There's a joke about a respected Lithuanian rabbi who in the beginning of the 19th century was asked by one of his students which religion was closest to Judaism. The rabbi thought for a moment and replied with confidence: Hassidism. In the up-to-date version of this joke, the rabbi's answer would likely be: The settlers.
This argument is further reinforced by the response of settler rabbis (including the current genius Shalom Dov Wolpe, who heads the "International Headquarters for Saving the People and Land of Israel ") to the initiative to bring the Green Line back to textbooks. In an emergency session, a religious edict was issued that completely bans the use of textbooks that include the Green Line.
We should make note perhaps that this same Green Line - that is, the armistice line signed between Israel and Jordan in November 1948 - has been erased from maps in the past.
Author and journalist Gershom Gorenberg describes in his last book, The Accidental Empire, exactly when and how this happened. Yigal Alon, who was the deputy prime minister, ordered the heads of the surveying department back on October 30, 1967 to erase the line from all maps produced from that point on.
We're apparently talking about one of the most meaningful decisions taken by a single Israeli politician since the state's establishment: It created, or at least greatly contributed to creating a situation where generations of Israelis who graduated the national education system do not know what the sovereign territory of their country is.
This is because Israeli governments, which for good reasons never officially annexed 99 percent of the West Bank, did everything in order to append them in practice to the State of Israel's territory.
The decision to erase the Green Line from Israeli maps also contributed to an almost absolute distortion of two completely different terms that are often mixed up around these parts: "The State of Israel" and "The Land of Israel."
The former is a modern geopolitical term with clear borders, while the latter is a religious-historical one whose geographical borders have remained undefined over most generations. The confusion between the two terms is the platform upon which the local, sparse discourse takes place regarding the future of Israel's' control over the West Bank and its Palestinian population.
Minister Tamir's decision to add the Green Line to textbooks reflects no doubt a political agenda, but it isn't more or less political than Yigal Alon's decision to erase the line, or from the decisions of his successors in the past 40 years to maintain this practice.
All these decisions reflect first and foremost the common perception regarding the role of the modern state as a major player in molding its citizens' identity. And what contributes more to molding it than a demarcation of their cultural and educational horizons. It's obvious that the depth and width of these horizons have implications that politicians are interested in using in order to advance their own political agenda.
And another anecdote in conclusion: In the years 1930-1905, a sharp argument divided the Zionist movement. At its heart was the familiar issue known as the east Africa plan, which by mistake is referred to the Uganda Plan (even though we're talking about territory that is part of neighboring Kenya.)
The camp that backed Jewish autonomy in east Africa included, among others, most representatives of the Mizrahi, the Zionist-religious branch. This branch later gave birth to the fundamentalist "Gush Emunim settlement movement.
Had the Uganda Plan been implemented, as the settlers' spiritual father figures wanted, the rabbis of "religious Ugandaism" could have been issuing today religious edicts banning the use of books that include the equator. After all, the problem was and remains one and the same: They don't like lines of any type or color.
The writer coordinates the settlement follow-up project for Peace Now
RSS
