Support by the New Left in the United States and Europe for the Arab terrorists in the Middle East conflict has markedly decreased in recent months, a report by the American Jewish Committee discloses. A comprehensive survey of New Left attitudes and actions was made public here today by Philip E. Hoffman, president of the AJCommittee, at the opening of its four day 65th annual meeting attended by some 1009 representatives of the AJCommittee’s chapters and units throughout the country. The report on the New Left, prepared by Milton Ellerin, director of the AJCommittee’s Trends Analysis Division, in collaboration with Abraham S. Karlikow, director of its European Office, indicated that the extent of New Left attacks on Israel has abated for a number of reasons. Among these are: disillusion by the New Left with Arab terrorist forces following their defeat by King Hussein’s army in Jordan last Fall; the general overall decline in influence; reemergence of Vietnam as a dramatic issue to absorb remaining New Left energies; increasing concern with other local issues in various countries; a split among New Left groups about which Arab states and political parties to support and which to oppose; and the tentative steps toward peace taken by Israel and Egypt, spurred by the United States and the Soviet Union, which have evaporated the position that some New Left forces had assigned themselves of providing the grounds for an entente between Jews and Arabs on the basis of their "progressive" ideologies.
The Leningrad trials, with the resultant outcry it provoked in the world, has also moved certain anti-Soviet New Leftists to cease their consistent anti-Israel position, since they now were aligned with Israel in protesting the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union. The survey, while pointing to these aspects of change in New Left attitudes, warned that the New Left campaign against Israel and Zionism, frequently with anti-Semitic undertones, "has not stopped altogether." Another danger to the Jewish community, it continued, is that "negative images of Israel, Zionism and Jews, of a permanent danger, have become deeply imbedded among those oriented toward the New Left of today’s high school and college youth and segments of the intellectual community." Compounding these dangers, the report pointed out, is the lessening of support for Israel by some groups which traditionally have given the country strong backing. In Western Europe, for example, particularly in West Germany and Holland, "younger Socialist elements have challenged strenuously what has been until now the strong Socialist Party support for Israel." In France and Italy, with the increased political discussion in the secondary school system, New Left groups, with their "normal package" of anti-Israel views, have had greater "glamor." The AJC report showed the decline that had taken place in the New Left organizationally since September, 1970.
"The fragmented SDS no longer exists as a viable force. The Weatherman faction with its addiction to violence has alienated most radical students…The Black Panthers, once a prolific source of pro-Al Fatah, anti-Zionist, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda, is in the throes of a death struggle," the survey reported. Along with this disintegration, the survey declared, most radicals and revolutionaries have turned to other causes than that of the Arab terrorists, including the Christian Peace Movement exemplified by the actions of the Berrigan Brothers, the case of black militant Angela Davis, the Women’s Liberation Movement, and the effort to counter the activities of new rightist and centrist campus coalitions, and the need to rally the majority of students who give indications of sliding from involvement to apathy. Another significant factor in reducing the volume of leftist attacks on Israel, the report pointed out, has been "the vigorous attack against the pro-Arab, anti-Israel posture of the campus left launched by Jewish radical groups." These efforts, it added, "significantly blunted or thwarted the commitment of many a Jewish New Leftist to the Arab cause." In Europe, Jewish groups have taken steps to counteract New Left initiatives and present the Israel position better, it stated.
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