FDR and the Jewish State

[Matthew6:33]

I remember hearing something (in a sermon?) about FDR being antisemitic and being against the formation of the state of Israel. FDR died suddenly and his VP, Harry Truman took office. Truman reportedly was very pro-Israel (in contrast to many in his cabinet) and he backed them eleven minutes after Israel declared itself a nation.

Did FDR say Israel would never be a nation while he was president? I am trying to find info about this but it is hard to find for obvious reasons.

 

[mattfivefour]

There are very conflicting reports about FDR and the Jews. I think President Roosevelt was a man who, like most politicians, spoke according to what was politically expedient at any given moment and to any given audience ... to the Jews and their supporters one thing, to the Arabs another.

 

[Hol]

Here's one tragic incident: "A boat carrying 937 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution is turned away from Havana, Cuba, on May 27, 1939. Only 28 immigrants are admitted into the country. After appeals to the United States and Canada for entry are denied, the rest are forced to sail back to Europe, where they’re distributed among several countries including Great Britain and France."

Ship carrying 937 Jewish refugees, fleeing Nazi Germany, is turned away in Cuba | May 27, 1939 | HISTORY

A boat carrying 937 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution is turned away from Havana, Cuba, on May 27, 1939. Only 28 immigrants are admitted into the country; the rest are forced to return to Europe.

www.history.com

 

[Matthew6:33]

Been doing a little bit more digging on this topic and found a couple interesting articles.

Move over, Theodor Herzl, David Ben-Gurion, and Menachem Begin: it turns out that the man most responsible for the founding of Israel was, in fact, Franklin D. Roosevelt. This astonishing claim is being circulated by FDR partisans in a new effort to rescue their hero’s reputation in the Jewish world.

The depiction of Roosevelt as a Zionist hero, first presented in the 2006 book Saving the Jews, by divorce lawyer Robert Rosen, has recently been resurrected by Richard Breitman and Allan Lichtman in their new book, FDR and the Jews. Both works emphasize the president’s rhetoric rather than his policies. Boilerplate pro-Zionist messages sent by Roosevelt to Jewish organizational events serve their narratives better then his actual policies regarding Palestine and Zionism.

The case made by Breitman and Lichtman also relies heavily on bit of curious reasoning: since a German conquest of Palestine would have resulted in the destruction of the Jewish community there, and since U.S. military equipment played a significant role in the Allied defeat of the Nazis in North Africa, thus stopping the Germans from reaching Palestine, therefore FDR’s approval of the transfer of that equipment means that if not for Roosevelt, there would have been “no Jewish state, no Israel,” as they put it.

At about the same time the Breitman-Lichtman book came out earlier this year, I happened to be doing some research at the Central Zionist Archives, in Jerusalem. There I came across new documents that illustrate the contrast between FDR’s public expressions of sympathy for Zionism and his behind-the-scenes coldness on the subject.

One of the documents is an account by a prominent American Jewish leader, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, of a private meeting he had with President Roosevelt in January 1938. Wise was dismayed to hear FDR assert, “You know there is not room in Palestine for many more people–perhaps another hundred or hundred and fifty thousand.” Those figures apparently were provided by the president’s close adviser, geographer Isaiah Bowman, who was strongly anti-Zionist.

Franklin Roosevelt, Founder of Israel?

“Teddy Roosevelt’s great-great-great grandson is an anti-Israel protester at Princeton,” blared a New York Post headline on May 4, 2024.

The Post reported that Quentin Colon Roosevelt, an 18-year-old freshman, and descendant of the 25th President, is an anti-Israel activist at the Ivy League university. But far from being hip and new, Quentin’s brand of anti-Zionism is old hat — he is merely continuing a long family tradition of anti-Israel activism.

There is an abundance of literature on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s views on Jews and Zionism, the belief in Jewish self-determination. Both FDR and his wife Eleanor had made antisemitic remarks. In a private conversation in 1938, then-President Roosevelt suggested that by dominating the economy in Poland, Jews were themselves fueling antisemitism. And in a 1941 Cabinet meeting, FDR remarked that there were too many Jewish Federal employees in Oregon. In his final days, FDR promised Saudi leader Abdul Aziz Ibn al Saud that he would oppose the creation of Jewish state in the Jewish people’s ancestral homeland.

Hating Israel Isn’t New; How the CIA and State Department Undermined the Jewish State

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The reason for my interest in this topic is purely prophetic. It is said that after FDR had the conversation with the Saudi leader stating he would oppose the creation of the Jewish homeland, he died shortly after, and Truman became President. Truman was instrumental in the support and creation of the Jewish state.

It is also interesting how many Jewish people are big supporters of FDR but do not realize (or acknowledge) his policies (and some statements) were not in support of the Jewish people at all.

There are several books on this topic:

The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust and
FDR and the Holocaust: A Breach of Faith by Rafael Medoff