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Zionism: Political Zionism
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Zionism is a political movement that was originated in the middle of the 19th century to establish --A-- homeland for Jews. Theodore Herzel was the main leader and originator of the Zionist movement. Jews were influenced by many factors that led them to create this movement. One factor was the rising spirit of nationalism in Europe during that era, and the anti Jewish sentiment among Europeans. In that context, Jews were split. One stream advocated communism as a solution for the world’s problems by creating the International Proletariat Dictatorship.
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Since Zionism is a political objective, it needs to be scrutinized in the same manner as any other politic. Basing its legitimacy upon a UN partition plan for Palestine, is like attending an organized summit, for the purpose of dividing up territory for criminal enterprises. Legitimacy is established by the consent of People. The fact that Palestinians rejected the theft of their land is central to the continued hostility within the region. Should this come as a surprise, what if an outside power would enter your own community and displace you and your neighbors? Just ask any resident displaced by urban renewal!
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The ascendancy of Ahad HaAm's cultural Zionism and its emphasis on practical settlement in Eretz Yisrael climaxed at the Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903. After an initial discussion of settlement in the Sinai Peninsula, which was opposed by Egypt, Herzl came to the congress apparently willing to consider, as a temporary shelter, a British proposal for an autonomous Jewish entity in East Africa. The Uganda Plan, as it was called, was vehemently rejected by East European Zionists who, as before, insisted on the ancient political identity with Palestine. Exhausted, Herzl died of pneumonia in 1904, and from that time on the mantle of Zionism was carried by the cultural Zionists led by Ahad HaAm and his close colleague, Chaim Weizmann. They took over the WZO, increased support for Hibbat Tziyyon, and sought Jewish settlement in Palestine as a prerequisite to international support for a Jewish state.
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Modern Zionism - The modern ideological expression of Zionism began to take shape in the nineteenth century. Zionism became a political movement with the first Zionist congress in 1897. The conference was in reality a rather modest milestone. Without the support of the Jewish masses, it was hard for Zionism to show great concrete achievements. Without such achievements, it was hard for Zionism to win the support of the Jewish masses for a project that seemed hopeless and Quixotic. Tenacity, gradualism, pragmatism, courage and daring leveraged the tiny, gradually accumulated achievements of Zionism from a few people in a conference hall to a movement, from a movement in Europe to Jewish settlement in the land of Israel, from a few settlements to the British mandate, from the mandate to a Jewish state.
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Politically, Zionism can be seen as a secularization of Jewish messianic hopes. Throughout Jewish history, Orthodox believers have awaited the appearance of a messiah, an event which would result in a renewed gathering of the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland. Over time... people began to grow impatient and many started to take an active hand in matters by arguing that this gathering needed to occur before the messiah came.
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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.
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Political Zionism