How do I feel about Zionism and Anti-Zionism?
by Laurie Ruettimann
I went to my synagogue on a weeknight and took a Jewish storytelling class where I explored my relationship to Israel.
You’re probably like, “What? Huh? What’s that all about?” Me too.
I am naturally suspicious of formal religion, including my own. When it comes to Zionism and Anti-Zionism, my feelings are framed by a lifetime of internalized anti-semitism, rooted in the consumption of American news on the “middle-east,” and influenced by a recency bias that is framed by October 7th as well as the ongoing war with Iran.
The storytelling class took part just weeks after Tisha B’Av, the saddest day in the Jewish calendar that marks the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem.
It all muddies my thinking on what it means to be a Jew right now.
Where To Start?
Jews have a long history of being the group everyone points to when a system breaks down, so the current shape of the battlefield in Israel, Lebanon, Iran, and the neighboring gulf states carries extraordinary modern-day risks for us. What is also true is that when Jews are threatened, it drags everyone else into the literal blast radius. Nobody is marked safe from anti-semitism. It’s a risk to you, even if you’re an atheist who lives in Iowa, rural Georgia, or somewhere with literally no Jews.
This is not an overstatement. It’s a dangerous time. And it requires all of us to pay attention in a new way.
As naturally suspicious as I am of religion, I’m doubly suspicious of people in positions of power. Jews are often made to feel like it’s Israel against the world, which is more than just vaguely true but does nothing for the Jewish diaspora and mostly benefits a certain group of political, governmental, religious, academic, and cultural leaders who attempt to use fear as a method of control.
But sometimes warnings become self-fulfilling prophecies. Members of Hamas and Hezbollah (and others) want to continue to kill Jews. So do plenty of Americans who pack their cars with explosives and try to kill preschoolers. But I believe that the actions of the Israeli government are also making it unsafe for Jews, and really everybody, everywhere.
So I want to engage with this debate, but the terms Zionism and anti-Zionism seem like dated terms used by ancestors and Boomers that miss the nuance of human psychology.
People Are People
Throughout human history, governments and religion have weaponized each other to control human labor, raw materials, water, and land. So, when I look at the current conflict in Israel, I hear nothing but primal and patriarchal language being applied to a struggle that’s structurally pretty ordinary.
This current conflict? Israel versus Hamas versus Hezbollah versus Iran? Swap in the Mormons versus Native Americans, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Burma versus the Rohingya, the Sudanese Armed Forces fighting against the Rapid Support Forces, or the Chinese cultural genocide of the people of Tibet or the actual genocide of the Uyghurs and you get the same core conflict with violence and cruelty. Humans can’t help but fight the same fight over land and resources. It’s played out all over the world for centuries.
Yet this specific Israeli conflict is different, and intensely personal, because very loud voices are blaming a historically marginalized group for how much it’s hated in the world. No other religion or ethnicity has had a multi-millennia-long campaign designed to wipe it out like Judaism, and no other ethno-religion has a diaspora like ours because of it.
But is the framing of Zionism and Anti-Zionism helpful or even accurate? I’m a skeptic. I believe that trying to fix Israel and Palestine (without solving human problems like patriarchy, gender apartheid, queer justice, and climate change) can feel like a wasted effort.
It’s my belief that a secular fix is needed. And it’s probably a much bigger fix than just trying to get the Israelis and Palestinians to live as neighbors. If we want lasting peace, we need to have a larger conversation about how humanity feeds, clothes, shelters, and cares for one another in fair and equal ways.
Good luck with that!
The Responsibility to Repair
In the absence of secular, structural, and systemic change, Israel still needs to address the unequal legal and civil status between Jewish and Palestinian residents, settlement expansion backed by the state, a citizenship structure that treats one group as default and the other as conditional.
Will that happen in my lifetime? I hope so.
If we as Jews don’t push Israeli institutions toward something more just and equitable, I don’t think the world waits patiently for us to get there. Historically, when outside forces “solve” a Jewish problem, Jews are the ones who pay for it, expulsions, forced conversions, pogroms, all carried out in the name of solving a Jewish question that Jews had no say in designing.
Yet I bristle when non-Jews weigh in on Zionism and anti-Zionism from a position of automatic privilege, in spaces and from platforms that aren’t historically theirs. That’s not me saying no one else gets an opinion. You do. It’s me saying the loudest voices are often the least accountable to the outcome. (And, yes, I try to hold myself to the same standard and work hard to check my assumptions and biases before I give others advice on how to solve their problems.)
Barack Obama is one of the only politicians I’ve ever trusted. Yes I know he’s not perfect. He frequently stated that “compromise isn’t a dirty word” and insisted it is the only way to govern a divided country. I would say that it’s the only way we get through life. He also repeated the maxim that if nobody is happy, then you’ve done a good job of reaching a compromise.
I agree.
What I actually dream of is a conversation rooted in deep respect that leads to conflict reduction, compromise, and restorative justice. One that doesn’t fall apart the second someone says the word Zionist or anti-Zionist. And I’ll know we’ve made progress on the conflict if, one day, there’s an agreement for peace and nobody is happy but people walk away going, okay, that makes sense.
Being The Change
Do I have a part in this future dialogue? I’m not sure. Historically, I’ve been impatient with the “who’s more of a victim” dialogue that underlies every conversational frame around Israel and Palestine. And I’m uncomfortable with conversations that are rooted back to biblical texts or pre-1948 maps that don’t take into account the geopolitical realities we face today.
So, that’s why I’ve largely ignored the specifics on Zionism or anti-Zionism. Yet, I clearly do have opinions on this and have been thinking about it for a long time. That’s why I took the storytelling course at my synagogue.
Why engage with it now? Well, if I truly believe in tikkun olam, which is my Jewish responsibility to heal the fractured cosmos, any small effort I make to repair the conflict in Israel and Palestine will matter, even if nothing happens from my efforts at all.
And in attending the storytelling workshop, I took a huge step in acknowledging the tension between rise of global anti-semitism while also hearing uncomfortable truths about the systems in Israel and my own preconceived notions about the longstanding conflict.
I don’t know what comes of it. It’s all so overwhelming. I’m still ignoring the loudest voices on the topic, those who have no skin in the game but lots of opinions formed on TikTok. But I’m on a path where I can, in my own time and space, learn from people who’ve been to Israel and Palestine in the past few years and can report firsthand on the efforts, both big and small, to repair our broken and fractured world.
I think that’s a good first step.