Mike Whitney – The Unz Review Dec 29, 2024

American patriot General George C. Marshall strongly opposed the partitioning of Palestine because he knew that the creation of a Zionist state at the heart of the Arab world would severely undermine US regional interests while fueling endless conflicts across the Middle East. In short, Marshall and his allies at the State Department grasped that Zionist leaders would never opt to get along with their Arab neighbors or pursue a path of peaceful coexistence but would relentlessly seek to dominate the region by duping Washington into destroying its perceived enemies. Marshall’s opposition suggests that—even before Israel achieved statehood—powerful members of the US foreign policy establishment anticipated that the prevailing ideology of the Israeli state would lead to widespread destabilization, conflagration and genocide. This is from an article at Mondoweiss:

In the period between the end of World War Two and Marshall’s meeting with Truman [May 12, 1948], the Joint Chiefs of Staff had issued no less than sixteen (by my count) papers on the Palestine issue. The most important of these was issued on March 31, 1948 and entitled “Force Requirements for Palestine.” In that paper, the Joint Chiefs of Staff predicted that “the Zionist strategy will seek to involve [the United States] in a continuously widening and deepening series of operations intended to secure maximum Jewish objectives.” The JCS speculated that these objectives included: initial Jewish sovereignty over a portion of Palestine, acceptance by the great powers of the right to unlimited immigration, the extension of Jewish sovereignty over all of Palestine and the expansion of “Eretz Israel” into Transjordan and into portions of Lebanon and Syria. This was not the only time the JCS expressed this worry. In late 1947, the JCS had written that “A decision to partition Palestine, if the decision were supported by the United States, would prejudice United States strategic interests in the Near and Middle East” to the point that “United States influence in the area would be curtailed to that which could be maintained by military force.” That is to say, the concern of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was not with [watch out, here comes a shocking statement] the security of Israel- but with the security of American lives. Damned as anti-Semite, Geo Marshall predicted that Israel would become US tarbaby, Mondoweiss

Repeat: The Joint Chiefs of Staff…. predicted that “the Zionist strategy will seek to involve [the United States] in a continuously widening and deepening series of operations intended to secure maximum Jewish objectives.”

And has this prediction turned out to be true?

It has. The US has been bogged down in wars for Israel for the last two decades (Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad) with no material benefit to itself. To the contrary, by blindly accommodating Israel’s ambitious “regional hegemony” project, Washington has drawn the hatred of more than a billion Muslims while plunging the region into endless bloodletting and chaos. None of this is in America’s national security interests.

Here’s economist Jeffrey Sachs explaining that all of America’s wars in the Middle East have been for Israel:

Israel has run American foreign policy in the Middle east for 30 years. That’s how it works. We have an Israel Lobby, we have this Clean Break strategy, and we have a plan for 7 wars in five years. And what’s interesting is that they actually carry out this madness without explaining any of it to the American people. But you can watch it step by step. We’ve (already) had six of those seven wars. The only one that hasn’t happened, is Iran. And if you watch every day now, the Mainstream Media is pushing for war with Iran. Netanyahu is pushing for war with Iran. They’re really trying to get this started to make it seven out of seven.

Repeat: The Joint Chiefs of Staff…. also predicted that Israel would seek to establish “Jewish sovereignty over all of Palestine and the expansion of “Eretz Israel” into Transjordan and into portions of Lebanon and Syria.”

So, way back in 1947, US powerbrokers at the State Department and the Pentagon had already figured out that Zionist leaders would never trade land for peace or comply with UN Resolution 242. They also knew that Israel was determined to seize all the land between the Jordan to the Mediterranean and either kill or banish the entire indigenous population. In short, the two-state solution was always a ruse. Here’s more:

The Joint Chiefs of Staff…. predicted that “A decision to partition Palestine, if the decision were supported by the United States, would prejudice United States strategic interests in the Near and Middle East” to the point that “United States influence in the area would be curtailed to that which could be maintained by military force.”

