Zionism is an ethnic nationalist movement that emerged in late 19th-century Europe to establish and support a Jewish homeland through colonization in the region of Palestine, which roughly corresponds to the Land of Israel in Judaism—itself central to Jewish history. Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible. Zionism was the main force behind the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, and remains the country's dominant ideology today.
Modern Zionism initially emerged in Central and Eastern Europe as a secular nationalist movement in the late 19th century, in reaction to new waves of antisemitism and in response to the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Zionist movement, led by Theodor Herzl, associated this national revival with lands in Palestine, a region then under Ottoman rule. The arrival of Zionist settlers in Palestine during this period is widely seen as marking the start of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Zionists justified their claim to Palestine by invoking a perceived historical right to it and widely asserted that this right outweighed that of the Palestinian Arab population.
In the 1917 Balfour Declaration, Britain declared its support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". The 1922 Mandate for Palestine placed Britain in control of Palestine until 1948, when the State of Israel declared its independence and war broke out. During the war, Israel expanded its territory to control over 78% of former Mandatory Palestine. After the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, an estimated 160,000 of 870,000 Palestinians in the territory remained, forming a Palestinian minority in Israel.
Zionist views have varied over time and are not uniform, resulting in a variety of types of Zionism. The Zionist mainstream has historically included Liberal, Labor, Revisionist, and Cultural Zionism, while groups like Brit Shalom and Ihud have been dissident factions within the movement. Religious Zionism is a variant that combines secular nationalism and religious conservatism. Advocates of Zionism have viewed it as a national liberation movement for the repatriation of an indigenous people (who were subject to persecution and share a national identity through national consciousness), to the homeland of their ancestors. Opponents of Zionism often characterize it as a supremacist, colonialist, or racist ideology, or as a settler colonialist movement.
Etymology and terminology
The word Zion itself derives from Mount Zion, a hill in Jerusalem and a term used in the Hebrew Bible. It has been used poetically as a synecdoche for the Land of Israel since the period of the Babylonian Exile, with particular importance in Jewish messianic belief. The term also appeared in political contexts in antiquity, including on coinage issued during the First Jewish Revolt against Roman rule. The messianic conception of "Zion" was used by the Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, who wrote Seeking Zion in 1862, a proto-Zionist text that was the first written work to demand that the Jews migrate en masse to Palestine.
The term "Zion" was first associated with a mass movement of Jews in connection with the activities of (lit. "Lovers of Zion"), also known as the (lit. 'Love of Zion'), who came together at the 1884 Katowice Conference, inspired by Leon Pinsker's pamphlet Auto-Emancipation.
The first use of the term as an -ism is attributed to the Austrian writer Nathan Birnbaum, in an 1890 article published in his periodical (itself named after Pinsker's pamphlet). Birnbaum used "Zionism" to refer to the various activities of the Lovers of Zion. In 1893, he published a pamphlet titled The National Rebirth of The Jewish People in Their Own Land, which advocated for European Jews to migrate to Palestine. In the same year, he founded Zion: Union of Austrian Societies for the Colonization of Palestine and Syria, to advance his proposals.
The paramount Zionist leader Theodor Herzl was unaware of Birnbaum's original usage of the term before popularizing the term "Zionism" himself. In Herzl's diary entries between 1895 and early 1896, he used the term "Zionist" to describe others such as the Lovers of Zion, whom Herzl saw as fellow Jewish nationalists, but without a concrete plan. When Herzl published his seminal pamphlet in 1896, he used the term "Zionist" in the text, often in a critical light, to describe emigration advocates like the Lovers of Zion. In his manifesto, Herzl called for the creation of a Jewish state, an idea he claimed was "an ancient one" that he did not "discover". Birnbaum wrote a review of the pamphlet, attributing its success to its author's proud embrace of Zionism, but also criticizing Herzl's cultural proposals. Birnbaum quickly struck up a correspondence with Herzl, and gave him a copy of The National Rebirth of The Jewish People in Their Own Land, as a sort of Zionist education.
Herzl did not begin identifying as a "Zionist" until months after the publication of . His usage of "Zionism" was later popularized when convening the 1897 First Zionist Congress and the Zionist Organization founded there.
