On Friday May 14, 1948 the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel was signed by members of the National Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum, representing the Jewish community in the country and the Zionist movement abroad. Israel- the land whose name makes the heart of many Jews across the world full of joy, of hope; it rings redemption- return to the Promised Land. Many populations of Jews throughout history have longed to return to the Holy land. The United Nations made sure that the terrorism caused by the Nazi government would never happen again, but was perhaps unaware of the terrorism they were giving birth to; a form of terrorism that still lingers today.
In 1983 the German government was controlled by a man whose name leaves one of the biggest scars in history: Adolf Hitler (Rossel, 20). Hitler and the Nazis wanted to force all Jews out of Germany, so they started with the Jews that did not have German citizenship (20). They worked up, slowly taking away rights of all Jews and even taking away their citizenship (21). Eventually, the Jews started riots and the German soldiers, ordered by the Nazi government, burned down many synagogues, Jewish homes and destroyed Jewish shops (22-24). The Nazis soon realized that all the destruction would have to be repaired by German insurance companies and this frustrated them, one of the officials said “I would rather you have slaughtered 200 Jews than destroy such valuable property!” (27).
Terrorism was in the very air that the Jewish people breathed in, giving rise to the idea of Zionism. Zionism can be defined to have many different shades of the same color. It has many meanings and can be by certain individuals considered a political movement (which began with the publication of Judenstaat, by a man named Herlz which included the longing of a Jewish homeland) (Laqueur, XXV). Political or not, the main focus of Zionism is on the land of Israel (Ben-Arî, 57). It’s the ideology that holds that the Jews are a people like any other and should have their own homeland/ nation; extreme Zionism ideology went as far as to say that Jewish inhabitance anywhere other than Israel was wrong (57). The term Zionism (love of Zion) was first established in 1891(some say 1885). Unlike previous ideology, the modern idea of Zionism was very much separated from religion. As a matter of fact, most people who gave rise to Zionism were not even considered religious.
There have been many movements and many Rabbis that supported the ideology of returning Jews to their home/holy land (the land of Israel in accordance to biblical references). These Zionist said that the Jews were powerless and would be guests where ever they went- always without a home. The anti-Jewish treatment of Jews in some European countries led to a stronger want of a Jewish homeland. One such act was the Jewish officer of the French army that was falsely convicted of treason in 1894 (Burns, 9). This action inspired Theodore, a journalist, to write the pamphlet Der Judenstaat, The Jewish State (Chisholm, 1130). His pamphlet in turn led to the creation of the first Zionist congress in Basle, Switzerland. In 1902, Herzl published a utopian novel about the Jewish state called Altneuland. Another man, Leo Pinsker, also wrote about the need of a Jewish homeland in a pamphlet called auto-emancipation (although, he did not mention a specific land) (1130).
Following World War I, Palestine came under British rule. Even before they had conquered Palestine from the Ottoman Turkish Empire, owing to the efforts of Zionists, the British government declared its intentions in the Balfour declaration of sponsoring a national home for the Jews in Palestine (Dugdale, 7). Countries around the world turned away Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust and a movement known as Aliyah Bet was organized to bring Jews to Palestine (Ofer, 9).
The first Aliyah (first group of immigrants to come to Israel) with the idea of Soon, turning the land into a Jewish state began in 1881. Many anti-Semitic programs in Russia led to the second Aliyah beginning in 1904(40,000 Jews settled in Palestine). But these people were not very successful, because they had no means of obtaining money and therefore buying necessities. In return the social Zionist movement tried to force plantation owners to hire only Jews and raise pay. A boycott of Arab labor took place (not very successful and unpopular among Arabs). The two strongest and most effective Jewish groups that supported Zionism were in Poland (Ofer, 9). These two groups were: Hehalutz (connected with labor wing of zionism) and Betar (mostly consisted of youth that held strong beliefs about the Zionism movement and so were easily willing to leave behind their homes); Between 1929-1934 both of these organizations saw a huge raise in their community (9). The third (1919–1923) and Fourth Aliyah (1924–1929) brought 100,000 Jews to Palestine- this is when Jewish people successfully started to take Arab jobs (Gelabert, 241). The rise of Nazism in the 1930s led to the Fifth Aliyah with about a quarter of a million Jews (Gelaber, 264).
The Palestinians that already lived in Israel responded to this situation and the idea of Zionism with a great sense of nationalism (Tessler, 172). Azmi Bey, Turkish governor of Jerusalem said “we are not xenophobes; we welcome all strangers. We are not anti-Semites; we value the economic superiority of the Jews. But no nation, no government, could open its arms to groups… aiming to take Palestine from us” (Mandel, 104). There were riots held to stop Jewish immigration, to stop the Jews from buying Arab land and the Palestinians refused to be a part of a government which gave the Jews the same rights as them (Tessler, 172). Many Palestinians thought that Jewish immigration was a threat to the state and to them personally (Mandel, 103). The riots of 1929 led to militant Zionism. As the conflict went on, both sides hardened. In the 1948 war about 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled and Israel did not allow them to return. Many of these refugees settled in camps in horrible conditions and have lived there for generations.
I sympathize with the Jews having a national land. Especially after the holocaust, I think it’s mandatory that they have a home of their own, but at the same time I don’t support the Jews settling in Palestine with intentions of taking away Palestine from the Arabs and making it into a Jewish state. I believe the British and the UN made the wrong choice by allowing such an action to be taken place. It’s not right to heal one individual’s ailment by giving another individual pain. The Jews needed a home, but at the same time- Palestine belongs to the Palestinians as Britain belongs to the British. People condemn terrorism and the Palestinians are highly marked as the evil side, especially in the American media. But no one, no one tries to understand how terrorists are “born”. No one ever stops to realize that we as humans are not born evil or with hate, but hate is something we acquire. It is something we come to learn and hold as a result of our situation in life. If a man bombs himself in order to kill Israeli people because his mother died in his arms yesterday because of a lack of basic necessities, or because she was bombed, than is that man a terrorist? Is he fighting for freedom? Is he fighting to protect his people?
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