Why zionism started

The Zionist movement started in the late 19th century, amidst growing European anti-Semitism. The movement secured support among Western European governments, particularly after Zionists agreed to create their Jewish state in historic Palestine. Thus, we need to step outside the physical context of the Middle East to understand a force that ultimately changed the Middle East.

This article focuses on Jewish history and Jewish politics and thought; other texts in this collection complement and complicate the picture I give with perspectives from the Arab, Palestinian, and imperial perspectives. In what follows I will give an overview of the Jewish world at the time; will zoom in on the conditions in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe that eventually gave rise to the Zionist movement; will discuss the early evolution of the movement in Europe, before discussing how it evolved and changed as it focused on a settlement and nation-building project in Palestine.

Zionism is a form of Jewish nationalism that posits Jews are a nation and that Jews should receive national rights on the basis of this identity. Jews had originated in Palestine ancient Canaan but had begun to migrate outwards in ancient times, both because of expulsions and for economic reasons under the Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans.

In the late Middle Ages, in the wake of persecution and expulsions, many Ashkenazi Jews moved east from Germany to the lands of Poland and Russia. Not all Jews migrated to Europe; when the Middle East came under the rule of Islam, some migrated across the Muslim world, including a very important population who went to Spain and flourished there and retained their identity as Spanish Jews even after they were expelled after the Christian Reconquista in A very small population of Jews remained in Palestine under Roman, Byzantine, and Muslim rule; their numbers grew after the Spanish expulsion of and again with migration of Jews from Eastern Europe to the holy land, often for religious reasons, or to study.

Back in Europe, with the expansion of the Russian Empire and the partition of Poland in the s, much of Eastern Europe came under Russian rule. Most were religious, but increasingly were being influenced by the idea of learning secular sciences, alongside the maintenance of Jewish cultural identity. Much smaller, but often highly educated and influential populations of Jews lived in Western and central Europe, especially France, Germany, England, and Austria.

To understand the emergence of Zionism we need to look at key trends taking place in Europe: enlightenment and emancipation in Western and central Europe and state centralization and enlightened absolutism in Eastern Europe.

Both of these would lead some Jews toward Zionism, though not always for the same reasons. In Eastern Europe, the debate was not about citizenship, but rather about state centralization and integration of Jews and other minorities into state languages and state educational institutions. But unlike in the West, where collective identities were dissolved in favor of individual rights, the Russian empire in particular was full of ethnic groups understanding themselves as distinct entities.

The idea that Jews could be fully modern and maintain ethnic identities and institutions of their own was consistent with broader national trends in Russia. Within a large commitment to modernization, Jewish cultural movements, based on Yiddish and Hebrew, emerged. But confidence in integration and modernization stalled in , with the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, the rollback of his more inclusive laws, and the outbreak of pogroms.

The s then saw the emergence of a slew of Jewish political alternatives to liberalism, from socialism to nationalism to nationally organized forms of socialism.

Zionism emerged in this mix as a particular form of nationalism: the idea that Jews could be fully realized culturally and politically only in a homeland of their own.

In Western and Central Europe our story begins earlier than the Eastern European story, though Zionism emerged there slightly later. The enlightenment had introduced a belief in citizenship and individual rights. Jews were an important test case: if such a unique and traditionally insular group could be integrated, the very principle of enlightenment would be supported.

Many, however, were unsure whether Jews could or should be integrated. But rising ethnic nationalism and growing economic pressures compromised this trend. Debates raged throughout the late ss about whether Jews could be fully integrated. This came to be called the Jewish Question. And indeed the more Jews were integrated, the more grew the perception that they were a potential fifth column, that they would weaken the state.

Most Jews in Central and Western Europe continued at that time to believe that integration was possible and the best solution to rising anti-Semitism. But this is wholly fallacious. But the direction was clear — the goal of zionism from the start was the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine. The rights of the people of Palestine themselves received no attention in these plans. What the political concept of a Jewish State in Palestine needed to give it reality was to transfer people to Palestine.

The religious and spiritual solidarity of the Jews in the Diaspora with the Holy Land had survived over the centuries. Despite the anti-Semitism in Europe, only small groups had emigrated to Palestine to settle in Palestine for purely religious sentiments. They numbered perhaps 50, at the end of the nineteenth century, and personified, or symbolized, the Jewish link to Palestine which was, in essence, spiritual.

