In times when the month-by-month march of events is of such a character as to give little comfort to the hopes of men in general, and perhaps of Jews in particular, it is the thankless but necessary task of the writer of this department to winnow out the facts from the welter of belief, propaganda, actuality, and emotion that constitutes present-day public information and opinion. Maurice J. Goldbloom has had many years of experience as a news analyst, and brings to his work of appraisal here a rich store of knowledge in modem history and international affairs. The judgments expressed here are, of course, those of the writer, and in no sense represent or reflect official policy.
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Many times since the end of the Civil War, the Democratic party had seemed on the verge of disappearing. Never, before 1932, had it succeeded in attaining the status of a majority party. Even its two successful candidates, Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson, had secured only pluralities. Its only secure support had come from the Solid South, and from the machines in certain Northern cities. The latter had seldom been able to carry their states, and indeed the cities themselves had often been unreliable in national elections.
But the combination of an unprecedented depression, a magnetic personality, and unrivaled skill as a political tactician had enabled Franklin D. Roosevelt to cement a coalition which elected him twice with overwhelming majorities. And a world war had made it possible for him to hold it together for a third victory, and then a fourth.
The forces that had rallied behind Franklin Roosevelt were in part the same ones that Andrew Jackson had united a century before. Urban industrial workers, the poorer farmers, and Southern planters had followed Jackson in his attack on the “money power.”
But it was doubtful that even Andrew Jackson’s coalition would have been adequate to seize and hold power in the 20th century. For in the interim the United States had become in large part a middle-class country; the industrial workers were, on the whole, a minority even in the cities, and the proportion of small farmers in the nation had been steadily falling. Basically, the power of decision now rested with the commercial middle classes and the white collar workers who shared their mores and attitudes. It was in this group, its security shattered by the Great Depression, that Roosevelt found his most ardent followers. For them, neither class interests nor acceptance of principles weighed as heavily as did their psychological need for reassurance. And this the personality of Roosevelt supplied. (To many of the same group—and to others, also, since insecurity was not confined to one section of modern society—a similar function was performed by the certainties of the Communist party. Hence it was with genuine enough enthusiasm that many of that party’s adherents joined in its Roosevelt worship after Teheran.) But an alliance cemented together by the force of a personality, and lacking either a common program or common interests, was essentially impermanent.
Whether, had Roosevelt lived, he could have kept the coalition alive through another four years, was in the nature of the case uncertain. The farmers of the Middle West had already begun to drop away well before his death. In the South, there had been loud rumblings of discontent in 1940 and 1944, and they had seemed likely to rise further by 1948. Even labor and the liberals had shown signs of impatience with the failure of Dr. New Deal to rise again after it was clear that Dr. Win-the-War’s task had been accomplished. And of course the question of whether the Communists would have continued more Rooseveltian than the President, or whether they would have again discovered—as they had in 1933 and again in 1940—that he was leading the country toward fascism, was one that could not be answered without knowing whether the “Great Experiment” of giving Russia all she asked would have been continued.
But however probable the breakup of the coalition had Roosevelt lived, it became almost inevitable with his death. For Harry Truman was not a man to inspire multitudes with blind devotion, nor had he become, through the catalysis of great events, a symbol capable of transcending the boundaries of interest and ideology that divided men. Fundamental clashes that Roosevelt had held in check, to some degree and for a time, now began to demand decisions.
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The Rebels
The defection of the Communists was certain from the moment American policy began to clash with that of the Soviet Union. Rebellion in the South, however, had seemed unlikely when Mr. Truman first assumed office. The Southerners regarded him as one of themselves, and expected him to take a conservative position on economic issues and—at least tacitly—a Southern one on racial questions. In both respects, he disappointed them. In the economic field, to be sure, he proposed no startling innovations. But he did, even if half-heartedly at times and not with complete consistency, fight a rear-guard action against the removal of controls on business and their imposition on labor. And he resisted somewhat more steadfastly the efforts of those who wished to alter the country’s fiscal policies so as to lower the proportionate burdens of the rich.
But if Southern Democrats frequently found themselves voting against the President on economic questions, their differences with him were on details rather than basic principles. And the questions were not charged with the emotional content necessary to disturb the political ways of the South.
