Zionism

Formally founded in 1897 , Zionism embraced a variety of opinions in its early years on where that homeland might be established. From 1917 it focused on the establishment of a Jewish national homeland or state in Palestine , the location of the ancient Kingdom of Israel . Since 1948 , Zionism has been a movement to support the development and defense of the State of Israel , and to encourage Jews to settle there. Poster promoting a film about Jewish settlement in Palestine, 1930s: Toward a New Life (in Romanian ), The Promised Land (in Hungarian ) This article is intended to be a survey of the history and objectives of the Zionist movement, not a history of Israel or of the Arab-Israeli conflict . The history of the various forms of opposition to Zionism is discussed at the article Anti-Zionism .

Since the establishment of the State of Israel , the Zionist movement continues primarily to support and advocate on behalf of the Jewish state . Zionism did not have a uniform ideology, but a plethora of ideologies: General Zionism, National-Religious Zionism, Labor Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, etc. Shimoni (1995) shows that there existed among the parties a common denominator: the claim to Eretz Israel as the national homeland of the Jews and as the legitimate focus for the national self-determination of the Jews. Zionism is based on historical ties and religious traditions linking the Jewish people to the Land of Israel . Almost two millennia after the Jewish diaspora , the modern Zionist movement, beginning in the late 19th century, was mainly founded by secular Jews , largely as a response by Ashkenazi Jews to antisemitism and the Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire . With its international support, Zionism is included in diaspora politics as a broader phenomenon of modern nation liberation movements . Although one of several Jewish political movements offering alternative responses to assimilation and antisemitism, Zionism grew rapidly and became the dominant force among Jewish political movements. The political movement was formally established by the Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl in the late 19th century following the publication of his book Der Judenstaat . The movement sought to encourage Jewish migration to the Ottoman Palestine and was eventually successful in establishing Israel on 14 May 1948 (5 Iyyar 5708 in the Hebrew calendar ), as the homeland for the Jewish people . Its proponents regard its aim as self-determination for the Jewish people. The proportion of world Jewry living in Israel has steadily grown since the movement came into existence. Today roughly 40% of the world's Jews live in Israel. Nearly as many live in the United States (see American Jews ). Gurock, American Zionism: mission and politics (1998) p 289; Moshe Davis, Zionism in transition (1980) p 56; "Zionism: Changed perceptions of," in Glenda Abramson, ed. Encyclopedia of modern Jewish culture (2005) vol 2 p Page 991 Gideon Shimoni, The Zionist Ideology (1995) Aviel Roshwald , "Jewish Identity and the Paradox of Nationalism", in Michael Berkowitz, (ed.). Taylor, 'Vision and intent in Zionist Thought', in 'The transformation of Palestine', ed. by I.

Theodor Herzl is considered the founder of the Zionist movement. In his 1896 book Der Judenstaat , he envisioned the founding of a future independent Jewish state during the 20th century. Tziyonut , after Zion ) is a nationalist and political movement of Jews and Jewish culture that supports the re-establishment of a Jewish homeland in the territory defined as the historic Land of Israel (also referred to as Palestine , Canaan or the Holy Land ). Zionism emerged in the late 19th century in central and eastern Europe as a national revival movement, and soon after this most leaders of the movement associated the main goal with creating the desired state in Palestine, then an area controlled by the Ottoman Empire . The primary goals of Zionism until 1948, were the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel (" Eretz Israel " in Hebrew ), ingathering of the exiles , and liberation of Jews from antisemitic discrimination and persecution that occurred in their diaspora . Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism continues primarily to advocate on behalf of Israel and address threats to its continued existence and security. A religious variety of Zionism supports Jews upholding their Jewish identity defined as adherence to religious Judaism, opposes the assimilation of Jews into other societies, and has advocated the return of Jews to Israel as a means for Jews to be a majority nation in their own state. In a less common usage, the term may also refer to non-political, cultural Zionism , founded and represented most prominently by Ahad Ha'am . Another less common meaning is the political support for the State of Israel by non-Jews. Advocates of Zionism view it as a national liberation movement for the repatriation of a persecuted people to the homeland they were dispersed from millennia before. Critics of Zionism view it as a colonialist , racist and exceptionalist ideology that led advocates to violence during Mandatory Palestine , followed by the exodus of Palestinians, and the subsequent denial of their human rights. The Cambridge Survey of World Migration . "Critical" Scholarship and Historical Geography" . See for example: M. The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism Paperback , or Through the Looking Glass: The Myth of Israeli Exceptionalism . Edward Said: The Legacy of a Public Intellectual .

