Conflict of Judaism and Zionism .. Will Israel disintegrate from within?

In 1890, the Austrian Jewish writer “Nathan Birnbaum” published an article in the magazine “Self-Emancipation”, using a new term on his readers at this time [1], but it was not an arbitrary word, as it was not until seven years passed that this term crystallized in Basel In Switzerland in 1897 by the other Austrian Jew, “Theodor Herzl”, who used the word “Zionism” coined by “Nathan” to hold the First Zionist Congress one year after the publication of his book “The Jewish State”; In it, he called for the immigration of Jews to Palestine and the establishment of the Land of Israel, which will solve the problem of Jewish minorities in the diaspora [2].

What we know well today is that this moment was the beginning of the Zionist settlement project, which ended with the state of Israel built on the ruins of Palestine, but what many do not know also is that the same moment launched the story of the internal Jewish conflict between religious Jews and Zionism, before the Nakba, and before the Jewish migrations To Palestine, and before the Balfour Declaration, and before “Balfour” even knew that he would make a promise to the Jews of something on a land. According to the history researcher at the Islamic University in Gaza, Yunus Abdel-Hamid [3], many religious Jews rejected Zionist thought from its inception, and even fought it and considered it harmful to their interests in the world, and their leaders realized that Zionism is a secular movement, not only for the secularism of its founders, but for opposing it. They express their belief in the Kingdom of Israel that the awaited “Mashih” will establish for them.

The religious character with which Zionism characterized its movement did not affect religious Jews, as the writer “Muhammad Amara” [4] – a researcher in religions and the Arab-Israeli conflict – says, as he tells us that the derivation of “Zionism” came to exploit the feelings of the Jews and their longing for a mountain. Zion, which is sacred to them, which clashed with a well-established Jewish rule in them – as well – which is that the Land of Israel is a gift from God to them by the awaited Mashhite, and that every human attempt to establish a Jewish state is an infidelity and an anomaly from the known Jewish traditional method and a betrayal of the meaning Promise [5].

This objection was the main cornerstone of all moral and material disputes between religious Jews and the Zionist movement, before, during and after the establishment of their “Zionist entity” on the land of Palestine. Every Jewish religious movement / group, whether it transformed into a political party or not, has internalized the Mashih doctrine in its rejection. For Zionism, while – on the other hand – the Zionist movement saw, according to David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister, that the idea of ​​returning Mashihs was a “very negative” idea.

The opinion presented by Ben-Gurion found its echo among many pro-Zionist Jewish thinkers, as the Russian Zionist thinker “Bertis Smolenskin” saw that the Zionist vision is defined as a kind of settlement to ensure livelihood and security and has nothing to do with the savior [6], which is what the Hungarian Zionist agreed with. “Max Nordau” who described the movement as a political movement, not a mystical religious movement, and that it is not linked to Masihnian visions and does not wait for a miracle, but rather wants to prepare the way back with its own efforts [7], which is completely consistent with the saying of “Herzl” in his memoirs: “I am I do not submit to any religious motive in my project. “

These combined views represented an affirmation of the secularism of the movement among the fundamentalists and the falsehood of its religious claim, which was used to justify its colonial purposes – according to the description of “Al-Masiri” [8] -. Orthodox Jews [*] believe that “the Jewish people” is nothing but a religious term, and that belonging to this The people depend on the extent of adherence to the Jewish law, and then every call that views the Jews with a political or national view is something contrary to religion and far from it [9], and hence the shouts of rejection of it in all parts of this people.

On its way to Palestine, the Zionist movement accumulated a lot of criticism and opposing stances from within the Jewish ranks itself, the fundamentalist before the leftist or the secular, while secular criticism started from the need for the integration of Jewish minorities with their societies [10], and considering Zionism a civilized response that does not address the problem of ghettos. Judaism but increases it by creating a large ghetto in the name of a state [11]. On the other side, religious criticism was launched from the mashih dilemma mentioned above.

On the individual level, fundamentalist Jewish protests against the nascent Zionist entity appeared in succession and from the various regions in which Jews live. Rabbi Moshe Hirsch, born in Palestine and one of the leaders of the anti-Zionist Naturi Carta movement, wrote in a 1978 article in the Washington Post that “Zionism is in contrast to Complete with Judaism … it wants to define the Jewish people as a national unit, and this is disbelief itself … and when they do so they must bear all the consequences. ”[12]

This vision, which saw in the Zionist movement as infidelity and a deviation from the heritage of the fathers, is found in the statement of another rabbi, “Elmer Berger,” the former president of the American Jewish Council, when he declared in 1968 at the American University of Leiden that “the land of Zion is not sacred unless it is controlled by Sharia law.” The Lord “[13], and said:” No one can accept the claim that the establishment of the present state of Israel was a fulfillment of the prophecy “[14].

