Truman and the United States of America's Responsibility

Truman was a brutally cynical pragmatist, as evidenced by his assertion, "If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances. Neither of them thinks anything of their pledged word." [Donovan, Robert J. (1996). Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry Truman, 1945–1948. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press. p. 36. ISBN 0-8262-1066-X.] and an anti-Semite, "The Jews, I find are very, very selfish," Truman wrote in a 1947 diary entry. "They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog. Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I've found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes." After a conversation with Treasury Secretary Henry Morganthau, a Jew, about a ship carrying Jewish refugees to pre-state Israel, Truman wrote, "He’d no business, whatever to call me. The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgement on world affairs. Henry brought a thousand Jews to New York on a supposedly temporary basis and they stayed.", but he was also a fervid Presbytarian, who saw the world through biblical spectacles, for example, "We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark".and his beliefs undoubtedly played a significant role in the USA's support for the founding of Israel (without which it could not have happened). Still it was pure political pragmatism that drove him to recognize the establishment of the State of Israel over the objections of Secretary of State George Marshall, who feared it would hurt relations with the Arab states and resigned over this issue.

<<At a meeting in the White House on November 10, 1945, he told envoys to Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt: "I am sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism: I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents." (Eddy, FDR Meets Ibn Saud, p. 37. The envoys were William A. Eddy, minister to Saudi Arabia; S. Pinkney Tuck, minister to Egypt; George Wadsworth, minister to Syria and Lebanon; and Lowell C. Pinkerton, general counsel in Jerusalem.) 

Rejecting Arab, British, and U.S. State Department warnings that Jewish immigration to Palestine and a Jewish state would destabilize the Middle East, Truman and Congress continued to support the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people. American policy makers in 1947–48 agreed that the highest foreign policy objective was containment of Soviet expansion as the Cold War unfolded. From Washington's perspective Palestine was secondary to the goal of protecting the "Northern Tier" of Greece, Turkey, and Iran from Communism, as promised by the Truman Doctrine. Truman set three goals for the region: a peaceful solution, unwillingness to send US troops, and the need to prevent Soviet penetration.

According to George Lenczowski, Truman's policy on Palestine was influenced by Jewish lobbyists. In his memoirs, Truman wrote that top Jewish leaders in the United States put pressure on him to promote Jewish aspirations in Palestine. At the urging of the British, a special UN committee, UNSCOP, recommended the immediate partitioning of Palestine into two states. With Truman's support, the plan was approved by the General Assembly on November 29, 1947. Secretary of State George Marshall and foreign affairs experts continued to oppose the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. When Truman agreed to meet with Chaim Weizmann, the Secretary of State objected but did not publicly dispute his decision. Secretary of Defense James Forrestal warned about the perils of arousing Arab hostility, which might result in denial of access to petroleum resources in the area, and about "the impact of this question on the security of the United States." Truman recognized the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, eleven minutes after it declared itself a nation.

Truman wrote: "Hitler had been murdering Jews right and left. I saw it, and I dream about it even to this day. The Jews needed some place where they could go. It is my attitude that the American government couldn't stand idly by while the victims [of] Hitler's madness are not allowed to build new lives.">>  [ex Wikipedia]

It is perhaps worth noticing that this occured without discussion, let alone negotiations, with the Palestinians, with Israel sliced out of land which had been held for the Palestinians as a "sacred trust", as a direct consequence of Zionist terrorism.

Under US pressure, again driven by Truman, the Palestinian refugees caused by the Zionists driving them from the Palestine, were not dealt with by the UNHCR but were represented by their own commissioner to protect their "right to return."

Truman and the United States were undoubtedly largely (and directly) responsible for the establishment of Israel, the Palestinian refugee tragedy and the current situation where territory taken by Israel and held in contravention of the Charter of the UN and laws of war continue to poison international relations and any chance of a peaceful resolution of the brutal mistreatment of the Palestinian people by Israel and the world. Unfortunately, Congress and the Whitehouse have no knowledge of this - only what "the Lobby" and the lobby controlled media tells them.