The political ideology underlying Israel’s national cultural heritage policy

This article explores the historical processes, socio-political contexts, and ideological tendencies that underlie the development of the Heritage Plan, Israel’s official cultural heritage policy. I argue that the Heritage Plan does not merely invest in the conservation of tangible and intangible Israeli national heritage assets; in addition, it employs cultural heritage as an educational tool for creating a ‘unifying national ethos’ to ensure the continuous existence of Zionism – in the eyes of the policy’s architects. To understand the concrete manifestations of this policy in relation to its ideological roots, I adopted a critical discourse analysis lens to examine various data materials, including official documents and interviews. My findings lead to a direct connection between the Heritage Plan and the rise of a specific ideological interpretation of Zionism, which combines Anglo-American conservative concepts with selected political-Zionist ideas. This study retraces how conservative-Zionism informed the decision-making process behind the Heritage Plan’s creation and demonstrates how this ideology continues to influence the policy’s current implementation.