The New Left and the Arab-Israeli Conflict in the United States

Abstract

The youthful activists who made up the New Left during the 1960s were largely in accord in their opposition to the Vietnam War and their support for the black freedom movement. By contrast, they were deeply divided about how to approach the Arab-Israeli conflict. Some left-wing youth championed the Palestinian cause as another example of support for anti-imperialist struggles in the Third World. Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party (BPP), and famous Youth International Party (Yippie) figures Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin felt this way, as did certain members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Other members of the New Left balked at calling Israel an imperialist oppressor and pushed back, including some in SDS, but also groups like the Radical Zionist Alliance. The result was bitter conflict and invective that was worsened by the fact that left-wing Jews, who were present in disproportionately large numbers in the New Left, were represented on both sides of this issue.

Notes

1 Few scholars have examined how the New Left approached the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is not mentioned, for example, in Todd Gitlin, The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); John McMillian and Paul Buhle, eds., The New Left Revisited (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2003); or Vann Gosse, Rethinking the New Left: An Interpretative History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). One exception is Irwin Unger's The Movement: A History of the American New Left, 1959–1972 (New York: Harper and Row, 1974).

2 This topic is covered more extensively in Michael R. Fischbach, The Movement and the Middle East: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Divided the American Left (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019).

3 C. Wright Mills, “Letter to the New Left,” New Left Review 1, no. 5 (September–October 1960): pp. 18–23.

4 Much has been written, starting in the late 1960s and early 1970s, about how and why Jewish youth were attracted to the New Left and highly represented in it, including Seymour Martin Lipset's “The Socialism of Fools: The Left, the Jews, and Israel,” Encounter, December 1969, pp. 24–35, and Nathan Glazer's “The New Left and the Jews,” Jewish Journal of Sociology 11 (1969): pp. 121–31. An entire conference on this topic was held in 1970 that led to publication of Mordecai S. Chertoff, ed., The New Left and the Jews (New York: Pitman, 1971). Some of these analyses offered some fairly critical and hostile psychological explanations for what motivated Jewish leftists, as did Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter's later work, Roots of Radicalism: Jews, Christians, and the New Left (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). Other writers analyzed this phenomenon more charitably, including Noam Chomsky's “Israel and the New Left,” in The New Left and the Jews, ed. Chertoff, pp. 197–228.

5 The demise of the New Left did not mean that the entirety of the Left was diminished by the 1970s, however.

6 This was true even before Black Power emerged. See, among others, Penny Von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–1957 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); Brenda Plummer, In Search of Power: African Americans in the Era of Decolonization, 1956–1974 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); and John Munro, The Anticolonial Front: The African American Freedom Struggle and Global Decolonization, 1945–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Early Black Power transnationalism was expressed in Lawrence P. Neal, “Black Power in the International Context,” in Black Power Revolt: A Collection of Essays, ed. Floyd B. Barbour (Boston, MA: Porter Sargent Publishers, 1968).

7 Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, ed. George Breitman (New York: Grove Press, 1990), p. 50.

8 Breitman, Malcolm X Speaks, p. 47.

9 Breitman, Malcolm X Speaks, p. 48.

10 See Michael R. Fischbach, Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018) for more about this topic. The best writings on this subject are those produced by Malcolm himself. See, inter alia, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, with the assistance of Alex Haley (New York: Grove Press, 1966), and Breitman, Malcolm X Speaks.

11 Louis A. DeCaro Jr., On the Side of My People: A Religious Life of Malcolm X (New York: New York University Press, 1996), pp. 150 and 153; C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America, revised edition (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1973), pp. 28, 183–84.

12 Malcolm X, “Zionist Logic,” Egyptian Gazette, 17 September 1964.

13 SNCC, “Third World Round-up: The Palestine Problem; Test Your Knowledge,” SNCC Newsletter 1, no. 2 (June–July 1967), p. 4.

14 Simon Hall, “‘On the Tail of the Panther’: Black Power and the 1967 Convention of the National Conference for New Politics,” Journal of American Studies 37, no. 1 (April 2003): p. 67; Sid Lens, “The New Politics Convention: Confusion and Promise,” New Politics 6, no. 1 (Winter 1967): p. 10; Frank Lynn, “New Left Hits Israel, Viet War, Draft,” Newsday, 5 September 1967.

15 For a study of early New Left internationalism, see Vann Gosse, Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of a New Left (New York: Verso, 1993).

