How did the Australian Jewish Left respond to the first wave of pro-Palestinian activism from 1967-75? By Professor Philip Mendes (Monash University), Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal, 26(3), November 2023, pp.363-379.
Abstract
During and following the 1967 Six Day War, many groups within the international Left abruptly shifted their position on the Middle East conflict from either pro-Israel or relatively neutral perspectives to overtly pro-Arab alignments. Yet, progressives remained substantively divided, particularly between those who endorsed the Palestinian demand to liquidate the State of Israel, and others who still supported the right of Israel to retain national sovereignty. Similar divisions existed within Jewish Left groups globally. This paper examines the struggle by key figures within the Australian Jewish Left – particularly Norman Rothfield and Henry Zimmerman – to resist the extreme anti-Israel agenda. Attention is drawn to their key arguments and strategies, and also to alternative perspectives presented by other local Jewish Left figures.
Keywords: Jewish Left, Israel, Palestinians, Norman Rothfield, Henry Zimmerman
Introduction
Prior to the 1967 Six Day War, the global Left was relatively sympathetic to the State of Israel. There were few groups or individuals – particularly amongst Western progressives – who endorsed Arab demands for the elimination of Israel. To be sure, the Soviet Bloc and their supporters in orthodox Communist parties were highly critical of Israeli policies and politically aligned with the Arab states. But the Israeli-Arab conflict was rarely highlighted in progressive agendas, and the Palestinians were largely viewed as a refugee problem to be resolved by humanitarian means rather than as a people deserving of national self-determination. [1]
However, the Six Day War fundamentally changed political alignments on the global Left. The Israelis were placed in the ‘bad’ pro-imperialist camp, whilst the Arab regimes, even though they were mostly military dictatorships that persecuted socialists, liberals and ethnic and religious minorities, were added to the ‘good’ anti-imperialist camp. The Soviet Bloc, whilst still officially supporting Israel’s existence as a nation state, increasingly provided unconditional political, military and financial support for the Arab campaign against Israel. For example, the Soviet UN Ambassador Nikolai Fedorenko, speaking on 9th June 1967, accused Israel of perpetrating unprovoked aggression against the Arab States whilst ignoring the many Arab threats against its existence. He also compared Israel’s actions to those of Nazi Germany, and demanded that its leaders be placed on trial for war crimes. [2]
Additionally, the emerging Palestinian national movement – despite or perhaps because of its highly publicized acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians – gained support not only from the pro-Soviet Left, but also particularly from younger new Leftists within non-orthodox Marxist groups. The latter constructed the Palestinians as victims of western colonialism, and aligned their struggle against Israel with that of the Vietnamese against the USA.[3]
Nevertheless, progressives remained divided. Some remained largely neutral, or adopted balanced perspectives that recognized the national rights of both Israelis and Palestinians. Others continued to prioritize the security and well-being of Israel. In general, Marxists and other radical Leftists were more likely to endorse a hardline pro-Palestinian agenda, whilst social democrats and other moderates were less critical of Israeli policies. But even centre-Left support for Israel eroded to some extent after 1977 when the right-wing Likud Party ended the Israeli Labor Party’s long period of government. [4]
Jewish Left groups and individuals were no less divided on Israel-Palestine. In the USA, there were major frictions between pro-Israel Jewish Communists associated with the Morgen Freiheit (Yiddish-language newspaper) and Jewish Currents (English-language journal), and anti-Zionists who established the Jewish Affairs journal as a counterweight. Leading pro-Israel Jews such as Paul Novick and Morris Schappes, who described the Six Day War as a ‘war of self-defence’, were expelled from the Communist Party which actively endorsed the Palestinian nationalist agenda.[5] Further to the left, a number of younger Jews were active in smaller Marxist groups such as the Socialist Workers Party that voiced vocal support for the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO).[6] According to one author, there was a virtual ‘civil war’ within the American Jewish Left between supporters and opponents of Israel.[7]
Similarly in Britain, some prominent left-wing Jewish intellectuals such as Ralph Miliband and Mervyn Jones defended Israel and presented the case for respecting the national rights of both Israel and the Palestinians. Conversely, others presented an anti-Zionist perspective proposing the end of Israel as a Jewish state.[8]
The Australian Left and Israel-Palestine
