In the 1980s there was a debate in the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) world in Israel about the government’s decision to institute “summer time” by moving the clocks ahead one hour. The reasons largely had to do with energy consumption. There were protests from the religious parties in the Knesset about making sure this was done after Passover so that the seder would not begin too late at night. But there was a deeper anxiety in the haredi world having to do with the ostensible expression of power expressed in the “Zionist” state determining time. During these days I noticed a giant poster in Kikar Shabbat, the main intersection separating the haredi neighborhoods of Geula and Meah Shearim. The poster had two clocks, one reading 7:00 and the other reading 8:00. The first was labeled “true clock” ( she’on emiti) and the second, “Zionist clock” (she’on zioni). I recall being struck by what I took as an expression of existential angst embodied in this poster. While many governments legislate “summer time,” the haredim saw in this an expression of how Zionist influence pervades their lives and how, against their collective will, they feel trapped in its grasp. In the past sixty years, Zionism has made enormous contributions to Jewish and global society: it drained swamps and made the desert bloom; it provided a refuge for persecuted Jews from Yemen to the former Soviet Union, from Ethiopia to Iraq. For many American Jews, Israel has been a source for pride and renewed Jewish identity. It created a vibrant secular Jewish culture including art, music, dance and literature. It revived the Hebrew language and created a thriving and organic religious environment. It breathed new life and, for some, provided renewed faith, after the devastation wrought by the Nazis. It brought democracy to the Middle East. This is all to be celebrated.

But there is a darker side that cannot, and should not, be ignored. Zionism as an ideology and political reality was also guilty of a form of colonialism and, until quite recently, overtly denied the very existence of Palestinian collective identity. In some cases, it “liquidated” villages, illegally expropriated agriculturally rich territory and oppressed another people through occupation for almost a generation before any sustained armed resistance by the oppressed. Whatever justifications one could make for all these things, they were a product of Zionism, perhaps necessarily so. Benny Morris ’s “Zionist” response to his own post-Zionist book on the making of the Palestinian refugee problem said it best when he argued that, yes, Israel committed many of the atrocities enumerated in his book but that is the necessary price of nation-building. In other words, Zionism needed to undermine the indigenous population and deny their collective existence in order to create the Jewish state. While he claims it was taken out of context, his analogy of Israel ’s origins to nineteenth-century America’s treatment of the Native Americans is not totally out of place. While the analogy is problematic on many levels, it is arguably true that both countries would not be what they are had they not committed these deeds. This, I think, is Morris ’ point.

Zionism, of course, is not monolithic. However, Gershom Gorenberg’s new book The Accidental Empire does a wonderful service documenting how the leftist kibbutz movement was as deeply invested in settlement activity after 1967 as the religious Zionists now seen by many progressives as root of the “the problem.” That is, the issues regarding Israel, the land, and its non-Jewish population are not solely a product of a religious ideology gone awry but are an outgrowth of the very notion and nature of Zionism.

While many of us on the Left have a deep love for the land, the country, and the culture (secular and religious) that Zionism produced, we can no longer stand under the banner of Zionism; we no longer want to tell time by the Zionist clock. Perhaps it is time, after sixty years, to unambiguously state, “we love the land and its culture and support a state in part of Eretz Yisrael but we can no longer call ourselves Zionists. ” Why? Because Zionism, in its myriad forms, cannot absorb what needs to be done, from relinquishing vast amounts of territory to the implementation of a liberal (and not only an “ethnic”) democracy where all citizens are treated equally in the eyes of the law. This may, or may not, result in the end of the Jewish State as we know it, or as Zionism envisioned it. That depends on many factors beyond our direct control. Many Israelis, known as post-Zionists, have come to a similar conclusion but post-Zionism is an Israeli phenomenon and has no real place in the Diaspora. Diaspora Jews who are sympathetic to this position must begin to formulate a stance that continues to appreciate and even celebrate all the positive things Zionism has accomplished at the same time that it views Zionism as an ideology that can no longer serve as a foundation for the future of Israel.

Until this point, Zionism in the Diaspora has been viewed as synonymous with supporting Israel. I suggest the Israel that some of us would like to see is one that can no longer be viewed through the Zionist lens. Perhaps, after sixty years, we need to critically look at whether Zionism itself has become a spent and even counter-productive ideology. This is not about the eradication of Israel, far from it: it is about the liberation of Israel from an ideology that once brought it into existence but can no longer serve as its core. America would simply be a different country without the doctrine of Manifest Destiny or slavery but few, if any, in America still hold these ideologies as having any contemporary relevance. In fact, America has gone to great lengths to repair the damage done by these doctrines. We in the Diaspora have lived for sixty years with a Zionist clock. Perhaps it is time to consider resetting our watches.