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My reading of the history is that a not insignificant fraction of early Western support for Zionism was explicitly to avoid Jewish immigration to Western nation
by mkoubaa 2y ago
My reading of the history is that a not insignificant fraction of early Western support for Zionism was explicitly to avoid Jewish immigration to Western nations.
- danans 2y agoThat was among the secular/ethno-nationalist rationales. But there is also a religious rationale. In fundamentalist Christianity, the re-establishment of the state of Israel to its biblically described borders is a precondition for the return of the Messiah and Judgement Day, when the same Jewish people will supposedly be given a last chance to convert ... or else. So the policy is in part rooted in the anti-Semitism of Christian eschatology. Those ideas had strong appeal after WW2, and they are a major policy motivator of the Christian religious right-wing in the US today.
- tsimionescu 2y agoJust one minor note: these are parts of American Protestant fundamentalist Christianity, I don't think similar concepts can be found in even the more fundamentalist factions of Catholic, Orthodox, Calvinist, Lutheran, or Ethiopian Christian sects.
- danans 2y agoYes, I don't generally include Catholicism, Orthodox, and several other Christian sects when I use the term fundamentalist Christianity (although I'm sure fundamentalists exist in any sect of any religion). I suppose a better term would be "evangelical protestant fundamentalist Christianity", although I suspect that even there, some small number of them are not focused on politicizing Christian eschatology.