Zionism
Encyclopedia
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination
of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state
and address threats to its continued existence and security. In a less common usage, the term may also refer to non-political, cultural Zionism
, founded and represented most prominently by Ahad Ha'am; and political support for the State of Israel by non-Jews, as in Christian Zionism
.
, Labor Zionism
, Revisionist Zionism
, Green Zionism
, etc. However, the common denominator among all Zionists is the claim to Eretz Israel as the national homeland of the Jews and as the legitimate focus for the Jewish national self-determination (as shown, among others, by Gideon Shimoni). It is based on historical ties and religious traditions
linking the Jewish people to the Land of Israel
.
After almost two millennia of existence of the Jewish diaspora
without a national state, 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
. The political movement was formally established by the Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl
in 1897 following the publication of his book Der Judenstaat
. At that time, the movement sought to encourage Jewish migration
to the Ottoman Palestine
.
Although initially one of several Jewish political movements offering alternative responses to assimilation
and antisemitism, Zionism grew rapidly and became the dominant force in Jewish politics with the destruction of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe where these alternative movements were rooted.
The movement was eventually successful in establishing Israel on 14 May 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 also steadily grown since the movement came into existence and over 40% of the world's Jews
now live in Israel, more than in any other country. These two outcomes represent the historical success of Zionism, unmatched by any other Jewish political movement in the past 2,000 years.
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
.
Zionism was also directed at assimilation into the modern world. As a result of the Diaspora, many of the Jewish people were outcasts and had no knowledge of the modern era. There were Jews who desired complete assimilation and were willing to neglect their faith in an attempt at modernization. The assimilationists, who are depicted as truly messianic, were a radical group in Jewish history. They desired a pure revolution: a complete integration of Jews into European society. This would dispel any dissimilarity between Jews and non-Jews. They are described as messianic in their anticipation and desire of a new era. Assimilationists were not concerned with keeping their own identity but wanted homogeneity. They would disband their traditional views and opinions as long as it insured complete assimilation into the modern world. Another less radical form of assimilation was called cultural synthesis. Those in favor of cultural synthesis emphasized an obligation to maintain traditional Jewish values but also a need to conform to a modernist society. They are described as defensive and sought to reject the pure revolution that the assimilationists promoted. They aimed to eradicate any disparity between Jewish and modern life. However (in contrast with assimilationists), they also wanted to preserve their own faith and many of their traditional values. They were concerned that if Jews lost their identification, the result would be detrimental. Those in favor of cultural synthesis desired a balance between change and continuity as opposed to the assimilationists who only wanted change.
In 1975, the United Nations General Assembly
passed a resolution that designated Zionism as "a form of racism and racial discrimination". The resolution was repealed in 1991. Within the context of the Arab–Israeli conflict
, Zionism is viewed by critics as a system that fosters apartheid and racism
.
, referring to Jerusalem. Throughout eastern Europe at the time, there were numerous grassroots groups promoting the national resettlement of the Jews in what was termed their "ancestral homeland", as well as the revitalization and cultivation of Hebrew. These groups were collectively called the "Lovers of Zion." The first use of the term is attributed to the Austrian Nathan Birnbaum
, founder of a nationalist Jewish students' movement Kadimah, who used the term in his journal Selbstemanzipation (Self Emancipation) . Readings of the founders of Zionism shows that they lived in the same Europe which spawned fascism and Naziism, and they adopted the anti-Jewish view that Jews did not belong in Europe as the core of their ideology.
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. The movement was democratic from its inception and women had the right to vote.
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.
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:
Since the creation of modern Israel, the role of the movement has declined and it is now a peripheral factor in Israeli politics, though different perceptions of Zionism continue to play a role in Israeli and Jewish political discussion.
. 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 "kibbutz
im". 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 Aliya
in that they put great emphasis on communalism and egalitarianism, representing to a certain extent Utopian socialism. Furthermore, they stressed self-sufficiency, which became an important aspect of Labor Zionism. 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
.
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. Labor Zionism's main institution is the Histadrut, which began by providing strikebreakers against a Palestinian worker's strike in 1920 and is now the largest employer in Israel after the Israeli government.
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. Kadima
, however, does 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.
Party in Israel, which has dominated most governments since 1977. It advocates Israel maintaining control of the West-Bank and East Jerusalem and takes a hard-line approach in the Israeli-Arab conflict. In 2005 the Likud split over the issue of creation of a Palestinian state on the occupied territories and party members advocating peace talks helped form the Kadima
party.
(the first Chief Rabbi of Palestine
) and his son Rabbi Zevi Judah Kook saw great religious and traditional value in many of Zionism's ideals, while rejecting its anti-religious undertones. They taught that Orthodox (Torah) Judaism embraces and mandates Zionism's positive ideals, such as the ingathering of exiles, and political activity to create and maintain a Jewish political entity in the Land of Israel. In this way, Zionism serves as a bridge between Orthodox and secular Jews.
While other Zionist groups tended to moderate their nationalism over time, the gains
from the Six-Day War
have led religious Zionism to play a significant role in Israeli political life. Now associated with the National Religious Party
and Gush Emunim
, religious Zionists have been at the forefront of Jewish settlement in the West Bank and efforts to assert Jewish control over the Old City of Jerusalem.
is a branch of Zionism primarily concerned with the environment of Israel. The first and only environmental Zionist party is the Green Zionist Alliance
.
and post-Zionism
. Both movements mark the Israeli version of a worldwide phenomenon:
Neo-Zionism and post-Zionism share traits with "classical" Zionism but differ by accentuating antagonist and diametrically opposed poles already present in Zionism. "Neo Zionism accentuates the messianic and particularistic dimensions of Zionist nationalism, while post-Zionism accentuates its normalising and universalistic dimensions". Post-Zionism asserts that Israel should abandon the concept of a "state of the Jewish people" and strive to be a state of all its citizens, or a binational state where Arabs and Jews live together while enjoying some type of autonomy.
do openly affiliate with the Zionist movement.
Some Haredi rabbis do not consider Israel to be a halachic Jewish state because it is secular. However, they generally consider themselves responsible for ensuring that Jews maintain religious ideals and since most Israeli citizens are Jews they pursue this agenda within Israel. Others reject any possibility of a Jewish state, since according to them a Jewish state is completely forbidden by Jewish law, and a Jewish state is considered an oxymoron.
Two Haredi parties run in Israeli elections. They are sometimes associated with views that could be regarded as nationalist or Zionist, and have shown a preference for coalitions with more nationalist Zionist parties, probably because these are more interested in enhancing the Jewish nature of the Israeli state.
The Sephardi-Orthodox party Shas
rejected association with the Zionist movement, however in 2010 it joined the World Zionist Organization
, its voters also generally regard themselves as Zionist and Knesset members frequently pursue what others might consider a Zionist agenda. Shas has supported territorial compromise with the Arabs and Palestinians but generally opposes compromise over Jewish holy sites.
The Ashkenazi Agudat Israel
/UTJ
party has always avoided association with the Zionist movement and usually avoids voting on or discussing issues related to peace because its members do not serve in the army. The party does work towards ensuring that Israel and Israeli law are in tune with the halacha, on issues such as Shabbat
rest.
Many other Hasidic
groups, most famously the Satmar
Hasidim as well as the larger movement they are part of in Jerusalem, the Edah HaChareidis, are strongly anti-Zionist. One of the best known Hasidic opponent of all forms of modern political Zionism was Hungarian
rebbe
and Talmud
ic scholar Joel Teitelbaum
. In his view, the current State of Israel, which was founded
by people that included some anti-religious personalities in seeming violation of the traditional notion that Jews should wait for the Jewish Messiah, is seen as contrary to Judaism
. The core citations from classical Judaic sources cited by Teitelbaum in his arguments against modern Zionism are based on a passage in the Talmud, Rabbi Yosi b'Rebbi Hanina explains (Kesubos 111a) that the Lord imposed "Three Oaths
" on the nation of Israel: a) Israel should not return to the Land together, by force; b) Israel should not rebel against the other nations; and c) The nations should not subjugate Israel too harshly. According to Teitelbaum, the second oath is relevant concerning the subsequent wars fought between Israel and Arab nations.
Other opponent groups included in the Edah HaChareidis include Dushinsky, Toldos Aharon, Toldos Avrohom Yitzchok, Spinka, and others, numbering tens of thousands in Jerusalem, and hundreds of thousands worldwide.
The Neturei Karta
, an orthodox Haredi religious movement, strongly oppose Zionism and Israel; it considers the latter a racist regime. The movement equates Zionism to Nazism
, stating "Apart from the Zionists, the only ones who consistently considered the Jews a race were the Nazis." Naturei Carta believes that Zionist ideology is totally contrary to traditional Jewish law and beliefs and the teachings of the Holy Torah
and that Zionism promotes antisemitism.
The Chabad-Lubavitch
Hasidic movement has traditionally not identified itself as Zionist, although in recent years it has adopted a nationalist agenda and opposed any territorial compromise.
(migration, literally "ascent") to the Land of Israel is a recurring theme in Jewish prayers. Some Zionists consider Jews outside of Israel as living in exile. Rejection of life in the Diaspora is a central assumption in Zionism. Underlying this attitude is the feeling that the Diaspora restricts the full growth of Jewish individual and national life.
Zionists generally preferred to speak Hebrew, a Semitic language that developed under conditions of freedom in ancient Judah
, modernizing and adapting it for everyday use. Zionists sometimes refused to speak Yiddish, a language they considered affected by Christian persecution. Once they moved to Israel, many Zionists refused to speak their (diasporic) mother tongues and gave themselves new, Hebrew names. Hebrew was preferred not only for ideological reasons, but also because it allowed members of the new Yishuv who came from different parts of the world to have a common language, thus furthering the political and cultural bonds between Zionists.
Major aspects of the Zionist idea are represented in the Israeli Declaration of Independence:
Zionism is dedicated to fighting antisemitism. Some Zionists believe antisemitism will never disappear (and that Jews must conduct themselves with this in mind), while others perceive Zionism as a vehicle with which to end antisemitism.
Since the first centuries CE most Jews have lived outside Land of Israel
(Eretz Israel, better known as Palestine
by non-Jews), although there has been a constant presence of Jews. According to Judaism, Eretz Israel is a land promised to the Jews by God according to the Bible
. The Diaspora began in 586 BCE during the Babylonian occupation of Israel. The Babylonians destroyed the First Temple, which was central to Jewish culture at the time. After the 1st century Great Revolt and the 2nd century Bar Kokhba revolt, the Romans
expelled the Jews from Judea
, changing the name to Syria Palaestina." The Bar Kokhba revolt caused a spike in anti-Semitism and Jewish persecution. The ensuing exile from Judea greatly increased the percent of Jews who were dispersed throughout the Diaspora instead of living in their original home.
Zion
is a hill near Jerusalem (now in the city), widely symbolizing the Land of Israel.
In the middle of the sixteenth century Joseph Nasi
, with the support of the Ottoman Empire
, tried to gather the Portuguese Jews, first to Cyprus
, then owned by the Republic of Venice and later to Tiberias. This was the only practical attempt to establish some sort of Jewish political center in Palestine between the fourth and 19th centuries. In the seventeenth century Sabbatai Zebi (1626–1676) announced himself as the Messias and gained over many Jews to his side, forming a base in Salonica. He first tried to establish a settlement in Gaza, but moved later to Smyrna. After deposing the old rabbi Aaron Lapapa
even the Jewish community of Avignon
prepared to emigrate to the new kingdom in the spring of 1666. The readiness of the Jews of the time to believe the messianic claims of Sabbatai Zevi may be largely explained by the desperate state of European Jewry in the mid-17th century. The bloody pogroms of Bohdan Khmelnytsky
had wiped out one third of the Jewish population and destroyed many centers of Jewish learning and communal life. Finally, he was forced by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV
to visit him and, to the surprise of his followers, in the presence of the Sultan he converted to Islam.
In the 19th century, a current in Judaism supporting a return to Zion grew in popularity, particularly in Europe, where antisemitism and hostility towards Jews were also growing, although this idea was rejected by the conferences of rabbis held in that epoch. Nonetheless, individual efforts supported the emigration of groups of Jews to Palestine, pre-Zionist Aliyah, even before 1897, the year considered as the start of practical Zionism.
The Reformed Jews rejected this idea of a return to Zion. The conference of rabbis, at Frankfurt am Main, 15–28 July 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". The Pittsburg conference, 1885, reiterated this Messianic idea of reformed 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".
Jewish settlements were established in the upper Mississippi region by W.D. Robinson in 1819 and near Jerusalem, by the American Consul Warder Cresson
, a convert to Judaism, in 1850. Before he succeeded, he was tried and condemned for lunacy in a suit brought forward by his own wife and son; after winning a second trial he established a colony in the Valley of Rephaim
, where he hoped to "prevent any attempts being made to take advantage of the necessities of our poor brethren... (that would) ... FORCE them into a pretended conversion." Similar efforts were made in Prague, by Abraham Benisch
and Moritz Steinschneider
in 1835.
