ASAF CALDERON
To a native Israeli Jew, Zionism isn’t so much a political stance as it is a basic component of national identity. Being a Zionist is often used as a sort of catchall term for displays of, or claims to, patriotism, good citizenship, and involvement in public and community life. It should come as no surprise then, that to native Israelis, the term is often so banal that its meaning might get somewhat blurry. I remember that, in a certain junior high school class, we were asked to describe a scene in an American film that included the U.S. flag and national anthem. One of my classmates remarked that the film attempts to show that “the Americans are a very Zionist people”; “Zionist,” of course, was for him simply a synonym for “patriotic.”
Growing up in Israel in the 1990s, there was never any particular moment in which I started being a Zionist, just like there was no particular time in which I started being a Jew. In the highly political post-Oslo climate and after Rabin’s assassination, I grew up fully aware of political and ideological polemics: one could (like my parents) be an anti-occupation leftist, a hawkish right-winger, a religious fanatic, or a gay rights activist, but my assumption was that in addition to all these, you were also a Zionist. Zionism was, to me, the default, neutral point of view.
Toward the end of high school, I became politically active in issues such as racism, immigration, and the occupation. My self-centered teenage brain started to give way to a painful awareness of injustice. My mother is a founding member of Peace Now, a Zionist antiwar and anti-occupation organization that used to be rather influential, and my father is a relatively outspoken intellectual and commentator on politics. My parents had been taking me to demonstrations since I was young. So becoming political myself was natural. I discovered, however, that the people I thought were doing good activist work—demonstrating against the wall in the West Bank, consistently opposing assaults on Gaza, and fighting for the rights of refugees and migrants—were overwhelmingly non-Zionist.
They did not believe in a Jewish state. Rather, they believed in a State for All Its Citizens. To my family, and therefore to me, this was a radical, extremist idea, and at first, I rejected it. I held to the belief that the Jews deserve their own nation state and there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as it adheres to certain democratic values. Yet I had to admit that, compared with the Zionist left’s impotent party politics and unimpressive field presence, the non-Zionists were far more exciting. I suppose this was scary for me; I didn’t want to become a “radical,” so I kept a safe distance.
One of the main tenets that separate the Zionist from the non-Zionist left in Israel is the issue of conscription. To my parents, serving in the military was normal and expected, even if you didn’t agree with most of what the military does. Non-Zionist organizations, and people generally, support refusal to serve. When my conscription drew near, I decided I would not serve. It was only partially an ideological decision; mostly, I felt unfit for military life (I suffered from quite serious anxiety at the time). I hated the idea of forced conscription and the endless pro-military propaganda in my school.
In hindsight, dodging service was probably the best decision I ever made. Once I knew I was not going to serve, an abyss suddenly opened between me and my friends who went into the army. Whether I wanted it or not, I was now labeled a radical. Somehow this made it easier to admit that, in fact, I was.
Instead of serving in the army, I volunteered in a workers’ rights organization. I started to hang out almost exclusively with people with whom I could relate: other draft dodgers and refuseniks, activists, NGO workers, African refugees. My family supported my decision not to serve, but now I was no longer afraid to admit that we had different opinions. I no longer found any logic in the idea that Israel should be more Jewish than it should be Palestinian. I began to reevaluate the simplistic and one-sided history of Zionism that is taught at school, and started using terms such as colonialism, apartheid, and fascism.
This ideological shift allowed me finally to look Palestinians in the eye. While I was a Zionist, the Palestinians were always “others” to me. I supported their right to a state but could not accept their demands for the return of the refugees, the BDS movement, or the call for a total, South-African-style regime change. Zionism, for me, was a mental prison, and breaking out of it meant that I was willing to really listen to the Palestinians I came in contact with and adjust my views of the oppressor, based on the demands of the oppressed. I became more than a non-Zionist. I was now an anti-Zionist. “Non-Zionist” implies that one rejects Zionism as an ideological framework, but doesn’t necessarily actively oppose it. It may imply a sort of agnosticism on Zionism. “Anti-Zionist” is a more assertive, resolute term that implies direct opposition.
Because Zionism and patriotism are so entwined in the Israeli discourse, being anti-Zionist defines one as inherently unpatriotic. However, I never thought of my opposition to Zionism as unpatriotic. Even from abroad, I love my country and its people, and I certainly don’t believe they should cease to exist. The Zionist regime, however, with its deeply racist systems and its inherently alienating approach to all who are not Jewish, must fall and be replaced with a democratic and egalitarian society for all its citizens.