The Zionists drew on this ancient spiritual potential to build a political movement. A stirring slogan was spread abroad:. Just the very opposite! Serfs they were in the lands of the Diaspora and suddenly they find themselves in unrestricted freedom and this change has awakened in them an inclination to despotism. In , Samuel in a memorandum entitled The Future of Palestine , proposed:. It was he who guided our work into more official channels. If it had not been for the counsel of men like Sykes we, with our inexperience in delicate diplomatic negotiations, would undoubtedly have committed many dangerous blunders.

The need for such counsel will become evident [in] the complications which already, at that time, surrounded the status of the Near East. Zionist leaders stressed the strategic advantages to Britain of a Jewish State in Palestine.

In a letter written in to a sympathizer, Weizmann said:. That again is not a material argument, but certainly it ought to carry great weight with any politician who likes to look 50 years ahead. Sykes was especially valuable in helping Weizmann and his colleagues, particularly Nahum Sokolow, in trying to persuade France to renounce its residual claims in the internationalized Jerusalem agreed upon in the Sykes-Picot accord. Original French ambitions had embraced all of Syria, including Palestine, to whose internationalization it had agreed only on strong British insistence.

Weizmann was to join Sykes in Egypt and go on with him to Palestine when the time was ripe. Sokolow was to see what he could do to create a more favourable atmosphere in Paris, where the Government had been disinclined to take the Zionists seriously and the leading Jews for the most part openly hostile. An organized effort was to be made to secure the support of the American and Russian Zionists, and, if possible, of their Governments, for what was now to be put forward openly as the Zionist programme — the building up of a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine under the aegis of Great Britain.

Its first point had to do with national recognition:. The Suzerain Government recognizes the desirability and necessity of a Jewish resettlement of Palestine. Stein describes the initiation of the consultations between the British Government and the Zionist Organization:.

The conference of February 2nd was, in fact, the starting point of a prolonged exchange of views between the Zionist Organization and the British Government … In July , a formula for a proposed declaration was submitted to the Government by the Zionist representatives.

The Government replied with an alternative draft which formed the basis of … the Balfour Declaration. Actually there were six drafts exchanged and discussed between the British Government and the Zionist movement, United States assent also being obtained before the British Foreign Secretary issued the final text of the Declaration in November The process has been described by more than one authority.

The final version of the Declaration received the most careful examination. This meticulous drafting process assumes significance precisely because the result of this lengthy and careful drafting was a statement remarkable for the ambiguities it carried. To quote Stein:. The language of the Declaration was studiously vague, and neither on the British nor on the Zionist side was there any disposition, at that time, to probe deeply into its meaning — still less was there any agreed interpretation.

Although the Declaration had fallen short of Zionist hopes, it was considered politic not to press further. Weizmann writes:. Should we then have obtained a better statement or would the Government have wearied of these internal Jewish divisions and dropped the whole matter? There is a significant difference — it would be a home, not the home, and would be established not reconstituted, the latter term implying a legal right.

The formal recognition of the Zionist Organization as an authority, implicit in the Zionist draft, had been dropped. Weizmann was sensitive to these significant changes:. This clause does not mention the Palestinian or Arab people, whether Christian or Muslim, who compromised over 90 per cent of the population of Palestine, and who owned about 97 per cent of its land.

Further, at a time when the principle of self-determination was being accorded recognition it was being denied to the people of Palestine. The issue of its accurate juridical interpretation is therefore, one of very substantial importance.

In view of these considerations, it is necessary to use the most reliable evidence, the primary public law source materials, for interpretational purposes. He then summarizes the negotiating objectives of both the British Government and the Zionist Organization. The first was to win the war, and the second was to maximize the British power position through the ensuing peace settlement ….

These expectations, however, were necessarily limited by two objective factors. The first was that the number of Jews in Palestine during the World War was only a small fraction of the entire population of the country. The Balfour Declaration became a highly controversial document. His dissent from the political nature of Zionist aims stemmed from conviction that Judaism was a universal faith, distinct from nationality, and that in the era of the modern nation-State the Jewish people did not constitute a nation.

