What is Zionism?

Answer 1

Zionism is a political movement and ideology that supports a homeland for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, where the Jewish nation originated over 3,200 years ago and where Jewish kingdoms and self-governing states have existed up to the 2nd century. While Zionism is based in part upon religious tradition linking the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, the modern movement was originally secular, beginning largely as a response to rampant antisemitism in Europe and many parts of the Muslim world during the 19th Century. After a number of advances and setbacks, and after the Holocaust had destroyed much of the existing Jewish society in Europe, the Zionist movement culminated in the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

Since the founding of the State of Israel, the term Zionism is generally considered to mean support for Israel. However, a variety of different, and sometimes competing, ideologies that support Israel fit under the general category of Zionism, such as Religious Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, and Labor Zionism. Thus, the term is also sometimes used to refer specifically to the programs of these ideologies, such as efforts to encourage Jewish emigration to Israel. The term Zionism is also sometimes used retroactively to describe the millennia-old Biblical connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel, which existed long before the birth of the modern Zionist movement.

“Zionism” as a term also has controversial political overtones. The term is regularly used to describe the persecution of Arabs by the state of Israel. “Zionism is racism” campaigns are not uncommon. People who opine that Palestinian Arabs are in no way persecuted by Israel and that the situation is the exact opposite see this use of “Zionism” as a cover for anti-Semitism. There is no doubt that anti-Semitic groups have seized on the term and misuse it to justify racially-based attacks on Israel, further confusing the issue. In some cases, the label "Zionist" is also used improperly as a euphemism for Jews in general by those wishing to whitewash anti-Semitism (as in the Polish anti-Zionist campaign).

The desire of Jews to return to their ancestral homeland has remained a universal Jewish theme ever since the defeat of the Great Jewish Revolt, and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire in the year 70, the defeat of Bar Kochba's revolt in 135, and the dispersal of the Jews to other parts of the Empire that followed, although during the Hellenistic Age many Jews had decided to leave Palestine to live in other parts of the of Mediterranean basin by their own free will [1] (famous figures who are the result of these migrations are for example Philo of Alexandria). Due to the disastrous results of the revolt, what was once a human driven movement towards regaining national sovereignty based on religious inspiration, over centuries tradition and broken hopes of one "false messiah" after another took much of the human element out of messianic deliverance and put it all in the hands of God. Although Jewish nationalism in ancient times had always taken on religious connotations, from the Maccabean Revolt to the various Jewish revolts during Roman rule, and even during the Medieval period when intermittently national hopes were incarnated in the "false messianism" of Shabbatai Zvi, among other less known messianists, it was not until the rise of ideological and political Zionism and its renewed belief in human based action toward Jewish national aspirations, did the notion of returning to the homeland become widespread among the Jewish people.

Jews lived continuously in the Land of Israel even after the Bar Kochba revolt, and indeed there is much historical documentation to show vibrant communities there. For example, the Palestinian Talmud was created in the centuries following that revolt. The inventor of Hebrew vowel-signs in the 5th century lived in a vibrant Jewish community in Palestine; and so forth. The slow and gradual decline of the Palestinian Jews occurred across a period of several centuries, and can be attributed to Hadrian's crushing of Bar Kochba's revolt, the Arab conquest of Palestine in the 600's, the Crusader wars in the 11th century and beyond, and the inefficiencies of the Ottoman empire from the 15th century on, by which time the land had greatly decreased in fertility and its economy was virtually nil. Despite this, several Zionist movements over the centuries saw the revival of particular Jewish communities, such as the middle-ages community of Safed which was bolstered by so many Jews fleeing the persecution following the Christian Reconquista of Al-Andalus, the Muslim name of the Iberian peninsula. In Portugal, they were expelled by Manuel I or forced to convert to Christianity — creating the Marrano Jews, from which Spinoza came — while the Inquisition imposed the limpieza de sangre doctrine, breaking away with the Caliph of Córdoba's tolerance.

