Israel's Next War
Encyclopedia
"Israel's Next War" is an episode of the PBS
series Frontline that aired on 5 April 2005. The episode, by Israel
i director Dan Setton, investigated the rise of the religious right in Israel and the role it could play as a "spoiler" in peace negotiations with the Palestinians. It was Setton's second documentary film for PBS: his previous film for them, "Shattered Dreams of Peace," won him a Peabody Award
.
, Afghanistan
, and South Lebanon, Setton decided to take his investigation closer to home and investigate how rightwing religious fundamentalism was impacting Orthodox Jews
in Israel. The phenomenon of the radical right had already made an enormous impact on Israeli society following the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre
in 1994 by Baruch Goldstein
and the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin
by Yigal Amir
the following year. Two groups associated with these events, Kach and Kahane Chai
were declared terrorist organizations by the Israeli and U.S. governments respectively. While Setton found that the activist core of these groups was small, some 30 percent of Israelis identified with their ideology of establishing an exclusively Jewish state. To better understand the phenomenon, he decided to investigate a lesser-known incident that had failed—a plot to bomb a Palestinian girls' school in the East Jerusalem
neighborhood of At-Tur
.
During the film, Setton interviews the two perpetrators, Shlomo Dvir and Yarden Morag, in prison, and visits the settlement of Bat Ayin
, where they lived. Dvir admits to the camera that it was his idea, saying, "Whoever gets hurt gets hurt." These interviews serve as a hook, leading Setton to various other settlers
, who supported Dvir and Morag. Some are very explicit about the motivations for the attack: "Revenge," says Noam Federman
, "is an important value. The Talmud
says that it is one of the greatest things. Revenge is great." He believes that revenge is the motive for people like Yitzhak Paz, formerly of the Jewish settlement in Hebron, whose 10-month-old daughter Shalhevet was killed by a sniper while he and his wife were walking with her in the street. Paz's arrest for the possession of explosives helped the police
to unravel the case against Dvir and Morag.
As the film unfolds, however, Setton discovers that the extremists' motives extend far beyond acts of personal revenge against the Palestinian
s. Shmuel Ben Yishai, a follower of Meir Kahane
now living in the settlement of Kiryat Arba
, is no less antagonistic toward the State of Israel in its current configuration: "The Israeli secular entity has to be destroyed," he says. "God can't reveal himself until it's all wiped out. As long as the state of Israel stays as it is, there will be no redemption
." An Israeli editorial on the series noted that "Words like 'redemption,' 'sanctify,' and 'revenge' marble the vocabulary of these people." On the other hand, the extremists believe that this will one day change. Mike Guzovsky
says: "I think the day will come when the Secret Service and the government will look for Jews who are willing to go into the Arab villages and kick them out, kill them …"
During the film, Setton also speaks with the Israeli authorities under whose tenure the events occurred. Avi Dichter
, head of the Shin Bet at the time, tells him that, " Jewish terror is liable to create a serious strategic threat that will turn the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a conflict between 13 million Jews and a billion Muslims all over the world." Yitzhak Dar, the head of the Jewish section of the Shin Bet, draws a distinction between believers and activists: "As long as they're only thinking it, as long as they're only talking about it, we can live with it. When they try to put it into action, through the murder of the prime minister, through the murder of Arabs, through the massacre at the Hebron mosque, it's the beginning of the end of a nation that can defend itself."
. Although Israelis had long been aware of the extremist activities of its fundamentalists, the overwhelming response was one of horror to hear the underlying ideology articulated. The national newspaper Haaretz
titled its review of the film "A Horror Film," but quickly attempted to insinuate that the phenomenon was not indigenous to Israel and had been imported their largely by American Jewish
immigrants. The lede paragraph of the article notes of the extremists that, "They are 'serious to death,' as they say in English
, the mother tongue of no small part of them …".
Setton, however, disagreed with this analysis, and attempted to argue that the ideology, if not the actions, are prevalent among large segment of Israeli society. He admits that there are no confirmed numbers of people who adhere to that ideology, though in an interview with PBS he estimates that it is about 30 percent of the country's Jewish population. After quoting Shmuel Ben Yishai saying that there is no religious justification for leaving any Palestinian in a Jewish state, Setton comments, "To some people, this is extreme, but others who are more centrist and more religious do not see anything wrong with what he is saying. They see a brave man who is expressing what he feels. It all depends on where your political compass lies."
Nevertheless, Setton does see a difference between these extremists and the Islamic fundamentalists, who were the subject of his previous film "In the Name of God." He explains, "They have something unique to them—the adoration of death as a value. With us, it is something internal that does not come from the same motives, but from other causes. There is no room for comparison, except in their religious beliefs."
