Palestine A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha

The change from a Yiddish family name such as Perelman, to a Hebrew family name such as Ben-Yehuda, provided many Zionist settlers in Palestine with a prototype for emulation in a process of self-invention and self-indigenisation. This process also inspired Prime Minister and Defence Minister David Ben-Gurion who used the Israeli army after 1948 to impose general Hebraicisation and purification procedures of family and personal names. Ben-Gurion himself was born David Grün in Russia; his mother was called Scheindel and his Russian-born wife was called Pauline Munweis when she met and married Ben-Gurion in New York (she later changed her name to Paula); after immigrating to Palestine David Grün became David Green; and he subsequently changed his family name to the biblical- sounding, and literally lionised and predatory, name David Ben-Gurion (literally ‘son of the lion cub’). He also chose a biblical-sounding name for his daughter Geula (‘redemption’) and his son Amos, after a minor prophet in the Hebrew Bible.

For Ben-Gurion, the invention of a Hebrew tradition and the synthesising of a nation meant that the Hebrew Bible became not a religious document or a repository of theological assertions; it was reinvented as a nationalised and racialised sacred text central to the modern foundational myths of secular Zionism. As a primordialist ideaology of secular nationalism, asserting the antiquity of Jewish nationalism (Smith, A. 1986, 1989: 340‒367), and inspired by Eurocentric völkisch and racial ideologies, Ben-Gurion’s Zionism viewed the Bible in an entirely functional way: the biblical language, narrative and place names functioned as a mobilising myth and as an ‘historical account’ of Jews’ ‘title to the land’ – a claim not necessarily borne out by recent archaeological findings. For Ben-Gurion, it was not important whether the biblical narrative and place names were an objective and true record of actual historical events and the past. It is not entirely clear whether Ben-Gurion assumed that the ancient events the Israeli state was re-enacting had actually occurred. But, as he explains, ‘It is not important whether the [biblical] story is a true record of an event or not. What is of importance is that this is what the Jews believed as far back as the period of the First Temple’ (Pearlman 1965: 227; also Rose 2004: 9).

Like Ben-Gurion, many secular labour Zionists displayed from the outset a deeply ambivalent attitude towards religion. Although the movement’s name is derived from the word ‘Zion’, which was originally the name of a fortress in Jerusalem, Zionism reinvented Judaism and translated Jewish themes into political action. Furthermore, Zionism had ambitions to create a new Hebrew society that would be different from Jewish life in the diaspora and did not see multi-religious and pluralistic Jerusalem as the appropriate place for the founding of such a new society. Not only was it full of aliens (native Palestinian Arabs), but it was also inhabited by the peaceful ‘old Jewish Yishuv’, whose members were part of the anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox community. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Zionists preferred to build the new (and pure) Jewish city of Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean coast, just outside the Palestinian city of Jaffa. Tel Aviv was founded in 1910 in a region which, according to the Bible, was ruled by the Philistines (not the Israelites)

from the 12th century BC onwards. It was named after a Babylonian city mentioned in Ezekiel (3:15). But the ethno-religious ‘purity’ of the European Hebrew colony, the New Yishuv, was best illustrated by the fact that during the Mandatory period its Zionist leaders preferred to live in the demographically exclusive Tel Aviv rather than in multi-religious Jerusalem or Jaffa.

Those Zionist immigrants who chose to live in Jerusalem settled outside the historic city and built new Jewish neighbourhoods and the first Jewish university: the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Tel Aviv remained home to the (Hebrew) Histadrut and all the Hebrew daily papers, and while Zionist leaders of the New Yishuv continued to swear by the name of Jerusalem, they did not live there and most of the Jewish immigrants to Palestine, about 80 per cent, settled along the Mediterranean coast, a region that (according to Avishai Margalit, of the Hebrew University) had never been the historic homeland of the Jewish people.25

