Sunday, September 29, 2024

Biden Can Halt Wider War: Stop Sending Arms


 September 26, 2024
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Image by Alexander Mills.

Israel’s violence toward its neighbors, long out of control in its destruction of Gaza, now threatens to open new fronts, involve new nations, and even drag the United States into direct conflict. Promises of a ceasefire from the Biden Administration have come to nothing. Soft, behind the scenes diplomacy has failed to achieve peace.

In response, “Ceasefire,” the first demand of the peace movement since Israel’s destruction of Gaza began, has evolved. The actions of the Israeli military and government, the indiscriminate killing of women and children with US weapons, and appropriate frustration from activists in the street have created a new demand: an American arms embargo against Israel. For President Biden and his administration, it may be the only way out of a new quagmire in the Middle East.

But instead of de-escalating the war and reaching a lasting peace with the Palestinian people, Netanyahu’s Israeli government is expanding the war to new fronts. On September 23rd the Israeli Defense Force launched a barrage of attacks on Lebanon, killing over 600 people and wounding thousands.

It is now threatening a ground invasion. The previous week it simultaneously detonated electronic devices across Lebanon killing dozens and maiming thousands, including civilians and children. Commenting on that attack, former CIA Director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said, “I don’t think there’s any question that it’s a form of terrorism.” These terror attacks in Lebanon were perpetrated just one day after a senior Biden advisor warned Netanyahu not to expand the war.

These are only the latest examples of a pattern of escalation by Israel. In January an Israeli strike killed a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut, Lebanon. In April Israel destroyed the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria. In late July they assassinated the political leader of Hamas, and lead negotiator in the ceasefire talks, in Tehran, while he was attending the inauguration of Iran’s new president. Israel has also escalated the scale of violence in the West Bank, killing over 500 civilians in the past year and launching a major military operation there in August.

Israeli officials have recently described their strategy of expanding the war to include Lebanon as “de-escalation by escalation” – an oxymoron that flies in the face of the Biden Administration’s long stated goal to prevent a wider, regional war.

This diplomatic failure on the part of President Biden and his foreign policy team threatens to drag the United States into another war in the Middle East. The Pentagon announced that the US is sending additional forces, adding to the 40,000 US servicemen and women already in the region. Another aircraft carrier, the USS Truman, and accompanying ships is now headed to the area to join the USS Abraham Lincoln, sending thousands more sailors to the region as well, at considerable expense–and risk.

More direct US involvement in Israel’s wars threatens not only those US personnel, but also the political situation at home. A major foreign policy failure so close to the November presidential election could have the effect of bolstering former President Donald Trump’s bid to retake the White House. Trump has consistently criticized Biden for not supporting Israel enough, saying he should let them “finish the job” in Gaza. No friend to the Palestinians, Trump even used the term “Palestinian” as an insult and slur on the debate stage with Biden. Despite repeated signs that the Israeli PM is not a trustworthy partner for peace, President Biden has failed to use his leverage to rein him in. In a recent statement Netanyahu declared he will not entertain diplomatic ideas on Lebanon and will not engage in ceasefire talks for 45 days. The fact that the statement came 45 days before the US presidential election is a clear signal of Netanyahu’s political desires and motivations.

So what can Mr. Biden, his administration, and presidential hopeful VP Harris do? They can change course and finally put their foot down with Netanyahu and his right-wing government. The planned introduction of a Joint Resolution of Disapproval by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont provides an opportunity to do so. This privileged resolution requires the US Senate to take a vote on the sale of $20 billion dollars of military equipment to Israel. More than $18 billion comes in the form of high tech F-15 fighter-bombers, but the sale also includes tank munitions, mortar shells, and precision bombs.

Biden could preempt the vote by announcing a pause to at least some weapons to Israel in light of the expanding war he has long opposed publicly. This move could also shield the Biden Administration from forthcoming reports from inspectors general investigating human rights violations committed by Israel using US weapons, a breach of US law.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has certainly given President Biden cause to stop sending US arms to his right wing government. The assault on the people of Gaza is nearing its one-year anniversary. Tens of thousands of Israelis are protesting their government’s failure to get back hostages taken by Hamas during its attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023. Former Israeli Prime Ministers Barak and Olmert have criticized Netanyahu’s prosecution of the war and blamed him for strategic failures that led to October 7th. President Biden could embrace these more reasonable forces in Israel, framing his arms stoppage as a message to Netanyahu personally and an effort to retrieve the hostages.

He’s done it before. In one of President Biden’s first foreign policy moves as president he announced a pause in offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia. The kingdom had been using such weapons to destroy its neighbor to the south, Yemen, since 2015. Biden’s move helped pave the way for negotiations leading to a ceasefire in Yemen that has largely held since 2022. His example of presidential leadership, while not perfect, illustrates a clear roadmap.

