Question for folks around in the 60's

[seg4527]

Just something I've been pondering, since today's left and anti-war movement tends to be very pro-palestine, what was the opinion among leftists on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict back in the 60's and early 70's? It's something I never really heard anything about, and knowing that the conflict was pretty tense from 67-70, surely it must have been talked about.

Thanks, Steve

[murielm99]

1. Nearly everyone was Pro-Israeli.

We were all very conscious of the Holocaust. Palestinians had not yet succeeded in presenting their side of the story to the world.

They had a very unsympathetic press, and a couple of events led many people to dislike them. According to his killer, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated due to his pro-Israeli stance. And even fewer people had sympathy for them after the 1972 Olympics. I knew few people at the time who sided with them. Times have changed.

[GrumpyGreg]

8. Times have changed? Not in my neck of the woods--most are

pro Israel in my area.(And I'm in Massachusetts(

[BillZBubb]

2. I can't say for certain.

Prior to the occupation of the West Bank, there was a lot of sympathy for the Israeli's. There wasn't really an Israei-Palestinian conflict per se. It was more Israel versus the Arab states, particularly Egypt and Syria. Israel, as the underdog, had a lot of support on the left.

The Israeli occupation and mistreatment of the Palestinians has pretty much destroyed most of the sympathy for Israel on the left.

That's my take anyway.

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. Are you forgetting the war in 1967?

That was a pretty big conflict.

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. I honestly don't remember

We were so busy opposing the Vietnam War I don't remember many converations about Israel and Palestine.

I do remember my dad saying in 1967 that we had better hope that the US stays out of the middle east. He told us that conflict had been going on for 1000s of years and if we ever got into it we would never get out. I think a lot about that these days.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. I honestly don't remember Palestinians 1967-70 as a big issue

as they were disenfranchised at that time and didn't have a leader like Arafat. They didn't get much press until the Munich Massacre.

[Warpy]

5. Things were generally more pro Israel in the early to mid 60s

because the right wingers handn't yet taken full control, the West Bank hadn't been colonized, and the Palestinian Arabs hadn't been forced into what is beginning to look like apartheid redux. It was a very different country back then, mostly keeping within its borders, and having to fight off periodic invasions launched from its neighbors' soil. The kibbutzes were socialist ventures that worked, and earned a great deal of respect from the US left.

By the late 60s, though, they'd started to destabilize Lebanon and plan their colonies outside their borders. That's really when things started to change, and they've gotten progressively less sympathy across the world since then. The new colonies on the West Bank are fascist enterprises that abandoned the socialist foundation of the early cooperative farms in favor of wingnut religion and strict social control.

Leftists I knew started going from knee jerk support for Israel before, during, and right after the 1967 war to looking puzzled in 1968-1969 to starting to get downright critical by the early 70s. Well, some of them did. There is still a certain amount of knee jerk support for Israel in some segments of the left.

Israel is simply not the same country that earned the respect of the left from its beginning through the 1967 war. They changed drastically, and with that change they lost a great deal of support that they'd previously enjoyed.

[DURHAM D]

7. Agree with above posts. Oddly enough, the first time it really

occurred to me to really give the conflict a second thought (not just pro-Israeli American view)was when Vanessa Redgrave spoke out about it at the Academy Awards. For awhile she was unable to get work in Hollywood.

In fact - I don't think her career has ever completely recovered and she is still seen as a trouble maker.

Vanessa Redgrave - a real shero.

[seg4527]

9. thanks guys

I'm part of the campus anti-war movement today, and there are lots of people more passionately pro-palestine than anything else, mostly seniors and older students who were activists before the war in Iraq even started. So thanks for giving me an idea of how things were back then.

Recently found out one of my professors is a former SDSer, and have talked to him a bit about it, and have had some of these questions floating around my mind.

[catmother]

10. i personally was on the side of the israeli's. i don't remember

if it was the 67 war but there was one time when they hit israel on yom kippur. also being a new yorker and having many jewish friends and co-workers i sided with israel. i actually dated an israeli guy who had fought in the 67 war. his passion for his country really impressed me and he was very young.

of course, there was also vietnam war which i protested.

i sometimes say about the 60s "they were the best of times, they were the worst of times". we had hippies and free love and i have some very good memories. also sad ones i.e., JFK, RFK.:dilemma:

on edit: i always wanted to visit israel. i used to say "as soon as things calm down there i'm gonna go". well my friends things are worse than ever. :cry:

[leftofthedial]

11. mostly pro-Israel

There was an idealism about the very concept of Israel before they becam conquerors and allowed themselves to be subverted by fascist-Zionists.

