Amalek's Accomplices' Blaming Zionism for the Holocaust

Anti-Zionist Ultra-Orthodoxy in Israel during the 1980s

Bibliographic Data

ID10074091
AuthorsDina Porat (corresponding author)
Year1992
Volume27
Issue4
Pages695-729
Publication date1992-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Contemporary History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-0094 • E-ISSN: 1461-7250
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/002200949202700408
OpenAlexW2095311052
LanguageEN
Citations received13

During the late 1970s and early 1980s the ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist circles in Israel revived with fervour their campaign of accusations against Zionism for its alleged conduct during the Holocaust. This campaign charged the Zionist movement, both in the land of Israel and abroad, with complicity and even initiative in the destruction of European Jewry. 'Amalek's Accomplices' was the title of a series of articles that appeared in the mid1970s.2 The message is just as frank in a pamphlet published in 1988 and entitled, 'The Crimes of Zionism in the Destruction of the Diaspora'.3 Another leaflet describes Zionist leaders as 'Criminals of the Holocaust'.4 Anyone certainly the secular Zionist reader confronting these texts for the first time, is bound to be disturbed by these terrible accusations, especially when they are compared with the poignant and agonizing self-criticism, both public and historiographical, in the Jewish-Zionist world in general and in Israel in particular. Orthodox Jewry, which at present makes up from ten to fifteen per cent of the population of Israel,5 is a house divided against itself, contentious and riddled with factionalism, with different groups pitched in a fierce battle over halachic (religious) law and political questions. It abounds with bitter personal and group power struggles, which occasionally spill over into violence. There is no single religious or political leadership whose authority is accepted by all the various branches. One cannot, therefore, speak about 'the Orthodox' in general

Orthodoxy · Political science · Politics · The Holocaust · Theology · Zionism · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Middle East Politics and Society · Philosophy · Religion, Theology, History, Judaism, Christianity

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