Zionist Founder Quotes

1897 Zionist Congress calls for a home for Jewish people in Palestine Pamphlet by founder of socialist Zionism, Nahman Syrkin, says Palestine “must be evacuated for the Jews”.

We spoke often of Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, who argued that the future of the Jewish people depended on the existence of a Jewish state, one bonded together not just by religion but by language and nationality. “Let them give us sovereignty over a piece of the earth’s surface, just sufficient for the needs of our people. Then we will do the rest.

AIPAC itself had explicitly Zionist roots: its founder, I. L. “Si” Kenen, was head of the American Zionist Council in 1951, which was a registered foreign lobbying group. Kenen reorganized it as a U.S. lobbying organization—the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs—in 1953–54, and the new organization was renamed AIPAC in 1959.

It is noteworthy that the pro-Israeli lobby was established, according to the declared aims of its founder, to eliminate pro-Arab influence in the State Department. This particular mission was accomplished, it seems, not so much by the lobby’s effort as by the successful endeavors of the Christian Zionists.

As Matzpen’s founder Moshé Machover notes, “Israel is not only a product of the Zionist colonization but also an instrument for its further extension and expansion. . . . Colonization continued between 1948 and 1967 in the territory ruled then by Israel, within the Green Line. Lands belonging to Palestinian Arabs—including those who remained within the Green Line—were expropriated and given over to Zionist colonization.

The term Christian Zionist can be found as early as 1896, when the Jewish Zionist leader Theodor Herzl referred to William Hechler, the Anglican chaplain to the British Embassy in Vienna, as a “Christian Zionist” and the following year Herzl again used that term to describe Jean-Henri Dunant, a Swiss banker and founder of the Red Cross, and an observer at the First Zionist Conference.

THIS NOTION OF A “new Jew” would become one of Zionism’s most defining ideas. In 1942, some three decades after Bialik wrote “In the City of Slaughter,” a writer in the Yishuv named Hayim Hazaz wrote a short story—“The Sermon”—that has become an Israeli classic. The narrator of the “sermon” is Yudke, one of the founders of the kibbutz on which he lives. Yudke is trying to explain to his fellow kibbutzniks why he believes that they should not teach Jewish history to their children. His main reason is that “we really don’t have a history at all. . . . You see, we never made our own history, the gentiles always made it for us . . . it wasn’t ours, it wasn’t ours at all!” Yudke’s view of Jewish history is classic Zionist fare. “Persecutions, massacres, martyrdoms and pogroms. And more persecutions, massacres, martyrdoms and pogroms. And more, and more, and more of them without end.” The Jews have been so weak and pathetic (and here Hazaz is almost identical to Bialik) that Jewish children find nothing of interest in Jewish history. “Children love to read historical novels. Everywhere else, as you know, such books are full of heroes and conquerors and brave warriors and glorious adventures. In short, they’re exciting.” The problem is that these children “read novels, but ones about gentiles, not about Jews. Why? You can be sure it’s no accident. Jewish history is simply boring . . . it has no adventures, no conquering heroes, no great rulers or potentates.” Jews in history are not potentates. They are “a mob of beaten, groaning, weeping, begging Jews”—the opposite of inspiring. That is why, says Yudke, “if it were up to me, I wouldn’t allow our children to be taught Jewish history at all. Why on earth should we teach them about the shameful life led by their ancestors? I’d simply say to them ‘look boys and girls, we don’t have any history. We haven’t had one since the day we were driven into exile. Class dismissed, you can go outside and play.

Sons of Islam everywhere, the jihad is a duty—to establish the rule of Allah on earth and to liberate your countries and yourselves from America’s domination and its Zionist allies. It is your battle—either victory or martyrdom.” ​—Ahmed Yassin, founder of Hamas