He questioned the credentials of the Zionist Organization to speak for all Jews. In secret memoranda later made public he wrote:. But at the very time when these Jews have been acknowledged as Jewish Russians and given all liberties, it seems to be inconceivable that zionism should be officially recognized by the British Government, and that Mr. I do not know what this involves, but I assume that it means that Mohammedans and Christians are to make way for the Jews, and that the Jews should be put in all positions of preference and should be peculiarly associated with Palestine in the same way that England is with the English or France with the French, that Turks and other Mohammedans in Palestine will be regarded as foreigners, just in the same way as Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine … When the Jews are told that Palestine is their national home, every country will immediately desire to get rid of its Jewish citizens, and you will find a population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants, taking all the best in the country ….

The Ten Commandments were delivered to the Jews on Sinai. It is quite true that Palestine plays a large part in Jewish history, but so it does in modern Mohammedan history, and, after the time of the Jews, surely it plays a larger part than any other country in Christian history ….

Why should the Russian give the Jew equal rights? This was very much a minority view in the British Government whose policy was summed up by Prime Minister Lloyd George:.

It was not their idea that a Jewish State should be set up immediately by the Peace Treaty without reference to the wishes of the majority of the inhabitants. On the other hand, it was contemplated that, when the time arrived for according representative institutions to Palestine, if the Jews had meanwhile responded to the opportunity afforded them and had become a definite majority of the inhabitants, then Palestine would thus become a Jewish Commonwealth.

The notion that Jewish immigration would have to be artificially restricted in order that the Jews should be a permanent minority never entered the head of anyone engaged in framing the policy.

The implication is clear — the achievement of a Jewish majority would assure the establishment of a Jewish State. The fundamental question of the rights of the Palestinians themselves did not enter into the picture. One is that evidently it was not in accordance with the spirit of the pledges of independence given to the Arabs both before and after it was issued.

The second is that the disposition of Palestine was determined in close consultation with a political organization whose declared aim was to settle non-Palestinians in Palestine. Not only did this ignore the interests of the native Palestinians, but it was a deliberate violation of their rights see sect. IV below. The third is that through the Declaration the British Government made commitments to the Zionist Organization regarding the land of the Palestinians at a moment when it was still formally part of the Ottoman Empire.

For Great Britain had no sovereign rights over Palestine, it had no proprietary interest, it had no authority to dispose of the land. Other authorities in international law have also held the Declaration to be legally invalid 39 but this was not an issue in , when the Balfour Declaration became official British policy for the future of Palestine.

The ambiguities and contradictions within the Declaration contributed heavily towards the conflict of goals and expectations that arose between the Palestinian Arabs and the non-Palestinian Jews. The Palestinian people were to resist these efforts, since their fundamental political right to self-determination had been denied, and their land was to become the object of colonization from abroad during the period it was under a League of Nations Mandate.

Nationalist aspirations in the Arab world, including Palestine, were ascendant when the war ended. One of the foremost authorities on Middle Eastern affairs, Professor J. Hurewitz, writes:. Yet while Britain and France inherited the political controls they significantly did not annex Near and Middle East territory outright. Mandates and preferential alliances were no more than provisional arrangements, and the presence of the Western Powers in various guises stimulated the growth of local nationalism dedicated to the early realization of full sovereignty.

A major question facing the victorious European Powers was the political status of territories and peoples formerly under Ottoman rule. The Allied Powers, however, decided at the Paris Peace Conference of to bring these territories under the mandates system introduced by the Covenant of the League of Nations, signed on 28 June , as an integral part of the Treaty of Versailles which concluded peace with Germany. The League of Nations was a body sui generis, established by an unprecedented agreement by the victorious States of the post-war world to establish their concept of order in international relations.

The place of the colonies ruled by the victorious States and the territories detached from the defeated States was a special problem in this order. The League of Nations, designed to respond to the prevailing order, adopted the mandates concept, an innovation in the international system, as a way to accommodate the demands of the colonial age with the moral and political need to acknowledge the rights of the colonized.

The degree of tutelage was to depend on the extent of political maturity of the territory concerned. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory. Article 22 laid down no rules for the selection of the Mandatory Powers or for the distribution of mandates between them. Turkey and Germany were simply made to renounce their claims to sovereignty over the territories whose distribution was to be decided by the Allied Powers.

In the case of Turkey, such renunciation was provided for in the Treaty of Sevres of article but, since that treaty never came into force, the renunciation of Turkish claims over non-Turkish territories was formalized in the Treaty of Lausanne.

