Temple groups mobilized their followers to storm Al-Aqsa
Afrasianet - Abdullah Maarouf - Every once in a while, the temple groups come out to us with an ambitious and big announcement of a qualitative storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, taking advantage of any occasion, especially if it is religious. Its latest announcement is no departure from this context, as the media has been abuzz with the calls of these groups and their supporters for a massive storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque with 5,000 settlers on Thursday, July 23, which constitutes the largest incursion in the history of the mosque, in order to commemorate the so-called "anniversary of the destruction of the Temple" or "the Hebrew 9th of August."
This occasion is not left by the extremist temple groups every year without constituting a cornerstone and a central station in the path of escalation against the mosque, as it is the day when the temple groups are contaminated with which they try in various ways to prove their presence and power on the ground, and to demand broad changes in the status quo in the mosque and the city with a kind of extreme emotion, in order to take advantage of this sad occasion, which symbolizes what they consider to be the anniversary of the destruction of the first and second temples in the same history hundreds of years apart.
"We should not consider the failure of the occupation to reach its numerical goal – without any intervention from the Palestinian, Arab or Islamic side to deter it – as a victory for Arabs and Muslims of any kind! Victory in this battle is by imposing a retreat on the occupation and its settlers."
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This year is different from the previous one in that this occasion comes in light of the start of Israel's first electoral race since the war of extermination in Gaza. Therefore, the magnitude and quality of the incursions into the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque were expected even before the institutions of the extremist temple groups published their announcements.
Just two days before the so-called "Temple Destruction Remembrance," some settlers committed an unprecedented act at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, painting the religious slogan "The Savior in the House of the Lord" used by some members of these extremist groups, the crown emblem consisting of two letters of the word "Christ," on a rectangle referring to the temple.
The painting of a religious slogan of this kind inside the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque is a precedent that deserves to be stopped, because it carries many connotations related to the idea of the "Third Temple" promoted by the Israeli religious Zionist right, as well as the American Christian evangelical right. The Third Temple is the ultimate target of these groups, as is well known, and it is not something hidden, but is announced by the extremist Temple groups day and night.
But what comes to the surface in this matter is the name of the "Savior" which they symbolize with the crown. It is the same crown that we see always drawn above the temple, because the idea of the Third Temple in these communities is originally intended to "dwell the Lord with his people," and this is the religious phrase that refers to the events of the end and the coming of the Savior to be king over the people of Israel and make him lord over all peoples. The Third Temple in the vision of these communities is originally associated with Christ the Savior, who is the millstone pole in the people's relationship with this land from a religious point of view.
Although the idea of the Temple ranges from the historical vision of the leftist and secular currents on the one hand, and the religious vision of the right-wing and religious currents and the religious Zionist current on the other, the right's control over government in Israel makes the religious aspect of this idea the most present and influential in its application, and thus it applies to the idea of the Savior, which is completely related to the religious dimension of the Jews' relationship to this land, according to their point of view. It is clear here that the salvationist doctrine is no longer an abstract religious conception, but has become an electoral political platform.
The deliberate vandalism of the Al-Aqsa Mosque stones is a new issue that the mosque has not witnessed since its occupation, and this act is not isolated or limited to an extremist religious group in itself, as the commemoration of the so-called "Temple Destruction" in light of the elections is not actually limited to the religious Zionist movement this year.
Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister of Israel, former head of the right-wing Jewish Home party and now Bennett 2026, was keen to appear in a photo of himself during the commemoration of the Temple vandalism. Ben Gvir joined the settlers in performing a mass prayer after the evening prayer in front of the Qataneen Gate, one of the gates of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque on the western side. Netanyahu also chose to commemorate the occasion in a speech preaching Israel's "eternity."
The so-called "Temple Institute", which is one of the largest and most powerful extremist organizations of the Temple Mosque today, tried to achieve a new qualitative breakthrough on the eve of the "Temple Destruction Anniversary", as its members tried to perform a special prayer at night in front of the Al-Ghawanmeh Gate in the northwestern corner of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and this is a dangerous and significant advance in the attempt to control the Bab, which these groups failed to obtain in 1998.