Any step toward the realization of racial equality was, however, another question. The Democratic party in the South had maintained its monopoly on political life by virtue of the single issue of “white supremacy.” This had been the battle-cry with which it had recaptured control from the “Black Republicans” after reconstruction, and with which it had successfully undermined the Populist rebellion. The race question defined the limits within which a Southern politician had to operate. He might blatantly make it his stock and trade, or more genteelly give it his tacit adherence. On other issues, he might be reactionary or progressive or even “radical.” But on this issue, he had no choice if he wished to retain his place in political life.
For a long time this Southern attitude had presented no problems to the national Democratic party. On the one hand, the doctrine of states’ rights—reinforced by a series of Supreme Court decisions designed primarily to protect business from federal interference—afforded an easy answer to any Northern liberals who might be unhappy about the “peculiar institutions” of the South. On the other hand, there were few Negroes in the North, and those who were there were assumed to be faithfully wedded to the Republican party. Hence the administrations of Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson were both marked by the introduction of new limitations on the rights of Negroes in the South, and in both cases the federal government collaborated at least tacitly in the process.
During and after the First World War, however, hundreds of thousands of Negroes moved North. They became a political force capable of deciding close elections in a number of the most important states. It was no longer possible for the urban Democratic machines of the North to disregard them. And when, through the WPA, the majority of Northern Negroes were finally convinced that they had more to gain from the Democrats than from the Republicans, they pressed vigorously within the Democratic party for federal action against racial discrimination. At the same time, the Supreme Court, in the course of adjusting the Constitution to the realities of modem economic life, expanded the powers of the federal government sufficiently to remove the legalistic basis for its policy of non-interference.
Under Franklin Roosevelt, however, the issue did not assume an acute form. Negroes, by and large, contented themselves for the moment with improved treatment—still far short of equality—in questions of federal employment and economic assistance, and with public expressions of good will. Not until the war did discrimination in private employment and in the armed services receive serious attention, and even then most Negro leaders were willing to postpone the issue in the name of national unity.
But after the war, they clamored for equality of status as the corollary of the equal sacrifice which had been demanded of them. And, forced to choose between their demands and the prejudices of the South, Harry Truman took his stand on the side of freedom and equality. It was this which the Southern politicians found unforgivable.
Had Truman possessed the dramatic flair of a Roosevelt, he might have presented his decisions on both foreign policy and racial equality in such a manner as to win him more supporters than they alienated. Had he possessed Roosevelt’s skill as a political tactician, he might have blanketed them with crises in other directions, so that the excitement they aroused would have quickly evaporated. As it was, however, he took his stand clearly enough to make its opponents his own, but far too quietly to win himself the support of those who approved his decisions.
It was this political ineptitude, more than any of his actual policies, which was primarily responsible for the coolness non-Communist labor and liberals felt toward the President. To be sure, he had proposed the conscription of labor during the railroad strike, and he had signed a bill abolishing portal-to-portal pay and otherwise weakening the Wage-Hour Act. But Franklin Roosevelt had also advocated the conscription of labor. And in any case, the unions were ready to forgive and forget all such transgressions in view of Truman’s veto of the Taft-Hartley Act. But they did not wish to support a candidate who seemed bound to lose the election.
As for the liberals, their enthusiasm for Truman had always been exceedingly restrained—less because of his policies than because his appointments seldom came from their ranks. But they had been ready to support him as long as he seemed a likely winner. As soon as the United States withdrew its support from the partition of Palestine it became obvious, at least in New York and Washington, that Truman stood no chance to win. Hence the organized liberals, grouped in Americans for Democratic Action and the New York Liberal party, began spontaneously to discover that they could not support Truman for re-election.
But they had already committed themselves to the thesis that the Republican party could not possibly have anything to offer. At the same time, Henry Wallace and his Communist supporters were anathema to them; and they had opposed the setting up of a non-Communist third party on the ground that it would split the progressive forces.
The machinery of the Democratic convention would almost certainly be in the President’s hands, despite the revolts of Zionists and Southerners. Moreover, if by some miracle a knockdown fight in the Democratic convention were to result in the choice of a candidate other than Harry Truman, the resulting bitterness seemed almost certain to assure the nominee the fate of John W. Davis in 1924. This seemed likely to be true even if the President were to withdraw and leave an open field for his would be successors. For the forces attacking him would find it difficult to find common ground with one another on any other subject.
The Southerners were faced with a similar dilemma, if in a somewhat less acute form. They could desert the President, but only at the cost of electing a Republican. And the Republicans were as firmly committed to a civil rights program as Mr. Truman himself.
