Bevin tried to persuade the Arab states to be “reasonable” and agree to the limited 1,500 monthly quota for Jewish entry into Palestine. This humanitarian gesture, he argued, would allow for the Anglo-American Committee to operate in a calm atmosphere while gaining the Arabs worldwide appreciation. No state individually, nor the Arab League collectively, rejected the proposals. None, however, was prepared to give a final reply. The Arab Higher Committee (AHC), approached by Cunningham in like vein, had only asked for time to consider. (A Jewish Agency intelligence report revealed that the AHC soon called a conference of prominent Arabs, at the end of which all — 144 —

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emphatically rejected the High Commissioner’s request and refused to admit a single Jewish immigrant into Palestine. This was officially conveyed to Cunningham on January 19.) In addition, Creech Jones pointed out to Bevin, the lack of a quota—which he thought questionable in legal terms—had created a “most difficult” situation and one of “considerable danger” in Palestine. The Hagana he thought likely to try to free the over 900 Jewish immigrants presently interned in the Atlit camp. Should that occur and the casualties inevitably be “heavy,” it might make the Anglo-American Committee’s visit “impracticable.” The time had come, he concluded, to give effect to the Cabinet decision of January 1 and to prescribe a quota.7 Reports that the surviving 80,000 Polish Jews wished to go to Palestine, aided by Zionist emissaries across Europe, alarmed the Foreign Office. George Rendel, head of the Eastern Department and consistent anti-Zionist, cautioned Bevin that admitting them into the British zone would be “playing the Jewish game,” causing both “great political inconvenience and expense” to HMG and “great hardship” to the Jews themselves. Sir Noel Charles, the British Ambassador in Rome, aware of an “escape” route from the British zone in Austria to Italy, proposed that the Italian government be asked to take action against this “clandestine influx.” “There is a spontaneous general wish on the part of European Jewry to go to Palestine,” Refugee Department head Douglas Mackillop acknowledged, and “though it is magnified and artificially fostered by Zionist propaganda, it is a real aspiration.” To counter adverse publicity, Whitehall issued a statement on January 11 that HMG had admitted 630 Jewish refugees into Palestine two days earlier from Rumania “within the limits of the quota.”8 In the Colonial Office’s view, the Anglo-American Committee would find itself unable to recommend any type of unitary government as suitable for Palestine, and so it suggested that the Foreign Office consider its scheme for provincial autonomy. Partition such as proposed by the Peel Commission, John Martin wrote to Howe on January 10, would spark “serious disorders” involving heavy British military commitments both in Palestine and throughout the Middle East, as well as have “a disastrous effect” on Muslim opinion in India. Bevin’s preference for a tripartite federation linking Palestine and Transjordan might prove to be the best solution, but the time was not yet ripe for its creation. Breaking up Palestine into cantons along the Swiss model, however, — 145 —

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“a federal scheme in embryo,” contained the seeds for development and self-government for Arabs and Jews. Martin urged that a discussion between the two concerned departments take place soon, and if the Cabinet approved the plan, it could be given to the Committee members for “due consideration” before they reached their final conclusions.9 The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine had commenced its public hearings three days earlier, meeting in the big conference room on the second floor of the State Department building at Seventeenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest. A statement from Truman expressed his hope that the twelve-man team would successfully complete their examination of the terms of reference. He added that he viewed the British willingness to begin the hearings in Washington as evidence of the cooperative spirit which he was confident would characterize all of the Committee’s operations. Singleton had made the same point at the group’s first formal gathering as Acheson’s guests for luncheon in Washington’s Blair House on January 4, emphasizing that “we must endeavor to capture in peace the wartime partnership of Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill,” demonstrating that Great Britain and the United States “can together solve the problems before them.”10 The week devoted to receiving testimony began, as Crum later recalled, in an atmosphere of “tense expectation.” Speaking before the crowded chamber of Room 474, both Harrison and Schwartz described the grim conditions prevailing among the 1,250,000 Jews who had survived in Europe, and advocated the quick evacuation of non-repatriables to Palestine, where a clear majority wished to go. That country could absorb 100,000 refugees within six to nine months and absorb more than a million immigrants within the next ten years, Nathan observed, further enhancing the already evident improvement in Arab living conditions. Lowdermilk backed this with a depiction of the possibilities of a Jordan Valley Authority (JVA) project, much like the Tennessee Valley Authority, for cheap electric power and adequate irrigation throughout the area. Wise and Neumann propounded the historical, legal, and political arguments for Palestine’s formation as a Jewish state open to the Jews of the world. Judith Epstein brought Lord Morrison to tears with her depiction of Hadassah’s Youth Aliya program, which had saved and resettled almost 17,000 Jewish children there since its inception in 1934. Mizrachi religious-Zionist Ze’ev Gold, Labor Zionist Hayim — 146 —

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Greenberg, Louis Brandeis disciple Robert Szold, the American Jewish Congress’s Irving Miller, and B’nai Brith President Henry Monsky echoed the Zionist message. The non-Zionist Proskauer advocated that the Jewish DPs be admitted to Palestine, “the only place where they can go immediately,” a further reflection of American Jewish unity regarding the 100,000. (His detailed refugee-centered program on humanitarian grounds, not requiring a Jewish state, pleased the co-chairmen greatly.) Isidore Hershfield of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society said much the same.11 Other spokesmen challenged the classic Zionist perspective. Joseph Beck of the National Refugee Service advocated immigration into the United States, while Isaac Steinberg of the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonization championed Australia and possibly Canada. Bergson, representing the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation, distinguished between “Jews” the world over and “Hebrews” (the yishuv and all who wished to live in the free republic of Palestine “without a state religion”). Rosenwald, claiming that the Jews were a religion and not a people, stated that his organization had 10,000 members “who rejected the Hitlerian concept of a Jewish State.” His charge that “Jewish nationalism” was a cause of antisemitism sat well with Crossman, but McDonald pointed out that Jewish historians Heinrich Graetz and Simon Dubnow spoke of the “Jewish people,” and that pro-Zionist statesmen such as Lloyd George, Jan Smuts, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill would not have lent themselves to a program “that implied, even remotely, divided loyalty.” Wise, later depicted glowingly by Crossman as a modern-day biblical prophet Micah, shot up in indignation and cited Brandeis’s declaration that no inconsistency existed between Zionism and American patriotism. Hutcheson ended that altercation and the questioning of the ACJ president by saying that the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice whom Wise cited was his personal friend, and that Brandeis’s outstanding characteristic was that he had the utmost respect for the views of others. Sensing the veiled reprimand, Wise thundered back that Brandeis tolerated opinions but not slander and defamation (a retort not recorded in the official transcript.)12 The Arab case had its proponents as well. Leland Albright of the Foreign Missions Conference of North America claimed that Palestine had more than done its share in providing a haven for more than a half million Jews in the last twenty-five years; a Jewish state would — 147 —

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seek Lebensraum (in the Nazi sense) by encroaching on neighboring countries; and free elections to determine the country’s future should permit a “purely” religious and cultural Jewish home-center of “limited proportions.” M. S. Massoud and the Rev. T. F. Summerhayes of the Canadian-Arab Friendship League declared that the Arab majority merited independence on democratic principles in the land holy to three religions. Palestine’s Arabs objected to the process of industrialization introduced by the Jews, noted History professor John Hazam of City College, not wishing the country to being turned into “a combination of Pittsburgh and Coney Island.” Executive director of the Institute for Arab American Affairs Khalil Totah claimed that trouble had surfaced in Palestine ever since the Zionists’ arrival, and he suggested that the Arabs might gravitate to another power (a hint at the Soviet Union, which Crossman named blackmail). This side’s best advocate was Philip Hitti, professor of Semitic literature at Princeton University, who cautioned that the Arabs would never submit to an alien way of life being imposed on their home, which dated from time immemorial; Jewish immigration seemed to them “an attenuated form of conquest.” Especially persuasive appeared to be the presentation of Frank W. Notestein, director of the Office of Population Research at Princeton, who claimed that the high Arab birthrate—twice that of Jews—would make it difficult for the Jews to maintain a majority in Palestine after the year 1970.13 Einstein’s appearance proved to be the most sensational. As McDonald’s diary put it, the gentle scientist, greeted with the audience’s loud applause, proceeded to “throw bombs” at the British, the extreme Zionists, and the Committee. In a silent voice, he accused the Colonial Office of the same “divide and rule” policy as HMG practiced in India between Hindu and Muslim in order to keep Arab and Jew apart, and so serve imperialist interests. He repudiated a Jewish commonwealth and all nationalism, while tarring the Committee as “a smokescreen” for the two governments. (A few days later he would tell Wise that “a solution on the basis of an honestly bi-national character is the only one we can hope for,” and that a rigid demand for a “Jewish State” would have “only undesirable results for us.”) Crossman bore down hard and asked if the Americans should take over responsibility “and show how wrong we are.” Einstein replied that Palestine should be placed under an international regime. Taking issue with the “smoke-screen” phrase, Crum suggested that the Committee be judged by the actions following — 148 —

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its recommendations. “I would be glad to be wrong,” Einstein answered in benign fashion.14 The eminent Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, speaking on behalf of the executive committee of the Christian Council on Palestine, sat down on January 14 as the last to give testimony. The Jews, “a nation scattered among the nations of the world,” had a right to a homeland, he began. Unlike the previous Jewish and Arab spokesmen, he declared that no “perfectly just solution” could be found. Rather, the fact that the Arabs had a vast hinterland in the Middle East, and the Jews had nowhere to go, established the “relative justice” of their claim and of their cause. The Americans, he averred, should help the British arrive at an over-all solution of the Palestinian question. Hutcheson, gratified at that “Christian point of view,” agreed with Niebuhr that Palestine should be referred to the UN for a trusteeship, to be implemented by the two governments. For this witness, if Notestein’s figures were indeed accurate then immigration should not be halted for fear of establishing a Jewish majority. Lacking a state, he concluded, the Jews were “almost liquidated” in the last world war, and the price paid would continue to be high so long as “the group has to maintain itself in a minority position wherever it is.”15 In adjourning the hearings, Hutcheson expressed the possibility that any solution to the question at hand might not be open to conciliation, but only found by “determining the principles which shall control and render judgment.” In fact, although rendered almost speechless by Wise’s presentation, he indicated at various times opposition to Jewish statehood. As an “Old Testament Christian,” he viewed Jews as a religious entity, and could not grasp a Jewish state in secular terms. Singleton also objected to Jewish sovereignty, and thought that some European Jews would want to return to their homes. He vigorously attacked Nathan’s criticisms of HMG’s policy, and agreed with Proskauer that any determination of Palestine’s future should be postponed as long as possible. Manningham-Buller, the most hostile of the Britishers, declared that the Mandate only called for a Jewish home, Palestine was too small for large immigration, and, as he put it to Greenberg, the exclusion of Arabs on Jewish National Fund land was a form of racist discrimination. Crossman considered that both the Zionists and Arabs had badly overstated their case. A private three-hour discussion with Jewish Agency economic advisor David Horowitz led him to wonder, however, — 149 —

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if perhaps the Jewish nation “had been born” in Palestine. McDonald’s pro-Zionism was evident, while clandestine briefings by Neumann and the American Jewish Conference’s Washington, D.C. secretary, David Wahl, steadily pulled Crum towards their camp. While Buxton appeared friendly as well, the other Committee members had yet to make their inclinations clear.16 The next morning, Truman received the twelve men for a quarter-hour in the Oval Office. Turning to the British delegation, he said that he received thousands of letters a day on this problem and hundreds of telegrams, a volume of mail never seen before in the history of the White House. There was no problem that concerned him more deeply, he went on, than the Jewish DPs. The democratic world, so Crum recorded the tenor of the President’s remarks, had to give these innocent human beings a chance to rebuild their lives. He and the U.S. government would do everything in their power to implement a solution. The matter, he urged, must be settled “properly and quickly.” One of the British members asked how it felt to be President. Truman replied very simply: “I don’t feel that I am. I feel that I am trying to carry on for someone else.” During a tour of the White House that followed, the visitors were permitted, thanks to Phillips’s intervention, to enter the State Dining Room to see George Healy’s magnificent painting of a pensive Lincoln. They then made for New York City, before boarding the Queen Elizabeth on the 18th for London.17 Phillips’s diary recorded his satisfaction that the Washington hearings proved useful as a means of “blowing off the steam of the Zionist cause,” but they, in fact, discouraged the American Zionist leadership. Wise deemed Singleton “a crusty, frosty, insinuating old devil.” AZEC secretary Arthur Lourie thought the British chairman was present in order to defend a policy established by London in advance, Hutcheson “apparently not a man of great vision,” and the American members shifting to the sentiments of their counterparts. He was surprised that partition, which he thought the Committee might do well to consider, did not come up for serious discussion. Crossman “is in no position to be trusted by us,” Wahl concluded after being kept secretly informed by Crum. “The cards are stacked against us,” wrote Max Kirschblum to President Meyer Berlin (later Bar-Ilan) of the Mizrachi World Organization. The day the hearings closed Silver told his colleagues that, as far as the Committee was concerned, the conflict between the humanitarian problem and — 150 —

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our political objectives was hindering the Zionist case; even Truman had said that he was not interested in a Jewish commonwealth. One “redeeming fact,” Silver observed, was that the Committee’s recommendations were not binding, and in all likelihood a substantial number of Jews would be enabled to go to Palestine.18 Agreeing with Silver’s evaluation, Epstein went further in warning Shertok that Britain’s wish for the United States to participate in Palestine and as an ally in a sphere of growing Russian danger would be readily achieved be means of a vague trusteeship, leaving in HMG’s hands the strategic benefits of the Holy Land. A UN trusteeship, as a transitional stage between that of unlimited Jewish immigration to Palestine and the establishment of Jewish sovereignty, could ultimately lead to a Jewish commonwealth. Realism dictated that the Jewish Agency should press for a partitioned Palestine, whose limited confines would make it easier to achieve a Jewish majority. It was essential to transfer Europe’s Jewish masses as soon as possible to Palestine, especially as the increasing tension in Russo-Anglo-American relations might result in Moscow’s prohibiting all Jewish emigration from countries within her orbit. The diplomatic apparatus of statehood would permit the World Zionist Organization to assume some sort of relations with the USSR, a great power in world affairs and geographically closer to Palestine than her two major rivals. Partition represented the only possible alternative to an Arab state in Palestine; a bi-national state, as advocated by HaShomer HaTsa’ir and Dr. Magnes, would require a permanent international trusteeship, or else it would soon develop into an Arab state. For reasons of tactics, it would not be wise to advocate this now, he emphasized, but serious work had to be done in advance to win over US and British public opinion, and particularly members of the Anglo-American Committee. For Epstein, a satisfactory partition had to include the Negev and the Galilee, and exclude only the Arab “triangle.” Otherwise, it would spell “physical degeneration and political suicide.” He would do nothing to propagate these ideas until hearing Shertok’s advice on this matter.19 British fears of Soviet incursion into the Middle East, an anxiety that Henderson endorsed in a talk with Crum and that Beeley would soon reiterate to the American delegation, had a basis in fact. Seeing the USSR effort to control Persian Azerbaijan and put pressure on Turkey for a base on the Black Sea Straits, Truman had recently written in confidence to Byrnes “I am tired of babying the Soviets.” (Truman — 151 —

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resented Byrnes’s arrogating authority to report publicly about the Moscow Conference, and considered him, as did U.S. Embassy chargé d’affairs George Kennan, too conciliatory there with the Russians.) Moscow’s counselor at its embassy in Cairo, quoting Azzam Pasha’s earlier public statement of wonder why the Russians were not taking part in resolving the Palestine question, cautioned the head of the Near East Department of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs at the beginning of the month that “a solution reached without our participation will not be to our advantage.” Palestine, he noted, was also located on the sea routes to various ports “in our own country.” British Minister Frank Roberts in Moscow concluded that the Soviet Union now regarded itself as “a Great Moslem power,” and would not allow the many Baltic and Polish Jews who wished to emigrate to Palestine to do so. He added that, under Soviet pressure, the authorities in Sofia had made the renunciation of Zionism a condition for the restoration to Bulgarian Jews of the property which they had lost in World War II under the German occupation. The one reference in the Soviet press to the Anglo-American Committee hearings quoted at length Einstein’s criticisms of British policy in Palestine, coupled with his opposition to a Jewish state. The way in which the proceedings were reported left the impression that the correct solution lay in genuine cooperation between Jews and Arabs, but that could only be achieved under UN trusteeship, and not under existing British rule.20 The struggle between the mandatory and the Jews increased in bitterness the same month. On January 12, an Irgun attack on an armed train stole £35,000 in cash, the payroll of the Palestine Railway staff. Three days later, a demonstration in Jerusalem of the Va’ad HaLeumi, the chief rabbinate, and delegates of local councils, communities, and agricultural settlements informed Cunningham that the yishuv would not “acquiesce in the undermining of its future and in its surrender to the mercy of others.” On January 17, 908 young survivors about the aliya bet 500-ton schooner Enzo Sereni, named in memory of an elder yishuv parachutist who was killed in Dachau, were escorted by a British destroyer into Haifa harbor and then interned in Atlit. The same day, after Sudanese guards at the British prison in Eritrea killed two Irgun inmates and wounded twelve, the British commander refused the demands of hunger strikers on the grounds that Jews had declared war on the Empire. In turn, the Irgun assaulted the Jerusalem prison and — 152 —

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damaged an electric station near the Palestine Broadcasting Service; two British officers and at least one attacker were killed in an exchange of fire. The next evening, a Hagana time-bomb completely demolished the searchlight tower of the coastguard station at Givat Olga; a related operation against the RAF radar station on Mt. Carmel failed. Opening the assembly of the Sh’eirit HaPleita in Munich, Ben-Gurion urged the attendees to continue their fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the yishuv for unrestricted immigration to Palestine.21 The reactions of His Majesty’s Government came soon. Bevin concurred with Creech Jones’s appeal to continue Jewish entry at 1,500 per month, telling his Middle East ambassadors that the “whole situation is arousing feeling out of all proportion to the small number… while complete stoppage of immigration is being used with much effort as propaganda material in America.” This would last for three months as of the previous mid-December, when the White Paper quota had run out; the decision was relayed to Truman, while the Arab states heard of this on an informal basis “in the belief that official communications might inspire formal catalogues of objections.” At the same time, London informed the UN that Transjordan (originally three-quarters of the Palestine Mandate area until separated by the British in 1922) would be granted independence, despite Zionist protests that issues affecting the Palestine Mandate were sub judice until the Anglo-American Committee reported. No attention was paid to Goldmann’s confidential information, which Ambassador Inverchapel found “might be useful,” that Egyptian Prime Minister Sidky Pasha personally favored partition, and that Azzam Parsha said that a Jewish state would be welcomed by the Arabs as a member of a regional federation of states. (Speaking to journalist Jon Kimche, Azzam saw this as “a likely development.”) Rather, new Defence (Emergency) Regulations posted in the mandatory gazette on January 28 increased the penalties for all engaged in unlawful immigration, while detention orders could be issued without any limitation of time and searches made without warrant. The Cabinet’s Overseas Reconstruction Committee, under Bevin’s prodding, resolved to work with the Italian government against illegal emigration, as well as have Jews “filtering” through British zones in Germany and Austria “dealt with” by a reduction in rations. “Most of the Jewish migrants from Poland,” the Foreign Secretary opined, “were influenced by political rather than racial motives [antisemitism] in their efforts to reach Palestine.”22 — 153 —

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On January 30, a force of more than 2,000 airborne troops formed a cordon around four sections of Tel Aviv, while Palestine police and the military carried out a six-hour search and interrogated several hundred men. Two persons were held for further questioning. Reacting to a ten-day curfew in Jerusalem, the Palestine Post editorialized that the yishuv’s spirit “is not broken by these measures,” which “threaten to generate contempt.” As tension mounted, the mandatory announced that Jamal Husseini, who had been exiled from Palestine in 1937 for incitement during the Arab Revolt and had ended up behind bars in Southern Rhodesia in 1941 for his role in the pro-Axis revolt in Iraq, had been allowed to re-enter the country. Kol Yisrael immediately warned that the Jewish resistance movement would oppose the rigid Defence Regulations just issued: “We know that we can expect from you a series of terrorist acts, but we will be compelled to reply, and the Holy Land will be converted into a bloodbath.” “We officially inform you,” the Hagana radio broadcast added, “that the Jewish resistance does not recognize your laws and carrying them out will be considered a criminal act.” A dispatch from the Reuter correspondent in Palestine, published in London, quoted the underground newspaper of the Hagana as saying that it would bring five times as many Jews without visas into Palestine this year as it did in 1945.23 By this time, the American members of the joint Committee had received a rude shock before reaching the port of Southampton. Three days into the choppy voyage across the Atlantic, Phillips gave the group a stenographic record of Roosevelt’s conversation with Ibn Saud. It revealed that the President had gone further than his subsequent letter to the Sunni leader, personal promises to Zionist leaders notwithstanding. FDR’s spoken commitment that he would do nothing to harm the Arabs, echoing State Department cables of assurance to Arab rulers since 1938 to counter pro-Zionist Congressional and party proclamations, led Crum to declare that he saw no point in continuing their task. Singleton replied: “It appears that Great Britain is not the only power who promises the same thing to two different groups,” only serving to bring the two nations “closer in the world ahead,” while another Britisher sent Crum a note: “Remember the Chief was a very sick man at the time. Don’t be too hard on him.” Years later, Buxton recalled that a furious Hutcheson railed: “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can tell you I will not be a duplicitous son-of-a-bitch!” — 154 —

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As appointees of Truman, he did not think that the Americans should be bound by any prior declarations. Newspaperman Gerold Frank, hearing of this outburst by “Texas Joe” and receiving a copy of the confidential file from Crum, wrote to Silver that it now appeared the Committee, to protect its own good name, “will finally air the entire business.” Buxton, a liberal Republican, concluded thus to his colleagues: “In spite of all the correspondence, we’ll call the shots as we see them.”24 On January 25, the Committee began a week of public hearings in London’s Royal Empire Society at Northumberland Avenue. Board of Deputies of British Jews president Brodetsky appeared as the primary Zionist spokesman, buttressed by Poalei Zion’s Nathan Jackson and former Colonial Secretary Leopold Amery, a pro-partition advocate who had helped draft the Balfour Declaration. Leonard Montefiore of the Jewish Colonization Association and Leonard Stein of the AngloJewish Association reiterated Proskauer’s appeal on humanitarian grounds; the Jewish Fellowship’s Louis Gluckstein echoed Rosenwald’s testimony. Viscount Herbert Samuel urged the admission of 50,000 Jews annually, raising the Arab standard of living, and a temporary system whereby rival communities in Palestine would be administered by their religious or ethnic groups until they thought in political party terms. All were far more moderate than their American Jewish counterparts, and certainly more so than General Sir Edward Spears, British Ambassador to the Levant during World War II, who defended Arab pro-German leanings in that conflict, equated Zionism with Nazi doctrine, and appealed for Arab sovereignty in Palestine lest the whole Middle East be set aflame. Labourite Thomas Reid MP, a member of the 1938 Woodhead Commission, asserted that partition was economically, militarily, and morally unsound; Labour resolutions were vague and hurried; the Jewish refugee problem “is not a Palestinian problem”; and a Palestinian state should be established before 1949 with an Arab majority. Speaking for the Arab state representatives, headed by the strikingly garbed Saudi crown prince Emir Feisal, president of the Iraqi Senate Fares al-Khoury demanded an end to Jewish immigration and the immediate independence for an Arab state in Palestine.25 Little new emerged in this evidence that differed from the Washington hearings. Questions were rather stereotyped in character, Lourie tellingly reported to his superiors. McDonald, Crum, and Buxton remained friendly to the Zionists. Hutcheson, on the other — 155 —

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hand, confirmed his opposition to a Jewish state, and went so far as to publicly discount Congressional resolutions, party platforms, “and all that kind of stuff.” Notestein’s figures and forecasts continued to impress many of the members, who also asked about the use of force against the current Arab majority, the JNF lease, and the non-employment of Arab labor. Aydelotte appeared to side with Hutcheson in favoring Singleton’s distinguishing between the claims of the DPs and the political problem of Palestine. The British judge, read Phillips’s diary, spoke to some witnesses as if they were criminals before the bar. Crum tried unsuccessfully for an interim report favoring an entry of 50,000– 100,000 survivors, but the others thought they could not in justice do so before visiting Palestine. With the possible exception of Crick, the British members pressed for the eventual elimination of the Jewish Agency. Crossman, too, remained perplexed by the Jews who made up the bulk of the Zionist movement, and who were encouraged to have a loyalty both to their home country and to their national home. In addition, he grasped early on that Attlee’s government could not “sidestep” the Palestine issue, unlike the Democratic Administration and the Congress, who were pledged to support Zionist claims even as the State and War Departments desired to avoid a conflict with the Arab states. He therefore guessed that the Cabinet, overwhelmed by domestic problems and haunted by Soviet expansion, had set up the joint inquiry in the hope of postponing a decision while possibly securing American support for Britain in the Middle East. He wondered whether this end could be achieved.26 Bevin’s impromptu remarks at a luncheon on January 28 for the entire group offered a ray of hope. Surrounded by Hall, Creech Jones, Noel-Baker, and former Colonial Secretary Oliver Stanley in the Dorchester Hotel, he rose to toast the health of the Committee. Jokingly, he thanked its members for removing responsibility from his shoulders for at least 120 days. Then, slowly but emphatically, he declared that if they achieved a unanimous report, “we shall accept your recommendations.” The rest of his speech was devoted to an attack on racialism, during which he stated that he saw no solution in setting up racial states in Palestine. Crum thought this unconvincing, given HMG’s recent creation of the completely Arab kingdom of Transjordan or British subsidies to Ibn Saud and funds to Syria in order to eliminate the French. Phillips thought the Foreign Secretary’s personal word to follow the — 156 —

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recommendation of a united Committee gratifying but “a bit injudicious”; Singleton reemphasized that, if possible, a unanimous report must emerge. Bevin’s pledge “cheered” the Americans, who had previously suspected the Committee to be only “a stalling device,” Crossman noted. It appeared now that Bevin had an “open mind,” although one Britisher whispered to Crum that they all had to “convince Ernie that whatever comes out of this is really his idea, then he will get behind it.”27 Individual meetings behind the scenes played a significant role for some. Goldmann urged partition on McDonald and Crum, a solution which Weizmann also advocated to this pair. Told by them that Hutcheson thought a Jewish state suggested a narrow nationalism which many of the inquiry team found “abhorrent,” the ailing WZO chieftain responded with a question: “Surely the world does not think that the Jewish people, who have suffered so much from nationalism, would themselves succumb to it?” Partition, McDonald jotted in his diary, “seemed to hold out for the first time hope for an agreed program.” Phillips and a few others questioned wartime High Commissioner MacMichael’s private advocacy of partition as the only possibility because the sovereign Jews would quickly solve the immigration problem, thinking that the Jewish frontiers would “overflow” into the Arab state and thus create an even more critical situation. Laski informed Crum and McDonald that, contrary to Reid’s assertion, the Labour Party’s strongly pro-Zionist 1944 resolution was carefully studied and represented the “mature opinion” of its members. Aydelotte, closer to the British point of view, broached to Buxton and Crum a radical proposal for very large Jewish immigration on condition of the creation of an enlarged Syrian state. They were much encouraged, but McDonald did not feel certain that Aydelotte would hold to his views “in the clinches.” Undersecretary for Air John Strachey especially impressed Crossman when arguing that the continuing belief of the Chiefs of Staff in a “neutral Arab belt” as essential for British strategy was “sheer nonsense” in the atomic age, while the present Arab rulers, despite blackmail or threat, were “unlikely to go pro-Russian.”28 The Kremlin had still not shown its full hand. At a meeting in London on January 17 of the U.S. Group on Trusteeship, John Dulles relayed that Creech Jones implied that he would accept the American view that “geographic propinquity” was not a necessary criterion to — 157 —

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define the “states directly concerned,” since it would automatically involve the Arab states in Palestine. Yet Andrei Andreevich Gromyko, Delegate of the Soviet Union to the General Assembly, had rejected as “totally unacceptable” Benjamin Cohen’s idea that the mandatory power might be considered the only state so concerned. The Moscow periodical New Times would soon declare that the Anglo-American Committee operated without “lawful foundation,” since it lacked the participation of “the directly interested parties.” Moscow Radio applauded the Arab League’s opposition to a Greater Syria plan, which it labeled “British machination.” Further, a member of the British Communist Party, testifying before the Anglo-American Committee, impressed Phillips with his firm pro-Arab stance.29 Dmitry Manuilsky, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister and one of Lenin’s closest collaborators, explained to Crum that former Soviet Ambassador to London Ivan Maisky had written a glowing report about the yishuv after a visit there in 1945, but a large Muslim population in the Soviet Union also had to be considered. The United States had made the Palestine situation “rather difficult” by not insisting that Russia be represented on the Committee of Inquiry, he added, which could only lead to delay. Britain’s using the Middle East as the military base of its operations might make it impossible for the USSR to accept the Committee’s recommendations. He would do all in his power, Manuilsky stated, to help both in relation to Palestine and in opening the doors of the Soviet Union to such Jews as might wish to find refuge and rehabilitation there. Once the report was in, the two governments should put it up to Moscow; he would personally talk to Stalin about it. As to Russia’s position, so Crum told Goldmann and journalist Gerold Frank repeated to Silver, Manuilsky stated that it was not opposed to a Jewish Palestine, and that their encouragement of Arab independence did not imply a negative attitude to the Jewish Homeland. This was open to question, however, since Stalin had not yet spoken.30 “European realities,” in Crossman’s phrase, persuaded the Committee members that the vast majority of Jews in the DP camps wished to emigrate to Palestine. Although skeptical when seeing the same banners at public demonstrations and convinced that Zionist pressure produced the size of the majority (close to 100 percent in UNRRA surveys), even the British delegates concluded that Harrison’s basic conclusions rang true. “They had smelled the unique and unforgettable smell of huddled, — 158 —

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homeless humanity,” he later wrote, meeting again and again survivors, nearly all of whom were the isolated remnants of families which had been wiped out in the Holocaust, who felt that “their one hope of escape from Hell was Palestine.” When the 2,000 in the Fürth DP camp who had all cast ballots for Palestine as their first choice were asked for their second choice, for example, 500 put down “Krematorium.” The feeling we found for Palestine was “too deep, too passionate, too widespread” to be accounted for by artful Zionist indoctrination, declared Buxton. Visits by delegate teams to Germany, Austria, France, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, with memoranda of representatives from Hungary and Rumania, all countries still rife with antisemitism, disclosed that now only Jewish Communists, a negligible minority, opposed Zionism. Hitler’s persecution, Crossman concluded, had re-created “a Jewish nation, recognized alike by Gentile and by Jew.”31 Graphic personal accounts of the survivors’ travail, especially from Harrison and the actress Helen Waren, convinced Eleanor Roosevelt that 100,000 Jewish refugees should be admitted immediately into Palestine. She was not prepared to grant these stateless Jews specific “Hebrew” ethno-political status, as Bergson had recommended to her, nor could she embrace Welles’s conversion to the cause of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine. “I do not happen to be a Zionist,” she wrote to Truman, “and I know what a difference there is among such Jews as consider themselves nationals of other countries and not a separate nationality,” but she objected to the delay arising from the creation of the Anglo-American Committee. Rather than have His Majesty’s Government again “have some one [sic] pull her chestnuts out of the fire,” the Jews should be allowed to enter Palestine or be apportioned among different nations, “and we would not continue to have on our conscience the death of at least fifty of these poor creatures daily.” A personal visit to the Zilsheim DP camp at this time, where an old Jewish woman knelt in the mud, embracing her knees and murmuring over and over “Israel, Israel,” had made Mrs. Roosevelt realize “for the first time what that small land meant to so many, many people.” Yet she wished to wait for the Committee’s report, which, if favorable to Zionist ambitions, would still necessitate the intervention of the great powers to achieve “the minimum of bloodshed.”32 “A lugubrious homecoming,” wrote McDonald in his diary for February 22, once he and Phillips joined their other colleagues that — 159 —

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evening at the luxurious Bristol Hotel next to the Vienna State Opera. Crum’s earlier press conference, reporting his and Leggett’s opinion that the DP camps in Germany had to be cleaned out and the survivors be permitted to go wherever they chose, led the co-chairmen to publicly declare the next day that no conclusions had been drawn to date, Hutcheson repeating that he would be bound only by his own judgment of what is “just.” (They did not disclose that the Soviets had refused entry into their zones in Germany and Austria, as well as into Hungary and the Balkan states.) Crum pressed for an interim report calling for the immediate entry of 100,000 to Palestine, much as Rifkind had requested of the members, whereas ManninghamBuller with Singleton’s support wished to have Washington approve London’s closing of all borders to infiltration from Poland. The latter’s obvious weakness, Crossman observed, was that the members had no positive proposals for emigration from Europe. Refusing to endorse Manningham-Buller’s suggestion, Hutcheson urged Crum to desist. The other Americans agreed, arguing that this would seriously compromise the desired impression of the commission’s impartiality, particularly as they had not even reached Palestine. Crum’s threat to resign led Truman to have Niles inform Crum that the President “has every confidence in you and that he hopes you will do nothing rash”; Niles had Henderson cable Crum in like vein.33 A long and acrimonious debate, “showing many of the Committee members at their worst” in McDonald’s judgment, followed over the next two days. At their first full meeting since London, Singleton began by wondering if their two governments should not be informed of the contradiction between British and American policy regarding Jewish migration, and the possibility that the spring might witness a mass movement through Vienna and the American zone into Bavaria, causing a “complete breakdown” of the military administration. “Then the sparks began to fly,” Crossman’s diary records, with “Texas Joe” saying he wanted no interim report at all, after which Crum and Crick stated that they wished a full interim report on the Jews in Europe to be prepared immediately. Leggett, Phillips, and McDonald urged that those who wished one should prepare a draft; Crossman agreed, but Singleton and Manningham-Buller wanted the decision in principle to be taken first. At this point, Sir John—for the first time displaying diplomatic skill—immediately said that if the American chairman objected he could — 160 —

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not press the matter, since obviously no communication would be sent against Hutcheson’s wish. Crossman quickly endorsed this, stressing that Anglo-American relations were more important than the immediate issue, as was the final report. Leggett and Crick also supported this attitude, but Manningham-Buller stated that he wished his dissent recorded in the minutes. All seemed fine, but the next morning Manningham-Buller demanded that the record of yesterday’s meeting be read aloud, to insure that it included his dissent. When asked by Hutcheson why he was so keen on this, the Britisher said he wished to defend himself at a late date against recriminations for having failed to file such an interim report. The reply put his delegation in the wrong, Crossman recorded, since it was “obviously playing politics” for subsequent personal use. The Americans demanded, with approval from Morrison, Leggett, and Crossman, that if any records were kept, they should be burned on the day the report was sent off. After a “long and unpleasant” discussion, it was decided that on this occasion alone Manningham-Buller’s dissent should be recorded, leaving the members in effect 10 to 1 against Manningham-Buller, with Sir John “embarrassed and neutral.”34 The Committee had weathered its first crisis, with the cause of unity triumphant and no interim report issued. Crum told the Jewish Agency’s Joseph Linton that the British were “desperately eager” to reach unanimity with the Americans, because they knew that if the majority of the Americans ultimately disagreed, their report would not carry any weight. McDonald, more optimistic than Rifkind, shared this evaluation. A far more pessimistic Gideon Ruffer (later Rafael), the Agency’s liaison to the Committee, thought that the members did not intend to accord independent politics status to the Zionists, and that their decision on the 100,000 would be influenced by their impression of Palestine and its absorptive capacity. The British officials, he added, were all hostile, Beeley, for example, saying that the White Paper restrictions should continue. Unbeknownst to him, Hutcheson and Leggett, fully aware of the U.S. military’s desire to empty the overcrowded camps quickly, had been informed in a meeting with the State Department’s chief of the Visa Division that consulates for the purpose of emigration would only begin operations on March 1 in certain German cities in the U.S. zone, and none at all in Poland. Visits to Italy and Greece on the members’ way to Palestine revealed once again that the Jewish — 161 —

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Committees there saw Palestine as “the only solution.” London informed the joint Committee, however, that that country’s absorptive capacity in 1946 would allow only 30,000 Jewish immigrants to come in. A visit to the Holy Land was therefore essential, giving the twelve members, as Crossman put it, “a conspectus of the whole problem” before they made up their minds.35 The group would reach a country rapidly turning into a seething maelstrom. On February 6, the Stern Group had attacked a British Army installation in Holon and killed a British officer and an African soldier, sparking Sudanese forces to retaliate, killing two of that city’s residents and wounding four. Cunningham urged restraint on London after Shertok publicly lashed out on the 18th against the mandatory’s “murderous and atrocious laws,” noting to the Colonial Secretary that the Agency, having incited the Palestinian Jewish masses against HMG, was resorting to “greater lengths of extremism” lest it lose authority over the yishuv. On the 20th, the Palmah succeeded on its second try in blowing up the radar station on Mt. Carmel, and two days later it carried out coordinated attacks against Palestine Mobile Force Camps at Sarona and two other locations. A funeral in Tel Aviv for the four men killed when they had attempted to enter the Sarona camp drew more than 50,000 in a torrential downpour, with distributed Hagana leaflets reading “all Jewry is proud of its heroes and deplores their death.” On February 25, the Irgun and Stern Group attacked airfields at Lydda, Petah Tikva, and Qastina, damaging eight Halifax heavy bombers beyond repair at a cost of well over £1,000,000. Kol Yisrael and the other underground movements hailed these actions in the Jewish people’s struggle “against the forces which aim to throttle them and their natural aspirations for normal statehood in their National Home.” The British clamped a twelve-hour curfew on all roads and detained over 5,000 suspects. A lead article in the Palestine Post, unanimously applauded by readers, bluntly stated that curfews and searches were meant more as reprisals and collective punishments than anything else. Attlee’s Cabinet nonetheless decided to accept the High Commissioner’s assessment, but its patience and especially that of the military was wearing thin.36 Nor had the Arab hostility to Zionism abated. Ibn Saud cautioned Senator Pepper that if immigration were substantially increased to the point of creating a Jewish state, a Muslim “holy war” would ensue in Palestine, and he also warned HMG’s representative that Great Britain — 162 —

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might well be unable to count on Arab friendship and support in “any future emergency” if it abandoned the 1939 White Paper policy. Syrian Prime Minister Saadallah al-Jabiri declared that his country could not be expected to assent to any continued Jewish immigration to Palestine. The Iraqi Chamber of Deputies sent a resolution to world leaders and the UN protesting continued Jewish immigration pending the report of the Anglo-American Committee. AHC acting chairman Jamal Husseini demanded the return of the ex-Mufti and other “exiled and absentee” Palestinian Arab leaders so that they could testify before the joint body and defend their country’s cause. At the same time, the Arab Higher Committee officially cabled Bevin on the 19th that any resolution emanating from the Anglo-American representatives which went contrary to Arab demands for the country’s immediate independence and a “permanent stoppage” of Jewish immigration “will not bind Arabs.” At a meeting of the AHC in Jerusalem on the 25th, responding to suggestions by the Arab Front, Village Union, left-wing parties, and other organizations to boycott the public hearings, the executive deemed it inadvisable to make a decision contrary to the wishes of the Arab League. Furthermore, a boycott made little sense considering that the heads of the Arab delegations in London had already given evidence before the commission. Presentation on Near Eastern soil of the Arab case would commence one week later.37 Mena House, originally begun as a hunting lodge by Isma’il Pasha, the Khedive (Viceroy) of Egypt and Sudan from 1863 to 1879 under the Ottoman Empire, had received its name after the first monarch who united the kingdoms of Lower and Upper Egypt. Expanded considerably by two wealthy English couples, the building and its grounds opened in 1886 to the public. Famous guests over the years included the Prince of Wales, the widow of Napoleon III Empress Eugénie, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Charlie Chaplin. A new train service from Cairo some twelve miles away, starting in 1900, brought many to tour the fabled pyramids at Giza close by. Converted for a time into a hospital during World War I, the elegant hotel featured tennis, a large swimming pool, golf, and camel polo. In November 1943, Mena House hosted Churchill, Roosevelt, and Chiang Kai-shek to discuss Allied combat operations in Southeast Asia against Japan.38 The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine now had its turn in this opulent palace of stone and mortar rising from — 163 —

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the desert, sitting down on the morning of March 2, 1946, to hear the chairman of the Arab League as its first major witness in Egypt. Azzam Pasha emphasized to the Committee that Arab intransigence to Zionism lay in the return of the Jewish “old cousin” from Europe with Western ideals, seeking to dominate in Palestine by means of British pressure, American influence, and terrorism. His nine-page memorandum went further, charging that Zionism threatened the security of Jews already in Arab countries, and that its realization would also drive a fatal wedge in the heart of Arab countries, dividing them from one another. Crick followed the able presentation with queries about the boycott of Jewish products, while Crossman asked about Azzam’s distinguishing between European and Eastern Jews. At this point, the other Arab League representatives present rose to announce that they would not reply to further questioning. Unanimously, they signed the Lebanese three-point statement against all immigration and further land settlement, and in favor of united and unlimited efforts to block the Jewish nationalist enterprise, using phrases recurrently that referred to what McDonald characterized as “a state of war.” This unexpected climax brought the day’s only sitting to an end exactly 100 minutes after it had begun.39 In the next two days, the Committee members toured Cairo and met with locals to ascertain their views. American diplomats, particularly Minister to Syria and Lebanon George Wadsworth, and British veterans like Oriental Secretary Walter Smart and famed archeologist of Mesopotamia’s Ur Leonard Woolley, strongly championed the Arab cause. The British military command warned of the Hagana, numbering 65,000 armed men and 40,000 in reserve, probably intending to strike but waiting for the Committee’s report; in its view, six divisions (in which American participation would be expected) would be needed to impose a Zionist solution in Palestine. Young Arab intellectuals, noting the serious rioting on March 4 in Alexandria against the British Army’s presence in the Suez Canal area and elsewhere, wished the entire Middle East cleared of HMG’s troops. Their Jewish counterparts, discounting sanguine comments from some wealthy Jews, feared for Jewry in Egypt and throughout the region.40 While Phillips believed that most members were veering toward the establishment of a Palestine state on federated lines, Crossman pondered the possibility of partition. The obsessive fear in AngloAmerican circles of Russian expansion he thought both shortsighted — 164 —

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and immoral. The British could not check a Soviet takeover of their Iranian and Iraqi oil fields, while no reason existed to believe that the Arab attitude would be any more favorable in a third world war than in the second. An alternative existed in his mind: London should propose that the UN assume responsibility for guarding the strategic positions upon a total British withdrawal, with HMG giving economic and technical assistance to the Arabs. Some reason for hope then arose, he thought, that the Jewish National Home would become, “what it always should have remained,” a local issue to be decided between the Jews and the Arab in Palestine itself.41 The Committee’s remaining witnesses in Egypt, appearing on March 5, presented the same unyielding anti-Zionist stand as their predecessors. Main speaker Muhammad Fadhel al-Jamali, Director General of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, asserted that his government saw no need for any commission to study Palestine, whose coastline represented “the seaport of Iraq.” Muslim Brotherhood founder el Banna, advocate of a global Islamic caliphate, declared that the Koran had nothing good to say about the Jews, whose religious bonds to Palestine meant nothing because these were “diametrically opposed” by the Koran and Muslim practices. Habib Bourguiba, Tunisian nationalist leader against French rule, advised “to obliterate the Zionist germ from the minds of the Jews so that they could again be ordinary human beings and live everywhere as equal citizens with everybody.” Saeed Ahmed Morad el Bakri, Grand Chief of the Sufi Order, read a declaration against all Zionist demands, and refused to discuss the issue any further. For President of the Arab Union Abdel Meguid Ibrahim Pacha Saleh, the Zionists in Palestine were “a cancer in the Arab body,” which, stated Saleh Harb Pacha of the Young Men’s Moslem Association, would be fought “to the last man.”42 On that uncompromising note, the Anglo-American Committee boarded a train the following day for Palestine via the Sinai Desert, and reached Jerusalem sixteen hours later. “Palestine is really in a state bordering on war,” wrote McDonald in his diary, with guards everywhere and an armed escort alongside waiting new Ford Mercury cars for a drive to settle in at the King David Hotel. Opened in 1931 on Julian’s Way (in honor of the Roman emperor who had permitted Jews to return to settle in the city) with funds from banker Ezra Mosseri and other wealthy Cairene Jews, the stately six-story edifice built with locally quarried pink limestone had hosted royalty from its earliest days. — 165 —

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Three heads of state forced to flee their countries took up residence there: King Alfonso XII of Spain (1931), Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia (1936), and King George II of Greece (1942). The Committee would maintain its offices in the imposing YMCA building across the street, keenly aware of barbed wire everywhere in great coils, tanks at various intersections, pill boxes, and soldiers manning machine guns to survey all avenues of approach. Mandatory authorities informed the members that their phones were tapped in the hope of uncovering terrorists seeking to reach them. Criminal Investigation Division (CID) agents were assigned to each man, and an armed guard commanded both elevator and stair entrances. Kol Yisrael announced repeatedly that no extremist acts would take place during the group’s stay, but officials warned nonetheless that the members’ lives were in constant danger. A three-hour tour the next morning of the Old City’s religious sites, with a “most polite” reception at the High Commissioner’s Government House that evening—the Arab Higher Committee members alone declining to come because of the necessary contacts with the Jews, concluded the team’s initial welcome in this greatly troubled land.43 Weizmann, whom Crossman described as “a weary and more humane version of Lenin,” spoke as the first witness on the morning of March 8. Seven years before, he had sat at the same semicircular mahogany table in the same YMCA lecture hall before the Peel Commission, unsuccessfully pleading the same case a few years before, in his phrase to Hutcheson, Hitler “won a complete victory” as far as the Jews were concerned. Gaining strength without a pause as two hours passed, the WZO President impressed Crossman and colleagues in founding his case for a Jewish commonwealth on the candid admission that every Jew carried the virus of antisemitism with him. He also openly averred that the issue was not between right and wrong: the Committee had to choose “the line of least injustice.” The only hope for the survival of Europe’s Jews, who could not be expected to resettle on soil drenched with Jewish blood, lay in the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Condemning terrorism in unmeasured terms and still expressing hope of an understanding with the Arabs, Weizmann disturbed Agency Executive members in attendance when, again responding with the detachment of a scientist, he declared that it might take one to two years for the yishuv to bring in the 100,000. His somber yet passionate presentation finally over after ninety minutes of questioning in the afternoon, he returned to his — 166 —

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magnificent home to Rehovot, as confidante Blanche Dugdale recorded, “very tired, but very cheerful, obviously feeling he had done well.”44 The next day being the Jewish Sabbath, some Committee members motored to Gaza, Beersheba (Be'er Sheva), and Hebron, the two chairmen traveled to the Dead Sea, and Crum and Crossman went off to visit Weizmann. Spending the entire day in the “Arab world” of Palestine convinced Phillips of “the impossibility of the Jews ever ruling Palestine.” Weizmann persuaded Crossman, on the other hand, that partition with an adequate area offered a practical solution such as he had advocated in 1937 to the Peel Commission. Federal autonomy under a central government, the WZO herald advised, lacked finality and did not provide Jews with national sovereignty or UN representation. In a marathon discussion with a short break for dinner, after which Shertok and the pro-Zionist Crum took part, Crossman suggested that the Arab territory be incorporated in Transjordan, which would please Abdullah. Shertok remarked that the Agency would retain its leadership within the yishuv if Bevin decided to establish a Jewish state that included the Galilee and the Negev in a divided Palestine. The Hagana and Ben-Gurion, he added, would go along provided that the scheme was passed “quickly and decisively.” Crossman confided that the British authorities in Europe felt the 100,000 could be transported from the Continent in one month’s time. Encouraged, he drafted a summary of the conversation and submitted it to the co-chairmen judges, along with the proposal that the Committee hear Weizmann in camera.45 A Jewish state, Ben-Gurion testified before the Committee on March 11, meant complete independence to develop the country, “our historic birthplace,” as for any other free people. The 600,000 Jews living here through their love of Zion were attached to a living reality, he went on, although it had for them “a great and deep spiritual significance as well.” He hoped that the White Paper policy, which was condemned by “the moral conscience of the world,” would not continue. He agreed, in answer to Manningham-Buller, with Weizmann’s condemnation of violence, but collaboration by the Jewish Agency in suppressing the terrorists was “futile.” Building Eretz Israel on principles of justice, brotherhood, and peace, Ben-Gurion remained confident that the Jews could live in harmony and equality with a union of Arab states. Crossman thought Ben-Gurion’s stance on violence “doubtful”—to remain within the letter of the law as the Agency’s Executive chairman while tolerating — 167 —

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terror as a means to pressure HMG. Phillips saw nothing in the witness’s remarks indicating what the Jews could do or intended to do to reach amicable relations with the Arabs. This was particularly apparent when, in answer to Crossman’s question as to how the Agency would respond in the event British forces were withdrawn from Palestine, the confident Ben-Gurion seemed to convey in what McDonald considered “a militant presentation” that the Jews were prepared to force their demands on Palestine if they could not get them any other way.46 Jamal Husseini offered an even more forthright statement, lacking protestations of friendship, when appearing the next morning. In fluent English, he sharply rejected the detailed exposition of the Agency’s David Horowitz the previous day that the Zionists had dramatically improved the Arabs’ material conditions, arguing that in any event the prime issue rested on principles of morality and justice. Europe, responsible for the Holocaust and the subsequent Jewish refugee problem, should not make the Arab majority in Palestine pay the price for its solution. His statement that Haj Amin alone could truly speak for the people of Palestine led Crossman, in the questioning period, to probe the attitude of the ex-Mufti and the Arabs during the last war. With calculating candor, Husseini replied that Haj Amin had met Hitler in Germany and acted, as elsewhere, in the interests of his people, much as Churchill had allied with Stalin. “The Mufti did not work for the Germans’ victory,” he added, “but only tried to receive something from them in case they won the war.” If the British departed now, Husseini believed that 30 percent of the current Jewish community would also leave and the others would extend their hand in peace to the Arabs, who would reciprocate in kind. Auni Bey al-Hadi, who immediately followed, tried to deny that Haj Amin had collaborated with the Germans. Crossman vigorously responded, with Crum’s support, showing a Viennese newspaper photograph in 1944 of the Mufti’s taking the Nazi salute of the Muslim Bosnian SS soldiers in Yugoslavia whom he had actively recruited. “He was a great Arab patriot,” al-Hadi responded. “Perhaps he thought at the time that Germany would be victorious.”47 The Committee met in private immediately afterwards, Crick and Manningham-Buller taking Crum and Crossman to task for questioning the two Arab spokesmen on the subject of the Mufti. “In our country,” one Britisher observed, “we consider a man innocent until he is proven guilty.” Singleton, about to visit Ibn Saud, added coldly: “You know, — 168 —

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such questioning will make it more embarrassing for us [when we see the desert monarch].… You should have thought of that.” Crick formally protested that these questions had made conciliation more difficult. Crossman personally felt that if the Committee grilled Ben-Gurion and other Jewish speakers, the Arabs should get the same treatment, and the Arab attitude toward the ex-Mufti and Great Britain was perfectly relevant. If one of the Committee’s concerns was an Arab state, he explained privately to Phillips, it was highly important for the AHC to realize that Haj Amin was regarded as an erstwhile enemy who had cooperated fully with Hitler. “After today’s evidence,” his diary read, “anybody who thinks that the Arab leaders are not prepared to accept any sort of help in order to get rid of the British is just refusing to face facts.” By what Crossman considered “an odd coincidence,” the verbatim report dealing with his cross-examination of Auni Bey was omitted, although the press carried a full account. The official record read: “At this point the witness dispensed with the services of the interpreter, and unfortunately the reporter could not make a continuous record.” To make matters even more absurd, the record in the very next sentence carried Singleton’s compliment on Auni Bey’s English, saying that had the Arab leader addressed us the Committee in English, “you would have saved yourself a good deal of time.”48 The morning of March 14 focused on the British military’s evidence in camera. Commanding Officer in Palestine and Transjordan Lt. Gen. John D’Arcy gave a very sobering picture of the situation, stating his sincere belief that troubles could not be avoided. He mainly dealt with what was, in the words of an informant to the U.S. War Department’s Office of Strategic Services, the “alarming aspect” of the Jewish quasi-military organizations. The Jewish Agency appeared to be providing £1 million (one-fourth of its budget) to the Hagana, which was 70,000 strong with possibly some 40,000 reserves; the Irgun numbered 3,000– 5,000 fighters, and the Stern Group 200–300. Should the British troops be withdrawn, the Jews would occupy the whole country. Asked about disarming the Hagana, he replied: “You cannot disarm a whole people. I rather think the world will not stand for another mass murder of Jews.” A separate British memorandum for the Committee about “military implications” on the maintenance of law and order in Palestine observed that either the Jews or the Arabs were capable of producing a “serious situation” in Palestine. A compromise solution which failed to — 169 —

