Many in Israel’s religious Zionist community are ashamed, anxious and helpless against the false union of MK Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, an acolyte of Meir Kahane racist.
Tkuma Party (Revival) Smotrich and Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) Ben-Gvir urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to come together before the March 23 elections to give him a better view of forming a right religious coalition .
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Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir sign the agreement to form a new political alliance earlier this month
The shame of the community was exacerbated by the fact that that alliance chose to name the Zionist Religious Party.
Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit group is an anti-Arab nationalist party that is hated by the Arabs. It is the party that wants Palestinians expelled from the country. His alliance with the marginalized Lehava movement, which opposes the marriage of enemies and Arabs, is similar.
Israelis, but most of those who identify as religious Zionists, should be concerned about the political union of the right-wing parties and the increased consensus of voters signed by Likud Netanyahu.
Religious Zionism is a revolutionary movement that gave spiritual content to the State of Israel. Unlike the world of Haredi, which refuses to renew, it is a place where tradition meets the present day and where there is no fear of change.
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Lehava move protests against Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem in 2015, when teenager killed by Haredi chief
(Photo: Getty Images)
Religious Zionists believe that one can fight for rights to participate on their land while recognizing social and universal processes that allow for alliance with the Arabs among them.
They understand that one can affirm the identity of Israel as a Jewish state but they still understand that the Jewish religion is aimed at high lords and human behavior, offering love to all of God’s creatures.
Itamar Ben-Gvir and his political party oppose these beliefs.
The Zionist religious movement has relied on many innovations in Jewish life since the founding of the state. He has restored the philosophical study of the scriptures, thus strengthening the connection of coming to earth according to the spirit of our biblical prophets.
You don’t have to be a bloodthirsty liberal to confront Ben-Gvir’s spiritual father, the racist Meir Kahane and his forbidden Kach party. Religious Zionist thinkers through the ages have written the exact opposite positions.
Ben-Gvir is not part of religious Zionism.
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Itamar Ben-Gvir, second from the right, will attend a wedding in 2015 where the murder of a Palestinian family by Israeli terrorists is commemorated
Ben-Gvir builds identity politics and slows down sections of society like Zionists never did religiously. Political tradition is the last of conversation and not prohibition.
One could take solace in the knowledge that most people who identify as religious Zionists do not agree with Ben-Gvir and the difficult support for him in ongoing elections is proof of that. .
How sad it is that Bezalel Smotrich, who has embraced the values of many religious Zionists, agreed to forge such an alliance in case he did not win enough support for re-election in March .
If he does, he will not be with the religious Zionists behind him – for all that remains of that tradition is the name of his party.