There is a professor at California Institute of Integral Studies, in the anthropology program (heavily into both post-modernism and critical theory), who explains that the lesson Zionists took was that they have to be not merely tough, but bullies. This is also the professor from whom I first learned of the Jewish tradition of social justice.
The Zionist view is a dark one. It necessarily assumes that Jews, who have indeed been subject to numerous pogroms in numerous places, but especially in Europe, will always be under threat, that the world is implacably hostile to Jews. It shouldn't even remotely be difficult to see how this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.