[Chipper Chat]

12. Israel was looked at with great respect in the 60s.

Especially since they were immediately attacked by all surrounding Arab countries after it was declared a country in 1948 (49?)and defeated those countries. The original leaders such as Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, and the first president (help me out here) were wise men & women of great forethought. Seems like Israel was pretty calm until the 80s. I remember a tacit Arab population; even a Palestinian "Miss Israel." I agree with a previous poster that the militants (both sides) changed everything.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

19. You're thinking of David Ben Gurion

:-)

[Chipper Chat]

20. Aha!

Muchas gracias!!!

[TreasonousBastard]

13. Pretty hazy to me, too, but...

we were consumed with pollution, civil rights, Viet Nam, and everyone had Kennedy's assasination fresh in our minds. Israel was there, but not a high priority for most of us.

Seems to me we were all pretty much on Israel's side, at least at first. Feisty little country surrounded by enemies, and when they got attacked, beat the crap out of Egypt and the rest of the crew. In a week! A real underdog to root for. Didn't hurt that we all felt closer to the Holocaust back then, what with most of our fathers having fought in WWII. It also didn't hurt that the left was heavily populated with Jewish intellectuals.

Ben Gurion, Golda Meier... A lot of Israelis back then were the good guys. Nothing about the Shatilla massacre or the other stuff until later when the dark side showed up. It may have been Lebanon that jumped the shark.

What they did to Vanessa Redgrave kinda says it all.

[liberalpragmatist]

22. Golda Meir was actually incredibly hawkish

And anti-Palestinian in her views. She didn't even want to give back the Sinai.

[madrchsod]

14. the left was pro-israel because many of the leadership

of the civil rights and anti war movement were jewish. some of the early deaths in the 60`s civil rights movement in the south were young jewish kids. the more leftist/communist leaning elements were pro palestinian and communist society oriented. i have several books that were printed in the 60`s about the palestinian problem,che,the North Vietnam position on the war of liberation,and cuba.
i really don`t think there was an open conflict over this issue but like any large group dynamic there was tension between the different groups of people.

[Dan]

15. There seemed to be the general perception

that Israel was the little nation just trying to survive. But also remember that WWII was less twenty-five years removed.

[DavidDvorkin]

16. I remember the 1967 war as the turning point

When the ended, the left seemed to stop seeing Israel as the leftwing underdog who deserved sympathy and, if necessary, help. It was as if the military success was too big and too quick, and that upset many on the left.

That's subjective. It was the impression I had at the time.

[peacetalksforall]

17. I think everyone was pretty pro-Israel and expected them to do right.

The country was always for those who escaped from our enemies (with time frames irrelevant).

There were not a lot of spokespeople for the Palestinians.

We always were told that WW III, if there was going to be one, would be over the Middle East.

Israel was always the favored country. The money we poured into Israel didn't raise questions.

Pro-Palestinian sympathies are rather new. It took a long time to get started in this country. Now we are wiser.

Personally, I often placed a wall between myself and news from the area from the 60's on because the violence always seemed to follow an eye for an eye sequence. I was extremely turned off. I thought is was anti-thetical to responsibility. I only followed the news when there were peace talks and mediation in progress.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. The Palestinians were not much on the radar in this country

Instead, the news was full of threats by neighboring Arab countries to "drive the Israelis into the sea."

The situation was very tense, and suddenly in the summer of 1967, Israel struck all the neighboring Arab countries at once and managed to capture the West Bank, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, and the Sinai Peninsula. It really was quite a military feat, and most of the world saw the situation as the "little guy" standing up to the bullies.

My one and only trip to Europe so far occurred later that summer, and all over Europe, we saw pro-Israeli signs in people's windows.

The Israeli army was seen as dashing and gutsy, as when they again fought several Arab countries in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and rescued the hostages from an El Al airliner that had been hijacked to Uganda.

Their reputation began to deteriorate, and the Palestinians became more militant after Menachem Begin instituted his policy of encouraging the building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. (I marvel at the lack of common sense that prompted Begin to send extra unwanted people to one of the most densely populated places on earth.

The Israeli incursions into Lebanon during that country's civil war also widely disapproved of, but the real turning point in both world opinion and the rise of the type of Palestinian militancy that we see today was prompted by the settlement policy.

By the way, I agree with higher class. I try to stay out of I/P discussions in general these days, because they degenerate into "You're the devils and we're the angels." "No, YOU're the devils and WE're the angels."

[SoCalDem]

21. until the '67 war, things were not on "permanent boil-over"

and even afterwards when the land was given back, things seemed to cool down.. Viet Nam/civil rights were THE issues during the sixties.. Those two issues (along with the assassinations) kept everyone pretty "busy"..

Israel was pretty much back-burner..

[Peter Frank]

23. You've heard little about this is because your premise is skewed Steve...

Sounds like you're data-mining.