At its broadest,Zionism is a movement that supports the establishment of a Jewish national home inPalestine by theJewish people, such as in the form of aJewish state. While sharing a core belief in the importance of a home for the Jewish people, Zionist beliefs have not been uniform and have varied since they were first conceived in the second half of the 19th century.

Zionist beliefs have been categorized into roughly a dozen varieties by academics. The first Zionists were either political or practical Zionists, as typified byTheodor Herzl, considered the father of the Zionist movement. The rise ofsocialist movements in the first part of the 20th century resulted in the rise of left-wingLabor Zionism. Synthetic andgeneral Zionists combine the ideas of political and practical Zionists. Liberal Zionists emphasize the importance ofLiberalism.Revisionist Zionists accept many tenants of Liberal Zionism but have expanded territorial aims—includingparts of Jordan.Religious Zionism views Zionism as an integral toOrthodox Judaism.Cultural Zionism emphasizes asecular approach. Revolutionary Zionism emerged from guerrilla warfare against the British (who oversawMandatory Palestine), and attracted both left- and right-wing nationalists.Reform Zionism is associated withReform Judaism.

Other kinds of Zionist thought includeChristian Zionism, and evenAntisemitic Zionism.Anti-Zionists oppose Zionism altogether. Schools of thought prior to Herzl may be consideredProto-Zionism.Post-Zionism argues that Zionism was successful given the creation ofIsrael and argues that Israel must build a new civic identity based on multi-ethnicliberal democracy.

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Zionism
Variants Cultural Federal General Green Labor Neo- Nietzschean Non- Post- Proto- Reform Religious Christian Muslim Revisionist
Principles Zion Aliyah Gathering of Israel Hebraization of surnames Hebrew revival Homeland (proposals) Jewish culture Jewish state Jewish values Judaization Land of Israel Law of Return Negation of the Diaspora Promised Land Racial conceptions of Jewish identity Revival of the Hebrew language Self-determination Settlement Territorialism Yerida Yishuv
History Jewish land purchase in Palestine Katowice Conference Uganda Scheme Balfour Declaration Faisal–Weizmann agreement Mandate for Palestine Mandatory Palestine Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine
People Aaronsohn Aleichem Ariel Arlosoroff Baazov Begin Ben-Gurion Borochov Herzl Hess Jabotinsky Kalischer Kook Meir Nordau Reading Schneerson Syrkin Weizmann Wiesel Yosef Zangwill Zuckerman
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The idea of a home for the Jewish people pre-dated Theodor Herzl, and thinkers who espoused such beliefs may be considered proto-Zionists.^[1]

Political Zionism aimed at establishing for the Jewish people a publicly and legally assured home inPalestine through diplomatic negotiation with the established powers that controlled the area.^[2] It focused on a Jewish home as a solution to the "Jewish question" and antisemitism in Europe, centred on gaining Jewish sovereignty (probably within the Ottoman or later British or French empire), and was opposed to mass migration until after sovereignty was granted. It initially considered locations other than Palestine (e.g. in Africa) and did not foresee migration by many Western Jews to the new homeland.^[2]

Nathan Birnbaum, a Jew from Vienna, was the original father of Political Zionism, yet ever since he defected away from his own movement,Theodor Herzl has become known as the face of modern Zionism. In 1890, Birnbaum coined the term "Zionism" and the phrase "Political Zionism" two years later. Birnbaum published a periodical titledSelbstemanzipation (Self Emancipation) which espoused "the idea of a Jewish renaissance and the resettlement of Palestine." In this idea, Birnbaum was most influenced byLeon Pinsker.^{[citation needed]} Political Zionism was subsequently led by Herzl andMax Nordau. This approach was espoused at theZionist Organization'sFirst Zionist Congress and dominated the movement during Herzl's life.

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Known in Hebrew asTzionut Ma'asit (Hebrew:ציונות מעשית), Practical Zionism was led byMoshe Leib Lilienblum andLeon Pinsker and molded^{[clarification needed]} by theLovers of Zion organization.^{[citation needed]} This approach believed that firstly there was a need in practical terms to implementAliyah, Jewish immigration toPalestine as theHoly Land, and settlement of the land as soon as possible, even if a charter was not obtained.

