May 12 this year falls on a Wednesday — as it did in 1948, 73 years ago, when President Harry S. Truman called a meeting to address the situation in Palestine.  At that meeting were the president's key domestic aids, including Clark M. Clifford and the top officials from the State Department, including secretary of state George C. Marshall.

An account of that meeting opens Counsel to the President, a Memoir, by Clifford, with Richard Holbrooke as a collaborator.  An account of that meeting also appears in the volume of Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, dealing with the Near East.  The FRUS volume contains Secretary Marshall's memorandum of the May 12, 1948 meeting.  This is a most remarkable document, for it includes a comment by Marshall that, arguably, makes General Douglas MacArthur's "insubordination" to the president child's play.  You will find, in this memo, Marshall's statement indicating that if President Truman were to recognize a Jewish State in Palestine, Marshall would not vote for him in the November 1948 election.

George C. Marshall sworn in as Secretary of State by Harry S. Truman.  Library of Congress.

President Truman convened the meeting to convince Secretary Marshall to accept his decision to recognize the Jewish State when the British mandate on Palestine ended, May 15, three days later.  As Marshall's memorandum of the meeting shows, he was adamantly opposed to recognizing a Jewish State, which he called "a pig in a poke."

Because May 15 fell on the Sabbath, the Jewish Agency in Palestine declared the establishment of Israel before sundown on Friday, May 14.  President Truman recognized the State of Israel shortly thereafter, but only in terms of de facto recognition.  The Soviet Union, acting shortly after the United States, was the first country to confer de jure recognition of Israel, recognition that goes beyond the fact of a nation's existence to its legitimacy.

Sadly, the 73rd anniversary of the establishment of Israel sees the renewed outbreak of violence by Palestinian terrorists against Israeli civilians.  How else to refer to the firing of hundreds of rockets by Hamas, in Gaza, against the Israeli population, some rockets reportedly reaching Jerusalem?  At The New York Times, the Hamas acts of terrorism are brushed aside for a generic tone, the May 11 lead story carrying this headline: '"VIOLENCE ERUPTS / BETWEEN ISRAELIS / AND PALESTINIANS."  "Violence erupts" — as if by spontaneous combustion, not lethal intent from Hamas?

Source.

One thinks immediately how different the situation was with President Trump in the White House.  The Trump administration gave unqualified support to Israel, including moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and recognizing Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights.  Critics of Mr. Trump predicted a violent reaction by Palestinians to these moves.

Instead, the Trump administration also fostered good relations between Israel and the Gulf States, Morocco, and Sudan.  "Violence" did not "erupt" on the Temple Mount, or from rocket barrages fired by Hamas in Gaza.

The immediate response from the Biden State Department to the Hamas aggression seems not to be critical of Israel.  The New York Times quotes State Department spokesman Ned Price as calling the rocket attacks on Israel "an unacceptable escalation."  Price was further quoted as calling for avoiding violence while acknowledging "Israel's legitimate right to defend itself."  (This obvious comment is to be compared with a remark by Philip Jessup in a State Department cable, July 1948, that Israel's establishment was "extra-legal."  This writer believes that it took seven decades and the Trump administration to recognize Israel's right to self-determination in all aspects.)

A Times May 11 story also quoted State Department spokesman Price as rejecting the assertion by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) that Israel was engaged in "ethnic cleansing" in Jerusalem.  Mr. Price commented, "That's not something our analysis supports."  (He might have dismissed Omar's lie in two words: "That's nonsense.")

But what will Biden do next?  Will he be persuaded by the anti-Israel Democrats, led by Mr. Obama and Susan Rice and Sen. Sanders, to adopt the even-handed policy that encouraged Arab intransigence for nearly seven decades until the Trump presidency? 

On Saturday, May 15, 1948, the State of Israel was invaded by Arab states, including Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, with the intent to abort her at birth.  On May 15, 2021, the goal of ending Israel's existence has not dissipated in extremist Arab circles. 

In August 1948, James G. McDonald, the U.S. representative in Israel (later our first ambassador to Israel), sent a cable to Clark Clifford noting that U.S. policy seems to enable the Arab belligerents indefinitely to call the tune.  President Trump put an end to that policy, and with positive results.  Will his successor maintain the Trump policy on the Middle East, or, in pettiness, will he return to the failed policy over seven decades of letting intransigent Arabs call the tune?

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