(i) In Palestine, the ancient home of Jews, only a few thousand Jews were living in 1900.
(ii) Some 15 million were scattered around Europe and North America.
(iii) These Jews had been subjected to systematic persecution for centuries.
(iv) But in the late nineteenth century, the persecution in Russia (Where two-thirds of the world’s jews lived), France and Germany was intense.
(v) Some Jews emigrated to Palestine, while many more went to the United States and Britain.
(vi) In 1896, Thodore Herzel, a Viennese journalist, published a pamphlet called the Jewish state in which he called for the creation of a Jewish national home. In 1897 the world zionist organisation was founded.