Bill_Urick wrote on Tue, 13 January 2009 11:24 |
In general, I've always been very supportive of Israel and I've never understood why the political left has not.
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I can't say much about the political left in the USA, but here is my view of the reasons the left in Europe and Latin America aren't 'supportive' of Israel now:
Europe was generally pro-Israel until 1967, so were most Latin-American countries; The general feeling was that Israel was a young and frail country facing great national challenges, having to develop a barren, desertic piece of land, with a very decided and young population, a democratic regime with leaders that were thinkers, where socialism was advanced and communal farms abounded.
Amidst the cold war, Israel was a non-aligned country, having relations with East and West; the USSR was particularly interested and by the mid-1960s they were pushing for military co-operation, offering access to modern soviet weaponry accompanied by their 'military advisers' (a precursor to ingression in the soviet block); European Communist parties, notably the French and Italian, were openly friendly with Israel and often published supportive words on their newspapers.
Israel resisted the soviet advances diplomatically.
Then tensions with the neighboring nations began by 1965, culminating in the 1967 war; when it broke up, most of the European press was sure that Israel would be wiped out and published sorrowful articles about the 'end of a noble state'.
Then the unexpected happened: the mouse has roared... Israel won, against all odds.
After the Israeli victory, things changed; Israel put an end to the soviet's diplomatic advances, bitter feelings emerged with France (due to France's refusal to send, during the war, the Mirage fighters that Israel had bought and paid in advance), Israel went politically closer to the USA; the soviets, now closer to the Arab countries, realized that Israel was putting in effect the unthinkable: they were building a country were one could choose if he wanted to live in a capitalist society (the cities) or in a communist society (the Kibbutzim and Moshavim); this went against all communist thinking, no option should be possible and such a country could not be allowed to succeed, so they instructed their satellites (the Western Communist parties) to start bashing Israel and use all possible means of negative propaganda.
Sectors of the Catholic Church were also uneasy with the conquest of Jerusalem by Israel, the Pope went as far as stating that Jerusalem should be turned into an 'international free territory' not belonging to any nation; the Israeli conquest would upset the status quo carefully weaved between the church and the 'moors' over centuries of underground negotiations; the Jews now 'owned' the Holy City again and this was hard to swallow. This feeling affected the most the two extremes of the catholic Church: the most traditionalists and the left-wing 'progressive church', quite active in Latin America where they often harbored communist guerrillas.
Also, the question of the palestinians started to get more space in the international press, due to the soviet influence.
All of the above contributed to Europeans and Latin-Americans to become less and less supportive of Israel as time went by.
How it affected the north-american left, I can't say.