Israel's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945–1949 by Jeffrey Herf

Abstract

This new book by Jeffrey C. Herf, a prolific historian of modern European politics and societies at the University of Maryland, examines an early and important post-1945 geopolitical question facing governments: whether to favor or oppose the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state on the eastern rim of the Mediterranean Sea. This issue deeply divided Western governments, Western publics, and international bodies, whereas Soviet-bloc governments were unified on the matter. From May 1947 to May 1949, to the surprise of many, the United States and the Soviet Union cooperated for one remarkable moment in facilitating the launch of the nascent state of Israel onto the regional and world scene. This is the story Herf heavily documents and tells in Israel’s Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945–1949. He magnifies the centrality of European affairs in the first half of the twentieth century and highlights what occurred when international rivals collaborated on a complicated and controversial issue amid a deepening Cold War. Even though the United States and the Soviet Union converged to recognize the independence of the Zionist entity, a motley group of governments, political parties, and private and non-profit entities strongly opposed bringing Israel into legal existence. The latter included Great Britain’s Labour government and a political hierarchy clinging to empire in its Palestinian Mandate and beyond, including defending its access through the strategic Suez Canal. The sweep of Arab leaders included authoritarian strongmen and quasi-governments such as Arab League members and the Arab Higher Committee in Palestine led by Haj Amin al-Husayni, the grand mufti of Jerusalem who had been a leading Nazi collaborator. Opposition inside the United State included the Truman administration’s top diplomatic, military, and intelligence brass, plus corporate energy and industrial board heads who were invested in cultivating the Arab Middle East and its petroleum—with or without President Harry S. Truman. Herf makes clear his admiration of the extraordinary efforts of post-Holocaust Jews in Palestine, a patchwork of groups under the aegis of Prime Minister David Ben Gurion. Herf consistently praises Ben Gurion, who understood there was only a brief window of opportunity for a U.S.-Soviet agreement to support partitioning