User:DMH223344/sandbox-zionism-history

History

Background

The transformation of a religious and primarily passive connection between Jews and Palestine into an active, secular, nationalist movement arose in the context of ideological developments within modern European nations. The concept of the "return" remained a powerful symbol within religious Jewish belief which emphasized that their return should be determined by Divine Providence rather than human action. Leading Zionist historian Shlomo Avineri describes this connection: "Jews did not relate to the vision of the Return in a more active way than most Christians viewed the Second Coming." The religious Judaic notion of being a nation was distinct from the modern European notion of nationalism. Ultra-Orthodox Jews strongly opposed collective Jewish settlement in Palestine, viewing it as a violation of the three oaths sworn to God: not to force their way into the homeland, not to hasten the end times, and not to rebel against other nations. They believed that any attempt to achieve redemption through human actions, rather than divine intervention and the coming of the Messiah, constituted a rebellion against divine will and a dangerous heresy.

Ideas of Jewish cultural unity developed a specifically political expression in the 1860s as Jewish intellectuals began promoting the idea of Jewish nationalism. Zionism would be just one of several Jewish national movements which would develop, others included diaspora nationalist groups such as the Bund. Zionism emerged towards the end of the "best century" for Jews who for the first time were allowed as equals into European society. During this time, Jews would have equality before the law and gain access to schools, universities, and professions which were previously closed to them. By the 1870s, Jews had achieved almost complete civic emancipation in all the states of western and central Europe. By 1914, a century after the beginnings of emancipation, Jews had moved from the margins to the forefront of European society. In the urban centers of Europe and America, Jews played a influential role in professional and intellectual life, considered in proportion to their numbers. 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. The development of Zionism and other Jewish nationalist movements grew out of these sentiments, which began to emerge even before the appearance of modern antisemitism as a major factor. 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.

Emancipation in Eastern Europe progressed more slowly, 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 as a response to pogroms or economic insecurity. 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 which tended toward intolerance and exclusivity. For the early Zionists, if nationalism posed a challenge to European Jewry, it also proposed a solution.

Forerunners of Zionism

The forerunners of Zionism, rather than being causally connected to the later development of Zionism, are thinkers and activists who expressed some notion of Jewish national consciousness or advocated for the migration of Jews to Palestine. These attempts were not continuous as national movements typically are. The most notable precursors to Zionism were thinkers such as Judah Alkalai and Zvi Hirsch Kalischer (who were both rabbinical figures), as well as Moses Hess who is regarded as the first modern Jewish nationalist.

Hess advocated for the establishment of an independent Jewish state in pursuit of the economic and social normalization of the Jewish people. Hess believed that emancipation alone was not a sufficient solution to the problems faced by European Jewry; he perceived a shift of anti-Jewish sentiment from a religious to a racial basis. For Hess, religious conversion would not fix this anti-Jewish hostility. In contrast to Hess, Alkalai and Kalischer developed their ideas as a reinterpretation of Messianism along traditionalist lines in which human intervention would prepare (and specifically only prepare) for the final redemption. Accordingly, the Jewish immigration in this vein was intended to be selective, involving only the most devout Jews. Their idea of Jews as a collective was strongly tied to religious notions distinct from the secular movement referred to as Zionism which developed at the end of the century.

Christian restorationist ideas promoting the migration of Jews to Palestine contributed to the ideological and historical context that gave a sense of credibility to these pre-zionist initiatives. Restorationist ideas were a prerequisite for the success of Zionism, since from the beginning Zionism was dependent on Christian support.

Pinsker and Herzl, the first zionists

In the wake of the 1881 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 which could not be assimilated. For Pinsker, emancipation could not resolve the problems of the Jewish people. 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, was for Jews to become a "normal" nation and acquire a homeland over which Jews would have sovereignty. 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.

The pogroms motivated a small number of Jews to establish various groups in the Pale of Settlement and 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 Hibbat Zion in 1887 where Pinsker would take a leading role. 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 lead to the eventual establishment of the state of Israel. 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.

