AHC: U.S. Gov't is the principal provider of arms and funding to Israel before & during its founding

raharris1973

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Even if the decades long record of US government aid and support to Israel sometimes makes it look that way, Israel was not a US government creation, and the US government had a real, but still limited share of agency in Israel's founding and Israel's territorial expansion compared to other actors.

Here's the challenge, get the US government to be lead aid provider across the board for Israel at its founding (48-49) or even earlier. And project the effects of that going forward.

I came across an old 2001 or 2002 letter to the editor I wrote to shine a light on the more important roles of others besides the United Stated government, which made me think of this question:

"Mary McGrory’s meandering editorial from March 10,
"It’s Still About Clinton," veers into historical
inaccuracy when it says, “…only the United
States…which founded and funds Israel.” Generous US
aid to Israel has been an undeniable fact for up to 35
years. However, credit (or blame) for the founding of
Israel goes first to the Zionist Jews who settled
there in the first half of the century, and
pro-Zionist Jews around the world. Secondly, it goes
to the Ottoman and British authorities who
administered what is now Israel, and through acts of
commission or omission, allowed the Zionist community
to grow and arm itself. Israel fought its war of
independence primarily with weapons supplied by the
Czechoslovakian government (a transaction blessed by
Stalin's USSR)and the black market (American citizen
Al Schwimmer, was only pardoned last year for
illegally procuring arms for Israel in that war. He
had been denied his voting rights for over fifty years
for breaking the neutrality law).
Arab states like Morocco, Yemen, Libya and Iraq
unwittingly strengthened Israel, encouraging Jewish
emigration to that country when they failed to protect
their own Jewish citizens from mob violence. At this
time, West German reparations were a far bigger
revenue source for Israel than US aid.
Finally, Israel conquered the occupied territories
with arms supplied by the French, not American
government, and, if books like “The Samson Option” or
“Israel and the Bomb” are accurate, the French were
also decisive in Israeli development of nuclear
weapons in the late 60s. Since that time, the Israeli
nuclear deterrent has made a decisive Arab military
victory over Israel impossible, with or without Israel
having US arms.
If the enemies of Israel in Arab countries want to
blame someone for their inability to destroy it, they
should look first to France, whose current Middle East
policy seems designed to try to cover up its early
support for Israel, and then they should look in the
mirror, before scapegoating the United States for
their frustrations.
 

raharris1973

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Any ideas how to get this result?

I dunno maybe independent Syria goes hard left and vocally pro-Soviet as soon as the French leave in 1946? Maybe one or more Arab monarchies are overthrown and take such a path before 1948. For those I would think only Egypt or Iraq might come close to plausibility.
 
Maybe a limited German victory in Europe during WWII that results in a Cold War between that country and the United States?
 

raharris1973

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Maybe a limited German victory in Europe during WWII that results in a Cold War between that country and the United States?

Interesting - I'd love to see the outline of the scope and circumstances of Germany's victory, and how this allows for establishment of an Israel.

Is there an Israel in @CalBear's AANW? Or does it lack the manpower to expand beyond its pre-1939 population, or is it actually conquered by the Axis?
 

CalBear

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Interesting - I'd love to see the outline of the scope and circumstances of Germany's victory, and how this allows for establishment of an Israel.

Is there an Israel in @CalBear's AANW? Or does it lack the manpower to expand beyond its pre-1939 population, or is it actually conquered by the Axis?
No Israel in AANW. The self determination policy didn't work out in the favor of the Jewish population which was outvoted in a big way.
 
Someone other than Glubb Pasha commands the Arab Legion in the 1930s, and allows Husseinist influence to get in. (I.e. influence of Amin el-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and his clan.)

During the Arab Revolt, the Legion proves unreliable: that is, not entirely reliable. While most of the Legion is sound, there are a few incidents of Legion troops joining Palestinian Arab gangs in attacks on Jewish settlements and even a few British outposts and motor convoys. This causes the British to rely on the Zionist Notrim. In one heavily publicized incident, Notrim fighters rescue a group of British travelers from an Arab ambush which included some Legion deserters.

