Zionism

I. Up to the Founding of the State of Israel

Zionism is the political movement which, from the late 19th century onward, aimed to enable the Jews to return to “Zion” (Mount Zion in Jerusalem being the symbol of Palestine or the Land of Israel) with a view to establishing their own state. For many centuries, the Jews dispersed throughout the entire world expressed their longing to return to the Land of Israel in the form of prayers, poems, or philosophical tractates. However, such hopes were linked to messianic expectations (Messiah: III), as for instance in the annually recited words “Next year in Jerusalem.” Following this conception, the Jews would only be allowed to return to their land after the coming of the Messiah.

From the mid-19th century onward, this “longing to return” began to assume political forms that were particularly motivated by the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. M. Hess’s book Rome and Jerusalem (1862) cited the example of the Italian struggle for freedom to justify his claim that the Jews should also establish a national movement for the restoration of a historical state. However, his demand went almost unheard and had no notable political repercussions. A similar appeal by the Russian doctor L. Pinsker in a pamphlet entitled Auto-Emancipation also failed to elicit any political reaction, although it was followed by the founding of so-called “Hibbat Zion” (“Love of Zion”) circles that laid the foundations of modern Jewish settlement in Palestine.

Such theoretical appeals only began to have a substantial practical impact with the activities of T. Herzl. In his book The Jewish State (1896), he ¶ called for the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth. One year later,he initiated the first Zionist Congress in Basel, which was attended by roughly 200 delegates from 20 countries. Herzl headed the Zionist movement until his death in 1904. The leadership of political Zionism remained in Germany until World War I, although the majority of its adherents were recruited in Eastern Europe.

Zionism was characterized by various motives and goals from the very beginning. Like many Western European Zionists, Herzl became a Zionist as a result of his experiences with anti-Semitism. He strove to establish a Jewish state in order to guarantee the safety of the European Jews. This state was to be configured on the basis of the most modern social achievements and of a tolerant coexistence of religions and peoples. Herzl’s fiercest inner-Zionist opponent Ahad Ha’am (A. Ginsberg), on the other hand, had other goals and views that were shared by many Eastern European Zionists. For him and other cultural Zionists, the Land of Israel was above all to become a spiritual center for the revival of Hebrew culture and language.

By the beginning of the 20th century, various political parties already began to emerge withinZionism. The Mizrahi, which was founded in 1902, represented the religious Zionists. The latter were only a small minority, both among the Orthodox Jews (Orthodoxy: III) – who mostly rejected Zionism as blasphemy owing to its anticipation of the Messianic Age – and also among the Zionists themselves, who mostly held secular views. The religious Zionists, who could already boast 19th-century forerunners such as Judah Alkalai and Z.H. Kalischer, followed Rabbi Yitzchak Yaacov Reines in his attempt to harmonize the collective return of the Jews to the Land of Israel with the theological arguments that spoke against it. The socialist Zionists stood at the opposite end of the political spectrum. Having attained a majority within the movement following World War I, they produced the leading political figure in Palestine itself in the person of D. Ben Gurion. They were divided into several Marxist and non-Marxist groups and recruited most of their followers among the Eastern European Jews. The center of the political spectrum was occupied by the General Zionists under the leadership of C. Weitzman, who presided over the World Zionist Organization with only one short interruption from 1920 to 1946. He adopted a conciliatory attitude toward the British mandatory power that controlled the fate of Palestine after World War I. In 1935, this policy led to the secession of the nationalist Revisionists under their charismatic leader Vladimir Jabotinsky, who had founded the movement ten years earlier. They initially asserted maximum claims, including the territory of later ¶ (Trans-)Jordan, which belonged to the mandate until 1922. They also insisted on a more aggressive policy towards the British. These four political factions formed the basis from which the political parties emerged in the later state of Israel.

All parties attempted to further the goals of Zionism by purchasing land and engaging in political negotiations, but also by organizing the emigration to Palestine (Heb. Aliya, “ascent”). The Jewish National Fund Keren Kayemet LeYisrael, which was founded in 1901, was assigned a central role in the achievement of the first goal; since the founding of the state of Israel, it has dedicated itself to the reforestation of the land. The second goal was achieved with the Balfour Declaration of November 1917, in which British foreign secretary Lord A.J. Balfour promised the Jews “a national home in Palestine.” However, this promise would not be held during the period of the British Mandate. As a consequence, the political agenda of Zionism assigned crucial importance to immigration and to the demographic restructuring of Palestine. While immigration had only slowly gained momentum prior to World War I (when Palestine still belonged to the Ottoman Empire), the period of the British Mandate witnessed a marked increase in the number of immigrants. By 1936, roughly 400,000 Jews were living in Palestine (as compared to 80,000 in 1914), and only the strict immigration quotas imposed by the British (as a concession to the insurgent Arab population) prevented a further major increase in the period of the growing persecutions of Jews (III) throughout Europe.

Zionism was more than just a national movement for the resettlement of the Jews. It also aspired to transform the Jewish person. The Zionist ideal was that of the Jewish farmer who tilled the soil on his own land and thus no longer corresponded to the picture of the merchant confined within the narrow limits of the ghetto. The kibbutz as a collective farming settlement was an attempt to implement the ideals of Eastern European Zionists who had been influenced by socialism. For those Jews who temporarily remained in the Diaspora (II, 2), Zionism even devised a program of Gegenwartsarbeit (“work in the present”) that was meant to strengthen their national instead of their religious identity while also familiarizing them with the goals ofZionism. Herzl’s deputy, the author M. Nordau, had issued the slogan of the Muskeljudentum(“muscular Judaism”) in the late 19th century, thereby prompting the creation of Zionist sports clubs throughout Europe, among which “Hakoah Vienna” would even win the Austrian soccer championship in 1925.

