Religion
Related: About this forumOpinion // How Israel Went From Atheist Zionism to Jewish State
The synthesis of Zionism and socialism has disintegrated, making way for a winning symbiosis of religion and strong ethno-nationalism.
Shlomo Sand Jan 21, 2017 5:59
Its sad to read the recent complaints of Israeli intellectuals about the collapse of the only Jewish democracy in the Middle East. The secular melancholy is likely to arouse identification among readers but not to enlighten them, alas.
It sometimes seems that words are nothing more than props in the hands of talented circus acrobats. For example, there is a profound connection between the terms secularism and atheism, but they are by no means congruent or identical. Among Israeli intellectuals, and not by chance, the differences between the two are far more vague than in other areas of the national discourse.
For example, a person can be secular in the political sense of the word and believe in a higher power (like the late Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz), or an atheist who is not really secular (like the late Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion). Secularism is not only, but mainly a political viewpoint, whereas atheism is firstly a philosophical viewpoint.
In the historical development of liberal democracy and, in effect, in the growth of some of the authoritarian democracies, too secularism meant the separation of religion and state. Or, to be more precise, a severance of the traditional Gordian knot between political society and the Church (or churches).
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.766485
Mosby
(17,052 posts)Who has made his living shitting on Jews and Israel.
rug
(82,333 posts)That he rejects religious Zionism does not make him an antisemite.
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/12/shlomo-sand-on-zionism-post-zionism-and-the-two-state-solution/#sthash.i2yxSc1g.dpuf
He clearly, despite being a veteran of the Six Day War, opposes the rationale behind the state of Israel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shlomo_Sand
I can't speak to the question of whether he is or is not an asshole.
Mosby
(17,052 posts)Sand goes much further than rejecting religious zionism.
http://forward.com/culture/206656/how-i-stopped-reading-shlomo-sands-crackpot-memoir/
Mondoweiss is a RW hate site BTW.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/05/04/mondoweiss-is-a-hate-site/
rug
(82,333 posts)David Bernstein is a Scholar at the Cato Institute BTW.
https://www.cato.org/people/david-bernstein
Of course he thinks Mondoweiss is a hate site.
It's not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondoweiss
Mosby
(17,052 posts)Interesting how many of those posters ( I count 4) post at JPR now.
rug
(82,333 posts)The determination there of whether something is or is not a hate site - or anything else for that matter - is in direct proportion to how one feels about the State of Israel.
It's not persuasive. Neither is a Scholar at the Cato Institute.
To return to the OP, it is about the validity of basing a modern state on religious antecedents.