It became dominant after Herzl's death, and differed from Political Zionism in not seeing Zionism as justified primarily by the Jewish Question but rather as an end in itself; it "aspired to the establishment of an elite utopian community in Palestine".^[2] It also differed from Political Zionism in "distrust[ing] grand political actions" and preferring "an evolutionary incremental process toward the establishment of the national home".^[2]

Led by socialistsNachman Syrkin,Haim Arlosoroff, andBerl Katznelson and MarxistBer Borochov,^{[4][5][6][page needed]} Labor or socialist Zionists desired to establish an agricultural society not on the basis of a bourgeois capitalist society, but rather on the basis of equality. Labor or Socialist Zionism was a form of Zionism that also espousedsocialist orsocial democratic politics.^[7]

Although there were socialist Zionists in the nineteenth century (such asMoses Hess), labor Zionism became a mass movement with the founding ofPoale Zion ("Workers of Zion") groups in Eastern and Western Europe and North America in the 1900s.^[8] Other early socialist Zionist groups were the youth movementHapoel Hatzair founded byA. D. Gordon^[9] and Syrkin'sZionist Socialist Workers Party.

Socialist Zionism had aMarxist current, led by Borochov. After 1917 (the year of Borochov's death as well as theRussian Revolution and theBalfour Declaration), Poale Zion split between a Left (that supportedBolshevism and then theSoviet Union) and asocial democratic Right (that became dominant in Palestine).^[8][10][11]

InOttoman Palestine, Poale Zion founded theHashomer guard organization that guarded settlements of theYishuv, and took up the ideology of "conquest of labor" (Kibbush Ha'avoda) and "Hebrew labor" (Avoda Ivrit). It also gave birth to the youth movementsHashomer Hatzair andHabonim Dror.^[12] According toZe'ev Sternhell, both Poalei Zion and Hapoel Hatzair believed that Zionism could only succeed as a result of constantly and rapidly expanding capitalist growth.^[13] Poale Zion "sawcapitalism as the cause of Jewish poverty and misery in Europe. For Poale Zion, Jews could only escape this cycle by creating a nation-state like others."^[9] However, according to Sternhell, Labor Zionism ultimately did not promise to free workers from the inherent dependencies of the capitalist system.^[14] In Labor Zionist thought, a revolution of the Jewish soul and society was necessary and achievable in part by Jews moving toIsrael and becoming farmers, workers, and soldiers in a country of their own. Labor Zionists established rural communes in Israel called "kibbutzim"^[15] which began as a variation on a "national farm" scheme, a form of cooperative agriculture where theJewish National Fund hired Jewish workers under trained supervision. The kibbutzim were a symbol of theSecond Aliyah in that they put great emphasis on communalism and egalitarianism, representingUtopian socialism to a certain extent. Furthermore, they stressed self-sufficiency, which became an essential aspect of Labor Zionism.^[16][17]

In the 1920s, Labor Zionists in Palestine also created a trade union movement, theHistadrut, and political party,Mapai.^[9] In Palestine, PZ disbanded to make way for the formation of the nationalist socialistAhdut HaAvoda, led byDavid Ben Gurion,^[19][9] in 1919.^[20] Hapoel Hatzair merge with Ahdut Ha'avoda in 1930 to form Mapai,^[21][9] at which point, according toYosef Gorny, Poale Zion became of marginal political importance in Palestine.^[22]

Labor Zionism, represented by Mapai, became the dominant force in the political and economic life of theYishuv during theBritish Mandate of Palestine. Poale Zion's successor parties,Mapam,Mapai and theIsraeli Labor Party (which were led by figures such asDavid Ben Gurion andGolda Meir, dominated Israeli politics until the1977 election when theIsraeli Labor Party was defeated. Until the 1970s, the Histadrut was the largest employer in Israel after the Israeli government.^[23]

Sternhell andBenny Morris both argue that Labor Zionism developed as a nationalist socialist movement in which the nationalist tendencies would overpower and drive out the socialist ones.^[24][25] Traditionalist Israeli historianAnita Shapira describes labor Zionism's use of violence against Palestinians for political means as essentially the same as that of radical conservative Zionist groups. For example, Shapira notes that during the1936 Palestine revolt, theIrgun Zvai Leumi engaged in the "uninhibited use of terror", "mass indiscriminate killings of the aged, women and children", "attacks against British without any consideration of possible injuries to innocent bystanders, and the murder of British in cold blood". Shapira argues that there were only marginal differences in military behavior between the Irgun and the labor ZionistPalmah. In following with policies laid out by Ben-Gurion, the prevalent method among field squads was that if an Arab gang had used a village as a hideout, it was considered acceptable to hold the entire village collectively responsible. The lines delineating what was acceptable and unacceptable while dealing with these villagers were "vague and intentionally blurred". As Shapira suggests, these ambiguous limits practically did not differ from those of the openly terrorist group, Irgun.^[26]

