Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish nationalist movement; in its original form it has existed for some two thousand years. In its modern political form it has existed since the 19th century among Jews of Central and Eastern Europe.
In 1975 the United Nations stated that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination" (UN resolution 3379), but the United Nations then officially revoked this resolution in 1999.
Zionism sees itself as the modern form of a millennia-old dream of Jewish people to rebuild a Jewish state in the land of Israel (one of the proposed names for this state was Zion). Many different Zionist groups exist, each expressing a unique political, social and religious position. Almost all of these groups have and continue to co-operate through the World Zionist Organization (WZO). Some people, such as Noam Chomsky, argue that the common definition of their opinions has changed in time from Zionism to anti-Zionism, reflecting a change in the definition of Zionism.
The desire of Jews to return to their ancestral homeland was first expressed during the Babylonian exile and became a universal Jewish theme after the destruction of Jerusalem and Judea by the Roman Empire in 70 A.D. and the dispersal that followed.
Until the rise of political Zionism in the early 1800s, most religious Jews believed that the Jewish people would only return to Israel with the coming of the messiah, i.e., only after divine intervention. Indeed, many even believed that Jews were divinely forbidden to attempt to establish a state prior to the coming of the Messiah (see Neturei Karta). Many people proposed that Jews attempt to return earlier, by their own devices, but until the rise of Zionism in the 19th century they were a minority.
One of the key moments of the modern Zionist movement was the publishing of Theodor Herzl's pamphlet Der Judenstaat in 1896. In 1897, Herzl organized the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. At this Congress, the WZO was established, and Herzl named its President. The Congress gave this definition of the aims and means of Zionism:
Labor Zionism dominated most of the institutions of Zionism, including the World Zionist Organization and the Knesset, from early in the history of Zionism until 1977, when Likud, a political party descended from the merger of Revisionist parties, won the elections to the Knesset. Famous Labor Zionists included David Ben-Gurion, Berl Katzenelson, and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (among countless others).
The Revisionist movement was founded by Vladimir Jabotinsky.
On May 14, 1948, the day before the British Mandate of Palestine expired, Zionists within Palestine made a declaration of Independence, and the state of Israel was established. This marked a major turning point in the Zionist movement, as one of its major goals had been accomplished. Many Zionist institutions were reshaped: the three military movements, the Labor-dominated Haganah and the Revisionist Irgun and Lehi, combined to form the Israel Defence Forces.
Then on July 5, 1950 the Knesset passed the Law of Return which granted all Jews the right to immigrate to Israel.
Some Zionist groups promote particular denominations of Judaism (e.g. the Masorti Zionist movement (Mercaz) promotes Conservative Judaism); many other groups do not have a formal connection with any particular denomination.
All groups accept the Jerusalem Program. This program started as a set of principles on which all Zionists could agree. It was first adopted in 1951 at the 23rd World Zionist Congress and later revised by the 27th Zionist Congress in 1968.
The task of Zionism is the consolidation of the State of Israel, the ingathering of exiles in Eretz Israel, and the fostering of the unity of the Jewish people.
The program of work of the Zionist Organization is:
The aims of Zionism are:
Starting in the 1920s, Zionists and Arabs increasingly came into conflict within Palestine. This conflict, the forerunner of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was approached by different Zionist groups and individuals in different ways. Long after the founding of the state of Israel, it remains one of the most important political questions within the state. A fringe minority of Israelis support the idea of expelling the Palestinian population (for instance, see the Kach movement).
Although Zionist opinion has always favored a Jewish state in Palestine, other proposals have been floated at various times. Herzl's Der Judenstaat argued for a Jewish state in either Argentina or Palestine, both being equally acceptable. In 1903, Herzl introduced a controversial proposal to the 6th Zionist Congress to investigate an offer brought to him for Jewish settlement in British East Africa. Although the proposal proved very divisive, a majority voted to establish a committee for the investagation of the possibility. The possiblity was dismissed at 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 territoralists attempted to establish a Jewish homeland wherever possible, but went into decline after the Balfour declaration in 1917 and was dissolved in 1925 (see http://www.wzo.org.il/home/movement/uganda.htm). A later unsuccessful proposal, to establish a Jewish homeland in northern Australia, was made in 1944 by the Freeland League under the leadership of the former Bolshevik Isaac Steinberg.
There have been other, non-Zionist proposals for Jewish homelands: the Soviet government tried to convince Soviet Jews to move to the Jewish Autonomous Republic (with capital in Birobidzhan) in the Russian Far East. Yiddish was a co-official language. Also, the Japanese Empire planned to ask Nazi Germany to transfer European Jews as colonists in Manchukuo (occupied Manchuria).
This is discussed in the article on Anti-Zionism.
The majority of Jews today are Zionists. However, at its inception, Zionism was opposed by the majority of religious Jewish organizations including the leaders of Reform Judaism, Lithuanian Jews and Hasidic Jews. After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and subsequent success, much of the opposition faded away. Haredi Jews still have strong resistance to some aspects of Zionism, including the idea that it is a symbol of Redemption. Major Jewish anti-Zionist movements include Satmar and Neturei Karta. The Neturei Karta and Satmar set themselves apart from the rest of the world's Jewish community; some Jews view them as virtually anti-Semitic.
The religious Anti-Zionist movement is religiously conservative; there is however also politically motivated anti-Zionism, that for the most part is liberal or socialist. These people motivate their stance by supporting the Arab claim to Palestine, through general opposition to nationalism or for other reasons.
