The “Promised Land” Claim in the Legitimacy of the Israeli Occupation: Examining the Relevance of Max Weber's Theory of Authority
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15575/jis.v5i4.49064Keywords:
authority, Israel, legitimacy, promised land, ZionismAbstract
This study aims to examine the relevance of Weber's theory of authority in relation to the phenomenon of the Promised Land claim and its impact on the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation. The results and discussion in this study show that the Zionist political movement successfully utilised Jewish theological themes as the basis for the establishment of the state of Israel, in this case, the Promised Land claim becomes a doctrine that functions as a political aspiration and is believed to be rooted in divine and religious authority, revealing that Weberian tripartite classification of authority have limitations in explaining the form of legitimacy that comes from theological claims. The conclusion of this study is that the the Promised Land claim effectively functions as theological legitimacy in the Israeli occupation, offering a new form of authority distinct from Weberian tripartite classification of authority (traditional, charismatic, rational-legal).
References
Agius, C. (2022). Social Constructivist International Relations and the Military. In A. M. Sookermany (Ed.), Handbook of Military Sciences (pp. 1–16). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02866-4_105-1
Akenson, D. H. (1992). God’s People: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster (Vol. 10). Cornell University Press.
Aldrovandi, C. (2011). Theo-Politics in the Holy Land: Christian Zionism and Jewish Religious Zionism. Religion Compass, 5(4), 114–128. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8171.2011.00267.x
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Zaid Tsabit Al Kalatini, Asep Abdul Sahid, Muhammad Izzuddin Al Haq
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).