End of the Exile: The State of ISRAEL

……For the first time since the long exile triggered by baseless hatred had begun 1,878 years before, the Jewish people had an independent government in its land. Did the return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel spell the end of baseless hatred among Jews? What has happened to baseless hatred in the last sixty-two years? An analysis of key events in the life of Israel through the lens of baseless hatred reveals an intricate relationship between internal baseless hatred and the external anti-Zionist opposition or hatred. In Israel, the type and extent of external opposition – that is, the Islamist and Western-based hostility faced by Israel, whether it is politically or religiously motivated – has profound repercussions on divisiveness among Jews and on the manifestations of baseless hatred…..

…………….what emerges from this attempt to analyze the state of arevut in Israel is a strange Israeli behavior: the reaction to outside opposition or hatred can take two opposite forms. If it is interpreted as existential, it can become a unifying factor…. A contrary or reverse behavior took place during the second three decades, where external opposition was absorbed and internalized in ways that resulted in dysfunctional divisiveness…. In these second thirty years at least four new simultaneous currents emerged:

1. The nature of external threats changed.
2. The pursuit of peace became a national obsession – and failed.
3. The fire of the Zionist dream was not sustained among a new generation of Israelis.
4. Western countries ended their traditional support of Israel.


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