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The excessive wing of the devout nationalist network prevailed. At the same time, devout Zionists are part of the Israeli mainstream.
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By Isabel Kershner
HEBRON, West Bank (AP) — The Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, home to a few hundred Orthodox Jews among some 200,000 Palestinians, has long been a stronghold of the far-right settler movement outside Israel. society.
But after this month’s elections in Israel, an alliance of far-right parties, led by the Religious Zionism Party that reflects the prospects of radical settlers, has emerged as the third political force in Israel. The alliance, which also included the ultra-nationalist Jewish Power party, won more than 88 percent of the vote of Hebron settlers.
The alliance is now poised to be a key pillar of the combined coalition through right-wing Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu, who on Sunday won the official mandate to shape the next government, raising fears among secular Israelis that religions and political extremism are entering the mainstream.
Supporters of devout Zionism hope the alliance will use its influence to bolster its concept of a Jewish state, adding the sale of conservative family values, preserving Sabbath sanctity and enforcing Jewish sovereignty in parts of the West Bank, a territory the Palestinians claim. for a long-term state and which devout Zionism considers part of Greater Israel and refers to by names. Biblical Judea and Samaria.
“The Torah of Israel, the other people of Israel and the Land of Israel, those are the 3 banners of devout Zionism,” said Hananiya Shimon, a 39-year-old father of seven who lives in one of the settler complexes scattered around Hebron’s tomb. Patriarchs, the disputed holy place, respected by Jews and Muslims, who call it the Ibrahimi Mosque. The domain is completely controlled by the Israeli army.
“During 2,000 years of exile,” Shimon said, “religion is what has held us together. “
The Party of Religious Zionism, led by Bezalel Smotrich, ran on a joint list with the ultranationalist Jewish Power, led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Noam, a small orthodox far-right party opposed to L. G. B. T. Q. rights. This partnership designed through Mr. Netanyahu to maximize his bloc’s electoral prospects in its bid to return, and represents the toughest political incarnation of devout Zionists.
There has long been an internal war within Israel’s Zionist community, said Tehila Friedman, a fashionable Orthodox lawyer and centrist former lawmaker. That war pitted more liberal moderates “against each other liberal moderates “who need to combine their Jewish culture with humanist values opposed to other strident and opposing voices. “who see humanism as too progressive,” he said. Hardliners must adhere to the strictest interpretation of Jewish law on matters governed by the state.
A more moderate party representing devout national settlers and the public, Jewish Home, was eliminated this time, having lost the acceptance of its electorate after breaking promises it made in the last election, in 2021, and joining forces in a government. with leftists and an Arab holiday. Outbreaks of Arab terrorism and inter-ethnic and criminal violence over the past 18 months have left many Israelis fearful for their private protection and have also strengthened hardliners.
Given the lack of an alternative, Ms. Friedman said, “The more forces aligned with the more extreme. “
The devout Zionist national camp also has a larger component of mainstream Israel in recent years in a concerted effort to integrate and have more say in Israel’s future.
Religious Zionists have risen to the highest ranks of the security and police establishment, constituted a disproportionate number of graduates of the Military Officer School, strengthened their presence in Israel’s combined Jewish and Arab cities, and developed an influential voice in the Israeli community. Media and culture.
“We are a Jewish state, and it is vital that devout Zionism is in government and works for its Jewish character,” said Rivka Ben Avraham, an instructor and mother of 10 who volunteered at Warm Corner, a shelter for foot soldiers near her. agreement in the Etzion bloc, north of Hebron. “At the same time, we are a democratic state,” he said, “and devout Zionists are involved in each and every facet of life here. “
Religious Zionists come with other people of varying degrees of religiosity and other shadows of more commonly right-wing politics. Network length diversity estimates of 10% to 30% of Israel’s population. A recent survey for the Institute of Jewish People’s Policy, a Jerusalem grassroots study group, found that about 15% of the male population profiles as strictly observant Jews who believe in the concept of a Greater Israel.
