It's hard to believe now, but once upon a time in America the Left was pro-Israel and the Right was anti-Israel (though the Right on this issue most assuredly did not represent their Biblical Fundamentalist contingent). While pro-Israel liberals now cry like babies at the idea that conservatives are more pro-Israel than they are, the liberals of that era actually denied the right or claim of any conservative to support Israel. They claimed it as an absolute monopoly. No conservatives need apply. And unfortunately, not a lot of conservatives were applying.
Internationally, the Left had long rejected its very brief support of Zionism (in the late 1940's when they were looking for anything to hit the "British Empire" with), but in America the Left rallied around Israel and claimed it as their own. Israel, they claimed, was an island of liberalism and progressivism in a sea of Arab reaction. They even opposed the PLO, even as they supported the PLO's comrades in every corner of the globe (just as conservatives who opposed the PLO's comrades couldn't quite bring themselves to condemn the PLO).
Liberals like to remember that Fidel Castro refused to break off diplomatic relations with Israel in 1967 when the rest of the Communist bloc did. What they forget is that Castro did break diplomatic relations with Israel after the 1973 war and did a complete about-face without a single thought. Liberals also don't like to remember that as early as 1966--one year before the Six Day War provoked Communist condemnation of Israel--the "pro-Israel" Castro was hosting Yasser Arafat and other "palestinian" terrorists at the Tri-Continental Conference for Peace.
I have on several occasions in the past also pointed out that in 1982, when the Right Wing government of Menachem Begin sent the IDF into Lebanon to clear out the PLO, American ultra-leftists Jane Fonda and then husband Tom Hayden actually went to Lebanon to defend Israel's actions and entertain Israeli troops. They pointed out (quite correctly, as it was) that Israel was being attacked directly from Lebanon while North Vietnam and the Vietcong were not attacking American territory. However--they were being perfectly consistent with the then domestic American Leftist line that Israel was "the Cuba of the Middle East" (even under Begin) and that supporting North Vietnam and Israel was perfectly consistent (despite the fact that North Vietnam itself was vehemently anti-Israel and pro-Arab).
Now Jane Fonda has suddenly fallen in love with the "reactionary" Arabs and is assailing the former "Cuba of the Middle East." What happened?
The answer is very simple. The "line" changed. Unlike those of us on the Right, current fashion means everything to the Left. The fact that contemporary liberals can now not even remember ever having supported Israel to begin with merely illustrates this fact. When Israel was "cool," they were pro-Israel. When Israel became "un-cool" they did a complete about face without the slightest qualm because they apparently don't have any internal beliefs on anything; they merely seek to be "fashionable." How else to explain the Israeli Labour Party's going from hawkish David Ben Gurion and Golda Meir to its current self-hating "our country was a mistake" line?
Those of us on the Right who supported Israel back then didn't allow ourselves to be bullied by the predominant anti-Israel consensus on our side of the spectrum. And I highly suspect that those on the Right who remain anti-Israel also don't give a fig for current consensus. That is because whether people on the Right support or oppose Israel, they do so for deeply-held principals that cannot be compromised. Not so the Left.
To show you how far the domestic Left (again, as opposed to the International Left, which was always anti-Israel) has changed, even the alleged "pro-Israel" remarks of Martin Luther King Jr. are now being attacked because he was unfamiliar with the subject and didn't know what he was talking about. Martin, meet your replacement: the King of Saudi Arabia.
How long before RFK is either disowned for being pro-Israel or his pro-Israel position erased from history?
Wow...thanks for the lesson!
Did the international left not even support Israel early on when it was pretty explicitly socialist?