The Zionist ideology tells us that the Jews are a people or a nation like any other, and they must meet in a single homeland. Zionism was consciously the Jewish analog of the Italian and German national liberation movements of the 19th century.
The term "Zionism" was apparently coined in 1891 by the Austrian publicist Nathan Birnbaum, to describe the new ideology, but it was used retroactively to describe earlier efforts, ideas, and return Jews to their homeland for whatever reason; It applies to evangelical Christians who want people of the Jewish religion to return to Israel to hasten the second coming.
Zionism is not a religious movement, and Israel is not the state of the Jewish religion. The Jewish religious establishment originally opposed Zionism, and later tried to seize power or lead the movement. There are religious Zionists who have their own motivations for adhering to Zionism, and Zionism certainly meant including religious Jews, but Herzl, Weizmann and other Zionist leaders were not Jewish and approached Zionism as a national issue, not a religious issue.
Zionism is a Jewish nationalist movement that has aimed to create and support a Jewish national state in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews. Although Zionism originated in Eastern and Central Europe in the latter part of the 19th century, it is in many respects a continuation of the ancient attachment of the Jews and the Jewish religion to the historic region of Palestine, where one of the hills of ancient Jerusalem was called Zion.
There are several misconceptions about Zionism and the land. The first is that Zionism did not specifically target the establishment of the "Holy Land" (Palestine) and that Zionists were willing to settle in places like East Africa and Cyprus. The latter were considered for a time as temporary havens to alleviate the suffering of Russian Jews, but were never accepted as final targets for settlement by the Zionist movement. To advance the goal of settlement outside of Palestine, Israel Zangwill abandoned the Zionist movement and founded the Territorial Zionist Movement, a separate political and ideological current, which attempted to secure a national home for Jews in other territories.Zangwill also became a champion of immigration to America and assimilation.
