On Not Giving Up the Flag

Michael Walzer, in Dissent, worries that the Israeli Left is making the same mistakes the American Left made in the Vietnam era. Read the whole thing.

There are many reasons, of course, for the current weakness of the Left. But its militants might begin to overcome their weakness if they were seen by their fellow citizens to be insisting, with a strong (rather than a bleeding) heart, that solidarity has to be a two-way street. They should say to the Palestinians: we will march with your flag only if you march with ours. And they should say to all Israel: our program, two states for two peoples, offers the best hope of securing the national sovereignty that this flag, which we carry proudly, is supposed to represent.

I tell this to my friends, but I am writing it only for the Dissent blog. Leftists here have to work this through for themselves. No one learns from what happened to someone else, half a century ago.