At this point, Zionism remained a scattered movement. Theodor Herzl would work to unify the various strands of Zionism into a single movement. The first Zionist Congress was convened in Basel in 1897 largely as a result of his efforts and would adopt the official objective of establishing a legally recognized home for the Jewish people in Palestine. This congress would also establish the World Zionist Organization as the main administrative body of the movement which would go on to establish the Jewish Colonial Trust. Its objectives were to encourage European Jewish emigration to Palestine and to assist with the economic development of the colonies.

The title of Herzl's manifesto providing the ideological basis for Zionism, Der Judenstaat is typically translated as The Jewish State. 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 Ha'am referred to as "the state of the Jews." Specifically, Ha'am 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. Like Pinsker, Herzl saw antisemitism as a reality that could only be addressed by the territorial concentration of Jews in a Jewish state. He wrote in his diary: "I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism."

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. From early on, Herzl recognized that Zionism could not succeed without the support of a Great Power. His view was that this 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."

The Beginning of Zionist Settlement

In the early twentieth century, Zionism advanced by establishing towns, colonies, and an independent monetary system to channel Jewish capital into Palestine. Due to the unstable local economy and fluctuating currency values under Ottoman rule, Zionists created their own financial institutions, including the first locally headquartered bank and credit cooperative societies. Despite their small numbers, Zionists antagonized the local Palestinian population, leading to physical resistance and the eventual use of military force by settlers. Initially, the impact on rural Palestinians was minimal, with only a few villages encountering Jewish colonies. However, after World War I and as Zionist land purchase increased, the rural population began to experience dramatic changes. Early warnings from local leaders in the 1880s about the destabilizing effects of Jewish immigration went largely unheeded until these later developments. By the early 20th century, there were fourteen Zionist settlements in Palestine, established through land purchases from both local and external landowners.

From the outset, the Zionist leadership saw land acquisition as essential to achieving their goal of establishing a Jewish state. This acquisition was strategic, aiming to create a continuous area of Jewish land. The World Zionist Organization established the Jewish National Fund in 1901, with the stated goal "to redeem the land of Palestine as the inalienable possession of the Jewish people." The notion of land "redemption" entailed that the land could not be sold and could not be leased to a non-Jew nor should the land be worked by Arabs. The land purchased was primarily from absentee landlords, and upon purchase of the land, the tenant farmers who traditionally had rights of usufruct were often expelled. Herzl publicly opposed this dispossession, but wrote privately in his diary: "We must expropriate gently... We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our country... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." Support for expulsion of the Arab population in Palestine was one of the main currents in Zionist ideology from the movement's inception. The fear of territorial displacement and dispossession would be the main driver of Arab antagonism to Zionism for the next several decades.

In 1903, 'the Eretz Israel assembly' was held and chaired by Menachem Ussishkin, a committed Zionist and Russian Jew in his early forties, this assembly marked the beginning of a more formalized Zionist colonization effort. Under his leadership, both professional and political organizations were established, paving the way for a sustained Zionist presence in the region. Ussishkin delineated three methods for the Zionist movement to acquire land: by force and conquest, by expropriation via governmental authority, and by purchase. The only option available to the movement at the moment in his perspective was the last one, "until at some point we become rulers."

The Second Aliyah and WWI

The second wave of Zionist settlement came with the second aliyah starting in 1904. The settlers of the Second Aliyah laid foundational elements for the Jewish society in Palestine envisioned by the Zionist movement. They established the first two political parties, the socialist Po'alei Zion and the non-socialist Ha-Po'el Ha-Tza'ir and initiated the first collective agricultural settlements known as kibbutzim, which were fundamental in the formation of the Israeli state. They also formed the first underground military group, Ha-Shomer, which later evolved into the Haganah and eventually became the core of the Israeli army. Many leaders of the Zionist national movement, including David Ben-Gurion, Berl Katznelson, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Moshe Sharett, Levi Eshkol, Yosef Sprinzak, Yitzhak Tabenkin, and Aharon David Gordon, were products of the Second Aliyah. The Zionists of the second aliyah were also more ideologically motivated than those of the first aliyah. In particular, they sought the "conquest of labor" which entailed the exclusion of Arabs from the labor market.

