The perversion of religious Zionism - opinion

Having first attacked ultra-Orthodoxy last century (“Divinely inspired, but wrong,” April 26, 1996), this column has skewered its politicians’ mixture of ignorance, hypocrisy, audacity, and zeal for 28 years. 

Not today. Ultra-Orthodox leaders’ response to the Biden-Netanyahu hostage deal is a display of humility, humanity, and sobriety that starkly contrasts this coalition’s other religious wing, the far Right.

No, we don’t know the deal’s full details, much less whether it is affordable, but that is not the point right now. The point is that when told that Benjamin Netanyahu is backing the deal, United Torah Judaism’s leader, Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf, didn’t make believe he is a military or diplomatic expert, and he didn’t set out to scan the blueprint and raise Talmudic questions about its fine print.

Instead, the black-clad hassid turned to his Jewish heritage and instincts. Redeeming hostages is a supreme Jewish value, he said, and vowed to support the deal.

The following day, the same line was voiced by ultra-Orthodoxy’s other part, Shas. The deal is about “the commandment of redeeming prisoners,” it said, and the party “encourages the prime minister and the war cabinet to endure all the pressures, finalize the deal, and” – paraphrasing the ancient Jewish prayer said every Monday and Thursday – “save our brethren and sisters who are in captivity and distress.”  

This attitude is not only humane and humble, it is also selfless, since the hostages – a collection of farmers, soldiers, and rockers – are not the ultra-Orthodox parties’ constituents.

That’s not what happened on the far Right, whose leaders, though also Orthodox, rejected the proposed deal flatly, even though they claim to profess the same Jewish heritage that guides their ultra-Orthodox peers. How can this be?

Opposed, but not for religious reasons

SHREWDLY, THE far Right’s formal arguments are not religious. “The deal means giving up on defeating Hamas,” said National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. His conclusion – “it’s a reckless deal” – was followed by a threat to dissolve the coalition if it adopts the deal.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich concurred. Calling the proposal “a surrender offer,” he vowed “to work for the replacement of a failed leadership with a new leadership that will know how to deliver victory.”

Neither man actually saw the document he rejected – Netanyahu wouldn’t show it to them – but President Joe Biden’s statement contained what for them is an abomination that spells disaster: a ceasefire. Why, in their view, is a ceasefire bad, and what has that got to do with their understanding of the Jewish faith?

What happened to Religious Zionism since the days when its leaders – before, during, and after the Six Day War – were the moderate force in the government, a set of Orthodox politicians who first questioned the wisdom of a preemptive war, then opposed the conquest of Jerusalem, and then, on June 19, 1967, backed Israel’s first formal offer of land for peace?

The answer is simple: Religious Zionism was hijacked, reprogrammed, and perverted.

SURE, A ceasefire now with Hamas is problematic, and one that would tie the IDF’s hands indefinitely should indeed be avoided. However, if Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, and Benny Gantz say Israel will be able to resume fighting when it chooses, why does that not satisfy Ben-Gvir and Smotrich? Evidently, their real concern is not the ceasefire. It’s something else.

The pair’s endgame is a restoration of Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip, a mad idea by any yardstick – national, international, or military – but a perfectly sound one in terms of their messianic theology, which is to plant Jewish settlements in every reachable corner of the biblical Land of Israel, regardless of who is there and what that entails. While even they understand this cannot happen immediately, they focus on what can happen: Israeli military rule across the Gaza Strip.

A ceasefire is anathema to them because it might generate an Arab regime in Gaza designed by Arab governments at peace with Israel, and also Saudi Arabia. To Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, such a scenario is a nightmare, not militarily or strategically, as they claim, but theologically as they do not openly admit.

RELIGIOUS ZIONISM and ultra-Orthodoxy have been at odds for more than a century. Their controversy was about the Jews’ role in shaping their future. Religious Zionists, like their secular allies, thought the Jews must fight for their freedom or they would be abused indefinitely. Ultra-Orthodoxy thought the Jews’ redemption was God’s task, and the Jews’ task was to pray that God would soon fulfill His task.

The Zionist goal, then, was Jewish liberation through Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish land. The Jews were the aim, and their land was the means. This view was shared by Religious Zionism’s politicians who in 1947 backed wholeheartedly the partition plan that created the Jewish state, and in 1967 backed with equal conviction the idea of land for peace, as did the greatest Modern Orthodox theologian, Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik (1903-1993).

Now the party that calls itself Religious Zionism not only doesn’t think of land for peace, it thinks of land for war. The hostages, in its view, are expendable for the hallucination of Jewish settlements in Gaza. The people, originally the aim, and the land, originally the means, have reversed roles. It’s a biblical tragedy.

Reading the Bible, one wonders what paganism was. But two certainties emerge: One is that there really was a cult of human sacrifice called Moloch as archaeology has found (in Carthage); the other is that for the Bible, that was idolatry’s worst form.

Reading those biblical accounts one wonders: Did people really sacrifice their own kith and kin for something physical that they declared divine? Now, looking at Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, we know the answer. People sure did sacrifice humans for idols, and if we surrender to this pair’s paganism, so will we.

www.MiddleIsrael.netThe writer, a Hartman Institute fellow, is the author of the bestselling Mitzad Ha’ivelet Ha’yehudi (The Jewish March of Folly, Yediot Sefarim, 2019), a revisionist history of the Jewish people’s political leadership.