The Z Word.
You have probably heard the words 'Zionism' and 'Zionists'.
Chances are, used as an insult on social media or in a student union debate.
It’s a word that has been distorted and abused and framed, not by Zionists themselves,
but by Zionism’s opponents.
It’s come to be believed to mean hardliners who want a greater Israel and no peace deal
with the Palestinians.
Oppressors.
Colonialists.
Expropriators of land.
Users of excessive military force.
Proponents of apartheid.
Even ethnic cleansers.
It’s also come to be used as a synonym for Jews by antisemites who want to use the old
racist tropes about conspiracies and global control of finance, media and politics, but
to get away with it by saying “we only said that about Zionists, we didn’t say it about
Jews”.
But this isn’t what Zionism means.
Zionism is simply the belief that the Jewish people should have a homeland in Israel.
Judaism isn't just a religion.
The Jewish people are a nation, who share a common land, a common religion and a common
history.
Following defeat by the Roman Empire, most Jews lived in exile outside the land of Israel
for 2,000 years (although there was a residual continuous Jewish presence), in many countries
Jews were a persecuted minority.
Inspired by other national movements in Europe, Zionism emerged in the 19th century as a national
freedom movement among Jews.
The founder of modern Zionism was Theodore Herzl.
Zionists believed that the oppression and the discrimination faced by Jews in Europe and
elsewhere came from their lack of a homeland.
A homeland would give Jews physical security, and allow a full flowering of their culture.
And although it was predominantly a secular movement, Zionism was rooted in the Jewish people’s
strong emotional and religious attachment to its historic homeland in Israel, which was then part
of the Ottoman Empire.
Herzl’s Zionist Organisation encouraged migration to Palestine.
This immigration and purchase of land for agriculture (often from Arab absentee landlords)
was legally approved by the Ottoman authorities.
During the First World War Britain conquered Palestine from the Ottoman Empire.
In the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the British Government announced its support for a Jewish
national home in Palestine.
In 1922 Britain received the Mandate to govern Palestine on behalf of the League of
Nations.
The wording of the Balfour Declaration was included in the Mandate.
‘Palestine’ as defined in the Mandate included the present-day state of Jordan as
well as Israel and the West Bank and Gaza.
Jews saw a parallel between their own moves towards self-determination and the national
liberation of new states in Central and Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Austrian
and Russian Empires.
The rise of the Nazis and the events of the Holocaust in Europe accelerated the demand
for a Jewish state.
Jews sought desperately to escape the Nazis.
Most other states closed their borders to refugees, which swelled the flow of immigrants
to Palestine.
The British barred Jewish immigration to Palestine in 1939.
After the war, many Holocaust survivors, unable or unwilling to return to their homes, clamoured
for admission to Palestine.
The British authorities refused entry to the majority of them.
What the British termed as “illegal immigration” flourished and was met with a tough response.
The Zionists fought an anti-colonial struggle to end British mandate rule and achieve a
Jewish state.
In 1947, the United Nations approved a plan to partition the land between a Jewish and
an Arab State.
The Jews accepted the plan but the Arab community in Palestine and the neighbouring Arab States rejected
it.
Arab militias attacked Jewish communities.
When the British Mandate ended the Zionists established Israel as an independent State.
Armed forces from all the neighbouring Arab countries invaded.
Despite the odds, the tiny Jewish state survived and won the War of Independence.
The borders of Israel between 1948 and 1967, known now as the ‘67 borders, were actually
the ceasefire line at the end of the War of Independence.
In 1967, Israel’s Arab neighbours declared their intention to invade again and attempt
to destroy the Jewish state.
Israel responded by launching a pre-emptive strike against Egypt and Syria and counter-attacked against
the attacking Jordanian forces.
Victory in the Six Day War saw Israel gain control over Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
Anyone who supports the existence of the State of Israel – including as part of a Two State
Solution alongside a Palestinian state - is a Zionist.
Zionists come in lots of types – liberal Zionists, revisionist security-focused Zionists, socialist
“labour Zionists”, religious Zionists.
Not all Zionists are Jewish.
Millions of non-Jews support the Jewish desire for national self-determination.
I'm one of them. A non-Jew, from a centre-left political background.
But the vast majority of Jews are Zionists.
Vigorous internal debate about whether Jews needed a state was largely settled by the
horrors of the Holocaust.
Tragically no one else came to protect the Jews or offer them safe haven.
If Israel had existed in the 1930s it would have been a place Jews could have escaped
to and been protected by the armed forces of a Jewish State.
44% of all Jews now live in Israel.
Outside Israel most synagogues say a weekly prayer for the State of Israel.
Recent polling found that 90 percent of British Jews support Israel’s right to exist as
a Jewish state.
Whether you are Jewish or non-Jewish, if you support the right to self-determination of
all peoples, including Jews, you should be proud to call yourself a Zionist.