At the start of the war, the Zionist leadership began attempts to persuade the British government of the benefit of sponsoring a Jewish colony in Palestine. Their main initial success was in establishing a lobbying group centered around the Rothschild family, with official negotiations beginning in 1916. The ensuing Balfour declaration came shortly afterwards in November 1917. In it Britain formally declared its commitment to establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The declaration was largely motivated by war considerations and antisemitic preconceptions about the putative influence Jews had on the Tsarist government and in the shaping of American policy. Though his decision was also motivated by religious convictions, Balfour himself had passed the Aliens Act 1905 which aimed to keep Eastern European Jews out of Britain. More decisive were Britain's colonial and imperial geopolitical goals in the region, specifically in retaining control over the Suez Canal by establishing a pro-British state in the region.

The British Mandate and Development of the Zionist Quasi-State

After the war, the plan for a greater Arab kingdom under the Hashemite family was abandoned when King Feisal was expelled from Damascus by the French in 1920. In parallel, the Zionist demand for a clear British acknowledgment of the entirety of Palestine as the Jewish national home was rejected. Instead, Britain committed only to establishing a Jewish national home "in Palestine" and promised to facilitate this without prejudicing the rights of existing "non-Jewish communities". These qualifying statements aroused the concern of Zionist leaders at the time.

The British mandate over Palestine was based on the Balfour declaration, explicitly privileging the Jewish minority over the Arab majority. In addition to declaring British support for the establishment of a "Jewish national home" in Palestine, the mandate included provisions facilitating Jewish immigration, and granting the Zionist movement the status of representing Jewish national interests. In particular, the Jewish Agency, the embodiment of the Zionist movement in Palestine, was made a partner of the mandatory government, acquiring international diplomatic status and representing Zionist interests before the League of Nations and other international venues.

The British mandate effectively established a Jewish quasi-state in Palestine, lacking only full sovereignty, which was held by the British High Commissioner. This lack of sovereignty was crucial for Zionism at this early stage, as the Jewish population was too small to defend itself against the Arabs of Palestine. The British presence provided a necessary safeguard for Jewish nationalism. To achieve political independence, Jews needed Britain's support, particularly in land purchase and immigration.

British policies supporting these efforts were pursued at the expense of the socioeconomic development of the Arab sector. For example, the taxation system imposed by the mandatory government extracted greater relative costs (as well as in absolute numbers) from the Arab population. At the same time, the main British mandatory expenditures from 1933 to 1937 were for economic development and security expenses, in support of the Jewish population. In this sense, the growth of the Jewish economic sector came at the expense of the Arab population. British policies encouraged the proletarianization of the Arab peasantry and reinforced the wage gap between Jewish and Arab laborers. The mandate also included an article describing self-governing institutions intended only for the Jewish population of Palestine. No similar support or recognition was provided to the Palestinian majority at any point during the time of the mandate.

In contrast to the Jewish population, the Arabs did not benefit from any government protections such as social security, employment benefits, trade union protection, job security and training opportunities. Arab wages were one third of their Jewish counterparts (including when paid by the same employer). By enabling the Zionist institutions to serve as a parallel government to the Mandate, the British facilitated the separation of the economy and legitimized their quasi-state status. Accordingly, these institutions, which purported to act in the interests of Jews everywhere, were able to funnel resources into the Jewish sector in Palestine, heavily subsidizing the dominate Jewish economy; for example, over 80% of the JNF's income came from contributions.

Following the Balfour declaration, Jewish immigration to Palestine would grow from 9,149 immigrants in 1921 to 33,801 in 1925--by the end of the mandate period, the Jewish population in Palestine would have nearly tripled, eventually reaching one third of the country's population.

The nucleus of the Jewish quasi-state was the Histadrut, established in 1920 as an independent social, political and economic institution. The Histadrut also developed a military arm, the Haganah, which evolved into a permanent underground reserve army with a command structure integrated into the Jewish community's political institutions. Although the British authorities disapproved of the Haganah, particularly its method of stealing arms from British bases, they did not disband it. The Histadrut operated as a completely independent entity, without interference from the British mandate authorities. Ben-Gurion saw the Histadrut's detachment from socialist ideology to be one of it's key strengths; indeed it was the General Organization of Workers in Israel. In particular, the Histadrut worked towards national unity and aimed to dominate the capitalist system enroute to gaining political power, not to create a socialist utopia.

