The modern Zionist Movement can be dated to 1896 with the publication of Theodore Herzl’s book, DER JUDENSTAAT (The Jewish State).
The backdrop was rising anti-Semitism in Europe. Most notably were the escalating pogroms in Russia as the decrepit Tsarist regime sought to scapegoat Jews for the abortive Revolution of 1905, following Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese War. There was also the Dreyfus Affair in France where a Jewish officer was framed for passing military secrets to the Germans.
A key point made by Herzl was that universal brotherhood was not even a beautiful dream. In his view, antagonism was essential to man’s greatest efforts. This underlines the need for a Jewish state.
Carl Jung critiqued Jews as a people without land. If so, how come Jung didn’t support the Zionist cause? Wouldn’t restoring a dispossessed people to ancestral lands cure any alleged problems with the Jewish psyche that Jung was pontificating about? Instead, to this day, Jung’s disciples have to fend off charges of anti-semitism.
One unfair charge hurled against Jung was that he was influenced by the Volkisch ideas of his time. Of course he was. German Volk romanticism was not a unique phenomenon. Modern day Zionism was also heavily influenced by German Volkisch ideas. See the 1970 work GERMANS AND JEWS by German-Jewish historian George L Mosse.
A major impetus to Zionism–after the Balfour Declaration–came in the 1920s when Winston Churchill as Colonial Secretary hived off Trans-Jordan from the Palestine Mandate. This set up Trans-Jordan as the only Palestinian state.
Churchill became a lifelong supporter of Zionism because he, quite frankly, was a Social Darwinist who preferred Jews to Arabs. Also, reflecting the residual anti-semitism of the British upper crust, Churchill’s Zionism coexisted with the fear that Jews, deprived of a homeland, might make trouble for the world.
