The tragic earthquake in Iran caused the death of more than 30,000 people and caused countless injuries. The world responded to the tragedy with offers of help. Israel offered to send aid. The Iranian government announced that all assistance will be accepted except from the “the Zionist regime.”
We watched and heard the words on television and radio, Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter telling his terrorist captors: “I’m a Jewish American. I come from, on my father’s side, a family of Zionists. My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I’m Jewish. My family follows Judaism.” For the “crime” of being born a Jew and being a Zionist, Pearl was brutally executed.
In Egypt in December, the Alexandria Library prepared to put a copy of the notorious forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” on display as part of a rare book display. Claiming to be the minutes of a secret meeting of Jews plotting to take over the world as part of the Zionist conspiracy, this pernicious forgery was labeled by scholar Norman Cohen as a “warrant for genocide.” Only international protest, led by UNESCO, caused the library to withdraw the book from the exhibit.
In his Kol Nidre sermon delivered in 1943, Rabbi Irving Reichert of San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El asked a simple question: “Where do you stand?” Speaking on the issue of Zionism, Reichert declared, “No more serious issue will face us Jews during our lifetime and the lives of our children.” Reichert was a critic of Zionism. His comments, offered in the darkest days of the Holocaust, only a few months after the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, caused deep concern in our community.
Sixty years later, before a standing-room-only crowd at the 2003 West Bay AIPAC membership luncheon, Julie Brandt offered a brilliant, powerful important response to those who continue to employ anti-Zionist rhetoric. More important, Brandt offered a beacon call to all who care about Israel and its future.
Said Brandt: “The state of Israel is not perfect, far from it. And to find fault with a 55-year-old nation is not difficult. …
“But today, many people seek to vilify Zionism. So, for them, I would like to set the record straight.
“Being a Zionist today does not mean supporting every policy of an Israeli government; being a Zionist today does not mean there is no legitimate room for criticism of Israel; and being a Zionist today does not mean a moral blank check for the state of Israel. …
“Being a Zionist today means supporting Israel’s right to self-defense as a sovereign nation, and being a Zionist today means that even as we necessarily struggle and wrestle with issues confronting Israel, still we remain committed to a safe and secure Jewish state in the land of Israel.”
Three cheers for Brandt. Her words should echo in our minds and hearts and should be heard throughout the Jewish world and beyond. It is that kind of expression that should give us confidence and direction as we force an increasingly dangerous world.
John Rothmann is a KGO Radio talk-show host, a political analyst in San Francisco and former president of the Zionist Organization of America.