The Australian Left was also divided concerning the outcomes of the Six Day War. Initially, a number of key organisations expressed views sympathetic to Israel. One example was the long-standing peace group, the Campaign for International Cooperation and Disarmament (CICD), which was often accused during the Cold War of being a Communist Front group.[9] The CICD passed a sympathetic motion urging Arab recognition of the State of Israel, whilst also proposing that Israel withdraw captured territories, and negotiate a just solution to the ‘Arab refugee problem’.[10]
The Australian Labor Party (ALP) was also sympathetic to Israel’s position in the immediate post-war period. The Labor Party’s NSW, Victorian and Federal conferences all passed pro-Israel motions which highlighted the leading role of the earlier Chifley Labor government in advancing the creation of Israel, and celebrated the state’s military victory. [11]
The Federal Labor Party leader Gough Whitlam was perceived to be a friend of Israel, and had visited the Jewish state three times in 1964, shortly after the war in September 1967, and again in December 1968. In parliament, he accused the Australian Coalition government of being insufficiently active in encouraging travel between Australia and Israel.[12] In further public speeches, Whitlam praised Israel’s free and democratic society and institutions, and declared that ‘every Jew and Jewish community could and should feel proud of Israel’s achievements which were an example to the world’.[13] He applauded Israel for retaining high democratic standards despite ‘fighting for survival for two decades’. [14]
It was only later as Prime Minister from 1972-75 that Whitlam adopted what was termed an even-handed policy, but which many in the Jewish community felt was in practice acutely biased against Israel. Even then, many leading members of the Labor Party such as Bob Hawke, Clyde Holding, Don Dunstan, Joseph Riordan and Barry Cohen actively contested Whitlam’s repositioning of Party policy.[15]
On the radical Left, the Communist Party of Australia (the CPA) gradually shifted from a neutral position, and adopted increasingly hostile policies towards Israel.[16] To be sure, an editorial written during the war in Tribune was relatively balanced, censoring ‘extreme nationalism on both sides’, and emphasizing ‘the principle of equal rights for Arabs and Jews’.[17] Equally, their June 1967 party resolution was even-handed, rejecting demands by ‘extremist Arab nationalism’ for the destruction of Israel, and endorsing the national rights of both Jews and Arabs.[18].
However, a 1970 motion was more explicitly anti-Zionist, highlighting the attainment of Palestinian national rights. In 1974, the Party expanded its critique of Zionism within Australia and the Middle East. Their resolution implicitly supported the PLO’s call for a secular democratic state of Palestine as the preferred long-term objective, whilst conceding a two-state solution as an acceptable interim solution.[19] To be sure, there were divisions between the NSW Branch which was partisan to the Palestinian nationalist agenda, and the Victorian Branch which presented a more balanced viewpoint. However, the Party newspaper, Tribune, was published in Sydney, and increasingly reflected the Palestinian agenda in favour of the elimination of Israel.[20]
Jewish Left resistance to the pro-Palestinian viewpoint
Prior to the Six Day War, the Australian Jewish Left included two principal organisations: the Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism (JCCFAS), and the smaller Yiddish-speaking Jewish Progressive Centre (JPC).
The JCCFAS had occasionally spoken out in support of Israel, particularly during the 1948 and 1956 wars, but was mostly concerned with fighting domestic anti-Semitism. During the Six Day War, the JCCFAS issued a joint statement with eight other Melbourne Jewish Labor organisations demanding ‘full support for and solidarity with Israel…at this crucial hour in the history of the Jewish state’.[21] However, the Council gradually lost its influence in the Jewish community, and ceased to exist in 1970.[22]
The JPC was divided into pro-Israel and anti-Israel factions. The latter group, wedded to a pro-Soviet position under the leadership of Saul Factor and Misha Frydman, withdrew in 1968 to form the Itzik Wittenberg Study Group. The JPC dissolved soon after.[23]
For many left-wing Jews, however, the post-six Day War diversion of progressive sympathies from Israel to the Arabs came as a rude shock. The conventional framing of the conflict as involving a small democratic state of Israel fighting a courageous war of self-defence against a much larger group of backward chauvinist Arab leaders was suddenly superseded by an alternative interpretation. Instead, progressives increasingly labelled Israel as the aggressive Goliath, and the anti-imperialist Arab states as the oppressed victims. Additionally, the Palestinians, who had long been dismissed as a mere refugee problem to be solved via humanitarian forms of resettlement, were now parachuted to the centre of the debate, and their national aspirations granted equal if not greater precedence than those of the Israelis.
