Walzer Waltzes With the Left

And he steps on their toes.  Neatly:

...Here in Jerusalem, I am watching leftists arguing about flags in much the same way that we argued about flags in the Vietnam era, and the spectacle is depressing...the lesson of the flag wars seems obvious: never surrender the symbols of the nation to your political opponents.

But that is exactly what Israeli leftists, or some of them, are doing today. In a “solidarity” march for an independent Palestinian state earlier in July, roughly 90 percent of the marchers were Israeli Jews, but all the flags were Palestinian. Israeli flags were banned at the insistence of the Palestinians, who said that they wouldn’t join the march unless their flags were the only ones carried...

...leftist demonstrations and marches are so small these days.  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.

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