TJS S3E11 1945-55 part III The reorganization of American Zionism

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First comes thought, says Napoleon Hill, then organization of that thought into ideas and plans, then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you observe, is in your imagination. Well, we're far from the beginning of this story, but my imagination's always present. I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and this is The Jewish Story. Episode 11, The Golden Decade Part 3, Reorganizing American Zionism You know, when I was growing up, Zionism and the Holocaust were the main substance of my Jewish education. And that's not to say that all I learned was 6 million people died, so either I'd better marry a Jew or move to Israel, or best, both. But all the content that I did acquire as a public school kid, active in the conservative movement, youth group, after school, Hebrew school, summer camp, etc., was framed by these two realities.

We touched on the role of the Holocaust in forming post-war American Jewish identity last episode. And though, in my opinion, we only scratched the surface, I'm going to put it aside right now in order to address the other piece, Zionism. because it was by no means obvious that Zionism would achieve the centrality that it eventually did amongst American Jews. I mean, just go back to the first two episodes of this season and you can trace a bit of its early evolution. And you'll have to wait until we talk about 1967 to see how it truly won the war, so to speak. But for now, I want to focus on the fact that despite its great victory in 1948, or even perhaps because of it, Zionism was on the ropes in the immediate wake of Israeli independence.

And it had little to do with the practical problems of infiltration, mass immigration, economic embargoes that we've discussed, because those are issues of state, which of course the Zionist movement was involved in. But the problem the movement faced as a movement was actually success. Achieving a Jewish homeland within the Palestine mandate had been their purpose ever since the first Zionist Congress, led by Herzl himself, adopted the Basel program in 1897. And now they'd actually done it. And I know that our topic today is the reorganization of American Zionism, but in order to understand that process, I think we need to begin with the 23rd Zionist Congress, which was held in Jerusalem in 1951.

It was actually the first meeting of the World Organization post-independence. In fact, the first meeting for five years. And in the intervening years, Jewish life had undergone a revolution. In truth, several of them. And most critically for our story was the revolution of the birth of a state that came together with the destruction of European Jewry. Because the center of gravity of world Jewry had shifted. It shifted from Europe to the New World. And it did so just as that independent Jewish state was born. Which meant that a central issue of this conference would be how to manage Israel-Diaspora relations without the buffer of the old core of European Zionist loyalists. Because those loyalists shared the Israeli Zionist assumption that exile was an unnatural state, which must be erased in order that the Jews achieve a new normal, or even be redeemed.

It was a feeling not exactly shared in the New World. So the convention was held in Binyane HaUma, where I hope you've been, at the time the brand new National Convention Center. And as befits the economic chaos of the early 50s, the delegates had to weave their way through the scaffolding, which still covered the building under construction. Apparently, they did cease building for all important discussions. And there were three primary issues on this meeting of the World Zionist Congress. First was the clarification of the status of the World Zionist Organization now that the Israeli government actually existed. This is actually a complex and messy question, which has a long history, in particular in relation to the organized American Jewry, but I don't want to focus on it today.

It's kind of in the details. Suffice to say that the Zionists, World Zionist Organization, felt that they should now be recognized by the State of Israel as the sole representatives of world Jewry, including, of course, where the bulk of world Jewry was in America. And obviously, the non-Zionists, who were by far the majority in the U.S., were not interested in ceding control of Israel relations or the massive fundraising mechanisms that went along with it to a minority of Zionist loyalists. So maybe we'll get to that later, maybe not. But that's one issue you should just know was roiling the ranks of American institutional Jewry. The next issue on the agenda was an urgent appeal for Halutsiut, for a pioneer spirit.

In fact, the renewal of and recommitment to that pioneering spirit that had transformed the Jewish presence in the land from a handful of poor farmers to a thriving state in 30, 40 years. Now, this was an appeal that went out both to Israeli and world Jewry. But while Israeli Jews were urged to carry on the ethics of collectivism and self-sacrifice that had taken them this far, diaspora Jews heard a call to come home. And this call for Aliyah might sound strange, considering that, as we spoke about in 1951, the state seemed to be in danger of foundering under the weight of mass emigration. But as Eliyahu Dabkin, the Jewish agency executive member in charge of immigration, pointed out in the meeting, most of the immigrants from the Muslim countries would arrive within the next three years.

