Po‘ale Tsiyon’s Approach on Palestine

Po‘ale Tsiyon Central Committee

1905

Given the socioeconomic life-conditions that obtain in the capitalist countries, the Jewish national group [folk-grupe]—as a people without its own national economy—will inevitably always feel a sharp socioeconomic and national-political pressure that manifests itself in the growing pauperization and cultural infertility of the great Jewish masses. The [mass] emigration provoked by this situation, which is directed toward the developed capitalist lands where the socioeconomic condition of the Jewish masses cannot be radically altered, will unavoidably encounter limits and obstacles that cannot be overcome. In order to create the necessary conditions for a free socioeconomic and national-political life, the broad Jewish masses must acquire a free territory where they can gather and lead their folk life based on national autonomous foundations. This is the goal of Zionism: to acquire such a territory that would be the secured homeland of the majority of the Jewish people.

Acknowledging the evolutionary progressive character of every folk psychology and thus by extension the Jewish one as well; convinced that every social ideology is dependent on material-social relations and real interests (and that the real life interests of the Jewish masses do not lie in Palestine nor in aspiring to that land in particular); not according any real value to our supposed “historical rights” to this land—we do not acknowledge an organic connection between Zionism and Palestine.

Translated by

Vera

Szabó

Credits

Po‘ale Tsiyon Central Committee, from “Deklaratsion” [Po‘ale Tsiyon’s Approach on Palestine], Sotsialistisher teritorializm: Zikhroynes un materialen tsu der geshikhte fun di parteyen SS, YS, un, “Fareynikte,”, vol. 1 (Paris: Voltaire, 1934), pp. 145–46.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.