- cross-posted to:
- history
- cross-posted to:
- history
Zionism was one of these cultural nationalist movements. What made it different was that it grafted itself onto British colonialism, a relationship made explicit with the Balfour Declaration in 1917, and actually tried to create a country out of a British colony — Mandate Palestine — and use British colonialism as a way to help establish itself in the Middle East. The Balfour Declaration was essentially a way to use the British Empire for its own ends. On some level, you could say Zionism is a toxic mixture of European nationalism and British imperialism grafted onto a cultural reservoir of Jewish tropes and mythologies that come from Jewish liturgy and culture.
I recently discovered (thanks to the recommendation the Jewish communist podcast The Minyan) this song from 1931 that perhaps captures some of the attitudes of the Yiddish-speaking community toward Zionism during that same period: https://youtu.be/tQMRwk8WDd4
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: