20th-century Zionism took many forms

Photo by Gidon Pico from Pixabay

One news article

Do Donald Trump and Kamala Harris identify as ‘Zionist’? Here’s what their campaigns told us, Ron Kampeas, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, September 12, 2024:

"Zionism, born as a modern ideology in the 19th century, sought to establish a Jewish polity in the Land of Israel. Since that was achieved with Israel’s establishment in 1948, its meaning has been contested, but is generally taken to signify support for Israel as a Jewish state, and for its citizens. Many Jews self-identify as Zionist, and antisemitism watchdogs caution that bigots will often use the word “Zionist” in their attacks on Jews."

One essay

From a 7,000-word article, "Israel’s Descent," by Adam Shatz, London Review of Books, Vol. 46 No. 12 · 20 June 2024

"...as Shlomo Sand reminds us in Deux peuples pour un état?, there was another, dissident Zionism, a ‘cultural Zionism’ that advocated the creation of a binational state based on Arab-Jewish co-operation, one that counted among its members Ahad Ha’am, Judah Magnes, Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt. In 1907, the cultural Zionist Yitzhak Epstein accused the Zionist movement of having forgotten ‘one small detail: that there is in our beloved land an entire people that has been attached to it for hundreds of years and has never considered leaving it’. Epstein and his allies, who founded Brit Shalom, the Alliance for Peace, in 1925, imagined Zion as a place of cultural and spiritual rebirth. Any attempt to create an exclusively Jewish state, they warned, would turn Zionism into a classical colonial movement and result in permanent warfare with the Palestinian Arabs. After the Arab riots of 1929, Brit Shalom’s secretary, Hans Kohn, denounced the official Zionist movement for ‘adopting the posture of wounded innocents’ and for dodging ‘the least debate with the people who live in this country. We have depended entirely on the force of British power. We have set ourselves goals that were inevitably going to degenerate into conflict.’

But this was no accident: conflict with the Arabs was essential to the Zionist mainstream. For the advocates of ‘muscular Zionism’, as Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin has argued, the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine would allow Jews not only to achieve the ‘negation of exile’ but also, and paradoxically, to reinvent themselves as citizens of the white West – in Herzl’s words, as a ‘rampart of Europe against Asia’. Brit Shalom’s vision of reconciliation and co-operation with the indigenous population was unthinkable to most Zionists, because they regarded the Arabs of Palestine as squatters on sacred Jewish land."

After Israel was recognized as a state in 1948,

"Jewish critics of Israel who traced their roots to the cultural Zionism of Magnes and Buber – or to the anti-Zionist Jewish Labor Bund – would find themselves vilified as heretics and traitors. In Our Palestine Question, Geoffrey Levin shows how American Jewish critics of Israel were dislodged from Jewish institutions in the decades following the state’s formation."

There was

"Fayez Sayegh, the leading Palestinian spokesman in the US in the 1950s and early 1960s...joined forces with an anti-Zionist rabbi, Elmer Berger of the American Council for Judaism, who had already established himself as a critic of Zionism in his 1951 book, A Partisan History of Judaism, in which he assailed the movement for embracing ‘Hitler’s decree of separatism’ and betraying Judaism’s universalist message."

Today, "the most consequential wave of resistance may be the one we are seeing now from a generation of young Jews for whom identification with an explicitly illiberal, openly racist state, led by a close ally of Donald Trump, is impossible to stomach."

Books referenced

Note: Deux peuples pour un État? is a translation from Sand's Hebrew into French by Michel Bilis.

A Partisan History of Judaism by Elmer Berger (Amazon)

Another essay

Jody Alyn reflects on kibbutz life in Israel in the year following the Yom Kippur War (which was in 1973). Some people at the kibbutz "made fierce argument for a shared future with Palestinian Israelis." Alyn points out:

"History depends on who tells it. The histories of Israel/Palestine are convoluted, conflicting and confused by colonialism and capitalism. They go back to World War II and the partition of Palestine in 1948. Or to the Balfour Declaration in 1917. Or to Russian pogroms, the Ottoman Empire or to Judea and Samaria in the Iron and Bronze ages."

Here, "people who lived through the same events came out with different stories depending on where they sat in the system." Unfortunately, "Israel was favored—and used—by the British colonizers in power."

She says: "My idealism died in 1995 when Israeli Prime Minister and Nobel Laureate Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli settler. The oh-so-fragile peace process was also dealt a fatal blow." She found herself "ashamed, angry and afraid of what Israel had become."

"What we do to the 'other,' we do to ourselves," and therefore: "We must all call for a permanent cease-fire; for regime changes, for truth and reconciliation and for collaborative, cooperative rebuilding. Now and forevermore."

Read: Can I Take My Identity Back From Israel?: Reflections of one Jew on her life and times. Jody Alyn. Age of Empathy, Nov 29, 2023.

What do politicians use it to mean?

Returning to the JTA article, mentioned earlier:

"Asked by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency if Vice President Kamala Harris considers herself a Zionist, a campaign aide replied:

“The Vice President and Governor [Tim] Walz have been strong and longstanding supporters of Israel as a secure, democratic homeland for the Jewish people. They will always ensure Israel can defend itself from threats, including from Iran and Iran-backed terrorists such as Hamas and Hezbollah.”

Told that the first sentence of that response would meet perhaps the most common definition of “Zionist,” the aide replied that beyond the statement she relayed, she had “nothing for you.”"