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). The official beginning of the construction of the New Yishuv in Palestine is usually dated back to the arrival of the Bilu
group in 1882, which commenced the First Aliyah
. In the following years, Jewish immigration to Palestine started in earnest. Most immigrants
came from Russia, escaping the frequent pogrom
s and state-led persecution. They founded a number of agricultural settlements with financial support from Jewish philanthropists in Western Europe. Further Aliyahs followed the Russian Revolution and Nazi persecution. However, at the end of the XIX century, Jews still were a minority in Palestina.
In the 1890s, Theodor Herzl
infused Zionism with a new ideology
and practical urgency, leading to the First Zionist Congress
at Basel
in 1897, which created the World Zionist Organization
(WZO). Herzl's aim was to initiate necessary preparatory steps for the attainment of a Jewish state. Herzl's attempts to reach a political agreement with the Ottoman
rulers of Palestine were unsuccessful and other governmental support was sought. The WZO supported small-scale settlement in Palestine and focused on strengthening Jewish feeling and consciousness and on building a worldwide federation.
The Russian Empire, with its long record of state organized genocide and ethnic cleansing ("pogroms") was widely regarded as the historic enemy of the Jewish people. As much of its leadership were German speakers, the Zionist movement's headquarters were located in Berlin
. At the start of World War I
, most Jews (and Zionists) supported Germany in its war with Russia.
Lobbying by a Russian Jewish immigrant, Chaim Weizmann
and fear that American Jews
would encourage the USA to support Germany culminated in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 by the British government (the Zionist congress had decided already by 1903 to decline an offer by the British to establish a homeland in Uganda). This endorsed the creation of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine. In addition, a Zionist military corps led by Jabotinsky were recruited to fight on behalf of Britain in Palestine.
In 1922, the League of Nations
adopted the declaration in the Mandate it gave to Britain:
Weizmann's role in obtaining the Balfour Declaration led to his election as the movement's leader. He remained in that role until 1948 and then became the first President of Israel
.
Jewish migration to Palestine and widespread Jewish land purchases from feudal landlords led to landlessness and fueled unrest—often led by the same landlords who sold the land. There were riots in 1920, 1921 and 1929, sometimes accompanied by massacres of Jews The victims were usually from the non-Zionist Haredi Jewish communities in the Four Holy Cities
. Britain supported Jewish immigration in principle, but in reaction to Arab violence imposed restrictions.
In 1933, Hitler came to power in Germany, and in 1935 the Nuremberg Laws
made German Jews (and later Austrian
and Czech Jews) stateless refugees. Similar rules were applied by the many Nazi allies
in Europe. The subsequent growth in Jewish migration and impact of Nazi propaganda
aimed at the Arab world led to the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. Britain established the Peel Commission
to investigate the situation. The commission did not consider the situation of Jews in Europe but called for a two-state solution and compulsory transfer of populations
. But Britain rejected this solution and instead implemented White Paper of 1939
. This planned to end Jewish immigration by 1944 and to allow no more than 75,000 further Jewish migrants. This was disastrous to European Jews already being gravely discriminated against and in need of a place to seek refuge. The British maintained this policy until the end of the Mandate.
Growth of the Jewish community in Palestine and devastation of European Jewish life sidelined the World Zionist Organization. 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 highly effective American Palestine Committee
.
After World War II and the Holocaust
, a massive wave of stateless Jews
, 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. The British either imprisoned these Jews in Cyprus
(including many orphaned children) or sent them to the British-controlled Allied Occupation Zones in Germany
. This resulted in universal Jewish support for Zionism and the refusal of the U.S. Congress to grant economic aid to Britain. In addition, Zionist groups attacked the British in Palestine and, with its empire facing bankruptcy, Britain was forced to refer the issue to the newly created United Nations
.
In 1947, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine
(UNSCOP) recommended that western Palestine should be partitioned into a Jewish state, an Arab state and a UN-controlled territory, Corpus separatum, around Jerusalem. 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 the streets of Jewish cities. However, the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab states rejected the UN decision, demanding a single state and removal of Jewish migrants, leading to the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
On 14 May 1948, at the end of the British mandate, the Jewish Agency, led by David Ben-Gurion
, declared the creation of the State of Israel, and the same day the armies of seven Arab countries invaded Israel. The conflict led to an exodus of about 711,000 Arab Palestinians
, known to Palestinians as Al Nakba (the "catastrophe"), and the exodus of 850,000 Jews
from the Arab world, mostly to Israel. Later, a series of laws passed by the first Israeli government prevented Palestinians from returning to their homes, or claiming their property. They and many of their descendants remain refugees. The expulsion of the Palestinians has since been widely, and controversially, described as having involved ethnic cleansing
.
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 migrating Jews 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.
were called Restorationists. The return of the Jews to the Holy Land was widely supported by such eminent figures as Queen Victoria, Napoleon Bonaparte, King Edward VII, President John Adams
of the United States, General Smuts
of South Africa, President Masaryk of Czechoslovakia
, philosopher and historian Benedetto Croce
from Italy, Henry Dunant
(founder of the Red Cross and author of the Geneva Conventions
), and scientist and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen
from Norway
.
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."
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.
. He is credited with being the major promoter of the idea following his 11 lectures on the hopes of the church, the Jew and the gentile given in Geneva in 1840. His views were embraced by many evangelicals and also affected international foreign policy. 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
Christians, especially in the United States, now strongly support Zionism.
The founder of Latter Day Saint movement
, Joseph Smith, Jr., in his last years alive, 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.
Some Arab Christians
publicly supporting Israel include US author Nonie Darwish
, and former Muslim Magdi Allam
, author of Viva Israele, 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".
Naser al-Din Shah Qajar met with British Jewish leaders, including Sir Moses Montefiore
, during his journey to Europe. At that time, the Persian king suggested that the Jews buy land and establish a state for the Jewish people.
Arab Muslims who publicly defended Zionism include Dr. Tawfik Hamid
, former member of a terror organization and current Islamic thinker and reformer, Sheikh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi
, Director of the Cultural Institute of the Italian Islamic Community, and Tashbih Sayyed
, a Pakistani-American scholar, journalist, and author.
On occasion, some non-Arab Muslims such as some Kurds and Berbers
have also voiced support for Zionism.
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. 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.
Some Indian Muslim
s have also expressed opposition to Islamic anti-Zionism. In August 2007, a delegation of the All India Organization of Imams
and mosques led by Maulana Jamil Ilyas visited Israel. The meet 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. The visit was organized by the American Jewish Committee
. The purpose of the visit was to create meaningful debate about the status of Israel in the Muslim eyes worldwide, and 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".
government opposed Zionism. Some writers have claimed that this was in order to get more Muslim votes in India (where Muslims numbered over 30 million at the time). However, conservative Hindu nationalists, led by the Sangh Parivar
, openly supported Zionism, as did Hindu Nationalist intellectuals like Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
and Sita Ram Goel
. Zionism as a national liberation movement to repatriate the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland 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.
An international opinion survey has shown that India is the most pro-Israel country in the world. In more current times, conservative Indian parties and organizations tend to support Zionism. 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
."
to form a movement dedicated to returning Americans of African origin to Africa. During a speech in Harlem
in 1920, Garvey stated: "other races were engaged in seeing their cause through—the Jews through their Zionist movement and the Irish
through their Irish movement—and I decided that, cost what it might, I would make this a favorable time to see the Negro's interest through."
Garvey established a shipping company, the Black Star Line
, to allow Black Americans to emigrate to Africa, but for various reasons failed in his endeavour.
Garvey helped inspire the Rastafari movement
in Jamaica, the Black Jews
and the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem who initially moved to Liberia before settling in Israel.
Hasidim and Neturei Karta
), the former Soviet Union, some African-Americans, many in the Muslim world, and Palestinians. Reasons for opposing Zionism are varied, and include the perceptions of unfair land confiscation, expulsions of Palestinians, violence against Palestinians, and alleged racism. Arab states in particular strongly oppose Zionism, which they believe is responsible for the 1948 Palestinian exodus
.
Nonetheless, Theodore Herzl travelled to Rome in late January 1904, after the sixth Zionist Congress (August, 1903) and six months before his death, looking for some kind of support. In January 22, Herzl first met the Secretary of State, Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val. According to Herzl's private diary notes, the Cardinal agreed on the history of Israel being the same as the one of the Catholic Church, but asked beforehand for a conversion of 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 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 recourse of preordained divine judgment in the Bible was utilized by the same periodical to oppose Zionism, alleging that the rejection and killing of Jesus by the Jews condemned them in the eyes of Catholics. 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 anti-Semitism, expressing 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."
, and Zionism has been criticized
for promoting unfair confiscation of land, involving expulsion of indigenous peoples, and causing violence towards Palestinians. The characterization of Zionism as colonialism has been described by, among others, Nur Masalha, Gershon Shafir, Michael Prior
, Ilan Pappe
, and Baruch Kimmerling
.
Others, such as Shlomo Avineri
and Mitchell Bard
, view Zionism not as colonialist movement, but as a national movement that is contending with the Palestinian one. David Hoffman
rejected the claim that Zionism is a 'settler-colonial undertaking' and instead characterized Zionism as a national program of affirmative action
, adding that there is unbroken Jewish presence in Israel back to antiquity.
Noam Chomsky
, John P. Quigly, Nur Masalha, and Cheryl Rubenberg
have described the criticism of Zionism that it unfairly confiscates land and expels Palestinians.
Edward Said
and Michael Prior
claim that the notion of expelling the indigenous population 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." Derek Penslar
says that Herzl may have been considering either South America or Palestine when he wrote the diary entry about expropriation.
Ilan Pappe
argued that Zionism results in ethnic cleansing
. This view diverges from other New Historians
, such as Benny Morris
, who accept the Palestinian exodus narrative but place it in the context of war, not ethnic cleansing.
Saleh Abdel Jawad
, Nur Masalha, Michael Prior
, Ian Lustick
, and John Rose
have described a criticism of Zionism that it has been responsible for violence against Palestinians, such as the Deir Yassin massacre
, Sabra and Shatila massacre
, and Cave of the Patriarchs massacre
.
In 1938, Mahatma Gandhi
rejected Zionism, saying that the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine is a religious act and therefore must not be performed by force. He wrote, "Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. 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."
" as the source of racism in Zionism.
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." At the time there was little cooperation between Israel and South Africa. 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.
Following the oil embargo and with Soviet, Islamic and African support the Arab League
was able to wield its numeric advantage in the UN General Assembly to pass, in 1975, Resolution 3379, which said that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination". In 1991 the resolution was repealed with UN General Assembly Resolution 46/86, after Israel declared that it would only participate in the Madrid Conference of 1991
if the resolution were revoked.
Arab countries attempted to equate Zionism with racism once more, in connection with a 2001 UN conference on racism, which took place in Durban
, South Africa, 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".
Supporters of Zionism, such as Chaim Herzog
, argue that the movement is non-discriminatory and contains no racist aspects.
Anti-semites have alleged that Zionism was, or is, part of a Jewish plot to take control of the world. One particular version of these allegations, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
" (subtitle "Protocols extracted from the secret archives of the central chancery of Zion") achieved global notability. The protocols are fictional minutes of an imaginary meeting by Jewish leaders of this plot. Analysis and proof of their fraudulent origin goes as far back as 1921. A 1920 German version renamed them "The Zionist Protocols". The protocols were extensively used as propaganda by the Nazis and remain widely distributed in the Arab world. They are referred to in the 1988 Hamas charter.
There are examples of anti-Zionists using accusations, slanders, imagery and tactics previously associated with anti-semites. On October 21, 1973, then-Soviet ambassador to the United Nations
Yakov Malik declared: "The Zionists have come forth with the theory of the Chosen People
, an absurd ideology." Similarly, an exhibit about Zionism and Israel in the Museum of Religion and Atheism in Saint Petersburg
designates the following as Soviet Zionist material: Jewish prayer shawls
, tefillin
and Passover
Hagaddahs, even though these are all religious items used by Jews for thousands of years.
Noam Chomsky
, Norman Finkelstein
, Irfan Khawaja, and Tariq Ali
have suggested that the characterization of anti-Zionism
as anti-Semitic is inaccurate, sometimes obscures legitimate criticism of Israel's policies and actions, and is sometimes a political ploy to stifle criticism of Israel.
Self-determination
Self-determination is the principle in international law that nations have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or external interference...
of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state
Jewish state
A homeland for the Jewish people was an idea that rose to the fore in the 19th century in the wake of growing anti-Semitism and Jewish assimilation. Jewish emancipation in Europe paved the way for two ideological solutions to the Jewish Question: cultural assimilation, as envisaged by Moses...
and address threats to its continued existence and security. In a less common usage, the term may also refer to non-political, cultural Zionism
Cultural Zionism
Cultural Zionism is a strain of the concept of Zionism that values Jewish culture and history, including language and historical roots, rather than other Zionist ideas such as political Zionism...
