Say It Loud: Judaism Is Zionism

On the morning of October 7, 2023, my family and I slumped against the wall of a stairwell in the French Hill neighborhood of Jerusalem. We listened to sirens blaring, rockets soaring overhead, and the deep, far-off thuds as they fell to the ground or were intercepted midair. My brother and sister-in-law wore pensive expressions; they had been here, in this stairwell, before. But my parents and I, the New Yorkers, were afraid.

“Misha,” my mother whispered to her son, “is this serious?”

My brother shook his head and smiled. He did not want his young children to think that anything was wrong. But it was.

Less than seventy miles away, Hamas terrorists were setting houses on fire, slaughtering babies in their cribs, and sexually assaulting their mothers. They were kidnapping the people we still wait for today, devastating entire communities before triumphantly reentering Gaza with their spoils. In the stairwell, we did not know this. All we knew about were the rockets.

Days later, as our plane hovered over Europe, I looked out the window and thought about the many decisions that had led us to Israel in the first place. In 1990, with the fall of the Soviet Union, my mother arrived in America from Belarus, after spending months crisscrossing through Eu- rope. Ten years later, she met my father, another Belarusian immigrant. They married and built a house in Staten Island. And then, eleven years later, my brother flew to Israel for the second time in his life. As the president of Boston College’s first pro-Israel student organization, he was to spend six weeks in Jerusalem’s Old City before returning home to graduate from college and begin law school. It was a simple plan, one that did not take into account the power of the experience.

For as long as I can remember, my Judaism—and therefore my identity—has been tied to my Zionism.

“Mom, something happened to me,” read my brother’s email. Huddled together in the kitchen, my parents read his words aloud, their faces shrouded in disbelief. The aspiring lawyer was now to become a rabbi instead, trading law school for the yeshiva. After a few years, my parents came around, forgoing their anti-theistic notions for a warm embrace of Orthodox Judaism, and my brother and his wife moved to Jerusalem.

It was a love for and commitment to Israel, and the discoveries my brother made there, that initially charted the course for us all. So, for as long as I can remember, my Judaism—and therefore my identity—has been tied to my Zionism.

In the months that have passed since October 7, the strength of this tether has been tested. The connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel has been poked and prodded, investigated and researched by those who distort truth. “How deep is this connection?” they ask. “How old is it?” They seek to peel back the layers of history, to locate the exact, quantifiable moment when Jews first arrived in Israel and started to attract calamity. It is as though Hamas’s terrorism—the goals of which they explicitly state in their charter—can be explained by the relationship between Jews and Israel. It must be that some inherent flaw in the Jewish people’s self-determination, their statehood, their Zionism itself, has brought evil upon them.

Over the past generation, Western Jews have begun to pull at the threads that join them to Israel.

Over the past generation, Western Jews have begun to pull at the threads that join them to Israel. It has become easy and even desirable to reject Zionism. Some Jews have sought to remove themselves from this narrative or to place themselves on the side of the apparent victors of October 7. “As a Jew….” they write, hiding behind screens as they con- done terrorism, renounce Zionism, and forfeit—consciously or unconsciously—a core facet of their Jewish identity. On October 7, the day of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, the pro-Palestine organization Jewish Voice for Peace ( JVP) released a statement claiming that “the source of all this violence” was “Israeli apartheid and occupation.” As quoted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), JVP activist Ariel Koren has said that Hamas’s crimes are “consistent with Palestinians’ right to resist.’” In January, Jewish Currents published a comic titled “Israel’s Defense,” in which IDF soldiers are depicted as brutalizing unclothed Gazan men while filming themselves. Above the head of one soldier, a speech bubble reads: “It’s a blood libel to hit ‘play’ on our genocide TikToks!” Israeli flags poke out of destroyed buildings.

As defined by the ADL, Zionism is “the movement for self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel.”

But somehow, to this particular group of Jews, Zionism is utterly separate from one’s Jewishness. Jewish members of JVP, like Koren, can now block bridges while shouting for a ceasefire—a ceasefire does not include peace or an end to conflict—and calling for the United States government to stop sending aid to Israel as it defends itself. Jonathan Glazer can “refute” his Judaism on stage at the Oscars as he accepts the award for Best International Feature Film for The Zone of Interest—a film he made about Auschwitz, where approximately 1.1 million of his brethren were killed.

Jews who reject Zionism are rejecting the premise that Jews should have a state where they can live without being persecuted.

In its essence, Jews who reject Zionism are rejecting the premise that Jews should have a state where they can live without being persecuted. Perhaps it is possible to believe, in the comfort of one’s San Francisco home or Camden flat, that the game has ended, and we can finally stop running. Centuries have passed since the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, and we are generations removed from the gas chambers and death camps of the Holocaust. Perhaps it is possible to believe that we do not need to be Zionists anymore.

But if Hamas’s calculated acts of savagery on October 7, and the world’s response since then, have proven anything, it is that the game is not over. Those who hate Israel do not, for the most part, exclude Jews from their hatred. Zionism is inherent to Jewish identity, and no amount of anti-Zionist Jews can change this truthful perception.

The curtain between those who oppose Zionism and those who loathe Jews has grown precariously thin.

On October 21, protestors at an anti-Israel rally in Rhode Island chanted “Hey hey, ho ho, the Yahudi [ Jews] have got to go!” This is only one example of antisemitic sentiment expressed within the context of anti-Zionist activism, but it is emblematic of what is a much larger trend: The curtain between those who oppose Zionism and those who loathe Jews has grown precariously thin. Despite the common refrain trumpeted by social-media trolls and zealous protestors—that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism—it is difficult to see how calling for the eradication of the world’s only Jewish state, or writing that the land must be “free” of Jews to allow for Palestinian sovereignty, is not antisemitic.

Throughout history, in every time of crisis, Jews have been forced to consider what we value, what we prioritize, and what challenges us. As Israel fights to defend itself against the terrorist group that seeks its destruction, and the subsequent destruction of the West, it is crucial to remember that this war is another in the long series of wars that has shaped Jewish identity. Regardless of one’s qualms with the Israeli government or disillusionment with Judaism itself, in order for the Jewish people to have a future in the Diaspora and in their historic homeland, Zionism must once again become intrinsic to Jewish identity. We must value ourselves, we must prioritize our statehood, and we must accept the challenge of defining our identity.

As the first-century sage Hillel once said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” These words are ancient, but their message is timeless, as this is the question we face now. If the Jewish people do not identify as Zionists, then who will ensure that our state lives on? If we do not believe that we deserve a place to live and worship freely, to go dancing without never returning home again, to wake up on a holiday morning with our loved ones sleeping safely in their beds, then our future will not only be dark. It will be virtually impossible to ensure. And, as Hillel concluded—“If not now, when?”

Excerpted from Young Zionist Voices: A New Generation Speaks Out (New York: Wicked Son, 2024), David Hazony, ed. Click here to order.