Semitism.net

Well, I've just had the unusual experience of having this blog be be counted among the "more conservative Jewish blogs" in a discussion on Semitism.net about the Jewish terrorist attack on Arabs in Shefaram last week. Andrew Schamess writes a very interesting post, giving a somewhat more leftwing position than I would, but still not out of my range, about the terrorist attack, religious fundamentalism, and Zionism. I agree with him that "Islam is not the only religion to generate a radical fundamentalist philosophy that can be used to justify terrorism. Kahanism is an outgrowth of religious Zionism just as militant Islam is an outgrowth of Islamic fundamentalism."

I also agree, but less comfortably, with his statement that:

Religious Zionism has generated less violence than the Islamic movements because, until recently, Israel's actions were more or less in synch with its philosophy. There was little reason for Jewish extremists to engage in terrorism because they had the apparatus of the state at their disposal. As long as the settlements were expanding and the Palestinians being driven gradually out of Eretz Israel, there was no reason for violent opposition.

He is right that the settler movement has been able to use the power of the state to gain their ends, and that this has often (and perhaps normally) resulted in violence against Palestinians - whether direct violence by soldiers, or the more indirect violence of having their land expropriated for settlements, olive groves uprooted, people being forbidden access to their own farmland, etc.

What I find uncomfortable is that even though there has never been a religious Zionist majority in the Kenesset, they have been able to have their way for so many years with largely secular governments, because secular and religious non-Zionist parties have gone along with their messianic version of Zionism in order to make viable governmental coalitions.