Zionist in the context of "Law of Return"

Abraham Fraenkel (Hebrew: אברהם הלוי (אדולף) פרנקל; 17 February, 1891 – 15 October, 1965) was a German-born Israeli mathematician. He was an early Zionist and the first Dean of Mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is known for his contributions to axiomatic set theory, especially his additions to Ernst Zermelo's axioms, which resulted in the Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory.

Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, Baron de Rothschild (8 February 1868 – 27 August 1937), was a British banker, politician, zoologist, and soldier, who was a member of the Rothschild family. As a Zionist leader, he was presented with the Balfour Declaration, which pledged British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. Rothschild was the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews from 1925 to 1926.

Chaim Azriel Weizmann (/ˈkaɪm ˈwaɪtsmən/ KYME WYTES-mən; 27 November 1874 – 9 November 1952) was a Russian-born Israeli statesman, biochemist, and Zionist leader who served as president of the Zionist Organization and later as the first president of Israel. He was elected on 16 February 1949, and served until his death in 1952. Weizmann was instrumental in obtaining the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and convincing the United States government to recognize the newly formed State of Israel in 1948.

The Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine, known in the United Kingdom as the Palestine Emergency, was a paramilitary campaign carried out by Zionist militias and underground groups—including Haganah, Lehi, and Irgun—against British rule in Mandatory Palestine from 1944 to 1948. The tensions between the Zionist underground and the British mandatory authorities rose from 1938 and intensified with the publication of the White Paper of 1939. The Paper outlined new government policies to place further restrictions on Jewish immigration and land purchases, and declared the intention of giving independence to Palestine, with an Arab majority, within ten years. Though World War II brought relative calm, tensions again escalated into an armed struggle towards the end of the war, when it became clear that the Axis powers were close to defeat.

The Haganah, the largest of the Jewish underground militias, which was under the control of the officially recognised Jewish leadership of Palestine, remained cooperative with the British. But in 1944 the Irgun, an offshoot of the Haganah, launched a rebellion against British rule, thus joining Lehi, which had been active against the authorities throughout the war. Both were small, dissident militias of the right-wing Revisionist movement. They attacked police and government targets in response to British immigration restrictions.

Plan Dalet (Hebrew: תוכנית ד', Tokhnit dalet "Plan D") was a Zionist military plan executed during the 1948 Palestine war for the conquest of territory in Mandatory Palestine in preparation for the establishment of a Jewish state. The plan was the blueprint for Israel's military operations starting in March 1948 until the end of the war in early 1949, and so played a central role in the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight known as the Nakba.

The plan was requested by the Jewish Agency leader and later first prime minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion, and developed by the Haganah and finalized on March 10, 1948. Historians describe Plan Dalet as the beginning of a new phase in the 1948 Palestine war in which Zionist forces shifted to an offensive strategy.

The Nakba (Arabic: النَّكْبَة, romanized: an-Nakba, lit. 'the catastrophe') is the Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs through their violent displacement and dispossession of land, property, and belongings, along with the destruction of their society and the suppression of their culture, identity, political rights, and national aspirations. The term is used to describe the events of the 1948 Palestine war in Mandatory Palestine as well as Israel's ongoing persecution and displacement of Palestinians. As a whole, it covers the fracturing of Palestinian society and the longstanding rejection of the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.

During the foundational events of the Nakba in 1948, about half of Palestine's predominantly Arab population – around 750,000 people – were expelled from their homes or made to flee through various violent means, at first by Zionist paramilitaries, and after the establishment of the State of Israel, by its military. Dozens of massacres targeted Palestinian Arabs, and over 500 Arab-majority towns, villages, and urban neighborhoods were depopulated. Many of the settlements were either completely destroyed or repopulated by Jews and given new Hebrew names. Israel employed biological warfare against Palestinians by poisoning village wells. By the end of the war, Israel controlled 78% of the land area of the former Mandatory Palestine.

Politics in Israel are based on parliamentary democracy. The Prime Minister of Israel is the head of government and leader of a multi-party system. Politics in Israel is dominated by Zionist parties. They traditionally fall into three camps, the first two being the largest: Labor Zionism, revisionist Zionism, and religious Zionism. There are also several non-Zionist Orthodox religious parties and non-Zionist secular left-wing groups, as well as non-Zionist and anti-Zionist Israeli Arab parties.

Benny Morris (Hebrew: בני מוריס; born 8 December 1948) is an Israeli historian. He was a professor of history in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Beersheba, Israel. Morris was initially associated with the group of Israeli historians known as the "New Historians", a term he coined to describe himself and historians Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappé and Simha Flapan.

Morris's 20th century work on the Arab–Israeli conflict and especially the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has won praise and criticism from both sides of the political divide. Despite regarding himself as a Zionist, he writes, "I embarked upon the research not out of ideological commitment or political interest. I simply wanted to know what happened." One of Morris's major works is the 1989 book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1948 which, based on then recently declassified Israeli archives, demonstrated that the 1948 exodus of Palestinian refugees was in large part a response to deliberate expulsions and violence by forces loyal to Israel, rather than the result of orders by Arab commanders as had often been historically claimed.

The Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye (Yiddish: פֿאַראײניקטע פּאַרטיזאַנער אָרגאַניזאַציע‎; "United Partisan Organization"; referred to as FPO by its Yiddish initials) was a Jewish resistance organization based in the Vilna Ghetto in German-occupied Lithuania and founded on January 21, 1942. The clandestine organisation was established by Communists as well as left- and right-wing Zionists. Their leaders were the Communist Yitzhak Wittenberg, Socialist Abba Kovner, and revisionist Betar member Josef Glazman.