State Dept’s Pressure to Favor Arab Views Disclosed by Truman

Attempts by the State Department to influence him against favoring the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine–immediately after he became President of the United States–are related by former President Harry Truman in a chapter of his memoirs published yesterday in the New York Times. He also relates how the British Government was “none too happy” with his reaction to the immediate admission in 1945 to Palestine of 100,000 Jewish victims of Nazism “regardless of the effect on the situation in the Middle East which this would have.”

“My first official contact with the problem,” Mr. Truman writes, “took place within a few days of the time I became President when Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius Jr. had sent me a letter offering to ‘brief’ me on Palestine before I might be approached by any interested parties. It was likely, he said, that efforts would soon be made by some of the Zionist leaders to obtain from me some commitments in favor of the Zionist program which was aimed at unlimited Jewish immigration into Palestine and the establishment there of a Jewish State.

TRUMAN “BRIEFED” BY STATE DEPARTMENT ON ROOSEVELT’S VIEWS

“Two weeks later Joseph C. Grew, who in Stettinius” absence was the Acting Secretary of State, sent me a further memorandum on the subject, informing me: Although President Roosevelt at times gave expression to views sympathetic to certain Zionist aims, he also gave certain assurances to the Arabs which they regard as definite commitments on our part. On a number of occasions within the past few years, he authorized the department to assure the heads of the different Near East Governments in his behalf that in view of this Government there should be no decision altering the basic situation in Palestine without full consultation with both Arabs and Jews. In his meeting with King Ibn. Saud (of Saudi Arabia) early this year, moreover, Mr. Roosevelt promised the King that as regards Palestine he would make no move hostile to the Arab-people and would not assist the Jews as against the Arabs.

“I was fully aware of the Arabs” hostility to Jewish settlement in Palestine, but like many American, I was troubled by the plight of the Jewish people in Europe. The Balfour Declaration had always seemed to me to go hand in hand with the noble policies of Woodrow Wilson, especially the principle of self-determination. When I was in the Senate I told my colleagues, Senator Wagner of New York and Senator Taft of Ohio, that I would go along on a resolution putting the Senate on record in favor of the speedy achievement of the Jewish homeland.

“But the State Department’s concern was mainly with the question of how the Arabs would react, and that this was the wrong time to raise the Palestine question. In another memorandum, on June, 16, 1945, the Acting Secretary of State said the State Departments view was that Palestine was one of the problems which should come up for settlement after the war through the United Nations organization. The memorandum closed with this well-intended advice on the subject of the likely call on me by Zionist leaders: It does not seem, therefore, that you need go any further, unless you care to do so, than to thank the Zionist leaders for any materials which they may give you and to assure them their views will be given your careful consideration.

“To assure the Arabs that they would be consulted was by no means inconsistent with my generally sympathetic attitude toward Jewish aspirations. It was my belief that world peace would in the long run be best served by a resolution that would accord justice to the needs and the wants of the Jewish people who had so long been persecuted. The acts of extremists in Palestine, whether Jewish or Arab, I condemned and deplored, but I also felt that it was important that some encouragement be given to the Jews who wanted to further their cause by accepted democratic methods… The State Department continued to feel that we should stay out of any activity that might offend the Arabs.”