Israel Affairs ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fisa20 Generational crossover: ‘the Movement for the Entire Land of Israel’ from the Labour movement to Gush Emunim Amir Goldstein & Elchanan Shilo To cite this article: Amir Goldstein & Elchanan Shilo (2021): Generational crossover: ‘the Movement for the Entire Land of Israel’ from the Labour movement to Gush Emunim, Israel Affairs, DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2022.2017140 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2022.2017140 Published online: 22 Dec 2021. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=fisa20 ISRAEL AFFAIRS https://doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2022.2017140 Generational crossover: ‘the Movement for the Entire Land of Israel’ from the Labour movement to Gush Emunim Amir Goldsteina,b and Elchanan Shiloc a Multidisciplinary Studies, The Tel Hai Academic College Upper Galilee, Israel; bThe Herzl Institute for the Study of Zionism, Faculty of Humanities, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel; cThe School of Basic Jewish Studies, Bar-Ilan University and Multidisciplinary Studies, Sapir College, Ramat Gan, Israel ABSTRACT The ‘Movement for the Entire Land of Israel’, was formed by activist members of the Labour movement shortly after the June 1967 war. Its founders struggle for “Greater Israel” and espoused the establishment of settlements that would secure the Israeli hold on the territories occupied during the war. During the 1970s, however, the movement had effectively come to be spearheaded by Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful), a newly-created religious-nationalist activist group. This article describes this transition while examining the factors that enabled this process despite the two groups’ very different political, social, cultural ideals and intergenerational backgrounds. KEYWORDS The whole land of Israel; Labour; Gush Emunim; 1967 war; Nathan Alterman; Moshe Shamir; Menachem Begin; Likud; Tehiya This article focuses on the interrelationships between two groups that were active in the 1970s in the Israeli political and public arena; on the individuals, circles and movements that spearheaded the activist-hawkish camp of the historical Labor Movement on one side, vis-à-vis the nationalists from the activist-hawkish camp of Religious Zionism on the other. Posed at its crux is a political, social, cultural and intergenerational encounter between two groups that issued from different political movements and traditions and embraced discordant beliefs and perceptions. The trajectory described below unfolds the change which took place in Israel in the 1970s, when the fundamental definitions of political identity and political praxis shifted from a socio-economic or cultural-religious basis onto a political-security platform, centering on the question of Israel's boundaries. We shall trace, along the timeline, the decline of this movement as an organized and distinct group, until its disappearance, as well as CONTACT Amir Goldstein 1220800 Israel amirgold@telhai.ac.il © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Tel Hai Academic College, Upper Galilee, 2 A. GOLDSTEIN AND E. SHILO the rise of the new settling elite. Since the Peel Commission’s recommendation (1937) to partition mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states (the latter unified with Transjordan), a controversy ensued within the Labour movement (which dominated the Zionist/Israeli political scene for most of the 20th century) between most of Mapai leaders who acquiesced in partition and the more socialist circles opposing the idea. Yet, there evolved a gradual acceptance of the territorial reality that was created by the establishment of the State of Israel on a small part of Mandatory Palestine – which comprised the entire territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River as well as vast lands east of the river (which were effectively severed by Britain in the early 1920s to become the Emirate of Transjordan, latterly the Kingdom of Jordan). Even after Israel’s capture of the biblical lands of Judea and Samaria (renamed the West Bank after their 1951 annexation to Jordan) during the June 1967 Six Day War, Labour’s political leadership adopted a pragmatic position that promoted restricted Jewish settlement in the newly-acquired territories while envisaging the return of most of these territories within the framework of a peace agreement. However, about two months after the war, a ‘Movement for the Entire Land of Israel’ (hereinafter MELI) was created by a string of political activists and intellectuals advocating Israel’s permanent retention of these territories. The movement represented a unique alliance among varied streams in Israeli society, including a number of public figures from the Revisionist Right and religious Zionism, but at its core stood figures from the Labour movement who became