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The Only Response to Anti-Zionism Is Zionism

(Tablet) Dr. Einat Wilf - I now hear from parents in the American Jewish community of the ever-growing demands placed on young Jews to join the ranks of anti-Israel organizations. The demand on young Jews to be less visibly and confidently Jewish as the price of social acceptance and toleration is an ancient one. Today it includes demands to disavow support for Israel or declare support for Palestinian political movements. I confronted this demand myself 25 years ago, when I was a member of Israel's Labor Party and a proud member of the country's political left. I also remained a committed Zionist, a set of values and principles that in no way contradicted any of my other political beliefs. Yet several encounters with peers and colleagues abroad led to the eventual realization that the fact that I was an unapologetic Zionist banished me from the good graces of the global left. I never changed my opinion about Zionism. I simply gave up my status as a "good Jew" in the opinions of others. At present, a Jewish student who does not show herself to be an ally of Students for Justice in Palestine, or does not agree that "Zionism equals racism," or that Zionism is a form of apartheid and whatever other supreme evil will be identified next, cannot be considered a good Jew. Over the last several months, as a visiting professor at Georgetown University in Washington, I taught a course called "Zionism and Anti-Zionism." In the many hours I spent discussing student life with students and faculty, it became apparent that the anti-Zionist activism on campus was not primarily a form of social protest or political expression, but a form of bullying. The only effective response to the bullies is to resist them with confidence. It's hard to bully a proud people; it's impossible to bully a people who know they have nothing to be ashamed of, and who don't need or seek anyone else's approval in the first place. The only response to anti-Zionism, in other words, is Zionism. The writer, a former IDF intelligence officer and Knesset member, is the co-author of The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace (2020).
2022-05-12 00:00:00
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