Herzl, a Hungarian-born Jew living in Vienna, was a journalist in Paris at the time of the Dreyfus Case in 1891, in which a Jewish officer was falsely condemned for treason. The anti-Semitic feeling surrounding his trial awakened a desire in Herzl to seek a homeland for his people, where they could live peacefully according to their social and religious traditions.

Herzl made contact with heads of state and leading Jews in Western Europe to promote the idea of a Jewish State in Palestine. He hoped for a huge return of Jews from all the countries of the Diaspora.

In 1896 he founded the World Zionist Organization and published his book “Der Judenstaat” (“The Jewish State”) in which he described how they could set up a State in Palestine. The society would be built on European democracy but with Jewish values as its foundation. However, most Orthodox Jews did not like his secular vision, saying that such a return to Israel could only happen after the arrival of the Messiah. Many secular Jews enjoyed prosperity in the lands where they lived and had no desire to begin a new life in Palestine. Herzl continued his mission undaunted.

On 29^th August 1897 Herzl opened the First Zionist Congress in Basel, attended by over 200 delegates. Herzl told them that they had met “to lay the foundation-stone of the house that will some day shelter the Jewish people.” At the second Congress in Basel a year later, the number of delegates more than doubled, including a 23-year old chemist from Geneva, Chaim Weizmann, later to be the first president of the State of Israel.

In 1902 Britain offered Herzl a Jewish homeland in Uganda, which he accepted as being a step towards a Jewish nation being formed, although many Zionists were outraged at accepting anything other than Palestine. The Zionist movement was split.

Herzl's portrait hangs behind David Ben-Gurion at the declaration of independence in 1948.	Herzl's grave on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem.