What is Zionism?
Two Jewish writers explain it to other Jews. Let's listen in.
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NOTE: Zionism used to be a word that everyone could easily define. Not anymore. The Tucker Carlson set wishes us to believe that Zionism isn’t even Jewish, that somehow it’s a separate thing, one which the majority of Jews don’t support (you know, since Zionism is not Jewish).
Of course, this is news to the Jews. Globally, between 60 and 80 percent of Jews consider themselves Zionists to one degree or another. That number rises to 90 percent in Israel (although Pew found “just” 74 percent). It drops to a mere 37 percent in the United States (perhaps Bernie Sanders is the source of Tucker’s polling?), yet even here, as many as 88 percent of U.S. Jews support for the State of Israel’s existence, and 71 percent of U.S. Jews report an “emotional connection” to Israel.
So the question is, what is Zionism? And why is it suddenly controversial among people who never really thought about it till they started listening to Candace Owens?
To find out, let’s listen in as two Israeli Jews explain what “Zionism” means in a Jewish publication (“Future of Jewish”) written for other Jews. Tucker says they’re a secretive cabal, after all, saying things to each other they don’t say to the rest of us.
Let’s listen in and find out. — RDM
What is Zionism?
by Eitan Chitayat and Einat Wilf
June 29, 2026
For most people, home is where they were born.
For Jews, it’s where our story began — the Land of Israel.
Even if some of us never lived there, the connection runs deep. Our prophets, our kings, our ancestors walked this promised land.
We built a kingdom and spoke Hebrew here.
Jerusalem was our capital. Twice.
Every time we were exiled by empires, we prayed towards it, broke glasses at weddings to mourn its destruction, and said “Next year in Jerusalem” — for more than 2,000 years.
Our entire calendar is built around this land. The holidays weren’t timed to, say, Poland or Morocco — rather, to the soil and seasons of Israel.
We are a complete civilization bound to one place.
So when people ask “What are the Jewish People? A nation, an ethnicity, a culture, a religion?” — the answer is: We predate these categories. We have one word, in Hebrew, for who we are. It is just two letters long: Am. Am Yisrael. It means, “the People of Israel.”
We are an indigenous people; a people whose collective history, culture, time, and rituals are bound to a land. Exiled and scattered, we were never seen as equals or fully belonging. Even when we reduced our Jewish identity to religious practice — as opposed to a true people — it wasn’t enough.
The father of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, saw it clearly. No matter how successful or how well we fit in, Jews would always be “the other.” So he flipped the question: What if we stopped asking for permission to belong — and just went back home? He reminded us all: We are a People, one People, with a shared past and future, and a home we longed for.
So when the world was being reshaped in the 19th century with empires crumbling and nation-states rising, we wanted what others wanted: freedom and self-determination in our nation-state.
That is Zionism.
Zionism is the Jewish People’s movement for self-determination in our ancestral homeland. Not living at the mercy of kings or czars or mobs. Shaping our own future. Jews wanted what every other nation wanted: a place of our own.
That is Zionism.
It was revolutionary. Because Jews were never supposed to have power again. We were never supposed to rise.
But we did. We rebelled. We refused to disappear or play the role others have set for the Jews.
We reclaimed the land we’re indigenous to. And for some, that was (and still is) intolerable. An obsession began.
A liberation movement that should have been celebrated was slandered, demonized, and attacked. Its enemies called it colonialism, even though we were in our ancestral homeland. They called it racism, even though Jews come in all colors and came to escape racism. They called it apartheid, even though Jews fled apartheid conditions in Arab countries. (And, today in Israel, two million Arabs live as equal citizens.)
Because Zionism isn’t about denying anyone else’s rights. It’s about affirming our own.
Zionism took a neglected piece of land in the Levant, purchased its malarial tracts, and made it bloom with grit and hope. We saw the promise of the land because for millennia we knew the place, not as a dream, but as a living memory.
That is Zionism, too.
And, in 1947, when the United Nations proposed two states — one for Jews, one more for Arabs — the Jews said yes, Arab leadership said no and chose war, because they believed the Jews must have nothing.
We didn’t want that war, but we survived and became stronger for it, finally creating a home and opening its doors to over a million people made up of Holocaust survivors and Jews ethnically cleansed from Arab lands for the crime of daring to image themselves equal.
So why is the existence of the only Jewish state still up for debate?
Because for too many, Jews can exist, sure, just not as equals. And certainly with no power. Tragically, the Arabs in the land (the Palestinians) have become the frontline of that obsession. They’ve been used by regimes, ideologues, and activists — not to build their own future, but to destroy ours.
The fact is, we are not going anywhere.
Yes, we lived all over the world. But we were never truly safe. Never fully free. Never fully home.
So when people ask: “We get that Jews are a people and they want a country of their own, but why here? Why Israel?”
The answer is simple: For Am Israel, everywhere else is exile. Only one place has ever been home. And only one place ever will be.
