Summary
Missouri lawyer and key domestic adviser to Harry Truman, one of the three strongly pro-Zionist advisers who, in Perceptions of Palestine, did more than any other group to shape Truman’s viewpoint on Palestine (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 780-798).
Details
- Clifford has firmly dismissed any notion that politics played a part in either his own views or Truman’s decisions, insisting Truman acted only out of moral and ethical considerations and U.S. strategic interests (lines 726-734).
- In early March 1948, while Truman was genuinely undecided between continuing to support partition and the State Department’s proposed UN trusteeship, Clifford sent a lengthy memorandum recommending support for partition, concluding in language that demeaned the Arabs: by its uncertainty the United States “appears in the ridiculous role of trembling before threats of a few nomadic desert tribes. This has done us irreparable damage. Why should Russia or Yugoslavia, or any other nation treat us with anything but contempt in light of our shilly-shallying appeasement of the Arabs” (lines 780-798).
- Clifford had a private, informal, always off-the-record meeting with Truman at the end of every day; during the critical points before the UN partition vote and before U.S. recognition of Israel he often acted, in Christison’s account, as much like a Zionist political activist as like a presidential adviser (lines 808-814).
- In November 1947 Clifford visited the Philippine ambassador in Washington, apparently without Truman’s knowledge, and told him a vote against partition would endanger U.S. relations with the Philippines; under this and other pressures the Philippines voted for partition (lines 808-814).
- After the heated, indecisive recognition meeting at which Secretary of State George Marshall threatened not to vote for Truman if he recognised Israel, Clifford decided on his own to force the issue: he asked the Jewish Agency representative in Washington, Eliahu Epstein, to send Truman a formal request for recognition a few hours before the anticipated announcement of Israel’s creation, helped write the request when no one at the Agency knew how to word it, and with David Niles wrote the official U.S. reply — all before Truman had finally decided. Clifford states in his memoirs that Epstein “did not realize that the President had still not decided how to respond to the request I had just solicited” (lines 808-814).
Related pages
Perceptions of Palestine, Harry Truman, David Niles, Max Lowenthal