View source for Zionism

{{Short description|Ethnocultural movement supporting a Jewish state in the Palestine region}}
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{{use American English|date=January 2014}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=October 2021}}
[[File:Theodor Herzl.jpg|thumb|[[Theodor Herzl]] was the founder of the modern Zionist movement. In his 1896 pamphlet {{Lang|de|[[Der Judenstaat]]}}, he envisioned the founding of a future independent Jewish state during the 20th century.]]
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'''Zionism'''{{efn|{{IPAc-en|ˈ|z|aɪ|.|ə|n|ɪ|z|əm}} {{respell|ZY|ə|niz|əm}}; {{langx|he|צִיּוֹנוּת|Ṣīyyonūt}}, {{IPA|he|tsijoˈnut|IPA}}}} is an [[Ethnic nationalism|ethnocultural nationalist]]{{efn|"Zionism belongs to the category of ethnocultural nationalism, according to which groups sharing a common history and culture have fundamental and morally significant interests in adhering to their culture and in sustaining it for generations. Cultural nationalism holds that such interests warrant political recognition and support, primarily by the means of granting the groups in question the right to national self-determination or self-rule."{{sfn|Gans|2008|p=3}}}} movement that emerged in late 19th-century [[History of Europe#From revolution to imperialism (1789–1914)|Europe]]; it primarily seeks to establish and support a [[Homeland for the Jewish people|Jewish homeland]] through the [[colonization]] of the [[Palestine (region)|Palestine region]],<ref>{{bulleted list||{{harvnb|Aaronson|1996|p=223|ps=: "On the other hand, our study has revealed that Jewish colonization resembled in many respects the model of pure "settlement of population" ("colonization de peuplement"), in the sense of involving colonization without colonialism."}}|{{harvnb|Cohen|2011|p=128|ps=:"In February 1928, Weizmann submitted an official request to the government for a loan guarantee. He explained that the Zionist Loan was needed to promote further Jewish colonization in Palestine. [...] He advised that both the Zionists and the government should initiate a new period of Zionist colonizing activity as soon as possible."}}|{{harvnb|Murphy|2005|p=}}:{{pn|date=August 2025}} "The first forty years of the twentieth century witnessed the transformation of Zionism from a philosophical discourse to a practical programme for the colonisation of Palestine."|{{harvnb|Yadgar|2017|p=207|ps=:"At the foundation of the Zionist outlook stood the aspiration to establish a state. And absolute sovereignty is needed for Zionism more than for any other nation, because Zionism demanded the right of unrestricted immigration and unrestricted colonization, which can be brought about only by complete sovereignty."}}|{{cite journal |last1=Shapira |first1=Anita |title=Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881–1948 |journal=[[The American Historical Review]] |date=1992a |volume=98 |issue=4 |page=355 |doi=10.1086/ahr/98.4.1302 |url=https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/98/4/1302/129140 |access-date=19 July 2025 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |issn=0002-8762 |quote=In many respects, Zionism was unique as a national movement. 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. [...] The Zionist movement (in particular, it socialist variant) viewed itself as belonging to the forces striving for a better world and could not accept the fact that the framework of its activity was determined by the contours of a country of colonization. |url-access=subscription}}|{{cite journal |last1=Elazari-Volcani |first1=J. |title=Jewish Colonization in Palestine |journal=The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science |date=1932 |volume=164 |pages=84–94 |doi=10.1177/000271623216400112 |jstor=1018961 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/1018961 |access-date=19 July 2025 |issn=0002-7162 |url-access=subscription}}|{{cite book |last1=Gelvin |first1=James L. |title=The Israel-Palestine Conflict: A History |date=11 March 2021 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |pages=49–80 |edition=4th |url=https://www.cambridge.org/highereducation/books/the-israel-palestine-conflict/5D389E3231527643CCE3F861003EC172/zionism-and-the-colonization-of-palestine/4C076CF1B5A8289FAECC6FA36262EC4A |access-date=19 July 2025 |chapter=Zionism and the Colonization of Palestine |doi=10.1017/9781108771634 |isbn=978-1-108-77163-4}}|{{harvnb|Collins|2011|pp=169–185|ps=: "... and as subsequent work (Finkelstein 1995; Massad 2005; Pappe 2006; Said 1992; Shafir 1989) has definitively established, the architects of Zionism were conscious and often unapologetic about their status as colonizers."}}|{{harvnb|Bloom|2011|pp=2, 13, 49, 132|ps=: "Dr. [[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. ... [[Franz Oppenheimer|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) . ... [[Daniel Boyarin]] wrote that the group of Zionists who imagined themselves colonialists inclined to that persona "because such a representation was pivotal to the entire project of becoming 'white men'." Colonization was seen as a sign of belonging to western and modern culture;"}}|{{harvnb|Robinson|2013|p=18|ps=: {{" '}}Never before', wrote Berl Katznelson, founding editor of the Histadrut daily, ''Davar'', 'has the white man undertaken colonization with that sense of justice and social progress which fills the Jew who comes to Palestine.{{' "}} [[Berl Katznelson]]}}|{{harvnb|Alroey|2011|p=5|ps=: "[[Theodor Herzl|Herzl]] further sharpened the issue when he tried to make diplomacy precede settlement, precluding any possibility of preemptive and unplanned settlement in the Land of Israel: "Should the powers show themselves willing to grant us sovereignty over a neutral land, then the Society will enter into negotiations for the possession of this land. Here two regions come to mind: Palestine and Argentina. Significant experiments in colonization have been made in both countries, though on the mistaken principle of gradual infiltration of Jews. Infiltration is bound to end badly."}}|{{harvnb|Jabotinsky|1923|ps=: "Colonisation can have only one aim, and Palestine Arabs cannot accept this aim. It lies in the very nature of things, and in this particular regard nature cannot be changed .. . Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population." [[Ze'ev Jabotinsky]] quoted in Alan Balfour, [https://books.google.com/books?id=D7p9DwAAQBAJ ''The Walls of Jerusalem: Preserving the Past, Controlling the Future''], [[Wiley (publisher)|Wiley]], 2019, p. 59, {{isbn|978-1-119-18229-0}}.}}|{{Cite journal |last=Piterberg |first=Gabriel |date=April 1, 2010 |title=Settlers and their States |url=https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii62/articles/gabriel-piterberg-settlers-and-their-states |journal=[[New Left Review]] |issue=62 |pages=115–124|article-number=2835 |doi=10.64590/odz |quote=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. What its apologists fail to confront is the settler-colonial paradigm. |url-access=subscription}}}}</ref> which corresponds to the [[Land of Israel]] in [[Judaism]] and is central to [[Jewish history]].<ref>{{bulleted list||{{harvnb|Safrai|2018|p=76|ps=: "The preoccupation of [[rabbinic literature]] in all its forms with the [[Land of Israel]] is without question intensive and constant. 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."}}|{{harvnb|Biger|2004|pp=58–63|ps=: "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 [[River Jordan|the Jordan]]'s sources, the southern part of the [[Litani River|Litanni river]] in Lebanon, the large cultivatable area east of the Jordan, including the Houran and Gil'ad wheat zone, Mt Hermon, the [[Yarmouk River|Yarmuk]] and [[Zarqa River#Biblical Jabbok|Yabok]] rivers, the [[Hijaz Railway]] ... ."}}|{{harvnb|Motyl|2001|p=604}}|{{cite book |last1=Herzl |first1=Theodor |author-link1=Theodor Herzl |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3f4RFWkMeWoC |title=Der Judenstaat |publisher=[[Dover Publications|Courier Dover]] |year=1988 |isbn=978-0-486-25849-2 |edition=republication |location=New York |page=40 |translator=[[Sylvie d'Avigdor]] |trans-title=The Jewish state |chapter=Biography, by Alex Bein |access-date=September 28, 2010 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3f4RFWkMeWoC&pg=PA40 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140101195701/http://books.google.com/books?id=3f4RFWkMeWoC |archive-date=January 1, 2014 |url-status=live |orig-date=1896}}{{page needed|date=October 2024}}}}</ref> <!-- The following text is the result of consensus on the talk page. Changes to the text have been challenged and any further edits to the sentence should be discussed on the talk page and consensus obtained to change. -->Zionists wanted to create a [[Jewish state]] in Palestine with as much land, as many [[Jews]], and as few [[Palestinians|Palestinian Arabs]] as possible.<ref name="ZionistLandJewsArabs" />

Zionism initially emerged in [[Central Europe|Central]] and [[Eastern Europe]] as a [[secular]] nationalist movement in the late 19th century, in reaction to newer waves of [[antisemitism]] and in response to the [[Haskalah]], or Jewish Enlightenment.<ref>{{bulleted list|{{harvnb|Conforti|2024|p=485|ps=: "The crisis in the Enlightenment movement in the late nineteenth century gave way to the rise of alternative ideologies, such as Jewish nationalism and socialism. Early Zionist thinkers, such as Peretz Smolenskin (1842–1885), sharply criticized the Enlightenment scholars and their universalist approach."}}
| {{harvnb|Shillony|2012|p=88|ps=: "[Zionism] arose in response to and in imitation of the current national movements of Central, Southern, and Eastern Europe"}}
| {{harvnb|LeVine|Mossberg|2014|p=211|ps=: "The parents of Zionism were not Judaism and tradition, but anti-Semitism 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 [[pogrom]]s in [[Eastern Europe]] that set two million Jews to flight; most wound up in [[United States|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."}}
| {{harvnb|Gelvin|2014|p=93 |ps=: "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'."}}
}}</ref><ref>{{bulleted list|
| {{harvnb|Cohen|1995|p=[https://archive.org/details/cambridgesurveyo00robi/page/504 504]}}: "Zionism Colonize palestine."
| {{harvnb|Gelvin|2007|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=5FwAT5fx03IC&q=the%20Basel%20program%20colonisation%20of%20Palestine&pg=PA52 51]}}
| {{harvnb|Pappé|2006|pp=10–11}}
}}</ref> [[Aliyah|The arrival of Zionist settlers]] to Palestine during this period is widely seen as 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.<ref name="OutweighedArabsBundle" />

In 1917, the [[Balfour Declaration]] established Britain's support for the movement. In 1922, the [[Mandate for Palestine]], governed by Britain, explicitly privileged Jewish settlers over the local Palestinian population. In 1948, the [[Israel|State of Israel]] [[Israeli Declaration of Independence|declared its independence]] and the [[1948 Arab–Israeli War|first Arab–Israeli war]] broke out. During the war, Israel expanded its territory to control over 78% of Mandatory Palestine. As a result of the [[1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight]], an estimated 160,000 of 870,000 Palestinians in the territory remained, forming a [[Arab citizens of Israel|Palestinian minority in Israel]].<ref name="unccp">{{cite web |author=United Nations General Assembly |date=August 23, 1951 |url=https://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/b792301807650d6685256cef0073cb80/93037e3b939746de8525610200567883?OpenDocument |title=General Progress Report and Supplementary Report of the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine |format=OpenDocument |access-date=May 3, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110822123836/http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/b792301807650d6685256cef0073cb80/93037e3b939746de8525610200567883?OpenDocument |archive-date=August 22, 2011}}</ref>

Zionist views have varied over time and are not uniform, resulting in a variety of [[types of Zionism]].<ref>{{bulleted list||{{harvnb|Dubnov|2011|p=}}:{{pn|date=March 2025}} "Relatively recent examples of the search for this "core" idea in Zionism (which tends to label ideological diversity as "heresy" or "deviation") can be found in Gorny and Netzer, "'Avodat ha-hoveh ha-murhevet'"; Halpern and Reinharz, ''Zionism and the Creation of a New Society''; and Shimoni, ''The Zionist Ideology''. Older studies that are based on a similar presupposition include Heller, ''The Zionist Idea'', and most famously Hertzberg, ''The Zionist Idea''."|{{harvnb|Gorny|1987}}|{{harvnb|Yadgar|2017|loc="Main Zionist Streams and Jewish Traditions"|pp=119–160}}|{{harvnb|Stanislawski|2017}}{{page needed|date=January 2025}}|{{harvnb|Penslar|2023|p=36}}|{{harvnb|Seidler|2012|p=176}} "conflicting founding designs...express the formative ideological background underlying the very idea of the State of Israel."|{{harvnb|Boyarin|2025|pp=137–160}}}: "What we call Zionism, despite the existence of a World Zionist Organization and then a Zionist state, is in fact a catchall for numerous, often contradictory currents of thought."|{{harvnb|Shoham|2013}}|{{harvnb|Shindler|2015|p=}}:{{page needed|date=January 2025}} "Zionism was never a monolithic movement. It would be more correct to speak of a range of different varieties of Zionism. Herzl's General Zionism immediately began to flow into different ideological streams."}}</ref> The Zionist mainstream has historically included [[Liberal Zionism|Liberal]], [[Labor Zionism|Labor]], [[Revisionist Zionism|Revisionist]], and [[Cultural Zionism]], while groups like [[Brit Shalom (political organization)|Brit Shalom]] and [[Ihud]] have been dissident factions within the movement.{{sfn|Gorny|1987|p={{page needed|date=October 2024}}}} [[Religious Zionism]] is a variant of Zionist ideology that brings together secular nationalism and religious conservatism. Advocates of Zionism have viewed it as a national [[liberation movement]] for the [[repatriation]] of an [[Indigenous peoples|indigenous people]] (who were subject to [[Persecution of Jews|persecution]] and share a [[national identity]] through [[National identity#National consciousness|national consciousness]]), to the [[homeland]] of their [[History of ancient Israel and Judah|ancestor]]s.{{sfn|Troen|2007|pp=873–875}}{{sfn|Aaronson|1996|pp=215, 224}}{{sfn|Cohen|2011|pp=118, 120, 128}} [[Anti-Zionism|Opponents of Zionism]] often characterize it as a [[supremacist]],{{sfn|Sabbagh-Khoury|2023|loc=Conclusion}}{{sfn|Beinart|2025}}{{sfn|Jamal|2019|pp=193–220}} [[colonialist]],<ref name="CHARCOL">{{bulleted list|
| {{harvnb|Shafir|Peled|2002|pp=37–38}}
| {{harvnb|Bareli|2003|pp=99–116}}
| {{harvnb|Pappé|2004|pp=72–121}}
| {{harvnb|Prior|1997|pp=106–215}}
| {{harvnb|Shafir|1999|pp=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}
| Lustick, Ian, ''For the Land and the Lord'' ...{{full citation needed|date=January 2025}}
| {{harvnb|Zuriek|1979|p=}}{{page needed|date=January 2025}}
| {{harvnb|Penslar|2003|pp=85–98}}
| {{harvnb|Pappé|2006|pp=}}{{page needed|date=January 2025}}
| {{harvnb|Masalha|2007|p=16}}
| {{harvnb|Prior|1999|p=240}}
}}</ref> or [[Zionist racism|racist]] ideology,<ref name=CHARRAS>
* {{harvnb|Kayyali|1979|p=}}{{pn|date=July 2025}}
* {{harvnb|Gerson|1987|p=68}}
* {{harvnb|Hadawi|1991|p=183}}
* {{cite book |last=Beker |first=Avi |date=2008|title=Chosen: the history of an idea, the anatomy of an obsession |publisher=Macmillan |pages=131, 139, 151}}
* Quoting Mr. Abouchaer of Syria, on p. 31: {{Cite periodical |last1=Carey |first1=John |last2=Carey |first2=Henry F. |title=Hostility in United Nations Bodies to Judaism, as the Jewish People and Jews as Such |journal=Israel Yearbook on Human Rights |date=1987 |volume=17 |editor1-first=Yoram |editor1-last=Dinstein |editor2-first=Mala |editor2-last=Tabory |publisher=The Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University / Martinus Nijhoff Publishers / Kluwer Academic Publishers |pages=29–40 |lccn=72-955544 |issn=0333-5925 |isbn=90-247-3646-3 |id=[[HeinOnline]] [https://heinonline-org.proxy-um.researchport.umd.edu/HOL/Page?collection=intyb&handle=hein.intyb/isryhr0017&id=31&men_tab=srchresults isryhr0017].}}
* Citing Soviet ideology, on p. 136: {{Cite periodical |last=Korey |first=William |title=The Kremlin and the UN Zionism Equals Racism Resolution |journal=Israel Yearbook on Human Rights |date=1987 |volume=17 |editor1-first=Yoram |editor1-last=Dinstein |editor2-first=Mala |editor2-last=Tabory |publisher=The Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University / Martinus Nijhoff Publishers / Kluwer Academic Publishers |pages=133–148 |lccn=72-955544 |issn=0333-5925 |isbn=90-247-3646-3 |id=[[HeinOnline]] [https://heinonline-org.proxy-um.researchport.umd.edu/HOL/Page?collection=intyb&handle=hein.intyb/isryhr0017&id=136&men_tab=srchresults isryhr0017].}}
* Harkabi, Yehoshafat, ''Arab attitudes to Israel'', pp. 247–248{{full citation needed|date=July 2025}}</ref> or as a [[Zionism as settler colonialism|settler colonialist]] movement.<ref>See for example: {{harvnb|Alam|2009}}, or {{harvnb|Gould-Wartofsky|2010}}</ref><ref>{{bulleted list|
| {{harvnb|Masalha|2007|p=314}}
| {{harvnb|Curthoys|Ganguly|2007|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=crIxjc564_AC&pg=PA315 315]}}
| {{harvnb|Kīfūrkiyān|2009|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=_ka2AmZw3YIC&pg=PA9 9]}}
| {{harvnb|Scham|Salem|Pogrund|2005|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=c-cviX0c63YC&pg=PA87 87–]}}
}}</ref>

== Etymology and terminology ==
The word ''[[Zion]]'' itself derives from [[Mount Zion]], which is a hill in [[Jerusalem]] and a term used in the [[Hebrew Bible]].{{sfn|Pixner|2010|pp=320–322}}{{sfn|Neusner|1991|p=469}} It has been used poetically as a [[synecdoche]] to refer to the Land of Israel since the period of the [[Babylonian captivity|Babylonian Exile]], with particular importance in Jewish messianic belief.{{sfn|Harel|1977|pp=194–195}}{{sfn|Davidi|Stillman|Landau|Yehuda|2010}} The messianic conception of "Zion" was utilized by the Rabbi [[Zvi Hirsch Kalischer]], who wrote ''Seeking Zion'' in 1862, a [[proto-Zionist]] text which was the first written work to demand that the Jews migrate en-masse to Palestine.{{sfn|Laqueur|2009|pp=54}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Bloomberg |first=Jon |date=2004 |title=The Jewish world in the modern age |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vVETCrICwO8C&dq=birnbaum+1893+%22jewish+state%22&pg=PA161 |location= |publisher=KTAV Publishing House |page=161 |isbn=9780881258448}}</ref>

The first time the term "Zion" was associated with a mass movement was with the {{lang|he-latn|[[Lovers of Zion|Hovevei Zion]]}} (lit. 'Lovers of Zion'), also known as the {{lang|he-latn|Hibbat Zion}} (lit. 'Love of Zion'), who came together at the 1884 [[Katowice Conference]], inspired by [[Leon Pinsker]]'s pamphlet ''[[Auto-Emancipation]]''. The first use of the term as an [[-ism]] is attributed to the Austrian [[Nathan Birnbaum]], in an 1890 article in his periodical {{lang|de|Selbst-Emancipation}}, itself named after Pinsker's pamphlet.<ref>{{bulleted list|
| {{harvnb|Shindler|2015|p=55}}
| {{harvnb|Fishman|1985|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}
| {{harvnb|Kühntopf-Gentz|1990|p=39}}: {{lang|de|"Nathan Birnbaum wird immer wieder als derjenige erwähnt, der die Begriffe "Zionismus" und "zionistisch" eingeführt habe, auch sieht er es selbst so, obwohl er es später bereut und Bedauern darüber äußert, wie die von ihm geprägten Begriffe verwendet werden. Das Wort "zionistisch" erscheint bei Birnbaum zuerst in einem Artikel der "Selbst-Emancipation" vom 1 April 1890: "Es ist zu hoffen, dass die Erkenntnis der Richtigkeit und Durchführbarkeit der zionistischen Idee stets weitere Kreise ziehen und in der Assimilationsepoche anerzogene Vorurteile beseitigen wird""}} ["Nathan Birnbaum is repeatedly mentioned as the person who introduced the terms "Zionism" and "Zionist", and he himself sees it that way, although he later regrets it and expresses regret about how the terms he coined are used. The word "Zionist" first appears in Birnbaum's article in "Selbst-Emancipation" on April 1, 1890: "It is to be hoped that the recognition of the correctness and feasibility of the Zionist idea will continue to spread and eliminate prejudices acquired during the assimilation era.""]
| {{cite book |url=http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/cm/3092765 |title=Selbst-Emancipation: Zeitschrift für die nationalen, socialen und politischen Interessen des jüdischen Stammes; Organ der Zionisten: (1.4.1890). 1890 Heft 1 (1.4.1890). Wien |date=August 13, 1890 |language=de |trans-title=Self-Emancipation: Journal for the national, social and political interests of the Jewish tribe; Organ of the Zionists: (1.4.1890). 1890 Issue 1 (1.4.1890). Vienna |access-date=July 7, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230708090145/https://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/cm/3092765 |archive-date=July 8, 2023 |url-status=live |via=Digitale Sammlungen}}
}}</ref> Birnbaum used the term "Zionism" in reference to the activities of the Lovers of Zion.<ref>{{cite book |last=Perez |first=Anne |date=2023 |title= Understanding Zionism History and Perspectives |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AqN9EAAAQBAJ&dq=birnbaum+%22hibbat+zion%22+%22zionism%22&pg=PA25 |location= |publisher=Fortress Press |page=25 |isbn=9781506481173}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=<!-- not stated --> |date=2018 |title=The Zionist Ideas Visions for the Jewish Homeland—Then, Now, Tomorrow |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5VtPDwAAQBAJ&dq=Nathan+Birnbaum+1890+%22zionism%22&pg=PR38 |location= |publisher=Jewish Publication Society |page=xxxviii |isbn=9780827612556}}</ref> In 1893, Birnbaum published ''The National Rebirth of The Jewish People in its Own Land'', which advocated for the Jews to migrate to Palestine. In the same year, Birnbaum founded "Zion: Union of Austrian Societies for the Colonization of Palestine and Syria", to carry out his proposals.<ref>{{cite book |last=Wilkinson |first=Paul |date=2008 |title=For Zion's Sake Christian Zionism and the Role of John Nelson Darby |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wj5KAwAAQBAJ&dq=birnbaum+1893+%22national+rebirth%22&pg=PA7 |publisher=[[Wipf & Stock Publishers]] |page=7 |isbn=9781556358074}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Robertson |first=Ritchie |date=2001 |title=The 'Jewish Question' in German Literature, 1749-1939 Emancipation and Its Discontents |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OMepNRndhN4C&dq=birnbaum+national+rebirth+of+the+jewish+people+1893&pg=PA479 |publisher=[[Clarendon Press]] |page=479 |isbn=9780191584312}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Pauley |first=Bruce |date=2000 |title=From Prejudice to Persecution A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MNBFAwAAQBAJ&dq=Birnbaum+%22national+rebirth%22&pg=PA54 |location= |publisher=[[University of North Carolina Press]] |page=54 |isbn=9780807863763}}</ref>

The paramount Zionist leader [[Theodor Herzl]] was unaware of Birnbaum's original usage of the term before popularizing the term "Zionism" himself. In Herzl's diary entries between 1895 and early 1896, he originally used the term "Zionist" to describe others, and not himself. Herzl used the term "Zionist" to describe those in the Lovers of Zion, who Herzl saw as fellow Jewish nationalists, but without a concrete plan. When Herzl published ''[[Der Judenstaat]]'' in 1896, he used the term "Zionist" in the text, often in a critical light, to describe emigration advocates like the Lovers of Zion.{{sfn|Penslar|2023|pp=37–38}}<ref name=derek>{{cite book |last=Penslar |first=Derek |date=2020 |title=Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IwHMDwAAQBAJ&dq=birnbaum+%22lovers+of+zion%22+%22zionism%22&pg=PA93 |location= |publisher=[[Yale University Press]] |page=93 |isbn=9780300182507}}</ref> In ''[[Der Judenstaat]]'', Herzl called for the creation of a Jewish state, an idea which he claimed was "an ancient one" that he did not "discover".{{sfn|Laqueur|2009|pp=84}} After the publication of ''Der Judenstaat'', Birnbaum wrote a review of the book, attributing its success to the author proudly embracing Zionism, but also criticized the cultural proposals of Herzl. Birnbaum quickly struck up a correspondence with Herzl, and gave him a copy of ''The National Rebirth of The Jewish People in its Own Land'', as a sort of Zionist education.<ref>{{cite book |last=Olson |first=Jess |date=2013 |title=Nathan Birnbaum and Jewish Modernity Architect of Zionism, Yiddishism, and Orthodoxy |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7nqjOCSVJm0C&dq=birnbaum+zionism+pamphlet+1893&pg=PA121 |publisher=[[Stanford University Press]] |page=70-75 |isbn=9780804785006}}</ref> 

Herzl did not begin self-identifying as a "Zionist" until months after the publication of ''Der Judenstaat''.<ref name=derek></ref> Herzl's usage of "Zionism" was later popularized when convening the 1897 [[First Zionist Congress]] and the [[World Zionist Organization|Zionist Organization]] founded there.{{sfn|Historical Section of the Foreign Office|1920|p=21}}

== Beliefs ==
===National self-determination===
{{See also|Nationalism|Rise of nationalism in Europe|Self-determination}}
Fundamental to Zionism is the belief that Jews constitute a nation, and have a moral and historic right and need for [[national self-determination|self-determination]]. According to Gideon Shimoni and Yakov Rabkin, in contrast to the Zionist notion of nationhood the Judaic sense of being a nation was rooted in religious beliefs of unique chosenness and divine providence, rather than in ethnicity. Specifically, prayers emphasized distinctiveness from other nations where a connection to [[Eretz Israel]] and the anticipation of restoration were based on messianic beliefs and religious practices, not modern nationalist conceptions.{{sfn|Rabkin|2006|loc=A New Identity}}{{pn|date=August 2025}}{{sfn|Shimoni|1995|p=53}}

=== A Jewish home and state in Palestine ===
{{Main|Homeland for the Jewish people}}

