Introduction

Part 2 of Zionism explores how 19th-century European economic, religious, social, and political factors nurtured the movement. Part 2 examines how antisemitism, victimhood, and the idea of a Jewish homeland became interconnected with Zionism.

Embarkation

Zionists weaponize victimhood against critics of Israeli misbehavior. “Antisemite” and “holocaust denier” are the most common name-calling responses from Zionists. Both comments are based on victimhood. Victimhood carries leverage and privilege. Zionists used victimhood leverage to influence the 20th Century World powers to create Israel. Privilege creates an audacious attitude to believe that it is fair to grant the land of Palestine a special favor for suffering.

I obligatorily admit that Jewish people have suffered more than their share of expulsions, tragedy, persecution, and mass execution. It is a tragic history that generates empathy. Empathy was not the weapon of choice for the Zionists. The power of victimhood was of more value. Empathy, when transformed into victimhood, packs a political punch mighty enough to silence most critics and sell the idea of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.

Expulsions and Exodus

Expulsions and exodus of Jews are lessons in victimhood we have learned in textbooks, movies, schools, newscasts, and verbose politicians sponsored by Jewish lobbyists. Examples can be found in the Bible and on Wikipedia’s dedicated page that emphasizes this plight. Wikipedia (Expulsions and Exodus of Jews page) lists events such as the Assyrian exile, Babylonian, Roman, Muslim, England, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Germany, Russia, Yemen, and 70 other Worldly incidents.  

Rulers of sovereign nations grant asylum to foreigners or declare them undesirable, illegal, or personae non grata. The expulsion of groups from their territories became a means of controlling migratory flow and the growing influence of nationalism as an ideology.

In Spain, King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I, the Catholic Monarchs, established the Spanish Inquisition to uphold Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms. The 1492 Alhambra Decree mandated that Jews and Muslims residing in Spain either convert to Catholicism or leave the country within four months. The Decree resulted in thousands of Jews emigrating to other lands such as Portugal, North Africa, the Low Countries of Europe, Italy, and the Ottoman Empire. Four years after The Alhambra Decree, Portugal signed a decree of expulsion of all Muslims and Jews.

The Jews have a rich history of expulsions, but they are not alone as migratory groups. The Dutch, in 1834, expelled 7,500 Dutch Orthodox Protestants. Greek nationalists (1821 -1828) forced some 200,000 Turks to flee from Greece. After the Crimean War of 1853–1856, the Russian Emperor Alexander II (1818–1881) removed a similar number of Tatars. Muslims, by the thousands, were expelled after the Russian pacification of the Caucasus (1859–1864).  In the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), 80,000 Germans were expelled from France, while 130,000 French citizens felt forced to leave Alsace-Lorraine. The Ottoman Empire removed Armenians, Kurds, Bulgarians, and Greeks from contested territories. Stalin purged and deported a multitude of ethnic groups to enhance his power over the Soviets.

The Zionists use the history of expulsions and exodus as a tool to imprint upon civilization that the Jewish people are the number one victims. The logic is simple, expulsions and exoduses of Jews contributed to a significant stream of homeless Jewish refugees wandering in Europe, in search of a homeland. It was a vital concept for selling a Jewish homeland project in Palestine.

In Adam Sutcliffe’s, Judaism and the Enlightenment, he explains, “They were an “unassimilable Other.” Many saw the Jews as particular, backward-looking, uprooted nomads, with tribal culture of outmoded customs and religious teaching.” Conclusion; Jewish victimhood suffered at the hands of antisemitic rulers, affords an entitlement to an imposed, created homeland.  

Jewish Assimilation – Western Europe

The 18th-century French Revolution began new ideas of liberty for Jews in France and Germany. It marked an increase in the number of middle‑class German Jews. Jews began to take their place in German and French society. They were able to explore the intellectual opportunities beyond the ghetto.

The Jewish Enlightenment era, the Haskalah (1770s-1880s), encouraged Jews to assimilate into European society in dress, language, manners, and loyalty to the ruling power. Haskalah marked the end of the use of Yiddish and experienced a revival of Hebrew and the adoption of European languages. 

