What Is Zionism?

that's been in the news a lot lately, Zionism. Zionism is a nationalist movement that successfully established an independent state for Jewish people in nineteen forty eight and continues to support Judaism's claim to Israel, its ancient homeland. It's also one of the most complex and controversial political ideas of the past one hundred and fifty years. Not only is the history of Zionism complex and messy, but so are

the emotions and opinions surrounding it today. A criticism of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians has stoked protests and calls for economic boycotts of Israel, similar to those levied against South Africa during apartheid. However, criticisms of Israel strike a nerve and some supporters of the state, because the line between anti Zionism and antisemitism can be dangerously thin. So

today let's talk about how all of this started. Although Zionism draws its name from the biblical Mount Zion, it isn't a primarily religious movement. It's true that some Jewish people have yearned for a return to the so called Promised Land of Abraham for two thousand years, but leaders of the modern Zionist movement were mostly secular and even agnostic Jewish people who identified their people as a nation rather than a religion. Zionism, for them meant the creation

of an independent political state for this Jewish nation. Zionism wouldn't be so problematic if it wasn't focused on the creation of this nation. In what's sometimes known as the Holy Land or the Palestine Region, a small strip of historically and culturally important land between the Mediterranean Sea and

the River Jordan. It's considered holy by multiple religions. Furthermore, Arab Palestinians have comprised the majority of people living there for centuries, under the yoke of both the Ottoman and British empires. The result is one of the thorniest political

issues in the modern world. Zionists and some other supporters of Israel argue that the safety and continued existence of the brutally persecuted Jewish people depends upon the existence of a Jewish state, and that the rightful place for that

state is Judaism's ancestral homeland. Meanwhile, Palestinians and their supporters see Zionism as an at best imperialist and at worst racist movement that forcefully colonized Arab lands and homes and subjugated the native Palestinian people as second class citizens in areas like Gaza, a territory that's been under Israeli military control since nineteen sixty seven, and now decades of conflict have erupted into the Fifth War between Gaza and Israel.

To understand how we got here, let's start with the birth of the modern Zionist movement, which took place in Europe at the tail end of the eighteen hundreds. Nationalist movement swept Europe in the early and mid eighteen hundreds. For centuries, different ethnic and cultural groups had been forced to live together under sprawling empires and kingdoms, but at that time, new European states were forged in places like Italy and Germany around people with shared language and cultural history.

This left some European Jewish people wondering are we not also a nation? They were living at the time in a scattered diaspora in nation states that mostly treated them as suspect foreigners, though occasionally welcomed them as full citizens, as France did in seventeen ninety. Even before the eruption of violent anti Jewish raids pogroms in Eastern Europe, Jewish intellectuals struggled with what was known as the Jewish question

or the Jewish problem. The issue was whether it was even possible for Jewish people to be truly free and equal in someone else's nation, and as anti Semitic rhetoric and violence increased in the eighteen hundreds, this question became far more urgent. For the article this episode is based on how Stuffworks spoke back in twenty twenty with Daniel Kotsen, currently a history professor at William Jewell College who has

conducted extensive research on the subject. He said, in many ways, modern Zionism was a response to the Jewish question, Well, what is the place of Jews in Europe? In a post Enlightenment age. But if there was a catalyst to pursuing independent nationhood, it was the Dreyfus affair. In eighteen ninety four, a French army captain named Alfred Dreyfus was falsely accused and convicted of treason in a highly publicized trial. Dreyfus, a secular Jew, became the target of openly antisemitic attacks

in the press. There was this idea that because he was Jewish, he was not truly Frenchkotsen said, here is this army officer the epitome of an emancipated and assimilated Jew. The people behind the treasonous accusations spread this false idea that Jews could never be part of the European nation state and should always be viewed with suspicion. Among the journalists covering the Dreyfus affair was an Austrian playwright named Theodore Hertzel, who was living in Paris as a foreign

correspondent for a Viennese newspaper. Hertzel, himself Jewish at fully assimilated and non religious, wrote later that he identified deeply with Dreyfus. If a man of Dreyfus's stature wasn't immune from anti Semitism. Who was. In eighteen ninety six, Hertzel published The Jewish State, a call to Jewish nationhood that

launched the modern Zionist movement. In it, he argued that the establishment of an independent Jewish nation would be good for everyone in Europe, Jewish or otherwise, because antisemitism was causing divisions that plagued European nations. Coming on the heels of the Dreyfus affair, Hertzel's writings found a ready audience

among many Jewish intellectuals. In eighteen ninety seven, the First Zionist Congress met in Basel, Switzerland, and Hertzel dedicated the short rest of his life he died from a heart attack in nineteen oh four to securing political as financial support for the creation of a Jewish state in the region of Palestine. Note that all of this was part of the political Zionist movement. There were several different streams

of Zionism present in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For example, cultural Zionism called for a spiritual rebirth of Judaism in Israel, not necessarily an independent state, but okay. A turning point in political Zionism was a short letter written in nineteen seventeen by the British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfer to one Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild, heir to the Rothschild banking

fortune and president of the British Zionist Federation. The letter, known as the Blfer Declaration, was, in its own words, a declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations. In it, Belfer wrote, his Majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish peaceop and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement

of this object. While far from a mandate or official compact, this letter was a huge step forward for the Zionist movement, which to that date had only sent small delegations of Jewish immigrants to settle in Palestine. A Kotsen said here, you have the most powerful empire in the world at the time, saying to the Jewish people, We're going to help you find a home in your native land of Palestine. This was enormously important when the British took control of