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satisfy either, it declared, might well result in a heavier and more protracted commitment beyond HMG’s current two and a half divisions, an air contingent equal to seven squadrons, and naval forces of one cruiser and four destroyers.49 Manningham-Buller was indignant at a Hagana memorandum which declared that the Jewish Resistance Movement would increase and spread if a Zionist solution were not forthcoming, with Morrison most bitter and fearing that a war was inevitable unless the Committee prevented it. This war would not be between the rival communities, Crossman thought, because the military had said that the Hagana would rout the Arabs in a few weeks. Rather, he foresaw a British-Jewish armed conflict with quite “a number of blind people on both sides” almost anxious to see it start. An imposed “clean partition,” he concluded, could alone prevent this, provided that it was generous enough for Weizmann to regain his authority and “sell” it to his own more extreme associates. Unfortunately, he thought, most of the Committee opposed this approach, their optimistic liberalism outweighing the logic and facts on his side. (Leggett would not mince words, telling Crossman that BenGurion and other Zionist leaders were “thugs” and “fascists.”) Yet in fact, already three days earlier, McDonald found that Aydelotte, Crum, and Buxton were seriously discussing for the first time the possibility of a united American delegation along the lines of Crossman’s program, while Hutcheson seemed at least willing to consider it.50 The appearance of Hebrew University President Judah Magnes that afternoon, preceded by Martin Buber’s presentation of their Ihud Party’s platform, appealed to most of the Committee. His disinterested approach when calling for a bi-national state with Jewish and Arab parity held his audience “almost breathless” (McDonald’s phrase) for more than two hours. All found his statement eloquent at times, deeply moving, and showing a moral courage which a Palestine Post editorial strongly doubted would find its Arab counterpart. Many listeners had tears in their eyes, and Hutcheson went up to congratulate him, quoting from John 1:47 “here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no guile.” McDonald, however, thought his advocacy not at all practical, a “utopia” in Crossman’s judgment unless all the Jews were as patient and rational as Magnes, the Arabs not certain that the British were on their side, and Bevin replacing all HMG’s key Middle Eastern officials by men who believed in the Jewish National Home and in helping Arabs and Jews to — 170 —

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work together. Magnes himself, in reply to Crick, objected to altering his institution’s name to “the University of Palestine,” and advocated continued Jewish immigration (much as HaShomer HaTsa’ir’s Mordekhai Ben-Tov joined it to bi-nationalism during a private talk with the sympathetic Hutcheson). For Crossman, the difference between moderates like Magnes and Weizmann and militants like Ben-Gurion was one of principle. (Arab spokesmen thought Magnes more dangerous than BenGurion.) It was all, he concluded, a question of tactics.51 While some members spent the next few days touring the country, Singleton, Manningham-Buller, and Buxton heard an anti-Zionist presentation in Baghdad before traveling to the royal palace in Riyadh for their rendezvous with Islam’s Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques in Mecca and Medina. While “lasting friendship” should exist between Great Britain, the United States, and the Arabs, a very outspoken Ibn Saud began that March 19th, the Jews “are our enemies in every place and in every country to which they come,” striving to create difficulties between the Arabs and their friends Britain and America. He had advised the Arabs during and after World War II to avoid friction with HMG. A day will come, however, when the Jews would become strong and perhaps be the first to fight Britain. When Roosevelt had offered him in their one meeting agricultural progress in return for sanctioning the Zionist endeavor, he replied that so long as Jews “are in our country… we preferred death to cultivation.” The U.S. President had then responded that he “neither ordered nor approved of the immigration of Jews to Palestine, nor is it possible that I should approve of it.” The Jews, Ibn Saud continued, have taken the Arabs’ possessions, driven them out, and did them injury. To Singleton’s question about accepting the arrival of many Jewish orphans, children, and old people in Palestine, Ibn Saud said that the Arab states first had to approve before he expressed an opinion. To the Arabs, he answered Buxton, “death is preferable to acquiescence” in Jewish immigration to Palestine. On that note, gifts were exchanged, and the trio returned to the Holy Land.52 In the meantime, Hutcheson, Morrison, and McDonald heard similar denunciations of Zionism during their visits to Damascus and then Beirut. In the Syrian capital, ecclesiastical dignitaries, women representatives, and various political groups gave defiant addresses “so well ordered” that it seemed rehearsed, and thus less convincing than it — 171 —

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would otherwise have been. At dinner, President Shukri al-Quatli spoke in beautiful French of the Jews as “invaders” constituting a menace that threatened the whole Arab world. Lebanese president Bechara El Khoury, although seemingly less bitter in tone, called for the maintenance of the status quo in Palestine and no more Jewish immigration. Prime Minister Sami al-Solh and other state officials expressed almost violently anti-Zionist views, one minister repeating some of the Hitler charges against Jews. Although exhausted, McDonald managed to obtain, with Hutcheson’s intervention, the freeing from arrest of a young Palestine Post correspondent. With the American chairman’s approval, he also confirmed the authenticity of an interview which newspaperman Gerold Frank had obtained with Archbishop Ignatz Moubarak and reported in the JTA, stating that the Maronite Christian people favored Zionism as “the creative force” in Palestine and, contrary to what El Khoury had said, feared not the Jews but the “latent fanaticism” of the Muslims. Maronite Patriarch of Antioch Anthony Peter Arida confirmed these views to McDonald on March 21, calling Weizmann his friend and citing several Koran passages which mandated the true believer to subject the Christians to harsh rule. With that, the three members motored back to Jerusalem, preceded once they reached the Palestine frontier by a police car carrying three young soldiers with submachine guns at the ready.53 Meeting soon thereafter with the members in private, Shaw asserted that, given a few prerequisites, he would be ready to recommend the admission of the 100,000—over three or four years. (An updated Jewish Agency memorandum to the Committee, by contrast, had argued that the country could offer immediate opportunities for practically all the able-bodied members of working age in this group.) At their request, he submitted memoranda on a token Jewish state covering the plan of Sharon and Acre Bay (without Acre), and on the practicability (slim in his view), assuming partition, of attaching the Arab state to Transjordan. He considered expansion of industry and agriculture “a matter for speculation rather than forecast,” since Palestine would need largely expanded markets and demonstrate ability to compete. The mandatory administration felt that it was “justifiable” to assume that the country’s capability to maintain “a substantially larger population” could eventually be developed, but “a vast amount of groundwork” was necessary before it would be proper to attempt to calculate — 172 —

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that capacity. Since achieving political stability took precedence, the absorption of 100,000 Jewish DPs had to be preceded by the Arabs receiving adequate assurance that this influx marked “the definite end of political immigration” and that they, together with the Jews, should have a constitutional voice in determining future entry. In addition, Shaw opined, illegal armed forces had to be suppressed and the Jewish Agency dissolved if there were not a Jewish state, conclusions welcome to Singleton and others but not to Crossman and most of the American members. Expecting violence whatever the Committee’s decision, the Chief Secretary believed and so told Phillips and Leggett afterwards that a bi-national state offered the only solution.54 The last two Arab witnesses appeared on the afternoon of March 25. Earlier that morning, Histadrut executive Goldie Myerson (later Golda Meir), the only woman to testify in Jerusalem, had impressed with her direct appeal that Jews wanted that which was given naturally to all peoples of the world—“to be masters of our own fate,” and to create in Palestine a free Jewish society based on mutual cooperation throughout the country and with all their neighbors. Yet it was 36-year-old Albert Hourani, the Oxford University-trained representative of the Arab Office in Jerusalem, who stood out in “ably and brilliantly” showing, as Horowitz later acknowledged, that any decision was liable to provoke an Arab-Jewish conflict. For Hourani, all “intermediate solutions,” including a Jewish state in all of Palestine, partition, bi-nationalism, and the 100,000 to be brought in without delay, were “illusory” and differed only in degree. Each clashed with the question of principle at the heart of the Arabs’ firm opposition to Zionism. Consequently, he responded to Crum, “there is no solution of the Palestine problem, not even refusal to solve it, which doesn’t involve the risk of using force.” Some Committee members questioned his certainty that the Jews would become reconciled to an Arab state once they found there was no alternative, but the fiery rhetoric of Ahmed Shukairy, who followed, dispelled Hourani’s tone of “persuasive moderation” (as the Palestine Post phrased it). Hearing all this, Hutcheson posed a question to Hourani: Would not the fate of “a solid, an indigestible mass of Jews” in Palestine be more difficult for the Arabs to tolerate than the uncertain one of Jews in Arab countries today, Jews who had come to this country by the guarantee of the Christian powers? The answer came without hesitation: “Minorities must try to live in the community of their neighbors. Outside protection is a danger for them.”55 — 173 —

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The Anglo-American Committee seemed to be up a dead end. All the Jewish witnesses, even the ultra-Orthodox Agudas Israel’s Isaac Breuer and Moshe Blau, championed unrestricted immigration when testifying in Jerusalem. The Arabs, on the other side of the divide, objected and called for a struggle until full independence. Ben-Gurion, privately endorsing partition, reflected the yishuv’s resolve, telling Crossman the next evening to “imagine that we’re Englishmen fighting for our national existence, and calculate that we shall behave as you would behave if you were in our situation. …Make up your minds one way or the other, and remember that either way, we shall fight our Dunkirk.” Partition advocates at this stage included Crossman, McDonald, Crum, and Buxton; Phillips, strongly influenced by Palestine Broadcasting Service director Edwin Samuel, and the other British members favored bi-nationalism. Singleton maintained the role of prosecutor, trying unsuccessfully to have Ben-Gurion admit in questioning that the Agency controlled the Jewish underground resistance. Hutcheson by now had become convinced, saying this to Palestine Post editor Agronsky, that “Zionism meant squeezing out Arabs” and made for dual loyalty; the Jews should “go in for assimilation” elsewhere; Jewish success created antisemitism; and “anyhow Jews thrived on persecution.” None in the Committee supported Palestine as an Arab state, nor the Agency’s official position that “only the re-establishment of the Jewish Commonwealth of Palestine can lay the evil spirit of anti-Semitism and offer the Jews that freedom and security which are the birthright of every people.” Two days after Shertok’s firm presentation ended the hearings, they left in a convoy of nine cars for Lydda airport on the way to Malta, then Geneva, and on to Lausanne. A stay there would last perhaps two or three weeks, Phillips thought: “very important weeks, for somehow the report will have to be born during that time.”56 In Churchill’s opinion, America had to “take a hand in the matter” if the Palestine problem were to be solved. He made this point to reporters three months earlier when arriving in New York aboard the Queen Elizabeth for a Miami vacation at his doctor’s orders. While a Zionist from the “very beginning,” the leader of the Conservative Party opposition went on, he believed that too heavy a burden had now been thrown on Great Britain considering the “complicated nature” of her connections with the Arab world. Asked about Truman’s support for the 100,000 Jewish DPs to enter Palestine, he shifted to praise the joint Committee investigation, and reiterated that the problem was too difficult for only — 174 —

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one nation to solve. On March 19, at an evening conference at New York’s Hotel Commodore with Silver, arranged by his financier friend Bernard Baruch, Churchill praised the wartime service of the Jewish Brigade and voiced gratification at Palestine’s having absorbed large numbers of Jews, particularly children. He reaffirmed his commitment to the Balfour Declaration and his support for free Jewish immigration to Palestine’s fullest absorptive capacity, confidently looking forward to the solution of the Palestine problem through partnership in “a joint trusteeship” of the Anglo-American powers.57 Churchill’s partnership concept had received far wider publicity exactly two weeks earlier when, in front of a crowd of 40,000 at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, he dramatically called for a union of Britain and the United States to respond to the Soviets’ “iron curtain” that had descended across the Continent. He had first used the phrase in a telegram to Truman on May 12, 1945, but now it carried great force with the State Department and the U.S. military owing to a recent 8,000-word message from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow by scholarly chargé d’affaires Kennan. The Kremlin, this “long telegram” posited, was “committed fanatically” to the idea that in the long run there could be no “peaceful coexistence” with the United States, and that “it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life destroyed, the international authority of our state broken.…” Truman, who had read Churchill’s speech earlier and introduced his guest by saying “I know he will have something constructive to say to the world,” applauded at several points. When, however, reaction in the country strongly arose in opposition, the President quickly backed off from responsibility. Truman invited Stalin without success to speak at the University of Missouri in his company so that the Soviet leader could address the American public as had Churchill. At the same time, he told W. Averell Harriman, former ambassador to the USSR and about to head the country’s embassy in London, that the refusal of the Red Army to withdraw from Iran could mean war. When reporters asked the President if he agreed with Harriman’s worry over the Russian threat, a view strongly endorsed by Navy Secretary James Forrestal, he replied, “I have nothing to say about it.”58 Stalin still had nothing to say about Palestine either, although in a rare public address in Moscow on February 9 he had declared that war between communism and capitalism was inevitable, this confrontation — 175 —

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to take place in the 1950’s, when American would be again in the depths of another depression. The AZEC’s Eliahu Ben-Horin was convinced that the Arab League, dependent for its existence on Britain and most probably aligning with Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan, would not adopt a pro-USSR orientation. Revisionist-Zionist Yosef Klarman, who had secured pro-Zionist declarations from leading politicians in Rumania and Bulgaria after the war, reported that Soviet authorities had opened the frontier of Tchernowitz to allow Holocaust survivors in Transnistria entry into Rumania. Yet leading Soviet expert on Palestine Viktor Lutski emphasized in a public lecture that “natural poverty” in Palestine was aggravated by unemployment and Jewish immigration, and he branded Zionism as anti-democratic. On March 12 the Soviet European Service in Arabic from Moscow called for independence as vital for Arab countries, and the Red Fleet article “Palestine: A British Base” soon thereafter noted Haifa’s growing importance for HMG and the growing movement of British troops there. Five days later, the Soviet trade union publication Trud called for the Mandate to be transferred to the UN. L. D. Wilgress of the Canadian Embassy in Moscow concluded to his superiors that the Russians were not yet ready to give their “unreserved benediction” to the Arab League, and that the Soviet newspapers were “far more discreet” about Palestine due to the Kremlin’s desire not to antagonize the Jews nor “the influential section of opinion” which supported them in the United States.59 Truman had no clear policy at this point vis-à-vis the Soviet regime, but his wish not to be either belligerent or weak struck many as vacillating and uncertain. A Drew Pearson column in the Washington Post reported the following: “Apparently no matter what I do,” Truman told some friends, “I’m always in the middle. I say something about Palestine Jews and Arabs holler,” and the same held true for fights between US labor and. capital or an argument between the Russians and the British. Suddenly, he called out to appointments secretary Matt Connolly: “Where can I buy a copy of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People?” Writing to British minister to Moscow Frank Roberts, who shared the anxiety of Harriman, Kennan, and Acheson about Soviet designs, Isaiah Berlin spoke of “the poor perplexed little man of the White House.” Arthur Krock, chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, deemed Truman “very good and human and courageous,” an exemplar of common sense, but his was a minority view.60 — 176 —

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The American Zionist leadership also could not decide which way the President was going. The AZEC’s Akzin complained to Solicitor General J. Howard McGrath of “the lag between promise and performance,” and warned of the switch of a large number of Jewish votes in the coming Congressional elections unless the White House took a positive stand soon after the report of the Anglo-American Committee. Niles told Phil Schiff of the National Jewish Welfare Board that he and the Administration were very much worried about the Zionists recently wooing Senators Robert Taft, Owen Brewster of Maine, and other Republicans, giving Schiff the impression that he was very sensitive of Zionist impatience with Truman. Congressman Celler, noting Crum’s threat to resign and Auni Bey’s defense of the ex-Mufti’s wartime collaboration with Nazi Germany, urged the Chief Executive to back an interim report for the 100,000 to be admitted immediately into Palestine, and have the American members of the Committee “withdrawn forthwith” if that body were not permitted to continue its inquiry in an objective manner unhampered by the British Foreign Office. Responding that he was waiting patiently for the report, after which he and Attlee could then arrive at the conclusion “which conditions warrant,” Truman wrote back on March 23: “I highly appreciate your interest, of course, but a premature comment on a report that is not made will not help the situation one little bit.”61 The survivors could not wait, Zalman Grinberg warned the Union of American Hebrew Congregations biennial conference, and if those in DP camps and in Eastern Europe were not permitted to go to Palestine without delay “there will be acts of desperation in the camps this summer.” Various reports indicated that their morale had plummeted, while black market activities were on the rise. The “great bulk” of American soldiers preferred the “properly dressed, obsequious, conniving German,” Klausner informed the World Jewish Congress, a reality also reported in the Reader’s Digest. The U.S. Embassy in Warsaw thought probable a large-scale increase in Jewish flight from Poland during the spring and summer of 1946 because Jews felt they had no future there. Thanks to Fierst’s intervention, reflecting Goldmann’s request in an interview with Acheson three weeks earlier, a cable from Byrnes and Patterson to the military on March 6 stated that the borders to Jewish “infiltrees” from Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe should be kept open at least until the Anglo-American Committee announced its decision. At the same time, the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the U.S. — 177 —

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zone of Germany warned Morgan on the 26th of antagonistic incidents by Army and UNRRA personnel toward Jewish DPs in Bamberg, Fuerth, and Stuttgart. Three days later, a contingent of German police conducting a morning raid on the 1,400 survivors in a Stuttgart settlement killed Samuel Danziger, a survivor from Radom who had recently returned from a Paris hospital to join his wife and two children, and wounded four. “It is my feeling,” Klausner reported to the JDC, “that we face our most serious problem at this time.”62 Events in Palestine also appeared like a whirlwind swirling out of control. Following a British patrol’s discovery of weapons which searching the newly founded Birya settlement on Mt. Carmel, the military occupied the place on March 5 under the Defence (Emergency) Regulations. On the 14th, about 3,000 Jews returned; three days later, the authorities permitted twenty people to remain and continue planting trees on the site, and the siege was lifted. In the early hours of the 25th, while the destroyer HMS Chevron brought to the Atlit detention camp 248 “illegals” aboard the 200-ton schooner Wingate (named in honor of the pro-Zionist British officer whose Night Squads, composed of Hagana youngsters, had effectively operated against the Arab Revolt), nineteen-year-old Palmah fighter Braha Fuld was shot dead by a policeman. Her last words were: “Better to be killed than to go to the Bet Lehem prison.” Two days later, 736 passengers who set sail from the port of Sète near Marseilles aboard the Tel Hai (in memory of eight members of HaShomer in that settlement, including commander Yosef Trumpeldor, who were killed there by Arab attackers in 1920) were intercepted by a British sea patrol and met the same fate. Their 430-ton motor-vessel flew the Zionist colors, along with banners which read “The Remainder of the Jewish People,” “Buchenwald Collective,” and United Pioneer Youth,” and the shabbily clothed refugees sang the HaTikva as they were escorted by the destroyer HMS Chequers into Haifa Bay. This first clandestine large vessel to sail from a West European country in peacetime signaled a novel turn in aliya bet activities. Falastin fulminated against the two arrivals, but Ueberall and other Mosad L’Aliya veterans intended that these not be the last.63 Located in Ouchy on the shores of Lake Léman, and covering ten acres of private gardens, the buildings of the Beau-Rivage-Palace command breathtaking views across the lake to the snow-capped Swiss and French Alps beyond. The luxury hotel opened in 1861, with — 178 —

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the main building constructed in Art Déco and neo-Baroque style in 1908. On July 24, 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne was signed here, the final treaty concluding World War I. The attendees had recognized the boundaries of the modern state of Turkey, which made no claim to Palestine and the defeated Ottoman Empire’s other Near Eastern provinces, and recognized the British possession of Cyprus and the Italians’ of the Dodecanese islands. The victorious Allies dropped their demands of autonomy for Turkish Kurdistan and Turkish cession of territory to Armenia, abandoned claims to past economic spheres of influence (capitulations) in Turkey in return for a promise of judicial reforms, and imposed no controls over Turkey’s finances or armed forces. Turkey paid no reparations, but accepted treaties to protect its minorities. The Turkish Straits between the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea were declared open to all shipping. A separate Turkish-Greek agreement provided for compulsory exchange of populations. Here, twenty-three years later in these same elegant halls, a deeply divided Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine hoped to complete its report. Hutcheson took the lead on April 1, 1946, followed by Singleton. Arguing in poetic style for unity and finding a solution “based not on political expediency but on justice and truth,” the American chairman declared that neither Arab nor Jew could justly claim the whole country. The very great achievements of the Palestinian Jewish community must be admitted and nothing done, such as the 1939 White Paper, to check the normal development of the Jewish homeland. The Agency was not to be weakened, and he leaned to “some form” of a bi-national state with one economic level for both contending peoples. Partition he considered “a solution of despair or of trying to find a temporary easy way out”; further, as a Christian, he opposed dividing the Holy Land. Hutcheson’s shocked British counterpart, on the other hand, appeared to favor quite limited Jewish immigration to be regulated by a non-partisan board. Singleton preferred a constitutional regime in order to encourage ArabJewish cooperation, the High Commissioner or his successor to exercise a veto. The Hagana should be discontinued, with HMG relieving itself of its responsibilities in Palestine if it did not receive cooperation from the outside. He made no specific attack on the Jewish Agency, but the implication was clear that Singleton felt this body must be radically changed.64 Buxton next argued frankly for a Jewish immigration of 100,000– 125,000 without delay, the British to get out as quickly as possible, — 179 —

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and a Jewish state representing a modern, practical people in an undivided Palestine. Any attack on the Agency, he added, would require a critique of the mandatory’s record. Taking sharp exception to Buxton’s immigration figures, Manningham-Buller called for the repression of the Hagana, along with the marked alteration, if not the abolition, of the Agency. As Britain had now carried out her obligations under the Balfour Declaration, he insisted, a Palestine state “should be set up forthwith,” leading Hutcheson to interrupt that he would not wish to hand the Jews over to the slender mercies of the Arabs. Phillips vaguely declared that since the Agency was “out of step” with the mandatory administration, some reforms should be instituted and the Hagana eliminated. Leggett agreed about reforming the Agency, and objected to Buxton’s idea of “eminent domain” on which to base sovereignty. Aydelotte sought an agreed upon report if possible, recommended encouraging the “religious industries” in Palestine, spoke sympathetically of both rival sides, and condemned the Hagana. Crum favored the abolition of the White Paper, the 100,000 admitted immediately, the JVA project, and partition. On this divisive note, the members, having for the first time revealed their thoughts to each another as a committee, adjourned for lunch.65 What Phillips characterized as “a rather strong divergence of opinion” continued that afternoon, with Crick favoring a transitory organization as a move towards pure democracy, immigration decided upon by an international board and carried on under an AngloAmerican mandate, and separating the refugee and Palestine problems. Convinced that Zionism was “a bare necessity for the existence of eastern European Jewry” and that the yishuv had become “fused in a single nation,” Crossman declared that immigration had to continue and he might endorse partition. McDonald did not clearly indicate which solution he supported, although he wished to study partition further and favored Leggett’s idea of first pursuing an agreed statement of facts. The latter drew Hutcheson’s ire, who thought the recommendation a British strategy for delay, but Crossman and the others appreciated Leggett’s argument that this noncontroversial work would show a far broader basis of agreement than they imagined. Leggett, McDonald, Manningham-Buller, and Phillips would rewrite the chapter on the Jews in Europe, and another four, two Americans and two British, the Palestine section. Hutcheson, still convinced that an exchange of oral — 180 —

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views was far better than reports, gave them a brief time limit in which to complete the task.66 A second private session two days later disclosed that clear rifts of opinion remained. Singleton’s long statement elaborated on a democratic Palestine, condemned the Hagana, and in effect scrapped the special status of the Jews. General agreement arose over Hutcheson’s paper against a Jewish or an Arab state, if not his embrace of the HaShomer HaTsa’ir’s stance, but Manningham-Buller’s wish to link the 100,000 to disarming the Hagana evoked McDonald’s quick dissent. Crick suggested that in view of the conflicting pledges and obligations assumed by HMG since 1917, it would be best to start with “a clean slate,” an approach not to Hutcheson’s liking. Crossman’s paper noted that a large immigration and partition would strengthen Weizmann (whom he considered “one of the very few great men” he had ever met), Kaplan, and other moderates against terrorist activity. The American judge, McDonald’s diary read, did not wish the British “to finagle us” into supporting a weak and insignificant report, but this appeared to be the case when Singleton, Manningham-Buller, and Crick argued on April 5 for freeing HMG of Mandate obligations on the ground of the “good of Palestine” and thereby eliminating the Jewish National Home. Hutcheson forced a vote on continued immigration and accepting the Mandate’s obligations as still binding. The Americans voted yea and four British nay, with Morrison and Crossman abstaining.67 Crum, McDonald, and Buxton secretly kept Zionists abreast of these developments. Shertok, Goldmann, Lourie, Ruffer, and Horowitz, discreetly awaiting word at a lakeside hotel in Montreux, heard on the morning of April 5 that it was “extremely essential” that “the boss in Washington” (Truman) should cable “the shofet” (Hebrew for judge— Hutcheson). The American chairman should be encouraged in his stand, with the President expressing confidence in the American chairman’s efforts to bring about a quick solution of the whole problem. McDonald had sent a cable to the White House in like vein, while Crum did the same to Niles along with a summary of the members’ current positions. From Geneva, Goldmann cabled this to Weisgal along with Crum’s report, noting that except for Crossman, who generally sided with the Americans, the united Britishers were constantly in touch with London for advice. “All instructions being carried out,” Weisgal cabled back the same day, “Ishemet” (Hebrew code for Truman) authorizing Niles to call — 181 —

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Hutcheson “to hold fast not yield.” At this point, Lourie wrote Silver, it appeared that two reports would emerge: the Americans remained clear about the 100,000 and cancelling the White Paper’s land restrictions; the British were “poles away.” Hutcheson, he added, had apparently come to accept the Agency’s legal position, and had even privately indicated that HMG’s lopping off of Transjordan in 1922, leaving Western Palestine’s 10,000 square miles equivalent to less than one percent of the entire Arab domain, greatly restricted the possibilities of Jewish colonization. “The two gangs are still some parasangs apart,” Buxton wrote to Frankfurter, but “Hutch has been magnificent.”68 Immigration continued to be a source of friction. The following morning, pressed by Hutcheson, Buxton, and Crum, McDonald sharpened his paper on short-term immigration to advocate the need of a 100,000-entry in the current calendar year. Crick’s paper proposed a substantial immigration of 50,000 in cooperation with the Agency, but so coupled with restrictions that it seemed meaningless. Opposed to bargaining with the Agency, Mannningham-Buller, relying on his own draft reports, went on to charge that Buxton’s defense of the “prompt enactment” of the 100,000 ignored the political factors which Shaw had presented to them in camera. “Dumping” that number on Palestine, Leggett chimed in, would cause violent reaction. Aydelotte disagreed, and added that the United States should support the British “morally” in Palestine. More was needed than American advice, Morrison spoke up to the “discreet cheers” of his British colleagues: serious trouble in Palestine would require an additional 20,000 troops to bring the British army and police force up to 100,000. Where would they come from? Crum then threw in “a bombshell” by calmly suggesting that the Hagana be legalized, thus providing additional three divisions. Crossman backed the 100,000 with Agency coordination, objected to an Anglo-American trusteeship that would eliminate Russia, and ended by saying that unity was more important than specific recommendations. Hutcheson opposed attacking the Hagana, emphasized that the Committee was in no position to commit the United States to cooperation, and expressed the feeling that the obligations in the Mandate were not irreconcilable. Unmoved, Singleton spoke of the need to end illegal immigration, resented the suggestion to legalize the Hagana, and concluded that members could sign different parts of the report. Asserting, per contra, that Palestine could accommodate a large immigration of — 182 —

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Jews, who had been prevented by the White Paper and had a “special right” to go now, Hutcheson then adjourned the lively meeting.69 Crossman’s “brilliant” presentation two days later of the case for partition against other possibilities occupied the Committee’s attention on April 8. He ruled out a token Jewish state in the largest area possible where Jews were now in the majority, both because the Zionists would immediately reject it and, if compelled to accept, they would have a legitimate case for demanding a revision of its frontiers when they had filled it to overflowing. (Brigadier I.N. Clayton, advisor on Arab affairs at the British Embassy in Cairo, had proposed to journalist Jon Kimche a far more limited “Jewish Vatican” starting from Mt. Scopus, through the Judean mountains, and approaching Rehovot.) Crossman equally ruled out the Weizmann scheme of a Jewish state comprised of all of Palestine, with “the triangle,” where Arabs exclusively occupied the central mountain area, transferred to Transjordan. The former, he argued, would require British supervision until the Jews achieved a majority, while the latter would need a very large grant-in-aid to see it through. A unitary bi-national state in which Jewish immigration were facilitated would enable the Arabs to “blackmail” the mandatory and lead to an almost “indefinite period” of British rule. For Crossman, one solution offered itself. Partition, giving the Jewish Agency control over immigration and land purchase in an area big enough for developing its national home, combined with a bi-national state there to assure the current Arab majority permanent political parity—precisely as advanced in the HaShomer HaTsa’ir pamphlet—offered the only practicable scheme. The Arabs would receive immediate independence in the “triangle” and, if they wished, could be annexed to an independent Transjordan. (On March 22, HMG had relinquished its mandatory rule over Transjordan, and concluded with now King Abdullah a twenty-five year treaty of alliance which maintained British military rights in that country.) The Jews would become sovereign in their area as soon as something like numerical parity had been achieved. Besides providing a solution based on “rough justice,” this, perhaps most importantly, appeared to have finality. It “cuts the knot,” he put it, and that is what is expected of this Committee.70 The two chairmen opposed Crossman’s proposal straight away. Hutcheson thought it smacked of “slick maneuvering” and involved no consent of the people, while Singleton claimed that it could not be final, — 183 —

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gave the Jews the best of Palestine, and was unworkable. Morrison doubted the Agency would support, while Crick strongly denied that the primary duty of the Mandate was to advance the building of the National Home. McDonald was noncommittal but favorable; ManninghamBuller thought the Agency and the Arabs would reject, and he dubbed partition “a defeatist policy.” Crum sided with Crossman, recalling Cunningham’s private opinion that partition would lead to less resistance than any other plan. Leggett observed that the Arabs, to whom the country’s coastline was important, were united on this issue, and a Jewish state would not be able to resist the Arab pressure. Aydelotte rejected partition; Buxton championed Jewish sovereignty throughout the country. Phillips thought Crossman’s arguments very persuasive but not convincing. As the group dispersed, Singleton asked Phillips to prepare a paper giving the advantages of a bi-national state.71 With two and probably three reports in the offing, the long sessions in the morning and afternoon of the next few days took on a depressing air. Hutcheson heard over the telephone a cable from Truman on April 9, telling him to “keep up the good work” and hoping that the report would be unanimous. The telegram was received with “good results,” D. N. (Niles) was informed three days later, telling of a real chance that the British would yield if Aydelotte and Phillips backed Hutcheson and the Americans acted as a unit. Yet “Texas Joe” continued to be annoyed at what he thought was “deliberate stalling” by some of the Britishers, while Phillips sided with the British on adding a paragraph warning the 100,000 to be admitted into Palestine of the possibility that the new immigrants would not find the peaceful country which they anticipated. This has been “a black day,” Phillips’s diary entry of April 12 read, everyone discouraged but himself: “I feel that having reached the low point things must take a new turn for the better.” The same day, a memorandum arrived at the Beau-Rivage-Palace from the Jewish Brigade, demanding that, “as a Jewish army,” it be permitted to participate “in the construction of a Jewish State whose first law will be free immigration for every Jew who may wish to return to his country and be a citizen in his own homeland.”72 The State Department and Whitehall both feared outbreaks of violence in Palestine once the Committee’s report appeared. If either the Arabs or Jews considered the report “completely unfavorable,” State’s Office of Research and Intelligence posited, their responses would most — 184 —

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likely assume “an extreme and sustained form.” Its specialists thought unified action from the various Arab countries unlikely, but “protracted guerilla warfare” from native Arabs entirely possible. British troops, the report’s authors thought, could “neutralize” its effectiveness. The well-trained Jewish fighting units, on the other hand, expected also to continue large-scale immigration “at all costs,” could mount a popular revolt that would probably be “extremely arduous” and necessitate a “protracted campaign.” For his part, Bevin had State notified that he was “gravely concerned” that the mandatory might be “obliged” to take military action in Palestine on publication of the Committee’s report. Assuming that the document would be completed on or about May 7, London needed preview copies presented to both governments, thereby enabling the British Army to make “the necessary dispositions” in advance. Henderson urged Byrnes on the 10th to have Truman instruct Hutcheson in the sense of the foregoing, and insure against any premature publication.73 Another drama, unfolding just then 300 miles away in northern Italy’s port of La Spezia on the Ligurian Sea, gave the British government additional cause for concern. Under the command of intrepid, resourceful Hagana leader and Mosad head in Italy Yehuda Arazi, 1,104 survivors crowded in the 600-ton Fede while British tanks, infantry, and a warship blocked their voyage to Palestine. Once on board in the disguise of a refugee, Arazi used the ship’s radio to send telegrams about the passengers’ plight to Attlee, Truman, Stalin, and Pope Pius XII; gave daily interviews to a sympathetic world press about the Jews’ right to return to their homeland; and got the municipality’s permission to have a sign with the inscription “The Gate of Zion” appear over the port gates. Shertok urged restraint and prudence in light of the larger issues at stake, but traditionally secretive Mosad L’Aliya chief Meirov backed Arazi to the hilt. On the evening of April 7, Arazi took his next bold step. Following his appeal to the voyagers that their stand would determine the future of aliya bet, a hunger strike commenced with the singing of the HaTikva and the raising of the Zionist and Italian flags. A large board near “The Gate of Zion” began listing the hours of the strike and the number of those unconscious because of lack of food. “Our decision is to go to Palestine or die,” read their cable to the U.S. Ambassador in Rome, while another to the Jewish Agency threatened that they would sink the ship — 185 —

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“because we reached the last stage of despair.” Three days later, with the figures on the board steadily mounting, the Va’ad HaLeumi resolved that fifteen yishuv leaders would fast in solidarity. The American Jewish Conference implored Truman to intervene on the voyagers’ behalf. Seventy-two hours into the strike, Harold Laski, alerted to this by Jewish community leader Raphaelo Cantoni while on his way to a Social Conference in Florence, arrived to talk with Arazi. Refusing the Labour Party chairman’s suggestion that the strike be halted until the Anglo-American Committee reported, Arazi threatened public suicides by some passengers. Ultimately, the pair agreed that the hunger strike would stop until April 19, during which Laski would faithfully present the case of the Fede to Attlee and Bevin.74 Far removed from La Spezia, as well as from the pressures of Washington, London, the Displaced Persons camps, and the Middle East, the Anglo-American Committee also sought to understand how quickly the 100,000 might be transported to Palestine. The co-chairmen invited Col. Stanley M. Mickleson, in charge of the Displaced Persons Division of the U.S. Military Government, and Colonel D’Arcy Stephens of Berlin and Vienna to provide them updated information. Speaking before those members writing the report on Europe, Mickleson averred on April 9 that the 100,000 could be moved by rail from Marseille to Bari within one month, and then onwards in readily available U.S. troopships. Stephens even thought that the camps in Austria could be emptied in two weeks’ time, leading to the conclusion that the entire number could be reestablished in Palestine within the year. To Manningham-Buller and Leggett, who cited Spears’s testimony in the London hearings that these would constitute an invading army, Mickleson declared that the survivors were “peaceful citizens” outside of DP centers, and were only “obstreperous” when German policemen or others came in “to disturb their tranquility.” “Inwardly,” he added to another question, antisemitism “is still strong” among the Germans.75 During the following week, the European section of the report, ­initially drafted by Manningham-Buller and then prepared in the main by Legget and Phillips, neared completion. The section on recommendations had a harder run, despite Hutcheson’s powerful arguments on the 12th for scrapping the 1940 Land Transfers Regulations as “clearly violative” of the Mandate. Singleton favored delay and no inclusion of the issue in their report, while Manningham-Buller thought the — 186 —

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r­egulations would become ultra vires when the Arab and Jews “are brothers.” Crossman insisted, as did McDonald, that the regulations were “vociferous”, racist, and political in origin. Crick categorically opposed Hutcheson, tried to justify the regulations, and denied that they were political. Buxton favored cancellation. Crum’s wish to repeal everything connected to the 1939 White Paper drew Leggett’s deploring the Zionists’ “creeping conquest”, suggesting instead that the government own the land for the long term, then lease it. Singleton ended the heated discussion with a long “catalogue of horrors” committed by the Agency, but his implied attack on the Hagana found scant support from anyone. There seemed to be a “show-down” among the British delegation, Phillips wrote the next evening, the majority against any further stalling by Singleton and Manningham-Buller.76 A flare-up occurred on April 16, when each member took turns criticizing McDonald’s two-page memorandum calling for the enlargement and strengthening of the Jewish Agency’s powers. He declared himself ready to sign a minority report, seeing that any new UN trusteeship being proposed by the Committee did not at present include the administration’s underlying obligations under the Mandate. At stake lay the special status of the Jews in Palestine, he argued, and the current draft would leave the Jewish National Home “juridically defenseless.” Hearing this complete reversal of their draft resolution, which had emphasized the Agency’s obligation to cooperate with the mandatory in suppressing violence and terrorism, almost all in the British team said that they would have to reconsider their position towards the Agency and jeopardize the agreement about the 100,000; Crick actually spoke of the Jewish National Home as an outworn “shibboleth.” Not even Buxton and Crum supported their U.S. colleague. Singleton talked with the aggrieved American afterwards, but it was Hutcheson and Buxton, as McDonald’s diary put it, who “more or less dragooned” him into initialing the compromise long-term mandate and UN plan.77 That same Tuesday morning, Truman met confidentially and off-therecord with Senators Joseph Guffey (Pa.), James Tunnell (Del.), Harley Kilgore (W.Va.), Elmer Thomas (Okla.), James Mead (N.Y.), and George Radcliffe (Md.). All Democratic Party stalwarts on that body’s Foreign Relations Committee and seeking re-election, they wished to formulate the President’s instructions to the U.S. members of the Anglo-American Committee. Leo Sack, the AZEC’s Congressional lobbyist, had prepared a — 187 —

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memorandum for their use. Tunnell, the major spokesman, asked plainly if the report would be similar to the pro-Zionist Congressional resolution of last December. Truman replied that he had already communicated with the Committee, was aware of “Jewish grievances,” and expressed confidence and pleasure that the 100,000 would be recommended in the final document. His visitors wished the Americans to insist on at least that number of certificates to be awarded immediately, even at the cost of a complete break with the British counterparts. “I don’t want the Americans to go along with the British,” the Chief Executive exclaimed; “this should be an American report.” Speaking afterwards with Kilgore, Truman stated that there must be a solution involving large-scale immigration to Palestine, which would “automatically liquidate” the pressure of the DP situation in Germany; he thought there was “no separation” of these two problems. As a result of the meeting, Truman sent Hutcheson that day a letter, drafted by Niles, stating that the world “expectantly awaits” a report from “the entire Commission” which would be the basis of “an affirmative program to relieve untold suffering and misery.” The letter ended with a “deep and sincere wish” that the U.S. delegation “will stand firm for a program that is in accord with the highest American tradition of generosity and justice.”78 In fact, as Lourie reported to Silver on April 16, Singleton’s “crowd’ seemed to have definitely “caved in” on the 100,000, continued immigration, repeal of the 1940 land legislation (with certain reservations) , and no “frontal attack” on the Agency and the Hagana. All in the Committee objected to a Jewish or an Arab state. Only days earlier, however, Hutcheson and three other Americans favored the grant of 100,000 certificates immediately, a ratification of the Mandate’s obligations, and an eventual bi-national state under UN trusteeship. Crossman, McDonald, and Crum championed partition unless unanimity could be achieved on a scheme including the 100,000. Singleton, Manningham-Buller, and Crick advocated that the 100,000 be admitted slowly but only if the “illegal armies” (primarily the Hagana) be disbanded and the Agency lose control of awarding certificates. As for long-time policy, the three Britishers refused to commit HMG to reaffirming the Mandate’s pledge of continued immigration and development of the Jewish National Home. Morrison, Leggett, and Crossman considered that Singleton’s demand about the Hagana would strengthen the extremists in Palestine and might well produce “immediate hostilities” between the British — 188 —

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forces and the Jews. Moreover, such a recommendation, made against the view of all the American members, would range all U.S. public opinion against the British government. This, in turn, would force Truman to back the Zionists against London. Prepared as this trio was to accept the bi-national solution if that demand were dropped, Crossman confided years later that he contacted Noel-Baker, then in Geneva in connection with the final meetings of the League of Nations, and convinced him to meet there with Singleton and try to persuade the British chairman to withdraw his condition on the ground that Anglo-American unity had to be obtained “at any cost.”79 The private intervention by Attlee’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs the previous Friday with Singleton bore crucial fruit, leading to unanimity on what Crossman properly termed “a compromise document.” The “most ticklish point” was resolved by calling for the Jewish Agency to aid the mandatory in suppressing terrorism and illegal immigration. To finesse the second thorny issue, the group recommended that, until the Arab-Jewish “hostility” disappeared, the mandatory continue to rule pending the execution of a UN trusteeship. The Land Transfers Regulations should be replaced by new legislation protecting Arab small owners and tenants, with Arab education levels raised and government supervision of schools contributing to “conciliation between the two peoples.” The formation of an Arab community, aiming to improve its standard of living, along the lines of its rival, should be encouraged. Admission to Palestine of the 100,000 should be pushed forward as rapidly as possible in 1946, with future entry following the Mandate’s obligation to “facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions.” Large-scale development projects, such as the JVA, should be explored with the Jewish Agency and the neighboring Arab states.80 Informed by Crum the next day of the emerging results, Lourie considered this “a defensive victory” for the Zionists in that the “very considerable” attack on the Agency and the Hagana had been “completely repelled.” A repeal of the 1939 White Paper signified a very real victory on short-term policy, he noted, although no Jewish or Arab state in the whole of Palestine was envisaged. “The struggle has been intense and at times completely exhausting,” McDonald wrote to Weizmann, while expressing the hope that when the Zionist avatar learned of the resolutions he would not feel all the efforts and the hearings themselves had been lost.81 — 189 —

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As final touches were put on the report during the afternoon of April 19, one day after the League of Nations in Geneva voted itself out of existence and turned its assets over to the UN, Singleton threw a spanner into the works. Notwithstanding his fine speech at Hutcheson’s farewell dinner for the Committee the previous evening, he attempted to slip into the draft suggestions of delay for both the short and long term immigration proposals, claiming that HMG should consult the Arab states first. Not one of his colleagues rose in support. At the elaborate cocktail party which Sir John subsequently hosted, he launched into a bitter attack on Hutcheson in the presence of Phillips, Buxton, and some of the British. Buxton used strong words in defending his chairman. What had transpired did not surprise McDonald, who understood that Singleton’s outburst clearly reflected a defeat of his policies. It is good that we will be signing at once, Manningham-Buller told the American, for it would have been impossible to have kept the two chairmen on speaking terms a week longer. To have attempted to do this, he added, would have caused everything “to blow up.”82 The next morning, the Committee came together in the hotel’s conference room for signing the report, one for Truman and one for the British government. After Hutcheson made a few pleasant remarks, he met with his colleagues in his room just before catching a Lockheed Constellation flight for Washington to present the document to the President. He broke down, much to his disgust and their embarrassment, expressing appreciation for their work and loyalty to him. After the judge’s departure, the team bade farewell to the British, only to find Singleton still feeling that his group had given way to American pressure. A confident Buxton allayed Phillips’s doubts by predicting an enthusiastic reception in the U.S. press. McDonald soon wrote to BenGurion (with a copy to Proskauer) urging that the yishuv leaders focus on the “concrete possibilities” in the report, strain every effort to translate them into reality, and have ideological considerations—at least for the next months—take a secondary place. Crum sent a lengthy cable to Niles, stressing that for “this monumental victory” to mean more than words, the President had to designate someone (he suggested McDonald) to implement its recommendations, particularly regarding the 100,000. Crossman, he noted, was writing a similar letter to Bevin urging the need for speed and also stating that partition would come “within three years at the outside.”83 — 190 —

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Defending the report in his letter to Bevin two days later, Crossman took the occasion to suggest that partition might well evolve in a relatively short period of time. In his view, British interests had been protected; the approval of the Americans, who “actually improved” the recommendations, had given them weight; and moderates led by Weizmann now had “a real chance” of regaining their “dwindling” authority. At the same time, Crossman doubted that the Mandate or trusteeship could go on for at least a generation in the face of two competing nationalisms. Furthermore, both Arab and Jew might agree in two or three years to an early partition, such as the boundaries endorsed by Weizmann and Ben-Gurion in their private talks with him, as an alternative to the “horrid prospect” of fifty years of British trusteeship. If the Foreign Secretary could “exploit” the situation to the full, this would force both sides to think again on “a new and more realistic basis.” These ideas should not be given any publicity at the present moment, he concluded: “We have first got to let the present report and any policy you have upon it sink in.”84 Bevin had other thoughts, requesting Byrnes on April 24 to tell Truman that HMG could not possibly agree to publication of the report until the full Cabinet considered it, not even a partial public release that State had suggested. The Foreign Secretary’s first reaction, he told the Cabinet the same day, was that the report could not be carried out unless illegal armies were “cleared up” and “a new deal” was arrived at with the Jewish Agency. He would then accept the 100,000 subject to a Board of Control on which the United States was represented, but the cost of “building up” the Arabs had to rest on the Americans or on the Arabs themselves. Three days later, a special Cabinet Committee, in association with the Chiefs of Staff, concluded that the recommendations would have a “disastrous effect” on HMG’s position in the Middle East, possibly unfortunate repercussions in India, and a general Palestinian Arab rising supported by the nearby states, all this without silencing the Zionist clamor in the United States. If peaceful methods failed, the Jewish underground resistance organizations had to be dissolved by force and the Jewish leaders arrested. Washington would have to provide political, economic, and military assistance to carry out the Committee’s recommendations, with London possibly asking the Security Council’s approval for some other, more satisfactory policy.85 The killing by the Stern Group of seven British soldiers, some in cold blood, in the Sixth Airborne car park on the night of April 25 in Tel Aviv, — 191 —

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although quickly condemned by the leading yishuv bodies and Kol Yisrael, hardened the mood. A curfew was clamped down on the city, a “horrified and disgusted” Sixth Airborne commander Major-General A.J.H. Cassels informing the acting mayor that he held the whole community to blame. Two days later Bevin told Byrnes, both then at the Conference of Foreign Ministers in Paris, that HMG would only accept the immigration of the 100,000 after disarmament of the Jews had taken place. The Agency, he claimed, smuggled arms illegally into Palestine and selected Jews for immigration “for militant purposes.” These “warlike and aggressive intentions” were highly disturbing to the Arab states, and he felt bound to announce this view publicly when presenting the Palestine report to the House of Commons. The Jews were “poisoning relations between our two peoples.” Military forces would be required to collect the Jewish weapons, and he hoped the Americans would send some troops to help. Bevin made it clear how distasteful it was to the British government to keep four divisions of troops in Palestine, with all the expense and waste of manpower involved, merely in order to execute “a thankless task.” He had to consider the possibility of “a complete British withdrawal” from Palestine.86 Returning home on the 28th, Bevin expressed to his staff strong opposition to HMG’s taking any initiative to bring the Palestine conundrum into the Security Council. This step, he argued, would open the door to the Russians and everyone else “to make mischief.” Nonetheless, he realized that one or more of the Arab states would take the initiative to do so. The next day, the Cabinet decided first to have it out with Washington, and that while the matter should in due course be brought before the UN, the Trusteeship Council should be involved.87 Byrnes, still in Paris, advised Acheson on April 28 that Bevin expressed the hope that the United States would not make a statement of policy on Palestine without consulting London. The Secretary of State noted that he was willing to agree, but asked Acheson to apprise Truman. The President informed Acheson the next day that he felt it necessary to issue a statement when the report was released on May 1. Unbeknownst to Acheson, Silver, urged by McDonald and Crum separately on the 28th not to criticize the report, agreed on condition that the President publicly hail the recommendations about the 100,000 and abrogating the White Paper, while saying that he would consider the long-term proposals at a later date. (Shertok, then in Paris, had called Epstein urging this same line of action.) The pair consented; Crum had — 192 —

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already cabled Niles that Truman had to release the report without delay, or it would “leak out piecemeal” and the real effect would be lost. With a draft prepared by Silver and his associate Neumann, Crum took the statement to Niles. On the 29th, Crum and Epstein, calling from Niles’s office in the White House, told Silver that Crum had seen the President. During this meeting, Truman said, “We have to hurry with the first 100,000 in order to be able to start with another 100,000.” He also agreed in principle to the draft, but wished some mention that the Holy Places would be protected and a sentence about the Arabs. The AZEC approved the ultimate wording. The next day, hearing over the telephone the impending statement, Byrnes stated to Acheson that he did not object to Truman’s issuing that text at 7 p.m., scheduled for the simultaneous release of the Anglo-American report, and would mention it to Bevin. Acheson instructed Ambassador Harriman in London to officially transmit the statement to the Foreign Office as well.88 Unaware of these developments, the British Cabinet met that day with the Commonwealth’s prime ministers at 3:30 in the afternoon. It had been of great advantage to have obtained the Americans’ cooperation in the Committee’s appointment, Attlee began, but the recommendation regarding resettlement of the DPs was vague and general. The other and more positive proposals involved “heavy liabilities” on the United Kingdom government alone. Many would be “most unpopular” with the Arabs. The suppression of the Jewish illegal armed forces was essential before immigrants would be permitted to enter Palestine. The future regime suggested in the report would be equally unpopular with both the Jews, who were officially committed to the Biltmore Program for statehood in all of the country, and the Arabs. The British were not in a position to spare the troops or the money necessary to implement the recommendations single-handed; it was “high time” that the Americans shared some of the cost. Accordingly, Attlee closed, the government proposed to consult with Washington regarding further action to be taken. Hall seconded these concerns, as did Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) Alanbrooke. Those in attendance agreed that it would be difficult for the U.S. Government to disclaim any further responsibility, and that when the report was published HMG would confine itself to saying that it was in consultation with Washington. It would be unwise to indicate acceptance of any proposal until London had ascertained to what extent the Truman administration was prepared to cooperate in giving effect — 193 —

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to the recommendations. These consultations should not be “unduly protracted,” since a grave risk existed that disorder would break out in Palestine, which the mandatory would be left to handle alone, if any substantial delay occurred in defining the two governments’ attitude towards the policy advocated in the report.89 Truman’s public statement, given to the media at the scheduled time, disregarded Bevin’s requests for delay. When first informed by Byrnes on April 20 that the Foreign Secretary “earnestly” hoped” and was “particularly anxious” that US action and publication of the report not take place prior to consultation with him, the President had written a marginal notation on the cable: “Approved—but it [might] just give the British a chance to pull their usual stunt. H. S. T.” Ten days later, the words delivered now clearly reflected his change of mind:90 I am very happy that the request, which I made for the immediate admission of 100,000 Jews into Palestine has been unanimously endorsed by the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. The transference of these unfortunate people should now be accomplished with the greatest dispatch. The protection and safe-guarding of the Holy places in Palestine sacred to Moslem, Christian and Jew is adequately provided in the report. One of the significant features in the report is that it aims to insure complete protection to the Arab population of Palestine by guaranteeing their civil and religious rights, and by recommending measures for the constant improvement in their cultural, educational and economic position. I am also pleased that the Committee recommends in effect the abrogation of the White Paper of 1939 including existing restrictions on immigration and land acquisition to permit the further development of the Jewish National Home. It is also gratifying that the report envisages the carrying out of large scale economic development projects in Palestine which would facilitate further immigration and be of benefit to the entire population. In addition to these immediate objectives the report deals with many other questions of long range political policies and questions of international law which require careful study and which I will take under advisement. Harry S. Truman

Bevin received the text from Byrnes at 9:30 p.m. in Paris, two and a half hours before Truman’s statement was to be issued. He dispatched — 194 —

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a “diplomatic (secret)” telegram at midnight to the Foreign Office for Attlee, with a request that a copy be passed immediately to Halifax. In view of “the American statement,” the cable began, he considered that the Prime Minister’s speech in the House of Commons the next day should make it clear that London could do nothing in this matter unless “the Jewish Agency [thus equated with the Hagana] and others disarm.” This was “vital.” Acceptance of the report without insisting that disarmament must precede immigration would leave the Agency in a position to maintain private armies, and His Majesty’s Government must be satisfied “that they are not committed to a policy which would involve them in further military commitments.” The United States, the Foreign Secretary concluded, “must be put up against it.” He would send a “stiff” letter to Byrnes tomorrow.91 Truman’s focusing on the 100,000 and the White Paper’s abrogation ran directly counter to the Committee’s ultimate efforts. While the members’ report had glossed over Arab opposition and remained unclear as to Palestine’s future government, unanimity had been achieved for the document in all its parts. As the report had headed to completion, Crum thought their joint achievement a “monumental victory”, but the true test would be full implementation. Reaching Washington, Hutcheson told newspapermen that he would “stand firm” on the report, and that anyone who did not agree with the contents “could lump it.” Thinking that the report would not be given out to the press in its entirety and that this might cause “a good deal of damage,” Phillips had sent a personal telegram to State the day it was signed saying that when Truman made it public, he should merely declare that he had not had time to study it or to exchange views with the British government, then add that the members had prepared the report with much care and it deserved careful consideration. This seasoned diplomat was therefore “much annoyed” that Truman had “rather botched” the report, not making it clear that each of the ten recommendations was a part of the whole. Bevin’s private secretary, taking the call from Byrnes about Truman’s intended statement while dining at the British Embassy in Paris, later also faulted the President for not even having “the courtesy” to consult Attlee and Bevin beforehand. A far more caustic Crossman, whom Phillips credited even beyond Hutcheson with achieving the report’s completion, deemed Truman’s statement “lamentable” for saying ­nothing about — 195 —

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the “very carefully balanced” report, not even making a passing reference to America’s taking part in carrying it out.92 The future of the report was now up in the air. So certain were the members that their recommendations would be carried out that ManninghamBuller had undertaken to see Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party Anthony Eden, and Leggett, an old friend of Bevin’s, agreed to talk with him. Had not the Foreign Secretary pledged the Committee in London to back a unanimous result? Yet Bevin’s and Attlee’s immediate responses augured badly, as did the conclusions of the British Chiefs of Staff on April 27. Crum cautioned some leading Zionists not to attack Truman and to remember that they could not afford to alienate this ally before facing “a major battle” at the UN. He feared that the Jews had had such bad news for so long that they were unwilling to accept good news at face value when they got it. Buxton told Lourie that he thought the report would be “the biggest step forward for Zionism in 25 years.” “Well, that remains to be seen,” the AZEC official wrote to Silver, who strongly objected to many of the recommendations. Crossman hoped that acceptance of the report would boost Weizmann’s appeal, but Hagana commander Sneh spoke for an increasingly militant yishuv, writing in HaAretz that the Jewish people would not, could not surrender in its national struggle: “ein breira” (we have no choice).The Arabs’ hostile reaction could be anticipated, Oriental Secretary Smart warning from Cairo of a hostile Fertile Crescent arising if the report were adopted. Even before taking his unilateral step, not the President’s first on this highly contentious issue, Truman asked Hutcheson on April 25 if each Committee member was prepared to defend the report. The Americans certainly would, replied “Texas Joe,” but his was uncertain conjecture.93 Meanwhile, the plight of the survivors in Europe had steadily deteriorated. Reports from Poland especially indicated no abatement in the public’s murderous hatred of Jews. The Stuttgart incident of the previous month, which led McNarney to halt the use of unsupervised German police guards, reflected deepening tensions with the U.S. military. Rioting broke out in the Landsberg DP center on April 28 after a rumor that two Jewish camp policemen had been kidnapped by SS partisans. The existing state of affairs, wrote General Morgan to Fanny Holtzman, might best be described as “an unstable equilibrium.” An official UNRRA survey on the Displaced Persons in Germany spoke of “morale at its lowest ebb,” and urged — 196 —

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that governments work towards their earliest possible removal. Central Committee chairman Grinberg warned the American Jewish Conference that depression “reached its peak,” and if a large scale of immigration to Palestine did not start within the next months, he suspected “catastrophe.”94 Concurrently, Palestine’s appeal rose. Returning from a trip to Europe, Rochester Temple Brith Kodesh spiritual leader Philip Bernstein spoke of the heartbreak witnessing people “having nothing to do and nowhere to go,” and he declared that immigration to Palestine was “a matter of life and death” for the Jewish DPs. In a last report to General McNarney before stepping down from his advisory position to the American military on DP issues, Rifkind explained that the “unwelcome” Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, escaping “a graveyard of memories,” were converging on the U.S. zone in Germany in the hope of reaching Palestine. Unless the world was prepared to enable them to “strike permanent roots” there, he cautioned, this “handful of a decimated people” would be driven to “despair and disaster.” Rumanian Jewish leaders handed the British mission three volumes containing a petition from 90,000 heads of families representing 270,000 souls asking in April for the abolition of the White Paper, free immigration under the Jewish Agency’s control, and a Jewish state in all of Palestine. In a supplement to the first Passover Haggada printed in Germany after the war, illustrated with expressionist woodcuts of the Nazi concentration camps and death centers by Hungarian-born survivor Miklós Adler, Hebrew pedagogue from Kovno Y. D. Sheinson concluded the Dayeinu with this plea: “How much more so for all these tragedies to have affected us, are we obligated to make aliya, to get there illegally, to remove the galut mentality, to build the Promised Land and to establish a home for ourselves and our children forever.”95 Fierst, having by this time moved to the State Department with Hilldring, newly appointed Assistant Secretary for Occupied Territories in Europe, as his principal adviser on refugees and DPs, gave Rifkind a memorandum for his appointment with Truman that same month. Noting the “current explosive situation” despite improvements to the survivors’ condition in the U.S. zones in Germany and Austria, it proposed a “rapid mass evacuation” to Palestine, as recommended by the President last September, to be “the only solution.” The borders should be kept open to Jewish refugees and immediate planning for the ­evacuation of the — 197 —

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100,000 initiated by the relevant government departments. A report on April 15 by the former director of UNRRA’s DP operations in the Eastern Military district of the U.S. zone in Germany, which D. N. (Niles) initialed, made the same point. Despite the War Department’s wish to close the camps in August owing to its fear that they would be inundated with Jewish infiltrees soon after the Anglo-American report’s publication, a sympathetic Truman had Byrnes inform Secretary Patterson on the 23rd that the President thought it “unwise” to do so before the special UN Committee on refugees reported to the General Assembly in September and the Assembly had an opportunity to act upon this report. Hearing of the Cabinet’s decision one week later to await the public reaction to the Anglo-American report before deciding on the border closing question, Fierst got Hilldring’s approval to have State and War meet with Jewish leaders to obtain their “maximum cooperation” in “moderating the flow” when needed as the only way of keeping the borders open. Acheson agreed and, given the task to draft a memorandum from Hilldring to Truman on the proposed meeting, Fierst quickly set to work.96 Much hinged now on the responses of London, Washington, Jews, and Arabs to the report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine. Deeply anxious about Jewish illegal immigration, a meeting of representatives from the British Colonial, Foreign, and War Offices, together with the Admiralty, had recently concluded that taking more “radical action” to stem the traffic was impossible unless the Labour Cabinet decided to endorse drastic steps against the Jewish Agency— “undoubtedly the financial and administrative mainspring” behind this effort. The La Spezia affair, yet to be resolved, hinted at future difficulties. Agency immigration head Dobkin claimed to his colleagues on April 30 that 400 briha operatives, having transferred some 68,000 survivors over the past five months to DP camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy, determined the Committee’s unanimous recommendation for the 100,000. What might come next? Cunningham wired Hall the previous day that if “a major outrage” occurred in Palestine after the report’s publication and the Jews did not disband their armed forces “by agreement,” he would have to agree with Commander-in-Chief of Middle East forces Genl. Bernard Paget to initiate military action against the yishuv, including occupation of the Agency’s headquarters and the detention of selected leaders.97 Attlee’s impending statement before the House of — 198 —

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Commons would be crucial. Truman’s political position on the Promised Land dilemma in all its ramifications had yet to be finalized. Nor had that country’s two contesting communities, as well as the Arab League, made their views on policy and tactics clear. The same could be said for Moscow. The survivors were suspended between past and future, and Palestine’s fate still stood clouded in mystery.

