Benny Morris: A prophet perplexed
Beholding Israel today, Theodor Herzl – Zionism’s fin-de-siecle prophet and founding organiser – would have alternatively beamed and frowned.
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Perhaps the deeply secular, anti-theocratic Herzl would have been most flummoxed and incensed by the (burgeoning) numbers, and correlated political power of the orthodox and ultra-orthodox (some 20-25% of the country’s Jews). He believed that God was dead, and religious Jews a dying breed.
Herzl’s liberal sensibilities would have been shocked by the Israeli occupation of much of the West Bank and the displays of insensitivity and occasional brutality that are the common fare of most military occupations. More generally, he would certainly have been taken aback by the spectacle of Arab-Israeli conflict, of which the occupation is one of the byproducts.
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