There’s historical precedent too. Presidents Eisenhower, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush also leveraged US arms to Israel. Want a ceasefire to end or prevent humanitarian disaster? Stop providing the fire. 

President Biden’s strategy to achieve a ceasefire and end the destruction of Gaza has, so far, failed. His strategy to prevent a wider war in the Middle East is currently failing. It’s time for a tougher, clearer tack. There is still time to prevent the complete destruction of Gaza and to avert another disastrous regional war. There is time for Biden to avoid a political blunder that will permanently damage his legacy as president. There is time to energize young voters and Arab-American and Muslim-American voters who fear a return of Trumpism but can’t stomach a vote for an administration they see as complicit in genocide.

But there isn’t much time.

The Not Another Bomb Campaign, launched by the Uncommitted movement that successfully mobilized over 700,000 voters to express their discontent with Mr. Biden’s Gaza policy in the Democratic Primary, has the correct framing. “It is crystal clear: In order to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza, the U.S. must immediately stop arming Israel.”

Satisfying this new demand can also stop the expansion of violence into Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, preventing the loss of American lives. Heeding it might be the only way to stop the horror.

Brian Garvey is Assistant Director of Massachusetts Peace Action. He is also an active member of the Raytheon Antiwar Campaign.

 

Do Not Go Gently into that Good Supermarket

How to rage against the snack aisle.

Don’t panic. The supermarket doors had just locked while I was standing in the checkout line. “Everyone stay exactly where you are. We have an amber alert for a lost child.”

Head down, act natural, Justin.

Looking down, there was nothing natural about my shopping basket, packed with the most ultra-processed food on the planet. As an American, you can proudly call me the number one consumer of snack foods worldwide (Japan is number two, Canada number six). They say only two-thirds of daily calories for American children and teens come from ultra-processed food. I say we can do 100%! And so what if the latest and largest study of over 10 million people showed that consuming ultra-processed food was associated with 32 health problems, especially heart disease-related deaths, Type 2 diabetes, and common mental health issues like anxiety and depression?

Standing in the checkout line that evening while they searched for a lost kid, I didn’t register any anxiety. Like my childhood hero, He-Man, I had the powerrrrrr . . . to disassociate. Besides, I looked completely trustworthy. I just came from the gym, wearing my hoodie—hood up—and baggy workout pants. At 25 years old, I stood 6’3”, scraggly scruff, vacant furtive eyes, plus my aura of anger.

Pay no attention to my shopping basket loaded with kid-friendly junk food. Because when you’re as numb as I am, one little box of animal crackers won’t soothe the raging belly beast. I had the frilly stuff, like Rice Krispie treats, party-size bags of gummi bears, and Funfetti Oreos. Which by the way, why are there so many flavors of Oreos today? Growing up we had two. I remember the first time I ate double-stuff Oreos. They’re like MDMA crème sandwiches—Oreos make me want to hug you and do more.

I basically had enough sugared treats to dose a small child into a cotton-candy coma and everyone saw it. Even the store manager was coming at me. I dropped my basket to the floor and prepared to scream: “Wait! It’s not me! I’ve been doing paleo and skipping carbs!”

And then the doors unlocked. They found the kid wandering the produce section.

After my exit, I should have been thinking: maybe I have a problem. That night of the amber alert, my food compulsions almost got me on a registry because some kid didn’t know their way around lettuce. Where was my red dye 40 alert? Something to let me know about the link between ultra-processed food and obsessive overeating; or that processed food hooks us through an endless combination of addictive chemical seasonings.

Instead, I threw myself back into the Food Lion’s den to take on their “patisserie” aisle. By the way, South Burlington isn’t Paris, just call it a bakery. You’re a grubby fluorescent chain store peddling chemically-injected corn and soy widgets. Over seventy percent of packaged food options are ultra-processed, containing excessive levels of salt, sugar and fat. Still, I couldn’t resist their latest concoction. Chunky chocolate-chip cookies with rainbow sprinkles, straddling a thick layer of stable cream puff, and each one the size of my sasquatch fist. I must have them all.

A nice, older woman with graying, curled hair delicately packed four in a fancy box. As if two minutes from now I wasn’t going to shred the box, shove that crimped gold ribbon under my car seat, and pop those sprinkled sugar bombs whole like a sad circus pelican. “Oh, your little boys are going to love them,” she winked at me, handing me the box. I must have looked puzzled because she repeated it. “You must have little boys at home waiting for these.”

What the hell was she talking about? No, I didn’t have any children at home. I was just a grown-ass single man who hadn’t done any therapy.

And so I became a Funfetti guerrilla, vanilla frosting smeared under the eyes, deploying Seal Team Six cover strategies.

