The words ‘Zionist’ and ‘Zionism’ are attributed to a Jew writing in the late 19th century. The concept, without the name, appeared in writing by British Christians, staring with the Rev. Dr. Keith, in the early 19th century, when he said that Israel/Palestine/Syria was ‘A land without a people for a people without a land.’ What is now Israel was part of the Ottoman Vilayet of Syria. Today, most Zionists are Christians who ‘know’ that Jesus cannot return until all the Jews are in Palestine, so they want Israel to continue to exist and every Jew to be sent there. Only a minority of Zionists are Jews, and only a minority of Jews are Zionists, most are happy living outside Israel, and, while they might visit, have no desire to move there and become Israeli citizens. Or they might become dual citizens so they can easily visit Israel and just as easily return to the country they consider home.
After the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI, most of the Asian and African Ottoman Empire became French and British colonies. The Ottoman Vilayets were all broken up and the pieces shared between the British and the French. Britain called one of their colonies ‘Palestine’, which had once been a small part of the Vilayet of Syria, and the British Balfour Declaration said that Palestine was for the Jews, but they didn’t really mean that: the Jews in the Pale were subject to pogroms and wanted to go to Palestine, but were denied, and Hitler was refused permission to ship German Jews to Palestine, the British meant Palestine as a place to which they wanted every Jew in the UK to go, since the Anglicans believed it was wrong for the UK to host Jews. For one thing, some of the Anglican clergy consider all Jews to be deicides, and for another, Palestine is in the Fertile Crescent, so British Jews shipped to Palestine/Israel could farm using advanced British agricultural equipment and produce lots of food with limited human labour that could be sold very cheaply to the UK while making the Jews from Britain moderately wealthy by British standards and quite rich by Palestinian standards. Plus, Palestine could produce lots of tropical fruits and vegetables to tempt the British palates.
The British had mixed opinions about what to do about the Arabs living in Palestine. Some said that they were Arabs, so nomads who wandered, spending part of their time wandering through Palestine, but no problem if they were told to keep their wanderings out of Palestine which was for the Jews; but other Brits said that the Jews and the Philistines, native inhabitants of Palestine since before the first Jew ever came there according to the book of Samuel, should live together in peace, with nothing taken from the Philistines: the Jews would live in the parts of Palestine that were undeveloped, without any Philistines, or they would buy their land from Philistine owners who wanted to sell (coming from the UK they’d have enough money that lots of Philistine and Ottoman owners would want to sell).
A small number of British Jews went to British Palestine as colonists after WWI, and started rebelling, trying to evict the British Imperialists, but without success.
Then came WWII and the Holocaust. The US refused to allow Jews to immigrate, except for the equivalent of Nobel Prize winners, until 1944, when they had heard about the Nazi persecution of the Jews and said any Jew who could make it to the US would be admitted as a refugee. Many European Jews had been turned away by the US before 1944, and were sent back to Europe to be murdered by the Nazis. And the UK refused to let Hitler send any European Jews to British Palestine, since the British Jews who had gone there were already a problem for the British governing Palestine, one that would only become worse if a lot of European Jews were allowed to join them.
(Note that a lot of the Jews killed in the Holocaust could have been saved had the US and the UK not refused to let them leave Europe.)
After WWII, those who had killed or helped to kill Jews were punished severely. If one reads the book, My Struggle, written by Hitler in the ‘20s, it says the Jews were all terrible and Europe must be cleansed of the Jews, a horrible statement, so many say the book must be banned, while others say it should be studied to ensure that it never happens again. The book also says that the Slavs are all terrible and Europe must be cleansed of all Slavs, but this is considered by the US and UK as a simple statement of fact, not worth mentioning. Those who had killed or helped kill Slavs and made it west of the Warsaw Pact were generally rewarded, and given good jobs working for the US or UK. We recently saw Canada bestow great honours on an elderly member of the Waffen-SS for his work killing Slavs in WWII.
