NOVANEWS
Posted by: Israel Shahak, Norton Mezvinsky
Preface
Virtually identified with Arab terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism
is anathema throughout the non-Muslim world. Virtually identified
with ignorance, superstition, intolerance and racism, Christian
fundamentalism is anathema to the cultural and intellectual elite
in the United States. The recent significant increase in its number
of adherents, combined with its widening political influence,
nevertheless, make Christian fundamentalism a real threat to
democracy in the United States. Although possessing nearly all the
important social scientific properties of Islamic and Christian fun-
damentalism, Jewish fundamentalism is practically unknown outside
of Israel and certain sections of a few other places. When its
existence is acknowledged, its significance is minimized or limited
to arcane religious practices and quaint middle European dress,
most often by those same non-Israeli elite commentators who see
so uncompromisingly the evils inherent in Jewish fundamentalis-
m's Islamic and/or Christian cousins.
As students of contemporary society and as Jews, one Israeli, one
American, with personal commitments and attachments to the
Middle East, we cannot help seeing Jewish fundamentalism in
Israel as a major obstacle to peace in the region. Nor can we help
being dismayed by the dismissal of the perniciousness of Jewish fun-
damentalism to peace and to its victims by those who are otherwise
knowledgeable and astute and so quick to point out the violence
inherent in other fundamentalist approaches to existence.
This book is a journey of understanding - often painful, often
dreary, often disturbing - for us as Jews who have a stake in Jewry.
With our hearts and minds we want Jews, together with other
people, to recognize and strive for the highest ideals, even as we
fall short of them. We see these ideals as central to the values of
Western civilization and applicable throughout the civilized world.
We believe these values do not stand in the way of peace anywhere.
That a perversion of these values in the name of Jewish funda-
mentalism stands as an impediment to peace, to the development
of Israeli democracy and even to civilized discourse outrages us,
both as Jews and as human beings. To identify and lessen, if not
purge, this outrage, we have written this book and undertaken this
journey in the hope that it may bring understanding to our readers
as it has brought understanding to us. Our assumption is that
peace in the Middle East cannot be achieved until the currents and
cross-currents of contemporary life in the region are understood.
In this most historical and most religious area, understanding
entails an exploration of the past that continues to impinge upon
the attitudes, values, assumptions and behaviors of all the people
of this beautiful and troubled land. Jewish opposition in Israel to
Jewish fundamentalism greatly increased after a Jewish, funda-
mentalist, religious fanatic, Yigal Amir, who insisted that he was
acting in accordance with dictates in Judaism, shot and killed
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. That numerous groups of religious
Jews after the assassination supported this murder in the name of
the "true" Jewish religion aroused interest in Israel in past killings
by Jews of other Jews who were alleged to be heretics or sinners.
In our book we cite present and past investigations by Israeli
scholars documenting that for centuries prior to the rise of the
modern nation state, Jews, believing they were acting in accordance
with God's word and thus preparing themselves for eternal paradise,
punished or killed heretics and/or religious sinners. Contemporary
Jewish fundamentalism is an attempt to revive a situation that
often existed in Jewish communities before the influence of
modernity. The basic principles of Jewish fundamentalism are the
same as those found in other religions: restoration and survival of
the "pure" and pious religious community that presumably existed
in the past.
In our book we describe in some detail the origins, ideologies,
practices and overall impact upon society of fundamentalism. We
emphasize mostly the messianic tendency, because we believe it to
be the most influential and dangerous. Jewish fundamentalists
generally oppose extensions of human freedoms, especially the
freedom of expression, in Israel. In regard to foreign policy, the
National Religious Party, ruled by supporters of the messianic
tendency of Jewish fundamentalism, has continuously opposed
any and all withdrawals from territories conquered and occupied
by Israel since 1967. These fundamentalists opposed Israeli
withdrawal from the Sinai in 1978, just as twenty years later they
continued to oppose any withdrawal from the West Bank. These
same Jews printed and distributed atlases allegedly showing that
the land of Israel, belonging only to the Jews and requiring liberation,
included the Sinai, Jordan, Lebanon, most of Syria and Kuwait.
Jewish fundamentalists have advocated the most discriminative
proposals against Palestinians. Not surprisingly, Baruch Goldstein
and Yigal Amir, the most sensational Jewish assassins of the 1990s,
and most of their admirers have been Jewish fundamentalists of the
messianic tendency.
COMPLETE BOOK YOU FIND HERE
