Zangwill, an English Jew, founded an organization called "the Jewish Territorialists Organization" in 1905. The aim of the Jewish Territorialists 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.