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Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish nationalist movement that dates from the 19th century. The foremost goal of Zionism,
the creation of a Jewish homeland, was achieved with the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.
The desire for a Jewish homeland has Biblical origins. Jews believe that over 4,000 years ago, God told
Abraham, the founding father of Judaism, to go and occupy Canaan, the land in the Middle East that is
Israel and Palestine today. Yet it was not until after the Holocaust of World War II that the Jewish state of
Israel was established. That victory for Zionism was bittersweet, however, because the legality of Israel
was challenged by Arabs on all sides. That conflict continues to this day.
In the mid-1800s, Jewish intellectuals, after suffering and failing to gain complete acceptance into the
German, Russian, or Spanish social structures where they lived, began to support the idea that Jews should
settle in the region near Jerusalem. Mount Zion is one of the hills surrounding Jerusalem, the holy city, and
it was from that sacred mountain that the movement's name was adopted.
In Russia in particular, Jews who lived under the harsh regimes of the czars had failed miserably in their
attempts to assimilate into the culture. Consequently, they lived in separate communities and spoke their
own language, Yiddish. Most of them were poor, although a certain quota were allowed to attend the
universities, and a few had become doctors and lawyers. Those autonomous communities had their own
schools, businesses, and financial structure. In the mid-19th century, the Russian government all but
sanctioned pogroms, bloody grass-roots revolts aimed at Jews. That violence resulted in many Jews
escaping to Western Europe and the United States.
In 1882, Judah Leib (Leo) Pinsker published, in German, a pamphlet called Auto-Emancipation. Pinsker
focused on the dream of establishing a Jewish homeland, but his words fell on deaf ears in most of Western
Europe. In Russia, however, a small group inspired by his writing banded together under the name Hovevei
Ziyyon, or Lovers of Zion. The Lovers of Zion promoted the idea of Jewish farmers and craftspeople
settling in Palestine. Thanks to the generosity of Baron Edmund de Rothschild of Paris, that dream became
a reality for a few. From 1882 to 1903, 25,000 Jews migrated to Palestine in what is called the First Aliyah.
The Second Aliyah, or next wave, came just before World War I, during 1904-1914, when another 40,000
Jews were added to the population of Palestine. In 1914, there were about 85,000 Jews in Palestine, a small
minority among the Arab population. In addition, there were 43 Jewish agricultural settlements with 13,000
settlers, many of them supported by the wealth of the Rothschilds.
Theodor Herzl, a journalist from Austria, moved Zionism into the worldwide political arena and is often
called the Father of Zionism. In August 1897, he convened the first Zionist Congress in Switzerland. The
constitution written at the first Congress stated, "Zionism strives to create for the Jewish people a home in
Palestine secured by public law." In 1903, after years of negotiations with the British government, Herzl
convinced the United Kingdom of the legitimacy of a Jewish state, and Britain offered 6,000 square miles
in the highlands of Uganda. Yet the land in Africa was not the promised land near Jerusalem that many
Jews longed for, so any serious consideration of the British proposal began to split the Zionist movement
into two factions. Herzl's untimely death at the age of 44 in 1904 marked the end of negotiations with
Britain about Uganda, and Zionists were left to focus their hopes on Palestine.
The death of Herzl and the onset of World War I contributed to a temporary halt in the Zionist movement.
Because the Ottoman Empire (which controlled Jerusalem) was at war with the United Kingdom, and since
Herzl had already convinced the British government to sympathize with the Jews, World War I could have
been used as on opportunity to rally behind British warfare to garner support for the Zionist movement.
However, the Zionists' lack of strong central leadership resulted in a missed opportunity.
After World War I, support for Zionism shifted from Germany, Austria, and Russia to London and New
York, where money was being raised. Most Zionists who moved to Palestine in the interwar period were
from Poland.
On November 2, 1917, British foreign secretary Arthur J. Balfour declared his support for the Zionist
movement by writing, "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a
national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this
object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious
rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in
any other country." That document, called the Balfour Declaration, was endorsed by the main Allied
Powers at the San Remo Conference in 1920 and became an official international policy. Using the Balfour
Declaration as a preamble, the council of the League of Nations approved on July 24, 1922 the Palestinian
Mandate. The League of Nations also advised how to aid in Jewish immigration to Palestine.
However, while the Balfour Declaration had noted the rights of Muslim Arabs in Palestine, the Zionists'
goals overshadowed them. Zionists and their supporters did not question the right of Jews to occupy a land
that had not been theirs for hundreds of years. The strife among Jews, Palestinians, and other Arabs during
the last 50 years of the 20th century proves that short-sighted thinking marred supporters of the Zionist
movement, even at the government level of foreign nations. It must be remembered, though, that Britain
had enjoyed many successful years of colonization and war victories. The British government thought that
it was perfectly acceptable for Jews to "colonize" or occupy Palestine in the same way that the British had
conquered and settled areas all over the world.
Between 1922 and 1939, the Jewish population in Palestine increased to 30% of the total population, or
about 450,000 people. Tel Aviv, a city founded specifically by Jews for Jews, became a major economic
center with a population of 150,000. As the Jewish population grew in Palestine, Zionist activists turned
toward violent behavior to support their cause.
Meanwhile, the anti-Semitic Adolf Hitler gained power at the head of the National Socialist German
Workers' Party, or Nazis. The Nazis' mass murder of Jews during World War II did more to bring attention
and sympathy to Zionism than any other act of the 20th century. By the time Germany was defeated at the
end of the war, surviving Jews all over the world felt that the Old Testament command, given to Abraham
to conquer and possess the holy land, had even greater meaning.
From the end of World War II in 1945, it took three years to establish Israel as a Jewish state in Palestine.
Four major groups were involved in the process: the United Kingdom, which occupied Palestine by
mandate of the League of Nations; the United States, a new superpower that had a powerful Jewish voting
bloc; the Arab League, which vowed to block the establishment of a Jewish state in the Middle East; and
the Zionist Jews from various nations. Each group had its own agenda regarding territorial ownership,
government policies, and rights. The British, desiring to maintain good relations with the Arab nations and
angered by acts of Zionist terrorism in Palestine, wished to restrict Jewish immigration to Palestine. The
United States, however, favored an independent Jewish republic in Palestine. Finally, in 1947, the United
Kingdom passed the problem on to the United Nations (UN).
The UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) recommended that Palestine be partitioned into Jewish
and Arab territories but that it maintain the same economic core in an attempt to promote unity and stability
in the region. The Arab League immediately protested the recommendation. The Arab nations felt that Jews
did not have the fundamental right to live in Palestine just because they needed a place to call home and
they wanted that home to be near Jerusalem. Moreover, the territory that UNSCOP recommended for
Jewish occupancy included the valuable coast line and farm lands that the Arabs felt was out of proportion
to the ratio of Jews and Arabs living in the region. Nevertheless, the UN General Assembly approved the
partition on November 29, 1947.
The British soon pulled their occupying forces out of the region, and David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the
state of Israel on May 14, 1948. The United States and the Soviet Union immediately recognized the new
nation. The Arab League, on the other hand, had declared a jihad, or holy war, against the Jews in
Palestine. Zionists had achieved their homeland, but that victory set the stage for decades of conflict
between Israelis and Palestinians—a conflict that continues to this day.
Further Reading
Beilan, Yossi, Israel: A Concise Political History, 1992; Gilbert, Martin. Israel: A History. New York:
Morrow, 1998; Laqueur, Walter. A History of Zionism. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972.
MLA Citation
"Zionism." World History: The Modern Era. ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 19 May 2014.
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Entry ID: 309421