(Reviewer: Gary Selikow, Vol. 72, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2017)
I have often wondered how from being supported by the greater part of the world (barring Arab/Muslim and Soviet Bloc countries), including by the non-Stalinist Left, Israel has become a victim of unrelenting hatred, including in the United Nations, media, EU, Third World regimes and many churches. Today, Palestinian privilege means that Palestinians can carry out continual acts of terror against Jewish Israelis and still be regarded as the victims. In his insightful, penetrating and hard hitting work Making David into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel, Joshua Muravchik grapples with this question.
The introduction refers to the perfidious 2009 Goldstone Commission, which unjustly charged Israel with committing ‘crimes against humanity’ during Operation Cast Lead in late 2008-early 2009, an operation aimed at preventing llamas from launching rockets at civilian Israeli targets. Comments Muravchik, this “underlined a dramatic change in international opinion that would have seemed unthinkable a few decades earlier. Little more than forty years had elapsed since the underdog Israel had fought a six-day war against its Arab neighbours in which the Western world had cheered for its victory … by 2009 this sympathy seemed a distant memory in the United Kingdom and the rest of Western Europe, and the United Nations was arrayed overwhelmingly against Israel …. In short the global community had stamped Israel as an outcast. What had happened in the intervening decades to occasion such a dramatic turnaround?”
The first reason is that the Arab world is no longer seen as the massive axis threatening tiny Israel. Instead, the Palestinian cause has become an extremely ‘progressive’ and fashionable one. Israel has certainly become a major military power, but however much the Palestinians are outgunned and however much they might be suffering heavier casualties, they remain the aggressors. This is a one sided war, writes Muravchik, in that only one side – the Palestinians and Muslim world -want it. And while Israel has always engaged in defensive measures and targeted terror networks, the Arabs have made no bones about their strategy of targeting civilians.
What has changed the paradigm to a large degree is the abandonment by the Left of the class struggle for that of supporting dark-skinned Third World people against the demonized West (particularly whites). In this worldview, the former can do no wrong (unless they align with the West) and are always the victims, while Westerners are the epitome and root of all evil in the world (West vs the Rest). Israel, despite half its Jewish population being dark-skinned and originating from the Middle East and North Africa, are seen as Western and white and therefore evil, while the Palestinians are regarded as noble, dark-skinned oppressed victims.
A current example of this anti-white racism is how left-wing feminists, who historically campaigned against rape and the right of women to dress as they please, now defend Muslim migrants in Europe guilty of participating in what has been termed a `rape jihad’ against European women and girls, going so far as to say the victims are at fault for dressing in a way that `provokes’ the attacks. This world view has also led the global Left to support some of the worst tyrannies of modern times, such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Zimbabwe, not to mention Saddam Hussein’s genocide of the Kurds and Communist China’s suppression of Tibet.
Then opening chapter takes the story from the 1917 Balfour Declaration through to the 1967 Six-Day War, the time “when Israel was admired (almost all around)”. Chapter Two details how the Arab cause became ‘Palestinian’ and ‘progressive’ (“No longer was it Israel versus the Arabs. Now it was Israel versus the homeless Palestinians. David had become Goliath”). The Palestinians, having realized they could never win militarily, launched a two pronged strategy of terror combined with the greatest propaganda campaign since the Third Reich (perhaps even greater, as it is more widespread and global). Comments Muravchik, “No longer did Israel enjoy the public relations gifts of opponents who were collaborators of Hitler and Goebbels. Now they faced the comrades of such chic romanticized figures as Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh. Not only had David become Goliath but on the other side the frog had become a prince”.
Making David into Goliath explains in successive chapters about the Palestinians’ use of terrorism, the use of the Arab oil weapon to pressure the world against Israel, the Arab takeover of the United Nations and how the latter became a body apparently bent on destroying the Jewish state. It records how, under the malignant influence of Austria’s Jewish-born Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, the Socialist International was turned against Israel, and how “Edward Said conquers academia for Palestine”. There is a chapter on Israel’ s own internal political culture and one dealing with the International Solidarity Movement, which supports the killing of Israeli civilians and refuses to work with even left-wing Israeli groups. Their poster girl Rachel Corrie (who was accidentally killed while interfering with an Israeli anti-terror operation) herself showed scant compassion for Israeli victims of terror.
The author further explores the world of Jews who nurse a pathological hatred of all things Israeli. They include academic Norman Finkelstein and the UN Human Rights Council ‘Special Raconteur on Israel’s violations’ Richard Falk, who supported the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Republic of Iran, describes Israelis as Nazis and praises suicide bombings as “legitimate resistance”.
Chapter Eleven, entitled ‘Israel in the Dock’, describes the pillorying, demonization and delegitimization of Israel in the wake of the so-called ‘Second Intifada’ of 2000-2005, including its even being brought to trial in the International Criminal Court for a purely defensive measure – the Security Fence, built in response to the deaths of over a thousand Israelis in terror attacks on buses, religious ceremonies (such as the 2002 Netanya Pesach Seder), discotheques and pizza parlors. Implied by this was that Israel has no right at all to defend herself against terror by any means at all.
Muravchik describes the irony of how Israel is consigned by the Left to darkness and villainy even though according to the latter’s nominal values, such as freedom of speech and thought, religious tolerance, racial and sexual diversity and social justice, it is among the world’s best whereas its enemies rank among the worst. In his conclusion, he points to what the demonization, delegitimization, isolation and onslaught against Israel could lead to: “Should Israel’s enemies succeed, the result would be a second Holocaust. This would be a tragedy of unspeakable proportions for the Jews but not only for them. The world would have lost one of its most creative countries and the devastation of the Jewish people would cause incalculable harm to the spiritual life of the West and perhaps beyond”.
This remarkable book is vital reading for anyone who wishes to know why and how Israel has gone from being one of the most admired countries in the world to one of the most reviled and the sheer injustice of this.
Making David into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel by Joshua Muravchik, Encounter Books, 2014, 296pp.
Gary Selikow is a media researcher and analyst and a regular contributor of book reviews to Jewish Affairs.
