2008 Woodie Awards
From the Editor's Desk: Religious Zionism's Day of Reckoning
Ari Fridman
Issue date: 8/31/05 Section: Editorials/Op-Ed
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With a deep sigh of relief over the realization that things could have gone worse, disengagement has finally and thankfully passed, and left in its wake an Israeli society deeply divided along political and religious lines. In the end, the prime minister and his remaining Likud loyalists, backed by the silent majority of Israelis who supported withdrawal from Gaza, won out over the vocal minority that opposed it and nearly turned the country upside down over a hectic month, even by Israeli standards.
The pullout exposed the rift between not only the left and right, but also the one, equally troubling, between the old-school Religious Zionists of former-National Religious Party yore and the radical hilltop youth elements who used the disengagement to make a mockery of democracy and the rule of law. While the disagreements between left and right and extreme right stem from a combination of political as well as religious differences, those between the settler right and righter are grounded in fundamentally religious terms. In short, a yearning, largely theoretical, for a Greater Israel in the case of the Gush Emunim generation versus a blind pursuit of Greater Israel in the here and now in the case of the undomesticated rabble, a la the evacuees of the Kfar Darom synagogue.
Not surprisingly, the most extreme outbursts of defiance during disengagement came from the hilltop youth, whose parents, doubtless residents of the West Bank, were nowhere to be found. By contrast, the permanent residents of Gaza left their homes relatively orderly, albeit after the government's August 15 deadline for evacuation. Israelis sympathized with the long-time residents of the strip who, by all objective measures, had been thrust into a life-altering experience at the hands of the same man who in another very different political climate had served as their godfather. These same Israelis showed little sympathy for those that flouted, even endangered the government evacuation forces, some of whom were visibly shaken by the task with which they were dealt and were simply following the most gut-wrenching of orders.
The pullout exposed the rift between not only the left and right, but also the one, equally troubling, between the old-school Religious Zionists of former-National Religious Party yore and the radical hilltop youth elements who used the disengagement to make a mockery of democracy and the rule of law. While the disagreements between left and right and extreme right stem from a combination of political as well as religious differences, those between the settler right and righter are grounded in fundamentally religious terms. In short, a yearning, largely theoretical, for a Greater Israel in the case of the Gush Emunim generation versus a blind pursuit of Greater Israel in the here and now in the case of the undomesticated rabble, a la the evacuees of the Kfar Darom synagogue.
Not surprisingly, the most extreme outbursts of defiance during disengagement came from the hilltop youth, whose parents, doubtless residents of the West Bank, were nowhere to be found. By contrast, the permanent residents of Gaza left their homes relatively orderly, albeit after the government's August 15 deadline for evacuation. Israelis sympathized with the long-time residents of the strip who, by all objective measures, had been thrust into a life-altering experience at the hands of the same man who in another very different political climate had served as their godfather. These same Israelis showed little sympathy for those that flouted, even endangered the government evacuation forces, some of whom were visibly shaken by the task with which they were dealt and were simply following the most gut-wrenching of orders.