Beyond a Crisis: Why Liberal Zionism Still Matters
Professor Shaul Magid is right about something fundamental: liberal Zionism is in crisis.
October 7 and the devastation of Gaza have not merely strained an ideology; they have exposed fault lines that many liberal Zionists long knew were there but hoped time, peace processes, or better leadership would eventually resolve. The old language feels brittle. The old coalitions are fraying. The old assumptions no longer carry the weight they once did.
This is not denial. It is honesty.
But where I want to part company with Shaul — gently, respectfully, and as a former student who has learned much from him — is in what we imagine comes after this diagnosis.
Because naming a pivot is not the same as naming a destination.
And a crisis of liberal Zionism does not automatically mean its exhaustion.
The Diagnosis I Largely Share
Much of Shaul’s essay resonates deeply with what I see in my own community.
Yes:
• The phrase “Jewish and democratic” is under unprecedented strain.
• Yes: Israeli society has moved sharply rightward, with illiberal impulses no longer marginal.
• Yes: settler violence, Kahanism, and talk of “no innocents” have entered the mainstream in ways that would have been unthinkable not long ago.
• Yes: liberal American Jews feel trapped between defending a war they cannot morally justify and abandoning a people they cannot emotionally relinquish.
• Yes: the old two-state mantra often feels more like a talisman than a plan.
And yes — it must be said — Gaza has become a moral rupture event, not only for Palestinians but for Jews whose ethical frameworks can no longer absorb the scale of destruction without fracturing.
On all of this, I agree: something has collapsed.
But a Collapse Is Not the Same as a Conclusion
Where I hesitate is at the implicit suggestion — felt more than stated — that liberal Zionism may no longer be able to carry the moral or imaginative load required of this moment.
That its elasticity has snapped.
That the only remaining options are drift, polarization, or abandonment.
I don’t think that’s right.
What has collapsed is not liberal Zionism’s core insight.
What has collapsed is its old equilibrium.
And those are not the same thing.
The Core Insight Still Matters
At its best, liberal Zionism held together three commitments that now appear increasingly incompatible:
- Jewish collective self-determination is legitimate.
- Palestinians are a people with equal moral claims to dignity, freedom, and self-determination.
- The conflict cannot be resolved through permanent domination without corroding Jewish moral life itself.
That synthesis is now under extraordinary pressure.
But pressure does not mean falsity.
It means the work has become harder — not obsolete.
What worries me is that many are responding to the crisis not by deepening the moral imagination, but by abandoning it in opposite directions:
• Some abandon liberalism to preserve Zionism.
• Some abandon Zionism to preserve liberalism.
Both moves reduce complexity in the name of psychic relief.
Both moves are understandable.
Both moves are, in the long run, dangerous.
The Deeper Crisis Is Not Liberal Zionism — It Is Zero-Sum Thinking
One thread in Shaul’s essay that I want to pull gently is this: the sense that Israeli society has moved toward a zero-sum mentality, and that this shift has made bridge-building increasingly implausible.
Here I think Shaul names the problem — but underestimates its implications.
A zero-sum framework doesn’t just threaten liberal Zionism.
It threatens any future that doesn’t end in endless war.
When Israelis come to believe that only Jewish survival matters, Palestinian humanity becomes expendable.
When Palestinians come to believe that Jewish legitimacy itself is temporary or fraudulent, Jewish survival becomes negotiable.
This is not ideology.
It is a death spiral.
Liberal Zionism, at its core, was an attempt — imperfect, flawed, often compromised — to resist that spiral.
If we abandon that resistance now, we are not being realistic.
We are conceding the field to the worst actors on all sides.
“Ethnocracy” and the Limits of the Frame
Shaul rightly raises the deep tension between liberal values and an ethnically defined state. This tension is real and unresolved — not only in Israel, but in many nation-states struggling to reconcile peoplehood with pluralism.
But here I would urge caution with the frame.
To describe Israel simply as an “ethnocratic state” risks collapsing Jewish peoplehood into a caricature of modern nationalism. Jewish collective identity is not merely a state project; it is a civilizational one that long predates sovereignty and survives without it.
That doesn’t excuse injustice.
It doesn’t sanctify occupation.
It doesn’t absolve state violence.
But it does mean that dismantling Jewish political legitimacy cannot be the price of Palestinian liberation.
Any framework that requires one people to disappear so another can be free is not liberal — and not sustainable.
What a Post-Pivot Liberal Zionism Might Look Like
If liberal Zionism is pivoting, the pivot cannot simply be defensive or rhetorical.
It must be deeper:
• Less slogan, more moral architecture.
• Less denial of Palestinian suffering, more honest reckoning.
• Less reflexive Israel solidarity, more principled Israel accountability.
• Less nostalgia for “the peace camp,” more imagination for new political forms: confederation, shared sovereignty, equal citizenship models, regional guarantees.
And yes — less reliance on the fantasy that goodwill alone will solve structural injustice.
But abandoning the project altogether would be a mistake.
Because the alternative frameworks on offer today — from hard ethno-nationalism to erasure-based anti-Zionism — do not lead to justice. They lead to permanent war dressed up as moral clarity.
The Question Is Not Whether Liberal Zionism Survives
The real question is whether Jews — Israelis and Diaspora alike — can articulate a future that is neither domination nor disappearance.
That work has no guaranteed audience.
It will be rejected by extremists on all sides.
It will feel inadequate to those demanding immediate moral certainty.
But it remains necessary.
Not because liberal Zionism is comfortable.
But because every alternative that abandons its core insight ends in ruin.
After Gaza, the Work Is Harder — and More Urgent
Shaul is right: Gaza has changed everything.
But what it has not changed is this:
Two peoples exist.
One land is shared.
Neither is going anywhere.
Any ideology — liberal, Zionist, post-Zionist, or anti-Zionist — that cannot begin from that premise is not a solution. It is a postponement of catastrophe.
Liberal Zionism may be pivoting.
But its deepest moral intuition — that Jewish survival and Palestinian freedom are not mutually exclusive — remains the only starting point that does not guarantee endless bloodshed.
That intuition deserves refinement, not burial.
And the work of articulating it — however unfashionable, however fragile — is not over.
Not yet.