Doves for War

One of the ironies in the U.S. view of the conflict is that some of Israel's strongest supporters are liberals who led antiwar sentiment in the U.S. during the Viet Nam years. The Senate resolution urging the continued delivery of Phantom fighter-bombers and other war materials was introduced by, among others, Viet Nam Doves Jacob K. Javits and Abraham Ribicoff. Among the "American Professors for Peace in the Middle East" who signed an ad in the New York Times advocating support of Israel was Martin Peretz, an assistant professor of social studies at Harvard and a major contributor to George McGovern's campaign.

Yet most "doves for war," as they were christened by L.B.J. Aide John P. Roche during the 1967 Six-Day War, have little difficulty justifying their seemingly inconsistent positions. To begin with, as Author David Halberstam points out, most antiwar activists objected to U.S. policy in Viet Nam not on outright pacifistic grounds but because they were convinced that Viet Nam was "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time." Moreover, the Israelis are hardly seeking the same order of U.S. aid as the South Vietnamese did. Says Idaho Senator Frank Church, a longtime opponent of U.S. involvement in Viet Nam but staunchly for arms aid to Israel: "The Israelis have never asked for a single American soldier to fight in their defense." Adds James M. Wall, editor of the Christian Century: "The Viet Nam conflict was an internal conflict. This is a conflict between two powers over specific external borders."

Yet not every liberal sees the conflict in terms quite that simple. Linguist Noam Chomsky of M.I.T., a radical opponent of U.S. Viet Nam policy, says that the crucial issue in the Middle East is "that both the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs claim some legitimate right to the same territorial area."

Liberal Distaste. Perhaps the final irony is that many U.S. liberals and intellectuals, who used to preach detente and denounce cold warriors, now sharply question and even attack the current Nixon-Kissinger bargaining with the Soviets. For example, Political Scientist Hans J. Morgenthau recently decided that the Soviet Union is too far outside any "moral consensus" shared with the rest of the international community to be trusted to fulfill its commitments. In recent weeks the tough Jackson amendment that would deny the Soviet Union many U.S. trade advantages unless it changes its emigration policy won the endorsement of such liberals as Writer I.F. Stone and Columnist Joseph Kraft. To be sure, most recent liberal doubt about establishing closer ties with the Soviet Union involves distaste for internal Russian policies, especially the lack of intellectual and human freedoms. But the Kremlin's unwavering hostility toward Israel--detente or no detente--has further alienated a segment of the cause's once enthusiastic liberal supporters in the U.S.

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