Why Zionism Succeeded Where Other “Isms” Failed

On Wednesday, the American journalist and humorist P.J. O’Rourke died at the age of seventy-four. An idiosyncratic and independent-minded conservative, O’Rourke used his biting wit not only to achieve hilarity but also to demonstrate truths about politics and society in ways few more serious writers could. He attributed some of his own intellectual development to friendships with Jews during his childhood in Toledo, Ohio. While he was slower than some to see the justness of Israel’s cause, he did eventually, as is evident from this November 2001 report on a visit to the Jewish state in the spring of that year, at the high of the second intifada. Dispensing with the cliches and pablum that clutter much Western journalism on the subject, he instead reflects on “the absurdity of Israel’s being an ordinary place.” Then he visits the Yad Mordechai kibbutz, and is struck by the power of Zionism’s commitment to particularity: