ABSTRACT
FROM a Zionist perspective, perhaps from any perspective, the Zionism experiment - for such it was in its early period - must be regarded as a huge success story. Fifty years after the first Zionist Congress convened, the United Nations granted international legitimacy to Israel, with an independent Jewish state to be established in a partitioned Palestine. From little more than a hyperactive pressure group that had constituted a tiny minority in the Jewish world, the Zionist movement became a factor of international consequence. Its most cherished aim had been fulfilled, some would say against all the odds. How did this come about?