, founded and represented most prominently by Ahad Ha'am; and political support for the State of Israel by non-Jews, as in Christian Zionism
Christian Zionism
Christian Zionism is a belief among some Christians that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, is in accordance with Biblical prophecy. It overlaps with, but is distinct from, the nineteenth century movement for the Restoration of the Jews...
.
Overview
Zionism does not have a uniform ideology, but has evolved in a dialogue among a plethora of ideologies: General Zionism, Religious ZionismReligious Zionism
Religious Zionism is an ideology that combines Zionism and Jewish religious faith...
, Labor Zionism
Labor Zionism
Labor Zionism can be described as the major stream of the left wing of the Zionist movement. It was, for many years, the most significant tendency among Zionists and Zionist organizational structure...
, Revisionist Zionism
Revisionist Zionism
Revisionist Zionism is a nationalist faction within the Zionist movement. It is the founding ideology of the non-religious right in Israel, and was the chief ideological competitor to the dominant socialist Labor Zionism...
, Green Zionism
Green Zionism
Green Zionism is a branch of Zionism that is primarily concerned with the environment of Israel. It mostly fuses Israel-specific environmental concerns with support for the existence of Israel and Jewish self-determination...
, etc. However, the common denominator among all Zionists is the claim to Eretz Israel as the national homeland of the Jews and as the legitimate focus for the Jewish national self-determination (as shown, among others, by Gideon Shimoni). It is based on historical ties and religious traditions
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
linking the Jewish people to the Land of Israel
Land of Israel
The Land of Israel is the Biblical name for the territory roughly corresponding to the area encompassed by the Southern Levant, also known as Canaan and Palestine, Promised Land and Holy Land. The belief that the area is a God-given homeland of the Jewish people is based on the narrative of the...
.
After almost two millennia of existence of the Jewish diaspora
Jewish diaspora
The Jewish diaspora is the English term used to describe the Galut גלות , or 'exile', of the Jews from the region of the Kingdom of Judah and Roman Iudaea and later emigration from wider Eretz Israel....
without a national state, the Zionist movement was founded in the late 19th century by secular Jews
Secular Jewish culture
Secular Jewish culture embraces several related phenomena; above all, it is the international culture of secular communities of Jewish people, but it can also include the cultural contributions of individuals who identify as secular Jews...
, largely as a response by Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim , are the Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities along the Rhine in Germany from Alsace in the south to the Rhineland in the north. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name for this region and thus for Germany...
to rising antisemitism in Europe, exemplified by the Dreyfus Affair
Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...
in France and the Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire
Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire
The term pogrom as a reference to large-scale, targeted, and repeated antisemitic rioting saw its first use in the 19th century.The first pogrom is often considered to be the 1821 Odessa pogroms after the death of the Greek Orthodox patriarch Gregory V in Constantinople, in which 14 Jews were killed...
. The political movement was formally established by the Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl , born Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl was an Ashkenazi Jew Austro-Hungarian journalist and the father of modern political Zionism and in effect the State of Israel.-Early life:...
in 1897 following the publication of his book Der Judenstaat
Der Judenstaat
Der Judenstaat is a book written by Theodor Herzl and published in 1896 in Leipzig and Vienna by M. Breitenstein's Verlags-Buchhandlung...
. At that time, the movement sought to encourage Jewish migration
Aliyah
Aliyah is the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel . It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. The opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to as yerida . The return to the Holy Land has been a Jewish aspiration since the Babylonian exile...
to the Ottoman Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
.
Although initially one of several Jewish political movements offering alternative responses to assimilation
Jewish assimilation
Jewish assimilation refers to the cultural assimilation and social integration of Jews in their surrounding culture. Assimilation became legally possible in Europe during the Age of Enlightenment.-Background:Judaism forbids the worship of other gods...
and antisemitism, Zionism grew rapidly and became the dominant force in Jewish politics with the destruction of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe where these alternative movements were rooted.
The movement was eventually successful in establishing Israel on 14 May 1948 (5 Iyyar 5708 in the Hebrew calendar
Hebrew calendar
The Hebrew calendar , or Jewish calendar, is a lunisolar calendar used today predominantly for Jewish religious observances. It determines the dates for Jewish holidays and the appropriate public reading of Torah portions, yahrzeits , and daily Psalm reading, among many ceremonial uses...
), as the homeland for the Jewish people. The proportion of the world's Jews living in Israel has also steadily grown since the movement came into existence and over 40% of the world's Jews
Jewish population
Jewish population refers to the number of Jews in the world. Precise figures are difficult to calculate because the definition of "Who is a Jew" is a source of controversy.-Total population:...
now live in Israel, more than in any other country. These two outcomes represent the historical success of Zionism, unmatched by any other Jewish political movement in the past 2,000 years.
In some academic studies, Zionism has been analyzed both within the larger context of diaspora politics
Diaspora politics
Diaspora politics is the political behavior of transnational ethnic diasporas, their relationship with their ethnic homelands and their host states, as well as their prominent role in ethnic conflicts...
and as an example of modern national liberation movements
Wars of national liberation
In Marxist terminology, wars of national liberation or national liberation revolutions are conflicts fought by oppressed nationalities against imperial powers to establish separate sovereign states for the subjugated nationality. From a Western point of view, these same wars are called insurgencies...
.
Zionism was also directed at assimilation into the modern world. As a result of the Diaspora, many of the Jewish people were outcasts and had no knowledge of the modern era. There were Jews who desired complete assimilation and were willing to neglect their faith in an attempt at modernization. The assimilationists, who are depicted as truly messianic, were a radical group in Jewish history. They desired a pure revolution: a complete integration of Jews into European society. This would dispel any dissimilarity between Jews and non-Jews. They are described as messianic in their anticipation and desire of a new era. Assimilationists were not concerned with keeping their own identity but wanted homogeneity. They would disband their traditional views and opinions as long as it insured complete assimilation into the modern world. Another less radical form of assimilation was called cultural synthesis. Those in favor of cultural synthesis emphasized an obligation to maintain traditional Jewish values but also a need to conform to a modernist society. They are described as defensive and sought to reject the pure revolution that the assimilationists promoted. They aimed to eradicate any disparity between Jewish and modern life. However (in contrast with assimilationists), they also wanted to preserve their own faith and many of their traditional values. They were concerned that if Jews lost their identification, the result would be detrimental. Those in favor of cultural synthesis desired a balance between change and continuity as opposed to the assimilationists who only wanted change.
In 1975, the United Nations General Assembly
United Nations General Assembly
For two articles dealing with membership in the General Assembly, see:* General Assembly members* General Assembly observersThe United Nations General Assembly is one of the five principal organs of the United Nations and the only one in which all member nations have equal representation...
passed a resolution that designated Zionism as "a form of racism and racial discrimination". The resolution was repealed in 1991. Within the context of the Arab–Israeli conflict
Arab–Israeli conflict
The Arab–Israeli conflict refers to political tensions and open hostilities between the Arab peoples and the Jewish community of the Middle East. The modern Arab-Israeli conflict began with the rise of Zionism and Arab Nationalism towards the end of the nineteenth century, and intensified with the...
, Zionism is viewed by critics as a system that fosters apartheid and racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
.
Terminology
The term "Zionism" itself is derived from the word ZionZion
Zion is a place name often used as a synonym for Jerusalem. The word is first found in Samuel II, 5:7 dating to c.630-540 BCE...
, referring to Jerusalem. Throughout eastern Europe at the time, there were numerous grassroots groups promoting the national resettlement of the Jews in what was termed their "ancestral homeland", as well as the revitalization and cultivation of Hebrew. These groups were collectively called the "Lovers of Zion." The first use of the term is attributed to the Austrian Nathan Birnbaum
Nathan Birnbaum
----Nathan Birnbaum was an Austrian writer and journalist, Jewish thinker and nationalist. His life had three main phases, representing a progression in his thinking: Zionist phase ; Jewish cultural autonomy phase which included the promotion of the Yiddish language; and religious phase...
, founder of a nationalist Jewish students' movement Kadimah, who used the term in his journal Selbstemanzipation (Self Emancipation) . Readings of the founders of Zionism shows that they lived in the same Europe which spawned fascism and Naziism, and they adopted the anti-Jewish view that Jews did not belong in Europe as the core of their ideology.
Organization
Country/Region | Members | Delegates |
---|---|---|
Poland | 299,165 | 109 |
USA | 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
Philosophical movement
A philosophical movement is either the appearance or increased popularity of a specific school of philosophy, or a fairly broad but identifiable sea-change in philosophical thought on a particular subject...
is structured on representative democratic
Representative democracy
Representative democracy is a form of government founded on the principle of elected individuals representing the people, as opposed to autocracy and direct democracy...
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. The movement was democratic from its inception and women had the right to vote.
Until 1917, the World Zionist Organization
World Zionist Organization
The World Zionist Organization , or WZO, was founded as the Zionist Organization , or ZO, in 1897 at the First Zionist Congress, held from August 29 to August 31 in Basel, Switzerland...
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
Jewish National Fund
The Jewish National Fund was founded in 1901 to buy and develop land in Ottoman Palestine for Jewish settlement. The JNF is a quasi-governmental, non-profit organisation...
(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
Biltmore Conference
The Biltmore Conference, also known by its resolution as the Biltmore Program, was a fundamental departure from traditional Zionist policy with its demand "that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth." The meeting was held in New York City at the prestigious Biltmore Hotel from May 6...
, the movement included for the first time an express objective of the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel.
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:
- 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 AliyahAliyahAliyah is the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel . It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. The opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to as yerida . The return to the Holy Land has been a Jewish aspiration since the Babylonian exile...
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 and it is now a peripheral factor in Israeli politics, though different perceptions of Zionism continue to play a role in Israeli and Jewish political discussion.
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 HerzlTheodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl , born Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl was an Ashkenazi Jew Austro-Hungarian journalist and the father of modern political Zionism and in effect the State of Israel.-Early life:...
. 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 "kibbutz
Kibbutz
A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...
im". 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 Aliya
Aliyah
Aliyah is the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel . It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. The opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to as yerida . The return to the Holy Land has been a Jewish aspiration since the Babylonian exile...
in that they put great emphasis on communalism and egalitarianism, representing to a certain extent Utopian socialism. Furthermore, they stressed self-sufficiency, which became an important aspect of Labor Zionism. 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
Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism , is the approach to Judaism which adheres to the traditional interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Sanhedrin and subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and...
.
Labor Zionism became the dominant force in the political and economic life of the Yishuv
Yishuv
The Yishuv or Ha-Yishuv is the term referring to the body of Jewish residents in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel...
during the British Mandate of Palestine and was the dominant ideology of the political establishment in Israel until the 1977 election
Israeli legislative election, 1977
The Elections for the ninth Knesset were held on 17 May 1977. For the first time in Israeli political history, the right-wing, led by Likud, won the election, ending almost 30 years of rule by the left-wing Alignment and its predecessor, Mapai...
when the Israeli Labor Party was defeated. The Israeli Labor Party continues the tradition, although the most popular party in the kibbutzim is Meretz. Labor Zionism's main institution is the Histadrut, which began by providing strikebreakers against a Palestinian worker's strike in 1920 and is now the largest employer in Israel after the Israeli government.
Liberal Zionism
General Zionism (or Liberal Zionism) was initially the dominant trend within the Zionist movement from the First Zionist CongressFirst Zionist Congress
The First Zionist Congress was the inaugural congress of the Zionist Organization held in Basel , Switzerland, from August 29 to August 31, 1897. It was convened and chaired by Theodor Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionism movement...
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
Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Azriel Weizmann, , was a Zionist leader, President of the Zionist Organization, and the first President of the State of Israel. He was elected on 1 February 1949, and served until his death in 1952....
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. Kadima
Kadima
Kadima is a centrist and liberal political party in Israel. It was established on 24 November 2005 by moderates from Likud largely to support the issue of Ariel Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan, and was soon joined by like-minded Labor politicians...
, however, does 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.
Nationalist Zionism
Nationalist Zionism originated from the Revisionist Zionists led by Jabotinsky. Jabotinsky was based in Mussolini's fascist Italy until Hitler demand his expulsion. The Revisionists left the World Zionist Organization in 1935 because it refused to state that the creation of a Jewish state was an objective of Zionism. The revisionists advocated the formation of a Jewish Army in Palestine to force the Arab population to accept mass Jewish migration. Revisionist Zionism evolved into the LikudLikud
Likud is the major center-right political party in Israel. It was founded in 1973 by Menachem Begin in an alliance with several right-wing and liberal parties. Likud's victory in the 1977 elections was a major turning point in the country's political history, marking the first time the left had...
