Has the word Zionism outlived its usefulness?

Has the word Zionism outlived its usefulness? No. I can understand why people might say so, but Zionism describes a series of beliefs, feelings and needs that transcend political reality. In that sense, it’s like any word that ends in “ism”—liberalism, conservatism, progressivism. These are bundles of ideas and feelings that survive across time, even if their meanings change. For example, to be a liberal today is very different from 150 years ago, but we still use the word.

How did the term collect so much baggage? On the left, the word Zionism has come to mean a particular approach to Jewish nationhood tainted with exclusion, domination and racism. In universities today it’s often a pejorative. I think the connotations are inaccurate: As Amos Oz said, Zionism is a last name that has many first names, religious Zionism, Labor Zionism, spiritual Zionism, Revisionist Zionism and more. But it’s not just 21st-century progressives who’ve contributed to those connotations. A lot of Arab Muslim countries have not wanted to call Israel by name, so they refer to “the Zionist entity.” Iran still does. In the former Soviet Union, “Zionism” was a crime. Before that, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion—the most famous antisemitic tract in history—used the word “Zion” to connote a global conspiracy of Jews. It’s been used in slogans attributing negative qualities to Israel since the 1960s— Zionism as racism, Zionism as apartheid. But I don’t think throwing out the word would get rid of these underlying negative feelings.

Some people who associate Zionism with ethnocentrism, narrowness and racism don’t want anything to do with it, and it’s true that there are forms of Zionism that are all those things—the current Israeli government embodies those aspects. But there are other types of Zionism that are more progressive and inclusive. When my daughter was in college, she would say, “I’m Zionish.” I hear something like that from a lot of my Jewish students, who feel connected to Israel but feel that “Zionism” has acquired too much negative meaning. And of course some Jews and even Israelis consider themselves anti-Zionist because their desire for equity and justice between Jews and Palestinians is so fundamental to their identity. But to be a Jewish anti-Zionist is to be engaged with Israel in a deeply personal way—which, in my definition, is also to be a Zionist. It means you care, even if you don’t want to admit it.

Does using the word Zionist imply the existence of the state is still in question? It’s true that if you define Zionism as the movement to create a Jewish state, that movement ended in 1948. Right-wing figures in the 1940s coined the term “post-Zionism” to describe just that. The idea reappeared, this time from the left, in the 1990s when the Oslo peace process appeared to herald the onset of a “normal” Israel, with peace and diplomatic ties with the Arab world, when it seemed that Zionism as a mobilizing movement would no longer be wise or necessary.

But Zionism was always about much more than simply the creation of the Jewish state. It was also about a profound sense of Jewish nationhood and the cultivation of that nationhood through the connection to Israel as a spiritual and cultural center. That sense of connection continues. Even the fact that so many Jews in the diaspora are upset with Israel at the moment means they care about it.

Some in Israel think that Zionism no longer applies because Israel has no connection with the diaspora. But in fact, both right-wing and left-wing diaspora Jews are constantly involved in Israeli politics.

What other words could we use instead? Why not say pro-Israel? We could call the ideology Israelism, but that assumes that we’re only talking about the State of Israel, and I don’t think that’s true. It’s about something more—global Jewish solidarity, interest in Hebrew culture, the religious heritage of the Jewish people. “Israelism” suggests we venerate or worship a country. Zionism’s a better choice—it’s more abstract and open-ended.

Can the word be reclaimed? Yes—it needs to be rescued from the anti-Zionist left and also from the illiberal, populist and hateful streams within contemporary Israel, shared by no small segment of American Jewry. We can’t stop them from calling themselves Zionist, but other Jews with other ideas can keep using it, too. There are many different ways one can identify with the state of Israel and the Jewish people. There are people in academia who say they are non-Zionist, anti-Zionist, post-Zionist—but they’re still using the word Zionist as a reference point. I don’t want to force anybody into a category; if they don’t want to use it, that’s their business. But the idea of Zionism is still useful, even if I don’t define it the way Benjamin Netanyahu does.

Derek Penslar is a comparative historian and a professor of Jewish history at Harvard University. He is the author or editor of a dozen books, including the forthcoming Zionism: An Emotional State.