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Zionism is an ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century that aimed to establish and maintain a national home for the Jews, pursued through the colonization of Palestine, a region roughly corresponding to the Land of Israel in Judaism, with central importance in Jewish history. Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.
Zionism initially emerged in Central Europe and Eastern Europe as a secular nationalist movement in the late 19th century, in reaction to newer waves of antisemitism and in response to the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment. The arrival of Zionist settlers to Palestine during this period is widely seen as the start of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The Zionist claim to Palestine was based on the notion that the Jews' historical right to the land outweighed that of the Arabs.
In 1917, the Balfour Declaration established Britain's support for the movement. In 1922, the Mandate for Palestine governed by Britain explicitly privileged Jewish settlers over the local Palestinian population. In 1948, the State of Israel was established and the first Arab-Israeli war broke out. During the war, Israel expanded its territory to control over 78% of Mandatory Palestine. As a result of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, an estimated 160,000 of 870,000 Palestinians in the territory remained, forming a Palestinian minority in Israel.
The Zionist mainstream has historically included Liberal Zionism, Labor Zionism, Revisionist, and Cultural Zionism, while groups like Brit Shalom and Ihud have been dissident factions within the movement. Religious Zionism is a variant of Zionist ideology that brings together secular nationalism and religious conservatism. Advocates of Zionism have viewed it as a national liberation movement for the repatriation of an indigenous people (that were subject to persecution and share a national identity through national consciousness), to the homeland of their ancestors. Criticism of Zionism often characterizes it as a Jewish supremacy, colonialist, Zionist racism,
or exceptionalist ideology or as a settler colonialist movement.See for example: , or
Zion or Mount Zion is a hill in Jerusalem and a term used in the Hebrew Bible. It has been used poetically as a synecdoche to refer to the Land of Israel since the period of the Babylonian Exile with particular importance in Jewish messianic belief.
After suffering as a minority in Europe and the Middle East, establishing a Jewish state, with a Jewish majority, became a focus of the Zionist movement. Zionist organizations encouraged immigration to Palestine, and anti-Semitism produced a strong push factor. Israeli historian Yosef Gorny argues that this demographic change required annulling the majority status of the Arabs.: "This was potentially a much more dangerous situation than the struggle of two peoples maintaining a constant balance of forces between them for the same territory.The logical, and even inevitable, corollary of the aspiration towards territorial concentration was the desire to create a Jewish majority in Palestine. Without it, Zionism would forfeit its meaning, since the history of Exile had demonstrated the danger inherent in perpetual minority status. Thus, the desire for a Jewish majority was the key issue in the implementation of Zionism, implying a basic change in the international standing of the Jewish people and marking a turning-point in their history. The significance of this demand, and of the untiring endeavour to realize it in various ways, lay in the annulling of the majority standing of the Arabs of Palestine. The roots of the Jewish-Arab confrontation, therefore, are embedded in the incessant process of disturbance of the status quo ante as regards national status in Palestine." Gorny argues that the Zionist movement regarded Arab motives in Palestine as lacking both moral and historical significance. According to Israeli historian Simha Flapan, the view expressed by the proclamation "there was no such thing as Palestinians" is a cornerstone of Zionist policy. This perspective was also shared by those on the far-left of the Zionist movement, including Martin Buber and other members of Brit Shalom, after the Holocaust. Judah Magnes, even after the Holocaust, continued to support a binational state, even one imposed by the Great Powers, but was unable to find any Arab interlocutors. British officials supporting the Zionist effort also held similar beliefs.
Unlike other forms of nationalism, the Zionist claim to Palestine was aspirational and required a mechanism by which the claim could be realized. The territorial concentration of Jews in Palestine and the subsequent goal of establishing a Jewish majority there was the main mechanism by which Zionist groups sought to realize this claim.: "Zionism had always looked to the day when a Jewish majority would enable the movement to gain control over the country: The Zionist leadership had never posited Jewish statehood with a minority of Jews ruling over a majority of Arabs, apartheid style." By the time of the 1936 Arab Revolt, the political differences between the various Zionist groups had shrunk further, with almost all Zionist groups seeking a Jewish state in Palestine.: "Zionism is both a struggle for land and a demographic race; in essence, the aspiration for a territory with a Jewish majority...Zionist democratic diversity did not mean that there was no commonground between the major segments of the movement. Initially, Ben-Gurion preferred an 'iron wall of workers', namely settlements and Jewish infrastructure, on Jabotinsky's call for an iron wall of military might and deterrence... he even lashed out against what he defined as Jabotinsky's 'perverted national fanaticism', and against the Revisionists 'worthless prattle of sham heroes, whose lips becloud the moral purity of our national movement. . .' Eventually, however, under the growing chal-lenge of Arab nationalism and especially with the growth in the Yishuv of a collective mood of sacred Jewish nationalism following the Holocaust, the Labour Zionists, chief among them David Ben-Gurion, accepted forall practical purposes Jabotinsky's iron-wall strategy. The Jewish State could only emerge, and force the Arabs to accept it, if it erected around it an impregnable wall of Jewish might and deterrence." While not every Zionist group openly called for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, every group in the Zionist mainstream was wedded to the idea of establishing a Jewish demographic majority there.: "Within the Zionist ideological consensus there coexisted three relatively distinct tendencies—political Zionism, labor Zionism and cultural Zionism. Each was wedded to the demand for a Jewish majority, but not for entirely the same reasons."
In pursuing a Jewish demographic majority, the Zionist movement encountered the demographic problem posed by the presence of the local Arab population, which was predominantly non-Jewish. The practical issue of establishing a Jewish state in a majority non-Jewish region was an issue of fundamental importance for the Zionist movement.: "Thus, the desire for a Jewish majority was the key issue in the implementation of Zionism, implying a basic change in the international standing of the Jewish people and marking a turning-point in their history. The significance of this demand, and of the untiring endeavour to realize it in various ways, lay in the annulling of the majority standing of the Arabs of Palestine." Many Zionist activists intended to establish a Jewish majority through Jewish immigration to the region.
Zionists used the term "transfer" as a euphemism for the removal, or what would now be called ethnic cleansing, of the Palestinian population.: "In the 1930s and 1940s the Zionist leadership found it expedient to euphemize, using the term "transfer" or "ha'avara" – the Hebrew euphemism for ethnic cleansing – one of most enduring themes of Zionist settler-colonization (see below). Other themes included demographic transformation of the land and physical separation between the immigrant-settlers and the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine. All these colonizing themes were central to Zionist muscular nationalism, with its rejection of both liberal forms of universalism and Marxism, along with individual rights and class struggle. Instead, Zionism gave precedence to the realization of its ethnocratic völkisch project: the establishment of a biblically ordained state." According to Benny Morris, the idea of transfer played a large role in Zionist ideology from the inception of the movement and was seen as the main method of maintaining the "Jewishness" of the Zionist's state.: "The idea of transferring the Arabs out of the Jewish State area to the Arab state area or to other Arab states was seen as the chief means of assuring the stability of the 'Jewishness' of the proposed Jewish State" He explains that "transfer" was "inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism" and that a land that was primarily Arab could not be transformed into a Jewish state without displacing the Arab population.: "transfer was inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism—because it sought to transform a land which was 'Arab' into a 'Jewish' state and a Jewish state could not have arisen without a major displacement of Arab population; and because this aim automatically produced resistance among the Arabs which, in turn, persuaded the Yishuv's leaders that a hostile Arab majority or large minority could not remain in place if a Jewish state was to arise or safely endure." Further, the stability of the Jewish state could not be ensured given the Arab population's fear of displacement. He explains that this would be the primary source of conflict between the Zionist movement and the Arab population.
