Zionism

n.
A Jewish movement that arose in the late 19th century in response to growing anti-Semitism and sought to reestablish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Modern Zionism is concerned with the support and development of the state of Israel.

Zionist Zi'on·ist adj. & n.
Zionistic Zi'on·is'tic adj.

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Zion in Hebrew refers to the citadel of Jerusalem and also to the Kingdom of Heaven. Zionism refers to the movement among European Jews in the late nineteenth century to create a Jewish homeland. This movement was largely a consequence of the anti-Semitism which Jews were experiencing. 1897 Theodore Herzl (1860-1904) formally initiated a Zionist movement at the World Zionist Conference in Basle. Since that time there have been organized attempts to persuade Jews to emigrate to the ‘Land of Israel’, otherwise known as Palestine. It was not at first unquestioned that the Jewish state must be in Palestine; Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952), later first President of Israel, was influential in establishing this objective and it was much encouraged by the declaration of the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour (the ‘Balfour Declaration’) in November 1917 that Britain favoured a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine. Jews continued to emigrate to Palestine in relatively small numbers and a Jewish state might have been many decades or even centuries away had it not been for the persecution and extermination of the Jews by Hitler and his allies between 1933 and 1945, which legitimized the idea of a Jewish state to Jews and non-Jews alike as the only place where Jews might feel safe from persecution.

Zionism achieved its principal aim 1948 with the establishment of a state of Israel which acknowledged, in its ‘Law of Return’, the right of all Jews to live within its borders. Since that time ‘Zionism’ can be taken to refer to support for the continued existence of the state of Israel. Like many forms of nationalism, of which it is a special case, Zionism tolerates considerable ideological diversity: it is possible to be a religious or secular Zionist, and to believe in capitalism or socialism in the state of Israel.

Palestine was by no means unoccupied when Jewish settlement began, but populated by an Arab people, the Palestinians, who were, for the most part, forced into exile by a form of settlement which became, in effect, a military conquest (see also intifada, PLO). Underlying this problem is the deeper question of the legitimacy of a national claim to territory which dates back to a dispersion of the Jews in ad 70 under the Roman Empire. Some historians have even claimed that European Jews are not, at least for the most part, descended from the original inhabitants of Palestine, but from Caucasian tribes who converted to Judaism under the later Roman Empire.

— Lincoln Allison

Modern movement for the national independence of the Jewish people in Erets Israel. The ideology of the modern Zionist movement, whose goal was the return of the Jewish people to Erets Israel, drew upon a number of different strands to change the overall complexion of the concept of the Return to Zion from philanthropic to political, from messianic to utopian, from religious to secular-centered. Under the impact of modernity and against the background of the rise of nationalism throughout Europe the traditional messianic idea of the Return to Zion was rationalized into pragmatic programs by Judah Alkalai and Tsevi Hirsch Kalischer, both rabbis, who took the unorthodox view that Redemption must be attained through human effort rather than divine intervention. Both worked until their deaths in the 1870s to establish Jewish colonies in Erets Israel, and while their ideas were vehemently opposed by Orthodox rabbis they became the basis of religious Zionism.

Another forerunner of modern Zionism was Moses Hess, who published Rome and Jerusalem in 1862, calling for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Erets Israel founded on socialist principles in a ramified network of agricultural settlements and cooperative communities. Real practical work began with the founding of the Ḥibbat Zion movement in Eastern Europe against the background of the pogroms in Russia in 1881. The movement was bolstered ideologically by Leo Pinsker's Autoemancipation (1882), which called for the creation "of a Jewish nationality, of a people living upon its own soil." Under Pinsker's leadership, Ḥibbat Zion was instrumental in founding a series of agricultural settlements (moshavot) in Erets Israel all through the 1880s (Rishon le-Zion, Rosh Pinnah, Zikhron Yaakov, Gederah, etc.). This brand of "practical" Zionism was opposed by Aḥad Ha-Am, who saw the dream of creating a Jewish homeland in Erets Israel as unrealistc as a solution for the Jewish problem and proposed instead a cultural renaissance of the Jewish people through the agency of the Hebrew language and Hebrew literature, with the Land of Israel becoming a spiritual center strengthening Jewish life throughout the Diaspora.

