Israel P-30 1 Shekel Fine to Very Fine

You will receive a note in the design indicated in Fine to Very Fine condition. Design and color will be intact but may be somewhat faded compared to a new note. May have

• Wear on the edges and/or corners
• Folds, 1–2 may be heavy
• Millimeter-sized missing pieces along edge (max. 2, max. 3 mm each)

The Fisherman: an "Invented Tradition"

Series II of the Israeli pound (lira), "Walks of Life" featured idealized figures—farmers, laborers, and notably fishermen. These images were not neutral. They constructed a visual narrative: a people organically tied to the land—working it, harvesting from it, living from it. A fisherman, in particular, signals permanence: coastal livelihood, generational continuity, rootedness—“we belong here, we have always belonged here.” 

This contrasted remarkably with the reality of 1948: the new state was overwhelmingly composed of immigrants from Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Many had arrived in the 1920s–1930s, while one-third to nearly half who had arrived in the three short years since the end of World War II (and the Holocaust) in 1945.

The fishermen image, the permanence, the belonging was one piece of pure nation-building mythology, alongside:

• The idea of the "New Hebrew" (the Sabra): muscular, tanned, secular, and agricultural
• Secular "folk songs" newly composed, blending Russian, Yemenite and Bedouin motifs
• Reframing Masada as "heroic resistance" rather than as mass suicide by a fringe sect, which it was
• Archeological excavation only of Jewish sites: Emphasis was placed heavily on the First and Second Temple periods (Jewish sovereignty), while the 1,300 years of Islamic, Byzantine, and Crusader history were often treated as rubble to be cleared away to reach the "true" history underneath
• Erasing (dehumanization) of the Palestinians, framing Palestine as having been a "land without a people" that had been a desolate, empty swamp or desert until Jewish labor "redeemed" it through reforestation and agriculture (including, ironically the Jaffa orange, which had long been world-famous as a Palestinian export)
• Hebraization of people's names, the invention or reinvention of Hebrew names for places, and of course the spread of the Hebrew language itself, replacing settlers' native Yiddish, Arabic, etc.

The nation-building effort was greatly successful and forms the baseline of Israeli culture—apart from the ~7 million Palestinians (1.7 million citizens and 5.3 million under Israeli occupation).