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The Israeli Right Wing

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I wrote this for World Politics class in The Spring of 2005. I got an A in that class and I won the Political Science award for the highest grade point average in political science in my graduating class from community college (3 A's). I also had American National Government and American State and Local Government.

The Israeli Right Wing

The founder of the Israeli Right Wing was Vladimir Jabotinsky. He started Revisionist Zionism in response to Labor Zionism, which had drifted away from the dream of creating a Jewish State. Jabotinsky had been speaking in Riga, Latvia. According to the homepage of Betar UK [http://www.betar.co.uk/history.php], “Shortly after Jabotinsky left Riga, several Jewish students who were inspired by his talks organized themselves into the ‘Association of Trumpeldor.’ They dedicated themselves to the formation of a new Jewish Legion, which would conquer all of Eretz Yisrael [The Land of Israel]. A local youth named Aaron Propes was elected President of the organization. An idea, a principal that was destined to take the mind of Jewry by storm, and fire the imagination of Jewish youth as nothing had ever fired it before gave birth to Betar. The principal was very simple, yet revolutionary: The subordination of everything to the realization of the Zionist ideal - a Jewish State within its historical boundaries.” Yosef Trumpeldor was a Jewish pioneer killed defending Kibbutz Tel Chai from Arab terrorists in 1920. Beitar, a Hebrew acronym for Association of Yosef Trumpeldor, was named after Yosef Trumpeldor.

At the same time, Right Wing Religious Zionism arose. It was founded as the World Mizrachi Movement in 1902 in Vilna, Lithuania by Rabbi Yitzchak Yaacov Reines. The World Mizrachi Movement’s homepage [http://www.mizrachi.org/aboutus/default.asp] reports that “the World Mizrachi Movement Mizrachi [Hebrew acronym for Merkaz Ruchani (Spiritual Center)] is an ideological and educational movement based in Yerushalayim [Jerusalem] is active in 37 countries throughout the world. The ideology of the Mizrachi is based on the motto of ‘Am Yisrael B'Eretz Yisrael al pi Torat Yisrael - the Jewish people in the Land of Israel living according to the Torah of Israel’”. This was a revolutionary movement in Orthodox Judaism because previously many Jews believed that there could not be a Jewish state in the Land of Israel until the Messianic age. But led by Mizrachi, and their spiritual leader, the first Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook, many Orthodox Jews began to believe that Zionism was a way to hasten the Redemption. They believed by actively setting up a Jewish State, they would bring the days of the arrival of the Messiah closer.

The British rulers in British Mandatory Palestine exiled Jabotinsky from the Land of Israel, and he died in exile in New York. Beitar started two military wings, the Lechi (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) and the Etzel (National Military Organization). Led by leaders such as Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, both future Prime Ministers of Israel, they carried out guerilla attacks on the British colonial power in the Land and also defended Jews from Arab terrorists. They led the fight for the independence of Israel. When the British withdrew from the Land, the Lechi and Etzel fought to liberate land in the War of Independence until they were disbanded by the Provisional Israeli Government. There was a ship called the Altalena carrying ammunition for the Lechi and Etzel fighters. The ship was shot at off of the shores of Israel by the Israeli Army killing the Jews on board. After that, there was only one Israeli Army, the Israel Defense Forces of today.

In the Israeli Knesset, the Beitar movement was represented by the Herut Party with Menachem Begin as leader. Herut was in the opposition until 1977 when it won the elections after uniting with other parties to form the Likud Party of today. As Prime Minister, Menachem Begin made peace with Egypt, but refused to make further concessions of land won by Israel in the Six Day War. He annexed the Golan Heights and declared the entire Jerusalem as the united Capital of Israel. But many people resented that he had returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. They especially resented the expulsion of Jews who had lived in the community of Yamit in Northwestern Sinai. Yitzhak Shamir succeeded Begin as Prime Minister after the latter resigned in 1983. Some new parties formed in response to Begin’s concessions to Egypt. One of them was Techiya. Later on, Rechavam Ze’evi founded the Moledet (Homeland) Party.

In 1996, a new Likud Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, was elected. He formed a coalition with Non-Zionist Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) Jewish parties, the National Religious Party (Which today represents the Mizrachi Movement.), and some Centrist parties. He was only for bilateral concessions in diplomatic negotiations. He refused to make unilateral concessions without anything in return. That caused people to his left to be against him and when he signed the Wye River Memorandum, people to his right resented him. He signed the agreement on the condition that both sides would honor it and when he felt the other side [the Palestinian Authority] wasn’t fulfilling their side of the agreement, he stopped fulfilling Israel’s side. This led the Labor Party to bring down his government in cooperation with members of his own party who had disagreed with the accord in the first place. Prior to the 1999 elections, some members of his party founded the New Herut Party to recreate the original party, which had turned into Likud. These party members felt that the Likud Party strayed from the original message of the party. The Tekumah Party, which had split off of the National Religious Party for similar reasons, joined with Herut and Moledet to form the National Union.

