I am a Zionist.
This much maligned word has been taken and twisted by those who are certain there is nothing worse that a person can be, who cannot articulate what a Zionist stands for, except that it is evil, or what a Zionist believes, except that it is wrong.
But I am used to people taking pieces of who I am, and insisting that they understand those pieces better than I do, and I refused to let others tell me who I am and what I believe, or take away the words that I find meaning in, so let me tell you what Zionism means to me.
I love Israel.
I love its people and its culture, their strength and determination, and the way they don’t hesitate to tell you what they think you need to know, the way a particularly pushy family member might. And even when they’re wrong about what you need, you know they are acting out of love, and you cannot help but love them back. Because you also know that, on the day you say to them, “I need you now, and this is what I need,” They will do everything they can to help you, because that is what family does.
I love the land and its history, the ancient city built on ancient city where every layer holds a wealth of knowledge and every ruin contains truths about where we came from and how that shapes who we are today.
I love the natural beauty, and I marvel at how such a small space can hold so much variety as mountain and desert and fertile soil sit side by side in a vision of how peoples might someday learn to live.
Because I am a Zionist.
I know that the country is flawed, that it has as many terrible actions in its history as wonderful actions that its government continues to condone and commit horrors, and I desperately want it to be better,
Because I am a Zionist.
I seek to understand the flaws and the horrors, the obstacles to the best of what Israel can be that come from within as well as from without, because only when threats and obstacles are understood can they be overcome, and I dream of the day when Israel will be the best version of itself,
Because I am a Zionist.
I dream of the day when Jews and Arabs and everyone else will live together peacefully and happily in Israel and in the countries that sit beside it,
Because I am a Zionist.
I worry for my family, for my father’s siblings and their spouses and their children and for the millions of others who are my family because they are my People.
My heart bleeds when they suffer and when they die, and when the world shouts that they deserve it because of where they live (when the world shouts that I deserve the same because of who I am). I dream of the day when they will live in peace and safety, when they will be able to make plans without taking into account if the place they want to go is close enough to the bomb shelter and if that shelter has enough space, when war and its horrors will be something that happens somewhere or somewhen else,
Because I am a Zionist.
(I dream, too, of the day that the Palestinian people will live in peace, without fear of bombs or vigilante violence or totalitarian governments, secure in their borders and able to build the homeland they want.
I dream of this partly because I am a Zionist, and I know that Israel will never truly know peace until its neighbors do as well, but mostly because I dream of these things for all peoples, in all parts of the world.)
And I know how difficult and distant these dreams are. I know how impossible they seem.
But there was a time, not long ago, When Israel itself was an impossible dream.
For two thousand years, we sat in our synagogues and at our seder tables and sang “Next year in a rebuilt Jerusalem,”
And it was an impossible dream.
For two thousand years, we were hated and used and killed and imprisoned in and thrown out of every place we lived, and prayed for a place that could be ours, where we would always be welcome and never told we could not be ourselves,
And it was an impossible dream.
That dream is not wholly fulfilled, when Israel is not welcoming to all of us, and asks too many of us to change who we are, when so many people tells us we do not belong, and Israel sometimes does terrible things when fighting against them.
But we are so much closer than seemed possible just two hundred years ago.
If we truly want it, it is not just a story we tell, not an impossible dream, but a goal we can work towards.
I believe this, because I am a Zionist.
And so I look at other dreams that we have held onto for two thousand years,
That “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they continue to study war,” That “My house shall be called a house of prayer to all the nations,” That hunger and want will be eliminated from the Earth,
And I believe that, if we truly want them, they are not just stories we tell, not impossible dreams, but goals we can work towards.
And I will continue dreaming, and believing, and working,
Because I am a Zionist.