The concept of "transfer" had a long pedigree in Zionist thought, as it was considered both moral and practical, as a way to deal with the Palestinian problem, create a Jewish homeland and avoid ethnic conflict. The concept of removing the non-Jewish population from Palestine was a notion that garnered support across the entire spectrum of Zionist groups, eventually including its farthest left factions, who, after realizing the extent of the destruction of European Jewry, viewed it as a lesser evil.: "The archival and documentary evidence shows that in the pre-1948 period, "transfer"/ethnic cleansing was embraced by the highest levels of Zionist leadership, representing almost the entire political spectrum. Nearly all the founding fathers of the Israeli state advocated transfer in one form or another, including Theodor Herzl, Leon Motzkin, Nahman Syrkin, Menahem Ussishkin, Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Tabenkin, Avraham Granovsky, Israel Zangwill, Yitzhak Ben-Tzvi, Pinhas Rutenberg, Aaron Aaronson, Vladmir Jabotinsky and Berl Katznelson (Masalha, 1992). Supporters of "voluntary" removal included Arthur Ruppin, a co-founder of Brit Shalom, a movement advocating bi-nationalism and equal rights for Arabs and Jews; moderate leaders of Mapai (later the Labour party) such as Moshe Shertok and Eli'ezer Kaplan, Israel's first finance minister; and leaders of the Histadrut (Hebrew Labour Federation) such as Golda Meyerson (later Meir) and David Remez (Masalha, 1992)." Transfer thought began early in the movement's development in various forms. "Transfer" was not only seen as desirable but also as an ideal solution by some the Zionist leadership, but it remained controversial.
The contrasting assimilationist viewpoint was that Jewishness consisted in an attachment to Judaism as a religion and culture. Both the Orthodox Judaism and Reform Judaism establishments often rejected this idea. Subsequently, Zionist and non-Zionist Jews vigorously debated aspects of this proposition in terms of the merits or otherwise of Jewish diaspora. While Zionism embarked on its project of social engineering in Mandatory Palestine, ethnonationalist politics on the European continent strengthened and, by the 1930s, some German Jews, acting defensively, asserted Jewish collective rights by redefining Jews as a race after Nazism rose to power. The Holocaust's policies of Genocide ethnic cleansing utterly discredited race as the lethal product of pseudoscience.
With the establishment of Israel in 1948, the "ingathering of the exiles", and the Law of Return, the question of Jewish origins and biological unity came to assume particular importance during early nation building. Conscious of this, Israeli medical researchers and geneticists were careful to avoid any language that might resonate with racial ideas. Themes of "blood logic" or "race" have nevertheless been described as a recurrent feature of modern Jewish thought in both scholarship and popular belief. Despite this, many aspects of the role of race in the formation of Zionist concepts of a Jewish identity were rarely addressed until recently.
Questions of how political narratives impact the work of population genetics, and its connection to race, have a particular significance in Jewish history and Jewish culture. Genetic studies on the origins of modern Jews have been criticized as "being designed or interpreted in the framework of a 'Zionist narrative and as an essentialist approach to biology in a similar manner to criticism of the interpretation of archaeology in the region. According to Israeli historian of science Nurit Kirsh and Israeli geneticist Raphael Falk, the interpretation of the genetic data has been unconsciously influenced by Zionism and anti-Zionism. Falk wrote that every generation has witnessed efforts by both Zionist and non-Zionist Jews to seek a link between national and biological aspects of Jewish identity.
The employment of exclusively Jewish labor was also intended to avoid the development of a national conflict in conjunction with a class-based conflict. The Zionist leadership believed that by excluding Arab workers they would stimulate class conflict only within Arab society and prevent the Jewish-Arab national conflict from attaining a class dimension. While the Zionist settlers of the First Aliyah had ventured to create a "pure Jewish settlement," they did grow to rely on Arab labor due to the lack of availability of Jewish laborers during this period. With the arrival of the more ideologically driven settlers of the second aliyah, the idea of "avoda ivrit" would become more central. The future leaders of the Zionist movement saw an existential threat in the employment of Arab labor, motivating the movement to work towards a society based on purely Jewish labor.
The Zionist goal of reframing of Jewish identity in secular-nationalist terms meant primarily the decline of the status of religion in the Jewish community.: "This secularization means primarily the "decline of the status of religion in the Jewish community"7 and a gradual "liberation" from the shackles of "religious tradition"." Prominent Zionist thinkers frame this development as nationalism serving the same role as religion, functionally replacing it.: "Zionism was the most fundamental revolution in Jewish life. It substituted a secular self-identity of the Jews as a nation for the traditional and Orthodox self-identity in religious terms. It changed a passive, quietistic, and pious hope of the Return to Zion into an effective social force, moving millions of people to Israel. It transformed a language relegated to mere religious usage into a modern, secular mode of intercourse of a nation-state... This does not mean that Israel is a substitute for Jewish religion, only that functionally it plays a role similar to that of religion in pre-Emancipation days. For Jews today who are still religious in the traditional sense, religion has a deep collective existential meaning. But since not all Jews can identify today with the religious symbols, religion is merely a partial focus of identity, and Israel, more than any other factor, now plays this unifying role." Zionism sought to make Jewish ethnic-nationalism the distinctive trait of Jews rather than their commitment to Judaism. Zionism instead adopted a racial understanding of Jewish identity.: "Failing (or neglecting) to offer a fully-fledged national identity that would be independent from rabbinical readings of Jewish iden-tity, yet zealously rebelling against rabbinical authority and "religion" in general, Zionism was left with a racial notion of Jewish identity: Tautologically, echoing anti-Semitic notions of Jewishness, it would argue that a Jew, simply, is a Jew; that Jewishness is something some-one is born with. One does not choose it, nor can one rid oneself of his Jewishness; it is in one's "blood"." Framed this way, Jewish identity is only secondarily a matter of tradition or culture.: "The author, essayist, and public intellectual A. B. Yehoshua is one of the more committed and outspoken spokespersons of the State of Israel's political theology. As such, Yehoshua also functions as an influential formulator of the ideological bed upon which statist Jewishness is founded... Yehoshua's reply to this criticism repeats the claim that Jewish political sovereignty renders assimilation impossible and guarantees, no matter what, that meaningful Jewish content is to be produced. For him, "the cultural matter" is secondary, and as such not deserving of judgment. Political sovereignty, on the other hand, is primary and absolute: Jewishness is not only culture and not only religion." Zionist nationalism embraced pan-Germanic ideologies, which stressed the concept of das Volkish: people of shared ancestry should pursue separation and establish a unified state. Zionist thinkers view the movement as a "revolt against a tradition of many centuries" of living parasitically at the margins of Western society. Indeed, Zionism was uncomfortable with the term "Jewish," associating it with passivity, spirituality and the stain of "galut". Instead, Zionist thinkers preferred the term "Hebrew" to describe their identity. In Zionist thought, the new Jew would be productive and work the land, in contrast to the diaspora Jew. Zionism linked the term "Jewish" with negative characteristics prevalent in European anti-Semitic stereotypes, which Zionists believed could be remedied only through sovereignty.
The revival of the Hebrew language and the establishment of Modern Hebrew is most closely associated with the linguist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and the Committee of the Hebrew Language (later replaced by the Academy of the Hebrew Language).
