Читать книгу Judaism I - Группа авторов - Страница 24

Dr. Martin Kloke of Cornelsen Publishing, Berlin, notes the biblical roots of Zion before considering nineteenth-century Zionism and Herzl’s vision. Between 1882 and 1903, twenty- to thirty-thousand Jews came to Palestine. This number doubled between 1904 and 1914. Ottoman pressures radicalized Jews. Chaim Weizmann lobbied for British recognition. Following World War I, in which the Ottomans aligned with Germany, the Zionist-friendly Balfour declaration was promulgated.

The British invasion of Palestine in 1918 ended the four-hundred-year reign of the Turks. In 1919, Emir Feisal of Mecca accepted Jewish immigration to Palestine. But by 1928, the economic recovery of the Jewish Yishuv caused fear among the Arabs. Muslims and Jews engaged in street battles, while the authorities stood aside. Organized labor was important for the socio-economic development of the Yishuv. When in 1933, the Nazis began systematic discrimination against Jews, around 38,000 new immigrants came to Palestine. They were followed by 197,000 refugees from Poland. Zionists intensified efforts to smuggle Jewish refugees. World opinion could no longer overlook the murder of six million European Jews.

On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly partitioned the land into Jewish and Arab states. Immediately after the resolution, an Arab uprising tried to prevent the Jewish state. The Haganah fought to secure the areas that the UN allocated to the Jews. When the Palestine Mandate expired without an agreement, on 14 May 1948, the Jewish National Council proclaimed the State of Israel.

The declaration resulted in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948–49, in which between 600,000 and 750,000 Arabs fled or were driven from their homes. In the face of hostilities in Palestine between 1945 and 1952, more than 600,000 Jews fled from Arab countries to the Jewish state. The so-called law of return allowed all Jews and their non-Jewish partners or children to immigrate to Israel as citizens.

In 70 years, Israel’s population multiplied from approximately 800,000 to 9 million. Although Israel defines itself as »Jewish and democratic,« the Jewish majority accounts for 75 percent of the population, while the Arab minority constitutes 20 percent. Integration of the territories conquered in 1967 will either lead to Jewish minority rule over a majority Palestinian population or to a binational community.