Harari: What Israel Is Doing Now Is Becoming A “Spiritual Catastrophe For Judaism Itself”
Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari warned that the path Israel is on now threatens to bring a “spiritual catastrophe” that could destroy Judaism itself.
YUVAL HARARI: I think this could be one of the biggest turning points in Jewish history-maybe the biggest since the fall of the Temple in 70 CE, since the Roman conquest. Because Judaism has survived. It became the world champion in surviving catastrophes. But it never faced a catastrophe like we are dealing with right now, which is a spiritual catastrophe for Judaism itself. Because what is happening right now in Israel could basically, I think, destroy-void-2,000 years of Jewish thinking and culture and existence. That’s the worst-case scenario that we are facing right now. And I emphasize, it’s a worst-case scenario. We can still prevent it, and we can talk later about how to prevent it. But we should be clear about what we are facing. If Israel continues on its present trajectory, what we are facing is the potential of an ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza and in the West Bank, resulting in the expulsion of 2 million, maybe more, Palestinians from there; the establishment of Greater Israel; the disintegration of Israeli democracy; and the creation of a new Israel, which is based on an ideology of Jewish supremacy and on the worship of what were completely anti-Jewish values for the last two millennia. A country based on the worship of power and violence-militarily strong, yes. It will survive. It will be militarily strong. It will have alliances with various bullies around the world. It will also be economically viable. And this will be the spiritual disaster, because this will be the new Judaism that all Jews in the world will have to deal with. It will not disappear. Again, Jews are very good at dealing with catastrophes-from the Roman conquest to the Holocaust. But this will not be a military catastrophe. The state will actually be successful in military and economic terms. And it will make the challenge much, much bigger. No Jew, say in London or New York or anywhere else, will be able to say, This is not the real Judaism. It’s like being, say, a communist in the 1950s in London and saying, No, the Soviet Union is not really communism. They misunderstood it. No. This will be the new Judaism-and maybe the only Judaism.