The cultural memory of Jews in the diaspora revered the Land of Israel. Religious tradition held that a future messianic age would usher in their return as a people, a 'return to Zion' commemorated particularly at Passover and in Yom Kippur prayers. The biblical prophecy of Kibbutz Galuyot, the ingathering of exiles in the Land of Israel as foretold by the Prophets, became a central idea in Zionism.: "A number of factors motivated Israel's open immigration policy. First of all, open immigration—the ingathering of the exiles in the historic Jewish homeland—had always been a central component of Zionist ideology and constituted the raison d'etre of the State of Israel. The ingathering of the exiles (kibbutz galuyot) was nurtured by the government and other agents as a national ethos, the consensual and prime focus that united Jewish Israeli society after the War of Independence"}}: "Central to Zionist thinking was the concept of Kibbutz Galuiot—the "ingathering of the exiles". Following two millennia of homelessness and living presumably "outside of history", Jews could once again "enter history" as subjects, as "normal" actors on the world stage by returning to their ancient birth place, Eretz Israel"
In contrast, Moses Hess, who is regarded as the first modern Jewish nationalist, advocated for the establishment of an independent Jewish state in pursuit of the economic and social normalization of the Jewish people. Hess believed that emancipation alone was not a sufficient solution to the problems faced by European Jewry.
Christian restorationist ideas promoting the migration of Jews to Palestine contributed to the ideological and historical context that gave a sense of credibility to these pre-Zionist initiatives. Restorationist ideas were a prerequisite for the success of Zionism, since although it was created by Jews, Zionism was dependent on support from Christians, although it is unclear how much Christian ideas influenced the early Zionists. Zionism was also dependent on the thinkers of the Haskalah or Jewish enlightenment, such as Peretz Smolenskin in 1872, although it often depicted it as its opponent.
Zionism emerged towards the end of the "best century" for Jews who for the first time were allowed as equals into European society and gained access to schools, universities, and professions that were previously closed to them. By the 1870s, Jews had achieved almost complete civic emancipation in all the states of western and central Europe. By 1914, Jews had moved from the margins to the forefront of European society. In the urban centers of Europe and America, Jews played an influential role in professional and intellectual life. During this period as Jewish assimilation was still progressing most promisingly, some Jewish intellectuals and religious traditionalists framed assimilation as a humiliating negation of Jewish cultural distinctiveness.: "While assimilation was still progressing most promisingly, and also quite independently of antisemitism when it later arose, not only religious traditionalists but also part of the Jewish intelligentsia decried the humiliating self-negation that assimilation exacted and rose to the defense of Jewish cultural distinctiveness." The development of Zionism and other Jewish nationalist movements grew out of these sentiments. In this sense, Zionism can be read as a response to the Haskala and the challenges of modernity and liberalism, rather than purely a response to antisemitism.
Emancipation in Eastern Europe progressed more slowly, to the point that Deickoff writes "social conditions were such that they made the idea of individual assimilation pointless". Antisemitism, pogroms and official policies in Tsarist Russia led to the emigration of three million Jews in the years between 1882 and 1914, only 1% of which went to Palestine. Those who went to Palestine were driven primarily by ideas of self-determination and Jewish identity, rather than just in response to pogroms or economic insecurity. Zionism's emergence in the late 19th century was among assimilated Central European Jews who, despite their formal emancipation, still felt excluded from high society. Many of these Jews had moved away from traditional religious observances and were largely secular, mirroring a broader trend of secularization in Europe. Despite their efforts to integrate, the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe were frustrated by continued lack of acceptance by the local national movements that tended toward intolerance and exclusivity. For the early Zionists, if nationalism posed a challenge to European Jewry, it also proposed a solution.
The pogroms motivated a small number of Jews to establish various groups in the Pale of Settlement (a region in western Russia) and in Poland, aimed at supporting Jewish emigration to Palestine. The publication of Autoemancipation provided these groups with an ideological charter around which they would be confederated into Hibbat Zion ("Lovers of Zion") in 1887 where Pinsker would take a leading role. The settlements established by Hibbat Zion lacked sufficient funds and were ultimately not very successful but are seen as the first of several aliyahs, or waves of settlement, that led to the eventual establishment of the state of Israel. The conditions in Eastern Europe would eventually provide Zionism with a base of Jews seeking to overcome the challenges of external ostracism, from the Tsarist regime, and internal changes within the Jewish communities there. The groups that formed Hibbat Zion included the Bilu group, which began its settlements in 1882. Anita Shapira describes the Bilu as serving the role of a prototype for the settlement groups that followed. At the end of the 19th century, Jews remained a small minority in Palestine.
At this point, Zionism remained a scattered movement. In the 1890s, Theodor Herzl (the father of political Zionism) infused Zionism with a practical urgency and worked to unify the various strands of the movement. The title of Herzl's 1896 manifesto providing the ideological basis for Zionism, Der Judenstaat, is typically translated as The Jewish State. Herzl sought to establish a state where Jews would be the majority and as a result, politically dominant. Ahad Ha'am, the founder of cultural Zionism, criticized the lack of Jewish cultural activity and creativity in Herzl's envisioned state, which Ahad Ha'am referred to as "the state of the Jews." Specifically, he points to the envisioned European and German culture of the state where Jews were simply the transmitters of imperialist culture rather than producers or creators of culture. Like Pinsker, Herzl saw antisemitism as a reality that could only be addressed by the territorial concentration of Jews in a Jewish state.
Herzl's project was purely secular; the selection of Palestine, after considering other locations, was motivated by the credibility the name would give to the movement. From early on, Herzl recognized that Zionism could not succeed without the support of a Great Power.: "Notwithstanding the growing participation of East European Jewry in Zionist activities, Herzl recognized that the movement would not succeed until it secured the diplomatic support of a Great Power and the financial assistance of members of the Western Jewish community." His view was that this Judenstaat would serve the interests of the Great Powers, and would "form part of a defensive wall for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism."
Herzl's efforts would lead to the First Zionist Congress at Basel in 1897, which created the Zionist Organization (ZO), renamed in 1960 as World Zionist Organization (WZO), and adopted the Basel Program, which served as the formal platform of the movement until the 1950s, including the official objective of establishing a legally recognized home for the Jewish people in Palestine. The Zionist Organization was to be the main administrative body of the movement and would go on to establish the Jewish Colonial Trust, whose objectives were to encourage European Jewish emigration to Palestine and to assist with the economic development of the colonies.
From the outset, the Zionist leadership saw land acquisition as essential to achieving their goal of establishing a Jewish state. This acquisition was strategic, aiming to create a continuous area of Jewish land. The World Zionist Organization established the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in 1901, with the stated goal "to redeem the land of Palestine as the inalienable possession of the Jewish people." The notion of land "redemption" entailed that the land could not be sold and could not be leased to a non-Jew nor should the land be worked by Arabs. The land purchased was primarily from absentee landlords, and upon purchase of the land, the tenant farmers who traditionally had rights of usufruct were often expelled. Herzl publicly opposed this dispossession, but wrote privately in his diary: "We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our country... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." Support for expulsion of the Arab population in Palestine was one of the main currents in Zionist ideology from the movement's inception.
The arrival of Zionist settlers to Palestine in the late 19th century is widely seen as the start of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.
In 1903, 'the Eretz Israel assembly' was held by Menachem Ussishkin. This assembly marked the beginning of a more formalized Zionist colonization effort. Under his leadership, both professional and political organizations were established, paving the way for a sustained Zionist presence in the region. Ussishkin delineated three methods for the Zionist movement to acquire land: by force and conquest, by expropriation via governmental authority, and by purchase. The only option available to the movement at the moment in his perspective was the last one, "until at some point we become rulers".
