Was there ever a time when a leading organ of the US media could speak the unvarnished truth about the links between the United States and Israel?
Consider this quote from Time magazine of January 1952, embedded in an article that explained its choice of Mohammed Mossadegh as its Person of the Year for 1951. It had no compliments for Mossadegh, the man who was spearheading his country’s bid to take back its oil resources from the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. No surprise there.
Surprising, however, is Time’s candor on Israel. It minces no words. US support for the creation of Israel had alienated the Middle East: it had been a costly error, motivated not by national interest but petty considerations of presidential politics. Truman had supported the creation of Israel in order to court American Jewish votes. This was the plain truth: a US President had placed his electoral chances ahead of a vital national interest. Apparently, in those days, Time could write the plain truth without worrying about the tide of flak from the American Jewish community.
Here is the quote, with italics added for emphasis:
The word “American” no longer has a good sound in that part of the world [the Middle East]. To catch the Jewish vote in the U.S., President Truman in 1946 demanded that the British admit 100,000 Jewish refugees to Palestine, in violation of British promises to the Arabs. Since then, the Arab nations surrounding Israel have regarded that state as a U.S. creation, and the U.S., therefore, as an enemy. The Israeli-Arab war created nearly a million Arab refugees, who have been huddled for three years in wretched camps. These refugees, for whom neither the U.S. nor Israel will take the slightest responsibility, keep alive the hatred of U.S. perfidy.
No enmity for the Arabs, no selfish national design motivated the clumsy U.S. support of Israel. The American crime was not to help the Jews, but to help them at the expense of the Arabs. Today, the Arab world fears and expects a further Israeli expansion. The Arabs are well aware that Alben Barkley, Vice President of the U.S., tours his country making speeches for the half-billion-dollar Israeli bond issue, the largest ever offered to the U.S. public. Nobody, they note bitterly, is raising that kind of money for them.
Time does not see Israel as a victim. There is no mention of the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ either. Instead, Israel had been created “at the expense of the Arabs.” It refuses to “take the slightest responsibility” for the million Palestinian refugees. It is also the source of Arab hostility towards the United States.
Missing also is the cant – so common over the past half century – about Arab threats to Israel. Instead, Time speaks of Arab fears of Israel. “Today, the Arab world fears and expects a further Israeli expansion.” Prescient words too.
The true victims are recognized – the Palestinians – and there is sympathy for them too. “The Israeli-Arab war created nearly a million Arab refugees, who have been huddled for three years in wretched camps.” There is obfuscation too: the Arab refugees were created by the Israeli-Arab war. Israeli propaganda had succeeded even at this early date. There is no admission of Israel’s planned ethnic cleansing of Palestinians or the massacres that attended this outrage.
Astonishing too is the spectacle of a US vice-president at this early date campaigning for an Israeli bond issue: like a hired salesman, he tours the country, making speeches to sell Israeli bond worth half a billion dollars. Did Israel raise the full value of the bond issue? It is a neat sum, enough to buy an army the best weapons in those days.
Notable too is the Time’s willingness – unthinkable today – to see the issue from an Arab perspective: how they see the world’s failure to send the refugees back to their homes. “These refugees, for whom neither the U.S. nor Israel will take the slightest responsibility, keep alive the hatred of U.S. perfidy.” It is not often that the US media speaks of “U.S. perfidy.”
Such journalistic candor was not good for Israel. The major Jewish organizations soon flexed their muscle: they organized to police what the US media could write or say about Israel. Their success was devastating. Israeli lies soon commanded unalloyed allegiance of every segment of American media.
Only recently that situation is beginning to change, as Israeli threats to US interests and to world peace become harder to ignore. This shift is tentative, however. Pro-Israeli forces are fighting back: and the few voices critical of Israel could be silenced by any number of events, not least another terrorist attack on US soil.
“Truman had supported the creation of Israel in order to court American Jewish votes. ”
Prove it.
“Today, the Arab world fears and expects a further Israeli expansion.” Prescient words too.
Uh huh. Which is why the engaged in a genocidal war against the Jews in 1967.