Endnotes 1 Meeting, January 1, 1946, CAB 128/5; Cunningham to CO, Dec. 26, 1945, and minute, December 31, 1945, CO733/462/II; all in PRO; Truman to Attlee, January 1, 1945, PSF, Palestine 1945–1947, Box 161, HSTL; Creech Jones to Bevin, January 23, 1946, PREM 8/627, PRO. 2 Ben-Gurion to Cunningham, January 1, 1946, BGA; January 1, 1946, CO 814/41, PRO. 3 JTA, January 3 and 4, 1945. 4 New York Times, January 3 and 7, 1946; New Judea, January-February 1946; I. F. Stone, “The Morgan Affair in Perspective,” PM, January 6, 1946; Morgan statement, January 17, 1946, 6/12; Holtzman to Lehman, January 19, 1946, 5/18; both in RG 84, AJA; L. Galambos et al., eds., The Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower, vol. 7 (Baltimore, MD, 1978), 722–723; Rifkind to Gross, n.d., Rifkind MSS; Holtzman to Winchell, February 1, 1946, Szold-US depts. files, Hadassah Archives, New York City; Morgan to Lehman, February 14, 1946, Herbert Lehman MSS. Lehman’s successor, former New York City Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, removed Morgan from the post in August 1946. For his own recollections, see Frederick Morgan, Peace and War: A Soldier’s Life (London, 1961), 234–238, 243–262. 5 Friedman report, June 11, 1946, Group IV-3-32.477, Histadrut Archives, Makhon Lavon, Tel Aviv; HaMerkaz LaGola conference, January 6, 1946, S25/5215, CZA; Memo of discussion with Kaplan, December 24, 1945, General Jewish Agency 1945–1946, JDC Archives, New York City; Lange statement, January 4, 1946, 1-A/20, World Jewish Congress Archives, New York City (now at the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati); Gran report, January 23, 1946, declassified NND760050, NA; Richman to Whiting, January 17, 1946, Box 66,484, UNRRA Files, UNA; Excerpt from January 23, 1946 report,

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P.68/6, Abraham Klausner MSS, Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem. 6 Byrnes to Royall, January 7, 1946; Royall to Acheson, January 19, 1946; Hilldring memo, January 14, 1946; all in CAD 383.9, section 2, RG 165, SD; Fierst memoir, 43–47. For Clark’s views, see Mel Schiff, “President Truman and the DPs 1945–1946, The Untold Story,” American Jewish History 99, no. 4 (October 2015): 340–347.   7 Hall to Cunningham, January 3, 1946, CO 733/463/2; Creech Jones to Bevin, January 23, 1946, PREM 8/627/2; both in PRO; Arab Political News, January 8, 1946, S25/22831, CZA; Muhammad Khalil, The Arab States and the Arab League (Beirut, 1962), 513–514.  8 Gilbert, Exile and Return, 276, 278; British statement, January 11, 1946, Z5/285, CZA. For Rendel’s views in the 1930’s, see Penkower, Palestine in Turmoil, vols. 1–2, passim.   9 Martin to Howe, January 10, 1946, FO 371/52504, PRO. 10 Truman statement, January 7, 1946, OF 204-B, HSTL; Bartley C. Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain (New York, 1947), 6–7. 11 Hearings Before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, January 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 1946 (typescript) (Washington, D.C., 1946): Yarden memo, January 7–14, 1946, Z4/30678, CZA; Cohn to Proskauer, January 14, 1946, Box 8, Joseph Proskauer MSS, American Jewish Committee Archives, New York City. 12 Hearings, January 10, 1946; Yarden memo, January 7–14, 1946, Z5/30678, CZA. 13 Hearings, January 10, 11, 14, 1946. 14 McDonald diary, January 11, 1946; Hearings, January 11, 1946; Einstein to Wise, January 14, 1946, Z6/287, CZA. In 1944 Einstein had written to the American Council for Judaism’s Morris Lazaron that while he did not like nationalism in itself, “for us Jews a feeling of strong intellectual solidarity is very important to make us independent in our inner life from the devastating influences of a more or less hostile social environment…. Zionism has great merits in this respect and has saved many people from despair and from succumbing to an inferiority complex. This is true, I am convinced, also for our fellow-Jews in this country in the present situation and may be still more in the times to come.” Einstein to Lazaron, April 14, 1944, SC-3124, American Jewish Archives. 15 Hearings, January 14, 1946. 16 Hearings, January 7, 9, 10, and 14, 1946; Crossman, Palestine Mission, 38–41; David Horowitz, State in the Making, J. Meltzer, trans. (New York, 1953), chap. — 200 —

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8; Crum to Miller, August 27, 1953, Crum file, Emanuel Neumann MSS, ZA; Wahl memos, January 11 and 15, 1946, A431/44, CZA. 17 Wahl memo, January 15, 1945, A431/44, CZA; McDonald diary, January 15, 1945; Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, 7 (which errs on the time sequence). 18 Phillips diary, January 24, 1946, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge; Wise to Levinthal, January 11, 1946, Box 113, Wise MSS; Rundall to Tandy, January 13, 1946, FO 371/52507, PRO; Wahl to Kenen, January 17, 1946, A431/44, CZA; Kirschblum to Berlin, January 18, 1946, 32, Religious Zionism Archives, Mosad HaRav Kook, Jerusalem; AZEC meeting, January 14, 1946, Z5/1171, CZA. 19 Epstein to Shertok, January 25, 1946, Z4/30969, CZA. Epstein also sent a copy to Weisgal, clearly intended for Weizmann. January 28, 1946, Z5/781, CZA. 20 Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, 7–8, 33; David McCullough, Truman (New York, 1992), 478–480; George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1925–1950 (New York, 1967), 287–288; Solod to Samylovskii, January 3, 1946, Documents on Israeli-Soviet Relations , 1941–1953, vol. 1, E. Bentsar, B. L. Kolokolov et al., eds. (London, 2000), 120–123; Robert to Foreign Office, January 14, 1946, CO 733/463/75872/140; Roberts to Foreign Office, January 15, 1946, FO 371/52506; both in PRO. 21 Trevor, Under the White Paper, 177–181; February 11, 1946 report, Yitshak Herzog MSS, Heikhal Shlomo, Jerusalem; CID report, January 15–26, 1946, 8 klali/21, HA; “Voice of Israel,” January 21 and 22, 1946, Z5/794, CZA; Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 936, 1121–1122, 877; Ben-Gurion address, January 17, 1946, S25/5232, CZA. 22 Bevin to Cairo and elsewhere, January 28, 1946, FO 371/52507, PRO; Silver and Wise to Truman, January 25, 1946, S25/3505, CZA; InverchapelGoldmann talk, January 17, 1946, FO 371/52565, PRO; Kimche memo, January 5, 1946, A263/18, CZA; Trevor, Under the White Paper, 182–186; Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 812; Gilbert, Exile and Return, 278–279. 23 JTA, January 31, 1946; “The Curfew,” Palestine Post, January 29, 1946. 24 Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, 36–42; McDonald diary, January 18–23, 1946; Frank to Silver, January 27, 1946; Lourie to Silver, January 23, 1946; both in 4/3, Abba Silver MSS, The Temple, Cleveland; Buxton interview witth the author, July 10, 1979. 25 Hearings Before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (London, 1946), 6 vols., PRO. For the Woodhead Commission, see Penkower, Palestine in Turmoil, vol. 2, chap. 8. Hearing the testimony of Spears, whose great-grandfather Isaac Spiers — 201 —

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had married Hannah Moses, Crossman wrote in his diary “General Spears was nauseating, proving that a Jew can be pro-Arab.” Crossman diary, January 1946. 26 Lourie memo, February 3, 1946, Z4/15440, CZA; Phillips diary, February 7, 1946; Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, chap. 3; Crossman, Palestine Mission, 54–56, 65–72. 27 Crossman, Palestine Mission, 57; Phillips diary, January 30, 1946; Crum diary, January 29, 1946, Gerold Frank MSS, New York Public Library, New York City; Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, 61–62. 28 McDonald diary, January 24, 25, 26, 27, 1946; Phillips diary, January 30 and February 2, 1946; Crum diary, January 23, 1946; Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, 46, 54–55, 65–66, 72–73; McDonald diary, February 3, 1946; Crossman diary, January 1946. 29 Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS) 1946, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.,1972), 554–555; JTA, February 4, 1946; Epstein memo, February 11, 1946, A370/575; P. to Ben-Gurion, February 1, 1946, S25/486; both in CZA; Phillips diary, February 1, 1946. 30 Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, 62–64; Goldmann to Silver and to Wise, February 28, 1946, Z6/268, CZA; Crum Diary, February 1, 1946; Frank to Silver, February 6, 1946; both in Box 7, Gerold Frank MSS. 31 Crossman, Palestine Mission, chap. 4; UNRRA Germany report, January 31, 1946, Box 66,483; UNRRA Austria report, January 1946, Box 52,071; both in UNRRA records, UNA; Memo by the Bohemia-Moravia-Silesia Jewish communities, January 1946; Box 88, David Mowshowitz MSS, YIVO; Zissu memo, February 22, 1946, World Jewish Congress archives, London; Vida diary, February 12, 22, and 23, 1946, C3/788, CZA; Lunzer report, February 18, 1946, C14/29-2, Board of Deputies of British Jews Archives, London; Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, 123–124; McDonald diary, February 1946,; Crick-Buxton report, February 6, 1946; Singleton report, February 12, 1946; Crick report, February 14, 1946; Buxton report, February 16, 1946; all in McDonald MSS; Shuckburgh to Foreign Office, February 18, 1946, FO 371/52511, PRO. 32 Monty Noam Penkower, The Holocaust and Israel Reborn: From Catastrophe to Sovereignty (Urbana, IL, 1994), 279–280. Morgan, who had asked Eleanor Roosevelt to visit American DP camps in Germany, hoped that she could do good for “those poor wretches that UNRRA has under its care.” Morgan to Roosevelt, February 21, 1946, Box 3773, Eleanor Roosevelt MSS, FDRL. 33 February 22, 1946, McDonald diary; Palestine Post, February 21, 1946; Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, 121–122, 127–129; Ruffer aide-memoire, — 202 —

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34

35

36

37

February 18, 1946, S25/6449, CZA; Rifkind to Wise, February 23, 1946, Box 125, Wise MSS; Crossman, Palestine Mission, 96–97; Abram L. Sachar, The Redemption of the Unwanted (New York, 1983), 203. Officially, the Soviet government stated that it saw no need for visits to these areas, since “manifestations of racial discrimination” were not permitted there, while it, moreover, was not informed of the “creation, purpose and functions” of the Anglo-American Committee. Moscow to Foreign Office, February 16, 1946, CO 733/463, PRO. McDonald diary, February 24, 1946; Crossman diary, February 24–25, 1946, Middle East Centre, St. Anthony’s College, Oxford. Manningham-Buller’s fear, reported after his visit to Poland, was that the Russians might want Jewish migration because it would create difficulties for the British and Americans in Europe, “and accentuate the situation in Palestine,” and because they feared the influence and propaganda in Poland of a large number of Jews who had seen “the inside of the USSR.” Manningham-Buller report, February 13, 1946, McDonald MSS. Linton to Shertok, February 26, 1946, S25/6446; Ruffer memo, February 25, 1946, S25/6442; both in CZA; Mickleson to the Committee, February 14, 1946, McDonald MSS; Hutcheson-Leggett-Travers meeting, February 1946, Box 1096, Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (hereafter AACI) files, #71A6682, RG 59, National Archives, Suitland, MD; February 26, 1946 Italy report, McDonald MSS; February 27, 1946, McDonald diary; LaFleche report, March 5, 1946, RG 25, series A-12, vol. 2093-I, PAC; Moissis testimony, February 27, 1946, SZ4/30677; Goldmann to Silver, February 28, 1946, Z6/268; both in CZA; Crossman, Palestine Mission, 97. Palestine, Statement of Information, 7–8; Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 866– 871; Report, February 26, 1946, S25/5601, CZA; JTA, February 25, 1946; Cunningham to Colonial Office, February 19, 1946, Box 1, Cunningham MSS; Comay to Gering, February 19, 1946, S25/1568, CZA; Meeting, February 21, 1946, CAB 125/5, PRO. The United Resistance Movement’s actions notwithstanding, on February 18 the British captured LEHI’s secret radio operator, Geula Cohen, and eight of her male associates in Tel Aviv thanks to information received from Kollek. Bergman, “The Scorpion File.” Wahl to Kenen, February 7, 1946, A431/44, CZA; Smith to Bevin, February 11, 1946, RG 25, 84-85-19, Box 255, PAC; Report, February 27, 1946, S25/9229, CZA; Porter to State, February 2, 1946, 867N.01/2-246, SD; JTA, February 11, 1946; Epstein letter in Washington Post, February 18, 1946; Committee to Bevin, February 14, 1946, 3059/18-P, Israel State Archives (hereafter ISA), Jerusalem; — 203 —

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Committee to Bevin, February 19, 1946, CO 733/461/75872, PRO; CID reports, February 28, 1946; March 2, 1946; both in file 47/571, HA. 38 Andreas Augustin, The Mena House Treasury: Secrets of a Very Special Hotel (2007). 39 Hearings Before the Anglo-American Committee on Inquiry Held at the Mena House Hotel, Cairo, March 2, 1946, AACI files, RG 59, NA; McDonald diary, March 2, 1946. 40 McDonald diary, March 3–4, 1946; Phillips diary, March 1, 4, 5, 1946; LLR (Rood) memo, March 3, 1946, Box 1100, AACI files, NA; A. L. (Lourie) report, March 3, 1946, A370/575, CZA. 41 Phillips diary, March 1, 1946; Crossman, Palestine Mission, 112–116. 42 Testimony March 5, 1946, S25/6386, CZA. 43 McDonald diary, March 6–7, 1946; Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, 159–163; Phillips diary, March 7, 1946. 44 Crossman, Palestine Mission, 123–124; Azriel Carlbach, Va’adat HaHakira HaAnglo-Amerikanit L’Inyanei Eretz-Yisrael, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv, 1946), 207–344; Rose, Baffy, 231-232; JAEL, March 10, 1946, Jewish Agency Executive Jerusalem (hereafter JAEJ), March 10, 1946, CZA. Faced with some Agency executive members demanding that Weizmann’s evidence be amended, Weizmann sent a letter (drafted first by Shertok) to the Committee stating that the 100,000 should be admitted “forthwith as an emergency measure.” Weizmann to joint secretaries, March 12, 1946, WA. 45 March 9, 1946, Phillips diary; Crossman, Palestine Mission, 125–128; Rose, Baffy, 232. 46 Carlbach, Va’adat, 326–344; Crossman, Palestine Mission, 129; Phillips diary, March 11, 1946; McDonald diary, March 11, 1946. 47 Carlebach, Va’adat, 348–371. Auni Bey later told the Agency’s chief Arab expert that the Palestinians’ fate would be determined by the Arabs themselves, and the Jews should leave their destiny in the hands of the Arabs. Sasson to Shertok, March 17, 1946, S25/6482, CZA. 48 Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, 181–182; Crossman diary, March 14, 1946; Crossman, Palestine Mission, 130–131; Phillips diary, March 13, 1946; McDonald diary, March 14, 1946; Lourie letter, March 16, 1946, A370/575, CZA. Silver and Wise complained in an advertisement in the New York Times, but (Buxton then wrote to Frankfurter) Singleton, one of the first to discover the omission, had taken steps to have it reinserted into the record. Buxton to Frankfuter, April 6, 1946, Frankfurter MSS.

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49 Report, March 14, 1946, X4902, RG 226, NA; Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, 220; “Military Implications,” n.d., McDonald MSS. 50 Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, 214–215; Hagana memo, March 25, 1946, CO 733/464/75872/138/7, PRO; Crossman, Palestine Mission, 132–133; Crossman diary, March 19, 1946; McDonald diary March 11, 1946. 51 Carlbach, Va’adat, 386–403; Phillips Diary, March 14–15, 1946; Crossman, Palestine Mission, 132–134. Mordekhai Ben-Tov, Yamim Mesaprim, Zikhronot MeiHaMeia HaMakhra’at (Tel Aviv, 1984), 86–87; Ben-Tov interview with the author, August 26, 1976. Hutcheson would repeat his appreciation of Magnes’s views while criticizing “Russian influence” in the kibbutzim. Lefever report, March 30, 1946, C25/6522, CZA. For Arab views of Magnes, see Teller report, March 21, 1946, Box 1534, Jewish Welfare Board Archives, New York City; “Arab Political Life” report, March 20, 1946, S25/22831, CZA. 52 Beeley to Baxter, March 25, 1946, FO 371/52514, PRO; Azriel Carlbach, Va’adat HaHakira, vol. 2 (Tel Aviv, 1946), 414–415, 417–420. 53 March 17–21, 1946, McDonald diary; J.G. Hutcheson files, Houston Chronicle, June 18, 1955; Carlbach, Va’adat HaHakira, vol. 2, 411, 415–417; Palestine Post, March 21, 1946; JTA, March 22, 1946; Wadsworth to Satterthwaite, April 3, 1946, 867N.01/4-346, SD. 54 Shaw memoranda, n.d., Box 1102, AACI files, NA; Shertok to Committee secretaries, March 14, 1946, S25/6501, CZA; Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, 221; March 24, 1946, Phillips diary. 55 Carlbach, Va’adat HaHakira, vol. 2, 473–493; Horowitz, State in the Making, 66–68; Palestine Post, March 26, 1946. 56 Carlbach, Va’adat HaHakira vol. 1, 371–372; Crossman, Palestine Mission, 155–156, 163–164; Mar. 27, 1946, McDonald diary; Agronsky to Weizmann, Mar. 26, 1946, A209/20, CZA; Memorandum Submitted to the Anglo-American Committee on Inquiry on Palestine by the Jewish Agency for Palestine (Tel Aviv, 1946), 52; Carlbach, Va’adat HaHakira, vol. 2, 496–500, 521–540; Phillips diary, March 27, 1946. An exception was Husni al-Barazi, a Syrian of Kurdish descent, who told some of the Committee members that he favored a Jewish state in Palestine, a Christian state in the Lebanon, and a Muslim state in Syria and Lebanon. Heydt report, March 14, 1946, S25/8085, CZA. 57 Landau memo, January 15, 1946, S25/8189, CZA; March 19, 1946, ZOA Executive minutes, ZA. 58 David McCullough, Truman (New York, 1992), 486–491; Clifford, Counsel to the President, chap. 6. For immediate U.S. press reaction to the Fulton speech,

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see Canadian Ambassador telegram, March 9, 1946, RG 62, series 18, vol. 110, File U-40, PAC. 59 McCullough, Truman, 486; Ben-Horin to Silver, March 7, 1946, A300/62, CZA; Klarman to JTA, file 3/6/195-P, Jabotinsky Archives, Tel Aviv; Roberts to FO, March 8, 1946; March 24, 1946; both in CO733/463/75872/140, PRO; Epstein memo, March 15, 1946, Z5/809, CZA; JTA, March 17, 1946; Wilgress letter, March 23, 1946, RG 25, series A-12, vol. 2093/I, PAC. 60 Washington Post, February 6, 1946; Hardy, Isaiah Berlin, Letters, 621; McCullough, Truman, 492–493. 61 Akzin to Shapiro, March 14, 1946, A370/575, CZA; Akzin to Shulson, March 21, 1946, Akzin file, Emanuel Neumann MSS (courtesy of Emanuel Neumann), New York City; Celler to Truman, March 20, 1946; Truman to Celler, Mar. 23, 1946; both in PSF, Palestine, 1945–1947, Box 161, HSTL. 62 Grinberg at UAHC biennial, March 6, 1946, Union of Hebrew Congregations Archives, New York City; Klausner to Karlbach, March 11, 1946, file U154/11, WJC Archives, New York City; Richard Joseph with W. Root, “Why So Many GIs Like the Germans Best,” Reader’s Digest 48 (March 1946); Lovell to Byrnes, March 7, 1946, 840.48 Refugees/3-746, SD; Fierst memoir, 47–54; Goldmann-Acheson interview, February 12, 1946, 840.48 Refugees/2-1246, SD; Grinberg to Morgan, March 26, 1946, Box 18/118, Sh’eirit HaPleita MSS, YIVO; Central Committee report on March 29, 1946, file 170, Sh’eirit HaPleita MSS, YIVO; Schwarz, The Redeemers, 107–108; Klausner to JDC, March 29, 1946, Germany-DPs 1946 files, JDC Archives. 63 Trevor, Under the White Paper, 189–193; “Simpozyon al ‘Lel Vingate’ B’Vet HaRofeh B’Tel Aviv,” Hed HaHagana 22 (May 1966): 124–132; Nir Mann, “Wingate Night, Revisited,” HaAretz, March 27, 2011; Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 871–877, 1196–1197; Avriel, Open the Gates!, 265–269. 64 Hutcheson statement, April 1, 1946, McDonald MSS; McDonald diary, April 1, 1946. 65 Hutcheson statement, Box 40, Frankfurter MSS; McDonald diary, April 1, 1946; Lourie letter, April 3, 1946, Z6/287, CZA. 66 McDonald diary, April 1, 1946; Phillips diary, April 1–2, 1946; Crossman, Palestine Mission, 166–167, 173. 67 McDonald diary, April 3, 5; Phillips diary, April 3, 1946; Hutcheson paper, April 3, 1946; Crossman paper, April 6, 1946, both in McDonald MSS; Crossman diary, Apri 6, 1946, March 26, 1946; Lourie letter, Manson files, Silver MSS.

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68 Goldmann to Weisgal, April 5, 1946, L35/142; Weisgal to Goldmann, April 8, 1946, Z6/287; both in CZA; April 6, 1946, Lourie letter, Manson files, Silver MSS; Buxton to Frankfurter, April, 6, 1946, Frankfurter MSS. 69 McDonald diary, April 6, 1946; McDonald paper, April. 5, 1946; Crick paper, April 5, 1946; Buxton paper, April 5, 1946; Manningham-Buller, two drafts on immigration, n.d.; all in McDonald MSS. 70 Crossman, “Partition,” April 7, 1946, Box 1101, AACI files, NA; Kimche letter, January 2, 1946, S25/8004, CZA. Both McDonald and Phillips characterized his presentation as brilliant. April 8, 1946, McDonald and Phillips diaries. 71 McDonald diary, April 8, 1946; Phillips diary, April 8, 1946, Box 5, file 2, Cunningham MSS. The High Commissioner also did not wish the Jewish Agency, which he thought “a force to be reckoned with,” to be disbanded, nor did he think it really could be “destroyed.” Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, 225. 72 Truman to Hutcheson, April 9, 1946; Cable to D. N., April 12, 1946; both in S25/3342, CZA; Phillips diary, April 12, 1946; Zionist Record, April 12, 1946. 73 April 9, 1946 report, Box 1100, AACI files; Henderson to Byrnes, April 10, 1946, 867N.01/4-1046; both in SD, NA. 74 Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 1123–1126; Avriel, Open the Gates!, 277– 285; Kane report, April 18, 1946; Byington to State, April 15, 1946; both in 840.48 Refugees/4-1846, SD; Cable, April 8, 1946, SS6/4684, CZA; Monsky to Truman, April 10, 1946, file 167, G-Sheirit HaPleita MSS, YIVO Archives; Va’ad HaLeumi, April 11, 1946, J1/8027, CZA; “La Spezia,” Davar, June 9, 1947. For a report on Weizmann’s opposition to the Va’ad HaLeumi hunger strike, see April 17, 1946 report, OSS report, AACI files, Box 1101, NA. 75 Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, 271–272; McDonald diary, April 9, 1946. 76 McDonald diary, April 12, 1946; Phillips diary, April 13; Hutcheson draft recommendations, April 13, 1946, McDonald MSS. 77 McDonald memos, April 16, 1946, McDonald MSS; McDonald diary, April 12 and 16, 1946; Phillips diary, April 19, 1946. 78 Wahl memo, April 18, 1946, A431/2, CZA; Sack to Silver, April 17, 1946, BenGurion Archives; Sachar, The Redemption of the Unwanted, 204, 315–316. 79 Lourie to Silver, April 16, 1946, Manson files, Silver MSS; Crossman memo, April 22, 1946, PREM 8/302, PRO; Crossman interview with the author, July 1972. Horowitz hinted at Crossman’s talk with Noel-Baker and the latter’s meeting with Singleton when reporting subsequently to the Jewish Agency Executive in Jerusalem. JAEJ, June 2, 1946, CZA.

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80 Crossman memo, April 22, 1946, PREM 8/302, PRO; Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Report to the United States Government and His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom (Washington, D.C., 1946). 81 Lourie letter, April 17, 1946, Drawer 4, file 3, Silver MSS; McDonald to Weizmann, April 17, 1946, Weizmann Archives. 82 McDonald diary, April 19–20, 1946; Phillips diary, April 20, 1946. 83 McDonald diary, April 20, 1946; Phillips diary, April 20, 1946; McDonald to Ben-Gurion, April 22, 1946, Ben-Gurion Archives (copy to Proskauer, Box 8, Proskauer MSS.); Crum to Niles, n.d., S25/3342, CZA. 84 Crossman memo, April 22, 1946, PREM 8/302, PRO. 85 Bevin to Halifax, April 24, 1946, FO 371/52516; Meeting, April 24, 1946, CAB 195/4; Meeting, April 27, 1946, CAB 129/9; all in PRO. 86 Cunningham to Hall, April 26, 1946, FO 371/51519; Press Officer to Colonial Office, April 27, 1946, FO 371/52520; Bevin to Foreign Office, April 7, 1946, FO 371/52517; all in PRO; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 587–588; Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 879. 87 Ward to Beckett, April 28, 1946, FO 372/52521, PRO. 88 FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 588–589; Zvi Ganin, Truman, American Jewry, and Israel, 1945–1948 (New York, 1979), 63; Shertok to Weizmann, May 16, 1946, Z4/15432, CZA; Crum to Backer n.d., and Crum to Backer, n.d.; both in S25/3342, CZA; Ben-Gurion and Epstein meeting with Niles, May 17, 1946, BGA. 89 Meeting of Prime Ministers, April 30, 1946, FO 371/52520, PRO. 90 FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 584–585, 588–589. 91 Bevin to Attlee, April 30, 1946, FO 371/52519, PRO. 92 Crum to Niles, n.d., S25/3342, CZA; Houston Chronicle, April 24, 1946; Phillips diary, April 19, 1946; July 1951, William Phillips Oral History, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York City; Piers Dixon, Double Diplomat (London, 1968), 210; Crossman, Palestine Mission, 189. 93 Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, 281–282; Crum to Marks, April 27, 1946, Z4/30677, CZA; Lourie letter, April 16, 1946, Manson files, Silver MSS; Moshe Sneh, “Min HaMeitsar,” HaAretz, April 12, 1946; Cohen, Palestine and the Great Powers, 111; Hutcheson to American members, April 25, 1946, Phillips MSS. 94 Jewish Agency reports, April 1946, Youth Aliya files, Hadassah Archives; Warhaftig report, April 9, 1946, file 2A, WJC Archives; Morgan to Holtzman, April 11, 1946, file 6/12, RG 84, American Jewish Archives; Confidential

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report, n.d., Germany Mission, Box 66,480, UNRRA records, UNA; Mintzer to Schwarz, April 29, 1946, Box 118, file 116; Grinberg to the Conference, April 26, 1946, file 167; both in G-Sheirit HaPleita files, YIVO Archives. 95 Bernstein UPA release, n.d., Exhibit 23, Phillip Bernstein MSS, Rochester, New York; AZEC Executive, April 10, 1946, ZA; Rifkind to McNarney, April 8, 1946, S25/5232, CZA; Klarman to JTA, April 3, 1946, file 3/6/195-P, Jabotinsky Archives; “Free from Bondage,” Jerusalem Post Magazine, 4, April 18, 1986. 96 Fierst memoir, 56–60; Winslow report, April 15, 1946, L35/113, CZA; Byrnes to Patterson, April 23, 1946, WDSCA 383.7, RG 165, NA. 97 Memorandum, April 2, 1946, FO 371/52514, PRO; JAEJ, Apr. 30, 1946, CZA; Cunningham to Hall, April 29, 1946, FO 371/52519, PRO.

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On the afternoon of May 1, 1946, at the close of question hour in the House of Commons, Attlee made his first public statement concerning the report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine. After expressing HMG’s appreciation for the “care and trouble” devoted to the report’s preparation, he then posited that the document must be considered as a whole in all its implications. Further, London wished to ascertain to what extent the U.S. Government would be prepared to share the military and financial responsibilities arising from the “very heavy” commitments entailed in its execution. The mandatory could not admit so large a number as 100,000 Jews into Palestine until the Jewish illegal formations had been disbanded and their arms surrendered. The Jewish Agency had to take an active part in suppressing “this evil,” and HMG hoped that Jewish and Arab leaders would show restraint. Asked by Churchill if the government would enter immediately into discussion with Washington about the action necessary to do justice “to this very important and far-reaching report,” the Prime Minister replied “that is so.” Were the people living in “almost indescribably helpless and hopeless conditions in camps all over Europe” to “remain there indefinitely, or could any early hope be given to them?” queried Sidney Silverman. The Labourite MP was asked to wait until the Cabinet had the opportunity of studying the report fully and could make an announcement.1 Earlier that morning, the Cabinet had decided that Atlee should clarify British intentions in light of Truman’s earlier declaration about the 100,000 being brought to Palestine with the greatest dispatch, all accepting the Prime Minister’s desire to “put US up against it.” Unless a statement was made at once, argued Minister of Health Aneurin Bevan, “alarm and expectations will be excited” by the President’s promise of an

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early transfer of these Holocaust survivors. CIGS Viscount Alanbrooke reported that the local commanders in Palestine had stressed the need to disarm the illegal Jewish organizations and, as a first step, arrest the leaders. “Severe measures,” he added, would lead to bloodshed and require a year to complete. In agreement, those assembled also consented that Bevin should personally take up with French counterpart Georges Bidault that the ex-Mufti not leave France; Haj Amin would be arrested if he came in Britain’s jurisdiction, Dalton noted. The Prime Minister’s statement in Commons would not be taken harshly in the United States, Morrison opined: “Truman may be in some difficulty but he is used to it.”2 British response to the report was generally favorable, particularly amongst the fourth estate. Only the Conservative Daily Telegraph, preferring partition, condemned it as unhelpful. Reginald Coupland, key proponent behind the Peel Commission’s appeal for that solution, championed it again along with a trustee government in control of one or two common matters until the Jewish and Arab states joined in some union with their neighbors. Newspapers across the political spectrum warmly welcomed the call for American participation. At the same time, editorialized the independent left-of-center Tribune, any half-hearted decision of postponement would put a premium on violence by both Arabs and Jews; disarming the Hagana would require a full-scale military campaign, and it was “unlikely” that Attlee envisaged anything of this kind. Laski, in an article for the Overseas News Agency, stressed the need to move ahead on the 100,000 as the report’s “pivotal and unconditional” recommendation, based on “considerations of mercy and justice” that no government, and especially no Labour government, could possibly neglect. The diplomatic correspondent for the London Times, on the other hand, pointed out that this emphasis was bound to look a little different to the mandatory administration, “which is asked to go on indefinitely with a task of unique difficulty, to carry out a policy which the Committee admits will please neither Jew nor Arab and to bear the full political and economic consequences of providing a refuge for a portion of Europe’s displaced and refugee Jews.”3 The American response differed markedly. The New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune agreed that the United States was under obligation to assume a share of the responsibility in the report’s implementation. Yet while the former applauded the recommendation — 211 —

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against a Jewish state, both urged the immediate immigration of the 100,000 to Palestine. I. F. Stone warned in PM that the report’s other recommendations were a trap allowing Colonial Office operatives to stifle the yishuv’s future development. Crum and Buxton expressed shock at Attlee’s condition for admitting the 100,000, noting that the Committee had expressly rejected this as “inhuman and impossible of fulfillment.” Hutcheson had actually told Truman (as he had to Singleton) that Palestine’s Jews were defending what they believed to be their legitimate rights, and they were only doing what their ancestors, the Maccabees, did. The American co-chairman had no comment at the present on Attlee’s statement, but did say that he stood on the report which recommended that entrance of the 100,000 into Palestine be accomplished this year. Even Aydelotte, stating that Attlee had raised a reasonable point in seeking American aid, remarked that the condition imposed by the Prime Minister should be left to the people “on the spot” who would be forced to deal with any police problem.4 The Jewish Agency Executive in Jerusalem decided to issue no statement pending an indication of action to be taken by the British government. The recommendation for the 100,000 was definitely appreciated, but those parts denying statehood were bitterly criticized. Attlee’s statement in Commons, Ben-Gurion told Laski, “changed the entire picture.” His condition not only punished the unfortunate victims of the Nazis for acts committed by the “terrorist gangs” in Palestine, but it would mean practically “closing for good” the future of Palestine, for there was not “the slightest chance” of Jews there surrendering their weapons without being massacred first. The long-term policy bore no relation to realities in Palestine, he added; if HMG invited the Agency for talks, we would do our best to help find a solution, satisfactory, “as far as humanly possible,” to all sides. Magnes, who welcomed the recommendations, also cautioned Cunningham that the yishuv, having “unhappy bitter experiences” of past Arab attacks, should not be asked to renounce its right to self-defense.5 No Zionist was more shaken by Attlee’s words than the Anglophile Weizmann. Chairing a Jewish Agency Executive meeting hours before Attlee addressed the Commons, he had urged that the yishuv focus on carrying out the report’s recommendations for the 100,000 and land purchase, with the Jewish state arising organically after five years. The Prime Minister’s statement, he cabled Frankfurter, “came as a shattering — 212 —

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blow [and] may have grave consequences.” He feared, and so informed Magnes, that the British “are still bent on the liquidation of the National Home, which would mean “plunging Palestine into a great disaster.” It was “dreadful,” he wrote to the general secretary of Palestine House in London, to think of the unhappy people in the DP camps “depending on some sort of obscure political manoeuvres quite incomprehensible to the ordinary mind.” An opportunity of peaceful settlement of Palestine’s affairs was being jettisoned, the WZO president thought, whether by some “sinister forces” or by “mere muddle-headedness. I don’t know, and it makes little difference.” The following day, according to an OSS War Department informant, Weizmann sent a statement to the Agency and the Va’ad HaLeumi urging the cessation of terrorist actions and halting the implementation of any plans already worked out by the united resistance movement.6 Officially, the Agency Executive in London praised the recommendations for the 100,000 and the repeal of the 1940 Land Law, while expressing a few preliminary observations on some of the other proposals. It readily admitted the need to safeguard in equal measure the rights of all inhabitants of Palestine and to protect their holy places, but other suggestions, such as that Jewish education should be controlled by the Palestine government, bore the mark of “inadequate opportunity for full enquiry.” The Anglo-American Committee, it went on to emphasize, failed to provide for the needs of those Jews in other parts of the world whose position was no less insecure than that of the 100,000, just as it failed to realize “the core” of the problem—the homeless and stateless condition of the Jewish people. The Balfour Declaration and the Mandate had aimed at the solution that the Jewish National Home in Palestine could not be really secured “save within the framework of the Jewish State.” That commonwealth, as the Agency had made clear from the beginning, would be based on full equality for all its citizens; no Jew outside Palestine would be able to claim citizenship of that state, but any Jew in need of a home would be enabled by the Jewish commonwealth to settle in Palestine as of right. The Jewish Agency, the statement closed, would give careful consideration to the entire report, and in due course publish its comments.7 The American members of the Agency Executive limited their initial response to praising the report’s recommendation for the 100,000. Two weeks earlier, the AZEC had approved the proposal of Robert — 213 —

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Nathan and Office of Price Administration veteran Richard Gilbert to seek Congressional approval for $250,000,000 as an amendment to the Export-Import Law in order to advance the JVA scheme, which drew initial sympathy from Acheson, Vinson, and Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs William Clayton. Acheson suggested that another like sum be advanced as a loan for the development of the neighboring Arab countries, a “grand idea” in Shertok’s opinion. With this matter pending, Silver, Wise, Goldmann, Epstein, Louis Lipsky, and Weisgal (as secretary) now conveyed to Truman their “profound satisfaction” that his proposal for transferring the 100,000 to Palestine without delay had been adopted by the Anglo-American Committee. They pledged the fullest cooperation in this “great task,” assuring him that their organization in the United States, on the Continent, and in Palestine was at his disposal in the execution of that program. Truman’s “statesmanlike and humane spirit,” which prompted him to take the initiative in this “historic move,” elicited their deepest appreciation.8 The Arab world denounced the report in no uncertain terms. Jamal Husseini declared that Arabs everywhere would fight its implementation, particularly as regards the 100,000. Ibn Saud cabled him that “we shall not waver—by Allah’s Grace—to do everything possible” against the report’s “unsurpassable injustice.” Palestine Arab National Fund chairman Ahmed Hilmi wrote to Cunningham that the country’s Arabs were resolved to struggle in the defense of their holy country, “irrespective of Truman’s atomic bombs and the conspiracies of the hirelings of the Jews in America and elsewhere.” The United States’ position in the Arab world would “inevitably deteriorate” if the recommendations became policy, Azzam Pasha informed U.S. minister S. Pinckney Tuck in Cairo, the report only adding “fuel to the flames”; those who had kept quiet in expectation of the White Paper’s being put into operation now had “every reason to renew the fight dropped in 1939.” The Iraqi government, holding HMG solely responsible (U.S. “interference” deemed to have “no legal validity”), warned that any policy short of the White Paper would be regarded as “an unjust act calculated to disturb international peace in the Middle East.” Reaction in press, public, and official circles throughout Lebanon and Syria, Byrnes was informed, had been “disillusionment, hardening into determination” to resist execution of the report. Saudi Arabia foreign minister Emir Faisal had foreseen this one week before the report’s publication, telling Wadsworth — 214 —

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that the Arabs would have to resist, “by force if necessary,” a fact which he greatly regretted because of their two countries’ “otherwise truly friendly ­relations.”9 These developments greatly worried Henderson and colleagues. State had made every effort to head off Truman’s unilateral statement about the report, he confidentially told Halifax, including contacting Byrnes in Paris and putting “all possible pressure” on the White House direct to say nothing. The department had hoped up to the last minute that no statement would be issued, which explained why it could not give the British Embassy in Washington adequate warning. “Forces in the White House had been at work,” however, which State could not control, and he knew that the President’s declaration had added to the difficulties of the Palestine question. The situation developing in the Near East with regard to the report, Henderson felt, made it all the more desirable for action to be taken by Washington toward consultation with Arabs and Jews, and then, after speaking with London, decide the extent to which this government was prepared to accept the report as the basis for its Palestine policy. “We are of course playing with dynamite,” he wrote on a draft along these lines to Acheson on May 3, and you might prefer to discuss the matter orally with the President. Three days later, Acheson replied that he had discussed it with Truman, who seemed to approve but wanted to talk it over “with some of his people.” Consultation with Jews and Arabs, as FDR and Truman had pledged, Henderson told the AZEC’s Akzin, must take place before considering the report as a whole—although the President might take “a different view.”10 Hilldring thought otherwise, convinced that Attlee’s stipulations for the 100,000 showed that the British were stalling—“as anticipated,” considering that the Anglo-American Committee had made this an unconditional recommendation. The United States’ military and political interests in Germany and Austria required that Washington press for immediate implementation of the issue. The answer to Arab opposition and Britain’s negative attitude, the Assistant Secretary continued in a lengthy memorandum to Acheson on May 3, might very well be demonstrations by Jewish DPs and “scathing comments” by Jewish leaders and organizations in this country. Accordingly, he suggested that the Under Secretary propose to Truman that the White House issue a public statement stressing the “urgent necessity” of immediately going — 215 —

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forward on the 100,000 recommendation, with the U.S. Government offering to transport these survivors. A representative, chosen by the Chief Executive, would be empowered to coordinate with the Army, the War Shipping Administration, UNRRA, the IGCR, and Jewish voluntary agencies in order to effect the movement. The net cost would be no more, and perhaps even less, than the expense of maintaining the Jewish DP camps in Germany and Austria for another year. If the Under Secretary concurred, he would prepare an appropriate memorandum for Acheson to present to the President.11 Chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs Merriam sharply disagreed with Hilldring’s suggestion, noting to Acheson five days later that it apparently failed to take into account any aspect of “the complicated Palestine problem” other than the European. State had already advised Truman that the report had to be considered as a whole and should be adopted as official policy. Since the U.S. Government had not yet accepted the report, its status was simply that of a recommendation. American interests in the various Arab countries in the Near East were of an importance “certainly commensurate” with our interest in the future of the occupied zones in Europe. The Arabs’ reaction to the report “has been swift and alarming,” and they had given every indication of the intention to “resist” the 100,000 recommendation. The United States had many political and educational interests in those countries, and its trade and petroleum interests could not be neglected. Moreover, Merriam continued, removing 100,000 would be a temporary solution at best, as the Army expected an influx of Jewish DPs from the Soviet zones to “continue unabated and soon fill the vacuum.” The joint Anglo-American undertaking would seem to preclude unilateral action on Washington’s part, a move that would no doubt spark British resentment, which would be to the “inevitable detriment” of the United States’ long-range interests in Palestine and elsewhere. Last but not least, the government had committed itself on various occasions to consult with both Arabs and Jews before taking any action involving a change in the basic situation in Palestine, and if any part of the report were put into operation by Washington without such consultation, it would be regarded as “a breach of faith” which could not fail to have repercussions of “a very serious nature.”12 Merriam’s argument prevailed, as did Henderson’s draft to Acheson for the President’s approval. On May 8, Truman informed Attlee of — 216 —

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his intention to consult with the Jewish and Arab organizations and governments with a request that they transmit to Washington their views on the report within two weeks. After consulting with London, the U.S. Government would issue a statement as to its attitude concerning the recommendations. He assumed that the British would wish to take concurrent action, and wished to know if this assumption was correct. In view of the “urgency” regarding the 100,000 recommended by the Committee, he sincerely hoped that these consultations could be completed at “the earliest possible moment.” One week later, Niles informed Goldmann that Truman did not mean to include the 100,000 in the consultation procedure, but State “did get it in.” Perhaps “the sincerity or otherwise” of the White House lay in its willingness to issue directives to the State Department, Akzin observed to Silver, adding this: “The issuance of friendly statements to us or even to the public does not seem sufficient.”13 Earlier the same day, following Truman’s approval of a memorandum that Fierst had prepared for Hilldring, Secretaries Acheson and Patterson met with the representatives of seven Jewish organizations to discuss the closing of U.S. zone borders to Jewish refugees. It was announced that as long as infiltration continued at the present rate of about 5,000 per month, this could go on indefinitely. At the same time, given the danger that publication of the Anglo-American report’s suggestion about the 100,000 might stimulate a large-scale influx of survivors from Central and Eastern Europe, the Jewish leaders were urged to use their good offices in maintaining the current manageable rate. If it were found necessary to close the frontiers, the Jewish groups in America would first be advised. Hilldring noted to the Jewish leaders that while “we must hold out hope” for the other 400,000 refugees estimated in the report who wished or were compelled to leave Europe, it was “most desirable” to concentrate on securing the 100,000 certificates. A “highly successful” conference, Fierest wrote to Rifkind. The mere presence of “our friends” and their cooperative attitude were major factors in postponing “the evil day.” Hopefully, he added, they will appear, at least outwardly, cooperative in preventing “a mass stampede” across the borders.14 In light of this meeting, Hilldring received Acheson’s approval to inform McNarney and Clark to keep the borders open for the present. Fierst, given the assignment by Hilldring to bring what the Assistant Secretary termed “gentle pressure” on the Jewish leaders to use their influence in this regard, — 217 —

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talked extensively with Philip Bernstein, executive director in World War II of the National Jewish Welfare Board’s Committee on Army and Navy Religious Activities and now Rifkind’s successor. Fierst also kept in steady touch with the American Jewish Conference’s Washington representative David Wahl, telling him in confidence that Henderson cautioned Hilldring against making too much speed in implementing the transfer to Palestine of the 100,000 because the Arabs were offering tremendous resistance and threatened to cut off American oil contracts. Hilldring replied, “to hell with oil and to hell with the Arabs as allies!” He would not tolerate “playing ball” with the Arabs at the expense of the DPs and using oil as an excuse. McNarney was also deeply impressed by the Anglo-American Committee’s unanimous report, writing to Hutcheson that if the British approved the recommendations, it would constitute one of the “great accomplishments” for the solution of a “most distressing problem here in Europe; namely, a home for these people who were the principal targets of nazism [sic].”15 Halifax assumed that HMG would hesitate to carry out the 100,000 recommendation “despite American clamour,” and he advised Bevin, as well as the United Kingdom’s first Permanent Representative to the UN Alexander Cadogan, that there were grounds for HMG bringing the matter to the General Assembly. That body would be certainly concerned, observed J. G. Ward of Whitehall’s International Relations Department, since it would have to approve any trusteeship agreement for Palestine. While the Security Council was currently restricted by Article 24 of the UN Charter to the maintenance of international peace and security, the Assembly had a far wider mandate (in Articles 1, 10, and 14) to seek the peaceful resolution of any situation likely to impair “the general welfare or friendly relations among nations.” It would therefore be quite consistent for HMG, once the Cabinet had made its mind on the Anglo-American report, to lay the whole matter before the General Assembly on the ground that there were “vital questions of policy” requiring UN consideration as a whole before London could attempt to draw up a trusteeship agreement with “the states directly concerned.” HMG presumably could go further at the same time, Ward concluded, and declare that it was not prepared to accept the role of sole trustee for Palestine, and that the Assembly must decide how this duty should be exercised in the future.16 In a private talk with Crossman that quickly became heated, Attlee made his objections to the 100,000 proposal vividly clear. Why did — 218 —

