by Akiva Lichtenberg

While 2024 was celebrated as the year when more than half the world’s population voted in national elections, in 2025 Jews around the world have a chance to vote in a peculiar election of their own: the World Zionist Congress. This deliberative body was founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897 as a means for Zionist chapters from around the world to convene and resolve the direction of the Zionist movement.

A lot has changed in the interim. In recent decades the World Zionist Organization has organized elections for the WZC every five years. Delegates are apportioned according to the size of a country’s Zionist movement and elections are run by the national Zionist organization of each country. In the United States the American Zionist Movement has acted as the main organizing body for dozens of Zionist
organizations and manages the election of the America’s delegates to the WZC—the largest delegation from any single country outside of Israel. (Delegates from Israel are appointed by parties from the Knesset according to the number of seats each party has won in the most recent parliamentary election.)

In 2020, as in most recent elections, the most popular slate was the one represented by Reform Judaism (Arza). It usually partners with slates representing Conservative Judaism (Mercaz) and a group of liberal Zionist organizations (Hatikvah) to form a liberal bloc within the WZC. However, in an unforeseen outcome, a new slate called Eretz Hakodesh, representing Orthodox Jewish groups, came in second place
and, together with other right-wing and Orthodox slates in the US and allied parties in Israel, was able to form a controlling coalition in the WZC. This year both liberal and right-wing groups are campaigning on the importance of their side prevailing to prevent the other side from promoting their values and policies.

An American liberal Zionist can be forgiven for being swept up in all this electioneering. There is indeed something exciting about a global election for all Jews who care about Israel. The WZC is billed as a way for Jews anywhere to have a direct vote in the governance of the Jewish state. However, for this year’s election, in the aftermath of the worst attack on Israel since its founding and Israel’s nearly-uninterrupted assault on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, liberal American Jews should abstain from participating in an organization that has outlived its purpose and perpetuates the very problems that liberal Jews claim to oppose. At the end of the day, it does not make sense to sustain a political body that affects Palestinian life without any Palestinian representation.

All WZC slates seek to inform potential voters about the stakes of the election, namely control of the budgets and operations of agencies that, like the WZO, predate the State of Israel: the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund. These organizations are charged with, respectively, promoting Jewish immigration to Israel and managing land controlled by Israel.

Although these agencies have a storied legacy in the annals of Zionist history, they also perpetuate Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and its policy of Jewish supremacy in all areas under Israel’s control.

While the Jewish Agency promotes Jewish immigration to Israel, including to illegal settlements in the West Bank, Palestinians outside the Green Line cannot move to Israel and their visitation privileges are severely curtailed or outright forbidden. Where the Jewish Agency promotes Jewish heritage within Israel, Palestinian identity is suppressed, demonized, and outlawed.

While the Jewish National Fund manages parks for Israel and land for Jewish settlements—both within and outside of the Green Line—Palestinians are denied building permits and recognition of their towns. JNF has also planted trees over liquidated Palestinian towns, and aided the state in cordoning expropriated land from Palestinians and handing control to Jewish settlements.

In short, the Jewish Agency and JNF, in concert with the WZO, work hand-in-hand with the most repressive arms of the State of Israel. A liberal Jew living outside of Israel might be tempted to think that their vote for a liberal slate in the WZC can meaningfully change these agencies for the better, reform them from within. But this position is misguided on practical and political grounds.

Practically, it is simply implausible that these agencies can act in any way opposed to the government of Israel. The current Israeli government is committed to settlement expansion and Jewish supremacy. It is unrealistic to imagine that the WZC could meaningfully oppose the prerogatives of the Israeli government on issues related to the place of Judaism in the public sphere or Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. The moderate success of liberal slates in previous elections has produced no meaningful results. Instead, these slates rely on aspirations of what they might accomplish in the unlikely event they can form a majority of the WZC.

Politically, those who oppose the occupation and the current Israeli government must realize a fundamental point: the only way for Jews to effectively oppose Palestinian oppression is by partnering with Palestinians. Such a partnership must come from an acknowledgement that only a movement of Jews and Palestinians united in opposition to apartheid and occupation can break the stronghold of Jewish supremacy. However, a vote in the WZC, in an election that is only open to Jewish Zionists, reinforces those repressive structures that we need to fight now more than ever.

Some might counter my argument by claiming that I am asking liberal Jews to spurn their coreligionists by turning their backs on the majority of organized American Jewry and fellow liberal Jews within Israel.

On the contrary.

Liberal Jews should double down on fighting Jewish illiberalism at home and abroad. This means standing with supporters of Palestine currently being targeted by the extremist government of the US, and supporting movements of Jews and Palestinians working together to fight the extremist government in Israel. Within American Jewish communities there is also an urgent need to challenge the equation of
Judaism with Zionism, as well as the dangerous conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism.

Those of us who care about Israel, and want to stop its oppression of Palestinians, should cease working with organizations like the WZO that entrench Jewish supremacy. Instead, we should challenge the status quo by uniting Jews and Palestinians for a just future where there is equality for everyone living between the river and the sea.

Akiva Lichtenberg is a resident physician in Massachusetts.