Present at the Re-creation of Israel
RABINOVICH, ABRAHAM
A Participant’s Account Present at the Re-creation of Israel By Abraham Rabinovich Jerusalem As they approached their nation’s 60th anniversary, cushioned by prosperity unimagined when...
...The following month, he witnessed the signing of the Proclamation of Independence in the former home of Tel Aviv’s first mayor, Meir Dizengoff, on Rothschild Boulevard...
...The lesser event, he says, was the actual signing of the Proclamation...
...There remains one witness who can testify from the inside to the climactic events that gave birth to the country and to the spirit that imbued the men and women who were its midwives...
...The debate was stormy, Handler recalls, and lasted close to six hours: “It seemed at times that people might come to blows...
...It was in this capacity that he participated in the Va’ad Hapoel meeting in April...
...In mid-March, Washington’s shift took concrete form...
...He advocated waiting a little bit [before declaring independence...
...THERE WERE weighty reasons to avoid proceeding without U.S...
...Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped...
...Fighting with Palestinian Arabs was already raging around the country, Jerusalem was surrounded, and several Arab armies were preparing to invade in a month on the heels of the departing British...
...Army in the conflict...
...With a remarkably vigorous mind, he recalled that period during a recent interview in his Jerusalem home...
...According to the official account of the Va’ad Hapoel meeting, participants from all parties were united in decisively rejecting Truman’s proposal...
...But strong objections from the State Department and U.S...
...The antirecognition arguments made by Marshall and the State Department could not easily be dismissed...
...In making the case for recognition, Clifford cited history and morality—the Bible, the Balfour Declaration, the Holocaust...
...The Zionist statesman, then 74, spoke softly and persuasively to the President, who would later call him “one of the wisest men I’ve ever met...
...We didn’t know whether we could oppose the British Empire...
...or Britain said...
...Marshall responded forcefully by citing the national interest...
...After prayers and dinner with his family Handler joined Tel Avivians dancing in the street—an extraordinary departure for him and other Orthodox Jews from the normal sobriety of the “day of rest...
...He arranged a debate at his desk between Marshall and White House special counsel Clark Clifford...
...Some delegates favored accepting the American proposal for a very different reason: They believed that if the partition resolution were scrapped, the Jewish state could expand beyond the territory allocated to it by the UN...
...He believed that whatever we did must be in conformity with the great powers...
...I was convinced, and still am, that if we had waited there would not have been a state...
...Exasperated, Truman soon closed his doors to importuning Jews and said to aides one day: “I don’t want to hear the word Palestine anymore...
...As the Army chief of staff in World War II, Marshall enjoyed tremendous national prestige and Truman’s deep respect...
...He had less reason to be optimistic now than the previous month...
...Handler described the electric atmosphere at that April meeting as each party’s delegation took its place at a separate table in the small hall of a Tel Aviv school for girls...
...As Handler and his neighbors were dancing in the streets of Tel Aviv Friday night, Marshall telephoned Truman to say that while he could not support the President’s position, he would not oppose it publicly...
...Even Chaim Weizmann, the grand old man of the Zionist movement, was not dismissive of the American proposal, says Handler...
...Says Handler: “This event was more important than the actual signing of the Proclamation of Independence...
...If the President decided otherwise, Marshall warned he would not support his election in November...
...In the end, it was Ben-Gurion who decided the issue with a passionate speech...
...Handler was in England when World War II broke out and remained there until 1948...
...And it ended: “With trust in the ‘Rock of Israel,’ we set our hand to this Proclamation...
...Some senior officials maintained that a state formed in good part by immigrants from Eastern Europe would inevitably go Communist...
...The Arabs were quite strong and the British didn’t like us,” notes Handler...
...The U.S...
...for a Jewish state was immense, not only among Jews...
...He was universally regarded as a patriot for whom the national interest was supreme and he gave formidable weight to Truman’s Cabinet...
...When Rabbi Silver, at the head of a Zionist delegation, slammed his hand on Truman’s desk at the end of a peroration, Truman told him that only the President of the United States slammed that desk...
...The earlier decision to proclaim independence was now put to the provisional government, which affirmed it...
...As Handler remembers it, though, the meeting was far more complex: “Every party was divided on the issue, including mine...
