Who did what for Israel in 1948? America Did Nothing

Having just taught a course on the Cultural Geography of the Middle East at a community college in Florida for "seniors" (over 55 years of age), I again encountered a unanimous belief among my students in what I would call the Most Widely Believed Myth of the political and military conflict between Israel and the Arabs. This universal belief, never challenged by the media, is that the United States was wholly or largely responsible for fully supporting Israel on the ground from the very beginning of its independence in May, 1948.

The world has been inundated with a tsunami of Arab propaganda and crocodile tears shed for the "Palestinians" who have reveled in what they refer to as their Catastrophe or Holocaust (Nabka in Arabic). Their plight has been accompanied by unremitting criticism that the United States was the principal architect that stood behind Israel from the very beginning with money, manpower, and arms. The fact is that President Truman eventually decided against the pro-Arab "professional opinion" of his Secretary of State, General George Marshall, and the Arabists of the State Department. He accorded diplomatic recognition to the new Jewish state but never considered active military aid. His own memoirs recall how he felt betrayed by State Department officials and the American U.N. Ambassador, Warren Austin, who pulled the rug out from under him one day after he promised Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann support for partition.

American Jewish voting in the 1948 Presidential election leaned heavily for President Truman but also cast a substantial number of votes for third-party "Progressive" leader Henry Wallace, who had spoken out even more strongly on behalf of American support for the Zionist position and aid to Israel. It was actually not until the administration of President John Kennedy in the early 1960s that American arms shipments were made to Israel.

Soviet Diplomatic Support

The struggle of the Jewish community in Palestine was endorsed completely by what was then called "enlightened public opinion," above all by the political Left. Andrei Gromyko, at the UN, asserted the right of "the Jews of the whole world to the creation of a state of their own," something no official of the U.S. State Department has ever acknowledged. Soviet support in the U.N. for partition brought along an additional two votes (the Ukrainian and Belorussian Republics within the USSR) and the entire Soviet-dominated bloc of East European states.

Taking their lead from Moscow, the (hitherto anti-Zionist) Palestinian communist organizations merged their separate Arab and Jewish divisions in October 1948, giving unconditional support to the Israeli war effort and urging the Israel Defense Forces to "drive on toward the Suez Canal and hand British Imperialism a stinging defeat!"

Worldwide Support from the Left

The most famous and colorful personality of the Spanish Republic in exile, the Basque delegate to the Cortes (Spanish Parliament), Dolores Ibarruri, who had gone to the Soviet Union, issued a proclamation in 1948 saluting the new State of Israel and comparing the invading Arab armies to the Fascist uprising that had destroyed the Republic. Just a few months earlier, the hero of the American Left, the great Afro-American folk singer Paul Robeson, had sung in a gala concert in Moscow and electrified the crowd with his rendition of the Yiddish Partisan Fighters Song.

Jewish Attempts to Buy Arms and Czech Approval

The major Arab armies who invaded the newly born Jewish state were British-led, equipped, trained, and supplied. The Syrian army was French-equipped and had taken orders from the Vichy government in resisting the British-led invasion of the country, assisted by Australian troops, Free French units, and Palestinian-Jewish volunteer forces in 1941. In their War of Independence, the Israelis depended on smuggled weapons from the West and Soviet and Czech weapons.

The leaders of the Yishuv (Jewish community in Palestine), already in the summer of 1947, intended to purchase arms and sent Dr. Moshe Sneh (the Chief of the European Branch of the Jewish Agency, a leading member of the centrist General Zionist Party who later moved far leftward and became head of the Israeli Communist Party) to Prague to improve Jewish defenses. He was surprised by the sympathy towards Zionism and by the interest in arms exports on the side of the Czech Government. Sneh met with the Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Clementis, who succeeded the non-Communist and definitely pro-Zionist Jan Masaryk. Sneh and Clementis discussed the possibility of Czech arms provisions for the Jewish state, and the Czechs gave their approval.

In January 1948, Jewish representatives were sent by Ben-Gurion to meet with General Ludvik Svoboda, the Minister of National Defense, and sign the first contract for Czech military aid. Four transport routes were used to Palestine, all via Communist countries: a) the Northern route via Poland and the Baltic Sea, b) the Southern route via Hungary, Yugoslavia, and the Adriatic Sea, c) via Hungary, Romania, and the Black Sea, d) by air via Yugoslavia to Palestine.

At first, a "Skymaster" plane chartered from the U.S. to help in ferrying weapons to Palestine from Europe was forced by the FBI to return to the USA. By the end of May, the Israeli Army (IDF) had absorbed about 20,000 Czech rifles, 2,800 machine-guns, and over 27 million rounds of ammunition. Two weeks later, an additional 10,000 rifles, 1,800 machine-guns, and 20 million rounds of ammunition arrived. One Czech-Israeli project that alarmed Western intelligence was the so-called Czech Brigade, a unit composed of Jewish veterans of "Free Czechoslovakia," which fought with the British Army during WWII. The Brigade began training in August 1948 at four bases in Czechoslovakia.