This prediction also turned out to be accurate. After all, isn’t the United States more reviled in the region than any time in history? Hasn’t Washington become the main provider of the lethal weaponry and bombs that are slaughtering Palestinian women and children by the thousands? Hasn’t this behavior proved that the US is not an “honest broker” capable of acting impartially, but is merely the enforcement arm of the Zionist state whose primary task is to prosecute a war that runs contrary to America’s own national security interests?

Yes, yes and yes. And Marshall anticipated it all which is why he opposed the partition from the beginning. Here’s more:

….the concern of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was not with the security of Israel- but with the security of American lives.

But isn’t that how it should be? Isn’t that what we would expect of any decent American leader?

The fact is, Marshall has been decried as an anti-Semite merely because he was ‘doing his job’. The man was not an anti-Semite any more than the people who oppose the blowing up of women and children in Gaza are anti-Semites. The idea is laughable.

Check out this post at The Center for Israel Education about Loy Henderson, the Director of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, US State Department to the U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall:

Loy Henderson, the second-highest-ranking member of the State Department in the Near East section, was an avowed Arabist and passionate anti-Zionist. .… Henderson concluded this letter to Secretary of State Marshall, “We are under no obligations to the Jews to set up a Jewish state. The Balfour Declaration and the Mandate provided not for a Jewish state, but for a Jewish national home. Neither the United States nor the British Government has ever interpreted the term ‘Jewish national home’ to be a Jewish national state.”

Written two months before the US voted in favor of partitioning Palestine into two states, he presented vigorous and profound sympathies for Arab state interests. US cultivation of deeper relationships with Arab and Muslim countries drove his political views for political and economic reason. Henderson vigorously opposed the establishment of a Jewish state, and thus was against US voting for Palestine’s partition into an Arab and Jewish state. After the November 1947 vote, he lobbied to have either the US or the US and Britain administer a trusteeship for Palestine. His pro-Arab sympathies were joined by Secretary of State Marshall and George Kennan, the head of the Policy Planning Branch of the State Department.

He wrote to Secretary of State Marshall that the UN (UNSCOP) plan to partition Palestine into two states was thoroughly unworkable; if adopted, he said, “it would guarantee that the Palestine problem would be permanent and still more complicated in the future. … The proposals contained in the UNSCOP plan are not only not based on any principles of an international character, the maintenance of which would be in the interests of the United States, but they are in definite contravention to various principles laid down in the Charter as well as to principles on which American concepts of Government are based. … These proposals, for instance, ignore such principles as self-determination and majority rule. They recognize the principle of a theocratic racial (Jewish) state and even go so far in several instance as to discriminate on the grounds of religion and race against persons outside of Palestine.” Loy Henderson, the Director of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, US State Department to the U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall, Center for Israel Education

Brilliant! Political analyst Greg Stoker explains why the partitioning of Palestine was “a strategic blunder even the most hardened imperialist… must begin to recognize…“.

So, the experts at the State Department (and the Pentagon) knew that the proposed Jewish state would NOT be based on the “principles on which American concepts of Government are based.” But, instead, on the “principle of a theocratic racial (Jewish) state (that) discriminate on the grounds of religion and race against persons outside of Palestine.”

Correct me if I am wrong, but this seems to suggest that US foreign policy mandarins knew that Israel was going to be an apartheid state from the get-go but chose to keep their mouths shut. Isn’t that what they are saying? And there’s this tidbit too:

… These proposals, for instance, ignore such principles as self-determination and majority rule.

So, Israel was never going to be a democracy, the Palestinians were never going to be allowed to govern themselves, and the country was going to be ruled by a narrow caste of Ashkanazi elites. Is this true or false?

