Zionism

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History of Zionism · Aliyah · Herzl. Balfour · British Mandate. 1947 UN Plan · Independence ... Zionism is an international political movement that originally ...
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Zionism
What Zionism is -- and its pernicious influence upon the USA. ... Zionism Links: Further Articles. on Other Websites. Earlier links. Later links ...
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Zionism n. A Jewish movement that arose in the late 19th century in response to growing anti-Semitism and sought to reestablish a Jewish homeland in
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What is Zionism?
What is Zionism? Zionism is the Jewish national movement of rebirth and renewal in the land of Israel - the historical birthplace of the Jewish people.
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ZIONISM- Background
The origin of the term "Zionism" is the biblical word "Zion", often used as a ... Zionism is an ideology which expresses the yearning of Jews the world over for ...
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Zionism
Zionism and the Holocaust ... This timeline gives details of the history of Zionism and Israel. ... "Zionism" is not a monolithic ideological movement. ...
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Zionism Defined
Zionism - Definitions, Zionists, Israel (Isreal) and the Jews ... Historically, Zionism strove to create a legally recognized national home for ...
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Zionism is an international Jewish political movements that supports a homeland for the Jewish People in the Land of Israel.Zionism On The Web, "Definitions of Zionism", a compiled collection, Accessed January 10, 2007.Although its origins are earlier, the movement was formally established by Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl in the late nineteenth century. The international movement was eventually successful in establishing the Israel in 1948, as the world's first and only modern Jewish State. It continues primarily as support for the state and government of Israel and its continuing status as a homeland for the Jewish people."An international movement originally for the establishment of a Jewish national or religious community in Palestine and later for the support of modern Israel." ("Zionism," Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary). See also "Zionism", Encyclopedia Britannica, which describes it as a "Jewish nationalist movement that has had as its goal the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews (Hebrew: Eretz Yisra'el, “the Land of Israel”)," and The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, which defines it as "A Jewish movement that arose in the late 19th century in response to growing anti-Semitism and sought to reestablish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Modern Zionism is concerned with the support and development of the state of Israel." Described as a "diaspora nationalism,"Ernest Gellner, 1983. Nations and Nationalism (First edition), p 107-108. its proponents regard it as a national liberation movement whose aim is the self-determination of the Jewish people.A national liberation movement:

While Zionism is based in part upon Judaism linking the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, where the concept of Jewish nationhood is thought to have first evolved somewhere between 1200 BCE and the late Second Temple era,"...from Zion, where King David fashioned the first Jewish nation" (Friedland, Roger and Hecht, Richard To Rule Jerusalem, p. 27)."By the late Second Temple times, when widely held Messianic beliefs were so politically powerful in their implications and repercussions, and when the significance of political authority, territorial sovereignty, and religious belief for the fate of the Jews as a people was so widely and vehemently contested, it seems clear that Jewish nationhood was a social and cultural reality". (Roshwald, Aviel. "Jewish Identity and the Paradox of Nationalism", in Berkowitz, Michael (ed.). Nationalism, Zionism and Ethnic Mobilization of the Jews in 1900 and Beyond, p. 15). the modern movement was mainly Secularism, beginning largely as a response by Ashkenazi Jews to rampant antisemitism across Europe and the Muslim Nations.Largely a response to anti-Semitism:

Conflicting Arab nationalism and Political aspects of Islam claims to the Land of Israel as well as lingering New antisemitism have meant that Zionism has aroused powerful forces of anti-Zionism, as well as Israel-United_States_relations.

Terminology The word "Zionism" itself derived from the word "Zion" (Hebrew language: ציון, Tzi-yon), one of the names of Jerusalem and the Land of Israel, as mentioned in the Bible.It was coined as a term for Jewish nationalism by Austrian Jewish publisher Nathan Birnbaum, founder of the first nationalist Jewish students' movement Kadimah, in his journal Selbstemanzipation (Self Emancipation) in 1890. (Birnbaum eventually turned against political Zionism and became the first secretary-general of the anti-Zionist Haredi Judaism movement Agudat Israel.)De Lange, Nicholas, An Introduction to Judaism, Cambridge University Press (2000), p. 30. ISBN 0-521-46624-5.

