Among the traits shared by leaders of the US and Israel is a sharp political instinct for ethnocentrism — Donald Trump’s appetite for white nationalism and Benjamin Netanyahu’s vision of a Jews-only state.

In response to Trump, we have heard many voices pointing out that immigrants built this country and still are. And in Israel? Who built that country? Palestinians did and still are. They have always filled the labor-intensive sector of the construction industry. Everyone knows this, but it is the subject of widespread denial.

For a long time, the dogma of Labor Zionism camouflaged this inconvenient fact. According to that doctrine, the primary builders were the pioneers and settlers. Unused to skilled manual labor, they staffed the cement mixers, with shovels in hand or bricks balanced awkwardly on their shoulders, and made “New Jews” of themselves through their nation-making toil, “redeeming” another people’s land as their own.