Could I have been a Ben-Gvir voter?

Returning to a changed Israel, DEBORAH STONE considers whether a different path from her religious youth experience could have landed her on the other side of the growing political divide.

We all like to believe that our convictions are a result of conscious reflection or reasoned argument. It’s uncomfortable to acknowledge that our principles are more likely to be rooted in experience and exposure.

I am challenged by this understanding when I consider that I shared formative experiences with some of the people who probably voted for ultranationalists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich and are delighted with the creation of Israel’s new ultra-Right coalition.

These politicians gather under the banner of Religious Zionism, a term I spent part of my adolescence learning to love.

I’ve been feeling sorry for religious Zionists lately – not for those with two capital letters who have hijacked the term as a political party but for the original religious Zionists, those who believe in Orthodox Judaism and a Jewish state without hating Palestinians or trying to destroy democratic institutions.

I was a B’nei Akiva girl, a member of the youth group of the religious Zionist movement. On Sunday afternoons in the synagogue courtyard, on summer camps that were the highlight of my year, and on a gap year in Israel, I was taught that combining religious observance with the settlement of Israel was the ideal life.

I can still hear the Hebrew anthem I sang with gusto, the rousing finale promising “With a courageous heart and God’s help, we will arise”.

Religious Zionists have certainly arisen now but in the light of the form it has taken, my nostalgia feels tainted.

The Kool Aid I drank for a while was Orthodox and nationalist but not inherently bigoted, theocratic or supremacist.