Zionism Term Analysis

The movement to create a state for the Jewish people, which now more generally refers to supporters of Israel. Although Zionism is Israel’s founding ideology, Arendt soon reveals that Eichmann was something of a Zionist himself while working for the S.S.; after one of his first bosses made him read the foundational Zionist text Der Judenstaat, Eichmann began to revere Zionists because of the similarities between their nationalism and that of the Nazis. Both ideologies, in his terms, were “idealist”—they were willing to sacrifice in pursuit of an idea. While only a small minority of Jews were Zionists before World War Two, the ideology grew rapidly, in part because of the Nazi preference for Zionists—they would not negotiate with anyone else—and of course Jews’ experiences of persecution during the war. Yet a number of Zionist groups and officials, like the Hungarian Rudolf Kastner, actually helped the Nazis ship fellow Jews to concentration camps in exchange for letting a few, generally privileged Jews escape to Palestine. Arendt was a Zionist herself in her youth and arguably even when she wrote this book, although the term is insufficient to capture her evidently complex views of Israel.