“The major Jewish organizations soon flexed their muscle: they organized to police what the US media could write or say about Israel. Their success was devastating. Israeli lies soon commanded unalloyed allegiance of every segment of American media.”
Prove it. The media has continuously criticized Israeli policies. The differences is that they don’t go so far as to call for the destruction of the State.
And Mr. Alam, your tiny little article, without a single scholarly citation, betrays your own indifference and hatred. The Arab rulers have kept the refugees in camps for generations. They have imposed apartheid laws against them. These perfidious measures were imposed upon people with the same language, culture and religion. And you, don’t give a damn.
How can you prove your point? Take a representative survey of articles and editorials dealing with Israel from Time from 1947 through the present and calculate what percentage of those articles are critical or favorable of Israel. (You may start with this years September 13 issue.) Of course you haven’t done so. Yet you make a sweeping claim without the tiniest shred of evidence.
What manner of a name may Ephraim be?
A name that has been around for more than 3500 years.
See Genesis 41:52
In a Nov. 10, 1945 meeting with American diplomats brought in from their posts in the Middle East to urge Truman not to heed Zionist urgings, Truman had bluntly explained his motivation:
“I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism: I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.”
http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0591/9105017.htm
That’s quite a fantasy. Also, Israel started that war with a surprise attack on Egypt on the morning of June 5.
Ephraim….seriously?
Without wasting too much of my time on your silly comment, some things you write need to be addressed.
Truman’s recognition of Israel, a mere 11 minutes after its unilateral declaration of independence, flew in the face of what his top advisers and common sense and morality suggested. Men like Secretary of State George C. Marshall, UN Ambassador Warren Austin and the state department’s Near East Division, led by Loy Henderson, all hoped to delay recognition in order to set up a temporary trusteeship for Palestine after the expiration of the British Mandate.
Nevertheless, with chief consul and committed Zionist Clark Clifford at his side, Truman caved to the demands and aggressive lobbying of Jewish proponents of Zionism, remarking, “I am sorry gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.”
Your suggestion that the Arab world “engaged in a genocidal war against the Jews in 1967” is completely bogus. First off, the war wasn’t between Arabs and Jews, it was between nations. Secondly, it was hardly even a war – more like an act of aggression by Israel. Numerous articles have been written on this site and others confirming the fact that Israel was the aggressor in 1967, not acting in self-defense against a “genocidal” enemy.
Further, your contentions about criticism of Israel in the media are hilarious. I suggest you read Mearscheimer and Walt (which you won’t) or Ilan Pappe (which you won’t) on this topic.
Lastly, your suggestion that the writer of this piece should “take a representative survey of articles and editorials dealing with Israel from Time from 1947” is impossible since Israel didn’t even exist until the middle of the following year.
Better luck next time, Ephraim.
One comment allegedly made by Truman doesn’t prove anything. The quotation which seems to be based on one single citation, also must be understood within its context. Historical accounts indicate that Truman believed supporting the creation of the Jewish state was the right thing to do. That the State Department and others in the U.S. establishment opposed the State gives lie to the claim that there exists an all-powerful Jewish lobby.
“Secondly, it was hardly even a war – more like an act of aggression by Israel.”
Nonsense. Nasser and his buddies were calling the “destruction” and “annihilation” of Israel. Sounds like aggression to me.
“Lastly, your suggestion that the writer of this piece should “take a representative survey of articles and editorials dealing with Israel from Time from 1947″ is impossible since Israel didn’t even exist until the middle of the following year.”
Straw man. You prefer “1947”. Let it be 1947. You want it to be “the Zionists” instead of Israel- go right ahead. The essential argument remains. The author has failed to show that the U.S. media has been under the thumb of Israel/Zionists for the past six decades.
I certainly agree the claims of an all-powerful Israeli lobby are enormously exaggerated. But as for Truman’s reasons for recognizing Israel, you can either take him at his own word or not.
So, are you saying that when U.S. and Israeli political and military leaders state that “all options are on the table” and urge a military attack – whether it’s in the form of air strikes, covert action or invasion – on Iran to “neutralize” the Iranian armed forces, destroy Iran’s wholly legal nuclear energy program and force “regime change,” that also “sounds like aggression” and therefore Iran would be well within its rights to preventatively attack either the United States or Israel to make sure it doesn’t face any more external threats?