Palestine after World War One. The stage was set for conflict. A Jewish immigration to Palestine increased, an Arab resentment of what was seen as Balfur's betrayal boiled over into violent clashes. It was seen as a betrayal because the British had made a lot of promises between nineteen fifteen and nineteen seventeen, including one to help create a pan Arab state in the Middle East, in which turn for Arab support in

fighting the Ottoman Empire in World War One. Arab Palestinians kept their end of the bargain, and the bell for Declaration essentially renegged on the deal. The next two decades saw Arab riots and rebellions, and when the British then tried to clamp down on Jewish immigration, Zionists also fought back. However, through all of this, Zionism remained a small minority movement within the global Jewish community, with loud critics from both

the religious and secular camps. That's according to Columbia University historian Michael Stanislowsky and his book Zionism A Very Short Introduction. He explains that the situation changed dramatically after the rise of the Nazis and their murder of six million Jewish people, he wrote, The need for an independent Jewish state to serve as a safe haven for Jews became not only widespread,

but central to Jewish consciousness throughout the world. By nineteen forty five, large numbers of Holocaust survivors were living at makeshift refugee camps in Europe, while Allied governments argued over

what to do with them. The British had all but cut off Jewish immigration to Palestine in nineteen thirty nine in an effort to secure favor with Arab oil producing nations, but US President Harry Truman now called on Britain to allow one hundred thousand Jewish refugees to enter Palestine immediately. The British, already the target of both Arab and Zionist attacks, saw no viable solution, so in nineteen forty seven they handed over the seething Jewish Palestinian problem to the newly

created United Nations. In November of nineteen forty seven, the UN passed a resolution to partition or divide Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab, of roughly equal sizes, even though at the time the one point five million strung population of Palestine was only about one third Jewish and two thirds Arab. The Arab Palestinians flatly rejected the un plan and took up arms against the Zionists in what was essentially a civil war for control of the

Holy Land. As internal fighting raged on, the British set a date of May fifteenth, nineteen forty eight, for its official departure from the region. The day before British armed forces left Palestine, the Zionist leader David benger Yan declared the independence of the State of Israel, knowing full well that such a provocation would invite all out war with neighboring Arab nations. Stanislawsky notes that bengur Yan's declaration makes no mention of God or the biblical promise of a

Jewish homeland. That was not the Zionist message. Instead, bengur Yan declared the establishment of Israel was quote the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign state. As benger Jan and the Zionists expected, five different Arab nations immediately declared war on the new state of Israel. To demonstrate the opposing perspectives of this war and its outcome. Israelis call it the War of Independence, and Arab Palestinians

and their allies call it the Catastrophe. It's not just the names that are different. As historian Betty Morris has demonstrated, there are also two starkly opposing narratives about how and why hundreds of thousands of Arab Palestinians left Palestine during the war and became refugees in Jordan and Syria. In the Zionist account, these people willingly fled the war zone because their Arab allies warned that they would imminently and

violently invade. In the Palestinian account, the Israeli army raided their villages and brutally drove them out at gunpoint. According to historical documents, there is clear evidence that some Palestinians fled their homes out of fear of violence by Israeli

defense forces, both real and imagined. Even historian Morris, a defender of Israel, conceded in his book nineteen forty eight The First Arab Israeli War that quote, the Jews committed far more atrocities than the Arabs and killed far more civilians. In POWs in deliberate acts of brutality in the course of nineteen forty eight. Ultimately, Israel won the war and walked away with fifty percent more territory than it would

have been granted by the UN partition plan. In the first place, that territory did not yet include the so called occupied territories in Gaza and the West Bank, which were added after Israel's victory in the Six Day War of nineteen sixty seven. And so the troubling Jewish question that led to the creation of the Zionist movement has now become the Palestinian question. After decades of conflict, can Israelis and Palestinians find a way to live in peace.

Many left leaning Israelis and some Zionists recognize the plight of the Palestinians and support a two state solution similar to the UN partition, while more conservative backers of Israel oppose such concessions, claiming that Palestinian leaders and their Arab allies continue to seek the destruction of what they see as the Jewish homeland. As decades of tension and conflict have shown there is no easy solution. Today's episode is based on the article what is Zionism and is it

fueling the Palestinian Israeli conflict? On how stuffworks dot Com written by Dave Ruse. Brainstuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.