However, the tranformation of the Zionist idea into a political movement is to be credited to Theodor Herzl, who convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897 and founded the World Zionist Organization. The Basel Program adopted at the Congress established the aim of Zionism as creating a home for the Jewish people in Erets Israel under public law and with the consent of governments. Within the framework of the Organization and in a series of yearly Congresses, all the currents of Zionist thought contended with one another, until the practical and political approaches merged into Synthetic Zionism under the leadership of Chaim Weizmann. Politically, Weizmann played a key role in bringing about the publication of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, which recognized the right of the Jewish people to establish a national home in Palestine. Practically, settlement activity continued apace, led by the socialist camp, which came to dominate political life in the Palestinian yishuv and under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion became more and more influential in the Zionist movement as a whole.

Between the World Wars numerous Zionist youth groups (Hashomer Hatsair, Bnei Akiva, Betar, Hehalutz) were active in Eastern Europe, promoting immigration (aliyah) to Erets Israel and opposed by such rival organizations as the Bund and the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Israel. In Lithuania and Poland the religious Zionist Mizrachi movement sponsored the Hebrew-language Yavne school system while Zionist-oriented Tarbut schools promoted Hebrew culture. Members of the Zionist movements were also in the forefront of Jewish resistance and uprisings during the Holocaust.

In the meanwhile Zionism was becoming a mass movement in the West as well. The American movement, dominated by such figures as Louis Brandeis, Stephen S. Wise<silver<yishuv Contended with Arab and British Hostility, Culminating in Large-Scale Arab Riots in 1921, 1929, and 1936 and the British White Paper of 1939 Limiting Jewish Immigration and Land Purchases. with the Struggle Intensifying After World War II, the Zionist Effort Was Geared to Creating "a Jewish Commonwealth" Based on Partition of the Land of Israel in Accordance with the Original Proposal Made by the British in the Peel Commision Report of 1937. with the Establishment of the State of Israel, Zionism Became a Byword for the Nation-Building Effort As Such, Aimed At the ingathering of the Exiles, the economic development of the country, and the creation of secure borders to provide a safe haven for the Jewish people.

Throughout its history the Zionist movement has faced hostility from both within and without as well as considrable ambivalence among Jews with regard to the centrality of the Jewish State. The Arabs, who had always opposed Zionism totally, were joined after the Yom Kippur War of 1973 by the Third World in an anti-Israel campaign that culminated in the 1975 UN resolution equating Zionism with racism. In the Jewish world, the ultra-Orthodox and the Reform movement have opposed Zionism as challenging tradition and assimilationism, respectively. However, the Reform movement, reversing its position in the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885, defining the Jews as a religious community rather than a nation, affirmed in the Columbus Platform of 1937 the obligation of all Jewry to aid in the upbuilding of a Jewish homeland in Palestine as a refuge for the oppressed and as a center for Jewish cultural and spiritual life. In recent years the Reform movement joined the Zionist Organization and has actively endorsed immigration to Israel. In Israel itself, the term "post-Zionism" has become popular in certain circles seeking to suggest that the movement is obsolete and at the same time to "demythologize" its achievements.

In the final analysis, the Zionist idea achieved the Jewish state. It became the great national force in the Jewish world and through a monumental effort involving millions of Jews around the world set the stage for the establishment of the State of Israel. As such, Zionism and the Jewish national renascence are synonymous.

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The word "Zionism" was coined by Jewish nationalist Nathan Birnbaum (1864-1937) in 1893. Jews in Eastern Europe, having experienced centuries of persecution and suspecting more was coming, began to take literally the words spoken at every Seder meal, "Next year in Jerusalem!"

Zion is the traditional name for one of the hills in the city that was to become known as Jerusalem, the "City of Peace." It is the spiritual center of the Jewish universe, the Holy Land given to Abraham and his descendants forever. Ever since the destruction of their beloved Temple in 70 ce, Jews had longed to return, to establish Eretz Yisrael, the "Land of Israel."