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the Committee not recommend that this number of refugees go to America? he asked. They specifically want to go to Palestine, Crossman replied, separate from the fact that the United States did not want to receive them. How it is possible to "burden such a small country” with an absorption of 100,000? Attlee shot back. He did not yet met one person in Palestine who said that it could not be done from an economic point of view, Crossman answered. Attlee: “The Zionists will not stop, and will ask for rule over the whole country. We could not depend on the impulsive Weizmann,” but Ben-Gurion, “who knows what he wants,” will want more once he gets the 100,000. Getting angry, Crossman responded that if HMG left Palestine in one month, the Jews would seize the country in three. Hall, also present, took a strong line about disarming the Jews. Appalled, Crossman left the meeting, reported to Horowitz what had transpired, and advised that all efforts should be made to bring Weizmann to London and talk to Churchill. As for Attlee’s condition about disbanding the Hagana, he confided that the AngloAmerican Committee vote against this idea had been 8 (the Americans, Leggett, and himself) to 4 (his other British colleagues). Gathering confidence, Crossman resolved to take his case to the Labour Party’s External Affairs group, its members in parliament, and the press. “He has committed himself up to the hilt,” Shertok wrote to Weizmann, “and is now fighting his own battle—the battle of his political career.”17 Attlee replied on May 9 to Truman, requesting a few days’ wait until the Cabinet had reviewed the matter thoroughly, and asking the President to consider Bevin’s suggestions to Byrnes in Paris, especially that experts of their two governments study the financial and military liabilities involved prior to the proposed consultations with Jews and Arabs. (The Cabinet that morning had agreed with Aneurin Bevan’s observation about the Americans: “Don’t turn the heat on yet. They are wading in.”) Bevin’s memorandum had called for suppressing the illegal Jewish armies; the need if the report were implemented for reinforcing Britain’s current two and one-half divisions in Palestine by two more infantry divisions and one armored brigade; and the requirement of at least £115,000,000–£125,000,000 to carry out all the recommendations. That evening, Bevin urged on a sympathetic Byrnes that Truman defer consultations until May 20. Given the “so acute” problem of arranging for a British troop withdrawal from Egypt, the Foreign Secretary argued, London could not act before receiving U.S. assurances of military and — 219 —

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financial assistance. Receiving Attlee’s “top secret” telegram the next day, Truman concurred in Byrnes’s view and authorized him that evening to so inform Bevin.18 The Attlee government had just emerged victorious, by a comfortable margin of 327 votes to 158 in the House, in the first real attack on its foreign policy following Labour’s sudden announcement of withdrawing all British forces from Egypt. In a radical memorandum which the Prime Minister had circulated before the Defence Committee two months earlier, the government argued that no successful defense of the Suez Canal or of Egypt would be possible unless British won the goodwill of an increasingly nationalist Egyptian public, and the Chiefs of Staff had agreed that this step would enable the negotiations for a new treaty with Cairo to succeed. Churchill replied that it was bad diplomacy to announce a withdrawal in advance, wringing from Attlee the important admission that if the negotiations broke down the original 1936 treaty would still stand. Concerned about Soviet forces in Europe and in north Persia (the Red Army finally withdrew from the latter on May 9), the Imperial General Staff envisaged two alternative Middle Eastern bases: Kenya or Palestine as a whole, with the air base at Lydda, the naval installations at Haifa, and a large military base in the northern Negev. Bevin’s preference that HMG remain a Mediterranean and a Middle Eastern power would gradually prevail, with the aim of raising the living standards of the peasant majority in the region while serving Britain’s strategic needs for oil and bases. Consequently, he reasoned, the Russians would be kept contained to the north, and the “soft underbelly” of southern Europe prevented from falling under “the totalitarian yoke.” As a result, construction of new airfields and military barracks to the value of £ 5 million near Gaza began, rooted in one assumption: Palestine would become the main British base in the Middle East.19 British procrastination over the 100,000 quickly came under fire in the United States. Senator Mead found no parallel case in history where a great nation had so completely agreed to carry out a responsibility and then so “expeditiously disregarded it” whenever a crisis occurred. “World opinion has the right to expect” that HMG would grant this permission, asserted Owen Brewster from across the aisle. The report had been “sabotaged,” Congressman Celler declared, while I.F. Stone labeled Attlee’s statement “a cruel tease,” insisting in the Nation that “America has the capital if Britain has the vision.” Crum charged Bevin with a — 220 —

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breach of faith for having broken his pledge to the Committee to abide by a unanimous report, and he called for the immediate arrest of Haj Amin as “a war criminal.” (Whitehall responded that it had no record of what the Foreign Secretary had said at the Committee luncheon in question.) Addressing the New York chapter of the American Jewish Committee, whose executive board had officially advocated quick adoption of the 100,000 recommendation, McDonald warned that delay would “dangerously heighten the tension now existing in the centers where Jewish displaced persons have so long waited for release,” and he asserted that Palestine’s ability to absorb them “cannot be seriously doubted.”20 On May 13, Halifax had Attlee’s reply, which closely followed Bevin’s cabled suggestions from Paris, delivered directly to the White House. In addition to pressing for one month to allow for consultations with Arab governments and Jewish organizations, the Prime Minister preferred that experts from their two governments first study the military and financial costs involved in adopting the Committee’s report. At a final stage, a conference of Arab and Jewish representatives would be convened to meet with representatives of the two governments, who then could make their decisions having had the “fullest opportunity” of bringing their own views “into harmony” and of promoting the “greatest possible measures of agreement” between the other interested parties. Truman had Clark Clifford, recently appointed his Naval Aide, bring a copy of this message to Acheson. In so doing, Clifford noted the President’s acceptance of the May 20 deadline but also his wish that the entire matter be “pushed forward with dispatch.” Acheson replied that he would study the message and confer with Truman three days later.21 The same day cast doubt whether admission of the 100,000 would have any effect on aliya bet activity. The Max Nordau (Smyrna), carrying 1,754 immigrants from a Rumanian port and named in honor of a leading Zionist thinker and champion of Herzl, was captured by British destroyers fifty miles off the Palestine coast and brought to Haifa. The British in Constanza, an area then under Russian military control, had claimed that the old 760-ton ship was not seaworthy, but the Soviet ­representative on the Allied Supervisory Committee gave the approval to sail. HMG had also received reports that other Jewish refugees had left or were about to leave Greece, and the tempo of this traffic was being “stepped up.” These passengers were “potential reinforcements of illegal — 221 —

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armies,” Chief Secretary Shaw told Pinkerton, but he had no suggestion as to possible government action against this movement in view of the exhausted number of entry certificates. Five days later, the ships Dov Hos (the Fede) and Eliyahu Golomb (the Fenice), transporting the La Spezia passengers and named after two deceased Hagana leaders, would arrive in Palestine legally under the remaining quotas through June.22 Attlee may have found comfort in hearing the views of the majority among the British members of the Anglo-American Committee, whom he and Hall convened at 10 Downing St. on May 14. Singleton’s suggestions echoed the Cabinet’s approach; Morrison declared that Jewish education in Palestine was being conducted “on the lines of the Hitler Youth movement” and Zionist propaganda in the United States was “entirely unscrupulous.” Crick thought that the Jewish Agency’s special position under the Mandate should be concluded; Manningham-Buller expressed pleasure at Attlee’s statement that the illegal Jewish armies be disbanded before further immigration took place. Leggett considered the proposal impracticable, as did Crossman, who warned that this would leave the Jews open to attack by the Arabs while it meant dropping the Committee’s unanimous recommendation for the immediate admission of 100,000 survivors. He favored partition, but Singleton preferred the concept of trusteeship, which empowered the administration to regulate immigration for the good of the country as a whole. Unconvinced, Crossman succeeded in having the Labour Party’s External Affairs group vote overwhelmingly to implement the report. Strengthened by the presence of Shertok, Locker, and a spokesman from Bergen-Belsen, he also made a strong impression when telling some thirty Labour MPs that the yishuv was united behind a resistance movement that was the most significant military factor in the Middle East. In deep appreciation for these efforts, Weizmann wrote Crossman that he, as Anatole France had said of Zola’s letter during l’affaire Dreyfus, “spoke for the conscience of the world.”23 For GOC Palestine Lt. Genl. D’Arcy, as he told the Chiefs of Staff on May 15, the time had come to forcibly disarm the yishuv, break up its illegal armed organizations, and arrest their leaders. This action would induce the Arabs to compromise and accept some additional immigration. British troops, also used in a police role and now at the “breaking point” because of Jewish terrorist attacks, could carry out his plan within forty-eight hours. He could not, on the other hand, estimate the — 222 —

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extent of the commitment or the time involved to contend with a general Arab uprising. Illegal immigration could only be checked by strong action to prevent departure at the source. The transfer of Jews from Europe into Palestine as recommended by the Anglo-American Committee, D’Arcy declared, would ensure the “complete loss” of Arab goodwill towards HMG, and pose a problem which would remain “unsettled” in the Middle East for years to come. His receptive listeners were aware of a Kol Yisrael broadcast three days earlier to London warning that the Jewish Resistance Movement would make every effort “to hinder” the transfer of British bases from Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon to Palestine and prevent their establishment there. Having broken the Jewish Agency’s secret code, the British knew that Sneh had cabled Ben Gurion that this broadcast was made at Shertok’s request. For their part, the Chiefs urged Permanent Under Secretary at the Colonial Office George Gater to review the possibility that the illegal immigrant traffic could be checked by diverting seized passengers to a British-held territory like Cyprus or Tobruk and by immediately confiscating the ships engaged.24 Truman and Attlee came to a meeting of minds by May 19. Both agreed to consultations with Arab and Jewish representatives over the course of one month, these to clarify the issues involved and narrow the field in which discussions of experts from London and Washington would take place. The President recommended initiating preliminary discussions between the experts, and asked for an “indication” of what HMG thought should form the basis of these talks. Washington now seemed ready to “remove the question from propaganda and to study its practical implications on a business-like footing,” concluded a pleased Bevin to his Cabinet colleagues on May 20. Attlee would respond one week later to Truman’s request with a detailed three-page list, adding that “a full and frank exchange of views” between both governments, initiated one week before receiving replies from the Arabs and Jews, would be of great value. In a memorandum to Acheson, Henderson described the list as “very comprehensive and well thought out.” The Jewish Agency, the Arab Higher Committee, the Arab states, and American Jewish organizations with a particular interest in Palestine were officially asked by London and Washington for their views on the Anglo-American Committee’s report and to reply by June 20.25 To meet considerable public criticism in the United States that the projected consultations meant only further delay, State issued a public — 223 —

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announcement on the morning of May 22 denying that the talks signaled a retreat from Truman’s statement of April 30. Wise and especially the harsh sounding Silver were not mollified, charging in an interview with Acheson and Henderson that the department’s declaration was informed by the “pro-Arab spirit” of the Near Eastern department. Acheson kept saying that the April 30 statement was “binding upon all of us.” “We are trying, like the President, to move this thing forward,” he remarked finally, but it could only be done through and after consultation. He could not fulfill their wish to remove the 100,000 and repeal of the 1940 Land Law recommendations from consideration of the entire report. One week later, the pair registered their “astonishment” to Acheson that immediate action had not been taken pursuant to Truman’s statement of a month ago, the consultations producing delay where immediate action was called for and confusion “where the issue has been altogether clear.”26 Truman’s primary interest in the 100,000 received further confirmation when Myron Taylor, whom he had reappointed after FDR’s death as the President’s personal representative to the Vatican, sent him a long letter against the mass entry of Jews into Palestine. Repeating the anti-Zionist arguments of Roosevelt geography advisor Isaiah Bowman and Col. Harold Hoskins, wartime special envoy to Ibn Saud, Taylor advocated a “broad dispersion” of the Jews worldwide to meet the “emergency need” and that European countries should accept a “reasonable” number of Jews. A “racial state” of Jews in Palestine ran counter to American traditions and ideals, he added, while Russia was ready to take advantage of Arab hostility towards the United States. Niles, asked by Truman to draft a reply, refuted these arguments and then pointed out to his chief that “you are concerning yourself now only with the transference of 100,000 Jews,” having said on April 30 that he would take the other parts of the report under consideration for future study. Truman sent Niles’s memorandum to Taylor on May 27, along with a response that he had in mind the “desperate situation faced by the remnant of European Jewry” when proposing the immediate entry of 100,000 Jews into Palestine, while setting aside the long-range proposals of the Anglo-American Committee for further examination given “the difficulties of reconciling the aspirations of Jewish and Arab nationalism.” Agreeing fully with Taylor that every country should absorb as many Jewish refugees who wished to enter as was humanly possible, Truman ended that “the emergency need in — 224 —

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Europe is so great that we dare not wait on this kind of consideration by a large number of individual countries.”27 The reaction of the Jewish Agency and the Arabs in the Middle East to the consultations could have been foretold. In the yishuv’s view, the Agency’s Bernard Joseph bitterly complained to Cunningham, “this was just wanting to play for time.” The Zionists had been waiting since 1939 for a revision of the government’s policy, and no Jew could see any justification in delaying the implementation of the 100,000 proposal. The Arab Higher Committee’s Jamal Husseini rejected the report “completely,” and declared to the High Commissioner that the country’s Arabs would defend their country “will all the power and means at their disposal.” Its executive board called for the abolition of the Mandate; the cessation of Jewish immigration and land sales; an end to the Jewish Agency; the establishment of Palestine as an Arab democratic government; and the removal of foreign troops. Surely the mutual best interests in the Middle East of 140 million Americans and of 45 million Arabs would prevail against the “special pleading” of almost 5 million Jewish lobbyists, Ibn Saud wrote personally to Truman on May 28, but until U.S. intentions were clear he could not proceed with Trans World Airlines (TWA) negotiations to fly over his country or a Treaty of Commerce and Friendship. The king closed on this note: “The Arab nations will shortly determine a Palestine policy for themselves.” The next day, an Arab League conference at King Farouk’s place in Inchas near Cairo called for an end to Jewish immigration to Palestine, “an Arab country,” and meeting Zionism by force of arms. Abdullah advocated there for collecting £2 million a year to check Jewish purchase of Palestinian land. Lebanese President Khoury had raised the humanitarian aspect of the problem, he informed British minister Terence Shone, but he was “up against a stone wall,” as the rulers assembled considered the Committee report “anathema” and clung to the 1939 White Paper as the pledged word of His Majesty’s Government. The All-India Muslim League, speaking for 100 million Muslims, declared its support as well for Palestinian Arab independence.28 On May 30, a clean-shaven “Marouf al-Dawalabi,” wearing European clothes and carrying a Syrian passport, alighted from a TWA Skymaster at the Cairo airfield. Haj Amin, leaving Paris in this disguise, was greeted warmly by Arab Higher Committee members Jamal Husseini, Husayn Khalidi, Ahmed Hilmi Pasha, and Emil Ghouri. He would remain in — 225 —

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hiding for more than three weeks while speculation swirled regarding his whereabouts and the BBC (but not the censored Palestine press) broadcast his “escape.” The former Mufti’s memoirs claimed that he sought safety from possible Jewish assassins and from being brought to trial as a war criminal after Nuremberg court documents revealed his role in encouraging the German government’s “Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” as well as his desire to take part in the “battle that had begun for Palestine’s future.” All previous British efforts to prevent this development had failed, many suspecting that France’s treatment of Haj Amin, who earlier had moved about at will from his villa outside of Paris, rested in the hopes that it would benefit her standing in the Arab world after HMG had pushed her out of the Levant and would stabilize her colonial possessions in North Africa. Most of the narrow streets in Jerusalem’s Old City and many streets in the Arab quarter of the New City were soon decorated with flags, flowers, and roses; the ex-Mufti’s picture appeared everywhere. Churchill demanded that he be arrested; Attlee responded that HMG’s Ambassador had received orders to see what could be done. There the troublesome matter rested.29 For London and Washington, Moscow’s unclear stand remained a far more worrisome factor than Haj Amin’s current presence. Unbeknownst to them, on May 15 its Deputy Director of the Middle East Department authored a secret memorandum to his superiors entitled “The Palestine Question.” In M. A. Maksimov’s view, HMG, side by side with Transjordan, sought to create in Palestine “a new bridgehead” in the Near East to insure that British oil had an outlet to the Mediterranean and to use Palestine to complete “the chain” of states under British control. (Ten days later, the Transjordanian parliament adopted a new name for its country, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.) The United States, now drawn in because of the joint Committee report but also to protect oil sources in the area and especially Saudi Arabia, was under “great pressure” as well from “American Zionist capitalists” who had invested considerable funds in Palestine and were working for largescale irrigation and electrification (the JVA scheme) there. He recommended that the Arab members of the UN propose a trusteeship regime, which Russia would defend, to be created towards an independent and democratic Palestine. The “Jewish question in Europe,” Maksimov added, could only be satisfactorily resolved with the “complete destruction of all the roots of fascism and the democratization of the European — 226 —

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countries,” thereby giving the Jewish masses “normal living conditions.” Two weeks later, however, the British Embassy in Moscow reported to Whitehall that the Soviet authorities “are still sitting on the fence” and avoided committing themselves in support of Arabs or Jews, although they were leaning increasingly towards the former. The Soviet press did pillory the British-created Arab League as never before, and suggested that the Palestine issue come before the Security Council. Whether Moscow had yet thought out the full implications of this last proposal, the telegram closed, was uncertain.30 Truman replied to Attlee on June 5 that Washington had plans for setting up a special group to handle the many issues raised in his detailed list of May 27. One or more experts would be sent to London by the requested June 13 date to discuss the “urgent” physical problems arising out of the transfer of the 100,000 Jews to Palestine. It would take considerable time to find “satisfactory answers” to all the problems on the list, but as the situation of these survivors “continues to cause great concern,” the President thought it “highly desirable” that examination of the matter begin “immediately.” The United States would take responsibility for their transport and help as to temporary housing. Longer term assistance for them, which the United States would also be glad to consider, should be reserved for the more general conversations. Henderson, urging patience and caution in implementing the Anglo-American Committee’s report, had sought to delay sending the preliminary group of experts, but Hilldring’s insistence at a meeting in State two days earlier that the moving of the 100,000 had to be quickly settled proved decisive.31 On June 7, even as Henderson advised Acheson that the NathanGilbert proposal would have “an extremely bad effect” on the Arab world, Truman declared at a press conference that the admission of the 100,000 was being discussed by Byrnes and Bevin. Attlee reiterated to Truman the same day that HMG had to consider the entire Committee report, including the political reactions and possible military consequences relating to the 100,000, and therefore doubted the purpose of sending an advance party to London before the full groups on both sides met. Truman refused to budge, informing Attlee one week later that he had instructed Ambassador W. Averell Harriman, assisted by representatives of the State and War Departments, to initiate talks “at once” with the British regarding the “purely technical issues” involved in moving — 227 —

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the 100,000. A British delegation chaired by Additional Secretary to the Cabinet Norman Brook would meet with the advance party, Attlee answered the same day, but the 100,000 had to be discussed as part of the whole report: “Tension is mounting in Palestine and we are satisfied that precipitate action on the part of the immigration question alone would provoke widespread violence.”32 Increased tension could not be denied. On June 8, 462 passengers aboard the 150-ton wooden motor vessel Haviva Reik, named after a Palestinian female parachutist executed by the Nazis in Czechoslovakia, was captured seventy miles out and, its banner reading “keep the gates open we are not the last,” brought to Atlit. If it were not possible to “achieve the ideal of eliminating the Jewish Agency altogether,” Cunningham wrote to the Colonial Office’s John Martin, then clearly something had to be done to “clip its wings.” Two days later, three simultaneous attacks by the Irgun on railway trains resulted in the death of an Arab constable and damage by land mines to the locomotives estimated at £100,000. In an interview with the London Daily Mail, commander of the Jordanian Arab Legion Lt. Genl. John Bagot (“Pasha”) Glubb warned that the Arabs would rise in revolt, and shortly thereafter privately advised Attlee to champion a Palestinian Arab state. The Arab League, meeting in Bludan, Syria, resolved on June 12 to reject the Anglo-American Committee report, call for strengthening the boycott in all Arab countries of Zionist products, and constitute a Higher Arab Executive Committee with Haj Amin as chairman in order to unify Palestine’s competing factions. Secret agreements declared that if the joint Committee report’s resolutions were carried out, the Arab governments would cut relations with Great Britain and the United States, support Palestine’s Arabs in their armed revolt, and take the case of the Palestine Arabs to the UN Security Council. (At the same time, the delegates turned down Husseini’s plea for creating a Palestinian government-in-exile and an army of 100,000 to liberate Palestine in its entirety.) The next day, under the amended Emergency Regulations, a British court passed the first two death sentences by hanging under the amended Emergency Regulations of Yosef Simhon (19) and Michael Ashbel (24) for their part in the Irgun’s attack on March 6 against the Sarafand Military Camp.33 Bevin’s “gratuitous sneer” (the phrase of his biographer Alan Bullock) at the Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth on June 12, — 228 —

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given without prior advice from the Foreign Office, threw more fuel on the fire. After repeating his stance that Palestine not be turned into an exclusively racial state and Jews should become citizens with full rights in European countries, he declared that the American campaign for the 100,000 was proposed “with the purest of motives. They do not want too many Jews in New York.” His further comment that admitting this number would require another whole division of British troops besides expenditures of £22 million appeared to indicate that HMG would refuse the 100,000 entry into Palestine. Following the advice of newly appointed Ambassador to Washington Lord Inverchapel (Archibald Clark Kerr), Bevin soon announced that he did not oppose the 100,000, but that the recommendation had to be considered by the welcome new group of experts as part of the full Anglo-American Committee report. Senator Wagner heard from the British Embassy that the Foreign Secretary’s June 12 comments had been put forward “in an atmosphere of realism” in order to offer some “constructive suggestions” for the imminent talks in London. Three days after his remarks at Bournemouth, however, Kol Yisrael announced that the Hagana had obtained a copy of Operation Broadside, the secret 600-page British plan to imprison some 5,000 yishuv leaders, primarily those of the Hagana, Palmah, and Jewish Agency. This “black list” should let the whole world know “what Bevin, Attlee and their henchmen are preparing for us,” the underground radio transmission ended, “and let the world know that we shall fight.”34 Bevin’s speech drew the ire of Wise, Silver, Crum, and Senator Johnson at a mass Zionist rally that same evening in Madison Square Garden, demanding that an American loan to Britain be withheld unless his statements on Palestine were repudiated. Proskauer and colleague Jacob Blaustein, declaring that Bevin’s remarks had caused “great consternation” among all Jewish groups and among “all fair-minded Americans,” urged Truman to take “immediate action” on the 100,000. Realizing that Truman would be queried about Bevin’s remarks, Niles advised presidential press secretary Charles Ross to have Truman state that even if the Foreign Secretary had been quoted accurately, it would not alter the President’s own humanitarian appeal for the 100,000, and that he was going ahead by sending a team to London to work out with the British “the operation details.” Truman secretary Mathew J. Connelly replied in this vein to Illinois Congressman Adolph Sabath a few days later. Sabath had been told by a concerned Truman on June 4 — 229 —

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that he heard the Russians were supplying arms to the Arabs, and that the British had asked the United States to furnish half of the 500,000 soldiers necessary to maintain order in Palestine if the 100,000 were admitted. At Sabath’s request, a memorandum from the Zionist camp soon reached the Oval Office indicating that any danger from the small and ill-equipped forces of the Arab states was non-existent, as was the need for a single American soldier to aid the mandatory’s large forces in the Middle East.35 On June 11, Truman announced the creation of a Cabinet Committee on Palestine and Related Problems, to be chaired by State Department career diplomat Henry F. Grady with the rank of Ambassador, along with one appointee each from the Secretaries of War and Treasury. The same day, he received Secretary Patterson’s report on the U.S. oneyear military occupation of Germany, including the observation that if action on the admission of survivors to Palestine were delayed, protests and demonstrations in the DP camps (including suicides and largescale attempts to cross borders to Switzerland and France) “are to be expected.” American Zionist representatives failed to obtain via Niles the appointment of Crum or McDonald to chair the new committee, but they did hear correctly that a secret draft plan (prepared by Henderson for Acheson) had been made for the guidance of the U.S. representatives about the movement of the 100,000, phasing the transfer operation at a 20,000 per-month basis beginning July 15. Byrnes took for granted the admission of the 100,000 as an “immediate step,” Inverchapel cabled Whitehall, the United States ready to supply the necessary shipping and bear at least half of all expenses at settling them in Palestine, adding to the British Ambassador that he was under “very strong pressure” from Congress and outside it. Goldmann and Oscar Gass, now an economic consultant to the Jewish Agency, found a sympathetic ear in Treasury’s Committee appointee Herbert Gaston. Fierst and Wahl got the same impression from meetings with that department’s Raymond Mikesell, as well as with Lawrence Cramer of Hilldring’s staff, and Lt. Col. Geoffrey W. Lewis of the War Department’s Civil Affairs Division. Cramer and Lewis met with Fierst to draft an implementation plan for the 100,000, which Fierst then reviewed with Epstein and Wahl. Cramer and Lewis would join State’s Palestine desk director and Anglo-American Committee advisor Evan Wilson as the American advance team for the initial talks in London.36 — 230 —

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An unprecedented Hagana assault on the night of June 16–17, 1946, implementing its broadcast threat to London on May 12, demonstrated beyond doubt that the yishuv and the mandatory were on a collision course. The Jewish Agency, worried about the likely political repercussions, had received word beforehand from Crossman (who checked with Food Minister and Defence Committee member John Strachey) approving the attack. In a most remarkable example of logistical ability, ten of the eleven rail and road bridges linking Palestine to its neighbors were put out of use. The only failure occurred at the Akhziv bridges, where fourteen Palmah fighters were killed. A Kol Yisrael message explained that the operation was meant to “disturb” British bases and communications, prevent neighboring Arabs from coming to fight the Jews in Palestine, and mark the closing up of their frontiers to Jewish immigrants. An attack on the Kishon railway workshops in Haifa on the evening of the 17th proved very costly to a sizeable LEHI contingent, but the Irgun succeeded in seizing six British officers the following afternoon in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, taken as hostages to halt the scheduled hanging of Simhon and Ashbel. A curfew was immediately imposed on Tel Aviv, whose municipal council, as well as the Hagana, condemned the kidnappings and appealed for the prisoners’ release.37 Lt. Genl. Evelyn Barker, recent successor to D’Arcy, now had to decide if to confirm, as per the Emergency Regulations, the death sentence on the two young men. Most important, what the Israeli lexicon would later call “the night of the bridges” surely constituted a “major outrage” which Cunningham on April 29 had told Hall would mandate a harsh British campaign against the yishuv. It appeared that the moment had finally arrived. In a “most immediate, top secret and personal” telegram to Hall on June 18, Cunningham requested authorization to carry out the full plan against Jewish illegal organizations and the Jewish Agency “at whatever time I think appropriate.” Sneh and other Agency Executive members who advocated for terrorism had emerged victorious, he observed, although the High Commissioner hoped to have the moderate Weizmann intervene and so have the army avoid taking “extreme measures.” The kidnapping and shooting of British officers would have a serious effect on the troops’ already “very highly” tried morale, yet the yishuv was either sympathetic to the underground resistance ­perpetrators or — 231 —

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frightened should it give assistance to the mandatory. Until the officers were returned, all discussions about the 100,000 should cease. The Hagana, “definitely controlled by the Agency,” had carried out at least part of the outrages, and Cunningham warned that future incidents of possibly increased intensity could be expected unless “drastic action” was taken. In confidence, Attlee conveyed to Harriman the next evening HMG’s great concern over these Palestine developments.38 Did the Jewish leaders, by these actions, wish to have everything they had done in Palestine with such devotion and skill lost in “a welter of bloodshed and desolation?” Cunningham asked Weizmann on June 19. The only possible solution to the Palestine problem was a political one, he emphasized, and not a military one. The Zionist avatar agreed that the blowing up of the bridges was “a senseless and useless act,” but reminded his host that it had resulted from an accumulation of setbacks for the yishuv: the public statements of Bevin and Glubb; Haj Amin’s “escape”; the “black list” detailing a British military assault; and the sentencing of two young Jews to death. Intimating that no further serious trouble need be feared shortly (a hint to the Hagana), Weizmann ended by remarking that he fully understood what the High Commissioner said, and would pass it on. “I am afraid his influence with the extremists is small, and I do not believe he knows most of what is going on though quite possibly he intentionally avoids doing so,” Cunningham subsequently wrote to Hall.39 Ben-Gurion also deplored the kidnappings in an interview with Hall the same day, but added that the Agency could not stop the resistance or refute the argument that it occurred because the White Paper, a surrender to Arab terror, had continued in force. He offered to send a message to Shertok, asking the Jewish Agency—which Ben-Gurion disingenuously asserted was not “associated” with the Hagana—to issue a statement that the yishuv would give every possible assistance in freeing the kidnapped officers. (The Executive in Jerusalem, while releasing its own appeal in this respect, quickly objected to working with the mandatory.) The next day, with Crossman in attendance, Hall expressed to Ben-Gurion HMG’s hope to settle the entire question that summer; if it came before the UN, the Russians and Arab states adjacent to Palestine would come in and “all sorts of difficulties” would arise. The Agency Executive chairman was emphatic: “We want the whole of Palestine as a Jewish State, and no less than that.” In a letter to the London Times, — 232 —

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Ben-Gurion also challenged Bevin’s claim that the 100,000 would require enormous additional military and financial commitments, and thought the Foreign Minister’s preaching that this “tormented people” have patience a “cruel mockery” and “dilatory tactics,” which he doubted American and British publish opinion would tolerate.40 Attlee’s Cabinet resolved on June 20 that “firm action must be taken now to restore law and order in Palestine,” but not to inform the Americans beforehand in case it came to the knowledge of Jewish groups. Newly appointed CIGS head Field-Marshal Bernard Montgomery, convinced after a brief trip to Palestine that the police and army had to be given “a very clear directive” to re-establish “effective” British authority there, warned that the troops “might get out of hand” if the existing state of affairs continued. With the Chiefs of Staff advising that present forces could not carry out a comprehensive disarming of individuals in both contending native communities, immediate action would be confined at this stage to the breaking up of the illegal Jewish organizations by arresting their leaders and searching the Agency’s premises with a view to obtaining evidence “uncovering” that organization’s ties with the united armed resistance. Talks with the American advance team regarding the 100,000 would continue, however, without HMG committing itself to accepting that particular proposal. Attlee informed the like-minded Bevin, then in Paris, of the Cabinet’s decision.41 Concurrently, the first week of discussions in London between the advance American and British teams reflected clear differences of opinion. Brook sought to have the Anglo-American report and its implications considered as a whole, but Harriman made clear that Truman had authorized him to focus on the recommendations relating to the 100,000. Faced with the American draft plan of 20,000 to be received in Palestine per month, the British charged that the country’s economic absorptive capacity could not accept more than 4,000 monthly; sought a fixed date for the eligibility of DPs to receive certificates in order to prevent “a stampede” into the American zone in Germany; and questioned the figures provided by Agency treasurer Kaplan (largely based on the Nathan-Gass study) with regard to their absorption in Palestine. The Colonial Office’s Robert Scott, brought in from his post as Financial Secretary of the mandatory government, asserted that the 100,000 could be absorbed in five years—approximately the current rate of 1,500 per month. Their meetings since the teams began their work on June 18 had been of definite — 233 —

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use in disposing of much necessary “spadework” on the technical issues relating to the 100,000, Wilson wrote to Anglo-American Committee secretary Leslie Rood in Washington, but “we are still proceeding on the most tentative basis.” He doubted that HMG would agree to the report as a whole, and with the British taking recent events in Palestine “very seriously,” they might not consent to the U.S. suggestion that the Jewish Agency play an important part in the issuing of certificates in Europe and the reception of the immigrants in Palestine.42 Wahl warned associates that the new Cabinet Committee “is bound to be a total loss to us” until it would be properly staffed and directed toward getting the 100,000 to Palestine, but private meetings in Washington with Grady and War Department appointee Goldthwaite Dorr did little to allay Zionist concerns. Both wished to consider the Anglo-American report in its entirety, also viewing the problem in the light of U.S. Near Eastern policy. Both placed “great store” on getting British concurrence, were critical of what they considered “pressure tactics” in the United States and Palestine to force the two governments into certain action, and particularly decried terrorist activities in Palestine. Lourie heard State’s appointee described as “second string,” while Grady and the elderly New York lawyer Dorr had no familiarity with the Palestine problem. These two Cabinet alternates were more interested in the political difficulties involved, and in a talk with Akzin asked whether it would not be necessary to try to obtain Arab good will prior to the admission of the 100,000. They queried Goldmann about the report’s trusteeship recommendation, to which he offered his personal favoring of partition. The Jewish Agency, he concluded in a letter to Ben-Gurion, had to adopt officially a “certain line of policy,” for otherwise “we cannot discuss major policy intelligently and with any chance of success.”43 The Foreign Office also had to consider Halifax’s suggestion a month earlier about bringing the Palestine issue before the UN General Assembly. While it would be very difficult to predict how the majority view in the Assembly would crystallize in this particular case, Inverchapel and Cadogan were informed on the 18th, it would be safe to assume that member states would in general be reluctant to undertake any direct military or financial responsibilities regarding Palestine. The Dominions and a number of European states would probably support the United Kingdom’s attitude, the secret telegram went on, but this — 234 —

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would be “cancelled” by the Soviet group backing the Arab states. Since so much would depend on the Latin American bloc, it was vital that HMG should not come into direct conflict with the United States. The risks involved in any case largely depended on the Chiefs of Staff’s estimate of Palestine’s strategic importance, particularly in light of the decision to evacuate Egypt. Understandably, specialist H. R. Hadow’s conclusion one week later that HMG could not count upon the Latin American vote in the General Assembly, especially with the United States “presumably against us and in the propaganda-laden atmosphere of New York,” offered little encouragement. This might change, Inverchapel noted, if some trusteeship proposal could be put forward by which HMG would be in line with the United States, and much would depend on the particular nature of the proposal for which London wanted Latin America support.44 Truman was determined, despite some reservations, to secure the 100,000 that the Anglo-American Committee had also unanimously recommended. He received a similar viewpoint from Eleanor Roosevelt, who had written in a newspaper article, responding to a sympathetic column by Nation editor Freda Kirchwey, that “surely our Allied chiefs of staff could work out some force of military defense” to admit the 100,000 “who must find homes immediately and they want to go to Palestine.” Further, nine Senators spearheaded by Wagner urged the President on the 20th not to “let up” on Attlee and HMG’s “toying with the souls and hearts and bodies of persecuted and destitute human beings.”45 When Arthur Lelyveld, accompanied by Eddie Jacobson, saw Truman for a half hour in the White House on June 26, the President’s comments about Great Britain “betrayed deep bitterness and displeasure,” and he remarked that after the 100,000 had been secured, “we will have to begin thinking about the next 100,000.” At the same time, Truman worried about Arab guerilla warfare jeopardizing oil supply lines, which he viewed as of “great strategic importance for the peace of the world.” He expressed impatience with Silver and Wise for being able to see only Zionism, and not being concerned with the “larger problems of world peace.” He praised Magnes as “the finest Hebrew” who had spoken to him on this subject, and showed “profound distrust” of Russia. Finally, Lelyveld reported to Silver, Truman said that he understood Bevin’s recent statement about New York “agitation,” because — 235 —

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he himself was often tempted “to blow up” due to the pressure from New York. (Amused at being called “a New York Jew,” a delighted Silver responded that they would continue “to make it uncomfortable” for Truman with “unremitting” pressure.) After the meeting, Niles, who had arranged for the Zionists to finally see Truman after a two-month wait, told Lelyveld that they should focus on what he termed “the operational level” and “capitalize to the full” their appointment for July 2.46 On June 27, Cunningham’s “most immediate” telegram no. 1056 informed Hall that the operation (code-named “Agatha”) against the yishuv would commence at 4:15 on Saturday. The Jewish Agency had officially rejected the Anglo-American Committee’s report and, one day earlier, the Josiah Wedgwood (named after the late ardent Zionist Labour MP) was intercepted and its 1,259 passengers brought to Atlit. Certain members of the Jewish Agency who had been implicated in the outrages would be arrested, the High Commissioner now relayed to the Colonial Secretary, and the Agency Executive’s headquarters in Jerusalem occupied and searched for incriminating documents. The plan included the arrest of members of Hagana headquarters and the search there for similar documents, the arrest of known Palmah members, and an “incidental” search for weapons. GOC-Palestine Barker’s memorandum for military action had focused on the Palmah and on the Agency, which had created “a state within the state” and built up that “illegal offensive army,” hoping that most of the Hagana could be brought into the police force and the political moderates “raise their heads and take control.” Weizmann actually penned an ultimatum to Shertok that unless the Agency halted the violence, he would resign with the very next act of sabotage: “I cannot continue to play the part of a respectable facade screening things which I abhor, but for which I must bear responsibility in the eyes of the world.” The letter was not sent, Weizmann thinking it over for a day before dispatching it; Shertok was arrested in what the yishuv would quickly call HaShabbat HaShehora (“the Black Sabbath”). Shortly before the operation began, the Prime Minister informed Truman of this “first step towards restoring those conditions of order without which no progress can be made towards a solution of the long term problem.”47 The vastness of the operation before dawn broke on June 29 surprised the stunned yishuv. Some 17,000 soldiers took control of main telephone exchanges, closed roads, imposed curfews, occupied the Jewish Agency — 236 —

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and Histadrut offices, and entered the command centers of the Hagana and the Palmah. Twenty-seven settlements were searched, with thirty arms caches in Yagur the one significant find. More than 2,700 Jews (56 women among them) were taken into custody and brought to Atlit, Rafiah, and mostly the Latrun prison camp, the latter including Agency members Shertok, Joseph, former Polish-Zionist leader Yitzhak Gruenbaum, and the 70-year-old Rabbi Jacob Fishman of Mizrachi, who was forced into a car despite his request to walk to police headquarters not far away and not violate the Sabbath. More than 800 Palmah fighters (almost half its strength) and 7 Hagana officers, as well as many incriminating documents at Agency headquarters, also fell into the dragnet. Epithets of “Gestapo!” and “Nazis!” were countered with shouts such as “Hitler had the right idea!” and the daubing of swastikas on walls. Resistance was met with tear gas (at Yagur) and clubbing. Four Jews were killed and scores wounded, eleven prisoners in Atlit were tortured because they refused to give their fingerprints, and widespread destruction occurred of settlement property and at the WIZO (Women’s International Zionist Organization) headquarters in Tel Aviv. The mandatory’s military intelligence report concluded: “Important as these material results is the psychological shock which firm British action has undoubtedly given to the increasing number of extremists” who thought that they had got the British “on the run”; confidence in “the invulnerability of their primate armies is now also shaken.” These operations, Cunningham broadcast over Palestine radio, were not reprisals nor punitive, but “directed to one end only—the suppression of violence. The door of negotiation and discussion is not shut.”48 The High Commissioner’s last statement appeared premature. In an interview that afternoon with Cunningham, Weizmann accused HMG of “virtually declaring war” on the Jews worldwide. He asked for the release of the Agency Executive members, begged that his host not let matters drift as they would mean “greatly increased bloodshed,” and warned as a friend of Britain that it could not bring peace with a bayonet and gallows. The Va’ad HaLeumi, whose chairman David Remez also ended up in Latrun, and the Zionist Inner Actions Committee soon declared a tax strike and non-cooperation with government organizations. An orderly protest march of well over 8,000 British Jews from the East End to Trafalgar Square received respectful treatment in the BBC and the local press. The Jewish Agency in London decided that it would — 237 —

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have no talks with HMG until all Executive members were freed from Latrun, and the temporary Agency Executive in Jerusalem would conduct no political negotiations but deal only with daily business. Except for Aliya Hadasha, no yishuv party asked for the Agency Executive’s resignation. No senior Hagana officers were caught, and Sneh went into hiding. On July 1, following a Hagana high command decision, he signaled Irgun commander Begin to carry out an attack “as soon as possible” on the malonchik (King David Hotel), housing the offices of the Government Secretariat and headquarters of the British Army in Palestine and Jordan; LEHI would attack the Palestine Information Office in Jerusalem, and the Palmah seize the weapons that were taken at Yagur and moved to the Bat Galim arms dump.49 In Paris’s Hotel Royal Monceau on the Champs-Elysées’ Avenue Hoche, a silent Ben-Gurion heard updates throughout that Saturday via the Mosad’s secret transmitter, then summoned Ueberall to take him for a drive around the city. As dawn broke, he returned to the hotel, got out of the car, and just before entering the lobby said to Ueberall: “I’ll tell you what we must do. We must establish a Jewish State.” Ueberall went directly to Mosad headquarters and told director Meirov: “I believe I have witnessed the thought process that led to the decision on the proclamation of Independence.” That same morning, Ben-Gurion gathered all the aliya bet emissaries present and demanded that more and bigger ships had to arrive, at least one a week. This effort would not cease until the goal was reached. “We are on the way to statehood,” he proclaimed, as he closed the meeting several hours later. “The latest pogrom in Palestine” notwithstanding, he would tell a public meeting soon thereafter, “we were in Palestine before the British, and we shall remain there after them.” Even Hitler could not prevent the Warsaw Ghetto revolt, he observed, and the Jews would not be robbed of their right to a state of their own as an equal among other nations and to representation in the United Nations.50 The Labour government stood firm, beginning with Attlee’s statement in Commons during a heated discussion on July 1 that HMG had to take action against the acts of Jewish sabotage and terrorism, which since December had resulted in the death of sixteen British soldiers and material damage that exceeded £4 million. Three days later, right after Bevin turned down Shertok’s appeal against the immediate demobilization of the Jewish Brigade and for its transfer to Palestine, Attlee — 238 —

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urged Truman to send the U.S. Cabinet Committee delegates soon for the second stage of talks on the Anglo-American Committee report. He hoped that the work would be completed by July 20 in light of a promised parliamentary debate before the summer recess on August 1; the effect in Palestine if a final decision were much further delayed; and the Arab League’s declaration that it would bring the matter to the General Assembly in September “unless some arrangement satisfactory to them has been reached meanwhile.”51 On July 8 Hall’s paper to his colleagues ruled against implementation of the joint report as a heavy financial and military drain. Viewing bi-nationalism or partition as impractical long-range solutions, he advocated semi-autonomous areas under a central Trustee Government. This would keep Britain’s strategic position in Palestine intact, allow for the 100,000, and possibly lead to Arab-Jewish cooperation in a federal constitution or to partition. His proposal satisfied the Chiefs of Staff, who asserted that the “cooperation” of the Arab states must be retained in order to maintain essential oil supplies and communications and to insure that the Arab world not gravitate towards Moscow. Bevin thought of linking this provincial autonomy scheme with his federal plan of the previous September, joining the major part of the Arab province to Jordan, the Arab portion of Galilee going to Lebanon, and creating a Jewish state “rather larger” than the territory allocated to Jews in Hall’s plan. On July 11 the Cabinet authorized Brook to advance the provincial autonomy idea to Grady and company.52 Truman continued to adopt a wary attitude. To Jewish Agency Executive officials on the morning of July 2 he expressed regret over recent developments in Palestine, which he said should not delay the 100,000 movement, and expressed his appreciation for the Agency’s “workmanlike” suggestions with regard to carrying out a transfer for which Washington would assume technical and financial responsibility. That evening, he wrote Attlee of his regret that the mandatory government had to take “drastic action” in Palestine, along with his hope that law and order would be maintained there while efforts were being made toward a solution of the long-term policy. Soon thereafter he advanced the departure date of the Grady team. Hearing from Niles that Byrnes, resentful of Zionist and other criticism of State on Palestine policy, had refused to see Ben-Gurion during the peace negotiations in Paris, Truman wrote a note to “Dave” on July 8 that he did not blame the — 239 —

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Secretary much: “Imagine Goldmann, Wise and co. each running in after a round with a bandit like Molotov on Trieste and the Tyrol!—reparations, displaced persons, and hell all around. Think probably I’d tell him to jump in the Jordan.”53 The next day, following the advice of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, he told Grady that the United States was not willing to employ military forces or act as Trustee or Co-Trustee in Palestine. His administration would back the proposal that Palestine not be a Jewish or an Arab state. He would ask Congress to admit some 50,000 non-quota victims of Nazi persecution and approve a grant of $25–$50 million for the settling of the 100,000 on the assumption that London would do likewise. He would also end preferential DP treatment care for future infiltrees in Europe, and ask the appropriate international agencies for substantial funds towards the development of Palestine and other Middle Eastern countries.54 A pogrom in Poland’s south central city of Kielce on July 4 dramatically accentuated the plight of Europe’s Holocaust remnant. In the space of a few hours, triggered by a false rumor that nine-year-old Henryk Blaszczyk had been kidnapped by Jews at the Jewish Committee headquarters at 7 Planty Street for the purpose of ritual murder, a mob led by local police, workers, and soldiers brutally attacked the Jews living there, women and children behaving with the same ferocity as men in focusing on victims’ heads and genital organs. By the day’s end, forty-two Jews were killed, most beaten by rocks, clubs, pieces of iron and steel into unrecognizability, and another forty wounded, with about thirty more murdered in a frenzy that spread across the area. One week after the dead were buried in a mass grave, the Communist government executed nine of the attackers. The savage assault sparked intense fear in the already traumatized postwar Polish Jewish community, victim of 1,500 killings during 1945–1946, even as Cardinal August Hlond, Catholic Primate of Poland, blamed the Jews for their political association with the regime. A mass exodus began to the west, to reach over 75,000 in the next two months.55 The numbers pouring into the U.S. zones (20,000 in July alone) greatly worried the War Department. It had already decided on July 3 with the Secretaries of State and Navy to authorize McNarney to close the borders of the U.S. zone in Germany to infiltrees from the British and French zones “as the situation requires,” and, in conjunction with — 240 —

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Clark, to seal the remaining borders of the U.S. zones in Germany and Austria when the number of Jewish DPs reached 110,000. Faced now with the thousands who, thanks to briha emissaries and friendly Czech authorities, began streaming in after the Kielce pogrom, the War Department pressed for another meeting with the Jewish leaders. Hilldring again asked Fierst to arrange this conference, set for the morning of July 22.56 In Palestine, it appeared that “Black Sabbath” had placed the yishuv’s moderate leadership back in the saddle. Aliya bet continued with the arrival on July 2 in Haifa Bay and then to Atlit of 1,108 passengers from Sète aboard the Arbel (renamed Biriya in honor of the recently restored Galilee settlement), who had been transferred from the World War II US corvette Bilboa (Hagana) to the old Turkish steamer within fifty miles out of Palestine’s waters. (Their voyage would be publicized by journalist and fellow passenger I. F. Stone, first in PM columns and then his book Underground to Palestine.) The next day, however, after the remaining British officers were freed by the Irgun on the Hagana’s information that Simhon and Arbel would be saved from the gallows, Cunningham commuted their sentences to life imprisonment. Three days later, appeals from Weizmann, Kaplan, and the Farmer’s Union led to a postponement of the non-cooperation and tax strike decisions taken on June 30.57 Most significantly, Weizmann delivered an ultimatum via his aide Weisgal to Sneh: cease all further acts of resistance or he would resign and publish his reasons. Sneh brought this to the six-man “Committee X,” responsible for the United Resistance Movement. By a vote of 4 against 2 (Sneh and Israel Idelson of the leftist, Palmah-dominated Ahdut HaAvoda), Weizmann’s demand was accepted. On July 7, the WZO president told Shaw that Hagana-Palmah operations would cease (a point he repeated in an interview with Cunningham shortly before departing for London), although he failed to obtain the release of moderates in Latrun. Hagana clashes with the British did come to a halt; its members would focus henceforth on aliya bet and acquiring weaponry abroad (rekhesh). The British military operation ceased on July 12, and Palmah chief Yitzhak Sadeh regretfully had to call off an operation to retrieve the weapons taken from Yagur. Sneh, having resigned as Hagana high command chief on July 17, decided to escape to Paris, where colleagues on the Agency Executive would decide whether to — 241 —

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resume the armed resistance and what long-term policy to adopt at this fateful hour.58 “Black Sabbath” shook Ben-Gurion as well, as he made clear in addressing Zionist officials in New York prior to heading for the decisive meetings in Paris. To the Agency-AZEC Committee of Eight, he called for a definite break with England, a declaration that she had forfeited her position in Palestine, and a demand that she withdraw her troops and negotiate with the movement regarding a Jewish state. He stressed the antisemitic nature of “the Bevin regime,” and called its members “Nazis,” convinced that they would not admit the 100,000 but seek a new trusteeship over Palestine free of the Mandate’s obligations to world Jewry. A rectification of frontiers (not a partition of Palestine west of the Jordan River), whereby the Arab-populated “triangle” would be given to Jordan and Jews would get the southern part of that country along with the rest of Palestine, would give the Jews a majority and statehood in the near future. Yet he held out no hope to the Hadassah executive board that this would come to pass. The ZOA National Executive, which resolved to abide by the 1942 Biltmore Program as officially endorsed by the World Zionist Organization, heard him call for strengthening the yishuv’s security and economy against the “illegal occupying power.”59 The UN should declare the original mandated area of Palestine on both sides of the Jordan a neutral territory, Ben-Gurion confided in a lengthy letter to Frankfurter on July 17, with Jews and Arabs setting up two independent states—Judaea (most of Western Palestine) and Abdalliah (much of Jordan and Palestine’s Arab “triangle”)—having no armies but agreed upon militias. Any dispute between them should be arbitrated by three or five smaller states of the UN which had no interests in Palestine. He closed on this note: The strength of world public opinion, together with decent people in England itself, might overcome the “short-sighted, egoistic and militaristic policy of Mr. Bevin, and free Palestine and Jews and Arabs as well.”60 By then, the constant meetings between the Grady and Brook teams had been going on for one week. On July 15 the Americans received “almost a verbatim copy” of the provincial autonomy cantonization plan which former Palestine official and now Colonial Office representative Douglas Harris had unsuccessfully proposed to the Anglo-American Committee in January. McNeil privately urged Grady and Lewis to stress the importance of prevailing upon Jews to remain in Europe, not ­wishing — 242 —

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the two governments to undertake to resettle all who now wished to leave there. Four days later, Grady recommended the plan to Byrnes, arguing that it offered the only means of moving the 100,000 Jewish survivors into Palestine “in the near future”; the British had not asked for U.S. military aid or participation in a trusteeship; the present financial plans were well within the program outlined by Grady to the British group. HMG would invite the Jews and Arabs to London for consultation on the plan; if they did not accept, London would bring the matter before the UN. In a subsequent memoir, Grady added his view that the provisional autonomy plan stayed within the Anglo-American Committee recommendations yet moved toward a solution—partition or ultimately an “integrated” Jewish-Arab state, a “most satisfactory” alternative. The Jewish area proposed would be smaller than the Arab but “immeasurably richer,” and the Jews would also have a large measure of control over immigration beyond the early transportation of the 100,000.61 A perplexed Byrnes replied to Grady with a few specific questions on July 22. Would the British make the transfer of the 100,000 dependent on acceptance of the Harris plan by both Jews and Arabs or, if they did not agree, by the UN? Who would control immigration? Why was not immediate partition into two independent states preferable to a plan which might not contain a provision for termination of trusteeship, thereby avoiding “difficulties and misunderstandings” likely to arise from third party supervision? Finally, had the two teams definitely rejected the Anglo-American Committee report, which moderate elements in both groups might accept, would permit the immediate transfer of the 100,000, and would contemplate a unitary Palestine based on Arab-Jewish cooperation at the local territorial levels extending upwards into government itself?62 The Irgun’s setting off a tremendous explosion at 12:37 the same day in Palestine, ripping off the entire southwest corner of the King David Hotel, had a profound effect on the country and beyond. The Jewish Agency Executive and the Va’ad HaLeumi immediately expressed their abhorrence of “the dastardly crime perpetuated by the gang of desperadoes,” and called on the yishuv to “rise up against these abominable outrages.” Zionist spokesmen abroad took the same stance. Shertok, regularly smuggling letters out of Latrun to colleagues, deemed it a “terrible abomination.” Although “Committee X” had initially approved the operation, its vote to accede to Weizmann’s threat of resignation led Sneh — 243 —

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to ask the Irgun twice for a delay. Amichai Paglin (code name “Gadi”), in charge of the attack, refused any further postponement, and seven milk cans with high explosives that were brought in by Jews disguised as Arabs and placed near the Regence Café took a heavy toll: 91 dead and scores more wounded. The Irgun took full responsibility at the Hagana’s confidential request, deploring the loss of life and stating that telephone warnings had been given to afford the mandatory authorities the opportunity to evacuate the building. The British strongly denied the latter. In a private message to Begin, Hagana official Yisrael Galili declared that the mission did not take account of “our instructions,” and the result therefore was “not preventable under the present circumstances.” This could cause “tragic and serious dangers for the continuation of the struggle,” he warned. Caught unawares, Ben-Gurion declared to the editor of France Soir in Paris that the Etzel organization had always opposed him and the Jewish Agency, and the terrorists in Eretz Israel “are the enemies of the Jewish Nation.” Such acts of terrorism, Truman said in reaction, “might well retard” the on-going American-British efforts, including as regards the 100,000, to bring about “a peaceful solution to this difficult problem.”63 Attlee termed this an “insane act of terrorism” when addressing the Commons, but he ruled out in the Cabinet the next day any large-scale searches that Bevin earlier and now Air Marshall Arthur Tedder advocated. The Cabinet also rejected Cunningham’s appeal for a collective fine of £500,000 on the yishuv and suspending immigration, deciding that this would jeopardize the on-going Grady-Brook talks. For the same reason, it turned down Montgomery’s request to raid large arms dumps, as this could well “arouse a pathological community, on the eve of a new policy.” By now, Cunningham, the Manchester Guardian, and Isaiah Berlin, among others, had come round to some form of partition as offering what the High Commissioner told Hall was “the only solution which gives a chance of stability,” much as Crossman had urged Horowitz a month earlier to have the Agency propound this solution. The government did release a selection of documents showing the Agency’s connection with the united resistance movement since November 1945.64 Barker went further on July 26, giving “restricted” orders (which stirred up charges of antisemitism once reported in the British press) to all officers. British soldiers were to avoid all Jewish places of entertainment, shops, cafes, restaurants, and private dwellings. This, the — 244 —

