21 August 2024
Last week, Israeli ‘National Security’ Minister Itamar Ben Gvir stood at Masjid al-Aqsa and, for the third time in as many months, declared an end to the longstanding status quo governing al-Aqsa as a Muslim-only place of worship
As Orthodox Jews prostrated themselves and prayed loudly, the chief of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party declared that the government’s “policy is to allow prayer.”
He was seemingly rebuffed soon after by Netanyahu, who reasserted that there was no change in the status quo at al-Aqsa. Such statements by Netanyahu are deemed disingenuous, as it is an open secret that the Israeli authorities have been permitting such prayer at al-Aqsa, and have been affording Temple Movement zealots the leeway to pursue their incendiary agenda.
After Ben Gvir’s latest pronouncements, several lawmakers from the ruling Likud party voiced support for the minister’s position — among them MK Amit Halevi, who was one of more than 1,600 Jewish Israelis to trespass Al-Aqsa during last week’s Tisha B’Av commemoration
In a statement, the national-religious Halevi told reporters that he had come to Masjid al-Aqsa to pray “for victory in the war.”
“This is a war for the Mount, for God, against an enemy that in the name of religion fills the world with murderousness, barbarism and evil in the face of the Israeli culture and its call from the Temple Mount for justice, truth, morality and mercy,” he said.
Interviewed recently by The Times of Israel in his Knesset office, Halevi — who has previously proposed dividing the holy site between Muslims and Jews — highlighted the centrality of what he called the Temple Mount to the current genocide in Gaza.
“I think prayer on the Temple Mount is very important because this is the real war here,” he argued, insisting that Israel was battling “radical Muslims” and “real infidels” who were operating according to a religious vision.
The purported Temple, he claimed, represents “world peace, justice, truth, morality [and] this is the real answer.” Halevi continued, clarifying that he had not coordinated his trip with Ben Gvir and pushing back against arguments that Jewish visits are a provocation.
“We are in a Jewish sovereign state. And if a Knesset member or a minister goes to the holiest place of the Jewish people, the Temple Mount, it’s unacceptable from my point of view that somebody will say: ‘Hey, that will cause the non-Jewish to kill you, the Muslims to kill you.’ That’s ridiculous,” Halevi said.
“I don’t know if it’s a very central issue in Likud, but I hope more and more people understand that this is the war for Al Aqsa, as they call it themselves,” he continued, noting that Hamas termed its operation 10 months ago “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.”
“So they understand that this is a religious war. If we hide this dimension, we are only causing it to increase more and more. And we need to say, Okay, this is a religious war,” he said.
Adapted from Times of Israel
