How Many Jews Need to Die in the Name of Zionism?

A common misconception about Zionism is that it is all about protecting Jews. Yet, Zionist and Israeli leaders have consistently put Jews in danger, sacrificing Jews for the goal of establishing and maintaining a Jewish State. This is a brief history of the Jews who have had to die for the cause of Zionism.

In the 1930s, the Zionist movement was committed to rescuing Jews fleeing persecution in Europe only if it meant their immigration to Palestine. The leader of the Zionist community in Palestine at the time, David Ben Gurion, was clear that Jewish Agency funds were not to be used to save Jews going somewhere other than Palestine. 

In fact, after Kristallnacht, the infamous Nazi pogrom in Nov. 1938, a rescue effort was organized known as the “Kindertransport” in which Britain reluctantly agreed to allow 10,000 Jewish children from Germany to Britain.

Shortly thereafter, Ben Gurion stated on Dec. 9, 1938: “If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, or only half of them by transporting them to Israel, then I would opt for the second alternative, for we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the people of Israel.” [1, 2, 3 ].

The Zionist community in Palestine cared about establishing a Jewish state. The Jews of Europe were worth saving only to the extent that they served this aim.

By 1948, many hundreds of Zionist Jews in Palestine had already sacrificed their lives for the cause. Many dozens of Jewish fighters were killed in attacks on British targets in the 1940s. Many hundreds more were killed in violent clashes with the native Palestinian Arabs in 1920, 1921, 1929 and 1936-1939. Turns out that building a Jewish State in a land that was overwhelmingly non-Jewish was dangerous business. Who would have guessed?

Then, during the 1948 Palestine War, some 6,000 Jews perished, or about 1% of the community, in the process of expelling 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and preventing their return. Turns out ethnic cleansing was also quite dangerous, obviously for the Palestinian victims, but also for the Jewish perpetrators.

After the war, the State of Israel continued to endanger Jews in the name of Zionism. A member of the Zionist underground in Baghdad, Yusef Ibrahim Basri, bombed three Jewish targets in Baghdad in 1950-51 to drive 110,000 Jews out of Iraq and hasten their immigration to Israel.

The Israeli military also persuaded a group of Egyptian Jews to carry out acts of violence in Egypt in what became known as The Lavon affair. They planted bombs inside civilian targets like theaters, libraries, post offices, and educational centers to induce the British to keep its occupying forces in Egypt's Suez Canal zone, thought to be in the interest of the Jewish State, even if it was not in the interest of Egyptian Jews.

In the 1950s, Israel built 108 civilian centers in border areas to serve as a first line of military defense, including towns like Nahal Oz, short for Nahalayim Mul Aza, “Nahal soldiers across from Gaza,” which tragically ended up serving the purpose for which it was built, to put Israeli civilians on the front lines as human shields. 

Military service is of course compulsory for most Jews in Israel. That’s because of the nature of the state, which was established against the will of its native inhabitants, as well as the surrounding countries. This has required a constant flow of soldiers.

Awkwardly, most of Israel’s wars have been wars of choice: the border wars of the 1950s, the 1956 Suez War, the June 1967 War, the 1982 Lebanon War, the occupation of southern Lebanon (1982-2000), the first Palestinian Uprising (1987-1993), the second Palestinian Uprising (2000-2005), the 2006 Hezbollah War and the 4 wars waged on Gaza in 2008-9, 2012, 2014 and 2021. Thousands of Jewish soldiers died in these armed conflicts. All of these wars were wars of choice ostensibly fought in the name of Zionism, and all required eager Jewish soldiers willing to give their lives for the cause.

That leaves us with Israel’s current war on Gaza, the most deadly war Israel has ever waged in its history. In mid-Dec. 2023, Israeli trauma centers reported that more than 10,580 Israelis had been wounded in combat since Oct. 7th, the vast majority of them Jewish. In the eight months that have passed since then, the violence has escalated in many areas of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Lebanon. Is the number of killed, wounded or traumatized Jews is 20,000? 30,000? The Israeli military censor is working hard to hide its casualty counts in order to ensure ongoing support for the war. How many more Jews need to die for the cause?

For decades, the State of Israel has been a menace to the Jewish people. It has consistently sacrificed Jewish lives for the cause of preserving Jewish domination in Palestine. No surprise, Israel is the most dangerous place in the world to be Jewish today. When will the Jewish people realize Israel has become not a savior of Jews, but their greatest threat?

If you enjoyed this piece, check out our Palestine 101 Course here, a comprehensive 4-part lecture series on the history of Palestine-Israel question, from 1870-present.

Much love,

-Zach