Z

Zionism

Zionism is the political creed, dating from early in the diaspora, that the old
Jewish national homeland of Palestine should be regained by Jews and run as a
national home and centre for world-wide Jewish solidarity. Although Zionism
grew with increasing fervour from the early 20th century, the rise of vicious
anti-Semitismin Europe during the 1930s greatly increased its support. For a
long time the area demanded, Palestine, was governed under a mandate from
theLeague of Nations, and then theUnited Nations, by the United
Kingdom, because, whatever international Judaism might argue historically,
it was a fully populated Arab country which could not be evacuated or
suddenly flooded with European Jews, and tight immigration controls were
applied. After the European Holocaust, however, it became both morally and
practically difficult for Western powers to maintain their protection of the area
and, after a terrorist campaign and the withdrawal of British troops, militant
Jewish groups founded the State of Israel as the official Zionist homeland.
While the general doctrine of Zionism has remained vitally important to
most Jews, world-wide, the problem of the Palestinian people, especially in the
areas which Israel added to its control after its defensive wars against Arab
states, has diminished external support, and even produced political strains
inside Israel. Nowadays Zionism principally refers to ahawks and doves
orientation towards Israeli policy. Zionists support at least the retention of the
land gained in the variousArab–Israeli conflictssince 1947, and possibly a
further integration of these areas by the settlement of Jewish immigrants,
mainly from the former Soviet Union. Zionism still retains considerable
support, often among financially and politically powerful Jewish lobbies in
Western countries, and especially in the USA. Non-Zionists, whether Jewish,
Israeli or neither, increasingly believe that some sort of accommodation,
almost certainly involving the creation of a Palestinian state somewhere inside
the currentde factoIsraeli borders, is both right and politically necessary.
At a UN conference onracismin September 2001, a number of Arab states,
led by Syria, proposed a that the conference equate Zionism with racism,
claiming that in its contemporary sense the suppression of the Palestinian