What Is Zionism? Ideological Settlers View Themselves as True Zionists, Called Upon to Reclaim the Holy Land in Its Entirety, Almost Regardless of the Consequences

Zionism debate at heart of bitter Israeli vote

February 24, 2015

AP - What is Zionism? The ideological question, rooted in the 19th century, has gained surprising urgency in an Israeli election campaign that seems more open than had been expected.

Seeking to take votes from the nationalistic right of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the relatively liberal opposition has rebranded itself as the Zionist Union — sparking a debate about a concept that some considered resolved when the Jewish state was declared and widely recognized in 1948.

Since adopting the name in early December, Isaac Herzog's Labor Party — bolstered by a smaller grouping led by former opposition leader Tsipi Livni — has surged in the polls. They are now running neck-and-neck in the polls with Netanyahu's Likud.

The debate over who best reflects the ideals of Zionism — and who can most credibly lay claim to its successes — has lent an oddly philosophical hue to a campaign that had been dominated by more prosaic issues such as budget scandals in the management of the prime minister's residence. Along the way, the stage appears to have been set for a surprisingly climactic vote on March 17.

On the left, politicians speak of true Zionism as requiring the establishment of peace and equality in the land, including by making peace with the Palestinians and giving up land if needed.

Netanyahu has mocked his rivals as "the anti-Zionist Union." Backers of his Likud tend to equate the term with a strong Israel standing up to its enemies, and with the West Bank settler movement specifically. Ideological settlers view themselves as true Zionists, called upon to reclaim the Holy Land in its entirety almost regardless of the consequences.



Danny Danon, a senior Likud parliamentarian, argued that the opposition was weakening Israel with excessive sympathy for the Palestinians, alleging that some on the left have praised refusal to serve in the army or support the Arab view that the founding of the country was a catastrophe.

"Some in that camp are trying to change the nature of Israel and (use) the name Zionist Union to hide some of the comments made by their members," Danon said.

Hilik Bar, secretary-general of the Labor Party, counters that "we who are dealing with the most important things in society, aspire to reach peace and speak to our enemies — this is Zionism."

The modern idea of a return to "Zion" — Jerusalem or the Holy Land — has been around since the 19th century, when European Jews facing anti-Semitism began to contemplate a Jewish nation-state in the land of their biblical forefathers.

Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl popularized the notion in an 1896 manifesto, "The Jewish State," and built what would become the international Zionist movement.

That dream culminated with Israeli independence in 1948, when the fledgling country emerged as a refuge for the world's Jews in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

"According to one theoretical concept, since the state of Israel was established, Zionism had achieved its goal and that was it. But that's not the way it was," said Tom Segev, an Israeli historian and author who has written books about early Israel.

Today, he said, "Zionism has become an equivalent to patriotism," he said, criticizing this approach for ignoring the key issue of resolving the conflict with the Palestinians.

The establishment of Israel turned out to be only the beginning. Early Israel was tested by wars and waves of immigration.

In 1967 came a game-changer: in a war that lasted six days Israel captured Arab territories including the West Bank and east Jerusalem — parts of the biblical Land of Israel but also home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

Today the number of Palestinians in the territory is about 2.5 million, and most live in islands of autonomy administered by the Palestinian Authority. But Israel is the ultimate ruler, and the occupation, in the minds of most people, essentially grinds on.

Many of Israel's neighbors reject its existence and its final borders are an open question. Gaza, ruled by Hamas militants and blockaded by Israel, has another 2 million Palestinians and is part of the equation.

Many Israelis feel the situation is unsustainable, both because of the hardships it imposes on the Palestinians and the demographic implications, with the population of Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in the territories on track to eventually outnumber Jews.

Therein lies the logic of the Zionist Union moniker: that the occupation, by saddling Israel with millions of Arabs, is endangering its status as a "Jewish state," leading toward a demographic composition that could more aptly be called a "binational state" where Jews no longer outnumber Arabs.

Bar said this would either mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state or result in "a kind of apartheid state" where Arabs will not be allowed to vote. 

"They (the right) will lead us to a very horrible situation. This is the end of Zionism," Bar said.

But with party support having remained stagnant in the polls since the initial surge, and with three weeks before the election, the definition has been broadened out.

Omer Bar-Lev, a former top military commando, tells voters he "led fighters in the rescue at Entebbe" — Israel's dramatic 1976 rescue of hostages in Uganda. "That is Zionism."

A recent campaign video made no mention of the Palestinian issue. Instead, a slew of politicians equated Zionism with social justice, economic opportunity, better schools and a nod to mandatory military service. Of late, this is the direction the campaign is taking.

A young Labor lawmaker, Stav Shaffir, recently became a viral sensation when she lectured her right-wing opponents on the true meaning of Zionism in a parliamentary speech.

