The Declaration announced that the Jewish state would officially come into existence at midnight on 14 May 1948 which marked the end of the British Mandate for Palestine. In Washington this would be 6 p.m. EST on 14 May.
At about the same time that Ben Gurion was in the process of reading the Declaration in Tel Aviv, Eliahu Epstein, head of the Jewish Agency for Israel, now calling himself, ‘agent to the provisional government of Israel’, received a phone call from Clark Clifford,23 the special counsel to President Truman. Clifford, who was in his early forties at this time, urged Epstein to write at once to President Truman to ‘welcome Israel into the community of nations’. Then at 11 minutes after the proclamation of a Jewish state in Palestine became effective, President Truman recognized the provisional government as the ‘de facto authority of the State of Israel’.24
It seems inconceivable, at least in our opinion, that President Truman gave his personal approval within minutes, presumably without having seen the details of the constitution of this new ‘Jewish state’ claiming biblical rights to modern Palestine! At any rate, David Ben Gurion was immediately made Israel's first prime minister and Chaim Weizmann, the ‘guiding spirit behind the Zionist Organization [now called the World Zionist Organization]’ who was at the time living in New York, was to become it's first ‘president’.
But what really happened at the White House on that fateful and confusing day of 14 May 1948?
An Insider's Account
In his memoirs, Clark Clifford revealed some rather shocking aspects of how and why President Truman so hastily recognized the Jewish state of Israel.25
A little background information is necessary at this stage. All who understood this vexed issue knew that the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine of 29 November 1947 was, … patently unfair, it awarded 56 percent of Palestine to its 650,000 Jewish inhabitants, and 44 percent to its 1,300,000 Muslim and Christian Arab inhabitants. Partition was adopted only after ruthless arm-twisting by the US government and by 26 pro-Zionist US senators who [sent] in telegrams to a number of UN member states.26
Making matters worse was Truman's famous statement regarding the Zionist lobby in America, in which he bluntly gave this explanation of his position: I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism: I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.27
As predicted by many, no sooner was the UN Partition Plan adopted than widespread armed fighting broke out between Jews and Arabs, as the latter rejected wholesale the partition arrived at by ‘foreigners’ for what was clearly a piece of Arab real estate. Nonetheless well-armed and experienced Jewish militias seized Arab villages that were given to Arabs by the UN, easily crushing badly armed and untrained Arab villagers. At this point, Secretary of State George C. Marshall, a highly respected five-star general and staunch opponent of the UN plan, asked Truman in no uncertain terms to reconsider his support for a Jewish state.
When the British announced their withdrawal from Palestine to be effective at midnight on 14 May 1948 (without even waiting for the final outcome of events in the UN) the conflict had already spread all over Palestine, and five Arab countries, including Egypt and Jordan, now openly threatened to send their armies across the border to ‘kill the new born Jewish state at birth’. The State Department strongly urged Truman not to recognize Israel, at least not immediately, but rather to support the prevailing view at the UN for a UN ‘trusteeship’. So why didn't he listen to such wise advice? To understand this, it is important to appreciate the pivotal role played by Clark Clifford, then Truman's political adviser for domestic affairs, in counteracting and eventually overriding Secretary Marshall's opposition. In Clark Clifford's own words: Marshall firmly opposed American recognition of the new Jewish state; I did not. Marshall's opposition was shared by almost every member of the brilliant and now legendary group of presidential advisers, later referred to as the ‘wise men’, who were then in the process of creating a post-war foreign policy that would endure for more than 40 years. The opposition included the respected Under Secretary of State Robert Lovett; his predecessor, Dean Acheson; the No. 3 man in the State Department, Charles Bohlen; the brilliant chief of the Policy Planning Staff, George Kennan; (Navy Secretary James V.) Forrestal; and … Dean Rusk, then the director of the Office of United Nations Affairs …
Officials in the State Department had done everything in their power to prevent, thwart, or delay the president's Palestine policy in 1947 and 1948, while I had fought for assistance to the Jewish Agency.28
Clifford then narrates the specific mood and happenings in early May 1948, and more specifically his own involvement: At midnight on May 14, 1948 [6 p.m. in Washington], the British would relinquish control of Palestine. One minute later, the Jewish Agency, under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion, would proclaim the new state. I had already had several serious disagreements with General Marshall's protege, Dean Rusk, and with Loy Henderson, the director of Near Eastern and African Affairs … He [Rusk] had no use for White House interference in what he saw as his personal domain in American policy in the Middle East. A number of Middle East experts in the State Department were widely regarded as anti-Semitic.
