Zionism is a movement seeking to establish and maintain a Jewish state inPalestine / theLand of Israel. The movement began in the late 19th century and in 1948 theState of Israel was established.
Zionism is as old as theBabylonian Exile, which began in 586BCE. Separation from the Land of Israel as they were being led into captivity by their conquerors rested crushingly upon the spirits of the Jewish exiles; a longing for the homeland consumed them. Turning in the direction ofJudah, they then took an awesome vow: "If I forget thee, OJerusalem, let my right hand lose its cunning. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I remember thee not; if I set not Jerusalem above my chiefest joy" (Psalms 137:5-6).
Nathan Ausubel,The Book of Jewish Knowledge, 1964, art. Zionism p. 526.
To be or not to be! To be the last Jews or the first Hebrews.
Micha Josef Berdyczewski. The quote is speaking about the annihilation of Diaspora Jewry. The “Old Jew” is the diaspora Jew, doomed to perish, while the “Hebrews” are the “new Jews”: liberated, proud, strong Zionists. Quoted inNot in the Heavens, p. 86
Shall we, with our inheritance, do less than the Irish, the Serbians, or the Bulgars? And must we not, like them, have a land where the Jewish life may be naturally led, the Jewish language spoken, and the Jewish spirit prevail?
For hundreds of years the Jewish masses have blindly searched for a way that will return them to nature, to the soil. At last we have found it. Zionism is the way.
Ber Borochov,Nationalism & Class Struggle (1907), translation 1937.p. 74.
I want to express what we mean by a Jewish State. We mean by a Jewish State simply a State where the majority of the people are Jews, not a State where a Jew has, in any way, any privilege more than anyone else.
I'm notanti-Semitic at all, but I am anti-Zionist. I don't believe they had the right, after 3,000 years, to reclaim theland with Westernbombs andguns onbiblical injunction.
During our last talks with the [British] Government in London, when certain proposals were made for a settlement-which, unfortunately, we could not consider-we were offered that Jews should have more rights than others. And certain examples were given us of certain British colonies, in Ceylon and other places. Andwe declared emphatically to the Government that we will not accept,we will fight any privilege accorded to a Jew because he is a Jew. What we want to have is more Jews in Palestine but not more privileges tor the Jews.A Jewish state means a state based on absolute equality of all her citizens and on democracy.
For many of us,anti-Semitic feeling had little to do with our dedication [to Zionism] [...] We emigrated not for negative reasons of escape but for the positive purpose of rebuilding a homeland ... ~David Ben-Gurion
For many of us,anti-Semitic feeling had little to do with our dedication [to Zionism]. I personally never suffered anti-Semitic persecution.Płońsk[Ben-Gurion's hometown] was remarkably free of it ... Nevertheless, and I think this very significant, it was Płońsk that sent the highest proportion of Jews to Eretz Israel from any town inPoland of comparable size. Weemigrated not for negative reasons of escape but for the positive purpose of rebuilding a homeland ... Life in Płońsk was peaceful enough.
It is a nationalism whose aim is not power but dignity and health. If we did not have to live among intolerant, narrow-minded and violent people, I should be the first to throw over all nationalism in favor of universal humanity.
Palestine is not only a place of refuge for the Jews of Eastern Europe, but the embodiment of the reawakening corporate spirit of the whole Jewish nation.
The wealthy, whose comforts of life have lured them away from the suffering of their people and who find in material comfort a substitute for spiritual satisfaction, have for the most part been indifferent to the appeal of Zionism. The power of the magnet is not felt by gold!
Harry Friedenwald. Quoted inPaul Goodman & Arthur D. Lewis,Zionism: problems and views, 1916,p. 136.