"Real Zionism is solidarity — not only in battle, but also in the day-to-day. Looking after each other," she said. "That's what Zionism is: to take care of the future of Israel's citizens — in the hospitals, in the schools, on the roads, and in social welfare. That's Zionism, and you're destroying it," she said of her colleagues on the right.

Former Education Minister Shai Piron of the centrist Yesh Atid Party bristles at the use of Zionism by left and right alike.

"Zionism is far more than what they say. They are using this for political reasons," he said. "Zionism is our story, the Jewish story," he adds.

Such a view could pose a problem for Herzog. Arab citizens make up about a fifth of the population of 8 million in Israel proper, with the West Bank and Gaza removed from the picture. Their once-divided politicians are running on a joint slate that some polls show as possibly emerging as the third-largest in parliament. Like the Palestinians, many Israeli Arabs equate Zionism with land grabs, discrimination and military occupation.

As much as they detest the Israeli right and want a peace deal, they will struggle to ally with something called the Zionist Union, uncomfortable with an argument for withdrawing from the West Bank that is motivated so clearly by the desire to unload fellow Arabs.

Obama, the Illuminati, and the Zionist Agenda

Nazi Support of Zionism

Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the founder of modern Zionism, recognized that anti-Semitism would further his cause, the creation of a separate state for Jews. To solve the "Jewish Question," he maintained "we must, above all, make it an international political issue." Herzl wrote that Zionism offered the world a welcome "final solution of the Jewish question." In his "Diaries," page 19, Herzl stated "Anti-Semites will become our surest friends, anti-Semitic countries our allies."

Zionism was supported by the German SS and Gestapo. Hitler himself personally supported Zionism. During the 1930's, in cooperation with the German authorities, Zionist groups organized a network of some 40 camps throughout Germany where prospective settlers were trained for their new lives in Palestine. As late as 1942, Zionists operated at least one of these officially authorized "Kibbutz" training camps over which flew the blue and white banner, which would one day be adopted as the national flag of "Israel."

The Transfer Agreement (which promoted the emigration of German Jews to Palestine), implemented in 1933 and abandoned at the beginning of WWII, is an important example of the cooperation between Hitler's Germany and international Zionism. Through this agreement, Hitler's Third Reich did more than any other government during the 1930's to support Jewish development in Palestine and further the Zionist goals.

Hitler and the Zionists had a common goal: to create a world Jewish Ghetto as a solution to the Jewish Question.

The Zionist so-called "World Jewish Congress" declared war on the country of Germany, knowing that it would affect their Jewish brothers residing in that country who would be left without protection. When others tried to help them escape to other countries, the Zionist movement took actions which caused those countries to lock their doors to Jewish immigration. As a result of the Zionist influence, five ships of Jewish refugees from Germany arriving in the United States were turned back to the gas chambers.

Sacrificing Europe's Jews

The fundamental aim of the Zionist movement has been not to save Jewish lives but to create a "Jewish State" in Palestine. "The Jewish State of Israel was only established after the Holocaust had resulted in the murder of about 40% of European Jewry," writes Ami Isseroff, MidEastWeb for Coexistence.

When attempts were contemplated in the 1930's to change the immigration laws of the United States and Western Europe in order to provide token refuge for persecuted Jews of Europe, it was the Zionists who actively organized to stop these efforts.

Ben Gurion informed a meeting of Labor Zionists in Great Britain in 1938: "If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Israel, then I opt for the second alternative."

This obsession with colonizing Palestine and overwhelming the Arabs led the Zionist movement to oppose any rescue of the Jews facing extermination because the ability to deflect select manpower to Palestine would be impeded. From 1933 to 1935, the World Zionist Organization (WZO) turned down two-thirds of all the German Jews who applied for immigration certificates.

Berel Katznelson, editor of the Labor Zionist Davar, described the "cruel criteria of Zionism:" German Jews were too old to bear children in Palestine, lacked trades for building a Zionist colony, didn't speak Hebrew, and weren't Zionists. In place of these Jews facing extermination, the WZO brought to Palestine 6,000 trained young Zionists from the United States, Britain and other safe countries. Worse than this, the WZO not merely failed to seek any alternative for the Jews facing the Holocaust, the Zionist leadership opposed belligerently all efforts to find refuge for fleeing Jews.

As late as 1943, while the Jews of Europe were being exterminated in their millions, the U.S. Congress proposed to set up a commission to "study" the problem. Rabbi Stephen Wise, who was the principal American spokesperson for Zionism, came to Washington to testify against the rescue bill because it would divert attention from the colonization of Palestine.

This is the same Rabbi Wise who, in 1938, in his capacity as leader of the American Jewish Congress, wrote a letter in which he opposed any change in U.S. immigration laws which would enable Jews to find refuge. He stated: "It may interest you to know that some weeks ago the representatives of all the leading Jewish organizations met in conference... It was decided that no Jewish organization would, at this time, sponsor a bill which would in any way alter the immigration laws."