Jewish Extremism in Israel
Dateline: December 09, 1998
Yitzhak Rabin’s murder was neither the conclusion nor even the beginning of a long and not always subtle process which is moving Israel away from a secular state towards a theocracy. Two very different groups are attempting to peacefully coexist in Israel, each with mutually exclusive identities and each contending to define the nature of Israeli society. Sometimes one is dominant, sometimes the other – but at all times it is impossible to understand Israel with recognizing both.
One group promotes a modern society functioning according to the accepted rules of developed western societies, based on the concepts of civil liberties and civil citizenship. A second group, the focus of this article, recognize as their sole authority a selective interpretation of the Jewish halacha, or religious law. Their aim is to create a “halachic Jewish state,” a theocracy where the only law is religious in nature and all obligations and rights are defined in ancient religious terms. Their “Land of Israel” is not a strip of land with territorial boundaries, it is instead a spiritual and theological concept which must be realized.
Who are they? Where do they come from? What are their current political activities and immediate political goals? And, most importantly, what effect are they having on the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians? The answers are disturbing at best.
The history of Gush Emunim, or Bloc of the Faithful, can most simply be traced back to a cadre of young men hardened in the 1967 war and who, through the 1970s, came into leadership positions in far-right and ultra-religious communities across Israel. After becoming organized on a wider scale by the mid-1970s, they engaged in a considerable variety of direct-action political activities. Their efforts ranged from mass-protest rallies in which the morals of the nation were rebuked, to terrorist acts designed to sabotage peace efforts with Arab neighbors.
With assistance from various sympathetic government leaders, Gush Emunim have been especially involved with the effort to increase the numbers of settlers in the Occupied Territories. Those areas are considered by them to be a part of “Greater Israel” – part of the spiritual and theological state which Jews are destined to rule over. Settlers are often themselves members of Gush Emunim who then proceed to engage in deliberate conflict with Palestinian neighbors, provoking confrontation at every turn. As you will see, the interests of their immediate Palestinian neighbors are simply not considered relevant.
Violent activism in the name of religious politics found a logical, if desperate, conclusion in the attempted plot to blow up the sacred Islamic mosque and shrine on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This is the purported site of Solomon’s Temple, and it is the goal of Gush Emunim members to eliminate the blasphemous presence of Islam from their holy site and rebuild their own temple. This was to have been the crowning glory in activities of Jewish underground terrorism in the Territories. It is fortunate that covert efforts by the Israeli secret service foiled this plan in 1984, because simulations conducted by the Harvard Center for International Affairs indicated that World War III would have been a likely result had the plot succeeded.
In fact, activist-believers had taken just that possibility into account, expecting that the bombing would result in a massive Muslim jihad which would sweep the entire planet into confrontation. We, evidently, were to be sacrificed in their war. This was interpreted as the “War of Gog and Magog” from which a religious Israel would emerge victorious, paving the way for the appearance of the True Messiah. Such inhuman attitudes towards everyone outside the Gush Emunim must be kept in mind at all times – they don’t care about what happens to the rest of us.
Through their “sacred vigilantism,” not only are the rights of the native Arab population threatened, but the future of Israel as a free democracy as well. The rest of the world is none too safer, either.
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