Center for Israel Studies Vienna

Invitation I Einladung I הַזמָנָה

Lecture
Prof. George Wilkes, University of Birmingham

„Strength and Peace:
What drove the Israeli religious peace movement after 1967?“

After the 1967 war, Religious Zionist peace activists mobilised to counter the nascent settler movement and to promote diplomacy in favour of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace settlement. They soon created a distinctive peace movement, Strength and Peace (Oz veShalom), designed to counter extremism within the Religious Zionist population. The pioneers of the Religious Zionist peace movement have been overshadowed by the successes of their adversaries, and narrative histories have suggested they failed to win the argument against messianism that was always the focus of their activity. But Oz veShalom was also a remarkable initiative whose strengths and motivations are marked by the influence of the Religious Kibbutz movement, and particularly by a cohort of intellectual German Orthodox Zionists who set out in Weimar Germany to renew Orthodox political culture. This lecture reviews their history, raising questions of relevance to the challenges their grandchildren face in seeking to build a politics and a society drawing on their values and commitments.

Welcome
Univ. Prof. (em.) Dr. Mitchell Ash, President Center for Israel Studies Vienna

Dr. Stephan Wendehorst, Senior Scientist, Universität Wien, Juridicum, Institut für Rechts- und Verfassungsgeschichte

Moderator: Dr. Stephan Wendehorst

Where: University of Vienna, Juridicum, Seminarraum SEM20,
Schottenbastei 10-16, 1010 Wien
When: Monday, 15 December 2025
19:00h
The lecture will be delivered in English.

Please register: [email protected]

In cooperation with: Universität Wien, Juridicum, Institut für Rechts - und Verfassungsgeschichte, Team Wendehorst

Supported by: Zukunftsfonds der Republik Österreich