the moving spirits in its initial phase. Their quantitative and qualitative weight in the process of establishing the movement and its activities was significant. The three initiators – the poet Nathan Alterman, the novelist Moshe Shamir, and the activist Zvi Shiloah – were the own kith and kin of the Labour movement who felt that they couldn’t remain aloof to such fateful historic moment.1 Fifty-six intellectuals signed a manifesto ‘for the Entire Land of Israel’, published on 22 September 1967. A month after its publication, the inaugurating convention of the movement was held in Tel Aviv, and two weeks later a delegation met with Prime Minister Levy Eshkol. Behind the initiative lay the feeling that the events of May-June 1967 were fateful, historic and demanded a public realignment. The nascent movement confronted Israeli society with an ‘incomparable’ reality ‘a thousand years were reduced to a moment – and one hour was burdened with the weight of generations’.2 However, it was precisely then that a Zionist leadership imbued with historical understanding and endowed with a veritable visionary sentiment was nowhere to be seen. The role of the writers and poets in the movement was crucial, and they provided an interpretation to the events within the context of a wider spiritual world. ISRAEL AFFAIRS 3 Paradoxically, many within the Israeli literary elite advocated the maximalist position opposing compromise while most military personnel were willing to consider the need for withdrawal from the territories and in return for a partial compromise. Alterman played a major role in MELI throughout the last years of his life (he died on 28 March 1970), while in subsequent years it was Shamir who took his place and assumed the role of ‘poet-prophet’. The movement acted in several ways to promote its worldview across the Israeli public: it issued a biweekly (This is the Land), published extensive ads in the daily press, organised conferences and ideological seminars, and seems to have received considerable funding. The gravitation towards the Right on the part of the Labour movement’s elite was accompanied by hesitations and inhibitions. The first collaboration with the successors of the Revisionist Right was forged around the establishment of MELI and the publication of its founding manifesto, but it was fenced off within the boundaries of the intellectual-cultural elite. The movement was defined as non-partisan and the Gahal party and its leader, Menachem Begin, were not partnered. A landmark in the shattering of the historical-mental-political barrier was the election campaign for the Seventh Knesset (October 1969). The first major figure to cross the lines was Alterman, who had undergone a personal and mental process of breaking away from the Eshkol-led Mapai leadership around the ‘Lavon affair’ and the establishment of Rafi in the early 1960s. Now, against the backdrop of support by large sections of Labour’s top echelons for a negotiated withdrawal from the territories, he came out against his alma mater, claiming that voting for the newly-created Alignment (comprising the Mapai and Mapam parties) amounted to ‘casting a blank ballot’ and that voters had to choose ‘among the other parties, the one closest to their position . . . Only by doing so will they also strengthen those factors who are close to their spirit within the Alignment’.3 Ten days after the article was published, numerous members of MELI came out with a ‘manifesto to the voter’ that locked arms with Alterman’s approach. They objected the suspension of settlement activity and exhorted to abstain from voting for a party that some of its candidates endorsed a territorial compromise. Among the signatories were Moshe Shamir and Haim Hazaz, Avraham Yaffe, Eliezer Livneh, Menachem Dorman and Chaim Yahil – all belonging to the Labour movement’s elite.4 Their exhortation actually defined the political-security outlook as the pivotal element in the establishment of a political-party identity. MELI also faced a major weakness: it lacked young settling forces that would follow the worldview it promoted. Shiloah admitted that there was ‘a great deal of truth in the nickname of the movement’s top leaders as generals 4 A. GOLDSTEIN AND E. SHILO devoid of an army on the settlement front.’5 This was the reason for Yehuda Harel’s – Yitzhak Tabenkin’s disciple, whose father was among the movement’s members – refusal to join MELI. For Harel, deeds, rather than words, were of the essence: ‘I was not interested in manifestos. . . . I do not believe in political movements and petitions but in settling enterprises’.6 The younger generation that the hawkish leftist circles had longed for would be revealed among the religious Zionism youth. Consent and chasm within ‘the Movement for the Entire Land of Israel’ The growth of Gush Emunim has received considerable scholarly attention.7 Here, we shall underscore both the common denominator between the