Editing Zionism (section)

=== Religious Zionism and the Six-Day War ===
{{main|Neo-Zionism}}
Prior to the 1967 [[Six-Day War]], [[religious Zionism]] mostly described support for political Zionism among Orthodox Jews.{{sfn|Ravitzky|1996|pp=32–34}}<!--<ref>{{cite journal |last=Friesel |first=Ofra |title=Israel's 1967 Governmental Debate about the Annexation of East Jerusalem: The Nascent Alliance with the United States, Overshadowed by "United Jerusalem" |journal=Law and History Review |volume=34 |issue=2 |date=2016 |issn=0738-2480 |doi=10.1017/S0738248016000031 |pages=363–391}}</ref>--> However, the war and the Israeli conquest of the [[West Bank]], invigorated and popularized a religious Zionist ideology associated with the Rabbi [[Abraham Isaac Kook]] and the [[Mercaz HaRav]] yeshiva, which believes that Zionism is a part of the historical process that will bring about the [[messianic age]].{{sfn|Ravitzky|1996|pp=102–109, 122–131}}{{sfn|Shlaim|2001|loc=Chapter 14}} This ideology considered secular Zionism and secular state policies to be holy and part God's divine plan: "The spirit of Israel... is so closely linked to the spirit of God that a Jewish nationalist, no matter how secularist his intention may be, is, despite himself, imbued with the divine spirit even against his own will."{{sfn|Goldberg|2009}}{{pn|date=March 2025}}

According to followers of the Mercaz HaRav ideology, the Six Day War was a demonstration of the work of the Divine Hand and the "beginning of redemption".{{sfn|Ravitzky|1996|loc=Chapter 3}} Proponents of this ideology venerate the land as sacred, and consider its sanctity a core principle of religious Zionism. Religious Zionists view the settlement of the West Bank as a commandment of God, necessary for the redemption of the Jewish people.{{sfn|Ben-Ami|2007}} Rabbi [[Zvi Yehuda Kook]], a major religious Zionist leader and thinker, would declare in 1967 following the Six Day War in the presence of Israeli leadership including the president, ministers, members of the [[Knesset]], judges, chief rabbis and senior civil servants:
<blockquote>
 I tell you explicitly... that there is a prohibition in the Torah against giving up even an inch of our liberated land. There are no conquests here and we are not occupying foreign land; we are returning to our home, to the inheritance of our forefathers. There is no Arab land here, only the inheritance of our God—the more the world gets used to this thought the better it will be for it and for all of us.{{sfn|Masalha|2014}}
</blockquote>

In the 1970s, religious Zionists, such as [[Shlomo Aviner]] and [[Hanan Porat]], campaigned against Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and [[Sinai Peninsula]].{{sfn|Ravitzky|1996|loc=Chapter 3}} Religious Zionist ideology motivated the [[assassination of Yitzhak Rabin]] in 1995, who ceded some territory to the [[PLO]] as a part of the [[Oslo Accords]], and several religious Zionist rabbis reacted to the assassination with approval.{{sfn|Shlaim|2001}}{{page needed|date=December 2024}}