Political Movement - Zionism Overview
Zionism is a political movement among
Jews, although supported by some non-Jews and not supported by some
Jews, which maintains that the Jewish people constitute a nation and are
entitled to a national homeland in Palestine, the location of the
ancient Kingdom of Israel. Since 1948, Zionism has been a movement to
support the development and defense of the State of Israel, and to
encourage Jews to settle there.
This article is intended to be a survey of the history and objectives of
the Zionist movement, not a history of Israel or of the Arab-Israeli
conflict. The history of the various forms of opposition to Zionism is
discussed at the article Anti-Zionism.
The word "Zionist" is derived from the word "Zion" (Hebrew: ציון,
Tziyyon), being one of the names of Jerusalem, as mentioned in the
Bible. It was coined by an Austrian Jewish publicist Nathan Birnbaum in
his journal Self Emancipation in 1890.
Aliyah, or emigration to Israel, has always been considered by rabbinic
Judaism to be a praiseworthy (and perhaps mandatory) act for Jews, and
is included in many lists of the 613 commandments. From the Middle Ages
and onwards many prominent Jews (e.g. Nahmanides) and groups (e.g. the
students of the Vilna Gaon) emigrated to Israel. However, during the
decades prior to, and immediately after, the establishment of the State
of Israel, Zionism was a predominantly secular movement, and some of the
founders of the state were actually atheists. Elements of Religious
Zionism developed in the 1920s and 1930s under such leaders as Rabbi
Abraham Isaac Kook (the Chief Rabbi of Palestine) and his son Zevi
Judah, and gained substantial following during the latter half of the
20th century. The modern Israeli ultranationalist religious movement is
an offshoot of adherents to Kook's teachings. (Armstrong, 2001)
Religious Jews believe that since the land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael) was
given to the ancient Israelites by God, the right of the Jews to that
land is permanent and inalienable. To generations of diaspora Jews, Zion
has been a symbol of the Holy Land and of their return to it, as
promised by God in Biblical prophecies. (See also Jerusalem, Jews and
Judaism)
Despite this, many religious Jews were not enthusiastic about Zionism
before the 1930s, and many religious organisations opposed it on the
grounds that an attempt to re-establish Jewish rule in Israel by human
agency was blasphemous, since (in their view) only the Messiah could
accomplish this. The secular, socialist language used by many pioneer
Zionists was contrary to the outlook of most religious Jewish
communities. There was, however, a small but vocal group of religious
Jews, led by the Rabbi Kook, that supported Zionism and cooperation with
the secular majority in Palestine. Only the desperate circumstances of
the 1930s and 1940s converted most (though not all) of these communities
to Zionism.
Secular Jewish opinion was also ambivalent in its attitudes to Zionism.
Many argued that Jews should join with other progressive forces in
bringing about changes which would eradicate anti-Semitism and make it
possible for Jews to live in safety in the various countries where they
lived. Before the 1930s, many Jews believed that socialism offered a
better strategy for improving the lot of European Jews. In the United
States, most Jews embraced the liberalism of their adopted country. By
some estimates, before World War II only 20–25 percent of Jews worldwide
supported Zionism, with most others either opposed or lukewarm to it.
The chain of events between 1881 and 1945, however, beginning with waves
of anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia and the Russian-controlled areas of
Poland, and culminating in the Holocaust, converted the great majority
of surviving Jews to the belief that a Jewish homeland was an urgent
necessity, particularly given the large population of disenfranchised
Jewish refugees after World War II. Most also became convinced that
Palestine was the only location that was both acceptable to all strands
of Jewish thought and within the realms of practical possibility. This
led to the great majority of Jews supporting the struggle between 1945
and 1948 to establish the State of Israel, though many did not condone
violent tactics used by some Zionist groups.
Since 1948 most Jews have continued to identify as Zionists, in the
sense that they support the State of Israel even if they do not choose
to live there. This worldwide support has been of vital importance to
Israel, both politically and financially. This has been particularly
true since 1967, as the rise of Palestinian nationalism and the
resulting political and military struggles have eroded sympathy for
Israel among non-Jews, at least outside the United States. In recent
years, many Jews have criticised the morality and expediency of Israel's
continued control of the territories captured in 1967.