Since the founding of the State of Israel, the term "Zionism" is generally considered to mean support for Israel as a Jewish nation state. However, a variety of different, and sometimes competing, ideologies that support Israel fit under the general category of Zionism, such as Religious Zionist Movement, Revisionist Zionism, and Labor Zionism. Thus, the term is also sometimes used to refer specifically to the programs of these ideologies, such as efforts to encourage Aliyah.

Certain individuals and groups have used the term "Zionism" as a pejorative to justify attacks on Jews. According to historians Walter Laqueur, Howard Sachar and Jack Fischel among others, in some cases, the label "Zionist" is also used as a euphemism for Jews in general by apologists for antisemitism.Misuse of the term "Zionism":

Zionism should be distinguished from Territorialism which was a Jewish nationalist movement calling for a Jewish homeland, but not necessarily in Palestine. During the early history of Zionism, a number of proposals were made for settling Jews outside of Europe but these all ultimately were rejected or failed. The debate over these proposals helped define the nature and focus of the Zionist movement.

Historical background The desire of Jews to return to their ancestral homeland has remained a universal Jewish theme since the defeat of the Great Jewish Revolt, and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire in the year 70, the later defeat of Bar Kokhba's revolt in 135, and the dispersal of the Jews to other parts of the Empire that followed. Yearning for Zion by Briana Simon (WZO) (During the Hellenistic Age many Jews had decided to leave Palestine to live in other parts of the Mediterranean basin by their own free will; The Jewish Diaspora in the Hellenistic Period famous figures associated with these migrations include, for example, Philo of Alexandria). Due to the disastrous results of the revolt, what had been a human-driven movement to regain national sovereignty based on religious inspiration, became, after centuries of broken hopes associated with one "false messiah" after another, a movement in which much of the human element of messianic deliverance had been replaced by a trust in God providence. Although Jewish nationalism in ancient times had always had religious connotations—from the Maccabees to the various Jewish revolts during Roman rule, and even during the Medieval period when intermittently national hopes were incarnated in the "List of messiah claimants" of Shabbatai Zvi—it was not until the rise of ideological and political Zionism and its renewed belief in human-based action toward Jewish national aspirations that the notion of returning to the homeland once again became widespread among the Jewish people.

Jews lived continuously in the Land of Israel even after the Bar Kokhba's revolt, and indeed there is much historical evidence of vibrant communities there continually throughout the past two millennia. For example, the Jerusalem Talmud was created in the centuries following that revolt. The inventors of niqqud, the Masoretes (ba'alei hamasorah, Hebrew בעלי המסורה), groups of scribes in 7th and 11th centuries were based primarily in Tiberias and Jerusalem; and so forth. The slow and gradual decline of the Palestinian Jews occurred across a period of several centuries, and can be attributed to Hadrian's crushing of Bar Kokhba's revolt, the Arab conquest of Palestine in the 600s, the Crusader wars in the 11th century and beyond, and the inefficiencies of the Ottoman Empire from the 15th century on, by which time the land had greatly decreased in fertility and its economy was virtually nil.

Despite this decline, several proto-Zionist movements over the centuries saw the revival of particular Jewish communities, such as the medieval community of Safed, the population of which was bolstered by Jews fleeing inquisition following the Reconquista of Al-Andalus (the Muslim name of the Iberian peninsula).

Aliyah and the ingathering of the exiles Return to the Land of Israel had remained a recurring theme among generations of Jewish diaspora, particularly in Passover and Yom Kippur prayers which traditionally concluded with, "Next year in Jerusalem", and in the thrice-daily Amidah (Standing prayer)."Sound the great shofar for our freedom, raise the banner to gather our exiles and gather us together from the four corners of the earth (Isaiah 11:12) Blessed are you, O Lord, Who gathers in the dispersed of His people Israel."

Aliyah (immigration to Israel) has always been considered to be a praiseworthy act for Jews according to Halakha, and is included as a commandment in most versions of the 613 mitzvot. Although not found in the version of Maimonides, his other writings indicate that he considered return to the Land of Israel a matter of extreme importance for Jews.In Hilchos Melachim 5:12 Maimonides says "whoever lives in the Land of Israel remains without sin". In Hilchos Avadim 8:9 he says that if a Jewish slave wishes to move to the Land of Israel, his master must move with him, or sell him to someone who will move to the Land of Israel. In Hilchos Avadim 8:10 he states that if a slave flees to the Land of Israel, the Jewish court frees him, and the Talmud (Kesubos 110) lists the reason as being the commandment to settle in the Land of Israel.From the Middle Ages and onwards, a number of famous Jews (and often their followers) immigrated to the Land of Israel. These included Nahmanides, Yechiel of Paris with several hundred of his students, Yosef Karo, Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk and 300 of his followers, and over 500 disciples (and their families) of the Vilna Gaon known as Perushim, among others.

