Jewish Extremism
Definition
Jewish fundamentalism is a political movement that integrates the law of the Torah into the actual world through literature. As a result, Jewish fundamentalism does not distinguish between the State and the Synagogue and attempts to impose the Torah's law on the Promised Land on the State.
Overview
The concept of the Promised Land (State of Israel) is essential to the growth of Jewish fundamentalism today. In Judaism, the land is more than just a physical location; it is a holy concept. Judaism and Land are inextricably linked since the Biblical narrative of Abraham connects Judaism to the Land through Abraham's relocation to Canaan, the Promised Land - comprising modern day Israel and Palestine.
Jewish fundamentalists turned the concept of the Land into Messianic theology and translated the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War political situation into political terms that are attained via a human initiative that, according to the belief, is inspired by God and the holy scripture of the Torah. Today, Jewish fundamentalism is a huge force with theological doctrine as its primary political target in Israel.
A common belief among Jewish supremacists is that God guided the Jews - his “chosen people” to victory so they could re-create the Kingdom of Israel. Thus, Jewish fundamentalists have altered public discussion on the nation's future and the conditions for regional peace by institutionalizing their religious values.
According to Prof. Ian Lustick, Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, “in the late 1960s, the vast majority of Israeli Jews regarded fundamentalist, ultranationalist, and religious beliefs and political programs as bizarre extremism”. However, this is no longer the case today. Today’s Jewish supremacists are supported by around 20% of Israeli Jews. Another 10 to 15% find these policies and viewpoints acceptable, even if they do not entirely agree with them.
Jewish fundamentalism, observed through the lens of religious Zionism, is strongly attached to the sense of racial supremacist ideology, as Jewish supremacists consider themselves to be racially superior to goyim (Non-Jews), and in the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict - Arabs in particular. Jewish supremacist groups in Israel position Palestinian Arabs at “the bottom of the food chain.” According to Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh, American-born Israeli rabbi affiliated with the Chabad movement, Jews are God’s chosen nation and a Jew’s life is more valuable than any non-Jew, resulting in the dehumanization of the Arab community in Israel.
These religious fundamentalist Zionists supported and participated in the construction of illegal outposts across the occupied West Bank, Golan Heights, and Gaza Strip. Following the Six Day War, Judea and Samaria (the biblical term for the West Bank) became a very important issue in Israeli right-wing and religious discussions. Hence, the State of Israel began to rule it militarily and politically and began settling populations in this specific area. Within Religious Zionist discourse, it is a common belief that God's promise to Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel) included Judea and Samaria. As a result, the Land of Israel and the People of Israel became important components of Religious Zionist philosophy.
Evolution of Kahanism
Not only is Jewish fundamentalism attached to the extremist ideology of “Gush Emunim”, founded by followers of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, including Hanan Porat, Haim Drukman, and Rabbi Moshe Levinger, but it is also about the ideology of Kahanism, founded by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was also the founder of the Jewish Defence League (JDL) - a militant and extremist Jewish organization founded in the 1960’s.
Kahanism is an extreme Jewish philosophy founded by its spiritual leader Kahane, who also established the Israeli Kach party when he was the Associate Editor of the Jewish Press, an American weekly newspaper located in Brooklyn, New York. Kahane strongly believed that the majority of Arabs in Israel were enemies of Jews and of Israel itself and that a Jewish theocratic state with no voting rights for non-Jews should be established.
He began receiving an increasing number of calls and letters concerning attacks and crimes against Jews and Jewish organizations in the United States. At that time, Kahane made the first move toward forming the Jewish Defense League. In May 1968, the Jewish Press advertised on the main page: “We are talking about JEWISH SURVIVAL!” Are you prepared to fight for democracy and the survival of the Jewish people? Join and contribute to the Jewish Defense Corps.” To avoid being labeled as a violent organization, the name was later changed to “Jewish Defense League.”
In 1971, Kahane founded the far-right Jewish-Orthodox and ultra-nationalist Kach political party as an outpost of the Jewish Defense League in the United States. The Kach party is known for proposing the “Halakhah” as the law of the State of Israel in Greater Israel. Halakhah gave the Palestinian Arabs in Israel the right to choose between becoming an Israeli citizen in the State of Israel after a security check, on the condition that they agree to serve in the defense forces and perform other civilian duties, and accept their status as non-Jewish residents, or emigrating from the country.
