For The Land and The Lord: The Range of Disagreement within Jewish Fundamentalism, by Ian S. Lustick
The assumptions about history and politics outlined in the previous chapter form the ideological basis of Jewish fundamentalism. They are the points of departure, the terms of discourse, for the discussions within what Gush Emunim speakers and writers refer to as tzibur shelanu (our public). But even among activists within the movement there is a substantial range of disagreement on most important issues. More importantly, the debates within the movement reveal the forces that drive it, the stresses to which it is subject, and the trajectories it may trace in the future.
I have chosen for analysis six issues that together encompass most of the critical disputes within Gush Emunim between 1982 and 1987. For each issue I will identify mainstream opinion and characterize the support for it in comparison with opposing views, located along a continuum appropriate to the issue under discussion. These issues are as follows:
Leadership and Source of Transcendental Authority. Until his death in 1982 Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook was acknowledged by most Gush Emunim activists as the leader of the movement. Through him, authoritative interpretation of his father's writings-particularly the latter's magnus opus, Orot (Lights)-was possible. As noted in chapter 2, many of his followers understood and reported his words as akin to prophecy. 1 His advice and guidance were sought on issues pertaining to where and how to establish illegal settlements, what political frameworks to construct and support during elections, and how to manage relations between nonreligious and religious Jews within the movement. Tzvi Yehuda taught that deciphering the circuitous route that redemption would take and the particular actions God desired of his people required spiritual vision and rigorous religious training. Combined with his father's endorsement of charismatic leadership, this teaching encouraged his followers to rely on and accept his leadership.
But Tzvi Yehuda was very old and wrote very little. His manner of speaking was elliptical and filled with allusions to rabbinic texts and authorities unfamiliar to most Israelis, and even to most Gush supporters. Consequently, even during his lifetime he served more as a charismatic focus for the respect and devotion of activists within the movement than as its effective leader. Since his death, various leading elements within Gush Emunim have used anecdotes about his life, his commentaries and homilies (as transmitted by his students), as well as the writings of his father to support contradictory positions on many issues.
The leadership vacuum within Gush Emunim that Tzvi Yehuda's death created has been widely acknowledged. In May 1983, a year after the Yamit evacuation, an important Gush conference was held to discuss the movement's future. Rabbi Yaacov Ariel, head of the yeshiva in the settlement that hosted the conference, spoke of the need to shift from dependence on a charismatic leader who was no longer present to some form of collective leadership.
As long as Rav Tzvi Yehuda was alive, there was a natural leadership, but since his death, and perhaps since he stopped giving his opinion on specific matters, controversies began. . . . The fact that most of those invited (to our conference), are here, shows that there are plenty of opinions. After the death of Rav Tzvi Yehuda it is not possible to find a single leader, rather all together our public may perhaps be able to do what formerly one man could do. 2
Most activists within the movement find their own leaders among the pioneering elite who founded the first West Bank settlements, such as Hanan Porat from Gush Etzion and Beni Katzover from Elon Moreh, and among the rabbis who teach in their yeshivas or who live among them in the settlements. Indeed, many rabbis whose influence as spiritual leaders over Gush activists is very great do not occupy public positions. Nor do their names commonly appear in the media. The intimate relationships they build with their students and followers are based on regular contact, constant study of sacred texts, and close consultation in matters of religious and personal life. These relationships also create opportunities for them to wield enormous influence over their followers in matters pertaining to politics and the advancement of the struggle to settle and annex the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But a number of rabbis, mostly students of Tzvi Yehuda, have become public personalities-for example, Haim Druckman, Moshe Levinger, Eleazar Waldman, Yoel Ben-Nun, Yisrael Ariel, Yaacov Ariel, and Shlomo Aviner. Despite substantial differences among them, each claims to be transmitting the authentic message of Abraham Isaac and Tzvi Yehuda Kook; a statement by Aviner to that effect was quoted in chapter 4. 3
In fact, the work of both Kooks has been subject to a wide range of interpretation within the fundamentalist movement. The debate over the Yamit debacle entailed intricate discussions of what Tzvi Yehuda had said about the issue in an effort to agree on what he would have said had he lived to the time of the evacuation. 4 A prolonged and fervid debate took place in 1984 and 1985 over whether the Jewish terrorist underground represented a distortion of the Kooks' message or an expression of it. 5 The extraordinary range of interpretation among those seeking the "authentic" teaching of the Kooks is also exemplified in the contrasting views of Eleazar Waldman and Yisrael Yaacov Yuval regarding Abraham Isaac Kook's attitude toward war and its relationship to the redemption process. Waldman quotes Orot as alluding to the biblical book Song of Songs, which Jewish mystics considered an allegory of love between God and the people of Israel pertaining to the messianic age. Waldman quotes Rav Kook as follows:
When war breaks out, the power of the Messiah is aroused. The time of the nightingale has arrived; she sings in the boughs. The wicked ones disappear from the world, the earth is perfumed, and the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land.
"On the one hand," comments Waldman, "war is accompanied by destruction and death, on the other hand, it increases the power of the Messiah. . . . Unfortunately it is still impossible to achieve the completion of Redemption by any means other than war." 6
In sharp contrast to this view that Rav Kook sanctioned war as necessary to Israel's efforts to advance the redemption process, Yuval learns from Orot about "the dangers inherent in extremist nationalism." He quotes from that same source as follows:
...until such happy times as it will be feasible to conduct an independent national policy without recourse to vicious and barbaric practices . . . it is not in the interest of Jacob to wield sovereignty, when this entails wholesale bloodshed and ingenuity of a sinister kind. 7
More broadly, the rabbis of Gush Emunim legitimize their opinions on the basis of their interpretation of both halacha and aggadah (the major rabbinic glosses and commentaries on the halacha). In addition to key biblical passages, the writings of Maimonides and of the scholar and mystic Rabbi Moshe Ben Nachman, or Nachnianides (1194-1270), are cited more often than any other sources by both rabbis and religious fundamentalist laymen to validate particular positions within their universe of discourse. 8
As noted in chapter 2, Maimonides' discussion of messianism was designed to discourage thinking about apocalyptic matters. By stipulating that only earthly political success by religiously observant leaders-not mystical intuition or reputations for miraculous behavior-could validate action to advance the coming of the Messiah, Maimonides hoped to make redemptionist-oriented activity virtually impossible. But Zionism's success in ending the Exile for at least part of the Jewish people, and the establishment of Jewish rule over most of the Land of Israel, has, ironically, made his "practical" approach to messianism a legitimizing resource of enormous importance for Gush Emunim rabbis seeking authentication of their efforts to "push the end." The prominence of Nachnianides as an authority is even more understandable in light of the principles with which he is most closely associated: that the Land of Israel is "equal in weight to all the commandments put together," and that all the commandments were taluyot ba aretz (tied to and dependent on the Land of Israel). 9
The significance of these sources for the communication of transcendental imperatives is expressed not in precise agreement on what they mean, but in the extent to which they are used to articulate and justify quite different positions on questions of importance within the fundamentalist movement. For example, Shlomo Aviner declares that "there is an absolute Torah prohibition against the transfer of any portion of our holy land to foreign rule" and that those who even discuss territorial concessions are committing the sin of "profanation of the Name of God." 10 Portions of the Land of Israel not yet ruled by Jews must, he writes, be acquired at any cost:
We must settle the whole Land of Israel, and over all of it establish our rule. In the words of [Nachmanides]: "Do not abandon the land to any other nation." If that is possible by peaceful means, wonderful, and if not, we are commanded to make war to accomplish it. 11
Thus, Aviner argues that the principle of pikuach nefesh (preserving life rather than following halacha) does not apply to the commandment to conquer, possess, and settle the land. Rabbi Yehoshua Zuckerman quotes the same words from Nachimanides to prohibit any cession to a neighboring state of parts of the Land of Israel already under Jewish rule, without also suggesting a positive commandment to conquer areas not under Jewish rule. 12 Yaacov Ariel, on the other hand, while accepting Nachmanides' classification of any war over the territorial boundaries of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel as a milchemet mitzvah (commanded war), is unsure, citing Maimonides, whether or not such wars belong to the category of yehareg yelo ya ayor (to be fulfilled even if one's life is at stake). While prohibiting any consideration of convenience or comfort in the formulation of policies toward territorial issues, he is also unsure, on the basis of Maimonides' teachings, whether in dire circumstances military and political experts might be authorized to cede territory. 13
Relying mainly on Nachmanides and Maimonides as well are Rabbis Avraham Elkana Kahana-Shapira and Yehoshuah Menachem Ehrenberg, who reject the notion that portions of the Land of Israel could be ceded in order to preserve good relations with the United States or to prevent the outbreak of war. They do suggest, however, that in principle and in extremis, military and political experts could decide to cede territory rather than continue in an utterly hopeless military and political predicament. 14
Also reflective of the authority attributed to these sources was a debate conducted over whether the Jewish terrorist underground was wrong in principle or only in method or timing-a debate that centered on the question of whether or not the government of Israel was to be considered a representative of heaven on earth. Citing both Tzvi Yehuda and Maimonides, Yisrael Ariel defended the machteret against the charge that they were "rebelling against God." Ariel wondered whether without a king, a halachically proscribed revolt can take place at all. Moreover, according to Maimonides, Ariel reminded his readers, a Jew who "does not hear" the commands of a king who breaks the law of the Torah, "even a king of Israel," cannot be considered in "rebellion against the authority of God." 15 In response, Yehuda Zoldan, quoting Nachmanides and Tzvi Yehuda, challenged Ariel's distinction between the "state of Israel" and any particular "government of Israel." He argued that "as long as, and only as long as, the government's acts are not obviously against the Torah," the democratically elected government of Israel must be obeyed as the halachic equivalent of a king. 16
In a related set of discussions, Rabbi Yitzhak Shilat cited Maimonides' practical messianism to support his own position that direct actions can be taken for the explicit purpose of advancing the messianic process. If the machteret was perhaps an inexpedient means of achieving redemptive goals, it was wrong-but only on tactical grounds, not in principle. Shilat stressed that according to Maimonides, Rabbi Akiya's proclamation of Bar Kochba as the Messiah, though mistaken, was not in principle unwarranted; he thus implied that Gush Emunim should remain alert to the possibility that one of its number is indeed the Messiah. 17 In direct contrast, Yoel Ben-Nun vigorously condemned the Jewish terrorist efforts to destroy the Muslim shrines in Jerusalem as contrary to the teachings of Maimonides and of the Kooks.
Whoever thinks that he need not take account of the results that were liable to flow from the destruction of the Dome of the Rock, because he believes he is acting according to the "Laws of Redemption," and is thereby not constrained by regular laws, cuts himself off not only from [Maimonides], but also from Rav Kook and from Rav Tzvi Yehuda and exposes himself to the "trivial laws" that the representatives of the people implement to protect the public welfare. . . "Laws of Redemption" that give rise to actions like that are a Sabbatian distortion. 18
But if most Jewish fundamentalists think and act according to transcendental injunctions mediated through role models, the guidance of spiritual leaders, and the semiauthoritive interpretation of sacred texts, some claim authority to act out of a more direct sort of contact with God's will. The most significant and influential example is Yehuda Etzion-the ideological spokesman for the most prominent segment of the Jewish terrorist underground.
Etzion is a veteran of Ofra, one of the earliest Gush Emunim settlements in the West Bank; he is not a rabbi. At his trial for his role in the attacks on the two Arab mayors and the Islamic College in Hebron, and in the plot to blow up Temple Mount, he proudly admitted the truth of the charges, but challenged the right of the court to pass judgment on his acts. In his statement to the court, reprinted in full in Nekuda, Etzion explained his motives and those of his fellow conspirators as grounded in their belief that God had given them a personal responsibility to advance the redemption process through radical action. Referring to the rebuilding of the Temple, Etzion declared:
I have seen myself as responsible to carry out actions which I would characterize as the purification of the Temple Mount, the only holy place of the people of Israel, from the structure now located upon it, on the site of the holy of holies, the building known as the Dome of the Rock. 19
In long articles published in Nekuda, Etzion argued that the divine imperative for Jews to build the Temple could not be ignored. His response to God's "painfully obvious" commandment to do so, he wrote, is comparable to Abraham's unhesitating willingness to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice when God commanded him to do so, even though Abraham could see no useful or rational purpose to his action. 20
Though quoting Rav Kook the Elder as the inspiration that guided him to the realization of his responsibility, Etzion characterized his actions and those of his comrades as directly authorized by God through the Torah, and proven to be so by the purity of their intentions.
The commandment that pounded in the heart of Joshua and the generation who captured Canaan, in the heart of David and Solomon, and their generation, the word of God in his Torah, is thus, as it was first purely stated, what motivates us. 21 The source of our authority will be our volunteering for the holy because we only come to return Israel to its true purpose and destiny of Torah and Holiness . we are looking for the complete renewal of the true official authority-the Sanhedrin and the anointed from the House of David-we are those who nurse from the future, from which we gain our authority for the generations. 22
Etzion's commitment to radical and violent action to push the end places him on the extreme edge of the fundamentalist movement in terms of the directness with which transcendental authorization is experienced and the immediacy with which divine commandments are to be implemented. 23 Since he received directly from God the "commandment that pounded in the heart of Joshua" he was much less willing than other fundamentalists to accept scriptural or rabbinic constraints against pursuing his cosmically prescribed objectives. The prominence his articles were given in Nekuda triggered considerable criticism from more mainstream writers; nonetheless several authors expressed strong support for his views and his tactics. Herzl himself was considered irrational and crazy when he proposed the idea of a Jewish state. So argued Aviva Segal, rejecting calls for "realism" and predicting that when the Temple is rebuilt, Etzion will be honored as a prophet. 24
At the other end of the spectrum with regard to the source of the transcendental imperative is the nonreligious wing of the fundamentalist movement. Although it includes no more than 20 percent of Gush Emunim activists, the secular ultranationalist camp has produced some of the leading fundamentalist ideologues, polemicists, and politicians-including Geula Cohen, Rafael Eitan, Israel Eldad, Eliyakim Haetzni, Yuval Neeman, Eliezer Schweid, Moshe Shamir, and Zvi Shiloach. 25 This group saw in Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook a leader whose emphasis on the Land of Israel and settlement, as opposed to religious observance, created valuable opportunities to harness the efforts and devotion of tens of thousands of religious Jews in support of their maximalist Zionism, but essentially secular, program. Indeed, as noted earlier, Tzvi Yehuda was instrumental in establishing Tehiya-the party with which most secularly oriented fundamentalists are affiliated.
Following Tzvi Yehuda's death, latent tensions pertaining to the level of personal religiosity of Gush Emunim leaders and settlers surfaced. Haim Druckman's efforts to establish Matzad as a political alternative to Tehiya and Hanan Porat's decision to abandon Tehiya in favor of a religiously oriented political framework were reactions to the domination of Tehiya by secular activists who refused to incorporate reference to God or the Torah in the charter and political propaganda of the party.
On the other hand, Tehiya is not antireligious. It supports efforts to establish mixed religious and nonreligious Gush settlements, and Tehiya policy forbids desecrating the Sabbath in public. Rabbi Waldman, ranked fourth on Tehiya's list for the Knesset in the 1984 elections, is a prominent member of the party. Religious imagery including the vocabulary of redemptionism and holiness, if not explicit appeals to the Torah, is common in the discourse of its leading personalities. "All members of Tehiya," Geula Cohen has said, "believe that we are living at the beginning of Redemption even if no one knows its exact definition." 26 She and other secular ultranationalists have acknowledged that the devotion and spiritual confidence of religious Jews, derived from their faith in God and their belief in the Torah, is a more effective ideological basis for the fundamentalist movement as a whole than the integralist or romantic nationalism they represent. 27
As is true of the religious majority, the nonreligious minority within the Jewish fundamentalist movement seeks rapid and comprehensive change in the shape and substance of Israeli society in direct response to its perceived transcendental imperatives. It possesses the same basic worldview (the abnormality of the Jewish people, the implacability of Arab hostility, the primacy of the cleavage between Jew and gentile, the highest priority of the Land of Israel, and so forth) as the religious majority. Nonreligious fundamentalists participate in most of the same organizations and pursue virtually the same political objectives as their religious counterparts. In some sectors, such as Amana, secularists have predominated. But although these secular ultranationalists accept the binding and immediate implications of a transcendental imperative, they do not accept the direct word of God, the authoritative interpretation of sacred writings, or the exegetical virtuosity of revered rabbis as the legitimizing basis for belief and action. They rely instead on individual interpretations of the requirements of the "Jewish national renaissance"; on heroic models such as Abraham (Yair) Stern, founder of Lehi, and Yitzhak Tabenkin of Ahdut Haayoda; and on the rhapsodic, evocative work of numerous writers and ideologues.
Secular Jewish ultranationalists consider Uri Zvi Greenberg the greatest Hebrew poet of the contemporary era. The theme of nation worship, the glorification of the boundless but untapped strength of the Jewish people restored to their land, and the employment of terminology traditionally associated with religious beliefs are typical of his work and the discourse of most nonreligious fundamentalists. Each is illustrated in this short passage from Greenberg's poem "Ode to the Nation."
0 NATION, HOW GREAT YOU ARE!
. . .
What shall they do here today,
Your sons and daughters,
In the fullness of their vigor,
With the storm of their dammed-up fury,
The force of revolt within them?
What shall they do
With the pulse of battle pounding in their blood?