The development of political groups in the Yishuv

During this period, and up until the arab revolt of 1936, there was room for political flexibility within the Zionist movement. Even so, the ideological framework within which the movement operated constrained the political moves made by groups within the movement. A key tenant of this framework involved seeking the support of a Great Power through which to achieve the acquiescence of the Palestinians.

As head of the World Zionist Organization, Weizmann's policies had a sustained impact on the Zionist movement, with Abba Eban describing him as the dominant figure in Jewish life during the interwar period. According to Zionist Israeli historian Simha Flapan, the essential assumptions of Weizmann's strategy were later adopted by Ben-Gurion and subsequent Zionist (and Israeli) leaders. By replacing 'Great Britain' with 'United States' and 'Arab National Movement' with 'Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,' Weizmann's strategic concepts can be seen as reflective of Israel's current foreign policy. A key aspect of this strategy is the consistent non-recognition of the national rights of the Palestinian people as a basic element of Zionist policy towards the Arab issue.

Weizmann's ultimate goal was the establishment of a Jewish state, even beyond the borders of "Greater Israel." For Weizmann, Palestine was a Jewish and not an Arab country. The state he sought would contain the east bank of the Jordan River and extend from the Litani River (in present day Lebanon). Weizmann's strategy involved incrementally approaching this goal over a long period, establishing "facts on the ground" as "faits accomplis" in the form of settlement expansion and land acquisition. Weizmann was open to the idea of Arabs and Jews jointly running Palestine through an elected council with equal representation, but he did not view the Arabs as equal partners in negotiations about the country's future. In particular, he was steadfast in his view of the "moral superiority" of the Jewish claim to Palestine over the Arab claim and believed these negotiations should be conducted solely between Britain and the Jews.

Ze'ev Jabotinsky founded the Revisionist Party in 1925 which took on a more militant ethos and openly maximalist agenda. Jabotinsky rejected Weizmann's strategy of incremental state building, instead preferring to immediately declare sovereignty over the entire region, which extended to both the East and West bank of the Jordan river. Like Weizmann and Herzl, Jabotinsky also believed that the support of a great power was essential to the success of Zionism. From early on, Jabotinksy openly rejected the possiblity of a "voluntary agreement" with the Arabs of Palestine. He instead believed in building an "iron wall" of Jewish military force to break Arab resistence to Zionism, at which point an agreement could be established. The labor Zionists promoted immigration and settlement, establishing "facts", as the main path towards statebuilding. Later, Ben-Gurion would recognize the national character of Arab rejection of Zionism and concluded that only war, not an agreement, would resolve the conflict.

In the same year Brit-Shalom was established, an ultimately marginal group which promoted Arab-Jewish cooperation.

As secretary general of the Histadrut and leader of the Zionist labor movement, Ben-Gurion adopted similar strategies and objectives as Weizmann during this period, disagreeing primarily on issues of specific tactical moves up until 1939. The middle class grew dramatically in size with the arrival of the fourth aliyah in 1924, motivating a political shift within the labor movement. It was during this period that the political strategy of the labor movement would solidify. The founding of the Mapai party unified the labor movement, making it the dominant force. The labor party saw economic control as essential to facilitating Zionist settlement and achieving political power: "the economic question is not one of class; it is a national question." Indeed the Mapai prioritized nationalism over socialism to the extent that the "only qualification required for membership in Mapai was not ideological commitment but possession of a Histadrut membership card." For Ben-Gurion, the transformation from "working class to nation" was intertwined with his rejection of diaspora life, as he would declare: the "weak, unproductive, parasitical Jewish masses" must be converted "to productive labor" in service of the nation.