Religious Zionism has its roots in the decades before the status quo of the State of Israel in 1948. One of its founding fathers, Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook, saw a messianic calling in the creation of a Jewish state and embraced the socialist and secular pioneers who arrived in the early twentieth century as its builders.
The National Religious Party, founded in 1956 to unite the devout Zionist electorate, has sat in many governments and focused first and foremost on issues of faith and state. After Israel conquered the biblical center of the West Bank, East Jerusalem with its holy sites and other territories in the 1967 war, devout Zionists led efforts to colonize the newly conquered lands, presenting themselves as the next generation of Zionist pioneers.
Rabbi Kook’s son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, delivered an impassioned speech weeks before the war, lamenting the fact that Hebron, Jericho and other biblical sites in the West Bank were under Jewish control. After the Israeli victory and profession of those areas, some of his supporters saw his words as a prophecy and the ideological settlement motion took on messianic overtones.
The ultimate purpose of Mr. Smotrich, the leader of the Zionist party, is to impose complete Jewish sovereignty over the entire territory and ultimately for Israel to be governed through Torah legislation. He refused to outline the fatal attacks on Palestinians as Jewish terrorism.
Rabbi Yaakov Medan, a devout Zionist leader of Yeshiva Har Etzion, a seminary in Alon Shvut’s Etzion Bloc agreement, joined the assignment of the agreement from the beginning. But he represents a voice of moderation and tolerance. In the decade since Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by a Jewish fanatic, Rabbi Medan worked on a pact of coexistence between devout and secular Jews in Israel.
This most recent election, Israel’s fifth in less than four years, underscored divisions within the national camp and the break with the more liberal part of the country.
Rabbi Medan said the respectable Mr. Smotrich, who once served as a minister, said it differed from his logo of devout Zionism. Ben-Gvir’s Jewish force “is not a devout Zionism,” Rabbi Medan said, but “a protest party opposed to lack of governance. “Protest parties regularly disappear, he added.
Rabbi Medan said he would rather give up some of the force by having a more left-wing party sign up for the emerging coalition, not left-wing, adding: “I am willing to pay this value in the interest of the nation. “unity. “
Other devout Zionists have teamed up with Mr. Ben-Gvir, a Hebron resident with a history of provocation and racism, who until recently hung a portrait of Baruch Goldstein, an American-born Israeli doctor who massacred 29 Muslim worshippers. in 1994.
Now that the Jewish settlement is deeply rooted in the West Bank, the muscular form of Mr. S. S. S. It turns out that Smotrich has refocused his prospects on converting Israel as a whole.
He is pushing for a review of the judiciary to oversee politicians and give more strength to parliament, which critics say would turn Israel’s liberal democracy into a Jewish-majority government.
It also needs to restrict the scope of Israel’s Law of Return, which automatically grants citizenship to foreign Jews, as well as their children and grandchildren who would not possibly be Jewish under Jewish law. And he has already demanded that Israeli professional soccer leagues avoid the few games still played on Saturday.
Unlike ultra-Orthodox parties that focus more on building walls and securing budgets to protect the way of life of the Haredi minority, said Uri Keidar, executive director of Be Free Israel, which promotes devout freedom and pluralism, devout Zionism “aims to replace the DNA of Israeli society. And not just prevent Israeli society from converting them.
“We’re getting to a point,” Keidar said, “but we’ll fight it and we will win. “
Itamar Leshem, 39, who lives in Hebron and teaches at a yeshiva in the adjacent Kiryat Arba agreement, said he hoped devout Zionism would infuse more Jewish traditions into the curriculum of Israel’s secular state schools and destroy the outgoing government’s efforts to liberalize the conversion procedure. to Judaism and announce the rights of homosexuals.
“Our values have been trampled,” Mr. Leshem, adding that he believed the outgoing government was not nationalistic enough. “The other people of Israel have spoken. “
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