This Is Our Moment for Fearless Zionism

I spent Shabbat at the University of Texas at Austin, where students are reeling, with the rest of the world, about the display of sheer evil they witnessed: how  Hamas delighted in its slaughter of the Bibas boys – and didn’t even return their martyred mother’s remains, at first.

Er, scratch that. I forgot the caveats:  I spent Shabbat at UT Austin, where many Jewish students are reeling, with most but not all of the Jewish world – and a depressingly small number of non-Jewish friends.  Alas, we’re all feeling it: the pain of the brutal murders and manipulations is compounded by the silence of so many in the face of such an assault on humanity, on civilization, on America, and on the West.

The New York Times – that moral arbiter for too many Jews who never “woke” to the reality of its cravenness – ran a headline that says it all: “Fate of Bibas Family Recalls Trauma of Oct. 7, Renewing Fears for Gaza Truce.” The writers are efficient: three assaults on decency in fourteen words.

First, “fate” is too deterministic and bland, obscuring the premeditated, deliberate, dastardly nature of the crimes — not just against the Bibas family, and not just committed by Hamas terrorists but involving many Gazans – and not regretted but cheered in Gaza, the Arab world, and in sick swamps of our own democracies. Fortunately, thankfully, the wickedness has not been repeated, not out of any desire for peace on their part, but because Israel, backed by good friends in the Jewish world, in America and beyond, fought back hard, strong, relentlessly and, yes, bloodily.  I thought the time for apologetics and anguish ended at 6:30 a.m. on October 7. But it certainly should have ended after Hamas’ weekly displays of depravity culminating with this latest perversity.

Second, “trauma” continues obscuring the guilty Palestinians’ culpability and instead plays into the sick narrative that Israelis were mostly motivated by revenge or blinded by their trauma. No: Israelis were fighting for their lives. More accurately, Israelis ARE fighting for their lives, day by day, battle by battle, loss by loss, threat by threat. Israeli society mobilized, with 200,000 flying back home, 360,000 reservists and soldiers ready to sacrifice it all, and 80-plus percent of the country volunteering. They weren’t working through some emotions, or seeking another partial victory with evil enemies who keep promising to destroy us. They rallied to win a war, to re-establish deterrence, to restore the balance of terror in our favor not theirs.   And, yes, I am proud of how much we accomplished, while defying the world – degrading Hamas, crushing Hezbollah, humiliating Iran, and generating so much pressure Assad’s Syria imploded too.

Third, by inserting “Renewing Fears for Gaza Truce,” the Times highlights its agenda. Avoid war at all costs, no matter how righteous the cause or pressing the need. There’s no appetite for Israel’s justified war for self-defense, for fighting evil, for crushing Hamas, for defending America, the West, humanity itself, against terrorism and Jihadism. Imagine the 1941 headline “Japanese Bomb Pearl Harbor” or in 2001, “Jihadists Attack America” … followed by “Renewing Fears of War.”

Ask my kids who have served. Ask any Israeli.  Ask an American veteran or active soldier – if you know one (sharp elbow intended). Those who have tasted the chaos, brutality and terror of war, don’t need knowitalls from Times Square lecturing them about the joys of calm – or the desire for a real, fair, workable truce, as soon as possible. But great soldiers in moral democracies understand that sometimes the only way to achieve true peace is by fighting a bloody war. That takes time in these days of urban warfare. Such veterans and soldiers understand, more than most, that by knowing what they are willing to die for, they know what they are willing to – and yearning to – live for.

In this confused universe, amid the too-deafening silence, hear the call for moral clarity: This is the moment for Fearless Zionism (cheap reference to the mega-star Taylor Swift intended).

Using a true moral calculus, Fearless Zionists would generate a different headline: Slaughter of Bibas Family Recalls Evil of Oct. 7, Confirming Need to Crush Hamas.” Same number of  words – different moral and historical orientation.

Fearless Zionists are post-anguish and post-apologetics. We don’t need Hamas to remind us again and again that we are on the right side of history, and the right side of this conflict. We know that this story also transcends the cheap, obsessive, left-versus-right politics of America – this is about right versus wrong.

This is our moment, folks. To reaffirm the rightness of the Zionist cause, yesterday, today and tomorrow. Looking back, we will not let them commit historicide, trying to kill our history or rob us of our joy. We know that we are a people as well as a religion – Am Yisrael – that we have deep historical ties to our homeland as the original aboriginal people, the indigenous people there  – Eretz Yisrael – and that we have the absolute right to establish a state in our homeland, Medinat Yisrael.

