Eliana Blumberg is a public health student at Brown University. She was a 2022 summer intern at Americans for Peace Now. 

During my first year of high school I was asked to give a tour of the building to a prospective student and her family. Her father, also Jewish, asked me matter-of-factly what students’ “Israel politics” were like. At fourteen I knew very little about the world, let alone Israel/Palestine, and I mistakenly responded using the word Zionism, saying I thought most people “weren’t super Zionist,” that they had progressive politics. My response clearly upset him and he snapped at me, saying that one could be progressive and Zionist. It was then that I realized that while we were using the same word, we were talking about different things. 

In the past seven years, I have developed a much better understanding of the word Zionism and have many times, in my head, revised my answer to the man’s question. But the clear disconnect between my use of the term Zionism and his is one that I now see frequently represented in progressive Jewish spaces. 

My father and I have very similar politics when it comes to Israel. But despite our shared criticism of the Israeli government, outrage about settler violence, and support of the BDS movement, if you asked us who comes to mind when we hear the term “Zionism,” our answers would be strikingly different: my father would say Chaim Weizmann and I would say Benjamin Netanyahu. When my father thinks of Zionism he thinks of Israel bonds and the socialist experiment of the kibbutz, but when I think of Zionism, IDF violence and AIPAC come to mind. 

Twitter is filled with dramatic and often untrue claims about what life is like for Jewish college students. Fans of AIPAC love to talk about how Zionist students are under attack and while I don’t think they’re right, I do think the polarity of Israel/Palestine campus dynamics have, in part shifted the way young people think of the term “Zionism.” 

To many in my father’s generation, Zionism simply refers to the belief in the need for and the existence of a Jewish state, in a way that is removed from contemporary politics. Calling yourself a Zionist doesn’t necessarily mean that you support the contemporary political configurations/meshugas of the Israeli nation-state, but rather that you believe in the idea of a Jewish state, that you believe in the “project” that people like Weizmann had in mind. You can believe that the “project” has strayed too far from its origins, or even that it has failed entirely, but the idea that perhaps some iteration of the Zionist project could have been successful grounds you in your identity as a Zionist. 

But in my experience as a college student, Zionism is a term that has lost much of its flexibility and nuance. While groups on the right push the AIPAC rhetoric that equates “true” Zionism with pro-Israel politics, groups on the left claim that that today’s politics follow from yesterday’s Zionism: they argue that occupation and Zionism are inseparable. The role for those who see Zionism as something that exists above and independent from politics is vanishing and, as a result, the perception of Zionism and meaning of the word among Jews and non-Jews alike has changed. 

Primarily, however, this shift in meaning is due to the fact that my generation has only known an Israel led by Netanyahu. For the generations before us, the idea of a truly just, secular, democratic Jewish state seemed more feasible, but for many of my friends, Netanyahu’s corruption and right-wing politics have made us more skeptical. Of course, a key difference between my generation and that of my father’s is that the ideals and dreams of early twentieth century Zionism are now far outweighed by Israel’s glaring historical record. 

In my lifetime, Israel has always been a powerful military state backed by extensive US support. There have been no existential wars, and while I know this hasn’t always been the case, the memories of Jewish powerlessness seem a poor justification for the Israeli abuses of power of the last forty years. 

This disillusionment, combined with a fear of being misunderstood by our peers, has resulted in the avoidance of the word “Zionist” among some progressive Jewish students, the use of “Anti-Zionist” among some, and a general fear and confusion around how to talk about Israel and Palestine among others.

In liberal Zionist organizing spaces like J Street U, avoiding the terms Zionism and Anti-Zionism has its advantages. Students who come to college just out of youth-group “How to Defend Israel” seminars are often terrified of entering a space that is so openly critical of Israel, whereas more liberal students don’t want to get involved in an organization that calls itself “pro-Israel”. By discussing the occupation as a system independent of  Zionism, we allow ourselves to ignore ideological discussions that might divide us and focus instead on building energy and coalitions around ending American support for the occupation. As a public health student, I like to think of this as a harm-reduction approach to organizing; we can focus on addressing the origins of occupation later (and a discussion of Zionism will certainly be a part of that), but right now we need to mobilize people to improve the dire realities on the ground.

I recognize that this approach is not necessarily harmless. Attempting to separate the idea of Zionism from its very real political effects should not be undertaken lightly, and by avoiding the term entirely, we may be doing just that. 

There are those who insist that young progressive Jews must focus on “reclaiming” the term “Zionist” or even the term “pro-Israel” in order to show people that you can support Palestinians while being a Zionist, that being pro-Israel means being pro-democracy, not pro-apartheid. I think such efforts are futile. While discussing Zionism is important, we must acknowledge that far too often discussions and debates around language and terminology siphon energy from necessary efforts to change realities on the ground. Arguing about the “true” meaning of a word that has been shaped by many more than 74 years of history and politics is an unproductive use of our time. Rather, we should spend our time organizing around political action, not reclaiming an ideology. 

We should accept that the word Zionism’s meaning has changed. It holds different significance and meaning for different generations despite shared politics, and therefore should not be used as a litmus test for inclusion in Jewish organizing spaces. Far too often, in explicitly Zionist and non-Zionist spaces alike, those who do not identify with the group are excluded from organizing. 

In my experience, liberal Zionist groups like J Street desperately want their students to identify as Zionist and even as “Pro-Israel,” and as a result, many student leaders have questioned their involvement, wondering if they should leave the movement. Not only does this exclusion hurt the future of movements like J Street, it also hurts students who feel alienated, prevents effective political solidarity with other groups, and distracts from the desperate need for political action. 

I don’t identify as a Zionist, and neither do many of my fellow J Street U leaders, and by excluding us from institutional or organizational spaces, progressive groups are alienating their next generation of organizers and leaders. We must strike a balance between discussing the importance and role of Zionism in our current political moment, and understanding that Zionism’s divisiveness, as a term, has the potential to impede our progress.