It's an American a holiday as there is, but Thanksgiving actually played a pivotal role in creating Israel
A look back at Thanksgiving 1947, for those who want something to talk about at the table that's not American politics, Israeli politics or the war.
For this year’s Thanksgiving, we’re sharing a brief largely forgotten vignette of the role that the holiday played in the creation of the State of Israel.
In 1947, the United Nations was merely two years old and composed of fifty-six member countries. In the last week of November 1947, its General Assembly met in New York to debate Resolution 181 for the partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. It was, a slight modification of UNSCOP’s proposal.
Initially, the Americans offered only tepid support for the Zionists. The State Department, under George Marshall, had long assumed a staunchly anti-Jewish-independence stance; to make matters worse for the Yishuv, a day before the vote, a secret CIA report urged President Truman not to lend his support. The Jewish state would not be able to defend itself, the CIA had concluded, and the United States would be drawn into the conflict that was bound to ensue. “The Jews will be able to hold out no longer than two years,” the CIA predicted.
The president ignored the CIA and the State Department, and not only gave the partition plan America’s vote, but pressured other countries to which the United States gave aid, as well. The Soviet Union had already made clear that it would back Jewish independence. Believing that the Jewish state might well become socialist (and undoubtedly delighting in the humiliation that the entire affair caused the British, a symbol of Western imperialism), the Russians threw their support behind Jewish independence. Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet representative, said, “The Jewish people had been closely linked with Palestine for a considerable period in history. . . . As a result of the war, the Jews as a people have suffered more than any other people . . . the Jewish people were therefore striving to create a State of their own, and it would be unjust to deny them that right.”
Even with Soviet and American support, however, the Zionists feared that they were still a few votes short of the two-thirds majority they needed. The General Assembly vote was scheduled for Wednesday, November 26, but the Jewish Agency calculated that it needed more time to persuade several other countries, including Haiti, Liberia, and the Philippines to support them. Help came in the form of Rodriguez Fabraget, Uruguay’s UN delegate, who launched a filibuster that ended up delaying the vote.
Due to Fabraget’s lengthy speech, the vote would now have to wait until after the Thanksgiving holiday. The Zionist coalition therefore had another day during which they could lobby a few countries whose votes were critical. Abba Eban and others worked around the clock, calling people in the middle of the night, pleading the Jewish people’s case and urging representatives to help establish the first Jewish commonwealth in two thousand years.
When the General Assembly finally reconvened after the Thanksgiving holiday on November 29, Jews around the world, desperate for good news and a renewed lease on Jewish life after the horrors of the Holocaust, huddled around their radios. American Jews and Europeans, Australian Jews and Jews in the Yishuv, suddenly united by a sense that in the coming moments their people’s history might be radically changed, held their breath and listened to the roll call. As expected by that point, the Soviet Union and the United States voted in favor. The British, responsible for Palestine, abstained.
What was less expected was that seven of the seventeen countries who had indicated on November 25 that they planned to abstain now voted in favor. The filibuster and the ensuing Thanksgiving delay had worked. Resolution 181 for the Partition of Palestine passed by a vote of 33 in favor, 13 opposed, and 10 abstentions. The Jews were going to have their state.
Following the First Zionist Congress in 1897, Herzl had written in his diary, “At Basel I founded the Jewish state. If I said this out loud today, I would be answered by universal laughter. Perhaps in five years, and certainly in fifty, everyone will admit it.”
Now it was 1947, exactly fifty years later, and Herzl’s wild dream was about to come true.
The account above is based on the description of these events in my book, Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn, approximately pages 148-149.
Timely and uplifting piece today! I will add this historical note to all the things I am grateful for on this most secular and most meaningful holiday.
Thank you