The hidden history of how the U.S. was used to create Israel
Alison Weir
2014
LOUIS BRANDEIS, ZIONISM, AND THE "PARUSHIM"
In 1912 prominent Jewish American attorney Louis Brandeis, who was to go on to become a Supreme Court Justice, became a Zionist. [27] Within two years he became head of the international Zionist Central Office, newly moved to America from Germany. [28]
While Brandeis is an unusually well known Supreme Court Justice, most Americans are unaware of the significant role he played in World War I and of his connection to Palestine.
Some of this work was done with Felix Frankfurter, who became a Supreme Court Justice two decades later.
Perhaps the aspect of Brandeis that is least known to the general public – and often even to academics – is the extent of his zealotry and the degree to which he used covert methods to achieve his aims.
While today Brandeis is held in high esteem by almost all Americans, there was significant opposition at the time to his appointment to the Supreme Court, largely centered on widespread accusations of unethical behavior. A typical example was the view that Brandeis was "a man who has certain ideals in his imagination, but who is utterly unscrupulous in method in reaching them." [29]
Such criticisms of Brandeis are either ignored or attributed to political differences and/or "anti-Semitism" today,[30] however there is evidence suggesting that such views were more accurate than Brandeis partisans would like.
In 1982 historian Bruce Allen Murphy reported, in a book that won a Certificate of Merit from the American Bar Association, that Brandeis and Frankfurter had secretly collaborated over many years on numerous covert political activities. Zionism was one of them. [31]
"In one of the most unique arrangements in the Court's history, Brandeis enlisted Frankfurter, then a professor at Harvard Law School, as his paid political lobbyist and lieutenant," writes Murphy, in his book The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection: The Secret Political Activities of Two Supreme Court Justices."Working together over a period of 25 years, they placed a network of disciples in positions of influence, and labored diligently for the enactment of their desired programs." [32]
"This adroit use of the politically skillful Frankfurter as an intermediary enabled Brandeis to keep his considerable political endeavors hidden from the public," continues Murphy. [33]
Brandeis only mentioned the arrangement to one other person, Murphy writes, "another Zionist lieutenant– Court of Appeals Judge Julian Mack." [34]
One reason Brandeis and Frankfurter kept their arrangement secret was that such behavior by a sitting Supreme Court justice is considered highly unethical. As an editorial in the New York Times pointed out following the publication of Murphy's book,
"... the Brandeis-Frankfurter arrangement was wrong. It serves neither history nor ethics to judge it more kindly, as some seem disposed to do... the prolonged, meddlesome Brandeis-Frankfurter arrangement violates ethical standards."
The Times reiterates a point also made by Murphy: the fact that Brandeis and Frankfurter kept their arrangement secret demonstrated that they knew it was unethical – or at least realized that the public would view it as such: "They were dodging the public’s appropriate measure of fitness." [35] Later, when Frankfurter himself became a Supreme Court Justice, he used similar methods, "placing his own network of disciples in various agencies and working through this network for the realization of his own goals."
These included both Zionist objectives and "Frankfurter‘s stewardship of FDR‘s programs to bring the U.S. into battle against Hitler."[36]Murphy notes,
Their activities were "part of a vast, carefully planned and orchestrated political crusade undertaken first by Brandeis through Frankfurter and then by Frankfurter on his own to accomplish extrajudicial political goals." [37]
Alison Weir, If Americans Knew
Frankfurter had joined the Harvard faculty in 1914 at the age of 31, a post gained after a Brandeis-initiated donation from financier Jacob Schiff to Harvard created a position for Frankfurter.[38]
"... for the next 25 years, Frankfurter shaped the minds of generations of the nation's most elite law students."[39]
After Brandeis become head of the American Zionist movement, he "created an advisory council– an inner circle of his closest advisers– and appointed Felix Frankfurter as one of its members." [40]
The Parushim
Even more surprising to this author – and even less well-known both to the public and to academics – is Brandeis’s membership in a secret society that covertly pushed Zionism both in the U.S. and internationally.[41]
Israeli professor Dr. Sarah Schmidt first reported this information in an article about the society published in 1978 in the American Jewish Historical Quarterly. She also devoted a chapter to the society in a 1995 book. Schmidt writes: "The image that emerges of the Parushim is that of a secret underground guerilla force determined to influence the course of events in a quiet, anonymous way."