The invention of a new masculine collective memory was based on hegemonic state power: the ‘New Hebrew’ language, the ‘New Hebrew Man’, a new and militarised society and an exclusively Jewish ‘Hebrew City’ (Tel Aviv), a ‘New Yishuv’ settler colony, and the new and armed Hebrew workers of the Histadrut, the General Federation of Hebrew Workers in the Land of Israel. Established in 1920, the militarised Histadrut and military service were central to the Zionist project of conquest. They represented that newly constructed muscular and militant national identity. The militarised Histadrut, in particular, dominated both the economic and military- security infrastructure of the Zionist Yishuv and played a major role in immigration, land settlement and colonisation, economic activities, labour employment and military organisation and defence (the Haganah), with trade union activity as only one part of its activities.26 Palestinian citizens of Israel were not admitted as members until 1959. The Histadrut became central to this drive designed to create a ‘New Settlement’ of blood and common descent and redeem the ‘biblical soil’ by conquest. In the 1920s the Zionist Labour leadership also began to develop a boycott strategy in Palestine. Thus, in 1929, Ben-Gurion wrote of the need for an ‘Iron Wall of [Zionist] workers’ settlements surrounding every Hebrew city and town, land and human bridge that would link isolated points’ and which would be capable of enforcing the doctrine of exclusive ‘Hebrew labour’ (‘avoda ‘ivrit) and ‘Hebrew soil’ (adama ‘ivrit) (Masalha 1992: 24‒25).

Although deeply secular, Ben-Gurion’s Zionism instrumentally emphasised Jewish religion and Jewish ‘ethnicity’, promoted the cult and mythologies of ancient Israel and biblical battles, promoted the revival of a seemingly dead language, Hebrew, built up what became a powerful army, surrounded its ‘ethnically’ exclusive, ‘pure’ colony, the Yishuv, with an ‘Iron Wall’ (Shlaim 2000; Masalha 2000) and waged a bitter struggle for political independence and territorial expansion throughout the land of Palestine. In an article entitled: ‘(Re)naming the Landscape: The Formation of the Hebrew Map of Israel 1949–1960’, Israeli political geographers Maoz Azaryahu and Arnon Golan write:

The importance assigned to Hebrew as the language and culture of national revival was also manifest in the emphasis upon Hebrew purity and Hebraicization procedures. Hebraicization included the introduction of Hebrew nomenclatures in various fields of scientific knowledge e.g. botany or zoology. Of special political bearing and with far reaching personal consequences was the Hebraicization of family names of Jewish immigrants. This measure belonged to the construction of a new Hebrew identity. In the first years of Israeli independence, Ben-Gurion, the founding father of modern Israel, used his authority to promote Hebrew family names. In his capacity as a Defence Minister, he made the Hebraicization of family names obligatory for Israeli officials serving in representative positions e.g. high ranking army officers and diplomats. (Azaryahu and Golan 2001: 182)

Anthroponomastics (or anthroponymy) is the study of personal names.

Zionist toponymic and anthroponymic projects were central to Zionist settler-colonisation strategies in Palestine and these included not only Hebrewisation, biblicisation and Judaisation of the country, but also self-indigenisation, self-antiquation. Personal names such Allon (oak; Arabic:

ballut) and Aloni (my oak) became very popular in Zionist settlers’ indigenising strategies. ‘Palestine Oak’ ( بلوط فلسطين , Quercus Calliprinos) and Pistacia Palaestina are internationally famous, indigenous trees common to Palestine, the eastern Mediterranean region and the Levant (especially Palestine, Syria and Lebanon). ‘Pistacia Palaestina’ adds brilliant red to the Galilee landscape. Of the three species of oak found in modern Palestine, the ‘prickly evergreen oak’ (Quercus Coccifera) is the most abundant. It covers the rocky hills of Palestine with dense brushwood of trees. And for many centuries the traditional Palestinian plough, used in preparation for sowing seeds or to loosen or turn the soil, was made of oak wood. Like the Palestinian olive tree, ‘Oak Palestine’ is another key symbol of Palestine and Palestinian life.

The oak tree of Palestine played a major part in Palestinian stories for children and generally in Palestinian cultural memory and folklore.

Within the Zionist strategies, there is a long list of Zionist leaders who formally changed their names from Russian and East European to Hebrew-sounding names. Many changed their names following Ben- Gurion’s military directives after the establishment of Israel in 1948. While only a small minority of East European Jews who had migrated to the US or Britain chose voluntarily to anglicise their names, members of almost the entire Zionist elite of Israel were pressurised after May 1948 to change their European names to ‘authentic’-sounding biblical ones. In fact this intense pressure was applied almost immediately after the establishment of Israel in May 1948. It was applied top down by Prime Minister and Defence Minister David Ben-Gurion, who effectively ordered all senior officers of the Israeli army to change their European surnames. Yigael Sukenik, chief of operations and acting chief of staff of the army in 1948, was the first to comply: ‘On June 28, 1948, Ben-Gurion swore in the members of the IDF high command, insisting that each one adopted a Hebrew last name. Since most chose their Haganah code names, Yigael Sukenik became Yigael Yadin’ (Pasachoff 1997: 220).

