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Movement supporting a Jewish state in Palestine

For other uses, see Zionism (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with Ziaism.

Zionism[a] is an ethno-cultural nationalist[1][fn 1] movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century and aimed for the establishment of a Jewish state through the colonization of a land outside of Europe.[4][5][6][7] It eventually focused on the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine,[8][9][10] a region corresponding to the Land of Israel in Judaism,[12][13][15] and of central importance in Jewish history. Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.[16] Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism became the ideology supporting the protection and development of Israel as a Jewish state and has been described as Israel's national or state ideology.[17][18][1][19][20][21]

Zionism initially emerged in Central and Eastern Europe as a national revival movement in the late 19th century, in reaction to newer waves of antisemitism and as a consequence of the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment.[1][22][23][24] During this period, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire.[25][26][27] The arrival of Zionist settlers to Palestine during this period is widely seen as the start of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Throughout the first decade of the Zionist movement, some Zionist figures, including Theodor Herzl, considered alternative options to Palestine in several places such as "Uganda" (actually parts of British East Africa today in Kenya), Argentina, Cyprus, Mesopotamia, Mozambique, and the Sinai Peninsula,[28] but this was rejected by most of the movement. This process was seen by the emerging Zionist movement as an "ingathering of exiles" (kibbutz galuyot), an effort to put a stop to the exoduses and persecutions that have marked Jewish history by bringing the Jewish people back to their historic homeland.[29]

From 1897 to 1948, the primary goal of the Zionist movement was to establish the basis for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and thereafter to consolidate it. The movement itself recognized that Zionism's claim to Palestine went against the commonly accepted interpretation of the principle of self-determination.[30][clarification needed] In 1884, proto-Zionist groups established the Lovers of Zion, and in 1897 the first Zionist congress was organized. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a large number of Jews immigrated first to Ottoman and later to Mandatory Palestine. At the same time, some international recognition and support was gained, notably in the 1917 Balfour Declaration by the United Kingdom. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism has continued primarily to advocate on behalf of Israel and to address threats to its continued existence and security.

The term "Zionism" has been applied to various approaches to addressing issues faced by European Jews in the late 19th century.[31] Modern political Zionism, different from religious Zionism, is a movement made up of diverse political groups whose strategies and tactics have changed over time. The common ideology among mainstream Zionist factions is support for territorial concentration and a Jewish demographic majority in Palestine, through colonization.[32] The Zionist mainstream has historically included liberal, labor, revisionist, and cultural Zionism, while groups like Brit Shalom and Ihud have been dissident factions within the movement.[17] Differences within the mainstream Zionist groups lie primarily in their presentation and ethos, having adopted similar strategies to achieve their political goals, in particular in the use of violence and compulsory transfer to deal with the presence of the local Palestinian, non-Jewish population.[33][34][35][36][37] Advocates of Zionism have viewed it as a national liberation movement for the repatriation of an indigenous people (which were subject to persecution and share a national identity through national consciousness), to the homeland of their ancestors as noted in ancient history.[38][39][40] Similarly, anti-Zionism has many aspects, which include criticism of Zionism as a colonialist,[41] racist,[42] or exceptionalist ideology or as a settler colonialist movement.[43][44][45][46][47] Proponents of Zionism do not necessarily reject the characterization of Zionism as settler-colonial or exceptionalist.[48][49][50][51]

Terminology

The term "Zionism" is derived from the word Zion (Hebrew: ציון, romanized: Tzi-yon) or Mount Zion, a hill in Jerusalem, widely symbolizing the Land of Israel.[52] Mount Zion is also a term used in the Hebrew Bible.[53][54] Throughout eastern Europe in the late 19th century, numerous grassroots groups promoted the national resettlement of the Jews in their homeland,[55] as well as the revitalization and cultivation of the Hebrew language. These groups were collectively called the "Lovers of Zion" and were seen as countering a growing Jewish movement toward assimilation. The first use of the term is attributed to the Austrian Nathan Birnbaum, founder of the Kadimah nationalist Jewish students' movement; he used the term in 1890 in his journal Selbst-Emancipation (Self-Emancipation),[56][57] itself named almost identically to Leon Pinsker's 1882 book Auto-Emancipation.

Overview

Main article: Types of Zionism

Zionism originated as a nationalist movement aimed at creating an independent Jewish state.[58][59] The common denominator among all modern Zionists is a claim to Palestine, a land known in Jewish tradition as the Land of Israel ("Eretz Israel"), as a national homeland of the Jews and as a focus for Jewish national self-determination.[60] Historically, the consensus in Zionist ideology has been that a Jewish national home requires a Jewish majority.[61] Zionism is based on historical ties and religious traditions linking the Jewish people to the Land of Israel.[62] Zionism does not have a uniform ideology, but modern political Zionism is typically associated with Labor Zionism and Revisionist Zionism which are not fundamentally different.[63][37][61]

For approximately 1,700 years after the last recorded Jewish majority in the region, most Jews lived in various countries without a national state as part of the post-Roman chapter of the Jewish diaspora.[64] The Zionist movement was founded in the late 19th century by secular Jews, largely as a response by Ashkenazi Jews to rising antisemitism in Europe, exemplified by the Dreyfus affair in France and the anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire.[65] The political movement was formally established by the Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl in 1897 following the publication of his book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State).[66] At that time, Herzl believed that Jewish migration to Ottoman Palestine, particularly among poor Jewish communities, unassimilated and whose 'floating' presence caused disquiet, would be beneficial to assimilated European Jews and Christians.[67] Political Zionism was in some respects a dramatic break from the two thousand years of Jewish and rabbinical tradition. Deriving inspiration from other European nationalist movements, Zionism drew in particular from a German version of European enlightenment thought, with German nationalistic principles becoming key features of Zionist nationalism. The Jewish historian of nationalism Hans Kohn argued that Zionism nationalism "had nothing to do with Jewish traditions; it was in many ways opposed to them". Starting early on, Zionism had its critics, the cultural Zionist Ahad Ha'am in the early 20th century wrote that there was no creativity in Herzl's Zionist movement, and that its culture was European and specifically German. He viewed the movement as depicting Jews as simple transmitters of imperialist European culture.[68]

Although initially one of several Jewish political movements offering alternative responses to Jewish assimilation and antisemitism, Zionism expanded rapidly. In its early stages, supporters considered setting up a Jewish state in the historic territory of Palestine. After World War II and the destruction of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe where these alternative movements were rooted, it became dominant in the thinking about a Jewish national state. During this period, Zionism would develop a discourse in which the religious, non-Zionist Jews of the Old Yishuv who lived in mixed Arab-Jewish cities were viewed as backwards in comparison to the secular Zionist New Yishuv.[68]

From the beginning of the development of the Zionism movement, the support of the European powers was seen as necessary by the Zionist leadership (Herzl, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion). Creating an alliance with Great Britain and securing support for some years for Jewish emigration to Palestine, Zionists also recruited European Jews to immigrate there, especially Jews who lived in areas of the Russian Empire where antisemitism was raging. The alliance with Britain was strained as the latter realized the implications of the Jewish movement for Arabs in Palestine, but the Zionists persisted. The movement was eventually successful in establishing Israel on May 14, 1948 (5 Iyyar 5708 in the Hebrew calendar), as the homeland for the Jewish people. The proportion of the world's Jews living in Israel has steadily grown since the movement emerged. A Zionist consensus then became known as an ideological umbrella typically attributed to two main factors: a shared tragic history (such as the Holocaust), and the common threat posed by Israel's neighboring enemies.[69][70] By the early 21st century, more than 40% of the world's Jews lived in Israel, more than in any other country. In some academic studies, Zionism has been analyzed both within the larger context of diaspora politics and as an example of modern national liberation movements and as an instance of settler-colonialism.[71][72] Some prominent figures in the early Zionist movement referred to the movement as colonialist, such as Ze'ev Jabotinsky.[73][74][51]

Modern Zionism emerged in late nineteenth-century Europe, originating from unsuccessful attempts of Jews to integrate into Western society as well as the increasing antisemitism in Europe. Zionism viewed nationalism as a problem for Jews, which excluded them as an "unwanted" or "alien" minority. Zionism also saw nationalism as a solution for the plight of European Jews, by establishing a state in which Jews would be a majority.[75] Zionism did not seek to solve antisemitism, but rather saw it as an inevitable reality. Leo Pinsker described antisemitism as a hereditary and incurable disease, concluding in his Autoemancipation that "a people without a territory is like a man without a shadow: something unnatural, spectral".[76] So-called "assimilationist" Jews desired complete integration into European society. They were willing to downplay their Jewish identity and in some cases to abandon traditional views and opinions in an attempt at modernization and assimilation into the modern world. A less extreme form of assimilation was called cultural synthesis. Those in favor of cultural synthesis desired continuity and only moderate evolution, and were concerned that Jews should not lose their identity as a people. "Cultural synthesists" emphasized both a need to maintain traditional Jewish values and faith and a need to conform to a modernist society, for instance, in complying with work days and rules.[77]