The remainder of this paper examines the struggle by key figures within the Australian Jewish Left – particularly Henry Zimmerman and Norman Rothfield – to resist the new pro-Arab orthodoxy that threatened to capture key sections of the Australian Left. In the words of Norman Rothfield, there was a ‘determined campaign’ led by an alliance of Arab nationalists and sections of the New Left, who employed a range of strategies – public forums, publications, protest rallies and media interviews – in an attempt ‘to persuade Australians that the State of Israel should be destroyed’.[24]
Henry Zimmerman
Henry Zimmerman was a long-term CPA member from 1941-79 who became progressively dissatisfied with Communist policies towards Jews, Israel and Zionism. In 1968, he and others established the small Yiddish-speaking Jewish Progressive Group for Peace in the Middle East (JPGPME) which emerged out of the split in the pre-existing Jewish Progressive Centre. The JPGPME actively campaigned against manifestations of official anti-Semitism in the Soviet Bloc including particularly the large-scale expulsion of large numbers of Jews from Poland in 1968, and the use of anti-Zionism as a cover for anti-Semitism.[25]
In July 1967, Zimmerman condemned what he called ‘one-sided attacks on Israel’ in Tribune. [26] Zimmerman published a number of articles and letters in left-wing publications that defended Israel’s right to national existence, and argued that any political solution would need to recognize the national rights of both Jews and Arabs to statehood.[27] He argued provocatively that ‘the time is soon coming when all decent people will have to meet the present left-wing anti-Semitism by saying we are all Zionists’. [28]
In 1970, Zimmerman (as chair of the JPGPME) translated a pamphlet authored by the leading Israeli (Maki Party) Communist, Moshe Sneh, titled ‘Arafat the adored and Lenin the ignored’. The pamphlet censored the support offered by leftists to the PLO, asking: ‘How can a democrat – not to say a socialist or an honest communist – support a political body that seeks to murder the existing state of a living people’? Sneh portrayed the PLO as mere terrorists seeking to eliminate the legitimate national rights of Israelis.[29]
Zimmerman attacked the refusal of the CPA to openly condemn the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. He emphasized that ‘all the Arab terrorist organisations have the reactionary aim of denying the national rights of one people. As a result their means both before and after 1967 were the use of terror against innocent civilians’.[30]
Nevertheless, Zimmerman was by no means an uncritical supporter of the State of Israel. He often emphasized that Israeli policies in favour of territorial expansion were just as responsible as what he called ‘Arab intransigence’ for blocking peace negotiations. His preferred political solution was two states whereby a Palestinian Arab state was created alongside Israel. [31]
Norman Rothfield
Zimmerman actively collaborated with Norman Rothfield, a Labor Party member (but politically close to the CPA), who was a leading figure in Jewish Left groups and active in peace movement organisations such as the Australian Peace Council and the Campaign for International Cooperation and Disarmament (CICD. Additionally, Rothfield enjoyed close links with the Israeli Peace Committee,[32] and was instrumental in presenting their positions and strategies within the Australian political scene.[33]
Rothfield was concerned at what he called ‘the increasingly unreasonable hostility to Israel that had emerged in the years following the Six Day War’. He was certainly not an unqualified supporter of Israeli government policies, but ‘felt the need for a more balanced view on this topic than that currently prevailing in Left circles’.[34]
Shortly after the Six Day War, Norman and his wife Evelyn represented CICD at a meeting of the pro-Soviet World Peace Council where Arab and Russian delegates attempted to pass a partisan motion condemning Israel as the aggressor in the war, and demanding unconditional return of the newly captured territories. Rothfield intervened in the debate, arguing against one-sided criticisms of Israel, and urging approaches in favour of negotiations and peace.[35] In a subsequent report, Rothfield condemned one-sided perspectives that ‘urge a solution merely by applying pressure on Israel without requiring the Arab States to do anything at all’. He emphasized that the core barrier to conflict resolution remained the Arab ‘refusal to make peace with Israel or to enter into negotiations which could lead to a peace settlement’. [36]
Rothfield similarly criticized the CPA for labelling Israel as the aggressor. He attacked Tribune journalist Rupert Lockwood[37] for presenting what he alleged were biased and partisan views aligned with a pro-Arab agenda.[38] He also attacked a series of articles in Tribune by the CPA leader Bernie Taft (himself of German Jewish background) as being unfairly critical of Israeli policies. Taft condemned hawkish tendencies within Israel proposing annexation of some or all of the newly conquered territories. He also alleged that the Israeli ruling class knew that the Arabs posed no real threat to Israel, and denied that the Six Day War was necessary for Israel’s survival. [39] To the contrary, Rothfield insisted that the population of Israel believed that ‘not only their own lives and their families but the survival of their state was at risk’. [40]
In public talks, Rothfield rejected claims from Communist groups that Israel had been the aggressor. However, he also urged Israel to display flexibility in peace negotiations including a willingness to trade territory for security and provide some form of justice for Palestinian refugees.[41] For example, he argued that ‘a just and lasting peace must include withdrawal of Jewish troops from occupied areas and recognition of the right to safety and existence of all states in the area’. He added that the Six Day War had been fought “for survival’.[42]
Rothfield visited Israel during 1968 to address a meeting of the Israeli Peace Committee. Their Secretary, J. Majus (a member of the Left Zionist party Mapam) thanked him enthusiastically for his support for their concerns about Palestinian acts of terror in contrast to the pro-Arab bias exhibited by the World Peace Council.[43] In a further letter, Majus praised Rothfield for his attack on Tribune’s anti-Israel bias. He also referred positively to their ‘common cause’ opposing the pro-Arab views espoused by the World Peace Council.[44]
