The Jews, I find are very, very selfish

[st_swithin]

Well, someone has to be the slave, right?

Hinx, minx the old witch winks,
The fat begins to fry.
Nobody home but Jumping Joan,
Father, Mother and I.

Stick, stocks, stone-dead,
Blind men can't see.
Every knave must have a slave,
You or I must be he.

Personally, I just figure whoever beats me up less is the lesser of two evils.

[Az]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I've found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes

Very smart observation. I agree with GePap. It doesn't seem like Truman is anti-semetic, just that the Jewish problem with Palestine was brought up around that time and they were the 'underdog who went to the top'. It is true that they did not care about other displaced persons as well.

what do you mean by that? it's 47' you know.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Well they didn't care about the Estonians or Poles or Greeks... they were getting their own state, didn't care about displacing the Palestinians. They wanted special treatment and didn't give a damn about the other people who had been displaced.

[lord of the mark]

somehow i suspect that if you looked at a list of Americans who were interested in the problems of displaced peoples, other than members of the groups in question, youd find quite a few Jews. Just as you find plenty of Jews among the white supporters of the civil rights movement. Im not taking issue with Truman - he was sharing some folksy wisdom with his diary, for gods sake. I would take issue with some here who overlook these historic facts. Power may corrupt, but, for whatever historical reasons, it does not corrupt everyone equally.

And certainly HST was talking about American Jews - not the situation in Palestine, as the context of the quote makes clear. Israel did not yet have statehood. And Poland and Greece of course did, and Jews in Israel and American were no less concerned about the Baltic States than most other Americans. Probably a tad more so.

And of course if HST thought that "Labor" was on top in USSR, he was quite naive.

[Heresson]

And Poland and Greece of course did

Not quite

[GePap]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
And certainly HST was talking about American Jews - not the situation in Palestine, as the context of the quote makes clear. Israel did not yet have statehood. And Poland and Greece of course did, and Jews in Israel and American were no less concerned about the Baltic States than most other Americans. Probably a tad more so.

What Jews in Israel? As you said, there was no Israel then?

And of course if HST thought that "Labor" was on top in USSR, he was quite naive.

That is most certainly NOT where labor comes form: the immidiate aftermath of the war saw a lot of strikes, and the addition of management to the list shows that what he meant was labor relations inm the uS, and bickering between labor and Management.

[Az]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Well they didn't care about the Estonians or Poles or Greeks... they were getting their own state, didn't care about displacing the Palestinians. They wanted special treatment and didn't give a damn about the other people who had been displaced.

What? Do you want the jews to care about how the Poles Greeks or Estonians felt? One could read your post and think that WW2 was some sort of Bonanza for the jews.

[Imran Siddiqui]

What? Do you want the jews to care about how the Poles Greeks or Estonians felt?

Well that's why they are 'selfish' .

One could read your post and think that WW2 was some sort of Bonanza for the jews.

IIRC, WW2 ended a few years before 1947 . And, post-WW2 WAS a bonanza for the Jews.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Azazel

Did you get a warning from Ming for that?

[JCG]

It's true but it's not necessarily a bad thing...we are all selfish by nature and our solidarity is limited, but at least the Jews try to extend that feeling to take care of their people/religion/culture as much as possible.

And in this case, it was understandable, in a time of great worry/excitement over their future fate.

Other groups should try to do the same (easier said than done, of course), for their own benefit IMHO.

It's a bit better than saying "sure we are all created equal and free, blah blah...but *I* don't really care about what happens to my neighbors....it's their own business".

So it's not like Truman was an anti-Semitic just for taking note of this and being somewhat bothered and amused by what he observed (again, I don't honestly see it as a bad thing, personally).

[Q Classic]

doesn't change my mixed opinion of him:

good: nuking japan (to finish the war, and (imho) karmic)
bad: allowing the soviets to overrun the territory above the 38th (because it looked like a good dividing line)
good: having the balls to stand up to the reds and helping half of the country not end up a stalinist hellhole

[St Leo]

Truman was a war criminal. Nagasaki was, is, and forever will be inexcusable.

This doesn't change my view of him one bit.

[TCO]

Maybe he was more anti-Zionist than anti-Semetic. And only against the extremist Zionists, blowing up Brits and the like.

[Sava]

I'm not going to hold Truman in too much of a bad light because of this. The times were different... racial and ethnic slurs were common, so was hatred, but there's a difference between the likes of David Duke, Strom Thurmond, Hitler, and people like Truman.

[Lonestar]

Yeah! Darn those selfish Jews and their, uh, potato pancakes?