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Eisenhower?
In these circumstances, both groups of rebels turned to General Dwight D. Eisenhower as a candidate who could rally all factions and a majority of the electorate as well. His opinions on political questions were not sufficiently clear to antagonize any large group, he had great personal charm, and his status as a victorious commander endowed him with an aura of authority that many Americans had missed since Roosevelt’s death.
There were, of course, certain drawbacks to the Eisenhower candidacy. He had already refused in no uncertain terms to run, and there was no indication that he would change his mind. It was possible that some of those now using his name were counting on his refusal, and merely hoped to create a situation in which the President would find it necessary to withdraw and leave an open field for some other candidate. (One who was mentioned in this connection was Supreme Court Justice William Douglas.) Others—particularly Democratic bosses in such areas as the Bronx—had apparently resigned themselves to the loss of the presidency and sought merely to free themselves and their local tickets from the handicap of Truman’s name. Still others really believed that Eisenhower was accessible to a draft, and that Truman would yield to popular sentiment and facilitate it.
Certainly Eisenhower did not act as if he were planning to change his mind. Not only did he reiterate that his first refusal still held good, but, before a congressional Committee, he testified—as he could easily have avoided doing—in favor of the continuation of segregation in the armed forces. This reassured the South, but it completely alienated any Negro support that the draft movement might have hoped to acquire. And while it did not alienate the liberal and labor leaders of the draft movement, since their support of Eisenhower seemed to rest more on a desperate desire to be on the winning side than on any considerations of principle, it certainly embarrassed them.
Perhaps Eisenhower’s resistance was based on an acquaintance with American history. Military heroes who had become presidents had often had cause to regret their acceptance of the office. Even Washington had ended his term amid the violent abuse of the Jeffersonians, no longer the hero of all the nation but rather the figurehead of a faction. But the most horrible example was the case of U. S. Grant. In many respects there was a notable similarity. Like Eisenhower, Grant was a professional soldier who had never taken part in politics. But he had been sought after by both parties, and rejected a Democratic draft before he finally yielded to a Republican one. In his time, too, the American people had been confronted by a rapidly changing world which undermined their traditional concepts. In Grant, the general who had saved the Union, they saw a protector not only from their real perils but from their ill-defined anxieties. So great was their need that, even after two terms of the worst corruption and inefficiency in American history, there was strong sentiment in favor of drafting him for yet a third. But if Grant’s failure in the presidency was not apparent to all his contemporaries, it was clear enough for posterity to see. And it was quite possible that Eisenhower felt that the surest way of avoiding a similar place in history was to emulate Sherman and Pershing, not Grant.
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For all the talk about presidential candidates, a recent Gallup Poll showed that only nine per cent of Americans thought that the presidential election was the most important problem confronting the nation.
The poll showed that Americans were far more concerned with foreign policy. Indeed, most Americans were considerably more anxious about the outcome of the elections in Italy than about those in their own country. A victory for the Communists and their allies in Italy would face the Western powers with loss of control in the Mediterranean and encourage Stalin to believe that he could overrun all of Europe instead of merely its Eastern half. On the other hand, a Communist defeat which left the de Gasperi government the prisoner of neo-Fascist groups would certainly mean the beginning of the end of Italian democracy. And in that case, whether it fell to the Right or the Left might mean something in terms of a purely military struggle for power, but little in terms of building a democratic world.
It was not surprising, therefore, that the Western Powers sought to influence the Italian elections in every way which did not infringe on Italian sovereignty. Their most spectacular single move was their declaration in favor of transferring the city of Trieste to Italy. Here, they knew they were putting the Italian Communists and the Soviet Union on the spot, because of the latter’s commitments to Tito. The Russians, for their part, obliged by opposing any change in the Free City’s status.
But other methods, somewhat less dramatic, were perhaps even more effective in influencing the Italian voters.
Americans of Italian descent were encouraged to write, and in great numbers did write, to their relatives in Italy, expounding the glories of democracy and the evils that would ensue from a Communist victory. Some of those evils were spelled out by the State Department, which made it clear that a Communist government would receive no aid from this country, whether under the Marshall Plan or otherwise. Meanwhile, the extent of present aid was emphasized both by a large-scale propaganda campaign and by a number of well-timed gestures.