Bid them conquer the land,
Scale the peaks with standards flying;
Storm the walls of Titus, raze Bastilles;
As rebels they will go forth,
And you shall hear them, singing their song
Of freedom and conquest and redemption,
Full redemption! 28
Also typical of this conception of the nation and its destiny as the source of transcendental meaning are the writings of Israel Eldad, who was originally active in the Revisionist movement and later became a leader of Lehi. A well-known writer and historian, Eldad was one of the founders of the Movement for the Whole Land of Israel, and is an important participant in the theoretical and ideological debates within Gush Emunim. His ultranationalist interpretation of the source of ultimate authority, his embrace of religious motifs, and the historicist nature of his thinking are reflected in his description of the discovery by archaeologist Yigal Yadin, a former army general, of letters from Bar Kochba to his army:
The letters of Bar Kokhba, the last commander of the Jewish army, thus reached the first commander of the new Jewish army after one thousand eight hundred and twenty years, as if by personal delivery . . an extraordinary feat, bordering on the sublime. If you associate this experience with the visionary siting of Herzl's tomb between the Memorial to the holocaust and the military cemetery, perhaps you will no longer look upon the Israeli army as an army like any other. . . anybody who dares talk about Israel's "militarism" is blaspheming. . . committing an act of profound impiety. . . . Can there be anything more sacred than the fighting force of this people ? 29
The extent to which religious and nonreligious fundamentalists share the same "sacred" discourse is illustrated by a poll of 539 Gush Emunim settlers in which 11 percent identified themselves as nonreligious. The two groups gave virtually identical responses to the halachically framed question of whether "withdrawal from Judea and Samaria falls under the principle of ye'horeg y'al ya'ayor (that a Jew should give up his life rather than allow the area to be ruled by non-Jews)"-17.3 percent and 17.0 percent, respectively, disagreed or strongly disagreed; 62.1 percent and 66.8 percent, respectively, agreed or strongly agreed. 30
The transcendental imperative to which nonreligious fundamentalists feel themselves responding is most precisely understood as a teleological conception of the course that Jewish history is required to take. The unique destiny of the Jewish people and the unique destiny ascribed to the Land of Israel are to fulfill each other. Reunited with its whole Land, the people of Israel attain a central place, if not the central place, in the consciousness of humanity. Realization of this vision demands concentration of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel; extension of Jewish settlement and sovereignty over as much of the Middle East that was ever under Jewish rule as possible; replacement of Western, Christian, "pseudodemocratic" values taken from Europe and America with authentically Jewish political forms; and a "national renaissance" expressed in cultural, technological, and spiritual spheres. Nonreligious fundamentalists understand the Bible, as the historic product of the Jewish people's creative genius, to provide both lessons of realpolitik to contemporary Israel and, in its description of the Davidic kingdom, an image of a powerful, united Jewish people bringing the world hope, and a kind of salvation, through its social, cultural, and technological accomplishments. 31
Eldad identifies the exact character of the Jewish people's contemporary struggle to establish the "physical and economic basis for the nation's spiritual renaissance." 32 It is instructive that he does so in terms strikingly similar to those used by Harold Fisch, in a religious framework, to describe the "divine drama" in which Israel plays an inescapable and leading role. 33 This generation of Jews, according to Eldad, "has the potential of being the greatest of all," if only the Jewish people plays the part history has assigned it with full vigor. 34
Israel's army is again facing the Egyptian army in the very same place where the first exodus took place under the leadership of Moses. . . . The role of Egypt the enslaver has in our times been filled by Nazi Germany and by Stalinist and Neo-Stalinist Russia. . . . The first scene of the drama-Joseph's days of greatness in Egypt-is being re-enacted elsewhere, in America. . Thus on the contemporary stage all three acts of our ancient drama are being produced simultaneously: Prosperity in a foreign land; Enslavement; Exodus and the liberation of our country. We are re-living the days of Joseph, Moses, Joshua and David, all at once. 35
To be sure, the absence of a personal God, or of binding religious law, requires that nonreligious fundamentalists' notions about the source of transcendental imperatives differ from those of their religious counterparts. To understand how the nonreligious fundamentalists yet operate rather comfortably within a political, ideological, and organizational rubric that is so heavily religious, it is crucial to understand that the ultimate values of each group lead to essentially identical operational objectives. In addition, both religious and nonreligious fundamentalists believe that their counterparts are serving a useful purpose. Each ignores the metaphysical differences between their positions, while considering the other's theological views to be wrong, but temporary and irrelevant. Although many day-to-day problems exist between religious and nonreligious members of Gush Emunim, particularly in mixed settlements, ideological differences have not been an important problem. Because they share the political imperatives regarding the land, settlement, and the rejection of "normal" Western-democratic oriented Zionism, issues that otherwise might seem likely to challenge the integrity of the movement dissolve into each segment's acceptance of the other's different names for the same things.
As noted previously, another stream within Zionism, very prominently represented among nonreligious Gush activists and supporters, is activist Labor Zionism, particularly the Achdut Haayodah party and its affiliated kibbutz movement, as those institutions were shaped by their historic leader-Yitzhak Tabenkin. The following excerpt from an interview with Ephraim Ben Haim, a disciple of Tabenkin active originally in the Movement for the Whole Land of Israel, and now in Tehiya, illustrates how, even for those not mystically inclined, common political objectives help to dissolve differences over the religious or nonreligious character of die transcendental imperatives involved.
Question: Doesn't all the talk of divine promises and messianic redemption bother you?
Ephraim Ben Haim: I'll tell you how I deal with all that. For me the Bible is the holy thing. In my eyes it is more holy than in those of a religious man. Because it is the fruit of the Jewish genius. Perhaps the word "holy" is not correct, but I don't know how to express this any better. Regarding the promised borders: I don't believe that God said anything to Abraham. I see in the promised borders the geopolitical mission of the people of Israel for its generations. . . it doesn't bother me that they (the religious) believe their source is divine. Now, the matter of redemption: first of all you should know that... some of the religious, the enlightened ones, such as Akiva, rejected the idea that only the angels could bring redemption.... That is to say the days of the Messiah are not a mystical thing, abstract. . . .I certainly think that we are living in a special period. If someone sees it as a messianic period, and if in his heart of hearts has some mystical feeling about it, that doesn't bother me. 36
Territorial Scope of the Whole Land of Israel. Many of the most extreme positions with respect to the destined borders of the State of Israel are espoused by members of the nonreligious wing of the fundamentalist movement. Israel Eldad is famous for his advocacy, throughout the l9"0s and 1960s, of a Jewish state stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates. In the early 1970s he still argued for a territorial minimum that included Jordan (and Sinai) under Jewish sovereignty. Judging that "the map of the Middle East is still very much in a state of flux" and that many Arab states rest on "ramshackle foundations," Eldad predicted that Israel "will yet help many an oppressed minority to attain its independence and in turn redraw the map." Accordingly, he refused to indicate what he thought Israel's proper borders should be. 37 Although in recent years Eldad has scaled down his objectives to focus on those areas Israel currently controls, other secular ultranationalists continue to pursue their vision of an Israel stretching broadly across the entire Fertile Crescent.
One of these is Yaacov Feitelson, former mayor of Ariel (the largest settlement in the northern bulge of the West Bank) who recently abandoned Herut to join Tehiya. Taking a stance similar to Eldad's former position, Feitelson has refused to place specific limits on Israel's eventual borders, but envisions its domain as stretching across the entire region.
I am speaking of a tremendous vision. We are only in the infancy of the Zionist movement. . . . Israel must squarely face up to the implementation of the Zionist vision-a vision that has not changed since the days of Herzl. As is known Herzl never indicated what the borders of the state were to be . . . in his time the settlement of the Syrian desert was discussed. I say that Israel should establish new cities throughout the entire area. I mean really the whole area of the Middle East, without limiting ourselves: we should never say about any place: here we stop. 38
Yuval Neeman, leader of the Tehiya party, has advised the following:
If we are attacked by Jordan, I would annex the Red Mountain (east and south of the Dead Sea), which is relatively unpopulated, and which has great Importance for the development of the southern part of the country. We would also thereby create a border with Saudi Arabia from which we could threaten the oil fields. . . . In the North-if the conflict in Lebanon should begin again, I advocate maintaining control over the Litani. 39
Among religious fundamentalists, debate over the appropriate borders of the Jewish state focuses mainly on the various biblical descriptions of the Promised Land and on different interpretations of what is required or allowed in the conquest, settlement, and inheritance of it. One of the most respected scholars in Gush Emunim, Yehuda Elitzur, has outlined several more or less concentric territorial shapes for the Jewish state on the basis of biblical sources. He considers the "promised," or "patriarchal," boundaries-extending to the Euphrates River, southern Turkey, Transjordan, and the Nile Delta-"the ideal borders." The borders as reflected in the lands conquered by the "generation that left Egypt"-including northeastern Sinai, Lebanon and western Syria, the Golan Heights, and much of Transjordan-are the lands Israel is required eventually to conquer and settle. The boundaries of the "?"returning exiles from Babylonia" encompass southern Lebanon, southwestern Syria, half of Transjordan, the northern Negey, and northeastern Sinai, but not large parts of the coastal plain. Neither these borders nor the smaller ones described in Ezekiel, which include the Jordan River on the east, are to be considered candidates for permanent boundaries. Elitzur suggests that Ezekiel's borders, which more or less correspond to the territory Israel presently rules, were meant to describe the shape Israel would take during the "dawn of redemption," a shape that would be expanded as the redemption process advanced. 40 In general, Elitzur concludes, public settlement of Jews devoted to inheriting the land, in any part of the territory ever conquered by or promised to the ancient Israelites, is sufficient to transform that territory into a part of the "holy Land of Israel." 41
Territorially ambitious rabbis and religious leaders differ according to which direction they emphasize for expansion and the means they suggest as mandatory or permissible to accomplish this expansion. At one extreme are those who characterize wars of liberation, in virtually any direction, as required under conditions deemed favorable by political and military elites. Shlomo Aviner represents this group:
We have been commanded by the God of Israel and the creator of the world to take possession of this entire land, in its holy borders, and to do this by wars of defense, and even by wars of liberation. 42
Support for this position is easily found in the writings of Tzvi Yehuda Kook. as reflected in the la
We are commanded both to possess and to settle. The meaning of possession is conquest, and in performing this mitzvah, we can perform the other-the commandment to settle. In our eternal Torah we are commanded to settle the desolate land, meaning also the portions of the land that are spiritually desolate. We cannot evade this commandment.... Torah, war, and settlement-they are three things in one and we rejoice in the authority we have been given for each of them. 43
Somewhat less aggressive positions are taken by rabbis and lay leaders who specify conditions to be met before expansion can take place. Only with a "qualitative improvement of the spiritual climate" within Israel, Rabbi Uzi Kelcheim has argued, will the "quantitative extension of the territory of Eretz Israel" occur. 44 Without advocating wars of conquest, others speak in practical terms of opportunities they believe may or will arise. "We must prepare ourselves," said Hanan Porat in the immediate aftermath of the Yamit evacuation (but before the Lebanon War), "in terms of our consciousness and by establishing new settlement nuclei, to settle those portions of the Land of Israel that today are still not in our hands... nuclei for the Litani area, Gilead, Transjordan, and Sinai." 45
Other fundamentalists focus their expansionist ambitions on one particular geographic area. Traditionally, most such aspirations have been directed toward the East Bank of the Jordan, where the Israelite tribes of Reuven, Gad, and Manasseh were located. Thus, Eleazar Waldman opposes the idea propounded with much fanfare by Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon, and some nonreligious fundamentalists that the East Bank, now ruled by King Hussein, become the Palestinian homeland. Waldman and the religious majority of the movement may acknowledge that such proposals have some tactical utility, but they oppose any formal agreement to relinquish the East Bank to non-Jewish rule, since it is clearly part of the Land of Israel. 46
But if Transjordan has been the primary focus for Gush Emunim's expansionist ambitions, the Lebanon War encouraged many others within the movement to discuss Biblical imperatives toward territorial expansion in other directions as well. In September 1982, at the climax of the war, Nekuda published a transcript of a study session in Ofra led by Yehuda Elitzur that identified the most serious distortion of Israel's true borders to be in the north-in Lebanon. 47 The following month Jewish fundamentalists made this position public in a book entitled This Good Mountain and the Lebanon. Rabbis Dov Lior, Yaacov Ariel, and Yisrael Ariel were among those who declared southern Lebanon to be the lands of the Israelite tribes of Zevulon, Naphtali, and Asher. Yisrael Ariel characterized the borders of the Land of Israel to include Lebanon up to Tripoli, Syria, part of Iraq, part of Kuwait, and Sinai. 48 In October 1982 he called for the annexation and settlement of most of Lebanon, regardless of the cost.
Beirut is part of the Land of Israel-about that there is no controversy, and being that Lebanon is a part of the Land of Israel we must declare that we have no intention of leaving. We must declare that Lebanon is flesh of our flesh, as is Tel Aviv or Haifa, and that we do this by right of the moral power granted to us in the Torah. Our leaders should have entered Lebanon and Beirut without hesitation, and killed every single one of them. Not a memory or a trace should have remained. . . . We should have entered Beirut at any price, without regard to our own casualties, because we are speaking of the conquest of the Land of Israel. . . . We should immediately divert the waters of the Litani to the Jordan. . . 49
In response to the peace treaty with Egypt and Israel's gradual withdrawal from Sinai, some fundamentalists sought to focus irredentist sentiment there. But despite the loyalty with which Gush Emunim commemorates the uprooting of Yamit, and the official and undisputed status Sinai holds within the fundamentalist movement as an integral part of the Land of Israel, this demand is not highly salient. The organization created to work toward this objective, Shvut Sinai (Return to Sinai), seems to have disappeared.
Most within the movement appear to be uncomfortable with public appeals to biblical or halachic imperatives to justify so-called wars of liberation. The rabbis who raised territorial demands during the Lebanon War were severely criticized for doing so, though, as we shall see, mainly on tactical grounds. The general perception within Gush Emunim is that recognition of Arab political rights in Jordan and Lebanon represents a painful, if temporary, compromise of Jewish territorial claims. Yoel Ben-Nun's remarks in this respect are representative.
We shall not forget "our Transjordan," but we know well that the people of Israel, in its current circumstances . . is hardly able to integrate the western Land of Israel, that we have in our hands (to say nothing of the lands of Naphtali and Asher in Lebanon!). That is hard to understand and to swallow, but "This also is the word of God." 50
The dominant view within the Jewish fundamentalist movement is that the task of this generation is to ensure the establishment of permanent Jewish control of Judea, Samaria, the Gaza District, and the Golan. 51 For virtually all of those referred to as "our public," the "western Land of Israel"-the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea-is the irreducible minimum for fulfilling the purpose of Zionism, carrying Out the obligation to settle and inherit the land, and advancing the redemption process. Aspirations to extend Jewish rule over Sinai, parts of Lebanon, and much of the Fast Bank should not be forgotten, and may some day become politically relevant. In the meantime, direct action to achieve these objectives may be postponed in the effort to consolidate Jewish rule west of the Jordan.
Within this mainstream view, the most important point of disagreement is on whether or not to move quickly toward formal annexation. The declaration of Israeli sovereignty in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza is a formal part of Tehiya's platform, and the party has introduced resolutions to that effect in the Knesset. But many within the movement, if not most, prefer to wait until a very substantial shift in the demographic balance is achieved through massive Jewish settlement and Arab emigration.
What may be termed a "dovish fringe" also exists within Gush Emunim. Shaken by the losses that many Yeshivot Hesder sustained in the Lebanon War, a number of rabbis and other well-known leaders of the movement began speaking of the need to consider peace and the saying of Jewish lives as valid reasons to delay demands for exclusive Jewish rule of all the territories. Among those who have taken positions of this nature are Zevulon Hammer, Yehuda Ben-Meir, Rabbi Yehuda Amital, Yochanan Ben-Yaacov, and Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein. The positions they favor range from granting administrative autonomy for West Bank arid Gaza Arabs without establishing formal Israeli sovereignty as a more or less permanent solution, to relinquishing certain densely populated Arab areas to Jordan or Egypt. 52 Though hedged about with many conditions, these views do involve acceptance of the principle of pikuach nefesh as applicable to territorial questions, belief that security might someday be enhanced and not degraded by compromise, and emphasis on the value of the people of Israel greater than the Land of Israel. In the words of Amital:
If opportunities for a genuine and final peace with the Arabs materialize, after which emigration of Jews from the Land might stop and a massive immigration of Jews might begin, and if we are faced with the choice of more Jews in the Land of Israel, with less holy land under Jewish rule, or fewer Jews in the Land of Israel and more holy land under Jewish rule, we should choose the first option. 53
The radical character of such beliefs in the fundamentalist context is reflected in the banning of Zevulon Hammer, minister of education and culture in the Begin government, from most Gush settlements after he made remarks suggesting that although settlements should never be abandoned, autonomy and other negotiated arrangements to bring peace to the area should not be ruled out. Amital's opinions triggered a wave of angry letters and articles denouncing his views as a contradiction of the basic premise of Gush Emunim, challenging his right to be considered part of the movement, and attacking the editors' decision to allow such heresy to appear in the pages of Nekuda. 54 Indeed, insofar as these individuals have arrived at positions that include compromise and delay in the implementation of transcendental imperatives, they must be considered as substantially less fundamentalist than the vast majority of Gush Emunim leaders and activists.
Pace and Political Dynamics of the Redemption Process. Both religious and nonreligious Jewish fundamentalists believe that Israel's role in the contemporary period has world historic significance. Most think of it in terms of a process of redemption that has begun and will culminate in the establishment of malchut Yisrael (the restoration of the authority of the house of David over the whole Land of Israel). For the religious, this will include the arrival of the long-awaited Messiah, and even some nonreligious fundamentalists embrace the vision of a rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem, state enforcement of the halacha, and a unifying "spiritual revival." 55 Cutting across the religious divide are intricate debates over the exact schedule of events in this redemptive process, the extent of human involvement in its advancement, and its overall length.
For religious fundamentalists the debate is, on one level, theological. Some argue that individual spiritual repentance and increased religious observance will be necessary before the process can move toward completion. Others contend that God welcomes any action necessary to advance the process, and will respond to it, whether or not individual Jews repent. The esoteric elements in this debate are not as important as the dramatically different political stances for which differing theological and philosophical interpretations are offered as justification. The crucial distinction within Jewish fundamentalism as a whole is between "vanguardists," or "truth tellers," on the one hand, and "consensus builders" on the other. 56
The vanguardists believe that although the process of redemption has begun, and may be completed in the near future if the proper steps are taken, its fulfillment is in serious jeopardy. Therefore, dramatic action is often required to "create facts" necessary for the continuation of the process, even if the vast majority of Jews oppose such action as irrational or illegal. It is imperative that the truth be spoken, no matter how unsettling or unpopular it is, so that the people learn to trust Gush Emunim as an organization of zealots dedicated above all to redemption, unsullied by considerations of political expediency. The government of Israel, argue the vanguardists, is neither holy nor authoritative, and if its decisions contradict the destiny of the people and Land of Israel, and what they see as the Zionist mission of the state, those decisions must be defied. Nonreligious vanguardists state their position as follows:
We must distinguish very clearly between state and government. The first is given in trust to the second. The Knesset acts only as a custodian. The state is not the property of the Knesset and the government rather the latter administer the affairs of the state in trust, arid on condition that they remain faithful to that trust. 57
Their religious counterparts make the same argument in halachic terms.
When a king of Israel behaves in a manner contrary to the Torah-his authority as a king of Israelis canceled. . similarly we must distinguish between the concept of "state," that has supreme value, and the concept of "leader of the people." This latter status depends on different conditions which, if not met, mean that neither the "leader" nor the "government" can be considered "authoritative" in the halachic sense. 58
Most vanguardists emphasize the decisive role of human effort in fulfilling God's will. They tend to reject the notion that certain aspects of the process, such as the restoration of the Sanhedrin or the rebuilding of the Temple, must await the miraculous intervention of God or his angels. With bold action rooted in faith, and justified on the basis of their appreciation of the higher law to which they are responding, the vanguardists claim to act in the tradition of authentic Zionism, a minority movement that ignored accusations of unrealism to make divinely supported visions a reality. Rather than wait the generations it would take to convince Israelis to act decisively, the vanguardists see the function of Gush Emunim as responding to true, but as yet unappreciated, messianic imperatives.
