Einat Wilf, Z3 Senior Fellow, Launches New Zionism Explainer Video
The definitive, animated story of the Jewish national liberation movement
David H.—Every once in a while, a single well-constructed video can effectively encapsulate centuries of history, offering us both a reminder and something we can use. This is the case with “ZIONisM” (pronounced “Zionism Is”), produced by Z3 Senior Fellow Einat Wilf together with Eitan Chitayat. The video (below) is five minutes long, animated, and spells out the singular story that enabled Jews to return to their ancestral homeland under the banner of Zionism.
Zionism today, of course, is under endless assault from without, flooding the discourse with malevolent ignorance about what exactly the word means—to the point where well-meaning people, Jews and non-Jews alike, are tempted to stay away from the word just to avoid trouble. This video is for them, for educators, and for anyone who needs a digestible, clear, definitive, and fun dose of the most powerful Jewish story of the last century.
This is how Wilf explained it in a recent post on X:
Zionism belongs to the Jewish people. Others can have opinions about it. But they don’t get to define it. Not our enemies, not hateful mobs, not bots or useful idiots regurgitating lies on social media as if they know our history better than we do.
Our national liberation movement has been recast as colonialism, racism, apartheid, and genocide, through repetition, inversion, and a sustained campaign to pressure Jews into surrendering its very meaning.
It’s only by understanding what Zionism is that we can see antizionism for what it is, too. Not the opposite of Zionism, but a comprehensive and sinister assault on Jewish life everywhere, wearing a sophisticated mask…
Zionism is our identity, carried for thousands of years of exile by hope, faith, and memory, and now embodied in our survival, our sheer will, and our refusal to disappear.
Zionism is the Jewish People’s movement for self-determination in our ancestral homeland. It affirms our rights without denying anyone else’s. It is freedom, justice, co-existence, strength, innovation, diversity, survival, indigenous rights, and so much more.
For a more in-depth look into Einat’s experiences teaching what Zionism really is to American college students, check out her new book Teaching Zionism: Revelations from a Skeptical Classroom, published in May by Z3 and Wicked Son.
Watch the video here:
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