| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In the summer of 1948, Charles F. Knox, Jr., a career American Foreign Service officer with no prior experience in Middle Eastern affairs, was assigned by the State Department to serve as Counsellor to the initial United States Mission in Israel. White House officials who had overcome State Department opposition to the recognition of Israel in May regarded Knox with suspicion. However, in the course of his service in Israel Knox transcended a Foreign Service milieu that was traditionally hostile to Zionist aspirations as well as his own negative stereotypes about the character of American Jews. The letters Knox sent to family and friends at home, as well as his official dispatches to his superiors in Washington, provide a vivid record of daily life in wartime Tel Aviv as well as a notably sympathetic portrayal of the Israeli people at war.
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