Weizmann's ultimate goal was the establishment of a Jewish state, even beyond the borders of "Greater Israel." For Weizmann, Palestine was a Jewish and not an Arab country. The state he sought would contain the east bank of the Jordan River and extend from the Litani River (in present-day Lebanon). Weizmann's strategy involved incrementally approaching this goal over a long period, in the form of settlement and land acquisition. Weizmann was open to the idea of Arabs and Jews jointly running Palestine through an elected council with equal representation, but he did not view the Arabs as equal partners in negotiations about the country's future. In particular, he was steadfast in his view of the "moral superiority" of the Jewish claim to Palestine over the Arab claim and believed these negotiations should be conducted solely between Britain and the Jews. According to Zionist Israeli historian Simha Flapan, the essential assumptions of Weizmann's strategy were later adopted by David Ben-Gurion and subsequent Zionist leaders.: "The importance of analysing Weizmann's strategy derives from the fact that the assumptions on which they were based were, with slight modifications, adopted by Ben-Gurion and his successors. If one substitutes 'United States' for 'Great Britain' and the 'Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan' for the 'Arab National Movement', Weizmann's basic strategic concepts might be taken as descriptive of Israel's present foreign policy."
The British mandate over Palestine, established in 1922, was based on the Balfour declaration, explicitly privileging the Jewish minority over the Arab majority. In addition to declaring British support for the establishment of a "Jewish national home" in Palestine, the mandate included provisions facilitating Jewish immigration, and granting the Zionist movement the status of representing Jewish national interests. In particular, the Jewish Agency, the embodiment of the Zionist movement in Palestine, was made a partner of the mandatory government, acquiring international diplomatic status and representing Zionist interests before the League of Nations and other international venues.
The British mandate effectively established a Jewish quasi-state in Palestine, lacking only full sovereignty. This lack of sovereignty was crucial for Zionism at this early stage, as the Jewish population was too small to defend itself against the Arabs of Palestine. The British presence provided a necessary safeguard for Jewish nationalism. To achieve political independence, Jews needed Britain's support, particularly in land purchase and immigration. Following the Balfour declaration, Jewish immigration to Palestine grew from 9,149 immigrants in 1921 to 33,801 in 1925—by the end of the mandate period, the Jewish population in Palestine would have nearly tripled, eventually reaching one third of the country's population.
The mandatory administration implemented policies that favored the development of the capitalist sector, predominantly associated with the Jewish community, while disadvantaging the Arab non-capitalist sector. Between 1933 and 1937, government spending was concentrated in two main areas — development and economic services, and defense — with the former focusing on infrastructural improvements (such as railways, roads, bridges, and other public works) that were particularly beneficial for capitalist production. In contrast to the Jewish population, the Arabs did not benefit from any government protections such as social security, employment benefits, trade union protection, job security and training opportunities. Arab wages were one third of their Jewish counterparts (including when paid by the same employer). The mandate also included an article describing self-governing institutions intended only for the Jewish population of Palestine. No similar support or recognition was provided to the Palestinian majority during the time of the mandate. By enabling the Zionist institutions to serve as a parallel government to the Mandate, the British facilitated the separation of the economy and legitimized their quasi-state status. Accordingly, these institutions, which purported to act in the interests of Jews everywhere, were able to funnel resources into the Jewish sector in Palestine, heavily subsidizing the dominate Jewish economy. The nucleus of the Jewish quasi-state was the Histadrut, established in 1920 as an independent social, political and economic institution. The Histadrut also exercised significant control over the Haganah, a Jewish defense force formed in 1920 in reaction to Arab riots. Originally created to defend the community, Haganah evolved into a permanent underground reserve army fully integrated into the Jewish political structure. Although the British authorities disapproved of the Haganah, particularly its method of stealing arms from British bases, they did not disband it. The Histadrut operated as a completely independent entity, without interference from the British mandate authorities. Ben-Gurion saw the Histadrut's detachment from socialist ideology to be one of its key strengths; indeed it was the General Organization of Workers in Israel. In particular, the Histadrut worked towards national unity and aimed to dominate the capitalist system en route to gaining political power, not to create a socialist utopia.
As secretary general of the Histadrut and leader of the Zionist labor movement, Ben-Gurion adopted similar strategies and objectives as Weizmann during this period, disagreeing primarily on issues of specific tactical moves up until 1939. The middle class grew dramatically in size with the arrival of the fourth aliyah in 1924, motivating a political shift within the labor movement. It was during this period that the political strategy of the labor movement would solidify. The founding of the Mapai party unified the labor movement, making it the dominant force. The party saw economic control as essential to facilitating Zionist settlement and achieving political power: "the economic question is not one of class; it is a national question". For Ben-Gurion, the transformation from "working class to nation" was intertwined with his rejection of diaspora life, as he would declare: the "weak, unproductive, parasitical Jewish masses" must be converted "to productive labor" in service of the nation.
The Zionist economic platform was partially based on the assumption (eventually demonstrated incorrect) that economic benefits to the Arabs of Palestine would pacify opposition to the movement. For the Zionist leadership, the economic status and development of the Arabs of Palestine should be compared with Arabs of other countries, rather than with the Jews of Palestine. Accordingly, disproportionate gains in Jewish development were be acceptable as long as the status of the Arab sector did not worsen. While British support for Zionist aspirations in Palestine established the parameters within which the Arab economy could develop, Zionist policies reinforced these limitations. Most notable are the exclusion of Arab labor from Jewish enterprise and the expulsion of Arab peasants from Jewish-owned land. Both of these had limited impact in scope but reinforced the structural limitations put in place by British policies.
With the rise to power of the Nazis in 1933, the Jewish community was increasingly persecuted and driven out. The discriminatory immigration laws of the US, UK and other countries preferable to German Jews, led to in 1935 alone more than 60,000 Jews arriving in Palestine (more than the total number of Jews in Palestine as of the establishment of the Balfour declaration in 1917). Ben-Gurion would subsequently declare that immigration at this rate would allow for the maximalist Zionist goal of a Jewish state in all of Palestine. The Arab community openly pressured the mandatory government to restrict Jewish immigration and land purchases.
Sporadic attacks in the countryside (described by Zionists and the British as "banditry") reflected widespread anger over the Zionist land purchases that displaced local peasants. Meanwhile, in urban areas, protests against British rule and the increasing influence of the Zionist movement intensified and became more militant in the early 1930s.
The outbreak of violence in the course of the 1936 Arab Revolt was a turning point in Jewish-Arab relations, unifying previously divided factions within the Zionist movement and leading them to view the use of force as a necessary means of defense and deterrence. Moreover, some, like Beilinson, viewed the Jewish struggle for Palestine as a matter of survival, whereas they argued that for the Arabs it was not an existential issue. Consequently, they believed that Jews could not afford to make significant concessions and that Arab motives — whether noble or base — were not historically or morally significant.
During the revolt, the Irgun Zvai Leumi engaged in the use of terror attacks against the Arabs of Palestine. Similarly, for the labor Zionist Palmah, the lines delineating what was acceptable and unacceptable while dealing with Arab villagers were "vague and intentionally blurred". These ambiguous limits practically did not differ from those of the self-described "terrorist" group, Irgun. According to Anita Shapira, beginning in this period, Labor Zionism's use of violence against Palestinians for political means was essentially the same as that of radical conservative Zionist groups.