Author and former New York Times editor Peter Grose, sympathetic to Zionism,[42] also reported on it in both a book and several subsequent articles.[43] According to Grose, Brandeis was a leader of "an elitist secret society called the Parushim, the Hebrew word for ‘Pharisees’ and ‘separate,’ which grew out of Harvard’s Menorah Society."[44]
Grose writes that Brandeis used the Parushim "as a private intellectual cadre, a pool of manpower for various assignments." [45] Brandeis recruited ambitious young men, often from Harvard, to work on the Zionist cause – and further their careers in the process.
"As the Harvard men spread out across the land in their professional pursuits," Grose reports, "their interests in Zionism were kept alive by secretive exchanges and the trappings of a fraternal order. Each invited initiate underwent a solemn ceremony, swearing the oath 'to guard and to obey and to keep secret the laws and the labor of the fellowship, its existence and its aims.'" [46]At the secret initiation ceremony, new members were told:
"You are about to take a step which will bind you to a single cause for all your life. You will for one year be subject to an absolute duty whose call you will be impelled to heed at any time, in any place, and at any cost. And ever after, until our purpose shall be accomplished, you will be fellow of a brotherhood whose bond you will regard as greater than any other in your life– dearer than that of family, of school, of nation." [47]
While Brandeis was a key leader of the Parushim, an academic named Horace M. Kallen was its founder, creating it in 1913. Kallen was an academic first hired by Woodrow Wilson, who was then president of Princeton, to teach English there. [48] When Kallen founded the Parushim he was a philosophy professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Kallen is generally considered the father of cultural pluralism.
In her book on Kallen, Schmidt includes more information on the society in a chapter entitled, "Kallen‘s Secret Army: The Parushim." She reports, "A member swearing allegiance to the Parushim felt something of the spirit of commitment to a secret military fellowship." [49]
"Kallen invited no one to become a member until the candidate had given specific assurances regarding devotion and resolution to the Zionist cause," Schmidt writes, "and each initiate had to undergo a rigorous analysis of his qualifications, loyalty, and willingness to take orders from the Order’s Executive Council." [50] Not surprisingly, it appears that Frankfurter was a member. [51]
‘We must work silently, through education and infection’
Members of the Parushim were quite clear about the necessity of keeping their activities secret. An early recruiter to the Parushim explained: "An organization which has the aims we have must be anonymous, must work silently, [52] and through education and infection rather than through force and noise." He wrote that to work openly would be "suicidal" for their objective. [53]
Grose describes how the group worked toward achieving its goals:
"The members set about meeting people of influence here and there, casually, on a friendly basis. They planted suggestions for action to further the Zionist cause long before official government planners had come up with anything. For example, as early as November 1915, a leader of the Parushim went around suggesting that the British might gain some benefit from a formal declaration in support of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine." [54] (More on this in the following chapter.)
Brandeis was a close friend of President Woodrow Wilson and used this access to advocate for the Zionist cause, at times serving as a conduit between British Zionists and the president. [55]
In 1916 President Wilson named Brandeis to the Supreme Court. At that time, as was required by standard ethics, Brandeis gave in to pressure to officially resign from all his private clubs and affiliations, including his leadership of Zionism. But behind the scenes he continued this Zionist work, quietly receiving daily reports in his Supreme Court chambers and issuing orders to his loyal lieutenants. [56]
When the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) was reorganized in 1918, Brandeis was listed as its "honorary president." However, he was more than just "honorary." As historian Donald Neff writes, "Through his lieutenants, he remained the power behind the throne." One of these lieutenants, of course, was Frankfurter. [57]
Zionist membership expanded dramatically during World War I, despite the efforts of some Jewish anti-Zionists, one of whom called the movement a "foreign, un-American, racist, and separatist phenomenon." [58]
* * *
[27] While Brandeis' beloved uncle, after whom he was named, had been a Zionist, it appears that Brandeis himself had not become a Zionist until later in life. The main person credited with his conversion to Zionism was a journalist named Jacob De Haas. De Haas had been sent to the U.S. ten years before Brandeis met him by Zionist founder Theodor Herzl to recruit Americans to the cause.
