Cooperation, Integration, and Assimilation: Abba Hillel Silver, Emanuel Neumann, the Lowdermilk Plan, and the Arab Question in the Forties

The growing power of the USA, of US Jewry, and of the US Zionist movement was a major factor that impacted Zionist policy during the 1940s. During this period, US Zionists sought to bring their influence to bear on the fundamental problems that the Zionist movement confronted during the war and thereafter. The Arab issue featured prominently in these efforts. While engaging with the questions of the relations between the Jews and the Arabs living in Palestine and with ways to make the Jewish state an integral part of the Middle East, the US Zionist leadership actively promoted the Lowdermilk Plan, which addressed the shortage of water in the region. US Zionist engagement with the Arab question signaled a fundamental change in the modes of operation of US Zionists and their desire to take an active and practical role in shaping the Jewish state and the Zionist movement. They were no longer content merely to provide material and political support to the Zionist movement and to the Jewish yishuv in Palestine.