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GOC-Palestine officer pronounced, would punish the Jews “in a way the race dislikes more than any, by striking at their pockets.” He launched “Operation Shark” whereby a curfew lasting 84 hours was placed on Tel Aviv’s 200,000 inhabitants; a curfew of sixteen nights was also placed on Jerusalem. Of 102,000 Jews “screened” in Tel Aviv, more than 700 were sent to the Rafa detention camp. Begin still eluded capture, but Yitshak Yezernitzky (later Shamir) of the LEHI command was recognized because of his bushy eyebrows despite sporting a rabbi’s disguise. He was eventually flown to a British prison in Eritrea to join some 250 other members of the underground.65 Grady replied to Byrnes’s questions of July 22 two days later by enclosing the complete text that both teams had endorsed, noting that the Cabinet Committee members unanimously considered the provincial autonomy plan to be “the only realistic solution at this time particularly if any extensive Jewish immigration is to be realized.” The British had been “most reasonable and completely cooperative,” he added to Henderson, and would most likely not renegotiate on some alternative bases. Grady urged Washington’s “most expeditious consideration and acceptance,” but Goldmann expressed his grave doubts to the American committee chairman. British newspaper reports, his letter of July 25 pointed out, indicated that the 100,000 was now conditional on HMG’s consultations with Arabs and Jews, contrary to a transfer without delay that Truman and Acheson had both championed, while the main proposal would be “totally unacceptable” from the Zionist point of view. Byrnes made the same point about the 100,000 in a teletype conference from Washington with Grady on the 26th, observing that Truman could not “recede” from his often-stated position that the movement of the survivors should begin “at once.” He requested that Grady, Dorr, and Gaston meet him in Paris on July 29, while he would advise Bevin that there had not been sufficient time to consider the plan and make a recommendation to the President.66 Truman’s reaction at this point validated, in fact, Grady’s assertion to Byrnes that the President’s instructions to the US team before departing for London had never “segregated” the 100,000 from the AngloAmerican Committee’s other recommendations. The President had told Hutcheson that he considered the joint report “a really statesmanlike document,” and was determined to do what he could to carry it out “as a whole.” To a delegation on July 15 from the Jewish War Veterans of — 245 —

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America, which staged a parade of 4,000 in Washington against British policy, Truman had said that the 100,000 “must be dovetailed” with the other features of the report. (He also indicated then that he wished to get 100,000 DPs into the United States, as well as in South America.) When Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace asked Truman on July 26 about a New York Times front-page story from London that morning which echoed what Goldmann had written to Grady, including that the separate provinces would have very limited powers and the Jews confined to a narrow coastal strip, the President disagreed. The Jews had gotten the best part of Palestine in their designated area; the provinces would be under UN trusteeship; the overseeing authority only controlled foreign relations and excise taxes for “the time being.” The entire proposal implemented “to the letter” the Anglo-American Committee’s report, he asserted, and the JVA scheme, which particularly interested Wallace, would be made possible. The reports he was getting from London about the talks were “excellent,” Truman concluded, and it looked as if the 100,000 Jews would be getting into Palestine as soon as they could be absorbed. He had been in touch every day with the American team, and they had followed his explicit instructions “exactly.”67 The Zionist leadership in America reacted swiftly. Given the King David Hotel bombing, accounts from London, and Frederick Kun’s story in PM on July 24 about the cantonization plan assigning the Jewish province 1,500 square miles (15 percent of Western Palestine)—even less territory than the limited partition area proposed by the Peel Commission, Epstein urged Silver that he come immediately to lobby in Washington. They were all unaware that Paul Hanna, the only Palestine expert on the US team, had already on July 21 advised the three delegates to withdraw as “infinitely preferable to involvement in and moral responsibility for a policy of protracted delay and ultimately anti-Zionist outcome,” much as did State’s other representative at the talks, Deputy Director of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs Henry S. Villard. Silver sat down with a highly determined McDonald to draft a memorandum and arrange a meeting with Truman. On the 27th, with Mead and Wagner giving McDonald full reign, he insisted that the President had been “badly served” by the American delegation, whose members agreed to recommendations that ran counter to the AngloAmerican Committee’s report. Visibly annoyed and at times angry, Truman responded that “you can’t satisfy these people.” He would strive — 246 —

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for the 100,000, and “the Jews aren’t going to write the history of the United States or my history.”68 On the 29th, Leo Kohn showed an SOS cable from the Agency in Paris, saying that Byrnes had accepted the plan, to Frankfurter. The Associate Justice immediately spoke to his good friend Acheson, as well as to Patterson and the new Treasury Secretary, John Snyder, against accepting the new plan. (Truman appointed Vinson to become Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.) Kohn then met with Rosenman and Niles, arguing (as he had with Epstein to Henderson earlier) that the Grady scheme kept the British in control in Palestine, prevented the future growth of the Jewish National Home, and made it impossible to settle any substantial number of refugees there. Nathan also spoke to Rosenman, insisting that the Jews get the Negev and control over immigration and economic concerns. Both agreed to speak to the President against the plan.69 Truman’s exasperation surfaced with even greater force during a brief meeting, arranged by Niles, with a New York Congressional delegation on the morning of July 30. Speaking on behalf of his other nine House of Representatives colleagues, Celler began by reading from a memorandum arguing that acceptance of the joint proposal would delay the immediate admission of the 100,000 into Palestine, and he charged that the plan confined Jews to a ghetto. Throughout, Truman looked at some papers, told them that he knew all about Palestine, and that he was working on the refugee problem in general. He was fighting for the 100,000 (four days earlier he had also approved the decision by Byrnes and Patterson to keep the U.S. zone borders open for the present), but had to agree to the British conditions in order to achieve that objective. The group had come because they were up for re-election that fall, he declared. He was tired of having Jews, Irishmen, Poles, Italians, and Armenians come to him in their own interests; “it was time someone came to see him about an American problem for a change.” With that, he cut the interview short after but a quarter hour. Exiting, Celler said that he could only tell the press that the conference was “entirely unsatisfactory and unsuccessful.” Truman later told Niles that he found Celler “intractable,” with nothing to propose. Coincidentally, the Senate heard Wagner assail the latest proposals as “a deceitful device to stifle the hopes of a long-suffering people,” with Taft declaring this this “cynical plan” would mean the — 247 —

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“complete ­frustration” of Jews in Palestine, and “deep despair for the million and one-half surviving Jews in Europe.”70 Niles’s suggestion to Truman, proposing that he not accept the Grady report but have that team meet with the Anglo-American Committee members and resolve “the impasse,” proved crucial. At a Cabinet meeting later that day devoted solely to Palestine, Truman showed a sheaf of telegrams about four inches thick from Jews along with a Byrnes telegram noting that Attlee proposed making a statement tomorrow in Commons announcing the report, and endorsing the plan as “the best solution of this difficult problem that can now be secured.” Acheson favored Truman’s going ahead, as did Forrestal, who two weeks earlier had concluded that America lost “very greatly” in prestige in the Arab world by the Administration’s attitude on Palestine, and now felt that Jews were injecting “vigorous and active propaganda” to force Truman’s hand. Thinking the Grady report “really fair” (the best of all the proposed solutions, he privately told Grady later), Truman remarked at one point that he was very much “put out” with the Jews: “Jesus Christ couldn’t please them when he was here on earth, so how could anyone expect that I would have any luck?” Forrestal warned that if another war came, the United States would need the oil in Saudi Arabia. Truman responded that he wanted to handle the problem not from that standpoint but from that of “what is right.” Finally, the President decided, with backing from Wallace, Snyder, and Agriculture Secretary Clinton Anderson, to have Acheson wire Byrnes that the United States would not go along with Attlee. Truman immediately transmitted this decision in a personal telephone call to Niles, who, in Kohn’s presence, broke down. At the same time, the President wrote to his mother about his “most awful day,” particularly that he spent at a Cabinet luncheon “two solid hours discussing Palestine and got nowhere.”71 Attlee, whose Cabinet had accepted the report on July 25, expressed his “keen disappointment” when “an obviously both embarrassed and depressed” Harriman personally informed him on the morning of July 31 of Truman’s decision. Much in the same manner as Acheson told Inverchapel, the U.S. Ambassador relayed that, having consulted with his Cabinet and some members of both houses of Congress, the President “with the greatest reluctance and regret” concluded that he could not obtain the necessary support to fulfill the proposals which — 248 —

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he was called upon to make. Inverchapel attributed Truman’s “deplorable display of weakness” to domestic politics, just as the President had deferred announcing the Anglo-American Committee’s creation until after the New York elections. Henderson had admitted as much in a talk with him, saying that the Zionists’ condemnatory attitude had prevented the U.S. Government from accepting the full plan. Silver crowed publicly that Zionist-generated pressure on Truman from influential Jews like Lehman, key Congressmen, Crum, McDonald, and Buxton had narrowly averted “political disaster,” a stance which, according to Epstein and Henderson, made the pro-Republican rabbi from Cleveland persona non grata in the White House thereafter.72 Truman’s statement of July 31, elating the Zionists, declared that in view of “the complexity” of the whole matter, he was recalling the Grady team to discuss its report with him in detail, and he hoped that further discussions would “alleviate” the situation of Europe’s Jews and contribute to solving the “longer term problem” of Palestine. Kohn urged caution, however, calling Goldmann in Paris that evening to say that some of the U.S. Agency Executive members should return home but, as Niles urged, “with a policy in their pocket; otherwise it was no use.” Since Morrison (substituting for an indisposed Bevin although having no part in the Cabinet Committee) announced the British proposal in Commons as scheduled, the report became known henceforth as the Morrison-Grady plan. A two-day debate would now follow.73 Morrison defended the “federalization plan,” which he said HMG would use as the basis for discussion at a conference with the Arabs and the Jews, as a “fair and reasonable” compromise, and indicated to the Commons that the 100,000 proposal would move forward if it were accepted. The Jews would receive autonomy over 17 percent of Palestine’s territory; the Arabs 40 percent; and the British controlling the remainder (Jerusalem and the Negev). Even when dissociating the government from “the actual terms” couched in Barker’s letter, he charged that the King David Hotel bombing showed that “the curse of Hitler has not been wholly removed from some of his victims.” Declaring that the world was “weary” of the “ceaseless” Arab-Jewish strife and “sickened by barbarous incidents,” he called on the Jews and the Arabs to end a “sordid” chapter in history and join the “civilized nations in building the foundations of a nobler and happier world.” — 249 —

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A spirited response quickly came from both political benches. Crossman, while favoring the plan if it would be followed after a maximum of ten years by either federation or partition, praised the Hagana’s past help against terrorism and called for the release of the arrested Agency Executive members in Latrun. Rev. Gordon Lang (Labour) blasted Barker’s “vulgar anti-Semitism,” and asserted that an everlasting peace in the world would only occur when the Jews were returned to their own land as ordained in the Scriptures. Churchill praised the yishuv’s war record, but denounced violence by Jewish extremists and doubted Palestine’s ability to absorb “the great masses of Jews who wish to leave Europe.” He insisted that if Britain failed to secure American cooperation in solving the Palestine problem, it should surrender the Mandate, place the entire problem in the hands of the UN, and “evacuate Palestine within a specified period.” Despite the Conservative party herald’s strong attack, Hall concluded that the “remarkable degree of agreement” manifested during the debate would encourage the government to go forward with the provincial autonomy scheme. He yet hoped for U.S. cooperation, noted that the plan was tentative regarding the composition of a central government and the Negev’s fate, and emphasized that “eventually” HMG would draft a trusteeship agreement for submission to the UN.74 The surge in illegal immigration to Palestine dominated Hall’s concerns just then, with still no reply received from Cunningham for a plan to place before the Cabinet. The Hagana, carrying 2,678 passengers from Yugoslavia who were towed to Haifa after its engines failed 90 miles off the Palestine coast, had arrived on July 29, followed two days later by 550 passengers from Antwerp aboard HaHayal HaIvri (“The Jewish Soldier”). At the recommendation on August 1 of Attlee, who sought to avoid incidents that would “seriously embarrass the government” just when Truman had recalled the Grady team, the 500 children, 170 expectant mothers, and 57 persons over the age of 50 on the two ships were allowed to land. Nonetheless, the heavy pressure from his colleagues, the Chiefs of Staff, Shaw, and Cunningham for either deporting arrivals to their point of departure or to Cyprus would tip the scales.75 The next day, Weizmann requested of Hall, who urged the Agency to attend the conference, that the Jewish province be not smaller than the state proposed by the Peel Commission, the Negev be given now to the Jews, and the British administration continue only for 3–5 years. “Eventually,” he observed, “there must be clear-cut partition.” — 250 —

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He promised, at the same time, to help halt illegal immigration provided that those already in Haifa or en route (5,000–6,000) be allowed immediate entry against the 100,000. Hall rejected all these terms for fear of Arab reaction, writing soon thereafter to the WZO leader that the continued arrival of illegal immigrants “in large measure” might “very seriously” prejudice the mandatory’s ability to carry out the 100,000 recommendation as part of the whole federalization plan. On August 5, Hall’s paper to his colleagues recommended deportation to Cyprus, thereby avoiding a clash with the Arab world, with accommodation on the island ultimately to be made available for 10,000 new arrivals.76 That same day, in view of an impasse that threatened Zionism’s very existence, the rump Jewish Agency Executive meeting in Paris faced a critical decision. Niles had telephoned Goldmann on August 2 to warn that Truman would “wash his hands” completely of the Palestine issue if its officials did not present a “realistic plan” quickly. Byrnes had already told Wise and Goldmann of a Cabinet minister’s informing him that the British would impose their own plan if the Arabs and Jews turned it down. Silver had just wired that their “friends” (Buxton, McDonald, and Crum) wished to know what to advocate when meeting with the Grady team. In addition, the King David Hotel bombing, Brodetsky reported, had turned public opinion against the movement; Bevin enjoyed unparalleled support in Great Britain. Moreover, tearfully argued Mizrachi’s Jacob Fishman on August 4, had the Agency the right to “abandon to their fate” the tens of thousands in Eastern Europe fleeing for their lives after the Kielce pogrom? He, backed by Locker, supported the MorrisonGrady plan with the Negev as ultimately leading to a partitioned Jewish state. Wise, like Fishman having opposed the Peel partition proposal in 1937, now agonized over a “harrowing sense of guilt” that a Jewish commonwealth then might have saved many lives. Attacking Kaplan’s readiness (much as Weizmann had just advocated in meeting with Hall) to negotiate for improvements in the federalization scheme, a plan virtually continuing the White Paper, Ben-Gurion, with Sneh’s support, wished any mission to Washington to indicate only a willingness to accept a Jewish state. The latter he outlined in a memorandum drawing on the same principles which he had given to Frankfurter on July 17 of a Jewish pact with a sovereign Jordan.77 On the morning of August 5 Goldmann insisted that an emissary needed a formal decision defining the Executive’s attitude, including — 251 —

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“some room for negotiations,” before departing on a scheduled flight to Washington that afternoon. With Ben-Gurion refusing to accompany Goldmann to Washington, Lipsky wished that Silver join him there in this effort. Goldmann sidestepped that suggestion in view of Neumann’s telegram that he should not come due to Silver’s strong objections to Goldmann’s earlier independent, pro-partition advocacy in Washington. Goldmann then read out his own set of proposals, first declaring Morrison’s announced plan “unacceptable as a basis of discussion,” followed by this resolution: “The Executive is prepared to discuss a proposal for the establishment of a viable Jewish state in an adequate area of Palestine.” Yet the third resolution—calling for the immediate start of transporting the 100,000, the grant of “full administrative and economic autonomy to the area of Palestine designated to become a Jewish state,” and the Agency’s right to administer immigration in that area—indicated Goldmann’s readiness to negotiate on the basis of the Morrison-Grady proposals. Myerson’s attempt to avoid a vote on the last resolution, since it referred to the interim period before full sovereignty, failed by a vote of 9–3; only Ben-Gurion and Sneh supported their own resolution. A unanimous Executive backed Goldmann’s first proposal, with an overwhelming majority cast for the second (10 to 1, with 1 abstention) and the third (10 in favor, with 2 abstentions). Goldmann suggested that two members fly to Washington, but candidates could not be found. When Lipsky refused to go, thinking the mission unnecessary, Ben-Gurion’s call for an Executive vote on Goldmann’s carrying out the mission brought a vote of 9 in favor, with 3 abstentions. NonExecutive member Israel Goldstein of the ZOA declared that he would vote for the mission only if an emissary would work with and through the AZEC. Ben-Gurion declared this unconstitutional, since the Agency was “not dependent” on that Council. Goldmann immediately left for Washington.78 As arranged beforehand by cable, Silver met Goldmann in New York on the afternoon of August 6 and they proceeded to Washington. Silver accepted Ben-Gurion’s position that the Executive had the right to negotiate about partition if proposed by others, although he was reluctant to accept it. By then, Kohn had shown Niles a letter from Gass indicating the “dictatorial manner” in which Grady had followed the British line against his own advisors. Early the next morning, Goldmann, Crum, — 252 —

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and Niles discussed how to have Hutcheson criticize the Grady report without expressing his personal opposition to a Jewish state. According to Crum, the tactic succeeded: all the members of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine criticized the Grady trio (Acheson still thought that Morrison-Grady “had the makings of a compromise”) and, before leaving for home, Hutcheson informed Truman on August 7 that the Cabinet Committee’s report was a “complete repudiation” of their own. Crum remained behind to work with Wahl on following through to the statement which the President should make to the British, all the while consulting with Silver and other Zionist leaders. Indeed, Truman cabled Attlee at 5 p.m. that “I do not feel myself able in present circumstances” to accept the plan proposed as a joint venture; he hoped that a “more definite reply” would follow ‘in the not too distant future.” The same Wednesday, Goldmann found a highly receptive audience for partition in Treasury Under Secretary Edward Foley. Foley, having gotten a damning memorandum from Mikesell (which the Agency also received) of Grady’s actions, made an appointment for Goldmann to see Snyder the next morning.79 That afternoon, Goldmann presented the Agency Executive’s proposals in his most important meeting, a two-hour interview (arranged by Niles) with Acheson. Hearing the Under Secretary say that Truman was “very irritated” by Jewish lobbying and the Americans “might get out of it altogether” if the Agency did not accept the Grady report, Goldmann on his own initiative urged the U.S. Government to champion partition. He went even further according to Acheson’s record, indicating that the Morrison-Grady report was “preferable” to the Anglo-American Committee one because it at least “looked toward partition,” but “the Jews would ask for the boundaries as established by the Peel Report, plus the Negev.” The period until partition should also be shortened to 2–3 years, he remarked, and the Jews given authority over immigration and economic matters in their assigned autonomous area. Acheson thanked him for these “very frank statements,” which, he cabled Harriman five days later, showed that Goldmann’s “counter-proposals” might be regarded “as certain alternations and extensions in various provisions [of the] Morrison plan rather than outlines of an entirely new plan.”80 At a meeting of the AZEC Executive on the evening of the 7th, Goldmann agreed with Silver’s assessment of the Paris resolutions — 253 —

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that until a partition proposal might emerge from the negotiations in London, which the Zionists would then discuss, the fight should continue for the 100,000 and the removal of the 1940 land restrictions. “Naturally,” Goldmann stated, the Agency Executive will negotiate jointly “with a member of the Council.” Silver and his colleagues only heard the next day of Goldmann’s private meetings with Acheson and Secretaries Snyder and Patterson from Crum, who pointed out to Goldmann the danger on two counts of his trying to get Truman to recommend to the British an improved Grady plan leading to partition. In Crum’s view, this should first have been cleared “on procedural grounds” with Silver, while a British veto after the President proposed it would further endanger the Zionist cause and place Truman in “a dangerous position politically.” Continuing, however, to operate on his own, convinced (so he cabled Lipsky) that Silver’s participation “would have made success impossible,” Goldmann persuaded Niles later that evening to back the Agency Executive’s resolutions, and requested Kohn to prepare a letter for Truman along those lines. He also convinced the non-Zionist Proskauer that the current stalemate, which would lead to the United States withdrawing altogether and the immediate immigration of Jews (what Proskauer thought the “absolute objective”) cut off by the British, could only be broken with Jewish statehood.81 The next morning, Goldmann quickly got Snyder’s support and, with Patterson’s good friend Proskauer in attendance, the War Secretary’s approval as well. Niles, Proskauer, and Goldmann then decided that Kohn should alter his draft into a memorandum, which Acheson and Niles would present to the President. Goldmann later sought a meeting with Silver and Neumann, but a furious Silver refused, telling Kohn that Goldmann was “a liar” who had “misled him,” and he “did not want to have anything further to do with him.” In Silver’s view, Goldmann’s initiating partition and the concessions which he made therein would be taken by the British as open to whittling down further. Niles brought better news at 6 p.m., telling Goldmann, Kohn, and Epstein that Truman had decided to accept the Agency Executive’s line, and that instructions to that effect would be cabled to Harriman. Goldmann also got encouragement when presenting his proposals to Inverchapel, who advised Bevin to receive this emissary after hearing that the Agency made no claim to the Holy Places, would welcome British bases, and asked for the Negev “mainly for window dressing” in order to “be able to tell their — 254 —

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own people that a considerable chunk of Palestine, 35 per cent, had been allotted to the Jews.”82 Reporting to Kohn on Friday morning right after meeting with Acheson again, Goldmann conveyed that Henderson had read to him at that interview a telegram for Harriman which endorsed the Agency’s Paris resolutions. Hearing this as well from Goldmann, Gass could not believe that Truman and State had so readily agreed, telling Kohn that Goldmann was “intoxicated and deceived.” In fact, Acheson’s cable to Harriman on the 12th suggested only that HMG announce that the forthcoming consultations did not preclude the possibility of the early creation of “viable state of Jewish portion,” which Washington would support morally and financially “if” London, after consultations with Arabs and Jews, reached a decision that the U.S. Government felt could “obtain public approval this country even not satisfactory to extremists.” Truman sent a message to Attlee in the same vein that evening, to which Bevin replied to Harriman that while the government (Hall) had heard proposals from Weizmann that “appeared to be the same” as Goldmann’s, “he would study the matter and discuss it later.”83 Bevin’s response to the U.S. Ambassador on August 13 coincided with the mandatory’s announcement of deportations to Cyprus. Following the Cabinet’s approval on the 7th of Hall’s recommendation, the First Infantry Division mounted “Operation Igloo” at 4:45 a.m. five days later to begin transferring the 758 arrivals aboard the Yagur and the 536 aboard the Henrietta Szold who had been intercepted and just arrived in Haifa Bay. The first British deportation ship sailed for Cyprus with 500 illegal immigrants on board. On August 13 the aliya bet vessels Katriel Yaffe (604 passengers) and the Khaf Gimel Yordei HaSira (790 passengers) were seized by the British, with desperate resistance on board the Twenty-Three. The same day, two Royal Navy ships with 1,300 Jewish detainees on board set sail for Cyprus. A crowd of about 1,000 Jews attempted to break into the Haifa port area despite a curfew; British troops responded with live fire, killing three and wounding seven. Hagana intelligence had heard of Shaw’s boast on the 7th to colleagues that his trip to London had resulted in the suspension of certificates for 2–3 months and that there would be “a complete stoppage” to illegal immigration, but the yishuv was unprepared for this. “Into the Abyss” declared the Palestine Post; a leading article in HaAretz asserted that a decisive step had been taken in “creating a gulf between the British — 255 —

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Government and the Jewish people”; “a dark chapter is being opened in the history of mankind,” warned HaTsofeh, “but the Jews will not stop fighting for their existence.” All the 600,000 Jews in Palestine and Jews the world over, defiantly declared the Agency Executive in Paris, will continue to “give all their support to any Jews seeking to return to their homeland.”84 The pressure would not die down. Although only one more boat, the yawl Amiram Shochat (183 passengers) landing near Caesarea on August 16, evaded the blockade that month, the British understood that others would make the attempt. The Foreign Office, following the Chiefs of Staff recommendation on July 29 that the best solution was to stop illegal traffic at “source or at ports en route,” continued to urge France, Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, Rumania, and the Soviet government not to permit the exit of such vessels from their countries. All the while, the flight of survivors into the U.S. zones increased in tempo, leading Bernstein to recommend to McNarney on August 2 after a trip to Poland that accommodations be prepared for an additional 100,000 over the winter months. The next day, State was informed that nearly 4,000 more Jewish refugees had arrived in Vienna from Poland overnight, and with the Prague government ready to open the Czech-Polish border, 15,000–20,000 more Jews were ready to head for the West. Visiting Germany and Austria, Fierst recommended to a sympathetic General Ralph H. Tate, Clark’s deputy, that the flow should be diverted to Italy—despite British opposition—as “extremely advantageous” to both U.S. national interests and to the Jewish DPs. Not long after McNarney spoke publicly about closing the borders, Hilldring’s office reiterated “in no uncertain terms” (Wahl’s phrase) that American policy of open borders remained in place. Eleanor Roosevelt echoed a rising public sentiment when telling Lady Reading that the 100,000 Jews should be let into Palestine, and warning of a growing feeling in the United States that Great Britain wished Arab friendship not for the sake of justice but in order to “get more favorable consideration where oil concessions are concerned.” Palestine is “in such a mess” that ultimately it should be turned over to the United Nations, she concluded in a letter that reached the Foreign Office.85 The Jews had to “make a gesture” and stop unsanctioned immigration without being asked to do so, Bevin told Goldmann when they met on August 14. His guest consented to the Foreign Secretary’s desire — 256 —

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(as had Weizmann in his last talk with Hall) that HMG put forward the federalization plan at the conference scheduled for September, not ruling out discussion of what Goldmann called “separation of the two provinces into independent states.” Fearful that the Arabs, who had already refused as in February 1939 to sit around the table with Jews, would not acquiesce in any plan unless other nations would take some of the Jews from Europe, Bevin asked Harriman to find out if Truman would join by recommending to Congress the admission of additional immigration to the United States. Only days before, the Arab League had sharply called on HMG to “take all steps in their powers” to prevent the landing of illegal immigrants and to arrange that such immigrants be given asylum elsewhere.86 The next day, Hall, receiving Weizmann, Wise, and Goldmann, heard that the Zionists could only participate in the conference on the basis of a discussion of a “reasonable” transition period leading to two independent states in treaty relationship with Great Britain. Goldmann pointed out that “our public opinion” would not stand for any more compromises beyond partition, and that they would have to choose their own delegates (thus requiring the release of those detained in Latrun). Hall countered that HMG would propose the Morrison plan, but was “fully ready” to consider proposals from both Arabs and Jews. Told of the interview, Bevin consented to Hall’s approach, the two men also in agreement that if the period under the provisional autonomy scheme were long enough, the Arab and Jewish communities might come to work together “and partition would not be necessary.” Hull believed, Harriman reported to Acheson, that the Zionists would accept his terms. Instead, Weizmann officially informed him on August 16 that the Executive in Paris decided (Ben-Gurion’s proposal approved by a 11–1 vote) that it could not participate in any discussions based on the proposals outlined by Morrison in Commons, but only on “the establishment of a viable Jewish State in an adequate area of Palestine” and the right to choose its own delegates.87 Truman’s statement on August 16 indicated beyond doubt that Goldmann had failed to gain the endorsement from Washington for partition. At a dinner party for the President on August 14, Truman indicated that he “was very anxious to have Jewish support” in light of the coming Congressional elections, a point Crum had discussed there — 257 —

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with chairman of the Democratic State Chairman in New York Paul Fitzpatrick, yet Senator Brewster the next day found Truman “utterly bewildered and confused” about what to do. Now the White House release stated that the government “has not presented any plan of its own for the solution of the problem of Palestine.” The President hoped that a fair solution, “in a spirit of conciliation,” could be found for all the parties concerned and immediate steps taken “to alleviate the situation of the displaced Jews in Europe.” It was also evident, the non-committal declaration went on, that since the solution would not in itself answer “the larger problem” of the hundreds of thousands of displaced persons in Europe, he hoped that the United States and other countries would admit many on a permanent basis; he would seek special Congressional legislation authorizing the entry of “a fixed number of these persons, including Jews.” “The American front has virtually collapsed,” concluded Goldstein in Paris when referring to the statement, and there was no reason anymore for attending the conference. Myerson: “Britain will under no circumstances decide to go with us against the Arabs.” Ben-Gurion refused to repudiate the Goldmann mission even though agreeing that “the result was negative,” and that the emissary was not able to give “a true estimate” of the political situation. He was only interested at the present time in the internal Zionist position, which would stand if the movement’s ranks came together. Publicly, he noted that Truman’s statement did not alter the Palestine situation “at all,” since 500,000 Jews in Europe had to leave, and the majority of them wanted to go to Palestine.88 When meeting with Hall and Bevin on August 18 in Paris, Goldmann, accompanied by Wise and Locker, proposed that HMG begin holding secret informal talks simultaneously with Jews and Arabs before any conference, the government telling the Arabs that they had to compromise (as the Zionists had on partition) and yield some of Palestine to the Jews. Weizmann’s letter of the 16th had the peremptory character of an ultimatum presented by “a victorious power to a defeated enemy.” Bevin retorted. The Jews first had to halt illegal immigration and “end the present state of war” with the mandatory forces. The real trouble, he added, was that Washington had held up a solution of this problem for over a year by the demand for the 100,000 because of “Jewish pressure from New York.” He was prepared to delay the conference, might see Arab representatives, and “try to get the atmosphere better.” If there — 258 —

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were no settlement soon, Britain would have no choice but, reluctantly, to hand the matter over to the UN. Hall remained firm: informal talks would mean more delay; the government would present the Morrison plan at the conference, with other proposals then open for discussion. That plan could easily lead to partition in a few years, but entering the conference with the Agency’s partition scheme would only bring on deadlock with the Arabs. Informed by Hall of the interview, Attlee agreed with his two ministers that the conference should go forward even without Jewish participation. To Truman, the Prime Minister expressed the hope on the 19th that a solution would emerge from the conference which “may be possible of implementation without too greatly endangering the peace of Palestine or of the Middle East as a whole,” it being understood that any such solution must, as matters stood, be one which HMG could put into effect “with our resources alone.” 89 Reports from Eliyahu Sasson about some responsible Arab leaders in Cairo who confidentially favored partition appeared to offer a breakthrough. It began with Shertok’s long memorandum to Egyptian Prime Minister Ismail Sidqi Pasha on August 18, offering a Jewish concession of “half of the whole loaf of bread”: the Jewish state would be limited to all of the land west of the Jordan, with the Arabs there getting full equality. This would, he asserted, cause the Arabs “miniscule damage.” (His earlier draft had proposed a partition of Palestine so long as the area given the Jews afforded opportunities for large immigration, and even accepted provincial autonomy during a transitional period that would lead “in a reasonable period” to an actual state.) Shertok cautioned that the Jews would not accept minority status in a unitary Palestine, the Arabs would not feel secure, and bloodshed would become “a constant phenomenon” likely leading to disaster. In the new scheme, Jewish agricultural and industrial advances would benefit the Arab world, and the Jewish state could host British army and air bases instead of Egypt. Moreover, Britain’s continuing “political hostility” might easily cause the democratic-socialist worker majority in the yishuv to turn to another orientation. For all these reasons, Shertok concluded, a “constructive compromise” in Eretz Israel was clearly desirable as much as it was urgently required.90 Notwithstanding the Arab foreign ministers’ declaration in Alexandria on August 15 that they would be governed at the conference — 259 —

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by the Bludan decisions, the Agency’s Arab Department director found Sidqi Pasha, Azzam Pasha, and first Cairo University director Lufti al-Sayyid prepared to accept partition, particularly if the Zionists could help obtain advantages for Egypt and Libya in Arab negotiations with London. Abdullah, too, who would meet Sasson on the 12th and the 19th, told British Ambassador Alec Kirkbride this same month that he favored partition, with an exchange of populations (much as Ben-Gurion had advocated in July) in order to join Jordan’s 300,000 inhabitants and those of Arab Palestine. Goldmann forwarded this news immediately to Bevin and to Acheson in the hope that Sasson’s information would strengthen the argument for informal talks, but Bevin remained committed to the conference with attendance on HMG’s terms. Given the attitude of “extreme Zionists in America, particularly the Silver group,” Goldmann told Acheson, the Agency Executive in Paris could not agree to attend the conference other than looking towards establishing a Jewish state following partition. He wished that the Under Secretary would urge London to accept preliminary talks, but, accepting Harriman’s advice, Acheson chose not to press the British on this issue.91 Bevin’s request that his Middle East representatives explore the possibility of Arab compromise on partition did not draw promising results, however. The director-general of the Lebanese ministry of foreign affairs favored a system of local autonomy such as enjoyed by Scotland or Wales and a continuance of the White Paper. Fares al-Khoury, now President of the Syrian parliament, appreciated the Morrison plan but objected to further Jewish immigration and repeal of the White Paper’s land transfer regulations. British Ambassador to Egypt Ronald Campbell, opposed to partition and suspicious of Sidqi Pasha’s motives, warned Whitehall that the latter “did not have his hand on the Arab pulse.” Even British military advisor Clayton in Cairo, having come round to partition as “a counsel of despair” after realizing that the “reasonable” White Paper could not continue, cautioned that the masses’ violent opposition would cause Arab governments who accepted it to fall. National Democratic Bloc leader Abdul Rahman al-Kayali also favored partition, but feared that counsels of moderation had few prospects in view of current heightened anti-Zionist feeling in the Arab world. Azzam Pasha told Campbell that the Arabs saw partition as leading Jews, once their province became “congested,” to overflow into neighboring territory, — 260 —

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and he, like Emir Feisal, saw no chance of the conference’s being successful. The Palestinian Arab Higher Executive, created by the Arab League in June to place the Husseinis, rather than the opposition Arab Higher Front, firmly back in the saddle, resolved on August 25 to accept HMG’s invitation to the conference provided that its delegation included the ex-Mufti. (Attlee’s Cabinet had already ruled out Haj Amin’s presence.) Husseini, who announced two weeks earlier that the bombing of the American legation and the British consulate in Beirut was to protest U.S. interference in Palestine and reflected Arab resentment, added that their participation was contingent on unfettered discussion and on the talks beginning with recognition of the Palestinian Arabs’ rejection of all forms of partition.92 Bevin was “not unhopeful” about the conference, he told the delegates of the British Commonwealth to the Peace Conference on August 23. The Arabs had not taken “any uncompromising line” and the Jews had become “much more reasonable” in advocating partition and within an Arab Federation that might even include Jordan. Either might not come to the conference in London, but he would be patient and hope to bring them together again: “The problem had existed for 2,000 years and he had only been Foreign Secretary for one.” He envisaged the Palestine settlement as part of a British arrangement for the entire region, specifically to create irrigation projects in Ethiopia and Iraq, and hoped that some Jewish refugees could be taken by Canada, Australia, or even New Zealand. The last step could perhaps stimulate similar action in the United States, as well as calm the Arabs’ “not unjustified fear” over Jewish illegal immigration. “I have worked very hard on this business and have set my mind on getting a settlement,” Bevin wrote to Attlee on the 29th, intending to take his full part in the conference.93 Bevin agreed to transmit to the Cabinet Goldmann’s new plea to him the same day that the Jews would be called in for talks if and when the Arabs had agreed to discussions on the basis of partition. “It looks to me” that this proposal “is an obvious manoeuvre to put the Arabs in the wrong,” Attlee wired to Bevin in Paris, “and to avoid a position where the Jews would have to come out for partition.” No need existed, he added, to bring this to the Cabinet. The Prime Minister and Colonial Secretary agreed with Bevin that Goldmann’s latest proposal was — 261 —

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“entirely u ­ nacceptable,” and that the Agency had to reply without further delay to Hall’s letter extending the invitation. With the conference scheduled to begin in nine days’ time, Hall added, “there should be no more bargaining or negotiation.”94 If the Zionists’ prospects over the conference remained in doubt, their internecine feuds in the United States threatened the very unity that Ben-Gurion understood was essential at this critical hour. Furious over Goldmann’s independent actions in Washington, which he claimed had caused great damage to the movement, Silver had resigned from the Agency Executive on August 14. Not accepting this, Ben-Gurion immediately wrote on behalf of those in Paris that all had to abide by decisions of the majority, and urged that the ZOA president join them at the earliest possible moment to discuss the next political steps to be taken. Crum advised Goldmann that Silver should be “brought publicly into the picture” so that Washington would know that if it adopted a given course of action, the Administration would have the backing of the American Jewish citizens. For Silver, the manner in which Goldmann had presented partition was “a colossal political blunder”: “We had played our trump card and we had lost.” Kohn, on the Agency’s side, cabled Goldmann his fear that “Caspi” (Silver) intended to take an “extremist line” rejecting partition as a “sellout” and to warn the “Nasi” (Truman) that backing partition would not assure him Jewish votes in the coming Congressional elections, a position which would drive the President “to despair and paralyze his initiative support.” In fact, the ZOA National Executive on August 28 renewed its confidence in Silver’s leadership, and reaffirmed Zionism’s official program calling for, in the language of the 1942 Biltmore resolutions, Palestine’s establishment “as a Jewish Commonwealth.” Even Wise, who had drawn Silver’s wrath the previous month for supporting the U.S. loan to Great Britain, sharply took issue with the Agency Executive in London when most of its British members backed Weizmann’s wish to attend the conference: “HMG led us into the 1939 trap—shall we permit it to lead us into the same trap for the second time?”95 Palestine seethed with far greater tension. Cunningham cabled to Hall his despairing assessment on August 19 that any British attempt to come to terms with moderates such as Weizmann, Goldmann, and Wise was doomed to failure until militant Zionism “has been eradicated.” With men like Silver or Ben-Gurion in power, he noted, in the long run almost any — 262 —

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scheme which may now be devised for Palestine would break down. Robert Scott, Acting Chief Secretary in Shaw’s absence, thought the Palestine Post's editor “poisoned” like the other yishuv newspapers, and considered it “a very slippery road” between the Hagana’s sabotage of railways and bridges and the Irgun’s blowing up the King David Hotel. Members of the Palmah’s underwater sabotage unit (HaHulya shel Palyam) used explosives to damage the Empire Heywood and Empire Rival, ships active in the deportations to Cyprus. Barker’s non-fraternization order was lifted on August 9, but Pulitzer prize-winner journalist H. R. Knickerbocker confidentially told Agronsky that the general went on an antisemitic tirade for some time at a dinner he later attended, including this: “My troops liberated the camp at Belsen. If I’d known what was going to happen, I would have left the beggars to rot there.”96 Despite passive resistance at the remote Dorot and Ruhama settlements in the Negev desert on August 28 during a Sixth Airborne Division search for weapons, systematic destruction and looting occurred, some soldiers shouting “This is for the King David Hotel” and “This is for the soldiers killed in Tel Aviv,” and swastikas were scribbled all over walls. A bitter HaAretz cartoon headed “The Times We Live In” showed two locals gaping at each other as tanks come over hill. One asks: “What have they come for?” and the other replies: “To invite us to the London Conference.” Other than Fishman, no Agency Executive member had been released from Latrun; none were yet brought to trial on charges. Even as Bevin confidentially told Harriman on August 20 that he was confident the British military now had control of the terrorists in Palestine, LEHI announced that if the death sentence were imposed on eighteen of its fighters for their attack on the Haifa railway in June, it would kill 100 Britons. Agency liaison officers attached to British intelligence were emphatic that the threat was genuine, saying that the Irgun had joined forces with the Stern Group for this purpose. The charges were commuted to life imprisonment.97 Palestine was “one of the most baffling problems that he had to deal with,” a troubled Acheson confessed to Milton Handler and Abraham Tulin. Confirming that the Agency’s partition proposal, which he regarded as “the first sign of reasonableness on either side,” had come just when Washington had decided to “wash its hands” of the whole Palestine conundrum, he stated that the matter was now one between the Agency, the British government, and the Arabs. Acheson warned — 263 —

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the two lawyers, who had been sent by the AZEC Executive on August 20 to object to Jordan’s possible admission into the United Nations, that the situation would drift into “chaos and utter helplessness” if the Palestine problem were not solved within the next six weeks. It would then be thrown into the lap of the UN, where Russia would take the position that it was the protector of the Arab states and peoples, creating one more cause of discord between Moscow and Washington. If an acceptable solution were found between the Jewish Agency and the British on one side and the Arabs on the other, he added, the U.S. Government would support such a solution and be prepared to assist in its implementation. Under the present circumstances, however, six weeks and Arab-Jewish rapprochement both smacked of fantasy. What the Under Secretary characterized as “a most complex and explosive question charged with emotion” appeared spiraling into still further drift and toward the realization of his great fears.98

Endnotes 1 2

H. C. Debates, vol. 422, cols. 195–199. Meeting, May 1, 1946, CAB 128/5; Meeting, May 1, 1946, CAB 195/4; both in PRO. 3 Harriman to Byrnes, May 1,1946; Harriman to Byrnes, May 9, 1946; both in 867N.01/5–146, SD; London Times, May 5, 1946; Tribune, May 10, 1946; Harold J. Laski, “Britain Faces Test on Palestine,’’ Box 3, Morgenthau MSS. 4 HaMashkif, May 3, 1946; Halifax to Bevin, May 3, 1946, FO 371/52520, PRO; Ben-Gurion and Epstein talk with Niles, May 17, 1946, BGA. 5 JAEJ, May 1, 1946, CZA; Ben-Gurion to Laski, May 2, 1946, BGA; Ben-Gurion to Joseph, May 6, 1946, S25/1550, CZA; Magnes to Hinden, May 1, 1946; Magnes to Cunningham, May 5, 1946; both in 249, Judah Magnes MSS, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. 6 JAEJ, May 1, 1946, CZA; Weizmann to Frankfurter, May 4, 1946; Weizmann to Magnes, May 8, 1946; Weizmann to MacKinnon, May 3, 1946; all in WA; May 5, 1946 OSS report, no. 71A6682, AACI files, Box 1101, SD. 7 Zionist Review, May 3, 1946. 8 AZEC Executive, April 18–19, 1946, ZA; Shertok to Weizmann, May 16, 1946, Z4/15432; Silver et al. to Truman, May 2, 1946, Z6/2770; both in CZA. Lipsky — 264 —

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was a founder of the ZOA, of the Jewish Agency and of the Keren HaYesod in the United States, and a leader of the American Jewish Congress. 9 Hilmi to Cunningham, May 1, 1946; Husseini to Attlee, May 3, 1946; both in CO 733/463/75872; Campbell to Bevin, May 3, 1946, FO 371/52520; all in PRO; Al Ahram, May 2, 1946, J112/1126; Report, May 9, 1946, S25/22831; both in CZA; FRUS, 1946, 7, 591, 593–595, 599–600. 10 Halifax to Bevin, May 7, 1946, FO 371/52521, PRO; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 595– 596; Akzin to Shapiro, May 6, 1946, A370/676, CZA. 11 FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 501–502. 12 Ibid., 597–599. 13 Ibid., 596–597; Akzin to Silver, May 17, 1946, CF-Akzin files, ZA. 14 Fierst memoir, 61–71; FRUS, 1946, vol. 5, 156–158; Goldstein report, May 8, 1946, A431/8; Wahl to Kenen, May 9, 1948, A431/3; both in CZA; Tourover to Epstein, May 8, 1946, US Depts. File, Hadassah Archives; Fierst to Rifkind, May 9, 1946, Rifkind MSS. 15 Fierst memoir, 71; Wahl to Kenen, May 10, 1946, A431/3; McNarney to Hutcheson, May 13, 1946, S25/9600; both in CZA. While praising the “gallantry” of the Jewish Brigade during the Allied wartime campaign in Italy, Clark assured Shertok that the U.S. Army was “doing all to improve the situation of the Jewish people.” Clark to Shertok, May 14, 1946, Z5/814, CZA. 16 Halifax to Foreign Office, May 4, 1946, CO 537/1735; Ward memo, May 5, 1946, FO 371/52521; both in PRO. 17 May 7, 1946, BGA; Shertok to Weizmann, May 16, 1946, Z4/15432, CZA. 18 FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 601–603; May 9, 1945, CAB 128/5 and CAB 195/4; both in PRO. 19 Mallory Browne, “Commons Favors Egypt Evacuation,” New York Times, May 11, 1946; Bullock, Ernest Bevin, 242–244; Confidential report, May 14, 1946, L35/90, CZA; Elizabeth Monroe, Britain’s Moment in the Middle East, 1914– 1956 (London, 1963), 157; Peter Hennessy, Never Again, Britain, 1945–1951 (New York, 1993), 240–241; Richard H. S. Crossman, “The Role Britain Hopes to Play,” Commentary 5 (June 1948): 495. 20 Palestine Post, May 10, 1945; Halifax to Bevin, May 10, 1946, FO 371/52323, PRO; Proskauer to Stein, May 6, 1946, Box 8, Proskauer MSS; JTA, May 15, 1946; 21 FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 606; Bevin to Attlee, May 9, 1946 (two cables), FO 800/475, PRO; Clifford memo, May 15, 1946, PSF 184, HSTL. 22 Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 1130–1131; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 607. 23 Note of a meeting, May 14, 1946, FO 371/52524, PRO; Comay to Gering, May 29, 1946, S25/1568; Horowitz at JAEJ, June 2, 1946; both in CZA; Weizmann — 265 —

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to Crossman, May 22, 1946, Crossman MSS. For l’affaire Dreyfus, see Monty Noam Penkower, “The Dreyfus Affair and Its Echoes,” in J.C. Friedman and R. D. Miller II, eds., “The Highest Form of Wisdom,” A Memorial Book in Honor of Professor Saul S. Friedman (New York, 2016), 177–211. 24 COS meeting with D’Arcy, May 15, 1946, FO 371/52525, PRO; Broadcast, May 12, 1946, and Sneh to Ben-Gurion, May 12, 1946, Palestine Statement of Information, 8–9; Stapleton to Gater, May 29, 1946, FO 371/52527, PRO. 25 FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 607–615; May 20, 1946, CAB 128/5, PRO. 26 State Department press release, May 22, 1946, 867N.01/5–2246, SD; Wise to Goldmann, May 22, 1946, Box 109, Wise MSS; Acheson to Wise-Silver, May 24, 1946; Silver-Wise to Acheson, May 31, 1946; both in Z5/1161, CZA. 27 Taylor to Truman, May 15, 1946, OF204, Box 771, HSTL; Sachar, The Redemption of the Unwanted, 206–207, 316–318. Spears made the same arguments as Taylor in an article for the British press on May 20, 1946, 867N.01/5-2346, SD. For the influence of Bowman and Hoskins on Roosevelt, as well as Taylor’s wartime anti-Zionist views on Palestine, see Monty Noam Penkower, Decision on Palestine Deferred, America, Britain, and Wartime Diplomacy, 1939–1945 (London, 2002), passim. 28 Joseph-Cunningham interview, May 20, 1946, S25/7706, CZA; Husseini to Cunningham, May 24, 1946, FO 371/52553, PRO; Palestine Post, May 28, 1946; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 615–616; CO 733/463/75872/138, PRO; Muhammad Khalil, The Arab States and the Arab League (Beirut, 1962), 244– 245; Abdullah meeting, June 1, 1946, FO 371/52553; Shone to Foreign Office, May 31, 1946, FO 371/52527; both in PRO; Al Difa’a, May 29, 1946, 47/625, HA; Ahava report, June 5, 1946, S25/9031, CZA. 29 Joseph B. Schectman, The Mufti and the Fuehrer (New York, 1965), 187–193; Zvi Elpeleg, HaMufti HaGadol (Tel Aviv, 1980), 72–79. For suspicions that the British themselves had used “blind eye” tactics, see A. B. report, June 15, 1946, 125/11-Het Tsadi, ISA. 30 Documents on Israeli-Soviet Relations, 126–128; Moscow to the Foreign Office, May 31, 1946, FO 371/52527, PRO. For an American appraisal from Moscow of Soviet intentions at this time regarding Palestine, see Smith to Byrnes, May 24, 1946, 867N.01/5-2446, SD. 31 FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 617–619; Wahl to Kenen, June 3 and 5, 1946; A431/3, CZA. 32 FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 622–624, 626–627; Henderson to Acheson, June 7, 1946, 867N.01/6–1246, SD. — 266 —

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33 Trevor, Under the White Paper, 206–209; Cunningham to Martin, June 6, 1946, FO371/52535, PRO; Glubb to Attlee, June 12, 1946, S25/2202, CZA; Khalil, The Arab States, 162–163, 515–518; Amman to Whitley, July 23, 1946, FO 371/52551, PRO; Eliyahu Sasson, BaDerekh El HaShalom (Tel Aviv, 1978), 358–364; Comay to Joseph, June 16, 1946, S25/9020, CZA. 34 Bullock, Ernest Bevin, 277–278; Frankel report, June 27, 1946, Foreign Countries-Palestine file, AJC Archives; Inverchapel to Bevin, June 13, 1946; Bevin to Inverchapel, June 14 and 19, 1946; all in FO 371/52529, PRO; Balfour to Bevin, June 23, 1946, Manson files, Silver MSS; Zionist Review, June 21, 1946. 35 Inverchapel to Bevin, June 13, 1946, FO 371/52529, PRO; ProskauerBlaustein to Truman, June 14, 1946, Box 8, Proskauer MSS; Niles to Ross, June 13, 1946, L35/70; Connelly to Sabath, June 17, 1946, A370/176; Akzin to Silver, June 10, 1946, and attached draft letter, A370/676; Memo, June 11, 1946, Z6/276; all in CZA. 36 Department of State Bulletin, June 23, 1946, p.1089; Patterson to Truman, June 11, 1946, PSF 157, HSTL; Akzin to Silver, June 4, 1946, A370/676, CZA; Henderson to Acheson, June 7, 1946, 867N.01/6-1246, SD; Inverchapel to Bevin, June 13, 1946, FO 371/52529, PRO; Wahl to Kenen, June 10, 1945, Z10, Robert Szold MSS, ZA; Fierst memoir, 99–100. 37 Palestine Post, June 18, 1946; Hugh Thomas, John Strachey (London, 1973), p 229; Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 824–825, 880–888, 919; Z. Gilad, Sefer HaPalmah, 650–660, 740–741; Dov Gavish, Ulai Hu Od Yavo (Carmel, 2013); Eliyashiv Veiner, “Ehad V’Od Shlosh Esrei,” Makor Rishon, Deyukan, June 27, 2014, 30–32, 34; Palestine Statement of Violence, 9; Palestine Post, June 19, 1946. 38 Cunningham to Hall, June 18, 1946, CAB 129/10, PRO; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 631. 39 Cunningham to Hall, June 21, 1946, Box 1/1, Cunningham MSS; Shertok to Ben-Gurion, June 20, 1946, S25/7706, CZA. 40 Hall-Ben Gurion talk, June 19, 1946, S25/7566, CZA; Hall-Cunningham cable, June 19, 1946; Ben-Gurion -Crossman-Hall interview, June 20, 1946; both in BGA; JAEJ, June 20, 1946; Shertok to Ben-Gurion, June 21, 1946, S25/7706; both in CZA; London Times, June 20, 1946. Goldmann took the same moderate approach as Weizmann in a talk with Inverchapel. Inverchapel to Hall, June 20, 1946, FO 800/485, PRO; Goldmann to Inverchapel, June 21, 1946, Z6/2278, CZA. 41 Meeting, June 20, 1946, CAB 128/5, PRO; The Memoirs of Field-Marshall The Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (New York, 1958), 381–382; Hall to — 267 —

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Cunningham, June 20, 1946, FO 371/52531; Attlee to Bevin, June 20, 1946, FO 371/52531; Bevin to Attlee, June 20, 1946, FO371/52530; all in PRO. 42 Harriman to Byrnes June 18, 1946 (2 cables), 867N.01/6-1846; Harriman to Byrnes, June 22, 1946, 867N.01/6-2246; both in SD; Kaplan to Wilson, June 25, 1946, S25/7497, CZA; Wilson to Rood, June 2, 1946, AACI files, SD. 43 Wahl to Grossman, June 24, 1946, Confidential files-Cabinet Committee, ZA; Lourie to Silver, June 18, 1946, 4/3, Silver MSS; Bernstein memo, June 21, 1946, A431/4, CZA; Goldmann-Grady-Dorr talk, June 21, 1946, AACI files, SD; Akzin to Silver, June 18, 1946; Akzin to Silver, June 24, 1946; both in A370/676, CZA; Goldmann to Ben Gurion, June 20, 1946, BGA. 44 FO to Washington, June 18, 1946, FO 371/52521; Inverchapel to Foreign Office, June 26, 1946, FO 371/52534; both in PRO. 45 Eleanor Roosevelt, “Crisis for Jews,” New York World-Telegram, June 22, 1946; Roosevelt to Truman, June 16, 1946; Truman to Roosevelt, June 20, 1946; both in 4560, Eleanor Roosevelt MSS, FDRL; Wagner et al. to Truman, June 20, 1946, PSF, Palestine 1945–1947, Box 161, HSTL. Responding to her letter on the DPs, Truman agreed, and added: “We are working on this program as hard as we can. It is a difficult program to solve.” Roosevelt to Truman, June 16, 1946; Truman to E. Roosevelt, June 20, 1946; both in 4560, Eleanor Roosevelt MSS, FDRL. 46 Ganin, Truman, America Jewry, and Israel, 1945–1948, 74–75; New York Post, June 26, 1946; Lelyveld interview with the author, Jan. 11, 1973. Magnes, considering a partition plan “evil” and thinking it “a catastrophe” if Britain were removed from the relationship of the Arabs and the Jews, supported a modification of the federalization plan. Slawson to Proskauer, Aug. 13, 1946, Box 8, Proskauer MSS. 47 Cunningham to Hall, June 27, 1946, FO 371/62635, PRO; Barker memorandum, Box 5/4, Cunningham MSS; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 627–631; Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 1009, 1132; Weizmann to Shertok, June 27, 1946; Weizmann to Shertok, Jan. 20, 1947; both in WA; Attlee to Truman, June 28, 1946, FO 371/52535, PRO. 48 Military intelligence report, July 5, 1946, 80/60/3, HA; Cunningham statement, June 29, 1946, S25/10488, CZA; JTA, July 1, 1946; S25/7697, CZA; Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 891–896; Palestine Post, July 2, 1946; Shaw to Weizmann, July 3, 1946, WA; Trevor, Under the White Paper, 216–224. 49 Cunningham to Hall, June 29, 1946, FO 371/52534, PRO; memo, Jan. 29, 1946, CZA; July 1, 1946 meeting, J1/8027; JAEL, June 30, 1946; both in CZA;

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Sneh to Begin, July 1, 1946, I-R-032, Begin Archives; Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 896. 50 Avriel, Open the Gates!, 288–292; David Ben-Gurion, “The Palmach Takes the Offensive,” Jewish Observer and Middle East Review, September 18, 1964, 14. 51 H. C. Debates, vol. 424, cols. 1805–1922; Howe to the Political Secretary, July 3, 1946, S25/6064, CZA; Attlee to Truman, July 4, 1946, FO800/485, PRO. 52 Hall memo, July 8, 1946, CAB 129/11; July 8, 1946, CAB 129/11; Chiefs of Staff memo, July 10, 1946, PREM 8/627; Note, July 10, 1946, FO 800/485; July 11, 1946, CAB 128/6; all in PRO. 53 FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 642–644; Agency Executive statement, July 2, 1946, Z5/385, CZA; Sachar, The Redemption of the Unwanted, 319. 54 JCS memo, June 21, 1946 memo, CCS 092 Palestine, Sec. 2, RG 218, NA; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 644–645. Silver reported to the AZEC Executive that Truman, in a “much more friendly” mood than his first meeting with Wise and Silver, worried that “if we are not careful we may have a war in the Middle East over oil,” and that he had “absolutely” given a clear directive to the Cabinet Committee and its predecessor that the 100,000 transfer was not tied up with the other recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee. AZEC Executive, July 3, 1946, ZA. 55 Jan T. Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz (New York, 2006), chaps. 3–4; Arthur Bliss Lane, I Saw Poland Betrayed (New York, 1948), chap. 16; Lane to Byrnes, July 29, 1946, 840.48 Refugees/7-2946, SD; Jacob Apenszlak memo, July 1946, 207A, WJC Archives; Hlond remarks, July 11, 1946, 840.48 Refugees/7-1146, SD; Jerusalem Post, July 9, 2006; Krane memo, July 10, 1946, Germany Mission, Box 66,021, UNRRA MSS; Srole memo, July 10, 1946 Z6/271, CZA; JTA, July 21, 1946. 56 Fierst memoir, 74, 77; Wahl to Grossman, July 22, 1946, A431/8, CZA. 57 Avriel, Open the Gates!, 293–298; I.F. Stone, Underground to Palestine (New York, 1946); Cohen, Palestine and the Great Powers, 88–89. 58 Eli Shaltiel, Tamid B’Meri, 264–278; Cunningham to Hall, July 8, 1946, FO 371/53538; Cunningham to Hall, July 11, 1946, FO 371/52539; WeizmannCunningham interview, July 14, 1946, FO 371/52540; all in PRO; Slutzky note, Oct. 29, 1970, 80/158-Peh Tsadi, HA; Sneh to Ben-Gurion, July 18, 1946, BGA. 59 Neumann to Silver, July 9, 1946, Silver correspondence, Neumann MSS; Executive minutes, July 10, 1946, Hadassah Archives; Executive minutes, July 15, 1946, ZOA files, Neumann MSS.

