WHY ZIONISM WINS
For the overwhelming majority of Israelis and other Jews, Zionism is the embodiment of the most fundamental instinct human beings possess: Survival.
Perhaps the main reason the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has continued this long is that many people imagine there is a military solution.
There isn’t.
There are only two possible destinations: Negotiated coexistence or endless war.
That may sound obvious, but apparently it isn’t. Because millions of people around the world continue to behave as though Israel can be defeated.
They chant for a “Free Palestine” “from the river to the sea.”
They imagine Zionism as a temporary political project that can be dismantled if only enough pressure is applied. More protests, boycotts, diplomatic isolation, violent “resistance.” Just one more war and surely the Zionist project will finally collapse.
History suggests otherwise — not because Israel is invincible. No nation is and, as militarily powerful as Israel may be, it maintains a tenuous hold on a tiny strip of land in a sea of genocidal hostility.
But Israelis are fighting for something fundamentally different than what those seeking Israel’s destruction are fighting for.
Israelis are fighting for survival.
Their enemies are fighting to end Jewish sovereignty.
These are not equivalent motivations.
Hatred is an extraordinarily powerful human emotion. It can inspire cruelty, fanaticism, and astonishing acts of violence. History books are filled with examples.
But there is something even stronger than hatred: The instinct to survive.
Antizionism is not a polite political movement that seeks compromise or coexistence. It is a genocidal force that seeks, in its most generous incarnation, ethnic cleansing and, in its less kind form, genocide.
People will endure extraordinary hardship to preserve the lives of their children and the future of their community.
Israel exists because generations of Jews reached the same conclusion: Never again would their survival depend entirely upon the goodwill of others.
The crazy idea of Hamas — since adopted by their bloodthirsty overseas cheering sections — is that October 7 was somehow the first major salvo in the concluding chapter of Zionism.
Of course, the opposite is true. October 7 convinced many Jews who had not been terribly committed to Israel that it was indeed worth saving. Necessary, in fact, because many Jews found out that their Canadian neighbors, their French coworkers, their Australian acquaintances didn’t care whether Jews lived or died. Some, in fact, celebrated mass murder of Jews.
A whole bunch of Jews who, as of October 6, never imagined they might need a refuge from an antisemitic world, on October 8 began to realize that the world has not advanced as much in the past 80 years as they had assumed.
October 8 — the post-pogrom world in which millions of people worldwide removed their masks and demonstrated support for atrocities — convinced anyone with a remaining shred of decency that Israel is an existential need for Jews worldwide. If not today, then maybe next year, or next week.
That is why so much contemporary “pro-Palestinian” activism strikes Israelis, Jews, and Zionists like me as wildly detached from reality.
It proceeds as though enough pressure will eventually persuade Israelis to abandon the one institution they believe guarantees that another October 7 will not become another holocaust.
Ask yourself honestly: If you believed your family’s survival depended upon maintaining a sovereign state, what amount of international criticism would persuade you to dismantle it? What number of United Nations resolutions? How many boycotts? How many campus encampments? How big a protest march populated by screaming, hate-filled mobs?
The answer, for almost everyone, is obvious. None.
This is not uniquely Israeli.
Ask Taiwanese whether they should voluntarily surrender Taiwan. Ask Poles whether Poland should disappear again. Ask Armenians. Ask Kurds.
Most illustratively: Ask Ukrainians.
None of us believed Ukraine would survive more than a few weeks against the Russian invasion.
Now there is talk of Ukraine winning the war against its aggressive, expansionist, neofascist neighbor.
Literal survival will defeat hatred almost every time. It’s a matter of existence versus dogma.
There is, of course, a chance that Israel could be militarily defeated.
But Israel has nuclear weapons (shhhh!) and any people forced into an existential corner might use them as a last resort.
Even if it never came to that, we see the lopsided death tolls from the war that began October 7. As I wrote yesterday, Palestinian elites maximize the number of dead Palestinians in an effort to win history’s most despicable PR campaign.
Israelis do everything in their power to minimize casualties on both sides.
Nevertheless: exponentially more Palestinians than Israelis die in every conflict between the parties.
Therefore, any movement that pushes Palestinians to pursue violence rather than coexistence and a negotiated compromise is a movement that promotes tens of thousands more Palestinian deaths.
