Myth and reality, denial and concealment: American Zionist leadership and the Jewish vote in the 1940s

Abstract

This article examines how the Jewish vote was brought to bear in the presidential elections of 1944 and in the mid-term elections of 194. It also reveals the essential difficulties that American Zionist leaders faced in activating the Jewish vote, and their efforts to cope with the complex challenges of ethnic politics in the US of the 1940s. Documents of American Zionist leaders at the time show that the political use of the Jewish vote, so simple, so natural to the Zionist establishment in Palestine and in the WZO, presented a predicament for the Americans. It began with the need to cover up the very fact of its use and went on to set the political and social identity of some American Zionist leaders on a collision course with the implications of the ethnic vote in the American political arena.