The Zionist Movement

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The Zionist Movement

• Bob Bauer

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What is the Zionist Movement?

• The Zionist Movement is an international
  political movement that supports a homeland for
  the Jewish people in the land of Israel.
• Formally organized in the late 19th century, the
  Zionist Movement was successful in establishing
  the State of Israel in 1948, as the worlds first
  and only modern Jewish State.
• It continues primarily as support for the state
  and government of Israel and its continuing
  status as a homeland for the Jewish People.

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Background

• The desire of Jews to return to their ancestral
  homeland has been a universal Jewish theme since
  the defeat of the Great Jewish Revolt and the
  destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire in
  70 AD.
• In 1894, the Dreyfus Affair, in which a Jewish
  officer in the French military was wrongly
  imprisoned, made European Jews conscious of their
  national identity.
• In 1896, Theodor Herzel published Der Judenstaat
  (The Jewish State) which transformed Zionism from
  a cultural feature of Judaism to a social
  movement.
• In 1897, Herzel organized the First Zionist
  Congress, which founded the World Zionist
  Organization and made Herzel its president.

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Herzel and The Jewish State
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Herzel addressing the Zionist Congress
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• In 1917, the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur
  Balfour, issued the Balfour Declaration in which
  he called for the establishment in Palestine a
  national home for the Jewish People.
• With the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1919 and
  the establishment of the British Mandate over
  Palestine by the League of Nations in 1922, the
  Zionist Movement entered a new phase of activity,
  the escalation of Jewish settlements in
  Palestine.
• The rise to power of Adolph Hitler in Germany in
  1933 produced a flood of Jewish refugees and
  Jewish immigration to Palestine increased.

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Early Zionist Settlement in Palestine
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After the Holocaust

• The revelation of the fate of 6 million European
  Jews had several effects
• First, it created thousands of Jewish refugees,
  many of whom wanted to live in Israel.
• Second, it evoked a world-wide feeling of
  sympathy with the Jewish people, mingled with
  guilt.
• Third, it swung world Jewish opinion almost
  unanimously behind the creation of a Jewish State
  in Palestine.

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Holocaust refugees in Varna, Bulgaria on their
way to Palestine
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Israel and Zionism

• In 1947 Britain announced its intention to
  withdraw from Palestine and on November 27, the
  United Nations General Assembly voted to
  partition Palestine into an Arab state and a
  Jewish state.
• On May 14, 1948, the leaders of the Jewish
  community in Palestine made a declaration of
  independence and the State of Israel was
  established.
• This marked a major turning point in the Zionist
  Movement, as its principal goal had been reached.
  It now focuses on support of the State of Israel.

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• David Ben Gurion (First Prime Minister of Israel)
  publicly pronouncing the Declaration of the State
  of Israel, May 14, 1948, Tel Aviv, Israel,
  beneath a large portrait of Theodore Herzl,
  founder of modern political Zionism.

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Flag of the State of Israel