Zionism and Human Worth
Before we speak about another person, we choose: see a human being, or turn a person’s life into an ideological argument. Too often do we recently see the dehumanizing of people into arguments.
This weekend on Saturday Night Live, comedian Michael Che turned Israel’s election, which witnessed an historic showing of the Arab Israeli voters, into a joke about “genocide.” A word for one of humanity’s gravest crimes became a punchline, despite obvious proof of its falsehood. The world’s only Jewish state and became an accusation, which not only attacked Israel but also erased Israel’s Arabs who successfully exercised their political rights as citizens just this week.
Words matter. When a charge this grave becomes a joke, Israelis become caricatures. Jewish pain becomes comedic and cultural material. A nation with many visions for its future disappears into a laugh.
Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people have the right to safety, self-determination, and a home in our ancestral land. Zionism begins with the worth of human beings, including Jews. Modern political Zionism emerged in an age when European emancipation had promised Jews equal citizenship. Yet, to our great pain, legal equality did not end hatred. Pogroms, exclusion, and the Dreyfus affair exposed how quickly Jewish belonging could be questioned and Jewish lives endangered, even where modern, “enlightened” societies had promised acceptance.
Zionism is an insistence that Jews are more than a problem for others to solve. We are a people with history, dignity, and the right to shape our future in our ancestral land. Zionism is a movement of survival, yes, but also of renewal and hope. Jewish life must never depend entirely on someone else’s permission. And the worth Zionism taught Jews to defend is not ours alone. Every person is created in the image of God. That truth must shape how we see one another.
It belongs to the Israeli musician, DJ Dekel, whose invitation to Twisted Frequency, a New Zealand music festival, was withdrawn after organizers said he had not publicly condemned Israel. They found no verified evidence of his beliefs. Still, his silence was enough. He deserved to be seen as a person, not made to answer for an entire country.
The Divine image belongs to Jewish comedian Lucas Zelnick, who says that after an audience member shouted that Jews were evil, he received threats and abuse, including from Jews angry about his views on Israel. No Jew should have to endure antisemitism or threats from fellow Jews for expressing their opinions.
And that image belongs to the Arab citizens of Israel whose votes matter in forming a government. Their participation is not a threat to democracy. It is proof of Israel’s Declaration of Independence and its promise of democracy. The Jewish state is strengthened when every citizen can belong fully within it.
These stories are different. Yet each shows how easily a person becomes a category: a Jew turned into a symbol, an Israeli artist made to answer for a government, an Arab voter treated as a threat.
My people know what happens when others stop looking at our faces. Our tradition demands that we keep seeing the face of another.
Jewish children should grow up safe and unapologetic, knowing their people and homeland are worthy of love. They deserve a Jewish world where strength and compassion belong together, where disagreement does not erase belonging, and where another person’s dignity is never a threat to our own.
We are not abstractions. We are human beings, each carrying an image of the Divine. May we muster the moral courage to see one another.
