A Calculated Risk. Evan M. Wilson
survivors of Nazi persecution could find new lives in Palestine. In response to a request by a group of rabbis on the same occasion for an indication of our government's views, Secretary Hull issued a statement praising the contribution of American citizens in building up the Jewish National Home in Palestine. deploring the Nazi persecution of the Jews. and reaffirming our support for the Atlantic Charter. This anodyne declaration, with its sweeping generalizations, was the only government statement duringall of 1942 that even mentioned Palestine. It can certainly not be called a statement of our policy regarding Palestine.
Balfour Day, incidentally, coincided with Montgomery's breakthrough at Alamein in the Western Desert. This success, followed a few days later by the Allied landings in North Africa, was a turning point in the war in Africa. It provoked one of Winston Churchill's most remembered comments, when he said, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the eginning.”9 In the Pacific, meanwhile, the U.S. fleet had begun to take the initiative following the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway earlier in the year.
The record of the Near East Division's involvement in the Palestine question during 1942 is not extensive. In June and again in July, Wallace Murray urged that the United States should issue a statement condemning Zionist agitation as counter to the war effort, but Roosevelt took the attitude that in the existing situation in the Middle East, the less said by everyone the better. On several other occasions during the year Murray submitted memoranda to his superiors that were critical of Zionist aims and warned of the consequences of following a pro-Zionist policy.
Meanwhile, Under Secretary Welles was saying (to a British official) that the Palestine problem could be solved only by the creation of a Jewish state and (to the Zionists) that “not the slightest commitment” would be made to the Arabs without consulting them (the Zionists) and securing their agreement. Neither of these statements appears in the Foreign Relations volume or in the Department archives.
2
THE UNITED STATES FINDS A POLICY
The year 1943 opened with some encouraging developments for the Allies. In the Pacific we finally wrested control of Guadalcanal from the Japanese, while on the Russian front the Germans were forced to surrender at Stalingrad. In January, Roosevelt and Churchill met at Casablanca to discuss the North African campaign and to issue their “unconditional surrender” declaration.
In terms of U.S. Palestine policy, 1943 was a crucial year in that our government for the first time, under pressure of circumstances, adopted a definite line of policy. Since this was also the year that I joined the Near East Division (after an interval of nearly two years following my departure from Cairo in late 1941, during which I did economic warfare work in Mexico City and Washington), I had an opportunity to become familiar with this policy in the early stages of its development.
Up to this time, the United States had not had to have more than a vague attitude toward the Palestine problem. Most Americans, if asked, would probably have said that the Jewish people should be allowed to return to their ancient homeland as the Bible said, but there was very little if any real knowledge or understanding of the Middle East among the public at large. During the 1920s and early 1930s, American Jews had not brought much pressure to bear on the U.S. government to follow a particular line of policy with respect to Palestine, and since we had only a limited involvement in the Near East, the basic conflict of interest—Jewish versus Arab in Palestine—was of no great or immediate concern to us. Of course the dilemma was there, as our policy makers well knew, and it was thus all the more understandable that they should have preferred to have us stand on the sidelines and leave this particular headache to the British.
Secretary of State Hull definitely took the attitude that Palestine was a British responsibility. He directed that this, and no more, should be said in reply to inquiries received by the Department. From 1936 through 1939, in response to the urging of American Jews and their supporters in Congress that we intervene with the British government respecting some particular aspect of the Palestine question, Hull had authorized the American Embassy at London to make an approach to the British, but mainly this had been in the form of informal, oral inquiries.
After Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into the war, the Palestine problem began to come more actively to the notice of officials in Washington. By 1943, it was evident that our government could no longer confine itself to generalized statements based on United Nations principles, or on the Atlantic Charter. This was because of the interaction of two factors: the growing Zionist agitation in this country and the reaction to this in the Arab world.
Zionist activity, which began building up after the Biltmore Conference in May 1942, was steadily increasing. In January 1943, representatives of thirty-two national Jewish membership organizations met in Pittsburgh with the purpose of organizing a representative body to develop a common program of action respecting “the postwar status of Jews and the upbuilding of a Jewish Palestine.” This led to the American Jewish Conference, numbering 501 delegates, which met at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City later in the year. Of the delegates, 379 were elected by local and regional Jewish groups and 122 were appointed by the national organizations. The Zionists worked hard to secure the selection of a preponderant Zionist majority among the delegates, with the result that approximately four-fifths of the total number were regarded as having Zionist sympathies.
The Conference passed a number of resolutions, of which the most important endorsed in its entirety the Biltmore Program. This resolution was adopted as the result of an impassioned speech by Rabbi Silver, who repeated his remarkable oratorical performance of the previous year at the Biltmore Conference. Asserting that the Balfour Declaration had not been intended to be merely “an immigrant aid scheme,” Silver argued that the establishment of a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine was “essential for the salvation of a people fighting for its very life” and that rescue of European Jews, free immigration into Palestine, and statehood were “inseparable links” in a single chain.
Silver's speech met with an emotional response on the part of the assembled delegates, many of whom were moved to tears. “Hatikva,” the Zionist anthem, was sung over and over and Silver was roundly cheered. From then on, it was clear that the Conference would come out for the full Biltmore program, even though some delegates, notably those representing the non-Zionist American Jewish Committee, questioned the wisdom of this. When the final vote was taken, there were only four delegates who dissented.
This vote was particularly significant because it came from a convention of delegates representing the whole spectrum of the Jewish community, not just Zionists, as had been true of the Biltmore Conference. This point was stressed by a delegation of the Conference leadership that called on Secretary Hull to present him with a set of its resolutions, which were described as “the expression of the will and opinion of the overwhelming majority of the American Jewish community.” The subsequent withdrawal of the American Jewish Committee from the Conference (which was a continuing body) did not minimize its importance, for it was now clear that the vast majority of American Jewish opinion supported the Biltmore appeal for a Jewish state.
The Interim Committee of the Conference immediately launched an intensive propaganda campaign with the goal of bringing American public opinion to sympathize with Zionist aims and of eliciting pledges of support from public officials at all levels. The ultimate purpose was to win the U.S. government over to the concept of a Jewish state in Palestine. The campaign was designed to appeal first to those who were impressed by the humanitarian argument and by the need to rescue the victims of Hitler's persecution; second, to those who believed that the return of the Jewish people to Zion was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy; and third, to those who saw the Zionist Jews in Palestine as a liberal, progressive, and democratic element in the Middle East. The link between the plight of the Jewish refugees and the necessity for a Jewish state was always stressed. The line taken was often strongly anti-British.
The American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs was reorganized as the American Zionist Emergency Council, which took over the direction of the campaign with an annual budget of $500,000. Rabbi Silver and Rabbi Wise were named co-chairmen. The Emergency Council, generally known as AZEC, with headquarters