And then, where would the next wave come from? It wasn't only a quantitative issue. How are we going to keep our population edge over the Arab world? He saw it as a qualitative problem as well. American Jews in particular had the professional, educational, and cultural resources that he saw as critical to Israel's ability to continue a high pace of economic development. and he declared that nothing less than 5,000 American Jews a year would suffice. But even as he said it, he knew that his appeal would fall on deaf ears. As he said, even American Zionists were, quote, trembling in fear lest their children be infected by Aliyah. Sound familiar to anyone out there? Now, Dobkin's words about Aliyah caused quite a stir in the American and British delegations.

And we'll explore the truth of the matter shortly when we shift focus to the American perspective. But, in reality, this call for Aliyah, and even the call for Chalutziyut, for the renewing of the pioneering spirit, was really a subsidiary of the third and most profound question that the Congress had to address. And that's one which caused outright chaos. Because in addition to renegotiating the status of the World Zionist Organization in light of Israeli independence, and calling for a renewal of the pioneering spirit, The 23rd Zionist Congress was tasked with redefining the purpose of Zionism itself. Now, you may recall that the definition of Zionism offered by the Basel program from 1897 had been simple and direct, and at this point almost completely achieved.

Quote, Zionism seeks to secure for the Jewish people a publicly recognized, legally assured homeland in Palestine. And the 23rd Congress was now looking for a similar statement, one that could guide the movement to its next achievement, because they weren't ready to pack their bags, declare victory, and go home. And the initial proposal for what they were calling the Jerusalem program, to replace the Basel program, was, quote, the redemption of the Jewish people through the ingathering of exiles. I've got to tell you, it strikes a chord with me, that at this point Zionism saw its purpose as redemption. But when the proposal went to committee, and the discussions really began, it appeared that redemption was far from agreed upon as an aim, especially not if it depended on the ingathering of the exiles.

Because at heart, the Jews of Israel and those of America and Great Britain shared a very different definition of exile. Rose Halperin, president of Hadassah Women, which was a large and extremely powerful American Zionist organization, declared to the whole plenary, we do not accept the concept that we are in exile. Jews are in exile where they live in fear or in torture, or they cannot leave their countries and immigrate freely to Israel. Jews in the United States are part of the diaspora where we live in freedom. Now, despite her words, Israeli and the remaining few European Zionists warn the Americans darkly of the lessons of Jewish history, then as now, promising that they were deluding themselves if they thought that America was truly different.

That's a discussion we'll have to have, but what they warned was that the German Jews had thought the same thing. But American labor Zionist ideologue, Chaim Greenberg, spat right back at them that if America ever became a fascist country bent on exterminating the Jews, then Israel would prove no safe haven either. Quote, If that was the prognosis of a universal Sodom and Gemara, what then would be the chances of Israel in such a vortex sweeping all mankind into the abyss of wickedness and evil? Kind of brings a chill when you read the news, doesn't it? So this controversy over a redefinition of Zionism raged for six days in the Congress' Commission on Fundamental Problems. Moderate Israelis sided with the British and Americans, while an unlikely union of the right-wing Cherut delegates joined the Mpam communists to hold out for a Maximus' redemptive vision.

In the end, it was actually Dr. Nahum Goldman, head of the Jewish Agency executive and unofficial leader of American Zionism, who proposed a compromise. In his eyes, three years after the establishment of the Jewish state was too soon to formulate the ultimate aims of the movement. He himself, he said, was for the redemption of the Jewish people. That's the true aim of Zionism. But now was the time to show statesmanship by avoiding a definition of aims and concentrating instead on tasks. And the result was the statement called Tasks of Zionism, which declared, quote, the task of Zionism is the strengthening of the state of Israel, the ingathering of the exiles in Eretz Israel, and the fostering of the unity of the Jewish people.

