1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (13 page)

The Zionists faced a major challenge in the twenty-member Latin American bloc, the United Nations' largest, where the anti-Zionist influences of the Catholic Church-the Vatican opposed partition and Jewish statehood-and local Arab and German communities were strong, and where anti-American feeling, which affected attitudes to Zionism, was widespread, though the regimes themselves were dependent on and aligned with Washington. During April-May, the Latin Americans appeared to support the Zionist cause, or so it seemed to Jewish Agency officials. But by October, many were wavering or even antagonistic, due, the Zionists believed, to "a very intensive campaign [by the Arabs "and their friends" of] ... commercial pressure, diplomatic pressure, bribery"84 and to apparent US irresolution. Of the bloc, only "five or six" were definitely for partition, and two, Argentina and Cuba, were "committed" on the Arab side. Of the remaining thirteen, about half were leaning toward partition, and the rest were "inclined to abstain."85

In the Ad Hoc Committee vote of 25 November six Latin American countries abstained, Paraguay absented itself, and one (Cuba) voted against, as against twelve "ayes." In the following days, the Zionist directed their efforts toward the recalcitrant countries' UN representatives, who seem largely to have been left to their own devices on the Palestine questions"

Pecuniary considerations apparently affected the votes of one or two Latin American ambassadors (though documentation in this regard is hard to find). According to reports, one Latin American delegation voted for partition after receiving seventy-five thousand dollars; another, perhaps Costa Rica, turned down a forty-five-thousand-dollar bribe but nonetheless voted for partition.87 More telling, apparently, were promises and threats directed at individual governments by American Jewish businessmen and politicians. Apparently prominent in this lobbying effort was Samuel Zemurray, head of the United Fruit Corporation, which had large plantations in the Carribean.88

One of the most vocal pro-Zionist ambassadors to the United Nations was Jorge Garcia Granados, the Guatemalan; he had led the pro-partition camp in UNSCOP and, during the General Assembly meeting, had lobbied his fellow Latin Americans relentlessly. The British believed that he was "receiving money from American-Jewish organizations" and alleged that he was "living extravagantly at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel."' American diplomats had reported that Granados enjoyed "`a beautiful friendship' with a Jewess named `Emma."" Perhaps these reports were true. But he also, as he put it in his memoirs, believed in "the justice and historic necessity" of the creation of a Jewish state.9'

The black African vote-Ethiopia and Liberia-was also important. Zionist officials in Britain approached Lorna Wingate, the widow of Orde Wingate. During the late 1930s, Orde Wingate was a passionate philo-Zionist and, as a young British army captain, trained and led Haganah troops in counterinsurgency operations during the Arab Revolt in Palestine. He died in an air crash in Burma in 1944 while commanding the Chindit guerrillas against the Japanese. In between, in 1940-1941, he had led British forces that reconquered Abyssinia from the Italians and restored Ethiopian independence and the rule of Emperor Haile Selassie.92 The emperor "owed" Wingate, and in November 1947, the Zionists decided to call in the debt. Lorna Wingate cabled Selassie: "Fate of world may well hang on United Nations Palestine decision.... Partition only hope of ultimate peace.... I cast myself before you in name of Orde Wingate to ask that you stand again in history as man of God and man of destiny. "93 In the end, Ethiopia abstained; apparently Arab threats concerning the well-being of Egypt's large Coptic minority carried the day94

By contrast, Liberia was subjected to the stick. Both former US secretary of state Edward Stettinius, who headed an American-Liberian development company, and Harvey Firestone, whose Firestone Rubber Company owned plantations in Liberia and imported rubber, Liberia's main (or only) export, were mobilized to threaten a boycott unless Liberia voted for partition. Jan Smuts, prime minister and foreign minister of South Africa, was also recruited to pressure Monrovia.95 Liberia duly switched from abstention to "aye."

