I am not Jewish, but I became a Zionist. Here's why.

I used to think that Jews did not need a homeland. Now it is clear to me that they have no real allies.

“Anti-Zionists” doing what “anti-Zionists” do: make baseless claims about Israeli “occupation” and “apartheid” (photo: Raya Sharbain/Wikipedia)

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This is a guest essay written by Nick Rafter, a New York-based journalist.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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For those who do not know, “Eurovision” is sort of like a European version of “American Idol” or “Australian Idol” or “Canadian Idol.” Each country submits an original song performed by a national artist to compete in a continent-wide competition.

The contest this year was marred in controversy due to the inclusion of Israel. Despite having been part of the contest since 1973¹, Israel’s inclusion triggered protests and calls for their banning from the event.

Protestors gathered outside the hotel room of the Israeli contestant Eden Golan, heckling her and requiring her to remain secluded in the room and followed around by security 24/7. Golan was booed at her initial performance and the backlash was so potent that Finland’s 2023 contestant, Käärijä, was forced to apologize after a video of him dancing with Golan went viral on social media. Several contestants even threatened to quit.

The response to Golan’s inclusion in the contest is among the latest in what seems to be a plague of antisemitism sweeping across the globe in the wake of Israel’s response to the October 7th massacres and kidnappings led by Hamas. It comes after weeks of campus unrest at colleges in the United States, Canadia, Australia, and Europe that have led to thousands of complaints from Jewish students and staff about antisemitic attacks, both verbal and physical.

The wave of antisemitism is being justified as being about Zionism — the support for the existence of Israel as a Jewish state — and not about Judaism, but some of the protestors seem to have trouble differentiating between the two.

I myself was verbally berated on a Brooklyn street in January when a protestor mistook me for being Jewish. When I informed her that I am not Jewish, she kept oscillating between Zionism and Judaism in some weird incoherent rant where she invoked Biblical stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Ishmael that had nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.² This only reinforced in me the idea that there was significant hatred of Jews that goes well beyond the current conflict.

These experiences and observations have made me rethink my earlier belief that Jewish people are safe in most of the Western World and that the need for the creation of a Jewish homeland, the core belief of Zionism, is moot.

Just before the October 7th attacks, I suggested to a Jewish friend that, if Israel would cease to exist, there would still be countries in the West where Jewish people would be generally treated well, the United States included. He responded: “So you’re okay with Jewish people so long as we remain a minority everywhere we live.”

At the time, I could not come up with a coherent response to that. Antisemitic crimes are indeed prosecuted vigorously here, and Jews are generally treated well compared to elsewhere in the world and in history. But, since Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president in 2016 and the neo-Nazi, the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pennsylvania two years later (resulting in 11 deaths), and the response from many groups on the Left even before this war, I am not sure that matters.

Progressives were irate when President Joe Biden suggested that Israel needs to exist to ensure Jewish people have a state that would protect them because it is not guaranteed anywhere else. The suggestion is that Biden is unable to ensure the protection of Jewish people in the United States, which offended many on the Left.

This came across as a “hit dog will holler” situation, in which a defensive reaction to an accusation can be an admission of guilt. Back when I still identified as a social justice warrior, I accepted that, in America, no minority is truly safe. Unless you are white, Christian heterosexual, and preferably male, you are always at risk of some level of oppression.

The progressive in me says Biden is correct. Even as he channels the full force of the federal government to fight antisemitism, he is not going to be president forever, and he cannot guarantee anyone’s safety in 2025 or beyond. He also cannot guarantee what happens on the local level.

Biden’s standing against antisemitism did not stop Jewish students from being harassed on college campuses, or antisemitic graffiti from being sprayed on synagogues and public parks. Antisemitism is a wound that is festering on both ends of the political spectrum, including in places where you would not expect it. The last 11 months have only validated the concept of Zionism.

