‘in the Long Run’ Revolutionary Left Zionism’s Only True Ally, Says Ben-aharon

In the long run, the revolutionary left is Zionism’s only true ally, Histadrut secretary general Yitzhak Ben-Aharon told today’s session of the American-Israel Dialogue. Foreign Minister Abba Eban opened the sessions Monday night with a denunciation of New Leftism anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic (see separate story on Page 1).

Israel’s present alignment with more-reactionary forces is merely necessary political pragmatism, “which must not be allowed to become Israel’s real, basic philosophy,” Ben-Aharon contended. “Opportunistic pragmatism” has permeated the Labor Party, he warned, and is eating into many facets of Israeli society. But, he said, “Short-term political alliances should not obscure deeper streams of political purpose.” He asserted that just because right-wing forces and governments help Israel more now than left-wing forces does not mean they are Israel’s natural allies.

Speaking as a “veteran Socialist.” the 66-year-old former Cabinet minister pointed out that the Old Left was also riddled with anti-Semites. He saw three reasons for this: the presence in the leftist movement of many anti-Jewish Jews who sought to show how cosmopolitan and detached from Jewry they were; the fact that there was indeed a Jewish capitalist class of bankers and property owners in the diaspora which drew leftist opposition, and the fact that the mentor–Soviet Russia–was anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist.

Paul Jacobs, a radical leftist from San Francisco, said the New Left was not by definition anti-Semitic, and said he and others within it were fighting such a trend. Irving Kristol of New York, editor of The Public Interest, said Israel and Jews generally were politically conservative and should have the courage to say so. The New Left opposes Israel and American Jewry not out of anti-Semitism but out of anti-conservatism, he contended.

Eban’s condemnation of New Leftism was echoed by Marie Syrkin of New York, the veteran Zionist thinker and editor of the Herzl Press. She read from the poetry of LeRoi Jones to prove that the New Left is anti-Semitic. Amos Elon, the Israeli author of “The Israelis: Fathers and Sons,” attacked what he saw as Israeli society’s insensitivity to social problems, communal differences and the plight of Arab villagers evicted from their homes.