The establishment of Gush Emunim settlements across the Green Line, and the effective erasure of that line, required a few to take upon themselves the responsibility for determining the fate of the western Land of Israel in our generation. . . without the permission of the elected government of Israel, and even in the face of its bitter opposition. 59
Drawing on Talmudic sources, as well as on the writings of the Kooks and Menachem Kasher, they emphasize that just as Rabbi Akiva judged that the outcome of the revolt against Rome would determine the advent of the messianic age, so too must Gush Emunim, despite the absence of obviously miraculous signs, understand its pursuit of concrete political objectives and the liberation of the entire Land of Israel from foreign rule as a direct struggle to complete the redemption process. 60
Politically, many of the vanguardists are associated with Tehiya. Within Gush circles, they have argued against the principle of voting for the Likud in parliamentary elections as the "lesser of two evils." Before the 1981 elections the Likud came under heavy criticism for officially supporting the idea of Arab autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza, though an even greater fear was that a Labor victory would curtail the resources available for Jewish settlement in the areas. Beni Katzover, a religious vanguardist prominent in Tehiya, argued against calculations of political expediency.
Our strength must be that we speak the truth, our truth, to the people. We must concentrate on the ends [and] not the means.... If we say that the Likud is a lesser of the evils and therefore we should support it, this means we accept [Arab] autonomy. How can we say to the people that we are speaking our truth when we can be seen to accept autonomy? ... The biggest enemy of the Land of Israel is confusion, blurring of the truth. 61
Similarly, Eleazar Waldman agrees that the truth must be told to the Jewish people that "they are not yet what they were created to be." 62 But Waldman, among other vanguardists, also emphasizes the importance of telling the truth to non-Jews.
We do not struggle for the Land of Israel only by disregarding the Arabs or the gentiles, but, in fact, we do so out of our responsibility to the gentiles. Based on our faith that "You have chosen us from among all the families of the earth," we must publicly, and without fear; declare our truth. And we must be ready to struggle on behalf of the truth that we speak. 63
Another belief typical of the vanguardist approach is that settlement in the territories does not yet suffice to prevent their return to the Arab rule. Thus, Katzover, who was a member of the original Elon Moreh settlement nucleus, which eventually settled in Sebastia, has repeatedly called on Gush Emunim to "return to Sebastia"-that is, to the strategy of spectacular and extralegal actions designed to create facts, raise the consciousness of the people, and sabotage what he and other vanguardists see as the all too likely possibility that a territorial compromise will be reached. 64
Vanguardists were in the forefront of the struggle to stop the withdrawal from Yamit, favoring explicit and implicit threats of violence. Yisrael Ariel, who had been arrested himself for urging two soldiers at Yamit to disobey orders, warned:
Don't wait for the exterminator to sneak up on the settlements of Judea and Samaria, perish the thought. Don't wait for the moment when the cranes arrive at Kedumim and Elon Moreh. Take Yamit as an example... and the moment that they come to uproot a planting, to attempt to demolish houses, let every individual abandon a house and do battle in Yamit in order to save Judea and Samaria, in order to save all of the Land of Israel! 65
One of the most articulate spokesmen for the vanguardist camp is Eliyakim Haetzni, an attorney and fiery polemicist in Kiryat Arba whose writings appear in Nekuda more often than those of any other author. In 1985 Haetzni founded Elisha (Citizens for Judea, Samaria, and Gaza), whose purpose was to mobilize political opposition to the Hussein-Peres peace initiatives under way at that time. And in his book, The Shock of Withdrawal from the Land of Israel, he argues that Jews faithful to the Land of Israel have the right to resist and even overthrow the State of Israel if it betrays Zionism and the Jewish people by agreeing to relinquish portions of the homeland to Arab rule. 66
Haetzni is a founding member of the Yesha Council, and in October l985 the council passed a resolution reflecting his views:
The proposals and plans of the Prime Minister [Peres] constitute a clear and absolute abrogation of Israel's role as a Zionist state. . . We warn any regime in Israel which implements such proposals that we will relate to it as an illegal regime as General de Gaulle treated the Vichy regime of Marshal Petain, which betrayed the French people. 67
Haetzni and others have leveled withering criticisms at Gush Emunim leaders for failing to fulfill their vanguard function. Rejecting the official Gush argument that the Jewish terrorist underground arose in response to a failure of the government to protect settlers from Arab violence, vanguardist Dan Tor blamed the underground on the leadership vacuum in Gush Emunim. According to Tor, the movement failed completely at Yamit, abandoning its revolutionary mission for a business-as-usual approach in which its so-called leaders served as government lackeys. 68 By refusing to speak the truth about the liberation of the lands of Zevulon and Naphtali in Lebanon it demonstrated that "whoever betrayed the southern portion of the Land of Israel will not have the moral strength to conquer its northern portion." 69 Another vanguardist, Baruch Lior, has attacked Yesha for its reluctance to emphasize demonstrative settlement in the most sensitive locations as the most effective means of pushing the end.
It is possible that we will be in the minority. . . then we must emphasize that the truth does not derive from majorities . . . we must focus the tremendous debate on three places-Hebron, Shechem (Nablus), and the Temple Mount-with acts of settlement and a wide-ranging propaganda effort. 70
If such efforts should not succeed in preventing movement toward a territorial compromise, Lior advocates a kind of unilateral declaration of independence by the settlers.
We will deny the country's right to the name "State of Israel." We will continue to maintain a state of the Jews in the heart of our land and engrave on its flag the duty of in gathering the exiles and of settlement. 71
However, the vanguardists' very attacks on the leadership of Gush Emunim reflected the fact that after 1982 the center of gravity within the movement shifted from vanguardism to consensus building. In late 1986 one vanguardist complained bitterly about this trend.
The Six Day War rejuvenated the term "redemption." Many of those who, as a result of the war, went to settle in the liberated areas did not refrain from using it daily to explain, with one word, the meaning of their deeds. Parallel to this historic reorientation, over these past twenty years, a reaction against it has crystallized.... Even among many students of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda, may he rest in peace, and also in the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, a trend exists toward moderation and reduction in support for the process of "redemption." Every catalyst for the process of national advancement is repressed. 72
In contrast to the vanguardists, who conceive of the redemption as a relatively rapid process (hence their common identification of the present period as the "generation of the Redemption" 73), consensus builders portray it as a process likely to take decades. Responding to those for whom the continuing delay in the completion of the process has raised doubts about its reality, Shlomo Aviner asked whether
anyone could think that only fifty years were needed to repair this people?! Sometimes it takes a single man fifty years or more to repair defects in his own soul. Is it reasonable that for an entire people fifty years would suffice? Whoever thinks that understands nothing. Generations will be necessary to enlighten this people! 74
Other fundamentalist leaders have used stages in biblical history to suggest the length and rhythm of the redemption process.
Our kingdom, like the entire process of redemption, we build little by little... from the conquest of the land by Joshua (to the Kingdom of Saul, David, and Solomon), hundreds of years passed. . . and we don't even yet have all of the Land of Israel nor the Kingdom of David. This is only the beginning of the Kingdom-a Jewish government-as if in the period of the Judges. 75
But despite its length, the consensus builders consider the process of redemption to be well under way. They express confidence that the settlements established and under construction in the territories have made territorial compromise all but impossible. The task that remains for Gush Emunim is to help the majority of Israelis to accustom themselves to the new reality, to prepare them-spiritually, ideologically, and politically-for the unfolding process of redemption, and to provide leadership and inspiration during the setbacks that are bound to occur. This means avoiding extremist slogans and confrontational actions, which alienate many Israelis and impede the creation of a new consensus supportive of Jewish sovereignty over the whole Land of Israel as an objective more important than peace or a high standard of living.
This approach also entails characterization of the State of Israel per se as "the primary stage in the process of the Redemption of Israel." 76 In part to discourage vanguardist acts of defiance, consensus builders regularly affirm those aspects of Rav Tzvi Yehuda's teachings that ascribed literal holiness to the state, government, and people of Israel, regardless of their shortcomings. Although he has a reputation for vanguardist actions and attitudes, Moshe Levinger emphasizes this and other themes associated with the consensus-building approach.
In light of the great mission of the State of Israel. dedicated to the final victory of good over evil. . . the State of Israel is holy. The Torah, the Yeshivas, and the synagogues, as well as buildings, industry, agriculture and all productive enterprises-all are holy, even though there are different levels of holiness. But also the responsible governmental institutions are holy. . . as are, in a special way, the army and the police, who guard the state. 77
The most important slogan of the consensus builders is a traditional phrase whose use in this context is attributed to Tzvi Yehuda-kima kima (little by little). The position of Rabbi Yehoshua Zuckerman, director of the Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva in 1984, is typical.
Remember the teaching of our Rabbi, Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook, may he rest in peace, concerning faith in our state. This faith does not permit slogans such as "Messiah now, peace now," or "holiness now." The Redemption comes kima kima, by the same power that created our state, and we shall work, managing to move forward along the path toward it, despite all its complexities. 78
Rather than speaking the truth at all costs, most Gush spokesmen and strategists emphasize the need to "say only that which can be heard" by the public at large. The primary task, in their eyes, is an ideological/educational one that must be performed gently, over a long period of time. By mid-1983 most leaders of the movement agreed that during the Lebanon War, great damage had been done by those of its members who had spoken loudly of the importance of settling and annexing those portions of Lebanon that Gush Emunim considers within the promised borders of the Land of Israel.
Today our problem is how to educate the people. . . . It is very important for our youth to learn where the borders of the Land of Israel are, but the transmission of this truth must be gradual. We must return to what we have learned in the house of study from Rav Tzvi Yehuda, little by little. . . . In order to bring our ideas to the public, it is impossible to express them in all their fullness. . . the ear cannot hear I too great a noise. 79
It is time, according to Yosef Ben-Shlomo, chairman of the Jewish philosophy department at Tel Aviv University, for Gush Emunim to establish its hegemony over the entire Zionist movement. This will entail maintaining a low profile for some long-term goals, elaborating an "ideological manifesto... highlighting only those objectives that the people of Israel agree with deep in its soul," and then launching a comprehensive educational, ideological, and cultural campaign for the final defeat of secular, dovish Zionism. 80 Moshe Levinger has made similar "0nsensus-building arguments for dissimulation in regard to the unliberated areas in the north, and for patient confidence in the inexorable pace of redemption. In view of the unpopularity of the Lebanon War, he advises against discussing the question of whether or not Lebanon is a part of the Land of Israel. 81 Levinger has also tried to reassure Jewish fundamentalists that despite the Yamit evacuation, budget cuts for settlements, the outcome of the Lebanon War, and the Labor Party's participation in the government, the future is secure.
The public that is faithful to the Land of Israel has begun to worry. Perhaps, in spite of everything, the danger is real that the Yamit precedent will be repeated, God forbid, in parts of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. I must say, taking full responsibility, that such simplistic and absolutist comparisons between what happened in Sinai and the infrastructure we have established here in the heart of our forefathers' inheritance: Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, are exaggerated and totally unjustified. 82
Levinger proceeds to argue for continued support of the Likud's participation in the national unity government (despite an apparent settlement freeze), intensified efforts to convince all Israelis of the ideological and spiritual centrality of the Land, calm faith in the future, and dedication to building a normal life in the territories without recourse to needless confrontation with the authorities.
Uri Elitzur is often referred to as one of a half-dozen activists who might be candidates for a formally elected leadership position in Gush Emunim. After a lengthy series of conversations between Amos Oz (a leading Israeli author and dovish activist) and Gush Emunim stalwarts appeared in Nekuda, many fundamentalists objected to the publication's giving so much attention to Oz's views. Elitzur's consensus-building approach, including his judgment of the importance and the difficulty of building the necessary consensus, is reflected in his response to those who objected to the debate with Oz. 83
The most difficult political or international problem with which we are now faced, and which it is now proper for us to address, is to persuade Amos Oz. I have no illusions that it will be possible to achieve this goal in the next five years, but I believe that in fifty years it will be done. 84
The most prolific exponent of the consensus-building approach, and the most sophisticated, is Yoel Ben-Nun. Alone among Gush leaders, Ben-Nun has been a regular contributor of articles to the left wing press. 85 For Ben-Nun the lesson of Yamit is that "it is impossible to succeed without the support of the decisive majority of the people. We must go With the people an not against it-nor against large part of it." 86 The process of redemption, he counsels, is a long one, dependent ultimately on the will and miraculous action of God to bring it to completion. Gush Emunim's contribution cannot be discovered halachically, but can be determined only on the basis of pragmatic political concerns. 87 Given the enormous progress made by the settlement movement, the primary task at the present juncture is to engage in a prolonged Kulturkampf with the dovish left, aimed at constructing a new consensus on the boundaries and character of the Jewish state. Simple declarations of Israeli sovereignty over the occupied areas will not do what only the ideological conversion of masses of -Israelis to the cause of Jewish fundamentalism can accomplish. 88
Thus, "the days of Sebastia and Yamit," when Gush Emunim's mission was to act as a vanguard, "are gone and will not return." 89 By panicking over every problem, agitating fiercely for more and more money for settlements, exaggerating threats to the personal security of settlers, and justifying actions by the Jewish terrorist underground, the vanguardists discourage more settlement and cause Gush Emunim to appear as a special-interest group, separated from the mass of Israelis. This endangers the fulfillment of redemption by interfering with the political task of building a new consensus. 90 Confident of the long-term strength of Gush Emunim, Ben-Nun condemns all Gush elements that support independent or radical actions based on challenges to the legitimacy of the state in pursuit of redemptionist ends. He asserts instead the decisive importance of engaging in a wide-ranging, respectful dialogue to reconstruct a consensual basis for the authority of the state. "There is nothing more urgent at this stage than to renew the authority of the state based on a public consensus." 91
Attitudes Toward International and Israeli Opposition. As emphasized in chapter 4, Jewish fundamentalists conceive of a radical distinction between the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds and assume a basically antagonistic relationship between them. Fundamentalists consider Jewish messianism "not only our responsibility to ourselves but to all the families of man." 92 Thus, Jewish conflict with the gentiles, and even wars against them, is "for their own good," 93 because in the long run the reunification of the people of Israel with its whole land hastens the redemption of all mankind.
At least until that time arrives, however, few if any Jewish fundamentalists consider gentiles dependable friends or partners. "For us," Moshe Levinger has declared, "the gentiles can be divided into two types: those who hate us and those who would be indifferent to our destruction." 94 Despite such rhetoric, however, there are real differences within the movement over what distinctions are worth making among gentiles, the cultural and political threats they represent, and the appropriateness of political models associated with the western democracies.
All Jewish fundamentalists reject the notion of a "Judeo-Christian tradition" which constitutes the basis for a Western civilization in which Jews authentically share. In fact, in discussions on Jewish relations with non-Jews living in the Land of Israel, many Gush Emunim rabbis have distinguished Muslims from Christians, insofar as the former are "unquestionably monotheistic," whereas the belief of the latter in the Trinity suggests they be regarded as "idol-worshippers." 95 Still, Rav Tzvi Yehuda was willing to acknowledge that "the great gentiles," such as novelist George Eliot, "know that the Land of Israel is joined to the people of Israel." 96 Most fundamentalists, however, tend to think that even if all gentiles are not actively opposed to the renaissance of the Jewish people in its land, they cannot possibly understand it. The following passages are quoted from a nonreligious and a religious fundamentalist, respectively.
The historical connection of the people of Israel to Judea and the Mountain of Ephraim is something no foreigner can ever understand. One cannot begin to explain it with routine political concepts . . these are things that are outside the realm of formal, realistic discussion, as might be proffered in a meeting of the Security Council or an international court. 97 The Torah took pains to explain to us God's motive in taking a land from one people and making it the home of another. There is no problem here of "being in the wrong," or being in the right. The question is the source from which the words came. There is a qualitative difference between the Torah morality of the people of Israel and the moral laws of other peoples spread over the earth which are derived from anthrocentric worldviews in which man stands at the center of law and is the highest value. In contrast, the Jewish worldview is theocentric. For the believer the source of both action and belief is the command of God. 98
Whether religious or nonreligious, Jewish fundamentalists contrast the materialism and shallowness of the Christian West with the discipline, historicity, and spiritual depth of Judaism. Democracy arid equality, regardless of race, religion, or ethnic background, may be appropriate values for Europe arid America, but they do not apply to Israel.
If in Europe and the United States a moral and democratic mission requires equality of rights for all, it is clear and obvious that in Israel what must determine rights to vote and to be elected to public office must be identification with and participation in the struggle of the people of Israel to accomplish its mission. 99
Beyond this rejection of political models imported from Europe arid America, a very substantial body of opinion within Gush Emunim identifies the influence of Western, liberal democratic culture on the Jewish people as the source of its current problems. The most fervent exponent of this viewpoint is Moshe Ben-Yosef (Hagar), who has written, 'There is no Western culture-neither American, Russian, German, nor French-that is not foreign to the culture and history of Israel." 100
Along with Haetzni arid Ben-Nun, Ben-Yosef is one of the most published authors in Nekuda; for several years he has had his own column. For Ben-Yosef, the European Enlightenment, which "emancipated" the Jews, was actually a great catastrophe, making it "impossible for Jews to live in any foreign land" while simultaneously "thrusting upon the Jewish people the experience of self-annihilation (via assimilation). 101 By destroying the organic religious arid social unity of the past, eighteenth-century Europe's new liberal democratic culture exposed Jews, as an ancient God-centered tribe, to a new form of systematic anti-Semitism, which culminated in the Holocaust. 102 Tragically, the Zionist movement adopted liberal nationalist norms, in vain imitation of the West. Gush Emunim arid maximalist Zionism remain the Jewish people's last and only hope to preserve its unique culture and destiny 103 by conducting a "war of extermination against Western culture, which has brought the greatest of holocausts upon us-the Liberal holocaust." 104 This will require severing as many ties with the West as possible. In Ben-Yosefs words:
We must finally put an end to the kind of Zionism which rejects the implementation of real Zionism-the future of the people is in danger! Otherwise, by means of a bureaucratic democracy transferred from the Western industrial countries, the beggars who live off the wealth of others will build, from Eilat to Metula [within the green line] a boutique for strictly European merchandise. That is to say, by means of the dictatorship of the secretariat of the party they are seeking favor in the eyes of the intellectuals of the Behemoth-from the left arid the right-in the lands of the uncircumcised. 105
Ultimately, what is required to save the Jewish people from the cultural imperialism of the West is to force the halacha and maximalist Zionism upon them, using state power to do so.
Our survival as a sovereign Jewish national kingdom . . . requires a different approach to the implementation of the halacha in a democratic society arid, indeed, a revolutionary understanding of the halacha itself. For this we shall need an uncompromising leadership . . that lives the Zionist revolution from its very sources arid also understands the Western conception of the world in which we have become trapped. 106
Accordingly, Ben-Yosef saves his most vitriolic language not for gentiles, but for Israeli opponents of Gush Emunim, especially those who object to the fundamentalist movement on liberal m democratic grounds.
It is a mistake to think we can avoid the catastrophe of a kulturkampf, we are already engaged in it . . . the main representatives of cultural degeneracy in the Land of Israel (in addition to the media arid the educational establishment) are "Shinui" and the Movement for Citizen Rights [dovish civil libertarian political group]. They are typical of the decadence of a society that has disowned the Biblical tradition-by means of scientific progress, aesthetics, arid the most elaborate arid costly ethical system in history. Instead they demand that permissiveness be established as the cultural reality of Israel. 107 Kahanism is but a festive overture to the real fascist dictatorship that is being prepared for us in the academies of anarchism by the big brothers of the left. . . 108
Although religiously nonobservant himself, Ben- Yosef believes a reformed halacha, springing from nationalist/tribal imperatives, can arid should be imposed within Israel, arid blames the official rabbinate for impeding the process. 109 While few opinion leaders within the Jewish fundamentalist movement are as vituperative as Ben-Yosef or as willing to discuss publicly the establishment of a theocratic dictatorship, even fewer take issue with his attacks on Western culture. Eliyakim Haetzni, Tzvi Shiloach, Meir Kahane, Amiel Unger, Israel Eldad, arid many others regularly condemn Israeli doves as "Meists," "nowists," "Hellenizers," "fifth columnists," "traitors," arid carriers of Western materialism and spiritual decadence. 110 Peace Now is widely considered representative of a categorical abandonment of Zionism arid as the source of apathy arid loss of will among Israeli Jews.
With great sorrow we witness today an accelerating process, under the guise of "sane" Zionism, of dehistorization arid de- Zionization, a process encouraging Jews to fold their hands arid undermining faith in the justice of our cause. . . . Zionism was always based on anti-Nowism, and in all the years of the Exile it stood in revolt against its essence, which was "nowism." In exile the life of Jews was entirely submerged in the bleak arid uncertain "now." 111
Against a background of Labor party efforts, from 1984 to 1986, to exercise the "Jordanian option," i.e. a territorial or administrative division of the occupied territories between Israel and Jordan, before the Likud's return to power, the expression of such sentiments was extended to include the personal vilification of Shimon Peres, Abba Eban, Ezer Weizman, and other leading foreign policy moderates, as well as discussion of the inevitability of arid even the need for, civil war.
Haetzni, for example, portrays Peres as the "second Reheboam," referring to the son of Solomon, whose policies triggered a civil war arid the secession of ten tribes from ancient Judea. 112 Haetzni relies heavily on the precedent of the Maccabean War against the Syrian Greeks as, first arid foremost, a "civil war, between Jews and Jews (Hellenizers vs. those faithful to the land arid culture of Israel)." 113 He also insists that any government ceding territory would thereby negate Zionism and its own claim to legitimate authority, warning that if
the state withdraws the army, the police, arid the Israeli administration from Judea, Samaria, arid Gaza-scores of thousands of Jews will remain, perhaps joined by thousands more from within the country arid the Diaspora, in an emergency mobilization to save the land. . . . And if, amidst the shedding of blood, the government tries to evacuate 100,000 Jews from their homes by force, a civil war will break out. 114
Among the large number of Gush adherents who share Haetzni's views, most would express them less explicitly. 115 They tend to emphasize the horror of the possibility of "a split in the people," even while warning that the excesses of the dovish left could well bring it about. 116 Within this body of opinion, debate is over tactics-for example, whether to take up arms against Israeli troops enforcing a withdrawal order, engage in violent provocations in order to sabotage the process, or remain behind to be slaughtered with great drama by the Arabs.
Beneath the surface of these debates over appropriate tactics in the face of "traitorous" or "blasphemous" political options that present and future Israeli governments might seek to exercise, there lies a more fundamental disagreement within Gush Emunim over the meaning and value of democracy. This issue came to light after the arrest of the Jewish terrorist underground in the spring of B4 of 1984. Although most of the soul searching within Gush Emunim triggered by those arrests focused on tactical arid educational questions, Eliezer Schweid argued that two more basic questions had to be confronted:
1. Do we see democracy as haying value in and of itself, or only as a means? . . . Is the halachic sanctity of the state of Israel attached to the fact that it is the state of the Jews, with no connection to the nature of its government?
2. . . . Do we prefer the absolute arid enforced authority of the halacha, which would follow its formal establishment as the law of the state, to a basis of humane and moral sentiments? Or do we fear the halacha, unrestrained in its enforcement, would not stand the test our moral sentiments and human values, and that its formal establishment would in fact result in hurried and unconsidered rationalizations of it? 117
With the partial exception of Moshe Ben-Yosef, no one has systematically attempted to answer these questions. However, occasional references by both religious and nonreligious fundamentalists to the "inauthenticity" of majoritarianism in Jewish tradition suggest the direction the debate would take should it ever get under way. Thus, Rabbi Yehuda Hankin reminds his readers that "if democracy means that authority is derived from the public, then Judaism, as is the case with most religions, is not democratic." 118 Rabbi Moshe Tzuriel notes that "apart from disputes Sanhedrin. . . there is no basis in the halacha for pitting a majority against a minority, rather the arguments involved are to be weighed objectively." 119 Eliyakim Haetzni makes the same point from a biblical, historicist, but purely nonreligious perspective:
Even if 100% of the Jewish inhabitants of Israel should vote for its separation from the Land of Israel, that "hundred percent consensus" would not have any more validity than the "hundred percent consensus that prevailed within the people of Israel when it danced around the golden calf. The fate of those dancers around the golden calf and they represented a massive "democratic" majority, was branded as with a hot iron into the genetic code of the Jewish people. The same is true of the fate of the spies [sent by Moses into Canaan] who were ready to abandon the Land of Israel, ten of the twelve of them at any rate, a solid "consensus," the fate of whom is also deeply engraved on the historical consciousness of the people. The history of Israel is the history of the minority, of Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Yephunah, who said: "Let us arise and take it; we shall succeed." In the end the consensualist majority turned on its heels and died in the desert while these two did enter the Land. 120
Jewish fundamentalism's ambivalent attitude toward Israeli democracy is most apparent in its variety of opinions about the extent to which rehabilitation of its Jewish opponents is possible. Most fundamentalists are prepared to write off the Peace Now leadership, the small liberal parties, arid what is often termed the "secular left" as totally cut off from their roots arid more than likely to emigrate or assimilate. 121 Yet the movement as a whole seems undecided as to whether or not the Labor Zionist movement, previously the bedrock of Israeli society, is salvageable. Compare the tone of these two quotes from editorials published in Nekuda.
Now that Gush is entering its second decade, its greatest challenge and responsibility is to renew the battle for the support of the people.... But not only to reinvigorate Likud supporters and supporters of Gush Emunim. We must redouble our efforts within the ranks of the Labor settlements, where there exists a silent majority that continues to appreciate the pioneering work of Gush. 122 The Labor Party has been transformed into an out and out leftist party that supports the establishment of a Palestinian state. . . . Labor's explicit hostility toward us is destroying the basis for dialogue . . . the Labor Party, that was the leading institution in critical areas pertaining to the upbuilding of the state-settlement, immigration, arid security-today, in almost every area, adopts positions of retreat and faithlessness . . indeed the Labor Party has now endorsed the right of the Palestinians to the Land of Israel. 123
While the contributions and promise of Labor Zionism and of the Jewish left in general are emphasized by some, others emphasize their irremediable abandonment of authentic Jewish and Zionist values. Thus, while Menachem Froumin reminds his readers of all the deadly seriousness of the threat posed by the left, he admonishes Gush Emunim to remember that Moses, in his struggle with Amalek, had to raise both his hands, right and left, to achieve victory. 124 Abraham Mintz, a Gush veteran, responds that the "leftists" are
ready to abandon the Land of Israel simply to serve fewer days in the reserves . . and just as we should not allow hatred to blind us, nor should we let love blur our vision. We are ready to have good relations with anyone, to honor and love him. We are even ready to restore sinners to our midst, but not when they hold a knife in their hands. 125
Disagreements within the movement over whether antifundamentalist Israeli Jews should be considered criminal or merely benighted are also expressed by uncertainty regarding the limits to be imposed on intra-Jewish conflict. This was illustrated by Yesha's 1986 prudent but confused reinterpretation of its controversial 1985 declaration of intent to resist any government move toward territorial compromise. 126
Gush Emunim supporters who espouse the most moderate position on this issue refuse to subordinate "love of all Israel" or "the unity of the people" to consolidation or expansion of Jewish sovereignty over the whole Land of Israel. Strongly criticizing Gush rabbis who endorsed the war in Lebanon as a means to "liberate" large areas of the homeland, at the expense of Jewish lives and risk to the well-being of Diaspora Jewish communities, Yehuda Amital warned that
there is a hierarchy of values in Judaism, and . . . those who fail to distinguish holiness from holiness will in the end fail to distinguish between the holy and the profane. We must consider the relative priority of three values: Israel, Torah, and the Land of Israel. The interest of the people of Israel precedes that of the interest of the Land of Israel. 127
Consistent with this view, Amital arid other rabbis have criticized threats of violent opposition to the government on ideological as well as tactical grounds. Indeed, though a minority view in any case, such sentiments appear to be more common among religious leaders than among the secular ultranationalists. Amital, Yoel Ben-Nun, and Aharon Lichtenstein have expressed such strong concern for maintaining the safety and unity of the people, that Haetzni and others have suggested they may no longer qualify to be counted within the "camp of those faithful to the Land of Israel." 128
Thus Jewish fundamentalists display a substantially broader range of attitudes toward Jews who are not within the movement than toward the international community. They appreciate expressions of support from some American ultraconservatives, retired American military officers, or Protestant fundamentalist groups, but in general are wary of the outside world. To a certain extent this even includes Diaspora Jewish communities. Although the movement views them as important potential sources of immigration, their political influence is not deemed to be great. Their responsibility, shamefully ignored to this point, is to bring an end to their own existence through mass emigration to Israel before assimilation drastically reduces their size. In this regard, manifestations of anti-Semitism are seen positively, as spurs to the emigration of Diaspora Jews.
Europe is seen as spinelessly responsive to Arab oil interests and Palestinian terrorism. Israel's economic arid military dependence on the United States is characterized as likely to facilitate dangerous pressure on Israeli governments to accept some sort of territorial compromise. Virtually all Gush Emunim members support lowering the Israeli standard of living in order to reduce dependence on the United States. Significantly, both Haetzni and Ben-Nun, representing, as I have indicated, diametrically opposed viewpoints within the movement, agree that linking Israel's fate with gentile political actors-be they Lebanese Christians, Americans, or Russians-should be avoided except for reasons of short-term expediency. Thus, in direct reaction to the Reagan initiative, Haetzni suggested that Israel consider joining the Soviet bloc. In 1984 Ben-Nun argued for Israeli withdrawal from the "western world democratic front," against the continued purchase of sophisticated and expensive American arms, and in support of renewed ties with the Soviet Union. 129 In the aftermath of the Lebanon War, Eleazar Waldman answered a question about the location of "evil" in the modern world. He acknowledged the Communist bloc's moral inferiority to the West, but emphasized that Israel is standing alone in a wicked world.
Today evil is exhibited by the entire world. I refer to the western world . . . mainly the political leadership of the western world, though of course there is a connection between culture and political behavior. Today these leaders admit openly that they calculate their policies and adopt political positions, not on the basis of justice arid righteousness, but in view of their economic and political interests. . . . The State of Israel is not only the only state in the world fighting against evil, it is the only state that considers justice and righteousness in the determination of its policies. 130
To be sure, appeals for increased American support for Israel on the basis of a joint struggle against the Soviet Union are not uncommon. In these appeals the United States is usually portrayed as blind to the threat that the grand geopolitical aspirations of Arab nationalism constitute for vital American interests. While American diplomats concentrate on the Arab-Israeli conflict, they ignore the inroads Moscow makes as a result of intra-Arab struggles. A key objective of Israeli foreign policy must be the reeducation of American leaders to the realities of Middle Eastern and international politics. These realities include the decisiveness of Israel's military power in the Middle East, its capacity to participate in the region's political reorganization, and its central role in the fight against terrorism. 131
But while such formulas may be used in communications directed toward the American government or sympathetic audiences outside of the fundamentalist movement, within its religious mainstream they are not taken seriously. The writings of Mordechai Nisan, a leading religious Gush intellectual, who teaches Middle Eastern politics at the Hebrew University's School for Overseas Students, provide an excellent example of this "double discourse," in which American audiences are provided with glowing tributes to America while militantly anti-American themes are stressed to supportive Jewish audiences. Nisan's 1982 book, American Middle East Foreign Policy: A Political Reevaluation, is addressed to U.S. policymakers. He argues there that "America and Israel represent the 'chosen' societies that carry the most noble dreams of civilization." The 1982 war in Lebanon, he asserts, "provided the most recent evidence for the identity of American and Israeli interests on global and regional issues." 132 But in an article directed to a supportive Jewish audience, Nisan characterized Israel's relationship to the United States as a colonial one, advocating Israeli policies of violence, extremism, and intransigence, instead of "surrender to America." 133
A similar view of the United States, in which it is portrayed as an imperialist power committed to dismembering Israel for the benefit of sinister domestic interests, found expression in a February 1983 Nekuda editorial.
The pressures the United States has placed on Israel to surrender the gains of the Peace for the Galilee War, and the American political offense, designed in cooperation with Hussein, Arafat, and their collaborators, are meant to return Israel to its "natural dimensions," that is, to the lines of 1967. The corporation that controls the President of the United States-the Bechtel Corporation-has personal and economic interests in Saudia Arabia, the Persian Gulf and in other Muslim countries. The American President, totally dependent on this clique, has been converted to an antagonistic stand toward Israel's interests. 134
In sum, Jewish fundamentalists are divided over how to relate to Jewish opposition, but except in terms of style and emphasis, virtually all display a distrustful antagonism toward gentiles. With respect to one group of gentiles, however, the local Arab population, Jewish fundamentalists are deeply divided.
Policy Toward and Eventual Status of Local Arabs. One of the most extensively and explicitly debated issues within Gush Emunim concerns the policies appropriate for dealing with the large Arab majority living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the substantial Arab minority residing within the 1949 borders of Israel proper.
No evidence exists of concrete plans to carry out genocidal policies toward the "Arabs of the Land of Israel." Nevertheless, analysis of the range of disagreement within the Jewish fundamentalist movement over the Arab question must begin with the fact that a number of rabbis supportive of Gush Emunim have offered opinions that could provide the halachic basis for such policies. The substance of these opinions pertains to the identification of the Palestinian Arabs, or of Arabs in general, as Amalekites.
According to the biblical account, the Amalekites harassed the Israelites during their wandering in the desert, preying upon weak and helpless stragglers. As a consequence, God commanded the Jewish people not only to kill all Amalekites-men, women, and children-but to "blot out the memory of Amalek" from the face of the earth. Traditionally, great enemies of the Jews, such as Haman in ancient Persia (as described in the Book of Esther) and Torquemada during the Spanish Inquisition, have been identified as descendants of Amalek. Accordingly, the most extreme views within Gush Emunim on the Arab question, views quoted extensively by Israeli critics of the movement, speak of the Arabs as descendants of the Amalekites. 135 These critics reacted strongly when Haim Druckman greeted the crippling of two Arab mayors on the West Bank by quoting the Book of Deborah: "Thus may all Israel's enemies perish!" A Gush veteran, Haim Tsuria, defended Druckman: "In every generation there is an Amalek. In our generation, our Amalek are the Arabs who oppose the renewal of our national existence in the land of our fathers." 136
But despite such rhetoric and occasional halachic disputations over whether an Arab can be killed in the absence of provocation (in view of the presumption of the need for self-defense), no important group within the movement publicly advocates genocide. 137 On the other hand, Meir Kahane's Kach party, which advocates the virtually complete expulsion of Arabs from the Land of Israel, received 22 percent of the vote in the 1985 local council elections in Kiryat Arba. Indeed, it appears that at least one-third of Gush Emunim believes that Jews should consider themselves to be "in a state of war with the whole Arab population of the country. " 138 Their discussions focus on the merits of various techniques for bringing about the eventual departure of the all non-Jews from the Land of Israel. The following passages are representative of this viewpoint.
Coexistence between a Jewish majority and an Arab minority in the Land of Israel, that does not endanger the historical objectives of the Jewish people, and the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, is problematic. . . .If we want to avoid unremitting bloodshed, there is only one solution-the transfer of the Arab population of the Land of Israel to the Arab states. . . This solution is a humane solution compared to the "final solution"' which the Arab world plans for us. 139 The goal of good neighborly relations with the Arabs of the Land of Israel is not only illusory, but it contradicts the meaning of the settlement enterprise in the Land of Israel. We have come to the land to inherit it because it is our land, and not the land of hundreds of thousands of Arabs living in it like a malignant and painful tumor-a cancer within the heart of the state. . . . we must settle within densely populated Arab areas, expropriating their land, and insulting their national feelings . . . constantly we must explain to ourselves and our people that Arabs or Jews can live in the Land of Israel-but not both peoples together. 140 Demographic research shows that within 40 years Arabs will be a majority in the state of Israel, and that within 80 years they will be a majority within the borders of the 'Green Line.' Abandoning Judea, Samaria, and Gaza will not solve the problem, but only postpone it for a number of years. Clearly, if we do not bring about the departure of the Arabs, the day will come when they will be able, democratically, to destroy the state of Israel. 141 I am more extreme than Kahane regarding encouragement of Arabs to leave the country. First of all, I favor paying the Arabs to leave the country. But that is just the carrot, not the stick. Gentlemen, this is a Jewish state and I favor negative means of encouragement as well. . . I know the difficulties involved in such policies, but it is the genuine solution and must be implemented completely arid systematically. 142 We must deal with the Land of Israel branch of the Arab people to make sure that it will lose every tune something happens that hurts our life in the Land of Israel. We must induce them to leave here. They must be made to feel that the land is slipping away beneath their feet. . . . For the good of our peace, their peace, and the peace of all Israel, not only for the settlers of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and for our future in this land, for there to be any future at all, there is no place for Arabs with us here. . . . We must find a new way, a new revolutionary way to deal with the Jewish-Arab conflict. 143
Aside from Kach, no political party calls officially for the wholesale expulsion of Arabs. Yuval Neeman, however, at the 1986 Tehiya convention, in Kiryat Arba, declared that a half million Arab refugees presently living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would have to be relocated to Arab countries in any peace agreement. 144 More recently, Moshe Ben-Yosef sought to legitimize discussions of mass expulsions.
