Only a handful of Jews took up the call then, but during World War I, the Zionist movement secured significant help from the British Empire. In 1917, the British issued the Balfour Declaration, which pledged to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. By the time World War I was over, the British had taken control of Palestine from the Ottomans. Under their colonial rule in the years that followed, a period known as the British Mandate, they made good on their 1917 promise by facilitating the immigration of thousands more European Jews to Palestine. In doing so, the
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