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The intellectual dishonesty of religious zionists

from The Rav: ON ZIONISM, UNIRSALISM AN FEMISM by Simcha Kraus :

R. Meiselman makes one more claim. The Rav's views on Zionism and Medinat Yisrael were the same as those of his uncle, the Brisker Rav zt. R. Meiselman states:

"In his eulogy for his uncle, Rav Yitzhak Ze'ev Soloveitchik (the Brisker Rav) published subsequently under the title Ma Dodekh Midod, the Rav said that whereas a secular Jewish government in Israel does not fit into any halakhic categories, it is religiously irrelevant. This was not just a formulation of his uncle's position, but it was his as well. This is the essential theme of his essay Dodi Dofek, in which he states clearly that the importance of the State of Israel has to be evaluated in exclusively pragmatic terms."

Who is being more dishonest here? Meiselman is not saying that RJBS and his uncle have the same view overall, just on the point of the state being halachically irrelevant.

But Meiselman too isn't being honest. He is sort of suggesting that RJBS's view on Zionism isn't much different from his uncle's. His whole article attempts to say that RJBS was pretty much the same as R' Kotler and other Charedi gadolim. But really you can't even put those two in the same sentence. The Brisker Rav hated Zionism as did his father. And as Meiselman admits "This is not to be interpreted to mean that the Rav was in any way an enemy of the State of Israel." Well, the Brisker Rav, to his credit, was.




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