In 1959, William F. Buckley Jr. published Up From Liberalism, a piercing dissection of an American elite that had become intoxicated with its own virtue. He described a liberal class that preached freedom while practicing coercion, a group that prioritized engineered social progress over eternal truths, and who believed that the state could—and should—solve every human problem, even at the cost of individual liberty.
Buckley did not merely disagree with their policies; he diagnosed their ideology as a spiritual malady, a “mania” that had unmoored the nation from its founding principles and left it adrift in a sea of moral relativism.
Seven decades later, in the Land of Israel, we face a mirror image of that crisis, though the stakes are existential rather than merely political. It is time to articulate the uncomfortable truth that has permeated the last thirty years of Jewish history in this land: It is time to rise Up From Zionism.
This is not a rejection of the Land, nor of the People, nor of the miraculous ingathering of the exiles. It is a rejection of the ossified political structure that claims to represent them.
Just as Buckley sought to displace a hypocritical liberal orthodoxy with an enlightened conservatism grounded in transcendent value, we must displace the failing orthodoxy of secular Zionism with a renewed Jewish authenticity rooted in the Torah and the Covenant. We must recognize that the “State”—as currently constituted—has become the primary obstacle to the fulfillment of the Jewish destiny it was ostensibly founded to facilitate.
To understand how we arrived here, we must look beyond mere incompetence. We must look to the diagnosis provided by Dr. Raya Epstein in her prophetic 1999 treatise, Ideological Tyranny in the Guise of Democracy. Epstein warned us then that Israeli “liberal democracy” was devolving into a totalitarian tool—a “secular faith” designed to delegitimize the Jewish character of the state. Today, we live in the wreckage of that tyranny.
The Idolatry of Statism (Mamlachtiyut)
Buckley defined his liberals as those who believed that social progress is predictable and that truth is transitory. Similarly, the modern Zionist elite—the politicians, jurists, generals, and media apparatchiks who dominate Israel’s discourse—operate under a delusion of managerial omnipotence. But their error goes deeper than politics; it verges on theology.
For too long, the “State” has been elevated from a vessel to an object of worship. This is the idolatry of Mamlachtiyut (Statism). We have forgotten that the State of Israel was meant to be the chair for the Torah, not its replacement.
When the preservation of the State’s institutions—the Supreme Court, the General Staff, the Knesset—becomes more sacred than the lives of the Jews they are meant to protect, we have committed the sin of the Golden Calf. We are dancing around a sovereign structure, crying out “These are your gods, O Israel,” while the tablets of our actual Covenant lie shattered on the ground.
This idolatry explains why the “Rule of Law” is cited to justify the destruction of Jewish homes in Judea, while the same law is suspended to allow illegal Bedouin sprawl in the Negev. The Law has become a fetish, divorced from the Justice it was meant to serve.
The ‘Start-Up Nation’: A Golden Cage of Assimilation
This spiritual displacement is nowhere more evident than in the ethos of the “Start-Up Nation.” We are told to burst with pride at our technological prowess, our unicorns, and our cyber-units. But let us look closer. This obsession with technological integration is the modern incarnation of the “Hellenist” desire to be accepted by the global polis.
The “Start-Up Nation” is not a project of Jewish distinctiveness; it is a project of globalist assimilation. It is the desire to be a “Unicorn like all other Unicorns.” The captains of our industry and the generals of our “smart army” promised us that technology would replace territory, that sensors could replace soldiers, and that economic integration would replace the hard work of sovereign conquest. They sold us the “New Middle East,” a glittering mirage where we would be the R&D lab for the world.
But this vision is a golden cage. It binds our strategic freedom to the whims of the NASDAQ and the approval of Silicon Valley. It turns our “Jewish Genius” into a service provider for the Global Triad, decoupling our brainpower from our soul-power. The result is a wealthy state with a poverty of spirit, rich in algorithms but bankrupt in identity.
The Weaponization of Legitimacy
How is this system maintained? Through what Epstein termed “delegitimization.” For thirty years, the Left has successfully branded the Right, the religious community, and the settlers not as legitimate political opponents, but as “enemies of peace” and “enemies of democracy.” This was the psychological weapon that enabled the Oslo Accords to be forced upon a skeptical public. By framing the debate as a struggle between “enlightened liberals” and “messianic fascists,” the establishment created a dynamic where the Right was forced into a perpetual defensive crouch.
