Religious Zionism Holds the Future of Israel in its Hands

A nation can't exist for long cannot exist without both a national identity and a national structure. The latter has to come from the political and practical institutions of the state. The former has to come from a shared value and belief system. A state without a shared positive value system is on the way to extinction, as first world nations can amply demonstrate for us. A value system without a state leaves only victims and exiles.

The collapse of the first world nations is occurring precisely because those value systems are being ruthlessly torn down, leaving hollowed out states that have the structure of a nation but no defense again attack or ability to rally morale. Like mannequins they have the appearance of states, but not the content. This is occurring across America, Europe and Israel.

Without that larger value system birth rates fall, patriotism is deserted by idealists and really does become the last refuge of the thug and the scoundrel, extremist camps are everywhere and represent no one, while the consensus falls into the camp of greed and ego.

In Israel, Caroline Glick nails down the catastrophic campaign against Religious Zionism, which parallels the assault on national patriots in America and Europe as well, as the elites look for ways to destroy the more rural, traditional and patriotic elements of the population.

As Glick brilliantly puts it, the contrast between the failed ideology of Labor which prioritizes socialism over religious Zionism which prioritizes the fusion of national and religious fulfillment, is the precise reason for the conflict.

Labor Zionists have been confounded by the endurance of anti-Semitism and its transformation of Israel, though anti-Zionism, into the International Jew. The world’s refusal to accept Israel as an equal has been shattering for them. It has caused Labor Zionists to abandon Zionism in the hopes that by doing so they will finally be accepted as equals by the nations of the world. At its core, Labor Zionism is outward seeking rather than inward looking.

In contrast, Religious Zionism is inward looking. It seeks to turn Jews into actors on the international stage as Jews. It also seeks to make Judaism responsive to the imperatives of an empowered people as it was responsive to the imperatives of Jews as a powerless people during the generations of exile.

Labor can conceive of a state. Haredim can conceive of a religion. But only Religious Zionism has been able to unite them together. Yet the pressure of the Rabin assassination and the Gaza Expulsion has moved to split down Religious Zionism into the politically familiar lines of appeasing moderates or Mamlachtis and spiraling out of touch extremists who are prepared to sing the anthem of the Neturei Karta. And if that state of affairs continues, the secular socialists will have achieved their Pyrrhic victory over the ashes of the state, while the Haredim will hug close religion, claiming that the destruction of Israel proved they were right all along.

We can see this same kind of split happening among conservative Christians in America who are withdrawing from the political process, which only marks time until they're the next FLDS in a compound being raided by the government.

Religion of course should not rule a state, neither in Israel or America or anywhere else, simply because it tends to fail miserably and when it implodes, the results are catastrophic. The strength of political institutions is that they can reform themselves, religious institutions that gain political authority, rarely can. They can only splinter and war among themselves.

But religion has a more important role, to guard the values of the nation. When religion and politics mix, the results leave both poisoned and compromised. But when religion guards values while the political institutions maintain the state, both work separately to maintain the country, the state as the exoskeleton from without and religion as the beating heart from within.

State religions work badly, but a state of religion is an ideal for a nation that wishes to survive. That means there shouldn't be only one stream or one religious consensus. What it does mean is that there should be a consensus on moral matters and national ones. A religious stream that promotes moral disintegration or opposes national defense is a cancer and if it grows, it will poison all that it touches, regardless of all its other "good works" and "good intentions". And when the values of the state implode, it it those genuinely religious people who must step into the breach to seal the holes and fight to restore the morality of the people and the state.

Religious Zionism was the greatest gift to the State of Israel that the state ignored and often treated with contempt, because they cared about the welfare of the state itself. Though Religious Zionism has many flaws, it is unlikely at this point that the survival of the State of Israel and the survival of Religious Zionism can be detached from one another.

With the rise of leftist dogma that propounds the criminality of the State of Israel among the secular left, Religious Zionism exists as the only real bastion that stands between annihilation and the state. Yet the deliberate assaults have borne their fruit as I've noted above. Religious Zionism has not not entirely given up on the State, even if the State under pro-appeasement Prime Ministers has turned ruthlessly on Religious Zionism. But neither the "hug everyone as brothers" position of the Mamlachtis nor the increasing fanaticism around the edges that has led to the embrace of everything from the NK hymn, to FC, to various therapy cults to conspiracy theories to increasing detachment from what is actually happening in favor of short term messianic solutions is a sustainable position for the survival of the state.

Religious Zionism holds the future of Israel in its hands. It is only a question of whether the burden will not prove too heavy for it to hold.