The Ascendance Of Israel S Radical Right

The Israeli people were stunned in 1984 when they learned of a barely averted plot to blow up five buses full of Arab passengers and an earlier attempt to blow up the Dome of the Rock, the holy Muslim mosque in Jerusalem. Even more shocking was the discovery that the terrorists in question were not a bizarre radical sect, but members of the Gush Emunim, "the Block of the Faithful," a fundamentalist group committed to establishing Jewish settlements in the West Bank. For the first time, Israelis had to confront the fact that the rise of the Radical Right--and the religious fundamentalism, extreme nationalism, and aggressive anti-Arab sentiment associated with it--was becoming a significant part of the nation's public life. The first book to examine the origins, convictions, and political impact of the entire Radical Right, The Ascendance of Israel's Radical Right provides extraordinary insights into a political camp whose influence pervades Israeli politics and culture as well as Arab-Israeli relations. Sprinzak traces the Zionist roots of the Radical Right and its reemergence following the Six-Day War and the Camp David accords. He examines the increasing control of the Radical Right over the settlements in the West Bank, its penetration of more moderate parties such as Likud and the National Religious Party, and its reaction to the Intafada and the Persian Gulf Crisis. With in-depth portraits of the major movements--including the Tehiya, Tzomet, and Moledet parties, Gush Emunim, and the late Meir Kahane and his Kach party, and various underground or terrorist groups--he sheds new light on the people and events which produce such intense fervor and on their political beliefs--for instance, the views that Arabs should be "transferred" from the occupied territories and that Israel was founded to establish a safe home for the Jews, not to protect the human rights of the Palestinians. Sprinzak argues that approximately 20 to 25 percent of Israeli citizens share the convictions of the Radical Right, and that it is especially strong among the young. Indeed, as the message of this camp spreads throughout the country, Sprinzak predicts that the Radical Right's impact on Israeli politics and national security will only increase. As The Ascendance of Israel's Radical Right shows, the Radical Right is not--as is often thought--a small lunatic fringe, but a major school of Israeli Zionism, whose ideas are propagated by sophisticated and thoughtful leaders with large public appeal. Understanding what the Radical Right has already achieved, and how it is currently shaping much of Israel's government agenda is important for every Israeli and Arab, as well as anyone who is concerned with the future of the Middle East.

Two decades ago, the idea that a "radical right" could capture and drive Israeli politics seemed highly improbable. While it was a boisterous faction and received heavy media coverage, it constituted a fringe element. Yet by 2009, Israel's radical right had not only entrenched itself in mainstream Israeli politics, it was dictating policy in a wide range of areas. The government has essentially caved to the settlers on the West Bank, and restrictions on non-Jews in Israel have increased in the past few years. Members of the radical right have assumed prominent positions in Israel's elite security forces. The possibility of a two state solution seems more remote than ever, and the emergence of ethnonationalist politician Avigdor Lieberman suggests that its power is increasing. Quite simply, if we want to understand the seemingly intractable situation in Israel today, we need a comprehensive account of the radical right. In The Triumph of Israel's Radical Right, acclaimed scholar Ami Pedahzur provides an invaluable and authoritative analysis of its ascendance to the heights of Israeli politics. After analyzing what, exactly, they believe in, he explains how mainstream Israeli policies like "the right of return" have served as unexpected foundations for their nativism and authoritarian tendencies. He then traces the right's steady rise, from the first intifada to the "Greater Israel" movement that is so prominent today. Throughout, he focuses on the radical right's institutional networks and how the movement has been able to expand its constituency. His closing chapter is grim yet realistic: he contends that a two state solution is no longer viable and that the vision of the radical rabbi Meir Kahane, who was a fringe figure while alive, has triumphed.

Two decades ago, the idea that a "radical right" could capture and drive Israeli politics seemed highly improbable. While it was a boisterous faction and received heavy media coverage, it constituted a fringe element. Yet by 2009, Israel's radical right had not only entrenched itself in mainstream Israeli politics, it was dictating policy in a wide range of areas. The government has essentially caved to the settlers on the West Bank, and restrictions on non-Jews in Israel have increased in the past few years. Members of the radical right have assumed prominent positions in Israel's elite security forces. The possibility of a two state solution seems more remote than ever, and the emergence of ethnonationalist politician Avigdor Lieberman suggests that its power is increasing. Quite simply, if we want to understand the seemingly intractable situation in Israel today, we need a comprehensive account of the radical right. In The Triumph of Israel's Radical Right, acclaimed scholar Ami Pedahzur provides an invaluable and authoritative analysis of its ascendance to the heights of Israeli politics. After analyzing what, exactly, they believe in, he explains how mainstream Israeli policies like "the right of return" have served as unexpected foundations for their nativism and authoritarian tendencies. He then traces the right's steady rise, from the first intifada to the "Greater Israel" movement that is so prominent today. Throughout, he focuses on the radical right's institutional networks and how the movement has been able to expand its constituency. His closing chapter is grim yet realistic: he contends that a two state solution is no longer viable and that the vision of the radical rabbi Meir Kahane, who was a fringe figure while alive, has triumphed.