Zionist-religious and the former members of the labour parties in MELI and the discrepancies between them. Both circles comprised Ashkenazi Jews, mostly of East-European descent. The prism through which they reflected on the Israeli reality was based upon spiritual-cultural thought and their views derived from an uncompromising metaphysical conception. Members of the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva, from which most of Gush Emunim leaders ensued, alluded to the religious commandment to inherit the Land of Israel, while Labourite supporters of the ‘Entire Land of Israel’ concept subscribed to the historical-national right, which also included a political-messianic dimension. Moshe Shamir saw himself as the bearer of the vision of Zionist redemption, emphasised the utopian-messianic components in the interpretation of reality and belittled the weight of constraints and compromise considerations.8 At a meeting of the Labour Party secretariat in early November 1968, Rachel Yanait Ben-Zvi, widow of Israel’s second president and a longtime political activist, went against the mood and the terminology instilled by the party leadership: ‘The territories are not occupied. They are redeemed’.9 On another occasion she evoked the chain of renewed Zionist heroism from the days of her and her friends’ Second Aliya (1904–14) in order to emphasise: ‘But they pale in comparison to the six days of the IDF war’. Here she supplemented the messianic dimension: ‘The Labor movement in our country knew how to endure the birth-pangs of the Messiah, to advance the coming of redemption, and now, more than ever, we are commanded to live in a messianic spirit; to contend in that spirit in our political struggle’.10 Both religious and labourite circles regarded the territories captured in the 1967 war as parts of the ancestral homeland and viewed settling these areas as essential and the main tool for ensuring Israel’s continued hold on them. They both regarded the position adopted by most Israelis as an ISRAEL AFFAIRS 5 expression of the value crisis undergone by the secular society of the time and perceived their political action as geared to redressing the flaws that afflicted society. Obviously, alongside this common denominator between the veterans of the Labour movement and the youths of religious Zionism, a significant gap wedged between the two groups: first and foremost, the religious basis and concomitant lifestyle and, in some cases, divergent socioeconomic standpoints as well. The settlement enterprise was considered by Gush Emunim leaders an act that would hasten the messianic coming and the prophecies of ‘the last days’. And while the messianic element constituted common ground, its content was different. Not a socialist model state, but, in the words of Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook ‘The State of Israel, the foundation of God’s throne in the world, whose whole goal is to have one God whose name is the One.’11 Fluctuating relations between both groups over the timeline Already during the first years of MELI activity, the movement was joined by some young religious Zionist activists. Hanan Porat, a prospective prominent Gush Emunim leader, was one of the speakers at MELI’s inaugural assembly in October 1967.12 Also at the conventions conducted the following month he spoke alongside the veterans of the movement as a representative of the residents of Kfar Etzion13 – a kibbutz, the re-establishment of which (it had been destroyed by the Jordanians in the 1948 war), even if unsanctioned, Alterman and Shamir endeavoured to promote.14 Alongside Porat, who maintained close ties with several MELI members and seemingly won their hearts,15 this circle also included Gershon Sheft, a member of the Religious Kibbutz Movement, and Yisrael Harel, who had his colleagues sign the famous manifesto of the movement and was appointed, in the spring of 1968, as the first editor of the newspaper This is the Land.16 At the conferences held in June 1968 and November 1969, it was Rabbi Moshe Levinger, the ‘head of the Hebron settlers’, who was assigned to be one of the speakers.17 Once Kfar Etzion was re-established with the approval and endorsement of the Religious Kibbutz Movement, the members of the nucleus did not require MELI’s assistance. However, for the Hebron residents, the need to rely on the old settlement elite was far greater. The organisational and political infrastructure afforded by MELI to the young religious Zionists became conspicuous around the affair of the activists who entered Hebron on the eve of Pesach 1968 and the decision to affect its status de facto and remain in situ. Already in March 1968, MELI members organised a petition and a delegation to the Knesset requesting permission for the ‘mitnahalim’ (settlers) to reside in Hebron, and later raised a considerable sum for this purpose.18 6 A. GOLDSTEIN AND E. SHILO Colonel Yehoshua Verbin, among the signatories of the MELI manifesto, mediated between the religious youths and Maj.