{{See|Proposals for a Jewish state}}

Early Zionism was ambiguous about the form self-determination might take. While some texts spoke of a "Jewish state", others spoke only of a "Jewish homeland" (as in the Zionist movement’s Basel declaration) or "national home for the Jewish people" (the term used in the Balfour Declaration), usually under the sovereignty of the Ottoman and, later, the British Empire. According to [[Shlomo Avineri]], it was only in the 1930s that a sovereign state rather than home became the fully articulated goal.<ref>{{cite web |last=Avineri |first=Shlomo |title=Self-Determination and Israel's Declaration of Independence |website=Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs |date=30 April 2025 |url=https://jcpa.org/article/israels-decaration-of-independence/ |access-date=20 August 2025 |quote=The history of the Zionist movement is fraught with paradoxes and ambiguities regarding its ultimate political aim. Theodor Herzl's foundational document Der Judenstaat (1896) referred explicitly to statehood, yet the Basel Declaration issued at the First Zionist Congress in 1897 judiciously avoided such explicit language: after much discussion it settled on stating that "Zionism aims at achieving in Palestine a Jewish homeland, secured by public law." And in Herzl's utopian novel Altneuland (1902), which described how a Jewish society in the Land of Israel would look in 1923, its precise status within and vis-a-vis the Ottoman Empire is left somewhat nebulous – though Herzl’s clarion call in Basel ("We are a nation") clearly suggested where Zionism was ultimately heading. The reasons for this ambiguity were obvious: while the fundamental subtext of Zionism was to aim at a Jewish state, the geopolitics of the period and the region called for a careful approach. Herzl's aim, despite numerous disappointments, was to try to obtain from the Ottoman Sultan a charter for Jewish immigration, settlement, and practical self-government. The diplomatic contacts of the Zionist movement – not only with the Sublime Porte in Constantinople but also with the German Kaiser, the British government, Russian ministers, and numerous other statesmen – were aimed at achieving such a de facto control of Palestine, regardless of the exact legal formula – a chartered company, autonomy or the like. This ambiguity continued also when Britain became the hegemonic power in the region. The Balfour Declaration was the first major international victory for Zionism, but its careful language spoke merely of "establishing in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people," hedging this with an assurance that this would "not prejudice the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities" in the country. These formulations were incorporated in 1922 into the text of the League of Nations Mandate to Great Britain, and consequently were naturally interpreted in different ways by Zionists, various British administrations, and of course the Arabs in Palestine.}}</ref>

Similarly, some early Zionists, including Herzl, considered [[Sixth Zionist Congress|possibilities]] for a Jewish national home or state outside Palestine, for example in the Americas or Africa. In 1905 (after Herzl's death), a majority of the Zionist Congress voted against the proposal to settle in East Africa, and the supporters of this proposal, led by [[Israel Zangwill]], split from the movement to form the [[Jewish Territorial Organisation]].<ref name="h552">{{cite web |last=Almagor |first=Laura |title=The Movement That Imagined a Jewish Homeland Without the State of Israel |website=New Lines Magazine |date=15 December 2023 |url=https://newlinesmag.com/essays/the-movement-that-imagined-a-jewish-homeland-without-the-state-of-israel/ |access-date=27 August 2025}}</ref><ref name="m783">{{cite book |last=Almagor |first=Laura |title=Routledge Handbook on Zionism |chapter=Jewish Territorialism and ‘Other Zions' |publisher=[[Routledge]] |publication-place=London |date=8 May 2024 |isbn=978-1-003-31235-2 |doi=10.4324/9781003312352-23 |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781003312352/chapters/10.4324/9781003312352-23 |access-date=27 August 2025 |pages=225–236}}</ref> 

Over time, the belief that Jews have a moral and historic right and need for [[national self-determination|self-determination]] in [[Palestine (region)|Palestine]] became the dominant Zionist view.{{efn|"The basic assumption regarding the right of Jews to Palestine—a right that required no proof—was a fundamental component of all Zionist programs. 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. Even Ahad Ha-Am, the eternal skeptic, commented that this was 'a land to which our historical right is beyond doubt and has no need for farfetched proofs.' Others, such as Lilienblum, did not even think it necessary to dwell on this matter."{{sfn|Shapira|1992|p=41}}}} The Zionist claim to Palestine was based on the notion that Jews had a [[hereditary right]] to the land that outweighed the equivalent [[Palestinian nationalism|nationalist claims]] of the local Arabs.<ref name="OutweighedArabsBundle">{{bulleted list|
| {{harvnb|Gorny|1987|p=210}}: "This set of assumptions was intended to stress the equal status of the Jews vis-à-vis the rest of the world, and to provide the basis for their superior right to Palestine."
| {{harvnb|Shapira|1992|pp=41–42}}: "The basic assumption regarding the right of Jews to Palestine—a right that required no proof—was a fundamental component of all Zionist programs. 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."
| {{harvnb|Slater|2020}}: "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."
| {{harvnb|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"
| {{harvnb|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."
| {{harvnb|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."
}}</ref> After suffering as a minority in Europe and the Middle East, establishing a Jewish state, with a Jewish majority, became a focus of the Zionist movement. Zionist organizations encouraged immigration to Palestine, and antisemitism produced a strong push factor.<ref name=“majority”>{{bulleted list|
| {{harvnb|Morris|2001|p=14}}: "The reality of Jewish life, when most of the world's Jews lived in the European part of the Russian Empire known as the 'Pale of Settlement,' running from Memel in the north to Crimea on the Black Sea, was one of continuous discrimination and insecurity and occasional oppression and violence. The historian Elie Kedourie once spoke of the "deep insult of diaspora life." Basic freedoms—of movement, place of residence, language, occupation, and worship—were severely curtailed or regulated by the state. The restrictions, including prohibition of landownership,assured the impoverishment and socioeconomic immobility of most Jews in the Pale. During the mid-nineteenth century, Jews were subjected to a brutal system of twenty-five-year military conscription, which occasionally entailed the virtual kidnapping of their children at the age of twelve, or even some-times at eight or nine, and their attempted conversion to Christianity by the authorities in special preparatory military schools. Indeed, an official Rus-sian government commission in 1888 defined the Jews' condition as one of "repression and disenfranchisement, discrimination and persecution." The impulse to Zionism arose out of and was a product of this reality."
| {{harvnb|Meir-Glitzenstein|2004|p=11}} "The bloodshed [of the ''[[Farhud]]''] prompted many of [the Jewish youth] to turn their backs on traditional leadership and its conservative policy and to seek a radical solution to the Jewish problem in Iraq. The revolutionary fervour of youth led in two different directions: the Jewish national direction, which took them to the Zionist movement; and the socialist direction, which brought them to the Communist Party."
| {{harvnb|Laskier|1994|pp=85–86}}: "The Vichy period ''did'' stimulate a growing segment of pro-Zionist youths and young adults in [[Moroccan Jews|Morocco]] and the rest of the [[Maghrebi Jews|Maghrib]] to engage in active Zionism ({{lang|he-latn|tsīyonut magshīma}}) leading to ʿaliya. [...]<br/>
"The decision in the Yishuv to dispatch the special emissaries to North Africa and to other Arabic-speaking countries from 1943 onward in order to organize youth ʿaliya as well as self-defense, was supported by these and several other leaders in the Maghrib. The latter felt that the experience of 1940–42, the German occupation of Tunisia, the ''farhūd'' (pogrom) in Iraq of June 1941—in which 179 Jews were slaughtered by pro-Nazi Muslim groups—necessitated the formation of self-defense units to guard the communities."
| {{harvnb|Miccoli|2015|p=149}} "With the Arab revolt in Palestine in 1936 and the radicalisation in an anti-Jewish sense of part of the Egyptian sociopolitical arena, a more significant number of Jews started to become interested in Zionism and to worry about the situation of Jews in Palestine and – because of the dramatic news that arrived and thanks to the activities of a group like the {{lang|fr|Ligue contre l'Antisémitisme Allemand}} – in Europe as well."
}}</ref>

=== Claim to a Jewish demographic majority ===
{{see also|Demographic history of Palestine (region)}}
The establishment of a Jewish demographic majority was an essential aspect of Zionism.<ref>{{bulleted list|
| {{harvnb|Ben-Ami|2007|p=22}}: "Zionism is both a struggle for land and a demographic race; in essence, the aspiration for a territory with a Jewish majority."
| {{harvnb|Gorny|1987}}{{pn|date=August 2025}}
| {{harvnb|Morris|2001}}:{{pn|date=August 2025}} "Zionism had always looked to the day when a Jewish majority would enable the movement to gain control over the country: The Zionist leadership had never posited Jewish statehood with a minority of Jews ruling over a majority of Arabs, apartheidstyle."
| {{harvnb|Pappé|2006}}:{{pn|date=August 2025}} "Already in the late nineteenth century Zionism had identified the 'population problem' as the major obstacle for the fulfillment of its dream."
}}</ref> Israeli historian [[Yosef Gorny]] argues that this demographic change required annulling the majority status of the Arabs.<ref>{{harvnb|Gorny|1987}}:{{pn|date=August 2025}} "This was potentially a much more dangerous situation than the struggle of two peoples maintaining a constant balance of forces between them for the same territory. The logical, and even inevitable, corollary of the aspiration towards territorial concentration was the desire to create a Jewish majority in Palestine. Without it, Zionism would forfeit its meaning, since the history of Exile had demonstrated the danger inherent in perpetual minority status. Thus, the desire for a Jewish majority was the key issue in the implementation of Zionism, implying a basic change in the international standing of the Jewish people and marking a turning-point in their history. The significance of this demand, and of the untiring endeavour to realize it in various ways, lay in the annulling of the majority standing of the Arabs of Palestine. The roots of the Jewish-Arab confrontation, therefore, are embedded in the incessant process of disturbance of the status quo ante as regards national status in Palestine."</ref> Gorny argues that the Zionist movement regarded Arab motives in Palestine as lacking both moral and historical significance.{{sfn|Gorny|1987|p=251}} According to Israeli historian [[Simha Flapan]], the view expressed in [[Golda Meir]]’s 1969 interview comment that "[[there was no such thing as Palestinians]]" is a cornerstone of Zionist policy.{{sfn|Flapan|1979|p=12}} After the Holocaust, even those on the far-left of the Zionist movement, including [[Martin Buber]] and other members of Brit Shalom, did not see the Arabs as having an equally weighty claim to nationhood in Palestine,{{sfn|Jacobs|2017|p=274|ps=: "In fact Buber also shared the common European Orientalist perspective, by which the local Arabs did not really have a national concern and may be appeased by the cultural and economic benefits that will accrue from Jewish immigration to Palestine."}} and sought demographic parity.{{efn|"When faced with the apocalyptic dimensions of the Jewish catastrophe, the Holocaust, even Brit-Shalom Ihud moved to endorse first the necessity of demographic parity between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, and then, as 'a necessary evil', the idea of a Jewish independent state, that is the partition of Palestine. It was no longer the time for moral scruples or guilt feelings towards the dispossessed Arab population.{{' "}}{{sfn|Ben-Ami|2007}}}} [[Judah Leon Magnes|Judah Magnes]], even after the Holocaust, continued to support a binational state, even one imposed by the Great Powers, but was unable to find any Arab interlocutors.<ref>{{bulleted list|
| {{harvnb|Morris|2013|pp=51–52}}: "The problem with binationalism, however—apart from main-stream Zionist opposition—was that Brit Shalom and Magnes could find no Arab partners, or even interlocutors, who shared the binational vision or hope. As Magnes succinctly put it as early as 1932: "Arabs will not sit on any committee with Jews [...] [Arab] teachers [...] teach children more and more Jew-hatred." In this sense, things only got worse with the passage of time, the deepening of the Arabs' political consciousness, and the increase in Jewish immigration."
| {{harvnb|Morris|2013|p=55}}: "By mid-World War II Magnes realized that an open-ended international mandate was no longer feasible. He had despaired of ever reaching substantive Jewish-Arab negotiations or agreement and decided that the only solution would be an externally imposed “union between the Jews and the Arabs within a binational Palestine.” Further, he determined, this union would need to be subsumed or incorporated in a wider economic and political "union of Palestine, Transjordan, Syria and Lebanon" and linked to and guaranteed by an "Anglo-American union." And the binational state would have to be "imposed [on the Jews and Arabs] over their opposition” by the United States and Britain. The binational state would need to be based on "parity," in terms of political power, between the two constituent groups, in order to guarantee the rights of whichever group was in the minority.<br/>
"By mid-1948, with the first Arab–Israeli war in full swing, Magnes was deeply pessimistic. He feared an Arab victory: "there are millions upon millions of Muslims in the world [...] They have time. The timelessness of the desert." An Arab ambush on 13 April 1948 of a Jewish convoy bearing doctors and nurses traveling through East Jerusalem to the Hebrew University–Hadassah Medical School campus on Mount Scopus—in which seventy-eight were slaughtered—was in effect the final nail in the coffin of Magnes's binationalism. It was not that he publicly recanted. But he understood that it was a lost cause—and that his own standing in the Yishuv had been irreparably shattered."
}}</ref> British officials supporting the Zionist effort also held similar beliefs.{{efn|Lord Balfour would write, "Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far greater import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land."{{sfn|Khalidi|2006|p=252}}}}{{efn|While Secretary of State for the Colonies, Winston Churchill spoke to the Peel Commission: "I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."{{sfn|White|2012|loc=Introduction}}}}<ref>{{bulleted list|
| {{harvnb|White|2012|loc=Introduction}}
| {{harvnb|Jacobs|2017|loc=Does the Left have a Zionist Problem?}}
| {{harvnb|Khalidi|2006|pp=145–150}}
}}</ref>

Unlike other forms of nationalism, the Zionist claim to Palestine was aspirational and required a mechanism by which the claim could be realized.{{sfn|Penslar|2023|pp=1–2|ps=, "Zionism, in turn, is the belief that Jews constitute a nation that has a right and need to pursue collective self-determination within historic Palestine ... Unlike other nationalisms, however, pre-1948 Zionism's claim on territory was aspirational, based in ancient memories and future hopes. Until well into the twentieth century, a negligible number of Jews lived in the Land of Israel ... It is a belief that Jews have a moral right and historic need for self-determination within historic Palestine."}} The territorial concentration of Jews in Palestine and the subsequent goal of establishing a Jewish majority there was the main mechanism by which Zionist groups sought to realize this claim.<ref>{{harvnb|Morris|1999|p=682}}: "Zionism had always looked to the day when a Jewish majority would enable the movement to gain control over the country: The Zionist leadership had never posited Jewish statehood with a minority of Jews ruling over a majority of Arabs, apartheid style."</ref> By the time of the [[1936 Arab Revolt]], the political differences between the various Zionist groups had shrunk further, with almost all Zionist groups seeking a Jewish state in Palestine.{{sfn|Gorny|1987|pp=Introduction, Chapter 8}}<ref>{{harvnb|Ben-Ami|2007|pp=22–23}}: "Zionism is both a struggle for land and a demographic race; in essence, the aspiration for a territory with a Jewish majority...Zionist democratic diversity did not mean that there was no commonground between the major segments of the movement. Initially, Ben-Gurion preferred an 'iron wall of workers', namely settlements and Jewish infrastructure, on Jabotinsky's call for an iron wall of military might and deterrence... he even lashed out against what he defined as Jabotinsky's 'perverted national fanaticism', and against the Revisionists 'worthless prattle of sham heroes, whose lips becloud the moral purity of our national movement. . .' Eventually, however, under the growing chal-lenge of Arab nationalism and especially with the growth in the Yishuv of a collective mood of sacred Jewish nationalism following the Holocaust, the Labour Zionists, chief among them David Ben-Gurion, accepted forall practical purposes Jabotinsky's iron-wall strategy. The Jewish State could only emerge, and force the Arabs to accept it, if it erected around it an impregnable wall of Jewish might and deterrence."</ref> While not every Zionist group openly called for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, every group in the Zionist mainstream was wedded to the idea of establishing a Jewish demographic majority there.<ref>{{harvnb|Finkelstein|2003|loc=Chapter 1}}: "Within the Zionist ideological consensus there coexisted three relatively distinct tendencies—political Zionism, labor Zionism and cultural Zionism. Each was wedded to the demand for a Jewish majority, but not for entirely the same reasons."</ref>

In pursuing a Jewish demographic majority, the Zionist movement encountered the demographic problem posed by the presence of the local Arab population, which was predominantly non-Jewish. The practical issue of establishing a Jewish state in a majority non-Jewish region was an issue of fundamental importance for the Zionist movement.<ref>{{harvnb|Gorny|1987|p=2}}: "Thus, the desire for a Jewish majority was the key issue in the implementation of Zionism, implying a basic change in the international standing of the Jewish people and marking a turning-point in their history. The significance of this demand, and of the untiring endeavour to realize it in various ways, lay in the annulling of the majority standing of the Arabs of Palestine."</ref>{{sfn|Finkelstein|2016|loc=Chapter 1}} Many Zionist activists intended to establish a Jewish majority through Jewish immigration to the region.<ref>{{bulleted list|
| [[Nahum Sokolow]] in 1918 quoted in {{harvnb|Sanders|1984|pp=641–642}}: "A Jewish government would be established once the Jews formed a majority, which would transpire through steady, large-scale immigration."
| {{harvnb|Morris|2001|p=72}}: "[[Herbert Samuel]] favored gradual but steady immigration; eventually a Jewish majority would form and, then, a state would naturally follow."
| [[Eliezer Ben-Yehuda]], quoted in {{harvnb|Morris|2001|p=49}}: "The goal is to revive our nation on its land [...] ''if only we succeed in increasing our numbers here until we are the majority'' [Emphasis in original]"
}}</ref>

Zionists used the term "transfer" as a euphemism for the removal, or what would now be called [[ethnic cleansing]], of the Palestinian population.<ref>{{harvnb|Masalha|2014}}: "In the 1930s and 1940s the Zionist leadership found it expedient to euphemize, using the term "transfer" or "ha'avara" – the Hebrew euphemism for ethnic cleansing – one of most enduring themes of Zionist settler-colonization (see below). Other themes included demographic transformation of the land and physical separation between the immigrant-settlers and the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine. All these colonizing themes were central to Zionist muscular nationalism, with its rejection of both liberal forms of universalism and Marxism, along with individual rights and class struggle. Instead, Zionism gave precedence to the realization of its ethnocratic völkisch project: the establishment of a biblically ordained state."</ref> According to [[Benny Morris]], the idea of transfer played a large role in Zionist ideology from the inception of the movement and was seen as the main method of maintaining the "Jewishness" of the Zionist's state.<ref>{{harvnb|Morris|2001}}: "The idea of transferring the Arabs out of the Jewish State area to the Arab state area or to other Arab states was seen as the chief means of assuring the stability of the 'Jewishness' of the proposed Jewish State"</ref> He argues that "transfer" was "inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism" and that a land that was primarily Arab could not be transformed into a Jewish state without displacing the Arab population.<ref>{{harvnb|Morris|2004|p=}}: "transfer was inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism—because it sought to transform a land which was 'Arab' into a 'Jewish' state and a Jewish state could not have arisen without a major displacement of Arab population; and because this aim automatically produced resistance among the Arabs which, in turn, persuaded the Yishuv's leaders that a hostile Arab majority or large minority could not remain in place if a Jewish state was to arise or safely endure."</ref> Further, the stability of the Jewish state could not be ensured given the Arab population's fear of displacement. He argues that this would be the primary source of conflict between the Zionist movement and the Arab population.{{sfn||Morris|1999|p=37}}

The concept of "transfer" had a long pedigree in Zionist thought, as it was considered both moral and practical, as a way to deal with the Palestinian problem, create a Jewish homeland and avoid ethnic conflict.<ref>{{bulleted list|
|{{harvnb|Morris|1999|p=139}}: "The transfer idea did not originate with the Peel Commission. It goes back to the fathers of modern Zionism and, while rarely given a public airing before 1937, was one of the main currents in Zionist ideology from the movement's inception. It was always clear to the Zionists that a Jewish state would be impossible without a Jewish majority; this could theoretically be achieved through massive immigration, but even then the Arabs would still be a large, threatening minority."
|{{harvnb|Morris|1999|p=140}}: "Moreover, transfer was seen as a highly moral solution. The Zionist leaders felt that the Jews' need for a country with empty spaces able to absorb future immigrants morally outweighed the rights of the indigenous Arabs—who were no different than their brothers across the Jordan or Litani and could relocate there with relative ease if the transfer was well compensated and well organized. The Arab states—principally Transjordan, Syria, and Iraq—had vast uninhabited areas and required additional inhabitants for their own development. In any event, separation was preferable to an intermingling, which could only end in a bloodbath."
}}
</ref>{{sfn|Ben-Ami|2007|p=25-26}}{{sfn|Masalha|2012|loc=Chapter 1}} The concept of removing the non-Jewish population from Palestine garnered support across the entire spectrum of Zionist groups, eventually including its farthest left factions, who, after realizing the extent of the destruction of European Jewry, viewed it as a lesser evil.{{efn|group=fn|On this topic, Ben-Ami writes: "This is how a Brit-Shalom Ihud, non-Zionist member of the Jewish Agency, Werner Senator, put it: 'If I weigh the catastrophe of five million Jews against the transfer of one million Arabs, then with a clean and easy conscience I can state that even more drastic acts are permissible.{{' "}}{{sfn|Ben-Ami|2007|pp=}}}}<ref>{{harvnb|Masalha|2014|loc=Chapter 2}}: "The archival and documentary evidence shows that in the pre-1948 period, "transfer"/ethnic cleansing was embraced by the highest levels of Zionist leadership, representing almost the entire political spectrum. Nearly all the founding fathers of the Israeli state advocated transfer in one form or another, including Theodor Herzl, Leon Motzkin, Nahman Syrkin, Menahem Ussishkin, Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Tabenkin, Avraham Granovsky, Israel Zangwill, Yitzhak Ben-Tzvi, Pinhas Rutenberg, Aaron Aaronson, Vladmir Jabotinsky and Berl Katznelson (Masalha, 1992). Supporters of "voluntary" removal included Arthur Ruppin, a co-founder of Brit Shalom, a movement advocating bi-nationalism and equal rights for Arabs and Jews; moderate leaders of Mapai (later the Labour party) such as Moshe Shertok and Eli'ezer Kaplan, Israel's first finance minister; and leaders of the Histadrut (Hebrew Labour Federation) such as Golda Meyerson (later Meir) and David Remez (Masalha, 1992)."</ref> Transfer thought began early in the movement's development in various forms.<ref>{{bulleted list|
| {{harvnb|Ben-Ami|2007|pp=25–26}}
| {{harvnb|Slater|2020|loc=''Transfer''}}
| {{harvnb|Masalha|1992|p=2}}: "It should not be imagined that the concept of transfer was held only by maximalists or extremists within the Zionist movement. On the contrary, it was embraced by almost all shades of opinion, from the Revisionist right to the Labor left. Virtually every member of the Zionist pantheon of founding fathers and important leaders supported it and advocated it in one form or another, from Chaim Weizmann and Vladimir Jabotinsky to David Ben-Gurion and Menahem Ussishkin. Supporters of transfer included such moderates as the "Arab appeaser" Moshe Shertok and the socialist Arthur Ruppin, founder of Brit Shalom, a movement advocating equal rights for Arabs and Jews. More importantly, transfer proposals were put forward by the Jewish Agency itself, in effect the government of the Yishuv."
| {{harvnb|Morris|2001|p=139}}: "For many Zionists, beginning with Herzl, the only realistic solution lay in transfer. From 1880 to 1920, some entertained the prospect of Jews and Arabs coexisting in peace. But increasingly after 1920, and more emphatically after 1929, for the vast majority a denouement of conflict appeared inescapable. Following the outbreak of 1936, no mainstream leader was able to conceive of future coexistence and peace without a clear physical separation between the two peoples—achievable only by way of transfer and expulsion. Publicly they all continued to speak of coexistence and to attribute the violence to a small minority of zealots and agitators. But this was merely a public pose, designed to calm the worried inhabitants and the troubled British: To speak out loud of inevitable bloodshed and expulsion could only have undermined both internal self-confidence and external support for their cause."
| {{harvnb|Segev|2001|pp=404–405}}
|{{harvnb|Finkelstein|2016|loc=Introduction}}
}}</ref> "Transfer" was not only seen as desirable but also as an ideal solution by some in the Zionist leadership, but it remained controversial.<ref>{{bulleted list|
| {{harvnb|Finkelstein|2016|loc=Chapter 1}}
| {{harvnb|Shapira|1992|loc=The Shift to an Offensive Ethos}}
| {{harvnb|Gorny|1987|loc=The Decisive Years, 1939–948}}
| {{harvnb|Ben-Ami|2007|pp=25–26}}
| {{harvnb|Morris|2001|pp=682–683}}
}}</ref>

=== Perceived deficiencies of assimilation, negation of diasporic life ===
{{main|Negation of the Diaspora}}

From the perspective of some early Zionist thinkers, Jews living amongst non-Jews suffer from impediments that can be addressed only by rejecting the Jewish identity that developed [[Negation of the Diaspora|while living amongst non-Jews]].{{sfn|Engel|2021|p=}} Accordingly, the early Zionists sought to develop a nationalist Jewish political life in a territory where Jews constitute a demographic majority.{{sfn|Rabkin|2006}}{{page needed|date=November 2024}}{{sfn|Yadgar|2017|pp=180, 221}}<ref>{{harvnb|Avineri|2017|loc=Chapter 7}}: "Unsatisfactory and simplistic as Pinsker's quasi-medical diagnosis may be, it does try to address itself to the exceptional conditions of Jewish existence. If Jews are a nation and they continue to exist as a nation despite the lack of the effective attributes of national life, this is an obvious anomaly, and an explanation has to be found. Krochmal and Graetz tried to explain this deviation from the norms of universal historical development by rearranging the conventional norms of universal history itself. Pinsker lacks this philosophical dimension of history, and he therefore limits himself to stating what he conceives as an anomaly and attempting to suggest a clinical diagnosis for it. Pinsker's diagnosis may appear irrelevant, but his cure is radical. If the nations of the world see the Jew as a soul without a body, a shadowless Ahasver, an eternal Wandering Jew, lacking real, corporeal existence, the cure surely has to be radical. If the Jews are hated because they have no homeland, normalization will become possible only if they acquire one. Were this to happen, then the nations of the world would view the Jews as normal human beings and would consequently lose their inordinate fear of them. No concrete, real attribute of the Jews causes Judeophobia; it is the abnormality of the Jews being somewhere between a national existence and a lack of a real foundation for that existence. For the Jews to appear like any other people they need a homeland, Pinsker argues: then everybody will relate to them as normal people and Judeophobia will wither away."</ref> The early Zionist thinkers saw the integration of Jews into non-Jewish society as both unrealistic (or insufficient to address the deficiencies associated with demographic minority status) and undesirable, since assimilation was accompanied by the dilution of Jewish cultural distinctiveness.{{sfn|Shimoni|1995|loc=Chapter 1}} The Zionist solution to the perceived deficiencies of diasporic life (or the "[[Jewish Question]]") was dependent on the territorial concentration of Jews in Palestine, with the longer-term goal of establishing a Jewish demographic majority there.{{sfn|Gorny|1987|loc=Introduction}}{{sfn|Finkelstein|2016|loc=Chapter 1}}{{sfn|Shimoni|1995|loc=Chapter 1}}

[[Negation of the Diaspora]] is a concept that asserts that Jews living in [[Jewish diaspora|the Diaspora]]—that is, outside of the [[Land of Israel]]—are in an environment that is inherently harmful and so must be fixed to ensure the survival and the cohesion of the [[Jewish peoplehood|Jews as a people]], often to the extent that the Jewish people have no future without amassing at their "spiritual centre" in the Land of Israel.{{sfn|Schweid|1996|p=133}}

