A Calculated Risk. Evan M. Wilson
among both Arabs and Jews which more than thirty years later is still the dominant feature of the conflict.
In November 1943, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin held their first meeting at Tehran. The meeting resulted in some far-reaching decisions regarding the conduct of the war, but there was very little discussion of Middle Eastern questions, and none at all of Palestine; it was an indication of the relative priorities in the thinking of the wartime leaders.
March 1944 was the expiration date of the five-year period during which Jewish immigration into Palestine was to be allowed to continue under the terms of the 1939 White Paper. In anticipation of this date, Jews in this country had been exerting constant pressure on our government to intervene with the British to extend the date and expand the immigration. On December 13, 1943, Hull sent for the British Ambassador, Lord Halifax, and told him that he and the President were in favor of the extension of the immigration quota after the March deadline. 13The Ambassador replied that the British government was already planning to take action along these lines, as not all the certificates available had been used. This in fact was done, and the intention had been already announced in the House of Commons on November 10 (though Hull in his Memoirs claims credit for the action).14 But the Jews were eager for the American government, too, to take some positive steps. At the Anglo-American refugee conference held in Bermuda in April 1943 the British had refused to have Palestine placed on the agenda, but as more and more stories of Nazi atrocities were reported, the Zionists kept up their campaign for Palestine.
In December, Roosevelt, who had had several ideas of havens in various parts of the world for Jewish refugees, sent a well-known attorney and personal friend, Morris L. Ernst, to London to explore the possibilities with British officials.15 But Ernst soon found that any suggestions for an alternative to Palestine would never get anywhere either with the Zionists or with politicians generally in the United States. Reluctantly, he abandoned the project.
For a number of reasons U.S. immigration quotas during these years were substantially unfilled—the difficulties of travel were an obstacle in themselves, and also, for reasons of national security, visa applications were being scrutinized with extra care to prevent enemy agents from entering the country. There were a good many complaints alleging red tape and obstructionism on the part of the State Department's personnel dealing with the refugee problem and with visa matters, but there is no basis for claiming, as has been done, that these officials were responsible for the loss of European Jewry.
I think it is safe to say in this connection that all of my colleagues who were dealing with the refugee question in those years were distressed by the frustrations and disappointments which their work entailed. The security issue was an especially thorny one: how was the overworked, conscientious consular officer to be sure that the visa applicant with the concentration camp number plainly tattooed on his forearm was indeed one of Hitler's victims and not a Nazi spy? As the visa regulations became more and more voluminous, the entire process became more and more cumbersome, and visa officers quite naturally grew cautious in the extreme. But that is not the same as deliberately delaying the process, or being anti-Semitic. as some critics have charged.16
As the year 1943 drew to a close, the following was the situation in the Near East Division as far as Palestine policy was concerned. We had evolved some language (the “full consultation” formula) which we hoped might serve as a statement of U.S. government policy but which might have the drawback of meaning all things to all men. We had advanced a tentative plan for the future of Palestine but were becoming aware that the plan needed modification. And we had been unsuccessful in getting agreement at the highest level to issuing a public statement of policy, which in any event might not have achieved the primary purpose that its sponsors had in mind. All the time, while we were turning in this not very impressive record of accomplishment, the flood of Zionist pressure mail was rising higher and higher in anticipation of the coming election year.
3
PALESTINE BECOMES A POLITICAL ISSUE
As the year 1944 got under way, the Palestine question began taking on more and more importance as part of American domestic politics. The Zionist propaganda campaign launched in 1943 was intensified in an all-out effort to get the American government firmly committed to the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.
On the war fronts, the Allies went on the offensive during the early part of the year. The Red Army drove the Germans out of the Ukraine, crossed into Poland, and entered Romania, then started toward Odessa and the Crimea. In the Pacific, American forces landed in the Marshall Islands and attacked the Japanese at Truk. In Europe, the beachhead at Anzio was established in mid-January, and in March the long siege of Monte Cassino began. Round-the-clock aerial bombings of Germany also started.
In late January, the American Zionist Emergency Council succeeded in obtaining the introduction into both Houses of Congress of identical resolutions calling for unrestricted Jewish immigration into Palestine and for the “reconstitution” of that country as a “free and democratic Jewish Commonwealth” (see Appendix H). These resolutions, which had bipartisan backing, were a pet project of the Council's co-chairman, Rabbi Silver. Their language was very similar to that of the Biltmore Program, except for the substitution of the word “reconstitute” for “be established,” which clearly implied that the new Zion was the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Few people saw any inconsistency in “a free and democratic Jewish Commonwealth” that was two-thirds Arab.
Official Washington was flooded with petitions urging approval of the resolutions, but almost immediately Arab protests also began coming in. These were on a much smaller scale, but they were serious enough to cause anxiety in the Executive branch. Murray submitted a memorandum to his superiors drawing attention to the consequences to our position in the Near East if the resolutions should pass, and the Department sent out instructions to our Foreign Service posts telling them to take the line, in discussing the matter, that “passage of the resolutions by either or both Houses would be only an expression of the individual members of that House and would not be binding on the Executive branch or an expression of the foreign policy of the United States.”2
Chairman Sol Bloom of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives wanted the Department to testify at public hearings which he was holding, but Secretary Hull was reluctant to become involved and sought to pin responsibility for opposing the resolutions on the War Department. Secretary of War Stimson, with the President's approval, wrote a letter to the chairmen of the Senate and House committees stating that the resolutions were prejudicial to the war effort. The ever cautious Hull then wrote a letter to these same chairmen saying that “in view of the military considerations advanced in this regard by the Secretary of War, it is believed that, without reference to its merits, no further action on this resolution would be advisable at this time.” These letters were not made public.3
The House Foreign Affairs Committee conducted several days of hearings, at which the testimony was overwhelmingly in favor of the resolutions. All the major Zionist organizations were heard. The only opposition came from the American Council for Judaism and from three witnesses (two of them Arab-Americans) who supported the Arab point of view.4
As Zionist pressure for passage of the resolutions continued, so did the reaction in the Arab world. The Egyptian and Iraqi ministers together called on Acting Secretary Stettinius, to express the concern of their governments.
Later the Egyptian returned to the Department and handed Paul Alling of NE a note stating among other things that recent developments were giving rise to the impression among the Arabs that “America is supporting the Jews at the expense of the Arabs.”
Our representatives in Baghdad, Damascus, Jidda, and Beirut telegraphed the Department to relay the anxiety and dismay expressed to them by local officials. Loy Henderson, then serving as Minister at Baghdad, reported a conversation with the prime minister of Iraq, Nuri Said, a prominent leader in the Arab world, during which Nuri pointed out that the German radio broadcasts in Arabic were making frequent use of the Congressional resolutions in an effort to “create a lack of confidence among