Present at the Birth
Eban, Abba
PRESENT AT THE BIRTH Abba Eban "Only by means of partition can these conflicting national aspirations find substantial expression and qualify both peoples to take their places as independent...
...An Iraqi column moved in strength toward the Jordan River...
...She told me that "all is well...
...It was only when Eddie Jacobson in a sentimental mood compared Weizmann with President Andrew Jackson, Truman's hero, that the President relented...
...He arrived in New York weary, old but indomitable...
...They would cut Jerusalem off at the Latrun salient...
...Silver, with incredible serenity, went back to the prosaic business of organizing weddings and funerals in Cleveland...
...it had ¦avoided contact with UNSCOP during its deliberations...
...Our chief problem was to overcome a natural tendency to regard a unitary state as preferable to a divided one...
...For one thing, the international alignment had changed and the Soviet Union was now the only major power still steadfast in its support of Jewish statehood...
...The UNSCOP report broke down this reserve...
...Does it seek a solution based on justice and equity, or is it merely looking for a solution against which the Arab governments will kindly consent not to use force...
...Behind his abrasive exterior lurked an abrasive interior...
...The differences between Arabs and Jews are much greater than those between Belgium and the Netherlands...
...The Arab states, spurred on by the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, urged total rejection of UNSCOP's report in both parts...
...He was warmly received at the White House and plunged immediately into his theme, illustrating it with a memorandum prepared by Eliahu Elath, the Jewish Agency representative in Washington...
...Our difficulties were compounded by the complex American position...
...There was no question that skepticism about our military prospects had played a central part in the decline of American support...
...When it became evident that Jewish statehood in some form would be proposed by the General Assembly, our adversaries moved away from direct antipar-titionism toward a policy of truncating the Jewish territory so as to make it unacceptable to us...
...The Soviet Union and Guatemala had recognized Israel...
...When the General Assembly came together on November 27, we were plunged in gloom...
...The representative of Uruguay, Professor Rodriguez Fabregat, embarked on a long discourse that could not uncharitably be regarded as a filibuster...
...Ambassador Francis Sayre of the American mission in the Trusteeship Council replied lamely that "for the time being he had no official information on the subject...
...We rallied around the principle that a valid international judgment must not be overthrown by armed force...
...There were Jews in tears, and non-Jews moved by the nobility of the occasion Nobody who lived that moment will ever lose its memory from his heart...
...Weizmann replied that numbers were not decisive: "The trouble with the Egyptian army is that its soldiers are too lean and its officers too fat...
...At his side stood the rotund and solid figure of the Secretary-General, Trygve Lie, who had a dual interest in our success: he badly needed an achievement for the United Nations that would give it some resonance in world opinion, and as a Norwegian socialist he had seen the horrors of Nazi persecution from close at hand...
...Egyptian planes had bombed Tel Aviv...
...An attempt by Chamoun to secure a postponement in order to discuss the federal proposal was firmly ruled out of order by Aranha and opposed with impressive unity by Gromyko and Hershel Johnson...
...There was every reason to fear that if the vote was taken, we would fall short of the two-thirds majority...
...As the hours went by, it became clear that no general trusteeship would be voted...
...David Ben Gurion now banished all other concerns to concentrate with fierce resolve on strengthening our defense forces...
...On the other hand, we took comfort from the militant and efficient way in which American Jewry was organizing itself under the somber but dynamic leadership of Abba Hillel Silver...
...It was plain that Arab armies were mustering for invasion...
...He was immensely gratified to feel that he was still indispensable in the fray...
...None of these gifts had come from the UN...
...Gromyko came up to me, pumped my hand warmly and said, "You have killed trusteeship...
...On the other hand, Evatt was a contentious man...
...We lobbied, pleaded and got our friends to filibuster...
...I had even branched out into some speaking engagements in other cities...
...Before retiring, I sent Sharett a cabled message of congratulations...
...AFFECTIONATELY EBAN Weizmann was then in London recuperating from his efforts at the General Assembly...
...What exactly were the motivations and impulses that could cause Haiti to vote with us...
...Belgium...
...As I left, he said: "Well, this is it...
...I could see Trygve Lie studying me intently, Gromyko smiling grimly over his spectacles, and the American delegate, Philip C. Jessup, scribbling on a pad with dejected nervousness...
...Guatemala, Australia and the United States successively proposed resolutions which would have put a United Nations flag in Jerusalem under varying degrees of responsibility...
...representative compared the positions of the Arab and Jewish peoples in the world...
...It would be hard to imagine a more far-fetched comparison, but it worked...
...The minority plan therefore appears impracticable...
...I was to work with Nahum Goldmann...
...In addition, the desperate nature of our struggle had induced Silver and Ben Gurion to encourage a maximal contribution by Weizmann...
...So the Jewish Agency delegations under Silver and Sharett settled down into a fairly workable rhythm...
...The effect was strong...
...Weizmann's role was to make an impact on the uncommitted delegates who had been shaken by the strong blasts of Arab pressure...
...Can you come right down," he said, "there is story in the papers on Palestine and I don't understand what has happened...
...There was no such thing as a voluntary reversion from the threshold of national liberty, back to a kind of international colonialism...
...We had good allies...
...To my pleasure but embarrassment, Sharett received many congratulations on his speech, and especially on that sentence...
...Sharett immediately recognized this logic and asked Horowitz and me to remain within sight and sound of UN headquarters...
...In Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem and in other towns, scores of Jewish men, women and children were blown to bits...
...What a tortuous journey we had made...
...Israel was experiencing the joys of birth and the fear of death in a single taste...
...One day in March, for example, I was lunching with Weizmann and Alexandre Parodi, who was full of hard-headed doubts about partition...
...Together with Horowitz and a water expert, Aharon Wiener, he fought hard to make everyone see that the proposed state, in spite of its tortuous boundaries, would have some economic viability...
...Argentina...
...It therefore came as a stunning shock to Jews everywhere when on March 19 Ambassador Warren R. Austin, the American representative in the Security Council, announced what amounted to a headlong retreat from the partition plan...
...Our military defenders and civilian population in Palestine no longer were fighting with the sun of international recognition on their backs...
...much might depend on the attitude in which delegates listening to the debate reported home...
...As the tumult of Jewry's greatest day in modern history swept through the streets of New York, Weizmann lay silent in the darkened hotel room, with a few of us around him...
...I felt that more would depend on the effect of Zionist appearances before the committee and, of course, on our ability to raise echoes in the mass media...
...To be published by Random House, Inc...
...Now, together with Luxembourg, our countries are reunited, not politically, but economically...
...When France loudly said "Oui," there was an outbreak of applause in the hall, which Aranha sternly suppressed...
...One writer has said about my speech on May 1, 1948: "Had his performance that day in the General Assembly been humdrum and officialese, had he spoken without passion, without any special distinctive quality, the opportunity would have been lost and he would have remained one of the backroom boys...
...He would say that if the General Assembly made no clear recommendations, it would be failing in its duty, and with that failure some of mankind's more cherished hopes would subside...
...The Special Political Committee in which our problem was discussed was directed by a complex personality, Herbert Evatt of Australia...
...The United States seemed reluctant to criticize British policy so actively as to become a candidate for British responsibility...
...Foreign statesmen faced him with a curious mixture of apprehension and awe...
...The suffering and grief that convulse our country today can be avoided only by seeking a way back to the highway of the partition resolution...
...The members of the United Nations can help the Jewish people by acting in accordance with the principles of the Charter, which call for the guaranteeing to every people of their right to independence and self-determination...
...It was as if we had been set on the threshold of statehood, allowed to peep within—only to be tantalizingly thrown back into the wilderness...
...No comfort whatever was to be found from Dr...
...The only Jewish spokesmen they knew were Weizmann, Abba Hillel Silver and Moshe Sharett...
