Correcting Richard Holbrooke

In today's Washington Post, there's a recollection piece by Richard Holbrooke on the birth of Israel and the role that Washington, that is, President Truman and the State Department (at loggerheads), played at the time.

Holbroke writes:-

The Jewish Agency proposed partitioning Palestine into two parts -- one Jewish, one Arab. But the State and Defense departments backed the British plan to turn Palestine over to the United Nations. In March, Truman privately promised Chaim Weizmann, the future president of Israel, that he would support partition -- only to learn the next day that the American ambassador to the United Nations had voted for U.N. trusteeship.

Not quite correct.

The partition proposal was that of the United Nations, which the Jewish Agency accepted (Menachem Begin as well as the Lechi heads most certainly did not), and which came into being on November 29, 1947. In writing the British plan to turn Palestine over to the United Nations, Holbrooke means that the British attempted to renege on the Partiton Plan and the State Dept. aided them in promoting trusteeship. (Review this)

To his credit, Holbrooke makes clear what was the background to the struggle:-

Beneath the surface lay unspoken but real anti-Semitism on the part of some (but not all) policymakers. The position of those opposing recognition was simple -- oil, numbers and history. "There are thirty million Arabs on one side and about 600,000 Jews on the other," Defense Secretary Forrestal told Clifford. "Why don't you face up to the realities?"

In the end, Truman overrode the opposition:-


Don't you wonder if such a harsh reality continued and, perhaps, continues even unto this day at Foggy Bottom?