It's 1965 All Over Again

The growing movement delegitimizing the State of Israel with campus protestors shouting “From the River to the Sea” is just following the strategy and tactics of campus protestors who, starting in 1965, shouted “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh; NLF is gonna win!”

Today in Gaza and the West Bank, if Israel cannot win, who will: the Palestinian people themselves or a one-party dictatorship imposing an Islamic volksreich?

David S. Fehr, a member of a peace organization, wrote for RealClear Defense that Israel’s war against HAMAS “should be brought to an end.”

But his reasoning was fatuous, making judgments in hindsight on Israel’s tactics in Gaza, armchair generalship at its worst. 

But the David Fehr's of today must not be ignored. They are the ground zero of a new antiwar movement, one which will be the undoing of Israel, just as the movement against the war in Vietnam brought about the conquest of South Vietnam and a new flood of refugees seeking safe havens.

In both wars, the issue to be decided by blood and iron is sovereignty: who will rule the land? Vietnamese Communists or Vietnamese Nationalists? Palestinians or Jews?

But what may start on campus can spread to embroil the body politic. In 1972 the movement against the war in Vietnam took over the Democratic Party under the leadership of George McGovern. Now it seems the anti-Israel movement is similarly gaining strength in the very same Party, causing President Joe Biden to backtrack on his previous support for Israel.

Following the dissemination modality of the anti-Vietnam War movement, consider the current article by Jon Hoffman of the Cato Institute titled: “Israel Is a Strategic Liability for the United States.” The anti-Vietnam War movement precursor was the March 25, 1964 speech (expanded later into a book) by Senator William Fulbright with the title “Old Myths and New Realities”.

In a similar vein, Hoffman suggests that we turn away from “old myths” to seriously consider “new realities” in our relationship with Israel asking: “What exactly the United States gets in return for this unidirectional relationship remains unclear.”

He seeks to weaken the hold on us of the “old” narrative: “Proponents claim that unfaltering support is critical for the advancement of U.S. interests in the Middle East. Sen. Lindsey Graham, for example, once referred to Israel as the “eyes and ears of America” in the region. While intelligence-sharing may have some strategic value, the past five months of war in Gaza have made clear the numerous negative effects of the relationship, namely how Washington’s emphatic embrace of Israel has undermined its strategic position in the Middle East while damaging its global image.”

Today, the toxic “from the River to the Sea” narrative is collecting adherents thanks to a powerful ancient prejudice – antisemitism. That pernicious narrative about Jews proposes that they are always outsiders, on their own, not deserving of our sympathy, or “ally-ship.”

What conflates the two antiwar narratives of 1965 and 2024 is a mythos about the compelling morality of liberation coupled with a false narrative about who is oppressed. Those who are said to be oppressed need liberation and so to support them is righteous. End of analysis.

So, the issue today about what should happen between the “river and the sea” really is how to share sovereignty over territory that was once Jewish but then later Muslim. Wars of conquest, either then or now, are not the best way to solve such a territorial dispute, which, in the end, will require compromise and the creation of mutual respect between two stubborn and mistrustful ethnicities.

But as of now Joe Biden and his administration are more and more following the emerging campus narrative as it wins over believers in the Democratic Party. Such Democrats are now openly distancing themselves from Israel.  With support from Senator Chuck Schumer, President Biden is building a case that the current Israel government is “undeserving “of American support just as Democrats opposed to the Vietnam War once insisted that the South Vietnamese government of President Nguyen Van Thieu was similarly benighted and undeserving.

On February 1, the Biden administration issued an executive order  distancing itself from Jewish settlers on the West Bank. The order imposed sanctions on four settlers for directly carrying out violence against or intimidation of Palestinians.

On March 25, the Biden administration did not veto a U.N. Security Council vote calling for a Gaza ceasefire. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office called the US abstention “a clear retreat from the consistent position of the US in the Security Council since the beginning of the war.” 

On April 4 in a tense call with Benjamin Netanyahu, President Biden told Israel’s President that US support will now depend on steps being taken to “address civilian harm” and “humanitarian suffering” in Gaza.

Each small step taken by the Biden Administration ratifies the supposed truth of a moral narrative undermining American commitment to Israel and so intensifies that narrative’s political appeal to disaffected Americans. Thus, small steps become a self-fulling prophecy. Each step becomes a proof point that the war effort rests on unsound principles, leading to a spreading conviction that Americans must turn their backs on the war.

A complete break between former allies then just simply happens as a matter of unstoppable political momentum developing in the American Democratic Party.

For those who remember the protest movement against the Vietnam War, déjà vu anyone?

As we consider our policy towards Israel, wise and humane American leaders should remember what once happened to an American ally in Southeast Asia and so should try hard not to let such a betrayal happen again. 

Proffered antiwar narratives demeaning or demonizing our allies need to be carefully screened for misinformation and disinformation.

Stephen B. Young is the Global Executive Director of the Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism (CRT).