Rothfield also attempted to encourage the declining JCCFAS to take an active position on Israel. Whilst expressing concern about the rise of Arab terrorism, he urged ‘friends and supporters of the Jewish Council and Israel’ to encourage the Jewish state to ‘implement a more flexible approach in order to create an alternative to war and destruction’ based on the land for peace formula of United Nations Security Council resolution 242.[45] Rothfield continued to urge Israel to reject annexation, and state a willingness to trade territory for peace and security. He also denounced PLO leader Yasser Arafat and his supporters as terrorists, bemoaning their increasing support in the Arab world.[46]
In 1971, Rothfield and his colleagues including Jacob Zemel, Jack Rezak, Max Teichmann, Max Charlesworth and Labor Party MPs Clyde Holding and Gordon Bryant formed the Australian Committee for Peace in the Middle East which published a pamphlet titled Palestine, Israel and Zionism. That publication framed Zionism as a pluralistic movement with both ‘positive and negative aspects’ and ‘progressive and reactionary’ followers, and strongly rejected Arab demands for the abolition of Israel. It recommended cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian socialists to advance Israeli-Palestinian mutual recognition and peace.[47] The Committee also organized the visit to Australia of Israeli-Arab journalist Ibrahim Shebat, editor of As Mirsed (On Guard), the Arabic-language publication of the left Zionist Mapam Party, and an Executive member of the Histadrut. Shebat addressed a number of public forums auspiced by Hashomer Hatzair and the National Union of Australian Jewish Students where he urged Israeli-Palestinian peace and reconciliation via a two state solution. [48]
In late 1971, Rothfield and others including Henry Zimmerman, Simon Prokhovnik, young left-wing Zionist David Zyngier, and long-time JPC activist Jacob Semel established the Jewish Radical Association (JRA). One of the key aims of the JRA was to confront the growth in anti-Israel propaganda emanating from sections of the political Left including overt calls for the replacement of the State of Israel with an Arab State of Palestine. The JRA supported both the security and well-being of Israel, and recognition of the legitimate national rights of Palestinians. [49] In March 1973, for example, the JRA sent a friendly letter to Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, highlighting their support for ‘a sovereign Israel at peace with Arabs’ whilst urging Meir to initiate new peace moves with the Arab countries.[50] But, the JRA attracted only limited support and dissolved after a few years.
In early 1974, Rothfield and his wife Evelyn (Rothfield) sent a personal letter to anti-Israel campaigner (and prominent Labor Party figure) Bill Hartley emphasizing the need for justice for both Israelis and Palestinians. The letter recommended that Hartley call on Arab States to recognize Israel, and negotiate peace with Israel. [51]
In June 1974, Rothfield formed the Paths to Peace organisation to promote mutual recognition and peace between Israel, the Arab states and the Palestinians. Henry Zimmerman became co-editor of the associated Paths to Peace journal which was published from 1974-86, and often reproduced articles from New Outlook and other Israeli peace movement journals.[52] The first issue of Paths to Peace featured a further letter from Rothfield to Bill Hartley attacking the latter’s call for the abolition of the State of Israel. Rothfield argued that such extremist agendas would only provoke war and further delay the achievement of justice for the Palestinians.[53]
Both Rothfield and Zimmerman were highly critical of the support granted by many within the CPA to the PLO despite their active role in terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. Rothfield denounced the terrorist actions of Arafat and the PLO which he insisted hindered prospects for peace including the advancement of Palestinian aspirations for national self-determination.[54] He denied the PLO represented the Palestinians, and argued that their demands for the destruction of Israel were ‘neither socialist, left-wing nor liberal but in line with the worst excesses of reactionary chauvinism’.[55]
Rothfield actively exposed the contradictions in Arafat’s famous ‘gun and olive branch’ speech to the UN General Assembly in November 1974, insisting that his demand for the destruction of Israel would provoke ‘war not peace’. Rothfield opined that ‘an olive branch in the Middle East does not mean Arafat’s plan to destroy a nation and a state: an olive branch means the recognition of the rights of both Israel and the Palestinian Arabs to self-determination’.[56]
Consequently, Rothfield opposed the proposed visit of a PLO delegation to Australia in early 1975 on the grounds that its rejection would ‘help Palestinian moderates who realize fulfilment of their aspirations requires mutual recognition with Israel and not destruction of Israel’.[57] Rothfield demanded that the PLO ‘indicate a willingness to abandon their policy of terror and the destruction of the State of Israel and adopt a more constructive posture in the affairs of the region’. [58]
Norman and Evelyn Rothfield criticized the anti-Israel motion passed at the 1975 International Women’s Conference aligning Zionism with racism,[59] and unsuccessfully lobbied the Australian delegate to oppose the motion. They wrote to Senator Don Willesee, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, urging that the Australian government oppose any further international resolutions attacking Israel or Zionism.[60] The Paths to Peace journal denounced the motion as ‘the way of bigotry and hatred. It encourages those who seek war as a solution to the problem of the Middle East. Peace requires respect for one’s rights but also respect for the just rights of others’. [61]
In March 1975, Rothfield, Zimmerman and 36 other progressive Jews published a letter in the CPA newspaper, Tribune, attacking alleged anti-Israel bias in the publication. The letter responded to an earlier editorial in Tribune which attacked the decision of the Australian Labor Party government to refuse entry to a Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) delegation.
