‘We need new vocabulary on Zionism’

PROFESSOR GIL Troy, a lecturer at McGill University in Canada and author books of including Why I am a Zionist, is concerned about the way Israel’s founding ideology is being discussed — or not — by young Jews.

In the UK this week for a lecture tour, Prof Troy told a Union of Jewish Students-organised event in London on Monday: “I see kids coming from the finest Jewish day schools… and they’re suffocating. Before they even get attacked on campus, they’ve been given such a simplistic, Israel-rightor-wrong approach to Israel and Zionism, that no wonder they’re running away from it.”

He added that on his travels around the world he noticed how hard it is for young people to discuss Israel. “When I see how the conversation about Israel has turned so fragile, so tense, it upsets me.

“I’m trying to introduce a whole new vocabulary and conversation [from] political Zionism to identity Zionism.”

Prof Troy’s tour, which was organised by UJS in association with the Jewish Agency, included events at UCL, Queen Mary, Warwick, Leeds and Manchester universities.

Daniel Kosky, Campaigns Organiser for UJS, said the week was “about showcasing the range of voices and opinions that Jewish students in the UK have about Zionism and Israel”.

He added the events were open to “all students, everyone, across the political, religious and cultural spectrum. To those who identify with any strand of Zionism, to those who do not”.

UJS purchased 1,000 copies of Professor Troy’s latest work, The Zionist Ideas, which it has been handing out to students. It is described as a “renewed” version of Arthur Hertzberg’s 1959 anthology, The Zionist Idea. As with the original, it contains a collection of essays by Zionist thinkers of all political and spiritual persuasions.

As Prof Troy said on Monday: “Going back to the 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, the Zionist movement was launched through conversation.”