Civil-religious policing in Israel’s periphery

ABSTRACT

The Israeli organisation HaShomer HaChadash (The New Guard) attempts to fill a gap of security in Israel’s periphery that, in the organisation’s words, falls prey to ‘agricultural terrorism’, such as theft and arson. This main mission is combined with education and cultural activities. The organisation has expanded into a conglomerate that provides security services to farmers and orchestrates countless educational and cultural programmes. We argue that the activities of this organisation are forms of (civil) religious policing in which we see a renaissance of Israeli civil religion through the convergence of both civil-religious and more traditional principles with neo-national themes and values. The religious symbols, rhetoric, and practices used by this largely secular organisation reframe and reconstruct legitimacy for its policing activities outside the state. Simultaneously, this legitimacy challenges statist frameworks of security and thus promotes an alternative civil neo-nationalist agenda.

KEYWORDS:

• (Civil)religious policing
• securitisation
• militarism
• neo-nationalism
• social movements
• Israel

Introduction

On Passover, the Holiday during which Jews commemorate the Israelites’ exodus from Pharaohs’ Egypt and the end of their enslavement thousands of years ago, the organisation HaShomer HaChadash (The New Guard; henceforward, TNG) wrote the following in its newsletter for its volunteers:

Go out and learn! [a reference to religious text of the Passover Haggadah – the authors]. Only a departure from the enslaving thought and feeling will allow for a renewed reality. The last few years have been accompanied by a sense of national and international frustration. Leadership seems to be the same, valueless, conceptual… [We need] to face the current crisis in which we find ourselves and to move forward, out of the areas of debate, cynicism, sectarianism. We need to change the face of reality … The domain of internal security in Israel has received poor treatment for decades. This is a violation of the basic ‘contract’ between the citizen and the state … An active return to the land will also be a return to ourselves, this is where the answers will be found [emphasis by the authors, our translation]. [TNG Facebook page, 26.3.2021]

The organisation, which we will introduce shortly in more detail, neatly connects the ancient holy day of Passover and its celebration of freedom from slavery with the contemporary security reality in Israel in this post. The spirit of the holy day of Passover (in Hebrew: Pesach) is used to advance the organisation’s activities, primarily consisting of policing activities on and around farms and fields in Israel’s periphery, agricultural work, and education. Besides being an important holy day of the Jewish calendar, Pesach is also considered a national holiday in Israel, as it marks the consolidation of a newly born Jewish nation en-route to its historical homeland – the ‘Land of Israel’. This holiday and its framing matches the organisation’s (neo)nationalist agenda.

TNG is one of the most prominent and largest civil society organisations in Israel, whose central activities lie in the realm of voluntary agricultural and security work on farms in Israel’s periphery combined with Jewish-Zionist education. While the organisation draws on historical, secular Zionism, which used to detach itself from Jewish tradition and religion, it intermixes and transforms religious ideas with modern neo-nationalism. Additionally, the organisation’s members increasingly come from the nationalist-religious segment of society, which also reinforces an religious interpretive framing to the acts of security and policing of the organisation.

In this paper, we use the case of TNG to make the following argument: practices of guarding farms and other policing activities by TNG are infused with cultural religious themes, closely tying the Israeli ethos of ‘bitakhon’ or security with religious values. This serves as a vehicle for legitimising acts of vigilantism and policing by civilians and advancing a neo-nationalist agenda beyond the institutional and discursive limits of the nation-state. We will thus show how TNG’s activities, which are mostly voluntary, are infused with a mix of religious, civil religious, and security themes, which helps the organisation to advance a civic nationalist ideology.

Our contribution to the existing literature on religious policing is how our case and analysis show that religious values and practices are not just part of policing practices but are actively used to legitimise a nationalist, civil agenda by a non-state organisation. Religious policing then becomes a vehicle for alternative political projects that question the monopoly of violence of the state.

Theoretically and analytically, we draw on the tradition of the analysis of framing processes of social movements that assists us in disclosing the ways social movements’ activists engage in meaning production (Benford and Snow 2000, Johnston 1995; Snow 2004). More specifically, we are interested in the ways different genres and discourses are assembled and articulated in discourse to motivate and legitimise collective action.

The connection between social movements and nationalism is undeniable. It is impossible to understand nationalism without acknowledging the pivotal role of organised collective action in its existence or to understand the social and political significance of contemporary social movements without relating to nationalism as a basic organising principle of modern society. Yet, the relationship between nationalism and social movements is not limited to national campaigns, as social movements contribute to the revival of nationalist ideas and their amelioration in ways that exclude the frameworks of the nation-state.

Here we wish to focus on the meaning-work done through TNG discursive activities. We follow the sociological approach of frame analysis that was developed by Erving Goffman (1974), and further ameliorated by David Snow and others (Benford and Snow 2000; Snow 2004) for the analysis of social movements. This theoretical and analytical framework seeks to trace the generation of interpretive frames, in discourse and activities, that construct social meaning and guide collective action. These ‘schemata of interpretation’ as Goffman (1974) termed them or ‘collective action frames’ as Benford and Snow (2000) prefer to describe them, are ‘action-oriented sets of beliefs and meanings that inspire and legitimate activities and campaigners of social movement organizations’ (614). The process of manufacturing these collective action frames is by nature dynamic, and thus enables us to trace changes in a social movements’ ideology, boundaries, and attributes. Here, we will use different dimensions from Benford and Snow’s (2000) seminal review, such as core framing tasks, motivational, diagnostic and prognostic framing tasks.

Collective action frames are continuously reconstituted during interactions that occur in movement gatherings and campaigns (Benford and Snow 2000, 624), in speeches, manifests and formal (and informal) texts, and in collective activities. Disclosing them thus requires both the analysis of interviews and texts, but also an ethnographic investigation that captures social and cultural meaning-work in action and in context (Fine 2013).

