Before America's entry into the 2nd World War

In 1941, in America, neutral still, the Zionists stepped up their pressure to get President Roosevelt's administration committed to supporting Zionism right or wrong in an expanded set of demands for what it wanted in Palestine.

Dating back to 1922 there had been competition between Democrats and Republicans to see who could promise the Zionists most in return for votes and election campaign funds.

Shortly after America entered the war, Roosevelt agreed in principle with Churchill that they needed to say something that would lower the rising temperature of Arab anger. After lengthy consultations in London and Washington, the text of a joint Anglo American statement was prepared for release to the public. It assured both Arabs and Jews that solutions to the Palestine problem were being delayed until after the war and no decisions about the future would be released without prior consultation with both.

Roosevelt, for reasons of domestic politics, acquiesced in the suppression of the joint Anglo-American statement.

In 1942 the first conference of the American Zionist movement took place in New York. The conference approved the following programme:

"1. That the gates of Palestine be opened to Jewish immigration."

2. That the Jewish Agency would be vested with control of immigration into Palestine and with the necessary authority for up-building the country, including the developement of its unoccupied and uncultivated land.

3. That Palestine, all of it, be established as a Jewish Commonwealth integrated into the structure of a new democratic world."

In December 1942 American Zionists fired what was effectively the first shot in the campaign to have Roosevelt to do their bidding. It took the form of a joint statement signed by 63 senators and 181 members of the House of Representatives. It called on the President to restore the Jewish homeland.

Instead of doing that President Roosevelt sent a special emissary for talks with Ibn Saud . The State Department's special emissary was Colonel Harold B. Hoskins.

President Roosevelt's input into the Hoskins' mission was to suggest that Ibn Saud be asked to consider that he should meet Weizmann . Ibn Saud rejected the idea of a meeting. He told Hoskins that during the first year of the war Weizmann had impugned his character and motives by attempting to bribe him with an offer of twenty million pounds sterling. Ibn Saud had been told, he advised Hoskins, that Weizmann's promised payment had been guaranteed by President Roosevelt himself. Roosevelt was furious at such a suggestion. But was he telling the truth?

At this point America's Zionist leaders were not too dismayed by Roosevelt's refusal to commit himself to their cause.

1944 was election year and Zionism's leaders knew that during the election campaign many candidates running for office including their party leaders would be at their most vulnerable. At the time offical statistics showed that America's Jews were about 3 per cent of the population and were contributing nearly fifty per cent to the campaign funds.

To create a pressure point in the 1944 campaign the Zionist lobby arranged for the Wright Compton resolution to be introduced to Congress, it called for unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish Commonwealth there.

The State Department was so alarmed that it sought and obtained President Roosevelt's approval to issue the suppressed Anglo American statement, but, before it could be used, Roosevelt was obliged to receive two of America's most powerful Jewish leaders, Rabbi Stephen Wise and Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver .

The two Rabbis emerged from their meeting with Roosevelt to proclaim to the waiting media and through it to the world that the President confirmed his support for Zionism. In other words President Roosevelt was for a Jewish state.

New York's Governor Dewey, running against Roosevelt, and pressed by Rabbi Silver subsequently made it clear that the Commonwealth was to be Jewish one. Thus in complete ignorance of what the Palestine problem was all about the people of America were offered a choice between Pro Zionism and Pro Zionism.

The previous year the National Executive of the British Labour Party, then in Zionism's pocket and about to take power after Churchill, had called for the Arabs to be transferred out of Palestine.

At the Yalta Conference Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt had settled their differences about setting up the UN , whose charter came into force on the 24th October 1945.

Roosevelt knew as did everyone else that a resolution of the problem by the UN, representing the will of the organised international community at the time, would not concur with the Jews - provided that is, that they were permitted to vote freely.

On the return journey home from Yalta President Roosevelt met Ibn Saud and confirmed that no resolutions would be taken without consultation with the Arabs and Jews.

Unfortunately the first thing President Roosevelt did when he got back to Washington after his meeting with Ibn Saud was to authorise Rabbi Wise to say that he, the President, was still in favour of unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine and the creation there of a Jewish state.

On the 10th March President Roosevelt received letters from King Ibn Saud and other Arab leaders, detailing the Arab case.

In his letters of reply to Ibn Saud and the other Arab leaders, President Roosevelt repeated in writing more or less what he had said to the Saudi monarch face-to-face that no decision would be taken to the basic Palestine situation without full consultation with both Arabs and Jews and that he would take no action which might prove hostile to the Arab people.

His letters were dated 5th April 1945. They were not transmitted until the 10th April. Two days later he was dead.

What explains President Roosevelt's double game?

Was it domestic considerations prior to the election, in other words campaign funds and votes? Or something else?