...A frenzy of rage and disappointment rolled through the Jewish world...
...It was clear we would know our fate on November 29, and that November 28 would be a day of unremitting toil...
...Silver's reference to the implementation of the General Assembly resolution had great irony, since for the last few weeks the UN had been frenziedly attempting to prevent the fulfillment of its own resolution...
...On the other hand, their own relations with him were tense, and I was given the task of using him in the most effective way...
...Nevertheless, the legitimacy of our state would be affected in the eyes of many governments if a United Nations regime were established, even theoretically, at the time when the British Mandate expired...
...Second, there was the feeling that if immigrants poured in from Eastern and Central Europe, they would bring the Communist virus into the Middle East...
...Although President Truman had put himself firmly behind the partition proposal, many of his delegates to the United Nations, long familiar with Arab causes, were creating an atmosphere of skepticism around their own government's policy...
...Truman had granted recognition by letter to Elath at six-fifteen...
...Byelorussia...
...We knew vaguely that Silver and Sharett were in command, that anybody else could be argued with, that a few of us, including myself, had access to the peak of the Waldorf Towers, where Weizmann sat in dark brooding splendor...
...The day after the Passover Seder, Weizmann called me to his suite in the Waldorf Towers with an exciting story to tell...
...Not surprisingly, Truman was assailed by the armory of invective which Zionism had perforce stored up during the long years of failure and frustration...
...Despite Truman's lead, American policy had never been fully won over to the idea of partition...
...The Arab governments had resolved to occupy the country, subjugate its Jewish population and strangle Israel's statehood at its birth...
...As April went forward Jewish military fortunes improved...
...Our reports from Israel indicated that Ben Gurion was steadfast...
...In his book Man of Independence, Jonathan Daniels has recounted the story of Black Friday at the White House: Truman called Clark Clifford, his administrative assistant, at 7:30 Saturday morning March 20...
...Yet it was obvious that if there were no victory there would be no spoils to argue about...
...In the General Assembly we were fighting not to obtain a resolution, but to avoid one...
...So was the Belgian delegate, Ambassador Fernand Van Langenhove, who seemed to have an obsequious fixation on the British government...
...On a much humbler level, I was taking a similar line in discussions at Jewish Agency headquarters...
...Yet we knew that we were at the mercy of any slight parliamentary fluctuation...
...How could I have dreamt a few months before that I would be anywhere near the center of this drama...
...His first reaction to my appeal was irascible...
...They knew that they were likely to be charmed into an unwanted commitment, or overpowered by the weight of his historic imagination...
...Thus the hope of using Weizmann's services depended largely on me...
...Instead, the city was abandoned to savage war...
...Here were nine stalwart defenders of the partition principle: one of them, Lester Pearson of Canada, was putting his emollient diplomacy to work for the first time in a major international issue...
...Hence, after consulting with the Zionist leaders, I sent Weizmann a telegram on January 23: IN VIEW WORSENING SITUATION ADVISE YOU IF POSSIBLE RECONSIDER DECISION TO GO PALESTINE JANUARY...
...Yes...
...The Jewish parts of Jerusalem were very nearly encircled, as well as being cut off from normal contact with the coast...
...The Jewish people was at a turning point...
...All the world tribunals had regarded Jewish immigration to Palestine as a matter of right and urgency...
...Most people's lives have their turning point, and this was mine...
...Since trie majority report would have to be amended in order to reduce the, number of Arabs in the Jewish state and to diminish the disparity between the areas of the two states, it was clear that detailed committee work would be needed...
...Horowitz, weighed down by anxiety about his family, insisted on returning to Jerusalem, and I stayed in lonely charge...
...Weizmann sat down on May 13 and wrote a letter to Truman asking for recognition of the Jewish state when it was established...
...It was a strange role for the so-called moderate to be summoning the Jewish people to the utmost intransigence and tenacity...
...How can a few hundred thousand of you stand up against millions...
...Goldmann has explained quite candidly in his autobiography that he came to favor the postponement of the declaration...
...As British power receded, Jewish and Arab authority began to flow in rough approximation to the partition boundaries except that the Negev was still empty and cut off...
...I went to see Weizmann and drafted a cable to Leon Blum, the socialist statesman who would have a strong influence on the French Cabinet: "Does France wish to be absent from a moment unfading in the memory of man...
...The struggle for the frontier has ended in victory...
...HAPPY BE ABLE CONGRATULATE ON AUBREY'S STRIKING SPEECH IN APPEARING AS OFFICIAL SPOKESMAN JEWISH PEOPLE IN INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL STOP HIS EXTRAORDINARY BRILLIANCE IN THOUGHT AND EXPRESSION POWERFUL COGENCY OF REASONING DIGNITY OF PRESENTATION DID OUTSTANDING CREDIT TO OUR CAUSE AND MADE US ALL IMMEASURABLY PROUD STOP SPEECH MADE PROFOUND IMPRESSION ON ALL STOP FRIEND AND FOE LISTENED WITH RAPT ATTENTION MANY CHARACTERIZING IT AS ONE OF THE HIGHEST WATERMARKS OF ENTIRE SESSION STOP WARMEST REGARDS STOP MOSHE The immense generosity of his action was to abide with me across the years...
...On the other hand, I reflected that if there had been no cause for disquiet, there would have been no need for such an appointment to be made...
...We had now secured access to the Security Council table, as had the Arab Higher Committee, and Moshe Sharett was the vigorous exponent of our cause...
...It was essential, therefore, for Weizmann to stay in America and be available for the unfolding of the plan...
...The Netherlands representative recalled the time after the Napoleonic Wars when Belgium and the Netherlands were brought together in one unitary state...
...We knew now that he was in deep turmoil of spirit...
...NO CONDITIONS EXIST THERE YOUR CONSTRUCTIVE POLITICAL ACTIVITY...
...What in heaven's name did London matter now...
...History has taught our countries this valuable lesson of independence combined with unity for certain important but limited purposes...
...BEN GURION KAPLAN MYERSON REMEZ SHERTAI I went out into Park Avenue...
...Ambassador Thors fully accepted my argument that what was needed now was "decision," not the vain pursuit of "agreement...
...I found it hard to imagine many other Zionist leaders being capable of a similar gesture...
...All of them were rejected...
...Newspapermen, television and radio correspondents from all over the world were concentrated in the lobbies, while the delegates' seats and visitors' gallery were crowded as they had never been before...
...But there was a race against time: the Jewish Agency representatives had been invited to meet the American delegate, Hershel Johnson, at three o'clock the next day in the United Nations delegates' lounge to hear the State Department's decision against retaining the Negev in the Jewish state...
...Thus, fortified by international legitimacy, the new state could fight for its survival not as an unregarded outcast, but as a member of the international family...
...Lopez, mounted the rostrum to ask the American delegates point-blank if the rumor was true...
...But Jessup's aide had found Truman's statement on a ticker-tape message in Lie's wastepaper basket...
...My own position in the Jewish Agency team had changed since April...
...The only voice which did not join the attack was that of the man who had the most right to feel betrayed...
...The United Nations was facing a momentous opportunity at a very early stage of its career...
...In the Jewish Agency negotiating team we mounted an assault on the trusteeship proposal...
...Thus, on two occasions when Sharett had to cancel speaking engagements in American cities, I almost had to be forced down the throats of the appropriate organizations as his deputy...
...Silver and the American Zionist leaders no longer regarded me as an exotic intruder...
...After all, it only needed one third of the voting members to block a favorable recommendation...
...He had called in his senior advisers— Secretary of State George Marshall, Undersecretary Robert Lovett, Clark Clifford and a State Department official...
...There remained Jerusalem, to which the United Nations in November 1947 had promised "peace, order, security, well-being and constructive measure for development...
