Zionism
Zionism is an ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in late 19th-century Europe which primarily seeks to establish and support a Jewish homeland through the colonization of Palestine, a region which roughly corresponds to the Land of Israel in Judaism—itself central to 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. The Zionist claim to Palestine was based on the notion that the Jews' historical right to the land outweighed that of the Arabs.
Zionism initially emerged in Central and Eastern Europe as a secular nationalist movement in the late 19th century, in reaction to new waves of antisemitism and in response to the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment. Soon after this, most leaders of the movement associated the main goal with creating the desired homeland in Palestine, then an area controlled by the Ottoman Empire. This process was seen by the Zionist Movement as an "ingathering of exiles", an effort to put a stop to the exoduses and persecutions that have marked Jewish history by bringing the Jewish people back to their historic homeland. The arrival of Zionist settlers to Palestine during this period is widely seen as the start of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
In 1917, the Balfour Declaration established Britain's support for the movement. In 1922, the Mandate for Palestine, governed by Britain, explicitly privileged Jews over the local Arab population. In 1948, after the end of the British Mandate, the State of Israel declared its independence and the civil war in Mandatory Palestine became an international conflict. During the war, Israel expanded its territory to control over 78% of former 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.
Zionist views have varied over time and are not uniform, resulting in a variety of types of Zionism. The Zionist mainstream has historically included Liberal, Labor, 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, to the homeland of their ancestors. Opponents of Zionism often characterize it as a supremacist, colonialist, or racist ideology, or as a settler colonialist movement.
Etymology and terminology
The word Zion itself derives from Mount Zion, which 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. The term also appeared in political contexts in antiquity, including on coinage issued during the First Jewish Revolt against Roman rule. The messianic conception of "Zion" was utilized by the Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, who wrote Seeking Zion in 1862, a proto-Zionist text which was the first written work to demand that the Jews migrate en-masse to Palestine.The first time the term "Zion" was associated with a mass movement was with the Hovevei Zion, also known as the Hibbat Zion, who came together at the 1884 Katowice Conference, inspired by Leon Pinsker's pamphlet Auto-Emancipation. The first use of the term as an -ism is attributed to the Austrian Nathan Birnbaum, in an 1890 article in his periodical Selbst-Emancipation, itself named after Pinsker's pamphlet. Birnbaum used the term "Zionism" in reference to the activities of the Lovers of Zion. In 1893, Birnbaum published The National Rebirth of The Jewish People in its Own Land, which advocated for the Jews to migrate to Palestine. In the same year, Birnbaum founded "Zion: Union of Austrian Societies for the Colonization of Palestine and Syria", to carry out his proposals.
The paramount Zionist leader Theodor Herzl was unaware of Birnbaum's original usage of the term before popularizing the term "Zionism" himself. In Herzl's diary entries between 1895 and early 1896, he originally used the term "Zionist" to describe others, and not himself. Herzl used the term "Zionist" to describe those in the Lovers of Zion, who Herzl saw as fellow Jewish nationalists, but without a concrete plan. When Herzl published Der Judenstaat in 1896, he used the term "Zionist" in the text, often in a critical light, to describe emigration advocates like the Lovers of Zion. In Der Judenstaat, Herzl called for the creation of a Jewish state, an idea which he claimed was "an ancient one" that he did not "discover". After the publication of Der Judenstaat, Birnbaum wrote a review of the book, attributing its success to the author proudly embracing Zionism, but also criticized the cultural proposals of Herzl. Birnbaum quickly struck up a correspondence with Herzl, and gave him a copy of The National Rebirth of The Jewish People in its Own Land, as a sort of Zionist education.
Herzl did not begin self-identifying as a "Zionist" until months after the publication of Der Judenstaat. Herzl's usage of "Zionism" was later popularized when convening the 1897 First Zionist Congress and the Zionist Organization founded there.
Beliefs
National self-determination
Fundamental to Zionism is the belief that Jews constitute a nation, and have a moral and historic right and need for self-determination. In contrast to the Zionist notion of nationhood the Judaic sense of being a nation was rooted in religious beliefs of unique chosenness and divine providence, rather than in ethnicity. Specifically, prayers emphasized distinctiveness from other nations where a connection to Eretz Israel and the anticipation of restoration were based on messianic beliefs and religious practices, not modern nationalist conceptions.A Jewish home and state in Palestine
Early Zionism was ambiguous about the form self-determination might take. While some texts spoke of a "Jewish state", others spoke only of a "Jewish homeland" or "national home for the Jewish people", usually under the sovereignty of the Ottoman and, later, the British Empire. According to Shlomo Avineri, it was only in the 1930s that a sovereign state rather than home became the fully articulated goal.Similarly, some early Zionists, including Herzl, considered possibilities for a Jewish national home or state outside Palestine, for example in the Americas or Africa. In 1905, a majority of the Zionist Congress voted against the proposal to settle in East Africa, and the supporters of this proposal, led by Israel Zangwill, split from the movement to form the Jewish Territorial Organisation.
Over time, the belief that Jews have a moral and historic right and need for self-determination in Palestine became the dominant Zionist view. The Zionist claim to Palestine was based on the notion that Jews had a hereditary right to the land that outweighed the equivalent nationalist claims of the local Arabs. 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 antisemitism produced a strong push factor.
Claim to a Jewish demographic majority
The establishment of a Jewish demographic majority was an essential aspect of Zionism. Israeli historian Yosef Gorny argues that this demographic change required annulling the majority status of the Arabs. 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 in Golda Meir's 1969 interview comment that "there was no such thing as Palestinians" is a cornerstone of Zionist policy. After the Holocaust, even those on the far-left of the Zionist movement, including Martin Buber and other members of Brit Shalom, did not see the Arabs as having an equally weighty claim to nationhood in Palestine, and sought demographic parity. 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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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. He argues 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. Further, the stability of the Jewish state could not be ensured given the Arab population's fear of displacement. He argues 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 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. Transfer thought began early in the movement's development in various forms. "Transfer" was seen not only as desirable but also as an ideal solution by some in the Zionist leadership, but it remained controversial.