ABSTRACT
In the Autumn of 1941, the chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive for Palestine suggested a novel thesis to his colleagues in London: the achievement of a maximalist Zionist program depended upon capturing American public opinion. Reviewing his political movement’s fortunes since the start of World War II, David Ben Gurion pointed out that the British Mandatory power had relentlessly adhered to the restrictive 1939 White Paper immigration quota, and most recently had failed to live up to its promise of a Jewish division to fight the legions of Adolf Hitler. Already the previous March, Ben Gurion had proposed a two-fold program of action to his associates regarding the future of Palestine: strengthen the Haganah defense force there to form a Jewish army, and demand independence after the war as a means of bringing millions of needy European Jews to the national homeland with all speed. The United States, much more disinterested in Palestine than Great Britain, and therefore able to take a more objective view, also possessed the largest Jewish community in the world. That great mass of five million Jews, Ben Gurion argued on the basis of previous visits to America, supported the effort of the Yishuv (Jewish Palestinian community) in principle. The general American public, he thought, could also be won over to support the establishment of “Palestine as a Jewish Commonwealth immediately after the war.” Ben Gurion would leave for the United States to undertake this mission (See Appendix, No. 1, below). 1