...Once the idea of Jewish statehood had been internationally endorsed and the Jewish community had begun to establish its autonomous structure, there was no possibility that "second thoughts" could have any effect...
...If we succeeded, we would realize a millennial dream...
...This document pointed out that the Arab states already had an outlet to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba through Transjordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia...
...Bolivia9" "Yes...
...He decided to concentrate entirely on the importance of the southern Negev in his talk with the President...
...By the third week of November we were ready for the decision...
...Israel would never forget the lesson...
...The words may have flowed easily because they were nourished by an intense conviction...
...Every argument had been exhausted...
...Suddenly a bellboy appeared with flowers, fruit and—a telegram from the Zionist Laboi leaders in Tel Aviv...
...Indeed, General Hildring had been appointed a special presidential representative acting as a kind of watchdog to ensure that the State Department's predilections did not get the better of the President's policies...
...At any rate, there was not a whisper in the large hall...
...In fact, when the partition vote was announced in the General Assembly, the Arab delegates got up and walked out of the hall, openly threatening violence...
...all influence had been put to work...
...PRESENT AT THE BIRTH Abba Eban "Only by means of partition can these conflicting national aspirations find substantial expression and qualify both peoples to take their places as independent nations in the international community and in the United Nations...
...The simple logic of this sentence in the UNSCOP majority report was the banner around which our delegation rallied in the General Assembly...
...I can still recall the daily hourAbba Eban was Foreign Minister of Israel for many years, as well as Deputy Prime Minister, Ambassador to the United Nations and to the United States...
...There was no need to take the floor again against trusteeship...
...They burst into song and began dancing in the street...
...We knew that the judgment recently given by the General Assembly would be a mere scrap of paper unles it was ratified by sacrifice and toil...
...Instead of being one of our main allies in support of partition, the United States had withdrawn into the trusteeship proposal which we regarded as a frustration of our dearest hopes...
...Our natural course would have been to seek contact with President Truman in order to transcend the hesitations of the State Department...
...Soviet diplomacy has a nocturnal tendency, and most of these meetings were held very late at night in a Park Avenue mansion...
...Zionism has always had a strange weakness for unreadable pamphlets...
...At any rate, Thor Thors would be the first speaker on that historic day, and it seemed urgent to ensure that he would set up a positive momentum...
...I sat helplessly among visitors and tourists while the oratorical contest was reopened...
...The Canadian representative declared, "The representative of Pakistan has said here that partition should not take place without consent...
...I would leave the Jews of Iraq, of Yemen and of Tripoli, and the Christians, Syrians and Iraqi to pronounce on that...
...The United Nations seemed to matter very much to the world in those days...
...In describing an international assembly twenty-five years before, he said, "I came from the Council room in which the Mandate was ratified with a feeling that the most cherished ideals of our history had been sanctioned by the conscience of all mankind...
...In its culture it was deeply impregnated with Biblical memories...
...The operative result would be that we would pass from one foreign domination to another, and the moment of Jewish independence would be postponed and probably lost...
...Weizmann believed, I thought with little justice, that Sharett should have done more to save him from deposition at the 1946 Zionist Congress in Basel...
...In midsentence, he was called to the telephone...
...On the basis of radio reports and telegrams he had received from Tel Aviv, Abba Hillel Silver, who was sitting at the Jewish Agency desk, broke in quietly with the following words: This morning at ten o'clock the Jewish state was proclaimed in Palestine...
...I find the following entry in my diary: October 16, 1947...
...any more...
...I later learned that Truman had received Weizmann's letter in the morning and had used it as a lever for intensive action...
...I went out into the lobby, where the Jewish delegation was caught up in the embrace of an enthusiastic throng...
...Weisgal was Weizmann's most faithful supporter and counselor...
...The news from France was reserved but more promising than before...
...While our mam task was to frustrate the American trusteeship proposal in the General Assembly, we could not absent ourselves from the Security Council which was vainly trying to get a truce...
...Sharett rose to the full height of his meticulous statesmanship in the detailed evidence that he gave on each and every point of the map of the proposed Jewish state...
...Aranha announced his intention to call for a vote in alphabetical order...
...The partition line shall be nothing but a line of fire and blood" was Azzam Pasha's ominous warning...
...He was also chivalrously anxious that I should have a chance of making my own mark...
...Here, however, there was a major complication...
...Others of my colleagues in the Jewish Agency delegation watched with who-knows-what kind of sentiment...
...The position must surely be recorded as bizarre...
...He proposed that a special session of the General Assembly be called to discuss the establishment of an "international trusteeship," to take effect with the end of the British Mandate...
...Truman developed a trauma about what he called "Zionist pressure...
...I had no need to worry about a "backroom" destiny On May 14 the United Nations had its ultimate chance of taking charge in Jerusalem...
...Over the top for the last time...
...And Sharett, Horowitz and I made plans to •return whence we had come...
...He must think that I am a plain liar...
...The die had been cast and there was very little that most of us could do, except to accompany the forthcoming verdict with our prayers...
...It was not a passive default, but an active relinquishing of responsibility in a critical hour...
...WE LOOK FORWARD TO THE DAY WHEN WE SHALL SEE YOU AT THE HEAD OF THE STATE ESTABLISHED IN PEACE...
...Thus on May 14 the United Nations had its ultimate chance of taking charge in Jerusalem...
...The perfidy seemed all the heavier in contrast to the joy of a few months before...
...The main issue would obviously be determined by a trial of strength in the area, and not by United Nations documents...
...The Jewish aspiration for independence, first recognized in the Mandate, had not yet been fulfilled...
...With a firm hand, oblivious of Arab protest, he adjourned the session...
...The Secretary-General, who rarely neglected gastronomic priorities, had naturally gone off to dine...
...Marshall had not argued strenuously against this logic...
...When the debate opened in New York in September 1947, we found that the committee's report had won more authority than skeptical British and Arab commentators had ascribed to it...
...Weizmann told Weisgal, with some Yiddish imprecations, "Tell them to proclaim the state no matter what happens...
...It must therefore be recorded to the credit of Silver and Ben Gurion that they had no hesitation in harnessing Weizmann's influence in the common cause...
...Weizmann on my conscience...
...He strengthened his chiefs hands through all his political battles and was later to ensure Weizmann's legacy in the form of the Weizmann Institute of Science at Rehovot...
...At the same time, President Truman's conscience was sorely tormented...
...At this time I had been helping Sharett draft one of his speeches in the Security Council...
...Seating himself opposite Sharett and Horowitz, he blurted out an embarrassed retraction: "What I really wanted to say to you was that we have no changes in the map you suggest...
...He made light of Arab spokesmen's assertions that the Jews were the descendants of the Khazars of southern Russia: "It is very strange...
...Was there some hope that Thailand would abstain...
...Looking back, I am struck by how little these things then seemed to matter...
...We were fortunate in the constitution of the subcommittee which was to discuss the partition plan...
...No...
...While making their mam effort in the field of battle, the Arabs decided also to attempt a reversal of the partition resolution by appeals to the Security Council, which took the question on its agenda in mid-December...
...He knew that it might be his last appearance at the bar of the nations...
...copyright © 1977 by Abba Eban...
...It will be the inevitable result of British evacuation...
...Yet the story was beginning to leak...
...EVERYTHING DEPENDING ON OUTCOME CRUCIAL NEGOTIATIONS LAKE SUCCESS AND WASHINGTON...
...This was comforting in itself...
...Our political effort in New York now branched off into two directions...
...The President had given Weizmann a specific commitment that he would work for the establishment and recognition of a Jewish state of which the Negev would be a part...
...It did not seem useless to develop an argument or impossible to change minds...
...I noticed that Sharett had slipped away from his seat behind me as soon as I had finished...
