By Steve Kramer
KFAR SABA, Israel — I recently received this question from a reader in Arizona, who happens to be a fervent Christian Zionist. “We are hardly getting much news about Israel and what I have seen seems rather fragmented and confusing. It seems that Israel is not unified against their enemies. Is this the case?”
Here’s my answer:
Here are some suggestions for daily news about Israel: Israel Today. It’s a free Israeli paper here, available in both Hebrew and English online. Then there’s the more liberal Jerusalem Post and the Times of Israel. Here’s an easy litmus test to determine the political slant of the ‘paper’: does the website you look at use the Jordanian-invented term, “West Bank”, or Judea and Samaria, names which date back to ancient times.
“Judea and Samaria” was the name mentioned in the 1917 Balfour Declaration for a “national home” for the Jews. The idea was soon adopted, in toto, by the League of Nations, and later the United Nations. In contrast, the term “West Bank” was made up in 1950 by the Jordanian monarchy to sever Israel’s connection to its homeland, geographically situated on the western side of the Jordan River, the border between Israel and Jordan.
Our former home for 26 years was in Samaria, in Alfe Menashe. It is located 60 miles from the Jordan River and certainly not on the western bank of the river. It’s similar to the distance between Atlantic City and Philadelphia. Could Atlantic City accurately be described as located on the East Bank of the Delaware River? However, even if Alfe Menashe were next to the Jordan, the correct name of its location would still be Samaria.
Now to the question, Are Israelis unified? Do you know the expression: 2 Jews and 3 opinions? Both sides of an argument are valued in Judaism, even to the point of recording the majority and minority viewpoints in the Talmud (the written commentary of the oral Jewish laws describing customs, ethics, and history). The Talmud was compiled between the 3rd and 6th centuries CE.
In more recent history, towards the end of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century, Zionist pioneers came to the Land of Israel in small numbers. The “Second Aliyah” immigrants (1904 – 1914) came to Palestine to settle the land, not to pray and live next to the ruins of the Holy Temple. This generation was generally young Jews excited to drain the swamps and plant crops to sustain Jewish settlement in our ancient homeland. Many died of malaria or returned to Europe, unable to cope with the harsh conditions and dangerous Arabs.
The Zionists, themselves just one of many international peoples at the time who were recognizing their nationality, were primarily socialists or Communists mostly from the huge Russian Empire (along with a smaller number of religious Jews from Yemen). What was “Zionism”? It was a Jewish nationalist movement with the goal of the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews.
The Zionist leadership of the first and second generations was almost wholly Jews from Eastern Europe with secular leanings and Ashkenazi cultural orientations. Their Mapai Party (a combination of three left wing parties, later known as the Labour Party) tightly controlled the Yishuv: pre-state Israel from the end of WWI until 1948. Mapai headed all the government institutions.
There was much disagreement and animosity between Mapai and their opponents, the Revisionists, who were headed by the charismatic Ze’ev Jabotinsky until Labour was upset in 1977 by Menachem Begin, the leader of the Likud party, who had been Jabotinsky’s deputy.
Although Begin was from the same Ashkenazi background as the now displaced Labour leaders, Likud respected the Sephardi Jews, descendants of Iberian Peninsula/North African Jews, and Mizrahi Jews, who had been living in Arab countries for centuries or even millennia. These immigrants had been, and were still, disrespected as ‘primitive’ by Labour and were treated accordingly.
Begin and the Likud Party recognized these “Arab” Jews who felt marginalized and underrepresented by the Labour establishment, as an important part, actually the majority, of the Israeli mix. This political revolution turned Israel from a quasi-Socialist state to one leaning ‘right’ and capitalistic (especially under the influence of Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 2002-2003). Eventually the diminished Labour Party merged with the smaller left wing Meretz Party to form the Democrat Party, which holds only 4 seats in the 120-member Knesset.
After Israel’s independence was achieved in the 1948 War of Independence, and even in the previous decades, political affiliation became a divider between Israelis. If you were a member of Labour’s Histradut labor organization, you could get work in the government, the schools, the hospitals, the large factories, etc. If not, you found it much harder to secure a position and had to be more independent. Even today, some right wing educators keep their political views to themselves to ensure their positions. (This is not unique to Israel.)
There is no singular Israeli political direction. Many leftist Jews and other Israelis are totally against Bibi and will do almost anything to depose him. Some of the left and center-left Israelis, especially the more financially successful ones, favor “anybody but Bibi.” The rightist Jews in general favor the Likud and its leader, Bibi Netanyahu. Prime Minister Netanyahu eclipsed David Ben-Gurion years ago as Israel’s longest serving premier. His tenure is very divisive, adding to an inability of die-hard left-leaning and right-leaning Jews to reach agreement on so many issues.
The Haredim, or Ultra-Orthodox, are another faction, neither left nor right. In general, the Ultra-Orthodox senior rabbis will back the political party which promises them the most economic benefits. Many Israelis, secular or Orthodox, resent the Haredim for two reasons, adding to the list of disagreements here in Israel. Because Israel is at war, the fact that most of the young Haredi men don’t serve in the IDF is a huge point of contention, adding to the general malaise Israelis are feeling.
The Ultra-Orthodox have a higher birth rate than most Israelis (except Bedouin Arabs) and are 12-13% of Israel’s population – and growing. This is upsetting to most Israelis because of the economic benefits given to Haredim by certain political parties to curry their favor at election time. Even more troubling is their unwillingness to share the burden of defending Israel from its enemies. For their part, the Haredi rabbis aver that the prayers of the Yeshiva students are paramount in protecting Israel.
In addition to all of the above, Israel is in the midst of a terrible war, in which many heads of households are serving in the IDF reserves, removing them from their families for months at a time. This, too adds to the atmosphere of tension and disagreement here. So, yes, the Israelis are not unified but I’m sure that this is the case in most Western countries today.
We live in a world where most governments are ‘muddling through.’ The different parties blame everything on their opponents, time and money are wasted, and complications abound. However, among the soldiers, politics are minimized and the fighters are much more concerned about protecting each other, defeating Hamas, and recovering our captives. One hopes that this cooperative attitude will carry over into civilian life when this war against Muslim terrorists is victorious.
So, the answer to the question, Are the Israelis unified? is that whatever our divisions, nearly the entire Jewish population supports the defense of the state and the continuation of the Zionist enterprise in our ancient homeland.
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Steve Kramer is an American-Israeli freelance writer based in Kfar Saba, Israel.