Zionism

The Jews have but one way of saving themselves — a return to their own people and an emigration to their own land. ~ Theodor Herzl

Zionism (Hebrew: צִיּוֹנוּת‎ Tsiyyonut after Zion) is a movement espousing the reestablishment of the homeland for the Jewish in their ancestral land after several thousand years of persecution. In its modern form it dates from the late 19th century, and the movement soon centered on the area roughly corresponding to Canaan, the Holy Land, the region of Palestine or Eretz Israel on the basis of a long Jewish connection and attachment to that land. The state of Israel was founded in 1948 after the Holocaust led to the deaths of 6 million Jews and after defending themselves from frequent armed massacres by the surrounding Arab areas of the British Mandate in Judea and Samaria.

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

A

  • Zionism proceeds from the assumption that the Jews are still a people or nation, many of whom cannot or will not assimilate themselves to other peoples, and wish to retain their identity as a national community.
    • The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia, 5th ed. 1977, art. Zionism, p. 2016.
  • Zionism is as old as the Babylonian Exile, which began in 586BCE. Separation from the Land of Israel as they were being led into captivity by their conquerors rested crushingly upon the spirits of the Jewish exiles; a longing for the homeland consumed them. Turning in the direction of Judah, they then took an awesome vow: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand lose its cunning. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I remember thee not; if I set not Jerusalem above my chiefest joy" (Psalms 137:5-6).
    • Nathan Ausubel, The Book of Jewish Knowledge, 1964, article "Zionism," p. 526.

B

  • Shall we, with our inheritance, do less than the Irish, the Serbians, or the Bulgars? And must we not, like them, have a land where the Jewish life may be naturally led, the Jewish language spoken, and the Jewish spirit prevail?
    • Brandeis, A Call to the Educated Jew, 1916.
  • Loyalty to America demands that each American Jew become a Zionist.
    • Brandeis, The Jewish Problem, 1915.
  • For hundreds of years the Jewish masses have blindly searched for a way that will return them to nature, to the soil. At last we have found it. Zionism is the way.
    • Borochov, Nationalism & Class Struggle, (1907) 1937. p. 74.
  • I'm not anti-Semitic at all, but I am anti-Zionist. I don't believe they had the right, after 3,000 years, to reclaim the land with Western bombs and guns on biblical injunction.
  • We do not wish and do not need to expel Arabs and take their places. All our aspiration is built on the assumption – proven throughout all our activity … that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs
  • I want to express what we mean by a Jewish State. We mean by a Jewish State simply a State where the majority of the people are Jews, not a State where a Jew has, in any way, any privilege more than anyone else.
  • During our last talks with the [British] Government in London, when certain proposals were made for a settlement-which, unfortunately, we could not consider-we were offered that Jews should have more rights than others. And certain examples were given us of certain British colonies, in Ceylon and other places. And we declared emphatically to the Government that we will not accept, we will fight any privilege accorded to a Jew because he is a Jew. What we want to have is more Jews in Palestine but not more privileges tor the Jews. A Jewish state means a state based on absolute equality of all her citizens and on democracy.
For many of us, anti-Semitic feeling had little to do with our dedication [to Zionism]
[...]
We emigrated not for negative reasons of escape but for the positive purpose of rebuilding a homeland ...
~ David Ben-Gurion
  • For many of us, anti-Semitic feeling had little to do with our dedication [to Zionism]. I personally never suffered anti-Semitic persecution. Płońsk [Ben-Gurion's hometown] was remarkably free of it ... Nevertheless, and I think this very significant, it was Płońsk that sent the highest proportion of Jews to Eretz Israel from any town in Poland of comparable size. We emigrated not for negative reasons of escape but for the positive purpose of rebuilding a homeland ... Life in Płońsk was peaceful enough. There were three main communities: Russians, Jews and Poles. ... The number of Jews and Poles in the city were roughly equal, about five thousand each. The Jews, however, formed a compact, centralized group occupying the innermost districts whilst the Poles were more scattered, living in outlying areas and shading off into the peasantry. Consequently, when a gang of Jewish boys met a Polish gang the latter would almost inevitably represent a single suburb and thus be poorer in fighting potential than the Jews who even if their numbers were initially fewer could quickly call on reinforcements from the entire quarter. Far from being afraid of them, they were rather afraid of us. In general, however, relations were amicable, though distant.
  • For hundreds of years the Jewish masses have blindly searched for a way that will return them to nature, to the soil. At last we have found it. Zionism is the way.
    • Co-Founder of labour Zionism Ber Borochov, Nationalism & Class Struggle, 1937. p. 74.

C

  • In our age, the choice for the Jew is between Zionism or ceasing to be a Jew.

