We Should Applaud Herzog and Livni for Reclaiming Zionism

February 17, 2015

In a recent article in the San Diego Jewish World, Rabbi Dow Marmur echoes the Israeli writer Amos Oz, who criticized Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni for naming their coalition party “Zionist Union.”: The name suggests, he said, that “they’re afraid that the electorate only recognizes the right-wing block of Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett as authentic Zionists, while Herzog and Livni are trying to say defensively that they’re also Zionists.” Oz, who is a supporter of the far-left Meretz party, speaks to a kind of purity that takes it for granted that a true Zionist is a liberal democrat, whose thinking is set forth in Israel’s Declaration of Independence which proclaims that Israel respects the rights of all. He thinks that any good Israeli should be able to see that the thinking of Netanyahu and Bennett, who see no place for Arabs and other minorities within the borders of a Jewish State that includes the West Bank lands of biblical “Judea and Samaria,” is a brand of revisionism that does not embody the original Zionist spirit.

We think Oz is unrealistically optimistic about the state of the Israeli electorate, which for over six years has largely supported Netanyahu’s way of thinking. Over the last decades the Right has brought this revisionism into the mainstream of Zionist thought. Hence Herzog and Livni are right to bestow on their party the name “Zionist Union” and join in the battle for the definition of Zionism, which speaks to the very purpose of the State of Israel.  This is a fight that we pray Herzog and Livni will win, for on it depends the soul of the Jewish people.

Netanyahu and Bennett would, for the sake of political gain, pander to fears of ISIS or Iran as reasons for Israelis to sacrifice the basic ethical principles of Judaism.  By lifting up the Islamist bogeyman, they continue to justify victimizing Palestinians who want nothing more than the dignity afforded to themselves as Israelis, which is to live in a state of their own. In the name of security, they would continue to enlist Israel’s youth in committing corrupting acts of violence and oppression against a mostly defenseless people, which deadens their souls to the living presence of the Almighty.

Herzog and Livni are asking Israeli electorate to take stock of the direction that Netanyahu & Co. have been taking their country, and ask themselves, “is this the Zionism that our forefathers signed on to? Will our children be proud of a Zionism that bristles with intolerance and hate?” At this juncture in history it is the right question to ask.