The attacks were immediate and harsh. People threw charges of cowardice and treachery at each other. People still objected to the idea that the ingathering of the exiles was at all relevant, even though it had been uncoupled from the purpose of Zionism. But perhaps most telling the criticism came from Eliezer Perry the MAPAM spokesman who said that indeed his party would vote for the majority proposal if their own amendment was defeated in order to advance the Zionist cause and maintain unity. But he warned, the failure to state the aim of Zionism as the redemption of the Jewish people was a, quote, reduction of the image of Zionism. Just as the Basel program was revolutionary, so must an equally revolutionary program emerge from the Jerusalem Congress.

But in the end, it did not. The Jerusalem program that did emerge from the 23rd Congress was pragmatic rather than visionary. It called the world Jewry, as you heard, and chiefly amongst Americans, to lend a hand in building the state, in gathering the exiles, but it sought to maintain Jewish unity by leaving the difficult question of purpose for another day. If we're going to speak about the reorganization of American Zionism, then we have to touch on the distinction between Zionists, non-Zionists, and anti-Zionists. Now, at this point in the golden decade, Zionists in America are what they've always been, members of the political and cultural movement founded by Herzl, whose arc we've been tracing, frankly, since midway through season two.

Go back and look it up. Except that as we just saw with the 23rd Congress, it's not entirely true that this arc continues on its way. The struggle between vision and action that consumed the 23rd Congress is taking place independently within American Zionism as well. And despite the compromise reached in Jerusalem, which removed the link between the redemption of the Jewish people and the ingathering of the exiles, in fact, it took redemption off the plate, and therefore took the immediate pressure off of anyone who wanted to remain a Zionist from getting on a plane right away and going to Israel, nevertheless, American Zionists will still have to answer the question of where do I belong? Can I rightly call myself a Zionist if the movement has achieved a state, whether as Engel or not, and I still live in Cleveland?

And if I choose not to participate in the in-gathering, how, as a Zionist, do I fulfill the other two elements of the Congress' task declaration to strengthen the state of Israel and foster the unity of the Jewish people? We're going to wait to the end of the episode to take a look at one critical path, definitive even, that the American Zionist movement took in order to fulfill those tasks. So for now, let's just hold the question. What does it look like to be a Zionist if I'm not living in Israel in 1950? Okay, so in order to understand the next subset of American Jews, the anti-Zionists, I need to reframe the where do I belong question on a less personal and more philosophical scale. If Israel, after 1948, is now the nation state of the Jews, does that mean that the Jewish nation by definition resides there?

And if so, then is every Jew in America a de facto member of an other nation state? This is the theoretical question that underlies that deep fear of dual loyalty, which haunted the minds of many American Jews even before the state was born and has made a strong comeback in our day. So you add to this sort of fear of dual loyalty and the questions around which nation I belong to now that there's a Jewish nation state, the fact that there were many Jews in America who denied the existence of a Jewish nation altogether. It was a position that was particularly bound up with roots of the reform movement. You may recall that pivotal document of the movement, its 1885 Pittsburgh platform, which, amongst other things, declared, quote, we consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.

And because of such roots, it came as little surprise that when the National Conference of American Rabbis passed a resolution in 1942, the height of World War II, supporting the creation of a Jewish army, and ultimately in the same year expressed approval of the Biltmore platform that called for the foundation of a Jewish state, a group of more than 90 rabbis, led by the prominent San Francisco Reform Rabbi Irving Reichert, split from the conference to a forum, what was called the American Council for Judaism. A-C-J. Yes, I know, another A-C-J-G-C-A-G-C. It's confusing. The American Council for Judaism. It was an organization devoted to combating Jewish nationalism. And to Reichert, personally, it embodies his declaration that Judaism is a religion and a religion only.

His goal was essentially that of the Pittsburgh platform and of the classic reform movement, the integration of Jews into American society as a community of faith, Americans of the Mosaic persuasion. And as the struggle in the land of Israel heated up and European Jewry burned, Reichert actually declared, quote, Zionism was a retreat from the highway of Jewish destiny and achievement in America to the dead-end street of medieval ghettoism. One wonders what the Gentile world makes of all this Zionism. It is notorious that anti-Semites, when other arguments fail, sometimes succeed in prejudicing even friendly Christians against the Jew by quoting this type of nationalistic propaganda to convict us out of our own mouths for being a nationality embedded within a nation.