Indeed, the matter went beyond the status of rabbis and opinion writers, as Sir Edon Montagu – the Jewish minister in the British government at the time of the Balfour Declaration – expressed his strong opposition to Zionism and described it as an evil trend and a misleading political doctrine that no citizen who loves his homeland can defend it, and that the return of the Jews is from Exile – according to his belief – should be carried out by a divine will and not by the will of the Zionists. Rather, he suggested that every Zionist should be deprived of the right to vote in the United Kingdom, and he emphasized that the Balfour Declaration offends the Jews. It deprives them of their rights as citizens of the countries to which they belong [15].

Sir Edon Montagu, the Jewish minister in the British government at the time of the Belfort Declaration was issued. I have an awareness of the nature and essence of Judaism that clashes with the idea of ​​creating an ad hoc Jewish state. ”[16] This is the same religious position on which Judaism and Zionism were in dispute.

In a related context, the researcher “Jada Jaladi” [17], a Jewish Arab thinker, mentions that this Jewish rejection of Zionism was on the same pattern in many Arab Jewish institutions and on the lips of many of their famous people, and this is due to several reasons – other than the doctrinal criticism and belief Mashih – including the Jews’ enjoyment of an atmosphere of religious tolerance as people of dhimmah throughout the Islamic world. They did not suffer persecution and racism like the Jews of Europe. Rather, they felt that they were first-class citizens in their Arab countries.

Among the manifestations of this rejection is that the Israeli Association for Combating Zionism was established in Egypt in 1946, announcing its principles, which were summarized in two pivotal principles: The struggle against Zionism, which conflicts with the interests of both Jews and Arabs, and the strengthening of the close connection between the Jews of Egypt and the Egyptian people in the struggle against colonialism. Advertising

A year ago, the same thing happened in Iraq as well, where the Anti-Zionist League was formed headed by “Harun Zalkha”, and many activities against the Zionist movement were organized, including conferences and mass events, and the newspaper “Al-Osbah” was published for the same purpose, and many were published in it. Among the articles that considered Zionism an agent of colonialism, as this movement undermines the common popular struggle – between Arabs and Jews – against colonialism, as the League considered that Zionism is an explicit violation of the rights of the Palestinians, and that the solution to the problem of Jewish minorities is through defending their duties inside their homelands and not through Displacement to Palestine [18].

In turn, the Israeli historian, “Zeev Herzog” declared that the biblical myths invoked by the Zionists to prove the historical right to the land of Palestine are a false claim without historical evidence [19], which was approved by the historian and lecturer at the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, “Shlomo Sand,” author of a book “The invention of the Jewish people”, in which it was stipulated that the Roman expulsion of the Jews did not take place from the origin until they returned to Palestine, which is confirmed – in fact – the confusion of the Zionist movement at its inception about the desired homeland for immigration, so Argentina, Mozambique, Congo, Cyprus and South Africa – next to Palestine – were all Suggestions, put forward for selection [20].

In a similar context, the Jewish-Zionist conflict was taking a more intense and frictionless form than before, and it is a conflict that continues at a haunting pace for the government until now between religious groups and the Israeli government over the state, its institutions, and so on. To understand this conflict, we need a quick historical tracing of the religious factions within Israeli society, which are branching out from two main directions: the reformist trend and the orthodox / haredi trend.

With regard to the reform movement, it began in the late nineteenth century in Germany, specifically in 1840, and demanded the complete integration of the Jewish minorities in Germany and the purification of Judaism from the impurities that clung to them, including changing the language of worship from Hebrew to the language of the country in which prayer is performed, And the words “Zion” and “Jerusalem” were deleted from all prayers, and indulgence in the sanctity of the Sabbath day, lawful eating, etc. [21].

The reform movement was also expressing a new form of solutionism, which is the permissibility of the peoples of God. They saw that God had settled in the spirit of progress and age – neither the nation nor the Jewish land -, and this was the origin of their disagreement with Zionism, because the reformers did not see the Jews as a people but rather religious minorities, while Zionism considered that the place of solutions is the Jewish people and the land [22].

Researcher Yunus Abdel-Hamid states that the reformist movement has constituted the largest organized obstacle in the paths of Zionism, as it is the most influential of the Jewish groups in the United States and the West. Many conferences calling for anti-Zionism were held, such as the Rabbis conference in Frankfurt in 1869, in which he showed Reformists refused to pray for the return to the land of the patriarchs – as Zionism claimed -, and declared that their hopes are still tied to their homeland in Germany, and that the desire to establish a Jewish state in Palestine is completely absent, which was repeated – almost – in the same year, but in “Philadelphia” in the United States. .