India, represented on UNSCOP, was vigorously lobbied from summer 1947, even though its pro-Arab stance was stark and consistent 96 Even Albert Einstein was mobilized. Hayim Greenberg, a member of the American Section of the JAE and a man of letters, approached the physicist and then drafted Einstein's letter to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.97 Einstein brandished morality rather than political interests or legalisms. The Jews, he wrote, had been history's victims "for centuries." Now the United Nations was considering compensating this "pariah" nation. The Holocaust only underlined the urgent need for a sovereign Jewish state. And this would not infringe on the rights of others-because the Jews would bring material benefit to their Arab neighbors, as they had in the past. In any event, the Arabs held sway or were assured sovereignty in over 99 percent of the areas liberated from the Turks in World War I; it was only moral that the Jews receive the remaining sliver of land in which they had once been sovereign, as Nehru well knew (Nehru in his years in a British prison had written a history of the world). "In the august scale ofjustice, which weighs need against need, there is no doubt as to whose [need] is more heavy," wrote Einstein.

Nehru responded with both realpolitik and ethics. He asserted that in India there was "the deepest sympathy for the great suffering of the Jewish people." But "national policies are unfortunately essentially selfish policies. Each country thinks of its own interest first"-and India's interests, he implied, necessitated siding with the Arabs. But he added that in Palestine the conflict was between two sets of "rights," and he was not convinced that Jewish aspirations could be fulfilled without impinging on Arab rights. He declined to embrace Jewish statehood.98

During September-November, Zionist officials repeatedly met Indian diplomats and journalists at the United Nations; they were still eager to convert the giant of the subcontinent. Vijayalakshmi Pandit, Nehru's sister, who headed the delegation, occasionally threw out hints that something might change. But Shertok was brought down to earth by historian Kavalam Panikkar, another member of the Indian delegation: "It is idle for you to try to convince us that the Jews have a case.... We know it.... But the point is simply this: For us to vote for the Jews means to vote against the Moslems. This is a conflict in which Islam is involved.... We have 13 million [sic] Moslems in our midst.... Therefore, we cannot do it."" In a sign of the panic that overtook the Zionist leadership at the eleventh hour, one further effort was made to "convert" India. On 27 November Weizmann cabled Nehru that rejection of partition would spur the Palestinians to war: "[I] cannot understand how India can wish [to] obstruct such [a fair two-state] settlement," he argued. 10° But India would not budge.

China was also wooed, and perhaps Zionist lobbying contributed to the shift from outright rejection of partition to what Silver called "benevolent neutrality." 101 In the end, China abstained. The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, V. K. Wellington Koo, though sympathetic to Zionism, explained: "[China] has her own difficulties.... The Chinese Republic ... [has] twenty million Moslems many of whose leaders hold important positions in Nanking and throughout China."102

Nor, through most of October-November, was Western Europe, from the Zionist viewpoint, in the bag. "Our last hope is France," said Jamal Husseini, the AHC representative in New York, a few days before the crucial vote. 103 France was to remain a major Zionist headache until the last minute. And its vote, it was understood, would influence that of Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and Denmark. France had to take account of its traditional alliance with Britain and the sixteen million Muslims under its rule in North Africa.'" And the winds from the Vatican affected French thinking. Initial French utterances did not bode well. True, France had helped the Zionists in the Exodus Affair. But Paul Ramadier, the French prime minister, told Zionist officials who came to lobby him in August that "Britain was in serious difficulties" and that the Arab League was "a force to be reckoned with [and France `could not ignore the Arab population within the French Union'].... He wondered whether some interim arrangement might not be made. After all, there were two ways of getting the Jews to Palestine-the way of Moses and the way of Esther [to which Berl Locker, the chief Zionist interlocutor, replied that `as far as he knew, Esther did not lead the Jews to Palestine']." Perhaps a "suitable country" could be found for Europe's Jewish DPs "within the French Union," Ramadier suggested.'()-"

Weizmann gave the French UN delegation a persuasive pep talk in New York on 25 September. But pro-Arab French officials and a stream of antipartition cables from the French consulate in Jerusalem and the French Legation in Damascus dampened its effect'06-and, in any case, the matter was to be decided in the French cabinet.

By October, France's position had crystallized into abstention. One Zionist official reported from Paris that "the chances of changing the position of the French Foreign Ministry were very slim." 107 But the key lay with the cabinet. The Zionists, spearheaded by Weizmann, mobilized Leon Blum, the former prime minister and elder statesman of French socialism, to lobby the government.108 The fall of the Socialist-led Ramadier administration and its replacement on ig November by one led by Robert Schuman, with a Socialist minority, only aggravated matters. France abstained on 25 November in the Ad Hoc Committee. But intense Zionist lobbying, and pangs of Holocaust-related conscience, at last persuaded the cabinet the following day to instruct Alexandre Parodi, the head of the French UN delegation, to vote "aye."