But in the late nineteenth century the Holy Land was still known as Palestine. Jews had migrated there to live, work, and study. It was the destination of many a pilgrimage. But it wasn't home.

The first Zionist Congress was held in 1897, convened by the man who has come to be known as the "father" of political Zionism, Theodore Herzl (1860-1904). That first congress adopted the Basel Program, named after the town in which the representatives met. Their purpose was to establish in Palestine, then under Turkish rule, a permanent home for Jewish people. They formed the World Zionist Organization, the mission of which was to win approval for their cause by appealing to the leading world powers. It was an uphill battle all the way. The Balfour Declaration, passed by the British government in 1917, began the process. The next year, after Britain received a League of Nations mandate to settle the area, saw an influx of Jewish migration. By the time World War II broke out, Jewish residents in Palestine numbered about 500,000.

No one knows what might have happened had the aftermath of the war not brought to the attention of the world the atrocities committed by the Nazis. But with the news of the Holocaust fresh in the public mind, in 1947 the newly formed United Nations overwhelmingly approved the establishment of a Jewish state in part of Palestine. The birth of the State of Israel was proclaimed on May 14, 1948 (the 5th day of the month of Iyar, in the year 5708 by the Jewish calendar).

Seven Arab nations promptly invaded the new state, and the first War of Liberation was soon underway. It continues to this day.

Not all Jews are pro-Zionist. A very vocal faction of Orthodox Jews, calling themselves "anti-Zionists," are happy Israel exists. It offers, after all, a safe haven for oppressed Jews to study Torah. But these ultra-Orthodox Jews believe very strongly that God pulls rank even over the United Nations. Israel must be divinely established and protected or it will not last.

The ultra-Orthodox point out that the Torah lists three oaths Israel took when it began its second exile back in the first century. Israel would not "go up like a wall." That is, massive force would not be used to restore the nation. God made Israel swear it would not rebel against the nations of the world. God made non-Jews promise not to oppress Israel "too much." Persecution is God's way of strengthening his people. The ultra-Orthodox feel that it's far more productive to study Torah and remain faithful. God will handle the details.

In deference to their religious beliefs, many ultra-Orthodox Jews living in Israel today are exempt from serving in the Israeli army; in addition, they receive other social benefits not extended to everyone. Their special status was established when the state of Israel first began and has been guaranteed over the years by their increasing political clout. This status infuriates less religious or secular Jews, many of whom fight for political rather than religious reasons. They wonder why they should fight and perhaps die to protect the ultra-Orthodox. While the religious political parties wield considerable power in Israel, in recent years those who support Zionism and oppose the military exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox have gained many followers. In Israel's 2003 January elections, the number of Knesset seats they won almost doubled their ranks in the government.

Numerous questions arise surrounding the issue of Zionism. Should Jews have their own homeland? Must faithful Jews live in Israel? Can you be a Jew without being religious? Are religious Jews hindering political progress and security? These are the kinds of questions Judaism has yet to answer. While the debate continues, war breaks out in the streets. Palestinians rightly claim they are being pushed out of their homes. Israelis justifiably feel grieved and outraged by the numerous suicide bombings carried out by Palestinian extremists. Americans debate which side they should support. And many people around the world wonder whether the Israelis have become the oppressors, rather than the oppressed.

Sources: Bridger, David, ed. The New Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Behrman House, 1962. The Jewish Virtual Library. http://www.us-israel.org. September 14, 2003.

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The emergence of modern political Zionism in the late nineteenth century did not inspire great enthusiasm on American shores. German American Jews, who numbered about 200,000 at the time Theodore Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress in 1897, rejected calls for creation of a Jewish state. Reared in the classical Reform movement, they considered the United States their "New Zion" and feared that Jewish nationalism might compromise their standing as loyal American citizens. At its 1885 Pittsburgh meeting, the Reform movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis declared, "We consider ourselves no longer a nation but a religious community and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine … nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state."

