ABSTRACT
Opposition to any particular form of Zionist achievement was inevitable given the variety of its aspirations. From the beginning Zionism was not a monochromatic ideology but one which expressed itself in a variety of colours: e.g. the political Zionism of Herzl, the cultural-historical Zionism of Ahad Ha’am, the religious Zionism of the Rabbis Kook, the syndicalist Zionism of Nahman Syrkin, the Marxist Zionism of Ber Borochov, the fascist Zionism of Jabotinsky and Labour Zionism, which dominated the Yishuv and prevailed for the first thirty years of the life of the state until the advent of a Likud-led government in 1977 (see Goldberg 1996). Yonatan Ratosh noted the lack of clarity:
Zionism is essentially an attempt to provide an undefined answer (from a’spiritual centre’ to an empire) to an undefined problem (the Jewish question, all depending on the various attitudes towards the question of what Judaism is) of an undefined human grouping (all the Jews, according to the various conceptions of ‘Who is a Jew?’—or portions thereof) in an undefined territory (from Western Palestine, or a portion thereof—to the borders of Egypt and the Euphrates).
(in Diamond 1986:23).