The fact that Eichmann spoke German does not mean that German cannot be the language of a normal human being, and it is kosher to discuss the idea of transfer, and even to put it into effect, despite the fact that Kahane speaks about it. It is kosher not only because it is an "actual solution," but also because it is required for the vision of the whole Land of Israel. The idea of transfer has deep roots in the Zionist movement. 145
He goes on to quote respected leaders of Labor Zionism, such as Berl Katznelson and Yitzhak Tabenkin, who favored the idea.
Although these sentiments gain ground within Gush Emunim in periods of violent Arab attacks on Jews, commitment to the expulsion of the Arab population as a radical solution to the demographic problem is not a dominant view within Jewish fundamentalism. 146 Nevertheless, vigilantism and various other "iron fist" techniques against "troublemakers" or in response to specific Arab actions do have wide support. A poll of 455 settlers conducted in 1981 and 1982 showed that two-thirds of those questioned expressed agreement or strong agreement with the statement "It is necessary for settlers to respond quickly and independently to Arab harassments of settlers and settlements. " 147 In the summer of 1985, Yesha called for a crackdown on the Arab population, recommending closure of Arab newspapers and universities, dissolution of Arab cooperatives and youth organizations, loosening of restrictions on settler use of weapons, and prosecution of all known PLO supporters. 148 Following a particularly brutal firebomb attack in April 1987, which killed a young mother traveling to a West Bank settlement, hundreds of Jewish settlers went on a rampage in the nearby Arab town of Kalkilia. Daniella Weiss, general secretary of Gush Emunim, was reportedly among those who "threw bottles at shops in the town, rolled barrels down the streets, and set fires to tires." 149 Gideon Altschuler, a founder of Tehiya and its general secretary until November 1987, has advocated issuing shoot-to-kill orders against Arab stone throwers, including children. 150
Beni Katzover expressed the "blood-boiling" response of most Gush members to Arab attacks on settlers in his endorsement of collective punishment as a policy for maintaining control over the Arab population.
Our moderation, tolerance and care are the reasons why the Arab public is dominated by the extremists. Failure to retaliate against acts of terror is what convinces the Arabs that it does not pay to cooperate with the policy of coexistence What we need is collective punishment and harsh measures-so that they learn to fear us. 151
In a 1987 poll of rabbis living in the West Bank and Gaza, 86 percent of those responding judged that it was permissible to use collective punishment against refugee camps or extended families. The favored method (64 percent) was deportation. 152 But while the majority of Gush Emunim members favor collective punishment as a law enforcement tactic, including the deportation of hundreds or even thousands of Arab "agitators" and stone throwers (along with their families), others warn against collective punishment on the grounds that it implies, and may even help to create, a Palestinian "collectivity" that does not exist naturally. 153
Regardless of different opinions on the wisdom of collective punishment as a law enforcement device, most fundamentalists do not believe that policies of wholesale retribution or transfer can or should be used to address the problem of the size of the Arab population relative to that of the Jews. Mainstream opinion within Gush Emunim toward the Arabs who live in the West Bank and Gaza is that strict enforcement of security laws, effective bans on Arab political and cultural activity, closure or direct Israeli supervision of Arab educational institutions, and minimal personal relations between Arabs and Jews can create an environment within which settlement can flourish, annexation proceed, and the demographic problem be gradually alleviated. The general expectation, sometimes stated and sometimes not, is that deprived of opportunities for political, cultural, and economic development, and discovering the area to be ever more thoroughly "Judaized," Arabs will emigrate in demographically meaningful numbers. 154
While Arabs yet remain in the Land of Israel, Yaacov Arid and most other Gush rabbis stress that a clear distinction must be made between attitudes toward and treatment of Arabs who meet the conditions for living in peace with the Jews arid those who do not. There is much less agreement on what those conditions are, but one that almost all the rabbis stipulate is that Arabs surrender any claim to political influence in the country. Tzvi Yehuda wrote that private meetings with Arab notables were to be encouraged for the purpose of reducing levels of personal animosity, but only as long as the Arabs involved abandoned all political demands.
First of all they must recognize that they have no arguments to make concerning political authority. How to behave toward minorities-that is something that can be clarified to avoid injustice. But with respect to politics and the state-it is impossible for us to disavow the truth that we owe them no part of the government! Only after they know this is there a place for discussions with them. 155
This overall stance is expressed accurately, and unselfconsciously, in the photograph on the cover of the January 13, 1984, issue of Nekuda, an issue concerned particularly with the Arab question. (For a reproduction of this cover, see Appendix 4.) Above the caption "A Moment of Coexistence," a Gush settler, in military uniform, leads an elderly, blind Arab refugee across a road. The settler's machine gun is slung across his waist. He holds a club in one hand arid the Arab's hand in the other. This is, in fact, m what most Gush Emunim loyalists consider the proper relationship of Jews to Arabs in the Land of Israel-the Jews as young, dominant, strong, armed, in control, and fully alert; the Arabs as old, helpless, docile, dependent, grateful, but ultimately irrelevant. 156
Within this mainstream perspective there are disagreements on specific points. An elaborate literature is developing pertaining to the halachic implications of the concept of gar toshav (resident alien). Most fundamentalist rabbis agree that, generally, observance of the seven Noachite commandments (including a ban on idol worship) and acceptance of Jewish sovereignty, in the form of tax payments to the Jewish government, should qualify a non-Jew for the protection of his person and property in a Jewish state. Others, however, argue that to attain gar toshav status, the non-Jew must not only observe the seven Noachite commandments, but also undergo a kind of conversion process and accept the holiness of the Torah. Still others insist that while non-Jews might be permitted to own land, the prohibition against transfer of land to non-Jews, known as lo tehonem, means that no real property not now in Arab hands may be allowed to come into their possession. Additional issues in this debate are whether the gar toshav can be allowed to live in Jerusalem and whether in the absence of the Temple the status of gar toshav can be enforced de jure or only de facto. 157
Stretching beyond the bounds of these halachic disputes are a broader set of policy concerns, including the important question of whether or not non-Jews can or should be granted some corporate minority status. Some fundamentalists argue that a separate, subordinate, but formal legal status should be imposed on Arabs to eliminate the ambiguity of their residence in Israel without citizenship. 158 Associated with this view is the model of Jewish life in the Muslim world, as a dhimmi community, meaning, in Muslim parlance, a monotheistic religious group deserving of protective subordination, and, more broadly, that of Jewish life in the Diaspora. Yaacov Ariel has put it this way:
In the Galut [Exile] faithful Jews opposed both equal rights and equal responsibilities for Jews. We did not want to be in the army arid fight the wars of others. We did not demand fully equal rights in education, social standing, or political action. We saw ourselves as guests and we wanted to be treated that way. . . We never saw ourselves as citizens in the Galut. What we demand of the Arabs in our land is no different from what they demanded from us in Galut: be honored guests, who know how to acknowledge and honor the master of the house, or be citizens bearing the full yoke of responsibilities as well as rights. . . 159
Those who hold out the theoretical possibility of citizenship for West Bank and Gaza Arabs, such as Yaacov Ariel arid the Tehiya party, do so by attaching conditions designed to make its acquisition virtually impossible (thorough security check, knowledge of Hebrew, three years' national service, declaration of loyalty to Israel as a Jewish-Zionist state, and so on). 160 Some fundamentalists argue that "cooperative" Arabs can be used as allies within the Arab population to help stabilize the situation; others condemn all attempts to forge political alliances with Arab elements. 161 Some would deprive Arabs of employment opportunities in Jewish settlements by hiring only Jews for construction and custodial work; others respond that Arab labor is still necessary, that such demands are impractical. 162 Some advocate reducing the political status of Arabs inside the green line to conform to that of Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza and to prevent the cp"7stallizatiOn of an effective political alliance between Israeli Arabs and left-wing Jews; 163 others believe that taking rights away from Arabs who are already Israeli citizens would be difficult and unnecessarily provocative. 164
It is apparent even in the appeals made by fundamentalist authors who favor tough policies toward the Arabs that they judge most of their readers to have a visceral hatred of Arabs. Thus, while declaring that "humane" policies toward Arab political activists are not appropriate, Hanan Porat nonetheless quotes both Abraham Isaac Kook and Tzvi Yehuda to support his overall argument that the Arab problem must be addressed "not by denigrating Ishmael, but by elevating Israel." 165 But a small minority within Gush Emunim, whose contributions to Nekuda comprise some lO-l5 percent of the articles published on the subject, are very critical of the negative attitudes toward Arabs that they say predominate within the mainstream of the movement. 166 In an article entitled "Do Not Hate!" Miriam Shiloh, for example, recounts violently anti-Arab songs and slogans popular among, Gush Emunim youth. Such attitudes are wrong and dangerous she warns. She gives an example of Arabs who helped her family during an auto accident and argues in favor of applying the Talmudic dictum "to love thy neighbor as thyself." 167 In a similar vein, arguments are occasionally made for greater efforts to establish "good neighborly relations with Arabs" or to teach Jewish children Arabic. 168
Most authors who are solicitous of Arab rights and sensibilities are not leaders of the movement, though fluctuations in the editorial line of Nekuda suggest that key activists share some of their opinions. 169 On the individual level these writers stress the development of positive personal relations with Arab inhabitants. Politically they suggest that loyal Arabs should be extended formal rights to citizenship or, eventually, opportunities to participate within whatever political system is based in Amman. Most of them believe that the Jews must consider themselves strong enough to have "compassion" toward the Arabs, and must not be overtaken by a hatred that may lead to forsaking real Jewish values. "He who kills a gentile in anger," Yehuda Shabib has written, "is bound in the end to kill a Jew with premeditation." 170
That this general approach toward the Arabs represents a minority view is clearly apparent in the apologetic tone its advocates often adopt.
On no account should I be mistaken for one of those "pretty souls" ready to "turn the other cheek." I support severe punishment for terrorists, stone-throwers, and trouble-makers. By severity I mean lengthy prison terms and also deporting Arabs involved in hostile activity. . . .Yes we are nationalist Jews, believing in the right of the people of Israel to settle in its homeland, and that Judea and Samaria are central parts of that home-land . . . but we are also Jews whose tradition includes love and respect for every human being created in the image of God; who have been educated according to values of justice and morality as the basis for every human society. 171
One response to internal questions about possible injustices committed against the Arabs is the argument that regardless of appearances, fulfillment of maximalist Zionism and completion of the redemption process will serve the true interests of the Arab people. 172 This idea was expressed concretely in a leaflet distributed to Jericho Arabs one week before a large Gush Emunim march was to be held in that city in 1987.
. . .see how settlement and Jewish neighbors have brought you livelihood, homes, television sets, cars and a standard of living you and your forefathers never dreamed of. . . . When we settle in Jericho, you will also enjoy blessings and prosperity [Haying] Jews living in your city is the safest assurance that you and your children will continue living in this country. . . .If the advice of the evil counselors-your PLO and our Peace Now-is carried out, and Israel withdraws from the West Bank, you know that in a few years your extremists will take over arid inflict another war on this country. An Israeli army which will have to conquer Nablus, Hebron, and Jericho again and shed blood for them again-will it leave a single Arab in the West Bank? 173
Among fundamentalists, however, solicitude for Arab well-being is not the predominant response to compassion toward Arabs or to criticism of the movement's attitudes toward them. Much more characteristic is condemnation of the naivetŽ that such sentiments reflect and outrage that such pro-Arab opinions should be expressed publicly in the pages of Nekuda, given past Arab terrorism and the damage that the expression of such views could do to Gush Emunim's image. 174 In 1985 many fundamentalist rabbis, including Yoel Ben-Nun, condemned government-sponsored programs to reduce tensions between Jews and Arabs in Israel by sponsoring social interaction between Jewish and Arab youth. Meetings between young people, Ben-Nun argued, would give the mistaken impression of equality and might interfere with the development of a strong national consciousness on the part of the Jewish participants. 175
By contrast, some prominent personalities within the movement who represent diverse stands on other issues have argued that a less antagonistic relationship to the local Arab population is important for tactical political purposes. Haetzni has, from time to time, supported the idea of finding Arab elements willing to cooperate politically arid administratively with the settlers. 176 Yisrael Harel, editor of Nekuda, has suggested that Arabs in the Gaza Strip, though not those in the West Bank, might be granted some form of cultural autonomy. 177 Ben-Nun and Yaacov Feitelson have contended that radical answers to the Arab problem are not available, and that unless arrangements can be created for a calm arid normal life together with the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli opponents of annexation will be assisted in their struggle against it. Thus, Ben-Nun has warned repeatedly against complaining too vociferously about Arab stone throwing and against discussion of expulsion as a solution to the Arab problem. Such talk, he argues, encourages the belief that "no sort of coexistence between Jews and Arabs can occur," which in turn supports arguments for disengagement from populated Arab areas.
If it is true that no co-existence is possible, and if the public becomes convinced as well that there isn't any real possibility that a large portion of the Arab population will abandon the land, by one means or another, then the natural conclusion to be drawn will be a Jewish state within smaller borders-not an internal struggle with a large Arab population. 178
As noted in chapter 4, despite substantial disagreements about what if any rights Arabs have or should have in the Land of Israel, there is a complete agreement that Arabs have no rights over any part of it. But something more is implicit in Jewish fundamentalist disagreements over policies regarding local Arabs-an unquestioned assumption that the interests or aspirations of Arab inhabitants must not be allowed to affect the fulfillment of Jewish imperatives. If Arabs will not or cannot accommodate themselves to Jewish rule, they will, ultimately, have no place in the State or the Land of Israel.
Prospects for Peace. Jewish fundamentalists do not believe that a negotiated, comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict is possible, at least not without political or religious transformations that would make the Middle East something radically different from what it is today. On the other hand, many fundamentalists do fear that a deal could be struck between Israel and Jordan, though none believe it could serve as the basis for a lasting peace. Indeed, in practical terms, differences within the movement regarding peace prospects are narrower and less intense than those associated with any of the five areas already discussed. Still, various opinion clusters can be identified.
At one extreme, some religious leaders of Gush Emunim combining literal interpretation of the Bible and the halacha with a strong sense of messianic immediacy, argue that a state of war will continue until the reestablishment of the "Kingdom of Israel," the rebuilding of the Temple, and the arrival of the Messiah. For Eleazer Waldman, the wars to be fought against the evil that will press upon Israel until the completion of the redemption are mitzvahs which, like all mitzvahs, "must be done joyfully." Only with the completion of the redemption process, for which Israel is primarily responsible, can or will peace come.
What, in essence, is the Redemption to which we aspire? It is spiritual and moral completedness. "There will be neither evil nor corruption in all his holy mountain because the land will be filled with the knowledge of God," "My house is a house of prayer for all peoples." All shall worship the one God, and peace, tranquillity, and love will prevail among all man-kind. That is Redemption. 179
According to Hanan Porat:
Tidings of peace will come to the world only from the Mountain of the Temple of God, and only when the Torah will go forth from Zion and the word of God from Jerusalem. 180
From this perspective, peace is a messianic phenomenon. Since Jewish restoration of the shlemut (completeness) of the Land of Israelis a prerequisite for the redemption of the world, territorial compromise as a price of peace (shalom) is nonsensical. This linguistic linkage mirrors the close conceptual relationship between shlemut and shalom that is the basis for Porat's rejection of religious arguments for territorial compromise as a way to save Jewish lives. Just as God enjoined Joshua to fight wars and suffer Jewish casualties for the sake of the repair of the world, Porat writes, so too must present day Israel understand that
the value of the Land of Israel exceeds that of peace . . . We are not commanded, at the outset, to make war upon and destroy the non-Jews living in the Land . . . but if the peoples who control the Land at present do not accept the presence of the people of Israel and their sovereignty over the Land of Israel, then . . . we are commanded to conquer the Land by war, even at a high price. 181
According to Gideon Aran, similar beliefs predominated among the leadership of the Movement to Halt the Retreat in Sinai:
The MHRS thinks that not only does the peace of its opponents conceal war within it but also that it is intertwined with collective humiliation and cultural assimilation. But even if it would preserve national honor, moral purity, and security for the state and its inhabitants, such a peace would still be unacceptable. 182
Jews are not to see their responsibility for bringing peace as including direct efforts to bring about nonbelligerent relations with non-Jews, but as dragging a recalcitrant world toward redemption. Not only will hatred, anti-Semitism, and war continue until the redemption is complete, these manifestations of evil will intensify. Thus, Eleazar Waldman has written:
The period of struggles will accelerate, from the beginning of creation until the appearance of the Messiah, Son of David. The closer the world gets to the destruction of evil, the more determinedly evil clings to life, before its final elimination from the world. 183
The Jewish contribution to peace is to fight to fulfill God's will and to achieve a pervasive sense of completedness, or harmony "within the Jewish people as a whole, between the people and its whole land, and between the Jews and their God." 184
Closely related to this perspective, albeit framed in strictly secular terms, is the view that for all intents and purposes peace with the Arab world is impossible. The Arab-Israeli conflict is characterized as a contemporary version of the Hundred Years War. Its roots lie in Arab psychological and cultural fixations, Muslim religious imperatives to Jihad, anti-Semitism borrowed from Europe, and chronic instability encouraging irrational but p0litically necessary hatred of Israel.
The "House of Islam" lost Spain, parts of Europe ruled by the Ottoman Empire, and great areas of Asia today controlled by Soviet Russia. But what was true of territories on the margins of the Muslim world-non-Muslim political authority in areas previously ruled by non-Muslims--cannot be so in the very heart of the "House of Islam." For Muslims there is only one precedent-the Crusader state. What a deep wound this was in the heart of the "House of Islam." In the end it was wiped from the face of the earth, and thus also must (Israel) be obliterated by armed might in a Muslim holy war. 185 . . . pan-Islamic doctrine incorporated in the ideology of Pan- Arabism; the dogma that Jews must be kept in inferior status to Islamic people, and the widespread adoption of Christian and Nazi anti-Semitism-constitute what must be recognized as nothing less than a virulent form of militant Islamic-Arab religious racism. . the prime instrument of Arab ideological unification... (Another) major factor in explaining the Arabs rejection of any Jewish national rights in the Middle East lies in the complex web of internal (domestic) and inter-state Arab and Muslim conflicts, fears and jealousies which generally determine the policies and actions of the Arab world. 186
In light of the overdetermined and intransigent nature of Arab enmity, no adjustments in Israeli policies can possibly advance the prospects for peace.
