Zionism came up as an idea to support the Jews. It seems that the allocation of land to the Jews, which has never been religiously and racially homogeneous throughout history, has also been the cause of the collapse of the region’s stability by the intervention of great powers, especially Britain. Interestingly, the plan to create a Jewish state, an artificial and illegitimate construction of a state, has opponents even among Jews.
What Jews think about Zionism
Based on Pew polls in 2016, Most Jews resident in Israel believe “Zionist” – a term referring to someone who supports the creation and protection of a state for the Jewish in Palestine – can describe them as “very” (30%) or “somewhat” (44%) accurately. Jews who describe their political favour as “left” or “right” are about equally likely to express the term Zionist describes them at least level somewhat accurately. Thirty-four per cent of the left-wing Israeli Jews say the Zionist’s idea describes them very accurately, compared with 37% of those on the political right.
Currently, all Jews evrywhere have the right to travel to Israel and attain citizenship, thanks to Israel’s Law of Return, enacted in 1950 (two years after Israel became a so-called state). Interestingly Israeli Jews are divided on the question of whether Arabs-the previous residents of that land- should be allowed to settle in their motherland state. Nearly half (48%) declare Arabs should be removed from Israel, while a similar share (46%) disagree with the manifesto “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel.”
Zionist definition
Zionism defines as a Jewish nationalist movement that considers its aim the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, which they believed and called “the ancient homeland of the Jews”. But can this claim approve by the facts? Historically speaking, it is evident that Jews spread to many parts of the world. During the medieval ages, Palestine — named so by the Romans — came under the Islamic Caliphate.
Jewish immigration to Palestine
The first wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine began in 1881. The aim to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine was declared by Herzl at the first Zionist congress in Basel in 1897. In 1916, Britain and France agreed secretly to apportion the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire between them.
With the rise of nationalism during the 19 century, the idea of forming a state for a Jew was created.
At that time, most Jews in Central and Western Europe believed integration was feasible and the best solution to rising anti-Semitism. But some other Jews, at the outset, believed in the principles of liberalism and integration and came to feel that Jews could not be legitimate as members of a host nation but instead should make their own identity as a nation of their own. Theodor Herzl, a Viennese Jewish journalist from Hungary deduced that anti-Semitism would not terminate and that the solution was Jewish statehood. Though Zionism has a specific logic that was raised from the events in that era, not all Jews acknowledged that logic, and in fact, most of the Jews did not.
The First Zionist Congress
Most importantly, Theodor Herzl, in 1897, assembled the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. Still, they believed that the actual populations subjected were those facing pogroms in Eastern Europe, and most of them assumed they would not personally move.
Moreover, to promising Sharif Husayn of Mecca an Arab state in return for aid in the Arab revolt against the Ottomans and making arrangements with France, they published the famous (and for some, infamous) Balfour Declaration, which declared support for the founding of a “Jewish national home” in Palestine. As once Avi Shalim, Israeli-British historian, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and a fellow of the British Academy, said Britain had no moral or political, or legal right to promise the land that belonged to the Arabs to other people”.
Main Jew’s Opposition to Zionism
Their opposition is rooted in a variety of directions.
- Jewish liberals believe in Jewish integration but are different from Zionism. Liberals criticize Zionists by conceding that the permanence of anti-Semitism would, in turn, lead to more anti-Semitism.
- Orthodox Jews believe Jews had been exiled in old times for their sins and would return only with God’s will and at a specific time. It should be noted that this opposition would change as religious streams of Zionism emerged, but it is essential to remember that Orthodoxy was initially deeply opposed to Zionism.
- Another Jewish opposition is Autonomists, who believed in the national and cultural specificity of Jews but believed that the solution to Jewish problems would be found within the places they lived by demanding cultural autonomy.
Usually, during celebrations of Israel’s Independence Day, on May 5th, anti-Zionist Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews march in Jerusalem to mourn the anniversary of the creation of the state. Protesters, who call themselves “Palestinian Jews,” carried Palestinian flags and burned Israeli flags at the centre of the Mea Shearim neighbourhood.
Zionist regime or Apartheid beliefs
In 1897 Even in the First Zionist Congress in Basel, which Zionists looked for to “establish a home for the Jewish people”, there was no reference-at least explicitly- of a “Jewish State”. The Zionist Organisation preferred initially to use the description “Jewish homeland” or “Jewish Commonwealth.”
At least one in five people live in the Zionist regime – twenty per cent of its population, according to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics – is Arab (and are mostly either Muslim, Christian, Druze or Bahai) and recognise Israel as a “Jewish State” as such makes one-fifth of the population of Israel spontaneously strangers in their motherland and opens the door to legally decreasing them. Most undemocratically, the Zionist regime makes non-Jew citizens into second-class citizens (or perhaps even strips them of their citizenship and other rights). This means apartheid.
Seven million Palestinians descended from the Palestinians who in 1900 lived in historical Palestine (i.e. what is now called Israel, the West Bank including Jerusalem, and Gaza) and at that time made up 800,000 of its 840,000 residents; and who were driven off their land through war, violent eviction or fear. It means, before final status negotiations have even initiated, that Palestinians would have then given up the rights of about 7 million Palestinians in the diaspora to repatriation or compensation.
The Zionist regime changed the demographic of Palestine by using force.
Since its foundation in 1948, Israel has set out to control as much of the land of historic Palestine as possible and drive as many indigenous Palestinian populations from the land as possible. Israel’s oppression of Palestinians involves settler colonialism: Zionism seeks to establish a new society, control land and resources, and forcibly remove Palestinians.
In conclusion, anti-Zionism is against an apartheid regime that violates human rights, not anti-Semitism.
