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In her 1954 autobiography, Many A Good Crusade: Memoirs of Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, the Dean of Barnard College of Columbia University between 1911 and 1947, Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, wrote the following:
"...When the proposal for the partition of Palestine came before the General Assembly--the Ad Hoc Committee, with our approval, rejected the proposal that the International Court of Justice should be asked to rule upon the legal status of Palestine, and finally, by a majority of the nations actually voting, adopted the partition plan. But when this recommendation came before the Assembly, not merely a majority, but a two-thirds vote was needed. Then tremendous pressure was exerted because of Zionist influence, not only through the United States Government but by powerful private individuals and organizations. Five countries which had indicated their intention of voting against the partition were special targets,--Haiti, Liberia, the Philippines, Ethiopia, and Greece. All except Greece were either won to voting for the partition or persuaded to abstain. Thus the United States succeeded in forcing through the partition proposal.
"...Meanwhile, the Arabs and the Zionists were fighting in Palestine. That unhappy land was torn with violence, fear and cruelty. Outstanding among the horrors was the massacre of Dair Yaseen in early April [1948]. The whole population of that Arab village, women and children, the aged and infirm, as well as the able-bodied men, were massacred by the Zionist terrorists in cold blood. As the news of this slaughter spread through the country hundreds of thousands of other Arabs from villages and towns fled from their homes and possessions to save their lives, expecting of course, like all those who in the past have fled from floods, wars, and eruptions, to return to their houses and farms when the terror had passed.
"Since they have never been able to do so, reprisals from Arabs on Zionists and counter-reprisals from Zionists on Arabs followed Dair Yaseen, and the chain of tragedies continued until the destruction of the Arab village of Kibya by Israeli armed forces in 1953 redoubled the tension, which seems destined to continue indefinitely..."
(end of part 8)
In her 1954 autobiography, Many A Good Crusade: Memoirs of Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, the Dean of Barnard College of Columbia University between 1911 and 1947, Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, wrote the following:
"...In 1952 I resigned the Chairmanship of the Board of Directors of Reid Hall, which I had held for over 30 years...
"...I have spoken of the rise of the Zionist movement and the forcing into the small country of Palestine of many thousands of Jewish immigrants, against the will of the Arab majority of the population, whose ancestors had held and tilled the land for over a thousand years. The long and intricate history of this movement reached one of its culminating points in the autumn of 1947 when the General Assembly of the United Nations considered a report from a special U.N. committee recommending that on the ending of the British Mandate Palestine be divided into two states,--one Arab and the other Jewish, with economic union between them and Jerusalem internationalized. The Jewish state was to contain the greater part of the fertile land of that arid country and the only first-class deep-water ports. The proposal aroused a storm of protest from all the member nations in the Middle East who objected to it vehemently; but the Delegation of the United States of America, that country which of all the West the peoples of the Middle East had looked upon as their best friend, was ordered by President Truman to support the partition plan, and every resource of propaganda was used by the American Zionists to present the idea favorably to the people of America and to prevent the opponents of it, whether they were Christian, Moslem, or Jew, from being heard...
"...Unhappily, this delicate and difficult question had become a kind of football in American politics. Perhaps there is a `Jewish vote' in New York which might determine the casting of the state's 45 electoral votes in a presidential election, though I doubt it. At all events the Zionists succeeded in convincing both the Democratic and the Republican politicians that they did control a Jewish vote, especially in the state of New York, and they urged upon the party leaders the necessity of coming out strongly in favor of the partition plan. When President Truman had insisted that the British, under the Mandate, admit immediately 100,000 more Jews, Governor Dewey of the State of New York, his Republican opponent, had promptly urged the admission of 200,000. I do not doubt that President Truman and Governor Dewey, besides political motives, were animated also by humanitarian concern for the Jewish refugees and, having probably heard only one side of the question, believed that they were pursuing a humane and generous course. It is easy to imagine, however, with what bitterness the Arabs saw the fate of their people being sacrificed by American political leaders who insisted that American foreign policy must be determined by the needs of local politics..."
(end of part 7)
In her 1954 autobiography, Many A Good Crusade: Memoirs of Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, the Dean of Barnard College of Columbia University between 1911 and 1947, Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, wrote the following:
"...Not all the Zionists merely denounced me. Many of them sent me interesting material about Palestine and the projects for settlement and development. Some of them chose to call at my office and discussed the great problem with me, and I continued for several years my humble efforts to help get some sort of just and peaceful settlement.
"My most moving experience during these efforts was on a day when I called in New York upon Dr. Judah Magnes, a distinguished and a noble Jew, for many years President of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a much-loved leader in Palestine, and author of a plan whereby he felt confident that Jews, Moslems, and Christians could live together peacefully in the Holy Land. I shall always remember the very touching way in which he spoke of his friends and neighbors in Jerusalem--Jews and Arabs alike--and his confidence that they could live in peace and work together for the welfare of their country. He gave me a copy of a press release he had written, setting forth his views. The American newspaper would not publish it, he told me. This saddened him profoundly--the fact that he was refused a hearing before the American people. His health had been poor for some time and not long after my visit to him, in sorrow and disillusion he died.
"Of the tragic story of death and hatred in the Holy Land and of my small efforts to help mitigate the horrors. I will speak further in a later chapter in which I tell of the years after my retirement from the Deanship of Barnard, when I devoted myself mainly to the Middle East..."
(end of part 6)
In her 1954 autobiography, Many A Good Crusade: Memoirs of Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, the Dean of Barnard College of Columbia University between 1911 and 1947, Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, wrote the following:
"...I wrote the following letter to the New York Times, which appeared in its issue of October 9, 1945:
"`To The Editor of The New York Times:
"`The situation in the Near East is apparently approaching a crisis; very soon violence and bloodshed may result. For this I fear our country is partly responsible.