Movement that supports the creation of a Jewish homeland For other uses, see Zionism (disambiguation) . Front page of The Jewish Chronicle , 17 January 1896, showing an article by Theodor Herzl (the father of political Zionism) a month prior to the publication of his pamphlet Der Judenstaat Theodor Herzl was the founder of the Modern Zionist movement. In his 1896 pamphlet Der Judenstaat , he envisioned the founding of a future independent Jewish state during the 20th century. Zionism ( Tsiyyonut after Zion ) is the nationalist movement of the Jewish people that espouses the re-establishment of and support for a Jewish state in the territory defined as the historic Land of Israel (roughly corresponding to Canaan , the Holy Land , or the region of Palestine ). Modern Zionism emerged in the late 19th century in Central and Eastern Europe as a national revival movement, both in reaction to newer waves of antisemitism and as a response to Haskalah , or Jewish Enlightenment. Soon after this, most leaders of the movement associated the main goal with creating the desired state in Palestine, then an area controlled by the Ottoman Empire . Until 1948, the primary goals of Zionism were the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel, in gathering of the exiles , and liberation of Jews from the antisemitic discrimination and persecution that they experienced during their diaspora . Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism continues primarily to advocate on behalf of Israel and to address threats to its continued existence and security. A religious variety of Zionism supports Jews upholding their Jewish identity defined as adherence to religious Judaism, opposes the assimilation of Jews into other societies, and has advocated the return of Jews to Israel as a means for Jews to be a majority nation in their own state. A variety of Zionism, called cultural Zionism , founded and represented most prominently by Ahad Ha'am , fostered a secular vision of a Jewish "spiritual center" in Israel. Unlike Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, Ahad Ha'am strived for Israel to be "a Jewish state and not merely a state of Jews". Advocates of Zionism view it as a national liberation movement for the repatriation of a persecuted people residing as minorities in a variety of nations to their ancestral homeland. Critics of Zionism view it as a colonialist , racist and exceptionalist ideology that led advocates to violence during Mandatory Palestine , followed by the exodus of Palestinians , and the subsequent denial of their right to return to lands and property lost during the 1948 and 1967 wars. A Just Zionism: On the Morality of the Jewish State . Translated by Sylvie d'Avigdor (republication ed.). Jews & the Japanese: The Successful Outsiders . (Zionism) arose in response to and in imitation of the current national movements of Central, Southern, and Eastern Europe. The parents of Zionism were not Judaism and tradition, but antiSemitism and nationalism. The ideals of the French Revolution spread slowly across Europe , finally reaching the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire and helping to set off the Haskalah , or Jewish Enlightenment. This engendered a permanent split in the Jewish world, between those who held to a halachic or religious-centric vision of their identity and those who adopted in part the racial rhetoric of the time and made the Jewish people into a nation. This was helped along by the wave of pogroms in Eastern Europe that set two million Jews to flight; most wound up in America , but some chose Palestine. A driving force behind this was the Hovevei Zion movement, which worked from 1882 to develop a Hebrew identity that was distinct from Judaism as a religion. The fact that Palestinian nationalism developed later than Zionism and indeed in response to it does not in any way diminish the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism or make it less valid than Zionism. All nationalisms arise in opposition to some "other". Why else would there be the need to specify who you are? And all nationalisms are defined by what they oppose. As we have seen, Zionism itself arose in reaction to anti-Semitic and exclusionary nationalist movements in Europe. It would be perverse to judge Zionism as somehow less valid than European anti-Semitism or those nationalisms. Furthermore, Zionism itself was also defined by its opposition to the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants of the region. Both the "conquest of land" and the "conquest of labor" slogans that became central to the dominant strain of Zionism in the Yishuv originated as a result of the Zionist confrontation with the Palestinian "other". The Cambridge Survey of World Migration . "Critical" Scholarship and Historical Geography" . "Zionism and British imperialism II: Imperial financing in Palestine", Journal of Israeli History: Politics, Society, Culture . See for example: M. Edward Said: The Legacy of a Public Intellectual . Shared Histories: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue . There are <ref group=fn> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a template (see the help page ).