The concept of a "compromise" does not exist in the political lexicon of Islam, and the Arabs today envisage no other termination of their campaign than Zionism's complete uprooting. . . . While Arab acquiescence today seems to be a dream. . . objectively, and notwithstanding the theoretical acrobatics indulged in by persons of good will and by various professors of political science-no solution looms on the horizon for the "problem," however it may be defined. 187
It remains for Israel to avoid becoming entrapped in doomed attempts to find a compromise solution to the Palestinian problem. Israel must establish and preserve an overwhelming deterrent, waging preventive war when necessary, until, with the passage of several generations and following sweeping changes in the Arab world, a peace based on Israeli control of the whole land might perhaps be achieved. One of the best known and bluntest exponents of this point of view is Raphael Eitan.
If we are deemed weak, this would invite war. If we are thought of as strong and patient, this will remove the danger of war. . . . The Syrians want what all the Arabs want, to annihilate Israel. They do not want a small piece of Israel, nor do they want a large piece of it, or only some part. They do not want this and they do not want that. They simply want to liquidate Israel. (I) do not believe in any negotiations with the Arabs. . . . 188
Eitan's theme within Tzomet, the political movement that he founded, has been the need for Israel to constitute itself as a modern day Sparta, prepared to fight wars for the foreseeable future.
The root of the problem is the extent of the readiness of the coming generation to fight. The solution must be to begin now, in the kindergartens. We must educate the children so that they will give on their own the spiritual-moral answer to our enemies, or' to the extent necessary, to strike with the fist. But we must begin to teach them in kindergarten. Once the youth reaches the army it is already too late. 189
From this perspective, signs of Arab moderation, even if credible, should be ignored for the foreseeable future, until the complete fulfillment of Zionist objectives. This may entail war. According to Abraham Yoffe, a former Israeli army general, longtime head of Israel's Nature Reserve Authority, and a founder of the Movement for the Whole Land of Israel, "The will of the people is expressed in war. That is the whole Torah." 190 The necessity of war, no matter how moderate Arab negotiating positions may appear to be, flows from the uncompletedness of Zionism s mission.
We are here in the Land of Israel no more than as a "pioneer at the head of the entire Jewish people." The State of Israel, as presently constituted, does not represent the fulfillment of Zionism. This is a state on the way.... Our duty is not completed: . . . The state must provide a refuge for the Jewish people as a whole. The Arab people will never accept this idea! 191
A few fundamentalists-mainly, but not solely, secular ultranationalists-have described conditions under which a comprehensive Middle East peace could be achieved without the miraculous culmination of the redemption process. They often envision a cultural and political transformation of the area in which the predominantly but, in their view, superficially Arab character of the region would disappear. In the nonreligious version of this conception, the non-Arab peoples of the Middle East would, with Israeli assistance, break the artificial domination of the area by Arab imperialism.
We speak of the "Arab world," but there is no Arab world. There exists perhaps an Arab Empire, but even that is only raking shape. The Arab world is a dream. . . . The Arab imperialist movement is still described by propagandists in both the East and the West, as a progressive and positive liberation movement. That is far from the truth. The Arabs have fourteen absolutely independent states. If Arabs arc to be liberated it is from Arab rule. . . . . .In most of the territories they rule the Arabs are no more than one of the minorities and not even in each case are they the largest minority, the most vigorous, and certainly not the most cultured. 192
On the basis of this vision of the Middle East, Tzvi Shiloach has described a true peace that would be based on two federations, built out of ethnic mini-states into which Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon are eventually destined to dissolve. The northern federation would include most of what is now the central and northern parts of Lebanon and Syria, and northern and eastern Iraq. The southern federation, led by Israel, would include what is now Israel and Jordan plus southern Lebanon and Syria, western and southern Iraq, and Kuwait; it would become the "United States of the Middle Fast," and emerge as a technological, scientific, industrial, and military power of international proportions. Together with Turkey and Iran, it would form the "geo-strategic axis of the entire area." 193
Ezra Zohar has argued that both culturally and geographically, Egypt must be considered outside of the Middle East. In his view, the region gets its overall character from the non-Arab countries of Israel, Turkey, and Iran, and from the Kurds, Maronites, Greeks, Cypriots, Druse, Beduin, and Alawites. "No one people or group has a majority or even a large enough portion of the population, to insure its hegemony." On this basis, Zohar argues that a reorganized Middle East, with many more states joined together in a common market, is possible. The most important factor in bringing this transformation about, he suggests, is a vigorous Israeli foreign policy designed to encourage the establishment of autonomous ethnoreligious entities in place of large Arab or Pan-Arab states. 194
Yuval Neeman has also described the requirements of a comprehensive and lasting peace in the area. With Shiloach and Zohar, he rejects negotiations or internationally imposed or brokered solutions. "A Jewish-Arab peace is not to be sought in the realm of subtle diplomacy; it is an historical process." 195 However, Neeman not only accepts the existence of the Arab nation, he emphasizes its unity and size, stretching from "the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf," as justifying in Arab eyes the acceptance of Jewish rule over the whole Land of Israel. But such an historic compromise between the Arab and Jewish nations will require a social and psychocultural revolution in the Arab world. Arabs will have to appreciate the "deep reasons" that they suffer from frustration and behave with aggression and out of hatred. The revolution must include "the reconstruction of Arab society, the productivization of its mentality, and the realization of its potential." 196
Religious fundamentalists rarely articulate visions of a Middle East at peace before the completion of the redemption process. Two who have presented such images of peace are Yoel Ben-Nun and Yaacov Arid. Ben-Nun's conception of the redemption process as essentially indistinguishable from human political and cultural struggles permits him to consider long-term changes toward peace that might be brought about by what would appear to be purely human effort. He rejects "current policies which try to achieve understanding based on secular politics and using western-Christian legal concepts." Neither 'feeble western-Christian humanism . . . nor wild Khomeinism," he argues, can serve as a basis for a stable peace, but only "the Torah of Israel which was designed, first for the peoples of this area, and then for the rest of the world." Thus he not only delineates a vision of eventual peace, but suggests negotiations as a route to achieve it. The parties to the negotiations, however, will be neither politicians nor diplomats, but Jewish and Muslim religious leaders, whose political authority reflect a cultural transformation of both peoples. Such leaders
might develop in the coming generation and be capable of getting to the root of the conflict. . . . This leadership would be able to achieve a deep and honest understanding between the two sides, based on their ancient faith, on their mutual opposition to idol-worship, and their faith in the oneness of God, thereby moderating the savagery and cruelty still deeply embedded in the Arab world. 197
Ariel's ideas about a stable peace that might be achieved in the absence of a Messiah, while less developed than Ben-Nun's, are more explicit in regard to the application of Jewish religious law to relations between Jews and their Arab enemies. The Torah, he argues, "does not endorse peace sought by unsound compromise. The Torah values genuine peace and reprehends any loss of opportunity in the search for a true and lasting peace." A Torah-sanctioned peace, however' requires deep changes in both Jewish and Arab modes of thinking. Jews must begin the peace process by "investing all our energies into bringing about a spiritual and moral change in our own society. " Given such a cultural revolution at home, it will then be possible to effect even more comprehensive change among Israel's neighbors.
Our enemies are expected to accept the values of the Torah, to undergo an actual revolution in their way of thinking and living. Such is the only way to a true and lasting peace . . . entailing acceptance of the Divine Revelation of the Torah at Sinai.
While admitting these suggestions may sound like "utopian hankering," Ariel warns that such transformations are the only route to peace. 198
Within the fundamentalist camp, another approach to peace focuses on the possibility of ameliorating belligerency in the short run, rather than on comprehensive settlement. This comparatively sanguine view of Israel's short- and medium-term political, as opposed to strictly military, options is based on an assumption that at least some Arabs and Muslims are rational enemies with differentiated, identifiable, finite interests. Several Gush Emunim figures, although committed to an overwhelming Israeli military deterrent as the sine quo non for peace in the area, have suggested that a carrot-and-stick policy toward selected Arab and non-Arab groups could produce informal arrangements to serve Israeli interests while preventing war. Thus, in 1976 Tzvi Shiloach suggested establishing territorial continuity between Israel and an independent Maronite enclave in Lebanon. 199 Supporters of Ariel Sharon s view of Jordan as a Palestinian state reflect this kind of thinking in their presumption that creation of a Palestinian target for Israeli retaliation in Amman will result in good behavior by rational Palestinian leaders. In 1982 Eliyakim Haetzni argued for a comprehensive set of informal alliances with various groups in Lebanon, including Palestinians south of the Awalli River, to keep that country fragmented, weak, and effectively dependent on Israel. 200
The disastrous outcome of the Christian-Israeli alliance during the Lebanon War, however, did much to undermine the credibility of this approach within the fundamentalist movement. Haetzni's view, for example, appears to have changed. In January l985, he sharply attacked military and political echelons for not haying conducted a scorched earth policy in Lebanon, including the utter destruction of Beirut and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Shiites from the country's southern region. 201 In April 1986 he warned that Israeli weakness in Lebanon and signs of indecisiveness on the Golan Heights would mean war with Syria in the near future. 202
Nevertheless, some fundamentalists have continued to suggest that various avenues of political opportunity do exist in the Arab world. The best known proposal, which originated within Herut circles but is also supported by influential personalities in Tehiya, is the idea of Transjordan as a Palestinian homeland, if not a state. But although this proposal is used extensively for polemical purposes, most fundamentalists, as noted earlier, have abiding ideological aversions to formally surrendering Jewish sovereignty claims over large portions of the East Bank. Nor, in view of the apparent stability of the Hashemite kingdom, have advocates of this idea come up with specific measures Israel might take to implement it.
On the other hand, Yoel Ben-Nun and Moshe Levinger have both suggested that Israeli diplomatic initiatives focus on achieving de facto agreements with Syria to bring some order to Lebanon and stabilize Israel's northern front. 203 Whereas most fundamentalist commentary on Egyptian-Israeli relations emphasizes the outrageousness of Egyptian behavior in light of formal treaty commitments to normalize relations with Israel, Meir Har-Noi argued in 1986 that Israel should accept the "cold peace" with as a justification for not moving toward negotiations on other issues and as a means of protecting the domestic political position of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. 204
Ultimately, however, voices within Gush Emunim calling for useful opportunities for Israeli political or diplomatic activity in the Arab world are lost within the unremitting chorus of declaration, warning, and debate over how best to prevent or sabotage initiatives that might lead to peace negotiations. Insofar as Gush Emunim adherents concern themselves with Israeli policy toward Arabs outside the Land of Israel, this is their concern and the focus of their analysis. Such analyses pour forth in great volume and intensity whenever negotiating initiatives appear to be moving forward. As these initiatives fade, so does discussion of Israeli foreign policy toward the Arab world. Haetzni is the most prolific of Gush authors regarding what he has repeatedly seen as the great and imminent danger that various Israeli, Jordanian, Egyptian, European, or American attempts to move the peace process ahead might be successful. In April 1985, for example, he condemned the Likud for letting Prime Minister Peres and other dovish ministers hijack Israeli foreign policy
It has become clear that the architect of the Hussein Arafat agreement was Mubarak the Egyptian, and that the agreement is only the first stage in a well constructed plan whose culmination will be an Egyptian-Jordanian-PLO-Israeli meeting to discuss surrender of the Land ("Camp David" haying been thrown into the waste basket because it was deemed, God save us, too pro-Israeli) 205 Whoever does not want to live in a "Peace Now" state, the plans for which are here and now being implemented, had better well organize to dam up the flood, and do it now--or they will wake up one day, in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza and in Golan, and perhaps also in Jerusalem, as we did in Sinai: too late. 206
Somewhat more representative of this dominant frame of mind than the typically panicky Haetzni is Amiel Unger, who systematically presents an uncompromising, but polemically attractive, negotiating position. Unger suggests a set of demands that Gush Emunim can formally endorse in order to rally public opinion against negotiations, should they appear likely, and ensure their failure, should they begin.
Unger explicitly rejects Ben-Nun's and Levinger's suggestions that a de facto agreement with the Syrians is possible. Discussions about Assad the "godfather of Lebanese terrorism," weaken Israel's rejection of negotiations with the PLO. Those who believe that there are some Arabs more willing and able to come to terms with Israel than others are suffering from dangerous delusions. "There is no difference in this regard between Amman, el-Bireh, and Iksal in the Galilee." By including Israeli Arabs as part of the Arab enemy, Unger is able to suggest a negotiating position that can sound reasonable to many Israelis, while being so far from the Arab position as to prevent the "Sadatization" of Arafat.
If Israel is pressured to speak with a "joint" delegation of Arabs, it should include Mean and Toufik Ziad [Israeli Arab members of Knesset]. And if they speak of borders, the borders that we should speak about are from 1921, before 2/3 of the Land of Israel was given to Abdullah. . . .If the Arabs demand areas free of Jews, we will make symmetrical demands-areas free of Arabs. Who-ever demands evacuation of Susia will have to submit to the demand to evacuate Sakhnin and whoever wants Tekoa to be free of Jews will be pressured to agree to pay in Um El Fahm [Jewish settlements on the West Bank and Arab villages in the Galilee]. 207
Implicit within the fundamentalist debate on the prospects for peace
is the conviction that compromise is simply not a route to that
objective. Some accommodate themselves to the continuing state of war by
seeing it as an increasingly bloody but increasingly promising harbinger
of redemption, or by shifting the focus of their attention to the
necessity for religious and cultural change. Others, whether they
anticipate a divinely defined redemption or not, steel themselves for a
belligerent relationship with the Arabi Muslim world that will extend as
far into the future as they can imagine. Within this realm of discourse,
political negotiations for peace, under whatever guise and however
structured, cannot be an opportunity. The episodic emergence of
initiatives designed to about such negotiations is important, however.
Jewish fundamentalists understand negotiating
opportunities, which are tempting to many Israelis, as times of testing,
for themselves and for the Jewish people as a whole Will or will not the
Jewish people become trapped in a process whose very assumptions
contradict the imperatives which God and Jewish history have established?
Notes
Note 1: Gideon Aran, The Land of Israel Between Religion and Politics: The Movement to Stop the Retreat in Sinai (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 1985) p.23. Back.
Note 2: Nekuda, no.59, June 10, 1983, p.16. Back.
Note 3: Shlomo Aviner, "Messianic Realism," in Avner Tomaschoff, ed., Whose Homeland (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1978) p.117. Back.
Note 4: For this debate, see Yehoshua Zuckerman (then director of Merkaz HaRav), "Implementing the Ambush of Faith," Nekuda, no.43, May 21, 1982, pp.18-22; Shlomo Aviner, "The Way of Rav Tzvi Yehuda, May He Rest in Peace, and Our Struggle for the Land of Israel," Nekuda, no.50, November11, 1982, pp. 16-17; and Isser Klansky and Haim Steiner, "Courage and Strength in the Struggle for the Completeness of the Land," Nekuda, no.56, March 28, 1983, pp. 20-23. Back.
Note 5: Illustrative of this debate are Yisrael Ariel, "Was There Indeed a Revolt against Heaven?" Nekuda, no.73, May 1984, pp.16-17; Yehuda Zoldan, "Patience of Redemption," Nekuda, no.76, August 10, 1984, pp.22-23; David Hanshke, "What Has Happened to the Lights of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook?" Nekuda, no.79, October 1984, pp.12-13, 28; David Stiu, "The Lights Are Not Out!" Nekuda, no.84, March 1, 1985, pp.18-20; and long, angry letters from David Hanshke in Nekuda, no.85, April 5, 1985, p.4, and David Stiu inNekuda, no. 87, May 24, 1985, p.3. Back.
Note 6: Eleazar Waldman, "The Struggle on the Road to Peace," Artzi vol. 3 (1983) pp. 18, 20. Back.
Note 7: Yisrael Yaakov Yuyal, "Religious-Zionist Messianism: Prospects and Perils," in Tomaschoff, Whose Homeland, pp.104-105. Yuval's particular interpretation of Rav Kook would appear to place him outside the boundaries of the fundamentalist worldview; but by basing his argument on Abraham Isaac Kook's writings, he does illustrate the authoritative nature of Kookist ideas within the fundamentalist camp. Back.
Note 8: For an excellent summary of the halachic debate over a variety of disputes on issues such as status of non-Jews in the Jewish state, non-Jews' property rights, definition of idolatry, and applicability of pikuach nefesh to territorial issues, see J. David Bleich, "Judea and Samaria: Settlement and Return," Tradition, vol.18, no.1 (Summer 1979) pp.44-78. Bleich's summary judgments tend to fall on the "dovish-moderate" side of the interpretive spectrum. Back.
Note 9: See Aryeh Newman, "The Centrality of Eretz Yisrael in Nachmanides," Tradition, vol.10, no.1 (Summer 1968) pp.21-30. Back.
Note 10: Shlomo Aviner, "Nor Have We Been False to Thy Covenant", Artzi vol.1 (1982) pp.43-44. Back.
Note 11: Shlomo Aviner, "Dialogues between Shaltiel and the Sage," Artzi vol.1 (1982) p.32. Back.
Note 12: Interview with Yehoshua Zuckerman, Nekuda, no.73, May 25, 1984, p.8. Back.
Note 13: Yaakov Ariel, "Return of the Regained Territories-The Halakhic Aspect," Whose Homeland, pp.127-155; and Yaakov Ariel, "Our Relations with the Arabs: The Halachic Moral Dimension," Artzi vol.4 (Spring 1986) p.12. Back.
Note 14: These and other fundamentalist rabbis who take this halachic position express the view that it is, of course, inconceivable, that the territories acquired by Israel in 1967 could be considered a security liability and not a security asset. See Avraham Elkana Kahana-Shapira, "Eretz Israel's Integrity in Halakhah and Agadah," in Tomaschoff, Whose Homeland, pp. 160-175; and Yehoshuah Menachem Ehrenberg, "Territories, War, and Danger to Life," in Tomaschoff; Whose Homeland, pp.176-181. Back.
Note 15: Yisrael Ariel, "Was There Indeed a Revolt," p. 16. Back.
Note 16: Zoldan, "Patience of Redemption," pp.22-23. Back.
Note 17: Yitzhak Shilat, "Useless Messianism and False Messianism," Nekuda, no.76, August 10, 1984, pp.16-17. Back.
Note 18: Yoel Ben-Nun, "The Way of the Lights and the War of the Perversion," Nekuda, no.91, September 15, 1985, p. 11. Back.
Note 19: Nekuda, no.88, June 24, 1985, p.24. Back.
Note 20: Yehuda Etzion, "From the Laws of Existence to the Law of Destiny" Nekuda, no.75, July 6, 1984, p.23; and Yehuda Etzion, "Finally to Raise the Banner of Jerusalem," Nekuda, no.93, November 22, 1985, p.22. Back.
Note 21: Yehuda Etzion, 'Finally to Raise the Banner of Jerusalem," p.23. Back.
Note 22: Yehuda Etzion, "From the Banner of Jerusalem to a Movement of Redemption," Nekuda, no.94, December 20, 1985, p.28. Back.
