YYA, sounds like an interesting book. I think it says similar things to what many posters are saying here: that there were religious people who participated in the settlement. If you don’t want to call them religious zionists, but call them haredim who arrived to dig wells, shoin.
> 8. The secular settlements were dependent on financial support from Jews abroad, no less than the �Old Yishuv� was. (The Kibbutz Movement was never a financial success story
Indeed. According to research I saw – when Sochnut centralized donor funds and re-directed them to kbibutzim in 1920-30s, this decreased development of manufacturing in Tel Aviv area [kibutzim were losing money, while manufacturing was profitable], leading to less German Jews deciding to come until it was too late. To be totally fair, acquisition of land enabled creating the state and provide physical protection beyond “city states” of Yerushalaim and Tel-Aviv.