The Arab Revolt

For the Zionist movement, economic development and policies were a mechanism by which political aims could be achieved. A new economic sector exclusively for Jews, controlled by the Labor Zionist movement, was established with support from the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and the agricultural workers' Histadrut. The JNF and Histadrut aimed to remove land and labor from the market, effectively excluding Palestinian Arabs. Despite the universalist ideals of Zionist pioneering, this new Jewish economic sector was fundamentally based on exclusionary practices. Throughout the duration of the British Mandate, the labor movement was largely driven by the goal of achieving "100 percent of Hebrew labour." This was primary driver of the territorial, economic and social separation between Jews and Arabs.

The Zionist economic platform was partially based on the assumption (eventually demonstrated incorrect) that economic benefits to the Arabs of Palestine would pacify opposition to the movement. For the Zionist leadership, the economic status and development of the Arabs of Palestine should be compared with Arabs of other countries, rather than with the Jews of Palestine. Accordingly, disproportionate gains in Jewish development were be acceptable as long as the status of the Arab sector did not worsen. While British support for Zionist aspirations in Palestine established the parameters within which the Arab economy could develop, Zionist policies reinforced these limitations. Most notable are the exclusion of Arab labor from Jewish enterprise and the expulsion of Arab peasants from Jewish owned land. Both of these had limited impact in scope but reinforced the structural limitations put in place by British policies.

With the rise to power of the Nazis in 1933, the Jewish community was increasingly persecuted and driven out. The discriminatory immigration laws of the US, UK and other countries preferable to German Jews, led to, for example, in 1935 alone more than 60,000 Jews arriving in Palestine (more than the total number of Jews in Palestine as of the establishment of the Balfour declaration in 1917). Ben-Gurion would subsequently declare that immigration at this rate would allow for the maximalist Zionist goal of a Jewish state in all of Palestine. The Arab community openly pressured the mandatory government to restrict Jewish immigration and land purchases.

Sporadic attacks in the country-side (described by Zionists and the British as "banditry") reflected widespread anger over the Zionist land purchases that displaced local peasants. Meanwhile, in urban areas, protests against British rule and the increasing influence of the Zionist movement intensified and became more militant. The British appointed a commision of inquiry in 1937 in response to the revolt which recommended the partition of the land: annexation of most of Palestine to Transjordan and the designation of a small portion of land for a future Jewish state.

At this point, Jews owned 5.6% of the land in Palestine; the land allocated to the Jewish state would contain 40 percent of the country's fertile land. The commission also recommended the expulsion (or the euphemistic "compulsory transfer") of the Palestinian population from the land designated for the Jewish state. For Ben-Gurion, the transfer proposal was the most appealing recommendation put forward by the commission; he would write in his diary:

The compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the First and Second Temples.… We are being given an opportunity which we never dared to dream of in our wildest imaginings. This is more than a state, government and sovereignty—this is national consolidation in a free homeland.

Much of the Zionist leadership spoke in strong support of the transfer plan, including Ussishkin, Ruppin and Katznelson. In giving their support for compulsory transfer, they asserted their stance that there is nothing immoral about it. Within the Zionist movement, two perspectives developed with respect to the partition proposal; the first was a complete rejection of partition, the second was acceptance of the idea of partition on the basis that it would eventually allow for expansion to all territories within "the boundaries of Zionist aspirations.". The revolt was inflamed by the partition proposal and continued until 1939 when it was forcefully suppressed by the British.

Traditionalist Israeli historian Anita Shapira describes labor Zionism's use of violence against Palestinians for political means as essentially the same as that of radical right-wing Zionist groups. For example, Shapira notes that during the 1936 Palestine revolt, the Irgun Zvai Leumi engaged in the "uninhibited use of terror", "mass indiscriminate killings of the aged, women and children", "attacks against British without any consideration of possible injuries to innocent bystanders, and the murder of British in cold blood". Shapira argues that there were only marginal differences in military behavior between the Irgun and the labor Zionist Palmah. In following with policies laid out by Ben-Gurion, the prevalent method among field squads was that if an Arab gang had used a village as a hideout, it was considered acceptable to hold the entire village collectively responsible. The lines delineating what was acceptable and unacceptable while dealing with these villagers were "vague and intentionally blurred". Shapira maintains that these ambiguous limits practically did not differ from those of the openly terrorist group, the Irgun.

