Truman and Israel

Cohen, professor of history at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, uses published sources, private papers, and declassified government papers in a brilliant reconstruction of one of Washington's oddest incidents: how the U.S. government came to formulate its policy on the partition of Palestine, the declaration of Israel's statehood, and the borders of Israel.

The cast of characters is alone worth the price of admission. They included an irascible president; a lofty secretary of state; and an anti-Semitic secretary of defense. Lower down, Loy Henderson led the fight against recognizing Israel with the argument that this would permanently destroy the U.S. position in the Middle East. Clark Clifford and David Niles masterminded the pro-Israel forces in the White House. Abraham Granoff, who met Truman at a Independence, Mo., barbershop in 1924, served as a key presidential counselor on this issue. But Eddie Jacobson was the most exotic figure of all. He first met the future president in 1905, served (in Truman's words) as "Jew clerk" to Truman in the army during World War I, then became Truman's partner in a men's clothing store in Independence. The store lasted only three years before going bankrupt in 1922, but it cemented a relationship which much later gave Jacobson permanent access to the president, including twenty-four Oval Office appointments, plus other meetings. Jacobson sometimes used these opportunities to help the Zionist cause and, unlikely as it sounds, he and Granoff had a major, perhaps a decisive, influence on the president.

Truman and Israel raises classic issues of American foreign policy (the White House versus the State Department, the role of domestic politics in foreign affairs). And it does so compellingly, for the book reads like a novel.

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