In 1975, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, which designated Zionism as "a form of racism and racial discrimination". Resolution 3379 was repealed in 1991 with Israel's conditioning of its participation in the Madrid peace talks on the passing of Resolution 46/86, which " revoke[d] the determination contained in" 3379.[78]

Beliefs

Claim to a Jewish demographic majority and a Jewish state in Palestine

Fundamental to Zionism is the belief that Jews constitute a nation and have a moral and historic right and need for self-determination in Palestine. This belief developed out of the experiences of European Jewry which the early Zionists believed demonstrated the danger inherent to their status as a minority. Unlike other forms of nationalism, the Zionist claim to Palestine was aspirational and required a mechanism by which the claim could be realized.[79] The territorial concentration of Jews in Palestine and the subsequent goal of establishing a Jewish majority there was the main mechanism by which Zionist groups sought to realize this claim.[80] By the time of the 1936 Arab Revolt, the political differences between the various Zionist groups had shrunk further, with almost all Zionist groups seeking a Jewish state in Palestine.[81][82] While not every Zionist group openly called for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, every group in the Zionist mainstream was wedded to the idea of establishing a Jewish demographic majority there.[83]

Ethnic unity and common ancestry of Jews

Early Zionists were the primary Jewish supporters of the idea that Jews are a race, as it "offered scientific 'proof' of the ethno-nationalist myth of common descent".[84] Zionist nationalism drew from a German ethnic-nationalist theory that people of common descent should seek separation and pursue the formation of their own state.[68][page needed] In the words of Yulia Egorova, this "racialisation of Jewish identity in the rhetoric of the founders of Zionism" was originally a reaction to European antisemitism.[85] According to Raphael Falk, as early as the 1870s, contrary to largely cultural perspectives among integrated and assimilated Jewish communities in the Age of Enlightenment and Age of Romanticism, "the Zionists-to-be stressed that Jews were not merely members of a cultural or a religious entity, but were an integral biological entity".[86] This re-conceptualization of Jewishness cast the "volk" of the Jewish community as a nation-race, in contrast to centuries-old conceptions of the Jewish people as a religious socio-cultural grouping.[86] The Jewish historians Heinrich Graetz and Simon Dubnow are largely credited with this creation of Zionism as a nationalist project. They drew on religious Jewish sources and non-Jewish texts in reconstructing a national identity and consciousness. This new Jewish historiography divorced from and, at times at odds with, traditional Jewish collective memory.[68]

It was particularly important in early nation building in Israel, because Jews in Israel are ethnically diverse and the origins of Ashkenazi Jews, the original founders of Zionism, are "highly debated and enigmatic".[88] Notable proponents of this racial idea included Max Nordau, Herzl's co-founder of the original Zionist Organization, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the prominent architect of early statist Zionism and the founder of what became Israel's Likud party, and Arthur Ruppin, considered the "father of Israeli sociology".[90] Jabotinsky wrote that Jewish national integrity relies on "racial purity", whereas Nordau asserted the need for an "exact anthropological, biological, economic, and intellectual statistic of the Jewish people".

According to Hassan S. Haddad, the application of the Biblical concepts of Jews as the chosen people and the "Promised Land" in Zionism, particularly to secular Jews, requires the belief that modern Jews are the primary descendants of biblical Jews and Israelites.[91] This is considered important to the State of Israel, because its founding narrative centers around the concept of an "Ingathering of the exiles" and the "Return to Zion", on the assumption that all modern Jews are the direct lineal descendants of the biblical Jews.[92] The question has thus been focused on by supporters of Zionism and anti-Zionists alike,[93] as in the absence of this biblical primacy, "the Zionist project falls prey to the pejorative categorization as 'settler colonialism' pursued under false assumptions, playing into the hands of Israel's critics and fueling the indignation of the displaced and stateless Palestinian people,"[92] whilst right-wing Israelis look for "a way of proving the occupation is legitimate, of authenticating the ethnos as a natural fact, and of defending Zionism as a return". A Jewish "biological self-definition" has become a standard belief for many Jewish nationalists, and most Israeli population researchers have never doubted that evidence will one day be found, even though so far proof for the claim has "remained forever elusive".[95]

Rejection of the Identity of the Diaspora Jew

Israeli-Irish scholar Ronit Lentin has argued that the construction of Zionist identity as a militarized nationalism arose in contrast to the imputed identity of the Diaspora Jew as a "feminised" Other. She describes this as a relationship of contempt towards the previous identity of the Jewish Diaspora viewed as unable to resist antisemitism and the Holocaust. Lentin argues that Zionism's rejection of this "feminised" identity and its obsession with constructing a nation is reflected in the nature of the symbolism of the movement, which are drawn from modern sources and appropriated as Zionist, instancing the fact that the melody of the Hatikvah anthem drew on the version composed by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana.[68]

Negation of the life in the Diaspora

Negation of life in the Diaspora is a central assumption in Zionism.[96][97][98][99] Some supporters of Zionism believed that Jews in the Diaspora were prevented from their full growth in Jewish individual and national life.[citation needed]

The rejection of life in the diaspora was not limited to secular Zionism; many religious Zionists shared this opinion, but not all religious Zionism did. Abraham Isaac Kook, considered one of the most important religious Zionist thinkers, characterized the diaspora as a flawed and alienated existence marked by decline, narrowness, displacement, solitude, and frailty. He believed that the diasporan way of life is diametrically opposed to a "national renaissance," which manifests itself not only in the return to Zion but also in the return to nature and creativity, revival of heroic and aesthetic values, and the resurgence of individual and societal power.[100]

Revival of the Hebrew language

See also: Modern Hebrew and Hebraization of surnames

Zionists generally preferred to speak Hebrew, a Semitic language which flourished as a spoken language in the ancient Kingdoms of Israel and Judah during the period from about 1200 to 586 BCE,[102] and continued to be used in some parts of Judea during the Second Temple period and up until 200 CE. It is the language of the Hebrew Bible and the Mishnah, central texts in Judaism. Hebrew was largely preserved throughout later history as the main liturgical language of Judaism.

Zionists worked to modernize Hebrew and adapt it for everyday use. They sometimes refused to speak Yiddish, a language they thought had developed in the context of European persecution. Once they moved to Israel, many Zionists refused to speak their (diasporic) mother tongues and adopted new, Hebrew names. Hebrew was preferred not only for ideological reasons, but also because it allowed all citizens of the new state to have a common language, thus furthering the political and cultural bonds among Zionists.[citation needed]

The revival of the Hebrew language and the establishment of Modern Hebrew is most closely associated with the linguist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and the Committee of the Hebrew Language (later replaced by the Academy of the Hebrew Language).[103]

In the Israeli Declaration of Independence

Major aspects of the Zionist idea are represented in the Israeli Declaration of Independence.

History

Main article: History of Zionism

For a chronological guide, see Timeline of Zionism.

Historical and religious background

According to Zionism, Jews are an ethnoreligious group and nation[104][105][106] originating from the Israelites[107][108][109] and Hebrews[110][111] of historical Israel and Judah, two Israelite kingdoms that emerged in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Jews are named after the Kingdom of Judah,[112][113][114] the southern of the two kingdoms, which was centered in Judea with its capital in Jerusalem.[115] The Kingdom of Judah was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE.[116] The Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple, which was at the center of ancient Judean worship. The Judeans were subsequently exiled to Babylon, in what is regarded as the first Jewish diaspora.[117][118][119]

Seventy years later, after the conquest of Babylon by the Persian Achaemenid Empire, Cyrus the Great allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple.[120] This event came to be known as the Return to Zion. Under Persian rule, Judah became a self-governing Jewish province. After centuries of Persian and Hellenistic rule, the Jews regained their independence in the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire, which led to the establishment of the Hasmonean Kingdom in Judea. It later expanded over much of modern Israel, and into some parts of Jordan and Lebanon.[121][122][123] The Hasmonean Kingdom became a client state of the Roman Republic in 63 BCE, and in 6 CE, was incorporated into the Roman Empire as the province of Judaea.[124]

