Types of Zionism
At its broadest, Zionism is a movement that supports the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine by the Jewish people, such as in the form of a Jewish state. While sharing a core belief in the importance of a home for the Jewish people, Zionist beliefs have not been uniform and have varied since they were first conceived in the second half of the 19th century.
Zionist beliefs have been categorized into roughly a dozen varieties by academics. The first Zionists were either political or practical Zionists, as typified by Theodor Herzl, considered the father of the Zionist movement. The rise of socialist movements in the first part of the 20th century resulted in the rise of left-wing Labor Zionism. Synthetic and general Zionists combine the ideas of political and practical Zionists. Liberal Zionists emphasize the importance of Liberalism. Revisionist Zionists accept many tenants of Liberal Zionism but have expanded territorial aims—including parts of Jordan. Religious Zionism views Zionism as an integral to Orthodox Judaism. Cultural Zionism emphasizes a secular approach. Revolutionary Zionism emerged from guerrilla warfare against the British, and attracted both left- and right-wing nationalists. Reform Zionism is associated with Reform Judaism.
Other kinds of Zionist thought include Christian Zionism, and even Antisemitic Zionism. Anti-Zionists oppose Zionism altogether. Schools of thought prior to Herzl may be considered Proto-Zionism. Post-Zionism argues that Zionism was successful given the creation of Israel and argues that Israel must build a new civic identity based on multi-ethnic liberal democracy.
Proto-Zionism
The idea of a home for the Jewish people pre-dated Theodor Herzl, and thinkers who espoused such beliefs may be considered proto-Zionists.Political Zionism
Political Zionism aimed at establishing for the Jewish people a publicly and legally assured home in Palestine through diplomatic negotiation with the established powers that controlled the area. It focused on a Jewish home as a solution to the "Jewish question" and antisemitism in Europe, centred on gaining Jewish sovereignty, and was opposed to mass migration until after sovereignty was granted. It initially considered locations other than Palestine and did not foresee migration by many Western Jews to the new homeland.Nathan Birnbaum, a Jew from Vienna, was the original father of Political Zionism, yet ever since he defected away from his own movement, Theodor Herzl has become known as the face of modern Zionism. In 1890, Birnbaum coined the term "Zionism" and the phrase "Political Zionism" two years later. Birnbaum published a periodical titled Selbstemanzipation which espoused "the idea of a Jewish renaissance and the resettlement of Palestine." In this idea, Birnbaum was most influenced by Leon Pinsker. Political Zionism was subsequently led by Herzl and Max Nordau. This approach was espoused at the Zionist Organization's First Zionist Congress and dominated the movement during Herzl's life.
Practical Zionism
Known in Hebrew as Tzionut Ma'asit, Practical Zionism was led by Moshe Leib Lilienblum and Leon Pinsker and molded by the Lovers of Zion organization. This approach believed that firstly there was a need in practical terms to implement Aliyah, Jewish immigration to Palestine as the Holy Land, and settlement of the land as soon as possible, even if a charter was not obtained.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". It also differed from Political Zionism in "distrust grand political actions" and preferring "an evolutionary incremental process toward the establishment of the national home".
Labor Zionism
Led by socialists Nachman Syrkin, Haim Arlosoroff, and Berl Katznelson and Marxist Ber Borochov, Labor or socialist Zionists desired to establish an agricultural society not on the basis of a bourgeois capitalist society, but rather on the basis of equality. Labor or Socialist Zionism was a form of Zionism that also espoused socialist or social democratic politics.Although there were socialist Zionists in the nineteenth century, labor Zionism became a mass movement with the founding of Poale Zion groups in Eastern and Western Europe and North America in the 1900s. Other early socialist Zionist groups were the youth movement Hapoel Hatzair founded by A. D. Gordon and Syrkin's Zionist Socialist Workers Party.
Socialist Zionism had a Marxist current, led by Borochov. After 1917, Poale Zion split between a Left and a social democratic Right.
