Implosion

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  Showdown in the Oval Office

  Over the past six decades, the United States has been Israel’s best friend and chief ally. That warm and strategic relationship began with President Harry Truman’s official and highly public decision to be the first world leader to recognize and support the newly declared State of Israel on May 14, 1948. Yet few Americans realize the tectonic struggle that took place at the highest levels of the U.S. government and almost prevented Truman from making or implementing that decision.

  Until recently, despite decades of studying Jewish history, traveling to Israel, and working with various Israeli leaders, I had no idea just how close the Jewish state came to being denied early and critical recognition by the American government. Not long ago, however, an Israeli friend recommended that I read Counsel to the President, a book that takes readers inside the Oval Office and describes the political infighting against Israel in vivid detail. What I found absolutely fascinated me.

  The book is the memoir of Clark Clifford, a highly respected Democrat who served as senior advisor for and special counsel to President Truman. Later, Clifford served as chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board for President John F. Kennedy, as secretary of defense under President Lyndon Johnson, and as an informal but highly trusted advisor to President Jimmy Carter before retiring from government and later passing away in 1998 at the age of 91. Clifford’s memoir explains his up-close-and-personal role in some of the most dramatic moments of American history in the post–World War II years, from advising Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, to helping Johnson seek an exit strategy from the Vietnam War, to counseling Carter during the darkest days of his presidency, to playing poker with Winston Churchill on a train bound for Fulton, Missouri, where Churchill was set to deliver his “Iron Curtain” speech.

  Yet Clifford didn’t begin his 709-page tome with a description of any of these events. His first chapter, titled “Showdown in the Oval Office,” begins like this:

  May 12, 1948—Of all the meetings I ever had with presidents, this one remains the most vivid. Not only did it pit me against a legendary war hero whom President Truman revered, but it did so over an issue of fundamental and enduring national security importance—Israel and the Mideast.[124]

  Clifford noted that Truman regarded then–secretary of state (and decorated Army general) George C. Marshall as “the greatest living American,” yet Truman and Marshall were on “a collision course” over Israel that “threatened to split and wreck the administration.”[125] Simply put, “Marshall firmly opposed American recognition of the new Jewish state,” opposition that was “shared by almost every member of the brilliant and now-legendary group of men, later referred to as ‘the Wise Men,’ who were then in the process of creating a postwar foreign policy that would endure for more than forty years.”[126] President Truman, in contrast, was a strong supporter of Israel, in large part because of his belief in the Bible.

  Among the secretary of state’s allies in opposing recognition of Israel was James V. Forrestal, the secretary of defense. Some months before, Forrestal had told Clifford, “You fellows over at the White House are just not facing up to the realities in the Middle East. There are 30 million Arabs on one side and about six hundred thousand Jews on the other. It is clear that in any contest, the Arabs are going to overwhelm the Jews. Why don’t you face up to the realities? Just look at the numbers!”

  “Jim, the president knows just as well as you do what the numbers are . . . but he doesn’t consider this to be a question of numbers,” Clifford replied. “He has always supported the right of the Jews to have their own homeland, from the moment he became president. . . . He is sympathetic to their needs and their desires, and I assure you he is going to continue to lend our country’s support to the creation of a Jewish state.”

  “Well, if he does that, then he’s absolutely dead wrong,” the secretary of defense shot back.[127]

  Now the moment of truth had come. The British Mandate for oversight of the land then referred to as Palestine (a term that dated back to the Greeks’ and Romans’ descriptions of the Holy Land) was set to expire in forty-eight hours. David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, was poised to announce the declaration of the Jewish state’s independence on May 14. That action, the administration knew, would almost certainly trigger a war between Israel and the surrounding Arab nations. Interestingly, Clifford noted that Ben-Gurion and his advisors had not yet decided on a name for the Jewish state. “The name ‘Israel’ was as yet unknown,” Clifford wrote, “and most of us assumed the new nation would be called ‘Judaea.’”[128]

  At four o’clock in the afternoon on Wednesday, May 12, Marshall, Clifford, and several other advisors entered the Oval Office to meet with the president. Secretary Marshall explained that the creation of a Jewish state would be “dangerous.” He said he had told a representative of the Jewish Agency that if the Jews got into trouble and “came running to us for help . . . they were clearly on notice that there was no warrant to expect help from the United States, which had warned them of the grave risk they were running.”[129]

  When Marshall and his colleagues were finished making their case opposing a Jewish state, the president turned to Clifford and asked for the case in support. Clifford noted a war between Israel and its neighbors was going to begin any moment and that delaying support would be tantamount to denying support. He said that the more quickly the president supported the Jewish state, the more likely it was for the new state to become friendly with—and hopefully eventually an ally of—the United States. If the Soviet Union, however, were the first to recognize the state, perhaps the Jews would form closer ties to Moscow. He continued by stating that in the Balfour Declaration, the British government had long before promised a state to the Jews and that “the United States has a great moral obligation to oppose discrimination” against the Jews and to create a “safe haven” for Jews escaping the Holocaust and Eastern European Communism. Finally, he argued that the U.S. should support the creation of democracies, that the Middle East had long been unstable, and that helping establish a democracy in the Middle East would be consistent with American values.

