Adam Kirsch: book review, "A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel" doesn't hold up
[Adam Kirsch is a senior editor at The New Republic.]
In 1949, a year after the state of Israel was created, its Chief Rabbi visited President Harry Truman in Washington. Isaac Halevi Herzog told Truman that his role in helping the Jewish state achieve its independence was not just a matter of politics and diplomacy; it was a divine mission. "When the President was still in his mother’s womb," Herzog said, "the Lord had bestowed upon him the mission of helping his Chosen People at a time of despair and aiding in the fulfillment of His promise of Return to the Holy Land." Truman was a 20th-century version of King Cyrus of Persia, who had permitted the Israelites to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem in the 6th century B.C.E.: "he had been given the task once fulfilled by the mighty king of Persia, and that he too, like Cyrus, would occupy a place of honor in the annals of the Jewish people."
To Truman--a former haberdasher turned machine politician, and an accidental president who came to office in the giant shadow of Franklin Roosevelt--this kind of praise was more than welcome. As a believing Baptist, who had read the Bible "at least a dozen times" by the age of fifteen, he appreciated how momentous a role he had played in the history of the Jewish people. Yet as Allis and Ronald Radosh make clear in their highly detailed and illuminating new history, A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel, the comparison with Cyrus--while an adept piece of flattery--doesn’t really hold up.
For one thing, unlike the Persian emperor, Truman did not have Palestine to give. Between 1918, when the British took the province from the Ottoman Empire, and 1948, when they precipitously abandoned it, Palestine was a British colony. Originally, with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the British promised to create a "national home for the Jewish people" in the ancient Jewish land. But it soon became clear that the British Empire, which ruled hundreds of millions of Muslims in the Middle East and India, would not defy the wishes of Arab leaders, who were totally opposed to any Jewish presence. With the White Paper of 1939, the British effectively closed Palestine to Jewish immigration just at the moment when the need for a refuge from Hitler was greatest. By the time the Second World War ended, the Jewish population of the Yishuv was deeply resentful of Britain, and an extreme faction--the Irgun and the Stern Gang--had turned to vicious acts of terrorism against the occupiers.
What really distinguished Truman from Cyrus, however, is that he was not an absolute monarch but a democratic politician; and A Safe Haven offers an expert case study of just how complicated, and unedifying, policy-making in a democracy can be. The Truman White House is the focus of the Radoshes' history, but they make clear that Truman was by no means master in that house. From 1945 to 1948, the president was the target of a non-stop barrage of advice, demands, reports, committees, and bare-knuckle political threats, all seeking to influence his policy on Palestine.
Moderate American Zionists like Stephen Wise, who hoped to use quiet influence with the President, fought with more aggressive ones like Abba Hillel Silver, who publicly criticized Truman’s heel-dragging. Pro-Zionist White House aides, such as Clark Clifford and FDR’s old confidant Samuel Rosenman, fought with the State Department’s Near East experts, such as Loy Henderson, who feared the consequences of antagonizing the Arab world. Lurking in the background, as always, were the cold calculations of electoral politics. Truman was a weak Democratic incumbent, and his challenger in 1948 was the Republican governor of New York, Thomas Dewey. Without the support of New York's Jewish voters, there was no way Truman could carry that important state.
Truman's own feelings towards the Zionist cause were basically positive. As a Senator, he had been a member of the American Palestine Committee, a Christian Zionist group, and even lent his name to the Committee for a Jewish Army, a Revisionist-inspired movement that called for arming the world's Jews against Hitler. The revelation of the Nazi concentration camps, and the plight of the Jewish survivors languishing in Displaced Persons camps, further fueled his commitment.
Nor, the Radoshes make clear, should the influence of his close friendship with Eddie Jacobson--his old army buddy and business partner in Kansas City--be discounted. Jacobson, who had free access to the White House, helped lobby Truman for the Zionist cause, even arranging a crucial meeting with Chaim Weizmann. Truman’s affection for Jacobson is moving: "Eddie was one of those men that you read about in the Torah," Truman said after his friend’s death. "If you read the articles in Genesis concerning two just men [Enoch and Noah] you’ll find those descriptions will fit Eddie Jacobson to the dot." Yet there is something archaic, and discomfiting, about the way Truman let his view of the Jews be influenced by his opinion of this one Jew. The days when the Jews had to use court figures to intervene with powerful rulers are, one would hope, behind us....