I was an OB—Original Binger. Before self-checkout kiosks existed, I tried to “Bury the Order,” e.g., buy enough regular but non-perishable groceries like boxes of pasta, dish soap, canned beans, and then strategically mix in all of the real items I required: potato chips, chocolate doughnuts, Pop-Tarts, Cool Ranch Dorito’s, etc.

And yes, I more than once invoked the nuclear cover option. After watching The Big Lebowski, I donned a bathrobe and slippers. Then I shuffled through the sliding doors very un-Dude like. No sunglasses or confident chit-chat. I was a Keebler chameleon. A conveyor belt full of my favorite junk foods and nothing else. Not a single can of concealer beans. My slacked jaw and empty gaze to nowhere, the long trench-coat style fleece bathrobe . . . even the fuzzy slippers. No one looked at me. I felt invisible at last, like I could rob a bank. I mean, in a bathrobe and slippers, so the getaway might be tricky.

Eventually, I survived my processed food addiction through the William Blake method: “You never know what is enough, unless you know what is more than enough.”

If you see me grocery shopping in a tattered bathrobe—it’s okay. I heard Oreo’s is coming out with a new salted caramel ecstasy flavor. After all, progress not perfection.FacebookTwitter

Justin Kolber, a practicing lawyer in Vermont, is a recovered ripped dude, an athlete, activist, and author of Ripped, the first memoir about the dual extremes of muscle and food disorders. Read other articles by Justin.

 

Zelenskyy Joins the US Election

Here he goes again, cap in hand, begging for the alms of war.  Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been touring the United States, continuing his lengthy salesmanship for Ukraine’s ongoing military efforts against Russia.  The theme is familiar and constantly reiterated: the United States must continue to back Kyiv in its rearguard action for civilisation in the face of Russian barbarism.  By attempting, not always convincingly, to universalise his country’s plight, Zelenskyy hopes to keep some lustre on an increasingly fading project.

The Ukrainian president has succeeded most brazenly in getting himself, and the war effort, into the innards of the US presidential election.  In doing so, he has become an unabashed campaigner for the Democrats and the Kamala Harris ticket while offering uncharitable views about the Republicans.  (Electoral interference, anyone?)  The Republican contender, Donald Trump, had good reason to make the following observation about Zelenskyy: “Every time he comes into the country he walks away with $60 billion … he wants them [the Democrats] to win this election so badly.”

Even as a lame duck president, Joe Biden could still be wooed to advance another aid package.  This seemed to be done, as the White House records, on threadbare details about Zelenskyy’s “plan to achieve victory over Russia.”  According to the readout, diplomatic, economic and military aspects of the plan were discussed.  “President Biden is determined to provide Ukraine with the support it needs to win.”

Detail was also scarce in a briefing given by White House national security spokesperson John Kirby.  Zelenskyy’s plan to end the war “contains a series of initiatives and steps and objectives that [he] believes will be important”.

In a statement, Biden announced that he had directed the Department of Defense to allocate the rest of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funds by the end of the year along with US$5.5 billion in Presidential Drawdown Authority.  The US$2.4 billion from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative is intended to supply Ukraine “with additional air defense, Unmanned Aerial Systems, and air-to-ground ammunitions, as well as strengthen Ukraine’s defense industrial base and support its maintenance and sustainment requirements.”

In terms of materiel, an additional Patriot air defence battery is to be furnished to Ukraine’s air defences, along with additional Patriot missiles. Training for Ukrainian F-16 pilots is to be expanded.  The air-to-ground Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW), colloquially known as glide bombs, will also be supplied.

Ukraine’s fate is being annexed to the US election campaign, with the Ukrainian president keen to make his own boisterous intervention in the election.  On September 22, Zelenskyy paid a visit to a military facility in Scranton, Pennsylvania.  It was calculated for maximum effect.  The facility is not only responsible for manufacturing some of the equipment being used in the war against Russia, notably 155-millimeter howitzer rounds, but is a crucial state for the presidential contenders.  On hand to join him was a full coterie of Democrats: Gov. Josh Shapiro, Senator Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Representative Matt Cartwright (D-8th District)

Harris is clear that any administration she leads will see no deviation from current policy.  Peace proposals were to be scoffed at, while prospects for a Ukrainian victory had to be seriously entertained.  Stopping shy of playing the treason card in remarks made on September 26, Harris claimed that there were those “in my country who would instead force Ukraine to give up large parts of its sovereign territory, who would demand that Ukraine accept neutrality, and would require Ukraine to forgo security relationships with other nations.”  And such types had endorsed “proposals” identical to “those of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”

That message of sanctimonious chest beating was also embraced by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who could only see Zelenskyy as a fighter “for freedom and the rule of law on behalf of democracies around the world” while “Trump and his craven MAGA followers side time and again with Vladimir Putin,” one responsible for a “filthy imperialist and irredentist invasion.”  Clearly, the Zelenskyy promotions tour has exercised some wizardry.

