If There Is a Future for Zionism, It’s the Path of Rabin, Not Netanyahu

From Jerusalem, I reflect on what Zionism must mean in 2025 — and why reclaiming Rabin’s legacy is essential to Israel’s survival.

I write to you from Jerusalem, where I’m a delegate to the 39^th World Zionist Congress.

For those who don’t know, the Congress was founded in 1897 by Theodor Herzl to support the creation of a national homeland for the Jewish people in the land of Israel – from which they had been driven some 1800 earlier.

The word Zionist is a source of great contention in 2025. Often, critics of “Zionism” are in fact criticizing the policies and actions of recent Israeli governments.

To me, Zionism is simply the belief in the Jewish people’s collective right to national self-determination. I believe the Palestinian people have that same right, and that both peoples’ legitimate efforts to realize it in the same land lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that must be resolved.

On Monday, I’ll be speaking to the Labor Zionist delegation at a session marking the 30^th anniversary of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination.

Here are the remarks I intend to share:

We gather today at a vital moment in the Jewish people’s history – one that calls for memory, reckoning, and leadership.

On the eve of the 39th World Zionist Congress, we meet to mark the thirtieth anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s murder for daring to believe that a different future for Israel and its neighbors was possible.

Together, we – the heirs of the movement that founded this country – honor his memory and shoulder the weight of his unfinished work.

Rabin understood three decades ago that the time had come to end the country’s era of fighting.

The time had come for a new era – of peace, of coexistence with our neighbors, of focusing on building a future for generations to come.

“Enough of tears and bloodshed,” Rabin said on the White House lawn in 1993 – a moment of history I was fortunate to witness in person.

As one of Israel’s greatest soldiers, Rabin knew that true strength comes not from the trigger finger but from the outstretched hand. In pursuit of peace, he did something unimaginably difficult: he shook the hand of the man he once fought – not because he trusted him, but because he knew the alternative was endless war.

He stood ready to lead Israel on a different path – one defined by courage, pragmatism, and the conviction that our future depends on peace with our neighbors.

And then his life was cut short. His dream, deferred.

In the decades since, we have seen more violence, more tears, more pain, more bloodshed.

Rabin’s voice calls to us still. His challenge echoes in this hall: Who will finish the work I began?

That is our charge as 21st-century liberal Zionists – Jews who know that Zionism without peace, justice, and democracy cannot endure.

We gather not only to remember but to recommit – to a vision of Zionism grounded in security through peace, and to make Rabin’s legacy our mission.

I must begin by acknowledging that perhaps the worst of what Rabin sought to prevent has come to pass in these past two years.

The horror of October 7 – the murder, the brutality, the violation of every moral and human boundary – would have brought him unbearable pain. Rabin, the soldier and commander, never hesitated to fight terror or defend Israel.

But he would also have been appalled by how this war was waged – and by the words of some leading it. He was a man of the army, but also of conscience. He embodied the tradition of tohar haneshek – the purity of arms – a moral code older than Zionism itself.

It teaches that even in defense, even in fury, we are bound by a higher standard. We fight because we must, not because we can. We fight to defend life, never to devalue it.

And so, even as we mark with joy the return of the living hostages and some of our dead, we grieve for all who have suffered – in Israel and in Gaza alike. We must say, with honesty and love, that we have strayed from the moral compass Rabin held so dear.

Israel’s strength has always come not only from its weapons but from its values – from the belief that survival must never come at the expense of our humanity.

If Rabin were here today, I believe he would ask: Is this the Israel we dreamed of? The Israel I gave my life to build?

Every nation faces moments of truth – moments that demand we ask: Who are we? What kind of country do we want to be? What values will define our people in the eyes of history?

Israel and the Jewish people stand at precisely such a moment – at a fork in the road.

One path – that of the present government – is a path of fear, division, and domination.

Incitement is used to cling to power.

Democracy is treated not as a sacred trust but as an obstacle.

