by skyhook77sfg » Mon Feb 14, 2011 4:54 pm
Jewish fundamentalism remains ideologically the single most coherent and vigorous political force in Israel.
Jewish fundamentalism remains ideologically the single most coherent and vigorous political force in Israel. Its influence is reflected both in the obstacles to peace negotiations stemming from Israel's entrenched position in the occupied territories and in Israeli opinion polls. In the late 1960s the vast majority of Israeli Jews regarded fundamentalist ultranationalist and religious beliefs and political programs as bizarre extremism. Now, however, some 20 per cent of Israeli Jews embrace them. Another 10 to 15 per cent consider these policies and opinions acceptable, even if they do not fully agree with them. And another 10 to 15 per cent firmly back the key Gush demand that no territorial concessions be made in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In another telling indication of Gush Emunim's impact, a June 1987 survey of 22 leading Israeli figures by the newspaper Hadashot found that Rabbi Moshe Levinger, the current ideological leader of Gush Emunim and a key figure in initiating the Jewish settlement movement in 1968, tied with former Prime Minister Menachem Begin in being considered the person who has had the greatest impact on Israeli society in the last 20 years.
Not surprisingly, fundamentalists fully embrace Jews as an Am Segula (a chosen or "treasured" people). The implication is that the transcendent imperatives for Jews effectively nullify moral laws that bind the behavior of normal nations. Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, of the Ataret Cohanim Yeshiva in Jerusalem and one of Gush Emunim's most prolific ideologues, argues that divine commandments to the Jewish people "transcend the human notions of national rights." He explains that while God requires other nations to abide by abstract codes of justice and righteousness, such laws do not apply to Jews. To his people of Israel, God speaks directly.
AS CHIEF RABBI ITZAK AVRAHAM KOOK DECLARED:
"The difference between a Jewish soul and the souls of non-Jews - all of them in all different levels - is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle."
AND THERE YOU HAVE IT IN ONE SENTENCE
for more see Prof. Ian Lustick Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel