Remembering Harry Truman: Israel and a President’s Conviction

As early as 1797, the second United States President, John Adams, supported the idea of a Jewish State in Palestine, then ruled by the Ottoman Empire, by stating “I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.”

On March 5, 1891, six years before the convening of the 1897 First Zionist Conference, over 400 U. S. leaders, including the Chief Justice, House and Senate leaders and chairman of Congressional committees, governors, and mayors, signed the Blackstone Memorial, which called for the reestablishment of a Jewish State in the Land of Israel.

On June 30, 1922, Congress passed a Joint Resolution, which was signed by President Warren Harding: “Favoring the establishment, in Palestine, of a national home for the Jewish people.”

26 years later it happened. A 2000-year-old dream became reality: A Jewish State was born anew in its ancient homeland and the first world leader to recognize it was an American President.

Against vigorous opposition from his Secretary of State, George Marshall, President Harry S. Truman did the unpredictable. He extended immediate recognition to the new state eleven minutes after it declared itself a sovereign nation.

Marshall believed the paramount threat to the US was the Soviet Union and feared that Arab oil would be lost to the US in the event of war. He warned Truman that: “the US was playing with fire with nothing to put it out.” There was other major opposition in the State Department as well. Though warned about the importance of Saudi Arabian oil in another war; Truman replied he would decide his policy based on justice, not oil.

Truman had indeed electrified the world by recognizing the State of Israel to the dejection of Israel’s enemies. The General Assembly of the UN went into a tantrum. Not even the American delegation there under Warren Austin had known about Truman’s act.

141 years ago today, John Truman, a horse and buggy trader of Lamar, Mo., nailed a horseshoe over the front door of the little white cottage where he lived. The horseshoe was in honor of the birth of his first son, Harry.

In his time, Harry Truman was a dishwasher in a drugstore, wrapped newspapers in a newspaper plant, was a timekeeper on a railroad construction job, and a bookkeeper in a bank. He also was a postmaster, Army captain, haberdasher, and county judge.

He was elected vice president in the 1944 presidential election and became the 33rd president of the United States upon Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s death in April 1945.

During his nearly eight years in office, Truman confronted enormous challenges in both foreign and domestic affairs. He made the agonizing decision of authorizing the first and only use of nuclear weapons in war against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, perhaps the most controversial decision ever taken by a U.S. president. He presided over the onset of the Cold War in 1947, oversaw the Berlin Airlift and Marshal Plan in 1948, and sent U.S. forces to turn back a communist invasion of South Korea in 1950.

Proper historical perspective attests the fact that Harry Truman faced up courageously to more grave decisions than any other American president. But he is best remembered in the State of Israel for the bold decision he made on May 14, 1948, by being the first country leader to extend recognition to the new sovereign nation of Israel.

On May 8, 1951, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, gave Truman a menorah that was originally donated to a synagogue in Buergel, Germany in 1767. The menorah is on display at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri.

In 1956, World renowned artist and sculptor, Dr. Rene Shapshak had the privilege of sculpting a bronze bust of former President Harry S. Truman. The sculpture was placed in the Hall of Fame at the Ben Yehuda National Museum in Jerusalem, Israel. It was unveiled in Israel on Truman’s 73rd birthday.

In central Israel today stands the village of Kfar Truman, a moshav first established in 1949 as Bnei Harel. In 1950, representatives of the Jewish Agency proposed changing the name to Kfar Truman, in honor of U.S. president Harry Truman who had supported the establishment of the State of Israel. The forest alongside Kfar Truman was renamed for Margaret Truman, daughter of the president.

And the little white cottage with the horseshoe over the front door remains in Lamar, Missouri today as an historic site and a testimony to the memory and legacy of one of America’s greatest presidents.