Four American Heroes Who Fought Against US Recognition of Israel in 1948
Four American Heroes Who Fought Against US Recognition of Israel in 1940
The Jews were already very powerful in the US in 1948. Many of them managed to rise very high in the federal bureaucracy in the New Deal and the judiciary during the war. People might be surprised though, that recognition of the State of Israel was not a foregone conclusion when Zionist terrorists founded the Israeli government during the time Harry S. Truman was president of the US. In fact, many prominent Americans opposed it.
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When Truman was considering the issue of Israeli recognition, those against this move were mostly concentrated in the State Department. Many connected to State made their opposition loud and clear, including Dean Acheson who was a White House advisor to Truman at the time and who would later attain the office of Secretary of State himself.
The then serving Secretary of State, George Marshall was an extraordinary man.who served as Chief of Staff of the US Army (the highest uniformed Army rank back then) during World War Two. He was something of an organizational genius. In 1941 the Army was composed of 1.4 million indifferently armed men, by February 1945 it was composed of 8.3 million well-equipped and organized troops. He served two years as Secretary of State 1947-1949 and was brought back to the State Department for 1951-1952 for part of the Korean War. Marshall strongly opposed Israeli recognition.
Joining Marshall in opposition was James Forrestal, Secretary of Defense. Forrestal, a businessman by trade, had switched to government service in 1940 to become Undersecretary of the Navy. He did such a good job as Undersecretary that he was made Secretary of the Navy (then a cabinet post) and served in that position from 1944 to 1947. He then became the first Secretary of Defense and served in that position from 1947 to 1949, when he committed suicide. There are many people to this day who believe that Forrestal was murdered, but that’s another story.
Another of these men to oppose Israel was the State Department’s great “idea man” George F. Kennan, who was Director of Policy and Planning for State. Kennan was the man who basically wrote America’s Cold War plan, known as “Containment” which stood in opposition to the rival idea of “Rollback”. Kennan was rather brilliant and was prophetic in being an early opponent of getting involved in the Vietnam War. Just before his death in 2005 at age 101 he predicted that the Eastern expansion of NATO was a potential disaster, and sure enough, Russians and Ukrainians are slaughtering each other as I type these words.
Lon Henderson was in 1946-48 head of the Near-Eastern bureau of the State Department. He was a long-serving foreign service officer, going back to 1922. After his time at the Near-Eastern Bureau, he would later serve as US Ambassador to India as well as the Iranian ambassadorship. Because he was somewhat less prestigious than Marshall, Kennan and Forrestal, he was subject to a lot of pressure from jews that he knew in the political and foreign policy worlds. There is some evidence that Henderson was threatened. In an oral history recording he gave for the historical arm of the Truman Presidential Library in the early eighties, Henderson told the interviewer the following:
During the years 1945-1948, various of my Jewish friends had tried to warn me that I was making powerful enemies who could make life miserable for me. I can recall that a Jewish member of Congress with whom I had friendly relations, had given me a fair warning. He had said, ‘Loy, I want to tell you that you will be in deep trouble if you continue to adhere to what is believed to be your present attitude with regard to the establishment of the Jewish State. Can’t you at least modify your stand and just let affairs take their natural course? If you continue to advise our Government against supporting the setting up of a Jewish State, your career can be ruined, and I don’t know what else might happen to you.
This is stark evidence of the extent of Zionist Jewish power in the US as early as 1948. Anyone who thinks Zionist influence in the halls of power is a relatively new phenomenon, ought to think again.
The main arguments against recognition of Israel were several. First of all, the opponents argued that it was a general threat to political stability in the Middle-East. It was also felt that recognition would push Arab states to become friendly with the Soviet Union. General Marshall had a more nuanced argument. He thought the new State would end up being attacked from several directions and would not have the capacity to defend itself and that the US would not have the resources or ability to intervene.
Those who opposed Israeli recognition were often derided as “Arabists”. However, in nearly every respect, history has proven them right. The Middle-East is today very much an area of instability and conflict. Americans were to learn a hard lesson in 1973 during the Arab Oil Embargo at the time of the Yom Kippur War. I remember as a young teenaged boy, cars lined up at American gas stations by the dozens and you could only buy fuel on alternate days. The negative economic effects were disastrous. The US suffered from stagflation, a combination of high inflation and high unemployment, at the same time. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) plummeted. Israeli recognition resulted in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya, South Yemen and Algeria becoming Soviet client states. The “Wise Men” of the State Department nailed it right away.
The forces pushing for recognition were led by attorney Clark Clifford, the ultimate Democrat political insider. Clifford’s first prominent role in the corridors of power was as an aide to then Vice-President Harry S. Truman beginning in 1945. Clifford would come to be involved in informal and formal advisory roles, not just in the Truman Administration, but would go on to serve three more presidents, Kennedy, Johnson and Carter. He reached his peak of power when he was later to do a year as Johnson’s Secretary of Defense. In the early 90’s Clifford got mixed up with what was known as the BCCI banking scandal. The insider was serving as head of First American Bankshares, which was secretly owned by the Bank of Commerce and Credit International. BCCI was doing some very shady criminal activities involving money laundering, bribery, arms trafficking, tax evasion and other things. The bank was found to have a cool 10 billion in unaccounted funds. Clifford barely escaped prosecution only because his lawyers were able to convince a judge to drop the charges on the basis of his poor health. This did not shield him from civil suits and he lost huge in civil suits and had to lay out more than five million of his personal funds. He died shortly after the scandal.
A lot of Evangelicals like to say that Truman was very much for recognition of Israel because he was a Baptist. Of course, many Baptists these days follow Dispensational Theology which is very pro-Israel. Dispensationalism did exist in the US in 1948, however, it wasn’t as prominent among Baptists as it was in 1970 and after, where it took off and became very fashionable in those circles. The consensus of scholars these days is that there is little evidence that Truman advocated for Israeli recognition on the basis of his religious beliefs.
In the end, the pro-Israeli forces emerged victorious. A regrettable outcome that has cost this country much in blood, treasure and prestige. Here in 2026, with the rise of independent online media, minds are being changed. Hopefully, in a few years this will result in real political progress. The polls show a clear majority of Democrats opposed the Zionist project. Republicans still show majority support, but advocacy for Israel in the Republican Party is moving downward, especially among youth.
The four great men who fought against Israeli recognition have every reason to be lauded and remembered today. The American love affair with the Israeli state has been a disaster for American interests. Trump’s reflexive reaction to Netanyahu’s “brilliant” idea has put the US into an untenable strategic position and incurred a national humiliation that will have negative effects for many decades in the future. Marshall, Forrestal, Kennan and Henderson should be remembered as heroes because they put American interests first.
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