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By Root 1182 0

more brains than the rest of the world put together, and they always end up landing on their feet. That's what he says. The question is, whose feet exactly do they land on? Good night, all. I must just ask you not to repeat anything I've told you, seeing as what it's inside information." (All his life, even as an old man, after living in Jerusalem for sixty years, Uncle Dudek always insisted on saying "seeing as what," and three generations of devoted sticklers for the language failed to teach him otherwise. Even his years of service as a senior police officer and eventually as chief of the Jerusalem police, and later as deputy director-general of the Ministry of Tourism, did not help. He always stayed just as he was—"seeing as what I'm just a stubborn Jew!").

44

FATHER EXPLAINED over supper one evening that at the General Assembly of the United Nations, which would meet on November 29, at Lake Success, near New York, a majority of at least two-thirds would be required if the UNSCOP report recommending the creation of two states on the territory of the British Mandate, one Jewish and one Arab, was to be adopted. The Muslim bloc, together with Britain, would do everything in their power to prevent such a majority. They wanted the whole territory to become an Arab state under British protection, just as some other Arab countries, including Egypt, Trans-Jordan, and Iraq, were de facto under British protection. On the other side, President Truman was working, contrary to his own State Department, for the partition proposal to be accepted.

Stalin's Soviet Union had surprisingly joined with the United States and also supported the establishment of a Jewish state side by side with an Arab one: he may have foreseen that a vote in favor of partition would lead to many years of bloody conflict in the region, which would enable the USSR to acquire a foothold in the area of British influence in the Middle East, close to the oil fields and the Suez Canal. Contorted calculations on the part of the superpowers coincided with one another, and apparently intersected with religious ambitions: the Vatican hoped to gain decisive influence in Jerusalem, which under the partition plan was to be under international control, i.e., neither Muslim nor Jewish. Considerations of conscience and sympathy intertwined with selfish, cynical ones: several European governments were seeking a way of somehow compensating the Jewish people for losing a third of its numbers at the hands of the German murderers and for generations of persecution. The same governments, however, were not averse to channeling the tide of hundreds of thousands of indigent displaced Eastern European Jews who had been languishing in camps since the defeat of Germany as far away as possible from their own territories and indeed from Europe.

Right up to the moment of the actual vote it was hard to foresee the outcome. Pressures and temptations, threats and intrigues and even bribes managed to sway the crucial votes of three or four little republics in Latin America and the Far East back and forth. The government of Chile, which had been in favor of partition, yielded to Arab pressure and instructed its representative at the UN to vote against. Haiti announced its intention of voting against. The Greek delegation was of a mind to abstain, but also decided at the last minute to support the Arab position. The Philippine representative refused to commit himself. Paraguay hesitated; its delegate to the UN, Dr. César Acosta, complained that he had not received clear instructions from his government. In Siam there had been a coup d'état, and the new government had recalled its delegation and not yet dispatched a new one. Liberia promised to support the proposal. Haiti changed its mind, under American pressure, and decided to vote in favor.* Meanwhile, in Amos Street, in Mr. Auster's grocery shop or at Mr. Caleko's, the news agent and stationer, they told of a good-looking Arab diplomat who had exerted his charms on the female representative of a small state and managed to get her to