To the Gates of Jerusalem: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, 1945-1947

Not originally intended for publication, this contemporaneously written insider's account by trusted Truman-appointee James G. McDonald reveals how closely today's struggles between Israelis and Arabs are a legacy of little-known and confidential events of the years preceding Israel's formation. In the wake of World War II, Jews, Arabs, and Europeans began a new chapter in the struggle for Palestine. Would the Holy Land remain a part of the British Empire? Would it win its independence under the Arabs, joining Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon in breaking the bonds of European rule? Or would Palestine provide, after nineteen centuries, a reconstituted national home for the Jews, who had been promised a homeland during World War I, and who had just suffered the greatest catastrophe in their history? As Palestine simmered with suspicion, resentment, and violence, the British and U.S. governments referred these questions to an unlikely group of twelve politicians, diplomats, jurists, and scholars, known as the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. This group, of which James McDonald was a pivotal member, offered a dramatic platform for all contending voices. Zionist leaders ranging from David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir to Holocaust rescuers and survivors emphasized the idea of a Jewish people, its ancient connection to the land, the curse of national homelessness, and the need for a Jewish state. Arab speakers including monarchs, Islamicists, and Arab nationalists were equally adamant. Insisting that Europe's Jewish question was not theirs to solve, minimizing the Holocaust as simply another persecution, and equating Zionism with aggressive European nationalism, they pledged never to accept a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The issue was partially resolved through war in 1948. But the impassioned arguments from the immediate aftermath of World War II remain very much alive, reminding us that there was nothing inevitable about the birth of the modern state of Israel. And it is entirely possible that it would not have come about were it not for the determined efforts of James G. McDonald. Following the widely praised Advocate for the Doomed (IUP, 2007) and Refugees and Rescue (IUP, 2009), this stand-alone work is the anxiously awaited third of a projected four volumes that significantly revise the ways that scholars and the world view the Holocaust and its aftermath.