Rabbi Abba Silver, a Cleveland Zionist with Republican contacts, and Zionist official Emmanuel Neumann, initiated "Democratic and Republican competition for the Jewish vote." In 1944 they "wrung support from the conventions of both parties for the Taft-Wagner [Senate] resolution" supporting abrogation of the Palestine immigration limits in the 1939 British white paper, and the establishment of Palestine as a Jewish commonwealth. Ensuring the traditional loyalty of Jewish voters was a paramount concern of Democratic politicians, up to the president himself, in the New York mayoral election of 1945, the 1946 congressional elections, and the 1948 presidential election.

Gentile opinion was also courted in non-electoral ways, through the American Palestine Committee of notables, constituted in 1941 by Emmanuel Neumann of the American Zionist Emergency Committee. By 1946 it included "sixty-eight senators, two hundred congressmen and several state governors" with "seventy-five local chapters." It became "'the preeminent symbol of pro-Zionist sentiment among the non-Jewish American public.'" It was entirely a Zionist front.

Zionist control was discreet but tight. The Committee's correspondence was drafted in the AZEC headquarters and sent to [chairman New York Senator Robert] Wagner for his signature. Mail addressed to Wagner as head of the American Palestine Committee, even if it came from the White House or the State Department, was opened and kept in Zionist headquarters; Wagner received a copy. The AZEC placed ads in the press under the committee's name without bothering to consult or advise it in advance, until one of its members meekly requested advance notice.

Dewey Stone, a Zionist businessman, had financed Truman's vice-presidential campaign in 1944, and businessman Abraham Feinberg, with jewelry magnate Edmund Kauffman, led fundraising for the otherwise penniless 1948 presidential campaign. "If not for my friend Abe, I couldn't have made the [whistle-stop train] trip and I wouldn't have been elected," Truman stated. "Feinberg's activities began a process that made the Jews into 'the most conspicuous fundraisers and contributors to the Democratic Party.'"

Key White House advisors ensured the domination of Zionist viewpoints in the highest circles of the Truman Administration. Jewish aides David Niles, administrative assistant to Truman, and Max Lowenthal, special assistant on Palestine to Clark Clifford, himself "Truman's key advisor on Palestine at the White House," were especially crucial. Niles was one of two presidential aides retained from the Roosevelt Administration, the other being Samuel Rosenman. Niles was Truman's chief political liaison with the Jewish community. Lowenthal was the Harvard-trained former counsel to the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee on which Truman had served, who specialized in drafting Zionist memoranda. In 1952 Truman stated in a letter to Lowenthal, "I don't know who has done more for Israel than you have." Clifford, an ambitious Missouri lawyer, like so many non-Jewish Democrats saw the manifest political advantages of Zionism; Truman's 1948 victory launched Clifford's career as consummate Washington insider. The "White House through its busy and assorted 'aides' never wanted for advice on the Palestine question. All together the quantity of well-argued advice coming in through various unofficial channels was enormous and would provide an efficient counter to that coming from the president's official foreign policy-making body, the State Department."

This formidable apparatus was deployed at every twist and turn on the sinous path of events that culminated in Israel's creation. In 1945 the Zionist lobby linked concern for the Jewish displaced persons languishing in European camps to the Palestine question, and pressured Truman to endorse a Jewish Agency proposal for the British to admit 100,000 Jewish immigrants to Palestine. In April, 1946, a joint Anglo-American commission, with US Zionist members, duly endorsed the immigration proposal, among others, and talks about a comprehensive political settlement continued, resulting in the Morrison-Grady plan for a federal state with autonomy for Arab and Jewish provinces. Truman thought this then and later "the best of all solutions proposed for Palestine." The plan fell short of Zionist aspirations toward partition, and under intense pressure, with the fall elections looming, Truman reluctantly declined to endorse it.

The Jewish Agency Executive, the governing body of the Zionist settlement in Palestine, proposed partition in early August. On October 4, 1946, the eve of Yom Kippur, Truman delivered his famous statement noting the Morrison-Grady plan, and the Jewish Agency partition proposal, calling the latter a solution which "would command the support of public opinion in the United States." Despite Truman's further observations that "the gap between the proposals" could be bridged, and that the US government could support such a compromise, the statement was intepreted as support for partition and a Jewish state, as Niles predicted to the author, the Jewish Agency representative in Washington, whose original draft had been modified by the State Department.