There were three possible responses to suchdiscrimination. The first was to leave. Yet despite the importance of Zionism in Polish-Jewish politics, only a small proportion of Polish Jews drew the conclusion that they would be better off trying to find a Jewish state in the new 'home' their people had been granted in what was now theBritish 'mandate' in Palestine. Even in the 1930s just 82,000 Polish Jews emigrated there, though as we shall see this also reflected British nervousness about the effect of continued Jewish immigration on Palestine's internal stability. In fact, only a minority of Polish Zionists were committed to systematiccolonization of the Holy Land; the majority were just as interested in what could be achieved in Poland itself. It was easier in more ways than one for a West Prussian to leave Poland for neighbouringGermany than for a Jew to leave Poland for the more distant Holy Land.
Niall Ferguson,The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), p. 171
There will be not only peace between us and the Arabs, ... but close friendship and co-operation.
David Ben-Gurion, to Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry, March 19, 1946.The Macmillan Dictionary of Political Quotations, p. 117.
It is the task of Zionism in the Diaspora to transform the Jews domiciled there into workers and producers. There, too, the chief thing is creation, not wealth.
A. D. Gordon, Quoted in S. Spiegel.Hebrew Reborn, p. 416.
Before, or at least along with, the redemption of the soil there must be also the redemption of the soul.
The State is not in itself an aim: it is a means to an end, the end of Zionism.
David Ben-Gurion, speech, Aug. 13, 1948.Rebirth and Destiny of Israel, 276.
I am told Zionism is a Utopia. I do not know; perhaps. But inasmuch as I see in this Utopia an unconquerable thirst for freedom, one for which the people will suffer, it is for me a reality. With all my heart I pray that the Jewish people, like the rest of humanity, may be given spiritual strength to labor for its dream and to establish it in flesh and blood.
Maxim Gorky. Quoted inMaccabean, April 1902, ii. 213.
Zionism in its spiritual sense is a lofty aspiration. By spiritual sense I mean they should want to realise the Jerusalem that is within. Zionism meaning reoccupation ofPalestine has no attraction for me. I can understand the longing of a Jew to return to Palestine, and he can do so if he can without the help ofbayonets, whether his own orthose of Britain. In that event he would go to Palestine peacefully and in perfect friendliness with theArabs. The real Zionism of which I have given you my meaning is the thing to strive for, long for and die for. Zion lies in one’s heart. It is the abode ofGod. The real Jerusalem is the spiritual Jerusalem. Thus he can realise this Zionism in any part of the world.
The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in theBible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood? Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense thatEngland belongs to theEnglish orFrance to theFrench....The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish theidea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled? Or do they want a double home where they can remain at will? This cry for the national home affords a colourable justification for theGerman expulsion of the Jews.
Zionism views itself as the political expression of the Jewish nation. Indeed, it fulfills itself as the fulfillment of Jewish history. In a matter analogous to most othernationalisms, Zionism has constructed a three-part narrative that traces the unbroken history of the Jewish nation from its birth and efflorescence in Palestine through a period ofdecay and degeneration in exile to a period ofredemption at the hands of the modern Zionist movement and its return to its ancestral homeland in Palestine. For Zionists, the Jewish claim to Palestine can be found inthe Bible and corroborativearchaeological evidence. Most commonly, the Zionist narrative of Jewish history begins withAbraham and his descendants, whoimmigrated to Palestine in the second millennium BC, possibly fromIraq. The standard Zionist narrative considers the tenth-century BC reigns ofKing David andKing Solomon the highpoint of the Jewish presence in Palestine. Theirs was a period ofcultural andpoliticalglory, when the Jewish nation was politically united and religious authority radiated from the great temple in Jerusalem. But their was also a short-lived period, lasting less than seventy years, about half of the length of the "golden age" ofGreece.
James L. Gelvin,The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: One Hundred Years of War (2014), Cambridge University Press, p. 6
Know that youZionists do not represent Judaism and do not represent the Jewish people. . . You only represent the idea of apolitical movement whose ideas and values oppose the ideas and values of our holy Torah and the Jewish religion. We strongly condemn your aggressive actions and emphasize to the whole world: There is a big difference between Judaism and Zionism...
