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This chapter examines how the Zionist debates among Jews in England took a new imperial turn as that nationalist movement became increasingly imbricated with the British state during the First World War period. Part I of the chapter introduces the reader to the terms of debate prior to that conflict, beginning by addressing how resistance to Zionism was rooted in a commitment to emancipation based on certain liberal ideals and traditions as expressed by the leadership of the Anglo-Jewish communal institutions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also explains how the English Zionist Federation served as a conduit for a new Central European nationalist culture, bringing the ideology, representations and organizational structure of early twentieth-century political Zionism to England and the British Isles. Part II of the chapter details the imperial turn taken by both Zionist and anti-Zionist Jewish leaders in England, beginning with the outbreak of the First World War and through the years immediately following the San Remo Conference. It shows how, during that time, representatives on both sides of the debate created and advanced new arguments based not only on the expectation of a British-controlled Palestine but also on the understanding of that empire, and even of English society, as characterized by diversity, as both were comprised of people with various religious, ethnic and national identities. Finally, the chapter as a whole explores the use of Orientalist ideas by both the advocates of Zionism and their opponents.
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