"The extremist Temple Groups' recording of the goal of gathering 5,000 settlers in one day at Al-Aqsa Mosque during this occasion 'the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple' indicates a horizon that the occupation wants in the mosque: the image of flooding Al-Aqsa with thousands of settlers to reach the moment of numerical overcoming the Islamic presence."
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All these scenes show that Israel, especially the national-religious right, is feeling a severe crisis due to its inability to impose its entire agenda on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, as right-wing parties and religious nationalist movements are trying to impose their presence at night in the mosque, in order to establish the reality of full sharing of time in the mosque between Muslims and Jews, and to implement the full idea of time division according to the promise made by Deputy Prime Minister Yariv Levin to these groups during the Hanukkah celebrations at the end of last year. Its failure indicates Israel's inability to yet exercise its sovereignty over the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Perhaps this is why the night march that roamed the streets around Al-Aqsa Mosque on the eve of the "anniversary of the destruction of the temple" was called the "March of Sovereignty." Sovereignty is what Israel lacks in Al-Aqsa Mosque, no matter how much it tries to appear otherwise.
As for the extremist Temple groups' registration of the goal of gathering 5,000 settlers in one day at Al-Aqsa during this "anniversary of the destruction of the Temple", it points to a horizon that the occupation wants in the mosque: the image of flooding the Al-Aqsa Mosque with thousands of settlers in order to reach the moment of numerical overcoming the Islamic presence in the mosque, i.e., sovereignty through numbers.
I believe that the idea of mobilizing large numbers of settlers in the mosque and raising the numerical target every year, through which these groups want to revive hope in the hearts of their children, especially since they find that the general trend of their movements in Al-Aqsa Mosque during the past twenty years has been escalating, and this is a fact that unfortunately, and we should not deceive ourselves in this field.
Nor should we consider the failure of the occupation to reach its numerical goal – without any intervention from the Palestinian, Arab or Islamic side to deter it – as a victory for Arabs and Muslims of any kind! The victory in this battle is to impose retreat on the occupation and its settlers and deter it when it comes to the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, and not in the failure of the occupation itself due to its internal disputes related to Al-Aqsa, as a result of the official rabbinate's insistence on the traditional fatwa to prevent Jews from entering Al-Aqsa, for example.
The crown painted above the temple symbol was not just a passing scribble on the mosque's stones; it was a visual shortcut for an entire project that attempts to move from religious doctrine to politics, from waiting for the "savior" to imposing sovereignty over the land.
Unless this project is deterred in its current stages, the talk of the "Third Temple" may no longer be just a slogan carried by these extremist groups, but a real program that Israeli parties are competing to implement.
At the same time, the catastrophic situation that the mosque is going through cannot be mistaken by an observer, and at the same time, the occupation is still unable to impose its full sovereignty over Al-Aqsa, but let's be clear: this deficit may not last long unless there is real action.
Does the cow's ear heal? The Prophecy of the End Ignites the Noise in Israel
A red cow brought from the US state of Texas in 2022 "Settlement Board"
Al-Suyuti stated in his book "History of the Caliphs" that the Umayyad Caliph Hisham bin Abd al-Malik did not like blood, and he wished that one day he would pass without blood or news of wars, conspiracies and revolutions, so he liked one day to be alone in his palace in the city of Rusafa so that he would not be sad on that day. "Not a single day?"
This short story applies to us today, as we hardly ever rest from the traditions of the religious Zionist movement in Israel and their allies in the United States until they come out against us. As soon as the noise of the five red cows – which this movement and its supporters in Israel and the United States had broken our heads with, after defects appeared in three of them and only two remained that also seemed unfit to complete the cleansing rituals – we were rushed by the news of the birth of a red cow in the Galilee region in the northern Palestinian territories, where social media, especially among evangelical Christian groups in the United States, was buzzing with the news that a red cow had been found – at least so far – that it had been born in the One of the Israeli farms in the Upper Galilee.
