A political movement that began in the 19th century as a response to the Haskalah or Jewish Enlightenment. The movement was formally established in 1897 by the Austro-Hungarian lawyer Theodor Herzl, who gave shape to its character in his book Der Judenstaat. Herzl sought to answer the “Jewish Question,” posed by antisemites since at least 1750, which postulated that Jews had no place in the nation-states of Europe. Herzl’s answer was to send European Jews into Ottoman Palestine as shock-troops to open the territory up to European settlement and markets. In exchange, he offered the self-deportation of the entire Jewish population of Europe.
Zionism is inherently opposed to all forms of Yiddishkeit, or “Jewishness,” that exist outside of the nation-state of Israel. A foundational pillar of Zionism is the so-called “negation of the Diaspora,” the rejection of Jewish life and ethnic existence in diasporic communities.
Zionism is an aggressive settler-colonial movement and is the foundational political ideology and political strategy of the illegal settler state of Israel.