Czech assistance to Israel's military strength comprised a) small arms, b) 84 airplanes—the outdated Czech-built Avia S.199s, Spitfires, and Messerschmidts that played a major role in the demoralization of enemy troops; c) military training and technical maintenance. On January 7, 1949, the Israeli air force, consisting of several Spitfires and Czech-built Messerschmidt Bf-109 fighters (transferred secretly from Czech bases to Israel), shot down five British-piloted Spitfires flying for the Egyptian air force over the Sinai desert, causing a major diplomatic embarrassment for the British government.

According to British reports, based on informants within the Czech Government, the total Czech dollar income from the export of arms and military services to the Middle East in 1948 was over $28 million, and Israel received 85% of this amount. As late as 1951, Czech Spitfires continued to arrive in Israel by ship from the Polish port of Gdynia-Gdansk (Danzig). Since May 2005, the Military Museum in Prague has displayed a special exhibition on the Czech aid to Israel in 1948.

In contrast, the American State Department declared an embargo on all weapons and war material to both Jews and Arabs in Palestine, a move that only had one effect in practice. There was no Arab community in North America to speak of, and given the fact that a substantial and overwhelmingly sympathetic Jewish community in the United States was anxious to aid the Jewish side, the embargo simply prevented a large part of this intended aid from reaching its destination. The small trickle of supplies and arms reaching Israel from North America was accomplished by smuggling. The U.S. vote in favor of partition was only de facto, reflecting the State Department's care not to unnecessarily offend the Arab states, whereas the Soviet vote recognized Israel de jure.

Even with Czech weapons and Soviet aid, Israel would undoubtedly have been unable to halt the Arab invasion without a massive inflow of manpower. The United States, Canada, and Europe provided no more than 3,000 volunteers, many of them combat-hardened veterans from both the European and Pacific theaters of war, plus a few score idealistic youngsters from the Zionist movements with no combat experience or training. But their numbers were a drop in the bucket compared to more than 200,000 Jewish immigrants from the Soviet-dominated countries in Eastern Europe—notably Poland, Bulgaria (almost 95% of the entire Jewish community), Romania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the former Baltic States, and even the Soviet Union—who emigrated to Israel, arriving in time to reach the front lines or replenish the depleted ranks of civilian manpower. Without both the arms and manpower sent from the "Socialist Camp" to aid the nascent Israeli state, it would have been crushed.

The About-Face of The Party Line on Zionism

Jewish Marxist theoreticians the world over, including several high-ranking Party activists—all dedicated anti-religious and anti-Zionist communists—had followed the Party Line and even praised a vicious pogrom by Muslim fanatics carried out against ultra-Orthodox Jews in the town of Hebron in Palestine in 1929. The Party Line then was that the Arab masses were demonstrating their anti-imperialist sentiment against British rule and its sponsorship of Zionism.

In 1947, when Stalin was convinced that the Zionists would evict the British from Palestine, the Party Line turned about-face. Following Soviet recognition and aid to Israel in 1948-49, both the Daily Worker and the Yiddish-language communist daily in the U.S., Freiheit (Freedom), outdid one another to explain the new party line: "Palestine had become an important settlement of 600,000 souls, having developed a common national economy, a growing national culture, and the first elements of Palestinian Jewish statehood and self-government."

A 1947 CP-USA resolution entitled "Work Among the Jewish Masses" berated the Party's previous stand and proclaimed that "Jewish Marxists have not always displayed a positive attitude to the rights and interests of the Jewish People, to the special needs and problems of our own American Jewish national group, and to the interests and rights of the Jewish Community in Palestine." The new reality that had been created in Palestine was a "Hebrew nation" that deserved the right to self-determination. Remarkably, the Soviet propaganda machine even praised the far-right underground groups of the Irgun and "Stern Gang" for their campaign of violence against the British authorities.

Church Support in the U.S.

The Jewish cause in Palestine enjoyed the support of a large section of mainstream and liberal Protestant churches and not primarily the "lobby" of Protestant Fundamentalists, as is often portrayed today by critics of Zionism. As early as February 1941, and in spite of the wholehearted desire of the American Protestant establishment not to risk involvement in World War II, Reinhold Niebuhr spoke out convincingly through the journal he founded, Christianity and Crisis, and sounded a clarion call of warning about Nazism. Its final goals were not simply the eradication of the Jews but the extirpation of Christianity and the abolition of the entire heritage of Christian and humanistic culture. This is the only kind of "World Without Zionism" that the Iranian and Arab leaders long for. Niebuhr based his views not on any literal "Evangelical" interpretation of Biblical promises but on the essentials of justice for the nations and also called for some form of compensation to those Arabs in Palestine who might be displaced if their own leaders refused to make any compromise possible.

Nazi and Reactionary Support for the Arabs

There was nothing "progressive" about those who supported the Arab side. The acknowledged leader of the Palestinian Arab cause was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who had fled from Palestine to Iraq and then to exile in Berlin, where he led the "Arab office," met with Hitler (whom he called "the Protector of Islam"), and served the Germans in Bosnia, where he was instrumental in raising Muslim volunteers among the Bosnians to work with the SS. At the end of the war, the Yugoslav government declared him a war criminal and sentenced him to death. Palestinian Arabs still regard him as their original supreme leader. Lending active support to the Arab war effort were Falangist volunteers from Franco's Spain, Bosnian Muslims, and Nazi renegades who had escaped the Allies in Europe.