  At that point, Secretary Marshall exploded. “Mr. President . . . I don’t even know why Clifford is here. He is a domestic advisor, and this is a foreign policy matter.”

  “Well, General,” the president replied calmly, “he’s here because I asked him to be here.”

  Marshall and his colleagues protested that Clifford was pressing for support in order to win Jewish votes in the next presidential election. Marshall then threatened that if Truman supported the Jewish state, he would lose Marshall’s vote. The room grew silent. The president ended the meeting by saying he would consider both sides seriously and make his decision soon.[130]

  American Jewish Opposition to Israel

  Actually, Truman’s support of the creation of the Jewish state was opposed by many American Jews, a fact unknown or forgotten by many friends of Israel.

  “A significant number of Jewish Americans opposed Zionism,” Clifford wrote in his memoir. “Some feared that the effort to create a Jewish state was so controversial that the plan would fail. In 1942 a number of prominent Reform rabbis had founded the American Council for Judaism to oppose the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. It grew into an organization of over fourteen thousand members, which collaborated closely with State Department officials.” Clifford also noted that Arthur H. Sulzberger, the Jewish publisher of the New York Times, and Eugene Meyer, the Jewish publisher of the Washington Post, “opposed Zionism” as well.[131]

  Nevertheless, Truman had spoken favorably of the creation of a Jewish national homeland since not long after taking office. In 1947, for example, Truman had publicly made it the policy of the United States government to back passage of the United Nations Partition Plan, creating the legal framework for the rebirth of the State of Israel as well as an adjoining state for the Palestinian Arabs. To succeed, t
he Partition Plan needed a two-thirds majority vote of the U.N. General Assembly. With just days to go before that historic vote on November 29, 1947, however, supporters of the plan were still three votes short. Some have suggested that President Truman personally called leaders of other nations to encourage them to support the American position. Others say he didn’t but that staff in his administration did; the record is not clear.[132] Either way, most historians—including David McCullough, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his extraordinary biography Truman[133]—acknowledge that Truman wanted the plan to pass and played a role behind the scenes.[134]

  In the end, Truman got his way. The Partition Plan dramatically passed at the last moment, thirty-three to thirteen, with ten abstentions.[135]

  Truman’s Historic Decision

  Given the president’s backing of the Partition Plan, it would seem in retrospect that his decision to formally support the new state was a fait accompli. But the political crisis inside the White House and State Department was real and festering for the next two days. Tensions mounted, and time was running out. Reporters were asking what the president would do on the issue, and the advisors closest to the president had no clue. President Truman kept his cards close to his vest. Clifford later wrote that he thought “the chances for salvaging the situation were very small—but not quite zero.”[136]

  By May 14, neither the secretary of state nor the secretary of defense nor any of the Cabinet or senior advisors knew which side the president would come down on. Then, a few hours before Ben-Gurion’s scheduled announcement, an aide to Secretary Marshall called Clifford at the White House to say that Marshall still did not support the creation of Israel but would not oppose the president publicly if he declared in favor. This was a significant breakthrough. With less than an hour to go, the State Department aide called back to suggest again that Secretary Marshall hoped the president would delay making any decision for more internal discussions, presumably over the next few days.

  “Only thirty minutes . . . before the announcement would be made in Tel Aviv,” Clifford recalled, “the American segment of the drama was now coming to a climax.” Clifford told the aide he would check with President Truman and get back to the secretary. He waited three minutes, then called the aide back, saying delay was out of the question. Finally, at six o’clock, the president formally announced his final decision to Clifford. The United States would recognize and support the State of Israel. Truman handed his statement to Clifford, who immediately took it to the president’s press secretary, Charlie Ross. At 6:11 p.m., Ross read the statement to the press, and thus to the world:

  Statement by the president. This government has been informed that a Jewish state has been proclaimed in Palestine. . . . The United States recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the new State of Israel.[137]

  History had been made. Bible prophecy had just been fulfilled. After a long and painful labor, the State of Israel had miraculously been born in a day. “Who has heard such a thing?” the prophet Isaiah wrote more than seven hundred years before Jesus’ birth. “Who has ever seen things like this? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zion in labor than she gives birth to her children” (Isaiah 66:8, NIV).

  What’s more, the first world leader officially to recognize Israel’s legitimacy was a Christian who had been raised reading the Bible and believed it was true. Most of his senior advisors had vehemently opposed the creation of Israel. Much of the American Jewish community opposed it too. The Arab world would soon turn against the United States and move increasingly into the orbit of the Soviet Union. Yet Truman backed Israel anyway because he believed it was the right thing to do, the biblical thing to do.

