ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the ways how ethnicity is structured within the nation state, emphasising the different roles that ethnicity takes in the process of nation building, and the interests and aims that ethnicity is forced to serve within the national discourse. Different ethnic/religious groups from different class positions may support different cultural narratives of the nation. The ethnic markers that will be identified with the ideal/imagined national culture will gain social, cultural, and political capital in the nation-to-be, due to their role in the nation-building project that will enable them to transform themselves from particular markers to dominant markers. Mass education is one of the channels that has played a crucial role in national socialisation. The Arab Jews were blamed for emphasising false ethnic markers/images that were no longer valid in the Jewish-Israeli society, thus trying to prove a false identity, and even to “pass” as Arabs, in order to jeopardise the national solidarity.