The full soldering of Ukrainian matters to US electoral politics has received a frosty response from various Republicans.  House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) demanded nothing less than Zelenskyy’s dismissal of the Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova.  “Ambassador Markarova organised an event in which you toured an American manufacturing site.”  The tour took place “in a politically contested battleground state, was led by a top political surrogate for Kamala Harris, and failed to include a single Republican because – on purpose – no Republicans were invited.”

Those on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, seething at Zelenskyy’s electoral caper, have launched an investigation into the possibility that taxpayer funds had been misused to the benefit of the Harris presidential campaign.  Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), in a letter to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, noted that, as the Department of Justice was “highly focused on combatting electoral interference, the Committee requests DOJ review the Biden-Harris Administration’s coordination with the Ukrainian government regarding President Zelensky’s itinerary while in America.”

Comer could not resist a pertinent reminder that the Democrats had made much the same charge against Trump while in office in 2019. That occasion also featured Zelenskyy, only that time, the accusation was that Trump had used him “to benefit his 2020 presidential campaign, despite a lack of any evidence of wrongdoing on the part of President Trump.”

GOP dissatisfaction is far from unreasonable.  Zelenskyy’s sojourn is nothing less than a sustained effort at electoral meddling, the sort of thing that normally turns US exceptionalists into rabid hyenas complaining of virtue despoiled.  Only this time, there are politicians and officials in freedom’s land happy to tolerate and even endorse it.  At stake is a war to prolong.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.comRead other articles by Binoy.

 

The War at Home, Fall of 1970

When you’re 20, playing college football, chasing girls and barely keeping enough passing grades to stay out of the draft, what could be better? That was this writer in the fall of 1970, at the height of the Vietnam debacle (I never would call it a war). Just completed the greatest summer of my life (even now 54 years later) and living at home with not a damn care in the world, other than how to get more weed for the weekends. My cousin Mick and I spent June and July in beautiful (to us city boys) Virginia Beach, with our own furnished apartment, days at the beach and evenings working part time. The stone promenade and the white sands blending into the clean salt of the ocean was as close to paradise this Brooklyn boy could ever experience. And the girls! Unreal! We met girls from the South and Midwest who just wanted fun in the sun and male companionship. They sure got it from us.

In May of 1970 I had my first taste of protest. Up until then I was as naive as a guy could be. The Vietnam thing was just whatever the mainstream media would offer us at the 6 O’clock News. Eating dinner with my folks and viewing the news footage of rice paddy battles, along with hype and spin by LBJ and his surrogates, was still not in my own purview. After all, I had my 2-S student deferment that kept me safe at home in Brooklyn. It wasn’t until the war, as they called it, skirted close to me that I started to grow up. First it was when my neighbor Fran from across the street, when she married this ex-GI who just returned from what he explained to me was ‘The Shit’. His stories of being an infantryman there for his one year tour (yeah, some tour) and how he spent every moment out on patrol being scared shitless. Then, our church’s crossing guard Mrs. L had her only child, a Marine, come home in a wooden box. All I could remember about her afterwards was that Mona Lisa look on her face. About the same time I heard that my friend David’s apartment building super’s son, Vito, a US Ranger, got killed on some hill in ‘The Shit’. His family were Poles who came to our country a few years earlier. I could never forget seeing him, home on leave less than a year before, standing next to me at Mass, dressed in his Ranger browns replete with beret tied outside his pants leg. Vito had a younger brother, 17, who I knew from the schoolyard where we played ball. Within a few years of Vito’s death the kid got into horse and OD’d.

I could have done more after this new political education… and chose not to. It was back to playing football, chasing girls, driving the yellow cab and smoking weed. I didn’t take part in the many marches and demonstrations against the phony war when I should have.

Mea Culpa. I guess I made up for it when the Bush/Cheney Cabal did their illegal and immoral attack and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. It took me over 30 years to finally grow up! And grown up I am nowFacebookTwitter

Philip A Farruggio is regular columnist on itstheempirestupid website. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 500 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the It’s the Empire… Stupid radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at paf1222@bellsouth.netRead other articles by Philip.

 

The 1948 Recognition of Israel: Impact, Legacy, and Relevance

How a genocide got to the impossible "here" from the improbable "there"

Note: Update of my previous article from March 2008.

Except for a brief interlude during the Eisenhower administration, United States’ support for Israel, in its genocide of the Palestinian people, has been an ongoing process since the Truman administration recognized the state. Contemporary events prompt a review of the post-World War II history that resulted in the formation of a nation that had no visible name until David Ben Gurion proclaimed, on May 14, 1948, the state as Israel.

Books, articles, documents, memoirs and letters from past generations detail how a small group of insiders prevailed over recommendations from an experienced and famous U.S. State Department of “wise men.” It is the story of the Zionist mission. It is the story of apartheid Israel.