...The two principal American Zionist leaders were divided on the issue, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise opposing the American proposal, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver favoring it...
...He arrived in Tel Aviv on the eve of independence and assumed a senior role in the Hapoel Hamizrachi movement...
...The Haganah’s successes to date, he warned, had created unrealistic expectations...
...Ben-Gurion was almost the only person who didn’t care what the U.S...
...Like BenGurion, Truman weighed the conflicting arguments and came to a clear decision: He would support a Jewish state...
...Nevertheless, Truman apparently remained undecided...
...Many more men were to be recruited as well, including Holocaust refugees arriving from British detention camps in Cyprus...
...defense officials had led to second thoughts within the Administration...
...The most difficult test still lay ahead, with the incursion of the Arab armies, said the Zionist leader, but the Yishuv would prevail if it summoned its inherent powers...
...Rising precisely at 4 P.M...
...Topping the meeting’s agenda, however, was a political issue—the startling shift in Washington’s position toward the establishment of Israel...
...Truman, who had apparently been unaware of this initiative, nevertheless asked that the Proclamation of Independence be delayed by a few months to put off the imminent Arab invasion...
...President Harry S. Truman’s approval half a year earlier of the United Nations resolution calling for the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, and America’s pressure on other countries to do likewise, were major landmarks in the drive to create a Jewish state...
...Moscow was an enthusiastic advocate of a Jewish state in the expectation that the Labor Party leadership would bring it into the socialist camp...
...Ben-Gurion had also heard with dismay the appraisal of Yigael Yadin, the Haganah’s operations chief, that it had no more than a 50-50 chance, probably less, of holding its own...
...On the basis of the Haganah’s limited skirmishing thus far, Secretary of State George C. Marshall and others were dubious about the ability of the Jews to repel the regular Arab armies...
...The building had been converted into an art museum, and was fitted with a podium and chairs for the occasion...
...Up front, facing them, sat BenGurion and other leaders of the Labor movement, including Golda Myerson (Meir) and Moshe Shertok (Sharett...
...And the Jewish lobby was implacable...
...Coolly outlining the options facing the still unborn state, he said that if the British continued to prevent arms and reinforcements from reaching the Yishuv, the situation would indeed be dire: “I don’t say hopeless, but there is the possibility that the Arabs would take control of the whole country and every settlement, if not worse...
...Despite the fact that neighboring Arab states had 40 times the population of the Yishuv, he said, and despite the abundance of weapons in the hands of the Arabs, no Jewish settlement had yet been captured or abandoned...
...It began: “The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people...
...We have decided,” said the concluding resolution, “relying on the authority of the Zionist movement and the support of the entire Jewish people, that upon the termination of the mandatory regime there shall be an end to foreign rule in Palestine and the governing body of the Jewish state shall come into being...
...If we had followed America [and postponed],” says Handler, “Russia would have backed off and would have been trouble...
...When the matter was put to a vote, Ben-Gurion won an unquestionable victory...
...Washington’s backing a Jewish state, opponents argued, would undermine American influence among the oil-rich Arab states and give the Soviet Union an opportunity to penetrate the Middle East...
...Ben-Gurion concluded: “The question is, is there a realistic chance of standing up to the [Arab] invasion or not...
...Jesus Christ couldn’t please them when he was on earth,” Truman was quoted by former Vice President Henry A. Wallace as saying, “so how can anyone expect that I would have any luck...
...Within hours, the Arab armies began advancing on the country’s borders to begin the decisive confrontation with the newborn Israel...
...A feeling of drift and faltering values stirs a longing for leaders with the grit, vision and modest lifestyle of the Founders...
...Here they attained statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave the world the eternal Book of Books...
...From the White House, Clifford telephoned a Jewish Agency official in Washington to inform him that the United States would that day recognize the Jewish state...
...support...
...After the pregnant silence that followed that remark, Truman suggested that they all sleep on it...
...The afternoon ceremony was concluded in half an hour so that synagogue-goers could hurry home to prepare for the Sabbath...
...Washington had placed an arms embargo on the Middle East that affected the Jews but not the Arabs, who were getting their arms from Britain and France...
...They warned against involving the overstretched U.S...
...This was conveyed to Marshall...
...Every man present, even Ben-Gurion, wore a dark suit and tie...
