Mr. Forrestal foresaw Mr. Truman’s capitulation and his alarm increased. He saw the Democratic party-manager, Mr. J. Howard McGrath (November 6, 1947) and again could make no headway. Mr. McGrath said:
“There were two or three pivotal states which could not be carried without the support of people who were deeply interested in the Palestine question”.
The next day he again received support from General Marshall, who told the Cabinet that the Middle East was “another tinder box”, and Mr. Forrestal then “repeated my suggestion. . . that a serious attempt be made to lift the Palestine question out of American partisan politics. . . Domestic politics ceased at the Atlantic Ocean and no question was more charged with danger to our security than this particular one” (November 7, 1947).
The “partition” vote was by this time near and Mr. Forrestal made another appeal to Mr. McGrath, the Democratic party-manager, showing him a secret report on Palestine provided by the governmental intelligence agency.
Mr. McGrath brushed this aside, saying Jewish sources were responsible for a substantial part of the contributions to the Democratic National Committee and many of these contributions were made “with a distinct idea on the part of the givers that they will have an opportunity to express their views and have them seriously considered on such questions as the present Palestine question. There was a feeling among the Jews that the United States was not doing what it should to solicit votes in the United Nations General Assembly in favour of the Palestine partition, and ‘beyond this, the Jews would expect the United States to do its utmost to implement the partition decision if it is voted by the United Nations through force if necessary’.”
This quotation reveals the process of progressively raising the bid for Zionist funds and the Zionist vote which went on behind the scenes. At the start only United States support for the partition proposal had been “expected”.
Within a few weeks, this “expectation” had risen to the demand that the United States should “solicit” the votes of other countries in support of partition and should use American troops to enforce partition, and the party-manager was quite accustomed to such notions.
If American troops in the 1950’s or 1960’s find themselves in the Middle East, any of them who have read Mr. Forrestal’s Diaries should know how they come to be there.
Mr. Forrestal must have acted from a sense of duty, not of hope, when he implored Mr. McGrath “to give a lot of thought to this matter because it involved not merely the Arabs of the Middle East, but also might involve the whole Moslem world with its four hundred millions of people: Egypt, North Africa, India and Afghanistan”.
While Mr. Forrestal fought this losing battle behind the curtained windows of the White House and of party-headquarters, Dr. Weizmann, in Washington, New York and Lake Success was indefatigably organizing “the vote” on partition. He was having his difficulties, but was rescued from them at this culminant moment when he found “a welcome and striking change” among some of those “wealthy Jews” who formerly had opposed Zionism.
At this belated stage in his narrative he first mentions Mr. Bernard Baruch, saying that Mr. Baruch had formerly been “an oppositionist Jew”, one of the “rich and powerful Jews who were against the idea of the Jewish National Home, but they did not know very much about the subject”.
One can only speculate about the exact composition and nature of the “Jewish International” which Dr. Kastein described as having come into existence around the start of this century. It is permissible, in the light of all that has happened in these fifty years, to envisage it as a permanent, high directorate, spread over all nation-state boundaries, the membership of which probably changes only when gaps are left by death.
If that is its nature, a reasonable further inference would be that Dr. Weizmann was a very high functionary, perhaps the highest functionary, subordinate to it, but that undoubtedly there was a body superior to him. In that case, I would judge that its four most important members, in the United States at that period, would have been Mr. Bernard Baruch, first, and Senator Herbert Lehman, Mr. Henry Morgenthau Junior and Justice Felix Frankfurter, next.
If there were a doubt, it would previously have attached to Mr. Baruch, who had never publicly associated himself with “leftist” causes or with Zionism. His great crony, Mr. Winston Churchill, quoted Mr. Baruch’s “negative view” about Zionism to Dr. Weizmann, who in consequence (as he says) “took great care not to touch on the Jewish problem” when he earlier met Mr. Baruch in America.
Nevertheless, at this decisive moment Mr. Baruch suddenly “changed a great deal” (Dr. Weizmann) and his support, added to the Zionist “pressure” that was being exerted on American politics, was determining. Dr. Weizmann, as he hurried round the lobbies at Lake Success, learned that the American delegation was opposed to the partition of Palestine. Thereon he enlisted the “particularly helpful” support of Mr. Baruch (until then, for forty years or more, regarded as an opponent of Zionism even by such intimates as Mr. Winston Churchill!) and also of the junior Mr. Henry Morgenthau (whose name attaches to the plan of “blind vengeance” adopted by Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill at Ottawa in 1944)
Mr. Baruch presumably did not hold Dr. Weizmann in the awe which seems to have seized the Western politicians at the Zionist leader’s approach. Therefore, his sudden support of Zionism must denote either an abrupt conversion or the revelation of a feeling earlier concealed; in either case, his intervention was decisive as will be seen.
