WEBVTT - What Is Zionism? 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:08.719 Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey Brainstuff, Lauren Bogelbaum. Here. 0:00:10.320 --> 0:00:13.160 We don't often talk about current events on this show, 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:17.159 but given the ongoing Israel Hamas War, which started on 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:20.360 October seventh of twenty twenty three and is part of 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:24.599 the larger Gaza Israel conflict and the even larger Israeli 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:28.040 Palestinian conflict, I wanted to talk today about a term 0:00:28.040 --> 0:00:33.080 that's been in the news a lot lately, Zionism. Zionism 0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:37.080 is a nationalist movement that successfully established an independent state 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:40.440 for Jewish people in nineteen forty eight and continues to 0:00:40.479 --> 0:00:45.160 support Judaism's claim to Israel, its ancient homeland. It's also 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:49.120 one of the most complex and controversial political ideas of 0:00:49.240 --> 0:00:53.760 the past one hundred and fifty years. Not only is 0:00:53.800 --> 0:00:57.360 the history of Zionism complex and messy, but so are 0:00:57.400 --> 0:01:01.720 the emotions and opinions surrounding it today. A criticism of 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:05.800 Israel's treatment of the Palestinians has stoked protests and calls 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:09.319 for economic boycotts of Israel, similar to those levied against 0:01:09.360 --> 0:01:14.480 South Africa during apartheid. However, criticisms of Israel strike a 0:01:14.520 --> 0:01:17.200 nerve and some supporters of the state, because the line 0:01:17.240 --> 0:01:22.520 between anti Zionism and antisemitism can be dangerously thin. So 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:28.559 today let's talk about how all of this started. Although 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:31.880 Zionism draws its name from the biblical Mount Zion, it 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:36.680 isn't a primarily religious movement. It's true that some Jewish 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:39.280 people have yearned for a return to the so called 0:01:39.319 --> 0:01:43.560 Promised Land of Abraham for two thousand years, but leaders 0:01:43.600 --> 0:01:47.119 of the modern Zionist movement were mostly secular and even 0:01:47.200 --> 0:01:50.880 agnostic Jewish people who identified their people as a nation 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:55.280 rather than a religion. Zionism, for them meant the creation 0:01:55.480 --> 0:02:01.760 of an independent political state for this Jewish nation. Zionism 0:02:01.800 --> 0:02:04.400 wouldn't be so problematic if it wasn't focused on the 0:02:04.440 --> 0:02:07.280 creation of this nation. In what's sometimes known as the 0:02:07.320 --> 0:02:11.160 Holy Land or the Palestine Region, a small strip of 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:15.320 historically and culturally important land between the Mediterranean Sea and 0:02:15.360 --> 0:02:20.960 the River Jordan. It's considered holy by multiple religions. Furthermore, 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:25.200 Arab Palestinians have comprised the majority of people living there 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:28.240 for centuries, under the yoke of both the Ottoman and 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:33.800 British empires. The result is one of the thorniest political 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:37.639 issues in the modern world. Zionists and some other supporters 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:41.160 of Israel argue that the safety and continued existence of 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:45.440 the brutally persecuted Jewish people depends upon the existence of 0:02:45.440 --> 0:02:48.240 a Jewish state, and that the rightful place for that 0:02:48.320 --> 0:02:54.880 state is Judaism's ancestral homeland. Meanwhile, Palestinians and their supporters 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:59.120 see Zionism as an at best imperialist and at worst 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:03.880 racist movement that forcefully colonized Arab lands and homes and 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:07.800 subjugated the native Palestinian people as second class citizens in 0:03:07.919 --> 0:03:11.440 areas like Gaza, a territory that's been under Israeli military 0:03:11.480 --> 0:03:17.960 control since nineteen sixty seven, and now decades of conflict 0:03:18.000 --> 0:03:21.400 have erupted into the Fifth War between Gaza and Israel. 0:03:23.840 --> 0:03:26.280 To understand how we got here, let's start with the 0:03:26.280 --> 0:03:29.080 birth of the modern Zionist movement, which took place in 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:32.519 Europe at the tail end of the eighteen hundreds. Nationalist 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:35.720 movement swept Europe in the early and mid eighteen hundreds. 0:03:36.440 --> 0:03:39.880 For centuries, different ethnic and cultural groups had been forced 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:44.480 to live together under sprawling empires and kingdoms, but at 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:48.240 that time, new European states were forged in places like 0:03:48.280 --> 0:03:53.880 Italy and Germany around people with shared language and cultural history. 