According to the Tribune editorial, the PLO represented ‘the two million Palestinians who were driven by terrorism out of Palestine to establish the State of Israel. Their right to land and to nationhood is an issue of principle forgotten by people who wax indignant about individual terrorism’. The editorial alleged that the Palestinian case had been ‘obscured by a long and vicious campaign of misrepresentation and slander’, and accused prominent pro-Israel Labor Party figures (and critics of the proposed PLO tour) Bob Hawke and Don Dunstan of acting as ‘intolerant censors of the Australian people’s right to hear the Arab side’. The editorial openly endorsed the PLO’s preferred solution to the conflict based on eliminating the existing state of Israel, and instead advancing what they termed ‘a just solution of the Palestine issue: the Arabs’ right to return to their land, in a democratic, secular state, guaranteeing freedom and equal rights for Arab and Jew’.[62]
In response, the 38 readers presented a different interpretation of the history of the conflict, referring to the fact that Israel was created as a result of the United Nations vote to partition Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state, and emphasizing that the Soviet Union and progressive groups throughout the world had supported that decision. The readers argued that the Palestinian refugee tragedy was caused primarily by the Arab states violent opposition to Partition, and their refusal to accept the existence of Israel. They rejected the proposal for a secular democratic state as ‘clearly unrealistic and politically naïve’, and denounced calls by the PLO for the destruction of Israel. Instead, they argued that Palestinian rights could best be advanced by a programme of recognition of Israel, and the establishment of a Palestinian state (possibly in partnership with Jordan) alongside Israel. [63]
In summary, they argued in favour of what was to become known as the two-state solution encompassing both the State of Israel within roughly the pre-1967 Green Line borders, and a Palestinian state within the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The letter of the 38 readers was also reproduced in full in the Yiddish-language newspaper of the Jewish fraction of the American Communist Party, Morning Freiheit, and in the Israeli Hebrew-language Communist paper, Kol ha’am. [64]
Alternate Jewish Left views on Israel
A number of other Jewish progressives supported the concerns advanced by Zimmerman and Rothfield. Sam Mane from Sydney published a number of letters in Tribune criticizing Rupert Lockwood’s one-sided attacks on Israel, and presenting Israel’s actions as based on self-defence rather than aggression. [65] Similar views were presented by Mark Borman from Sydney who constructed Zionism as a Jewish national liberation movement, and demanded Arab recognition of Israel’s existence.[66]
Mark Lang (known beyond political circles as Mark Langsam) was a long-time Jewish progressive who strongly defended the State of Israel which he described as ‘a tiny corner on this globe for shelter, for survival, for a little national dignity’.[67] Lang emphasized that Israel and Jews generally were divided like any other nation into a proletarian class and a bourgeois or middle class, [68] and aggressively critiqued what he identified as an increasing convergence of anti-Zionism with traditional forms of anti-Semitism.[69]
Others on the Jewish Left were less sympathetic to Israel. Long-time Marxist and leader of the Jewish Progressive Centre, Misha Frydman, consistently rejected Zionist ideology as reactionary. Nevertheless, at the same time, he rejected Fatah’s calls for the end of Israel as unreasonably denying the ‘legitimate national rights of Israelis’.[70] Instead, he defended Israel’s right to exist, and recommended a two-state solution to the conflict.[71] Another Jewish anti-Zionist was veteran Communist Judah Waten who framed Zionism as a conservative movement opposed to Socialism. Nevertheless, whilst condemning Israel’s alliance with imperialist powers such as the USA and Britain, he still defended the state’s existence.[72] Similar views were expressed by long-time Jewish progressive Saul Factor. [73]
Further to the Left, the anti-Zionist ex-Israeli Jew Benjamin Merhav and his wife Rachel Merhav actively opposed the existence of Israel.[74] The Merhavs were members of Matzpen, the tiny Israeli Socialist Organisation, which insisted that the Israelis were an oppressor nation that should only be entitled to self-determination following a victorious Arab socialist revolution that transformed them into an oppressed nation.[75]
Conclusion
The Israeli military victory in the 1967 Six Day War and the associated occupation of Arab lands provoked a new pro-Arab paradigm within sections of the Australian Left. Some anti-Zionist commentators openly supported calls by the PLO for the elimination of the State of Israel, and its replacement by an Arab State of Palestine.
