I didn’t leave the Left. They left me — all because of Israel.

Once upon a time, Israel was the liberal dream, and the Left championed the nascent Jewish state. What happened?

If any students from the 1960s and 1970s were looking on today, they’d shake their heads in disgust. (photo: Nikolas Gannon/Unsplash)

Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.

---

This is a guest essay by John Matthews, a journalist and author of 24 books.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

---

The Left’s attitude to Israel has changed over the years, or is it my own views that have shifted?

To more accurately gauge that requires going through a quick checklist:

• Do I believe in equal rights for all? Yes, absolutely.

• Am I against discrimination of any groups or races? Yes.

• Do I believe in equality of the sexes? Yes.

• Am I homophobic? No.

• Do I generally believe in fair play and stand up for the downtrodden? Very much so.

• Do I speak out when I see any of the aforementioned rights abused? Yes, indeed often probably too much so.

So, how does the Left fare on that same checklist? I’m sure they would proclaim they hold true and firm on all of the preceding. However, in a couple of areas — discrimination and standing up for the downtrodden — the lines have become blurred over the years, and on occasion have gone directly against their other core values.

But to fully explain how and why this has come about requires going back some years — specifically to 1969 in the State of Israel, when Golda Meir became its prime minister. At that time (hard to believe when you consider the state of affairs now) Israel was beloved and championed by the liberal Left. It ticked all the right boxes:

• A brave new nation of only 4 million people surrounded by numerous hostile Arab nations, with a combined total of 200 million, vying for its destruction

• One of the first ever female prime ministers in a male-dominated political landscape, at a time when women’s lib was on the rise

• The kibbutz, a particularly idealistic socio-economic endeavour and the model for many farming co-operatives to follow

In fact, such was the level of the love affair between Israel and the liberal Left that a favourite past-time of British students throughout the late 1960s and 1970s was to spend summer breaks on a kibbutz, whereas now they’d more likely be found demonstrating in front of the Israeli embassy.

Finally, that this was a people who had survived the Holocaust. Indeed, with the advent of the 1967 Six-Day War two years previous, it had been unthinkable that the surrounding Arab armies might be victorious and the Jewish People would face the same again: massacred and cast to the wind to return to being simply an ethnic group in other nations. Another diaspora, if you will.

Such was the level of fear and outrage, particularly amongst the liberal Left, that many protest groups begged the United States to intervene to protect Israel. The U.S. didn’t, partly because at that time Russia was backing the Arab camp and that could have led to direct conflict with Russia, though the U.S. did provide arms as the Russians were supplying the Arab armies.

Then the war came, and went. In six days! While Israel could be applauded for fighting such a speedy, strategic war with resultant low losses on both sides, the downside was that it caused a serious dent to their status as “underdogs” with the liberal Left. Still, though, the surrounding Arab nations massed against them were much larger, and six years later made a more concerted and organized assault with the Yom Kippur War, which at one point came dangerously close to success, before finally throwing in the towel.

This six-year period also saw the first seeds of Palestinian nationalism; before that it had been purely a Pan-Arab battle, and if successful Israel would no doubt have been divided up equally between its surrounding conquerors of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, with little thought of developing an independent Palestinian state. Indeed, that hard truth was demonstrated by the fact that Jordan, who held the West Bank and East Jerusalem from 1948 to 1967, made no moves whatsoever towards the formation of a separate Palestinian state. They simply annexed the entire area as part of an expanded Jordan.

In the decades following, there was an uncomfortable courtship between the Left and the Palestinian cause, mostly due to how it was pursued during that period. After all, however righteous that cause might be, what self-respecting Left-winger could, with a clear conscience, support plane hijackings, killing half an Olympic team, and blowing apart men, women, and children in cafés, hotels, clubs, and shopping malls?

Paradoxically, it wasn’t until the security divide to protect against this was built between 2003 and 2006 that the Palestinians were seen as a fully entrenched and disadvantaged group, and so in turn were perceived by the Left as fully deserving of the “underdog” crown previously held by Israel.

In Gaza, where with the withdrawal of settlers, Gazan women gave flowers to Israeli soldiers in thanks, that initial hope faded as Hamas gained control and with continual rocket fire into Israel, the situation became even more entrenched.

In retrospect, one can’t help wonder whether Palestinian leaders, having viewed the reaction in the West to that 30-year largely civilian-targeted terrorist bombing campaign, helped shape how they would fight their cause in the future. Certainly, with the divide built and future bombing plans seriously hampered, propaganda was probably the only remaining strong option, so it’s easy to see why the Palestinians would make as much of their future civilian losses as they could.

As a result, those losses were strongly exaggerated or bent out of shape, and pictures of injured or dead infants displayed at every opportunity. “They’re killing our children,” became a favoured headline. And who can blame them? Having seen their own bombing campaigns against Israelis have a reverse effect and raise nothing but horror in the West, why not dip their bread in some of that same gravy (or in this case, blood) and plumb Western liberal sensitivities as best they could? Perhaps they even thought at one stage: The Holocaust helped the Jews gain the State of Israel, playing the victim card might work in a similar way for us too.

So it’s easy to understand why the Palestinians and part of the Arab media pursued this course; after all, with the odds against them in a conventional conflict, what other choice was there?

But the position of the liberal Left and much of the Western media is not so easy to comprehend. Where were the voices questioning these statistics or this strategy, or indeed stating the obvious: “You can hardly complain about civilian losses on your side when for the past 30 years you’ve pursued a terrorist bombing campaign against Israel which has targeted almost exclusively civilians?” But this sort of reality-check was rarely if ever aired.