Establishment of the Zionist movement
The desire of Jews to return to their ancestral homeland has remained a
universal Jewish theme ever since the defeat of the Great Jewish Revolt,
and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire in the year 70, the
defeat of Bar Kochba's revolt in 135, and the dispersal of the Jews to
other parts of the Empire that followed. Due to the disastrous results
of the revolt, what was once a human driven movement towards regaining
national sovereignty based on religious inspiration, over centuries
tradition and broken hopes of one "false messiah" after another took
much of the human element out of messianic deliverance and put it all in
the hands of God. Although Jewish nationalism in ancient times have
always taken on religious connatations, from the Maccabean Revolt to the
various Jewish revolts during Roman rule, and even Medieval Times when
intermittently national hopes were incarnated in the "false messianism"
of Shabbatai Zvi, among other less known messianists, it was not until
the rise of ideological and political Zionism and its renewed belief in
human based action toward Jewish national aspiration, did the notion of
returning to the homeland become widespread among the Jewish
consciousness.
The Haskala of Jews in European countries in the 18th and 19th centuries
following the French Revolution, and the spread of western liberal ideas
among a section of newly emancipated Jews, created for the first time a
class of secular Jews, who absorbed the prevailing ideas of rationalism,
romanticism and, most importantly, nationalism. Jews who had abandoned
Judaism, at least in its traditional forms, began to develop a new
Jewish identity, as a "nation" in the European sense. They were inspired
by various national struggles, such as those for German and Italian
unification, and for Polish and Hungarian independence. If Italians and
Poles were entitled to a homeland, they asked, why were Jews not so
entitled?
Before the 1890s there had already been attempts to settle Jews in
Palestine, which was in the 19th century a part of the Ottoman Empire,
inhabited by about 450,000 people, mostly Muslim and Christian Arabs
(although there had never been a time when there were no Jews in
Palestine). Pogroms in Russia led Jewish philanthropists such as the
Montefiores and the Rothschilds to sponsor agricultural settlements for
Russian Jews in Palestine in the late 1870s, culminating in a small
group of immigrants from Russia arriving in the country in 1882. This
has become known in Zionist history as the First Aliyah (aliyah is a
Hebrew word meaning "ascent," referring to the act of spiritually
"ascending" to the Holy Land. In modern Hebrew, this word is used in
place of an equivalent to "immigration.").
The first aliyah: Biluim used to wear the traditional Arab headdress,
the kuffiyeh
Enlarge
The first aliyah: Biluim used to wear the traditional Arab headdress,
the kuffiyeh
Proto-Zionist groups such as Hibbat Zion were active in the 1880s in
Eastern Europe where emancipation had not occurred to the extent it did
in Western Europe (or at all). The massive anti-Jewish pogroms following
the assassination of Tsar Alexander II made emancipation seem farther
than ever and influenced Judah Leib Pinsker to publish the pamphlet
Auto-Emancipation in January 1, 1882. The pamphlet became influential
for the Political Zionism movement.
There had also been several Jewish thinkers such as Moses Hess whose
1862 work Rome and Jerusalem; The Last National Question argued for the
Jews to settle in Palestine as a means of settling the national
question. Hess proposed a socialist state in which the Jews would become
agrarianised through a process of "redemption of the soil" which would
transform the Jewish community into a true nation in that Jews would
occupy the productive layers of society rather than being an
intermediary non-productive merchant class which is how he perceived
European Jews. Hess, along with later thinkers such as Nahum Syrkin and
Ber Borochov, is considered a founder of Socialist Zionism and Labour
Zionism and one of the intellectual forebears of the kibbutz movement.
American evangelical Christian Zionists such as William Eugene
Blackstone also pursued the Zionist ideal during late 19th century,
especially in the American Blackstone Memorial (1891).
A key event triggering the modern Zionist movement was the Dreyfus
Affair, which erupted in France in 1894. Jews were profoundly shocked to
see this outbreak of anti-Semitism in a country which they thought of as
the home of enlightenment and liberty. Among those who witnessed the
Affair was an Austrian-Jewish journalist, Theodor Herzl, who published
his pamphlet Der Judenstaat ("The Jewish State") in 1896. Prior to the
Affair, Herzl had been anti-Zionist, afterwards he became ardently
pro-Zionist. In 1897 Herzl organised the First Zionist Congress in
Basel, Switzerland, which founded the World Zionist Organisation (WZO)
and elected Herzl as its first President.
Zionist initiatives
The WZO's initial strategy was to obtain the permission of the Ottoman
Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid II to allow systematic Jewish settlement in
Palestine. The good offices of the German Emperor, Wilhelm II, were
sought, but nothing came of this. Instead the WZO pursued a strategy of
building a homeland through persistent small-scale immigration, and the
founding of such bodies as the Jewish National Fund in 1901 and the
Anglo-Palestine Bank in 1903.
