When I took a Modern Middle East class, I remember something about a king (I wanna say it was the Saudi king?) discussing the Israel situation with FDR. The story went something like FDR explaining they wanted to make an ethnic homeland for Jewish people because of what the Nazis had done, and the king was sympathetic but points out “Why not give them land seized from the Germans if the Germans were responsible? Why take land from Arabs who had nothing to do with it?” Allegedly, FDR admitted it was a good point and promised to discuss it later, but died before he could, and Truman just went ahead and supported Israel.
We also read a letter a Jewish person from the region had written around the time of Israel’s creation where he pleaded with the West not to force the creation of the state by stealing Arab land, pointing out they had a peaceful relationship within Palestinian Muslims and that stealing land to make an ethno-state would just agitate the region and make them hostile to the people Europeans were claiming to protect. He asked why it wasn’t possible to just create a Jewish homeland in the US if it was so important and the US cared so much, especially since the US had so much land. I think he also mentioned the fact most of the Jewish people being sent to Palestine to found Israel were European first, and there was a cultural and linguistic rift between them and the Jewish people actually already living there.
That class was the only instance in the US I’ve ever heard these points of view. Not counting online communist spaces.
When I took a Modern Middle East class, I remember something about a king (I wanna say it was the Saudi king?) discussing the Israel situation with FDR. The story went something like FDR explaining they wanted to make an ethnic homeland for Jewish people because of what the Nazis had done, and the king was sympathetic but points out “Why not give them land seized from the Germans if the Germans were responsible? Why take land from Arabs who had nothing to do with it?” Allegedly, FDR admitted it was a good point and promised to discuss it later, but died before he could, and Truman just went ahead and supported Israel.
We also read a letter a Jewish person from the region had written around the time of Israel’s creation where he pleaded with the West not to force the creation of the state by stealing Arab land, pointing out they had a peaceful relationship within Palestinian Muslims and that stealing land to make an ethno-state would just agitate the region and make them hostile to the people Europeans were claiming to protect. He asked why it wasn’t possible to just create a Jewish homeland in the US if it was so important and the US cared so much, especially since the US had so much land. I think he also mentioned the fact most of the Jewish people being sent to Palestine to found Israel were European first, and there was a cultural and linguistic rift between them and the Jewish people actually already living there.
That class was the only instance in the US I’ve ever heard these points of view. Not counting online communist spaces.