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
series Frontline that aired on 5 April 2005. The episode, by Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i director Dan Setton, investigated the rise of the religious right in Israel and the role it could play as a "spoiler" in peace negotiations with the Palestinians. It was Setton's second documentary film for PBS: his previous film for them, "Shattered Dreams of Peace," won him a Peabody Award
Peabody Award
The George Foster Peabody Awards recognize distinguished and meritorious public service by radio and television stations, networks, producing organizations and individuals. In 1939, the National Association of Broadcasters formed a committee to recognize outstanding achievement in radio broadcasting...
.
The film
Setton explains that the inspiration for his project came from his previous film, In the Name of God (HBO), an investigation of fundamentalist Islam and suicide bombers, for which he received an Emmy Award. Having investigated radical religion in PakistanPakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
, Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, and South Lebanon, Setton decided to take his investigation closer to home and investigate how rightwing religious fundamentalism was impacting Orthodox Jews
Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism , is the approach to Judaism which adheres to the traditional interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Sanhedrin and subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and...
in Israel. The phenomenon of the radical right had already made an enormous impact on Israeli society following the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre
Cave of the Patriarchs massacre
The Cave of the Patriarchs massacre was a terrorist attack that occurred when Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli settler and member of the far-right Israeli Kach movement, opened fire on unarmed Palestinian Muslims praying inside the Ibrahim Mosque at the Cave of the Patriarchs site in Hebron in the...
in 1994 by Baruch Goldstein
Baruch Goldstein
Baruch Kopel Goldstein was an American-born Jewish Israeli physician and mass murderer who perpetrated the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in the city of Hebron, killing 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers and wounding another 125....
and the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin
' was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995....
by Yigal Amir
Yigal Amir
Yigal Amir is the Israeli assassin of Prime Minister of Israel Yitzhak Rabin. The assassination took place on November 4, 1995 at the conclusion of a rally in Tel Aviv. Amir is currently serving a life sentence for murder plus six years for injuring Rabin's bodyguard, Yoram Rubin, under...
the following year. Two groups associated with these events, Kach and Kahane Chai
Kach and Kahane Chai
Kach was a far-right political party in Israel. Founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane in the early 1970s, and following his Jewish nationalist ideology , the party entered the Knesset in 1984 after several electoral failures...
were declared terrorist organizations by the Israeli and U.S. governments respectively. While Setton found that the activist core of these groups was small, some 30 percent of Israelis identified with their ideology of establishing an exclusively Jewish state. To better understand the phenomenon, he decided to investigate a lesser-known incident that had failed—a plot to bomb a Palestinian girls' school in the East Jerusalem
East Jerusalem
East Jerusalem or Eastern Jerusalem refer to the parts of Jerusalem captured and annexed by Jordan in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and then captured and annexed by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War...
neighborhood of At-Tur
At-Tur
Surat At-Tur is the 52nd sura of the Qur'an with 49 ayat.وَالطُّورِAnd swearing is by the At-Tur; [52:01]وَكِتَابٍ مَّسْطُورٍ فِي رَقٍّ مَّنشُورٍ...
.
During the film, Setton interviews the two perpetrators, Shlomo Dvir and Yarden Morag, in prison, and visits the settlement of Bat Ayin
Bat Ayin
Bat Ayin is a village and an Israeli settlement and in Gush Etzion, on the edge of the Judean hills in the West Bank, between Jerusalem and Hebron. It is administered by the Gush Etzion Regional Council...
, where they lived. Dvir admits to the camera that it was his idea, saying, "Whoever gets hurt gets hurt." These interviews serve as a hook, leading Setton to various other settlers
Israeli settlement
An Israeli settlement is a Jewish civilian community built on land that was captured by Israel from Jordan, Egypt, and Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War and is considered occupied territory by the international community. Such settlements currently exist in the West Bank...
, who supported Dvir and Morag. Some are very explicit about the motivations for the attack: "Revenge," says Noam Federman
Noam Federman
Noam Federman is a religious right-wing Israeli Jew in Hebron and a former leader of the Kach Party which he has been involved with since he was 14. He has been held in administrative detention several times. Federman hosts a weekly Internet program called "Federman Without Censor"...
, "is an important value. The Talmud
Talmud
The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....
says that it is one of the greatest things. Revenge is great." He believes that revenge is the motive for people like Yitzhak Paz, formerly of the Jewish settlement in Hebron, whose 10-month-old daughter Shalhevet was killed by a sniper while he and his wife were walking with her in the street. Paz's arrest for the possession of explosives helped the police
Israel Police
The Israel Police is the civilian police force of Israel. As with most other police forces in the world, its duties include crime fighting, traffic control, maintaining public safety, and counter-terrorism...
to unravel the case against Dvir and Morag.
