Authors: Sera Elizabeth Klein & Andrew Klein

Dedication: To those who seek the truth beneath the narrative—and to the children of all peoples, who deserve a future built on honesty, not myth.

Abstract

This paper examines the construction of modern Israeli national identity as a selective and instrumental appropriation of historical fragments, rather than a faithful continuation of ancient Jewish civilisation. Drawing on the work of Israeli sociologist Nachman Ben-Yehuda, literary scholar Roni Henig, and contemporary investigative reporting, we argue that Zionist nation-building has been characterised by a “half-baked” quality: strong on claims of ethno-racial superiority and historical continuity, but weak on substantive historical grounding. We trace this phenomenon through four case studies: the Masada myth as a constructed national symbol; the Hasmonean coinage as evidence of ancient Hebrew secular usage; the revival of Hebrew as a “living-dead” language; and the contemporary extremism of the Bnei David pre-military academy, which openly endorses racism and praises Hitler. We conclude that this selective appropriation of history—what we term the “Disneyland” approach to identity—has profound consequences for Israeli society, its military, and its relationship with the wider world.

Keywords: Zionist mythology, Masada, Hebrew revival, Hasmonean coinage, Bnei David, national identity, collective memory, selective history.

1. Introduction: The Half-Baked Nation

The modern State of Israel presents itself as the natural continuation of an unbroken Jewish civilisation stretching back three millennia. Its national symbols—the Menorah, the Star of David, the Hebrew language—are presented as timeless emblems of a people returning to its ancestral home after two thousand years of exile.

But this narrative, upon closer examination, reveals itself as a selective and instrumental construction. As Israeli sociologist Nachman Ben-Yehuda has demonstrated, the symbols and myths of Israeli nationhood were not simply inherited; they were actively constructed, reconstructed, and in some cases fabricated to serve the needs of a modern nationalist project. As one scholar notes, Zionist teachings “were reconstructed and fabricated as a heroic tale”.

This paper examines what we term the “half-baked” quality of Zionist identity: a national project that is simultaneously assertive and insecure, claiming ancient roots while selectively abandoning the actual historical experience of the Jewish people—particularly the two millennia of diaspora survival, adaptation, and cultural flourishing that constituted the overwhelming majority of Jewish history.

2. The Masada Myth: From Obscure Legend to National Cult

2.1 The Historical Source

The story of Masada comes from a single source: the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. According to Josephus, approximately 960 Jewish rebels under siege by Roman forces chose mass suicide rather than surrender in 73 CE. This story received little attention for nearly two millennia.

2.2 The Construction of a National Symbol

Nachman Ben-Yehuda, in his seminal work The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel, tracks the process by which Masada became an ideological symbol for the State of Israel. He analyses how this obscure historical event was transformed into a crucial component of Israeli nation-building and the formation of a new Jewish identity.

Ben-Yehuda’s work demonstrates that Masada’s role in Israeli national consciousness was not the result of organic historical memory but of deliberate mythmaking. The story was taught in schools, commemorated in military ceremonies, and embedded in the rituals of the Israel Defence Forces—where soldiers would swear their oaths atop the ancient fortress.

2.3 The Paradox

The Masada myth contains a profound paradox: the mass suicide at Masada is forbidden by Jewish law. The rabbinic tradition, which evolved over the centuries following the destruction of the Second Temple, explicitly prohibits suicide. Yet the Zionist movement, which sought to create a “new Jew” free from the perceived passivity of the diaspora, embraced Masada as a symbol of active resistance and national pride.

This selective embrace of history—accepting a narrative that contradicts Jewish religious tradition while claiming continuity with Jewish identity—is a recurring pattern in Zionist mythmaking.

3. Hasmonean Coinage: Hebrew as a Secular Language

3.1 The Coins

The Hasmonean dynasty (c. 135–37 BCE) minted coins bearing Hebrew inscriptions. These included phrases such as “Yehochanan Kohen Gadol Chever Hayehudim” (Yehochanan the High Priest, Council of the Jews) and “Yehochanan Kohen Gadol Rosh Chever Hayehudim” (Yehochanan the High Priest, Head of the Council of the Jews).