A significant role was also played by American labor organizations. Both the AFL and CIO indicated that they not only regarded a Communist victory as undesirable, but that if it occurred, their opposition to political strings on the Marshall Plan would not prevent them from supporting the American government in refusing further aid. Nor were they alone among democratic labor movements in following this course. British labor leaders lent their active support to the campaign of Giuseppe Saragat’s anti-Communist Socialist Party of Italian Labor, seeking to persuade as many workers as possible to support Saragat’s party instead of the Communist-dominated Socialist party of Pietro Nenni. So did such French Socialist leaders as Léon Blum, Daniel Mayer, and Guy Mollet.
By the end of the campaign, most observers felt certain that the Communists would suffer a setback. But few expected the results to be as favorable to the government as they were. Premier de Gasperi’s Christian Democrats secured almost half the votes and a clear majority in the Chamber of Deputies. Saragat made substantial inroads on the working-class vote, on which the Communists and Nenni had counted. As a result, the latter lost a number of their former strongholds in Northern Italy—a loss partly made up, however, by increasing their strength among the peasants of the South. And the extreme right-wing and neo-Fascist groups secured only negligible support. At least for the moment, it was certain that the government of Italy would remain firmly in the hands of the Center.
The election might perhaps have resulted in a defeat for the Communists and their allies even if there had been no outside intervention against them. Certainly the efforts of the Catholic Church in mobilizing support for the Christian Democratic party played an important role in the outcome. Yet at least the degree of the anti-Communist victory seemed due in large part to the active participation in the electoral campaign of forces outside Italy.
There were some who, though anti-Communist themselves, had felt that it was wrong for other nations, and for groups within them, to endeavor actively to influence the Italian elections. Certainly it had to be admitted that there was something undignified, and perhaps not altogether consistent with the concepts of democracy, in the intense pressure exerted on the will of the Italian people. Some of the methods used were reminiscent of the custom once rather common in American industry of posting notices just before election day announcing that a Democratic victory would be followed by layoffs. This was disturbing even though no election was ever altogether a free expression of a people’s will, unaffected by external pressures.
On the other hand, there could be no doubt that the Soviet Union and its satellites, not to mention Communists throughout the world, were in the habit of interfering to the best of their ability in elections everywhere. It would therefore have been somewhat quixotic for the democratic forces of the world to have renounced such methods, and to have left them, as so often in the past, for the exclusive use of the totalitarians. It could be argued, moreover, that even if the democratic process had been subjected to certain strains in the course of the campaign, it remained essentially intact, whereas a Communist victory would have meant its complete destruction.
A more fundamental cause for misgivings in regard to the future lay in the fact that, while the Communists had been defeated for the moment, the evils which had enabled them to win the support of almost a third of the Italian people still remained. A shockingly low standard of living even in the industrial cities, almost incredible poverty coupled with a system of absentee landlordism in the rural areas, mass illiteracy, and industrial and agricultural resources far below the needs of the population—so long as these evils remained, the life of Italian democracy would be at best precarious despite all the propaganda that could be brought to bear on its behalf. But if they were removed, democracy would not need the aid of outside pressure.
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While American eyes were centered, to a large extent, on the Communist drive for power in Italy, there was ample reason for worry nearer home. The Communist parties of Latin America were far too weak numerically to have any chance of seizing power in free elections. But they were well-organized, and headed by leaders who understood well enough—even if many of their followers did not—that the prime purpose of a Communist party was to serve the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. And by unprincipled political deals, they were able to produce an effect far beyond what their numbers would have appeared to make probable.
One of the countries in which a judicious policy of alliances had paid the Communists handsome dividends was Costa Rica, whose proximity to the Panama Canal made it of special significance. Democracy in Costa Rica was rather highly developed, and governments had long succeeded each other peacefully as the result of free and honest elections. The Communist party existed legally, had members in Congress, and controlled many unions. In the elections of 1944 the victorious candidate, Teodoro Picado, had been backed by the Communists, the United Fruit Company, and dictator Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua. As his term drew toward an end, it became clear that at least some of his supporters had no intention of permitting the 1948 elections to go against his hand-picked successor, Rafael Calderón Guardia. Only a general strike prompted the government to agree to supervision of the elections by an impartial commission.
