Harvard Prof. Says Anti-zionists Demand New Leftists Surrender Jewish Identity

A Harvard professor of government said that anti-Zionist pressure on the New Left, whose membership he termed “disproportionately Jewish,” from black militants at home and Third World revolutionaries abroad constitutes a demand for “a surrender of their Jewish Identity.”

Dr. Michael Walzer also told a Boston audience that “the same mental rigidity which turned the civil war in Vietnam into an international struggle is turning the Middle East struggle into an international incident.” He said that “New Leftists who are against the war in Vietnam and other examples of American intervention find it easy to assimilate any ally of the United States into the camp of imperialism.” The relative ease of the Israeli victory in the Six-Day War, Dr. Walzer said, “brought a sudden picture of ‘imperialistic’ Israel ruling over a conquered people.” This, he said, intensified the pressure on Jewish leftists who could now “support the Arab Palestine guerrilla whom they identified as part of the world revolution they admired.”

In discussing the pressure from black militants. Dr. Walzer discounted talk of Negro-anti-Semitism, asserting “it is not the majority of blacks but the militant leftists who resent Jewish leadership.” Black anti-Zionism, he said “is far more an assertion of black leadership and black nationalism than a principle position on the State of Israel.” The professor, a contributing editor to Dissent magazine. said that “the New Left significantly underestimates the importance and value of national feelings. These pressures demand from liberal Jews a surrender of Jewish identification which, unfortunately, today is easy for Jews to make. The result is a generation of young people both without a nation and without self-respect.”