Dr. Weizmann was well supported by the other powerful Jews in the Democratic Party. Senator Lehman was head of UNRRA when it was used to smuggle the Eastern Jews across Europe to Palestine, and had demanded General Morgan’s resignation for publicly calling attention to this mass-movement of people; his part in the drama was already plain.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter was equally busy; Mr. Forrestal was told by Mr. Loy Henderson (in charge of Middle Eastern Affairs in the State Department) that “very great pressure had been put on him as well as Mr. Lovett to get active American solicitation for United Nations votes for the Palestine partition; he said Felix Frankfurter and Justice Murphy had both sent messages to the Phillipines delegate strongly urging his vote” (this is the same Mr. Frankfurter who called on Mr. House at the 1919 Peace Conference in Paris “to talk about the Jews in Palestine”; he was also the devoted instructor of Mr. Alger Hiss at the Harvard Law School.)
Having such support, Dr. Weizmann was a besieging general backed by superior armies when he called on the citadel’s commander, President Truman, on November 19, 1947 to demand that the United States support the partition of Palestine, and furthermore, that the Negev district (to which Dr. Weizmann attached “great importance”) be included in the Zionist territory.
“Mr. Truman’s discipline was exemplary: he promised me that he would communicate at once with the American delegation” (Dr. Weizmann).
Out at Lake Success the chief American delegate, Mr. Herschel Johnson, as he was about to inform the Zionist representative of the American decision to vote against the inclusion of the Negev, was called to the telephone and received, through President Truman, Dr. Weizmann’s orders.
With that the deed was done and on November 29, 1947 the General Assembly of the United Nations recommended (Zionist propaganda always says “decided”) that “independent Arab and Jewish states, and the specific international regime for the City of Jerusalem” should come into existence after termination of the British “Mandate” on August 1, 1948.
The vote was 31 against 13 with 10 abstentions. The manner in which the American vote was procured has been shown. As to some of the other votes, Under Secretary Robert Lovett said at the next Cabinet lunch (December 1, 1947) that “he had never in his life been subject to so much pressure as he had been in the last three days”.
The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, which had a concession in Liberia, reported (he said) that it had been asked by telephone to instruct its representative in Liberia “to bring pressure on the Liberian Government to vote in favour of partition”. (Mr. Loy Henderson’s account of the “great pressure” used to get American “solicitation” of the votes of small countries has already been quoted).
Thus was the “vote” of “the United Nations” produced in the most explosive issue of this century’s world affairs.
At the Cabinet lunch immediately after this “vote” Mr. Forrestal returned to the attack:
“I remarked that many thoughtful people of the Jewish faith had deep misgivings about the wisdom of the Zionists’ pressures for a jewish state in Palestine. . . The decision was fraught with great danger for the future security of this country”.
He then discussed the question (December 3, 1947) with Mr. James F. Byrnes, who had ceased to be Secretary of State earlier in the year (his relegation was foreseeable; it was he who disclosed President Roosevelt’s pledge to Ibn Saoud).
Mr. Byrnes said President Truman’s actions had placed the British Government “in a most difficult position” and added that Mr. David K. Niles had been brought into the White House among the “Palace Guard” with which the “adviser on Jewish affairs” and Judge Rosenman had helped write presidential speeches. These men (said Mr. Byrnes) told Mr. Truman “that Dewey was about to come out with a statement favouring the Zionist position in Palestine, and had insisted that unless the President anticipated this moment New York State would be lost to the Democrats”.
Here Mr. Byrnes gave another glimpse of the behind-the-scenes action. The two candidates for the highest office in the United States (Mr. Thomas Dewey was the prospective nominee of the other party, the Republican) in these portrayals look like children, incited against each other by the offer of a dangling bag of sweets. Mr. Truman, by doing the Zionist bidding in the matter of partition, had by no means ensured the Democrats of the prize, for the election was still a year distant and during that time the Zionists were to demand more and more, and the Republican party to bid higher and higher for the dangling reward.
Mr. Forrestal, in desperation, now tried to convince the Republican Mr. Dewey:
“I said the Palestine matter was a matter of the deepest concern to me in terms of the security of the nation, and asked, once more, if the parties could not agree to take this question out of their electoral campaigning”.
Governor (of New York State) Dewey’s response was much the same as President Truman’s:
“It was a difficult matter to get results because of the intemperate attitude of the Jewish people who had taken Palestine as the emotional symbol, because the Democratic party would not be willing to relinquish the advantages of the Jewish vote”.
Thereon Mr. Dewey continued to try and outdo the Democratic politicians in his bid for “the Jewish vote” (and to his own surprise nevertheless lost the election).
