Replies

Did the international left not even support Israel early on when it was pretty explicitly socialist?

From the very beginning the USSR banned Zionism as "reactionary." So far as I know, no distinction was ever made between left and right wing Zionism.

After World War II this line changed temporarily. Stalin wanted the British Empire destroyed and used every propaganda piece he could think of . . . including supporting Israel's anti-colonial war. With Stalin's permission, Communist Czechoslovakia sold weapons to the nascent state (though negotiations with that country had preceded the Communist coup d'etat) when no one else would. Even the US did nothing other than diplomatically recognize Israel, continuing to observe the arms embargo that was theoretically neutral but in fact favored the Arabs.

During this brief period, Stalin's minions began parroting the line and so for this brief moment the international left supported Israel, even suggesting that Israel and "anti-imperialist" Arab movements join together to throw Britain out of the Middle East.

However, in the early fifties the Communist line changed again and went right back to its original anti-Zionist position. Stalin saw "Zionists" and "cosmopolitans" everywhere, and thought they were agents of America. Anti-Semitism swept the Eastern Bloc (some writers have suggested that had Stalin not died on Purim 5713 there would have been a second Sho'ah, G-d forbid). Communist Czechoslovakia, again as Russian's client, began supplying the Arabs as it had once supplied Israel. Even the notorious "right wing" anti-Semite Francis Parker Yockey became pro-Communist, convinced that the reds were an ally in the war against Jewry. (As an aside, it is interesting to note that Israel's socialist Prime Minister David Ben Gurion actually offered to send troops to fight the Communists in Korea but was rebuffed.)

However, the reds maintained diplomatic relations with Israel in 1967 (as mentioned earlier, Castro continued to maintain relations until the 1973 war). Since that time at the latest the international Communist left has been 100% against Israel, always mentioning it in the same breath as Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa. I myself used to listen to short wave broadcasts in the Seventies and I had no idea whatsoever that any right wingers had ever been hostile to the Jewish state because I thought only Communists had ever opposed it.

However (and this is where things get hazy), while the international Communist left was hostile to Israel, the international socialist and social democratic left was pro-Israel (Israel's ruling Labor Party was a member of the Socialist International). This is needless to say a very strange situation.

But American domestic politics was completely unhinged from reality. Other than Biblical Fundamentalists the right was almost solidly anti-Israel (and not just the kooks) while almost the entire domestic left claimed an absolute monopoly on pro-Israel sentiment. And if the official Communist organizations toed the Soviet line in name, in fact they were very quiet about it. Though there were always exceptions to the "pro-Israel" consensus of the American left (Maoists, Trotskyists, Black nationalists).

This is what I gather from reading about this topic for many years. I apologize for my lack of documentation but hope this will help to at least begin to answer your question.