Editor’s note: With Israeli Independence Day approaching, we are publishing in the coming days a series of op-eds on the contemporary meaning of Zionism.
Unlike other national liberation movements of the 19th century that battled palpable political foes such as a foreign empire or a traditional ruling class, Zionism began as a more nebulous struggle against, as David Ben-Gurion once described it, destiny.
From the very beginning, Zionism had a clear political objective, which was formulated in the movement’s First Zionist Congress in 1897: to establish a national home for the Jews in their ancestral homeland. But before the movement could entertain such a goal, it had to convince Jews that they constituted a national group whose political future resided in a distant, dangerous, insalubrious land.
Zionism was initially an idea that had to appeal to a critical mass of Jews, so it should not be surprising that many of the early Zionist texts were utopian. These texts — chief among them Theodor Herzl’s “Altneuland” — sought to imagine a future Jewish national home and prove its viability.
As Zionism transformed into a political movement in Palestine under the auspices of the British Mandate, which was created in 1922 in order to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, there emerged deep ideological and political divisions among Zionists. Laborites emphasized the need to develop the social and economic infrastructure of the Yishuv, or pre-state Israel. Revisionists, followers of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, pressed for the development of a Jewish military as the key to achieving national independence. Meanwhile, members of the national religious camp emphasized the need to maintain crucial features of traditional Judaism in the future national home. From the late 1930s, Zionists were deeply divided on whether to accept partition plans as the way to attain political independence.
Despite these often fundamental differences, they were all united by the same core idea: the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
Those who initially opposed Zionism — anti-Zionists, who came primarily from within the Jewish world — did so not because they were critical of the manner by which the various Zionist parties were carrying out their political vision, but because they rejected the very idea of Zionism. Ultra-Orthodox Jews opposed it on theological grounds: They viewed Zionism as dehikt haketz, the hastening of the end of times, an interference with God’s plans for his Chosen People. Jewish Marxists rejected it as a bourgeois ideology that placed the nation ahead of the proletariat as the agent of historical change. Many Jews in the West opposed it because identifying with a Jewish national movement could lead to questioning their allegiance to the countries in which they resided.
After the Zionist idea became a political reality with the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, Ben-Gurion believed that the term “Zionism” was no longer relevant. For him, it had outlived its usefulness as a collective rallying cry.
Instead he favored mamlachtiyut, statism or republicanism, as the conceptual framework through which a new Israeli ethos should be formulated. For the majority of Israelis, Zionism became a relic, a reminder of a bygone era. Even among the ultra-Orthodox in Israel, the vehement anti-Zionism was relegated to a shrinking radical group. The majority of haredim in Israel, while not identifying as Zionists, became increasingly Israeli (and reliant on state funds for their vast educational network).
In fact, following the establishment of the state, it was mainly Arab and Muslim countries that kept using the term “Zionism,” referring to Israel as the “Zionist entity” in Arabic. Calling the country “Israel” would mean accepting the political reality of the Jewish state, while referring to it as the Zionist entity meant that it is merely an idea, propagated by Western imperialism.
Following the establishment of the state, it was mainly Arab and Muslim countries that kept employing the term ‘Zionism.’
Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran called the Jewish state Israel and allowed Israelis to visit. After the revolution, Israel became the Zionist entity. Before 1994, Jordan called the country to its west the Zionist entity. After the peace agreement, it became Israel. For such countries, employing the phrase “Zionist entity” was an act of anti-normalization, not accepting the reality of Israel, relegating it to an idea that could easily be crushed.
In the 1980s, Zionism re-entered Israeli public discourse, this time as part of the post-Zionist debates. By that decade, several prominent academics and public intellectuals argued that Israel, now a military and economic powerhouse, should orient itself away from nationalism or statism as its collective ideology and instead seek to integrate into the emerging globalized new world order being fueled by new technologies.
The more radical proponents of post-Zionism maintained that in order for Israel to fully live in peace with its neighbors and be accepted by the international community, it also had to come to terms with various historical wrongdoings of its founding ideologues and leaders. With that, the majority of post-Zionists advocated confronting past evils of the Zionist movement and the young state, not dismantling the State of Israel — a country in which they continued to be active and engaged citizens.
In this century, anti-Zionism has gained increasing purchase outside of Israel among critics of the state in progressive circles. In the age of both identity politics and intersectionality, geopolitical interests and motivations as explanations for the actions of states are jettisoned in favor of historical morality tales that pit good (non-Western, indigenous populations) against evil (the West).
In this regard, what is required to explain the Arab-Israeli conflict is an original sin. Zionism, as an ideology that emerged in Europe and was sanctioned by a European power, fits the bill. And so, it is not the Israeli government that’s put on trial but the very idea of Jewish political independence.
Some commentators have recently suggested that attitudes vis-a-vis Zionism are tearing the American Jewish community apart. It seems that, increasingly, questions with regard to Israel are challenging core beliefs among many American Jews. Can they remain true to universal principles of social justice while supporting a country led by a radical right-wing government? Or does their commitment to Jews and Jewish causes mean supporting the Jewish state, regardless of who leads it, as a safe haven for endangered Jews everywhere?
In the American context, this has been formulated as a pro-Zionist versus anti-Zionist debate. But ultimately, the stakes for American Jews in this debate aren’t very high. They might end up shunned by fellow synagogue members, but they will not have to pay an actual political price for their stance.
For most American Jews, embracing or rejecting Zionism does not involve migration and all that it entails. It is much more a probing of one’s identity and core values. Therefore, this debate is mostly about ideas, and this is what Zionism has always been.