How the Soviet Union helped bring Israel into being: Gromyko at the UN, Czech arms and a break in relations

On 14 May 1947, a diplomat took the rostrum at the UN General Assembly in New York. He represented Stalin’s Soviet Union, a regime that had always opposed Zionism. What he said surprised everyone. The Jewish people had suffered as no other people had during the war. No Western European state had managed to protect them, and it would be unjust to deny them a state of their own. A little over a year later, on 29 May 1948, four fighters supplied by Czechoslovakia with Moscow’s agreement attacked an Egyptian column near Isdud. How far they helped halt its advance is still disputed ¹²¹⁶¹⁷.

This episode sits uneasily both with accounts of Israel as a “creation of the West” and with those that remember the Soviet Union only for its anti-Zionism in the 1970s. The dates and sources tell the story.

Gromyko’s speech, 14 May 1947

In spring 1947, Britain, the Mandatory power, referred the Palestine question to the UN. The General Assembly met in special session to create a commission of inquiry, the future UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). At the 77th plenary meeting, on 14 May, Soviet permanent representative Andrei Gromyko set out his government’s position ¹².

In the words of the official record: “During the last war, the Jewish people underwent exceptional sorrow and suffering. […] The total number of members of the Jewish population who perished at the hands of the Nazi executioners is estimated at approximately six million. Only about a million and a half Jews in Western Europe survived the war.” He spoke of the “hundreds of thousands of Jews” still wandering through Europe and of the displaced persons camps ¹.

Then came the passage that caught the audience’s attention: “The fact that no Western European State has been able to ensure the defence of the elementary rights of the Jewish people, and to safeguard it against the violence of the fascist executioners, explains the aspirations of the Jews to establish their own State. It would be unjust not to take this into consideration and to deny the right of the Jewish people to realize this aspiration.” ¹²

Gromyko explicitly proposed partition as a second choice if a common state proved unworkable. He identified two “equitable” solutions: a single Arab–Jewish state with equal rights, or, “if this plan proved impossible to implement” because of deteriorating relations between Jews and Arabs, “the partition of Palestine into two independent states, one Jewish and one Arab” ¹². Six months later Moscow would vote for the second option.

Why? According to the Soviet archives examined by historian Laurent Rucker, the policy had been set by April 1947. Moscow sought to weaken Britain in the Middle East, “exploit the contradictions between London and Washington” and enhance its prestige among Jews worldwide ³⁴.

The vote on 29 November 1947

On 29 November 1947, at its 128th plenary meeting, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 (II), “Future Government of Palestine”. It provided for partition into a Jewish state and an Arab state, an economic union and international status for Jerusalem. The official tally was 33 in favour, 13 against and 10 abstentions ⁵⁶.

The 33 votes in favour included the United States, France, the Soviet Union and the two Soviet republics with seats of their own, Ukraine and Byelorussia, as well as Poland and Czechoslovakia. The United Kingdom abstained, as did Tito’s Yugoslavia. The 13 votes against came from Arab and Muslim UN members, India, Greece and Cuba ⁷. The resolution required a two-thirds majority. “The USSR secured the votes of Byelorussia, Ukraine, Poland and Czechoslovakia,” Rucker notes ³. The United States and the USSR both voted in favour. With 33 votes to 13, switching either one of those votes would not have defeated the resolution ⁵⁶⁷.

17 May 1948: Moscow recognises Israel

On Friday 14 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel. That day President Truman recognised the provisional government as the “de facto” authority of the new state. Ben-Gurion repeated that wording in thanking him on 16 May ⁸⁹.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Moshe Shertok (Sharett) telegraphed Vyacheslav Molotov requesting Soviet recognition. The answer came on Radio Moscow on the night of 17 May: “The Government of the USSR has decided officially to recognise the State of Israel and its provisional government.” The Associated Press noted that Molotov used neither “de facto” nor “de jure” but referred to a “sovereign” state, which London considered a broader formulation than Washington’s ⁹. The two notes appeared in the Soviet press on 18 May ¹⁰. It was the first full recognition, known as “de jure” recognition, granted to Israel by a great power.

Arms from Czechoslovakia in 1948

Recognising a state was one thing. Helping it survive was another. In December 1947 the United States imposed an arms embargo on Palestine and its neighbours ¹¹. The Haganah, which in May would face the armies of the neighbouring Arab states, found a supplier in Prague.