In response, a small group of Australian Jewish progressives led by Henry Zimmerman and Norman Rothfield actively resisted this trend, and unconditionally defended the right of Israel to exist. Their activities played an incredibly valuable frontline role in preventing the imposition of a pro-Palestinian orthodoxy on leading progressive circles, but surprisingly received little recognition from the mainstream Jewish community at the time. Hopefully, this historical overview provides them with the acknowledgement that they have long deserved.
Further research would ideally interrogate the archives of political parties such as the CPA and ALP and organisations such as CICD to provide further insights into the varied Israel-Palestine perspectives and debates from 1967-75.
[1] Philip Mendes, Jews and the Left: The rise and fall of a political alliance, Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, p.117.
[2] Jeffrey Herf, Undeclared wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German far left 1967-1989, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2016, p.44.
[3] Mendes, Jews and the Left, pp.117-118.
[4] Ibid, pp.118-122.
[5] Arthur Liebman, Jews and the Left, New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1979, p.524.
[6] Michael Fischbach, The movement and the Middle East: How the Arab-Israeli conflict divided the Jewish Left, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2020, pp.80-103.
[7] Michael Fischbach, The movement and the Middle East, p.63.
[8] Paul Kelemen, The British Left and Zionism: History of a divorce, Manchester, Manchester University Press, pp.151-159; June Edmunds, The Left and Israel, London, Macmillan, 2000, pp.116-117.
[9] For a history of CICD, see Laura Rovetto, ‘Peace Activism in the Cold War:
The Congress for International Cooperation & Disarmament, 1949-1970’, Doctor of Philosophy Thesis, Victoria University, 2020.
[10] Alfred Dickie, ‘M.E. View’, Australian Jewish News (hereafter cited as AJN), 21 July 1967, p.16. See also Norman Rothfield, Many paths to peace: the political memoirs of Norman Rothfield, Yarraford Publications, Melbourne, 1997, p.60.
[11] Anonymous, ‘ALP shows concern’, Australian Jewish News, 16 June 1967, p.26. See also Chanan Reich, Australia and Israel: An ambiguous relationship, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2002, pp.125-126.
[12] Gough Whitlam, ‘Speech to House of Representatives’, Hansard, 17 August 1967, p.217.
[13] ‘Example is commended, Mr Whitlam’, AJN, 20 October 1967, p.3. See also Reich, Australia and Israel, pp.127-128.
[14] ‘Israel fighting for life: Whitlam’, AJN, 1 August 1969, p.5.
[15] Chanan Reich, ‘Australia and the Yom Kippur War of 1973’, Australian Journal of Jewish Studies, 26 (2012), pp.10-30; Alex Benjamin Burston-Chorowicz, ‘A fight worth having: Rudd, Gillard, Israel and the Australian Labor Party’. In Shahar Burla and Dashiel Lawrence (Eds.) Australia & Israel: A diasporic, cultural and political relationship, Sussex Academic Press, Brighton, 2015, pp.160-162; Suzanne Rutland, ‘Whitlam’s shifts in foreign policy 1972-75: Israel and Soviet Jewry’, Australian Journal of Jewish Studies, 26 (2012), pp.36-69.
[16] Philip Mendes, The New Left, the Jews and the Vietnam War 1965-1972, Lazare Press, Melbourne, 1993, pp.114-115.
[17] ‘Middle East crisis’, Tribune, 7 June 1967, p.2.
[18] ‘Communists for Left Coalition’, Tribune, 14 June 1967, pp.1, 12.
[19] ‘CPA 24th Congress resolution on the Middle East’, Tribune, 27 May 1975. See also Craig Johnston, ‘The Communist Party of Australia and the Palestinian revolution, 1967-76’, Labour History, 37 (1979), pp.86-100.