On the other side, the situation did not differ much among the Orthodox Jews. Rather, it was more severe and violent. Orthodoxy is the closest expression of fundamentalism, which arose as a reaction to the reform movement, but – paradoxically – it agreed to defend the Jewish “diaspora” where it is, and hostility The movement considered that any advocacy that looks at the Jews with a political or national viewpoint is something contrary to religion and far from it [23]. Rather, it considered Zionism – from the origin – to worship the wrong God [24].

And because the Orthodox movement, later called the Haredim – meaning the pious – was more hostile to Zionism than others, the German Council of Rabbis – protest rabbis – forced Herzl in 1897 to change the location of the First Zionist Congress from “Munich” to “Basel”, They issued an anti-Zionist statement after the conference in which they expressed the difference in the efforts of the Zionists with the principles of their fundamentalist group [25], and from this moment they adopted the fiercest line of opposition to Zionism from within the Jewish ranks.

In October 1911, a meeting was held in Frankfurt, Germany, in which a number of German Jews, Hungary, Lithuania and Poland participated. To discuss the issue of the language of worship and the position on Western civilization and so on, until an agreement was reached on the first foundations for the establishment of the “Agudat Yisrael” party – the Israel League – as an international organization [26], which is the party that has been hostile to Zionism since its founding in Poland in 1912, and sought to unify the groups Eastern and Western Orthodoxy with the aim of forming an alternative option for the Jewish organizations to confront the Zionist movement [27].

According to Yunus Abd al-Hamid, the party built on Orthodox ideas and set out on it in laying out its political programs, and was interested in encouraging biblical education, until it began its activity on the land of Palestine in Jerusalem in 1919 at the hands of an Orthodox community, and considered opposition to Zionism one of its most basic principles. The opposition launched wide media campaigns against the Zionist movement and its project in Palestine, and opposed it in its testimony before the League of Nations, refused to join Zionist groups and maintained isolation from it, and presented himself as a spokesman for anti-Zionist Jews in an attempt to create a non-political Jewish organization to replace the Zionist movement, until he was assassinated. Yaakov DeHaan, “the political spokesman of the party in 1924, at the hands of the Zionist gangs at the time.

Abd al-Hamid adds that with the announcement of the establishment of Israel in 1948, the intensity of the party’s policies began to gradually diminish, and it agreed with some of the Zionist positions on settlement, immigration, and statehood, provided that it adheres to the Jewish Sharia, which made the party in the end weaker than considering it a real obstacle to Zionism. This was rejected by some members of the party and decided to split from it to practice anti-Zionism independently. These schisms are the most prominent feature of the Orthodox tendency in general. It included within it many conflicting factions with different powers, [28] but despite the difference and the multiplicity of anti-Zionist religious parties and groups, no more violent and anti-Zionist groups have yet emerged than the two Haredi groups “Satmar” and “Naturi Karta” in particular.

In contrast to the many movements and parties whose conflict with the Israeli government has slowed down with the passage of time, the ultra-Orthodox Jews in the two groups “Satmar” and “Naturi Karta” remained among the fiercest religious Jews and fiercest hostility to the Zionist movement and its government so far, which is confirmed by the researcher, “Muhammad Emara” in his book Religious movements rejecting Zionism inside Israel, as he says: “It is known that the Zionist movement has not seen, since its inception, hostility from a Jewish religious leader, as it has seen from Rabbi Yoel Telbaum, the spiritual leader of the“ Satmer ”movement, who accused Zionism of heresy and that it is an eminence of religion. “.

The rabbi went further – as Amara recalls – when he considered the Holocaust as a punishment from God for the Jewish people who violated his commandments at the hands of the Zionist movement. He even accused Zionism explicitly that it had orchestrated the Holocaust in conjunction with the Nazis to force the remaining European Jews to emigrate to Palestine (29) ].

The movement took control of one of the largest international Jewish organizations, the United States Rabbis Union, which issued a sharp statement in 1982 attacking Zionism and the State of Israel, and religious parties joining the government – such as the National Religious Party – under the pretext that this accession reverses the balance of power when adherents to the Torah join the wicked. They help them in establishing their rule, and they said in the text that these adherents are “directly responsible for the actions that this unbelieving rule carries out… they have chosen to join a government that is competing with states with frightening arrogance… A spirit of atheism resides within everyone who believes that the Jews are able to break the cordon of the diaspora. And the establishment of an independent state before the appearance of the Savior ”[30].

Likewise, the “Neturei Karta” movement – or city guards – came back in 1935 when it split from the “Agudat Yisrael” party after it gradually began to merge with Zionism, and the number of its followers now stands at nearly half a million people around the world, and tens Thousands of people inside the occupied territories are concentrated in the “one hundred Shaareem” neighborhood in Jerusalem and the newly established city of Bnei Brak, which has become one of the most important strongholds of religious groups in the country [31].

