IPCRI Forum - Violence, revenge and redemption - Feb.2017

"Violence, Revenge and Redemption": A close look at Jewish radical violence On 16th February 2017 IPCRI hosted a forum at Mishkenot Sha'ananim in Jerusalem. Entitled “Violence, Revenge and Redemption”, it focused on Jewish radical violence in Israel and Palestine.

The discussion was moderated by Natan Odenheimer, a journalist and Mandel Scholar at Hebrew University. It took place thanks to the participation of Tehila Frideman-Nachalom, Pnina Pfeuffer and Perle Nicole, as well as to the questions of the public.

After specifying that the forum would discuss a phenomenon that is quantitatively restricted and that does not represent the entire Israeli society nor Jewish culture, Natan Odenheimer depicted the characteristics and implications of Jewish radical violence, while tracing the wide context of its orgins.

This radicalism is nevertheless linked to Judaism specifically, which led Odenheimer to question the link between the Messianic ideology and violence. Indeed, he underlined that the return of the Jewish people to Israel, whether religious or secular and political, is comprised in a messianic narrative according to which a Jewish State would bring redemption and put an end to the threats the Jewish people have endured in Europe and the Middle East. Odenheimer explains that nuances in interpretation allowed perversion towards a Jewish political thinking that resorts to violence in spite of the traditional objection against taking action to advance the coming of the Messiah. Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh is referred as one of the main influences of this violent wave, by supporting the destruction of the Zionist state of Israel and its replacement by a Jewish Kingdom that would be led by the Jewish Messiah. He notably supported tolerance towards the killing of non-Jews in certain situations and articulated revenge as a spiritual act of piety.

Inspired by his vision and encouraged by the impression of constituting a small group that is constantly under threats, Jewish radicals base their use of violence on the idea that escalating the situation can contribute to the rise of a new order.

The moderator underlined that since this topic is as important and toxic as it is complex, it requires delving deeply into the ways in which it’s understood interannly.

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Following this introduction, Tehila Frideman-Nachalon provided her testimony as part of the modern orthodox community. She is a Senior Fellow at Shaharit and Head of Movilim at Kolot that promotes democratic values within orthodox communities. She does not define herself as orthodox but rather as a "Zionist religious", in order to differentiate her religious community from the orthodox movement, which is often considered anti-Zionist.

First, she explained that as Zionist religious, they consider that they have the privilege and the right to live on the land of their ancestors. Indeed, according to the narrative she shares with her community, Israel is not a response to anti-Semitism: it is part of the fulfillment of a mission that was given to the Jewish people within the Bible. That means that their return is perceived as a positive and independent movement rather than as a consequence of negative events. This vision was inspired by Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook (1865-1935), to whom she referred during her speech. Hence redemption results from the return of the Jewish exiles, which is meant to achieve a Biblical mission.

According to her, this vision has started falling apart because of the Oslo negotiations and agreements, which consisted in an effort to turn the Holy Land into a normal state by applying territorial restrictions to the fulfillment of that mission. The political dispute between the right and the left wings, on a background of spreading terror attacks, led many religious Zionist the question the legitimacy of the state. Indeed, politicians were shifting the Jewish essence of the state towards a political essence, prioritizing sovereignty over religion and without even fulfilling the first objective of a state, which is to protect its people. A milestone within that upheaval is the disengagement from Gaza, towards which Frideman-Nachalom is critical.

This disillusion is, according to her, the main driver of the emergence of Jewish radicalism. As the social contract had been broken between the state and the people, violent acts perpetrated by religious Jews were, at first, perceived as actions to protect themselves. Consequently, violent radicalism was not perceived as a serious problem by religious Zionists until it started spreading such that they condemned them and distanced themselves from such behavior that stood against the Torah.

Pnina Pfeuffer then reacted to Frideman-Nachalom's speech, starting her own by underlining that most orthodox Jews are not anti-Zionist but rather very patriotic. She herself is part of the Haredi community and works as a writer and a columnist to raise awareness on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within her community.