The following biblicisation list includes almost the entire political, military and intellectual Israeli elite, left, right and centre:

• David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973), Israeli Prime Minister and Defence Minister, used the Israeli army after 1948 to impose general Hebraicisation and purification of family and personal names. He was born David Grün in Russia; his mother was called Scheindel and his Russian-born wife was called Pauline Munweis when she met and married him in New York (she later changed her name to Paula).

• Moshe Sharett was born Moshe Shertok in Russia in 1894; he became Israel’s Foreign Minister in 1948; he chose to Hebraicise his last name in 1949, following the creation of the State of Israel.

• Golda Meir was born Golda Mabovitch in Kiev in 1898; later called Golda Meyerson. Interestingly, she Hebraicised her last name only after she became Foreign Minister in 1956; she was Prime Minister 1969–1974.

• Yitzhak Shamir27 was born Icchak Jeziernicky in Eastern Poland in 1915; he was Foreign Minister 1981–1982 and Prime Minister 1983–1984 and 1988–1992.

• Ariel Sharon was born Ariel Scheinermann in colonial Palestine in 1928

(to Shmuel and Vera, later Hebraicised to Dvora, immigrants to Palestine from Russia); he was Prime Minister 2001–2006.

• Yitzhak Ben-Tzvi was born in 1884 in the Ukraine as Yitzhak Shimshelevich, the son of Tzvi Shimshelevich, who later took the name Tzvi Shimshi; he was the second President of Israel.

• Yigal Allon, Commander of the Palmah in 1948 and later acting Prime Minister of Israel, was born Yigal Peikowitz in the settlement of Masha (Kfar Tavor). His father immigrated to Palestine from Eastern Europe in 1890.

• Menahem Begin, the founder of the current ruling Likud party and the sixth Prime Minister of Israel, was born in Brest-Liovsk, then part of the Russian Empire, as Mieczysław Biegun.

• Yitzhak Ben-Tzvi’s wife, Rahel Yanait, born in the Ukraine as Golda Lishansky and immigrated to Palestine in 1908. She was a labour Zionist leader and a co-founder of the Greater Land of Israel Movement in 1967.

Apparently she Hebraicised her name to Rahel Yanait in memory of the Hasmonean King Alexander Jannaeus (Hellenised name of Alexander Yannai) (126–76 BC), a territorial expansionist, who during a twenty-seven- year reign was almost constantly involved in military conflict and who enlarged the Hasmonean Kingdom. Her two sons, born during the British Mandatory period, were given biblical names: Amram, named after the father of Moses and Aaron, and Eli, named after the High Priest Eli.

• Levi Eshkol was born in the Ukraine in 1895 as Levi Skolnik; he was Israel’s third Prime Minister, 1963–1999.

• Pinhas Lavon (1904–1976) was born Pinhas Lubianiker in what is now Ukraine and moved to Palestine in 1929; he was Defence Minister in 1954 and labour leader.

• Yitzhak Ben-Aharon (1906–2006) was an Israeli politician who became a general secretary of the Histadrut and held a cabinet post. He was born Yitzhak Nussenbaum in what is today Romania and immigrated to Palestine in 1928.

• Dov Yosef (1899‒1980, an Israeli Labour politician who held ministerial positions in nine Israeli governments, was born Bernard Joseph in Montreal, Canada.

• David Remez was born David Drabkin in Belarus in 1886; he was Israel’s first Minister of Transportation.

• Zalman Shazar, the third President of Israel (from 1963 to 1973), who immigrated to Palestine in 1921, was born in the Russian empire as Shneur Zalman Rubashov.

• Pinhas Rutenberg (1879–1942), a prominent Zionist leader and the founder of the Palestine Electric Company, which became the Israel Electric Corporation, was born in the Ukraine as Pyotr Moiseyevich Rutenberg.

• Avraham Granot (1890–1962), Director-General of the Jewish National Fund and later chairman of its board, was born in today’s Moldova as Abraham Granovsky; he changed his name after 1948.

• Fayge Ilanit (1909‒2002) was an Israeli Mapam politician born in the Russian Empire as Fayge Hindes, to Sharaga Hindes and Hannah Shkop. She immigrated to Palestine in 1929.

• Shimon Peres was born in Poland in 1923 as Szymon Perski; he was Israel’s eighth Prime Minister and in 2007 was elected as its ninth President.

• Right-wing Russian Zionist leader Zeev Jabotinsky (1880–1940), the founder of Revisionist Zionism, changed his name from Vladimir Yevgenyevich Zhabotinsky during the Mandatory period, choosing a predatory name: Zeev (‘wolf ’).

