Exerpts from a Ha'aretz article
The opinions of Harav Shaar Yashuv Cohen, Harav Shlomo Aviner, and Hanan
Porat,
March 2005
The disengagement plan for Gaza and Northern Samariahas elicited a variety
of responses from Religious Zionist leaders. Perhaps the most controversial
response was the call by Harav Avraham Schapira for religious soldiers to
refuse military orders to evacuate settlements. This ruling set off an active
debate about the relative value of the State of Israel and the Landof Israelin
Religious Zionist thought. The following citations of three Religious Zionist
religious and political leaders are taken from an article in Haaretz on March
11, 2005:
Harav Shaar Yashuv Cohen, Chief Rabbi of Haifa :
(from comments made recently at an assembly of rabbis at the Ariel Institute,
and in an interview with Haaretz):
The religious precept to settle the Land of Israel is one that stands by
itself, even in the absence of the State of Israel and Jewish sovereignty
in the Land of Israel. We upheld the precept to settle the land even when
the Turks and the British ruled the land. Why can we not continue to live
there even when the State of Israel withdraws its sovereignty from the soil?
[…]
I hear the voices. I dwell among the people. People are finding it difficult
to swallow the new reality. When the government of Israelraises its hand to
uproot Jewish settlements from the Landof Israel, it loses by its own actions
the whole purpose and point of the state's existence. It is impossible to
ignore this. The state is an instrument of holiness, not holiness itself,
an instrument of a precept, not a precept. Even Rabbi [Joseph B.] Soloveitchik
wrote that he would not lend a hand to unreserved subjugation to the state.
That is idolatry. When the state behaves like a state of all of its residents,
and not as a Jewish state, the attitude changes. I respect it as I do any
other government, but it is no longer the "beginning of our redemption".
The practical significance is that we might no longer be able to continue
to recite the prayers and blessings of Independence Day.
Hanan Porat, former Member of Knesset (National Religious Party and
National Union)*:
There is no doubt that in terms of mood, he (Harav Shaar Yashuv Cohen) is
expressing a very grave feeling of frustration and crisis. I can imagine large
parts of our public being pulled in the Charedi direction, a development that
will be manifested in forgoing army service or even in refusal to pay taxes.
There is also great bewilderment in the religious pre-army academies. It is
not just a question of whether to refuse or not refuse. Some of the boys there
are liable to remain spiritual cripples.
Above all, I am fearful of the feeling of people who say that now this is
no longer our enterprise - that it is not the "beginning of our redemption".
I hear people speaking this way in various settlements and in a number of
congregations. I do not accept that. The break is not between the Landof Israeland
the State of Israel, it is between the Landof Israeland the state leadership.
The state is the great enterprise of the return to Zionin terms of its national
and state meaning, and it continues to exist and be valuable as the "foundation
of G-d's throne on earth", even when the leadership spoils matters and
betrays its mission. We pray for the well-being of the State of Israel, which
is not Sharonor Peres personally. If I am in opposition to the government,
it is because I am in a coalition with the state, with the enterprise, with
the idea. The state is more than a public company that reflects the shares
of the public as a whole. It is not only an instrument of a precept, but an
instrument in its own right. The fact that its leadership has betrayed its
mission does not prevent me from extolling it, loving it, and thanking the
L-rd daily for its existence. There was a period when the priests were corrupt.
Did the institution of the priesthood cease to be valuable because of that?
*Hanan Porat was expelled as a child with his family from Kibbutz Ein Tzurim
in Gush Etzion when it was overrun by the Jordanians in the War of Independence.
He grew up on the relocated Kibbutz Ein Tzurim, and after the Six-Day War,
along with other children of the kibbutz, re-established Kibbutz Rosh Tzurim
in Gush Etzion.
Harav Shlomo Aviner, Rosh Yeshivat Ateret Cohanim
(Harav Aviner issued a halachic ruling against refusal of military orders,
contrary to the ruling of his mentor, Harav Schapira):
In the Torah, it does not say "national religious". It speaks of
worship of G-d, it speaks of the people of Israel- in other words, the whole
of the people of Israel. I am not bothered by what is good for the national
religious public, but by what is good for the whole people of Israel, what
will help the people of Israel.
Redemption comes "little by little" - not all at once. Light and
darkness are mixed together, and slowly the light conquers in its way. Sometimes,
temporarily, the darkness also triumphs…. In the midst of the progress
of the light, there are crises and setbacks…. We are not working alone,
but through the people of Israeland the State of Israel…. Patience is
needed. Patience is not a concession. We are not conceding anything. Do not
say: "The state is finished, I have finished with the state." We
have not finished with anything - not with the people, not with the state,
and not with the army. We have only just begun. We are now in a great test….
I hereby declare: "I love Gush Katif and I love northern Samaria, but
I love my people above all."