Too dangerous a parallel between the insistence of Zionist spokesmen upon nationality and race and blood and sinister pronouncement pronouncement by fascist leaders in European dictatorships. We may live to regret it. Now, the question of dual loyalty definitely needs to be considered, as do some of his concerns about Jewish nationalism there, but perhaps not while war is consuming the Jews of Israel and the Holocaust of Jews of Europe. And Reichert and his supporters were labeled the Goy 90s, remember there were 91 of them, by the Zionist movement, cementing the antagonism that existed between these two poles of American Jewry. I say poles, but in reality, Reichert and the anti-Zionists of the ACJ, I can't even say it, were heavily outnumbered by active Zionists, not to mention the non-Zionists in the middle.

And of course, despite their opposition, a Jewish state did indeed come to be in 1948. Even after Israel declared dependence, the American Council for Judaism continued its anti-Zionists, now anti-Israel campaign. is a painful reality that actually led to the resignation of several of its founding members. Now, its position was, post-48, that to American Jews, Israel was not the state or homeland of the Jewish people, but simply a foreign country. And so the ACJ switched its focus from opposing independence to battling what they called the political influence of Zionism upon American Jewry. For almost four years, Reichert fought to hold the ACJ together and prevent what he called the Zionizing of American Jew.

Zionism, he claimed, uses the sight of Israel to subvert our American view of Judaism and herd us into a new ghetto. In a sort of prescient sense, at least viewed from today, he had the idea that the battleground between Zionist and anti-Zionist ideology would be the universities. And in a 1949 speech, he actually drew thinly veiled comparisons between the Hitler Youth and the Zionist programs, which are aimed at college students. declaring Jewish nationalism, quote, a totalitarian movement with its tentacles in all of our personal lives. The Council didn't just fight on the educational front. They also waged war against American Jewish fundraising for Israel and in particular against the merging of Zionist fundraising organizations with local community boards.

Today, when the local communities raise money, some portion of it generally goes to Israel. As the 50s progress, they actually built friend relations with the State Department under John Foster Dulles and even loudly supported efforts by the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to have American lobbyists for Israel legally registered as foreign agents. Now, as dire as this may sound, the ACJ and the anti-Zionism that it represented shrank dramatically after 1948. And the stunning victory of the Six-Day War in 1967, which united American Jewry behind Israel, essentially erased the organization and their worldview. In fact, I wouldn't have bothered to include them at all, except as a footnote in the Jewish story, if their worldview wasn't on track today to replace Zionism as the mainstream posture of American Jewry.

That's an important question of how that happened, but it's a discussion for another time. Because for right now, we touch the Zionists, who we'll come back to. I gave you a picture of the anti-Zionists, and so it's on to the majority of Jews in the golden decade. The non-Zionists. you can differentiate a non-Zionist from an anti-Zionist, kind of in the same way you could differentiate an anti-Semite from a non-Semite. One actually has an antagonism, the other one's agnostic. I'm just not for or against. But nevertheless, there were tensions between the non-Zionist and the Zionist movement, as well as the state of Israel. And those problems really were rooted in the same issues of immigration and identity, which were there from the start.

You know, President Chaim Weizman's speech at the opening of the Constituent Assembly in February of 1949 received worldwide press coverage. If you want to go back to episode 7 of this season, you can get the context. But it may have been only amongst American Jewish non-Zionist leadership that Weizman's speech actually made waves. He was quoted in English as saying that the State of Israel had been earned by all of the hardships, weariness, sorrow, and tribulations that have been our portion during the past 70 years when one-third of our nation was annihilated. And it was that last phrase, one-third of our nation was annihilated, that caused Jacob Blaustein, newly appointed president of the American Jewish Committee, to address a formal complaint to Eliyahu Elat, Israeli ambassador in Washington.

