Gershom Gorenberg is an American-born Israeli and longtime critic of the West Bank occupation and keen observer of the religious right in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.1 He sees ominous trends in his country’s religion, state, and military, but unlike J Street’s president Jeremy Ben-Ami who sees Israel’s problems stemming from the occupation following the ’67 war, Gorenberg sees the origins of these trends as preceding the occupation and based in the creation of the Right back in the forties, which were exacerbated in the euphoria of the ’67 victory.
The Israeli Right, Gorenberg contends, developed in the unseemly milieu of European right-wing groups in the thirties. The Irgun et al were not simply a response to the imminent catastrophe, as Ben-Ami says. They emerged in a time that prized strong party organization, decisive action, and the use of extralegal force. Gorenberg makes no further comparison. Furthermore, these groups had a vision of Israel as including all of what is now the West Bank and Jordan as well – ambitions that persist today among some.
After World War Two, the Irgun clashed with Arabs, the British, and the fledgling Israeli Defense Forces under the political leadership of David Ben-Gurion and the military command of Moshe Dayan. The culmination of the latter conflict was a sharp engagement between the Irgun and the IDF in which several people were killed. Oddly, Ben-Ami’s father was in the Irgun force during the engagement and future prime minister Yitzhak Rabin commanded the IDF detachment.
Defeated and outraged, the Irgun movement and its followers (who formed the present-day Likud party of Benjamin Netanyahu) remained at odds with mainstream Israelis. The secularly-oriented Israelis who had fired upon and killed fellow Jews were stained by treachery and murder. An enduring myth came into being which supported violence against unjust actions by the government. Ben-Gurion and his generals guarded against such thought in the IDF, which was largely secular and intended to stay that way. But as Gorenberg goes on to argue, the 1967 war changed that.
In the decade after founding, Israel debated the merits of a written constitution. The US has one; Britain does not. Both are strong democracies. But in a country with strong religious and secular traditions, the matter would be contentious. Religious groups, small and vocal and key to coalitions, did not want a written document, preferring instead to rely on religious texts, some of which of course outline scores of laws that governed ancient Israel. Much of government was left to the legislature, but religious forces won control over marriage, divorce, and parts of the education system. Tensions between secular and religious forces remain with lively debate over the primacy of religious texts or legislative acts. Gorenberg sees this as part of the present-day crisis over the rule of law and democracy itself, which keeps Israel an ”œethnic movement” instead of a modern democracy.
The 1967 victory over surrounding states was seen as improbable in many countries, including Israel. Among more religious Israelis it was for more. It was miraculous – literally. Even more, the acquisition of the West Bank, Golan Heights, and Sinai opened religious eyes to the unfolding of God’s plan. By regaining the old lands of ancient Israel, the path was opening to the redemption of Israel and the world – literally.2
Israeli religion, once moderate and compartmentalized, would never be the same: ”[T]he world’s spiritual condition was measured by Jewish military power and territorial expansion. Religion swallowed whole the hard-line nationalism of soil, power, and ethnic superiority, and took on its shape.” (p. 92)
Secular forces in the state had their own plan for the West Bank, one tied to the military matter of more defensible borders. The government quickly established settlements in the guise of temporary military outposts. In time they would be neither military nor temporary but the state saw the later religious settlers as useful: ”The government was outsourcing a project that combined defense and foreign policy to an ideological camp that read pragmatic restraint as a lack of faith.” (p. 93)
In the early days of the nation the military was a source of pride that had established independence and ended the image of the weak Jew. Chiefly secular from independence to well after the 1967 war, especially in combat units, later events would make it more religious – a troubling trend to Gorenberg.
The occupation of the West Bank and growing Palestinian resistance led to pangs of conscience, objections to policy, and occasional refusals to serve. The same demurrals came with the invasion and occupation of Lebanon in the eighties. As industry boomed, secular Israelis eschewed military careers and went more into computers and medical products.
Pious Israelis moved into the ranks. Religious schools mixed the Bible with Clausewitz and their alumni joined the army, often in separate religious units, often in combat units. West Bank settlers joined as well. The army ”was getting soldiers who had no questions about military service in occupied territory. They would not refuse orders on political grounds.” (p. 144) Clergy and soldier have been tied since the days of the Joshua and David, but today the country faces the influence of a politicized clergy over troops and the dominance of the religious right in [combat] units. The authority of the elected government over its military is steadily being eroded.” (p. 138)
Gorenberg sees adverse implications for the rule of law and the nation’s democracy. Israeli courts have judged at least some West Bank settlements to be illegal, yet government subsidies and protection continue or the government claims its priorities are elsewhere and it cannot get to the settlements just now. Settlers are armed and entrusted with police power. An army officer who refused to follow an order to dismantle a settlement was given a remarkably light sentence and allowed to remain in the army. Some rabbis forbid soldiers to participate in dismantling of settlements. The law of God, which of course they interpret, takes precedence over the law of man.
The 1995 murder of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin by a religious man angered by a peace agreement is usually described as the act of a lone individual. Gorenberg insists that this drains history from the assassination. He sees it in the context of rising religious zealotry and declining respect for the rule of law and secular authority.
Gorenberg describes dark trends in Israel, not its dominant political culture. He offers thoughts on reversing the unmaking of his country. Ending the settlements on the West Bank and establish a Palestinian state. Breaking the growing unity between ”state and synagogue” – an obvious allusion to the American principle. ”Graduating” from being an ethnic movement with vague parameters and rules to a modern democratic state with the rule of law. Disbanding the religious military units which are more loyal to rabbis and texts than to ministers and laws.
1 See The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 (New York: Times Books, 2006).
2 See also Yehud Sprinzak, The Ascendance of Israel’s Radical Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
Copyright 2012 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a political/military analyst and author of The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam.