I
recently met with a group of Australian Jewish leaders and discovered
that in the land of the kangaroo and the koala they do not fear the word
“Zionist.” Not only do eighty percent of Australian Jews embrace the label proudly,
they acknowledge how much Zionism has strengthened their community,
inspiring many of them personally, while emboldening many of them
politically. By contrast, many American Jewish leaders continue to abandon the word “Zionism,” claiming it does not “poll well.”
Abandoning the
term Zionism is an act of cowardice. It represents a retreat in the face
of the systematic Soviet-choreographed, Arab-fueled, hard left-endorsed
campaign to delegitimize Israel which has been going on since the 1970s
and has outlasted the fall of the Soviet Union, and the 1991 repeal of
the UN’s 1975 Zionism is racism resolution. Running away from the term
gives the delegitimizers a victory they do not deserve. It starts the
defense of Israel on the defensive. “Zionism” does not poll well because
it has been targeted effectively. But pollsters cannot quantify how
much credibility American Jews lose when they abandon the term instead
of defending it – our allies, our young people, and our enemies can
smell the fear.
American Jews’
gutless flight is particularly anomalous because the community is in
many ways more Zionist than ever – and primed to accept a robust Zionist
message. American Jews are a people-people, more united by ethnic,
national, cultural solidarity, than by belief in God. Despite critics’
claims to the contrary, three-quarters of American Jews consistently
support Israel, the Jewish state. The most successful program of the
last decade, Taglit-Birthright, is a peoplehood project which helps
young Jews aged 18 to 26 jumpstart their Jewish journeys by visiting
Israel. Moreover, young, idealistic American Jews do not want to retreat
or defend, they want to celebrate, dream, improve.
Zionism is the
national liberation movement of the Jewish people. Its fundamental
assumptions are that the Jews are a people not just a community of
faith, and that Israel is the Jewish national homeland. Having
established the state of Israel in 1948, the modern Zionist movement is
now dedicated to protecting and perfecting the state. Perfecting the
state is about an aspirational Zionism, a values-based Zionism, an
inspiring Identity Zionism, not just a defensive Zionism. It moves
Zionism away from “Israel advocacy” which is mostly about preservation,
toward a more expansive conversation about seeking fulfillment. Given
that understanding of Zionism, American Jews should embrace Zionism as
enthusiastically as Australian Jews too.
Just as
Israel’s Foreign Ministry is wisely evolving away from that terrible
term “Hasbarah,” with its implication of heavy-handed, propagandistic
explanations, American Jews should shift from talking about Israel
Advocacy to Zionism. Israel Advocacy suggests that Israel needs legions
of defense attorneys working overtime defending the Jewish state. Israel
Advocacy gives the Palestinians a propaganda victory they do not
deserve by focusing on Israel as a problem, and obsessing about all of
Israel’s problems.
Israel exists
and it is not on probation. It does not need to be constantly advocated
for, justified, legitimized. Talk of Zionism carves out more room for
the normal and the exceptional. Zionist normalcy includes my sons’
baseball league, my daughters’ ballet performance, my wife’s art school –
all of which testify to the extraordinary achievement of simply living
an ordinary life in the Jewish homeland. At the same time, Zionist
exceptionalism includes Israel’s miraculous achievements as Start Up
nation, Israel’s soaring old-new aspirations as values nation, and
Israel’s beautiful 24/7 Judaism as the Jewish state.
Groups
committed to “Israel Advocacy” can only do so much – they can defend
Israel, they can rebrand Israel, they can deepen understandings of
Israel. But, as its best, a revitalized Zionist movement can help
improve Israel and help improve American Jewry too. Zionism challenges
Jews to criticize themselves and their community. A robust American
Zionism will question why so many American Jews feel so alienated by
their Jewish upbringing, in their families, their schools, their shuls,
that they need the kind of last-minute intervention Birthright Israel
provides. A muscular American Zionism will extend the critique from
American Jewry to American life itself, asking why so many Americans
feels lost, stressed, distressed, despite living in the freest, richest,
greatest exercise in mass middle class prosperity the world has ever
witnessed. An expansive American Zionism is broad enough to synthesize
many American liberal values with Zionist ones, rejecting the caricature
of the two ideologies as incompatible. An effective Identity Zionism
for American Jews will then use the power of the Jewish story, the
richness of Jewish values, the warmth of Jewish solidarity to help
ground American Jews – and launch into a lifelong conversation and
confrontation with Israel which draws inspiration and strength from
Israel, while both defending Israel and refining it.
Zionism has not
always resonated with American Jews. For decades, Reform Jews in
particular feared the whiff of dual loyalty that may emanate from an
American Jewish community too enthusiastic about establishing a Jewish
state. But the Holocaust and the establishment of the State in 1948
helped make the Reform Movement Zionist. Israel’s victory in the 1967
war – and the pride it brought American Jewry – made Zionism even more
popular in America. That American Jewish support for Israel remains one
of American Jews’ defining tenets, 45 complicated years later,
represents an impressive accomplishment. Just as most so-called secular
Israelis do not begin to fathom how deeply Jewish they are, most
Americans Jews do not realize how deeply Zionist they are. They need to
stop ignoring the small group of elites trying to sour them on either
the Zionist project or the Zionist label, and proclaim to themselves and
the world: I am A Zionist.
Gil Troy is
Professor of History at McGill University and a Shalom Hartman Engaging
Israel Research Fellow in Jerusalem. The author of “Why I Am A Zionist:
Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today,” his next book,
“Moynihan’s Moment: The Fight against Zionism as Racism” will be
published by Oxford University Press this fall.
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