World Zionist Organization convenes hundreds in Basel

(JTA) — Hundreds of Jews from around the world have traveled to Basel, Switzerland, to mark the 125th anniversary of a historic gathering of Zionists there.

The event was organized by the World Zionist Organization, a group inaugurated during the First Zionist Congress that Theodor Herzl, considered the father of modern Zionism, convened in Basel in 1897. At the 1897 congress, 200 participants from 17 countries voted to adopt as an explicit goal the creation of “a publicly and legally assured home in Palestine” for Jews.

“At Basel, I founded the Jewish state,” Herzl famously wrote in his diary...