“Tell me, young fella, when was the last time you were in America?”
Henry – I don’t remember his second name – was talking to me.
“Me? Never.”
“Aha!” bayoneted Henry. “So there you have it. Here you have one of your own staff sitting here not knowing a thing about us, with no idea of the communities we come from, no idea how we organize ourselves, no idea how we volunteer our precious time, no idea what American Jewry – ”
“So why don’t you give him an idea,” interrupted the prime minister, laughter in his voice. “Invite him. You have my permission.”
“Okay, we will. We’ll invite him on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“That he keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t make a single speech. We’ll host him for a month or so and show him what the American Jewish community looks like. And you” – he was talking to me again – “you will observe, listen, ask as many questions as you like, and come back knowing a bit more about us than you do today. Is that a deal?”
“It’s a deal,” chuckled Eshkol on my behalf. “Will Independence, Missouri, be on his itinerary?”
“If need be. It’s close to Kansas City. There’s a generous Jewish community in Kansas City.”
“In that case,” said Eshkol, with a smile of satisfaction, handing me the Truman letter, “you’ll be my courier and deliver this in person to the president as a token of my respect.”
Head bubbling with anticipation, I thanked Henry profusely for his invitation – an invitation that took me across the continent to communities large and small, and which brought me, ultimately, to the front door of the former president of the United States, Harry S. Truman.
Two hundred and nineteen North Delaware Street, Independence, Missouri, was a spacious, rustic, white Victorian residence, with steep gables, corniced eaves, squared bay windows, and an elongated porch extravagantly decorated with elaborate ironwork.
The taxi driver who took me there was proud of its birthright, telling me in his flat-as-Kansas drawl that Bess Truman’s maternal grandfather had built the house in 1860. Mr. and Mrs. Harry Truman had been living in it for the best part of fifty years, he said, and between 1945 and 1953, when Truman was president, it was known as the Summer White House.
A trimly attired middle-aged black maid answered the door and, informed of my purpose, said I was expected and bade me enter. She led me into the front parlor, took charge of the prime minister’s letter, and told me to wait.
The parlor was a venerable repository of heirlooms. On the mantelpiece of the marble fireplace were all sorts of White House memorabilia, most notably a bronze miniature of Andrew Jackson on horseback. In one corner stood a piano, displaying the musical score of a piece called The Missouri Waltz, whose notes I tried to fathom.
“I don’t give a damn about that waltz, young man, but I can’t say that out loud in public because it’s the state song of Missouri.”
Harry S. Truman was standing in the doorway, his celebrated vim and vigor belying his eighty-odd years – though he did look his age. He was leaning on a cane, his famous face drawn and bony, his eyes disproportionately large behind thick steel-rimmed glasses. Buttoned up and scarved, he wore a dapper fedora on his head.
“I’m about to take my daily walk, young man,” he said sprightly, “and I’d be pleased if you would care to join me.”
A Secret Service agent maintained a discreet distance as Mr. Truman stepped out into the street and began walking with stiff, short steps. As I adjusted to his pace, he chuckled, “Old lady Anno Domini has been chasing me recently, so I have to take it a bit slowly.” Then, genially, “Very kind of Prime Minister Eshkol to send you personally to deliver his letter, and kinder still to give me such credit for your nation’s independence. But the man he really ought to be thanking is Eddie Jacobson, not me.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Because when I wavered – and I wavered a lot – it was Eddie who made sure I kept America’s weight behind Israeli statehood when it was most needed.”
He paused at the memory of the man, and muttered, “Dear old Eddie. Best friend a man could ever have – honest to a fault. May he rest in peace.”
Truman’s voice mellowed when he spoke thus of his World War I buddy and longtime business partner. It mellowed even more when he confided, “Except for one time when he wanted me to see a Zionist leader I was not anxious to see, in all our thirty years of friendship there was never a sharp word between Eddie and me – and we had been through some tough times together, believe me. There was the Great War, and then our haberdashery venture, which was no howling success.”
