Why did Zionism Begin?

Answer 1

Anti-Zionism has a number of root causes. The following is a non-exhaustive list of the underlying causes of Anti-Zionism:

1) Jewish Blasphemy: There was a prevailing belief among the more religious Jews (Orthodox, Hasidim, Ultra-Orthodox, etc.) that the Galut (the Exile from the Holy Land) was a divine act of punishment because Jews had violated the commandments that God had given them. When God believed that the Jewish people had repented and were ready for the Messiah, this Messiah would come and bring the Jews back to the Holy Land. Until that time, Jews will remain in exile. The Orthodox and some branches of the Hasidim and Ultra-Orthodox eventually came around to supporting the State of Israel, but not on the grounds of it being a Jewish (religious) State. They typically support it because it is a nation with a large percentage of Jewish people. However, there are some very vocal factions in the Hasidic and Ultra-Orthodox communities who see a Return to the Holy Land as being an act of blasphemy because Jews should wait for God to bring them into the Holy Land and not to physically move there of their will.

2) Non-Jewish Holy Sites: Since the Holy Land does not only have Jewish Holy Sites, but also has Christian and Moslem Holy Sites, there was opposition in these communities to Jews having a physical monopoly and control of these holy sites. Therefore, these communities opposed the idea of a Jewish Nation State that could do exactly that.

3) Palestinian Indigenous Rights: The indigenous Palestinians were aggrieved that people from abroad would come to the land that the parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents had lived on and worked for as long as they could remember and buy that land from the Ottomans without consulting them. Moreover, these people had a particular agenda to establish a state on the land they called their own. Understandably, the Palestinians were opposed to the Zionist project for these emotional and political considerations.

4) Arab Nationalism: Arab Nationalism as a movement crystallized in the 1930s and came to the political fore in the 1960s. Arab Nationalism was a movement that sought to create an Arab State or multiple Arab States based on common cultural and historical markers. This movement began to make a tether between Arab cultural identity and Islamic religious identity. This was especially keen in places with large non-Moslem communities because those communities typically worked closely with the European colonizers seen to be repressing the Arab identity. Zionism, which was a movement based on a European cultural identity and a Jewish religious identity was antithetical to the Arab Nationalist movement ideologically and also claimed territory claimed by Arab Nationalists putting them at odds politically.

5) Anti-Semitism: This should be self-evident. The Logic goes thus: Anti-Semites oppose any Jewish aspiration to freedom and/or power. Zionism promotes Self-Determination for the Jewish people which is an aspiration to freedom and power. Therefore, Anti-Semites oppose Zionism.

6) Political Antagonism: If State A has a lot of wars with State B, State A and B will develop a mutual animosity towards each other and their raisons d'être. There are a number of politically independent or partially independent Peoples and States that came into conflict with the Halutzim (Jewish Pioneers in the British Mandate of Palestine), the Haganah et al. (Jewish Militias), and Tzahal (the Israeli Army).

There are currently other additional causes, but these came later as other perspectives were added.