August 30, 2020 1:25 pm
by Jerold Auerbach
www.algemeiner.com
OPINION
A general view picture shows a construction site in Efrat, in the Gush
Etzion settlement bloc in the West Bank, Jan. 28, 2020. Photo: Reuters /
Ronen Zvulun / File.
Benjamin Kerstein has been commended as “one of the finest American-Israeli authors of his generation.” But his recent Algemeiner critique — “Zionism, Messianism and the Question of the Settlements” — is unpersuasive.
Kerstein understands that Israeli settlers are not monolithic: they
“represent a diverse and complex society-within-a-society.” They range
from ordinary Israelis who, like generations of Zionists before them,
have built communities in the Biblical Land of Israel, to “true
believers” who are “often terrifyingly sure of themselves.” Their
“remarkable success story” might best be understood as the fulfillment
of the Zionist dream. Yet he identifies with those “who view the
movement with skepticism at best and open hostility at worst.”
Kerstein knows that Judea and Samaria (Jordan’s “West Bank” until the
Six-Day War) comprised “the heartland of the ancient Jewish kingdoms;
it is integral to the Jewish people’s biblical inheritance … and our
presence there is as indigenous as one could possibly imagine.” He
recognizes settlers as “people of considerable integrity” who “are
willing to put their lives in danger for what they believe in.” That
seems like a compelling argument for an embrace of the historic Land of
Israel and its bold and courageous Jewish residents.
Yet for Kerstein there are “very legitimate reasons to be skeptical
of and even hostile toward the settlement movement.” Least persuasive is
his discomfort that “essentially the entire world considers the
settlements illegal.” (Who cares?) But “the most troubling aspect of the
settlement movement” is its “ferociously messianic passion” of the kind
that has sprinkled Jewish history with “horrifically destructive”
consequences. Among the “terrible horrors,” he rightly identifies
“Baruch Goldstein’s slaughter of 29 innocent Muslims” in the Machpelah
shrine (1994), reinforced by “the Kahanist ideologues of Hebron” who
“reject Israeli democracy.”
But Kerstein ignores the reality that the overwhelming majority of
the nearly 450,000 settlers are normal Israelis who, as Zionists have
always done, built communities in the Biblical homeland of the Jewish
people. The settlement blocs with the largest number of Israeli
residents feature universities, yeshivas, scientific laboratories,
high-rise apartments and shopping centers. It is inconceivable that they
would be ever be abandoned by their residents or evicted by the Israeli
government.
That leaves Kerstein’s primary targets: the “messianic fanatics” of
Hebron and neighboring Kiryat Arba (Biblical Hebron) who reject
democracy and advocate “a theocratic state.” But Baruch Goldstein’s
horrific massacre of Muslims at prayer in Me’arat ha’Machpelah — the
ancient burial site of Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs — remains the
tragic exception. Hebron Jews, numbering fewer than 1,000, have far more
often been the targets of Palestinian terrorism than perpetrators of
violence.
While researching the history of Hebron, the repository of Jewish
memory rooted in the Biblical narrative, I met with the trilogy of
Israelis who were the founding fathers of the restored community
following the Six-Day War: Rabbis Moshe Levinger and Eliezer Waldman and
lawyer Elyakim Ha’etzni. They were not “messianic fanatics”; they were
passionate Zionists determined to restore Jewish life in the holy Jewish
city that was the first capital of ancient Israel under King David’s
rule. Other Hebron and Kiryat Arba residents, especially my guide David
Wilder, were welcoming, generous with their time, and patiently answered
my questions.
Kerstein’s “messianic fanatics” turned out to be passionate Israelis
who — like secular Zionists — were determined to return to the Biblical
homeland of the Jewish people. They neither rejected Israeli democracy,
as he writes, nor did they advocate “a theocratic state.” Their
“apocalyptic messianism,” in translation, was devotion to the
restoration of Jewish national sovereignty — also known as Zionism.
For Kerstein, however, Jewish settlers — not only in Hebron — are an
unwelcome intrusion into the “overwhelmingly Arab” West Bank. So, too,
were the early waves of Zionist settlers who returned to their promised
land. They were vastly outnumbered by Arab residents (not yet
self-identified as “Palestinians”) who — often violently — resisted
their presence. Arab rioting in 1921 that killed 47 Jewish “settlers” in
Tel Aviv hardly would have justified the abandonment of Zionism — in
the city where Kerstein lives.
Kerstein is, of course, entitled to be “a strong skeptic of the
settlement movement.” But he recognizes that it has “won” its struggle
to establish “a permanent presence in the West Bank.”
Settlements, he realizes, “are not going anywhere, and we must make
some kind of peace with that.” Perhaps the most appropriate expression
of peace would be acceptance of the reality that the settlers’
“permanent presence” represents the fulfillment of Zionism: the
restoration of Jewish sovereignty in the Biblical homeland of the Jewish
people.
Jerold S. Auerbach is the author of Hebron Jews: Memory and Conflict in the Land of Israel (2009).
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