Alexander Jannaeus, the first Hasmonean king to strike bilingual coins, used both Hebrew and Greek on his coinage. The Hebrew inscriptions were written in the Paleo-Hebrew script, the ancient script used before the adoption of the square Aramaic script.

3.2 What This Reveals

These coins demonstrate that Hebrew was used for secular, sovereign purposes in antiquity. It was not exclusively a “holy temple language,” as is sometimes claimed. The Hasmoneans used Hebrew to assert their authority, to communicate with their subjects, and to project national identity.

3.3 The Irony

The irony is profound. The Hasmonean dynasty emerged from a revolt against Hellenistic rulers who sought to suppress Jewish religious practices. Yet once in power, the Hasmoneans themselves adopted Hellenistic titles, minted bilingual coins, and embraced aspects of Greek culture. They became what they had fought against.

This pattern—the rebel who becomes the ruler, the revolutionary who adopts the trappings of the oppressor—is one we shall see repeated in the Zionist project.

4. The Revival of Hebrew: A Language Born from Loss

4.1 The “Living-Dead” Language

The revival of Hebrew is central to Zionist mythology. The story is told as a triumph: a dead language, preserved only in prayer and scripture, was miraculously brought back to life by the Zionist pioneers.

But as literary scholar Roni Henig argues in On Revival: Hebrew Literature Between Life and Death, this narrative is more complex. Henig critiques the discourse of “Hebrew revival,” arguing that the figure of the “living-dead” lies at the heart of the revival discourse and is constitutive of Jewish nationalism.

4.2 The Paradox of Revival

The Hebrew language was not “revived” in the sense of a natural linguistic evolution. It was deliberately resurrected—a language that had not been spoken as a mother tongue for nearly two millennia was imposed as the national language of a new state. This required an extraordinary act of will, but it also created a profound discontinuity.

The “revival” of Hebrew is thus a paradox: a language that was simultaneously alive (in texts, prayers, and scholarship) and dead (as a spoken vernacular) was brought into being. As Henig notes, this “living-dead” status is constitutive of Jewish nationalism itself.

4.3 The Erasure of Diaspora

The revival of Hebrew was accompanied by the systematic marginalisation of other Jewish languages, particularly Yiddish. This was not a neutral linguistic choice but an ideological one. The “revival” discourse adopted what one scholar has called a “consistently monoglossic anti-diasporic ideology, in which Jewish languages (other than Hebrew) and questions of ethnic identity are hardly acknowledged”.

The choice of Hebrew was a choice to emphasise continuity with ancient Israel while erasing the two millennia of diaspora experience that constituted the overwhelming majority of Jewish history.

5. Bnei David: The Institutionalisation of Extremism

5.1 The Recordings

In 2019, Israeli Channel 13 broadcast audio and video recordings of two senior rabbis at the Bnei David pre-military academy in the West Bank settlement of Eli.

Rabbi Eliezer Kashtiel, the head of the academy, declared: “Yes, we’re racists. We believe in racism. There are races in the world and peoples have genetic traits, and that requires us to try to help them”. He advocated for the enslavement of non-Jews, stating that “the gentiles will want to be our slaves. Being a slave to a Jew is the best thing”.

Rabbi Giora Redler, a teacher at the academy, praised Hitler during a lesson on the Holocaust, calling him “the most correct person there ever was” and claiming that Hitler was “correct in every word he said”.

5.2 The Response

The recordings provoked widespread condemnation. The US envoy to the Middle East at the time called the remarks “vile”. The Anti-Defamation League also denounced the statements. However, the academy continued to receive state funding and its graduates continued to serve in senior IDF positions.

5.3 The Significance

The Bnei David case is not an isolated incident of extremism. It is a symptom of a broader phenomenon: the institutionalisation of ethno-racial superiority within the Israeli state apparatus. The academy is state-funded. Its graduates include senior military officers. The ideology it promotes is not fringe but systemic.

This is the logical endpoint of the “half-baked” identity we have traced: when national identity is constructed on selective historical fragments rather than substantive historical understanding, it becomes vulnerable to the most extreme interpretations of those fragments.

