moment debate YES

Has the word Zionism outlived its usefulness? Yes. Because different people use it in so many different ways, we end up talking past each other, especially in conversations between those who say they support Zionism and those who say they oppose it. Supporters—and here I’m specifically talking about people with a generally liberal worldview—tend to think the term refers to either belief in a Jewish and democratic state, or a sense of personal and communal attachment to Israel. Opponents tend to focus on Zionism as a state-led ideology—because at the moment Zionism doesn’t exist apart from the single state, Israel, whose policies flow from it—and say that whatever those policies are, they all have at their root the inequality and the privileging of some people and groups over others, whether it’s Jews over non-Jews or citizens of the state over Palestinians under occupation.

I recently conducted a survey of American Jews, and unsurprisingly, a strong majority said they were Zionist. Then I posed a series of definitions, asking whether they were Zionist according to definitions A, B or C. When Zionism was defined as supporting the existence of a Jewish and democratic state, more than 70 percent said they were Zionists. Likewise when Zionism was defined as a sense of attachment to Israel. But when the definition was “Zionism means a set of policies that flow from a particular governing structure where Jews are inherently privileged over non-Jews,” only 10 percent said yes. That tells me the word’s not very useful. It’s better to talk about emotions and values directly.

How did the term collect so much baggage? It comes partly from looking at ideologies through the lens of who wins and who loses. With Zionism, the winners were clearly the Jews, who succeeded in creating a state. The losers were clearly the Palestinians, actively displaced by Jews’ creation of that state. Awareness has grown about the cost of certain state-building practices on some marginalized populations. Even in my field, international relations, people are teaching and thinking more than they did 20 years ago about decolonization and racism.

Being a Zionist once meant you were committed to moving to Israel and making your life there. Now Jews feel more secure in North America—the rise of antisemitism notwithstanding—so Zionism tends to be more of an arms-length political and emotional allegiance. I think that’s another reason the term has become so contested. Now it’s a set of political beliefs, and all political beliefs are and should be subject to debate and critique.

Does using the word Zionist imply that the existence of the state is still in question? If you think of Zionism as the push to create a Jewish state, that’s right. But Zionism is not only a historical political program, it’s also a set of contemporary state-led ideologies and policies. The creation of Israel is a settled matter, but we should always be thinking of how its policies affect individuals and groups.

Then there’s the argument that opposing Zionism is opposing not just the state but the Jewish people—in other words, that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. I don’t agree with that equation, but it has to be heard and dealt with. And to debate it, we have to define our terms.

What other words could we use instead? Why not say pro-Israel? I wouldn’t use any of those words. We should talk about policies that advance or impair dignity, equality, justice and freedom: What has Israel done, what can it or does it do, to advance those values? And where does Israel need to be held to account? That approach also avoids holding Israel to a double standard, because those are questions we should be asking everywhere in the world. Separately, we could talk about attachment to Israel. Am I a Zionist? If I’m attached to the people and the language of Israel, and want to make it a more just place for everyone who calls it home, maybe someone who defines Zionism as attachment would see me as a Zionist. But someone who sees Zionism as a matter of policies wouldn’t, because of the policies I argue for. If someone wants to ask me if I’m attached to Israel, ask me that. It doesn’t necessarily mean I support the policies of inequality that Israel advances. If I simply said I’m a Zionist, or an anti-Zionist, no one would know where I stood on emotions or values. If we eschew the term Zionism, then we can advance the conversation.

Can the word be reclaimed? I don’t think so. It’s not like reclaiming a negative word like “queer.” That was binary: You could use it in a positive way to take the sting out of it. But Zionism, while it’s sometimes a slur, is already being used in too many fundamentally different ways. There’s too much mixing and matching, when what we really need is clarity.

Mira Sucharov is a professor of political science at Carleton University, the author most recently of Borders and Belonging: A Memoir, and coeditor of Social Justice and Israel/Palestine: Foundational and Contemporary Debates.