Synthetic Zionism, led byChaim Weizmann,Leo Motzkin andNahum Sokolow, was an approach that advocated a combination of Political and Practical Zionism.^[27] It was the ideology of General Zionism, the centrist current between Labor Zionism and religious Zionism, that was initially the dominant trend within the Zionist movement from the First Zionist Congress in 1897 until after the First World War. General Zionists identified with the liberal European middle class to which many Zionist leaders such as Herzl andChaim Weizmann aspired. As head of the World Zionist Organization, Weizmann's policies had a sustained impact on the Zionist movement, with Abba Eban describing him as a dominant figure in Jewish life during the interwar period. The current had a left wing ("General Zionists A"), who supported amixed economy and good relations with Britain, and a right wing ("General Zionists B"), who were anti-socialist and anti-British. After independence, neither arm played a significant role in Israeli politics, the "A" group allying with Mapai and the "B" group forming a dwindling right-wing opposition party.^[28]

According to Zionist Israeli historianSimha Flapan, writing in the 1970s, the essential assumptions of Weizmann's strategy were later adopted by Ben-Gurion and subsequent Zionist (and Israeli) leaders. According to Flapan, by replacing "Great Britain" with "United States" and "Arab National Movement" with "Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan", Weizmann's strategic concepts can be seen as reflective of Israel's current foreign policy.^[29][verify]

Weizmann's ultimate goal was the establishment of a Jewish state, even beyond the borders of "Greater Israel." For Weizmann, Palestine was a Jewish and not an Arab country. The state he sought would contain the east bank of the Jordan River and extend from the Litani River (in present-day Lebanon). Weizmann's strategy involved incrementally approaching this goal over a long period, in the form of settlement and land acquisition.^[29] Weizmann was open to the idea of Arabs and Jews jointly running Palestine through an elected council with equal representation, but he did not view the Arabs as equal partners in negotiations about the country's future. In particular, he was steadfast in his view of the "moral superiority" of the Jewish claim to Palestine over the Arab claim and believed these negotiations should be conducted solely between Britain and the Jews.^[30]

Liberal Zionism, although not associated with any single party in modern Israel, remains a strong trend in Israeli politics advocating free market principles, democracy and adherence to human rights. Their political arm was one of the ancestors of the modern-dayLikud.Kadima, the main centrist party during the 2000s that split from Likud and is now defunct, however, did identify with many of the fundamental policies of Liberal Zionist ideology, advocating among other things the need for Palestinian statehood in order to form a more democratic society in Israel, affirming the free market, and calling for equal rights for Arab citizens of Israel.^[31]

Revisionist Zionism was initially led byZe'ev Jabotinsky and later by his successorMenachem Begin (laterPrime Minister of Israel), and emphasized the romantic elements of Jewish nationality, and the historical heritage of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel as the constituent basis for the Zionist national idea and the establishment of the Jewish State. They supportedliberalism, particularlyeconomic liberalism, and opposed Labor Zionism and the establishing of a communist society in the Land of Israel.^{[citation needed]}

Jabotinsky founded the Revisionist Party in 1925. Jabotinsky rejected Weizmann's strategy of incremental state building, instead preferring to immediately declare sovereignty over the entire region, which extended to both the East and West bank of the Jordan river.^[30] Like Weizmann and Herzl, Jabotinsky also believed that the support of a great power was essential to the success of Zionism. From early on, Jabotinksy openly rejected the possibility of a "voluntary agreement" with the Arabs of Palestine. He instead believed in building an "iron wall" of Jewish military force to break Arab resistance to Zionism, at which point an agreement could be established.^[30]

Revisionist Zionists believed that a Jewish state must expand to both sides of theJordan River, i.e. takingTransjordan in addition to all of Palestine.^[32][33] The movement developed what became known as Nationalist Zionism, whose guiding principles were outlined in the 1923 essayIron Wall, a term denoting the force needed to prevent Palestinian resistance against colonization.^[34] Jabotinsky wrote that

Zionism is a colonising adventure and it therefore stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important to build, it is important to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot—or else I am through with playing at colonization.