The impact, legacy and relevance of the 1946-1948 events to today’s occurrences have not been sufficiently explored. Under the surface are the hidden messages and obscure drives that shaped the past and extended into the future. A more complete analysis of the legacy from Truman’s rapid recognition of the state of Israel explains the past and clarifies the present.

In the initiation of a trend, supporters of those who derailed State Department Near East policy were able to integrate themselves into Middle East policy and subsequently shape global policies. Turmoil from initial events provoked a continuous turmoil in the Middle East. Almost all administrations framed Middle East polices to favor the Zionist cause.

The Truman State Department consisted of leading luminaries of U.S. State Department history. George C. Marshall, United States military chief of staff during World War II, first military leader to become Secretary of State and later a Nobel Prize recipient, had Loy Henderson, Robert A. Lovett, Dean Rusk, Warren Austin and other known figures in his department. Many of them were not entirely supportive of the UN partition plan; their State Department followed Truman’s directives until sensing the partition plan would be counterproductive and cause more violence than it intended to resolve. The record indicates the State Department attempted to modify Truman’s policy that favored partition. They sought a temporary UN  trusteeship.

President Truman postured himself as motivated by a conviction — the displaced Jews who had survived the World War II Holocaust needed and deserved an immediate home. The U.S. president vacillated in his arguments and contradicted himself in statements. He railed vehemently against the steady stream of advocates for a Jewish state and retained several presidential advisors who pursed one purpose; promoting a new Jewish state. A suspicion remains that his humanitarian motives had a political content; the Democratic Party craved the financial and voting support of Zionist organizations and their allies.

Clark Clifford, Truman’s chief consul and ardent promoter for a Jewish state, quickly became one of the president’s closest assistants. He was not Truman’s principal assistant, a post held by John Roy Steelman, and behaved as if he were titular chief of staff by acting unilaterally and somewhat dubious in actions that proved decisive. The evidence points to Clifford favoring election expediencies in developing policies that led to the creation of the state of Israel.

The story begins at the closing shots of World War II and with the refugees in displaced persons camps.

The plight of the displaced persons could not be easily resolved. The United States was involved in returning millions of its armed forces to their homes, in the repatriation of captured enemy soldiers, and in preventing mass starvation in Europe. A possibility of a post-war depression and mass unemployment guided America’s political thinkers. In addition, the U.S. immigration laws did not permit the immediate admittance of the displaced persons, nor could it show favoritism. Unable to find a legal mechanism that would  bring them to America, Truman petitioned Great Britain to allow them to immigrate to Palestine. British Prime Minister Clement Attlee cited the 1939 White Paper, which specified a definite number of applicants, as a limiting factor. He also suspected new immigrants would burden Britain’s over-stressed mandate and add troubles to the existing emergency.

Truman could not prevail over Attlee. What to do? After presentations by an Anglo-American inquiry commission and a joint cabinet committee (Morrison-Grady) failed to achieve welcoming peace proposals, a tired and irked British government requested the UN General Assembly to consider the Palestine problem. On May 15, 1947, the UN created the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). The committee outlined a partition plan with the city of Jerusalem under a UN trusteeship. Truman instructed the State Department to support the partition plan. UN Ambassador Warren Austin and the state department’s Near East Division, led by Loy Henderson, doubted that partition could resolve the situation.

During the months of UNSCOP’s efforts, Truman complained of pressure by pro-Zionist groups. In Volume II of his Memoirs, p.158, the former president relates:

The facts were that not only were there pressure movements around the United Nations unlike anything that had been there before but that the White house too, was subjected to a constant barrage. I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders — actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats — disturbed and annoyed. Some were even suggesting that we pressure sovereign nations into favorable votes in the General Assembly.

This harsh rhetoric was mild compared to other Truman’s statements concerning the Zionists and its American leaders, especially Cleveland’s Rabbi Silver. In a memorandum to advisor David K. Niles, the president wrote, “We could have settled this whole Palestine thing if U.S. politics had been kept out of it. Terror and Silver are the contributing cause of some, if not all of our troubles.”

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly approved the UNSCOP Partition plan. Approval only meant agreement in principle. No effective means for transferring the principle into an operational result had been determined. The lack of enforcement provoked more conflict in Palestine. Each side strived to gain territory and advantage. The uncontrolled mayhem steered the U.S. State Department to adopt the concept of a temporary trusteeship for the area. Believing it had President Truman’s approval, the State Department instructed the U.S. delegation to the United States to petition for a special session of the General Assembly and reconsider the Palestinian issue. In his presentation, UN Ambassador Warren Austin proposed the establishment of a temporary trusteeship for Palestine.

