The official memorial service for Binyamin Ze’ev Herzl, the visionary leader of modern Zionism, was held Thursday at Har Herzl in Jerusalem.
President Shimon Peres – who is from the Kadima party – used the occasion to hint at the ongoing political and cultural dispute between left-liberal and nationalist, morally conservative Israelis.
“Herzl believed that the mission of Zionism would not end with the establishment of the State of Israel,” Peres said. “He wanted aliyah [immigration, or literally – ‘ascent’ – Ed.] to Israel but also an ascending Israel.”
“Binyamin Ze’ev Herzl envisioned a State of Israel that would reach the highest pinnacles of democracy, pinnacles of spirit and culture. He wanted it to be a free, egalitarian, safe country. He imagined a modern state with wide roads and speeding trains.”
Peres’s reference to democracy as the supreme value of the state echoes the liberal agenda that is increasingly clashing in modern Israel with nationalism, conservative mores and the need to survive in the face of a savage enemy that is aided by a highly active destabilizing and defeatist camp within Israel.
The degree to which Herzl was anti-religious has been disputed in recent years. A book by Yitzchak Weiss – “Herzl – a New Reading” – claims that liberal historians have unfairly “expropriated” Herzl for justifying their ideology, painting him as an ardent secularist when in fact his ties to Judaism were deeper than his biographies claim.