Are you a “Zionist”? It’s a question I’m asked constantly – from all directions.
When those on my right pose it, what they’re really asking is: Can I trust that when you and J Street criticize Israeli government policy, you are doing so out of concern for Israel and the Jewish people?
When those on my left ask, the subtext is different: Are you defending racism? Ethnonationalism? The subjugation of another people?
“Zionist” has become less a description of political belief than a test – of identity, loyalty, even morality. Too often, it is used to include or exclude, to certify or to condemn.
A recent piece by Sabrina Soffer in these pages argues that Zionism must be understood as far more than a minimalist claim about Israel’s “right to exist,” emphasizing instead the Jewish people’s deep historical and biblical connection to the land of Israel. On that point, she is absolutely right.
But where her argument goes wrong is in suggesting – implicitly or explicitly – that those of us who identify as liberal Zionists fall outside that definition.
We do not.
The differing definitions of Zionism
My understanding of Zionism begins precisely where she says it should: with the recognition that the Jewish people are not only a religious community but a people with a continuous historical connection to the land of Israel – and a right to self-determination there.
That connection is not abstract. It is rooted in history, memory, language, and lived experience across generations. It is why the idea of return took hold in Jewish consciousness long before it became a modern political movement. And it is why, in the 19th century, as nationalism reshaped the world, Jews embraced the idea that they too had the right to sovereignty in their ancestral homeland.
My own family was part of that story. My great-grandparents fled the Russian Empire in the 1880s, escaping violence and seeking to build a future in the land to which our people had remained bound for millennia.
But Zionism has never been a single, monolithic idea. From the beginning, it has encompassed multiple strands – religious and secular, socialist and revisionist, liberal and nationalist – often in deep disagreement with one another.
The question has never simply been whether Jews have a right to a state. It has always also been: What kind of state should it be?
That question remains unresolved.
Today, some argue – implicitly or explicitly – that to be a “real” Zionist is to refrain from criticizing Israeli government policy, or to support an increasingly illiberal and exclusionary political direction.
That is not a defense of Zionism. It is a narrowing of it. And it is a profound mistake.
Because when voices like mine – and the millions of Jews around the world who share this perspective – are written out of the Zionist tent, the movement does not become stronger or clearer. It becomes smaller, narrower, and less capable of sustaining the broad base of support Israel needs to thrive.
The foundation of liberal Zionism
Liberal Zionism insists on two core ideas at once: that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination in their historic homeland, and that this state must live up to the democratic and ethical values that give that project meaning.
Those commitments are not contradictory. They are inseparable.
And they lead directly to a second recognition: that the Palestinian people – who also have deep roots in the same land – have a parallel right to self-determination.
Two peoples, bound to the same land, each with legitimate claims.
The tragedy is not that one is right and the other wrong. It is that both are right – and their aspirations collide.
For that reason, Zionism cannot be reduced to a slogan or a defensive posture. It cannot be sustained by insisting only on what Jews deserve, without grappling with what justice requires for Palestinians as well.
Israel today remains without agreed-upon borders. It continues to govern millions of Palestinians who lack equal rights or sovereignty. And its current political trajectory raises serious questions about its commitment to democratic norms and minority rights.
That is not the fulfillment of Zionism’s vision. It is a challenge to it.
Jewish sovereignty was always meant to test whether a people long denied power could exercise it in accordance with enduring moral principles.
At this moment, that test is under strain.
My hope – for my children and grandchildren – is that they will one day feel pride in a country our family helped build. For that to be possible, Israel must recommit to both pillars of Zionism: the realization of Jewish national self-determination, and the creation of a society that reflects the highest values of Jewish tradition – justice, equality, and peace.
That requires rejecting the idea that loyalty demands silence. It means recognizing that criticism, when rooted in care and responsibility, is not betrayal but a form of commitment.
And it requires understanding that Zionism was never meant to belong to only one political camp. It was – and remains – a project of the entire Jewish people, including those of us in the Diaspora who helped build and sustain the state and who retain both a stake in its future and a responsibility to speak honestly about its direction.
So when I am asked, yes or no – am I a Zionist?
Yes. But my Zionism is not a litmus test, and it is not limited to affirming Israel’s right to exist.
It is rooted in the Jewish people’s enduring connection to our ancestral homeland. It is committed to a democratic national home for the Jewish people. And it is inseparable from the belief that the Palestinian people are entitled to the same right in that same land.
Excluding those convictions from Zionism does not clarify the idea. It diminishes it.
And at a moment when support for Israel is under real strain, narrowing the definition of Zionism to exclude millions of Jews is not just intellectually wrong. It is strategically self-defeating.