During the Great Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE), the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and burned the Second Temple.[125] Of the 600,000 (Tacitus) or 1,000,000 (Josephus) Jews of Jerusalem, all of them either died of starvation, were killed or were sold into slavery.[126] The Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–136 CE) led to the destruction of large parts of Judea, and many Jews were killed, exiled, or sold into slavery. The province of Judaea was renamed Syria Palaestina. These actions are seen by many scholars as an attempt to disconnect the Jewish people from their homeland.[127][128] In the following centuries, many Jews emigrated to thriving centers in the diaspora. Others continued living in the region, especially in the Galilee, the coastal plain, and on the edges of Judea, and some converted.[129][130] By the fourth century CE, the Jews, who had previously constituted the majority of Palestine, had become a minority.[131] A small presence of Jews has been attested for almost all of the period. For example, according to tradition, the Jewish community of Peki'in has maintained a Jewish presence since the Second Temple period.[132][133]

Jewish religious belief holds that the Land of Israel is a God-given inheritance of the Children of Israel based on the Torah, particularly the books of Genesis and Exodus, as well as on the later Prophets.[134][135][136] According to the Book of Genesis, Canaan was first promised to Abraham's descendants; the text is explicit that this is a covenant between God and Abraham for his descendants.[137] The belief that God had assigned Canaan to the Israelites as a Promised Land is also conserved in Christian[138] and Islamic traditions.[139]

Among Jews in the diaspora, the Land of Israel was revered in a cultural, national, ethnic, historical, and religious sense. They thought of a return to it in a future messianic age.[140] The Return to Zion remained a recurring theme among generations, particularly in Passover and Yom Kippur prayers, which traditionally concluded with "Next year in Jerusalem", and in the thrice-daily Amidah (Standing prayer).[141] The biblical prophecy of Kibbutz Galuyot, the ingathering of exiles in the Land of Israel as foretold by the Prophets, became a central idea in Zionism.[142][143][144]

Pre-Zionist initiatives

See also: Aliyah § Middle_Ages

Pre-Zionist resettlement in Palestine met with various degrees of success. In late antiquity, many Babylonian Jews immigrated to centers of religious study in the Land of Israel.[146] In the 10th century, leaders of the Karaite Jewish community, mostly living under Persian rule, urged their followers to settle in the Land of Israel, where they established their own quarter in Jerusalem.[147]

The number of Jews migrating to the land of Israel rose significantly between the 13th and 19th centuries, mainly due to a general decline in the status of Jews across Europe and an increase in religious persecution, including the expulsion of Jews from England (1290), France (1391), Austria (1421), and Spain (the Alhambra decree of 1492).[148]

In the middle of the 16th century, the Portuguese Sephardi Joseph Nasi, with the support of the Ottoman Empire, tried to gather the Portuguese Jews, first to migrate to Cyprus, then owned by the Republic of Venice, and later to resettle in Tiberias. Nasi—who never converted to Islam[149][150]—eventually obtained the highest medical position in the empire, and actively participated in court life. He convinced Suleiman I to intervene with the Pope on behalf of Ottoman-subject Portuguese Jews imprisoned in Ancona.[149]

In the 17th century Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676) announced himself as the Messiah and gained many Jews to his side, forming a base in Salonika. He first tried to establish a settlement in Gaza, but moved later to Smyrna. After deposing the old rabbi Aaron Lapapa in the spring of 1666, the Jewish community of Avignon, France, prepared to emigrate to the new kingdom.[151]

In the early 19th century, a group of Jews known as the perushim left Lithuania to settle in Ottoman Palestine.

Establishment of the Zionist movement

In the 19th century, a current in Judaism supporting a return to Zion grew in popularity,[152][better source needed] particularly in Europe, where antisemitism and hostility toward Jews were growing. The idea of returning to Palestine was rejected by the conferences of rabbis held in that epoch. Individual efforts supported the emigration of groups of Jews to Palestine, pre-Zionist Aliyah, even before the First Zionist Congress in 1897, the year considered as the start of practical Zionism.[153]

Reform Jews rejected this idea of a return to Zion. The conference of rabbis held at Frankfurt am Main over July 15–28, 1845, deleted from the ritual all prayers for a return to Zion and a restoration of a Jewish state. The Philadelphia Conference, 1869, followed the lead of the German rabbis and decreed that the Messianic hope of Israel is "the union of all the children of God in the confession of the unity of God". In 1885 the Pittsburgh Conference reiterated this interpretation of the Messianic idea of Reform Judaism, expressing in a resolution that "we consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community; and we therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning a Jewish state".[154]

Jewish settlements were proposed for establishment in the upper Mississippi region by W.D. Robinson in 1819.[155]

Moral but not practical efforts were made in Prague to organize a Jewish emigration, by Abraham Benisch and Moritz Steinschneider in 1835. In the United States, Mordecai Noah attempted to establish a Jewish refuge opposite Buffalo, New York, on Grand Isle, 1825. These early Jewish nation building efforts of Cresson, Benisch, Steinschneider and Noah failed.[156][page needed][157]

Sir Moses Montefiore, famous for his intervention in favor of Jews around the world, including the attempt to rescue Edgardo Mortara, established a colony for Jews in Palestine. In 1854, his friend Judah Touro bequeathed money to fund Jewish residential settlement in Palestine. Montefiore was appointed executor of his will, and used the funds for a variety of projects, including building in 1860 the first Jewish residential settlement and almshouse outside of the old walled city of Jerusalem—today known as Mishkenot Sha'ananim. Laurence Oliphant failed in a like attempt to bring to Palestine the Jewish proletariat of Poland, Lithuania, Romania, and the Turkish Empire (1879 and 1882).

Theodor Herzl and the birth of modern political Zionism

The official beginning of the construction of the New Yishuv in Palestine is usually dated to the arrival of the Bilu group in 1882, who commenced the First Aliyah. In the following years, Jewish immigration to Palestine started in earnest. Most immigrants came from the Russian Empire, escaping the frequent pogroms and state-led persecution in what are now Ukraine and Poland.[citation needed] They founded a number of agricultural settlements with financial support from Jewish philanthropists in Western Europe. Additional Aliyahs followed the Russian Revolution and its eruption of violent pogroms. At the end of the 19th century, Jews were a small minority in Palestine.[158]

In the 1890s, Theodor Herzl (the father of political Zionism) infused Zionism with a new ideology and practical urgency, leading to the First Zionist Congress at Basel in 1897, which created the Zionist Organization (ZO), renamed in 1960 as World Zionist Organization (WZO).[159] In Der Judenstaat, Herzl was explicit in mentioning that the "state of the Jews" could be established only with the support of a European power. He described the Jewish state as an "outpost of civilization against Barbarism". In separate writing, Herzl compared himself to Cecil Rhodes, who was a strong supporter of British colonialist and imperialist ideologies.[68]: 327

In 1896, Theodor Herzl expressed in Der Judenstaat his views on "the restoration of the Jewish state".[160] Herzl considered antisemitism to be an eternal feature of all societies in which Jews lived as minorities, and that only a sovereignty could allow Jews to escape eternal persecution: "Let them give us sovereignty over a piece of the Earth's surface, just sufficient for the needs of our people, then we will do the rest!" he proclaimed exposing his plan.[161]: 27, 29

Success and stumbles in Russia

Before World War I, although led by Austrian and German Jews, Zionism was primarily composed of Russian Jews.[162] Initially, Zionists were a minority, both in Russia and worldwide.[163][164][165][166] Russian Zionism quickly became a major force within the movement, making up about half the delegates at Zionist Congresses.[167]

Despite its success in attracting followers, Russian Zionism faced fierce opposition from the Russian intelligentsia across the political spectrum and socioeconomic classes. It was condemned by different groups as reactionary, messianic, and unrealistic, arguing that it would isolate Jews and exacerbate their circumstances rather than integrate them into European societies.[167] Religious Jews such as Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum viewed in Zionism a desecration of their sacred beliefs and a Satanic plot, while others hardly thought it deserved serious attention.[168] For them, Zionism was seen as an attempt to defy the divine order to await the coming of the Messiah.[169] However, many of these religious Jews still believed in the Messiah coming soon. For example, Rabbi Israel Meir Kahan "was so convinced of the imminent arrival of the Messiah that he urged his students to study the laws of the priesthood so that the priests would be prepared to carry out their duties when the Temple in Jerusalem was rebuilt."[168]

Criticism was not limited to religious Jews. Bundist socialists and liberals of the Voskhod newspaper attacked Zionism for distracting from class struggle and blocking the path to Jewish emancipation in Russia, respectively.[167] Figures like historian Simon Dubnow saw potential value in Zionism promoting Jewish identity but fundamentally rejected a Jewish state as messianic and unfeasible.[170] They provided alternative emancipatory solutions, such as assimilation, emigration, and Diaspora nationalism.[171] The opposition to Zionism, rooted in the intelligentsia's rationalist worldview, weakened its appeal among potential adherents like the Jewish working class and intelligentsia.[167] Ultimately, the Russian intelligentsia was united in the view that Zionism was an aberrant ideology that ran counter to their beliefs in Jewish assimilation.

