Zionism
Updated: 5/24/2026, 5:32:48 PM Wikipedia source
Zionism is an ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in late 19th-century Europe to establish and support a Jewish homeland through colonization in the region of Palestine, which roughly corresponds to the Land of Israel in Judaism—itself central to Jewish history. Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible. Zionism initially emerged in Central and Eastern Europe as a secular nationalist movement in the late 19th century, in reaction to new waves of antisemitism and in response to the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Zionist movement, now led by Theodor Herzl, associated this national revival with Palestine, then under Ottoman rule. 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. In 1917, the Balfour Declaration established Britain's support for the movement. In 1922, the British Mandate for Palestine explicitly privileged Jewish settlers over the local population. In 1948, after the end of the British Mandate, the State of Israel declared its independence and war broke out. During the war, Israel expanded its territory to control over 78% of former Mandatory Palestine. After the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, an estimated 160,000 of 870,000 Palestinians in the territory remained, forming a Palestinian minority in Israel. Zionist views have varied over time and are not uniform, resulting in a variety of types of Zionism. The Zionist mainstream has historically included Liberal, Labor, Revisionist, and Cultural Zionism, while groups like Brit Shalom and Ihud have been dissident factions within the movement. Religious Zionism is a variant that combines secular nationalism and religious conservatism. Advocates of Zionism have viewed it as a national liberation movement for the repatriation of an indigenous people (who were subject to persecution and share a national identity through national consciousness), to the homeland of their ancestors. Opponents of Zionism often characterize it as a supremacist, colonialist, or racist ideology, or as a settler colonialist movement.
Tables
| Year | Muslims | Jews | Christians | Others | Total Settled |
| 1922 | 486,177 (74 %) | 83,790 (12 %) | 71,464 (11 %) | 7,617 (1 %) | 649,048 |
| 1931 | 693,147 (71 %) | 174,606 (18 %) | 88,907 (9 %) | 10,101 (1 %) | 966,761 |
| 1941 | 906,551 (59 %) | 474,102 (31 %) | 125,413 (8 %) | 12,881 (0 %) | 1,518,947 |
| 1946 | 1,076,783 (58 %) | 608,225 (33 %) | 145,063 (7 %) | 15,488 (0 %) | 1,845,559 |
References
- /ˈzaɪ.ənɪzəm/ ZY-ə-niz-əm; Hebrew: צִיּוֹנוּת, romanized: Ṣīyyonūt, IPA: [tsijoˈnut]
- "The basic assumption regarding the right of Jews to Palestine—a right that required no proof—was a fundamental componen
- The only parties disagreed were Brit Shalom and Ihud. Around the 17th Zionist congress, Chaim Weizmann was criticized fo
- "When faced with the apocalyptic dimensions of the Jewish catastrophe, the Holocaust, even Brit-Shalom Ihud moved to end
- Lord Balfour would write, "Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present need
- While Secretary of State for the Colonies, Winston Churchill spoke to the Peel Commission: "I do not admit that the dog
- On this topic, Ben-Ami writes: "This is how a Brit-Shalom Ihud, non-Zionist member of the Jewish Agency, Werner Senator,
- "If anything, the first decades of Zionism bear out an affinity with some of the more unsavoury 'regenerative' discourse
- "throughout all of the de-racializing stages of twentieth-century social thought, Jews have continued to invoke blood lo
- In late medieval times, there arose among the Ashkenazi an augury—"Next year in Jerusalem—that was then included in the
- Pinsker wrote: "The fact that, as it seems, we can mix with the nations only in the smallest proportions, presents a fur
- "The irony here is in the now well-documented understanding that Lord Balfour was himself deeply religious and that his
- Brian Klug states that "Keeping Jews out of Britain and packing them off to Palestine were just two sides of the same an
- "The Histadrut is not a trade union, not a political party, not acooperative society, nor is it a mutual aid association
- Various leaders spoke strongly in favor of transfer. Ussishkin said, "We cannot start the Jewish state with ... half the
- David Ben Gurion famously would say: we shall "fight the White Paper as if there were no Hitler and fight Hitler as if t
- The reasons for this decision were explained by Ernest Bevin, then "His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Forei
- "that a small, determined group of revolutionaries representing a minority view within the wider population could achiev
- "In Israel, '"nationality" (Hebrew: "le'um") and "citizenship" (Hebrew: "ezrahut") are two separate, distinct statuses,
- "Though a little religious support for Zionism existed, 'the majority of Orthodox leaders condemned Zionism from its ver