Zionism

On the eve of World War II, the British government changed its Palestine policy, in an effort to appease the Arab world. The White Paper of May 1939 terminated Britain's commitment to Zionism and provided for the establishment of a Palestinian state within ten years. The Arab majority in Palestine was guaranteed by a clause that provided for the further immigration of 75,000 Jews during the following five years, after which additional entry would depend on Arab consent.

The 1939 White Paper broke the traditional Anglo-Zionist alliance and provoked many in the Yishuv to violent protest. In May 1942, Zionist leaders meeting at the Biltmore Hotel in New York City demanded a Jewish Democratic Commonwealth—that is, a state—in all of western Palestine as part of the new world order after the war. This “Biltmore program” marked a radical departure in Zionist policy. The Holocaust, the systematic murder of European Jews by the Nazis, finally convinced Western Jewry of the need for a Jewish state. In 1944, the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization), a Zionist guerrilla force led by the future Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, began an armed revolt against British rule in Palestine.

On May 14, 1948, at midnight, the British mandate over Palestine ended, and the Jews declared their independence in the new state of Israel. Israel owed its existence to a unique set of circumstances: Western sympathy for Jewish suffering; the political influence of American Jews in securing the support of President Harry S. Truman; Britain's loss of will to continue its rule in Palestine; and, perhaps above all, the Yishuv's determination and ability to establish and hold on to its own state.

The purpose of Zionism during the first years of statehood seemed clear—to consolidate and defend Israel, to explain and justify its existence. Relations between the new state and the Zionists, however, proved problematic. Israel's first prime minister, Ben-Gurion, insisted that Zionist leaders who elected to remain in the Diaspora would have no say in Israel's policy decisions, even though Israel may have owed its existence to their influence. Ben-Gurion also insisted that, now that the Jewish state was in existence, the sole purpose of Zionism must be personal aliya (Hebrew, “going up,” or settling in Israel).

Nahum Goldmann, head of the WZO from 1951 to 1968, argued that Zionism must also nurture and preserve Jewish life in the Diaspora. American Zionists, notably Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, founder of the Reconstructionist movement, have urged a redefinition of Judaism and have warned against the dangers of creating a schism between Israel and Diaspora Jewry. In 1968 the Jerusalem Program (adopted by the Zionist Congress held in Jerusalem that year), made aliya the condition for membership of any Zionist group, but the new program has brought little practical change.

During the 1970s, much Zionist activity focused on Soviet Jewry, who were finally allowed to emigrate in restricted numbers. Again, differences arose between Zionist and Jewish relief agencies over whether immigration to Israel should be the only option offered to Soviet Jews. A massive wave of immigration by Soviet Jews to Israel began in the late 1980s.

Zionism has been repeatedly denounced by the Arab nations and their supporters as a “tool of imperialism.” In 1975, the UN adopted a resolution equating Zionism with racism; in 1991, the General Assembly voted 111 to 25 for repeal. For their part Zionists have emphasized that their movement has never rejected Arab self-determination and that the fundamental meaning of Zionism has been the national liberation of the Jewish people. Zionism today is based on the unequivocal support of two basic principles—the autonomy and safety of the state of Israel and the right of any Jew to settle there (the Law of Return)—which together provide the guarantee of a Jewish nationality to any Jew in need of it.