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Zionism
Zionism,
or Jewish nationalism, is a modern political movement. Its core
beliefs are that all Jews constitute one nation (not simply a
religious or ethnic community) and that the only solution to anti-Semitism
is the concentration of as many Jews as possible in Palestine/Israel
and the establishment of a Jewish state there. The World Zionist
Organization, established by Theodor Herzl in 1897, declared that
the aim of Zionism was to establish "a national home for
the Jewish people secured by public law."
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Demonstration in Israel.
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Zionism drew
on Jewish religious attachment to Jerusalem and the Land of Israel
(Eretz Israel). But the politics of Zionism was influenced by
nationalist ideology, and by colonial ideas about Europeans' rights
to claim and settle other parts of the world.
Zionism gained
adherents among Jews and support from the West as a consequence
of the murderous anti-Jewish riots (known as pogroms) in the Russian
Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Nazi genocide
(mass murder) of European Jews during World War II killed over
six million, and this disaster enhanced international support
for the creation of a Jewish state.
There are
several different forms of Zionism. From the 1920s until the 1970s,
the dominant form was Labor Zionism, which sought to link socialism
and nationalism. By the 1920s, Labor Zionists in Palestine established
the kibbutz movement (a kibbutz is a collective commune, usually
with an agricultural economy), the Jewish trade union and cooperative
movement, the main Zionist militias (the Haganah and Palmach)
and the political parties that ultimately coalesced in the Israeli
Labor Party in 1968.
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David
Ben-Gurion reading the proclamation of Israel's establishment,
May 14, 1948, in Tel Aviv. The photo is of Theodor Herzl. |
The top leader
of Labor Zionism was David Ben-Gurion, who became the first Prime
Minister of Israel.
A second
form of Zionism was the Revisionist movement led by Vladimir Jabotinsky.
They earned the name "Revisionist" because they wanted
to revise the boundaries of Jewish territorial aspirations and
claims beyond Palestine to include areas east of the Jordan River.
In the 1920s and 1930s, they differed from Labor Zionists by declaring
openly the objective to establish a Jewish state (rather than
the vaguer formula of a "national home") in Palestine.
And they believed that armed force would be required to establish
such a state. Their pre-state organizations that included the
Betar youth movement and the ETZEL (National Military Organization)
formed the core of what became the Herut (Freedom) Party after
Israeli independence. This party subsequently became the central
component of the Likud Party, the largest right wing Israeli party
since the 1970s.
Although
many Jews became Zionists by the early 20th century, until the
rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and the institution of a "Final
Solution" to exterminate world Jewry, most Jews were not
Zionists. Most orthodox Jews were anti-Zionist. They believed
that only God should reunite Jews in the Promised Land, and regarded
Zionism as a violation of God's will. Some Jews in other parts
of the world, including the United States, opposed Zionism out
of concern that their own position and rights as citizens in their
countries would be at risk if Jews were recognized as a distinct
national (rather than religious) group. But the horrors of the
Holocaust significantly diminished Jewish opposition or antipathy
to Zionism, and following World War II most Jews throughout the
world came to support the Zionist movement and demand the creation
of an independent Jewish state.
| Israel's
victory in the 1967 war gave rise to a more religious form
of Zionism. |
Although
orthodox Jews continued to oppose the creation of a Jewish state
for several more decades, they supported mass settlement of Jews
in Palestine as a means of strengthening and protecting the community.
And following the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, most orthodox Jews who
previously had resisted Zionism adopted the belief that Israel's
overwhelming victory in the war was a sign of God's support, and
a fulfillment of God's promise to bring about the Messianic era.
The areas captured and occupied in 1967, especially the West Bank,
were important to religious Jews because they are the core of
the biblical Land of Israel (Judea and Samaria). Consequently,
Israel's victory in 1967 gave rise to a more religious variation
of Zionism. Some existing political parties representing orthodox
Jews came to embrace religious nationalism, and new parties and
movements formed to advocate Israel's permanent control and extensive
Jewish settlement in the West Bank and Gaza.
The religious-nationalist
parties and groups that constitute the far right of the Israeli
political spectrum maintain a hard line on matters relating to
territory and the Arab-Israeli conflict. They have allied with
the Likud Party. Although the Labor Party also has supported Jewish
settlement in the West Bank and Gaza, a key difference is a willingness
to consider a territorial compromise with Palestinians as a means
of ending the conflict. The Likud and its allies oppose any territorial
withdrawal. In 1977, the Likud won the national election, for
the first time unseating the Labor Party that had governed Israel
since independence. Since then, Likud and Labor have alternated
as the governing party, sometimes forming coalition governments
when neither could achieve a clear electoral victory.
A minority
of Jewish Israelis belongs to left-wing Zionist parties, which
formed a political coalition known as Meretz in the 1980s. Meretz
often joins Labor-led governments. Leftist Zionists are fully
committed to maintaining Israel as a Jewish state, but tend to
be more willing than the Labor Party to compromise on territorial
issues, and have relatively greater sympathy for Palestinian national
aspirations for a state of their own. A tiny minority of ultra-leftist
Jewish Israelis identify themselves as non- or anti-Zionists.
Some of them aspire to see all of Israel/Palestine transformed
into a single state with citizenship and equal rights for all
inhabitants, and others advocate the creation of a Palestinian
state in all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.