After WWII, the Allies discovered that somewhere between 4.5 – 6 million Jews had been murdered by the Nazis, and 2 million or so were still alive in the concentration camps, or had somehow managed to evade the Nazis. The US announced that all would be sent to British Palestine, while the old, European empires would all be dissolved, so Palestine would no longer be a British colony but an independent state. Actually, Palestine had once included the Transjordan, and an early version of the Mandate said all was for the Jews, but then the Transjordan was set aside for Arabs. The Jews were told they must settle with the Philistines between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. The Jews had better weapons than the Arabs, and went to war to take all of Palestine for the revived state of Israel, but the US insisted on a truce when Ghaza and the West Bank were still held by Arabs, so the nation of Israel was originally everything controlled by the Jews when the US ordered the ceasefire in 1948. The Ghaza became part of Egypt and the West Bank became part of Jordan.
This lasted until 1967 when Israel started by destroying all the Arab air forces, then, with total air superiority, they annexed Ghaza and the West Bank and parts of Syria, Lebanon, and other parts of Egypt beyond Ghaza.
This lasted until 1973 when Egypt got back most of Israeli Egypt for a few days, thanks to Soviet Air Defences, but then the Egyptians did not defend their air defence system, so Israel captured and destroyed it, after which, with total air superiority, Israel recaptured all of Egypt north of the Nile, but then the US made Israel give Egypt back all of the Sinai in exchange for a peace treaty. Jordan also signed a peace treaty, and got peace and everything that had been in the British colony east of the Jordan River. Israel still have chunks of Syria and Lebanon and no intention of giving any of it back. Israel also have all of Ghaza and the West Bank.
Israel is called an Apartheid State, but this is wrong. The word ‘apartheid’ comes from South Africa, where no one with a drop of African or Asian blood could be a citizen (Jews from Europe were considered European, so they could and did become citizens if they moved to South Africa and applied for citizenship). Israel say that two million Philistines are Israeli citizens, and another half million to one million non-Jews and non-Philistines are also citizens, but seven million, the overwhelming majority of the ten million Israeli citizens, must have a Jewish connection.
Strict, Orthodox Judaism says one is only Jewish if one’s mother was Jewish, but Israel says anyone with a Jewish grandparent qualifies for citizenship based on Jewish heritage. This was based on the Holocaust, where the Nazis said proof that one grandparent was Jewish was grounds for being sent to a Concentration Camp. Strict Orthodox Jews say that many Israelis who are citizens by virtue of having a Jewish grandparent are not actually Jewish unless their mother was Jewish.
All information in Israel is strictly controlled by the government, so it is hard to know what is true. It is said that most Israeli citizens: the 7 million Jews, the 2 million Philistines, and the million other citizens want everything from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, and are happy with Israel running the way it is currently being run. They figure the Philistines who do not have Israeli passports are all Antisemites who want to kill all the Jews, and probably all the Israeli citizens, so they’d like all the Philistines who do not have passports evicted.
Israel figure all the Philistines who do not have Israeli passports are illegal aliens who have no right to be in Israel, and want them all to go elsewhere. After the 7 October attack, Israel plan to remove every last Philistine from Ghaza, one way or the other: if other nations will accept them, those who have never been part of Hamas will be sent there. If no other nation will accept them, then all must be killed, but their deaths are not Israel’s fault, their deaths are entirely the fault of the nations that refused to accept them.
As the British said 200 years ago, those Philistines are Arabs, and belong in some Arab country, while Israel must be for the Jews, partly for the cheap crops they can produce and sell to the UK, and partly so that, when every Jew is in Palestine, Jesus can return.
Of course, that was 200 years ago, and now most Christian Zionists are in the US, and they vote, so the US strongly support Zionists and Zionism. And with the full support of the US, if Israel want to kill every Palestinian in Ghaza, or, for that matter, every Palestinian in Israel who does not have an Israeli passport, the US will back them 100%.
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