The Yom Kippur statement marked a watershed in the political and diplomatic struggle for the Jewish state. The British saw in the statement a demonstration of Jewish political power and gave up their quest for an Anglo-American consensus on Palestine. [British Foreign Secretary] Bevin began issuing threats that the British would evacuate Palestine, and in February 1947 they did indeed refer the question with no recommendation to the United Nations.

The United Nations Special Commission on Palestine was formed after the British announcement. Truman, "undoubtedly embarrassed by accusationsthat he had exploited the Palestine question for domestic political gain" with his Yom Kippur statement, thereafter remained silent. Before the UNSCOP decision, Truman still retained hope for the 1946 Morrison-Grady plan. When on August 31, 1947, UNSCOP announced its majority decision recommending partition, the administration came under overwhelming pressure to endorse it.

The State Department, like the War Department and most of the government, and elite opinion generally, viewed good relations with the Arab states and people as the basis of US interests in the region's oil, in trade and investment, military basing rights, and excluding the rising bogey of Soviet influence. But the Zionist machine was at full throttle, Democratic politicians from Congress to the Cabinet protested vehemently to Truman about the political consequences, and a statement endorsing partition was made at the UN on October 11. Truman did fear that if partition became a US plan, it would require US military forces to implement. Neither the US nor the USSR, which endorsed partiton two days after the US, lobbied for votes among member states, and on Wednesday, November 26, the General Assembly approved the final draft partition resolution by one vote less than the required two-thirds majority. The partition forces postponed the final vote, and over the Thanksgiving holiday the president, his aides and US diplomats went to work. That Saturday, November 29, partition passed by 33 to 13, with ten abstentions. Truman took personal credit for changing several votes.

The Zionists had been waging war against the British to drive them out of Palestine, and after the UN partition vote, civil war broke out with the Palestinian Arabs, who rejected partition. In February the State Department prepared plans for a UN trusteeship, with White House knowledge and approval. On March 18, a UN commission to monitor events in Palestine, which had predicted further chaos and bloodshed after the British withdrawal on May 14, reported its failure to arrange any agreement between Jews and Arabs. The following day the US ambassador to the UN announced the trusteeship proposal, which brought a political firestorm down on Truman, and on March 25, at a press conference he explained that trusteeship was only a means of eventually implementing the UN resolution for partition. The Arabs rejected it, as did the Zionists.

Yet Truman's political fortunes continued to plummet; the Democratic Party revolted against his presidential candidacy. As Zionist forces achieved partition (and more) in battle, pressure built for recognition of the Jewish state, expected to be proclaimed on the final day of British withdrawal, May 14. The State Department was opposed; Secretary Marshall feared Jewish military successes would be temporary, that the Zionists would partition Palestine with King Abdullah of Transjordan without reaching a settlement with the Palestinian Arabs (which did happen), and that recognition would prejudice efforts to arrange a truce under UN auspices after May 14. Zionist pressure was ferocious; the White House "aides" were very busy; Clifford essentially commissioned the request for recognition from the Jewish Agency representative in Washington, which was duly delivered to the White House, and at 6:11 PM on May 14 Truman announced de facto recognition of the State of Israel, flummoxing the US delegation at the UN, and US allies. Marshall stated that, during a May 17 discussion, Truman "treated it somewhat as a joke as I had done but I think we both thought privately it was a hell of a mess," and felt that the US "had hit its all-time low before the U.N."

US diplomacy in the ensuing Arab-Israeli war was conducted along similar lines. For all his accommodation of Zionism, Truman received only 75% of the Jewish vote, compared to Roosevelt's typical 90%. Truman lost New York, Dewey's home state, where there was also a large vote for Wallace. Truman did narrowly win Ohio, Illinois and California, helped by Jewish voters. After describing this tour de force of domestic power politics, Michael Cohen, whose work is mainly quoted here, argues that Israel's military prowess changed the views of the British and US diplomatic and military establishments. "[T]he White House and State Department, if only ephemerally, came to a consensus on Israel's vital importance to the West as a 'strategic asset."' The qualification "ephemerally" acknowledges the Eisenhower presidency, during which Israel was largely not regarded as a strategic asset.

