Israel at a Sea Change: Experiencing Second Zionist Revolution

In May, Dershowitz wrote in The Jerusalem Post and The Huffington Post: “I have now joined this distinguished company of people who get booed for advocating territorial compromise in the interest of peace. I was booed and jeered at the Jerusalem Post Conference on April 28, 2013 when I proposed an idea for restarting peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority … These same people cheered loudly when Glick, a right-wing opponent of any territorial compromise, announced that: ‘There are no competing narratives. There is only the truth.’ For her, the only truth lies in history and archeology.”

Briefly, here are four relevant voices today:

Dershowitz told Newsmax this week: “I think a lot of Israelis are today thinking — as many have thought in the past — that they can’t outsource the defense of their own people, that they have to make their own decisions, make their own judgments and take their own actions as they did when they destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 and various Syrian reactors more recently.”

Glick wrote in a January blog: “Next week we’re going to vote and it is already clear that Israel is in the midst of the Second Zionist Revolution. The first Zionist revolution was a socialist revolution. The second Zionist revolution is Jewish. Israel is coming into its own. Judaism is flourishing, changing, living and breathing here like it never has anywhere since the destruction of the Second Commonwealth. The secular Left has been eclipsed by the Jewish Right. I don’t call it the religious Right because that is too limiting. What’s happening isn’t just about religion, it’s about everything and that is why non-observant hipsters in Tel Aviv are voting for the Jewish Home party. Non-observant and observant Jews are joining forces and the anti-religious are being left behind.”

Ted Cruz at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March, as reported by The Christian Post: “‘I commend everyone here for respecting the biblical admonition to stand with Israel,’” he said, praising their ‘commitment to speak the truth in an era when so many believe they know better than eternal truths. ‘The alliance between the United States and Israel must remain completely and entirely unshakeable.’”

Moshe Feiglin, Knesset member, wrote in his newsletter this week: “I demand, at the first stage, to close the Temple Mount to Moslems during the Sukkot holiday just as the Mount was closed to Jews for the month of Ramadan.”

_________________________________________________
Bernie Quigley is a prize-winning magazine writer and has worked more than 30 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and book, movie, music and art reviewer. His essays on politics and world affairs have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and other newspapers and magazines. He has published poetry in Painted Bride Quarterly and has written dozens of magazine articles. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He has written hundreds of columns for “Pundits Blog” in “The Hill” a political journal in Washington, D.C. He lives in the White Mountains with his wife and four children.