Do Not Ask Jews to Confess Their Way into Belonging
We are witnessing what it means when a room decides that the word “Zionist” is enough to make a Jew suspect. The conversation changes. The human being disappears. Suddenly a Jew must explain, defend, or renounce the peoplehood that has carried us through exile, persecution, and the long struggle to live safely in our own home, our community, our workplace.
That is why the fashionable demand to “deZionize” public life cannot be dismissed as ordinary criticism of Israel. A British political party has declared Zionism racism. An American scholarly association has put “deZionizing” the university on its program. A Jewish writer presents antizionist Jews as the moral aristocracy of our people. And Israelis living abroad are crossing oceans to vote because they refuse to abandon responsibility for Israel’s future.
Criticism is not antisemitism. Jews have always argued with one another, including about Zionism. But when Zionism itself is declared racist, when universities are urged to remove it, or when Jews who reject it are presented as the morally authentic Jews (what Hannah Arendt termed “exceptional Jews”), the argument is no longer about a government’s choices. It is about whether Jewish collective life is allowed to exist on its own terms.
There have always been Jews who opposed Zionism. Their voices are part of Jewish history. But their existence does not make antizionism an authentic expression of Jewish peoplehood. A Jewish person’s opinion cannot be used to sanctify the denial of Jewish self-determination.
For millennia, Jews prayed toward Jerusalem, carried the memory of Zion across continents, and understood ourselves as a people with a shared past and a shared future. Modern Zionism arose from that inheritance and from a brutal modern truth: Jews could not rely on other nations to keep us safe. Jewish self-determination is not a claim to supremacy. It is a refusal to make Jewish survival depend on someone else’s permission.
The Green Party of England and Wales adopted a policy declaring “Zionism is racism.” The Board of Deputies of British Jews responded by calling the party racist and urging other parties not to form coalitions with it unless the policy is reversed. The Board’s alarm is warranted. A party that defines Zionism as racism makes a central expression of Jewish identity and history grounds for exclusion.
The same danger is present in academic language. The American Studies Association’s recent conference included sessions titled “Zionism Is Racism” and “Dezionizing the U.S. University.” Academic freedom must protect criticism of nations, governments, and political movements. It must also protect Jewish scholars from being treated as contaminants because they are Zionists. A university should invite disagreement, not demand ideological confession.
Then there is the cultural prestige attached to Jewish antizionism. Benjamin Moser’s “Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History” presents Jewish opponents of Zionism as a hidden tradition whose members were ultimately proven right. Their arguments should be studied. But a Jewish voice is not a certificate that makes the denial of Jewish self-determination morally sound. Nor does defending Zionism require defending every Israeli policy or ignoring Palestinian history and suffering.
This week, Israelis living abroad are making another argument through action. Tens of thousands are traveling back to vote in an election they see as decisive for Israel’s future. They are not all returning to endorse the same leader or party. They are returning because they refuse to abandon responsibility for their country. That, too, is Zionism: not obedience or adulation, but the conviction that Israel’s future belongs to its people and must be shaped democratically.
The answer to antizionism is not silence about injustice. It is a Zionism strong enough to protect Jewish life, defend democracy, and refuse to relinquish the demands of self-determination. We dare not surrender our destiny to those who call it racism, or surrender Jewish conscience to those who confuse loyalty with silence.
Jews will not confess away our peoplehood to prove our humanity.