Israel, like all states,  can do good and bad. Zionism is the Jewish national liberation movement of the Jewish People in the Land of Israel, re-launching the Jewish-democratic state of Israel.

Understanding today, we know that Zionism was the movement to establish the state of Israel in 1948 and rebuild a new Jew. Since then, it is the movement of Jewish national liberation to defend the State when necessary, but build, be rebuilt, and dream always. So to be “anti-Zionist,” as we saw on October 7, is not to be against what Israel does – but what Israel is.

And we know that despite all the media coverage and international opprobrium, despite the searing moral dilemmas involved in urban warfare, we can be proud of the IDF. Not only have we fought as moral a war as any democratic army has or could, but they will be teaching about our restraint, our ethics, and our victory, in West Point and elsewhere, decades from now.

And, finally, evoking Bill Clinton in 1992, and Fleetwood Mac, we won’t stop thinking about tomorrow, or dreaming about it. As Fearless Zionists we always strive to do right, to do better, to build a better world, for ourselves, our children, and all of humanity. But we know that you can’t do good for others, until you first defend yourself, are good to yourself and your people, and do yourself some good too.

Fearless Zionists are not swivel-headed, forever looking over our shoulders, wondering, “What will they say?” We are level-headed, forever looking straight ahead, asking ourselves, “Who are we? What do we need to do? And how do we do it right?”  We learn from Americanism, not just Zionism, that liberal-democratic nationalism is a force for good in this world, and that while no nation is perfect, some dictatorial regimes and terrorist organizations are perfectly evil. We are proud, passionate, thoughtful patriots, not afraid of words like “pride,” “love,” “power,” or “anger.” We define true patriots as those who love their country because of its politicians always and despite its politics always.

Fearless Zionists understand that war is hell. We know that this war’s moral calculus starts with holding Hamas responsible for everything that has happened since October 7:  They started the war, committed despicable crimes, keep holding and abusing hostages, refuse to surrender, and hide behind their own civilians as human shields. We can regret the deaths of Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire, we try to minimize the death of innocents, but we know the moral onus is on Hamas, not us.

Fearless Zionists aren’t “April 1 Zionists”: supporters of Israel who nevertheless blamed Israel and not the fog of war, along with the instigators of the war Hamas, when seven aid workers were killed mistakenly, tragically – and then started saying “enough, stop fighting,” as the media turned increasingly on Israel.  Fearless Zionists don’t call fending off 320 Iranian missiles “taking the win.” They know the difference between defense and offense, between avoiding catastrophe and restoring deterrence. And fearless Zionists have a moral code too, but theirs doesn’t come from anguishing and blaming our soldiers for the holy work of doing the Western world’s dirty work. Our moral code comes from fighting evil, not just condemning it, while understanding how restrained and disciplined and, yes, ethical Israel has been despite facing an enemy that turns mosques into HaMosques, hospitals into Hamaspitals and kindergartens into killergartens.

We reject Jean Paul Sartre’s formulation, and the New York Times’ assumption: The anti-Semite doesn’t make the Jew. The anti-Zionists, including that small, loud minority of anti-Zionist Jews, don’t define the Jew. The Jew makes the Jew.  I am not a Zionist because of their hatred, but I do occasionally have to shape my Zionist agenda to fight it.

Fearless Zionists learn from our courageous soldiers. We can come from the Right and the Left, be religious and non-religious, be pro-Bibi or hate him, pro-Trump or hate him, but we focus on our enemies and fight them with clarity when they come to get us. And we never, ever, stop singing and dancing and continuing our celebration of life.

At Texas Hillel, before starting Friday night services, so many students said how grateful they were for their community, their camaraderie, their people. And one student – soon enlisting as a lone soldier in Israel — declared his gratitude about belong to a people who refuse to be Jews with trembling knees. That’s Fearless Zionism!

And in building our big, broad, blue-and-white tent, we emphasize our foundational consensus, which doesn’t start in hedging or regretting or fixating on those who betray us. Instead, we affirm. We root ourselves in our amazing tradition and our 3,500-year-old story, reach out to our people and likeminded allies worldwide, and find our strength and joy in shouting from the rooftops: “We are Zionists – and will continue to thrive, not just survive.”

Gil Troy, a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. His latest books, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream and The Essential Guide to October 7: History, Facts, and Figures were just published.