The Test Facing the Religious Zionists
The Test Facing the Religious Zionists

The Religious Zionist sector, with all its variegated hues, can be the group that determines what government will be formed after Tuesday's elections.

The more political maturity and national responsibility it evinces, the more it can see to it that the Likud is part of the next coalition, no matter which other parties are in it as well. Sectorial identification is not the way to achieve this crucial goal.

Religious Zionist activists who are seen as political leaders have tried to set three daring processes in motion . Moshe Feiglin tried to take over the Likud, and was pushed out. Naftali Bennett is attempting to extend the boundaries of the sector and turn to the rest of the public to form a sort of Likud B. The third process in motion is joining up with haredi-sephardic voters led by Eli Yishai – this current venture seems like an unnatural, forced experiment that will be the first and last of its kind.  

The Religious Zionist public errs, not for the first time, in its shocking ingratitude towards the Likud, its leaders and Knesset members, the ones who prevented a withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. Thanks to them, the "settlements" have remained standing, and the lives of their residents have been viable for many years. Public support and economic resources have been like life sustaining oxygen in contrast to the left's plans to strangle this Zionist project and destroy it completely.

Does Rabbi Kook's heritage stop working in the election booth?
At this crucial moment, before the Tuesday vote, the religious are shutting themselves into narrow minded sectorialism. They are not rising above that to national consciousness. There is no clear thinking about the results of free and uncontrolled flow from the Bnei Akiva youth group to the pre-Army mechinot, then to Bennett's Bayit Yehudi. Their intentions are good, but their actions are not beneficial.

How can it be that no renowned rabbi of the sector saw fit to recommend voting for Netanyahu? Why can't anyone set himself free of the house in which he grew up to think of the entire Jewish People? Does Rabbi Kook's heritage stop working in the election booth?

The Likud is THE party of all the Jewish nation, unsectorial in its platform and its voting body. It is an Israeli Jewish home for many years, way before Bennett tried to copy the model with small and unsubstantial variations.

Many Religious Zionists think they are still in a youth group in the company of  those with whom they began nursery school. But now the Likud is desperate for a large number of votes in order to have enough mandates to block the left from leading the next government. Elkin and Hotobely, Danon and Levin, Kara and Yaalon – and the rest of the Likud Knesset list – are no less firm about Eretz Yisrael belonging to the Jewish people than are Struk and Yogev.

This is the zero hour for the religious, who have the power in their hands to prove that the state and its people are what matters to those voting in the communities in Judea and Samaria, rather than  the almost childish satisfaction at having another Sabbath observer in the Knesset.