Zionism was a movement deeply rooted in human rights, and the quest for a just, egalitarian society. It is time to go back to the roots.

Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, was merely 44 when he died. The Jerusalem Report issue of July 12, 2004 commemorated
the 100th anniversary of his death with the observations of the renowned Israeli writer, A.B. Yehoshua. Jolted by the
Dreyfus Affair, from liberal assimilationist complacency into convening the first World Zionist Congress in 1897, Herzl became a
latter-day Hebrew prophet with his uncanny assessment that a Jewish state would emerge from his efforts, fifty years later. As to
his vision of the Jewish state — depicted in Herzl’s futuristic tale, “Altneuland” (Old-New Land) — Yehoshua states: “… it was
idealistic — pleasant, liberal, democratic: The rabbis didn’t get involved in politics, the Arabs had full rights, the cities all had
rapid transit, the workers had social benefits undreamed of in Europe, the choice of theater and opera rivaled… Vienna. Its people
did not die violent deaths and the whole world exalted in its contribution to humankind…. If he’d have lived today, I’m sure he
would have voted Meretz.”
In this spirit, Moises F. Salinas, a professor of psychology at Central Connecticut State University, makes the following article.