Wilson, Thomas Woodrow

(1856–1924)

   Twenty-eighth president of the United States 1913–21. In the crucial period of 1917 to 1920, that saw the BALFOUR Declaration and the Palestine mandate come into being, President Wilson came under contending pressures regarding the American attitude towards the Jewish National Home. He was disposed in favour of Zionism by his stern Presbyterian upbringing, his belief in self-determination for small repressed peoples and the personal influence on him of such leading American Zionists as Louis BRANDEIS, Stephen WISE and Felix FRANKFURTER. Against that were a number of negative arguments, arrayed by his secretary of state, Robert Lansing. He argued that Palestine belonged to Turkey, with which the United States was not at war; that American economic interests would be prejudiced; that Christian sentiment would resent Jewish domination in the Holy Land; and that many influential Jewish groups and leaders were themselves lukewarm about or opposed to Zionism. Lansing’s attitude was backed by American oil companies and missionary groups active in the Arab world. In 1917, Wilson gave a favourable response to an informal sounding from the British government about the proposed Balfour Declaration. After the declaration had been issued, Lansing was able to prevent official United States endorsement of it, to the disappointment of the Zionist leaders. However, in August 1918 Wilson wrote to Rabbi Wise that, ‘I welcome an opportunity to express the satisfaction I have felt in the progress of the Zionist movement in the United States and in the allied countries since the declaration by Mr Balfour on behalf of the British government, of Great Britain’s approval of the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people…’ This was regarded as implied support for the Balfour Declaration. In March 1919, the president assured a Jewish delegation that he was ‘persuaded that the Allied nations with the fullest encouragement of our government and people are agreed that in Palestine there shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish Commonwealth’. Soon after, he caused consternation in Zionist ranks by agreeing to the King-Crane commission going to Palestine to report on the wishes of the local inhabitants. The report was strongly anti-Zionist but was shelved.

   In 1920, Wilson, already an invalid, performed another important service to Zionism by opposing the French plan to include a major part of the Galilee in Syria and Lebanon. At the Paris Peace Conference, Wilson gave his full support to the Jewish submissions on the need for guarantees for minority rights in the new successor states in Europe.