E

  • Revive the organic center: let the unity of Israel which has made the growth and form of its religion be an outward reality.
    • Eliot, Daniel Deronda, 1876, chapter 42.
  • It is a nationalism whose aim is not power but dignity and health. If we did not have to live among intolerant, narrow-minded and violent people, I should be the first to throw over all nationalism in favor of universal humanity.
  • Palestine is not only a place of refuge for the Jews of Eastern Europe, but the embodiment of the reawakening corporate spirit of the whole Jewish nation.

F

  • The wealthy . . . have for the most part been indifferent to the appeal of Zionism. The power of the magnet is not felt by gold!
    • Zionist leader Jonas Friedenwald, Quoted in P. Goodman & A. D. Lewis, Zionism, 1916, p. 136.

G

  • Before, or at least along with, the redemption of the soil there must be also the redemption of the soul.
    • J. L. Gordon, letter to S. Bernfeld, Jan. 31, 1888. Igrot, ii. 248.
  • The State is not in itself an aim: it is a means to an end, the end of Zionism.
    • Ben Gurion, speech, Aug. 13, 1948. Rebirth and Destiny of Israel, 276.
  • I am told Zionism is a Utopia. I do not know; perhaps. But inasmuch as I see in this Utopia an unconquerable thirst for freedom, one for which the people will suffer, it is for me a reality. With all my heart I pray that the Jewish people, like the rest of humanity, may be given spiritual strength to labor for its dream and to establish it in flesh and blood.
    • Gorky. Quoted in Maccabean, April 1902, ii. 213.
  • Zionism in its spiritual sense is a lofty aspiration. By spiritual sense I mean they should want to realise the Jerusalem that is within. Zionism meaning reoccupation of Palestine has no attraction for me. I can understand the longing of a Jew to return to Palestine, and he can do so if he can without the help of bayonets, whether his own or those of Britain. In that event he would go to Palestine peacefully and in perfect friendliness with the Arabs. The real Zionism of which I have given you my meaning is the thing to strive for, long for and die for. Zion lies in one’s heart. It is the abode of God. The real Jerusalem is the spiritual Jerusalem. Thus he can realise this Zionism in any part of the world.
  • The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood? Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French....The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish the idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled? Or do they want a double home where they can remain at will? This cry for the national home affords a colourable justification for the German expulsion of the Jews.
  • In a matter analogous to most other nationalisms, Zionism has constructed a three-part narrative that traces the unbroken history of the Jewish nation from its birth and efflorescence in Palestine through a period of decay and degeneration in exile to a period of redemption at the hands of the modern Zionist movement and its return to its ancestral homeland in Palestine.
    • James L. Gelvin, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: One Hundred Years of War (2014), Cambridge University Press, p. 6
  • Most commonly, the Zionist narrative of Jewish history begins with Abraham and his descendants, who immigrated to Palestine in the second millennium BC, possibly from Iraq. The standard Zionist narrative considers the tenth-century BC reigns of King David and King Solomon the highpoint of the Jewish presence in Palestine. Theirs was a period of cultural and political glory, when the Jewish nation was politically united and religious authority radiated from the great temple in Jerusalem.
    • James L. Gelvin, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: One Hundred Years of War (2014), Cambridge University Press, p. 6
  • Know that you Zionists do not represent Judaism and do not represent the Jewish people. ... You only represent the idea of a political movement whose ideas and values oppose the ideas and values of our holy Torah and the Jewish religion. We strongly condemn your aggressive actions and emphasize to the whole world: There is a big difference between Judaism and Zionism.
  • I have for many years opposed Zionism as the dream of capitalist Jewry the world over for a Jewish State with all its trimmings, such as Government, laws, police, militarism and the rest. In other words, a Jewish State machinery to protect the privileges of the few against the many. Reginald Reynolds (referring to an article he wrote called ‘Palestine and Socialist Policy’) is wrong, however, when he makes it appear that the Zionists were the sole backers of Jewish emigration to Palestine. Perhaps he does not know that the Jewish masses in every country and especially in the United States of America have contributed vast amounts of money for the same purpose. They have given unstintingly out of their earnings in the hope that Palestine may prove to be an asylum for their brothers, cruelly persecuted in nearly every European country. The fact that there are many non-Zionist communes in Palestine goes to prove that the Jewish workers who have helped the persecuted and hounded Jews have done so not because they are Zionists, but for the reason I have already stated, that they might be left in peace in Palestine to take root and live their own lives.