Party in Israel, which has dominated most governments since 1977. It advocates Israel maintaining control of the West-Bank and East Jerusalem and takes a hard-line approach in the Israeli-Arab conflict. In 2005 the Likud split over the issue of creation of a Palestinian state on the occupied territories and party members advocating peace talks helped form the Kadima
Kadima
Kadima is a centrist and liberal political party in Israel. It was established on 24 November 2005 by moderates from Likud largely to support the issue of Ariel Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan, and was soon joined by like-minded Labor politicians...
party.
Religious Zionism
In the 1920s and 1930s Rabbi Abraham Isaac KookAbraham Isaac Kook
Abraham Isaac Kook was the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandate for Palestine, the founder of the Religious Zionist Yeshiva Merkaz HaRav, Jewish thinker, Halachist, Kabbalist and a renowned Torah scholar...
(the first Chief Rabbi of Palestine
Chief Rabbinate of Israel
The Chief Rabbinate of Israel is recognized by law as the supreme halakhic and spiritual authority for the Jewish people in Israel. The Chief Rabbinate Council assists the two chief rabbis, who alternate in its presidency. It has legal and administrative authority to organize religious...
) and his son Rabbi Zevi Judah Kook saw great religious and traditional value in many of Zionism's ideals, while rejecting its anti-religious undertones. They taught that Orthodox (Torah) Judaism embraces and mandates Zionism's positive ideals, such as the ingathering of exiles, and political activity to create and maintain a Jewish political entity in the Land of Israel. In this way, Zionism serves as a bridge between Orthodox and secular Jews.
While other Zionist groups tended to moderate their nationalism over time, the gains
Israeli-occupied territories
The Israeli-occupied territories are the territories which have been designated as occupied territory by the United Nations and other international organizations, governments and others to refer to the territory seized by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967 from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria...
from the Six-Day War
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...
have led religious Zionism to play a significant role in Israeli political life. Now associated with the National Religious Party
National Religious Party
The National Religious Party ) was a political party in Israel representing the religious Zionist movement. Formed in 1956, at the time of its dissolution in 2008, it was the second oldest surviving party in the country after Agudat Yisrael, and was part of every government coalition until 1992...
and Gush Emunim
Gush Emunim
Gush Emunim was an Israeli messianic and political movement committed to establishing Jewish settlements in the West Bank. While not formally established as an organization until 1974 in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, Gush Emunim sprang out of the conquests of the Six-Day War in 1967, encouraging...
, religious Zionists have been at the forefront of Jewish settlement in the West Bank and efforts to assert Jewish control over the Old City of Jerusalem.
Green Zionism
Green ZionismGreen Zionism
Green Zionism is a branch of Zionism that is primarily concerned with the environment of Israel. It mostly fuses Israel-specific environmental concerns with support for the existence of Israel and Jewish self-determination...
is a branch of Zionism primarily concerned with the environment of Israel. The first and only environmental Zionist party is the Green Zionist Alliance
Green Zionist Alliance
The Green Zionist Alliance is a New York-based secular and pluralistic Jewish environmental organization that is a U.S.-registered 501 tax-deductible nonprofit charity...
.
Neo-Zionism and Post-Zionism
During the last quarter of the 20th century, classic nationalism in Israel declined. This led to the rise of two antagonistic movements: neo-ZionismNeo-Zionism
Neo-Zionism is a right-wing, nationalistic and religious movement that appeared in Israel following the Six Days War and capture of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which they consider parts of Israel. It evolved parallel with, and in opposition to Post-Zionism...
and post-Zionism
Post-Zionism
Post-Zionism refers to the opinions of some Israelis, diaspora Jews and others, particularly in academia, that Zionism has fulfilled its ideological mission with the creation of the modern State of Israel in 1948, and that Zionist ideology should therefore be considered at an end...
. Both movements mark the Israeli version of a worldwide phenomenon:
- Emergence of globalization, a market society and liberal culture
- Local backlash
Neo-Zionism and post-Zionism share traits with "classical" Zionism but differ by accentuating antagonist and diametrically opposed poles already present in Zionism. "Neo Zionism accentuates the messianic and particularistic dimensions of Zionist nationalism, while post-Zionism accentuates its normalising and universalistic dimensions". Post-Zionism asserts that Israel should abandon the concept of a "state of the Jewish people" and strive to be a state of all its citizens, or a binational state where Arabs and Jews live together while enjoying some type of autonomy.
Zionism and Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Judaism
Most Haredi Orthodox organizations do not belong to the Zionist movement; they view Zionism as secular, reject nationalism as a doctrine and consider Judaism to be first and foremost a religion. However, some Haredi movements such as ShasShas
Shas is an ultra-orthodox religious political party in Israel, primarily representing Sephardic and Mizrahi Haredi Judaism.Shas was founded in 1984 by dissident members of the Ashkenazi dominated Agudat Israel, to represent the interests of religiously observant Sephardic and Mizrahi ...
do openly affiliate with the Zionist movement.
Some Haredi rabbis do not consider Israel to be a halachic Jewish state because it is secular. However, they generally consider themselves responsible for ensuring that Jews maintain religious ideals and since most Israeli citizens are Jews they pursue this agenda within Israel. Others reject any possibility of a Jewish state, since according to them a Jewish state is completely forbidden by Jewish law, and a Jewish state is considered an oxymoron.
Two Haredi parties run in Israeli elections. They are sometimes associated with views that could be regarded as nationalist or Zionist, and have shown a preference for coalitions with more nationalist Zionist parties, probably because these are more interested in enhancing the Jewish nature of the Israeli state.
The Sephardi-Orthodox party Shas
Shas
Shas is an ultra-orthodox religious political party in Israel, primarily representing Sephardic and Mizrahi Haredi Judaism.Shas was founded in 1984 by dissident members of the Ashkenazi dominated Agudat Israel, to represent the interests of religiously observant Sephardic and Mizrahi ...
rejected association with the Zionist movement, however in 2010 it joined the World Zionist Organization
World Zionist Organization
The World Zionist Organization , or WZO, was founded as the Zionist Organization , or ZO, in 1897 at the First Zionist Congress, held from August 29 to August 31 in Basel, Switzerland...
, its voters also generally regard themselves as Zionist and Knesset members frequently pursue what others might consider a Zionist agenda. Shas has supported territorial compromise with the Arabs and Palestinians but generally opposes compromise over Jewish holy sites.
The Ashkenazi Agudat Israel
Agudat Israel
Agudat Yisrael began as the original political party representing the ultra-Orthodox population of Israel. It was the umbrella party for almost all ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel, and before that in the British Mandate of Palestine...
/UTJ
United Torah Judaism
United Torah Judaism is an alliance of Degel HaTorah and Agudat Israel, two small Israeli Haredi political parties in the Knesset. It was first formed in 1992.The two parties have not always agreed with each other about policy matters...
party has always avoided association with the Zionist movement and usually avoids voting on or discussing issues related to peace because its members do not serve in the army. The party does work towards ensuring that Israel and Israeli law are in tune with the halacha, on issues such as Shabbat
Shabbat
Shabbat is the seventh day of the Jewish week and a day of rest in Judaism. Shabbat is observed from a few minutes before sunset on Friday evening until a few minutes after when one would expect to be able to see three stars in the sky on Saturday night. The exact times, therefore, differ from...
rest.
Many other Hasidic
Hasidic Judaism
Hasidic Judaism or Hasidism, from the Hebrew —Ḥasidut in Sephardi, Chasidus in Ashkenazi, meaning "piety" , is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that promotes spirituality and joy through the popularisation and internalisation of Jewish mysticism as the fundamental aspects of the Jewish faith...
groups, most famously the Satmar
Satmar (Hasidic dynasty)
Satmar is a Hasidic movement comprising mostly Hungarian and Romanian Hasidic Jewish Holocaust survivors and their descendants. It was founded and led by the late Hungarian-born Grand Rebbe Yoel Teitelbaum , who was the rabbi of Szatmárnémeti, Hungary...
Hasidim as well as the larger movement they are part of in Jerusalem, the Edah HaChareidis, are strongly anti-Zionist. One of the best known Hasidic opponent of all forms of modern political Zionism was Hungarian
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
rebbe
Rebbe
Rebbe , which means master, teacher, or mentor, is a Yiddish word derived from the Hebrew word Rabbi. It often refers to the leader of a Hasidic Jewish movement...
and Talmud
Talmud
The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....
ic scholar Joel Teitelbaum
Joel Teitelbaum
Joel Teitelbaum, known as Reb Yoelish or the Satmar Rav , was a prominent Hungarian Hasidic rebbe and Talmudic scholar. He was probably the best known Haredi opponent of all forms of modern political Zionism...
. In his view, the current State of Israel, which was founded
Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel
The Israeli Declaration of Independence , made on 14 May 1948 , the day before the British Mandate was due to expire, was the announcement by David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, that the new Jewish state named the...
by people that included some anti-religious personalities in seeming violation of the traditional notion that Jews should wait for the Jewish Messiah, is seen as contrary to Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
. The core citations from classical Judaic sources cited by Teitelbaum in his arguments against modern Zionism are based on a passage in the Talmud, Rabbi Yosi b'Rebbi Hanina explains (Kesubos 111a) that the Lord imposed "Three Oaths
Three Oaths
The Three Oaths is the popular name for a Midrash found in the Talmud, which relates that God adjured three oaths upon the world. Two of the oaths pertain to the Jewish people, and one of the oaths pertains to the other nations of the world...
" on the nation of Israel: a) Israel should not return to the Land together, by force; b) Israel should not rebel against the other nations; and c) The nations should not subjugate Israel too harshly. According to Teitelbaum, the second oath is relevant concerning the subsequent wars fought between Israel and Arab nations.
Other opponent groups included in the Edah HaChareidis include Dushinsky, Toldos Aharon, Toldos Avrohom Yitzchok, Spinka, and others, numbering tens of thousands in Jerusalem, and hundreds of thousands worldwide.
The Neturei Karta
Neturei Karta
Neturei Karta is a Haredi Jewish group formally created in Jerusalem, British Mandate of Palestine, in 1938, splitting off from Agudas Yisroel...
, an orthodox Haredi religious movement, strongly oppose Zionism and Israel; it considers the latter a racist regime. The movement equates Zionism to Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
, stating "Apart from the Zionists, the only ones who consistently considered the Jews a race were the Nazis." Naturei Carta believes that Zionist ideology is totally contrary to traditional Jewish law and beliefs and the teachings of the Holy Torah
Torah
Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...
and that Zionism promotes antisemitism.
The Chabad-Lubavitch
Chabad-Lubavitch
Chabad-Lubavitch is a Chasidic movement in Orthodox Judaism. One of the world's larger and best-known Chasidic movements, its official headquarters is in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York...
Hasidic movement has traditionally not identified itself as Zionist, although in recent years it has adopted a nationalist agenda and opposed any territorial compromise.
Particularities of Zionist beliefs
Zionism was established with the goal of creating a Jewish state. Though later Zionist leaders hoped to create a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael, Theodor Herzl "approached Great Britain about possible Jewish settlement in that country's East African colonies." AliyahAliyah
Aliyah is the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel . It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. The opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to as yerida . The return to the Holy Land has been a Jewish aspiration since the Babylonian exile...
(migration, literally "ascent") to the Land of Israel is a recurring theme in Jewish prayers. Some Zionists consider Jews outside of Israel as living in exile. Rejection of life in the Diaspora is a central assumption in Zionism. Underlying this attitude is the feeling that the Diaspora restricts the full growth of Jewish individual and national life.
Zionists generally preferred to speak Hebrew, a Semitic language that developed under conditions of freedom in ancient Judah
Kingdom of Judah
The Kingdom of Judah was a Jewish state established in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. It is often referred to as the "Southern Kingdom" to distinguish it from the northern Kingdom of Israel....
, modernizing and adapting it for everyday use. Zionists sometimes refused to speak Yiddish, a language they considered affected by Christian persecution. Once they moved to Israel, many Zionists refused to speak their (diasporic) mother tongues and gave themselves new, Hebrew names. Hebrew was preferred not only for ideological reasons, but also because it allowed members of the new Yishuv who came from different parts of the world to have a common language, thus furthering the political and cultural bonds between Zionists.
Major aspects of the Zionist idea are represented in the Israeli Declaration of Independence:
Zionism is dedicated to fighting antisemitism. Some Zionists believe antisemitism will never disappear (and that Jews must conduct themselves with this in mind), while others perceive Zionism as a vehicle with which to end antisemitism.