Movement supporting a Jewish homeland For other uses, see Zionism (disambiguation) . Theodor Herzl was the founder of the Modern Zionist movement. In his 1896 pamphlet Der Judenstaat , he envisioned the founding of a future independent Jewish state during the 20th century. Zionism ( Tsiyyonut after Zion ) is a nationalist movement that emerged in the 19th century to espouse support for the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine , a region roughly corresponding to the Land of Israel in Jewish tradition. Following the establishment of Israel , Zionism became an ideology that supports "the development and protection of the State of Israel ". Zionism initially emerged in Central and Eastern Europe as a national revival movement in the late 19th century, both in reaction to newer waves of antisemitism and as a response to Haskalah , or Jewish Enlightenment. Soon after this, most leaders of the movement associated the main goal with creating the desired homeland in Palestine, then an area controlled by the Ottoman Empire . This process was seen by the Zionist Movement as an " ingathering of exiles " ( kibbutz galuyot ), an effort to put a stop to the exoduses and persecutions that have marked Jewish history by bringing the Jewish people back to their historic homeland. From 1897 to 1948, the primary goal of the Zionist Movement was to establish the basis for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and thereafter to consolidate it. In a unique variation of the principle of self-determination, The Lovers of Zion united in 1884 and in 1897 the first Zionist congress was organized. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a large number of Jews immigrated to first Ottoman and later Mandatory Palestine , and at the same time, diplomatic attempts were made to gain worldwide recognition and support. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism has continued primarily to advocate on behalf of Israel and to address threats to its continued existence and security. Zionism has never been a uniform movement. Its leaders, parties, and ideologies frequently diverged from one another. Compromises and concessions were made in order to achieve a shared cultural and political objective as a result of the growing antisemitism and yearning to return to the "ancestral" country. A variety of types of Zionism have emerged, including political Zionism , liberal Zionism , labor Zionism , revisionist Zionism , cultural Zionism , and religious Zionism . Advocates of Zionism view it as a national liberation movement for the repatriation of a persecuted people to its ancestral homeland. Critics of Zionism view it as a colonialist , racist , or exceptionalist ideology or movement. A Just Zionism: On the Morality of the Jewish State . Translated by Sylvie d'Avigdor (republication ed.). It is no wonder that this literature offers historians of the Land of Israel a wealth of information for the clarification of a wide variety of topics." Biger, Gideon (2004). The Boundaries of Modern Palestine, 1840–1947 . Unlike the earlier literature that dealt with Palestine's delimitation, the boundaries were not presented according to their historical traditional meaning, but according to the boundaries of the Jewish Eretz Israel that was about to be established there. This approach characterizes all the Zionist publications at the time ... when they came to indicate borders, they preferred the realistic condition and strategic economic needs over an unrealistic dream based on the historic past.' This meant that planners envisaged a future Palestine that controlled all the Jordan 's sources, the southern part of the Litanni river in Lebanon, the large cultivatable area east of the Jordan, including the Houran and Gil'ad wheat zone, Mt Hermon, the Yarmuk and Yabok rivers, the Hijaz Railway ... Translated by Sylvie d'Avigdor (republication ed.). Zionism . : |work= ignored ( help ) Ben-Ami Shillony (2012). Jews & the Japanese: The Successful Outsiders . (Zionism) arose in response to and in imitation of the current national movements of Central, Southern, and Eastern Europe LeVine, Mark; Mossberg, Mathias (2014). The parents of Zionism were not Judaism and tradition, but antiSemitism and nationalism. The ideals of the French Revolution spread slowly across Europe, finally reaching the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire and helping to set off the Haskalah , or Jewish Enlightenment. This engendered a permanent split in the Jewish world, between those who held to a halachic or religious-centric vision of their identity and those who adopted in part the racial rhetoric of the time and made the Jewish people into a nation. This was helped along by the wave of pogroms in Eastern Europe that set two million Jews to flight; most wound up in America , but some chose Palestine. A driving force behind this was the Hovevei Zion movement, which worked from 1882 to develop a Hebrew identity that was distinct from Judaism as a religion. The fact that Palestinian nationalism developed later than Zionism and indeed in response to it does not in any way diminish the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism or make it less valid than Zionism. All nationalisms arise in opposition to some "other". Why else would there be the need to specify who you are? And all nationalisms are defined by what they oppose. As we have seen, Zionism itself arose in reaction to anti-Semitic and exclusionary nationalist movements in Europe. It would be perverse to judge Zionism as somehow less valid than European anti-Semitism or those nationalisms. Furthermore, Zionism itself was also defined by its opposition to the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants of the region. Both the "conquest of land" and the "conquest of labor" slogans that became central to the dominant strain of Zionism in the Yishuv originated as a result of the Zionist confrontation with the Palestinian "other". The Cambridge Survey of World Migration . The Intractable Case of Israel/Palestine" . [T]he Zionist claim to Palestine on behalf of world Jewry as an extra-territorial population was unique, and not supported (as admitted at the time) by established interpretations of the principle of national self-determination, expressed in the Covenant of the League of later versions), and as applied to the other territories with the same status as Palestine ('A' mandate). "Critical" Scholarship and Historical Geography" . "Zionism and British imperialism II: Imperial financing in Palestine", Journal of Israeli History: Politics, Society, Culture . See for example: M. Edward Said: The Legacy of a Public Intellectual . Shared Histories: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue . There are <ref group=fn> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a template (see the help page ).

