What did Zionism do to contribute the birth of Israel?

Answer 1

Zionism was (and is) the movement to establish and preserve a Jewish homeland, so it was the movement to create Israel.

It is the ideology that Jewish people should have their own state. The Land of Israel was promised to the Jewish people by God, according to The Bible. Jews lived in the Land of Israel from the time of Joshua until the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. Almost all Jews were exiled to other countries, known to Jews as the Diaspora. For centuries, Jews prayed for a return to Zion. In the nineteenth century, the Zionist movement, led by Theodor Herzl and Chaim Weizmann, encouraged Jews to turn the dream into reality, and lobbied the international community to understand that a "Jewish national home" was the only solution to anti-Semitism and the "Jewish problem."

In 1947, the dream was realized when the UN voted to partition Palestine between the Jews and the Arabs. The Arabs immediately attacked the Jews and in the middle of the war, on May 14, 1948, the State of Israel declared its independence. Today, about half of the world's Jewry lives in Israel. Most Jews living in and out of Israel are supporters of Israel and the Zionist ideology, although a small percent believe only divine intervention should bring about a Jewish state.