Gadi Taub
Photo: Inbal Zafrani
Our modern-day Sparta
Settlers replace moral heritage of prophets with Joshua Ben Nun’s sword
The debate regarding the settlement construction freeze is diverting our attention from the following question: Why in fact does anyone still think that it is worthwhile for us to build there? The answer to this question has a complex history.
The original argument of the settlers was a messianic one, as explicitly declared by the founding manifesto of the Gush Emunim settlement movement. Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook also taught his followers that the settlement enterprise is “divine politics that no earthly politics could overcome.” As Menachem Felix once told the High Court, the security argument makes no difference to the settlers. For them, this is a mitzvah.
However, Israel was not convinced. Hence, the salvation argument was replaced by what initially were merely a public relations move and a means to persuade the unconvinced: The security argument.
Yet this argument also underwent deep changes. As long as the IDF’s doomsday scenarios had to do with Iraqi tanks rushing in our direction through Jordan, the argument of holding on to certain territory in order to curb an invasion carried some weight. Yet the First Gulf War pushed this argument off the agenda, replacing it with the question of missiles. It became unclear why we need the settlement enterprise to defend ourselves against missiles, as the land cannot stop the Scuds.
And then, the Oslo process got underway, and the security argument changed. It was no longer about the need to curb invasion, but rather, about our ability to prevent terrorism by controlling the area. Later, it was about our ability to avert Qassam rocket attacks. As the Right predicted, instead of peace we indeed got terrorism in exchange for Oslo, and later – as also predicted by the Right – we got Hamastan and missiles in exchange for a unilateral withdrawal.
2 successful wars
However, in the meantime Israel found a way to address these threats with great success. The moment Hamastan was established in the south and Hezbollah had shifted from being a guerilla group to a partner in government – in short, the moment we saw the emergence of a centralized rule – it turned out that we can make them pay a price for terror and missiles.
Once the dust will settle and we will look back at the period extending from 2006 to now, we will discover that beyond all the talk Israel engaged in two very successful wars: The northern border is quiet. The Qassam barrages from Gaza had been curbed, and those who still manage to fire a rocket here and there are being harshly persecuted by Hamas. We exacted a heavy price, from Lebanon and from Gaza, and this price exceeds any benefit that can be achieved by the Qassams and Katyusha rockets.
However, even beyond this, terrorism and rockets do not constitute an existential threat. On the other hand, the loss of our Jewish majority and the danger of bi-nationalism, which the settlement enterprise drags us towards, are major existential threats.
Hence, the one stable justification that remains for defending the settlement enterprise is heritage: The settlements safeguard Jewish heritage and our historic connection to the Land of Israel. And this argument needs to be addressed courageously, because the connection to the land is indeed part of Judaism and Zionism. Nonetheless, it would be wrong to think that Judaism is solely on the settlers’ side, while those who endorse a partition of the land only have “Americanization” on their side.
Limiting Judaism to the mitzvah of settling the land (which is not even included in the 613 mitzvot listed by Maimonides) turned the Judaism of the settlers into an armed Sparta that replaced the spirit with materialism and the moral heritage of Israel’s prophets with Joshua Ben Nun’s sword. The settlers’ Zionism is an express route to losing the major Zionist accomplishment (that is, the Jewish State) and accepting their interpretation of Judaism is an express route to limiting Jewish morality to clods of earth.
With all due respect to the Land of Israel, the center of gravity of Zionism and Judaism was always the spirit, rather than materialism. For that reason, Zionism spoke of a Jewish state in the land of Israel – “in” rather than “across the entire” Land of Israel. Indeed, the time has come to challenge the settlers’ pretense to represent Israel’s Jewish and Zionist heritage.