Note 23: In certain of his articles Etzion strongly criticizes Tzvi Yehuda, and it is reliably reported that he considers the Kookist approach to redemption to be superseded by his own, adapted largely from the work of an obscure religious member of Lehi, Shabbatai Ben-Dov. See Ben-Nun, "The Way of the Lights," p. 11; Ehud Sprinzak, Each Man Right in His Own Eyes: Illegalism in Israeli Society (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim, 1986) p.140; and Yehuda Etzion, "From the Laws of Existence to the Law of Destiny," Nekuda, no.75, July 6, 1984, pp. 22-23, 26-27. Back.
Note 24: Aviva Segal, "If It Is Forbidden for Yehuda Etzion to Be a Prophet, Then It Is Forbidden for You Too, Yedidya,"Nekuda, no.92, October23, 1985, p.24. For a major defense of Etzion's views by the editor of Shabbatai Ben- Dov's writings, see Dan Tor, "To Continue to Push the End," Nekuda, no.96, February 21, 1986, pp. 12-13. Back.
Note 25: While some nonreligious fundamentalists-including Eldad and Haetzni-consider themselves members of Gush Emunim and are fully accepted as such, others-including Neeman, Cohen, and Eitan-while active partners or benefactors of Gush Emunim, should not formally be seen as part of it. Back.
Note 26: From an interview with Geula Cohen, quoted in Julien Bauer "A New Approach to Religious-Secular Relationships?" in David Newman, ed., The Impact of Gush Emunim: Politics and Settlement in the West Bank, (London: Croom Helm, 1985) p.l0l. Not coincidentally, the Hebrew meaning of her first name, Geula, is "redemption." Back.
Note 27: Haaretz, September 16, 1979. See JPRS, no.74485, October31, 1979, p.85. For detailed comment by a secularist founder of the Movement for the Whole Land of Israel concerning the dissipation of will among Labor Zionist youth and the significance of Gush Emunim as the spiritually exhausted Labor movement's true successor, see an interview with Professor Rivka Shatz-Oppenheimer, "The True Messianism of Gush Emunim," Nekuda, no.69, February 3.1984, pp.12-13. See also Eliezer Schweid, The Land of Israel: National Home or Land of Destiny (Rutherford, New Jersey: Herzl Press, 1985) pp.198, 212. Back.
Note 28: Un Zvi Greenberg, "Ode to the Nation" (1933) translated in Israel Eldad, The Jewish Resolution: Jewish Statehood (New York: Shengold Publishers, 1971) pp. 52-53. Back.
Note 29: Eldad, pp. 85-86. Back.
Note 30: David Weisburd, "Deviance as Social Reaction: A Study of the Gush Emunim Settlements in Israel," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1985) p.224. Back.
Note 31: In addition to the sources cited in this chapter, excellent examples of this approach are available in Eliezer Livneh, Israel and the Crisis of Western Civilization (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Schocken Books, 1972); and Aharon Ben-Ami, ed., The Book of The Whole Land of Israel, (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Freedman, 1977). Back.
Note 32: Eldad, Jewish Revolution, p. 56. Back.
Note 33: Fisch, Zionist Revolution, p. 78. Back.
Note 34: Eldad, Jewish Revolution, p. 56. Back.
Note 35: Ibid., pp. 55-56. Back.
Note 36: Tsvi Raanan, Gush Emunim (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim, 1980) pp.216-217. Back.
Note 37: Eldad, Jewish Revolution, pp.134-135. Back.
Note 38: Koteret Rashit, no.l02, November 14, 1984, p.23. For similar suggestions of Israel's proper geopolitical ambitions, set in nonreligious fundamentalist terms, see Ora Shem-Ur, The Challenges of Israel (New York. Shengold Publishers, 1980) especially p.69-70, 74. Back.
Note 39: Yuval Neeman, "National Goals," in Alouph Hareven, ed., On the Difficulty of Being an Israeli (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem. Van Leer, 1983) p.268. Back.
Note 40: Yehuda Elitzur, "The Borders of Eretz Israel in Jewish Tradition," in Tomaschoff, Whose Homeland, pp.42-53. Back.
Note 41: Yoel Elitzut, "Is Lebanon also the Land of Israel?: The Northern Borders of the Land of Israel in the Sources and According to the Halacha," Nekuda, no. 48, n.d., pp.10-13. Back.
Note 42: Shlomo Aviner, "Nor Have We Been False," p. 38. Back.
Note 43: Tzvi Yehuda Kook, "Between the People and Its Land," Artzi, vol.2 (1982) p.19. Back.
Note 44: Uzi Kelcheim, "Our Moral Title to the Land of Israel-in the Writings of Ramban (Nachmanides)," in Tomaschoff, Whose Homeland, p. 69. Back.
Note 45: Hanan Porat, "In Sinai the Brigade of Fighters Was Established," Nekuda, no. 43, May 21, 1982, p.17. Back.
Note 46: Personal interview with Eleazar Waldman, Kiryat Arba, April 30, 1984. See Jerusalem Post Supplement, March 25, "83, pp.4-5. This was also Menachem Begin's position, maintaining loyalty to the traditional slogan of the Revisionist movement, still officially valid, "Both banks of the Jordan-this one is ours and that one is also!". Back.
Note 47: Elitzur, "Is Lebanon also the Land of Israel?" pp 10-13. Back.
Note 48: Maariv, March 18, 1983. Back.
Note 49: Nekuda, no. 50, November 12, 1982, p.23. Back.
Note 50: Yoel Ben-Nun, "The State of Israel vs. the Land of Israel?" Nekuda, no.72, April 16, 1984, p.31. Back.
Note 51: For most purposes the expanded East Jerusalem area was annexed in June 1967. Israeli law was applied to the Golan Heights in December 1982, but discussions disturbing to Gush Emunim continued within the Labor parry over the possi bility of a territorial compromise with Syria. Back.
Note 52: See, for example, Dan Margalit, "Zevulon Hammer's Turnabout," Haaretz, October 4, 1982 (translated in FBIS October 6, 1982, pp.114-170; interview with Hammer broadcast on Israel Defense Forces radio, October 10, 1982 (transcribed in FBIS, October 12, 1982, pp.I8-9); interview with Yehuda Ben-Meir, Nekuda, no.54, February 4, 1983, pp. 10-13; and Yehuda Amital, "In the Trap of Perfection," Nekuda, no.52, December 24, 1982, pp.8-11. Back.
Note 53: Amital, "In the Trap," p. 10. Back.
Note 54: See Nekuda, no.53, January 15, 1983, p.3; interview with Yehoshua Zuckerman, "Merkaz Harav as a Propaganda Center," Nekuda, no. 54, February 4, 1983, p.5; Yisrael Ariel, "Agudah with a Knitted Skullcap," Nekuda, no.55, February 22, 1983, pp.28-29; Yoel Ben-Nun, Moshe Levinger, and Moshe Simon, "Responses to Rav Amital," Nekuda, no.53, January 15, 1983, pp.4-7; and Hanan Porat, "The Controversy with Rav Amital over the Land of Israel," Nekuda, no.56, March 28, 1983, pp. 26-29, 36. Back.
Note 55: Eldad, Jewish Revolution, "p.171-172. Back.
Note 56: A very similar distinction was made by Rabbi Elchanon Ben-Nun in his characterization of the overall shape of the discussion at a preelection Gush Emunim symposium in 1981. See "To Influence the Results of the Election," Nekuda, no. 26, March 3, 1981, p.15. A more systematic discussion of essentially the same two perspectives is presented in Eliezer Schweid, "The Underground and the Ideology of Gush Emunim," Nekuda, no.75, July 6, 1984, "p.18-22. Back.
Note 57: Eliyakim Haetzni, The Shock of Withdrawal from the Land of Israel (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Elisha, 1986) p.19. Back.
Note 58: Yisrael Ariel, "Was There Indeed a Revolt," p.16. Back.
Note 59: Dan Tor, "To Continue to Push," p. 13. This article is dedicated to Yair (Abraham Stern, leader of the prestate Jewish terrorist organization known as Lehi, or the Stern Gang), whom Tor calls "the greatest pusher of the end of the generation of the Redemption." Back.
Note 60: Moshe Tzuriel, "In Defense of Redemption Initiatives," Nekuda" no. 105, December 9, 1986, p.15. See also Dan Tor, "To Continue to Push," pp.12-13. Back.
Note 61: Beni Katzover, remarks at a Gush Emunim symposium on political strategy held in March 1981. Nekuda" no.26, April 3, 1981, p.6. Back.
Note 62: EleazarWaldman, "Do Not Aspire to Little by Little,"Nekuda" no.59, June 10, 1983, p.20. Back.
Note 63: Ibid., p.20 (emphasis in original). Back.
Note 64: Beni Katzovet, "Plan to Return to the System of Struggle of Sebastia," Nekuda, no.83, February 1, 1985, p.13; and "The People Is with Us: We Must Break from the System," Nekuda, no.93, November 22, 1985, p.14. Back.
Note 65: Quoted from Nekuda in Yehuda Litani, "The Mass of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza," Haaretz, December 26, 1980. Back.
Note 66: Eliyakim Haetzni." Shock of Withdrawal. For a similar argument, see Baruch Lior, "To Prepare the Generations for Prayer and War," Nekuda, no.85, April 5, 1985, pp.11-12. Back.
Note 67: Resolutions quoted in Moshe Shapira, "The State of Israel vs. the State of Yesha," Nekuda, no.93, November 22, 1985, p.11 When another settler publication Aleph Yud, published an article in October 1985 calling openly for armed struggle against the Peres government, it was suspended by government order. Back.
Note 68: The term used, shtadlan, has a particularly distasteful meaning in Zionist parlance, referring to the kowtowing "court Jews" of the Diaspora, who traditionally protected Jewish communities by serving at the beck and call of the gentile ruler. Back.
Note 69: Dan Tor, "All the Flags Have Been Folded," Nekuda, no.79, September 1984, p.11. Back.
Note 70: Baruch Lior, "To Prepare the Generations," pp.12-13. Back.
Note 71: Ibid., p.12 For an extended version of this argument, see Haetzni, Shock of Withdrawal" pp.20-29. Back.
Note 72: Tzuriel, "In Defense of Redemption Initiatives", p.14. Back.
Note 73: See, for example, Haetzni, Shock of Withdrawal, p.10. Back.
Note 74: Shlomo Aviner, "Our Attachment to the Land of Israel," Artzi, vol.1 (1982) p. 14. Back.
Note 75: Yitzhak Shilat, "To Return to the Way of the King," Nekuda, no.89, July 26, 1985, p.15. For a similar but secular use of long periods of biblical history to characterize the future course of the redemption process and justify a consensus building approach, see Israel Eldad, "I Have Not Fallen from the Ladder," Nekuda, no.65, April 11, 1983, pp.11-12. Characterizing the view that the redemption process is lengthy, intricate, and only partially dependent on human action as the majority view is consistent with the results of a 1984 opinion survey of 100 settlers of American background. See Chaim Waxman, "American Settlers in the Territories," in Newman, Impact, p.219. Back.
Note 76: "Strength in a Time of Crisis," Nekuda, no.73, May 5, 1984, p.6. Back.
Note 77: Moshe Levinger, "Don't Throw Away the Old Banners," Nekuda, no.97, March 25, 1986, p.7. For similar arguments, opposing any sort of intra-Jewish or antistate violence and for maintaining the utmost tolerance toward Jewish critics, see Yaakov Ariel, 'The Authority of the Halacha," Nekuda, no.74, June 21, 1984, pp.20-21; Eliezer Schweid, "Democracy Challenged," Nekuda, no. 78, September21, 1984, pp.15-19; the interview with Yehoshua Zuckerman in Nekuda, no.54, February 4, 1983, p.4; and Yitzhak Shilat, "Without Hysteria," Nekuda, no.93, November 22, 1985, p.10. Back.
Note 78: Interview with Rabbi Yehoshua Zuckerman, by Bembi Erlich, Nekuda, no.73, May 25, 1984, p.9. Back.
Note 79: Remarks by Yaakov Ariel, rabbi of the Neve Dekalim settlement, where the symposium was held. Nekuda, no.59, June 10, 1983, p.17. Back.
Note 80: Yosef Ben-Sholomo, "Ideological Struggle with the Right and Left," Nekuda, no.85, April 5, 1985, pp.20-22. The dissimulation involved in the consensus building approach, which itself is derived from Abraham Isaac Kook's formula for secular-religious relations, helps explain the difference between the policies and outlooks articulated by Ben-Shlomo in Nekuda and those he shares with nonfundamentalist Jewish audiences. See his interview in Tikkun, vol.2, no.2 (1987) pp.72-77. Back.
Note 81: Interview with Moshe Levinger; Nekuda, no.83, February 1, 1985, p.7. Back.
Note 82: Moshe Levinger, "With Alertness and Security," Nekuda, no.93, November22, 1985, p.8. For the same argument, see also Yoel Ben-Nun, "Not to Be Nervous and Not to Be Made Nervous," Nekuda, no.68, January 13, 1984, pp.4-7. Back.
Note 83: See appendix 3 for a biographical sketch of Uri Elitzur. Back.
Note 84: Uri Elittur, "I Am No More Zionist and You are No More Sane," Nekuda, no. 53, January 14, 1983, p.19. Back.
Note 85: He has been a regular contributor, for example, to the left-of-center news magazine Koteret Rashit. Back.
Note 86: Yoel Ben-Nun, "For Security and Faith; Against Screams of Crisis,"Nekuda, no. 85, April 5, 1985, p.11. Back.
Note 87: Ben-Nun, "Way of Lights," pp.8-l1. Back.
Note 88: Ben-Nun, "State of Israel," p.29. See also Ben-Nun, "Not to Be Nervous," pp. 4-7. Back.
Note 89: Ben-Nun, "For Security and Faith," p.11. Back.
Note 90: Ibid., pp.10-l1. Back.
Note 91: Yoel Ben-Nun, "Authority Now," Nekuda, no.88, June24, 1985, pp.18-19. Back.
Note 92: Eleazar Waldman, "Yes, Conquer the Mount," Nekuda, no.55, February 27, 1983, p.21. Back.
Note 93: See, especially, Eleazar Waldman's defense of the Lebanon War, "Struggle," p. 21. For the secular fundamentalist equivalent of this message, involving Israel's future role as a technological savior for much of mankind, see Yuval Neeman, "National Goals," p.268. Back.
Note 94: Quoted in Miriam Shiloh, "Do Not Hate!" Nekuda, no.34, September 28, 1981, p.17. Back.
Note 95: Kook, "Between the People," p. 19; Ariel, "Our Relations with Arabs," p. 13; and Dov Lior, "The Arabs and Us," Artzi, vol.4 (Spring 1986) p.21 See also the advice of Moshe Ben-Yosef (Hagar) not to burn copies of the New Testament, but only because, indirectly, Christian beliefs affirm the Jewish people's connection to the Land of Israel. Nekuda, no.93, November 22, 1985, p.26. Back.
Note 96: Kook, "Between the People," p.20. The reference here is to George Eliot's proto-Zionist novel Daniel Deronda. Back.
Note 97: Yonatan Aharoni, "Every Jew and Mt. Ephraim," in Ben-Ami, Book of The Whole Land, p.40. For elaboration of the same argument, see also the essay in that volume by Benjamin Oppenheimer, "Israel and Its Land: Principles of Jewish Nationalism," pp.45-61. Back.
Note 98: Esther Azolai, "Conquest of the Land: The Moral Dimension," Nekuda, no. 77, August 31, 1984, pp.18" 31. For the same argument put forward even more graphically" see Etzion, "From the Laws of Existence," pp.22-24. Back.
Note 99: Moshe Levinger, '"We and the Arabs," Nekuda, no.36, November27, 1981, p. 15. For a clear statement of the notion of the distinctive "mission" of the Jews, which overrides all other considerations and makes them unique as a people, see Moshe Simon, "The People Denies Its Destiny," Nekuda, no.91, September 15, 1985, pp. 6-7, 36. Back.
Note 100: Moshe Ben-Yosef, "A Good Jerusalem Boy No Longer," Nekuda, no.88, Tune 24, 1985, p.9. Back.
Note 101: Moshe Ben-Yosef, "The Emancipation Has already Destroyed the Third Commonwealth," Nekuda, no.94, December 20, "85, p.14. Concerning the "Christianized" and "anemic travesty of our creed that was evolved during the Emancipation," see Eldad, Jewish Revolution, p.173 See also Yaakov Ariel's characterization of the "desolation" brought upon the Jewish people by the Emancipation in "Our Relations with the Arabs," p.19. Back.
Note 103: Moshe Ben-Yosef, "Secular Zionism by Religious Means," Nekuda, no. 78, September 21, 1984, pp.28-31. Back.
Note 104: Interview with Moshe Ben-Yosef by Ofta Amitai, Nekuda, no. 100, July 11, 1986, p.28 For the detailed argument, see Ben-Yosef, "The Struggle for Survival against the Liberal Holocaust," Nekuda, no.80, November 23, 1984, pp.20-22. Back. Benjamin Oppenheimer, "Israel and Its Land: Principles
Note 105: Amitai interview with Ben-Yosef, p.28. Back.
Note 106: Moshe Ben-Yosef, "Emancipation," p.15. Back.
Note 107: Moshe Ben-Yosef, "From the Vision to Nihilism," Nekuda, no.91, September 15, 1985, p.24. Back.
Note 108: Moshe Ben-Yosef, '"Where Is the Border?" Nekuda, no. 95, January 2l, 1986, p. 23. Back.
Note 109: Ben-Yosef "Struggle for Survival," p.22. Back.
Note 110: For Tzvi Shiloach's views, see Gideon Levy, Haaretz, March 23, 1984; Amiel Unger "The Broken Dream of the National Unity Government," Nekuda, no. 98, April 23, 1986, pp.16-17; and Israel Eldad (Interview, Bamachane, July 10,1985, in JPRS 85-110, August 25, 1985) p.42. See also Dan Nimrod, Peace Now: Blueprint for National Suicide (Montreal: Dawn Publishing, 1984). Back.
Note 111: Yosef Nedya, "Sane Zionism-or Believing Zionism?" Artzi vol.2 (1982) p. 45. Back.
Note 112: Haetzni, Shock of Withdrawal p.35. Back.
Note 113: Eliyakim Haetzni, "Even Now a Civil War is Liable to Erupt," Nekuda no.82, January 4, 1985, p.18 (emphasis in original). Back.
Note 114: Haetzni, Shock of Withdrawal, p.33. For excellent analyses of the potential for this kind of civil revolt, see Ze'ev Schiff, Haaretz, November 21, 1985; Lea Anbel, "The Hussein Initiative: What Will the Settlers in the Territories Do," Koteret Rashit, no.131, June 5, 1986, p.7; and Mark Gefen, "The Revolt in Judea and Samaria is Coming Out of Hiding," AI-Hamishmar November 8, 1985 (translated in FBIS, November 15, 1985, pp. 19-Ill). Back.
