Published: 22 August 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
We still have much work to do. Too much of the Zionist conversation is upstaged by the fight over the attempt to delegitimise Israel. That keeps us in defensive mode, and in the political realm.
I am calling for Identity Zionism, for using our proud past and our current understanding that Jews are a people not just a community of faith, to build a better Israel – but also a more meaningful future for ourselves individually and collectively, as Jews, wherever we live.
When Israel is attacked for its policies and actions, what is the line beyond which the attack is illegitimate and becomes anti-Semitic?
Two framing thoughts – first, the moral onus is on them not me, not us. It’s the responsibility of the speaker not to be offensive, not to be sexist or racist or Islamaphobic. How come when it comes to anti-Semitism it’s the victim’s problem, not the victimiser’s responsibility?
Second, our enemies make it easy – most don’t even try. They hide behind the ambiguous cases but read, for example, the work of the key founders of the BDS Boycott movement, they are very clear about their desire to eliminate Israel and to deprive Israel of the right to exist.
The legendary scientist Professor Judea Pearl calls the irrational hatred of Israel, Zionophobia – and says if someone was irrationally obsessed with hating Britain or Scotland or Australia or China – wouldn’t we find that problematic? Why do we give Israel-haters a bash?
I also follow the great Soviet Jewish Refusenik and Human Rights Activist Natan Sharansky’s 3-D analysis – that if you Delegitimise Israel, if you Demonise Israel, or if you hold Israel to a double standard, you are treating Israel like the Jew among the nations and falling into anti-Semitic bigotry, not “just” anti-Zionism.
Those tend to be the tics of the Left. Today we have progressive extremists who claim to love Jews but hate Israel, and right-wing fanatics who claim to love Israel but hate Jews – to smoke their hatred out, I add a 4H test – if you deny the Holocaust or weaponize it against Israel; if you outlaw or mock Halachic practices, Jewish law or rituals; if you accuse Jews of seeking Hegemony – world power; or if you criticize Jews or the Jewish state using a grab bag of Historical stereotypes and images – you, too, have fallen into anti-Semitism.
In your role as the chair of Taglit - Birthright Education Committee, how do you see the way young Jews from around the world interface with Israel?
The Taglit-Birthright story balances out the woe-is-me, tear-out-your-hair, the youth-is-abandoning us narrative. Every year, nearly 50,000 young Jews come to Israel and describe their reactions in two words: AWE-SOME!
They absorb Identity Zionism instinctively, responding to Israel as a launching pad for the Jewish identity Journey not just a political cause – and they are the silent and often-silenced majority of young Jews, who are proud of being Jewish and proud of Israel.
The Israel-bashers, especially, the “as a Jew” Israel-bashers who only relate to their Jewish identities as some badge to justify attacking Israel, get the headlines; but the Jewish masses, thanks especially to birthright, are far more pro-Israel than the media or the worried parents and grandparents believe.
You have chosen to live in Israel. How did that change your perspective on world Jewry, Israel, Jewish peoplehood, Zionism?
Moving to Israel is a way of saying, I want to be a full-time Jew, but also an organic Jew. I want that identity to feel authentic not forced. Living in Israel is a great adventure and a constant source of pride. It sometimes leaves me worried about the rest of world Jewry, with its galloping intermarriage rates and deep Jewish ignorance, but mostly it makes me optimistic.
I see the look on young Jews’ faces when they discover their identity by encountering their homeland. I see the way young Israelis relate to me when I challenge them to build an Identity Zionism not just a Political Zionism. And every day, I see, touch, hear, feel, taste the miracle of the Jewish people flourishing again, against all odds, in our homeland. If that doesn’t reinforce your Zionism – what will???
How is Israel functioning as the centre of world Jewry? Is Israel a uniting or dividing force for Jews around the world?
The answer to the second question is yes, both. Unfortunately, Israel has too many politicians who prefer to play a domestic politics of demagoguery and division, and world Jewry has too many professors, writers and rabbis who prefer to play a communal politics of self-righteousness and division – they deserve each other, but they are hurting us all.
And so the headlines are filled with stories of clashes, of offences given and taken, of breakdowns in communication. But, especially as an historian, when people see we have never been so divided, I ask “compared to when.”
We are a quarrelsome people living in very different realities. It’s not surprising that we have tensions and divisions, but it’s a miracle we are still talking to one another and feeling connected -and Israel is both a great flashpoint in the Jewish world today – and the greatest unifying platform.
What is your message to the Australian Jewish community?
First, keep doing what you are doing – you know the formula, more is more, more Jewish education, more Jewish family commitment, more trips to Israel, more Jewish patriotism.
Second, do not despair - we have challenges but we also have unprecedented strengths.
And finally, let’s open up the conversation about Zionism, from a defensive Political Zionism to an expansive, Identity Zionism, from a Zionism of left or right, of my way or the highway, of us and them, to a Zionism of from left to right, of a shared peoplehood platform, of agreeing to agree not just agreeing to disagree.
I am going to launch my book The Zionist Ideas in Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney, and to invite people not just to attend my Zionist Salons but to host Zionist salons in their homes, in their schools, around their boardrooms, returning us all to the world’s greatest conversation, a conversation about who we are – and who we can be – as individual Jews, as a Jewish people and as Zionists supporting the Jewish state in the Jewish homeland.
Gil Troy is visiting Australia as scholar in residence for the Zionist Federation of Australia. He is Distinguished Scholar in North American History at McGill University, currently living in Jerusalem. He is the author of The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s, and ten other books on the American presidency. His latest book is Zionist Ideas: Visions for the Jewish Homeland – Then, Now, Tomorrow
