Differentiating between Zionism and Judaism requires recognition of certain basic facts. To begin with, Theodor Herzl (the founder of Zionism) was an atheist whose personal awareness of Jewishness appears to have been awakened during the 1894 trial, wrongful conviction, and imprisonment on Devil’s Island of Alfred Dreyfus, a French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent accused of spying for Germany.

In his diaries, Herzl makes no secret of his intention to use Jewish suffering as a means of furthering Zionist ideology.

His vision for a Jewish state had nothing to do with “ … I will also bring them back to the land that I gave to their forefathers and they shall possess it” (Jeremiah 30:3). Herzl actually considered various other locations such as Uganda and Argentina for his Zionist state and his view of Zionism and Judaism was more akin to that of Chaim Chassas who in 1943 in the Zionist newspaper, Ha’Arutz, said:

“Zionism and Judaism is not one thing but two different things. And of course two contradicting one another. Zionism starts at the place where Judaism is destroyed … one thing is certain, Zionism is not a continuation or healing of wounded Judaism, but rather an uprooting.”

Zionism has never had any qualms about the loss of Jewish lives so long as that loss furthered the cause of Zionism. In the book 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis, editor Lenni Brenner, uses actual historic documents to demonstrate the betrayal of Jews by Zionists – before during, and after the Holocaust – even to the extent of offering to fight for the Nazis on the understanding that after Germany won the war, Zionism would be rewarded with Palestine.

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