The American Jewish Committee, as I hope you recall, was at this point the oldest, largest, and most powerful of Jewish communal institutions. And as a non umbrella organization it was constantly fighting an internal battle to reconcile the strident fears of the anti in its ranks and the ardent demands of the Zionists among them And Blaustein in his letter reminded the ambassador that both he and his predecessor had spoken directly with Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, President Weizman, even Foreign Minister Moshe Sharet, immediately after independence. And they'd all agreed together on the principle that, quote, the Israeli government speaks only for its citizens and that Jews of other countries are not part citizen of that nation.

and therefore he complained. What President Weissman ought to have said is, one-third of the Jews were annihilated, and not one-third of our nation. Now, this may seem like hair-splitting to you, and a fine degree at that even for the Jews, but it actually goes to the heart of the matter that most concerned American Jewry of all stripes in the golden decade. In the wake of Israel's birth, what exactly was their relationship to the nation-state of the Jews, and therefore, what did it mean for them as Americans? Now, at first, the ambassador took a conciliatory toe. After all, the American Jewish Committee represented the bulk of American Jewry, and even more critically, the vast majority of its wealth and political power.

Ben-Gurion and the Jewish Agency were about to launch their four-point program in hopes of surviving the economic and logistical onslaught of mass immigration. And their goal was to raise $1.5 billion through intergovernmental aid, united Jewish appeal money, private capital, and a government bond issue. Therefore, they could ill afford to alienate the non-Zionists. Nevertheless, the ambassador was the representative of a sovereign country, and one not so well known for its tact or subtlety. So in addition to assuring Blaustein that Israel would never challenge the right of American Jewry to be loyal American citizens, and affirming his government's commitment to speak only for its own citizens, he nonetheless added that Blaustein had to recognize that part of Israel's raison d'etreit's purpose for existence was to help Jews in distress no matter where they lived and therefore it didn't see the edges of the nations ending at the Mediterranean and the ambassador added his own quote grave concern over Blaustein's association with the American Council for Judaism which in his eyes was developing a growing cooperation with what he labeled as the most anti-Semitic and anti-Israel elements in America.

He named them as missionary groups that were operating in the Middle East and agents of oil companies. Now, this little spat was only the first of many diplomatic waves to come. In November 1949, Ben-Gurion managed to irk actually all the American Jewry at once. I mean, the anti-Zionists, that was simple. But in a comment aimed likely at Abihilil Silver, his American Zionist nemesis, he warned Zionist donors that they had to adjust to the reality of a new independent state, one where their money would give them no influence over sovereign state decisions. Well, that didn't bother the non-Zionists, but then, to the dismay of Blaustein and his compatriots, Ben-Gurion declared that Israel, quote, promotes the ingathering of the exiles from their dispersion.

This is the red line. As I told you back at the beginning, that even American Zionists didn't see themselves as in exile, in an exile that necessitated their immediate immigration to Israel, and certainly the non-Zionists as well. Suddenly, the anti-Zionists within the American Jewish Committee opened fire on Blaustein, calling on him to finally wake up to the new political reality post-1948 and to see the American Council for Judaism as his allies and not Prime Minister Ben-Gurion. High-level conversations followed with the ambassador, with the prime minister, the foreign minister, Jewish agency, executive representatives, everyone under the sun. But that was all between the official high-level non-Zionist Jewish leadership.

Meanwhile, the American Council for Judaism, in its anti-Zionist zeal, chose a new tactic. Rejecting what they called the ghetto diplomacy of haggling in private conferences about public issues, they began a high-publicity campaign to denounce the evils of Zionism and its threat to American Jewry. One headline from the April 23, 1950 edition of the New York Times will suffice to show you what was going on. It was a quote from Morris Ernst. He was a prominent Jewish-American lawyer and co-founder, by the way, of the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, and, of course, an active member of the American Council for Judaism. The headline reads as follows. Morris warns Jews making ghetto separatism as reactionary as anti-Semitism, lawyer tells Judaism Council.

Yeah, you heard me correctly if you were listening. this might be the first instance of a Jew publicly declaring that Zionism is a reactionary movement to be fought just like anti-Semitism. Now ultimately, this publicity campaign led to a break between the American Jewish community under Blaustein and the Council for Judaism. And as I said, the ACJ was bound to fade from the American scene. Present revival accepted. But in the early 50s, Blaustein's life as a leader and go-between between the non-Zionist Jews and Israel didn't get any easier. Despite his recognition that the non-Zionists were the key to maintaining American political and financial support, Ben-Gurion just seemed unwilling or maybe unable to restrain his ideological ardor when speaking of the state and the in-gathering.

