Religious Zionism and the Struggle for Israel's Soul - In Israel, Religious Zionism Keeps Flexing Its Muscles Amid the Ongoing Battle With Liberalism (original) (raw)

FROM SAFE HAVEN TO MESSIANIC REDEMPTION: THE ASCENDANCE OF RELIGIOUS-ZIONISM

Poliics and Religion JOurnal, 2022

On June 13, 2021, Naftali Bennet was sworn in as Israel’s first ever Religious-Zi-onist Prime Minister. Although Bennet’s political party, Yamina (Rightward), had only seven seats in the Knesset (out of 120), and his coalition government lasted only one year, his election as Prime Minister symbolizes the progress made by Reli-gious-Zionism towards achieving a hegemonic position in Israeli society. Historical-ly, Religious-Zionism had been a junior partner in the historic bloc which sustained the hegemony of the Labor Zionist movement over the Zionist settlement project. However, the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973 gave the younger generation of Religious-Zionism the opportunity to take over their own movement and aim, as they put it, to move from the back seat to the driver’s seat of Israeli society. Labor Zionism’s loss of the political initiative regarding the territories occupied in 1967 pro-vided the opening for that move. Religious-Zionism encompasses a whole range of religious and nationalist outlooks, but its most influential and dynamic element is the activist-Messianic tendency associated with Gush Emunim. The core interest and value of this dominant tendency is the permanent incorporation of the West Bank under Israeli sovereignty.

The Perennial Dilemmas of Liberal Zionism

972mag.com, 2014

Written after the Gaza round of violence in 2014 but relevant to the current (2023) round of violence with no end in sight. For over a century, liberal Zionists have attempted to reconcile universal humanism with Zionist nationalism, with little success. This has been a feature of discussions in the Zionist movement from its inception, forcing Liberal adherents to choose, at times of crisis, between their universal values and ethnic political loyalties. Historically, dropping the Liberal component has been the most common response to such dilemma, with only a few dissidents opting rather to abandon Zionism.

The state of the nation: Contemporary challenges to Zionism in Israel

Israelis in Conflict: Hegemonies, Identities and …, 2004

The State of the Nation: Contemporary Challenges to Zionism in Israel Uri Ram Observers are struck by the turmoil Israeli society has evinced during the 1990s and since. This study proposes a new perspective for the analysis of Israel, based on a'glocal'model, in which global and ...

Rethinking Zionism Political Affairs Article, 2006

click here for related stories: Middle East 2-07-06, 8:51 am A comrade who is a sophisticated Marxist-Leninist asked me recently to try to deal with the question of "Zionism" theoretically. His point, which is a good one, was that criticisms and condemnations of Israeli policy and general attacks on "Zionist" ideology are routinely condemned as anti-Semitic by supporters of those policies. At the same time, there are both neo-Nazi and other anti-Semitic groups in Europe and the U.S and rightist groups in Middle Eastern countries, including the Palestinian group Hamas, who for different reasons have cloaked anti-Semitic ideology and policies in anti-Zionist rhetoric. • Previous message: [lbo-talk] Dems force Hackett out of race • Next message: [lbo-talk] Rethinking Zionism • Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] More

Overcoming the “Religion and Politics” Discourse: A New Interpretation of the Israeli Case

Arguing against the prevalence of the religion and politics discourse, this essay aims to outline a critical interpretation of the unresolved and problematical nature of the State of Israel’s approach to Jewish traditions. Such an interpretation, I argue, enables us to both avoid the misconceptions and misinterpretations encouraged by the use of the allegedly transhistorical and transcultural category of “religion” for the study of Jewish politics, and to better understand the foundational political issues that are commonly studied under the title “religion and politics” in Israel. I thus suggest a discussion of several notions that become further clarified by refocusing the framework of discussion and analysis on matters of tradition. These touch upon three central issues: the role of Jewish traditions in (a) the shaping of the Zionist project, (b) the shaping of the Israeli public sphere, and (c) the formation and development of Jewish identities in Israel.