In 1973, 1977, and 1981, Kach ran for the Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Knessets respectively, but did not make it through to the electoral threshold. The Central Elections Board barred the party from standing in the 11th Knesset elections in 1984, but the judgment was overruled by the Supreme Court, and the party ended up winning its first congressional seat. As a result, the Knesset quickly enacted an amendment to the Basic Law: The Knesset, which states that no party may participate in Knesset elections if one of its aims is incitement to racism (section 7a of the law). Eventually, Kach was officially disqualified from competing in the 1988 elections for the 12th Knesset.
The Kach party founder was arrested and charged with numerous violent crimes linked to his JDL operations in the United States throughout the 1970s, including bombings, kidnappings, and assassination plots. In addition, he was accused of promoting JDL’s activities in 1975, when he was sentenced to one year in jail for planning to manufacture bombs after he was discovered urging JDL members to abduct or murder Soviet diplomats, blow the Iraqi embassy in Washington D.C, and organize arms smuggling to Israel. In November 1990, JDL Founder, Kahane, was assassinated in a Manhattan hotel while delivering a speech in front of a crowd of mostly Orthodox Jews.
Following the statements in favor of Baruch Goldstein's killing, the United States and the Israeli government designated the Kach party as a terrorist organization in 1994 under the 1948 anti-terrorism laws. Goldstein was a Jewish terrorist who carried out the Cave of the Patriarchs Massacre in February 1994 that resulted in the deaths of 29 unarmed Palestinian worshippers in Hebron. Many of the party’s leaders were subsequently imprisoned in Israeli jails under administrative detention, most notably Noam Federman, who was imprisoned for more than 6 months without being charged.
Far-right Jewish Figureheads and Organizations
Rabbi Kahane is considered one of Israel’s foremost alt-right leaders. His assassination did not mark an end to his extremist ideology. Kahane’s followers and ideology left a residual effect, and today, his ideology still resonates amongst Jewish supremacists in Israel. Meir Ettinger, Baruch Marzel, Bentzi Gopstein, Itamar Ben-Gvir are among the most prominent disciples of Kahane’s extremist ideology in Israel.
Among the Jewish organizations that follow the Kahanist ideology is the Otzma Yehudit party (The Jewish Strength), founded in 2012, and led by MK Itamar Ben-Gvir who advocates for the annexation of the West Bank, the deportation of “enemy” Arabs to neighboring countries, the supremacy of religious Jewish law, and the rejection of the establishment of a Palestinian state, thereby granting Israel complete control of the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
In 2005, Bentzi Gopstein and Baruch Marzel, right-wing and Jewish supremacist activists, created a Kahanist organization called Lehava. The group, with an active membership of 10,000 individuals adopts its ideas and views from the ideology of Kahana, Rabbi Meir Kahane, who believed in a homogenous Jewish state governed by the Torah's precepts. Its adherents not only reject Jewish intermarriage and assimilation, objecting to most personal ties between Jews and non-Jews, but the organization's most harmful views include the expulsion of Palestinians to Arab nations, annexation of the occupied West Bank, and a ban on Christmas celebrations.
In addition, the Hilltop Youth (HY) Movement (also known as ISIS of Israel), led by Meir Ettinger - the grandson of Meir Kahane, and Avri Ran, is also another example of a Kahanist organization. HY is a far-right extremist and terrorist organization that has long been designated as a national security concern and is subject to the highest levels of law enforcement in Israel. HY is known for carrying out assaults on innocent Palestinians and Jewish peace activists. Hilltop's Kahanist fellows explicitly state that Jews are God's chosen nation to execute the mandate of slaughtering and eliminating the Arab people from Palestine, as it is a common belief among its members that the Holy Land belongs only to Jews.
“Jewish fundamentalism remains as one of the most cohesive political forces in Israel,” Prof. Lustick stated. The rising prominence of religion and religious discourse in Israeli politics indicates the strength of faith-based incitement and hate-speech, and how it can penetrate modern-day political systems and countries.