16 - Conclusion

Summary

The meaning of the terms “left” and “right” in 1945-9 regarding Israel were quite different than what they came to mean in global politics during the Cold War. The conclusion recalls that “Israel’s Moment” was the brief two years of 1947-9 marked by a conjuncture of liberal and left-leaning sentiment in the United States and France, and Western Europe with support for the Zionist project by the Soviet Union and the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. In these two years and in the four years following World War II and the Holocaust, the United States State Department, Pentagon, and the CIA shared the views of the British government that a Jewish state in Palestine would endanger Western access to Arab oil, foster Arab antagonism to the Britain and the United States, and would facilitate expansion of Soviet and communist influence in the Jewish state and thus in the Middle East. By contrast, those who supported the Zionist project did so with the language of antiracism, anticolonialism, and antifascism. As important as President Harry Truman’s support for the new state of Israel was, the diplomatic and military support from the Soviet bloc for that goal was far more persistent and emphatic than was often thought to be the case during the decades of the Cold War.