[20] Philip Mendes, ‘The last wave of Jewish pro-Israel activism within the Communist Party of Australia: the March 1975 letter to Tribune by 38 readers’, Australian Association of Jewish Studies Quarterly Newsletter, 84 (Autumn 2022), pp.15-19. For one example of this bias, see the interview by Tribune journalist Denis Freney with a Palestinian representative titled Mr Sami who demands the ‘total liberation of Palestine, not once inch less, not one inch more in ‘The Palestine debate’, Tribune, 23 April 1974, p. 6.
[21] ‘Labor groups’, AJN, 9 June 1967, p. 1.
[22] Philip Mendes, ‘The declining years of the Melbourne Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism, 1954-70’, Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal, Vol. 17, Part 3 (November 2004), pp.375-388.
[23] Stanley Robe and Philip Mendes, From shtetl to Melbourne: Century of Jewish life in Melbourne, Unpublished Manuscript, Melbourne, 1990, pp.142, 160.
[24] Norman Rothfield, Radical Jews, Unpublished report, Melbourne, 1971, p.1
[25] Philip Mendes, ‘The Melbourne Jewish Left 1967-1986’, Journal of the Australian Jewish Historical Society, Vol.11, Part 3 (1991), p.506; Zimmerman in Philip Mendes, ‘Jewish involvement in the Communist Party of Australia’, Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal, Vol.12, Part 3 (1994), pp.584-605.
[26] Henry Zimmerman, ‘Congress resolution’, Tribune, 26 July 1967, p.11.
[27] Henry Zimmerman, ‘Out of touch with Jewry’, Tribune, 30 August 1967, p. 11.
Henry Zimmerman, ‘Zionism and socialism’, Outlook, June (1968), pp.17-18; Henry Zimmerman, ‘Israel’s right to exist’, Tribune, 23 September 1970; ‘More on Middle East’, Tribune, 21 April 1971, p.11.
[28] Henry Zimmerman, ‘Anti-Jewish’, Tribune, 5 May 1971.
[29] Moshe Sneh, Arafat the Adored and Lenin the Ignored, Jewish Progressive Centre, Melbourne, 1970.
[30] Henry Zimmerman, ‘The Palestinian problem’, Tribune, 3-9 October 1972, p.8.
[31] Henry Zimmerman, Israel’s right to exist.
[32] The Israeli Peace Committee was formed by a coalition of various progressive Israeli parties such as Mapam, Ahdut Ha’avodah, and the Communist Party of Israel. See Reuven Kaminer, The politics of protest, the Israeli peace movement and the Palestinian intifada, Sussex Academic Press, Brighton, 1996, p.2.
[33] Rothfield, Many paths to peace, pp.89-90.
[34] Ibid, p.62.
[35] Ibid, pp.59-60.
[36] Norman Rothfield, The Middle East, Unpublished report, Melbourne, 1967.
[37] On Rupert Lockwood, see, for example, his ‘Oil bases behind Arab-Israeli crisis’, Tribune, 31 May 1967, p.9; and also ‘New suffering in the Jordan Valley’, Tribune, 3 April 1968, p.5.
[38] Norman Rothfield, ‘Middle East partisanship’, Tribune, 26 June 1968, p.11; Norman Rothfield, ‘Debate at progressives’, AJN, 5 July 1968, p. 9.
[39] Bernie Taft, ‘Eyewitness in Israel: the Six Day War’, Tribune, 26 June 1968, p.6; Bernie Taft, ‘Israel’s anti-Arab hawks grand vistas of disaster’, Tribune, 24 July 1968, p.9. See also Bernie Taft, ‘One year after’, Australian Left Review, June-July (1968).
[40] Norman Rothfield, ‘Face realities of M. East’, Tribune, 24 July 1968.
For a full discussion of this episode, see Philip Mendes, ‘The radical Left and the 1967 Middle East Six Day War’, Recorder, 300 (2021): 15, https://labourhistorymelbourne.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Recorder-300.pdf.
[41] ‘Time: Arabs’, AJN, 1 August 1969.
[42] ‘Rothfield on peace movement’, AJN, 26 April 1968: 13.
[43] J. Majus, ‘Letter to Norman Rothfield’, 23 May 1968.
[44] J. Majus, ‘Letter to Norman Rothfield’, 2 September 1968.
[45] Norman Rothfield, Statement on Israel and the Middle East, unpublished, Melbourne, late 1969.
[46] Norman Rothfield, ‘Trading for security’, AJN, 9 January 1970.
[47] Norman Rothfield, Palestine Israel Zionism, Australian Committee for Peace in the Middle East, Melbourne, 1971; Norman Rothfield, ‘Palestine Israel & Zionism’, Tribune, 25 August 1971.