On May 7th, a week before the end of the British Mandate, I met with President Truman for our customary private day-end chat … I handed the president a draft of a public statement I had prepared, and proposed that at his next press conference, scheduled for May 13th, the day before the British Mandate would end, he announce that it was his intention to recognize the Jewish state. The president was sympathetic to the proposal, but, being keenly aware of Marshall's strong feelings, he picked up the telephone to get the Secretary's views …
I could tell that Marshall objected strongly to the proposed statement. The president listened politely, then told Marshall he wanted to have a meeting on the subject … On ending the conversation, the president swivelled his chair toward me. ‘Clark, I am impressed with General Marshall's argument that we should not recognize the new state so fast,’ he said. ‘He does not want to recognize it at all – at least, not now. I’ve asked him and Lovett to come in next week to discuss this business. I think Marshall is going to continue to take a very strong position. When he does, I would like you to make the case in favor of recognition’ …
President Truman had asked me to debate the man he most admired, a man whose participation in the administration was essential to its success. I was 41 years old, in my third year at the White House as a presidential aide. Virtually every American regarded General Marshall, then 67, with a respect bordering on awe …
At 4 p.m. on Wednesday, May 12 … seven of us joined President Truman in the Oval Office … President Truman did not raise the issue of recognition; his desire was that I be the first to raise it, but only after Marshall and Lovett had spoken, so that he would be able to ascertain the degree of Marshall's opposition before showing his own hand. Lovett began by criticizing what he termed signs of growing ‘assertiveness’ by the Jewish Agency …
Marshall interrupted Lovett. He was strongly opposed to the behavior of the Jewish Agency, he said. He had met on May 8th with Moshe Shertok [future Israeli prime minister Moshe Sharett], its political representative, and had told Shertok that it was ‘dangerous to base long-range policy on temporary military success.’ Moreover, Marshall said, he had told Shertok that if the Jews got into trouble and ‘came running to us for help … there was no warrant to expect help from the United States, which had warned them of the grave risk which they were running’ … The United States, he said, should continue to support those resolutions in the United Nations which would turn Palestine over to the UN as a trusteeship, and defer any decision on recognition .29
At that point Clifford presented his own ‘case’, speaking of the 1917 Balfour Declaration which promised a homeland for the Jews to the Zionist Federation, the terrible events of the Holocaust, and now the chance to have a Jewish nation t
hat would uphold democracy in the Arab world. However as Clifford made his argument he had noticed: … Marshall's face reddening with suppressed anger as I talked. When I finished, he exploded.
‘Mr. President, I thought this meeting was called to consider an important and complicated problem in foreign policy. I don't even know why Clifford is here. He is a domestic adviser, and this is a foreign-policy matter.’ I will never forget President Truman's characteristically simple reply: ‘Well, General, he's here because I asked him to be here.’ Marshall, scarcely concealing his ire, shot back, ‘These considerations have nothing to do with the issue. I fear that the only reason Clifford is here is that he is pressing a political consideration with regard to this issue. I don't think politics should play any part in this.’
Lovett joined the attack. ‘It would be highly injurious to the United Nations to announce the recognition of the Jewish state even before it had come into existence and while the General Assembly is still considering the question. Furthermore, such a move would be injurious to the prestige of the President. It is obviously designed to win the Jewish vote, but in my opinion it would lose more votes than it would gain.’ Lovett had finally brought to the surface the root cause of Marshall's fury: his view that the position I presented was dictated by domestic political considerations …
When Lovett concluded his attack, Marshall spoke again. Speaking with great and barely contained anger and with more than a hint of self-righteousness, he made the most remarkable threat I have ever heard anyone make directly to a president. He said, ‘If you follow Clifford's advice and if I were to vote in the election, I would vote against you.’
Everyone in the room was stunned. Here was the indispensable symbol of continuity, whom President Truman revered and needed, making a threat that, if it became public, could virtually seal the dissolution of the Truman administration and send the Western Alliance, then in the process of creation, into disarray before it had been fully structured. Marshall's statement fell short of an explicit threat to resign, but it came very close.
Clifford further recounts that in the 12 May 1948 meeting: Lovett and I both tried to step into the ensuing silence with words of conciliation. We both knew how important it was to get this dreadful meeting over with quickly, before Marshall said something even more irretrievable … he [Truman] rose and turned to him and said, ‘I understand your position, General, and I’m inclined to side with you in this matter’ … Marshall did not even glance at me as he and Lovett left.
