What is the vision of the Jews who want to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem?
Last Thursday night in Jerusalem I went to a rally of about 200 of these messianic Jews and spoke to four of them at some length. I’ve posted three video interviews below, which express some of the ideas I heard.
These Jews explained that when the temple is rebuilt, no Muslim holy places would remain on the Temple Mount– or Haram al Sharif, as Muslims describe the site. How the Muslim sites would be removed these Jews could not say. “We don’t know the exact detail,” said a psychotherapist who gave his name as Yechiel Israel. There are hints, he said: earthquake or war. He pointed out that a Lubavitcher rabbi advised in 1967 that the Israeli army blow up the Al Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock—and the Six Day War had been a “window of opportunity” that wasn’t taken (video below).
Ynet reported that the demonstrators chanted in Hebrew, “The mosque will burn, the temple rebuilt.” And one demonstrator said to me that the Western Wall was merely the “wrapping” on the Haram-al-Sharif/Temple Mount, as if the plateau was a gift from God to the Jews.
Many of the demonstrators wore masks to impersonate Rabbi Yehuda Glick, the third temple activist who was shot a week before, allegedly by a Palestinian, after such a demonstration. Glick is still in the hospital in serious condition; his alleged assailant was killed by Israeli police. Here are three boys wearing those masks.
These Jews claimed to me that “all Jews” of all persuasions want the temple rebuilt. Their insistence reminded me of Islamists who claim that all Muslims support thus-and-such extremist policies. All Jews pray for rebuilding the temple at the end of the Passover seder and the end of Yom Kippur, when they say, “Next year in Jerusalem”, the activists said to me. “They are begging and requesting to God to bring about the restoration of the temple,” Michael Wolfowitz said.
These believers all complained bitterly that they have limited access to the temple mount, less than 1/6th of the Muslim access to the site. Not that Muslims will have access when the temple is rebuilt. “We cannot share any kind of sovereignty,” one said.
And when I asked a young American named Jeremy, What do you think this country will look like in 100 years? he responded with a religious vision: I see millions of people streaming through these streets to get to the temple to make animal sacrifices. People of all former religions from all over the world, he said– because then the messiah would be here and the other religions would disappear.
These Jews also asserted that almost all Israeli Jews agree with them. But foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman has said that the calls for Jews to pray on the temple mount are a provocation, and some rabbis have said that it goes against Jewish law to pray on the temple mount before the messiah has arrived or all the Jews have in-gathered in Jerusalem. (It’s hard to keep all the theology here straight.)
Much of the rhetoric I heard was aggressive. The Jews I spoke to said that Israeli authorities had been far too soft in responding to Palestinian violent acts in Jerusalem. Jeremy said that Palestinians should be paid to leave Israel and the West Bank and go to Jordan. “What’s Palestine?” Yaacov Hayman, a tall bearded American-Israeli, said to me when I used the word “Palestinian.”
Hayman said that Muslims carried out violent acts and played football on the Haram al-Sharif, and that Israeli authorities have to stop that behavior. “The Muslims don’t see it as a holy place, they just see it a political place.”
But it is political to the demonstrators too. Many spoke about government policy toward Palestinians. “We think the response is soft,” Michael Wolfowitz said to me. “Any other normal country” would act to restore calm and quiet far more quickly. “We support harsher responses…the majority of people in Israel now are in favor of ending the violence,” he said.
The rally was highlighted by a speech from the former member of Knesset Michael Ben-Ari, who is a Kahanist, or militant Jewish chauvinist. His speech is in Hebrew, and I am hoping for a translation, but the spirit comes through.
When are American Jews going to wake up to what is being done in Israel? I mean this behavior’s just ridiculous. People make it seem that Muslims simply don’t want Jews to pray there.
