We at the Vision movement want to expresses deep gratitude to all our visionaries, candidates, activists and voters who brought us into the next World Zionist Congress through their readiness to fight for new ideas and advance Jewish liberation to the next stage.
As a grassroots movement with no network of schools, synagogues, youth movements or summer camps, we went toe-to-toe with much larger establishment organizations and institutions in a popular election – and we did so while promoting a fresh political message that challenged some of the fundamental beliefs held by pro-Israel Diaspora Jews (running an educational campaign is always difficult in an arena where most people vote for what they already understand and support).
While some of the more establishment parties came to these elections with passionate calls to defeat one another, our movement ran a clean ideological campaign that expressed a nuanced appreciation for what’s good and true in all the warring camps, and focused the conversation on what the next objectives of Jewish liberation should be.
Our candidates and activists demonstrated a deep understanding of Jewish identity/history & commitment to the territorial integrity of our homeland often only found on Israel’s right but also a sensitivity to Palestinian grievances and awareness for how oppressive systems operate generally found on the Diaspora left.
We presented a unique political ideology and a nationalist/universalist dialectic that has existed within Israel’s collective soul for thousands of years but has rarely enjoyed much electoral success (the Fighters party only earned one seat in the first Knesset but Yitzḥak Shamir eventually became Israel’s prime minister).
The released results show 1,036 Jews voting to send our slate to the World Zionist Congress. That’s almost twice the votes we received in the last (2015) election. It’s also amazing that a grassroots movement like Vision with no significant budget or organization was able to earn a couple hundred more votes than the Jewish National Fund party (Americans4Israel) and only a few hundred less than StandWithUs (Kol Yisrael).
But more importantly, 1,036 Jews in the United States made heard their desire for fresh ideas and new conversations about meaningful participation in this chapter of our people’s story.
We hope that you’ll all join us in building a vibrant movement on your campuses and in your communities. Subscribe to our magazine at VisionMag.org, become a partner in building our movement here and be sure to participate in our upcoming webinars and events.
The real work starts now.