The young cow looks completely red as seen in the photos circulating about it, and it overrides the main obstacle suffered by the five cows brought from Texas in 2022, which is that it was born in the "Land of Israel" according to the religious concept adopted by the ultra-Orthodox religious authorities. In doing so, she repeated the story of the red cow that was born in Israel in 2005 and was celebrated by the media that day until she was transferred to a private farm in the Negev region, before several black hairs appeared in it that disappointed those who saw it as a miracle that had been achieved.
What aroused interest in this particular cow was that it was born in the Galilee region during the ongoing war between Hezbollah and Israel, which led some members of these religious groups to see it as a divine sign that it was born "under the fire of the enemy."
This understanding of the idea of "divine signs" is not new to these groups, as I once remember that someone once posted a video of a number of members of extremist Temple groups storming the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the steps of the northern Rock Square, and an old Palestinian woman with a bowed back passed between them.
The funny thing about this event today is that this little cow turns out that its Israeli owner had pierced its ear to put a plastic identification tag on it according to the government health instructions in Israel before it was discovered, and this action, according to the rabbinic religious view, is considered a sufficient reason to make the cow unfit for the ritual of purification. According to religious texts, this ritual requires that this cow should not have been subjected to any accident, injury or scratch, and that it should not plow a field, and that a rope should not be placed around its neck, and that no human should ride on its back.
So, according to the religious text, what the owner of the farm did was enough to make this new red cow unfit for religious rituals, and become like any other cow. However, it is noteworthy that some rabbis from the religious Zionist movement and their allies from the Christian evangelical movement in the United States were not satisfied that this defect was enough to lose hope in this new cow, so they removed the plastic piece from it and entrusted it to the so-called "National Red Cow Institute" established by the "Temple Institute" in Israel, so that the members of this institute follow up on the extent of the healing of the ear piercing that this little cow suffers from and follow up on its daily affairs until it reaches the legal age. Two years and two months, to make sure that hair of a different color than red does not appear in it, and that nothing that could make it unfit for the ritual of purification is not in it.
"The Islamic world today is faced with two options: either stop this obsession and the American-Israeli religious absurdity, or remain hostage to the ear piercing of the red cow, and in the end, lose the Al-Aqsa Mosque with all that it represents, and then regret will not be of any use."
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According to the vision of these groups, the whole world today stands on one foot to watch the cow's ear piercing! As funny as this phrase may seem, it reveals an unprecedented obsession with religious visions of the apocalypse, the final salvation, and the Messiah, which governs the behavior of both the Israeli religious Zionist government and the conservative evangelical American administration today.
What really struck me about this was that the over-celebration of the birth of this cow was on the part of evangelical Christians, while the subject was almost absent from Jewish news and analytical pages and websites. This, by the way, applies to the subject of the five red cows that were brought from Texas, as a quick glance shows that the interest in their subject among the American evangelical right was greater than that in Israel and among the Jewish religious currents by a great extent.
This brings to the fore the idea of religious overzealism that dominates the current in the United States today. Evangelicals believe that we are in the sixth historical stage in which Christ must descend for the second time, and they believe that everything that is happening today in Israel is in the interest of hastening the end of this stage and preparing the ground for the second coming of Christ.
Therefore, we believe that the readiness of the members of these groups to do anything in order to prepare for the coming of the Messiah is far greater than that of traditional Jewish religious authorities, such as the official rabbinate of Israel, which believe that the principle is to wait until the divine signs appear alone without human intervention.
This can explain the sincerity of some decision-makers in the current US administration regarding the fate of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which has always been a self-deterrent to the occupation for fear of the consequences of any damage to the mosque. Here we recall the dangerous report published by the British website Middle East Eye at the end of last month, in which it revealed the existence of a plan developed by the current US administration, which has already been communicated to various countries in the region, to end Islamic sovereignty over the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, dissolve the Awqaf Council, and establish an international body in which Israel participates to supervise the Al-Aqsa Mosque instead of the Islamic Endowments Department, without any consideration of the consequences of this step.