...Finally the speechmaking came to an end, and a solemn hush descended on the hall...
...My third task lay in the presentation of written material...
...Abstain...
...At midnight I went out into the New York streets to buy the next morning's papers...
...He gave strict orders not to allow any Zionist leaders to have access to him...
...Some of us who were present still retain a memory of the tone in which Cordier recited the votes...
...This was all very well, but the fact remained that the United States had withdrawn its support from the partition proposal and we now had the task of working not with the United States, but against it...
...A vast press corps, strengthened by radio and television teams, followed all its committees...
...To those who had said that force would be needed to impose partition, I would reply that force would be needed to prevent or cancel it, especially since there was no likelihood that the Jewish pqpulation would accept the jurisdiction of a new trustee...
...The movement of nations from tutelage to independence could be quick or slow, but it could only have one direction: forward...
...What was needed to bring France and Belgium into the yes column...
...I had gone with Ehahu Elath to a meeting at the State Department with senior American officials...
...It seemed evident that our only chance of access to Truman lay through the activation of Weizmann's prestige...
...Sharett wavered...
...I had tried to summarize the international dilemma in a single sentence: "What is it that the Security Council is trying to obtain...
...Early in November the United States, influenced by British pressure, tried to induce us to yield the southern Negev to the Arabs...
...The Arab governments were hostile to internationalization...
...this November, and featured by the Book-of-the-Month Club in January...
...The meeting had dispersed several times—once in order to receive Ehahu Elath's message delivered by cab to the White House security guard, pointing out that the state for which Weizmann had sought recognition in his May 13 letter was called "Israel...
...On May 11 the Haganah chief of operations, Yigael Yadin, gave Zionist leaders in Jerusalem a somber and disconcerting account of the sacrifices and difficulties that would be certain to follow the invasion of Palestine by Arab armies...
...In a comer cowered Ernest Bevin and his wife, both sending out waves of venom and hostility...
...I invited Ambassador Thors to reflect on the historic mystery involved...
...In his office Truman was as disturbed as Clifford had ever seen him...
...The General Assembly chairman, Brazil's Oswaldo Aranha, was religiously uplifted by the concept of Jewish statehood...
...But at precisely that moment the French delegate, Alexandre Parodi, had called for a postponement of the session In the twenty-four hours since then, we had lost ground...
...We looked for a Bible and eventually found one supplied by the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in the bedside table...
...But I warn you not to accept military advice too easily...
...The resolution is adopted...
...The delegates of fifty-seven nations listened to him in suspense...
...In Palestine herself, partition was coming spontaneously to life...
...Moreover, it was a stubborn and tenacious democracy, guarding its national particularity within its rain-swept island boundaries for century upon century —a people determined to be itself, sharing its language and literature with no other nation, and refusing to abandon its remote island outpost for warmer and gentler climes elsewhere...
...His wife came on the line...
...Eventually the Partition Committee produced the draft of Lester Pearson of Canada, which was acceptable to both the United States and the Soviet Union...
...YOUR HELP AND STAND HAVE STRENGTHENED ALL OF US...
...and it is doubtful whether the reversal on partition could have been made without explicit presidential acquiescence...
...Here, however, I interposed a question: Were we not acting in an absurdly routine way...
...Finally, after the announcement of Yugoslavia's "abstention," we heard the historic words: "Thirty-three in favor, thirteen against, ten abstentions, one absent...
...Spent half an hour on Isaiah looking for a return-to-Zion passage...
...Eddie Jacobson informed Eliahu Elath and myself that while Truman spoke with irrational rage about the official Zionist leaders, his voice became more tender when he talked of Weizmann and recalled his conversation with him about the southern Negev...
...It must have been one of the least creditable decisions ever made by a British government, and Britain's allies in America and Europe were visibly ashamed...
...I tremble to think of the wave of violence and repression which would sweep Palestine if the conditions of recent unhappy years were to be continued under British or indeed any foreign rule...
...The nation that had taken the lead in resisting Hitler seemed determined to prevent redress for Hitler's victims...
...They still hoped to strangle Israel in her infancy by a combination of military violence and political obstruction...
...The Iraqi delegate stated that the Statute for Internationalization was "illegal," that Jerusalem must take its chances with the rest of the country, and that the siege and denial of water must be maintained not only as a legitimate act of war, but even in the event of a truce...
...I went into the delegates' lounge to call Weizmann at his hotel...
...Indeed, since the absence of fighting in Jerusalem would have released Jewish forces for other sectors, the UN simply allowed the fighting to proceed rather than confer a "military advantage" on the Jews...
...Although our two peoples had very close ties, relations and interests of a cultural, historical, ethnological and economic nature," he went on, "this unitary state ended rapidly and unsuccessfully...
...Yes...
...The United States government, for example, had expressed no views about partition in the special assembly in April...
...I had now been in the United States for nearly a year, apart from the few months with UNSCOP in Jerusalem and Geneva, and the New York scene was becoming more familiar to me...
...The Jewish Quarter in the Old City was under siege and doomed to fall...
...I found them perfunctory in support of partition and deeply skeptical about the possibilities of its implementation...
...Our fight against the American trusteeship proposal now had a new and dramatic incentive...
...The idea of a Jewish state was so novel that many governments had been unable to crystallize their policies...
...It was now a question of counting heads...
...Casualties multiplied at a terrifying rate...
...Even President Truman might hesitate to recognize a state in an area in which the United Nations claimed jurisdiction...
...Thors, to my relief, was magnificent...
...Everything depended now on the decision to be made by the Jewish leaders in Palestine herself...
...The Political Committee adopted the majority report by a vote of 22 against 13 with about 20 abstentions—this meant that the partition proposal was alive but by no means certain of passage with a majority of two thirds...
...My own personal anxieties were great, for the abstainers in the committee included France and Belgium, whose support in the final vote would be indispensable...
...Moreover, as full members the Arab and Moslem states could speak whenever they liked, whereas Jewish Agency representatives were invited only by special dispensation...
...The toll of Jewish civilian life mounted tragically...
...The Arabs were determined to prove that it would be costly in blood...
...The President had called Rosenman into the Oval Office and told him quite simply, "I have Dr...
...The members designated to explore an "agreed solution" were Australia, Thailand and Iceland...
...Accordingly, I began my day on November 29, 1947, with a visit to him at the Barclay Hotel...
...At the same time, the American Zionist movement, in its most decisive operation, mounted a vast campaign to persuade American opinion that the abandonment of partition not only would be a betrayal of a sorely tried people but would also make a mockery of international institutions arid put a premium on aggression...
...In particular, the prospect of French abstention threatened to disrupt the whole West European front...
...Finally, he said: "We'll make this do, but how about a posuk [Biblical verse] for the ending...
...If the decision was clear and firmly upheld, it might have a chance of securing acquiescence later on...
...In his statement on the UNSCOP report, the Yugoslav member upheld federalism but referred to "the right of secession" as "the democratic principle which may be considered the highest achievement of human progressive thought...
...The opportunity was deliberately cast away...
...In addition to the tension of my maiden speech and the attempts to thwart the trusteeship proposal, I became involved in another enterprise...
...The most effective delegates were from Lebanon in the person of Camille Chamoun and Charles Malik...
...American diplomats even hinted that without this concession they would abandon support of the partition plan...
...I could sense a growing skepticism about our hope of survival if we clung to the partition plan...
...It is an ill-fated digression...
...Egyptian forces had crossed the frontier and advanced into the Negev...
...In helping Weizmann draft this letter, I knew that Truman was not irrevocably lost to us...
...There was still some apprehension in Jewish Agency circles lest the Assembly seize on an optimistic remark by the Icelandic representative in order to defer a partition vote and explore the figment of an agreed solution...
...The events of December 1947 seemed to confirm these fears...
