David Ben-Gurion was the primary national founder of the State of Israel as well as its first prime minister. As head of the Jewish Agency from 1935, and later president of the Jewish Agency Executive, he was the de facto leader of the Jewish community in Palestine, and largely led the movement for an independent Jewish state in Mandatory Palestine.
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.
Christian Zionism is a political and religious ideology that, in a Christian context, espouses the return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land. Likewise, it holds that the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 was in accordance with biblical prophecies transmitted through the Old Testament: that the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Levant—the eschatological "Gathering of Israel"—is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The term began to be used in the mid-20th century, in place of Christian restorationism, as proponents of the ideology rallied behind Zionists in support of a Jewish national homeland.
The Israel Prize is an award bestowed by the State of Israel, and regarded as the state's highest cultural honor.
Henrietta Szold was an American-born Jewish Zionist leader and founder of Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America. In 1942, she co-founded Ihud, a political party in Mandatory Palestine dedicated to a binational solution.
The Zion Christian Church (ZCC) is one of the largest African-initiated churches operating across Southern Africa, and is part of the African Zionism movement. The church's headquarters are at Zion City Moria in Limpopo Province, South Africa.
Yoel Schwartz was an Israeli Haredi Jewish rabbi, Torah scholar, and writer who published over 200 Jewish books. He was a senior lecturer at Dvar Yerushalayim yeshiva in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof, an English-speaking institute for baalei teshuva. He was also involved in attempts to revive the Sanhedrin.
The First Zionist Congress was the inaugural congress of the Zionist Organization (ZO) held in the Stadtcasino Basel in the city of Basel on August 29–31, 1897. Two hundred and eight delegates and 26 press correspondents attended the event. It was convened and chaired by Theodor Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionism movement. The Congress formulated a Zionist platform, known as the Basel program, and founded the Zionist Organization.
Pilar Rahola i Martínez is a Spanish journalist, writer, and former politician and MP.
As an organized nationalist movement, Zionism is generally considered to have been founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897. However, the history of Zionism began earlier and is intertwined with Jewish history and Judaism. The organizations of Hovevei Zion, held as the forerunners of modern Zionist ideals, were responsible for the creation of 20 Jewish towns in Palestine between 1870 and 1897.
"Negation of the Diaspora" is a concept in Zionism that asserts that the Diaspora—that is, all Jews dispersed outside of the Land of Israel—is a state of being that inherently causes Jewish assimilation, particularly through discrimination and persecution, and thereby must be repudiated to ensure the survival and the cohesion of the Jews as a people. A more developed formulation of the idea further argues that the Jewish people have no future without amassing at their "spiritual centre" in the Land of Israel, which is currently represented by the State of Israel.
In Israel, prisoners of Zion were Jews who were imprisoned or deported for Zionist activity in countries where such activity was prohibited. The former Speaker of the Knesset, Yuli Edelstein, and the former chairman of the executive of the Jewish Agency, Nathan Sharansky, were both prisoners of Zion in the Soviet Union. In 1992 an Israeli law made the status of the prisoner of Zion official, however the status was in use long before.
Irving Moskowitz was an American physician, businessman, and activist. His activism, in part, sought to create a Jewish majority in Palestinian Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem by purchasing land.
Just Vision is a non religiously unaffiliated nonprofit organization that utilizes storytelling, media and public engagement campaigns to highlight Palestinian and Israeli grassroots leaders working to end the occupation and conflict through unarmed means. It is based in Washington, New York and Jerusalem.
The common definition of Zionism was principally the endorsement of the Jewish people to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine, secondarily the claim that due to a lack of self-determination, this territory must be re-established as a Jewish state. Historically, the establishment of a Jewish state has been understood in the Zionist mainstream as establishing and maintaining a Jewish majority. Zionism was produced by various philosophers representing different approaches concerning the objective and path that Zionism should follow. A "Zionist consensus" commonly refers to an ideological umbrella typically attributed to two main factors: a shared tragic history, and the common threat posed by Israel's neighboring enemies.
Labor Zionism or socialist Zionism was the left-wing, socialist variant of Zionism. For many years, it was the most significant tendency among Zionists and Zionist organizations, and was seen as the Zionist faction of the historic Jewish labour movements of Eastern Europe and Central Europe. Labor Zionism eventually developing local movements in most countries with sizable Jewish populations. Unlike the "political Zionist" tendency founded by Theodor Herzl and advocated by Chaim Weizmann, Labor Zionists did not believe that a Jewish state would be created by simply appealing to the international community or to powerful nations such as the United Kingdom, Germany, or the former Ottoman Empire. Rather, they believed that a Jewish state could only be created through the efforts of the Jewish working class making aliyah to the Land of Israel and raising a country through the creation of a Labor Jewish society with rural kibbutzim and moshavim, and an urban Jewish proletariat.
Michael Freund is an American-born Israeli political activist and non-profit executive who advocates on behalf of individuals and communities with Jewish ancestry, including descendants of the Lost tribes of Israel, crypto-Jews, hidden Jews and Jews forcibly assimilated under Communist rule, and seeks to assist them to reconnect with their roots. With this aim in mind, he founded the organization Shavei Israel in 2004. He is also a veteran syndicated columnist and feature writer for The Jerusalem Post
Ran Ronen was an Israeli Air Force (IAF) brigadier general and fighter ace credited with seven kills. He commanded various fighter squadrons, the IAF flight academy, and Tel Nof Airbase, retiring from the IAF with the rank of brigadier general. One of his pilots later described him as "the greatest squadron commander ever".
The Second World Zionist Congress met in Basel, Switzerland on 28 August 1898. and was the second meeting of the Zionist Organisation. The World Zionist Congress brought together delegates from across the world to raise funds, lobby support and create the institutions that would one day form the modern day Jewish State known as Israel, which was established in 1948. The Congress met every year from 1897 to 1901. The main focus of the Second Congress, as set out by its chair, Theodor Herzl, was to engage with Jewish communities in the diaspora and encourage them to adopt Zionism.
Dr. Maor Farid is an Israeli scientist, engineer and artificial intelligence researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, social activist, and author. He is the founder and CEO of Learn to Succeed for empowering of youths from the Israeli socio-economic periphery and youths at risk, a regional manager of the Israeli center of ScienceAbroad at MIT, and an activist in the American Technion Society. He is an alumnus of Unit 8200, and a fellow of Fulbright Program and the Israel Scholarship Educational Foundation. Dr. Farid was elected to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list of 2019, and won the Moskowitz Prize for Zionism.