H

If you will it, it is no dream ~ Theodor Herzl
  • The world will be freer by our liberty, richer by our wealth, greater by our greatness.
    • Herzl, The Jewish State, 1896.
  • The Jews have but one way of saving themselves—a return to their own people and an emigration to their own land.
    • Herzl, The Jewish State, 1896.
  • Zionism is the return of the Jews to Judaism, before their return to the Jewish land.
    • Herzl, address to the first Zionist Congress, Aug. 29, 1897.
  • The heart of the people—that is the foundation on which the land will be regenerated.
    • Ahad HaAm, "The Wrong Way," 1889. Ten Essays, 14.
  • Were I to sum up the Basel Congress in a word — which I shall guard against pronouncing publicly — it would be this: At Basel, I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today, I would be answered by universal laughter. Perhaps in five years, certainly in fifty, everyone will know it.
    • Theodor Herzl in a diary entry, (3 September 1897), a few days after the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, as quoted in Nonstate Nations in International Politics: Comparative System Analyses (1997) by Judy S. Bertelsen, p. 37.
  • The Jews have but one way of saving themselves — a return to their own people and an emigration to their own land.

J

  • [It is the] iron law of every colonizing movement, a law which knows of no exceptions, a law which existed in all times and under all circumstances. If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison on your behalf. Or else – or else, give up your colonization, for without an armed force which will render physically impossible any attempts to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible, not “difficult”, not “dangerous” but IMPOSSIBLE! … Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important to build, it is important to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot – or else I am through with playing at colonialization.
    • Ze'ev Jabotinsky, as quoted in Lenni Brenner, The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir (1984), p. 78.
  • We cannot promise any reward either to the Arabs of Palestine or to the Arabs outside Palestine. A voluntary agreement is unattainable. And so those who regard an accord with the Arabs as an indispensable condition of Zionism must admit to themselves today that this condition cannot be attained and hence that we must give up Zionism. We must either suspend our settlement efforts or continue them without paying attention to the mood of the natives. Settlement can thus develop under the protection of a force that is not dependent on the local population, behind an iron wall which they will be powerless to break down.
    • Ze'ev Jabotinsky, as quoted in Avi Shlaïm, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, W. W. Norton: 2014, p. 14.
  • We Jewish people have our own independent case against Zionism. It is terribly important to make clear that we are also struggling for ourselves in the Palestinian solidarity movement. And I think one of the greatest crimes against Jews that Israel has perpetrated-aside from saying that Jews did not fight the Nazis, that we went quietly into the camps; we don't know what they were doing (in fact we do; they were making deals with the Nazis)—aside from that, their crime has been to try to cut us off from our history and tradition of taking part in movements against injustice.
    • Selma James, Speech at US Assembly of Jews Confronting Racism and Israeli Apartheid (2010), in Sex, Race and Class: the Perspective of Winning (2012)

K

  • For many, Zionism was inherited at birth and they now think of it as synonymous with Jewishness. The threat of being labelled a traitor for questioning Israeli policies, and the allegation of self-hatred and anti-Semitism have inhibited an in-depth study of Zionism, its diverse political tenets, its history in relation to other Jews and to non-Jews and its role in defining Jewish identity in the States.
    • Irena Klepfisz "Khaloymes/Dreams in Progress: Culture, Politics, and Jewish Identity" in Dreams of an Insomniac: Jewish Feminist Essays, Speeches and Diatribes (1990)

L

  • Audacity created the Zionist Congress. It was Theodor Herzl’s only weapon. ... The Zionist Congress enabled us to regain corporate responsibility of our national destiny. It gave a Galuth people status and an address. It is the forerunner of the Jewish State.
    • Lipsky, Nov. 1921. Selected Worlds, 1927, i.161.
  • One can be a Zionist without being a nationalist, even an unaggressive one. The earlier Zionism, that which has had a far longer career than the Neo-Zionism of to-day, was none the less Zionist, even though it had no tinge of nationalism in the modern semi-aggressive sense. That Zionism was not based on a Jewish nation, whose existence in the modern sense it did not admit, but on the Jewish people. The earlier Zionism had no political connotation. It was no less successful on that account. It was certainly one of the instruments that kept Judaism alive and Jewry in existence. That early - it may be termed spiritual - Zionism still exists even though its voice is drowned by the more blatant shouts of a nationalism that differs from it in many respects. And as that earlier Zionism, which is a large part of Judaism, flourished for centuries before Political Zionism was conceived, it will not inconceivably survive Political Zionism as a living force, for centuries.
  • It seems to me that Zionism asks too little, not too much! They have traded in that City of the vision for a cramped fortress tower, believing that Jews will always be persecuted, hunted. That most of humanity couldn't care less if it happened again. Would let it happen. Knowing some of humanity would even applaud. Believing there is no other way for Jews to survive. I want to shout it at them from the rooftops, to cry it out loud: you have never asked for enough! Zionism, at least as it's lived today, accepts anti-Semitism, says it's permanent in the world: As long as there are Jews, there will be Jew-haters, Jew-killers, so we'll build a wall of bodies around us and live behind it, a menace to our neighbors, trying to feel safe. I stand here and cry out to you: "Come out of the trenches! Ask for it all! I demand for myself, and my children who will also be Jews, and for you, too, my soldiering kin, a world where fortresses are unknown and unnecessary."

