Part 2

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."

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 Palmah) and the political parties that
ultimately coalesced in the Israeli Labor Party in
1968.

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.


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.



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