I have for many years opposed Zionism as the dream ofcapitalist Jewry the world over for a Jewish State with all its trimmings, such asGovernment,laws,police, militarism and the rest. In other words, a Jewish State machinery to protect theprivileges of the few against the many. Reginald Reynolds (referring to an article he wrote called ‘Palestine and Socialist Policy’) is wrong, however, when he makes it appear that the Zionists were the sole backers of Jewish emigration to Palestine. Perhaps he does not know that the Jewish masses in every country and especially in theUnited States of America have contributed vast amounts ofmoney for the same purpose. They have given unstintingly out of their earnings in the hope that Palestine may prove to be an asylum for their brothers,cruelly persecuted in nearly everyEuropean country. The fact that there are many non-Zionist communes in Palestine goes to prove that the Jewish workers who have helped the persecuted and hounded Jews have done so not because they are Zionists, but for the reason I have already stated, that they might be left in peace in Palestine to take root and live their own lives.
One of the things Zionism was meant to make from scratch was aHebrew present. Not only in reality; in the language, too. In ancient Hebrew, there was very little grammatical present. There was a past and a future--that is, memory and longing. We almost never said "I go," "I do." It was necessary to make the present a linguistic habit, a routine part of life. Perhaps Zionism came into being primarily to create for us a present tense. To say at long last that the Jews, too, have a present. Whoever now denies this present has forgotten the whole lesson of Zionism; he would send us back to the days of remembering and longing of the Diaspora. We came to Israel so as to not wait for a messiah who is yet to come; rather, we came to be here now, today. That is Zionism in a nutshell.
Shulamith Hareven, from "Life Is Now, Mr. Shamir" collected inThe Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)
The world will be freer by our liberty, richer by our wealth, greater by our greatness.
Let everyone find out what Zionism really is, Zionism, which was rumored to be a sort of millennial marvel—that it is a moral, lawful, humanitarian movement, directed toward the long-yearned-for goal of our people.
Theodor Herzl, address to Zionist congress, Basel, Switzerland (aug 29 1997). InGreat Jewish Speeches Throughout History, p. 51.
Zionism is the return of the Jews to Judaism, before their return to the Jewish land.
Theodor Herzl, address to the first Zionist Congress, Aug. 29, 1897. Quoted inThe People in Its Land, p. 108.
The heart of the people—that is the foundation on which the land will be regenerated.
[Zionism] provides an opportunity for communal work and political excitement; his emotions find an outlet in a field of activity which is not subservient to non-Jews; and he feels that, thanks to this ideal, he stands once more spiritually erect and has regained his personal dignity, without overmuch trouble and purely by his own efforts…. For it is not the attainment of the ideal that he heeds; its pursuit alone is sufficient to cure him of his spiritual disease, which is that of an inferiority complex, and the loftier and more distant the ideal, the greater its power to exalt.
Ahad Ha'am.Textual Sources for the Study of Judaism, p. 162.
Were I to sum up theBasel Congress in a word — which I shall guard against pronouncing publicly — it would be this: At Basel, I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today, I would be answered by universallaughter. Perhaps in five years, certainly in fifty, everyone will know it.
Theodor Herzl in a diary entry, (3 September 1897), a few days after theFirst Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, as quoted inNonstate Nations in International Politics: Comparative System Analyses (1997) by Judy S. Bertelsen, p. 37.
