Neo-Zionism

In studies of Israeli political culture, neo-Zionism commonly appears alongside post-Zionism as a way of distinguishing competing understandings of Israel's Jewish national character and democratic institutions.[6] A study published in 2000 presents an ethnic, religious-nationalist neo-Zionism opposite a liberal, secular, civic post-Zionism.[6] Within that framework, the former consolidates the Jewish ethno-national character of the state, while the latter emphasizes civic membership rather than national character.[6]

A broader account of Israeli political culture places a Jewish ethno-religious ethos, sometimes called neo-Zionist, alongside three other political traditions: the Labor movement's pre-state pioneering ethos, early-state etatism or Mamlakhtiyut, and a liberal ethos that emerged in the 1980s and is sometimes called post-Zionist.[1] These traditions have competed for cultural and political predominance, with struggles recurring as social and historical circumstances changed.[1]

Other applications focus on renewal rather than this opposition between national and civic identities. Gorny's account of Daniel Elazar presents a religious-pluralistic version compatible with continuing Jewish life in the diaspora.[2] Dror proposes a global Jewish network in which Israel and diaspora communities are equal partners.[5] A 2007 opinion essay uses the term for a democratic Zionist self-description that supports territorial compromise.[7]

An early use of the expression “Neo-Zionism of the Herzl type” appears in an account of Russian Jewry's debates over Jewish national education.[8] In that setting, Zionists and nationalists sought greater Hebrew instruction and support for the model ḥeder, while radicals opposed national elements in education.[8]

A separate usage concerns the spontaneous Jewish national movement that developed in the Soviet Union.[4] From 1969, Jews in different Soviet regions petitioned Soviet authorities, Israel's government, the United Nations, and Western Communist parties for the right to leave for Israel.[4] Private groups of young Jews also studied Hebrew, Jewish history, and Israel.[4]

This movement arose amid long-standing antisemitism and an official anti-Israel campaign that intensified after the 1967 Six-Day War.[4] Emigration requests numbered in the tens of thousands, Hebrew was studied semi-underground, and connections with Jews outside the Soviet Union were maintained despite difficulty and danger.[4] Arrests, show trials, and other intimidation failed to end the campaign, which formed part of a wider reassertion of Jewish identity after decades of suppressed Jewish cultural and linguistic life.[4]

The Israeli religious-nationalist developments associated with later discussions of neo-Zionism have a different historical setting.[9][10] Their religious background includes the influence of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook in the 1920s and the messianic features of religious Zionism that became manifest after the Six-Day War.[10] The 1967 victory and capture of Jerusalem stimulated a growing religio-nationalist movement that emphasized Jewish settlement throughout Eretz Yisrael.[9]

This development contrasted with Labor Zionism's emphasis on settlement within the Green Line.[9] New nationalist currents, including those associated with Rabbi Moshe Levinger and Gush Emunim, connected territorial unity and settlement with religious redemption.[9] Religious Zionists interpreted the military victory as miraculous and as evidence of divine intervention, bringing nationalism more centrally into their religious outlook.[11]

Gush Emunim, founded in 1974, regarded the secular Jewish state as an indispensable stage toward messianic redemption and sought to use state institutions to advance settlement.[10] The movement emerged from a post-1967 alliance with religious Jews who connected Jewish retention and settlement of the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — with the advent of the Messiah.[9] The related expression “New Zionism” was used for the more political form of a changed Israeli civil religion.[9]

After the political change of 1977, settlement construction expanded beyond limited strategic locations to areas near Palestinian population centers and suburban communities near the pre-1967 Green Line.[11] The settler population in the territories increased from approximately 13,000 in 1977 to nearly a quarter-million by the time of a 2005 analysis, although most settlers eventually became less ideologically driven than the movement's leadership.[11]

The May 1996 election provides a specific electoral application of the term: Haredi parties campaigning over the Jewish character of the state were categorized as neo-Zionist, although a large share of the ultra-Orthodox community had not embraced the Zionist project of building a Jewish state.[3] Their leaders instead understood themselves as the “real” Zionists. Elazar and Sandler distinguished that self-description from their own judgment, writing, “It would be more accurate to define them as neo-Zionists.”[3] Israel B’Aliya was placed in the same category because Sharansky was perceived as a genuine believer in the Jewish people and the Zionist idea.[3]

The religious camp won 23 Knesset seats in that election.[3] Shas and the National Religious Party together secured 19 seats, seven more than in the previous election, while the United Torah Front retained four.[3] In this electoral interpretation, the gains partly reflected voters' perception that the “Jewishness of the Jewish state” was under attack.[3]

The religious constituencies involved had different relationships with Zionism.[12] Historically, the ultra-Orthodox sector included anti-Zionist and non-Zionist positions that regarded Israel as a political entity without Jewish religious value.[12] The National Religious sector, by contrast, affirmed Zionism and understood the state as religiously significant, marking the beginning of Jewish national and religious redemption.[12]

Subsequent political developments included a rightward shift in both sectors, deeper ultra-Orthodox political involvement, and increasing National Religious identification with settlement in Judea and Samaria.[12] National Religious leaders expressed their sense of growing influence through the metaphor: “We are no longer just riders of the nation’s train, but already occupy the locomotive driver’s seat.”[12]

