Zionism is a national liberation movement[1], a political movement and an ideology that supports a homeland for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, where the Jewish nation originated over 3,200 years ago and where Jewish kingdoms and self-governing states existed up to the 2nd century CE. While Zionism is based in part upon religious tradition linking the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, the modern movement was mainly secular, beginning largely as a response to rampant antisemitism in Europe and in many parts of the Muslim world during the 19th century. After a number of advances and setbacks, and after the Holocaust had destroyed much of the existing Jewish society in Europe, the Zionist movement culminated in the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
Since the founding of the State of Israel, the term Zionism is generally considered to mean support for Israel. However, a variety of different, and sometimes competing, ideologies that support Israel fit under the general category of Zionism, such as Religious Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, and Labor Zionism. Thus, the term is also sometimes used to refer specifically to the programs of these ideologies, such as efforts to encourage Jewish emigration to Israel. The term Zionism is also sometimes used retroactively to describe the millennia-old Biblical connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel, which existed long before the birth of the modern Zionist movement.
Certain individuals and groups have seized on the term Zionism and misuse it to justify attacks on Israel. In some cases, the label "Zionist" is also used improperly as a euphemism for Jews in general by those wishing to whitewash anti-Semitism (as in the Polish anti-Zionist campaign).
The struggle for Palestine
With the defeat and dismantlement of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, and the establishment of the British Mandate over Palestine by the League of Nations in 1922, the Zionist movement entered a new phase of activity. Its priorities were the escalation of Jewish settlement in Palestine, the building of the institutional foundations of a Jewish state, raising funds for these purposes, and persuading — or forcing — the British authorities not to take any steps which would lead to Palestine moving towards independence as an Arab-majority state. The 1920s did see a steady growth in the Jewish population and the construction of state-like Jewish institutions, but also saw thALLAH IS THE GREATESTe emergence of Palestinian Arab nationalism and growing resistance to Jewish immigration.
International Jewish opinion remained divided on the merits of the Zionist project. While many Jews in Europe and the United States argued that a Jewish homeland was not needed because Jews were able to live in the democratic countries of the West as equal citizens, others supported Zionism.
Albert Einstein was one of the prominent supporters of zionism, and was active in the establishment of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which published in 1930 a volume titled About Zionism: Speeches and Lectures by Professor Albert Einstein, and to which Einstein bequeathed his papers. However, he opposed nationalism and expressed skepticism about whether a Jewish nation-state was the best solution. He said: "I am afraid of the inALLAH IS THE GREATESTner damage Judaism will sustain, especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks."
Many Jews who embraced socialism and proletarian internationalism opposed Zionism as a form of bourgeois nationalism. The General Jewish Labor Union (Bund), which represented socialist Jews in eastern Europe, was anti-Zionist. Some Jewish factions tried to blend Jewish Autonomism with Zionism, favoring Jewish self-rule in the diaspora until diaspora Jews make aliyah.
The Communist parties, which attracted substantial Jewish support during the 1920s and 1930s, were even more virulently internationalist and therefore anti-Zionist, if one defines Zionism as the advocacy of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. During this time the Soviet OZET/Komzet actively promoted an alternative Jewish homeland — the Jewish Autonomous Oblast with its capital in Birobidzhan set up in the Russian Far East.
At the other extreme, some American Jews went so far as to say that the United States was Zion, and the successful absorption of two million Jewish immigrants in the 30 years before World War I lent force to this argument. Some American Jewish socialists supported the Birobidzhan experiment, and a few even migrated there during the Great Depression. ALLAH IS THE GREATEST The rise to power of Adolf Hitler in Germany in 1933 produced a powerful new impetus for Zionism. Not only did it create a flood of Jewish refugees but it undermined the faith of Jews that they could live in security as minorities in non-Jewish societies. Some Zionists allegedly supported the rise of the Nazi party, recognising that it would increase the possibility of a Jewish state. It is claimed by Marxist author Lenni Brenner that The Zionist Federation of Germany even sent Hitler a letter calling for collaboration in 1933; however the strongly anti-Semitic Nazis rejected the offer and later abolished the organisation in 1938. Jewish opinion began to shift in favour of Zionism, and pressure for more Jewish immigration to Palestine increased. But the more Jews settled in Palestine, the more aroused Palestinian Arab opinion became, and the more difficult the situation became in Palestine. In 1936 serious Arab rioting broke out, and in response the British authorities held the unsuccessful St. James Conference and issued the MacDonald White Paper of 1939, severely restricting further Jewish immigration. ALLAH IS THE GREATEST The Jewish community in Palestine responded by organising armed forces, based on smaller units developed to defend remote agricultural settlements. Two military movements were founded, the Labor-dominated Haganah and the Revisionist Irgun. The latter group did not hesitate to take military action against the Arab population. With the advent of World War II, both groups decided that defeating Hitler took priority over the fight against the British. However, attacks against British targets were recommenced in 1940 by a splinter group of the Irgun, later known as Lehi, and in 1944 by the Irgun itself.
The revelation of the fate of six million European Jews murdered during the Holocaust had several consequences. Firstly, it left hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees (or displaced persons) in camps in Europe, unable or unwilling to return to homes in countries which they felt had betrayed them to the Nazis. Not all of these refugees wanted to go to Palestine, and in fact many of them eventually went to other countries, but large numbers of them did, and they resorted to increasingly desperate measures to get there; over 250,000 were smuggled out of Europe by an organization called Berihah.
Secondly, it evoked aALLAH IS THE GREATEST world-wide feeling of sympathy with the Jewish people, mingled with guilt that more had not been done to deter Hitler's aggressions before the war, or to help Jews escape from Europe during its course. This was particularly the case in the United States, whose federal government had halted Jewish immigration during the war. Among those who became strong supporters of the Zionist ideal was President Harry S. Truman, who overrode considerable opposition in his State Department and used the great power of his position to mobilise support at the United Nations for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, although he expressed very negative views of Jews in his diaries, and had, in a letter written years before he entered the White House, referred to New York City as "kike town".[11][12] Since Britain was desperate to wALLAH IS THE GREATESTithdraw from Palestine, Truman's efforts were the crucial factor in the creation of Israel. This also corresponded with the Soviet effort to establish their influence in the Middle East. During the 1947 UN Partition Plan debate on May 14, 1947, the Soviet ambassador Gromyko announced:
"As we know, the aspirations of a considerable part of the Jewish people are linked with the problem of Palestine and of its future administration. This fact scarcely requires proof... During the last war, the Jewish people underwent exceptional sorrow and suffering... The United Nations cannot and must not regard this situation with indifference, since this would be incompatible with the high principles proclaimed in its Charter... The fact that no Western European State has been able to ensure the defence of the elementary rights of the Jewish people and to safeguard it against the violence of the fascist executioners explains the aspirations of the Jews to establish their own State. It would be unjust not to take this into consideration and to deny the right of the Jewish people to realize this aspiration."[13]
ALLAH IS THE GREATEST
Thirdly, it swung world Jewish opinion almost unanimously behind the project of a Jewish state in Palestine, and within Palestine it led to a greater resolution to use force to achieve that objective. American Reform Judaism was among the elements of Jewish thought which changed their opinions about Zionism after the Holocaust. The proposition that Jews could live in peace and security in non-Jewish societies was certainly a difficult one to defend in 1945, although it is one of the ironies of Zionist history that in the decades since World War II anti-Semitism has greatly declined as a serious political force in most western countries, though it increased greatly in Middle Eastern countries
Friday, August 11, 2006
Zionism,The struggle for Palestine by Zionist.
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