• Prominent Labour leader Haim Arlozoroff (1899–1933) was born Vitaly Arlozoroff.

• General Yigael Yadin (1917–1984), the army’s second chief of staff and a founding father of Israeli biblical archaeology, was born Yigal Sukenik; he was ordered to change his surname by Ben-Gurion after May 1948.

• Eliahu Elat (1903–1990), an Israeli diplomat and Orientalist and the first Israeli ambassador to the United States, was born Eliahu Epstein in Russia and immigrated to Palestine in 1924.

• Yisrael Galili (1911‒1986) was an Israeli government minister. Before 1948 he had served as chief of staff of the Haganah. He was born Yisrael Berchenko in today’s Ukraine.

• Meir Amit (1921–2009) was an Israeli politician and cabinet minister and head of the Mossad from 1963 to 1968. He was born in Mandatory Palestine as Meir Slutsky to settler parents from Russia.

• Meir Argov (1905–1963), Israeli politician and a signatory of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, was born Meyer Grabovsky born in Moldova (then Russian empire) and changed his name after 1948.

• Pinhas Rosen (1887‒1978), the first Israeli Minister of Justice and a signatory to the Israeli Declaration of Independence, was born in German as Felix Rosenbluth and changed his name after 1948.

• Abba Hushi (1898–1969), an Israeli politician and mayor of Haifa for eighteen years, was born Abba Schneller (also Aba Khoushy) in Poland and immigrated to Palestine in 1920.

• Mordechai Bentov (1900‒1985) was a politician and cabinet minister.

He was born in the Russian Empire as Mordechai Gutgeld and immigrated to Palestine in 1920.

• Peretz Bernstein (1890‒1971) was a Zionist leader, Israeli politician and one of the signatories of the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948. He was born in Germany as Fritz Bernstein, immigrated to Palestine in 1936 and changed his name after the establishment of Israel.

• Avraham Granot (1890–1962), Israeli politician, chairman of the JNF Board of Directors and a signatory of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, was born in (today) Moldova as Abraham Granovsky; he immigrated to Palestine in 1924, and changed his name after 1948.

• Mordechai Bentov (1900‒1985), Israeli journalist and politician, was born Mordechai Gutgeld in Poland and immigrated to Palestine in the Mandatory period.

• Herzl Vardi (1903–1991), Israeli politician, a signatory of the Israeli Declaration of Independence and editor of the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot, was born Herzl Rosenblum in Lithuania and changed his name after 1948.

• Professor Benyamin Mazar, co-founder of Israeli biblical archaeology, was born Benyamin Maisler in Poland and was educated in Germany; he immigrated to colonial Palestine in 1929 and Hebraicised his name.

• Yitzhak Sadeh (1890–1952), commander of the Haganah’s strike force, the Palmah, and one of the key army commanders in 1948, was born in Russia as Isaac Landsberg.

• General Yitzhak Rabin, the first native-born Israeli Prime Minister, 1974–1977 and 1992–1995, was born Nehemiah Rubitzov in Jerusalem to a Zionist settler from the Ukraine.

• General Yigal Allon (1918–1980), commander of the Palmah in 1948, government minister and acting Prime Minister of Israel, best known as the architect of the Allon Plan, was born in Palestine as Yigal Paicovitch.

His grandfather was one of the early East European settlers who immigrated to Palestine in the 1880s. After Israel was proclaimed in 1948 he changed his name to the Hebrew Allon (‘oak’ tree).

• Ephraim Katzir (1916–2009), the fourth President of Israel from 1973 to 1978, was born Efraim Katchalski, son of Yehuda and Tzila Katchalski, in Kiev and immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1925.

• Abba Eban (1915‒2002), Israeli Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, was born Aubrey Solomon Meir Eban in Cape Town, South Africa, to Lithuanian Jewish parents; in 1947, after immigrating to Mandatory Palestine, he changed his first name to Abba (Hebrew:

father) Solomon Meir Eban.

• General Tzvi Tzur (1923–2004), the Israeli army’s sixth chief of staff, was born in the Zaslav in the Soviet Union as Czera Czertenko.

• General Haim Bar-Lev, army chief of staff in 1968–1971 and later a government minister, was born Haim Brotzlewsky in Vienna in 1924.

• Ben-Tzion Dinur (1884–1973), Israel’s Minister of Education and Culture in the 1950s, was born Ben-Tzion Dinaburg in the Ukraine and immigrated to Palestine in 1921.

