Stalin’s hope was that Israel would be a springboard for the spread of Communism. When this hope didn’t mature, Stalin ordered the murder of all Jewish intellegencia in Russia.

http://history1900s.about.com/cs/holocaust/p/balfourdeclare.htm

As you might know, that was in 1917. Truman was still in school then, IIRC.
By the time Truman fell into the oval office, Israel was already a done deal. When the UN declared Israel a state in 1947, it was the culmination of a long process and recognition of the facts on the ground.

snipped from wikipedia;
“On May 14 1948, the last British forces left Haifa, and the Jewish Agency, led by David Ben-Gurion, declared the creation of the State of Israel, in accordance with the 1947 UN Partition Plan. Both U.S. President Harry S. Truman and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin immediately recognized the new state.”
Why don’t you give Stalin the bulk of the credit for Israel? He had more to do with it then Truman did.

You are just another in a long line of revisionist historians that are trying to do a make over of that worthless sack of shit’s Truman’s place in history.
Worst President ever. Worse then Bush, Carter and Clinton combined.

Take Truman out of the equation and Israel still exists, without much change in the actual events.
It was JFK that forged the ‘special’ relationship between Israel and the USA. IIRC, TRuman actually did as little as possible to support Israel, which is why the Israel used French fighters during that period instead of American. French and British armor instead of American.
That was the period when Truman’s stupid and cowardly containment policy was created. His only interest in Israel was to prevent it from falling into the Soviet sphere.

Ted, I’m sorry but you are misinformed. Roosavelt was infamously anti-semitic, as were all the moneyed elite of the era. He mouthed public sympathies toward the Jews, but privately (and not so privately) he talked in the vilest of terms with regard to Jews. Reading just about any biography of Roosavelt that is not a fawning whitewash will reveal just how deeply rooted his bigotry was. He was typical of his class and time. It wasn’t just jews, but blacks, Hispanics, Catholics and anyone else who was different in class, culture or race from him. Roosavelt was not a nice person!

Roosavelt absolutely would have found sufficient reason not to support a Jewish homeland. Certainly, the State Department (a hotbed of anti-semitism to this day) proved itself willing to throw up sufficient interference that he could have justified doing nothing. Certainly, it took more strength of character and humanity to accomplish what Truman did than Roosavelt ever displayed.

Truman was one of my favorite Dems after learning more about Israel and the Atom Bomb.

He was a good man.

Barack Obama will not act “unfriendly” towards Israel. As matter of fact, I expect him to constantly utter sentimental and well-meaning, mushy sounding rhetoric. Obama will stress that he is the best friend that Israel ever had. Tears may even well up in his eyes. The ultimate danger is that this very left-wing president will endanger the country with his naiveté and self-hating Western instincts. He is existentially committed to the notion that the white skinned Israeli establishment is victimizing the darker skin Palestinians.

The young Bavarian, Joseph Ratzinger, must have been in a quandary. He had just hit 14 and all 14 year old boys in Hitler’s Germany of 1941 were automatically drafted into the Hitler Youth, a paramilitary unit of the Nazi Party obligatory for all future Nazis. The Third Reich was designed to last a thousand years and it needed regular recruits to perpetuate its “Master Race.”

His older brother, Georg, was already enrolled even though their Catholic father was strongly opposed to der Feuher and all that godless Nazism represented. However, Joseph’s and Georg’s options were severely limited, unlike the largely-fantasized lives of Austrians, Maria Reiner and the von Trapp family in The Sound of Music. Their hills were alive with more than music and flight was unrealistic.

Besides, Joseph wanted to be a priest, even a cardinal, so his planbook didn’t include marriage and propagating. He retaliated by not bothering to attend required Hitler Youth meetings in a silent protest. Joseph was again drafted at 16, after entering the seminary, this time into the German anti-aircraft corps and he briefly trained for the infantry.

As World War Two was ending, he deserted from the German military, briefly became an Allied POW, re-entered the seminary, received Holy Orders, and went on to become a liturgical scholar, bishop, archbishop, and a cardinal.

In April, 2005 Joseph Alois Ratzinger succeeded Pope John Paul II when he was elected 265th Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Benedict XVI became sovereign head of the Vatican, Bishop of Rome, and leader of the world’s 1.13 billion Catholics.

