Historical Meeting on Palestine Conflict

In nineteen forty-five, about twenty men met Ben-Gurion in New

York. They were asked to become an American arm

of an underground

army.

Its war would drive most Palestinians from their homes.

Ben-Gurion led the movement to turn Palestine into a Jewish state.

Two in every three people living there were Palestinian Arabs.

The movement's underground army was the Haganah.

The host was Rudolf Sonneborn, a New York chemicals businessman.

They talked in his apartment from half past nine until five.

In his diary, Ben-Gurion wrote that they promised to help in everything.

The meeting was secret. Not even their wives knew what it was for.

In nineteen forty-eight, three years later,

Sonneborn described that

day in a confidential report.

They had been asked to become an American arm of the underground Haganah.

The group had no directors, no officers, not even a letterhead.

Every Thursday they met for lunch in a private hotel dining room.

They kept the doors barred and the waiters out.

Sonneborn wrote that they bought eighteen ships to carry Jewish immigrants

into Palestine.

Britain ruled Palestine and limited how many could come.

One of the ships was named Exodus.

The Exodus nineteen forty-seven was ours.

Five of those ships later joined Israel's navy.

In nineteen forty-eight, they set up a company, Materials for

Palestine. Its job was to supply the Haganah.

By that summer, they had shipped nearly two thousand tons

of army supplies:

food, medicine, uniforms, ambulances, and trucks.

Ben-Gurion was now Israel's defense minister.

He had his government thank the group.

The Haganah became Israel's army and fought the war of nineteen

forty-eight.

Palestinians call it the Nakba, the catastrophe.

More than seven hundred thousand Palestinians were made refugees,

forced from their homes and their land.

The men in the apartment were asked. They said yes.

The Palestinians who lost their homes were never asked.