There Are (At Least) Two Religious Zionist Camps, Not One

ט' לחודש השישי תשע"ב

Settler On Settler Violence
An evacuation clash reveals intra-settler fault lines

Yair Rosenberg, Tablet Magazine, July 27, 2012

Yesterday, the Israeli government began evacuating 33 families from illegal homes in the settlement neighborhood of Givat Ulpana. Earlier, the Israeli Supreme Court had ordered that these buildings be dismantled by July 1, and Prime Minister Netanyahu had vowed to uphold the ruling, going so far as to threaten to fire any government ministers who voted for legislation to retroactively legalize the homes.

In a classic Netanyahu balancing act, he mollified the evicted settlers by promising to build 300 new housing units in another part of the settlement deemed legal by the Supreme Court. This agreement in hand, the residents of the Ulpana homes agreed to leave peacefully

Thus, when the day of eviction arrived, settler media like Arutz 7 published “Pictures of Quiet Eviction,” depicting a relaxed, orderly transition.

But while there were no clashes between soldiers and settlers, there were violent altercations on the ground–between the majority of the settlers and a few who attempted to resist the evacuation. According to the local outlet Hakol Hayehudi (“The Jewish Voice”), infighting broke out when one family and some youths barricaded themselves inside the buildings, threatening to derail the otherwise uneventful transition. (cont.)

I guess this really shocked the Jews outside of Israel.  After all, a settler is a settler, right?

Actually, they might very well differentiate between this settler and that.

The Jews living in the Jerusalem suburb of Efrat, a mansion in Neveh Daniel, or Neveh Aliza, which looks like it was extracted out of West Los Angeles, aren't really settlers.  How could they be?  There are so well behaved, not to mention being upstanding contributors to an Israeli democratic society.

If nothing else, these Jews are referred to as the "good settlers," the ones who have legitimate rights to their towns, with their well-planned, well-pruned community centers and public gardens.

They seem not to be able to fathom that there are actually, and really always have been, two "Religious Zionist" camps: 1) The Mamlakhtim (undying state loyalists), who follow Rabbis Aviner, Druckman, and Tau (who broke off from Merkaz HaRav Kook Yeshiva, and founded Har HaMor), those who hijacked the Torah of Rav Kook, by pushing that one may only understand his Torah through his son Rav Tzvi Yehuda, and thus through these 3 rabbis.  This camp refuses to acknowledge that there are increasing numbers of irreconcilable conflicts between Israeli Law and Jewish Law.  2) Those who see how obvious it is that there are such conflicts, and that when there is a conflict, the Torah way takes precedence.  This camp knows (and expresses it most of the time) that there is no question the Torah guides us, nothing else.

The State more or less sees this as treason or sedition, and makes decisions daily on when to push this envelop, in order to paint the "settlers" in a negative, "un-Democratic," "stubborn," self-righteous, and racist manner. The secular State is desperately trying to battle the Torah world by manipulating and distorting it from within, not to mention maintaining a hold on the State rabbinate, by continuing to pay their salaries, so that they can maintain control over the masses, with and with kippoth on their heads.

Beth-El "Ulpana" Neighborhood

Beth El was a sad example of a few "popular" rabbis, with untenable, Jewish legal logic, collaborating with the State, claiming "good intentions," who played on the desire of their communities to keep their heads buried in the sand, rather than face their cognitive dissonance, and face reality already: The State of Israel, run by the minority Far Left (one segment of the Erev Rav), is not in the least bit interested in being a Jewish state, save for a few symbolic tidbits, it throws to its numbed out masses.

Let me be clear though, that when the (truly loyal to Torah) rabbis saw that they had reached the end of the futile battle, only then did they instruct the residents to accept their fate, just like at the last stand in the K'far Darom synagogue in Gaza in the summer of תשס"ה/2005. Some might, and have, compared this situation to Rabbi Yohanan smuggling himself out of a besieged Jerusalem in order to negotiate with the Romans, having realized that the battle was lost, and damage control was indicated.

Personally, I would not go that far.  Gaza was doomed from the start, due to the collaboration with the government, and the traitorous sabotage of its own constituents, of the YeSh"A Council.

Bottom line? If you're a Jew, you are suppose to follow the Torah, plain and simple, to the best of your ability.

You have to make a choice. Are you going to follow the Torah, or follow the Israeli government? It does not seem very likely, in the near future, that you will be able to get away with following both.  How the mamlakhtim will be able to stand the sudden and massive surge of cognitive dissonance pulsating through their brains, I do not know.

What we Jews must finally get our heads around is that the Western/assimilationist/exile values and sensibilities we grew with (whether in San Francisco or Borough Park) are not interchangeable with Jewish values and sensibilities.

1,700 years in exile can be pretty powerful in convincing us that the opposite is true.  But, we must snap out of it!

Now, if you think all of that is difficult to get your exile, "let's be like the goyim" mentality around, wait till I tell you that there are those of us who more Religious and Zionist than any of those calling themselves "Religious Zionists."

That's right!  You see, Zionism doesn't really exist, at least not how it was hijacked by the Ben-Gurions and the Pereses.  Nope.  You see "Zionism' is simple a part of the Torah.

Without Torah, there is no, I repeat, no justification whatsoever for "Zionism."

But, I suppose, we had better back up, and start with some more basic concepts, because I really don't think that any of you (Jews who believe that your home is in the U. S.) are ready for such a concept.