Creating the “Land of Israel”: Agitprop in the Cause of Nation-Building

"[...]Zionist propaganda had to rally European Jewry to immigrate to Palestine in the name of “redemption” and then indenture the Jewish settler community, the Yishuv, to lay the groundwork for an eventual state. Its colorful posters presented a hardy people tilling the soil (“making the desert bloom”) and encouraged a self-sufficient economy of so-called “Hebrew labor” and “Hebrew produce” necessary for constructing a proto-state that was independent of the Palestinians and eventually confident enough to subjugate them. Anchored in a powerful story, Zionism enlisted Western benefactors and molded a discrete community whose only commonality was a shared faith tradition into a linguistically and culturally unified nation capable of establishing a cogent state."