my road to Zionism
If you will it, it's not just a fairytale (Theodore Herzl)
I have been neglecting this Substack for a long time for a number of reasons: I’ve had some minor but irksome health issues - mainly back problems which prevented me from sitting at the computer for more than about half an hour. Whatever I did write, be it emails or work on my novel, was done on my phone, lying on my back. All this, combined with the absurd political machinations at home at the horrific war in the Middle East threw me into a long period of ennui.
Lately, I have gained tons of new subscribers, mostly through recommendations from Karen Hunt and Ariel Pink (THANK YOU!) and I figured it was time for at least a short essay.
Like all the Jews I know, I was shaken to the core by the October 7 Hamas declaration of war on Israel and the tsunami of “anti-Zionism” that followed. I thought to myself: “Ah! So THIS is what my parents always talked about when they were discussing their experiences in the Holocaust and the virulent anti-Semitism they had experienced growing up!” I stared at my phone in disbelief as I witnessed the outbursts of visceral Jew hate post 10/7, the contemptuous denial of the victims’ suffering and the absurd, perverse adulation of their tortures. I understood clearly like never before why Israel must exist and why all Jews are - or should be - Zionists.
Here are a few thoughts and personal experiences, some directly, some tangentially tied to my growth as a proud Zionist.
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I was fifteen and a half years old when I arrived in Israel. Just six weeks prior to disembarking into a stifling hot October night at Lod Airport (now Ben Gurion International Airport), I had been a happy, hippy teenager in leafy, green and temporarily free Prague. Then the Soviet tanks rolled in, crushed our temporary freedom, and we fled to leafy, green Vienna and thence to parched and sun-withered Israel, my father having refused job offers in Germany, Austria and the US.
In October 1968, Israel was a dusty backwater of about three million inhabitants, a proud, mostly agrarian little country led by the Labor government of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in tandem with other early Polish and Russian socialist Zionists. The country was in the middle of an exhausting war of attrition, yet in a jubilant mood, having just won a tremendous victory in the Six Day War.
I hated it. It was hot, parochial and primitive in every way. It made even Communist Prague seem like a throbbing metropolis. Nobody listened to rock music and the names John, Paul, George and Ringo meant nothing to my new classmates, all outfitted in blue trousers and light blue open neck shirts. All conversation swirled around upcoming conscription to the IDF, and the elite units the boys aspired to serve in. As far as I could tell, the only interesting cultural outlet in Haifa, where we lived, was a banged-up, ancient movie theater in the Carmel district, showing “The Good, The Bad And The Ugly”. That said, the city itself was beautiful with its harbor and the Arab quarter around it, the Lower Carmel district with falafel stands and open air markets, the Upper Carmel with its great views of the Mediterranean and fancy villas, and, of course the Golden Baha’i dome halfway up Carmel Hill.
In 1969, we moved to Tel Aviv and while the city was no Prague or London, it was alive 24/7 with street markets, shawarma stands, dingy old movie theaters that ran Marx Brothers movies and European classics like Fellini and Goddard, smoky tea rooms where one could puff on a nargila, city buses that blared loud music with drivers puffing on cigarettes and singing along, many fabulous Bauhaus buildings around Rothchild Boulevard - and of course lovely beaches where the true Tel Avivians lived and played. When I was eighteen, I fell in love with a gorgeous blue-eyed blonde, as atypical a sabra as you could find. She opened my eyes to Israeli culture (a thing I had suspected didn’t even exist). The poetry of Natan Alterman and Yehuda Amichai, the music of Arik Einstein, Shlomo Gronich and Naomi Shemer (of “Jerusalem of Gold” fame) and many other men and women of letters and music. She also helped my Hebrew and it’s thanks to her that I mastered it to the point of almost native fluency. Through a slow process of integration, understanding and - I can’t kid myself - my love for an intelligent and artistic woman, I became and Israeli. And through the tragedy of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which my girlfriend lost her 23-year old brother, I became a convinced Zionist. For the next fifty years, my Zionism lay dormant only to burst forth with force, pride and determination after the events of October 7, 2023…fifty years plus one day after the horrors of the Yom Kippur War.