It’s true. Here’s how Max Blumenthal summed it up:

Israel is the Jewish state in Israel and the Levant (JSIL) It is the only active settler colony in the world. It embraces an anachronistic system that is based on the idea of maintaining ethnic purity or a Jewish demographic majority in an area where most people aren’t Jewish. That requires, as I said, settler colonialism but also the dispossession and exclusion of the indigenous Palestinian population which isn’t Jewish. That’s why we see people ghettoized in the Gaza Strip. People in the West Bank tucked behind 638 kilometers of concrete. People being dispossessed in the Negev inside Israel, the Bedouins. This catastrophic system that is constantly abusing Palestinians is the result of the attempt to maintain a Jewish demographic majority and the ethnic purity the state’s existence is contingent upon. That also requires the entire population to participate in this project of domination and control of the indigenous people. That means everyone enlists into the military at age 18 and has to participate on some level in human rights abuses. That’s catastrophic for the Jewish population as well. So, it is the maintenance of Israel as JSIL the Jewish state in Israel and the Levant, that is the problem. It is not a democracy, it’s an ethnocracy that is anachronistic. Max Blumenthal @partisangirl

And here’s a second blurb on Zionism from the Jewish Voice for Peace:

....the Zionism that took hold and stands today is a settler-colonial movement, establishing an apartheid state where Jews have more rights than others…. Because the founding of the state of Israel was based on the idea of a “land without people,” Palestinian existence itself is resistance….(Zionism) a political ideology founded on (Palestinian) erasure. Our Approach to Zionism, Jewish Voices for Peace

At this point, readers are probably wondering why President Harry Truman opted to recognize Israel in 1948 when his most trusted advisors and regional experts strongly opposed the measure? And it’s worth noting, that the advice was not proffered by a few rogue anti-Semites at the State Department, but (as Henderson stated) “those of nearly every member of the Foreign Service or of the Department who has worked to any appreciable extend on Near Eastern problems, in the manner in which they should have been presented.” In other words, this was the pro-American consensus.

But Truman chose to recognize Israel regardless. Why?

That question cannot be answered definitively, but the “Rumor-mill” is chock-full of persuasive theories, most of which are linked to the generous donor contributions to Truman’s barren campaign coffers. Here’s a short clip from a piece by Alexander Cockburn at Counterpunch in 2006:

The late Steve Smith, brother in law of Teddy Kennedy, and a powerful figure in the Democratic Party for several decades, liked to tell the story of how a group of four Jewish businessmen got together two million dollars in cash and gave it to Harry Truman when he was in desperate need of money amidst his presidential campaign in 1948. Truman went on to become president and to express his gratitude to his Zionist backers. The Row Over the Israel Lobby, Counterpunch

And, here’s more in the same vein by author Gore Vidal in the Forward to a book by Israel Shahak titled Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years by Israel Shahak:

Sometime in the late 1950s… John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948, Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president. Then an American Zionist brought him two million dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign train. ‘That’s why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.’ As neither Jack nor I was an antisemite (unlike his father and my grandfather) we took this to be just another funny story about Truman and the serene corruption of American politics.

Unfortunately, the hurried recognition of Israel as a state has resulted in forty-five years of murderous confusion, and the destruction of what Zionist fellow travellers thought would be a pluralistic state …. I shall not rehearse the wars and alarms of that unhappy region. But I will say that the hasty invention of Israel has poisoned the political and intellectual life of the USA, Israel’s unlikely patron. Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, If Americans Knew

As we said earlier, these rumors cannot be independently verified but they do appear to have been widely circulated and (I suspect) trusted as credible evidence of foul play. IMHO, Truman’s decision was probably not simply a bribe as inferred by both Vidal and Cockburn, but a convenient debt of gratitude to an American leader who shared their basic Zionist world view. Check out this short excerpt from an article by Dr. Alfred M. Lilienthal and you’ll see what I mean:

Truman was a Biblical fundamentalist who constantly pointed to these words of the Old Testament: “Behold I have given up the land before you; go in and take possession of the land which the Lord has sworn unto your fathers; to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob” [Deuteronomy 1:8]. The extent of Truman’s devotion to fundamentalism was pointed up in the writings of his sister after his death.

The chaos that has occurred and is still occurring on the West Bank and in Gaza has followed naturally from Truman’s action. It was foreseen in my writings and public statements both before and after Zionism’s creation of the state of Israel. Remembering General George Marshall’s Clash With Clark Clifford Over Premature Recognition of Israel, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

So, Truman was a closet Zionist?

We don’t know, but we do know that he put Israel’s interests before those of the United States. Of that, we can be absolutely certain.

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