Zionism
Understand Zionism — the nationalist movement that sought a Jewish homeland in Palestine, shaped by centuries of persecution and the Holocaust.
Zionism was the nationalist movement that advocated the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It emerged in the late 19th century as a response to persistent anti-Semitism in Europe, drawing on religious tradition, nationalist ideology, and the practical need for a refuge from persecution.
Theodor Herzl, often called the founder of political Zionism, published The Jewish State in 1896 after witnessing the anti-Semitism exposed by the Dreyfus Affair in France. The First Zionist Congress (1897) established the World Zionist Organization and called for 'a publicly recognized, legally secured homeland in Palestine.' Jewish immigration to Ottoman and then British Mandate Palestine gradually increased in the early 20th century.
The Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which Britain expressed support for a 'national home for the Jewish people' in Palestine, provided international backing but also created a contradiction: the same territory was home to an Arab Palestinian population. The Holocaust, which killed six million European Jews, devastated the Jewish people and created overwhelming moral and political pressure for a Jewish state. Israel's declaration of independence in 1948 fulfilled the Zionist vision but created the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that remains one of the world's most intractable disputes.