“A homeland for the Jewish people is an idea rooted in Jewish history, religion, and culture. The Jewish aspiration to return to Zion, generally associated with divine redemption, has suffused Jewish religious thought since the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian exile.”
“Modern legal attempts to establish a national homeland for the Jewish people began in 1839 with a petition by Moses Montefiore to Sa’id of Egypt for a Jewish homeland in the region of Palestine.”
“The first wave of modern Jewish migration to Ottoman-ruled Palestine, known as the First Aliyah, began in 1881, as Jews fled pogroms in Eastern Europe. Although the Zionist movement already existed in practice, Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl is credited with founding political Zionism, a movement that sought to establish a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, thus offering a solution to the so-called Jewish question of the European states, in conformity with the goals and achievements of other national projects of the time.”
In 1896, Theodor Herzl set out his vision of a Jewish state and homeland for the Jewish people in his book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State). The following year he presided over the First Zionist Congress in Basel, at which the Zionist Organization was founded.”
“The draft of the objective of the modern Zionist movement submitted to the First Zionist Congress of the Zionist Organization in 1897 read: “Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law.” One delegate sought to insert the phrase “by international law”,[8] which was opposed by others. A compromise formula was adopted, which came to be known as the Basel Program and read: Zionism aims at establishing for the Jewish people a publicly and legally assured home in Palestine.
“Though the immigrants of the Second Aliyah largely sought to create communal agricultural settlements, the period saw the establishment of Tel Aviv as the first planned Jewish town in 1909. This period also saw the emergence of Jewish armed militias, the first being Bar-Giora, a guard founded in 1907. Two years later, the larger Hashomer organization was founded as its replacement.’
Continue reading: “Homeland for the Jewish People.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeland_for_the_Jewish_people
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