Pre-state institutions

Zionist Organization (ZO), est. 1897

Zionist Congress (est. 1897), the supreme organ of the ZO

Palestine Office (est. 1908), the executive arm of the ZO in Palestine

Jewish National Fund (JNF), est. 1901 to buy and develop land in Palestine

Keren Hayesod, est. 1920 to collect funds

Jewish Agency, est. 1929 as the worldwide operative branch of the ZO

Funding

The Zionist enterprise was mainly funded by major benefactors who made large contributions, sympathisers from Jewish communities across the world (see for instance the Jewish National Fund's collection boxes), and the settlers themselves. The movement established a bank for administering its finances, the Jewish Colonial Trust (est. 1888, incorporated in London in 1899). A local subsidiary was formed in 1902 in Palestine, the Anglo-Palestine Bank.

A list of pre-state large contributors to Pre-Zionist and Zionist enterprises would include, alphabetically,

Isaac Leib Goldberg (1860–1935), Zionist leader and philanthropist from Russia

Maurice de Hirsch (1831–1896), German Jewish financier and philanthropist, founder of the Jewish Colonization Association

Moses Montefiore (1784–1885), British Jewish banker and philanthropist in Britain and the Levant, initiator and financier of Proto-Zionism

Edmond James de Rothschild (1845–1934), French Jewish banker and major donor of the Zionist project

Pre-state paramilitary organizations

A list of Jewish pre-state paramilitary and defense organisations in Palestine would include:

Direct precursors of the IDF

Bar-Giora (1907–1909)

Hashomer (1909–1920)

Haganah (1920–1948)

Palmach (1941–1948)

Not sanctioned by central Zionist administration

Irgun (1931–1948)

Lehi (1940–1948)

Unrelated

Mahane Yehuda, 'Judah's Camp', a mounted guards company founded by Michael Halperin in 1891[172] (see Ness Ziona)

HaNoter, 'The Guard' (1912–1913),[173] distinct from the British Mandate-period Notrim[174]

HaMagen, 'The Shield' (1915–1917)[174]

Territories considered

Throughout the first decade of the Zionist movement, there were several instances where some Zionist figures, including Herzl, considered a Jewish state in places outside Palestine, such as "Uganda" (actually parts of British East Africa today in Kenya), Argentina, Cyprus, Mesopotamia, Mozambique, and the Sinai Peninsula.[28] Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, was initially content with any Jewish self-governed state.[175] Jewish settlement of Argentina was the project of Maurice de Hirsch.[176] It is unclear if Herzl seriously considered this alternative plan,[177] however he later reaffirmed that Palestine would have greater attraction because of the historic ties of Jews with that area.[161]

A major concern and driving reason for considering other territories was the Russian pogroms, in particular the Kishinev massacre, and the resulting need for quick resettlement in a safer place.[178] However, other Zionists emphasized the memory, emotion and tradition linking Jews to the Land of Israel.[179] Zion became the name of the movement, after the place where King David established his kingdom, following his conquest of the Jebusite fortress there (2 Samuel 5:7, 1 Kings 8:1). The name Zion was synonymous with Jerusalem. Palestine only became Herzl's main focus after his Zionist manifesto 'Der Judenstaat' was published in 1896, but even then he was hesitant to focus efforts solely on resettlement in Palestine when speed was of the essence.[180]

In 1903, British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain offered Herzl 5,000 square miles (13,000 km2) in the Uganda Protectorate for Jewish settlement in Great Britain's East African colonies.[181] Herzl accepted to evaluate Joseph Chamberlain's proposal,[182]: 55–56 and it was introduced the same year to the World Zionist Organization's Congress at its sixth meeting, where a fierce debate ensued. Some groups felt that accepting the scheme would make it more difficult to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, the African land was described as an "ante-chamber to the Holy Land". It was decided to send a commission to investigate the proposed land by 295 to 177 votes, with 132 abstaining. The following year, Congress sent a delegation to inspect the plateau. A temperate climate due to its high elevation, was thought to be suitable for European settlement. However, the area was populated by a large number of Maasai, who did not seem to favour an influx of Europeans. Furthermore, the delegation found it to be filled with lions and other animals.

After Herzl died in 1904, the Congress decided on the fourth day of its seventh session in July 1905 to decline the British offer and, according to Adam Rovner, "direct all future settlement efforts solely to Palestine".[181][183] Israel Zangwill's Jewish Territorialist Organization aimed for a Jewish state anywhere, having been established in 1903 in response to the Uganda Scheme. It was supported by a number of the Congress's delegates. Following the vote, which had been proposed by Max Nordau, Zangwill charged Nordau that he "will be charged before the bar of history," and his supporters blamed the Russian voting bloc of Menachem Ussishkin for the outcome of the vote.[183]

The subsequent departure of the JTO from the Zionist Organization had little impact.[181][184][185] The Zionist Socialist Workers Party was also an organization that favored the idea of a Jewish territorial autonomy outside of Palestine.[186]

As an alternative to Zionism, Soviet (USSR) authorities established a Jewish Autonomous Oblast in 1934, which remains extant as the only autonomous oblast of Russia.[187]

According to Elaine Hagopian, in the early decades it foresaw the homeland of the Jews as extending not only over the region of Palestine, but into Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, with its borders more or less coinciding with the major riverine and water-rich areas of the Levant.[188]

Main articles: Balfour Declaration and Mandate for Palestine

Lobbying by Russian Jewish immigrant Chaim Weizmann, together with fear that American Jews would encourage the US to support Germany in the war against Russia, culminated in the British government's Balfour Declaration of 1917.

It endorsed the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, as follows:

His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.[189]

In 1922, the League of Nations adopted the declaration, and granted to Britain the Palestine Mandate:

The Mandate will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home ... and the development of self-governing institutions, and also safeguard the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.[190]

Weizmann's role in obtaining the Balfour Declaration led to his election as the Zionist movement's leader. He remained in that role until 1948, and then was elected as the first President of Israel after the nation gained independence.

A number of high-level representatives of the international Jewish women's community participated in the First World Congress of Jewish Women, which was held in Vienna, Austria, in May 1923. One of the main resolutions was: "It appears ... to be the duty of all Jews to co-operate in the social-economic reconstruction of Palestine and to assist in the settlement of Jews in that country."[191]

In 1927, Ukrainian Jew Yitzhak Lamdan wrote an epic poem titled Masada to reflect the plight of the Jews, calling for a "last stand".[192]

Nazism and the Holocaust

In 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, and in 1935 the Nuremberg Laws were enacted. Similar rules were applied by the many Nazi allies in Europe. The subsequent growth in Jewish migration fostered the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. Britain established the Peel Commission to investigate the situation. The commission called for a two-state solution and compulsory transfer of populations. The Arabs opposed the partition plan and Britain later rejected this solution and instead implemented the White Paper of 1939. This planned to end Jewish immigration by 1944 and to allow no more than 75,000 additional Jewish migrants. At the end of the five-year period in 1944, only 51,000 of the 75,000 immigration certificates provided for had been utilized, and the British offered to allow immigration to continue beyond cutoff date of 1944, at a rate of 1500 per month, until the remaining quota was filled.[193][194] According to Arieh Kochavi, at the end of the war, the Mandatory Government had 10,938 certificates remaining and gives more details about government policy at the time.[193] The British maintained the policies of the 1939 White Paper until the end of the Mandate.[195]

Population of Palestine by ethno-religious groups, excluding nomads, from the 1946 Survey of Palestine[196] Year Muslims Jews Christians Others Total Settled 1922 486,177 (74.9%) 83,790 (12.9%) 71,464 (11.0%) 7,617 (1.2%) 649,048 1931 693,147 (71.7%) 174,606 (18.1%) 88,907 (9.2%) 10,101 (1.0%) 966,761 1941 906,551 (59.7%) 474,102 (31.2%) 125,413 (8.3%) 12,881 (0.8%) 1,518,947 1946 1,076,783 (58.3%) 608,225 (33.0%) 145,063 (7.9%) 15,488 (0.8%) 1,845,559

The growth of the Jewish community in Palestine and the devastation of European Jewish life sidelined the World Zionist Organization (WZO). The Jewish Agency for Palestine under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion increasingly dictated policy with support from American Zionists who provided funding and influence in Washington, D.C., including via the American Palestine Committee.[citation needed] In 1938, Ben-Gurion argued that a significant source of fear for Zionists was the defensive political strength of the Palestinian position, stating:[197]

A people which fights against the usurpation of its land will not tire so easily. ... When we say that the Arabs are the aggressors and we defend ourselves — this is only half the truth. ... [P]olitically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves. The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country.