This leads to a drastic change in British policy: they will rely on the Zionists to hold Palestine. The Notrim is elevated to a "Hebrew Legion", and the limits on Jewish immigration are rescinded. By 1946, Palestine is majority Jewish, with independence planned in a few more years.

However, Arab hostility is exacerbated, especially as refugees from Europe pour in. Britain is no longer willing to support the nascent Jewish state, due to postwar exhaustion and increasing Arabist sympathies. Britain hands off to the US, which is much more enthusiastic about Zionism, and becomes Israel's financial angel and arms source.
 
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The biggest reason for lax early American support was the overwhelming strength of the left in Israeli politics from 1948 to 1977. Due to early Cold War suspicion, Israel was seen as a state that was just waiting to flip into the Soviet bloc.

What changed this? The rise of Arab Socialism and Pan-Arabism, and the alliance of those movements with the Soviets due to the Israeli alliance with the French and to a lesser extent, the British.

The US in the 40s and 50s was relatively ambigious on the Israel question and noticeably annoyed with its allies that indulged Israel too much.

So to change this, you need the US to be less suspicious of the early Israeli state, and for that, you need for someone other than Mapai/Ahdut HaAvoda to be in power, and this is going to be quite hard to accomplish. Perhaps the General Zionists and Herut form an alliance early on, and Ben Gurion shows far less tact than he did in OTL regarding religious voters, and there is just enough outrage over some issue or another that makes a non-Left Wing coalition possible in 1949 or 1951.
 

raharris1973

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To everyone's credit, nobody piped up with "hey, what is this, a DBWI, of course the US govt was"
 

raharris1973

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George Marshall would resign...

Well that would be interesting, wouldn't it?

By the time the partition votes were coming up at the UN, Marshall had finished with his China mediation and identified himself with the Marshall Plan. If he left after that, the policy impact is limited.

Although, he's a very respected figure. I wonder if Truman would have trouble getting votes for aid through Congress.
 
Well that would be interesting, wouldn't it?

By the time the partition votes were coming up at the UN, Marshall had finished with his China mediation and identified himself with the Marshall Plan. If he left after that, the policy impact is limited.

Although, he's a very respected figure. I wonder if Truman would have trouble getting votes for aid through Congress.


I don't know how much of a more pro-Israel program by Truman would have required congressional consent. The arms embargo on the Middle East had been instituted by the executive branch and could have been ended by it. As for a loan to Israel, Truman stated in October, "With reference to the granting of a loan or loans to the State of Israel, I have directed the departments and agencies of the executive branch of our Government to work together in expediting the consideration of any applications for loans which may be submitted by the State of Israel." http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=13065 In 1949, such an aid deal (involving $135 million in loans from the Export-Import Bank and the sale of surplus commodities to Israel) was in fact arrived at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-and-overview-of-u-s-foreign-aid-to-israel (and de jure recognition was extended).

Even voting for partition and extending de facto recognition was of course disturbing to much of the American diplomatic and military establishment, including Marshall, concerned as they were with US interests in the Arab world (above all, oil). Ending the arms embargo and extending de jure recognition in 1948 would definitely have led to major resignations. OTOH, if one can ignore this negative effect, it might have enabled Truman to carry New York state in November. This is not primarily because of Dewey (who as usual tried to steer clear of controversial issues, since he thought he was sure to win...) but because of Wallace. In 1948, the pro-Soviet left in the US was very pro-Israel, and Wallace unlike Dewey had every incentive to charge Truman with betraying Israel--and repeatedly did so charge. There's a very interesting article on this: Did the Jewish Vote Cost Truman New York? A New Look at the 1948 Presidential Race by Rafael Medoff. http://web.archive.org/web/20130413...org/special-reports/JewishVoteTrumanStudy.pdf

