White's Political Dictionary

Zentrum (TSEN-troom). See CATHOLIC CENTER PARTY.

Zimmerman Note. A dispatch of January 19, 1917 to the German minister in Mexico from German foreign minister Zimmerman stating that the unrestricted submarine campaign would soon be resumed and that if the United States were then drawn into the war it was the German intention to try to secure an alliance with Mexico, offering certain southwest United States territory as an inducement.

Zionism. The name for the movement to reestablish Palestine as a Jewish national state. It had its origins in Central Europe but its mass support came particularly from Russian and Polish Jews. In a way it continues the traditional longing of the Jews, dispersed all over the world, for the restoration of their homeland. Anti- Semitic movements toward the end of the 19th century helped to spread Zionism. For most European Jews, however, Zionism was alien, as they regarded themselves as Englishmen, Frenchmen and Germans of Jewish religion and such a phrase as the "Jewish nation" was meaningless to them. Thus assimilation, conversion and intermarriage with non-Jews, often split Jewry into two opposing camps. Politically Zionism became organized in 1897 by Theodor Herzl who convoked the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. In 1917 Britain, in the famous Balfour Declaration, favored the establishment of "a Jewish national home." It was endorsed by the Allies and included in the Treaty of Sévres (1920). Jewish settlements in Palestine started in the 1880's and increased rapidly after World War I when Palestine became a British mandate. The Arabian population of Palestine has been opposed to the influx of Jews to a varying degree, though many of them profited by a growth in prosperity as Jews established many flourishing agricultural settlements and built a few modern cities, such as Tel Aviv. Arab dissatisfaction resulted in violent outbreaks and revolts. The British sent out a commission of inquiry in 1930 whose recommendations were accepted, resulting in restrictions on Jewish immigration and land purchase in Palestine. This decision was violently attacked by Zionists who demanded unrestricted right of immigration and the creation of a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine. During World War II illegal entries into Palestine by often desperate and destitute refugees from Nazis were frequent, and were only partly opposed by the British authorities. Arab nationalism has grown rapidly since World War I and has opposed these developments, organizing in many ways to halt further Zionist aspira

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