More statements, more conversations, ultimately, Blaustein traveled to Israel on multiple occasions, and Ben-Gurion made his way to America as well. And despite their ideological differences, the two men actually developed a close personal friendship. And that may have been what allowed them to overcome the gaps in their worldview and forge a new model of Israel-Diaspora relations. This was the so-called Blaustein-Ben-Gurion Agreement, and it served, its three points at least, served as the foundation for the relationship between American Jewry and Israel at least until 1967. The formal element of their exchange took place on August 23, 1950. It was during a speech by Ben-Gurion welcoming the American Jewish Committee mission led by President Blaustein, and the speech itself was followed up a year later with an exchange of letters.

It had three points. Regarding the status of American Jewry, Ben-Gurion declared, the Jews of the United States, as a community and as individuals, have only one political attachment, and that is to the United States of America. They owe no political allegiance to Israel, number one. Number two, he further reiterated that the state of Israel represents and speaks only on behalf of its own citizens, and in no way presumes represent or speak in the name of the Jews who are citizens of any other country. These two points define the political boundaries between American Jews and Israeli Jews. They are parts of separate nation states, and whatever unites them, it is not the classical model of nationalism.

And finally, the third point, that oh-so-touchy issue of immigration from America, Ben-Gurion commented, We should like to see American Jews come and take part in our effort. We need their technical knowledge, their unrivaled experience, their spirit of enterprise, their bold vision, their know-how. But the decision as whether they wish to come, permanently or temporarily, rests with the free discretion of each American Jew himself. We need Chalutzim, pioneers, not only from those countries where the Jews are oppressed and in exile, but also the country where the Jews live a life of freedom. But the essence of a halutziot of pioneering spirit is free choice. It will come from among those who believe that their aspirations as human beings and as Jews can best be fulfilled by life and work in Israel.

And so, despite the teeth pulling that it took to get Ben-Gurion to agree, he recognized two things. American Jews were not going to come en masse. And they were not going to come because the definition of exile in America was fundamentally different. For his part, Blaustein responded, Jewish communities, particularly American Jewry in view of its influence and strength, can offer advice, cooperation, and help, but should not attempt to speak in the name of other communities or in any way interfere in their internal affairs. So here we have it. The basis for American Jewish life in the early era of the Jewish state, and it will basically carry through until 1967. Anti-Zionism is on its way out. at least until today.

To the ire of the Zionist movement, non-Zionists have actually taken the lead in the Israel-American relationship. That's due to their money and influence, and, frankly, their status as the vast majority. But it's also due, by the way, to Ben-Gurion's desire to eliminate any Zionist movement which could operate independent of the Israeli leadership. All that's left is to clarify, wither American Zionism in the age of Israel. In early 1950, Prime Minister Ben-Gurion sent a trusted advisor and leading Mapai Party intellectual on a tour of America in order to get a first-hand account of what was happening among American Jewry. And his prognosis for American Zionism was particularly grim. Quote, the condition of American Zionism was a cause for grave concern.

Within a short time, it was likely to disintegrate and degenerate. And you know, once he had the information at his disposal, Ben-Gurion's assessment was even more blunt. He said, Zionism is not undergoing a crisis, it's going bankrupt. Now this was true for many of the reasons that we discussed, but an acute crisis in 1953 offered the opportunity for the complete reorganization and therefore revitalization of the movement in America. Ever since the struggle for independence, and even really before, American Jewish leaders had presented the soon-to-be state of Israel as both a haven for the persecuted, very appealing to the American mind, and as a gutsy democracy surrounded by totalitarian Arab regimes which threatened its destruction.