File:Mishmar HaEmek.JPG|thumb|Kibbutznikiyot in Mishmar HaEmek, during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The Kibbutz is the historical heartland of Labor Zionism. In Ottoman Palestine, Poale Zion founded the Hashomer guard organization that guarded settlements of the Yishuv, and took up the ideology of "conquest of labor" and "Hebrew labor". It also gave birth to the youth movements Hashomer Hatzair and Habonim Dror. According to Ze'ev Sternhell, both Poalei Zion and Hapoel Hatzair believed that Zionism could only succeed as a result of constantly and rapidly expanding capitalist growth. Poale Zion "saw capitalism as the cause of Jewish poverty and misery in Europe. For Poale Zion, Jews could only escape this cycle by creating a nation-state like others." However, according to Sternhell, Labor Zionism ultimately did not promise to free workers from the inherent dependencies of the capitalist system. In Labor Zionist thought, a revolution of the Jewish soul and society was necessary and achievable in part by Jews moving to Israel and becoming farmers, workers, and soldiers in a country of their own. Labor Zionists established rural communes in Israel called "kibbutzim" which began as a variation on a "national farm" scheme, a form of cooperative agriculture where the Jewish National Fund hired Jewish workers under trained supervision. The kibbutzim were a symbol of the Second Aliyah in that they put great emphasis on communalism and egalitarianism, representing Utopian socialism to a certain extent. Furthermore, they stressed self-sufficiency, which became an essential aspect of Labor Zionism.
In the 1920s, Labor Zionists in Palestine also created a trade union movement, the Histadrut, and political party, Mapai. In Palestine, PZ disbanded to make way for the formation of the nationalist socialist Ahdut HaAvoda, led by David Ben Gurion, in 1919. Hapoel Hatzair merge with Ahdut Ha'avoda in 1930 to form Mapai, at which point, according to Yosef Gorny, Poale Zion became of marginal political importance in Palestine.
Labor Zionism, represented by Mapai, became the dominant force in the political and economic life of the Yishuv during the British Mandate of Palestine. Poale Zion's successor parties, Mapam, Mapai and the Israeli Labor Party (which were led by figures such as David Ben Gurion and Golda Meir, dominated Israeli politics until the 1977 election when the Israeli Labor Party was defeated. Until the 1970s, the Histadrut was the largest employer in Israel after the Israeli government.
Sternhell and Benny Morris both argue that Labor Zionism developed as a nationalist socialist movement in which the nationalist tendencies would overpower and drive out the socialist ones. Traditionalist Israeli historian Anita Shapira describes labor Zionism's use of violence against Palestinians for political means as essentially the same as that of radical conservative Zionist groups. For example, Shapira notes that during the 1936 Palestine revolt, the Irgun Zvai Leumi engaged in the "uninhibited use of terror", "mass indiscriminate killings of the aged, women and children", "attacks against British without any consideration of possible injuries to innocent bystanders, and the murder of British in cold blood". Shapira argues that there were only marginal differences in military behavior between the Irgun and the labor Zionist Palmah. In following with policies laid out by Ben-Gurion, the prevalent method among field squads was that if an Arab gang had used a village as a hideout, it was considered acceptable to hold the entire village collectively responsible. The lines delineating what was acceptable and unacceptable while dealing with these villagers were "vague and intentionally blurred". As Shapira suggests, these ambiguous limits practically did not differ from those of the openly terrorist group, Irgun.
Synthetic, General and Liberal Zionism
Synthetic Zionism, led by Chaim Weizmann, Leo Motzkin and Nahum Sokolow, was an approach that advocated a combination of Political and Practical Zionism. It was the ideology of General Zionism, the centrist current between Labor Zionism and religious Zionism, that was initially the dominant trend within the Zionist movement from the First Zionist Congress in 1897 until after the First World War. General Zionists identified with the liberal European middle class to which many Zionist leaders such as Herzl and Chaim Weizmann aspired. As head of the World Zionist Organization, Weizmann's policies had a sustained impact on the Zionist movement, with Abba Eban describing him as a dominant figure in Jewish life during the interwar period. The current had a left wing, who supported a mixed economy and good relations with Britain, and a right wing, who were anti-socialist and anti-British. After independence, neither arm played a significant role in Israeli politics, the "A" group allying with Mapai and the "B" group forming a dwindling right-wing opposition party.According to Zionist Israeli historian Simha Flapan, writing in the 1970s, the essential assumptions of Weizmann's strategy were later adopted by Ben-Gurion and subsequent Zionist leaders. According to Flapan, by replacing "Great Britain" with "United States" and "Arab National Movement" with "Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan", Weizmann's strategic concepts can be seen as reflective of Israel's current foreign policy.
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. 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.
Liberal Zionism, although not associated with any single party in modern Israel, remains a strong trend in Israeli politics advocating free market principles, democracy and adherence to human rights. Their political arm was one of the ancestors of the modern-day Likud. Kadima, the main centrist party during the 2000s that split from Likud and is now defunct, however, did identify with many of the fundamental policies of Liberal Zionist ideology, advocating among other things the need for Palestinian statehood in order to form a more democratic society in Israel, affirming the free market, and calling for equal rights for Arab citizens of Israel.