#I haven't even delved into russia but it seems... well chaotic and messed up even at a glance

[brick-van-dyke]

Also I'm hyper focused on the history again so I want to do a brief rundown of a few things I've looked into as someone who's just been generally invested in the origins of Zionism. Removed from Israel, Palestine and the general horror of it all, I've found the history itself utterly fascinating from a historic standpoint.

See, the hope to return is an important Jewish thing that is genuinely a part of Jewish culture worldwide. However, this doesn't explicitly mean it's a desire for ownership, just to go back to the land and return to old practices in the place they view as holy and as "home". This isn't wrong, but it is different to Zionism when you consider what Zionism has become over the course of, say, a century and a half post the French Revolution. To be more precise, since the creation of a political ideology centred on western nationalism and socialism. The two are very distinct, but at the turn of this specific event in history, the two became conflated and thus Zionism as we know it came into being. It's why, today, Jews who are anti-Zionist are seen as "Self Hating", because of this conflation despite the strong differences in both origins and historical contexts. Obviously, this will all be me simplifying and paraphrasing, and just generally explaining as briefly as I can to the best of my ability and the knowledge I've acquired thus far. My knowledge isn't perfect, but it is something I've been studying for long enough to create a sort of internal timeline while understanding how Zionism formed.

So, returning to the French Revolution. For the first time, Jews were granted the same rights and citizenship of other groups in France, meaning that they could live however they like, including in traditionally "non Jewish" ways. This was an amazing step forward for human rights and equality, but with the merging of two cultures, sometimes you get strange hybrid subcultures, one being the introduction of socialism and nationalism into the Jewish sense of the hope for return. Mix that with different perspectives of how that should be done and different reasons why one would want to achieve it, you'll evidently get something fairly messy. Even so, it became a common held belief for many socialists, (arguably) this included Karl Marx himself and many others who saw Zionism as a fellow socialist movement and a potential usage to help with the then "Jewish Question" of Europe. Marx himself was said to have been Jewish, yet seemed reluctant to associate with the label. From the beginning, I would argue there is a considerable overlap in anti religious socialism and the socialist nationalism of Zionism, though that in and of itself would require further study. For now, it is something I have been considering due to how much overlap I have observed over such an extended history of the two interwoven movements.

For many Jewish communities, there wasn't really a linear type of Zionism that everyone agreed on. Not until around 1897 when Theodore Hertzl created a more unified ideology of Zionism and propelled the ideology forward. In Hertzl's vision, assimilation and the concept of a homeland in a westernised ownership sense of the word became more mainstream. It wasn't as widely accepted as nowadays, but it was something that became very popular amongst European Jews and, to note in particular, the European Jews that immigrated to historic Palestine. Before, during and after World War I.

As a sort of side note/ tangent (since I find it really interesting, but it isn't exactly directly related to Zionism per se), a European-Ottoman Jew created the beginnings of Modern Hebrew from Ancient Hebrew and Ottoman Arabic. Ancient Hebrew is somewhat like Latin in that it had become a dead language that lacked an ability to be spoken. Yiddish, a compensation of ancient Hebrew with modern European languages, became the norm in Europe, while modern Hebrew (what would later become Israeli Hebrew) originated from Arabic in order to be spoken and ancient Hebrew in terms of base words and structure that could be utilised. There were other forms of Hebrew as well iirc, but these two became the most prominent. I still need to understand the potential relations or there lack of when it comes to ancient Berber (Amazigh), Armenian and Assyrian, I do know that Aramaic specifically was widely spoken alongside Greek. Hebrew was a written language more used by the wealthy and upper class, as I understand it. Which is quite interesting when you consider the different languages used, the immigration in a biblical context, etc. but that's a tangent for another time.

Back onto Zionism, Palestine and generally just the history of how it all developed into what it is. In the aftermath of the defeat of the Ottoman Turks, Europe created the British Balfour Declaration in order to come to a sort of agreement amongst European Zionists and the British government. However, there is much controversy on if this was to appease the Jews, or to simply get rid of them and create a place to "better manage and control" the Jews. This is particularly pushed due to the rising antisemetism in Europe, particularly within the government itself at the time. It had no respect or love for Jews and likely sought a way to "get rid" of them through mass immigration. Again, this is more theoretical and contemplative of the potential reasoning. I personally see the logic, but I wouldn't say it's "a historical fact" rooted in concrete events. Basically, there's a lot of evidence, but I won't claim it as fact.

In the post Ottoman British Mandate of Palestine, we begin to see a strong push from Britian to control Palestine and it's affairs (irrespective of Arab or Jewish prioritisation iirc). It created much tension in the region between native populations of Arabs and Jews to any Europeans and Britons who immigrated there. To the local diaspora, they were seen as invaders and a potential avenue for the Mandate to further wrest more power over local resources and to limit access to the land and their own practices. A fear of colonisation, more so than any fear of religion, began to fester in the British Mandate of Palestine. However, irrespective of the native Jewish population, the European Jewish immigrants were seen in a different light to their indigenous counterparts. Namely, they were seen as European settlers rather than simply just Jews. That isn't to say there were many different perspectives born from this and potential antisemetism, but the main cause was indisputably the context of a foreign entity resting control of the area and seeing immigrants of said entity as potential dangers. This would accumulate and continue to boil over until the Arab Revolt, when tensions flared even more out of the rejection of European immigration and the desire for assimilation from European Jews in the midst of British oppression and colonialism. The mixture was violent and something that, in my view, was a sad inevitability considering the pretext of the British Mandate Itself. Had Palestine been self-governing, while still having many issues, I believe the tensions would never have been so high had it not been for the control the British government sought at the time; those sparks would exist, but the fuel added created an explosive environment that was bound to erupt at any moment.