Our argument is then based on the materials collected in an ongoing research project that began in 2018. Our primary research methods include participant observations during TNG events and activities, and the analysis of speeches, group discussions, and cultural activities (e.g. singing and dancing, collective learning, hikes, etc.). We also analysed secondary materials, such as online footage of the organisation’s activities, and social media outlets. We participated in numerous public TNG events, such as the ‘Guard Day’ honouring the organisation’s volunteers, Independence Day celebrations, planting and harvest festivals, and fundraising events. Our research assistants and we also joined agricultural volunteering and guarding activities.

In addition, we conducted in-depth, open-ended interviews alongside casual chats with the organisation’s senior and ground-level personnel and volunteers. The interviews were conducted in Hebrew and took place at informants’ homes, cafés, and TNG locations (e.g. farms, schools, and communes) and events. Respondents were identified using snowball sampling and during on-site observations. We further reviewed secondary sources, such as newspapers, websites and material from major TV channels, alongside social media pages and artefacts. Interviews were transcribed in full and analysed, together with all other materials, through coding and comparison. We used an inductive grounded theory approach, similar to the micro-discourse approach (Johnston 1995), to reconstruct the relationships between concepts and experiences represented in the informants’ narratives, activities, and artefacts.

We begin by giving a theoretical and historical overview of the nexus of secularisation, religion, and security in national projects, in general, and in Zionism, in particular. We will then continue to discuss TNG and its main traits and present key findings about the organisation’s collective action frames that shape its core activities.

Religion, nationalism and security

Religion and nationalism are closely associated, historically, theoretically, and empirically, as religion is considered one of the strongest pillars of, and reasons for, nationalism and nation-state formation (Hastings 1997; Soper and Fetzer 2018). Nevertheless, while the Gordian knot between religion and modern nationalism has always been a fundamental issue in political theory, both terms have long been contested and have designated as multidimensional phenomena (Brubaker 2012). While some scholars treat religion and nationalism as analogous (Durkheim 1995, 215–16, 221, 429; Smith 2003, 26), others treat religion as part of nationalism (Smith 1986; 2003) or alternatively, consider religious nationalism as a distinct social and political order (Friedland 2002; Juergensmeyer 1993). Indeed, in some countries, religion is nationalised; in others, we find expressions of secular nationalism (Veer van der 2013). Soper and Fetzer (2018) invite us to think of religion’s role in nationalism along a continuum. Religion can be more or less central as an ideological resource for nationalism, and the corresponding institutional links between religion and the state can vary in their strength. Discussing these approaches and various cases in length is beyond the limits of this paper. However, to make our case, we wish to delve further into the relations between nationalism, (civil)-religion, and security in Israel.

One of the key conceptualisations that connect the domains of religion and modern nationalism is ‘civil religion’, which identifies religious traits in secularised frames of national collectivity. Robert Bellah’s work (2017, 1967) importantly describes the culture of modern nationalism in the US and how it is based on a cult of symbols, values and rites associated with the state in ways that encourage social solidarity, loyalty and feeling of togetherness of the public. He defines this as a ‘quasi-religious’ social order. Although the content of civil religion may refer to traditional religious beliefs and sentiments, it may involve an amalgamation of religious traits and secular nationalisation, as we can find, for example, in modern Turkey (Kucukcan 2009), India (Harel-Shalev 2010), and Israel. The conceptualisation of civil religion, similar to modernisation theory, presumes that the modern state, in many respects, replaces the role traditionally played by the church; yet it challenges the secular presumption of modernist accounts in recognising that the state retains a need for moral legitimacy; very similar to those we find in traditional religion. This is often achieved through war and militarism in modern nationalism.

Twentieth-century sociologists have acknowledged the focal role of war and security in nation-building projects. As put forth in Tilly’s (1992) ‘war makes state’ argument – war and militarisation have been vital forces in the consolidation of modern states, and although they gradually were distanced from civil society in Western democracies, they have continued to produce fruitful symbols and myths that contribute to the maintenance of modern national identities. For example, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is described by Anderson (1983) as a central nationalist symbol. The combination of religious themes and militarism is evident in many national cultures in various countries. However, it has special significance in societies facing ongoing violent ethnonational conflict. As we shall present below, these entanglements are not restricted to state domains but can also flourish in civil society and are promoted by social movements through their non-state policing practices.

The Israeli case: Zionism, civil religion and security

The case of Israel exemplifies the complex nexus of religion, nationalism, security, and policing practices. Israel is often considered a prime example of the rejection of secular nationalism (Walzer 2015) and the ascendency of religiously based alternatives, for instance, by not separating church and state (Neuberger 1999). Yet, particularly in early Zionism, civil religion in Israel was very much distanced from religious themes and practices, mainly in the first decades of independence.

Zionism is the ideological and practical yearning for a national home for the Jewish people. Originating in 19^th century Eastern Europe, soon different Zionist movements came into being, some more ideological, some more practical. Although Zionist nationalism did use Jewish symbols and narratives, it has been nationalised and secularised. In many ways, it has sought to offer a viable modern secular alternative to traditional religious Jewish communalism as a political theology that left the redemption of Jewish people to divine intervention. From this perspective, especially among the secular hegemony of the Zionist enterprise, religious Judaism was viewed as archaic and as a hindrance to practical Zionism. The antagonistic attitude towards religion was further consolidated during the decades of formation of Israeli society, in the first half of the 20^th Century, in which militarisation and securitisation played a key role.

Small and later bigger groups of Jewish migrants began to arrive in what was first the Ottoman Empire (1882–1917) and later a British Mandate (1917–1948), which led to hostilities between them and the local inhabitants. The violent struggle between these local Arab Palestinians and Jewish militias, and later the IDF (Israeli Defence Force), turned the practice of security (bitakhon) into an important force in the construction of the new Jewish nationality and its secularisation. A key element in this project was the distinction between two cultural models – one was the ‘Old-Jew’ of the diaspora, who was associated with a passive and traditional backward way of life in the ghetto, a religious mindset, and weakness, and the second one, who was pictured as the proactive brave ‘New-Jew’ and associated with secularism, heroism, and militarism (Almog 2000).

