colin, i'm not an expert on israeli history, but it has always seemed to me that this was essentially 19th-century european nationalism -- the same stuff that gave rise to the ahistorical kilt. no mysteries, there. it's essentially a kind of secular religion, right? and in that sense, the bible was for people like ben gurion or weizmann the central source of national(ist) mythology. atavistic in a way, i suppose, but in the end no moreso than scots nationalists harking back to robert the bruce and welsh nationalists teaching themselves scots gaelic (remember eliezer perelman/ben yehuda and the invention of modern hebrew). and i think the famous and widespread opposition of religious jews all over europe (that is to  say, sephardim and ashkenazim) in this process is quite telling. religious zionists have coopted a secularly-framed project -- a project that was already deeply problematic, no doubt, but a secular process nonetheless. they were able to do it in part precisely because the non-religious and even anti-religious early zionists had no other -- or at the very least no better -- source of national identity than the bible. i suspect, but again am no expert, that avnery is spot on when he fingers the educational system as the main culprit in the shift. many aspects of jewish-israeli society were fought over between secular and religious jews in the early days of israel, but the role of religion in education seems to be the critical one (see madrasahs in pakistan and pesantrin in indonesia). fwiw j <div>On 2/26/06, Colin Brace <<a href="mailto:cb@lim.nl">cb@lim.nl</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Fascinating piece, Johanna; thanks for posting it. It begs the question though: if the original Zionists didn't define themselves in religious terms, by their religions practices, what then formed the ideological basis for their project? How else could one define a Jew except by religion? They had no common language at the time, nor a distinctive racial identity, not even a over-arching culture (cf, the synagogues in 17th century Amsterdam; separate ones for Sephardic and Ashenazi Jews) And these avowed "atheists" established a nation whose citizenship is defined by one's mother having been "Jewish"? What right did they have to settle in Palestine except that established in a two-thousand year old religious text? Based on what Avnery says, Zionism sounds at best like a cynical land and power grab, at worst a kind of atavistic tribalism. --   Colin Brace   Amsterdam ___________________________________ <a href="http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk"> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk</a> </blockquote></div> -- "lo que decimos no siempre se parece a nosotros"