Following the election of Labor’s Ehud Barak in 1999, Herut split off of the National Union. The National Union then joined up with Yisrael Beitenu, a Russian immigrants’ party. The National Union was led by Rechavam Ze’evi of Moledet and Avigdor Lieberman of Yisrael Beitenu. Herut was led by Michael Kleiner. Following the special elections for Prime Minister to replace Barak after his resignation, the National Union joined Ariel Sharon’s new government. Labor also joined but the National Union did not agree with the path of the new government. Sharon had begun his journey leftwards from his original hawkish position. The National Union resigned from the government but before the resignation went into effect, Rechavam Ze’evi was assassinated by an Arab terrorist in a Jerusalem hotel. They withdrew their resignation and Rabbi Benny Elon succeeded Ze’evi as Moledet leader. However, they withdrew later on.

In the 2003 elections, Moledet and Tekumah ran on one National Union ticket together with Yisrael Beitenu and Herut ran on a separate ticket. The National Union won seven seats but Herut didn’t win even one seat. The Herut ticket was notable because the number two man on the list was Baruch Marzel, a former member of the Kach Party of Rabbi Meir Kahane. For the first time, a Kahanist was aloud to run in the elections since the movement was banned by the Israeli Government, which had deemed it as “racist” because it supported population transfer of hostile Arabs living in Israel. The position of transfer is the platform of Moledet as well.

Rabbi Meir Kahane was a Brooklyn-born rabbi who immigrated to Israel. His brand of Zionism was a unique blend of Religious Zionism and the Zionism of Jabotinsky. He won the only seat for his Kach Party in 1984. In 1988, he was banned from running for re-election because he was declared racist even though Arab parties, which openly call for the destruction of Israel, are permitted to run in Israeli elections. In 1990, Rabbi Kahane was assassinated in New York, by El Sayid Al-Nossair, one of the terrorists responsible for the first World Trade Center bombing.  Following the assassination, Baruch Marzel led the Kach Party but a split in the movement led to the formation of Kahane Chai (Kahane Lives). It was led by his son Rabbi Binyamin Ze’ev Kahane. The younger Kahane was assassinated on December 31, 2000, on a Samarian road as he was driving home from Jerusalem with his family. Today, even though these movements are declared illegal by the Israeli Government, they are very popular among Jews all over the World for their promotion of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s teachings of “the genuine Jewish Idea”. They believe that this ideology is unadulterated Judaism without any outside influences. Baruch Marzel now leads the Chayil Party after loosing the last elections in Herut.

Recently, the followers of Rabbi Binyamin Ze’ev Kahane, led a campaign to bring 10,000 Jews to pray on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where the Jewish Temples stood. The Israeli Police prohibited this because they thought it would lead to incitement to Arab violence. Yisrael Meir Cohen reports “Saturday night, I left for the Old City. It was about 1:30 A.M. and to my surprise there was n problem getting into the Old City. The entrance to the Kotel [Western Wall] was only lightly guarded, allowing for easy passage past the guards and the metal detectors. … After resting for the next few hours I joined a netz (Dawn) Minyan [Prayer Quorum] for the Rosh Chodesh (new month) prayers. At about six A.M., the Kotel plaza began to fill with hundreds of officers. Teens of police vans converged on the plaza. The prayers ended about 6:20 A.M.. Just then about 20 plain cloths police officers converged on me followed by another 50 clothed officers. They led me out of the plaza.” [Cohen, 5]. This was a plan coinciding with the beginning of the new Jewish month of Nissan on April 10, 2005. They were protesting the fact that Jews can’t pray on the holiest site in Judaism even though Arabs are aloud to and preach for the destruction of Israel on the site. This is also by seen some Israeli Rightists as a way to distract the Israeli Police from protests to stop Sharon’s plan to remove Jews from Gaza. They also see it as a way for Divine intervention to please G-d to bring the Final Redemption and save Gaza and all of Israel and the Jewish People. 

Recently, the National Religious Party split again when some of its Knesset members who disagreed with staying in the government with the threat of Sharon’s policies to expel Jews from the Gaza Strip, left and formed the Religious Zionist Renewal Party. The National Union will also split for the next elections with Yisrael Beitenu being separate again and Moledet and Tekumah are expected to run together with the Religious Zionism Renewal Party.

As the date of Sharon’s planned “disengagement” from Gaza nears, it is expected that there will be chaos in Israel with massive civil disobedience with highways being blocked and with Jews trying to ascend to the Temple Mount. These are issues that may divide Israeli society and threaten civil war. It is hoped among Right Wing Jews that Sharon’s government will fall to bring an end to this policy and bring a return to the genuine Right Wing politics to the Israeli Government.

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