The Basel Program was the first

manifesto A manifesto is a written declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party, or government. A manifesto can accept a previously published opinion or public consensus, but many prominent ...

of the

Zionist movement Zionism is an ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century that aimed to establish and maintain a national home for the Jewish people, pursued through the colonization of Palestine, a region roughly co ...

, drafted between 27 and 30 August 1897 and adopted unanimously at the

First Zionist Congress The First Zionist Congress () was the inaugural congress of the Zionist Organization, Zionist Organization (ZO) held in the Stadtcasino Basel in the city of Basel on August 29–31, 1897. Two hundred and eight delegates from 17 countries and 2 ...

Basel Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High Rhine, High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's List of cities in Switzerland, third-most-populo ...

, Switzerland, on 30 August 1897. In 1951, it was replaced by the

Jerusalem Program The Jerusalem Program () is the ideological platform of the Zionist Movement, and was initially adopted in 1951 at the 23rd World Zionist Congress to replace the Basel Program. The Jerusalem Program differed from the original Basel Program in that ...

History

The Basel Program was drafted by a committee elected on Sunday 29 August 1897 comprising

Max Nordau Max Simon Nordau (born Simon Maximilian Südfeld; 29 July 1849 – 23 January 1923) was a Hungarian Zionism, Zionist leader, physician, author, and Social criticism, social critic. He was a co-founder of the Zionist Organization together with Theo ...

(heading the committee), Nathan Birnbaum, Alexander Mintz, Siegmund Rosenberg, Saul Rafael Landau, together with Hermann Schapira and Max Bodenheimer who were added to the committee on the basis of them having both drafted previous similar programs (including the "Kölner Thesen"). The seven-man committee prepared the Program over three drafting meetings.

Goals

The program set out the goals of the Zionist movement as follows:Zionisten-Congress in Basel
Officielles Protocoll, 1898, pp. 114–119.

References

Bibliography

* * * {{cite book, first=Max, last=Bodenheimer, author-link=Max Bodenheimer, title=Prelude to Israel: The Memoirs of M. I. Bodenheimer, url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015026627060;view=1up;seq=11, year=1963, publisher=T. Yoseloff Pre-1948 Zionist documents 1897 documents German-language works Jews and Judaism in Basel Zionism in Switzerland