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60 Ben-Gurion to Frankfurter, July 17, 1946, Box 23, Frankfurter MSS. 61 FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 646–647; Fierst memoir, 101–102; Draft, Chapter 9, 160– 162, Box 5, Henry Grady MSS, HSTL. 62 FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 648–649. 63 Philip Burton, A Captain’s Mandate, Palestine: 1946–1948 (London, 1996), 36–50; Thurston Clarke, By Blood and Fire: The Attack on the King David Hotel (New York, 1981); Moshe Sharett, Yerahim B’Emek Ayalon, P. Ofer, ed. (Tel Aviv, 2011), 91–92; Yosef Evron, Gidi V’HaMa’arakha L’Pinui HaBritim Meh’Eretz Yisrael (Jerusalem, 2001), 91–180; Bruce Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, 290–306; Galili to Begin, n.d.; Ben-Gurion statement; both in BGA; I-R-032, Begin Archives; New York Herald Tribune, July 24, 1946. MI5 records reveal that information on this was available beforehand, but MI6’s Kim Philby, the most senior agent run by the Soviet KGB, did not pass it on. Today British intelligence circles believe that Philby acted so because his Moscow handlers actually were interested in a terror attack against British government targets. Earlier, Kollek had expressed doubts about Philby’s reliability, but his MI5 contact dismissed this concern. Bergman, “The Scorpion File.” 64 H. C. Debates, vol. 425, cols. 1877–1880; July 22, 1946 meeting, FO 371/52543; July 23, 1946, CAB 128/6 and CAB 195/4; July 25, 1946, CAB 128/6; all in PRO; Cunningham to Hall, July 24, 1946, Box 1/1, Cunningham MSS; Manchester Guardian, July 23, 1946; Berlin, Enlightening Letters, 8–12, Crossman to Horowitz, June 28, 1946, Crossman MSS; Palestine: Statement of Information Relating to Acts of Violence. 65 Trevor, Under the White Paper, 229–234; Agronsky memo, July 31, 1946, S25/7697, CZA; Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 902–903. 66 FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 651–668; Teletype Conference, July 26, 1946, 867N.01/72646, NA. 67 Hutcheson to Buxton, July 12, 1946, 93.03, 2266/23, ISA; AZEC Executive, July 15, 1946, ZA; Niles to Connelly, July 15, 1946, PSF 184, HSTL; The Price of Vision: The Diary of Henry A. Wallace, 1942–1946, J.M. Blum, ed. (Boston, MA, 1973), 603–604. 68 AZEC Executive, July 25 and 26, 1946, ZA; Hanna memo, July 21, 1946, in Edward Glick, The Triangular Connection: America, Israel, and America Jews (London, 1981), 82–84; Villard memo, n.d., Box 1101, AACI files, SD; Villard interview with the author, May 17, 1976; McDonald memo, July 27, 1946, Z4/15440; McDonald interview with Truman, July 27, 1946; both in Z4/20276, CZA; Wise et al. to Epstein, July 29, 1946, BGA. — 270 —

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69 Kohn diary, July 29, 1946, Kohn MSS, ISA. 70 Near York Times and New York Herald Tribune, July 31, 1946; Inverchapel report, Aug. 1, 1946, FO 371/52548, PRO; Kohn diary, July 30, 1946; AZEC executive, July 30, 1946, ZA. Byrnes’s and Patterson’s decision had come after meeting with Jewish representatives on July 22, Patterson especially moved by Blaustein’s emotional appeal on humanitarian grounds for the survivors of the Holocaust. Fierst memoir, 74–79. 71 FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 671–673; Draft memoir, 164, Grady MSS; The Price of Vision, 606–607; The Forrestal Diaries, 180, 188–189; Kohn diary, July 30, 1946; Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman (New York, 1973), 383–384. 72 Harriman report, July 25, 1946, 867N.01/7-2546, SD; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 673–676; Beeley-Harris report, July 28–31, 1946, FO 371/52550; Inverchapel to Bevin, July 30 and 31, 1946, both in FO 371/52546; Inverchapel to Bevin, August 5, 1946, FO371/52549; all in PRO; JTA, August 2, 1946; Eliyahu Eilat, HaMa’avak al HaMedina, 1 (Tel Aviv, 1979), 370. 73 FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, notes to 674; Kohn diary, July 31, 1946. 74 JTA, August 1–2, 1946. 75 Trevor, Under the White Paper, 236–238; August 1, 1946, CAB 128/6, PRO, and BGA; Cunningham to Hall, August 1, 1946, FO371/52549; Hall to Cunningham, August 2, 1946, FO 371/52550; both in PRO. 76 CO note, August 2, 1946, BGA; Hall to Weizmann, August 2, 1946, WA; Gallman to State, August 2, 1946, 867N.01/8-246, SD; Hall memo, August 8, 1946, CAB 129/2, PRO; Hall to Cunningham, August 2, 1946, IR-95, Begin Center Archives. 77 Jewish Agency Executive (JAE) meetings, August 2, 1946, CZA; Nahum Goldmann, Sixty Years of Jewish Life (New York, 1969), 232; Goldmann address, August 3, 1946, A289/127, CZA; Silver to Ben-Gurion, August 3, 1946, BGA; JAE two meetings, Aug. 4, 1946, CZA; Kaplan proposal, 2267/40, 93.03, ISA; Ben-Gurion memorandum, August 4, 1946, S25/7161, CZA. 78 JAE meeting, August 5, 1946, CZA. 79 Goldmann report, August 13, 1946, A289/127, CZA; August 4, 1946, Kohn diary; Mikesell to Glasser, and Glasser to Foley, August 1, 1946. Z6/79; Gass to Epstein, July 28, 1946, L35/121l; Wahl memo, August 18, 1946, A431/4; all in CZA, FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 677; Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York, 1969), 175–176. A newspaper story reported, contrary to Crum’s report to the Zionists, that Hutcheson set forth his opposition to a partition of the Holy Land when speaking to Truman before his departure for Houston. Houston Chronicle, August 9, 1946. — 271 —

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80 Goldmann report, August 13, 1946, A289/27, CZA; Acheson-Goldmann interview, August 7, 1946, 867N.01/8-746, SD; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 679–682. Acheson conveyed this as well to Inverchapel, both men seeing Goldmann’s information as a hopeful development. Acheson memo, August 10, 1946, 867N.01/8-1046, SD. 81 AZEC Executive, August 7, 1946, ZA; Minutes, August 7, 1946, Z6/304, CZA; Wahl memo, August 18, 1946, A431/4, CZA; Kohn diary, August 7, 1946; Goldmann to Lipsky, August 7, 1946, L35/82; Goldmann note, August 1946, Z6/2271; both in CZA; Proskauer to Blaustein August 16, 1946, Box 8, Proskauer MSS. 82 Goldmann report, August 13, 1946, A289/27, CZA; Kohn diary, August 8, 1946; “Memorandum on Palestine,” August 8, 1946, Box 8, Proskauer MSS; Neumann to Lipsky, August 9, 1946, Box 6, Louis Lipsky MSS, AJHS; Inverchapel to Bevin, August 9, 1946, FO 371/52551. Patterson also received a memorandum from Goldmann opposing trusteeship and a bi-national state in favor of partition. Ben-Gurion’s July plan was included. “Palestine,” August 6, 1946, Z5/385, CZA. 83 Kohn diary, August 9–10, 1946; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 681, 684. 84 Meeting, August 7, 1946, CAB 128/6, PRO; HMG statement, August 13, 1946; Jewish Agency statement, August 13, 1946; both in S25/10488, CZA; Palestine Post, August 13–14, 1946; Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 1137–1140; August 11, 1946 report, S25/7697, CZA. Henrietta Szold was the legendary founder of Hadassah and headed Youth Aliya in Palestine until her death in February 1945. Katriel Yaffe commanded twenty-three commandos of the Hagana who had gone on a mission in May 1941 aboard a police motor launch (sira) on behalf of the Allies under the command of a British officer in order to bomb the oil refineries in Vichy-controlled Tripoli. No sign of them was ever found. The Hagana and HaHayal HaIvri passengers yet on those boats were transferred to the Atlit detention center. 85 Chiefs of Staff memo, July 29, 1946, FO 371/52547; July 31, 1946 memo, FO 371/52548; both in PRO; Bernstein report, August 2, 1946, Philip Bernstein MSS, University of Rochester, Rochester, N.Y.; Erhart to State, August 3, 1946, 840.48 Refugees/8-346, SD; Fierst memoir, 96; Wahl to Grossman, August 19, 1946 A431/4, CZA; Roosevelt to Reading, August 23, 1946, FO371/52556, PRO. Shochat was one of the twenty-three Hagana seamen who disappeared while on their Allied mission in May 1941 (see note 84). 86 Bevin to Attlee, August 14, 1946, FO371/52522, PRO; Goldmann report, August 14, 1946, 2569/14-Het Tsadi, ISA. Harriman to Acheson, August 15, 1946 867N.01/8-1546, SD; Azzam Pasha to Campbell, August 10, 1946, 2569/14-Het Tsaddi, ISA. — 272 —

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87 Hall-Zionist delegation interview, August 15, 1946, FO 800/485; Hall-Bevin talk, August 16, 1946, FO 800/487; both in PRO; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 685; JAE, August 16, 1946, CZA; Weizmann to Hall, August 16, 1946, WA. Shertok and Joseph had insisted that no negotiations take place without a release from Latrun and Ben-Gurion’s participation. Sharef to Ben-Gurion, August 13, 1946, S25/1554, CZA. At the same time, Shertok feared that the August 16 letter’s formulation with the Paris formula “courts rejection.” Sharef to Zaslani, August 20, 1945, S25/1554, CZA. 88 FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 684–685; The Price of Vision, 609; Kohn diary, August 16, 1946; Crum to Hannegan, October 1, 1946, S25/7497, CZA; Sack to Silver, August 19, 1946, Box 3, Hyman Schulson MSS, New York Public Library, New York City; JAE, August 17, 1946, CZA; Palcor, August 19, 1946. Truman had also given Crum assurances at the dinner that he had demanded of the British to drop the Grady proposals and stop the blockade. (There is no other record of the second demand.) Wahl memo, August 19, 1946, A431/24, CZA. 89 Meeting, August 18, 1946, FO 371/52641, PRO; Report of interview, August 18, 1946, A289/27; JAE, August 18, 1946; both in CZA; Hall to Bevin, August 18, 1946, FO 371/800/485, PRO; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 687. 90 Sharett, Yerahim B’Emek Ayalon, 212–216. 91 Bevin to Hall, August 19, 1946, FO 371/52641,PRO; Acheson to Harriman, August 20, 1946, 867N.01/8-2046, SD; Sasson, BaDerekh El HaShalom, 364– 372; Report, August 29, 1946, Z4/33021, CZA; Campbell to Bevin, August 30, 1946; Clayton to Smart, August 31, 1946; both in FO 371/52556; Kirkbride to Bevin, August 15, 1946, FO 371/52553; Kirkbride to Bevin, August 27, 1946, FO 371/52555, all in PRO; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 688–690. 92 Beeley to Baxter, August 20, 1946; FO 371/52553; Young to Bevin, August 27, 1946, FO 800/475; Young to Bevin, August 28, 1946, FO 371/52642; Russell to Young, August 10, 1946, CO733/461/75872; Campbell to Bevin, August 22, 1946, FO 371/52554; Campbell to Bevin, August 31, 1946, FO 371/52555; Clayton to Smart, August 31, 1946, FO 371/52557; all in PRO; JTA, August 11 and 26, 1946; Issa Khalaf, Politics in Palestine, Arab Factionalism and Social Disintegration, 1939–1948 (Albany, NY, 1991), 115–123. 93 Bevin talk with Commonwealth delegates, August 22, 1946, FO 371/52555; Bevin to Attlee, August 29, 1946, FO 800/ 485; both in PRO. 94 Bevin to Attlee and Hall, August 29, 1946, FO 371/52562, PRO; Goldmann note on Bevin interview, August 29, 1946, A289/127, CZA; Attlee to Bevin, August 30, 1946; Hall to Bevin, August 30, 1946; both in FO 800/485, PRO. — 273 —

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95 Silver to Ben-Gurion, August 14, 1946, BGA; Ben-Gurion to Silver, August 15, 1946, Z4/15170, CZA; Crum to Goldmann August 27, 1946, Jacques Torczyner MSS, Begin Center; AZEC minutes, August 26, 1946, Z5/1172, CZA; Kohn to Goldmann, August 16, 1946, P576/34-P, Kohn MSS; JTA, August 29, 1946; Wise to Goldmann, August 27, 1946, Z6/290; JAEL, August 27, 1946, Z4/302/31; both in CZA. The US government made the loan on July 15, 1946. It would be paid off in 2006. The loan, negotiated for the British by John Maynard Keynes, totaled $3.75 billion at a low 2 percent interest rate. 96 Cunningham to Hall, August 19, 1946, FO 371/52554, PRO; Agronsky notes, August 2, 1946, A209/3; Agronsky memo, August 29, 1946, A209/20; both in CZA; Z. Gilad, Sefer HaPalmah, 733–737. 97 Trevor, Under the White Paper, 244, 252–254; reports: September 4, 1946, J1/3321; August 27, 1946, A417/90; both in CZA; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 689; Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, 322. 98 Handler and Tulin to Silver, August 20, 1946, 4/3, Silver MSS.

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The first week of September 1946 did not augur well for Zionist prospects. Receiving Goldmann and Locker on the evening of September 2, Bevin stated that HMG awaited a final word as to whether the Jewish Agency accepted or refused the London Conference invitation as it stood. As to Goldmann’s information that Sidki Pasha confidentially favored partition, the Foreign Secretary stated that London could not hand over its responsibility for negotiations with the Arabs to the Egyptian Prime Minister, and partition could be discussed at the conference. Two days later, Weizmann wrote to Hall that the Agency Executive could only participate on the terms outlined in his letter of August 16. Hall replied in turn that the government, which had expected the Agency to place foremost among its considerations the plight of “so many Jews in Europe” and the need for peace in Palestine, could not possibly let one party alone lay down the agenda of the proceedings. He released their correspondence to the press, one day after Epstein, at Goldmann’s request, had informed the State Department’s Near East specialists of the Agency’s “reluctant” decision, and of his great fears that “the extremists” would take over in Palestine and in the American Zionist organization as a result of these developments. (“It is not likely” that a satisfactory settlement could result from a conference between the British and the Arabs only, a worried Henderson informed Acting Secretary of State William Clayton.) The same day, Truman declared in response to questions at a press conference that while he was trying to get 100,000 Jews into Palestine, the Morrison-Grady plan “was still under consideration,” including its recommendation for a $300 million Arab development loan, and he would rather not make any statement until “the whole program had been decided.”1

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The Attlee Cabinet’s resolve about the conference, coupled with Truman’s statement regarding the federalization scheme, divided the Zionist camp. Weizmann, his Executive colleagues at 77 Great Russell Street, and Goldmann still hoped to attend or at least have informal talks. The movement’s Inner Actions Committee in Jerusalem favored only the latter; the opposition (all against partition as well) included Mizrachi, Ahdut HaAvoda, HaShomer HaTsa’ir, and the Jewish State Party. In Latrun, Remez thought that the Agency had no choice but to appear “at the first seemly opportunity”; Shertok, who together with his detained associates was concerned about Goldmann’s “secret negotiations,” could not decide beforehand when that would be. Walter Eytan (formerly Ettinghausen), principal of the Agency’s newly created Public Service College, advised attendance with an effort to secure American support for improving the Morrison-Grady proposals lest a new period of “infinite delay” and a worse British scheme tantamount to retention of the White Paper ensue. With Myerson and Kaplan in sharp disagreement over the matter, the Mapai Central Committee ultimately supported Myerson’s stand, resolving by a vote of 38–13 to attend only if partition and the release of the Executive members in Latrun formed the basis of the conference. Ben-Gurion, standing by his letter of August 23 to the Mapai Party convention that the yishuv should embrace “neither Masada nor Vichy,” vacillated.2 News of Bevin’s earlier confrontation with the Zionists regarding the conference led Epstein to ask a receptive Niles (code-named “Yeor”) on September 9 if Washington could formally declare U.S. support for the Agency Executive’s partition proposal. Kohn prepared a draft, which obtained Niles’s approval and that of Henderson (code-named “Ben-HaNeder”), who forwarded it to Byrnes in Paris. Hearing that the Secretary of State demurred, Niles asked Clayton to have the President at least use it in reply to questions from the press. Clayton, who knew little about the Palestine issue, agreed, and said that he would himself draft a declaration with Henderson. Epstein and Kohn, seeing the draft on the 12th in Niles’s office, thought it unsatisfactory, and rewrote it entirely at his request. Doubting, however, whether Niles would be effective enough to push the amendments through, the Agency pair convinced him to tell Truman’s secretary to wait until Acheson returned from vacation, as he had handled the Palestine question.3 On an entirely separate front, Crum, working in tandem with Wahl, pressed Robert E. Hannegan to persuade Truman of the need to publicly — 276 —

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reaffirm his policy in relation to issuing 100,000 certificates immediately and a partition plan that would meet with the Zionists’ approval. Their argument that the Jewish vote in New York would otherwise “go into the Republican pocket” in the tight Congressional race, Jews thinking that the Administration had failed them with respect to Palestine, resonated with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman and Postmaster General. Besides a public statement or an open letter from Truman to the British government, Wahl’s memorandum called for the President to confer on occasion with Silver, “by far the most influential leader and spokesman in American Jewish life” whose voice would be “definitive” at the upcoming ZOA national convention and World Zionist Congress, as well as for the removal or transfer of Henderson from his present position. (At the same moment, both Tulin and Nation administrator Lillie Shultz reported to Zionists that Silver was persona non grata at the White House.) Wahl also advised Hannegan to consider a different liaison between the American Jewish community and the President than Niles, who, operating more “as a buffer than a channel,” had a predilection for bringing Truman into personal contact with the views espoused by Proskauer, Goldmann, and Wise. Hannegan indicated that he had already thought about the matter, and would have further discussion with Wahl on these points immediately upon his return from Missouri in about a week.4 These two independent efforts reflected the ongoing tension between Silver and his allies in the AZEC and the Agency office in Washington. Silver proposed to Ben-Gurion, as a basis for understanding, that all American Zionist efforts be directed to secure Washington’s support for the Agency’s partition plan; large-scale political action would be undertaken now seeking government support before the forthcoming Congressional elections in November; and the Agency Executive would correct the impression created by a New York Times article that the Zionist leadership in Paris was “moderate” and Silver “extremist.” In addition, Silver would not press the issue of reorganization of activity in Washington before the Zionist Congress, while Goldmann’s sphere of activity until then should be located in Europe; activities with the UN and governments would remain the Agency’s prerogative; and all Agency activity connected to the U.S. government had to be done with the knowledge of the Committee of Eight. Kohn considered that Silver’s purpose was to dominate the American scene completely. — 277 —

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Epstein, while thinking Silver’s suggestions “unconstitutional and disruptive,” wired again his urgent plea to Ben-Gurion and Goldmann that some Executive members visit the United States without delay in order to resolve these issues “otherwise expect harmful developments here, particularly elections.” Wise and Hadassah executive Rose Halprin disagreed with their other AZEC colleagues’ endorsement of Silver’s clarion call on September 10 that the United States might play a key role in the struggle for partition “only if sufficient pressure could be brought on the government,” Wise particularly concerned about attacks on the Administration. Political action, Silver replied to him privately, “is our one last weapon and our one last hope.”5 Clayton, in fact, advised Truman on the 12th not to issue a pro-partition statement immediately, such as the Zionists wanted, for a few reasons. First, Byrnes and Harriman agreed that in view of the “very delicate” situation in London and without full knowledge of “all the complicated elements in the situation,” we might do more harm than good by intervening at this time. Yielding to the pressure of “highly organized Zionist groups,” moreover, would merely encourage them to make fresh demands and to apply future pressure whenever they wished. Any statement would also run counter both to the Anglo-American Committee report and the Morrison-Grady scheme. Finally, the Arab world’s attitude toward the United States had become “progressively hostile” in the last few months, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff had urged that no action regarding Palestine be taken which might orient the peoples of that entire region “away from the Western Powers.” If, Clayton added, the President still wished to make another declaration, State offered a draft that commended the work of the past two joint Anglo-American committees, made clear that the Administration had not put forward “any concrete proposals” in this connection, and noted that it was not committed “to any single plan” with regard to Palestine’s future. The draft (which Kohn and Epstein understandably thought unsatisfactory) then closed by saying that the United States would be prepared to support any concrete proposals in keeping with the Mandate’s basic principles, and which would have “a sufficient degree of acceptance among those directly concerned to give good grounds for the hope that they could be successfully put into effect.” Two days later, Truman informed Clayton—with a copy of the correspondence to Niles – that “I have been very hesitant about saying anything on this subject. I hope it will not — 278 —

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be necessary for me to have anything to say. If I do, I’ll certainly clear it with you.”6 By then, Attlee had officially opened HMG’s conference with the Arab delegation in Lancaster House, a nineteenth-century NeoClassical mansion located in the St. James’s district of London’s West End. Declaring his conviction that, given a spirit of “realism and understanding,” a solution of the Palestine problem could be found, he noted that the discovery of such a solution would be “a high test of statesmanship.” While regretting the absence of the Arab Higher Committee (its insistence—against Abdullah’s advice—on Haj Amin’s presence and that its executive alone represent Palestine’s Arabs had been rejected by the Cabinet), the Prime Minster was “fully satisfied” that the Palestine Arabs’ point of view was “adequately and effectively” reflected here. His half-hour address on September 10 stressed that facts had to be faced as they existed today; no settlement was possible in Palestine unless each community was prepared to take account of the others’ interests and to make the concessions necessary for peace; and the problem had to be regarded against the “wider background” of world policy. Speaking briefly on behalf of the representatives of the seven Arab states, Fares al-Khoury acknowledged the kind invitation, and a closed session followed. Bevin spoke there of Britain’s objective to grant independence for Palestine just as slated for India, the need for a settlement offering an incentive for Jewish agreement, and that HMG and the Arabs could not afford to disregard the U.S. Government and its people. Hall then presented the Morrison-Grady plan, which drew the Arabs’ objection that it was not democratic. The assembly recessed at 1 p.m., all agreeing to pursue the matter further.7 In meetings over the next two days, the Arab delegates made clear their opposition to any plan possibly favorable to the Zionists. To Bevin’s points that the significant attitude taken by the United States and Palestine’s role in world peace had to be taken into account, Azzam Pasha declared that the Arabs desired peace, but they would not sacrifice democracy for the sake of “Jewish insurgents,” who had misled the American people. Hall outlined the benefits of the Morrison-Grady plan, which al-Khoury quickly dismissed it as impractical, then stated that partition was viewed as contrary to Arab unity and also unacceptable because it allowed for further Jewish immigration. Abd al-Razziq Sanhouri Pasha (Egypt), Muhammad Fadhel al-Jamali (Iraq), Camille — 279 —

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Bey Chamoun (Lebanon), Emir Adir Arslan (Syria), and Emir Feisal (Saudi Arabia) all declared the provincial autonomy plan unsuitable as a basis for discussion or for finding a solution to the Palestine dilemma. Emir Saif El-Islam Abdullah (Yemen) and Samir al-Rifai Pasha (Jordan) confirmed their rejection of the Morrison-Grady scheme. The delegates’ position only confirmed Azzam Pasha’s statement one week earlier to Ambassador Campbell that the Palestine question had become “a fetish” with the Arab peoples, who had “got it into their heads” that the Jews would use partition for the eventual creation of a Jewish state for the whole of Palestine, and none of the Arab governments dared to be seen sacrificing the Arab position in that country. Brigadier Clayton also expressed to Sasson his skepticism (which Campbell relayed to Bevin) about the Arabs accepting partition, given their fear of Jewish “expansionist aims.”8 While the delegation dug in its heels, Goldmann informed Bevin and Hall on September 14 that the Agency had retreated from its insistence on partition. Members of the Executive would attend the conference if the Cabinet made some gesture to them beforehand. A list of suggested representatives would be submitted, subject to British veto, along with an official letter from Weizmann stating that Jewish delegates would join the conference on the 17th and present their proposals. Against Hall’s reservations, Bevin agreed while noting the Cabinet’s decision that none of the Latrun detainees was acceptable. He and Goldmann agreed upon a formula saying that HMG and a Jewish Agency representative had agreed in conversations that the Agency and the other Jewish representatives would attend the conference in order to participate in the talks and “to present their views and opinions on the solution of the Palestine problem.” Goldmann then requested that the British invite Monsky and Proskauer, the second named currently pressing him privately by telegram to attend and thereby avoid an “indelible stigma which would attach in judgment of whole world to Jewish refusal to confer,” as representing non-Zionist US organizations. This suggestion first drew Bevin’s “violent” comments about the anti-British agitation of American Jews, followed by the comment that he would discuss the list with Attlee.9 Hearing the same day of Goldmann’s overture, which was taken without consulting the Agency members in Paris, Ben-Gurion was furious. Zaslani, Kollek wrote to colleague Ze’ev Sharef in Jerusalem, had — 280 —

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been dispatched to the Hotel Royal Monceau “at the greatest speed” to “hold David’s hand and avoid a split.” That did not fully work. The Executive chairman immediately wired his colleagues in London that he no longer saw himself their partner in the Executive, and that they did not function henceforth in his name or on his authority. Given the serious situation within the movement, he would not publicize this resignation lest outside adversaries exploit it. To Kaplan and others of the Executive in Jerusalem, he gave an order to create twenty-four new settlements immediately; if this were not possible, then at least half should be put up, especially in the Negev. From his sickbed after an eye operation to restore some of his sight, Weizmann tried to convince Ben-Gurion on the 15th to support going to the conference, asserting in a long letter that “an honourable and decent way” had been found to attend: “I feel very strongly that we shall be committing a sin against the movement and against the Yishuv if we do not explore even the slightest possibility of reaching a solution acceptable to us.” The effort failed, and the break between the two Zionist titans began to widen.10 Cunningham attempted to persuade Husseini on September 16 that the Arab Higher Committee should broaden its basis and thereby come to Lancaster House. The day before, Husseini had urged on the High Commissioner the dissolution of the Agency and other Zionist political bodies; a thorough search for weapons throughout the yishuv; monetary fines to pay for all the damages caused by “Jewish terrorism”; and carrying out the death penalty on Jews as the British had done against Arabs during the revolt of 1936–1939. If not, he warned, Palestine’s Arab community would call on “the Arab nation” for its defense, and all the responsibility involved would fall on the mandatory’s shoulders. Even if the Jews attended the conference, Husseini now responded, the country’s Arabs would not give up the only right left to them—to choose their own delegates. Yet apart from the ex-Mufti’s pro-German wartime activities, Cunningham observed, a difficulty existed with regard to the detained Jewish leaders in Latrun. If they were not to be let out, Husseini replied, that would give him “great joy” and Haj Amin might stay in Egypt, refusing to accept an invitation even if offered to him. Perhaps a compromise lay here, but a CID report noted that AHC members Ahmed Shukeiri, Emil Ghouri, and Ahmed Hilmi Pasha all spoke privately of armed resistance, including a plan prepared by militant nationalists Akram Zu’aiter and Izzat Darwaza for an invasion by — 281 —

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the Arab nations, and a large-scale revolt if the Arab states failed to take active steps on behalf of Palestine.11 The conference did not make headway on the 16th, where Bevin insisted that HMG considered the Morrison-Grady plan “a reasonable and workable solution,” giving Arabs and Jews the experience of separate self-government necessary prior to independence. The Arab demand for a “democratic” solution, whereby the Jewish minority would submit itself to the will of the Arab majority, would never be accepted either by Jews or by a large body of world opinion, he argued. Nor could Jewish immigration be stopped totally in light of the plight of Jews in Europe and the “special relationship” between Palestine and the “Jewish element” there, now “highly organized” and numbering 600,000. The Jews might take a different view of “economic absorptive capacity” once responsible for immigration into their province. Furthermore, Arab fears of Jewish expansion might “most effectively” be met by specifying the boundaries in a trusteeship agreement. In reply, Chamoun queried why advantage should not be taken of facilities offered by other governments such as Colombia, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic to solve the “European refugee problem,” rather than have Jews “pushed into a country which has no use for them and refuses to admit them.” Al-Khoury repeated his suggestion that Arab detainees in Palestine and the Seychelles, some of whom had been held for ten years without conviction, now be released. After further discussion, it was agreed that the conference would be adjourned until the delegates intimated their readiness for meetings to comment on Bevin’s statement and to present their counter-proposals.12 The same day, Goldmann asked Bevin that the communiqué which they had agreed upon would be held up in order for him to consult with Agency colleagues overseas. In Paris, Ben-Gurion advised that in light of the September 14th move away from insisting on partition, they now had to “stiffen their attitude” on the Latrun detainees as the condition for attendance. He also wished his name included for “public reasons” in the Agency’s list, but he would go to Palestine if the government permitted his return. Sneh and Emil Shmorak (the only Executive member who had voted against the resolution on August 5) opposed participation, regarding it a departure from the Executive’s decision in Paris. The situation had been reported to the Executive in Jerusalem, which, by a 5–1 vote on the 16th, decided that the Agency should continue its — 282 —

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earlier refusal to take part. Weizmann, operating on his own, wrote to Martin about letting the detainees come to the conference (although not making this essential); appealed to Fishman and colleagues “lema’an Zion” (for Zion’s sake) to accept his judgment; and urged moderates Kaplan and Joseph Sprinzak to persuade the Executive and the Inner Zionist Actions Committee that refusal would lead to the “breakup of [the] movement and chaos.” That committee, Locker observed to associates in London, had to endorse the Executive’s decision in order to secure a wider measure of agreement. If Hall replied that he must consult with the Cabinet regarding the Agency’s proposed list of attendees, Zaslani suggested, they would have to advise HMG that the committee’s crucial meeting of the 19th be postponed to the following week. This was agreed to, with Locker, Brodetsky, and secretary Joseph Linton chosen to meet with the Colonial Secretary.13 Sitting down with Hall on the afternoon of the 18th, the trio “argued hard” that their doctrine of collective responsibility mandated that the Agency Executive could not participate in the conference if some members were detained, and lack of a concession on London’s part made it extremely unlikely that the Actions Committee would agree to attendance. Hall replied that while holding no hope of a change, he would put the matter to his colleagues and have the Cabinet’s reply in a day or two. The London Executive divided on the issue, with Weizmann acolytes Weisgal, Linton, Harry Sachar, Simon Marks, and Aubrey (later Abba) Eban in favor of going even if the detainees were not released, Brodetsky uncertain, and Zaslani (“the yishuv would regard anyone who attended under such circumstances as quislings”) and Locker opposed. Weizmann, writing to Hall, argued that not granting the detainees’ “just and right” release from Latrun would “make our position in the Jewish world… untenable” and largely nullify the conference’s practical results.14 On September 19, Goldmann and Locker saw Bevin and Hall, and asked that the detainees be permitted to attend, particularly Shertok. The British Secretaries replied that this had been ruled out when the request was made five days earlier. Bevin added that there would be no objection to the Agency’s asking American Jews not connected to the Agency to attend as observers. It was agreed that Locker would fly to Palestine the next day to put the entire matter before the Actions Committee. Reporting these developments to the American Embassy in London, Goldmann, — 283 —

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while submitting the Agency’s list of delegates and observers the next day to the Colonial Office, blamed Hall for the delay in making arrangements for Jewish participation in the talks. Bevin he characterized as “smart but ignorant,” a man whom Hall would “unsell” after each interview with the Jews, a “little man” compared with his predecessor Eden, an aristocrat who also knew how to “yield gracefully in important negotiations.” Why could the British not give in just a little when this little might satisfy Jewish self-respect? Goldmann wondered. “Thoughtful Arabs” had ridiculed the idea that the Jewish state would threaten Arab interests. Bevin had the feeling that the Jews were “poisoning” U.S.-UK relations, but the British had released Arabs from detention in the Seychelles for the 1939 St. James Conference, as well as India nationalists in the past, to participate in similar conferences. If the Actions Committee refused to attend, Goldmann told U.S. chargé Waldemar Gallman in closing, he would return to the United States at once.15 The Arab delegation’s counter-proposals, submitted to the British on September 19, presented their case in uncompromising, unequivocal terms. The Mandate should be terminated, with Palestine declared an independent state. A democratic government in Palestine would rule in accordance with a constitution drawn up by a constituent assembly; Jews would be given “essential rights and safeguards” normally enjoyed by minorities. Jewish immigration should stop immediately, with future immigration left to the Palestine government. A treaty of alliance should establish friendly relations between the new sovereign state and Great Britain. The sanctity of holy places, including free access without distinction between religion, creed, or language, would be guaranteed. Bevin rejected the immigration proposals in light of world opinion and the prevailing Palestine situation, and raised a few questions about Jews’ political rights. The Arabs consented to his query about a military treaty with Great Britain and the Palestine state, but did not respond to his thought that if partition could remain as a possibility after the transition period, cooperation between the two rival communities might reduce the likelihood of its implementation considerably. The Arabs agreed the next day that a subcommittee, including Brook and Azzam Pasha, would meet to examine the practicality of these counter-proposals, now stated in broad terms. The British made it clear that at this stage there was no question of accepting them as the basis for discussion, and so informed chargé Gallman.16 — 284 —

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In Palestine, the seemingly hopeless stalemate between the mandatory and the yishuv did not let up. On September 2, the Dov Hos, this time named the Arba Hei’ruyot (Four Freedoms), carrying 1,024 passengers, was seized by the HMS Childers and HMS Chivalrous. The British boarding was strongly resisted, and two people drowned while trying to swim ashore; deportation to Cyprus followed. On the 8th and 9th, an Etzel force attacked three railway bridges, and laid mines in the south of country which claimed one British sergeant’s life and wounded four soldiers and one officer. Members of the LEHI killed a Tel Aviv security officer, an Arab guard, and CID Sergeant Thomas Martin, who had identified Yezernitzky on July 26. A curfew was imposed on Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Ramat Gan, during which a screening of 3,000 persons in Tel Aviv led to the release later of half and 54 sent to the Rafa detention camp, joined by 47 from Ramat Gan. That same day, the Va’ad HaLeumi voted to raise £100,000 for Jewish immigration to Palestine (directed to aliya bet), and not to attend all government committee meetings except for those concerning ex-servicemen and the citrus industry. A third search of Bat Yam, held on the 10th, during which seven were wounded and four women detained for resistance to identification, revealed nothing. On the 14th, 23 men were rounded up in a Haifa police search and sent to Rafa. Fourteen Irgunists were captured during a raid on the Ottoman Bank in Jaffa and Tel Aviv. Six days later, an Irgun time bomb damaged the Haifa Railway Station, followed the next day by an attack on a train line and the killing of an Arab guard. On September 22, the brigantine Palmah, with 611 passengers, was seized by the minesweeper HMS Rowena. The British attempted to board the ship four times before finally seizing it. Thirty-one-year-old Yona Lev Schwartz, who had come from Hungary with his wife, was hit by a rock, lost consciousness to tear gas, fell overboard, and drowned.17 This escalation only strengthened the resolve of the militants within the established Zionist leadership, buoyed by the refusal of all the other Jewish groups invited by Hall to attend the conference as long as the Agency turned it down. Ahdut HaAvoda’s Tabenkin, opposing the Agency’s partition initiative as “deeply divisive for the movement and the nation,” thought it better for Weizmann and Ben-Gurion to resign rather than attend the conference. Ben-Gurion cabled Myerson on September 24 to inform the Actions Committee of his regret that Goldmann and his colleagues in London, sending the September 20 — 285 —

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letter, had again violated the August 5 resolutions. He would have nothing to do with the conference and the Executive if the London members would not secure beforehand either HMG’s acceptance of a Jewish state or the freeing of all detainees and those subject to detention and restoring the Agency to its status prior to “Black Sabbath.” (Gater had, in fact, informed Goldmann on the 21st that the detainees would not be released to attend.) The Actions Committee endorsed Ben-Gurion’s position the next day, Silver also cabling its members against “further weakening and continuing retreat even from the compromise position decided in Paris,” and so informed 77 Great Russell Street headquarters. Goldmann thus had to tell Hall that the Agency would not attend, but it would continue efforts (reflecting the Actions Committee vote of 16–6 in favor of Myerson’s resolution) to bring about “preliminary conditions” essential for the Agency’s participation.18 A disappointed Weizmann, partially blind and suffering from chest pain, poured out his disappointment about the Actions Committee vote when receiving Hall and Gater in his rooms at the Dorchester Hotel on the afternoon of September 26. He did not want to be regarded as a pétain, a collaborationist with the British, but felt it his duty to warn colleagues of the “disastrous results” of the Agency’s present policy. Feeling “helpless like a squeezed lemon,” realizing that “his usefulness was gradually waning,” he decided to hold off resignation until hearing Locker’s report of the situation in Palestine. Hall responded that he would greatly deplore this step, but unless the Agency took quick action, the Jewish case would not be put forward at the conference. “The sands were running out,” and if no conclusion were reached at the conference, other remedies, such as Churchill’s suggestion of handing the Mandate over to the UN, which commanded fairly wide support in Parliament and the press, would have to be considered. Weizmann replied that he would immediately call Palestine direct to urge the Zionist leaders of the seriousness of the position and come to the conference.19 Assessing the current state of affairs under his care, Cunningham again pressed his argument to Hall that partition offered the “greatest hope” of producing finality when faced with all the “changing currents and intricacies” of the Palestine problem. The Agency would accept a viable state in which it controlled immigration, and the bulk of the yishuv would follow its lead. Mizrachi and HaShomer HaTsa’ir, albeit with reluctance and considerable recrimination in the process, would — 286 —

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accept it as well; increasing signs indicated that the Jews realized they would have to “liquidate” the terrorist groups themselves. While the former Mufti, regarded as a national hero by the Arabs, would be followed “almost to a man,” some Arabs, notably in the eastern districts, had told Cunningham that they would even be in favor of partition. If assistance was not coming from the Arab states and Haj Amin not allowed to intervene, the Arab resistance to partition would be confined to rioting in the towns. The Arab fear of Jewish expansion, in the High Commissioner’s view, was apt to be exaggerated, since the Jews would be involved with immigration in their established and guaranteed frontier. As to future Jewish immigration, the advent of greater stability in Europe, the eventual solving of the Displaced Persons problem, the diminution in the actual numbers of Jews, and the possibility of less American money being available and the shrinkage of markets for Jewish goods all tended to its reduction.20 Whatever the accuracy of this evaluation, Cunningham correctly informed Hall that Mapai overwhelmingly favored Myerson’s “recent extreme tendencies,” but much depended on what Locker could tell them of Ben-Gurion’s attitude. In fact, that labor party’s prime leader cabled Myerson on the 27th to inform Shertok, Meirov, and Eliezer Levenstein (later Livneh), editor of the Mapai activists’ Eshnav Hagana newspaper, that there was no truth to rumors that he had agreed to take part in the conference. One day later, Ben-Gurion wired Myerson again, noting that he and Sneh fully agreed with her refusal, so long as Ben-Gurion and the Latrun detainees did not participate, to accept Weizmann’s proposal (actually suggested by Goldmann) that she, Kaplan, and Fishman come to London for informal talks with the British. (Resigning from the Executive a week earlier because of the London office’s moderate approach to the conference, Sneh was now in charge of the Agency’s political work in Europe.) The High Commissioner found Myerson “obstinate” when informing him on the 28th that even if partition were discussed, it would be difficult to accept attendance at the conference. In Ben-Gurion’s opinion, so he wrote to Silver on October 1, the British could no longer be depended upon to help in implementing the Zionist ideal, and the forthcoming World Zionist Congress would have to decide on new policies for the movement. His agenda for the Congress, shared confidentially with Mapai adherents among the Holocaust’s “saved remnant” in Germany, was clear: the recognition of Jews as an independent nation, together — 287 —

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with a united Zionist effort in expanding aliya, settlement, and the milhama (war), all for the sake of establishing a Jewish state.21 The Sh’eirit HaPleita in Europe, whom Ben-Gurion hailed as a “wondrous example for generations,” continued to stream towards the welcome U.S. zones. The Polish Jews, IGCR director Emerson acknowledged to the U.S. Embassy in London, were motivated by two motives: getting out of that country and getting to Palestine. A secret report on September 4 from the Soviet Allied Commission for Austria to the Council of Ministers of the USSR on Matters of Repatriation relayed that some 200,000 Jews from Poland were “heading for Palestine” via Czechoslovakia and Austria. Clandestine transit from Austria into Italy with JDC, UNRRA, and French police help, also took place. McNarney informed HMG’s Ambassador in Prague Evelyn Shuckburgh on the 6th that he would not refuse assistance to any Jews in his area of command. The next day, he officially legalized the Central Committee of Liberated Jews. He also authorized Bernstein to give his personal guarantee to a concerned Czech government that on July 1, 1947, he would take 10,000 Polish Jews from there into the U.S. zone in Germany if so requested. Clark agreed to Bernstein’s advice to raise the level of the settled Jewish DP population in Austria from 5,000 to 30,000. On September 23, the War Department released to the press Bernstein’s assessment to McNarney that over 90 percent of the Jewish refugees in Germany and Austria were “sustained by the hope of resettlement in Palestine,” all of them insisting on a Jewish state “even if necessary in a reduced area of Palestine.” Two days later, Hilldring privately informed McNeil that Jews were fleeing Poland because of acute antisemitism; in such circumstances, the U.S. authorities “had given and would continue to give haven to such persons.” The U.S. Government could not emulate the recent British decision to reduce the scale of rations to DPs in their zone to the German civilian standard and to arrange for compulsory work, he added.22 The flow of Jewish infiltrees into the American zones caused “continuing embarrassment” to HMG, McNeil pointed out to Hilldring, but the fate of Palestine’s future and of the conference itself pressed down on the Cabinet with greater immediacy. Iraqi foreign minister al-Jamali warned Bevin on September 18 that the Arabs would mount “the most stubborn resistance” against future Jewish immigration as proposed by the United States, Russian propaganda also urging Iraqis to defeat — 288 —

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Zionism. The same day, the Foreign Secretary was very impressed with Musa Alami, who told him that all Arabs viewed the movement of Jews to join the yishuv—“a completely alien race with different ideas”—as a spearhead for expansion, which would lead to war. Abdullah would give the Jews provincial autonomy if Palestine were joined to Jordan, that country’s delegate at the conference informed Bevin while admitting that the other Arab states would not like it. Crossman’s publicized ideas about partition, Bevin wrote to “Clem,” derived from “his lack of judgment and his intellectual arrogance.” As for releasing Jewish leaders from Latrun, Cunningham cautioned Hall that doing so without a substantial quid pro quo would be “most damaging from the Arab angle.” So long as they were being detained, he argued, it would be “most illogical” not also to detain Ben-Gurion and Sneh, the two most heavily involved of the Agency leaders with the forces of violence, should they return to Palestine. What, then, to do?23 On October 2, hearing the Arab delegates’ adamant refusal to accept Morrison-Grady (even if it did not lead to partition), as well as informal talks with the Zionist moderates possibly leading to their participation in the full conference, London reluctantly announced that the second stage of talks would commence on December 16. (The British-Egyptian treaty negotiations had reached a dead-end at the same time.) By then the Arab counter-proposals would have been studied, many of the Arab delegates and Bevin would have attended the General Assembly (GA) sessions, and the World Zionist Congress would have completed its deliberations. The problem had to be solved, Bevin warned Weizmann and associates on October 1, or surrendered unsolved to the UN. HMG could not go on with this “stigma of failure,” and he would like their cooperation in finding a solution, which would be “the greatest triumph of his career.” He still hoped that Arabs and Jews could live in a unitary state for a decade, as a transitional period; Great Britain had no right to partition Palestine. Three days later, Hall repeated to a delegation led by Weizmann that the Agency must help in combating terrorism and the sending of thousands of people under “appalling conditions” and on ships that were “absolutely unsafe.” The British, Hall noted, “would clear out as soon as possible.”24 The continuing delay sparked a Zionist endeavor at the same moment to obtain a public statement of support from Truman. It was not a propitious time: unionists disliked the President’s violent o ­ pposition to the — 289 —

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year’s coal and rail strikes; farmers opposed his effort to keep meat prices low; conservatives did not trust the reforms that Truman promised in his speeches; liberal Democrats worried that many long-time Roosevelt men such as Interior Secretary Harold Ickes had left the government because they could not work well with his successor. (Wallace, passed over by FDR for Truman as Vice-President in the 1944 campaign, would finally be fired that month for criticizing Washington’s hard-line policy towards Moscow.) On September 19, Wise and Lehman, then running for the U.S. Senate, joined by United Jewish Appeal official Monroe Goldwater (a law partner with Truman’s influential political ally Edward J. Flynn), sat down in the Oval Office for an off-the-record meeting arranged by Hannegan and Niles. After Wise spoke frankly about the need for action now on the President’s part concerning Palestine to counter “the anti-Democratic Jews” favoring Taft and Dewey in the off-year election, Truman pulled a map from his desk bottom drawer and said “I know the country from Dan to Beersheba,” and that he was familiar with the history of Israel from the time he went to Sunday school. Tulin and Handler then prepared a letter along these lines for Lehman to send to Truman. In a related démarche, Kohn warned Niles that British intransigence despite Truman’s repeated efforts had created an atmosphere of “intense bitterness” amongst American Jews of all shades of opinion, even those who appreciated that the President was keen to help declaring that efforts were judged by results.25 At this stage, the State Department’s opposition to Zionist goals had not diminished. Its secret “Palestine, Policy and Information Statement” on September 15, while echoing the Anglo-American Committee’s conclusions, posited that whatever policy the Administration eventually adopted should take “full account of the Arab position and should have as an objective the obtaining of as wide a measure of Arab acquiescence as possible.” Merriam reminded a pro-Zionist American Jewish Labor Council delegation on the 24th that, acknowledging the Arab majority in Palestine, the principle of self-determination was one that the U.S. Government had long championed, and that until Jews and Arabs could agree on a basis for governing Palestine together some form of UN trusteeship seemed inevitable. He assured the delegation that the department would continue to do all it could, and repeated Henderson’s recent remark to another delegation that, for every hour spent on India with its population of 400 million, State spent twenty hours on Palestine.26 — 290 —

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Two days later, U.S. Minister to Syria and Lebanon George Wadsworth reported to some State officials, currently working on a Palestine Position Paper for the U.S. delegation to the General Assembly, that Truman had repeated to him that the Palestine problem should be settled on an international plane, much as the President had told the Near East Chiefs of Mission on November 10, 1945. Truman, wishing the pressing problem of the European Jewish refugees to be kept in the forefront of State’s thinking, appeared to dismiss the idea of a Jewish state and implied the need for trusteeship allowing for some local autonomy arrangement without specifically favoring bi-nationalism. The pro-Arab Wadsworth, who currently served as the Near East division’s liaison officer with the U.S. delegation, agreed with some of these division colleagues that any American declaration should not include reference to the 100,000. Going further, he alone proposed to them a resolution which, rather than a declaration based on the Anglo-American Committee’s report which Truman had approved as a whole, advocated an independent Palestine state “as soon as practicable.” In the meantime, this resolution called on HMG and other Member States interested in the problem to seek “constructive compromise” between the “conflicting extremist political views” of Arabs and Jews.27 With Acheson’s return to Washington, Epstein renewed his effort to secure Niles’s help for a Truman statement favoring the Agency’s partition proposal. He indicated to “Dave” its increased importance in view of Wise’s recent meeting with the President; the deadlock reached in the Executive’s unofficial talks in London; the “growing desperate situation” of the Jewish DPs; the increased terror in Palestine; and the activity of Republican candidates, especially in New York, to make the Palestine issue one of the focal points of attack on Truman and the Administration. At Niles’s suggestion, he provided a letter to be given to Truman with some facts regarding the unrestrained British searches in Ruhama and Dorot and the deporting of Holocaust victims to Cyprus, both developments contributing greatly to the increased tension in Palestine and increasing the influence there of the “extremist elements.” A letter from Crum to Hannegan (incorporating Neumann’s revisions) noted the political value in having Truman press London for the 100,000 on humanitarian grounds and endorse the Agency’s partition proposal, much as he had argued on August 14. Epstein also urged — 291 —

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Henderson to press the British for the entry of 20,000 or 25,000 Jews while the conference was in adjournment.28 Fifty-eight year old Max Lowenthal, then serving as Truman’s appointee to advise U.S. deputy military governor in Germany Lucius D. Clay regarding the restitution of Jewish property in Europe, played a role as well. Initially impressing Senator Truman when counsel to a subcommittee investigating the railroad industry’s finances in the late 1930’s, he had introduced the rising Missouri politician to meetings at the Washington home of Justice Brandeis, where proponents of Zionism and the dangers of corporate business found a welcome audience. Now, in a brief talk with the President on October 3, Lowenthal spoke of the need for an early exit for the Jewish DPs in Europe, eliciting Truman’s response that he was presently working on the issue and that the Hutcheson commission’s report had “real value.” While sensing the Chief Executive’s confusion about the proposals for Palestine’s future, Lowenthal remarked that “the important thing politically” was to authorize before the election the admission of a large number of the Holocaust survivors into Palestine, and if Truman could secure this, it would “bury” the Republican party; the situation in New York State “is very bad and we need real help.” He was trying to work things out so that 100,000 could go to Brazil, Truman replied, and he would ask Congress to allow him to pool the national quotas so that the Displaced Persons generally could enter on these quotas. General Clay, who had been instrumental in contributing to Byrnes’s Stuttgart speech on September 6 advocating Germany’s economic reconstruction, came in for praise from both of them. After some conversation regarding minority groups in the United States and a Congressional deputation to Germany, Lowenthal departed. Wahl received a copy of his memorandum of the talk.29 Niles informed Truman that Governor Dewey intended to issue a strong statement to the United Palestine Appeal on October 6th in favor of Jewish immigration. With the Jewish vote in New York crucial to Lehman’s chances, he advised the President to issue a public statement two days earlier, on the eve of the holiest day of the Jewish calendar year, Yom Kippur. Silver, under whose guidance the AZEC organized a Political Actions Committee which mobilized American Jews to demand action from the government on Palestine, later wrote that a first draft for this statement was submitted by Oscar Cox, former general counsel — 292 —

