B.C. Comics, Robin Hood, and Israel

Everyone loves an underdog...until he isn't one.

Many years ago I read a particular strip of B.C comics. It shows a masked man who robs a rich man, proclaiming that he takes from the rich and gives to the poor. In the next frame, our masked hero finds a poor man and gives him the money. In the next frame, overwhelmed with joy, he cries out "I'm rich!" Sure enough, in the final frame the robber returns and takes the money, proclaiming that he takes from the rich...

I thought of this when I read "How did we forget that Israel's story is the story of the West?" by Charles Moore:

Anti-imperialists and the Left also found much to admire [in Israel]. They admired people whose pioneer spirit kept them equal, who often lived communally, who fled the persecution of old societies to build simpler, better ones. If you read Bernard Donoughue's diaries, just published, of his life as an adviser to Harold Wilson in the 1970s (a much better picture of what prime ministers are like than Sir Christopher Meyer's self-regarding effort), one difference between then and now that hits you hard is Donoughue's (and Wilson's) firm belief that the cause of Israel is the cause of people who wish to be free, and that its enemies are the old, repressive establishments.

Remember those good old days when the Left loved Israel? How times do change, especially when the underdog becomes more established and someone else comes along and says that they are the underdog.

...But then a different narrative supervened. People called "the Palestinians" began to be mentioned. Once upon a time, the word "Palestinian" had no national meaning; it was simply the description on any passport of a person living in British-mandated Palestine. During the 19 years to 1967 when Jordan governed the West Bank, the people there had no self-rule, and no real name. UN Resolution 242, which calls for Israel to leave territories it occupied in 1967, does not mention Palestinians; it speaks only of "Arab refugees". Palestinian nationality came along, as it were, after the fact, a nationality largely based on grievance.

Since then, the story has grown and grown. Israel, which was attacked, has come to be seen as the aggressor. Israel, which has elections that throw governments out and independent commissions that investigate people like Sharon and condemn him, became regarded as the oppressive monster. In a rhetoric that tried to play back upon Jews their own experience of suffering, supporters of the Palestinian cause began to call Israelis Nazis. Holocaust Memorial Day is disapproved of by many Muslims because it ignores the supposedly comparable "genocide" of the Palestinians.

The Left can be very exacting about the their role models.

Western children of the Sixties like this sort of talk. They look for a narrative based on the American civil rights movement or the struggle against apartheid. They care little for economic achievement or political pluralism. They are suspicious of any society with a Western appearance, and in any contest between people with differing skin colours, they prefer the darker. They buy into the idea, now promoted by all Arab regimes and by Muslim firebrands with a permanent interest in deflecting attention from their own societies' problems, that Israel is the greatest problem of all.

I imagine that back in 1967, no one could have imagined that the love affair between the Left and Israel would ever end. Do we dare hope that the Left might take a second look at the Palestinians and realize whom they are admiring now?

Technorati Tag: Israel.