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PARTISAN REVIEW
conscious needs that are served by the construction or symbolic invention
of a particular national past.
In the case of Zionism, its political leaders from Herzl onward often
displayed an acute understanding of the constructive role of myth in the
nation-building process. The will to nationhood in a dispersed, powerless
people like Diaspora Jewry had to be forged against a formidable array of
obstacles, both external and internal. Not only did Zionism operate under
difficult and frequently unfavorable conditions, both in the Diaspora and
in Mandatory Palestine, but even after the creation of Israel its leaders
have had to navigate in an intensely hostile and unenviable geopolitical
environment. Moreover, before 1948 (and to a lesser extent since then)
Israeli and Zionist leaders had to face considerable opposition to the reali–
zation of their goals from within the Jewish people. In these adverse
conditions the establishment and consolidation of a coherent and distinc–
tive Israeli identity has been a remarkable historical feat. It would have
been virtually impossible without the ability to harness such potent
"myths" as the ingathering of the exiles, the upbuilding of Zion as a
model society, the creation of a new Hebrew or "Jewish" type and an
overarching vision of national redemption. The task was rendered even
more complex by the relative lack ofJewish political experience during
two millennia, the tension between Judaism as a religion and the ideal of
statehood, the clash between nationalist particularism and universalist ide–
als in Jewish history, as well as the structural weaknesses of the Zionist
movement. Even without the devastating blow of the Holocaust and the
wall of Arab-Muslim hostility that confronted the new Israeli state, the
challenge of constructing a viable Israel would have been formidable. To
convert an urban-based Diasporic people, whose cohesion had already
been significantly eroded by cultural assimilation, into a "normal" nation
rooted in its own land and Hebrew language, was a huge task even under
the most optimal set of circumstances.
The ideological synthesis of socialist Zionism and the driving myths
that shaped Israeli society in its early years reflected many of these im–
peratives, constraints, and challenges. The emphasis on
mamlakhtiut
("statism"), on national security, unity, rootedness, pioneering settlement,
and military virtues, as well as the priority attached to a "melting pot"
ideology, seemed appropriate to the immediate imperatives of survival
under adverse conditions. Similarly, the "heroic" Spartan ethos, so de–
cried by current fashion, was in many respects a functional necessity for a
country poor in natural resources, surrounded by enemies, and dependent
on a high level of motivation, collective willpower, and implacable de–
termination to re-root itself in the land. The dominant myths underwent
a subtle shift after 1967 as territorial expansion and rule over a large Pal-
