Zionists - who are they? What is the essence of Zionism?

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:47

Zionists - who are they? Let's figure it out. The word "Zionism" comes from the name of Mount Zion. She was the symbol of Israel and Jerusalem. Zionism is an ideology that expresses longing for the historical homeland of the Jewish people in a foreign land. This political movement will be discussed in this article.

When was the idea that formed the basis of Zionism born?

The idea of returning to Zion originated among the Jews in ancient times, at the time when they were expelled from Israel. The practice of return itself was not an innovation. About 2500 years ago, the Jewish people returned to their country from the Babylonian diaspora. Modern Zionism, which developed in the 19th century, therefore, did not invent this practice, but only clothed an ancient movement and idea in an organized modern form.

The declaration of May 14, 1948 on the establishment of the State of Israel contains the quintessence of the movement we are interested in. This document says that the Jewish people appeared in the land of Israel.

Its political,the religious and spiritual image was formed here. The people, according to the declaration, are forcibly expelled from their homeland.

The connection between the Jewish people and Israel

We continue to consider the question: "Zionists - who are they?" It is impossible to understand the movement we are interested in without understanding the existing historical connection between Israel and the Jewish people. It arose almost 4 thousand years ago, when Abraham settled in the territory of modern Israel. Moses in the 13th century BC e. led the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, and Joshua captured the country divided between 12 Israelite tribes. In 10-11 centuries. BC e., in the era of the First Temple, the monarchs Solomon, David and Saul ruled in the state. Israel in 486 BC e. was captured by the Babylonians, who destroyed the Temple, and the majority of the Jewish people were taken into captivity. Under the leadership of Nehemiah and Ezra in the same century, the Jews returned to their state and re-established the Temple. Thus began the era of the Second Temple. It ended with the conquest of Jerusalem by the Romans and the repeated destruction of the Temple in the year 70.

Jewish uprisings

After the capture of Judea, many Jews lived in Israel. They raised an uprising against the Romans in 132 under the leadership of Bar Kokhba. For a short time, they managed to form a Jewish independent state again. This uprising was brutally suppressed. At the same time, according to historians, about 50 thousand Jews were killed. However, even after the uprising was crushed, there were still hundreds of thousands of representatives of the Jewish people in Israel.

After the 4th century AD. e. in Galilee again began a major uprising directed against Roman rule, again a mass of Jews was expelled from Israel, their lands were requisitioned. In the country in the 7th century there was their community, the number of which was 1/4 million people. Of these, tens of thousands assisted the Persians, who captured Israel in 614. This was explained by the fact that the Jews had high hopes for this people, since the Persians allowed them in the 6th century BC. e. to return from Babylonian captivity to their own country.

In 638 A. D. e., after the Arab-Muslim conquest, the local Jewish population became a dwindling minority. This was also due to forced Islamization. At the same time, a rather large Jewish community existed in Jerusalem for a long time. The crusaders who captured Jerusalem in 1099 committed a massacre, the victims of which were both Muslims and Jews. However, even when the number of inhabitants in Israel was sharply reduced, representatives of the indigenous population did not completely disappear.

Immigration flows

Individual groups or members of messianic movements throughout history have periodically returned or sought to enter Israel. Another stream of immigration in the 17th and 19th centuries, that is, before the rise of Zionism, leads to the fact that the Jerusalem Jewish community in 1844 becomes the largest among other religious communities. It should also be noted that the waves of Jewish migration during all the years (from the end of the 19th and throughout the 20th century) were preceded by more thansporadic, smaller and less organized streams. Zionist repatriation began along with the migration to Israel of Palestinianophiles, as well as members of the Bilu movement. This happened in 1882-1903. Following this, throughout the 20th century, new waves of repatriation took place, which were arranged by the Zionists. Who they are, you will better understand by knowing what the basic concept of Zionism was.

The central concept of Zionism

It should be noted that central to this movement is the concept that Israel is the real historical homeland of the Jewish people. Living in other states - exile. Identification with the exile of life in the diaspora is the central thought of this movement, the essence of Zionism. So, this movement expresses the historical connection with Israel of the Jewish people. But it is very doubtful that it would have arisen without modern anti-Semitism, as well as the modern persecution of the Jews, who would have assimilated if they were left alone.

Zionism and anti-Semitism

So Zionism can be considered a reaction to anti-Semitism. You can also see in it a kind of anti-colonial movement, which was characterized by oppression and discrimination, pogroms and humiliation, that is, the position of a minority subordinate to foreign power.

It is important to emphasize in this connection that Zionism is a political movement that is a response to contemporary anti-Semitism. However, hundreds of years of persecution of the Jews must be taken into account. This phenomenonobserved in Europe for a long time. Again and again, European diasporas have been killed and persecuted for religious, social, economic, racial and nationalist reasons. In Europe, Jews on their way to the Holy Land (11-12 centuries) were slaughtered by crusaders, killed in droves during a plague epidemic, accused in the 14 century of poisoning wells, burned at the stake in Spain during the Inquisition (15 century), they became victims of a mass massacre perpetrated in Ukraine by the Cossacks of Khmelnitsky (17th century). Hundreds of thousands were also killed by the armies of Petliura and Denikin, sparking Zionism in Russia into a civil war. The image below is dedicated to these events.

After the First World War, the situation became catastrophic. Then the killers came from Germany, where the Jews made the most serious attempt at assimilation.

This people throughout history was expelled from almost all European countries: France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, England, Lithuania and Russia. All these problems accumulated over the centuries, and by the beginning of the 19th century, Jews had lost hope for changes in their lives.

How did the leaders of this movement become Zionists?

The history of Zionism shows that the leaders of the movement often turned into Zionists after they themselves faced anti-Semitism. This happened to Moses Ges, who was shocked in 1840 by slanderous attacks on Jews living in Damascus. This also happened to Leon Pinsker, who after the assassination of Alexander II(1881-1882) was struck by a chain of pogroms, and with Theodor Herzl (pictured below), who, as a journalist in Paris, witnessed the anti-Semitic campaign launched in 1896 in connection with the Dreyfus affair.

Zionist goals

Thus, the Zionist movement considered its main goal to solve the "Jewish problem". Its supporters viewed it as a problem of a helpless people, a national minority that does not have its own home and whose lot is persecution and pogroms. So, we answered the question: "Zionists - who are they?" We note one interesting pattern, which we have already mentioned.

Discrimination and waves of immigration

There is a strong connection between Zionism and the persecution of Jews in the sense that most of the major waves of immigration to Israel have invariably followed discrimination and killings in the diaspora. For example, the First Aliyah was preceded by pogroms in Russia in the 80s of the 19th century. The second began after a series of pogroms in Belarus and Ukraine at the beginning of the 20th century. And the third was a reaction to the killing of Jews by the troops of Denikin and Petliura during the civil war. This is how Zionism manifested itself in Russia. The fourth aliyah came in the 1920s from Poland, following the adoption of legislation against Jewish entrepreneurship. At the age of 30, during the Fifth Aliyah, they came from Austria and Germany, fleeing Nazi violence, etc.

Conclusion

The goals and deeds of the Zionists, therefore, pursued mainly the task of restoringhistorical justice. This is not racism, since this idea does not postulate the superiority of one people over another, as well as the existence of a chosen people or a "pure race". Nor can world Zionism be considered a bourgeois movement, since all classes and strata of the population participated in it. In its leadership, indeed, there were mainly people of bourgeois origin. However, the same can be said about other revolutionary movements, including communist and socialist ones. Zionism is not a "evil" ideology that encourages Jews to immigrate to Israel. Only those who share the Zionist vision of the fate and history of this people are repatriated.