The Zionist Movement

ZIONISM

The Zionist movement in the late 19th century was caused by nationalist currents in Europe, as well as the need to secure Jewish life in Eastern Europe, which led many Jewish intellectuals to seek a new basis for a Jewish national life. One of these intellectuals was Theodore Herzl, a Viennese journalist who wrote The Jewish State which was about the need to form a Jewish state as a solution to the Diaspora (The dispersion of Jews outside of Israel from 6th century B.C., when they were exiled to Babylonia, until the present time.) and to anti-Semitism. In 1897 Herzl called the first World Zionist Congress at Basel, which brought together diverse pro-Zionist groups into one movement. The meeting helped found Zionist organizations in most countries with large Jewish populations.

The debate on whether or not Palestine was essential for a Jewish state was the first issue to split the Zionist movement. A majority of the delegates to the 1903 congress felt that Palestine was essential and rejected the British offer of a homeland in Uganda. On the other hand, Territorialists led by Israel Zangwill, withdrew because they believed that an immediate refuge for persecuted Jews was needed. Within the Zionist movement a broad range of perspectives developed, ranging from a philosophy of nationalism with traditional Jewish Orthodoxy (in the Mizrahi movement, founded 1902) to various other forms of Zionism with utopian and Marxist socialism.

After Herzl's death, the Zionist movement came under the leadership of Chaim Weizmann, who tried to restore the "practical" wing of the movement, which was to further Jewish settlement in Palestine, and its "political" wing, which stressed the establishment of a Jewish state. Weizmann obtained few acknowledgments from the Turkish sultan, who ruled Palestine. However, in 1917, Great Britain, then at war with Turkey, issued the Balfour Declaration which promised to help establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine. Great Britain was given a mandate of Palestine in 1920 by the League of Nations, in part to implement the Balfour Declaration.

Jewish colonization greatly increased in the early years of the mandate, but soon the British limited their interpretation of the declaration in the face of Arab pressure. There were disputes in the Zionist movement on how to counter the British position. The right-wing Revisionists, led