As for the movement’s doctrine, it – as “Amara” mentions – takes an aggressive stance against Zionism for the aforementioned religious reasons and considers it a blasphemous movement. Its followers boycott the timing of the state and all its media – except for religious programs on the radio – and they adopt a special timing in which the day begins at midday They own a special newspaper that does not stop attacking Zionism, the “Al-Soor” newspaper, whose name means the separation fence between Judaism and Zionism, as well as boycotting the Israeli currency and minting a special internal currency between them.

As shown in the media material about them, the members of the “Neturei Karta” adhere to traditional Jewish dress and boycott technology greatly, and their women are modest in their clothes, and they sanctify the Sabbath sharply. .

And the group has a sharp position on military service, so that Rabbi “Hirsch” says in this regard: “Why are they considering our recruitment when they do not recruit Arabs? We hate them more than the Arabs, and if they give us a weapon, we will shoot them” [31]. It is also the movement that most defends the right of the Palestinians to their land. In an interview that Rabbi “David Feldan” conducted with the Qatari newspaper Al-Watan in 2005, he said: “The Palestinian people have the right to regain their land however they want, and we are confident that the Jews who live in Israel will leave it if they know that The Arabs will not kill them, contrary to what Zionism has been spreading since 1948. “

In this context, Rabbi David Weiss said: “Since the establishment of the State of Israel, we have been demonstrating against the state and they have beaten us during the demonstrations without mercy” [32]. In February 2015, the movement sent a letter to French President “Nicolas Sarkozy” after Israeli Prime Minister “Benjamin Netanyahu” invited European Jews to mass immigration, in which it said: “The Israeli prime minister once again acted as the protector and representative of the world’s Jews, the Zionists. They consider themselves the saviors of the Jews, but in reality they pose a great danger to them, and they are the reason for the increase in hostility to the Jews in the world, and their Zionist project is the reason for the hatred of the Jews ”[33].

Therefore, the movement always works to warn the Jews against immigration to Palestine, which we find clearly in the words of Rabbi “David Weiss”, a spokesman for the movement, as he says: “The chief rabbis in our movement preached that it is not necessary to live under Zionism. There are tens of thousands who have left. Palestine so that they would not live under the shadow of Zionism … But there is another school of thought in the Jewish community that does not want to leave Israel on the basis that it wants to fight Israel and Zionism from within. ”[34]

Commenting on this, “Amara” says that we should not resort to the simple axiom that says: As long as there are Jews who reject Zionism in Palestine, let them leave it and leave, because the matter is more complicated than that. There is a group of them who believe that it is imperative to fight Zionism from the inside, and they are completely isolating the state, and there are those who see it as a sacred land of worship regardless of Israel, and there was a Palestinian Jewish minority, and that minority considers itself Palestinian to the extent that the “Naturi Karta” movement boycotted the late president “Yasser Arafat” and the Palestine Liberation Organization – for some time – after practically recognizing Israel in exchange for the organization’s control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in addition to the movement’s support for the families of detainees and the wounded Palestinians financially and their sympathy for them; As David Landau mentions in his book “Jewish Fundamentalism” one of the movement’s messages in which he came:We, the anti-Zionist Palestinian Jews, express our sympathy and affection for you, we are your Palestinian brothers. “

Nevertheless, “Amara” affirms that the Jewish rejection of Zionism varies between groups and parties, and not all rejectionist positions should be interpreted as sympathy for stolen Arab rights. And the Arabs in particular, and believes that the holy Jewish state does not exist except after the expulsion of the Arabs from their land.

It also indicates that the material temptations offered by the Zionist entity play a major role in changing some religious movements to their positions, as they tend to dissolve into the state, and that the ethnic basis on which these movements are based is what made it very difficult to unify them, so the process of appropriating them – in practice – was easier. Much.

In the end, the relationship between Judaism and Zionism, and the problems that result from it, does not cease to announce itself again and again. Zionism does not stop using religion politically, and religious people do not stop declaring their rejection of Zionism and exposing its falsehood [36], so the question remains: Does Israel carries the factors of its demise inside it? Or is this conflict capable of being contained and the Zionists of its final party, the fundamentalist Haredim?

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Margins

[*] The Orthodox is a derivative word, the first part of which is from the word Orthodox and its origin from the Greek language meaning “right” or “right” or “correct”, and its second part from the word doxa which means “opinion” or “belief”, and it is related to the word Duquesne, meaning “to think”, is used in general to denote adherence to agreed upon customs, in particular to religious belief associated with religions.

[**] A ghetto refers to a region in which, willingly or unwillingly, lives a group of people who are considered by the majority of people to be a background to a particular ethnicity, culture or religion.