• General Moshe Ya’alon, former army chief of staff, was born in Israel in 1950 as Moshe Smilansky.

• Prominent Israeli author and journalist Amos Elon (1926–2009) was born in Vienna as Amos Sternbach.

• Yisrael Bar-Yehuda (1895–1965) was an Israeli labour politician who held a number of ministerial posts; he was born Yisrael Idelson in present-day Ukraine and immigrated to Palestine in 1926.

• Israel’s leading novelist Amoz Oz was born in Mandatory Palestine in 1939 as Amos Klausner. His parents, Yehuda Klausner and Fania Mussman, were Zionist immigrants to Mandatory Palestine from Eastern Europe.

• Gershom Scholem, a German-born Jewish philosopher and historian and the founder of the modern academic study of Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), was born Gerhard Scholem; he changed his name to Gershom Scholem after he emigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1923.

• Moshe Kol (1911‒1989), Israeli politician and a signatory of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, was born Moshe Kolodny in Pinsk (Russian Empire) and changed his name after 1948.

• Avraham Nissan was a Zionist political figure in Mandatory Palestine and a signatory to the Israeli Independence Declaration in 1948: He was born Avraham Katznelson in 1888 in what is now Belarus and changed his name after 1948.

• Tzvi Shiloah (1911‒2000), an Israeli Labour (Mapai) politician, who was one of the founders of the Whole Land of Israel Movement after 1967 and served as a member of the Knesset for Tehiya in the 1980s, was born Tzvi Langsam in the Ukraine and immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1932.

• Ben-Tzion Sternberg (1894–1962), a Zionist activist and a signatory to the Israeli Declaration of Independence, was born Benno Sternberg in the Austro-Hungarian empire.

• Yigal Tumarkin, a German-born Israeli artist known for his memorial sculpture of the Holocaust in Tel Aviv, was born in Dresden in 1993 as Peter Martin Gregor Heinrich Hellberg.

• Israel’s greatest poet, Yehuda Amichai (1924–2000) (Hebrew for ‘Praise my people alive’), was born in Germany as Ludwig Pfeuffer. He immigrated to colonial Palestine in 1935 and subsequently joined the Palmah and the Haganah. In 1947 he was still known as Yehuda Pfeuffer.

• Amos Kenan (1927–2009), an Israeli columnist and novelist, was born Amos Levine in Tel Aviv in 1927 and changed his family name after 1948.

• Peretz Bernstein (1890–1971), Israeli politician and one of the signatories of the Israeli Declaration of Independence in May 1948, was born in Germany as Fritz Bernstein and changed his name after 1948.

• Israeli Jewish communist leader, Meir Vilner (1918–2003), who began his political life as one of the leaders of the Zionist left‑wing group Hashmer Hatzair and became a signatory to the Israeli Declaration of Independence in May 1948 under the name Meir Vilner‑Kovner, was born Ber Kovner in Lithuania and immigrated to Palestine in the late 1930s.

• Abba Kovner, Meir Vilner‑Kovner’s cousin, was a well‑known Israeli Zionist poet born in the Crimean city of Sevastopol. Abba Kovner’s mother, Rosa Taubman changed her name to Rachel Kovner after immigrating to Palestine.

• Ya’akov Zerubavel, Zionist writer, publisher and one of the leaders of the Poale Tzion movement, was born Ya’akov Vitkin in the Ukraine.

• Historian Ben-Tzion Netanyahu, a Polish immigrant to the United States and the father of the current Israeli Prime Minister, Benyamin (Miliekowsky) Netanyahu, was born in Poland as Ben-Tzion (‘son of Zion’) Mileikowsky in 1910.

• Reuven Aloni (1919–1988), founder of the Israel Land Administration, an Israeli government authority responsible for managing land in Israel which manages 93% of the land in Israel, was born Reuven Rolanitzki.

He was also the husband of Shulamit Aloni, born Shulamit Adler.

• Shulamit Aloni (1928–2014), born Shulamit Adler, was an Israeli politician and leader of the Meretz party and served as Education Minister from 1992 to 1993. Adler’s father descended from a Polish family.

• Yosef Aharon Almogi (1910–1991), a Labour politician who served as a member of the Knesset between 1955 and 1977 and held several ministerial posts, was born Josef Karlenboim in the Russian Empire (today in Poland), and immigrated to Palestine in 1930.

• David Magen (born David Monsonego in 1945) is a former Israeli politician who held a number of ministerial posts in 1990s; he arrived from Morocco in 1949.