Let me know what you think about that one.
As for Truman, that wasn’t the only time he chimed in on his thoughts about Zionists. Take, for example, what he wrote in his own memoirs about the pressure exerted politically on the U.S. government to support the Zionist cause in the United Nations, at the expense of the Palestinians:
“The facts were that not only were there pressure movements around the United Nations unlike anything that had been seen 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 a political motive and engaging in political threats — disturbed and annoyed me. Some were even suggesting that we pressure sovereign nations into favorable votes in the General Assembly.”
Or this, also from his own diary on July 21, 1947, in which he opines on the demands of Zionist Jews upon him:
“The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog. Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I’ve found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes.”
Just sayin’…
Ephraim, you are such a sweetheart, I enjoy reading your counter arguments because they are so…well…manipulative of only what you want the world to see. First, you are denying an all powerful Jewish lobby on the one same citation that you criticized in the first place.
Secondly, if verbal threats are acts of aggression, Israel’s call for an attack on Iran is certainly an act of internationally illegal aggression..but then you have never argued (that I have read) that Israel is a peaceful state…hard to argue with its occupation of Palestinian land, its destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages, its ongoing annexation and expropriation of Palestinian land in the West Bank by way of the wall and by way of the settlements protected by military rule, its use of torture, extra-judicial assassination, its complete control over Gaza where its official policy is starvation into submission…those all seeem pretty aggressive to me.
Third, again, the U.S. media has not been under the thumb of Israel/Zionist media for 60 years, only the better part of the last 40 since the 1967 Six Day War that was initiated by Israel with the knowledge that the military capacity of its opponents…oh sorry…I forgot my ‘proof’…but then that is no different than your arguments.
As for the media, there are five major corporations that control most of the media in the U.S. All are pro-Israel – which does not mean that from time to time, probably just to apear “balanced” and to deflect criticism away from their undisguised support of the U.S. military-industrial complex, they will write an article or two criticising some component of Israeli action. But the big picture is U.S. support by way of billions of dollars in “aid” and much more in the way of military hardware and technology for the Israeli position in the Middle East, and not particularly worrying about the Palestinians and their ethnic cleansing. My word, no “proof” again! If you wish I can send you a book list that will give you all the references you want – it won’t include the Old Testament. Or you could go to my website and read my list of book reviews there, shorter and easier.
So keep on rebutting Ephraim, I enjoy seeing how the world is viewed from your perspective, a rather holier than thou desparate attempt to safeguard everything Israel does and says.
“that was initiated by Israel”
The Arabs countries continuously supported terrorist raids into Israel. When Israel retaliated, the Arabs (esp. Nasser) threatened Israel with genocide. They then massed their troops along the Israeli borders, at the same time announcing they would shorty annihilate Israel. Israel reacted with a preemptive strike instead of waiting for the Arabs to start the war. The question is not whether Israel should have reacted, but whether Israel overreacted.
“ethnic cleansing”
-is not occurring. You can catalog all the actions that Israel has implemented against the Palestinians and it won’t add up to ethnic cleansing. On the other hand, the PA and Hamas again and again betray their aims to destroy Israel.
And you really don’t care. Right now, millions of Palestinians are discriminated against in Lebanon, Syria, Kuwait, Jordan and Egypt. Do I hear even a whisper from you?
Jim,
Why do the Arab regimes continue to discriminate against Palestinians while claiming to support their cause? Why did “they” support terrorist acts against Israel before 1967?
Your questions and comments only indicate that you have not read my material. I frequently include criticism of the Arab governments in my arguments as they do operate double standards for their own survival – lip service to the Palestinians, obeisance to the U.S. and Israelis, or with a bit more nuance they know they cannot defeat Israelis armed with all the modern armaments up to and including many nuclear weapons, and the elites need U.S. support to keep them in power.
Your claim that the Arab countries supported terrorist raids into Israel is false. As for Israel having “retaliated”, Israel’s attack on Samu was condemned as an act of aggression by the UN Security Council. Troops were not massed “along the Israeli borders”. Only Egypt had mobilized troops, and they were well within Egyptian territory, in the Sinai, which, remember, Israel had invaded in another act of aggression in 1956, and where they took up defensive positions.
