I have been a proud Zionist since my teenagerhood. I was a member of Masada, the youth arm of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), and served on its national leadership for several years, as well as running their monthly magazine (Ayin L’Tzion). I spent the summer of 1973 in Israel on the ZOA’s Leadership Training Course (LTC), and spent much of the fall working in NYC during the Yom Kippur war and its aftermath.
Even back in those days, when the ZOA was far less right wing than they are today, if you’d asked a ZOA leader what their thoughts were on the issue of the Palestinians, their answer would be “there are no Palestinians” (or some variation thereof).
Back in those days, some 50 years ago, I disagreed strongly with that position, as I do today. Clearly, there were Arabs living within the boundaries of Medinat Yisrael who did not want to be Israeli citizens, whose families either had lived in those areas for generations or who had left (or been compelled to leave) and were now living in “camps”. These people had every right, I believed then and I believe now, to govern themselves and have their own country.
What troubles me is that every time that an Israel leader has proposed a peace plan, it has been shot down by the Palestinian “leadership”: first Arafat and his PLO, now Hamas, Hezballah, and, to perhaps a less relevent degree, the Palestinian Authority. But does that change the Palestinian’s rights to self-government? I don’t think so.
Do I still consider myself a Zionist today? Absolutely. This is what I believe Zionism means:
Zionism is the right of every Jew, of all religious persuasions (including non-observant) to come to Israel and live and be citizens. Zionism does not favor any one group, sect, community or cult above anyone else. My Zionism does not give any religious authority the right to determine who can marry and who cannot, who can perform marriages, who can avoid service in the military, or who can worship at the Kotel.
Zionism is the absolute right of every Jew to live in Israel… but not to live anywhere and everywhere one wishes. The Torah does not, cannot, give Jews a deed to each and every square inch of Eretz Yisrael on both sides of the Jordan River.
Zionism does not deny the rights of non-Jews to live in the land, and in fact requires defending that right. My Zionism does not displace people so that Jews (any Jews) can live in their places. My Zionism remembers that the Germans did that to us in the run-up to WWII.
Zionism does not favor any group of Jews above any other.