Remembering the UN vote that changed Jewish history for ever

During those three days, Jews around the world understood that this was the moment that could change history. Every contact, no matter how tenuous, every pressure point, was utilised. It was now or never.

Diplomats such as Moshe Sharett, the Jewish Agency’s “Foreign Minister” tried to persuade the Ethiopians by recalling the hospitality that Jerusalem had given Emperor Haile Selassie after the Italians had ousted him. Businessmen such Harvey Firestone, whose National Rubber Company had interests in Liberia, used their influence.

Both Greece and Haiti had decided to vote No. Would the Philippines abstain? What would be the effect of a revolution in Thailand? The dispirited Zionists labelled 27 November “Black Wednesday”.

At that time, the UN comprised just 56 states. This was before the onset of full decolonisation a decade later. Even so, newly independent India was mindful of its Muslim minority and Prime Minister Nehru was not amused at persistent attempts to persuade him to vote in favour.

The Vatican held great sway amongst Catholic countries. The Latin Americans were divided on partition and France and Belgium were wavering. France, in particular, did not wish to increase anti-colonial sentiment in its Empire amongst its Muslim subjects. Yet the antisemitism of the Vichy regime and the Nazi occupation could not be glossed over.

During the inter-war years, the Vatican was unsympathetic to Zionist aspirations and many of its officials tended to view Jews as part and parcel of a Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy — although Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (John XXIII) and Karol Józef Wojtyła (John Paul II), future popes who themselves bore witness to Nazi brutality, never followed the Vatican’s neutral stand on Jewish persecution.

The British, virtually bankrupt after victory over the Nazis, felt aggrieved that, having won the war, they were now in the process of losing an empire. Maintaining forces in Palestine was expensive and there was mounting anger, exacerbated by the military struggle of the Irgun, at the Zionists — to the extent that there were riots in Britain to the point of open antisemitism. David Horowitz writes that Lt Col Martin Charteris, the head of military intelligence in Jerusalem, was “one of our most confirmed and unrelenting adversaries”. Charteris later became private secretary to the Queen during the early part of her reign.

The Palestine question polarised Britain politically. The Guardian tended to support the Zionists while the Daily Telegraph was lukewarm towards their aspirations. In cabinet, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin wanted a unitary state and opposed partition because in his eyes the Jewish problem began with the Nazis and ended with it.

The British case was that the Shoah had been “a solitary historical phenomenon” that would not be repeated. British policy was therefore directed at separating the aftermath of the Shoah from the Palestine question. But Atlee’s Cabinet was divided — Aneurin Bevan, the leader of the Labour Left, argued passionately for a Jewish state and even threatened to resign over British conduct in Palestine.

Britain famously abstained in the vote for partition and took eight months to formally recognise Israel after it had declared independence in May 1948 — while the Americans took 11 minutes. Yet the British dominions Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and led by Canada all deserted Britain on 29 November 1947 and voted in favour of a two-state solution.

Despite its virulent anti-Zionism in the past, the Soviet Union supported the emergence of a state for the Jews. But at the same time it arrested those Soviet Jews who wished to leave for Israel and sentenced them to long years in the Gulag. Its external and internal policies were diametrically different.

Stalin believed that the Soviets could replace the British in the Middle East and prevent the Americans from entering that strategic space.

Conversely, some in the US administration — and certainly in the Republican party — feared that supporting the Zionists was not in the US national interest, given that a Jewish state would be led by Ben-Gurion with a left-wing coalition and that the mass immigration of Jews could open the way to Soviet infiltration.

Local Communist parties strongly supported the rise of Israel — in the spirit of the wartime anti-Nazi alliance. In France, the Communist party’s stance was typified in a speech in the National Assembly by Florimond Bonté, a member of its central committee. He argued that the fight of the Jews in Palestine was on a par with other anti-imperialist liberation struggles: the Greek partisan, the soldier in the Chinese popular army, the Spanish combatant, the democrats in Vietnam, the Indonesian patriots, the Hindu resistant were all comrades of the battle waged by the soldiers of the Haganah.

The Shoah was the great leveller. Figures such as Golda Meir and Abba Hillel Silver who had opposed partition previously now accepted it as the only realistic proposition. The Religious Zionists were divided while many anti-Zionist charedi survivors of the Shoah argued that sanctuary in the Land of Israel took precedence over ideology.

Yet many Zionists on the Right continued to condemn partition. The approach of Menahem Begin’s Irgun was the most detailed, articulate and scathing of the right-wing groups on partition. A broadcast from the Voice of Fighting Zion in September 1947 described the architects of partition as “Jewish Vichyites” and predicted that in the near future “the people will put them on trial” for their past and present misdemeanours. Begin refused to recognise the 29 November 1947 resolution and regarded any decision as an illegal measure which would eventually be annulled.

The events of 29 November 1947 were the result of the sudden opening of many windows of opportunities — a few months later it would have been too late.
Many saw the vote as a result of divine providence. Others viewed it as based on the free will and consequent actions of Moshe Sharett, Abba Eban, David Horowitz and their many colleagues.

None however disputed the contention that this decision of the UN 75 years was one of the momentous in Jewish history.

Colin Shindler’s latest book Israel: A History in 100 Cartoons will be published by Cambridge University Press next month