Ideologies In The Middle East

1. Islam.
a.Sunni
b.Shi'ah
2. Secularism(Turkey)
3. Arab Socialism (Nasserism in Egypt & Libya )
4. Christian (Phalangist at Libanon)
5. Zionisme (Israel);
I. ISLAM
A.Sunni Islam, one of the two main branches of Islam. Shia Islam is the other.
Sunni Muslims constitute the vast majority in the world Islamic community (see Islam).
The term sunna means the way or the example and refers to the example of the
Prophet Muhammad. All Islamic groups and sects, however, accept the Sunna, along with
the Qur'an (Koran), the sacred scriptures of Islam, as binding. Because it means the
way, the term sunna may also be intended to distinguish mainstream Muslims from
Shia Muslims, who follow a side path.
The two main branches of Islam differ primarily in their beliefs about the
succession to Muhammad. Sunni Muslims believe that Muhammad intended that the
Muslim community choose a successor, or caliph, by consensus to lead the theocracy
(earthly kingdom under divine rule) he had set up. Shia Muslims, also known as Shias,
believe that Muhammad chose his son-in-law, Ali, as his successor, and that only the
descendents of Ali and his wife, Fatima, were entitled to rule the Muslim community.
There are also differences between the two branches in interpretation of the Quran.
The doctrines of Sunni Islam were formed toward the end of the 9th century, and
its theology was developed as a complete system during the 10th century. Both
developments occurred, in large measure, as reactions to early schismatic movements,
such as the Kharijites, Mutazilites, and Shias. The inclusive Sunni definition of a Muslim,
for instance, was conceived in reaction to the narrow extremism of the Kharijites. The
strong Sunni emphasis on God's power, will, and determination of human fate developed
in reaction to the Mutazilite insistence on the absolute freedom of the human will. Sunni
political doctrines emerged in the struggle against the legitimism espoused by the Shias in
the dispute over the succession to Muhammad (see Caliphate).
Various nuances of interpretation and different schools have developed within
Sunni theology, the Sunni tendency having been to accommodate minor differences of
opinion and to affirm the consensus of the community in doctrinal matters. Four schools
of law also developed in the Sunni tradition: the Shafi'i, the Hanafi, the Maliki, and the
Hanbali.

B. Shiah- Islam

Shia Islam, the second-largest branch of Islam. Sunni Islam constitutes the
largest branch to which the majority of Muslims belong.
Shia Islam emerged out of a dispute over the succession to Muhammad, the
prophet of Islam. His successors, called caliphs, were both political and religious
leaders of the theocracy (earthly kingdom under divine rule) that Muhammad had
set up (see Caliphate). After the assassination of the fourth caliph, Ali, in 661, Alis
supporters claimed that it had been Alis right to succeed Muhammad directly and
that the previous caliphs had therefore been usurpers. They maintained that only
the descendants of Ali and his wife, Fatima, Muhammad's daughter, were entitled
to rule the Muslim community. Alis followers were known as the Shia (partisans),
or Shiites. But the majority of the Muslim community, who followed the Sunna
(way), rejected the Shia doctrine about the succession.
The Shia developed a doctrine of the infallibility, sinlessness, and divine right to
authority of the descendants of Ali, whom they called imams (see Imam). The main Shia
body recognizes 12 imams and is called the Twelvers; the Ismailis recognize 7 and are
called the Seveners. The last imam disappeared in 880, and Shia Muslims to this day
await his return, when they believe that justice will be established on earth.
The imam, as Shia Islam conceives him, is a repository of wisdom, absolute in his
political and religious authority. Under the theoretical aegis of the 12th imam, Shia
religious leaders exercise immense influence. They are more likely to take an innovative
approach to religious issues and to defy political authority than are Sunni leaders.
During the early centuries of Islam, the Shia, politically defeated and persecuted,
became an underground movement and adopted the principles of taqwa (which in this
case means dissimulation of faith) and of an esoteric interpretation of the Qur'an
(Koran), the sacred scriptures of Islam. Thus, Shia Muslims believe that beneath the
explicit and literal meaning of the Qur'an are other levels of meaning, which are known
only to the imam, who can reveal them to chosen followers. These principles, useful to
the movement when it was politically powerless, are still accepted by Shia Islam. This
branch of Islam also affirms the validity of a form of temporary marriage called muta.
Shia Muslims pay the tax called zakat (originally levied by Muhammad to help the poor
and later levied by Muslim states) to their religious leaders rather than to state
authorities, as they did before achieving political power (for instance, in Iran in the 15th
century). As a result, some Shia leaders in Iran and Iraq have immense wealth and
property.

