The 60’s Revolution, Bob Dylan and the Six Day War: Being There
Americans of a certain age generally have a strong memory of where they were when President John Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. By the same token, many American Jews have a strong connection to the events in Israel during June 1967, with powerful memories of how they felt and reacted at that time.
The image of Israel encircled by enemy states, seriously out-numbered by the combined Arab armies a little more than 20 years after the Holocaust had enormous impact on the American Jewish community. Although it is hard to imagine now, prior to that point Israel simply did not hold anywhere near the central role it does today in the life of American Jews.
At my high school in suburban Minneapolis, I was one of the very few who had given much thought to Israel on a personal level. This was due to my membership in Habonim, the Labor Zionist youth movement. While I had not yet visited Israel, I learned of David Ben Gurion, A.D. Gordon, Berl Katznelson and others from our older group leaders who had spent a year in Israel on a kibbutz. When combined with our allegiance to the civil rights and the anti-Vietnam movements, the result was intense political debates and rousing sing alongs which combined the songs of the Zionist pioneers with protest tunes by Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan and other topical singer-songwriters.
While we closely tracked the unfolding events and celebrated Israel’s success, other Jewish students were beginning to grasp the enormity of what had taken place. The entire Jewish community was awakening to a new connection with Israel. They had been called upon to raise money to support the threatened Jewish state and in turn felt they had contributed in some way to the military victory. While in 1967 a youth visit to Israel was primarily the domain of the Zionist youth movements, by 1968 the Jewish Community Center of Minneapolis had established a youth exchange program with the Rishon Letzion municipality. Connecting with Israel and its people was now “in” among American Jews.
And it went farther than that. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, in 1967 739 Americans immigrated to Israel. By 1969, that number had risen to 6,419, reaching 8,122 in 1971. You can only imagine our excitement when Bob Dylan visited the Kibbutz Aliyah Desk, a post Six Day War entity established to address the flood of interest in work/study visits and immigration to kibbutz. Although he never carried through with his plan to spend a year on Kibbutz Kfar Blum, I personally saw his file (don’t ask how): on the questionnaire he listed his profession as “guitar player.”
While we were comfortable with our combined identity as leftist Zionists, our colleagues in the New Left did not share this sentiment. Mostly content to ignore Israel and the Middle East prior to the Six Day War, they had focused on Vietnam, civil rights and economic justice. The outcome of the war raised Israel’s profile on the left and ultimately resulted in Israel being lumped with the other “imperialistic forces” in the world. Many on the left no longer felt that we could be part of the “movement” if we supported Israel’s existence. This slap in the face by our former friends was painful. For example, while Dylan was experiencing Zionist stirrings in New York, Phil Ochs was performing his anti-Israel song at a Chicago concert, much to the dismay of the leftist Zionist contingent in attendance.
An organized reaction from progressive Jewish students was not long in coming. On campuses across North America, groups and Jewish student newspapers sprouted, proudly stating that there was no contradiction between progressive American political views and a belief that Israel was an expression of the Jews’ legitimate rights of national self-determination. Organizations such as the Radical Zionist Alliance and the Progressive Zionist Union provided a national voice and profile for local activists.
Finding common voice with early Israeli doves like Aryeh (Lova) Eliav, former Labor Party Secretary General, and writer Amos Kenan, many of us understood even then the impact the occupation was having both on relations with the Palestinians and Israeli society itself. We published editorials in our newspapers decrying Prime Minister Golda Meir’s “there are no Palestinians” statement and passed resolutions at conferences calling for a halt to further settlements that hamper efforts to reach a negotiated agreement with the Palestinians.
Forty years later, some voices on the left still negate the Jewish right to a state. And it has become even more clear that the vast majority of the settlements will need to be removed in order to achieve a peaceful two state solution with the Palestinians.
While Dylan wrote “The Times They Are a Changin’,” the proverb “The more things change, the more they stay the same” seems more appropriate in this context.
