Who's a Zionist Anyway?

Earlier this week, we released our survey of Canadian Jews, along with our friends at the New Israel Fund of Canada and Canadian Friends of Peace Now. Professor Robert Brym served as a consultant on the survey.

The data mostly showed what we expected - the Canadian Jewish community is largely divided. Points of majority agreement are around connection to Israel, belief in the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, and that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not play an outsized role in Canadian Jews' voting considerations.

The result that was most fascinating, however, and the one that has received the most amount of press coverage thus far, is that, while 94% of Canadian Jews believe Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state and 84% of Canadian Jews feel an emotional attachment to Israel, only 51% of Canadian Jews identify as Zionist.

We often hear that Zionism is simply the belief in Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. And indeed, the core principle of Zionism is the building of a Jewish state in the ancient homeland of the Jews.

While this is not incorrect, the question still not being asked enough within the Jewish community is, once that state is built (as it now is), how do we shift from thinking about what Zionism is to what Zionism becomes.

Our executive director, Maytal Kowalski, and Ben Murane, the executive director of the New Israel Fund of Canada, sat down with the hosts of the Bonjour Chai podcast yesterday to discuss exactly that.

What was most important in this conversation wasn't that the answers varied between Maytal, Ben, or the hosts when discussing what Zionism is or means, but rather, that the conversation was being had in the first place.

For too long, Jewish establishment organizations have wrung their hands but not done much else about the younger generation of Jews disconnecting from Israel or disconnecting from Judaism. 

Any decision to open up the discussion on Zionism, or on the current politics and policies of the state of Israel, is always stopped short for fear of those engaged in the conversation reaching a conclusion about Israel or Zionism that the establishment would rather they not.

And indeed, even those in the anti-Zionist groups, despite creating movements in many ways as a rejection of the Jewish establishment, have engaged in the same binary thinking of the institutions they purport to reject, with the data from this survey being interpreted simply as the Jewish community rejecting Israel's policies and behaviours.

When you read further into the survey, an even more puzzling picture emerges. For example, approximately ⅓ of Canadian Jews simply don’t know or choose not to answer if the continued building of settlements in the occupied West Bank helps or harms Israel’s security.

While 50% of Canadian Jews still believe the two-state solution is the best resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, approximately ¼ believe the best resolution is the complete annexation of the occupied West Bank by Israel and the creation of a single Jewish state from the river to the sea.

The argument that this is a community that has rejected Zionism because it is incompatible with their values falls apart rather quickly when questions directly relating to Israeli policy are asked.

Further, when it comes to Canadian foreign policy vis-a-vis the conflict, support is even lower, with much of the community opposing measures currently being considered by Canada’s federal Liberals, such as recognition of Palestinian statehood or continued sanctions on violent Jewish settlers.

The joy, beauty, and uniqueness of contemporary Jewish life is in its lack of simplicity. It is in complex questions being answered with complex answers. It is in the arguments that we have for the sake of heaven - hence the title of our report.

Right now, the fear of crumbling and eroding democracies is being felt worldwide. The drift to increasingly authoritarian positions on both the left and the right creates an unknown future for the liberal and democratic values that we not only hold dear, but that have historically offered the most safety and security to diaspora Jews.

The only way to fight not only for the Israel we want to see, and the Zionism we want to identify with, but also to fight for strong and stable democracies and the continuation of liberal practices and policies is to embrace complexity, debate, discussion, and disagreement.

For those who claim our community must remain united, there is no greater mission, goal, or cause than upholding these values and surely around that, we can all unite.