The Zionist leadership viewed the mass transfer of the Arabs as morally permissible, but were unsure of its political effectiveness.: "In any event, the idea of a mass transfer did not strike them as morally deplorable at any time, and their hesitations related only to its political effectiveness." Much of the Zionist leadership spoke in strong support of the transfer plan, asserting that there is nothing immoral about it. Within the Zionist movement, two perspectives developed with respect to the partition proposal; the first was a complete rejection of partition, the second was acceptance of the idea of partition on the basis that it would eventually allow for expansion to all territories within "the boundaries of Zionist aspirations.". It was the right wing of the Zionist movement that put forward the main arguments against transfer, with Jabotinsky strongly objecting it on moral grounds,: "...Jabotinsky also rejected the partition plan on moral grounds, fiercely opposing the idea of transferring the Arab population from Palestine. Jabotinsky underscored this point in several letters and speeches from 1937, and expanded on it in an article published in the Revisionist Zionist publication Hayarden...
Jabotinsky could not have been more clear about his opposition to transferring a single Arab from Palestine. He also argued that the Peel Commission drew the wrong lesson from the Greek–Turkish case. It was not a 'great precedent', as the commission noted in its report, but a tragedy that involved the expulsion of one million Greeks from Turkey." and others mainly focusing on its impracticality. However, in his last book "The Jewish War Front" published in 1940, after the outbreak of WWII, Jabotinsky no longer ruled out the possibility of voluntary population transfer, though he still didn't view it as a necessary solution.: "...in early 1940...Jabotinsky for the first time publicly proposed expelling Arabs from Palestine, even as he still noted that population transfers was by no means a necessary solution and repeated his promise for minority rights in the future Jewish state.": "In his last book... he fully endorsed the idea of a voluntary Arab transfer from Palestine, though still insisting that it was not mandatory since, objectively, "Palestine, astride the Jordan, has room for the million of Arabs, room for another million of their eventual progeny, for several million Jews, and for peace."": "...in his last book, The Jewish War Front, Jabotinsky did not rule out the possibility of population transfer—that is, expulsion of Arabs. The book was published in 1940, shortly before his death, and was written in the gloomy context of World War II:
'I see no need for this exodus, and it would be undesirable from many perspectives. But if it becomes clear that the Arabs prefer to emigrate, this may be discussed without a trace of sorrow in the heart.'" Some leaders, such as Ruppin, Leo Motzkin, and writers such as Israel Zangwill, also referred to transfer as a "voluntary" action that would include some form of compensation. However, "Palestine's Arabs did not wish to evacuate the land of their ancestors... The matter raised ethical questions that troubled the Yishuv". The revolt was inflamed by the partition proposal and continued until 1939 when it was forcefully suppressed by the British.
Later, Vladimir Jabotinsky, the right-wing Zionist leader, drew inspiration from the Nazi demographic policies that resulted in the expulsion of 1.5 million Poles and Jews, in whose place Germans resettled. In Jabotinsky's assessment:
The world has become accustomed to the idea of mass migrations and has almost become fond of them. Hitleras odious as he is to ushas given this idea a good name in the world.
By the time of the 1936 Arab revolt, almost all groups within the Zionist movement wanted a Jewish state in Palestine, "whether they declared their intent or preferred to camouflage it, whether or not they perceived it as a political instrument, whether they saw sovereign independence as the prime aim, or accorded priority to the task of social construction". The main debates within the movement at this time were concerning partition of Palestine and the nature of the relationship with the British. The intensity of the revolt, Britain's ambiguous support for the movement and the increasing threat against European Jewry during this period motivated the Zionist leadership to prioritize immediate considerations. The movement ultimately favored the notion of partition, primarily out of practical considerations and partially out of a belief that establishing a Jewish state over all of Palestine would remain an option.: "In the end, all of them accepted partition, less out of inner conviction than because of international pressure and force of national discipline, and in some cases were comforted by the thought that the path to a greater Palestine was still open." At the 1937 Zionist congress, the Zionist leadership adopted the stance that the land allocated to the Jewish state by the partition plan was inadequate—effectively rejecting the partition plan that faded away in the face of both Arab and Zionist opposition.
In response to Ben-Gurion's 1938 quote that "politically we are the aggressors and they the defend themselves", Israeli historian Benny Morris says, "Ben-Gurion, of course, was right. Zionism was a colonizing and expansionist ideology and movement", and that "Zionist ideology and practice were necessarily and elementally expansionist." Morris describes the Zionist goal of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine as necessarily displacing and dispossessing the Arab population.
Despite the White Paper, Zionist immigration and settlement efforts continued during the war period. While immigration had previously been selective, once the details of the holocaust reached Palestine in 1942, selectivity was abandoned. The official Zionist movement's war effort focused on the survival and development of the Yishuv; Pappe argues that scarce Zionist energy was deployed in support of European Jews.: "This was selective, in which the physically fit and those with the right ideological bent were given priority and, at times, exclusivity. This mode of selection was abandoned for a while when the horrific news of Nazi exterminations reached Palestine around 1942. The news even prompted the symbolic act of sending Zionist parachutists into Nazi Europe as a gesture of support to the Jews dying in the death camps rather than as a real attempt to save them. Little Zionist energy was invested in saving Jews, as the priority in those difficult days remained the survival of the Jewish community in Palestine." Many of those fleeing Nazi terror in Europe preferred to leave for the United States, however, strict American immigration policies and Zionist efforts led to 10% of the 3 million Jews leaving Europe to settle in Palestine.
In the Biltmore Program of 1942, the Zionist movement would openly declare for the first time its goal of establishing a Jewish state in all of Palestine.: "With this resolution the Zionist movement for the first time openly staked a claim to the whole of mandatory Palestine." At this point, the United States, with its growing economy and unprecedented military force, became a focal point of Zionist political activity that engaged with the American electorate and politicians. US President Truman supported the Biltmore program for the duration of his time in office, largely motivated by humanitarian concerns and the growing influence of the Zionist lobby.
| + Population of Palestine by ethno-religious groups, excluding nomads, from the 1946 Survey of Palestine and | |||||
| 1922 | 486,177 (74.9%) | 83,790 (12.9%) | 71,464 (11.0%) | 7,617 (1.2%) | 649,048 |
| 1931 | 693,147 (71.7%) | 174,606 (18.1%) | 88,907 (9.2%) | 10,101 (1.0%) | 966,761 |
| 1941 | 906,551 (59.7%) | 474,102 (31.2%) | 125,413 (8.3%) | 12,881 (0.8%) | 1,518,947 |
| 1946 | 1,076,783 (58.3%) | 608,225 (33.0%) | 145,063 (7.9%) | 15,488 (0.8%) | 1,845,559 |
During World War II, as the horrors of the Holocaust became known, the Zionist leadership formulated the One Million Plan, a reduction from Ben-Gurion's previous target of two million immigrants. Following the end of the war, many stateless refugees, mainly Holocaust survivors, began Aliyah Bet 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 or SS Exodus to the British-controlled Allied Occupation Zones in Germany. The British, having faced Arab revolts, were now facing opposition by Zionist groups in Palestine for subsequent restrictions on Jewish immigration. In January 1946 the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, a joint British and American committee, was tasked to examine political, economic and social conditions in Mandatory Palestine and the well-being of the peoples now living there; to consult representatives of Arabs and Jews, and to make other recommendations 'as necessary' for an interim handling of these problems as well as for their eventual solution. Following the failure of the 1946–47 London Conference on Palestine, at which the United States refused to support the British, leading to both the Morrison–Grady Plan and the Bevin Plan being rejected by all parties, the British decided to refer the question to the UN on February 14, 1947.
