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Israel-Gaza Megathread #3

This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.

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And yet collective, non-messianic Zionism only became popular in the late 1800’s in the context of modern European nationalism.

Going to my other example, the Lakota aren’t actively trying to retake the black hills because they’re not realistically able to. Until Palestine became part of the British Empire, there was no chance of retaking it.

True, but the project wasn’t a continuation of some ancient or medieval movement. I’m not an expert, but I believe the established view was that they would return to the promised land under the leadership of the messiah, conceived in religious and eschatological rather than practical terms. The Zionist movement that eventually produced the state of Israel arose in the same post-French revolution context as other European nationalisms of the era (e.g., Croatian, Bulgarian, Greek, Polish (based on all of what we would now call Poles considered as a whole people rather than on the political ‘nation’ of Poles in the medieval/early modern sense (which only referred to the nobility)). Having a pre-existing holy book that promised them a specific territory certainly has had its effects, but the movement was a break from the traditional Jewish religion rather than a linear development.