Truman denied giving a green light for the presentation and wrote in his diary, which has been quoted in “The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman, P.127. “This morning I find that the State dept. has reversed my Palestine policy. The first I knew about it is what I see in the papers. Isn’t that hell!” His infuriation arose from embarrassment of having assured Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, whom he highly regarded, that the U.S. would not depart from the Partition Plan and would not entertain a temporary trusteeship. George McKee Elsey, in his memoir, An Unplanned Life, p.161, supplied evidence of Truman’s awareness and permission for the speech. White House staff member Elsey writes:

In fact, as I quickly learned in delving into the record and querying White House and State Staff, Truman had personally read and approved some days earlier the Austin speech, which outlined a plan for U.N. trusteeship of Palestine when the British Mandate ended in May in lieu of partitioning the area into separate Jewish and Arab territories.

The May 15 date for the British exit neared, and the Zionists prepared to declare their state and present their credentials for recognition. Contradictions in U.S. Near East policy led to policies that became completely confusing.

In a speech to the UN General Assembly, March 25, 1948, President Truman clarified his nation’s temporary endorsement of a UN Trusteeship for Palestine that did not prejudice partition. The pleased State Department instructed Ambassador Austin to proceed with deliberations of the Trusteeship proposal. As if not cognizant of the UN trusteeship discussion, Truman prepared to recognize the soon to be formed state. On May 12, two days before an expected announcement by the Jewish Agency in Palestine, an angered George C. Marshall and his assistant Robert Lovett confronted Truman and demanded reasons for the haste in wanting to grant recognition. The president selected his counsel Clark Clifford, who was not involved in foreign policy, to clarify the reasons for the intended recognition.

Clifford’s principal reasons for instant recognition: The UN Security Council could not obtain a truce in hostilities; partition would happen in fact; the U.S. would eventually have to recognize a new state, and it was preferable to get the jump on the Soviet Union.

Clifford’s arguments are easily rebutted. (1) More significant than whether or not the Security Council could obtain a truce was that the UN council was engaged in discussions hoping to achieve a truce. Recognition would close the discussions and prevent the truce. (2) If the Trusteeship was approved and implemented, an entity unilaterally invoking a partition scheme would violate the UN dictates. (3) Clifford’s simple explanation that the U.S. must recognize the new state quickly because the U.S. must recognize the new state was a statement and not a clarification. (4) As for the Soviet Union, Clifford echoed the alarm of Phillip C. Jessup, a member of the U.S. delegation to the UN, who, according to Robert J. Donovan in his book Conflict and Crisis, The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, p.380, cabled UN affairs officer Dean Rusk that the Soviet Union wanted recognition to use Article 51 of the UN charter to protect the new state and thus gain a foothold in the Middle East. This view is specious — Article 51 pertains to defense of member states and the new nation did not become a UN member until one year later. Besides, wasn’t it advantageous for the U.S. to have the Soviet Union recognize the new state before it did? The State Department could then claim it had no choice and would lose less favor with the Arab states.

Marshall questioned why a domestic affairs advisor was determining foreign policy. Truman replied that he had invited Clifford to make a presentation. Obviously, Truman did not want history to record his words and asked his campaign manager to speak for him. Sensing that politics and the forthcoming presidential election had become overriding factors in a significant foreign policy decision, the dedicated George C. Marshall uttered one of the most insulting words ever directed by a cabinet official to a president, “If you follow Clifford’s advice, and if I were to vote in the next election, I would vote against you.” Clark Clifford’s Memoir, Council to the President, P.13, mentions that the Secretary also insisted that these personal remarks be included in the official state department record of the meeting. Whew! (Vice President Harris take note.)

Fearing that the transfer of advice on Near East affairs from the state and defense departments to inexperienced advisors and non-professional lobbyists would continue, Assistant Secretary of State Robert Lovett determined to change Truman’s intentions. For some unknown reason, rather than calling the president directly, he channeled his inquiries through Counselor Clark Clifford. The president’s counselor didn’t speak to the president about Lovett’s urgencies, but assumed a new role ─ he spoke for the president. In response to Lovett’s request to ask Truman to delay recognition, Clifford confesses in his memoir, P.22,

Saying (to Lovett) I would check with the President, I waited about three minutes and called Lovett back to say that delay was out of the question. It was about 5:40 and the State Department has run out of time and ideas.

Within a few minutes, one of the most bizarre sequence of events that had ever occurred in U.S. diplomacy unfolded.

Clifford states he called Dean Rusk and asked the UN affairs officer to inform Warren Austin, chief of the U.S. delegation to the UN, that the president intended to recognize the new Near East state within fifteen minutes. His called bypassed protocol; usually the assistant secretary of state should be informed and that person has the obligation to inform other staff members of decisions. Clifford quotes a surprised Rusk as retaliating with the remark, “This cuts directly across what our delegation had been trying to accomplish in the General Assembly, and we have a large majority for it.” Rusk supposedly called Warren Austin who went home without bothering to inform the U.S. delegation of the news.

