Israel Zangwill (February 14, 1864 - August 1, 1926) was an early Zionist and writer.
His early life was spent in the East End of London, and he was a teacher in the Jewish Free School there.
He wrote a very influential novel Children of the Ghetto (1892), and his play The Melting Pot was a hit in the USA in 1908-1909. He also wrote mystery works, such as The Big Bow Mystery. However, he is best known for coining the slogan, “a land without people for a people without land” to describe the land that is now Israel.
His friends included Jerome K. Jerome and H. G. Wells
Zangwill, an English Jew, founded an organization called the Jewish Territorialist Organization in 1905. The aim of the Jewish Territorialist Organization 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 after trying to build the Jewish state both in places in Canada and Australia, as well as in Mesopotamia, Cyrenaica and Uganda.
Israel Zangwill was the father of Oliver L. Zangwill , a prominent British psychologist.