Truman Was Warned: Recognizing Israel Would Be a Disaster for America

In May 1948, President Truman recognized the State of Israel eleven minutes after it was declared. His Secretary of State, his Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs had all warned him against it. This video uses the State Department’s own records to trace the origins of “Israel First” policy in Washington, and the costs Truman’s advisers warned of. Support this channel's independent research on Patreon: https://patreon.com/history_culture_projects Sources Primary sources Great Britain. Palestine: Statement of Policy. Cmd. 6019. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, May 1939. Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 31 January 1947, vol. 432. Truman, Harry S. “Statement by the President Announcing Recognition of the State of Israel.” May 14, 1948. Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, Independence, MO. Truman, Harry S. Memoirs, Vol. 2: Years of Trial and Hope. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956. United Nations General Assembly. Resolution 181 (II), “Future Government of Palestine.” November 29, 1947. U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, Vol. V: The Near East and Africa. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1971. U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, Vol. V, Part 2: The Near East, South Asia, and Africa. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1976. See especially “Memorandum of Conversation, by the Secretary of State,” May 12, 1948, and “Memorandum of Conversations, by the Under Secretary of State (Lovett),” May 17, 1948. Secondary sources Clifford, Clark, with Richard Holbrooke. Counsel to the President: A Memoir. New York: Random House, 1991. Cohen, Michael J. Truman and Israel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Gilbert, Martin. Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship. New York: Henry Holt, 2007. Hoffman, Bruce. Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917–1947. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015. Hughes, Matthew. Britain’s Pacification of Palestine: The British Army, the Colonial State, and the Arab Revolt, 1936–1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Judis, John B. Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. Khalidi, Walid. “Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine.” Journal of Palestine Studies 18, no. 1 (1988): 4–33. Khalidi, Walid, ed. All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992. Morris, Benny. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pappé, Ilan. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oxford: Oneworld, 2006. Radosh, Allis, and Ronald Radosh. A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. Segev, Tom. One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000. Sharp, Jeremy M. U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel. CRS Report RL33222. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, updated periodically. Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Costs of War Project. Providence, RI: Brown University.