Richard Brookhiser has some thoughts on Norman Podhoretz’s recent book, Why Are Jews Liberal:
This process I understand, somewhat. Much of it is Israel-driven. Years of anti-Israel Soviet propaganda did their work, and do it still, even as many of the stars whose light we see at night have actually gone out. The 1967 and 1973 wars were deeply humiliating to the Red Army: all those tanks chewed up by Israeli Shermans. Steps had to be taken, and were. Liberals, for their part, grew conflicted about defending a David that behaved like a Goliath. Was Exodus supposed to lead to Ariel Sharon? Finally, Israel acquired allies that simply embarrassed liberals, especially Jews. Liberty Baptist is a long way from Walter Benjamin.
Read the whole thing; for Roger L. Simon’s interview with Norman Podhoretz on PJTV, click here.
The long knives for Israeli may have been sharpened during the 1967 and 1973 wars, but in the U.S. they didn’t come out until 1977, when Menachem Begin and Likud won election over Labor for the first time in the nation’s history. Labor may have fought the Soviets’ client states, but their social policies were in tune with what liberal Democrats in the U.S. supported. Once Likud with its more free-market policies got into power, the left saw no reason to show any lingering support for Israel.
I think a cinema analogy is apropos here…
The Chosen People are much more sympathetic as victims lining up meekly for the cattle cars in Schindler’s List than they are as victors striking back in Raid on Entebbe or Munich.
Liberals always root for the Underdog, which for Israel would entail queueing on Tel Aviv’s beaches for their turn to walk into the sea.
Speaking of Stephen Spielberg, when Golda Meir in Munich says “Sometimes a nation must compromise on its principles”, is she referring to “Never Again”?