==== Zionism and secular Jewish identity ====
Zionism sought to reconfigure Jewish identity and culture in nationalist and secular terms.{{sfn|Shimoni|1995|loc=Zionism as Secular Jewish Identity}}<ref>{{harvnb|Yadgar|2017|p=2}}: "Indeed, Zionism has celebrated itself as the modernization of the Jews, manifested in the dual revolution of allegedly secularizing Jewish identity and nationalizing, or politicizing it."</ref> According to [[Yaacov Yadgar]], Zionism rejected traditional Judaic definitions of what it means to be Jewish, but struggled to offer a new interpretation of Jewish identity independent of rabbinical tradition. Yagdar argues that Jewish religion is viewed as an essentially negative factor in Zionism, even in religious Zionist ideology, and as responsible for the diminishing status of Jews living as a minority.{{sfn|Yadgar|2017|loc=Zionism, Jewish "Religion," and Secularism}} Responding to the challenges of modernity, Zionism sought to replace religious and community institutions with secular-nationalistic ones.<ref>Avineri, cited in {{harvnb|Yadgar|2017|p=72}}</ref> Indeed, Zionism maintained primarily the outward symbols of Jewish tradition, redefining them in a nationalistic context.{{sfn|Rabkin|2006|loc=A New Identity}}{{sfn|Penslar|2023|pp=18–23}} Zionism saw itself as bringing Jews into the modern world by redefining what it means to be Jewish in terms of identification with a sovereign state, rather than Judaic faith and tradition.{{sfn|Avineri|2017|loc=Introduction}} 

This new identity would be based on a rejection of the life of exile. Zionism portrayed the Diaspora Jew as mentally unstable, physically frail, and prone to engaging in transient businesses. They were seen as detached from nature, purely materialistic, and focused solely on their personal gains. In contrast, the vision for the new Jew was radically different: an individual of strong moral and aesthetic values, not shackled by religion, driven by ideals and willing to challenge degrading circumstances; a liberated, dignified person eager to defend both personal and national pride.<ref>{{harvnb|Shapira|2014}}: "This poem, published in Warsaw, epitomizes the youth rebellion that was part of the Zionist experience. Old Judaism seemed aged and ailing, lacking relevance to the new world dawning in the wake of World War One. The old Jew, the Jew of the Diaspora, was depicted as psychologically flawed, physically weak, inclined toward luftgesheftn (lit., "air business", meaning peddling, acting as middlemen, and engaging in other ephemeral trades), a stranger to nature and anything natural and spontaneous, materialistic and incapable of acting on anything but his or her own immediate interests. The new Jew was to be the complete opposite: an ethical, aesthetic person guided by ideals who rebels against a debasing reality; a free, proud individual ready to fight for his or her own and the nation's honor. Yearning for freedom and equality among peoples, admiring nature, beauty, and open spaces, the new Jew relinquished the pleasures of a hypocritical, bourgeois world shackled by outdated conventions and sought the challenge of a life in which dedication to the collective was congruent with maintaining inner truth and a life of simplicity, honesty, and self-realization. The new Jew aspired to equality, justice, and truth in human relations, and was prepared to die for them."</ref> This was the "New Jew" posited by Nordau's [[Muscular Judaism]] and later the pioneering "[[Sabra (person)|Sabra]]" celebrated in Israeli nationalism - not the feminine, over-intellectual, [[Social degeneration|degenerate]] ''Luftmenschen'' (people of air) of the diaspora, as Nordau characterised them.{{sfn|Haynie|2009}}{{sfn|Berg|2017}}{{sfn|Mosse|1992|p=}}{{pn|date=August 2025}}

According to Yadgar, the Zionist goal of reframing of Jewish identity in secular-nationalist terms meant primarily the decline of the status of religion in the Jewish community.<ref>{{harvnb|Yadgar|2017|p=68}}: "This secularization means primarily the "decline of the status of religion in the Jewish community"7 and a gradual "liberation" from the shackles of "religious tradition"."</ref> Prominent Zionist thinkers{{who?|date=July 2025}} frame the development development of secular identity as nationalism functionally serving the same role as religion.<ref>{{harvnb|Avineri|2017|loc=Introduction, Notes}}: "Zionism was the most fundamental revolution in Jewish life. It substituted a secular self-identity of the Jews as a nation for the traditional and Orthodox self-identity in religious terms. It changed a passive, quietistic, and pious hope of the Return to Zion into an effective social force, moving millions of people to Israel. It transformed a language relegated to mere religious usage into a modern, secular mode of intercourse of a nation-state... This does not mean that Israel is a substitute for Jewish religion, only that functionally it plays a role similar to that of religion in pre-Emancipation days. For Jews today who are still religious in the traditional sense, religion has a deep collective existential meaning. But since not all Jews can identify today with the religious symbols, religion is merely a partial focus of identity, and Israel, more than any other factor, now plays this unifying role."</ref> Zionism sought to make Jewish [[Ethnic nationalism|ethnic-nationalism]] the distinctive trait of Jews rather than their commitment to Judaism.{{sfn|Shimoni|1995}}{{page needed|date=November 2024}} According to Yadgar, Zionism instead adopted a racial understanding of Jewish identity.<ref>{{harvnb|Yadgar|2017|p=4}}: "Failing (or neglecting) to offer a fully-fledged national identity that would be independent from rabbinical readings of Jewish identity, yet zealously rebelling against rabbinical authority and "religion" in general, Zionism was left with a racial notion of Jewish identity: Tautologically, echoing anti-Semitic notions of Jewishness, it would argue that a Jew, simply, is a Jew; that Jewishness is something some-one is born with. One does not choose it, nor can one rid oneself of his Jewishness; it is in one's "blood"."</ref>{{page needed|date=November 2024}} According to Yadgar, framed this way (for instance by [[A. B. Yehoshua]]), Jewish identity is only secondarily a matter of tradition or culture.<ref>{{harvnb|Yadgar|2017|pp=192–193, 202}}: "The author, essayist, and public intellectual A. B. Yehoshua is one of the more committed and outspoken spokespersons of the State of Israel's political theology. As such, Yehoshua also functions as an influential formulator of the ideological bed upon which statist Jewishness is founded... Yehoshua's reply to this criticism repeats the claim that Jewish political sovereignty renders assimilation impossible and guarantees, no matter what, that meaningful Jewish content is to be produced. For him, "the cultural matter" is secondary, and as such not deserving of judgment. Political sovereignty, on the other hand, is primary and absolute: Jewishness is not only culture and not only religion."</ref> Nur Masalha says Zionist thinkers view the movement as a "revolt against a tradition of many centuries" of living parasitically at the margins of Western society. Indeed, he says, Zionism{{when?|date=July 2025}} was uncomfortable with the term "Jewish," associating it with passivity, spirituality and the stain of "galut". Instead, Zionist thinkers preferred the term "Hebrew" to describe their identity. Zionism linked the term "Jewish" with negative characteristics prevalent in European anti-Semitic stereotypes, which Zionists believed could be remedied only through sovereignty.{{sfn|Masalha|2012|loc=Chapter 1}}

=== Revival of the Hebrew language ===
{{Main|Revival of the Hebrew language}}
{{See also|Modern Hebrew}}
[[File:Portrait of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (cropped).jpg|thumb|[[Eliezer Ben-Yehuda]] (1858–1922), founder and leader of the movement to [[Revival of the Hebrew language|revive the Hebrew language]], is considered the father of [[Modern Hebrew]].{{sfn|Mandel|2005|pp=85}}]]
The revival of the Hebrew language in Eastern Europe as a secular literary medium marked a significant cultural shift among Jews, who per Judaic tradition used Hebrew only for religious purposes.<ref>{{harvnb|Rabkin|2006}}: "The political movement of Zionism was preceded in Eastern Europe by a revival of the Hebrew language as a nonreligious, literary medium. Jews always used Hebrew in their prayers and religious writings, but this was a revival of Hebrew as a language of novels and poems, polemical articles, and journalistic feuilletons. This development was an anathema to the rabbis who saw in it a desecration of the Holy Tongue. The origins of this movement are found in ethnically mixed Lithuania and later in Galicia, where the German Kultursprache of the Austrian rulers contended with both Polish and Ukrainian (Ruthenian) nationalism. Secularized, modern Jews began to ask for the origins of their culture, for the roots of their history; to extol the glories of Jerusalem; to ask whether they should not look into their own past just as members of other groups were doing."</ref> The primary motivator for establishing modern Hebrew as a national language was the sense of legitimacy it gave the movement, by suggesting a connection between the Jews of ancient Israel and the Jews of the Zionist movement.{{sfn|Dieckhoff|2003|pp=104}} These developments are seen in Zionist historiography as a revolt against tradition, with the development of Modern Hebrew providing the basis on which a Jewish cultural renaissance might develop.{{sfn|Rabkin|2006}}

The [[revival of the Hebrew language]] and the establishment of [[Modern Hebrew]] is most closely associated with the linguist [[Eliezer Ben-Yehuda]] and the Committee of the Hebrew Language (later replaced by the [[Academy of the Hebrew Language]]).{{sfn|Fellman|2011|p=7}}{{sfn|Blau|1981|p=33}}

=== Conquest of labor ===
{{main|Hebrew labor}}

In the early 20th century a more ideologically motivated wave of Zionist immigrants arrived in Palestine. With them, the Zionist movement began to emphasize the so-called "conquest of labor", the belief that the employment of exclusively Jewish labor was the pre-condition for the development of an independent Jewish society in Palestine.{{sfn|Gorny|1987|loc=Introduction}} The goal was to build a "pure Jewish settlement" in Palestine on the basis of "100 per cent Jewish labor" and the claim to an exclusively Jewish, highly productive economy.{{sfn|Flapan|1979|loc=Jewish and Arab Labour}}{{sfn|Shafir|1996|loc=Conclusion}} The Zionist leadership aimed to establish a fully autonomous and independent Jewish economic sector to create a new type of Jewish society. This new society was intended to reverse the traditional economic structure seen in the Jewish Diaspora, characterized by a high number of middlemen and a scarcity of productive workers. By developing fundamental sectors such as industry, agriculture, and mining, the goal was to "normalize" Jewish life that had grown "abnormal" as a result of living amongst non-Jews.{{sfn|Flapan|1979|loc=The Policy of Economic and Social Separation}} Most of the Zionist leadership saw it as imperative to employ strictly Jewish workers in order to ensure the Jewish character of the colonies. Another factor, according to [[Benny Morris]], was the worry that "employment of Arabs would lead to 'Arab values' being passed on to Zionist youth and nourish the colonists' tendency to exploit and abuse their workers", as well as security concerns.{{sfn|Morris|1999|p=51|ps=: "Continued employment of Arabs would lead to "Arab values" being passed on to Zionist youth and nourish the colonists' tendency to exploit and abuse their workers. Moreover, Arabs living in or on the periphery of colonies were suspected of pilfering and of passing information to hostile villagers and officials."}}

The employment of exclusively Jewish labor was also intended to avoid the development of a national conflict in conjunction with a class-based conflict.{{sfn|Almog|1983|p=5}} The Zionist leadership believed that by excluding Arab workers they would stimulate class conflict only within Arab society and prevent the Jewish-Arab national conflict from attaining a class dimension.{{sfn|Flapan|1979|p=201}} While the Zionist settlers of the [[First Aliyah]] had ventured to create a "pure Jewish settlement," they did grow to rely on Arab labor due to the lack of availability of Jewish laborers during this period.{{sfn|Shafir|1996|pp=196–200}} With the arrival of the more ideologically driven settlers of the second aliyah, the idea of "avoda ivrit" would become more central. The future leaders of the Zionist movement saw an existential threat in the employment of Arab labor, motivating the movement to work towards a society based on purely Jewish labor.{{sfn|Shapira|1992|p=60}}{{sfn|Shapira|2014|p=45-50}}{{sfn|Morris|1999|loc=Chapter 2}}

=== Racial conceptions of Jewish identity ===
{{main|Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism}}

In the late 19th century, amid attempts to apply science to notions of [[Race (human categorization)|race]], some of the founders of Zionism (such as [[Max Nordau]]) sought to reformulate conceptions of [[Jewish identity|Jewishness]] in terms of [[racial identity]] and the [[scientific racism|"race science" of the time]]. They believed that this concept would allow them to build a new framework for collective Jewish identity,{{sfn|Avraham|2017|p=357}} and thought that biology might provide "proof" for the "ethnonational myth of common descent" from the biblical [[land of Israel]].{{sfn|Hirsch|2009|p=592}}{{sfn|Doron|1980|p=404}} Countering [[Antisemitism|antisemitic]] claims that Jews were both aliens and a racially inferior people, these Zionists drew on and appropriated elements from various race theories,{{sfn|Hart|1999|p=271}}{{sfn|Avraham|2013|pp=355–357}}{{efn|"If anything, the first decades of Zionism bear out an affinity with some of the more unsavoury 'regenerative' discourses of the late nineteenth century, particularly Social Darwinism, eugenics, nationalism, and colonialism, precisely because Zionism – partly as a project of self-legitimacy – was both a Jewish response to and extension of these very same discourses." {{harv|Presner|2007|pp=1–23,4}}}} to argue that only a [[First Zionist Congress#Basel Program|home for the Jewish people]] could enable the physical regeneration of the Jewish people and a renaissance of pride in their ancient cultural traditions.{{sfn|Vogt|2015|pp=85–86}} According to Nur Masalha, Zionist nationalism embraced [[pan-Germanic]] ideologies, which stressed the concept of das [[Volkish|völk]]: people of shared ancestry should pursue separation and establish a unified state.{{sfn|Masalha|2012|loc=Chapter 1}}

The contrasting [[Jewish assimilation|assimilationist viewpoint]] was that Jewishness consisted in an attachment to [[Judaism]] as a religion and culture. Both the [[Orthodox Judaism|orthodox]] and [[Reform Judaism|liberal]] establishments often rejected this idea.{{sfn|Efron|1994|pp=4,144–146}}{{sfn|Avraham|2013|p=358}}{{sfn|Falk|2017|pp=35–36}} Subsequently, Zionist and non-Zionist Jews vigorously debated aspects of this proposition in terms of the merits or otherwise of [[Jewish diaspora|diaspora life]]. While Zionism embarked on its project of social engineering in [[Mandatory Palestine]], [[Ethnic nationalism|ethnonationalist]] politics on the European continent strengthened and, by the 1930s, some [[History of the Jews in Germany|German Jews]], acting defensively, asserted Jewish collective rights by redefining Jews as a race after [[Nazism]] rose to power.{{sfn|Avraham|2013|pp=354–374}}

With the [[Israeli Declaration of Independence|establishment of Israel]] in 1948, the [[Gathering of Israel|"ingathering of the exiles"]], and the [[Law of Return]], the question of Jewish origins and biological unity came to assume particular importance during early nation building. Conscious of this, Israeli medical researchers and geneticists were careful to avoid any language that might resonate with racial ideas. Themes of "blood logic" or "race" have nevertheless been described as a recurrent feature of modern Jewish thought in both scholarship and popular belief.{{efn|"throughout all of the de-racializing stages of twentieth-century social thought, Jews have continued to invoke blood logic as a way of defining and maintaining group identity...'race' is a significant component not only of scholarly or academic modern Jewish thought, but also of popular or everyday Jewish thought. It is one of the building blocks of contemporary Jewish identity construction, even if there are many who would dispute the applicability of biological or racial categories to Jews." {{harv|Hart|2011|pp=xxxiv–xxxv}}}} Despite this, many aspects of the role of race in the formation of Zionist concepts of a Jewish identity were rarely addressed until recently.<ref>{{bulleted list|
| {{harvnb|Doron|1983|pp=170–171}}
| {{harvnb|Morris-Reich|2006|pp=1–2,4–5}}
| {{harvnb|Gelber|2000|p=133}}
| {{harvnb|Nicosia|2010|pp=1–2,6–8}}
| {{harvnb|Hart|2011|p=xxxiv}}
| {{harvnb|Avraham|2017|pp=172–173}}
| {{harvnb|Avraham|2013|p=356}}
}}</ref>

== History ==
{{Main|History of Zionism}}

{{For timeline|Timeline of Zionism}}

=== Historical and religious background ===
{{See also|Jewish history|History of Israel|History of Palestine|History of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel|Jewish peoplehood}}

The [[Return to Zion|concept of the "return"]] was a powerful symbol within religious Jewish belief,{{sfn|Shapira|2004|p=}}{{pn|date=August 2025}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Greenspoon |first=Leonard J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yw2yDwAAQBAJ&dq=next+year+in+jerusalem&pg=PT9 |title=Next Year in Jerusalem: Exile and Return in Jewish History |year=2019 |publisher=[[Purdue University Press]] |isbn=978-1-61249-604-7 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Lind |first=Dara |date=2014-08-05 |title=Why are you supposed to say "next year in Jerusalem"? |url=https://www.vox.com/2014/8/5/18002034/why-are-you-supposed-to-say-next-year-in-jerusalem |access-date=2023-11-19 |website=Vox |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Johnson |first=George E. |date=2022-04-04 |title=Jewish Word {{!}} Why We Say 'Next Year in Jerusalem' |url=https://momentmag.com/next-year-in-jerusalem/ |access-date=2023-11-19 |website=Moment Magazine |language=en-US}}</ref> traditionally emphasizing that their return should be determined by Divine Providence rather than human action.{{sfn|Avineri|2017}} The cultural memory of Jews in the diaspora revered the Land of Israel. Religious tradition held that a future [[Messianic Age#Judaism|messianic age]] would usher in their return as a people,{{sfn|Taylor|1971|pp=10, 11}} a 'return to Zion' commemorated particularly at [[Passover]] and in [[Yom Kippur]] prayers.{{efn|In late medieval times, there arose among the [[Ashkenazi]] an augury—"[[L'Shana Haba'ah|Next year in Jerusalem]]—that was then included in the thrice-daily [[Amidah]] (Standing prayer).<ref>"Sound the great shofar for our freedom, raise the banner to gather our exiles and gather us together from the four corners of the earth (Isaiah 11:12) Blessed are you, O Lord, Who gathers in the dispersed of His people Israel."</ref>}} The biblical prophecy of [[Gathering of Israel|''Kibbutz Galuyot'']], the ingathering of exiles in the Land of Israel as foretold by the [[Nevi'im|Prophets]], became a central idea in Zionism.<ref>{{harvnb|Halamish|2008|p=}}: "A number of factors motivated Israel's open immigration policy. First of all, open immigration—the ingathering of the exiles in the historic Jewish homeland—had always been a central component of Zionist ideology and constituted the raison d'etre of the State of Israel. The ingathering of the exiles (kibbutz galuyot) was nurtured by the government and other agents as a national ethos, the consensual and prime focus that united Jewish Israeli society after the War of Independence"</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Shohat|2003|p=}}: "Central to Zionist thinking was the concept of Kibbutz Galuiot—the "ingathering of the exiles". Following two millennia of homelessness and living presumably "outside of history", Jews could once again "enter history" as subjects, as "normal" actors on the world stage by returning to their ancient birth place, Eretz Israel"</ref>{{sfn|Russell|Gordon|America|1917}} The transformation of this religious, and primarily passive connection between Jews and Palestine, into an active, secular, nationalist movement arose in the context of ideological developments within modern European nations in the 19th century. According to [[Gideon Shimoni]], the religious Judaic notion of being a nation was distinct from the modern European notion of nationalism.{{sfn|Shimoni|1995}}

=== Forerunners of Zionism ===
{{See also|Aliyah#Middle Ages}}
The forerunners of Zionism, rather than being causally connected to the later development of Zionism, are thinkers and activists who expressed some notion of Jewish national consciousness or advocated for the migration of Jews to Palestine. These attempts were not continuous as national movements typically are.{{sfn|Penslar|2023|p=25}}{{sfn|Shimoni|1995|loc=Chapter 2}} The most notable proto-Zionists were [[rabbi]]s such as [[Judah Alkalai]] and [[Zvi Hirsch Kalischer]].{{sfn|Dieckhoff|2003|loc=Political Beginnings of Zionism}} Their idea of Jews as a collective was strongly tied to religious notions distinct from the secular movement referred to as Zionism that developed at the end of the century.{{sfn|Penslar|2023|pp=27–29}}

In contrast, [[Moses Hess]], who is regarded as the first modern Jewish nationalist, advocated for the establishment of an independent Jewish state in pursuit of the economic and social normalization of the Jewish people.{{sfn|Sela|2002|loc=Zionism}} Hess believed that emancipation alone was not a sufficient solution to the problems faced by European Jewry.{{sfn|Shimoni|1995|loc=Chapter 2}}

Christian restorationist ideas promoting the migration of Jews to Palestine contributed to the ideological and historical context that gave a sense of credibility to these pre-Zionist initiatives.{{sfn|Shimoni|1995|loc=Chapter 2}} Restorationist ideas were a prerequisite for the success of Zionism, since although it was created by Jews, Zionism was dependent on support from Christians, although it is unclear how much Christian ideas influenced the early Zionists. Zionism was also dependent on the thinkers of the ''[[Haskalah]]'' or Jewish enlightenment, such as [[Peretz Smolenskin]] in 1872, although it often depicted it as its opponent.{{sfn|Penslar|2023|p=27|ps=, "The Zionist movement was created by Jews, but from the start it was dependent on support from the Christian world. Restorationism was therefore a prerequisite for the success of Zionism. It is harder to establish, however, whether Christian ideas influenced the nineteenth-century Jews who championed a return to the Land of Israel. It is difficult indeed to trace any such external influences...it may be that direct influence was scant or nonexistent but that the men were all influenced by the dynamic spirit of the age..."}}

=== Establishment of the Zionist movement ===
[[File:Memorandum to Protestant Monarchs of Europe for the restoration of the Jews to Palestine, Colonial Times 1841.jpg|thumb|"Memorandum to the Protestant Powers of the North of Europe and America", published in the ''[[Colonial Times]]'' (Hobart, Tasmania, Australia), in 1841]]

==== Jewish nationalism and emancipation ====
{{see also|Haskalah}}
Ideas of Jewish cultural unity developed a specifically political expression in the 1860s as Jewish intellectuals began promoting the idea of Jewish nationalism. This emerged amid the late [[Rise of nationalism in Europe|19th century European]] trend of [[national revival]]s.{{sfn|Beinin|Stein|2006|p=157}}{{sfn|Kagarlitsky|2014|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=cf3pAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA294 294]}}

Zionism emerged towards the end of the "best century"{{sfn|Avineri|2017|loc=Introduction}} for Jews who for the first time were allowed as equals into European society and gained access to schools, universities, and professions that were previously closed to them.{{sfn|Avineri|2017|loc=Introduction}} By the 1870s, Jews had achieved almost complete [[Jewish emancipation|civic emancipation]] in all the states of western and central Europe.{{sfn|Shimoni|1995}} By 1914, Jews had moved from the margins to the forefront of European society. In the urban centers of Europe and America, Jews played an influential role in professional and intellectual life.{{sfn|Avineri|2017|loc=Introduction}} During this period, as [[Jewish assimilation]] was still progressing most promisingly, some Jewish intellectuals and religious traditionalists framed assimilation as a humiliating negation of Jewish cultural distinctiveness.<ref>{{harvnb|Shimoni|1995}}: "While assimilation was still progressing most promisingly, and also quite independently of antisemitism when it later arose, not only religious traditionalists but also part of the Jewish intelligentsia decried the humiliating self-negation that assimilation exacted and rose to the defense of Jewish cultural distinctiveness."</ref> The development of Zionism and other Jewish nationalist movements grew out of these sentiments.{{sfn|Shimoni|1995|loc=Ethnicity and Nationalism}} In this sense, Zionism can be read as a response to the [[Haskala]] and the challenges of modernity and liberalism, rather than purely a response to antisemitism.{{sfn|Avineri|2017|loc=Introduction}}

Emancipation in Eastern Europe progressed more slowly,{{sfn|Goldberg|2009|p=20}} to the point that Deickoff writes "social conditions were such that they made the idea of individual assimilation pointless". Antisemitism, pogroms and official policies in Tsarist Russia led to the emigration of three million Jews in the years between 1882 and 1914, only 1% of which went to Palestine. Those who went to Palestine were driven primarily by ideas of self-determination and Jewish identity, rather than just in response to pogroms or economic insecurity.{{sfn|Avineri|2017|loc=Introduction}} Zionism's emergence in the late 19th century was among assimilated Central European Jews who, despite their formal emancipation, still felt excluded from high society. Many of these Jews had moved away from traditional religious observances and were largely secular, mirroring a broader trend of secularization in Europe. Despite their efforts to integrate, the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe were frustrated by continued lack of acceptance by the local national movements that tended toward intolerance and exclusivity.{{sfn|Rabkin|2006|loc=Orientations}} For the early Zionists, if nationalism posed a challenge to European Jewry, it also proposed a solution.{{sfn|Shlaim|2001|loc=Introduction}}

==== Leon Pinsker, Theodor Herzl and the birth of modern political Zionism ====
In the wake of the 1881 [[Pogroms in the Russian Empire|Russian pogroms]], [[Leo Pinsker]], who was previously an assimilationist, came to the conclusion that the root of the Jewish problem was that Jews formed a distinctive element that could not be assimilated.{{sfn|Shimoni|1995}} For Pinsker, emancipation could not resolve the problems of the Jewish people.{{sfn|Sela|2002}} In Pinsker's analysis, Judeophobia was the cause of antisemitism and was primiarily driven by Jews' lack of a homeland. The solution Pinsker proposed in his pamphlet ''[[Autoemancipation]]'' (1882) was for Jews to become a "normal" nation and acquire a homeland over which Jews would have sovereignty.{{sfn|Avineri|2017|loc=Introduction}}{{sfn|Sela|2002|loc=Zionism}} Pinsker primarily viewed Jewish emigration a solution for dealing with the "surplus of Jews, the inassimilable residue" from Eastern Europe who had arrived in Germany in response to the pogroms.{{sfn|Shafir|1996}}{{efn|Pinsker wrote: "The fact that, as it seems, we can mix with the nations only in the smallest proportions, presents a further obstacle to the establishment of amicable relations. Therefore, we must see to it that the surplus of Jews, the inassimilable residue, is removed and provided for elsewhere. This duty can be incumbent upon no one but ourselves," Leo Pinsker, "Auto-Emancipation," in Hertzberg, 1959, p. 193. And Nordau wrote, in a otherwise sympathetic presentation of the ''[[Ostjuden]]'', that: "'the contempt created by the impudent, crawling beggar in dirty caftan... falls back on all of us,'" quoted in Aschheim, 1982, p. 88.{{sfn|Shafir|1996|p=243-244}}}}

The pogroms motivated a small number of Jews to establish various groups in the [[Pale of Settlement]] (a region in western Russia) and in [[Poland]], aimed at supporting Jewish emigration to Palestine. The publication of ''Autoemancipation'' provided these groups with an ideological charter around which they would be confederated into [[Lovers of Zion|Hibbat Zion]] ("Lovers of Zion") in 1887 where Pinsker would take a leading role.{{sfn|Morris|1999|loc=Palestine on the Eve}} The settlements established by Hibbat Zion lacked sufficient funds and were ultimately not very successful but are seen as the first of several aliyahs, or waves of settlement, that led to the eventual establishment of the state of Israel.{{sfn|Gorny|1987|loc=The Overt Question, 1882–1917}} The conditions in Eastern Europe would eventually provide Zionism with a base of Jews seeking to overcome the challenges of external ostracism, from the Tsarist regime, and internal changes within the Jewish communities there.{{sfn|Dieckhoff|2003|p=50}} The groups that formed Hibbat Zion included the [[Bilu (movement)|Bilu]] group, which established its first settlement in 1882.{{sfn|Shapira|2012|p=29}} [[Anita Shapira]] describes the Bilu as serving the role of a prototype for the settlement groups that followed.{{sfn|Shapira|2014|p=32-33}} At the end of the 19th century, Jews remained a small minority in Palestine.{{sfn|Morris|2001|p=47}}

At this point, Zionism remained a scattered movement. In the 1890s, Herzl infused Zionism with a practical urgency and worked to unify the various strands of the movement.{{sfn|Masalha|2018}} The title of Herzl's 1896 manifesto providing the ideological basis for Zionism, {{lang|de|[[Der Judenstaat]]}}, is typically translated as The Jewish State. Herzl sought to establish a state where Jews would be the majority and as a result, politically dominant.{{sfn|Dieckhoff|2003|p=[https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Invention_of_a_Nation/1m_w5J0X7lUC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA39&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22Der%20Judenstaat%22 39]}} [[Ahad Ha'am]], the founder of cultural Zionism, criticized the lack of Jewish cultural activity and creativity in Herzl's envisioned state, which Ha'am referred to as "the state of the Jews". He pointed to the envisioned European and German culture of the state where Jews were simply the transmitters of imperialist culture rather than producers or creators of culture.{{sfn|Masalha|2012|loc=Chapter 1}} Like Pinsker, Herzl saw antisemitism as a reality that could only be addressed by the territorial concentration of Jews in a Jewish state.{{sfn|Masalha|2014|loc=Introduction}}

Herzl's project was purely secular; the selection of Palestine, after considering other locations, was motivated by the credibility the name would give to the movement.{{sfn|Masalha|2014|loc=Introduction}} From early on, Herzl recognized that Zionism could not succeed without the support of a [[great power]].<ref>{{harvnb|Cleveland|2010|loc=Chapter 13}}: "Notwithstanding the growing participation of East European Jewry in Zionist activities, Herzl recognized that the movement would not succeed until it secured the diplomatic support of a Great Power and the financial assistance of members of the Western Jewish community."</ref> He hoped that his state would support the great powers' interests and would "form part of a defensive wall for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism."{{sfn|Morris|1999|p=23}}

Herzl's efforts led to the [[First Zionist Congress]] at [[Basel]] in 1897, which created the [[World Zionist Organization|Zionist Organization]] (ZO), renamed in 1960 as [[World Zionist Organization]] (WZO),{{sfn|Sethi|2007}} and adopted the [[Basel Program]], which codified the official objective of establishing a legally recognized home for the Jewish people in Palestine.{{sfn|Masalha|2018}} The Zionist Organization was to be the main administrative body of the movement and would go on to establish the [[Jewish Colonial Trust]], whose objectives were to encourage European Jewish emigration to Palestine and to assist with the economic development of the colonies.

