I Changed My Mind On Zionism—Thanks To Both The Irrational Left And Right

Once again, I find myself a black sheep.

The truth isn’t found by running in the opposite direction of what you denounce. More often than not, you’ll just reach a converse but equally flawed position as your opponent. 

As nationwide campus protests against Zionism have gained attention for the ignorant and ugly beliefs some activists espouse, we’re seeing yet again that many people don’t adopt beliefs because they’re true, but because it’s what their peers will praise. Both the authoritarian Left and Right have mirrored each other’s failures for centuries—their current approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict proves nothing has changed.

After October 7th, I joined many others by instantly aligning with the Zionist position. I hadn’t thought much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before, so my first time ever seriously considering it was spurred on by the horror of that massacre. I felt a visceral disgust that made me sympathize with Israel—a country I knew little about—and feel contempt for Islam and the Middle East—a religion and region I already held negative associations with. I’d never seen footage of Israel’s attacks on Palestinians, nor the conditions they lived in; I was a blank canvas. 

With little historical knowledge, it seemed obvious who the aggressors and victims were. I saw a clear battle of good vs. evil, which motivated me to try on all the standard Zionist arguments. Doesn’t Israel have a right to secure its country at all costs? Palestine doesn’t seem capable of self-governance. October 7th justifies Israel’s right to claim the remaining Palestinian land for its safety. It’s good to have a Westernized country in the Middle East. Pro-Palestinian activists are so unhinged that their position simply can’t be credible. Shouldn’t the more organized, successful country have the right to prevail?

However, despite my visceral disgust over the attack and instinctual agreement with Zionists, a practice of intellectual humility and self-awareness prevented me from believing I knew enough to have an informed perspective on a foreign conflict famous for its complexity. 

This is one of the defining differences between me and my peers: I resisted the temptation to think I could instantly know the truth about a topic I’d only just started learning about. 

Rather than forming my beliefs in an echo chamber where only the weakest counterarguments were presented, I had something rare: a trustworthy, knowledgeable, and reasonable person to debate with. I happened to be dating an expert: Jake Klein, who co-founded The Black Sheep with me, had written about the ugly history of Zionism and participated in a powerful debate on “What Relationship American Jews Should Have With Israel?” He was raised as an Orthodox Jew and attended a Jewish-Zionist private school for 12 years. He’s also a deeply rational and patient person who’s willing to debate to find the truth after most people have escaped from logic into insults and slogans. When obvious questions came to my mind after October 7th, like “Why didn’t the Palestinians accept peace after previous negotiations?” or “Isn’t Israel entitled to remove proven threats?”, Jake didn’t shame or insult me, he simply explained a perspective I had never encountered. I debated every Zionist point I could make within the comfort of a relationship where I felt no need to “win” the argument and become more attached to my views. I quickly realized there was more to the issue than I assumed. Still, I felt that I didn't know enough to be either an informed pro- or anti-Zionist, so I kept my doubts while recognizing that the rational anti-Zionist argument was nothing like what I’d seen from leftist activists.

It was clear I needed more time to develop an informed position on Zionism, so I avoided making public comments on the issue in the meantime. I didn’t realize until later just how crucial this choice was for finding the truth. As soon as you take a public stance, you’re incentivized to defend not just your opinion, but your reputation from those who disagree (as explained in another of Jake's recent essays). By not taking public stances, I avoided making arguments that would’ve incentivized me to dig my heels deeper into my current position. Instead, I stayed open-minded enough to keep evolving my position. 

This is one reason leftist activists are so self-destructive: not long after the October 7th attack, it was 2020 all over again, with strangers monitoring strangers for silence online. The manipulative act of pressuring strangers into taking public stances is why I published Why Silence Isn’t Violence by Gillian Florence Sanger on December 18th. The authoritarian, narcissistic psychology at the core of “woke” leftism was re-energized by the cause of Palestinian liberation, just as it was by police brutality during the BLM movement. When I spoke out against these manipulative tactics, arguing that no speech is an important part of free speech, they came for me. It didn’t matter that my publication had already published Jake’s criticism of Zionism, despite knowing it would cost us subscribers and possibly more. To authoritarians, conforming to the collective comes before the cause, so defending the virtues of silence made me an enemy. 

Many Western leftist activists make the plight of Palestinians entirely about bringing attention to themselves: causing traffic jams, heckling event speakers, and using bullhorns in coffee shops. These abhorrent, counter-productive tactics are proof that before effectively advocating for a cause, these activists want to feel self-righteous, appease their peers, and spread collectivism. They’ve provided an anti-hero image of the Palestinian cause, sucking up all the air-time and making it easy for opponents to mischaracterize anti-Zionism.

The cost for self-aggrandizing activism is often paid by the cause itself, just as leftists have derailed progress on other legitimate causes like homelessness and racism. Even as I was learning the flaws in the Zionist position, some pro-Palestinian activists and their behavior—like ripping down hostage posters—made me less interested in criticizing Zionism and more interested in criticizing them. These leftists have been crucial in crafting the narrative now cemented in the minds of my right-wing peers. And yet, the worst person you know can still be correct. Because many conservatives hate leftists more than they love liberty, they stopped thinking rationally once the issue became a Right vs. Left debate. Just as quickly as the left started exploiting the struggle of Palestinians, the Right’s sympathy for Israel devolved into disdain for Palestinians.