Establishment of the Zionist movement The Emergence of Zionism The Haskalah of Jews in European countries in the 18th century and 19th century following the French Revolution, and the spread of western liberal ideas among a section of newly emancipated Jews, created for the first time a class of secular Jews who absorbed the prevailing ideas of rationalism, romanticism and, most importantly, nationalism.Jews who had abandoned Judaism, at least in its traditional forms, often found themselves still rejected by their host societies and still regarded as 'Jews'. Over time secular ideas also penetrated sections of the Orthodox Jewish community.

The formation of modern nations in Europe led to changes in the prejudice directed against Jews. What had previously been religious prejudice now became a modern phenomena known as antisemitism. Anti-Semites actively tried to prevent Jews from being given equal rights and citizenship (which they had been denied for centuries).Additionally Jews in Eastern Europe faced pogroms and History_of_the_Jews_in_Russia_and_the_Soviet_Union#Tsarist_Russia_.281480s-1917.29 aimed at driving them out.

A new common Jewish identity began to develop, of a "nation" in the European sense, inspired by various national struggles, such as those for Germany and Italy unification, and for Poland and Hungary independence. If Italians and Poles were entitled to a homeland, and if they excluded Jews, why not create a Jewish homeland?

Thus Zionism arose out of a combination of factors, it was a nationalist ideology, a response to anti-Semitism and an attempt to provide a means of escape from what many Jews were coming to see as unceasing Christian persecution.

Proto-Zionism , page one. The :Image:1844 Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews p2.jpg shows the map of the Land of IsraelA precursor to the Zionist movement of the later 1800s occurred with the 1820 attempt by journalist, playwright and American-born diplomat Mordecai Manuel Noah to establish a Jewish homeland on Grand Island, New York, (north of Buffalo, New York, USA). In 1840s, Noah advocated the "Restoration of the Jews" in the Land of Israel.Rubinstein, Hilary L. (Ed.), Rubinstein, William D, Cohn-Sherbok, Dan, Edelheit, Abraham J. The Jews in the Modern World: A History Since 1750, pp.303, Oxford University Press (2002), ISBN 0-340-69163-8

Moses Hess's 1862 work Rome and Jerusalem. The Last National Question argued for the Jews to settle in Palestine as a means of settling the national question. Hess proposed a socialist state in which the Jews would become agrarianism through a process of "redemption of the soil" that would transform the Jewish community into a true nation in that Jews would occupy the productive layers of society rather than being an intermediary non-productive merchant class, which is how he perceived European Jews. Hess, along with later thinkers such as Nahum Syrkin and Ber Borochov, is considered a founder of Socialist Zionism and Labour Zionism and one of the intellectual forebears of the kibbutz movement.

In the same year 1862, German Orthodox Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer published his tractate Derishat Zion, positing that the salvation of the Jews, promised by the Prophets, can come about only by self-help. Zvi Hirsch Kalischer (Jewish Encyclopedia) His ideas contributed to the Religious Zionism movement.

by J.L. Pinsker, 1882Early Zionist groups such as Hovevei Zion were active in the 1880s in the Eastern Europe where emancipation had not occurred to the extent it did in Western Europe (or at all). The massive Anti-Semitism pogroms following the assassination of Russian history, 1855-1892 made emancipation seem more elusive than ever, and influenced Judah Leib Pinsker to publish the pamphlet Auto-Emancipation in 1882. In 1890, the "Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Eretz Israel" (better known as the Odessa Committee) was officially registered as a charitable organization in the Russian Empire and by 1897 it counted over 4,000 members.

United States Protestantism Christian Zionism such as William Eugene Blackstone also pursued the Zionist ideal during late 19th century, especially in the American Blackstone Memorial (1891).