During World War II, as the horrors of the Holocaust became known, the Zionist leadership formulated the One Million Plan, a reduction from Ben-Gurion's previous target of two million immigrants. Following the end of the war, many stateless refugees, mainly Holocaust survivors, began migrating to Palestine in small boats in defiance of British rules. The Holocaust united much of the rest of world Jewry behind the Zionist project.[198] The British either imprisoned these Jews in Cyprus or sent them to the British-controlled Allied Occupation Zones in Germany. The British, having faced Arab revolts, were now facing opposition by Zionist groups in Palestine for subsequent restrictions on Jewish immigration. In January 1946 the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, a joint British and American committee, was tasked to examine political, economic and social conditions in Mandatory Palestine and the well-being of the peoples now living there; to consult representatives of Arabs and Jews, and to make other recommendations 'as necessary' for an interim handling of these problems as well as for their eventual solution.[199] Following the failure of the 1946–47 London Conference on Palestine, at which the United States refused to support the British leading to both the Morrison–Grady Plan and the Bevin Plan being rejected by all parties, the British decided to refer the question to the UN on February 14, 1947.[200][fn 2]

Post-World War II

With the German invasion of the USSR in 1941, Stalin reversed his long-standing opposition to Zionism, and tried to mobilize worldwide Jewish support for the Soviet war effort. A Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was set up in Moscow. Many thousands of Jewish refugees fled the Nazis and entered the Soviet Union during the war, where they reinvigorated Jewish religious activities and opened new synagogues.[201] In May 1947 Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko told the United Nations that the USSR supported the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. The USSR formally voted that way in the UN in November 1947.[202] However once Israel was established, Stalin reversed positions, favoured the Arabs, arrested the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, and launched attacks on Jews in the USSR.[203]

In 1947, the UN Special Committee on Palestine recommended that western Palestine should be partitioned into a Jewish state, an Arab state and a UN-controlled territory, Corpus separatum, around Jerusalem.[204] This partition plan was adopted on November 29, 1947, with UN GA Resolution 181, 33 votes in favor, 13 against, and 10 abstentions. The vote led to celebrations in Jewish communities and protests in Arab communities throughout Palestine.[205] Violence throughout the country, previously an Arab and Jewish insurgency against the British, Jewish-Arab communal violence, spiralled into the 1947–1949 Palestine war. According to various assessments of the UN, the conflict led to an exodus of 711,000 to 957,000 Palestinian Arabs,[206] outside of Israel's territories. More than a quarter had already fled during the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, before the Israeli Declaration of Independence and the outbreak of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. After the 1949 Armistice Agreements, a series of laws passed by the first Israeli government prevented displaced Palestinians from claiming private property or returning on the state's territories. They and many of their descendants remain refugees supported by UNRWA.[207][208]

Since the creation of the State of Israel, the World Zionist Organization has functioned mainly as an organization dedicated to assisting and encouraging Jews to migrate to Israel. It has provided political support for Israel in other countries but plays little role in internal Israeli politics. The movement's major success since 1948 was in providing logistical support for Jewish migrants and refugees and, most importantly, in assisting Soviet Jews in their struggle with the authorities over the right to leave the USSR and to practice their religion in freedom, and the exodus of 850,000 Jews from the Arab world, mostly to Israel. In 1944–45, Ben-Gurion described the One Million Plan to foreign officials as being the "primary goal and top priority of the Zionist movement." The immigration restrictions of the British White Paper of 1939 meant that such a plan could not be put into large scale effect until the Israeli Declaration of Independence in May 1948. The new country's immigration policy had some opposition within the new Israeli government, such as those who argued that there was "no justification for organizing large-scale emigration among Jews whose lives were not in danger, particularly when the desire and motivation were not their own" as well as those who argued that the absorption process caused "undue hardship". However, the force of Ben-Gurion's influence and insistence ensured that his immigration policy was carried out.

Role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

The arrival of Zionist settlers to Palestine in the late 19th century is widely seen as the start of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.[68]: 70 [214][215] Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.[16] In response to Ben-Gurion's 1938 quote that "politically we are the aggressors and they [the Palestinians] defend themselves", Israeli historian Benny Morris says, "Ben-Gurion, of course, was right. Zionism was a colonizing and expansionist ideology and movement", and that "Zionist ideology and practice were necessarily and elementally expansionist." Morris describes the Zionist goal of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine as necessarily displacing and dispossessing the Arab population.[216] The practical issue of establishing a Jewish state in a majority non-Jewish and Arab region was a fundamental issue for the Zionist movement.[216] Zionists used the term "transfer" as a euphemism for the removal, or ethnic cleansing, of the Arab Palestinian population.[fn 3][217] According to Benny Morris, "the idea of transferring the Arabs out... was seen as the chief means of assuring the stability of the 'Jewishness' of the proposed Jewish State".[216]

In fact, the concept of forcibly removing the non-Jewish population from Palestine was a notion that garnered support across the entire spectrum of Zionist groups, including its farthest left factions[fn 4], from early on in the movement's development.[218][219][220][216][221][222] The concept of transfer was not only seen as desirable but also as an ideal solution by the Zionist leadership.[222][34][223] The notion of forcible transfer was so appealing to this leadership that it was considered the most attractive provision in the Peel Commission. Indeed, this sentiment was deeply ingrained to the extent that Ben Gurion's acceptance of partition was contingent upon the removal of the Palestinian population. He would go as far as to say that transfer was such an ideal solution that it "must happen some day". It was the right wing of the Zionist movement that put forward the main arguments against transfer, their objections being primarily on practical rather than moral grounds.[218][224]

According to Morris, the idea of ethnically cleansing the land of Palestine was to play a large role in Zionist ideology from the inception of the movement. He explains that "transfer" was "inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism" and that a land which was primarily Arab could not be transformed into a Jewish state without displacing the Arab population.[fn 5] Further, the stability of the Jewish state could not be ensured given the Arab population's fear of displacement. He explains that this would be the primary source of conflict between the Zionist movement and the Arab population.[217]

Types

Main article: Types of Zionism

Members and delegates at the 1939 Zionist congress, by country/region (Zionism was banned in the Soviet Union). 70,000 Polish Jews supported the Revisionist Zionism movement, which was not represented.[225] Country/Region Members Delegates Poland 299,165 109 US 263,741 114 Palestine 167,562 134 Romania 60,013 28 United Kingdom 23,513 15 South Africa 22,343 14 Canada 15,220 8

The multi-national, worldwide Zionist movement is structured on representative democratic principles. Congresses are held every four years (they were held every two years before the Second World War) and delegates to the congress are elected by the membership. Members are required to pay dues known as a shekel. At the congress, delegates elect a 30-man executive council, which in turn elects the movement's leader.[citation needed] The movement was democratic from its inception and women had the right to vote.[226]

Until 1917, the World Zionist Organization pursued a strategy of building a Jewish National Home through persistent small-scale immigration and the founding of such bodies as the Jewish National Fund (1901 – a charity that bought land for Jewish settlement) and the Anglo-Palestine Bank (1903 – provided loans for Jewish businesses and farmers). In 1942, at the Biltmore Conference, the movement included for the first time an express objective of the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel.[227]

The 28th Zionist Congress, meeting in Jerusalem in 1968, adopted the five points of the "Jerusalem Program" as the aims of Zionism today. They are:[228]

Unity of the Jewish People and the centrality of Israel in Jewish life

Ingathering of the Jewish People in its historic homeland, Eretz Israel, through Aliyah from all countries

Strengthening of the State of Israel, based on the prophetic vision of justice and peace

Preservation of the identity of the Jewish People through fostering of Jewish and Hebrew education, and of Jewish spiritual and cultural values

Protection of Jewish rights everywhere

Since the creation of modern Israel, the role of the movement has declined. It is now a peripheral factor in Israeli politics, though different perceptions of Zionism continue to play roles in Israeli and Jewish political discussion.[229] After the state's establishment, Zionism has come to be described as Israel's national or state ideology.[21]

Labor Zionism

Main article: Labor Zionism

Labor Zionism originated in Eastern Europe. Socialist Zionists believed that centuries of oppression in antisemitic societies had reduced Jews to a meek, vulnerable, despairing existence that invited further antisemitism, a view originally stipulated by Theodor Herzl.[231][232] They argued that a revolution of the Jewish soul and society was necessary and achievable in part by Jews moving to Israel and becoming farmers, workers, and soldiers in a country of their own. Most socialist Zionists rejected the observance of traditional religious Judaism as perpetuating a "Diaspora mentality" among the Jewish people, and established rural communes in Israel called "kibbutzim".[233] The kibbutz began as a variation on a "national farm" scheme, a form of cooperative agriculture where the Jewish National Fund hired Jewish workers under trained supervision. The kibbutzim were a symbol of the Second Aliyah in that they put great emphasis on communalism and egalitarianism, representing Utopian socialism to a certain extent. Furthermore, they stressed self-sufficiency, which became an essential aspect of Labor Zionism.[234][235] Though socialist Zionism draws its inspiration and is philosophically founded on the fundamental values and spirituality of Judaism, its progressive expression of that Judaism has often fostered an antagonistic relationship with Orthodox Judaism.[235][236]

