We Jews have spent thousands of years, chasing our heritage, finally getting there. A vision: Muslims, Christians and Jews, praying together at the tombs of our patrimony. But it’s not acceptable. Not us. Nothing acceptable but to wipe out our memory, our being, our existence, our essence. I was raised as a liberal Jew, love your neighbor, judge people on their actions, not on the color of their skin, not on their race or their religion. I believed in this. With all my heart, my soul, my mind. I followed it through, to the extent that in my first year in high school I asked myself during assembly one day, why then do we discriminate against people because of who they choose to love? Could any god really have closed off half the human race to us as partners to love and cherish? What the f*ck is that? 9th grade. Before I had ever heard the word “homophobia.†Probably before I had ever heard the word “gay†in that context. I lay down in the middle of the street to protest the killing of what I thought were innocent Vietnamese civilians in a war that I was led to believe was being fought over ideology, over Western domination of Eastern cultures. I lived and breathed Eastern cultures at that time. I “recognized†their superiority over everything I had been taught my entire life. I “recognized†the symbols from my drug-induced fantasies. I couldn’t countenance the imposition of “Western†values on those timeless and priceless truths of the East. But it turned out that that wasn’t what the Vietnam war was about. It turned out that my own innocence and naivete had been exploited by forces far more insidious and cynical than those I was led to believe were being employed by the USA, the FBI, the CIA. And then I went to Israel. I walked on the Mount of Olives. I wandered through Hebron. I saw the graves that had been desecrated under the stewardship of the Hashemites and the way that sites holy to both Jews and Muslims were now divided in half so that Muslims could worship, uninterrupted, according to their traditions, in their holy places. I saw this and I heard from Jews who just a few years earlier had been prohibited from even setting foot on the ground of their holiest places, let alone permitted to pray in them. This was 1972. The memories were fresh. And there was no hatred. Just gratitude. Great joy, and gratitude (Star Trek fans will appreciate this reference. That’s how it was. Exactly.) This is why I became “right wing†on the question of Israel, back in 1972, when I had just become eligible to vote, when I still hoped to change the world with my liberal ideals. This is why I didn’t understand how there could be a discrepancy between the liberal vision of peace and freedom for all and the right of the Jewish State to exist in peace and freedom among its Arab and Muslim neighbors. This is why I will never accept any ideology that preaches its own ascendancy at the expense of the demise of others. That is not what Zionism is about. That is not what Zionism has ever been about. No matter how its enemies may try to twist it, no matter how many “peace advocates†misinterpret its doctrines, Zionism is about the attempts of the members of an ancient and much maligned people to assert their right, their justification, their very existence before the court of world opinion and to be recognized, finally, without qualification, as who they are, period.
This is why I am a Zionist. And damn proud of it.
