The ideology of the year: How Israel vindicated Zionism in 2024 - opinion

It’s mid-December, so we’re drowning in one-liners defining 2024. Donald Trump is Time magazine’s “Person of the Year,” predictably. A Gazan woman embracing her dead niece is World Press’s “Photo of the Year,” predictably. And Taylor Swift won the “Album of the Year” Grammy – again – and again predictably. I propose, unpredictably, designating Zionism the “Ideology of the Year.”

A year ago, Israel, the Jewish people, and Zionism were reeling, experiencing existential threats. By mid-December, the Israeli army had rallied impressively, squeezing Hamas, even freeing some hostages. But the Houthis were attacking Israel. Hezbollah’s rockets had emptied Israel’s northernmost communities, while terrifying Israelis, anticipating upcoming devastation. Syria protected the totalitarians’ trail of death, endlessly rearming Hezbollah as Iran’s “ring of fire” threatened the Jewish state.

Meanwhile, the yelping for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop short in Gaza and cease firing crescendoed. Jews worldwide endured surges of Jew hatred. And the “un-Jews” –  the rabbis, Jewish studies professors, and other anti-Zionists on the Jewish dole – dominated the headlines. Denouncing “the mass murder in Gaza,” this marginal minority wanted America to deprive Israel of weapons.

One year later – despite freshly dug graves and unfreed hostages – we’re on a roll.

How Israel vindicated Zionism

Israel’s mass doggedness saved Israel while strengthening the free world. Zionists on campus and worldwide found their footing. The Zionist ethos of self-defense, the Zionist refusal to surrender, and sheer Zionist grit vindicated the Zionist movement, while offering an ideological model other democracies should appreciate.

Few Western leaders seem to understand what Netanyahu, the IDF, and Israel’s extraordinary soldiers and citizens do. War is a pressure cooker. You succeed by enduring the pressure while crushing your enemies until they break. The constant time-outs the world demanded for Hamas would have recreated the pre-October 7 standoff of “mowing the lawn” and considering Hamas “pragmatic” – with two massive deficits added. The 1,200-plus killed by Hamas would have died in vain – with tens of thousands more Israelis easily targeted by Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. And the deterrence Israel lost following that monstrous Simchat Torah misfire would still be gone.

Today, although Israelis paid a shattering price by being attacked, the balance of terror Israel needs to restrain its enemies has been restored, in Israel’s favor. Hezbollah’s and Syria’s collapse, and Iran’s whimpers, demonstrate what a formidable, determined, unrelenting democracy can do to swaggering bullies.

So, yes, we vindicated the Zionist ethos of self-defense. We – our prime minister, the generals, our reservists, their supportive loved ones, and our regular soldiers – reaffirmed Zionism’s prime directive: Defend yourselves. We are no longer the world’s sitting duck. Zionism has returned Jews to history. We take responsibility for our fate, wielding power formidably, as ethically as possible, without forgetting our primary moral responsibility to repel enemies promising to destroy us.

GOOD DOCTRINES need people of good character, too.

We vindicated the Zionist refusal to surrender because, in an age of instant self-gratification and Israel-bashing, it was tempting to quit too early. Our greatest benefactors, the Americans, insisted. Many close friends, Jewish and non-Jewish, hassled us. Some citizens demanded it. The pressure was intense. But most reservists continued to put politics on mute, kiss their families goodbye, abandon their bosses – or employees – and suspend their everyday dreams temporarily, whenever they were called. We’re still burying some of those holy warriors, yet most soldier on, understanding that this is our chance “la’asot seder,” to restore order.

In Gaza and Lebanon, in the air, on the sea, in the tunnels, Israel’s soldiers were steely and nimble. The home front was equally resilient, with mass volunteering, co-workers accepting extra burdens to jump-start Israel’s war-torn economy, teenagers who keep enlisting, and spouses, children, and parents who coped with missing loved ones – sometimes temporarily as they fought, and sometimes, alas, forevermore.

At the risk of being triumphalist, I keep noticing that Western drift further spotlights Israel’s wartime mix of determination and exhilaration. We know what’s worth living for – and dying for. American headlines describe a sick, sexy, rich-kid killer charming the “woke” set’s laptop revolutionaries, and sexual harassers snaring government appointments. Meanwhile, mass loneliness, mental-health distress, and alienation spread, Left and Right, especially among youngsters, as too many teachers trash American values, coddle students, then watch them lash out against each other, their parents, and “the system.”

Canada suffers under a child king – prime minister – who boasts that “there is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada” and stays silent as his “first post-national state” beats up Jews, stagnates economically, and appears “broken.” Similarly, British newspapers lament “decay,” a “forlorn and frustrated public mood,” and “the death knell of optimism.”

Zionism, at its best, synthesizes Jewish values with liberal democracy, juggling universalism and particularism. The balance resonates with the West’s silenced majority – neither so woke as to be soullessly cosmopolitan nor so “supremacist” as to be tyrannically chauvinistic.

Zionist left-wingers serve in the military, value family, observe traditions in some way, and reject simplistic “oppressed-oppressor” paradigms. Zionism’s color-blind right-wingers don’t peek into their neighbors’ bedrooms and don’t knock others down to build up Jewish pride. Together, they form a robust middle and a buoyant society, wherein Left and Right defend Israel together.

While unleashing the collective fist when necessary, they live life with a smile on their collective face. That’s how Israel’s younger generation outshines its legendary founders, from David Ben-Gurion to Menachem Begin. Unlike those history-making, crusty, often sour-faced pioneers, today’s Israelis temper heroic toughness with a refreshing sense of humor.  

With their jolly fortitude, they redeemed Israel and improved the world in 2024, vindicating our old-new ethos.

The writer, a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. His latest book, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream, was just published.