Mr. Forrestal next tried to strengthen the hand of the State Department, in its resistance to the president, by a memorandum (January 21, 1948) in which he analyzed the dangers to American national security flowing from the entanglement:
“It is doubtful if there is any segment of our foreign relations of greater importance or of greater danger… to the security of the United States than our relations in the Middle East”.
He warned against doing “permanent injury to our relations with the Moslem world” and “a stumble into war”. He said he had found “some small encouragement” among individual Republicans for his proposal to take the question “out of party-politics”, but among the Democrats had met a feeling “that a substantial part of the Democratic funds come from Zionist sources inclined to ask in return for a lien upon this part of our national policy”.
The last nine words are explicit and are literally correct. The Zionists demanded the submission of American state policy and offered in return a four-year tenure of the presidency to the highest bidder.
Whether they were in truth able to deliver what they offered has never been tested; the party-managers took them at their word and the candidates of both parties put on the sackcloth of submission before they were nominated, knowing (or believing) that they would not even achieve nomination unless they wore it.
Mr. Forrestal urged the Secretary of State (General Marshall) to remonstrate with the President, pointing out that a large body of Jews “hold the view that the present zeal of the Zionists can have most dangerous consequences, not merely in their divisive effects in American life, but in the long run on the position of Jews through the world”.
Under-Secretary Lovett, on reading Mr. Forrestal’s memorandum, produced one already prepared by the Planning Staff of the State Department. This informed the President that the partition plan was “not workable” (exactly as British governments had been warned by their colonial administrators that “the Mandate” was “not workable”); that the United States was not committed to support it if it could not be effected without force; that it was against American interest to supply arms to the Zionists while refusing them to the Arabs; that the United States should not take on itself to enforce the “recommendation” of partition and should try to secure withdrawal of the partition proposal.
Mr. Lovett added, “the use of the United Nations by others as a propaganda platform is complicating our conduct of foreign relations” and said the State Department was “seriously embarrassed and handicapped by the activities of Niles at the White House in going directly to the President on matters involving Palestine”.
On that very day, the Under-Secretary complained, he had once more been under “pressure”. Mr. Niles had telephoned from the White House “expressing the hope that the embargo on the sales of arms to the Zionists would be lifted”.
At that point Mr. Forrestal evidently became an acute annoyance to the powers behind the White House and his elimination was decided. First he received a visit from Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt junior. Whatever the father’s deathbed pledge not to take “hostile action against the Arabs”, the son (a New York politician, with presidential hopes) was an extreme Zionist partisan.
Mr. Forrestal pointedly said, “I thought the methods that had been used by people outside of the Executive branch of the government to bring coercion and duress on other nations in the General Assembly bordered closely on scandal”.
He records (as if with surprise) that his visitor “made no threats” in response to this, and he then explained his proposals to “lift the question out of politics” by agreement between the parties.
Mr. Roosevelt, his father’s son, replied that “this was impossible, that the nation was too far committed, and that, furthermore, the Democratic Party would be bound to lose and the Republicans to gain by such an agreement”.
Mr, Forrestal answered that “failure to go along with the Zionists might lose the states of New York, Pennsylvania and California,” (the ‘pivotal states’ earlier mentioned by party-manager McGrath) “I thought it was about time that somebody should pay some consideration to whether we might not lose the United States”.
No comment by Mr. Roosevelt is recorded, but he was a harbinger of ill for Mr. Forrestal because on this same day (February 3, 1948) came the intervention of Mr. Bernard Baruch. Mr. Baruch, earlier an opponent of Zionism, was now so zealous in the cause that he advised Mr. Forrestal “not to be active in this matter. . . I was already identified, to a degree that was not in my own interests, with opposition to the United Nations policy on Palestine”.
Ominous words for Mr. Forrestal!
The annals here record for the first time a specific intervention by Mr. Baruch in high affairs, and its nature. His counsel was that Mr. Forrestal, a Cabinet officer, consider his own interest, which was endangered; until that time Mr. Forrestal as a responsible Cabinet officer had considered only the interest of his country. Mr. Forrestal does not say whether he saw in this advice anything threatening; his allusion to Mr. Roosevelt on the same day shows that the thought of “threats” was in his mind.
He then gave way to the fear which in the end cowed nearly all men who strove against the thrall of Zion. Four days later (February 7, 1948) he drew up a last paper on the subject which he never submitted to the President, but which contains something of historical importance. He said that on February 6
“Eisenhower told me that effective United States participation in a Palestine police force would involve about one division with appropriate supporting units”.
At that time, therefore, General Eisenhower (then Chief of Staff) was drafting plans for the potential engagement of American troops in Palestine. Mr. Forrestal put away this last memorandum.
