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Theodor Herzl, the seminal leader of early Zionism.

Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people should return to the Land of Israel.


  • Zionism proceeds from the assumption that the Jews are still a people or nation, many of whom cannot or will not assimilate themselves to other peoples, and wish to retain their identity as a national community.
    • The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia, 5th ed. 1977, art. Zionism, p. 2016.
  • Zionism is as old as the Babylonian Exile, which began in 586BCE. Separation from the Land of Israel as they were being led into captivity by their conquerors rested crushingly upon the spirits of the Jewish exiles; a longing for the homeland consumed them. Turning in the direction of Judah, they then took an awesome vow: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand lose its cunning. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I remember thee not; if I set not Jerusalem above my chiefest joy" (Psalms 137:5-6).
    • Nathan Ausubel, The Book of Jewish Knowledge, art. Zionism p. 526.
    • Theodor Herzl in a diary entry, (3 September 1897), a few days after the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, as quoted in'Nonstate Nations in International Politics: Comparative System Analyses (1997) by Judy S. Bertelsen, p. 37.
  • All forms of Zionism hold the perception that a certain extent of anti-Semitism benefits the Zionist enterprise. To put it more sharply, anti-Semitism is the generator and ally of Zionism. Masses of Jews leave their place of residence only when their economic situation and physical safety are undermined. Masses of Jews are shoved to this country rather than being attracted to it. The yearning for the land of Zion and Jerusalem is not strong enough to drive millions of Jews to the country they love and make them hold on to its clods.
  • One can be a Zionist without being a nationalist, even an unaggressive one. The earlier Zionism, that which has had a far longer career than the Neo-Zionism of to-day, was none the less Zionist, even though it had no tinge of nationalism in the modern semi-aggressive sense. That Zionism was not based on a Jewish nation, whose existence in the modern sense it did not admit, but on the Jewish people. The earlier Zionism had no political connotation. It was no less successful on that account. It was certainly one of the instruments that kept Judaism alive and Jewry in existence. That early - it may be termed spiritual - Zionism still exists even though its voice is drowned by the more blatant shouts of a nationalism that differs from it in many respects. And as that earlier Zionism, which is a large part of Judaism, flourished for centuries before Political Zionism was conceived, it will not inconceivably survive Political Zionism as a living force, for centuries.
  • Anti-Zionists, last of all, exhibit a distaste for certain words. It was Thomas Hobbes who, anticipating semantics, pointed out that words are counters, not coins; that the wise man looks through them to reality. This counsel many anti-Zionists seem to have neglected. They are especially disturbed by the two nouns nationalism and commonwealth, and by the adjective political. And yet these terms on examination are not at all upsetting.
    Jewish nationalism means no more than recognition of the peoplehood of Israel, and of the propriety of that people's being a religio-cultural group in America, a nationality in Eastern Europe, and in Palestine an actualized nation.
    Nor is the word political more horrendous, even when it precedes Zionism. For what does it signify? It refers either to methods for realizing the Zionist objective or to the objective itself. If to the former, it denotes the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and their transactions with the Mandatory Power and others on immigration into Palestine and related problems. If this be political Zionism, what can be wrong with it? Anyone wishing Jews to be free to enter Palestine knows that governments must be dealt with and understandings negotiated. Or are there some so naive as to approve of results but not of the only means for attaining them?
  • The idea that Zionism is essentially racist is only consistent with the view that all nationalism is a form of racism. In that case all states that claimed to be based on nationalism would need to be removed as well. Anti-Zionism, however tends to argue one or some of the following ideas:
    (a) Jews are not a nation
    (b) Jews are only identifiable by attachment to Judaism as religion
    (c) there is only tenuous evidence linking Jews to Torah historical accounts
    (d) the Jews come from Eastern Europe, not the Middle East
    (e) Jews are not a homogeneous group
    (f) Jews have collaborated with oppressors (Imperialism, the Nazis)
    (g) Zionism inevitably means oppressing the Palestinians.

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