For the last 3,000 or so years, there has been a documented presence of Jews in what is now Israel. The Land of Israel was the birthplace of Jewish identity and culture. Certainly, for the last 2,000 or so years, the majority of the Jewish community has lived in the diaspora (i.e. outside of the Land of Israel).

Those Jews who returned to Israel as part of the Zionist movement, beginning in the late 19th century, did not represent a foreign power, colonial or otherwise. In fact, the families of most Israeli Jews lived across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia before returning to Israel in the 20th century. 

They believed that the re-establishment of a Jewish sovereign state, in their native land, was the only way to ensure that Jews could continue to live, peacefully or otherwise. They fought for self-determination, like so many other peoples did in the 19th and 20th centuries, and they gradually returned home, becoming a majority in Jerusalem in the 1860s, and establishing the first Jewish city in modern history, Tel Aviv, in 1909.