Summary
Harold Fisch, formerly rector of Bar-Ilan University, the only member of Gush Emunim’s core religious elite to publish a systematic presentation of the fundamentalist worldview — The Zionist Revolution (1978) and in Hebrew The Zionism of Zion (1982) — and a principal source for Lustick’s Chapter 4 (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 4, lines 3625-3800).
Details
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Fisch’s book is based directly on the ideas of Abraham Isaac Kook and Menachem Kasher and appeared in two slightly differing versions, the English original and the Hebrew edition (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 4, lines 3700-3800).
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He articulates the movement’s reversal of classical Zionism: the idea that the Jewish nation is a normal nation “is the original delusion of secular Zionism”; Jews are irrevocably abnormal, eternally unique by the covenant at Mount Sinai (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 4, lines 3750-3850).
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He dismisses the Palestinians as the exact opposite of the Jewish people, with absolutely no legitimate claim to nationhood or to any part of the country, no real suffering, and a collective “deathwish” against Israel (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 4, lines 3850-3950).
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On the Land, his covenant is a triad of God, land and people: “The Covenant rests on a triad of relationships: God, land and people.” He holds that only the Jews in fact have a relationship to their land that is divinely ordained (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 4, lines 4000-4118).
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Chapter 4 gives Fisch’s readings of the three key events through which fundamentalists discern God’s messages: the Holocaust as God’s discipline, “a commandment written in blood upon the soil of Europe”; the Six Day War as a Red Sea moment of miracle and deliverance restoring the Jews to Jerusalem and the cities of Judah; and the Yom Kippur War as God’s admonition to accept abnormality and covenant destiny (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 4, lines 4119-4400).
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Writing in 1978, Fisch identified Gush Emunim as the force reformulating Zionism in covenantal terms, affirming the absoluteness of the Jewish bond with the Holy Land and the Holy City and “that history will finally justify them” (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 4, lines 4119-4400).
Related pages
For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Gush Emunim, Jewish Fundamentalism, Menachem Kasher, Eretz Israel