Colin Shindler: How the Left turned on Israel - Today’s antipathy towards the Jewish state unites liberals, Marxists and Islamists - '...Soviet national interests ultimately trumped all other concerns including the meaning of socialism. Stalin’s desire to oust the British from the Middle East and to secure a Soviet presence there was a deciding factor in the Kremlin’s espousal of a Jewish state in the spring of 1947. Indeed without Stalin’s support, it is doubtful whether the UN would have voted by the mandatory two thirds majority for a two-state solution in November 1947. It is doubtful that without Stalin whether Israel would have come into existence in May 1948. Yet Soviet Jews who applied to emigrate to Israel were quickly arrested and incarcerated for long years in the Gulag. The USSR’s external policy in Palestine dovetailed with Zionist interests. Its internal policies did not...'