Cam & Ray's Cold War Podcast

By 1881, on the eve of the start of the Zionist Jewish influx, Palestine’s population was 457,000—about 400,000 of them Muslims, 13,000–20,000 Jews, and 42,000 Christians (mostly Greek Orthodox). In addition, there were several thousand more Jews who were permanent residents of Palestine but not Ottoman citizens. The overwhelming majority of the population was Arab, about 70 percent rural. Most of the Jews and Christians lived in Jerusalem.

But then foreign Jews started buying land in Palestine. When the first Jews started to arrive from Russia, the governor of Jerusalem was ordered to bar Russian, Rumanian, and Bulgarian Jews from landing in Jaffa and Haifa. The following year he was instructed to stop the sale of state lands to Jews, even if they were Ottoman citizens. But they kept coming anyway.

Many of the Zionists had been lead to believe the land was mostly empty. Many people believe that still today. Of the Palestinians, many Zionists believed they were "primitive, dishonest, fatalistic, lazy, savage". The Zionist leader Moshe Smilansky, in 1914 wrote:

"We must not forget that we are dealing here with a semi-savage people...."

The cause of the Zionists was supported by certain Western leaders, especially those who were Christian Zionists. Christian Zionists believe that the gathering of the Jews in Israel is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus.

The idea of Jews returning to Palestine had been around since they were evicted by the Romans, but in a modern sense it really started to take shape in the late 19th century after the pogroms in Russia. On this podcast we talk about the vision some of the early proponents of Zionism had, including Leo Pinsker, Moses Hess, and Theodor Herzl.

Although you may not think of Israel as part of the Cold War paradigm, it’s played such a huge role in American foreign policy, and we have to cover it. It’s also played, and continues to play, a huge role in the story of oil, which is, of course, a huge part of the Cold War story. Because, as you know, the Cold War was all about economics. In this episode, we give a quick overview of anti-Semitism and the creation of the State of Israel. In our next episodes we're going to go deep into the story of Zionism.

Kim's "invasion" of the South gave the US the pretext they needed to ramp up military spending via NSC-68 and to support Rhee directly and indirectly by committing one of the classic blunders: never get involved in a land war in Asia.

Admiral Forrest Sherman, Chief of Naval Operations, declared later: ‘I was fully aware of the hazards involved in fighting Asiatics on the Asiatic mainland, which is something that, as a naval officer, I have grown up to believe should be avoided if possible."

But they did it anyway.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 83 was pushed through - the Soviet Union did not veto it because it was still boycotting the Security Council - and Truman immediately decided to throw everything he had at Korea, shocking not just the Koreans, the Soviet and the Chinese, but also the British.

Truman call it a "police action", a phrase he would later regret.

WWII had created a strong US economy, mostly for military spending coming out of the public treasury.

Lots of industrialists made a fortune during that period.

And it was going away after the war.

In the aftermath of World War II, US armed forces had not merely been reduced – they had been allowed to crumble to the brink of collapse.

Truman’s new Defense Secretary, Louis Johnson, had cut the military to the bone.

It makes sense that they needed to find a way to keep the country on a war footing in the absence of a real war.

Korea – and NSC-68 – provided exactly that.

Americans were told that the invasion by North Korea was a total surprise. It was positioned as another Pearl Harbour. But this isn’t exactly true. They must have known it was coming and when it was coming. They just chose to ignore it. Why? Who stood to benefit from the invasion?