Hamas's surprise strike on 7 October was a targeted blow to the soft underbelly of Zionism. She threw back the Zionist idea into the embarrassment of its early days, to the doubt cast by Ahad Ha'am in defiance of Herzl: "You may solve the problem of the Jews, but you will not solve the problem of Judaism." We were thrown into the basic Zionist question: What do the Jews want in the Land of Israel? The horrors of war were intertwined with the anxiety of the culture war that broke out between us over the past year. The plight of the Jews, which focused on the question of physical existence, was bound together with the plight of Judaism, which had lost its spiritual path.
What has Zionism achieved? Already in 2005, Dan Miron touched on the embarrassment of the Zionist purpose in his book "Relaxation for the sake of touching." As a professor of Hebrew literature of the 20th century, Meron questioned the purpose of the Zionist enterprise: "Even Zionism's expectation that the exclusion of Jews from European societies and their concentration in a state of their own would lead to the disappearance of anti-Semitism did not materialize. Even Zionism's confidence that it will be able to extricate the Jewish people from existential dangers, which has led to a new Jewish existential activity, has not reached and may not even reach the goal it set for itself. For the time being, the historical development of Zionism and its success in achieving Jewish political independence have only led to the replacement of existential dangers."
Song of Hope on Gaza's beach // Photo: Use under Section 27A of the Copyright Law
In fact, two difficult questions are raised here about the state of Zionism. In one dimension of the Zionist vision, Herzl sought a response to anti-Semitism. He recognized that, indeed, as individuals, Jews had so far failed to achieve a solution to the problem of anti-Semitism, although at times it seems that they have tried all ways to the point of assimilation. Nonetheless, he wanted to believe that if only the Jews succeeded in gathering into a normal state that would allow them to be accepted as a people among nations, as a nation-state among nation-states, the problem of anti-Semitism would come to an end.
Kibbutz Bari after the massacre, photo: GettyImages
One must ask about this: In the past hundred years, since the beginning of the Zionist effort to incorporate the Jews in their homeland, has Herzl's expectation of the disappearance of anti-Semitism really been realized? So far, it seems that the exact opposite has happened. An anti-Semitism has been created that is to a greater extent more sophisticated and protected by a kind of vaccine: ostensibly, no more hatred against Jews wherever they are, but only criticism of the State of Israel and its conduct. At the same time, it is also redirected against Jews around the world, to the point where they occasionally complain about Israel, which they claim endangers them by its actions. In recent decades, the answer to anti-Semitism has generated a new kind of anti-Semitism, no less dangerous than in the past. In this respect, Meron argues, this dimension of the Zionist vision has reached a dead end.
In the second dimension, Zionism sought to provide a response to the very defense of the existence of Jews, who did not cease to suffer from pogroms, pogroms and other troubles. In this dimension, too, Meron raises the thought, which arouses concern among many Israelis, that with all of Israel's independence and military power, what has only been achieved is nothing more than the replacement of one kind of existential problem, such as pogroms in Chisinau, with another kind of existential problem, such as an Iranian nuclear program threatening Tel Aviv, or the October 7 massacre. All in all, Zionism replaced disease A with disease B.
And yet, despite Meron's doubts, for those who observe the fighting spirit of the IDF soldiers and the heroic support of the soldiers' parents, the Zionist story is revealed in its simplicity, in an unreservedly readiness to fight in defense of the people and the state. And this is great historical news.
When Ben-Gurion agreed with Jabotinsky
A hundred years ago, in his article "The Iron Wall," Ze'ev Jabotinsky laid the cornerstone of the foundations of Israel's security doctrine. Already in 1923 he conceptualized the motives of the Arab struggle against the Zionist enterprise in Palestine, and accordingly proposed the strategic concept for the Zionist response.Applying the logic of the article to the challenges of Israel's national security today, it can be summarized in three topical claims:
The first claim: The Arab resistance and struggle against Zionism express a national-religious struggle, whose sources of motivation are constant. The thinking that characterizes the US administration and the EU leadership that there is a positive and sustainable solution to the conflict, by agreeing to appropriate compensation and the right compromise, has proven to be absurd time and time again.
The second argument: The Arab struggle and its embodiment by means of terror and violence do not stem from economic distress, poverty and despair, as it is sought to be presented in the West and with the support of "peace-loving" senior Israeli officials, as much as it stems from Arab hope. Hope that the Zionist sovereign presence can be undermined and weakened, to the point of bringing it to an end.
The third argument: Internalizing the first two claims, the idea of the Iron Wall is intended to negate Arab hope of achieving achievements in the ways of struggle against the Israeli Zionist presence and sovereignty.
At the beginning of the 1936 riots, at a hearing at the Mapai Center, Ben-Gurion testified that he had reached the conclusion that "there is no chance of understanding with the Arabs," and therefore one must strive for an understanding with the English. He added: "What can push the Arabs to mutual understanding with us? Facts! Only after we succeed in creating a great Jewish fact in the Land of Israel, that there will be such a Jewish force here that every person will see that it cannot be moved, only then will the precondition for discussion with the Arabs be created."
The words in their language and spirit expressed the full adoption of the "iron wall" position, as Jabotinsky's article concluded: "As long as the Arabs have even a glimmer of hope of getting rid of us, they will not betray this hope... A living people agrees to concessions on crucial questions... Only when he has no hope, only when not a single crack is visible in the iron wall." Indeed, in recent years significant cracks have emerged in the Zionist iron wall. At this time, the ultimate goal of the war: to rehabilitate the Zionist iron wall and to place it with renewed strength for the next hundred years.
The rehabilitation of the communities destroyed in the Hamas attack and the return of the communities to the communities abandoned in the Galilee and the Negev are critical components in the rehabilitation of the Iron Wall. The conditions for this are far from limited to technical tasks of renovation and construction. On the sources of strength for the victory in 2018, Ben-Gurion wrote: "We reached victory on three paths: on the path of faith, on the path of pioneering creativity, on the path of suffering." These are the paths to victory in this war as well.
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