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Notes -
I disagree with "always".
Israel was popular with the pro-establishment left well into the 1980s, even in countries where the pro-establishment left wasn't dominated by Jews. The Yes, Minister sketch about Israel-Palestine has Hacker and the politicians being pro-Israel because it is the moderate, popular position and Sir Humphrey and the Deep State being pro-Palestine because they want to make nice to the Gulf Arabs. (This was back when the Gulf Arab monarchies were as anti-Israel as the rest of the Arab world). Pro-establishment right attitudes to Israel used to depend on how much the pro-establishment right favoured making nice to the Gulf Arabs for cynical oil-politics reasons vs standing up for Western values.
Why? A combination of Cold War politics (Israel's worst enemies where Soviet clients), Holocaust guilt, straightforward preference for civilisation over barbarism, and a belief among non-Communist socialists that Israel back when Labour was the natural party of government was a socialist success story.
What changed? The Cold War ended, post-colonial guilt replaced Holocaust guilt, the era where Israel was a plucky underdog receded into history, changes in Israeli domestic politics made it less sympathetic to Western leftists (and, increasingly, with the rise of religious Zionism and the increasing influence of true-believing Orthodox Judaism, fans of Western civilisation more generally), the humanitarian situation for Palestinians in the West Bank (for which Israel is to blame) and Gaza (for which Israel is widely but unfairly blamed) got worse after the failure of Oslo compared to pre-Oslo.
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