I hope that over the last month or so, I have been able to show just how complicated the region we now call Israel really is.
As far back as we have written records, this region has experienced conflict, war, conquest, and colonization. The ancient peoples of the region included the Canaanites and the Israelites, whose histories and genealogies were closely connected. Over the centuries, these identities and populations changed as people migrated, intermarried, and assimilated with conquering peoples.
On the eve of World War I, where I ended last week, the region was under the control of the Ottoman Turks, but most of its population was Arab Muslim, whose ancestors had conquered the region in the 630s. The major minority groups were Arab Christians and Jews. As we have seen, this is a fascinating and difficult history, but when it comes to the crisis we see today, things were just about to start heating up with World War I.
However, before we dive into the Great War, it is important to take some time to understand what was happening in Europe and the development of a movement called Zionism. Over the centuries, Jews had established communities around the world. Although they made these lands their new homes, ancient Israel remained central to Jewish religious identity and tradition. Jerusalem was at the heart of Jewish prayer, along with the hope of returning to Zion, a biblical name associated with their ancestral homeland.
As we moved into the 19th century, nationalism became an important ideology as it spread around the world. It encouraged people who shared a common history, language, or culture to seek political self-determination, or, in other words, to govern themselves. This movement was particularly difficult for European Jews, who faced anti-Semitism and violence even as many sought to establish themselves in their new countries. Growing nationalism and anti-Semitism, particularly in Eastern Europe, convinced many Jews that they needed a homeland of their own for safety.
The rise of nationalism was not lost on European Jews, who increasingly began advocating for Jewish nationalism. One prominent early thinker in this movement was Moses Hess, a German Jewish philosopher who published the book “Rome and Jerusalem” in 1862. Hess argued that the Jewish people constituted a nation and should reestablish a national presence in their ancestral homeland. Then, in the 1880s, following violent anti-Jewish pogroms, or organized attacks, in the Russian Empire, Jewish nationalist groups began organizing efforts to encourage immigration to the Ottoman-controlled region of Palestine.
The man most associated with modern political Zionism was Theodor Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist. Witnessing anti-Semitism in Europe, including the controversy surrounding the trial of French Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus in the 1890s, Herzl concluded that anti-Semitism was too strong to allow assimilation into European societies. In 1896, he published “The Jewish State,” arguing that Jews should establish a sovereign national homeland, ideally in Palestine, the land associated with their historical and religious identity.
Although the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the hope of returning to Zion long predated the 19th century, modern political Zionism transformed that religious and historical attachment into a movement for Jewish national self-determination. In other words, the desire to return to the ancestral homeland was centuries old, but the movement to establish a modern Jewish nation-state was relatively new.
Following Herzl’s work, Jewish immigration to Palestine grew. These immigrants purchased land from Arab landowners, hired Arab workers, traded in local markets, and interacted with surrounding villages. Some settlements maintained workable relationships with nearby communities. However, cooperation did not mean that everyone welcomed Zionist immigration. There even was some tension between established Jewish communities and the new arrivals from Europe. They shared a religious and historical connection to the land, but they did not always share the same political goals about how Jewish society should develop.
Many of the new immigrants were Ashkenazi Jews from Europe. Some arrived with considerable resources and saw themselves culturally superior to the established Jewish communities who had lived in the Middle East for generations. The arrival of Zionist settlers and the development of competing national aspirations began to cause conflict with the region’s Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities.
The wave of immigration that came after 1900 is called the Second Aliyah, as opposed to the First Aliyah back in the 1880s. This new wave consisted of roughly 40,000 immigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe. They were influenced by both Zionism and socialist ideas, and some had fled pogroms and discrimination. Unlike some earlier immigrants, members of the Second Aliyah often emphasized Jewish agricultural labor, collective farming, and the revival of Hebrew as a modern spoken language. In 1909, the new Jewish immigrants founded Tel Aviv, by the Arab city of Jaffa, which eventually grew into a major city and capital.
Nationalism was not lost on the people already living in Palestine. Most identified as Arabs who increasingly resented Ottoman rule and hoped for political autonomy or independence. The British would eventually use these nationalist aspirations to their advantage during World War I, encouraging Arabs to rise against their Ottoman rulers with promises of support for Arab independence. The problem was that Jews were also pursuing their own form of nationalism, hoping to fulfill a long-held religious and historical aspiration to return to their ancestral homeland and establish a Jewish national home.
Yet before either dream could be accomplished, the Ottoman Empire first had to fall.
James Finck is a professor of American history at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. He can be reached at james.finck@swoknews.com. Thanks to the Southwest Ledger and the Lawton Constitution for sharing his column.