It’s somehow absurd and trivial to use the wordIsrael and the expression60th birthday in the same sentence or the same breath. (What is this, some candle-bedecked ceremony inMiami?) The questions before us are somewhat more antique, and also a little more pressingly and urgently modern, than that. Has Zionism made Jews more safe or less safe? Has it cured the age-old problem ofanti-Semitism or not? Is it part of thetikkun olam—the mandate for thehealing and repair of thehuman world—or is it another rent and tear in the fabric?Jewish people are on all sides of this argument, as always. There areHasidic rabbis who declare the Jewish state to be a blasphemy, but only because there can be no such state until the arrival of the Messiah (who may yet tarry). There are Jewish leftists who feel shame that asettler state was erected on the ruins of so manyPalestinian villages. There are also Jews who collaborate withextreme-conservativeChristians in an effort to bring on the day ofArmageddon, when all these other questions will necessarily become moot. And, of course, there are Jews who simply continue to live in, or to support from a distance, a nerve-racked and high-tech little state that absorbs a lot ofviolence andcruelty and that has also shown itself very capable of inflicting the same.
[It is the] iron law of everycolonizing movement, a law which knows of no exceptions, a law which existed in all times and under all circumstances. If you wish to colonize aland in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison on your behalf. Or else – or else, give up yourcolonization, for without an armed force which will render physically impossible any attempts to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible, not “difficult”, not “dangerous” but IMPOSSIBLE! … Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important to build, it is important to speakHebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot – or else I am through with playing at colonialization.
Ze'ev Jabotinsky, as quoted in Lenni Brenner,The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir (1984), p. 78.
We cannot promise any reward either to theArabs of Palestine or to the Arabs outside Palestine. A voluntary agreement is unattainable. And so those who regard an accord with the Arabs as an indispensable condition of Zionism must admit to themselves today that this condition cannot be attained and hence that we must give up Zionism. We must either suspend our settlement efforts or continue them without paying attention to the mood of thenatives.Settlement can thus develop under the protection of a force that is not dependent on the local population, behind an iron wall which they will be powerless to break down.
Ze'ev Jabotinsky, as quoted in Avi Shlaïm,The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, W. W. Norton: 2014, p. 14.
we Jewish people have our own independent case against Zionism. It is terribly important to make clear that we are also struggling for ourselves in the Palestinian solidarity movement. And I think one of the greatest crimes against Jews that Israel has perpetrated-aside from saying that Jews did not fight the Nazis, that we went quietly into the camps; we don't know what they were doing (in fact we do; they were making deals with the Nazis)—aside from that, their crime has been to try to cut us off from our history and tradition of taking part in movements against injustice.
Selma James, Speech at US Assembly of Jews Confronting Racism and Israeli Apartheid (2010), collected inSex, Race and Class: the Perspective of Winning (2012)
For many, Zionism was inherited at birth and they now think of it as synonymous with Jewishness. The threat of being labelled a traitor for questioning Israeli policies, and the allegation of self-hatred and anti-Semitism have inhibited an in-depth study of Zionism, its diverse political tenets, its history in relation to other Jews and to non-Jews and its role in defining Jewish identity in the States.
Irena Klepfisz "Khaloymes/Dreams in Progress: Culture, Politics, and Jewish Identity" inDreams of an Insomniac: Jewish Feminist Essays, Speeches and Diatribes (1990)
Just as many contemporaryYiddishists romanticize and depoliticize the past, so do most contemporary Zionists romanticize and depoliticize the Israeli present. Such nostalgia is rightfully condemned by those who want Jews to engage in the political present. But these critics erroneously conclude that any focus on their Jewish identity will inherently foster Jewish escapist tendencies.
Irena Klepfisz "Khaloymes/Dreams in Progress: Culture, Politics, and Jewish Identity" inDreams of an Insomniac: Jewish Feminist Essays, Speeches and Diatribes (1990)
The promulgation of the Mission of Israel demands a world center, a world authority whence the forces actuating it could radiate in every direction.
David Lubin, letter to Brandeis, March 20, 1918. Quoted in O. R. Agresti.David Lubin, 343.
Audacity created the Zionist Congress. It was Theodor Herzl’s only weapon. ... The Zionist Congress enabled us to regain corporate responsibility of our national destiny. It gave aGaluth people status and an address. It is the forerunner of the Jewish State.
