Why Jews Need Zionism…Still

Zionism: The Jewish Right to Self-Determination

Zionism is often misrepresented, deliberately distorted, or reduced to slogans that strip it of history and meaning. At its core, Zionism is simple, ancient, and profoundly Jewish: it is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. Not a political trick. Not a colonial project. Not racism. Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people, like all peoples, have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland.

First, it is essential to state clearly: Zionism is Jewish because it emerges from Jewish history, identity, and collective memory. The Jewish people are not merely a religion; they are an ethno-national people with a shared origin in the Land of Israel. Jewish prayers, holidays, language, law, and historical consciousness are inseparable from Zion. For over 3,000 years, Jews have oriented their faith, culture, and identity toward Jerusalem. “Next year in Jerusalem” is not a metaphor but it is a declaration of continuity.

Zionism did not begin in the 19th century. Modern political Zionism was articulated then, but the idea itself is ancient. From the Babylonian exile to Roman expulsion, from medieval Europe to the Islamic world, Jews maintained an unbroken connection to the land. Jewish communities never disappeared from Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias, or Hebron. The return was not invented; it was resumed.

Because Zionism is the expression of Jewish self-determination, it is by definition Jewish. That is why non-Jews cannot be Zionists in the same way Jews are. This is not exclusionary; it is factual. Just as a non-Armenian cannot be an Armenian nationalist, or a non-Kurd cannot be Kurdish, a non-Jew cannot belong to the Jewish national movement. However, and this matters deeply, non-Jews can be Zionist supporters. They can support the Jewish right to self-determination, the existence of Israel, and the legitimacy of the Jewish nation-state. Support does not require ownership of identity.

Zionism brought tangible, life-saving good to the Jewish people. First and foremost, it restored Jewish sovereignty after nearly two thousand years of statelessness. Statelessness was not theoretical; it was deadly. Without sovereignty, Jews depended on the goodwill of others, a goodwill that repeatedly collapsed into expulsion, pogroms, and genocide. Zionism changed that reality. For the first time since antiquity, Jews became responsible for their own defense, borders, and future.

Zionism also rescued Jews from persecution across the world. It provided refuge to Holocaust survivors when no country wanted them. It airlifted Jews from Arab and Muslim lands where ancient communities were erased. It brought Ethiopian Jews home through extraordinary rescue operations. It reunited a dispersed people into a single political and cultural framework.

Beyond survival, Zionism enabled Jewish renewal. Hebrew, once a liturgical language, became a living national language. Jewish culture flourished openly rather than defensively. Jews stopped being a tolerated minority and became a majority shaping their own society. This psychological transformation, from vulnerability to agency, is one of Zionism’s greatest achievements.

Critics often claim Zionism harms others. But Zionism does not require the denial of rights to non-Jews. Israel’s founding vision explicitly promised equality to all citizens. Arab citizens vote, serve in parliament, sit on the Supreme Court, and participate across society. No national movement is judged solely by its conflicts except the Jewish one.

Labeling Zionism as racism is not an act of moral clarity; it is an act of erasure. It denies Jewish peoplehood, Jewish indigeneity, and Jewish history. It demands that Jews be the only people on earth denied the right they freely grant to everyone else.

Zionism exists because the Jewish people exist. As long as Jews remain a people with memory, language, and land, Zionism remains not only legitimate but necessary.