...
Once the Likud came to power in 1977, Zvi Kook rose to prominence as the
spiritual leader of settlers who were colonizing large parts of the Palestinian
West Bank, building their outposts at the heart of densely populated Palestinian
areas.
The idea was that such an aggressive colonization would accelerate the
de-Arabization of the West Bank. This process was meant to put Palestinians
under pressure by taking over all of their resources, such as land, water, and
even access to the labor market.
With the help of the army, this ruthless methodology became a daily practice of
abuse, harassment and, in some cases, of directly killing and wounding
Palestinians in the vicinity of these mushrooming illegal settlements.
It was convenient for all Israeli governments to pretend that these expansionist
plans were being implemented without their blessing. But this is a lie. In fact,
most of the settlers' actions in the West Bank were directly coordinated with
the military commanders on the ground to be later approved by successive
governments.
These groups of vigilantes and vandals, mostly educated at the Merkaz Harav,
were prodded by Zvi Kook's religious rulings, edicts that directed their actions
against the Palestinians and preventing any government from "giving up" even one
square inch of so-called 'Eretz Israel'.
It is important to note that, for Zvi Kook and his disciples, 'Eretz Israel'
includes Jordan as well.
Additionally, quite a few secular Jews in Israel were admirers of this brutal
form of colonization, seeing it as a continuation of the 'glorious' early
colonization of Palestine during the mandatory period.
'Youth of the Hills'
The most extreme manifestation of Kookism is the Noar Ha-Gevaot, the 'Youth of
the Hills'.
This group, constituted of hundreds of youths, was encouraged by late Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 1998 to "occupy every free hill in the West Bank
and settle there". This strategy was aimed at establishing irreversible 'facts
on the ground', a path towards a full Judaization of the West Bank.
The main modus operandi of the Noar Ha-Gevaot is known as Tag Mehir, or Price
Tag. These are particularly unprovoked vicious attacks on Palestinian farms,
cars, businesses and fields.
Occasionally, the members of the group would burn a mosque or a church in these
assaults. Sometimes, it is more than that. They try, and sometimes succeed, in
burning people alive in their houses or killing them during these pogroms.
During these violent episodes, the Israeli army would stand by and allow the
extremists to carry out their attacks unhindered.
In recent years, this messianic group has entered in a systematic way into the
Palestinian neighborhoods of mixed towns inside Israel such as Akka, Haifa,
Jaffa, Al-Lid and Al-Ramleh.
They built "learning centers" in the midst of the Palestinian areas and are
constantly harassing the population. These settlers played an important role in
instigating the riots against Palestinian communities, the '48 Arabs, in May
2021.
The Youth of the Hills added yet another component to their violent repertoire
in recent years, the raiding of Al-Haram Al-Sharif, the most sacred Palestinian
Muslim holy site. Their aim is to instigate a regional reaction, which, in their
minds, would facilitate the building of the so-called third temple on the ruins
of Al-Aqsa Mosque, with the ultimate hope of precipitating the coming of the
Jewish messiah.
Jewish Power, Religious Zionism
The Youth of the Hills became even more of a menace after the November 2022
elections as the two political parties that fully support them, Ozma Yehudit
(Jewish Power) and Haziyonut Hadatit (Religious Zionism) significantly increased
their representation in the Knesset. This new-found power allowed right-wing
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to establish his government.
The representatives of these extremist parties are now ministers in the current
cabinet, with Bezalel Smotrich becoming the finance minister and Itamar Ben Gvir
- who used to be the defense lawyer of these vigilantes - becoming the national
security minister.
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, along with other ministers of their parties, are not part
of the small war cabinet created after the events of October 7. Consequently,
they have little impact on the ongoing genocidal policies carried out by the
Israeli army in Gaza.
However, they will be crucial in determining Israel's next move, which aims at
bringing Jewish settlers back to the Strip.
Moreover, these extremist politicians are already playing a part in the
intensification of the horrific assaults on the Palestinian community of the
occupied West Bank. Additionally, they are the leaders of the new campaign of
terror and racism targeting the '48 Palestinian Arabs.
These extremists have already succeeded once, namely, in their relentless
attacks on the villages in Masafer Yatta, in the southern Hebron Hills. They
have done so with the tacit help of the Israeli army, leading to the eviction of
thousands of Palestinians. Successive Israeli governments have been wanting to
de-Arabize that area for years, in order for Israel to create territorial
integrity for Jews from the Negev (the Naqab) to the Jordan River.
Quite a few of these religious Zionist representatives are now making their way
into the upper echelons of the Israeli security services and army.
Their final goal is to close a circle, which began with a rabbi who decided to
nationalize Judaism as a settler colonial project in the early 20th century, and
ultimately build a theocracy that would try and finish what secular Zionism
failed to do: the very destruction of the Palestinian people.
Moshe Zimmerman, Israel's leading historian of modern Germany, had, as early as
1995, compared Kook's disciples to another group, which terrorized Jews during
the dark days of Nazism. This is what he said in an interview with the Israeli
newspaper Yedioth Ahronot:
"There is a whole sector in Israeli society that I contend without hesitation
that it is a copycat of the Nazis. Look at the children of (the Jewish settlers
in) Hebron, they are exactly like the Hitleryugend... They are indoctrinated
from the cradle about the bad Arabs, antisemitism, how everyone is against
us. They become the paranoid supremacists, precisely like the Hitleryugend."
Enough said.
-- https://www.palestinechronicle.com/the-hitleryugend-or-isis-israel-the-two-kooks-who-nationalized-judaism-ilan-pappe/
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