As I’ve written before, there’s something deeply backwards about the word “Zionist.”
Israel EXISTS. It has existed for generations — for 78 years. Yet we have a special ideological label for someone who thinks Jews should be allowed to maintain a nation in their indigenous homeland.
Why does that need a name?
We don’t have special words for people who think Egypt should continue to exist as a homeland for Egyptians, or Iran for Iranians, or Turkey for Turks. Their continued national existence is simply the default.
But give the Jewish version a special name — “Zionism” — and suddenly Jewish national existence sounds like a HYPOTHESIS. A political proposition. Something requiring argument and defense.
And with that little linguistic trick, the burden gets placed on exactly the wrong people.
“Are you a Zionist?”
“Why do you believe Israel has a right to exist?”
“Why should Jews get their own country?”
No.
Israel already exists. Jews already have their nation. They have had it for generations. Jews should no more have to continually justify the existence of their country than other peoples do.
If anyone needs a special ideological label, it’s the people advancing the extraordinary proposition: that this particular nation should be dismantled, and this particular people should once again be rendered stateless.
And there’s a rather important historical fact here.
The Jewish state was born in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust and became home to huge numbers of Jewish refugees and survivors. It meant that never again would a persecuted Jew’s survival depend entirely upon whether some other country was willing to open its doors.
And ever since, there have been people demanding that this refuge cease to exist.
So maybe THAT position deserves the special word.
I propose:
Holocauster.
Not because every person who wants Israel dismantled consciously wants another Holocaust.
But because they advocate stripping Jews of precisely what the Holocaust demonstrated, with almost unimaginable horror, that Jews needed: a nation and refuge of their own.
Let THEM carry the label.
Let THEM defend the proposition.
The Jews are no longer on trial for wanting to exist.