Peter Grose, "Louis Brandeis, Arthur Balfour and a Declaration That Made History," Moment 8, no. 10 (November 1983): 27-28. Online at http://search.opinionarchives.com/Summary/Moment/V8I10P27-1.htm.
According to its website, Moment Magazine is "North America's premier Jewish magazine." It was founded in 1975 by Elie Wiesel and Leonard Fein.
[28] Neff, Pillars, 10; Christison, Perceptions, 28; Robert John and Sami Hadawi, The Palestine Diary: 1914-1945, Britain's Involvement, Vol. 1, Reprint of Third Ed. (Charleston: BookSurge, 2006), 59.
[29] Urofsky, Melvin. Louis D. Brandeis: A Life. New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 2009, 438. Urofsky, an Israel partisan and Brandeis champion, while noting that the campaign against Brandeis centered on ethical questions, attributed the motivation to political differences.
[30] Regarding the possible role of anti-Semitism in the opposition to Brandeis, it seems that his ethnicity may actually have enhanced his chances. Many Jewish leaders, while disliking his Zionism, felt they must support him. Similarly, many non-Jews, fearful of being called anti-Semitic, remained silent. Journalist Gus Karger reported at the time that "many Senators who might base their opposition to him on sound and logical grounds, if he were a Presbyterian, are reluctant to take a stand, lest their opposition be misconstrued." (Urofsky, Brandeis, 440)
[31] Bruce Allen Murphy, The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection: The Secret Political Activities of Two Supreme Court Justices (New York: Oxford UP, 1982), 10.
Bruce Murphy is a judicial biographer and scholar of American Constitutional law and politics and is the Fred Morgan Kirby Professor of Civil Rights at Lafayette College. He holds a PhD from the University of Virginia. This book received a Certificate of Merit from the American Bar Association.
[32] Murphy, Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection, 10.
[33] Murphy, Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection, 10.
[34] Murphy, Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection, 44.
[35] New York Times, "Judging Judges, and History," editorial, February 18, 1982, Late City Final ed., Section A, http://www.nytimes.com/1982/02/18/opinion/judging-judges-and-history.html.
[36] Murphy, Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection, 10; back cover flap.
[37] Murphy, Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection, 11.
[38] Michael Alexander, Jazz Age Jews (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2001), 83.
[39] Murphy, Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection, 39.
[40] Murphy, Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection, 39.
[41] It is surprising how extremely buried this information remains. After I posted Sarah Schmidt's article on it (see footnote below) online in 2010 and mentioned it in my online and print drafts of this book, another book released this year mentions the society, but fails to report accurately on its covert nature and significant activities.
[42] A positive review of the book in Foreign Policy stated: "[Grose] is not a one-sided partisan; he exposes the faults and foibles of all concerned (above all, the State Department). What slant the book has derives from his chosen theme: that America and the Jewish state are 'bonded together' through history and shared values."
John C. Campbell, "Israel in the Mind of America," review of Israel in the Mind of America, by Peter Grose, Foreign Affairs, Spring 1984. Online at http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/38470/john-c-campbell/israel-in-the-mind-of-america.
[43] Sarah Schmidt, "The Parushim: A Secret Episode in American Zionist History," American Jewish Historical Quarterly 65, Dec (1975): 121-39. Online at http://ifamericansknew.org/history/parushim.html.
Sarah Schmidt, Horace M. Kallen: Prophet of American Zionism (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson, 1995), 77.
Dr. Sarah Schmidt teaches courses related to modern Jewish history at the Rothberg International School of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with an emphasis both on Israeli and American Jewish history. She is also associated with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (focused on "Israeli Security, Regional Diplomacy, and International Law") See http://jcpa.org/researcher/dr-sarah-schmidt.
