A bitter and bloody harvest
The Jews, who have made a contribution to our culture out of all proportion to their population and social conditions, were treated abominably by the Christian peoples of Europe for many centuries. Perhaps the first irony is that the Jews fared rather better under Islamic rule, especially but not only in the great civilisation of al-Andalus in Spain.
Waves of murderous pogroms in eastern Europe in the late 19th century persuaded some Jews that they would have no peace or security until they had a homeland of their own, and the political ideology of Zionism was born. Some Zionists began to build agricultural colonies in Palestine, the land from which the Roman empire had expelled the Jews almost two millennia earlier.