On February 12 and 18 he made two final appeals to general Marshall to contend with the president and the party-managers and at that point his efforts ceased.
His desisting availed him nothing for within a twelvemonth he was literally hounded to death. His end needs to be described here, before the armed seizure of Palestine is recorded; it is the classic case of persecution by defamation, leading to death.
I first went to America early in 1949 and was perplexed by the venom of the attacks, in the press and radio, on one Mr. James Forrestal, Secretary for Defence. I knew nothing of him but his name, and the part he played in this affair (as above recorded) was then entirely unknown to the public. Nevertheless they read or heard daily that he was insane, a coward who had left his wife to be attacked by a burglar, a tax defaulter, and all manner of other things.
By chance I met a friend of his who told me that he had been so reduced by this persecution that those near to him were gravely alarmed. A few weeks later he threw himself from a high window, leaving in his room some copied verses from Greek tragedy which ended with the refrain, “Woe, woe! will be the cry. . .”
[Note – JP: It has since been disclosed that, according to in-depth investigation, Mr. Forrestal was most probably “thrown bodily from the window”; i.e. MURDERED!]American libel laws are liberal and differ from state to state, and litigation is long. Even a successful action may not bring redress. Hardly any limit is in practice set to what may be said about a man singled out for defamation; the slanders are printed in the language that incites mob-passions and when broadcast are uttered in rabid accents, that recalled to me the voices of primitive African tribespeople in moments of catalepsy.
Among Mr. Forrestal’s effects was found a scrapbook full of these attacks, and towards the end he could not listen to the radio. The refuse of calumny was emptied on his head and at the end two broadcasters joined for the kill. One of them announced (January 9, 1949) that President Truman would “accept Forrestal’s resignation within a week” (and followed this with some slander about shares in the German Dye Trust).
On January 11, the second broadcaster told the millions that President Truman would by that time have accepted Mr. Forrestal’s resignation, had not the first broadcaster anticipated the event (the Jewel-robbery story was added to this).
A few weeks earlier President Truman had told the Press that he had asked Mr. Forrestal not to resign; on March 1 he sent for Mr. Forrestal and demanded his immediate resignation, without explanation, to be effective from May 1. Mr. Forrestal committed suicide on May 21. At the funeral ceremony Mr. Truman described him as “a victim of the war”!
(In parentheses, at that time another man was being hounded to the same death, which he escaped, later in the same year only by the failure of his suicide attempt. His persecution came from the same defamationist source, though his offence was in the other field, Communism. Mr. Whittaker Chambers sinned by his efforts to expose Communist infiltration of the American Government.
I was in America at the time of his ordeal, which is described in his book; this contains the striking example, to which I earlier alluded, of the Talmudic practice of “cursing by an angry, fixed look” (the Jewish Encyclopedia). Literal Talmudists would presumably see in Mr. Chamber’s suicide attempt, and in the ill-health which subsequently afflicted him, a token of the literal efficacy of “the Law” in this respect).
After Mr. Forrestal’s retreat into silence, at the warning of Mr. Baruch, the responsible men at the State Department continued their struggle, headed by General Marshall. (All this while, in England, Mr. Bevin was carrying on his lonely fight against the Conservative opposition and against the mass of his own party alike). At one point, for the first time since 1917, the responsible Cabinet officers and officials in both countries seemed to have won the day.
This was in March 1948. Violence in Palestine had so greatly increased after the United Nations’ “recommendation” for the country’s bisection that the Security Council grew alarmed and beat a retreat.
Even President Truman was shaken and his representative in the Security Council announced the reversal of American policy, proposing (March 19, 1948) that the partition proposal be suspended, that a truce be arranged, and that the end of the “Mandate” be followed by a “Trusteeship” (this was in effect the proposal of the State Department memorandum of January).
At the last moment the idea of “the Jewish state” thus seemed about to collapse. The post-war return to reason was beginning (that process which Mr. Lloyd George, thirty years before, had warningly called the “thaw”) and if the coup now failed only a third world war could provide another opportunity.
The “Trusteeship” would be the “mandate” in a new form, but with the United States as the country chiefly involved, and in another ten or twenty years America, foreseeably, would find the “Trusteeship” as “unworkable”, under Zionist pressure, as the British had found the “Mandate”.
It was then or never and the Zionists struck at once. They presented the “United Nations” with the accomplished fact by bisecting Palestine themselves.
The terrorist deed by means of which this was accomplished was the result of the policy adopted at the World Zionist Congress of 1946, where “the demoralizing forces in the movement” (Dr. Weizmann’s words) had recommended methods of “Resistance. . . defence. . . activism”, and Dr. Weizmann, who knew what was meant, had been deposed for objecting to them.
Next: Part 2 – (the bloody Reign of Terror in Palestine)
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