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Zionism

Zionism is an international political movement that supports a homeland for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. Formally organized in the late 19th century, the movement was successful in establishing the State of Israel in 1948, as the world's first and only modern Jewish State. It continues primarily as support for the state and government of Israel and its continuing status as a homeland for the Jewish people. Described as a "diaspora nationalism", its proponents regard it as a national liberation movement whose aim is the self-determination of the Jewish people.

While Zionism is based in part upon religious tradition linking the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, the modern movement was mainly secular, beginning largely as a response to rampant antisemitism. At first one of several Jewish political movements offering alternative responses to the position of Jews in Europe, Zionism gradually gained more support, and the Holocaust accelerated Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel. On May 14, 1948, the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel stated: "In the year 5657 (1897), at the summons of the spiritual father of the Jewish State, Theodore Herzl, the First Zionist Congress convened and proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country. Today certain Christian groups, motivated by the growing popularity of premillennial eschatology, actively support the State of Israel.