Progressive or Zionist — The Jewish Left’s False Binary
Jews don’t have to be ideological hostages.
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Something curious happened when I moved to Israel in 2013, at the age of 24.
Up until then, I had grown up in and been surrounded by liberal environments — first in the northern suburbs of Los Angeles, and then at a relatively liberal public university in San Diego.
I marched for women’s rights, believed deeply in racial equality, felt inspired by Obama’s vision of hope and change, and generally saw the world through what today’s kids call a “progressive” lens.
But when I arrived in Israel, I found that my ideological toolkit from California didn’t fit the reality in front of me. Suddenly, the frameworks I had leaned on to understand power, equality, and justice felt … insufficient. Or worse, misapplied.
I began to notice something I hadn’t expected: I was becoming more conservative. Not in the American sense — I didn’t suddenly embrace capitalism red in tooth and claw or start watching Fox News — but in the Israeli sense; I started to value national security above abstract idealism. I understood the necessity of a strong military. I saw the importance of Jewish identity, even Jewish particularism, as a counterweight to the constant global push for Jews to assimilate or disappear.
At first, I was unsettled by this ideological shift. Was I betraying my values? Was I becoming one of those people — the ones I’d argued against in campus debates? But then I realized: I wasn’t becoming a different person. I was responding to a different context.
Political ideology is not a universal template. What counts as “Left” or “Right” in one place doesn’t neatly translate to another. A position that seems liberal in New York may be naïve in Jerusalem. A policy that seems conservative in Tel Aviv may be “progressive” in Paris.
Western democracies — affluent, secure, and aging — are often dealing with problems of abundance: how to expand rights, include marginalized voices, and evolve institutions that have grown complacent or exclusionary. In this context, progressivism often means pushing toward equality, challenging legacy power structures, and emphasizing empathy for those historically underprivileged.
Israel, on the other hand, is a small, young, and existentially vulnerable country. Surrounded by hostile neighbors, targeted by terror groups, and demonized by international institutions, Israel’s challenges are rooted in survival, sovereignty, and national cohesion. The luxury of hyper-liberal openness is, by and large, one it cannot afford.
It’s not hypocrisy to adjust your politics to context. It’s maturity.
What’s more, every country faces different challenges because every country carries its own history, geography, demographics, traumas, and existential realities.
Norway doesn’t have suicide bombers on its buses. Japan doesn’t have rockets aimed at its schools. Canada doesn’t have to worry that international bodies will condemn it more than Iran. And so it’s no surprise that different nations, facing vastly different threats and pressures, adopt different policies and political instincts.
Israel exists in a uniquely volatile neighborhood. It’s about an hour-long drive east to west and six hours north to south, with a population smaller than that of New York City, yet it’s tasked with defending itself against hostile non-state actors, powerful regional players like Iran, and a global public opinion machine that often denies it the basic right to self-defense. Its policies reflect not a failure of idealism, but a daily reckoning with reality.
The United States, by contrast, is protected by two oceans and has enjoyed decades of relative security. Its “progressive” movements are often responses to internal dealings (real and imagined), not the need for physical survival.
And that matters. Because the world isn’t flat. Nations are not interchangeable. Applying the exact same political expectations to wildly different countries is like giving everyone the same medicine regardless of diagnosis. Context isn’t a cop-out. It’s the difference between moral clarity and moral confusion.
Plus, the caricature of Israel as a Right-wing ethnostate is just plain wrong. In reality, Israel is a noisy, pluralistic, maddening, and deeply democratic society that blends conservative security needs with liberal social policies in ways that often surpass Western nations.
This is a country with universal healthcare, a thriving public education system, and one of the highest rates of female entrepreneurship in the world. It’s a country where LGBTQ+ rights are not only protected, but celebrated — from Tel Aviv’s world-famous Pride parade to same-sex adoption and surrogacy rights upheld by the courts.
In addition, Arab Israelis are citizens with full rights and access; serve in the Knesset (parliament), on the Supreme Court, and in many other political positions; and have socioeconomic upward mobility. Is life pristinely perfect for Arab Israelis? No, it isn’t. But most of them would tell you that they unquestionably prefer living in Israel versus living in any of the region’s plentiful amounts of theocracies and dictatorships.
At the same time, the security situation pushes Israel toward conservative policies in defense and foreign affairs. But in everyday life (on matters of gender, sexuality, healthcare, and innovation) Israel is home to remarkable liberalism. It is not a contradiction. It is complexity.