Fast forward four years, which is where this article is going. It required a short intro just as a personal admission is in order.

As a Catholic, I have major issues with my Church, especially but not limited to its infestation by homosexuals who have disgraced and all but impoverished the Catholic Church with their perversions.

My other issues range from disagreements with the Second Vatican Council to ordaining women as priests to permitting priests to marry, marry women, that is. Such changes would go a long way toward cleaning up the mess the Church is in.

As for regretting the excesses of the Crusades and the Inquisition, they are such old news they don’t merit regrets or apologies in A.D. 2009. Others should follow suit in burying the past.

I should also add that I am of Irish extraction with no known connections or relatives in Germany, Austria, or in any of the neighboring Benelux countries. Point is, I don’t have a national dog in the fight between Pope Benedict and Israelis and, unfortunately, there is a very mean fight in progress.

This pope, in my estimation, is a good man, a man who has experienced and dealt with life up very closely and very personally. He has seen and resisted evil incarnate in Hitler and Nazism and what he witnessed has clearly colored his life and thinking.

I would not sanctify him as a future saint, as I would his predecessor, Pope John Paul II. Sainthood requires far more proof of holiness and more longevity in his current position.

He also is a peace-loving man, as most popes and other spiritual leaders have tended to be in the last 500 years or so. In that role as peace advocate, if he were to “take sides,” any hopes for accomplishing any true peace on Earth would be dashed against the rocks of divisive political sectarianism and nationalistic bluster.

And, so, Pope Benedict XVI went to the MidEast, to a Holy Land that has been immersed in violent turmoil for 6 decades, if not for 2000 years. To an objective observer, based on the reactions of some to his journey, it would seem this 82 year old holy man took this road trip for the sole purpose of stirring up trouble.

He was received well enough in Jordan on what the Vatican termed a ”journey of faith,” of peace, and renewal, a pilgrimage intent on avoiding political intrigues and entrapment: xxhttp://www.zenit.org/rssenglish-25775.

In Israel, he encountered what can best be described as a cool welcome, something shy of wild enthusiasm. At worst, he was received with outright condemnation.

Israel is still steeped in a seething, unrelenting anger against Germany for the Holocaust, three generations and more since Hitler’s war was ended by Allied troops and after those Allies freed the concentration camp survivors. Sixty-four years may not be sufficient time for Jews to consign memories of the Holocaust to an awful era of their history.

The matter of Jewish antipathy toward the papacy is more complex. It should have been so consigned years ago since the initial disdainful and rude reaction to Benedict’s visit is rooted in a misconception, namely what they regard as Pope Pius XII’s inadequate response to Jewish refugees during the Second World War.

That canard has long been floating around but the best recent Jewish recognition of its inaccuracy is this grudging, almost sarcastic, report that Pius XII saved 24 Jewish refugees, “just weeks after German occupiers rounded up about 2,000 Roman Jews on Oct. 16 and deported them to Auschwitz.” (http://jta.org/news/article/2009/03/05/1003472/vatican-document-shows-pius-xii-saved-jews)

A far more exhaustive and objective article refuting the charge of Pius’ disregard for the Jewish plight and his designation in one book as “Hitler’s Pope,” can be found here: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/dalin.html.

A more pertinent question may be, If Pope Pius XII is to be condemned, why should not the United States, and FDR, be condemned for failing to rescue Jewish refugees in the 1940’s? After all, FDR turned back a boatload of them and had far less compassion, although . . .

(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com/)

Israel must leave the UN as soon as possible. Staying in it only shows that Israel is acting like a battered wife, staying with a husband who beats her senseless every night. After Israel would leave the UN, that organization would have almost nothing to do, as it has spent the great majority of its time, since its inception, passing anti-Israel resolutions and working for Israel’s demise.

P.S. The UN is one of the most destructive, and dumbest, ideas that has ever been implemented. Anyone who thinks that the existence of an empowered, peerless, competitionless entity is a constructive venture is just too stupid for words. While it’s true that the UN was not really empowered until 1991 (when Bush Sr. stupidly empowered the institution as the USSR fell – one of the dumbest moves in all of human history), just the idea of creating such an entity was a testament to the stupidity of people.