...This news had come from Tel Aviv in time for Elath's action and for Silver's statement to the committee at Lake Success...
...Between March and May 1948, our relations with the United States were painfully tense...
...It consisted of the United States, the Soviet Union, Canada, South Africa, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Venezuela, Uruguay and Guatemala...
...It was dark and late...
...Cables came from Tel Aviv telling of familiar Zionist leaders bearing new and glamorous ministerial titles...
...The trouble was that the Arabs had a numerical advantage...
...The British government, spurred by Be-vin's bitterness, had announced that it would do nothing "to facilitate the fulfilment of the partition recommendation...
...On May 14, while the United Nations Political Committee was conducting a desultory debate on paragraphs of the American trusteeship proposal, there came an electric moment...
...Everything here is abrasive, rough and disconcerting...
...He expected deference and was seldom inclined to regard any praise of himself as excessive...
...If the Jews stood firm, we would win through...
...In spite of the role that I had played in the November 23 resolution, I was still unknown to most of the Jewish public in the world...
...Although the partition plan had given the Negev to the Jewish state, our presence there was still thin and fragile...
...The only solution which they would consider would be the establishment of an Arab state in which the existence of a separate Jewish nationality would be ignored...
...Here, for the first time since the end of the war, two Great Powers were reaching agreement on a major international issue, and countries of lesser responsibility were preventing their accord from coming into effect...
...The former, largely owing to Allied exertions, enjoyed lavish independence symbolized by the presence of six Arab representatives in the Assembly...
...Saw Chief after he lunched with Henry Morgenthau...
...Nevertheless, last-minute efforts had to be made to avert complications and to secure the decisive vote...
...MOST CRUCIAL PHASE OF ALL NOW APPROACHES HERE IN WHICH WE SORELY MISS YOUR PRESENCE ADVICE ACTIVThe United States had withdrawn its support from the partition proposal and we now had the task of working not with the United States, but against it...
...Doubts about the United States position were creating a difficult situation in Latin America and in countries such as the Philippines and Liberia, which were accustomed to follow the American lead on international issues...
...I had spoken in public many times but never on a world stage with millions of listeners beyond...
...The turning point had come even earlier...
...He himself had planned to attend the Seder service with his friends Siegfried and Lola Kramarsky, solid and fervent Zionists who had emigrated to New York from Holland...
...And the brunt of 0ur-sacrific^was being borne by civilians, not by soldiers...
...The war of independence was inevitable, but it would be fought in conditions far different from anything that could have been predicted a few months before...
...But these are only the external aspects of his character...
...After each sentence was written in huge letters and agreed, he would go to a lampstand and bring the text right to his glasses endeavouring to learn it by heart...
...It was now plain that American and Soviet support could be expected, but even so, the two-thirds majority was not assured...
...More serious for us, there were second thoughts in the United States...
...With the aid of Arthur Lourie I was able to obtain this gesture, and a few weeks later Weizmann left London— never to return...
...The Icelandic delegate, Ambassador Thor Thors, was to be the rapporteur...
...I added a personal question: "What do I do now...
...It was international discussion at its highest level...
...He even sent Meyer Weisgal out of the country to telephone from Nice to elicit Weizmann's opinion...
...If the 1917 resolution could not be actively enforced by the United Nations we at least wanted to prevent the annulment of its major principle, that of Jewish statehood...
...The Arab delegations, led by Camille Chamoun, decided on a show of moderation in order to prevent the partition judgment from being adopted...
...The alleged interest of the world community in the city's welfare had not been expressed in any serious effort to secure a truce...
...He was more personal than usual...
...He discovered that the hour was late, that the decision to be made was important and that the following day was an American national holiday, Thanksgiving Day...
...He understood the greatness of the moment, but he could not join the spirit of the dance...
...Here was a President of the United States willing to recognize a Jewish state if it was established in defiance of the trusteeship proposal that his own State Department was seeking to press on the United Nations...
...He stated with firm conviction that despite every examination of all avenues, he and his committee were convinced that an agreement in advance was impossible...
...long automobile trip between the Barbizon Plaza Hotel and the temporary UN building at Lake Success, Long Island...
...The opportunity was deliberately cast away...
...The United States now abandoned the trusteeship proposal and moved successfully for the appointment of a Mediator...
...For Israel, a gateway to Africa and Asia would be an indispensable part of its vision...
...News came rolling in thick and fast...
...I could not, of course, use the argument about the Truman-Rosenman conversation, since this was kept in the private knowledge of very few of us in Washington and New York...
...The day before, the odds had seemed to be in our favor...
...On the podium, pale and solemn, were the President of the Assembly, Oswaldo Aranha, Trygve Lie and the equally well nourished Assistant Secretary-General Andrew Cordier...
...I tried to recall that I had been given the chance to plead for justice for our people, for its right to live like others within its own patrimony and environment without benefit of trustees or guardians...
...Under this protection the fighting would stop and the possibility of different solutions, including partition, would be investigated...
...But the wheels of American policy were grinding implacably...
...A group of State Department officials, led by Dean Rusk, was making an earnest attempt to dissuade Moshe Sharett and Nahum Goldmann from proclaiming a state on May 15...
...It should have been obvious from the start that any proposal which disregarded the existence of a Jewish nationhood was now internationally unacceptable...
...I made for United Nations General Assembly headquarters, which was in a ferment of tension...
...By this time the United States and the Soviet Union were becoming irritated at the delaying tactics imposed on the General Assembly by the Arab and British delegations...
...It was a day that would linger and shine in the national memory forever—a moment of truth that would move Israel to its ultimate generations...
...When the General Assembly convened in special session in April 1948, it became evident that partition was not going to be killed as early as Washington had hoped...
...Weizmann had a special capacity to arouse his remorse...
...From the forthcoming ABBA EBAN: An Autobiography by Abba Eban...
...This fact must have been in his mind when he called me on the telephone late on April 30...
...General Carlos Romulo of the Philippines, who had spoken against partition two days before, had now disappeared, and a new Filipino delegate spoke as ardently for the partition plan as Romulo had spoken against...
...He was always 100 percent for or against, and Sharett was now definitely in the "against" column...
...If the world community was firm in support of partition, then partition would come into existence and those who opposed it now would have no course but to acquiesce...
...Worked on draft for four steady hours...
...The Colombian delegate, Dr...
...In addition, there was heavy reinforcement from Mohammed Zafarullah Kahn, the Pakistani representative, an eloquent jurist, later to become a judge at the International Court in the Hague...
...He went on, "The minority plan had its merits and advantages, since it is based on the idea of creating a single Arab-Jewish state in Palestine...
...It was no use pretending that this was the Cambridge Union or a Zionist meeting...
...If you succeed, I will wish you well...
...The President received Weizmann on March 18 and told him that he had not changed at all in his fidelity to partition...
...At six o'clock, when the Mandate was ended, the representative of Iraq arose exultantly to cry "The game is up...
...Thus too there has been consummated the age old dream of Israel to be re-established as a free and independent people in its ancient homeland...
...After all, if an agreed solution had been feasible, there would have been no need of an Assembly discussion at all...
...Weizmann managed to keep Truman's mind riveted on this point alone...
...Late at night Sharett's voice came on the telephone...
...It was now eight-thirty...
...I have upheld it in difficult times...
...Ambassador Johnson leapt to the telephone booth like a startled and portly reindeer...
...And so it went on...
...Our future as a people depended on its most decisive day on the momentum or atmosphere which would be created by a representative of Iceland...
...Around the Security Council Table, Britain, represented by Sir Alexander Cadogan, seemed to carry more weight than among fifty-seven members of the General Assembly...
...I wondered if he had been disappointed or otherwise embarrassed...
...A few days later it became clear how prudent this decision had been...
