Summary
The political arm of the national-religious (Mizrahi) movement, which sought to integrate relatively strict observance of the halacha with full participation in a modern Zionist society, and within which the Young Guard incubated the Jewish fundamentalist movement (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Introduction, lines 575-610).
Details
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The Mizrahi movement’s state-supported school system educates 25-30 percent of Israeli Jewish children; as a result of its traditional control of the Ministries of Interior and Religious Affairs, the National Religious Party exerted predominant influence over enforcement of the religious status quo (Introduction, lines 575-590).
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The majority of religious Zionists maintained a politically pragmatic attitude until 1967, and even religious Zionism had explicitly denied any spiritual significance to the Zionist programme: Mizrahi voted in support of Theodore Herzl’s 1903 proposal to accept Uganda as an alternative to Palestine, treating a Jewish-governed state as no more than another host environment for observant Jewry (Chapter 2, lines 1495-1525).
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In 1948 the Mizrahi movement (which became the National Religious Party) and Agudat Yisrael struck the religious status-quo bargain with the dominant Labor Zionist party Mapai — no written constitution, Orthodox control of marriage, divorce and adoption, state honouring of the Sabbath and kosher food in state institutions — and the religious parties joined governing coalitions (Chapter 2, lines 1525-1545).
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After the Six Day War the party’s Young Guard (the tzeirim), disgusted with the machine-style, status-quo politics of the older generation, advanced Jewish sovereignty over the whole Land of Israel as a decisive step toward hastening a divinely ordained redemption process they believed had already begun; led by Hanan Porat, Zevulon Hammer, Yehuda Ben-Meir and Rabbi Haim Druckman, the Young Guard emerged after 1967 as the dominant faction within the party and hence within religious Zionism (Introduction, lines 590-610; Chapter 2, lines 1565-1595).
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Future Gush Emunim leaders in the Gahelet fraternity were rebuffed in 1964 at their first effort to exert influence within the National Religious Party itself, and gravitated toward Tzvi Yehuda Kook (Chapter 2, lines 1775-1790).
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In 1977 the Likud organized a coalition government with the National Religious Party, by then dominated by Gush Emunim; together Likud and the National Religious Party received 37 percent of the vote in 1984 (45 seats) (Introduction, lines 700-720; Chapter 2, lines 1995-2010).
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In Lustick’s Chapter 3, the party’s threat to bolt the Begin coalition if a confrontation with the Elon Moreh settlers ensued, and its demand for a special cabinet meeting on the settlement’s legal status, were central to the pressure that produced the state-land settlement regime of 1979-1980 (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 2560-2750).
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The party was badly hurt by the fundamentalist fragmentation of 1984: it placed only four deputies in the Knesset and received a mere 4 percent of Gush Emunim settler votes, against Likud’s 48 percent, Tehiya’s 23 percent and Morasha’s 21 percent, a performance Lustick attributes in part to the defections of Porat and Druckman and to doubts raised by Hammer and Ben-Meir (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3 notes, lines 3560-3624).
Related pages
For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Gush Emunim, Jewish Fundamentalism, Tzvi Yehuda Kook, Likud