The Haskala of Jews in European countries in the 18th and 19th centuries following the French Revolution, and the spread of western liberal ideas among a section of newly emancipated Jews, created for the first time a class of secular Jews, who absorbed the prevailing ideas of rationalism, romanticism and, most importantly, nationalism. Jews who had abandoned Judaism, at least in its traditional forms, began to develop a new Jewish identity, as a "nation" in the European sense. They were inspired by various national struggles, such as those for German and Italian unification, and for Polish and Hungarian independence. If Italians and Poles were entitled to a homeland, they asked, why were Jews not so entitled?

A precursor to the Zionist movement of the later 1800s occurred with the 1820 attempt by journalist, playwright and American-born diplomat Mordecai Manuel Noah to establish a Jewish homeland on Grand Island, New York, (north of Buffalo, New York, USA). Noah called it "Ararat" after Mount Ararat, the Biblical resting place of Noah's Ark.

Before the 1890s there had already been attempts to settle Jews in Palestine, which was in the 19th century a part of the Ottoman Empire, inhabited (in 1890) by about 520,000 people, mostly Muslim and Christian Arabs but including 20-25,000 Jews. Pogroms in Russia led Jewish philanthropists such as the Montefiores and the Rothschilds to sponsor agricultural settlements for Russian Jews in Palestine in the late 1870s, culminating in a small group of immigrants from Russia arriving in the country in 1882. This has become known in Zionist history as the First Aliyah (aliyah is a Hebrew word meaning "ascent," referring to the act of spiritually "ascending" to the Holy Land. In modern Hebrew, this word is used in place of an equivalent to "immigration.").

Proto-Zionist groups such as Hibbat Zion were active in the 1880s in the Eastern Europe where emancipation had not occurred to the extent it did in Western Europe (or at all). The massive anti-Jewish pogroms following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II made emancipation seem farther than ever and influenced Judah Leib Pinsker to publish the pamphlet Auto-Emancipation in January 1, 1882. The pamphlet became influential for the Political Zionism movement.

There had also been several Jewish thinkers such as Moses Hess, a comrade of Karl Marx, whose 1862 work Rome and Jerusalem; The Last National Question argued for the Jews to settle in Palestine as a means of settling the national question. Hess proposed a socialist state in which the Jews would become agrarianised through a process of "redemption of the soil" which would transform the Jewish community into a true nation in that Jews would occupy the productive layers of society rather than being an intermediary non-productive merchant class which is how he perceived European Jews. Hess, along with later thinkers such as Nahum Syrkin and Ber Borochov, is considered a founder of Socialist Zionism and Labour Zionism and one of the intellectual forebears of the kibbutz movement.


The first aliyah: Biluim used to wear the traditional Arab headdress, the kaffiyehAmerican Protestant Christian Zionists such as William Eugene Blackstone also pursued the Zionist ideal during late 19th century, especially in the American Blackstone Memorial (1891).

A key event said to trigger the modern Zionist movement was the Dreyfus Affair, which erupted in France in 1894. Jews were profoundly shocked to see this outbreak of anti-Semitism in a country which they thought of as the home of enlightenment and liberty. Among those who witnessed the Affair was an Austrian-Jewish journalist, Theodor Herzl, who published his pamphlet Der Judenstaat ("The Jewish State") in 1896 and described the Affair as a turning point -- prior to the Affair, Herzl had been anti-Zionist, afterwards he became ardently pro-Zionist. Herzl's own account has since been downplayed by historians, who instead point to the rise of anti-Semitic demagogue Karl Lueger as the primary motivating factor.[2] In 1897 Herzl organised the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, which founded the World Zionist Organisation (WZO) and elected Herzl as its first President.


1892 issue of Self Emancipation describing the principles of ZionismThe word "Zionism" itself derived from the word "Zion" (Hebrew: ציון, Tziyyon), one of the names of Jerusalem, as mentioned in the Bible. It was coined as a term for Jewish nationalism by Austrian Jewish publisher Nathan Birnbaum in his journal Self Emancipation in 1890.

