HAARETZ: "I'll give you six months," said a close relative the day before I packed my life into two rucksacks and schlepped them 2,000 miles from Britain. A decade on, I'm still here, and proud to be an olah vatika (veteran immigrant).
Even within Israel the concept of Aliyah for Zionism's sake is often an alien one. Young Israelis in particular cannot understand why someone from an evidently prosperous country, with a culture-rich and progressive society and which is relatively terrorism free, would choose to throw it all over, leave their family and friends and move to a country so riddled with internal problems and violence.
My motivation can be summed up in one word. Zionism. In recent decades Zionism has become a dirty word in the world. It has been used as an insulting and disrespectful collective noun for the Jewish people, shorthand for the State of Israel within the context of its conflict with the Palestinians and even a synonym for the settlement movement.
It is time to reclaim the word as an expression of pride. Zionism is what has driven and will drive past, present and future Jews around the world to move to a miniscule spot of land in a war-torn region. >>> By Sara Miller | Tuesday, April 28, 2009
