Editing Zionism (section)

=== Establishment of the Zionist movement ===
[[File:Memorandum to Protestant Monarchs of Europe for the restoration of the Jews to Palestine, Colonial Times 1841.jpg|thumb|"Memorandum to the Protestant Powers of the North of Europe and America", published in the ''[[Colonial Times]]'' (Hobart, Tasmania, Australia), in 1841]]

==== Jewish nationalism and emancipation ====
{{see also|Haskalah}}
Ideas of Jewish cultural unity developed a specifically political expression in the 1860s as Jewish intellectuals began promoting the idea of Jewish nationalism. This emerged amid the late [[Rise of nationalism in Europe|19th century European]] trend of [[national revival]]s.{{sfn|Beinin|Stein|2006|p=157}}{{sfn|Kagarlitsky|2014|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=cf3pAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA294 294]}}

Zionism emerged towards the end of the "best century"{{sfn|Avineri|2017|loc=Introduction}} for Jews who for the first time were allowed as equals into European society and gained access to schools, universities, and professions that were previously closed to them.{{sfn|Avineri|2017|loc=Introduction}} By the 1870s, Jews had achieved almost complete [[Jewish emancipation|civic emancipation]] in all the states of western and central Europe.{{sfn|Shimoni|1995}} By 1914, Jews had moved from the margins to the forefront of European society. In the urban centers of Europe and America, Jews played an influential role in professional and intellectual life.{{sfn|Avineri|2017|loc=Introduction}} During this period as [[Jewish assimilation]] was still progressing most promisingly, some Jewish intellectuals and religious traditionalists framed assimilation as a humiliating negation of Jewish cultural distinctiveness.<ref>{{harvnb|Shimoni|1995}}: "While assimilation was still progressing most promisingly, and also quite independently of antisemitism when it later arose, not only religious traditionalists but also part of the Jewish intelligentsia decried the humiliating self-negation that assimilation exacted and rose to the defense of Jewish cultural distinctiveness."</ref> The development of Zionism and other Jewish nationalist movements grew out of these sentiments.{{sfn|Shimoni|1995|loc=Ethnicity and Nationalism}} In this sense, Zionism can be read as a response to the [[Haskala]] and the challenges of modernity and liberalism, rather than purely a response to antisemitism.{{sfn|Avineri|2017|loc=Introduction}}

Emancipation in Eastern Europe progressed more slowly,{{sfn|Goldberg|2009|p=20}} to the point that Deickoff writes "social conditions were such that they made the idea of individual assimilation pointless". Antisemitism, pogroms and official policies in Tsarist Russia led to the emigration of three million Jews in the years between 1882 and 1914, only 1% of which went to Palestine. Those who went to Palestine were driven primarily by ideas of self-determination and Jewish identity, rather than just in response to pogroms or economic insecurity.{{sfn|Avineri|2017|loc=Introduction}} Zionism's emergence in the late 19th century was among assimilated Central European Jews who, despite their formal emancipation, still felt excluded from high society. Many of these Jews had moved away from traditional religious observances and were largely secular, mirroring a broader trend of secularization in Europe. Despite their efforts to integrate, the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe were frustrated by continued lack of acceptance by the local national movements that tended toward intolerance and exclusivity.{{sfn|Rabkin|2006|loc=Orientations}} For the early Zionists, if nationalism posed a challenge to European Jewry, it also proposed a solution.{{sfn|Shlaim|2001|loc=Introduction}}

