- Israel's founding movement, Zionism,
may be one of the most misunderstood
and controversial phenomena in modern history.
Some Palestinians and anti-Israel groups condemn Zionism
as a 19th-century colonialist enterprise
that sought to extend the influence of white Europeans
into the Middle East,
at the expense of the Arab people
living there for generations.
But for the overwhelming majority of Jews
and Israel supporters of all backgrounds,
Zionism wasn't, and isn't, anything resembling that.
Rather, it's a movement that sought a people's return
to their ancestral homeland,
and a sanctuary for powerless, persecuted Jews
around the world.
So how did Zionism become associated
with a colonialism narrative?
The answer has a lot to do with the Roman Empire.
- Absolutely nobody should question Palestinian...
Um... "indigeneity" to the land
of what we now call Israel-Palestine.
No one should ever question Palestinian rights
in Israel-Palestine or the fact their ancestors
and their connection with the land has produced
a national identity specific to the land
of Israel-Palestine.
- When we talk about Zionism,
a little history goes a long way.
Today, we tend to understand Zionism
as a modern, secular movement
that started in the late 19th century.
This is true as far as Zionism's
organized political establishment goes,
but if we only begin the story there,
the essence of what Zionism gave expression to
is gutted out.
The Jewish people have yearned for their homeland, Zion,
for over 2000 years.
Since being exiled around 70 CE,
attachment to the land has permeated
every aspect of Jewish culture.
The dream of returning home is repeated three-times daily
in Jewish prayers.
It's the basis for many religious laws,
and is even the theme of Judaism's grace after meals.
And Jews sit down for a lot of meals.
Speaking of food, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar
is a fast day called Tisha B'Av
devoted to mourning the loss of the Jewish Kingdom
that ruled the land for about 1000 years.
Let that sink in for a moment.
1000 years of Jewish statehood,
centuries before Christianity or Islam even began.
According to the Bible,
the Jewish people grew from a small family:
Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca,
Jacob, Rachel, Leah and their twelve sons,
into a tribe of families,
then into a loose confederacy of tribes,
before establishing the Jewish Kingdom in 1000 BCE.
Assyrian, Babylonian, Roman, and Greek historical accounts
also mention the Jewish tribes and nation.
Jewish sovereignty came to an end
when the Roman empire attacked Jerusalem,
murdered one million Jews, and exiled Jewish leaders.
In an attempt to wipe out all memory of the bond
between the Jewish people and their land known as Judea,
the Roman Emperor Hadrian renamed it Syria-Palestina.
Its new name, Palestine,
a nod to the ancient Philistines
who disappeared from the region 500 years earlier,
gradually eased into common use.
This is when Israel's colonization really began,
with the Roman Empire,
then on track to conquer most of the known world,
forcing Jews out of their own country.
- A lot of the reasons why the peace process has failed
is because Palestinian leaders,
and for a while the surrounding Arab countries,
refused to acknowledge that,
refused to acknowledge that Jews were not foreigners,
we are not invaders, we are not colonizers.
We have come home.
We are among you.
We have a language that comes from the Middle East,
we have a culture that comes from the Middle East,
and our national identity comes from the Middle East,
obviously, which is why we pray at the Western Wall.
- Exiled Jews were now presented
with a daunting challenge:
how do you stay Jewish when so much of Judaism
was inherently tied to the land of Israel and its Temple?
The answer might be the most drastic pivot
a nation has ever undertaken in history.
Jewish leaders understood their painful exile
as a divine consequence of their own sins and infighting.
This reframe, driven by ancient Jewish philosophy,
fostered a Jewish culture in diaspora
whose self-improvement was directly related
to its goal of returning home, to Zion.
The better Jews became as a people,
the closer they were to coming home.
The harsher they were treated in exile,
the better as a people they needed to become.
How's that for Jewish guilt?
This proto-Zionism inextricably tied Jewish identity
with the land of Israel,
and it's vital to understanding
that what makes one a Zionist emerged as an identity
close to 2000 years before modern, political Zionism
came on the scene.
While a constant Jewish presence remained in Palestine
since the Roman exile,
the land was conquered and reconquered
by nearly every world empire from then on.
Palestinian identity, as its indigenous people,
is tied to this tumultuous history.
While it's unclear exactly
when their ancestors' presence in the land began,
indigenous people of all backgrounds have lived in the area
since biblical days.
For Jews, the majority of whom were now living
in exiled communities across the globe,
persecution emerged as a terrible force
that would help shape their dream of returning home.
Jew hatred took on various forms in different eras,
but it always culminated in organized massacres
of Jewish communities, attacks known as pogroms
that continued well into modern times.
This is the climate
in which modern political Zionism emerged,
when in 1896 an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist
named Theodore Herzl,
shaken by Europe's ingrained anti-Semitism,
wrote "Der Judenstaat," "The State of the Jews."
The 60-page pamphlet was the first widely distributed call
for a political solution to the Jewish Question
by way of Jews returning to their historic homeland
in Palestine and reestablishing a state.
In 1917, Herzl's efforts paid off as the British Empire,
the ancient land's current custodian after wrestling
it away from the Ottoman Empire in World War I,
officially endorsed a national home
for the Jewish people in Palestine.
The Balfour Declaration validated Jewish return
to their land on the world stage,
and Zionism gained even more momentum
with the League of Nations mandate in 1919
and San Remo conference in 1920.
For many Arabs who'd been living in Palestine
for generations, British support was seen as evidence
that Zionism was tied to imperialism,
the British empire's historic method
of extending its influence to far-flung nations
by seizing land, resources,
and suppressing local identities.
In other words, colonialism.
- When Theodore Herzl talked about colonialism,
he used those words to illustrate
the need of the Jewish people to immigrate
and to establish a home for themselves.
Nowhere in that doctrine, in that creed,
does it say that the Palestinians cannot do the same thing.
It just says that the Jews can.
- Hundreds of thousands of Jews returned
to Mandatory Palestine, its name under British rule,
escaping growing persecution in Europe
in order to realize Zionism's dream
of reestablishing the Jewish state.
Feeling politically vulnerable, many Palestinians turned
to surrounding Arab nations for support.
Jews, meanwhile, began to see Israel as their only refuge
as Hitler rose to power.
In our next episode, we'll see how this mix of aspiration
and desperation created the perfect storm
that would explode into all out warfare
when the British left Palestine,
leaving Jews and Arabs to work the growing conflict out
on their own.