World War I shifted Zionist hopes from Germany to Britain

Evidence

Theodor Herzl hoped to make use of German influence with the Porte, asking the kaiser’s government to pressure the sultan’s, which still controlled Palestine, to support Jewish settlement there. But the course of the First World War led Zionists to believe that a victorious Britain would dismantle the Ottoman Empire and dominate the Holy Land. London became the preferred address for the Zionists’ efforts. In 1917 the British Foreign Minister Arthur James Balfour declared to Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild that “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 138

Categorization

• XREF: Aligns with the broader theme in Kalmar/Penslar and Said’s argument that Zionism fused with imperial geopolitics rather than purely Jewish self-determination.