Messianism, Against, Right Up Against Zionism

Religious messianism is an integral part of Zionism in Israel¹.

Within it, it stands out by its will to design and to plan a Greater Israel beyond the current borders of the Hebrew State, at the risk of eclipsing other spiritual or political aspects of Zionist doctrine. In other words, messianic groups, half-religious, half-political, imagine themselves as the pioneers of a Zionist and religious revolution capable of “reforming the entire nation” with a view to a “social and spiritual upheaval” (Sedan, 2014). More Judaism, less Zionism: this expression could be the watchword in particular of certain messianic currents, with an ever more pressing influence on the Israeli political world and on daily life.

The religious-Zionist messianism that we are going to examine here imposes, through its force and exaltation, a political and electoral recomposition and, consequently, a new political construction in Israel. In its current complexity, it presents a paradox. It increasingly puts into conflict—through the presence of Jewish settlers living in the outposts of Judea and Samaria, or again through the march toward the Temple Mount—its relation to political and state Zionism, by seeking to modify it or to extract itself from it. Henceforth, it implies political struggles against secularised Zionism and against the state Zionism that had dominated this current until 2005. But it also presupposes more or less extreme engagements, affirming an exclusive Jewish nationalism, ignoring non-Jewish and non-religious entities, which also translates into violent political gestures. In a context where Israeli democracy is fragile and unstable, notably since October 7, 2023, what is to be analysed here is the renewal of the practices and grammars of religious messianism.

The religious-Zionist revolution and its hybridisations

Messianism in Israel finds itself in the hands of different currents that position themselves differently with respect to religion, such as religion may have been reified through the nation-state (secularised and modern messianism), or on the contrary thought independently of state structures (revivalist messianism). Whether assimilated to religious Zionism or attached to the constitution of a Jewish kingdom independently of the State, these currents overlap, and various spiritual and semantic bricolages exist. What are their characteristics?

Historically, religious-Zionist messianism is syncretic. The theology of the Kook rabbis popularised a teleological vision according to which the Jewish State would be at once the vector and the embodiment of Jewish redemption, its government having then to be considered as that of the current Jewish Kingdom within which the Jewish people will now progress toward its collective redemption. This politico-religious syncretism characterised several generations of Israeli religious-Zionists who, volunteering for the most dangerous military units, becoming politically and socially involved at all levels of Israeli society, and participating in certain cases in government coalitions (even with left-wing partners, up to the 1990s), thus gave evidence of their spiritual involvement in the project of the rebirth of the Jewish people in the land of Israel. Since the 1970s, religious-Zionist spiritual devotion and messianic fervour have been coupled with a growing nationalism, with the settlement of hundreds of thousands of ideological settlers in the West Bank (and in Gaza until 2005).

These settlers nurture an exalted vision according to which their return to the ancestral lands of the West Bank (notably to the cities of Hebron, Nablus, and Jericho) and to East Jerusalem are advances toward Jewish salvation and human redemption. In this regard, the territorial conquests resulting from the Six-Day War, and then from the 1973 war, contributed to grounding the still unfinished ideal of a Greater Israel and a teleological vision destined to rid itself of secularised and moderate parties. Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005 and the dismantling of the settlements that were located there marks a rupture in this messianic exaltation, and was perceived by religious-Zionists as a political betrayal and a spiritual crisis. One of the consequences is their will to expand and reinforce their territorial hold on the West Bank in order to impose, by force, the irreversibility of the redemptive advance.

Multifaceted alliances

Whatever their dimensions (realist or eschatological) and their anchorings (in Israel and in the Territories), the teleological dimension of this colonising messianism rests on politico-religious entryism and the political alliances of the settlers, favoured by a fragile and extremely unstable political system since 2019. The promotion of a religious, nationalist, and increasingly radical Zionism, advocating in particular the overcoming of state and secularised Zionism, has gained in visibility thanks to alliances between different religious and right-wing parties within the most recent governmental coalitions. The place taken by ultranationalist settlers, and that of the former religious-Zionist parties become religious-Zionist (such as Otzma Yehudit), ensure a form of entryism and radical entrepreneurship within the very governmental bodies of the country, with an increased desire for control, notably of the police and the judicial system, in order to establish a hold over the State. This growing influence of the partisans of Greater Israel makes it possible to display a theologico-religious project including the annexation of the Palestinian Territories, even of Gaza.

