by Hillel Halkin New York Sun November 23, 2004

“If the rebels win the vote today, we’ll have been Feiglinized,” declared Omri Sharon, the prime minister’s son and political right-hand man, over the weekend.

The “vote” was Sunday’s election in the 2,500-member Central Committee of the Likud. Up for grabs were three key positions that control the party’s internal apparatus.

For each of these positions, there was a pro-Sharon candidate and a “rebel” or anti-Sharon candidate who opposes the prime minister’s Gaza disengagement plan.

In essence the vote was over this plan, and the prime minister’s supporters won by a narrow margin in all three cases . a reversal of the results of the Likud referendum on disengagement held last May, in which 60 percent of registered party members participating voted “no.” But who is Mr. Feiglin? His name wasn’t one of the candidates’. Few outside of Israel have heard of him. What was Omri Sharon saying?

Moshe Feiglin is a religious West Bank settler of extreme nationalist views who first came to the attention of Israelis following the signing of the Oslo agreement in 1993, when he organized and led an extra-parliamentary protest group, called Zo Artsenu, “This Is Our Country.” The protesters staged anti-Oslo demonstrations of a sometimes massively disruptive nature, such as tying up traffic simultaneously on all of Israel’s main roads by staging sit-ins at major intersections, and Feiglin was later convicted by Israel’s courts of incitement to riot and sentenced to prison in 1997. Released after three months, he decided to turn to more conventional channels.

For a while he founded and headed a right-wing lobby called “Jewish Leadership.”

Then, persuaded that this, too, was not the way to affect Israeli politics, he came up with a new idea.

This idea was simple and ingenious. Heretofore, the more militant West Bank and Gaza settlers, who in most cases were religiously Orthodox, had been associated with a small number of right-wing political parties that frequently splintered and regrouped. Some of these parties were exclusively religious in orientation while others appealed to secular voters, too, but none had much influence in the Knesset . in which, even when included in ruling coalitions, they were insufficiently indispensable to press home their demands. Thus, in recent months, the small National Religious Party and Israel Home Party both have quit Mr. Sharon’s coalition, unable to deter him from his planned pullout from Gaza.

All this led Feiglin to a new conclusion: If the small parties of the religious and semi-religious right couldn’t change the course of the Likud, their natural ally, from without, why not change it from within? In 2002 he joined the Likud and urged other religious right-wingers to do the same, a campaign that he has pressed for the past three years.

By all appearances, this campaign has been highly successful. Although there are no exact figures on how many Feiglinites have signed up for the party, the latter’s 200,000 registered members could by now include tens of thousands of them. The Feiglinites were instrumental in swinging last May’s Likud referendum against the prime minister, and they have already elected some of their ranks to the Likud’s Central Committee, where they were among the noisiest backers of the “rebels” defeated in this week’s elections.

There was a time when such a development might have seemed good political news.

Ever since the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948, it has been repeatedly observed that the proliferation of small parties, particularly ones with religious agendas, has had negative effects. It has weakened the larger parties, led to the politicization of religion, prevented the separation of synagogue and state, and turned the national budget into a schmaltz barrel for the subsidization of religious institutions. How much better it would be, the conventional wisdom went, if religious voters could be persuaded to support major parties that might defend their interests without being narrowly sectorial.

The infiltration of the Likud by the Feiglinites, however, is an unwelcome development. Although there are may be obvious parallels between it and, say, the new activism of fundamentalist Christians in the Republican Party in America (and who, really, would want to see a separate Evangelical Party in America?), there is one fundamental difference. America’s politically activist Christians are focused on a domestic agenda; they may think they are performing G-d’s will by pushing this agenda, but they understand that they have to push it by rational means and they do not, apart from small groups of End-of-Dayers, believe they are actors in a divine eschatological drama.

Not so the Feiglinites. Many of them are true messianists who are convinced that the retention of the entire land of Israel is part of G-d’s plan for the Jewish people and the world, and that there is no need to think rationally about how such a plan can be realistically implemented because G-d will take care of all problems in due time. All Israel has to do is hold on to every inch of sacred ground and make no concessions to the Palestinians; the rest will be arranged by the will of Heaven.

Political messianism, which absolves the faithful of the need for hard political thinking, has always been a disastrous force in Jewish history. There is a danger of its becoming so again. Confined to the fringe parties of the far Right, the Feiglinites are a containable contagion. As infiltrators into the Likud, a nationalist party that has always put realistic principles first, they can leverage Israeli politics in an irrational direction. This week they and their supporters were beaten back. One must hope that their defeat was not just temporary.

Dr. Jay Gold’s Response:

Hillel Halkin’s column on Nov. 23, 2004 (”Messianism Meets Its Match”) was an extremely one-sided, ill-informed piece of journalism. In attempting to perform an obvious hatchet job on Moshe Feiglin, the head of the Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) movement in Israel, rather than relying on facts, Mr. Halkin relied on hearsay and innuendo. His most “credible” source? Omri Sharon, the son of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who now may be facing indictment due to violation of election law funding practices in order to get his father elected.

Mr. Feiglin is an orthodox Jew and a man of principle whose goal is to restore Jewish values and pride to the state of Israel. Contrary to Mr. Halkin’s distortion, he is not a “messianist” nor an extremist. Does Mr. Halkin envision all men of faith to be extremists? Is is ironic that he praises the Christian influence in attempting to set America’s domestic agenda while he attempts to deconstruct Mr. Feiglin for doing the same in Israel, as many of the Christians that Mr. Halkin praises are key supporters of Mr. Feiglin. Mr. Feiglin has said over and over he has no with to establish a theocracy in Israel. In fact he has called for the removal of the religious parties from the government. Because of his love of all Jews, religious and non-religious, he also recognizes that he cannot shove religion down the throat of the secular Jews in Israel. His love and respect for them perhaps explains why so many of Manhigut Yehudit’s supporters are in fact, non-religious. Messianism? Hardly.

Mr. Halkin is quick to extol the virtues of democracy in Israel. Does he relize that Mr. Sharon has been governing in direct violation of several of his own Likud party’s votes and directives? Or that he is now governing with only a minority government and all the while refusing to call a national referendum on several key issues including the proposed Gaza disengagement? Does he also know that Mr. Feiglin was also asked to establish his “Jewish Leadership” movement inside the Likud at the behest of many senior secular Likud members who were horrified at the Sharon family’s hijacking of the Likud party and turning into their own personal fiefdom?

Since Mr. Feiglin is in America this week I would urge the editors (and Mr. Halkin) to meet this man and find out for yourself what he stands for. You can also check their website, www.manhigut.org for more information including full domestic agenda. Had Mr. Halkin done that, he might have been better informed. I enjoy the Sun immensely. Please keep it the quality paper that is has become.

Sincerely,
Jay E. Gold, MD, FACP
New York

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 21st, 2004 and is filed under opinion.