The urgency of the condition of the Jewish refugees in Europe motivated the committee to unanimously vote in favor of terminating the British mandate in Palestine. The disagreement came with regards to whether Palestine should be partitioned or if it should constitute a federal state. American lobbying efforts, pressuring UN delegates with the threat of withdrawal of US aid, eventually secured the General Assembly votes in favor of the partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, which was passed 29 November 1947.
Outbursts of violence slowly grew into a wider civil war between the Arabs and Zionist militias. By mid-December, the Haganah had shifted to a more "aggressive defense", abandoning notions of restraint it had espoused from 1936 to 1939. The Haganah reprisal raids were often disproportionate to the initial Arab offenses, which led to the spread of violence to previously unaffected areas. The Zionist militias, employed terror attacks against Arab civilian and militia centers and many Palestinians were evicted from their houses. In response, Arabs planted bombs in Jewish civilian areas, particularly in Jerusalem.
The first expulsion of Palestinians began 12 days after the adoption of the UN resolution, and the first Palestinian village was eliminated a month later, in retaliation for Palestinian attacks on convoys and Jewish settlements. In March 1948, Zionist forces began implementing Plan D, an ethnic cleansing operation that involved the expulsion of civilians and the destruction of Arab towns and villages in pursuit of eliminating Palestinians seen as potentially hostile, resulting in the loss of Palestine to much of its indigenous population.: "The prospect and need to prepare for the invasion gave birth to Plan D, prepared in early March. It gave the Haganah brigade and battalion-level commanders carte blanche to completely clear vital areas; it allowed the expulsion of hostile or potentially hostile Arab villages. Many villages were bases for bands of irregulars; most villages had armed militias and could serve as bases for hostile bands. During April and May, the local Haganah units, sometimes with specific instruction from the Haganah General Staff, carried out elements of Plan D, each interpreting and implementing the plan in his area as he saw fit and in relation to the prevailing local circumstances. In general, the commanders saw fit to completely clear the vital roads and border areas of Arab communities -Allon in Eastern Galilee, Carmel around Haifa and Western Galilee, Avidan in the south. Most of the villagers fled before or during the fighting. Those who stayed put were almost invariably expelled." According to Benny Morris Zionist forces committed 24 massacres of Palestinians in the ensuing war, in part as a form of psychological warfare,: "Jewish tactics in the battle were designed to stun and quickly overpower opposition. Demoralisation of the enemy was a primary aim; it was seen to be as important to the outcome of the battle as the physical destruction of the armed Arab units. The mortar barrages and the psychological warfare broadcasts and announcements, and the tactics employed by the Haganah infantry companies, advancing from house to house, were all geared to this goal. The 22nd Battalion (Carmeli Brigade) orders to its troops were "to kill every adult Arab encountered" and to set alight with firebombs "all objectives that can be set alight. I am sending you posters in Arabic; disperse on route."" the most notorious of which is the Deir Yassin massacre. The United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine estimated that between 1948 and 1949, 710,000 Palestinians were driven out of the country and another 40,000 were internally displaced, primarily as a result of these expulsions and massacres.
The British left Palestine (having done little to maintain order) on May 14 as planned. The British did not facilitate a formal transfer of power; a fully functioning Jewish quasi-state had already been operating under the British for the past several decades."When the British left Palestine in 1948, there was no need to create the apparatus of a Jewish state ab novo. That apparatus had in fact been functioning under the British aegis for decades. All that remained to make Herzl's prescient dream a reality was for this existing para-state to flex its military muscle against the weakened Palestinians while obtaining formal sovereignty, which it did in May 1948. The fate of Palestine had thus been decided thirty years earlier, although the denouement did not come until the very end of the Mandate, when its Arab majority was finally dispossessed by force." The same day, Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the state of Israel. The Declaration of Independence of Israel described a democracy with equality of social and political rights for all citizens, and extended a peace offering to neighboring states and their Arab citizens. Masalha notes that the declaration states equality on the basis of citizenship but not nationality.
The ensuing war led to the State of Israel establishing control over 78% of Mandatory Palestine, instead of the 55% outlined in the UN partition plan, and resulted in the destruction of much of Palestinian society and the Arab landscape.: "The 'War of Liberation', which led to the creation of the State of Israel on 78 per cent of historic Palestine (not the 55 per cent according to the UN partition resolution), resulted not in 'equality for all citizens' 'as taught by the Hebrew prophets' but in the destruction of much of Palestinian society, and much of the Arab landscape, in the name of the Bible, by the Zionist Yishuv, a European settler community that emigrated to Palestine in the period between 1882 and 1948." This war, led by the Zionist Yishuv was framed by its leaders in biblical and messianic terms as a 'miraculous clearing of the land,' akin to the biblical War of Joshua. Masalha writes that it is not clear who the Yishuv was declaring independence from, as it was neither from the British colonial rule, which facilitated Jewish settlement against Palestinian wishes, nor from the land's indigenous inhabitants, who had long cultivated and owned it. After the 1949 Armistice Agreements, a series of laws passed by the first Israeli government prevented displaced Palestinians from claiming private property or returning on the state's territories. They and many of their descendants remain refugees supported by UNRWA.Kodmani-Darwish, p. 126Féron, Féron, p. 94.
Prior to 1948, the Zionist movement had limited authority over the use of place names in Palestine. After 1948, the Zionist movement systematically eliminated mention of "Palestine" from the names of its organizations; for example, the Jewish Agency for Palestine, which played a critical role in the founding of the Israeli state in 1948 was renamed to the "Jewish Agency for Israel".
According to followers of the Mercaz HaRav ideology, the Six Day War was a demonstration of the work of the Divine Hand and the "beginning of redemption". Proponents of this ideology venerate the land as sacred, and consider its sanctity a core principle of religious Zionism. Religious Zionists view the settlement of the West Bank as a commandment of God, necessary for the redemption of the Jewish people. Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, a major religious Zionist leader and thinker, would declare in 1967 following the Six Day War in the presence of Israeli leadership including the president, ministers, members of the Knesset, judges, chief rabbis and senior civil servants:
I tell you explicitly... that there is a prohibition in the Torah against giving up even an inch of our liberated land. There are no conquests here and we are not occupying foreign land; we are returning to our home, to the inheritance of our forefathers. There is no Arab land here, only the inheritance of our God—the more the world gets used to this thought the better it will be for it and for all of us.
In the 1970s, religious Zionists, such as Shlomo Aviner and Hanan Porat, campaigned against Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Sinai Peninsula. Religious Zionist ideology motivated the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, who ceded some territory to the PLO as a part of the Oslo Accords, and several religious Zionist rabbis reacted to the assassination with approval.
Known in Hebrew as Tzionut Ma'asit, Practical Zionism was led by Moshe Leib Lilienblum and Leon Pinsker and molded by the Hovevei Zion organization. It became dominant after Herzl's death, and differed from Political Zionism in not seeing Zionism as justified primarily by the Jewish Question but rather as an end in itself; it "aspired to the establishment of an elite utopian community in Palestine" through Aliyah. It also differed from Political Zionism in "distrusting grand political actions" and preferring "an evolutionary incremental process toward the establishment of the national home".: "practical Zionism. This designation referred to those who supported the redemption of Palestine by small-sized, but ideologically-driven, aliya and settlement, which would progress gradually and steadily, if slowly. Political Zionism, its ideological rival, disagreed. Its most prominent spokesman, Theodor Herzl, feared that this unorganized colonization of Palestine would jeopardize his diplomatic negotiations with the great powers; and in his address to the first Zionist congress in 1897 he defined this method as "infiltration"."