This plan, which US Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed he was not aware of, has many details and evidence that confirm its existence and attempts to translate it on the ground in close cooperation between the current US administration, which has become the representative of the extremist evangelical current, and the Israeli government, which has become the representative of the extremist religious Zionist current.
The videos now published by the religious leaders of both sides are almost entirely in this context, including the repeated videos of Shmuel Eliyahu, the rabbi of the city of Safed in the Upper Galilee and one of the ideologues of the religious Zionist movement, in which he calls daily for the construction of a synagogue inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and a video in which he appeared a few days ago in the company of the extremist Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, in which Ben-Gvir pledged to build a synagogue in the mosque. Or the repeated statements of the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who does not hesitate to publicly call for this issue to be resolved in favor of these groups.
One of the main proofs of the reality of what is happening is the beginning of a violent, coordinated and simultaneous media campaign against the Islamic Endowments Department by writers, speakers, and theorists of the Religious Zionist Movement, which seeks to link it to Hamas. The Israeli right-wing websites began to report widely the news of the dispute between the Israeli police and the Awqaf Department against the background of the refusal of the head of the Awqaf Council to go to meet the occupation police at the Al-Qishla police station, despite the passage of more than three months since this event, and this coincided with the publication of an article on the right-wing website "Mikur Rishon" at the beginning of this month, in which he attacked the Awqaf Department, considering it "the Hamas office in Jerusalem."
This is reminiscent of Israel's coordinated media campaign to demonize UNRWA, which was a necessary prelude to its subsequent designation as a terrorist organization and outlawed during the war on Gaza. This is completely consistent with what the Middle East Eye website announced about the American plan on which the Evangelical leaders are based to abolish the circle and hand over the Al-Aqsa Mosque to a body in which Israel participates.
All these testimonies make us not surprising that the evangelicals are behind the unprecedented interest in anything that can support their religious vision based on the need to ignite the so-called Great War of Armageddon, and there is no better way for these groups in this context than to set fire to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in all its symbolism and danger.
One of their followers, the Australian evangelical Christian Dennis Michael Rohan, was the one who burned down the Al-Aqsa Mosque on August 21, 1969. Needless to say, today's invocation of the myth of the Red Cow comes in the context of justifying the measures taken by these and their allies in Israel to decide the fate of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, even if it is on the basis of blood.
All of this puts the entire Islamic world today, its official and popular people, especially the Palestinian people, in front of two options: either stop this obsession and the American-Israeli religious tampering with the fate of the world at any cost, or remain hostage to the ear piercing of the red cow, and finally, lose the Al-Aqsa Mosque with all that it represents, and then regret will not be of any use.
The fall of Ben Gurion. and the Hasmonean kingdom soon in Israel
Settlers perform biblical rituals in front of the Lions Gate, one of the gates of Al-Aqsa Mosque
Israel and its supporters have long boasted that it is "the only democracy in the Middle East," and this propaganda phrase has always been the centerpiece of any debate about the nature of Israel and its alien element to the region and the surrounding Arab region.
This phrase, which Israeli politicians sang – and still does, ironically – was intended to outbid the Arab world in the absence of real democracy in it, and to claim the absence of freedom of expression and opinion in totalitarian regimes in the Middle East as a whole, as claimed by the occupation politicians.
This is in contrast to the "oasis of democracy and freedom" in which power is genuinely transferred by appealing to the people, in which anyone can say what they want or do whatever they want without accountability. It is as if the rest of the Arab world is nothing more than prisons and ruins that know nothing of civilization.
However, the recent years that witnessed the historic rise of the nationalist right and then of the religious Zionist movement in Israel have revealed a completely different picture that this country is living in, as no one can claim to be a Western liberal democracy like the Western democracies today.
Today, the sharp polarization in Israeli society is confined between the nationalist right on the one hand and the religious right on the other, while the Western liberal parties and ideas that established the state in 1948 have almost no place on the map of Israel's active forces.
