Zionism's anti-socialist activism was born with the movement itself. In talks with the German Kaiser and his ministers in the mid-1890s, the founder of the Zionist Organization, Theodor Herzl, assured the Germans that Zionism would distance Jews from socialism: "It was folly on the part of Jews to join the Socialism movement, which would soon rid itself of them."

Herzl added that the Kaiser "was impressed when I mentioned the fact that at the University of Vienna we have taken students away from Socialism". Zionism, he added, would also spur Jews not to join revolutionary and anti-Kaiser organisations: "We were taking the Jews away from the revolutionary parties."

Indeed, it was Zionist anti-communism that clinched the alliance with anti-Bolshevik Britain. The timing of the 1917 Balfour pledge of British support for Zionism's quest for a "national home" for Jews in Palestine - issued only five days before the triumph of the October Revolution in Russia - was not a coincidence.

Acting on false reports from Zionist informants claiming that most Russian Jews were Zionists who might otherwise support socialism, British officials grew anxious after the February Revolution regarding Jewish backing for the socialist movement.

In April 1917, Lord Robert Cecil, then parliamentary secretary to the Foreign Office, telegraphed the British ambassador in Petrograd, arguing: "We are advised that one of the best methods of counteracting Jewish pacifist and socialist propaganda in Russia would be to offer a definite encouragement to Jewish nationalist aspirations in Palestine."