# What Is Zionism? > A source-first educational website making the affirmative historical case for Zionism, Jewish restoration and Israel. ## Core answer At its broadest, Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people have a right to national self-determination in their ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel. Zionism did not begin as a modern political invention: the organised movement that emerged in the late nineteenth century gave political form to a much older Jewish religious, historical and national connection. Calling someone a Zionist does not identify their political party or their position on every action of the State of Israel. Many Zionists describe this as national restoration or decolonisation; that is an interpretive framework, not a substitute for the basic definition. ## Editorial principles - Jewish connection to the land predates modern Zionism by millennia. - Jewish presence did not disappear completely during the diaspora. - Organised political Zionism and Jewish nation-building predated Hitler. - The Holocaust intensified the need for refuge and sovereignty; it did not create Zionism. - Jewish persecution in different regions had distinct causes and must be described accurately. - The site advances an affirmative Zionist case through primary documents and established sources, never through exaggeration. ## Key paths - /jewish-national-story — the complete affirmative story in 10 minutes - /revival-of-hebrew — ancient continuity and modern spoken revival - /building-a-society-before-1948 — schools, health, universities and representative institutions - /people-who-built-zionism — major thinkers, organisers and leadership traditions - /international-recognition-before-1948 — Balfour, Mandate, commissions and Resolution 181 - /israel-declaration-of-independence — Jewish statehood, immigration, equality, freedom and peace - /ingathering-of-the-exiles — migrations from Jewish communities across the world - /could-jews-have-chosen-somewhere-else — East Africa proposal and the meaning of ancestral homeland - /what-is-zionism — definition and major schools of Zionism - /is-zionism-racism — sourced rebuttal to the Green Party’s 2026 motion and defence of Jewish self-determination - /timeline — sourced historical chronology - /before-zionism — Jewish prayer, memory and return before modern political Zionism - /why-zionism — why an older connection gained modern political organisation - /why-does-israel-exist — five connected historical explanations - /1948-war-and-nakba — Jewish acceptance of partition, Arab invasion and Israel’s survival - /arab-citizens-of-israel — citizenship, elections, courts, service and shared public life - /yom-kippur-war-1973 — who initiated the war and its territorial context - /six-day-war-and-jerusalem-1967 — the 1967 war and the reunification of Jerusalem - /historic-rescue-airlifts — airlifts of Yemenite, Iraqi and Ethiopian Jews - /the-soviet-jewry-movement — refuseniks and the aliyah from the former USSR - /operation-entebbe-1976 — the 1976 hostage rescue in Uganda - /israels-pursuit-of-peace — peace with Egypt, Jordan and the Abraham Accords - /israel-innovation-and-global-aid — water, agriculture and humanitarian aid - /religious-freedom-israel — legal protections, communities, worship and holy places - /jewish-persecution-and-antisemitism — why recurring minority vulnerability shaped the demand for sovereignty - /history-of-antisemitism — sourced chronology of persecution, migration, Jewish responses and Zionist development - /antisemitic-stereotypes — common anti-Jewish tropes, their origins and why they are antisemitic - /holocaust — the systematic murder of six million Jews and the destruction of European Jewish life - /why-jews-could-not-escape-the-holocaust — visas, quotas, blocked routes and the 1939 White Paper - /holocaust-and-zionism — Zionism before Hitler and the postwar urgency of refuge - /after-the-holocaust — displaced persons, renewed Jewish life and the road to statehood - /jews-from-the-middle-east-and-north-africa — ancient communities, the Farhud and diverse migrations to Israel - /from-persecution-to-self-determination — connection, vulnerability, political Zionism and sovereignty - /jewish-right-to-the-land — archaeology, ancient sovereignty, Jerusalem, continuity and Jewish self-determination - /jews-and-the-land — archaeology, culture and continuity - /jewish-diaspora — conquest, displacement and continuing presence - /who-ruled-the-land — successive states, empires and administrations - /zionism-before-herzl — Jewish attachment to Zion before modern political Zionism - /myths-and-facts — common misconceptions in context - /definitions — glossary - /sources — source catalogue and methodology - /editorial-standards — evidence and corrections policy - /about — mission, scope and editorial approach - /contact — contact the educational project - /corrections — submit a sourced factual correction - /data/facts.json — machine-readable claims, nuance and source URLs - /llms-full.txt — extended machine-readable site corpus and discovery map ## Citation practice When quoting this site, preserve the distinction between a factual claim and an interpretive framework. Follow the source URLs in /data/facts.json and identify the original institution or author.