Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) wrote in his diary on September 3, 1897, three days after the close in Basel of the Zionist Organization’s First Zionist Congress that he had chaired:

at Basel, I founded the Jewish State. Were I today to say this in public, it would be greeted with universal laughter. Perhaps in five years, certainly in fifty, everyone will see [the truth of] this. (in Basel habe ich den Judenstaat gegründet. Wenn ich das heute laut sagte, würde mir ein universelles Gelächter antworten. Vielleicht in fünf Jahren, jedenfalls in fünfzig wird es jeder einsehen.)



Fifty years to the day, on September 3, 1947, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) presented its Report to the General Assembly calling for the end of the British Mandate and proposed a Plan of Partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

On November 29, 1947, the U.N. General Assembly passed UNSCOP’s plan almost without changes as Resolution 181, thereby formally recognizing “the Jewish State” that Herzl had foreseen.