Religious Propaganda Too Successful for Its Own Aims

I recently posted the results of a Yesha Council poll and then this academic paper flitted across my screen:

While not all settlers, or ‘colonists’ as they are called in European newspapers, were religious (and this is a generalization, of course; There are many shades of observant groups in Israel, from light to ultra-orthodox, not to mention ‘secular’ sympathizers), the overwhelming majority was and still is.

The results of that poll were:

National - Religious: 34%
Hareidi - 32%
Secular - 34%

The study from which I culled that above excerpt, which deals with the Gaza expulsion: "Religion and Politics as Passive-Aggressive Partners: Some Reflections on the Israeli Withdrawal from the Gaza Strip", 8/2005 by Athalya Brenner, University of Amsterdam (now of Tel Aviv U.), also had this observation:

[I] expected to see how religious propaganda worked to convince—or to create conflict and disparity. This indeed happened, but on a scale smaller that anticipated. Paradoxically, the faith objects and concepts that were used in this largely performative event—performative, since the news media was ever present—achieved the opposite effect. Somehow, the use of religious symbols acted as conflict-resolving, rather than conflict-creating, agent. In that sense, it created [secular] public sympathy for the evacuees but failed to mobilize that public on their behalf and, therefore, no fatal rift occurred. In other words, religious propaganda in this instance should be evaluated as too successful for its own aims.

Her conclusion is even more direct:

Many voices in Israel and beyond proclaimed, at that time, that the degree to which the army and police forces were trained to deal with possible scenarios, their tactics and
superior power and numbers, was the main factor that facilitated the quick and successful evacuation...I believe the ultimate reason lies precisely in the fact that ‘A Jew can expel a Jew’ from the Jew’s home [to put the settlers’ slogan on its head], but—at least in this round—‘A Jew cannot kill a Jew’ for being expelled, certainly not in front of media cameras (the performative element), almost certainly because of the ‘Love thy neighbour/We are all one nation/Think of the Torah’ slogans (ideological elements) that united both sides well, to the chagrin of the slogans’ inventors.

For the settlers, the commonalities of shared [real or manufactured] memories and symbols proved to be a Trojan horse; for the ‘others’, non-religious Israelis, including most of the evacuators, the reminders of such commonalities assisted in checking potential violence against the settlers’ civic and more radical resistance, and in recognizing their very real pain of leaving their homes. Let me emphasize: that commonalities might eventually override differences in any conflict, including a civic conflict in which one side claims to have divine support, hardly needs further substantiation by the present instance. After all, techniques of [peaceful] conflict resolution will always seek common ground to base a solution on. What I found so interesting in the pullout case was the manner in which the technique worked so well that it achieved the opposite of what its initiators targeted. So game and match was won by the Israeli State this time. Religious/biblical symbols were recognized as shared, but ‘identity’ was ultimately resolved by being equated with obedience, or at least only a limited physical struggle with, the State. The stated overruled the Torah in this round.

I think this possesses much food for thought as regards the continuing hullabaloo over the "hilltop" youth phenomenon, that they are extreming themselves out of the mainstream, not only of those who are secular but of those among whom they live.

^