Because the Right relies on the Left for discerning what moral direction to run in, they’re approaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on easy mode, ignoring knowledgable advocates to instead dunk on naive students and activists who can only see the world through leftist dogma. When you don’t know how much you don’t know, someone like Destiny rambling on with his usual false bravado seems convincing because it speaks to the level of understanding most of America’s newest Zionists hold: a history that started on October 7th and counter-arguments a trained parrot could out do.

While debating Zionism with Jake helped, he wasn’t ultimately why I changed my mind. Listening to the 25-hour-long Martyr Made podcast series on the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, “Fear And Loathing In The New Jerusalem,” is when I recognized that Zionism is completely indefensible. I had assumed Israel was always Israel. I didn’t know that the Jews who historically lived in Palestine before Zionist immigration opposed it. I didn’t know how many terrible people were instrumental to the Zionist ideology and its execution: Menachem Begin’s terrorist attacks on British and Palestinian civilians, and his encouragement of settlers' expansion beyond Israel's internationally recognized border into Palestinian land; Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s and his desire to colonize not just the region of Palestine, but all of Jordan and parts of Lebanon and Syria; the Zionist terrorist group Lehi, who wanted to ally with the Nazis in WW2 and assassinated the Swedish U.N. peace mediator Count Folke Bernadotte—who had previously negotiated the rescue of thousands of Jews from Nazi concentration camps—for trying to negotiate a truce between Zionists and Palestinians. I didn’t know Zionists even practiced terrorism, let alone that they’d assassinated their fellow Jews. I didn’t know that David Ben-Gurion, the preeminent leader of the Zionist movement and first Prime Minister of Israel, had openly admitted he believed in sacrificing Jewish children to create the Jewish state, explaining after a deadly pogrom in Nazi Germany that, “If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.” I didn’t know that Palestinians were at first generally welcoming of Jewish immigrants, while many Zionists knew from the start that their intention was to create a Jewish ethno-state on Palestinian land. I didn’t know that as recently as the 1990s, Zionists had pressured the U.S. to refuse Jewish refugees from the USSR in order to further populate Israel, yet again exposing the destructive nationalist ethos valuing the Jewish state above Jewish individuals. I didn’t even realize how absurd the Zionist claim that all Jews have a “birthright” to take land they’ve never owned or even touched is. I felt insane.

Were my “free-thinking” peers just as ignorant of this history as I was, and if not, how could they support this?

Anti-Zionism is not about annihilating Israel's inhabitants, nor synonymous with being anti-Jewish. Zionism is an ethno-nationalist ideology, not unlike other racist identity-based nationalisms, such as white or black nationalism. It was conceived as such from its origins and remains true to that goal today. Zionism is incompatible with the classical liberalism my right-leaning peers have built personal brands upon. And though they criticize the left for enforcing a hierarchy of identities, Zionism is the definition of identity politics. While I hope for a peaceful solution—two-state or otherwise—that respects the dignity of all individuals, Zionism is the origin of and an obstacle to resolving the present day conflict felt by all caught in its wake.

It’s a humbling experience to realize how easily we can be led to adopt beliefs incompatible with our values through the right mix of shocking tragedy, biased media consumption, and antagonism from ideologues. It would be easier for me to not write this essay, as I’ll likely gain little from publishing it and may even lose opportunities. Unlike mocking “neo-pronouns” and bemoaning cancel culture, it requires risk to take this stance. It's clear that speaking out against Zionism will put me at odds with many people I'd like to remain in good standing with, but I know my position will eventually be vindicated and that the narrative changes one voice at a time. So once again, I find myself a black sheep.

I'm not an unhinged leftist or right-wing ideologue: let the fact that I defy the strawman stereotype of an anti-Zionist be your catalyst for reconsidering your understanding. In hindsight, Zionism will be seen as far more destructive and morally indefensible than vaccine mandates or lockdowns—mistakes the Right is fond of imagining how history will portray. We will look back on Zionism with the same moral disdain that most of us look at any ethno-nationalism with. Instead of falling for yet another collectivist ideology that weaponizes identity to justify authoritarianism, we should abide by the one approach that promotes fairness and freedom: treating all people as individuals, not as groups.

The flaws in ethno-nationalism are exactly what America solved by offering a nation that could belong to anyone who shared its ideals, regardless of identity. It’s this ideal that needs fighting for, not more of the same identity-based systems of that past, no matter what new hierarchy they promote.

Recognizing how Zionism perpetuates this pattern will provide you a new level of clarity. You will see what many haven’t yet: defeating the authoritarian Left is not as simple as running blindly to the authoritarian Right. The Zionist Right and the Marxist Left are the ideologically-captured collectivist enemies each of them deserves. Luckily these aren’t our only two choices for a more enlightened humanity, they are simply the obstacles to it. We are in an age that requires people who act on principles, not as partisans. Unfortunately, it’s the truth and innocent individuals who will pay the cost until we close yet another chapter in the long, ugly history of groupthink.