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:58.280 This left some European Jewish people wondering are we not 0:03:58.440 --> 0:04:01.240 also a nation? They were living at the time in 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:05.440 a scattered diaspora in nation states that mostly treated them 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:09.800 as suspect foreigners, though occasionally welcomed them as full citizens, 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:15.040 as France did in seventeen ninety. Even before the eruption 0:04:15.280 --> 0:04:19.640 of violent anti Jewish raids pogroms in Eastern Europe, Jewish 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:22.920 intellectuals struggled with what was known as the Jewish question 0:04:23.320 --> 0:04:27.080 or the Jewish problem. The issue was whether it was 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:30.680 even possible for Jewish people to be truly free and 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:35.760 equal in someone else's nation, and as anti Semitic rhetoric 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:39.520 and violence increased in the eighteen hundreds, this question became 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:44.839 far more urgent. For the article this episode is based 0:04:44.880 --> 0:04:48.080 on how Stuffworks spoke back in twenty twenty with Daniel Kotsen, 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:51.920 currently a history professor at William Jewell College who has 0:04:51.920 --> 0:04:56.600 conducted extensive research on the subject. He said, in many ways, 0:04:56.720 --> 0:05:00.120 modern Zionism was a response to the Jewish question, Well, 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:02.080 what is the place of Jews in Europe? In a 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:07.960 post Enlightenment age. But if there was a catalyst to 0:05:08.080 --> 0:05:14.360 pursuing independent nationhood, it was the Dreyfus affair. In eighteen 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:18.200 ninety four, a French army captain named Alfred Dreyfus was 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:23.960 falsely accused and convicted of treason in a highly publicized trial. Dreyfus, 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:28.280 a secular Jew, became the target of openly antisemitic attacks 0:05:28.279 --> 0:05:31.560 in the press. There was this idea that because he 0:05:31.640 --> 0:05:37.760 was Jewish, he was not truly Frenchkotsen said, here is 0:05:37.800 --> 0:05:42.200 this army officer the epitome of an emancipated and assimilated Jew. 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:46.600 The people behind the treasonous accusations spread this false idea 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:49.160 that Jews could never be part of the European nation 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:55.080 state and should always be viewed with suspicion. Among the 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:58.640 journalists covering the Dreyfus affair was an Austrian playwright named 0:05:58.720 --> 0:06:01.599 Theodore Hertzel, who was living in Paris as a foreign 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:06.480 correspondent for a Viennese newspaper. Hertzel, himself Jewish at fully 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:10.600 assimilated and non religious, wrote later that he identified deeply 0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:15.240 with Dreyfus. If a man of Dreyfus's stature wasn't immune 0:06:15.279 --> 0:06:21.120 from anti Semitism. Who was. In eighteen ninety six, Hertzel 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:24.760 published The Jewish State, a call to Jewish nationhood that 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:28.880 launched the modern Zionist movement. In it, he argued that 0:06:28.920 --> 0:06:31.920 the establishment of an independent Jewish nation would be good 0:06:31.920 --> 0:06:35.960 for everyone in Europe, Jewish or otherwise, because antisemitism was 0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:42.200 causing divisions that plagued European nations. Coming on the heels 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:45.640 of the Dreyfus affair, Hertzel's writings found a ready audience 0:06:45.680 --> 0:06:49.960 among many Jewish intellectuals. In eighteen ninety seven, the First 0:06:50.120 --> 0:06:54.640 Zionist Congress met in Basel, Switzerland, and Hertzel dedicated the 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:56.920 short rest of his life he died from a heart 0:06:56.920 --> 0:07:00.560 attack in nineteen oh four to securing political as financial 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:03.120 support for the creation of a Jewish state in the 0:07:03.160 --> 0:07:07.960 region of Palestine. Note that all of this was part 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:12.000 of the political Zionist movement. There were several different streams 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:16.280 of Zionism present in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For example, 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:20.560 cultural Zionism called for a spiritual rebirth of Judaism in Israel, 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:27.320 not necessarily an independent state, but okay. A turning point 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:30.360 in political Zionism was a short letter written in nineteen 0:07:30.440 --> 0:07:34.320 seventeen by the