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Early Release - What Is Zionism? Part 1: Jews Return to Palestine

🕑 Added 2025-05-30 20:21:49 +0000 UTC

Comments

Duniel Mendez

Although I do not believe or support the idea of Zionism… this truly puts into perspective what discrimination and oppression can do to a people. Thank you for this video, and can’t wait for the other parts.

Dmitri Zdorov (the dimka)

There is another piece of land that is designated to Jewish people, and it is Jewish Autonomous Oblast that was created in 1934 in the Far East part of the USSR. It did not work out as a place an alternative to Palestine for various reason. But I guess it's still could be mentioned in the context of main subject.

Randy Whitmore

Wheres your scarf you traitor. Haha hope all is well over there - thanks for the video !

Mila

Hi Ryan, thank you for your thorough analysis. Everything described in the video mostly aligns with my understanding and what I learned back at university. It's a complicated topic, and it's hard to choose a point to start discussing it, so I just want to share a potentially relevant thought that hasn't been mentioned in the comments so far: Zionism wasn't the first attempt to return to Jerusalem. There were numerous movements from different countries. Various leaders in different parts of the world had different motivations; some were religiously motivated—to be buried in Jerusalem—while others sought a safe place to live. For instance, Jews from Spain and later Portugal during the Inquisition moved to Jerusalem among other places, especially after the expulsion. The book that describes this is called "Jews of Spain" by Jane S. Gerber. Additionally, one word caught my attention. Using a loaded term like "colonization" casually without specifying your understanding can lead to some confusion. Different groups of people have varying interpretations, depending on their historical context. Colonies were mostly driven by empires that expanded their territories by exploiting the new land, people's work, and their lives. I'm curious about the definition of colonization in this context. I believe it will be important to include an explanation that sets the context for part 2. Your work is fantastic and highly appreciated.

Ryan Chapman

That's a good catch. I might re-record that line with tighter phrasing. What I meant was that it's often called the bible, simply, within Jewish contexts. So Jews talking about it might call it simply 'the bible' if they were casually referencing it and wanted to use a word that English speakers understand.

Mark

Hey Ryan. Difficult, but fascinating subject. Have you read Peter Beinart’s “THE CRISIS OF ZIONISM”? Peter is a liberal but also a Zionist, an intellectual & a professor of political science at City University of NY. I look forward to the next of your segments. One observation + caveat: the bible purposefully avoided describing the physical features or race of Jesus or any of the other biblical figures. Why do we then continue to present Jesus & other biblical figures as White in our Art, Videos, Presentations, etc. Historians, scholars, Anthropologists, Archaeologists and the like will strongly disagree. It’s 2025. Time to grow up & get with the program.

Bob Nicholson

I've been following this guy on YouTube for a couple years, and found his historical perspective informative. Of course, it's the Jewish perspective, but insightful. https://youtu.be/V1Pixr7FF0g?feature=shared

Elizabeth

This video is great, Ryan! The only change I would suggest is making clear that the Jews today call the Hebrew Bible, "the Tanakh," and not "the bible," which is a Christian word.

Elizabeth

@ minute 2: "among Jews, simply the Bible." No, among Jews it's called the Tanakh, which is an anagram of Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvin. Torah = first 5 books, also called "The Five Books" - these are the most authoritative texts in Judaism. Nevi'im = The Prophets. Ketuvim = the Writings (psalms, etc.)

Ryan Chapman

Thanks! This is really the feedback I'm looking for

Bob Nicholson

Fantastic work, as usual! And by the way, you LOOK very FRENCH!! I wish you well in your new home!

Ryan Chapman

That lines up with my understanding too, and the way I see that argument go. Do you want to keep hashing it out more? Because I think there is some messiness there. And I don't know if it's a mistake on my end, or in that Cohen style of analysis.