Jewish nationalist movement For other uses, see Zionism (disambiguation) . 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. 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 . The Zionist claim to Palestine was based on the notion that the Jews' historical right to the land outweighed that of the Arabs. 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. There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or templates on this page, but the references will not show without a template or template (see the help page ). He explained that the Zionist Loan was needed to promote further Jewish colonization in Palestine. One of its (presumably singular) characteristic features stemmed from the fact that it was a national liberation movement that was destined to function as a movement promoting settlement in a country of colonization. [...] Zionist psychology was molded by the conflicting parameters of a national liberation movement and a movement of European colonization in a Middle Eastern country. Arthur Ruppin was sent to Palestine for the first time in 1907 by the heads of the German [World] Zionist Organization in order to make a pilot study of the possibilities for colonization. ... Oppenheimer was a German sociologist and political economist. As a worldwide expert on colonization he became Herzl's advisor and formulated the first program for Zionist colonization, which he presented at the 6th Zionist Congress (Basel 1903) . ... It lies in the very nature of things, and in this particular regard nature cannot be changed .. . Piterberg 2010 : "It is within the typology of settler colonialisms that I place the Zionist colonization of Palestine and the state of Israel—a move which surely should have put to rest the tedious contention that Zionism could not be termed a colonial venture because it lacked the features of metropole colonialism; as if anyone were suggesting otherwise. Translated by Sylvie d'Avigdor (republication ed.). It transformed most of Palestine from what it had been for well over a millennium—a majority Arab country—into a new state that had a substantial Jewish majority. This transformation was the result of two processes: the systematic ethnic cleansing of the Arab-inhabited areas of the country seized during the war; and the theft of Palestinian land and property left behind by the refugees as well as much of that owned by those Arabs who remained in Israel. There would have been no other way to achieve a Jewish majority, the explicit aim of political Zionism from its inception. Haganah undertook to ensconce small groups of Jews in parts of Palestine formerly beyond their sights ... their leaders had hoped for more expansive borders ..."), and 138 ("The prospect that Israel would have only the barest Jewish majority thus loomed large in the imagination of the state's leaders. To be sure, until the late 1930s most Zionists would have been delighted with any majority, no matter how slim; the thought that Jews in Palestine would ever be more numerous than Arabs appeared a distant vision. But in 1937 the Peel Commission had suggested ... to leave both the Jewish state and Arab Palestine with the smallest possible minorities. That suggestion had fired Zionist imaginations; now it was possible to think of a future state as 'Jewish' not only by international recognition of the right of Jews to dominate its government but by the inclinations of virtually all of its inhabitants. Such was how the bulk of the Zionist leadership understood the optimal 'Jewish state' in 1948: non-Jews (especially Arabs) might live in it and enjoy all rights of citizenship, but their numbers should be small enough compared to the Jewish population that their impact on public life would be minimal. Israel's leaders were thus not sad at all to see so many Arabs leave its borders during the fighting in 1947–48 ... the 150,000 who remained on Israeli territory seemed to many to constitute an unacceptably high proportion relative to the 650,000 Jews in the country when the state came into being. Zionist ideology and practice were necessarily and elementally expansionist ... Zionism was politically expansionist in the sense that from the start, its aim was to turn all of Palestine (and in the movement's pre-1921 maps, the East Bank of the Jordan and the area south of the Litani River as well) into a Jewish state ... The Zionists were intent on politically, or even physically, dispossessing and supplanting the Arabs; their enterprise, however justified in terms of Jewish suffering and desperation, was tainted by a measure of moral dubiousness ... Zionism had always looked to the day when a Jewish majority would enable the movement to gain control over the country ... The ideals of the French Revolution spread slowly across Europe, finally reaching the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire and helping to set off the Haskalah , or Jewish Enlightenment. This engendered a permanent split in the Jewish world, between those who