Try arguing reality instead of fantasy.
I have waited before deciding to weigh in on this one. The point of this article is what – that the Time Magazine brain trust should have been running US foreign policy in 1948? Yes, Truman’s act of recognition of Israel was a political act, and a GUTSY one at that. The entire US State Department opposed the recognition of Israel, favoring a continued UN mandate over Palestine. But as I have written before in commenting on Hammond’s straw dog on UNGAR 181, the declaration and recognition of independent states is purely political and has nothing to do with justice, or injustice for that matter.
Truman acted our of courage and political will, and he was certainly mindful of the plight of the Jews of Europe, the complicity of the Arabs in the holocaust, and the need to resolve the simmering issue of Palestine. The removal and transfer of populations (i.e. 9 million Germans removed from Poland) to accommodate winners and not in favor of losers, was a common post WWII situation. Arabs who had cast their lot with the Nazi Axis cannot be excused from such a formula.
Clearly, the Arabs lost out politically in this situation. But no land was actually stolen and no communities were cleansed, except for Jewish communities by the Jordanians. Many, many Arabs remained in the Jewish state, a pure repudiation of the claim of cleansing. Also, I am aware that many Israelis wanted to ‘straighten’ the borders after 1948, but no actual war for this took place until 1967, when Jordan decided to join the UAR and attacked Israel. King Hussein has admitted as much, and was the ONLY Arab leader who first engaged in war against Israel and then decided himself to enter into a peace treaty with Israel, leaving the territories his country LOST in Israeli possession. The decision to surrender the right of Jordan to regain territory lost in war to Israel was a political and pragmatic one, in spite of the fact that the territory was gained through war (defensive war, that is) and the fact that Jordan is now the home of many, many Arab refugees from Palestine.
In reading the piece of M. S. Alam one gets the sense of the dwelling on a theory of injustice that permeates the retarded politics of Araby. There will be no so called ‘justice’ or ‘do-overs’ or ‘return of refugees’ or ‘eye-for eye’compensation that M.S. Alam seeks. This does not work in politics and has no historical precedent as envisioned by the Arabs – that is the complete removal of a sovereign state to placate emotional losses. Arabs should instead train their sights on using whatever talents they have on moving forward, developing an industrious culture based on western political tolerance, eschewing Jew hatred, participating positively in the human endeavor (instead of blowing themselves up on the bus, at the mosque or the airport) and embracing the lessons of history in order to avoid their political mistakes of the past. Obviously, Arab carping about injustice has gotten NOWHERE these last 60 plus years!
“the declaration and recognition of independent states is purely political and has nothing to do with justice, or injustice for that matter”
That’s a rather meaningless statement. Of course one state’s recognition of another is a political matter. But that does not negate the fact that the right to self-determination is a right recognized and codified under international law, and that the exercise of that right is a matter of justice and the denial of that right (such as Israel’s denial of Palestinian self-determination) is an injustice.
“the complicity of the Arabs in the Holocaust”
Ah, the appeal to emotion. Spare readers your fantasies, though. If you’re going to use this rhetorical device, try to keep it real.
“no land was actually stolen and no communities were cleansed”
Ah, ignorance and denial. You can spare us that, also. That Palestine was ethnically cleansed is in no way controversial.
What do you mean calling my 181 essay a “straw dog”? Just curious.
Self determination – a proper and fit national consciousness is necessary to exercise self determination, which the Arabs in Palestine have failed to achieve. This is a political matter requriing competent and constructive leadership which the Arabs in Palestine do not have. Instead they are a community of hating corrupt gangsters shaking down the unwary, and attracting the anti-Semite that will find cause with the hate and violence they foment. Their demands for justice are hollow. Also, what does this ‘justice/victim theme’ have to do with self determination? Absolutely nothing. For this simply defines the community by what was supposedly lost, not by the positive idea of a polity.
