The Truman broadcast is John Kiriakou’s account of an archival address by President Harry Truman announcing American recognition of the state of Israel, which he says he came across on YouTube and found revealing for a reason unrelated to its main subject.
What he watched
“I was watching an old video of President Harry Truman. This was on YouTube just a few days ago. And Truman was giving this address to the nation and he was announcing the creation of the state of Israel and the US recognition of Israel.”[1]
The first thing Kiriakou reports from it is Truman’s own test of a successful negotiation: “he said that um he he knew that he had succeeded because both the Israelis and the Palestinians hated him at the end of the negotiations. So he’s declaring victory and and moving on.”[2]
The unkept half
The detail Kiriakou singles out as fascinating is the second half of the announcement. “It was that the US and other major countries, I think the Russians were second, recognized the state of Israel on that night in 1948. And that recognition of a Palestinian state would come uh following additional negotiations.”[2]
His comment is a single sentence of arithmetic: “That was 1948 and we’re still waiting.”[3]
He used it to set up a question to his guest — whether any major Western country is serious about the creation of a Palestinian state — and received the answer that none of them are.[3]
Kiriakou has elsewhere given a harsher account of Truman’s own later view of the decision, recorded at Truman’s regret over Israel; the broadcast is the contemporaneous document rather than the retrospective one.