In this renewed political landscape, certain religious figures also turn toward, or draw closer to, the ultra-orthodox parties—politically and religiously—notably because of their rejection of the modern aspect of state Zionism, but also because certain ultra-orthodox fringes are in quest of Israelisation. Finally, from right-wing parties such as the Likud, to the new religious Zionism of the ultra-orthodox, multiple rapprochements and alliances are visible between different groups, with at their heart a nationalism that excludes any collective recognition of the Palestinians.

New kingdoms in practice. Occupy, defend, expand

In this context, Jewish messianism in Israel finds itself at the crossroads of new orientations, but also of forms of expression—between, on the one hand, the realist moderns relying on the State and, on the other, the revivalists who militate for forms of life separate from the national State, insofar as the latter does not sufficiently symbolically and religiously embody Jewish redemption. For the latter, in the minority, true redemption can only be realised in spite of the State of Israel, with its replacement by a new Jewish kingdom.

The messianic settlers who have taken control of the traditional religious-Zionist parties (Katzman, 2020) and who seek to expand in a project of annexation and occupation of the West Bank represent the realist tendency. They seek to free themselves at once from the State, perceived as an obstacle to their interventions in the West Bank, and from a Zionism bearing universal secular values. Certain settler communities, often relatively young and settled in the outposts of the West Bank, make of their messianism a way of life. Rather than indulging in dreams of future redemption, they apply themselves—sometimes in particularly violent dealings with the Palestinians they live alongside—to asserting their power locally, to living their spirituality individually, to living their hopes immediately in kingdoms of the here-below. Many see themselves as the simple “product of their generation in the land of Israel” (Nicolle-Hasid, 2019) and participate in the expansion of the colonialist project not because of a theological centrality, but in a post-messianic and materialist positioning. Their devotion to their land is no longer a devotion to the spiritual ideal of the biblical land of Israel, nor to the political vision of Greater Israel, but rather a concrete manifestation of their local anchoring, which can go hand in hand with a reconnection to the divine. This kind of messianism of the “here-below” that one finds in other situations (Bulle 2025) translates into a mistrust of and distancing from the settlements recognised by the Israeli state, judged too “bourgeois,” and the adoption of a way of life that is often rural, frugal, set apart, in reaction to the modern and increasingly technological face of state Zionism.

This will to a “practical” messianism also animates other religious-Zionist groups—notably those who claim to be part of the “Toranic-nationalist” (Torani Leoumi) world. The “Torah nuclei” (Garinim Toraniim) see themselves as representatives of the new religious-Zionist elite, uninhibited and integrated into the Israeli social landscape, in order to amplify the reach of its messianic message. Where religious-Zionist settlers work to Judaise the hills and lands of the West Bank, these groups apply themselves to Judaising Israeli cities. These communities settle in the centres of often liberal, sometimes mixed cities (such as Jaffa or Lod, cities historically marked by Judeo-Arab co-presence), with the objective of redrawing the Israeli public space. In these mixed neighbourhoods, but also in East Jerusalem, attempts to intimidate the Palestinian Arab populations multiply, notably under the influence of supremacist ideologues.

Among the settlers referred to above, let us also distinguish the militants known as the “hilltop youth.” They embody a twofold opposition—both to exilic Judaism and to Zionism, whether secular or religious. The new spirituality that they elaborate is revivalist; it must be anchored in a new time—that of the rejection of exile—and a new space—that of the land of Israel. Strongly inspired by Hasidic thought and certain New-Age influences (Persico 2014), it tends to make them be reborn as ancestral Jews, purified of the corruptions of exile and anchored in their land. Unlike the religious-Zionist settlers who for the most part avoid conflicts with the Israeli authorities, the “hilltop youth” emancipate themselves from state Zionism and from secular institutions in order to lay claim to a political autonomy and to dream of the advent of a theocratic Jewish kingdom. In their isolated communities, they develop a counter-culture that celebrates its violence as salvific, since it serves their transformation into new ancestral Jews and signals their claim to be “outside the State.”