  “The fundamental basis of this nation’s ideals was given to Moses on Mount Sinai,” Truman once told an audience. “The fundamental basis of the Bill of Rights of our Constitution comes from the teachings which we get from Exodus, St. Matthew, Isaiah, and St. Paul. The Sermon on the Mount gives us a way of life, and maybe someday men will understand it as the real way of life. The basis of all great moral codes is ‘Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.’ Treat others as you would like to be treated.”[138]

  That is not to say that Truman made all his decisions based on Scripture. Truman was an intensely private man when it came to spiritual and religious matters, and he did not often discuss what he believed about the Bible and how he connected those beliefs to public policy. The 1940s were a different age. Presidents rarely discussed such matters with the public. Truman even felt reticent about discussing his beliefs with Billy Graham, as Graham described in his autobiography.[139] However, it is not conjecture to say that Bible prophecy was a critical element in Truman’s decision-making process.

  Clifford confirmed it in his memoir. “[Truman] was a student and believer in the Bible since his youth. From his reading of the Old Testament he felt the Jews derived a legitimate historical right to Palestine, and he sometimes cited such biblical lines as Deuteronomy 1:8, ‘Behold, I have given up the land before you; go in and take possession of the land which the Lord hath sworn unto your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.’”[140]

  Bible Prophecies Foretelling the Rebirth of Israel

  Are there really ancient prophecies in the Bible that point to the rebirth of Israel in the last days? There are.

  The most famous of these, perhaps, are found in the book of Ezekiel, chapters 36 through 39. Here, the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel, writing more than 2,500 years ago, describes in great detail, in chapter after chapter, how “in the last days” (Ezekiel 38:16) the Lord will remember the Jewish people, resurrect the “dry bones” of the Jewish people who seemed left for dead (Ezekiel 37:1-14), remember the land of Israel, bring the Jewish people back to the land, cause the land of Israel to flourish again, and help the Jewish people rebuild the ancient ruins of Israel. The prophet also describes how the Lord would help the Jewish people survive and multiply and be blessed again in a resurrected land of Israel—which Ezekiel describes as “the center of the world” (Ezekiel 38:12)—even though their enemies would repeatedly seek to destroy them.

  Consider a few excerpts from these important passages:

  • Ezekiel 36:8-10—“But you, O mountains of Israel, you will put forth your branches and bear your fruit for My people Israel; for they will soon come. For, behold, I am for you, and I will turn to you, and you will be cultivated and sown. I will multiply men on you, all the house of Israel, all of it; and the cities will be inhabited and the waste places will be rebuilt.”

  • Ezekiel 36:22-24—“It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name. . . . For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands, and bring you into your own land.”

  • Ezekiel 37:1, 11-14—“The hand of the LORD was upon me, and He brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of the valley; and it was full of bones. . . . Then He said to me, ‘Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, “Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.” Therefore prophesy and say to them, “Thus says the Lord GOD, ‘Behold, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, My people; and I will bring you into the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My people. I will put My Spirit within you and you will come to life, and I will place you on your own land. Then you will know that I, the LORD, have spoken and done it,’ declares the LORD.”’”

  • Ezekiel 38:8, 12—“After many days you [Gog, a key enemy of Israel] will be summoned; in the latter years you will come into the land that is restored from the sword, whose inhabitants have been gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel which had been a continual waste; but its people were brought out from the nations, and they are living securely, all of them . . . the people who are
gathered from the nations, who have acquired cattle and goods, who live at the center of the world.”

  Ezekiel and Auschwitz

  In January 2010, my wife, Lynn, and I traveled to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where I was to address an evangelical Christian conference. I was teaching on the prophecies of Ezekiel 36–39, on the centrality of Israel in God’s plan and purpose for mankind in the last days, the threat of radical Islam, and the importance of building a global movement of Christians committed to showing the people of the epicenter unconditional love and unwavering support. As I prepared to teach, I happened to read news coverage of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address in Poland, commemorating the sixty-fifth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Speaking at the actual site of the Nazi death camp, the prime minister delivered a major address warning the world of new genocidal threats against the Jewish people and the importance of acting early enough to prevent such devastations. He also declared to the people of Europe and the world that the prophecies of Ezekiel had been fulfilled.

  The most important lesson of the Holocaust is that a murderous evil must be stopped early, when it is still in its infancy and before it can carry out its designs. The enlightened nations of the world must learn this lesson. We, the Jewish nation, who lost a third of our people on Europe’s blood-soaked soil, have learned that the only guarantee for defending our people is a strong State of Israel and the army of Israel. We learned to warn the nations of the world of approaching danger but at the same time to prepare to defend ourselves. As the head of the Jewish state, I pledge to you today: we will never again permit evil to snuff out the life of our people and the life of our own country.