Chaim Weizmann in the context of "World Zionist Organization"

The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British Government in 1917 during the First World War announcing its support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population. The declaration was contained in a letter dated 2 November 1917 from Arthur Balfour, the British foreign secretary, to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. The text of the declaration was published in the press on 9 November 1917.

Following Britain's declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire in November 1914, it began to consider the future of Palestine. Within two months a memorandum was circulated to the War Cabinet by a Zionist member, Herbert Samuel, proposing the support of Zionist ambitions to enlist the support of Jews in the wider war. A committee was established in April 1915 by British prime minister H. H. Asquith to determine their policy towards the Ottoman Empire including Palestine. Asquith, who had favoured post-war reform of the Ottoman Empire, resigned in December 1916; his replacement David Lloyd George favoured partition of the Empire. The first negotiations between the British and the Zionists took place at a conference on 7 February 1917 that included Sir Mark Sykes and the Zionist leadership. Subsequent discussions led to Balfour's request, on 19 June, that Rothschild and Chaim Weizmann draft a public declaration. Further drafts were discussed by the British Cabinet during September and October, with input from Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews but with no representation from the local population in Palestine.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; Hebrew: הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is an Israeli public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, it is the second-oldest institution of higher learning in Israel, having been founded 30 years before the establishment of the State of Israel but six years after the older Technion university.

The university has five affiliated teaching hospitals (including the Hadassah Medical Center), seven faculties, more than 100 research centers, and 315 academic departments. As of 2018, one-third of all the doctoral candidates in Israel were studying at the HUJI. The HUJI has three campuses in Jerusalem: one in Rehovot, one in Rishon LeZion and one in Eilat. Until 2023, the world's largest library for Jewish studies—the National Library of Israel—was located on its Edmond J. Safra campus in the Givat Ram neighbourhood of Jerusalem.

Labor Zionism (Hebrew: ציונות סוציאליסטית, romanized: tziunut socialistit) is the left-wing, socialist variant of Zionism. For many years, it was the most significant tendency among Zionists and Zionist organizations, and was seen as the Zionist faction of the historic Jewish labour movements of Eastern Europe and Central Europe. Labor Zionism eventually developing local movements in most countries with sizable Jewish populations. Unlike the "political Zionist" tendency founded by Theodor Herzl and advocated by Chaim Weizmann, Labor Zionists did not believe that a Jewish state would be created by simply appealing to the international community or to powerful nations such as the United Kingdom, Germany, or the former Ottoman Empire. Rather, they believed that a Jewish state could only be created through the efforts of the Jewish working class making aliyah to the Land of Israel and raising a country through the creation of a Labor Jewish society with rural kibbutzim and moshavim, and an urban Jewish proletariat.

Major theoreticians of the Labor Zionist movement included Moses Hess, Nachman Syrkin, Ber Borochov, and Aaron David Gordon; and leading figures in the movement included David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, and Berl Katznelson. Labor Zionist parties, most notably Mapai and its successor, the Israeli Labor Party, dominated Israeli politics during the state's first three decades.

The claim that there was a Jewish war against Nazi Germany is an antisemitic conspiracy theory promoted in Nazi propaganda which asserts that the Jewish people, framed within the theory as a single historical actor, started World War II and sought the destruction of Germany. Alleging that war was declared in 1939 by Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, Nazis used this false notion to justify the persecution of Jews under German control on the grounds that the Holocaust was justified self-defense. Since the end of World War II, the conspiracy theory has been popular among neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers.

Revisionist Zionism is a form of Zionism characterized by territorial maximalism. Revisionist Zionism promoted expansionism and the establishment of a Jewish majority on both sides of the Jordan River. Developed by Ze'ev Jabotinsky in the 1920s, this ideology advocated a "revision" of the "practical Zionism" of David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann which was focused on the settling of Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel) by independent individuals. Differing from other types of Zionism, Revisionists insisted upon the Jewish right to sovereignty over the whole of Eretz Yisrael, including Mandatory Palestine and Transjordan. It was the main ideological opponent to the dominant socialist Labor Zionism. Revisionist Zionism has strongly influenced modern right-wing Israeli parties, principally Herut and its successor Likud.

In 1935, after the Zionist Executive rejected Jabotinsky's political program, Jabotinsky resigned from the World Zionist Organization and founded the New Zionist Organization (NZO), known in Hebrew as Tzakh. Its aim was to conduct independent political activity for free immigration and the establishment of a Jewish State. In its early years under Jabotinsky's leadership, Revisionist Zionism was focused on gaining support from Britain for settlement. From the early 1930s, Jabotinsky believed that the United Kingdom could no longer be trusted to advance the Zionist cause, leading to a short-lived alliance with Italy.