The Problem of Gush Emunim
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THE PROBLEM OF GUSH EMUNIM Sture Ahlberg Stockholm Last year the state of Israel celebrated, as History everybody knows, its thirtieth anniversary. Looking back at the three decades that have The earliest roots of Gush Emunim may be passed since the proclamation of the State, we traced to the period after the Israeli victory in can discern a development which seems to the Six-Day War, 1967. The formal founding show different trends, some good and some of the movement, however,, goes back to Feb- less good. ruary 1974, when several hundred yeshivah- After the defeat of Nazi Germany and after students and young members of the National the massacre of six million Jews, the procla- Religious Party attended a convention at Kfar mation of an independent Jewish state in the Ezion, where they adopted its name and guid- land of their forbears, stood out as a new ing principles.' miracle. The Jewish people made their entry This choice of place was certainly not a once more among the nations of the world, mere coincidence. Kfar Ezion, a kibbutz about after an exile of two thousand years. A new 13 miles south of Jerusalem, is a symbol of confidence in the future was born. Jews from the long and cruel fight between Jews and different parts of the world gathered in Is- Arabs. The area was bought in 1935 by a Je- rael, and the country grew in strength, poli- wish farmer (S. Z. Holzmann) during the tically as well as economically. British Mandate period, and after that it was It would be wrong to underestimate the exposed to several attacks from the Arabs. In importance of the state to world Jewry. But 1943 the kibbutz was founded by Jewish immi- it would also be wrong to minimize the prob- grants from Poland, who had succeeded in lems that arose through the creation of the escaping from the Nazis. Five years later, on new state. One of the essential problems is the the same day as the state of Israel was proclai- so-called Palestinian one. Another, and one med, the kibbutz was taken by the Arabs after that has been focused upon more and more, is a bloody massacre. Then Kfar Ezion served the Israeli policy of settling in the occupied as a base for the Jordanian Legion until 1967, territories. when the Israelis took over. A movement that has made big headlines Kfar Ezion has also given its name to the lately is the Gush Emunim, a term which means so-called Ezion Bloc, a group of Jewish settle- "bloc of believers". The enormous publicity ments affiliated to the Religious Kibbutz Mo- round this phenomenon in the mass media has vement (Ha-Kibbutz ha-Dati). Here Gush made necessary a close study to the issues con- Emunim recruited its most devoted members, nected with the Gush Emunim movement. In among others Mr. Hanan Porat, the present lea- this paper I intend to give a somewhat more der.2 detailed account of background of this mo- Not only should the place of Gush Emu vement, and, above all, deal with some termi- nim's birth be noted, but also the time, as it nological questions connected with it. happened a few months after the October War in 1973, which, compared with the earlier Six- 26 Day War, left many Israelis in a state of recri- on the contrary it should be hastened, which is mination and self-doubt. Now, the people were made possible by the Jews' settling down in the to recover their pioneering spirit3 for which land of Zion.7 they hade once been known; and the result of This "mystical" interpretation of Zionism is the Gush activity is notable. Particularly since typical of Gush Emunim, as appears from the- the spring of 1976, when a sensational two se words by one of its members: days' march from Jerusalem to Jericho was "No intellectual acrobatics can stop Zionism carried out, the movement has won thousands from withering away once is has been cut of followers.4 off from its mystical, Messianic dimen- sion, the very root of its existence. The pro- found affinity to Eretz Yisrael, this holy madness with which the Jewish People has Ideology been sick these 20-odd centuries, is some- thing the only logic of which is its illogic. Gush Emunim's ideology originates, to no Any attempt to understand the Zionist phe- small degree, from that of Rabbi Kook. Rabbi nomenon without taking into account the Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), Ashke- 'holy madness' of it is a sterile one. Zio- nazi Chief Rabbi of Palestine during the British nism is mysticism. It is a secular expression Mandate period, is a monumental person in the of Judaism and the religion of the secularists history of Religious Zionism. His philosophy among us."8 is studied particularly in the Yeshivah in Jeru- In the vocabulary of Gush Emunim the term salem founded by himself and bearing his na- hitnahalut plays a prominent role. Prof. David me —. Yeshivat Mercaz Haray. After his J. Schnall, who has analysed the Gush ideology, death his son, Zvi Yehudah Kook (b. 1891), says that by comparison with hitnahalut all took over the leadership of the institute.5 Dr. other values pale, including democracy. The Charles S. Liebman, one of our experts in Je- meaning of the word, in this context, is a wish Orthodoxy, has described Kook as a "com- combination of settlement and Messianism. manding religious personality towering head Settling on occupied territories is a religious and shoulders above other religious leaders of obligation, a divine imperative, which will has- his period or of today".6 ten the redemption. For this reason, too, the In Rabbi Kook's mind the idea of the Jews' Gush members never discuss their "right" to affinity with the Holy Land played a tremen- the land. It is quite self-evident; and the Pa- dous role. Only in Palestine could the Jewish lestinian problem is little more than a creation people fulfil the divine mission to become a of Arab propaganda. "light for the nations". Therefore exery Jew Hitnahalut is also seen as a cure for the had the duty not only to accept the Jewish na- social and economic ills of the nation. Accor- tional movement — Zionism — but also ac- ding to Rabbi Moshe Levinger, one of the tively work for its sake, for aliyah and the main figures of Gush Emunim, these problems cultivation of the Holy Land. According to are due to a lack of productive labour, i.e. Kook, Zionism was not a common national dedication to one's job beyond material re- movement but the concrete expression of an wards. The individual has placed his own needs ancient prophetic notion of the Jews' return before those of the nation. His interest is to to the land of their fathers in the Messianic get the highest pay for the least work. But Era. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, which now this attitude must be overcome through a promised a national home for the Jewish people revival of the old pioneering spirit. The essen- in Palestine, was interpreted as a Messianic tial struggle, however, must always be with the sign. The time of the Messiah was approaching. Arab States, whose only "raison d'être" is to Athalta di-ge'ullah, "the beginning of redemp- destroy the State of Israel. tion", was at hand. In the Orthodox Jewish Gush Emunim is not a new political party opinion history is the historiy of Jewish redemp- in Israel. On the whole, the movement is more tion, the history of the Almighty God's gui- or less in opposition to all parties in the Knes- dance of his people through changing fortunes set, including its own National Religious Party. to the Golden Age when the Messiah appears. It should rather be regarded as a "political pres- But this future must not be awaited passively; sure group" concentrated upon the struggle for 27 the Jews' right to settle everywhere within the basis is there for the assumption that the be- borders of the "historical Eretz Israel"; and to liever has to reject any compromises with re- this land, which the Almighty once promised gard to the borders of the Land of Israel? he Father Abraham, belong not only Judea and asks. In the Jewish return to Palestine Rabbi Samaria but also the Golan heights. Kook saw the beginnings of the Messianic redemption (Athalta di-ge'ullah), but this does not allow one to draw the political conclusion Opposition that it is forbidden to withdraw from the bor- ders which were established in the Six-Day About Gush Emunim's idealism and determi- War. Above all, those who want to adhere to nation to fight for its ideals there is no doubt. the Kook's system must consider his moral An Israeli economist has estimated that, be- teaching. "It is forbidden that the fear of cause of its values, the Gush is able to found God should supersede natural human morality, a community at less than ten per cent of the for then the fear of God is no longer pure" cost of a government settlement.9 (Kook) .13 Settling on occupied territories, however, is This criticism, based on an ethically biased not mainly a matter of money and pioneering theology, is shared by many other religious spirit but rather one of Law and Justice; and Zionists in Israel as well as in the diaspora. on this point the gap is wide between Gush The British Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits and the Government.