==== Territories considered ====
{{Main|Jewish territorialism|Proposals for a Jewish state}}

[[File:JewishChronicle1896.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|Front page of ''[[The Jewish Chronicle]]'', January 17, 1896, showing an article by Theodor Herzl, a month prior to the publication of his pamphlet {{Lang|de|[[Der Judenstaat]]}}]]
[[File:THEODOR HERZL AT THE FIRST ZIONIST CONGRESS IN BASEL ON 25.8.1897. תאודור הרצל בקונגרס הציוני הראשון - 1897.8.25 (cropped).jpg|upright=1.35|right|thumb|The delegates at the First Zionist Congress, held in [[Basel]], Switzerland (1897)]]
Throughout the first decade of the Zionist movement, Herzl and other Zionist figures considered locations for a Jewish state outside of the Land of Israel, such as [[Uganda Scheme|"Uganda"]] (actually parts of [[British East Africa]] that are today in [[Kenya]]), [[Argentina]], [[Cyprus]], [[Mesopotamia]], [[Mozambique]], and the [[Sinai Peninsula]].<ref>{{harvnb|Rovner|2014|p=45}}: "European Jews swayed and prayed for Zion for nearly two millennia, and by the end of the nineteenth century their descendants had transformed liturgical longing into a political movement to create a Jewish national entity somewhere in the world. Zionism's prophet, Theodor Herzl, considered Argentina, Cyprus, Mesopotamia, Mozambique, and the Sinai Peninsula as potential Jewish homelands. It took nearly a decade for Zionism to exclusively concentrate its spiritual yearning on the spatial coordinates of Ottoman Palestine."</ref> Herzl was initially content with any Jewish self-governed state.{{sfn|Aviv|Shneer|2005|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=kdBtob8RWEMC&q=zionism+uganda+argentina&pg=PA10 10]}} Jewish settlement of Argentina was the project of [[Baron Maurice de Hirsch|Maurice de Hirsch]].{{sfn|Hazony|2000|p=150|ps=: "Recalling his views when he had written "The Jewish State" eight years earlier, he [Herzl] pointed out that at the time, he had openly been willing to consider building on Baron de Hirsch's beginning and establishing the Jewish state in Argentina. But those days were long gone."}} It is unclear if Herzl seriously considered this alternative plan;{{sfn|Friedman|2021|pp=239–240}} however, he later affirmed that only Palestine could gain enough Jewish support because of the historic ties of Jews with that area.{{sfn|Herzl|1896|p=29 (31)}}{{sfn|Shapira|2012|p=23}} A major concern and driving reason for considering other territories was the Russian pogroms, in particular the [[Kishinev pogrom|Kishinev]] massacre, and the resulting need for quick resettlement in a safer place.{{sfn|Hazony|2000|p=369|ps=: "Herzl decided to explore the East Africa proposal in the wake of the pogrom, writing to Nordau: "We must give an answer to Kishinev, and this is the only one...We must, in a word, play the politics of the hour.""}}

=== Early Zionist settlement ===
{{Main|First Aliyah}}

In the early twentieth century, Zionism advanced by establishing towns, colonies, and an independent monetary system to channel Jewish capital into Palestine. Due to the unstable local economy and fluctuating currency values under Ottoman rule, Zionists created their own financial institutions. Despite their small numbers, the Zionists instilled a fear of territorial displacement in the local population,{{sfn|Pappé|2004|loc=Chapter 2}} which led to Palestinian resistance and the settlers' eventual use of military force.<ref>{{harvnb|Morris|1999|p=37}}: "The fear of territorial displacement and dispossession was to be the chief motor of Arab antagonism to Zionism down to 1948 (and indeed after 1967 as well)."</ref> Initially, the impact on rural Palestinians was minimal, with only a few villages encountering Jewish colonies. However, after [[World War I]] and as Zionist land purchases increased, the rural population began to experience dramatic changes. From almost the beginning of Zionist settlement, Palestinians viewed Zionism as an expansionist endeavor. According to Israeli historian Benny Morris, Zionism was inherently expansionist and always had the goal of turning the entirety of Palestine into a Jewish state. In addition, Morris describes the Zionists as intent on politically and physically dispossessing the Arabs.{{sfn|Morris|1999|loc=Conclusions}} Early warnings from local leaders in the 1880s about the destabilizing effects of Jewish immigration went largely unheeded until these later developments.{{sfn|Pappé|2004|loc=The Arrival of Zionism}} By the early 20th century, there were fourteen Zionist settlements in Palestine, established through land purchases from both local and external landowners.{{sfn|Pappé|2004|loc=The Arrival of Zionism}}

From the outset, the Zionist leadership saw land acquisition as essential to achieving their goal of establishing a Jewish state. This acquisition was strategic, aiming to create a continuous area of Jewish land. The WZO established the [[Jewish National Fund]] (JNF) in 1901, with the stated goal "to redeem the land of Palestine as the inalienable possession of the Jewish people." The notion of land "redemption" entailed that the land could not be sold and could not be leased to a non-Jew nor should the land be worked by Arabs,{{sfn|Quigley|2005|pp=4–7}} though most Zionists continued to employ [[fellaheen]] to perform labor on their lands.{{sfn|Anderson|2013|p=84}} The land purchased was primarily from absentee landlords, and upon purchase of the land, the tenant farmers who traditionally had rights of usufruct were often expelled.{{sfn|Khalidi|2010|p=102}} Herzl publicly opposed this dispossession, but wrote privately in his diary: "We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our country... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."{{sfn|Morris|1999|pp=20–24}} The arrival of Zionist settlers to Palestine in the late 19th century is widely seen as the start of the [[Israeli–Palestinian conflict]].{{sfn|Masalha|2012|p=70}}{{sfn|Karsh|2009|p=12}}{{sfn|Morris|2008|p=1}} Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.<ref name="ZionistLandJewsArabs">{{bulleted list|
| {{harvnb|Manna|2022|ps=, pp. 2 ("the principal objective of the Zionist leadership to keep as few Arabs as possible in the Jewish state"), 4 ("in the 1948 war, when it became clear that the objective that enjoyed the unanimous support of Zionists of all inclinations was to establish a Jewish state with the smallest possible number of Palestinians"), and 33 ("The Zionists had two cherished objectives: fewer Arabs in the country and more land in the hands of the settlers.")}}
| {{harvnb|Khalidi|2020|p=76|ps=: "The Nakba represented a watershed in the history of Palestine and the Middle East. 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. Nor would it have been possible to dominate the country without the seizures of land."}}
| {{harvnb|Slater|2020|ps=, pp. 49 ("There were three arguments for the moral acceptability of some form of transfer. The main one—certainly for the Zionists but not only for them—was the alleged necessity of establishing a secure and stable Jewish state in as much of Palestine as was feasible, which was understood to require a large Jewish majority."), 81 ("From the outset of the Zionist movement all the major leaders wanted as few Arabs as possible in a Jewish state"), 87 ("The Zionist movement in general and David Ben-Gurion in particular had long sought to establish a Jewish state in all of "Palestine," which in their view included the West Bank, Gaza, and parts of Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria."), and 92 ("As Israeli historian [[Shlomo Sand]] wrote: 'During every round of the national conflict over Palestine, which is the longest running conflict of its kind in the modern era, Zionism has tried to appropriate additional territory.'")}}
| {{harvnb|Segev|2019|p=418|ps=, "the Zionist dream from the start—maximum territory, minimum Arabs"}}
| {{harvnb|Cohen|2017|p=78|ps=, "As was suggested by Masalha (1992), Morris (1987), and other scholars, many preferred a state without Arabs or with as small a minority as possible, and plans for population transfers were considered by Zionist leaders and activists for years."}}
| {{harvnb|Lustick|Berkman|2017|pp=47–48|ps=, "As Ben-Gurion told one Palestinian leader in the early 1930s, 'Our final goal is the independence of the Jewish people in Palestine, on both sides of the Jordan River, not as a minority, but as a community numbering millions" (Teveth 1985:130). ''Ipso facto'', this meant Zionism's success would produce an Arab minority in Palestine, no matter what its geographical dimensions."}}
| {{harvnb|Stanislawski|2017|p=65|ps=, "The upper classes of Palestinian society quickly fled the fight to places of safety within the Arab world and outside of it; the lower classes were caught between the Israeli desire to have as few Arabs as possible remaining in their new state and the Palestinians' desire to remain on the lands they regarded as their ancient national patrimony."}}
| {{harvnb|Finkelstein|2016|loc=Ch. 1 ("Justifying the Zionist Enterprise")|ps=, "Zionism's claim to the whole of Palestine not only precluded a modus vivendi based on partition with the indigenous Arab population, it called into question any Arab presence in Palestine."}}
| {{harvnb|Rouhana|Sabbagh-Khoury|2014|p=6|ps=, "It was obvious to most approaches within the Zionist movement—certainly to the mainstream as represented by Labor Zionism and its leadership headed by Ben Gurion, that a Jewish state would entail getting rid of as many of the Palestinian inhabitants of the land as possible ... Following Wolfe, we argue that the logic of demographic elimination is an inherent component of the Zionist project as a settler-colonial project, although it has taken different manifestations since the founding of the Zionist movement."}}
| {{harvnb|Engel|2013|ps=, pp. 96 ("From the outset Zionism had been the activity of a loose coalition of individuals and groups united by a common desire to increase the Jewish population of Palestine ..."), 121 ("... the ZO sought ways to expand the territory a partitioned Jewish state might eventually receive ... 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. This perception not only dictated Israel's adamant opposition to the return of Arab refugees, it reinforced the imperative to bring as many new Jewish immigrants into the country as possible, as quickly as possible, no matter how great or small their prospects for becoming the sort of 'new Jews' the state esteemed most.")}}
| {{harvnb|Masalha|2012|p=38|ps=, "From the late nineteenth century and throughout the Mandatory period the demographic and land policies of the Zionist Yishuv in Palestine continued to evolve. But its demographic and land battles with the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine were always a battle for 'maximum land and minimum Arabs' (Masalha 1992, 1997, 2000)."}}
| {{harvnb|Lentin|2010|p=7|ps=, "'the Zionist leadership was always determined to increase the Jewish space ... Both land purchases in and around the villages, and military preparations, were all designed to dispossess the Palestinians from the area of the future Jewish state' (Pappe 2008: 94)."}}
| {{harvnb|Shlaim|2009|p=56|ps=, "That most Zionist leaders wanted the largest possible Jewish state in Palestine with as few Arabs inside it as possible is hardly open to question."}}
| {{harvnb|Ben-Ami|2007|p=50|ps=, "The ethos of Zionism was twofold; it was about demography–ingathering the exiles in a viable Jewish state with as small an Arab minority as possible–and land."}}
| {{harvnb|Pappé|2006|p=250|ps=, "In other words, ''hitkansut'' is the core of Zionism in a slightly different garb: to take over as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians as possible."}}
| {{harvnb|Morris|2004|p=588|ps=, "But the displacement of Arabs from Palestine or from the areas of Palestine that would become the Jewish State was inherent in Zionist ideology and, in microcosm, in Zionist praxis from the start of the enterprise. The piecemeal eviction of tenant farmers, albeit in relatively small numbers, during the first five decades of Zionist land purchase and settlement naturally stemmed from, and in a sense hinted at, the underlying thrust of the ideology, which was to turn an Arab-populated land into a State with an overwhelming Jewish majority."}}
| {{harvnb|Morris|2001|pp=676–682|ps=, "Zionism was a colonizing and expansionist ideology and movement ... 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 ... Palestine would not be transformed into a Jewish state unless all or much of the Arab population was expelled."}}
}}</ref>

In 1903, 'the Eretz Israel assembly' was held by [[Menachem Ussishkin]]. This assembly marked the beginning of a more formalized Zionist colonization effort. Under his leadership, both professional and political organizations were established, paving the way for a sustained Zionist presence in the region.{{sfn|Pappé|2004|loc=The Arrival of Zionism}} Ussishkin delineated three methods for the Zionist movement to acquire land: by force and conquest, by expropriation via governmental authority, and by purchase. The only option available to the movement at the moment in his perspective was the last one, "until at some point we become rulers".{{sfn|Morris|1999|p=35-40}}

==== Second Aliyah ====
{{Main|Second Aliyah}}

The second wave of Zionist settlement came with the [[Second Aliyah]] starting in 1904. The settlers of this period laid the foundational elements for the Jewish society in Palestine envisioned by the Zionist movement. They established the first two political parties, the socialist [[Po'alei Zion]] and the non-socialist [[Hapoel Hatzair|Ha-Po'el Ha-Tza'ir]] and initiated the first collective agricultural settlements known as [[kibbutzim]], which were fundamental in the formation of the Israeli state.{{sfn|Shafir|1996}} They also formed the first underground military group, [[Ha-Shomer]], which later evolved into the Haganah and eventually became the core of the Israeli army. Many leaders of the Zionist national movement were products of the Second Aliyah.{{sfn|Gorny|1987}} The Zionists of the second aliyah were also more ideologically motivated than those of the first aliyah. In particular, they sought the "[[Hebrew Labor|conquest of labor]]", which entailed the exclusion of Arabs from the labor market.{{sfn|Shafir|1996|loc="Conquest of Labor"}}

=== The Balfour Declaration and World War I ===
{{main|Balfour Declaration|Mandate for Palestine|Homeland for the Jewish people}}

[[File:Palestine claimed by WZO 1919.png|thumb|right|Palestine as claimed by the World Zionist Organization in 1919 at the [[Paris Peace Conference, 1919|Paris Peace Conference]]]]
==World War I Period==
While there were 85,000 Jews Jews living in Palestine in 1914, that number went down to 56,000 by 1917. The Arab population also suffered greatly during this time.{{sfn|Shapira|2012|p=67}} When Turkey entered the war on Germany's side in October 1914, tens of thousands of Russian Jews became enemy citizens, and many opted to leave rather than become Ottoman citizens and be subject to conscription.{{sfn|Shapira|2012|p=67}} This gave the Ottomans an opportunity to suppress the Zionist movement.{{sfn|Shapira|2012|p=67}} The war also had a negative effect on trade in Yishuv.{{sfn|Shapira|2012|p=67-68}} On January 17, 1914, the Ottomans announced, with no prior warning, that all foreign nationals must immediately board a ship in Jaffa to be taken to Alexandria.{{sfn|Shapira|2012|p=68}} In April 1917, the Ottomans orders all Jews to leave Jaffa.{{sfn|Shapira|2012|p=68}} In October 1917, after the Ottomans discovered that [[Nili]] had been giving intelligence to the British, they arrested people at random and imposed a curfew as collective punishment.{{sfn|Shapira|2012|p=69}} Most Zionists came to the conclusion that there was no hope of change under the Ottomans and therefore supported the British conquest of Palestine, and they viewed the British as redeemers.{{sfn|Shapira|2012|p=69-70}}

At the start of [[World War I]], the Zionist leadership attempted to persuade the British government of the benefits of sponsoring a Jewish colony in Palestine. Their main initial success was in establishing a lobbying group centered around the [[Rothschild family]], largely driven by [[Chaim Weizmann]].{{sfn|Shlaim|2001}}{{pn|date=August 2025}} In the 1917 [[Balfour Declaration]], Britain declared its support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". The declaration was largely motivated by war-time considerations and antisemitic preconceptions about the putative influence Jews had on the [[Tsarist autocracy|Tsarist government]] and in the shaping of American policy.{{sfn|Shapira|2014|loc=The Balfour Declaration}}{{sfn|Pappé|2004|loc=Palestine in the First World War}} Though his decision was also motivated by religious convictions,{{efn|"The irony here is in the now well-documented understanding that Lord Balfour was himself deeply religious and that his thinking on the projected post-World War 1 fate of Palestine was influenced by his expectations of the fulfullment of biblical prophecy. What disappointed Balfour, [[William Hechler|Hechler]] and [[Abraham Isaac Kook|Kook]] was that the secular Jewish settlers of British Mandate Palestine did not see divine Providence at work in international affairs."{{sfn|Goldman|2009|p=133}}}} Balfour himself had passed the [[Aliens Act 1905]], which aimed to keep Eastern European Jews out of Britain.{{efn|[[Brian Klug]] states that "Keeping Jews out of Britain and packing them off to Palestine were just two sides of the same antisemitic coin"{{sfn|Masalha|2018|loc=Chapter 10}}}} More decisive were Britain's colonial and imperial geopolitical goals in the region, specifically in retaining control over the [[Suez Canal]] by establishing a pro-British state in the region.{{sfn|Shapira|2014|p=70-71}}{{sfn|Roy|2016|p=33-35}} Weizmann's role in obtaining the Balfour Declaration led to his election as the Zionist movement's leader. He remained in that role until 1948, and then was elected as the first [[President of Israel]] after the nation gained independence.

Weizmann's ultimate goal was the establishment of a Jewish state, even beyond the borders of "Greater Israel." For Weizmann, Palestine was a Jewish and not an Arab country. The state he sought would contain the east bank of the Jordan River and extend from the Litani River (in present-day Lebanon). Weizmann's strategy involved incrementally approaching this goal over a long period, in the form of settlement and land acquisition.{{sfn|Flapan|1979|p=[https://www.google.com/books/edition/Zionism_and_the_Palestinians/cJRtAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=%22Greater%20Israel%22 18]}}{{refn|[[Avi Shlaim]] 2014, '''The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (Updated and Expanded)''. Quotation: "In the period 1918–20 the Zionists put forward their own maximalist interpretation of the Balfour Declaration. They wanted international recognition of the Jewish claim to Palestine, and they wanted the Jewish national home to stretch across both banks of the river Jordan. When Weizmann was asked at the Paris peace conference what was meant by a Jewish national home, he famously replied, “To make Palestine as Jewish as England is English.” He was careful, however, not to speak openly in terms of a state, so as not to give substance to the charge that the Jewish minority planned to make itself master over the Arab majority. Although a Jewish state with a Jewish majority was his ultimate and unchanging aim, he believed in working toward this goal in a gradual, evolutionary, and nonprovocative fashion."}} Weizmann was open to the idea of Arabs and Jews jointly running Palestine through an elected council with equal representation, but he did not view the Arabs as equal partners in negotiations about the country's future. In particular, he was steadfast in his view of the "moral superiority" of the Jewish claim to Palestine over the Arab claim and believed these negotiations should be conducted solely between Britain and the Jews.{{sfn|Shlaim|2001}} According to Zionist Israeli historian [[Simha Flapan]], the essential assumptions of Weizmann's strategy were later adopted by [[David Ben-Gurion]] and subsequent Zionist leaders.<ref>{{harvnb|Flapan|1979|p=[https://www.google.com/books/edition/Zionism_and_the_Palestinians/cJRtAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=%22The%20importance%20of%20analysing%22 20]}}: "The importance of analysing Weizmann's strategy derives from the fact that the assumptions on which they were based were, with slight modifications, adopted by Ben-Gurion and his successors. If one substitutes 'United States' for 'Great Britain' and the 'Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan' for the 'Arab National Movement', Weizmann's basic strategic concepts might be taken as descriptive of Israel's present foreign policy."</ref>

==== King-Crane Commission ====
[[File:King Crane Commission 1919 Summary of Arguments Presented to the Commission For and Against Zionism.jpg|thumb|During the [[1919 Paris Peace Conference]], an [[King–Crane Commission|Inter-Allied Commission]] was sent to Palestine to assess the views of the local population; the report summarized the arguments received from petitioners for and against Zionism.]] In 1919, the US-based [[King–Crane Commission]] started with a strongly sympathetic disposition towards Zionism but concluded that the maximum Zionist demands implied subjection of Palestinians to Jewish rule and that this was a violation of the principle of self-determination, given the anti-Zionist sentiment of the non-Jewish population.{{sfn|Ovendale|2015|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=XM_MCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA51 51–]}} The report stated that "The initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a 'right' to Palestine based on occupation of two thousand years ago, can barely be seriously considered."{{sfn|Quigley|2021|p=181}}<ref name="Crane">{{Cite report |title=Report of the American Section of the International Commission on Mandates in Turkey |publisher=[[King-Crane Commission]] |date=August 28, 1919 |page=794 |url=https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1919Parisv12/d380 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231216002528/https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1919Parisv12/d380 |archive-date=December 16, 2023}}</ref> Consequently, it recommended a considerably "modified" or "reduced" version of the Zionist programme, with Palestine as a Jewish national home but not a Jewish state.<ref name="Crane"/>

==== The Development of Revisionist Zionism ====
[[Ze'ev Jabotinsky]] founded the [[Revisionist Zionism|Revisionist Party]] in 1925, which took on a more militant ethos and openly maximalist agenda than Weizmann and Ben-Gurion. Jabotinsky rejected Weizmann's strategy of incremental state building, instead preferring to immediately declare sovereignty over the entire region, which extended to both the East and West bank of the Jordan river.{{sfn|Shlaim|2001}} Like Weizmann and Herzl, Jabotinsky also believed that the support of a Great Power was essential to the success of Zionism. From early on, Jabotinksy openly rejected the possibility of a "voluntary agreement" with the Arabs of Palestine. He instead believed in building an "[[Iron Wall (essay)|iron wall]]" of Jewish military force to break Arab resistance to Zionism, at which point an agreement could be established.{{sfn|Shlaim|2001}} Jabotinsky's "iron wall" strategy would have a lasting effect on the Zionist perspective towards the demographic problem posed by the presence of the local Palestinian population.<ref>{{harvnb|Slater|2020}}: "In short, the Iron Wall concept—together with the premises, values, and historical myths that underlie it—has been and still is the dominant political and military strategy of Zionism. Summarizing its consequences, Flapan wrote that Jabotinsky "left an indelible mark on the Zionist attitudes towards the Arab question""</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Cohen|2017}}: "Combined with the justification for using force to impose Zionism's minimum requirements, Jabotinsky's practical proposal for coercive pedagogy quickly filled the void that was Zionism's official policy on the Arab question."</ref> Both the left and right factions of Zionism would rely on this strategy of leveraging military strength in pursuit of political aspirations.<ref>{{bulleted list
| {{harvnb|Shlaim|2001}}: "Jabotinsky never wavered in his conviction that Jewish military power was the key factor in the struggle for a state. It was the Labor Zionists who gradually came around to his point of view without openly admitting it. So in the final analysis the gap was not all that great: Labor leaders, too, came to rely increasingly on the strategy of the iron wall... all Israeli governments, regardless of their political color, have adopted the first stage of the strategy of the iron wall—to impose their presence unilaterally on their neighbors... Despair was expected to promote pragmatism on the other side and thus to prepare the ground for the second stage of the strategy: negotiations with the local Arabs about their status and national rights in Palestine. In other words, Jewish military strength was to pave the way to a political settlement with the Palestinian national movement..."
| {{harvnb|Gorny|1987}}: "From the outset, Zionism sought to employ Jewish force in order to realize national aspirations. This force consisted primarily of the collective ability to rebuild a national home in Palestine. It also included the organization and education of the people and recruitment of Jewish funds and military means of defending the Yishuv. The ha-Shomer organization fulfilled this last task in the Second Aliyah and its continuation was the Hagana set up by Ahdut ha-'Avodah in 1919 and adopted by the Histadrut a year later. Thus, Revisionism's campaign for a Jewish military force in Palestine was innovative only in that it viewed the implementation of Zionism as conditional on the existence of such a force."
| {{harvnb|Morris|2001}}: "The Revisionists found support for their belief that Zionism would win through only with military force. The binationalists saw in the violence "proof" that conciliation had to be achieved quickly, before the Arab majority overwhelmed the Yishuv. The socialist mainstream—now represented by Mapai (Mifleget Poalei Eretz Yisrael—the Land of Israel Workers Party), established in 1930 with the amalgamation of Achdut HaAvodah and HaPoel HaZair—was obliged at last to admit that there existed a Palestinian-Arab nationalist movement, and that the Yishuv was not merely confronting a group of bloodthirsty fanatics or incited hooligans.42 The natural consequence was the growing appreciation, expounded by Chaim Arlosoroff, the director of the Jewish Agency's Political Department from 1931 until 1933, that Zionism would have to use force to achieve its aims.43 After Arlosoroff was murdered by unknown assailants in Tel Aviv in 1933, Ben-Gurion met repeatedly with Musa al-Alami, a PAE member, and argued that Zionism would develop the country to the benefit of both peoples. Al-Alami replied that he would rather have the country remain desolate for a hundred years than see Zionism succeed.44 These contacts came to naught, and the stage was set for the outbreak of the Arab revolt."
| {{harvnb|Shapira|1992}}: "The romanticism of the use of force, a feature that had characterized Zionism in its early period, gave way to a down-to-earth political attitude: Force was conceptualized, coolheadedly and soberly, as one of a gamut of means utilized by a political movement seriously intent on realizing its objectives... Up until World War II, the Zionist leadership had viewed physical power as a tool designed to provide an answer to the challenge of Arab militancy. They regarded it as a means to curb and prevent Arab action but not as a way to advance Jewish initiatives or to create new facts. There was already a certain ambivalence in this matter at the time of the Arab Rebellion. The ascent to Hanita and its settlement could not have taken place without the threat of force by the Jews. In other words, in this instance, force also created facts on the ground."
| {{harvnb|Finkelstein|2016}}: "The 'defensive ethos' was never the operative ideology of mainstream Zionism. From beginning to end, Zionism was a conquest movement. The subtitle of Shapira's study is 'The Zionist Resort to Force'. Yet, Zionism did not 'resort' to force. Force was – to use Shapira's apt phrase in her conclusion – 'inherent in the situation' (p. 357). Gripped by messianism after the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, the Zionist movement sought to conquer Palestine with a Jewish Legion under the slogan 'In blood and fire shall Judea rise again' (pp. 83–98). When these apocalyptic hopes were dispelled and displaced by the mundane reality of the British Mandate, mainstream Zionism made a virtue of necessity and exalted labor as it proceeded to conquer Palestine 'dunum by dunum, goat by goat'. Force had not been abandoned, however. Shapira falsely counterposes settlement ('by virtue of labor') to force ('by dint of conquest'). Yet, settlement was force by other means. Its purpose, in Shapira's words, was to build a 'Jewish infrastructure in Palestine' so that 'the balance of power between Jews and Arabs had shifted in favor of the former' (pp. 121, 133; cf. p. 211). To the call of a Zionist leader on the morrow of Tel Hai that 'we must be a force in the land', Shapira adds the caveat: 'He was not referring to military might but, rather, to power in the sense of demography and colonization' (p. 113). Yet, Shapira willfully misses the basic point that 'demography and colonization' were equally force. Moreover, without the 'foreign bayonets' of the British Mandate, the Zionist movement could not have established even a toehold, let alone struck deep roots, in Palestine.51 Toward the end of the 1930s and especially after World War II, a concatenation of events – Britain's waning commitment to the Balfour Declaration, the escalation of Arab resistance, the strengthening of the Yishuv, etc. – caused a consensus to crystallize within the Zionist movement that the time was ripe to return to the original strategy of conquering Palestine 'by blood and fire'."
}}</ref>