held to a halachic or religious-centric vision of their identity and those who adopted in part the racial rhetoric of the time and made the Jewish people into a nation. This was helped along by the wave of pogroms in Eastern Europe that set two million Jews to flight; most wound up in America , but some chose Palestine. All nationalisms arise in opposition to some 'other'. Why else would there be the need to specify who you are? And all nationalisms are defined by what they oppose. As we have seen, Zionism itself arose in reaction to anti-Semitic and exclusionary nationalist movements in Europe. It would be perverse to judge Zionism as somehow less valid than European anti-Semitism or those nationalisms. Furthermore, Zionism itself was also defined by its opposition to the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants of the region. In contrast with other prospective areas for Jewish settlement, such as Argentina or East Africa, it was generally believed that no one could deny the right of the Jews to their ancestral land... The slogan 'A land without a people for a people without a land' was common among Zionists at the end of the nineteenth, and the beginning of the twentieth, century. It contained a legitimation of the Jewish claim to the land and did away with any sense of uneasiness that a competitor to this claim might appear." Slater 2020 harvnb error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFSlater2020 ( help ) : "According to the standard Zionist and then the Israeli narrative, for a number of reasons the land of Palestine rightfully belongs to the Jewish people—and no others, including today's Palestinians." Khalidi 2006 : "[T]he Zionist claim to Palestine, which since even before the establishment of the state of Israel had depended in some measure on arguing that there was no legitimacy to the competing Arab claim" Alam 2009 : "Zionism was a messianic movement to restore Palestine to its divinely appointed Jewish owners... Conversely, the Palestinian, whether his ancestors were the ancient Canaanites or Hebrews, would forfeit all rights to his lands; he had become a usurper." Sternhell 1999 : "Like all Zionists, Gordon did not recognize the principle of majority rule, and he refused to acknowledge the right of the majority to 'take from us what we have acquired through our work and creativity.' Moreover, he had confidence in the spiritual vitality of the Yishuv, its energy and motivation, and believed it was supported by the entire Jewish people. In 1921, he spoke in much stronger terms than he had between 1909 and 1918: 'For Eretz Israel, we have a charter that has been valid until now and that will always be valid, and that is the Bible, and not only the Bible.'... And now came the decisive argument: 'And what did the Arabs produce in all the years they lived in the country? Such creations, or even the creation of the Bible alone, give us a perpetual right over the land in which we were so creative, especially since the people that came after us did not create such works in this country, or did not create anything at all.' The founders accepted this point of view. This was the ultimate Zionist argument." Alam, Mohammad Shahid (2006). Challenging the new orientalism: dissenting essays on the "war against Islam" . The Zionist claim to Palestine is based on 'a historical connection': the presence of Jews (more accurately, Hebrews) in ancient Palestine most of whom left after the second destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE. The New York Review of Books . We're talking about what the basis of the Zionist claim to Palestine is. There are four bases. One is the divine argument. One is the argument from positive law, in other words, the League of Nations, the Balfour Declaration. One is the argument from natural law, that is, the need. One is the argument from historical connection. The Collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process" . The founding myths of Israel: nationalism, socialism, and the making of the Jewish state . A Just Zionism: On the Ethics of Jewish Nationalism . The Zionist movement aspired to realize Jews' interests in adhering to their culture and in realizing their right to self-determination in the Land of Israel rather than in places where the Jews were currently residing, or in any other territory without a special significance in the history of the Jewish people.3 This aspiration was based on what has often been called the historical right of the Jews to the Land of Israel. The justification of Jewish settlement rests on historical arguments Friedland, Roger; Hecht, Richard D. Jerusalem is, of course, the sovereign capital of Israel, and the Zionist claim to Palestine is rooted here. After the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE, the Jews adapted to their exile by holding tightly to their map of history, to the repeated and promised cycle of exile and redemption. The Jews survived as a people, Eli Wiesel is fond of saying, because