The most recent scandal of the ultra-Orthodox Netzach Yehuda unit assaulting CNN journalists is just the latest in a long list of blemishes in the unit’s history, with a perfunctory search showing at least four other episodes in the last 10 years of them beating and abusing Palestinian detainees. They hold the dubious record of being one of the only units sanctioned by the United States for human rights violations.
In parallel, we have far Right religious settlers conducting almost daily attacks throughout the West Bank, all while the military and government look on.
Finally, we have the government itself, with an unprecedented representation of far Right religious cabinet members in key security positions, championing behavior such as legalizing the death penalty by hanging specifically for Arab terrorists. What do these patterns all have in common? Religion.
I have personally walked all sides of the spectrum: I was raised haredi (ultra-Orthodox) in the Old City of Jerusalem, right on the edge of Palestinian east Jerusalem. My family declared themselves non-Zionist; they were pro living in the land of Israel, but not pro the Israeli government because it was not religious enough.
After years of religious study in haredi institutions, I joined the military through a Hesder program, serving 15 months as a case worker in the Netzach Yehuda brigade.
I then studied at a National-Religious yeshiva before gaining my Rabbinic ordination from an Orthodox institution.
After a tumultuous journey of deconstructing my past, I am now a vocal critic of both hardline religion and the contradictions inherent in trying to create a democratic nation-state.
Religion only makes this worse
By its very definition, a nation-state requires discrimination against all who are not of that nation, regardless of how long they have been living in that land or how deeply they are connected to it. Religion only makes this worse.
The more dogmatically linked a population is to ancient teachings that can justify their present-day behavior, the more likely they are to tap into supremacist and entitled beliefs. The Torah is full of stories of conquest, of destroying man, woman, and child to acquire a land promised by God to his chosen people. Progressives read this as a metaphor. Conservatives read it literally.
I was raised on the idea that we were entitled to the land; it was ours because an ancient book said so. Anyone living on it currently, even for generations, was an inconvenience. We dreamed of the messiah returning, to be ruled once again by a monarch under full halachic law and Jewish courts. Israeli democracy was a stepping stone towards this “full salvation.”
Even secular Zionists refer to religion when it’s convenient for them, in what Ilan Pape describes as “We don’t believe in God and he promised us this country.”
Thus, we get completely secular cabinet members making comparisons between Palestinians and Amalek, an amorphous title that can be assigned to any “enemy of the Jews” to justify their complete annihilation, man, woman, and children, as the Torah dictates.
I personally ascribe to Western democratic values, which hold that all individuals in a land are entitled to equal freedom and legal rights. Israel, I believe, has only two options: to absorb the Palestinians into the country, providing them the same treatment they would to a Jew, or to allow them to govern themselves.
This amorphous gray area that is currently the legal state of Palestinians is unconscionable, and I believe the onus to rectify the situation lies on the Israeli government – they are the adults in the room, they have all the power: politically, economically, and militarily.
Israel claims to be the only democracy in the Middle East. It prides itself on its gay rights and on its scientific innovation. In having the “most moral army.” The closer Israel steps towards religion, the more these values will be eroded.
We are seeing this daily, in the behaviors of soldiers and citizens and in the legal structures being codified. As Jews, we know better than anyone what it means to be victims of ideology. Ask yourself – are these the values you believe in? And if you prefer to get more personal, is this how you’d want to be treated?
The writer is a former member of Netzach Yehuda.