In the Diaspora, you might prioritize these same liberal values, whether it be universal healthcare, racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and strong environmental policy — and also support secure borders, compulsory military service, and a strong Jewish identity for the State of Israel.
You might fight for criminal justice reform, but still support harsh counterterrorism measures in Israel. You might oppose Western nationalism, but recognize that Zionism (the national liberation movement of the Jewish People) is not the same thing as white supremacy or colonialism.
To hold these two views simultaneously is not a contradiction. It’s a recognition that liberalism without realism is indulgent, and realism without liberalism is dangerous.
Too often, “progressive” Jews are taught to view Israel not as a real place with real people facing real threats, but as a metaphor, an embodiment of all that is wrong with nationalism, militarism, and colonial power. This is both intellectually lazy and morally perverse.
And, for many “progressive” Jews raised in Western democracies, Jewishness has always been tied to powerlessness. Their moral identity was shaped by exile, persecution, and marginality. They were the outsider, the underdog, the conscience in the room.
So when those same Jews see Israel wield power — military power, geopolitical power, economic power — it can feel unsettling. To watch Jews hold borders, fly fighter jets, run intelligence operations, or enforce national laws can feel like a betrayal of the story we’ve been telling ourselves for generations: that we are the ones who never had power.
But Jewish power is not the problem. Jewish powerlessness was.
Israel isn’t a betrayal of Jewish values; it’s their survival. In a world that has again and again shown that it cannot be trusted to protect the Jews, Israel is the near-perfect answer: We will protect ourselves. That power may be imperfect, but it is necessary — and it is moral when used to defend life, safety, and sovereignty.
The goal was never to stay weak and righteous. The goal was to stay alive and righteous. And that means accepting the discomfort of strength without abandoning the values that animate it.
So, to all the “anti-Zionist Jews” out there, Israel is not your symbolic punching bag. It’s the home of millions of Jews — Mizrahim, Ethiopians, Russians, secular, religious, and politically diverse — all of whom deserve the right to live safely and freely in their ancestral homeland.
And just as importantly, Israel is not the quintessential West. Its founding wasn’t based on Enlightenment ideals of abstract liberty, but on a desperate need to survive after centuries of exile, pogroms, and genocide. Its policies aren’t crafted in the void of theory, but amidst genocidal wars and existential threats.
Those who insist you must choose between your “progressive” values and your Zionism are selling you a false binary. They are asking you to be less complex than the world actually is. Worse, they are asking you to abandon the people who need you most.
In times of crisis, Jews don’t need more purity tests. We need more grown-ups — people who understand that history is complicated, that values can be held in tension, and that love for one’s people doesn’t require hatred of another.
In an age of ideological sorting and tribal politics, nuance is often the first casualty. But perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in conversations about Israel, where many Jews (especially younger ones) feel caught between their sociopolitical values in the West and their emotional and historical commitments to the Jewish state. A growing number of Jews feel forced to choose: either be “progressive” and critical of Israel, or be “conservative” and stand by it.
But here’s the radical truth: You can be both “progressive” about certain issues in Western countries and more (or totally) conservative about Israel. In fact, it might be the most honest, coherent position you can take.
To be “progressive” on certain issues in the West and conservative about Israel is to recognize that context matters. It’s to live with moral tension rather than outsource your thinking to ideological gatekeepers. It’s to hold fast to the dream of a better world while never losing sight of the real dangers that threaten to undo it. In short: It’s to be a responsible adult in a world that desperately needs more of them.
There’s a dangerous trend that’s been emerging out of some “progressive” circles, namely importing overly liberal academic frameworks from parts of the West — like post-colonialism, critical race theory, or intersectionality — into the Israeli context without understanding the region, the history, or the lived reality of its people.
These frameworks, designed to critique Western imperial powers, often miscast Jews as the “oppressors” and Palestinians as the “colonized.” But this ignores thousands of years of Jewish indigenous presence in the land, the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries, and the fact that over half of Israel’s Jewish population is Mizrahi or Sephardic (Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent).
Applying American racial binaries or European guilt complexes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict flattens a deeply complex, multi-layered struggle into a cartoon of good versus evil. It erases context, distorts reality, and feeds a moral narrative that’s more about Western self-flagellation than Middle Eastern truth.
You can’t cut and paste Western campus politics onto Jerusalem. The region (and with it, Israel) demand their own nuanced understanding, and their own moral frameworks.
Probably the best expression of intertwining progressive values with support for Israel that I have ever read.
Very well said. Now if only the ignorant, antisemitic Diaspora Jews would read it -instead of trying to disassociate from themselves in order to be “accepted”.