they remembered. As Saul Friedlander and Adam Seligman have recently shown, the Israelis placed the Shoah, the Nazi destruction of European Jewry, into this classic narrative form, the singular evilness of exile followed by national redemption. This sequence could be read both as a "secular" statement of historical cause and reason for nationhood, and as a "religious" statement of God's direction of history. This claim for a homeland, in the name of an historical right by a people not residing within it, implied, a priori, a denial, whether moderate or extreme, of the exclusive rights of the Arab residents. Hence, recognition of their historical right to the country constituted the internal and outward justification for their return to the country." Maoz, moshe (2013). Both movements have claimed full legitimate rights over the entire land: Eretz Israel or Falastin. The Zionists, by recounting historical rights and divine promises derived from the Bible, and the Palestinians, by citing historical continuity and religious bonds, as well as their demographic majority cum the right of self-determination. Nazism, The Jews and American Zionism, 1933-1948 . Erscheinungsort nicht ermittelbar: Wayne State University Press . He then went on to challenge the very basis of the Jewish claim to Palestine, claiming: ["]Palestine does not belong to the Jews. It does not belong to them on historical grounds. They had full possession of it for less than five hundred years. The Arabs have had it for thirteen hundred years. The Jews were not driven out of Palestine by the destruction of Jerusalem under Titus. Their dispersion for several hundred years had been a voluntary diaspora.["] Goldberg, Ronald Allen (2012). America in the forties . America in the twentieth century. The Jewish claim to Palestine dates back to biblical times, when the Jews ruled their own nation. Dispersed by the Romans, they became a minority in the area. Many years later, following the rise of Islam, the Arabs began to populate the area and eventually became the majority. A small Jewish population remained in the area, augmented greatly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After the horrors of World War II, the Jewish community pressured for the revival of a Jewish state in their ancient homeland. "Shattering a Zionist Myth: "Defensive Ethos or Mission of Conquest" ". Arab Studies Quarterly . 15 (3): 111– 126. The Zionist claim to Palestine rests on one or a combination of the following arguments: (1) divine right, (2) historical right, (3) compelling need. Arab Studies Quarterly . 10 (1): 44– 58. No claim asserted, with the exception of the Zionist claim to Palestine, based so ancient Krämer, Gudrun (2008). A history of Palestine: from the Ottoman conquest to the founding of the state of Israel . The Jewish claim to Palestine as the "Land of Israel" (Eretz Israel) bases itself on the biblical narratives and asserts the unbroken presence of the Jewish people in this land and their bond to it Gelvin 2021 : "Zionists, the Jewish claim to Palestine comes from their ancient habitation in Palestine" Rudnicki, Catherine. In that time, archaeology was extremely political, as determining whether an artifact was Jewish or not was to some extent ruling on the scope to which the Jewish claim to Palestine was historically grounded כתבי בורוכוב א'. תל אביב: הקיבוץ המאוחד – ספרית פועלים, תשט"ו 1955 . עמוד 19, פרק "לשאלת ציון וטאריטוריה". "ולעומת זאת מאשימים אותם הפלשתינאים בגינוני-סנטימנטליות פילאנטרופיים ובמגמות אנטי-לאומיות, לפי שהם (ציוני-ציון) חושבים את ארץ-ישראל לחלק בלתי-נפרד מן האידיאל היהודי הלאומי; לשם הוכחה מעלים הפלשתינאים, כרגיל, את עברו של עם ישראל, גילויים שונים של געגועי-העם לארץ-ישראל בספרות, בחוויותיו של העם ובתנועות המשיחיות, וכן הם מסתמכים על תולדות התנועה הציונית גופא." מנחם אוסישקין, דברים אחרונים . ירושלים: הלשכה הראשית של הקרן הקימת לישראל; תש"ז. Ben Gurion's speech reproduced in Davar , 21 November 1933. Max Nordau's address to sixth Zionist congress, translated by The Jewish Chronicle in the 28 August 1903 issue. 1921 letter to Herbert Samuel. The original is probably in English but this is a translation of the Hebrew version found in יצחק בן-צבי, כתבי יצחק בן-צבי . תל אביב: הוצאת מצפה שנת תרצ"ו. כרך א, עמוד 183 1921 Address to Jerusalem Va'ad Ha'ir. Available at חיים ויצמן, דברים: נאומים, מאמרים ומכתבים בארבעה כרכים . תל אביב: מצפה, תרצ"ז. פרק "מה אנו דורשים?" כל כתבי משה ליב ליליינבלום. קרקא: דפוס יוסף פישר, תרע"ב. פרק "על תחית ישראל על אדמת ארץ אבותיו" [1] Moses Gaster, "Palestine From The Destruction of The Temple to 1880" in The Maccabaean⁩ , 1 April 1906.