[edit]
Zionist initiatives
While Zionism is based heavily upon religious tradition linking the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, the modern movement was originally secular, beginning largely as a response to rampant antisemitism in late 19th century Europe. It was the Jewish answer to the Eastern European, mainly Russian Pogroms.

In 1883, Nathan Birnbaum, nineteen years old, founded Kadimah, the first Jewish Students Association in Vienna. In 1884 the first issue of Selbstemanzipation or Self Emancipation appeared, completely made by Nathan Birnbaum himself. Kadimah was the first Jewish nationalist orientated organisation; in 1890 he coined the term Zionist and Zionism.

In 1878 the first Zionist Settlement appeared Petah Tikva, inhabited by former residents of Jerusalem hoping to escape the cramped quarters of Jerusalem's walls.

Rishon LeZion was founded on 31 July 1882 by a group of 10 members of the Zionist group Hovevei Zion from Kharkov, in modern Ukraine. Led by Zalman David Levontin, they purchased 835 acres (3.4 km²) of land south-east of present-day Tel Aviv for this purpose near an Arab village named Uyun Qara. Along with Petah Tikva, it is considered the first Zionist settlement in Israel and its founders were members of the First Aliyah. The land was owned by Tzvi Leventine and was purchased by the "Pioneers of Jewish Settlement Committee" that was formed in Jaffa, the port of arrival for many of the immigrants to the area.

Theodor Herzl (May 2, 1860 – July 3, 1904) was an Austrian Jewish journalist who became the founder of modern political Zionism. In 1897, he founded Die Welt of Vienna. Then he planned the first Zionist Congress in Basel, together with Nathan Birnbaum. During the congress, the following agreement was reached:

Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Eretz-Israel secured under public law. The Congress contemplates the following means to the attainment of this end:

The promotion by appropriate means of the settlement in Eretz-Israel of Jewish farmers, artisans, and manufacturers.
The organization and uniting of the whole of Jewry by means of appropriate institutions, both local and international, in accordance with the laws of each country.
The strengthening and fostering of Jewish national sentiment and national consciousness.
Preparatory steps toward obtaining the consent of governments, where necessary, in order to reach the goals of Zionism.
After the first Zionist Congress, the first four years they met every year, later they gathered every second year till the Second World War. After the war the Congress met every four years until present time.

The WZO's initial strategy was to obtain permission of the Ottoman Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid II to allow systematic Jewish settlement in Palestine. The good offices of the German Emperor, Wilhelm II, were sought, but nothing came of this. Instead the WZO pursued a strategy of building a homeland through persistent small-scale immigration, and the founding of such bodies as the Jewish National Fund in 1901 and the Anglo-Palestine Bank in 1903.


Theodor Herzl addresses the Second Zionist Congress in 1898.Before 1917 some Zionist leaders took seriously proposals for Jewish homelands in places other than Palestine. Herzl's Der Judenstaat argued for a Jewish state in either Palestine, "our ever-memorable historic home", or Argentina, "one of the most fertile countries in the world". In 1903 British cabinet ministers suggested the British Uganda Program, land for a Jewish state in "Uganda" (actually in modern Kenya). Herzl initially rejected the idea, preferring Palestine, but after the April 1903 Kishinev pogrom Herzl introduced a controversial proposal to the Sixth Zionist Congress to investigate the offer as a temporary measure for Russian Jews in danger. Notwithstanding its emergency and temporary nature, the proposal still proved very divisive, and widespread opposition to the plan was fueled by a walkout led by the Russian Jewish delegation to the Congress. Nevertheless, a majority voted to establish a committee for the investigation of the possibility, and it was not dismissed until the 7th Zionist Congress in 1905.

In response to this, the Jewish Territorialist Organization led by Israel Zangwill split off from the main Zionist movement. The territorialists attempted to establish a Jewish homeland wherever possible, but went into decline after 1917 and were dissolved in 1925. From that time Palestine was the sole focus of Zionist aspirations. Few Jews took seriously the establishment by the Soviet Union of a Jewish Autonomous Republic in the Russian Far East.