— Eitan Chitayat lives in Tel Aviv and is creator of the “I’m That Jew” brand; Einat Wilf is an Israeli politician and author.
Now would be an opportune time to educate people on Jewish and Israeli history. So here are some great books for the Rod Martin Report’s audience:
* A History of the Jews: A Study of Jewish History and Influence Across Millennia by Paul Johnson
* Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth by Noa Tishby
* Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn by Daniel Gordis
* Impossible Takes Longer: Covering Israel's Judicial Reform Crisis and the October 7th War by Daniel Gordis
* Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder
* A History of Judaism by Martin Goodman
* Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World's Mightiest Empire by Barry Strauss
* Uprooted: How 3000 Years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World Vanished Overnight by Lyn Julius
* Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military by Bryan Mark Rigg
* Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Barry Rubin
* In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands by Martin Gilbert
* Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship by Martin Gilbert
* Lincoln and the Jews: A History by Jonathan D. Sarna & Benjamin Shapell
A terrific article by Eitan Chitayat and Einat Wilf! It succinctly and eloquently explains what Zionism actually is. Zionism is simply put, the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancient homeland. That’s it. Zionism has nothing to do with settler-colonialism, white supremacy, Jewish supremacy, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, or genocide. Zionism simply means that the Jewish people are returning to their homeland to rebuild their state. The charge it had anything to do with colonialism is hilarious because Zionism is in fact, an anti-colonial, indigenous rights movement. People often overlook a crucial fact, the Jews didn’t just fight the Arabs to restore their state, they fought the British Empire as well. The Jewish people are literally no different from the Native Americans, Inuits, Native Hawaiians, Aboriginal Australians, Māoris, Aleuts, Ainu, Kurds, or the Samaritans. Theodor Herzl and Sitting Bull for example, would’ve seen many parallels between their people’s respective struggles. The Jewish people were never fully accept as equals or welcomed anywhere they went. In Christendom, they were persecuted, discriminated against, called devil worshippers, stereotyped, made to wear distinctive clothing, hats or badges to tell them apart from the rest of the population, were victims of pogroms, were expelled too many times to count, and were victims of genocide by the Nazis and their allies during World War II. Under Islam, they were second-class citizens who were made to pay a discriminatory tax, the Jizya for not accepting Muhammad as their final prophet. They had to live in segregated neighborhoods. They could only serve in positions subordinate to Muslims as well. Arabs and Muslims also did pogroms against Jews. During World War II, the Grand Mutfi of Jerusalem Amin Al-Husseini made an alliance with Adolf Hitler and the two made an agreement to exterminate the Jews of Palestine. Many Arabs welcomed the Nazis as liberators from British and French colonialism and enthusiastically assisted them and their Italian allies in rounding up North African Jews and putting them in concentration camps.
Thousands of Arabs, Afro-Arabs and black Africans also joined the Wehrmacht’s Free Arabian Legion. THIS history is exactly why Zionism was needed! Western and liberal values were NOT enough to protect the Jewish people from possible extermination! The Jewish people needed to return to the land the vast majority of them had been forced to leave several millennia ago due to an economic recession, Roman repression and a series of failed uprisings. When Jews prayed they didn’t face France, Germany, Poland, Morocco, Algeria, or Yemen. They faced the holy city of Jerusalem and they faced toward Zion. THAT was their native land, not Britain, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania, or Bulgaria! Europeans and Arabs always treated Jews as at best an alien other who didn’t really belong. Nor did America always treat them right either. In colonial times, some states forbade Jews from voting. Jews faced discrimination, red lining, quotas at universities, exclusion from private clubs, being banned from hotels, restaurants and swimming pools, and hate coming from popular groups like the second Ku Klux Klan and the German-American Bund. Israel was the best and only place on Earth for the Jewish people. Apartheid? In Israel? Don’t make me laugh! In Israel, everyone has equal rights under the law. Two million Arabs live in Israel and have full equal rights. The occupation of the West Bank doesn’t fit the bill either as the occupation is quite humane. If you want to see a real apartheid, go to Gaza where all the black population lives in the same neighborhood called Al-Abeed meaning “My Slave” in English or any Arab country where Palestinians are second-class citizens. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. That is where you’ll find the REAL apartheid! There is no more inclusive a country in the entire Middle East than Israel. Jews by the way are white-passing, black, brown, red, and yellow. So you are ignoring Asian, African, Middle Eastern, Latin American, and Caribbean Jews when you make the argument Israel is a white supremacist state. Ashkenazi Jews also are not white. Many are light-skinned enough they can identify as such and most American Jews do. But they are technically not. Also, dark-skinned Ashkenazi Jews cannot pass as white. So again, this argument is just flat out ridiculous. Israel also has done more to help the nations of Africa than any Arab country ever has. Who was it that had a centuries long slave trade and enslaved millions of black Africans? Oh right, that was the Arabs.