Zionist identity was built by rerouting Orientalist hero-cult onto the Jew

Evidence

For the Jew of pre-Nazi Europe has bifurcated: what we have now is a Jewish hero, constructed out of a reconstructed cult of the adventurer-pioneer-Orientalist (Burton, Lane, Renan), and his creeping, mysteriously fearsome shadow, the Arab Oriental. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 727

Categorization

• XREF: The bifurcation of the Semite into ‘heroic Jew’ and ‘fearsome Arab shadow’ is a key mechanism linking Orientalism to later race-thinking on Jews and Arabs; carries into the Islamophobia module as an example of how a single racial category splits into valorized and demonized halves.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 727