of power and defense which national sovereignty confers.
For people like Ben-Gurion, it meant much more than this. The Holocaust had awakened in the whole generation of European Jews in Palestine a set of emotions long dormant. The Zionists who had come to Palestine had reacted violently to all the traditions of eastern European Jewry. They were predominantly non-religious, even antireligious, viewing religion as an obstacle to the rejuvenation of the people. (Also, they could not forget that nearly all the leaders of Orthodox religion had denounced Herzl and Zionism, saying the setting-up of a Jewish state and the Ingathering of the Exiles were reserved exclusively to the Messiah, whose coming might well be delayed if some ungodly sinners like the Zionists took it upon themselves to do his job for Him.) Religion, then, was out. So was most Jewish literature glorifying life in the ghetto. Zionist literature, taught to every Jewish child in Palestine, depicted Jewish life in eastern Europe as despicable, the whole tradition and folk lore of the ghetto as cowardly, crooked, parasitical. (Because of this, Israeli sabras consider themselves vastly superior to Jews in the Diaspora, treating them at best with a paternalistic, rather colonial attitude.) Now, with the news of the Holocaust, the older Zionists in Israel, feeling guilt and repentance, found the life of their youth in the ghettos, so cruelly destroyed, beautiful, wholesome, harmonious. Jewish religion again became respectable.
All this led to an upsurge of nationalistic feeling. The state had to come, now. The dissidents intensified their guerrilla warfare against the British, sometimes collaborating with the Haganah and sometimes denounced and persecuted by it. The Haganah took over the organization of illegal immigration, started earlier by Jabotinsky, and gave it a dramatic dimension. The gallant blockade runners with their load of human misery-unfortunately Hollywoodized in Exodus by Leon Uris-aroused the conscience of the world. It became clear to Britain that she