• Zalman Aran (1899–1970) was an Israeli politician. He was born Zalman Aharonowitz in the Ukraine and arrived in Palestine in 1926.

• Aharon Barak, President of the Israeli Supreme Court from 1995 to 2006

and the Attorney General of Israel (1975–1978), was born Aharon Brick in Lithuania in 1936. His father, Tzvi Brick, arrived in Palestine in 1947.

• Yitzhak Moda’i (1926–1998) was an politician and Knesset member; he was born Yitzhak Madzovitch in Mandatory Palestine.

• Yehuda Amital (1924–2010) was a Zionist Rabbi, cabinet minister and head of Yeshivat Har Etzion in the West Bank, established in 1968. He born Yehuda Klein in Romania and arrived in Palestine in 1944.

• Ehud Barak (born in 1942) is an Israeli politician who served as Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001 and earlier as chief of staff of the army.

He was the son of Yisrael Mendel Brog (1910–2002), born to a family which immigrated from the Russian Empire. Ehud Brog Hebrewised his family name from Brog to Barak in 1972.

• Yosef (Joseph) ‘Tommy’ Lapid (1931–2008) was born Tomislav Lampel (Томислав Лампел) in Serbia. He was an Israeli journalist, politician and government minister.

• Naomi Chazan (born Naomi Harman in Mandatory Palestine in 1946)

is an Israeli academic and politician. She is the daughter of Avraham Harman, an Israeli ambassador to the US. Harman was born in London and immigrated to Palestine in 1938.

• Rachel Cohen-Kagan (1888–1982) was an Israeli politician, and one of only two women to sign the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948. She was born Rachel Lubersky in today’s Ukraine and immigrated to Palestine in 1919.

• Yehuda Karmon (1912‒1995), Professor of Geography at the Hebrew University, was born Leopold Kaufman in Poland and moved to Palestine in 1938.

• Hanoch Bartov (died in 2016), a prominent Israeli author and journalist who also served as a cultural advisor in the Israeli embassy in London, was born Hanoch Helfgott in Palestine in 1926, a year after his parents immigrated from Poland.

Evidently many of these name changes took place around or shortly after 1948. During the Mandatory period, it was still advantageous for individuals to have their original European names.

The above list also shows senior officers and army chiefs of staffs (Hebrew:

rav alufs) adopting Hebrew-sounding names in the post-1948 period. Ironically, although in the Hebrew Bible the Philistines are constructed as the Other and arch enemy of the Israelites, since 1948 a Philistine term such as seren (a lord) has been used by the Israeli army as a rank equivalent to captain. Also, the terms aluf and rav aluf (major general and lieutenant general, respectively), which have been used for the two highest ranks in the army, are apparently from the New Testament. In the New Testament aluf (‘chief ’, the one who commands a ‘thousand people’) was a rank of nobility among the Idumites, identified by some scholars to be of Nabataean Arab origins, and often depicted as the Israelites’ inveterate enemies whom the Hebrew prophets denounced violently.

Since 1948 the Israeli state has encouraged a conception of an ethnocentric identity on the basis of the traditions of land and conquest of the Hebrew Bible, especially the Book of Joshua, and those dealing with the biblical Israelites’ origins that demanded the subjugation and destruction of other peoples. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the Book of Joshua is required reading in Israeli schools. In fact, the Book of Joshua is a work of fiction and the Israelite‘conquest’ was not the‘Blitzkrieg’it is made out to be in the Book of Joshua. But this book holds an important place in the Israeli school curricula and Israeli academic programmes partly because the founding fathers of Zionism viewed Joshua’s narrative of conquest as a precedent for the establishment of Israel as a nation (Burge 2003: 82).

Although the account of the Israelites’ enslavement in ancient Egypt as described in the Book of Exodus is generally recognised as a myth, in Israeli schools and universities this is treated as actual history.

Furthermore, since 1948 Israeli academic institutions have continued the same colonialist tradition of intelligence gathering and data collection.

The Israeli army and Israeli biblical academy, in particular, have always been intimately connected to and close partners in nation-building.

Engagement in nationalist mobilisation, using the Bible and myth-making through spurious scholarly activity involves a large number of Israeli academics and social scientists, in particular archaeologists, political geographers and Orientalists. The involvement of Israeli academic institutions with the Governmental Names Committee (below), which has operated since the early 1950s, and continues to do so, from the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, is perhaps the best example of academic complicity in the production of knowledge through myth-making.