Yitzhak Rabin Archives - Stanley A. WeissStanley A. Weiss

Blessed are the Businessmen and Women

WASHINGTON— Sixty-four years ago today, one of the most prescient memos in American history was placed on the desk of George C. Marshall, the United States Secretary of State. It was written by Loy Henderson, the director of the State Department’s Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs. Coming less than a month after a special committee of the United Nations had recommended partitioning Palestine into two states—one Jewish and one Arab—it precisely predicted the violent future that partition would bring.

Myanmar Frozen in Time By Ethnic Rift

WASHINGTON—The topic of assassination lends itself to one of the recurrent parlor games of world history. If John F Kennedy had never been assassinated, would the United States have gotten out of Vietnam? If Yitzhak Rabin hadn’t met an assassin’s bullet, would the Oslo Accords have led to peace between Israelis and Palestinians? If Archduke Franz Ferdinand had survived his attacker in Sarajevo, would the world have gone to war in 1914?