Is Zionism a Response to Antisemitism?
- Uri Pilichowski
- 5 hours ago
- 4 min read
Joseph Massad, a professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, New York, wrote an essay claiming that Zionism only gained support after the Holocaust. Massad wrote, “One of the more remarkable aspects of the history of Zionism is that the majority of European Jews rejected the movement from its inception in the early 19th century until the Second World War.
The movement failed to gain traction among European Jews... It was not until the Nazi genocide of European Jews that a majority of European and American Jews were swayed and began to support this colonial-settler movement that enjoined Jews to self-expel and colonize Palestine.”
Mr. Massad is a critic of Israel and Zionism, and his line of reasoning connecting support for the Holocaust and Zionism is a common thread among many critics of Israel. Former Knesset Member and well-known author Dr. Einat Wilf wrote, “There are those who believe, too many, that without the Holocaust there would have been no Israel. Most of them make this assumption in good faith. US President Barack Obama, in his June 4, 2009, Cairo speech, spoke of “the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.”
Rise in antisemitism and start of political Zionism
From 1899 through 1939, there was a spike in antisemitism in Western societies. Though the persecution of Jews has a history of at least two millennia, the late-19th and early-20th century witnessed a high-water mark in hatred against Jews, especially in Western Christian societies. A number of the popular explanations for the rise of antisemitism have analogs in the literature on ethnic prejudice. In particular, theories of modernization, relative deprivation, ethnic competition, and scapegoating or frustration-aggression prevail as explanations of the rise of antisemitism.
Zionism emerged from this world. A minority of Jewish thinkers concluded that the only way to secure their community would be to build a Jewish national home. Self-determination – what the Russian Zionist Leon Pinsker called ‘auto-emancipation’ – was the only way. ‘The great ideas of the eighteenth century have not passed by our people without leaving a trace,’ Pinsker wrote in his 1882 pamphlet Autoemancipation: ‘We feel not only as Jews; we feel as men. As men, we, too, would fain live and be a nation like others.’
Zionism was more than a response to antisemitism
The modern political Zionism movement was born during a time of rising antisemitism, and many people assume that Zionism was a response to antisemitism. They are confident that if there were no antisemitism, there would have been no Zionism. This assumption ignores important factors that demonstrate that Zionism was more than just a response to antisemitism.
When people assume that Zionism must have been a response to antisemitism because it started at the time of rising antisemitism, they are confusing correlation with causation. There was a correlation between rising antisemitism and the start of modern political Zionism, but there wasn’t causation.
Theordore Herzl founded modern political Zionism, and he was motivated to create a Jewish State in the historic Jewish land of Israel as fast as possible to create a refuge for the Jewish people from rising hate, but Herzl wasn’t the first person to encourage Jewish immigration to Israel nor was he the first person to think of creating an independent Jewish state.
While there has been a continuous Jewish presence in the land of Israel over the millennia, the yearning to return to Zion, the biblical term for both the land of Israel and Jerusalem, has been a cornerstone of Jewish communal life since the Romans violently colonized the land, sending Jews into exile two thousand years ago. An earlier exile by the Babylonians produced perhaps the most well-known lamentation, “By the rivers of Babylon, there we wept as we remembered Zion.” That connection between Jews and the land, and the hope for repatriation, is deeply embedded in Jewish prayer, ritual, literature and culture.
Wrap-up
Modern Zionism was a political movement that aimed to return the Jews to their historic homeland. Even without the rise in antisemitism in the late 1800s there’d still be a movement to bring Jews home without antisemitism. For the two thousand years before the massive catastrophe of the Holocaust, there was no imperative for the Jews to return to Israel. Jews didn’t see a need to return to their own land and establish a state until they had nowhere to flee during the Holocaust. The Jews came to realize that a State of Israel isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity.
The Jewish people’s position on their rights to establish, govern, and live in their historic homeland didn’t change; it was the timing and the necessity of establishing the state that changed. Zionism wasn’t a response to antisemitism; it was supercharged by antisemitism, but the principles of Zionism were established thousands of years ago. Today’s State of Israel exists on the foundation of its eternal principles.
Uri Pilichowski is an author, speaker, and senior educator at institutions around the world.