Though support for Zionist aspirations in the United States from 1945 to 1947 included some prominent members of the Republican Party, the strongest, most persistent support came from liberals, left liberals, and leftists responding to the Holocaust and World War II. The chapter examines writings by Richard Crossman, Freda Kirchwey, I. F. Stone, Alexander Uhl, Henry Wallace, and Sumner Welles in The Nation, PM, and The New Republic.

The most important result of State Department opposition to the Zionist project was the imposition, in November 1947, of an embargo on arms to the Jews in Palestine and to the Arab states. The chapter examines official reasons for the embargo as well as efforts to lift it by American liberals including Senator Robert F. Wagner, Congressman Emanuel Celler, and journalists at PM such as I. F. Stone among others. They argued that the embargo, imposed when the Arabs began their violent attack in Palestine, fell most heavily on the Jews, who did not yet have a state. Secretary of State George Marshall insisted on continuing the embargo. The communist regime in Czechoslovakia became the only government to flout first the US and British, and then what became a UN Security Council embargo.

In 1944 and 1945, in response to revelations of the Holocaust, support in American politics and public opinion gained momentum. Among its aspects were calls to indict Palestinian Arab leader Haj Amin al-Husseini for war crimes as a result of his collaboration with the Nazi regime. They came from members of the US Congress, journalists at liberal papers such as PM and the New York Post, and from the American Zionist Emergency Council. Their efforts to convince the US State Department to indict or investigate Husseini were not successful, despite the existence of significant American—and British—files on his activities during World War II and the Holocaust.

The chapter describes events surrounding the “Showdown in the Oval Office” between presidential adviser Clark Clifford and the secretary of state, George Marshall, about whether Truman should recognize the state of Israel. Though the president did so, in accord with the enormous enthusiasm Israel’s establishment aroused among in American public opinion, especially among liberals, he did not lift the arms embargo, even after the Arab states’ invasion of May 15, 1948. The chapter examines the unsuccessful effort waged by members of Congress, led by Emanuel Celler, voices in the liberal press, and by former under secretary of state Sumner Welles to urge Truman to lift the embargo. The US national security leadership continued to justify the embargo by referring to the danger of antagonizing the Arabs, and facilitating Soviet expansion which, they argued, the new Jewish state would advance.