The arrival of over 2 million eastern European Jews between 1880 and 1920 altered the demographic profile of American Jewry and opened new doors for the Zionist movement. Reared in traditional Judaism or in the socialist movements of the Old World, the new arrivals proved more sympathetic to the idea of a Jewish homeland. In 1884a small group of Jews in New York City formed the nation's first Zionist organization, Hoveve Zion (literally the lovers of Zion). By 1898 a number of American Zionist groups merged into the Federation of American Zionists, counting some ten thousand members across the country.

The American Zionist movement enjoyed its most rapid growth under the leadership of the famed attorney and eventual Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis. According to Brandeis, American Jews could support the Zionist cause without sacrificing their status as loyal American citizens. His "Brandeisian synthesis" described the United States in pluralist terms, encouraging ethnic difference and drawing strong parallels between the aspirations of Americans and Zionists. With Brandeis's support, President Woodrow Wilson backed Great Britain's November 1917 Balfour Declaration, which promised a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

For the next twenty-five years the Zionist movement suffered from political infighting, financial difficulties, and an American political culture unsympathetic to its long-term goal. During the 1920s conflicting leadership styles ruined any hope of consensus, while the Great Depression diverted needed dollars from organizational coffers. American isolationism and the rise of domestic anti-Semitism in the 1930s discouraged Jewish leaders from adopting an aggressive Zionist stance.

U.S. entry into World War II and word of Adolf Hitler's "final solution" mobilized American Jews behind the Zionist cause. By 1948 membership in Zionist organizations swelled to 1 million as American Jews from across the denominational spectrum rallied for Jewish statehood. Even the once anti-Zionist Reform movement abandoned its opposition to Zionism during its 1937 rabbinic convention in Columbus, Ohio. A small group of Reform rabbis formed the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism, but it faded quickly with news of Nazi atrocities.

President Harry S. Truman recognized the state of Israel a mere eleven minutes after the new Jewish state declared its independence in May 1948. While a few American Jews immigrated to Israel in the 1950s and early 1960s, most advanced the Zionist cause with financial contributions to Israel and resisted the call for a physical return to Zion. Philanthropic Zionism dominated the movement for the first twenty years of the postwar period.

At the time of the 1967 Six Day War, American Zionism underwent a fundamental transformation, as many young Jews rejected the humanitarian-based Zionist views of their parents and embraced a form of Jewish nationalism that encouraged aliyah (immigration, literally to rise up). Jewish high school students looked forward to spending a summer in Israel, while undergraduates took advantage of overseas study programs to matriculate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In the 1990s several Jewish philanthropists endowed the birthright program, promising every North American Jew a free trip to Israel.

In the late twentieth century American Jews took a more active role in domestic Israeli politics, especially around issues of religious pluralism. Both the Conservative and Reform movements established Jerusalem campuses for their respective seminaries and lobbied Israeli government officials for greater recognition of nontraditional forms of Jewish expression. They demanded recognition of their clergy's right to perform weddings and conversions, staged protests at Jerusalem's Western Wall, and sought inclusion on local religious councils.

American immigration to Israel also reflected a fundamental political shift. Between 1967 and 1973 almost sixty thousand American Jews packed their belongings and moved to the Jewish state. Most hailed from nontraditional religious backgrounds and viewed their aliyah as an opportunity to help create an idealistic Jewish homeland. By the 1990s though the number of American immigrants plummeted to fewer than three thousand a year.

Despite their strong support for the state of Israel, American Jews have never considered mass immigration to the Jewish state a viable option. Zionism has remained a minority movement in the United States.

Bibliography

Cohen, Naomi W. American Jews and the Zionist Idea. New York: Ktav, 1975.

Halperin, Samuel. The Political World of American Zionism. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1961.

Urofsky, Melvin I. American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975.

Movement for the establishment of an independent state in Palestine for the Jewish people.

