There are two words I grew up believing were honorable: patriot and Zionist. Today, both often require explanation, and often, defense.
As a kid in America, patriotism meant admiration for the U.S. military and the belief that service and national purpose mattered. Zionism meant being the only Jewish kid in class trying to explain why a tiny country called Israel mattered to me before I even fully understood why myself.
As an adult, those instincts eventually became an identity I consciously embraced: American-Israeli. I inherited one half of that identity and chose the other. But the choice itself never felt entirely individual. It felt like a continuation of something older—a collective narrative, memory, and obligations that shaped me long before I understood it.
Today, however, identifying strongly with either America or Israel increasingly places you on the wrong side of a cultural shift that views national identity itself with suspicion. October 7th did not create this tension. It exposed it.
Among younger generations, disillusionment with America is real. Gallup finds that only 41% of Gen Z adults say they are very proud to be American, compared with 75% of Baby Boomers; only 42% of those under 50 believe the American dream is achievable, compared to 68% of those over 65. Today, housing is unaffordable, student debt is crushing, and political polarization has turned basic facts into tribal loyalties. I understand why many people feel detached from national identity because, at times, I have felt it too.
But disillusionment and rejection are not the same thing.
America has endured periods of profound national disillusionment before. After Vietnam, Watergate, and the crises of the 1970s, public trust collapsed. Yet the response was not to abandon the American project entirely, but to reform and rebuild it. History shows the danger comes when cynicism evolves into total rejection, and when people stop believing their society is even worth repairing.
That distinction matters because the failure of a country to live up to its ideals is not proof that the ideals themselves are worthless. The same dynamic now surrounds Israel. Being Israeli once carried a certain admiration: a resilient, embattled, misunderstood perhaps people, but legitimate. Today, Israeli identity increasingly arrives with pre-judgment attached. In many spaces, Israelis are assumed guilty before they’ve spoken a word. Israel is not above criticism. But much of today’s debate is no longer about policy or accountability. It is about legitimacy itself.
What is often lost is the founding story of Zionism. Theodor Herzl did not arrive at Zionism through religious mysticism or supremacist ideology. He arrived at it as a liberal European journalist who concluded, after witnessing the antisemitism of the Dreyfus Affair, that even enlightened societies could ultimately fail to protect Jews. Zionism was not conceived as a rejection of liberalism, but as a response to its limitations. Its core argument was simple: the Jewish people should possess the same right to sovereignty and self-determination afforded to every other nation.
I did not inherit Israeli identity the way I inherited American identity. I chose it when I made Aliyah at 22, knowing full well the obligations that choice carried: IDF service, sacrifice, and a more complicated life between two worlds. But chosen identity demands more from you than inherited identity. It forces clarity.
There is a cautionary parallel worth holding onto. Before 1933, German-Jewish intellectuals argued that their two identities were not just compatible but mutually enriching. The tragedy is not only what happened to them, but that the identities they held with such pride were ultimately declared incompatible by forces they could not stop. The answer to pressure on a hyphenated identity is not to simplify it. It is to defend it more precisely.
America taught me that people can build lives beyond the limits of circumstance. Israel taught me that history is not abstract. It has borders, funerals, sirens, and feelings.
The deeper issue beneath both American disillusionment and anti-Zionism is that much of the West has lost confidence in the legitimacy of its own national projects. And when societies lose confidence in their own legitimacy, they also lose the ability to defend their values, their allies, and eventually themselves.
Patriotism is not blind loyalty. It is the belief that a nation’s failures are partly your responsibility to repair, not merely condemn. Zionism is not supremacy or colonialism. It is the belief that Jews possess the same right to security, sovereignty, and self-determination as any other people.
Both beliefs are deeply unfashionable right now. That is precisely why I believe they are still worth defending.
Jacob Wirtzer is a contributing writer to Jlife Magazine.