In Israel, after independence, the relations between modern Jewish nationalism (Zionism) and Jewish identity have been ‘well coated in what was called “mamlachtiyut”, which literally means “kingdomship” (or “statism”) and actually means the sacralization of the state’ while stressing its national (and not religious) Jewish identity (Ram 2008, 65). More than any other institution, the military has symbolised this ethos of mamlachtiyut in Israeli political culture and its civil religion.

The dominancy of security, military service, and the involvement of Israel in multiple wars over the decades have made Israel a nation-in-arms and a militarist society (Ben-Eliezer 1998; Kimmerling 1993) and have become a pillar of Israeli civil religion and its secularisation. This process was also closely associated with the power relations between sectors of Israeli society. From the early days of the Zionist project until the late 20^th century, the field of security and the military were primarily associated with a particular segment of the Zionist movement – the national labour sector, composed of Ashkenazi secular Jews (Levy 2007; Shafir and Peled 2002) – who were perceived by themselves and others as society’s elite. Although the ethos of security was framed as one that represents the ‘common good of all (Jewish) citizens’, other groups – mainly Mizrahi Jews (of Middle Eastern and North African origin), national religious and Ultra-Orthodox Jews were marginalised from this domain or excluded from it almost entirely – such as Palestinian citizens of Israel (after the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948) – (Shafir and Peled 2002; Svirsky and Bernstein 1980).

To allow the service of religious men,¹ some traditional Jewish motifs were introduced into military life (e.g. Kosher food and preserving of the Shabbat) (Cohen 1999). For decades the military and the sphere of security have largely remained non-religious domains, in the sense that the military is not subjected to religious authorities nor religious rational.

More recently, however, there seems to be a transformation in the relationship between nationalism, religion, and security in Israel. Uri Ram (2008), for example, identified a new development between Zionist nationalism and Jewish religion and between socio-political sectors in Israel. He suggested that in contemporary Israel, and especially since the 1967-War, nationalism and religion have come to be tightly enmeshed and that a pre-condition for the secularisation of Israel is its de-nationalisation. Ram posits that in order to preserve its ethnicity, Zionism used Jewish religion to shield itself from conversion into civic nationalism. This has reintegrated religion to the Israeli civil religion and consolidated two major socio-political streams in Israel – religious Zionism and liberal secularism.²

This process has intensified since the mid-1980s, due to the neoliberal regime shift in Israel that led to a decline of national and collective sentiments among members of the past secular elite, the occupation of the West Bank, and the increasing power of religious-Zionism in Israeli politics (Ben-Eliezer 2015). Furthermore, in the last decades, as the Israeli economic system gradually turned away from the discourse of Zionist Socialism to neo-liberal capitalism, youngsters from the upper echelons of the Ashkenazi secular middle class also increasingly withdrew from the military; considering military service as a disruptive factor rather than an effective avenue for social mobility. As a result, the motivation to join combat and elite units declined among this elite. Members of the marginalised groups quickly filled this vacuum – traditional Mizrahi³ and National Religious Jews (Religious-Zionists) – have joined combat units in growing numbers. The latter considered the victory of the 1967 war and the resulting occupation of the West Bank an example of divine intervention and an essential milestone in Jewish redemption. The historic change of government in 1977, which brought the Israeli political right to power and was based on a new alliance between the Likud ruling party and the religious parties, only strengthened this ideology.

The growing dominance of religious soldiers in the military’s echelon of command contributed to what Yagil Levy (2007; 2015; 1998) coined as the ‘religionization of the military’. It increased the influence of religious, spiritual, and educational figures on the military. This has created a conflict between social groups that strived to maintain the secular character of the military (and the country) and the new groups who increasingly infiltrated it with religious themes, for example, around the separation between men and women in the military (Levy 2013). Thus, Israel’s securitised civil religion shifted from being largely secular to more infused with new Jewish religious themes.

Importantly, this neonationalist ideology has up till now been described and analysed as military related and merely through a statist lens. Moreover, it is often described as mainly a political project of the national religious sector (Ram 1999, 2008). Yet, we argue here that Israel’s civil religion, which started as a secular ideology, has become increasingly infused with civilianised religious themes closely tied to civilian securitisation and policing. This process, which started in the state’s security agencies, now continues, and is further developed in civil society, by social movements such as TNG. It takes new forms in civil religious policing and cultural practices and involves non-state agencies that take it into new directions. We aim to show, how the nexus of secularism-religionism, nationalism and security is not restricted to Israel’s military or to the national religious sector. It also thrives in civil society, in ways that legitimise civilian violence and redraw social boundaries in Israeli society.

HaShomer HaChadash (The New Guard)

TNG was established in 2007 to deal with what was framed as ‘agricultural terrorism’ – the theft of flocks and the desecration of orchards and fields belonging to Jewish farmers, mainly in the country’s periphery, namely in the Galilee, Negev, and Jordan Valleys.⁴ Today, more than a decade after its establishment, the organisation has a few hundred permanent workers and tens of thousands ‘episodic volunteers’⁵ (Macduff 1990) coming from various social and political sectors in Israeli society and who volunteer irregularly (from only once, to monthly shifts). These include secular youth from kibbutzim (home to Israel’s past national and political elite), volunteers from the urban sector, religious Zionist activists (Israel’s Neo-Zionist elite), young and middle-aged volunteers from development towns, men and women, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews, and even some activists from Druze and Arab villages and towns. In recent years, even few Ultra-Orthodox Jews joined the volunteering activities.

