Zionism

Zionism is an international political movement that supports a homeland for the Jewish People in the Land of Israel. Although its origins are earlier, the movement was formally established by the Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl (Herzl Tivadar in Hungarian) in the late nineteenth century. The movement was eventually successful in establishing the State of 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. Described as a "diaspora nationalism," its proponents regard it as a national liberation movement whose aim is the self-determination of the Jewish people. Opposition to Zionism has arisen on a number of grounds, ranging from religious objections to competing claims of nationalism to political dissent that considers the ideology either immoral or impractical.

While Zionism is based in part upon religious tradition 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 (i.e. up to 70 CE), the modern movement was mainly secular, beginning largely as a response by European Jewry to antisemitism across Europe. It constituted a branch of the broader phenomenon of modern nationalism. At first one of several Jewish political movements offering alternative responses to the position of Jews in Europe, Zionism gradually gained more support, and after the Holocaust became the dominant Jewish political movement.Since the first century CE most Jews have lived in exile[citation needed], although there has been a constant presence of Jews in the Land of Israel[citation needed], which was known to most non-Jews as Palestine. According to Judaism the Jews would return to Eretz Israel with the coming of the Messiah[citation needed]. However in the nineteenth century the current in Judaism supporting an earlier return got more support. Even before 1882, which is generally seen as the year in which practical Zionism started.

In 1882 immigration, called Aliyah (ascent) by Jews, started in earnest. Most immigrants came from Eastern Europe, where anti-semitism was rampant. They founded a number of agricultural settlements, or moshava, with financial support from Jewish philanthropists in Western Europa. In the 1890s Theodor Herzl infused Zionism with a new and practical urgency. He brought the World Zionist Organization into being and, together with Nathan Birnbaum, planned its First Congress at Basel in 1897.[13] This current in Zionism is known as political Zionism because it aimed at reaching a political agreement with the Power ruling Palestine. Up to 1917 this was the Ottoman Empire, and then until 1948 it was Britain on behalf of the League of Nations. The WZO also supported small scale settlement in Palestine.

In 1917 Chaim Weizmann was successful in gaining the Balfour Declaration from the British. This declaration endorsed a Jewish Homeland in Palestine and became the basis of the Mandate the League of Nations gave to Britain. Subsequently Britain supported Jewish immigration in principle, but in reaction to Arab violence it did impose restrictions on immigration.

At the beginning of the twentieth century Labor Zionism movement in Palestine began to develop. Although it consisted of several parties, in 1920 these parties together founded the Histadrut. The Histadrut did a lot of things for Jewish workers, like offering a Labor Exchange and health services, improving labor and living conditions. It was also the largest employer of the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine. An important task of the Histadrut was also the absorption of immigrants by offering them shelter, jobs and other necesitties. Under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion in the 1930s the dominant party of the labor movement, Mapai, also became the dominant party in the WZO.

Among Palestinian Arabs there was a lot of popular resistance against Zionism. They felt threatened by the Zionist aim to have a Jewish majority in Palestine. There were riots in 1920, 1921 and 1929, sometimes accompanied by massacres of Jews. From 1936 to 1939 a general Revolt broke out. This revolt was suppressed by the British, but in a reaction they restricted further Jewish immigration to an absolute limit of 75,000, and in principle they stuck to this limit untill the end of the Mandate.

The Zionist goal of a Jewish state in all of Palestine, as demanded at the Biltmore Conference of 1942, obviously conflicted with the interests of the Palestinian Arabs because it had the intention of creating a purely Jewish state by scaring off or forcing natives out of their homes. After WWII and the Holocaust the support for Zionism among Jews and the general public worldwide increased. The British, who were attacked in Palestine by Zionist groups because they didn’t allow further Jewish immigration, didn’t know how to solve the matter and gave it to the United Nations. In 1947 the UN decided for a two-state solution, a Jewish and an Arab state in Palestine. Since the Arabs rejected partition, saying they wanted one state with an Arab majority, a war became inevitable. During this war the Yishuv first defeated the Palestinian Arabs and their foreign auxiliaries in April and early May 1948, withstood the invasion of armies of Arab states in May and June and subsequently went on to defeat those armies and conquer 78 percent of Palestine. During the war the military offensives of the Yishuv caused an exodus of over 700,000 Palestinians.

On 14 May 1948, after the last British troops had left, the Jewish Agency, led by Ben-Gurion declared the creation of the State of Israel. After the creation of the State of Israel the WZO continued to exist as an organisation that supported Israel.