Zionism may be seen as a national liberation movement for a Jewish homeland based on a nineteenth-century European political model. It defined Jews as a nation whose collective future depended upon the establishment of a national territorial entity in Eretz Yisrael (in Hebrew, "the land of Israel"), from which most Jews had been dispersed by the Roman Empire at the beginning of the second century C.E. The movement's name was coined by the Viennese Jewish writer Nathan Birnbaum in 1885 and derives from Zion, one of the biblical names for Jerusalem, the focus of worldwide Judaism.

Zionists believed that antisemitism was endemic to the diaspora; thus, the achievement of national and civil rights in host nations, while desirable, was insufficient to secure economic and cultural interests for Jews in the long run. Few Zionists believed that the diaspora would be swept away (as was attempted a century later by Hitler's Nazi Germany), but a Jewish homeland - which would serve as a cultural and political model and as a magnet for its finest sons and daughters - could help to secure a future for Jews.

Foundations of Zionism

Through the centuries of exile, ritual, prayer, and the study of sacred texts preserved for Jews the knowledge that Judaism had developed in Eretz Yisrael and Zion. In nineteenth-century Europe during the Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment), revival of the Hebrew language as a nonreligious, literary medium transmitted secular works and secularized versions of sacred histories to assimilated generations losing faith in religion and religious authority. If Zionism were to ensure the survival of the Jewish people, it could do so only by going through the modern European Jewish experience, not by denying it. Zionists were Jews who believed that only in Zion could Jewish culture and the Jewish people be re-established and secure. At that time, however, Zion was located in Palestine, within the Ottoman Empire, and was populated by Arabs under Ottoman jurisdiction.

A "proto-Zionism" had existed in fact before it was fully defined or before the word itself was coined. As a way of helping the indigent and scholarly Jewish populations in Ottoman Palestine, Western European philanthropists such as Edmond de Rothschild and Sir Moses Montefiore proffered aid to projects that later would come to be associated with the Zionist movement - the purchase of land for settlements, farms, and businesses from Ottoman officials and Arab landlords; the building of schools for vocational training; and the opening of medical facilities.

Jewish emigration to Eretz Yisrael also antedated the emergence of a Zionist movement. Jewish religious leaders had always endorsed the idea of living in the Holy Land as a means of discharging religious duties, and had actively promoted the expansion of Jewish communities in Safed, Tiberias, Hebron, and Jerusalem, creating financial mechanisms to meet the immigrants' material needs.

The wave of pogroms that followed the assassination of Russia's Czar Alexander II in 1881 turned an attachment for Zion into an ideology embraced by some of Russia's secular Jewish leaders and intellectuals. Newly promulgated regressive legislation and the resuscitation of antisemitic rhetoric dashed the hopes of those who had believed Russia's polity would evolve into a democracy, with basic rights granted to its population and the ideals of tolerance espoused. Although emigration to the United States and Britain was a popular way of escaping the immediate disabilities imposed by Russian policies, some educated Jews saw that moving to another land would neither end antisemitism nor secure a Jewish future. They argued that only a purposeful immigration with the goal of establishing a Jewish majority in a territory would achieve international respectability for Jewry and help protect Jews everywhere against discrimination. For those who called on Jews to liberate themselves, the Zionist idea supplanted the ideal of assimilation. Zionism was presented as resolving the Jewish problem by normalizing the conditions of Jewish existence.

Development of Zionist Organizations

Although many rabbinical authorities opposed Zionism for its secular and humanistic principles, many rabbis - most notably Samuel Mohilever and Isaac Jacob Reines - welcomed Zionism; they affiliated with Hibbat Zion, the first international Zionist organization to be founded, partly because they reasoned that in Eretz Yisrael a social and cultural environment could be created that was conducive to religious observance.

