Ressentiment Zionism

In this chapter, I explain Zionism, the nationalism underpinning the state of Israel, as a ressentiment ethnic nationalist discourse. After a brief overview of Zionism and my strategy to evade its hegemonic portrayal of history, I explore the development of the Zionist discourse, outlining how it formed a ressentiment pair with ‘Palestinian’ nationalism up to the creation of Israel in 1948. This chapter does not substantiate Israel’s status as an ethnocratiser state, which is the task of the next chapter. This chapter instead demonstrates how Zionism’s inception and early development fits with the previous chapter’s account of ressentiment ethnic nationalism. It also considers the how ‘virtue’ built into the Zionist ‘national character’ informs the dissidents’ place within a problematic tradition of internal dissent.