These initially dominant strains faded after the First World War and Balfour Declaration.
Labor Zionism became a mass movement with the founding of Poale Zion ("Workers of Zion") groups in Eastern and Western Europe and North America in the 1900s. Poale Zion split between Left and Right after 1917. In 1919, the Right Poale Zion in Palestine disbanded to form the nationalist socialist Ahdut HaAvoda, led by David Ben Gurion;: "The formal decision to found Ahdut Ha'avoda was made at the Convention of Agricultural Workers, held in February 1919. This was the first country-wide gathering of all regional agricultural workers' organizations. The elections took place according to the system of proportional representation, with 1 representative for every 25 people; small settlements were allowed to send 1 representative for every 12 people. Altogether, 58 representatives were elected to the convention, 28 of whom were nonparty, 11 from Hapo'el Hatza'ir, and 19 from Po'alei Tzion. Thus, a clear majority supported non-socialist, if not antisocialist, principles. Prior to this agricultural gathering, the two political parties also held conventions, and at the Po'alei Tzion convention in Jaffa on 21–23 February, the party disbanded in order to clear the way for the founding of Ahdut Ha'avoda." in 1930, it merged with Hapoel Hatzair, founded by A. D. Gordon, to form Mapai.: "The two largest of them, Ahdut Ha'avoda and Hapoel Hatzair, merged in January 1930 to form Mapai." Labor Zionism, represented by Mapai, became the dominant force in the political and economic life of the Yishuv during the British Mandate of Palestine. It was the dominant ideology of the political establishment in Israel until the 1977 election, when the Israeli Labor Party was defeated. During the early twentieth century, the left wing of this tradition was represented by Hashomer Hatzair, followed by Mapam in the late twentieth century, and Meretz until 2022.
, during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The Kibbutz is the historical heartland of Labor Zionism.]] In Labor Zionist thought, a revolution of the Jewish soul and society was believed necessary and achievable in part by Jews moving to Israel and becoming farmers, workers, and soldiers in a country of their own. Labor Zionists established rural communes in Israel called "", a form of cooperative agriculture in which the Jewish National Fund hired Jewish workers under trained supervision. The kibbutzim were a symbol of the Second Aliyah in that they put great emphasis on communalism and egalitarianism, representing Utopian socialism to a certain extent. Furthermore, they stressed self-sufficiency, which became an essential aspect of Labor Zionism. (1998). 9780691009674, Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691009674
Followers of Revisionist Zionism developed the Likud Party in Israel, which has dominated most governments since 1977. It advocates Israel's maintaining control of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and takes a hard-line approach in the Arab–Israeli conflict.
After the Six-Day War and the capture of the West Bank, a territory referred to by the movement as Judea and Samaria, the movement turned right as it integrated revanchist and irredentist forms of nationalism; this right-wing form of religious Zionism, powerful within the settlement movement, is represented today by Gush Emunim (founded by students of Abraham Kook's son Zvi Yehuda Kook in 1974), Jewish Home (HaBayit HaYehudi, formed in 2009), Tkuma, and Meimad.
Kahanism, a radical branch of religious Zionism, was founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose party, Kach, was eventually banned from the Knesset, but has been increasingly influential on Israeli politics.
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.
Philosopher Carlo Strenger describes a modern-day version of Liberal Zionism, rooted in the original ideology of Herzl and Ahad Ha'am. It is marked by a concern for democratic values and human rights, freedom to criticize government policies without accusations of disloyalty, and rejection of excessive religious influence in public life. Liberal Zionists see that "Jewish history shows that Jews need and are entitled to a nation-state of their own. But they also think that this state must be a liberal democracy, which means that there must be strict equality before the law independent of religion, ethnicity or gender."
Brit Shalom, which promoted Arab-Jewish cooperation, was established in 1925 by supporters of Ahad Ha'am's Spiritual Zionism, including Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, Hans Kohn, "and other important figures of the intellectual elite of the pre-independence yishuv, Gorny describes it as an ultimately marginal group.
Christian Zionism is primarily driven by the belief that the return of Jews to the Holy Land will either lead to their conversion to Christianity or their destruction. This belief is criticized by Gershom Gorenberg in his book "The End of Days," where he highlights the troubling aspect of this messianic scenario—the disappearance of Jews. Evangelical figures like Jerry Falwell believe the establishment of Israel is a pivotal event signaling the Second Coming of Christ and the eventual End of the World. As a result, Christian Zionists have significantly contributed politically and financially to Israeli nationalist forces, with the understanding that Israel's role is to facilitate the Second Coming of Christ and the elimination of Judaism."The massive support extended to the State of Israel by the millions of Christian supporters of Zionism is overtly motivated by a single consideration: that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land will be a prelude to their acceptance of Christ or, for those who fail to do so, to their physical destruction. In his book, The End of Days, Gershom Gorenberg, a religious Jewish author, deplores the messianic scenario dear to many Christian Zionists, which includes the conversion to Christianity of great numbers of Jews and the destruction of those who refuse. In his view, "the evangelical scenario is a drama in five acts, where the Jews disappear in the fourth" (Cypel).For the evangelical preacher Jerry Falwell, the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 has been the most crucial event in history since the ascension of Jesus to heaven, and "proof that the second coming of Jesus Christ is nigh.... Without a State of Israel in the Holy Land, there cannot be the second coming of Jesus Christ, nor can there be a Last Judgement, nor the End of the World" (Tremblay, 118).These groups have provided massive political and financial assistance to the most resolute nationalist forces in Israeli society. In their view, the principal function of the State of Israel is to prepare for the Second Coming of Christ and to eliminate Judaism and those who profess it. This would explain why Christian Zionists have come to play an increasingly significant role in the financial and political support of the State of Israel."
One of the principal Protestantism teachers who promoted the biblical doctrine that the Jews would return to their national homeland was John Nelson Darby. His doctrine of dispensationalism is credited with promoting Zionism, following his 11 lectures on the hopes of the church, the Jew and the gentile given in Geneva in 1840. However, others like Charles Spurgeon,Sermon preached in June 1864 to the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews Horatius Bonar'The Jew', July 1870, The Quarterly Journal of Prophecy and Andrew Bonar, Robert Murray M'Chyene,Sermon preached November 17, 1839, after returning from a "Mission of Inquiry into the State of the Jewish People" and J C RyleSermon preached June 1864 to London Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews were among a number of prominent proponents of both the importance and significance of a Jewish return, who were not dispensationalist. Pro-Zionist views were embraced by many Evangelicalism and also affected international foreign policy.
The largest Zionist organisation is Christians United for Israel, which has 10 million members and is led by John Hagee.
In more current times, conservative Indian parties and organizations tend to support Zionism. A 2012 international opinion survey found that India was the most pro-Israel country in the world. 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."
Opposition to Zionism in the Jewish diaspora was surmounted only from the 1930s onward, as conditions for Jews deteriorated radically in Europe and, with the Second World War, the sheer scale of the Holocaust was felt. Thereafter, Jewish anti-Zionist groups generally either disintegrated or transformed into pro-Zionist organizations, though many small groups, and bodies like the American Council for Judaism, conserved an earlier Reform Judaism tradition of rejection of Zionism.
