July 1, 2021
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In his “History of the Jews,” the historian Paul Johnson coined the phrase “Non-Jewish Jew” for any Jew who, in his words, “denied there was such a thing as a Jew at all.”
But it took Naftali Bennett and the Religious Zionist movement to trump the notion of the “Non-Jewish Jew” with that of racism posing as religion what I dub: non-Jewish Judaism.
By historical coincidence, the year Johnson published his book was also the first full year of the Palestinian Intifada and many of Israel’s Religious Zionists were in a violent frenzy. One of them, Rabbi Moshe Levinger, set the tone of much of what was to follow. Levinger was the “spiritual leader” of a gang of Israeli “settlers” in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. In September 1988, Levinger fired at a group of Palestinians killing one and seriously wounding another as they stood outside a shoe store.
Behind all the pretty words, Bennett’s speech at the Israel Prize ceremony reveals exactly what he’s after: a Jewish nationalist theocracy. By Gil Gertel During last Thursday’s annual Israel Prize ceremony, Education Minister Naftali Bennett gave a speech laying out his vision. He called for the establishment of a national, Jewish state, and in order…