While they want to be apart, these “hilltop youth” share with the other militant currents of religious-Zionism a growing militancy for the physical reconstruction of the Jewish Temple of Jerusalem (in place of the mosques on the site), sometimes inspired by various apocalyptic prophetic visions and by Kabbalistic mysticism. This displacement of messianism, “outside the State” but embodied by the reconstruction of the Temple, offers the opportunity for a new messianic breath—revivalist—by resurrecting the Jewish institutions of pre-exile times, by reforging the mythical relation between the Jewish people and the divine, by reanchoring Judaism physically in Jerusalem.

This type of militancy can however be qualified as politico-religious insofar as it summons an inherent violence and maintains a conflictuality with the State. The rise of settler groups onto the site is at once an act of political rebellion against the State of Israel, which does not authorise Jewish prayer on account of the application of the status quo on the Temple Mount (today administered by the Waqf, the Muslim religious organisation under Jordanian jurisdiction), and an act of spiritual emancipation.

Messianism and anti-Zionism

At the close of this panorama, two particular points need to be raised. The first interrogates the possibility of a convergence between European anti-Zionism (growing since the war underway in Gaza since 2023) and certain of the messianisms evoked above. It is remarkable that messianism, by reframing Zionism and its modern State form, ends up in a rejection symmetrical to that of European decolonial anti-Zionism. Indeed, while the messianisms place Greater Israel at the heart of the teleological realisation of the Kingdom of the Jews, European anti-Zionism relies for its part on the exclusive recognition of Palestinian legitimacy and the erasure of Israel’s identity as a political and real entity. They are therefore on the same trajectory of opposition to Jewish étatisme. For the former, Israel cannot be described as a rooted State and remains a foreign body floating in Middle Eastern waters. For the latter, the land of Israel (and not the State of Israel) is the only possible matrix of life; the Jewish State does not allow for embodying the Jewish redemptive process. In both cases, it is a matter of overcoming Israeli étatisme.

A second point of analysis emerges. While the messianic dynamic tends to impose itself as a predominant ideology within the religious-Zionist world, with an unprecedented influence on Israeli politics, it is favoured by the influence of American evangelicalism, which openly manifests its ambition to play a role in the realisation of the biblical covenant, from the Gaza region to the West Bank. Jewish messianism resonates in evangelical Christian spheres, in particular American ones. The land of God being indivisible, ties have been forged between Christian and Jewish Zionists defending Israel in the eschatological and apocalyptic perspective of the End of times. This type of alliance, favoured by American influence, is today at the heart of the territorial becoming of Israel and the Palestinian Territories, including Gaza.

Whether it be the future of the West Bank and Gaza, growing European anti-Zionism, attempts to impose the exclusive sovereignty of the Jewish people within the very State of Israel, or again Western evangelicalism, the futures of the Palestinian and Israeli peoples are in the grip of such religious and political phenomena. They condition more than ever the political future of the region.

References

Bulle, S. 2025, “Des visions contrastées de l’effondrement. Le cas d’une zone à défendre” (“Contrasting Visions of Collapse. The Case of a Zone to be Defended”), Condition humaine / Conditions politiques [Online], 6 | 2025, posted online on September 25, 2024, accessed on May 13, 2025. URL: http://revues.mshparisnord.fr/chcp/index.php?id=1506

Katzman, H. (2020). The Hyphen Cannot Hold: Contemporary Trends in Religious-Zionism. Israel Studies Review, 35(2), 154-174.

Nicolle-Hasid, P. (2019). Beyond and Despite the State: Young Religious Settlers’ Visions of Messianic Redemption, Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History, 16: 116-143.

Persico, T. (2014). Neo-Hasidic Revival. Expressivist Uses of Traditional Lore. Modern Judaism, A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience, 34(3): 287-308.

Sedan, E. (2014). Shitat Elkana: Et Lakum veLaasot [The Elkana method: it is time to act]. YouTube (Bnei David Mechina). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0Vfva45N5Y