Letter One: WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

Dear Students,

These letters call on you to resist the “Academic Intifada”, the anti-Zionist movement on campus and elsewhere, which includes professors, administrators and students.

By crying “Globalise the Intifada,” this movement endorses violence – “by any means necessary”; terrorism – “burn, burn Tel Aviv” and “we are Hamas”; and Israel’s eradication – “from the river to the sea”. These activists attack what Israel is, not what Israel does. In its actions and implications, the movement is anti-Jewish, anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-intellectual. It is addicted to black-white binaries, especially those of “oppressor-oppressed” and “coloniser-decoloniser”.

It also turned personal this year. There were calls such as “we know where you live” and attacks by professors on students and dormmates on their neighbours.

Many of the movement’s leaders seek to turn your campus against you, treating universities as propaganda camps pushing one nihilistic political view that is unacademic and illiberal.

The movement is obsessively anti-Israel. It focuses disproportionate energy and blame on Israel and Zionism, while ignoring bad actors worldwide, from Iran’s genocidal mullahs to China’s and Russia’s imperialistic autocrats. Such one-sidedness and such double standards are inherently antisemitic. In slogans such as “There is only one solution, intifada, revolution,” activists repeat a term – “intifada” – popularised in the early 2000s when Palestinian terrorists, rejecting the Oslo Peace Process and seeking Israel’s destruction, murdered more than 1,000 innocents.

The movement is also obsessed with race and identity politics, erroneously framing the nationalist conflict between Israelis and Palestinians as racial, despite the fact that there are light-skinned Palestinians and dark-skinned Israelis. Overlapping with many other academic trends today including postmodernism, identity politics, critical race theory, antiracism, DEI regimes, Social Justice Warriors, and the “woke” movement, the Academic Intifada fixates on Israel, Jews and Zionism.

And even on campuses the protesters are shockingly ignorant – unable in surveys to identity which “river” and which “sea”. Israel’s former ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, sighed: “The protests are produced by what our academic institutions have become and seek to destroy what they were created to be.”

Although these letters address this great betrayal, you will see that they are laced with optimism. How could they not be? If you’re tied to Israel in any way, you’re part of the Zionist Dream, a miracle, that, defying its enemies, has allowed individuals to thrive in a society balancing the old and the new while improving the world.

Zionism emphasises traditionalism, communalism, and particularism more than post-1960s Westernism does. Moreover, if you live in any liberal democracy, you’re among the luckiest people in history – safer, freer, more comfortable, and more prosperous than much of humanity, today and yesterday. How can I despair when I watch your Israeli peers fighting and dying for freedom – and I see their heroism and moral clarity in many of you too. And it’s not just about bravery, grit, audacity – it’s about a zest for life, a sense of humour, a fierce determination to enjoy and thrive that drives our enemies crazy.

These letters are for you, the students and others who won’t back down, the students who faced down the mob. These letters are also for those of you less involved, the silenced majority of students, both Jewish and not Jewish, who either do not fully understand the conflict, or just want to be students not activists.

This is not the academic world we entered, and it’s not the campus experience you deserve.

Let’s not exaggerate. Most professors still care about all their students, regardless of ideology, and care most about their academic specialties, not politics. But a fanatic minority has imposed a groupthink that resonates widely. Attacking the Academic Intifada does not mean that Israel is perfect or beyond criticism.

There is lots of room for robust debate about many issues, which currently include Israel’s leadership, its current war strategy, and the ongoing, agonising hostage dilemma. Zionists can be found on all sides of these issues.

And repudiating the Academic Intifada does not delegitimise every protester concerned over Gazans or disgusted by any particular Israeli actions. But your fellow students must take responsibility for their allies. They cannot march with people burning the Union Jack and Israeli flags, threatening you, and uttering genocidal calls against Jews, then pretend not to notice or avoid being implicated.

I learned on October 7, when a friend and I stood unarmed outside a garden in Jerusalem defending 50 others praying, that when you’re willing to die for something, you know what you’re willing to live for, too. These letters essentially ask you: who are you? What do you stand for? And, because of how our enemies have framed it, which side are you on? In the early 2000s, during the Second Intifada, the wave of Palestinian terrorism many feared would never end, I regularly called an older, wiser friend, Yaffa Reisfield, who fought to establish Israel in 1948. I kept asking, foolishly: “How are you?” She always answered: “Dancing between the raindrops.” We’re still dancing. I invite you to join this exhilarating, soul-stretching, thought-provoking, world-improving, liberal-democratic dance too.