History
year | Muslims | Jews Yishuv The Yishuv or Ha-Yishuv is the term referring to the body of Jewish residents in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel... |
Christians Palestinian Christians Palestinian Christians are Arabic-speaking Christians descended from the people of the geographical area of Palestine. Within Palestine, there are churches and believers from many Christian denominations, including Oriental Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholic , Protestant, and others... |
Others | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1922 | 486,177 (74.91%) | 83,790 (12.91%) | 71,464 (11.01%) | 7,617 (1.17%) | 649,048 |
1931 | 493,147 (64.32%) | 174,606 (22.77%) | 88,907 (11.60%) | 10,101 (1.32%) | 766,761 |
1941 | 906,551 (59.68%) | 474,102 (31.21%) | 125,413 (8.26%) | 12,881 (0.85%) | 1,518,947 |
1946 | 1,076,783 (58.34%) | 608,225 (32.96%) | 145,063 (7.86%) | 15,488 (0.84%) | 1,845,559 |
1950 | 116,100 | 1,203,000 |
Since the first centuries CE most Jews have lived outside Land of Israel
Land of Israel
The Land of Israel is the Biblical name for the territory roughly corresponding to the area encompassed by the Southern Levant, also known as Canaan and Palestine, Promised Land and Holy Land. The belief that the area is a God-given homeland of the Jewish people is based on the narrative of the...
(Eretz Israel, better known as Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
by non-Jews), although there has been a constant presence of Jews. According to Judaism, Eretz Israel is a land promised to the Jews by God according to the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
. The Diaspora began in 586 BCE during the Babylonian occupation of Israel. The Babylonians destroyed the First Temple, which was central to Jewish culture at the time. After the 1st century Great Revolt and the 2nd century Bar Kokhba revolt, the Romans
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
expelled the Jews from Judea
Judea
Judea or Judæa was the name of the mountainous southern part of the historic Land of Israel from the 8th century BCE to the 2nd century CE, when Roman Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina following the Jewish Bar Kokhba revolt.-Etymology:The...
, changing the name to Syria Palaestina." The Bar Kokhba revolt caused a spike in anti-Semitism and Jewish persecution. The ensuing exile from Judea greatly increased the percent of Jews who were dispersed throughout the Diaspora instead of living in their original home.
Zion
Mount Zion
Mount Zion is a place name for a site in Jerusalem, the location of which has shifted several times in history. According to the Hebrew Bible's Book of Samuel, it was the site of the Jebusite fortress called the "stronghold of Zion" that was conquered by King David, becoming his palace in the City...
is a hill near Jerusalem (now in the city), widely symbolizing the Land of Israel.
In the middle of the sixteenth century Joseph Nasi
Joseph Nasi
Don Joseph Nasi was a Jewish diplomat and administrator, member of the House of Mendes, and influential figure in the Ottoman Empire during the rules of both Sultan Suleiman I and his son Selim II...
, with the support of the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
, tried to gather the Portuguese Jews, first to Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
, then owned by the Republic of Venice and later to Tiberias. This was the only practical attempt to establish some sort of Jewish political center in Palestine between the fourth and 19th centuries. In the seventeenth century Sabbatai Zebi (1626–1676) announced himself as the Messias and gained over many Jews to his side, forming a base in Salonica. He first tried to establish a settlement in Gaza, but moved later to Smyrna. After deposing the old rabbi Aaron Lapapa
Aaron Lapapa
Aaron ben Isaac Lapapa was an Oriental rabbi and Talmudist. He was at first rabbi at Manissa, Turkey, and at an advanced age was called to Smyrna as judge in civil affairs. In 1665, when the Sabbatai Zevi movement was at its height there, he was one of the few rabbis who had the courage to oppose...
even the Jewish community of Avignon
Avignon
Avignon is a French commune in southeastern France in the départment of the Vaucluse bordered by the left bank of the Rhône river. Of the 94,787 inhabitants of the city on 1 January 2010, 12 000 live in the ancient town centre surrounded by its medieval ramparts.Often referred to as the...
prepared to emigrate to the new kingdom in the spring of 1666. The readiness of the Jews of the time to believe the messianic claims of Sabbatai Zevi may be largely explained by the desperate state of European Jewry in the mid-17th century. The bloody pogroms of Bohdan Khmelnytsky
Bohdan Khmelnytsky
Bohdan Zynoviy Mykhailovych Khmelnytsky was a hetman of the Zaporozhian Cossack Hetmanate of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . He led an uprising against the Commonwealth and its magnates which resulted in the creation of a Cossack state...
had wiped out one third of the Jewish population and destroyed many centers of Jewish learning and communal life. Finally, he was forced by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV
Mehmed IV
Mehmed IV Modern Turkish Mehmet was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1648 to 1687...
to visit him and, to the surprise of his followers, in the presence of the Sultan he converted to Islam.
In the 19th century, a current in Judaism supporting a return to Zion grew in popularity, particularly in Europe, where antisemitism and hostility towards Jews were also growing, although this idea was rejected by the conferences of rabbis held in that epoch. Nonetheless, individual efforts supported the emigration of groups of Jews to Palestine, pre-Zionist Aliyah, even before 1897, the year considered as the start of practical Zionism.
The Reformed Jews rejected this idea of a return to Zion. The conference of rabbis, at Frankfurt am Main, 15–28 July 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". The Pittsburg conference, 1885, reiterated this Messianic idea of reformed 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".
Jewish settlements were established in the upper Mississippi region by W.D. Robinson in 1819 and near Jerusalem, by the American Consul Warder Cresson
Warder Cresson
Warder Cresson or as he was known with his Jewish name Michoel Boaz Yisroel ben Avraham was a religious enthusiast, and convert to Judaism...
, a convert to Judaism, in 1850. Before he succeeded, he was tried and condemned for lunacy in a suit brought forward by his own wife and son; after winning a second trial he established a colony in the Valley of Rephaim
Valley of Rephaim
Valley of Rephaim - . A valley descending southwest from Jerusalem to the Valley of Elah below, it is an ancient route from the coastal plain to the Judean Hills, probably named after the legendary race of giants.-Biblical story:...
, where he hoped to "prevent any attempts being made to take advantage of the necessities of our poor brethren... (that would) ... FORCE them into a pretended conversion." Similar efforts were made in Prague, by Abraham Benisch
Abraham Benisch
Abraham Benisch was a Hebraist and journalist.He studied medicine at Vienna but abandoned his studies and moved to England in 1841. He was the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, 1854-69 and 1875-8 and zealously promoted the cause of his fellow Jews...
and Moritz Steinschneider
Moritz Steinschneider
Moritz Steinschneider was a Bohemian bibliographer and Orientalist. He received his early instruction in Hebrew from his father, Jacob Steinschneider , who was not only an expert Talmudist, but was also well versed in secular science...
in 1835.
Sir Moses Montefiore
Moses Montefiore
Sir Moses Haim Montefiore, 1st Baronet, Kt was one of the most famous British Jews of the 19th century. Montefiore was a financier, banker, philanthropist and Sheriff of London...
, famous for his intervention in favor of Jews around the world, including the attempt to rescue Edgardo Mortara
Edgardo Mortara
Edgardo Levi Mortara was a Roman Catholic priest who was born and raised Jewish. Fr. Mortara became the center of an international controversy when he was removed from his Jewish parents by authorities of the Papal States and raised as a Catholic...
, established a colony for Jews in Palestine. In 1854, his friend Judah Touro
Judah Touro
Judah Touro was an American businessman and philanthropist.-Early life and career:...
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
Laurence Oliphant
Laurence Oliphant was a British author, traveller, diplomat, and mystic. Best known for his 1870 satirical novel Piccadilly, he spent a decade in later life under the influence of the spiritualist prophet Thomas Lake Harris....
failed in a like attempt to bring to Palestine the Jewish proletariat of Poland, Lithuania, Romania, and the Turkish Empire (1879 and 1882). The official beginning of the construction of the New Yishuv in Palestine is usually dated back to the arrival of the Bilu
Bilu
Bilu was a movement whose goal was the agricultural settlement of the Land of Israel. "Bilu" is an acronym based on a verse from the Book of Isaiah "בית יעקב לכו ונלכה" Beit Ya'akov Lekhu Venelkha...
group in 1882, which commenced the First Aliyah
First Aliyah
The First Aliyah was the first modern widespread wave of Zionist aliyah. Jews who migrated to Palestine in this wave came mostly from Eastern Europe and from Yemen. This wave of aliyah began in 1881–82 and lasted until 1903. An estimated 25,000–35,000 Jews immigrated to Ottoman Syria during the...
. In the following years, Jewish immigration to Palestine started in earnest. Most immigrants
Jewish refugees
In the course of history, Jewish populations have been expelled or ostracised by various local authorities and have sought asylum from antisemitism numerous times...
came from Russia, escaping the frequent pogrom
Pogrom
A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...
s and state-led persecution. They founded a number of agricultural settlements with financial support from Jewish philanthropists in Western Europe. Further Aliyahs followed the Russian Revolution and Nazi persecution. However, at the end of the XIX century, Jews still were a minority in Palestina.
In the 1890s, Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl , born Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl was an Ashkenazi Jew Austro-Hungarian journalist and the father of modern political Zionism and in effect the State of Israel.-Early life:...
infused Zionism with a new ideology
Der Judenstaat
Der Judenstaat is a book written by Theodor Herzl and published in 1896 in Leipzig and Vienna by M. Breitenstein's Verlags-Buchhandlung...
and practical urgency, leading to the First Zionist Congress
First Zionist Congress
The First Zionist Congress was the inaugural congress of the Zionist Organization held in Basel , Switzerland, from August 29 to August 31, 1897. It was convened and chaired by Theodor Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionism movement...
at Basel
Basel
Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...
in 1897, which created the World Zionist Organization
World Zionist Organization
The World Zionist Organization , or WZO, was founded as the Zionist Organization , or ZO, in 1897 at the First Zionist Congress, held from August 29 to August 31 in Basel, Switzerland...
(WZO). Herzl's aim was to initiate necessary preparatory steps for the attainment of a Jewish state. Herzl's attempts to reach a political agreement with the Ottoman
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
rulers of Palestine were unsuccessful and other governmental support was sought. The WZO supported small-scale settlement in Palestine and focused on strengthening Jewish feeling and consciousness and on building a worldwide federation.
The Russian Empire, with its long record of state organized genocide and ethnic cleansing ("pogroms") was widely regarded as the historic enemy of the Jewish people. As much of its leadership were German speakers, the Zionist movement's headquarters were located in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
. At the start of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, most Jews (and Zionists) supported Germany in its war with Russia.
Lobbying by a Russian Jewish immigrant, Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Azriel Weizmann, , was a Zionist leader, President of the Zionist Organization, and the first President of the State of Israel. He was elected on 1 February 1949, and served until his death in 1952....
and fear that American Jews
American Jews
American Jews, also known as Jewish Americans, are American citizens of the Jewish faith or Jewish ethnicity. The Jewish community in the United States is composed predominantly of Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated from Central and Eastern Europe, and their U.S.-born descendants...
would encourage the USA to support Germany culminated in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 by the British government (the Zionist congress had decided already by 1903 to decline an offer by the British to establish a homeland in Uganda). This endorsed the creation of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine. In addition, a Zionist military corps led by Jabotinsky were recruited to fight on behalf of Britain in Palestine.
In 1922, the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
adopted the declaration in the Mandate it gave to Britain:
Weizmann's role in obtaining the Balfour Declaration led to his election as the movement's leader. He remained in that role until 1948 and then became the first President of Israel
President of Israel
The President of the State of Israel is the head of state of Israel. The position is largely an apolitical ceremonial figurehead role, with the real executive power lying in the hands of the Prime Minister. The current president is Shimon Peres who took office on 15 July 2007...
.
Jewish migration to Palestine and widespread Jewish land purchases from feudal landlords led to landlessness and fueled unrest—often led by the same landlords who sold the land. There were riots in 1920, 1921 and 1929, sometimes accompanied by massacres of Jews The victims were usually from the non-Zionist Haredi Jewish communities in the Four Holy Cities
Four Holy Cities
The Four Holy Cities , is the collective term in Jewish tradition applied to the cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safed: "Since the sixteenth century the holiness of Palestine, especially for burial, has been almost wholly transferred to four cities—Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, and...
. Britain supported Jewish immigration in principle, but in reaction to Arab violence imposed restrictions.
In 1933, Hitler came to power in Germany, and in 1935 the Nuremberg Laws
Nuremberg Laws
The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany introduced at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. After the takeover of power in 1933 by Hitler, Nazism became an official ideology incorporating scientific racism and antisemitism...
made German Jews (and later Austrian
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
and Czech Jews) stateless refugees. Similar rules were applied by the many Nazi allies
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
in Europe. The subsequent growth in Jewish migration and impact of Nazi propaganda
Nazi propaganda
Propaganda, the coordinated attempt to influence public opinion through the use of media, was skillfully used by the NSDAP in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler's leadership of Germany...
aimed at the Arab world led to the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. Britain established the Peel Commission
Peel Commission
The Peel Commission of 1936-1937, formally known as the Palestine Royal Commission, was a British Royal Commission of Inquiry set out to propose changes to the British Mandate of Palestine following the outbreak of the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine...
to investigate the situation. The commission did not consider the situation of Jews in Europe but called for a two-state solution and compulsory transfer of populations
Population transfer
Population transfer is the movement of a large group of people from one region to another by state policy or international authority, most frequently on the basis of ethnicity or religion...