-Gen. Uzi Narkis, who acquiesced in their sojourn in the city under the promise to vacate the place the day after the Passover night.19 Moshe Shamir and Shmuel Katz (MK in the 1st Knesset on behalf of Herut) joined the Jewish ritual (Seder) itself as representatives of the movement. The following day, a MELI meeting was held in Hebron.20 Students from the Herut student cell at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem were recruited to guard the Hebron settlers.21 In May 1968, members of the movement assisted the settlers in contacting the Arab residents and even attempted to harness the United Kibbutz movement for the mission, but were turned down.22 The recruitment of the movement was carried out while capitalising on the close system of contacts it held with the political leadership, government officials and the military leadership. MELI activists liaised between the Hebron settlers and Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Alon, who gave them his patronage. Following their sojourn at the Park Hotel, Alterman and longtime Netanya Mayor Oved Ben-Ami met with Defence Minister Dayan, who opposed the settlers’ stay at the hotel and suggested their removal to a military camp.23 It is highly doubtful whether the settlement project of the Mercaz HaRav youth – lacking in experience and financial resources – could have materialised without the help and support of their ‘patrons, members of the “Movement for the Entire Land of Israel”’.24 Rabbi Levinger also viewed the relationship as such, and when asked about the fate of the settlement enterprise he replied that ‘he trusted the Movement for the Entire Land of Israel’.25 As we shall see, after the movement joined the rightwing political camp, after the October 1973 Yom Kippur War the relationship between the two groups and their status would alter beyond recognition. MELI’s Labourites within the Likud If MELI leaders initially estimated that they could influence the Labour party, out of which they had sprouted, as time went by a mental and political distancing from the ruling party ensued, as well as a growing assessment that the advancement of the movement’s stance necessitated a fundamental change in Israel’s political leadership, apart from forging an alignment with the Zionist Right. In the summer of 1973, a momentous event occurred. The MELI leadership announced its joining the ‘right-wing alignment’ that would eventually be called the Likud.26 This crossing-over to the opposite camp expressed the change in the contours that had shaped the political system following the Six- Day War. The name of the new faction – ‘the Labor Movement for ISRAEL AFFAIRS 7 the Entire Land of Israel’ was not accidental, but reflected a message that recurred as a common thread in the words of the speakers at its founding conference. Haim Yahil (Chairman of the Israel Broadcasting Authority and one of the founders of Kibbutz Givat Haim) emphasised that the linkup with Begin’s new party did not amount to turning the back on ‘our past, on “the quarry from which we were hewn”, but we take this step out of loyalty to the Labor movement’s heritage and values during its heyday.’ The crossing-over to the rival party was justified on the grounds of the decline of the Labour movement and its commitment to the Zionist ethos of settling the land. Moshe Shamir summed up the debate: ‘We have seen here the entire picture of the Working Land of Israel. It is a conference of the Labor Movement; there is no doubt about that. All the things said here . . . stemmed from the roots of the Labor Movement’.27 It was not in vain that Shamir chose to mention, on this occasion, his new partners – the Religious Zionist youth – who didn’t form part of the new party alignment (i.e. Likud). Since it was hard to find Likud circles committed to the settlement ethos – the main banner of the Labour movement over the years – Shamir reminded his listeners of their Hebron experience of five years earlier: ‘I made a pilgrimage with the settlers to Hebron . . . in faith and devotion to “the Glory of Israel” . . . I was swept away as one of the armor-bearers for that enthusiastic group on the eve of Passover 5728’.28 The cluster of speeches delivered on the eve of the Likud establishment underscored the choice of this branch among the veteran Labourites – to shift onto blatant oppositional activity and to break free from the Labour camp and its government – in all affairs pertaining the struggle to advance their worldview. The 1974 ‘Keshet affair’ The establishment of Gush Emunim in February 1974 was an important milestone in the growth of the new settling elite, symbolising a change in its relationship with the old Labourite settling elite. The latter’s disappointment exacerbated with the deepening contrast between the momentous activity of the religious Zionist youth and the lack of responsiveness