Published: 13 September 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
FIVE FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS differentiate the two. First, canonical-secular Zionism saw the need of the Jewish people for a safe shelter as the motivation for establishing the state. “Let sovereignty be granted us over a portion of the globe adequate to meet our rightful national requirements; we will attend to the rest,” Theodor Herzl wrote in “The Jewish State.”
Nationalist-messianic Zionism, however, sees the divine commandment to fulfill the biblical promise as the motivation for establishing of the state. “We settled … because we were commanded to inherit the land that God Almighty gave to our forefathers,” Menachem Felix, a leader of Gush Emunim, declared in a hearing at the High Court of Justice regarding the settlement of Elon Moreh in 1979.
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Photo: Members of Ma'abarot on their way to work, pre-state Israel, 1939 (Zoltan Kluger/Israel State Archives)