Albert Einstein said in 1950 about the then newly founded state of Israel that "I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain -- especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks". A range of well-known Jewish scholars and statesmean, often politically radical or secularized, have opposed Zionism. This includes Bruno Kreisky, Hans Fromm, Michael Selzer and several others. It is represented in contemporary America among others by controversial academic scholars such as Noam Chomsky, Israel Shahak, Peter Novick and Norman Finkelstein.
When Zionism was first proposed it was highly controversial; a great many Jews opposed it. Many Jews would rather try to integrate into the society they lived in rather than try to return to Israel. This was the position taken by Reform Judaism at the time. Reform Judaism changed its opinion after the Holocaust, and the Reform movement became a strong supporter of the State of Israel. In practice, most American Jews (of all religious denominations) did not want to emigrate to Israel; there, support for Zionism came through political, financial, and other means short of actually moving.
Many Hasidic Jews and other Orthodox Jews believed that any attempt to return to Israel, as a nation, before the coming of the messiah was sacrilegious. At one time the Lubavitcher Rebbes were anti-Zionist, though the most recent Rebbe changed his position from one of anti-Zionism (i.e., active opposition to Zionism) to one of mere non-Zionism (i.e., neutrality towards it) after 1948.
Today, the overwhelming majority of Jewish organizations and denominations are strongly pro-Zionist.
Recently, many native Israelis have started to take a position of Post-Zionism. Post-Zionists believe that while the original ideals of a Jewish homeland may not have been desirable, Israelis now constitute a new nationality. Post-Zionists tend to be secular, and believe that Israel as a nation should be separated from Judaism.
Jewish conspiracy theories in Europe and the nations that would later constitute the Soviet Union had existed for many years, but became much more accepted by the public in many nations after World War I, and even more so after the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Through the publication of the infamous forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, many people took it as a "proven" fact that Jews were secretly conspiring to rule the world.
This anti-Jewish attitude took on a stronger form during the reign of Joseph Stalin. Stalin was initially supportive of Zionism; many early Zionists were socialists or communists, and many people in the Soviet Union believed that the State of Israel would be an ally.
Stalin eventually realized that Israel would not become the communist nation he hoped it would become; he eventually became staunchly anti-Zionist, and thus made anti-Zionism the official doctrine of the Soviet Union.
(The Soviet Union even provided lots of military equipment and knowledge to Arabian states, thereby supporting "anti-zionism" actively)
By the 1950s the Soviet Union was funding the publication of many anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. It funded the publication of thousands of tractates, articles, and books promoting the viewpoint that all Jews were part of a conspiracy to rule the world, and that Zionism was one of their tools for world conquest. Early versions of this theory held that "the Jews" were merely tools of the Freemasons or some other group; after the Six-day War it became fashionable to hold that the Jews were really in charge, and that the Freemasons (or other groups) were merely tools of "international Jewry".
In all post-1960 variants of these conspiracy theories, Soviet indoctrination held that Zionism was a tool used by the Jews for racist imperialism. Zionists were referred to as "running dogs" as American imperialists. It was only with the death of Stalin in 1953 that anti-Zionist propaganda went into a temporary eclipse.
Some believe that the Slogan 'Zionism is racism' arose at this time. Others consider it insufficient to explain the consistent UN condemnation of Zionism, which is ironic considering the UN vote that established Israel.
During the 1930s, German Zionists believed that it was still possible to obtain rapprochement with the growingly anti-Semitic German government and society. Zionists in all nations, including Germany, petitioned their government to support the creation of a Jewish homeland in the British mandate of Palestine. During the Holocaust some Jewish groups engaged in desperate negotiations with Nazi leaders to effectively "buy" Jews and save them from the gas chambers.
Lenni Brenner's controversial Zionism in the Age of Dictators alleges that more than this occured, and that in fact the Jewish leadership effectively was working with the Nazis. Critics of Brenner regard his views as exagerrated and/or anti-Semitic.
Sometimes the term "Zionism" is colloquially used in a looser sense; as Jews have a strong affinity to their ancestral homeland (Zion) others have come to use the terms "Zion" and/or "Zionism" to refer to a location that matters much to them. In these cases the words were originally used as poetic descriptions of their affinity.
Zion has also been used metaphorically by non-Jews in a way that has only a metaphorical connection to Judaism or the land of Israel, and does not necessarily involve relocation of a community (although they could), and does not necessarily involve support for a geographical location by individuals who don't necessarily live there. For example, "Zion" plays a central role in Rastafarian religious mythology, as the name of the Promised Land that will unfold on earth with the fall of Babylon, symbol of earthly sins.
"Zion", in this generic mythological sense, is frequently used in fiction. In The Matrix movies, written and directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski, for example, Zion is the last hope of mankind, an undergound city where the last free humans live, in a world otherwise ruled by machine artificial intelligences.
See also: Timeline of Zionism -- anti-Zionism -- anti-Semitism -- Jewish Emancipation
Historical origin
Zionism in the modern era
Over the coming years, successive aliyahs (Hebrew for "ascent", in this sense, a wave of immigration) brought thousands of Jews from Poland, Russia, the Ukraine, and many other countries to Palestine, where they formed new communities and new institutions. The dominant trends in Zionist thought were Political Zionism, which emphasized gaining a charter for a Jewish homeland through international politics, along with Labor Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, and Religious Zionism.Establishment of the State of Israel
Diversity of views
The Jerusalem Program of 1951
The Revised Jerusalem Program of 1968
Zionism and relations with Arabs
Other prospective homelands for the Jews
Anti-Zionism
Religious views of Zionism from the 1900s to today
Post-Zionism
Zionism in Russia
Zionism in Nazi Germany
Other uses of the term
Further reading
External links
Ultra-Orthodox Anti-Zionist websites
