Summary
Rabbi Moshe Levinger, who established the first Jewish settlement in Hebron in 1968, a founder-figure of Jewish fundamentalism and, as identified by Gush Emunim in May 1987, its overall ideological guide (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Introduction, lines 800-820).
Details
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Levinger was a member of Gahelet, the Bnei Akiva graduates’ fraternity around Tzvi Yehuda Kook at Merkaz HaRav in the mid-1960s, which contained a very large proportion of the future leaders of Gush Emunim (Chapter 2, lines 1765-1785).
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In a survey conducted in the spring of 1987, the Hebrew weekly Hadashot asked a panel of twenty-two leading Israelis to name the person of the generation with the greatest effect on Israeli society in the last twenty years; first place was shared by Menachem Begin and Levinger. Boaz Epplebaum, an adviser to Shimon Peres, explained his choice: Levinger is still riding high while prime ministers have come and gone, and all Israelis have adapted themselves to his dimensions and his scale (Introduction, line 810, lines 800-820).
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In Lustick’s Chapter 3, Levinger’s spring 1968 illegal presence in a Hebron hotel, which the Labor government first confined to a military compound and then allowed to become the town of Kiryat Arba on the city’s outskirts, was the model for the later Gush use of the “creation of facts in the field” as a political weapon (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 2300-2400).
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He led the Gush delegation that met sympathetic ministers on October 23-24, 1979 in the Elon Moreh crisis, was among the leading Gush figures evacuated from Yamit in 1982 who formed Shvut Sinai, and is named among the leading figures who must have given at least tacit approval to the Jewish Underground (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 2500-2600, lines 3050-3150, lines 3450-3560).
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In Chapter 5 Levinger is quoted for the movement’s distrust of gentiles — “the gentiles can be divided into two types: those who hate us and those who would be indifferent to our destruction” — and, from the consensus-building side, for affirming that “the State of Israel is holy”, as are its responsible governmental institutions and, in a special way, the army and the police (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 5, lines 5400-6118).
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Levinger reassured the faithful after Yamit that comparisons between Sinai and the infrastructure established in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are “exaggerated and totally unjustified”, argued for continued support of Likud’s participation in the national unity government despite an apparent settlement freeze, and advised against discussing whether Lebanon is part of the Land of Israel (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 5, lines 5619-5900).
Related pages
For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Gush Emunim, Tzvi Yehuda Kook, Hebron, Jewish Fundamentalism