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Letter Two : Why I Am a Zionist

Dear Students,

We Westerners are the luckiest people in history, living in thriving democracies. And we Western Jews are among the luckiest Jews ever. In my lifetime, both Western Jews and Israelis have flourished – defying the odds and the grievance junkies, justifying Zionism and liberal democracy.

Yet today, many students mindlessly call for the destruction of Zionism – and Israel – “from the river to the sea”. Zionist has become a curse word. Reeling, many Jewish students ask me: “Why keep using the word ‘Zionist’? Shouldn’t we find a term that’s not toxic?”

My American-infused Zionism is a hopeful, second-stage, Zionism. If I tried building it reactively, on scars, on my personal trauma from Jew-haters, it would rest on a thin foundation. Instead, it evolved proactively, on bedrocks of Americanness, Jewishness, liberalism, truth-seeking, and meaning-seeking.

It’s a dreaming Zionism anchored in rootedness, not homelessness, plunging ahead towards an identity adventure, not fleeing persecution and poverty. It’s a communal Zionism of “never alone because we are one”, not a defensive Zionism of “never again”. It’s a romantic Zionism of perfecting Israel, not just defending it, and no longer needing to establish the Jewish state. It’s a fearless Zionism that resists our enemies doggedly, while living life passionately.

And it’s an identity Zionism that, with respect to President John F Kennedy, doesn’t just ask “What can you do for your country?” but asks, and answers, “What can that country do for you?” – by being yours, giving inspiration and identity, wherever you live.

While I am happy to redefine, revitalise, and even revive Zionism, I won’t surrender to our enemies by abandoning this successful movement’s Jerusalem-based name, honouring Mount Zion in our eternal capital. Feminists teach us to “take back the night”, defying the haters. We Jews get to define our own national liberation movement. No one can sully it for me or take it from us. I encourage you to hear in Zionism the joyous sounds of King David dancing in the hills – the Bible mentions Mount Zion nine times – of Jews from all over walking up to the First, then Second, Temples on the three pilgrimage festivals, of Jews wailing worldwide as they remembered Zion, of archaeologists digging as they discover the layers of Jewish connection to this place, and of Israelis singing “Jerusalem of Gold” to celebrate Jerusalem’s reunification in 1967.

I encourage you to hear in Zionism the cheers when Israel thrives, the sobs when Jews suffer, and your family stories which pivot around Israel and Jewish peoplehood in multiple ways over generations.

I encourage Jews to hear in Zionism the happy cries of “Next Year in Jerusalem” on Passover and the sad-yet-euphoric crash of the glass as we remember Jerusalem as we finish each wedding ceremony. And I encourage all of us, Jews and non-Jews, to hear in Zionism the song of the self and the nation, and the clarion call to spread justice and dignity worldwide.

That is why I proudly echo yet update the words I wrote in 2001, during the life-changing days of Palestinian terrorists blowing up innocents in cafés, pizzerias, and buses: “I am a Zionist.”

Tragically, today, too many Jews avoid the “Z-word,” because so many Jew-haters demonise Jews, Israel and Zionism. Our enemies must not define our movement. We are not just anti-antisemites or anti-anti-Zionists. We write our story proudly, proactively. Jews should reaffirm their faith in Zionism, which could inspire Israeli and diaspora Jews to find meaning by redeeming their old-new communal homeland. And the world should appreciate this gutsy, visionary movement, which rescued a shattered people by reuniting a scattered people.

Zionism is the Jewish national liberation movement, reviving a once-broken community guided by three assumptions:

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- That Jews are both a people and a Torah-orientated community of faith – Am Yisrael.

- That Jews share ties to one homeland – Eretz Yisrael.

- That Jews have the right to establish a state on that homeland – Medinat Yisrael.

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Zionism, the modern bogeyman, enrages extremists left and right. Although the Jews endured centuries of Western Jew-hatred, often masked behind the scientific-sounding term “antisemitism”, now Israel, the Jewish state, is the Western scapegoat, accused of most major Western crimes, be it racism, imperialism, colonialism or, now, white privilege. This latest slur negates the many Jews of colour while defining everyone by skin colour, not character, in a racist, essentialist, way.

No nationalism is pure, no movement is perfect, no state ideal. But today, Zionism remains legitimate, inspiring, and relevant. Zionism offers an identity anchor in a world of dizzying choices – and a road map towards national renewal and personal meaning. A century ago, Zionism revived pride in the label “Jew”; today, Jews must revive pride in the label “Zionist”.

I am a Zionist because I am a Jew. Judaism’s national component explains its unique character. Judaism is a world religion bound to one homeland, shaping a people whose holy days revolve around the Israeli agricultural calendar, ritualise theological concepts, and re-live historic events. Only in Israel can a Jew fully live in Jewish space and by Jewish time.

I am a Zionist because I share the past, present and future of my people, the Jewish people. Our nerve endings are intertwined. We know we are Never Alone. When any one of us suffers, we share the pain; when many of us advance communal ideals together, we – and the world – benefit.

I am a Zionist because I want to continue Jews’ historic, record-breaking, living streak.

I am a Zionist because I know my history. After being exiled from their homeland more than 1,900 years ago, the defenceless wandering Jews kept being persecuted by Christians and Muslims – centuries before this antisemitism culminated in the Holocaust.

I am a Zionist because Jews never forgot their ties to their homeland, their love for Jerusalem. Even when they established autonomous, self-governing community structures in Babylonia, Europe, and North Africa, these governments in exile yearned to return home. Wherever we wandered, wherever our people lived, whenever we prayed, we turned towards Jerusalem, Zion, our forever-home. Those ideological ties nourished and were nurtured by the plucky minority of Jews who remained in the land of Israel, sustaining a continued Jewish settlement throughout the exile.

I am a Zionist because Europeans’ promise in the 1800s of Emancipation and Enlightenment became a double-edged sword. Most only accepted Jews if they assimilated, yet never fully respected them when they did.

I am a Zionist because in establishing the sovereign state of Israel in 1948, the Jews modernised a relationship with a land that anchored them since biblical times. Just as Japan and India established modern states from ancient civilisations, Israel updated our ancient language, Hebrew, created cutting-edge cities such as Tel Aviv, and retro-fitted the Jews’ 3,000-year-old capital, Jerusalem.

I am a Zionist because in building that Jewish Altneuland, Old-New land, the Jews returned to history as active participants, not just victims – with all the responsibilities and dilemmas power provides.

I am a Zionist because Israel worked, giving Jews a home after 1,900 years of bruising homelessness. Israel welcomed Holocaust survivors as well as refugees from Arab Lands, Ethiopians and Russians, integrating both Jews who fled in fear and those who came by choice. And every day, Israel navigates the many messes that inevitably resulted, while delighting in diversity, creating a moral modern society from its array of Jews – living democratically with Israeli-Arabs, our fellow citizens.

I am a Zionist because I wake up every day looking forward to joining others in working through our long, society-improving to-do list, starting with Israel’s unfulfilled promises of full equality to Arabs, Ethiopians, Mizrahim, the poor. But I go to sleep every night looking backwards, appreciating how far we have come, and how much better off we are in 2024 than we were in 2004 or 1984, let alone 1967 or 1948.

I am a Zionist because I celebrate Israel’s existence.

Like any thoughtful, self-critical, patriot, though I might denounce particular government policies, I do not delegitimise the state itself.

I am a Zionist because I live in the real world of nation-states. Zionists are no more or less tribal than most nationalists, be they American, Armenian, British, Canadian, Czech, or Palestinian.

If bonding as Zionists makes us inherently racist, every citizen in a nation-state is bigoted too.

Most humans share an eternal need for some internal cohesion, some particularism, feeling solidarity with some historic grouping of individuals, not others.

I am a Zionist because multiculturalism teaches me that pride in one’s heritage as a Jew, an Italian, a Greek, roots you, orientates you, plunges you into a conversation deeper and more lasting than the empty, trendy ones we keep falling into in our me-me-me, my-my-my, more-more-more, now-now-now world.

I am a Zionist because in Israel we have learnt that a country without a vision is like a person without a soul; a big-tent Zionism represents liberal nationalism at its best.

Only by working together can we solve our biggest problems, from cruel enemies and environmental degradation to poverty and bigotry. Constructive, open-minded, big-hearted nationalism, dedicated to lifting us all up, not building more walls, can inculcate values, fight corruption, reaffirm national unity, and shape our common mission.

I am a Zionist because in our world of postmodern, multidimensional identities, we don’t have to be “either-ors,” we can be “ands” – a Zionist AND an American patriot; a secular Jew and a Zionist. Socialist Zionists championed egalitarianism and Jewish nationalism. We, too, can be hyphenated Zionists, synthesising different identities: Liberal Zionists and Settler Zionists, Gay Zionists, Feminist Zionists, Eco-Zionists, and Religious Zionists.

