Charles Krauthammer rightly wrote that today’s American Jews are living in “a miraculous age,” that of the rebirth of our Jewish people’s homeland’s independent sovereignty after eighteen hundred years. I have in my Israel book collection a few about American Jews, many of them young WW II vets, who at the time felt moved to aid Palestinian Jews in achieving that momentous rebirth. Here are my choices for moving reads.
Yes, we rightly revere President Truman for having stood up against the State Department’s “striped pants boys” and achieve Partition by two-thirds vote in 1947 in the UN. But the US embargoed arms “to the Mideast,” effectively only to Israel. This moving book, Leonard Slater’s The Pledge, recounts Israelis’ and Americans’ efforts in the US during the Mandate’s last days and then upon independence to supply the Jewish state arms to throw back the Arab invasion for its destruction.
I’d never heard of this book on US and Canadian WW II vets fighting for Israel in its War of Independence until I stumbled upon it, and am exceedingly glad that I did. PM Netanyahu in his Foreword calls it “riveting,” and I agree. These experienced fighters were invaluable in air force and armor, primitive as those branches of the new IDF were, and this book grippingly recounts how they were and what motivated them.
The American military man most deeply involved in the high command of Israel’s army in 1948 was of course Col. Mickey Marcus. This book, Ted Berkman’s Cast a Giant Shadow, though, isn’t centered on him but on Israel’s desperate struggle against the invading Arab armies and his influential role in Israel meeting it. It’s all in depth movingly here – the Negev, Latrun, the Burma Road, Jerusalem and more.
This book is in the “Aliyah Bet” section, but its subtitle is “The Untold Story of North American Volunteers Who Smashed the British Blockade of Palestine.” So read it, it’s exciting stuff, in this context too. These mostly young US WW II vets who sailed the US-originated refugee-bearing ships into the teeth of Palestine’s anti-Jewish British blockade, carried the bulk of its precious passengers.
And there’s another Israel book I classed elsewhere herein, but sheds important insights into Americans involvement in Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, Pressfield’s The Lion’s Gate. He dedicates the book to fighter pilot Lou Lenart, deeply involved in bringing in planes, in air battles and early air force command. And the motivations and role of other Americans, “Collie” Goldstein and others, are covered in flashbacks.