Truman’s rapid signing (within 11 minutes) of the document that gave de facto recognition to the ‘new state of Israel’ angered members at a United Nations meeting on the Trusteeship. After learning the new state would be called Israel, the words ‘Jewish state’ were crossed out and the words ‘state of Israel’ were inserted.

May 14 was an enviable day for the new state of Israel, but an unpleasant day for the 160 year old American republic. The diplomatic solution to the Near East crisis had been settled, but the conflict has not been resolved.

What does history show?

History supports the conviction that the Partition Plan would not resolve the hostilities. The State Department concern for rapidly recognizing a new state, without knowledge of its constitution or composition, was diplomatically correct and prescient. The quick recognition of a state for the Jewish population prevented the UN from finishing a discussion of providing mechanisms to prevent more bloodshed and providing proper protection for the state’s large Palestinian population. George Marshall’s State Department acted honestly, with knowledge, and with the conviction it served the interests of the United States

President Harry S. Truman correctly perceived the tenacity of the Zionists. He erred in his judgment that the Partition Plan would resolve the conflict. The unusual rapid response for recognition of the new state, without awareness of its composition, signified a pardon of the excesses committed by Irgun and Haganah against civilian populations and certified the exclusion of any Palestinian voice in the new government. Truman never asked what would happen to the 400,000 Palestinians who had no representation in the new state. Evidently, he didn’t consider that the placing of 100,000 displaced Jews into Palestine would also mean the placing of weapons in the hands of many of these persons and, together with instant recognition, would reinforce the eventual displacement of 900,000 Palestinians. The European DP camps were temporary shelter for those who would undoubtedly find permanent homes and citizenship; the UNWRA refugee camps became permanent homes for several million Palestinian displaced persons who languish with stateless identification.

The post-election provided Truman with an opportunity to show he was not captive to the Zionist enterprise. What did he do? He only half-heartedly pressured Israel in 1949 to resettle displaced Palestinians. This token maneuver is verified by Joshua Landis. In a paper published in The Palestinian Refugees: Old Problems – New Solutions, University of Oklahoma Press: Norman, OK, 2001, p. 77-87, Landis writes,

McGee threatened the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. that if Israel did not accept 200,000 refugees, the US would withhold $49 million worth of Export-Import Bank loans to Israel. The Israeli Ambassador was unimpressed with McGhee’s threat and responded that McGhee “wouldn’t get by with this move.” The Israeli Ambassador boasted that “he would stop it.”

True to his word, the Ambassador was able to nip McGhee’s threat in the bud. That same afternoon, the White house phoned McGhee to say that the President would have nothing to do with withholding loans to Israel. Never again would a State Department official under President Truman attempt to intimidate Israel on the issue of refugees.

Landis claims the U.S. President tried to resolve the Palestinian DP problem by offering the Syrian government $400,000,000 dollars in exchange for settling up to 500,000 Palestinians in the fertile plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. A president of a nation was willing to burden his own nation in order to relieve Israel of its obligation to the Palestinian refugees. In retrospect, he behaved circumspect and his compassion for victims depended on their value to the Democratic Party.

A humanitarian light brightened the parade of lobbyists for partition and this light managed to convince many of the validity of their cause. Later U.S. government Middle East policies repeated the intense lobbying that guided Truman’s 1948 decisions and subdued the power and recommendations of government agencies.

The darkened perspective, due to Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, has not deterred the forces who continue to obtain a U.S. foreign policy that favors their direction. The memory of Truman’s electoral victory, which defied all predictions, continues to make prospective candidates for national office sense that winning elections depends upon support from those who also support Israel.

The legacy of the 1946-1948 events is well described. Control of discussions pushed a previous U.S. administration to provide a legal frame for creation of the state of Israel. Control of discussions continued and impelled contemporary administrations to provide the support for that frame. Without U.S. support, Israel’s authentic moral, political, economic and military character would have been exposed and its structure weakened. The Israeli state might have collapsed.

The genocide started in 1947, from an improbable ‘there’ and has continued until the impossible ‘here.’ By supporting Israel, the democratic and freedom loving United States has made the improbable a sickening and frightful reality.FacebookTwitterReddit

Dan Lieberman publishes commentaries on foreign policy, economics, and politics at substack.com.  He is author of the non-fiction books A Third Party Can Succeed in AmericaNot until They Were GoneThink Tanks of DCThe Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name, David L. McWellan). Read other articles by Dan.

 

Anti-Immigrant Agitation in a Nation of Immigrants

In recent days, Donald Trump and his Republican running mate, JD Vance, have doubled down on their false and defamatory claims about legally-admitted Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, thus churning up widespread fears, bomb threats, and school evacuations.  Claiming that these migrants were destroying the American “way of life,” Trump promised that, if elected, he would order massive deportations.  This statement echoed his astonishing promise, made during the 2024 campaign and previously, to seize and deport between 15 and 20 million immigrants.

