Summary
Daniella Weiss, general secretary of Gush Emunim from its February 1985 reorganization, named by Lustick in the settler rampage in Kalkilia in April 1987 (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 5, lines 6178-6677).
Details
- In February 1985 Gush Emunim announced a fifty-person secretariat, a ten-member action committee and Daniella Weiss as general secretary, in its post-Yamit reorganization (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 3200-3624).
- Following a firebomb attack in April 1987 which killed a young mother traveling to a West Bank settlement, hundreds of Jewish settlers went on a rampage in the nearby Arab town of Kalkilia; Weiss, as general secretary of Gush Emunim, was reportedly among those who “threw bottles at shops in the town, rolled barrels down the streets, and set fires to tires” (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 5, lines 6178-6677).
- Weiss was among the Gush leaders who, at the secretariat meeting convened at Alfei Menashe the day after the April 11, 1987 molotov attack, accused the government of apathy and ineffectiveness on personal security and blamed the violence on the authorities’ leniency and on Peres’s peace-conference attempts (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 6, lines 8237-8486).
- In late 1986 Weiss became the focus of the most serious internal crisis in the movement’s history: her work for amnesty for the underground prisoners, her televised attacks on Labor kibbutzim’s historical contribution, and her intensely vanguardist sentiments led many veterans to call for her dismissal, and rabbis including Yoel Ben-Nun publicly separated themselves from Gush as led; the May 1987 agreement left her as general secretary, with Levinger as overall ideological guide, Ben-Nun resuming secretariat participation, Porat responsible for propaganda and Katzover heading the political committee (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 6, lines 8487-8736).
- Her Appendix 3 biography: born in Palestine in the mid-1940s to American- and Polish-born parents, Orthodox upbringing, a Bar-Ilan degree in English literature and political science, uninvolved in politics until the early 1970s; she joined the Elon Moreh nucleus led by Beni Katzover, which tried unsuccessfully seven times to establish itself near Nablus and succeeded on its eighth attempt, and has lived in Kedumim since; active in Tehiya from 1979 and in the Movement to Halt the Retreat in Sinai, close to Levinger, chosen as general secretary in 1985, and called “the queen of the Knesset cafeteria” for her informal contacts with Knesset members (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Appendix 3, lines 10052-10262).
Related pages
For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Gush Emunim, Yesha, Yoel Ben-Nun, Beni Katzover, Tehiya