After a decade, TNG has developed into a conglomerate that operates dozens of programmes for youth and adults, school and post-secondary students, soldiers, Israeli businessmen, and Jews from the diaspora. All these programmes revolve around three intersecting themes: agriculture, security, and education, and involve mainly volunteering activities. Within a decade, TNG has become one of the most prominent and largest civil society organisations in Israel. The movement’s budget is more than NIS 97 million (about US$27,000,000) a year⁶ and claims to serve 775,428 dunam⁷ of land in Israel. It is funded chiefly by donors from the Jewish diaspora, such as private family foundations and federations from the USA, and partly by state organs such as the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Defense, and Mishmar HaGvul (the Israeli Border Police).⁸

TNG, furthermore, frames itself as apolitical. In Israeli terminology, ‘non-political’ is often conflated with not being associated with a political party, and the organisation indeed claims that it is non-partisan and there ‘for all’. Still, this does not mean that TNG does not deal with political issues or is not connected with important political actors. On the contrary, the organisation’s core framing task is to provide security and to nurture agriculture within the framework of Zionism; as such, the discourse of volunteerism that it cultivates is unquestionably politically charged (Gazit and Grassiani 2023). Furthermore, different politicians from various right and left Zionist parties are known to support the organisation actively and even come from its ranks.⁹

However, TNG is an equivocal movement that fluctuates between being a pressure group that represents and advances the interests of the agricultural sector (vis-à-vis the Israeli government), and an all-Israeli movement with the pretention of representing the interests and values of the whole Israeli (Jewish) public. As such, TNG is anchored in the Israeli agricultural sector, which is still identified with secular Zionism, while it is also part of its security and policing domain. It is a socio-political project that seeks to redraw social boundaries in Israeli society and uses the nexus of nationalism, (civil) religion, and security and policing activities and rhetoric to advance this goal. This is achieved by reframing the meaning of security, educational and ideological indoctrination, public activity, and everyday practices, all of which we discuss below.

‘Agricultural terrorism’

The balance between TNG sectorial and national positionings, and the tension it produces, stand at the core of movement’s collective action frames. This is most evident in the fusion between neo-nationalist civil-religion and religious themes that enables TNG to redraw social boundaries in Israeli society and legitimate its vigilant and policing activities in the margins of the state.

As mentioned above, TNG’s raison d’etre or its ‘core framing task’ (Benford and Snow 2000:615) is to deal with what is framed as ‘agricultural terror’ – the criminal harassment of mostly Jewish farmers in Israel’s periphery. It is essential to dwell briefly on the use of the term ‘terrorism’ – a term that is frequently used in Israeli public discourse concerning politically-motivated or ‘nationalist’ (leu’mani) attacks carried out by Palestinians against Israelis, in the West Bank and in Israel. In the context of TNG, ‘terrorism’ is discursively repositioned in the civilian sphere and criminalised.

Hence, the movement’s diagnostic framing task identifies a clear threat and a clear enemy that should be combated. TNG locates this threat on both social levels, the sectorial level of the farmers and the national level of the (Jewish) land of Israel. We put the term ‘Jewish’ in brackets because TNG officially avoids identifies itself as a ‘Jewish’ movement; this to maintain its all-Israeli image. However, as we shall see, its activities and the narratives it uses are rich with civil religious themes and Jewish character and meanings.

TNG’s insistence on a non-partisan civic discourse is essential and fundamental to its neo-nationalist ideology. It also expresses its above mentioned ambivalent stance towards the Israeli state. On one hand, as a Zionist movement it is pro-state, and even receives financial support from state bodies. Yet, one of the prominent narratives of TNG is that the government has abandoned the farmers, has failed to deliver security to its citizens, and has abdicated the land. Hence, it has created a ‘void of governance’ (Khoser Meshilut) that TNG must fill. This state failure foremost threatens the farmers who were left behind and could not hold their farms and fields, as explained in one of our interviews:

In Israel’s agriculture there is a unique ‘business model’ that does not exist anywhere else. In other places, let’s say in Scotland, a farmer needs to basically work 12 hours a day, graze his sheep once every three or four days … In Israel one must run to the pen every 40 minutes and see if his property is still there. Between 2011–2015, 18,000 sheep and cattle were stolen in Israel. This is roughly between a third and a half of the amount of cattle in Israel! We are dealing with hundreds of thefts, millions of shekels [Israeli currency] of direct damage … This has contributed to a collapse of the agricultural sector and agricultural ethos in Israel. This is a national disaster in the making.

As we can see in this quote, the problem is simultaneously framed as sectorial and national. Consequently, the TNG does not only position itself as a vigilant movement that wishes to step in where the state has failed, it advances a new civil religion that is not depended on statist frameworks and in many ways undermines it. Furthermore, within this framing, security acts such as civilian policing, are charged with neo-nationalism that draws on pre-state sentiments and primordial symbolism.

‘Protecting the land (of our forefathers)’

Prognostic framing involves the tasks of the articulation of a proposed solution to the problem and the strategies for carrying out the plan. Since TNG frames the ‘problem’ as both physical and moral, the answer to the challenge articulated above combines concrete actions and ethical meaning-work.

This strategic programme is encapsulated in the movement’s founding story, which is told during practically every TNG event and carries almost mythical significance. More importantly, it roots the virtue of guarding and other policing activities in the civilian sphere after the state abandoned the rural periphery, and in many aspects draws on the frameworks of contemporary military heroes and of the biblical judges, all actors who rose to protect their people from existential threat.

As the story goes, TNG was founded after Yoel Zilberman, the movement’s leader, set up a tent on his family’s land after his father announced that he would quit farming because of all the thefts he had endured. Young Yoel, then still a soldier in a prestigious combat unit, took an Israeli flag, a pile of books, and some equipment, returned to his father’s land, planted the flag on a hill and stayed to protect it together with some of his comrades. While the story draws on a biblical ethos, it also symbolises the ethos of Zionist secular realisation through the practice and ethos of securitised volunteering, which the organisation is trying to recreate and nurture. Many volunteers, young and old, village or city dwellers, have followed Yoel and his comrades to protect farmers, like Yoel’s father, and their lands from foes.

