A) Rav Kook's 'raising the compass'
More than a century ago, Rav Kook picked up a metaphorical compass, and recognized that the Zionist movement was not progressing along on a paved road, but it could 'lose its way' within a few generations.
The attempt to break away from the root of Jewish existence and invent a new identity disrupted the trajectory of the Zionist movement. The age-old dream of the Jewish people had shrunk to finding a
safe haven for Jews or a model socialist society. Jewish survival, or a non-Jewish universalist vision – both options come up short, especially with a short moral fuse Zionism becomes morally justified only when the sword is at the neck, or as a short transition to application of universal values. This leaves no real moral horizon for the nation's existence.
Those who understood the danger of disintegration that hung over Zionism, about which Rav Kook spoke, often imagined things like a decrease in motivation to enlist and emigration. It is not certain that this included such things as highly motivated military generals
(with what consciousness?), energetic and idealistic state officials, dedicated jurists who call themselves 'gatekeepers', or judges who defend democracy – all of whom care deeply about the country. It sounds too confusing.
But that is what has happened.
The focal point of the disintegration (which began with the Oslo Accords) was not a decline in motivation, but an increased motivation to to purify nationalism and Zionism and mobilize the state systems for alternative issues, such as 'oppressed minorities', 'substantial equality', and a new and friendly branding for the enemy plotting to destroy us.
How exactly did this happen?
B) First leg: sovereignty, national power and security
A significant part of the senior officials of the security system gradually turned from experts in fighting, conquest, destroying the enemy and victory, to experts in security arrangements and simulated agreements with the enemy. They advanced in positions, but changed their character. They of course want the best of the country, but they forgot that their role is to exercise sovereignty and national power, and not to engage in economic prosperity for the enemy, anemones blooming in the spring, 'identifying processes' and problems of internal solidarity. For their part, they cared for the future of the country in their own way, but corrupted the systems responsible for sovereignty, security and national power and turned them into welfare departments, peace movements, rescue organizations and human rights associations. The values of a civil society are an important thing, but when generals are more committed to this than to fighting, conquering and winning, they degenerate the minds of Zionists.
And when the generals allow ethics professors – who oppose the concepts of victory, 'good' and 'bad' in the face of the enemy (and one of them even questioned a week ago the right to the existence of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel) – to manipulate the spirit of the IDF without the value of victory over the enemy, then the problem is not only the distortions of the thinking of those professors, but that Zionism itself is degenerating.
And if you want, that's the depth of the concept. Everything else follows from that.
C) Second leg: maintaining the Jewish majority
But the problem is not only in the security field. Zionism, by its very definition, stands on two additional legs, which have always been critical to national existence. One of them is maintaining the Jewish majority. Here too, before the Oslo Accords, the Jewish population numbered about 80 percent of all the country's residents, after years of waves of immigration. In the last thirty years we have been in constant retreat, and currently we are in the region of 73 percent of Jewish population in Israel. The Law of Return is completely flawed. Most of the immigrants through it are not Jewish, and a significant number are not even the sons of Jewish fathers.
Alongside this, the legal bureaucracy has deployed a web of cobwebs that produces here a 'state of every infiltrator and immigrant', with a one-way ticket in. Entire worlds of 'bureaucracy' and fake (and illegal) legal morality have been created that do not allow immigrants who entered illegally to be removed from the country. The peak was the wholesale disqualification of the infiltrator laws by the High Court of Justice.
It is not the product of foolish behavior. This is a degeneration of the Zionist consciousness and its replacement by a mobile globalist consciousness, similar to the processes happening in Europe and the USA. The idea of the nation state in the entire West is in a struggle for its very existence.
D) Third leg: Jewish settlement
We will not talk here about Judea and Samaria, but rather about two regions that have always been in the Zionist consensus, the Galilee and the Negev. Until the Oslo Accords, the phrase 'Jew of the Galilee' was a cross-campaign value, in his name observation points and settlements were established in the Galilee. Due to his power, the percentage of Jews in the Galilee grew. After the Oslo Accords we started to fall. The discrimination began with The Katzir Law passed by the Supreme Court. 25 years ago, which outlawed Jewish-defined settlements in the Land of Israel. But this was only the opening blow.
From then until today, a well-oiled bureaucratic machine has been built in the public service that discriminates against Jews in a blatant and shocking manner in everything related to settlement in the periphery. In all possible parameters: land prices, land development subsidies, tax benefits, development and expansion plans and construction permits – there is shockingly blatant discrimination in favor of Arabs and Muslims and against Jews (and especially those who serve in the reserves…).
It's hard to believe, but the policy of the State of Israel corresponds to the platform of the Balad party in the test of the result, and competes quite well with the 'White Book' policy of the British mandate.
Many reasons led to this result. What they all have in common is a degenerate Zionist consciousness and its replacement by other values: 'oppressed minorities', economic and environmental considerations. In the last 15 years, the birth rate in the heart of the Galilee has decreased by more than fifty percent. The percentage of Jews in the heart of the Galilee is in free fall, and they are surrounded on all sides by armed Muslims, who have a Palestinian consciousness in the spirit of the northern faction of the Islamic movement.
And so, in the test of the result, also in the field of Jewish settlement in the peripheral areas, in the consensus we receive Zionism in a state of clinical death.
E) . Why did we vote for Zionism and get disintegration?
One of the things that distracts from attention to this terrible slide down is politics. For a large part of this period, there was a right-wing Zionist government; Where was she regarding the appointment of the generals, the settlement and the preservation of the Jewish majority? Where did the ballot papers go? On one leg, the government was mainly busy with containment battles and trying to get along with the security, legal, clerical systems. Not to shock them, but only to go along with them. It didn't go over well, to say the least. The legal reform was an important attempt to contain the emergency, then came the internal explosion, then the war, and here we are.
F). The Zionist phoenix
These processes of Zionism going off the rails were already sown at the beginning of Zionism which abandoned its roots. They came to maturity after the period of the Oslo Accords, and now they have come to their senses.
But there is an ancient Jewish tradition somewhat similar to the world-known story of the phoenix. The death of one stage in development is also deep down the renewal of a new stage. The last war was such a moment. We entered it in a state of national clinical death, but from it we rose again, we grew great powers of a new resurrection. It started as a death, but turned into a resurrection war.
And in the spirit of the ancient tradition that our Rabbi Moshe died and was born on the same day, there is nothing like the holiday of Purim to teach us that in the people of Israel, reaching the gates of death grows from the depths of the great new life.
We are still in the middle of the road, or maybe even at the beginning. Rabbi Kook's amendment proposal stands: Zionism connected to the ancient Jewish vision, which gives a tremendous moral horizon to Israel's national power, is a blessing to the world from our being a regional power, and is an old-new vocation to fight for tirelessly.
These will replace the fleeting attempts to be satisfied with the small right to personal survival and the identification of morality with compassion for evil. It will take us more time, resources and growth of consciousness. We will still have to learn how not to be deceived, how to stand firm in the face of brothers' cries of losing their way, how to dismantle twisted moral towers of jurists and judges, and how to choose leaders who know how to realize this firm stand. And our youth will be renewed like an eagle.
