Founders of Zionism
Herzl, Weizmann and Jabotinsky: the thinkers and diplomats who built the Zionist movement.
Explainers in this topic
3 pieces
Ze’ev Jabotinsky
Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky (1880–1940) was a Zionist writer, orator and political leader who founded Revisionist Zionism, a movement that demanded Jewish statehood, a Jewish majority in Palestine and a strong Jewish defence force. Born in Odessa, he turned to Zionism after the Kishinev pogrom of 1903. During the First World War, he campaigned for Jewish military units in the British Army and helped establish the Jewish Legion. In 1920, he organised Jewish self-defence during the Jerusalem riots. He later developed the *Iron Wall* doctrine, arguing that Jewish state-building required sufficient strength to withstand Arab opposition. He founded the Revisionist movement in 1925 and the New Zionist Organization in 1935. He urged the evacuation of European Jews to Palestine and opposed partition. He died in New York in 1940 and was reburied on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem in 1964. His ideas influenced the Israeli Right, particularly Menachem Begin and the Likud movement.
Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) was a Hungarian-born Jewish journalist and playwright, trained in law, who founded political Zionism, the movement for a Jewish national home. He was born in Budapest and educated in Vienna. From 1891 to 1895 he was Paris correspondent of the Neue Freie Presse. He published The Jewish State in February 1896, convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel in August 1897, and led the Zionist Organization until his death on 3 July 1904. His defining decisions were to launch a public political movement, to seek a charter from the Ottoman sultan with great-power backing, and to put Britain’s East Africa offer before the 1903 Congress. He won no charter, but he built the institutions that carried Zionism to statehood. Israel’s Declaration of Independence calls him the spiritual father of the Jewish State.
Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Weizmann (27 November 1874 to 9 November 1952) was a Russian-born chemist who became the chief diplomat of the Zionist movement and the first president of Israel. He led the World Zionist Organization from 1920 to 1931 and from 1935 to 1946. He headed Israel’s Provisional State Council from May 1948 and was president from 1949 until his death. Wartime scientific work for Britain gave him access to ministers while he lobbied for the Balfour Declaration of 1917. His defining decisions were to tie Zionism to British power, to back partition in 1937 and 1947, and to win President Truman’s support in 1947 and 1948. Colleagues displaced him in 1946, and he held little power as president, but his diplomacy underpinned the state’s birth.
