Excerpts from The Jewish State

Written by Theodor Herzl
Originally published as Das Judenstaat in 1896
Reprinted in The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution
of the Jewish Question
Published in 1946

"The Jews who wish for a State shall have it, and they will deserve to have it."

One cannot hope to understand the historic and ongoing conflict in the Middle East without understanding the role that Israel plays in the region, and one cannot understand Israel without first understanding Zionism. Zionism was, and still is, a political movement aimed at creating a national homeland for the Jewish people. Today, that homeland exists in the nation of Israel. Yet many feel that Jews are still not secure from the persecution they had faced in other countries, even in Israel, for many Arabs in the Middle East, who feel some of...