Peter Grose, Israel in the Mind of America (New York: Knopf, 1984).
"Peter Grose Papers, 1942-1999: Preliminary Finding Aid," Princeton University Library, accessed January 1, 2014, http://findingaids.princeton.edu/collections/MC227.
Peter Grose was an editor and specialist on the history of intelligence and an editor for the New York Times and Foreign Affairs. He held a position at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He is the author of a number of books on modern U.S. history.
[44] Peter Grose, Israel in the Mind of America (New York: Knopf, 1984), 53.
[45] Peter Grose, "Brandeis, Balfour and a Declaration," 31.
[46] Grose, Mind of America, 53.
The Menorah Society was also a largely a Zionist organization, and was similarly secretive about this. An essay from the time states that the Menorah Society "camouflaged its Zionism by organizing itself as a purely nonpartisan body so as to obtain a larger membership." The writer reports that "practically all the leaders and active workers in the Menorah organization are Zionists… the thing of which the Menorah boasts now… is its little list of prize conversions to Zionism."
Mark Raider, "Pioneers and Pace-Setters: Boston Jews and American Zionism," in Jews of Boston, ed. Jonathan Sarna, et al (New Haven: Yale UP, Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, 2005), 256.
[47] Sarah Schmidt, "The Parushim: A Secret Episode in American Zionist History," American Jewish Historical Quarterly 65, Dec (1975): 121-39. Online at http://ifamericansknew.org/history/parushim.html.
Schmidt writes: "The image that emerges of the Parushim is that of a secret underground guerilla force determined to influence the course of events in a quiet, anonymous way."
Schmidt gives the entire oath and response of the Parushim initiation:
"A member swearing allegiance to the Parushim felt something of the spirit of commitment to a secret military fellowship. At the initiation ceremony the head of the Order informed him:
'You are about to take a step which will bind you to a single cause for all your life. You will for one year be subject to an absolute duty whose call you will be impelled to heed at any time, in any place, and at any cost. And ever after, until our purpose shall be accomplished, you will be fellow of a brotherhood whose bond you will regard as greater than any other in your life—dearer than that of family, of school, of nation. By entering this brotherhood, you become a self-dedicated soldier in the army of Zion. Your obligation to Zion becomes your paramount obligation... It is the wish of your heart and of your own free will to join our fellowship, to share its duties, its tasks, and its necessary sacrifices.'
The initiate responded by swearing:
'Before this council, in the name of all that I hold dear and holy, I hereby vow myself, my life, my fortune, and my honor to the restoration of the Jewish nation, -to its restoration as a free and autonomous state, by its laws perfect in justice, by its life enriching and preserving the historic speech, the culture, and the ideals of the Jewish people.
To this end I dedicate myself in behalf of the Jews, my people, and in behalf of all mankind.
To this end I enroll myself in the fellowship of the Parushim. I pledge myself utterly to guard and to obey and to keep secret the laws and the labor of the fellowship, its existence and its aims. Amen."
Schmidt reports that Henrietta Szold, founder of Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization, was an early member of the Parushim.
She writes: "Brandeis … began to assign the Parushim to carry out special 'missions' for him. In particular the Parushim were to serve as a school for leaders, and under Kallen's direction its members initially became the leading activists of the reorganized American Zionist movement."
Among those invited to be members were "Alexander Dushkin, an authority on Jewish education; Dr. I.L. Kandel, an educator then with the Carnegie Foundation and Teacher's College of Columbia University; Israel Thurman, a lawyer and 'Harvard man,' who would be used to propagandize among young lawyers; Nathan C. House, a 'Columbia man,' high school teacher, who could work out plans for training Jewish high school boys," I.J. Biskind, a doctor in Cleveland; Stephen S. Wise, prominent Reform Rabbi and leader in the Jewish Community; Oscar Straus; Alexander Sachs, a graduate student in economics at Columbia University; David Shapiro, an agricultural student at the University of California; Jesse Sampter, a writer and poetess; Elisha Friedman, President of the Collegiate Zionist League.
