Timeline of anti-Zionism

This timeline of anti-Zionism chronicles the history of anti-Zionism, including events in the history of anti-Zionist thought.

1800–1896 1880s – The Jewish community of Jerusalem (which largely consisted of Orthodox Jews) regarded the emergence of Zionism as a threat, particularly for its secular western character and redefinition of Jewishness. Through this decade, the Orthodox communities fought the Zionist idea of Jews as a people in search of a homeland, rather than being, for Judaism, a community awaiting redemption from the Messiah. The established Jewish community in Jerusalem denounced Zionist newcomers to the Ottoman authorities.Zvi Sobel, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi (eds.)Tradition, Innovation, Conflict: Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Israel, SUNY Press, 2012 pp.5-7. 1882 – United States minister to the Ottoman Empire, Lew Wallace, was moved by the hardships of Russian refugees he saw starving in the streets of Constantinople. He was called at the Porte's Foreign Office. He received a communication from the minister of foreign affairs in which the statement was made that Jews would be made welcome anywhere in the empire except in Palestine.United States, Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)This directive was contrary to one of the Capitulations of the Russo-Turkish Wars, which guaranteed Russian subjects unrestricted travel throughout the Ottoman Empire. However, Palestine visas for pilgrims and businessmen were still allowed to visit for limited periods (Mandel 6.) In reaction to Leon Pinsker's Autoemanzipation! that asserted Jewish emancipation required a homeland of their own outside Europe, Viennese rabbi Adolf Jellinek replied that 'Jews did not have any national characteristics, as such but "thanks to their universalism they adapt and absorb qualities from the nations in whose midst they are born and educated. We are at home in Europe and regard ourselves as children of the lands in which we were born and raised, whose languages we speak, and whose cultures make up our intellectual substance. We are Germans, Frenchmen, Magyars, Italians, and so forth, with every fiber of our being. We have long ceased to be true, thoroughbred Semites, and we have long ago lost sense of Hebrew nationality."Robert Wistrich 'Zionism and Its Religious Critics in Fin –De-Siècle Vienna, ' in S, Almog et al. Zionism and Religion, Brandeis/UPNE 1998 pp.140–158 pp.142–43. The Russian Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society is formed, supporting hundreds of institutions in Syria and Palestine but refusing to serve Jews and functionally acting as an extension of Tsarist Russian policy.Mandel 54: "By 1909 (a dislike of the Jews among Greek Orthodox Arabs) had become apparent" 1885 – The Pittsburgh Platform, convened by Reform Judaism leaders Kaufmann Kohler and Isaac Mayer Wise, denounces Zionism, adopting the text: "We recognize, in the modern era of universal culture of heart and intellect, the approaching of the realization of Israel s great Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice, and peace among all men. We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state". 1891 – 24 June, Arab notables in Jerusalem petition the Ottoman Grand Vizier to prohibit Russian Jews from entering Palestine and purchasing land there. Mandel xviii 1897 – Chief Rabbi of Vienna Moritz Güdemann publishes his pamphlet Nationaljudenthum, his detailed rebuttal to Herzl's pamphlet Der Judenstaat rejecting Zionism as antithetical to Judaism.Marsha L. Rozenblit, Reconstructing a National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria During World War I, Oxford University Press, 2004 p.35. It is one of the most enlightening theological and political critiques of the Zionist vision ever written. Güdemann feared that a day might come when “Judaism with cannons and bayonets would reverse the roles of David and Goliath to constitute a ridiculous contradiction of itself.” Henri Lammens, a Belgian scholar at the Jesuit University of Beirut, publishes "Zionism and the Jewish Colonies" in Études, describing the first Zionist Congress: “As at an ordinary meeting of ‘goyim,’ almost all the delegates were in evening dress and white tie; rabbinical cloaks seemed very sparse. (...) The Jews of Jerusalem were recognisable by their repulsive grubbiness and above all by that famous Semitic nose, which is not, like the Greek nose, a pure myth" via Mandel 53, noting the blend of Antizionism and Antisemitism

Jacques Cœur writing in , describes Jews as "always wandering, leaderless, without a homeland, and consequently without the means to resist the slightest power that would seek to destroy them, their first maxim is to have none. Quite different from all other peoples of the earth, their security depends on the degree of their servitude.

Hermann Adler, the Chief Rabbi of the Ashkenazi movement in London, and Moritz Güdemann, the Chief Rabbi of Viennese Jewry, criticized Herzl's proposal for a Munich conference on Palestine, and the executive board of the German Rabbinical Association, headed by Sigmund Maybaum, expressed the view in a public declaration in June 1897 affirming that: "The aspirations of so-called Zionists to found a Jewish nation state in Palestine, contradict the messianic promise of Judaism as it is written in the Holy Scripture and in later religious sources."

