Zionism

(I have been a Zionist since 1962, at age 16, when reading an Encyclopedia Britannica 1949 yearbook and seeing a picture of Israeli soldiers entering Jerusalem in 1948. “What is this”? I wondered. In none of my history classes had anyone mentioned Israel or its war for independence. I remembered television news stories from the 1956 invasion of Egypt by British and French forces after Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, and somehow there was a connection to Israel. But I knew nothing else.

(So I studied and I read and I discovered a history not taught in American schools or in Baptist Sunday School classes, a 2,000-year-old story of a people thrown out of their own land, a land given by God. I learned of attempts at destroying those people, Jews. And I decided Zionism was a good thing, both for Jews and for the people surrounding the Nation of Israel.)

"’All Zionists are legitimate targets everywhere in the world!’ declared a banner recently paraded by anti-Israel protesters in Denmark.”

…

“The army imagined by Theodor Herzl, Zionism's founding father, marched in parades and saluted flag-waving crowds. The Israel Defense Forces, by contrast, with no time for marching, much less saluting, has remained in active combat mode since its founding in 1948. With the exception of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the ideological forbear of today's Likud Party, none of Zionism's early thinkers anticipated circumstances in which Jews would be permanently at arms. Few envisaged a state that would face multiple existential threats on a daily basis just because it is Jewish.”

http://online.wsj.com/articles/in-defense-of-zionism-1406918952?mod=WSJ_hp_RightTopStories

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