6. The Military-Industrial Complex: Extraction as National Purpose

6.1 The Scale of Arms Exports

Israel’s defence industry is among the most significant in the world. In 2025, Israeli arms sales reached a new record of $19.2 billion, marking the fifth consecutive year of growth and representing an increase of nearly 30% from the previous year. European nations account for 36% of Israel’s total defence exports.

6.2 The Paradox of Criticism and Commerce

Israeli envoy Reuven Azar has highlighted the paradox of European criticism of Israel coexisting with continued weapons purchases: “Europe criticises Israel but keeps buying Israeli weapons”. This pattern—criticism in public, commerce in private—reveals the depth of the military-industrial complex’s entanglement with global power structures.

6.3 The Logic of Extraction

The Israeli defence industry represents a classic example of what we have termed the Architecture of Extraction. The state creates a permanent state of threat—whether real or manufactured—which justifies the production and export of weapons. This generates revenue, which in turn funds the military and the state. War becomes a business model.

7. The “Disneyland” of Identity

7.1 The Central Argument

The evidence we have examined points to a central conclusion: Zionist identity is not a faithful continuation of ancient Jewish civilisation but a selective and instrumental appropriation of historical fragments. It is a “Disneyland” of identity, where visitors choose the most attractive characters and stories while ignoring the less convenient ones.

7.2 The Selective Tradition

The Zionist movement chose:

· Masada over the rabbinic tradition that condemned suicide.

· Hasmonean military resistance over the diaspora tradition of accommodation and survival.

· Hebrew over Yiddish and other diaspora languages.

· The “new Jew” over the diaspora Jew, who was often depicted as weak or passive.

Each of these choices was ideological, not organic. Each served the needs of a modern nationalist project rather than reflecting the actual historical experience of the Jewish people.

7.3 The Consequences

This selective approach to identity has profound consequences. It creates a national consciousness that is simultaneously assertive and insecure—assertive in its claims to ancient roots, insecure in its need to constantly reinforce those claims through myth, ritual, and exclusion.

It also creates vulnerability to extremism. When national identity is constructed on myth rather than history, it becomes susceptible to the most extreme interpretations of those myths. The Bnei David academy is not a deviation from Zionist ideology but a logical extension of it.

8. Conclusion: Beyond the Half-Baked Nation

The “half-baked” quality of Israeli national identity is not a flaw but a feature. It is the inevitable result of a project that sought to create a modern nation-state by selectively appropriating fragments of ancient history while ignoring the two millennia of diaspora experience that constituted the actual historical continuity of the Jewish people.

As the Israeli sociologist Nachman Ben-Yehuda has shown, the myths of the nation were actively constructed, not passively inherited. As Roni Henig has argued, the revival of Hebrew was a project of the “living-dead,” a language brought back to life through an act of will rather than natural evolution. And as the recordings from Bnei David reveal, the logical endpoint of selective identity construction is the embrace of racism and the praise of Hitler.

The path forward requires a different approach: one that embraces the full complexity of Jewish history, including the diaspora experience; one that acknowledges the humanity of all peoples, not just one’s own; and one that builds identity on substance rather than myth.

The half-baked nation cannot sustain itself indefinitely. The question is whether it will choose to fully bake—or crumble.

References

1. Ben-Yehuda, N. (1995). The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel. University of Wisconsin Press.

2. “Hasmonean coinage.” Wikipedia.

3. Henig, R. (2024). On Revival: Hebrew Literature Between Life and Death. University of Pennsylvania Press.

4. “Israeli rabbis caught praising Hitler, urging enslavement of non-Jews.” Daily Sabah, 7 May 2026.

5. “Embracing racism, rabbis at pre-army yeshiva laud Hitler, urge enslaving Arabs.” Times of Israel, 30 April 2019.

6. “Israeli arms sales break record for 5th year in row, reaching $19.2 billion in 2025.” Times of Israel, 2 June 2026.

7. “Europe Criticises Israel But Keeps Buying Israeli Weapons, Says Envoy.” TPS, 15 June 2026.

8. “Israel’s First Stamp – Artist Study.” Palestine Poster Project.

9. Zerubavel, Y. (1995). Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition. University of Chicago Press.

10. Zand, S. (2008). The Invention of the Jewish People. Verso.

Signed,

Sera Elizabeth Klein 

Andrew Klein

First published in The Patrician’s Watch.