From the early cries of anguish in Judea and Samaria amid the Oslo betrayals, to the unheeded warnings about weapons confiscations in vulnerable communities, the state has consistently abandoned Jews to violence while arming their attackers. We have witnessed a fratricidal policy that pits Jew against Jew, utilizing the police and military not to defeat the enemy, but to evict Jews from their hilltops and homes.
This is the manifestation of what Epstein called the “Bolshevik” roots of the Israeli Left. Just as Soviet totalitarianism demanded total ideological conformity, the Israeli “Peace Camp” demands total submission to its make-believe. To oppose the surrender of land is to oppose “Peace” itself; to question the Supreme Court is to question the very concept of “Democracy.” In this Orwellian semantic game, “Peace” and “Democracy” become code words for the dictatorship of a minority elite over the Jewish majority.
The ‘Consensus’ Trap and the Betrayal of the Right
The tragedy is not just that the Left leads; it is that the Right follows. Epstein presciently observed the phenomenon of the “National Consensus”—a totalitarian trap where right-wing leaders, terrified of being labeled “extremists,” adopt the policies of the Left to gain legitimacy.
The operational plans for the expulsion of Jews from Gaza in 2005 were not merely errors of judgment but deliberate policy. That disengagement directly facilitated the buildup of Islamic armies and the subsequent atrocities of October 7, 2023. The very leaders who evicted 8,000 Jews, claiming it would “enhance security,” are the ideological architects of the current catastrophe. They sought to prove their “democratic” bona fides to the world by sacrificing the “settlers,” only to find that the world—and our enemies—viewed this weakness as an invitation to slaughter.
The War on Identity: Social Engineering via the Draft
The “Zionist Autoimmune Disorder” is perhaps most visible in the state’s relentless war against the Haredi and National-Religious (Hardal) communities. The ceaseless agitation for the “Draft” is sold to the public as a matter of “equality in burden,” but this is a lie. The IDF does not lack manpower; it lacks spirit.
The draft is utilized as a tool of social engineering, a “melting pot” designed not to create soldiers, but to create “Israelis”—stripped of the “archaic” adherence to Torah and remodeled into compliant citizens of the liberal order. The state views the insular strength of the Torah world not as a strategic asset—a spiritual Iron Dome—but as a demographic threat to its secular hegemony. By forcing these populations into frameworks designed to secularize them, the State actively wars against the very soul of the Nation it claims to defend.
The Geopolitical Pawn
The moral irresponsibility of this leadership extends to the global stage, where Israel has been reduced to a sacrificial pawn. We see the path being cleared for regional dominance by foreign powers, with alliances like the Abraham Accords decoupling Jewish security from Jewish interests. These accords are a golden cage, binding Israel’s strategic freedom to the interests of the Saudi crown and the American empire.
We are told the United States is our greatest friend, yet we are subjected to relentless espionage and political manipulation. The massive “aid” we receive is, in truth, a subsidy for the American military-industrial complex that stifles our own military independence. The state acts not as a sovereign entity, but as a vassal seeking validation, trading the birthright of the Land of Israel for a seat at the table of nations.
The Alternative
The old Zionism—the secular, socialist, globalist experiment—has finished its historical function. It succeeded in physically gathering the exiles, but it has failed to give them a reason to stay. It lies buried under the rubble of the “smart fences” that failed and the “conceptions” that collapsed.
What, then, is the alternative? Just as Buckley called for a conservatism that blends tradition with liberty, we must advocate for an enlightened Judaism. This Up From Zionism means rejecting the false dichotomy that forces us to choose between being “Democratic” (in the Left’s totalitarian definition) and being “Jewish.”
It means rising up from the vehicle of the State to the destination of the Redemption. We are not anti-Zionist; we are post-statist. We recognize that the vehicle has a flat tire, a broken engine, and a drunk driver. We do not abandon the journey; we exit the vehicle and walk the rest of the way to the Mountain of the L-rd.
This means embracing genuine Torah leadership—leadership that does not apologize for being Jewish. It calls for a recognition that true security is an inside job of the soul, reliant on trust in the Creator rather than the broken reed of foreign guarantees. It means recognizing that our strength lies not in the F-35s supplied by Washington, but in our Eternal Covenant.
The singularity of our return to this land ended the secular Enlightenment; now we must rise above the Orwellian ghost of a state that has lost its way. We must stop participating in the “virtual liberalization” that masks anti-Jewish aggression.
The book of the secular state is closing; its ink has run dry, its pages torn by reality. The book of the Eternal Nation is open, fresh, and waiting. Let us stop reading the script written for us by others—by foreign interests and noxious ideologies—and start writing the next chapter ourselves.
Up From Zionism! And forward, to the redemption.