=== British Mandate and development of the Zionist quasi-state ===
After the war, the plan for a greater Arab kingdom under the Hashemite family was abandoned when King Feisal was expelled from Damascus by the French in 1920. In parallel, the Zionist demand for a clear British acknowledgment of the entirety of Palestine as the Jewish national home was rejected. Instead, Britain committed only to establishing a Jewish national home "in Palestine" and promised to facilitate this without prejudicing the rights of existing "non-Jewish communities"{{Em dash}}these qualifying statements aroused the concern of Zionist leaders at the time.{{sfn|Gorny|1987|loc=Historical Background}}

The British mandate over Palestine, established in 1922, was based on the Balfour declaration, explicitly privileging the Jewish minority over the Arab majority.{{sfn|Khalidi|2020|loc=Chapter 1}} In addition to declaring British support for the establishment of a "Jewish national home" in Palestine, the mandate included provisions facilitating Jewish immigration, and granting the Zionist movement the status of representing Jewish national interests.{{sfn|Gorny|1987|loc=Historical Background}} In particular, the Jewish Agency, the embodiment of the Zionist movement in Palestine, was made a partner of the mandatory government, acquiring international diplomatic status and representing Zionist interests before the League of Nations and other international venues.{{sfn|Khalidi|2020|loc=Chapter 1}}

The British mandate effectively established a Jewish quasi-state in Palestine, lacking only full sovereignty. This lack of sovereignty was crucial for Zionism at this early stage, as the Jewish population was too small to defend itself against the Arabs of Palestine. The British presence provided a necessary safeguard for Jewish nationalism. To achieve political independence, Jews needed Britain's support, particularly in land purchase and immigration.{{sfn|Dieckhoff|2003|pp=7–8, 42}} Following the Balfour declaration, Jewish immigration to Palestine grew from 9,149 immigrants in 1921 to 33,801 in 1925—by the end of the mandate period, the Jewish population in Palestine nearly tripled, eventually reaching one third of the country's population.{{sfn|Roy|2016|loc=Political Background to the British Mandate Period (1917–1948)}}

The mandatory administration implemented policies that favored the development of the capitalist sector, predominantly associated with the Jewish community, while disadvantaging the Arab non-capitalist sector. Between 1933 and 1937, government spending was concentrated in two main areas—development and economic services, and defense—with the former focusing on infrastructural improvements (such as railways, roads, bridges, and other public works) that were particularly beneficial for capitalist production.<ref>{{harvnb|Roy|2016|p=38|ps=: "The Mandate administration further exacerbated the problems of the Arab producer by pursuing fiscal policies that, in effect, promoted the development of the Jewish capitalist sector at the expense of the Arab noncapitalist sector.
First, government expenditure in the five years between 1933 and 1937 was greatest for two single sectors: development and economic services, and defense. The former referred to the development of infrastructural services and public works—the improvement and construction of railways, roads, bridges, communications, telegraphs, harbors, and airports—which were far more important for capitalist (as opposed to noncapitalist) production, largely the domain
of the Jewish sector."}}</ref> In contrast to the Jewish population, the Arabs did not benefit from any government protections such as social security, employment benefits, trade union protection, job security and training opportunities. Arab wages were one third of their Jewish counterparts (including when paid by the same employer).{{sfn|Roy|2016|loc=British Government Policies}} The mandate also included an article describing self-governing institutions intended only for the Jewish population of Palestine. No similar support or recognition was provided to the Palestinian majority during the time of the mandate.{{sfn|Khalidi|2020|loc=Chapter 1}}
By enabling the Zionist institutions to serve as a parallel government to the Mandate, the British facilitated the separation of the economy and legitimized their quasi-state status. Accordingly, these institutions, which purported to act in the interests of Jews everywhere, were able to funnel resources into the Jewish sector in Palestine, heavily subsidizing the dominant Jewish economy.{{sfn|Roy|2016|loc=British Government Policies}} The nucleus of the Jewish quasi-state was the [[Histadrut]], established in 1920 as an independent social, political and economic institution.{{sfn|Sternhell|1999|loc=Introduction}}{{efn|"The Histadrut is not a trade union, not a political party, not acooperative society, nor is it a mutual aid association, although it doesengage in trade union activity, in politics, cooperative organizationand mutual aid. But it is much more than that. The Histadrut is a covenant of builders of a homeland, founders of a state, renewers of anation, builders of an economy, creators of culture, reformers of a society."{{sfn|Shimoni|1995|p=201}}}} The Histadrut also exercised significant control over the [[Haganah]], a Jewish defense force formed in 1920 in reaction to Arab riots. Originally created to defend the community, Haganah evolved into a permanent underground reserve army fully integrated into the Jewish political structure. Although the British authorities disapproved of the Haganah, particularly its method of stealing arms from British bases, they did not disband it.{{sfn|Cleveland|2010|p=252}} The Histadrut operated as a completely independent entity, without interference from the British mandate authorities. Ben-Gurion saw the Histadrut's detachment from socialist ideology to be one of its key strengths; indeed it was the General Organization of Workers in Israel. In particular, the Histadrut worked towards national unity and aimed to dominate the capitalist system en route to gaining political power, not to create a socialist utopia.{{sfn|Sternhell|1999|loc=Ends and Means: The Labor Ideology and the Histadrut}}

As secretary general of the Histadrut and leader of the Zionist labor movement, Ben-Gurion adopted similar strategies and objectives as Weizmann during this period, disagreeing primarily on issues of specific tactical moves up until 1939.{{sfn|Flapan|1979|p=131}} The middle class grew dramatically in size with the arrival of the fourth aliyah in 1924, motivating a political shift within the labor movement.{{sfn|Dieckhoff|2003|p=91}} It was during this period that the political strategy of the labor movement would solidify.{{sfn|Sternhell|1999|p=219}} The founding of the Mapai party unified the labor movement, making it the dominant force. The party saw economic control as essential to facilitating Zionist settlement and achieving political power: "the economic question is not one of class; it is a national question".{{sfn|Sternhell|1999}} For Ben-Gurion, the transformation from "working class to nation" was intertwined with his rejection of diaspora life, as he would declare: the "weak, unproductive, parasitical Jewish masses" must be converted "to productive labor" in service of the nation.{{sfn|Dieckhoff|2003|pp=89–95}}

=== Zionist policies and the 1936–1939 Arab Revolt ===
For the Zionist movement, economic development and policies were a mechanism by which political aims could be achieved.{{sfn|Sternhell|1999}} A new economic sector exclusively for Jews, controlled by the Labor Zionist movement, was established with support from the Jewish National Fund and the agricultural workers' Histadrut. Despite the universalist ideals of Zionist pioneering, this new Jewish economic sector was fundamentally based on exclusionary practices.{{sfn|Shafir|1996}} The goal of achieving "100 percent of Hebrew labour" was the primary driver of the territorial, economic and social separation between Jews and Arabs.{{sfn|Flapan|1979|loc=The Policy of Economic and Social Separation}}

The Zionist economic platform was partially based on the assumption (eventually demonstrated incorrect{{sfn|Flapan|1979|pp=19}}) that economic benefits to the Arabs of Palestine would pacify opposition to the movement. For the Zionist leadership, the economic status and development of the Arabs of Palestine should be compared with Arabs of other countries, rather than with the Jews of Palestine. Accordingly, disproportionate gains in Jewish development were acceptable as long as the status of the Arab sector did not worsen. While British support for Zionist aspirations in Palestine established the parameters within which the Arab economy could develop, Zionist policies reinforced these limitations. Most notable are the exclusion of Arab labor from Jewish enterprise and the expulsion of Arab peasants from Jewish-owned land. Both of these had limited impact in scope but reinforced the structural limitations put in place by British policies.{{sfn|Roy|2016|loc=The Economic Transformation of Palestine: Key British and Zionst Policies}}

With the rise to power of the Nazis in 1933, the Jewish community was increasingly persecuted and driven out. The discriminatory immigration laws of the US, UK and other countries preferable to German Jews, led to in 1935 alone more than 60,000 Jews arriving in Palestine (more than the total number of Jews in Palestine as of the establishment of the Balfour declaration in 1917). Ben-Gurion would subsequently declare that immigration at this rate would allow for the maximalist Zionist goal of a Jewish state in all of Palestine.{{sfn|Pappé|2004}}{{page needed|date=November 2024}} The Arab community openly pressured the mandatory government to restrict Jewish immigration and land purchases.{{sfn|Roy|2016|p=33}}

Sporadic attacks in the countryside (described by Zionists and the British as "banditry") reflected widespread anger over the Zionist land purchases that displaced local peasants. Meanwhile, in urban areas, protests against British rule and the increasing influence of the Zionist movement intensified and became more militant in the early 1930s.{{sfn|Khalidi|2020|p=44}}

The outbreak of violence in the course of the 1936 Arab Revolt was a turning point in Jewish-Arab relations, unifying previously divided factions within the Zionist movement and leading them to view the use of force as a necessary means of defense and deterrence.{{sfn|Gorny|1987|pp=243,251}} 

During the revolt, the [[Irgun Zvai Leumi]] engaged in the use of terror attacks against the Arabs of Palestine. Similarly, for the labor Zionist [[Palmah]], the lines delineating what was acceptable and unacceptable while dealing with Arab villagers were "vague and intentionally blurred". These ambiguous limits practically did not differ from those of the self-described "terrorist" group, Irgun. According to Anita Shapira, beginning in this period, Labor Zionism's use of violence against Palestinians for political means was essentially the same as that of radical conservative Zionist groups.{{sfn|Shapira|1992|pp=247, 249, 251–252, 350, 365}}

=== The Peel Commission partition proposal ===
[[File:PeelMap.png|thumb|right|Provisional frontiers of the Palestine partition from the Peel Commission]]
In response to the revolt, the British appointed in 1937 a [[Peel Commission|commission of inquiry]] that eventually recommended the partition of the land. The proposal included creating a small Jewish state occupying 17 percent of Mandatory Palestine's territory,{{sfn|Khalidi|2006|p=45}} while Jerusalem and a corridor to the sea would remain under British control, and the remaining 75 percent of the territory would form a Palestinian state connected to Transjordan under King Abdullah's rule.<ref>{{Cite news |date=February 1, 2024 |title=The Road to 1948, and the Roots of a Perpetual Conflict |url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/01/magazine/israel-founding-palestinian-conflict.html |access-date=January 7, 2025 |work=[[The New York Times]] |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250207025354/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/01/magazine/israel-founding-palestinian-conflict.html |archive-date=February 7, 2025}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Morris |first=Benny |author-link=Benny Morris |date=April 3, 2020 |title=The War on History |url=https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/7210/the-war-on-history/ |access-date=January 7, 2025 |website=Jewish Review of Books |language=en-us |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241229114844/https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/7210/the-war-on-history/ |archive-date=December 29, 2024}}</ref> At this point, Jews owned 5.6% of the land in Palestine; the land allocated to the Jewish state would contain 40 percent of the country's fertile land.{{sfn|Roy|2016|p=33}}
The commission also proposed a [[population transfer]] of the Palestinian Arabs from the areas designated for the Jewish state, based on the precedent of the [[Population exchange between Greece and Turkey|1923 Greek-Turkish population exchange]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Robson |first=Laura |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=c0InDgAAQBAJ |title=States of Separation: Transfer, Partition, and the Making of the Modern Middle East |publisher=University of California Press |year=2017 |isbn=978-0-520-29215-4 |pages=115–116 |language=en |quote=The members cited the Greek-Turkish exchange as a model for population exchange: "The courage of the Greek and Turkish statesmen has been justified by the result. Before the operation the Greek and Turkish minorities had been a constant irritant. Now Greco-Turkish relations are friendlier than they have ever been before."}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Katz|1992|p=59}}: "The Commission, however, believed that a secure peace could not be achieved solely by partition and the establishment of a boundary between the two countries. In its opinion, the attainment of peace would necessitate the implementation of population exchanges and land transfers between the Jewish and Arab states on the model of the Greco-Turkish precedent"</ref> For Ben-Gurion, the transfer proposal was the most appealing recommendation put forward by the commission.{{sfn|Ben-Ami|2007|p=25}} Indeed, this sentiment was deeply ingrained to the extent that Ben Gurion's acceptance of partition was contingent upon the removal of the Palestinian population.<ref>{{harvnb|Flapan|1979|p=261}}: "Ben-Gurion declared unequivocally that sovereignty of the Jewish state, especially in matters of immigration and transfer of Arabs, were the two conditions sine qua non for his agreement to partition."</ref>

The Zionist leadership viewed the mass transfer of the Arabs as morally permissible, but were unsure of its political effectiveness.<ref>{{harvnb|Gorny|1987}}: "In any event, the idea of a mass transfer did not strike them as morally deplorable at any time, and their hesitations related only to its political effectiveness."</ref>{{page needed|date=December 2024}} Much of the Zionist leadership spoke in strong support of the transfer plan, asserting that there is nothing immoral about it.{{efn|Various leaders spoke strongly in favor of transfer. Ussishkin said, "We cannot start the Jewish state with ... half the population being Arab ... Such a state cannot survive even half an hour." There was nothing immoral about transferring sixty thousand Arab families: "It is most moral.... I am ready to come and defend ... it before the Almighty." Ruppin said: "I do not believe in the transfer of individuals. I believe in the transfer of entire villages." Berl Katznelson, coleader with Ben-Gurion of Mapai, said the transfer would have to be by agreement with Britain and the Arab states: "But the principle should be that there must be a large agreed transfer." Ben-Gurion summed up: "With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement] .... I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it."{{sfn|Morris|1999|p=144}}}} Within the Zionist movement, two perspectives developed with respect to the partition proposal; the first was a complete rejection of partition, the second was acceptance of the idea of partition on the basis that it would eventually allow for expansion to all territories within "the boundaries of Zionist aspirations.".{{sfn|Chomsky|1999|loc="The Boundaries of Zionist Aspirations"}} It was the right wing of the Zionist movement that put forward the main arguments against transfer, with Jabotinsky strongly objecting it on moral grounds,<ref>{{harvnb|Rubin|2019|p=12}}: "...Jabotinsky also rejected the [partition] plan on moral grounds, fiercely opposing the idea of transferring the Arab population from Palestine. Jabotinsky underscored this point in several letters and speeches from 1937, and expanded on it in an article published in the Revisionist Zionist publication Hayarden...<br />Jabotinsky could not have been more clear about his opposition to transferring a single Arab from Palestine. He also argued that the Peel Commission drew the wrong lesson from the Greek–Turkish case. It was not a 'great precedent', as the commission noted in its report, but a tragedy that involved the expulsion of one million Greeks from Turkey."</ref> and others mainly focusing on its impracticality.{{sfn|Flapan|1979|p=264}} However, in his last book "The Jewish War Front" published in 1940, after the outbreak of WWII, Jabotinsky no longer ruled out the possibility of voluntary population transfer, though he still didn't view it as a necessary solution.<ref>{{harvnb|Rubin|2019|p=15}}: "...in early 1940...Jabotinsky for the first time publicly proposed expelling Arabs from Palestine, even as he still noted that population transfers was by no means a necessary solution and repeated his promise for minority rights in the future Jewish state."</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Schechtman|1956|p=}}:{{pn|date=March 2025}} "In his last book... he fully endorsed the idea of a voluntary Arab transfer from Palestine, though still insisting that it was not mandatory since, objectively, "Palestine, astride the Jordan, has room for the million of Arabs, room for another million of their eventual progeny, for several million Jews, and for peace.""</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Shilon|2021}}: "...in his last book, The Jewish War Front, Jabotinsky did not rule out the possibility of population transfer—that is, expulsion of Arabs. The book was published in 1940, shortly before his death, and was written in the gloomy context of World War II:<br />'I see no need for this exodus, and it would be undesirable from many perspectives. But if it becomes clear that the Arabs prefer to emigrate, this may be discussed without a trace of sorrow in the heart.'"</ref>{{sfn|Segev|2001|pp=406–407}} Some leaders, such as Ruppin, [[Leo Motzkin|Motzkin]], and writers such as [[Israel Zangwill]], also referred to transfer as a "voluntary" action that would include some form of compensation.{{sfn|Morris|2009|pp=349–360}} However, "Palestine's Arabs did not wish to evacuate the land of their ancestors... The matter raised ethical questions that troubled the Yishuv".{{sfn|Morris|2001|p=140}} The revolt was inflamed by the partition proposal and continued until 1939 when it was forcefully suppressed by the British.{{sfn|Khalidi|2020|loc=Chapter 1}}

Later, Vladimir Jabotinsky, the right-wing Zionist leader, drew inspiration from the Nazi demographic policies that resulted in the expulsion of 1.5 million Poles and Jews, in whose place Germans resettled.{{sfn|Finkelstein|2016}} In Jabotinsky's assessment:<blockquote>The world has become accustomed to the idea of mass migrations and has almost become fond of them. Hitler{{--}}as odious as he is to us{{--}}has given this idea a good name in the world.{{sfn|Finkelstein|2016}}</blockquote>

By the time of the [[1936 Arab revolt]], almost all groups within the Zionist movement wanted a Jewish state in Palestine, "whether they declared their intent or preferred to camouflage it, whether or not they perceived it as a political instrument, whether they saw sovereign independence as the prime aim, or accorded priority to the task of social construction".{{sfn|Gorny|1987|p=243-245}} The main debates within the movement at this time were concerning partition of Palestine and the nature of the relationship with the British. The intensity of the revolt, Britain's ambiguous support for the movement and the increasing threat against European Jewry during this period motivated the Zionist leadership to prioritize immediate considerations. The movement ultimately favored the notion of partition, primarily out of practical considerations and partially out of a belief that establishing a Jewish state over all of Palestine would remain an option.<ref>{{harvnb|Gorny|1987|p=323}}: "In the end, all of them accepted partition, less out of inner conviction than because of international pressure and force of national discipline, and in some cases were comforted by the thought that the path to a greater Palestine was still open."</ref> At the 1937 Zionist congress, the Zionist leadership adopted the stance that the land allocated to the Jewish state by the partition plan was inadequate—effectively rejecting the partition plan that faded away in the face of both Arab and Zionist opposition.{{sfn|Cleveland|2010|loc=Communal Conflict and the British Response}}

In response to Ben-Gurion's 1938 quote that "politically we are the aggressors and they [the Palestinians] defend themselves", Israeli historian [[Benny Morris]] says, "Ben-Gurion, of course, was right. Zionism was a colonizing and expansionist ideology and movement", and that "Zionist ideology and practice were necessarily and elementally expansionist." Morris describes the Zionist goal of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine as necessarily displacing and dispossessing the Arab population.{{sfn|Morris|2001|loc=Conclusions}}

=== Nazism, World War II and the Holocaust ===
In 1939, a [[White Paper of 1939|British White Paper]] recommended limiting Jewish immigration and land purchase with the objective of maintaining the status quo while the threat of war loomed in Europe.{{sfn|Morris|1999|p=162}}<ref>{{harvnb|Pappé|2004}}: "A British White Paper of 1939 tried to make provision for Palestinian sensibilities. It repeated the promises made in 1930 of withdrawal from the Balfour Declaration and limits to Jewish immigration and land purchase. The objective was to maintain the status quo until the situation in Europe was clear. The limitation on immigration came at a time when Nazi expansion in Europe was making life for Jews there unbearable and impossible. The Yishuv now waged its own kind of rebellion, a clandestine operation of illegal immigration, land takeover, and formation of a paramilitary organization, helped by sympathetic British officers such as the legendary Orde Wingate."</ref> The immigration was to be limited to no more than 75,000 people over the next five years. With Nazi expansionism in Europe, the limits on immigration prompted further militarization, land takeover and illegal immigration efforts by the Zionist movement. World War II broke out as the Zionists were developing their campaign against the White Paper—unable to accept the White Paper or to side against the British, the Zionist movement would ultimately support the British war effort while working to upend the White Paper.{{sfn|Cleveland|2010|loc=Communal Conflict and the British Response}}{{efn|David Ben Gurion famously would say: we shall "fight the White Paper as if there were no Hitler and fight Hitler as if there were no White Paper."}} From the start of the second world war, the Zionists pressured the British to organize and train a Jewish "army", culminating in the establishment of a Jewish Brigade and accompanying blue and white flag.{{sfn|Morris|1999|p=167}}{{sfn|Gorny|1987|p=277}} The development of this force would further train and enable the already substantial Zionist military capacity.{{sfn|Khalidi|2020|loc=Chapter 1}}{{sfn|Morris|1999|p=167}}{{sfn|Pappé|2004}}{{page needed|date=November 2024}} The Haganah was allowed by the British to openly acquire weapons and worked with the British to prepare for a possible Axis invasion.{{sfn|Cleveland|2010|loc=World War II and the Birth of the State of Israel}}

Despite the White Paper, Zionist immigration and settlement efforts continued during the war period. While immigration had previously been selective, once the details of the Holocaust reached Palestine in 1942, selectivity was abandoned. The official Zionist movement's war effort focused on the survival and development of the Yishuv; Pappe argues that scarce Zionist energy was deployed in support of European Jews.<ref>{{harvnb|Pappé|2004|loc=Palestine in World War II}}: "This was selective, in which the physically fit and those with the right ideological bent were given priority and, at times, exclusivity. This mode of selection was abandoned for a while when the horrific news of Nazi exterminations reached Palestine around 1942. The news even prompted the symbolic act of sending Zionist parachutists into Nazi Europe as a gesture of support to the Jews dying in the death camps rather than as a real attempt to save them. Little Zionist energy was invested in saving Jews, as the priority in those difficult days remained the survival of the Jewish community in Palestine."</ref> Many of those fleeing Nazi terror in Europe preferred to leave for the United States, however, strict American immigration policies and Zionist efforts led to 10% of the 3 million Jews leaving Europe to settle in Palestine.{{sfn|Pappé|2004|loc=Palestine in World War II}}

In the [[Biltmore Program]] of 1942, the Zionist movement would openly declare for the first time its goal of establishing a Jewish state in all of Palestine.{{sfn|Morris|1999|p=169}}<ref>{{harvnb|Shlaim|2001}}: "With this resolution the Zionist movement for the first time openly staked a claim to the whole of mandatory Palestine."</ref> At this point, the United States, with its growing economy and unprecedented military force, became a focal point of Zionist political activity that engaged with the American electorate and politicians. American [[Harry S. Truman|President Truman]] supported the Biltmore program for the duration of his time in office, largely motivated by humanitarian concerns and the growing influence of the Zionist lobby.{{sfn|Cleveland|2010}}

{|class="wikitable" style="float:right; margin-left:16px;"
|+ Population of Palestine by ethno-religious groups, excluding nomads, from the 1946 Survey of Palestine<ref>{{cite report |title=Survey of Palestine |date=1946 |volume=I |chapter=VI |page=141}} and {{cite report |title=Supplement to Survey of Palestine |date=1947 |page=10}}</ref>
|-
! style="width:50px;"|Year
! style="width:60px;"|[[Islam in Palestine|Muslims]]
! style="width:60px;"|[[Yishuv|Jews]]
! style="width:60px;"|[[Palestinian Christians|Christians]]
! style="width:60px;"|Others
! style="width:50px;"|Total Settled
|- style="text-align:right;"
||1922
||486,177 ''(74.9%)''
||83,790 ''(12.9%)''
||71,464 ''(11.0%)''
||7,617 ''(1.2%)''
||649,048
|- style="text-align:right;"
||1931
||693,147 ''(71.7%)''
||174,606 ''(18.1%)''
||88,907 ''(9.2%)''
||10,101 ''(1.0%)''
||966,761
|- style="text-align:right;"
||1941
||906,551 ''(59.7%)''
||474,102 ''(31.2%)''
||125,413 ''(8.3%)''
||12,881 ''(0.8%)''
||1,518,947
|- style="text-align:right;"
||1946
||1,076,783 ''(58.3%)''
||608,225 ''(33.0%)''
||145,063 ''(7.9%)''
||15,488 ''(0.8%)''
||1,845,559
|}