Traditionalist Israeli historian Anita Shapira describes labor Zionism's use of violence against Palestinians for political means as essentially the same as that of radical conservative Zionist groups. For example, Shapira notes that during the 1936 Palestine revolt, the Irgun Zvai Leumi engaged in the "uninhibited use of terror", "mass indiscriminate killings of the aged, women and children", "attacks against British without any consideration of possible injuries to innocent bystanders, and the murder of British in cold blood". Shapira argues that there were only marginal differences in military behavior between the Irgun and the labor Zionist Palmah. In following with policies laid out by Ben-Gurion, the prevalent method among field squads was that if an Arab gang had used a village as a hideout, it was considered acceptable to hold the entire village collectively responsible. The lines delineating what was acceptable and unacceptable while dealing with these villagers were "vague and intentionally blurred". As Shapira suggests, these ambiguous limits practically did not differ from those of the openly terrorist group, Irgun.[63]

Labor Zionism became the dominant force in the political and economic life of the Yishuv during the British Mandate of Palestine and was the dominant ideology of the political establishment in Israel until the 1977 election when the Israeli Labor Party was defeated. The Israeli Labor Party continues the tradition, although the most popular party in the kibbutzim is Meretz.[237] Labor Zionism's main institution is the Histadrut (general organisation of labor unions), which began by providing strikebreakers against a Palestinian worker's strike in 1920 and until 1970s was the largest employer in Israel after the Israeli government.[238]

Liberal Zionism

Main article: General Zionists

General Zionism (or Liberal Zionism) was initially the dominant trend within the Zionist movement from the First Zionist Congress in 1897 until after the First World War. General Zionists identified with the liberal European middle class to which many Zionist leaders such as Herzl and Chaim Weizmann aspired. Liberal Zionism, although not associated with any single party in modern Israel, remains a strong trend in Israeli politics advocating free market principles, democracy and adherence to human rights. Their political arm was one of the ancestors of the modern-day Likud. Kadima, the main centrist party during the 2000s that split from Likud and is now defunct, however, did identify with many of the fundamental policies of Liberal Zionist ideology, advocating among other things the need for Palestinian statehood in order to form a more democratic society in Israel, affirming the free market, and calling for equal rights for Arab citizens of Israel. In 2013, Ari Shavit suggested that the success of the then-new Yesh Atid party (representing secular, middle-class interests) embodied the success of "the new General Zionists."[239][better source needed]

Dror Zeigerman writes that the traditional positions of the General Zionists—"liberal positions based on social justice, on law and order, on pluralism in matters of State and Religion, and on moderation and flexibility in the domain of foreign policy and security"—are still favored by important circles and currents within certain active political parties.[240]

Philosopher Carlo Strenger describes a modern-day version of Liberal Zionism (supporting his vision of "Knowledge-Nation Israel"), rooted in the original ideology of Herzl and Ahad Ha'am, that stands in contrast to both the romantic nationalism of the right and the Netzah Yisrael of the ultra-Orthodox. It is marked by a concern for democratic values and human rights, freedom to criticize government policies without accusations of disloyalty, and rejection of excessive religious influence in public life. "Liberal Zionism celebrates the most authentic traits of the Jewish tradition: the willingness for incisive debate; the contrarian spirit of davka; the refusal to bow to authoritarianism."[241][242] Liberal Zionists see that "Jewish history shows that Jews need and are entitled to a nation-state of their own. But they also think that this state must be a liberal democracy, which means that there must be strict equality before the law independent of religion, ethnicity or gender."[243]

Revisionist Zionism

Main article: Revisionist Zionism

Revisionist Zionists, led by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, believed that a Jewish state must expand to both sides of the Jordan River, i.e. taking Transjordan in addition to all of Palestine.[244][245] The movement developed what became known as Nationalist Zionism, whose guiding principles were outlined in the 1923 essay Iron Wall, a term denoting the force needed to prevent Palestinian resistance against colonization.[246] Jabotinsky wrote that

Zionism is a colonising adventure and it therefore stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important to build, it is important to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot—or else I am through with playing at colonization.

— Zeev Jabotinsky[247][248]

Historian Avi Shlaim states that[249]

Although the Jews originated in the East, they belonged to the West culturally, morally, and spiritually. Zionism was conceived by Jabotinsky not as the return of the Jews to their spiritual homeland but as an offshoot or implant of Western civilization in the East. This worldview translated into a geostrategic conception in which Zionism was to be permanently allied with European colonialism against all the Arabs in the eastern Mediterranean.

In 1935 the Revisionists left the WZO because it refused to state that the creation of a Jewish state was an objective of Zionism.[citation needed] The Revisionists advocated the formation of a Jewish Army in Palestine to force the Arab population to accept mass Jewish migration.

Supporters of Revisionist Zionism developed the Likud Party in Israel, which has dominated most governments since 1977. It advocates Israel's maintaining control of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and takes a hard-line approach in the Arab–Israeli conflict. In 2005, the Likud split over the issue of creation of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories. Party members advocating peace talks helped form the Kadima Party.[250]

Religious Zionism

Main article: Religious Zionism

Religious Zionism is an ideology that combines Zionism and observant Judaism. Before the establishment of the state of Israel, Religious Zionists were mainly observant Jews who supported Zionist efforts to build a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. One of the core ideas in Religious Zionism is the belief that the ingathering of exiles in the Land of Israel and the establishment of Israel is Atchalta De'Geulah ("the beginning of the redemption"), the initial stage of the geula.[251]

After the Six-Day War and the capture of the West Bank, a territory referred to in Jewish terms as Judea and Samaria, right-wing components of the Religious Zionist movement integrated nationalist revindication and evolved into what is sometimes known as Neo-Zionism. Their ideology revolves around three pillars: the Land of Israel, the People of Israel and the Torah of Israel.[252]

Non-Jewish support

The French government, through Minister M. Cambon, formally committed itself to "... the renaissance of the Jewish nationality in that Land from which the people of Israel were exiled so many centuries ago."[253]

In China, top figures of the Nationalist government, including Sun Yat-sen, expressed their sympathy with the aspirations of the Jewish people for a National Home.[254]

Christian support for Zionism

Main article: Christian Zionism

Some Christians actively supported the return of Jews to Palestine even prior to the rise of Zionism, as well as subsequently. Anita Shapira, a history professor emerita at Tel Aviv University, suggests that evangelical Christian restorationists of the 1840s "passed this notion on to Jewish circles".[256] Evangelical Christian anticipation of and political lobbying within the UK for Restorationism was widespread in the 1820s and common beforehand.[257] It was common among the Puritans to anticipate and frequently to pray for a Jewish return to their homeland.[258][259][260]

One of the principal Protestant teachers who promoted the biblical doctrine that the Jews would return to their national homeland was John Nelson Darby. His doctrine of dispensationalism is credited with promoting Zionism, following his 11 lectures on the hopes of the church, the Jew and the gentile given in Geneva in 1840.[261] However, others like C H Spurgeon,[262] both Horatius[263] and Andrew Bonar, Robert Murray M'Chyene,[264] and J C Ryle[265] were among a number of prominent proponents of both the importance and significance of a Jewish return, who were not dispensationalist. Pro-Zionist views were embraced by many evangelicals and also affected international foreign policy.

The Russian Orthodox ideologue Hippolytus Lutostansky, also known as the author of multiple antisemitic tracts, insisted in 1911 that Russian Jews should be "helped" to move to Palestine "as their rightful place is in their former kingdom of Palestine".[266]

Notable early supporters of Zionism include British Prime Ministers David Lloyd George and Arthur Balfour, American President Woodrow Wilson and British Major-General Orde Wingate, whose activities in support of Zionism led the British Army to ban him from ever serving in Palestine. According to Charles Merkley of Carleton University, Christian Zionism strengthened significantly after the Six-Day War of 1967, and many dispensationalist and non-dispensationalist evangelical Christians, especially Christians in the United States, now strongly support Zionism.[citation needed]

Martin Luther King Jr. was a strong supporter of Israel and Zionism,[255] although the Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend is a work falsely attributed to him.