among the younger generation of the Labour movement to settlement enterprises in the territories. The religious Zionist youth already tallied several years of activity and their self-confidence in their project increased, even in view of the eroding sway of the Israeli government in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War. The trauma of the war and the fear that it would lead to withdrawal propelled them into action. In May 1974, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger embarked on shuttle diplomacy in an attempt to reach a disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria. Against the backdrop of the proposals he made for an 8 A. GOLDSTEIN AND E. SHILO Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied during the Yom Kippur War, MELI members went on a hunger strike. As the impact of this move began to fade, it was the thousands of demonstrators organised by Gush Emunim who lent the protest activity a new impetus.29 Moshe Shamir addressed the protestors: I have already made some dramatic changes in my life. I crossed over from the Left to the Movement for the Entire Land of Israel and to “Those who are loyal to the Land of Israel” and I will make one further turnover—a spiritual one. Here grows another generation of people who believe in the Land of Israel, whose roots are in the Torah, and who believe in the Land of Israel, and I already love them today, and I know that the next change will be forging a spiritual connection with them . . .. We hand over the flag to you.30 The motif of passing the flag, or baton, in the historic relay race points to the motivation of Shamir and other members of his movement who had lost their sway among the younger generation of the Labour movement. Upon acknowledging the dearth of a younger generation that would perpetuate the settlement-activist ethos – considered by MELI supporters one of the secrets for the appeal and power of the Labour movement – they turned to the religious youth. These were perceived as representing a dynamic social, cultural and political force. The recruiting capacity of the religious youth made a powerful impression on MELI members. They visited assemblies convened by Gush Emunim and were enthused by the striking difference from the situation in the secular political arena: ‘A crowd of tens of thousands shows up at the appointed time and listens with a thrill to the speakers of this wonderful movement . . . And in every such assembly one feels the high Zionist voltage’.31 The need for active and devoted players to will fill the void in Israel’s ceaseless struggle to determine its future was perceived by Shamir as searing enough to bridge differences and gaps between him – a secular (albeit moderate) leftist – and the knitted-skullcap young generation. A similar message that dubs the religious Zionist youth as the prodigal son who has returned to the obsolete old elite was expressed by Elyakim Haetzni, who had previously belonged to Mapai but had repudiated it already as a youth around his 1950s struggle against corruption. Haetzni explained his choice to join the Hebron settlers: In my society there is no one without a skullcap . . .. The whole leftwing community . . . that built the country . . . is gone . . .. No reservoir is to be found there . . .. If such is the case, I’ll go to them and will pour water on their hands. I shall serve this cause [the settling of the Land of Israel]; I shall serve them anyway and that’s how I reached Rabbi Zvi Yehuda.32 ISRAEL AFFAIRS 9 The case that – most than all others – expressed the gap between the recruitment capabilities of each of the settling movements transpired around the establishment of the Keshet locality. Out of concern lest the Israeli government would be forced to return territories in the Quneitra area of the Golan Heights – as part of the separation of forces agreement – in May 1974, twenty-five young Israelis from the Golan invaded an abandoned bunker.33 However, the turnover in situ was large and Yehuda Harel feared failure: ‘I knew that if it proved to be the case that the step we took was nothing but a demonstration – this would cause irreparable damage to the status of settlement in general, and in the Golan in particular’.34 The struggle to find individuals throughout the northern kibbutzim who would be willing to settle failed, and in October 1974 Harel was forced to contact Hanan Porat and transfer the responsibility for settling the place to his followers. The two travelled to consult Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, who ordered Eli Sadan (then a yeshiva student, later the head of the premilitary preparatory school Bnei David) to help establish the settlement. The transfer of Keshet to the Gush Emunim group was effected much to Harel’s chagrin – for lack of any other option – in the absence of secular cadres for the Golan Heights.35 The Sebastia affair (1974-75) Until the summer of 1974, it