Why I Became Addicted to Zionism

"Zionism is fundamentally a Western movement. It is a movement that lives on the border of the East, but always faces the West."

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I did not grow up as a Zionist or in a Zionistic home.

Actually, I can hardly recall my (Jewish) parents talking about Israel at all.

In Hebrew school we glossed over the Jewish state, and the only thing I remember today is learning that Israel is the geographic size of New Jersey.

In other words, I was not groomed to be a Zionist.

Today, having lived in Israel since 2013, I am “addicted” to Zionism, in the sense that I find it fascinating, exhilarating, and profoundly impressive.

I am in awe that the Jews were able to found a markedly accomplished country in our indigenous homeland, following thousands of years of exile, as well as systemic oppression, prejudice, apartheid (being second-class citizens in other countries), persecution, and genocide.

I am invigorated by one of former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s speeches, during which he said:

“I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it.”

From my point of view, there are two extraordinary parts of Zionism: the land and the people.

Israel was not originally a desert. Once upon a time, its landscape resembled southern Greece. The region became a desert due to thousands of years of colonization and mismanagement of the land, which made agriculture unreliable.

In 1867, Mark Twain made a visit to then-Ottoman-era Palestine and said:

“Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists — over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead — about whose borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch. Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village … Palestine is desolate and unlovely.”

The Galilee was swampy, the Judaean Mountains rocky, and the south of the country, the Negev, was a desert. Starting in the 1800s, Jews immigrated to our indigenous homeland, purchased land, and rehabilitated it, both for farming and for living. But local antisemitic Arabs raided farms and settlements; irrigation canals and crops were regularly sabotaged; sanitary conditions were poor; and malaria, typhus, and cholera were rampant.

Ardent Zionist Dr. Israel Kligler, a microbiologist, is credited with malaria eradication in the region during the 1920s, which ironically resulted in a major share of the Arab’s population increase. Local Arabs said that Zionists made the land “livable,” and as many as 60,000 Arabs subsequently immigrated to British-era Palestine to take advantage of new work opportunities provided by the growing population.

As exponentially more Jews also continued to immigrate to Ottoman-era and then British-era Palestine in the early 1900s, fleeing antisemitism-infested Europe and the Middle East, the notion of Jewish self-determination became increasingly foreseeable. Dominant thinking about Zionism could be described in three ways leading up to the founding of the Jewish state:

1. Practical Zionism – Firstly there is a need in practical terms to implement Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel and settlement of the land, as soon as possible, even if a charter over the Land is not obtained.

2. Labor Zionism – a desire to establish an agriculturist society not on the basis of a private-bourgeoisie society, but rather on the basis of moral equality

3. Cultural Zionism – The fulfillment of the national revival of the Jewish People should be achieved by creating a cultural center in the Land of Israel and an educative center to the Jewish Diaspora, which together will be a bulwark against the danger of assimilation that threatens the existence of the Jewish People.

The Great Synagogue of Rishon LeZion, just south of Tel Aviv, was founded in 1885. (Museum of Rishon Le- zion)

In 1948, the State of Israel was founded primarily by European socialists who politically and socioeconomically ran the country for the next three decades.

But an influx of nearly one million North African and Middle Eastern Jews during the next couple of decades, followed by another million Russian Jews leading up to and after the fall of the Soviet Union, shaped Israeli culture and society into what it is today: family-oriented, highly social, spiritual, traditional, resilient, optimistic, resourceful, creative, and hardworking — the combination of which any country would envy, thus a testament to the Israeli people.

Zionism, too, evolved as most movements do. And like other movements, Zionism is imperfect. There are less “politically correct” versions of it, such as Revisionist Zionism, characterized by territorial expansionism.

There are even stories, similar to ones today about the Iranians and the Qataris, about Zionists bribing people in other countries to vote in favor of a Jewish state as part of the 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine that suggested two states for two peoples in British-era Palestine, one for the Jews and one for the Arabs.

Some of the forests that exist in Israel today were planted by Jews on land that was previously inhabited by Arabs who fled Israel’s War of Independence in 1948 and 1949. One documentary indicated that Jews planted these forests so Arabs could not return to these lands following the war.¹

And then there is Israeli politics, which can be described as “one big hot mess.” Leadership in Israel has been good at times and not-so-good at others. While the Jews have demonstrated remarkable success in a variety of fields, government and public service have never really been among them.

Albert Ein­stein, who was a proud Jew and involved in many Jewish causes including the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, had expressed reserva­tions about Jews exer­cis­ing state pow­er, fear­ing that it would be cor­rupt­ing and a turn away from the spir­i­tu­al. To some extent, his foresight was accurate.

Even the great historian Benzion Netanyahu, the father of Israel’s prime minister, said in a 1998 interview:

“It is completely clear to me that in one area we have failed in Israel — in the area of ​​education. To think that maybe it is suitable for doing good business and maybe even for developing modern techniques, but it is not suitable for the historical task and the political situation we are in.”

“The people of the Left are certainly not suitable for this politically, but many of the people of the Right also do not properly understand the situation, the problems we are facing. And therefore they cannot properly distinguish between solutions and illusions, between the possible and the impossible.”

“That’s why my heart is truly full of anxiety. Sometimes I fear that a hundred years of Zionism might go down the drain because a large part of the current generation is not suitable for the historical role assigned to it.”²

Zionism also has a “branding” problem, which the State of Israel and Jewish organizations across the world are partially responsible for creating. The result has been a vacuum that allowed the Palestinians to reconstruct their “narrative” many times over, including with the help of the Soviets and their communist allies, who in the 1960s encouraged Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to abandon his open desire to annihilate the Jews in Israel, in favor of “liberating the Palestinian People.”

It was a brilliant communications strategy, and the first step in reframing the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews from religious jihad to secular nationalism, in a quest for political self-determination, a posture far less offensive to the West, especially in the wake of overwhelming guilt following the Holocaust.

Within the Palestinians’ endless changes to their story, reality has lost much ground, and their assault on Zionism goes hand-in-glove with their assault on truth. This, of course, presents a real, even existential, danger to Israel: If truth becomes hypothetical and conditional, it becomes harder to resist the anti-Israel (really, the anti-Jewish) agenda that Palestinians and their supporters have been pursuing for decades.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a notable Christian supporter of Israel and Zionism. (Dick DeMarsico)

You can say a lot about the less-than-stellar aspects of Zionism. I have mentioned a few in this essay, and there are certainly many others. But the one thing you cannot say about Zionism is that it is an imperialistic, colonial, violent, dangerous, racist, or oppressive movement.

Self-determination is always messy, but in all my readings about Zionism, its mainstream, practical variant was never intended to be anything other than Jewish self-determination in the Jews’ indigenous homeland.

Well before and leading up to the Jews’ declaration of independence in 1948, we know that there were people living in the area now known as Israel. There is no Zionist doctrine that espoused the illegal or immoral removal, elimination, genocide, or ethnic cleansing of these people.

The mainstream, practical Zionists were always in favor of two states for two peoples, and even agreed to a Special International Regime for the city of Jerusalem and its surroundings. In true Zionist form, sharing is caring, and this virtue held true for many Israelis up until October 7th. Now we know that what Golda Meir, Israel’s first and only female prime minister, said decades ago still rings true to this day:

“We’re not the only people in the world who’ve had difficulties with neighbors; that has happened to many. We are the only country in the world whose neighbors do not say, ‘We are going to war because we want a certain piece of land from Israel,’ or waterways or anything of that kind. We’re the only people in the world where our neighbors openly announce they just won’t have us here. And they will not give up fighting and they will not give up war as long as we remain alive. Here.”

It is also true that Israel’s current extreme right-wing government, a combination of Revisionist Zionists and Religious Zionists, is not helping Israel’s cause, especially among liberal democracies. And yet, the Zionist movement very much remains a liberal concept.

Zionism led to the greatest anti-imperialist, decolonization project on planet Earth, as well as the self-transformation of victims into sovereigns.

Zionism produced a unique form of multiculturalism stemming from European, Middle Eastern, Arab, North African, and Western influences.

Zionism’s righteous resistance began in the 1800s against the Ottomans, then the British, and now a Palestinian society that, in many ways, is more prolific than the Nazis at violent and virulent antisemitism.

Zionism created one of the few countries in the Middle East and North Africa where Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Catholicism, Baháʼí, Druze, and other religions can truly co-exist in peace.

Zionism manufactured a profoundly humanitarian society, in which Israelis and Israeli organizations routinely offer all types of support to places across the world plagued by conflict and disaster.

Zionism prepared its people to do something for their country and the Jewish People, by virtue of compulsory military service, as well as the “year of service” program for more religious individuals.

Zionism enabled tremendous contributions to a variety of fields, from medicine and agriculture, to technology and archaeology, while accumulating the world’s most museums, engineers, scientists, startups, and R&D investment per capita.

“Zionism is fundamentally a Western movement,” said Benzion Netanyahu. “It is a movement that lives on the border of the East, but always faces the West. And so it is today, standing against the natural tendencies of the East to penetrate the West and enslave it.”

Now, as I look at much of the West, I see societies that have overindulged on capitalism at the expense of vital social fabrics, that endlessly talk about democratic virtues but do little to sacrifice and fight for them, and that allow fringe groups of people to subvert important Western institutions and turn some of the West’s greatest values against itself.

Meanwhile, in Israel, we have a pretty good balance of socialism and capitalism; Israelis still predominantly enroll in the IDF or a volunteer program called “national service”; and while fringe groups exist in Israel, we are not at their mercy.

Perhaps it is Israel, of all places, that can help save the West. And perhaps it is Zionism, of all movements, that can fascinate, exhilarate, and profoundly impress upon more people in different places, with different struggles, across the world.

As for my addiction, well, it could always be worse.

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1. “Blue Box”

2. “Ben-Zion Netanyahu in an interview in 1998: ‘There is no such thing with a Palestinian.’” Haaretz.