Zionism in the 20th Century

Zionism in the 20th Century

Zionism Zionism in the 20th Century

Introduction to Zionism in the 20th Century

The two greatest achievements of Zionism in this century are the commitment made by the British government in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the establishment of Israel in 1948.

During World War I, the British wooed the Zionists in order to secure strategic control over Palestine and to gain the support of world Jewry for the Allied cause. The declaration, contained in a letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur J. Balfour to a British Zionist leader, approved the establishment in Palestine of a “national home for the Jewish people.” As Palestine had passed from Turkish to British control, this provided the Zionists with the charter they had been seeking.” (1)

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Guide to Zionism in the 20th Century

The Interwar Period

Introduction to Zionism in the 20th Century

After the war Zionism faced two critical setbacks. Russian Jewry, the traditional source of Zionist migration, was sealed off by the new Soviet regime. In addition, a dispute arose between the leader of American Zionism, Judge Louis Brandeis, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the man credited with obtaining the Balfour Declaration. The dispute involved both personal issues and an ideological debate over the future of Zionism. Weizmann’s “synthetic Zionism,” which advocated both political struggle and colonization, won out over Brandeis’s pragmatic approach, which concentrated on colonization without reference to future nationhood. Weizmann emerged as unchallenged leader, but Brandeis and his group seceded, and until World War II, American Jews directed the major part of their philanthropy to the relief of European Jews rather than to Palestine.

In 1929, Weizmann set up the wider Jewish Agency, a body that harnessed the financial support of Jews who were willing to aid their brethren in Palestine but did not subscribe to the political goals of Zionism.

During the period of the British mandate (1922-48), the Yishuv grew from 50,000 to 600,000 people. Most of the new immigrants were refugees from Nazi persecution in Europe. In 1935 a revisionist group led by Ze’ev Vladimir Jabotinsky seceded from the Zionist movement and formed the New Zionist party. During the late 1930s, Jabotinsky, who advocated a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River, devoted himself to a fruitless campaign to arrange for the mass evacuation of European Jews to Palestine.

Coexistence with the Arabs of Palestine became an increasingly intractable problem. Recurrent riots in the 1920s culminated in full-scale rebellion from 1936 to 1939. The Zionist movement adopted various approaches, including that of Judah L. Magnes, president of the Hebrew University, who advocated the foundation of a joint Arab-Jewish state, and that of future Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion, who argued that accommodation with the Arabs could come only from a position of Jewish strength, after the Yishuv had become a majority. For Socialist-Zionists, unresolvable conflict arose between the ideal of class cooperation with Arab workers and the higher national goal of consolidating a new Jewish working class in Palestine.” (1)

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Guide to Zionism in the 20th Century

The White Paper

Introduction to Zionism in the 20th Century

On the eve of World War II, the British government changed its Palestine policy, in an effort to appease the Arab world. The White Paper of May 1939 terminated Britain’s commitment to Zionism and provided for the establishment of a Palestinian state within ten years. The Arab majority in Palestine was guaranteed by a clause that provided for the further immigration of 75,000 Jews during the following five years, after which additional entry would depend on Arab consent.

The 1939 White Paper broke the traditional Anglo-Zionist alliance and provoked many in the Yishuv to violent protest. In May 1942, Zionist leaders meeting at the Biltmore Hotel in New York City demanded a Jewish Democratic Commonwealth-that is, a state-in all of western Palestine as part of the new world order after the war. This “Biltmore program” marked a radical departure in Zionist policy. The Holocaust, the systematic murder of European Jews by the Nazis, finally convinced Western Jewry of the need for a Jewish state. In 1944, the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization), a Zionist guerrilla force led by the future Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, began an armed revolt against British rule in Palestine.” (1)

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Guide to Zionism in the 20th Century

The State of Israel

Introduction to Zionism in the 20th Century

On May 14, 1948, at midnight, the British mandate over Palestine ended, and the Jews declared their independence in the new state of Israel. Israel owed its existence to a unique set of circumstances: Western sympathy for Jewish suffering; the political influence of American Jews in securing the support of President Harry S. Truman; Britain’s loss of will to continue its rule in Palestine; and, perhaps above all, the Yishuv’s determination and ability to establish and hold on to its own state.

The purpose of Zionism during the first years of statehood seemed clear-to consolidate and defend Israel, to explain and justify its existence. Relations between the new state and the Zionists, however, proved problematic. Israel’s first prime minister, Ben-Gurion, insisted that Zionist leaders who elected to remain in the Diaspora would have no say in Israel’s policy decisions, even though Israel may have owed its existence to their influence. Ben-Gurion also insisted that, now that the Jewish state was in existence, the sole purpose of Zionism must be personal aliya (Hebrew, “going up,” or settling in Israel).

Nahum Goldmann, head of the WZO from 1951 to 1968, argued that Zionism must also nurture and preserve Jewish life in the Diaspora. American Zionists, notably Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, founder of the Reconstructionist movement, have urged a redefinition of Judaism and have warned against the dangers of creating a schism between Israel and Diaspora Jewry. In 1968 the Jerusalem Program (adopted by the Zionist Congress held in Jerusalem that year), made aliya the condition for membership of any Zionist group, but the new program has brought little practical change.

During the 1970s, much Zionist activity focused on Soviet Jewry, who were finally allowed to emigrate in restricted numbers. Again, differences arose between Zionist and Jewish relief agencies over whether immigration to Israel should be the only option offered to Soviet Jews. A massive wave of immigration by Soviet Jews to Israel began in the late 1980s.

Zionism has been repeatedly denounced by the Arab nations and their supporters as a “tool of imperialism.” In 1975, the UN adopted a resolution equating Zionism with racism; in 1991, the General Assembly voted 111 to 25 for repeal. For their part Zionists have emphasized that their movement has never rejected Arab self-determination and that the fundamental meaning of Zionism has been the national liberation of the Jewish people. Zionism today is based on the unequivocal support of two basic principles-the autonomy and safety of the state of Israel and the right of any J
ew to settle there (the Law of Return)-which together provide the guarantee of a Jewish nationality to any Jew in need of it.” (1)

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Guide to Zionism in the 20th Century


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