Zionism

Also known as Zionist movement

Zionism is an ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in late 19th-century Europe to establish and support a Jewish homeland through colonization in the region of Palestine, which roughly corresponds to the Land of Israel in Judaism—itself central to Jewish history. Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.

AI overview

Zionism is a nationalist movement that began in late 19th-century Europe with the goal of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, a region historically significant in Judaism. The movement matters because it shaped the creation of Israel and remains central to ongoing debates about Jewish sovereignty, Palestinian rights, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

~104 min read

Encyclopedic overview

59 sections

Contents

Etymology and terminology
Beliefs
National self-determination
A Jewish home and state in Palestine
Claim to a Jewish demographic majority
Perceived deficiencies of assimilation, negation of diasporic life
Zionism and secular Jewish identity
Revival of the Hebrew language
Conquest of labor
Racial conceptions of Jewish identity
Historical and religious background
Proto-national characteristics in ancient Jewish identity
Forerunners of Zionism
History
Jewish nationalism and emancipation
Leon Pinsker, Theodor Herzl and the birth of modern political Zionism
Territories considered
Early Zionist settlement
Second Aliyah
The Balfour Declaration and World War I
World War I period
King–Crane Commission
Beginning of Revisionist Zionism
British Mandate and development of the Zionist quasi-state
Zionist policies and the 1936–1939 Arab Revolt
The Peel Commission partition proposal
Nazism, World War II and the Holocaust
End of the Mandate and expulsion of the Palestinians
Hebraization of names
Post-World War II
Religious Zionism and the Six-Day War
Types of Zionism
Early Zionism
Labor Zionism
Synthetic and General Zionism
Revisionist Zionism
Religious Zionism
Liberal Zionism
Cultural Zionism
Non-Jewish support
Christian support
Druze support
Hindu support
Anti-Zionism
Characterization as racist
Haredi Judaism and Zionism
Anti-Zionism and antisemitism
Zionism and colonialism
European colonialism
The transition from British sponsored colonialism to the Israeli state
Colonization and colonialism
Zionism as settler colonialism
Palestinian experiences of Zionism
See also
Notes
References
Works cited
Further reading
External links

Zionism initially emerged in Central and Eastern Europe as a secular nationalist movement in the late 19th century, in reaction to new waves of antisemitism and in response to the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Zionist movement, now led by Theodor Herzl, associated this national revival with Palestine, then under Ottoman rule. The arrival of Zionist settlers to Palestine during this period is widely seen as the start of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The Zionist claim to Palestine was based on the notion that the Jews' historical right to the land outweighed that of the Arabs.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Zionism” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.