Chapter Fourteen
PALESTINIAN REFUGEES
By 1949, Israel’s “War of Independence“ and ethnic cleansing[330] had created hundreds of
thousands of Palestinian refugees. The U.S. Representative in Israel sent an urgent report to Truman:
“Arab refugee tragedy is rapidly reaching catastrophic proportions and should be treated as a
disaster...Of approximately 400,000 refugees approaching winter with cold heavy rains will, it is
estimated, kill more than 100,000 old men, women and children who are shelterless and have little or
no food.”[331]
The number of refugees continued to grow, reaching at least three-quarters of a million, and
desperate, starving Palestinians inundated neighboring Arab countries. U.S. diplomats in Cairo and
Amman described a disastrous situation in which the “almost nonexistent resources” of these
countries were stretched nearly to the breaking point.
The State Department reported that during the last nine months of 1948 Arab states had donated
$11 million to refugee aid, stating, “This sum, in light of the very slender budgets of most of these
governments, is relatively enormous.”[332]
During this time, the report noted, “…the total direct relief offered…by the Israeli government to
date consists of 500 cases of oranges.”[333]
Meanwhile, Israel had acquired formerly Palestinian-owned properties worth at least $480
million in 1947 dollars; the equivalent of $5.2 trillion in today’s dollars.[334]
Journalist and academic Anders Strindberg reports:
“In the process of ‘Judaizing’ Palestine, numerous convents, hospices, seminaries, and churches
were either destroyed or cleared of their Christian owners and custodians. In one of the most
spectacular attacks on a Christian target, on May 17, 1948, the Armenian Orthodox Patriarchate was
shelled with about 100 mortar rounds—launched by Zionist forces from the already occupied
monastery of the Benedictine Fathers on Mount Zion. The bombardment also damaged St. Jacob’s
Convent, the Archangel’s Convent, and their appended churches, their two elementary and seminary
schools, as well as their libraries, killing eight people and wounding 120.”[335]
Truman, whose caving in to Zionist pressures had helped create the disaster, now tried to
convince Israel to allow the refugees to return to their homes.[336] His main representative working
on this was Mark Ethridge, former publisher of the Louisville Courier Journal.
Ethridge was disgusted at Israel’s refusal, reporting to the State Department:
“What I can see is an abortion of justice and humanity to which I do not want to be
midwife…”[337]
The State Department finally threatened to withhold $49 million of unallocated funds from an
Export-Import Bank loan to Israel if it did not allow at least 200,000 refugees to return. The U.S.
coordinator on Palestine Refugee Matters, George C. McGhee, delivered the message to the Israeli
ambassador and later described his response:
“The ambassador looked me straight in the eye and said, in essence, that I wouldn’t get by with
this move, that he would stop it… Within an hour of my return to my office I received a message from
the White House that the President wished to dissociate himself from any withholding of the Ex-Im
Bank loan.” [338]
Edwin Wright, a State Department Middle East specialist from 1945-66, was the subject of an
oral history interview many years later for the Truman Library. About this interview, he said:
“The material I gave [interviewer] Professor McKinzie was of a very controversial nature--one
almost taboo in U.S. circles, inasmuch as I accused the Zionists of using political pressures and even
deceit in order to get the U.S. involved in a policy of supporting a Zionist theocratic, ethnically
exclusive and ambitious Jewish State. I, and my associates in the State Department, felt this was
contrary to U.S. interests and we were overruled by President Truman.”[339]
Chapter Fifteen
ZIONIST INFLUENCE IN THE MEDIA
As historian Richard Stevens notes, Zionists early on learned to exploit the essential nature of the
American political system: that policies can be made and un-made through force of public opinion
and pressure. Procuring influence in the media, both paid and unpaid, has been a key component of
their success.[340]
From early on, the Zionist narrative largely dominated news coverage of the region. A study of
four leading newspapers’ 1917 coverage showed that editorial opinion almost universally favored
the Zionist position.[341] Author Kathleen Christison notes that “editorials and news stories alike
applauded Jewish enterprise, heralding a Jewish return to Palestine as ‘glorious news.’” Other
studies showed the same situation for the 1920s. Christison writes:
“The relatively heavy press coverage is an indicator of the extent of Zionist influence even in this
early period. One scholar has estimated that, as of the mid-1920s, approximately half of all New York
Times articles were placed by press agents, suggesting that U.S. Zionist organizations may have
placed many of the articles on Zionism’s Palestine endeavors.”[342]
At one point when the State Department was trying to convince Israel to allow Palestinian
refugees to return, Secretary of State George Marshall wrote:
“The leaders of Israel would make a grave miscalculation if they thought callous treatment of this
tragic issue could pass unnoted by world opinion.”[343]
Marshall underestimated the ability of Zionists to minimize the information on Palestinian refugees
reaching Americans. A State Department study in March 1949 found the American public was
“unaware of the Palestine refugee problem, since it has not been hammered away at by the press or
radio.”[344]
As author Alfred Lilienthal explained in 1953:
“The capture of the American press by Jewish nationalism was, in fact, incredibly complete.
Magazines as well as newspapers, in news stories as well as editorial columns, gave primarily the
Zionist views of events before, during, and after partition.”[345]
When the Saturday Evening Post published an article by Milton Mayer that criticized Jewish
nationalism (and carried two other articles giving opposing views), Zionists organized what was
probably the worst attack on the Post in its long history.
Zionists inundated the magazine with vitriolic mail, cancelled their subscriptions, and withdrew
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