Visual Source 22.3: Winning a Jewish National State

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The establishment of the independent state of Israel in 1948 marked an enormous victory for Jewish people that took on rich meaning for them in many contexts. The most historically significant context no doubt lay in the return of widely scattered Jewish people to the ancient biblical homeland from which so many Jews had fled or been expelled by various foreign rulers—Babylonian, Assyrian, Roman, Byzantine, and Crusader European. Since the first century C.E., the majority of the world’s Jews had lived in diaspora in the Middle East, North Africa, or Europe, with smaller numbers retaining a Jewish presence in what was then called Palestine. For those whose families had long lived in exile, the opportunity to return to an authentically Jewish state in the area comprising the ancient Land of Israel must have seemed miraculous.

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A more immediate context for the establishment of Israel was that of the Zionist movement, formally initiated in Europe in 1897 with the goal of creating a “home for the Jewish people in Palestine.” It was a response to the racism and anti-Semitism of European culture, and it drew on currents of nationalist thinking then surging across Europe. A major expression of Zionism lay in growing Jewish emigration to their ancient homeland, especially during the 1920s and 1930s and even more so in the several years following World War II and the Holocaust. Many among those who survived sought refuge and security in a land of their own.

Two major obstacles confronted these Jewish emigrants. One was British control of Palestine, granted to Great Britain as a mandate of the League of Nations following World War I. While the British favored the eventual creation of a Jewish state, they also feared antagonizing their Arab allies by allowing unfettered Jewish immigration. The second obstacle was opposition from the Arab majority of Palestine, who feared not only the loss of their land as Jewish settlers bought up growing amounts of it but also the loss of their cultural identity as Muslims in what they feared would become a Jewish land. The creation of Israel in 1948, with support from the United Nations, marked the triumph of Zionism and a victory over both British imperialism and Arab resistance.

Visual Source 22.3 shows a Zionist poster created around 1940 and intended to encourage emigration to the Land of Israel and to persuade donors to contribute money for the purchase of land in Palestine. It was titled “Redeem the Land,” a reference to the Zionist goal of using up-to-date farming techniques to provide the agricultural basis for a modern society.16

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Visual Source 22.3 Winning a Jewish National State (The Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem)