U.S. Left Movement vs. `Israel First' Liberals History Revisited (1)

By late 2023 most white U.S. antiwar left Movement organizers, activists and supporters on the Upper West Side and elsewhere in the United States (as well as most non-Movement white people under 50 years-of-age in the USA of Jewish or non-Jewish religious backgrounds) were opposed to the U.S. government providing military aid to the militaristic Israeli government and also supported the democratic right of national self-determination for the Palestinian people.

Yet, as the author of the groundbreaking Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Colors of Color 2018-published book, Randolph-Macon College Professor of History Michael R. Fischbach, recalled in the prologue to his follow-up book, titled The Movement And The Middle East: How The Arab-Israeli Conflict Divided The American Left (which Stanford University Press published in 2019), during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, "some on the" U.S. white "left (and liberal but not quite left-wing allies in the Democratic Party, trade unions, and mainstream anti-Vietnam War activists) lined up solidly behind Israel"; and some still "saw Israel as a progressive socialist state."

So in The Movement And The Middle East book, Professor Fischbach "tells the story of the varying white left-wing American attitudes toward the Arab-Israel conflict during the 1960s and 1970s, and asks why these had such a tremendous impact on activists' divergent agendas, identities, and understandings of how to effect change in American society and foreign policy."

According to Fischbach, "two major rifts" developed related to Middle East issues within the U.S. white left Movement subculture during the 1960s and 1970s: "the split over who in the Middle East deserved the left's support;" and "questions of Jewish identity" that "often personalized the struggle between left-wing internationalism and Israel exceptionalism."

In addition to a prologue, epilogue and an extensive bibliography, the text of The Movement And The Middle East includes 12 chapters with the following titles: 1. "The Times They Are a-Changin': The New Left and Revolutionary Internationalism"; 2. "Conflict in the Ivory Tower: Campus Activism"; 3. "(Fellow) Travelers: Left-Wing Youth in the Middle East"; 4. "Israel Exceptionalism: Jewish Attacks on the New Left"; 5. "Theory and Praxis: The Old Left against Israel"; 6. "Ghosts of Revolution Past: Conflicted Communists"; 7. "We're Not Gonna Take It: The Socialist Lurch toward Israel"; 8. "Give Peace a Chance? The Ambivalent Anti-Vietnam War Movement"; 9. "After the Storm: Divergent Left-Wing Paths"; 10. "The Shadow of the Cold War: Continued Pro-Israeli Pushback"; 11. "Taking Root: The New Thinking Goes Mainstream"; and 12. "Identity Politics and Intersectionality: Feminism and Zionism."

In the "The Times They Are a-Changin'" chapter, the verbal positions that some 1960s National Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] and 1960s SDS campus chapter organizers, Yippie organizers like Abbie Hoffman and White Panther Party [WPP] organizers like John Sinclair took with respect to the Palestinian liberation struggle after the June 1967 Middle East War, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, are accurately described. And it is also accurately recalled that, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, "like SDS and the Yippies, however, the WPP never did much publicly on behalf of Palestine solidarity."

The "Conflict in the Ivory Tower" chapter describes how attempts were made by Palestinian solidarity movement activists in the USA to use campus teach-ins and student newspapers at places like the University of California and Wayne State University, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, to increase U.S. student support for the Palestinian national liberation struggle.

Yet the same chapter also noted that in 1969 a "Committee for a Progressive Middle East" [CPME]--which was "the brainchild of Michael Lerner," whose "father, Joseph H. Lerner...served as vice president of the Zionist Organization of America,"--appeared in Berkeley and "issued a statement" asserting that "it was" allegedly "ridiculous for anyone to think that the Arabs were fighting a national liberation struggle" and which "called on al-Fateh to halt guerrilla warfare against Israel and instead focus on `redirecting that struggle internally in Arab lands'."

In the “(Fellow) Travelers” chapter, Professor Fischbach examines how some young U.S. left-wing late 1960s and early 1970s antiwar underground press journalists— “who wanted to be able to present their” Liberation News Service [LNS] “readers with first-hand information” about the Palestinian national liberation struggle—moved or traveled to countries like Lebanon, Jordan and Israel/Palestine, visited Palestinian refugee camps and interviewed or established personal contact with PLO, PFLP and/or Israeli left-wing activists.

And, after returning to the USA from their Middle East visits, “one group” of U.S. Palestinian solidarity Movement activists, “calling themselves the Middle East Research and Information Project, or MERIP, decided to create a new left-wing journal, MERIP Reports,” whose first issue appeared in May 1971. (end of part 1 of review article. To be continued.)