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Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel By Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky Pluto Press, 2004
The topic of religious fundamentalism and its political impact have been confined lately to the Islamic variety. Christian fundamentalism is beginning to attract scholarly attention, but Jewish fundamentalism has rarely been subjected to rigorous analysis. Several factors account for this, including general Western reluctance to broach such topics which may raise anti-Semitic charges, as well as the inaccessibility of Hebrew-language reference material to the average researcher. Shahak and Mezvinsky are eminently qualified to write on this subject not only because of their religious affiliation, but also, in the case of the late Shahak, because of his extensive commitment to human rights issues.
A study of Jewish fundamentalism in Israel is also overdue because of the undeniable relevance of this phenomenon to the question of Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territories, the major defining elements of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, it is the central contention of the authors that this conflict will retain its propensity for obfuscation unless and until the role of Israeli Jewish fundamentalism is clearly understood. The book focuses on the rise of the Haredim (religious fundamentalists) in Israeli politics and society as a result of the Oslo peace process and the tendency of the secular Israeli press to sensationalize these groups' bizarre ideas and behavior patterns. The authors demonstrate how the Israeli religious camp opposes the prospect of the creation of a Palestinian state because it views this as a weakness at a time when they have acquired great pride in the display of Jewish power. A tough Israeli state, according to this view, is the only compensation for centuries of Jewish humiliation. The fundamentalist attitude to the land of Palestine is summed up in the words of Rabbi Eliezer Waldman, head of a religious school in one of the West Bank's most militant settlements, namely Kiryat Arba. "The unique attachment of the Children of Israel to the Land of Israel cannot be compared to the ties of any nation to its land," he wrote. "Our attachment," he added "originates in the Devine Plan of the Creation of Heaven and Earth." (p. xi) Haredi Jews who are now concentrated in the Jerusalem area and in Bnei Brak, near Tel...