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Loving Violent Arabs: A Study of Radicalism Within the Israeli Messianic Movement

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Expressions of Radicalization

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Abstract

Steiner and Lundberg examine how Israeli Messianic leaders articulate the hope for peace in the Middle East. More specifically, they draw attention to how Messianic leaders understand the Middle Eastern conflicts and whether this understanding could be considered as radical. All of the informants underline the complexity of the conflicts and most of them tend to emphasize their permanence. The informants are pessimists regarding the conflict, half of them describe it in fatalist terms. This colours their hope for peace; they expect an escalation of the Middle Eastern conflicts, even the apocalypse. And lastly, the informants prefer a one-state solution. In comparison to the Israeli political mainstream, like Likud, the Messianic movement is not necessarily radical.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    According to Akiva Cohen ‘a growing polarization between more evangelical Messianic Jewish leaders and more Rabbinic/heritage positive Messianic Jewish leaders has been evident in recent leadership conflicts’ (Cohen 2013: 111).

  2. 2.

    This interviewee preferred to be anonymous.

  3. 3.

    This interviewee preferred to be anonymous.

  4. 4.

    Aliyah is the immigration of Jews living abroad to Israel .

  5. 5.

    In this study, the authors quoted the interviewees word by word. Grammatical mistakes might occur and are original.

  6. 6.

    There are a few deviant voices. When Interviewee 2 was asked about the commencement of the conflict, he presented a very different idea: ‘The conflict started when the Jewish people rejected Christ. …The issue is our enmity between us and God. Between Israel and its Messiah. That is the bottom-line, all the rest is a side effect’, and therefore he does not regard the Arabs as the main cause or origin of the conflict.

  7. 7.

    Agreeing with God regarding His Divine order.

  8. 8.

    Two interviewees gave stereotypical but benign images of Arabs. Bosharniko depicted Arabs as blessed by God and Ortiz depicted them as hardworking.

  9. 9.

    Dhimmi is a protected non-Muslim living in a non-Muslim state.

  10. 10.

    Howard Bass is the only one who does not marginalize the negative images of Israel and Judaism: ‘Israel is not a Christian country or non-Christian country; it is an anti-Christian country. Islam and Judaism are both anti-Jesus’.

  11. 11.

    Bosharniko was one of the Messianic leaders claiming to live in the present.

  12. 12.

    Regrettably, territorial concessions were never discussed during the interview with Ray Pritz.

  13. 13.

    Still, it must be said that none of the interviewees suggested ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians .

  14. 14.

    Thomas told us a story about how he consulted a Palestinian leader within the evangelical movement.

  15. 15.

    A detailed account of the principles behind these points of references is given in the introduction to this volume.

  16. 16.

    The coalition was dissolved again in 2014.

  17. 17.

    The Zionist Union is an Israeli centre-left political alliance, established in December 2014 by the Israeli Labour Party, Hatnuah, and the Green Movement.

  18. 18.

    Dispensationalism is a theological interpretative framework in which Israel plays a decisive and redemptive role before the return of Christ and world history is divided into seven distinct periods, called dispensations (Steiner and Lundberg 2015: 119).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden

    Kristian Steiner

  2. Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden

    Anders P Lundberg

Authors
  1. Kristian Steiner
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  2. Anders P Lundberg
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Global Political Studies, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden

    Kristian Steiner

  2. Department of Literature, History of Ideas & Religion, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Andreas Önnerfors

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Steiner, K., Lundberg, A.P. (2018). Loving Violent Arabs: A Study of Radicalism Within the Israeli Messianic Movement. In: Steiner, K., Önnerfors, A. (eds) Expressions of Radicalization. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65566-6_6

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