By the time of the Arab revolt, almost all groups within the Zionist movement wanted a Jewish state in Palestine, "whether they declared their intent or preferred to camouflage it, whether or not they perceived it as a political instrument, whether they saw sovereign independence as the prime aim, or accorded priority to the task of social construction." The main debates within the movement at this time were concerning partition of Palestine and the nature of the relationship with the British. The dominant feeling within the movement was that Jewish considerations took precedance over those of the Arabs and the Zionist movement was in a struggle for survival. From this perspective, the leadership believed that the movement could not afford to compromise.

According to Zionist historian Yosef Gorny, these considerations would drive the Zionist belief in the necessity of the use of force against the Arabs whose motives "were of no moral or historical significance." The intensity of the revolt, Britain's ambiguous support for the movement and the increasing threat against European Jewry during this period motivated the Zionist leadership to prioritize immediate considerations. The movement ultimately favored the notion of partition, primarily out of practical considerations and partially out of a belief that establishing a Jewish state over all of Palestine would remain an option. At the 1937 Zionist congress, the Zionist leadership adopted the stance that the land allocated to the Jewish state by the partition plan was inadequate--effectively rejecting the partition plan which faded away in the face of both Arab and Zionist opposition.

The 1939 White Paper and WWII

In 1939, a British White Paper would recommend limiting Jewish immigration and land purchase with the objective of maintaining the status quo while the threat of war loomed in Europe. With Nazi expansionism in Europe, the limits on immigration prompted further militarization, land takeover and illegal immigration efforts by the Zionist movement. The second world war broke out as the Zionists were developing their campaign against the White Paper--unable to accept the White Paper or to side against the British, the Zionist movement would ultimately support the British war effort while working to upend the White Paper. From the start of the second world war, the Zionists pressured the British to organize and train a Jewish "army," cultimating in the establishment of a Jewish Brigade and accompanying blue and white flag. The development of this force would further train and enable the already substantial Zionist military capacity. The Haganah was allowed by the British to openly acquire weapons and worked with the British to prepare for a possible Axis invasion.

Despite the White Paper, Zionist immigration and settlement efforts continued during the war period. While immigration had previously been selective, once the details of the holocaust reached Palestine in 1942, selectivity was abandoned. The Zionist war effort focused on the survival and development of the Yishuv, with little Zionist resources being deployed in support of European Jews. Ben-Gurion in particular was primarily concerned with the impact the holocaust had on the Yishuv rather than on European Jewry. Many of those fleeing Nazi terror in Europe preferred to leave for the United States, however, strict American immigration policies and Zionist efforts led to 10% of the 3 million Jews leaving Europe to settle in Palestine.

In the Biltmore Program of 1942, the Zionist movement would openly declare for the first time its goal of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. At this point, the United States, with its growing economy and unprecedented military force, became a focal point of Zionist political activity which engaged with the American electorate and politicians. US President Truman supported the Biltmore program for the duration of his time in office, largely motivated by humanitarian concerns and the growing influence of the Zionist lobby.

End of the Mandate and Expulsion of the Palestinians

Towards the end of the war, the Zionist leadership was motivated more than ever to establish a Jewish state. Since the British were no longer sponsoring its development, many Zionists considered it would be necessary to establish the state by force by upending the British position in Palestine. In this the IRA's tactics against Britain in the Irish War of Independence served as a both a model and source of inspiration. The Irgun, the military arm of the revisionst Zionists, led by Menachem Begin, and the Stern Gang, which at one point sought an alliance with the Nazis, would lead a series of terrorist attacks against the British starting in 1944. This included the King David Hotel bombing, British immigration and tax offices and police stations. It was only by the war's end that the Haganah joined in the sabotage against the British. The combined impact of US opinion and the attacks on British presence eventually led the British to refer the situation to the United Nations in 1947.