Rise of modern political Zionism Before the 1890s there had already been attempts to settle Jews in Palestine, which was in the 19th century a part of the Ottoman Empire, inhabited (in 1890) by about 520,000 people, mostly Muslims and Christian Arabs—but including 20-25,000 Jews. Pogroms in the Russian Empire led Jewish philanthropists such as the Moses Haim Montefiore and the Rothschilds to sponsor agricultural settlements for Russian Jews in Palestine in the late 1870s, culminating in a small group of immigrants from Russia arriving in the country in 1882. This has become known in Zionist history as the First Aliyah. Scharfstein, Sol, Chronicle of Jewish History: From the Patriarchs to the 21st Century, p.231, KTAV Publishing House (1997), ISBN 0-88125-545-9 Aliyah is a Hebrew word meaning "ascent," referring to the act of spiritually "ascending" to the Holy Land.

{], which erupted in France in 1894. Jews were profoundly shocked to see this outbreak of anti-Semitism in a country which they thought of as the home of enlightenment and liberty. Among those who witnessed the Affair was an Austro-Hungarian (born in Budapest, lived in Vienna) Jewish journalist, Theodor Herzl, who published his pamphlet Der Judenstaat ("The Jewish State") in 1896 and described the Affair as a turning point—prior to the Affair, Herzl had been anti-Zionist, afterwards he became ardently pro-Zionist. In Austria, Theodor Herzl took the idea of political Zionism and infused it with a new a practical urgency. Herzl brought the World Zionist Organization into being; its First Congress met at Basle in 1897 Zionism & The British In Palestine, by Arjun Sethi (University of Maryland) January 2007, accessed May 20, 2007.

Agricultural settlements used to wear the traditional Arab headdress, the kaffiyehFounded in 1878, Petah Tikva was the first Israeli settlement. It was inhabited by former residents of Jerusalem hoping to escape the cramped quarters of Jerusalem's Old City walls.

Rishon LeZion was founded on 31 July 1882 by a group of ten members of the Zionist group Hovevei Zion from Kharkov (today's Ukraine). Led by Zalman David Levontin, they purchased 835 acres (3.4 km²) of land for this purpose near an Arab village named Uyun Qara. The land was owned by Tzvi Leventine and was purchased by the "Pioneers of Jewish Settlement Committee" that was formed in Jaffa, Israel, the port of arrival for many of the immigrants to the area.

Early Zionist initiatives In 1883, Nathan Birnbaum, nineteen years old, founded Kadimah, the first Jewish Students Association in Vienna. In 1884 the first issue of Selbstemanzipation or Self Political emancipation appeared, completely made by Nathan Birnbaum himself.

addresses the Second Zionist Congress in 1898.Together with Nathan Birnbaum, Herzl planned the first Zionist Congress in Basel. During the congress, the following agreement, commonly known as the Basel Program, was reached:Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Eretz-Israel secured under public law. The Congress contemplates the following means to the attainment of this end:
  • The promotion by appropriate means of the settlement in Eretz-Israel of Jewish farmers, artisans, and manufacturers.
  • The organization and uniting of the whole of Jewry by means of appropriate institutions, both local and international, in accordance with the laws of each country.
  • The strengthening and fostering of Jewish national sentiment and national consciousness.
  • Preparatory steps toward obtaining the consent of governments, where necessary, in order to reach the goals of Zionism. The Basle Program. Resolutions of the First Zionist Congress August 30, 1897 (mideastweb)


    • After the First Zionist Congress, the World Zionist Organization met every year first four years, later they gathered every second year till the Second World War. After the war the Congress met every four years until present time.

    The WZO's initial strategy was to obtain permission of the Ottoman Empire#Sultans Abd-ul-Hamid II to allow systematic Jewish settlement in Palestine. The good offices of the German Emperor, William II, German Emperor, were sought, but nothing came of this. Instead, the WZO pursued a strategy of building a homeland through persistent small-scale immigration, and the founding of such bodies as the Jewish National Fund in 1901 and the Anglo-Palestine Bank in 1903.

    Alternative proposals Before 1917 some Zionist leaders took seriously proposals for Jewish homelands in places other than Palestine. Herzl's Der Judenstaat argued for a Jewish state in either Palestine, "our ever-memorable historic home", or Argentina, "one of the most fertile countries in the world". In 1903 British cabinet ministers suggested the British Uganda Program, land for a Jewish state in "Uganda" (in today's Kenya). Herzl initially rejected the idea, preferring Palestine, but after the April 1903 Kishinev pogrom Herzl introduced a controversial proposal to the Sixth Zionist Congress to investigate the offer as a temporary measure for Russian Jews in danger. Notwithstanding its emergency and temporary nature, the proposal still proved very divisive, and widespread opposition to the plan was fueled by a walkout led by the Russian Jewish delegation to the Congress. Nevertheless, a majority voted to establish a committee for the investigation of the possibility, and it was not dismissed until the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905.