⁩ Nahum Sokolow, History of Zionism volume 2. Quoted in ב. דינבורג' "יחיאל צ'לינוב: דרך חייו ודמות אישיותו". יחיאל צ'ליבוב . תל אביב, ארץ־ישראל, תדצ"ז / 1937. עמוד 46. Journal of Palestine Studies : 16. There are few types of arguments, or stories, for asserting a people's right to a land that one group of Zionists or another has not, at one time or another, advanced to support Jewish [claim] to Palestine/the Land of Israel. Among the most familiar:...the Jews' need to rule the land, or a large part of it, is greater than the need of the Palestinians, or the Arabs in general, andso takes precedence. According to the standard Zionist and then the Israeli narrative, for a number of reasons the land of Palestine rightfully belongs to the Jewish people—and no others, including today's Palestinians. The Zionist claim to Palestine, which since even before the establishment of the state of Israel had depended in some measure on arguing that there was no legitimacy to the competing Arab claim Quandt, William B. The author concludes with reflections on the importance of Zionism for Jewish secular identity and on the Zionist justification for the priority of a Jewish claim to the land of Palestine-Eretz Yisrael. In sum, Shimoni argues that most Zionists have adopted the utilitarian moral principle of following "the line of least injustice" in asserting that Jewish existential needs were greater than the Arabs. The Invention of the Land of Israel . After that point [1922], in conjunction with the new "right under international law," the conception of historical right emerged as the rhetorical cornerstone of Zionist propaganda...The fact that for thirteen hundred years the inhabitants of the region had been overwhelmingly Muslim was countered by maintaining that this local population did not possess the unique attributes of a nation and had never claimed self-determination. By contrast, according to Zionist discourse, the Jewish nation had always existed and, in every generation, had aspired to return to its country and realize its right. [...] Zionism understood this as it took its first steps, seeking to mobilize the principle of right in order to fulfill its nationalist aims. From Moses Leib Lilienblum in 1882 to the Israeli Declaration of Independence in May 1948, Jewish nationalism mobilized a system of ethical and legal justifications based on a common denominator of historical right, or the right of precedent, or, in plain language, "we were there first, and now we're back." Sandra M. The Arabs' presumed lack of attachment to the land based on their agricultural relationship to it was reiterated in Zionist notions of nationhood. The imagined bond between the Jewish people and the land of Israel, their colonial visions and agricultural goals, had significant implications for their ideas about the status of the Palestinian Arab population. The idea of rooting Jewish identity in Palestine and returning Jews to their ancient homeland revealed a Zionist view of Palestine as essentially and eternally Jewish. Palestinian Arabs, their national identities and histories, as well as their perceptions and use of land and swamps, were frequently overlooked or denied by Zionist conceptions of kibush ha'avoda (conquest of labor), kibush hakarka (conquest of land), and havra'at hakarka vehayishuv (healing the land and the nation), and Palestinian Arab claims to the land were devalued or dismissed. The Zionists believed that the indigenous Arab population did not possess the characteristics of a distinct, coherent nation. As such, they did not have national rights to the land. Disregarding the cultural, geographical, and social diversity within their own community, the Zionists perceived the Jews, in contrast, as one nation. Ben-Gurion expressed this view when he contrasted Jewish and Arab futures in the land according to their standing as a "nation". His evaluation ultimately obscured the national rights of the Palestinian Arab population by omitting their status in his considerations: "Palestine is destined for the Jewish nation and for the Arabs domiciled there." Given the Zionist linking of the nation and the land, Palestinian Arabs could not have a true attachment to the land if they did not constitute a nation. The idea that the Palestinian Arab population, especially its peasant farmers, had no real attachment to the land drew upon colonial racial views of non-European, indigenous populations as primitive and backward...Dismissing Palestinian Arab guardianship and attachment to Palestine, as scholar Ted Swedenburg has pointed out, defined Palestinian Arab "culture as being eternally destructive of the land." As Ben-Gurion proclaimed in 1924, "We do not recognize the right of Arabs to rule the country, since Palestine is still undeveloped and awaits its builders." Gans, Chaim. A Just Zionism: On the Morality of the Jewish State . First, Zionism could be regarded as having invoked the historical rights argument primarily in order to stress the primacy of the Land of Israel in the history of the Jews (henceforth, the formative territory claim). On the other hand, those who invoked it in most other cases referred mainly to the primacy of the nations they represented in the history of the territories they were claiming (henceforth, the first occupancy claim). The first argument concerns the identification of the right to national self-determination with