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As I have mentioned, when I first arrived in Israel, the Prime Minister was Levi Eshkol, one of the seemingly endless lineup of Labor politicians, born mostly in Poland and Russia. He was followed by the initially hapless but eventually steadfast and fearless Golda Meir. Golda was an anomaly. She was born in Russia but raised and educated in the United States. She never lost her American accent, though her Hebrew was fluent.
After Golda’s resignation, Yitzhak Rabin, the first sabra (native born Israeli) served as Prime Minister for a couple of years. But on the heels of the Yom Kippur War - a terrible intelligence fiasco yet a mighty military victory - Rabin was not able to maintain the Labor Party rule, uninterrupted for almost twenty years. The Labor Party was a party of fierce warriors, without which Israel’s first decades are hard to imagine. Sadly, throughout its long time at the reins of power, taxes were high, economic growth slow and - crucially - the Party, wittingly or unwittingly, catered to the Israeli elites, all immigrants from Eastern Europe or their descendants. The Party forgot about the “other half” of the country, people whose roots were in North Africa and Arabia - but that was about to change.
In 1977, Menachem Begin broke the Labor party chokehold on Israeli politics. He, too, was a shtetl Jew, but unlike his Labor Party predecessors, he was a true man of the people. For the first time, the silent majority of Israeli citizens (immigrants from North Africa and the Arab countries and their children) had a champion in the government. Begin may have been born in Poland but he knew the real heart of Israel. Elite army officers were mostly kibbutzniks with strongly socialist backgrounds. They fought like lions and won many wars but they didn’t understand their own people, many of whom had come from widely different backgrounds, who wanted nothing to do with socialism and certainly nothing to do with “peacnik” mentality. They had come from Arab countries, spoke Arabic, were born Middle Easterners and were suspicious of any deal which might weaken Israel’s position. One might say that although Zionism originated in Europe, it found its true natural champions in the Sephardi Jews.
Begin, a man of a “colorful” paramilitary career prior to the birth of the state, was not a distinguished warrior like Rabin. But he understood the Arab enemy intuitively and he understood that the balance of power within Israel had to change in favor of the long-suppressed Sephardi Jews. His policies were richly rewarded: he achieved peace with Egypt - an unimaginable dream to all his Labor predecessors.
I think that Begin (and Netanyahu, though the latter is uncouth and ungentlemanly - the opposite of the always neatly attired and eloquently spoken Begin) understood the real, deep nature - and defining quality - of Zionism. Just like the American Revolution was a big middle finger to the British king, Zionism, the unshakable bond with our identity, history and language and our God-given right to return to the land of our ancestors is one big “eff you”! An “eff you” to everyone from the anti-Semites who destroyed the military career of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, to Yasser Arafat’s slimy handshake, followed by an unprecedented wave of terror, to Sinwar and his bloodthirsty brigands. We are smarter, richer and have much better weapons. We choose to live a life of freedom based on Western democratic principles. And if you don’t like it - come at us with all that you got. It’s gotten you nowhere so far. You will continue being defeated, just like every Arab army has been defeated for the last 70 years. That “screw you”, we’re here, we’re Jews and we’re here to stay - now deal with it! is the essence of Zionism.
Until the Arab world - and the ragtag Palestinian groups - produce a statesman of Begin’s caliber, the war will continue at a great cost to both sides but, in the long run, at a much greater cost to the Palestinians. Zionism must be recognized and accepted exactly the same way as the American right to self-determination has been accepted. Jews are not only a culture or a religion (though we are that too). Jews are first and foremost a nation (“am Israel” - עם ישראל - the nation of Israel) Zionism is the expression of this eternal national yearning.
I am a Jew, not an “as a Jew” in Michael Rapaport coinage. This is how it shoud be done, check out the clip below! עם ישראל חי ✡️
Excellent article!
Loved this piece - I linked to it on my most recent post.