When Israel declared it's independence on May 14, 1948, President Harry Truman required all of 11 minutes to recognize the Jewish state.
"Truman wrote:
'Hitler had been murdering Jews right and left. I saw it, and I dream about it even to this day. The Jews needed some place where they could go. It is my attitude that the American government couldn't stand idly by while the victims [of] Hitler's madness are not allowed to build new lives.'"
Harry S. Truman - Wiki
Gore Vidal offers JFK's version of Harry's dream:
"Sometime in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and occasional historian, John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948, Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president.
"Then an American Zionist brought him two million dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign train.
'That's why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.'
"As neither Jack nor I was an anti-Semite (unlike his father and my grandfather) we took this to be just another funny story about Truman and the serene corruption of American politics."
Jewish History, Jewish Religion...
"Truman wrote:
'Hitler had been murdering Jews right and left. I saw it, and I dream about it even to this day. The Jews needed some place where they could go. It is my attitude that the American government couldn't stand idly by while the victims [of] Hitler's madness are not allowed to build new lives.'"
Harry S. Truman - Wiki
Gore Vidal offers JFK's version of Harry's dream:
"Sometime in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and occasional historian, John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948, Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president.
"Then an American Zionist brought him two million dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign train.
'That's why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.'
"As neither Jack nor I was an anti-Semite (unlike his father and my grandfather) we took this to be just another funny story about Truman and the serene corruption of American politics."
Jewish History, Jewish Religion...