1950-1951 Israel Yearbook, “The Zionist Movement”

The Israel Year Book, 1950/51, Tel Aviv, Israel Publications Limited, 1951, pp. 23-34.,(reprinted with permission).

The Zionist Movement, the unique instance in world history of a people without a land organizing itself for the rebuilding of its country which had been destroyed, is a comparatively recent growth. It dates its origin from the First Zionist Congress, held on the initiative of Dr. Theodor Herzl in Basel, Switzerland, in August 1897. Its formal establishment, however, was preceded by an unbroken tradition of Zionist sentiment, which was always a conscious and living factor among the Jewish communities scattered throughout the world.