A Fight for the Fabric of the State

At the time of its birth, much of the Jewish world was skeptical, if not hostile to the idea of Zionism. From a secular perspective, Jews in Eastern Europe believed that only a socialist revolution including the Jewish proletariat could solve the Jewish question. From a religious perspective, return to the Holy Land would of course come eventually, but it was not the job of the Jewish people to determine when. Rather, it was wholly the responsibility of God and the Messiah, the latter of which would come only through strict adherence to mitzvot.

The verdict of history, to put it lightly, was harsh to these worldviews. The leaders of the Jewish Labor Bund, who initially believed that they were lucky enough to live in an age of progress and tolerance, along with those driven by theology, who awaited the Messiah to be freed from the shackles of persecution, came to realize that while Europe spoke of equality, it failed to practice it. The worldviews that drove their movements would later be rendered obsolete by the tragedy that was to befall the Jews of Europe in the twentieth century. Zionism, the desire for a Jewish nation state that operated under the principles of the United Nations charter, had won the day.

Zionism didn’t only succeed in leading Jews to liberation and sovereignty. Its continued success is in its documented principles that have prevailed for the state’s duration: that Jews would act as a collective for the betterment of their society, with security, democracy and modernity regarded as its most esteemed ideals. It is because of these ideals that Israel has been capable of building a thriving middle class, a booming high-tech sector, a system of government where religious and ethnic minorities are not only protected but also represented, and where the voice of Jews has a legitimate space in the arena of international affairs.

And yet, despite this, the Jewish people are still forced to grapple with fringe extremism from other Jews whoseek to undo these great successes. On the hard-left, there are those who seek to dissolve any expression of Jewish self-determination between “the river and the sea,” by falling prey to the miserably ahistorical and deeply naive impression that the transformation of Israel from a Jewish-majority to an Arab-majority state will result in a more egalitarian and less violent society.

Then there are Jewish extremists on the right side of the spectrum, whom our community is less likely to condemn, simply because in their hearts they believe they are furthering the true mission of the Jewish people. In truth, their vision of the future is no less worrisome and unsustainable than that of their counterparts on the hard left. It is these fundamentalists who, after the senseless killing of two Israeli brothers in the West Bank last Sunday, rampaged through the Palestinian town of Hawara, setting fire to dozens of homes and automobiles, wounding nearly one-hundred Palestinian civilians and killing one. The settlers acting outside the purview of the state regard themselves as the frontline defense for the Jewish people, and therefore believe it justified to commit extrajudicial violence, which in Hawara, was expressed as collective punishment against the ethnic group deemed responsible for the actions of individuals. Another word for such an act is terrorism.

The ideology driving the far right is crucial if we are to understand the problem. The fact remains that the more secular Zionism succeeded, and the more its alternatives failed, the more frustrated antiliberal thinkers on the Jewish future became. As a consequence, the Israeli right, and more specifically the leaders of the settlement enterprise, has exercised theological interpretation to portray the secular Zionists who did everything to bring Israel into being, not as individuals who act collectively for the benefit of the end of the exile and the cultural renewal of the Jewish people, but rather as unconscious characters in God’s will, as “the donkeys leading the Messiah.”

The fact remains that the more secular Zionism succeeded, and the more its alternatives failed, the more frustrated antiliberal thinkers on the Jewish future became.

And their mission is bleak. Behind the mask of spirituality and religion, these Jews do not recognize the authority of the state, nor its innately democratic nature, nor do they accept that a nation must act within the bounds of international law in order to progress its aspirations. Instead, they ascribe to a continuation of the pre-state fallacy that upholds that only religious conviction can bring salvation to the Jewish people. Like the stalwart rabbis of the nineteenth century who regarded emigration to Ottoman or Mandated Palestine as an abomination against God, these Jews see an equal abomination in Israel as it stands today. They believe that in order to obtain true freedom, the entire biblical land of Israel must be settled, that Halakha (Jewish law) must be implemented in all areas of public life, and if non-Jews in the land are made to feel unwelcome, untrusted and unsafe, that is a necessary cross to bear.

This worldview is certainly not new. Before the state’s nineteenth anniversary, the highly influential Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook delivered his most renowned and significant address, called “In those first hours [of independence]”:

“I could not make peace with what was done [in 1948], with the horrible news [of partition], that God’s words from the prophecy in the Twelve Prophets: My land was divided was coming true … Where is our Hebron? Are we forgetting it? And where is our Nablus? Are we forgetting it? And where is our Jericho? Are we forgetting it? And where is our east side of the Jordan? Where is every lump and chunk? Every bit and piece of the four cubits of God’s land? Is it up to us to give up any millimeter of it? God forbid! In the state of shock that took over my body, completely bruised and torn to pieces—I could not rejoice.”

These words seared into the minds of many of Kook’s listeners, who would later become the leaders of the settlement movement. Kook’s use of the term “four cubits” to refer to Eretz Israel is telling because that term is traditionally used to refer to the “four cubits of halakha.” Kook’s message was simple: “Living throughout the entirety of the land is akin to Judaism itself!”

Later, Kook made the case that one may even be obligated to give one’s life, become a martyr, and save every inch of Eretz Israel from those who wished to stand in the way of God’s will. In other words, Kook advocated for the sacrificing of Jewish life in what he perceived as a Holy War.

In the context of current political turmoil, we must ask ourselves: How has Israel benefited from Kook’s Holy War? The answer is that it has not. In light of rising right-wing populism and religious fundamentalism, the shekel has dropped tremendously, Israeli companies have moved their lucrative businesses offshore, there has been continued isolation from even our closest allies, and the cost of living has taken a hit—in large part thanks to the continued surplus funding and specialized grants for the settlements, which has in turn destabilized Israel’s security and has placed Jewish men, women and children in the line of danger almost constantly. Everything that made Israel a successful country is jeopardized by an ideology that proclaims there to be no acceptable Jewish sovereignty without the wholeness of the land, and no acceptable sovereignty in the land unless it is Jewish.

The theological hypothesis that the original framework of Zionism as a democratic enterprise is inchoate and incomplete threatens to unravel the entirety of Israeli society. This would explain clearly why those who are taking to the streets each Saturday night in Tel Aviv to make their voices heard against the current government have made the correct decision to make the Israeli flag the symbol of their protest. For they are fighting for Zionism in its truest essence. And indeed, they are demanding that the Zionist project continue.

Blake Flayton is the New Media Director and Columnist for the Jewish Journal.

Samuel Hyde is a writer/researcher based in Tel Aviv, Israel. He is the editor of the book “We Should All Be Zionists” by Dr. Einat Wilf and is currently co-writing a second book with Wilf titled “Political Intelligence.”