. But Britain rejected this solution and instead implemented White Paper of 1939
White Paper of 1939
The White Paper of 1939, also known as the MacDonald White Paper after Malcolm MacDonald, the British Colonial Secretary who presided over it, was a policy paper issued by the British government under Neville Chamberlain in which the idea of partitioning the Mandate for Palestine, as recommended in...
. This planned to end Jewish immigration by 1944 and to allow no more than 75,000 further Jewish migrants. This was disastrous to European Jews already being gravely discriminated against and in need of a place to seek refuge. The British maintained this policy until the end of the Mandate.
Growth of the Jewish community in Palestine and devastation of European Jewish life sidelined the World Zionist Organization. The Jewish Agency for Palestine under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion
David Ben-Gurion
' was the first Prime Minister of Israel.Ben-Gurion's passion for Zionism, which began early in life, led him to become a major Zionist leader and Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946...
increasingly dictated policy with support from American Zionists who provided funding and influence in Washington, D.C. including via the highly effective American Palestine Committee
American Palestine Committee
The American Palestine Committee was political lobby group in the United States founded in 1932 to influence American policy towards the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine,an aim achieved in 1948 with U.S...
.
After World War II and the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
, a massive wave of stateless Jews
Sh'erit ha-Pletah
Sh'erit ha-Pletah is a biblical term used by Jewish survivors of the Nazi Holocaust to refer to themselves and the communities they formed following their liberation in the spring of 1945....
, 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. The British either imprisoned these Jews in Cyprus
Cyprus internment camps
Cyprus internment camps were camps run by the British government for internment of Jews who had immigrated or attempted to immigrate to Mandatory Palestine in violation of British policy...
(including many orphaned children) or sent them to the British-controlled Allied Occupation Zones in Germany
Allied Occupation Zones in Germany
The Allied powers who defeated Nazi Germany in World War II divided the country west of the Oder-Neisse line into four occupation zones for administrative purposes during 1945–49. In the closing weeks of fighting in Europe, US forces had pushed beyond the previously agreed boundaries for the...
. This resulted in universal Jewish support for Zionism and the refusal of the U.S. Congress to grant economic aid to Britain. In addition, Zionist groups attacked the British in Palestine and, with its empire facing bankruptcy, Britain was forced to refer the issue to the newly created United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
.
In 1947, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine
United Nations Special Committee on Palestine
The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine was formed in May 1947 in response to a United Kingdom government request that the General Assembly "make recommendations under article 10 of the Charter, concerning the future government of Palestine"...
(UNSCOP) recommended that western Palestine should be partitioned into a Jewish state, an Arab state and a UN-controlled territory, Corpus separatum, around Jerusalem. 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 the streets of Jewish cities. However, the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab states rejected the UN decision, demanding a single state and removal of Jewish migrants, leading to the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
On 14 May 1948, at the end of the British mandate, the Jewish Agency, led by David Ben-Gurion
David Ben-Gurion
' was the first Prime Minister of Israel.Ben-Gurion's passion for Zionism, which began early in life, led him to become a major Zionist leader and Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946...
, declared the creation of the State of Israel, and the same day the armies of seven Arab countries invaded Israel. The conflict led to an exodus of about 711,000 Arab Palestinians
1948 Palestinian exodus
The 1948 Palestinian exodus , also known as the Nakba , occurred when approximately 711,000 to 725,000 Palestinian Arabs left, fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Civil War that preceded it. The exact number of refugees is a matter of dispute...
, known to Palestinians as Al Nakba (the "catastrophe"), and the exodus of 850,000 Jews
Jewish exodus from Arab lands
The Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries was a mass departure, flight and expulsion of Jews, primarily of Sephardi and Mizrahi background, from Arab and Muslim countries, from 1948 until the early 1970s...
from the Arab world, mostly to Israel. Later, a series of laws passed by the first Israeli government prevented Palestinians from returning to their homes, or claiming their property. They and many of their descendants remain refugees. The expulsion of the Palestinians has since been widely, and controversially, described as having involved ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....
.
Since the creation of the State of Israel, the World Zionist Organization
World Zionist Organization
The World Zionist Organization , or WZO, was founded as the Zionist Organization , or ZO, in 1897 at the First Zionist Congress, held from August 29 to August 31 in Basel, Switzerland...
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 migrating Jews 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.
Non-Jewish support for Zionism
Political support for the Jewish return to the Land of Israel predates the formal organization of Jewish Zionism as a political movement. In the 19th century, advocates of the Restoration of the Jews to the Holy LandRestoration of the Jews to the Holy Land
Christian Restorationism, the Restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land was a nineteenth-century, Christian movement with both political and religious motivations.-Secular motivations:...
were called Restorationists. The return of the Jews to the Holy Land was widely supported by such eminent figures as Queen Victoria, Napoleon Bonaparte, King Edward VII, President John Adams
John Adams
John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...
of the United States, General Smuts
Jan Smuts
Jan Christiaan Smuts, OM, CH, ED, KC, FRS, PC was a prominent South African and British Commonwealth statesman, military leader and philosopher. In addition to holding various cabinet posts, he served as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 until 1924 and from 1939 until 1948...
of South Africa, President Masaryk of Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
, philosopher and historian Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce was an Italian idealist philosopher, and occasionally also politician. He wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy, history, methodology of history writing and aesthetics, and was a prominent liberal, although he opposed laissez-faire free trade...
from Italy, Henry Dunant
Henry Dunant
Jean Henri Dunant , aka Henry Dunant, was a Swiss businessman and social activist. During a business trip in 1859, he was witness to the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino in modern day Italy...
(founder of the Red Cross and author of the Geneva Conventions
Geneva Conventions
The Geneva Conventions comprise four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish the standards of international law for the humanitarian treatment of the victims of war...
), and scientist and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen
Fridtjof Nansen
Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen was a Norwegian explorer, scientist, diplomat, humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In his youth a champion skier and ice skater, he led the team that made the first crossing of the Greenland interior in 1888, and won international fame after reaching a...
from Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
.
The French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
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."
In China, top figures of the Nationalist government
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
, including Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese doctor, revolutionary and political leader. As the foremost pioneer of Nationalist China, Sun is frequently referred to as the "Father of the Nation" , a view agreed upon by both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China...
, expressed their sympathy with the aspirations of the Jewish people for a National Home.
Christians supporting Zionism
Some Christians have actively supported the return of Jews to Palestine even prior to Zionism, as well as subsequently. One of the principal Protestant teachers who promoted the biblical doctrine that the Jews would return to their national homeland was John Nelson DarbyJohn Nelson Darby
John Nelson Darby was an Anglo-Irish evangelist, and an influential figure among the original Plymouth Brethren. He is considered to be the father of modern Dispensationalism. He produced a translation of the Bible based on the Hebrew and Greek texts called The Holy Scriptures: A New Translation...
. He is credited with being the major promoter of the idea following his 11 lectures on the hopes of the church, the Jew and the gentile given in Geneva in 1840. His views were embraced by many evangelicals and also affected international foreign policy. Notable early supporters of Zionism include British Prime Ministers David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor OM, PC was a British Liberal politician and statesman...
and Arthur Balfour
Arthur Balfour
Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, KG, OM, PC, DL was a British Conservative politician and statesman...
, American President Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
and British Major-General
Major-General (United Kingdom)
Major general is a senior rank in the British Army. Since 1996 the highest position within the Royal Marines is the Commandant General Royal Marines who holds the rank of 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
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...
of 1967, and many dispensationalist
Dispensationalism
Dispensationalism is a nineteenth-century evangelical development based on a futurist biblical hermeneutic that sees a series of chronologically successive "dispensations" or periods in history in which God relates to human beings in different ways under different Biblical covenants.As a system,...
Christians, especially in the United States, now strongly support Zionism.
The founder of Latter Day Saint movement
Latter Day Saint movement
The Latter Day Saint movement is a group of independent churches tracing their origin to a Christian primitivist movement founded by Joseph Smith, Jr. in the late 1820s. Collectively, these churches have over 14 million members...
, Joseph Smith, Jr., in his last years alive, declared "the time for Jews to return to the land of Israel is now." In 1842, Smith sent Orson Hyde
Orson Hyde
Orson Hyde was a leader in the early Latter Day Saint movement and an original member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles...
, an Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, to Jerusalem to dedicate the land for the return of the Jews.
Some Arab Christians
Arab Christians
Arab Christians are ethnic Arabs of Christian faith, sometimes also including those, who are identified with Arab panethnicity. They are the remnants of ancient Arab Christian clans or Arabized Christians. Many of the modern Arab Christians are descendants of pre-Islamic Christian Arabian tribes,...
publicly supporting Israel include US author Nonie Darwish
Nonie Darwish
Nonie Darwish is an Egyptian-American human rights activist, and founder of Arabs For Israel, and is Director of Former Muslims United. She is the author of two books: Now They Call Me Infidel; Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel and the War on Terror and Cruel and Usual Punishment: The...
, and former Muslim Magdi Allam
Magdi Allam
Magdi Cristiano Allam , is an Egyptian-born Italian journalist and political leader, noted for his criticism of Islamic Extremism, his defence of Judeo-Christian roots of Europe and the West, and his articles on the relations between Western culture and the Islamic world...
, author of Viva Israele, both born in Egypt. Brigitte Gabriel
Brigitte Gabriel
Brigitte Gabriel is the pseudonym, of a Lebanese American journalist, author, and activist. Gabriel says that Islam keeps countries backward, and that it teaches terrorism...
, a Lebanese-born Christian US journalist and founder of the American Congress for Truth
American Congress For Truth
Gabriel formed ACT when she felt stirred to do something after 9/11 to warn the Western world about the dangers of Islamic fundamentalists.In an interview of Gabriel that was published in The New York Times in August 2008, she was asked: "Are you underwritten by the C.I.A.?" She replied, "No. Are...
, urges Americans to "fearlessly speak out in defense of America, Israel and Western civilization".
Muslims supporting Zionism
In 1873, Shah of PersiaQajar dynasty
The Qajar dynasty was an Iranian royal family of Turkic descent who ruled Persia from 1785 to 1925....
Naser al-Din Shah Qajar met with British Jewish leaders, including Sir Moses Montefiore
Moses Montefiore
Sir Moses Haim Montefiore, 1st Baronet, Kt was one of the most famous British Jews of the 19th century. Montefiore was a financier, banker, philanthropist and Sheriff of London...
, during his journey to Europe. At that time, the Persian king suggested that the Jews buy land and establish a state for the Jewish people.
Arab Muslims who publicly defended Zionism include Dr. Tawfik Hamid
Tawfik Hamid
Tawfik Hamid is an author from Egypt who opposes Islamic fundamentalism.A self-described former member of the militant al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya Tawfik Hamid advocates a peaceful understanding of Islam that is compatible with universal human rights and intellectual freedom...
, former member of a terror organization and current Islamic thinker and reformer, Sheikh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi
Abdul Hadi Palazzi
Abdul Hadi Palazzi , legally named Massimo Palazzi, is the secretary general of the Italian Muslim Assembly, and the Khalifah for Europe of the Qadiri Sufi Order....
, Director of the Cultural Institute of the Italian Islamic Community, and Tashbih Sayyed
Tashbih Sayyed
Tashbih Sayyed was a Shia Pakistani-American scholar, journalist, and author and was the Editor in Chief of Our Times, Pakistan Today, and In Review. Tashbih Sayyed worked from 1967-1980 for the Pakistan Television Corporation. In 1981, he emigrated to the United States...
, a Pakistani-American scholar, journalist, and author.
On occasion, some non-Arab Muslims such as some Kurds and Berbers
Berber people
Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are continuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River. Historically they spoke the Berber language or varieties of it, which together form a branch...
have also voiced support for Zionism.
During the Palestine Mandate era, As'ad Shukeiri
As'ad Shukeiri
Sheikh As'ad Shukeiri was a Palestinian religious and political leader in Acre, Palestine and the Ottoman-appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem from 1914 to 1918, although British Mandate authorities claimed Kamil al-Husayni was the Grand Mufti...
, a Muslim scholar ('alim) of the Acre
Acre
The acre is a unit of area in a number of different systems, including the imperial and U.S. customary systems. The most commonly used acres today are the international acre and, in the United States, the survey acre. The most common use of the acre is to measure tracts of land.The acre is related...
area, and the father of PLO founder Ahmad Shukeiri
Ahmad Shukeiri
Ahmad al-Shukeiri also transcribed al-Shuqayri, Shuqeiri, Shukeiry, etc.), was the first Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, serving in 1964–67....
, rejected the values of the Palestinian Arab national movement and was opposed to the anti-Zionist movement. 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
Mohammad Amin al-Husayni
Haj Mohammed Effendi Amin el-Husseini was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in the British Mandate of Palestine. From as early as 1920, in order to secure the independence of Palestine as an Arab state he actively opposed Zionism, and was implicated as a leader of a violent riot...
's use of Islam to attack Zionism.
