Zionist political violence refers to acts of political violence or terrorism committed by Zionists in support of establishing and maintaining a Jewish state in Palestine. These actions have been carried out by individuals, paramilitary groups, and the Israeli government, from the early 20th century to the present day, as part of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Palestinians are an Arab ethnonational group native to the region of Palestine.
Zionism is an ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century aimed to establish a national home for the Jewish people, pursued through the colonization of Palestine, a region roughly corresponding to the Land of Israel in Judaism, with central importance in Jewish history. Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is an ongoing military and political conflict about land and self-determination within the territory of the former Mandatory Palestine. Key aspects of the conflict include the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the status of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements, borders, security, water rights, the permit regime, Palestinian freedom of movement, and the Palestinian right of return.
The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was a proposal by the United Nations to partition Mandatory Palestine at the end of the British Mandate. Drafted by the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) on 3 September 1947, the Plan was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 29 November 1947 as Resolution 181 (II). The resolution recommended the creation of independent but economically linked Arab and Jewish States and an extraterritorial "Special International Regime" for the city of Jerusalem and its surroundings.
The Jewish aspiration to return to Zion, generally associated with divine redemption, has suffused Jewish religious thought since the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian exile.
Arab Jews is a term for Jews living in or originating from the Arab world. Many left or were expelled from Arab countries in the decades following the founding of Israel in 1948, and took up residence in Israel, Western Europe, the United States and Latin America. The term is controversial and politically contested in Israel, where the term "Mizrahi Jews" was adopted by the early state instead. However, some anti-Zionist Jews of Arab origin actively elect to call themselves Arab Jews.
As an organized nationalist movement, Zionism is generally considered to have been founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897. However, the history of Zionism began earlier and is intertwined with Jewish history and Judaism. The organizations of Hovevei Zion, held as the forerunners of modern Zionist ideals, were responsible for the creation of 20 Jewish towns in Palestine between 1870 and 1897.
During the British rule in Mandatory Palestine, there was civil, political and armed struggle between Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish Yishuv, beginning from the violent spillover of the Franco-Syrian War in 1920 and until the onset of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The conflict shifted from sectarian clashes in the 1920s and early 1930s to an armed Arab Revolt against British rule in 1936, armed Jewish Revolt primarily against the British in mid-1940s and finally open war in November 1947 between Arabs and Jews.
Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism. Although anti-Zionism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, all its proponents agree that the creation of the modern State of Israel, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palestine—a region partly coinciding with the biblical Land of Israel—was flawed or unjust in some way.
While anti-Zionism usually utilizes ethnic and political arguments against the existence or policies of the state of Israel, anti-Zionism has also been expressed within religious contexts which have, at times, colluded and collided with the ethnopolitical arguments over Israel's legitimacy. Outside of the liberal and socialist fields of anti-Zionist currents, the religious arguments tend to predominate as the driving ideological power within the incumbent movements and organizations, and usually target the Israeli state's relationship with Judaism.
The common definition of Zionism was principally the endorsement of the Jewish people to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine, secondarily the claim that due to a lack of self-determination, this territory must be re-established as a Jewish state. Historically, the establishment of a Jewish state has been understood in the Zionist mainstream as establishing and maintaining a Jewish majority. Zionism was produced by various philosophers representing different approaches concerning the objective and path that Zionism should follow. A "Zionist consensus" commonly refers to an ideological umbrella typically attributed to two main factors: a shared tragic history, and the common threat posed by Israel's neighboring enemies.
Racism in the State of Palestine encompasses all forms and manifestations of racism experienced in the Palestinian Territories of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, irrespective of the religion, colour, creed, or ethnic origin of the perpetrator and victim, or their citizenship, residency, or visitor status. It may refer to Jewish settler attitudes regarding Palestinians as well as Palestinian attitudes to Jews and the settlement enterprise undertaken in their name.
This timeline of anti-Zionism chronicles the history of anti-Zionism, including events in the history of anti-Zionist thought.
Mandatory Palestine was a geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the region of Palestine under the terms of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.
Palestinianism is a term occasionally used to denote either the national political movement or Identity of the Palestinian people. It gained currency by its use in the works of Edward Said to describe a certain vein of theology opposed to Christian Zionism and that challenges Zionism and the right of Israel to exist.
The 1948 Palestine war was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. During the war, the British withdrew from Palestine, Zionist forces conquered territory and established the State of Israel, and over 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled. It was the first war of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the broader Arab–Israeli conflict.
Palestinian nationalism is the national movement of the Palestinian people that espouses self-determination and sovereignty over the region of Palestine. Originally formed in the early 20th century in opposition to Zionism, Palestinian nationalism later internationalized and attached itself to other ideologies; it has thus rejected the occupation of the Palestinian territories by the government of Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War. Palestinian nationalists often draw upon broader political traditions in their ideology, such as Arab socialism and ethnic nationalism in the context of Muslim religious nationalism. Related beliefs have shaped the government of Palestine and continue to do so.
Zionism has been described by several scholars as a form of settler colonialism in relation to the region of Palestine and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This paradigm has been applied to Zionism by various scholars and figures, including Patrick Wolfe, Edward Said, Ilan Pappe and Noam Chomsky. Zionism's founders and early leaders were aware and unapologetic about their status as colonizers. Many early leading Zionists such as Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, and Ze'ev Jabotinsky described Zionism as colonization.
Far-right politics in Israel encompasses ideologies such as ultranationalism, Jewish supremacy, Jewish fascism, Jewish fundamentalism, Anti-Arabism, and ideological movements such as Neo-Zionism and Kahanism.
