If you support Israel then you aren't a leftist.
Leftists don't support imperialist ethnostates.
I honestly don't understand how anyone could call themself a leftist and not know about the free palestine movement, it's one of the issues real leftists are very loud about.
Lol the mid 2000s? You ever heard of the FLQ? The mostly Marxist Quebec Libération Front of the 60s? They were training in Jordan with the PLO/PFLP. As did the German RAF, Ulrike Meinhof was injured with a grenade there.
The Anti-Israel Movement in Québec in the 1970s: At the Ideological Crossroads of the New Left and Liberation-Nationalism
Since the late 1950s, Third World nationalism in Algeria, Vietnam, and the Middle East had fascinated radical Quebec nationalists. Quebec nationalism’s militant arm, the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), styled itself as a national-liberation movement fighting against Anglo-Canadian exploitation and oppression. After the Six-Day-War, the PLO became a significant source of inspiration for these elements. Quebec was their Palestine, as one prominent Quebec Nationalist asserted. This militant Quebec nationalism coincided and often overlapped with the rise of the New Left at Quebec’s universities and in its unions. Like its European and American counterparts, the Quebec New Left adopted the ideologies of anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism, and in 1972, the Quebec-Palestine Association was established in this milieu. Anti-imperialism combined the Marxist analysis of class struggle with a nationalistic worldview, which saw the world divided between oppressor and oppressed nations. For the New Left, Israel became the epitome of an oppressor nation. It was associated with all the supposed vices of the West: Racism, capitalism, inauthenticity, and militarism. This paper sheds light on the founding years of the Quebec anti-Zionist movement in the early 1970 and discusses the themes and images it used to describe Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
For a more American perspective, Malcom X was always Anti-Zionist.
It was Malcolm who warned us in his lifetime about the damage being done to the Palestinians, before any other African American leader or civil rights organization, just as he would take on the Vietnam War before anyone else would.
Imagine going back to the 70s or 80s and telling them they were living through the high water mark of communist internationalism. Well, at least in the west, i guess. idk.
I didn't mean to imply that was the start of the left's support for Palestine. I was only speaking from first hand experience, for as long as I've been active in leftist circles, there has been strong support for the Palestinians. Thanks for the info though.
I remember catching shit from libs that folks wearing Keffiyehs just didn't understand the complicated politics of the middle east! :hardwringing: back in the 90s and 00s.