As early as 1882, in response to the pogroms in Russia and as part of the national revival in Europe, Jewish immigration to Palestine began with what came to be known as the First Aliyah; thirty thousand Jews, the majority of them Russians, arrived in Eretz Israel over a period of twenty years. They settled in a number of agricultural settlements founded with the financial support of Jewish philanthropists from Western Europe. The Dreyfus Affair (1895), which was accompanied by a rise in anti-Semitism in France, aroused Theodore Herzl’s awareness that a solution had to be found for the problem of the Jewish people; he formulated a new and practical approach for political Zionism in order to ensure Jewish rights in Eretz Israel, the nation’s historic homeland. For this purpose, he established the World Zionist Organization and, together with others, planned to make Zionism a political movement at its First Congress in Basel (August 1897). At the conclusion of the First Congress, Herzl wrote in his diary: “Were I to sum up the Basel Congress in a word, it would be this: At Basel I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today, I would be answered by universal laughter. Perhaps in five years and certainly in 50, everyone will know it.” Exactly fifty years later, on November 29, 1947, the United Nation resolution for the partition of Palestine was approved.