Nativist agitation has a long, sordid history in the United States.  In the 1850s, large numbers of American Protestants rallied behind the Know Nothing movement and its political offshoot, the American Party, ventures centered primarily on opposing the influence of immigrant Catholics.  In the latter part of the nineteenth century, hostility toward Chinese immigrants (“the yellow peril”) and, later, Japanese immigrants led to lynchings, riots, and legislation that barred virtually all immigration from the two Asian nations.

During the early twentieth century, American xenophobia focused on the alleged dangers provided by the “new immigrants” from Southern and Eastern Europe, predominantly Catholics and Jews. Such people, it was claimed, had a higher propensity for moral depravity, feeble-mindedness, and crime, and were polluting the “Nordic race.” As a result, many “old stock” Americans championed changes in immigration law to sharply reduce the number of these allegedly inferior people entering the country.  Adopted in legislation during the 1920s, a new, highly discriminatory national origins quota system did, indeed, largely restrict their ability to enter the United States, leaving millions to perish in Europe after the onset of the Nazi terror.

Of course, many Americans, symbolized by the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, welcomed the arrival of people from foreign lands.  And, in line with their views, U.S. immigration law was significantly liberalized in 1965.

We should also recognize that the United States was hardly unique in undergoing surges of anti-immigrant nativism.  Indeed, over the centuries, recent arrivals in many countries experienced rampant xenophobia—including “Paki-bashing” in Britain and violence against Turkish immigrants in Germany.  Recently, in fact, intense opposition to immigration and immigrants provided a key factor behind British public support for Brexit and the startling rise of previously marginal, hyper-nationalist parties in Europe.

What has inspired this hostility to people coming from other lands?

Many individuals, it seems, feel uneasy when confronted with the unfamiliar.  Thus, they sometimes find differences in skin color, religion, language, or culture to be disturbing.  Although some people can―and often do―find these things a welcome addition to their lives or, at least, interesting, others become uncomfortable.  In these circumstances, immigrants are easily added to other disdained minority groups as victims of widespread misinformation, mistrust, and prejudice.

Unfortunately, this unease with human differences provides a ready-made opportunity for political exploitation.  As many a demagogue or unscrupulous politician has learned, fear and hatred of the “other” can be effective in stirring up a mob or winning an election.

Although nativism has been mobilized by political parties and movements of varying political persuasions, it has appeared most frequently on the Right.  Fascist movements of the 1920s and 1930s focused heavily on the supposed glories of their nation and the ostensible biological inferiority of people from other lands.  This xenophobia provided a rightwing ideological component in numerous countries, including the United States, where groups like the Ku Klux Klan, the Silver Shirts, the Nazi Party, and the America First movement lauded a mythical “Americanism” and assailed the foreign-born.

More recently, too, anti-immigrant sentiment has played a central role in Europe’s parties of the Far Right, such as France’s National Front (now the National Rally), Alternative for Germany, the Swiss People’s Party, Hungary’s Fidesz, the Party of Freedom of the Netherlands, the Brothers of Italy, and numerous others of their stripe.  Meanwhile, in the United States, anti-immigrant sentiment has thrived in the increasingly rightwing Republican Party.  Trump’s adoption of an anti-immigrant approach as a central theme of his MAGA movement, like his promise of building a wall between Mexico and the United States, is no accident, but part of a political strategy to ride xenophobia to power.

A key reason that nativism has become a staple of the Right is that, with the advent of democratic institutions in many nations, the Right has faced a difficult situation.  Before the commoners gained the vote, their opportunities for effectively challenging economic and social inequality were limited.  But, armed with the ballot, masses of people had the power to elect governments that would implement more equitable policies, such as sharing the wealth.  This could be accomplished in a variety of ways, including taking control of giant corporations and estates, heavily taxing vast fortunes, raising workers’ pay, reducing the workday and lengthening vacations, building inexpensive housing, and establishing free education and healthcare.  Worst of all, from the standpoint of the Right, such leveling measures, advanced by a burgeoning Left, had significant popular appeal.

Faced with this dilemma, the economically and socially privileged and their political parties on the Right recognized that, to defeat the drive for the expansion of economic and social equality, it would be useful to fan the flames of popular prejudices (among them, hostility to immigrants), as this would divide the mass base of the Left and put it on the defensive.  Consequently, they gravitated toward this divide and conquer strategy―a strategy that sometimes worked.

Will it work again in the 2024 U.S. presidential and congressional elections?  With the poll numbers so close, it’s hard to say.

Meanwhile, though, it’s worth noting how ironic it is that, in the United States―a nation populated almost entirely by immigrants and their descendants―anti-immigrant sentiment, whipped up by Trump and Vance, has once again come to the forefront of American politics.FacebookTwitterReddit

Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press). Read other articles by Lawrence, or visit Lawrence's website.