From an analytical perspective, we see how the ‘prognostic framing’ involving the articulation of the proposed solution to the problem – civilian volunteering in agriculture and security, is combined with ‘motivational framing’ – the ‘call to arms’ and the rational for engaging in civilian collective action. This merging of frames is based on the amalgamation of securitisation, civil secular religion, and religious Judaism, in ways that previously were restricted to state institutions. While the movement has originated from a distinct sector that is identified with a definite stream of the hegemonic secular Zionism, it very quickly has gone through a process of religionisation that has put its activities in much more multivocal context. It is very hard to separate between the two dimensions of meaning-work of setting up the programme and initiating the motivation for it, as both are strongly entangled in TNG’s various activities – both in agricultural and security volunteering, and in education and culture.

The mixed messages of TNG are constructed through a delicate balance between civil religion themes and religion, although the movement does not describe itself as a religion movement or even as Jewish. As already stated, TNG was foremostly founded as a civilian guarding initiative. Its policing activities range from nightly guarding and foot patrols by occasional volunteers at private farms to more organised groups of volunteers who ride motorcycles and jeeps. In contrast, a more securitised form of volunteering with a higher level of institutionalisation is carried out by a unit of volunteers that cooperates with the Israeli Border Police. Notably, the central idea that the movement puts forward is that the primary goal of these guarding activities at individual farms is the protection of ‘our’ lands, i.e. the Jewish lands of Israel.

At first glance, these activities may seem like standard gestures of civilian volunteerism. However, a closer look reveals a more profound meaning as these security endeavours have clear ethnoreligious and national connotations. This is notable, for example, in the movement’s symbols and artefacts. When at work, either during guarding activities or agricultural ones, TNG members wear shirts with the slogan ‘Shomer Achi’, which loosely translates as ‘I have got your back’ but comes from the biblical phrase by Cain in the Book of Genesis when he asks God if he is his brother’s keeper. TNG adopted this phrase with an answer to this question, signifying that ‘yes, I am my brother’s keeper!’, symbolising not only the virtue of Jewish brotherhood,¹⁰ but in this context of guarding activities also providing security for one other.

The term ‘Achi’ (My Brother) is also commonly used in military and police units to express comradeship and brotherhood. It is an ambivalent framing that both draws on the Israeli militant ethos, primarily associated with the military, and at the same time it is distinguished from the military. Notably, and essential for our argument, this nationalist security initiative comes from civil society and not from the state, which is blamed for neglecting its security responsibilities. Here it is imported and recontextualized as an expression of civilian solidarity that is based on a primordial Jewish affiliation that legitimises and motivates policing by ordinary civilians.

This discursive process is reflected not only in the organisation’s texts and symbols, but also in its frame articulation – the connection and alignment of ideological messages and actual experiences. It is most evident in TNG’s policing activities that support farmers to ‘secure the land’. Volunteers provide nightly patrols and stakeouts on a farmer’s lands, in Israel’s forests. The underlying popular message is clear: only security delivered by ordinary civilians would guarantee Jewish presence in the country’s periphery and would restore Jewish sovereignty that existed millennia ago. The fact the Israel has been independent for over 70 years is often ignored, as if we live in pre-state times.

This non-statist civil religion is popularised by the fact that the policing activities are carried out by ordinary civilians who come from various sectors of Israeli society and who receive no professional training. The practice is coloured as an ‘act of doing good’ by fellow civilians. TNG does not apply any strict criteria when recruiting new volunteers. While most of them served or would serve in the military, it is not presented as mandatory to volunteer. The massage is that ‘everyone’ can and should contribute but the informal recruiting strategies exclusively target Jews.

Through these voluntary policing activities, TNG puts itself on the map as a protective entity that protects (Jewish) farmland and goes into action where the state fails. The language used and the actions taken also blur the meaning of voluntary protection offered by the organisation, as it maintains nationalised and civilianised contextualisation of security and policing practices.

Importantly, these policing activities are framed and informed by (civil) religious themes, which also legitimise them. For example, on a Facebook post by TNG, the activities of its motorcycle security team are introduced with a quote from Psalms 121: ‘Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep’. The protection that these members carry out on motorcycles, but also by others who do patrols by foot or in jeeps, is thus not solely a practical issue; it relates to a much broader ideology of Zionism and Judaism to secure the connection of the Jews to the land of Israel. This very idea, in our interpretation, shows that these security practices are actively framed within ideas that are religious at their core while still rooted in a nationalist context.

Educating through militarist and religious themes

Besides its security activities, TNG operates dozens of educational programmes for youth and adults, school and post-secondary students, soldiers, Israeli businessmen, and Jews from the diaspora. These include cultural activities in collaboration with schools and private companies, such as picking fruit and planting trees, operating a youth movement, a summer camp, and a pre-military training programme. All these programmes and activities revolve around three intersecting themes: agriculture, security, and Zionist and Jewish education. These activities are essential in anchoring the movement’s volunteer and security activities in its wider ethnonational project.

The movement builds its programmes around the Jewish arrangement of ‘learning and working’ (Torah Ve’Avoda) and adds a third component of ‘guarding’. As one of the volunteers wrote on the TNG Facebook page: ‘ … to wake up every morning before sunrise, get out of the trailer with “army” pants, dirty work shoes, a dry fit shirt, a hat in my pocket and a smile on my face, ready for another day of work’ (TNG Facebook page, our translation). A few themes come to the fore in this short passage: a deep, romantic connection to nature and working outside in the field. This is very much related to Zionist ideals discussed earlier. The same is true for the idealisation of (hard and physical) work from the early hours of the morning.