Clifford claims that after this meeting, Secretary Mashall never mentioned his name again. He also eventually found out that, at day's end on 12 May 1948, Marshall: … did something quite unusual, which the president and I were unaware of at the time. Certain that history would prove him right, he wanted his personal comments included in the official State Department record of the meeting. His record, exactly as he wanted historians to find it when it was declassified, almost three decades later, reads as follows:
‘I remarked to the president that, speaking objectively, I could not help but think that the suggestions made by Mr. Clifford were wrong. I thought that to adopt these suggestions would have precisely the opposite effect from that intended by Mr. Clifford. The transparent dodge to win a few votes would not in fact achieve this purpose. The great dignity of the office of the president would be seriously diminished. The counsel offered by Mr. Clifford was based on domestic political considerations, while the problem which confronted us was international. I said bluntly that if the president were to follow Mr. Clifford's advice and if in the elections I were to vote, I would vote against the president.’30
At this point it is noteworthy that President Truman, judging from his owns accounts and that of his biographers, shows that he was undecided over the issue and confused as to what was best to do. Lobbied on the one hand for the recognition of the Jewish state by his White House adviser, David Niles, and Truman's old army colleague and business partner, Eddie Jacobson, and on the other hand by the ‘wise men’ at the State Department, Truman, on face value, seems to have hesitated. Clifford, however, give the impression that, quite to the contrary, Truman position was set on recognition of the Jewish state. In other words, his position was inflexible and adamantine. At any rate, everyone, it seems – Clifford, Niles, and even the State Department – were in direct communication with Eliahu Epstein, the Washington representative of the Jewish Agency for Israel (which later was to convert itself into the government of new state of Israel). As for Clifford himself, here, in his own words, is his involvement on that day of 14 May 1948: Even without a clear signal from Lovett and Marshall, I felt, we had to set in motion the machinery for recognition, in the event that a favorable decision was made. At 10 a.m., I made a different call – one that I looked on later with great pleasure … I told the Jewish Agency representative [Epstein], ‘we would like you to send an official letter to President Truman before 12 o'clock today formally requesting the United States to recognize the new Jewish state. I would also request that you send a copy of the letter directly to Secretary Marshall.’
Epstein was ecstatic. He did not realize that the president had still not decided how to respond to the request I had just solicited … It was particularly important, I said, that the new state claim nothing beyond the boundaries outlined in the UN resolution of Nov. 29, 1947, because those boundaries were the only ones that had been agreed to … A few minutes later, Epstein called me. ‘We've never done this before, and we're not quite sure how to go about it,’ he said …
With my knowledge and encouragement, Epstein then turned for additional advice to two of the wisest lawyers in Washington, David Ginsburg and Benjamin Cohen, both of whom were great New Dealers and strong supporters of the Zionist cause. Working together during the rest of the morning, he and they drafted the recognition request …31
Clifford then narrates how a staff member of the Jewish Agency for Israel drove to the White House with the request for recognition of the ‘Jewish state’ but was intercepted by another member because Epstein had heard on shortwave radio that the new state was not to be called the ‘Jewish state’ but the ‘state of Israel’ and thus instructed that the letter be corrected in ink before handing over the request for recognition to the White House! At any rate, when it became known to the American delegation at the UN (the latter then pushing for voting for continued trusteeship), the US ambassador to the UN, Warren Austin, walked out of the UN building so as not to be there when US recognition of Israel was announced. Dean Rusk thus had to quickly go to the UN Headquarters to persuade the US delegation members there not to resigning in protest!
Marshall did not resign as was previously feared. Lovett had apparently talked him out of it. According to Clifford, Lovett remained adamant for the rest of his life, however, in his view that the president and I had been wrong. So did most of his colleagues. Nothing could ever convince him, Marshall, Acheson, Forrestal, or Rusk that President Truman had made the right decision … Because President Truman was often annoyed by the tone and fierceness of the pressure exerted on him by American Zionists, he left some people with the impression that he was ambivalent about the events of May 1948. This was not true. He never wavered in his belief that he had taken the right action .32
Truman's fateful decision led to a situation in which three quarters of a million Arab-Palestinians were forced to flee their own country as refugees during the 1947 – 9 fighting, and subsequently caused five Arab-Israeli wars in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and 2006. Had a different decision been taken it seems probable that there would have been no ‘Middle East Crisis’, nor the formation of the various terrorist groups such as the PLO, Hezbollah and others that have resulted in modern times in the dreaded Al Qaeda of Osama Bin Laden, 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.33
Flash forward to 1978: Jerusalem Day
In 1978 Ayatollah Khomeini arrived in triumph in Qom, the holy city of the Shi'a Muslims, and pronounced to an ecstatic and frenzied multitude that
the Islamic Revolution had begun. A year later, now almost deified by his followers, he announced the creation of Al-Quds Day, Jerusalem Day: I invite Muslims all over the globe to consecrate the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan as Al-Quds Day and to proclaim the international solidarity of Muslims in support of the legitimate rights of the Muslim people of Palestine. For many years, I have been notifying the Muslims of the danger posed by the usurper Israel … I ask all the Muslims of the world and the Muslim governments to join together to sever the hand of this usurper and its supporters [America] … and through a ceremony demonstrating the solidarity of Muslims worldwide, announce their support for the legitimate rights of the Muslim people. I ask God Almighty for the victory of the Muslims over the infidels.34
In solidarity with the Palestinians, Khomeini declared the liberation of Jerusalem a religious duty to all Muslims. The Ayatollah then added: In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. Quds Day is an international day, it is not a day devoted to Quds alone. It is the day for the weak and oppressed to confront the arrogant powers, the day for those nations suffering under the pressure of America … The oppressed should arm themselves against the oppressors and rub their noses in the dirt … all the nations should rise up and throw these germs of corruption into the rubbish bin too …