...He spoke of the prospect that Jews might be a minority in an Arab state: "I will not discuss whether it is a good or a bad fortune to be a minority in an Arab state...
...Once again we were helped by Arab obduracy...
...I was working hard on the draft of the speech for him to make in the General Assembly, explaining why the suspension of the partition scheme would not only be unjust but unpractical...
...How could Moshe Tov get us more Latin American votes...
...Whatever the truth about that, however, it is clear that Truman wanted to make his way back to the partition plan...
...fortunes...
...He would deal with Weizmann, and with him alone...
...The Arab invasion will happen in any case...
...The displaced persons were still rotting away in their camps Now, eleven months later, everything had changed...
...It is a quality of multilateral diplomacy that governments may sometimes determine great issues in which they themselves are only remotely involved, but which are of desperate consequence to others far away...
...The U.S...
...The general returned to whisper to him that the President himself was holding on at the Washington end of the line...
...If the General Assembly session could be surmounted without reversing partition and if a Jewish state was declared on its own responsibility, the President would recognize it immediately...
...The headlines were strident, and for us, victorious, but they already carried the news of the first assaults on Jewish homes and shops in Jerusalem The tide of murder was in full spate Few of us in New York had any illusion about the gravity of our prospect...
...On November 19 we induced Weizmann to rise from his sickbed and go to Washington for a talk with President Truman...
...My own mind was fixed on Washington, where Weizmann's letter to Truman requesting recognition of a "Jewish state" had first been delivered...
...Such a people could be relied upon to understand the perseverance with which the Jewish people clung to its own specificity and to the recollections of its own patrimony...
...But the question arises whether it is any better to try to maintain unity without consent...
...The chief problem was the appalling scarcity of sophisticated equipment in the Haganah, as well as the difficulty of operating freely while the remnant of British rule remained...
...The British High Commissioner, Sir Alan Cunningham, had sailed from Haifa on a cruiser with the last remaining units of the government...
...The general debate had got us off to a good start, but the Arabs and Moslems were fighting a rear-guard action...
...He had not realized on March 19 that the State Department had gone so far in the abandonment of the partition plan...
...Ben Gurion had made his first broadcast as Prime Minister...
...Here was the Jewish people at the threshold of its greatest transition, and yet there was a danger that everything would be lost through utterly marginal circumstances in countries ostensibly external to the issue...
...Here I would say that this was not the purpose for which under international auspices we were encouraged to come to Palestine...
...By the end of April a proposal had been put forward for what amounted to a continuation of the Mandate, with the exception that the officials would be mobilized from several United Nations member states and not from Britain...
...Ambassador Philip Jessup has since written: "We laughed it off—how could that happen without the United States delegation being informed...
...He described the impending hour of the Mandate's expiration as "a moment of opportunity for the Jewish nation, which, if missed, might be irrevocably lost...
...This meant in effect that it was going to obstruct its fulfillment by allowing public order to collapse and permitting the country to fall into chaos...
...However, relations between Arabs and Jews have reached such a state of tension that it has become impossible to reconcile their points of view on the solution of the problem...
...And what counts now is not our political separation but our union for economic purposes...
...Even for him it was not easy to break through Truman's ban...
...This time he wanted his address to be carefully formulated...
...I was a stranger to them...
...By the time we had gone halfway through the alphabet, we knew that we were safely home...
...This meant Jerusalem for them, and London for me...
...Many of the utterances made from its rostrum were reported verbatim or at length in the New York Times and the Herald Tribune...
...I described the trusteeship plan as "an attempt to appease Arab violence...
...One of the dangers was that the British government would prolong the date that it had announced for the Mandate to end...
...Australia, New Zealand and many Latin American countries were passionate in supporting the principle of resistance to aggression...
...The President became fascinated by his excursion into a phase of remote political geography...
...but when he saw Secretary of State George C. Marshall in Washington on May 12, he was firm as a rock...
...It was evening in Jerusalem...
...Any meeting with him has always been a drastic and unre-laxing experience...
...All my life I've been a Jew, felt like a Jew, been talked about as a Jew, and I now learn in my old age that I am—what was it—oh yes, a Khazar...
...They would send volunteer armies from Lebanon and Syria into Galilee...
...I found my position quixotic, and I thought it best to tell him so frankly...
...Federal countries clearly understood that agreement was an essential condition of a unitary system...
...If we refused this suspension, we would be held responsible for the continuation of hostilities that were already costly and might well turn into a massacre...
...The country whose historic imagination had come to daring expression in the Balfour Declaration, the Britain that had made the idea of a Jewish national home familiar in international jurisprudence was now doing everything possible to abandon its own vision...
...Horowitz has recorded the Jewish reaction with quiet understatement: "We sighed with relief...
...For the next few days Jews and Arabs summoned every resource of influence and persuasion to secure the victory of their cause...
...I now had three major assignments...
...The Haganah was hard pressed in resisting the assaults of Palestine Arabs and of irregular forces under Fawzi el-Kawakji from the north...
...Very few political leaders like to have their predecessors too near, especially if they cast as formidable a shadow as Weizmann...
...At the beginning of 1947 the Jewish people's hope of statehood had been nowhere recognized...
...Australia...
...It had always been a proud tradition of Zionist leaders that they appeared in their own colors both as writers and orators...
...Much has been written about "pressure politics" in the 1947 Assembly But the partition verdict was also based on a keen ideological analysis backed by historic experience...
...Truman had stipulated one absolute condition...
...They had cleverly decided to avoid a frontal assault and to fight a war of communications...
...There was something almost messianic in this convergence of American and Soviet ideas...
...Thus sometime at two o'clock in the morning of May 1, I found myself for the first time writing an address that I was going to deliver to an international tribunal under the attentive scrutiny of the whole Jewish world and with a vast international audience beyond...
...This was only twenty-four hours after Truman had talked with Weizmann, as Truman himself wrote: "When he left my office I felt that he had reached a full understanding of my policy and that I knew what he wanted...
...I have been grievously disappointed by its recent decline...
...The Haganah was inflicting casualties as well as suffering them, but the more intense the fighting the more doubtful world opinion became about the possibility ihat the partition dream could be realized...
...At the Jewish Agency headquarters, we worked around the clock telegraphing, telephoning, writing, cajoling, pleading all over the world...
...With supreme indifference to the flow of history, the Assembly went on to discuss the general trusteeship proposal...
...We persuaded him to go to a Labor Zionist rally in Madison Square Garden, where he was given a rapturous homage...
...No sooner had the partition resolution come to fruition than attempts were made to thwart it...
...ON THE OCCASION OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE JEWISH STATE WE SEND OUR GREETINGS TO YOU WHO HAVE DONE MORE THAN ANY LIVING MAN TOWARDS ITS CREATION...
...Every people, and that includes the Jewish people, has a full right to demand that their fate should not depend on the mercy or the good will of a particular state," Ambassador Samyon Tsarapkin declared...
...How do we know that this Eban knows the language at all:" Suzy and I moved out of our hotel into Meyer Weis-gal's apartment on West End Avenue...
...Was there anybody in Manila who had access to the President...
...The American conception of a "speech writer" was quite foreign to our experience, unless there were, as in Weizmann's later years, compelling reasons to use such a technique...
...We thought that it would be historically ironical if this letter bore the signature of Weizmann, who had cooperated for forty years with the Mandatory power: April 19, 1948 I sound a note of solemn warning against the prolongation of British rule in Palestine...
...Sometimes, when we should have been talking to delegates from Iceland, Luxembourg or Uruguay, we were instead soothing the venerable leaders of Palestine Jewry, or ensuring that they had tickets for the meetings, or seeing to it that their hotel accommodations were at least tolerable...
...As you may know, I have cherished the British-Jewish relationship all my life...
...Sharett was unwilling to appear in somebody else's colors...