At the same time, the typical Yiddish idiom of the exile was to be replaced by Hebrew, which was also ¶ to be revived as a language for everyday use. A Modern Hebrew literature had already emerged in the second half of the 19th century, while Eliezer Ben-Yehuda authored a first dictionary of Modern Hebrew around the turn of the 20th century. The founding of the city of Tel Aviv (“spring mound,” 1909) symbolized the beginning of a modern urban lifestyle centered around Hebrew language and culture. Named after the Hebrew translation of Herzl’s utopian novel Altneuland (The Old New Land), the city’s population increased from 2,000 inhabitants in the year 1914 to 120,000 in 1935. The “Hebrew University” in Jerusalem, which was officially inaugurated in 1925, was to emphasize the role of Hebrew as a scientific language. After World War I, numerous Hebrew high schools also appeared in Eastern Europe.

In the face of the constant threat of Arab assaults on Jewish settlers, and as a reaction to the relative defenselessness of Jews against pogroms in the Diaspora, the notion of self-defense also played an important role in early Zionism. There was a general desire to prove that Jews were capable of defending themselves with a weapon in their hand. Great symbolic importance was thus attached to the Jewish Legion within the British Army, which Jabotinsky had succeeded in forming toward the end of World War I.The relationship with the Arab population in Palestine was assessed in different ways by the various representatives of Zionism. Herzl idealized the harmonious coexistence of both population groups and contended that the Arabs would welcome the Jewish immigrants with the technological and social advances that they brought along from Europe. As early as the late 19th century, Ahad Ha’am’s publications had already warned of the enormous conflict potential between the native population and the immigrants. Herzl’s vision of a peaceful cooperation initially appeared to find confirmation in 1919, when Weizmann received a document from Emir Faisal in which the settlement of Jews was welcomed. However, this stance was only short-lived and had few supporters among the Arab elite of Palestine. Anti-Jewish riots grew increasingly frequent and violent during the 1920s, and culminated in the civil commotions of August 1920 that left over 200 dead. The attitude of the grand mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin Muhammad al-Husseini, who called for a revolt and general strikes in 1936 and traveled to Berlin to meet Hitler, is indicative of the radicalization of positions. On the Zionist side, the radicalization is particularly noticeable among the Revisionists, who did not consider it possible to fulfill the dream of a Jewish state without a conflict against the Arab population.

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II. After the Founding of the State of Israel

The goals of Zionism were only achieved after the murder of most European Jews, and thus of the potential inhabitants of a Jewish state. The meaning of Zionism after the founding of the state of Israel, moreover, is a controversially debated issue. For some, Zionism is merely the advocacy of a Jewish state, for others the active backing of this state, and for still others the immigration to the state of Israel. Since the late 20th century, a group of Israeli intellectuals has been referring to itself as post-Zionists. While some only understand this to mean that the goals of Zionism have been achieved, others go even further and call for the establishment of a binational state without specifically Jewish or Arab symbols in place of a state with a Jewish character. In the light of the reality of the Middle East conflict and of the continued existence of anti-Semitism, however, a large majority of Jews still consider it necessary to maintain the existence of a Jewish state.

III. In North America

Hopes for the return of the Jews to Zion were expressed in America as early as the colonial period. Viewing the Jews as heirs to God’s promises to Israel, Protestant writers predicted the return of the Jews to their ancestral homeland as preparing the ground for the arrival of the Messiah.

The first groups in America to call themselves Zionists were the Hoveve Zion and Shave Zion organizations which began their activities in the late 1880s. Following Herzl’s initiatives in Europe, American Zionists organized on a national level. Motivated by a biblical eschatological faith, Protestant evangelists also came up with pro-Zionist initiatives during that time. The most outstanding was a petition organized in 1891 by William Blackstone, requesting that the United States work towards the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine. Protestant activists would continue to play a vital role in instigating or supporting Zionist initiatives. The architect of an American Zionist ideology was US Supreme Court Justice, Louise Brandeis, who found a raison d’être for an American brand of Zionism. This consequently legitimized Zionism in America and turned the movement into a large popular organization that gave expression to American Jewish sentiments and aspirations. Brandeis asserted that in order to be good Americans, Jews needed to be faithful to their Jewishness, i.e. they had to become Zionists. Unlike in Europe, Brandeis’s American Zionist ideology did not speak about the ingathering of all Jews in Palestine, but rather ¶ about American Jewish sponsorship for the Jewish national home. Since America could not become a home to all the persecuted or underprivileged Jewry around the world, there was a need for building a Jewish center in the nation’s ancestral home, which American Jews could help finance and support politically.

The Zionist movement grew during the 1920s and 1930s to become the largest Jewish political movement in America (United States of America: V). The rise of National Socialism to power in Europe brought Jews to support Zionism and its agenda further. In the 1940s, non-Zionist Jewish organizations and leaders joined with Zionists in the struggle for a Jewish state in Palestine. Zionist efforts helped persuade American administration to support the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. After the birth of Israel in 1948, support for Israel became a major priority for American Jewish organizations. In their turn, Jewish groups turned Israeli music, dance, and food into features of Jewish culture in America. Following the Six-Day War in 1967, American Jewish involvement with and support for Israel became even more extensive. Likewise, American Christian evangelical support for Israel grew considerably. The unexpected Israeli victory, including the occupation of the historical parts of Jerusalem, convinced many evangelicals that Israel was created for a historical purpose, and that the Jewish state was to play an important role in preparing the ground for the arrival of the Messiah. Evangelical Christians became an important part of the pro-Israeli lobby in America, urging Washington to take a favorable line towards Israel. In the 1980s to 2000s, many American Jews became more critical and, at times, even disillusioned with Zionism, while conservative evangelicals have remained ardent supporters of Israel.