According to Schmidt, "The Pittsburgh Program seems to have been the last of the projects of the Parushim."
[48] A. Scott Berg, Wilson (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2013), Chapter 6. (Accessed online, page number not available)
Berg writes that Kallen went on to a "stellar career," but mentions nothing of his Zionism and creation of a secret society. When Wilson hired Kallen, he became the college's first Jewish lecturer.
[49] Sarah Schmidt, Horace M. Kallen: Prophet of American Zionism (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson, 1995), 77.
[50] Schmidt, Horace M. Kallen, 77.
[51] Ben Halpern, "The Americanization of Zionism, 1880-1930," in American Zionism: Mission and Politics by Jeffrey Gurock (New York: Routledge, 1998), 125-43. (Part of a 13 Volume series edited by Jeffrey S. Gurock published by the American Jewish Historical Society.)
[52] Grose, Mind of America, 53.
[53] Grose, Mind of America, 40.
Another organization that chose to work secretively was the American Jewish Committee (AJC), though this organization was largely non-Zionist in its early decades. Author Marianne R. Sanua describes its activities in her authorized biography of the organization, Let Us Prove Strong: The American Jewish Committee, 1945-2006.
Except where noted otherwise, the following information comes from pages 3-27.
The AJC was founded in 1906 by wealthy banker Jacob H. Schiff, who invited "fifty-seven prominent Jews across the country" to explore the creation of a body to protect Jews both at home and abroad. "On the appointed day," Sanua writes, "rabbis, businessmen, scientists, judges, ambassadors, scholars, writers, and philanthropists gathered in New York from Baltimore, Boston, Cincinnati, Chicago, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Richmond, and as far away as San Francisco."
Although part of the original group withdrew, fearing such an entity would reinforce gentile beliefs in powerful Jewish cabals, the others went forward and in many ways created just such an entity.
While the existence of the AJC, unlike the Parushim, was not kept hidden, many of its activities were. As a leader wrote about its earliest days, "The new body was not to engage in publicity except as an instrument for achieving objectives."
According to Sanua, the AJC desired "in general to remain as unobtrusive as possible in conducting its work, preferring to use the names and addresses of supposedly nonsectarian organizations instead of its own."
When necessary, Sanua writes, the AJC "would create the name of an essentially fictitious organization to hide the fact that American Jews were behind the effort at all."
In the 1930s and 1940s, Sanua, reports, "its agents went undercover, infiltrated meetings, and compiled a list of 50,000 offenders [alleged anti-Semites or German sympathizers] whose names were shared with the FBI…" According to Sanua, scores of Americans were sent to jail "because of the efforts of the AJC," which, out of a total of 50,000 "offenders," raises the question of exactly who was on this list, and why.
In 1944 undercover AJC agents attended the first national convention of the America First Party, which had opposed entering European wars. The AJC charged that its presidential candidate, Gerald Smith, was anti-Semitic, a charge that Sanua says he denied, accusing the ADL and others of using the millions of dollars at their disposal to "hound innocent Christian nationalists with their Gestapo techniques." (Sanua, Let Us Prove Strong, 41)
The AJC successfully pushed for federal investigations into Smith, and in 1946 he was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Sanua notes that the AJC had "pulled all their strings in Washington to put him there." (Sanua, Let Us Prove Strong, 41)
These AJC activities continued after the war, Sanua reports, and notes, "Again, secrecy and behind-the scenes work was the key. Most of the written records of these activities remain closed to the public to the present day."
While the AJC began as a non-Zionist organization and opposed the immediate creation of a Jewish state for the AJC's first few decades, its activities at times were helpful to the Zionist cause. The organization endorsed the Balfour Declaration, some members provided financial support for Jewish settlement and institutions in Palestine, and for a time AJC representatives served with Zionists in the Jewish Agency for Palestine.
Eventually, over the objections of many members, the AJC became Zionist, and in the watershed year of 1947, Sanua reports, the AJC threw its weight behind the Zionist cause, using its connections at high levels of the U.S. government, including in the White House, to help push through a UN partition plan intended to create a Jewish state in Palestine.
