Cinder blocks and skullcaps

[occuserpens]

Khomeinism and radical religious Zionism developed simultaneously.

Michael Melchior. Cinder blocks and skullcaps
Like tens of thousands of other people, I grew up in the lap of religious Zionism. Because of it, I immigrated to Israel and I educated my children in accordance with its philosophy. In the Bnei Akiva movement they educated us to love of the land, to commitment to and solidarity with the Jewish people, and to adherence to the values of the Torah. This was an equilateral triangle, the power of which was in the combination of all of its elements, and especially the maintenance of the balance among them.

In the mid-1970s the process of sliding down the slippery slope began. Fanaticism, extremism and insensitivity to the "other" replaced the old values. The delicate fabric of religious Zionism unraveled. The Jewish people and the Torah were sidelined and their place was taken by the land of Israel. Not the land "of milk and honey" of the prophets? vision, full of justice and equality, but rather a fundamentalist, xenophobic land of Israel. A land of bullying and violence, of injured policemen and uprooted olive trees.

[Jim Sagle]

1. I weep for the olive trees.

:boring: