‘Settler Judaism’ Exposes the Hypocrisy of Jewish Unity : Israel: Jews must reclaim the God of the Torah, commanding love of the stranger, not the God of sectarian intolerance.

When Jews assemble in Madison Square Garden today to welcome Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, they will listen to Jewish establishment figures recall Yitzhak Rabin and disingenuously assert that “our hands did not spill his blood.” Yet many of the leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations sponsoring the event did their part to undermine the peace process and justify the West Bank occupation.

Today’s event was originally envisioned by groups within the Jewish community that have been unambiguously supportive of the peace process, and its aim was to give to the new Peres government a message of support from American Jews. But as frequently happens among the peace activists, a loss of nerve led them, supposedly in the name of a vacuous “unity,” to extend sponsorship of the rally to the entire Jewish community, including elements in the Orthodox community whose price of support was a shift from explicit endorsement of “the peace process” to support for “the search for peace.”

Subtle difference? Not really. The Orthodox elements explained that they wanted to show support for Israel, but not for the Labor government’s actual policies. From the standpoint of some of these elements, any exchange of land for peace is a betrayal. But a rally whose groundwork is ambiguous on this issue can offer little support to the peace process at precisely the moment, 30 days after its architect was murdered, it needs that support most.

The climate of violence that led to Rabin’s murder was rooted precisely in those policies of settlement and what it takes to sustain them. When hundreds of thousands of Israelis are asked to serve in an army of occupation, the demeaning of Palestinians, the denial of human rights, the occasional resort to torture and the inflicting of violence on teenage resisters to occupation become a routine necessity.

The reality is that you cannot occupy a resistant population without the use of force and violence, and that the tendency toward violence then spreads within your own society. Rabin will not be the last Israeli victim of this sickness.

It was in this climate that “Settler Judaism” became a major element in the Orthodox world and in some secular circles as well. Significant sectors of modern Orthodoxy and religious Zionism began to preach a worldview that holds that since the world is against us, abandoned us during the Holocaust, and hypocritically condemns us for violence more sharply that it criticizes others, we don’t have to live according to a universal moral standard (which is typically dismissed as “Western” or “Enlightenment-based” rather than “authentically Jewish and Torah-based”). God, according to Settler Judaism, gave us the West Bank as our eternal inheritance, and we have the right to do whatever is necessary to hold on to it. Anyone who trusts Palestinians or assumes that they have the same human needs and motivations to live in peace as Jews, or who doesn’t realize that the only Palestinian motivation is to destroy us or throw us into the sea, is naive and likely to endanger the Jewish people. Indeed, according to Settler Judaism, our fellow Jews are betraying us by calling for an exchange of land for peace. These peace-oriented Jews are traitors and may be as dangerous to our future as the Arabs. The obligation is to pursue justice and love your neighbor apply only to our fellow Jews, certainly not to Palestinians and maybe not even to Jews who advocate policies that would endanger our existence (and that, according to Settler Judaism, is precisely what the peace process does).

The demeaning of others and the sense of immediate endangerment inherent in Settler Judaism, coupled with the sense of entitlement that derives from God’s mandate, has led those who are close to Settler Judaism to feel that they have the right to use force and violence to maintain their conquest of the West Bank. Through much of the past 30 years, that claim was backed by the Israeli army. Is it any wonder that now the adherents to this position think that they have the right to take up arms to defend their beliefs?

Not all settlers subscribe to Settler Judaism. Many of them are decent and moral human beings who do not support the abusive tactics and disregard for Palestinian rights of the most militant settlers. Many have legitimate anxieties about their future safety that Rabin never adequately addressed. To be compassionate, we should be raising money to help resettle these people back within the borders of Israel unless they desire to live in peace as a minority within a Palestinian state.

Similarly, a significant minority of Orthodox Jews has always opposed Settler Judaism and has vigorously supported a religious peace movement, so it is wrongheaded and misleading to blame orthodoxy for the murder of Rabin. But it is not wrongheaded to publicly demand that orthodoxy explain why a significant majority has identified with the ideological tenets of Settler Judaism. It is not “Orthodox bashing” to point out that many Orthodox synagogues have publicly identified with opposition to any exchange of land for peace and that many people I know personally who question Settler Judaism have been made to feel unwelcome or put on the defensive in the orthodox community. Nor is it unreasonable to demand that leaders of Jewish organizations stop issuing statements disclaiming support for the murder of the prime minister and instead tell us whether they are willing to publicly repudiate Settler Judaism and reclaim those strands within Judaism that see God as siding with the oppressed and the powerless, helping the humble and the gentle and the kind.

Jewish renewal forces, operating within every branch of Judaism including Orthodoxy have been struggling to reclaim the voice of the compassionate God in the Torah who commanded us to love the stranger. Yet the renewal forces are made invisible when the call for Jewish unity obscures the difference between renewal Judaism and Settler Judaism.

Settler Judaism has a long history within Jewish tradition. It finds its fullest expression in those passages in Deuteronomy, Judges and Samuel I that called upon Jews to wipe out the inhabitants of the land and show no compassion in the process. Those who heard God’s voice in this way have been as much a part of Jewish history as those who heard God’s voice commanding us: “When you enter the land, do not oppress the stranger. Remember that you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

This latter understanding of what God requires of us stems from a renewal concept of Judaism that tells us that we do not have to do to others what was done to us, that the cycle of pain and cruelty can be broken and that God, as the force in the universe that makes possible the transformation from what is to what ought to be, calls upon us to love the stranger and to break the repetition compulsion to oppress just as we were oppressed. Renewal Judaism is not some post-Enlightenment invention or accommodation to secular humanism. It is as deeply rooted in Torah and Jewish tradition as the Judaism that projected onto God the anger and cruelty that an oppressed people understandably felt toward its oppressors.

Settler Judaism played a valuable role when Jews were powerless and demeaned. It helped us to externalize our anger at an oppressive non-Jewish majority and it allowed us to fantasize that we would someday be able to pay back the oppressor for all that was done to us. But in late 20th century America and Israel, where Jews exercise considerable power, Settler Judaism reinforces the tendency of Jews to deny our actual power and to continue to see ourselves as perennial victims whose exercise of force and violence is always defensive and justifiable. Jews with power who see themselves as victims, whether they be in Brooklyn, West Los Angeles or Bar Ilan, are a danger not only to Palestinians, but also to their fellow Jews who support the peace process and the future of the Jewish people.

Instead of unity with Settler Judaism, the end of the traditional 30 days of mourning for Yitzhak Rabin should be a moment for Jews to demand that Settler Judaism be purged from the pulpits and leadership of our community and to urge Peres to speedily conclude a final stage of negotiations that will end the occupation and allow Palestinians national self-determination. Our only hope of transmitting Judaism to our children is to build a Jewish renewal that proudly and unequivocally affirms the compassionate voice of God and our Torah’s sacred message of healing and transformation.