Report: Netanyahu trying to unite Religious Zionism, Otzma Yehudit

Following the withdrawal of the haredi parties from the Israeli government, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #BenjaminNetanyahu #Elections #IL #Israel #OtzmaYehudit #ReligiousZionism #ReligiousZionistParty
https://www.newsbeep.com/67617/

A call for a religious Zionist alternative to the ultraright mystical theology that promotes violence against Palestinians and denies their rights as a people.

Any hope for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East will require less chanting hate slogans at festivals and more engagement with all those Israelis opposed to their government's extremism.

https://fathomjournal.org/fathom-long-read-from-mystical-theology-to-political-violence-the-dangerous-logic-of-palestinian-elimination/

#IsraelPalestine #ReligiousZionism #Zionism #Theology #Nationalism

Will Zionism eat itself? On Zionism's inherently self-destructive nature (and Islam as an inspiration for what will replace it)

Following #Israeli unprovoked attack on Iran, Rabbi Daniel Sagron published an article on the religious website "Srugim" declaring "the end of secular Zionism's historical role", calling for the establishment of a Sanhedrin to replace Israeli courts and govern according to Torah law.

[...] "The people of Israel have taught humanity in recent days what 'turn from evil' means – how to destroy absolute evil in an absolute manner. Now the next task of the people of Israel is to teach what 'do good' means – how to build a society that takes from Islam the total commitment to God's word and will, but takes from the West morality and progress, freedom and science. This combination, which Rabbi Sacks described so beautifully in his book 'The Great Partnership,' is the main purpose of the people of Israel, it is the reason for the existence of the safe haven that it established in the heart of the Middle East."

Drawing on Rabbi Kook's writings, Sagron argued that secular Zionism completed its mission of creating a safe haven for Jews, and called for establishing a #Sanhedrin to replace Israeli courts, so Jews can live according to Torah law.

Drawing inspiration from #Islam, Sagron wants to turn Israel into a theocratic dictatorship. He later published a clarification stating he envisions demographic changes naturally leading to religious majority rule, rather than forced implementation. Secular lifestyles would be permitted in private homes, he says.

https://www.srugim.co.il/1141125-%D7%91%D7%99%D7%91%D7%99-%D7%A1%D7%99%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%A2%D7%9B%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%95-%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%A0%D7%95

A call to establish a Sanhedrin to replace Israeli courts and govern according to Torah law does parallel the concept of implementing religious law as the basis for state governance, similar to how #Sharia functions in some Islamic states. Both involve replacing secular legal systems with religious jurisprudence derived from sacred texts and religious interpretation.

I guess Christian Zionists who have devoted decades to supporting Israel might find it jarring to discover that their religious Zionist counterparts are instead looking to Islam for divine inspiration...

@palestine
@israel
#JewishFascism #Zionism #ReligiousZionism

#Judaism / There Are No Lights in War: We Need a Different Religious Language (Ariel Schwartz [January 16, 2024])

Ariel Schwartz comes from a right-wing, religious Zionist family, in the political dialing areas of Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. He studied at the Etzion Yeshiva, in southern Mount Hebron, and during his regular service in the settlements in the West Bank, he asked himself who those stateless Palestinians were, "who live under the daily rule of the IDF." These questions caused him to become a left-wing activist.

He tells #Haaretz […] "They took from me the thing most precious to me, my faith, and directed it against me. As religious people, we believe that our tradition demands a different moral stance, one that can restrain the war instead of fueling it."​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

[…] An example of this can be found in the recent words of R. Amihai Friedman, the rabbi of the Nahal brigade’s training base: “I sit and imagine that in these days there are no casualties, hostages, or injured,” he told his soldiers. “And the second I remove them from the screen, I’m left with what is maybe the happiest month in my life since I was born.”[1]

[…] R. Friedman’s words give rise to a harsh realization: around us is a religious world that is happy, in many respects, about the current war.

[…] Thus, for example, writes R. Yigal Levinstein in the pamphlet He Leaps Up Like a Lion: On the Exaltation of the Spirit and the Special Level of Life During Times of War that saw light in the situation: “The war is not a marginal thing, and we should not view it as a ‘mistake’ or a ‘mishap’ which we would have preferred to avoid. The war is a great thing and, at the end of the day, brings a great message to humanity on its wings.”[2]

[…] According to R. Levinstein, the greatness of the war is rooted in the fact that it is one of those extraordinary moments in which “the inner soul shines in all its vitality.” Indeed, for the individual, the war is a difficult event, but at the national level it calls forth great moments in which the people of Israel “reveals from within itself its mighty heights of life.”

[…] Widening segments of the contemporary religious community are seeking to wrap the war in a halo of enchantment and holiness and turn it pleasant, ideal, and even joyous from an emotional perspective. In furtherance of this aestheticization and idealization, there are those who seek to remove any ethical brakes from the war. They call for us not to differentiate between blood and blood and condone any action done in its framework. These conceptions treat the spirit of battle as the climax of the revelation of the human spirit, but within this, implicitly, it is as though they require war to happen again and again, so that this “spirit of battle” may be revealed. In light of this attempt, we must seek a different religious language―one that remembers that the Jewish horizon is not war but peace, that the goal of the Jewish nation’s existence on this land is not “to shorten the life of man but to lengthen,” and that ethical conduct even in times of war is the soul of our religious tradition.

Translation to English by https://thelehrhaus.com/commentary/there-are-no-lights-in-war-we-need-a-different-religious-language

@israel
@palestine
#ReligiousZionism #NeoZionism #IsraelWarCrimes

#Israel / Jewish Religious Nationalism [aka Religious Zionism] = Hamas, also… IDF is recognizing Hamas is in fact a national movement

Lecture at The Command and Staff Course (Hebrew acronym: פו״ם), a key course in the IDF that trains senior officers for command and staff high rank positions, Aug 10, 2023.

[…] Since the early 1990s until today, religious nationalism has shifted from the margins to the center and has become the new social, cultural, and political hegemony. This statement is true for the "Zionist" religious movement in Israel as well as for Palestinian Islamic nationalism, which has been institutionally expressed mainly through the Hamas movement (and to a lesser extent through the Islamic Movement in Israel).

[…] The two religious-nationalist movements, the Israeli-Jewish and the Muslim-Palestinian, saw the peace process as a threat, and struggled against it through a combination of political and social force as well as violence. Not only did they succeed in halting the peace process, but through their struggle, they became the political-social hegemony.

Original text in Hebrew

מראשית שנות ה-90 של המאה הקודמת ועד לימינו אנו, נעה הלאומיות הדתית מן השוליים אל המרכז והפכה להגמוניה החברתית, התרבותית והפוליטית החדשה. אמירה זו נכונה לגבי הציונות הדתית בישראל וכן לגבי הלאומיות-הדתית האסלאמית הפלסטינית, אשר באה לידי ביטוי מוסדי בעיקר בתנועת החמאס (ובמידה פחותה מכך דרך התנועה האסלאמית בישראל).

שתי התנועות הדתיות-לאומיות הישראלית-יהודית והמוסלמית-פלסטינית - ראו בתהליך השלום איום, נאבקו בו בשילוב של כוח פוליטי וחברתי ובאלימות. לא רק שהן הצליחו לעצור את תהליך השלום, אלא שמתוך מאבקן הן הפכו להגמוניה הפוליטית-חברתית.

@israel
@palestine
#Hamas #ReligiousZionism