Similarly, just as you can be Israeli yet reject Zionism, meaning Jewish nationalism, diaspora Jews can embrace it.

To those who ask, “How can you be a Zionist if you don’t make aliyah?” I reply, “How will anyone make aliyah without first being a Zionist?”

I am a Zionist because I believe in democracy. Fusing liberalism with nationalism produced free, prosperous, always-improving democracies, including Israel, despite terrifying attacks that often test its egalitarian values and freedoms.

I am a Zionist because I am an idealist. Just as a century ago, the notion of a viable, independent, sovereign Jewish state was an impossible dream – yet worth fighting for – so too, today, the notion of a thriving, independent, sovereign Jewish state living in peace with all its neighbours appears to be an impossible dream – yet worth pursuing.

I am a Zionist because I am a romantic. The Jews rebuilding their homeland, reclaiming the desert, renewing themselves, was our grandparents’ great epic; the story of the Jews maintaining their homeland, reconciling with the Arab world, renewing themselves, and serving as a light to others, a model nation-state, could be ours.

Yes, it sometimes sounds far-fetched. But, as Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, said in an idle boast that has become a cliché: “If you will it, it is no dream.”

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​Letter Three: October 7.2 and 7.3: How Zionism Saved Israel – and Could Save Academia Too

Since October 7, many of you keep asking me: “Won’t Israel still be fighting decades from now?” I know enough to know I don’t know – few predicted peace with Egypt, Jordan, or the UAE. True, the Hamas horrors rattled us. But they didn’t shake our faith in tomorrow or in Zionism. We’re not running away. And it’s not because we have nowhere else to go but because there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. Instantly, October 7.2 began, as Israelis saved Israel, transforming a helpless Holocaust moment into a new chapter in Zionist history. Today, it’s October 7.3, as we fight to restore a sense of safety and resume our lives.

As Israel survives thanks to Zionism, Zionism also offers a more patriotic, rooted, constructive form of liberalism than the illiberal liberalism that on October 7 blinded too many academics to a bloody eruption of evil broadcast straight to their smartphones.

Since October 7, Israelis keep wondering: “How did it happen?” That’s a “day after” question – and beyond these letters. But the scale of Hamas’s surprise attack raises a second question: How did Israel survive? Especially because it took hours before the army freed each besieged community.

Anecdote by anecdote, an extraordinary story of against-all-odds heroism emerged – highlighting the Israeli character in action. Hamas terrorists swarmed the border defences, followed by hundreds of Gazan marauders. They set ambushes at major intersections. So even when the cavalry came, the fights were bloody. But citizens, police officers, and soldiers, male and female, at home and on base, scrambled, improvised, and fought back fiercely. These citizen commandos saved countless lives. These Israelis saved Israel.

One Israeli who ran toward the trouble, Ben Mizrachi, was a family friend. This 22-year-old moved to Israel from Vancouver following high school. After serving as a combat medic, he enjoyed a South American tour, and now was at home in his homeland.

When Hamas terrorists assaulted the Nova music festival, Ben’s training – and courage – clicked in. Commandeering a golf cart, he and his buddy, Itai Bausi, ferried the wounded to the first-aid tent. Breaking into an ambulance, they found a medical backpack to treat people too. Alas, this time, his grieving mother, Dikla, sighed in her heart-wrenching eulogy, “Ben was unarmed.”

Initially, we didn’t want to know how Ben died: what terrors scarred his last moments, if the barbarians defiled his body. But hearing about his heroism at his funeral on Wednesday, October 11, shifted the narrative in my head – creating October 7.2.

For days, we wallowed in stories of Palestinian cruelty – and Israeli suffering. I remained heartbroken about this big-hearted guy’s loss. I stayed furious at Hamas’s savagery.

I still felt betrayed by a world that romanticises Palestinians and kept handcuffing Israelis defending themselves, for years. I felt disappointed by radicals who immediately blamed Israelis for being brutalised and by the silence of “decent” people.

Yet, suddenly, Ben and Itai flipped the October 7 narrative. True, the evil-doers’ joy in their Jew-hatred resonated historically. Nevertheless, this plot shifted. It wasn’t about pogroms torturing powerless Jews. It wasn’t about the Holocaust when Nazi dominance crushed resisters. Ben and Itai – with thousands of other heroes – returned Israel to its Zionist trajectory. October 7 and 7.2 became more chapters in Zionism’s rollercoaster tale about the Jewish redemption of a land surrounded by cruel enemies, which taught Israelis to fight when necessary, but live, build, and rejoice always.