During the 10th and 11th centuries, Shia Islam had a large following throughout
the Middle East, but the spread of the popular mystical movement known as Sufism
seems to have greatly diminished its strength. Today Shia Muslims are in the majority in
Iran, and large numbers are found in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, India, Pakistan, and parts of
Central Asia. Their total number exceeds 165 million. In the late 20th century several
Shia leaders, including the Iranian political leader Ayatollah Khomeini, advocated
rapprochement and solidarity with Sunni Islam.

C. Secularism

(Mustafa Kemal Atatrk, Turkey)

Mustafa Kemal Atatrk (1881 10 November 1938) was a Turkish army officer
and revolutionist statesman. Also, he was the founder and first President of the Republic
of Turkey; known most of his life as Mustafa Kemal, he was given the name Atatrk by
the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in 1934. He launched such of ideas :
secularization, de-Arabization & de-Islamization of Turkey.
D. Arab Socialism
(are Socialism ideas which modified & applied in the Middle East)
1. Nasserism (Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt);
Nasser, Gamal Abdel (1918-1970), Egyptian statesman, who rose from humble
beginnings to become president of Egypt (1956-1970) and the most influential leader of
the Arab world.
Nasser was born in Alexandria on January 15, 1918, the son of a postman. After
secondary schooling in Cairo, he entered the Royal Military Academy, and graduated in
1938. There and in subsequent service he formed friendships with a few fellow officers
and with them created a secret revolutionary society, the Free Officers. Egypt was ruled
at the time by a small landowning class that possessed one-third of the land and
dominated parliament; the British presence was all-pervasive, and the king, Faruk I, was
an irresponsible playboy. The Free Officers plotted to rid Egypt of the British and the
king, and the disastrous campaign against Israel in 1948 strengthened their resolve. On
July 23, 1952, they staged a coup and ousted King Faruk. Although he was the real
leader, Nasser initially remained in the background.
Radical measures were soon instituted: landownership was limited and political
parties banned. In 1953 the monarchy was abolished and a republic proclaimed. It was
first headed by General Muhammad Naguib, but in 1954 Nasser stepped out of the
shadows to assume power. He subsequently negotiated a treaty with the British, by which

Egypt was evacuated after 72 years of occupation. Nasser was officially elected president
in 1956.

Following the Bandung Conference (1955), at which he emerged as a world figure,

having espoused a policy of nonalignment (see Nonaligned Movement), Nasser's
relations with the West deteriorated. In 1956 Britain and the United States withdrew their
financial support from his Aswn High Dam project. In order to obtain funds for the
project, Nasser then nationalized the Suez Canal. This brought aggression from France
and Britain in alliance with Israel. Under pressure from the U.S., however, the three were
forced to withdraw, and a United Nations emergency force was subsequently placed as a
buffer between Egypt and Israel.
By this time Nasser had become a hero in the Arab world. In 1958 Syria and
Egypt united under his presidency, forming the United Arab Republic. The union,
however, broke up in 1961 after a coup in Syria. Nasser subsequently espoused a
program of Arab socialism, in which banks and utilities were nationalized to finance a
program of industrialization.
By 1967 the Arab-Israeli situation had deteriorated. After the UN peacekeeping
force, at Nasser's request, had been withdrawn, and Egyptian guns blockaded the Gulf of
Aqaba to Israeli ships, Israel attacked Egypt and occupied the entire Sinai Peninsula up to
the Suez Canal (see Six-Day War). Nasser, taking responsibility for the debacle, resigned,
but the people took to the streets, demanding his return to government. He never,
however, regained his previous stature. On September 28, 1970, he died suddenly of a
heart attack.

