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After the 1996 General Elections in Israel, the religious political parties are more powerful than ever, their own definition of Jewishness more pervasive than ever, and their bonding with the land of Israel all the land tighter than ever.
I sometimes find myself pondering the fate of my secular, Zionist grandmother’s religiously observant brother. In 1934 she emigrated to Palestine; he was forbidden to join her by his rabbi. He should not try to force the pace of events, argued the rabbi, but should wait patiently for the coming of the Messiah. The advice was catastrophic (the Germans killed him in Poland), but nonetheless a nice illustration of the then Judaism-Zionism paradox: on the one hand, a spiritual, religious Judaism, essentially non-territorial, and on the other, secular Zionism, determined to settle on its own land. The Zionist movement originated, it should be remembered, in rebellion against precisely that kind of religious Judaism which made a virtue of exile, of Diaspora existence. Indeed, except for one religious Zionist movement (Israel's National Religious Party is its modern-day heir), all other Jewish religious political parties in Israel remain ostensibly non-Zionist down to this very day.
These parties, experienced veterans of Israel’s political-electoral game, have made significant gains in the recent elections [1996]. In the early fifties, their interests were mainly sectoral accumulating benefits and concessions for their own people and institutions. But with time their agenda has come full circle and today they are bent on reversing Zionism’s definition of what Judaism is all about. Their success could change the face of Israel, its relations with the Arabs, and the value Israeli society attaches to the territorial aspects of ‘the Jewish State’.
A Polarized Identity
The view of Israel from abroad is far too narrow, and mistakenly concentrates on external aspects of Israeli-Arab relationships. Israel’s image in the media is ‘event-oriented.’ This underplays deeper changes of attitude and outlook, which are precisely the changes which form the context for, and even give birth to, the ‘events.’ To understand Israeli society (as well as what determines its attitude to the Arab question) one would do well to observe its changing views of itself as a Jewish State and its perplexities over the issue.
Israel has existed as a state for almost fifty years and during this time, and especially during the three decades following the Six Day War (1967), a polarized cultural struggle has engrossed its society. The struggle oscillates between two poles ---- Jewish identity that is secular, ‘ethnic,’ and history-generated (the view of secular Zionism), and the identification of a Jew by the strictness of his religious observance --- ‘the more strict, the more Jewish’. While the numbers may not seem worrying --- together the religious parties now have 22 seats (up from 18) in a parliament of 120 --- the 1996 elections nonetheless indicate a dramatic shift towards the second school of thought. This is particularly disturbing because, having moved far from the a-territorial Judaism of my great-uncle’s rabbi, religious Judaism is now increasingly identified with the notion of the ‘sacred Land of Israel’. The once moderate National Religious Party aligned itself with the ultra-right territorialists almost a generation ago. The same is now happening with the other religious sectors of Israeli political life. I find it no surprise that, in these elections, for the first time in its history, almost the entire religious bloc has given its electoral support to the Right’s candidate for Prime Minister.
The Danger: Altering the State’s Jewishness
Historically, Zionist movements from the left and from the right justifiably claim a share in the creation of the State of Israel, in the renaissance of the Hebrew language, and in winning Israel’s wars. However, the enormous energy invested in state-building left little time for secular Jews (“free-thinking Jews” as Orthodox Jews disparagingly call them) to invest in the non-religious components of their identity. They abandoned “Jewish values” to the nurture of the religious movements, whose members cannot comprehend any definition of Judaism other than a religious one. These religious movements, having invested relatively little in state- and nation-building, now, ironically, find themselves in a position to transform the character of the Jewish State in accordance with their formula ‘the more religious, the more Jewish’ .