During World War II, as the horrors of [[the Holocaust]] became known, the Zionist leadership formulated the [[One Million Plan]], a reduction from Ben-Gurion's previous target of two million immigrants. Following the end of the war, many [[Sh'erit ha-Pletah|stateless refugees]], mainly [[Holocaust survivors]], began [[Aliyah Bet|migrating to Palestine]] in small boats in defiance of British rules. The Holocaust united much of the rest of world Jewry behind the Zionist project.{{sfn|Johnson|1998|pp=21–28}} The British either [[Cyprus internment camps|imprisoned these Jews in Cyprus]] or [[SS Exodus|sent them]] to the British-controlled [[Allied Occupation Zones in Germany]]. The British, having faced Arab revolts, were now facing opposition by [[British–Zionist conflict|Zionist groups in Palestine]] for subsequent restrictions on Jewish immigration. In January 1946 the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, a joint [[United Kingdom–United States relations|British and American]] committee, was tasked to examine political, economic and social conditions in Mandatory Palestine and the well-being of the peoples now living there; to consult representatives of Arabs and Jews, and to make other recommendations 'as necessary' for an interim handling of these problems as well as for their eventual solution.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Avalon Project – Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry – Preface |url=https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/angpre.asp |access-date=March 10, 2023 |website=avalon.law.yale.edu |publisher=[[Yale Law School]] |archive-date=August 7, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180807185116/http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/angpre.asp |url-status=live}}</ref> Following the failure of the [[London Conference of 1946–47|1946–47 London Conference on Palestine]], at which the United States refused to support the British, leading to both the [[Morrison–Grady Plan]] and the [[Bevin Plan]] being rejected by all parties, the British decided to refer the question to the UN on February 14, 1947.{{sfn|Ravndal|2010|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}{{efn|group=fn|The reasons for this decision were explained by His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in a speech to the House of Commons on February 18, 1947, in which he said:<br />
"His Majesty's Government have been faced with an irreconcilable conflict of principles. There are in Palestine about 1,200,000 Arabs and 600,000 Jews. For the Jews the essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish State. For the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine. The discussions of the last month have quite clearly shown that there is no prospect of resolving this conflict by any settlement negotiated between the parties. But if the conflict has to be resolved by an arbitrary decision, that is not a decision that His Majesty's Government are empowered, as Mandatory, to take. His Majesty's Government have of themselves no power, under the terms of the Mandate, to award the country either to the Arabs or to the Jews, or even to partition it between them."}}

=== End of the Mandate and expulsion of the Palestinians ===
Towards the end of the war, the Zionist leadership was motivated more than ever to establish a Jewish state. Since the British were no longer sponsoring its development, many Zionists considered it would be necessary to [[Zionist political violence|establish the state by force]] by upending the British position in Palestine. In this the [[Irish Republican Army|IRA's tactics]] against Britain in the [[Irish War of Independence]] served as a both a model and source of inspiration.{{efn|"that a small, determined group of revolutionaries representing a minority view within the wider population could achieve some success against the British Empire helped to convince Zionist radicals that they could be successful. Members of Jewish underground groups . .studied Irish rebels' victory over the superior might of Britain. Ze'ev Jabotinsky, leader of the Irgun, had travelled to ireland, meeting Irish Volunteer and IRA gunrunner [[Robert Briscoe (politician)|Robert Briscoe]], to discuss drilling, training and strategy in fighting the British and to 'learn all he could in order to form a physical force movement in Palestine on the same lines as the IRA'."{{sfn|McConaghy|2021|p=482}}}} The [[Irgun]], the military arm of the revisionist Zionists, and [[Lehi (militant group)|Lehi]], who at one point sought an alliance with the Nazis,{{sfn|Morris|1999|p=174}} would lead a series of terrorist attacks against the British starting in 1944. This included the [[King David Hotel bombing]], British immigration and tax offices and police stations. It was only by the war's end that the Haganah joined in the sabotage against the British. The combined impact of US opinion and the attacks on British presence eventually led the British to refer the situation to the United Nations in 1947.{{sfn|Cleveland|2010|loc=World War II and the Birth of the State of Israel}} In response to a United Kingdom government request that the General Assembly "make recommendations under article 10 of the Charter, concerning the future government of Palestine", the [[United Nations Special Committee on Palestine]] (UNSCOP) was created on 15 May 1947.<ref>{{cite web |title=Establishment of UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) |url=https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-183472/ |publisher=[[United Nations]] |date=May 15, 1947 |access-date=February 18, 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240527151638/https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-183472/ |archive-date=May 27, 2024}}</ref>

The urgency of the condition of the Jewish refugees in Europe motivated the committee to unanimously vote in favor of terminating the British mandate in Palestine. The disagreement came with regards to whether Palestine should be partitioned or if it should constitute a federal state. American lobbying efforts, pressuring UN delegates with the threat of withdrawal of US aid, eventually secured the General Assembly votes in favor of the partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, which was passed 29 November 1947.{{sfn|Cleveland|2010|loc=World War II and the Birth of the State of Israel}}

Outbursts of violence slowly grew into a wider civil war between the Arabs and Zionist militias.{{sfn|Pappé|2004|p=118-119}} By mid-December, the Haganah had shifted to a more "aggressive defense",{{sfn|Morris|1999|p=148}} abandoning notions of restraint it had espoused from 1936 to 1939. The Haganah reprisal raids were often disproportionate to the initial Arab offenses,{{sfn|Morris|1999|pp=196–197}} which led to the spread of violence to previously unaffected areas. The Zionist militias, employed terror attacks against Arab civilian and militia centers and many Palestinians were evicted from their houses. In response, Arabs planted bombs in Jewish civilian areas, particularly in Jerusalem.{{sfn|Morris|1999|pp=196–197}}{{sfn|Pappé|2004|p=127}}

The first expulsion of Palestinians began 12 days after the adoption of the UN resolution, and the first Palestinian village was eliminated{{Clarify|reason=Unclear what the meaning of this euphemism is: ethnic cleansing? A massacre? A political disestablishment?|date=September 2025}} a month later, in retaliation for Palestinian attacks on convoys and Jewish settlements.{{sfn|Pappé|2004|pp=118–119}} In March 1948, Zionist forces began implementing Plan D, an ethnic cleansing operation that involved the expulsion of civilians and the destruction of Arab towns and villages in pursuit of eliminating Palestinians seen as potentially hostile, resulting in the loss of Palestine to much of its indigenous population.{{sfn|Pappé|2004|p=120}}{{sfn|Shlaim|2001|loc=Introduction}}<ref>{{harvnb|Morris|2004}}: "The prospect and need to prepare for the invasion gave birth to Plan D, prepared in early March. It gave the Haganah brigade and battalion-level commanders carte blanche to completely clear vital areas; it allowed the expulsion of hostile or potentially hostile Arab villages. Many villages were bases for bands of irregulars; most villages had armed militias and could serve as bases for hostile bands. During April and May, the local Haganah units, sometimes with specific instruction from the Haganah General Staff, carried out elements of Plan D, each interpreting and implementing the plan in his area as he saw fit and in relation to the prevailing local circumstances. In general, the commanders saw fit to completely clear the vital roads and border areas of Arab communities -Allon in Eastern Galilee, Carmel around Haifa and Western Galilee, Avidan in the south. Most of the villagers fled before or during the fighting. Those who stayed put were almost invariably expelled."</ref> According to [[Benny Morris]] Zionist forces committed 24 massacres of Palestinians in the ensuing war,{{sfn|Morris|2008|pp=404–406}}{{Failed verification|date=February 2025|reason=The referenced pages don't seem to include the claimed number of massacres}} in part as a form of psychological warfare,<ref>{{harvnb|Morris|2004}}: "Jewish tactics in the battle were designed to stun and quickly overpower opposition. Demoralisation of the enemy was a primary aim; it was seen to be as important to the outcome of the battle as the physical destruction of the armed Arab units. The mortar barrages and the psychological warfare broadcasts and announcements, and the tactics employed by the Haganah infantry companies, advancing from house to house, were all geared to this goal. The 22nd Battalion (Carmeli Brigade) orders to its troops were "to kill every [adult male] Arab encountered" and to set alight with firebombs "all objectives that can be set alight. I am sending you posters in Arabic; disperse on route.""</ref> the most notorious of which is the [[Deir Yassin massacre]]. The [[United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine]] estimated that between 1948 and 1949, 710,000 Palestinians were driven out of the country and another 40,000 were [[present absentees|internally displaced]], primarily as a result of these expulsions and massacres.<ref name="unccp"/>{{sfn|Pappé|2004}}{{page needed|date=October 2024}}

The British left Palestine (having done little to maintain order) on May 14 as planned. The British did not facilitate a formal transfer of power;{{sfn|Cleveland|2010}} a fully functioning Jewish quasi-state had already been operating under the British for the past several decades.<ref>{{harvnb|Khalidi|2020|loc=Chapter 1}}: "When the British left Palestine in 1948, there was no need to create the apparatus of a Jewish state ab novo. That apparatus had in fact been functioning under the British aegis for decades. All that remained to make Herzl's prescient dream a reality was for this existing para-state to flex its military muscle against the weakened Palestinians while obtaining formal sovereignty, which it did in May 1948. The fate of Palestine had thus been decided thirty years earlier, although the denouement did not come until the very end of the Mandate, when its Arab majority was finally dispossessed by force."</ref> The same day, Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the state of Israel.{{sfn|Cleveland|2010|loc=Terror and Intercommunal War}} The [[Declaration of Independence of Israel]] described a democracy with equality of social and political rights for all citizens, and extended a peace offering to neighboring states and their Arab citizens.{{sfn|Shapira|2012|p=180}} Masalha notes that the declaration states equality on the basis of citizenship but not nationality.{{efn|"In Israel, '"nationality" (Hebrew: "le'um") and "citizenship" (Hebrew: "ezrahut") are two separate, distinct statuses, conveying different rights and responsibilities'. Palestinians in Israel, as non-Jews, can be citizens, but never nationals, and are thus denied 'rights and privileges' enjoyed by those 'who would qualify for Israeli citizenship under the 1950 Law of Return'." {{harvnb|White|2012|loc=Spot the Difference}}}}{{Clarify|reason=The sentence is not clear and the quoted source is by White, not Masalha|date=February 2025}}

The ensuing war led to the State of Israel establishing control over 78% of Mandatory Palestine, instead of the 55% outlined in the UN partition plan, and resulted in the destruction of much of Palestinian society and the Arab landscape.<ref>{{harvnb|Masalha|2012}}: "The 'War of Liberation', which led to the creation of the State of Israel on 78 per cent of historic Palestine (not the 55 per cent according to the UN partition resolution), resulted not in 'equality for all citizens' 'as taught by the Hebrew prophets' but in the destruction of much of Palestinian society, and much of the Arab landscape, in the name of the Bible, by the Zionist Yishuv, a European settler community that emigrated to Palestine in the period between 1882 and 1948."</ref> This war, led by the Zionist Yishuv was framed by its leaders in biblical and messianic terms as a 'miraculous clearing of the land,' akin to the biblical War of Joshua. Masalha writes that it is not clear who the Yishuv was declaring independence from, as it was neither from the British colonial rule, which facilitated Jewish settlement against Palestinian wishes, nor from the land's indigenous inhabitants, who had long cultivated and owned it.{{sfn|Masalha|2012|loc=Chapter 1}} After the [[1949 Armistice Agreements]], [[Land and Property laws in Israel#The 'Absentees Property Law'|a series of laws]] passed by the first Israeli government prevented [[Palestinian refugees|displaced Palestinians]] from claiming private property or returning on the state's territories. They and many of their descendants remain [[Palestinian refugees|refugees]] supported by [[UNRWA]].<ref>Kodmani-Darwish, p. 126</ref>{{full citation needed|date=March 2025}}<ref>Féron, Féron, p. 94.</ref>{{full citation needed|date=March 2025}}<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=87 |title=United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East |publisher=[[UNRWA]] |date=January 7, 2015 |access-date=January 22, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130906121016/http://www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=87 |archive-date=September 6, 2013 |url-status=live}}</ref>

==== Hebraization of names ====
{{Main|Hebraization of Palestinian place names}}

As part of the effort to consolidate its new ownership over the land it had taken over in the 1948 war, the Israeli state worked towards "erasing all traces of its former owners".{{sfn|Shapira|2014|p=248}} The project of "Hebraization" of the map, for which the JNF Naming Committee was established,{{sfn|Masalha|2012|loc=The Zionist Superimposing of Hebrew Toponymy}} aimed to replace what remained of the Arab towns and villages with newly named Israeli settlements. These names were often based on the Arab names but with a "Hebrew pronunciation" or based on old Hebrew biblical names.{{sfn|Shapira|2014|p=248}} This effort also sought to demonstrate continuous Jewish ownership over the land to ancient times.{{sfn|Shapira|2014|p=248}} 

Prior to 1948, the Zionist movement had limited authority over the use of place names in Palestine. After 1948, the Zionist movement systematically eliminated mention of "Palestine" from the names of its organizations; for example, the [[Jewish Agency for Palestine]], which played a critical role in the founding of the Israeli state in 1948 was renamed to the "Jewish Agency for Israel".{{sfn|Masalha|2012}}{{page needed|date=October 2024}}

=== Post-World War II ===
[[File:1948 Arab Israeli War - May 15-June 10.svg|thumb|Arab offensive at the beginning of the [[1948 Arab–Israeli war]] ]]
[[File:Declaration of State of Israel 1948 2.jpg|thumb|[[David Ben-Gurion]] proclaiming Israel's establishment beneath a large portrait of Theodor Herzl]]
[[File:Op Magic Carpet (Yemenites).jpg|thumb|Yemenite Jews on their way to Israel during [[Operation Magic Carpet (Yemen)|Operation Magic Carpet]] ]]
Since the creation of the State of Israel, the World Zionist Organization has functioned mainly as an organization dedicated to assisting and encouraging Jews to migrate to Israel. It has provided political support for Israel in other countries but plays little role in internal Israeli politics. The movement's major success since 1948 was in providing logistical support for Jewish migrants and refugees and, most importantly, in assisting [[Soviet Jews]] in their struggle with the authorities over the right to leave the USSR and to practice their religion in freedom, and the [[Jewish exodus from Arab lands|exodus of 850,000 Jews]] from the Arab world, mostly to Israel. In 1944–45, Ben-Gurion described the [[One Million Plan]] to foreign officials as being the "primary goal and top priority of the Zionist movement."{{sfn|Hacohen|1991|p=262 #2|ps=:"In meetings with foreign officials at the end of 1944 and during 1945, Ben-Gurion cited the plan to enable one million refugees to enter Palestine immediately as the primary goal and top priority of the Zionist movement.}} The immigration restrictions of the British White Paper of 1939 meant that such a plan could not be put into large scale effect until the Israeli Declaration of Independence in May 1948. The new country's immigration policy had some opposition within the new Israeli government, such as those who argued that there was "no justification for organizing large-scale emigration among Jews whose lives were not in danger, particularly when the desire and motivation were not their own"{{sfn|Hakohen|2003|p=46|ps=: "After independence, the government presented the Knesset with a plan to double the Jewish population within four years. This meant bringing in 600,000 immigrants in a four-year period. or 150,000 per year. Absorbing 150,000 newcomers annually under the trying conditions facing the new state was a heavy burden indeed. Opponents in the Jewish Agency and the government of mass immigration argued that there was no justification for organizing large-scale emigration among Jews whose lives were not in danger, particularly when the desire and motivation were not their own."}} as well as those who argued that the absorption process caused "undue hardship".{{sfn|Hakohen|2003|p=246–247|ps=: "Both the immigrants' dependence and the circumstances of their arrival shaped the attitude of the host society. The great wave of immigration in 1948 did not occur spontaneously: it was the result of a clear-cut foreign policy decision that taxed the country financially and necessitated a major organizational effort. Many absorption activists, Jewish Agency executives, and government officials opposed unlimited, nonselective immigration; they favored a gradual process geared to the country's absorptive capacity. Throughout this period, two charges resurfaced at every public debate: one, that the absorption process caused undue hardship; two, that Israel's immigration policy was misguided."}} However, the force of Ben-Gurion's influence and insistence ensured that his immigration policy was carried out.{{sfn|Hakohen|2003|p=47|ps=: "But as head of the government, entrusted with choosing the cabinet and steering its activities, Ben-Gurion had tremendous power over the country's social development. His prestige soared to new heights after the founding of the state and the impressive victory of the IDF in the War of Independence. As prime minister and minister of defense in Israel's first administration, as well as the uncontested leader of the country's largest political party, his opinions carried enormous weight. Thus, despite resistance from some of his cabinet members, he remained unflagging in his enthusiasm for unrestricted mass immigration and resolved to put this policy into effect."}}{{sfn|Hakohen|2003|p=247|ps=: "On several occasions, resolutions were passed to limit immigration from European and Arab countries alike. However, these limits were never put into practice, mainly due to the opposition of Ben-Gurion. As a driving force in the emergency of the state, Ben-Gurion—both prime minister and minister of defense—carried enormous weight with his veto. His insistence on the right of every Jew to immigrate proved victorious. He would not allow himself to be swayed by financial or other considerations. It was he who orchestrated the large-scale action that enabled the Jews to leave Eastern Europe and Islamic countries, and it was he who effectively forged Israel's foreign policy. Through a series of clandestine activities carried out overseas by the Foreign Office, the Jewish Agency, the Mossad le-Aliyah, and the Joint Distribution Committee, the road was paved for mass immigration."}}

=== Religious Zionism and the Six-Day War ===
{{Main|Neo-Zionism}}

Prior to the 1967 [[Six-Day War]], [[religious Zionism]] mostly described support for political Zionism among Orthodox Jews.{{sfn|Ravitzky|1996|pp=32–34}}<!--<ref>{{cite journal |last=Friesel |first=Ofra |title=Israel's 1967 Governmental Debate about the Annexation of East Jerusalem: The Nascent Alliance with the United States, Overshadowed by "United Jerusalem" |journal=Law and History Review |volume=34 |issue=2 |date=2016 |issn=0738-2480 |doi=10.1017/S0738248016000031 |pages=363–391}}</ref>--> However, the war and the Israeli conquest of the [[West Bank]], invigorated and popularized a religious Zionist ideology associated with the Rabbi [[Abraham Isaac Kook]] and the [[Mercaz HaRav]] yeshiva, which believes that Zionism is a part of the historical process that will bring about the [[messianic age]].{{sfn|Ravitzky|1996|pp=102–109, 122–131}}{{sfn|Shlaim|2001|loc=Chapter 14}} This ideology considered secular Zionism and secular state policies to be holy and part God's divine plan: "The spirit of Israel... is so closely linked to the spirit of God that a Jewish nationalist, no matter how secularist his intention may be, is, despite himself, imbued with the divine spirit even against his own will."{{sfn|Goldberg|2009}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}

According to followers of the Mercaz HaRav ideology, the Six Day War was a demonstration of the work of the Divine Hand and the "beginning of redemption".{{sfn|Ravitzky|1996|loc=Chapter 3}} Proponents of this ideology venerate the land as sacred, and consider its sanctity a core principle of religious Zionism. Religious Zionists view the settlement of the West Bank as a commandment of God, necessary for the redemption of the Jewish people.{{sfn|Ben-Ami|2007}} Rabbi [[Zvi Yehuda Kook]], a major religious Zionist leader and thinker, would declare in 1967 following the Six Day War in the presence of Israeli leadership including the president, ministers, members of the [[Knesset]], judges, chief rabbis and senior civil servants:
<blockquote>
 I tell you explicitly... that there is a prohibition in the Torah against giving up even an inch of our liberated land. There are no conquests here and we are not occupying foreign land; we are returning to our home, to the inheritance of our forefathers. There is no Arab land here, only the inheritance of our God—the more the world gets used to this thought the better it will be for it and for all of us.{{sfn|Masalha|2014}}
</blockquote>

In the 1970s, religious Zionists, such as [[Shlomo Aviner]] and [[Hanan Porat]], campaigned against Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and [[Sinai Peninsula]].{{sfn|Ravitzky|1996|loc=Chapter 3}} Religious Zionist ideology motivated the [[assassination of Yitzhak Rabin]] in 1995, who ceded some territory to the [[PLO]] as a part of the [[Oslo Accords]], and several religious Zionist rabbis reacted to the assassination with approval.{{sfn|Shlaim|2001}}{{page needed|date=December 2024}}

== Types of Zionism ==
{{main|Types of Zionism}}

{{see also|Post-Zionism}}
From the turn of the century until the Arab revolt of 1936, there was room for political flexibility within the Zionist movement, many scholars argue that different currents of Zionism have had a shared core framework.{{sfn|Gorny|1987}}<ref>{{harvnb|Dubnov|2011|p=}}:{{pn|date=March 2025}} "Relatively recent examples of the search for this "core" idea in Zionism (which tends to label ideological diversity as "heresy" or "deviation") can be found in Gorny and Netzer, "'Avodat ha-hoveh ha-murhevet'"; Halpern and Reinharz, ''Zionism and the Creation of a New Society''; and Shimoni, ''The Zionist Ideology''. Older studies that are based on a similar presupposition include Heller, ''The Zionist Idea'', and most famously Hertzberg, ''The Zionist Idea''."</ref> Most mainstream histories of the movement delineate a few key strains, many following a taxonomy introduced during the period starting in the late 19th century and continuing into the 1930s: political, practical, socialist, cultural and revisionist.<ref>{{bulleted list|
| {{harvnb|Yadgar|2017|loc="Main Zionist Streams and Jewish Traditions"|pp=119–160}}
| {{harvnb|Stanislawski|2017}}{{page needed|date=January 2025}}
| {{harvnb|Penslar|2023|p=36}}
}}</ref><ref name="Shoham-2013"/> Some scholars emphasise the heterogeneity of these strains of Zionism.<ref>{{harvnb|Seidler|2012|p=176}}: "conflicting founding designs...express the formative ideological background underlying the very idea of the State of Israel."</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Boyarin|2025|pp=137–160}}}: "What we call Zionism, despite the existence of a World Zionist Organization and then a Zionist state, is in fact a catchall for numerous, often contradictory currents of thought."</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Shindler|2015|p=}}:{{page needed|date=January 2025}} "Zionism was never a monolithic movement. It would be more correct to speak of a range of different varieties of Zionism. Herzl's General Zionism immediately began to flow into different ideological streams."</ref>

=== Early Zionist Strains: Political and practical Zionism ===
Political Zionism was led by [[Theodor Herzl]] and [[Max Nordau]]. This approach was espoused at the [[World Zionist Organization|Zionist Organization]]'s [[First Zionist Congress]]. It focused on a Jewish home as a solution to the "[[Jewish question]]" and antisemitism in Europe, centered on gaining Jewish sovereignty (probably within the Ottoman or later British or French empire), and was opposed to mass migration until after sovereignty was granted. It initially considered locations other than Palestine (e.g., in Africa) and did not foresee migration by many Western Jews to the new homeland.{{sfn|Berent|2019|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}<ref name="Shoham-2013"/>

Known in Hebrew as {{lang|he-latn|Tzionut Ma'asit}}, Practical Zionism was led by [[Moshe Leib Lilienblum]] and [[Leon Pinsker]] and molded by the [[Hovevei Zion]] organization.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} It became dominant after Herzl's death, and differed from Political Zionism in not seeing Zionism as justified primarily by the Jewish Question but rather as an end in itself; it "aspired to the establishment of an elite utopian community in Palestine" through [[Aliyah]].{{sfn|Berent|2019|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}} It also differed from Political Zionism in "distrust[ing] grand political actions" and preferring "an evolutionary incremental process toward the establishment of the national home".{{sfn|Berent|2019|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}<ref name="Shoham-2013">{{harvnb|Shoham|2013|p=31}}: "practical Zionism. This designation referred to those who supported the redemption of Palestine by small-sized, but ideologically-driven, aliya and settlement, which would progress gradually and steadily, if slowly. Political Zionism, its ideological rival, disagreed. Its most prominent spokesman, Theodor Herzl, feared that this unorganized colonization of Palestine would jeopardize his diplomatic negotiations with the great powers; and in his address to the first Zionist congress in 1897 he defined this method as "infiltration"."</ref>

These initially dominant strains faded after the First World War and Balfour Declaration.{{sfn|Penslar|2023|pp=36–39}}

=== Labor Zionism ===
{{Main|Labor Zionism}}

[[File:Ber Borochov.jpg|120px|thumb|right|[[Ber Borochov|Dov Ber Borochov]], one of the leaders of Labor Zionism]]Led by socialists [[Nachman Syrkin]], [[Haim Arlosoroff]], [[Berl Katznelson]], and Marxist [[Ber Borochov]],<ref>{{bulleted list|
| {{harvnb|Schulman|1998}}
| {{harvnb|Sternhell|1999|p=35}}
| {{harvnb|Cohen|1984}}{{page needed|date=January 2025}}
}}</ref>{{sfn|Shafir|1996}} Labor or Socialist Zionism was a form of Zionism that combined messianic tendencies and [[socialism|socialist]] or [[social democracy|social democratic]] politics.<ref name="Perlmutter-1969">{{harvnb|Perlmutter|1969|p=}}:{{pn|date=March 2025}} "The Socialist-Zionist movement played a key role in Zionist colonization of Palestine. Its ideology became the most influential and persistent in the Jewish community in Palestine (the Yishuv) before the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Socialist-Zionism has been associated with most of the pioneer and colonizing efforts, institutions and procedures since the second Zionist immigration wave (hadAliya ha-Shnia) to Palestine in 1904–05, and became the chief force in the nation-building of Israel. It dominated Zionist immigration, consolidated the nationalist movement, and diffused the principles of an egalitarian social system into the Yishuv in Palestine... Socialist-Zionist ideology was not a unitary, totalitarian, and single ideology. It was iconoclastic-as all ideologies are. It blended messianic with programmist tendencies and integrated a variety of trends, doctrines and formulations of socialism and Zionism. It contained elements of the Russian Social Democratic variety of Marxism, Bundism, the Austrian and German Social Democracy, Russian Anarchism, Bolshevism and even of utopian pre-Marxian socialism."</ref>{{sfn|Shafir|1996}} The labor Zionists promoted immigration and settlement, establishing "facts on the ground" as the main path towards state-building.<ref>{{harvnb|Kimmerling|2006}}: "The tactics that Labor Zionists used to build the Jewish community in Palestine were completely different. They believed less in "rights" and more in incrementally established facts on the ground".</ref> 

Labor Zionism became a mass movement with the founding of [[Poale Zion]] ("Workers of Zion") groups in Eastern and Western Europe and North America in the 1900s.{{sfn|Keßler|2019}} Poale Zion split between Left and Right after 1917. In 1919, the Right Poale Zion in Palestine disbanded to form the nationalist socialist [[Ahdut HaAvoda]], led by [[David Ben Gurion]];{{sfn|Teveth|1985|pp=66–70}}{{sfn|Getzoff|2019|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}<ref>{{harvnb|Sternhell|1999}}: "The formal decision to found Ahdut Ha'avoda was made at the Convention of Agricultural Workers, held in February 1919. This was the first country-wide gathering of all regional agricultural workers' organizations. The elections took place according to the system of proportional representation, with 1 representative for every 25 people; small settlements were allowed to send 1 representative for every 12 people. Altogether, 58 representatives were elected to the convention, 28 of whom were nonparty, 11 from Hapo'el Hatza'ir, and 19 from Po'alei Tzion. Thus, a clear majority supported non-socialist, if not antisocialist, principles. Prior to this agricultural gathering, the two political parties also held conventions, and at the Po'alei Tzion convention in Jaffa on 21–23 February, the party disbanded in order to clear the way for the founding of Ahdut Ha'avoda."</ref> in 1930, it merged with [[Hapoel Hatzair]], founded by [[A. D. Gordon]], to form Mapai.<ref>{{harvnb|Laqueur|2009}}: "The two largest of them, Ahdut Ha'avoda and Hapoel Hatzair, merged in January 1930 to form Mapai."</ref>{{sfn|Getzoff|2019|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}} Labor Zionism, represented by Mapai, became the dominant force in the political and economic life of the [[Yishuv]] during the [[Mandatory Palestine|British Mandate of Palestine]]. It was the dominant ideology of the political establishment in Israel until the [[1977 Israeli legislative election|1977 election]], when the [[Israeli Labor Party]] was defeated.<ref name="Perlmutter-1969"/> During the early twentieth century, the left wing of this tradition was represented by [[Hashomer Hatzair]], followed by [[Mapam]] in the late twentieth century, and [[Meretz]] until 2022.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}