Some Indian Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
s have also expressed opposition to Islamic anti-Zionism. In August 2007, a delegation of the All India Organization of Imams
Imam (Sunni Islam)
In Sunni Islam, an imam khatib is a leader, often the worship leader of a mosque and the Muslim community. This compound title is merely a common combination of two elementary offices: leader of the congregational prayer, which in larger mosques is performed at the times of all daily prayers; and...
and mosques led by Maulana Jamil Ilyas visited Israel. The meet 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
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The conflict is wide-ranging, and the term is also used in reference to the earlier phases of the same conflict, between Jewish and Zionist yishuv and the Arab population living in Palestine under Ottoman or...
is of a religious nature. The visit was organized by the American Jewish Committee
American Jewish Committee
The American Jewish Committee was "founded in 1906 with the aim of rallying all sections of American Jewry to defend the rights of Jews all over the world...
. The purpose of the visit was to create meaningful debate about the status of Israel in the Muslim eyes worldwide, and 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".
Hindu support for Zionism
After Israel's creation in 1948, the Indian National CongressIndian National Congress
The Indian National Congress is one of the two major political parties in India, the other being the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is the largest and one of the oldest democratic political parties in the world. The party's modern liberal platform is largely considered center-left in the Indian...
government opposed Zionism. Some writers have claimed that this was in order to get more Muslim votes in India (where Muslims numbered over 30 million at the time). However, conservative Hindu nationalists, led by the Sangh Parivar
Sangh Parivar
The Sangh Parivar refers to the family of organisations of Hindu nationalists which have been started by members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or are inspired by its ideas. The Sangh Parivar represents the Hindu nationalist movement. It includes the RSS and several dozen smaller...
, openly supported Zionism, as did Hindu Nationalist intellectuals like Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
Vināyak Dāmodar Sāvarkar was an Indian freedom fighter, revolutionary and politician. He was the proponent of liberty as the ultimate ideal. Savarkar was a poet, writer and playwright...
and Sita Ram Goel
Sita Ram Goel
Sita Ram Goel , writer and publisher in late twentieth century. He had Marxist leanings during the 1940s, but later became an outspoken anti-communist that also spoke negatively about Islam and Christianity...
. Zionism as a national liberation movement to repatriate the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland appealed to many Hindu Nationalists, who viewed their struggle for independence from British rule
Indian independence movement
The term Indian independence movement encompasses a wide area of political organisations, philosophies, and movements which had the common aim of ending first British East India Company rule, and then British imperial authority, in parts of South Asia...
and the Partition of India
Partition of India
The Partition of India was the partition of British India on the basis of religious demographics that led to the creation of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India on 14 and 15...
as national liberation for long-oppressed
Persecution of Hindus
Persecution of Hindus refers to the religious persecution inflicted upon Hindus. Hindus have been historically persecuted during Islamic rule of the Indian subcontinent and during the Goa Inquisition...
Hindus.
An international opinion survey has shown that India is the most pro-Israel country in the world. In more current times, conservative Indian parties and organizations tend to support Zionism. This has invited attacks on the Hindutva
Hindutva
Hindutva is the term used to describe movements advocating Hindu nationalism. Members of the movement are called Hindutvavādis.In India, an umbrella organization called the Sangh Parivar champions the concept of Hindutva...
movement by parts of the Indian left opposed to Zionism, and allegations that Hindus are conspiring with the "Jewish Lobby
Jewish lobby
The term Jewish lobby is used to describe organized lobbying attributed to Jews on domestic and foreign policy decisions, as a political participant of representative government, conducted predominantly in the Jewish diaspora in a number of Western countries...
."
Marcus Garvey and Black Zionism
Zionist success in winning British support for formation of a Jewish National Home in Palestine helped to inspire the Jamaican nationalist Marcus GarveyMarcus Garvey
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., ONH was a Jamaican publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League...
to form a movement dedicated to returning Americans of African origin to Africa. During a speech in Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
in 1920, Garvey stated: "other races were engaged in seeing their cause through—the Jews through their Zionist movement and the Irish
Irish people
The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...
through their Irish movement—and I decided that, cost what it might, I would make this a favorable time to see the Negro's interest through."
Garvey established a shipping company, the Black Star Line
Black Star Line
The Black Star Line was a shipping line incorporated by Marcus Garvey, organizer of the Universal Negro Improvement Association . The shipping line was supposed to facilitate the transportation of goods and eventually African Americans throughout the African global economy...
, to allow Black Americans to emigrate to Africa, but for various reasons failed in his endeavour.
Garvey helped inspire the Rastafari movement
Rastafari movement
The Rastafari movement or Rasta is a new religious movement that arose in the 1930s in Jamaica, which at the time was a country with a predominantly Christian culture where 98% of the people were the black descendants of slaves. Its adherents worship Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia , as God...
in Jamaica, the Black Jews
Black Jews
The history of the Jews in the African diaspora is related to the Jewish people's long history in Africa, dating to the Biblical era.As the African diaspora grew, because of the movement of Africans and their descendants throughout the world, African Jews were part of that diaspora. In addition,...
and the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem who initially moved to Liberia before settling in Israel.
Opposition to Zionism
Zionism is opposed by a wide variety of organizations and individuals. Among those opposing Zionism are some secular Jews, some branches of Judaism (SatmarSatmar (Hasidic dynasty)
Satmar is a Hasidic movement comprising mostly Hungarian and Romanian Hasidic Jewish Holocaust survivors and their descendants. It was founded and led by the late Hungarian-born Grand Rebbe Yoel Teitelbaum , who was the rabbi of Szatmárnémeti, Hungary...
Hasidim and Neturei Karta
Neturei Karta
Neturei Karta is a Haredi Jewish group formally created in Jerusalem, British Mandate of Palestine, in 1938, splitting off from Agudas Yisroel...
), the former Soviet Union, some African-Americans, many in the Muslim world, and Palestinians. Reasons for opposing Zionism are varied, and include the perceptions of unfair land confiscation, expulsions of Palestinians, violence against Palestinians, and alleged racism. Arab states in particular strongly oppose Zionism, which they believe is responsible for the 1948 Palestinian exodus
1948 Palestinian exodus
The 1948 Palestinian exodus , also known as the Nakba , occurred when approximately 711,000 to 725,000 Palestinian Arabs left, fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Civil War that preceded it. The exact number of refugees is a matter of dispute...
.
Catholic Church and Zionism
The initial response of the Catholic Church was one of strong opposition to Zionism. Shortly after the 1897 Basle Conference, the semi-official Vatican periodical (edited by the Jesuits) Civilta 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." 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".Nonetheless, Theodore Herzl travelled to Rome in late January 1904, after the sixth Zionist Congress (August, 1903) and six months before his death, looking for some kind of support. In January 22, Herzl first met the Secretary of State, Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val. According to Herzl's private diary notes, the Cardinal agreed on the history of Israel being the same as the one of the Catholic Church, but asked beforehand for a conversion of 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 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 recourse of preordained divine judgment in the Bible was utilized by the same periodical to oppose Zionism, alleging that the rejection and killing of Jesus by the Jews condemned them in the eyes of Catholics. This initial attitude changed over the next 50 years, until 1997, when at the Vatican
Holy See
The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...
symposium of that year, Pope John Paul II rejected the Christian roots of anti-Semitism, expressing 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."
Characterization as colonialism
Zionism has been characterized as colonialismColonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
, and Zionism has been criticized
Anti-Zionism
Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionistic views or opposition to the state of Israel. The term is used to describe various religious, moral and political points of view in opposition to these, but their diversity of motivation and expression is sufficiently different that "anti-Zionism" cannot be...
for promoting unfair confiscation of land, involving expulsion of indigenous peoples, and causing violence towards Palestinians. The characterization of Zionism as colonialism has been described by, among others, Nur Masalha, Gershon Shafir, Michael Prior
Michael Prior (theologian)
Michael Prior , was a priest of the Vincentian Congregation, professor of biblical theology at Saint Mary's College, University of Surrey, and a liberation theologian...
, Ilan Pappe
Ilan Pappé
Ilan Pappé is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK, director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies, co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies, and political activist...
, and Baruch Kimmerling
Baruch Kimmerling
Baruch Kimmerling was an Israeli scholar and professor of sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Upon his death in 2007, The Times described him as "the first academic to use scholarship to reexamine the founding tenets of Zionism and the Israeli State"...
.
Others, such as Shlomo Avineri
Shlomo Avineri
Shlomo Avineri is an Israeli political scientist. He is Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem....
and Mitchell Bard
Mitchell Bard
Mitchell Geoffrey Bard is an American foreign policy analyst, editor and author who specializes in U.S.-Middle East policy. He is the Executive Director of the non-profit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise , and the director of the Jewish Virtual Library.-Education:Bard received his B.A...
, view Zionism not as colonialist movement, but as a national movement that is contending with the Palestinian one. David Hoffman
David Hoffman
David Hoffman is one of America’s veteran documentary filmmakers. During his 40-year career, Hoffman has made five feature-length documentaries including King, Murray, an experimental feature film about a Long Island salesman who goes to Las Vegas on a junket to gamble with other high rollers....
rejected the claim that Zionism is a 'settler-colonial undertaking' and instead characterized Zionism as a national program of affirmative action
Affirmative action
Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination.-Origins:The term...
, adding that there is unbroken Jewish presence in Israel back to antiquity.
Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, John P. Quigly, Nur Masalha, and Cheryl Rubenberg
Cheryl Rubenberg
Cheryl A. Rubenberg is a writer and researcher specializing in the Middle East, formerly an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Florida International University...
have described the criticism of Zionism that it unfairly confiscates land and expels Palestinians.
Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
and Michael Prior
Michael Prior (theologian)
Michael Prior , was a priest of the Vincentian Congregation, professor of biblical theology at Saint Mary's College, University of Surrey, and a liberation theologian...
claim that the notion of expelling the indigenous population 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." Derek Penslar
Derek Penslar
Derek Jonathan Penslar is a Canadian historian. He was raised in Los Angeles, attended Stanford University for his first degree, and then took his graduate degrees at the University of California at Berkeley, where his advisors were Richard Webster, Amos Funkenstein and Gerald Feldman...
says that Herzl may have been considering either South America or Palestine when he wrote the diary entry about expropriation.
Ilan Pappe
Ilan Pappé
Ilan Pappé is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK, director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies, co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies, and political activist...
argued that Zionism results in ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....
. This view diverges from other New Historians
New Historians
The New Historians are a loosely-defined group of Israeli historians who have challenged traditional versions of Israeli history, including Israel's role in the Palestinian Exodus in 1948 and Arab willingness to discuss peace. The term was coined in 1988 by one of the leading New Historians, Benny...
, such as Benny Morris
Benny Morris
Benny Morris is professor of History in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Be'er Sheva, Israel...
, who accept the Palestinian exodus narrative but place it in the context of war, not ethnic cleansing.
Saleh Abdel Jawad
Saleh Abdel Jawad
Saleh Abd al-Jawad is a Palestinian historian. He received his PhD in Political Science from Paris X-Nanterre University in 1986 and works as Professor of History and Political Science at Birzeit University since 1981.- Publications :...
, Nur Masalha, Michael Prior
Michael Prior (theologian)
Michael Prior , was a priest of the Vincentian Congregation, professor of biblical theology at Saint Mary's College, University of Surrey, and a liberation theologian...
, Ian Lustick
Ian Lustick
Ian Steven Lustick is an American political scientist and specialist on the modern history and politics of the Middle East.Lustick completed his Ph.D...
, and John Rose
John Rose (UK politician)
John Rose is a British Trotskyist politician and a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party. He is of Jewish descent and best known as a speaker on Israel and Palestine and as a critic of Zionism...
have described a criticism of Zionism that it has been responsible for violence against Palestinians, such as the Deir Yassin massacre
Deir Yassin massacre
The Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948, when around 120 fighters from the Irgun Zevai Leumi and Lohamei Herut Israel Zionist paramilitary groups attacked Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, a Palestinian-Arab village of roughly 600 people...
, Sabra and Shatila massacre
Sabra and Shatila massacre
The Sabra and Shatila massacre took place in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon between September 16 and September 18, 1982, during the Lebanese civil war. Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were massacred in the camps by Christian Lebanese Phalangists while the camp...
, and Cave of the Patriarchs massacre
Cave of the Patriarchs massacre
The Cave of the Patriarchs massacre was a terrorist attack that occurred when Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli settler and member of the far-right Israeli Kach movement, opened fire on unarmed Palestinian Muslims praying inside the Ibrahim Mosque at the Cave of the Patriarchs site in Hebron in the...
.
In 1938, Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , pronounced . 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement...
rejected Zionism, saying that the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine is a religious act and therefore must not be performed by force. He wrote, "Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. 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."
Characterization as racist
Some critics of Zionism describe it as racist or discriminatory. Some criticisms of Zionism specifically identify Judaism's notion of "chosen peopleJews as a chosen people
In Judaism, "chosenness" is the belief that the Jews are the Chosen People, chosen to be in a covenant with God. This idea is first found in the Torah and is elaborated on in later books of the Hebrew Bible...