Edward Jacobson was the son of impoverished Lithuanian Jewish immigrants who moved from New York’s Lower East Side to Kansas City. His biographers describe him as short, cheerful, and conscientious, with glasses and rapidly thinning hair. The haberdashery store, “Truman and Jacobson,” specialized in “gents’ furnishings” – shirts, socks, ties, belts, underwear, and hats. Harry kept the books, Eddie did the buying, and both took turns with the customers. The store opened for business in November 1919 and went under in 1934, crushed by the Great Depression.
“Good morning, Mr. Truman. Nice day, wouldn’t you say?”
The ex-president looked up at the clouds scudding across the pale sky, sniffed the air and, tipping his hat to the elderly lady passing us by, amiably replied, “It sure is a nice day, Betsy. My best to Jim.”
“Betsy’s an old neighbor,” he explained affectionately. And then, “So when Eddie came barging in to see me unannounced one day at the Oval Office – it must have been sometime in March forty-eight – I was surprised. In all my years in Washington he had never ever done that – never had he asked me for a thing. But on that day in the White House he was visibly upset. He said he wanted to talk to me about Palestine.”
We were walking down a tree-lined street flanked by homes built with traditional Victorian-era elegance, much like his own. Suddenly, he halted, appalled. “Just look at that!” he snapped.
In the gutter lay two empty beer cans. President Harry S. Truman crouched down, scooped them up, tossed them into a wastebasket, dusted his hands, and groused, “Most mornings I have to do that nowadays, pick up litter. It’s the Kansas City folk swallowing up Independence.”
The rueful acceptance of this unhappy circumstance seemed to trigger a sensitive nerve, for he suddenly turned on me and crisply exclaimed, “Let’s cut out the crap. I’ll tell you exactly why I was upset with Eddie when he came barging into my Oval Office – because his Zionist friends had been badgering me no end. Some were so disrespectful and mean to me I didn’t want any more truck with them. Many chose to believe that their Zionist program was the same as my U.S. Palestine policy. It was not. They wanted me to engage America to stop Arab attacks on the Jews in Palestine, keep the British from supporting the Arabs, deploy American soldiers to do this, that, and the other. And all the while the British were putting it about that my interest in helping the Jews enter Palestine was because I didn’t want them in America.”
He pressed his lips together, showing his pique and, throwing me a piercing glance, went on, “I’ll teach you an important lesson young man: never kick a turd on a hot day. And those were hot days. My patience was being drawn so tight I issued instructions that I didn’t want to see any more Zionist spokesmen. That’s why I had put off seeing Dr. Weizmann. He had come to the States especially to meet me. But Eddie was insistent I see him right away. I told him that if I saw Dr. Weizmann it would only result in more wrong interpretations of my Palestine policy. I’d had enough of that.”
We had reached a bench at the end of the street, under a large and spectacular tree. “This is where I usually catch my breath,” he said, sitting down.
I had the distinct impression he was trying to contain his cross feelings about those American Zionist activists who had come banging on his White House door, but his fixed eye and contracted brow showed that
the sting of his recollection was too sharp to suppress.
“Because of them I had words with Eddie,” he said vehemently. “He knew that the fate of the Jewish victims of Hitlerism was a matter of deep personal concern to me. The extermination of the Jews was one of the most shocking crimes of all times. Hitler’s war against the Jews was not just a Jewish problem, it was an American problem. I had been seized of the issue from the day I became president. And now things had reached a point when I wanted to let the whole Palestine partition matter run its course in the United Nations. That’s where it belonged.”
He was sitting hunched on the edge of the bench, his chin resting on the handle of his cane, the picture of small-town genuineness. This man from the rural Midwest who had never been to a college, nor made a pretense of erudition, was giving me a taste of his celebrated reputation for relentless talking in a language that was plain, straightforward, decisive and honest.
“Let’s go,” he said, stiffly getting to his feet. He leaned hard on his cane, looked up at the lofty branches that canopied the bench, and clucked, “What a fine tree this is. It’s a gingko.” Whereupon, he gave the trunk a little pat, and said to it affably, “You’re doing a good job.”