Cohen attributes Truman's susceptibility to Zionist influence to a "unique set of circumstances that converged to determine the fate of Palestine," including Jewish friends, White House advisors, key Jewish Democratic Party fundraisers, and Zionist military prowess, which "should not be expected ever to repeat themselves." The circumstances were not at all unique, but have been practically a recipe for quasi-sovereign Jewish influence on foreign policy in Democratic administrations. By institutionalization throughout the political culture, this influence extends to Republican administrations as well; Eisenhower was an exception. Such influence is not sinister or conspiratorial, but the overt working of US-style capitalist democracy, albeit on behalf of racism, war and genocide, and with a paralyzing effect, in this case, on the liberal circles which usually oppose such matters.

The chauvinism of US organized Jewry is a distinctive feature of US society and history, comparable in importance to classic US singularities like slavery, and the absence of a socialist left, and their crippling legacies. Jewish influence in the Democratic Party, and its impact on foreign policy, notably on the inability of Democrats to mount a critique of the Iraq war and Middle East policy, is comparable to the influence of the Dixiecrats, the segregationist Southern Democrats, on civil rights, labor law and other issues. The moral antipode to organized Jewish power is not an orthodoxy which misattributes Jewish influence to "strategic interest," but anti-Zionism. Left internationalism, in which Jews were prominent, and classical Reform Judaism, once the dominant Jewish creed, emphatically rejected Zionism as a reactionary ideology, rejected modern Jewish nationality, and affirmed the Jewish place as a minority in liberal or revolutionary society. Anti-Zionism need not mean, immediately, a secular democratic state in Palestine, but the moral and intellectual framework which rejects Zionist claims on Jewish identity and gentile conscience, and asserts liberal and revolutionary values against radical nationalism.

Harry Clark grew up in the Illinois congressional district represented for twenty-two years by Paul Findley, a centrist Republican. Findley's support for the Palestinians aroused the ire of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, which eventually drove him from office. Studying Zionism is an avocation.

A pdf of this article with footnotes can be found on Clark's website.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~hfc/mideast/trumanisrael.PDF

© 2006 by Harry Clark

According to the Haaretz report, the site, Baztab, published details about a month ago of what it termed "an interrogation" of the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah on July 12. Baztab's report claimed that the soldiers had admitted that Israel planned a military attack on Hezbollah in September or October, and the kidnapping had foiled this plan.

Based on this report and other information published on the site, AIPAC concluded that Baztab, which is supported by an American server, has ties with a terrorist organization. It therefore asked the U.S. Treasury Department to order the site shut down.

Chirac urged Israel to end its air and sea blockade of Lebanon, saying the measure - intended to cut Hezbollah's supply lines - was "seriously harming" the economy. He also called for the holding of an international conference to address the aid situation following 34 days of bloodshed.

Under UN resolution 1701, which ended the fighting, a robust international force is to deploy in south Lebanon.

European Union states have so far pledged nearly 7,000 troops, nearly half the envisaged total of 15,000.

France - which co-sponsored the text - is to command the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) until February, when Italy will take over, and is sending 2,000 soldiers to form one of its biggest contingents.

Chirac said the UN text provided "the framework for a lasting settlement based on Israel's security and Lebanon's sovereignty over its whole territory."

It "outlines a process which must lead to the disarmament of militias and the settlement of border questions, including that of the Shebaa Farms," a disputed territory controlled by Israel, Chirac said.

Israel captured the small, mountainous territory between Lebanon, Syria and Israel in the June 1967 Middle East war, but it is now claimed by Beirut with the backing of Damascus.

Chirac appealed directly to Syria - Hezbollah's key backer along with Iran - to help secure a lasting peace in the region.

He urged Damascus to "move beyond its isolationist logic", saying the Middle East "needs Syria to be active in the service of peace and regional stability."

Concerning the stand-off over Iran's nuclear programme - which Washington suspects is a cover for weapons development - Chirac also said Iran had a duty "to ease the concerns of others and work towards regional stability, as befits a major, responsible country."

"I exhort Tehran once more to take the necessary steps in order to create the conditions for trust," he said. "There is always room for dialogue."

"Iran will not find security by developing clandestine programmes, but by becoming fully part of the international community."

Iran is under pressure from the international community to suspend its programme of uranium enrichment, and the UN Security Council has given it until August 31 to comply or face the threat of sanctions.

