Zionists pitched Jews as carriers of European culture against the Arabs

Evidence

In a very real sense, Jewish nationalism, with the State of Israel which is its ultimate result, was a creation of the Yiddish nation in Eastern Europe. Its romanticism, its socialism, its populism, its linkage of religion and nationality are familiar features of East European political thought and life. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 950 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Israel as doppelganger exists on two levels. First, it is a doppelganger of the forms of chauvinistic European nationalisms that turned Jews into pariahs on the continent since well before the Inquisition. That was Zionism’s win-win pitch to anti-Semitic European powers: you get rid of your “Jewish problem” (i.e., Jews, who will leave your countries and migrate to Palestine), and Jews get a state of their own to mimic/twin the very forms of militant nationalism that had oppressed them for centuries. (This is why Zionism was so fiercely opposed by the members of the Bund, who believed that nationalism itself was their enemy and the wellspring of race hatred.) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 975 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Zionism externalized the Arab from the Jew and the Jew from Europe — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab: A History of the…, 975; Zionist secularism was a European cultural identity by definition — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 663; Zionism doubled the very European nationalist forms that oppressed Jews — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 975 (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• Zionism’s defining traits came from Eastern European Yiddish culture #complicates (0.76) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 950
• Zionism doubled the very European nationalist forms that oppressed Jews #complicates (0.75) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 975