"Much of the Wallace campaign’s criticism of Truman's Israel policy focused on the arms embargo that the administration imposed on the Middle East beginning the previous December. The embargo primarily affected the Jews, since the Arab states were receiving weapons from other countries. It was implemented so zealously that the U.S. rejected even a request for armored plates to shield Jewish civilian buses from Arab attackers. In a heartfelt appeal to Truman to drop the embargo, Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann wrote: “The choice of our people, Mr. President, is between Statehood and extermination.” Truman refused to budge. A face to face plea by Golda Meir to Eleanor Roosevelt to press Truman on the embargo likewise yielded no results...

The New York popular press hammered away on Truman's alleged softness on Israel--especially PM (renamed the New York Star in the summer of 1948):

"Other aspects of Truman's Israel policy troubled the newspaper's editors as well. The president's de facto recognition of Israel "is simply acknowledgement" that Israel exists, a June 24 editorial pointed out; only de jure recognition would assert that Israel "is legitimatw and rests upon a firm legal basis."...

"Just six weeks before the presidential election, the Truman administration’s Israel policy ignited a serious new clash with American Jewish voters. On September 21, Secretary of State George Marshall announced at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, in Paris, that the U.S. endorsed a plan by U.N. Mideast peace envoy Count Folke Bernadotte which included severing the entire Negev Desert from Israel. Member sof the U.S. delegation in Paris were quoted as saying that “strong pressure will be brought to bear on Israel to accept the Bernadotte plan.”

"The Israeli government charged Bernadotte’s proposal not only would “cut off about two-thirds of Israel’s territory,” but also “cripple...and stunt Israel’s progress and growth for generations to come.” The New York Post called the Bernadotte plan “anti-Israel,” and the Star published the entire text of Israel’s 2,000-word critique of the plan, as well as a string of editorials blasting it and news articles accusing the State Department of secretly co-authoring Bernadotte’s proposal...

"As he had done during the controversy over the trusteeship proposal, Truman tried to put distance between himself and the Bernadotte plan, claiming to be “thunderstruck” by Marshall’s Paris announcement and denying he had approved it...

"Confidence in the administration’s policy eroded so badly among Jewish voters, and some others, that two weeks before Election Day, the Star’s editors felt compelled to deny rumors that the Star was going to withdraw its endorsement of Truman, while acknowledging that "We dislike a number of things Mr. Truman has done," such as "his slow footedness in Palestine." One wonders how many readers were persuaded to vote for Truman on the basis of the Star's argument that "Under Mr. Dewey, too, we can be assured of an oil stench to our policy in Palestine--but it would be stronger."...

"The platform of Wallace's Progressive Party, adopted in late July, sounded as if it had been drafted by the editors of PM. It called for "immediate de jure recognition of Israel," "admission of Israel to the United Nations," "lifting the discriminatory arms embargo," "economic and diplomatic sanctions" against the Arab states that attacked Israel, "generous [U.S.] financial assistance without political conditions" for the Jewish state, U.S. ships to bring DPs from Europe to Israel, and a halt to U.S. interference in Israel's "sovereign right to control its own immigration policy," a swipe at Truman's ban on Americans of military age going to Israel....

"In press statements and speeches around the country during the final months of the campaign, Wallace raised the Israel issue at every opportunity...

After reviewing the election results in heavily Jewish Assembly Districts, the author concludes that "Overall, it would seem that Wallace received about 24% of the Jewish vote in New York City." To put that in perspective, remember that Wallace got 2.37% of the vote in the nation as a whole.
http://web.archive.org/web/20130413...org/special-reports/JewishVoteTrumanStudy.pdf

The big question of course, as Medoff acknowledges, is how many of Wallace's Jewish voters were leftists who would have voted for him anyway, and how many were motivated by his position on Israel:

