Aging Israeli extremist laments violence now used against
Palestinians
Jodi Rudoren & Isabel Kershner, NYT News Service | Aug
22, 2015, 06.35 PM IST
OFRA (West Bank): Yehuda
Etzion does not regret, exactly, helping plant bombs in the cars of Palestinian
mayors and plotting to blow up the Dome of the Rock in the 1980s, nor does he
express remorse. But he has reconsidered the role of violence in the quest for
a Messianic kingdom
of Israel, particularly
as he contemplates a new generation of radicals he sees as bastardizing their
shared ideology.
Yes, the aging right-wing extremist is wringing his weathered hands along with much of the Jewish world after last month's firebombing in the West Bank village of Duma that killed an 18-month-old boy and his father. It is personal for Etzion, 64, who said he takes "partial responsibility" for not reaching out to the young zealots "to try and straighten out their thinking," which he described as a "superficial", "childish", "distorted" and even "vulgar" interpretation of Jewish texts.
Yes, the aging right-wing extremist is wringing his weathered hands along with much of the Jewish world after last month's firebombing in the West Bank village of Duma that killed an 18-month-old boy and his father. It is personal for Etzion, 64, who said he takes "partial responsibility" for not reaching out to the young zealots "to try and straighten out their thinking," which he described as a "superficial", "childish", "distorted" and even "vulgar" interpretation of Jewish texts.
Having spent the decades since he was released from prison
in 1989 mostly writing and editing books — while continuing to promote a vision
of a third Jewish temple where the sacred Islamic dome now stands — this icon
of the Jewish underground issued a one-page declaration, gave a lengthy
interview to a conservative newspaper and went on television to condemn the
Duma arson. Etzion said if he knew the perpetrators, he would turn them in to
the police, prompting a backlash from some longtime friends.
"I can hardly find words strong enough to say how I distance myself from them and reject them," Etzion said in a conversation at his home in Ofra, the West Bank settlement he helped found 40 years ago.
"Violence has no role now," he said. "On the contrary, what's needed now is some quiet, an environment for letting a seedling grow. You need conditions, and violence contradicts those conditions."
"I can hardly find words strong enough to say how I distance myself from them and reject them," Etzion said in a conversation at his home in Ofra, the West Bank settlement he helped found 40 years ago.
"Violence has no role now," he said. "On the contrary, what's needed now is some quiet, an environment for letting a seedling grow. You need conditions, and violence contradicts those conditions."
Etzion, in his own recollection as well as contemporaneous
accounts of the notorious underground, always opposed attacks on random Arabs:
He saw the mayors as legitimate targets, "the heads of the snake",
but argued against his comrades' 1983 gun-and-grenade attack on the Islamic
college in Hebron.
Still, half of his recent declaration was devoted to sympathy for the Duma
arsonists' motives; more than himself, he blames the Israeli government for,
among other actions, releasing Palestinian prisoners.
To visit with Etzion is to see at once the differences and connections between the old underground and the current crop of so-called hilltop youth, against a backdrop of an Israel growing more religious and settlements ever more entrenched.
To visit with Etzion is to see at once the differences and connections between the old underground and the current crop of so-called hilltop youth, against a backdrop of an Israel growing more religious and settlements ever more entrenched.
The extremists of the 1980s were educated army veterans —
fathers in their 30s with a lot to lose. The Israeli authorities describe
today's as mainly dropouts who do drugs, recruited as young as 13 and generally
unmarried. But they share their predecessors' goal of replacing the democratic
state with a post-Zionist theocracy as well as some of their tactics: Both Duma
and the maiming of the Arab mayors, for example, marked the end of the 30-day
mourning period for Jews killed by Palestinians.
\
"He's certainly a link in the chain," Tomer Persico, a Tel Aviv University expert on Jewish extremism, said of Etzion. "The '80s guys were much more ideologically sound," he added. "The new guys, they're basically anarchists. Even the few things they wrote down, you can see that their main objective is just to unravel the state and to wreak havoc."
\
"He's certainly a link in the chain," Tomer Persico, a Tel Aviv University expert on Jewish extremism, said of Etzion. "The '80s guys were much more ideologically sound," he added. "The new guys, they're basically anarchists. Even the few things they wrote down, you can see that their main objective is just to unravel the state and to wreak havoc."
Sefi Rachlevsky, a columnist for the leftist Haaretz
newspaper who wrote a book about Jewish Messianism, said he "wouldn't
really believe" Etzion's mea culpa. He argued that the real change is the
absorption of formerly fringe ideas into Israel's establishment politics, and
said Etzion knows well that his agitation for Jewish prayer on the Temple
Mount, the contested Old City holy site that Muslims revere as the Noble
Sanctuary, can itself erupt into violence.
"To say that somebody who is still working to make the biggest flames about the Temple Mount, that he changed something about his ideas, that's nonsense," Rachlevsky said. "Yehuda Etzion's ideological point of view changed? Not at all. Did his morality change? Not at all. Is he ready to blow up the confines above the rock if needed for Messianic redemption? Of course."
Born on a kibbutz to Yaffa and Avraham Mintz — a fighter in the pre-1948 Zionist paramilitary group Lehi — Yehuda changed his last name in 1968 to Etzion in homage to the first block of settlements built after Israel captured the West Bank. As a yeshiva student, he was a staple of the Gush Emunim settlement movement but was further radicalized after Israel's 1978 peace treaty with Egypt, which involved a traumatic withdrawal from Israeli settlements in the Sinai Desert.
