RESPONSE TO ANTISEMITISM AND ORGANISING
Within this context, Zionism can be understood as one of multiple responses arising from Europe’s politically diverse Jewish population to the problem of antisemitism. As opposed to liberal Jews, who pushed for assimilation and integration as a way of combating antisemitism, or revolutionary socialist Jews, who called for social and political revolution throughout Europe to fight antisemitism, Zionists argued instead for a colonial enterprise to establish a Jewish state. They argued for this by constructing Jews - specifically European Jews - as a nation, as opposed to simply a religious community, which was unprecedented at the time. By virtue of positioning themselves as a nation, they required a state. At the same time, during a burgeoning era of European imperialism and colonialism, early Zionist thinkers saw virtue in a colonial venture, they saw as a sign of strength and civilisation, through which they could prove themselves as a “worthy” people deserving of respect from European society.
Taking all of this together, Zionism can essentially be seen as a nationalist movement that offered a particular vision of Jewish self-determination as an “answer” to the problem of antisemitism in Europe. The key argument of the Zionist movement was that Jewish suffering was inevitable and unsolvable within Europe, and no amount of assimilation would be enough. They argued therefore that Jewish people, primarily at that time European Jews, needed a safe haven of their own: they needed their own state. Organising structures were founded to see this vision through. In 1897 in the city of Basel in Switzerland, the First Zionist Congress was held by the Zionist Organisation (ZO), today known as the World Zionist Organisation (WZO). The ZO was founded at this congress by Theodor Herzl, who is considered to be the foremost founding Zionist thinker and theorist. At this congress, inaugurated and chaired by Herzl himself, the official Zionist program was laid out and agreed upon, known as the Basel Program. After considering various places, including modern-day Kenya and Argentina, the Zionist movement identified Palestine as the destination for their future state because of historic Jewish connections and therefore the greater likelihood that settlement could be encouraged, particularly amongst religious Jews.
Zionism seeks to establish a home in Palestine for the Jewish people… -Basel Program
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