The Ethnic and the Religious Definitions of a Jew
What is the ‘Jewish character’ of Israel? Friends abroad would agree that one can be an Englishman and maintain almost any religious belief without losing that which makes one ‘English’. But can the same be said of a Jew? The long history during which the ethnic and religious definitions of a Jew coincided almost completely has created a basic contradiction which no Israeli can fully solve. Perhaps inexplicably, it is inconceivable to most Israelis that a Jew might convert to another religion and still feel that he retains his Jewish identity. Even a free-thinking Jew like myself cannot find a way to grasp this concept. The religious parties have been very successful in exploiting this confusion over the sources of Jewishness and, naturally, they have shifted the focus of the way to resolve the confusion towards their point of view. It is perhaps no wonder that the demagogic slogan “Netanyahu is good for the Jews”, calculatedly broadcast just a 24 hours before polling day, carried the day with the vast majority of religious voters.
I have never been able to sympathize with Orthodox Judaism, but I was able to feel respect for the basic tenet shared by many Orthodox parties --- that the secular State is just an instrument for the technical aspects of living in this land, and Jewish existence within it is best regarded as little different to communal Jewish existence, say, in England or the USA. Israel, however, is not England and the supposedly segregated religious sectors are undergoing an Israeli acculturation. Both ideology and the reality of life in Israel are rapidly sand-papering away the former spiritual tenets of the non-Zionist Orthodox parties. Their Judaism has attached itself more and more tightly to ‘land’. These elections have proven that ‘place’ and ‘territory’ have become inseparably glued to spiritual Judaism. Paradoxically, the rabbis, no doubt happy in their victory, should start worrying lest the cruder, nationalistic aspects of Zionism are taking hold of their flocks.
A State on Part of the Land or on All of It?
Israel’s future and its ability to extricate itself from its domination over, and settlement among, Palestinians may depend on the ‘Jewish content’ of the territory it occupies. Religious and rightist Judaism are irredentist by definition. [i.e. they pursue, on historical and/or ideological grounds, the restoration of lost territory] For example, the patriarch Abraham is reported to have purchased a burial plot in the (now Arab) city of Hebron, which, should, for that reason, be restored to the Jews. By contrast, mainstream Zionism, until the 1967 war, looked for a solution for the Jewish people ‘in Palestine’ (a point officially made in the 1917 Balfour Declaration), not in all of it. 20th-century Zionism has brought Jews to Israel mainly through its Mediterranean ports and has settled the great majority of Jews along the plains of the Mediterranean coastline. In antiquity, Jews believed they had migrated under Moses to Canaan [as the land was then called] from the desert, that is, from the far, the eastern, side of the River Jordan, and then crossed the river under Joshua, to settle in the inland hill-country. Modern-day immigrants have thus completely reversed the ancient population distribution. Although Zionists may have pictured themselves as returning to the ‘Land of their forefathers,’ the realization of the Return has been at best approximate. The coastal regions where most Israeli Jhave settled were, in the days of Kings David and Solomon, Phoenician and Philistine home territory (that is where the name ‘Palestine’ comes from).
Has the Momentum of Peace Gone into Reverse?
How does this Mediterranean paradox connect to religion, Judaism, the recent elections, and the future? In acknowledging the Mediterranean reality of Israel, the governments of Rabin and Shimon Peres also gave up on irredentism. Let us remember that from the Israeli point of view, the most significant ideological and formal implication of the Oslo Agreements with the Palestinians was that Israel has officially renounced, for the first time ever, its claim to the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) as the ancestral land of the Jewish people [the West Bank is that self-same hill-country which the ancient Israelites settled after crossing the Jordan from the East Bank]. We have fallen just short of implementing this renunciation between ‘Oslo II’ (already signed and partially implemented) and ‘Oslo III,’ yet to be negotiated. But could this still happen?
The victory of the right wing, bonded umbilically to the religious parties, must signify that irredentism is back in full force. This alliance feeds on two major trends: first, an increasing number of secular Israelis are being told (and, it seems, convinced) that Jewish identity equals religious identity; second, more and more religious Jews have come to see their Judaism as consisting in an attachment to the sacred Land. Shimon Peres argued against irredentism and for peace; he had dragged the Israeli-Jewish electorate and the rock of peace almost to the top of the hill, from which it may now be rolling back down again. As I write these lines, the morning after the elections, my heart is as heavy as Sisyphus’ stone.
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This article was first published in The Independent, a British newspaper, the day after the May 1996 General Elections in Israel.
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