Gathering of Israel - Zionist Vision

Zionist Vision

The First Zionist Congress of the World Zionist Organization (WZO), assembled in Basel in August 1897 and adopted the Zionist platform, which came to be known as the Basel Program, which stipulated the following goal: "Zionism seeks to establish a homeland for the Jewish people in Eretz Israel secured by public law ", namely, for the sake of The Gathering of the Exiles to the Land of Israel, a Kibbutz Galuyot.

The intensive involvement of the Zionist Movement ever since in transporting Jewish legal and nonlegal immigrants (this second type is also known as Aliyah Bet) to the Land of Israel, attests to the importance they've attributed to that goal.

Aliyah Bet (mainly known in Hebrew as HaHa'apala, ההעפלה), is the illegal entrance to the Land of Israel under the British Mandate's laws, including during World War II and the Holocaust. Aliyah Bet was organized by the Yishuv (the Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel before Israel's establishment as a country) from 1934 until the State of Israel began in 1948. Aliyah Bet was carried out by the Mossad Le'aliyah Bet, a branch of the Jewish Defense Association (Haganah), the para-military organization that was to become the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). During Aliyah Bet 's 14 years of activity, 115,000 Jews made Aliyah to the Land of Israel.

The term Aliyah Bet is composed of the Hebrew word Aliyah, meaning Jewish Immigration (Individual or a group) to the Land of Israel, and the Hebrew Letter Bet, the second letter in the Hebrew Alphabet. Its use was analogous to the English term "Plan B". Vis-a-vis, the illegal transportation of immigrants was being carried out simultaneously with the legal Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel permitted by the British Mandate. The Mandate attempted to limit the number of immigration certificates in a way which contradicted the national goals of the Jewish community living there. Aliyah Bet started only modestly in the midst of the nineteen-thirties. The majority of Jewish immigrants, the Olim, arrived after World War II and the Holocaust.

Aliyah Bet or HaHa'apala, was carried out in various methods:

1. Through the sea (the main method)
2. Through land routes (mainly through Iraq and Syria)
3. Through the air (This method was started in 1948 when two planes were landed in the Lower Galilee village of Yavne'el, as part of "Operation Michaelberg"—defying the British Mandate Government objection. The first plane carried Jewish immigrants from Iraq. The second flew in from south Italy ).