==== Leon Pinsker, Theodor Herzl and the birth of modern political Zionism ====
In the wake of the 1881 [[Pogroms in the Russian Empire|Russian pogroms]], [[Leo Pinsker]], who was previously an assimilationist, came to the conclusion that the root of the Jewish problem was that Jews formed a distinctive element that could not be assimilated.{{sfn|Shimoni|1995}} For Pinsker, emancipation could not resolve the problems of the Jewish people.{{sfn|Sela|2002}} In Pinsker's analysis, Judeophobia was the cause of antisemitism and was primiarily driven by Jews' lack of a homeland. The solution Pinsker proposed in his pamphlet ''[[Autoemancipation]]'' (1882) was for Jews to become a "normal" nation and acquire a homeland over which Jews would have sovereignty.{{sfn|Avineri|2017|loc=Introduction}}{{sfn|Sela|2002|loc=Zionism}} Pinsker primarily viewed Jewish emigration a solution for dealing with the "surplus of Jews, the inassimilable residue" from Eastern Europe who had arrived in Germany in response to the pogroms.{{sfn|Shafir|1996}}{{efn|Pinsker wrote: "The fact that, as it seems, we can mix with the nations only in the smallest proportions, presents a further obstacle to the establishment of amicable relations. Therefore, we must see to it that the surplus of Jews, the inassimilable residue, is removed and provided for elsewhere. This duty can be incumbent upon no one but ourselves," Leo Pinsker, "Auto-Emancipation," in Hertzberg, 1959, p. 193. And Nordau wrote, in a otherwise sympathetic presentation of the ''[[Ostjuden]]'', that: "'the contempt created by the impudent, crawling beggar in dirty caftan... falls back on all of us,'" quoted in Aschheim, 1982, p. 88.{{sfn|Shafir|1996|p=243-244}}}}

The pogroms motivated a small number of Jews to establish various groups in the [[Pale of Settlement]] (a region in western Russia) and in [[Poland]], aimed at supporting Jewish emigration to Palestine. The publication of ''Autoemancipation'' provided these groups with an ideological charter around which they would be confederated into [[Lovers of Zion|Hibbat Zion]] ("Lovers of Zion") in 1887 where Pinsker would take a leading role.{{sfn|Morris|1999|loc=Palestine on the Eve}} The settlements established by Hibbat Zion lacked sufficient funds and were ultimately not very successful but are seen as the first of several aliyahs, or waves of settlement, that led to the eventual establishment of the state of Israel.{{sfn|Gorny|1987|loc=The Overt Question, 1882–1917}} The conditions in Eastern Europe would eventually provide Zionism with a base of Jews seeking to overcome the challenges of external ostracism, from the Tsarist regime, and internal changes within the Jewish communities there.{{sfn|Dieckhoff|2003|p=50}} The groups that formed Hibbat Zion included the [[Bilu (movement)|Bilu]] group, which began its settlements in 1882. [[Anita Shapira]] describes the Bilu as serving the role of a prototype for the settlement groups that followed.{{sfn|Shapira|2014|p=32-33}} At the end of the 19th century, Jews remained a small minority in Palestine.{{sfn|Morris|2001|p=47}}

At this point, Zionism remained a scattered movement. In the 1890s, Theodor Herzl (the father of political Zionism) infused Zionism with a practical urgency and worked to unify the various strands of the movement.{{sfn|Masalha|2018}} The title of Herzl's 1896 manifesto providing the ideological basis for Zionism, {{lang|de|[[Der Judenstaat]]}}, is typically translated as The Jewish State.{{sfn|Dieckhoff|2003}}{{page needed|date=November 2024}} Herzl sought to establish a state where Jews would be the majority and as a result, politically dominant. [[Ahad Ha'am]], the founder of cultural Zionism, criticized the lack of Jewish cultural activity and creativity in Herzl's envisioned state, which Ahad Ha'am referred to as "the state of the Jews." Specifically, he points to the envisioned European and German culture of the state where Jews were simply the transmitters of imperialist culture rather than producers or creators of culture.{{sfn|Masalha|2012|loc=Chapter 1}} Like Pinsker, Herzl saw antisemitism as a reality that could only be addressed by the territorial concentration of Jews in a Jewish state.{{sfn|Masalha|2014|loc=Introduction}}