Tehran on Sunday underscored its determination to produce nuclear fuel but said it still sought talks on Western concerns about its nuclear programme.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is due to travel from Lebanon to both Tehran and Damascus later this week, as part of a Middle East tour that will also take him to Israel and the Palestinian territories.

On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Chirac called for a rapid meeting of the Middle East quartet - EU, UN, United States and Russia - to relaunch the stalled peace process as a key to regional stability.

"To accept the status-quo is to risk an escalation of violence that would escape all control," Chirac told the ambassadors' conference, saying the "commitment of the international community" was "key" to the peace process.

The number of personnel involved in the deployment is not yet clear, but Spain's Socialist government is reportedly considering sending 700-1,000 troops to the Middle East state.

The government is expected to approve the deployment at Friday's Cabinet meeting, however the mission also needs approval from parliament.

Until now at least 32 countries have promised troops or support for an international force in southern Lebanon to monitor a UN-brokered ceasefire.

Cemil Cicek, a government spokesman, said on Monday that parliament will convene to debate the deployment this week or next.

Cicek said: "In principle, we've decided to join the UN peacekeeping mission.

"The issue was debated in detail, considering our country's national interests. We will call on the parliament to meet in the shortest time."

Domestic opposition

The cabinet's decision comes amid mounting opposition in Turkey to a deployment.

Ahmet Necdet Sezer, Turkey's president, who holds a ceremonial post but wields considerable influence in the country, has come out strongly against the deployment.

On Friday Sezer said it was not Turkey's "responsibility to protect the interests of other countries".

Several legislators within the ruling Justice and Development Party have also spoken out against a possible deployment.

But the United States, the European Union and Israel have been pressing Turkey, the only Muslim member of Nato and a country with close ties to Israel and Arab countries, to send peacekeepers.

Turkey ruled Lebanon for about 400 years during the Ottoman Empire and many Turkish officials are keen for their country to have a say in an area that they regard as Turkey's back yard.

Italian troops

Italy has also given the final go-ahead to deploying 2,500 troops in southern Lebanon.

"If, as we expect, the contingent manages to leave tomorrow morning, it will be operational on September 1," Arturo Parisis, Italy's defence minister, said.

Bulgaria said it would probably send "around a hundred" soldiers to Lebanon, said Ivaylo Kalfin, the foreign minister, on Monday.

Romania said on Monday that it would not contribute any troops towards the force.

The UN secretary-general arrived on Tuesday in the southern town of Naqoura, where a 2,000 strong UN Interim Force (UNIFIL) contingent is based, and laid a wreath at a memorial in honour of UN soldiers killed during the 34-day conflict.

The UN secretary-general has urged both sides to respect the ceasefire, which he believes can only be upheld by full implementation of resolution 1701.

Middle East tour

Annan is due to leave for Israel on Tuesday before heading to Syria and Iran, which are believed to be the main backers of the Lebanese Shia Muslim resistance movement Hezbollah.

Annan has said he will ask Israel to immediately lift its sea and air blockade of Lebanon imposed nearly seven weeks ago.

He has also said that he will ask Syria to police its border with Lebanon to prevent arms supplies to Hezbollah, something that Israel has said is justification for Israeli air strikes that were carried out inside Lebanon days after the ceasefire began two weeks ago.

On Monday, Annan met Fuad Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister, and the ministers of defence and interior, along with Major-General Alain Pellegrini, the UNIFIL commander, to discuss steps the government has taken to tighten border security and what equipment and technical help it might need.

Keeping the peace

At his news conference in Beirut, Annan urged Hezbollah to release the two Israeli soldiers whose capture in a cross-border raid on July 12 sparked the conflict.

Hezbollah wants to swap the two soldiers for Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails through indirect negotiations.

Israel is also trying to secure the release of a third soldier captured by Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip.

"And of course the (Lebanese) government needs measures to assure, ensure that the entrances (to) the country -- sea, land and air -- are secure," he said during a ceremony at the UN headquarters in the southern town of Naqura.

"I think the time has come for the siege to be lifted, the Lebanese have shown they are serious about the implementation of (UN Security Council Resolution) 1701 in all the deployments and efforts they have made."

Annan hailed the Lebanese government for having already "taken very serious steps" in deploying thousands of soldiers along the country's borders with Israel and
Syria.