Opinion about Nasser is sharply divided. His detractors stress his police-state
methods and criticize his foreign policies, which also involved Egypt in a war in Yemen
(1962-67). Others praise his internal reforms and see him as the man who wrested Egypt
from the grasp of foreigners and a decadent monarchy and gave it back to the Egyptians.
Beyond doubt, he was the foremost Arab leader of his time, who restored Arab dignity
after the long humiliation of Western domination.
2. Moammar Khadaffi (Nasserism in Libya)

Libya, in full, Great Socialist Peoples Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, nation of northern
Africa. It is bounded on the north by the Mediterranean Sea, on the east by Egypt, on the

southeast by Sudan, on the south by Chad and Niger, on the west by Algeria, and on the
northwest by Tunisia. Libya is one of the largest countries in Africa. It covers an area of
1,757,000 sq km (678,400 sq mi), much of which is desert. Tripoli, located on the
Mediterranean coast, is the capital and largest city.
Libya is rich with petroleum resources, and oil dominates the nations economy.
The site of ancient Phoenician, Roman, and Arab settlements, Libya was colonized by
Italy in the early 20th century. The country became independent in 1951, and in 1969
young army officer Muammar al-Qaddafi seized power and proceeded to create a new
Libya based on his unique socialistic and nationalistic theories.

The indigenous population of Libya, comprising about 83 percent of the people, is

mostly Berber and Arab in origin; foreign workers make up the remainder of the
inhabitants. The population is unevenly distributed across the country: 88 percent live in
urban areas, mostly on the coast. A small number of Libyans still live in nomadic or
seminomadic groups in the plains and desert.

In 2004 Libya had an estimated population of 5,631,585. Due to the countrys

high population growth rate (2.37 percent in 2004), well over half of the population is
under 25 years old.
Islam is the state religion, and virtually all Libyans are Sunni Muslims. Arabic is
the official language, although Berber is sometimes spoken and English and Italian are
used in trade.

After Qaddafi came to power, he consolidated the Royal Libyan Army (in which
he had served) and the larger and better equipped provincial police and security forces
into one national military force. In the 1980s he claimed to have disbanded much of the
regular standing army in favor of civilian militia units, a policy of arming the people.
In actuality, this Peoples Army serves as an adjunct to the regular military. In 2002 the
regular military establishment included an army of 45,000 members, a navy of 8,000, and
an air force of 23,000.
During World War II (1939-1945), Libya was the scene of intense desert fighting
between Italo-German and Allied forces. Following the expulsion of Axis troops in 1943,
France and Britain shared control of the country. Britain, Italy, France, the United States,
and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) all offered to administer a
trusteeship in the territory, but on November 21, 1949, the United Nations General

Assembly approved a resolution calling for the granting of independence to Libya by

January 1, 1952.

A national assembly, composed of delegates from Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, and

Fezzan, convened at Tripoli in 1950 and nominated Emir Sayid Idris al-Sanusi, head of
the Cyrenaican government and leader of the Sanusi brotherhood, to serve as king of an
independent Libya. The assembly promulgated the Libyan constitution on October 7,
1951. On December 24 the emir, as King Idris I, proclaimed the independence of the
federal United Kingdom of Libya. Elections were held in February 1952, and parliament
met for the first time in March. Libya joined the Arab League in 1953 and the United
Nations (UN) in 1955. In 1963 the constitution was amended to give women the right to
vote, and the federal system was replaced by a unitary system.
Britain and France agreed to extend financial aid to the government in exchange
for the right to maintain their military installations in Libya. The United States, wishing
to retain the vast Wheelus Field air base near Tripoli, promised economic and technical
assistance. Libya established diplomatic relations with the USSR in 1956 but rejected
Soviet offers of economic aid. In 1964 negotiations were begun between Libya and the
United States and Britain for the withdrawal of troops and the closing of air bases. The
last contingents of British and U.S. troops left in 1970.
Libya was not a participant in the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and
neighboring Arab countries, but it strongly supported its Arab League neighbors in
opposition to Israel after the war. Libya also gave financial aid to Jordan and the United
Arab Republic, as Egypt was then called, to rebuild their economies.
Beginning in the mid-1950s, development of the oil industry made rapid progress
and turned Libya into a boom country. In 1956 the Libyan government granted two
American oil companies a concession of some 5,668,000 hectares (14 million acres). In
1961 Idris I opened a 167-km (104-mi) pipeline linking important oil fields in the interior
to the Mediterranean Sea. The new facility made possible the export of Libyan oil for the
first time. In the late 1960s numerous oil companies of various nations had been granted
concessions, and oil production reached more than 85 million barrels per month.

