It was to this possible future for the Jewish people that a Viennese Jew, Theodor Herzl, devoted his life.  In 1896 he inscribed the idea into a pamphlet, The Jewish State. Herzl was well aware that Eretz Israel (Biblical Israel, also known as Palestine, which today includes Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank) was already inhabited by a non-Jewish population, and his view of that situation was an unsettled one, sometimes expecting that Arab communities will relocate and sometimes emphasizing the aim of peaceful co-existence. In his novel AltNeuLand (1902), which was translated from German into many languages and reached a large worldwide audience, Herzl conceives the Jewish commonwealth in Palestine as one that ensures human rights and dignity for everyone, irrespective of ethnic origin or religious conviction. Arabs and Jews, men and women, are equal citizens and full participants in the project of building a democratic social order. One of the characters in the novel, Rashid Bey, an Arab engineer from Haifa who becomes one of the new country’s leaders, explains why Arabs welcome Jewish migration to Palestine—it has “developed the country and raised everybody’s standard of living.”

As represented in the novel, Herzl’s homeland for the Jews is not conflict-free, however.  There is a fanatical rabbi who campaigns for political office and argues that non-Jewish inhabitants of the new country are not full-fledged citizens and mustn’t be allowed to vote.  His view is rejected by the public and he is defeated. To be sure, Herzl’s vision here is romantic and utopian, but he points out in the preface to the novel that it anticipates an historical project, Zionism, that is actually underway.

 As it turns out, 20th-century Jewish emigration to the land of Palestine did not follow the peace-making guidelines that Herzl envisaged. Schlomo Avineri writes that Herzl

“did not foresee the emergence of a Palestinian national movement that would draw much of its ideological energy from opposing the Zionist project itself. While one might fault him for this, it is important to note that when he was writing, there was no Arab national movement in existence—neither in Palestine, nor anywhere else.”

Yet there were others at the time, Arabs and Jews alike, who were more prescient than Herzl.  In 1899 the mayor of Jerusalem, Yusef Effendi al-Khalidi, wrote a letter to Herzl that said it was “pure folly” to try to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine, because the land  was already “inhabited by others.” Herzl, falling back on colonial stereotypes of non-Europeans as uncivilized and backward, replied to the mayor that Zionism would bring modernity to Palestine and surely benefit the Arab population too: “It is their well-being, their individual wealth, which we will increase by bringing in our own.”

Theodor Herzl was technologically minded, inclined to seek engineering solutions to human problems. His views of Palestinian Arabs were contradictory, sometimes respectful and sometimes disparaging, but never anticipating serious Arab resistance to the Zionist project. Zionist leaders who came after Herzl, however, were made more acutely aware of Palestinian opposition.  To stave off such hostility, Chaim Weizmann, who would become the first president of Israel, went to Palestine in 1918 and signed an agreement with King Faisal of Iraq that called for the formation of two new states in Palestine, one Arab and one Jewish.

In the following decades, other Zionist leaders would be less sanguine about Arab-Zionist relations than Weizmann, and more intent on seizing and controlling the entire land of Palestine than in creating two states side-by-side. In 1937 Ze’ev Jabotinsky described the conflict in stark terms:

“There is no point talking about the possibility that the Arabs in Eretz Israel would consent to the Zionist plan while we are a minority here…. [this] is utterly illogical—to obtain the Arabs’ consent and goodwill to turn Eretz Israel from an Arabic country to a country with a Jewish majority.”

Hence Jabotinsky believed that only military might, not negotiation and compromise, could counter Arab resistance.

Although Zionism has evolved since  the late-19th century when the modern movement began, it continues to hold out similar hopes and to raise similar questions. Our aim here is to cast light on its early history – including the reasons why some people embraced the cause while others objected to it – thereby encouraging dialogue and reflection today.

Although he was acutely aware of the pogroms going on in Eastern Europe and Russia, along with amplifying antisemitism in Austria itself, Güdemann didn’t believe that Zionism offered a righteous path forward. The danger, he writes, is that a Judaism “with cannons and bayonets” will “swap the role of David for that of Goliath and be a pathetic travesty of itself.” Herzl was more hopeful, believing that Jewish settlement in Palestine would not only benefit the Arabs living there but also set an example for the world: “Nothing prevents us from being and remaining the exponents of a united humanity when we have a country of our own.”

Some of the disputes about Jewish identity and relationship to the land of Palestine that were occurring in late-19 century European countries remain unsettled today.  Decades before the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, some European Jews raised questions about what the achievement of statehood in a distant land would mean.  Among the participants in this conversation were two Austrian Jews, Bertha Pappenheim and Martin Buber.  He was a Biblical scholar and teacher who embraced the Zionist cause and moved to Palestine.  Pappenheim was a social activist who criticized Zionist methods and ethics.  Despite their ideological differences, they became close friends who worked together and learned from one another.