The Foundations of Zionism: Sabri Jiryis on the making of a colonial project in Palestine

"The Palestinians' adherence to their rights has never diminished. Their young generations recall history, are hostile to Israel and demand justice. It is not known when the chapter will come to an end - but the indigenous people have not forgotten their rights and will not give them up."

The Foundations of Zionism by Sabri Jiryis takes the reader on a tour of Jewish interreligious debates, from early Zionist settlers to the end of the British Mandate in 1948.

Jiryis, an 87-year-old Palestinian lawyer and writer fluent in Hebrew, with decades of activism, was the director of the Palestine Research Centre of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in the 1970s and 80s.

His activism would lead to his being placed under administrative detention, or imprisonment without charge, by Israel before being exiled to Lebanon.

A major activist intellectual, his role as head of the Palestine Research Centre gave dispossessed people a chance to grow intellectually, academically and to explore their own history.

In 1982, Israel invaded Beirut and looted the Centre’s historical archives and this set Palestinian educational institutions back a step.

The Foundations of Zionism was originally published in two volumes in Arabic in 1977 and 1986, with the first volume first appearing in Lebanon and the second in Cyprus.

A single-volume, newly translated edition of the book will give English readers direct access to a towering work of historical writing.

Jiryis writes: "My encounter with Zionism began at a young age. As a child in my village of Fassouta, in the Galilee, I witnessed the Nakba of 1948 when I was 10 years old, and saw people from nearby villages fleeing to Lebanon. I was among the 160,000 Palestinians who remained on our land, and I grew up under Israeli military rule and discrimination. Early in my life, the question plagued me: “Who are these people? Why did they come here?"

Those two basic questions that animated the young life of Sabri Jiryis feel like the guiding motivation for producing this work.

What we find in the book is not a simple picture of what Zionism is and how history unfolded. Jiryis does not shy away from complexity, nuance and historically rooted analysis.

The Foundations of Zionism gets into the weeds of the debates Zionists had in the late 19th century and the 1940s, as well as the background for why they were happening.

The book begins by examining the development of Judaism before Zionism and the impact of European Christian persecution of Jews from the 15th century onwards.

Jiryis puts forward a well-documented case that Zionism is born out of European antisemitism — he examines the different manifestations of antisemitism in different places, regimes and ideologies and how this impacted Jewish life.

As Jiryis observes, events like the trial of the Jewish-French Army officer Alfred Dreyfus, falsely accused of treason, convinced many Jews that despite an era of equality and integration, their Jewish heritage would not be forgotten.

"The writings of many Zionist leaders and thinkers revealed a great disappointment with antisemitism, which prompted them to fundamentally reconsider their positions. In doing so, affected by the very racism inherent in anti-semitism, they adopted racist hypotheses of their own to counter it." They concluded that Jews needed to leave Europe and establish a country made up of fellow Jews.

A key takeaway from the book is that Zionism had several different beginnings in the late 19th century, and that the synthesis of these different parties was the source of constant tension.

In the chapter on Theodor Herzl, who authored The Jewish State and was an important Zionist leader, we find that many of his ideas were contentious among other Zionists.

"In his book, Herzl also called for drafting a constitution for the Jewish state, and suggested that this state should take the form of an aristocratic republic."

Herzl stated his position was explicitly against democracy in the new state. Herzl's involvement with the Zionist Congress, which brought together various pro-Zionist factions, drew scrutiny, as he was often accused of being insufficiently practical.

Herzl was opposed to the settlement of Jews in Palestine before receiving political support from regional powers.

Some, including the Lovers of Zion faction, wanted a movement to embrace Jewish settlements that were taking place at the time.

There was also suspicion that Herzl was willing to settle for any land, regardless of its location, and that he lacked commitment to the Palestine project.

Reading these arguments and how they evolve later on offers us a trace of what Israel would be formed out of.

The Foundations of Zionism introduces English readers to an important Palestinian intellectual as he dissects and makes sense of the history of Zionism.

It will challenge many to take the intellectual work of Palestinians seriously and offer piercing insight into how they make sense of the world around them.

The book dispels myths and unveils the history and trajectory of Zionism. Essentially, reading is for anyone looking for a deeper understanding.

Usman Butt is a multimedia television researcher, filmmaker and writer based in London who read International Relations and Arabic Language at the University of Westminster and completed a Master of Arts in Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter