Gush Emunim • Partition

Gush Emunim • Partition- war of independence o Gush Etzion • 1967- Six day war התנועה למען ארץ ישראל השלמה Greater land of Israel Movement The organization was formed in July 1967, a month after Israel captured the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights in the Six-Day War. It called on the Israeli government to keep the captured areas and to settle them with Jewish populations. Its founders were a mixture of Labor Zionists, Revisionists, writers and poets • Reestablishment of the Gush Etzion Bloc A loose organisation of Bnei Akiva activists, led by Hanan Porat, whose parents had been evacuated, petitioned Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol to allow the reestablishment of Kfar Etzion. Construction began in September, 1967. • March 1968- Two Jewish men walk into the Palestinian Park Hotel in Hebron presented as Swiss tourists seeking to rent the entire building for the upcoming festival of Passover, and perhaps beyond. In a deal with the Israeli government, he moved with his family and followers to a former army base on a hill just northeast of Hebron, where, with the state's cooperation, they established the settlement of Kiryat Arba • Yom Kippur War October 1974 • Gush Emunim- founded 1974- goal to have West bank, Gaza and Golan Heights annexed as part of Israel • Began with a wedding at Sebastia- Ancient Israelite city of Shomron o Given permission to settle in an army base in Kedum o Leaders of the movement ▪ Chanan Porat ▪ Yoel ben Nun ▪ Moshe Levinger ▪ Menachem Froman ▪ Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook • Their territorial demands were based on a religious ideology which viewed the whole of the Land of Israel, as described in the biblical texts, as having been promised to the Jewish people by God and, once conquered (or, in their terms, "liberated") in the "miraculous" events of the Six day war in June 1967, not to be relinquished voluntarily any form of non-Jewish (Arab) rule even through the democratic decisions of an elected government. Fearful that the Israeli government was demonstrating weakness following the near disastrous events of the Yom Kippur War • Gush Emunim set as its objective the creation of a political movement which would ensure that none of the land now controlled by Israel would be relinquished. To that end, they proposed the establishment of Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a practical means through which land would come under long term Israeli civilian control. • Gush Emunim never became a formal movement with membership and official leadership roles. Movement activists, who identified with the basic Land of Israel ideology became involved in a wide range of private, public and quasi governmental institutions aimed at furthering the cause of West Bank and Gaza settlement. • Themes of Gush Emunim o The failure of the Zionist project o Religious Law as Binding ▪ Illegality of giving up land. o Peace and securitization. Baruch Goldstein • Initially members of Gush Emunim and the wider settlement community did not wish to harm Palestinians in the territories, but as Gush Emunim supporters pushed for the Judaization of the Occupied Territories, the language became more radical. Gush Emunim activists justified their argument of taking the law into their own hands through messianic logic that ‘if the state turns against redemption, one must choose redemption over the state’. • February 25th 1994 Baruch Goldstein entered the Muslim prayer hall of the Patriarchs Cave in Hebron, killing 29 worshippers including men, women and children and wounding many. He was overwhelmed and killed by worshippers in the mosque. • At Goldstein’s funeral, many religious fundamentalist Jews paid great tribute to Goldstein’s actions even extolling that he did not kill enough Arabs in the massacre. Although Gush Emunim was not directly involved in the incident, the movement did not condemn Goldstein’s act. Gush Emunim spiritual leaders, openly praised the criminal act, hailing Goldstein as a ‘saint who carried out the Lord’s. Goldstein’s act was a symptom of the radicalisation process and the culture of violence that was occurring due to the espousal of the Gush’s messianic and fundamentalist ideology. .

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