...Although there were only 13,000 men in military formations, said Ben-Gurion, they would be supplemented by 15,000 local protectors from kibbutzim and other settlements who would be deployed in mobile units...
...Ben-Gurion’s leadership would be demonstrated again on May 12, two days before the independence proclamation, when he addressed the newly formed provisional government...
...My answer is that by expanding [military] manpower and training, and by expanding our supply of armaments, mainly by bringing in what we have already acquired abroad, we can stand and we can win decisively, but not without losses and severe shocks...
...In that case, Israel would win the ensuing war, but not without heavy casualties and the loss of some settlements...
...This would change shortly...
...We felt at the time very clearly that the meeting was decisive...
...Truman was of very mixed mind now about supporting a Jewish state...
...But the revelers still did not know if Washington would issue the recognition that would confirm Israel’s legitimacy...
...Or Russia...
...It was apparent to all that a difficult war was in the offing, but the resolution was fortifying: “I was so encouraged when I saw the enthusiasm of Ben-Gurion and his Labor colleagues...
...A senior official of the religious Hapoel Hamizrachi movement, Handler witnessed the birth of Israel on two separate occasions...
...A Participant’s Account Present at the Re-creation of Israel By Abraham Rabinovich Jerusalem As they approached their nation’s 60th anniversary, cushioned by prosperity unimagined when David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of a Jewish state on the eve of an existential war, Israelis were suffused with nostalgia for the sense of purpose that sustained the embattled young country back then...
...May 14 was a Friday...
...Public support in the U.S...
...It was more likely, he said, that the blockade would be lifted when the British Army pulled out...
...Weizmann was in New York, but he sent Abba Eban to the UN to speak on his behalf...
...Two Days Earlier, a decisive meeting had been held in the Oval Office...
...At midnight, the British mandate formally ended...
...His latest book, The Yom Kippur War, is now available in paperback...
...His demonstrative resignation would be a personal blow for Truman and disastrous for his election hopes...
...by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a kibbutznik turned resident of a condo in one of Tel Aviv’s most luxurious high-rises...
...Domestic political considerations must not determine foreign policy, he said...
...and by Opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu, who is known to seek out superplush hotel stays at someone else’s expense during his trips abroad...
...Abraham Rabinovich writes frequently for the New Leader on the Middle East...
...A Jew he continued to see, though, was Eddie Jacobson, his old World War I comradein-arms and subsequent business partner...
...Postponement of independence, Handler believes, would have cost the Zionists precious political momentum, and most likely the important support of the Soviets...
...He had the group escorted out...
...Jacobson prevailed on him to have one more meeting with Weizmann...
...as scheduled, Ben-Gurion began reading the proclamation that he had adapted from a draft by Shertok...
...In addition, the Yishuv—the 650,000 Jews in Palestine—counted heavily on American political support and was seeking to raise desperately needed funds in the United States...
...He had just learned from Golda Meir, returning from a secret visit to Amman in Arab dress, that Jordan’s King Abdullah would invade with his crack Arab Legion despite his earlier promise to the contrary...
...The more critical moment came a month earlier, during a week-long session of the Va’ad Hapoel Hazioni, in effect the Zionist parliament, convened to weigh the imminent withdrawal of the British from Palestine and the prospect of all-out war with the Arab world...
...With the weight of Jewish history and the fate of the Jewish population of Palestine resting squarely on his shoulders, BenGurion projected a sharp vision and a self-assurance that carried the hesitant with him...
...Arieh Handler, now 93, is the last survivor among the 200 delegates invited to the signing of the Proclamation of Independence on May 14, 1948...
...Shertok, the future foreign minister, was likewise not eager to challenge Wa shington...
...ambassador to the UN, Warren Austin, urged the world body to abandon its partition plan in favor of a trusteeship that would serve as a stopgap until another political solution could be found...
...Mentioning the look on Meir’s face upon learning that day of the loss of 70 men in battle, he stressed how vital it was to prepare the population for the inevitability of heavy losses...
...Amid all the substantial challenges confronting them today, Israelis are irked by the hedonism and sycophancy of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the target of yet another criminal investigation...
...Yet neither could domestic political considerations if Truman wanted to be elected President in November...
Vol. 91 • March 2008 • No. 2