The organisation implements a deliberate selection of philosophical and spiritual texts and uses them to create an amalgam of meanings that support its raison d’etre. Instead of committing itself to a specific ideological corpus, the organisation teaches a multivocal ideology that consists of what may seem as contradictory elements of practical, secular Zionism and religious values, as well as anti-materialist and neoliberal ideals. The sources used are very eclectic. The guides that instruct the young volunteers mention various schools of thought that include Zionist thinkers, such as A.D. Gordon (who is identified with secular Labour Zionism), the texts of Rabbis like Kook (who is identified with National-Religious Zionism), and texts of classic (for example Plato and Spinoza) and new-age philosophers. At the same time, a very Jewish setting is used. The learning the organisation promotes is often conducted in collective learning circles of debate (chevrotah), which are the traditional way of learning in the Jewish place of Torah and Talmudic study.

This ideological fusion frames the organisation’s double-edged message. On the one hand, the organisation promotes the ethics of civilian solidarity, volunteering, Judaism, and collectivism. On the other hand, it also fosters ideals of self-development, entrepreneurship, and individualism that are more associated with contemporary neoliberalism than contemporary nationalism. In a speech in front of young soldiers, Yoel Zilberman explained:

The New Guard was an unplanned project … Imagine a triangle in your head, when at its top end you put land [agriculture], at the top right you put the word patrol [security], and at the top left you put the word heritage [identity]. Now take one side and put the concept of land and agriculture on the other side put the concept of civil society and education, and now let’s get start our journey. This is where matters actually begin. […] We understand that there is a tremendous desire of young boys and girls to connect to the land. This story called ‘The New Movement’ [TNG youth movement – the authors]. […] Since the 1990s, seculars like me have abandoned the idea of [cultivating] the land. The connection to the collective. […] it is clear that the ethos of [Zionist] pioneering space has fallen in favour of the vision of comfortable living, a comfortable cottage over a rural dwelling. The ideal of pioneering seemed to vanish. But now we see this exciting trend. In the business world there is the concept of ‘position’ – what value one gives and what value the other receives and so on … Now people understand that in agriculture unlike anywhere else, work is uniting and connecting all parts of society to a big and shared vision …

Importantly, one of the central organising themes tying the different ideas described here lies in the domain of security. For example, the teaching mentioned discusses the virtue of leadership mainly in a military context, and volunteering is often tied to policing work on farms, as mentioned earlier.

We also see this in the work with youth groups. The guides, former commanders in the Israeli military elite units, commemorate Israeli military icons, such as Moshe Dayan and Meir Har-Zion, as well as historical and mythical heroes from the Jewish historiography and holy texts, such as Samson and Bar Kokhba. The guides tell the young volunteers heroic war stories and take them to historic battle sites. During organised events, they also teach them navigation and basic military tactics. The underlying message of this experimental learning is that by connecting to the national community and its heroic military legacy, the volunteer will not only relate to the Jewish collective and its security endeavour, but also reconnect to his or her individual self and will have the opportunity to develop his or her personal traits.

Hence, besides coming together as ‘Jewish people’ to help each other stay safe (farmers in this case), the individual should develop himself or herself to contribute the wider society. Moreover, exactly in this context the traditional religious ideal becomes most dominant in preserving the collective dimension of the organisation’s activities and ideology. Amnon, one of the organisation’s senior officials, explained:

We have a youth movement with about 30,000 members, a Shin-shin [pre-military service work] program with 300 members. Three high schools, programs for overseas students … We educate about 50,000–60,000 pupils every year. We teach them responsibility and solidarity, caring. Something that they will take with them to their personal relationships, to their friendships, to their families and future careers. […] We know that all of that would be in vain if one would not ask himself ‘Why? Why do I help others?’. […] The answer may come from Rabbi Kook,¹¹ the Rabbi of Bratslav ,¹² or A.D. Gordon¹³ … We believe our responsibility is for Israeli society and the state of Israel. TNG is a Zionist organization. Not necessarily Jewish although it is part-and-parcel of Zionism. Many religious volunteers in the TNG do not wear their yarmulke [kipa]. It is a non-issue. Their Jewish identity [in the organization] is very strong. Not Jewish religion per-se, but the TNG preserves the Shabbat and keeps kosher food. In the end of day, the language is very Jewish. Philosophically speaking. This is a very Jewish movement.

The construction of a neo-nationalist narrative with a civil-religious undertone is also based on unofficial everyday practices that develop ‘nationalism from below’ (Shoham 2021). The movement symbols and everyday culture are very Jewish. The fusion between secular Zionist and Jewish religious themes and practices accentuates this.

The name of the movement and its logo symbolise its historical and ideological affiliations. TNG positions itself as a contemporary incarnation of the historical Jewish Hashomer militia. The logo features the famous monument of Alexander Zaïd (1886 − 1938), one of the founders and heroic figures of the original Hashomer.¹⁴ By relating itself to these pre-state militaristic Zionist symbols, TNG does not only position itself as a movement that continues and commemorates this legacy, but also sets an agenda of returning to and reviving this pre-state period; when the security of the nation and the land was based on volunteerism and individual sacrifice rather than on (failed) statist institutions. This logo appears on all TNG’s vehicles, pamphlets, and flags, raised alongside the Israeli national flag with the Jewish symbol of the Star of David.

The habitus of the TNG’s officials, pupils, and volunteers revive major themes of the secular Zionist Sabra culture (Almog 2000). They claim that this culture, which was dominant in Israel from the 1930s until the 1970s, give way to the growing influence of Western culture. The return to what is often considered ‘classic Israelism’ symbolises the return to old-style Zionism that combines a military way of thinking (bitchonism) (Ben-Eliezer 1998), patriotism, and love of the country (Eretz Israel). These ideals materialise in TNG everyday activities, including the celebration of collectivism in group agricultural work, team guarding, campfires, sing-along of canonical patriotic Israeli songs, using military jargon, and hiking the country.