"A crucial question, which is impossible to answer definitively, is how many of Wallace’s 509,559 votes in New York state came from Jewish partisans of the far left who would have voted for him regardless of the Israel issue; versus how many Jewish voters for Wallace were ordinary Democrats who abandoned Truman because of Israel. One might point out, for example, that when the American Labor Party endorsed the Democratic candidate for governor of New York in 1946, he received 428,903 votes on the ALP line. By that calculation, Wallace received only 80,656 more votes in New York than the ALP would ordinarily receive--so one might argue that the Israel issue brought Wallace only 80,656 more votes (still enough to take New York away from Truman, but not by much). On the other hand, one could counter that argument by pointing out that the ALP-nominated candidates for statewide office in New York in 1950, won only about 200,000 votes--which would mean that Wallace attracted an extra 300,000 votes in New York above the ALP base, and many of those could have been because of Israel..." (IMO 1946 is the better comparison--by 1950 the far left had been crippled by the outbreak of the Korean War. But even using 1946 as the standard of comparison, Wallace got enough votes above the previous ALP total to justify the belief that Israel was crucial to a substantial number of his New York voters.)
 

raharris1973

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I don't know how much of a more pro-Israel program by Truman would have required congressional consent. The arms embargo on the Middle East had been instituted by the executive branch and could have been ended by it. As for a loan to Israel, Truman stated in October, "With reference to the granting of a loan or loans to the State of Israel, I have directed the departments and agencies of the executive branch of our Government to work together in expediting the consideration of any applications for loans which may be submitted by the State of Israel." http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=13065 In 1949, such an aid deal (involving $135 million in loans from the Export-Import Bank and the sale of surplus commodities to Israel) was in fact arrived at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-and-overview-of-u-s-foreign-aid-to-israel (and de jure recognition was extended).

Even voting for partition and extending de facto recognition was of course disturbing to much of the American diplomatic and military establishment, including Marshall, concerned as they were with US interests in the Arab world (above all, oil). Ending the arms embargo and extending de jure recognition in 1948 would definitely have led to major resignations. OTOH, if one can ignore this negative effect, it might have enabled Truman to carry New York state in November. This is not primarily because of Dewey (who as usual tried to steer clear of controversial issues, since he thought he was sure to win...) but because of Wallace. In 1948, the pro-Soviet left in the US was very pro-Israel, and Wallace unlike Dewey had every incentive to charge Truman with betraying Israel--and repeatedly did so charge. There's a very interesting article on this: Did the Jewish Vote Cost Truman New York? A New Look at the 1948 Presidential Race by Rafael Medoff. http://web.archive.org/web/20130413...org/special-reports/JewishVoteTrumanStudy.pdf

"Much of the Wallace campaign’s criticism of Truman's Israel policy focused on the arms embargo that the administration imposed on the Middle East beginning the previous December. The embargo primarily affected the Jews, since the Arab states were receiving weapons from other countries. It was implemented so zealously that the U.S. rejected even a request for armored plates to shield Jewish civilian buses from Arab attackers. In a heartfelt appeal to Truman to drop the embargo, Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann wrote: “The choice of our people, Mr. President, is between Statehood and extermination.” Truman refused to budge. A face to face plea by Golda Meir to Eleanor Roosevelt to press Truman on the embargo likewise yielded no results...

The New York popular press hammered away on Truman's alleged softness on Israel--especially PM (renamed the New York Star in the summer of 1948):

"Other aspects of Truman's Israel policy troubled the newspaper's editors as well. The president's de facto recognition of Israel "is simply acknowledgement" that Israel exists, a June 24 editorial pointed out; only de jure recognition would assert that Israel "is legitimatw and rests upon a firm legal basis."...

"Just six weeks before the presidential election, the Truman administration’s Israel policy ignited a serious new clash with American Jewish voters. On September 21, Secretary of State George Marshall announced at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, in Paris, that the U.S. endorsed a plan by U.N. Mideast peace envoy Count Folke Bernadotte which included severing the entire Negev Desert from Israel. Member sof the U.S. delegation in Paris were quoted as saying that “strong pressure will be brought to bear on Israel to accept the Bernadotte plan.”