For the next ten minutes we walked in total silence, interrupted only by two schoolgirls who asked for his autograph. A clutch of tourists was waiting for him outside his house and they clapped as he approached. With enormous good grace he posed with them for snapshot after snapshot.
I thought this a propitious moment to take my leave, but Harry Truman insisted I remain. So I followed him into his front parlor where the maid, whom he called Vietta, told him his wife had just left for her church rummage sale. Vietta helped him take off his double-breasted jacket, bringing bright red suspenders into full view, and eased him into an armchair. Then she left, and came straight back with bourbon, coffee, and two thick volumes which President Truman explained were his memoirs, intended for me as a memento.
Taking a sip of his bourbon and pointing to the mantelpiece above the marble fireplace, he exclaimed, “You see that statue of Andrew Jackson?”
He was marking the miniature bronze of the seventh president of the United States, on horseback.
“I had that in my Oval Office. Jackson is my lifelong hero. So when Eddie confronted me that day in the White House, insisting I see Chaim Weizmann, he waved to that statue and reminded me that when we had the haberdashery store together I was forever reading books about Andrew Jackson. He also reminded me that I had put up a Jackson statue in a Kansas City square. Then, Eddie said, and I remember his exact words – he said, ‘Your hero is Andrew Jackson. I have a hero, too. He’s the greatest Jew alive. I’m talking about Chaim Weizmann. He’s an old man and very sick, and he has traveled thousands of miles to see you. And now you’re putting him off. This isn’t like you, Harry.’ That’s what he said. And I remember looking hard out of the window, and looking hard back at Eddie standing there, and my saying to him, “You baldheaded son-of-a-bitch. You win. I’ll see him.”
Wistfully, Truman went on, “Dr. Weizmann and I talked for almost an hour. He was a man of remarkable achievements and personality, who had known many disappointments and had grown patient and wise in them. He put it to me that the choice for his people was between statehood and extermination. It was then that I assured him that I would support Jewish statehood.”
Leaning back then, right foot on left knee, Harry Truman began to speak about his own State Department as if it was the enemy.
“I knew then what I had to do,” he said. “I had to handle those stripe-pants boys, the boys with the Harvard [he pronounced it ‘Ha-vud’] accents. Those State Department fellows were always trying to put it over on me about Palestine, telling me that I really didn’t understand what was going on there, and that I ought to leave it to the experts. Some were anti-Semitic, I’m sorry to say. Dealing with them was as rough as a cob. The last thing they wanted was instant American recognition of Jewish statehood. I had my own second thoughts and doubts, too. But I’d made my commitment to Dr. Weizmann. And my attitude was that as long as I was president, I’d see to it that I was the one who made policy, not the second or third echelons at the State Department. So, on the day the Jewish State was declared, I gave those officials about thirty minutes notice what I intended to do, no more, so that they couldn’t throw a spanner into the works. And then, exactly eleven minutes after the proclamation of independence, I had my press secretary, Charlie Ross, issue the announcement that the United States recognized Israel de facto. And that was that.”
A grin of self-satisfaction crept across his bony face as he took out his pen and dashed off an inscription to me on the title page of his memoirs. When I told him my son Danny was about to celebrate his bar mitzvah, he gladly inscribed the second volume to him.
Handing me the books, Harry Truman said, “Now, remind me, how did old Eddie use to say ‘congratulations’ in Hebrew – mozol something?”
“Tov,” I proffered.
“Yeah, ‘tov,’ that’s right. Mozol tov.” And he shook me warmly by the hand, with the command that I tender his personal best wishes to Prime Minister Eshkol, and thank him warmly for his letter.
Photograph credit: David Eldan & Israel Government Press Office
Prime Minister Levi Eshkol with British Prime Minister Harold Wilson at 10 Downing Street
Chapter 10
A Perfidious Syrian Design
Shortly after my return from the States, Eshkol summoned me to his office, listened to my brief report, and then, in a businesslike fashion, handed me a memo detailing a trip he was planning to London to confer with his fellow socialist, British prime minister Harold Wilson. He wanted Wilson to understand firsthand the implications of the perfidious Syrian design to divert the headwaters of the Jordan River, and to initiate negotiations for the acquisition of British weaponry in an effort to deter future escalation. Most particularly, he wanted the new British tank, the Chieftain.
