"On Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US 'will not waver in protecting Israel's security and promoting Israel's future', while noting while the Jewish state is 'confronting some of the greatest challenges in its history, but its promise and potential have never been greater'. Clinton also pointed out that in 1948 it took President Harry Truman just 11 minutes to recognise the state of Israel. 'And ever since, the US has stood with you in solidarity'." (Obama affirms 'unbreakable' US-Israel ties, AFP, 20/4/10)
So Truman took no more than 11 minutes to recognise Israel, eh? Just couldn't wait, right?
Was it because he knew it was the right and proper thing to do? Was he the instrument of Divine Providence?
Get real.
A bunch of American realists in the form of US diplomats to the Arab states had met with Truman on 10/11/45 to urge him to resist Zionist pressure for a Jewish state in Palestine. Truman candidly replied: "I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism: I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents."
Another American realist, former WW II US Army Chief of Staff and Truman's Secretary of State General George C Marshall (of Marshall Plan fame), adamantly opposed Truman's May 14, 1948 recognition of Israel because he knew that Truman was allowing domestic politics - or, as then Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett put it, "a very transparent attempt to win the Jewish vote" - to interfere with the rational formulation of US foreign policy.
Hillary, you're no George Marshall.
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