Zionism was the dream of Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl who believed antisemitism could not be defeated or cured, only avoided, and that the only way to avoid it was the establishment of a Jewish state. He argued that the Jewish people should leave Europe for Palestine, their historic homeland. They possessed a nationality; all they were missing was a nation and a state of their own. His ideas ran into opposition from members of the Orthodox community and those seeking to integrate in non-Jewish society. Earlier ideas for a homeland included South America and Africa.
His public utterances tended to give the impression that the non-Jewish residents of a future Jewish state would be well treated as he tried to win international support for his idea. But in his diary he wrote: “We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.’
Which is not far removed from the present defence minister, Israel Katz’s stated plans for a “humanitarian city” into which Palestinians in Gaza would be forced. Prof Amos Goldberg, a historian of the Holocaust, described it as “a concentration camp or a transit camp for Palestinians before they expel them”. The “emigration plan” which Mr Katz says “will happen”, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, is in fact an ethnic cleansing plan. No departure can be considered voluntary when the alternative is starvation or indefinite imprisonment in inhuman conditions.
The World Zionist Organization was founded at the congress on 29 August 1897 in Basel, Switzerland and is its legislative authority. Its stated aim:- “Strengthening Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic state and shaping it as an exemplary society with a unique moral and spiritual character, marked by mutual respect for the multi-faceted Jewish people, rooted in the vision of the prophets, striving for peace and contributing to the betterment of the world.”
In more recent times, the ultra-nationalist Religious Zionist Party was formed with Bezazel Smotrich, the far-right settler leader at its head, and is driven by notions of Jewish supremacy and anti-Arab racism.
Theodor Herzl, 2 May 1860 1.30 am Budapest, Hungary, had an intense, determined Sun Pluto in Leo in his communicative 3rd house widely square Saturn in wannabe-important Leo in his 7th. He had an enthusiastic and motivating Jupiter in Cancer opposition Mars square Mercury; and a dreamer’s Neptune in Pisces opposition Moon square Venus in his 5th.
With his North Node on his Aquarius Ascendant and Chiron in his 1st house he would be lacking in self-esteem and obsessed with his image.
“He imagined himself as a great statesman creating a dynasty for his family in Palestine once a Jewish state was established, where his father would be its foundational senator, and his son a doge.”
In the event he died young at 44, followed soon after by his wife, to whom it was reported he had given gonorrhea. His three children led troubled lives, one dying of a heroin overdose, one of suicide and one in a concentration camp during WW11.
When Israel was founded four decades after his death his ‘ghost’ chart recorded a Saturn Return; with tr Uranus triggering his dreamers’ Neptunian T square in its Solar Arc Positions. His Solar Arc Sun was conjunct his South Node (exactly) which may have been a hint that his ego and vanity (SN in Leo) had won out over his humanitarian Aquarius North Node.
The Zionist Congress 29 August 1897 in Basel, Switzerland, had a Virgo Sun square Pluto in Gemini and Jupiter in Virgo square Neptune – so was born out of the Neptune Pluto conjunction in Gemini of the time which produced visionary, religious and ambitious plans. Neptune and Pluto together create a fey, mystical mix of energies, both wonderful and terrifying at the same time. Neptune in its visionary aspect, mixing with Pluto’s power drive, creates a delusional though often devastatingly effective megalomania.
There was also a can-be-autocratic Uranus Saturn in Scorpio which was inconjunct Neptune. With a devoted-to-a-cause Aquarius North Node.
When Israel was founded in 1948 the Zionist Solar Arc Pluto as well as the transiting Pluto were conjunct its South Node in Leo – again promoting ego and selfish glory over humanitarianism.
Much water flowed under the bridge after Herzl’s death with the 1917 Balfour Declaration agreeing to a Jewish homeland in Palestine though stipulating the rights of the indigenous population should not be affected; the rise of fascism and anti-semitism in Europe; increasing unrest in Palestine with an influx of Jewish immigrants and the rise of Jewish militant groups, the Arab-Jewish War of the mid 1930s, the Holocaust and on.
There’s nothing new to say that has not been said here before with little indication of peace in Israel as tr Pluto in Aquarius makes its inexorable progress in opposition to the Israel Moon in 2026/27 – and through the 2030s opposing the 10th house Saturn Pluto and eventually square the Israel Sun and opposition Mars before it exits in the early 2040s. That looks like an unending, recycling two decades of extreme pressure and jeopardy.
Repeating a thought from a previous post:
Savage ironies are writ large in the intractable, never-ending Dante’s Inferno of the Israel/Palestine saga. The Jewish people never forgot the homeland they had been ejected from two millenia ago and yet the Israelis set their faces obdurately against any suggestion that the 700,000 indigenous Palestinians who were forcibly severed from their homes after the creation of Israel should be allowed to return. The 1948 order to expel an entire population “without attention to age” was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, a future prime minister. The lone voice of an opposition politician Meir Ya’ari spoke out against it. He noted “how easily” Israel’s leaders spoke of how it was “possible and permissible to take women, children and old men and to fill the road with them because such is the imperative of strategy. And this we say . . . who remember who used this means against our people during the [Second World] War . . . I am appalled.”
The post Zionism – an ideal with consequences first appeared on Astroinform with Marjorie Orr – Star4cast.
