The Establishment of Israel in 1948: A Watershed Period for Australian Zionism

Journal article

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In Journal Issue

Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal, 26, 2 (2023)

Author(s) Suzanne Rutland AbstractIn the early years of the foundation of Herzlian Zionism, support for this new movement was only at the fringes of Australian Jewry. Key Jewish leaders such as Sir Isaac Isaacs and Rabbi Jacob Danglow were fervently opposed to political Zionism. However, with the Holocaust, the arrival of Jewish refugees from Nazism in the late 1930s and Holocaust survivors after the war, combined with the key role which Labor Foreign Minister, Dr Herbert Vere Evatt played in the foundation of the Jewish state and the admittance of Israel into the United Nations, Zionism has become mainstream in Australian Jewry. This article analyses the early opposi­tion, the factors that led to the major change in attitudes to Zionism and Dr Evatt’s role in the creation of Israel.
Year2023
Pages230-257
Keyword(s)Zionism and Israel