16 Scholarship on SDS largely has ignored the question of how the group understood the Arab-Israeli conflict. Neither Kirkpatrick Sale's SDS (New York: Random House, 1973) nor David Barber's A Hard Rain Fell: SDS and Why It Failed (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008) mention it. Alan Adelson's SDS (New York: Scribner, 1972) does discuss it, but devotes only about two pages to it.

17 Roy Dahlberg, “Suggested Middle East Resolution Re: Arab-Israeli Reaction and Implications, Re: NIC Resolution,” New Left Notes, 19 June 1967.

18 “J. G.,” letter to the editor, The Militant, 4 September 1967, in Israel and the Arabs: Militant Readers Debate the Middle East Conflict (New York: Merit Publishers, 1969), p. 3; “Resolution on the Middle East,” 29 June 1967, reel 20, Students for a Democratic Society Papers, 1958–1970 (Glen Rock, NJ: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1977).

19 Larry Hochman, Zionism and the Israeli State: An Analysis in the June War (Ann Arbor, MI: Radical Education Project, 1967), p. 4.

20 Peter Pran, letter to the editor, New Left Notes, 20 March 1969.

21 Mark Rudd, email message to the author, 21 March 2011.

22 Rudd, email message to the author, 21 March 2011.

23 Bob Ross, telephone interview by the author, 21 October 2016.

24 Mike Klonsky, telephone interview by the author, 7 October 2013.

25 Adelson, SDS, p. 353.

26 Susan Eanet, “History of the Middle East Liberation Struggle: Part 1,” New Left Notes, 28 February 1969; Jerome H. Bakst, “The Radical Left and al Fatah,” ADL Bulletin 26, no. 7 (September 1969): p. 2.

27 Eanet, “History of the Middle East Liberation Struggle.”

28 Chertoff, “The New Left and the Newer Leftists,” in The New Left and the Jews, p. 194; Mel Galun, The New Tone of Arab Propaganda on Campus (New York: American Zionist Youth Federation, 1969), p. 6.

29 Jerry Rubin, Growing (Up) at 37 (New York: Warner Books, 1976), p. 75; Jerry Rubin, We Are Everywhere (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), p. 75; Linda Charlton, “Jews Fear Anti-Zionism of New Left,” New York Times, 14 August 1970.

30 Rubin, We Are Everywhere, pp. 75–76.

31 Nancy Kurshan, email message to the author, 29 March 2011.

32 Judy Gumbo Albert, email message to the author, 9 March 2011; Gumbo Albert, telephone interview by the author, 1 April 2011.

33 Anita Hoffman and Abbie Hoffman, To America with Love: Letters from the Underground (New York: Stonehill Publishing, 1976), p. 165.

34 Alan Dershowitz, Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law (New York: Crown Publishers, 2013), p. 435.

35 Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “Jewish Youth Seen and Heard at Dem Convention,” 12 July 1972.

36 Hoffman and Hoffman, To America with Love, pp. 164–66.

37 Jim Retherford, telephone interview by the author, 14 April 2011.

38 Pun Plamondon, email message to the author, 13 November 2013.

39 Good treatments of Black Panther internationalism can be found in Michael L. Clemons and Charles E. Jones, “Global Solidarity: The Black Panther Party in the International Arena,” New Political Science 21, no. 2 (1999): pp. 177–203; and Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr., Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013).

40 “Israel Military Aggression: Mao Condemns U.S.-Israeli Link,” Black Panther, 16 November 1968.

41 Federal Bureau of Investigation, “The Fedayeen Impact – Middle East and United States,” June 1970, p. 39, https://www.governmentattic.org/2docs/FBI_Monograph_Fedayeen-Impact_1970.pdf.

42 John Suiter, “Will the Machine-Gunners Please Step Forward,” Berkeley Barb, 15–21 August 1969.

43 “Yasser Arafat – Commander of Al Fat'h, Palestine: Voices of Rebellion,” Black Panther, 20 December 1969.

44 “Zionism (Kosher Nationalism) + Imperialism = Fascism,” Black Panther, 3 January 1970.

45 Eric Pace, “Cleaver Is Cheered in Algiers as He Denounces Israel as an American Puppet,” New York Times, 23 July 1969; Kathleen Neal Cleaver, “Back to Africa: The Evolution of the International Section of the Black Panther Party (1969–1972)” in The Black Panther Party (Reconsidered), ed. Charles E. Jones (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998), p. 213; “Cleaver, Panthers Cheered in Algeria,” Black Panther, 26 July 1969.