British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfer to 0:07:34.600 --> 0:07:38.760 one Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild, heir to the Rothschild banking 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:44.160 fortune and president of the British Zionist Federation. The letter, 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:47.760 known as the Blfer Declaration, was, in its own words, 0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:52.840 a declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations. In it, 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:57.520 Belfer wrote, his Majesty's government view with favor the establishment 0:07:57.560 --> 0:08:00.120 in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish peaceop 0:08:00.680 --> 0:08:03.800 and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement 0:08:03.920 --> 0:08:10.640 of this object. While far from a mandate or official compact, 0:08:11.040 --> 0:08:13.880 this letter was a huge step forward for the Zionist movement, 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:16.800 which to that date had only sent small delegations of 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:21.960 Jewish immigrants to settle in Palestine. A Kotsen said here, 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:24.480 you have the most powerful empire in the world at 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:27.320 the time, saying to the Jewish people, We're going to 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:29.880 help you find a home in your native land of Palestine. 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:36.280 This was enormously important when the British took control of 0:08:36.320 --> 0:08:40.040 Palestine after World War One. The stage was set for conflict. 0:08:40.760 --> 0:08:44.440 A Jewish immigration to Palestine increased, an Arab resentment of 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:48.359 what was seen as Balfur's betrayal boiled over into violent clashes. 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:52.000 It was seen as a betrayal because the British had 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:55.520 made a lot of promises between nineteen fifteen and nineteen seventeen, 0:08:55.960 --> 0:08:58.840 including one to help create a pan Arab state in 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:01.440 the Middle East, in which turn for Arab support in 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:05.640 fighting the Ottoman Empire in World War One. Arab Palestinians 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:08.080 kept their end of the bargain, and the bell for 0:09:08.200 --> 0:09:14.319 Declaration essentially renegged on the deal. The next two decades 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:17.880 saw Arab riots and rebellions, and when the British then 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:24.280 tried to clamp down on Jewish immigration, Zionists also fought back. However, 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:28.480 through all of this, Zionism remained a small minority movement 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:32.120 within the global Jewish community, with loud critics from both 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:36.680 the religious and secular camps. That's according to Columbia University 0:09:36.800 --> 0:09:41.720 historian Michael Stanislowsky and his book Zionism A Very Short Introduction. 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:46.360 He explains that the situation changed dramatically after the rise 0:09:46.360 --> 0:09:49.440 of the Nazis and their murder of six million Jewish people, 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:53.560 he wrote, The need for an independent Jewish state to 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:57.200 serve as a safe haven for Jews became not only widespread, 0:09:57.320 --> 0:10:03.160 but central to Jewish consciousness throughout the world. By nineteen 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:06.720 forty five, large numbers of Holocaust survivors were living at 0:10:06.760 --> 0:10:10.600 makeshift refugee camps in Europe, while Allied governments argued over 0:10:10.679 --> 0:10:13.520 what to do with them. The British had all but 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:16.600 cut off Jewish immigration to Palestine in nineteen thirty nine 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:19.960 in an effort to secure favor with Arab oil producing nations, 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:23.560 but US President Harry Truman now called on Britain to 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:27.800 allow one hundred thousand Jewish refugees to enter Palestine immediately. 0:10:29.880 --> 0:10:33.520 The British, already the target of both Arab and Zionist attacks, 0:10:33.960 --> 0:10:37.880 saw no viable solution, so in nineteen forty seven they 0:10:37.960 --> 0:10:42.040 handed over the seething Jewish Palestinian problem to the newly 0:10:42.120 --> 0:10:48.240 created United Nations. In November of nineteen forty seven, the 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:52.520 UN passed a resolution to partition or divide Palestine into 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:56.440 two states, one Jewish and one Arab, of roughly equal sizes, 0:10:57.080 --> 0:10:59.600 even though at the time the one point five million 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:03.200 strung population of Palestine was only about one third Jewish 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:07.920 and two thirds Arab. The Arab Palestinians flatly rejected the 