Before 1917 some Zionist leaders took seriously proposals for Jewish
homelands in places other than Palestine. Herzl's Der Judenstaat argued
for a Jewish state in either Palestine, "our ever-memorable historic
home", or Argentina, "one of the most fertile countries in the world".
In 1903 British cabinet ministers suggested the British Uganda Program,
land for a Jewish state in "Uganda" (actually in modern Kenya). Herzl
initially rejected the idea, preferring Palestine, but after the April
1903 Kishinev pogroms Herzl introduced a controversial proposal to the
6th Zionist Congress to investigate the offer as a temporary measure for
Russian Jews in danger. Notwithstanding its emergency and temporary
nature, the proposal still proved very divisive, and sparked a walkout
led by the Russian Jewish delegation to the Congress. Nevertheless, a
majority voted to establish a committee for the investigation of the
possibility, and it was not dismissed until the 7th Zionist Congress in
1905.
In response to this, the Jewish Territorialist Organization led by
Israel Zangwill split off from the main Zionist movement. The
territorialists attempted to establish a Jewish homeland wherever
possible, but went into decline after 1917 and were dissolved in 1925.
From that time Palestine was the sole focus of Zionist aspirations. Few
Jews took seriously the establishment by the Soviet Union of a Jewish
Autonomous Republic in the Russian Far East.
Image:Ac.weizmann.jpg
Chaim Weizmann
One of the major motivations for Zionism was the belief that the Jews
needed to return to their historic homeland, not just as a refuge from
anti-Semitism, but also to govern themselves as an independent nation.
Some Zionists, mainly socialist Zionists, believed that the Jews'
centuries of being oppressed in anti-Semitic societies had reduced Jews
to a meek, vulnerable, despairing existence which invited further
anti-Semitism. They argued that Jews should redeem themselves from their
history by becoming farmers, workers, and soldiers in a country of their
own. These socialist Zionists generally rejected religion as
perpetuating a "Diaspora mentality" among the Jewish people.
One such Zionist ideologue, Ber Borochov, continuing from the work of
Moses Hess, proposed the creation of a socialist society that would
correct the "inverted pyramid," of Jewish society. Borochov believed
that Jews were forced out of normal occupations by gentile hostility and
competition, explaining why there was a relative predominance of Jewish
professionals, rather than workers. Jewish society would not be healthy
until the inverted pyramid was righted, and the majority of Jews became
workers and peasants again. This could only be accomplished by Jews in
their own country. Another, A. D. Gordon, was influenced by the volkisch
ideas of European romantic nationalism, and proposed establishing a
society of Jewish peasants. Gordon made a religion of work. These two
thinkers, and others like them, motivated the establishment of the first
Jewish collective settlement, or kibbutz, Deganiah, on the southern
shore of the Sea of Galilee, in 1909 (the same year that the city of Tel
Aviv was established). Deganiah, and many other kibbutzim that were soon
to follow, attempted to realise these thinkers' vision by creating a
communal villages, where newly arrived European Jews would be taught
agriculture and other manual skills.
Another aspect of this strategy was the revival and fostering of an
"indigenous" Jewish culture and the Hebrew language. One early Zionist
thinker, Asher Ginsberg, better known by his penname Ahad Ha'am ("One of
the People") rejected what he regarded as the over-emphasis of political
Zionism on statehood, at the expense of the revival of Hebrew culture.
Ahad Ha'am recognised that the effort to achieve independence in
Palestine would bring Jews into conflict with the native Palestinian
Arab population, as well as with the Ottomans and European colonial
powers then eying the country. Instead, he proposed that the emphasis of
the Zionist movement shift to efforts to revive the Hebrew language and
create a new culture, free from Diaspora influences, that would unite
Jews and serve as a common denominator between diverse Jewish
communities once independence was achieved.
The most prominent follower of this idea was Eliezer Ben Yehudah, a
linguist intent on reviving Hebrew as a spoken language among Jews (see
History of the Hebrew language). Most European Jews in the 19th century
spoke Yiddish, a language based on mediaeval German, but as of the
1880s, Ben Yehudah and his supporters began promoting the use and
teaching of a modernised form of biblical Hebrew, which had not been a
living language for nearly 2,000 years. Despite Herzl's efforts to have
German proclaimed the official language of the Zionist movement, the use
of Hebrew was adopted as official policy by Zionist organisations in
Palestine, and served as an important unifying force among the Jewish
settlers, many of whom also took new Hebrew names.
