In this paradigm, the Arabs – notwithstanding their superiority in resources and numbers, nor their regressive social and political practices, nor their recent alignment with the Fascist powers – now, in the guise of the Palestinians, assumed a place among the forces of virtue and progress while the Israelis were consigned to the ranks of the villains and reactionaries.
Tutored by the Algerians, who had waged one of the twentieth century’s most storied anti-colonial struggles, the Palestinians executed a strategy that succeeded in yoking the support of almost the entire global Left. That support ran the spectrum from the diverse Communist states and parties, with their cynical though formidable political apparatuses, to the idealistic “soft Left,” throbbing with guilt over memories of imperialism and the enduring reality of racism.
Championed by the Left’s networks of organizations and intellectuals, a Palestinian state became a kind of Holy Grail to enlightened opinion. Whether this state would rise alongside Israel or in place of it was of secondary concern.
These two forms of suasion – on the one hand, the raw power in Muslim numbers and Arab oil wealth; and on the other hand, the moral claims of the Palestinians and the latter-day ideology of the Left – were to some degree contradictory, but in practice they reinforced each other and created an enduring threat to Israel that might yet trump its formidable military machine.
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Israel has withstood isolation and anathema thanks to its own strength of spirit and societal cohesion and also thanks to the United States, which has consistently dissented from the global chorus of condemnation.
Throughout the Arab world as well as among anti-Semites in the West, America’s strong support for Israel is attributed to the mysterious power of “the Lobby,” in other words, the Jews. But this explanation ignores how American democracy works.
The American people have continued to identify with Israel, however much it is vilified. A Gallup Poll in March 2013 found that 64 percent of Americans supported Israel, while 12 percent supported the Palestinians. Other polls in 2013 were similar. (The Washington Post/ABC poll put the ratio at 55 percent for Israel to 9 percent for the Palestinians; Pew had it at 49 percent to 12 percent and NBC/Wall Street Journal 45 percent to 13 percent). Of course these numbers fluctuate, but they always show a whopping preponderance for Israel, on average by about 4-to-1.
While the American people’s sympathy for Israel has been durable, it is not guaranteed to last forever. The ideological Left, the bastion of contemporary anti-Israel sentiment, has always been weaker in America than elsewhere, but its influence is not inconsequential.
For one thing, its voice is heard on college campuses from faculty who make the works of Israel-bashers like Edward Said, Noam Chomsky and Judith Butler among the most widely assigned texts, as well as from student activists of the Muslim Student Associations, the Students for Justice in Palestine, and a miscellany of Leftist groups.
To be sure, there are also Jewish groups that defend Israel, but today these are often defensive, even apologetic, in their advocacy and sometimes downright frightened of the rhetorically and occasionally physically violent behavior of their adversaries. Thus, they often seem to display less conviction than the anti-Israel voices which are, in Yeats’s phrase, full of passionate intensity.
In addition, while the ideological Left may be small in numbers, it is able to exert influence with a much wider public by advancing its position through groups that present themselves as liberal rather than radical: human rights organizations, labor unions, churches, and even Jewish groups like J Street.