The UNSCOP found that Jews were a minority in Palestine, owning 6% of the total land. The urgency of the condition of the Jewish refugees in Europe motivated the committe to unianimously vote in favor of terminating the British mandate in Palestine. The disagreement came with regards to whether Palestine should be partitioned or if it should constitute a federal state. American lobbying efforts, pressuring UN delegates with the threat of withdrawal of US aid, eventually secured the General Assembly votes in favor of the partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states which was passed 29 November 1947.

Outburts of violence slowly grew into a wider civil war between the Arabs and Zionist militias. By mid-December, the Haganah had shifted to a more "aggressive defense", abandoning notions of restraint it had espoused from 1936 to 1939. The Haganah reprisal raids were often disproportionate to the initial Arab offenses, which led to the spread of violence to previously unaffected areas. The Zionist militias, employed terror attacks against Arab civilian and militia centers. In response, Arabs planted bombs in Jewish civilian areas, particularly in Jerusalem.

The first expulsion of Palestinians began 12 days after the adoption of the UN resolution, and the first Palestinian village was eliminated a month later. In March of 1948, Zionist forces began implementing Plan D, which warranted the expulsion of civilians and the destruction of Arab towns and villages in pursuit of eliminating potentially hostile Arab elements. According to Benny Morris Zionist forces committed 24 massacres of Palestinians in the ensuing war, in part as a form of psychological warfare, the most notorious of which is the Deir Yassin massacre. Between 1948 and 1949, 750,000 Palestinians would be driven out of their homes, primarily as a result of these expulsions and massacres.

The British left Palestine (having done little to maintain order) on May 14 as planned. The British had done little to fascilitate a formal transfer of power; a fully functioning Jewish quasi-state had already been operating under the British for the past several decades. The same day, Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the state of Israel.

Hebrewization of Names

As part of the effort to consolidate its new ownership over the land it had taken over in the 1948 war, the Israeli state worked towards "erasing all traces of its former owners." The project of "Hebrewization" of the map, for which the JNF Naming Committee was established, aimed to replace what remained of the Arab towns and villages with newly named Israeli settlements. These names were often based on the Arab names but with a "Hebrew pronounciation" or based on old Hebrew biblical names. This effort also sought to demonstrate continuous Jewish ownership over the land to ancient times. Moshe Dayan would later speak to the appropriation of Arab place names:

Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Hunefis; and Kefar Yehoshua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that didn’t have a former Arab population.

Prior to 1948, the Zionist movement had limited authority over the use of place names in Palestine. After 1948, the Zionist movement systematically eliminated mention of "Palestine" from the names of its organizations; for example, the Jewish Agency for Palestine, which played a critical role in the founding of the Israeli state in 1948 was renamed to the "Jewish Agency for Israel".

Religious Zionism and the June War

The 1967 June War was followed by the the emergence of "religious Zionism." The Israeli conquest of the West Bank, referred to by Zionists as Judea and Samaria, indicated to religious Zionists that they were living in a messianic era. For them, the war was a demonstration of the work of the Divine Hand and the "beginning of redemption." The rabbis following in this line of thought immediately began to venerate the land as sacred, making its sanctity a core principle of religious Zionism. Consequently, anyone willing to cede parts of this land was seen as a traitor to the Jewish people. This belief contributed to the religiously motivated assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, which was carried out with the approval of some Orthodox rabbis. Rabbi Kook, a main religious Zionist leader and thinker, would declare in 1967 following the war in the presence of Israeli leadership including the president, ministers, members of the Knesset, judges, chief rabbis and senior civil servants:

I tell you explicitly... that there is a prohibition in the Torah against giving up even an inch of our liberated land. There are no conquests here and we are not occupying foreign land; we are returning to our home, to the inheritance of our forefathers. There is no Arab land here, only the inheritance of our God – the more the world gets used to this thought the better it will be for it and for all of us.

For the religious Zionists, secular Zionism and secular state policies were holy: "The spirit of Israel... is so closely linked to the spirit of God that a Jewish national­ist, no matter how secularist his intention may be, is, despite himself, imbued with the divine spirit even against his own will." Religious Zionists view the settlement of the West Bank as a commandment of God, necessary for the redemption of the Jewish people.

Sources

• Avineri, Shlomo (2017). The Making of Modern Zionism. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-09479-0.
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