Quote:
Originally Posted by ChainLegacy
I do see a widespread Jewish culture and acknowledge that secular Jewish people exist, as it is definitely more than just a religion. I don't think that fact alone somehow justifies the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine. I say it was for religious reasons because why else was the 'holy land' chosen? You can say that it wasn't for religious reasons but for historical ones, but I don't buy that either, since that was so long ago and many other ethnic groups have been driven away from their original lands in that period of time. I think at the base of it even if the original Zionists were less fundamentalist than I had originally supposed, their decision to choose that specific land in the Middle East is rooted in religion.
Besides, let's not think Western approval is justification of anything, especially in the time period you're talking about. The US passed that resolution right on the tail end of a century long slaughtering of the native inhabitants of America. Kinda removes their credibility for me...  |
the reason for choosing it was actually not a historic or a religious one
it was a PRACTICAL one
the zionist movment was working on creating a jewish state, but for that to happen, you needed jews to actually GO there
and getting jews from different places to agree on something is a very hard thing to do (like herding cats)
and this is especially true, since the new state would NOT be in europe one way or another (at one point, there was talk on forming it in Uganda)
so the zionist movment needed to choose a place that would actually attract jews
jews had spent 2000 years dreaming of retuning to their long lost homeland
by creating the new state right where the old one used to be, you are creating a direct link to that 2000 year old dream
how else do you convince jews from all over the world to leave their old lives behind and move to the middle of the desert to start building a country from nothing
how many people do YOU know who would leave everything behind and move to modern day Africa
it was about motivating people, and for THAT, you need more then just the promise of a "state"
you need a symbol to rally people behind
something that would drive people to leave their homes and venture into the middle of nowhere in search of a dream
"a homeland"
"THE homeland"
the one they spent 2000 years dreaming of
and it worked like a charm
it drove hundreds of thousands of jews from all over the world to converge on a piece of desert in one of the most hostile areas on earth, and in the middle of nowhere they started building a country
its still working today, as even on a slow year you have tens of thousands of jews immigrating to israel every year