28 Jul ZIONisM

ZIONisM is an animated film by Eitan Chitayat and Dr. Einat Wilf that explains Zionism from the perspective of Jewish history, identity and peoplehood. It argues that Zionism belongs first and foremost to the Jewish people: others may debate it, but they cannot erase or redefine its core meaning. The film presents Zionism as the Jewish people’s movement for self-determination in their ancestral homeland—a national liberation movement that affirms Jewish rights without denying the rights of others.

Watch the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1teGYJPo1EM

Key takeaways

The Jewish connection to the Land of Israel is historical, cultural, spiritual and civilizational—not merely modern or political.
The Jewish people predate modern categories such as nationality, ethnicity and religion; the Hebrew term Am Yisrael describes a people and civilization.
Zionism is the Jewish people’s movement for self-determination in their ancestral homeland.
Jewish longing for Jerusalem and the Land of Israel remained embedded in prayer, ritual, holidays and collective memory throughout exile.
Zionism affirms Jewish national rights without inherently denying anyone else’s rights.
The film challenges descriptions of Zionism as colonialism, racism or apartheid by grounding it in Jewish indigeneity, history and diversity.
Israel is presented as the only place that has ever been the collective homeland of the Jewish people.

FAQs

What is Zionism?

Zionism is the Jewish people’s movement for self-determination in their ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel.

Does Zionism deny Palestinian rights?

The film’s position is that affirming Jewish national rights does not inherently deny the national or civil rights of others.

Why is Jerusalem important in the film?

Jerusalem was the capital of ancient Jewish kingdoms and remained central to Jewish prayer, ritual, memory and longing throughout centuries of exile.

What does Am Yisrael mean?

Am Yisrael means “the People of Israel,” a Hebrew term describing the Jewish people as a collective people and civilization.

SCRIPT

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 and 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 toward it, broke glasses at weddings to mourn its destruction, and said, ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’

For more than 2,000 years, our entire calendar has been built around this land. The holidays aren’t timed to the seasons of Poland or Morocco, but 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 or a religion?’ the answer is: we predate these categories. We have one word in Hebrew for who we are, just two words long: Am Yisrael, the People of Israel.

An indigenous people are a people whose collective history, culture, time and rituals are bound to a land. Exiled and scattered, we were never seen as equals or as fully belonging. Even when we reduced our Jewish identity to religious practice, as opposed to being a true people, it wasn’t enough.

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 simply went back home?

He reminded us that 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 nineteenth century, with empires crumbling and nation-states rising, we wanted what others wanted: freedom and self-determination in our nation-state.

That’s Zionism. Zionism is the Jewish people’s movement for self-determination in our ancestral homeland. Not living at the mercy of kings or tsars or mobs, but shaping our own future. Jews wanted what every other nation wanted: a place of our own.

It was revolutionary because Jews were never supposed to have power again. For centuries, Christianity pointed to our exile as proof that the truth was with them. Under Islam, we were supposed to remain humiliated unless we accepted that the truth was with them. We were never supposed to rise. But we did. We rebelled.

We refused to disappear or play the role others had set for the Jews. We reclaimed the land we are indigenous to. And for some, that was—and still is—intolerable. An obsession. 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-like conditions in Arab countries and, 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’s Zionism too.

And when the United Nations proposed two states—one for Jews and one 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 more than one million people, including Holocaust survivors and Jews cleansed from Arab lands for the crime of daring to imagine themselves equal.

So why is the existence of the only Jewish state still up for debate? Because for too many, Jews can exist—just not as equals, and certainly with no power. Tragically, the Arabs in the land have become the frontline of that obsession. They have been used by regimes, ideologues and activists not to build their own future, but to destroy ours.

The fact is, we’re 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 understand that the Jews are a people and they want a country of their own—but why here? Why Israel?’ the answer is simple: for Am Yisrael, everywhere else is exile. Only one place has ever been home, and only one place ever will be.