Zionism: the history of a contested word
These polarising terms should be shelved, and taken out only when we are discussing political philosophy, which most of the time, we are not.

Jonathan Shamir
21 May 2018

Nathan Birbaum,(1864 - 1937) Austrian writer, Jewish thinker and nationalist. Wikicommons/ Zionist Archive. Some rights reserved.‘Objectivity has ceased to be a goal not only of popular writing on the subject but also of scholarship, and the line between intellectual engagement and political activism hardly exists today’

– Michael Stanislawski, Zionism: A Very Short Introduction, p.1

Written in German in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Theodor Herzl’s Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) (1896) is widely considered Zionism’s founding document. It was in the same country, six years earlier, that the term was coined by Nathan Birnbaum, the founder of the first Jewish student association in Vienna, Kadimah.

The philosophy was barely fledged before it evoked an impassioned backlash from the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform, where Reform Judaism was essentially founded, and the anti-Zionist Bundists in Russia, who, along with many other Jews, believed Zionism jeopardised the prospects of integration into their host nations.

This controversy has not ceased since. Jewish anti-Zionism has a diverse history, ranging from Satmar Hasidim, who perceived secular Zionism as an abomination and a forced pre-emption of redemption before God’s will, to many Iraqi Jews, who understood growing resentment in their own country as a response to Zionism. But anti-Zionism is not simply confined to Jewish infighting – it is now a staple of leftist thinking and movements.

Anti-Zionism is a negative ideology, and is therefore contingent on the definition of its positive counterpart. The word Zionism, however, is so ambiguous and varied in its meaning and so imbued with emotion, so firmly tied to identity, that invoking it stifles any productive conversation.

Could you expect a Holocaust survivor who found succour in Israel to disavow Zionism entirely? Could you expect a Palestinian expelled from their home and prevented from ever entering it again to be anything but an anti-Zionist?

To move forward, we need to abandon these terms when it comes to discussing Israel-Palestine.

Ideology in flux
Zionism consists of many heterogeneous variants and has changed so dramatically over time that what was once considered Zionism is now considered anti-Zionism.

In the early nineteenth century, the dominant strand of Zionism was Labour Zionism, which sought the redemption of the Jewish people through a renewed connection with the land and the subsequent creation of a socialist haven. At the time, secular bi-nationalism was an acceptable and even mainstream Zionist belief, and there were even several visions for the realisation of this model, spanning from a joint Jewish-Arab commonwealth, to the division of Mandate Palestine into cantons. Mapam, who were the second biggest Zionist party before 1948, believed in a binational solution.

Yet today, one of the main proponents of this model, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), are, by their own definition and that of Israel, perhaps the most prominent anti-Zionist organisation around. The State of Israel considers their goals and intentions so utterly anathema that they have a blacklist of groups who are active with BDS and their members are banned from entering the country.

For some, Zionism means the right to Jewish self-determination, a national liberation movement, but for others, it conjures violent dispossession and continued policies of occupation and colonisation. It is, of course, both, born out of a unique set of historical circumstances.

Yet there are also several positions in between, with no paucity of subscribers. On one side, you have liberal Zionism, which some take to be a paradox, and others consider a marriage of pro-Palestinian activism to their vision of a more just Jewish Israel. On the other extreme, you have a religious Zionism and neo-Zionism that uses Judaism to justify uncompromising expansionist nationalism. Like most philosophies, there was and is a war (in many cases, literally) for its definition.

J Street, an American liberal Zionist organisation, who ‘believe that the Jewish people have the right to a national home of their own’, were at the forefront of the (failed) battle to stop the demolition of Susya, a Palestinian village in Area C, gathering over 12,000 signatures. It was up against a government and the settler movement it supports, who are rigorous adherents to Neo-Zionism, which considers itself the true heir to the pioneering spirit that underpinned the foundation of the State of Israel in the first place. This was just one of many examples of two groups fighting completely opposing causes in the name of Zionism. This was just one of many examples of two groups fighting completely opposing causes in the name of Zionism.

Though Zionism is often qualified with an appended adjective, it seems be changing as a catch-all term too. A joint 2015 Yachad-Ipsos Mori survey found that while 90% of Jews in the UK believe in Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, just 59% would identify themselves as Zionists, down from 72% in 2010.

Conclusion

A broad church of competing movements which have changed over time, all of which are construed and misconstrued many times over, a unique set of historical circumstances in which liberation was colonisation, and the weaponisation of Zionism/anti-Zionism/anti-Semitism for diverging political interests means it is almost impossible to conduct a debate on these terms.

An Israeli professor told me that he was gently encouraged by Palestinian groups to preface his contributions to public discussions by identifying himself as an ‘anti-Zionist’, almost as a prerequisite to be given a platform, while, in an attempted overture to the Jewish community amidst Corbyn’s refusal to celebrate the Balfour Centenary, the Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry told the Jewish community that Jeremy is a ‘Zionist’.

These badges are ultimately meaningless, and often hinder discussion about methods and solidarity between those attempting to address the most critical situations in the conflict: the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the occupation of and settlement on the West Bank.

For so many, identification as a Zionist is a red line: the person in question is immediately considered racist. Yet so many of these so-called Zionists are at the forefront of the fight for justice for Palestinians.

Similarly, anti-Zionism is also loaded with nasty connotations of anti-Semitism.

These polarising terms should therefore be shelved, and taken out only when we are discussing political philosophy, which most of the time, we are not.

It is too charged, and too ambiguous, to lead to any productive dialogue.