Note 115: In a poll of 539 Gush Emunim settlers in 1981-82, two-thirds responded that they either agreed or strongly agreed that according to Jewish law, death must be chosen before acceptance of withdrawal from the West Bank. Support for this principle was evenly divided between religious and nonreligious settlers. See Weisburd, "Deviance as Social Reaction," pp.222, 224. Back.
Note 116: See, for example, "Zionists for Palestine," Nekuda, no.81, December 14, 1984, p.5. For similar sentiments, see Yehuda Zoldan, "Fewer Conflicts, More Meetings," Nekuda" no.99, May 30, 1986, pp.8-9; Unger, "Broken Dream," pp 16-17; and Eliyakim Haetzni, "Abandoning Parts of the Land of Israel to Foreign Sovereignty Is Not Zionism," Nekuda, no.100, July 11, 1986, p.22. Back.
Note 117: Eliezer Schweid, "The Underground and the Ideology of Gush Emunim" Nekuda" no.75, July 6, 1984, p.20. Back.
Note 118: Yehuda Hankin, "Judaism or Democracy," Nekuda, no.109, April 14,1987, p. 18. Back.
Note 119: Tzuriel, "Defense," p.15. Back.
Note 120: Haetzni, Shock of Withdrawal" pp.28-29. Back.
Note 121: Zoldan, "Fewer Conflicts," pp.8-9. Back.
Note 122: "Celebration of a Decade," Nekuda, no.69, February 3, 1984, p.3. Back.
Note 123: "Beware of Leftism," Nekuda" no.98, April 23, 1986, p.7. Back.
Note 124: Menachem Froumin, "To Conquer the Source of Scorn," Nekuda" no.108, March 13, 1987, p.23. Back.
Note 125: Avraham Mintz, "The Left Is Serious, the Left Is Dangerous," Nekuda" no.109, April 14, 1987, p.32. Back.
Note 126: Nekuda, no.95, January21, 1986, p.3. For rabbinical opinions similar to Ben-Nun's, see Shilat, "Without Hysteria," p.10; and Shapira, "State of Israel," p. 11. Back.
Note 127: Yehuda Amital, address delivered to students at the Kfar Etzion Yeshiva, Nekuda" no.52, December 24, 1982, p.10. Back.
Note 128: Nekuda, no.86, April26, 1985, pp.27-28; and Nekuda" no.96, February 21, 1986, p.19. Back.
Note 129: Eliyakim Haetzni, "Mysticism Goes Well with Communism," Nekuda, no.49, October 22, 1982, pp.14-15; Yoel Ben-Nun, "Independence Is Not a Gift" Nekuda, no.73, May 25, 1984, pp.20-21. Back.
Note 130: Eleazar Waldman, "Questions and Answers," Artzi vol.3 (1983) p.22. Back.
Note 131: See, in Ben-Ami, Book of the Whole Land, Shmuel Katz, "Toward a Sane National Policy: Background and Plan," pp.271-281, and Dov Yosephi, "Israel Between the Two Superpowers," pp.282-286. More recent versions of this argument appear regularly in the many publications of a prominent Gush Emunim support group in Canada, Dawn Publishing. See, for example, Dan Nimrod, ed., Views of the Middle East Conflict Rarely Seen in the Media, (Montreal: Dawn Publishing, 1985). Back.
Note 132: Mordechai Nisan, American Middle East Foreign Policy: A Political Reevaluation (Montreal: Dawn Publishing, 1982) pp.170, 185. Back.
Note 133: "A Strategy for Israel: Confrontation or Conciliation?" American Zionist (May-June 1976) pp.19-21. Back.
Note 134: Nekuda" no.54, February 4, 1983, p.2. For a comparison of Israel to North Vietnam, willing and able to fight either superpower to the death, see Ora Shem-Ur, The Challenges of Israel (New York: Shengold Publishers, 1980) p.62. Back.
Note 135: See references to and quotes from Menachem Kasher, Shlomo Aviner, and, especially, Israel Hess in Amnon Rubinstein, The Zionist Dream Revisited: From Herzl to Gush Emunim and Back (New York: Schocker Books, 1984) p.116 and Uriel Tal, "Foundations of a Political Messianic Trend in Israel," Jerusalem Quarterly no.35 (Spring 1985) pp.42-44; and Ehud Sprinzak, Gush Emunim: The Politics of Zionist Fundamentalism in Israel (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1986) p.12. The most explicit version of this argument appears in an article by Israel Hess entitled "The Torah's Commandment of Genocide," published in Bat Kol, the student journal of Bar-Ilan University, February 26, 1980. See also Amoz Ox, In the Land of Israel (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983) pp.87-100. Back.
Note 136: Haim Tsuria, "The Right to Hate," Nekuda, no.15, August28, 1980, p.12. Back.
Note 137: In 1985, for example, an extended debate was published in the pages ofNekuda on the proper lessons to be drawn from the biblical incident in which Shimon and Levy organized a slaughter of the inhabitants of Shechem. Back.
Note 138: Dov Lior, remarks at "The Arabs and Us," a symposium held at the Yehsiva Hesder Yamit, reported in Artzi, vol.4 (Spring 1986) p.21. Back.
Note 139: Dov Yosephi, "A Humane Solution to the Demographic Problem," in Ben-Ami Book of The Whole Land, pp. 345, 349 (emphasis in original). Back.
Note 140: Yedidya Segal, "Neither Arabic nor Arabs," Nekuda, no.9, May 16, 1980, pp.12-13. Back.
Note 141: Eilan Tor; "The Remedy for National Mental Illness," Nekuda, no.39, May 2, 1982, p.9. Back.
Note 142: Eli Susser, remarks at a Gush Emunim symposium, reported inNekuda, no.63, September 7, 1983, p.21, (emphasis in original). Back.
Note 143: David Rosensweig, "Peace for the Galilee War: The Wrong Address," Nekuda, no.63, December23, 1983, p.23. This article sparked a wide debate in Israel proper and among the settlers. Letters to the editor inNekuda on the issue were mostly supportive of Rosensweig. See, in particular, Nekuda, no.69, February 3, 1984, pp.28-29. Back.
Note 144: Jerusalem Domestic Service, April 14, 1986 (transcribed in FBIS April 16, 1986, p.15). Back.
Note 145: Moshe Ben- Yosef, "In Defense of the Transfer," Nekuda, no.109, April 14, 1987, pp.16-17. Back.
Note 146: See chapter 7, page 179, for information on a 1987 poll of rabbis in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that suggests that support for some sort of transfer option may be stronger than I indicate here. Back.
Note 147: David Weisburd and Vered Vinitzky, "Vigilantism as Rational Social Control: The Case of the Gush Emunim Settlers," in Myron Aronoff, ed., Cross-Currents in Israeli Culture and Politics Political Anthropology, vol.4, (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1984) p.74. Concerning Rafael Eitan's solution for the problem of local Arab unrest (sticks and beatings are preferable to the use of lethal force), see an interview broadcast on April 17, 1983, by Jerusalem Domestic Television Service (transcribed in FBIS, April 18, 1983, pp.15-7). Back.
Note 148: "We Must Block Terror," Nekuda, no.90, August 23, 1985, p.5. Back.
Note 149: Jerusalem Domestic Service. May 6.1987 transcribed in FBIS, May 7, 1987, p. 6).. Back.
Note 150: Michal Capra, "Beer and Olive Oil," Sof Shavua (Weekly supplement of Maariv), November 27, 1987, pp.10, 50. Back.
Note 151: Translated from Hatzofe, April 17, 1987, in Harty Milkman, ed., Israeli Press HighlightsBama'ale Newsletter, issued by the aliyah department of Gush Emunim in New York (Spring 1987) p.1. Back.
Note 152: "The Rabbis of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza: Encourage the Emigration of the Arabs," Nekuda, no.115, November 1987, p.37. For details concerning this poll, see chapter 7, note 2. Back.
Note 153: Ariel, "Our Relations with the Arabs," p. 16. Back.
Note 154: See Hanan Porat, "Policies toward the Arabs of the Land of Israel,"Artzi" vol.4 (Spring 1986) p.8. Back.
Note 155: Kook, "Between the People," p.20. Back.
Note 156: In the next issue ofNekuda one settler wrote on behalf of several who had joked among themselves at the embarrassing truth contained in this photograph. See Nekuda, no.69, February 3, 1984, p.29. Back.
Note 157: For various positions on these issues, see Shlomo Aviner, 'The Wholeness of the Land of Israel,"Artzi, vol.1(1982) pp.26-27; Arid, "Our Relations with the Arabs," pp.13-18; Lior, "The Arabs and Us," p. 21-22; Bezalel Zolty, "Lo Tehonnem: Halakhic Limitations on Gentile Property in Eretz Israel," in Tomaschoff, Whose Homeland, pp. 156-159; and Mordechai Nisan, "A New Perspective on Israeli-Arab Peace: Minority Rights in the Middle East," Plural Societies vol.15 (1984) pp.6-8. For an excellent summary of the classic sources involved in this debate, see J. David Bleich, "Judea and Samaria: Settlement and Return," Tradition., vol.18, no.1 (Summer 1979) pp.60-65, 73-76. Back.
Note 158: For one of the only systematic presentations of this position, see Dan Be'eri, "Autonomy for the Arabs of the Land of Israel," Nekuda, no.87, May24, 1985, pp. 10-11, 25. Back.
Note 159: Ariel, "Our Relations with the Arabs," p.19. Ariel implies that the citizenship option would be available only to Arabs who convert to Judaism. For application of the dhimmi model, see Nisan, "A New Perspective," pp.9-12. Back.
Note 160: When 539 Gush Emunim settlers were polled in 1981-1982, 64 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement "If Judea and Samaria are officially annexed, the local Arabs should be granted Israeli citizenship and given the right to vote." Only 13 percent agreed or strongly agreed. See Weisburd and Vinitzky, "Vigilantism," p.81. For Tehiya's outlook, see Yuval Neeman's discussion of the future of the Arab population (emigration, refugee resettlement outside the Land of Israel, and resident status for most of those that remain) in "National Goals," pp.264-266. Back.
Note 161: See Yosef Nedva, "Co-existence: The Danger and the Opportunity," Nekuda, no.56, March 28, 1983, pp.13-14. Back.
Note 162: For these opposing perspectives, see, for example, Yakki Fried, "Diary of a Terrorist," Nekuda, no.33, August 28, 1981, p.9; Amiel Unget, 'Yesha after the Subsidies," Nekuda, no.58, Ma" 17, 1983, pp.22-23; Aharon Baruchin, "Who Will Build?" Nekuda, no.91, September 15, 1985, p"2; and Simcha Stettner, remarks at the symposium ""he Arabs and Us," p. 22. Back.
Note 163: Yaakov Ariel, "Rosenzweig Recognizes a Palestinian Entity," Nekuda, no.69, February 3, 1984, p. 28; Nisan, " New Perspective," p.10; and Porat, "Policies toward the Arabs," p.8. Back.
Note 164: Personal interview with Yonathan Blass, Ofra, April 1984. Back.
Note 165: Porat," Policies toward the Arabs," p.5. Back.
Note 166: In the previously cited 1984 survey of opinions of settlers of American background, the following responses were given to a general question about policy toward local Arabs: Leave as is except for troublemakers, 30 percent; offer citizenship, and require that those who refuse leave or remain second-class, 30 percent; must find way for peaceful coexistence somehow, 17 percent; provide economic incentives for them to leave, 10 percent; force them out; 4 percent; divide the territories, 3 percent; don't know, 6 percent. See Chaim I. Waxman, "Political and Social Attitudes of Americans among the Settlers in the Territories," in Newman, (ed.) Impact, p 215. Back.
Note 167: Shiloh, "Do Not Hate!" pp. 16-17. For similar sentiments, see Chagi Huberman, "Objectivity with Limited Liability," Nekuda, no.64, October 14, 1983, pp. 14-15; Shlomo Kaniel, "Between Good and Evil," Nekuda, no.77, August 31, 1984, pp. 14-15; Hagai Ben-Artzi, "The Moral Attitude toward the Arabs," Nekuda, no.84, January 3, 1985, pp.12-13; and Zey Ben-Shachar, "Love Your Neighbor as Yourself," Nekuda, no.78, September21, 1984, pp. 32-33. Back.
Note 168: Hanoch Alon, "Preventive Knowledge," Nekuda, no.7, March 21, 1980, pp. 6-7; and Liora Karet, remarks at "Yesha and Israeli Society," a Gush Emunim symposium, reported in Nekuda, no.63, September 7, 1983, p.36. Back.
Note 169: "A Good Neighbor Is Good," Nekuda, no.77, August 31, 1984, p.5. Back.
Note 170: Yehuda Shabib, "The Lost Honor of Dinah Daughter of Leah,"Nekuda, no.81, December 14, 1984, p.22. Back.
Note 171: Ben-Artzi, "Moral Attitude," p. 13. Back.
Note 172: See Waldman, "Struggle," pp. 27-28. Back.
Note 173: "Gush Emunim Extends hand for peace to Jericho," Jerusalem Post International Edition, week ending May 9, 1987, p.3. Back.
Note 174: See Gideon Erlich, "Truth and Faith," Nekuda, no.47, September 3, 1982, pp. 6-7; and Yehezkel Levi, "Arguments without Foundation," Nekuda, no.86, April 26, 1986, pp.25-26. Back.
Note 175: Yoel Ben-Nun, "Equality and Participation--Man-made Values," Koteret Rashit no.151, October 23, 1985, pp.44-45. Back.
Note 176: Eliyakim Haetzni, "The Chasm is Bridged," Nekuda, no.66, November 25, 1983, pp.12-13. Back.
Note 177: Personal interview with Yisrael Harel, Ofra, April 1984. Back.
Note 178: Ben-Nun, "Not to Be Nervous," p.7 (emphasis in original). For similar arguments, see the editorial in this same issue, p.3; Orna Dann, "On Yaakov Feitelson: Jacob's Ladder," Nekuda, no.67, December 23, 1983, pp.8-9; and Kaniel, "Between Good and Evil," pp.14-15. Back.
Note 179: Waldman, "Struggle," p.27. Back.
Note 180: Hanan Porat, "Controversy with Rav Amital," p.28. Back.
Note 181: Ibid. (emphasis in original). "Repair of the world," is a concept in Jewish mysticism referring to the Jewish task of completing and uniting a fractured cosmos in order to help bring about the final redemption. Back.
Note 182: Aran, Land of Israel, p.14. Back.
Note 183: Waldman, "Struggle," p.20. Back.
Note 184: Ibid., p.14. See also the conclusion in Michael Hershkowitz, "On Values and Morality," Artzi, vol.4 (Spring 1986) pp.80-91. For a nonreligious formulation of the same point, see Yoram Ben-Meir, "On the Internal Point," Artzi vol. 1(1982) p.19. Back.
Note 185: Michael Schwartz, "War, Peace, and Territories in the Eyes of Islam," Artzi vol. 4 (Spring 1986) p.37. Back.
Note 186: Arnold M. Soloway, The Role of Arab Political Culture and History in the Conflict with Israel (Montreal: Dawn Publishing, 1985) pp.6-7. Concerning the "implacable" nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict, see also Paul Eidelberg, The Case of Israel's Jewish Underground, (Montreal: Dawn Publishing, 1985) pp.6-7; and Shem-Ur, Challenges, pp.21, 48-52. Back.
Note 187: Shmuel Katz, No Solution to the Arab-Palestinian Problem, (Montreal: Dawn Publishing, 1985) pp.35-36. See also Moshe Sharon "Interim Arrangements in Light of the Pax Islamica," in Ben-Ami, Book of The Whole Land, pp.263-268. Back.
Note 188: Interview with Rafael Eitan, in Yediot Acharonot, January; 21, 1983 (translated in FBIS, January 27, 1983,p. 13); and Maariv, February 27, 1983 (translated in FBIS, March 1, 1983, p.19). Back.
Note 189: "Tzomet Expects a Green Light from the Settlements," Nekuda, no.67, December 23, 1983, pp.26-27. Back.
Note 190: Interview with Abraham Yoffe, in Ben-Ami, Book of The Whole Land, p.192. See also the interview in this volume with General Aharon Davidi, "The War Aims of the People of Israel," pp.199-203. Back.
Note 191: Ibid., p.188. Concerning the likely use of Israeli military force during the next 60-70 years to block the Strait of Hotmuz and blockade Arab ports against receipt of arms shipments, see Shem-Ur, Challenges, pp.58-79. Back.
Note 192: Ari Jabotinsky, "The Administered Areas under Arab Imperialism," in Ben Ami, Book of The Whole Land, pp.207-209 (emphasis in original). Back.
Note 193: Tzvi Shiloach, "The Destiny of Greater Israel in Its Ancient Land," in Ben-Ami, Book of The Whole Land, pp.213-240. Back.
Note 194: Ezra Zohar, "Israel and the Periphery Facing Pan-Arabism," in Ben-Ami, Book of The Whole Land, pp. 227-240. Back.
Note 195: Neeman, "National Goals," p. 113. Back.
Note 197: Yoel Ben-Nun, "The Arab-Israeli Conflict as a Cultural-Religious Problem," Artzi, vol.4 (Spring 1986) p.46. Back.
Note 198: Yaakov Ariel, "Return of the Regained Territories," pp.154-155. Back.
Note 199: Zot Haaretz, editorial, November 6, 1976, reprinted in Ben-Ami, .Book of the Whole Land, p. 33. Back.
Note 200: Eliyakim Haetzni, "Peace without a Treaty," Nekuda, no.51, December 3, 1982, pp.10-1l. Back.
Note 201: Eliyakim Haetzni, "The People is Retreating from Its Last Line of Defense," Nekuda, no.83, February 1, 1985, pp.8-9, 26. Back.
Note 202: Eliyakim Haetzni, "After the Next War," Nekuda, no.98, April23, 1986, p.35. Back.
Note 203: Yoel Ben-Nun, "Syria is the Partner," Nekuda, no.58, May 17, 1983, p.5; interview with Moshe Levinger, Nekuda, no.83, February 1, 1985, p.6. Back.
Note 204: Meir Har-Noi, "To Shift into Reverse,"Nekuda, no.97, Match 25, 1986, p.19. Back.
Note 205: Eliyakim Haetzni, "Shivers," Nekuda, no.85, April 5, 1985, p.16. Back.
Note 206: Eliyakim Haetzni, "The Negro Doesn't Change His Skin," Nekuda, no.92, October 23, 1985, p.29. Back.
Note 207: Amiel Unger, "Return to the Days of Sebastia," Nekuda, no.85, April 5, 1985, pp.13-14. Back.