A new era in the history of Libya began on September 1, 1969, when a group of
young army officers overthrew the royal government and established a republic under the
name Libyan Arab Republic. The revolutionary government, led by Muammar al-

Qaddafi, a 27-year-old army officer aspiring to leadership of the Arab world, showed a
determination thereafter to play a larger role in the affairs of the Middle East and North
Africa. Representatives of Libya engaged in discussions with Egypt and the Sudan on
plans for the coordination of economic, military, and political policies of the three
countries. In September 1971, Egypt, Libya, and Syria agreed to form a federation
designed for mutual military advantage against Israel. This and a later agreement to form
a union with Tunisia were abandoned in 1974.
In internal affairs the Qaddafi regime nationalized all banks and decreed that all
businesses must become wholly owned by Libyans. Agreement was reached with foreignowned oil companies that increased Libyas annual oil revenues by $770 million at that
time. In the early 1970s, however, Libya also nationalized the oil resources of the
country. After the Arab-Israeli War of 1973 Libya joined in an embargo of oil sales to the
West and urged higher prices to the oil-consuming countries.

By the mid-1970s Qaddafis domestic revolution was coalescing. The

constitution of 1977 laid out the new political system, whereby Libya became a state of
the masses (jamahiriya) ostensibly run by the people through a system of local and
national committees. The countrys official name was changed to Great Socialist Peoples
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and a decade of economic upheaval began as the government
seized most private property and instituted a radically egalitarian welfare state.
Under Qaddafis leadership Libya took a much more active role not only in Arab
affairs but also in international politics. Opposing the peace initiative toward Israel of
Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat, Libya took a leading part, along with Syria, in the socalled rejectionist front in 1978. Its support for the Palestine Liberation Organization
later expanded to barely concealed subsidies for terrorists in other nations, and in the
early 1980s the regime was believed to be linked to a campaign of assassinations directed
against Libyan dissidents residing abroad. In 1974 Libya seized a segment of Chadian
territory known as the Aozou Strip, claiming rightful ownership of the region under a
colonial-era treaty. Over the next 15 years, Libyan forces intervened in a civil war in
neighboring Chad. A peace treaty with Chad was signed in 1989.
Libyan relations with the United States deteriorated in the early 1980s. In 1981
U.S. Navy jets shot down two Libyan fighter planes that had intercepted them over
international waters in the Gulf of Sidra. Libya, which claimed all of the Gulf of Sidra as
territorial waters, decried the attack. In 1982 the United States imposed an embargo on
Libyan oil imports. Another encounter in the Gulf of Sidra in March 1986 resulted in the
destruction of two Libyan ships by U.S. Navy ships. In April, responding to heightened
terrorism in Europe apparently directed by Libya against Americans, the United States
bombed sites in Libya declared by U.S. president Ronald Reagan to be terrorist centers.