The development of the first Hebrew-speaking city (Tel Aviv), the
kibbutz movement, and other Jewish economic institutions, plus the use
of Hebrew, began by the 1920s to lay the foundations of a new
nationality, which would come into formal existence in 1948. Meanwhile,
other cultural Zionists attempted to create new Jewish artforms,
including graphic arts. (Boris Schatz, a Bulgarian artist, founded the
Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem in 1906.) Others, such
as dancer and artist Baruch Agadati, fostered popular festivals such as
the Adloyada carnival on Purim.
The Zionist leaders always saw Britain as a key potential ally in the
struggle for a Jewish homeland. Not only was Britain the world's
greatest imperial power; it was also a country where Jews lived in peace
and security, among them influential political and cultural leaders,
such as Benjamin Disraeli and Walter, Lord Rothschild. There was also a
peculiar streak of philo-Semitism among the classically educated British
elite to which the Zionist leaders hoped to appeal, just as the Greek
independence movement had appealed to British phil-Hellenism during the
Greek War of Independence. Chaim Weizmann, who became the leader of the
Zionist movement after Herzl's death in 1904, was a professor at a
British university, and used his extensive contacts to lobby the British
government for a statement in support of Zionist aspirations.
This hope was realised in 1917, when the British Foreign Secretary,
Arthur Balfour, made his famous Declaration in favour of a Jewish
homeland in Palestine. Balfour was motivated partly by philo-Semitic
sentiment, partly by a desire to weaken the Ottoman Empire (an ally of
Germany during the First World War), and partly by a desire to
strengthen support for the Allied cause in the United States, home to
the world's most influental Jewish community. In the Declaration,
however, Balfour was careful to use the word "homeland" rather than
"state," and also to specify that the establishment of a Jewish homeland
must not "prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing
non-Jewish communities in Palestine."
Zionism and the Arabs
Outside of Jerusalem, Safed, and Tiberias, Arabs and/or Muslims
constituted the overwhelming majority of the population. The early
Zionists were well aware of this, but believed that the inhabitants
could only benefit from Jewish immigration. This attitude resulted in
the Arab presence being ignored, as in Israel Zangwill's famous slogan
"A land without a people, for a people without a land". Generally
though, such statements were propaganda invented by leaders who did not
foresee the subsequent conflict with the Arabs and thought of them as
allies against the big empires whom they viewed as the main obstacle.
Agreements with the Ottoman authorities, or with Arab rulers outside
Palestine were their main concern and concerns of the local Arabs were
overlooked.
One of the earlier Zionists to warn against these ideas was Ahad Ha'am,
who warned in his 1891 essay "Truth from Eretz Israel" that in Palestine
"it is hard to find tillable land that is not already tilled", and
moreover
From abroad we are accustomed to believing that the Arabs are all desert
savages, like donkeys, who neither see nor understand what goes on
around them. But this is a big mistake... The Arabs, and especially
those in the cities, understand our deeds and our desires in Eretz
Israel, but they keep quiet and pretend not to understand, since they do
not see our present activities as a threat to their future... However,
if the time comes when the life of our people in Eretz Israel develops
to the point of encroaching upon the native population, they will not
easily yield their place.
Though there had already been Arab protests to the Ottoman authorities
in the 1880s against land sales to foreign Jews, the most serious
opposition began in the 1890s after the full scope of the Zionist
enterprise became known. This opposition did not arise out of
Palestinian nationalism, which was in its mere infancy at the time, but
out of a sense of threat to the livelihood of the Arabs. This sense was
heightened in the early years of the 20th century by the Zionist
attempts to develop an economy in which Arabs were largely redundant,
such as the "Hebrew labor" movement that campaigned against the
employment of Arabs. The severing of Palestine from the rest of the Arab
world in 1918 and the Balfour Declaration were seen by the Arabs as
proof that their fears were coming to fruition.
Zeev Jabotinsky
Enlarge
Zeev Jabotinsky
Nevertheless, despite clear signs that a true Palestinian nationalism
was rising, much the same range of opinion could be found among Zionist
leaders after 1920. However, the division between these camps did not
match the main threads in Zionist politics so cleanly as is often
portrayed. To take an example, the leader of the Revisionist Zionists,
Vladimir Jabotinsky, is often presented as having had an extreme
pro-expulsion view but the proofs offered for this are rather thin.
According to Jabotinsky's Iron Wall (1923), an agreement with the Arabs
was impossible, since they
look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that
any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie.
