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Zionism

This movement was founded by the Viennese Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl. In his 1896 book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), he argued that the best way of avoiding anti-Semitism in Europe was to create an independent Jewish state in Palestine, seen as a haven from centuries of discrimination and persecution. Zionism was named after Mount Zion in Jerusalem, a symbol of the Jewish homeland in Palestine since the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BC.

The Balfour Declaration

Herzl's idea was not new but he gave it power by forming the World Zionist Organisation in 1897. As well as lobbying governments to support its aims, this group began organising Jewish emigration from Europe to Palestine as a way of creating a Jewish state by default.

One of its more prominent members, Lord Rothschild, persuaded the British government to support the establishment of a Jewish 'national home' in Palestine. This support was contained in the 'Balfour Declaration' of 2 November 1917 – a letter from the foreign secretary A J Balfour to Rothschild. Its terms were later incorporated into Britain's mandate for Palestine under the League of Nations.

The birth of Israel

Zionism initially appealed more to the less prosperous and more persecuted Jews of eastern Europe than to the more assimilated Jews of western Europe. However, during the 1920s, after successive waves of anti-Semitism and the growth of Fascist and Nazi movements, support for the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine grew. Zionists not only sponsored emigration to Palestine, but also persuaded Britain, the colonial authority, to allow them a measure of self-government through the Jewish Agency.

In 1948, the formation of the state of Israel was a triumphant realisation of the Zionist dream. However, the second half of the century witnessed numerous attempts by Israelis to silence and eliminate the area's native Palestinians. The latter's plight was also used as the excuse for much violence in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world.

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