Zionism

In the 19th century Europe, the legal restrictions against Jews were removed in most countries but certainly not in in Russia. Jews began leaving Eastern Europe and migrating mostly to the USA. A small number began migrating back to their ancient homeland of Judea and Israel, now part of the Ottoman Empire, in the belief that, without an actual Jewish state, anti-Semitism, oppression, persecution and the terrible pogroms in Eastern Europe and Russia would never end. This movement was called 'Zionism.' This migration began small, was mostly legal and the early immigrants bought land and settled in towns and began farming settlements. Their presence was unwanted but tolerated by the authorities who sometimes looked the other way for baksheesh in the time honoured Eastern way. Effendis (the Notables) secretly sold land that no-one else wanted for outrageous sums while publicly demanding land sales to Jews be prohibited.

By the late 20th century the meaning of 'zionism' had been altered as part of the reframing of the creation and defence of the state of Israel into a colonialist, imperialist, genocidal, oppressive, occupying, Nazi and throughly evil movement in the minds of all well thinking peoples. The history of Zionism and the Zionists is confused, uncertain, unlikely and its success was so unlikely and depended on so many factors that the belief among some Zionists that it received miraculous Divine Intervention can give second thoughts even to an atheist. It certainly required an astonishing amount of disunity, double-dealing, deceit and betrayal by its Arab opponents.