Progressives will say it is because of Zionism, but why would Jews take that risk and abandon Zionism, the only thing ensuring safety from this type of treatment, on the promise that they will not continue to be treated badly (as they have been throughout history)? Who would trust that? 

I always knew there was some level of anti-elitism antisemitism on the Right and among anarchists who sometimes find themselves aligned with the Left, but I did not realize how much of it existed in the mainstream Left (perhaps because it was not as prominent until more recently). It should have been more obvious.

For example, the Women’s March was a Left-of-center movement that erupted after Trump’s 2016 election, in which 3 to 5 million people participated in protests across the United States. But it unraveled shortly after one of its organizers, Tamika Mallory, praised a Louis Farrakhan speech where he made extremely vile anti-Jewish statements.

In recent years, I have had several younger real estate clients in New York City ask me if I knew if the landlord of the apartment I was showing them was Jewish, including one who had Left-leaning flair on a satchel she was carrying.

“Is the landlord Jewish?” said a 25-year-old Cornell University graduate with a Gay Pride flag and a peace symbol button on her bag. “I’m not anti-Jewish. I just know how bad they are as landlords.”

I just figured it was a fringe thing, but I question that now. The risk is real because Jewish people, even if they do have some power and allies in the United States, are still a minority. There is no guarantee an antisemitic government will not take power in the future, here or elsewhere.

While Christians and Muslims have multiple countries where they make up the majority, and even Hindus have India and Buddhists have countries like Thailand and Vietnam, Jews only have Israel. Otherwise, they have to put their faith in majority populations which have never missed a chance to oppress them when it serves their interests to do so.

Progressives are further hurting themselves by prefacing their support for Jewish people on where Jews stand on Zionism. This is a set standard that progressivism does not apply to any other minority group. The same progressives who argue Jews must be “anti-Zionist” to be accepted did not say the same thing about Black people who voted in favor of Proposition 8 (a ban on gay marriage) in California in 2008, or make that case against anti-choice Latinas.

They are quick to say that we should not point out the way many Arab voters in Dearborn, Michigan voted for the state’s anti-abortion referendum (by a fairly wide margin) or how many of these Arab voters aligned with anti-transgender figures like Chris Rufo in the moral panic about LGBTQ children. But Jews are expected to oppose and apologize for Zionism, which itself began as a social justice cause.

How are marginalized groups supposed to trust that progressives will not turn on them if they do achieve a form of justice in the way they have on Jews?

One of the most common criticisms of progressive social justice warriors is that they have an oppression fetish: Minority and marginalized communities are useful to them as long as they continue to be oppressed or subjugated, but once they begin to claw out of their oppressions through means the so-called “progressive movement” does not approve of — like Jewish people have — they become pariahs.

The creation of Israel is one of the biggest coups toward justice by a marginalized group. For centuries, Jews were the most oppressed group on the planet, exiled from their homeland and scattered around the world, always at risk of being persecuted, exiled, or even exterminated at the whims of whoever was in power. The recreation of a Jewish homeland was a major step toward justice for the Jewish People — and yes, it came at a price for Palestinians.

The pursuit of justice will always come at a price for those who benefit from the injustice, even if they are not the ones who caused it. This is a fact that many progressives are too deluded and naive to understand and confirmed by the fact that “justice” for Palestinians, according to the Left, will come at the cost of Jews, whom they see as having benefited from the “injustice.”

Who is to say that, if another marginalized group actually manages to right an injustice, progressives will not just throw their lot in with the people who used to oppress them — because they are the “oppressed” ones now?

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1. Israel is included in the Eurovision because the country is located in the European Broadcast Zone, along with other non-European countries like Morocco and Azerbaijan.

2. As the story goes, Abraham — unable to conceive a son with his legal wife Sarah, had an illegitimate child — Ishmael, with Sarah’s slave handmaid, Hagar, but then banished them once he was able to have a son, Isaac, with Sarah. Ishmael’s descendants are the Arabs, who believe Jews look down on them as inferior for having descended from Abraham’s bastard child.