A Calculated Risk. Evan M. Wilson
of our jurisdiction, including Palestine. There thus can be no basis for alleging, as has sometimes been done in Zionist circles, that NE was interfering in our government's Palestine policy—this was our duty.
The day-to-day operations of the Near East Division were generally similar to those of the other geographical or political divisions of the Department. Divisional papers, whether calling for action or simply transmitting information, customarily originated at the lowest level, that is, the desk officer, and proceeded up through channels to higher authority, with the most important papers, those intended for the President, receiving approval of the Secretary or Acting Secretary. A given paper, by the time it reached the top level, might have been redrafted one or more times to incorporate the suggestions of officers along the way. Through the system of clearances, though this was not so burdensome as it became later on, the papers were made to reflect the views of all officers having an interest in the matter in hand, in other divisions, at higher levels of the Department, or even in other agencies. This process naturally involved a certain amount of give and take, but it could be said that by the time it had been completed a consensus of U.S. policy on the subject had been reached.
Because of problems peculiar to the Palestine issue, there were two important respects in which the work of the Near East Division differed from that of the other divisions. In the first place, a very considerable portion of the paperwork relating to the Palestine problem had to receive the personal attention of the President—which brought the desk officer into much closer touch with the White House than was the case elsewhere in the Department. Secondly, the special way in which matters pertaining to Palestine were handled by the U.S. government gave rise to a whole range of problems that were unique as well as frustrating in the extreme. Frequently we were kept in the dark about important developments that took place at higher levels. We were dependent on the press for learning which Zionist leaders had been received at the White House, and what the President had said to them, or, in some cases, allowed them to make public in his name. Perhaps the worst example of this occurred in August 1945 when President Truman wrote Prime Minister Clement Attlee of Great Britain urging the immediate entry into Palestine of one hundred thousand displaced Jews. A month later, the Division was still seeking confirmation of press reports that Truman had approached Attlee on the subject.
There were many other examples of this sort of thing, especially when the Palestine question was before the United Nations in 1947 and 1948. Indeed, an examination of the material available today in the Roosevelt and Truman libraries, as well as in the Zionist archives, has provided me with a number of surprises in the way of things of which I had not been aware during the time I was on the Palestine desk.
A fact of life to which we had to resign ourselves was that we were generally unable to find out what U.S. policy toward Palestine was. As early as 1942, Murray proposed that President Roosevelt should be asked to define our policy, but no answer was forthcoming. Later on, in spite of many attempts, the Department never obtained from President Truman any clear set of instructions as to the line to take. Thus we were forced to operate more or less in a vacuum.
One thing, however, was certain: whenever a Presidential statement favorable to the Jewish side gave rise to Arab protests, as was frequently the case, it was the Near East Division that was called on to smooth things over and prepare a reply. After we had exercised our ingenuity in an effort to provide some plausible explanation, a grateful President would initial our draft and the reply would go out. We became quite accustomed to this syndrome: Presidential statement, Arab protest, reply prepared by NE, Presidential approval.
It is not surprising that with these frustrations some of us developed ulcers and that at times we despaired of ever being able to carry out the duties assigned to us. In retrospect the wonder is that a handful of officers, working mostly under difficult wartime conditions, should have been able to achieve so large an output of important policy papers as appears in the annual Foreign Relations volumes and still to have kept up with our other daily tasks.
THE WHITE HOUSE AND PALESTINE
Palestine was an issue both in our foreign relations and in our domestic politics. Thus it tended to be handled in two separate ways, and the State Department often did not know what the White House was doing. Roosevelt had an assistant David K. Niles—who dealt with minority groups, including the Jewish community, and thus served as the Jews’ point of contact at the White House and was often consulted by the President regarding Palestine. Ironically, Niles was housed in the old State Department building, directly below Murray and Henderson, but we never saw him and had no idea of his activities.
Under Truman, Niles continued to be one of the most influential Presidential advisers on Palestine. Another was Judge Samuel Rosenman, who was Special Counsel to the President from 1943 to mid-1946, when he was succeeded by Clark M. Clifford, who was to play a key role at the time of Truman's recognition of Israel.
The advice regarding the domestic aspect of the Palestine problem which the President received from members of the White House staff, from Congress, or from the Democratic National Committee, was something that was never passed to us in NE. Forrestal Diaries first made public the intervention in the Palestine question of Chairman Hannegan of the Democratic National Committee. Considerably more information on this general subject is now available in the Roosevelt and Truman libraries.
The papers in the two Presidential libraries, as well as in the Niles collection and in the Zionist archives, provide ample evidence of the involvement of the White House in the Palestine question. As will be brought out in this book, at times the intervention of the White House staff was decisive, notably in 1947-48 but on certain earlier occasions as well. The consequences in terms of our Middle Eastern policy as a whole are evident to this day.
THE JEWISH COMMUNITY IN PALESTINE AT THE TIME OF PEARL HARBOR
“We shall fight the war as if there were no White Paper, and we shall fight the White Paper as if there were no war.” This characteristic assertion by David Ben Gurion, the fiery chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive in Jerusalem, conveys very expressively the mood of the Jewish community in Palestine during the early years of the Second World War. With the outbreak of war in September 1939, Palestine had become relatively quiet as the focus of world attention shifted elsewhere, to the Western Desert and to Europe. This was in marked contrast to the years immediately preceding, when the country had been in constant turmoil.
Initially, the Jewish community offered its full cooperation to the British in the war against Germany. There was of course no question as to where the Jews stood as far as Hitler was concerned, and many of them hoped that their cooperation might lead to a relaxation of the White Paper restrictions on Jewish immigration and land settlement. Some 18,000 Palestine Jews enlisted in the British forces, and the community did a great deal to help the British war effort, particularly in connection with military orders placed with Jewish industry, Jewish terrorist activity, which had sprung up immediately after the release of the White Paper, now declined.
However as the months passed, with no sign that the British had any intention of modifying the White Paper policy. Jewish resentment grew. The Jews of Palestine began to seek ways of bringing in as many refugee Jews as possible from occupied Europe, legally or illegally, and to agitate for a separate Jewish fighting force.
The Jewish community, the Yishav, was highly organized. Its most important body was the Jewish Agency, which was created specifically by the Mandate and which represented in Palestine the interests of the World Zionist Organization. The Agency had the responsibility of promoting the development of the Jewish National Home. At this time, Dr. Chaim Weizmann was serving as president both of the World Zionist Organization and of the Jewish Agency. The chairman of the Agency's Executive, as already noted, was Ben Gurion; the head of the Political Department was Moshe Shertok (later Sharett), and the treasurer was Eliezer Kaplan. A prominent figure in Zionist circles in Palestine was Goldie Myerson (later Golda Meir) who at the time was a member of the Vand Hapoel, the Executive of the Histadrut, the influential General Federation of Jewish Labor, which had connections with every segment of Jewish life in the country.
The Jewish community had already developed into something of a state within a state, with its own executive (the Jewish Agency), legislature (the Vaud Leumi or National Council) trade union system (the Histadrut),