The close relationship between the Nazi movement and the German government under Hitler in courting the Arab Palestinian and Pan-Arab attempt to act as a Fifth Column in the Middle East has been thoroughly researched by Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers in their book Halbmond und Hakenkreuz. Das "Dritte Reich", die Araber und Palästina (Crescent Moon and Swastika: The Third Reich, the Arabs, and Palestine), published in September 2006 and yet to appear in English translation. It documents the Arab sympathies for Nazism, particularly in Palestine, and German attempts to mobilize and encourage the Arabs with their ideology, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, and the forces around the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, in Palestine.

Nazi radio broadcasts to the Arabs between 1939 and 1945 constantly proclaimed the natural German sympathy for the Arab cause against Zionism and the Jews. German Middle East experts stressed "the natural alliance" between National Socialism and Islam. Such experts as the former German Ambassador in Cairo, Eberhard von Stohrer, reported to Hitler in 1941 that "the Fuhrer already held an outstanding position among the Arabs because of his fight against the Jews."

Britain and the Abstentions

In the vote on partition in the UN, apart from the states with large Muslim minorities (like Yugoslavia and Ethiopia), the Arabs managed only to wheedle a few abstentions and one lone negative vote out of the most corrupt non-Muslim states. These included Cuba (voted against partition) and Mexico (abstained), eager to demonstrate their independence of U.S. influence, and Latin American countries whose regimes had been pro-Axis until the final days of World War II, such as Argentina and Chile (both abstained).

All the West European nations (except Great Britain) voted for partition as well. No other issue to come before the U.N. has had such unanimous support from the European continent or cut across the ideological divide of communist and western sectors. The Jewish state was even supported by Richard Crossman, a member of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine who had been handpicked by Britain’s anti-Zionist Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin. Crossman, taking a principled stand, refused to endorse the Labor Party Line.

What Today's So-Called "Progressive" Jews Have Forgotten or Ignore

Even many Jews in the Diaspora whose parents and grandparents rejoiced at the rebirth of Israel in 1948 and regarded it mystically as partial compensation for the Holocaust have been psychologically intimidated by the constant anti-Israel line of the media and of the torrent of bloody confrontations picturing enraged Muslim mobs ready for constant mayhem to avenge what they regard as the worst injustice in human history (i.e., the creation of the Jewish State rather than the failure to establish an Arab Palestinian state).

Some prominent Diaspora Jews, particularly among those who cannot escape the narcotic-like trance they have inherited as "progressives" and are essentially secular and ultra-critical of capitalism and American society with its underlying Christian values, have developed a new kind of psychological self-hatred to exhibit a disassociation from the State of Israel and their religious heritage. They are upset over the close Israeli-American friendship and outdo themselves in slanderous attacks on President Bush.

As long ago as 1958, this trend was clearly seen in the interviews given by Leon Uris, the author of the bestselling novel Exodus, in explaining why he wrote the book. He had in mind successful Jewish authors such as Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and Bernard Malamud, whom he called "professional apologists" (for being Jews). Uris set out to tell the story of Israel's rebirth as the story of Jewish heroes rather than the psychological analyses of individuals who grew up damning their fathers and hating their mothers and wondering why they were born.

Convenient Amnesia

Today’s media never attempt (not even the History Channel) to explain how it was Soviet and East Bloc aid, and not American support, that was the crucial factor which brought both essential weapons and manpower to the beleaguered newborn Israeli state in 1948-49 and enabled it to turn the tide of battle and justifiably hand the Palestinian Arabs and their allies their "Nabka." Soviet hopes that they might eventually pressure the new and profoundly democratic Israeli state to side with them in the Cold War were hopelessly naïve (see Uri Waller, Israel Between East and West; Israel's Foreign Policy Orientation, 1948-56, Cambridge University, 1990, 302 pages, ISBN 0521362490).

The Arabs cannot admit the truth of Soviet aid to Israel as it would rob them of their psychological advantage that they are victims who have the right to continually browbeat Western and especially American public opinion as responsible for their catastrophe. Amnesia is a common malady among politicians.

This article appeared in the December 2007 New English Review. Posted August 4, 2010. Visit Mr. Berdichevsky's website at www.nberdichevsky.com.

Norman Berdichevsky is a native New Yorker who lives in Orlando, Florida. He holds a Ph.D. in Human Geography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1974) and is the author of The Danish-German Border Dispute (Academica Press, 2002), Nations, Language and Citizenship (McFarland & Co., Inc., 2004), and Spanish Vignettes: An Offbeat Look into Spain's Culture, Society & History (Santana Books, Malaga, Spain, 2004). He is the author of more than 175 articles and book reviews that have appeared in a variety of American, British, Danish, Israeli, and Spanish periodicals. Dr. Berdichevsky teaches Hebrew at the University of Central Florida and writes a regular monthly column for the online publication New English Review.