A people without a plan is a people without a land: Zionism, goal-setting go hand in hand - opinion

From the outset, Zionist leadership treated goal-setting as a moral imperative.

That clarity broadened rather than narrowed as the movement matured. Max Nordau argued that political sovereignty required human regeneration as well. He understood that a people trained only to endure could neither defend itself in a hostile world nor command respect within it. His goal was survival through transformation: cultivating Jews capable of bearing sovereignty rather than merely suffering history.

Alongside these early architects of political and physical renewal stood Ahad Ha’am, who issued one of Zionism’s most enduring internal warnings.

He rejected the temptation of romantic daydreaming and cautioned that national revival could not be sustained by slogans or emotional intoxication alone. He argued that Zionism must strengthen its foundations through deliberate cultural work, disciplined planning, and patient execution rather than rushing into hollow declarations. His insistence on grounding vision in action reinforced a central truth of the movement: without goals and concrete plans, even the most inspiring ideas dissolve into illusion.

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda did not hope that Hebrew would return organically; he made it a national objective. Schools, families, newspapers, and daily life were mobilized toward fluency. Hebrew was treated as infrastructure, not nostalgia. Religious Zionism, too, operated with a clear purpose. Abraham Isaac Kook rejected the false choice between holiness and statehood, arguing that sovereignty could elevate ethics rather than erode them and that redemption unfolded through national action rather than passive waiting.

As Zionism moved from vision to confrontation with reality, its goals hardened rather than softened.

Ze’ev Jabotinsky articulated perhaps the most unsentimental objective in Zionist history: Jewish power as a condition of survival. He rejected the illusion that moral appeals or goodwill could substitute for strength in a hostile world. His “Iron Wall” doctrine was not a call for endless conflict but a recognition that peace becomes possible only when Jewish permanence is unquestioned. In his vision, strength was not the enemy of morality—it was what made morality sustainable.

Statehood sharpened the logic of goals even further.

Goal-setting is not a management technique; it is the difference between intention and achievement. Every successful movement in history understood that goals discipline energy, prioritize effort, and turn belief into action. Without clear objectives, values become slogans, institutions drift toward self-preservation, and leadership becomes reactive rather than directive. Goals create accountability not only to outcomes but to time—what must be achieved now and what cannot wait.

A people without goals does not merely lose direction; it loses the ability to distinguish progress from motion. This tradition did not end in Israel’s early decades.

At some point, however, this discipline collapsed beyond the realm of state policy and across the broader Zionist world.

Contemporary Zionism suffers not from a lack of passion or talent but from the disappearance of articulated goals. Institutions speak fluently about values, narratives, and defense, yet struggle to define what success will look like in 20 or 50 years. There are conferences without targets, statements without benchmarks, and budgets without destinations. Reaction has replaced direction.

If Zionism continues without clear goals, the consequences will not arrive as a catastrophe but as erosion. Hebrew will persist as a symbol rather than a shared language outside Israel, invoked ceremonially but rarely spoken with confidence. Jewish institutions will optimize for stability and fundraising cycles rather than generational outcomes, mistaking motion for progress. Leadership will perfect the art of reassurance while abandoning direction altogether.

Nothing dramatic will fail all at once; instead, the Zionist project beyond the state will slowly thin, narrowing into a defensive posture and losing the ability to imagine a future meaningfully different from the present.

October 7 shattered the illusion that history had slowed. It reminded Jews everywhere that time, pressure, and hostility still shape reality, regardless of how modern or secure we imagine ourselves. The rupture was not only military or moral; it was conceptual. A movement without direction cannot respond to rupture with renewal. It can only react. Moments like this do not repeat indefinitely.

The question facing Zionism today is therefore not whether Israel exists, but what the Jewish people are building next. The coming era demands a return to intentionality—not nostalgia for past goals, but the courage to define new ones. This obligation applies equally to Israel, Jewish life in the United States, and beyond. Zionism was always a civilizational project, not merely a state-maintenance exercise.

A renewed Zionism must reclaim goal-setting as a moral and strategic duty. Goals do not require unanimity to be legitimate; they require leaders willing to stand behind them. They must be broad enough to unite Israel and the Diaspora yet concrete enough to demand results. Direction, not reassurance, is what inspires societies to move. Zionism must once again tell the Jewish people where it is going. If you sit on a board, lead an institution, educate the next generation, or fund Jewish life, this question is no longer theoretical—it is yours.

Zionism without goals is not a mistake—it is a moral abdication, and we are standing inside it. Zionism has never lacked passion; it has lacked courage at moments when it mattered most. The founders understood that history is shaped by those willing to define victory and accept the cost of pursuing it. A people that refuses to set goals eventually forfeits the right to complain about its future.

If Zionism does not choose a future, others will choose it for us. Zionism was never merely about surviving history—it was about shaping it, and shaping ourselves in the process.