0:11:08.040 --> 0:11:10.959 un plan and took up arms against the Zionists in 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:13.840 what was essentially a civil war for control of the 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:19.640 Holy Land. As internal fighting raged on, the British set 0:11:19.640 --> 0:11:22.200 a date of May fifteenth, nineteen forty eight, for its 0:11:22.240 --> 0:11:26.320 official departure from the region. The day before British armed 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:30.720 forces left Palestine, the Zionist leader David benger Yan declared 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:34.200 the independence of the State of Israel, knowing full well 0:11:34.240 --> 0:11:36.840 that such a provocation would invite all out war with 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:43.520 neighboring Arab nations. Stanislawsky notes that bengur Yan's declaration makes 0:11:43.559 --> 0:11:46.000 no mention of God or the biblical promise of a 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:51.000 Jewish homeland. That was not the Zionist message. Instead, bengur 0:11:51.080 --> 0:11:55.080 Yan declared the establishment of Israel was quote the natural 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:57.360 right of the Jewish people to be masters of their 0:11:57.400 --> 0:12:01.040 own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign state. 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:07.600 As benger Jan and the Zionists expected, five different Arab 0:12:07.679 --> 0:12:10.679 nations immediately declared war on the new state of Israel. 0:12:11.760 --> 0:12:15.520 To demonstrate the opposing perspectives of this war and its outcome. 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:19.679 Israelis call it the War of Independence, and Arab Palestinians 0:12:19.679 --> 0:12:24.520 and their allies call it the Catastrophe. It's not just 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:28.719 the names that are different. As historian Betty Morris has demonstrated, 0:12:28.960 --> 0:12:32.360 there are also two starkly opposing narratives about how and 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:36.160 why hundreds of thousands of Arab Palestinians left Palestine during 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:41.000 the war and became refugees in Jordan and Syria. In 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:43.960 the Zionist account, these people willingly fled the war zone 0:12:44.000 --> 0:12:46.800 because their Arab allies warned that they would imminently and 0:12:46.920 --> 0:12:51.800 violently invade. In the Palestinian account, the Israeli army raided 0:12:51.800 --> 0:12:57.640 their villages and brutally drove them out at gunpoint. According 0:12:57.640 --> 0:13:01.359 to historical documents, there is clear evidence that some Palestinians 0:13:01.360 --> 0:13:03.880 fled their homes out of fear of violence by Israeli 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:09.280 defense forces, both real and imagined. Even historian Morris, a 0:13:09.360 --> 0:13:12.839 defender of Israel, conceded in his book nineteen forty eight 0:13:12.960 --> 0:13:16.800 The First Arab Israeli War that quote, the Jews committed 0:13:16.840 --> 0:13:20.040 far more atrocities than the Arabs and killed far more civilians. 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:23.040 In POWs in deliberate acts of brutality in the course 0:13:23.120 --> 0:13:28.640 of nineteen forty eight. Ultimately, Israel won the war and 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:31.560 walked away with fifty percent more territory than it would 0:13:31.559 --> 0:13:33.600 have been granted by the UN partition plan. In the 0:13:33.600 --> 0:13:37.400 first place, that territory did not yet include the so 0:13:37.520 --> 0:13:41.040 called occupied territories in Gaza and the West Bank, which 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:43.600 were added after Israel's victory in the Six Day War 0:13:43.720 --> 0:13:50.120 of nineteen sixty seven. And so the troubling Jewish question 0:13:50.280 --> 0:13:52.600 that led to the creation of the Zionist movement has 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:57.600 now become the Palestinian question. After decades of conflict, can 0:13:57.679 --> 0:14:00.720 Israelis and Palestinians find a way to live in peace. 0:14:02.679 --> 0:14:06.480 Many left leaning Israelis and some Zionists recognize the plight 0:14:06.520 --> 0:14:10.079 of the Palestinians and support a two state solution similar 0:14:10.080 --> 0:14:13.720 to the UN partition, while more conservative backers of Israel 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:17.840 oppose such concessions, claiming that Palestinian leaders and their Arab 0:14:17.960 --> 0:14:21.240 allies continue to seek the destruction of what they see 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:26.400 as the Jewish homeland. As decades of tension and conflict 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:35.080 have shown there is no easy solution. Today's episode is 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:37.400 based on the article what is Zionism and is it 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:40.960 fueling the Palestinian Israeli conflict? On how stuffworks dot Com 0:14:41.000 --> 0:14:43.880 written by Dave Ruse. Brainstuff is production of by Heart 0:14:43.960 --> 0:14:46.280 Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com and is 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:49.720 produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:53.040 visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:54.040 to your favorite shows.