    In response to this, the Jewish Territorialist Organization (ITO) led by Israel Zangwill split off from the main Zionist movement. The territorialism attempted to establish a Jewish homeland wherever possible, but went into decline after 1917 and the ITO was dissolved in 1925. From that time Palestine was the sole focus of Zionist aspirations. In 1928, the Soviet Union established a Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the Russian Far East but the effort failed to meet expectations and as of 2002 Jews constitute only about 1.2% of its population.Mark Tolts: The Post-Soviet Jewish Population in Russia and the World. Published in: Jews in Russia and Eastern Europe, 2004, No. 1 (52). p.51

    New Jewish mentality One of the major motivations for Zionism was the belief that the Jews needed to return to their historic homeland, not just as a refuge from anti-Semitism, but also to govern themselves as an independent nation. Some Zionists, mainly socialist Zionists, believed that the Jews' centuries of being oppressed in anti-Semitic societies had reduced Jews to a meek, vulnerable, despairing existence which invited further anti-Semitism. They argued that Jews should redeem themselves from their history by becoming farmers, workers, and soldiers in a country of their own. These socialist Zionists generally rejected religion as perpetuating a "Diaspora mentality" among the Jewish people.

    One such Zionist thinker, Ber Borochov, continuing from the work of Moses Hess, proposed the creation of a socialist society that would correct the "inverted pyramid" of Jewish society. Borochov believed that Jews were forced out of normal occupations by Gentile hostility and competition, using this dynamic to explain the relative predominance of Jewish professionals, rather than workers. Jewish society, he argued, would not be healthy until the inverted pyramid was righted, and the majority of Jews became workers and peasants again. This, he held, could only be accomplished by Jews in their own country. Another Zionist thinker, A. D. Gordon, was influenced by the völkisch ideas of European romantic nationalism, and proposed establishing a society of Jewish peasants. Gordon made a religion of work. These two figures, and others like them, motivated the establishment of the first Jewish collective settlement, or kibbutz, Degania, on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee, in 1909 (the same year that the city of Tel Aviv was established). Deganiah, and many other kibbutzim that were soon to follow, attempted to realise these thinkers' vision by creating a communal villages, where newly arrived European Jews would be taught agriculture and other manual skills., its name taken from a work by Theodor Herzl. It was founded on empty dunes, purchased from Arabs, north of the existing city of Yafo. This photograph is of the auction of the first lots in 1909.

    Another aspect of this strategy was the revival and fostering of an "indigenous" Jewish culture and the Hebrew language. One early Zionist thinker, Asher Ginsberg, better known by his pen name Ahad Ha'am ("One of the People") rejected what he regarded as the over-emphasis of political Zionism on statehood, at the expense of the revival of Hebrew culture. Ahad Ha'am recognized that the effort to achieve independence in Palestine would bring Jews into conflict with the native Palestinian Arab population, as well as with the Ottomans and European colonial powers then eying the country. Instead, he proposed that the emphasis of the Zionist movement shift to efforts to revive the Hebrew language and create a new culture, free from Diaspora influences, that would unite Jews and serve as a common denominator between diverse Jewish communities once independence was achieved.

    The most prominent follower of this idea was Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, a linguist intent on reviving Hebrew as a spoken language among Jews (see History of the Hebrew language). Most European Jews in the 19th century spoke Yiddish, a language based on mediaeval German, but as of the 1880s, Ben Yehuda and his supporters began promoting the use and teaching of a modernised form of biblical Hebrew, which had not been a living language for nearly 2,000 years. Despite Herzl's efforts to have German proclaimed the official language of the Zionist movement, the use of Hebrew was adopted as official policy by Zionist organisations in Palestine, and served as an important unifying force among the Jewish settlers, many of whom also took new Hebrew names.