The Jewish Radical Right is the first comprehensive analysis of Zionist Revisionist thought in the 1920s and 1930s, and of its ideological legacy in modern-day Israel. The Revisionists, under the leadership of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, offered a radical view of Jewish history and a revolutionary vision for its future. Using new archival material, Eran Kaplan examines the intellectual and cultural origins of the Zionist and Israeli Right, when Revisionism evolved into one of the most important movements in the Zionist camp. He presents revisionism as a form of integral nationalism, rooted in an ontological monism and intellectually related to the radical right-wing ideologies that flourished in the early twentieth century. Kaplan provocatively suggests that revisionism's legacies can be found both in the right-wing policies of Likud and in the heart of Post Zionism and its critique of mainstream (Labor) Zionism. Published with support from the Koret Jewish Studies Program

This book takes a fresh look at the trajectories of Israeli politics since the election of Likud in 1977, examining how right wing parties have adopted populist policies in order to carve out an identity and win support at the polls. As such it demonstrates how populism has become a hugely significant factor in shaping Israeli politics and society. The original perspective taken by the author allows for an understanding of the central phenomena of the contemporary political system in Israel, such as the Likud's party centrality in Israeli politics, the political force of the religious Shas party and the growing influence of certain political leaders. Through this innovative analysis of the concept of populism, the book contributes to a better understanding of the Israeli political system. With Israel playing such a central role in the Middle East conflict, this analysis of the ways in which populism contributes to the consolidation of governing political forces in Israel will allow for a better understanding of this conflict. Combining the theoretical elaboration of the concept of populism with its application in the analysis of a specific test-case, this novel approach contributes to the ongoing research on populist politics, and as such will be a useful tool for understanding many issues in the study of populism, comparative politics and the Middle East.

In this groundbreaking and controversial study of the rising tide of militancy in Israel, Ehud Sprinzak lays bare the historical roots of violence in Israeli domestic politics, examining the effects such militancy has had on the nation's civic culture. He traces the origins of the extremist thread to the era of the founding of the Jewish state, and shows how it has grown increasingly malignant in the past decade, culminating in the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER takes the reader through the critical turning points in Israeli political history and introduces us to the leaders whose careers were baptized by blood. Through his exploration of the disputes between David Ben-Gurion's Labour Movement and Menachem Begin's Irgun movement, Sprinzak argues that their legacy of conflict provided the inspiration for such agitators as Meir Kahane and the Orthodox radicals behind the Hebron massacre of 1994 and Rabin's assassination. Despite Sprinzak's disturbing accounts of violence, he remains optimistic that when peace between Israeli's and Arabs is reached and the great debate about borders of the nation is finally laid to rest, Israeli political violence will decline dramatically. BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER provides an incisive and extensively researched historical perspective on Israeli politics and opens a new chapter in our understanding of one of the world's most fascinating nations.

Jihad for Jerusalem explores the agent-structure dynamics in world politics and advances a constructivist theory of choice that explains the role of identity, culture, religion, and other core values in international politics. The struggle for Jerusalem by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel is the empirical space where the dynamics between reason and identity, values and strategies, is explored. Jihad for Jerusalem advances a theory of agency in international politics. This theory of agency is based on a reconstituted constructivist paradigm. The theory is tested by an examination of the foreign policy decision making of Iran, Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia towards Israel from 1967-1997. The book uses the foreign policy of these states as cases to test the tension between religion and rationality, between identity and reason, between power and morality, and advances a constructivist theory of choice that explains the importance of the role of culture, religion, identity, and core values in international politics. Anyone interested in international relations theory and the convoluted politics of the Middle East, will find this book intriguing reading.

`When certain Jews say to Arabs: "Look what we`ve done for you, we found a desert here and transformed it into a garden," the Arab replies, with good reason: "This may be true, but it was my desert and now it has become your garden."....That is why I say the Arabs must leave Israel....I want to make life difficult for them. I want them to say to themselves: it doesn`t make any sense to go on living here.` --Rabbi Meir Kahane The far right is now a force to be reckoned with in Israel. A plethora of groups -Kach, Tehiya, Morasha, Gush Emunim- advocate the gaol of a Greater Israel and the brutal repression of the Palestinians. These groups represent a growing threat not only to Middle East peace, but to the established political order in Israel itself. Raphael Mergui and Philippe Simonnot talk to the leaders of the far right about their aims and methods, their attitudes towards religion and the state. In an extended interview, Meir Kahane-former FBI agent, co-founder of the Jewish Defence League and founder of the extreme -right Kach movement in Israel- argues that the Jewish state cannot be democratic, secular and multi-racial, and that the Arabs should be expelled from Israel and the Occupied Territories. Such men are no longer part of a lunatic fringe. They are gaining increasing respectability and a mass following. They are Israel`s ayatollahs.