Louis Lipsky, Nov. 1921.Selected Worlds, 1927, i.161.
now it seems to me that Zionism asks too little, not too much! They have traded in that City of the vision for a cramped fortress tower, believing that Jews will always be persecuted, hunted. That most of humanity couldn't care less if it happened again. Would let it happen. Knowing some of humanity would even applaud. Believing there is no other way for Jews to survive. I want to shout it at them from the rooftops, to cry it out loud: you have never asked for enough! Zionism, at least as it's lived today, accepts anti-Semitism, says it's permanent in the world: As long as there are Jews, there will be Jew-haters, Jew-killers, so we'll build a wall of bodies around us and live behind it, a menace to our neighbors, trying to feel safe. I stand here and cry out to you: "Come out of the trenches! Ask for it all! I demand for myself, and my children who will also be Jews, and for you, too, my soldiering kin, a world where fortresses are unknown and unnecessary."
All forms of Zionism hold the perception that a certain extent of anti-Semitism benefits the Zionist enterprise. To put it more sharply, anti-Semitism is the generator and ally of Zionism. Masses of Jews leave their place of residence only when their economic situation and physical safety are undermined. Masses of Jews are shoved to this country rather than being attracted to it. The yearning for the land of Zion and Jerusalem is not strong enough to drive millions of Jews to the country they love and make them hold on to its clods.
As the Jews in Israel long for immigrants with a certain affiliation to their people, and as Zionism—like any other ideology—needs constant justification, we have a secret hope in our hearts that a moderateanti-Semitic wave, along with a deterioration in the economic situation in their countries of residence, will make Diaspora Jews realize that they belong with us. ... Is proof even necessary? No one will protest the assertion that therise in anti-Semitism in France gave us some satisfaction, in the sense of “we warned you, didn’t we?” Late Prime MinisterAriel Sharon did not hesitate to make such a declaration, angering theFrench government and many Jews who see themselves as unconditionalFrench citizens. Thousands of Jews fromFrance who see Israel as a lifeboat, as an insurance policy, purchased apartments here and raisedreal estate prices in the coastal cities. That’s good. It proves Zionism was right.
In order to remove these malignant doubts, it would be good to have some anti-Semitism in America. Not serious anti-Semitism, notpogroms, not persecutions that will empty America from its Jews, as we need them there, but just a taste of this pungent stuff, so that we can restore our faith in Zionism.
One can be a Zionist without being anationalist, even an unaggressive one. The earlier Zionism, that which has had a far longer career than the Neo-Zionism of to-day, was none the less Zionist, even though it had no tinge of nationalism in the modern semi-aggressive sense. That Zionism was not based on a Jewish nation, whose existence in the modern sense it did not admit, but on the Jewish people. The earlier Zionism had no political connotation. It was no less successful on that account. It was certainly one of the instruments that kept Judaism alive and Jewry in existence. That early - it may be termed spiritual - Zionism still exists even though its voice is drowned by the more blatant shouts of a nationalism that differs from it in many respects. And as that earlier Zionism, which is a large part of Judaism, flourished for centuries before Political Zionism was conceived, it will not inconceivably survive Political Zionism as a living force, for centuries.
A day will come when Zionism will be needed by you, proud Germans [German Jews], as much as by those wretched Ostjuden. ... A day will come when you will beg for asylum in the land you now scorn.
[In order] that we may not be compelled to wander from one exile to another, we must have an extensive, productive land of refuge, a center which is our own.
perhaps the nineteenth-century word Zionism-so incendiary, so drenched in idealism, dissension, ideas of blood and soil, in memories of victimization and pursuant claims of the right to victimize-perhaps the use of this word, by Zionists, post-Zionists, and anti-Zionists alike, needs to dissolve before twenty-first-century realities.