    The development of the first modern Hebrew-speaking city (Tel Aviv), the kibbutz movement, and other Jewish economic institutions, plus the use of Hebrew, began by the 1920s to lay the foundations of a new nationality, which would come into formal existence in 1948. Meanwhile, other cultural Zionists attempted to create new Jewish artforms, including graphic arts. (Boris Schatz, a Bulgarian artist, founded the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem in 1906.) Others, such as dancer and artist Baruch Agadati, fostered popular festivals such as the Adloyada carnival on Purim.

    British influence Ideas of the restoration of the Jews in the Land of Israel entered the British Empire public discourse in the 19th century. British Zionism - Support for Jewish Restoration (mideastweb.org) Not all such attitudes were favorable towards the Jews; they were shaped in part by a variety of Protestant beliefs, The Untold Story. The Role of Christian Zionists in the Establishment of Modern-day Israel by Jamie Cowen (Leadership U), July 13, 2002or by a streak of philo-Semitism among the classically educated British elite, Rethinking Sir Moses Montefiore: Religion, Nationhood, and International Philanthropy in the Nineteenth Century by Abigail Green. (The American Historical Review. Vol. 110 No.3.) June 2005or by hopes to extend the Empire. (See The Great Game)

    At the urging of Lord Shaftesbury, Britain established a consulate in Jerusalem in 1838, the first diplomatic appointment in the Land of Israel. In 1839, the Church of Scotland sent Andrew Bonar and Robert Murray M'Cheyne to report on the condition of the Jews in their land. Their report was widely publishedA Narrative of a Mission of Inquiry to the Jews from the Church of Scotland in 1839 (Edinburgh, 1842) ISBN 1-85792-258-1 and was followed by a "Memorandum to Protestant Monarchs of Europe for the restoration of the Jews to Palestine."In August 1840, The Times reported that the British government was considering Jewish restoration.

    Lord Lindsay wrote in 1847: "The soil of Palestine still enjoys her sabbaths, and only waits for the return of her banished children, and the application of industry, commensurate with her agricultural capabilities, to burst once more into universal luxuriance, and be all that she ever was in the days of Solomon."Crawford, A.W.C. (Lord Lindsay), Letters on Egypt, Edom and the Holy Land, London, H. Colburn 1847, V II, p 71The Treaty of Paris (1856) granted Jews and Christians the right to settle in Palestine and opened the doors for Jewish immigration.In her 1876 novel Daniel Deronda, George Eliot advocated "the restoration of a Jewish state planted in the old ground as a center of a national feeling, a source of dignifying protection, a special channel for special energies and an added voice in the councils of the world."

    Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield wrote in his article entitled "The Jewish Question is the Oriental Quest" (1877) that within fifty years a nation of one million Jews would reside in Palestine under the guidance of the British. Moses Montefiore visited the Land of Israel seven times and fostered its development.

    Capitulations of the Ottoman Empire allowed the British to place missions in the region and to institute charitable projects such as hospitals, settlement colonies and exploratory surveys and by the end of the 19th century, British interest in the Middle East increased because it was considered essential to guard the route to India.

    The Zionist leaders always saw United Kingdom as a key potential ally in the struggle for a Jewish homeland. Not only was Britain the world's greatest imperial power; it was also a country where Jews had lived for centuries in relative peace and security — among them influential political and cultural leaders such as Disraeli, Montefiore and Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild.

    Chaim Weizmann's Royal Navy Cordite Factory, Holton Heath was critical for the Allies of World War I. In his meetings with the British Prime Minister Lloyd George and the First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, Weizmann, the leader of the Zionist movement since 1904, was able to advance the Zionist cause for which the war had created new prospects. by Michael Sutton (originally appeared in the December 2002 issue of Chemistry in Britain magazine)

    This hope was realised in 1917, when the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, made his famous Balfour Declaration, 1917 in favour of "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." The Declaration used the word "home" rather than "state," and specified that its establishment must not "prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine."

    Jewish attitudes to Zionism before the founding of Israel in the 1930s. Zionist parties were very active in Poland politics. In the 1922 Polish elections, Zionists held 24 seats of a total of 35 Jewish parliament members.

