Theos-Talk Archives (March 2004 Message tt00280)

Tony wrote:
> I would be interested to know more, and am under the impression that
> Zionists are about a state of Israel as a Country, but that there are other
> (do they have a name) Jews who see it as a state of Consciousness. Is
> there anything in this?
Here's the short version:

The Romans had a habit of displacing large numbers of conquered people 
from their home countries in order to avoid rebellions. They did this 
with Judea. At this point, until the mid-20th century, that area was 
always part of owned territory by some empire or other. When the Eastern 
Roman Empire fell, the Turkish empire took it over, and owned it until 
WWI. Jews sporadically moved back, and many Jews never left at all. 
However, there was no organized movement to go back to the "Holy Land" 
until the Dreyfus affair of 1894 demonstrated that the Jewish people 
were always vulnerable to persecution, even in the most civilized 
countries. The original goal of Zionism was to get a homeland for the 
Jews; the land which would be later called "Palestine" was merely the 
first choice. Money was raised, and land was purchased from Turkey.

There was actually a lot of resistance to Zionism among Jews who 
believed that the Jewish homeland would not, and therefore should not, 
be restored until the time of the Messiah. Great Britain took over the 
area (now called "Palestine"), and Jews started buying more land, 
especially in the area now known as "Israel". They did a LOT of 
development work there. However, many of the Arab residents, who had 
previously paid rent to the land owners, found themselves being 
displaced. They were largely ignored by the Jewish settlers, considered 
to be unimportant (which, based on what happened later, was a major 
mistake).

It wasn't until Hitler's massacre of European Jews that Jews as a whole 
started supporting Zionism, as Germany, before Hitler, was considered to 
be one of the most civilized nations on Earth. The thought was that if 
it happened there, it would happen anywhere.

I won't bother at this point with the modern history of Israel, as it's 
somewhat irrelevant. The point is that Zionism didn't exist while 
Blavatsky was active in the Theosophical Society, and wasn't even near 
universal among Jews for another half a century.

Bart