"To say that somebody who is still working to make the biggest flames about the Temple Mount, that he changed something about his ideas, that's nonsense," Rachlevsky said. "Yehuda Etzion's ideological point of view changed? Not at all. Did his morality change? Not at all. Is he ready to blow up the confines above the rock if needed for Messianic redemption? Of course."
Born on a kibbutz to Yaffa and Avraham Mintz — a fighter in the pre-1948 Zionist paramilitary group Lehi — Yehuda changed his last name in 1968 to Etzion in homage to the first block of settlements built after Israel captured the West Bank. As a yeshiva student, he was a staple of the Gush Emunim settlement movement but was further radicalized after Israel's 1978 peace treaty with Egypt, which involved a traumatic withdrawal from Israeli settlements in the Sinai Desert.
His guiding light was Shabtai Ben-Dov, a Lehi fighter who
imagined a bloody battle that would bring the messiah. In "Dear
Brothers", a book about the Jewish underground, Haggai Segal — who served
time alongside Etzion and is his neighbor in Ofra — recounted how Etzion asked
Ben-Dov on his deathbed whether removing the Dome of the Rock would be a wise
first step toward redemption.
Ben-Dov said it "would solve all the Jews'
problems," according to Segal's account. When Etzion protested,
"That's a very hard thing to do," his mentor urged, "Difficult,
but not impossible."
Today, Etzion says the plot would have required 40 people to carry out, and while his group had readied huge caches of explosives, they did not even have four members prepared to follow through.
"We made a serious mistake," he said, not in wanting to destroy the dome, but in thinking 20 or 30 men "can lead a whole people in such a dramatic direction by enforcement".
"Such a huge project to be envisaged by such a small group of people is like standing a pyramid on its point," he said. "There is no alternative but to take the longer route, to work on the base of the pyramid. To make it a will of the people, an aspiration serious enough, so that the people will want to go back to their holy place and rebuild the holy temple."
Hence his devotion over the past five years to "Jerusalem Rebuilt", a book showcasing sophisticated renderings of a future city with a new temple at its core. Etzion said he has not ascended the Temple Mount in several years, after some 20 arrests by the Israeli police at the site, "because I don't restrain myself when I go, I pray a little or bow down."
"Even at my advanced age, I have not learned to respect and obey and say, 'Yes, of course', to every law that Israel creates," he said. "My criteria is the Torah of Israel."
Today, Etzion says the plot would have required 40 people to carry out, and while his group had readied huge caches of explosives, they did not even have four members prepared to follow through.
"We made a serious mistake," he said, not in wanting to destroy the dome, but in thinking 20 or 30 men "can lead a whole people in such a dramatic direction by enforcement".
"Such a huge project to be envisaged by such a small group of people is like standing a pyramid on its point," he said. "There is no alternative but to take the longer route, to work on the base of the pyramid. To make it a will of the people, an aspiration serious enough, so that the people will want to go back to their holy place and rebuild the holy temple."
Hence his devotion over the past five years to "Jerusalem Rebuilt", a book showcasing sophisticated renderings of a future city with a new temple at its core. Etzion said he has not ascended the Temple Mount in several years, after some 20 arrests by the Israeli police at the site, "because I don't restrain myself when I go, I pray a little or bow down."
"Even at my advanced age, I have not learned to respect and obey and say, 'Yes, of course', to every law that Israel creates," he said. "My criteria is the Torah of Israel."
A father of seven with "20-plus" grandchildren,
Etzion spends most of his time in Ofra, now a suburb of 700 religious families,
in the heart of what Palestinians see as their state. He has edited 15 books,
among them a four-volume, 2,800-page collection of Ben-Dov's writing, and has
written five.
With a biblical white beard and ruddy cheeks, Etzion wore sandals and a work shirt over his prayer fringes. He spoke in complicated, nuanced paragraphs as his wife of 40 years cooked for the Sabbath, at one point ducking in to apologize for a forthcoming noise. "That noise will soon be a cake," he noted with an eye-twinkle.
With a biblical white beard and ruddy cheeks, Etzion wore sandals and a work shirt over his prayer fringes. He spoke in complicated, nuanced paragraphs as his wife of 40 years cooked for the Sabbath, at one point ducking in to apologize for a forthcoming noise. "That noise will soon be a cake," he noted with an eye-twinkle.
Etzion described as "cowardly" the so-called
price-tag attacks today's radical youth carry out against Palestinian churches,
mosques and olive groves in response to Israeli government moves to, say,
demolish illegal settlement buildings. But he blamed Israel's own actions, especially
its evacuation of Gaza Strip settlements a decade ago, for inciting the ire.
"The young people ask themselves, 'Who is the state?' Is the state on the side of the house that was built in the land of Israel, or on the side of the bulldozer that has come to destroy it?" he said. "The more the youth decide the state is the bulldozer, they say, 'I'm against,' and 'I'm ready to throw a firebomb at the bulldozer.'"
"The young people ask themselves, 'Who is the state?' Is the state on the side of the house that was built in the land of Israel, or on the side of the bulldozer that has come to destroy it?" he said. "The more the youth decide the state is the bulldozer, they say, 'I'm against,' and 'I'm ready to throw a firebomb at the bulldozer.'"
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