"The Israeli government charged Bernadotte’s proposal not only would “cut off about two-thirds of Israel’s territory,” but also “cripple...and stunt Israel’s progress and growth for generations to come.” The New York Post called the Bernadotte plan “anti-Israel,” and the Star published the entire text of Israel’s 2,000-word critique of the plan, as well as a string of editorials blasting it and news articles accusing the State Department of secretly co-authoring Bernadotte’s proposal...

"As he had done during the controversy over the trusteeship proposal, Truman tried to put distance between himself and the Bernadotte plan, claiming to be “thunderstruck” by Marshall’s Paris announcement and denying he had approved it...

"Confidence in the administration’s policy eroded so badly among Jewish voters, and some others, that two weeks before Election Day, the Star’s editors felt compelled to deny rumors that the Star was going to withdraw its endorsement of Truman, while acknowledging that "We dislike a number of things Mr. Truman has done," such as "his slow footedness in Palestine." One wonders how many readers were persuaded to vote for Truman on the basis of the Star's argument that "Under Mr. Dewey, too, we can be assured of an oil stench to our policy in Palestine--but it would be stronger."...

"The platform of Wallace's Progressive Party, adopted in late July, sounded as if it had been drafted by the editors of PM. It called for "immediate de jure recognition of Israel," "admission of Israel to the United Nations," "lifting the discriminatory arms embargo," "economic and diplomatic sanctions" against the Arab states that attacked Israel, "generous [U.S.] financial assistance without political conditions" for the Jewish state, U.S. ships to bring DPs from Europe to Israel, and a halt to U.S. interference in Israel's "sovereign right to control its own immigration policy," a swipe at Truman's ban on Americans of military age going to Israel....

"In press statements and speeches around the country during the final months of the campaign, Wallace raised the Israel issue at every opportunity...

After reviewing the election results in heavily Jewish Assembly Districts, the author concludes that "Overall, it would seem that Wallace received about 24% of the Jewish vote in New York City." To put that in perspective, remember that Wallace got 2.37% of the vote in the nation as a whole.
http://web.archive.org/web/20130413...org/special-reports/JewishVoteTrumanStudy.pdf

The big question of course, as Medoff acknowledges, is how many of Wallace's Jewish voters were leftists who would have voted for him anyway, and how many were motivated by his position on Israel:

"A crucial question, which is impossible to answer definitively, is how many of Wallace’s 509,559 votes in New York state came from Jewish partisans of the far left who would have voted for him regardless of the Israel issue; versus how many Jewish voters for Wallace were ordinary Democrats who abandoned Truman because of Israel. One might point out, for example, that when the American Labor Party endorsed the Democratic candidate for governor of New York in 1946, he received 428,903 votes on the ALP line. By that calculation, Wallace received only 80,656 more votes in New York than the ALP would ordinarily receive--so one might argue that the Israel issue brought Wallace only 80,656 more votes (still enough to take New York away from Truman, but not by much). On the other hand, one could counter that argument by pointing out that the ALP-nominated candidates for statewide office in New York in 1950, won only about 200,000 votes--which would mean that Wallace attracted an extra 300,000 votes in New York above the ALP base, and many of those could have been because of Israel..." (IMO 1946 is the better comparison--by 1950 the far left had been crippled by the outbreak of the Korean War. But even using 1946 as the standard of comparison, Wallace got enough votes above the previous ALP total to justify the belief that Israel was crucial to a substantial number of his New York voters.)

Very interesting as always.

I read somewhere that Marshall backed off his threat to resign or publicly disagree with Truman's diplomatic support for Israel as things came to a head. And it is not like opponents of a pro-Israel policy could trust that Dewey would be more amenable to their preferences than Truman - all of Dewey's public statements on Palestine were pro-Zionist.
 
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