One of the most distressing things to me of late is the destruction being wrought on a number of English language words and terms in the current social media frenzy. No word has garnered more negative energy world-wide in recent months than “Zionism.” And in the furor, large numbers of people have either forgotten, or never knew, what the word means.
So I’ll start by saying that I am an unapologetic Zionist. I believe that Jewish people need and deserve a place to call our own. I believe that the world has failed to protect Jews from discrimination, abuse, torture and annihilation. Jews may be temporarily safe in some western democracies, but even the United States, widely regarded as a safe place for Jews, has a lengthy history of failure to protect Jews from the abuses of antisemites. Even if you want to argue that Jews are now safe in the USA, the last time I checked, the USA does not allow unlimited Jewish immigration to the USA no matter how much they might be subject to persecution in other lands. And the alleged safe status of Jews in the USA can only be regarded as a fragile and temporary state, no one has any idea when groups like right-wing Christian fundamentalists might turn against the US Jewish population.
Zionism is a modern movement of Jews having its roots in the late nineteenth century. Many of the original participants were only marginally religious; the movement began and remained largely secular for most of the century and a half from inception to the creation of the State. The first Zionists were not necessarily focused on what was then usually termed Palestine as the place for Jews, one serious proposal suggested that it be a part of Uganda. Nor was there a sense that this had to be a politically independent nation, the idea was more along the lines of an autonomous region: a place where Jews had self-governing powers, but not necessarily political independence.
Like most intellectual movements, Zionism developed various offshoots and currents. Some began to militate for an independent nation status. There were varying ideas about how “Jewish” such a state would have to be. By the time the state of Israel was created, the dominant group were the Labor Zionists–people committed to socialist (with a small “s”) principles and democracy, and willing to advocate for a secular state that would be open to non-Jews as full citizens. In the decades since the founding of the State, there has been some retreat from Labor Zionism, but it is safe to say that most of those founding principles remain strong in ideology if perhaps less so in practice. In other words, the State today still preserves large parts of the socialist ideals including free education for all citizens, universal representation in the Israeli parliament (“Knesset”), universal military service, and in fact even expanded socialist policy by adopting universal healthcare in the mid-1990s.
Zionism has garnered foes on both the left and right parts of the political spectrum. On the left, ideologues are fond of labeling Zionism a form of “colonialism” and try to portray it as oppressive towards non-Jews. On the right, ideologues have found the term a convenience to avoid the stigma of the more correct label, antisemitism. The notion that Zionism is a form of colonialism is almost amusing given that it was created as a refuge from European colonial policies and interests. In the Middle East, the colonizers were English, French and Turkish. The Zionists were committed to liberating some part of some land from colonizers. More than half the population of the modern state of Israel is composed of people who fled authoritarian and colonial governments in the Middle East and North Africa.
One persistent myth is that the modern State is built on land appropriated from the aboriginal population. For more than a century, that would have been impossible given that Zionists had no civilian or military authority in the land. The vast majority of land that would become Israel was acquired legally through purchase. Were there incidents during wartime of Israeli Jews acting wrongly against the local population? Almost certainly, yes. But sadly no human population seems to be free of acting improperly during wartime. The fact remains that such incidents were rare, and the vast majority of land procured for Israel was done through legal means.
And so I remain a proud Zionist, aligned and allied with those who believe in a country constitutionally created as a safe place for any Jews, but welcoming to people of all faiths and ethnicities.