To think that the Arabs will voluntarily consent to the realization of
Zionism in return for the cultural and economic benefits we can bestow
on them is infantile.
The solution, according to Jabotinsky, was not expulsion (which he was
"prepared to swear, for us and our descendants, that we will never
[do]") but to impose the Jewish presence on the Arabs by force of arms
until eventually they came to accept it. Only late in his life did
Jabotinsky speak of the desirability of Arab emigration though still
without unequivocally advocating an expulsion policy. After the World
Zionist Organization rejected Jabotinsky's proposals, he resigned from
the organization and founded the New Zionist Organization in 1933 to
promote his views and work independently for immigration and the
establishment of a state. The NZO rejoined the WZO in 1951.
The situation with socialist Zionists such as David Ben-Gurion was also
ambiguous. In public Ben-Gurion upheld the official position of his
party that denied the necessity of force in achieving Zionist goals. The
argument was based on the denial of a unique Palestinian identity
coupled with the belief that eventually the Arabs would realise that
Zionism was to their advantage. Privately, however, Ben-Gurion believed
that the Arab opposition amounted to a total rejection of Zionism
grounded in fundamental principle, and that a confrontation was
unavoidable. In 1937, Ben-Gurion and almost all of his party leadership
supported a British proposal to create a small Jewish state from which
the Arabs had been removed by force. The British plan was soon shelved,
but the idea of a Jewish state with a minimal population of Arabs
remained an important thread in Labour Zionist thought throughout the
remaining period until the creation of Israel.
The attitude of the Zionist leaders towards the Arab population of
Palestine in the lead-up to the 1948 conflict is one of the most hotly
debated issues in Zionist history. This article does not cover it; see
Israel-Palestinian conflict and Palestinian exodus.
The struggle for Palestine
With the defeat and dismantlement of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, and the
establishment of the British Mandate over Palestine by the League of
Nations in 1922, the Zionist movement entered a new phase of activity.
Its priorities were the escalation of Jewish settlement in Palestine,
the building of the institutional foundations of a Jewish state, raising
funds for these purposes, and persuading — or forcing — the British
authorities not to take any steps which would lead to Palestine moving
towards independence as an Arab-majority state. The 1920s did see a
steady growth in the Jewish population and the construction of
state-like Jewish institutions, but also saw the emergence of
Palestinian Arab nationalism and growing resistance to Jewish
immigration.
International Jewish opinion remained divided on the merits of the
Zionist project. Many prominent Jews in Europe and the United States
opposed Zionism, arguing that a Jewish homeland was not needed because
Jews were able to live in the democratic countries of the West as equal
citizens. Albert Einstein, one of the best-known Jews in the world,
said: "I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain, especially
from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks." The
many Jews who embraced socialism opposed Zionism as a form of
reactionary nationalism. The General Jewish Labor Union, or Bund, which
represented socialist Jews in eastern Europe, was strongly anti-Zionist.
The Communist parties, which attracted substantial Jewish support during
the 1920s and 1930s, were even more virulently anti-Zionist, if one
defines Zionism as the advocacy of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
During this time Communists actively promoted an alternative Jewish
homeland — the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, or Birobidzhan, which had been
set up by the Soviet Union in the Russian Far East.
At the other extreme, some American Jews went so far as to say that the
United States was Zion, and the successful absorption of 2 million
Jewish immigrants in the 30 years before the First World War lent force
to this argument. (Some American Jewish socialists supported the
Birobidzhan experiment, and a few even emigrated there during the Great
Depression.)
The rise to power of Adolf Hitler in Germany in 1933 produced a powerful
new impetus for Zionism. Not only did it create a flood of Jewish
refugees — at a time when the United States had closed its doors to
further immigration — but it undermined the faith of Jews that they
could live in security as minorities in non-Jewish societies. Some
Zionists allegedly supported the rise of the Nazi party, recognising
that it would increase the possibility of a Jewish state. It is claimed
by Marxist author Lenni Brenner that The Zionist Federation of Germany
even sent Hitler a letter calling for collaboration in 1933; however the
strongly anti-Semitic Nazis rejected the offer and later abolished the
organisation in 1938. Jewish opinion began to shift in favour of
Zionism, and pressure for more Jewish immigration to Palestine
increased. But the more Jews settled in Palestine, the more aroused
Palestinian Arab opinion became, and the more difficult the situation
became in Palestine. In 1936 serious Arab rioting broke out, and in
response the British authorities held the unsuccessful St. James
Conference and issued the MacDonald White Paper of 1939, severely
restricting further Jewish immigration.
