May 13, 2008 (expanded) Over the past few weeks, The Lobby and its Christian acolytes in government and the media have been forcing the world’s governments to celebrate 60 years of Israeli “statehood.” Even the three U.S. presidential [sic] nominees are falling over themselves to pay homage to their political master. I said “forcing” because I find it impossible to believe that any law-abiding democratic government would of its own free will celebrate a geopolitical perversity founded on torture, theft, murder, gangsterism and blackmail. If that were not the case we should have seen official celebrations of: • Nazi Germany (Jan. 30, 1933); These tyrannies, fortunately, have all wound up on the ash heap of history. The fact that the same fate has not befallen the Jewish tyranny in Palestine is entirely due to the coercive power of The Lobby and the corruption of President Harry Truman, who, 60 years ago, sold the U.S.’s political soul for the sake of re-election. The following account from Edwin Wright, Middle East specialist for Near East-South Asian-African Affairs, shows what sort of soul-selling coercion was put on Truman: “When the election was coming up in 1946 in New York, [a] group of New York Jews called upon Mr. Truman. Emmanuel Cellar was the head of this committee. Rabbi Steven Wise and several others were in it. They called upon Mr. Truman and said, ‘We have just been talking with Mr. [Tom] Thomas Dewey. He is willing to come out and declare for a Jewish state, and we are going to turn our money and urge the Jews to vote for him unless you beat him to it.’ Then Emmanuel Cellar pounded upon Mr. Truman’s desk and said, ‘And if you don't come out for a Jewish state we’ll run you out of town.’”* Against his better judgment Truman capitulated, but his statement on the founding of Israel is anything but a ringing endorsement.
• “Jewish state” is crossed out in favour of “State of Israel.” Based upon this document it’s hard to tell that the U.S. even recognized Israel as a legitimate state. In fact, the creation of Israel is mired in so much coercion, blackmail and bribery that any reasonable student of the event would have to conclude that Israel has never had a moral right to exist. For The Lobby, therefore, the historical record is very much something to be feared since it contains the truth about Israel’s origins. Since this history is accessible to any discerning scholar via the Internet, the Lobby has to do more than spread lies about Jews finding “empty” Palestine, censor of contrary information, and smear those who stand up for honest scholarship. History, itself, has to be torqued to support the myths of Israeli legitimacy and necessity. A May 7 opinion piece by former U.S. diplomat and Washington Post columnist Richard Holbrooke is an excellent example of the kind of slick, tendentious dissembling that masquerades as plausible scholarship. As Holbrooke describes the matter, Truman and his neophyte domestic political advisor Clark Clifford, who would later make the textual changes to Truman's statement, were virtually alone in supporting partition and recognition of Israel, whereas the highly respected Secretary of State George C. Marshall and almost the entire foreign policy establishment wanted Palestine to be placed under UN trusteeship. The big problem for the reader is less what Holbrooke says but Holbrooke himself. How far can he be trusted? What is he not telling? Is the picture he paints believable? On the one hand, Holbrooke has great credentials and intimate knowledge of the event. On the other hand, he co-authored Clifford’s memoirs, which means his version of events is biased. This bias comes through in his subtle denigration of the foreign policy establishment. He praises Marshall and the “wise men” who formulated “the great Truman foreign policy of the late 1940s” but he never gives us insight into their arguments. They are mentioned only to be attacked. Holbrooke even invokes the canard of “anti-Semitism” to condemn Defence Secretary James Forrestal for having pointed out the uselessness of sacrificing the interests of 30 million Arabs for the sake of 600,000 Jews. For Holbrooke, the anti-recognition side was driven by the parochial interests of “oil, numbers and history.” Those for recognition were all sweetness and light. Not surprisingly, Holbrooke makes no mention of zionist strong-arm tactics, the corrupting influence of zionists on the 1948 election, or the electoral imperative of selling out. According to Loy Henderson, director of Near Eastern and African Affairs: “If Truman had taken positions that would have resulted in a failure to establish the Jewish State, he would almost certainly have been defeated in the November elections, since the Zionists had almost the full support of the Congress, the United States media and most of the American people.”† Against this observation and the abovementioned reports of zionist threats, Holbrooke offers this weak apologia: “Clifford insisted to me and others in countless discussions over the next 40 years that politics was not at the root of his position—moral conviction was.” If that be the case, how does Holbrooke explain what happened to Henderson (and doubtless others) who championed UN trusteeship out of moral conviction? As Edwin Wright recounted: “The Zionists went to various people like Drew Pearson and Walter Winchell and said, ‘Smear this fellow. Destroy his character and get him out of Government.’… The result was Mr. Henderson became the target of Zionist attacks. All kinds of false stories were told about him in these columns by Walter Winchell and others. I was at that time Mr. Henderson’s assistant and I answered many of the letters, because he didn’t have time to do it himself. I was his sort of alter ego in handling much of this correspondence, and I saw the kind of letters that he got. They were vituperative. Walter Winchell accused him of crucifying the Jews the way that the Jews had been crucified earlier, and so forth, and so on…”§
“It has become clear that the partition plan cannot be carried out at this time by peaceful means. We could not undertake to impose this solution on the people of Palestine by the use of American troops, both on Charter grounds and as a matter of national policy. The United Kingdom has announced its firm intention to abandon its mandate in Palestine on May 15. Unless emergency action is taken, there will be no public authority in Palestine on that date capable of preserving law and order.… “The United States has proposed to the Security Council a temporary United Nations trusteeship for Palestine to provide a government to keep the peace. Such trusteeship was proposed only after we had exhausted every effort to find a way to carry out partition by peaceful means. Trusteeship is not proposed as a substitute for the partition plan but as an effort to fill the vacuum soon to be created by the termination of the mandate on May 15.” Besides painting a false black-and-white view of conflict over Israel, Holbrooke commits serious errors of omission. He casually speaks of the partition of Palestine as if it were a legitimate option, but the UN’s Partition Plan passed by the General Assembly on Nov. 29, 1947, was not legitimate. The UN had no authority to take land from one people to give to another, and even if it had, the plan was not ratified by the Security Council, which means it does not exist. Since the plan was never ratified, partition was never a legitimate option; because partition was never a legitimate option, Truman had no legal basis for recognizing Israel. Now, watch as Holbrooke tries to trick the reader: “To this day, many think that Marshall and Lovett were right on the merits and that domestic politics was the real reason for Truman's decision. Israel, they argue, has been nothing but trouble for the United States.”
What about the Arabs' survival? Israel has been nothing but trouble for the United States, but note how Holbrooke mentions this fact only to discredit it. Now comes the point of the piece: “Truman’s decision, although opposed by almost the entire foreign policy establishment, was the right one—and despite complicated consequences that continue to this day, it is a decision all Americans should recognize and admire.” We are to admire a state that tortures children, ransacks orphanages, humiliates and terrorizes non-Jews as a matter of national policy, and has openly threatened genocide against Palestinians if they stand up for themselves?! It’s a matter of debate which is the more responsible for the Palestinian genocide—the perpetrator (Israel) or the facilitator (the U.S.) Can a monster, following its nature, be held responsible for committing atrocities if its creator, knowing the monster’s nature, deliberately failed to prevent the atrocities and then actively participated in them? More than a just celebration [sic] of Israeli “statehood,” May 15 commemorates The Lobby’s purchase of the White House, and the beginning of the U.S.’s role as an accessory to a war crime. This is the real history that Holbrooke and others try to cover up. Sources |
