Abusing Religious Metaphors for War and Profit

How do you explain the religious complexities of a foreign culture not only to those who have a pretty deep understanding already, but to your most ignorant reader? And do various commonly used terms, like “religious right” and “religious left” mean the same thing “over there” (in this case, Israel) as they do over here? Not that we necessarily even agree on what they mean over here.

E. E. Evans of Get Religion asks good questions about Ethan Bronner's excellent article about religious and cultural divisions in the Israeli army. Take for example, this quote:

A soldier, identified by the pseudonym Ram, is quoted as saying that in Gaza, “the rabbinate brought in a lot of booklets and articles and their message was very clear: We are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the non-Jews who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land. This was the main message, and the whole sense many soldiers had in this operation was of a religious war.”

It's hard for 'normal' supporters of Israel in the United States to understand how significant this kind of thinking really is. As a soldiers, both my sister and I remember hearing rabbis come to lecture us about how Palestinians (and Arabs in general) are essentially 'Amalek', the tribe that the Hebrews allegedly destroyed in the desert after leaving Egypt. Religiously speaking, this idea has merit if you take into account the way current events and religious metaphors mix in that society. Using the name of Amalek is a way of attaching mythic significance to the current struggle, a way of mobilizing the Jewish heart along with the mind and body.

Unfortunately, at the margins (wide margins) we find some real nutcases. People who drank the Kool-Aid and forgot that religious metaphors at not the reality. Folks who forget that the Land of Israel is not the object of worship.

And there's more. Fundamentalist thinking can have a profound impact not only on political questions but on the nature of warfare:

Those who oppose the religious right have been especially concerned about the influence of the military’s chief rabbi, Brig. Gen. Avichai Rontzki, who is himself a West Bank settler and who was very active during the war, spending most of it in the company of the troops in the field.

He took a quotation from a classical Hebrew text and turned it into a slogan during the war: “He who is merciful to the cruel will end up being cruel to the merciful.”

A controversy then arose when a booklet handed out to soldiers was found to contain a rabbinical edict against showing the enemy mercy. The Defense Ministry reprimanded the rabbi.

They reprimanded him - but they did not fire him. As the most recent elections in Israel show, the terrain is changing. In the past, as Israel grew wealthier and more educated, there was a migration of voters from the right to the left. The Orthodox gave birth to children with more moderate views. As right wing, nationlist voters became successful, many would moderate their views and vote for more centrist or left wing parties.

The trend is now reversed. As leftists become disillusioned with the failures of Israel to become an actual secular liberal state at peace with its neighbors, they grow more comfortable with strong leaders promising to solve problems with military might and coercive measures. Religion provides a comforting meta-narrative for this process, an alternative that allows Israelis to feel more whole with themselves. In other words, if you are going to construct a society that needs to engage in constant warfare, on the battlefield and in the minds of the citizenry, then religious mobilization is a useful tool.

Of course, more of my friends from Israel are telling me that they aren't going back or intend to leave. R and T are in Germany. A and D in London. R in New York. And the list is growing.