ABSTRACT
Zionism, the movement that led to the establishment of the state of Israel is now called by some of the worst enemy of the Jewish people, as if the Jews did not have enough enemies. In fact, Zionism has not had a good press for a considerable time and it is not difficult to understand why. It appeared too late on the historical scene, but it could not have appeared any earlier. For Palestine was in the hands of the Ottoman Empire which had no wish to give up any part of its territory. By the time Balfour made his famous declaration (November 1917) most Jews saw no reason to move to a far away, primitive country of which they knew little. Zion for most of them had become an abstraction.
