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Detail - Goals of Zionism, and the Corresponding Problems they led to

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The European Zionist organizations which started the State of Israel had hoped that the new country they had started would be both a democracy and a special refuge for the Jewish people after suffering years of anti-Semitism, and then finally the unimaginable horrors of the holocaust. Thus they hoped for three main characteristics of their new country:

• 1. Safe, secure refuge for Jewish people, with special help for the Jews who arrived there from distant lands.
• 2. That the Jewish people would be a demographic majority in their new country, and thus they could have a democratic system that they would still control.
• 3. That the Jewish people would own all the land in their new country.

Unfortunately, things worked out as they had hoped (except for their country becoming an example of freedom and justice), but with negative results they had not anticipated. Many people believe this was because (1) the region they picked was already inhabited by another people who were actually more numerous than they were, and (2) the above characteristics of special privilege for one group and democracy are inherently contradictory by definition.

• 1. Special Privileges Unavoidably Leads to Injustice. Because they planned that the new state would provide all sorts of special assistance to the Jewish people who moved there, this meant that their new society would thus inevitably end up containing all sorts of inequalities, which thus inevitably would lead to all sorts of injustices, which the victimized people (non-Jews, but especially the native Arab people) would inevitably, and justifiably, rebel against.
• 2. Minority Dominating and Expelling a Majority Leading to Legitimate Rebellion. In addition, the Zionists were a minority in the land where they had decided to dominate the new country they had created there. So, in order for them to keep both their democratic system and their unequal society, they realized they had to both kick most of the native people out of their own country (so that they would then be the majority), and also they would have to compromise their democracy (to reduce the power of the Arabs that remained, and the Jews who did not believe in inequality and injustice). This too would inevitably lead to understandable rebellion and disdain across the world.

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(c) Israel Law Resource Center, February, 2007.