Israel Zangwill

Writer, born in London, UK. He studied at London University, and became a journalist, as editor of the comic journal Ariel. He was widely known for his novels on Jewish themes, such as Children of the Ghetto (1892, dramatized by him in 1899) and Ghetto Tragedies (1893). Other works include the play The Melting Pot (1908), whose title became widely used as a defining label for the view of 20th-c USA which saw European immigrants being transformed into a new nation. He formed the Jewish Territorial Organization for the Settlement of the Jews Within the British Empire, of which he was president (1905–25), and was also an active supporter of the suffragettes.

Born to a Russian émigré who had escaped persecution and death in a Czarist military prison, he dedicated his life to championing the cause of the oppressed.

His early life was spent in the East End of London, and he was a teacher in the Jewish Free School there.

Zangwill is known for coining the slogan "A land without a people for a people without a land" describing Zionist aspirations in the Land of Israel.

Zangwill, a British Jew, founded an organization called the Jewish Territorialist Organization in 1905, the aim of which was to create a Jewish homeland in whatever possible territory in the world (and not necessarily in what today is the state of Israel). Zangwill died in 1926 in Midhurst, West Sussex after trying to create the Jewish state in such diverse places as Canada, Australia, Mesopotamia, Uganda and Cyrenaica.

One of the four houses at Jews' Free School is named Zangwill in his honour.

Israel Zangwill was the father of Oliver Zangwill, a prominent British psychologist.

Israel Zangwill is featured as a recurring character in the novels of Will Thomas.