As the film unfolds, however, Setton discovers that the extremists' motives extend far beyond acts of personal revenge against the Palestinian
Palestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
s. Shmuel Ben Yishai, a follower of Meir Kahane
Meir Kahane
Martin David Kahane , also known as Meir Kahane , was an American-Israeli rabbi and ultra-nationalist writer and political figure. He was an ordained Orthodox rabbi and later served as a member of the Israeli Knesset...
now living in the settlement of Kiryat Arba
Kiryat Arba
Kiryat Arba or Qiryat Arba , lit. "Town of the Four," is an Israeli settlement in the Judean Mountains region of the West Bank on the edge of Hebron. Its settlers consist of a mix of Russian immigrants, American immigrants, and native-born Israelis numbering close to 10,000...
, is no less antagonistic toward the State of Israel in its current configuration: "The Israeli secular entity has to be destroyed," he says. "God can't reveal himself until it's all wiped out. As long as the state of Israel stays as it is, there will be no redemption
Messianism
Messianism is the belief in a messiah, a savior or redeemer. Many religions have a messiah concept, including the Jewish Messiah, the Christian Christ, the Muslim Mahdi and Isa , the Buddhist Maitreya, the Hindu Kalki and the Zoroastrian Saoshyant...
." An Israeli editorial on the series noted that "Words like 'redemption,' 'sanctify,' and 'revenge' marble the vocabulary of these people." On the other hand, the extremists believe that this will one day change. Mike Guzovsky
Mike Guzovsky
Mike Guzovsky, also known as Mike Guzofsky and Yekutiel Ben-Ya'acov, is an American-Israeli follower of the late Meir Kahane. According to the British Government, Guzovsky is a Jewish militant. He is a contact on Kahane.org, which is on the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of terrorist organizations...
says: "I think the day will come when the Secret Service and the government will look for Jews who are willing to go into the Arab villages and kick them out, kill them …"
During the film, Setton also speaks with the Israeli authorities under whose tenure the events occurred. Avi Dichter
Avi Dichter
Avi Dichter is an Israeli politician who currently serves as a member of the Knesset for Kadima. He is a former Minister of Internal Security and Shin Bet director.-Biography:...
, head of the Shin Bet at the time, tells him that, " Jewish terror is liable to create a serious strategic threat that will turn the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a conflict between 13 million Jews and a billion Muslims all over the world." Yitzhak Dar, the head of the Jewish section of the Shin Bet, draws a distinction between believers and activists: "As long as they're only thinking it, as long as they're only talking about it, we can live with it. When they try to put it into action, through the murder of the prime minister, through the murder of Arabs, through the massacre at the Hebron mosque, it's the beginning of the end of a nation that can defend itself."
Israeli response to the film
On October 20, 2005, five months after the documentary screened on PBS, an extended version of it was shown on Israel's Channel 2Channel 2 (Israel)
Channel 2 is an Israeli commercial television channel.- History :In 1990, after 13 years of deliberations, the Knesset passed a law that paved the way for the establishment of commercial television in Israel. The goal was to enhance pluralism and create competition. Channel 2 began broadcasting on...
. Although Israelis had long been aware of the extremist activities of its fundamentalists, the overwhelming response was one of horror to hear the underlying ideology articulated. The national newspaper Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...
titled its review of the film "A Horror Film," but quickly attempted to insinuate that the phenomenon was not indigenous to Israel and had been imported their largely by American Jewish
American Jews
American Jews, also known as Jewish Americans, are American citizens of the Jewish faith or Jewish ethnicity. The Jewish community in the United States is composed predominantly of Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated from Central and Eastern Europe, and their U.S.-born descendants...
immigrants. The lede paragraph of the article notes of the extremists that, "They are 'serious to death,' as they say in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, the mother tongue of no small part of them …".
Setton, however, disagreed with this analysis, and attempted to argue that the ideology, if not the actions, are prevalent among large segment of Israeli society. He admits that there are no confirmed numbers of people who adhere to that ideology, though in an interview with PBS he estimates that it is about 30 percent of the country's Jewish population. After quoting Shmuel Ben Yishai saying that there is no religious justification for leaving any Palestinian in a Jewish state, Setton comments, "To some people, this is extreme, but others who are more centrist and more religious do not see anything wrong with what he is saying. They see a brave man who is expressing what he feels. It all depends on where your political compass lies."
Nevertheless, Setton does see a difference between these extremists and the Islamic fundamentalists, who were the subject of his previous film "In the Name of God." He explains, "They have something unique to them—the adoration of death as a value. With us, it is something internal that does not come from the same motives, but from other causes. There is no room for comparison, except in their religious beliefs."