Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Thus, the Zionist idea was simultaneously very modern and based on concepts defi ning
one of the oldest self-identifi ed groups in world history. A half-century of activity by the Zion-
ist movement and by groups and individuals within the Land of Israel helped bring the State of
Israel into being in 1948. Diplomacy, education, political organization, economic investment,
immigration, settlement, defense, and a vast amount of manual and other labor all contrib-
uted to the creation of the state.
Although the Zionist movement had precursors in a variety of places — the idea of a Jewish
national homeland was already being raised in the mid-nineteenth century by such thinkers
as Moses Hess and Leo Pinsker and activists like those in the Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion)
movement — its main creator was Theodor Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian Jew. Convinced that
Europeans would not fully accept and integrate Jews on an equal basis with other citizens,
Herzl proposed a national solution to the “Jewish Question” in his book
The Jewish State.
Building on the enthusiastic response it received, he organized the First Zionist Congress in
Basel, Switzerland, in August 1897.
The Jewish population of the Land of Israel had been increasing for decades. A growing
number of religious Jews, mainly from Eastern Europe and Yemen, immigrated to Jerusalem
and Safed in the nineteenth century. During the 1880s, Jewish settlements with a consciously
political goal sprang up in the Ottoman-ruled territory of Palestine —which was approxi-
mately coextensive with modern-day Israel and the West Bank plus Jordan. Their founding
was sparked mainly by idealistic young Russian-born Jews of the Hovevei Zion group. The
development of the Zionist movement accelerated immigration. Then, during World War I,
the Ottomans deported many of the Jews who had come from Russia, the Ottomans' wartime
enemy. Some of the Jews remaining in Palestine supported the Allied cause by organizing an
effective espionage network to help the British. Those who had been deported quickly re-
turned once the fi ghting ended.
Three key events set the stage for Israel's creation: Great Britain's issuing of the Balfour
Declaration on November 2, 1917, which supported the establishment of a Jewish homeland;
the area's conquest by British forces in 1917 and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the war;
and the participation of three Jewish Zionist battalions, organized by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, in the
British army. After the war, the League of Nations established Palestine, part of the former
Ottoman Empire, as a British mandate, formalizing British rule over the territory. It charged
Britain with putting the Balfour Declaration into effect — that is, establishing in Palestine a
“national home for the Jewish people.” When the League of Nations consented to a division
of the British Mandate for Palestine, Transjordan was split off, becoming autonomous. Britain
established direct rule over the now-much-smaller Palestine.
Several factors inhibited Jewish immigration and kept the number from growing as fast as it
might have. The diffi culty of fi nding jobs was a problem, especially during the 1920s. Mount-
ing Arab opposition, including periodic riots and attacks on Jews, caused many casualties. And
after the Nazis took power in Germany, when far more Jews were seeking a safe haven, British
policy limited immigration, most notably in the 1939 White Paper with which Britain sought
to gain political favor in the Arab world. This last restriction was indirectly responsible for the
deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews trapped in Nazi-ruled Europe.
