and a half million, most acting under diveise forms of duress, have indeed settled in what is now Israel. But several million others, who were not subject to physical persecution, stayed where they were. Immigration is near a standstill, with only the wish of Soviet Jewry, not allowed to leave its closed society, still in doubt.
It seems, therefore, that world Jewry is not a nation, in the Zionist sense. This would have spelled the failure of the Zionist experiment, if something quite unforeseen had not happened in the meantime: A new nation was, indeed, born in Palestine.
Looking back today, this seems to have been as inevitable as the discovery of the New World, once Columbus and his little fleet left the shores of Europe on a westward course. If you transfer hundreds of thousands of people to a foreign land-a new climate and landscape-in which they speak a newly resurrected language and respond to different physical and political challenges, the stage is set for the emergence of a new society. If this society has a sense of political destiny and unity, it becomes a new nation. This has happened in the United States, in Australia, in Brazil, in many other countries. It has happened in Palestine.
We, the sons and daughters of Zionism, are indeed a new nation, not just another part of world Jewry that happens to live in Palestine. This is the central fact of our life, obscured by obsolete ideas and slogans, a truth that must be grasped if anything about our existence, our problems, and our future is to be understood.
What is a nation? Many answers have been given to this question, each influenced by the particular ideology of its proponent. Some put the emphasis on a common territory, others on a common culture or economy. I don't believe in abstract formulas to which life has to be somehow adapted. To me the answer seems simple and pragmatic: A nation is a group of people who believe that they are a nation, who want to live as a nation, have a common