Herzl's project was purely secular; the selection of Palestine, after considering other locations, was motivated by the credibility the name would give to the movement.{{sfn|Masalha|2014|loc=Introduction}} From early on, Herzl recognized that Zionism could not succeed without the support of a Great Power.<ref>{{harvnb|Cleveland|2010|loc=Chapter 13}}: "Notwithstanding the growing participation of East European Jewry in Zionist activities, Herzl recognized that the movement would not succeed until it secured the diplomatic support of a Great Power and the financial assistance of members of the Western Jewish community."</ref> His view was that this {{lang|de|Judenstaat}} would serve the interests of the Great Powers, and would "form part of a defensive wall for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism."{{sfn|Morris|1999|p=23}}

Herzl's efforts would lead to the [[First Zionist Congress]] at [[Basel]] in 1897, which created the [[World Zionist Organization|Zionist Organization]] (ZO), renamed in 1960 as [[World Zionist Organization]] (WZO),{{sfn|Sethi|2007}} and adopted the [[Basel Program]], which served as the formal platform of the movement until the 1950s, including the official objective of establishing a legally recognized home for the Jewish people in Palestine.{{sfn|Masalha|2018}} The Zionist Organization was to be the main administrative body of the movement and would go on to establish the [[Jewish Colonial Trust]], whose objectives were to encourage European Jewish emigration to Palestine and to assist with the economic development of the colonies.

==== Territories considered ====
{{Main|Jewish territorialism|Proposals for a Jewish state}}
[[File:JewishChronicle1896.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|Front page of ''[[The Jewish Chronicle]]'', January 17, 1896, showing an article by Theodor Herzl, a month prior to the publication of his pamphlet {{Lang|de|[[Der Judenstaat]]}}]]
[[File:THEODOR HERZL AT THE FIRST ZIONIST CONGRESS IN BASEL ON 25.8.1897. תאודור הרצל בקונגרס הציוני הראשון - 1897.8.25 (cropped).jpg|upright=1.35|right|thumb|The delegates at the First Zionist Congress, held in [[Basel]], Switzerland (1897)]]
Throughout the first decade of the Zionist movement, there were several instances where some Zionist figures, including Herzl, considered a Jewish state in places outside Palestine, such as [[Uganda Scheme|"Uganda"]] (actually parts of [[British East Africa]] today in [[Kenya]]), [[Argentina]], [[Cyprus]], [[Mesopotamia]], [[Mozambique]], and the [[Sinai Peninsula]].<ref>{{harvnb|Rovner|2014|p=45}}: "European Jews swayed and prayed for Zion for nearly two millennia, and by the end of the nineteenth century their descendants had transformed liturgical longing into a political movement to create a Jewish national entity somewhere in the world. Zionism's prophet, Theodor Herzl, considered Argentina, Cyprus, Mesopotamia, Mozambique, and the Sinai Peninsula as potential Jewish homelands. It took nearly a decade for Zionism to exclusively concentrate its spiritual yearning on the spatial coordinates of Ottoman Palestine."</ref> Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, was initially content with any Jewish self-governed state.{{sfn|Aviv|Shneer|2005|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=kdBtob8RWEMC&q=zionism+uganda+argentina&pg=PA10 10]}} Jewish settlement of Argentina was the project of [[Baron Maurice de Hirsch|Maurice de Hirsch]].{{sfn|Hazony|2000|p=150|ps=: "Recalling his views when he had written "The Jewish State" eight years earlier, he [Herzl] pointed out that at the time, he had openly been willing to consider building on Baron de Hirsch's beginning and establishing the Jewish state in Argentina. But those days were long gone."}} It is unclear if Herzl seriously considered this alternative plan;{{sfn|Friedman|2021|pp=239–240}} however, he later affirmed that Palestine would have greater attraction because of the historic ties of Jews with that area.{{sfn|Herzl|1896|p=29 (31)}}{{primary source inline|date=November 2024}} A major concern and driving reason for considering other territories was the Russian pogroms, in particular the [[Kishinev pogrom|Kishinev]] massacre, and the resulting need for quick resettlement in a safer place.{{sfn|Hazony|2000|p=369|ps=: "Herzl decided to explore the East Africa proposal in the wake of the pogrom, writing to Nordau: "We must give an answer to Kishinev, and this is the only one...We must, in a word, play the politics of the hour.""}}