Zionism: What's Left, Right and Wrong?

Left-Zionist blogger Ami Isseroff laments how Zionism is being associated with the political right. He sees forces on both the left and right making this claim:

... An alarming and discouraging trend has matured over the past four decades: Zionism has become identified in the mind of the public as a reactionary movement....

[But] The rebirth of the Jewish people was made possible in large part by the poor Jews of the world, who existed in abundance, despite stereotypes. Labor Zionism forged a new Jewish proletariat from their ranks. These Jewish workers and Jewish farmers built the Jewish state and brought the scattered remnants of the Jewish people to it. The reforestation and redemption of the land of Israel was financed in the main by thousands of little JNF boxes that appeared in every Jewish house, school and place of business.

Ber Borochov [founder of Socialist-Zionism] rightly understood that the Zionist revolution could only be made by a Jewish proletariat. That proletariat was created in Palestine, and the institutions created by Labor Zionism forged the Jewish state. Zionism was, in image and in reality, a creation of the reborn Jewish working class.

Zionism, the most successful national liberation movement of the Twentieth century, triumphed in the face of a powerful coalition of reactionary forces.... Click here to read Ami Isseroff’s entire article.