"They are also in serious consultation with the German government, to give them expertise and equipment in order to protect their land border, the airports and the sea," he said.

Israel has maintained its blockade on Lebanon despite a ceasefire that took effect on August 14, ending a month-long offensive against the country.

Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert conditioned the lifting of the blockade on the deployment of international troops at the Beirut airport and on the border with Syria.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad warned that such a deployment would be viewed as a hostile act and threatened to close the border with Lebanon if it happened.

"The committee will be charged with the task of examining the functioning of the government, its proceedings and decision making and anything else it sees fit to examine," he said in a televised speech Tuesday.

But he rejected the establishment of a state commission -- the most powerful type of inquiry in Israel -- which he said would "competely paralyse" the leadership when warfare was not yet fully over and
Iran posed a threat.

Politicians on both the left and right-wing united in a maelstrom of criticism that Olmert, whose approval ratings have sunk to an all-time low since taking office in May, had backed a toothless inquiry.

The nation's leadership, already reeling from scandal, has come under heavy fire over Israel's month-long war against Hezbollah, which failed to stop rocket attacks or free two soldiers captured by the Shiite guerrillas in July 12 cross-border raids that sparked the offensive.

Ami Ayalon, an MP with Olmert's main coalition partner, the centre-left Labour, branded the prime minister's decision a political mistake.

"I don't think this is what we need. They have no power to investigate people, no power to look at documents. It's a political mistake," he told Israeli radio.

"There is not the slightest chance of getting to the truth because it lacks power," added Danny Naveh, former cabinet minister and member of the opposition right-wing Likud party.

A group of army reservists, blasting military "indecisiveness", unclear war aims, confused orders, food, fuel and water shortages, and the slowness in launching a major ground assault, have spearheaded calls for a full investigative commission, along with several cabinet members.

But Olmert aides Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit and Interior Minister Ronni Bar-On defended the prime minister.

"If there were a state commission of inquiry, Ehud Olmert would actually come out clean," said Sheetrit, appointed temporary justice minister to replace Haim Ramon who was forced to resign amid allegations of sexual assault.

"His decision to go for an investigative committee and not a state commission stems from his concern that it would paralyse the establishment for several years, instead of dealing with the issues," he told army radio.

MPs in the parliamentary foreign affairs and defence committee complained that their chairman, Tzahi Hanegbi, a senior member of Olmert's Kadima party, prevented them from holding a vote in favour of a state commission.

Olmert's decision was greeted with scorn by several dozen reservists and protestors who have camped out in front of his Jerusalem office to demand a state inquiry, but have yet to galvanise the momentum that toppled the government after the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

"The public is not stupid and it will totally reject this conspiratorial attempt to create a smokescreen and not investigate the truth. This committee is only a fig leaf," wrote its chairman Eliad Shraga in the Maariv daily.

The country's best selling newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, condemned what it branded "the mother of all whitewashes" while the liberal Haaretz daily dismissed the committee as a "national farce".

Nonetheless the generally pro-governmental Maariv said it believed Olmert had made the right decision in not opting for the paralysing type of commission ordered after the 1973 war and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

"The committee whose establishment Olmert declared last night is the lesser evil. Its shortcomings are many, but they are dwarfed compared to the potential damage of the alternative -- a state commission of inquiry," it said.

"If the conclusion from the serious mistakes made during the war is that the prime minister and the defence minister must be ousted, the right address is the Knesset, or the polling booths, or the party institutions."

Israel's state comptroller has also launched an investigation into the Lebanon war. The defense ministry will also carry out an internal probe.

Olmert has been facing calls for a thorough, independent inquiry over the army's preparedness for the war it mounted against Lebanon, the government's conduct of the 34 days of fighting and, ultimately, the failure to defeat Hezbollah.

But he said that he did not wish to expose the army, heavily criticised for its performance, to an external inquiry. Instead, the military would carry out its own investigation, he said.

Olmert said that the decision to go to war had been his alone, and admitted to shortcomings in how the war had been pursued. Initially, Israeli officials had talked about the conflict lasting only days, not more than a month.

"I want to make one thing clear, the responsibility for the decision to go to war ... is entirely mine," he said.

"I know there are controversies about the degree of success that perhaps was due to early expectations."