Also something with which Americans can resonate, and of course, true. Now, this linkage between striving for Israel's survival and the nobility around that cause, while upholding the values of liberal America, and by extension a liberal world order, constituted the basis for what's called the functional consensus that held American Jews together from the middle of World War II through the defeat of Nazism and right up through the establishment of the Jewish state But in the later half of the golden decade that functional consensus hit a major snag in the form of the Kibbeah retaliation raid. Go back to episode 6 in this season if you want the full story. But for now, just recall that this massive act of retaliation was triggered by the murder of an Israeli mother and her two young children in October of 1953.

And the retaliatory raid, launched only two days later by the Israeli army, resulted in the death of 69 Jordanian civilians. Just recall the words of the United Nations team that investigated. Bullet-riddled bodies near the doorways and multiple bullet hits on the doors of the demolished houses indicated that the inhabitants had been forced to remain inside until their homes were blown up over them. Now, the Israeli political response ranged from the shocking to the downright absurd, and it included Ben-Gurion's attempt with an outright lie to claim that the IDF had nothing to do with the attack. And the condemnations reigned in from around the world, not only from Europe and the United States and the United Nations, but even from many Jewish communities shocked by what they saw as an act of barbarism.

For the purposes of understanding the reorganization of American Zionism, the diplomatic response to the Kibir raid created a sudden and urgent need to advocate for the righteousness of Israel's cause within the United States. And that, in turn, actually triggered a reorganization of American Zionist movement itself. Cy Canaan was a progressive newspaper man and a lawyer from Cleveland who had served as a top staffer for the American Jewish Conference during its brief lifetime in 1943 to 1949. Yeah, just when you thought there couldn't be another acronym of AJC, you got one. The conference was a mildly Zionist ad hoc umbrella organization which managed to unite 64 different Jewish groups around the needs of both current war and post-war world Jewry.

And when the conference dissolved, Kenna went on to work as the U.S. communications specialist for the Israel Office of Information until 1951 when he became the Washington delegate for the American Zionist Council. This council was yet another attempt at big tent Zionism. Its aim was to unite as much of American Jewry, Zionist and non-Zionist, behind the tasks of public relations, outreach, and lobbying. During 1951-1952, Cannon kept a close watch on the U.S. political scene. In particular, he watched as Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, a president with unclear views on the Middle East policy, came into office. And more worrying to pro-Israel activists than Eisenhower himself was actually his pick for Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

because Dulles made it clear from the outset that the administration's determination was to steer a neutral course between Israel and its Arab antagonists in the Middle East. And more disturbing even than that statement was a memorandum that was prepared for Dulles by the State Department staff in May of 1953 which lamented the existence of heavy and effective Zionist pressure which has been brought to bear on both the executive and legislative branches of the American government. Now, little did they know that they had not yet begun to feel the Zionist pressure. In general, Dulles' State Department identified three major issues that required resolution in order to settle the overall Israeli-Arab conflict.

Arab demands for border modifications, the allocation of water flowing through the Jordan River watershed, which we've got to talk about at some time, and, of course, the resettlement or repatriation of Palestinian refugees. But, to cite the fact that the State Department began almost immediately to pressure Israel on these issues, and in fact was in the process of cutting, or suspending at least, economic aid to Israel over the particular issue of the water, all of them paled in the face of Kibbe. In late November 1953, as the diplomatic crisis around the raid mounted, Canaan actually wrote, quote, The Kibbe incident has not only undermined the moral position of the Jewish people, It has discredited the premises of our propaganda and has given the color of truth to Arab propaganda efforts to portray Israel as aggressive, unfaithful to the UN, and brutally indifferent to the Arab refugees whom it allegedly expelled.

But he was not one to balk from a fight. And so he immediately added in his notes, it serves no purpose to engage in post-mortem. It is time that we pass from introspective brooding about the past and resume the offensive by restoring perspective on the Near East conflict and fixing responsibility for the continuation of that conflict where it really belongs. Because in Canaan's understanding, the way to win the fight over Kibbea was to place it in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict, a conflict which in his eyes was primarily due to the intransigence of the Arab border states. By late 1953, word began to spread through Washington that Eisenhower suspected the Israeli government was actually funding the American Zionist Committee, for whom Kanan worked, and that the administration might demand them to register as the agent of a foreign power.