Mehdi Sijelmassi

Hey Ryan, really appreciate the thoughtful and nuanced reply. Totally agree it’s hard to generalize across 900+ years, and I liked how you framed the difference between toleration and equality. Definitely isn’t the most important part of the video, but just wanted to bring it up since it caught my attention. On the demographic shift, we’re mostly aligned. Like you mentioned, there were growing economic incentives in Europe, and Cohen (Under Crescent and Cross) also highlights broader political and economic factors behind the population movement. That said, I think he might push back on the idea that Jews left Muslim lands because they were treated worse. He argues that Muslim societies were, on the whole, more tolerant than Christian ones during the Middle Ages—especially when you consider the violence in Western Europe: the Crusades, blood libels, expulsions from Spain and Portugal, and the Inquisition. The Ottoman Empire in the late 1400s welcomed Jewish refugees, and cities like Salonika and Istanbul became major Jewish centers. It’s also worth distinguishing between Western and Eastern Europe. The West was more hostile, but regions like Poland-Lithuania offered Jews relative protection and autonomy for a time—so a lot of the population shift was toward those Eastern communities, not necessarily because Muslim lands grew worse, but because some parts of Christian Europe temporarily became more stable and economically promising (which I feel like you acknowledge in the video until the pogroms start in Russia and Eastern Europe becomes more treacherous later on in the 1600-1800s). Overall I would just argue that the migration had much less to do about treatment of Jews and more around the collapse of central Islamic empires and better economic opportunities in Europe. Anyway, appreciate how open you are to discussion—looking forward to the rest of the series!

Avram

I do not know enough about this subject to offer any fact-checking questions. But this video was presented in a very accessible way. I'm looking forward to it's YouTube release so I can share with others

Ryan Chapman

It's a creative flair I've been developing. Sometimes it just feels to me that the best thing to do is cut to black. But I don't know how it reads to other people, and if it does read like a mistake, then I need to either improve my technique or stop doing it.

Ryan Chapman

Hey Mehdi, I think you might have successfully highlighted a problem spot. It's tricky lumping about 900 years of Muslim-Jewish history into a sentence, so I might make some sort of revision there. Here's my understanding: Islam started out friendly towards Jews during Muhammad's rise to power. Conflict then started between the groups, Jews wouldn't convert, and hostility began. During the jihads across the Middle East in the centuries that followed, Jews undoubtably endured various types of hardship that will be lost to history due to the lack of documentation. But Muslims ended up protecting the Jewish population that survived as Muslim political rule stabilized. That protection was in some ways more benevolent than the Christian one, perhaps mostly because Muslims did not believe Jews were guilty of deicide. But they also were basically second-class citizens under Muslim rule, which served as the rule with some exceptions. Some pogroms happened across the centuries, but in general, for about the next 400 years things were fairly stable and tolerable for Jews, relatively speaking. Islam came and went through its Golden Age. People talk about toleration in periods like these, but what toleration meant, at the time, was basically letting them live. It didn't mean anything like political equality. Then Islam starting becoming more ideologically strict, and towards Jews, more intolerant. From about 1300-1500 AD Jews increased increasing persecution, while also living in circumstances that were politically decaying. That caused a major demographic shift. At the start of the Middle Ages, something like 80% of the Jews of the world lived in the Middle East, and by the end it was flipped, something like 80% lived in Europe, and the population in the Middle East collapsed. That's my overall understanding, which I obviously can't go into in detail in the piece. There were also economic incentives towards the end of the Middle Ages, as the Middle Eastern societies were decaying, Europe was becoming more prosperous and beginning to invite Jews to come live and take part there. What do you think? I have seen the claim that Jews fared better under Muslims than Christians during the period, but I find that, as a broad claim, hard to square with the Jewish population collapse in the Middle East during that period. Why would they leave the area they were being treated better, and overwhelmingly move to an area where they were allegedly being treated worse? Also you could I think successfully argue Christians treated Jews worse throughout the middle section of the Middle Ages, but also that Muslims probably treated Jews worse in the beginning and end of the Middle Ages.

N. J. Oliver Campbell

The only thing I noticed was that there are several places where the screen goes black for a few seconds, in a way that really stands out and makes me be like "did it stop working?"

Chieko

Hi Ryan, topic is ambitious but prompt at the time of Palestinian-Israeli conflict on hostage crisis which phases into the Colonization of Palestine. My knowledge on topic is very limited to some comparative contexts, so that I look forward to your series to explore causal factors to it. The world had been a different place in the past but I wondered why ethnocultural nationalistic ZIONISM now over the diaspora life of Jews. Thank you for your good research.

Ali Snow

Beautiful work, Ryan! Thank you for creating this. Looking forward to the rest.

Jim Tierney

Excellent summary.

Mehdi Sijelmassi

Hey Ryan, excited for this series. Around the 5 minute mark, you mention that Christian societies in the middle ages gave better treatment to Jews than Muslim societies - however much of the information I've seen (see Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages by Mark R. Cohen) indicates that, although not egalitarian, Muslim societies tended to give better treatment to Jewish minorities. I'm curious if you could zero in on the time period you're speaking of?