Qaddafis home at one of the barracks was damaged and his infant daughter was killed,
but the major damage was to other military sites.
During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Libya urged moderation, opposing both
Iraqs invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent use of force against Iraq. Ties with Egypt
were strengthened during 1991, but those with the United States worsened, especially in
1992 when it was charged that Libya was manufacturing chemical weapons. In April
1992 United Nations sanctions were imposed against Libya for its refusal to extradite the
two men suspected of the 1988 bombing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie,
Scotland. The United States added further sanctions against Libya in 1996.
By the mid-1990s Qaddafi began moving away from his self-appointed role as
leader of the opposition to the international system. Decades of disappointment with
failed efforts to engineer Arab unity and the burden of international sanctions had taken
their toll on the regime and the country. Moreover, developing Libyan opposition to the
Qaddafi regime created difficulties at home. Starting in the mid-1970s many of the besteducated Libyans left the country, and some formed opposition groups. During the 1980s
the United States supported elements of the exiled opposition, but they had little effect on
the regime. In the 1990s, however, a new opposition developed. Although Qaddafi had
come to power an advocate of Islam, he and the religious elite of Libya parted ways in
the early 1980s, and Qaddafis version of Islam became increasingly heterodox. As a
result, he faced the same kind of Islamist opposition many of the secular regimes in the
Arab world confronted, and he found that his interests increasingly coincided with those
of regimes he had once reviled. By the late 1990s observers suggested that Qaddafi had
become interested in Libyas participation in the international system not as a rogue
state, as the United States had labeled the nation, but as a law-abiding member.

E. Christian (Phalangist in Libanon)

The Lebanese Civil War began on April 13, 1975, with a strike and counterstrike:
Gunmen attacked Christian Phalangists (members of the Kataib faction) at a Beirut
church, killing several, and hours later, Phalangists ambushed a busload of Palestinians,
killing 27. Months of brutal battles followed, prompting military intervention by Syria.
The fighting began to calm and a cease-fire in November 1976 yielded a lull. However,
PLO attacks on northern Israel continued, bringing Israeli reprisals in Lebanon. A heavy
strike by PLO fedayeen produced an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in March 1978.
During the invasion, Israel created a self-proclaimed security zone on the southern
border of Lebanon, which was manned by the South Lebanon Army (SLA), a Lebanese
militia sympathetic to Israel. After three months, most of the Israeli troops withdrew. To
help reduce attacks in the area, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)
was deployed in the southern part of the country. Between 1980 and 1982, fighting

became rampant in Beirut again, with vicious militia wars, car bombings, kidnappings,
and assassinations.
Aiming to pacify the Palestinians and punish Lebanon for hosting them, Israel
launched Operation Peace for Galilee, a full-scale invasion of Lebanon, in June 1982.
Israel pushed north to Beirut forcing a PLO retreat. Through international mediation,
thousands of PLO troops and Syrians were evacuated from Beirut and Tripoli by sea in
August, and a multinational force made up of U.S., French, British, and Italian troops
tried to stabilize the situation. Nearly 18,000 Lebanese, in addition to many Palestinians
and Syrians, were killed in the Israeli invasion.
Anti-American Bombing On October 23, 1983, a suicide bomber crashed his truck
into the United States Marine Corps headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 U.S.
troops. They had been sent to help keep peace in Lebanon. The photograph shows the
building after the bombing.Sygma/Stuart Franklin
In mid-September 1982 the president-elect, Kataib leader Bashir Gemayel
(Jumayyil), was assassinated and replaced by his brother, Amin. Fighting continued
sporadically, and in October 1983 more than 300 U.S. and French troops were killed by a
truck bomb in Beirut. The bombing prompted the multinational force to withdraw. With
the international force gone, an assault by mainly Kataib forces, with indirect Israeli
agreement and direct logistical aid, led to the massacre of more than 800 civilians in the
Sabra-Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut. Violence continued from 1983 to
1985, and a second multinational force returned for six months. In June 1985 Israel
withdrew most of its 1983 invasion forces, again leaving a small occupying force in the
south. Palestinians making commando raids on northern Israel were joined and later
replaced by a new extremist group, Hezbollah (Party of God), which enjoyed Iranian
support and Syrian approval.
Michel Aoun Michel Aoun served as the prime minister of Lebanon from 1988 to
1989. He also led Christian forces in Lebanons civil war during the late 1980s. Liaison
Agency/Karin Daher
Although violent fighting generally eased between 1986 and 1988, hostage-taking
amid near-anarchy became commonplace. In 1989 the most brutal infighting of the war
pitted former allies, Kataib commander Samir Geagea (Jaja) and army general Michel
Aoun, in savage artillery duels in Beirut. Aoun then brought further destruction and death
in a war of liberation to eject Syrian forces from Lebanon. The beginning of the end of
the war came when Lebanons parliamentarians met in Aif, Saudi Arabia, from
September 30 through October 22, 1989. There they reached the if Agreement for a
National Reconciliation Charter, which was formally approved on November 4. They
also elected a new president, Ren Moawad, who was assassinated 17 days later and
replaced by Elias Hrawi. Aoun resumed last-ditch fighting against Geagea and the
Syrians until October 13, 1990, when he was ousted. The fighting was over. The new
Government of National Reconciliation began the delicate task of disarming the militias
and restoring stability. In a decade and a half of war, an estimated 130,000 to 150,000

