IN ISRAEL, JEWISH EXTREMISTS WORSHIPPING A GOD OF HOLY WAR ARE GETTING STRONGER

In Israel, Jewish Extremists Worshipping a God of Holy War Are Getting Stronger

Since October 7, the flagrantly anti-democratic, morally bankrupt political theology of Israel's right-wing Jewish radicals, a worldview that justifies the death, starvation, and hunger of Palestinians, is becoming more dominant. Jews in Israel and around the world must confront this desecration of our tradition

May 07th, 10AM May 07th, 10AM

In late January, Rabbi Dov Lior, a leading Orthodox rabbinic figure on the religious far-right, was asked if it was permissible to desecrate the Sabbath to block humanitarian aid to Gaza.

"This is an important question," he said in a video released by afar-right group that calls itself "The Torah of War."

"We should be happy that we have a population that cares about Israel and cares about the Sabbath ... A war that takes place on the Sabbath makes it permissible to violate the Sabbath," he decreed. It is indeed the case that, according to rabbinic law, a Jew can wage war on the Sabbat.

But the humanitarian convoys Lior insists a religious Jew must block are authorized by the Israeli military. Nonetheless, right-wing activists have followed his directive, blocking roads on which humanitarian convoys are traveling into Gaza.

For Lior, blocking aid to a starving population, even against the wishes of the Israeli military and an extreme right-wing government, is a more crucial religious commandment than keeping the Sabbath.

But the very idea of violating the Sabbath to create more hunger and as a means of punishment or coercion is alien to Jewish rabbinic tradition and would undoubtedly have baffled our sages. However, in Israel, it is an increasingly mainstream ethical position. To be a good Jew is to put the collective punishment of Palestinians ahead of basic observance. Recently, Rabbi Eliyahu, Chief Rabbi of Zfat, even wrote a special prayer for those blocking humanitarian aid.

This mode of religious thinking, which sees God as a God of holy wars and vengeance and demands that Jews act violently in His name, has been gaining ground for more than half a century in some extremist corners of Israel and the Diaspora. But since October 7, it has developed into a more coherent and grotesque worldview, a political theology that licenses and even commends collective punishment and the proliferation of gun licenses while undermining or even dismissing efforts to return the hostages.

It demands the expulsion or total submission or death of Palestinians. It sees all those who argue with it as traitorous or weak. Palestinian suffering is dismissed. Religious soldiers recite our holiest prayers while blowing up mosques. There is no room for remorse, skepticism, or introspection. The only sin is not giving full rein to our innermost vengeful desires. Restraint is godlessness. Shockingly, this worldview is not some fringe ideology, it's what is currently blocking a hostage deal and prolonging the war with two of its adherents in the Cabinet: Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.

Compare this ideology with the words of Rabbi Moshe Avigdor Amiel in 1938,a religious Zionist and Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, then Mandatory Palestine. The secular Zionist leadership at the time called for "havlaga" or restraint in the face of Palestinian attacks. This was not enough for Amiel who proclaimed: "I object to the concept havlaga, which indicates that the prohibition of shedding the blood of Arabs is based on the need to "restrain" ourselves, while this is forbidden because of the prohibition of lo tirtzach (Thou shalt not kill). It is an incomparable moral degradation to justify the sinfulness of murder simply because it is ineffective. In my opinion, even if we knew that by these acts of murder, we would bring about complete redemption, we must reject this "redemption" with both hands and not be redeemed by blood."

Moreover, if we succeed in capturing a number of Arabs who have committed murder, but we have a doubt, one in a thousand, that there is an innocent among them, we must not harm them, lest the innocent suffer as well.

Amiel was hardly a radical. But his words would be barely recognizable in today's religious right.

For years, religious right extremism in Israel was characterized as "wild weeds." But those weeds have long since turned into a forest, with the movement of the religious right moving into positions of power throughout the Israeli government, military, and judiciary.

The shock of the sadistic murders and kidnappings of the October 7 terrorist attacks and the subsequent brutal assault on Gaza has only strengthened them. Many months into the war, this morally bankrupt religious ethos is gaining strength as a leading voice in the Jewish Israeli world.

Its effect will not be limited to Israel.

Historically, political opposition to these voices has come from outside the religious world. Oppositional voices criticize the theology of the religious right but have responded to the challenge with a compromise: Israel is Jewish "but" also democratic.

With this formula, liberal Jews in Israel and around the world suggest themselves, stewards of Israel's democracy, while surrendering its seemingly contradictory Judaism to the Religious right. This strategy abdicates responsibility for creating a counter-model to the theology of the right, challenging its theological validity or opposing its moral weaknesses.

Liberal Zionists around the world have not offered a serious challenge to the theology of the right; they have chosen instead to moderate it.

But these strategies misunderstand the source of the religious right's appeal: The religious right offers a consistent ideological justification for a policy that is flagrantly anti-democratic.

It explains why you are righteous, even if "the world" thinks you are wrong. In a world of populist nationalism and war, this is a powerful currency. This explains why the right moves consistently rightward, pulling Israeli politics with it: each justification makes room for more transgression and for more justification, and the cycle continues. Attempts to compartmentalize this ideology or negotiate with it fail to understand that its popularity is based precisely on the negation of these tactics: it grows because it prides itself on zero negotiation.

So, while liberals cede the ground of framing Jewish national identity, the religious right became, for many, the guardian of Jewish national tradition. While liberals applauded their own anguish, the religious right called for a political theology free of anguish.

Instead of taming it, those who wish to fight for a moral future for the Jewish tradition must confront religious right theology on its terms and offer a rigorous alternative. We must because it is a moral aberration that leads to the justification of death, starvation, and hunger. We must because it is a fundamental transgression of the Torah and a desecration of our tradition.

To confront it, we must return to our ethical traditions that have been attacked and marginalized. We must rethink issues such as exile and return, exclusivist land ownership and land sanctity, and our view of Jewish relations with non-Jews, especially Palestinians.

We must relearn our traditions of skepticism about war and fear of violence. We must confront the right's political theology honestly, constructively, consistently, and radically. Both theoretically and institutionally.

If Jews in the last century asked, "Who is a Jew?" we now must ask, "Who is a moral Jew?" This is a theological imperative. When we walk in God's ways, do we say, "As the Holy One, blessed be He, is called compassionate, so be you compassionate"? Or do we instead declare that our God is a God of vengeance, and therefore, we must avenge ourselves through constant subjugation, expulsion, war, and humiliation?

Our tradition in this regard is vast. Both Zionist thinkers (such as Amiel) and anti-Zionists have spoken out against nationalist pride and violence. There are Orthodox and Reform traditions, both modern and pre-modern, from Israel, the U.S., and other Jewish centers that are relevant. These movements are not the same, of course, but they have always been in conversation with each other, intellectually and institutionally.

It would be a mistake to consider Diaspora Jewry or Israeli Jewry self-contained. The theological cannot be limited by the political or the geographical of the moment. The Jewish world must think beyond those terms and use everything at its disposal, and frame a theological alternative and action to counter current Religious Right thought. Without this, the religious ethic that justifies endless war and suffering will continue to dominate Jewish politics and religion in Israel-Palestine and the Jewish world.

Mikhael Manekin is one of the leaders of the Faithful Left movement, and the author of End of Days: Ethics, Tradition and Power in Israel. He is currently a fellow at the Center for Religion and Public Life at the Harvard Divinity School Twitter: @MikhaelManekin

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