Chapter Ten
PRO-ISRAEL PRESSURE ON GENERAL ASSEMBLY
MEMBERS
When it was clear that, despite U.S. support,[220] the partition recommendation did not have the
two-thirds support of the UN General Assembly required to pass, Zionists pushed through a delay in
the vote. They then used this period to pressure numerous nations into voting for the recommendation.
A number of people later described this campaign.
Robert Nathan, a Zionist who had worked for the U.S. government and who was particularly
active in the Jewish Agency, wrote afterward, “We used any tools at hand,” such as telling certain
delegations that the Zionists would use their influence to block economic aid to any countries that did
not vote for partition.[221]
Another Zionist proudly stated:
“Every clue was meticulously checked and pursued. Not the smallest or the remotest of nations,
but was contacted and wooed. Nothing was left to chance.”
Financier and longtime presidential advisor Bernard Baruch told France it would lose U.S. aid if
it voted against partition. Top White House presidential aide David Niles organized pressure on
Liberia through rubber magnate Harvey Firestone, who told the Liberian president that if Liberia did
not vote in favor of partition, Firestone would revoke his planned expansion in the country. Liberia
voted yes.[222]
Latin American delegates were told that the Pan-American highway construction project would be
more likely if they voted yes. Delegates’ wives received mink coats (the wife of the Cuban delegate
returned hers); Costa Rica’s President Jose Figueres reportedly received a blank checkbook. Haiti
was promised economic aid if it would change its original vote opposing partition.
Longtime Zionist Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, along with ten senators and Truman
domestic advisor Clark Clifford, threatened the Philippines (seven bills on the Philippines were
pending in Congress).
Before the vote on the plan, the Philippine delegate had given a passionate speech against
partition, defending the inviolable “primordial rights of a people to determine their political future
and to preserve the territorial integrity of their native land...”[223]
The delegate went on to say that he could not believe that the General Assembly would sanction a
move that would place the world “back on the road to the dangerous principles of racial
exclusiveness and to the archaic documents of theocratic governments.”
Twenty-four hours later, after intense Zionist pressure, the Philippine delegate voted in favor of
partition.[224]
On Nov 29, 1947, UN General Assembly Resolution 181, the resolution creating partition, passed.
While this resolution is frequently cited, it was of limited (if any) legal impact. General Assembly
resolutions, unlike Security Council resolutions, are not binding on member states. For this reason,
the resolution requested that “[t]he Security Council take the necessary measures as provided for in
the plan for its implementation,”[225] which the Security Council never did. Legally, the General
Assembly Resolution was a “recommendation” and did not create any states.[226]
What it did do, however, was increase the fighting in Palestine. Within months the Zionists had
forced out over 413,000 people.[227] Zionist military units had stealthily been preparing for war
before the UN vote and had acquired massive weaponry, some of it through a widespread network of
illicit gunrunning operations in the U.S. under a number of front groups. (See below)
On May 15th Zionists announced the creation of their new state. They decided to name it “Israel,”
and chose not to set its boundaries or to write a Constitution (a situation that continues through today).
Five Arab armies joined the fighting, but, contrary to general perceptions of this war, Zionist/Israeli
forces outnumbered the combined Arab and Palestinian combatants.[228]
The UN eventually managed to create a temporary and very partial ceasefire, during which Israel
obtained even more armaments. A Swedish UN mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, who had
previously rescued thousands of Jews from the Nazis,[229] was dispatched to negotiate an end to the
violence. Israeli assassins killed him and Israel continued what it was to call its “war of
independence.”[230]
At the end of this war, through ruthless implementation of plans to push out as many non-Jews as
possible, Israel came into existence on 78 percent of Palestine.[231]
But let us take a closer look at the violence that followed the UN recommendation.
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