"`I believe sincerely in the peaceful settlement of disputes, a policy to which the United States is now committed, and I am deeply interested in the Near East through connections with American colleges and universities in that area. I am therefore greatly distressed by the policies now being urged on our Government, policies which threaten violence and upheaval in that critical region of the world.
"`Sooner or later Arabs and Jews must sit down together and reach an agreement regarding life in Palestine. Why should they not now gather about a conference table to arrive at some adjustment and avoid violence?
"`Surely it will be no kindness to the Jews to secure by force their admittance in very large numbers to a section of the world where they will have as neighbors many millions of enemies.
"`Are not some Americans urging the plan of forcing Britain to force the Arabs to admit the homeless Jews in order to escape our own responsibility toward these unfortunate persons? The conscience of the world should recognize the obligation of us all to help the homeless Jews whose persecution by Hitler we have so bitterly denounced. Each of the United Nations should accept its proportionate share of those Jews who seek new homes. The Arab nations have already offered to accept their share.
"`What will be the number the United States should admit? Perhaps 200,000? Then let Congress admit these over and above the usual immigration quotas. And let us stop evading our responsibility by urging that our Government force Britain to force Palestine to take in far more than its share. Thus we may avoid setting the Near East aflame.
"`Virginia C. Gildersleeve
"`New York, October 6, 1945'
"This letter brought a storm on my head. Many Zionists denounced me vehemently; some threatened violence. Most of my Jewish friends, on the other hand, were in favor of my views. So were some distinguished Christian leaders, notably my neighbor Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, Pastor of the Riverside Church, and my friend and comrade of many years Dr. Henry Sloan Coffin, President of Union Theological Seminary. So also were practically all the Americans I met who had lived in the Middle East and knew Palestine personally..."
(end of part 5)
In her 1954 autobiography, Many A Good Crusade: Memoirs of Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, the Dean of Barnard College of Columbia University between 1911 and 1947, Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, wrote the following:
"...Surprisingly few Americans knew anything about the background of this tragic situation. The spotlight of publicity had been focused so brightly by the Zionists on their plan for Palestine that to many of our citizens the rest of the Middle East was shrouded in darkness. Of the few who had any real knowledge of the circumstances, almost no one was willing to speak out publicly against a project of the Zionists. The politicians feared the Jewish vote; others feared the charge of anti-Semitism; and nearly all had a kind of `guilt complex' in their emotions towards the Jews because of the terrible tragedies inflicted upon them by Hitler. It seemed to me, however, that someone ought to speak out against the cowardly and immoral course to which our nation was being urged. My knowledge of the Middle East made me sure that only war and hatred could come from this policy..."
(end of part 4)
In her 1954 autobiography, Many A Good Crusade: Memoirs of Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, the Dean of Barnard College of Columbia University between 1911 and 1947, Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, wrote the following:
"As the clouds of that terrible struggle [in World War II against Nazi Germany and Japanese militarism] began to lift a little and we could again put our minds on the Palestine problem, among so many others, we were aware that disorder and death were rife in the Holy Land. The Zionists with ruthless efficiency were pushing to get more and more Jewish immigrants into Palestine. The Arabs were violently resisting. The British, in despair of arriving at any satisfactory adjustment, or even keeping order in the unhappy country, were preparing to give up the Mandate. In the United States powerful and influential Zionists began to put heavy pressure upon our government to force the British, contrary to the desires of the majority of the population, to admit more and more Jews to the Holy Land.
"The Zionists were supported in this by a great many American Christians, some few of whom, I am sorry to say, advocated the project because it would relieve us of doing anything ourselves to help the exiles. These unworthy Christians did not want to admit any more Jewish refugees into America. `Let's push them off on Palestine by all means,' they thought. They apparently saw no objection to our bullying our British allies, now in such an embarrassing position with relation to us, and forcing them to bully the Arabs into admitting this huge influx of alien foreigners. This seemed to me a most contemptible attitude for my country to tak, and I was bitterly ashamed of it..."
(end of part 3)
In her 1954 autobiography, Many A Good Crusade: Memoirs of Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, the Dean of Barnard College of Columbia University between 1911 and 1947, Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, wrote the following:
"..The Zionist movement...pushed forward with intense religious enthusiasm. Some Zionists said they did not want a political state in Palestine. Their concept of the `national home' was more humanitarian than political, but the ideal in the minds of the chief leaders seems to have been defined by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, later first President of the State of Israel, when as early as February, 1919, speaking before the Peace Conference, he explained the Jewish national home as the creation of an administration `with the hope that by Jewish immigration Palestine would ultimately become as Jewish as England is English.' At this time, 1919, the number of Jews in Palestine was some 65,000, constituting about a tenth of the population. The remaining nine-tenths, as they learned of this policy, naturally looked on it with apprehension. They consisted of some 515,000 Arab Moslems and 62,500 Christians, of whom many were Arabs.
"By 1936 the number of Jews in Palestine had increased to nearly 400,000, amounting to somewhat more than a quarter of the total population. The Palestinian Arabs inevitably increased their protests and efforts to stem this tide which they feared was going to overwhelm them,--as it soon did.
"The situation seemed to me to be drifting towards a disastrous explosion. Could not the free nations of the world somehow meet their humanitarian duty to the Jews without depriving the Palestinian Arabs of their native land, thereby setting the Middle East aflame and antagonizing the rest of the Moslem world? From my interest in the Middle East, my vision of it as a great whole, and from my concern for the Jews, whom I had come to know so well in my own city of New York, I felt this great problem keenly; all the more because the Zionists project was being financed by hundreds of millions of American dollars. Thus stood the situation and my own feeling when we were plunged into the chaos of World War II..."
(end of part 2)
