'Progressive Zionism' makes no sense at all.

The question is not whether "progressive Zionism" feels compassionate. It is whether the assumptions of "progressive Zionists" can survive contact with reality — and most often, they do not.

The incoherence becomes especially obvious when “progressive Zionists” promote the propaganda of our enemies. (photo: Nikolas Gannon/Unsplash)

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A few weeks ago, I attended a Jewish event in Los Angeles hosted by a local synagogue.

Naturally Israel came up in conversation, and I said something to one of the event organizers like: “I hope your congregation is pro-Israel…”

“Of course we are!” she said. “We’re progressive Zionists.”

Out of respect and social unity, I held myself back. But here is what I wish I would have said: “Progressive Zionism” sounds beautiful. As an aspiration, there is much to admire in it. As an explanation of reality, it is nonsense.

“Progressive Zionism” is not really a coherent political philosophy. It is an attempt to hold Zionism inside a so-called “progressive” moral framework that was largely constructed for a different world, with different assumptions, different enemies, and different consequences.

It is Zionism rewritten so that it can receive approval at a dinner party in San Francisco.

The “progressive Zionist” usually begins with two deeply held beliefs. The first is that the Jewish People have a legitimate right to a state in their ancestral homeland. The second is that the ideological principles of contemporary Western progressivism provide the best framework for understanding the world in complete binaries, such as racism and anti-racism, the so-called “oppressors” and “oppressed,” colonialism and anti-colonialism, and so forth.

The problem is that these two beliefs increasingly collide.

Zionism begins with Jewish particularism. It holds that the Jewish People are not merely adherents of a religion but a historic nation with a language, a civilization, a collective memory, and a homeland. It insists that Jews require the power to protect themselves because history has repeatedly demonstrated what happens when Jewish survival depends on the goodwill (or lack thereof) of others.

Contemporary progressivism is often suspicious of nearly every part of that sentence.

It distrusts nationalism, especially when practiced by groups it regards as powerful. It treats military strength as morally suspect, borders as instruments of exclusion, religion as a source of oppression, and historical claims as subordinate to present-day hierarchies of privilege. It tends to divide conflicts into dominant and marginalized groups, then distributes moral innocence accordingly.

Under that framework, Zionism does not fit comfortably.

So “progressive Zionists” spend an extraordinary amount of intellectual energy trying to make it fit.

They explain that Israel is not that kind of nation-state. That Jewish power is not that kind of power. That Zionism is not exclusionary nationalism but liberation. That Israel can remain Jewish and democratic, secure and conciliatory, militarily strong and perpetually restrained.

Sometimes those arguments are true. Indeed, Israel is both Jewish and democratic, secure and conciliatory, militarily strong and perpetually restrained.

But “progressive Zionism” often goes further. It begins inventing an Israel that does not exist, operating in a Middle East that does not exist, facing enemies who do not exist.

It becomes, in some sense, a Disney movie.

In the “progressive Zionist” version of the story, nearly every conflict is ultimately the result of misunderstanding, inequality, trauma, failed dialogue, or insufficient empathy.

Extremists are empowered because moderates have not been given enough hope. Violence is the language of people whose voices have not been heard. Hatred can be softened through recognition. Peace is waiting behind the next concession, the next diplomatic framework, the next courageous act of compassion.

The characters may initially distrust one another, but eventually they discover that they are “not so different” after all. The walls come down. The music rises. The children play together. Everyone learns a valuable lesson.

It is a lovely movie. It is not the Middle East.

The real world contains political movements that do not merely object to Israeli policies but reject Jewish sovereignty itself. It contains religious ideologies that do not understand territorial compromise as reconciliation but as weakness. It contains terrorist organizations that openly celebrate the murder of civilians, deliberately build military infrastructure among and beneath civilian areas, and teach future generations that destroying Israel is a sacred duty.

These are not cartoon villains. They are real actors with agency, doctrine, strategy, funding, weapons, and constituencies. “Progressive Zionism” frequently refuses to take them seriously because doing so would threaten the worldview that gives “progressive Zionism” its emotional appeal.

