ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the New Left's reinterpretation of the relationship between Israel and ‘the West’ hinged on its commitment to an anti-civilisation discourse. It documents the existence of such a discourse, first, by examining the intellectual and political biographies of three key members of the New Left in the 1960s and second, by arguing that three developments that were key in creating the New Left and that involved many of the same people as the anti-Zionist turn – the ‘populist turn’ in the Socialist People's Party, the radicalisation of the movement against the Vietnam War, and the rise of Maoism – all resulted from and/or contributed to the creation of an anti-civilisation discourse. The chapter ends by suggesting that in the context of how central this anti-civilisation discourse was to the New Left, the rise of anti-Zionism seems almost inevitable.
