A new religious/national leader in Israel

Here is an interesting and, to me, hopeful column about Israel, and about our common civilization. Unlike Sharon and the rest of the Israeli establishment, Moshe Feiglin, a 42-year-old leader on the rise in Israel’s ruling Likud party, believes in Israel’s religious and national destiny. He is the leading opponent of Sharon’s proposed disengagement from Gaza, and, incredibly, speaks about the long-range goal of rebuilding the Holy Temple, which should be of great interest to the Christian Dispensationalists. His criticisms of Sharon and others are based on their lack of a belief in God and peoplehood, which he sees as intimately connected. As columnist Ben Shapiro puts it, Feiglin seeks a “fundamental redefinition of Jewish identity and the Jewish state”:

I had the opportunity to speak with Feiglin on Dec. 29 by phone from Israel. What came across in our conversation was Feiglin’s deep-rooted faith in God and in the eternal vitality of Jewish identity. Feiglin criticized Prime Minister Sharon, explaining that Sharon “has the wrong identity. You can’t really ask why Sharon is giving in without asking why every Likud prime minister, from (Menachem) Begin to (Yitzhak) Shamir to (Benyamin) Netanyahu, has also given in. The reason is because they all have the wrong identities. To try to separate God from Israeli politics is a mistake, but the Israeli government has been doing it all along.”

Feiglin cited the 1967 Six Day War to exemplify what he meant: “When Israel liberated Jerusalem in 1967 from the Jordanians, they raised the Israeli flag over Har HaBayit (the Temple Mount). Two hours later, Moshe Dayan, the Israeli general, took it down. … His problem was that he was afraid of the re-establishment of Beit HaMikdash (the Holy Temple). He was afraid that if the Israeli flag stayed over Har HaBait, in 100 or 200 years, all of a sudden, the Beit HaMikdash would be standing again.”

But Feiglin, unlike Dayan, is unafraid of a renewed, vibrant Jewish identity. “I have a different dream,” he said. “I want to move toward the goal of Beit HaMikdash. I may not see it in my lifetime, but if you have the correct goal, you have the correct identity, and if you have the correct identity, you can take the correct means and measures.”

Here is another informative article about Feiglin, written at the Christian Science Monitor last June. I like this guy. I hadn’t heard of him before this because I had stopped reading about Israel. And I had stopped reading about Israel because, as I’ve said before, if they don’t care about preserving their own existence, why should I worry about them? But Feiglin does care. Reading about him gives me a feeling I haven’t had with regard to Israel for a long time: hope.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 05, 2005 02:01 AM | Send