The Haskalah emphasized more secular knowledge and practical training in the trades. Many assimilated Jews of Western Europe became successful financiers, bankers, entrepreneurs, and mechanics laborers. Most financially comfortable Jews opposed the Zionist vision. Jewish citizens of Germany, France, and the U.S.A. had comfortably assimilated into society. These assimilated Jews were unwilling to compromise their cosmopolitan life and national loyalty to move to Palestine to follow a utopian dream.

Some of the more religious Jews believed that assimilation and emancipation created doubts about the future of Judaism in Europe. To them, the indifference or neglect of Jewish law was a concern and a homogenized Jewish homeland became an option.

East Meets West

Many European Jews lived under the Russian Tsar in The Pale of Settlement. The lands of the Russian Empire in what are today Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and Western Russia. Jews were forbidden to own land or to reside in other parts of the empire.

Russian Tsar Alexander II (1855 – 1881) reformed rules targeting Jews regarding land ownership, restricted travel, special taxes, state employment, and living outside the Pale of Settlement. The cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg became magnets for rural Jews seeking education and employment. Other Jews fled Russia, immigrating to the United States, Western Europe, and Great Britain.  

Economic factors and a rapidly westward-expanding railway network made Jewish migration to Western Europe possible. Newly arrived Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe possessed few resources and little formal education. They typically competed with many in the host population for low-paying jobs. Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Ashkenazic Jews, many from ghettos with their strange customs and religious practices struck Western European non-Jews as a very different sort than the assimilated Sephardic Jews. (Exiles from the Iberian Peninsula)

This influx of Eastern European Jews appeared to have fueled the negative racial stereotypes existing within Western European culture. Still, only a few looked towards Zionism’s emigration to Palestine. Zionism was something of a pipe dream that few Jews embraced.

After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II (1881), Russian and Eastern European Jews had to deal with reinstated pogroms and restrictions to live and work in the Pale of Settlement. A growing number of Eastern European Jews found common ground with the antisemites. The common ground was a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Marxism – Another Option

Jews who stayed in Eastern Europe and Russia had another option. Jewish students in Russian cities became radicalized with the lure of communism. Their parents, neighbors, friends, and working family members saw socialism as a saving grace. The Jewish Labor Bund movement was founded in 1897 as a socialist organization of the Jewish people in Central and Eastern Europe. It was inspired by Marxist philosophy to fight for equality, religious, cultural, and the right to public education.

The Bund allied with Lenin’s Workers Party and became well-represented in the leadership of the Bolsheviks and the Communist Party. Europeans viewed Bolshevism as a threat that led to anti-Bolshevikism and fed anti-Semitic attitudes. Many accused Europe’s new Jews of being revolutionary socialists and anarchists, blaming them for labor unrest.

Antisemitism

Semitism was coined in 1879 by a Viennese journalist that distinguished Semitic language speakers as a different race than Europeans. He wrote that those who spoke the ancient languages of Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic constituted a racial group. As time passed, Semites became exclusively Jews.

The antisemites reasoned that since Jews were racially different than the European Christians, they lacked country-based loyalty. The 1800s witnessed an expansion of European nationalism. Antisemites argued that Jews did not fit into any European nationalism configuration, many referring to them as the other. For the antisemites, a solution for the other was an exile from Europe to a foreign land. 

David Engel, Professor of Holocaust and Judaic Studies at New York University, summed up the basic paradigm of Jewish nationalism: “[…] growing numbers of Jews suspected that nation-based states would soon become the norm worldwide, perhaps even replacing existing citizen-based states. They figured that in a world of nation-based states, the best way for Jews to maximize their well-being was to claim that they comprised a nation themselves. Therefore, they too have an inalienable right to constitute a state that would define serving the collective needs and interests as one of its fundamental purposes.” Zionism was Jewish nationalism and an option to counter European nationalism.  

