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Understanding Zionism: An Ideology in Historical Perspective

Understanding Zionism: An Ideology in Historical Perspective

$99.00 USD
$99.00 USD
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Instructor:  Abdelrahman Mahmoud

Date/times:

October 20 - December 8, Sundays 10 AM - 12 PM US Eastern Standard Time

Course description:

The UN recognition of Israel in 1948, resulting in the partition of Palestine along religio-national lines, represented an unprecedent historical victory for Zionism. The partition set off a new historical course for the Middle East that saw several regional political reconfigurations and wars, ending with the 2023-2024 genocide in Gaza. Focusing on the internal ideological trajectory of Zionism from its inception can, however, help answer important historical questions as to why and how this settler colonial ideology born out of 19th-century European nationalist thought was planted in Palestine. Some of these questions deal with the initial objectives of Zionist immigration to Palestine, the relationship between Judaism and Zionism, and the conception of Zionist thinkers of Arab Palestinians.

This course provides an introductory historical overview of Zionism as the founding ideology of Israel. It covers historical themes and subjects that help explain the ideological trajectory of Zionism; how it originated as an ideology of national liberation within a European-dominated thought system, then to a socialist settler colonial project, and finally to a full-fledged ethno-nationalist apartheid state. The focus of the course will less be on the history of Palestine, though its covered subjects will help put in context how Ottoman Palestine was disintegrated, partitioned, and finally colonized. Rather, its aim is to help students build a solid historical knowledge of entangled themes in imperial, Jewish, world, and Arab-Middle Eastern history that hopefully deepens and nuances their understanding of Zionism and Israel. At a closer look, the history of Zionism represents a significant historical phenomenon in world history as the crossroad between 19th-century European nationalist thought, the secularization of Judaic identity and Jewish civilization, and settler colonialism as a model of nation-building in the post-Ottoman Muslim-Arab world.

 

Course Requirements: 

Historiographical readings as well as translated primary sources will be assigned each week to prepare for the weekly lectures. By the end of the course, students will be asked to submit an essay (500-750 words long) in which they reflect on one aspect of Zionism (intellectual, cultural, ideological, political, etc) and compare it with either a contemporary or historical phenomenon that exists(ed) in the Muslim world.

 

Course schedule: 

Understanding Zionism: An Ideology in Historical Perspective
Sundays 10 AM - 12 PM EST (United States Eastern Standard Time) 

Week 1

October 20

European Nationalism and the Secularization of Religious Identity

  • Course Introduction
  • The Origin of Nationalist Thought in Europe.
  • Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe
  • How concepts and definitions around the Jewish state, Jewish Law, and Jewish identity were debated?

Week 2

October 27

The Origin of Zionism (Theoder Hetzel) and Jewish Enlightenment Thinkers 

  • Jewish Enlightenment thinkers in Russia and Eastern Europe
  • The role of historians and history writing in reimagining National Jewish history in the Diaspora
  • Theoder Hetzel as the archetype of a Nation builder.

Week 3

November 3

Ottoman Palestine from a Zionist Perspective 

  • The status of Palestine in the late Ottoman empire. 
  • The historically settled Jewish communities in Palestine prior to Zionism
  • The British Mandate Period and the Belfour Declaration
  • Jewish Alyahs to Palestine

Week 4

November 10

The Yishuve Period (Pre-1948 Jewish-Zionist community in Palestine 

  • Zionist diplomacy and the role of Zionist institutions to create a Jewish National Home in Palestine
  • Labor Zionism and the influence of Socialist thought on Zionist colonies.
  • Revisionist Zionism as a crucial turning point in the Ideological trajectory of Zionist discourse and political project 

Week 5

November 17

Cultural Zionism and the New Hebrew Culture in Palestine 

  • Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and The creation of a New Hebrew culture in Palestine
  • The Maskilim movement 

Week 6

November 24

Judaic Zionism and the Religious Jewish Response to Zionism as a Secular Project 

  • Jews of the Old Yishuv / Theological critiques of Zionism 
  • Biblical vs. Zionized reading of Jewish History
  • Judaic Zionism 
  • The rise of the National Religious Movement in Israel after 1976 

Week 7

December 1

Post-Nakba Zionism and the Question of Jewish Immigration 

  • Pre-1948 Immigration policies and objectives.
  • The impact of the Holocaust on the question of Jewish Immigration.
  • Sephardic and Mizrahim Immigration and the “ethnicization” of Zionist society in Israel
  • Russian and Ethiopian immigration at the end of century 

Week 8

December 8

The future of Israel between Diaspora Zionism and post-Zionist Jews 

  • Origins of Diaspora Zionism
  • The American case as an example of philanthropic Zionism.
  • The question of the representation of world’s Jewry as a constitutive ideological element of Zionism
  • The demographic and ideological shifts amongst Jews in Israel and the US.

Week 9

December 15

Possible review and makeup session

No one will be turned away for lack of funds, please send an email to info@alqasas.org

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