The Jewish community in Palestine responded by organising armed forces,
based on smaller units developed to defend remote agricultural
settlements. Two military movements were founded, the Labor-dominated
Haganah and the Revisionist Irgun. The latter group did not hesitate to
take military action against the Arab population. With the advent of
World War II, both groups decided that defeating Hitler took priority
over the fight against the British. However, attacks against British
targets were recommenced in 1940 by a splinter group of the Irgun, later
known as Lehi, and in 1944 by the Irgun itself.
The revelation of the fate of six million European Jews killed during
the Holocaust had several consequences. Firstly, it left hundreds of
thousands of Jewish refugees (or displaced persons) in camps in Europe,
unable or unwilling to return to homes in countries which they felt had
betrayed them to the Nazis. Not all of these refugees wanted to go to
Palestine, and in fact many of them eventually went to other countries,
but large numbers of them did, and they resorted to increasingly
desperate measures to get there.
Secondly, it evoked a world-wide feeling of sympathy with the Jewish
people, mingled with guilt that more had not been done to deter Hitler's
aggressions before the war, or to help Jews escape from Europe during
its course. This was particularly the case in the United States, whose
federal government had halted Jewish immigration during the war. Among
those who became strong supporters of the Zionist ideal was President
Harry S. Truman, who overrode considerable opposition in his State
Department and used the great power of his position to mobilise support
at the United Nations for the establishment of a Jewish state in
Palestine, although he expressed very negative views of Jews in his
diaries, and had, in a letter written years before he entered the White
House, referred to New York City as "kike town" .[1][2][3] Since Britain
was desperate to withdraw from Palestine, Truman's efforts were the
crucial factor in the creation of Israel.
Thirdly, it swung world Jewish opinion almost unanimously behind the
project of a Jewish state in Palestine, and within Palestine it led to a
greater resolution to use force to achieve that objective. American
Reform Judaism was among the elements of Jewish thought which changed
their opinions about Zionism after the Holocaust. The proposition that
Jews could live in peace and security in non-Jewish societies was
certainly a difficult one to defend in 1945, although it is one of the
ironies of Zionist history that in the decades since World War II
anti-Semitism has greatly declined as a serious political force in most
western countries, (though it increased greatly in Middle Eastern
countries) and Jewish communities continue to live and prosper outside
Israel.
Zionism and Israel
In 1947 Britain announced its intention to withdraw from Palestine, and
on 29 November the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition
Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state (with Jerusalem becoming
an international enclave). Civil conflict between the Arabs and Jews in
Palestine erupted immediately. On 14 May 1948 the leaders of the Jewish
community in Palestine made a declaration of independence, and the state
of Israel was established. This marked a major turning point in the
Zionist movement, as its principal goal had now been accomplished. Many
Zionist institutions were reshaped, and the three military movements
combined to form the Israel Defence Forces.
The majority of the Arab population having either fled or been expelled
during the War of Independence, Jews were now a majority of the
population within the 1948 ceasefire lines, which became Israel's de
facto borders until 1967. In 1950 the Knesset passed the Law of Return
which granted all Jews the right to immigrate to Israel. This, together
with the influx of Jewish refugees from Europe and the later flood of
expelled Jews from Arab countries, had the effect of creating a large
and apparently permanent Jewish majority in Israel.
Since 1948 the international Zionist movement has undertaken a variety
of roles in support of Israel. These have included the encouragement of
immigration, assisting the absorption and integration of immigrants,
fundraising on behalf of settlement and development projects in Israel,
the encouragement of private capital investment in Israel, and
mobilisation of world public opinion in support of Israel.
The 1967 war between Israel and the Arab states (the "Six-Day War")
marked a major turning point in the history of Israel and of Zionism.
Israeli forces captured the eastern half of Jerusalem, including the
holiest of Jewish religious sites, the Western Wall of the ancient
Temple. They also took over the remaining territories of pre-1948
Palestine, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (from Egypt). Religious Jews
regarded the West Bank (ancient Judaea and Samaria) as an integral part
of Eretz Israel, and within Israel voices of the political Right soon
began to argue that these territories should be permanently retained.
Zionist groups began to build Jewish settlements in the territories as a
means of establishing "facts on the ground" that would make an Israeli
withdrawal impossible.