" as the source of racism in Zionism.
In December 1973, the UN passed a series of resolutions condemning South Africa and included a reference to an "unholy alliance between Portuguese colonialism
Portuguese Colonial War
The Portuguese Colonial War , also known in Portugal as the Overseas War or in the former colonies as the War of liberation , was fought between Portugal's military and the emerging nationalist movements in Portugal's African colonies between 1961 and 1974, when the Portuguese regime was...
, Apartheid and Zionism." At the time there was little cooperation between Israel and South Africa. 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.
Following the oil embargo and with Soviet, Islamic and African support the Arab League
Arab League
The Arab League , officially called the League of Arab States , is a regional organisation of Arab states in North and Northeast Africa, and Southwest Asia . It was formed in Cairo on 22 March 1945 with six members: Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan , Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Yemen joined as a...
was able to wield its numeric advantage in the UN General Assembly to pass, in 1975, Resolution 3379, which said that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination". In 1991 the resolution was repealed with UN General Assembly Resolution 46/86, after Israel declared that it would only participate in the Madrid Conference of 1991
Madrid Conference of 1991
The Madrid Conference was hosted by the government of Spain and co-sponsored by the USA and the USSR. It convened on October 30, 1991 and lasted for three days. It was an early attempt by the international community to start a peace process through negotiations involving Israel and the Palestinians...
if the resolution were revoked.
Arab countries attempted to equate Zionism with racism once more, in connection with a 2001 UN conference on racism, which took place in Durban
Durban
Durban is the largest city in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal and the third largest city in South Africa. It forms part of the eThekwini metropolitan municipality. Durban is famous for being the busiest port in South Africa. It is also seen as one of the major centres of tourism...
, South Africa, 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".
Supporters of Zionism, such as Chaim Herzog
Chaim Herzog
Chaim Herzog served as the sixth President of Israel , following a distinguished career in both the British Army and the Israel Defense Forces .-Early life:...
, argue that the movement is non-discriminatory and contains no racist aspects.
Anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism
It is argued by some scholars that the opposition to Zionism at the more extreme fringes may be hard to separate from antisemitism.Anti-semites have alleged that Zionism was, or is, part of a Jewish plot to take control of the world. One particular version of these allegations, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a fraudulent, antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for achieving global domination. It was first published in Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the twentieth century...
" (subtitle "Protocols extracted from the secret archives of the central chancery of Zion") achieved global notability. The protocols are fictional minutes of an imaginary meeting by Jewish leaders of this plot. Analysis and proof of their fraudulent origin goes as far back as 1921. A 1920 German version renamed them "The Zionist Protocols". The protocols were extensively used as propaganda by the Nazis and remain widely distributed in the Arab world. They are referred to in the 1988 Hamas charter.
There are examples of anti-Zionists using accusations, slanders, imagery and tactics previously associated with anti-semites. On October 21, 1973, then-Soviet ambassador to the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
Yakov Malik declared: "The Zionists have come forth with the theory of the Chosen People
Chosen people
Throughout history and even today various groups of people have considered themselves as chosen by a deity for some purpose such as to act as the deity's agent on earth. In monotheistic faiths, like Abrahamic religions, references to God are used in constructs such as "God's Chosen People"...
, an absurd ideology." Similarly, an exhibit about Zionism and Israel in the Museum of Religion and Atheism in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
designates the following as Soviet Zionist material: Jewish prayer shawls
Tallit
A tallit pl. tallitot is a Jewish prayer shawl. The tallit is worn over the outer clothes during the morning prayers on weekdays, Shabbat and holidays...
, tefillin
Tefillin
Tefillin also called phylacteries are a set of small black leather boxes containing scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah, which are worn by observant Jews during weekday morning prayers. Although "tefillin" is technically the plural form , it is loosely used as a singular as...
and Passover
Passover
Passover is a Jewish holiday and festival. It commemorates the story of the Exodus, in which the ancient Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt...
Hagaddahs, even though these are all religious items used by Jews for thousands of years.
Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, Norman Finkelstein
Norman Finkelstein
Norman Gary Finkelstein is an American political scientist, activist and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University...
, Irfan Khawaja, and Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali , , is a British Pakistani military historian, novelist, journalist, filmmaker, public intellectual, political campaigner, activist, and commentator...
have suggested that the characterization of anti-Zionism
Anti-Zionism
Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionistic views or opposition to the state of Israel. The term is used to describe various religious, moral and political points of view in opposition to these, but their diversity of motivation and expression is sufficiently different that "anti-Zionism" cannot be...
as anti-Semitic is inaccurate, sometimes obscures legitimate criticism of Israel's policies and actions, and is sometimes a political ploy to stifle criticism of Israel.
See also
Types of Zionism
- Cultural ZionismCultural ZionismCultural Zionism is a strain of the concept of Zionism that values Jewish culture and history, including language and historical roots, rather than other Zionist ideas such as political Zionism...
- Green ZionismGreen ZionismGreen Zionism is a branch of Zionism that is primarily concerned with the environment of Israel. It mostly fuses Israel-specific environmental concerns with support for the existence of Israel and Jewish self-determination...
- Reform ZionismReform ZionismReform Zionism, also known as Progressive Zionism is the ideology of the Zionist arm of the Reform or Progressive branch of Judaism. The Association of Reform Zionists of America is the American Reform movement's Zionist organization. Their mission “endeavors to make Israel fundamental to the...
- Streams of ZionismStreams of ZionismThe Zionist Movement was produced by various philosophers representing different approaches concerning the objective and path that Zionism should follow. The principal common goal was the aspiration to establish an independent state for the Jewish people. However, the method of action needed was...
(Political, Practical & Synthetic Zionism)
Zionist institutions and organizations
- HistadrutHistadrutHaHistadrut HaKlalit shel HaOvdim B'Eretz Yisrael , known as the Histadrut, is Israel's organization of trade unions. Established in December 1920 during the British Mandate for Palestine, it became one of the most powerful institutions of the State of Israel.-History:The Histadrut was founded in...
- The Jewish Agency for IsraelJewish Agency for IsraelThe Jewish Agency for Israel , also known as the Sochnut or JAFI, served as the organization in charge of immigration and absorption of Jews from the Diaspora into the state of Israel.-History:...
- World Zionist OrganizationWorld Zionist OrganizationThe World Zionist Organization , or WZO, was founded as the Zionist Organization , or ZO, in 1897 at the First Zionist Congress, held from August 29 to August 31 in Basel, Switzerland...
- Jewish National FundJewish National FundThe Jewish National Fund was founded in 1901 to buy and develop land in Ottoman Palestine for Jewish settlement. The JNF is a quasi-governmental, non-profit organisation...
- Vaad LeumiVaad LeumiThe Jewish National Council , also known as the Jewish People's Council was the main national institution of the Jewish community within the British Mandate of Palestine.-History:...
- Hanoar HatzioniHanoar HatzioniHanoar Hatzioni is a youth movement established in 1926, with its head offices now in Israel. Its three main pillars are Judaism, Pluralism, and Zionism...
History of Zionism and Israel
- Return to Zion
- Yehud MedinataYehud MedinataYehud Medinata or simply Yehud, was an Achaeminid autonomous province covering Judea and parts of Samaria, located south to Eber-Nari...
- Jewish diasporaJewish diasporaThe Jewish diaspora is the English term used to describe the Galut גלות , or 'exile', of the Jews from the region of the Kingdom of Judah and Roman Iudaea and later emigration from wider Eretz Israel....
- Jewish people
- The HolocaustThe HolocaustThe Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
- Gathering of IsraelGathering of IsraelThe Gathering of Israel is the promise given by Moses, in the Hebrew Bible, to the People of Israel before his death, prior to their entrance to Eretz Israel...
- AliyahAliyahAliyah is the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel . It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. The opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to as yerida . The return to the Holy Land has been a Jewish aspiration since the Babylonian exile...
- History of ZionismHistory of ZionismZionism as an organized movement is generally considered to have been fathered by Theodor Herzl in 1897; however the history of Zionism began earlier and related to Judaism and Jewish history...
- History of IsraelHistory of IsraelThe State of Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948 after almost two millennia of Jewish dispersal and persecution around the Mediterranean. From the late 19th century the Zionist movement worked towards the goal of recreating a homeland for the Jewish people...
- Israeli-Arab conflict
- Israeli–Palestinian conflictIsraeli–Palestinian conflictThe Israeli–Palestinian conflict is the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The conflict is wide-ranging, and the term is also used in reference to the earlier phases of the same conflict, between Jewish and Zionist yishuv and the Arab population living in Palestine under Ottoman or...
- List of Zionist figures
- Timeline of ZionismTimeline of ZionismThis is a partial timeline of Zionism in the modern era, since the start of the 16th century.-16th–18th centuries:1561: Joseph Nasi encourages Jewish settlement in Tiberias, having fled the Spanish Inquisition fourteen years previously in 1547...
Miscellanea
- American Council for JudaismAmerican Council for JudaismThe American Council for Judaism is an organization of American Jews committed to the proposition that Jews are not a nationality but merely a religious group, adhering to the original stated principles of Reform Judaism, as articulated in the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform.The ACJ was founded in June...
- Christian Zionism in the United KingdomChristian Zionism in the United KingdomChristian Zionism in the United Kingdom is a Christian ideology that sees the return of the Jews to the Holy Land as a fulfilment of scriptural prophecy...
- Jewish AutonomismJewish AutonomismJewish Autonomism was a non-Zionist political movement that emerged in Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century. One of its major proponents was a historian and activist Simon Dubnow, who also called his ideology folkism....
- Jewish emancipationJewish EmancipationJewish emancipation was the external and internal process of freeing the Jewish people of Europe, including recognition of their rights as equal citizens, and the formal granting of citizenship as individuals; it occurred gradually between the late 18th century and the early 20th century...
- Restoration of the Jews to the Holy LandRestoration of the Jews to the Holy LandChristian Restorationism, the Restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land was a nineteenth-century, Christian movement with both political and religious motivations.-Secular motivations:...
- Berne Trial
Further reading
- Armborst-Weihs, Kerstin: The Formation of the Jewish National Movement Through Transnational Exchange: Zionism in Europe up to the First World War, European History OnlineEuropean History OnlineEuropean History Online is an academic website that publishes articles on the history of Europe between the period of 1450 and 1950 according to the principle of open access. EGO is issued by the Institute of European History in Mainz in cooperation with the Center for Digital Humanities in Trier ...
, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2011, retrieved: August 17, 2011. - Beller, Steven. Herzl (2004)
- Brenner, Michael, and Shelley Frisch. Zionism: A Brief History (2003) excerpt and text search
- Cohen, Naomi. The Americanization of Zionism, 1897-1948 (2003). 304 pp. essays on specialized topics
- Friedman, Isaiah. "Theodor Herzl: Political Activity and Achievements," Israel Studies 2004 9(3): 46-79, online in EBSCO
- David HazonyDavid HazonyDavid Hazony is an American-born Israeli writer and magazine editor.David Hazony has studied at Columbia University, received a B.A. and M.A...
, Yoram Hazony, and Michael B. Oren, eds., "New Essays on Zionism," Shalem Press, 2007. - Laqueuer, Walter. A History of Zionism: From the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel (2003) survey by a leading scholar excerpt and text search
- Medoff, Rafael. "Recent Trends in the Historiography of American Zionism," American Jewish History 86 (March 1998), 117-134.
- Pawel, Ernst. The Labyrinth of Exile: A Life of Theodor Herzl (1992) excerpt and text search
- Sachar, Howard M. A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (2007) excerpt and text search
- Shimoni, Gideon. The Zionist Ideology (1995)
- Taylor, A.R., 1971, 'Vision and intent in Zionist Thought', in 'The transformation of Palestine', ed. by I. Abu-Lughod, ISBN 0-8101-0345-1, Northwestern University PressNorthwestern University PressNorthwestern University Press is the university press of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, USA.- History :Northwestern University Press was founded in 1893, at first specializing in legal periodicals. Today, the Press publishes scholarly books of fiction, non-fiction, and literary...
, Evanston, USA - Urofsky, Melvin I. American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust (1995), a standard history
- Wigoder, Geoffrey, ed. New Encyclopedia of Zionism and Israel (2nd ed. 2 vol. 1994); 1521pp
Primary sources
- Herzl, Theodor. A Jewish state: an attempt at a modern solution of the Jewish question (1896) full text online
- Herzl, Theodor. Theodor Herzl: Excerpts from His Diaries (2006) excerpt and text search
External links
- Jewish State.com Zionism, News, Links
- Exodus1947.com PBS Documentary Film focusing on the secret American involvement in Aliyah Bet, narrated by Morley Safer
- SAZ - Support Association for Zionism
- Hanoar Hatzioni UK A Jewish-Zionist Youth Movement
- Theodore Herzl and Rev. William Hechler and the Zionist Beginnings