from the synagogue and the graveyard. The flag, a white cloth with blue stripes, was an adaptation of the talith, the Jewish prayer mantle. Much later, when the new State of Israel was looking for a coat of arms, it chose the menorah, the seven-armed candlestick of the Temple. In all this world of symbols there was no place for the nonHebrew periods of the history of Palestine, nor for the glorious heritage of the other great Semitic sister-nations. Zionist nationalism just did not blend into the landscape of the region, or even of Palestine, with its many-splendored past. Today this may seem strangely lacking in foresight, but at the time it was quite natural, so natural, in fact, that it could hardly have been different.
* * *
This, then, was the movement that slowly began to infiltrate into Palestine toward the end of the last century, the first aliyah (wave of immigration) settling there even before the birth of the Zionist movement itself, the second aliyah, composed of young socialists, following that event during the early years of the new country.
And in Palestine Zionism collided with a reality it was wholly unprepared to meet.