One of the major motivations for Zionism was the belief that the Jews needed to return to their historic homeland, not just as a refuge from anti-Semitism, but also to govern themselves as an independent nation. Some Zionists, mainly socialist Zionists, believed that the Jews' centuries of being oppressed in anti-Semitic societies had reduced Jews to a meek, vulnerable, despairing existence which invited further anti-Semitism. They argued that Jews should redeem themselves from their history by becoming farmers, workers, and soldiers in a country of their own. These socialist Zionists generally rejected religion as perpetuating a "Diaspora mentality" among the Jewish people.

One such Zionist ideologue, Ber Borochov, continuing from the work of Moses Hess, proposed the creation of a socialist society that would correct the "inverted pyramid," of Jewish society. Borochov believed that Jews were forced out of normal occupations by gentile hostility and competition, explaining why there was a relative predominance of Jewish professionals, rather than workers. Jewish society would not be healthy until the inverted pyramid was righted, and the majority of Jews became workers and peasants again. This could only be accomplished by Jews in their own country. Another, A. D. Gordon, was influenced by the völkisch ideas of European romantic nationalism, and proposed establishing a society of Jewish peasants. Gordon made a religion of work. These two thinkers, and others like them, motivated the establishment of the first Jewish collective settlement, or kibbutz, Deganiah, on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee, in 1909 (the same year that the city of Tel Aviv was established). Deganiah, and many other kibbutzim that were soon to follow, attempted to realise these thinkers' vision by creating a communal villages, where newly arrived European Jews would be taught agriculture and other manual skills.


Degania was the first kibbutz, the unique communal villages that were a key feature of socialist Zionism. Picture from the 1930s.Another aspect of this strategy was the revival and fostering of an "indigenous" Jewish culture and the Hebrew language. One early Zionist thinker, Asher Ginsberg, better known by his penname Ahad Ha'am ("One of the People") rejected what he regarded as the over-emphasis of political Zionism on statehood, at the expense of the revival of Hebrew culture. Ahad Ha'am recognised that the effort to achieve independence in Palestine would bring Jews into conflict with the native Palestinian Arab population, as well as with the Ottomans and European colonial powers then eying the country. Instead, he proposed that the emphasis of the Zionist movement shift to efforts to revive the Hebrew language and create a new culture, free from Diaspora influences, that would unite Jews and serve as a common denominator between diverse Jewish communities once independence was achieved.

The most prominent follower of this idea was Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, a linguist intent on reviving Hebrew as a spoken language among Jews (see History of the Hebrew language). Most European Jews in the 19th century spoke Yiddish, a language based on mediaeval German, but as of the 1880s, Ben Yehudah and his supporters began promoting the use and teaching of a modernised form of biblical Hebrew, which had not been a living language for nearly 2,000 years. Despite Herzl's efforts to have German proclaimed the official language of the Zionist movement, the use of Hebrew was adopted as official policy by Zionist organisations in Palestine, and served as an important unifying force among the Jewish settlers, many of whom also took new Hebrew names.


Tel Aviv, its name taken from a work by Theodor Herzl, was founded by Zionists on empty dunes north of the existing city of Jaffa. This photograph is of the auction of the first lots in 1909.The development of the first Hebrew-speaking city (Tel Aviv), the kibbutz movement, and other Jewish economic institutions, plus the use of Hebrew, began by the 1920s to lay the foundations of a new nationality, which would come into formal existence in 1948. Meanwhile, other cultural Zionists attempted to create new Jewish artforms, including graphic arts. (Boris Schatz, a Bulgarian artist, founded the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem in 1906.) Others, such as dancer and artist Baruch Agadati, fostered popular festivals such as the Adloyada carnival on Purim.