Of course, that is not a persuasive argument for overseas “pro-Palestinians.” The more dead Palestinians, the more self-righteous the “pro-Palestinians.” Notice how, in every Palestinian-Israeli conflict, overseas activists tally dead Palestinians like notches on a bedpost. Every corpse is an assurance of the activists’ moral rectitude.
Of course, that moral rectitude is the reason Palestinians are dying.
Because “pro-Palestinians” are not concerned with making life better for Palestinians. It is about the activists’ own feelings of being right, of having a role in an historical moment, of finding meaning in a vacuous existence (as I wrote yesterday).
See why I always put “pro-Palestinian” in scoff quotes?
For nearly eight decades, all of this Palestinian violence and all of this overseas “pro-Palestinian” activism has not hastened the disappearance of Israel.
They have only produced more graves. Mostly Palestinian graves.
The fantasy that Israel can somehow be undone has not cost Israelis their future.
It has cost Palestinians theirs.
Every generation encouraged to believe that total victory remains possible is another generation denied the opportunity to build a realistic future.
False hope can be a form of cruelty.
Many international activists insist they are standing with Palestinians. Many probably (stupidly) sincerely believe they are.
But solidarity that encourages impossible objectives is not solidarity.
Real allyship, real solidarity, tell difficult truths.
The hardest truth of all is this: Israel is not going away.
Not because it is stronger (though it is). Not because it is morally superior (again: it is). Not because history guarantees its success (because it doesn’t).
But because the people who live there overwhelmingly know they have nowhere else to go.
If the Palestinian people, the Arab and Muslim elites, and the rest of the world accepted that foundational reality, something remarkable would become possible.
Instead of asking how Israel can be eliminated, we would begin asking how Israelis and Palestinians can both flourish.
Instead of rewarding maximalist dreams, we would reward practical compromises.
Instead of feeding hatred, we would strengthen hope.
Zionism will not endure because it is an ideology. Israel will not survive because it is a country and its frontline enemies are nonstate actors.
Ideologies and countries rise and fall.
Zionism and Israel will endure because, for the overwhelming majority of Israelis, the idea of Zionism and the reality of Israel are inseparable from the most fundamental instinct any human being possesses: Survival.
History has taught many peoples that lesson. Few have learned it more painfully than the Jews.
Those who genuinely care about Palestinians should draw the obvious conclusion.
Stop investing in fantasies that require Israel to disappear — because your ideological purity kills Palestinians.
Start investing in a future that allows both peoples to remain, coexist, and thrive.
Because there are only two roads.
One leads to coexistence.
The other leads to another generation of funerals.
“Pro-Palestinians” have chosen the latter.
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In my next post …
You might apply the theory I outline here — that survival will triumph over ideology — to the Palestinian cause.
Stand by for the most incendiary debunking of that idea.
Just two more sleeps!
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One of the great ironies of history: The mass persecutions, ethnic cleanings and genocides of Jews over the past few centuries are what made Israel the powerhouse it is today. Jew haters are too stupid to understand that they continue to make the case for a strong Jewish state better than any Zionist ever could.
For decades the majority of Israelis hoped for some form of coexistence, but every offer was refused. More Israelis began to think that there was no longer a possibility of coexistence because the vast majority of Palestinians and their Muslim brothers simply wanted them dead from the river to the sea. Oct 7 convinced even more Israelis that tens of millions of people in the West also wanted them dead. As Dara Horn wrote, people love dead Jews. After all this, I don't see any way that Israel will consent to a Palestinian state on its border, especially a state that will require most of the West Bank to be Judenrein (yes, most progressives and Muslims and European leaders agree with the Nazis) and therefore uprooting hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes. This did not work well in Gaza. To add to this terrible divide, many Israelis have become acutely aware that the West Bank, a euphemism for Judea and Samaria, is the heart of ancient Israel and to have this Judenrein is politically, morally and emotionally impossible. Some Jews have always lived there for 3000 years. Israel is, of course, blamed for this, but basic common sense and knowledge of how we got here tells us that the Arab desire to kill all the Jews has always been the reason for the continuing conflict. It's a tragic situation.
One thing more. I think that many who cheered on Oct 7 believe that the pogrom and the attacks and slander of Israel from around the world would convince many in Israel to leave. They would simply give up from exhaustion. Surely four generations of living under continuous threat would convince many more to leave. Some have indeed left, but the vast majority are staying and some Jews living in the West are leaving for Israel. Go figure.