Zionism

**Zionism** is a nationalist movement that advocates for the creation and support of a homeland for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. Amongst Jews living in Israel, Zionism is generally associated with a conservative religious worldview. 

The modern movement started in the late 19th century in Europe, as a reaction to increasing antisemitism and to ideas of assimilation. Zionism has had many different varieties that all shared the goal of creating a homeland for the Jewish People. The dominant variety at first was political Zionism, led by Theodor Herzl, but it later lost ground to the socialist Labor Zionism. 

In 1948, Zionism resulted in the creation of the State of Israel.

## History 
### Herzl and Political Zionism 
The word "Zionism" was first used in 1890. It comes from Zion, meaning Jerusalem, though it can also symbolically mean the Land of Israel as a whole. Jewish people at the time lived as minority groups among other nations all across the world, in what was called the diaspora. In the early 19th century, assimilation and legal emancipation were popular ideas among Jews in western Europe. However, in the late 19th century anti-Semitism became a bigger threat, with the 1881 Russian pogroms and the Dreyfus affair in France. This caused some Jewish thinkers to lose faith in the idea of ever being accepted in gentile societies. One of these thinkers was Theodor Herzl, who is often considered the father of modern Political Zionism. Political Zionism was a secular movement and it was out of pragmatic considerations, rather than religious beliefs, that Palestine was chosen. There were many more congresses after this, and at the fifth Zionist Congress in 1901 the Jewish National Fund was established with the goal of purchasing land in Palestine.   

Political Zionism wanted to work with the established powers to get a publicly recognized and legally assured homeland. Palestine at the time was under the control of the Ottoman Empire, but Herzl's attempts to get support from the Ottomans failed, and he had to appeal to the imperial powers of Europe. Only during World War I did the Zionist movement get the great power support they had been seeking. In 1917 the British signed the Balfour Declaration, wherein they declared that they "favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". Part of the British motivation in signing was getting support of Jews in Russia and the U.S.A. for the allied cause. After the war, the British Empire took control of Palestine and administered it as their own colony, the Mandate of Palestine. During this time the cooperation between the Zionist movement and the British continued, though there were still tensions. The alliance would fall apart just before World War II. Jewish workers had to compete with Palestinian workers, which lowered their wages. They thought that they needed higher wages for the Jewish workers in order to attract immigrants for the Zionist project. They wanted a "conquest of labor", fighting the landowners for better working conditions, but also trying to exclude Arab workers from these jobs to give them to Jewish workers.

### Current views 
Some Zionists believe that Israel should control the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Other Zionists support a Two-state solution in which Israel and Palestine are separate countries. The entire region is the subject of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Out of the conflict and segregation in Palestine, African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights of African Union condemns Zionism as human rights violation, as well as apartheid and colonialism.  

## Related pages 
* Anti-Zionism
* Kibbutz
* Religious Zionism

## References