The former German territories were allotted by a decision of the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers on 7 May , shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. The former Turkish territories, however, were divided at the Conference of San Remo on 25 April , while a legal state of war with Turkey still existed, three years before the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne.

The various mandate instruments were drafted by the Mandatory Powers concerned but subject to the approval of the League of Nations. The mandate for Iraq, while in the process of being drafted, was amended to provide for the signature of a treaty between Britain and Iraq, which was concluded in This was supplemented by further agreements, all approved by the League as meeting with the requirements of article 22 of the Covenant. Iraq obtained formal independence on 3 October The Mandate for Syria and Lebanon did not provide for any special treatment as in the case of Iraq.

Both territories were governed under the full control of France until the Mandate was terminated. Lebanon achieved full independence on 22 November and Syria on 1 January Palestine and Transjordan as it was then called were included in the same Mandate but treated as distinct territories. On the request of the British Government the Council of the League, on 16 September , passed a resolution effectively approving a separate administration for Transjordan.

This separate administration continued until the territory attained independence as the Kingdom of Jordan on 22 March Only in the case of Palestine did the Mandate, with its inherent contradictions, lead not to the independence provisionally recognized in the Covenant, but towards conflict that was to continue six decades later. The contradictions inherent in the Mandate for Palestine arose from the incorporation in it of the Balfour Declaration.

The importance of gaining international support for a Jewish State was recognized from the outset for several reasons:. Weizmann and Zionist representatives from France and Italy, accompanied by British officials. The telegram to the British High Commission in Egypt outlined its task:. Although formally still part of the Ottoman Empire, Palestine was under British military occupation since December Palestinian apprehension over the intents of the Balfour Declaration had been reported to London by the military authorities, and when the Zionist Commission arrived in Jerusalem, Weizmann wrote the Foreign Office:.

This has already been done by Mr. Balfour in London, and by the press throughout the world. What is wanted is that the Zionists themselves should bring home to the Arabs and Syrians an exposition at once as accurate and conciliatory as possible of their real aims and policy in the country;…. Palestine, up to now a Moslem country, has fallen into the hands of a Christian Power which on the eve of its conquest announced that a considerable portion of its land is to be handed over for colonization purposes to a nowhere very popular people.

The dispatch of a Commission of these people is subsequently announced … From the announcement in the British press until this moment there has been no sign of a hostile demonstration public or private against a project which if we may imagine England for Palestine can hardly open for the inhabitants the beatific vision of a new heaven and a new earth. The Commission was warned in Cairo of the numerous and grave misconceptions with which their enterprise was regarded and strongly advised to make a public pronouncement to put an end to those misconceptions.

Proposals were submitted to the Foreign Office for consideration at the Conference. He contemplates a Jewish State, a Jewish nation, a subordinate population of Arabs, etc.

Feisal relied heavily for guidance on the British Government, which had sponsored his participation in the Conference. His position is described by George Antonius:. He felt keenly the insufficiency of his equipment, his ignorance of English, his unfamiliarity with the methods of European diplomacy … It added to his sense of weakness and isolation that he knew the French to be hostile to his person and to his mission: apart from the scant courtesy with which he had been treated on his passage through France, he had had a multitude of signs to show him that his own distrust of the French was unfeignedly reciprocated.

Feisal apparently did not fully appreciate the implications of Zionist aims. He could play no significant role in the Conference and, influenced by British officials, he presented a brief memorandum dated 1 January to the Paris Peace Conference, outlining the case for the independence of Arab countries. The paragraph relating to Palestine reads, in stilted and peculiar language:.

The Jews are very close to the Arabs in blood, and there is no conflict of character between the two races. In principles we are absolutely at one. Nevertheless, the Arabs cannot risk assuming the responsibility of holding level the scales in the clash of races and religions that have, in this one province, so often involved the world in difficulties. They would wish for the effective super-position of a great trustee, so long as a representative local administration commended itself by actively promoting the material prosperity of the country.

The significant point is the absence of representation of the Palestinian principals in decision on their fate, a characteristic also of subsequent rulings on Palestine. Both Weizmann and Sokolow spoke before the Conference, where the Zionist Organization presented a detailed memorandum drafted by a Committee including Samuel and Sykes , whose introductory portions, suggesting the alienation of Palestinian sovereignty, read:. For their own reasons both Britain and France did not nominate members to the Commission.