And so it became quickly clearer that a new lobbying entity was needed. And thus, the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs was born, or, as you more likely know it, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC. But a new lobbying agency that worked the Hill in Washington wasn't going to be enough to win this fight. In the wake of the diplomatic fury around Kibya, Nachman Goldman, that chairman of the executive committee of the Jewish Agency and, as I said, informal head of American Jewish Zionism, encountered the head of the Near Eastern desk of the State Department. And this State Department leader, really, complained to Goldman that in the wake of all this Kibya nonsense, he had to meet with, quote, six different delegations of agitated Jewish leaders and that he would prefer to meet with one authoritative group, just like governments throughout history, they wanted to speak to the big Jew.

And Goldman later wrote that in the wake of this encounter, he managed to persuade Philip Klutznik, a far-sighted, astute politician, and Rabbi Morris Eisendroth, the dynamic leader of Reform Jewry, to join me in calling a conference of the presidents of all major Jewish organizations with the object of creating at least a loosely structured forum for the discussion of all American-Israeli questions. This initial gathering, which he indeed succeeded in drawing together, became institutionalized as what is known as the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. It's an organization which still exists, and it currently unites 51 Jewish organizations, focusing its lobbying on the executive branch of the American government.

You know, it's interesting. The assessment by the Israeli Foreign Ministry of U.S. Jewish support for Israel in the immediate wake of Kibbeah was American Jewry was neither mentally nor organizationally prepared for this crisis. But whoever wrote it added, nevertheless, it rallied within a few days. And it wasn't just a rally, it was a transformation, because those few days laid the groundwork for the definition of Zionism for decades to come. The first steps had already been taken, as we noted, with the merger of previously rival non-Zionists and Zionist ideas and institutions. As the Harvard University historian Oscar Hanlon put it already in 1957, only by accepting the fact that Israel and the diaspora exist for their own sake and not to redeem one another could the Jews of these two different camps learn to work together.

And their ability to work together was going to be critical for their ability to serve the purposes of the state of Israel and perhaps of the Jewish people as a whole. So add to this the death of the anti-Zionist voices. And now we see what allowed for the emergence of a definition of Zionism, which was providing staunch and all but unquestioning support for the state of Israel. Yes, this is what American Zionism now became. Of course, some people would still get on a plane and embody that spirit of halutziot, of pioneering, and go to the land which they had been promised. But in essence, in the wake of Kibbea and in the golden decade, American Zionism became the Israel lobby. Too weak in its 1950s infancy to change or even alter the direction of Eisenhower and Dulles' Middle East policy.

Nevertheless, American Zionism, embodied as the Israel lobby, would see its power grow. By the 60s, it's going to help secure U.S. weapon sales and generous government assistance. And into the 70s, 80s, and up until today, it will continue to strengthen the political and strategic ties between the two nations. And perhaps most significantly, by not shrinking in the moment of crisis, by not shying away of what they call the abyss of Kibya, but rather actually reorganizing around the need to defend Israel, specifically when Israeli actions disturbed observers most, these new American Zionists set a pattern that remains at the heart of American Zionism to this very day. I just want to thank a few people before I sign off here.

I want to thank all the folks that give their hard-earned money in order to help make this show happen, to keep it free and widely available, and I want to invite you to join them right now. You can do that in two ways. You can go to my website, jewishstory.co. In the upper right-hand corner there, you can see a button that says Be a Patron. You can click on through there for a little bit of per-podcast support. I'm making a push to get to 100 patrons, and you can help me get there. We're at 75. It's so close. If that's a bit too much for you now, you can also sponsor a show. Sponsor it for a loved one who is around today. can sponsor it in memory of one who's passed on. I'm happy to give you the details on that.

Send me an email at rovmikefoyer at gmail.com or send me a personal message through my Facebook page. That's rovmikefoyer at Facebook. I also want to thank the Land of Israel Network. That's thelandofisrael.com for creating a network that allows me to reach so many amazing people. I want to thank the Pardes Institute, pardes.org.il for building an educational institution that gives me the privilege of touching the hearts and minds of so many wonderful Jews. And I want to thank you for listening. I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and this is The Jewish Story.