Summary
Tzvi Shiloach, a secular fundamentalist writer in Lustick’s account: an exponent of the view that peace requires the dissolution of the large Arab states into ethnic mini-states, and, in 1976, of territorial continuity between Israel and an independent Maronite enclave in Lebanon (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 5, lines 6178-6677 and 6678-7177).
Details
- Shiloach described a true peace based on two federations built out of ethnic mini-states into which Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon are eventually destined to dissolve: a northern federation including most of what is now central and northern Lebanon and Syria and northern and eastern Iraq, and a southern federation, led by Israel, including what is now Israel and Jordan plus southern Lebanon and Syria, western and southern Iraq, and Kuwait, which would become the “United States of the Middle Fast” [East, as printed] and, together with Turkey and Iran, form the “geo-strategic axis of the entire area” (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 5, lines 6178-6677 and 6678-7177).
- In 1976 Shiloach suggested establishing territorial continuity between Israel and an independent Maronite enclave in Lebanon, an instance of the short-run carrot-and-stick approach to selected Arab and non-Arab groups (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 5, lines 6678-7177).
- Shiloach is named in part 3 among those who regularly condemn Israeli doves as “Hellenizers”, “fifth columnists” and “traitors” (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 5, lines 5900-6118).
- Makdisi records a Tzvi Shiloah writing in Davar that “The only solution is to organize their emigration and settlement in Arab countries abundant in land and water such as Syria and Iraq”, in the post-1967 Transfer debate (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.185-186); the spelling differs (Shiloah/Shiloach) and the two passages are kept as printed in each source.
- His Appendix 3 biography: born in southern Poland in 1911, he came to Palestine in 1931 and became a high-ranking Labor party politician and publicist — editor of Hador under Ben-Gurion’s tutelage, head of the Israel Institute of Productivity’s Information Department, Labor Party Central Committee member and editor of Hamifal — before leaving Labor after the Six Day War for the Movement for the Whole Land of Israel, editing its newspaper Zot Haaretz, helping establish Tehiya in 1979 and briefly serving in the Knesset for it; he lives in a West Bank settlement and contributes to Yediot Acharonot (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, Transfer, Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation