Originally Posted by levite

You're 100% right, of course. But I prefer to separate Zionism, which is usually used specifically to describe the modern political movement, begun in the mid-1800s, to establish, somewhere in the world, a national homeland for the Jewish people, from the eternal connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, and their millenia-long yearning to return there. Zionism as a 19th- and early-20th-century political movement was always dominated by a socialist, deeply secular rhetoric. It embraced the notion of a Jewish people independent of Jewish religion-- which personally I question-- and advocated the advent of a Zionist national entity for reasons having nothing to do with the traditional teachings of the Jewish religion. Religious Zionism existed, sure, but it was always a minority movement, until late into the 20th century, well after the establishment of the State of Israel.

I am a religious Zionist, so clearly I support the State of Israel, and I believe that at heart, it doesn't matter what all those socialists thought, the establishment of the State of Israel is of some religious significance. But I am not, in theory, invested in the form of the State, or the makeup of its populace, or how religious its society is. I think that it is a first step on a long, long road to the messiah coming. But it's only that first step. It is only important in that it brought Jews back to live in the Land of Israel, speaking Hebrew, a country of free Jews on our ancestral homeland, acting as a shield for the rest of us by keeping a free space for any Jew to flee home, if need be, acting as our sword by keeping a strong Jewish army to remind people that Jews will no longer be anybody's prey, and keeping the torch of Judaism burning in the center of the Jewish world.

But socialism means nothing to me, and it was everything to political Zionists before the State was established. They couldn't care less about God, and I couldn't care more. It was a fortunate coincidence that their goals and the goals of many religious Jews met and ran parallel for a time. The great poets of Judaism who wrote about the eternal longing of Jews for the Land of Israel, and the City of David were not thinking about nationalism or post-Enlightenment geopolitics, but about God, covenant, and spirit.

I understand the desire to conflate the two, but I think it's important to keep them separate.