Prague’s Military History Institute (VHÚ) has published details of Operation DI (Důvěrné Izrael, “Israel Confidential”). It began in January 1948, before the February coup in Prague. The first consignment of 4,500 rifles, 200 machine guns and five million rounds went to Haifa via Belgium. On 31 March the first plane left Prague with seven tonnes of arms. In early May the military airfield at Žatec in northern Bohemia was assigned to the airlift the Israelis called Balak ¹²³. In all, Czechoslovakia supplied nearly 35,000 rifles, 9,000 machine guns, over 81 million rounds, 100 mortars and 28 artillery pieces ¹². The MG 34 machine guns came from the Zbrojovka works in Brno, which had made them for the Wehrmacht. By the end of 1948, 7,100 had been sold to Israel ¹³. Rucker puts the total value of the purchases at about $22 million at the time ³.

The aircraft were the most striking part. Lacking Daimler-Benz engines, the Avia factory had fitted Messerschmitt Bf 109 airframes with Junkers Jumo 211 bomber engines. The result, the Avia S-199, was notorious for its handling on take-off. An April 1948 contract called for ten aircraft. In the end 24 were delivered in parts and reassembled in Israel under the code name Sakin (“knife”) ¹²¹⁴. Pilot training began in May at České Budějovice. By the end of 1948, 82 pilots and 69 ground specialists had trained in Czechoslovakia, and a brigade of 1,335 volunteers had formed at Libavá camp ¹²¹⁵.

The first four S-199s arrived on 20 May 1948. On 29 May an Egyptian column had reached the Ad Halom bridge near Isdud (Ashdod), some 30 kilometres south of Tel Aviv. All four aircraft attacked it. This was the fighter squadron’s first combat mission. The pilots were Lou Lenart, Modi Alon, Ezer Weizman and Eddie Cohen, who did not return. The military effect is disputed, but the Egyptians advanced no further. On 3 June, Modi Alon shot down two Egyptian Dakotas that had just bombed Tel Aviv ¹⁶¹⁷. A further 61 Spitfires followed, 18 of which were flown to Israel via Yugoslavia ¹².

What part did Moscow play? Documents published since the 1990s show that Prague initially negotiated with Egypt and Syria as well, and that Soviet Deputy Minister Zorin suggested pressing Klement Gottwald to stop sales to the Arabs. After February 1948, Prague supplied only the Zionists. Moscow’s concern was that the deliveries, which breached the Security Council embargo, would come to light. Zorin recommended “refraining from steps that could be used against us” ³. Moscow allowed the sales to proceed and provided cover without putting its name to them.

Golda Meir in Moscow, autumn 1948

Appointed in June 1948, Golda Meyerson arrived in Moscow in September as Israel’s first envoy ³¹⁸. At her first meeting with Zorin, she said “the Jewish problem can be solved only by large-scale Jewish immigration to Israel”. The answer was that Soviet Jews, as citizens of a socialist state, were outside that discussion. Pravda put it in print that autumn: “The State of Israel has nothing to do with the Jews of the USSR” ³¹⁹.

Moscow’s Jews had other ideas. On 4 October 1948, the first day of Rosh Hashanah, tens of thousands gathered around the Choral Synagogue. Golda Meir later estimated the crowd at nearly 50,000, compared with the usual 2,000. All she managed to say was “Thank you for having remained Jews” as people called out, “Golda, we are alive!” ¹⁹²⁰. An 18-year-old Muscovite, David Khabkin, took the photograph that later appeared on an Israeli banknote. In 1957 he was sentenced to three years in prison ²⁰.

An American correspondent reported in 1949 that the gathering was followed by the closure of Yiddish publishing houses and the dissolution of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which had been established during the war to rally Jewish opinion worldwide. The Israeli legation was placed under close surveillance ²¹. Between 1948 and 1955 only 131 Jews were permitted to leave the USSR for Israel, according to Israeli figures cited by Rucker ³.

The reversal: Prague in 1952, Moscow in 1953

Rucker dates the deterioration to 1949 and attributes it far more to internal Soviet factors than to a strategy towards the Arab states, which began to emerge only in 1955 ³⁴. In Prague, military cooperation ended around the turn of 1949–50. The officers who had directed it were forced out of the army, and many Operation DI files were destroyed ¹⁵. In the VHÚ’s account, Moscow had expected Israel to become its satellite. When this did not happen, previously tolerated support for Zionist organisations was reclassified as reactionary ¹².