In light of the rise of religious Zionism, Israel no longer appears to be the Western liberal state that it has long sought to present itself in, but is rapidly approaching the model of a "theocratic kingdom" in which politics is conducted as an extension of religious and national faith, rather than as a civil contract between equal citizens.
The current Israeli crisis is no longer just a passing political dispute between a government and an opposition, nor a division over the personality or political future of Benjamin Netanyahu, but has turned into a deep struggle over the nature of the state itself: will it remain a state with modern liberal institutions as its founders wanted them to be and presented to the world (notably David Ben-Gurion), or will it become an entity in which law, sovereignty, and public identity are reformulated according to closed religious and national conceptions?
Since the formation of the current Netanyahu government in 2022, it seems that the religious Zionist current is no longer just a partner within the Israeli system, but has become the most influential force in redefining the state, its institutions, and its political and social functions, and its intellectual vision has moved from the margins of Israeli politics to the center of decision-making.
For decades, religious Zionism has been presented within Israel as an ideological current with limited influence and presence, with its primary presence concentrated in some settlements in the West Bank and ultra-nationalist religious environments.
Today, this vision has become the framework for regulating state policies in central files such as the judiciary, settlements, education, public identity, and even the definition of the relationship between religion and the state.
Today, this current controls almost all state institutions, not necessarily through its own parties, but even through members who are ideologically affiliated with this current in the heart of the ruling Likud party itself.
Perhaps there is no longer an apparatus that this movement has yet been able to control, except the judiciary, which is still out of control – despite Netanyahu's efforts to weaken it.
For right-wing and ultra-religious currents, Israel's Supreme Court was one of the last institutions capable of curbing the momentum of the national-religious project, whether in terms of settlements, government powers, or minority rights.
It was therefore not surprising that the conflict over the judiciary turned into an existential battle within Israeli society even before October 7.
In a liberal state by Western definition, elections alone are not enough to create democracy; there must be an independent judiciary, minority rights, and institutions capable of restricting power.
When the Supreme Court, the Public Prosecution, and the oversight agencies become obstacles to the will of a national-religious coalition, "democracy" becomes a mere numerical mechanism that grants the majority the right to reconstitute the state according to a single ideological conception, which is currently happening in Israel.
On the other hand, the leaders of Religious Zionism do not hide their true position on the very idea of "liberal democracy." In the discourse of this movement, democracy is not defined as a system for the protection of rights, freedoms, and the balance of powers, as is customary in Western democracies in general, but only as the rule of the Jewish majority, which has the right to reshape the state according to its doctrinal and national identity.
Hence, the independent judiciary, freedom of the media, the rights of minorities, and even some modern Western values become obstacles that should be restricted or overcome, rather than the basic pillars of the state, according to the view of the followers of this current.
Perhaps this vision is now more clearly reflected in the West Bank and settlement files. The current religious Zionist government does not treat settlement as a politically debatable security or negotiable issue as it has been in previous decades, but as a religious and national duty linked to the idea of "the full Land of Israel."
Therefore, it is no longer just about expanding settlements, but about imposing full "Jewish sovereignty" on the West Bank, and reformulating the legal and administrative reality in a way that brings the occupation closer to permanent and undeclared annexation.
This means that the project is no longer limited to managing the occupation, but seeks to transform it into a permanent system: sovereignty for the Jews, a temporary security administration for the Palestinians until they are all eliminated by transfer, and the expansion of settlements as a religious and nationalist message.
In this sense, Israel is now losing its ability to market itself as a Western liberal model in an undemocratic "Eastern" environment, because it approaches in its political structure systems that make religious identity the basis of legitimacy, and civil equality a secondary, deferred, or conditional issue.
It is precisely here that the theocratic nature of the new project is evident: the land here is not governed by international law or modern political considerations, but as an irrevocable religious and historical promise.
If Israel has for decades marketed itself as a liberal "Western island" in a troubled Middle East, its current image is rapidly eroding even within Western circles themselves.