The 1968 conference of the WZO adopted the following principles:
* The unity of the Jewish people and the centrality of Israel in Jewish
life
* The ingathering of the Jewish people in the historic homeland, Eretz
Israel, through aliyah from all countries
* The strengthening of the State of Israel, based on the "prophetic
vision of justice and peace"
* The preservation of the identity of the Jewish people through the
fostering of Jewish, Hebrew and Zionist education and of Jewish
spiritual and cultural values
* The protection of Jewish rights everywhere.
Control of the West Bank and Gaza placed Israel in the position of
control over a large population of Palestinian Arabs. Whether or not
there had been a distinct Palestinian national identity in the 1920s may
be debated, but there is no doubt that by the 1960s such an identity was
firmly established — the founders of Zionism had thus, ironically,
created two new nationalities, Israeli and Palestinian, instead of one.
The faith of the Palestinians in the willingness and ability of the Arab
states to defeat Israel and return Palestine to Arab rule was destroyed
by the war, and the death of the most militant and popular Arab leader,
Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, in 1970 reinforced the belief of
Palestinians that they had been abandoned. The Palestine Liberation
Organisation, created in 1965 as an Egyptian-controlled propaganda
device, took on new life as an autonomous movement led by Yasser Arafat,
and soon turned to terrorism as its principal means of struggle.
From this point the history of Israel and the Palestinians can be
followed in the article Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In 1975 the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution which
said that "Zionism is a form of racism." This resolution was rescinded
in 1991. This issue is discussed in length in the article on
anti-Zionism.
Anti-Zionism and Post-Zionism
More than 50 years after the founding of the State of Israel, and after
more than 80 years of Arab-Jewish conflict over the territory now known
as Israel, West Bank and Gaza Strip, many have misgivings about current
Israeli policies. Some liberal or socialist Jews, as well as some
Orthodox Jewish communities (the most vocal and visible being the small
Neturei Karta group), still oppose Zionism as a matter of principle.
Well-known Jewish scholars and statesmen who have opposed Zionism
include Bruno Kreisky, Hans Fromm and Michael Selzer. In the United
States a small number of Jewish intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky and
Norman Finkelstein have continued to oppose modern Zionism, although few
argue that the entire Jewish settlement of Palestine should actually be
reversed, and even fewer have suggested viable alternatives for the
resettlement of Jewish Israeli population (of over 5 million) in this
eventuality, since the overwhelming majority refuse to live under Arab
rule. Chomsky says he supports a Jewish homeland, but not a Jewish
state, and claims that this view is consistent with the original meaning
of Zionism.
Criticism of Israeli policies in the territories has become sharper
since Ariel Sharon became Prime Minister of Israel. Some elements of
Orthodox Judaism remain anti-Zionist, although mainstream Orthodox
groups such as the Agudat Israel have changed their positions since 1948
and now actively support Israel, often assuming right-wing stances
regarding important political questions such as the peace process.
Today, the overwhelming majority of Jewish organisations and
denominations are strongly pro-Zionist.
Among the important minority threads within Zionism is one that holds
Israelis to be a new nationality, not merely the representatives of
world Jewry. The "Canaanite" or "Hebrew Renaissance" movement led by
poet Yonatan Ratosh in the 1930s and 1940s was built on this idea. A
modern movement which is partly based on the same idea is known as
Post-Zionism. There is no agreement on how this movement is defined, nor
even of which persons belong to it, but the most common idea is that
Israel should leave behind the concept of a "state of the Jewish people"
and instead strive to be a state of all its citizens according to
pluralistic democratic values. Many Israeli historians hold "Caananism"
or "Pan-Semitism" as an aberration outside the bounds of Zionism.
Self-identified Post-Zionists differ on many important details, such as
the status of the Law of Return. Critics tend to associate Post-Zionism
with anti-Zionism or postmodernism, both charges which are strenuously
denied by proponents.
Another persistent opinion favors a binational state in which Arabs and
Jews live together while enjoying some type of autonomy. Variants of the
idea were proposed by Chaim Weizmann in the 1930s and by the Ichud
(Unity) group in the 1940s, which included such prominent figures as
Judah Magnes (first dean of The Hebrew University) and Martin Buber. The
emergence of Israel as a Jewish state with a small Arab minority made
the idea irrelevant, but it was revived after the 1967 war left Israel
in control of a large Arab population. Never more than the opinion of a
small minority, the idea is nevertheless supported by a few prominent
intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky, the late Edward Said, and (since
2003) Meron Benvenisti. Opponents of a binational state argue that since
Arabs (whose population growth rates are much higher than among Jews)
would form the majority of the population in such a state, the Jewish
character on which the state was founded would be lost and the Jewish
population's existence threatened, as it was threatened under other
Turkish and Arab regimes in the past. They also suggest that such a
state is unlikely to remain a democracy for long, as most Arab countries
today have autocratic governments.