The Orthodox rabbinate did not, however, establish an entirely harmonious relationship with the secular leadership in Hibbat Zion. Many Orthodox %
rabbis could not abide the dynamics of a political struggle that effected compromises between the demands of Zionism's secular and religious constituencies. Nor were the Orthodox entirely comfortable in an organization that did not acknowledge the primacy of religious law and rabbinic authority. The first nonsecular Zionist group, the Mizrahi, opened its office in 1893, but most rabbis, though comfortable with the nationalist claims of Zionism, were unwilling to accede to Zionist demands to share power and resources in local Jewish communities. As a consequence of the frustrating handicaps under which Hibbat Zion labored in the 1880s and 1890s, Zionism was at an impasse when Theodor Herzl undertook to lead the struggle for a Jewish state.

Unaware of developments in Eastern Europe, Herzl, a Viennese journalist, championed the idea of Jewish nationhood in response to the outbreak of antisemitism in France during the fraudulent espionage trial of Alfred Dreyfus (1894 - 1895). In 1896 Herzl published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), a book that set forth the argument that both the world and the Jews needed a Jewish state. In 1897 Herzl succeeded in drawing together representatives from the local and regional Hibbat Zion organizations in eastern Europe and Jews from western Europe, establishing and becoming president of a new Zionist framework, the World Zionist Organization (WZO). Authorized by the WZO to secure international recognition for Zionist political goals, Herzl pursued in the capitals of Europe and in the Ottoman capital, Istanbul, official sanction for Jewish colonization in Palestine, but his efforts, albeit feverish and intense, were unsuccessful. The Ottoman sultan Abdülhamit II was not persuaded that a larger Jewish population in Palestine was consistent with his imperial political objectives or that such a population would promote economic development.

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Herzl's leadership did broaden the popularity of Zionism in western and eastern Europe and enlarge its Orthodox membership. Herzl focused the activities of the WZO on diplomacy and finances. This approach mobilized the support of a number of Orthodox rabbis concerned with easing the economic hardships in Palestine for eastern European immigrants and hopefuls, as well as with the creation of a hospitable political climate there. By permitting groups to shift the mode of their representation from regional affiliation to ideological, the WZO was also used advantageously by the Orthodox to influence the direction of policies and, for a number of years, to exclude Jewish culture from the scope of Zionist activities.

Zionism's preoccupation with political solutions and stratagems triggered opposition. Against the political orientation associated with the leadership of Hibbat Zion, the writer Ahad Ha-Am argued that the purpose of Zionism ought to be to revive a modern Jewish culture through the medium of the Hebrew language and a renewed interpretation of classic religious texts; a new Jewish state could only be founded with new artifacts of Jewish culture. Cultural Zionist Ahad Ha-Am's insights on the problems besetting the Jewish people and the Zionist movement helped to inspire a group opposing Herzl's leadership and political Zionism - the Democratic Faction. This group, led by the scientist Chaim Weizmann, did not repudiate political methods or consider them insignificant; rather, they insisted that just as legal titles (to land) could facilitate resettlement, so could settlement lead to concrete political gains. Insisting that the structure of the WZO must be reformed to increase popular participation and broaden its agenda, the Democratic Faction defined its own priorities as the investigation of the physical, political, and social conditions of Palestine for purposes of increasing Jewish immigration.

Creating a Jewish community in Palestine was not simply the solution to continuing antisemitism but also the opportunity to establish a whole and vigorous modern Jewish life. In the early years of the twentieth century, efforts to create a youth movement and to popularize Zionism among the young led several Zionist leaders to synthesize socialism with Zionism. No longer would Jews have to choose between socialism (popular in Russia and in the Pale of Settlement) and Zionism. Some Socialist-Zionists promoted a non-Marxist socialism, emphasizing social welfare and justice; others insisted that even the Marxist version of socialism could be combined with Zionism. Branches of the first Labor Zionist party, Poʿalei Zion, founded in 1906, opened in many towns and cities of eastern Europe, attracting many educated Jewish teenagers. Ha-Halutz, the young pioneer farm movement, was nonpartisan and attracted many capable Austro-Hungarian Jewish youth, especially when it was funded by the WZO after World War I.

Before the conclusion of World War I, Zionists were unable to engage openly in mass mobilization in many countries. In the United States and western Europe, where organizations could operate freely, Zionism did not hold the imagination of most immigrants, who were struggling to work their way out of grinding poverty. In Russia, where the majority of Jews presumably felt sympathy with Zionist aims, Zionist activities were hobbled by the Russian Revolution, Soviet dictatorship, and persecution.

Establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine

With the issuance of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and the Sèvres Treaty of 1920, Britain became formally committed to the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish national home. This gave Zionism its first major political victory. World War I had changed the map of Eastern Europe as well as that of the Middle East, thereby providing Zionists an opportunity to engage in grassroots political organization among previously isolated Jewish communities. Youth groups expanded, and camps were created to offer vocational and Hebrew-language training to prepare Jews for life and work in Palestine.

Throughout its history, the Zionist movement has had to make crucial choices among several options: Eretz Yisrael (Palestine) versus another territory, such as Uganda, Canada, Australia; a national home versus a cultural center for world Jewry; a Jewish nation-state versus a binational state in which Jews and Arabs might share political power; neutrality during World War I versus pro-British cooperation; high political profile versus quiet political lobbying; and uniformity versus diversity in political goals. Each decision was made after great debate during and outside of Zionist congresses, often triggering enmity, hard feelings, and the creation of new splinters and factions. One of the most serious splits occurred when Vladimir (Zeʾev) Jabotinsky left the WZO to create his own Revisionist Zionist movement.

With increasing knowledge of the extent of the Holocaust during World War II, the Zionist movement chose Jewish survival over acquiescence in British restrictions on immigration, which resulted in an anti-British militancy aimed at gaining free entry for Jewish refugees into Palestine from 1944 until 1948. With the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, the fulfilment of one of Zionism's goals was endorsed by international consensus - majority support at the United Nations, official recognition by many of the world's nations, and acceptance by most Jews (religious Jews excepted). The Arab and Muslim world remained outside this consensus. Post-1948 Zionism evolved into a movement dedicated to immigration (aliyah) for as many Jews as possible, land purchase for continued settlement, and political and economic support for Israel through institutionalized activity. Despite the recent "post-Zionist" intellectual trend that urges a redefinition of Israel as an inclusive state for all its citizens and detaches it from its special diaspora Jewish connections, many Jews continue to consider themselves Zionists in affirming this connection and the importance of Israel in sustaining their Jewish identity.

Bibliography

Avineri, Shlomo. The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State. New York: Basic Books, 1981.

Dowty, Alan. The Jewish State: A Century Later. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

Halpern, Ben. The Idea of the Jewish state. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.

Hertzberg, Arthur. The Fate of Zionism: A Secular Future forIsrael and Palestine. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003.

Hertzberg, Arthur, ed. The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1997.

Laqueur, Walter. A History of Zionism: From the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel. New York: Schocken Books, 2003.

Rubinstein, Amnon. From Herzl to Rabin: The Changing Image of Zionism. New York: Holmes and Meier, 2000.

Sternhell, Zeev. The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism,Socialism, and the Making of the Jewish State, translated by David Maisel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.

Vital, David. Zionism: The Crucial Phase. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1987; New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

— DONNA ROBINSON DIVINE
UPDATED BY NEIL CAPLAN

The belief that Jews should have their own nation; Jewish nationalism. Zionism gained much support among Jews and others in the early twentieth century, and the hoped-for nation was established in the late 1940s in Palestine, as the state of Israel. Zionism is opposed by most Arabs. (See Arab-Israeli conflict.)

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Common misspelling(s) of Zionist

• Sionist

Dansk (Danish)
n. - zionisme

Nederlands (Dutch)
zionisme

Français (French)
n. - sionisme

Deutsch (German)
n. - Zionismus, (jüd.-nationale Bewegung)

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - σιωνισμός

Italiano (Italian)
sionismo

Português (Portuguese)
n. - sionismo (m)

Русский (Russian)
сионизм

Español (Spanish)
n. - sionismo

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - sionism

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
犹太复国主义

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 猶太復國主義

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 시온주의

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - シオニズム

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) الصهيونيه, الحركه الصهيونيه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮ציונות‬

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