In order to explain her first statement, Pfeuffer mentioned that the orthodox attitude towards the Israeli state has always been ambivalent. She stated that before its creation, anti-Zionism was a broad position based on different thinkers' ideas, which claimed the impracticalities and dangers of such an undertaking for the Jewish people. The ideology overturned with the creation of the state: when it became a granted fact, Pfeuffer assures that most Haredim wanted to get involved in the political process and functioning of the state.

The question she wanted to focus on concerned the Haredi perception of the role of the state of Israel in the process of redemption. She does not deny that there is an anti-Zionist faction within the Haredi community, which perceives the state as an anti-religious body that has to be 2

eradicated because it prevents the Jewish people from attaining redemption. However, she says that a majority of the members of her community actually do not know how the state of Israel relates to redemption. The reality is that they perceive the existence of the state as a fact with which they have to go along. In their mind, it simply constitutes a structure that provides them with protection and other services such as religious education. It is therefore connoted positively but is not necessarily linked to redemption.

In order to solidify this statement, she refers to the young generation of Jews who were born in the state of Israel and consider it their home and system without feeling the need to reflect deeper about its role. The youth is nonetheless in the process of building an identity, which is a broad process with a variety of different paths. Pfeuffer's perspective is considerate of the fact that the Jewish youth do not perceive themselves as former exiles and do not associate the state to redemption. Therefore, they are more likely to relate to the idea of revenge and to resort to violence when it comes to defending their right to live on the land they were born in.

The last panelist, Perle Nicolle, is a PhD Candidate at Hebrew University, researching Jewish Radicalism. She was asked about the ideological framework of her research, which focuses on the relation between redemption and the state of Israel.

Basing her analysis on field-based research, she stands for the necessity to step out of rhetorical narratives and to adopt a wider perspective in order to consider the varied set of perceptions about the state of Israel, given the variety of narratives within the Israeli society at large.

Nicolle aims at understanding the differences and the relations between the state of Israel and the West Bank, including the representatives and authorities of both entities. How do those relations affect Jewish Messianism and their apprehension of redemption? The research she undertook enabled her to discern two frames of thinking.

First, within the frame of "classic Zionism", the state is sacred and its creation is the first step towards redemption, which corresponds to the arrival of the Messiah. Inherently, the institutions themselves contribute to the fulfillment of the Biblical mission, which constitutes a motivation for the community to carry the state forward. Hence the engagement of the holders of this ideology in the army and in political affairs, for examples. Then, as Fridman-Nachalom mentioned, a twist was provoked by the disengagement from Gaza in 2005. Indeed, the displacement of 5,000 settlers affected the perception of the state as a sacred entity since it renounced to sovereignty over the entire land, and thereby to its quest of Jewish messianism.

The abiding of the political side to practicalities of the existence of the state of Israel provoked an upheaval of perceptions towards it, notably among the youth.

The responsibility for this behavior is attributed differently according to social groups. On the one hand, the elite of the movement that upholds the sacredness of the state agreed with the necessity to pull the state out of violent endeavors. Therefore, they attribute the disengagement from Gaza to the left wing rather than to the state itself and their aim was, from that point, to reengage the state in the direction that it should follow according to them. On the other hand, Nicolle explains that a large part of the society considered that the state failed and stopped perceiving it as sacred. In their eyes, it consequently became a secular entity that is not related to redemption anymore, which results in a strong dissonance with classic Zionism.

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As a result, the disengagement from Gaza is at the roots of Jewish violence because it initiated the feeling that the state failed in protecting its people, which the Hilltop Youth has proven able to compensate. Religion and politics were then merged, religion being the basis of recruitment to a group that perpetrates violence. She concludes that such acts correspond to a vision of redemption that occurs without the state, which explains why Jewish radicalism is a movement that is separate from classic Zionism, which believes in redemption through the state. She therefore emphasizes the importance of differences between groups' ideologies and narratives in the understanding of the emergence of Jewish violence.