This path deepens occupation, entrenches inequality, and extinguishes hope.

It is the path of Ben Gvir, Smotrich, and Netanyahu – a politics that trades in hate, that substitutes ethnonationalism for morality, and that makes room only for a narrow definition of who counts as a “real” Jew or a “true” Israeli.

This path leads not to security but to isolation. Not to peace but to permanent conflict. It will divide our people and shatter the bond between Israel and much of world Jewry – especially younger generations who can no longer reconcile Jewish values with the policies they see being implemented in the Jewish homeland..

And then there is the other path – the one Rabin sought to walk, and for which he gave his life.

This is the path of courage over fear, hope over despair. Of a Jewish homeland but one that is fully democratic for all its citizens. It is a path for those who know peace and security are inseparable.

The Zionism that inspired generations wedded our right to self-determination with our obligation to justice, equality, and compassion. It understood that Israel’s strength lies not in walls or weapons, but in the moral vision that gave birth to the state.

Friends, this is the choice before us: the path of democracy or authoritarianism, peace or endless war, Rabin or Netanyahu.

The world is watching. Our children are watching. And history will render its judgment.

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I came to Israel for this Congress as part of the Hatikvah delegation – a name that could not be more fitting.

We Jewish Americans on the Hatikvah slate came here to stand for hope.

• Hope for this country.

• Hope for our people.

• Hope that the nation-state we dreamed of for two thousand years will reflect the best of who we are.

Yes – Israel must, above all, be secure – strong enough to defend its people and repel any threat. Liberal Zionists do not shy from the fight to defend the state and the Jewish people.

But strength alone cannot define the Jewish state. Israel must also reflect the best of our values – the moral fiber that sustained us through centuries of exile and struggle.

Not all of us live here, but the state belongs to all of us. It shapes how the world understands what it means to be Jewish today. It is the proving ground for the values we teach our children as core to Jewish identity.

When people look at Israel, they should see not only a fortress but a light. Not only power, but purpose – a society embodying the justice and compassion our prophets demanded and our ancestors prayed for.

That is the Zionism we represent – the Zionism of Hatikvah.

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And so, friends, this is the moment we are called to meet.

For all the heartbreak of these past two years, we face not only steep challenge but extraordinary opportunity – the chance to complete the work of Zionism itself.

For more than seventy-five years, Israel has defended its existence. It has endured wars, terror, isolation, and hate – and it has survived and thrived.

But survival cannot be the endpoint of Zionism. The mission of this century’s Zionism must be to fulfill the dream on which the movement was founded.

In our generation, we can define Israel’s permanent borders, live in peace with our neighbors, and be accepted not as an isolated presence but as an integral part of the region.

Imagine an Israel in normal relations not with three or five neighbors, but with all twenty-two members of the Arab League – united in commerce, culture, and shared prosperity.

A 23-state solution: an Israel that lives securely beside a viable, independent Palestinian state and, together, joins a peaceful community of nations from the Mediterranean to the Gulf.

That is not a fantasy. It is a future within reach – if we have the courage to choose it.

• To choose leaders who know that Israel’s future depends not on perpetual conflict, but on reconciliation.

• To choose democracy over demagoguery.

• To choose a Zionism confident enough to embrace peace as the ultimate expression of Jewish self-determination.

Fulfilling the vision of Zionism means building the state the founders envisioned in 1948: “based on freedom, justice, and peace, as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.”

It means ensuring Israel remains the national home of the Jewish people – democratic, secure, and true to its values – a beacon of what our people have always believed: that strength and righteousness are not opposites, but partners.

We are the generation called to finish what Rabin began – to pick up his mantle and carry it forward.

If we will it – if we believe it, fight for it, and demand it – it is no dream.
Im tirzu, ein zo agadah.

Let that be the spirit we take from this Congress.

Let that be the legacy we offer to the next generation and to the State of Israel we love.

Together, let us complete the work of Zionism.