After the First Zionist Congress in Basel 1897 – The Jewish Labour Bund, a secular anti-Zionist socialist party whose purpose was to unify Jews within the Russian Empire is founded in Vilnius on 7 October.Jonathan D. Smele, Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916–1926, Rowman & Littlefield, 2015 p.245. 1898 – Karl Kraus writes Eine Krone für Zion, a polemic against (political) Zionism, accusing Herzl of supporting antisemites by promoting the idea Jews have multiple loyalties, and promoting their idea Jews should leave their countries. In 1899, compelled by a "holy duty of conscience," Yousef al-Khalidi, Arab mayor of Jerusalem and a member of the Ottoman Parliament, wrote a letter to Zadok Kahn, the Chief Rabbi of France to voice his concerns that Zionism would jeopardize the friendly associations between Muslims, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire. He wrote: 'Who can deny the rights of the Jews to Palestine? My God, historically it is your country!" But Khalidi suggested that, since Palestine was already inhabited, the Zionists should find another place for the implementation of their political goals. "... in the name of God," he wrote, "let Palestine be left alone."' 1902 – The American Israelite calls Zionism a "pernicious agitation" that would undermine the acceptance of Jews in the countries where they currently resided. The Israelite is also used by a number of editorial contributors such as David Philipson, Moses Mielziner and Jewish history scholar Gotthard Deutsch to oppose Zionism, arguing that Judaism was a religion exclusively,See Who is a Jew? and thus its people were stateless. 1903: Publication of the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an antisemitic forgery originating in the Russian empire, written in the months after a Russian Zionist congress in September 1902, purporting to document a Jewish conspiracy for world control. The forgery would prove influential on antisemitism and later anti-Zionism over the following decades. 1905 – Jewish Territorialist Organization splits off from the World Zionist Organization, in order to obtain "a large tract of territory (preferably within the British Empire) wherein to found a Jewish Home of Refuge" outside of Palestine. They explored the idea of settlement in Cyrenaica.Folksgrupe (a Jewish Duma faction that sought, as opposed to Russian Zionist members, communal autonomy) founded in Vilna in March. 1908–14 – growing Palestinian and Ottoman opposition to the Zionist project begins to take shape. 1912 – May. Agudat Israel forms in Katowice, attended by 200 orthodox rabbis from Germany and Eastern Europe, with Nathan Birnbaum as it chief ideologue, representing the first organized Orthodox opposition to Zionism and the foundation of a Jewish state. 1915 – Philosopher Hermann Cohen publishes Deutschtum und Judentum, opposed the Zionist programme arguing that Jews had no need for a homeland since they were an integral part of Europe. 1916, November – Claude Montefiore, opposing Zionism for threatening to create a problem of loyalty for Jews in the diaspora, argued that anti-Semites backed Zionism, commenting “How can a man belong to two nations at once?... No wonder that all anti-Semites are enthusiastic Zionists.” 1917 – Edwin Samuel Montagu submits his Memorandum on the Anti-Semitism of the British Government, in response to ongoing discussions around the Balfour Declaration. His view was that the British proposal was anti-Semitic, that it meant that Jews would be given preferential treatment over Muslims and Christians who also had a long history of attachment to the country and that it would rally anti-Semites the world over. Anti-Jewish prejudices could not be overcome by the creation of a Jewish state. He stated also that “Zionism has always seemed to me to be a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom" and outlines his four principles of anti-Zionism.” 1917 – David Lindo Alexander, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and Claude Montefiore, president of the Anglo-Jewish Association objecting to published statements of the Zionist leaders that "Jewish settlements in Palestine shall be recognized as possessing a national character " and the intention “to invest the Jewish settlers in Palestine with certain special rights in excess of those enjoyed by the rest of the population”.

After the Balfour Declaration 1917 – In the United Kingdom, the anti-Zionist League of British Jews was established. 1918 – Rabbi Isaac Breuer declared: 'Zionism is the most terrible enemy that has ever arisen to the Jewish Nation. The anti-nationalistic Reform engages it (the Jewish nation) at least in an open fight, but Zionism kills the nation and then elevates the corpse to the throne.'S. Almog, Jehuda Reinharz, Anita Shapira (eds.), Zionism and Religion, UPNE, 1998 citing Isaac Breuer,Judenproblem, Halle 1918 p.89 1918 – Yevsektsiya was formed in Soviet Russia to fight Zionism and bring Communism to the Jewish masses. 1919 – Jewish congressman Julius Kahn presents an anti-Zionist petition to Woodrow Wilson ahead of the Paris Peace Conference, including the statement: "We protest against the political segregation of the Jews and the re-establishment in Palestine of a distinctively Jewish State as utterly opposed to the principles of democracy which it is the avowed purpose of the World's Peace Conference to establish. Whether the Jews be regarded as a 'race' or as a 'religion', it is contrary to the democratic principles for which the world war was waged to found a nation on either or both of these bases." The petition included signatures from over 300 prominent American Jews, including Henry Morgenthau, Sr. and Simon W. Rosendale. -The US Government sponsored King–Crane Commission advocated the creation of a Greater Syria, to include Palestine, stating "nor can the erection of such a Jewish State be accomplished without the gravest trespass upon the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine".See King-Crane Commission#Jewish homeland