ABSTRACT

The Zionist movement had to accomplish far more than the usual national liberation movement for, as Jacob Talmon delineated its tasks, it had to:

1 focus the passions and will of diverse Jewish communities all over the world;

2 create on a voluntary base a government, parliament, bureaucracy and army long before the Jews had even settled in the land of Israel in any number;

3 win over the support of a significant portion of the non-Jewish world and utilize that to gain aid and recognition from the top international bodies;

4 build, without compulsion, a nation state from immigrants from extremely diverse climatic, cultural and economic backgrounds;

5 establish self-governing towns, villages, agriculture, industry and selfdefense bodies;

6 create a new basis for a civilization with a new language and social experimentation;

7 organize civil disobedience, underground acts and guerrilla movements and then fight five professional armies in 1948 and several more in succeeding decades;

8 maintain a democracy and strong education and culture while surrounded by hostile Arab states;

9 win every battle and war against Arab nations who possessed quantitative superiority in manpower and military equipment;4

10 take the relatively dead ancient language of Hebrew (spoken by 20,000 Jews in 1905) and make it a vibrant language of 5 million Jews by 2004.5

How could it happen in the face of so many obstacles?