What is a Zionist?
A Zionist is a follower of the political movement of Zionism &mdahs; the effort to support and establish, or continue to support, the state of Israel. In parts of the Old Testament, or Torah, both Jerusalem and Israel are referred to as Zion. Zionism, the idea of providing an independent Jewish nation, began in the 19th century with the writings of journalists like Theodor Herzl. However, the idea that the state of Israel belongs to the Jewish people dates well before that. Judaism was born in the area now known as Israel and, as a result, Jews dating well before the common era (CE) claim Israel as their home. Though Zionists have religious support for this contention, rooted primarily in the Torah, the Zionist movement was more political than religious. In fact, many of the people who fought for the establishment of a Jewish homeland were not particularly religious. Their primary goal was to end Jewish exile from their ancestral home, and so they identified more with the concept of a
Zionist is a term often heard, but it’s not always understood. Many people assume that to be a Zionist, someone must also be Jewish, or conversely, that all Jews are Zionists. This is not the case. It appears that the term Zionist was coined in 1890 by Nathan Birnbaum, a Viennese scholar and intellectual. He used Zionist and Zionism to refer to what was basically a political movement, one that would result not only in the return of the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland in Palestine, but a return with political sovereignty. The Zionist movement is not universally supported by Jews. Even today, there are a number of Orthodox Jewish groups that believe that Zionism violates the Torah. For instance, the Neturei Karta, founded and based in Jerusalem, refuses to acknowledge the state of Israel, and make the argument that that Torah requires that the land seized from the Palestians in the 20th century must be returned to them. On the other hand, a number of fundamentalist and evangeli
Zionism is a national liberation movement[1], a political movement and an ideology that supports a homeland for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, where the Jewish nation originated over 3,200 years ago and where Jewish kingdoms and self-governing states existed up to the 2nd century CE. While Zionism is based in part upon religious tradition linking the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, the modern movement was mainly secular, beginning largely as a response to rampant antisemitism in Europe and in many parts of the Muslim world during the 19th century. After a number of advances and setbacks, and after the Holocaust had destroyed much of the existing Jewish society in Europe, the Zionist movement culminated in the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Since the founding of the State of Israel, the term Zionism is generally considered to mean support for Israel. However, a variety of different, and sometimes competing, ideologies that support Israel fit under the gener