In the last years of his life, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, Joseph Smith, declared, "the time for Jews to return to the land of Israel is now." In 1842, Smith sent Orson Hyde, an Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, to Jerusalem to dedicate the land for the return of the Jews.[267]

Some Arab Christians publicly supporting Israel include US author Nonie Darwish, and former Muslim Magdi Allam, author of Viva Israele,[268] both born in Egypt. Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese-born Christian US journalist and founder of the American Congress for Truth, urges Americans to "fearlessly speak out in defense of America, Israel and Western civilization".[269]

The largest Zionist organisation is Christians United for Israel, which has 10 million members and is led by John Hagee.[270][271][272]

Muslim support for Zionism

Main article: Muslim supporters of Israel

Muslims who have publicly defended Zionism include Tawfik Hamid, Islamic thinker and reformer[274] and former member of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, an Islamist militant group that is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union,[275] Sheikh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi, Director of the Cultural Institute of the Italian Islamic Community[276] and Tashbih Sayyed, a Pakistani-American scholar, journalist, and author.[277]

On occasion, some non-Arab Muslims such as some Kurds and Berbers have also voiced support for Zionism.[278][279][280]

While most Israeli Druze identify as ethnically Arab,[281] today, tens of thousands of Israeli Druze belong to "Druze Zionist" movements.[273]

During the Palestine Mandate era, As'ad Shukeiri, a Muslim scholar ('alim) of the Acre area, and the father of PLO founder Ahmad Shukeiri, rejected the values of the Palestinian Arab national movement and was opposed to the anti-Zionist movement.[282] He met routinely with Zionist officials and had a part in every pro-Zionist Arab organization from the beginning of the British Mandate, publicly rejecting Mohammad Amin al-Husayni's use of Islam to attack Zionism.[283]

Some Indian Muslims have also expressed opposition to Islamic anti-Zionism. In August 2007, a delegation of the All India Organization of Imams and mosques led by its president Maulana Jamil Ilyas visited Israel. The meeting led to a joint statement expressing "peace and goodwill from Indian Muslims", developing dialogue between Indian Muslims and Israeli Jews, and rejecting the perception that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is of a religious nature.[284] The visit was organized by the American Jewish Committee. The purpose of the visit was to promote meaningful debate about the status of Israel in the eyes of Muslims worldwide and to strengthen the relationship between India and Israel. It is suggested that the visit could "open Muslim minds across the world to understand the democratic nature of the state of Israel, especially in the Middle East".[285]

Hindu support for Zionism

Main articles: India–Israel relations and Hindu nationalism

After Israel's creation in 1948, the Indian National Congress government opposed Zionism. Some writers have claimed that this was done in order to get more Muslim votes in India (where Muslims numbered over 30 million at the time).[286] Zionism, seen as a national liberation movement for the repatriation of the Jewish people to their homeland then under British colonial rule, appealed to many Hindu nationalists, who viewed their struggle for independence from British rule and the Partition of India as national liberation for long-oppressed Hindus.[citation needed]

An international opinion survey has shown that India is the most pro-Israel country in the world.[287] In more current times, conservative Indian parties and organizations tend to support Zionism.[288] This has invited attacks on the Hindutva movement by parts of the Indian left opposed to Zionism, and allegations that Hindus are conspiring with the "Jewish Lobby."[289]

Anti-Zionism

Main articles: Anti-Zionism and Timeline of Anti-Zionism

Zionism has been opposed by a wide variety of organizations and individuals. In 1919, the US-based King–Crane Commission found that the subjection of Palestinians to Zionist rule was a violation of the principle of self-determination. The report stated that "The initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a 'right' to Palestine based on occupation of two thousand years ago, can barely be seriously considered."[291][292]

Among those opposing Zionism before their dissolution were the former Soviet Union[293] and Nazi Germany.[294][295] Today, opponents include Palestinian nationalists, several states of the Arab League and in the Muslim world, some secular, Satmar and Neturei Karta Jews.[293][296][297][298] Reasons for opposing Zionism have been varied, and they include: fundamental disagreement that foreign born Jews have rights of resettlement, the perception that land confiscations are unfair; expulsions of Palestinians; violence against Palestinians; and alleged racism.[299][300][301] Arab states in particular have historically strongly opposed Zionism.[302] The preamble of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, which has been ratified by 53 African countries as of 2014 , includes an undertaking to eliminate Zionism together with other practices including colonialism, neo-colonialism, apartheid, "aggressive foreign military bases" and all forms of discrimination.[303][304]

In 1945 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. Ibn Saud pointed out that it was Germany who had committed crimes against the Jews and so Germany should be punished. Palestinian Arabs had done no harm to European Jews and did not deserve to be punished by losing their land. Roosevelt on return to the US concluded that Israel "could only be established and maintained by force."[305]

Catholic Church and Zionism

Shortly after the First Zionist Congress, the semi-official Vatican periodical (edited by the Jesuits) Civiltà Cattolica gave its biblical-theological judgement on political Zionism: "1827 years have passed since the prediction of Jesus of Nazareth was fulfilled ... that [after the destruction of Jerusalem] the Jews would be led away to be slaves among all the nations and that they would remain in the dispersion [diaspora, galut] until the end of the world."[306] The Jews should not be permitted to return to Palestine with sovereignty: "According to the Sacred Scriptures, the Jewish people must always live dispersed and vagabondo [vagrant, wandering] among the other nations, so that they may render witness to Christ not only by the Scriptures ... but by their very existence".[306]

Nonetheless, Theodor Herzl travelled to Rome in late January 1904, after the sixth Zionist Congress (August 1903) and six months before his death, looking for support. On January 22, Herzl first met the Papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val. According to Herzl's private diary notes, the Cardinal's interpretation of the history of Israel was the same as that of the Catholic Church, but he also asked for the conversion of the Jews to Catholicism. Three days later, Herzl met Pope Pius X, who replied to his request of support for a Jewish return to Israel in the same terms, saying that "we are unable to favor this movement. We cannot prevent the Jews from going to Jerusalem, but we could never sanction it ... The Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people." In 1922, the same periodical published a piece by its Viennese correspondent, "anti-Semitism is nothing but the absolutely necessary and natural reaction to the Jews' arrogance... Catholic anti-Semitism—while never going beyond the moral law—adopts all necessary means to emancipate the Christian people from the abuse they suffer from their sworn enemy".[307] This initial attitude changed over the next 50 years, until 1997, when at the Vatican symposium of that year, Pope John Paul II rejected the Christian roots of antisemitism, stating that "... the wrong and unjust interpretations of the New Testament relating to the Jewish people and their supposed guilt [in Christ's death] circulated for too long, engendering sentiments of hostility toward this people."[308]

Characterization as colonialist and racist

Zionism is often consider to be an example of a colonial[41] or racist[42] movement. According to historian Avi Shlaim, throughout its history up to present day, Zionism "is replete with manifestations of deep hostility and contempt towards the indigenous population." Shlaim balances this by pointing out that there have always been individuals within the Zionist movement that have criticized such attitudes. He cites the example of Ahad Ha'am, who after visiting Palestine in 1891, published a series of articles criticizing the aggressive behaviour and political ethnocentrism of Zionist settlers. Ha'am reportedly wrote that the Yishuv "behave towards the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly upon their boundaries, beat them shamefully without reason and even brag about it, and nobody stands to check this contemptible and dangerous tendency" and that they believed that "the only language that the Arabs understand is that of force."[309] Some criticisms of Zionism claim that Judaism's notion of the "chosen people" is the source of racism in Zionism,[310] despite, according to Gustavo Perednik, that being a religious concept unrelated to Zionism.[311] This characterization of Zionism as a colonialism has been made by, among others, Gershon Shafir, Michael Prior, Ilan Pappe, and Baruch Kimmerling.[41] Noam Chomsky, John P. Quigly, Nur Masalha, and Cheryl Rubenberg have criticized Zionism, saying that it unfairly confiscates land and expels Palestinians.[312] Isaac Deutscher has called Israelis the 'Prussians of the Middle East', who have achieved a 'totsieg', a 'victorious rush into the grave' as a result of dispossessing 1.5 million Palestinians. Israel had become the 'last remaining colonial power' of the twentieth century.[313] Saleh Abdel Jawad, Nur Masalha, Michael Prior, Ian Lustick, and John Rose have criticized Zionism for having been responsible for violence against Palestinians, such as the Deir Yassin massacre, Sabra and Shatila massacre, and Cave of the Patriarchs massacre.[314]

Edward Said and Michael Prior claim that the notion of expelling the Palestinians was an early component of Zionism, citing Herzl's diary from 1895 which states "we shall endeavour to expel the poor population across the border unnoticed—the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."[315] Derek Penslar says that Herzl may have been considering either South America or Palestine when he wrote the diary entry about expropriation.[316] According to Walter Laqueur, although many Zionists proposed transfer, it was never official Zionist policy and in 1918 Ben-Gurion "emphatically rejected" it.[317]

