That’s like saying “I know the term ‘patriot’ as referring to the republican party in the US”.
Like, yes, the right tries to take over the term, thus making all other parties “anti-Zionists”/“anti-patriotic”. But in reality the term crosses political boundaries.
If anything, the far-religious-right parties are the only (non-Arab) parties that don’t refer to themselves as Zionists (they have some issues with Zionism being a secular movent)
The Wikipedia article isn’t really something I, as someone who’d describe himself as a Zionist, would agree too.
I’m not going to go through every point, but talking about Zionism in terms of ethnicity is… weird. Like, that’s technically right, in the scene that the Jewish people are “A group of people who identify with each other on the basis of perceived shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups.” (link), but you’re trying to use it in the context of race, and that’s factually wrong. Israel are probably is one of the most racially diverse countries in the world.
The translated Hebrew Wikipedia article hits closer to home IMO:
Zionism is a national movement and ideology that aims to establish a national home state for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. The Zionist movement, as a Jewish national movement, arose in the last third of the 19th century, mainly in Central and Eastern Europe.
Shortly after the establishment of the Zionist movement, most of the movement’s leaders linked its main goal with the renewal of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel - the establishment of a Jewish state. With the establishment of the State of Israel, Zionism continues to work to support Israel, ensure its existence and strengthen it.
The roots of Zionism lie in age-old motives and values inherent in religious tradition on the one hand, and in the national ideologies that flourished in Europe in the 19th century on the other. Zionism as a popular political movement that developed among the Jews in Eastern Europe was spurred by outbreaks of anti-Semitism and was fueled by a process of secularization that intensified among the Jewish population from the mid-19th century, which also gave its signs in the secularization of the two-thousand-year-old religious longing for Zion. The modern world has led to the fact that on the one hand, religion has ceased to be a sufficient identity definer for them. This conflict has led to the creation of a new national self-definition[1].
From its beginning, the goals of Zionism were the return to Zion, the gathering of the exiles, the revival of Hebrew culture and language, the creation of a new Jew – muscular Judaism according to Max Nordau, and the establishment of independent Jewish sovereignty. According to Benjamin Zeev Theodor Herzl, who is considered the thinker of modern Zionism, Zionism is a broad tract of ideas, which includes not only the aspiration for a legally guaranteed political territory for the Jewish people, but also the aspiration for moral and spiritual perfection. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the Zionist movement has continued to mainly support Israel and address threats to its existence and security.
From its beginning, Zionism was not homogeneous. Its ideology, leaders, and parties were different from each other and even contradictory. The need of the hour, along with the longing to return to the homeland of the ancestors, led to compromises and concessions for the sake of a common cultural and political goal.
Edit: The English Wikipedia article from mid 2023 is also good:
https://web.archive.org/web/20230312004301/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism
My guess is that it’s been revised in the last year-and-a-half to retroactively make what’s happening in Gaza a natural extension of Zionism.
Yeah, that’s what I meant by “My guess is that it’s been revised in the last year-and-a-half to retroactively make what’s happening in Gaza a natural extension of Zionism”.
You’re talking about the Israeli reaction to the Oct. 7th attack, not Zionism. Some people are trying to link these things together, making the very concept of a Jewish state in the area of Israel “genocidal” (while also tying it to white supremacy, as a bonus). That’s not the case.
Yes, some Zionists would like to kill as many Palestinians (a disproportional part of them are a part of the Israeli government). Then again, some people who like to put ketchup on their steaks would also like to kill as many Palestinians. That doesn’t mean liking ketchup on your steak makes you genocidal.