Nurturing lsrael’s sparse water resources had always been Eshkol’s abiding passion, and it was common knowledge that he was familiar with every stretch of every irrigation pipeline in the country. Hence the Syrian stratagem, backed by other Arab states led by Egypt, was to him not only an abominable act of belligerency, but an outrageous personal affront as well.
“Prepare me an airport arrival statement,” he instructed. “Just a few lines. Try and say something without saying anything. And draft me a major speech for a dinner with the Joint Israel Appeal [now the United Jewish Israel Appeal]. It’s a black-tie affair. Every macher in Anglo-Jewry will be there.”
Panic-stricken at this sudden responsibility of drafting my first full-length speech, I croaked, “But what do you want to say?”
“Something inspirational. I’ll talk about our refugee immigrants, the ingathering of the exiles, their human needs, and our longing for peace. But for God’s sake, I don’t want to talk about Israel being a light unto the nations. I’ve heard enough about that. Let’s be a light unto ourselves first. And, oh yes, say a sentence or two about our National Water Carrier and Syria, but nothing too threatening. I don’t want to declare war in London.”
Came the day and Eshkol flew to Britain attired in a perfectly fitting dark suit and somber homburg, looking very much like a seasoned statesman. This being my first diplomatic trip I, too, tried to look the part when we disembarked from the El Al plane at Heathrow Airport, where the prime minister was greeted by children on the tarmac waving tiny blue and white flags and excitedly singing at the tops of their voices “Heveinu shalom Aleichem” [We welcome you in peace]. They cheered wildly when he approached them, grinning and waving his hat like a pennant, and when he posed among them, tenderly stroking their heads and muttering over and over again, “Sheina Yiddisher kinderlach ” [beautiful Jewish children] their faces were radiant while cameras rolled, clicked, and flashed.
Inside the VIP lounge we were all greeted with gusto. A tall, handsome gentleman of elega
nt grooming, whose resolute air was enhanced by a bristling ginger mustache, a tightly rolled umbrella and a bowler hat, introduced himself as Colonel So-and-So from the Protocol Office, and officially welcomed Prime Minister Eshkol in the name of Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Lots of Israeli officials, in addition to leaders of the Anglo-Jewish community, squeezed, hugged, and lauded Eshkol endlessly. And when these welcoming rites were done, the prime minister, surrounded by guards of different sorts – Scotland Yard, Metropolitan Police, Diplomatic Protection Squad, and the Israeli Security Service – strode outside to the bouquet of microphones at the edge of the press pen. With immense gravitas, he read his arrival statement which, mercifully, he had found the time to check and correct before landing. In his characteristic gravelly voice he said:
Israel and Great Britain have a long association. We share a history that was at times conflicted in the shadow of the greatest of tragedies that befell our people in World War Two. However, it is not the strife of the past that shapes our relationship, but the friendship of the present. This friendship binds our two democracies in an unbreakable alliance at a time when communist Russia is encouraging Syria and other regional dictatorships to engage in belligerent acts that demand our constant vigilance. I look forward to fruitful discussions with Prime Minister Wilson on this and on other topics of mutual interest, and am delighted at the opportunity to meet my fellow Jews, good citizens of this great land. Thank you.”9
Reporters barked a few predictable questions which the prime minister answered good-naturedly and unsubstantially, whereupon he clambered into a glistening Rolls Royce that was adorned with the Israeli flag, and set off along the highway to London followed by a fleet of limousines bearing his entourage, escorted by police cars and outriders in cavalry formation. Entering the West End, he was driven along prestigious streets, through beautiful parks, and around elegant squares into the heart of London’s classiest acre – Mayfair – and to its most exclusive hotel – Claridge’s.
The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership Page 14