seemed that the two groups under discussion were partnered in their mutual striving to break into areas that the Israeli government had refused to settle, and that the role of the Labour movement’s old elite was to mediate vis-à-vis the political, military and settling establishment. The Sebastia affair marked the new stage whereby the young residents of the Elon Moreh nucleus swept their partners into breaking the law and even into confrontations with the security forces. During the planning and preparation phase of the first settling on the ground, MELI opposed such course of action and even issued a statement condemning the act.36 However, the reverberations of the settling experience and the fact that the struggle against government and army, as well as the transgression of the law, failed to have a major impact led the movement to support subsequent settlement attempts on the part of religious youngsters who identified with ‘the deepest sources of Zionism’, though executed in violation of the law.37 Some of MELI members even joined the settlers. Prof. Heftziba Eyal, a member of the movement, recounted how ‘the twenty-four hours spent in the company of the settlers’ infused in her a ‘breath of fresh air’ that she had not experienced ‘since the pre-state period and the War of Independence’. Eliezer Livneh wrote an essay that gave Gush Emunim pride of place in the modern Return to Zion by ‘not only settling at the heart of our country and in its frontier areas but [by] instilling a cure for our moral laxity’. Gush Emunim 10 A. GOLDSTEIN AND E. SHILO was quick to make use of these statements in the first pamphlet issued in the summer of 1975.38 Both Ezra Zohar (one of the founders of the Tel Aviv Faculty of Medicine) and Moshe Shamir partook in the Sebastia squatting.39 Zohar presented Gush Emunim as a successor to Hashomer Hatzair, the leftist youth movement to which he had belonged in his youth. After the Sebastia affair he sent Yaakov Hazan, the veteran Mapam leader, a photo from his days as head of Hashomer Hatzair branch participating in the founding of a kibbutz in the pre-state era, telling the old politician that the excitement, uplift and admiration he felt at the time were similar to his feelings vis-à-vis the settling enterprise in Judea and Samaria.40 Epilogue – the rise of the Tehiya The Movement for the Entire Land of Israel and Gush Emunim were among the factors that led to the rise of Likud and the end of Labour’s longstanding hegemony in May 1977. The growing sway of the activist religious youths among the National Religious Party (NRP) also compelled it to forgo its historic alliance with the Labour movement and establish – together with the ultra-Orthodox parties – a new historic alliance with Likud, thus securing its Knesset majority. Along with their contribution to the political turnaround in Israel, it is possible to identify mental and ideological differences between these two groups and the Likud. Both regarded settlement as the core of Zionist fulfilment, an area in which the Revisionist Zionist Right had been marginalised. Both objected to Likud’s emphasis on flowery rhetoric at the expense of action on the ground, as well as to the manifest legalistic view advocated by Begin, and thought he attached undue importance to the international recognition of Israel’s policy. During the first months after its establishment, the Begin government restrained Gush Emunim activity throughout the West Bank due to pressure by the Carter administration (and perhaps Begin’s secret overtures to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat). MELI leaders attempted to mediate between the parties and strike a compromise of a gradual settlement that would not receive significant media exposure.41 On 2 November 1977, a festive convention was held to commemorate MELI’s tenth anniversary. While the meeting was attended by Begin, the event was predominantly marked by the intensifying alliance of MELI and Gush Emunim. Zvi Shiloah launched the evening with a reading of the opening lines of ‘Birkat Am’ (‘The People’s Blessing’), ‘Strengthen the hands of all our brothers’, by Haim Nahman Bialik – the foremost Zionist poet – whose words were adopted as the anthem of the Labour movement. Shiloah went on to explain what he meant: ‘Who but the members of Gush Emunim?’ ISRAEL AFFAIRS 11 Among the speakers were Hanan Porat and Rabbi Moshe Zvi Neria, and a standing ovation accompanied his invitation to the stage of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook.42 Kook, who a decade earlier had refused to sign the manifesto formulated by the heads of MELI because it did not encompass God’s Promised Land to Abraham, had earned the profound respect of the secular intellectuals who considered him a vital ally. Shiloah ascribed a place of honour in his speech to the representatives of the Gush Emunim nuclei who were present in the hall and symbolised the joining of forces between the various historical streams: the activist political Zionism advocated by the Revisionist Movement and its successors in Herut, and the practicalpioneering Zionism from the breeding ground of the Labour movement, whose fulfiling power lay now in the ranks of Religious Zionism.43 Shiloah enumerated the names of the nuclei, highlighting ‘Elon Moreh, whose struggle from the times of Sebastia to the present day constitutes a heroic tale that blends into the narratives of the defenders of Tel Hai, the Hanita and Tel-Amal settlers’.44 He concluded with a hopeful statement: Under the current government headed by Mr. Menachem Begin, loyal to the wholeness of the Homeland, and with Gush Emunim as a pioneer corps of the Zionist deed, we are looking forward, infused with faith, to a day of festivity when we shall fulfill the vision of uniting the Land of Israel from Mount Hermon to Suez and settling all its geographic domains with Jews . . .. In this note of hope, I hereby inaugurate the Assembly to celebrate the decade of the Movement for the Entire Land of Israel.45 One week later, Sadat would deliver his dramatic speech announcing his willingness to come to Jerusalem and address the Knesset. Contacts between Israel and Egypt became overt. Those ‘faithful to the Entire Land of Israel’ – both former Labourites and Gush Emunim members – were shocked. The gap between Begin and his party and these two groups vis-à-vis the status of the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights became evident. In fact, anyone who listened carefully to Begin’s speeches in the decade attending the 1967 war could have deduced that when he referred to the ‘whole of the homeland’ he meant Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. In contrast to MELI and Gush Emunim, the rightwing leader actually endorsed a territorial compromise in the Golan and Sinai, even if he conditioned the Israeli withdrawal on a full peace agreement – a position whose chances of fulfilment seemed extremely low until Sadat and Begin shuffled the deck. The unified forces of MELI and Gush Emunim concentrated now on activities in the ‘Movement to Stop the Withdrawal from Sinai’ (henceforth MSW), with MELI’s mouthpiece – This is the Land – made the new group’s joint journal.46 During the following two years it became clear, nevertheless, that MELI’s unequivocal views regarding the Middle-East reality, the value of peace and the prospects for its attainment, and the status of the Sinai Peninsula in the 12 A. GOLDSTEIN AND E. SHILO overall national perception were the preserve of a small segment of Israeli society, far smaller than they had fathomed. From the moment that peace with Egypt became attainable, it turned out that the Sephardi/Mizrahi middle class, which comprised the basis of Likud’s rise to power, embraced a more pragmatic and compromising approach than that of MELI and Gush Emunim – two elitist groups by definition, comprising a high proportion of Ashkenazi Jews. Not only in the Likud but also in the NRP, the older generation led by Yosef Burg and even the younger, more hawkish generation led by Zevulun Hammer preferred the chances of peace over retaining the territory taken from Egypt in 1967.47 As a result, MELI and Gush Emunim embarked on a struggle against the government they had hitherto supported. In May 1979, Moshe Shamir was among the first to leave Likud, decrying the decision to withdraw from Sinai and to destroy the Jewish localities there as ‘anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish’. He was followed two months later by Geula Cohen, and the two formed a new faction named Land of Israel Loyalists’ Alliance (known by the Hebrew acronym BNEI).48 Gush Emunim did not officially team up with the nascent party but some of its leaders – Hanan Porat, Gershon Sheft, Eliezer Waldman and Menachem Felix – were incorporated into its top ten. Porat was the one to mediate between Prof. Yuval Ne’eman, who became the party’s leader, and Rabbi Kook – who bestowed it his blessing. MELI granted the new party the few resources at its disposal, and the exhortation to join it featured on the front page of This is the Land magazine.49 A propaganda poster was chosen for the new movement, expressing the pretension of its members to restore Zionism’s pioneering spirit, but in its electoral debut – in the June 1981 election – the party won only 2.3% of the votes, a far cry from their expectations of becoming a twenty-seat faction (about 17% of the votes). The establishment of the Tehiya was the last phase in the shared journey of MELI’s labourite veterans and the religious Zionist youth and the swan song of the old elite.50 Press reports on MELI’s activities as a separate body can be found until August 1979.51 Shiloah wrote that ‘with the establishment of the Tehiya, the Movement for the Entire Land of Israel considered itself redundant’. Indeed, within months of the launch of the settlers’ bulletin