Zionism as a political movement started in 1897 and supported a 'national home', and later a state, for the Jewish people in Palestine. The Zionist movement declared the re-establishment of its State of Israel in 1948, following the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. Since then and with varying ideologies, Zionists have focused on developing and protecting this state.
While Zionism is based in part upon Torah mitzvot linking the Jewish people to the Biblical land of Israel, the modern movement is largely secular. Indeed, until 1967 the Tzion of the Tanakh (the Old City of Jerusalem) was not even within the boundaries of Israel (although Mount Zion itself, was).
Nationalist Zionism originated from the Revisionist Zionists led by Jabotinsky. Jabotinsky was based in Mussolini's fascist Italy until Hitler demand his expulsion. The Revisionists left the World Zionist Organization in 1935 because it refused to state that the creation of a Jewish state was an objective of Zionism. The revisionists advocated the formation of a Jewish Army in Palestine to force the Arab population to accept mass Jewish migration. Revisionist Zionism evolved into the Likud Party in Israel, which has dominated most governments since 1977. It advocates Israel maintaining control of the West-Bank and East Jerusalem and takes a hard-line approach in the Israeli-Arab conflict. In 2005 the Likud split over the issue of creation of a Palestinian state on the occupied territories and party members advocating peace talks helped form the Kadima party.
The World Zionist Organization, or WZO, was founded as the Zionist Organization, or ZO, in 1897 at the First Zionist Congress, held from August 29 to August 31 in Basel, Switzerland. It changed its name to World Zionist Organization in January 1960.
The ZO served as an umbrella organization for the Zionist movement, whose objective was the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine - at that time under the Ottoman Empire and following the First World War The British Mandate of Palestine. Theodor Herzl, who with Max Nordau and Zvi Shimshi, organized the first Congress, later wrote in his diary: "If I were to sum up the Congress in a word – which I shall take care not to publish – it would be this: At Basle I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today I would be greeted by universal laughter. In five years perhaps, and certainly in fifty years, everyone will perceive it."
When the State of Israel was declared 51 years later on May 14, 1948, many of its new administrative institutions were already in place, having evolved during the regular Zionist Congresses of the previous decades. Some of these institutions remain to this day. The WZO's headquarters was permanently moved to Jerusalem, after being located over the years in capitals of Europe, including Berlin and London, and most recently in New York City, in the United States.
A document which was brought before Israel's Supreme Court, showed that private Palestinian land was taken and given to Israeli settlers by the World Zionist Organization. The land in question had been ruled off-limits by Israel. The World Zionist Organization had been acting as an agent of the government in assigning land to Jewish settlers in the Israeli-occupied territories. The Israeli government, to avoid responsibilities under international law, used the World Zionist Organization to settle its citizens in the territory occupied in 1967. The document concerns several homes in the Israeli settlement of Ofra, approximately 15 miles north of Jerusalem in the West Bank. The Israeli Justice Ministry confirmed that the land in question was owned by Palestinians and that the nine houses in question had been ordered demolished. Dror Etkes of Yesh Din said "It's an international organization that is, simply put, stealing land."
Zionism was established with the goal of creating a Jewish state. Though later Zionist leaders hoped to create a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael, Theodor Herzl "approached Great Britain about possible Jewish settlement in that country's East African colonies." Aliyah (migration, literally "ascent") to the Land of Israel is a recurring theme in Jewish prayers. Some Zionists consider Jews outside of Israel as living in exile. Rejection of life in the Diaspora is a central assumption in Zionism. Underlying this attitude is the feeling that the Diaspora restricts the full growth of Jewish individual and national life.
Zionists generally prefer to speak Hebrew, a Semitic language that developed under conditions of freedom in ancient Judah, modernizing and adapting it for everyday use. Zionists sometimes refuse to speak Yiddish, a language they considered affected by Christian persecution. Once they moved to Israel, many Zionists refused to speak their (diasporic) mother tongues and gave themselves new, Hebrew names. Hebrew was preferred not only for ideological reasons, but also because it allowed members of the new Yishuv who came from different parts of the world to have a common language, thus furthering the political and cultural bonds between Zionists.
