Chaim Weizmann Thanks Clark Clifford for His Help In Getting President Truman to Recognize Israel

On the first day of the first Presidency of Israel, President Chaim Weizmann sent this letter to a young Truman aide, Clark Clifford, to thank him for his help in securing Truman’s support for the Jewish state.

Our mutual friend… has kept me informed of doings in Washington, and especially of your magnificent cooperation in many critical situations. In these days of struggle and readjustment we are desperately in need of understanding friendships, and it is good to know that we have in you a genuine friend of our cause. I assure you, and I wish you would in turn assure your great Chief, that we desire nothing but peace and amity with our neighbours, and that we have no aggressive designs on any of them. We shall always be mindful of the Biblical injunction: "Zion will be rebuilt in Justice".

Clifford in fact had received the brief to argue the issue of recognition of Israel against Secretary of State George Marshall from the President himself. “Truman said he would like me to prepare the case for the formation of a Jewish homeland,” Clifford recalled later, “as if it were a case to be presented to the Supreme Court," Marshall, who opposed recognition, was furious at the White House meeting when Clifford made his argument, and convinced the President to immediately recognize Israel - a feat celebrated here, by Weizmann, on his first day in office.

Typed Letter Signed, 2 pages, quarto, on the Hebrew letterhead of Weizmann House, Rehovot, Israel, February 20, 1949. To Clark Clifford in the White House.

With typewritten transmittal envelope.