Say When

In late 1946 President Harry Truman wanted nothing more than to have George Marshall, who had served with extraordinary ability as Army Chief-of-Staff throughout WWII, as his Secretary of State. At the time Marshall was serving as Ambassador to China and attempting to broker peace between Communist Mao Tse Tung and Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. Truman promised Marshall a virtual blank check in terms of the personal latitude he would be allowed to exert over US foreign policy. Ever the humble institutionalist, Marshall demurred and maintained he would only accept the position in line with the limitation of his role to merely an instrument of White House prerogatives. After all, that was how US governance was meant to work; he served at the pleasure of the POTUS.

That said, and times being as fluidly consequential as they were, Marshall would be involved in many momentous policy debates that occurred during his tenure at Foggy Bottom. Few of those controversies were as volatile, or carried such significant long-term implications, as the question of recognizing Israel’s independence. And no major decision by Truman would be opposed more adamantly by Marshall than his preference for aligning US interests with formal recognition in 1948.

For Truman it was a moral question… and personal. Eddie Jacobson, a lifelong friend, WWI comrade, and former business partner, advocated strongly and directly to the President in favor of recognition. As an American Jew, Jacobson humanized the predominant moral question few could seriously argue against as the Holocaust’s horrors continued to be documented: world Jewry required a safe haven from the relentless historical persecution the Nazis and their European collaborators had just proved was an existential crisis.

Whatever obstacles and conflicts formal support of a Jewish homeland might cause were worth risking to ensure such anti-Semitic pogroms never happened again. Moreover, Jacobson reinforced the arguments of White House advisors like Clark Clifford, who contended that supporting Israel offered domestic political advantages, providing a platform for the growing US Jewish community to become a dependable component of the Democratic base moving forward.

Marshall was forceful in his opposition to recognizing Israel, and even more against guaranteeing its welfare. He was certain Arab forces would immediately launch hostilities once independence was declared, and was pessimistic Israel could effectively defend itself against such an onslaught. While he appreciated the moral prerogative attached to Israeli aspirations, he was not willing to tie US forces to any future obligations as the infant nation’s protector.

But Marshall was most caustic toward the proposition that domestic politics should play any role in influencing foreign policy, particularly on questions involving complex geopolitical elements to which the American public gave little thought or consideration. Long after Marshall had passed, many did not hesitate to stain his otherwise splendid legacy by conflating his outspoken views on the “Palestine” question with either his own personal anti-Semitic inclinations or the prevalence of such bias throughout the upper echelons of the State Department. The former contention has been mostly discredited, the latter has not. Yet and still, 75 years later it’s impossible to argue Marshall’s many concerns were not prescient, as the US once again confronts the intractable bloodshed and recrimination tied to our evolving role as Israel’s patron.

None of the fundamental questions have dissipated; it’s still all about insecurity and displacement, enduring hatreds and the scapegoating required to maintain them. But the situation on the ground couldn’t be more different and perceptions have changed accordingly; Israel is now a hegemonic power, a nuclear-armed regional Goliath, who refuses to redefine itself as anything other than the David its national narrative began with. While it indulges this incongruity, most of the rest of the world does not.

The continuing specter of anti-Semitism can’t and shouldn’t alleviate the moral obligations that come with power over others; Israel struggles to balance that onus with the rhetoric from its neighbors that long ago vastly exceeded their capabilities to credibly pursue. But while Hamas mortar attacks on populated areas are illegal, reckless, unnerving, disruptive and too often lethal, Israel’s response is something else entirely. What its unopposed Air Force rains down on the dense Gaza skyline creates a stunning dichotomy that’s near impossible to reinterpret.

Cool Hand Luke may have been Paul Newman’s best work. Set in a classic southern work camp for convicts, one of its finest scenes is when “Dragline,” a much bigger and loquacious chain-gang veteran feels dissed by newcomer Luke and decides a boxing match is the proper venue to make him pay for his impertinence. What starts out as a proper lesson quickly becomes much uglier as Luke refuses to give up, absorbing blow after blow, knockdown after knockdown. The collective camp enthusiasm steadily wanes until nobody wants to watch the beating continue. “You’re going to have to kill me,” Luke tells Dragline. Finally, Dragline simply hoists Luke over his shoulder and carries him back to the barracks, cognizant he is a bit nuts.

What’s happening now in Gaza is not boxing, and launching mortars isn’t a flailing left hook, but the mismatch is far more pronounced. All of which brings the issue back around to what was George Marshall’s most visceral concern, the influence of domestic politics on foreign policy. For four years Bibi Netanyahu shamelessly took advantage of a dangerous US Administration’s complete disregard for decades of policy continuity regarding the Palestinians. Netanyahu was glad to allow Israel to become merely a box to be checked off of Trump’s “promises made, promises kept” list so long as it accelerated West Bank settlement, Likud’s constant preoccupation, and enhanced his own electoral prospects which, like Trump’s, he long ago conflated with keeping himself out of a jail cell.

Where this left the Palestinian’s situation, particularly in Gaza, was a whole new level of hopelessness. Trump treated the Palestinians as less than nothing, literally a worthless expense we could pretend our way out of considering. Now they’ll invite destruction rather than be ignored. Bibi seems content to deliver that. Of course, Trump’s GOP will cheer on the beating as long as it lasts, terrorists getting what they deserve. Fox/AM long ago brought “standing with Israel” under the ever-widening Islamophobe umbrella, slandering the traditional American “honest broker” role in the Middle East as just more liberal treachery.

Biden rightly came into office determined to provide Netanyahu with time to ponder how shortsighted his dalliance with Trump was. Pretending the Palestinians don’t matter within the peace process was imbecility only MAGA could embrace. “Accords” with the likes of Bahrain and the UAE were exactly what Trump expected them to be, nothing more than a couple of rally talking points. They may have been better than a poke in the eye, but not much, and certainly inadequate to offset the damage inflicted to America’s credibility as a good-faith partner by Trump’s enthusiasm to be nothing more than Bibi’s goon.

The deleterious consequences of the policy’s assured broader failures were a when not if proposition; now they’ve arrived in spades. It’s certain Biden has warned Dragline he better stop pounding Luke yesterday, there is a new Captain on the porch and there will be no “failure to communicate” US intentions moving forward, yet another MAGA mess to be cleaned up. Israeli policy that agrees to once again recognize Palestinian humanity as necessary to wider ambitions for regional peace and stability is a reset Biden is surely now demanding. The danger is whether it’s already too late. The worst thing for Israel’s future has always been adversaries with nothing left to lose. That day may be here with a fight Israel can’t win, no matter how powerful it has become. Perhaps all the Palestinians have left is their refusal to say uncle, which may be enough to badly injure what Israel was created to achieve… back when it was in exactly that same place. BC