HistorianAvi Shlaim describes Jabotinsky's perspective^[37]

Although the Jews originated in the East, they belonged to the West culturally, morally, and spiritually. Zionism was conceived by Jabotinsky not as the return of the Jews to their spiritual homeland but as an offshoot or implant of Western civilization in the East. This worldview translated into a geostrategic conception in which Zionism was to be permanently allied with European colonialism against all the Arabs in the eastern Mediterranean.

In 1935 the Revisionists left the WZO because it refused to state that the creation of a Jewish state was an objective of Zionism.^{[citation needed]} According to Israeli historian Yosef Gorny, the Revisionists remained within the ideological mainstream of the Zionist movement even after this split.^[38] The Revisionists advocated the formation of a Jewish Army in Palestine to force the Arab population to accept mass Jewish migration.^{[citation needed]} Revisionist Zionism opposed anyrestraint in relation to Arab violence and supported firm military action against the Arabs that had attacked the Jewish Community inMandatory Palestine. Due to that position, a faction of the Revisionist leadership split from that movement in order to establish the undergroundIrgun. This stream is also categorized as supporters ofGreater Israel.^{[citation needed]}

Supporters of Revisionist Zionism developed theLikud Party in Israel, which has dominated most governments since 1977. It advocates Israel's maintaining control of theWest Bank, includingEast Jerusalem, and takes a hard-line approach in the Arab–Israeli conflict. In 2005, Likud split over the issue of creation of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories. Party members advocating peace talks helped form theKadima Party.^[39]

Initially led byYitzchak Yaacov Reines, founder of theMizrachi movement, and byAbraham Isaac Kook, Religious Zionism is a variant of Zionist ideology that combines religious conservatism and secular nationalism into a theology with patriotism as its basis.^[40] Before the establishment of the state ofIsrael, Religious Zionists were mainly observant Jews who supported Zionist efforts to build aJewish state in theLand of Israel.^{[citation needed]} Religious Zionism maintained that Jewish nationality and the establishment of the State of Israel is a religious duty derived from theTorah. As opposed to some parts of the Jewish non-secular community that claimed that the redemption of the Land of Israel will occur only after the coming of themessiah, who will fulfill this aspiration, they maintained that human acts of redeeming the Land will bring about the messiah, as their slogan states: "The land of Israel for the people of Israel according to the Torah of Israel" (Hebrew:ארץ ישראל לעם ישראל לפי תורת ישראל). One of the core ideas in Religious Zionism is the belief that the ingathering of exiles in the Land of Israel and the establishment of Israel isAtchalta De'Geulah ("the beginning of the redemption"), the initial stage of thegeula.^[41] Their ideology revolves around three pillars: the Land of Israel, the People of Israel and theTorah of Israel.^[42]

TheLabor Movement wing of Religious Zionism, founded in 1921 under the Zionist slogan "Torah va'Avodah" (Torah and Labor), was calledHaPoel HaMizrachi. It represented religiously traditionalLabour Zionists, both in Europe and in the Land of Israel, where it represented religious Jews in theHistadrut. In 1956, Mizrachi, HaPoel HaMizrachi, and other religious Zionists formed theNational Religious Party (NRP), which operated as an independent political party until the 2003 elections.

After theSix-Day War and the capture of theWest Bank, a territory referred to by the movement asJudea and Samaria, the movement turned right as it integrated revanchist and irredentist forms of nationalism and evolved into what is sometimes known asNeo-Zionism. In the current period, this right-wing form of religious Zionism, powerful within the settlement movement, is represented byGush Emunim (founded by students of Abraham Kook's sonZvi Yehuda Kook in 1974),Jewish Home (HaBayit HaYehudi, formed in 2009),Tkuma, andMeimad. Today they are commonly referred as the "Religious Nationalists" or the "settlers", and are also categorized as supporters ofGreater Israel.

