Summary
Orthodox Israeli philosopher (1903–1994), advocate of separating state and religion, who charged in 1954 that the secular state rebels against Jewish religious tradition while using its symbols (Zionist Israel and the Question of Palestine, PDF p.16).
Details
- ‘The State of Israel does not dare disclose the true nature of its spirit, which is a rebellion against the religious tradition of the Jewish nation’ (1954/1997: 39, PDF p.16).
- In the same work’s final part, Leibowitz appears in a public talk with Shimon Peres about the Oslo Peace Process on March 25, 1994, reported in Maariv that day: a fierce critic of the occupation policy since 1967 and a proponent of the two-state solution within the borders of 1967, he told Peres that the violent Israeli occupying power had not been removed even following Oslo I — “we have not retreated even by a centimeter” — countered the terror argument with “two hundred and sixty children, the oldest ones fifteen, were killed by Israeli soldiers. That is the meaning of occupation policy”, called Peres’s empathy with the Arabs “nothing but hypocrisy”, and predicted of the Oslo concept: “what this factually means is the continuation of occupation of Palestinian people. […] We are going to continue pursuing [the occupation] in a sham package of lies and hypocrisy. […] This is sick hypocrisy” (PDF p.185-186).