    The chain of events between 1881 and 1945, beginning with waves of anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia and Congress Poland, and culminating in the Holocaust, converted the great majority of surviving Jews to the belief that a Jewish homeland was an urgent necessity, particularly given the large population of disenfranchised Jewish refugees after World War II. Most also became convinced that the Land of Israel was the only location that was both acceptable to all strands of Jewish thought and within the realms of practical possibility. This led to the great majority of Jews supporting the struggle between 1945 and 1948 to establish the State of Israel, though many did not condone violent tactics used by some Zionist groups.

    Opposition or ambivalence Initially, support for political Zionism was not a mainstream position in the Jewish communities scattered around the world. The secular, socialist language used by many pioneer Zionists was contrary to the outlook of most religious Jewish communities, and many religious organizations opposed it, both on the grounds that it was a secular movement, and on the grounds that any attempt to re-establish Jewish rule in Israel by Agency (philosophy) was blasphemous, since (in their view) only the Jewish eschatology could accomplish this."Most Orthodox Jews originally rejected Zionism because they believed the Jews must await the Messiah to restore them to nationhood." Settings of Silver: An Introduction to Judaism. Stephen M. Wylen, 2000, Paulist Press, page 356

    While traditional Judaism held that the Land of Israel was given to the ancient Israelites by God, and that therefore the right of the Jews to that land was permanent and inalienable, most Orthodox Judaism groups held that the Messiah must appear before Israel could return to Jewish control. Prior to the Holocaust, Reform Judaism rejected Zionism."Reform Jews originally rejected Zionism as inconsistent with the acceptance of Jewish citizenship in the Diaspora." Settings of Silver: An Introduction to Judaism. Stephen M. Wylen, 2000, Paulist Press, page 356

    When the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917, Edwin Montagu, the only Jew in the British Cabinet, "was passionately opposed to the declaration on the grounds that (a) it was a capitulation to anti-Semitic bigotry, with its suggestion that Palestine was the natural destination of the Jews, and that (b) it would be a grave cause of alarm to the Muslim world."Hitchens, "Love, Poverty, and War" 327

    Support The 1911 edition of the Jewish Encyclopedia evidenced the movement's growing popularity: "there is hardly a nook or corner of the Jewish world in which Zionistic societies are not to be found." Zionism article (section Wide Spread of Zionism) by Richard Gottheil in the Jewish Encyclopedia, 1911
    The first Zionist branches in the Arab world were opened in Morrocco, a few years of the first Zionist conference, and the movement was popular among Jews living in Arab states. A number of the founders of the city of Tel-Aviv were Moroccan Jewish immigrants and there was significant early migration from the Yemenite Jews (10% of Yemenite Jews moved to the Holy Land between 1880 and 1914) and Bukharan Jews.

    In the 1920s and 1930s, a small but vocal group of religious Jews began to develop the concept of Religious Zionism under such leaders as Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (the Chief Rabbi of Palestine) and his son Zevi Judah, and gained substantial following during the latter half of the 20th century. Only the desperate circumstances of the 1930s and 1940s converted most (though not all) of these communities to Zionism. By 1940, there were 171,000 members of Zionist organizations, and by 1942, 80% of American Jews surveyed agreed that a homeland in Palestine was required.Stork and Rose, 1974

    International reactions to Zionism Napoleon and the Jews#Napoleon and a Jewish state in Palestine the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine as early as 1799.Shlomo Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State, pp.45, Basic Books (1981), ISBN 0-465-04328-3

    Throughout the entire 19th century and early 20th century, the return of the Jews to the Holy Land was widely supported by such eminent figures as Queen Victoria, King Edward VII, John Adams, the second President of the United States, Jan Smuts of South Africa, Tomáš Masaryk of Czechoslovakia, British Prime Ministers Lloyd George and Arthur Balfour, President Woodrow Wilson, Benedetto Croce, Italy philosopher and historian, Henry Dunant, founder of the Red Cross and author of the Geneva Conventions, Fridtjof Nansen, Norway scientist and humanitarian. The France government through Minister M. Cambon formally committed itself to “the renaissance of the Jewish nationality in that Land from which the people of Israel were exiled so many centuries ago". Even in faraway China, Wang, Minister of Foreign Affairs, declared that "the Nationalist government is in full sympathy with the Jewish people in their desire to establish a country for themselves." Palestine: The Original Sin , Meir Abelson

    In 1873, Shah of Persia Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar met with British Jewish leaders, including Sir Moses Montefiore, during his journey to Europe. At that time, the Persian king suggested that the Jews buy land and establish a state for the Jewish people.