Religious Zionism nevertheless encompassed hundreds of thousands of Israelis, including moderates, and participation in many areas of Israeli society.[13] During the 2005 Gaza disengagement, some religious soldiers followed military orders despite rabbinical calls to refuse evacuation duties.[13] This response demonstrated that commitments to state institutions, religious authority, and settlement did not produce uniform political behavior.[13]

Education is another field in which neo-Zionism has been used as an analytical category.[14] A 2022 study examines right-wing political and organizational campaigns involving the veterans' group Breaking the Silence in schools, Im Tirtzu's opposition to left-wing influences in academia, and changes to the compulsory civics curriculum.[14] A separate textbook study compares the official high-school civics textbook introduced in May 2016 with the edition published in 2000, treating the revisions as evidence of neo-Zionist discourse entering citizenship education.[15]

A distinct religious-pluralistic conception retains Israel's centrality while treating Zionism as compatible with continuing Jewish life in the diaspora.[2] In a 1990 discussion, Yosef Gorny presents Daniel Elazar's neo-Zionism as continuing secular Zionism's achievements while understanding Zionism as a current within Jewish faith and a political tradition.[2] Gorny argues that its principal innovation lies in viewing Jewish national existence through a religious-pluralistic lens.[2]

Another conception proposes creative renewal of the Zionist vision in response to rapid changes in global society, rather than superficial adjustments to established models.[5] It replaces the image of Israel as the sole center and diaspora communities as peripheral with a global Jewish network in which Israel is a highly significant node.[5] Jewish communities in Israel and abroad are understood as equal partners rather than defining one through the negation of the other.[5]

Within this approach, immigration to Israel retains primary importance but is not the only measure of Zionist commitment.[5] Diaspora Jews may choose to remain in their communities while contributing to a connected Jewish collective.[5] Israelis living abroad may likewise help disseminate Israeli culture and contribute knowledge, offering an alternative to a wholly negative understanding of their dispersion.[5]

A 2007 Jerusalem Post opinion essay uses neo-Zionism as a self-description combining Israel's identity as the state of the Jewish people with democracy, equality, dignity, tolerance, and mutual respect.[7] The essay argues that Jewish survival requires territorial compromise in the West Bank to enable a Palestinian state and peace, giving the Jewish future precedence over an unyielding attachment to the past.[7] It also advocates a place in Israeli society for settlers leaving Gaza, Jewish identity beyond Orthodox observance, and an inclusive Israeliness encompassing Palestinian citizens.[7]

The relationship between Jewish national identity and democratic citizenship is a central theme in scholarly uses of neo-Zionism.[6] The term also provides a way to examine how religious-nationalist commitments, state institutions, settlement, and cultural memory interact within Israeli society.[9][14]

A course on Israeli society places neo-Zionism and post-Zionism among ideological developments considered alongside immigration, demographic change, multiculturalism, privatization, Americanization, and globalization.[16]

The term has also been applied to constitutional developments.[17] The 2018 Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, approved on July 19, declares Israel the nation-state of the Jewish people, reserves national self-determination in the state to the Jewish people, and identifies the development of Jewish settlement as a national value to be encouraged and promoted.[17] These provisions have been read as expressing neo-Zionist ideas about the state's Jewish national character.[17]

Religious Zionism, neo-Orthodoxy, and neo-Zionism nevertheless identify different kinds of categories.[9] Modern or neo-Orthodox religious Jews combine adherence to halakha with participation in wider society and state institutions, including the Israel Defense Forces.[9] Orthodox Zionist groups have included both the generally hawkish Gush Emunim and more moderate currents.[9]

The principal dispute concerns the term's scope. Gorny's discussion presents a religious-pluralistic vision.[2] Encyclopedia.com uses the term for Soviet Jewish activism.[4] A Jerusalem Post essay uses it for democratic renewal.[7] These applications do not establish a single enduring ideology shared by all those uses. Nor is the historical expression “New Zionism” explicitly established as identical to the later scholarly label.[9]

Critical interpretations associate neo-Zionism with the subordination of democratic commitments to Jewish ethno-national identity.[6] Educational studies describe it as authoritarian populism and identify reduced emphasis on minority rights in revised civics materials.[14][15] Panzano interprets the Nation-State Basic Law as exclusionary toward Palestinian citizens.[17] His more forceful analysis connects neo-Zionism with anti-Arab nationalism and the growing popularity of Arab transfer.[17] A 2020 INSS book review reports the argument that settlement-centered nationalism weakens universal Jewish values and democratic commitments.[18] These are analytical assessments, not shared definitions of the term or descriptions applicable to every religious Zionist, ultra-Orthodox Jew, or settler.[12][13]

Public arguments over related labels further complicate usage.[19] A 2010 opinion article distinguished “post” and “neo” from outright opposition while discussing Im Tirtzu's allegations of anti-Zionist bias at Ben-Gurion University; it also distinguished the organization's wording from media references to post-Zionism.[19] A separate 2011 opinion article defended Zionism as a shared religious, traditional, and secular Jewish project and warned against presenting religious youth as its sole continuation.[20]