Zionism

Zionism

1. Nationalism Interpretation

   • Bernard Lewis
   • Walter Laquer
   • Zionism does not fit the traditional interpretation of a nationalist ideology
     • Not ethnic in it's origins
     • A Jewish state could not be created through the application of the principle of national self-determination
   • Israeli Constitution and the 'Return Law' for all Jews
   • Jewish nationalism came from the diaspora of the community
   • Arguments in Favour by Bernard Lewis
     • Compares the Jews in E.Europe to Poles, Ukrainians and Baltic Peoples
       • Pale of Settlement
         • Gave largely Jewish autonomy which helped to cultivate the individualism and concept of a Jewish State
           • Common culture, religion, common descent, and a common language (Yiddish)
             • This helped to create the foundation of the Israeli state in 1948. Yiddish became Hebrew.
             • Israel was the creation of the Yiddish state in Eastern Europe
               • Formed from an ethnic not a legal nationality
           • Separate and individual literature, schools and higher education
         • 5-6 million people in 1880, which formed about 75% of the world's Jewish population at the time
     • Jews in Ottoman territory compared to Armenians and Greeks in the same territory
       • Religio-Political entity
       • Multiple languages used throughout the Ottoman Empire, which helped to cultivate different nations once the Empire disintegrated
     • Nationalist movement to justify religious state to international community
   • Arguments against by Bernard Lewis
     • Jewish minoirities in Western Europe (German and Austro-Hungary) were barely distinguishable in language, culture, way of life
       • A result of emancipation and secularisation throughout Western Europe
     • Ottoman Jewish Millet had multiple langauges
       • Contradicts the traditional concept of nationalism
     • "If the nation - an entity defined by descent, culture and aspiration - was the only natural and rightful basis of statehood, why then the Jews were also a nation, and must have their own state."

2. Religious Interpretation

   • Critical of secular Zionism, which was put forward by Herzl
   • Minority strand of Zionism
   • Arguments in Favour
     • Israeli state and Jews backed by many in the West due to the religious connotations of Jews returning to the Holy Land
       • Final sign before the return of the Messiah in the eyes of Christians in the West
     • Yetrez Israel and the notion of the old biblical lands of Judaism
     • Israel is a National Homeland/State for the Jews and therefore a theocratic state
     • After 1967 and the capture of Jerusalem, the religious importance and symbolism
   • Arguments Against
     • Jews were not supposed to return to the Holy Land until the Messiah had already appeared
       • Contradiction of Judaism for the Jews to return to Palestine
     • Least popular strand of Zionism when compared to Nationalist and Colonial Settler interpretations in Mid-East
     • A National identity has to be secular or it will be an apartheid nation
   • Based on a fusion of Jewish religion and nationhood
     • Aims to restore Jewish political freedom and Jewish religion in light of The Torah and its commandments
   • First discussed during the Fifth Zionist Congress in 1902
   • Pledged much of its effort to constructing a national-religious education system

3. Colonial Settler Interpretation

   • Edward Said
   • Ilan Pappe
   • Compare to other colonial settler interpretations
     • Algeria
     • Southern Rhodesia
     • South Africa under Apartheid
   • Arguments in Favour
     • Rejection of rights for Palestinians
     • Apartheid nature of the Israeli state
     • Annexation of West Bank and Gaza in 1967
       • If the Palestinians were included and had voting rights they would outnumber the Jewish Israelis
         • Israel would no longer be a Jewish state for Jews due to population imbalance
     • 1948 referred to as War of Independence, but independence from who?
       • Jews took land that had belonged to the Palestinians for centuries
         • Used an argument of racial superiority to justify their actions to the Europeans
         • Dispossession of Arab farmers as early as 1886-1907, strongly criticised by some Zionists for they could see the future troubles it would raise
     • Jewish Agency purchased lands from absent foreign owners which dispossessed large portions of Palestinians
     • Golda Meir famously remarked "Who should we return the land to? For the Palestinians are not a people who owned the land"
       • This didn't mean that there weren't people living in Palestine but no people worth considering within the framework of European supremacy
     • Majority of early Zionist settlers treated Palestinians from indifference and disregard to patronising superiority
     • Aggressive attitude towards natives in Palestine
       • Exploitation, beatings without reason, and trespassing unjustly upon their borders
     • Epstein suggested that Jewish land grabs took precedent over moral consideration in mainstream Zionist thought
       • Written in 1907, a year after the end of the Dreyfus Affair
   • Arguments Against

4. Origins and Development

   • Founded by Theodore Herzl in his book Die Judeenstat
     • Released in 1896
     • Written during a growing wave of anti-semitism in Europe
       • Dreyfus Affair in France
       • Pogroms in Russia
     • Colonisation of Palestine by Jewish agricultural and industrial workers
     • Fostered Jewish national sentiment and conciousness
   • First Zionist Conference held in Basel, Switzerland in 1897
   • Creation of Israel under Zionist Leader David Ben-Gurion in 1948
   • Zionist Congress looked for a country to sponsor it's plans: France, Germany and Russia were all interested at some stage
     • Britain was eventually the sponsor that the Zionist Congress found
       • Balfour Declaration 1917
         • British Mandate of Palestine
           • Mass immigration of Jews to Palestine from 1920-1930
             • Immigration curtailed in the mid-1930s
               • Impact of the Holocaust and Antisemitism in Nazi Germany
               • Second Arab Revolt in Palestine 1936-39
                 • Many Arabs became concerned that the increasing immigration of Jews into Palestine was rapidly changing the ethnic composition of the country
                   • This fear was exacerbated when it was realised that the Jews were arming themselves with European weapons
             • 1882 - 1923: 115,000 Jews emigrate from Russia to Palestine to avoid persecution in the Pogroms
             • 1929 - 1939: 250,000 Jews escape Nazi Germany and flee to Palestine
           • Peel Commission and the withdrawal of Britain
   • Zionism condemned in UN Resolution 3379
     • Condemned as a racist and a form of racial discrimination
     • Later repealed in 1991 bu the significance of it's initial adoption
     • Israel is an apartheid state as it does not recognise the Palestinians
       • The choice between Israel becoming a bi-national state or apartheid state after 1967 Six-Day War

5. Why did the Zionist Congress reject other sites for a Jewish homeland?

   • Uganda/Modern Day Kenya
     • Herzl met with Colonial Sec. Joseph Chamberlin in 1903
     • Plan rejected in 1905 after an expeditionary force sent to investigate the territory
       • Gained further traction after the pogroms in Russia in 1905
         • Split the Zionists between those who favoured immediate protection in a Jewish homeland and those who favoured waiting for Palestine
   • Madagascar
     • Nazi Germany contemplated proposals to relocate all Jewry to the Island off the coast of Africa
       • Hitler approved and Eichmann released a memorandum in 1940
         • 1 million Jews per year to be relocated every year for the next 4 years
           • Precursor to the 'Final Solution'?
     • This had been previously considered by Britain, France and Poland
   • The name itself links to Mount Zion, therefore the return to the Holy Land was always its strategic goal
   • Iraq
     • Investigated in 1906
       • Rejected by Zionist Congress
   • Libya
     • Investigated in 1906
       • Rejected by Zionist Congress
   • Other site plans abandoned after Balfour Declaration
   • Texas
     • 9,300 Jews arrived between 1907-1914 to set up Jewish settlements
     • Supported by leading American Jewish Bankers