Much of the analysis in the press and Western studies centers no longer speaks of a transient political crisis, but rather of a structural change in the nature of the Israeli state.
This explains the breadth of criticism coming from Jewish and Western figures who have historically been among the most vocal defenders of Israel, but who have begun to see the project that is currently taking shape gradually moving away from the liberal model that Israel has long claimed to represent in the region and the region.
This is not only about policies toward the Palestinians, although this is the most obvious area of this transformation, but also extends to Israel itself, as the rise of the influence of ultra-Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox parties has been reflected in the issues of education, public freedoms, the role of religion in civil life, military service, and personal status laws. This is evidenced by the crisis of the ultra-Orthodox conscription law that finally toppled Netanyahu's entire government.
Under this government, it is clear that the state appears less willing to separate the political sphere from religious references, and more inclined to give political legitimacy to the ideological and religious perceptions of adherents of these currents.
The irony is that Israel, which has long presented itself as the antithesis of the region's "theocratic states" and "theocratic kingdoms" as it used to describe it, is now moving very rapidly closer to the structural characteristics of the old theocratic kingdoms.
When religious identity becomes the basis of political legitimacy, when laws are redrafted to serve a national-religious project, and when land and sovereignty are treated as extensions of sacred texts rather than the principles of modern international law, the distinction between a "religious nation-state" and a "theocratic kingdom" becomes much narrower than Israeli official discourses try to acknowledge no matter how hard they try.
The religious authorities of the ultra-Orthodox and religious Zionist currents do not hide their desire for Israel to become a "state of rabbis" or a "state of Sharia," and in doing so, they avoid mentioning the word "kingdom" as much as possible.
But the truth is that the closest model that these references want is in fact a form of religious monarchy, in the sense of abolishing the idea of a republic and elections entirely, and transforming Israel into a contemporary model of the historical "Hasmonean kingdom," which is the historical model entrenched in the Israeli mentality of a religious kingdom ruled by the clergy by the power of Torah law between the second and first centuries BCE.
This is the direction in which Israel is currently heading, according to the religious right-wing followers.
We say this despite the fact that none of the religious and political references of the religious right-wing currents today dare to mention the word "kingdom" in the discourse that is hostile to the idea of a democratic republic on which Western Israel was founded, but only mentions the necessity of "judging the Torah" in all of life.
Perhaps the inability of these currents to mention the desired description of Israel is due to the fact that it is established in the biblical religious mentality that the idea of a "kingdom" is linked to the coming of the Savior, because this Messiah is the "King of Israel," and therefore no one may call for a monarchy or theocratic monarchy before the appearance of this expected Messiah.
Therefore, they seek to stabilize the essence rather than focus on appearance and name, so that Israel becomes a "religious kingdom," albeit in the name of a "democratic state."
It is true that Israel still theoretically retains elections, multi-partyism, civic institutions, and an active press, but the general trend points to a steady decline in the actual weight—within the state structure—of the Western liberal values that Israelis have boasted about since Israel's creation on the eve of the Nakba until today.
The struggle in Israel today is not only a struggle over a government, but also over the definition of Israel itself: is it a "modern" Western state that is trying to reconcile its Jewish identity with the principles of the civil state, or is it rapidly transforming into a rabbinical monarchy governed by religious nationalist doctrine as the supreme reference for the state, society, and sovereignty?
In summary, Israel has now not only shifted to a more extreme right, but has become an entity that is irrevocably redefining itself: Israel has now moved from the model of a Western liberal republic to one of a strict religious nationalist kingdom that sees religion and collective identity as the basis of political legitimacy, even if it undermines the liberal foundations on which Israel's traditional image is based before the world.
This is the greatest contradiction in its historical discourse today: a state that has long presented itself as the only democracy in the Middle East has become, under the leadership of religious Zionism and the far right, the model it has long claimed to be its opposite.
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Abdullah Maarouf
Director of the Center for Jerusalem Studies at Istanbul University, and former media and public relations officer at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
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