Summary: Reading Time: 23 minutesIn<a href="http://www.theendofhistory.net/most_recent/complete-balanced-guide-israeli-palestinian-conflict-chapter-1/"> yesterday’s post</a> on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict we looked at the history of the land of Palestine and how and why it holds a special significance to the Jewish people. We also saw how the Jews were expelled from the land of Palestine and scattered throughout the world with the diaspora. The story of the hardships and suffering of the Jewish people did not stop there. For centuries their place as a minority group with alien religious beliefs and traditions earned them the unique place within the societies where they had been scattered to as the scape goat whenever things would go badly for the communities they were living within. This is the environment that the history of Zionism was birthed in.<br> <br> The Plight of the Jews, Memories of Jerusalem and the Seeds of Zionism<br> <br> This seems to be especially true in the European world. Part of that had to do with the backwardness of Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. The real height of civilization during these centuries was based more in the Middle East under the Ottoman Empire. When you read through plays and literature from classic writers like Shakespeare you can see the unique identity stereotyped to Jews in European society. They were portrayed as the “shylocks” and devious lenders or unscrupulous traitors. For a lot of the Catholic world they were taught that it was the Jews who had crucified Jesus (which does not really hold up to the facts presented in the New Testament gospels).<br> <br> Whenever plague would break out in Europe, or a natural disaster, or a local tragedy like missing children, a familiar picture during these times is of the local Jewish community being blamed for the tragedy somehow. Then what would follow was the local, backwards community turning into a band of pitchfork and torch carrying mobs and they would carry out their own atrocities against the local Jews.<br> <br> For centuries this was a constant threat for Jews living in the diaspora. At any moment, the world around them could turn on them and they would catch all sorts of oppression and misery as society’s scapegoats.<br> <br> So within that kind of existence it is not hard to imagine how a sort of nostalgia for the way things were once upon a time began to develop. Jewish kids would grow up and at some point in their experience the townsfolk whom they lived among would blame them and their families for whatever was going wrong in the world. Then those same Jewish kids would watch as neighbors attacked their families and looted their homes.<br> When the dust settled after these attacks, the parents, the uncles and aunts, and the grandparents, would all gather together and they would pull out the sacred scriptures and recount the stories of a time when it was different. They would tell about the kingdom of David and of Moses and Abraham and the patriarchs and of a place where not only were Jews NOT the scapegoats and victims of their society but they were bonded together with a national identity. They had the temple. They had a king. They were strong and victorious. They had armies and wise men.<br> <br> It was all a long time ago. It did not exist anymore. But God had allowed them to be taken captive once before with the Babylonians according to the sacred scriptures. They had been able to return once. Might there be a hope for that happening ever again?<br> <br> This would have been the seeds of Zionism.<br> <br> It was small at first. But little by little one story after another used to cope with one tragedy after another it helped shape an image of the land of the Jews and Israel as something special and significant and perhaps it was out there again somewhere.<br> <br> This would have been burned into the conscience of J...