Beliefs National self-determination
Fundamental to Zionism is the belief that Jews constitute a nation, and have a moral and historic right and need for self-determination. In contrast to the Zionist notion of nationhood the Judaic sense of being a nation was rooted in religious beliefs of unique chosenness and divine providence, rather than in ethnicity. Specifically, prayers emphasized distinctiveness from other nations where a connection to Eretz Israel and the anticipation of restoration were based on messianic beliefs and religious practices, not modern nationalist conceptions.
A Jewish home and state in Palestine
Early Zionism was ambiguous about the form self-determination might take. While some texts spoke of a "Jewish state", others spoke only of a "Jewish homeland" (in the Basel declaration) or "national home for the Jewish people" (the term used in the Balfour Declaration), usually under the sovereignty of the Ottoman and, later, the British Empire. According to Shlomo Avineri, it was only in the 1930s that a sovereign state rather than home became the fully articulated goal.
Similarly, some early Zionists, including Herzl, considered possibilities for a Jewish national home or state outside Palestine, for example in the Americas or Africa. In 1905 (after Herzl's death), a majority of the Zionist Congress voted against the proposal to settle in East Africa, and the supporters of this proposal, led by Israel Zangwill, split from the movement to form the Jewish Territorial Organization.
Leading up to the 17th Zionist congress, Chaim Weizmann said that he opposed seeking a Jewish state. In response, Revisionist Zionists demanded that the Zionist movement announce its intentions to seek a Jewish state. Labor Zionists found it difficult to make up their minds about it. Many Zionists believed that such a declaration would damage the movement and preferred remaining ambiguous.: "In advance of the Basel Congress, Weizmann said that there was no way to establish a Jewish majority in Palestine in the foreseeable future, and as such there was no point in demanding a Jewish state... He maintained, however, that there was a chance of achieving an agreement on the basis of parity. He caused a scandal. The Revisionists made the most of it—they demanded a resolution explicitly stating that the Zionist movement sought a Jewish state. Weizmann, Ben-Gurion, and many others believed that such a declaration would be detrimental to the cause and that it would be best to maintain ambiguity. The labor movement again had trouble deciding where it stood."
Over time, the belief that Jews have a moral and historic right and need for self-determination in Palestine became the dominant Zionist view. Zionists justified their claim to Palestine by invoking a perceived historical right to it and widely asserting that this right outweighed that of the Palestinian Arab population. After suffering as a minority in Europe and the Middle East, establishing a Jewish-majority state became a focus. Zionist organizations encouraged immigration to Palestine, and antisemitism was a strong push factor.
Establishing a Jewish demographic majority
Mainstream Zionism has always held that Jews should constitute a majority in Palestine; though some prominent Zionists disagreed. Israeli historian Yosef Gorny argues that this demographic change required annulling the majority status of the Arabs.: "This was potentially a much more dangerous situation than the struggle of two peoples maintaining a constant balance of forces between them for the same territory. The logical, and even inevitable, corollary of the aspiration towards territorial concentration was the desire to create a Jewish majority in Palestine. Without it, Zionism would forfeit its meaning, since the history of Exile had demonstrated the danger inherent in perpetual minority status. Thus, the desire for a Jewish majority was the key issue in the implementation of Zionism, implying a basic change in the international standing of the Jewish people and marking a turning-point in their history. The significance of this demand, and of the untiring endeavour to realize it in various ways, lay in the annulling of the majority standing of the Arabs of Palestine. The roots of the Jewish-Arab confrontation, therefore, are embedded in the incessant process of disturbance of the status quo ante as regards national status in Palestine." Gorny argues that the Zionist movement regarded Arab motives in Palestine as lacking both moral and historical significance. According to Israeli historian Simha Flapan, the view expressed in Golda Meir's 1969 interview comment that "there was no such thing as Palestinians" is a cornerstone of Zionist policy. After the Holocaust, even those on the far-left of the Zionist movement, including Martin Buber and other members of Brit Shalom, did not see the Arabs as having an equally weighty claim to nationhood in Palestine, and sought demographic parity. Judah Magnes, even after the Holocaust, continued to support a binational state, even one imposed by the Great Powers, but was unable to find any Arab interlocutors. British officials supporting the Zionist effort also held similar beliefs.