The exodus of the Arab Palestinians during the 1947–1949 war has been controversially described as having involved ethnic cleansing.[318][319] According to a growing consensus between 'new historians' in Israel and Palestinian historians, expulsion and destruction of villages played a major role in creating the Palestinian refugee problem.[320] While traditionalist scholars such as Efraim Karsh state that most of the Arabs who fled left of their own accord or were pressured to leave by their fellow Arabs (and that Israel attempted to convince them to stay)[321][322] the scholarly consensus now dismisses this claim,[323] and as such, Benny Morris concurs that Arab instigation was not the major cause of the refugees' flight,[324] and state that the major cause of Palestinian flight was instead military actions by the Israeli Defence Force and fear of them and that Arab instigation can only explain a small part of the exodus and not a large part of it.[325][326][327][328][329][330] Ilan Pappe said that Zionism resulted in ethnic cleansing.[331] This view diverges from other New Historians, such as Benny Morris, who place the Palestinian exodus in the context of war, not ethnic cleansing.[332] When Benny Morris was asked about the Expulsion of Palestinians from Lydda and Ramle, he responded "There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide—the annihilation of your people—I prefer ethnic cleansing."[333]

In 1938, Mahatma Gandhi said in the letter "The Jews", that the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine must be performed by non-violence against the Arabs, comparing it to the Partition of India into Hindu and Muslim countries. He proposed to the Jews to "offer themselves to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them".[334] He expressed his "sympathy" for the Jewish aspirations, but said: "The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?"[335][better source needed] and warned them against violence: "It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs ... Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home ... They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs. They should seek to convert the Arab heart".[336] Gandhi later told American journalist Louis Fischer in 1946 that "Jews have a good case in Palestine. If the Arabs have a claim to Palestine, the Jews have a prior claim".[337] He expressed himself again in 1946, nuancing his views: "Hitherto I have refrained practically from saying anything in public regarding the Jew-Arab controversy. I have done so for good reasons. That does not mean any want of interest in the question, but it does mean that I do not consider myself sufficiently equipped with knowledge for the purpose". He concluded: "If they were to adopt the matchless weapon of non-violence ... their case would be the world's and I have no doubt that among the many things that the Jews have given to the world, this would be the best and the brightest".[338][better source needed]

In December 1973, the UN passed a series of resolutions condemning South Africa and included a reference to an "unholy alliance between Portuguese colonialism, Apartheid and Zionism."[339] At the time there was little cooperation between Israel and South Africa,[340] although the two countries would develop a close relationship during the 1970s.[341] Parallels have also been drawn between aspects of South Africa's apartheid regime and certain Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, which are seen as manifestations of racism in Zionist thinking.[342]

In 1975 the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, which said "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination". According to the resolution, "any doctrine of racial differentiation of superiority is scientifically false, morally condemnable, socially unjust, and dangerous." The resolution named the occupied territory of Palestine, Zimbabwe, and South Africa as examples of racist regimes. Resolution 3379 was pioneered by the Soviet Union and passed with numerical support from Arab and African states amidst accusations that Israel was supportive of the apartheid regime in South Africa.[343] In 1991 the resolution was repealed with UN General Assembly Resolution 46/86,[344][better source needed] after Israel declared that it would only participate in the Madrid Conference of 1991 if the resolution were revoked.[345]

Arab countries sought to associate Zionism with racism in connection with a 2001 UN conference on racism, which took place in Durban, South Africa,[346] which caused the United States and Israel to walk away from the conference as a response. The final text of the conference did not connect Zionism with racism. A human rights forum arranged in connection with the conference, on the other hand, did equate Zionism with racism and censured Israel for what it called "racist crimes, including acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing".[347]

Haredi Judaism and Zionism

See also: Haredim and Zionism

Some Haredi Orthodox organizations reject Zionism as they view it as a secular movement and reject nationalism as a doctrine. Hasidic groups in Jerusalem, most famously the Satmar Hasidim, as well as the larger movement they are part of, the Edah HaChareidis, are opposing its ideology for religious reasons. They number in the tens of thousands in Jerusalem, and hundreds of thousands worldwide.[citation needed] One of the best known Hasidic opponents of political Zionism was Hungarian rebbe and Talmudic scholar Joel Teitelbaum.

The Neturei Karta, an Orthodox Haredi sect viewed as a cult on the "farthest fringes of Judaism" by most mainstream Jews, reject Zionism.[348] Some have said that Israel is a "racist regime",[349] compared Zionists to Nazis,[350] claimed that Zionism is contrary to the teachings of the Torah,[351] or accused it of promoting antisemitism.[352]

Anti-Zionism or antisemitism

Main articles: Anti-Zionism § Anti-Zionism and antisemitism, and New Antisemitism

Critics of anti-Zionism have argued that opposition to Zionism can be hard to distinguish from antisemitism,[353][354] and that criticism of Israel may be used as an excuse to express viewpoints that might otherwise be considered antisemitic.[355][356] In discussion of the relationship between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, "one theory holds that anti-Zionism is no more than veiled anti-Semitism". This is contrasted with the theory "that criticism of Israeli politics has been discredited as anti-Zionism, and thus linked with anti-Semitism, in order to prevent such criticism".[357]

According to Thomas Mitchell, the terms Jewish and Zionist are at times used interchangeably by some Arab leadership, a perspective that has been influenced by the introduction of European antisemitism into the Arab world in the 1930s and 1940s by the Axis powers. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has always positioned itself as being anti-Zionist rather than antisemitic, although its leadership have in a few instances used the terms interchangeably.[358]

Anti-Zionist writers such as Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Michael Marder, and Tariq Ali have argued that the characterization of anti-Zionism as antisemitic obscures legitimate criticism of Israel's policies and actions, and that it is used as a political ploy in order to stifle legitimate criticism of Israel.

Jewish American linguist Noam Chomsky argues: "There have long been efforts to identify anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in an effort to exploit anti-racist sentiment for political ends; 'one of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all,' Israeli diplomat Abba Eban argued, in a typical expression of this intellectually and morally disreputable position (Eban, Congress Bi-Weekly, March 30, 1973). But that no longer suffices. It is now necessary to identify criticism of Israeli policies as anti-Semitism—or in the case of Jews, as 'self-hatred,' so that all possible cases are covered." – Chomsky, 1989 "Necessary Illusions

Philosopher Michael Marder argues: "To deconstruct Zionism is ... to demand justice for its victims—not only for the Palestinians, who are suffering from it, but also for the anti-Zionist Jews, 'erased' from the officially consecrated account of Zionist history. By deconstructing its ideology, we shed light on the context it strives to repress and on the violence it legitimises with a mix of theological or metaphysical reasoning and affective appeals to historical guilt for the undeniably horrific persecution of Jewish people in Europe and elsewhere."[359]

Jewish American political scientist Norman Finkelstein argues that anti-Zionism and often just criticism of Israeli policies have been conflated with antisemitism, sometimes called new antisemitism for political gain: "Whenever Israel faces a public relations débâcle such as the Intifada or international pressure to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict, American Jewish organizations orchestrate this extravaganza called the 'new anti-Semitism.' The purpose is several-fold. First, it is to discredit any charges by claiming the person is an anti-Semite. It's to turn Jews into the victims, so that the victims are not the Palestinians any longer. As people like Abraham Foxman of the ADL put it, the Jews are being threatened by a new holocaust. It's a role reversal—the Jews are now the victims, not the Palestinians. So it serves the function of discrediting the people leveling the charge. It's no longer Israel that needs to leave the Occupied Territories; it's the Arabs who need to free themselves of the anti-Semitism."[360]

Zionism as settler colonialism

Main article: Zionism as settler colonialism

Beyond characterizing it as a colonial movement, Zionism has been more recently described as a form of settler colonialism, with proponents of this paradigm including Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi, Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, Fayez Sayegh, Maxime Rodinson, George Jabbour, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Baha Abu-Laban, Jamil Hilal, and Rosemary Sayigh.[362]

The current form of this conceptual framework emerged in the 1990s among Palestinian scholars in Israel who "reframed the history of the Nakba as enduring" in response to their marginalization by the two-state Israeli–Palestinian peace process.[fn 6] It built of the work of Patrick Wolfe, an influential theorist of settler colonial studies who has defined settler colonialism as an ongoing "structure, not an event" aimed at replacing a native population rather than exploiting it.[365][366]

Rachel Busbridge says the framework's subsequent popularity is inseparable from frustration at the stagnation of that process and resulting Western left-wing sympathy for Palestinian nationalism. Busbridge writes that while a settler colonial analysis "offers a far more accurate portrayal of the conflict than...has conventionally been painted", Wolfe's zero-sum approach is limited in practical application because almost all Israeli Jews naturally reject it, as a form of antisemitism that denies their long-standing history in the land of Israel and aspirations for self-determination.[367]

See also

References

Explanatory notes

Citations

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