introduction15 Since its inception in the late nineteenth century, Zionism has evolved into a plethora of ideologies, assuming religious, labour, spiritual, revisionist, humanist, cultural and other ideological forms. Many of these forms of Zionism, notably its variations as epitomized by prominent thinkers, activists and religious scholars such as Ahad Ha’am, Martin Buber, Ernst Simon, and Judah Magnes, among others, have critiqued the nationalistic, state-centric, militaristic and xenophobic elements which political Zionism was injecting into its reading of Judaism. However, its modern adherents mainly understand Zionism as a movement for Jewish national self-determination in the form of a Jewish nation-state in what is called Eretz Israel, or ‘Greater Israel’; which includes the area of Mandate Palestine, along with parts of southern Lebanon and Jordan. As such, when referring to ‘modern Zionism’ or ‘political Zionism’ in this book, I am pointing to Zionism as a political project of settlement, colonialism and statehood based on an ideological understanding of the exclusiveness of the Jewish people. Importantly, this is not to undermine or ignore the ways in which early self-identified and active Zionist thinkers, such as those listed above, initially sought to reinvigorate Jewish awareness, organization and identity as a response to the violent and widespread persecution and anti-Semitism faced by Jews throughout Europe. Nor is it to question the fact that, for many Jewish immigrants, Mandate Palestine served as a place of refuge from such persecution. The notion of race, racialized representation, and racism is part and parcel to any discussion of modern political Zionism and cannot be satisfied with consideration of the function of ethnicity and religion in Israel alone. Far from an accidental or passing feature of Israeli society and politics, racism and racial discrimination is inherent in the ideological construct of modern political Zionism and its basic motivation for Jewish settlement, colonization and statehood. Believing in the national oneness of all Jewish people regardless of any political, social, legal, religious, or linguistic ties, Zionist literature and discourse make repeated reference to a certain ‘common ancestry’, ‘national fulfillment’ and a ‘national oneness’ of Jewish people everywhere.20 Importantly, since taking shape as a national movement, “a dominant order of Zionism articulated ‘the Jewish 20 As stated by Ben-Gurion, “The State of Israel is a part of the Middle East only in geography, which is, in the main, a static element. From the decisive aspects of dynamism, creation and growth, Israel is a part of world Jewry. From that Jewry it will draw all the strength and the means for the forging of the nation in Israel and the development of the Land; through the might of world Jewry it will be built and built again” (Ben-Gurion 1954, 489).