Zionism has become a term of abuse in the antisemitic lexicon
Israel was voted into existence as a sovereign state by the United Nations in 1947 and the movement which catalyzed this turning point in the history of the Jewish people was Zionism.
Until the emergence of Zionism in the 1880s, the solution to the centuries-old tragedy of Jewish persecution had rested in prayer and appeals to God. “Lord, Lord, why hast Thou forsaken me?” was the anguished cry of terrified and bereaved Jews. But when the libels and calumnies against the Jews persisted, enlightened Jews like Theodore Herzl, a Western journalist who had been shocked by the antisemitism inherent in the Dreyfus trial, realized that a pragmatic solution to the problem had to be found.
Herzl’s views resonated with those of many Russian Jews, horrified by the pogroms, discriminatory laws and persecutory acts battering their people. An independent Jewish state came to be seen as the only way in which Jews could live in safety. The two parties of East and West coalesced and the Zionist movement was born, which rapidly grew into a worldwide political and cultural movement.
Israel was chosen as the territory for the new state as much for religious reasons as for pragmatic ones. Ever since the expulsion of Jews in the sixth century BCE by the kingdom of Babylon, religious Jews had expressed a yearning for their lost land. Jerusalem, with its sacred landmarks, was extolled by scholars, poets and psalmists alike as the heartbeat of the Jewish nation.
At the end of the First World War, the conquering nations redrew the map of the Middle East, allocating the territory known as Palestine, then ruled by the Ottoman Turks, to Britain, to be held as a mandate pending its final disposition by the League of Nations. A promise made to the Jews by the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, to ensure a homeland for the Jewish people, heralded a bitter struggle between Jews and Arabs for the area of Palestine destined to become Israel. Two contradictory narratives sprang up, which have lasted to the present day. Arabs perceived the Jews as alien invaders imposed on them by a colonialist Empire, while Jews saw the Arabs as intransigent adversaries determined to prevent the fulfillment of their rightful legacy.
Nor did the vote by the United Nations in favor of a Jewish state bring about an abatement in the struggle. Military onslaughts by massed Arab armies, massacres of Jews, terrorist incursions into Israel and a slanderous propaganda war marked the next fifty years, despite several false dawns. Zionism brought muscle to the existential Jewish struggle for survival.
The worst episode in this dire chronicle of the war against the Jews began on October 7th, 2023, with the barbaric slaughter of 1200 innocent Jews and the hostage-taking, torture and abuse of 251 more by the Jihadi terrorist group Hamas, which controlled Gaza. A shocked and traumatized Israel launched an invasion and bombardment of Gaza in a futile attempt to fatally weaken Hamas, setting itself up for an orchestrated propagandistic counter-attack, in which Zionism, long held to be the evil demon of Jewish Israelis, came to be smeared with accusations of genocide.
The latest strategy of Israel’s enemies is to drive a wedge into the Jewish community, splitting Jews deemed supportive of a Palestinian state from Jews who believe that what is at stake is the survival of Israel as a Jewish state.
Unfortunately, the number of Jews in the former category is growing. In their idealistic vision, Arabs, Jews and Christians will join hands under a Palestinian flag in a spirit of cooperation. The enemies of Israel, however, seething with hatred for the Jewish people, have other ideas. For them, the establishment of Palestine as a state would signal the demise of the Jewish state and the Jews within it. And they believe that time is on their side.
Today, the word Zionism has been hijacked by Israel’s enemies and adopted by their gullible allies as a term of opprobrium for Jews who support Israel. Jews who chant for Palestine are motivated, not by malice, but by a stupendous ignorance of the history of the Zionist tradition. Amongst them are academics of the far left who paint a distorted picture of Israel as a colonialist enterprise foisted on the Arab underdogs by their imperialist masters. There is no acknowledgement on the part of anti-Zionist Jews that Zionism comprises a spectrum of ideologies ranging from left to right, united by a spirit of determination to ensure the continuation of Israel as a democratic state. It is these Jews who are fanning the flames of the huge upsurge in antisemitism, now coded as anti-Zionism.
