For too long, Jews wandered the world as shadows. Jews were pressured into silence, bullied into submission, and rendered inconsequential by the whims of others. Then came Zionism, the defiant Jewish lion’s roar that forged a backbone of steel. Zionists declared, Enough!
No more cowering in exile’s grip; no more yielding to the tyrants’ gaze. In reclaiming their homeland, Jews reclaimed their voice, their strength, and their right to matter. This is the courage to be consequential, to stand tall, unbowed, and unapologetic.
In his reflections on Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik said, “In my opinion, the greatest of all events and the most marvelous of all miracles is the coming out of our people from a two-millennia-old historical eclipse, complete historical obscurity, into the center of the universal historical arena; the burgeoning of our people from anonymity, from the two-millennia-old anonymity, into the focus of public interest and curiosity.
“In the last two thousand years, the Jewish people played no role in the historical arena. Revolutions transpired, worlds have been destroyed and rebuilt – our people played no role; we lived in obscurity, in anonymity. And now, a great miracle happened that our people somehow emerged from the shadows, from the anonymity in which it lived for so long, and is now in the center of the universal stage of historical occurrence.”
A new battle over Israel’s voice
Recently, anti-Israel sentiment has risen dramatically in America. Israel’s opponents criticize its advocates for exerting excessive financial and political influence to ensure unconditional US support for Israel, suppressing dissent, distorting policy debates, overriding public opinion, and undermining democratic processes in elections.
Anti-Israel activism encompasses different forms of opposition, including protests, political campaigns, and refusals of donations, aiming to curb the lobby’s sway over US foreign policy on Israel-Palestine. Recently, candidates for office publicly stated they won’t accept money from pro-Israel groups.
Advocating for Israel, and for a strong US-Israel relationship, is one of the most crucial acts of Jewish self-preservation today.
The world is witnessing that it is only America and Israel that have teamed together to end the terrorism of the Iranian fundamentalist regime. If not for these two strong countries and their unrivaled partnership, Iran’s monstrous leaders would be committing the most vile and tyrannical governing in today’s world.
For decades, Israel’s American advocates patiently explained and educated new members of Congress and the Senate on the benefits of a strong US-Israel relationship.
Based on a foundation of shared values, the national security of both nations depended on spreading the liberal democracies they treasured. Only by defeating the world’s communist, fundamentalist, and authoritarian nations could America and Israel enjoy the freedoms both nations fought so hard to establish.
The danger of allowing the US-Israel relationship to erode is clear when we envision a communist China, a fundamentalist Iran, or an authoritarian Russia setting the tone for the world. This is the unintended – and sometimes intended – result of Israel’s opponents’ activism. They seek a weakened America and Israel and a strengthened China, Iran, and Russia.
The American Congress has always been in favor of a strong US-Israel relationship because, as the elected leaders responsible for a secure America, they understand that partnering with Israel is crucial to America’s national security. Without Israel’s far-reaching intelligence, technological ingenuity, and ferocious fighting, America would have greater difficulty defeating its enemies.
At a recent American Israel Public Affairs Committee Summit (AIPAC), the organization’s CEO, Elliot Brandt, addressed the three thousand-strong crowd and addressed the rise in volume of Israel and AIPAC’s detractors. Brandt reviewed the charges leveled against Israel’s strongest advocates and talked about the long hours spent discussing how to stop the criticism and attacks.
They’d reached the conclusion that the only way to stop the hate focused on them and to stop their opponents from fighting them was for AIPAC and the American pro-Israel community to become inconsequential. Only by becoming inconsequential will their opponents stop caring about them.
Brandt explained that the pro-Israel American community, led by AIPAC, is not willing to become inconsequential.
He asked the audience, “Do we have the resolve to stay in the ring, to fight the fights, to win it? Our enemies have proven their resolve; now we must prove we have that resolve.”
In his book Auto-Emancipation, Leon Pinsker wrote, “With the loss of their country, the Jewish people lost their independence, and fell into a decay which is not compatible with existence as a whole vital organism…The world saw in this people the uncanny form of one of the dead walking among the living.
“The ghostlike apparition of a living corpse, of a people without unity or organization, without land or other bonds of unity, no longer alive, and yet walking among the living – this spectral form without precedence in history, unlike anything that preceded or followed it, could but strangely affect the imagination of the nations.”
Pinsker concluded, “The civil and political emancipation of the Jews is not sufficient to raise them in the estimation of the peoples. The proper, the only solution, is in the creation of a Jewish nationality, of a people living upon its own soil, the auto-emancipation of the Jews, their return to the ranks of the nations by the acquisition of a Jewish homeland…Help yourselves, and God will help you!”
Close to 150 years after Pinsker wrote the words that challenged the Jewish people to stand up for themselves and create a national homeland, the State of Israel is a thriving success. It plays an outsized and consequential role in world affairs. As Rabbi Soloveitchik so eloquently said once, the Jewish people are “now in the center of the universal stage of historical occurrence.”
The Jewish people, whether in Israel or the Diaspora, cannot be silenced by their opponents. It cannot cower in the fear of the “What if?...” It cannot self-censor out of fear of the unknown. Zionism was founded by the new and courageous Jew. It was a movement of Jews who refused to be silenced, refused to cower, and stood up to their own fright. The Jews of today cannot betray that courage.
The Jewish people no longer follow; they lead. The Jewish people walk with heads held high, unafraid, forceful, and proud. The Jewish people had the courage to become consequential, and they must always stay consequential.
The writer is a Zionist educator at institutions around the world and recently published a new book, Zionism Today.