On November 10, 1975, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”. In Israel, that resolution was met with shock and outrage. Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Chaim Herzog, tore the text of the resolution apart from the podium, in a gesture that became one of the most recognizable symbols of Israel’s struggle against the delegitimization of Zionism. More than fifty years later, it seems worth returning to the question of what remains of the Zionism for which Herzog tore up that resolution.

At first glance, there was considerable justification for Israel’s anger over the UN resolution. Zionism was not born of a racial doctrine, nor did it seek to ground the rights of Jews in the supposed inferiority of another people. Quite the opposite. The origins of Zionism lie in the European humanism and liberalism of the nineteenth century. Zionism emerged from the experience of Jewish powerlessness, antisemitism, and discrimination, and from the recognition that a person belonging to a national minority, even if formally granted rights, is not truly free if his freedom ultimately depends upon the goodwill of the majority among whom he lives. In this sense, the original demand for Jewish sovereignty was not a demand for privilege, but a claim to liberty.

Herzl did not imagine a Jewish state merely in terms of territory, borders, and power. In his novel Altneuland, Herzl presented his vision of a Jewish state as a modern, liberal, and tolerant society. Herzl saw the threat to the humanistic society he imagined precisely in the rise of nationalist and racist forces.

In the elections held in the “New Society” Herzl describes in the novel, Dr. Geyer, a religious fanatic and racist nationalist, seeks to incite the public and exploit its fears. Opposing him is Professor Steineck, who warns the citizens of the “New Society” against the rise of a racist and reminds them of the values upon which the new Jewish society must be built: freedom of thought and expression,........

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