Kahanism, a radical branch of religious Zionism, was founded by RabbiMeir Kahane, whose party,Kach, was eventually banned from the Knesset, but has been increasingly influential on Israeli politics. TheOtzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, which espouses Kahanism, won six seats in the2022 Israeli legislative election, forming what has been called the most right-wing government in Israeli history.^[43][44]

Cultural Zionism or Spiritual Zionism is a strain of Zionism that focused on creating a center in historic Palestine with its own secularJewish culture and national history, including language and historical roots, rather than on mass migration or state-building. The founder of Cultural Zionism was Asher Ginsberg, better known asAhad Ha'am. Like Hibbat Zion and unlike Herzl, Ha'am saw Palestine as the spiritual centre of Jewish life. Ha'am inaugurated the movement in his 1880 essay "This is not the way", which called for the cultivation of a qualitative Jewish presence in the land over [the] quantitative one" pursued by Hibbat Zion.^[45] Ha'am was also a sharp critic of Herzl; spiritual Zionism believed that therealpolitik engaged in by Political Zionism corrupted Jewry, and opposed any political solutions that victimised non-Jewish people in the land.^[2]

Brit Shalom, which promoted Arab-Jewish cooperation, was established in 1925 by supporters of Ahad Ha'am's Spiritual Zionism, includingMartin Buber,Gershom Scholem,Hans Kohn, "and other important figures of the intellectual elite of the pre-independenceyishuv,^[2] Gorny describes it as an ultimately marginal group.^[38]

Led byAvraham Stern,Israel Eldad andUri Zvi Greenberg. Revolutionary Zionism viewed Zionism as a revolutionary struggle to ingather the Jewish exiles from the Diaspora, revive the Hebrew language as a spoken vernacular and reestablish a Jewish kingdom in the Land of Israel.^[46] As members ofLehi during the 1940s, many adherents of Revolutionary Zionism engaged inguerilla warfare against the British administration in an effort to end theBritish Mandate of Palestine and pave the way for Jewish political independence. Following the State of Israel's establishment leading figures of this stream argued that the creation of the state of Israel was never the goal of Zionism but rather a tool to be used in realizing the goal of Zionism, which they calledMalkhut Yisrael (the Kingdom of Israel).^[47] Revolutionary Zionists are often mistakenly included among Revisionist Zionists but differ ideologically in several areas. While Revisionists were for the most part secular nationalists who hoped to achieve a Jewish state that would exist as a commonwealth within the British Empire, Revolutionary Zionists advocated a form of national-messianism that aspired towards a vast Jewish kingdom with a rebuiltTemple in Jerusalem.^[48] Revolutionary Zionism generally espousedanti-imperialist political views and included bothRight-wing andLeft-wing nationalists among its adherents. This stream is also categorized as supporters ofGreater Israel.

Reform Zionism, also known as Progressive Zionism, is the ideology of theZionist arm of theReform or Progressive branch ofJudaism. TheAssociation of Reform Zionists of America is the American Reform movement's Zionist organization. Their mission "endeavors to make Israel fundamental to the sacred lives andJewish identity of Reform Jews. As a Zionist organization, the association champions activities that further enhance Israel as a pluralistic, just and democratic Jewish state." In Israel, Reform Zionism is associated with theIsrael Movement for Progressive Judaism.

Certain groups ofChristians support Zionism. The reasons for doing so vary, but may include the desire to convert Jews to beliefs such asMessianic Judaism, or because they believe that returning theHoly Land to the Jewish people fulfills a biblical prophecy that is necessary to bring about theapocalypse.^[49]

Post-Zionists argue that Zionism was successful given the creation ofIsrael and argues that modern Israel now faces a challenge between whether it should be a Jewish state or a democratic state. Post-Zionists argue that Israel should build a civic identity based on a multi-ethnicliberal democracy that does not privilege any people above others.^[50]

• Federal Zionism
• Green Zionism

• Anti-Zionism
• Autonomism
• Bundism
• Canaanism
• Diaspora nationalism
• Folkism
• Neo-Zionism
• Non-Zionism
• Territorialism
• Yiddishism

• Zion and State: Nation, Class and the Shaping of Modern Israel by Mitchell Cohen
• Anne Perez (3 January 2025)."2. Culture War, World War, and the Many Types of Zionism". Augsburg Fortress Publishers. Retrieved3 January 2025.

• Types of Zionism
• Zionism
• Jewish movements

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