And as this one-way Palestinian-plight-propaganda-machine gained momentum; any remaining semblance of reality or balance was also lost. The security wall was suddenly dubbed an “apartheid wall” (neglecting the fact that if that had been the main aim it would have been built in 1949, not 55 years later in the wake of one of the worst terrorist bombing campaigns any nation has suffered); the Palestinian plight was sometimes compared to the Holocaust (neglecting the fact that they were several million lives lost short, with the only remotely comparable recent conflict, Syria, where with a death toll of 620,000, seven times as many Muslims have died in nine years than with Israel in 70 years).

The term “ethnic cleansing” was bandied about, when indeed the population in Gaza and the West Bank now stands at almost 5.5 million, four times that of the Palestinian population in 1948. And within Israel itself, you have a further 1.78 million Muslim Arabs residing, almost three times that of Palestinians originally displaced, something often conveniently forgotten by the Left.

By the time you get to the stage of liberal Left-wingers and students marching alongside Palestinians chanting “Palestine will be free, from the River to the Sea!” — in essence calling for the removal or eradication of all the Jews in between, hardly different to the stance of an ardent racist or latter-day Nazi (the polar opposite of all the Left has historically stood for) — you realize just how out of control things have become.

I’m sure that if any of the students involved in demonstrations in support of Israel in the 1960s and 1970s were looking on, they’d shake their heads in disgust. “Don’t you realize you’re demonstrating for the very thing that we strived to avoid all those years ago: the removal of all Jews from the area? Don’t you appreciate how abhorrently racist that is? Indeed, directly against all Left-wing principals we’ve ever held dear.”

Of course, when these ardent Left-wingers are called out on this apparent racism, they often reply, “Oh, I’m not anti-Jewish at all, it’s just Zionists I’m against.” But even this doesn’t stand up to even a basic litmus-morals test. It’s a bit like saying, “Those pesky Jews are bearable I suppose when they’re living in other nations — but for God’s sake, don’t let them have a nation of their own.”

Or, how would it be if the remark came: “Oh, I’m not anti-Muslim at all, it’s just the Palestinians I’m against.” And while no doubt the many Israeli infractions and wrongdoings would be raised in support of an anti-Zionist stance (and yes indeed, there have been many), as many infractions and wrongdoings could also be pointed at the Palestinians with the waves of suicide bombings, rockets, kidnapping tunnels, knife attacks, and the October 7th massacre.

While the Left points to America’s support of Israel, they tend to overlook the tremendous support Palestinians also have, particularly in the Arab world. Longtime Palestinian Authority dictator Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party receives support from many Arab nations, as well as the European Union and the United States, whereas Hamas’ support has historically come from Syria, Iran, Qatar, and the Muslim Brotherhood in various Arab nations, as well as talk of Hamas links with ISIS.

The underlying issue with this funding is that 100 percent of the Hamas funding (and a degree of the Fatah funding from Arab quarters) is provided on the understanding that it be used primarily to undermine and ultimately destroy the Jewish state rather than make peace with it. So, in that regard, the Pan-Arab battle against Israel of 40 years ago has hardly changed, except that now it’s fought primarily on a proxy rather than open basis.

The problem with this type of support is that it shows little regard for the actual plight of the Palestinian people. The undermining of Israel is put first and their own welfare second; in that regard, they are seen as mere pawns in a much grander Pan-Arab battle against Israel. So rockets, mortars, and cement for incursion and kidnapping tunnels take precedence over schools, hospitals, and trade parks — things which might actually improve the welfare of the Palestinians.

Of course, there’s also an underlying motive in all of this, because you can hardly recruit the next band of “freedom fighters” when things are stable and the economy is quite good. Which is no doubt why a number of surrounding Arab nations have kept the Palestinians in refugee camps throughout, without integrating them into their societies. Do we in the UK still have Ugandan Asians in refugee camps 40 years later? Do we intend to put the current influx of Iraqis, Syrians, and Afghans into refugee camps and keep them there? Of course not. So why do we tolerate numerous Arab nations doing that with the Palestinians?

There is it appears a need to keep them “lean and mean” so that all their ills can be blamed on Israel. And of course, with the response to suicide bombings, rocket attacks, random knifings, and the October 7th massacre, those ills and injustices come to the fore even more (especially by the time they’ve been put through the media-and-online propaganda mill), and the cycle continues.

When it comes to the attitude of today’s Left-wing liberals to Muslims at large, their fault-lines are even more acute. Yes, I fully understand their motives in defending a seemingly put-upon minority in Europe and the United States, as indeed Jews and Afro-Caribbean’s were similarly defended by the liberal Left in those regions in years gone by. And, yes, Islamophobia is a problem in some quarters, particularly with the Far-Right and UK groups such as the English Defence League.

But in the rush to defend that minority, Left-wing liberals seem to have forgotten that many of these Muslim groups (and this is particularly true of Hamas or any ardent Islamic group) are intolerant of gay rights, equality for women, democratic rights, and freedom of speech (particularly when it involves the Prophet Mohammed) — all the core tenets that any self-respecting Left-wing liberal holds dear. So, in that respect, they face a tremendous dichotomy, with one part of their aims directly at odds with all the others.

One voice of hope and unity in the region is Bassem Eid. A leading human rights campaigner for 30 years, he has developed a strong reputation of pulling no punches and being openly critical of abuses on both sides, whether by Israelis or Palestinians. As a result, he has become respected by each side, and in some instances feared. His views are simply too honest and forthright for some.

But one thing becomes clear: He’s one of the few strong voices to clearly have the welfare of the Palestinian people at heart, rather than simply be washed along with the flow of some nearby proxy-interest Arab nation.

In that regard, today’s Left-wing liberals would serve themselves well by taking a leaf out of his book, and perhaps ask themselves the same hard question: Do they also wish to serve those same remote Arab-proxy interests, or those of the Palestinian people?

---