a right to a nation-state. In the public discourse among Jewish Israelis, it is virtually presupposed that self-determination means the right to sovereignty or the hegemony of one ethnocultural group in a state of its own... [As an example, Gan cites Ruth Gavison:] ""A nation state — a state whose institutions and offi cial public culture are linked to a particular national group - offers special benefits to the people with whom the state is identified. At the same time, it puts those citizens who are not members of the preferred national community at a disadvantage."" [page 55] Gans, Chaim. Most Israelis believe that the Land of Israel is the property of the Jews...Proprietary Zionism conceives of the entire Land of Israel as the property of the Jews...If the Jews are the owners of Palestine, then the Arab inhabitants of Palestine are the holders of stolen property, at least as a collective, and therefore shouldn't be granted collective rights. Zionist historiography provides ample evidence suggesting that from the very beginning of the Zionist Yishuv (settlement) in Palestine the attitude of the majority of the Zionist groups toward the native Arab population ranged from a mixture of indifference and patronizing superiority, to outright denial of their national rights, and uprooting and transferring them to neighbouring countries. Both Zionism and Afrikaner nationalism have insisted on indigenous absence, on a 'land without a people', or the emptiness of the South African frontier, arguing that the indigenous peoples had entered the geographic space identified by the colonizing project only at some late historical stage. Palestinian existence was practically denied, the history of Palestine prior to Zionist settlement and the Israeli–Arab conflict overlooked [page 68] ... "Sharon's definition of the rights of Palestinian Israelis in relation to land — a notion that crucially accepts their presence in the State of Israel but also denies their entitlements — is ultimately very similar to Australian Prime Minister John Howard's notion of 'practical reconciliation' for Aboriginal communities: 'they have every right in the land, no rights to the land '." [page 81] Lockman, Zachary. Early Labor Zionists often referred to themselves and their organisations as 'Hebrew' ('ivri) rather than 'Jewish' (yehudi) to express their denigration and rejection of Diaspora Judaism and to instead identify themselves with the ancient Hebrews who had lived as a sovereign people in their own homeland – as modern Zionists aspired to do. This identification also helped these Jewish immigrants newly arrived from Europe envision themselves as having a deep historical connection to Palestine, thereby giving them a claim to possess it stronger than that of its indigenous Arab inhabitants. The Gospels, the New Testament, he [ Aaron David Gordon ] claimed, were also the work of the Jewish people: "It all came from us; it was created among us." And now came the decisive argument: "And what did the Arabs produce in all the years they lived in the country? Such creations, or even the creation of the Bible alone, give us [Jewish people] a perpetual right over the land in which we were so creative, especially since the people that came after us did not create such works in this country, or did not create anything at all." The founders accepted this point of view. This was the ultimate Zionist argument. Some Zionist arguments (like those of the Revisionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky) would grant the Palestinians jus soli in principle but insist that such a right was in conflict with the colonizing Jews' superior, because historical and ancient, right to the land. Such arguments create a hierarchy of priorities of those in possession of jus soli through a right of conquest based on alleged origins and historical longevity, and on the basis that, as modern Europeans, colonizing Jews were developing the land, which lay fallow in the hands of the natives. Zionist ideology defined this land as empty. This did not mean that Zionist leaders and settlers were ignorant of, or ignored, the presence of Arabs in Palestine....Jewish settlers were to be accorded exclusive privileges deriving from the Pentateuch, and Palestinian Arabs treated as part of the natural environment. The Zionist settlers were collective subjects who acted, and the native Palestinians became objects acted upon. [...] Zionism constructed its own story as a unique and impregnable one, in the process excluding the voices of an indigenous people—the Palestinian Arabs. A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion . He [ David Ben-Gurion ] believed that the land of Israel belonged to the Jews and that they deserved to receive it despite the fact that it was populated by Arabs. It would be more correct to speak of a range of different varieties of Zionism. Chosen: the history of an idea, the anatomy of an obsession . Israel Yearbook on Human Rights . Israel Yearbook on Human Rights .