Adrienne Rich "Jewish Days and Nights" in Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon, eds.,Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2003) andA Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society, 1997-2008 (2009)
Zionism is not a mere national or chauvinistic caprice, butthe last desperate stand of the Jews against annihilation.
In other words, Zionism was a colonialist phenomenon in all respects and fully resembled other examples of modern colonialism – apart from the fact that it was a national movement, that it was not motivated by a desire for economic gain, that it arose out of Jewish suffering and was realized by people who may be defined as refugees, that the settlers had no colonial mother country, and that the bond with the Land of Israel was part of the traditional historical identity of the Jewish people.
Haviv Rettig Gur, in anarticle as a response to Alexander Yakobson's quote from "Israel and the Family of Nations: The Jewish nation-state and human rights"
The rebirth of Israel’s national consciousness and the revival of Judaism are inseparable. When Israel found itself, it found its God. When Israel lost itself, or began to work at its self-effacement, it was sure to deny its God.
Solomon Schechter, 1906. Quoted in J. H. Hertz.A Book of Jewish Thoughts. 116f.
If we are Zionists, as we say we are, what is the good of meeting and talking and drinking tea? Let us do something real and practical— let us organize the Jewish women of America and send nurses and doctors to Palestine.
Henrietta Szold. From an address to a women’s Jewish study group meeting at Temple Emanu-El in New York on Purim, February 24, 1912. Quoted byProject Herzl
in recent times, largely because of the Arab-Israeli conflict, there has been a construction in the public sphere of Jews and Muslims as always already enemies. In the media, journalists often appeal to the cliché that “this conflict goes back thousands of years.” But historically that is false; it largely goes back to the late nineteenth century and the emergence of Zionism. For many centuries and even millennia, Jews and Muslims often faced Christian prejudice together...The two stories/histories of Jews and Muslims are often told in isolation, but in fact the two groups were subjected to the same inquisition and continued to live together within Muslim spaces. In my work, I have insisted on the Judeo-Muslim hyphen, because while the Judeo-Christian hyphen implies a legitimate meta-narrative, the Judeo-Muslim hyphen has been elided. Yet, historically the Judeo-Muslim hyphen could be seen as the norm rather than the Judeo-Christian, which is a relatively recent phenomenon, going back to the Euro-Jewish enlightenment and reinforced by Zionist Eurocentrism...Zionism, to my mind, can be described as an effort to whiten the Jew philosophically and even literally.
Political Zionism is problematic for obvious reasons. But I can never forget what it achieved as a moral force in an era of complete dissolution.It helped to stem the tide of 'progressive' leveling of venerable, ancestral differences; it fulfilled a conservative function.
Green, K. H. (editor),Strauss, Leo,Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity : Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought, 1997, State University of New York Press, pp. 413–14.
Anti-Zionists, last of all, exhibit a distaste for certain words. It wasThomas Hobbes who, anticipatingsemantics, pointed out thatwords are counters, notcoins; that thewise man looks through them toreality. This counsel many anti-Zionists seem to have neglected. They are especially disturbed by the two nouns nationalism andcommonwealth, and by the adjective political. And yet these terms on examination are not at all upsetting. Jewish nationalism means no more than recognition of the peoplehood of Israel, and of the propriety of that people's being areligio-cultural group in America, anationality inEastern Europe, and in Palestine an actualized nation. Nor is the word political more horrendous, even when it precedes Zionism. For what does it signify? It refers either to methods for realizing the Zionist objective or to the objective itself. If to the former, it denotes theWorld Zionist Organization, theJewish Agency for Palestine, and their transactions with the Mandatory Power and others onimmigration into Palestine and related problems. If this be political Zionism, what can be wrong with it? Anyone wishing Jews to be free to enter Palestine knows that governments must be dealt with and understandings negotiated. Or are there some so naive as to approve of results but not of the only means for attaining them?
