{"id":12849,"date":"2024-01-03T12:34:53","date_gmt":"2024-01-03T10:34:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/?p=12849"},"modified":"2024-02-27T14:05:34","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T12:05:34","slug":"zionism-still-helping-jews-save-themselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/zionism-still-helping-jews-save-themselves\/","title":{"rendered":"Zionism: Still helping Jews save themselves"},"content":{"rendered":"
During that annus horribilis, 2023, many things precious to Jews failed. Israel\u2019s government failed systemically, flamboyantly, from the coalition\u2019s inception. The IDF\u2019s border defense failed operationally and strategically.<\/div>\n
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The Ivy League that Jews worshiped failed morally. Many young people that American Jews have so invested in failed politically and ideologically.<\/div>\n
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Yet, Zionism did not fail on October 7. Chaim Weizmann warned in 1947, that \u201ca people does not get a state on a silver platter.\u201d Actually, Zionism \u2013 especially its self-defense ethos \u2013 keeps saving Israel, and the Jewish people \u2013 physically and spiritually.<\/div>\n
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\u201cThere is, of course, a thing called history,\u201d the historian Arnold Toynbee taught, \u201cbut history is something unpleasant that happens to other people.\u201d Indeed, October 7 ended many Jews\u2019 50-year holiday from history.<\/div>\n
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Since defeating the Egyptian and Syrian armies\u2019 1973 Yom Kippur surprise attack, Israelis had been running away from history \u2013 quite successfully. Despite occasional terrorist bumps, Israel prospered. A primitive, fragile, beleaguered country blossomed into a regional powerhouse militarily, and a hi-tech superpower financially, and intellectually.<\/div>\n
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As most Israelis hope that the Supreme Court\u2019s ill-timed decision to reawaken judicial reform passions won\u2019t polarize us again, both factions in this year\u2019s fight were fleeing history. The Left\u2019s extremists were protecting their Israeli dream, fearing Netanyahu\u2019s government would ruin their hi-tech, relatively low-maintenance, Israel. Meanwhile, the Right\u2019s extremists, chomping into their piece of the Israeli pie, reduced politics to a fight for spoils and revenge against old rivals domestically \u2013 while ignoring our enemies externally.<\/div>\n
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Bibi Zionism bewitched everyone. Netanyahu helped Israel modernize, prosper, and become spoiled. Ignoring his father\u2019s darker historical teachings, Bibi became the avatar of \u201cIkea Zionism,\u201d promising a chicken in every pot and an Apple laptop in every over-decorated bedroom.<\/div>\n
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Ironically, Bibi Zionism\u2019s greatest creation \u2013 the Start-Up Tel Avivis \u2013 fought him to save his Easy Livin\u2019 Zionism from his own government. And, Bibi held onto power by ignoring those accomplishments and returning his Bibistas to the grievances Bibi Zionism helped them escape.<\/div>\n
Increasingly, Bibi Zionism spurned good governance, national unity, and problem-solving. It preferred winning the daily news cycle to addressing long-term issues, having addicted Israelis to cushy lifestyles, and my-way-or-the-highway politics.<\/div>\n
American Jews were also on the run historically \u2013 and loving it. In 1973, the community was still insecure, moving on up, guilt-ridden about its Holocaust-era silence. By 2023, Jews had so \u201cmade it\u201d that many young Jews felt guilty about their \u201cprivilege,\u201d negating their parents\u2019 and grandparents\u2019 Herculean efforts to succeed. They also deemed themselves \u201cwhite,\u201d which to the Left became a curse, and to the far Right \u2013 a blessed designation Jews didn\u2019t deserve.<\/div>\n
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Still, last New Year\u2019s, Israelis and American Jews could see two of the happiest, richest, most comfortable communities in Jewish history. Most Canadian, Australian, and British Jews felt good too.<\/div>\n
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TODAY, WE\u2019RE devastated, bleeding, worrying, fighting multi-front wars. We underestimated our Middle Eastern enemies \u2013 and overestimated our Western friends.<\/div>\n
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True, Zionists who thought Zionism would end Jew-hatred miscalculated \u2013 but blame the Jew-haters not the Jews. Zionism finally gave Jews tools for confronting Jew-hatred. Promising Jews we would never be powerless again, Zionism returned us to history. Jewish history pulses with tragedies, enemies, failures \u2013 but with values, visions, and victories too. If the October 7 sadistic slaughter made us all Jews again, Israel\u2019s successful counterattack made us all 100% Zionist.<\/div>\n
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An extraordinary 1942 Hebrew short-story, translated magnificently by Hillel Halkin, explains this tension. Haim Hazaz wrote \u201cThe Sermon\u201d midway through the Holocaust, six years before Israel\u2019s creation. He addresses Jewish history\u2019s challenges and the resulting Zionist opportunities amid enduring Jew-hatred.<\/div>\n
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Yudka \u2013 \u201cLittle Judah\u201d or \u201cJew\u201d \u2013 commandeers a kibbutz meeting, proclaiming, \u201cI object to Jewish history.\u201d After all, \u201cwe never made our own history, the gentiles always made it for us.\u201d Forever victims not players, we spawned a history with \u201cno adventures, no conquering heroes, no great rulers\u2026 All it has is a mob of beaten, groaning, weeping, begging Jews.\u201d<\/div>\n
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In an aside, anticipating today\u2019s un-Jews, Yudka blasts \u201call those absent-minded Arab-loving professors,\u201d who \u201cwallow\u201d in Jewish \u201csuffering.\u201d They believe suffering \u201cenables us to be Jews,\u201d that it \u201cmaintains us and makes us appear strong and heroic\u201d and moral. Tired of surrendering, Yudka sighs: \u201cThe more enslaved we are, the more superior we feel.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Yudka overreacts, deciding that Zionism must crush Judaism rather than redefine and revitalize it. But I agree that \u201cZionism\u2019s inner essence, its hidden power\u201d is radical, pro-active, and cleansing. Miraculously, Zionism created \u201cA different people, one above all that makes its own history by and for itself, rather than having it made for it by others… Because a people that do not live in its own land and control its own fate has no history.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Jewish history\u2019s ongoing tragedy is that too many hate us; Zionism\u2019s enduring success is that we have a citizens\u2019 army to protect us and a new mentality that will never, ever surrender again.<\/div>\n
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Since Jews returned to power in Israel, some Arabs have always tried killing us. On October 7, 2023, too many succeeded. But even on that bloody day, we mobilized, immediately, globally. Every day we fight, we mobilize, we volunteer, we support, we push back, we write brave new chapters in Jewish history \u2013 etched in Zionist ink, sweat, and blood.<\/div>\n
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And every day that we sing, we dance, we marry, give birth, or just live our lives, we deprive our enemies of the victory they seek \u2013 which we, as Zionists, will never, ever grant them again.<\/div>\n
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The writer, a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian and the editor of a three-volume set, Theodor Herzl: Zionist Writings, the inaugural publication of The Library of the Jewish People (www.theljp.org<\/a>).<\/em><\/div>\n
Published by Jerusalem Post<\/a><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Israel\u2019s government failed systemically, flamboyantly, from the coalition\u2019s inception. The IDF\u2019s border defense failed operationally and strategically.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12850,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topics-identity","library-op-ed","library-publications"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12849"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14395,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12849\/revisions\/14395"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}