SAN DIEGO (Press Release)–During the Six Day War of 1967, polls showed that Americans and Europeans favored the Israelis over the Arabs by overwhelming margins. In the United Nations Security Council, a British resolution essentially gave Israel the terms of peace it sought and when the Arabs and their Soviet supporters tried to override the resolution in the General Assembly, they fell short of the necessary votes.
Fast forward 40 years and Israel has become perhaps the most reviled country in the world. What caused this remarkable turnabout? Initially, terrorism, oil blackmail, and the sheer size of Arab and Muslim populations gave the world powerful inducements to back the Arab cause; later, a new paradigm of leftist orthodoxy arose in which class struggle was supplanted by the “noble struggles” of people of color.
Joshua Muravchik is a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies. His most recent book, Making David Into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel, and a short companion e-book, Liberal Oasis: The Truth About Israel, were published in 2014.
Muravchik will speak at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 20, at Chabad Center of University City, 3913 Governor Drive. There is no charge. Further information is available from the Zionist Organization of America at (858) 546-1361 or www.sdzoa.org