Complicity in the holocaust – I will meet and debate you any time and anywhere to discuss the likes of Haj Amin al Husseini, the Arab mufti of Jerusalem, who was a war criminal, who lived under the protection of Hitler in Berlin during WWI, and who headed the Arab Higher Committee. The post war political reality was to ignore the community of Arabs in Palestine that had a Nazi collaborator leader, period. The Mufti was Jew hater and a murderer. Palestinian Arabs lost because of the Mufti’s pro Nazi activities and incitement. This is undeniable fact. Let’s meet and debate on the Nazi Mufti and the destructive role he played.
All the land that was ever in Palestine is still in Palestine. Where did the Jews take it? Also, there was no cleansing of the sort, indeed, the Arab population continues to grow. Arabs are citizens of Israel and participate in politics and own more land than Jewish Israelis and have seen their standard of living rise compared to other Arabs. These are the OBJECTIVE facts. Hardly ethnic cleansing.
The straw dog is your assumption that there is an assumption that UNGAR 181 created the state of Israel. Not true. The independent state was declared and then recognized, all a political matter.
Why do you reject the Palestinian’s right to self determination?
In 1948, Jews owned 7% of the land. Most of what is now Israel was stolen from the Arabs. That Palestine was ethnically cleansed is in no way controversial.
Glad to see you agree UNGA Res. 181 did not create Israel. You might want to point that out to the state of Israel, which claims in its founding document authority from UNGA Res. 181.
Ephraim and Jeremy are Purebloods. They must be part of the blogger “team” recruited by the Middle East’s “only democracy” to do damage control. LOL!
See the blooger army article here: http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-recruits-army-of-bloggers-to-combat-anti-zionist-web-sites-1.268393
Sectum Sempra
LOL! Perhaps you haven’t actually read any of my writings or comments on the topic of Israel and Palestine?
No one can out-Nazi a Nazi, like a Zionist can…
Terrorism? Think King David Hotel. Google the U.S. Liberty. 9-11? Very hard to believe, the best intelligence agency in the middle-east, if not the world, didn’t hear some chatter. Would Israel privy us, if they knew something was going down? I truly believe not if they had something to gain.
The war in Iraq was designed by Zionist. They expected a quick win, and a roadtrip of Abrams into Iran & Syria. Plan kinda failed.
http://www.goalsforamericans.org/2004/07/07/the-origins-of-the-iraq-war-the-neoconservative-agenda-for-middle-east-conflict/
Muslims certainly enjoy sawing heads off. Jews like to say “shalom”, and then stab you in the back. Two sides of the very same coin. They deserve each other. Over there!
No wars for Israel. Get out of the middle-east, and put our troops on the Mexican border.
Hey erm, Ephraim or nugget, whatever your name is, you are the same type of ”israeli” that participated in the attack on the USS Liberty, the British Sergeants affair, the attack on the King David Hotel, Deir Yassin and more.
You deny al nakbah as much as you like, your chickens are coming home to roost and they are not nice.
People all around the world have had enough of your tribe’s lies, your violence and your crimes against the rest of us ”goyim”, but you and your tribe and not long for this world.
@ephraim … why should I take your mythology as literal fact?
“Genesis” has about a dozen names for a “single” Deity. In fact “Isreal” literally means “He will rule like JHV” and I leave it to your imagination to figure out how the Israeli government rules.
There is nothing wrong with Jews living in Israel, the problem is how this state was created and the innumerable instances where moral accountability and ethical conduct are missing in a people that pride themselves as having the very oracles of our Deity. If JHV really wanted this land for jews would he have subjected the Palestinians to this kind of protracted abuse, humiliation, death and theft of land? One of your prophets wrote about a woman at labour but failing to deliver. 62 yrs is too long, surely something must be wrong. It diminishes and depletes whatever truth Ephraim may claim for his religion.
I suppose it was also Arab Terrorists that assassinated Special UN Envoy to Palestine Count Bernadotte in Jerusalem in 1948. Wasn’t the Stern Gang a Zionist terrorist organization, sorry about that?
Incidentally, Bernadotte was responsible for the negotiation of the release of about 31,000 Jewish prisoners from German concentration camps during World War II.
That’s the reward he got for helping the Chosen.
Ephraim you and your “Never Again” tribe are truly sweethearts.