Judaism and Zionism: A Reading into the Intellectual Roots and Structural Crisis of the State of Israel

By Abdulrahman Abdullah Mohamed
Houston, Texas

In a perspective that challenges the dominant narrative portraying Zionism as a natural extension of Judaism, Professor Yakov Rabkin, a Canadian academic and professor of modern history at the University of Montreal, asserts that the founding of the State of Israel was not the result of a theological evolution within Jewish tradition. Instead, it represented a fundamental departure from the very essence of the Jewish faith itself.
In a lengthy conversation with Jeffrey Sachs—an American Jewish economist and professor of political economy at Columbia University in New York—Rabkin offered a critical reading of the history of the Zionist idea, deconstructing the overlap between Jewish religious identity and the modern political project that bears its name.
Rabkin argues that Zionism was born within the Protestant imagination of seventeenth-century Europe, long before it emerged in the Jewish consciousness. Certain Protestant sects adopted a literal interpretation of the Pentateuch. They saw the “return of the Hebrews to the Holy Land” as a necessary prelude to the Second Coming of Christ.
Thus emerged what later became known as Christian Zionism, which resonated deeply within British religious thought—even influencing scientific figures such as Isaac Newton. With Britain’s expanding imperial reach in the nineteenth century, this theological vision fused with colonial interests, as the empire sought a strategic foothold in West Asia to secure its route to India.
At that stage, as Rabkin notes, the Jewish community as a whole showed no collective enthusiasm for the idea of gathering and establishing their own state.
Jewish engagement only began with Theodor Herzl, the secular journalist from Hungary, who founded what became known as “political Zionism.” Paradoxically, Herzl’s initial proposal to solve anti-Semitism was a call for mass conversion to Catholicism. When that idea failed, he turned to his alternative plan — the Zionist project.
From its inception, Zionism faced deep opposition from within Judaism itself, on three main levels:
1. Religious Rejection
Rabbinic tradition, based on the Babylonian Talmud, affirms the existence of three oaths that forbid Jews from seeking to reestablish sovereignty in the “Land of Israel,” from occupying it by force, or from rebelling against the nations among whom they reside. Accordingly, many Jewish scholars viewed Zionism as a religious sin and a rebellion against divine will.
This opposition continues today, embodied by the Satmar sect, which upholds the slogan: “Zionism is against the Torah.”
2. The Western Bourgeois Position
In Western Europe and the United States, Jews—who, unlike their Eastern European counterparts, were largely assimilated, prosperous, and socially integrated—viewed Zionism as a reactionary idea. They believed it revived anti-Semitic tropes, suggesting that Jews were “foreigners” who should “return” to Palestine.
3. The Socialist Position
Leftist movements such as the Bund in Eastern Europe regarded Zionism as a political deviation, distracting Jews from struggles for social liberation and class equality.
These divisions reached their peak with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which Britain promised to establish a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine—on the condition of safeguarding the “rights of the existing non-Jewish communities.”
Notably, Edwin Montagu, the only Jewish minister in the British government at the time, opposed the declaration and described it as an “anti-Semitic measure,” arguing it would cast doubt on the loyalty of European Jews to their homelands.
Rabkin points out that the core of the early Zionist elite consisted of secular revolutionaries influenced by early twentieth-century Russian culture, most of whom harboured open hostility towards religion.
This revolutionary background, he argues, instilled in Israeli political culture a bias toward power, exclusion, and ideological violence. Out of this school of thought emerged Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of Revisionist Zionism and spiritual father of the Likud Party, who advanced the principle of the “Iron Wall”—the idea that Jewish existence in Palestine could only be secured through force, not negotiation.
After the 1967 War, a new current emerged, which Rabkin calls “Religious National Judaism.” It represented an alliance between the Israeli political right and religious fundamentalists. These devout settlers rejected the traditional rabbinic pacifism and developed a new concept: the “Torah of the Land of Israel.” They argued that ancient Jewish law no longer applied to their reality in the occupied territories.
This theological revolution, Rabkin notes, is reminiscent of Khomeini’s introduction of the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist) in Iran.
Rabkin observes that this transformation constituted a radical intellectual rupture with the core of Talmudic wisdom, which had long neutralised genocidal commands found in the Book of Joshua by teaching that “the nations have mixed.”
However, the adherents of “Religious National Judaism” revived the violent interpretations of scripture, turning them into tools of justification for political and military policies—transforming Judaism from a tradition of tolerance into a theology of power.
A Parallel Reading: Israel on the Verge of Structural Collapse
On another front, in a recent study, American economist Richard Wolff offers a complementary diagnosis of what he describes as Israel’s “comprehensive structural crisis”, where its economic, political, social, and military crises intersect at a critical point threatening to tear the state apart from within.
1. The Economy – From Welfare State to Predatory Neoliberalism
The Israeli economy, once state-directed, shifted in the 1980s to an excessively neoliberal, privatised model.
Despite the glittering slogan “Start-up Nation”, this transformation has deepened class inequality, leaving vast segments of society excluded from growth. Particularly striking is the stark divide between Jews of European origin (Ashkenazim) and those of Arab and African origin (Mizrahim).
2. Politics – Perpetual Crisis as a Tool of Rule
Wolff describes Israel as a settler-colonial state that survives by managing crises rather than resolving them.
He argues that Benjamin Netanyahu has turned “permanent polarisation” into a mechanism for political survival, transforming the entire system into a self-perpetuating crisis machine.
3. Society – The Breakdown of the Social Contract
Israeli society is no longer cohesive; it has become a mosaic of fragmented communities.
The younger generation, Wolff notes, no longer views the conflict with the Palestinians as a “security imperative,” but as a moral dilemma—questioning the legitimacy of annihilating an entire nation under the guise of security.
4. The Military-Industrial Nexus
Wolff highlights the interdependence between the military establishment and high-tech sectors, whereby the army serves as a testing ground for technologies before their global marketing.
These tools—especially those involving AI, surveillance, and interception—are often tested on Palestinians in the occupied territories.
Thus, militarisation has become a source of profit, profit generates inequality, and inequality deepens systemic fragility—in a closed loop with no escape.
5. Arab Security Cooperation – Partnerships in the Shadows
Wolff notes the expanding cooperation between Israeli security companies such as Pegasus and several Arab regimes in the field of cyber surveillance.
This economic entanglement has made these regimes reluctant to criticise Israel publicly, despite its actions in Gaza and the West Bank—for fear of disrupting profitable relationships.
Conclusion
Wolff concludes that Israel stands at a decisive historical crossroads:
It must either move toward full authoritarian militarisation—or reforge a new social contract based on justice and equality.
Yet, he warns, such a transformation is nearly impossible, as Israeli neoliberalism has become organically intertwined with occupation, militarisation, and regional security alliances.
The crisis, therefore, is not temporary or circumstantial—it is structural, embedded in the very foundations of the Israeli state itself.

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