I first heard of Zionism by a Naval officer with whom I served. We were students together in the combatives phase of SEAL training, where instructors gave very, very brief introductions to various combat forms –– striking, grappling or throwing — then gave us time to “practice” — aka, beat the crap out of each other.

This officer had done some boxing and was good enough to strategize, take a few blows, throw some stinging ones back and move to where he wanted to be in the ring, all without losing his cool or even blinking. After training, he told me he’d started boxing out of Zionism, which to him was a response to Holocaust-era atrocities toward Jews. “Never again,” was the assertion. No more pacifist behavior, no more calmly, peacefully, walking or being carted to their torments and deaths.

This made — and still makes — absolute sense to me. Every nation, community and person should have the right to self-determination, guarding our bodies and our countries’ borders. But that was ten years ago, and words are being used in new ways. I read recently from a friend and former schoolmate about being anti-anti-Zionist. This friend writes about seeing “anti-Zionists only” on dating profiles and explains Zionism as the desire to found a Jewish state. Since the state of Israel has been founded, anti-Zionism, according to the author, can only mean the desire to destroy this nation.

I am not sure this is what everyone means by each of these terms, but I don’t think it matters. I take issue with any belief or doctrine rigidly held without room for discussion or reflection. I can believe, for example, that Palestinian people have a right to to live in their homes without fear of Israeli military drone strikes — such as the one reported only a few days ago by Al Jazeera in Gaza City — or orders for “no go zones” or evacuation declared over some 70% of Gaza, depriving it of humanitarian aid and resources according to the U.N. And I also want Israeli civilians — who, according to the author, are also indigenous to the area — to live free from armed incursions and hostage situations, such as that of October 7, 2023. But I cannot imagine that makes for a compelling dating profile. 

One belief matters to me: that the same stars which exploded to make the atoms that line my fingernails and eyelashes also exploded to line the fingernails and eyelashes of every other person; they line every leaf, rock, cloud and stream and every slithering, creeping, crawling or flying thing on this planet; and the same light and life that animates me, wherever it comes from, also lights and animates every other being. And any belief system, any ism: Zionism, anti-Zionism, communism, capitalism — even environmentalism — that does not acknowledge this truth, is incomplete and falls short.

This is also why I am “apo-” and not “anti-”. “Anti-” is to oppose something, and so create its negative, to give shape to it and therefore strengthen it. “Apo-,” also a Greek-root prefix, means “of, from, away from; separate, apart from, free from.” To decline or separate oneself is to say, ‘You are not fully there. You are a shade, a phantasm, a vestige of our reptilian tendencies for territory, greed and rage. You have no place in the humanity that we strive to become.’

There is a danger to this: the “all lives matter” type fallacy, which sometimes unintentionally detracts from the Black Lives Matter movement by dismissing the fact that for four brutal centuries, Black lives have disproportionately not mattered. The difference, to me, is that while “all lives matter” allows one to look away from atrocity, “we are all star children” demands that we look more closely at each situation.

We cannot say an atrocity does not concern us because everyone — the underage Bengali girl in a clothing factory full of chemical fumes funded by American purchases; the seven-year-old Ghanaian boy wielding a machete to cut the cocoa beans for our chocolate; the Palestinian mother killed by Israeli drone strikes and the Israeli nurse held as a Hamas hostage — each and every one of them are our sisters and brothers. And if we would not tolerate that treatment to our own family, we cannot accept that treatment toward anyone.

“Only when we realize,” philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti tells us, “not intellectually but actually, as actually as we would recognize that we are hungry or in pain, that you and I are responsible for all this existing chaos, for all the misery throughout the entire world because we have contributed to it in our daily lives and are part of this monstrous society with its wars, divisions, its ugliness, brutality and greed –– only then will we act.”

Samuel Nestor served ten years in the Navy, then earned his B.S. in math and M.S. in applied math at Stanford University. He has written for The Stanford Daily, STANFORD Magazine, ISSUED: Stories of service, and others. His first novel, An Earth Day Eulogy, was published in 2024.