Harry S. Truman
US president: the atomic bomb, the Marshall Plan—and the recognition of Israel
He recognized the State of Israel eleven minutes after the declaration of independence, on 14 May 1948 (5708 AM)—against the express advice of his own State Department and War Department, which warned that recognition would draw America into a war and cost it Arab oil. The recognition was de facto and not de jure, and that too is worth stating exactly: de jure recognition came in January 1949.
The familiar story that he was moved by his boyhood friendship with Eddie Jacobson is not an invention: Jacobson did persuade him to receive Chaim Weizmann in March 1948, when Truman was refusing to receive Zionist figures at all. But the decision cannot be reduced to that conversation.
On the timeline
Sources
Documents of the period
- De facto recognition, 14 May 1948; de jure, January 1949 — the eleven minutes; the State Department's objections
Basis: documents and evidence.