Published on April 5th, 2014 | http://www.lobelog.com/was-president-truman-pro-israel/

Was President Truman Pro-Israel?

by Barbara Slavin*
With U.S.-mediated Israel-Palestinian peace talks once again dangling over the abyss, a new book has kicked up controversy over the roots of U.S. policy toward Israelis and Palestinians.
In Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict, John Judis, a senior editor at The New Republic, argues that President Harry Truman was more ambivalent about the creation of the state of Israel than is commonly known.
While Truman famously told audiences after he left the presidency that he considered himself a modern-day Cyrus — after the Persian king who freed Jews from Babylonian captivity in the sixth century B.C. — Truman actually preferred a federation of Arabs and Jews to a Jewish-run state and worried about the impact of favouring Zionist claims over Arab ones, according to Judis.
“His preference was for a plan negotiated by American Henry Grady and British official Herbert Morrison that recommended a federated Palestine jointly administered by Arabs and Jews,” Judis writes. “‘Zionist pressure killed the plan,’ ” Judis quotes Truman as saying.