Zionism and Judaism: The Paradox of National Liberation
Title:
Zionism and Judaism: The Paradox of National Liberation
Author:
Walzer, Michael
Appeared in:
The journal of Israeli history
Paging:
Volume 26 (2007) nr. 2 pages 125-136
Year:
2007-09
Contents:
This article discusses the paradoxical history of national liberation and religious revival as manifested in three states that achieved independence after World War II: India, Algeria and Israel. Although the original leaders of all three national-liberation movements—the Indian National Congress, Labor Zionism, and the Algerian FLN—were secular, in the states that they created a politics rooted in what can loosely be called fundamentalist religion is today very powerful. The resistance of the traditional elites to national liberation, which is by definition a secularizing, modernizing and developmental creed, takes on a new ideological form after the achievement of political independence, when the defenders of traditional religion, themselves renewed and modernized, begin the construction of a counterrevolutionary politics.
Journal description