Shortly after receiving the Emmy statuette for his role in the series HacksJewish actress Hannah Einbinder, who finished her speech of thanks with a “Free Palestine”, published a story on her Instagram in which she approached an increasingly widespread vision of what Zionism means. “No – he wrote – Zionism is not the idea of Jewish self -determination. It is a colonial political project based on the colonization of Palestine to create a Jewish majority, where Jews have more rights than the Palestinians (apartheid). This genocide we are seeing is necessary for Zionism to prosper. That is why I hate the term ‘liberal sionist’, since it acquits the identifier to recognize the real definition of the system designed to kill Palestinians and colonize his land. “In the Israeli newspaper closest to the left, Haaretz, the journalist Allison Kaplan Sommer tried to understand the position of the actress.” Einbinder is the voice of a generation that has officially completed the cycle of the feelings of the feelings of the feelings of the feelings and great -grandparents, who experienced a rise of proud Jewish identity in the first years of Israel. They linked his Judaism to Israel so inextricably that the young state not only became an integral part of his religion, but often became a complete substitute for religion itself. Today, his descendants no longer see Israel as the proud protector of his faith. They want to protect ‘our religion’ from the State that, as they believe, harms it and, by extension, to themselves, “said Kaplan Sommer. Ok, Let’s talk about Zionism.
The definition of Zionism, according to the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy, is: “Jewish political movement focused on its origins in the formation of an Israel State and, after the proclamation of this in 1948, in its support and defense.” Some more could be deepened. Zionism is a kind of nationalist movement that understands Jews not as independent people with a religion, but as a people in itself that, therefore, requires a state. Israel’s original idea is that all Jews can live there, as a people, in their country. In fact, the Israeli return law grants citizens to any Jewish person who moves to the country.
As a nationalist movement, Zionism began to gain weight at the end of the nineteenth century thanks to the journalist and writer Austrohungaro Theodor Herzl, who had the conviction, not fictitious, that the Jews were increasingly persecuted. In 1896, he published the book ‘The Jewish State’, where he developed an “ancient thought: the restoration of the Jewish state.” “The world resonates with clamor against the Jews, and this awakens that numb thought,” he wrote in the prologue. From there, he explained A “simple plan”, which will be given to the Jews “sovereignty over a piece of the earth’s surface” to “satisfy” your “just needs as a people.” Once that claim is achieved, Herzl imagined, “it will be deliberate about the country to be occupied.”
In his book, Herzl considered two ideas, to occupy Palestine, but also Argentina. “Which one to choose?” He asked and then explain that “in both countries notable colonization trials have been carried out according to the false criterion of the gradual infiltration of the Jews”, something that in their opinion “tends to end badly, since the moment always arrives at which the government, pressed by the population that feels threatened, prohibits the immigration of Jews.” So what? From Argentina, it stressed that it was “one of the richest countries on land, of immense surface, scarce population and moderate climate.” A country that, according to him, “would have the greatest interest in giving a part of its territory” for the “natural disgust” that caused the “current infiltration of the Jews.” “We would have to explain to Argentina the radical difference of the new Jewish emigration”, a displacement that would be “gradual” and “decades” would last. Then there was the Palestine option, a territory that Herzl looked in his book as the “unforgettable historical homeland” of the Jews. It also advanced something that resonates in some speeches still today: “For Europe we would form a bulwark against Asia; we would be at the service of the advanced positions of culture against barbarism. As a neutral state, we would maintain a relationship with all of Europe, which would have to guarantee our existence.” A year after publishing his book, Herzl organized the first Zionist Congress, from which the world Zionist organization emerged. The objective was clear: to constitute a Jewish state in Palestine.
Herzl died in 1904, but Zionism gained more and more strength worldwide. Before he died, the writer even proposed to accept the British offer to establish the Jewish state in Kenya, but the Zionist movement did not accept it. They wanted to occupy Palestine, a place they emigrated more and more Jews. Everything rushed, of course, following the Second World War and the Nazi Holocaust, who pursued and murdered six million Jews throughout Europe. In November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly (UN) approved its number 181 resolution, which established the Palestine partition in two states, one Jewish and another Arab, a decision that then supported both the United States and the USSR. However, it was not well received by the Palestinians, who lost much of their territory even being a majority, or by the most extremist Zionists, who wanted even more. The UN resolution was never carried out. In May 1948, Israel declared its independence. Only eleven minutes after doing so, the United States recognized it. At that same moment, Israel decided to expand its borders. 700,000 Palestinians were displaced and converted into refugees in their own land. A war broke out that has extended to this day, a concatenation of conflicts thanks to which the state of Israel has gained more and more territory. The Palestinians called what happened in 1948 the Nakba, the catastrophe.
Theodor Herzl (center), one of the ideologues of Zionism, in a ship to Palestine in 1898.
While not all Jews are Zionists, The state of Israel, as such, was born from a Zionist conception, that is, the need to constitute a nation for and for the Jews. However, during all these years it is true that there have been several currents within Zionism, from the most extreme, such as current ministers such as Bezalel Smotrich, which advocates the total annihilation of Palestine, to the most ‘liberal’, such as the one defended by the professor and historian Zeev Sternhell. For Sternhell, who was considered a real Zionist, who opted for the occupation of Palestine were not “true Zionists”. “Whoever supports the occupation, that is, a binational state, is not a Zionist. This could also be said of the politicians who delay the negotiations aimed at achieving a solution of two states for two nations. They are postponing this solution for an unpredictable future, endangering the future of the Jewish state,” the teacher told the newspaper Haaretz In 2008.
In that conversation with Haaretzwhich defined Sternhell as “a member of the Zionist left,” the professor already ventured the extension of a thought that has moved actress Hannah Einbinder days. “Today [en 2008]the conviction of young people about it [que el futuro será mejor] It is falling apart. The occupation is corrupting our society. The terrible violence in the territories is spreading beyond the green line [la frontera que Israel pactó con Egipto, Jordania, Líbano y Siria para finalizar con la guerra de 1948]. This is inevitable: there can be no different norms and laws for each person without affecting the whole society. I do not seek absolute justice, only the end of the construction of a de facto apartheid, just ensure the creation of a society that future generations are not ashamed“Sternhell said. The historian died in June 2020, although it is not difficult to predict what would say what the United Nations has already described as a genocide.
In Israel, but also in what they call its diaspora, especially the United States, where with the passage of time the manifestations against war increase, there are already those who ask if this does not imply the very end of Zionism, if it has been shown that Zionism is nothing more than a failed movement, although for now it has been successful. He tells so, not without irony, the Israeli activist made: “There are Palestinians and Jews who cannot hear the spokesman of Israel’s defense forces without thinking of David Ben – Gurion in 1948: ‘To the Arabs of the Earth of Israel only one function left: it seems that, from the albores of Zionism, that is all that we could imagine. Cabo, as a landless people, we arrive at a land with people. […] We have only one function: Zionism. 77 years of ‘remodeling operations’ (as the head of the central command recently called them). Not only remodel the earth, but also consciousness, yours and ours. However, the Palestinians resist that sole function that we assign to them. […] Palestine is a dangerous terrorist because he has not yet fulfilled his only function: fleeing“.
