Revisionists prized ancient Israel’s territorial power over its moral legacy

Evidence

The Zionist Revisionists, on the other hand, maintained that true national rejuvenation lay elsewhere, in the discovery of the authentic powers that allowed the ancient Hebrew nation to flourish as a dominant regional power. They did not want to reduce the legacy of ancient Israel to another (however important) phase in the long process of the rise of Western culture; instead they sought to accentuate its uniqueness as a political entity that was part of a thriving Mediterranean world. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 545 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Unlike the Zionist “new” settlement, the Old Yishuv was not founded on a return to the Bible or on “negation of exile.” On the contrary: as a response to Zionist ideas, leaders of the Old Yishuv’s communities insisted on defining their present existence as “exile in the Holy Land” (Bartal 1984; Friedman 1977). Their messianic desire was not directed primarily toward political emancipation, but rather toward a spiritual process of tikkun, the Hebrew concept for repairing and transforming the broken world and achieving divine revelation through the practice of the mitzvot, the commandments, especially the commandments that can be observed only in the Land of Israel. They definitely desired the coming of the Messiah, but this belief did not mean necessarily, certainly not exclusively, political redemption in the form of a modern nation-state. Pre-Zionist settlement was not founded on an identification with the Christian West; consequently, its existence did not require the denial of the land. Certainly, this community emphasized, in its very existence, the crucial role of the land as the exclusive site of revelation. They believed in a coming redemption but did not reduce it to the idea of a national-colonial state. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 359 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Zionist Revisionism championed Dionysian force against Apollonian narratives of progress; Zionist Revisionists rejected the religious-moral view in favor of ancient Hebrew political power — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 545; Zionist Revisionists framed seafaring as restoring an ancient Hebrew masculine heroism — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 584 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Zionist Revisionists rejected the religious-moral view in favor of ancient Hebrew political power #corroborates (0.95) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 545
• Religious Zionism’s territorial claims were not a revival of old Jewish settlement ideology #complicates (0.72) — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 359