Not Zionism

Anshel Pfeffer, writer at Ha’Aretz, writes in a NYT editorial in 2022:

Jewish fundamentalists are now the dominant element in the Israeli governing coalition led by Benjamin Netanyahu. They plan a hostile takeover of Jewish identity.

Several ministries have been created with a focus on Jewish identity. They will be led almost exclusively by the members of parties representing the various strands of modern Jewish fundamentalism — parties that resist any form of modernism — as well as the elements of the Zionist Orthodoxy that are increasingly both ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox.

These parties are imposing on Israel a definition of Judaism that refuses to recognize the validity of the non-Orthodox streams, with which the majority of American Jews identify. They are even demanding a change in the most fundamental link between Israel and the Jewish diaspora: the Law of Return, which grants Israeli citizenship to Jews and their descendants. They have promised to make those with at least one Jewish grandparent and who are not recognized as Jewish by the Orthodox rabbinical establishment ineligible for automatic Israeli citizenship.

I have had numerous very unpleasant encounters with people making an irresponsibly facile assertion that the Likudnik coalition’s genocidal attack on Gaza reflects the fundamental truth of ‘zionism’.

This does not bother me because I am a Zionist; I am not. But if we are to make sense of the long-term injustices in the history of Israel-Palestine which have escalated into the current horror, we need to clearly understand the animating history & ideologies. And if we are stupid about Zionism, we open a door to antisemitism.

Countless times I have made the distinction that the Likudniks do not demonstrate What Zionism Necessarily Means, while gritting my teeth and conceding that they do reflect an important ideological & historical strain in Zionism. I will not do that any more.

Zionism is predicated on all Jews belonging to an ethnic people with common interests. This is not that.

Zionism is predicated on creating a homeland for all Jews. This is not that.