    King Faisal I of Iraq supported the idea of Zionism and signed the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement in 1919. He wrote: "We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our delegation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday to the Zionist organization to the Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper."

    Both the League of Nations' 1922 Palestine Mandate and the 1947 UN Partition Plan broadly endorsed the aim of Zionism. The latter was a rare instance of concurrence between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, although Harry Truman's State Department, led by George Marshall, vehemently opposed the formation of the state of Israel. David McCullough, Truman, Simon and Schuster, 1992, pp. 614-620 Only Truman's personal insistence overcame Marshall's intense opposition, which was based on strategic concerns for the stability of the region. Ibid. Marshall's opposition was recounted in detail by Truman's aide Clark Clifford, who led the internal campaign to recognize a new Jewish state. Clark Clifford, with Richard Holbrooke, Counsel to the President, Random House, 1991.

    Zionism and the Arabs It is, in retrospect, unclear how familiar Zionist leaders and advocates were with contemporary Palestine. During the movement's formative stages, Zionist negotiators with stronger political powers (such as the United Kingdom) corresponded enthusiastically while remaining silent about the inhabitants of Palestine, who numbered just under half a million during the late 19th century. However, knowledge of—at least—their existence was impossible to escape for Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, one of the earliest prominent Zionists to visit Palestine, who wrote that "there are now only five hundred thousand Arabs, who are not very strong, and from whom we shall easily take away the country " Israel Zangwill, who ostensibly coined the popular Zionist slogan, "A land without a people for a people without a land," visited Palestine in 1897 and, addressing a congregation eight years later, stated that "Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The pashalic of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States, having fifty-two souls to the square mile, and not a quarter of them Jews "

    Michael Bar-Zohar, the author of David Ben-Gurion's autobiography, attempted to explain this dichotomy:

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    Though there had already been Arab protests to the Ottoman authorities in the 1880s against land sales to foreign Jews, the most serious opposition began in the 1890s after the full scope of the Zionist enterprise became known. This opposition did not arise out of Palestinian nationalism, which was in its infancy at the time, but out of a sense of threat to the livelihood of the Arabs. This sense was heightened in the early years of the 20th century by Zionist attempts to develop an economy from which Arab people were largely excluded, such as the "Hebrew labor" movement that campaigned against the employment of Arabs. The severing of Palestine from the rest of the Arab world in 1918 and the Balfour Declaration, 1917 were seen by the Arabs as proof that their fears were coming to fruition.

    Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first president, indicated that the British did not view the welfare of the Arab residents highly, and according to Arthur Ruppin, formerly in charge of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Zionist leaders failed to grasp the nature and importance of the Arab question. Ruppin told the Agency in May 1936: "Dr Weizmann once told me how he received the Balfour Declaration. And when I asked him, 'And what did you think then in reality on the Arab question?' he replied, 'The English told us that are some hundred of thousands blacks there, and this has no importance.' This shows me that at that time our leaders didn't have a clue regarding the Arab question, and even much later they relegated this question to the margins."Heller, Yosef. Bama'vak Lemedinah, Hamediniyut Hatzionit Bashanim 1936-1948 Struggle for the State: The Zionist Policy 1936-1948, Jerusalem, 1984, p.140, quoting Arthur Ruppin's speech to the Jewish Agency Executive, May 20, 1936. The original speech is believed to have been in German; a copy of the original is held in the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem. This passage from the speech was translated into Hebrew. The English translation published here, based on the Hebrew version, is by Yosef Heller for Wikipedia, May 2007.A wide range of opinion could be found among Zionist leaders after 1920. The division between these camps did not match the main threads in Zionist politics as cleanly as is often portrayed. For example, the leader of the Revisionist Zionism, Vladimir Jabotinsky, is often presented as having had an extreme pro-expulsion view but the evidence offered for this is weak. According to Jabotinsky's Iron Wall (1923), an agreement with the Arabs was impossible, since:

    The solution, according to Jabotinsky, was not expulsion, which he was "prepared to swear, for us and our descendants, that we will never ", but to impose the Jewish presence on the Arabs by force of arms until they came to accept it. Only late in life did Jabotinsky speak of the desirability of Arab emigration, though still without unequivocally advocating an expulsion policy. After the World Zionist Organization rejected Jabotinsky's proposals, he resigned from the organization and foun

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