Gavin Newsom, governor of California and potential Democratic presidential candidate, was asked the other day if he is a Zionist. He was like a deer in the headlights. He had just walked back his remarks on Israel and apartheid. Then came the question. He paused, repeated the question, and said something deeply weird and creepy: “I revere the state of Israel.” I can just imagine the political calculations whirling through his head as he struggled to come up with an answer to a simple question that wouldn’t offend anyone. He ended up saying something that I have never heard an American or Israeli Jew say, or for that matter, that I have ever heard anyone say about any state.

Why is this hard? Because on the left, where Gov. Newsom will be seeking votes, “Zionism” has become an all-purpose boogeyman. There is no good reason for this. Zionism is simply the belief that the Jewish people have a right to political self-determination in their land. That’s it! It’s just the belief that the very first sentence of Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, “All peoples have the right of self-determination,” applies to the Jews just as much as it applies to all other peoples.

You can be a Zionist and favor the two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. In fact, that’s the position of the AJC and other leading Jewish advocacy groups, and it’s my position.

You can be a Zionist and oppose actions and policies of the Israeli government. (AJC and me).

You can be a Zionist and oppose actions by Jewish extremists in the West Bank. (AJC, and me).

You don’t have to “revere” the state of Israel to be a Zionist, and frankly, I think most Jews would rather you didn’t. We don’t want to be symbols of all that is good any more than we want to be symbols of all that is bad. And the idea of revering any state is, I think, deeply un-Jewish.

You might be someone who doesn’t believe that any people has a right to a state, someone who thinks that peoplehood just isn’t a basis for collective rights. “I reject nationalism,” or whatever. If that’s you, then I respect your views. You want every state to be more like the “settler-colonial states” (the US, Canada, Australia, etc.), and less like, say, France, or Japan, or any of the many Arab states, or the nascent Palestinian state. Just be sure that you apply your principles in an evenhanded way.

In short, if you think the Jewish people is a people just like any other people, with the same fundamental political rights, congratulations, you’re a Zionist! I wish that instead of cowering in fear in the face of activists who have distorted what Zionism means beyond all recognition for their own malign political goals, smart people like Gavin Newsom, who want to be leaders, should have the courage just to tell it like it is.