Zionism is a compromise.
Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, is a Biblical, religious concept with variously defined boundaries.
In Genesis 15:18, G-d’s covenant with Abraham included territory from the “River of Egypt to the great river Porat.” The “River of Egypt” is sometimes said to be the Nile and sometimes it is the Wadi el-Arish in the Sinai Peninsula, while the river Porat is the Euphrates.
In Exodus 23:31, the borders are from the “Sea of Reeds” (Sinai Peninsula) to the “Sea of Philistia” (Mediterranean Sea) and from the “desert” (Negev) to “The River” (Euphrates).
In Numbers 34:1-12, the boundaries of the lands of Canaan are less expansive than elsewhere in the Torah, with an eastern border along the Jordan River.
The State of Israel, in contrast, is substantially smaller. Why? Because Zionism is a compromise.
At its core, Zionism is the triumph of humanism in Jewish life. For centuries, our ancestors waited for divine intervention to bring us redemption from exile. Zionism contends that we need not passively wait for our salvation and that the Jewish people can be, and must be, active in setting the course of our own history. Thus, Zionism represents a reconciliation between Jewish belief in a divine promise to the People of Israel and human experience of emancipation, enlightenment and the modern concept of nationalism.
The compromise that Zionism makes with Jewish tradition and history is what allows for compromises to be made on territory.
Zionists accepted the 1947 UN Partition Plan because they were willing to make just about any compromise in order to be free.
Zionists advocated for peace with Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians even though it required ceding territory claimed in the Bible because they were prepared to make a human compromise with a divine land-grant.
Acknowledging these monumental compromises for the sake of one of modernity’s greatest humanistic achievements is crucial to understanding why the era of compromise could be nearing its end.
Last month, the attorneys for Mohamed Sabry Soliman made a motion to have hate crime charges dismissed because his attack in Boulder should be treated as political violence against Zionists rather than against a religious group. In essence, his attorneys argue that they are fine with their client being a labeled a terrorist, but they want the court to make a legal distinction between Zionism and Judaism.
Such a ruling would have marked a major victory in the battle to legitimize using “Zionist” euphemistically as a rationale for open warfare on the Jewish people.
Fortunately, the judge ruled against them.
The month before that, the creator of Humans of New York published a picture of members of Neturei Karta, a fringe chasidic anti-Zionist sect, taking part in an anti-Israel protest and published a statement by them condemning Israel.
Approbation among the anti-Zionist crowd soon followed, including among Jews who like to consider themselves anti-Zionist. At the same time, a seemingly unending string of college speakers, progressive and socialist politicians and their minions, and Iranian apologists all sing the same refrain that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism.
All of the above, in their struggle to define “Zionism,” lay bare this the short truth: Anti-Zionism is not only anti-Jewish hate, it is the most virulent strain of hate.
Anti-Zionism rejects compromise. Anti-Zionism is the chant of “from the river to the sea.” There is no compromise to be made on territory, no matter how small. In stark contrast with the compromising nature of Zionism, anti-Zionism is an absolutist ideology.
Anti-Zionism re-defines the Jewish people as colonizers of European ancestry without being able to say where in Europe our homes are much less which European country is the home of Mizrachi Jews who were driven out of Middle Eastern countries where they lived for two millennia.
Anti-Zionism is the argument that Jews are stateless, existing outside of history, and precludes the Jewish people from embracing humanism. Though they frame their arguments as political, anti-Zionists actually embrace age-old calumnies that portray Jews as inhuman.
The elevation of Neturei Karta by Humans of New York and its followers is a perfect illustration. Even Neturei Karta would not deny that the Torah grants the territories of the Torah to the Jewish people. Their argument is that only divine intervention can restore us to those lands and not human action. Their ideology is a total rejection of humanism as a form of idolatry, which in turn means that those who elevate Neturei Karta deny that any convergence between Judaism and humanism is possible or acceptable.
Thus, anyone who praises this kind of anti-Zionism is really saying what Neturei Karta believes, that Jews must wait on G-d for help because anything that we might do to help ourselves is a crime.
For this crime anti-Zionists have decided to sentence us to death. With calls to “globalize the intifada” this sentence is to be carried out with death by flamethrower. Death by terrorist invasion and bloodlust. And, were it not for timely intervention in Iran, death by nuclear bomb.
If all compromises Zionism permits are rejected and Zionism itself is a crime punishable by death, what is left to do?
Without the ability to compromise, the only available path is one of radicalization. It is a path of meeting an uncompromising enemy with an uncompromising response. It is a war for survival and existence that has to be fought on every front from far away battlefields in Tehran to those closer to home in the streets of Boulder, New York City or anywhere that demonization of Zionism is used to masquerade the same murderous threat as Nazism.
Must we radicalize? We obviously do not want to. We would prefer to be Zionists. We would rather that our humanity be respected on par with the humanity of others.
We would continue to make compromises, even with that which G-d granted to us, if it meant that we could genuinely live in peace. Zionists have repeatedly demonstrated the truth of these assertions.
It is up to anti-Zionists to drop the “anti” before it becomes too late to prevent the end of the era of compromise.