Then came the trial. From 20 to 27 November 1952, 14 Czechoslovak Communist Party leaders, including former general secretary Rudolf Slánský, stood trial in Prague for a “Trotskyite-Titoite-Zionist conspiracy”. The indictment identified 11 of the 14 as “of Jewish origin”. Eleven were hanged on 3 December 1952, among them former foreign minister Vladimír Clementis, who had supported aid to Israel in 1948 ²²²³¹². The indictment described the Israeli government as a “servant of American imperialism” and named Ehud Avriel, the former Israeli minister in Prague who had negotiated the 1948 arms contracts for the Jewish Agency ²⁴¹². In separate proceedings, Israel Shimon Orenstein was sentenced to life imprisonment on 7 August 1953 and Mordecai Oren to 15 years on 9 October ³⁶. In late December, the Soviet Party’s handbook for propagandists defined Zionism as “a faithful agency of American imperialism” ²⁵. What had been state policy was now grounds for prosecution.

In Moscow in January 1953, newspapers announced the arrest of nine Kremlin doctors. Soviet propaganda falsely accused several of working for American intelligence through the Joint. Solomon Mikhoels, the former chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee who had died in January 1948, was named as an intermediary ²⁶. This was the Doctors’ Plot. On the evening of 9 February 1953, a bomb exploded in the grounds of the Soviet legation in Tel Aviv, wounding five people, including the Soviet minister’s wife. Ben-Gurion denounced the “abominable attack” in the Knesset, offered compensation and had some 30 suspects arrested ²⁷²⁸.

Moscow would accept no apology. At 1am on 12 February 1953, Andrei Vyshinsky summoned the Israeli minister, Shmuel Eliashiv, and handed him a note. Soviet diplomats were leaving Tel Aviv and Israeli staff were to leave the USSR “without delay”. The attack, the note said, had occurred “with the obvious connivance of the police” and was the culmination of a campaign of hatred sustained by the Israeli government ²⁹. On 17 February, Ben-Gurion rejected the charge of complicity “with all the force at his command” ³⁰. Back in Jerusalem, Eliashiv called Moscow’s motives “obscure” ³¹. Stalin died a few weeks later. In Rucker’s account, the break had been one of the last acts of his rule ³. Relations were restored on 21 July 1953 ³².

But the relationship had lost its momentum. In September 1955, Washington learned “of the conclusion of an agreement by the Egyptian Government for the purchase of arms from the Soviet Union”. This was the “Czech” deal between Nasser and the Eastern bloc which, for Rucker, marked the start of Moscow’s new Middle East strategy ³³³. Prague was now arming Israel’s adversary. On 10 June 1967, the last day of the Six-Day War, the USSR broke relations with Israel a second time, as the US embassy in Tel Aviv reported that evening ³⁴. Eight years after that break, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379 in 1975.

Chronology

• 1947-05-14 — At the 77th plenary meeting, Gromyko proposes a common state as his first choice, and partition if that proves unworkable ¹².
• 1947-11-29 — Resolution 181 (II) passes with 33 in favour, 13 against and 10 abstentions. The USSR, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Poland and Czechoslovakia vote in favour.
• 1948-01 — Operation DI begins. The first Czechoslovak deliveries follow the US embargo by a month.
• 1948-05-14 — Israel declares statehood. Truman grants “de facto” recognition.
• 1948-05-17 — Molotov announces formal recognition of the State of Israel and its provisional government.
• 1948-05-29 — The Israeli fighter squadron flies its first combat mission. Four Avia S-199s engage the Egyptian column near Isdud.
• 1948-09 — Golda Meyerson opens Israel’s legation in Moscow.
• 1948-10-04 — On Rosh Hashanah, tens of thousands of Jews gather around Moscow’s Choral Synagogue.
• Late 1948 — The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee is dissolved. Czechoslovak cooperation is gradually wound down, ending in 1949–50.
• 1952-11-20 / 12-03 — The Slánský trial in Prague. Eleven defendants are hanged.
• 1953-01 — The “Doctors’ Plot” is announced in Moscow.
• 1953-02-09 — A bomb explodes at the Soviet legation in Tel Aviv.
• 1953-02-12 — The USSR breaks relations with Israel. They are restored on 21 July.
• 1955-09 — Nasser’s Egypt reaches an arms deal with the Soviet bloc.
• 1967-06-10 — Soviet–Israeli diplomatic relations are broken off a second time.

Sources

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The story in 30 seconds

Read the main facts at a glance and share the link.

1. On 14 May 1947 Gromyko backed a joint state or else partition. On 29 Nov partition passed 33–13 with Soviet, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish and Czech votes.
2. Moscow recognised Israel on 17 May 1948. Czechoslovakia supplied arms. On 29 May four Avia S-199 fighters attacked an Egyptian column near Isdud.
3. Rucker dates the Soviet–Israeli rapprochement to 1947–49. In 1953 diplomatic ties were broken in February and restored in July.

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