46 “Black Panther Party Statement on Palestine,” 18 September 1970, carton 5, folder 9, Eldridge Cleaver Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

47 Suiter, “Will the Machine-Gunners Please Step Forward.”

48 “Our Enemy's Friends Are Also Our Enemies,” Black Panther, 9 August 1969.

49 “Vietnam-Palestine: One Struggle,” 1954–82, carton 27, reel 100, folder 14: Arab-Israeli Conflict 1969–73, Social Protest Collection, ser. 6, miscellaneous, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

50 Michael Lerner, telephone interview by the author, 19 October 2014.

51 “Statement on the Middle East,” box 2, folder 38, Leon F. Litwack Collection of Berkeley, California, Protest Literature, ser. 1, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. The statement can also be found in Judaism 18 (Fall 1969): pp. 483–87.

52 Joel Aber, “The Role of the SWP in Supporting the Arab Revolution,” SWP Discussion Bulletin 27, no. 12 (August 1969): p. 14.

53 For more about the political activities of Arab students like those in the OAS, see Pamela E. Pennock, The Rise of the Arab American Left: Activists, Allies, and Their Fight against Imperialism and Racism, 1960s–1980s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017) and Geoffrey P. Levin, “Arab Students, American Jewish Insecurities, and the End of Pro-Arab Politics in Mainstream America, 1952–1973,” Arab Studies Journal 25, no. 1 (Spring 2017): pp. 30–58.

54 Adelson, SDS, pp. 127, 199.

55 Committee to Support Middle East Liberation Newsletter 2, nos. 3–4 (January 1970), box 15, folder 11, Youth against War and Fascism, 1968–70, Protest and Activism Collection, 1958–99, ser. VIII: student groups, 1966–75, University Archives, Columbia University.

56 Jack Nusan Porter, “Jewish Student Activism: Northwestern University Leader Outlines Jewish New Left Development,” Jewish Currents 24, no. 5 (May 1970): p. 33.

57 Michael J. Rosenberg, “Israel without Apology,” in The New Jews, ed. James A. Sleeper and Alan L. Mintz (New York: Vintage Books, 1971), pp. 82, 85; M. Jay Rosenberg, “My Evolution as a Jew,” Midstream 16, no. 7 (August–September 1970): p. 52.

58 “Working Paper on the Orientation of the Jewish Liberation Project,” July 1968. Copy in the author's possession.

59 “Radical Zionist Manifesto,” in The Jewish 1960s: An American Sourcebook, ed. Michael E. Staub (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2004), p. 247; Radical Zionist Alliance, “Socialism, Zionism, Liberation,” box 8, Middle East, 1969–, Printed Ephemera Collection on Subjects, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University.

60 “Viewpoint” section, National Guardian, 3 and 10 June 1967.

61 Irving Beinin, “The Mideast War Solves No Problems,” National Guardian, 17 June 1967, p. 8.

62 Irving Beinin, “Discussion: The Mideast Dispute,” National Guardian, 29 July 1967.

63 Leo Huberman, “Israel Is Not the Main Enemy,” Monthly Review 19, no. 5 (October 1967): pp. 8–9.

64 Paul M. Sweezy, “Israel and Imperialism,” Monthly Review 19, no. 5 (October 1967): pp. 2–6.

65 “Arabs and Jews: An Editorial,” Ramparts 6, no. 1 (July 1967): pp. 2–3.

66 Black for Palestine, “Black Solidarity Statement with Palestine,” 2015, http://www.blackforpalestine.com/read-the-statement.html.

67 For more on this, see Fischbach, Black Power and Palestine, pp. 213–15; Michael R. Fischbach, “What Color Are Israeli Jews?: Intersectionality, Israel Advocacy, and the Changing Discourse of Color and Indigeneity,” in Selected Racial Boundaries: The Social Life of Blackness in Israel, ed. Uri Dorchin and Gabriella Djerrahian (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, forthcoming); and Noura Erakat and Marc Lamont Hill, “Black-Palestinian Transnational Solidarity: Renewals, Returns, and Practice,” JPS 48, no. 4 (Summer 2019): pp. 7–16.

68 Carroll Doherty, “A New Perspective on Americans' Views of Israelis and Palestinians,” Pew Research Center, 24 April 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/24/a-new-perspective-on-americans-views-of-israelis-and-palestinians/.

69 Pew Research Center, “Republicans and Democrats Grow Even Further Apart in Views of Israel, Palestinians,” Survey Report, 23 January 2018, https://www.people-press.org/2018/01/23/republicans-and-democrats-grow-even-further-apart-in-views-of-israel-palestinians/.