#Zionist leaders like Ben Zvi believed this and it didn't stop them from doing the things they've done. They didn't and dont care

[bijoumikhawal]

additionally, Ugandan Jews, who have been practicing Rabbinic Judaism since 1920 (brief early history: before that the community was started in 1919 by a man (Semei Kakungulu) who initally converted to Christianity in 1880 but wanted to be circumcised- upon being told that basically would make him a Jew, he declared that in that case, he was a Jew, and underwent circumcision anyway, and declared his family were Jewish. This made the British and a bunch of other people mad. In 1920, a man named Yosef visited them and taught them about kashrut and the Hebrew calendar) were recently ruled not to be Jewish enough for aaliyah either.

Further the state is kind of horrible toward everyone who isn't Rabbinic. Ethiopian Jews traditionally are non Rabbinic, their community is led by priests and monks, and there is massive pressure on Ethiopian Jews to convert to Orthodox Rabbinic Judaism. Karaites, who today are either of Eastern European (esp. Crimean) or Egyptian descent, have a long history of being maligned by Rabbinic Jews, so it's not new that they aren't always treated well. Additionally, Samaritans are considered a sect of Judaism by the state even though they themselves do not consider theirs and Rabbinic Judaism to be the same religion, and they still aren't considered to be "Halakhic Jews", which is part of a broader weird and complicated political position they're put in by virtue of wanting not to be aggressively discriminated against, but also historically being scorned and considered inferior/outsiders because they aren't Rabbinic, as well as having historically close cultural ties to Palestinians. There's limited publication about this afaik, but I've met Beta Israelim who speak about this problem based on personal experiences, and there are others from the latter two groups that speak about the struggles they face as well.

People do not realize that when we say Israel is a settler-colonial state, we mean it was literally devised in junction with European imperialism around the turn of the century.

Political Zionism was founded by Theodore Herzl. Originally, Zionists were not specifically interested in the land of Palestine as a colonial project. In fact, Herzl was debating making Argentina the focus of mass Zionist migration, which is quite ironic considering Argentina's colonial and Aryanist past. British-controlled Uganda was also offered as a possibility by Joseph Chamberlain, a Conservative imperialist.

To encourage mass Jewish migration to Palestine, he worked with the British, who had recently drove the Ottoman Empire out of the Levant, and now boasted political dominance in the region, thanks to the Sykes–Picot Agreement between the UK, France, Italy, and Russia which covertly authorized British influence in Palestine, which had become a target of colonial expansion. He specifically wished to collaborate with Cecil Rhodes, a British imperialist who played a lead role in colonizing Zimbabwe and Zambia, and later took inspiration from his time spent extracting wealth from Africa as the founder of mining conglomerate the British South Africa Company.

Herzl’s personal goals for Zionism were colonial. He said in a letter to Rhodes:

“You are being invited to help make history. It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews […] How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial […] I […] have examined this plan and found it correct and practicable. It is a plan full of culture, excellent for the group of people for whom it is directly designed, and quite good for England, for Greater Britain [...]”

At that time, Palestine was predominately populated with Arab Muslims and Christians, as well as Arab Jews (Old Yishuv) and Druze. Jews made up around 6% of the population. The Ottoman government specifically released a manifesto at the start of Zionist migration condemning the colonization, stating:

“[Jews] among us […] who have been living in our province since before the war; they are as we are, and their loyalties are our own.”

The Balfour Declaration of 1917 on behalf of parliament, officially established the British Mandate of Palestine, sowing the seeds for the modern state of Israel, by means of the UK's ongoing occupation of the region.

Zionism was never about promoting Jewish culture or safety; it has always been tied up in Western (settler-)colonial expansion. !من النهر إلى البحر