Anti-Semitism's increasingly thin and hard-to-see line

[oberliner]

188. The Zionist movement predates the Holocaust by 40 years

The movement stemmed from Jews facing centuries of prejudice, discrimination, massacres, and expulsion from countries across Europe and the world. Jews found it increasingly difficult to feel safe and/or welcome in their home countries.

Here is a quote that helps elucidate that feeling:

"Since the Jew is nowhere at home, nowhere regarded as a native, he remains an alien everywhere. That he himself and his ancestors as well are born in the country does not alter this fact in the least... to the living the Jew is a corpse, to the native a foreigner, to the homesteader a vagrant, to the proprietary a beggar, to the poor an exploiter and a millionaire, to the patriot a man without a country, for all a hated rival"

This was published in the 1880's and helped inspire Herzl to his writings in the years following and get some real energy behind the movement to create a Jewish state. Philanthropists purchased land for settlement in Palestine with the First Aliyah being comprised of Jews facing pogroms particularly in Russia.

There were already several thousand Jews living in Palestine at the time (mostly in Jerusalem) and about 500,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs as well. As anti-semitism increased across Europe in the early part of the 20th century, the numbers of Jews immigrating increased and some of the structures of statehood began to be erected.

The pogroms of 1905 in Russia, in particular, led to an increase in immigration. The land that was purchased was generally swamps that they attempted to convert into arable, fertile land. These were essentially a series of socialist communes that grew across Palestine, populated by primarily Russian Jews escaping the oppression there.