In October 1948, Sanua writes, the AJC's executive committee resolved to work for "financial aid from the United States – which it achieved the following year."
Marianne Sanua, Let Us Prove Strong: The American Jewish Committee, 1945-2006 (Waltham, MA: Brandeis UP, 2007), 3-27.
According to journalists Abba A. Solomon and Norman Solomon, the AJC "adjusted to the triumph of an ideology – militant Jewish nationalism – that it did not share." The Solomons quote a January 1948 AJC position paper that described the actions of "militant Zionists," who were "then ascendant among Jews in Palestine and in the United States." The AJC warned that this group served "no less monstrosity than the idol of the State as the complete master not only over its own immediate subjects but also over every living Jewish body and soul the world over, beyond any consideration of good or evil."
According to the Solomons, such concerns "became more furtive after Israel became a nation later in 1948." By 1950 debate over Zionism was to be permissible only within the Jewish community – it was to be, in the Solomons' words, "inaudible to gentiles." Soon, the Solomons contend, even debate among Jews became "marginal, then unmentionable."
Norman Solomon and Abba A. Solomon, "The Blind Alley of J Street and Liberal American Zionism," Huffington Post, January 22, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/norman-solomon/the-blind-alley-of-j-stre_b_4644658.html.
[54] Grose, Mind of America, 54.
American professor Horace Kallen was a major mover and the original founder of the Parushim.
In his book American Zionism: Mission and Politics, Jeffrey Gurock writes: "Brandeis conducted a vigorous search of his own for 'college men,' particularly young graduates of Harvard Law School, whom he co-opted to leadership or special assignments for the regular and emergency Zionist organizations he controlled. Among those recruited were men like Felix Frankfurter, Judge Julian Mack, Walter Lippmann, Bernard Flexner (one of the founders of the Council on Foreign Relations), Benjamin Cohen (high official under both FDR and Truman), and others who achieved national and international eminence."
Jeffery Gurock, American Zionism: Missions and Politics (London: Routledge, 1998), 135.
Parushim creator Kallen is known as being one of the fathers of "cultural pluralism," opposing the highly popular "melting pot" view, in which immigrants from all over the world would join together as non-hyphenated Americans. See, for example: Michael Alexander, Jazz Age Jews (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2001), 90.
Most Americans and new immigrants – including Jewish Americans – were opposed to Kallen's creation of cultural pluralism and hyphenated Americans, preferring assimilation and the melting pot. See, for example, Cohen, Americanization of Zionism, 18: "Most [Jews] had found their promised land in America." One of the primary goals in the U.S. for some Zionists leaders was, in Cohen's words, "to guard against assimilation." (Cohen, Americanization of Zionism, 22) "The popular melting-pot theory was antithetical to the heart of the Zionist message." (Cohen, Americanization of Zionism, 15)
[55] Neff, Pillars, 12-14.
[56] Neff, Pillars, 12; Grose, Mind of America, 57-58. Brandeis also "played a decisive role in planning Wilson's economic program, and particularly in formulating the Federal Reserve." Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1993), 93.
[57] Neff, Pillars, 12; John & Hadawi, Palestine Diary, 59-60.
Felix Frankfurter's work on behalf of Zionism spanned many years. FDR was to appoint him to the Supreme Court in 1939, and even before this time he used his "access to the president to bring Zionist issues to his attention and urge his intercession on behalf of the Zionist cause. (Christison, Perceptions, 47)
"At Brandeis's behest, Frankfurter also became involved with American Zionism. In 1917 Frankfurter accompanied Ambassador Henry Morgenthau to Turkey and Egypt to see what could be done for the settlements in Palestine during the World War. Frankfurter also attended the peace conference in Paris as a representative of the American Zionist movement and as a liaison for Brandeis." (Alexander, Jazz Age Jews, 91)
At the request of Brandeis, financier Jacob Schiff had donated funds to have a position created for Frankfurter at Harvard early in his career. (Alexander, Jazz Age Jews, 83).
[58] Kolsky, Jews against Zionism, 25, 32.
Chapter Four
World War I and the Balfour Declaration