Nevertheless, when the elections showed the expected majority for the opposition candidate, Ottilio Ulate, the government refused to accept the results. Instead, the old congress—in which Picado’s followers, including the Communists, had a majority—threw out the report of the electoral commission and declared that the election had been won by the government candidate. Civil war broke out, and the government’s Communist supporters seized control of the capital. Dictator Somoza sent Nicaraguan troops to aid the government, and his brother dictators in Honduras and the Dominican Republic prepared to do likewise. At the same time the Central American democracies of Panama and Guatemala gave at least moral support to the opposition.
The United States, despite the threat of a Communist coup in an area of such immediate strategic importance, took no direct part in the struggle. Instead, this country confined itself to diplomatic representations to the various dictators, protesting against their intervention in the internal affairs of Costa Rica. This, together with similar representations from other American countries, was sufficient to dampen the interventionist enthusiasm of the Dominican and Honduran dictators, and to make even Somoza keep his interference within limits. Left to itself, the Picado government was doomed by the opposition of the great majority of the Costa Ricans. Despite a desperate last-minute Communist attempt to seize sole control and block any agreement, the government surrendered and the third vice-president took office until the meeting of the newly-elected Congress, to which choice of a president was left.
Proximity to the Canal also made Panama’s other neighbor, Colombia, an area of special interest to the Communists. And here, as in Costa Rica, a long democratic tradition had made it possible for them to organize legally and take an active part in politics. Numerically not very strong, they nevertheless had a tightly-knit party and controlled most of the unions.
Unlike most Colombians, whether Conservative or Liberal, the Communists did not welcome the holding of the Inter-American Congress in Bogotá. Indeed, they planned to demonstrate against this “imperialist” gathering. On the day set by them for a mass protest, the Liberal leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitán was assassinated. Within a matter of minutes, the assassin had been beaten to death and his face obliterated, so that positive identification was impossible.
Many of Gaitán’s followers immediately blamed the assassination on the Conservative government. A mob dragged the assassin’s body to the doorstep of President Ospina Perez and deposited it there. Other mobs roamed the streets burning and murdering. The hall where the Conference had been meeting was sacked. The United States Embassy was besieged, and efforts were made to set it on fire. A general strike was called, and the government’s resignation was demanded. The Inter-American Conference was forced to suspend its sessions.
So swiftly had the mobs appeared and begun burning and murdering, that their spontaneous formation seemed highly improbable. The most plausible explanation seemed to be that the assassination had been the fortuitous act of a deranged individual, but that the Communists had seized the opportunity which it offered to turn their party demonstration into a large-scale riot—which they hoped would in turn become a revolution—and to direct the resentment of the people at Gaitdán’s murder into anti-Yankee channels. In any case, the entire center of the city was wrecked, several hundred lives lost, and over twenty million dollars worth of property destroyed. (The representative of the American Jewish Committee at the Conference, Dr. Maximo Yagupsky, reported that the entire basis of Jewish economic life in Colombia had been wiped out.)
Order was finally restored by the formation of a coalition cabinet of the Liberal and Conservative parties. The sessions of the Conference were resumed. But its prestige had been damaged, and the United States had suffered a serious propaganda setback. Moreover, the material loss which the rioting had caused was certain to reduce still further the standard of living of Colombia’s workers, and it was the economic pressure to which shortages and inflation had subjected them which had made them so ready to respond to Communist agitation.
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For a time, Palestine had seemed to be an exception to the general rule that all minor conflicts in the world tended to be absorbed into the major one between the United States and the Soviet Union. The partition resolution had been forced through the General Assembly by the joint action of both powers, and had been hailed as a shining example of the type of cooperation which could establish a genuine international order. Even at the time, however, the appearance of Soviet-American harmony had been illusory. The failure to accompany the partition plan with any provisions for its implementation was due primarily to the impossibility of agreement between the two powers.
It was Russia which reaped whatever political benefit was to be gained from the partition resolution both in Palestine itself and among Zionists in the United States. (The United States, however pro-Zionist, was closely allied to Great Britain, designated by Zionists as Public Enemy Number .) This trend appeared not only in the election of Leo Isacson to Congress in the Bronx, but in the merger of Hashomer Hatzair and Ahdut Avodah into the United Socialist party, a group which differed from the dominant Labor party—the Mapai—mainly in its wish to substitute a definitely Eastern orientation for the neutrality which such leaders as Ben Gurion sought to maintain. It was difficult to judge the relative strength of the two labor parties in Palestine, since there had been no recent elections, but the elections held in the DP camps provided an ominous index. Here Mapai, formerly the strongest party, polled barely half the votes given to the United Socialist party and ran somewhat behind the Revisionists. Indeed, the Laborites who had furnished much of the leadership of Zionism in Palestine and internationally seemed to be losing ground to both the Russian-oriented group and the Revisionists.