Critics of Zionism see the changes in demographic balance which created
a Jewish state, which culminated in hundreds of thousands of Arabs being
made refugees, and the methods used to cause this, as an inevitable
consequence of Zionism. Critics also point to current inequities between
Jews and Arabs in Israel, similarly viewing them as attributable to
Zionist beliefs and ideologies. Those who regard Jews and Arabs as
racially distinct thus condemn Zionism as racist. Defenders of Zionism
disagree with the identification of Zionism with racism on a number of
grounds; they state that the basis that the charge is too vague, as the
views of Zionist groups differ widely from each other. They also
disagree on the basis that Palestinians and Jews are not racially
distinct from each other, that Israeli Jews themselves are racially
"mixed" (nearly half of Israel's Jews come from Arab countries, and
there are also almost 100,000 black Jews from Ethiopia); thus even if
Zionism discriminates against Arabs, such discrimination cannot
accurately be termed racist, but rather ethnic and/or cultural. As well,
they argue that discrimination based on culture or ethnicity is a fact
in almost all countries in the world, and that any discrimination in
Israel (including discrimination between Jewish groups) is similarly
based on such differences, and not inherent in Zionism itself. See also
Zionism and racism.
Non-Jewish Zionism
The question of whether a non-Jew can be a Zionist is a largely semantic
one, akin to the question of whether a man can be a feminist. The
websites of major Zionist organisations make it clear these are entirely
Jewish organisations. The website of the American Zionist Organization,
for example says: "The American Zionist Movement is a coalition of
organizations and individuals devoted to the unity of the Jewish people
and eternally connected to our homeland, Israel." (emphasis added)
There are nevertheless many non-Jews who support the State of Israel,
and some of these may choose to define themselves as Zionists.
Non-Jewish support for Zionism takes various forms:
* The traditional support from the political left for the Jews as an
oppressed people and for Israel as a semi-socialist state. Since the
Six-Day War the first of these has been almost entirely lost as the left
has shifted its sympathy to the Palestinians, while the second has been
lost since the Israeli Labor Party lost its hold on power in 1977. In
the United States, Israel continues to find support from most political
liberals, but outside the U.S. this has largely evaporated. However,
some of the strongest critics of Zionism in the US include prominent
liberals like Ralph Nader.
* Support from some political conservatives, mainly in the United States
and to a lesser extent in other countries such as the United Kingdom.
Much of this is really support for Israel as a pro-Western state rather
than support for Zionism per se, and is also strongly motivated by
domestic politics, particularly in the U.S. However, some of the
strongest critics of Zionism have also been political conservatives like
Pat Buchanan.
* "Christian Zionism", a movement among evangelical Christians in the
United States which sees the return of the Jews to the Holy Land as a
fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. Some Christian Zionists also believe
that most Jews will be killed and will burn in Hell while some will be
converted to Christianity as a prelude to the second coming of Jesus,
after which Christians will inherit the Holy Land; thus their ultimate
goals differ greatly from those of Jewish Zionists. Lobbying by
Christian groups in the United States on behalf of Israel has influenced
U.S. policy towards the Middle East.
* Some Muslim scholars point out that "The Qur'an says that Allah gave
the Land of Israel to the Jews and will restore them to it at the End of
Days" [4]. Shaykh Abdul Hadi Palazzi cites the Quran to support this
view:
"Pharaoh sought to scare them [the Israelites] out of the land [of
Israel]: but We [Allah] drowned him [Pharoah] together with all who were
with him. Then We [Allah] said to the Israelites: 'Dwell in this land
[the Land of Israel]. When the promise of the hereafter [End of Days]
comes to be fulfilled, We [Allah] shall assemble you [the Israelites]
all together [in the Land of Israel]." <Qur'an, "Night Journey,"
17:100-104>
"And [remember] when Moses said to his people: 'O my people, call in
remembrance the favour of God unto you, when he produced prophets among
you, made you kings, and gave to you what He had not given to any other
among the peoples. O my people, enter the Holy Land which God has
assigned unto you, and turn not back ignominiously, for then will ye be
overthrown, to your own ruin.'" <Qur'an, 5:20-21>
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism
Back to
Political Movement
|
|