...it was being crushed by the convergence of British hostility and Arab violence...
...A sense of abandonment and ingratitude invaded his mood...
...The United States recognizes the de facto authority of the new State of Israel...
...In the afternoon of May 14 the discussion was transferred to the plenary session at Flushing Meadow...
...The issue was illuminated by reference to many other experiences of national relations...
...If we failed, that dream might be extinguished for generations to come...
...There was one memorable objection from Philadelphia: "We know that Moshe Sharett speaks English quite fluently...
...Although I enjoyed writing, I did not share the belief of my seniors in the omnipotence of logical memoranda, few of which were ever read with any great attention...
...Yes...
...Yet in the first week of May the chief obstacle to the proclamation to Jewish independence seemed to lie in Jewish hesitations...
...The assignment had come to me so suddenly that I had had little time to reflect on its importance for me personally...
...It elicited a long-awaited American statement in the General Assembly in favor of partition...
...Tingfu Tsiang, the representative of China, which was then still under Chiang Kai-shek's regime...
...The evidence is not convincing...
...The danger was that the Arabs would be successful in making a cessation of fire dependent upon a Jewish agreement to suspend the Declaration of Independence...
...Occasionally we would stop halfway, near La Guar-dia Airport, where the General Assembly held its plenary sessions at a skating rink at Flushing Meadow...
...By the end of the session, his eyes were watering as if in tears...
...He replied with disconcerting emotion...
...Might some friend in the United States have influence on the President of Liberia...
...There was still the fear that a French abstention might upset this prospect...
...Grasping the simplicity and force of the argument, he gave his assent...
...His self-confidence was absolute...
...We felt that if the United Nations declared a trusteeship, President Truman, despite his good intentions, might find it difficult to recognize a state in a way that would involve defiance of an international decision...
...His eyesight was bad and the work of preparation agonizing...
...The map of the Jewish state would be lacking in any kind of coherence so that a Jewish governmental authority could not establish its writ in any consecutive area...
...Those like myself who were employed by the Jewish Agency had no specified ranks, positions or hierarchical priorities...
...Twenty minutes later he returned...
...The subterranean rivalries between him and Weizmann's followers, as well as the more overt jostling for credit between the American Zionists and the Palestine leaders led by Sharett, threatened to mar our sense of occasion...
...At that very moment a secretary put his head through the door with a copy of the New York Post telling of a spectacular Jewish victory at Mishmar Haemek...
...The announcement had been put on the air at once...
...Weizmann's talk had been successful...
...I barely had time to send it over to Sharett for a perfunctory check before I found myself sitting at the table of the General Assembly Committee, with all fifty-seven delegations attending, and with the plaque before me announcing "Jewish Agency for Palestine," Sharett sat behind me in paternal solicitude...
...This declaration was followed by a Soviet admission that there was insufficient harmony on which to base a unitary solution...
...A natural deference moved us to go to the Plaza Hotel to greet Chaim Weizmann, who had been waiting on tenterhooks...
...We recaptured much ground during that Thanksgiving holiday...
...But it was the American attitude that was giving us most concern...
...All I remember is looking around the table and feeling much younger than anybody else in sight...
...Accordingly, the Soviet government slid logically into its second position: support for partition...
...It was only because all prospects of an agreed solution had been exhausted in the three decades of Mandatory rule that the matter had come to the United Nations Assembly...
...He did not suffer fools—or for that matter wise men—gladly...
...The Political Committee, in adopting the partition plan, had appointed a commission of three to see whether an "agreed solution" could be found...
...From that moment on, the debate went inexorably our way...
...The only hope of conciliation lay in an act of judgment and decision...
...A splendid gleam of friendship had lit up our solitude...
...We knew that this was impossible...
...Within the next few days our delegation began to disperse...
...The aged leader had never had much taste for compromise in personal relations...
...Despite his lack of office, many heads of delegation and foreign ministers were not easily accessible by anyone but him...
...Many of the recognized leaders of Palestine Jewry were in our delegation and I must frankly acknowledge that they were something of a burden to those of us who had operative tasks...
...There were five Arab states, some of them ably represented...
...First, there was a genuine fear that the Jewish population of Palestine would be massacred as a result of an action for which the United States was largely responsible...
...Nor had we heard the last of Bevin, who had regarded the majority UNSCOP report as a personal affront to himself...
...Alone in his office, Ben Gurion sat at his desk with his head buried in his hands...
...He, more than anyone, knew that the charter of Jewish freedom was also the signal for a savage war...
...It was nearly seven o'clock with dawn rising in the gloomy ravine of West End Avenue when I finished my task...
...For a whole week we were to live in suspense...
...Only later did I learn that he had gone to a telegraph office from which he cabled to my family in London...
...And this was still not his last act in the drama...
...The weeks between September and late November 1947 are vivid in my memory...
...Those of us who made our homes there did not do so with the object of becoming Arab citizens of Jewish persuasion...
...The President was never to forget this act of faith...
...he had never fully recovered from the recollection of his deposition at the Zionist Congress in Basel, and his resentment toward his successors burned deeply in his heart...
...I also recall the curiosity of many delegates when I finally took the floor...
...I knew that I wanted intensely to succeed...
...At the end of December I sent warnings to Jerusalem about the decline in our political "The partition line shall be nothing but a line of fire and blood...
...Our problem, therefore, is not whether we can avoid invasion, but whether we shall be invaded as a state or as a. hesitant, nebulous entity...
...How could this have happened...
...As the minutes ticked away, all hope seemed to be receding...
...The dream of Jewish statehood which had illuminated the winter months was now to be snuffed out through the inconstancy of those who had fostered it...
...The key to this turning point in the first part of the UN meeting would lie in the hands of a small island country in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with a population of less than 175,000...
...Nothing was assured, even if nothing had been irrevocably lost...
...Our aim was to have the meeting conclude without creating a legal fact incompatible with the establishment of a Jewish state that day...
...The Jewish people in Palestine was truly a nation, fighting for its patrimony under the momentum of international recognition...
...In my first intervention, I expressed the opinion that it was vain to postpone statehood in order to avoid the Arab invasion...
...The Arab states were irritated but not overly alarmed by this development...
...In the city outside the walls, the Jewish population, cut off from the coast by intervening Arab armies, was subjected not only to bombardment by Transjordanian guns, but also to the prospect of starvation and thirst...
...On May 7, for example, Bartley Crum, who had been a member of the Anglo-American Committee, went to see Emmanuel Neumann with what he called the "strange story" that President Truman would be recognizing a Jewish state within a week...
...In an exhausted daze I left the Assembly hall and took a cab to the Waldorf Towers, where Weizmann lay in bed triumphant but . fatigued...
...Third, it was feared that America's interests in the Arab world, although not as variegated as they later became, would be subjected to threat and pressure...
...weizmann s appearance was scneauiea ror uctober Z4...
...Back in our hotel Suzy and I waited until midnight when the New York Times with its banner headlines gave us th< news: Victory in Washington and the United Nations, but danger in the Middle East...
...Trygve Lie was similarly ebullient...
...By the time the British Mandate ended, a Jewish state would be in virtual existence...
...There was a rumor that the United States had recognized the new State of Israel...
...The next few weeks were memorable for me in many respects...
...So in submitting extreme demands, the Arabs strengthened the impression that the Jews needed powerful safeguards to defend their existence and their very lives In submitting extreme demands, the Arabs strengthened the impression that the Jews needed powerful safeguards to defend their existence and their very lives...
...Abba Hillel Silver and Sharett made impressive openings in addressing the Special Political Committee under Evatt's chairmanship...
...Find out how this could have happened...
...Should your administration despite all this press for any prolongation of British tenure, it would mean a responsibility for terrible events...