Initially, the Sabra culture represented an effort to develop Jewish secularism that is distinct from the religious Jewishness of the diaspora. However, in TNG, we find a cultural mix between this ideal cultural model and more religious symbolism and practices. This tendency is partly due to the growing participation of national-religious youth in TNG activities. However, it also exemplifies the inclusionary agenda of the movement.

For example, in one of the fundraising events we participated in, a large crowd of national-religious youth mingled with older participants who belonged to the secular agricultural sector of kibbutzim and moshavim. For an outsider, the event might seem odd: dozens of religious boys and girls sang and danced to the music of classical secular music (Shirey Eretz Israel Ha’yafa) that was associated with Israeli secular culture. The fact that the dancing style was religious Hassidic and gender segregated only made the sight more surreal. Nevertheless, the message was clear – the mix between secular Zionist cultural themes and religious practices is no longer a contradictory. To the contrary, it is a celebration of Jewish unity and solidarity, which in our analysis, serves as a legitimising tool for the organisation’s nationalists security ambitions.

Educating the masses

Although TNG’s main goal is providing security and agricultural volunteering services to Israeli farmers, it also promotes its ideology to the broader Israeli public in open events, gatherings, and festivals. These events predominantly take place on national and religious holy days, as our introductory example shows, and enable the organisation to frame activities with nationalist, securitised and religious meanings.

Take, for example, TuB’shvat. Originally this Jewish holiday celebrated the beginning of the agriculture cycle connected to the biblical taxation year, and often it is called the ‘New Year of the Trees’. However, diaspora ideology and Zionist thought shifted this holiday’s emphasis to the Jewish people’s connection to the land and nature and, eventually, to Israel as the Jewish Homeland. During last year’s TuB’shvat, TNG organises volunteering activities around the country, and thousands of soldiers and school students flocked to farms and fields across Israel to help in agricultural activities. The organisation writes on its English Facebook page: ‘In honour of Tu B’shvat, the New Year of the Trees, HaShomer [organises activities] spreading across farms in northern Israel and volunteering, helping farmers, maintaining and connecting to the land’. In 2022 TNG paid attention to the concept of ‘shmita’, the 7^th year of the 7-year agricultural cycle originating in biblical texts. By combining its activities with a (civil) religious holiday and biblical meanings, TNG advanced a nationalist discourse based on non-state terms of belonging.

During events such as this one, volunteers of the organisation lecture about the importance of ‘re-connection’ to the land and securing it by drawing on traditional, religious texts that represent nationalist themes. As presented in the opening of this article, it is essential for the organisation to promote its ideas in newsletters that are distributed around Jewish holy days. These newsletters always include references to Jewish religious texts and political actualisation of themes to present-time securitisation. For example, before the holyday of Passover, TNG distributes its version of the Haggadah (the book that tells the biblical story of Exodus and sets the order of the Jewish Passover Seder ritual) among its volunteers and the broader public. This text combines the original religious texts with new ones that praise Jewish agriculture and security.¹⁵

Nevertheless, the organisation’s public activities are not restricted to religious holy days. They also take place on national days, such as Remembrance Day and the Day of Independence. One could say that these are the days on the civil religious calendar that are being celebrated. Here again, national myths based on military themes are mixed with religious leitmotifs in public singing, agricultural volunteering (tree planting, fruit picking, and harvesting) and educational gatherings. Furthermore, although the militaristic discourse is tuned down in favour of a more civilian one, the ideal of civilian securitisation remains constant. The organisers will, for example, tell the story of the historic HaShomer militia and the new TNG, which is seen as its present-day incarnation. They distribute stickers and hand out banners with the TNG logo and recruit new volunteers from the crowd by sharing uplifting personal experiences of farm guarding.

Importantly, the ethos of protecting and securing the land is amplified by the location of the TNG’s public events on historical sites that symbolise Jewish heroism. For example, many gatherings take place in Sepphoris in the Lower Galilee, one of the symbolic locations of the Great Revolt of the Jews against the Roman Empire (The First Jewish – Roman War, 66–73 CE). The message for the audience is unambiguous – current-day security efforts are echoes of a distant past. It is important to note that the references to these historical sites are not religious in the sense that they should nurture faith but rather serve as a cultural backdrop for present-day securitisation

The crowds at these public events are often eclectic and come from various sectors of Israeli society: middle-class secular and national-religious families, Ashkenazim and Mizrahim, all mingle. The ethos of volunteering enables the visitors to connect with the organisation and, more importantly, its apolitical framing, which is the popular version of Judaism the organisation nurtures. The criterion for joining is a love of the land, the desire to participate, and becoming a good community member beyond the state.

These events nurture cooperation and solidarity between citizens that are not restricted to political state structures. TNG transforms civil society into a social sphere where face-to-face yet depersonalised interactions between strangers from distinct social and political sectors can reframe their association beyond their formal citizenship and immediate interests. In other words, these public events and especially their expressive dimensions operate as social clubs – ‘occasions of interpersonal encounters between members that typically revolve around a common activity, interest, or purpose, establish official criteria for membership and prescribe certain rules of conduct’ (Kaplan 2018, 47). As Danny Kaplan posits, these encounters not only nurture growing familiarity and mutual loyalty but also depend on a shared sense of exclusivity and privilege (Ibid.). In these processes, TNG reframes and legitimises the trend of securitisation with its use of nationalist and religious themes.

