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You are in: Events: Israel at 50: ISRAEL TODAY | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Monday, 27 April, 1998, 12:14 GMT 13:14 UK
Zionism - 50 years after Israeli independence
![]() The celebrations surrounding Israel's 50th anniversary of independence
are more low-key than might have been expected - an indication of the
questioning and doubt in many peoples' minds about the future course of the
country. Israel's achievements in 50 years have been considerable; it has
been transformed from a tiny embattled state into a thriving modern economy,
well able to defend itself.
But old and new in Israel sometimes sit uncomfortably side-by-side. Old ideologies and patterns of thought appear less relevant to today's generation. BBC correspondent Jonathan Marcus looks at the fate of the founding ideology of the Jewish State - Zionism - and what it means today.
Zionism bears the indelible marks of its origins in the Europe of the 1880's and 1890's. Nationalism was already on the march - Italy and Germany had been established - and the great Empires of Russia and the Hapsburgs looked increasingly shaky. The founders of modern Zionism saw it as the only salvation for the Jewish people - they dreamed of a state that would provide a haven from pogroms and persecution. Unlike the religious, messianic Zionism that had been a traditional component of Jewish religious expression, modern Zionism was avowedly secular. Indeed many of Israel's founding fathers were not just Zionists, but also socialists. Political Zionism was prompted by the rising nationalist tide in fin de siecle Europe, but it didn't lead to Jewish state-hood until some 50 years into the next century.
As the colonial shackles were overthrown this new strand of nationalism was ultimately to give rise to the demands for Palestinian state-hood.
Zionism may still be important as a founding myth. But it probably means little to most average Israelis as they go about their daily lives. This raises a number of interesting questions: does Israel still need such an ideological foundation? And if not traditional Zionism, is there any competing ideology that could supplant it? Israel, as so often, is a frustrating mix of the old and the new; a society that is both established and young; one that still craves ideological foundation and one that believes that it has outgrown its ideological roots.
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