From the beginning of the development of the Zionism movement, the support of the European powers was seen as necessary by the Zionist leadership (Herzl, [[Chaim Weizmann]] and [[David Ben-Gurion]]). Creating an alliance with [[United Kingdom|Great Britain]] and securing support for some years for Jewish emigration to Palestine, Zionists also recruited European Jews to immigrate there, especially Jews who lived in areas of the Russian Empire where antisemitism was raging. The alliance with Britain was strained as the latter realized the implications of the Jewish movement for Arabs in Palestine, but the Zionists persisted. The movement was eventually successful in establishing Israel on May 14, 1948 (5 Iyyar 5708 in the [[Hebrew calendar]]), as the [[homeland for the Jewish people]]. The proportion of the world's Jews living in Israel has steadily grown since the movement emerged. A Zionist consensus then became known as an ideological umbrella typically attributed to two main factors: a shared tragic history (such as the [[Holocaust]]), and the common threat posed by Israel's neighboring enemies.<ref>{{cite book |first=Emanuel |last=Gutmann |chapter=The Politics of the Second Generation |page=305 |title=Ideology and Power in the Middle East |editor1-first=Peter J. |editor1-last=Chelkowski |editor2-first=Robert J. |editor2-last=Pranger |year=1988 |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |doi=10.1515/9780822381501-014 |isbn=978-0-8223-8150-1 |s2cid=242204076}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Lavsky |last=Hagit |title=New Beginnings: Holocaust Survivors in Bergen-Belsen and the British Zone in Germany, 1945-1950 |year=2002 |publisher=[[Wayne State University Press]] |doi= |isbn=978-0-8143-3009-8 |page=222}}</ref> By the early 21st century, more than 40% of the [[Jewish population|world's Jews]] lived in Israel, more than in any other country. In some academic studies, Zionism has been analyzed both within the larger context of [[diaspora politics]] and as an example of modern [[Wars of national liberation|national liberation movements]] and as an instance of [[settler-colonialism]].{{sfn|Taylor|1971|p=10}}{{sfn|Wolfe|2006|p=}} Some prominent figures in the early Zionist movement referred to the movement as colonialist, such as [[Ze'ev Jabotinsky]].{{efn|{{harv|Masalha|2012|p=}}: "For decades Zionists themselves used terms such as 'colonisation' (hityashvut) to describe their project in Palestine."}}{{sfn|Morris|2008|p=3|ps=: "But once there, the settlers could not avoid noticing the majority native population. It was from them, as two of the first settlers put it, that 'we shall... take away the country... through stratagems, without drawing upon us their hostility before we become the strong and populous ones.'"}}{{sfn|Jabotinsky|1923|pp=6–7|ps=: "It does not matter at all which phraseology we employ in explaining our colonising aims, Herzl's or Sir Herbert Samuel's. Colonisation carries its own explanation, the only possible explanation, unalterable and as clear as daylight to every ordinary Jew and every ordinary Arab... Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population."}}<ref name="G. Finkelstein 2003 109">{{harvnb|Finkelstein|2003|p=109}}: "The 'defensive ethos' was never the operative ideology of mainstream Zionism. From beginning to end, Zionism was a conquest movement. The subtitle of Shapira's study is 'The Zionist Resort to Force'. Yet, Zionism did not 'resort' to force. Force was – to use Shapira's apt phrase in her conclusion – 'inherent in the situation' (p. 357). Gripped by messianism after the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, the Zionist movement sought to conquer Palestine with a Jewish Legion under the slogan 'In blood and fire shall Judea rise again' (pp. 83–98). When these apocalyptic hopes were dispelled and displaced by the mundane reality of the British Mandate, mainstream Zionism made a virtue of necessity and exalted labor as it proceeded to conquer Palestine 'dunum by dunum, goat by goat'. Force had not been abandoned, however. Shapira falsely counterposes settlement ('by virtue of labor') to force ('by dint of conquest'). Yet, settlement was force by other means. Its purpose, in Shapira's words, was to build a 'Jewish infrastructure in Palestine' so that 'the balance of power between Jews and Arabs had shifted in favor of the former' (pp. 121, 133; cf. p. 211). To the call of a Zionist leader on the morrow of Tel Hai that 'we must be a force in the land', Shapira adds the caveat: 'He was not referring to military might but, rather, to power in the sense of demography and colonization' (p. 113). Yet, Shapira willfully misses the basic point that 'demography and colonization' were equally force. Moreover, without the 'foreign bayonets' of the British Mandate, the Zionist movement could not have established even a toehold, let alone struck deep roots, in Palestine. Toward the end of the 1930s and especially after World War II, a concatenation of events – Britain's waning commitment to the Balfour Declaration, the escalation of Arab resistance, the strengthening of the Yishuv, etc. – caused a consensus to crystallize within the Zionist movement that the time was ripe to return to the original strategy of conquering Palestine 'by blood and fire'."</ref>