In light of such tension and violence amongst the different groups involved, Jewish resistance forces were born, or in other words, European Jewish resistances more specifically or "terrorists" in the eyes of the Britons, certain indigenous Jews (specially anti Zionist groups that formed at the time) and Arabs alike. Internationally they were also legally recognised as the terrorist organisations; Haganah (which intersected with the Histadrut, a socialist nationalist union to create and preserve immigrant Jewish settlements), Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Gang. These three would eventually merge and create the basis for Israel's governmental systems and agencies, as well as it's military.

The 1920s-1940s, if not before and after as well, saw a great deal of hardship and violence, against both Arabs and towards Jews who did not conform to the Zionist movement in Palestine. Namely, the bombing of the King David Hotel which was counted as one of the reasons for the later UN resolution to create a state of Israel in order to prevent further violence (this didn't work very well evidently), and the assassination of Jacob Israël de Haan, a Jewish antizionist. That isn't to say they didn't protect Jewish settlements, they did and prioritised Jewish sovereignty. However, this was done with indiscriminate violence towards Jews and Arabs alike who expressed any dissemination or push against said settlements and Zionist views. These were sparks that were ignited from the history of western colonialism irrespective of Jewish immigration, but also evidently a new issue arose from this of westernised Zionism using colonialist methodology and ideologies of nationalism, borders and ownership to further flare preexisting suspicions towards European settlers. Zionism created a further distaste for Jewish immigration as a result of all these factors merging into one larger issue.

Meanwhile, back in Europe, antisemetism was on the rise which saw further immigration to Palestine, until the British Mandate began to reject refugees, just as Australia, the USA, UK, Canada and New Zealand, amongst many others, began to ban Jewish refugees from entering the country. Meanwhile Nazi Germany supported Zionist efforts in Palestine due to the potential "solution" of expelling Jews from Nazi Germany completely via Palestine. The Haavara Agreement also came into effect from 1933 to 1939, another example of collaboration between Zionist entities and the Nazi party owning to the shared belief in a Jewish Palestine and a "Jew-free" Europe. Though there are other factors as well, many of which I am still researching myself, it is clear that Zionism shared much of the end goals of (early) Nazism when it came to mass immigration, as well as Nazism in general when it came to socialist nationalism. The history of socialism and Zionism itself is a long one of comradery, one I would compare almost to a parental ideology and it's subgroup, owing to the fact political Zionism originated from socialism and the French Revolution. What's more was the emphasis of nationalism and ethnic essentialism in the two ideologies, which further created a unified solidarity between Nazis and Zionists in Europe before, and even during the Holocaust. It also just be understood that Zionists themselves were not necessarily Jewish and didn't necessarily have the interests of Jews in mind, rather, the interest of a Jewish Palestine and a solid socialist nationalist movement within Palestine.

Overall, it can be very clearly seen throughout history that Zionism, as a political entity and movement, is one with political motivations rather than purely cultural or religious. It cannot be claimed that it is merely "a desire for return" when compared to the history, unless one would ignore this history and claim there were two distinct "Zionisms" at play; the Zionist Movement (the socialist nationalist ideology) and the Zionist Sentiment (the Jewish cultural ideal). However, due to the harm calling both Zionism has caused in relation to the evident increase in antisemetism from those fearing and/ or rejecting the political movement, who then conflate the two different ideologies, I would confidently say that referring to the Jewish right to return ought to be considered separate. The history, owing to its violence and severity, as well as the antisemetism interwoven into the Zionist political movement, would create more issues for the Jewish people rather than assist them. This is my own opinion here, of course, but the above has indeed contributed to such a conclusion. It is based on historical evidence that has more or less seemed consistent in its overarching intention to push socialist nationalism, rather than purely a home for the Jews. I would even go as far as to claim that Zionism would continue to exist and prosper without the Jewish people, it would merely seek another group to explain the expansion of socialist nationalism.

Anyway, those are my thoughts so far and, of course, I'm still looking into this so take this all with a grain of salt. I also need to look further into the Russian side of things and more into the Zionism in Russia. Either way, better to look into these events in history yourselves and expand your own knowledge of these events. These are just my own observational insights and conclusions thus far.

If there's one thing I've respectively noticed from Zionists and defenders of Israeli war crimes, it's that every source, argument and potential avenue to explore each explanation is riddled with cherry picking, moving the goalposts and mental gymnastics to explain why their conclusions, which typically are barely even related to the sources they use, somehow overshadow literal reality and what we see with our own eyes.

While scrolling, one example I came across was the repetitive misrepresentation of BLM, antifa and quotes from Martin Luther King Jr, as well as statistics, scholarly journal articles and government website information. These are all good sources, yet every single time they're mangled completely until the only possible "interpretation" of any of them is "well Israel is right to defend itself after shorting rockets beforehand because the retaliation was brutal and all Arabs are bad by default therefore". As if any of these sources are even about individual exceptions of Israel versus hatred towards Arabs.

I think what I find most absurd, as someone in the middle of their own studies, is how every bit of critical thinking and logic goes out the window as they do every single thing possible to do what professors worldwide say NOT to do when evaluating sources. It's like watching a race to see who can tangle and misconstrue scientific information to fit their world view the fastest. Then said people say "um actually I studied at university before so it's actually not wrong that I'm doing this exact this everyone is warned not to do because I have a permit". Ignorance I can forgive, but willful and arrogant manipulation? That's another thing entirely.