Zionism

Abstract

Theodor Herzl Born a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl was the creator of political Zionism and hence the founding father of the state of Israel. Appalled by the anti-Semitism which accompanied the Dreyfus Affair in France, he abandoned the prevailing liberal ideas of Jewish assimilation and in his 1896 pamphlet Der Judenstaat proposed a sovereign Jewish state as the guarantor of Jewish life and liberty. In 1897 he organized the first World Zionist Congress, which settled on Palestine as the site for the Jewish state and established the World Zionist Organization. The rest of his life was spent in promoting his dream, and in 1949 his remains were transferred to Israeli soil. Microsoft ® Encarta ® Encyclopedia 2002. © 1993-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.