people were killed, at least that many were wounded, and the country suffered an
estimated $25 billion to $30 billion in damage and lost revenues.

F. Zionism

Zionism, movement to unite the Jewish people of the Diaspora (exile) and settle
them in Palestine; it arose in the late 19th century and culminated in 1948 in the
establishment of the state of Israel. The movement's name is derived from Zion, the hill
on which the Temple of Jerusalem was located and which later came to symbolize
Jerusalem itself. The term Zionism was first applied to this movement in 1890 by the
Austrian Jewish philosopher Nathan Birnbaum.

Zionism as an organized political movement originated in the 19th century, but its
roots go back to the 6th century BC, when the Jews were carried off to captivity in
Babylon and their prophets encouraged them to believe that one day God would allow
them to return to Palestine, or Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel). Over the centuries, the
Jews of the Diaspora associated the hope of the return with the coming of the Messiah, a
savior whom God would send to deliver them. Individual Jews often migrated to
Palestine to join the Jewish communities that continued to exist there, but they remained
a small minority among a largely Arab population.

A secular Zionism could not emerge until Jewish life itself was to some extent
secularized. This process began in the 18th century with the Haskalah (Hebrew,
enlightenment), a movement inspired by the European Enlightenment and initiated by
the German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. The Haskalah marked the
beginning of a move away from traditional religious orthodoxy and created a need for
Jewish national feeling to replace religion as a unifying force. Initially, however, the trend
was toward assimilation into European society. The liberal Jewish reform movement in
Germany sought to reduce Judaism to a religious denomination, allowing Jews to adopt
German culture. The achievement of political equality by European Jewry began in
revolutionary France in 1791 and spread over most of Europe during the next few
decades.

Political emancipation, however, proved to be a false dawn. In the second half of

the 19th century organized anti-Semitic parties emerged in Germany and AustriaHungary. In Russia, where the emancipation had in any case been superficial, the
assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 unleashed a wave of nationalist feeling, and
anti-Jewish riots (pogroms) spread across the country. The 1881 pogroms were as much a
turning point for Russian Jewry as the French Revolution had been for French and
Western European Jewry.
To escape persecution, large numbers of Russian Jews migrated to the West,
primarily to the United States. A smaller number, believing that Jews living in the
Diaspora were destined for the eternal role of scapegoat, and that their only security lay
in a homeland of their own, went to Palestine, which was then under Turkish rule. They
were given financial support by the French Jewish philanthropist Baron Edmond de
Rothschild, but many did not persevere, and this early Jewish immigration was
insignificant.

In the mid-19th century, two European Orthodox rabbis, Jehuda Alkalai and Zevi
Hirsch Kalischer, adapted the traditional belief in a Messiah to modern conditions by
teaching that Jews themselves must lay the groundwork for his coming. In 1862 the
German Jewish socialist Moses Hess, inspired by the Italian nationalist movement,
published Rome and Jerusalem (trans. 1918), a book in which he rejected the idea of
assimilation into European society, insisting that the essence of the Jews' problem was
their lack of a national home.