The resolution asked for full independence for Syria including Lebanon and Palestine , rejecting any form of foreign influence or control. The resolution included the first formal declaration of Arab opposition to the plans being made for Palestine:.

Our Jewish compatriots shall enjoy our common rights and assume the common responsibilities. The portions dealing with Palestine recommended:. The tables show that there was no one thing upon which the population of Palestine were more agreed than upon this. No British Officer consulted by the Commissioners believed that the Zionist programme could be carried out except by force of arms. The officers generally thought that a force of not less than 50, soldiers would be required even to initiate the programme.

That of itself is evidence of a strong sense of the injustice of the Zionist programme, on the part of the non-Jewish populations of Palestine and Syria. Decisions, requiring armies to carry out, are sometimes necessary, but they are surely not gratuitously to be taken in the interests of a serious injustice. Meanwhile, the actual policy for Palestine was being given final shape. Palestine presented a unique situation.

For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country, though the American Commission has been going through the form of asking what they are. And zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the , Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. What I have never been able to understand is how it can be harmonized with the Anglo-French declaration of November , the Covenant, or the instructions to the Commission of Enquiry.

Whatever deference should be paid to the view of those living there, the Powers in their selection of a mandatory do not propose, as I understand the matter, to consult them.

The process has been described as follows:. Lloyd George. As a result of the compromise, Palestine, which had under the Sykes-Picot plan been destined for international administration, in the end passed by mutual consent into British tutelage. The decision of the Allied Powers to support Zionist aims drew protest from Palestinians. Citizens of Nazareth reminded the British Administrator in Jerusalem:. Undeterred, the Zionist Organization pressed to obtain international support for its aims by securing approval from the League of Nations.

Weizmann writes that his advisers:. Draft after draft was proposed, discussed and rejected, and I sometimes wondered if we should ever reach a final text. The wording of the Mandate was the object of strong opinions within the British Government, with Curzon strongly resisting formulations that would imply recognition of any legal rights for the Zionist movement in Palestine.

Excerpts from official memoranda are informative:. Surely most dangerous. It is an euphemism for a Jewish State, the very thing they accepted and that we disallow;…. I have never been consulted as to this Mandate at an earlier stage, nor do I know from what negotiations it springs or on what undertakings it is based … I think the entire concept wrong.

Acting upon the noble principles of self-determination and ending with a splendid appeal to the League of Nations, we then proceed to draw up a document which … is an avowed constitution for a Jewish State.

Even the poor Arabs are only allowed to look through the keyhole as a non-Jewish community. The Zionist Organization was being consulted in the drafting of the Mandate although Curzon disapproved:. Weizmann that I could not admit the phrase historical connection in the preamble … It is certain to be made the basis of all sorts of claims in the future.

I do not myself recognize that the connection of the Jews with Palestine, which terminated 1, years ago, gives them any claim whatsoever … I would omit the phrase.

Balfour, by then Lord President of the Council, continued to help Weizmann. In a memorandum on the Mandate for the British Cabinet, Curzon wrote:. When it was first shown to the French Government it at once excited their vehement criticism on the ground of its almost exclusively Zionist complexion and of the manner in which the interests and rights of the Arab majority … were ignored.

The Italian Government expressed similar apprehensions … The Mandate, therefore, was largely rewritten, and finally received their assent;…. Balfour, who interested himself keenly in their case, admitted, however, the force of the above contentions and, on the eve of leaving for Geneva, suggested an alternative form of words which I am prepared to recommend.

The rise of Zionism led to massive Jewish immigration into Israel. About 35, Jews relocated to the area between and Another 40, made their way to the homeland between and Most Jews—about 57 percent of them—lived in Europe in However, by the end of World War II, only about 35 percent of the Jewish population still resided in European countries.

In , more than , Jewish settlers moved to Israel. This was the largest number of immigrants to arrive in a single year. The Jewish population in Israel increased from about , in to 5. Since it started more than years ago, Zionism has evolved, and different ideologies—political, religious and cultural—within the Zionist movement have emerged. Many self-proclaimed Zionists disagree with each other about fundamental principles. Some followers of Zionism are devoutly religious while others are more secular.

Advocates of the Zionist movement see it as an important effort to offer refuge to persecuted minorities and reestablish settlements in Israel. Arabs and Palestinians living in and around Israel typically oppose Zionism.

What is Zionism?