Reuven Rivlin Quotes

The irony is that the Zionist movement was very democratic long before most of the world had adopted democracy. They not only saw no conflict between a Jewish Homeland and democracy, but they maintained that Jewish tradition required democracy. After 60 years if constant attacks by its neighbors and having to defend the nation from invasion and extinction, the Israeli body politic actually became very conservative, while the Zionists were extremely left wing. Under the concept of Zionism there was a large population of Arabs as Israeli citizens. However, when some of those Arabs were openly against the nation in its struggle with the Palestinians and its other Muslim neighbors. Leiberman led the right wing effort in various efforts to expel the dissident Arab citizens and use very non democratic methods to cope with the right wing’s perception of the risk to the Jewish State.

Prior to 1948 and the establishment of the state of Israel, there were large number of Jewish refugees who were stateless and, regardless of whatever moral rights they may have had, there was no politi.cal mechanism to enforce or claim these rights. For example, in 1956 Nassar expelled most of the Egyptian Jewish population. It was only the existence of Israel that gave these people the right to come to Israel and not depend on the good will of the world to help them as refugees. The difficulty for most refugees is that there is no state to demand, support, and enforce their rights.

Olmert was speaking for a significant minority of Israelis who believe that God consecrated the land of Palestine to the Jewish People and all other peoples who controlled it did so by conquest. So their logic is for those who do not believe in the Bible and give no modern credence to God’s will, the Jews have no taken back the land by conquest which is the way the Palestinians and all of the many peoples had controlled that land. For believers, the Jews have the highest right; for non-believers, their right of conquest is no weaker than any of the others.

Since the foundation of the State of Israel in 1949, there has been compulsory military service for all except the ultra-orthodox. Initially, this was only a small handful of religious scholars, but the number had swelled to almost 70,000 man of draft age who were very vocal and active about how the nation should be run and its foreign policy but never had to risk their own lives of that of their children in fighting Israel’s wars. Finally, majority sentiment became overwhelming and the exemption was removed. The Degel HaTorah party was an ultra-orthodox Jewish minor religious party whose view of a Jewish State was very similar to the ultra-orthodox Muslims who believed that holy books of their religion are the only valid laws and must supersede everything else like man-made Constitutions or laws. For them there was NO separation between church and state. For Gafni, therefore, if a court ruling or law conflicted with the Torah (the first 5 books of the Old Testament – The Law of Moses-- it contravened the notion of a Jewish State. The vast majority of Israeli Jews believed that the civil law must trump anyone’s particular interpretation of the Law of Moses as interpreted by the ultra-orthodox or anyone else. See {636124} for another instance where Gafni complained that Israel was no longer a Jewish State.

Mr. Brandeis was Louis D. Brandeis, first Jewish Supreme Court Justice and one of the leading Zionist world leaders. Theodor Herzel is generally credited with being the father of Zionism but his treatise was written in 1895. Four years earlier, Blackstone, a Methodist Evangelical Minister, had drafted what has come to be called the Blackstone Memorial, which was a petition to President Benjamin Harrison to have American foreign policy work to return the Jews to Palestine where they would have a state and government. The petition was signed by over 400 notables. Straus, Brandeis and other Jewish Zionists credited Blackstone even though history has almost forgotten him. See {614860} for quotes from the Blackstone Memorial.

The murder to which he was referring was the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He had been very active in trying to negotiate a peace treaty with the Palestinians. A minority of right wing, religious fundamentalists were opposed to any peace treaty that would give the Palestinians control over the land that the fundamentalists believed was given to the Jews by God. Israel’s political system was so fractionated with minority parties having so much influence that Rabin was the only leader on the horizon who was influential and powerful enough to transcend the party politics, Since his assassination the peace process has been stalled, and the murder paid off.

This quotation is very surprising for most people. Reading the text alone, most of us would assume that it came from someone when the Zionist movement was fighting for a Jewish homeland in what is now Israel. Or just before the UN decision in 1947 to partition Palestine. However, it came from one of our founding fathers in Colonial times. Adams was by no means the only Founding Father with this point of view. Fundamentalist Protestants have put much credence in God’s granting the area for the Jewish People—then as today.