Zionists - who is it? Let's figure it out. The word "Zionism" comes from the name of Mount Zion. She was a symbol of Israel and Jerusalem. Zionism is an ideology that expresses longing for the historical homeland of the Jewish people who are in a foreign land. This political movement will be considered in this article.
When did the idea that formed the basis of Zionism?
The idea of returning to Zion originated among the Jews in ancient times, at the time when they were expelled from Israel. The practice of returning itself was not an innovation. About 2500 years ago, the Jewish people returned to their country from the Babylonian diaspora. Thus, modern Zionism, which took shape in the 19th century, did not invent this practice, but only clothed the ancient movement and idea in an organized modern form.
The declaration of May 14, 1948 on the formation of the State of Israel contains the quintessence of the movement of interest to us. This document states that the Jewish people appeared in the country of Israel.
His political, religious and spiritual appearance has developed here. The people, according to the declaration, are expelled by force from their homeland.
The connection between the Jewish people and Israel
We continue to consider the question: "Zionists - who is this?" It is impossible to understand the movement of interest to us without understanding the existing historical connection between Israel and the Jewish people. It arose almost 4 thousand years ago, when Abraham settled in the territory of modern Israel. Moses in the 13th century BC e. He led the exodus of Jews from Egypt, and Joshua captured a country divided between 12 Israeli tribes. In the 10-11 centuries. BC e., in the era of the First Temple, monarchs Solomon, David and Saul ruled in the state. Israel in 486 BC e. was captured by the Babylonians who destroyed the Temple, and the majority of the Jewish people were taken prisoner. Under the leadership of Nehemiah and Ezra, in the same century, Jews return to their state and establish the Temple again. Thus began the era of the Second Temple. It ended with the Roman conquest of Jerusalem and the repeated destruction in the 70th year of the Temple.
Jewish revolts
After the capture of Judea, many Jews lived in Israel. They raised a rebellion against the Romans in 132 led by Bar Kochba. For a short time they managed to again form a Jewish independent state. This rebellion was brutally crushed. According to historians, about 50 thousand Jews were killed. However, even after the uprising was crushed, hundreds of thousands of representatives of the Jewish people remained in Israel.
After the 4th century AD e. in Galilee, a major uprising began again, directed against Roman rule, the mass of Jews was again expelled from Israel, their lands were requisitioned. In the country in the 7th century there was their community, the number of which was 1/4 million people. Of these, tens of thousands assisted the Persians who captured Israel in 614. This was explained by the fact that the Jews had high hopes for this people, since the Persians allowed them in the 6th century BC. e. to return from the Babylonian captivity to their country.
In the year 638 e., after the Arab-Muslim conquest, the local Jewish population became a melting minority. This was due, among other things, to forced Islamization. At the same time, a fairly large Jewish community existed in Jerusalem for a long time. The Crusaders who captured Jerusalem in 1099 carried out a massacre, the victims of which were both Muslims and Jews. However, even when the number of inhabitants declined sharply in Israel, representatives of the indigenous population did not completely disappear.
Immigration flows
Individual groups or members of messianic movements throughout history have periodically returned or sought to enter Israel. Another stream of immigration in the 17th and 19th centuries, that is, before the advent of Zionism, leads to the fact that the Jerusalem Jewish community in 1844 turns into the largest among other religious communities. It should be noted that the waves of Jewish migration throughout the years (from the late 19th and throughout the 20th century) were preceded by more sporadic, smaller and less organized flows. Zionist repatriation began along with the migration of Palestinophiles to Israel, as well as members of the Bilu movement. This happened in the years 1882-1903. Following this, throughout the 20th century, new waves of repatriation took place, which were arranged by the Zionists. Who they are, you better understand when you find out what the basic concept of Zionism was.
The central concept of Zionism
It should be noted that in this movement the central place is occupied by the concept according to which Israel is the real historical homeland of the Jewish people. Living in other states is exile. Identification with the expulsion of life in the diaspora is the central moment of the thought of this movement, the essence of Zionism. So, this movement expresses a historical connection with the Jewish people of Israel. But it is highly doubtful that it would have arisen without modern anti-Semitism, as well as the persecution of Jews in the New Age who would assimilate if they were left alone.
Zionism and anti-Semitism
That is, Zionism can be considered a reaction to anti-Semitism. You can also see in it a kind of anti-colonial movement, which was characterized by oppression and discrimination, pogroms and humiliation, that is, the position of a minority subordinate to someone else's power.
It is important to emphasize in this connection that Zionism is a political movement that is a response to modern anti-Semitism. However, hundreds of years of persecution of Jews should be considered. This phenomenon has been observed in Europe for a long time. Again and again, the European diasporas were assassinated and persecuted for religious, social, economic reasons, as well as racial and nationalist. In Europe, Jews were slaughtered by crusaders on their way to the Holy Land (11-12 centuries), they were killed in droves during the plague, accused of poisoning wells in the 14th century, burned at the stake in Spain during the era of the Inquisition (15th century), they became victims of mass the massacre perpetrated in Ukraine by the Cossacks of Khmelnitsky (17th century). Hundreds of thousands were also killed by the armies of Petliura and Denikin, which caused Zionism in Russia in the civil war. The image below is dedicated to these events.
After World War I, the situation became disastrous. Then the killers came from Germany, where the Jews made the most serious assimilation attempt.
Throughout history, these people have been expelled from almost all European countries: France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, England, Lithuania and Russia. All these problems have accumulated over the centuries, and by the beginning of the 19th century, Jews had lost hope of changes in their lives.
How did the leaders of this movement become Zionists?
The history of Zionism shows that the leaders of the movement turned into Zionists often after they themselves faced with anti-Semitism. This happened with Moses Ges, who was shocked in 1840 by slanderous attacks on Jews living in Damascus. This happened with Leon Pinsker, who after the assassination of Alexander II (1881-1882) was hit by a chain of pogroms, and with Theodor Herzl (photo below), who, as a journalist in Paris, witnessed an anti-Semitic campaign launched in 1896 in connection with Dreyfus affair.
Zionist goals
Thus, the Zionist movement considered the solution of the "Jewish problem" to be its main goal. His supporters saw it as a problem of a helpless people, a national minority, which has no home and whose destiny is persecution and pogroms. So, we answered the question: "Zionists - who is it?" We note one interesting pattern that we have already mentioned.
Discrimination and waves of immigration
There is a close link between Zionism and the persecution of Jews in the sense that most of the major waves of immigration to Israel have invariably followed discrimination and killings in the diaspora. For example, the First Aliyah was preceded by pogroms in Russia in the 80s of the 19th century. The second began after a series of pogroms in Belarus and Ukraine at the beginning of the 20th century. And the third was a reaction to the assassination of Jews by Denikin and Petliura in the civil war. So Zionism manifested itself in Russia. The fourth aliyah came from Poland in the 1920s, following the adoption of legislation against Jewish entrepreneurship. At the age of 30, in Fifth Aliyah, they came from Austria and Germany, fleeing Nazi violence, etc.