In 1896 Theodor Herzl, a Hungarian born Jewish journalist, published a short

book aptly called The Jewish State, in which he analyzed the causes of anti-Semitism and
proposed its cure, the creation of a Jewish state. Although Herzl secured audiences with
the German emperor William II and Sultan Abd al-Hamid II of Turkey, he was unable to
secure their support. Nor would the wealthy among the Jews put up the money to back
his project.
In 1897 Herzl organized the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. Attended
by nearly 200 delegates, the congress formulated the Basel Program, which remained the
basic platform of the Zionist movement. The program defined Zionism's goal as the
creation for the Jewish people of a home in Palestine secured by public law. The
congress also founded a permanent World Zionist Organization (WZO) and authorized it
to establish branches in every country with a substantial Jewish population.

When Herzl failed to obtain a charter from the Turkish sultan, he directed his
diplomacy toward Britain, but the British offer to investigate the possibility of Jewish
colonization in East Africathe so-called Uganda schemenearly split the Zionist
movement. The Russian Zionists accused Herzl of betraying the Zionist program.
Although Herzl was reconciled with his detractors, he died soon after, a broken man.
When the 7th Zionist Congress (1905) rejected the East Africa scheme, Israel Zangwill
formed the Jewish Territorial Organization, the goal of which was to seek territory
anywhere suitable for Jewish colonization. Zangwill's organization, however, never
attracted a large following and faded after his death.
1. VARIETIES OF ZIONISM
Zionism has spawned a profusion of different ideas and ideologies. The cultural
Zionists, whose chief spokesman was the Russian journalist Ahad Ha-am, emphasized the
importance of making Palestine a center for the spiritual and cultural growth of the
Jewish people. Another variety of Zionism was elaborated by A. D. Gordon, who wrote
and practiced the religion of labor, a Tolstoyan concept that conceived the bonding of
people and land through working the soil.
Socialist Zionists tried to give a Marxist justification for Zionism. The Jews needed
a territory of their own in which to set up a normally stratified society, where they could
then engage in class struggle and thus hasten the revolution. Social experiments in
cooperative agriculture led to a uniquely Zionist creation, the kibbutz (Hebrew,
collective), which provided the political, cultural, and military backbone of the Yishuv
(Hebrew, settlement, the Jewish community in Palestine) before the state of Israel was
established and for many years thereafter.
Religious Zionists saw their goal as steering the Jews' national regeneration onto
more traditional paths, but those religious parties that shared political authority have been
criticized for compromising their beliefs in return for the material trappings of power.
2. ZIONISM IN THE 20TH CENTURY
The two greatest achievements of Zionism in this century are the commitment
made by the British government in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the establishment
of Israel in 1948.
During World War I, the British wooed the Zionists in order to secure strategic
control over Palestine and to gain the support of world Jewry for the Allied cause. The
declaration, contained in a letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur J. Balfour to a British
Zionist leader, approved the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish
people. As Palestine had passed from Turkish to British control, this provided the
Zionists with the charter they had been seeking.

After the war Zionism faced two critical setbacks. Russian Jewry, the traditional
source of Zionist migration, was sealed off by the new Soviet regime. In addition, a
dispute arose between the leader of American Zionism, Judge Louis Brandeis, and Dr.
Chaim Weizmann, the man credited with obtaining the Balfour Declaration. The dispute
involved both personal issues and an ideological debate over the future of Zionism.
Weizmann's synthetic Zionism, which advocated both political struggle and
colonization, won out over Brandeis's pragmatic approach, which concentrated on
colonization without reference to future nationhood. Weizmann emerged as unchallenged
leader, but Brandeis and his group seceded, and until World War II, American Jews
directed the major part of their philanthropy to the relief of European Jews rather than to
Palestine.
In 1929, Weizmann set up the wider Jewish Agency, a body that harnessed the
financial support of Jews who were willing to aid their brethren in Palestine but did not
subscribe to the political goals of Zionism. During the period of the British mandate
(1922-48), the Yishuv grew from 50,000 to 600,000 people. Most of the new immigrants
were refugees from Nazi persecution in Europe. In 1935 a revisionist group led by Ze'ev
Vladimir Jabotinsky seceded from the Zionist movement and formed the New Zionist
party. During the late 1930s, Jabotinsky, who advocated a Jewish state on both sides of
the Jordan River, devoted himself to a fruitless campaign to arrange for the mass
evacuation of European Jews to Palestine.
Coexistence with the Arabs of Palestine became an increasingly intractable
problem. Recurrent riots in the 1920s culminated in full-scale rebellion from 1936 to
1939. The Zionist movement adopted various approaches, including that of Judah L.
Magnes, president of the Hebrew University, who advocated the foundation of a joint
Arab-Jewish state, and that of future Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion, who
argued that accommodation with the Arabs could come only from a position of Jewish
strength, after the Yishuv had become a majority. For Socialist-Zionists, unresolvable
conflict arose between the ideal of class cooperation with Arab workers and the higher
national goal of consolidating a new Jewish working class in Palestine.

