Reply #19: The Gentleman Is Quite Correct, Sir [View All]

[The Magistrate]

Support for the state of Israel has, through most of its history, been stronger in the Democratic Party than the Republican Party. It remains the case even today that the great preponderance of Democrats view Israel with a friendly eye, though many dislike its current government. It is the belief of only a very small number of people that opposition to Israel is the hallmark of a "real Democrat."

The cause of Arab palestine had, of course, nothing to do with the form of Israel's government. It did become something of a totem on the Left, at a rime when hostilities between the Soviet Union and the United States were at their height, and Israel was seen as something of a check to Soviet designs in the Near East. The Soviet Union had, in the earliest days of Israel, been very supportive of it, viewing it as a possible wedge against European colonial control of the region; weapons shipped from the Soviet satillite of Czechoslovakia were essential elements of Israeli victory in the '48 war. Matters shifted during Stalin's swan-song, the Doctors' Purge, which had grotesque Anti-Semitic elements, and with the interplay of Israeli rapprochement with west Germany, and the rise of Nasser in Egypt. By the mid-fifties, and the Suez War, the turn to Soviet hostility was complete.