[[File:Mishmar HaEmek.JPG|thumb|Kibbutznikiyot (female Kibbutz members) in [[Mishmar HaEmek]], during the [[1948 Arab–Israeli War]]. The [[Kibbutz]] is the historical heartland of Labor Zionism.]] In Labor Zionist thought, a revolution of the Jewish soul and society was believed necessary and achievable in part by Jews moving to [[Israel]] and becoming farmers, workers, and soldiers in a country of their own. Labor Zionists established rural communes in Israel called "[[kibbutz]]im",{{sfn|Near|1986|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}} a form of [[collective farming|cooperative agriculture]] in which the [[Jewish National Fund]] hired Jewish workers under trained supervision. The kibbutzim were a symbol of the [[Second Aliyah]] in that they put great emphasis on communalism and egalitarianism, representing [[Utopian socialism]] to a certain extent. Furthermore, they stressed self-sufficiency, which became an essential aspect of Labor Zionism.{{sfn|Sternhell|Maisel|1998|p=}}{{pn|date=August 2025}}<ref>{{Cite web |title=Israel – Labor Zionism |url=https://countrystudies.us/israel/11.htm |access-date=November 23, 2023 |website=countrystudies.us |archive-date=November 23, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231123184510/https://countrystudies.us/israel/11.htm |url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Synthetic and General Zionism ===
{{Main|General Zionists}}

Synthetic Zionism, led by [[Chaim Weizmann]], [[Leo Motzkin]] and [[Nahum Sokolow]], was an approach that advocated a combination of practical and political Zionism<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |first=Evyatar |last=Friesel |entry=Weizmann, Chaim |title=The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe |url=https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/2150 |access-date=January 3, 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250122044638/https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/2150 |archive-date=January 22, 2025}}</ref> and distanced themselves from the growing Labour, Religious and Revisionist Zionist groups as the movement became polarised between those.{{sfn|Goldstein|2018|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}{{sfn|Divine|1993|pp=316–318}} General Zionists identified with the liberal European middle class to which many Zionist leaders such as Herzl and [[Chaim Weizmann]] aspired. As head of the World Zionist Organization, Weizmann's policies had a sustained impact on the Zionist movement, with Abba Eban describing him as a dominant figure in Jewish life during the interwar period.{{cn|date=February 2025}}

=== Revisionist Zionism ===
[[File:Zeev Jabotinsky portrait.png|right|thumb|upright=0.75|[[Ze'ev Jabotinsky]], founder of Revisionist Zionism]]
{{Main|Revisionist Zionism}}

Revisionist Zionism, developed by [[Ze'ev Jabotinsky]] in the 1920s, was a right-wing strain of Zionism. It initially believed that a Jewish state must expand to both sides of the [[Jordan River]], i.e. taking [[Transjordan (region)|Transjordan]] in addition to all of Palestine.{{sfn|Zouplna|2008|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}{{sfn|Shlaim|1996|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}} It broke with the WZO in 1935 because of the latter's refusal to declare the establishment of a Jewish state as its immediate aim,{{sfn|Shlaim|1996|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}} and had its own paramilitary organisation, [[Irgun]], from 1931 to 1948.{{cn|date=February 2025}}

Followers of Revisionist Zionism developed the [[Likud]] Party in Israel, which has dominated most governments since 1977. It advocates Israel's maintaining control of the [[West Bank]], including [[East Jerusalem]], and takes a hard-line approach in the Arab–Israeli conflict.{{sfn|Vause|Raz|Medding|2005}}

=== Religious Zionism ===
{{Main|Religious Zionism}}

{{Conservatism in Israel|Ideologies}}
Initially led by [[Yitzchak Yaacov Reines]] and by [[Abraham Isaac Kook]], Religious Zionism is a variant of Zionist ideology that combines religious conservatism and secular nationalism into a theology with patriotism as its basis.{{sfn|Yadgar|2017|loc=Main Zionist Streams and Jewish Traditions}} One of the core ideas in Religious Zionism is the belief that the ingathering of exiles in the Land of Israel and the establishment of Israel is [[Atchalta De'Geulah|the beginning of the redemption]], the initial stage of the ''[[Jewish eschatology|geula]]''.<ref>{{harvnb|Asscher|2021|p=}}:{{pn|date=March 2025}} "Highlighting and infusing the unsolved tension between religion and nationality rooted in Israeli Jewish identity, the father of religious Zionism Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935), and his son and most influential interpreter Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook (1891–1982), assigned primary religious significance to settling the (Greater) Land of Israel, sacralising Israel's national symbols, and, more generally, perceiving the contemporary historical period of statehood as Atchalta De'Geulah [the beginning of the redemption]"</ref> 

After the [[Six-Day War]] and the capture of the [[West Bank]], a territory referred to by the movement as [[Judea and Samaria]], the movement turned right as it integrated revanchist and irredentist forms of nationalism; this right-wing form of religious Zionism, powerful within the settlement movement, is represented today by [[Gush Emunim]] (founded by students of Abraham Kook's son [[Zvi Yehuda Kook]] in 1974), [[Jewish Home]] (HaBayit HaYehudi, formed in 2009), [[Tkuma (political party)|Tkuma]], and [[Meimad]].{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}

[[Kahanism]], a radical branch of religious Zionism, was founded by Rabbi [[Meir Kahane]], whose party, [[Kach and Kahane Chai|Kach]], was eventually banned from the Knesset, but has been increasingly influential on Israeli politics.{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}

=== Liberal Zionism ===
Today, the liberal Zionist perspective criticizes the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory since 1967 while also promoting the idea of a Jewish state as a necessity. In this vein, liberal Zionism sees Zionist and Israeli activity before 1967, such as the military conquest of Palestine and the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948, as a necessity.<ref>{{harvnb|Slater|2020}}: "'liberal Zionist,' widely defined to mean someone who is a strong critic of Israel's policies and treatment of the Palestinians since 1967 but who accepts the need for a Jewish state and regards Israel's early policies as a tragic necessity."</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Masalha|2012}}: "Sternhell — like other liberal Zionist intellectuals and authors, Martin Buber, Amos Oz, Amos Elon, S. Yizhar and A.B. Yehoshua included — embodies the liberal coloniser who promotes the myth of 'the clash of two rights and two justices', of (Buber's idea) the 'land of two people',37 and of the fallacy of balance and false symmetry between the colonised and the coloniser, between the indigenous and the European settler, between the ethnically cleansed and the ethnic cleanser. The conscientious liberal Zionist, represented in S. Yizhar's Khirbet Khiz'ah (1949) and A.B. Yehoshua's 'Facing the Forests' (1968) and Between Right and Right (Bein Zechut Le-Zechut) (1980, 1981) — whose narrative found strong echoes in the enthusiastic reception accorded in the West to the 'heroic new historians' — is always torn by the demands of Zionist patriotism and the need for human decency. At the Paris conference, expressing a view that is typical of the Israeli liberal narrative, Sternhell acknowledged the colonising aspects of Zionism and recognised the great injustice done to Palestinians. But he insisted that, in view of the European Jewish catastrophe, the Zionist military conquest of Palestine and the expulsion of the Palestinians was dictated by necessity."</ref>

Liberal Zionism, although not associated with any single party in modern Israel, remains a strong trend in Israeli politics advocating free market principles, democracy and adherence to human rights.{{citation needed|date=November 2024}}

Philosopher [[Carlo Strenger]] describes a modern-day version of Liberal Zionism, rooted in the original ideology of Herzl and [[Ahad Ha'am]]. It is marked by a concern for democratic values and human rights, freedom to criticize government policies without accusations of disloyalty, and rejection of excessive religious influence in public life.{{sfn|Strenger|2010}}{{sfn|Strenger|2010b|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}} Liberal Zionists see that "Jewish history shows that Jews need and are entitled to a nation-state of their own. But they also think that this state must be a [[liberal democracy]], which means that there must be strict equality before the law independent of religion, ethnicity or gender."{{sfn|Strenger|2014}}

=== Cultural Zionism ===
{{Main|Cultural Zionism}}

Cultural Zionism or Spiritual Zionism is a strain of Zionism that focused on creating a center in historic Palestine with its own secular{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} [[Jewish culture]] and national history, including language and historical roots, rather than on mass migration or state-building. The founder of Cultural Zionism was Asher Ginsberg, better known as [[Ahad Ha'am]]. Like Hibbat Zion and unlike Herzl, Ha'am saw Palestine as the spiritual centre of Jewish life. Ha'am inaugurated the movement in his 1880 essay "This is not the way", which called for the cultivation of a qualitative Jewish presence in the land over [the] quantitative one" pursued by Hibbat Zion.{{sfn|Katz|2024|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}} Ha'am was also a sharp critic of Herzl; spiritual Zionism believed that the [[realpolitik]] engaged in by Political Zionism corrupted Jewry, and opposed any political solutions that victimised non-Jewish people in the land.{{sfn|Berent|2019|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}

[[Brit Shalom (political organization)|Brit Shalom]], which promoted Arab-Jewish cooperation, was established in 1925 by supporters of Ahad Ha'am's Spiritual Zionism, including [[Martin Buber]], [[Gershom Scholem]], [[Hans Kohn]], "and other important figures of the intellectual elite of the pre-independence ''yishuv'',{{sfn|Berent|2019|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}} Gorny describes it as an ultimately marginal group.{{sfn|Gorny|1987|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}

== Non-Jewish support ==

=== Christian support ===
{{Main|Christian Zionism}}

From the beginning of the Zionist movement's development, it was dependent on support from the Christian world.<ref>{{harvnb|Penslar|2023|p=27}}: "The Zionist movement was created by Jews, but from the start it was dependent on support from the Christian world."</ref> The Christian restorationist movement held the belief that the "return" of Jews to Palestine would trigger the second coming of the Messiah, the resurrection of the dead, and ultimately lead to the conversion of the Jews to Christianity.<ref>{{harvnb|Pappé|2004}}: "Zionism in many ways began as a Christian project, as part of a restorationist movement believing that the 'return' of the Jews to Palestine would precipitate the second coming of the Messiah, the resurrection of the dead and eventually the conversion of the Jews to Christianity. These ideas influenced Jews looking for a haven when it was clear that anti-Semitic Europe will not allow them to be assimilated or integrate."</ref> In this sense, according to Penslar, Christian ideas of "restoration" were a prerequisite for the success of Zionism.<ref>{{harvnb|Penslar|2023|p=27}}: "Restorationism was therefore a prerequisite for the success of Zionism."</ref>

Christian Zionism is primarily driven by the belief that the return of Jews to the Holy Land will either lead to their conversion to Christianity or their destruction. This belief is criticized by [[Gershom Gorenberg]] in his book "The End of Days," where he highlights the troubling aspect of this messianic scenario—the disappearance of Jews. Evangelical figures such as [[Jerry Falwell]] believe the establishment of Israel is a pivotal event signaling the [[Second Coming of Christ]] and the eventual [[End times]]. As a result, Christian Zionists have significantly contributed politically and financially to Israeli nationalist forces, with the understanding that Israel's role is to facilitate the Second Coming of Christ and the elimination of Judaism.<ref>{{harvnb|Rabkin|2006}}:{{pn|date=August 2025}} "The massive support extended to the State of Israel by the millions of Christian supporters of Zionism is overtly motivated by a single consideration: that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land will be a prelude to their acceptance of Christ or, for those who fail to do so, to their physical destruction. In his book, The End of Days, Gershom Gorenberg, a religious Jewish author, deplores the messianic scenario dear to many Christian Zionists, which includes the conversion to Christianity of great numbers of Jews and the destruction of those who refuse. In his view, "the evangelical scenario is a drama in five acts, where the Jews disappear in the fourth" (Cypel).For the evangelical preacher Jerry Falwell, the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 has been the most crucial event in history since the ascension of Jesus to heaven, and "proof that the second coming of Jesus Christ is nigh.... Without a State of Israel in the Holy Land, there cannot be the second coming of Jesus Christ, nor can there be a Last Judgement, nor the End of the World" (Tremblay, 118).These groups have provided massive political and financial assistance to the most resolute nationalist forces in Israeli society. In their view, the principal function of the State of Israel is to prepare for the Second Coming of Christ and to eliminate Judaism and those who profess it. This would explain why Christian Zionists have come to play an increasingly significant role in the financial and political support of the State of Israel."</ref>

One of the principal [[Protestantism|Protestant]] teachers who promoted the biblical doctrine that the Jews would return to their national homeland was [[John Nelson Darby]]. His doctrine of [[dispensationalism]] is credited with promoting Zionism, following his 11 lectures on the hopes of the church, the Jew and the [[gentile]] given in Geneva in 1840.{{sfn|Spector|2009|p=15|ps=: "The timing was propitious. Liberal theologians in America and Higher Criticism scholars in Europe were challenging the idea that the Bible is the literal word of God, causing great distress to Bible-believing Christians. Embattled American evangelicals welcomed Darby's emphasis on biblical literalism and prophecy. Darby's focus on the Jews' return to Palestine, their centrality in the unfolding of divine history, and their expected final acceptance of their messiah has had a profound impact on generations of devout Protestants, particularly in the United States."}}{{sfn|Wilkinson|2013|p=2|ps=: "In a 2003 article for the Internet magazine, the Globalist, Michael Lind introduced readers to John Nelson Darby, claiming that "Mr Darby's peculiar version of Christianity has shaped the American South for generations. And now, through conservative Southern Republicans like George W. Bush, it is shaping the Middle East and the world." Darby has been described by one critic as "the most influential figure in the development of Christian Zionism," and "its greatest apostle and missionary." John Nelson Darby, the founder of Plymouth Brethrenism, did indeed make a pivotal contribution to the development of Christian Zionism, but I will demonstrate how his doctrines have been misrepresented and misused by Brethren and non-Brethren scholars alike."}}{{sfn|Goldman|2018|p=4|ps=: "Mearsheimer and Walt join a considerable number of scholars who derive Christian Zionism from the theological movement known as premillennial dispensationalism. The basic idea of premillennial dispensationalism is that history is composed of stages that culminate in the return of Jesus Christ to establish the millennium—the thousand-year reign of peace described by the Book of Revelation. This idea was systematized in the mid-nineteenth century by the Anglo-Irish theologian John Nelson Darby and promoted in the United States by evangelists including Dwight Moody and Cyrus I. Scofield."}} However, others like [[Charles Spurgeon|C H Spurgeon]],<ref>Sermon preached in June 1864 to the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews</ref>{{fcn|date=August 2025}} [[Horatius Bonar|both Horatius]]<ref>'The Jew', July 1870, The Quarterly Journal of Prophecy</ref>{{fcn|date=August 2025}} and [[Andrew Bonar]], [[Robert Murray M'Cheyne|Robert Murray M'Chyene]],<ref>Sermon preached November 17, 1839, after returning from a "Mission of Inquiry into the State of the Jewish People"</ref>{{fcn|date=August 2025}} and [[J. C. Ryle|J C Ryle]]<ref>Sermon preached June 1864 to London Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews</ref>{{fcn|date=August 2025}} were among a number of prominent proponents of both the importance and significance of a Jewish return, who were not dispensationalist. Pro-Zionist views were embraced by many [[Evangelicalism|evangelicals]] and also affected international foreign policy.{{cn|date=August 2025}}

The largest Zionist organisation is [[Christians United for Israel]], which has 10 million members and is led by [[John Hagee]].{{sfn|Rubin|2010}}{{sfn|Savage|2021}}{{sfn|Kornbluh|2022}}

=== Druze support ===
{{See also|Druze in Israel#Politics|Druze#Relationship with Jews}}
[[File:PikiWiki_Israel_1337_Druze_scouts_at_jethro_holy_place_צופים_דרוזים_בקבר_יתרו.jpg|thumb|[[Israeli Druze]] Scouts march to Jethro's tomb. Today, thousands of Israeli Druze belong to '[[Druze]] Zionist' movements.{{sfn|Ashkenazi|2005}}]]
While most Israeli Druze identify as ethnically [[Arab]],<ref>{{cite web |date=May 10, 2016 |title=5 facts about Israeli Christians |url=http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/05/10/5-facts-about-israeli-christians/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181111043948/http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/05/10/5-facts-about-israeli-christians/ |archive-date=November 11, 2018 |access-date=March 12, 2018 |website=[[Pew Research]]}}</ref> today, tens of thousands of Israeli Druze belong to "Druze Zionist" movements.{{sfn|Ashkenazi|2005}} A survey conducted in 2008 by Dr. Yusuf Hassan of [[Tel Aviv University]] found that out of 764 Druze participants, more than 94% identify as "Druze-Israelis" in the religious and national context.{{sfn|Shtern|2008}} In 1973, [[Amal Nasser el-Din]] founded the [[Zionist Druze Circle]], a group whose aim was to encourage the Druze to support the state of Israel.{{sfn|Landau|1993|p=46}}

The Druze have aligned themselves more with the Zionist ethos and have distanced themselves from other Arab and Islamic nationalist causes in Israeli society.{{sfn|Nisan|2010|p=}}{{pn|date=August 2025}} Israeli Druze citizens serve in the [[Israel Defense Forces]].{{sfn|Stern|2005}} The Jewish-Druze partnership was often referred to as "a covenant of blood" ({{langx|he|ברית דמים}}) in recognition of the shared responsibility of defending Israel.{{sfn|Firro|2006}}{{sfn|Rogan|2011|p=73}}{{sfn|Nisan|2015|p=284|ps=: "This Jewish-Druze partnership was often referred to as a "covenant of blood," in recognition of the common military yoke carried by the two peoples for the security of the country."}}

=== Hindu support ===
{{see also|India–Israel relations|Hindu nationalism}}
Before and after Israel's creation in 1948, the [[Indian National Congress]] and the Indian government initially opposed Zionism.{{sfn|Siddiqui|2018|p=}}{{pn|date=August 2025}}{{sfn|Vardhan|2021}}

Zionism, seen as a national liberation movement for the repatriation of the Jewish people to their homeland then under British colonial rule, appealed to many [[Hindu Nationalist|Hindu nationalists]], who viewed their struggle for [[Indian Independence Movement|independence from British rule]] and the [[Partition of India]] as national liberation for [[Persecution of Hindus|long-oppressed Hindus]].{{sfn|Osuri|2023}} [[Jawaharlal Nehru]], the first Prime Minister of India, drew a connection between the conflict in Palestine and Hindu-Muslim relations in India, calling it a British "imperialist diversion."{{sfn|Osuri|2023}}

In more current times, conservative Indian parties and organizations tend to support Zionism.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://us.rediff.com/news/2003/sep/10sharon11.htm |title=RSS slams Left for opposing Sharon's visit: Rediff.com India News |publisher=Us.rediff.com |date=September 10, 2003 |access-date=June 3, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100617073538/http://us.rediff.com/news/2003/sep/10sharon11.htm |archive-date=June 17, 2010}}</ref> A 2012 international opinion survey found that India was the most pro-Israel country in the world.{{sfn|Eichner|2012}} This has invited attacks on the [[Hindutva]] movement by parts of the Indian left opposed to Zionism, and allegations that Hindus are conspiring with the "[[Jewish Lobby]]."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://ghadar.insaf.net/June2004/MainPages/zionism.htm |title=Ghadar. 2004 |publisher=Ghadar.insaf.net |access-date=June 3, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160421115747/http://ghadar.insaf.net/June2004/MainPages/zionism.htm |archive-date=April 21, 2016}}</ref>{{better source needed|date=July 2025}}

== Anti-Zionism ==
{{Main|Anti-Zionism|Timeline of Anti-Zionism}}

{{See also|Non-Zionism|New Antisemitism|Criticism of the Israeli government|Zionist Occupation Government conspiracy theory}}
[[File:A 1936 caricature published in the Falastin newspaper on Zionism and Palestine.png|thumb|upright=1.35|right|The Palestinian [[Arab Christian]]-owned ''[[Falastin]]'' newspaper featuring a caricature on its June 18, 1936, edition showing Zionism as a crocodile under the protection of a British officer telling Palestinian Arabs: "Don't be afraid!!! I will swallow you peacefully...".{{sfn|Sufian|2008|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}]]

Zionism has been criticized and opposed by a wide variety of organizations and individuals. Until World War II, anti-Zionism was widespread among Jews for varying reasons.{{sfn|Grill|2021}}{{sfn|Kolsky|2009|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=NoPZu79hqaEC&pg=PA337 337]}} Orthodox Jews opposed Zionism on religious grounds, as [[Jewish eschatology|preempting the Messiah]].{{efn|"Though a little religious support for Zionism existed, 'the majority of Orthodox leaders condemned Zionism from its very outset,' particularly the rabbis of Eastern Europe. Their concerns were twofold: they feared that Zionists were overidealistic and were misleading the Jewish people about what was possible; they were also concerned that the Zionist millennial vision was an attempt to preempt the Messiah."{{Citation needed|date=January 2025}}}} Many secular or assimilationist Jewish anti-Zionists identified more with ideals of the Enlightenment and saw Zionism as a reactionary ideology,{{sfn|Cohen|1987–1988|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}{{sfn|Laqueur|1971|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}} while left-wing Jews (including in the [[General Jewish Labour Bund|Bund]]) believed that the Jewish question was best solved in the diaspora through building a socialist society.{{sfn|Balthaser|2020|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}{{sfn|Slucki|2009|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}

Opposition to Zionism in the [[Jewish diaspora]] was surmounted only from the 1930s onward, as conditions for Jews deteriorated radically in Europe and, with the Second World War, the sheer scale of the [[Holocaust]] was felt.{{sfn|Kolsky|2009|p=333}}{{sfn|Penkower|1985|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}} Thereafter, Jewish anti-Zionist groups generally either disintegrated or transformed into pro-Zionist organizations, though [[List of Jewish anti-Zionist organizations|many small groups]], and bodies like the [[American Council for Judaism]], conserved an earlier [[Reform Judaism|Reform]] tradition of rejection of Zionism.{{Citation needed|date=January 2025}}<!--Never defined in this article {{sfn|Halperin|1961|pp=451–452}}-->

There was a shift in the meaning of anti-Zionism after the events of the 1940s. Whereas pre-1948 anti-Zionism was against the hypothetical establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, post-1948 anti-Zionism had to contend with the existence of the State of Israel. This often meant taking a retaliatory position to the new reality of Jewish sovereignty in the Middle East. The overriding impulse of post-1948 anti-Zionism is to dismantle the current State of Israel and replace it with something else.{{Citation needed|date=January 2025}}<!--Never defined in this article <ref name="Mor" />-->

Opposition to Zionism was overwhelmingly common among the non-Jewish communities of Palestine from the 1880s onwards.{{Citation needed|date=February 2025}} [[Palestinian nationalism]], the [[national movement]] of the [[Palestinians]] that espouses [[Palestinian self-determination|self-determination]] and [[sovereignty]] over the [[region of Palestine]],<ref>de Waart, 1994, [https://books.google.com/books?id=FMxKEAAAQBAJ&dq=%22armed+struggle%22+%22self-determination%22+palestinian&pg=PA223 p. 223]. Referencing Article 9 of ''The [[Palestinian National Charter]] of 1968''. The [[Avalon Project]] has a copy here [http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/plocov.asp]</ref> cohered in the early 20th century, along with broader [[Arab nationalism]] and the ideology of [[Greater Syria]].{{sfn|Khalidi|2020|p=88}} Palestinian nationalism later internationalized and attached itself to other ideologies, in particular [[Third World socialism]] and [[Islamism]],{{sfn|Joffe|2017}} and was embodied in particular by the broadly secular [[Palestinian Liberation Organisation]], and later also by the socialist [[Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine]] and the Islamist [[Hamas]].{{sfn|Khalidi|2006|p=39}}

Although the left was initially mostly supportive of Zionism,{{sfn|Shindler|2011|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=NcaN0eYh7ckC&pg=PT45 45]}} [[Soviet anti-Zionism]] was influential in spreading anti-Zionism on the global left,{{sfn|Korey|1972|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}} and much of the [[New Left]] of the 1960s took on anti-Zionism as a key tenet.{{sfn|Améry|2021|pp=41–45}}{{sfn|Linfield|2019|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}

Today, opponents include Palestinian nationalists, several states of the [[Arab League]] and in the [[Muslim world]], many on the political left, and some secular Jews (such as [[Jewish Voice for Peace]] and [[IfNotNow]] in the US),<ref name="a280">{{cite web |last=Sunshine |first=Spencer |title=Get ready for the new wave: Young, passionately Jewish |website=[[Jewish Telegraphic Agency]] |date=July 8, 2019 |url=https://www.jta.org/2019/07/08/ideas/get-ready-for-the-new-wave-young-passionately-jewish-and-anti-zionist |access-date=July 16, 2025 |archive-url= |archive-date=}}</ref><ref name="eye">{{cite web |first=Zainab |last=Iqbal |date=February 8, 2024 |title=Why so many young Jewish Americans are anti-Zionist |url=https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/why-so-many-young-jewish-americans-are-anti-zionist |work=[[Middle East Eye]] |access-date=May 24, 2025 |archive-url= |archive-date=}}</ref> as well as the [[Satmar]]{{sfn|Nadler|2010}}{{sfn|Kaplan|2004|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}{{sfn|Keren-Kratz|2017|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}} and [[Neturei Karta]] Jewish sects.{{sfn|Fink|2024}}

{{quote box|width=30em|bgcolor=#F2F2F2|align=left|quote=Those war crimes are being committed in the name of my security, and my safety, and my religion. And that really offends me because it’s antithetical to everything I have ever known Judaism to be.|source= — Jewish anti-Zionist Hanna Stolzer<ref name=eye/>}}

Many [[List of Jewish anti-Zionist organizations|Jewish anti-Zionist groups]] operate both in Israel and the United States, most notably Jewish Voice for Peace, whose thousands of members opposes [[Israeli-occupied territories|Israeli occupation]] of Palestinian territories. These groups outwardly reject an inherent union between Judaism and Zionism and, as a result, face animosity and marginalization from Zionist Jews in their community.<ref name=eye/>

The fascist far-right have also generally espoused anti-Zionism, for antisemitic reasons.{{sfn|Penslar|2006|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}{{sfn|Bland|2019|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}