Nekuda in 1980, MELI’s magazine This is the Land was reduced to silence. Shiloah explained: ‘We found it appropriate to officially bring to an end the existence of the Movement for the Entire Land of Israel . . . lest various individuals, far removed from the tradition of its founders, especially its founder Nathan Alterman, exploit it [this platform]’.52 The waning of support for the Entire Land of Israel idea among within the Labour movement is a milestone in the completion of the permutation that took place in Israel in the 1970s in the definition of the terms Right and Left. The fundamental definition of political identity, which until 1967 had primarily been based on the socioeconomic aspect, was superseded by a definition predicated on ISRAEL AFFAIRS 13 the politico-security aspect, which centred on the question of Israel’s future borders. Proponents of the Entire Land of Israel ideology, whose breeding ground was in the Left would shift their allegiance to the rightwing bloc. The Tehiya was a radical rightwing party whose defining hallmark was not its socioeconomic stances or the cultural-religious background of some of its leaders but its categorical opposition to any Israeli withdrawal from territories captured in the 1967 war. Not only did the political body named ‘The Labor Movement for the Entire Land of Israel’ disappear from the Israeli political map but the very word compound embodied in its name would become an oxymoron. Notes 1. Shiloah, Ashmat Yerushalaim, 34. 2. Shamir, “Kriaa le-Histaknut”; idem, “Min Haplishtiuit el Hahar,” Maariv, July 1967. 3. Alterman, “Ekh Lehatsbia.” 4. “Gilui Daat el Ha-Boher,” Yediot Ahronot, October 17, 1969. 5. Shiloah, Ashmat Yerushalaim, 119. 6. Uri Milstein, “Hamatara Hayta Lehadesh et ha-Hityashvut be-Tnu’at HaAvoda,” Maariv, September 29, 2018. 7. See for example: Lustick, For the Land and the Lord; Feige, Settling in the Hearts; Inbari, Messianic Religious Zionism; Aran, Kookism. 8. Zadoff, “From Mishmar Ha’emek to Elon Moreh.” 9. Labour Party minutes, November 1, 1968, 2–23-1968-93, Labour Party Archives, Bet Berl. 10. Transcript of a speech, undated, P-2100/10, Israel State Archives (ISA), Jerusalem. 11. Kook, “Orot Ysrael.” 12. Invitation, October 31, 1967, P-2100/10, ISA. 13. Hatsofe, November 27, 1967. 14. Admoni, Asor Shel Shikul Da’at, 53. 15. Diary of Rachel Yanait Ben-Zvi, November 27, December 16, 1974, P-2114/3, ISA. 16. Maariv, August 31, 1967. 17. Davar, November 12, 1969; Gorenberg, The Accidental Empire, 192. 18. Yediot Ahronot, June 7, 1972. 19. Narkis, Hayal shel Yerushalayim, 356. 20. Maariv, April 14, 1968. 21. Shafat, Gush Emunim. 22. Izhar, Bein Hazon Leshilton, 696. 23. Uriel, Me-Malon Park le-Mahteret Yehudit, 33–4. 24. Davar, May 16, 1969. 25. See note 20 above. 26. Goldstein, “The Creation of the Likud.” 27. “Kenes Yesod Tnuat ha-Avoda Lema’an Eretz Israel Hashlema,” September 17, 1973, Moshe Shamir Archive, 1, 31: 14. 28. Ibid. 29. Maariv, May 16, 1974. 14 A. GOLDSTEIN AND E. SHILO 30. Shafat, Gush Emunim, 59–60. 31. Editoryal, Zot Haaretz, October, 23, 1974. 32. Elyakim Haezni, March 3, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= 7dsg0f9Hsik&t=4313s. 22.7.2020 ‫אוחזר בתארי‬. 33. Maariv, May 14, 1974. 34. Erlich, “Ha-Mered Ha-Kadosh,” 12. 35. Shafat, Gush Emunim, 61; Rubinstein, Meyeud Le-Hey Elai, 54–6. 36. Davar, June 12, 1974. 37. Editoryal, Zot Haaretz, October 23, 1974. A similar process can be identified in Begin’s approach to the Sebastia affair: Goldstein & Shilo, “Menachem Begin and the Question of the Settlements,” 16–19. 38. Livneh, “Emunim.” 39. Davar, July 28, September 4, 1974. 40. Maariv, December 21, 1975. 41. Naor, “‘A simple historical truth’”. 42. Cohen and Leon, “The new Mizrahi Middle Class.” 43. “Gam Sinai Hi Eretz Israel?” Haolam Haze, November 9, 1977. 44. Zot Haaretz, November 18, 1977. 45. Ibid. 46. Aran and Feige, “The movement to stop the withdrawal in Sinai.” 47. Shelef, Evolving Nationalism. 48. Steinberg and Rubinovitz. Menachem Begin and the Israel-Egypt Peace Process. 49. Zot Haaretz, September 21, 1979; Pedahzur, “The Extreme Right-Wing Parties in Israel.” 50. Davar, August 23, 1979. 51. Ibid., May 23, 1979. 52. Shiloah, Ashmat Yerushalaim, 186. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). Funding This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation [2083/17]. Notes on contributors Amir Goldstein is Chair of the Department of Multidisciplinary Studies and the Department of East Asian Studies at Tel-Hai College, Israel. Elchanan Shilo is a research associate at the Helene and Paul Shulman Center for Basic Jewish Studies at Bar-Ilan University. Bibliography Admoni, Y. Asor Shel Shikul Da’at: Hityashvut Me’ever La-Kav Ha-Yarok 1967-1977. Tel Aviv: Machon Galili, Yad Tabenkin, Ha-Kibbutz Ha-Meuhad, 1992. ISRAEL AFFAIRS 15 Alterman, N. 1969. “Ekh Lehatsbia ve-Keytsad Lehatsbia.” Maariv, October 17. 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