Although Zionism was a minority movement within the ranks of International Jewry (which desired instead to continue their parasitic activity within the Occident), prominent Zionists were able to persuade the British that American Jewry had enough sway over the American Government to bring the U.S. into the Great War in exchange for a quid pro quo on the issue of Palestine.

"During the interwar period Zionism came to preoccupy the leadership of French Jewry. Much to the surprise of the French Jewish establishment, Zionism acquired an unanticipated significance during the wr. It had to be taken into account on two grounds: the role it might play in the disposition of former Ottoman territory after the war, and its potential usefulness (much exaggerated by the allied powers) in mobilizing American Jewry to pressure the U.S. government to intervene in the hostilities. When the French government accepted the provisions of the Balfour Declaration, the national minority caluses that were incorporated into the Versailles treaty, and the conferral of the mandate over Palestine to the British, the spokesman for native Jewry found that their overt opposition to Zionism placed them in the awkward position of seeming to oppose governmental policy."

Paula E. Hyman, The Jews of Modern France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), p.138

"When, in 1915, the Foreign Office became worried about the pro-Germanism of Jews in the then-neutral United States, Weizmann and others exploited the crude fantasies of ministers and officials about Jewish power, urging them to declare their interest in Palestine in order to sway American Jews to the Allied cause. (American Jews were believed to wield great influence in Washington.)"

Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000 (Berkeley: University of Chicago Press, 2002), p.191