Countless stories described villagers organising and defending their communities, from house to house. Omri Bonim, 41, and five others fought dozens of terrorists for hours until help arrived. Using their knowledge of their kibbutz, Re’im, they kept firing from different positions, creating the illusion that more defenders had arrived. “We’re fighting in the soccer field, for our values, our community, the place where we raise our children,” Bonim recalled. “This was a fight for our homes,” but our long friendship with one another gave us “the most organic energy there is”.

Dozens of Arabs, Bedouins, and Druze suffered equally, and responded heroically, which further proves that Israel isn’t an apartheid state. My friend, the educator Mohammad Darawashe, lost his 23-year-old cousin, Awad Darawashe, another paramedic, who was working at the concert. Friends texted Awad, begging him to flee.

But he stayed, tending the wounded, like Ben and Itay, until terrorists murdered him too.

Ultimately, Israelis’ fierce counterattack, which began in the blue-and-white grassroots, then was heroically executed by Israel’s army, saved Israel. So did the fast mobilisation up north, which stopped Hezbollah from attacking simultaneously. Clearly, Hamas won the first battle. Hours later, responding instantly, Israel’s Plainclothes Commandos won the second.

October 7.3 began the next day. Nearly 400,000 reservists mobilised—with a 150 per cent response rate to the call up. The IDF retook the initiative. And 80 per cent of the citizenry, including our daughter, Lia, volunteered and donated, creating a chaotic cornucopia of contributions, which was intensified by extraordinary generosity from abroad.

When the politicians failed and the IDF faltered, the people stepped in – and vowed to win. Winning went beyond breaking Hamas, preventing Hezbollah’s destruction of the north, and creating a buffer zone around Gaza. It included rebuilding the once-booming north and the pastoral south, which was safe and blooming, in undisputed territory behind pre-1967 borders, until Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005. Then Israel, pressured by a deluded international community, underestimated Hamas as “pragmatic.”

Omri Bonim, one of the Kibbutz Rambos, says: “When we all return, we will rebuild it all, and we will show the world how beautiful our community is.”

Ultimately, like Islamic State, the Hamas death cult only destroys – their own people too. Israel has long been willing to partner with Palestinians to build a different future. When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Palestinians could have cultivated their land, lived in freedom and prosperity, creating a Palestinian Riviera, instead of a terror state.

As Israelis stirred to save Israel, the Jewish people – and much of the liberal-democratic world – stirred too. Yes, many academics cheered Hamas, as masked pro-Palestinian goons bullied Jews, and cowards attacked Zionists online anonymously. But students and professors, shopkeepers and billionaires, fought back too.

When history breaks into your house, ruining your revelry, it’s worth responding dramatically. Especially for young people, this could be their June 1967 reset – this could be a moment when an old-new Zionist vision is born.

Zionism is an activist movement, of Jewish national liberation and transformation rooted in Jewish values, stories, rituals, ideals. For decades, in Israel and abroad, many committed Jews feared that most Jews didn’t care. Today, as we feel how deeply Jews feel about one another and about the Jewish state, we have an opportunity to name those feelings — and shape them into a renewed Zionist ideology.

Israel needs a big-broad Zionism uniting religious and secular, left and right—on some things, not everything. Unity on basics doesn’t require uniformity on every specific.

Let’s reaffirm our consensus that Jews are a people sharing one religion, with ties to one particular homeland, and they have the right — like 192 other countries today — to establish, defend and perfect that state in that homeland.

Zionism is a counter-cultural movement. It is centripetal, about “us” not just “I” — while respecting the “I” — empowering Jews and non-Jews to fight our enemies affirmatively. We fight by choosing life.

Today, while entering adult life, my dear students, you have tasted the tragedy of Jewish history. Whether you are Jewish or pro-Israel, you’ve witnessed evil inflicted on innocents simply because they are Jewish — or next to Jews. You have seen what it’s like to watch ideologues applaud evil and many good people ignore it. And you experienced what it’s like to have the mob turn on you.

Jews have always survived by not letting the tragedies define us.

I hope that during these dark, stressful days you’ve also seen the light, the heroism, the idealism. That, I hope you now see, is the Jewish way, the Zionist way, the liberal way — and the Western way too.

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‘To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream’ by Gil Troy is available on Amazon (£15.13)