The Zionist leaders always saw Britain as a key potential ally in the struggle for a Jewish homeland. Not only was Britain the world's greatest imperial power; it was also a country where Jews lived in peace and security, among them influential political and cultural leaders, such as Benjamin Disraeli and Walter, Lord Rothschild. There was also a peculiar streak of philo-Semitism among the classically educated British elite to which the Zionist leaders hoped to appeal, just as the Greek independence movement had appealed to British phil-Hellenism during the Greek War of Independence. Chaim Weizmann, who became the leader of the Zionist movement after Herzl's death in 1904, was a professor at a British university, and used his extensive contacts to lobby the British government for a statement in support of Zionist aspirations.

This hope was realised in 1917, when the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, made his famous Declaration in favour of "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". Balfour was motivated partly by philo-Semitic sentiment, partly by a desire to weaken the Ottoman Empire (an ally of Germany during the First World War), and partly by a desire to strengthen support for the Allied cause in the United States, home to the world's most influental Jewish community. In the Declaration, however, Balfour was careful to use the word "home" rather than "state," and also to specify that its establishment must not "prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine."

[edit]
Jewish reaction to Zionism
Part of a series of articles on
Jews and Judaism


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Who is a Jew? · Etymology · Culture


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Judaism · Core principles
Tanakh (Torah / Nevi'im / Ketuvim)
Talmud · Halakha · Holidays · Prayer
Ethics · 613 Mitzvot · Customs · Midrash


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jewish ethnic divisions
Ashkenazi · Sephardi · Mizrahi · Lost tribes


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Population (historical) · By country
Israel · USA · Russia/USSR · Poland
Canada · Germany · France · England
Spain · Latin America · Iraq · Muslim lands
Lists of Jews · Crypto-Judaism


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jewish denominations
Orthodox · Conservative · Reform
Reconstructionist · Liberal · Karaite · Alt


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jewish languages
Hebrew · Yiddish · Ladino · Dzhidi
Judeo-Aramaic · Judeo-Arabic
Juhuri · Krymchak · Karaim · Knaanic
Judeo-Persian · Yevanic · Zarphatic


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jewish political movements
Zionism · Labor Zionism · General Zionism
Religious Zionism · Revisionist Zionism
Timeline of Zionism · Kibbutzim
The Bund · Jewish feminism


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

History · Timeline · Leaders
Ancient · Temple · Babylonian exile
Jerusalem (In Judaism · Timeline)
Hasmoneans · Sanhedrin · Schisms
Pharisees · Jewish-Roman wars
Diaspora · And Christianity · Under Islam
Middle Ages · Kabbalah · Hasidism
Haskalah · Emancipation · Holocaust
Aliyah · Israel (History) · Arab conflict


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Persecution of Jews
Anti-Semitism · Holocaust
History of anti-Semitism
New anti-Semitism


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This box: view • talk • edit
Support for the Zionist movement was not initially a mainstream position in the world Jewish community, and it was actively opposed by many Jewish organizations. While traditional Jewish belief held that Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) was given to the ancient Israelites by God, and that therefore the right of the Jews to that land was permanent and inalienable, most Orthodox groups held that the Messiah must appear before Israel could return to Jewish control, and Reform Judaism (prior to the Holocaust) explicitly rejected Zionism. Still, return to the Land of Israel had remained a recurring theme among generations of diaspora Jews, particularly in Passover and Yom Kippur prayers which traditionally concluded with, "Next year in Jerusalem", and the thrice-daily Amidah (Standing prayer). [3]

Aliyah, or emigration to Israel, has always been considered by Judaism to be a praiseworthy and mandatory act for Jews according to halakha. Aliyah is included in most versions of the 613 commandments, although not in the widely used version of Maimonides. Maimonides' other writings, however, indicate that he considered return to the Land of Israel a matter of extreme importance for Jews. [4]

From the Middle Ages and onwards a number of prominent Jews (e.g. Nahmanides) and groups (including the students of the Vilna Gaon, and Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk and 300 of his followers) emigrated to Israel.

Many Jewish religious leaders were opposed to Zionism before the 1930s. The secular, socialist language used by many pioneer Zionists was contrary to the outlook of most religious Jewish communities, and many religious organisations opposed it, both on the grounds that it was a secular movement, and on the grounds that any attempt to re-establish Jewish rule in Israel by human agency was blasphemous, since (in their view) only the Messiah could accomplish this. There was, however, a small but vocal group of religious Jews that began to develop the concept of Religious Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s under such leaders as Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (the Chief Rabbi of Palestine) and his son Zevi Judah, and gained substantial following during the latter half of the 20th century. Only the desperate circumstances of the 1930s and 1940s converted most (though not all) of these communities to Zionism.

Answer 2

Zionism is a political movement and ideology that supports a homeland for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, where the Jewish nation originated over 3,200 years ago and where Jewish kingdoms and self-governing states have existed up to the 2nd century. While Zionism is based in part upon religious tradition linking the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, the modern movement was originally secular, beginning largely as a response to rampant antisemitism in Europe and many parts of the Muslim world during the 19th Century. After a number of advances and setbacks, and after the Holocaust had destroyed much of the existing Jewish society in Europe, the Zionist movement culminated in the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

Answer 3

Zionism is 6 millioin Jews controlling the political parties and international decisions of 250 million.

Answer 4

Movement founded by the Viennese Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl, who argued in his 1896 book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) that the best way of avoiding anti-Semitism in Europe was to create an independent Jewish state in Palestine. Zionism was named after Mount Zion in Jerusalem, a symbol of the Jewish homeland in Palestine since the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BC. The movement culminated in the birth of the state of Israel in 1948.

Answer 5

Zionism, purely a political flow at its inception, has today change into better of an ideology than some thing else. by technique of definition, Zionism is a international flow for the go back of the Jewish human beings to Zion, the Land of Israel, even as workout habitual the right to carry authority of authorities over the state of Israel, which became promised to them contained in the Hebrew Scriptures. The roots for Zionism lie in Genesis chapters 12 and 15, wherein God makes a covenant with Abraham promising him that his descendants may inherit the land between Egypt and the Euphrates River. because of the undeniable reality that Zionism became all started as a politically influenced flow, there exists, between secular Gentiles and non-non secular Jews, a line of concept putting ahead that the non secular history of the Jewish human beings had no longer some thing to do with Zionism. it truly is argued that Zionism became instead a reaction of the Jewish human beings to international persecution in the time of international Wars I and II. No usa may take them in, so that they were compelled to create their personal usa, the land of their ancestry being the most opportune position. Regardless, the Zionist flow, all started contained in the late Eighteen Nineties, got here upon fulfillment in 1948 even as Israel became formally recognized as a state and granted sovereignty as a rustic interior of Palestine by technique of the United countries. it truly is even as, technically, the political Zionist flow ended and the ideology of Zionism began, and as such, has change right into a a lot-debated topic. some may say that Zionism has change right into a motivation for racism, or a reaction adverse to anti-Semitism. Others believe that Zionism because it at the moment exists is only Jewish patriotism. linked with Jewish Zionism is Christian Zionism. Christian Zionism is purely Gentile help of Jewish Zionism as depending on the supplies you to Israel got here upon contained in the Bible, passages consisting of Jeremiah 32 and Ezekiel 34. Christian Zionists are basically evangelical, and promises help in any respect plausible for the Jewish state of Israel. The go back of the Jews to the Promised Land is the fulfillment of prophecy and is taken under consideration, exceptionally by technique of dispensationalists, as a demonstration that the international has entered the accurate circumstances.

Answer 6

Websters new Collegiate:
ZIONISM: a theory; plan, or a movement for setting up a Jewish National or a religious community in PALESTINE!
Check it for yourself! A plan to steal

Answer 7

Zionism is the movement that supported the creation of Israel as a Jewish homeland. It is frequently used as a cover for anti-Semitic beliefs (i.e. someone saying "Zionist" instead of "Israeli" is likely anti-Semitic).

Answer 8

Like the ones that pasted from wiki said.

(Oh, and anyone who witters on about controlling the Senate, Rothschild, controlling the media blah blah is talking out of their rear sphincter)

Answer 9

It's the Jewish plan for world control.