Anti-Statehood
- Prof' Elisha Haas
- Oct 5
- 2 min read
At Kaplan, they are busy dismantling Ben-Gurion-style statism and undermining the very foundations of the State of Israel. This is not a political issue, but a persistent attempt to negate our identity as a Jewish state. Opinion.
“Rabbi Ḥanina, the deputy of the priests, said: Pray for the welfare of the government, for were it not for the fear it inspires, every man would swallow his neighbor alive” (Pirkei Avot 3:2).This is not a theological statement but a practical one—applicable to every state system, secular or religious, Israeli or foreign, dictatorial or democratic. It is a fundamental principle of survival for any form of statehood. All the more so, it applies to a state founded on an idea—a state without natural roots, only metaphysical ones. A state that must contend with a hostile environment that questions its very existence, day by day and hour by hour—like an organism whose death stalks it constantly. The State of Israel was not established by the laws of nature; its very existence and birth defy geopolitical logic.
Ben-Gurion deeply understood this danger. That is why he did everything to cultivate all the symbols of the new state’s sovereignty. He worked hard to build mamlachtiyut (statism)—not merely to ensure routine governance, but to create an unnatural entity for which any illusion of being “a state like all others” or “a nation like all nations” would be a deadly poison.
Anyone who has followed the conduct of Israeli Kaplanism since the beginning of the third generation (a decade ago), and especially since the night after the elections of November 1, 2022 (7 Marḥeshvan 5783), can observe the growing intensity of a phenomenon opposite to Ben-Gurion’s vision.Ben-Gurion wanted a Jewish state and emphasized this in the Declaration of Independence, from which he deleted the word democratic in order to strengthen the demand for the state’s Jewish character. He therefore stressed the symbols of Jewish sovereignty and ensured they were embedded in the state’s institutions.
However, during the Yom Kippur War, an opposite process was born—a flight from the Jewish identity of the state, led by the second generation (a cultural generation, not a biological one). This led to a fundamental dispute over the question of whether Israel should indeed be a Jewish state. The current Kaplanist movement is the culmination of this process, which denies our identity as a Jewish nation-state.
Simultaneously, as the third generation’s influence grew over the past decade and its demand to strengthen Jewish identity intensified, the Kaplanists’ despair deepened. Realizing that the flight from Jewish identity was being blocked, they came to an inevitable conclusion: in the third generation, the Jewish state is consolidating, progressivism is retreating, and their cultural hegemony is slipping away. This insight drove them to a suicidal conclusion.
Their actions reveal a logic that it is better to dismantle the Jewish state as soon as possible—to bring about a condition of neo-exile by gradually destroying its statism. Neo-exile is not a continuation of the Exile of Edom that has ended, but rather a retreat into a modern ghetto on the shores of the Mediterranean—a voluntary renunciation, at least partially, of independence and sovereignty, by free choice.
(For the full Hebrew article, click the link.)