If an adversary is genuinely committed to your destruction, then empathy alone will not stop him. If a territorial withdrawal creates a launching ground for rockets, then “ending the occupation” will not end the conflict. If a peace offer is interpreted as evidence that violence produces concessions, then compromise will encourage more violence rather than resolve it. If a population elects, supports, tolerates, or is unable to remove a violent movement, then the moral picture becomes more complicated than “oppressor versus oppressed.”

Reality introduces dilemmas that progressive language cannot easily solve. What should Israelis do when military infrastructure is deliberately embedded among civilians? What should Israelis do when returning territory does not produce peace? What should Israelis do when international institutions condemn their response more fiercely than the attack that prompted it? What should Israelis do when restraint is interpreted not as morality but as hesitation?

“Progressive Zionism” too often answers these questions with slogans: proportionality, diplomacy, international law, ceasefire, de-escalation.

These principles matter if all sides are playing by the same rules. But repeating them does not remove the underlying problem. A state still has to decide what to do when diplomacy fails, when a ceasefire is exploited, when law is manipulated, or when de-escalation allows an enemy to rearm.

There is no magical worldview that protects innocent people, defeats barbaric terrorists, preserves international approval, prevents soldiers from dying, avoids civilian harm, and produces permanent peace. There are only choices, costs, and consequences.

“Progressive Zionism” is frequently the refusal to admit this. Its deepest problem is not compassion. Compassion is essential. Its problem is cognitive dissonance.

Consider the “progressive” Jews in San Francisco, London, Mexico City, or Melbourne. They believe in liberal democracy, human rights, equality, justice, religious pluralism, and peaceful conflict resolution. These values are central to their identity; they are not fake. (In fact, many of them are, ironically, rooted in Judaism.)

They also care about Israel. Perhaps they have family there. Perhaps they have visited. Perhaps Israel represents Jewish continuity, refuge, memory, and belonging.

But they live in a social and political world where Zionism is increasingly treated as embarrassing at best and immoral at worst, so they begin negotiating with themselves. They do not abandon Zionism altogether. Instead, they edit it.

They construct a Zionism that their “progressive” friends might accept: a Zionism emptied of hard power, national interest, strategic necessity, and historical suspicion. A Zionism that constantly apologizes for itself. A Zionism whose moral legitimacy depends on Israel behaving according to standards demanded of no other country facing comparable threats.

They project the assumptions of a safe Western liberal society onto a country surrounded by armed movements that do not share those assumptions. They imagine that every conflict can be mediated because the conflicts around them usually can be. They assume institutions are basically trustworthy because the institutions around them mostly are. They believe people are responsive to goodwill because, in their lives, they often have been.

This is less an analysis of Israel than it is a projection of San Francisco onto the Middle East.

The “progressive Zionist” wants Israelis to act as though they live in a society where political disagreements occur through newspaper editorials, public demonstrations, court challenges, elections, and nonprofit advocacy. Unfortunately, Israelis live in a region where failed deterrence can mean people crossing the border to murder families in their homes.

That difference is not incidental. It changes everything — how risk is calculated, what security means, and the cost of being wrong. A “progressive” in California can afford to believe that an adversary has been misunderstood. If they are wrong, they may lose an argument, whereas Israelis who make the same mistake have lost an entire community of people, not least their family members, friends, neighbors, and colleagues.

“Progressive Zionism” survives by keeping that distinction abstract. It speaks endlessly about what Israel should risk while remaining geographically and personally insulated from the consequences of that risk. It turns Israeli survival into a black-and-white thought experiment for people who will not be in the shelter when the theory fails.

That does not mean “progressive Zionists” are cowardly, disloyal, or malicious. Many are not. Many are trying sincerely to preserve two parts of themselves that they fear are becoming incompatible. They do not want to abandon Jewish peoplehood, but they also do not want to be expelled from “progressive” society. They want Israel to survive, but they want its survival to occur without violating any of the moral commitments through which they understand themselves.

