When Arthur Hertzberg first published his magnus opus, The Zionist Idea, in 1959, all it took was a quick glance at the Table of Contents to get a sense of how varied, profound and extensive had been the exchange of ideas in Zionist circles. In the decades that have followed his book, a great deal has been written about Zionism, but there’s no doubt that the greatest days of thinking about the ideas of Zionism had unfolded before statehood.
To this day, there is no better introduction to the ideas at the core of Zionism than the approximately 85 page Introduction to that volume. It’s not light reading, but very little that is truly important is.
An updated version of that book, The Zionist Ideas, edited by Gil Troy, does an admirable job of illustrating how the conversation has continued, but even Troy would be the first to acknowledge that profound, ideas-based Zionist thinking today pales relative to what it was in the first decades of the twentieth century.
One important exception to that claim is Dr. Einat Wilf, who—to my mind—is one of the stellar thinkers about Zionism today. Formerly a person of the the Israeli left, Wilf has had the courage to rethink some of her previous commitments, and today, pulls no punches when it comes to articulating what she believes it will take to move this region to a brighter era.
As we’ll hear in today’s conversation, Wilf has recently launched a new political party—not left, not right, but something different. It’s called OZ (Strength), and in today’s conversation, she explains what it stands for.
A full list of her books is online, but here are some of the recent ones with which to begin:
The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace
Telling Our Story: Recent Essays on Zionism, the Middle East, and the Path to Peace
We Should All Be Zionists: Essays on the Jewish State and the Path to Peace
For the OZ party’s website in English, click here.
Wilf has also helped create a truly monumental movie about UNWRA. After watching it, it’s hard to recall how little we knew about UNWRA before.
Here is a trailer:
For those in Israel the movie in available on YouTube (just below). For those outside Israel, because the video below is geo-locked, there is a paid VOD option, more than well worth the few dollars.
Dr. Einat Wilf is a leading thinker on Israel, Zionism, foreign policy and education. She was a member of the Israeli Parliament from 2010 to 2013, where she served as Chair of the Education Committee and Member of the influential Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
Born and raised in Israel, Dr. Wilf served as an Intelligence Officer in the Israel Defense Forces, Foreign Policy Advisor to Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres and a strategic consultant with McKinsey & Company.
Dr. Wilf has a BA from Harvard, an MBA from INSEAD in France, and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Cambridge. She was the Goldman Visiting Professor at Georgetown University.
Dr. Wilf is the author of seven books that explore key issues in Israeli society. We Should All Be Zionists, published in 2022, brings together her essays from the past four years on Israel, Zionism and the path to peace; the co-authored The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace, was published in 2020.
For our paid subscribers
The link at the top of this posting will take free subscribers to an excerpted portion of today’s conversation.
For paid subscribers, the link at the top will take you to the full conversation; below, paid subscribers will also find a transcript for those who prefer to read, as always.