...The very partition that he had derided as impractical was now being seriously advanced as the only real practicality...
...it may be now or never...
...It was still regarded as the central arena in which the destiny of mankind would be determined...
...Meanwhile, the news from Jerusalem became more ominous...
...I assured Chaim Weizmann that we were for partition and would stick to it...
...In the conditions, our only direct contacts were through his Missouri friend Eddie Jacobson and his executive assistant, David K. Niles...
...There were other delegations at the General Assembly who were unwilling to follow the American retreat...
...Aranha called the meeting to order and invited the representative of Iceland to the rostrum...
...He said that Iceland was far less remote from Jewish destiny than I presumed...
...The General Assembly had lost its right of succession...
...Thus what was envisaged in the resolution of the General Assembly last November has been, as far as the Jewish State is concerned, implemented...
...The proposal was incurring a sharp fusillade of assault from the Soviet Union for obvious reasons, and from smaller countries such as New Zealand, Australia and Latin American republics, which were affronted by the idea that the United Nations could reverse its decision in response to illicit force...
...We reassembled our delegation in full force at the Jewish Agency headquarters and resolved to fight with every resource to ensure that the Jewish state would come into existence when the Mandate expired on May 15...
...If the United Nations would not take responsibility in time of peril, by what right could it claim authority when the danger was passed...
...Weizmann also pursued Sharett to the airport on his way back to Israel with an entreaty: "Don't let them weaken, Moshe...
...There was now a great deal of agitated whispering around the table where the American delegates sat...
...He had, simply put America m the observer's role: "If you make that decision, you will be alone...
...And yet, we had the intuition that the date would never lose its meaning...
...He said shyly that since I was writing the speech, he thought that I ought to deliver it myself...
...Jessup smoothed it out, mounted the General Assembly rostrum and read it as best he could: This Government has been informed that a Jewish State has been proclaimed in Palestine and recognition has been requested by the provisional government thereof...
...On the upper reaches of the Jordan a Syrian brigade was ready to attack our settlements in the hot green valley...
...Although the defense of Jewish settlements by the Haganah was heroic and generally successful, the Arabs were able to sunder communications between the scattered parts of Palestine Jewry...
...These were the only two places for any of us to be...
...Liberia also had swung around in our favor To my relief, my own "clients"—the Benelux countries—now recorded their firm intention to support the partition plan...
...They were sure that if the United Nations kept out of the way, the whole city would fall into their hands...
...Suzy and I got into one of the delegation's cars with Sharett and Moshe To v. Strangely, yet perhaps understandably, we made the journey into Manhattan in complete silence...
...The Arab assault was developed intensely by a veteran Syrian statesman, Faris al-Khoury...
...And in conclusion, the reference to prophecy: "The Lord shall set His hand for the second time to recover the remnants of His people and He shall set up an ensign for the nations and shall assemble the outcast of Israel and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth...
...He shrewdly insisted that I obtain confirmation of my invitation from the official Zionist bodies which were subservient to Abba Silver's circle...
...My speech was an attempt to demolish the American trusteeship proposal, not only by challenging its moral assumptions but also by proving that it was no longer viable in any empirical sense...
...Early in November the United States, influenced by British pressure, tried to induce us to yield the southern Negev to the Arabs...
...He is a member of Israel's Parliament...
...Of the Latin American representatives, Ambassador Alfonso Lopez of Colombia, a former President of his country, was noticeably lukewarm...
...Astonishingly, behind these habits and pretenses, there is not only a passionate Jewish loyalty but a deep esthetic sensitivity^ a desire that Jewish life should not only be free but, even more improbable, become beautiful—stripped of the disharmony resulting from Diaspora experience and transmuted by science and culture into an authentic symmetry...
...At least three hesitations were at work...
...I reached out for reinforcement in the direction where I had always found it...
...I thus found myself almost every night conferring con-spiratorially with Soviet representatives, including Gromyko, Tsarapkin and Jacob Malik, about the possibility of frustrating the American trusteeship proposal...
...With Sharett and Horowitz tied down in Jerusalem and the American Zionist leaders neutralized by their alienation from the President, my own responsibilities increased...
...The President had taken offense at charges made against him by Abba Silver, who was well known to be a supporter of the Republican Party...
...Some changes were made to the UNSCOP proposal with the object of reducing the Arab population of the Jewish state...
...For a few weeks I found Meyer's home a more congenial place for preparing speeches and memoranda than our tiny room in the Barbizon Plaza Hotel...
...The war of survival would be fought in Jerusalem while the efforts of our adversaries to frustrate partition would be centered in New York...
...ITY INFLUENCE...
...Crowds had gathered near the Jewish Agency building in Rehavia to hear the recitation of the vote...
...Afghanistan...
...In the division of the world into what we called "spheres of influence," I was allotted four Scandinavian countries, France and the three Benelux countries...
...But there was no news or greeting for Weizmann...
...His secretary, Joseph Cohn, took the overnight train to Washington and brought it to the White House...
...In the circumstances therefore the partition plan proposed by the majority offers more hope of realization...
...The idea that the international community should represent every sovereignty and culture except that of the Jews was clearly repellent to his libertarian nature...
...There is a shock of gray hair, a bulbous nose, a red face, a strident voice and a vocabulary so rich with unprintable imprecations as to leave the recipient shuddering with incredulity...
...They would interpose themselves between the northern and southern Negev...
...But it was worth taking the risk for the reward of an unusual experience...
...By the morning of November 29 the Thai delegate, Prince Wan, had prudently departed for Bangkok on the Queen Mary, ostensibly on the grounds that a revoluionary situation existed in his county, but actually in order to avoid having to cast a vote against partition...
...My case was that the logic of ethnic and cultural autonomy in the country, together with the creation of a vacuum by Britain's withdrawal, had, in fact, crystallized two separate areas of jurisdiction...
...As a result of our success as liaison officers with UNSCOP, Horowitz and I now had a more senior position...
...He never allowed his resolution to be blunted by any confession of fallibility...
...It was then that the chairman, Ambassador Aranha, revived our hopes...
...We now had good reason to expect a favorable Philippine and Liberian vote...
...A few hours before leaving his hotel suite, he had received a visit from Judge Samuel Rosenman, who had been Roosevelt's speech writer and was now a close and trusted adviser to Truman...
...From Jaffa, determined assaults were made against the civilian population of Tel Aviv...
...But these friends, with all their good will, did not have an intimate knowledge of our situation, nor could they be expected to give a detailed account of the points at issue in the Security Council debates...
...The Transjordanian Arab Legion was arrayed along the riverbank with its main encampment at Zerka...
...Truman's subsequent writings give the impression that he had been deceived by his own officials into accepting a proposal which he regarded as preparatory to partition, and which they envisaged as a substitute for it...
...We decided that a letter should go to President Truman expressing unconditional resistance to any extension of the British Mandate...
...The Australian people, for whom he spoke, had a traditionally chivalrous attitude to the Jewish people, as well as a close acquaintance with the Palestinian scenery in which so many Australian soldiers had found repose from the heat of desert conflict...
...Jessup had sent an aide to Trygve Lie's room to make inquiries...
...My work was especially delicate, since Weizmann had quarreled violently with Moshe Sharett despite the affinity of their political views...
...That evening I was among the guests, together with Sharett, at Trygve Lie's home in Forest Hills...
...There was always the danger that some injury to his vanity or sense of hierarchy might evoke vindictive reaction...
...He told the messenger that he could not be disturbed and sent his deputy, General Hildring, to take the call...
...Ambassador Johnson faced Sharett and Horowitz and began to pronounce judgment of execution...
...On Monday, March 22, Weizmann had called Eddie Jacobson on the telephone to express an utterly irrational belief that Truman would still fulfill his promise...
Vol. 3 • November 1977 • No. 1