Read entire article at The New Republic
In 1949, a year after the state of Israel was created, its Chief Rabbi visited President Harry Truman in Washington. Isaac Halevi Herzog told Truman that his role in helping the Jewish state achieve its independence was not just a matter of politics and diplomacy; it was a divine mission. "When the President was still in his mother’s womb," Herzog said, "the Lord had bestowed upon him the mission of helping his Chosen People at a time of despair and aiding in the fulfillment of His promise of Return to the Holy Land." Truman was a 20th-century version of King Cyrus of Persia, who had permitted the Israelites to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem in the 6th century B.C.E.: "he had been given the task once fulfilled by the mighty king of Persia, and that he too, like Cyrus, would occupy a place of honor in the annals of the Jewish people."
To Truman--a former haberdasher turned machine politician, and an accidental president who came to office in the giant shadow of Franklin Roosevelt--this kind of praise was more than welcome. As a believing Baptist, who had read the Bible "at least a dozen times" by the age of fifteen, he appreciated how momentous a role he had played in the history of the Jewish people. Yet as Allis and Ronald Radosh make clear in their highly detailed and illuminating new history, A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel, the comparison with Cyrus--while an adept piece of flattery--doesn’t really hold up.
For one thing, unlike the Persian emperor, Truman did not have Palestine to give. Between 1918, when the British took the province from the Ottoman Empire, and 1948, when they precipitously abandoned it, Palestine was a British colony. Originally, with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the British promised to create a "national home for the Jewish people" in the ancient Jewish land. But it soon became clear that the British Empire, which ruled hundreds of millions of Muslims in the Middle East and India, would not defy the wishes of Arab leaders, who were totally opposed to any Jewish presence. With the White Paper of 1939, the British effectively closed Palestine to Jewish immigration just at the moment when the need for a refuge from Hitler was greatest. By the time the Second World War ended, the Jewish population of the Yishuv was deeply resentful of Britain, and an extreme faction--the Irgun and the Stern Gang--had turned to vicious acts of terrorism against the occupiers.
What really distinguished Truman from Cyrus, however, is that he was not an absolute monarch but a democratic politician; and A Safe Haven offers an expert case study of just how complicated, and unedifying, policy-making in a democracy can be. The Truman White House is the focus of the Radoshes' history, but they make clear that Truman was by no means master in that house. From 1945 to 1948, the president was the target of a non-stop barrage of advice, demands, reports, committees, and bare-knuckle political threats, all seeking to influence his policy on Palestine.
Moderate American Zionists like Stephen Wise, who hoped to use quiet influence with the President, fought with more aggressive ones like Abba Hillel Silver, who publicly criticized Truman’s heel-dragging. Pro-Zionist White House aides, such as Clark Clifford and FDR’s old confidant Samuel Rosenman, fought with the State Department’s Near East experts, such as Loy Henderson, who feared the consequences of antagonizing the Arab world. Lurking in the background, as always, were the cold calculations of electoral politics. Truman was a weak Democratic incumbent, and his challenger in 1948 was the Republican governor of New York, Thomas Dewey. Without the support of New York's Jewish voters, there was no way Truman could carry that important state.
Truman's own feelings towards the Zionist cause were basically positive. As a Senator, he had been a member of the American Palestine Committee, a Christian Zionist group, and even lent his name to the Committee for a Jewish Army, a Revisionist-inspired movement that called for arming the world's Jews against Hitler. The revelation of the Nazi concentration camps, and the plight of the Jewish survivors languishing in Displaced Persons camps, further fueled his commitment.
Nor, the Radoshes make clear, should the influence of his close friendship with Eddie Jacobson--his old army buddy and business partner in Kansas City--be discounted. Jacobson, who had free access to the White House, helped lobby Truman for the Zionist cause, even arranging a crucial meeting with Chaim Weizmann. Truman’s affection for Jacobson is moving: "Eddie was one of those men that you read about in the Torah," Truman said after his friend’s death. "If you read the articles in Genesis concerning two just men [Enoch and Noah] you’ll find those descriptions will fit Eddie Jacobson to the dot." Yet there is something archaic, and discomfiting, about the way Truman let his view of the Jews be influenced by his opinion of this one Jew. The days when the Jews had to use court figures to intervene with powerful rulers are, one would hope, behind us....