My Introduction to Zionism (And What That Word Means)

I go by X Judah.

This is an alias, obviously, and anyone with a sufficiently keen eye may be able to deduce what sort of person would use it, but I would like to clarify why I have started this blog regardless of whether or not anyone will read it.

I am a Zionist. After due consideration, I have found my preferred category of Zionism with great difficulty. I am a Revisionist Zionist with Neo-Zionist leanings. This is atypical of my upbringing: I was raised in a politically progressive environment with moderate-left parents and far-left peers. As such, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was seldom discussed under my roof, with my peers generally associating Israel with racism, war, and other things we were raised to hate. My reason for following Zionism, especially one of its more nationalistic variants, was not religious, and I will explicitly avoid naming my own religion because I believe Zionism to be theoretically open to all religions and backgrounds. The same goes for my race, ethnicity, or anything else that would attract the attention of affirmative action programs. The point is that I chose this path, and if one buttoned-up flower child can choose it, so can any other.

I will not give definitions of the terms that I use for the sake of brevity, as there is ample literature online and beyond on the various forms of Zionism. I will give you, the reader, the sole smidgen of advice that when researching Zionism, avoid sources with excessive emotional and dogmatic language. When I began to learn about Zionism, I consulted every available source, from conservative PragerU to moderate J Street to far-left Al-Jazeera, and it was Al-Jazeera that convinced me of my correctness and confidence in the veracity of my beliefs.

Rather than giving what I consider to be the objective facts, as those can be summarized far more eloquently and cogently elsewhere, I will provide a play-by-play of the steps it took for me to convert from a neutral observer of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a Revisionist Zionist in a politically far-left sphere(!) with a moderate-left upbringing.

 This has not been an easy transition, nor will it be for anyone else in my position that chooses this path. I have been smeared by my peers and faculty as a racist, an oppressor, an ethnic cleanser. Zionism, a core component of who I am as a person, has been tainted from all sides of the political spectrum by fallacious and dogmatic description and analysis, so I will break the promise I made earlier and name a single fact I consider objective--the dictionary definition of Zionism:

"a movement for (originally) the re-establishment and (now) the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel."

Nothing more and nothing less.