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(If the H in history stands for hindsight) the decision by President Truman to recognize Israel in 1948, in hindsight, is in fact significant. But, in the context of 1948, the decision to recognize Israel by Stalin and his eastern European allies (training and supplying Jewish fighters since 1945; running operations to assist Jewish organizations to resettle thousands of surviving European Jews in Palestine) was the one that truly mattered. The U.S. diplomatic and intelligence communities were aware of what the Soviet bloc was doing to help establish a Jewish state, which they presumed would not be a part of the Western bloc. And the top Israeli politicians belonged to a socialist political party. Leo Gluchowski Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies University of Toronto
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