Reasons for opposing Zionism have been varied, and they include: fundamental disagreement that foreign born Jews have rights of resettlement, the perception that land confiscations are unfair; expulsions of Palestinians; violence against Palestinians; and alleged [[racism]] and [[supremacism]].<ref>{{bulleted list|
| {{harvnb|LaBelle|2024|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}
| {{harvnb|Imseis|1999|pp=9–10, 19, 27–28, 30–31}}
| {{harvnb|Sabbagh-Khoury|2023|loc=Conclusion}}
| {{harvnb|Beinart|2025}}
| {{harvnb|Jamal|2019|pp=193–220}} 
}}</ref> Arab states in particular have historically strongly opposed Zionism.{{sfn|Renton|2013|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}} The preamble of the [[African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights]], which has been ratified by 53 African countries {{As of|2014|lc=y}}, includes an undertaking to eliminate Zionism together with other practices including [[colonialism]], [[neo-colonialism]], [[apartheid]], "aggressive foreign military bases" and all forms of [[discrimination]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.achpr.org/instruments/achpr/ |title=African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights / Legal Instruments / ACHPR |website=achpr.org |access-date=March 12, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130119013007/http://www.achpr.org/instruments/achpr/|archive-date=January 19, 2013 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.achpr.org/instruments/achpr/ratification/ |title=Ratification Table: African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180119010517/http://www.achpr.org/instruments/achpr/ratification/ |archive-date=January 19, 2018 |website=African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights |date=2014}}</ref>

=== Characterization as racist ===
{{See also|Racism in Israel#Zionism|Israel and apartheid|Soviet anti-Zionism}}
[[File:2017.03.26 Anti-Israel Protest, Washington, DC USA 01929 (33670862035).jpg|thumb|upright=1.35|right|Pro-Palestinian protest with placards demanding the US to stop funding of "Israeli apartheid" in Washington, DC, 2017]]

In December 1973, the UN passed a series of resolutions condemning South Africa and included a reference to an "unholy alliance between [[Portuguese Colonial War|Portuguese colonialism]], [[Apartheid]] and Zionism."<ref>Resolution 3151 G (XXVIII) of December 14, 1973, by the UN General Assembly</ref> At the time there was little cooperation between [[Israel – South Africa relations|Israel and South Africa]],{{sfn|Nadelmann|1981|p=}} although the two countries developed a close relationship during the late 1970s.{{sfn|McGreal|2006}} Parallels have also been drawn between aspects of South Africa's apartheid regime and certain Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, which are seen as manifestations of racism in Zionist thinking.{{sfn|Johnston|2007}}

In 1975 the [[UN General Assembly]] passed [[Resolution 3379]], which determined that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination". The resolution quotes from the 1963 [[Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination]], "any doctrine of racial differentiation or superiority is scientifically false, morally condemnable, socially unjust, and dangerous". The resolution named the occupied territory of Palestine, Zimbabwe, and South Africa as examples of racist regimes. Resolution 3379 was pioneered by the Soviet Union and passed with numerical support from Arab and African states amidst accusations that Israel was supportive of the apartheid regime in South Africa.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.cfr.org/un/un-general-assembly-resolution-3379-racial-discrimination/p11284 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120130141738/http://www.cfr.org/un/un-general-assembly-resolution-3379-racial-discrimination/p11284 |title=UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, Racial Discrimination (Council on Foreign Relations, November 10, 1975) |website=[[Council on Foreign Relations]] |archive-date=January 30, 2012}}</ref> In 1991 the resolution was repealed with [[UN General Assembly Resolution 46/86]],<ref>{{Cite web |title=260 General Assembly Resolution 46–86 – Revocation of Resolution 3379 – 16 December 1991 and statement by President Herzog |language=en |publisher=[[Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs]] |url=http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Foreign%2520Relations/Israels%2520Foreign%2520Relations%2520since%25201947/1988-1992/260%2520General%2520Assembly%2520Resolution%252046-86-%2520Revocation |access-date=March 26, 2023 |archive-date=March 24, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090324051151/http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Foreign%20Relations/Israels%20Foreign%20Relations%20since%201947/1988-1992/260%20General%20Assembly%20Resolution%2046-86-%20Revocation |website=www.mfa.gov.il}}</ref>{{better source needed|date=July 2023}} after Israel declared that it would only participate in the [[Madrid Conference of 1991]] if the resolution were revoked.{{sfn|Frum|2000|p=320}}

Arab countries sought to associate Zionism with racism in connection with a [[World Conference against Racism 2001|2001 UN conference on racism]] in [[Durban]], South Africa, which caused the United States and Israel to walk away from the conference. The final text of the conference did not connect Zionism with racism. A human rights forum arranged in connection with the conference, on the other hand, did equate Zionism with racism and censured Israel for what it called "racist crimes, including acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing".<ref>{{cite news |date=September 4, 2001 |title=Anger over Zionism debate |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1484002.stm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181107030339/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1484002.stm |archive-date=November 7, 2018 |access-date=March 12, 2018 |work=[[BBC News]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1523600.stm |title=US abandons racism summit |date=September 3, 2001 |access-date=March 12, 2018 |work=[[BBC News]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180104085705/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1523600.stm |archive-date=January 4, 2018 |url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Haredi Judaism and Zionism ===
{{Main|Haredim and Zionism}}

Haredi Jews number some 2,100,000 world-wide, constituting 14% of the total Jewish population in the world.{{sfn|Staetsky|2022|p=3}} Most accept though do not support the secular Israeli state.{{sfn|Fox|2023}} A small number of Orthodox organizations among these Haredi reject Zionism as they view it as a [[secular movement]] and reject [[nationalism]] as a doctrine. in Jerusalem, certain [[Hasidic Judaism|Hasidic]] groups, most famously the [[Satmar (Hasidic dynasty)|Satmar]] Hasidim, as well as the larger movement they are part of, the [[Edah HaChareidis]], are opposed to its ideology for religious reasons. Despite having his life saved by a leader of the Zionist movement in 1944, one of the best known Hasidic opponents of political Zionism was [[Hungary|Hungarian]] [[rebbe]] and [[Talmud]]ic scholar [[Joel Teitelbaum]].{{sfn|Kaplan|2004|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}} Although this group of ultra-observant Jews do not support or identify with Zionism as a movement or ideology, in a poll taken in February 2024, 83% said they have a "very strong emotional connection" to Israel, only a small percentage less than the 87% of [[Modern Orthodox Judaism|Modern Orthodox]] Jews who reported having those same feelings.{{sfn|Kornbluh|2024}}

=== Anti-Zionism and antisemitism ===
{{Main|Anti-Zionism#Anti-Zionism and antisemitism|New Antisemitism}}

Critics of anti-Zionism have argued that opposition to Zionism can be hard to distinguish from antisemitism,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://jcpa.org/phas/phas-wistrich-f04.htm |title=Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism |website=Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs |date=Fall 2004 |access-date=November 17, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121115102337/http://jcpa.org/phas/phas-wistrich-f04.htm |archive-date=November 15, 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=Kenneth L. |last=Marcus |title=Anti-Zionism as Racism: Campus Anti-Semitism and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 |journal=William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal |volume=15 |issue=3 |pages=837–891 |year=2007}}</ref> and that criticism of Israel may be used as an excuse to express viewpoints that might otherwise be considered antisemitic.{{sfn|Temko|2006}}{{sfn|Kaplan|Small|2006|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}

Anti-Zionist writers such as [[Norman Finkelstein]],<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/5104 |title=ZNet – Beyond Chutzpah |access-date=June 25, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090625165331/http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/5104 |archive-date=June 25, 2009}}</ref> [[Noam Chomsky]], [[Michael Marder]], and [[Tariq Ali]] have argued that the characterization of anti-Zionism as antisemitic obscures legitimate [[criticism of Israel]]'s policies and actions, and that it is used to stifle legitimate criticism of Israel.{{cn|date=October 2025}}

== Zionism and colonialism ==
=== European colonialism ===
Zionism has been characterized as a form of colonialism or settler colonialism by various scholars. [[Joseph Massad]] argues that Zionism was intrinsically linked to European colonial thought from its inception, shaped by antisemitism and European imperial interests.{{sfn|Massad|2006|pp=14–18}} [[Edward Said]] similarly described the movement as following the European colonial model, particularly in its patronizing view of the native Palestinian population, which it regarded as backward.{{sfn|Said|1979|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}} [[Zeev Sternhell]] describes Zionism as a movement of "conquest", but disagrees that Jews arriving in Palestine had a colonial mindset.<ref>{{harvnb|Sternhell|2010}}: "Berl Katznelson, the labour-movement ideologist, never thought there could be any doubt about it: 'The Zionist enterprise is an enterprise of conquest', he said in 1929. And in the same breath: 'It is not by chance that I use military terms when speaking of settlement.' In 1922 Ben-Gurion had already said the same: 'We are conquerors of the land facing an iron wall, and we have to break through it.'... [B]ut to claim that the arrivals were white settlers driven by a colonialist mind-set does not correspond to historical reality."</ref> [[Anita Shapira]] and [[Shlomo Ben-Ami]] also emphasize the importance of the "ethos" of the movement, framing Zionism as a national liberation movement that was "destined" or "forced" to use colonial methods.{{sfn|Shapira|1992|p=355}}{{efn|Notably, Shapira also states that studying Zionism as a colonial movement is "both legitimate and desirable", though she notes that the reluctance to use these concepts is understandable, since they were associated with propaganda that vilified Zionism and Israel and presented them as enemies of the progressive, anti-colonial movement. She argues that the settler-colonial framing may help "clarify the relations between the settling nation and the native one", but adds that it needs to be complemented by what she refers to as perspective "from within" – the conceptual framework though which the Zionist movement viewed itself.<ref>{{harvnb|Shapira|2016|p=898}}: "Use of that model is both legitimate and desirable, just as an understanding of the problems of new immigrants to Israel would be furthered by applying a conceptual framework developed in relation to immigrants to the United States, for instance. Reluctance to use such concepts stemmed from the fact that they were part of the propaganda that stigmatized Zionism and Israel as belonging to the camp of the forces of evil as opposed to the progressive, anti-colonial world...<br />Defining a movement as settlement-colonialism may well help to clarify the relations between the settling nation and the native one. Nonetheless, it does not say much about other aspects of the settler nation. To complete the picture we need the perspective "from within" as well: how and in what conceptual framework did the society see itself and explain its situation?"</ref>}}{{sfn|Ben-Ami|2007|p=3}} Conversely, [[Nur Masalha]] argues that Zionism cannot be understood as a national liberation movement because it relied on British colonial support, asserting that "the State of Israel owes its very existence to the British colonial power in Palestine".{{sfn|Masalha|2014}}

Various proponents of Zionism have characterized Zionism as colonial or settler-colonial.<ref>{{bulleted list|
| {{harvnb|Masalha|2012|p=2}}: "... for decades Zionists themselves used terms such as 'colonisation' (hityashvut) to describe their project in Palestine."
| {{harvnb|Morris|2008|p=3|ps=: "But once there, the settlers could not avoid noticing the majority native population. It was from them, as two of the first settlers put it, that 'we shall... take away the country... through stratagems, without drawing upon us their hostility before we become the strong and populous ones.'"}}
| {{harvnb|Jabotinsky|1923|pp=6–7|ps=: "It does not matter at all which phraseology we employ in explaining our colonising aims, Herzl's or Sir Herbert Samuel's. Colonisation carries its own explanation, the only possible explanation, unalterable and as clear as daylight to every ordinary Jew and every ordinary Arab... Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population."}}
| {{harvnb|Finkelstein|2003|p=109}}: "The 'defensive ethos' was never the operative ideology of mainstream Zionism. From beginning to end, Zionism was a conquest movement. The subtitle of Shapira's study is 'The Zionist Resort to Force'. Yet, Zionism did not 'resort' to force. Force was—to use Shapira's apt phrase in her conclusion—'inherent in the situation' (p. 357). Gripped by messianism after the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, the Zionist movement sought to conquer Palestine with a Jewish Legion under the slogan 'In blood and fire shall Judea rise again' (pp. 83–98). When these apocalyptic hopes were dispelled and displaced by the mundane reality of the British Mandate, mainstream Zionism made a virtue of necessity and exalted labor as it proceeded to conquer Palestine 'dunum by dunum, goat by goat'. Force had not been abandoned, however. Shapira falsely counterposes settlement ('by virtue of labor') to force ('by dint of conquest'). Yet, settlement was force by other means. Its purpose, in Shapira's words, was to build a 'Jewish infrastructure in Palestine' so that 'the balance of power between Jews and Arabs had shifted in favor of the former' (pp. 121, 133; cf. p. 211). To the call of a Zionist leader on the morrow of Tel Hai that 'we must be a force in the land', Shapira adds the caveat: 'He was not referring to military might but, rather, to power in the sense of demography and colonization' (p. 113). Yet, Shapira willfully misses the basic point that 'demography and colonization' were equally force. Moreover, without the 'foreign bayonets' of the British Mandate, the Zionist movement could not have established even a toehold, let alone struck deep roots, in Palestine. Toward the end of the 1930s and especially after World War II, a concatenation of events—Britain's waning commitment to the Balfour Declaration, the escalation of Arab resistance, the strengthening of the Yishuv, etc.—caused a consensus to crystallize within the Zionist movement that the time was ripe to return to the original strategy of conquering Palestine 'by blood and fire'."
| {{harvnb|Liu|2022|p=190}}
| {{harvnb|Bar-Yosef|2012|pp=100–101}}
| {{harvnb|Nordau|Gottheil|1905|p=30}}
| {{harvnb|Pessah|2020}}: "Yet Herzl's Zionism was indeed rooted in his wish to imitate the European colonialism of his period."
}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Judt|2003}}: "As the prominent Labor politician [[Avraham Burg]] recently wrote, "After two thousand years of struggle for survival, the reality of Israel is a colonial state, run by a corrupt clique which scorns and mocks law and civic morality.""</ref> [[Joseph Massad]] wrote that, for political and ideological reasons, starting in the 1930s, some Zionist thinkers proposed that the Zionist movement should avoid using terms related to colonialism.{{efn|Massad depicts the transition in the choice of terminology within the Zionist movement in the mid-20th century, as "colonialism" began to more broadly develop a negative association.{{sfn|Massad|2006|pp=14–18}}}} [[Rashid Khalidi]] describes this move as an attempted rebranding of Zionism as an anticolonial movement.{{sfn|Khalidi|2020}}{{page needed|date=February 2025}}

Benny Morris dismisses the charge that Zionism is a "classic nineteenth-century European colonial venture," due to the fact that it existed as a movement not to exploit the populace or resources, but to provide a safe haven for a native population experiencing oppression internationally.<ref>{{harvnb|Morris|2020}}: "Colonialism is commonly defined as the policy and practice of an imperial power acquiring political control over another country, settling it with its sons, and exploiting it economically. By any objective standard, Zionism fails to fit this definition. Zionism was a movement of desperate, idealistic Jews from Eastern and Central Europe bent on immigrating to a country that had once been populated and ruled by Jews, not “another” country, and regaining sovereignty over it. The settlers were not the sons of an imperial power, and the settlement enterprise was never designed to politically or strategically serve an imperial mother country or economically exploit it on behalf of any empire. The land was known to lack natural resources. And most Zionists, rather than wanting to exploit the natives, were indifferent to their fate or wanted to simply see them leave"</ref>

=== The Transition from British sponsored colonialism to the Israeli state ===
Gershon Shafir describes the use of violence by a colonial metropole as essential to settler colonization. Shafir defines settler-colonialism as the creation of a permanent home in which settlers benefit from privileges withheld from the indigenous population. He describes colonization, the establishment of settlements against the wishes of the indigenous people, as the distinctive characteristic of settler colonialism.{{sfn|Shafir|2016|p=794}}

Shafir distinguishes between the pre-1948 era and the post-1967 era in the sense that after 1967, the Israeli state became the sponsor of the Zionist movement's colonial efforts, a role that had previously been played by the British.{{sfn|Shafir|2016|p=795}} For Shafir, Jerome Slater and Shlomo Ben-Ami, after the Israeli conquest of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, the Zionist movement more closely resembled other colonial movements.{{sfn|Shafir|2016|pp=799–805}}{{sfn|Slater|2020|loc=Zionism Reconsidered}}{{sfn|Ben-Ami|2007|p=3}} Similarly, Avi Shlaim describes 1967 as a milestone in the development of the "Zionist colonial project" rather than as a qualitative shift in its nature.{{sfn|Shlaim|2023|loc=Epilogue}} Israeli historian Yitzhak Sternberg cites Sivan, Halamish and Efrat as similarly describing 1967 as a turning point in which Zionism became involved in colonial efforts.{{sfn|Sternberg|2016|p=836}}

Shafir and Morris both further distinguish between Zionist colonialism during the First Aliyah and following the arrival of the Second Aliyah. Shafir describes the First Aliyah as following the ethnic plantation colony model, exploiting low wage Palestinian workers.<ref>{{harvnb|Shafir|1996|p=xii}}: "The colonialism of the First Aliya was based on sparse settlement and exploitation and the employment of low-paid Palestinian workers on Jewish-owned farms."</ref>{{sfn|Shafir|2016|p=797}} Morris describes this relationship:
<blockquote>
These Jews were not colonists in the usual sense of sons or agents of an imperial mother country, projecting its power beyond the seas and exploiting Third World natural resources. But the settlements of the First Aliyah were still colonial, with white Europeans living amid and employing a mass of relatively impoverished natives.{{sfn|Morris|1999|p=38-39}}
</blockquote>

=== Colonization and colonialism ===
Sternberg argues that it is important to clearly distinguish between colonization and colonialism as concepts.{{sfn|Sternberg|2016|loc=The Colonialism/Colonization Perspective on Zionism/Israel}} For Shafir and Peled, "colonization, namely territorial dispossession and the settlement of immigrant populations",{{sfn|Shafir|Peled|2002|p=37}} cannot happen without colonialism and "the means of violence of a colonial [[metropole]]".{{sfn|Shafir|2016|p=794}} In contrast, Sternberg considers classical definitions of colonization as broad enough to include cases that did not require the dispossession of the native population.{{sfn|Sternberg|2016|loc=The Colonialism/Colonization Perspective on Zionism/Israel}}

Tuvia Friling depicts the Zionist movement as operating differently from colonial movements in terms of [[land acquisition]]. Specifically, the Zionist movement acquired land in the early years by purchasing it.{{sfn|Friling|2016|p=852}} Sternberg in contrast explains that it was not unique for colonial movements to purchase land as part of land acquisition, pointing to similarities in North American colonialism.{{sfn|Sternberg|2016|p=837}} Friling argues that in contrast to European colonial projects, the early Zionist leadership was dominated by the labor movement with a socialist ethos.{{sfn|Friling|2016|p=855}} Shafir points to ideological drives in American and Rhodesian settler colonies that developed in service of the colonial project. Similarly, Shafir says, the Zionist labor movement used socialist ideals largely in service of the national movement.{{sfn|Shafir|2016|p=799}} 

In response to the argument that Zionism could not be a colonial project, but should instead be described as a project of immigration, Shafir quotes [[Lorenzo Veracini]]'s statement that settlers sometimes hide "behind the persecuted, the migrant, even the refugee... behind his labor and hardship." Shafir goes on to characterize Zionism as not unique, in the sense that "[t]he ruthless ethnic cleanser is commonly hidden behind the peaceful settler who arrived in an 'empty land' to start a new life."{{sfn|Shafir|2016|p=799}}

Alan Dowty describes the debate over the relationship between Zionism and colonialism as essentially a discussion of "semantics". He defines colonialism as the imposition of control by a "[[mother country]]" on another people, for economic gain or for the spreading of culture or religion. Dowty argues that Zionism does not fit this definition on the basis that "there was... no mother country" and that Zionism did not consider the local population in its plans.<ref>{{harvnb|Dowty|2022}}: "They did not recognize the Arab population of Palestine as another people with their own collective claims..."</ref> Efraim Karsh adopts a similar definition and similarly concludes that Zionism is not colonialism.{{sfn|Karsh|2000}}{{page needed|date=November 2024}} Dowty elaborates that Zionism did not control the local population since it ultimately failed to remove the native people from Palestine.{{sfn|Dowty|2022}} In his assessment of whether Zionism is colonialism, Penslar works with a broader definition of colonialism than Dowty, which allows for the country sponsoring the colonial enterprise to be different from the country of origin of the settlers.{{sfn|Penslar|2023|pp=70–71, 82–83, and 95–96}}

=== Zionism as settler colonialism ===
{{main|Zionism as settler colonialism}}

Beyond characterizing it as a colonial movement, Zionism has been more recently described as a form of settler colonialism, with scholarly proponents of this paradigm including [[Edward Said]], [[Rashid Khalidi]], [[Noam Chomsky]], [[Ilan Pappe]], [[Fayez Sayegh]], [[Maxime Rodinson]], {{Ill|George Jabbour|ar|جورج جبور}}, [[Ibrahim Abu-Lughod]], Baha Abu-Laban, {{Ill|Jamil Hilal|ar|جميل هلال}}, [[Rosemary Sayigh]]{{sfn|Sabbagh-Khoury|2022|loc=first section}}<ref>{{harvnb|Tawil-Souri|2016|p=}}{{pn|date=March 2025}} "Calling Israel a settler colonial regime is an argument increasingly gaining purchase in activist and, to a lesser extent, academic circles."</ref> and [[Nur Masalha]].{{sfn|Masalha|2018|loc=Chapter 10}}

The settler colonial framework on the conflict emerged in the 1960s during the [[Decolonisation of Africa|decolonization of Africa]] and the [[Middle East]], and re-emerged in Israeli academia in the 1990s led by Israeli and Palestinian scholars, who challenged some of Israel's foundational myths.{{sfn|Sabbagh-Khoury|2022|loc=Conclusion}}{{efn|"The settler colonial paradigm, linked to Israeli critical sociology, post-Zionism, and postcolonialism, reemerged following changes in the political landscape from the mid-1990s that reframed the history of the Nakba as enduring, challenged the Jewish definition of the state, and legitimated Palestinians as agents of history. Palestinian scholars in Israel lead the paradigm's reformulation.{{harvnb|Sabbagh-Khoury|2022|loc=first section}}}} It built on the work of [[Patrick Wolfe]], an influential theorist of settler colonial studies who has defined settler colonialism as an ongoing "structure, not an event" aimed at replacing a native population rather than exploiting it.{{sfn|Wolfe|2006}}<ref>{{cite web |title=Forum on Patrick Wolfe |url=https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3437-forum-on-patrick-wolfe |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210621043010/https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3437-forum-on-patrick-wolfe |archive-date=June 21, 2021 |access-date=April 26, 2022 |website=[[Verso Books]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |date=October 26, 2020 |title=What is at Stake in the Study of Settler Colonialism? |url=https://developingeconomics.org/2020/10/26/what-is-at-stake-in-the-study-of-settler-colonialism/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211125221504/https://developingeconomics.org/2020/10/26/what-is-at-stake-in-the-study-of-settler-colonialism/ |archive-date=November 25, 2021 |access-date=April 26, 2022 |website=Developing Economics |language=en}}</ref>

== See also ==
{{div col |colwidth=30em}}
* [[Zionist lobby]]
* {{anl|Back to Africa}}
* {{anl|Golus nationalism}}
* {{anl|Hardal}}
* [[History of Zionism]]
* {{anl|Jewish Autonomism}}
* [[List of Zionists]]
* {{anl|Palestinian nationalism}}
* {{anl|Palestinianism}}
* {{anl|Yehud Medinata}}
* [[Zionist as a pejorative]]
* {{anl|Zionist political violence}}
{{div col end}}

== Notes ==
{{notelist}}

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

=== Works cited ===
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<!-- Anon -->
{{refend}}

== Further reading ==
::'''Primary sources'''
* Herzl, Theodor. ''A Jewish state: an attempt at a modern solution of the Jewish question'' (1896) [https://archive.org/details/ajewishstateana00aviggoog <!-- quote=inauthor:herzl. --> full text online]
* Herzl, Theodor. ''Theodor Herzl: Excerpts from His Diaries'' (2006) [https://books.google.com/books?id=2RhB8hgyK4UC excerpt and text search] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140708150713/http://books.google.com/books?id=2RhB8hgyK4UC&dq=inauthor:herzl&lr=&as_drrb_is=q&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=&num=30&as_brr=3 |date=July 8, 2014 }}

::'''Secondary sources'''
* Armborst-Weihs, Kerstin: [http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0159-2010092115 ''The Formation of the Jewish National Movement Through Transnational Exchange: Zionism in Europe up to the First World War''], [[European History Online]], Mainz: [[Institute of European History]], 2011, retrieved: August 17, 2011.
* [[A. B. Masilamani]], ''Zionism'' in ''Melu Kolupu'' ([[Telugu language|Telugu]]), Navajeevana Publications, Vijayanagar Colony, Hyderabad, 1984, pp.&nbsp;121–126.
* Beller, Steven. ''Herzl'' (2004)
* Brenner, Michael, and Shelley Frisch. ''Zionism: A Brief History'' (2003) [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1558763015 excerpt and text search]
* [[Judith Butler|Butler, Judith]]: ''[[Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism]]''. Columbia University Press, 2013. {{ISBN|978-0-231-14611-1}}
* Cohen, Naomi. ''The Americanization of Zionism, 1897–1948'' (2003). 304 pp. essays on specialized topics
* Friedman, Isaiah. "Theodor Herzl: Political Activity and Achievements," ''Israel Studies'' 2004 9(3): 46–79, online in [[EBSCO Information Services|EBSCO]]
* [[David Hazony]], [[Yoram Hazony]], and [[Michael B. Oren]], eds., ''New Essays on Zionism'', Shalem Press, 2007.
* Idels, Ofer. [https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009442947 Zionism: Emotions, Language and Experience], Cambridge University Press, 2024.
* Kloke, Martin: [http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0159-2011081801 ''The Development of Zionism Until the Founding of the State of Israel''], [[European History Online]], Mainz: [[Institute of European History]], 2010, retrieved: June 13, 2012.
* Sachar, Howard M. ''A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time'' (2007) [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0375711325 excerpt and text search]
* {{Cite EB1922 |wstitle=Zionism |volume=32 |last=Simon |first=Leon |pages= |short=1}}
* Pawel, Ernst. ''The Labyrinth of Exile: A Life of Theodor Herzl'' (1992) [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0374523517 excerpt and text search]
* [[Gadi Taub|Taub, Gadi]]. ''The Settlers and the Struggle over the Meaning of Zionism'' (2010, Hebrew, English)
* Urofsky, Melvin I. ''American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust'' (1995), a standard history
* Wigoder, Geoffrey, ed. ''New Encyclopedia of Zionism and Israel'' (2nd ed. 2 vol. 1994); 1521 pp

== External links ==
{{Sister project links |auto=yes |wikt=Zionism |s=Portal:Zionism}}
* {{Britannica|657475}}
* [https://www.nli.org.il/en/discover/israel/zionism Zionism] at the [[National Library of Israel]]
* [http://www.zionistarchives.org.il/en Official website] of the [[Central Zionist Archives]]
* [https://www.wzo.org.il/en Official website] of the [[World Zionist Organization]]
* {{PM20|FID=sh/141115,160377}}

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