Following such conclusion, Natan Odenheimer started the discussion by mentioning that these groups dispose of independent organization, structured through newspapers, schools or yeshivas. He therefore asked Tehila Frideman-Nachalom for precisions about the identity of the leaders of this movement, while specifying again that it only represents a minority within Judaism and the Israeli society at large. In reaction, she deplored the commingling between settlers and radicals, claiming that the movement is mostly nurtured by system failures such as school dropouts among youth rather than by religion itself. Nonetheless, she acknowledges the existence of such organizations around settlements. According to her, a part of the society treats such structures as right-wing movements that undertake actions that should be distanced from Judaism even though she herself considers that responsibility has to be acknowledged as they are at some level a result of the Torah. Thus, she underlines the necessity to ensure proper education and honest dialogue in order to avoid misinterpretations and alienations.

Odenheimer then pointed out that an increasing number of Haredis was engaging in nationalist movements and asked Pnina Pfeuffer to provide enlightenment on the nature of this trend. She recalled that Israeli state citizenship is already granted to Haredi youngsters who are therefore building their identity and tend to find one within the national religious community. Indeed, it is an ideology that matches the religious education they received.

Finally, the moderator asked Perle Nicolle about the underlying causes of the engagement of the youth in radical groups. Both Odenheimer's question and Nicolle's answer referred to the Cat Square (Kikar Hahatulot). Indeed, this location allows understanding a key point, which is that if the violent nationalist groups perceive and present themselves as an elite, they often reach out to youth that is lost and seeking for an identity. These groups being young themselves, it is easier to relate to them than to HaRav Kook for example. Nicolle notably emphasized the fact that hate, for the lost youth, is easy to hold onto and that in such case, it is more a social phenomenon than a network.

Gershon Barskin, board member of IPRCRI, started the Q&A by summarizing the underlying causes of Jewish radicalism that have been mentioned into one initial cause: the idea according to which the Jews are the chosen people and therefore have more right than others. FridemanNachalom expressed her disagreement by stating that the status of chosen people does not give more rights but more duties. According to her, the understanding of such status is due to education. Nevertheless, Pnina Pfeuffer acknowledged that this narrative is indeed at the roots of racism in the Haredi community.

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Rafi Benvenisti, another board member of IPCRI, raised the question of the treatment of religious leaders such as Rabbis, noticing that the society seems to be refusing to deal with their responsibility in radicalism. In reaction, Odenheimer explained that indeed, the old generations' leaders of this movement remained in place but that it is not the case for the new young leaders of nationalist groups, most of whom are not Rabbis. Perle Nicolle thinks that Benvesti's observation is due to the cultural relation to religious leaders, which has to be targeted.

Answering a question of the audience, Odenheimer depicted the influence of Meir Kahane on the emergence of Jewish radicalism from the 1980s. The American-Israeli Orthodox Rabbi notably associated certain acts of violence with redemption. The maintaining and expansion of his influence have been and are achieved through a large set of institutions and structures. Perle Nicolle also underlines that Kahane became more of a brand than an actual ideological inspiration, as new generations are not familiar with his writings.

In reaction to an auditor’s remark, Perle Nicolle underlined that failure of the state in carrying some social groups is the reason why Jewish radicalism is a civil society movement that possesses an institutional structure of its own. Also, her analysis emphasizes the fact that Jewish violence is targeting the state and that victimizing Arabs is only a vector of that message of distrust towards the state.

When asked about the difference in legal treatments of different religious streams, Tehila Frideman-Nachalom recalled the tragic events that occurred in July 2015, when the assassination of 16-year-old Shira Banki at Jerusalem’s Gay Pride parade was followed by an attack on a Palestinian house in Duma. She underlines that despite the stigmas, she went to the Gay Pride parade to mourn and protest, and encouraged people to follow in order to stand up against Torah misinterpretations that lead to violence. Indeed, she believes in the responsibility of her community to express their disagreement with such acts, because moderate voices within the religious community also have to be heard.

Natan Odenheimer concluded the forum saying that the issue of Jewish radicalism is vast, deep and complex. The panelists allowed to get a broad understanding of the phenomenon but he insisted on the necessity to research deeper, even though the major key points have been presented, such as the responsibility of the state, the role of education and the organizational structure of the movement.

This forum initiated a productive discussion on a major issue, through the participation of speakers from different backgrounds and who exposed different points of views, whether they were based on personal experience or academic research. IPCRI was proud to host this forum and to observe the attention that it was given by the public.

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