The trend was intensified after the United States reversed its position on partition. The advocates of an Eastern orientation chortled that one could never trust the West; the terrorists and their supporters in America declared that terror was the only language the powers understood, and that the hesitancy of the Agency leadership in using it was responsible for the defeat of the Zionist cause. In Palestine itself, the Irgun repeatedly precipitated conflicts which Haganah had sought to postpone; it was occasionally repudiated verbally, but no action was taken against it. Instead, pressure for a merger of the terrorist groups with Haganah increased, on the ground that unity was essential for successful military action.
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Where there is no Truce
Meanwhile, at Lake Success, the United States was moving tentatively and hesitantly in the direction of a new solution. While submitting—without committing itself, and for discussion only—a proposal for the establishment of a temporary trusteeship, it also introduced in the Security Council a new truce resolution. Like previous appeals, it was approved by the Council, and like them it had no effect whatsoever in Palestine. Both Zionists and Arabs agreed to accept it only on conditions, and the conditions were mutually exclusive. In particular, the Zionists resented a provision which would have prohibited the immigration of Jews capable of bearing arms, and another which would have prevented action to establish a Jewish state on May 15. The Arabs objected because the resolution did not completely bar Jewish immigration during the truce, or specify the abandonment of partition.
In Palestine, an equally futile effort to obtain a cease-fire agreement was made by the British High Commissioner, Sir Alan Cunningham. Even attempts by the Consular corps and the British chairman of the Jerusalem Municipal Council to secure a local truce for that city were without effect. Instead, the war around Jerusalem, as well as elsewhere in Palestine, increased in intensity as the British forces withdrew to an ever more limited area. In most of Palestine, they were now either absent altogether, or confined themselves to the role of intermediaries in negotiations for the surrender of the defeated parties in local battles.
For a while, it seemed that the intervention of the International Red Cross might at least introduce a note of humanity into the struggle. Both sides pledged themselves to abide by the laws of war, and these were certainly far preferable to the lawless barbarity currently associated with peace. But it was soon obvious that neither side had any intention of abiding by this agreement: the “execution” of prisoners and the murder of non-combatants continued to be accepted as a matter of course.
In what was probably the worst single atrocity to date, the Irgun and Stem gangs seized the unoffending village of Deir Yassin and killed between two and three hundred of its inhabitants, about half of them women and children. (The character of the “battle” was obvious from the fact that the total losses of the attackers were three killed and four wounded.) The survivors were paraded as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. The New York Times at first reported that the attack had been made with the knowledge of the local Haganah commander. However, the Jewish Agency and Haganah subsequently condemned it, pointing out that Deir Yassin was one of the few villages near Jerusalem which had refused to permit itself to be used as a base for Arab forces. Haganah referred to the perpetrators of the attack as “the dissidents who disgraced the cause of the Jewish fighter and the honor of Jewish arms and the Jewish flag.” On the same day that Haganah and the Agency issued the statements of condemnation, the Zionist Actions Committee, over the opposition of the two Labor parties and under the leadership of the American General Zionists, approved the pending agreement for the merger of Haganah and Irgun.
A few days later, Deir Yassin was matched by an equally shocking Arab atrocity: the attack from ambush on a convoy going to the Hadassah Hospital and Hebrew University on Mount Scopus. Here, the victims were physicians, nurses, and scholars. It was not easy to see what military purpose could have been served by the attack.
Meanwhile, both sides prepared to extend the war. Haganah spoke of securing planes—it already had some, but they appeared to be non-combat types—and of mounting an offensive to gain control of all the territory between Haifa and Galilee, as well as along the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road. Meanwhile the Zionist seizures of Tiberias and Haifa and attacks on Jaffa and Acre provoked an immediate response. In Transjordan, King Abdullah let it be known that the Arab Legion would participate openly in the fighting even before May 15 and his forces were reported on the march. And in all the Arab countries, there were popular demonstrations and demands that the Arab regular armies go into action at once.
The prospects for a truce in the near future did not appear good.
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