Zionism is both political and spiritual. It has been going on for a long time, and it even translated into other cultures. In America, it became manifest destiny.
Zionism is ultimately the idea that God has promised land, and that it’s ones sacred duty to either take it or preserve it. The belief in an otherworldly heaven is actually not as old as Zionism, and to this day the Zionist ideal/agenda is still affecting our whole world. The originating culture was Israeli, and their diaspora has seemed to stretch all the way back into what could be considered almost prehistory. Its most recent manifestation was the founding of Israel in the country of Palestine, and seizing of places from their history, like Jerusalem.
This notion has been copied many times. In the conquest of the Americas (well, even the Roman conquest), it is the idea that the divine ordains one culture as privileged, making it the keystone of any other event on the planet.
Zionism could perhaps be likened to the African beliefs about tribal territory. They believed not that the land was theirs, but that it belonged to the spirits including the spirits of their ancestors, and they would keep their ancestral grounds as an act of filial piety.
The stated motivation for Israeli’s is not political. It’s not a desire for empire, but basically they see Israel as the home of their God where they can honour their standing beliefs and traditions. It’s motivated by piety. The literal Zionism definition is home of their ancestor Abraham. Tribal lands and given to Abraham by divine covenant, which they believe they must keep in worship of their God. That is literal Zionism.
In translated Zionism, as protestants left their “ancestral” lands they believed that God would go with them. It was their values and “Christianity” that God wanted to spread. The whole world was to be Gods kingdom and entrusted to his followers. The idea that the natives could be permitted to preserve their spirituality in the face of this divine call would be heresy.
In this day and age, the God element has sort of transmuted. God has become more metaphor and free to be translated. Instead, Zionism is world progress or world freedom, but in fact no such ideal is truly believed in. It‘s just useful doctrine to pacify those who will be included in the empire. It‘s perhaps interesting that American Zionism is what let Israeli Zionism become literal fact, and we are occupying Iraq and demanding they make room for each other. But what are we doing in Israel now? Continued fire fights, sporadic violence across the green line as it’s called there. We’re taking sides, and we were the peace makers? We are now? I am an American, by the way, and not a patriot. Nor am I anti-American.
We’re very hypocritical based on self interests. Yes. I am for the world seeing the truth in this matter. On some level, all of us have been seeking heaven, and in the seeking creating hell.
So this idea of land and God goes back before any recorded history to the start of man’s belief in God I expect? Yes. The Celtic burial mounds were also places of filial piety. Strange now that westerners think Japanese filial piety to be strange.
When or how did it get defined as Zionism? It got defined as Zionism because of the wide spread story of the Jews. Their enslavement or just cultural integration wherever they were. They weren’t slaves everywhere of course, but they had a long standing oral tradition of Zion. The sacred land/paradise they had lost. So many cultures heard of it, and the Jews have existed in differing states of peace in the various cultures they lived in.
Zionism then is the idea of the land and God and therefore ‘entitlement’ to it? Native cultures have the idea, but not the entitlement concept so they don’t practice it? They did eventually. Which is very likely what spurred Roman conquest, and permitted the “pax romanum” or Roman peace.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~