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of the wartime Lend-Lease Administration and the Foreign Economic Administration who had played an instrumental role in Morgenthau’s pressing Roosevelt to create the U.S. War Refugee Board. Epstein suggested to Niles that it be addressed as a letter to Weizmann and so strengthen its international value and raise the Agency’s prestige, but this was rejected for what Epstein termed “reasons of internal politics.” A draft by Epstein and Rosenman spoke of American support for partition, but Acheson and his officials inserted a phrase for the final version about bridging the gap between the Jewish Agency and British proposals. Truman, Acheson later told Inverchapel, did not “plunk” more specifically for partition because he did not wish to embarrass the British even more. According to Henderson’s explanation to Silver, the reason lay in preventing embarrassment of the President, who had endorsed the Anglo-American Commission and Grady reports that had opposed partition, and to “prevent leaving him out on a limb.”30 On October 4, expressing publicly his regret at the suspension of the London talks, Truman reviewed his past efforts regarding the Palestine problem. Referring to Morrison-Grady and the Agency’s partition proposal, he could not believe that the gap between the two proposals that had been put forward “is too great to be bridged by men of reason and goodwill. To such a solution our Government could give its support.” In light of the current situation, he called for substantial immigration to Palestine, liberalized immigration laws for the United States and other countries aiming towards collaboration on the whole problem of Displaced Persons, and a Congressional plan for economic assistance to Palestine should a “workable solution” for that county’s future be found. Truman appealed for a program of immediate action along these lines in light of “the terrible ordeal which the Jewish people of Europe endured during the recent war and the crisis now existing,” and closed with this pledge: “The Administration will continue to do everything it can to this end.”31 Reporting without delay to Goldmann about this latest development, Epstein got Silver’s approval to concentrate at the moment on this Yom Kippur statement’s constructive aspects, rather than criticize the declaration’s not offering full support for the Agency’s partition proposal and for the 100,000 specifically. (Kohn thought its tone too aggressive and that the many demands included therein would spark British anger.) Except for James Reston’s sharp criticism in the — 293 —

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New York Times of the political factors behind the statement’s release, U.S. newspapers praised the declaration while calling for action to follow. Acheson told Epstein the next day that the statement constituted the U.S. government’s policy, that the plight of the Jewish DPs remained Truman’s “greatest concern,” and that “when things calm down a little” in London the President would make another step toward pressing the British for action along the lines suggested by him. Inverchapel, whom Epstein saw next, repeated off-the-record his support for partition plus the Negev for the Jews, but wanted Western Galilee going to the Arabs as recommended by Morrison-Grady. The Ambassador deplored the King David Hotel bombing and illegal immigration, but acknowledged that the British had “already missed the boat” in Ireland and India: “We should not let it happen again in Palestine.” Epstein pointed to the danger of minimizing the importance of Truman’s statement, given that a very large section, especially the progressives of the country, were behind the struggle for a Jewish Palestine, and would not let Truman make of it a mere pre-election statement “even if he would like to do so.” Inverchapel promised to do what he could in explaining all of this to his government. The Cabinet’s response, as well as that of Arabs and of Jews, would not be long in coming.32 Attlee, having failed to get Truman to delay the statement even for a few hours so that he might communicate with Bevin in Paris, expressed “great regret” and astonishment to the President that he did not wait to acquaint himself with the reasons for the conference’s suspension and with the fact that talks with leading Zionists about entering the talks were proceeding “with good prospects of success.” Truman replied at length on October 10 that HMG’s announcement of postponement to December 16 had brought “such depression” to the Jewish DPs in Europe and to “millions of Americans concerned with the fate of these unfortunate people” that he could not “even for a single day” put off making clear the U.S. Government’s continued interest in their welfare. It would be “most unfair” to have the survivors face yet another winter without a definite word about whether they could proceed to Palestine, “where so many of them wish ardently to go.” These humanitarian concerns and implementation of the Mandate’s calling for Jewish immigration and settlement, Truman averred, called for taking immediate measures for the transfer of 100,000 Jewish refugees to Palestine, — 294 —

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which Washington, as it already had made clear, stood ready to do all in its power to initiate. Inverchapel reported home Acheson’s private explanation that Truman’s statement sought to stress the “non-partisan aspect of this question and the need for moderation,” given Dewey’s imminent speech designed to “catch the whole Jewish vote in the five major eastern states that tend to dominate the Presidential election.”33 The Arab Higher Committee quickly charged that Truman’s statement had been made under “political pressure.” A London Times editorial warned that it might compel people in Britain and in Arab countries “to the reluctant conclusion that no solution of the Palestine question will satisfy the President unless it goes the whole way to meet Jewish claims.” Speaking before the Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth, Churchill chose to criticize the Labour government for “vacillating” and abandoning the “lavish promises” made to the Jews before it took office, and hanging on to a Mandate “in which they have no vital interest.” 34 Truman’s feelings struck additional tones of high-mindedness that month. To reservations raised by Senator Walter F. George (D, FL) against taking a position on Palestine that would require a large appropriation of money or especially the use of American troops, he expressed his interest in relieving a half million people, including 100,000 Jews who should be sent to Palestine, “of the most distressful situation that has happened in the world since A. Hitler made his invasion of Europe.” (Truman sent a copy of this letter to Wise.) He was doing whatever he could for the survivors, the President told Bernstein on October 11, “because of my sympathy for these people,” and he still thought the movement of 100,000 to Palestine “did not need to await the long-range political settlement.” When George sent a second letter saying that it would be a serious error to assume England’s responsibilities in Palestine, Truman replied that that was not his intention. Rather, he wished to take care of the “pitiful plight” of these DPs, and it was also in the country’s own financial interest to have them taken care of “because we are feeding most of them.” To Ibn Saud’s protest that the statement supported “Zionist aggression against a friendly Arab country,” Truman responded on October 25 in a letter the White House soon made public that the Jews of Europe represented “the pitiful remnants of millions who were deliberately selected by the Nazi leaders for annihilation,” and “many of these persons look to Palestine — 295 —

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as a haven” where they could assist “in the further development of the Jewish National Home.” Nothing would more effectively contribute to the alleviation of their condition than the immediate entry of “at least” 100,000 of them to Palestine. U.S. policy had always supported such an objective, Truman insisted, and his statement was not “an action hostile to the Arab people.”35 Yet private expressions of the President’s bitterness surfaced as well. Writing to DNC treasurer Edwin W. Pauley, whose memorandum noted the ongoing plight of the Jewish DPs while focusing on Nazi crimes as documented in the Nuremberg Trials, Truman was sorry that he took the trouble to send “the Jewish report.” The British were “highly successful in muddling the situation,” he continued on October 22, “but the Jews themselves are making it almost impossible to do anything for them. They seem to have the same attitude toward the ‘under dog’ [sic] when they are on top as they have been treated as ‘under dogs’ themselves,” acting much the same way as rival contenders big business and labor today in the United States. “The only fellow who suffers,” the Chief Executive added, “is the innocent bystander who tries to help.” Two days later, while saying that the Displaced Persons problem was “one of the saddest situations he knew of and one that was constantly with him,” Truman agreed with New York Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger’s personal comment that the Zionists were “extraordinarily shortsighted” in “wrongly attracting” so much attention to the plight of the Jewish DPs, instead of all DPs irrespective of creed. Told that Sulzberger was about to deliver an anti-Zionist speech before a Chattanooga congregation, he also expressed regret over the feeling that Palestine was creating in the United States. Truman praised the “splendid” Anglo-American report and complained that “the god-damn British” had not cooperated. He was anxious to get the 100,000 into Palestine, Sulzberger recorded, but “deplored” the fact that the entire issue had come between London and Washington.36 Following Truman’s Yom Kippur pronouncement, State’s Near East department prepared three alternative position papers for the U.S. delegation to the General Assembly. What made the present domestic election campaign so extraordinary, Chief of the Far Eastern Division John Carter Vincent confided to the Agency’s Lionel Gelber, were the dual major issues of two traditional incompatibles—“Pork and Palestine.” Acheson had remarked at one of his staff meetings, however, that this jocular phrase did not really sum up the situation, for Truman’s — 296 —

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announcement meant more than just a bid for Jewish votes. It was, he stated, recognition of the problem by the American conscience. Acknowledging that the October 4 message was more far-reaching in scope than it was popularly credited with being and had “gone much further” than previous U.S. Government pronouncements, Henderson summarized for Acheson on October 21 the three papers: backing the entry of the 100,000 now, liberal immigration and unrestricted land sales, and support of “a workable solution” as suggested in Truman’s statement; introducing a strong resolution at the UN for the 100,000, an early partition of Palestine along the Agency’s lines, with provincial autonomy under trusteeship in the interim; and introducing a resolution there for bridging the gap between the Agency’s proposal and MorrisonGrady. Henderson expressed “serious doubt” that the partition resolution would pass in light of “certain opposition” from the British, Arab and Muslim states, joined possibly by the Soviet bloc, while it would harm the U.S. cultural, commercial, and economic interests throughout the Arab and Muslim world. That might lead the latter, in turn, to look elsewhere than the West for support, and the Arab states to leave the UN and sever relations with the U.S. Acheson’s marginal notation bore one word: “Hold.”37 In the United States, the President’s statement got mixed reviews in the Zionist camp. Writing confidentially to Truman, Wise hailed it as “bound to affect the situation for good” against “the obduracy” of Attlee and Bevin. The American Zionist movement’s militant wing, not having taken part in its genesis, criticized the declaration for not leading to meaningful action on the part of HMG. Silver deemed the statement, which he saw as an election maneuver, “harmful,” telling the AZEC executive that it “would not bring the Jews out of the concentration [sic] camps”; Washington was clearly not prepared to push the partition proposal. Far more scathing were attacks against Truman, Lehman, and the Democratic Party in newspaper advertisements authored by BenZion Netanyahu, National Executive Director of the United ZionistsRevisionists of America. Gelber exaggerated when privately regarding the statement as committing the Administration “to the full political program of the Jewish Agency.” Epstein’s balanced assessment viewed it as more than merely a pre-election bid for votes (the British press’s reaction), implicating as it did the State Department for having supported a plan for partition in August, as well as reflecting the “constant — 297 —

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pressure” to alleviate the critical situation of the survivors in Europe and the influence of the Jewish resistance movement in Palestine. The demand for immediate Jewish immigration into Palestine, Dewey even calling for several hundred thousand Jews, had “the wholehearted support” of both parties and the American public, the very point which Laski and Frankfurter made to Dalton. Encouraged, newly elected ZOA President Silver attacked Goldmann, Wise, and the Agency Executive’s August proposal; on October 27 the ZOA convention adopted his call for allegiance to the Biltmore Program.38 For the survivors still in DP centers, Truman’s pronouncement came at an increasingly critical time. Their situation had deteriorated considerably, Bernstein observed in public addresses, for the number of Jewish refugees in Continental Europe had by now swelled to almost 220,000, and they were “utterly destitute.” Winter would soon arrive, and the threat of demoralization loomed large. Not a single government in Europe had expressed an offer of more than temporary shelter for a people “still unwanted, still stigmatized, still excluded from the normalities of life.” The French government, for example, officially requested of the State Department that no convoys of Jewish refugees pass through that country without proper French visas, thereby assisting the British “in controlling illegal emigration to Palestine.” The International Refugee Organization, founded in April, did not include any tangible provision and appropriation for the resettlement of DPs. Expressing support for Truman’s declaration, the Central Committee of Liberated Jews asked the world “to continue the work of justice” reflected in the International Military Tribunal’s verdicts in Nuremberg on October 2 against fifteen Nazi leaders for their role in the murder of 6,000,000 Jews by granting the survivors “the possibility to rebuild their lives in their own country.” The Central Committee hoped that Washington would be able to convince the British government of the necessity for an immediate solution of the Jewish question in the next few weeks by starting “mass immigration” to Palestine. Yet with that appeal falling on deaf ears, I.F. Stone publicly warned that aliya bet remained the survivors’ one hope, and a British blockade would not deter those who had faced the SS and the crematoria.39 The yishuv did not wait on mandatory rule. Kol Yisrael reflected its overall reaction, grateful to Truman but still awaiting “deeds, not words.” On October 6, under the direction of Avraham Herzfeld, head — 298 —

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of settlements for the Agricultural Association, and with Hagana protection, more than 1,000 settlers, including 300 young women, set up eleven settlements across the northern Negev on Jewish National Fund land. (AHC secretary Husayn al-Khalidi termed this “a Zionist stunt,” and expressed the hope that Truman and the U.S. Congress would not accept it as evidence of Palestine’s absorptive capacity.) Eight days later, the Hagana command began drafting “Plan B” for resistance against government forces as a supplement to its May draft about meeting the threat of local armed Arab bands. On the 20th, the Eliyahu Golomb, renamed the Brakha Fuld, was captured off Lebanon with 806 passengers, including some 50 expectant mothers, by the HMS Chaplet and HMS Moon. LEHI, for its part, set off bombs on the 24th at four road blocks in Jerusalem, wounding one British officer, ten soldiers, and one Arab child. The Irgun carried out two attacks on the 30th, one an attempt to blow up the Jerusalem railroad station in which one of its ranks was killed and five others captured, leaving a policeman and two soldiers dead and thirteen wounded, including six Arabs. The next day, the Latrun (1,279 passengers), was intercepted by two destroyers when it entered territorial waters. Four people had died en route, and the ship was leaking and listing heavily. On the next morning when they were to be deported to Cyprus, a procession of 1,500 people, carrying Zionist flags draped in black, disbanded only when British troops announced “Disperse, or we fire.”40 Could the army, with no government policy in place, counter this escalation? By the month’s end, Attlee and his Cabinet still lacked the prospect of a peaceful settlement for Palestine. Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Colonial Office Arthur Creech Jones, replacing Hall on October 4, was a close friend of Locker’s and an advocate for partition. Shertok thought, however, that the man whom Bevin had chosen to be his Parliamentary Private Secretary in World War II would be “helpless” as to practical decisions. The Colonial Office’s informal meetings with the Jewish Agency Executive in London yielded nothing, in fact, of major substance, save the release of the eight yishuv leaders still in Latrun and amnesty for Ben-Gurion and Sneh soon after the Inner Zionist Council issued a statement on October 29 condemning “the bloodshed caused by groups of terrorists who defy national discipline” and calling on the yishuv to deny them all encouragement and assistance. (Arabs detained in the Seychelles would also be released concurrently “as a gesture of — 299 —

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goodwill.”) Cunningham warned that such “temporary expedients in the absence of an imposed solution” would likely “lead us deeper into the mire,” speeding up Arab militant preparations and concessions to Jews tying his hands as to the steps he could take to counter such action. A second concession to return some refugees interned in Cyprus, he also noted, would leave the Jews’ major grievance regarding free immigration, “which is universal and covers all parties,” in place and raise serious Arab objection.41 Bevin, convinced that Truman’s statement had damaged hopes for more satisfactory progress with the Jews, posted three options on October 25 for the Cabinet’s consideration if a settlement were not reached before the conference’s resumption in December. These included imposing some solution, surrendering the Mandate, or partition along with the Arab community to be merged with Jordan. Bevan, Shinwell, and Dalton joined Creech Jones in favoring the last. For now, Bevin preferred “to play it slow,” while Attlee, in an interview with the journalist Louis Fischer, thought that “if no one wants us we will get out.” Both Arabs and Jews were pulled by forces outside the country, the Prime Minister observed, and the moderate leaders had little support.42 Attlee’s conviction that “Russia will take over” if Britain abandoned Palestine was a concern currently shared on both sides of the Atlantic. Other than Henderson’s October 21 warning to Acheson about the Arab and Muslim worlds in this regard, the chief of the U.S. War Department’s Military Intelligence Division (G-2), accepting the British Chiefs of Staff’s conception of security in the Middle East, took an increasingly pro-Arab line due to his strong anti-Soviet feelings. Confirming a detailed study for the AZEC by Agency legal counsel Jacob Robinson on the Soviet press’s increasingly anti-Zionist shift, U.S. chargé in Moscow Elbridge Durbrow reported home that an article in Pravda had openly championed the Arab cause for the first time, played on all Arab resentment against American policy toward Palestine, and made mention of Indian Muslims. Addressing the General Assembly on October 30, Soviet Foreign Secretary Molotov charged Britain with unwillingness to relinquish the Palestine Mandate, thus “deliberately hindering” the establishment of the Trusteeship Council. Byrnes had asked Bevin to back a Soviet proposal before the Security Council as to the number of Allied troops in all former enemy countries, but the Foreign Secretary strongly refused on the grounds that this would show how small and incompetent — 300 —

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Great Britain really was militarily. Russian experts at the State Department also objected to the suggestion, saying that HMG would be telling the truth and the USSR might not. Acheson, like Frankfurter, thought this showed a lack of wisdom on Bevin’s part, since State could discredit Soviet estimates if they were palpable lies. The matter would come up again before the General Assembly.43 The first half of November showed just how illusory appeared Bevin’s hope to “play it slow” in Palestine. Three days after the Irgun bombed the British Embassy in Rome on October 31, Arabs mounted their first attack on a new kibbutz, Neot Mordekhai, leaving dead and wounded on both sides. On the 5th, addressing a large crowd from the Agency’s headquarters on King George Street in Jerusalem right after his release from Latrun, Shertok called upon the yishuv to mobilize “all our forces for the struggle.” On the 9th, when the HaKedosha (600 passengers), renamed the Abba Berditchev in honor of a yishuv parachutist who was killed by the Nazis in Rumania, foundered in a gale and sank, its passengers were rescued by the Knesset Israel. The latter vessel, now carrying a total of 3,845 passengers, was captured the same day by four British warships. Attempts to transfer the refugees to deportation ships to Cyprus on the 24th were met with resistance against baton charges and tear gas; two Jews were killed and 46 injured. LEHI mine attacks on the 9th, 11th, and 17th killed fourteen British soldiers and policemen. The Irgun destroyed the Rosh HaAyin railroad station on the 10th, followed by a string of crippling assaults on railroad tracks between the 17th and 19th. Twelve battalions of British troops were tied down to guard the railway network. Elections in the yishuv for the World Zionist Congress, concluded a secret CID report, showed that it favored parties which advocated “active resistance to Britain’s alleged anti-Zionist machinations, including partition.” The strong Revisionist-Zionist showing and the poor one of Aliya Hadasha and Weizmann’s General Zionists demonstrated clearly the failure of the moderates. Every party backed armed struggle, except for Aliya Hadasha (against any use of force) and HaShomer HaTsa’ir, which objected to resistance “lo tsamud” (not linked to aliya bet and settlement).44 The increase in terrorist incidents and the steady rise in casualties witnessed, in turn, British personnel moving to live and work in heavily defended security enclaves cordoned off by barbed wire fences — 301 —

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and entrance by identity card only. Barker longed to have the barbed wire removed but saw no alternative, he told Katie Antonius, his lover: “Balfour has made this uncomfortable bed in which we are all lying, and my sympathies are with the Arabs who are in no way responsible for it.” The whole area in the heart of Jerusalem bounded by the streets of Shivtei Yisrael, Heleni HaMalka, and Jaffa Road, with the Russian Compound at its heart, was a fortified area containing the vital installations of British rule. It became the mandatory’s administrative center, including government offices, law courts, police headquarters, and a central prison, as well as the Immigration Office in the Sergei Courtyard. Jerusalem wits scornfully dubbed this fortified government citadel “Bevingrad.” “Congratulations,” Kollek told a British officer, “you have finally succeeded in rounding yourselves up.” Patrols, an extensive pass system, prohibitions on individual or even small group travel, and armed escorts became commonplace.45 Elsewhere, the public tide was steadily running against moderation. Ben Hecht’s pageant-drama “A Flag is Born,” a defiant call for Jewish statehood (advertised as “1776 in Palestine”) that was sponsored by the Bergson group’s American League for a Free Palestine, scored by Kurt Weill, and starred Paul Muni, Celia Adler, and a young Marlon Brando as a Holocaust survivor, drew full houses for ten weeks in New York City’s Alvin Theatre on Broadway. (Magnes’s request, featured in the New York Times, that Mrs. Roosevelt drop her sponsorship met with failure.) Arthur Koestler’s well-received novel Thieves in the Night, although showing the frailties as well as the virtues of the Zionists, and granting a troubled confusion to British officialdom and a love for his hills and his country to the Arab, also angrily embraced the cause of Jewish independence. Netanyahu’s strident advertisements attacked Bevin and Attlee when they arrived in the United States, warning that “bitter and determined” Jewish resistance to Britain throughout the world would occur if free Jewish immigration and sovereignty in Palestine were further postponed, and declaring that Britain would capitulate, as she did with the American colonies, Ireland, South Africa, and India, “in her ignoble extermination campaign against the Jewish people.”46 The AZEC plenum agreed with Silver’s call to ban all political endorsements, a dictum which Wise contravened with a public statement favoring Lehman against Irving Ives and Senator James Mead for the governorship against Dewey. The resounding Republican victories — 302 —

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on November 5, giving that party majority control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1932, reflected great dissatisfaction with Truman in the face of labor-management strife and mounting inflation. The victories of Dewey and Ives, in particular, convinced a delighted Silver, as he wrote to financier Bernard Baruch, that the Jews of Brooklyn and the Bronx were “muttering in their beards” against an Administration “which has fed them with empty promises” regarding Palestine. He would hold off resignation from the Agency Executive until seeing what would transpire at the Zionist Congress.47 By then, Ben-Gurion had decided to break with Weizmann and align with Silver, a stratagem backed by Sneh. In a long letter on October 28 to Weizmann, whom the Agency Executive chairman hailed as “an embodiment of Jewish history symbolizing Jewish suffering and Jewish genius,” he opined that Morrison-Grady had to be vigorously opposed. Since HMG would either continue to endorse that plan or lean still more towards the Arabs, the movement, rejecting the Weizmann-Goldmann approach, had to boycott the conference. If Britain chose to impose provincial autonomy, the Jews must decide on “total noncooperation”; if she did not continue the Mandate and not wish to withdraw from Palestine, Britain had to agree to Jewish statehood—“not necessarily in the whole of Palestine”—either immediately or following a short transitional stage. Sneh, having already told Silver loyalist Jacques Torczyner in Paris that he saw eye-to-eye with Silver’s position, arrived in New York with Ben-Gurion in the hope of advancing his own idea of Weizmann retiring to the position of honorary President at the World Zionist Congress and the election of a presidium consisting of Silver, Ben-Gurion, and a third candidate, possibly Jacob Fishman of Mizrachi. Ben-Gurion maneuvered separately, seeking partners for a wide coalition of parties and opinions in the next Jewish Agency Executive. He found Inverchapel, a supporter of partition, ready to press Bevin to come to an agreement with the Zionists before the Congress. Bevin refused the Ambassador’s suggestion to receive Ben-Gurion, however, but did agree, following the intercession of New York lawyer Holtzman, then acting as unofficial liaison between the British Embassy and the Jewish Agency, to see Silver.48 Publicly, Sneh expressed the hope that the World Zionist Congress would decide to boycott the second phase of the London Conference unless assured that the establishment of a Jewish state would be the — 303 —

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purpose of those talks. He hoped that the “courageous and resolute line of policy” evinced in the recent ZOA convention resolutions would be reaffirmed at the forthcoming conclave in Basle. Privately, he asserted to Henderson on November 14 that, contrary to British fears, the yishuv could not have pro-Soviet leanings, and the Hagana, not a hostile force, represented the entire Palestinian Jewish community in terms of defense. It should be officially recognized as the military arm of the future Jewish state. The terrorist organizations such as the Irgun and Stern Group, by contrast, had “left us,” and operated outside of the established yishuv organizations. After “Black Sabbath,” Palestinian Jewry had shown restraint, “conserving our strength for further endeavors.” Unable to protect itself against outside aggression, the future Jewish commonwealth should be closely bound to Great Britain by a treaty and a military alliance. The Hagana, Sneh ended, could aid the British in a number of ways, such as sharing very valuable intelligence about Turkestan and Uzbekistan from Polish Jews who had been sent to those parts of the Soviet Union during the war. Henderson, a long-time critic of USSR aggression due to service with the American Red Cross in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia after World War I, and in the 1930’s the U.S. chargé d’affaires in Moscow, appreciated the frank talk, and said that he would bring this conversation to Acheson’s attention.49 Ten days earlier, Henderson had received a highly concerned James Terry Duce, Vice-President in charge of operations for ARAMCO (the Arabian American Oil Company). Truman’s October 4 statement and his letter to Ibn Saud greatly worried F. A. Davies, the President of ARAMCO, which had begun to build, through its Trans-Arabian Pipe Line Company (Tapline) affiliate, a 1,068-mile-long pipeline connecting the Eastern Province’s rich Abqaiq oilfield to the Mediterranean port of Sidon (Lebanon). On November 4, Emir Feisal informed Davies that although his father wished to avoid conflict with the United States over Palestine, the prince found himself under “constant pressure” from other Arab delegations to the General Assembly to annul the concessions awarded to ARAMCO unless the Administration changed its present policy on that issue. Davies immediately brought the matter to Byrnes’s attention, emphasizing the growing demand for oil by the U.S. Navy operating in the Mediterranean. Duce made the same point to Henderson a few hours later, to be told that American public opinion overwhelmingly approved the — 304 —

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g­overnment’s recent policies regarding Palestine, with “a large and aggressive element” even criticizing the Administration for not going far enough in endorsing the Zionist position. It was by no means simply a question of domestic politics. Congressmen, state legislatures, and resolutions from both major parties all reflected this sentiment. He could understand ARAMCO’s position, Henderson ended, but was still hopeful that some Palestine solution would be worked out to make “some extreme measures” unnecessary, and that such a solution might be achieved with the cooperation of the Arab states.50 Speaking with Silver three weeks later, Henderson reiterated his earlier observation to Duce that Truman’s October 4 statement “was not a campaign document but does represent government policy,” a point which State made clear with telegrams to all of its personnel overseas. The President’s declaration was, in effect, “our crossing of the Rubicon,” in direct contrast to Roosevelt’s October 1944 pro-Zionist letter to Wagner that was intended for political purposes. The department, he went on, was using “all measures” to persuade the British to accept the Jewish Agency’s partition plan (the same request that Ben-Gurion and Goldmann had separately made to Acheson on November 5). Henderson agreed with Silver that the situation was entirely “too dangerous and dynamic” to be permitted to drift, and he had urged on Byrnes that very day the necessity to get the British to indicate that they would accept the principle of partition. From informal talks with Bevin, Byrnes, asked by Truman to take over the handling of the Palestine question, got the impression that the Foreign Secretary was not yet prepared to accept partition and also felt that if the Zionist Congress did not authorize its Executive to attend the conference, the British would meet with the Arabs anyway, and afterwards the Zionists would find a way of contacting the British. Henderson advised Silver to call upon Inverchapel to indicate to him the real significance if negative action were taken at the World Zionist Congress so that he, in turn, could advise Bevin of this fact.51 Bevin first saw Silver on November 14 in a Hotel Waldorf-Astoria suite on New York City’s Park Avenue, one day after Inverchapel advised him that Silver, “the leader of the extremist group,” had apparently moderated his views, and that a meeting might have great value because Silver and his group were likely to emerge as the leading faction at the World Zionist Congress. Bevin repeated his overall view that the Balfour — 305 —

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Declaration promised “the same thing to all peoples” and did not provide for Jewish sovereignty; that while he and Goldmann were “getting on pretty well,” Truman had “shot his second bolt” just before the November elections; that the Anglo-American Committee report had to be accepted as a whole; that illegal immigration had to stop; and that a partition resolution would have to go to the UN, about which he saw “much opposition” from various quarters. All proposals would be on the table for the London Conference, and if no agreement were reached, HMG would have to give up the Mandate. Showing “signs of distress” upon hearing the last point, Silver asserted that the Agency’s proposal of “a viable state in Palestine” should be followed; Arab military strength was “illusory” and no outside troops would be needed. Bevin insisted, however, that he could make no prior commitments until the conference met in December. With Silver begging for a new formula by Bevin that he could present at the Zionist Congress, indicating that all plans would receive equal treatment at the conference, the one-hour interview ended.52 The two sides saw their meeting from different angles. Inverchapel, soon relaying to Whitehall Silver’s sense that the Foreign Secretary’s attitude was “a bit rigid,” advised Bevin to issue a statement that would satisfy the man whom the Ambassador characterized as “something of a megalomaniac.” In his opinion, Silver was susceptible to a friendly approach, and turning on a little of Bevin’s charm would “get him into your pocket.” All he needed was to be smiled at and “jollied a little,” and to be given the impression that he was being admitted to the Britisher’s confidence. To Bevin’s secretary, however, Silver made it very clear that if HMG set Morrison-Grady as the basis of the conference, the Jews would not attend when it resumed on December 16. Silver got the impression, Neumann reported to Detroit Jewish News publisher Philip Slomovitz, that Bevin felt himself under the heavy pressure of events to effect a definite settlement of the Palestine problem as quickly as possible. Silver also came to the conclusion that it was unlikely that Bevin would agree to offer a settlement satisfactory from the Zionist point of view unless subject to the “strongest kind” of pressure from the United States. Inverchapel strongly pressed Bevin to see Silver again, to discuss further the question on what terms the Jewish Agency would enter the conference, and whether it should be allowed to insist that no discussion should take place on the provincial autonomy plan.53 — 306 —

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In London, Agency officials received mixed signals from the Colonial and Foreign Offices. Although maintaining that Morrison-Grady remained on the conference’s agenda and all Jewish proposals would be given full consideration, Creech Jones told Locker on November 8 that efforts to reduce tension in Palestine would continue and the movement of immigrants from Cyprus to Palestine might start shortly. Three days later, he informed Weizmann that the Cabinet was leaning towards accepting partition, and asked his opinion on steps to improve the situation in Palestine. To Brodetsky and Eban, he expressed his concern with the problem of “making it easy” for Weizmann and his colleagues to win the confidence of the Zionist Congress. Eban’s argument that partition alone would offer “finality, independence, and peace” found, however, little appreciation from Robert G. Howe, Assistant Undersecretary of State in Whitehall officialdom. Beeley, present at that interview, noted that most Arabs of his acquaintance believed that Jews would accept part of Palestine “with reservations on irredential grounds.” The Arab delegates at Lancaster House, Howe pointed out, all opposed partition, and he wondered why a state was necessary to enable the Jews to develop their specific national culture. The Morrison plan appeared at present to be the most logical next step to take, he stated, and did not prejudice the ultimate future “in any way.” “Many echoes from Bevin’s speeches could be traced to him,” concluded Eban’s record of this talk, and it seemed that Howe was having his first fundamental discussion of the Zionist viewpoint.54 If HMG failed to work out a permanent settlement in Palestine, Bevin told Silver at their follow-up meeting on November 20, Britain would first ask the United States to take over the Mandate. If Washington was not willing to do so, London would place the entire matter before the UN. This would be a disaster, leading to chaos, Silver responded, and then said that although he personally opposed partition, he and fellow Jews would support this “supreme sacrifice” on the ground that it gave up “territory for status.” If HMG was not willing to back it, the Zionist Congress would be bound to disavow any delegation that went to London, and things would be “in a pretty bad mess.” Bevin: The Mandate (so the Colonial Office concluded) did not legally permit the British to agree to partition—a scheme which he did not oppose in principle, thus requiring such a proposal to be laid before the UN. He doubted that partition would receive the necessary votes of approval there in light of strong — 307 —

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opposition. Silver: The Arabs would consent if the United States and the United Kingdom both agreed, and he hoped that Bevin could “give him the word” before the Zionist Congress that the Foreign Secretary, performing “a real act of statesmanship,” would agree to that principle. Bevin expressed doubts about the Arabs’ acquiescence, given their fears that partition and unrestricted immigration would lead to the overcrowding of Palestine and to the inevitable “spilling over” of Jews into Arab areas. That risk “disappeared” with the slaughter by Germany and collaborator nations of six million Jews, Silver noted (a point Eban had also made to Howe). Hearing that “the word” need not be made public, Bevin said that he would consult Attlee and speak with Byrnes.55 Giving Acheson a summary of the two Bevin-Silver talks, Inverchapel indicated that Bevin was “moving rapidly” towards acceptance of partition, and he relayed Alexander Cadogan’s evaluation of a UN vote for partition. According to HMG’s primary representative there, it would take 19 votes to defeat such a proposal, and he did not think that there would be more than 12, including the USSR, its satellites, the Arab states, France, and India. Since there would undoubtedly be abstentions, however, it could not be certain that the final vote would favor passage. Everyone, Inverchapel divulged, wished to postpone the London Conference until sometime in January—the Arab states because they had nothing to gain by resumption, the Jews because they wished to wait until the Zionist Congress completed its deliberations, and the British who wished further time to prepare in view of their being “so burdened” with international meetings. Asked for his judgment as to the attitude of the U.S. Government and the Arabs to a plan of partition, Acheson reverted to Truman’s October 4 statement and, as to the second, promised a summary of the Near Eastern office’s views.56 Acheson informed Inverchapel on November 23 of his specialist’s assessment that all Arab countries would oppose partition. This would take the form of some terrorist acts, not military action, as the Arab states were “not in a position” to mount such action. (The Zionists advanced the same evaluation.) Anti-Jewish riots would occur in Baghdad and possibly in Cairo and Alexandria. Abdullah would feign opposition, but in fact view partition as offering good chances of extending his domain. The Syrians would likely furnish the most bitter and determined opposition, while in Lebanon the Muslims would oppose and the Christians would not be so vitally concerned. Saudi opposition — 308 —

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would be strong because its people were “emotionally aroused” at the thought of any Arab being subject to any Jew, with the king disturbed at the strengthening of the Hashemite House, his traditional enemy. The United States hoped that there would be no actual break with the Saudis, because they had so much to hope for both economically and otherwise from relations with Washington. The Arabs might threaten to leave the UN but probably would not do so. “An important factor will be the degree of determination with which such a solution is put forward and carried through,” the report stressed, “and the degree of solidity of front between the British and ourselves.” If British representatives in the region undertook to place the responsibility for partition upon the United States, or American businessmen or governmental representatives took a “secretly critical attitude” toward the British, this would be “the crack” into which the opposition would “insert its wedge” and would give encouragement to “violence, demonstrations, and delays.” These views accorded with his own entirely, Inverchapel responded, and he forwarded Acheson’s information to London.57 Zionist leaders did not wish to have the Palestine issue brought now before the UN. The five Arab states would definitely vote against Jewish statehood, while the attitude of the Eastern European countries remained unclear. Brodetsky, also President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, carried a majority of his executive in rejecting a motion for HMG to submit the problem to that global organization. The Board’s stance much resembled the line which Jewish Agency officials in the United States had been taking. Other than the difficulties of trusteeship, Gelber observed to colleagues on November 18, “the outlook is far from bright” as to having the issue presented to the General Assembly or the Security Council, the scene in both dominated by delay, partisanship, and motives external to the questions themselves. Ecuador representative Homero Viteri Lafronte cautioned the Agency’s Dorothy Adelson that much residual antisemitism existed in the world, and the Arab states would be joined by Iran and Turkey, five countries in the Slav bloc (Russia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Byelorussia, and Ukraine), and the five non-white countries (China, the Philippines, Liberia, Haiti, and India) who had a “fellow feeling” for the Arabs based partly on skincolor and partly on anti-imperialism. The Latin Americans, headed by the efforts of Guy Perez Cisneros of Cuba, were then “log-rolling” with the Arab bloc. Canadian Zionist — 309 —

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official Samuel J. Zacks reported that Lester B. Pearson, his country’s Undersecretary for External Affairs, shared Inverchapel’s support for partition, but Elizabeth MacCallum, that department’s Middle East expert, harbored strong pro-Arab views. Moscow’s new line on Palestine, expressed in a policy statement by the Communist Party of the USA on November 4, called for British withdrawal from Palestine and the creation there of an independent state. This position was forcefully stated at the UN by Soviet Ambassador to the U.S. Nikolai Novikov, who two months earlier had warned his superiors that the Truman Administration was bent on imposing political, military and economic domination around the world. Without strong U.S.-UK endorsement for partition, the outlook for Zionism appeared dim.58 So did hopes for law and order in Palestine, leading Montgomery on November 20 to press the Defence Committee for action against the Jewish terrorists. That very day an Irgun explosion destroyed most of the files of central income-tax offices in Jerusalem. Since October 1, the hero of El Alamein began, 76 men of the Army and 23 police had been killed and wounded; the police force was 50 percent below strength; and the strain had led to numerous assaults on Jewish civilians by policemen two nights earlier in Tel Aviv. Disgusted with what he saw as Colonial Office appeasement, the CIGS head wished the Army to take the offensive against the Jewish underground’s campaign of murder and sabotage. Creech Jones defended Cunningham, and asserted that there were signs of a rally of moderate opinion within the Jewish Agency’s ranks. Attlee insisted that no change had occurred since the Cabinet’s decision prior to Operation Agatha in June to give the High Commissioner full discretion to use the armed forces as an aid to the civil power. If we were not prepared to keep law and order in Palestine, Montgomery insisted, it would be better to get out. A frustrated D’Arcy, about to be succeeded by General Miles Dempsey, confirmed Montgomery’s view that Cunningham had ruled out vigorous offensive actions as being politically inexpedient and it being extremely difficult to target the section of the community responsible. With Attlee calling for a full and early report from the Colonial Office in conjunction with the War Office on the conditions governing the use of the armed forces in Palestine, Montgomery would depart in a week’s time for that embattled land in order to assess the rapidly deteriorating situation.59 — 310 —

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The Zionists’ first really comprehensive meeting with Byrnes, lasting over an hour on the morning of November 22, left Silver very pleased. He and Goldmann, with Wise in attendance, spoke of their respective talks with Bevin, after which the Secretary declared that he personally thought the partition solution fair and that he would do everything to induce London to act upon it. Yet, turning to Silver, he said, “You people are always pressing us to go to town,” and the United States could not force London to do things which it regarded as harmful to Great Britain. Bevin would like nothing more than to solve the Palestine problem while still in office as he attached great importance to it, Byrnes gathered from informal talks, but the decision lay with the Cabinet. If a solution could not be found in the next few months, the British might refer the entire matter to the UN, he added, which would mean “delay and all sorts of unforeseen complications.” Byrnes was not fully convinced that the London Conference would only have a chance of success if HMG agreed beforehand to accept the Jewish Agency’s proposal in principle. He agreed with Goldmann that if Great Britain and America made clear to the Arabs that the status quo could not remain then territorial compromise might be achieved, and he had told Bevin that Palestine was the only problem which kept the two countries apart and that the actual situation was “untenable.” The trio assured Byrnes that he now held the key position, and that by exerting real pressure on Great Britain, he might bring about a solution on the basis of the Agency’s plan.60 Writing at length to Attlee four days later, Bevin wondered if the Arabs would accept partition and if Britain could even get the necessary two-thirds vote of support for it at the General Assembly. Pointing out to Byrnes that as few as fifteen or sixteen votes would defeat the proposal there, he found that his American counterpart did “not seem too keen” on the matter having to go to the UN on the basis of partition. If word leaked out that London was prepared to discuss partition, Bevin was certain that the Jews would put pressure on Washington for the whole of Palestine. He also doubted whether HMG could obtain a bipartisan commitment to partition, convinced from talks with Byrnes that Zionism “has become so competitive here that it is a contest for the New York vote as between Truman and Dewey.” When pressed by Aydelotte at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations, he had replied that he would like to adopt the Anglo-American Commission’s report as a whole, but that when he told those assembled that one of the solutions was to ask the — 311 —

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United States to take it on, owing to their great interest in the subject, this was greeted with great laughter. Nor could he get anything definite from Byrnes in their “rather scrappy conversations” as to the possibility of the immigration of refugees into America.61 Attlee accepted this analysis when presenting the issue to his Cabinet on November 28. One week earlier, hearing that that the International Committee of the Labour Party Executive had recently put forward suggestions similar to the Jewish Agency’s proposal, the Prime Minister had replied to Laski that while that solution might “quite likely prove to be the way out,” he thought it unwise to make a statement prior to the London Conference. Now Attlee declared that it was most important that HMG should not commit itself to partition before all the alternatives had been fully discussed at the resumed talks. Bevin’s conversations in New York, therefore, should continue to be “purely exploratory.” The Prime Minister’s colleagues fully agreed, and a telegram was dispatched to Bevin along these lines. The Foreign Secretary repeated the position to Byrnes the following day, stating once again that HMG could not possibly allow one party alone to prescribe the agenda of the proceedings on a subject “vital to both peoples.” The Arab and Jewish delegations would both have the full opportunity to propose modifications to the provincial autonomy proposal or to advance other proposals. HMG, Bevin concluded, would be ready to consider every possibility of reaching an agreement, and would study “most carefully” all suggestions submitted to them at the conference.62 On November 29, Montgomery met with Dempsey and Cunningham in Jerusalem. While conceding that restrictions placed on the Army had prevented proper military action, the High Commissioner continued to maintain that the Agency and the Hagana would take action against the Irgun and Stern Group factions, which had limited public support. In his view, British efforts alone to stop terrorism would “merely annoy the Jews and make matters worse.” Per contra, Dempsey agreed with Montgomery’s conclusion that the only alternative was for the military to come down hard on the yishuv as an army of occupation, much as Montgomery had done when fighting with the Seventh Infantry Brigade in 1920–1921 against the Sinn Fein in Ireland and then commanding the Eighth Division in the north of Palestine during the last months of the Arab Revolt. Cunningham’s standing his ground prompted the apoplectic Field Marshal to send a long, rambling telegram to his deputy, — 312 —

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General Frank Simpson, accusing the High Commissioner of handling the “whole business of dealing with the illegal armed organisations” in “a gutless and spineless manner.” The sharp divide between these two views now shifted back to London, where, Montgomery wrote in his diary, “the lines will really be whether His Majesty’s Government is to continue to appease the Jews in the hope of reaching a solution or whether it will decide to impose its authority by force.”63 His month-long stay in the United States for meetings of the Council of Foreign Ministers convinced a relieved Bevin that, with the Congressional elections over, the Americans, so recorded his principal private secretary, might “desist from meddling” in the Palestine quandary. Although loudly booed by fans at a New York Giants-Los Angeles Rams football game at the Polo Grounds on December 1 when his presence was announced, Bevin found welcome Byrnes’s willingness to help find a Palestine solution. Bevin turned down Goldmann’s request via Byrnes that HMG commit itself to the Agency’s partition proposal before the conference as the Arabs would refuse to attend, but his formal assurance to Byrnes on the 2nd that all proposals would be given “equal status” satisfied the Secretary. On the 7th, the State Department released Byrnes’s announcement encouraging Jewish and Arab leaders to attend the second stage of the London Conference, to which the United States would then send an observer. As for Palestine, Creech Jones could report a marked diminution in the intensity of terrorist activities, and the railways there had resumed operation in daylight under military protection. Barker would soon be replaced as GOC Palestine and Jordan, and the First Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders’ Lt. Col. Richard Webb, who had openly referred to the Jews as “a despicable race” after the LEHI roadside bombing on October 24 caused casualties to his men, had been relieved of command. Cunningham also agreed to admit 300 immigrants from Cyprus on December 3 in the present quota period, with 750 in the next. “Unless the atmosphere is infected by unfortunate incidents over illegal immigration or some other local irritant in Palestine,” the Colonial Secretary concluded in a telegram to Bevin, it seemed “not improbable” that the impending World Zionist Congress would favor the Jewish Agency’s attendance at the conference with a directive to press for partition and the establishment of a Jewish state.64 — 313 —

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Bevin was encouraged in addition by his meeting with Truman at 11 a.m. on December 8 in the White House. With Inverchapel, Acheson, Niles, and Under Secretary of the Treasury O. Max Gardner present, Truman remarked that he was “in complete agreement” with everything Byrnes was doing on Palestine, and that if Attlee’s government reached an accord on that subject, Washington would be “very pleased” to give any help it could, including finance. According to the British record (which differed from Niles’s report), Bevin doubted that Jews and Arabs would agree with each other on Palestine; both men stated that their governments had given conflicting pledges to the two rivals. The Arabs could not continue the status quo in Palestine as they wanted, Bevin observed, to which Truman responded that with the midterm elections over (explaining how difficult it had been with “so many Jews in New York”), it would be easier for him to help reach a settlement. Truman agreed that Weizmann was the most intelligent of the Jewish leaders, then added “I can get nowhere with Dr. Silver. He thinks everything I do is wrong.” Sympathizing, Bevin observed that the Jews “somehow expect one to fulfill all the prophecies of the prophets…. I tell them sometimes that I can no more fulfill all the prophecies of Ezekiel than I can those of that other great Jew, Karl Marx.” Hearing that the U.S. Government could help with admitting Jews and thereby “reduce the tension” over the Jewish refugee problem and Palestine, Truman replied that he intended addressing a message to Congress, thinking that there was a quota allowing 100,000 immigrants which had not been used up. In closing, Truman reiterated his support for Byrnes’s present policy.65 Yet the issue of Jewish immigration to Palestine would not go away. Even when announcing the first admission there of survivors currently in Cyprus camps, Cunningham made it clear that the 1,500 monthly quota remained in force. On the 5th he had to inform Creech Jones that the deportation of the Knesset Israel passengers, once the Agency failed to halt the edict with habeas corpus proceedings, had “inevitably caused a revulsion of public feeling against the Administration,” which “must operate as a set-back” to anti-terrorist trends. That same day, the Rafiah with 785 passengers, named after a small Arab town in the Gaza strip where many Hagana and Palmah/Palyam members had been detained on “Black Sabbath,” was wrecked off Syrina in the Dodecanese Islands due to inclement weather. Several bodies, including children, were found — 314 —

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and buried on the island. Eventually, the other passengers were rescued by two British destroyers of the Palestine Patrol and one Greek warship, almost all of the men taken to Cyprus, and the women and children permitted to enter Palestine. Receiving Proskauer’s written appeal, following their meeting, to admit the 100,000 without further delay, Bevin pointedly skirted the issue. On December 10, First Lord of the Admiralty Viscount Hall, who thought the Jews were becoming “more determined and hysterical (sic),” endorsed the Commander-in Chief Mediterranean’s proposal to give HMG’s vessels “more sea room” for intercepting faster and heavier illegal transports within Palestine’s territorial waters. Lord Chancellor Jowitt concluded, however, that this proposal could not be justified in international law, leading Creech Jones to conclude on the 19th that other means had to be sought to aid the Palestinian authorities. Some grounds existed, he told Cabinet colleagues, for hoping that the shipment of large numbers of illegals would be suspended for a time if the Jewish representatives agreed to attend the resumed conference proceedings.66 Attacks by the Etzel and LEHI did not cease in the first week of December. On the 2nd, after five soldiers were killed in two mine ambushes on the roads, a tense Cunningham summoned Ben-Zvi to exclaim that it was extremely urgent that action be taken to prevent these outrages lest the army be put in charge and react with harsh force. A sixth soldier was killed in Haifa by a mine on the night of the 3rd. The following evening, one British constable was wounded in the attack on a police billet in Jerusalem. Hand grenades were thrown at Barker’s home, but caused no casualties. A British officer and a soldier were killed by an Irgun truck bomb on the morning of the 5th and about thirty injured in the large Sarafand army camp southeast of Jaffa. After Ben-Zvi again saw the High Commissioner the next day, the Agency and Va’ad HaLeumi issued a proclamation entitled “The Bloodshed Must Stop!,” warning (as did the local press) that such acts of terrorism endangered the entire yishuv. The Hagana, while amending “Plan B” a second time to posit that possible joint British-Arab efforts against Palestine’s Jewish community would require the hiding of legal weapons, denounced the recent assaults as treachery. On the 9th, the Reuters international news agency reported that, under Hagana pressure, the Irgun and Stern Group agreed to suspend — 315 —

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activities during the Zionist Congress. On behalf of the Agency Executive, Myerson had asked the dissidents’ leaders to do so and continue this suspension during the London talks if the Congress decided that the Agency should attend. They agreed to the first request, Etzel then warning the delegates that if they did not establish the fighting “independent Hebrew nation,” the nation and its youth in the homeland and abroad would turn their backs on them. In a softer tone, LEHI called on the delegates to declare war on the “treacherous and sinking” British Empire.67 The twenty-second World Zionist Congress, opening in Basle’s Mustermesse convention hall on December 9, gathered in a somber mood. The dais and the Zionist flag were draped in black. With 5,000 Jewish communities having been obliterated in what would be called the Holocaust, no longer were there substantial numbers from Germany, Hungary, Holland, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, or Belgium. Most notable of all was the absence of a delegation from Poland, the great center of Zionism during the period between the two World Wars. The United States had now replaced Poland as the chief Zionist hub, claiming almost half the world membership. Among the 585 delegates, the American and the Palestinian groups would dominate the assembly. Weizmann’s keynote speech to begin the Congress that afternoon, which he touched up in order to make a first draft by Berlin and Eban more pro-British, called for London to grant a Jewish state or return to the Mandate years of generous immigration. Declaring that “six million graves testify to the consequences” of Jewry’s homelessness and dispersion, with HMG guilty of maintaining the restrictive 1939 White Paper throughout the war, he thanked Truman for urging the immediate admission of 100,000 Jewish refugees to Palestine. Zionism’s impressive successes in the Promised Land, he asserted, had brought “no injury” to the Arab peoples, who already possessed seven independent sovereignties. A Jewish commonwealth would offer the Arabs finality and the possibility of joint, beneficial economic ventures. Terrorism by dissident Jewish groups “contaminates our banner” and is “barren of all advantage.” Absorbing 1.25 million survivors, the “overwhelming majority of whom are desperately pressing against the gates of Palestine,” constituted our generation’s first problem, while the 600,000-strong yishuv stood as testimony to Zionist faith and achievement.68 — 316 —

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The packed hall of 2,000 gave these words a cold reception. Dugdale’s diary recorded that the 90-minute speech in English, read with considerable difficulty by the half-blind leader of seventy-three years, had “no fire.” He made the impression “of an aged and tired man,” reported the local American consul general to Washington. Ben-Gurion’s first speech the next evening, even longer, fared little better. The Agency Executive chairman chose to gloss over their fundamental differences, his equivocation leaving listeners bewildered. While announcing that the Executive still adhered to the Biltmore Program, he also stated that it would be amenable to discuss partition if proposed. “This has put the cat among the pigeons with a vengeance,” Dugdale observed.69 Silver, on the other hand, lost little time in throwing down the gauntlet. He extolled the wartime contribution of American Zionists in the face of Washington’s “mere benevolent neutrality,” beginning with the 1943 American Jewish Conference’s open advocacy of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine; the introduction in 1944 of pro-Zionist planks in the presidential election platforms of the two major parties; the adoption by forty state legislatures of resolutions favoring Jewish sovereignty in Palestine; and the role played in having the Administration retreat from support of Morrison-Grady. Clearly opposing partition, Silver called for “a forthright, aggressive and militant line of action,” pledging that “a loyal and disciplined army of followers” was ready to give of themselves, their substance, their loyalty, and their devotion “to the cause of a free Israel in a free land of Israel.”70 The general debate, which would last for five days, began on December 11 with Neumann’s scathing attack on the Agency’s partition proposal in August as a “costly” failure which the British did not accept even as the Arabs remained “inflexible.” The proposed London Conference, which the State Department endorsed, should not be attended, inasmuch as Britain was currently “waging a war against the most vital interests of the Jewish people.” Meir Grossman of the American United Revisionists urged the removal of the present Executive, and demanded “a Jewish State within the historic boundaries of Palestine, based on a Jewish majority.” Ya’akov Hazan of HaShomer HaTsa’ir appealed for a bi-national state under the supervision of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, claiming that a Jewish commonwealth could not be established with an Arab majority in the country. Ahdut HaAvoda’s Tabenkin attacked both partition and Britain, which he declared was — 317 —

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opposed to a Jewish national homeland “because it wants to use Palestine as a military base for a third World War.” Felix Rosenbleuth (later Pinhas Rosen) of Aliya Hadasha urged cooperation with England, fearing that resistance would bring British military retaliation, which might spell the destruction of the yishuv. Hadassah President Judith Epstein took issue with Weizmann’s hope for a continuation of the Mandate as indulging in “a false dream.” Resistance in Palestine she considered necessary, along with “uncertified Jewish immigration” into Palestine without qualification.71 David Trager, President of the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews and heading a twelve-man delegation of survivors, asserted in Yiddish that the Sh’eirit HaPleita, having passed through “the seven gates of hell of the bestial Nazi regime,” resolved that world Jewry had no existence or right to existence without “a land of its own.” Neighbors across Europe’s blood-soaked landscape had aided in the murder process that constituted the Nazis’ methodical “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” while an apathetic free world stood by. A Jewish state in Eretz Israel remains our sole hope, he averred, a sentiment confirmed by 98 percent of the Jews in DP centers when replying to UNRRA questionnaires. The thriving of cultural, educational, and productive programs in their camps, along with the highest birth rate in the Western world, stood as testimony to the vigor and tenacity of the more than 200,000 survivors in these camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy. “Having but one choice—aliya or kelaya (annihilation),” he concluded, “We have decided to live and create in an independent and free Jewish State in Eretz Israel.” A thunderous ovation throughout the cavernous hall greeted Trager’s forthright statement.72 Goldmann’s address that afternoon, also in Yiddish, emphasized that Zionism had to be prepared for “tragic concessions” in order to break the political deadlock, get rid of foreign rule, and open Palestine’s gates to large immigration. The Executive sought from those assembled not blanket powers, but permission to negotiate at the London Conference in order to ascertain what proposals could be worked out. The May 1942 Biltmore Program had been drawn up on the assumption that millions of Jews would be transferred to Palestine after the war, and no one then had thought of partition. Bringing the matter to the United Nations would only lead to further delay and deterioration of the situation of Jews both in Europe and in Palestine. Time worked for the Arabs in the meantime, — 318 —

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he warned, and the belief that the United States might endanger its relations with Britain over Jewish rights was delusional.73 Shertok (who approved Goldmann’s presentation) and Sneh differed sharply on the issue of the conference. Besides the outspoken Sneh, who saw no British and Arab adversary ready to accept either Goldmann’s or Hazan’s compromise solutions, Aryeh Altman of the Palestine Revisionists charged that Weizmann symbolized “the defeat of Zionism, which has brought it to the present crisis.” Yitzhak Riftin of HaShomer HaTsa’ir, supported by colleague Mordekhai Ben-Tov, stated that “peaceful life and development in Palestine is not possible without an agreement with the Arabs on the basis of bi-nationalism.” Ya’akov Zerubavel of Poalei Zion’s left wing called for a Jewish commonwealth with a socialist orientation; Aharon Zisling of Ahdut HaAvoda stated that only an undivided Palestine could solve the Jewish problem. Bernard Joseph, the Agency’s legal advisor, endorsed the Biltmore Program in light of HMG’s rejection of the partition plan. The 72-yearold Wise challenged “what seems to be the ZOA’s ‘dogmatic line’”. As one of the few surviving friends and disciples of Herzl, he urged attendance at the conference, and through it to lay the foundations of a Jewish state in Palestine.74 Ben-Gurion immediately followed in Yiddish with an unqualified declaration that he would only join an activist-oriented Executive, one committed to an armed conflict against the mandatory. A “Jewish State in Palestine,” he stated, means the immigration to that country of the first 1,000,000 Jews in the shortest possible time. Aside from the Biltmore Program’s call for the whole of Palestine, the Executive chairman suggested as a personal thought giving Jordan part of the thickly Arab-populated “triangle” of Western Palestine and the Jews the under-populated area in eastern Palestine round the Dead Sea stretching to the Gulf of Aqaba. Still another possibility would be negotiations in London to create a Jewish commonwealth in a diminished area on condition that it would be large enough “to give immigration and colonization adequate to solve the Jewish question.” Whatever the options, the movement had to embrace the principle of resistance, he declared, but, unlike Silver and Neumann who relied on the yishuv to decide, this was to be “the resistance of the whole Jewish people.” “We have no choice,” Ben-Gurion ended, “but a homeland and independence in Palestine.”75 — 319 —

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Speaking in Yiddish and without notes on December 16, interspersing in his unique fashion humor with gravitas, Weizmann quickly drew swords with Ben-Gurion. The true and only path, he declared, was not struggle against Britain, but—as the Executive had adopted in the past—an evolving stand of sustained negotiation. The recent creation of eleven new settlements in the Negev will have greater significance than 100 speeches about resistance, he insisted, “especially when the speeches are made in Washington and New York while the resistance shall take place in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.” Our proposal for partition had not been rejected, he asserted; it took account of the large Arab population and the 10,000 square miles that made up Palestine’s small area, reminding his enthralled audience with delicate scorn that “you can swim more easily in the sea than in a bath tub.” Speaking as a professional chemist, Weizmann insisted that “we must go on experimenting,” until “trial and error” brought success. Resistance, championed by Ben-Gurion, is “indivisible. You may know where you begin, but you cannot know where it will end.” A great and important leader of American Jewry said that that community would provide moral, financial, and political support to the yishuv’s struggle, he continued, but that is “precious little when you send others to the barricades, if you send others to pit themselves against British guns and tanks.” “This is demagoguery!” shouted Neumann, contending that Silver (like Neumann) had merely expressed his moral solidarity with the yishuv’s determination to resist Great Britain’s anti-Zionist policy. Stung, incorrectly hearing it as “demagogue!,” and unable to see who had hurled such a challenge, something that had never happened to him in any Congress, Weizmann interrupted his speech. Removing his glasses, he launched with a passionate fury into a defense of his decades-long contribution in having gone through all the “agonies of Zionist work”: “The person who hurled that epithet at me should know that every farm-house and stable in Nahalal, and every building down to the tiniest workshop in Tel Aviv or Haifa, contains a drop of my life’s blood.” At this point the assembly rose almost to a man (Silver and Neumann, the Revisionists, and Mizrachi did not) in a spontaneous burst of cheering. Stirred, Weizmann went on: It is for this reason, that I have the right, I feel, to speak as I do now, and no impolite interjections will put me — 320 —

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off: for I believe that what I tell you is the truth….I warn you once again against taking short cuts, against following false prophets and will-o-the-wisp generalizations, and against the falsification of historical facts. Recalling that his misfortune had always been to point out the movement’s weaknesses and lay emphasis on its “sober side,” Weizmann pointed out that the British had understandably responded with the “Black Sabbath” two weeks after the Hagana had blown up ten of the eleven bridges connecting Palestine to its neighbors. Sneh’s assumption that Zionists had to look for “new orientations” because they could expect nothing from Britain was not a certainty. Weizmann feared that terrorism would become the “dominating feature of Jewish life,” and he warned the movement of the urgent need to “check the growth of this cancer.” Concluding the most eloquent speech of his long Congress career, the frail tribune exhorted his rapt audience not to rely on miracles. They had to continue with Zionist work. The securing of redemption through means which did not accord with “Jewish morale, ethics, or history” meant the worshiping of “false gods” and endangering everything that the Zionist enterprise had built up over a few decades. Re-read the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, he urged. They knew that “Zion will be redeemed through righteousness”—and not by any other means.76 Rows of applauding delegates stood “in awe and contrition” as Weizmann painfully groped his way to the street, Eban recalled years later, but the half-hour address may have cost him the WZO presidency. Many, while elated by his soaring words and appreciative of his singular half-century contribution to the successes of Zionism, thought his consistent stance too moderate for the future of the movement. BenGurion suggested that his rival almost seemed to excuse the arrests of “Black Sabbath.” With the battle in full sway, a very calm Weizmann determined to have his own policy “or pull right out.” On the 18th, Dugdale still thought that on the fundamental issue of attending the London Conference (which also meant backing Weizmann for the presidency) the delegates “will not commit suicide.”77 The same day, Ben-Gurion addressed the Congress’s closed political committee. Speaking freely, he warned of the dangers which the yishuv would face in the not distant future from the armies of surrounding Arab states, aided by England and other countries. To this end, a city — 321 —

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in the southern Negev region had to be established as soon as possible, to become a center of Jewish strength. Resistance meant opposition to the White Paper, and to do as much as possible to frustrate its ­implementation. That included far larger, safer boats for aliya bet, since that effort of ha’apala (“illegal” immigration) by ma’apilim constituted the primary battle in the struggle for the Jewish right to reach Eretz Israel. Murder of innocents by dissident groups was forbidden in all circumstances, and this principle demanded strict national discipline. Attending the London Conference was not morally possible if we knew that the British and the Arabs would object even to partition. There were fewer reasons to rely on HMG than in the past, Ben-Gurion observed, consequently requiring the movement to broaden its efforts in the Arab world and at the United Nations, including with the Soviet Union, and to strive at strengthening the yishuv in order that it achieve independence.78 Appearing before the Congress’s steering committee one day later, Ben-Gurion made it clear that, while having great esteem for Weizmann, he could not serve in an Executive governed by the elder statesman and his basic political stance. That line, as Weizmann had made clear in his final address, ruled out ma’avak (struggle). If Weizmann did not become Honorary President, then the presidency itself, a symbolic position, should be left vacant. The chairmanship of the Executive, which he would again accept if offered, would speak for Zionism in the future. As late as December 20, with the Congress still not having chosen a new Executive, Ben-Gurion pressed steering committee head Zalman Rubashov (later Shazar) to decide conclusively and without delay whether Weizmann had a majority or not to form an Executive. Otherwise, he warned, the movement faced “ruin.” Ultimately, BenGurion’s call in the Mapai party meeting for the immediate end to the White Paper, together with the “assurance of the creation of the Jewish State” or no going to London, triumphed against Kaplan’s proWeizmann stance by a vote of 77–55. At the same time, a vote of 89–30 (with many laborite members anxious about Silver’s coming to power) supported Weizmann for the WZO presidency. Even as Ben-Gurion walked out in protest, the pro-Silver group within the General Zionist camp worked assiduously against Weizmann’s return as President. Sneh, for his part, continued pushing for the bestowal of an honorary presidency upon the Anglophile Weizmann.79 — 322 —

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Silver’s appointment as head of the Political Committee, in recognition of his status and the strong following which he had at the Congress, proved crucial to the outcome. Neumann, chosen by him to chair the sub-committee on resolutions, pressed for following the most recent ZOA convention in demanding Jewish sovereignty in Palestine. The General Zionists, aided by Mizrachi and the Revisionists, secured a narrow majority of 21–16 not to attend the London talks “under present conditions”; if the situation improved, the resolution added, the Inner Actions Committee would decide on participation. The minority resolution, brought by Mapai and strengthened by Hadassah’s Marian Greenberg, allowed the Executive to participate in the Conference with the understanding that its negotiations would be based on the ­consideration of the early establishment of a Jewish state. Now it was up to the delegates.80 At a late hour on December 23, Weizmann appeared before the full Congress and apologized that it would be difficult for him to participate this time in the lengthy deliberations that would undoubtedly follow. He thanked his supporters, and wished that his opponents, if they assumed responsibility, would succeed “to open a new era of great activity.” The Jewish people, especially “those waiting in the camps,” he told the assembled, “look to you to open the gates. I thank you all.” This time, all the delegates without exception stood. They escorted him out of the hall with resounding ovations and the singing of the HaTikva. If the Congress decided against going to the London talks, Weizmann told his political advisors that same evening, he would not seek the WZO presidency. From there, Weizmann traveled to London and the quiet of his apartment in the city’s Dorchester Hotel.81 Shortly after midnight, Silver began reading out the political resolutions. These continued into the next day, and lasted for almost 14 hours. Resolution No. 1 reasserting the Biltmore Program was adopted. Terrorism, as opposed to resistance that sought to avoid the shedding of innocent blood (Shertok’s formulation), was condemned with a fair degree of unanimity; the Revisionists’ attempt to water down the resolution was badly defeated. A move by Weizmann’s supporters in Mapai to vote first on the presidency before the London Conference resolution, assuming that the majority which would vote for Weizmann would then agree to participate at those talks, was defeated by a coalition composed of Ahdut HaAvoda, General Zionists, Mizrachi, and the Revisionists. Hearing the — 323 —

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crucial resolution about the Conference, Myerson then proposed that the decision be left to the new Executive. This last-minute motion failed by a vote of 167–158, and with a vote at 3 a.m. of 171 (the group fashioned by the Silverites, Ben-Gurion, and Sneh plus Ahdut HaAvoda-Poalei Zion) to 154 (Mapai, General Zionists who supported Weizmann, and Aliya Hadasha) the Congress chose not to go to the Conference under “the present circumstances.”82 Mapai and Weizmann failed at this decisive juncture. Only 350 out of the 585 delegates voted. In addition, some of the Mizrachi ­delegates, under Ben-Gurion’s influence, had shifted from their declared ­support of Mapai’s position. The Revisionists’ compact bloc of 45 votes was thrown into the balance against every attempt to steer a moderate course. Finally, although supporting Weizmann for the presidency, HaShomer HaTsa’ir voted separately for its own resolution against participation in the London Conference “as this would inevitably lead to being caught in the trap of partition.” Paradoxically, the 25 votes cast separately as a bloc for their separate resolution by these firm advocates of a bi-nationalist state in Palestine denied Weizmann triumph. Hearing the bitter news in London, Weizmann understandably saw this as tantamount to a vote of no confidence in him, and he announced the removal of his candidacy for the WZO presidency. At 4:30 in the afternoon of December 24, Mapai’s David Remez announced as chairman of the proceedings that the conditions of time, place, and the absence of a list of candidates for the new Executive meant that elections to that body could not take place before the Congress finished its deliberations. Instead, he advised that the Actions Committee be given full authority to establish the Executive. By a vote of 116–37, with 65 abstentions, this was passed.83 To extended applause, Ben-Gurion closed the Congress a half hour later by suggesting that the failure to complete its work regarding an Executive might well symbolize the fracture of world Jewry. The Shoa also shattered the Zionist movement, he observed, for the void created by the annihilation of European Jewry, Zionism’s prime reservoir of support, had not been filled. After sending the Congress’s greetings to “the great Jew of our generation”—Dr. Chaim Weizmann, Ben-Gurion declared that the movement’s first obligation was to bring the survivors to the moledet (homeland). Its second was to redeem the land, and then to augment the yishuv’s strength. Finally, its supporters had to fight for — 324 —

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world Jewry’s rights as a sovereign nation. We all hope, he concluded, that we will be privileged to meet at the next Congress in “Zion liberated.” Expressing a personal feeling that this was “the Congress of the difficult birth pangs of the Messiah, of the Jewish State in Eretz Israel,” Remez then uttered the prayer chanted at the close of the Yom Kippur and Passover services: “Next Year in Jerusalem!” With that traditional cry, the Congress came to an end.84 The resounding defeat of the moderates at the Congress, which ran counter to the hopes shared by Creech Jones and Bevin, strengthened the pro-Arab advocates in the Foreign Office. Beeley had already received Oriental Secretary Smart’s strong disagreement with State’s evaluation on November 23 of limited Arab resistance to partition, as well as Glubb’s warning that possible delays for months in partition’s implementation would enable Haj Amin and all the Arab extremists to swing the Palestinian Arab masses and Russia to constitute itself as champion of the Arab cause. Assistant Undersecretary Howe considered withdrawal or partition, two of the three alternatives which Bevin had posed to the Cabinet on October 25, equally “disastrous.” The first would lead to British decline, read his memorandum of December 18, the second threaten British interests in the region. In return for the creation of a Palestine state, he proposed that the Arabs would have to agree to a Jewish immigration of 50,000–60,000 in the immediate future, with possibly 5,000 per month thereafter. Additional Secretary to the Cabinet Norman Brook agreed, asserting that the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate both permitted that Palestine remain a predominately Arab country, independence to be bestowed in the near future and some limit placed on Jewish immigration.85 With the November 29th meeting between Cunningham, Montgomery, and Dempsey having concluded that “strong military action” would have to be taken if a political solution were not forthcoming soon, Creech Jones and Bevin sat down on the afternoon of December 21 to discuss the Foreign Secretary’s draft of a letter to Attlee. Assuming that the resumed talks on January 21 with the Arab governments would have “very little chance of success,” the “top secret” document began, HMG should seriously consider offering the Mandate to the United States, which would “almost certainly” refuse, or to the UN. Creech Jones feared, however, that announcing the intention to surrender the Mandate would “at once” make the mandatory’s — 325 —

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position “untenable,” martial law then needed to maintain order until Britain’s responsibility came to an end, and harm the Labour Party in the General Election. The Chiefs of Staff would first have to weigh in as to the effect on Britain’s strategic position in the Middle East as a whole. For the Conference, four possible objectives presented themselves: provincial autonomy, a transitional period leading to self-government, some partition plan (which Bevin doubted would secure UN approval), and the Arab plan (which he thought would). Creech Jones strongly objected to the last because of HMG’s past commitments and his concern that it would lead to “a revolt on the part of the Jews” and, with a British withdrawal, abandon the country to civil war. Yet writing to Bevin two days later, Creech Jones was still not satisfied that it was impossible to impose a solution if necessary without the use of force greater than that which HMG ought to be prepared to contemplate, or that some scheme of partition sufficiently fair to both sides could not obtain UN approval as the most reasonable solution of “this intractable problem.”86 That problem received still another stimulus on December 11 for renewed outbreaks, following the Jerusalem Military Court’s sentencing of sixteen-year-old Benjamin Kimchin to eighteen years of imprisonment and eighteen strokes of the cane for his part in the attempted robbery of the Ottoman Bank in Jaffa three months earlier. Although Kimichin was saved from the death sentence because he had not reached his eighteenth birthday, his Irgun comrades plastered wall posters denouncing the sentence as a “dishonourable punishment,” and threatened that if were carried out, all British soldiers would be subjected to “the same humiliating treatment.” Although Ben-Zvi, the Chief Rabbinate, and the Jewish Bar Association asked Cunningham to yield on a general appeal and so rob the dissidents of public sympathy, Barker confirmed the sentence, which was carried out on the 27th. Two nights later, after issuing a second warning that “Zion is not Exile. The Hebrews are not Zulus,” Irgun fighters kidnapped a British Army Major, a noncommissioned officer, and two staff sergeants, flogged the men with eighteen strokes, and released them in Netanya, Rishon LeTsiyon, and Tel Aviv. Five Irgun men involved on this “Night of the Whippings” tried to rush a military road-block near Kfar Sabba; gunfire seriously wounded one (he died in hospital two days later) and the others were arrested. — 326 —

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Widespread searches followed until the afternoon of the 31st, with more than 6,000 people screened (of whom just over 100 were detained for further questioning) and a meager amount of weapons seized. BenZvi complained to the new Chief Secretary, Henry Gurney, about random assaults on civilians by often drunken troops even as the yishuv’s major parties pasted posters across Jerusalem with the heading “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” urging the public to cooperate in combating terrorism. Troop morale, Cunningham knew, was at the breaking point.87 Arab spokesmen sounded their great anxiety and warned of the consequences. The Arab League Council demanded that the British halt Jewish immigration and terrorism in Palestine, and that the U.S. Government put an end to the encouragement given in the American zones of occupation in Europe to facilitate Zionist immigration into Palestine. Member states were advised to inform Truman of their distress at his “continuous interference” in Palestine’s affairs. U.S. policy affected the 100 million Muslims in India, the leading Moslem League member in the India Interim Government warned Truman’s personal representative George A. Brownell, and there could be no true feeling of friendship between his people and America as long as Washington adhered to its position. Minister Brownell also reported to Truman Iraqi foreign minister al-Jamali’s fear that a violent Arab reaction would occur against the West if the United States sought to implement the policy it had advocated, and the Arab nations would turn toward Russia as a consequence. In an interview on December 13, Emir Feisal urged Truman in Acheson’s presence to support Palestine as a whole being given its freedom and all Jewish immigration cease until then. The Chief Executive replied that every proposal would be discussed at the London Conference, and he stressed again the plight of the Jewish Displaced Persons and the necessity of all peoples’ “receding from rigid positions” in order to aid in finding a solution.88 The unsatisfied chief of State’s Division of Near Eastern Affairs thought that the related Palestine and Jewish DP questions formed “an open sore, the infection from which tends to spread rather than to become localized,” Truman’s stance not aiding the Jews while keeping the department “constantly on the edge of embroilment” with the British and the Arabs. Accordingly, Merriam advised Henderson on the 27th that until the General Assembly approved a solution on which Arabs and Jews could agree, Britain should administer Palestine as a — 327 —

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t­ rusteeship under the UN. A “policy of principle and procedure,” in his phrase, rather than attempting to thread a way between contending pressure groups, would gain public approval and lead to world responsibility and involvement regarding world problems such as Palestine and the Jewish refugee question. Husseini went much further, declaring after a visit to the exiled ex-Mufti that “every Arab must consider himself a soldier on the front line,” and calling for an organized effort based on “supreme sacrifice.” If no trace of the Palestinians was left after the struggle, the Arabs in neighboring countries would “carry the banner of resistance after us.” For the editor of Al-Difa’a, most influential of the Palestinian Arab newspapers, Husseini’s statement was “a turning point.”89 On December 29, meeting in Basle’s Three Kings Hotel with the strength of a nineteen-member coalition that was chosen by the Va’ad HaPoel (Actions Committee), Ben-Gurion was re-elected chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive and took on the crucial security portfolio. The General Zionists included Silver (now head of the Agency in the United States), Neumann, Sneh, Brodetsky, Goldmann, Gruenbaum (vice-chairman), Hadassah’s Rose Halprin, and the Palestinian Peretz Bernstein. Mapai had seven members: Ben-Gurion, Jewish Frontier co-editor Hayim Greenberg, Locker, Myerson (the new director of the Political Department), Kaplan, Shertok (who would direct the Agency’s political delegation in Washington), and Dobkin. Mizrachi/Poalei Mizrachi was represented by Fishman, Ze’ev Gold, Moshe Shapira, and S. Z. Shragai. This reflected the same party distribution as in the outgoing Executive, with largely the same personnel. Moreover, with fourteen of the Executive in favor of participating in the London Conference and in favor of partition, Hadassah’s Epstein thought this a “Pyrrhic victory” that went counter to the American Zionists’ opposition on both issues. To satisfy Silver’s demand, the independently minded Goldmann would be transferred from activity in Washington to Europe. After assigning portfolios and declaring that the Agency would ask Weizmann’s help because “he is the first man in Zionism,” Ben-Gurion stressed that his associates should bring to the movement not the Congress’s “bitter” elements, but the same “inner strength” that existed in Zionism. If the situation did not improve, he concluded, “we will know to stand in the battle.”90 Ben-Gurion issued a manifesto for Davar’s readers which surveyed the proceedings of the Congress and projected Zionism’s urgent needs. — 328 —

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The destruction of European Jewry; the split in labor’s ranks; the division in American Zionist circles between Wise and Silver—all made their mark in the difficult weeks that had just passed in Basle. Despite these manifestations, however, the “eternity” of the Zionist halutz (pioneering) spirit in Eretz Israel had overcome “the bitter and at times depressing” deliberations. As a result, the overall results of the Congress were “positive and welcome,” both internally and even more so externally. His desire for a wide coalition, to include HaShomer HaTsa’ir and Ahdut HaAvoda, did not materialize, but the new Executive insured our three principles: halutziyut, ma’avak, and medina (statehood). Burdened with heavy responsibility, the movement and the Executive had to unite for more ha’apala, settlement, and security; reinforce their self-sufficiency; increase efforts to gain world sympathy; renew cooperation with England; seek mutual understanding and treaty with the Arab world; and work towards “the speedy establishment of medinat haYehudim” (the State of the Jews). On that note, Ben-Gurion left for a brief trip to London and then flew on to Palestine.91 The British Colonial and Foreign Office secretaries quickly grasped this seismic shift in Zionist orientation. In a memorandum dated December 31, Creech Jones summarized for Bevin their agreement that the Congress results underscored the victory of “the extremist group headed by Dr. Silver”; Weizmann’s overthrow and “the collapse of the moderate leaders”; the official refusal of the Jews to attend the London Conference “in existing circumstances”; and the fact that Zionists would accept no arrangement in Palestine “which involves further trusteeship or tutelage of any kind.” HMG had failed to avert these results, and could now anticipate “a recrudescence of terrorism and an increase of violence and disorder”; an increase in illegal immigration, as well as in Arab disturbances; more resentment on the part of the British forces in Palestine facing various forms of “violence and humiliation” without being able to take “adequate countermeasures”; and the “heavy strain” under which the Civil Administration in Palestine was already laboring “reaching a breaking point.” The resumed talks with the Arabs would “probably prove abortive.” Having already ruled out a unitary Arab state and provincial autonomy, Creech Jones reluctantly concluded that two self-supporting states could not be carved out of Palestine, Arab opposition to Jewish sovereignty was “implacable,” and any workable partition involved a very large Arab minority and the best Arab land in the Jewish state. — 329 —

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Greatly pessimistic, the Colonial Secretary concluded that HMG could either impose a policy on Palestine or refer the whole question to the United Nations. With the first option riddled with difficulties, the second—“no easy course particularly if Palestine is the scene of violence and civil conflict”—appeared the only alternative. In so doing, Britain would state that it had failed to discover any solution which both Arabs and Jews would accept, and that it was not prepared to impose a solution by force. Relinquishing the Mandate would probably spell the end of the special strategic advantages which HMG enjoyed in Palestine and further strengthen the hold of the anti-British Haj Amin. Sections of the Labour party and public opinion would challenge this decision as contrary to past British declarations of furthering the development of the Jewish National Home. The dilemma was not of HMG’s making, however, and the American Jews had, “to a great extent,” brought the situation on themselves. With no other course appearing to be possible, Creech Jones advised that Britain initiate “a special and urgent meeting of the Assembly” to consider the matter.92 As the New Year 1947 dawned, the decision how to proceed with the Palestine imbroglio rested now in the hands of the Cabinet. Uncharted waters loomed ahead.

Endnotes 1 FO to Alexandria, September 3, 1946, ST 277/6, Stansgate MSS, House of Lords Archives, London; Weizmann to Hall, Sept. 4, 1946, A289/127; Hall to Weizmann, September 6, 1946; both in CZA; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 691–693. 2 Weizmann to Smuts, September 9, 1946, WA; Goldman to Proskauer, September 8, 1946, Jewish Agency files, AJC; Ahdut HaAvoda statement, September 8, 1946, J1/8182; Shertok to Jewish Agency Executive, September 7, 1946, S25/10015; Mapai meeting, September 6, 1946, Z4/33019; all in CZA; Mapai Central Committee, September 16, 1946, file 811/7-P; Mapai Central Committee, September 18, 1946, file 811/8-P; both in ISA; Ettinghausen memo, September 1946, WA; David Ben-Gurion, Likrat Ketz HaMandat (Tel Aviv, 1993), 155–168. Masada in the Judean Desert was the last major stronghold of the Jewish revolt to fall to Roman Legions in the spring of 74 CE. The defenders, almost 1,000 men, women, and children led by Zealot Eleazar ben Yair, chose to commit suicide rather than fall into the — 330 —

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hands of the invaders. Vichy France represented the collaborator state, under Marshal Philippe Pétain, which governed the southern part of that country between 1940–1942 while the German army occupied northern France. After the Allies landed in French North Africa, that area was occupied by Germany and Italy. The puppet government of Vichy vanished when the Allies occupied all of France in November 1944. 3 Kohn report, October 28, 1946, S25/7497, CZA. Yeor in the Bible referred to the Nile River. Ben-HaNeder, meaning in Hebrew “son of the vow,” played on Henderson’s name. 4 Memo, Sept. 6, 1946; Crum to Hannegan, September 10, 1946; both in A431/17; Wahl to Kenen, September 9, 1946, A431/34; all in CZA; Shapiro to Silver, September 10, 1946, Manson files, Silver MSS; Gelber to Goldmann, September 11, 1946, Z5/1299, CZA.   5 Epstein to Ben-Gurion and Goldmann, September 2, 1946, Z6/69; Segal to Ben-Gurion, September 6, 1946, Z4/33021; both in CZA; Silver to Segal, September 8, 1946, Silver correspondence, Neumann MSS; AZEC Executive, September 10, 1946, ZA; Wise to Goldmann, September 11, 1946, Box 109, Wise MSS; Silver to Wise, September 14, 1946, Silver correspondence, Neumann MSS.  6 FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 693–695; Truman to Clayton and Truman to Niles, both September 14, 1946, PSF, Palestine 1945–1947, Box 161, HSTL.  7 Attlee address, September 10, 1946, CO 733/464/75872/147/11; Hall to Cunningham, September 10, 1946, FO 371/52644; Hall to Cunningham, September 11, 1946, CO 733/464/75872/147/11; all in PRO. Abdullah made his point of view clear to Husayn al-Khalidi when that representative of the Arab Higher Committee visited him on September 3. Fforde to Chief Secretary, September 4, 1946, file 47/711, HA.   8 Arab League report, December 7, 1946, file 2567/14 Het Tsadi, ISA; Campbell to Bevin, September 3, 1946, FO 371/52642; Campbell to Bevin, September 7, 1946, FO 371/52566; both in PRO.   9 Goldmann-Bevin-Hall interview, September 14, 1946, FO371/52644; Formula, September 14, 1946, FO800/486; both in PRO; Goldmann note, September 14, 1946, A289/127, CZA; Hall to Cunningham, September 15, 1946, BGA; Proskauer to Goldmann, September 10, 1946, Box 8, Proskauer MSS. 10 Kollek to Sharf, September 17, 1946, S25/498, CZA; Ben-Gurion, Likrat Ketz HaMandat, 174; Weizmann to Ben-Gurion, September 14, 1946, WA. 11 Husseini to Cunningham, September 15, 1946, file 8 Klali/21, HA; Cunningham to Hall, September 16, 1946, FO 371/52644, PRO; CID report, September 10, — 331 —

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1046, file 47/611, HA. For the roles of Zu’aiter and Darwaza in relation to the earlier Arab Revolt, see Penkower, Palestine in Turmoil, passim. 12 Hall to Cunningham, September 16, 1946, CO733/464/75872, PRO; Arab League report, December 7, 1946, file 2567/14 Het Tsadi, ISA. 13 Goldmann interview, September 16, 1946, FO 371/52644, PRO; Zaslani to Sharef, September 18, 1946, S25/1554; JAEL, September 18, 1946, Z4/302/31; both in CZA; Weizmann to Martin, September 16, 1946; Fishman, September 17, 1946; Weizmann to Kaplan, September 17, 1946; Weizmann to Sprinzak, September 19, 1946; all in WA. 14 JAEL, September 19, 1946, CZA; Weizmann to Hall, September 19, 1946, WA. 15 FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 697–698; Goldmann to Hall, September 20, 1946, Z4/20279/2, CZA; Summary of information, October 11, 1946, 867N.01/10-1146, SD. For the 1939 St. James Conference, see Penkower, Palestine in Turmoil, chap. 10. 16 FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 698–699; Hall to Cunningham, September 21, 1946, CO733/464, PRO. 17 Trevor, Under the White Paper, 255–265; Va’ad HaLeumi meeting, September 9,1946, J1/8028; Ben-Zvi to Chief Secretary, September 19, 1946, J1/3321; both in CZA; Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 908–909, 1111–1112; Report, October 5, 1946, file 14/274, HA. 18 Tabenkin to Ben-Gurion, September 24, 1946, S25/1554, CZA; Ben-Gurion, Likrat Ketz HaMandat, 180; Gater to Goldmann, September 21, 1946, Z4/31263; Silver to Committee, September 23, 1945, S25/7708; Goldmann to Hall, September 25, 1946, A289/127; all in CZA. 19 Weizmann-Hall interview, September 26, 1946, FO371/52645, PRO; JAEL, September 26, 1946, Z4/10380, CZA. 20 Cunningham to Hall, September 20, 1946, FO 371/52562, PRO. Marshal Pétain led the Vichy government which collaborated with Germany in World War II. 21 Cunningham to Hall, September 24, 1946, BGA; Sneh to Ben-Gurion, September 21, 1946, WA; Cunningham to Hall, September 28, 1946, BGA; Ben-Gurion, Likrat Ketz HaMandat, 181–188; JAEL, September 26, 1946, Z4/302/31, CZA; Ben-Gurion to Silver, October 1, 1946, BGA. 22 Ben-Gurion, Likrat Ketz HaMandat, 186; Emerson memo, September 5, 1946, 840.48 Refugees/ 9-546, SD; Golubev to Smirnov, September 4, 1946, Documents on Israeli-Soviet Relations, 142–144, 146–147; Innocenti report, September 28, 1946, UNRRA files, UN Archives; Shuckburgh to Bevin, September 6, 1946, FO371/52632, PRO; Bernstein address, October 1, 1946, Z5/1103, CZA; Memo and McNarney letter, September 7, 1946, Box 18/113, Germany-Sh’eirit HaPleita, YIVO Archives; Fierst memoir, 102–111. Through — 332 —

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the efforts of Hilldring and his staff, Wahl had discussions with General Harold R. Bull, McNarney’s Chief of Staff, which resulted in cancelling the plan in January of a highly placed general in Military Government to issue an order declaring the Central Committee illegal. Wahl to Kenen, November 12, 1946, A431/35, CZA. 23 Fierst memoir, 110; Bevin-Jamali talk; Bevin-Alami talk; both September 18, 1946, FO 800/486; PRO; Cunningham to Hall, September 25, 1946, BGA. A typical Crossman essay at the time was “The Case for Partition,” New Statesman and Nation, L35/123, CZA. 24 Bevin to Attlee, September 27, 1946; Bevin-Rifai talk, September 30, 1946; both in FO 800/486; Hall to Cunningham, October 2, 1946, FO371/52645; all in PRO; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 700; Bevin-Hall interview with Weizmann et al. October 1, 1946, Z4/15170; Hall-Weizmann et al. interview, October 4, 1946, Z4/302/31; both in CZA. 25 Robert J. Donovan, Conflict and Crisis (New York, 1977), chaps. 22–23; Goldwater interview, March 1976, L35/138; Kohn to Niles, September 29, 1946, Z6/87; both in CZA; Wise to Goldmann, October 8, 1946, Box 190, Wise MSS. After firing Wallace, Truman wrote privately that “we are not going to have any shooting trouble” with the Russians, “but they are tough bargainers and always ask for the whole earth expecting maybe to get an acre.” Truman to Garner, September 21, 1946, PSF 187, HSTL. 26 Memo, September 24, 1946, A431/34, CZA; Merriam interview memo, September 24, 1946, 867N.01/9-2446, SD; “Palestine, Policy and Information Statement,” September 15, 1946, James Byrnes MSS, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina. For a State Department internal response to a critique from a Captain of the Jewish War Veterans of the United States. about the department’s pro-Arab stance, an attack which echoed Crum’s public denunciations, see memorandum, September 28, 1946, 867N.01/9-2846, SD. 27 Wilson to Henderson, September 27, 1946; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 600; Wadsworth to Henderson, October 2, 1946; both in 501/BB Palestine/9-2746, SD. 28 Epstein to Goldmann, October 3, 1946, L35/122, CZA; Epstein to Goldmann, October 4, 1946, WA; Epstein to Niles, October 3, 1946, Z6/81; Crum to Hannegan, October 1, 1946, S25/497; both in CZA; Neumann to Silver, October 3, 1946, Silver correspondence, Neumann MSS; Porter memo, October 3, 1946, 867N.01/10-346, SD. A “restricted” British report that month tallied the result of its searches at Yagur (26 caches of arms found) and Dorot and Ruhama (1 cache each of explosives). October 1946 report, file 99920/15, ISA. — 333 —

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29 David McCullough, Truman (New York, 1992), 231, 234; Lowenthal memo, October 3, 1946, A431/12, CZA. 30 Ganin, Truman, American Jewry, and Israel, 105; Epstein to Goldmann, October 4, 1946, WA; Gelber to Epstein, October 16, 1946, Confidential-Henderson file, ZA; Elath, HaMa’avak Al HaMedina, vol. 1, chap. 11; Inverchapel to Bevin, November 26, 1946, FO 371/52565, PRO; Henderson-Silver talk, November 27, 1946, file 4/3, Silver MSS. For Cox and the US War Refugee Board, see David Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews, America and the Holocaust, 1941– 1945 (New York, 1984), 183–187. 31 Truman statement, October 4, 1946, Box 14, Clark Clifford MSS, HSTL. 32 Epstein to Goldmann, October 9, 1946; Kohn report, October 28, 1946; both in S25/7497, CZA; New York Times, October 7, 1946. 33 FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 701–708; Acheson-Inverchapel talk, October 3, 1946, 867N.01/10-346, SD; Inverchapel to Bevin, October 4, 1946, FO 371/52560, PRO; Officer to Pearson, October 5, 1946, file 84–85/19, Box 25, PAC, Ottawa. 34 New York Times, October 7, 1946; London Times, October 7, 1946; Chicago Tribune, October 6, 1946. 35 George to Truman, October 5, 1946; Truman to George, October 8, 1946; both in PSF Palestine 1945–1947, Box 184, HSTL; Abraham S. Hyman, The Undefeated (Jerusalem, 1993), 313–315; New York Herald Tribune, October 12, 1946; George to Truman, October 14, 1946; Truman to George, October 17, 1946; both in OF 204 Miscellaneous, HSTL; Truman to Wise, October 11, 1946, Box 68, Wise MSS; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 708–709, 714–717. 36 Truman to Pauley, October 22, 1946, Palestine—Jewish Immigration, Box 161, HSTL; Sulzberger memo, October 25, 1946, Germany-11, Arthur Hays Sulzberger MSS, New York Times Archives (now transferred to the New York Public Library, New York City). For Sulzberger’s consistent views about Judaism, Jews, and Zionism and how they were reflected in the New York Times up to that point, see Monty Noam Penkower, Twentieth Century Jews: Forging Identity in the Land of Promise and in the Promised Land (Boston, MA, 2010), 155–164. 37 Gelber to Goldmann, October 16, 1946, Confidential files—Henderson, ZA; Henderson-Brilliant interview, Oct. 25, 1946, 867N.01/10-35546, SD; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 710–713. The drafts, in three versions, are in 501.BB Palestine/10-2146, SD. Vincent’s comment referred to the fact that the eating of pork is forbidden by traditional Jewish law. When Acheson dissolved the Grady team on October 9, Dorr advised that since Truman’s statement took “very little cognizance” of the Arabs, something might be accomplished by encouraging the — 334 —

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Arabs to adopt a more moderate position, as the Jews had done in the light of existing conditions. Meeting, October 9, 1946, 867N.01/10-946, SD. 38 Wise to Truman, October 7, 1946, Z6/279, CZA; AZEC executive, October 14, 1946, ZA; New York Post, October 22, 25, 28, 1946; Gelber to Epstein, October 15, 1946, Silver MSS; Epstein to Friedenwald, October 15, 1946, A182/36, CZA; JTA, 10/7/46; B. Pimlott, ed., The Political Diary of Hugh Dalton (London, 1986), 388; ZOA resolution, October 27, 1946, Hadassah Archives. 39 Bernstein address, October 1, 1946, Z5/1103, CZA; Steering Committee minutes, October 15, 1946, AJC; Abbott to Byrnes, October 4, 1946, 840.48 Refugees /10/446, SD; JTA, October 3 and 8, 1946; Mishmar, October 16, 1946. 40 JTA, October 7–9, 1946; Yosef Avidar, BaDerekh LeTsahal, Zikhronot (Tel Aviv, 1977 ed.), chap. 15; Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 1255, 909–910; Palestine Post, October 23, 1946; Trevor, Under the White Paper, 268–270; Palestine Post, November 3, 1946. 41 Sharett, Yerahim B’Emek Ayalon, 460; Colonial Office-Jewish Agency meetings, October 8–9, 1946, Z4/15170, CZA; Meeting, October 17, 1946, FO371/52562; PRO; JTA, October 31, 1946; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 721–722; Cunningham to Creech Jones, October 12, 1946, FO371/52561, PRO. 42 October 25, 1946, CAB 195/4, PRO; Fischer-Attlee interview, October 17, 1946, Box 28, Louis Fischer MSS, Special Collections, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, Princeton. 43 Fischer-Attlee interview, October 17, 1946, Box 28, Fischer MSS; Epstein to Kollek, October 28, 1946, file 18/13-TT, ISA; Robinson memo, October 22, 1946, Z5/1172, CZA; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 720–721; JTA. October 30, 1946; October 24, 1946, Diaries, Box 2, Frankfurter MSS. 44 Eli Tavin, HeHazit HaShniya, HaEtzel B’Artsot Eiropa 1946–1948 (Tel Aviv, 1973), 63 ff.; Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 933, 948, 1141–1142; Z. Gilad, Sefer HaPalmah, 691–692; Avriel, Open the Gates!, 302–306; Palestine Post, November 27, 1946; Cunningham interview, November 27, 1946, S25/2600, CZA; Trevor, Under the White Paper, 277–280; November 19 and 21, 1946, Box 1/3, Cunningham MSS; Wright report, November 12, 1945, file IR-105, Begin Archives; Ben-Gurion, Likrat Ketz HaMandat, notes to 229. 45 Barker to Antonius, October 11, 1946, file P867/9, ISA; Sherman, Mandate Days, 185–186; JTA, November 15, 1946. Katie, daughter of the publisher of the strongly pro-Palestinian Arab Egyptian newspaper Mokattam and young widow of George Antonius, author of the pioneering volume The Arab Awakening (1938), championed anti-Zionist views at gatherings in her beautiful East Jerusalem home. She left Palestine after an Irgun bomb exploded nearby in early 1947. — 335 —

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46 New York Post, November 4, 12, 23, 1946; HaMashkif, December 5, 1946; Richard Watts, “Koestler’s Novel of Zionism,” New York Times, November 3, 1946. Former Senator Guy Gillette (D, IA), President of the American League for a Free Palestine, informed Mrs. Roosevelt that $325,000, or most of the money collected from the performances, would go to Reuven Hecht, the official in Switzerland responsible for “repatriation” (the Irgun’s illegal immigration program). Gillette to Roosevelt, December 4, 1946, Box 2, Palestine Statehood Committee files, Sterling Library, Yale University, New Haven. 47 AZEC plenum, October 16, 1946, ZA; New York Times, October 30, 1946; Silver to Baruch, November 7, 1946, Manson files, Silver MSS. 48 Ben-Gurion to Weizmann, October 28, 1946, BGA; Weizmann to Ben-Gurion, November 6, 1946, WA; Torczyner to Neumann, September 11 and 24, 1946, file P18-019, Jacques Torczyner MSS, Bevin Center Archives; Neumann to Silver, November 4, 1946, Silver correspondence, Neumann MSS; Ben-Gurion, Likrat Ketz HaMandat, 236–237; Holtzman to Morgan, December 12, 1947, 6/12, Fanny B. Holtzman MSS, American Jewish Archives. 49 Sneh address, November 1, 1946, Z5/818, CZA; Henderson-Sneh talk, November 14, 1946, 867N.01/11-1446, SD; Loy W. Henderson oral history interview, June 14, 1973, HSTL. 50 Elath memo, November 7, 1946, Z5/6621, CZA; Henderson-Duce talk, November 4, 1946, 867N.01/110446, SD. 51 Henderson-Silver talk, November 27, 1946, file 4/3, Silver MSS. 52 Inverchapel to Bevin, November 13, 1946, FO800/486; Bevin-Silver talk, November 14, 1946, FO 371/52565; both in PRO. On Silver’s behalf, Neumann also called on Crossman to say that he was not opposed to partition as such, but to the tactics which the Executive had adopted in Paris, and had empowered Neumann to transmit this officially to members of the government in London. Kollek to Zaslani, November 17, 1946, S25/498, CZA. 53 Inverchapel to Bevin, November 16, 1946, FO371/52565; Ormerod to Bevin, November 14, 1946, FO800/486; both in PRO; Neumann to Slomovitz, November 16, 1946, Box 1, Neumann MSS; Henderson to Bevin, November 17, 1946, FO800/486, PRO. 54 Creech Jones memo, November 8, 1946, FO371/52646, PRO; JAEL, November 8, 1946, Z4/10380; JAEL, November 19, 1946, Z4/10380; EbanHowe interview, November 8, 1946, S25/7566; all in CZA. For Weizmann’s suggestions, see Weizmann to Creech Jones, November 19, 1946, WA. — 336 —

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55 Memo, November 21, 1946, FO 371/52565, PRO; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 723– 724. For the Colonial Office’s legal ruling, see Beeley memo, November 13, 1946, FO 800/486, PRO. 56 FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 725–726. 57 Acheson to Inverchapel, November 26, 1946, 867N.01/11-2646, SD; Inverchapel to Bevin, November 26, 1946, FO800/475, PRO. 58 Gelber to Brodetsky-Linton, November 18, 1946, Z4/1534; Gelber memo, November 15, 1946, Z6/2332; both in CZA; Adelson to Goldmann, November 18, 1946, CF-UNO files, ZA; Zacks to Gelber, November 12, 1946, Z5/1252, CZA; Robinson report, November 19, 1946, file 93.03/2268/16, ISA; Novikov telegram, September 27, 1946, digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org. Goldmann told Inverchapel that if the United States and United Kingdom would come with a partition proposal to the UN, he was sure of the two-thirds majority. In his opinion, all the Latin American states, the British Commonwealth nations (save for India, Inverchapel interjected), and “certainly” all the western and northern European states would vote in favor. As to the Slavic bloc, he felt certain that Poland and Czechoslovakia would not oppose partition, even if Russia would, and might abstain. Goldmann note, November 17, 1946, A289/127, CZA. 59 Defense Committee, November 20, 1946, FO371/52565, PRO; D’Arcy to ME Command, November 21, 1946, Box 1/3, Cunningham MSS. Commanding the British Eighth Army in Egypt, and aided by signals intelligence from “Ultra” and local sources, Montgomery’s forces defeated General Erwin Rommel’s infantry and mechanized units in November 1942 at El Alamein, and ended the Axis threat to Egypt, the Suez Canal, and the Middle Eastern and Persian oil fields via North Africa. 60 Report on Byrnes meeting, November 22, 1946, Z6/17/15, CZA; Silver to Vandenberg, November 25, 1946, Box 2, Arthur H. Vandenburg MSS, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 61 Bevin to Attlee, November 26, 1946, FO 800/486, PRO. Answering Aydelotte, Bevin said that if HMG could not settle the problem, it had two courses open to it: offer Palestine to the U.S. or to the UN. He declined to make any predictions, but said that he did not despair, and that he regretted the necessarily “baffling complexities which beset the problem.” Bevin talk, November 21, 1946, Records of Meetings, Box 8, Council on Foreign Relations Archives, New York City. 62 Attlee to Laski, November 21, 1946, DLA/13, Harold Laski MSS, Archives, Hull University, Hull, England; November 28, 1946, CAB 128/6; Bevin to Byrnes, November 29, 1946, FO 800/486; both in PRO. — 337 —

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63 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, 346–354; The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Montgomery, 419–420; James Barker, “Monty and the Mandate in Palestine,” History Today 59:3 (March 2009): 30–34. 64 Dixon, Double Diplomat, 245 Chicago Tribune, December 2, 1946; GoldmanByrnes talk, December 2, 1946, A289/127, CZA; Goldmann-Byrnes talk, December 3, 1946, file 93.93/1, ISA; Akzin to Silver, December 3, 1946, Akzin-CF files, ZA; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 727; Trevor, Under the White Paper, 273; Creech Jones to Bevin, December 3, 1946, FO 800/486, PRO. 65 Bevin-Truman meeting, December 8, 1946, FO 371/61762, PRO. Niles reported to the AZEC’s Akzin that Truman had strongly urged on Bevin the admission of the 100,000 immediately and said that the United States government would put it “weight and support” behind the Agency partition proposal, which he considered a “fair compromise.” Acheson backed this position. Revealing the same information to Agudas Israel’s Meir Schenkolewski, Niles expressed confidence that some kind of solution would be found. He added that Bevin opposed any partition plan, while Truman did not favor “at this moment” discussion about a Jewish state. Akzin to Schulson, December 10, 1946, Silver MSS; Schenkolewksi report, November 10, 1946, Schenkolweski correspondence—Rosenhaim, Agudas Israel MSS, New York City. 66 Official communiqué, November 12, 1946, S25/10488, CZA; Palestine Post, December 4, 1946; Cunningham to Creech Jones, December 5, 1946, Box 1/3, Cunningham MSS; Menahem Shelah, HaKesher HaYugoslavi (Tel Aviv, 1994), 178–180; Bevin to Proskauer, December 2, 1946, Box 8, Proskauer MSS; Hall memo, November 26, 1946, CAB 129/14; Meeting, December 10, 1946, CAB 128/6, and CAB 195/4; Meeting, December 18, 1946, CAB 129/15; Meeting, December 19, 1946, CAB 128/6; all in PRO. 67 Ben-Zvi diary, December 3, 1946, S25/5601, CZA; Trevor, Under the White Paper, 289; Proclamation, December 4, 1946, file 10/7-19-4kaf, Jabotinsky Archives, Tel Aviv; Palcor, December 5, 1946; Irgun memo, December 1946, Z4/31579, CZA; Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 1255, 912. 68 HaKongress HaTsiyoni HaKhaf-Bet (Jerusalem, 1947), 7–16. 69 Rose, Baffy, 242–243; Scholes to State, December 17, 1946, 867N.01/121746, SD; HaKongress, 59–74. 70 HaKongress, 45–54. For American Zionist efforts during World War II, see Penkower, Decision on Palestine Deferred, passim. 71 HaKongress, 77–90, 97–120, 129–135. Epstein and Greenberg reports, January 8, 1947, National Board minutes, Hadassah Archives. For the Aliya — 338 —

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Hadasha manifesto issued prior to the Congress, see “Statement of Policy,” n.d., J18/82, CZA. 72 HaKongress, 125–129. 73 HaKongress, 142–151. 74 HaKongress, 154–163, 174–183, 190–199, 255–262, 225–229, 252–255, 211– 217, 322–331. 75 HaKongress, 331–338. 76 HaKongress, 339–345. The final quotation was from Isaiah 1:27. The only copy of the English version of Weizmann’s speech (incorrectly dated December 18) is to be found in file Z4/30987, CZA. 77 Abba Eban, “Tragedy and Triumph,” in M. W. Weisgal and J. Carmichael, eds., Chaim Weizmann, A Biography by Several Hands (London, 1962), 293; Shertok to Ben-Zvi, December 17, 1946, A116/85I, CZA; New York Times, Dec. 16, 1946; Rose, Baffy, 244. 78 Ben-Gurion, Likrat Kets HaMandat, 266–278. 79 Ben-Gurion, Likrat Kets HaMandat, 278–290; JTA, December 22 (Basle, December 20), 1946; Yediot Aharonot, December 19–20, 1946; JTA, December 23 (Basle, December 22), 1946; Greenberg report, January 8, 1947, National Board meeting, Hadassah Archives; HaShomer HaTsa’ir faction meeting, December 20, 1946, file (7) 7.10.95, HaShomer HaTsa’ir Archives, Givat Haviva; ZOA Bulletin no. 4, December 19, 1946, ZA. 80 Emanuel Neumann, In the Arena, An Autobiographical Memoir (New York, 1976), 229–230; Epstein report, January 8, 1947, National Board minutes, Hadassah Archives. 81 Eban, “Tragedy and Triumph,” 293; Ben-Gurion, Likrat Ketz HaMandat, 291. 82 HaKongress, 491–498. For an analysis of Sneh’s significant role at the Congress, see Shaltiel, Tamid B’Meri, chap. 17. 83 Yosef Gorney, Shutfut U’Ma’avak (Tel Aviv, 1976), 193–194; Ben-Gurion, Likrat Ketz HaMandat, 291; HaKongress, 538–539. For HaShomer HaTsa’ir’s stance, see Officer to Bernard, December 22, 1946, file (7) 7.10.95, HaShomer HaTsa’ir Archives; Ze’ev Tsahor, Hazzan—Tenuat Hayim (Jerusalem, 1997 ed.), 174–176. 84 HaKongress, 540–542. 85 Smart to Beeley, December 2, 1946, FO 800/475; Glubb to Beeley, December 14, 1946, FO371/61858; Howe paper, December 18, 1946; Brook minute, December 20, 1946; both in FO 371/52567; all in PRO. 86 Conference, November 29, 1946, FO371/52567; Foreign Office to Brook, December 22, 1946; Creech Jones to Bevin, December 23, 1946; both in FO 371/61761; all in PRO. — 339 —

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87 Ben-Zvi to Cunningham, December 27, 1946, file 397/14N, ISA; Palestine Post, December 30, 1946; Trevor, Under the White Paper, 294–296; Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, 363–366; Slutzky, Sefer Toldot HaHagana, 913–915. 88 Azzam Pasha to Bowker, December 4, 1946, file 2569/14–3 Het Tsadi, ISA; FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, 729–732; Brownell memo to Truman, December 2, 1946, PSF 184, HSTL. 89 FRUS, 1946, 732–735; Cairo to Foreign Office, December 13, 1946, FO 371/52646, PRO; New York Herald Tribune, December 29, 1946; Salman Masalha, “The 1948 War Through Arab Eyes,” HaAretz, March 10, 2017. Husseini also told a Cairo newspaper on behalf of the Arab Higher Committee that proportional representation in a Palestine state should be judged by the number of Jews who were in Palestine in 1919, thus not exceeding one Jew to every six Arabs. CID report to Chief Secretary, December 19, 1946, file 47/591, HA. 90 Ben-Gurion, Likrat Ketz HaMandat, 297–300; Epstein report, January 8, 1947, National Board minutes, Hadassah Archives. 91 Ben-Gurion, Likrat Ketz HaMandat, 300–301. 92 Creech Jones memo, December 31, 1946, FO371/61762, PRO.

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