According to British diplomats, it was the threat of resignation by three members of the cabinet-Finance Minister Rene Mayer, Labor Minister Daniel Meyer, and Interior Minister Jules Moch-buttressed by their announcement that American Jewry would organize a congressional campaign against continued US economic aid to France should it abstain, that clinched the decision, causing "consternation in the Quai d'Orsay" and prompting Parodi to ask the General Assembly, on 28 November, for a twenty-fourhour delay in the voting, a hiatus in which he sought, and failed, "to get the instructions reversed."'()' The delay, which caused palpitations among the Zionists, who feared that the two-thirds majority they believed they had in hand would slip away, was misinterpreted by them as stemming from machinations initiated by Harold Beeley and the Arab camp.110

Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg also caused the Zionists uneaseuntil they finally voted "aye." From September through November they had "adopted the attitude that they would vote for [partition] only if America, England and France would vote for it."''' Less than two weeks before the vote, the Luxembourg delegate said that his government had given him complete freedom of action and that he intended to vote against partition; the Arabs had persuaded him that "partition would lead to the outbreak of war "112 The Belgian government, with Paul-Henri Spaak at its head, generally favored partition-or so Spaak told Zionist officials. But he was under strong pressure, in the contrary direction, from his UN delegation and from the country's Catholic Party. As well, there were fears for the future of Belgian commercial interests in Arab countries, especially Egypt, and a desire not to offend Britain.' 13 But Spaak seems to have cut his sail according to each interlocutor. On 26 November he told the British ambassador, George Rendel, that he was unhappy with partition, which would lead to war. Moreover, he disapproved of the American and Soviet position in favor of partition coupled with an unwillingness to provide forces to implement it. And yet, that was the only ballgame in town-so how could Belgium abstain? He asked Rendel for "advice," and the ambassador, "purely personally," recommended abstention. More formally, London declined to offer advice and added high-mindedly that it deprecated attempts by any power "to influence others."114

Holland referred to the problem posed by "her [Muslim] population of 16 million"-in Indonesia-but assured the Zionists that it would stick to its UNSCOP representative's pro-partition position.'' Speaking of all three Benelux countries, a Zionist diplomat concluded, after the vote: "Their affirmative vote at the end came with some relief."' 16

Britain itself decided to abstain''7-and indeed, in the final days before the vote instructed its diplomats to refrain from influencing other countries one way or another. But without doubt British diplomats around the globe, and especially in New York, "privately" advised various countries on the best course of action.

From the Zionist standpoint, the Anglo-Saxon Dominions-Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand-were an easier sell, and in the event, all four voted for partition. But it was not all smooth sailing.118 Public opinion after the Holocaust strongly supported Jewish statehood. But the governments all had economic and political interests that militated in the opposite direction, and the traditional alignment of their foreign policies with London's seemed to indicate abstention. In June 1947 the Jewish Agency's Michael Comay discovered that the New Zealand UN deputy head of delegation, J. S. Reid, was "strongly anti-Zionist." Reid left him with the impression that "the New Zealand Legation is completely under the sway of the British Embassy." Comay was somewhat reassured by the South African minister, H. T. Andrews, who said that although "for 9o% of the time, the Dominions' views roughly coincided with those of Britain," occasionally they took an independent tack and that the British "would not insist on unanimity" in the Palestine vote. London, for its part, was careful not to be seen to be "pushing" the Dominions. 119

South Africa, with Smuts firmly at the helm, consistently championed the Zionist cause. But Australia and Canada-Australia's UNSCOP representative had abstained-were not completely firm, and New Zealand, almost down to the wire, caused the Zionists "anxiety." 120 Early on Wellington had assured the Jewish Agency that it would vote "aye.""' But then it wavered, abstaining in the Ad Hoc Committee.122 The alarmed Zionists dispatched a stream of telegrams, Chaim Weizmann and Henry Morgenthau, Jr., former US secretary of treasury and head of the United Jewish Appeal, writing to Prime Minister Peter Fraser and his finance minister, Walter Nash. The New Zealanders responded that in the absence of an adequate mechanism for implementation, the partition resolution would lead only to "bloodshed and chaos."I23 But in the end they, too, voted for partition.