There was a shift in the meaning of anti-Zionism after the events of the 1940s. Whereas pre-1948 anti-Zionism was against the hypothetical establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, post-1948 anti-Zionism had to contend with the existence of the State of Israel. This often meant taking a retaliatory position to the new reality of Jewish sovereignty in the Middle East. The overriding impulse of post-1948 anti-Zionism is to dismantle the current State of Israel and replace it with something else.
Opposition to Zionism was overwhelmingly common among the non-Jewish communities of Palestine from the 1880s onwards. Palestinian nationalism, the national movement of the Palestinian people that espouses self-determination and sovereignty over the region of Palestine,de Waart, 1994, p. 223. Referencing Article 9 of The Palestinian National Charter of 1968. The Avalon Project has a copy here [2] cohered in the early 20th century, along with broader Arab nationalism and the ideology of Greater Syria. Palestinian nationalism later internationalized and attached itself to other ideologies, in particular Third World socialism and Islamism, and was embodied in particular by the broadly secular Palestinian Liberation Organisation, and later also by the socialist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Islamist Hamas.
Although the left was initially mostly supportive of Zionism, Soviet anti-Zionism was influential in spreading anti-Zionism on the global left, and much of the New Left of the 1960s took on anti-Zionism as a key tenet.
Today, opponents include Palestinian nationalists, several states of the Arab League and in the Muslim world, much of the left, and some secular Jews, as well as the Satmar and Neturei Karta Jewish sects.
The fascist far right have also generally espoused anti-Zionism, for antisemitic reasons.
Reasons for opposing Zionism have been varied, and they include: fundamental disagreement that foreign born Jews have rights of resettlement, the perception that land confiscations are unfair; expulsions of Palestinians; violence against Palestinians; and alleged racism. Arab states in particular have historically strongly opposed Zionism. The preamble of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, which has been ratified by 53 African countries , includes an undertaking to eliminate Zionism together with other practices including colonialism, neo-colonialism, apartheid, "aggressive foreign military bases" and all forms of discrimination.
In 1975 the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, which said "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination". According to the resolution, "any doctrine of racial differentiation of superiority is scientifically false, morally condemnable, socially unjust, and dangerous". The resolution named the occupied territory of Palestine, Zimbabwe, and South Africa as examples of racist regimes. Resolution 3379 was pioneered by the Soviet Union and passed with numerical support from Arab and African states amidst accusations that Israel was supportive of the apartheid regime in South Africa. 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 sought to associate Zionism with racism 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. 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".
Anti-Zionist writers such as Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Michael Marder, and Tariq Ali have argued that the characterization of anti-Zionism as antisemitic obscures legitimate criticism of Israel's policies and actions, and that it is used to stifle legitimate criticism of Israel.
Various proponents of Zionism have characterized Zionism as colonial or settler-colonial."After two thousand years of struggle for survival, the reality of Israel is a colonial state.' Avraham Burg cited Tony Judt, Israel:The Alternative New York Review of Books 23 October 2003 Joseph Massad wrote that, for political and ideological reasons, starting in the 1930s, some Zionist thinkers proposed that the Zionist movement should avoid using terms related to colonialism. Rashid Khalidi highlights how this move was an attempted rebranding of Zionism as an anticolonial movement.
Benny Morris dismisses the charge that Zionism is a "classic nineteenth-century European colonial venture," due to the fact that it existed as a movement not to exploit the populace or resources, but to provide a safe haven for a native population experiencing oppression internationally.: "Colonialism is commonly defined as the policy and practice of an imperial power acquiring political control over another country, settling it with its sons, and exploiting it economically. By any objective standard, Zionism fails to fit this definition. Zionism was a movement of desperate, idealistic Jews from Eastern and Central Europe bent on immigrating to a country that had once been populated and ruled by Jews, not “another” country, and regaining sovereignty over it. The settlers were not the sons of an imperial power, and the settlement enterprise was never designed to politically or strategically serve an imperial mother country or economically exploit it on behalf of any empire. The land was known to lack natural resources. And most Zionists, rather than wanting to exploit the natives, were indifferent to their fate or wanted to simply see them leave"
Shafir distinguishes between the pre-1948 era and the post-1967 era in the sense that after 1967, the Israeli state became the sponsor of the Zionist movement's colonial efforts, a role that had previously been played by the British. For Shafir, Jerome Slater and Shlomo Ben-Ami, after the Israeli conquest of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, the Zionist movement more closely resembled other colonial movements. Similarly, Avi Shlaim describes 1967 as a milestone in the development of the "Zionist colonial project" rather than as a qualitative shift in its nature. Israeli historian Yitzhak Sternberg cites Sivan, Halamish and Efrat as similarly describing 1967 as a turning point in which Zionism became involved in colonial efforts.
Shafir and Morris both further distinguish between Zionist colonialism during the First Aliyah and following the arrival of the Second Aliyah. Shafir describes the First Aliyah as following the ethnic plantation colony model, exploiting low wage Palestinian workers.: "The colonialism of the First Aliya was based on sparse settlement and exploitation and the employment of low-paid Palestinian workers on Jewish-owned farms." Morris describes this relationship:
These Jews were not colonists in the usual sense of sons or agents of an imperial mother country, projecting its power beyond the seas and exploiting Third World natural resources. But the settlements of the First Aliyah were still colonial, with white Europeans living amid and employing a mass of relatively impoverished natives.
Tuvia Friling depicts the Zionist movement as operating differently from colonial movements in terms of land acquisition. Specifically, the Zionist movement acquired land in the early years by purchasing it. Sternberg in contrast explains that it was not unique for colonial movements to purchase land as part of land acquisition, pointing to similarities in North American colonialism. Friling argues that in contrast to European colonial projects, the early Zionist leadership was dominated by the labor movement with a socialist ethos. Shafir points to ideological drives in American and Rhodesian settler colonies that developed in service of the colonial project. Similarly, Shafir says, the Zionist labor movement used socialist ideals largely in service of the national movement.
In response to the argument that Zionism could not be a colonial project, but should instead be described as a project of immigration, Shafir quotes Lorenzo Veracini's statement that settlers sometimes hide "behind the persecuted, the migrant, even the refugee... behind his labor and hardship." Shafir goes on to characterize Zionism as not unique, in the sense that "the ruthless ethnic cleanser is commonly hidden behind the peaceful settler who arrived in an 'empty land' to start a new life."
Alan Dowty describes the debate over the relationship between Zionism and colonialism as essentially a discussion of "semantics". He defines colonialism as the imposition of control by a "mother country" on another people, for economic gain or for the spreading of culture or religion. Dowty argues that Zionism does not fit this definition on the basis that "there was... no mother country" and that Zionism did not consider the local population in its plans.: "They did not recognize the Arab population of Palestine as another people with their own collective claims..." Efraim Karsh adopts a similar definition and similarly concludes that Zionism is not colonialism. Dowty elaborates that Zionism did not control the local population since it ultimately failed to remove the native people from Palestine. In his assessment of whether Zionism is colonialism, Penslar works with a broader definition of colonialism than Dowty, which allows for the country sponsoring the colonial enterprise to be different from the country of origin of the settlers.
The settler colonial framework on the conflict emerged in the 1960s during the decolonization of Africa and the Middle East, and re-emerged in Israeli academia in the 1990s led by Israeli and Palestinian scholars, who challenged some of Israel's foundational myths. It built on the work of Patrick Wolfe, an influential theorist of settler colonial studies who has defined settler colonialism as an ongoing "structure, not an event" aimed at replacing a native population rather than exploiting it.
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