On the eve of World War II, the British government changed its Palestine policy,
in an effort to appease the Arab world. The White Paper of May 1939 terminated Britain's
commitment to Zionism and provided for the establishment of a Palestinian state within
ten years. The Arab majority in Palestine was guaranteed by a clause that provided for the
further immigration of 75,000 Jews during the following five years, after which
additional entry would depend on Arab consent.

The 1939 White Paper broke the traditional Anglo-Zionist alliance and provoked
many in the Yishuv to violent protest. In May 1942, Zionist leaders meeting at the
Biltmore Hotel in New York City demanded a Jewish Democratic Commonwealththat
is, a statein all of western Palestine as part of the new world order after the war. This
Biltmore program marked a radical departure in Zionist policy. The Holocaust, the
systematic murder of European Jews by the Nazis, finally convinced Western Jewry of
the need for a Jewish state. In 1944, the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military
Organization), a Zionist guerrilla force led by the future Israeli prime minister Menachem
Begin, began an armed revolt against British rule in Palestine.
3. The State of Israel
On May 14, 1948, at midnight, the British mandate over Palestine ended, and the
Jews declared their independence in the new state of Israel. Israel owed its existence to a
unique set of circumstances: Western sympathy for Jewish suffering; the political
influence of American Jews in securing the support of President Harry S. Truman;
Britain's loss of will to continue its rule in Palestine; and, perhaps above all, the Yishuv's
determination and ability to establish and hold on to its own state.
The purpose of Zionism during the first years of statehood seemed clearto
consolidate and defend Israel, to explain and justify its existence. Relations between the
new state and the Zionists, however, proved problematic. Israel's first prime minister,
Ben-Gurion, insisted that Zionist leaders who elected to remain in the Diaspora would
have no say in Israel's policy decisions, even though Israel may have owed its existence
to their influence. Ben-Gurion also insisted that, now that the Jewish state was in
existence, the sole purpose of Zionism must be personal aliya (Hebrew, going up, or
settling in Israel).
Nahum Goldmann, head of the WZO from 1951 to 1968, argued that Zionism
must also nurture and preserve Jewish life in the Diaspora. American Zionists, notably
Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, founder of the Reconstructionist movement, have urged a
redefinition of Judaism and have warned against the dangers of creating a schism
between Israel and Diaspora Jewry. In 1968 the Jerusalem Program (adopted by the
Zionist Congress held in Jerusalem that year), made aliya the condition for membership
of any Zionist group, but the new program has brought little practical change.
During the 1970s, much Zionist activity focused on Soviet Jewry, who were
finally allowed to emigrate in restricted numbers. Again, differences arose between
Zionist and Jewish relief agencies over whether immigration to Israel should be the only
option offered to Soviet Jews. A massive wave of immigration by Soviet Jews to Israel
began in the late 1980s.

Zionism has been repeatedly denounced by the Arab nations and their supporters
as a tool of imperialism. In 1975, the UN adopted a resolution equating Zionism with
racism; in 1991, the General Assembly voted 111 to 25 for repeal. For their part Zionists
have emphasized that their movement has never rejected Arab self-determination and that
the fundamental meaning of Zionism has been the national liberation of the Jewish
people. Zionism today is based on the unequivocal support of two basic principlesthe
autonomy and safety of the state of Israel and the right of any Jew to settle there (the Law
of Return)which together provide the guarantee of a Jewish nationality to any Jew in
need of it.