The idea that Zionism is essentially racist is only consistent with the view that all nationalism is a form ofracism. In that case all states that claimed to be based on nationalism would need to be removed as well. Anti-Zionism, however tends to argue one or some of the following ideas: (a) Jews are not anation (b) Jews are only identifiable by attachment to Judaism asreligion (c) there is only tenuous evidence linking Jews to Torah historical accounts (d) the Jews come from Eastern Europe, not theMiddle East (e) Jews are not a homogeneous group (f) Jews have collaborated with oppressors (Imperialism, theNazis) (g) Zionism inevitably meansoppressing the Palestinians. There are of course other views. These arguments all lead to an uncomfortable position that whereas all other self-declared nationalisms have validity, the Jews have no such claims. Yet in different ways the arguments about Zionism can be easily adopted to almost all other national situations. Yet no one asks ‘So exactly how is it that you areAustralian?’ This question is posed to Jews a great deal. While there are honorable Anti-Zionist positions they are few. On the whole Anti-Zionism is close to, or a mask for, Anti-Semitism.
I never heard [my parents] talk between themselves about Palestine or Zionism, and I suspected they had no strong convictions on the subject, at least until after the war, when the horror ofthe Holocaust made them feel there should be a "National Home." I felt they were bullied by the organizers of these meetings, and by the gangsterlike evangelists who would pound at the front door and demand large sums for yeshivas or “schools in Israel.” My parents, clearheaded and independent in most other ways, seemed to become soft and helpless in the face of these demands, perhaps driven by a sense of obligation or anxiety. My own feelings […] were passionately negative: I came to hate Zionism and evangelism and politicking of every sort, which I regarded as noisy and intrusive and bullying.
The ultimate aim of the Zionists is to liberate the Jewish people from the peculiar psychological complex induced by the penalization to which they have been subject for centuries in the Gentile world.
To bring water to the thirsty earth, shade to the sun-parched sands, the laughter of children to a countryside where only jackals howl; to unearth the good soil under the rocks, to push back the desert, and remove the last swamps—these are among the tasks of the Jewish National Fund in its second fifty years.
Zionism, as conceived and in part executed by Theodor Herzl, was the half-conscious instinct of a people integrating past and future together into the totality of the will to live and to be itself and only itself.
If we wish that the name Israel be not extinguished, then we are in duty bound to create something which may serve as a center for our entire people, like the heart in an organism, from which the blood will stream into all the arteries of the national body and fill it with life.
Revivor of the Hebrew language,Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, quoted in Hemda Ben Yehuda,New Palestine, Dec. 1950.
Zionism’s nature as an ethnic and national rather than an economic project; the refugee status of most of the Jews [who came to Palestine]; the loose organization of the Diaspora Jewish communities as opposed to well-organized [colonial] mother countries; and lastly, the ideal of the ‘return to Zion’ which is grounded in Jewish tradition.
Alexander Yakobson, "Israel and the Family of Nations: The Jewish nation-state and human rights"
Zionism as a philosophy, even in its leftist versions, doesn't appeal to me. I've never envisioned sovereignty over a piece of land as a solution to anti-Semitism, a negation of the Diaspora, a necessary focus of Jewish identity and culture, or the basis for building a socialist utopia. I see nationalism of all sorts, including national liberation movements, as problematic-an understatement when applied to theMiddle East. Yet I support the existence of Israel because Zionism is, among other things, a strategy forced on Jews by a particular historical situation. What it comes down to is that Israel has given Jews something whose lack cost millions of lives: a place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. These days, however, the Israeli government seems to believe that, far from the state's existing to insure the survival of Jews, Jews exist to insure the survival of the state.
Ellen Willis “What the Pollard Case Means to Jews” (1987) included in No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays (1992)
the "revisionist" strain of Zionism, with its roots in Deir Yassin and its followers inLebanon, has propelledIsrael toward disaster.
Ellen Willis “Ministries of Fear” (November 1985) included in No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays (1992)
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