1.
The shockwaves of the Oslo Accords will continue to accompany us on our path as a nation, and, just like in the mourning process, in which mourners move from denial to acceptance, this is a national process with psycho-historical and psycho-political components.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
The regions of the Land of Israel with which the agreements dealt with are more than mere "territories" that control the heart of the country and more than an obstacle to a contiguous route from Iran, through Iraq, and Jordan to the Samarian Hills in the western Land of Israel. All these are true, but these territories are first and foremost the cradle of our birth as a nation. It was in these places that the Bible was written and our ancient nationalism was shaped. These were the subjects of our dreams during the long, dark night of our exile: Jerusalem, Shiloh, Beit El, and Hebron. We have been dreaming of returning there to renew ourselves as a nation.
2.
Israeli nationalism is supplemented by the religious element or Jewish core of our identity, which is inextricably linked to these territories. The first stage of our national revival toward the end of the 18th century and during the 19th century was carried at the expense of the religious dimension. The Jewish elites rebelled against the religious establishment and cast off religion: the Torah and the halachic practice. It was these religious elements that back then were identified by young Jews as being primarily responsible for the despondent political situation of the Jewish people and its economic and social deterioration. Their anger grew stronger with the 1848 revolutions and the expansion of civil rights.
Video: PM Netanyahu speaks about judicial reform / Credit: Twitter/Prime Minister's Office
In Micha Joseph Berdyczewski's story "Mahanaim" (the beginning of the 20th century), the hero looks at his peers skating on the ice whose "souls echo with the confidence that exists when everything is well." He is jealous of them. Why is our fate different than theirs? The result: "Once he was just the son of a patrimony, and he was the guardian of that patrimony, and now he had gone out of its domain and he toiled to break off from everything he had acquired within its walls... He has emerged from darkness to light, from slavery to freedom..." There were many thousands like him.
3.
In psychological terms, what the Jewish elites did was patricide. They expelled the ancestral father – the Jewish God – who had stood at the head of the family for thousands of years. It is one thing if we believe in or are indifferent to religious faith, but it's a fact that for thousands of years, the Jewish people had a God who was responsible for the content of the lives and deaths of the individuals who made up the people. This faith, which has withstood trials and tribulations that no other nation has endured, and for which the best of its sons and daughters have given their lives, became the main component of the collective psychology of the people and its raison d'être.
The way to emerge from a state of national slumber and return to history was to disconnect from the religious umbilical cord. The psychoanalyst Margaret Mahler talked about the process of growing up in terms of separation-individuation – separation from the parental umbilical cord in order to form an independent personality. In national terms, what happened to us was the separation from the religious umbilical cord by rebelling against God (the ancestral father) and his representatives on earth (the religious establishment) in order to form an independent collective personality (the national individuum). At first, we returned to history with the revival of the national nucleus, which until that time had been dormant and wrapped in religious law, and after we returned to history, we returned to our ancient homeland and established an independent state.
Independence expressed not only political liberty but also a distancing from the religious dimension, which was relegated mainly to the personal sphere. Israel's Declaration of Independence managed to accommodate this complexity: On the one hand, it mentions some twenty times the word Jewish with its various conjugations (Jewish State, Jewish People, etc.), and on the other hand, it only hints at the fact that there once stood at the head of the family that was now forming the third Jewish republic (or kingdom) an ancestral father. Loyalty to this father and his laws was a real, not an imagined, foundation for the People. The compromise reached to add the vague expression "Rock of Israel" – which alludes to God (see: 2 Samuel 23:3) – at the end of the Declaration of Independence cast a veil on the face of the God of Israel. It seems that this is the deep-rooted cause of the many complexities that characterize Israeli society even today.
4.
The Six-Day War, or rather its results – the rapid victory and the liberation of the historical parts of the Land of Israel and Jerusalem above all - was an unplanned surprise, almost a historical accident. The direct encounter with the cradle of Jewish history exposed to the Israeli public in a very powerful way the theological meaning that is signified behind these liberated regions, and made it aware of the possibility of the return of the repressed religious dimension to the heart of political and public life. From the perspective of secular and liberal Israel, a dormant giant had awakened and it threatened the normalcy liberal Israel thought it had achieved: In other words, the Six-Day War marked the return of theology to history and from there to politics. It was a move that led Israel in the opposite direction from the "patricide" from which Israel's social elites had grown.
It is this – and not our control over another people – that is the root of the resistance of some among us to maintain our grip on the cradle of our historic motherland. The desire for a peace achieved by giving up on parts of the motherland loaded with historical and religious meaning, expressed a desire for normalcy, for an escape from an ancient fate and destiny that often throughout history appeared to have been thrust on us against our will. Hence, the negative use of the term "messianic," which was used now no longer as a hope for world peace come the end of days, but an expression of irrational considerations in policy, politics, the military, and more. The bitter struggle against the settlements and the settlers is also a part of this since it is religious Jews who have gone outside of the framework designated for them and have taken on the national task of settling in the historic lands of Judea and Samaria as they seek to lead the Zionist locomotive.
5.
It is now 30 years since we gave up the heart of the land in a failed attempt to make peace. It is through this prism that we can also explain the root of the public debate regarding judicial reform and, in fact, the role of the Supreme Court: Is it an equal authority between the three branches of power, or whether it is a gatekeeper that is designed to protect secular Israel from the return of the religious dimension to the heart of Israeli existence. Hence the exaggerated apocalyptic expressions that come from the side of the protesters, as if the end of the state is nigh.
In the Book of Jonah, we learned that the refusal to accept our destiny (in the case of Jonah: to hear the word of God ) found expression in Jonah's flight from the mountains to Jaffa, to the coastal plain, and his decision to sail out to sea with all the implications of being forgotten and forgetting identity which are inherent in that. But we also learned that those who flee will find themselves at the heart of a storm – a storm at sea, an economic storm, or even a terrible war and a danger of extermination – and then they will have no choice but to be vomited out on the shores of the Promised Land as survivors who have escaped from the sword, and to climb up the hill once more.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