Leon Pinsker

Some thought differently. Odessa doctor Leon Pinsker (1821–1891) attributed antisemitism to a fear of Jews. He believed a Jewish phobia existed based upon the fear that the Jews were a nation that existed as an intellectual and spiritual entity. The pogroms in the Russian Empire helped Leon Pinsker gain considerable support.

According to Pinsker legal and political equality could not be solved under these conditions. Only the self-emancipation of the Jews as a nation outside of the European continent in a single consolidated territory could.

The fact that Pinsker used phrases like; a re-nationalization of the Jews and the re-establishment of a territory for the Jews. This verbiage establishes a gaslight narrative of reclaiming land that is “rightfully ours.” This perspective allows for a hierarchical thinking that the targeted land is ours. The reality that the land is and has been inhabited by the Palestinians for centuries becomes inconsequential.

Theodor Herzl – The Official Declaration of Zionism

Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) published Der Judenstaat, the Jewish State, proposing a homeland in Palestine. The pamphlet became the catalyst that ignited the Zionist project. His book, Der Judenstaat, and his work in founding the World Zionist Organization helped to earn him the title of the founder of political Zionism.

Herzl, a journalist for a Viennese paper, had been present at the Dreyfus Trial. Herzl witnessed the emotional public involvement, reaction, and outcome surrounding the Dreyfus Affair. The atmosphere he observed in Paris changed his ideology from promoting Jewish assimilation to Zionism.

Alfred Dreyfus was the son of a wealthy Jewish textile manufacturer who had risen to the rank of captain in the French military. In 1894, Dreyfus was accused of selling military secrets to Germany. He was arrested, trialed, and convicted by what appeared to be strong evidence. A 12-year controversy ensued, known as the Dreyfus Affair.

The popular French novelist Émile Zola published accusations claiming a French Government cover-up. Some 3,000 supporters, many of high social status, and a host of intellectuals drafted a petition demanding a Dreyfus retrial. Riots and protests ensued and would continue until the Dreyfus retrial.

The new court martial found him guilty again. The President of the Republic would later pardon him. Herzl believed that this trial symbolized the miscarriage of justice and antisemitism that existed in France and Europe. He reasoned that if this happened in France, it could happen anywhere.

The Dreyfus Affair moved Herzl from being a supporter of Jewish assimilation into society to political Zionism. From his observations of the  Dreyfus Affair, Herzl sensed that Jews would never find a safe home in Europe. He concluded, “It has been established, that justice could be refused to a Jew for the sole reason that he was a Jew.”

Zionism – Mixed Popularity

At that time, Jewish assimilation was more popular than Zionism. Many Jews disagreed with Herzl’s assessment. Léon Blum, a Jewish Socialist and former Prime Minister of France, viewed the Dreyfus trial differently. Blum insisted that the Dreyfus affair established the emancipation of the Jews and their right to play a full role as citizens. He believed the Dreyfus Trial allowed a Jew like him to become Prime Minister. 

French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, born Jewish in Lithuania, also had a different perspective on the trial. Levinas often quoted his father: “A country that tears itself apart to defend the honor of a small Jewish captain is somewhere worth going.” Most French citizens believed the affair was a vindication of the civil rights of man and that French citizenship was open to all.

Zionism throughout the 19th Century drew a mixed bag of support. Many Jews had no interest in relocating to a Jewish homeland, while others thought it was an option. Jews from Eastern Europe and Russian Jews experienced a very different social environment than those of the Western European Jews. The former had more of a nationalist militant movement with a victimhood attitude. The latter were more idealistic and social-based.

It is important to note that both East Europe and West Europe experienced the rise of nationalism, antisemitism, and an increasingly hegemonic ideology that excluded Jews. Zionism and Bolshevism offered the European Jews the intellectual, political, and social comforts of belonging.   

Missing from the Zionist and Bolshevist schemes was a call for a unified effort and World approval. In 1917, they received their callings. The Zionist with the Sir Arthur James Balfour Declaration, the British Foreign Secretary promised Great Britain’s support to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The communist calling came with the Russian Revolution of 1917. A Revolution that overthrew the imperial government and placed the Bolsheviks in power.

Zionism – The Road – To Nowhere