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The office of Professor Schlomo Sand in the department of humanities at the University of Tel Aviv has almost no space for books on the shelves that adorn its walls. Among the works stored or stacked, there are several translations of “The invention of the Jewish people”, authored by the historian himself, born in Linz, Austria, nearly 67 years ago.
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When it was released in 2009, the book was on the bestseller list for 19 weeks. “Judaism as an ethnic root was shaped by Zionism to sustain its nationalist project,” fulminates Sand. “The Jews are a number of people with different cultures and histories, also formed by groups of converts who took the same religious identity. But homogeneity, as a nation lacking a territory, was essential in the Zionist thought.”
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David Ben-Gurion, first prime minister of Israel, during the declaration of independence of the Jewish state on May 14, 1948
His statements provoked strong controversy. Zionism, after all, more than a philosophical movement in Israel, constitutes the very doctrine of the State. The term, first used by writer Nathan Birnbaum, also Austrian, in 1892, refers to the movement founded by Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl, author of the book “The Jewish State”. “It was a response to systematic massacres suffered in central and eastern Europe,” explains the professor. “It became, in a time of nationalist outbursts, the pillar of Jewish patriotism.”
The main objective of the movement was the creation of a country that harbored the alleged descendants of Abraham and Isaac. That was the main demand of the “Basel Program” approved by the first Zionist Congress, held in the pleasant Swiss city, under the command of Herzl in 1897.
At the meeting they discussed where the new state should be installed. Part of the 200 delegates was leaning towards some uninhabited territory, as the island of Cyprus, Patagonia, or even some corner of Uganda or Congo. The majority, however, decided on Palestine, the land of Canaan and the first biblical kingdom of Israel, which existed between 1021 and 722 BC. Beginning in the year 638 of the modern era, however, the region was occupied by Arab-Muslims. Only a small Jewish minority had survived the massacre led, between 132 and 135, by the Roman emperor Hadrian.
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Theodor Herzl (left), founder of modern Zionism and Schlomo Sand (right), author of “The Invention of the Jewish People”
Besides using its historical traditions, the return to Palestine was also crucial as a strategy to loosen the resistance of religious sectors. The more orthodox groups rejected any political plan which preceded the coming of the Messiah. There was also strong opposition among left wing Jews, particularly Marxists, who advocated the full integration of the societies in which they lived and rejected ethnic-religious projects.
The meeting in Basel also created the World Zionist Organization, whose mission, among others, is to boost the flow of Jewish immigration to Palestine, organizing agricultural communities and cities that would change the demographics of the region and prepare the conditions for national dream, shared by different Zionist sectors.
Rise of the socialists
After Herzl's death in 1904, the so-called socialist Zionists gradually gained hegemony inside the movement. Its model of society combined Jewish nationalism with flags of the labor movement, proposing the organization of cooperatives and collective farms, and a strong trade union, as the axis of a nation that mixed particularism and racial equality between pairs.
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The main founders of the State of Israel emerged from this political field, starting with the first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion. Other important leaders have the same origin, such as Chaim Weizmann, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. As did Ben-Gurion, they joined the Mapai and its successor, Avodah, the Hebrew name for the Labour Party, which ruled the country uninterruptedly from 1948 to 1977. Since then, it whether alternates in power, or makes coalition with the far right wing of Zionism.
The emergence of this conservative sector happened under the leadership of Vladimir Jabotinsky, in the 20s, who announced his intention to revive “the spirit and the doctrine truly herzlians”, in opposition to socialist ideas, and exacerbating the doctrine’s nationalist aspects. While left-wing segments, when the First World War begun, advocated some kind of negotiation with the Arabs to give life to their project, the right-wing segments took part in the fighting on the side of England, in the so called Jewish League, to destroy the Ottoman Turkish Empire, who controlled Palestine since 1517.
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With over 200 participants, the Congress in Basel formulated Zionist platform and created the World Zionist Organization
Jabotinsky demanded Israel’s occupation of the entire region, including the land currently integrated by Jordan. He encouraged the creation of military structures used in land disputes with the Arabs. Given the repeated postponement of the British promise to facilitate the creation of the new state, his followers threw themselves in the armed struggle against the British colonial rule, established shortly after the end of the conflict.
Armed groups
Following this design, organizations like the Irgun and Lehi appeared. Unlike the Haganah, combat formation under the control of supporters of Ben-Gurion, these two phalanges of Zionism resorted to violence against military and civilian targets. The explosion of the King David Hotel in 1946, in the city of Jerusalem, organized by Menachem Begin, Irgun leader and future prime minister (1977-1983), became famous. Ninety-one people were killed, including employees of the British government and their families.
Another armed group of the Zionist right, the Lehi, ran by Avraham Stern, came to conceive, in the early '40s, alliance with Nazism. German Jews would be transferred to Palestine in exchange for support to banish the British, considered the principal enemy. They didn´t consider the fact that the Jewish slave labor was relevant to the war effort. Failing such agreement, the group was dedicated to attacking representatives of the British Crown.
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One of the most prominent activists of Lehi was Yitzhak Shamir, who would replace the Begin government, and would maintain his position until 1992. Both were prominent leaders of the Herut party, created after the founding of Israel.
[King David Hotel in Jerusalem was completely destroyed after terrorist attack organized by Menachem Begin]
When this society was born, several prominent figures of Judaism – among these, Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt – published a letter in the New York Times in which they expressed their opinion on the new party.
“In their forms of organization, in its methods, in its political philosophy there’s a very close relationship with the Nazi and Fascist parties”, said the document.
Irgun and Lehi, in a joint action, attacked the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin in April 1948. The goal was to relieve the pressure that Arab fighters were making on Jerusalem in the civil war that preceded Israel's independence. More than 107 villagers were killed, including women and children. Some lost their lives by gunfire at close range, others when grenades were thrown at their homes. The operation was promptly condemned by Zionists linked to Ben-Gurion.
The merger of Herut with other conservative parties, in 1973, forged the Likud, the party to which also the current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, belongs. These parties, in leadership or colligated, alternately ruled the country for 30 years since 1977. Their policies have had a profound impact on the internal situation of Israel and on its foreign policy, particularly regarding the Palestinian issue.
Religious parties
An important component in the architectural ideology of Zionism during the administrations of right wing parties was the strengthening of the religious parties, including the ultra-Orthodox. Since the birth of the State, religion has had a strategic role implied in the definition of the Jewish character of the nation and in the covenant offered by Ben-Gurion, in which various social relations – for example, marriages – would be managed exclusively by the religious. For many analysts, however, they had its audience and political interference increased after the mandates of Begin, Shamir, Sharon and Netanyahu.
Zionism was condemned by the UN in 1975 as guidance with racist content in a Resolution abolished in the early 90s. Even critics like Professor Schlomo Sand disagree with this approach. “The Zionist thought is not affiliated with racial discrimination, even though it may seem to be in certain situations”, he says. “It is a fusion of nationalism and religion, which gives primacy to a hypothetical ethnic and accepts the others as long as they’re subordinate to its hegemony in the territory it controls.”
Translation: Kelly Cristina Spinelli