Secular Jews or Fundamentalist Jews: Does It Make Any Deference for Palestinians?

Fundamentalist Zionist Jews have never demanded anything that hasn’t previously been done or supported by mainstream Zionists.

Secular Zionists and even anti-Zionists have lectured us on the peril of Zionist Jewish fanaticism for many years. Since Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing administration, which has the highest proportion of Jewish fundamentalists in an Israeli cabinet, took office, their voices have grown more incisive.

Most secular Zionists are concerned that Jewish fundamentalists provide a serious threat to Israeli Jews, while others are concerned that they pose a threat to Palestinians as well. However, some, particularly anti-Zionist secularists, claim that they pose a menace to the whole gentile world.

But it has always been secular Zionists who have killed the most innocent Palestinians, taken over and colonized their lands, persecuted Mizrahi Jews, and maintained friendly relations with antisemitic governments and groups all over the world, from Viktor Orban’s Hungary to American evangelical fundamentalists.

The secular Zionists who have ruled Israel under emergency laws since 1948 and who continue to ban all media in Israel are also to blame. The secularists are also responsible for all of Israel’s notoriously bigoted policies.

What makes fundamentalist Jewish Zionists more dangerous than mainstream Zionists, then?

In point of fact, the tone and bias of many of the studies written by anti-Jewish fundamentalists are very similar to those written by anti-Muslim, if not anti-Islamist, westerners and Arab and Muslim secularists.

Indeed, the anti-Muslim and anti-Islamist rants share a fundamental commitment to white Protestant European liberal secularism, which serves as the primary “enlightened” reference against which Islam, Islamism, and fundamentalist Judaism (if not Judaism itself) are constantly compared and left out.

The lengthy interview that the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a few weeks ago about the influence of the American-born Israeli fundamentalist rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh serves as a relevant illustration. The meeting was directed with the Israeli-instructed and US-based teacher of religion Motti Inbari, a researcher of Ginsburgh and his development. Inbari, a secular Zionist, warns readers that Ginsburgh wants to turn Israel into an “Iran” by doing the following:

“Until a Torah-based regime can be established, to uproot the Zionist-secular spirit and topple the government. The criminal decisions made by the Supreme Court must be overturned. The army only needs to be subjugated, not crushed. It is essential to make comparisons in this setting, and it must be stated explicitly: This is the perspective of ISIS and Al-Qaida.”

Inbari goes on to say that Ginsburgh is also dangerous to Palestinians and other gentiles because he believes that “Jewish blood is worthier than gentile blood” and that “the Jews are above nature, and therefore, in a situation in which a gentile intends to kill a Jew, the gentile must be liquidated in order to protect the Jew.” In addition, Inbari says that Ginsburgh is also dangerous to Palestinians and other gentiles.

These warnings are not brand-new. The pro-Israel American Jewish political scientist Ian Lustick, who supports peaceful negotiations and opposes the 1967 occupation, insisted in a book on Jewish fundamentalism in Israel that the “belief system” of fundamentalist Jews was “radically different from the liberal humanitarian ethos shared by most Israelis and Americans.”