Conclusions

In the literature, the connection between religion, nationalism and security is often discussed regarding civil religion cultivated by the state and its formal institutions. In this article, we suggest it is essential to also pay attention to this connection in civil society security initiatives, specifically in organisations that practice policing activities. Here we join previous works that examine expressions of ‘unofficial nationalism’ (Shoham 2021) that are nurtured from below, outside state institutions (Edensor 2002; Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008). While this phenomenon was mainly studied in the context of everyday culture, such as leisure activities, we examined it in relation to civilian securitisation in civil society with the help of the analytical framework offered by Benford and Snow (2000), which helped us to highlight the different framings undertaken by this social movement.

As such we identified agricultural terror as a diagnostic framework the organisation sets out to combat and protecting the land of one’s ‘forefathers’ as both a prognostic and motivational framing task. We showed that the Israeli TNG exemplifies the role of religion in giving new meaning and legitimisation to initiatives of civilian policing in the margins of the state. While such initiatives maintain a national meaning, they demand a broader context that extends statist frameworks. While TNG does not self-identify as a religious movement per-se, Jewish religion and historiography enable the organisation to frame its policing (and other) activities as doings that serve the collective in areas where the state fails, yet very much connected to deep national and primordial cores. As such, the (civil) religious framing of these activities legitimises their neo-nationalist agenda.

The re-convergence of secular Israeli civil religion, which was so dominant in the Israeli field of security, with a muted version of Judaism has an essential impact on the meaning of security, especially in civil society. Instead of treating Judaism as a mechanism of exclusion and segregation, the organisation’s neo-nationalist ideology is more inclusionary. It presents itself as open to all and democratic, as ‘security for citizens’. Ironically, the Jewish discourse is used to approach all sectors of Israeli society, of Jews and non-Jews, while this discourse in this cultural context is relevant to Jews only. Hence, the colouring of civilian security with soft religious colours enables the organisation to hold the stick on both ends – it is not Jewish security nor anti-Arab security, but it has obvious Jewish roots.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. According to Israeli law, all Jewish men and women at the age of 18 years are obliged to take part in military service. Religious women are exempted from service. Ultra-orthodox men shared the same exemption, which has been retracted lately leading to fierce protest from the orthodox community.

2. Religious Zionism is an ideology that combines Zionism and Orthodox Judaism. This ideology revolves around three pillars: the Land of Israel, the People of Israel, and the Torah of Israel. This ideology holds that ‘Eretz Israel’ (the Land of Israel) was promised to the ancient Israelites by God. Furthermore, modern Jews have the obligation to possess and defend the land in ways that comport with the Torah’s high standards of justice. To generations of diaspora Jews, Jerusalem has been a symbol of the Holy Land and of their return to it, as promised by God in numerous Biblical prophecies.

3. The term Mizrahi Jews refer to Jews who immigrated to Israel/Palestine from Africa and Asia and their descendants. A large proportion of this population are ‘traditional’ (Masortim, literarily ‘upholders of traditions’), which means they define themselves as neither strictly religious nor secular, yet they observe several meaningful religious commandments. For further discussion of this phenomenon, see (Leon 2008).

4. It is important to note that the validity of this threat is controversial. While there are countless media reports of the theft and arson of agricultural products in Israel in the past decade (see for example https://www.israelhayom.co.il/article/545525 accessed 15-05-2023, https://news.walla.co.il/item/3016854 accessed 15-05-2023, https://www.maariv.co.il/news/israel/Article-742024 accessed 15-05-2023). Some commentators (see for example https://eishton.wordpress.com/2018/10/29/agro-terrorism/ accessed 18-05-2023) claim that it is a fabricated threat, and that agricultural crime is blown out of proportion for the sake of a right-wing political agenda. The purpose of this article is not to evaluate the actual magnitude of the threat, but to explore the place of this discourse within the TNG phenomenon.

5. (Levy 2007) accessed 25-11-2022.

6. https://www.guidestar.org.il/organization/580492981 accessed 25-11-2022.

7. One dunam is 0.1 hectare. This measurement, originally from the former Turkish Empire, is still used in Israel and other parts of the Middle East. On the English website of TNG, an acre is mistakenly used as equal to a dunam. We base our values on the numbers given on TNG’s Hebrew website: https://www.hashomer.org.il/ accessed 25-11-2022.

8. https://www.hashomer.org.il/%d7%aa%d7%95%d7%9e%d7%9b%d7%99%d7%9d/ accessed 25-11-2022.

9. See for example the visit of the Minister of Defence Moshe ‘Bogie’ Ya’alon to TNG (https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2025350507498117 accessed 25-11-2022), the involvement of Yoaz Hendel, former Minister of Communication, who was a member of the TNG board, and the visit of Yair Lapid, at the time, Israeli Prime Minister (https://www.facebook.com/shomerisrael/photos/a.192120577490904/4983372918365622/?type=3 accessed 1-8-2023, http://www.knesset.gov.il/mk/eng/mk_eng.asp?mk_individual_id_t=997) accessed 25-11-2022).

10. Or sisterhood as in the wake of the international Me Too movement t-shirts were made with the slogan ‘Shomer Ahoti’, literally meaning my sister’s keeper.

11. Abraham Isaac Kook was an Orthodox rabbi, and the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of of British Mandatory Palestine. He is considered to be one of the fathers of religious Zionism.

12. Nachman of Breslov, also known as Reb Nachman of Bratslav, was the founder of the Breslov Hasidic movement.

13. Aaron David Gordon, more commonly known as A. D. Gordon, was a Zionist ideologue and the spiritual force behind practical Zionism and Labor Zionism. Influenced by Leo Tolstoy and others, it is said that in effect he made a religion of labour. However, he himself wrote in 1920, ‘Surely in our day it is possible to live without religion’.

14. The original HaShomer militia (The Guard), a Jewish defence organisation founded in Palestine in 1909 to guard the Jewish settlement lands and communities against Arab hostility, encapsulated this connection between agricultural settlement, security, and self-sacrifice.

15. https://www.hashomer.org.il/חדשות-2/הגדה-לפסח/