[48] Rothfield, Many paths to peace, pp.90-91. See also ‘Israel-Arab journalist on visit’, AJN, 11 June 1971; ‘No peace – no war suits the powers’, AJN, 18 June 1971; ‘Battle between Cousins – Shebat’, AJN, 25 June 1971; ‘The other voice’, AJN, 16 July 1971.
[49] Rothfield, Many paths to peace, pp.67-68. See also Jewish Radical Association, Activities 1972, Melbourne, 1972.
[50] Simon Prokhovnik and Norman Rothfield, letter to Golda Meir on behalf of Jewish Radical Association, 1 March 1973.
[51] Evelyn & Norman Rothfield, letter to Bill Hartley, 4 February 1974; Rothfield, Many paths to peace, p.75.
[52] Philip Mendes, ‘The Melbourne Jewish Left 1967-1986’, pp.509-520; Rothfield, Many paths to peace, pp. 72-73.
[53] Norman Rothfield, ‘Open letter to Bill Hartley’, Paths to Peace, August (1974), pp.10-13.
[54] Norman Rothfield, ‘Palestine’, Tribune, 25-31 January 1972, p.2.
[55] Rothfield quoted in ‘New state next to Israel’, AJN, 1 November 1974.
[56] Norman Rothfield, ‘True face of terror’, The Age, 19 November 1974; Rothfield, Many paths to peace, p.75.
[57] Norman Rothfield, ‘Phonogram to Dr Jim Cairns (Foreign Minister of Australia)’, January 1975.
[58] Paths to Peace, 4, February 1975.
[59] Rutland, Whitlam’s shifts, p.43.
[60] Norman & Evelyn Rothfield, letter to Senator Don Willesee, 6 August 1975.
[61] Rothfield, Many paths to peace, pp.76-77.
[62] Anonymous, ‘Reactions wins on PLO’, Tribune, 4 February 1975. It is important to note that whilst the CPA and other left-wing groups interpreted the PLO’s proposal as favouring a bi-national Palestine in which Jews and Arabs would share equal national rights, the PLO consistently emphasized that their secular democratic state would be exclusively Arab in character and only permit Jews to co-habit as a religious minority with no national rights. See Mendes, Jews and the Left, p.119.
[63] Henry Zimmerman, Norman Rothfield and 36 others, ‘Editorial deplored’, Tribune, 4 March 1975
[64] ‘38 readers protest Middle East stand of Australian Communist paper’, Morning Freiheit, 12 June 1975.
[65] Sam Mane, ‘The Middle East: a criticism and a reply’, Tribune, 26 June 1968, p.6; Sam Mane, ‘Principles or politics?’ Tribune, 13 September 1967, p.11. Mane later served as a Committee member of Rothfield’s Paths to Peace organisation.
[66] Mark Borman, ‘M.East borders’, Tribune, 4 October 1967, p.11; Mark Borman, ‘Jews and Zionism’, Tribune, 30 August 1967, p.11.
[67] Mark Lang, ‘Mid-East’, Tribune, 25 August 1971, p.2.
[68] Mark Lang, ‘Jewish workers’, Tribune, 30 April 1974, p.11.
[69] Mark Lang, ‘Israel and the Jews’, Tribune, 31 March 1971, p.11; Mark Lang, ‘Self-haters’, Tribune, 4 March 1975; Mark Lang, ‘The Middle East’, Tribune, 8 April 1975, p.11; Mark Lang, ‘Muddy anti-Zionism’, Tribune, 29 April 1975.
[70] Misha Frydman, ‘The Middle East’, Praxis, July-August 1972, p.20.
[71] Misha Frydman, ‘ Road to peace in the Middle East’, Outlook, 13(6), 1969, pp.14-15; Misha Frydman, ‘The problems of the Middle East’, Australian Left Review, 27, October/November (1970), pp.22-25; Misha Frydman, ‘Middle East viewpoint’, Tribune, 24 February 1971; Misha Frydman, ‘Middle East’, Tribune, 11 August 1971, p.2; Misha Frydman, ‘Zionism’, Tribune, 24 November 1971, p.2; Misha Frydman, ‘Palestine and Israel’, Tribune, 30 January 1973, p.9.
[72] Judah Waten, ‘Defending indefensible’, Tribune, 9 August 1967, p.11; Judah Waten, ‘East of Suez’, Tribune, 13 September 1967, p.11. See also ‘The debate that wasn’t’, AJN, 19 December 1969.
[73] Saul Factor, ‘Zionism’, Tribune, 25 January 1972, p.2.
[74] Benjamin Merhav, ‘Israeli punched’, Tribune, 27 October 1971, p.2; Rachel Merhav, ‘Israeli migrant’, Tribune, 11 January 1972, p.2.
[75] Benjamin Merhav, ‘Draft resisters’, AJN, 11 February 1972.