M

  • We come to Zion only by way of Zion.
    • Martin Buber, Zion als Ziel und Aujgabe, 1936.

N

  • A day will come when Zionism will be needed by you, proud Germans [German Jews], as much as by those wretched Ostjuden. ... A day will come when you will beg for asylum in the land you now scorn.
    • Nordau, speech, Berlin, Jan. 23, 1899.
  • Judaism will be Zionist, or Judaism will not be.
    • Zionist leader Max Nordau, address, Amsterdam, April 1899. Quoted in Joseph L. Baron, A Treasury of Jewish Quotations

P

  • [In order] that we may not be compelled to wander from one exile to another, we must have an extensive, productive land of refuge, a center which is our own
  • The national regeneration of the Jews must be initiated by a congress of Jewish notables.

R

  • Zionism is not a mere national or chauvinistic caprice, but the last desperate stand of the Jews against annihilation.

S

  • The rebirth of Israel’s national consciousness and the revival of Judaism are inseparable. When Israel found itself, it found its God. When Israel lost itself, or began to work at its self-effacement, it was sure to deny its God.
    • Schechter, 1906. Quoted in J. H. Hertz. A Book of Jewish

Thoughts. 116f.

  • The promulgation of the Mission of Israel demands a world center, a world authority whence the forces actuating it could radiate in every direction.
    • Lubin, letter to Brandeis, March 20, 1918. Quoted in O. R. Agresti. David Lubin, 343.
  • Zionism is the affirmation of our personality. We have faith in ourselves, our spirit, our destiny to be worthy of our past.
    • Lazare, Le National Juif, 1898. Quoted in N. Sokolow. History of Zionism, 1919. i. 293.
  • Political Zionism is problematic for obvious reasons. But I can never forget what it achieved as a moral force in an era of complete dissolution. It helped to stem the tide of 'progressive' leveling of venerable, ancestral differences; it fulfilled a conservative function.
    • Leo Strauss, Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity : Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought, 1997, State University of New York Press, Green, K. H. (editor), pp. 413–14
  • Anti-Zionists, last of all, exhibit a distaste for certain words. It was Thomas Hobbes who, anticipating semantics, pointed out that words are counters, not coins; that the wise man looks through them to reality. This counsel many anti-Zionists seem to have neglected. They are especially disturbed by the two nouns nationalism and commonwealth, and by the adjective political. And yet these terms on examination are not at all upsetting.
    Jewish nationalism means no more than recognition of the peoplehood of Israel, and of the propriety of that people's being a religio-cultural group in America, a nationality in Eastern Europe, and in Palestine an actualized nation.
    Nor is the word political more horrendous, even when it precedes Zionism. For what does it signify? It refers either to methods for realizing the Zionist objective or to the objective itself. If to the former, it denotes the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and their transactions with the Mandatory Power and others on immigration into Palestine and related problems. If this be political Zionism, what can be wrong with it? Anyone wishing Jews to be free to enter Palestine knows that governments must be dealt with and understandings negotiated. Or are there some so naive as to approve of results but not of the only means for attaining them?
  • The difficulty of Zionism is essentially one thing only, its attempt to settle a country that is already settled.
    • Vincent Sheean, Personal History. Lyle Stewart, publisher. New York, 1935, p.381

T

  • The ultimate aim of the Zionists is to liberate the Jewish people from the peculiar psychological complex induced by the penalization to which they have been subject for centuries in the Gentile world.
    • Toynbee, A Study of History, 1934, ii. 252.

W

  • To bring water to the thirsty earth, shade to the sun-parched sands, the laughter of children to a countryside where only jackals howl; to unearth the good soil under the rocks, to push back the desert, and remove the last swamps—these are among the tasks of the Jewish National Fund in its second fifty years.
    • Weizmann, message, Jan. 19, 1951. N.Y. Times, Jan. 20, 1951.
  • Zionism, as conceived and in part executed by Theodor Herzl, was the half-conscious instinct of a people integrating past and future together into the totality of the will to live and to be itself and only itself.
    • S. S. Wise, A Century of Jewish Progress, 1933.

Y

  • If we wish that the name Israel be not extinguished, then we are in duty bound to create something which may serve as a center for our entire people, like the heart in an organism, from which the blood will stream into all the arteries of the national body and fill it with life.
    • Ben Yehuda, “Sheela Nikbada.” HaShahar, 1879.
  • One people, one land, one language!

See also

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