The desire is human. The resulting ideology is often incoherent.

Graffiti on a wall separating Israel from the West Bank — a wall that was put there because Palestinians kept murdering Israeli civilians (photo: Ash Hayes/Unsplash)

This incoherence becomes especially obvious when “progressive Zionists” describe the Israel they support. It is usually a hypothetical Israel: Israel after the so-called “occupation,” after Netanyahu, after “the settlements,” after “religious coercion,” after “the conflict,” after the extremists, after the current war.

They support Israel once Israel has become the country they think it ought to be, but countries do not exist in the conditional tense.

Israel has existed and always will exist with flawed politicians, competing factions, difficult borders, religious tensions, security failures, moral compromises, traumatized citizens, and genocidal enemies. It must make decisions before history reveals which decisions were correct.

A Zionism capable of surviving only in a perfected future is not much of a Zionism. Real Zionism must deal with the Jewish People as we are, not as an ideological coalition wishes us to become. It must account for the Middle East as it is, not as it might appear after a miraculous final scene.

This does not require abandoning certain values. Israel protects minority rights, defends democratic institutions, pursues peace where peace is possible, punishes abuses of power, resists extremism, and goes out of its way to take civilian suffering seriously even when its enemies do not.

These are worthy commitments, but they must be pursued within reality, not above it.

A serious moral politics begins by acknowledging tradeoffs. It understands that power can be abused but also that powerlessness can be fatal. It recognizes that military force can cause terrible suffering but can also prevent worse suffering. It knows that national solidarity can become chauvinism but that a nation without solidarity may be unable to defend itself.

“Progressive Zionism” wants the moral prestige of Zionism without the moral burden of sovereignty. Sovereignty means deciding who enters your borders. It means maintaining an army. It means distinguishing citizens from noncitizens. It means acting under uncertainty. It means sometimes choosing between dangerous options rather than between good and evil.

The Jewish state was not created to provide Jews with a flawless moral identity. It was created so that Jews could live. That sounds less poetic than the “progressive Zionist” vision. It is also more honest.

Zionism was born from the recognition that Jewish ideals without Jewish power had not protected Jewish lives. The Jewish People had produced ethics, texts, prayers, arguments, and universal visions for centuries. None of them stopped pogroms. None persuaded Europe or Arab societies to spare their Jews. None made statelessness safe.

Zionism did not reject morality. It rejected dependence. Hence, “progressive Zionism” is inherently unstable. Progressivism asks Zionism to prove its innocence. Zionism exists because Jewish history taught us that survival cannot depend on remaining innocent in the eyes of others.

Still, “progressive Zionists” should not be shunned from the Jewish world. Driving them away would be both cruel and foolish. Their compassion is often genuine. Their concerns can be valuable. Their insistence that Jewish power remain accountable is necessary. Israel does need critics who care about its soul, not only defenders who care about its strength. And the Jewish world does not need ideological purges. It has enough enemies without turning political disagreements into excommunication.

But “progressive Zionists” should be challenged. They should ask whether their principles accurately describe the world or merely make them feel morally comfortable within it. They should examine whether their demands on Israel would produce the outcomes they imagine. They should listen not only to Israeli activists who speak their political language, but also to soldiers, border communities, Middle Eastern minorities, Iranian dissidents, victims of terrorism, and Jews whose families fled countries where idealism offered no protection.

They should ask themselves a harder question than, “Does this position reflect my values?” They should ask, “What happens if I am wrong?” That is the question political fairy tales avoid.

A mature Zionism should retain the desire for justice while discarding illusions about how justice is achieved. It should pursue peace without pretending every enemy wants peace. It should restrain Jewish power without becoming ashamed that Jewish power exists. Most importantly, it should judge ideas by their consequences, not their intentions. “Progressive Zionists” do not need to stop dreaming, but they must wake up before making policy.

There may one day be a Middle East that is peaceful, stable, and prosperous across the entire region. That future is worth working toward, but it will not be built by pretending it has already arrived. Disney movies end when the kingdom is saved. Jewish history begins the next morning.

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