121 Anat E. Leibler Statisticians’ Ambition: Governmentality, Modernity and National Legibility Most work on the history of statistics has located statistics as a tool of the state and has shown how the tool is used to invent society. My case study shows this happening, but it also shows something of the reverse process as well—how the state is used by the discipline of statistics. In fact, paradoxically, my case shows how the Central Bureau of Statistics con- tributed to the emergence of a statistical scientific community that could present itself as dissociated from politics. he empirical focus of the paper is on the establishment of the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) and on its first major operation—the first census and the general registry of the population; and deals with the social and political implications of central services of national statistics in the context of Israeli society. In that context, three groups went through a significant transformation: Most Pal- estinians were excluded from the new Israeli citizenry; Beduin-Arabs were subjugated to the jurisdiction of the state, while Mizrakhim—Jews from Muslim countries—were grouped as the Simmelian “stranger” of Israeli society. hese implications resulted, though not solely, from the way the statistical gaze was applied in those days. he time is 1948, a year in which the State of Israel was established as the modern nation-state of the Jewish people. A few months prior to that event, a state agency for the centralized production of national statistics was created. Called the “Central Bureau of Statistics,” the agency, following its name, centralized all the statistical activities of the state under its roof and administered to the needs of the emerging public administration. he first major project undertaken by CBS was the population census, which was conducted in November 1948. he characteristics of this census were as follows: It was conducted during the height of the War of Independence. During seven hours of curfew, military and security personnel proceeded