This conflict is as old as modernity:
“Overall, historians agree that modernity is rooted in traditionallyJewish social functions and attribute to Jews of 18th- 20th century Eastern Europe the role as a driving forceof capitalism and market development (e.g., Sombart 1913; Jacobs 1919; Veblen 1919; Slezkine 2004;Botticini and Eckstein 2005, Muller 2010).
..
Finally, we suggest a plausible mechanism that can explain the long-run effects of the Pale. Weargue that the non-Jewish population developed a special anti-market culture and bonding trust amongrepresentatives of their own group at the time when Jews and non-Jews lived side-by-side in towns andshtetls inside the Pale. Historical sources document hostility, rivalry, and little social interaction beyondmarket transactions between Jews and local non-Jewish population (Hoffman 1997, Slezkine 2004). The presence of a rival group in close proximity with alien religion, traditions and language, and with a veryspecific social role as market intermediary, created pressure on the non-Jews to unite against the Jews.This social pressure had two important consequences for the non-Jewish population within the Pale. First,ethnic antagonism between the two groups led to the development of within-group solidarity and trust. Asthis kind of trust developed in opposition to the rival group, it is often referred to as “bonding” (restrictedto homogenous groups) as opposed to “bridging” (across diverse social groups) social capital (Fukuyama1995; Putnam 2000), or “limited” as opposed to “generalized” morality (Tabellini 2008). Second, sinceJews as a group represented a liberal pro-market force by their distinct traditional occupations, ethnichostility of the non-Jewish population against Jews triggered the development of an anti-market cultureamong the non-Jewish population as anti-market sentiment was equated with anti-Jewish sentiment. Weargue that both the anti-market culture and within-group bonds have persisted among descendants of thenon-Jewish population up to the present day”
http://www.academia.edu/2044298/Persistent_Anti-Market_Culture_A_Legacy_of_the_Pale_of_Settlement_after_the_Holocaust
RE: “And when I asked a young American named Jeremy, What do you think this country will look like in 100 years? he responded with a religious vision: I see millions of people streaming through these streets to get to the temple to make animal sacrifices.” ~ Weiss
MY COMMENT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Dahmer also liked animal sacrifices, but I suspect Ishmael would think it a bit too “frantic”!*
*ISHMAEL (from Moby-Dick, 1851):
SOURCE – http://lit.genius.com/Herman-melville-moby-dick-chap-17-the-ramadan-annotated
RE: “And when I asked a young American named Jeremy, What do you think this country will look like in 100 years? he responded with a religious vision: I see millions of people streaming through these streets to get to the temple to make animal sacrifices.” ~ Weiss
MY COMMENT: Jeffrey Dahmer also liked animal sacrifices, but I suspect Ishmael would think it a bit too “frantic”!*
*ISHMAEL (from Moby-Dick, 1851):
SOURCE – http://lit.genius.com/Herman-melville-moby-dick-chap-17-the-ramadan-annotated
1) the guy in the first video is an American from CA. the psychotherapist who needs a real psychotherapist. he’s suffering from MD– messianic disease.
(We LET them have Mecca?????????)
2) those kids are indoctrinated cultists. their parents are responsible. wanna bet that they are also settler kiddies?
3) this American faux Moses says: ” Moslems cut off people’s heads.” “fanatical Moslems” “what is Palestine” he seems devoted to checking Phil’s Jewish bonafides and denigrating “Moslems” as the “problem”.
4) Another settler (Canadian?) demanding more Israeli violence. He’s an expert, and the MSM is also out to spread “disinformation” about the Arabs who kill Jews. Poor Phil, he’s only a “layperson from NY”.
those are some very scary (bearded) settlers from the US/ North America. I thank you, Phil. Thanks for making the obvious so very crystal clear.
I don’t speak Hebrew well enough to understand the last harrumph from Ben- Ari.
Max is correct — it’s #JSIL.
“Video of my presentation at London’s SOAS on the war in Gaza and Israeli exceptionalism: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u7JWj8FMcoc&feature=youtu.be …”
https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal
Here’s what I want to know~ why is the US supporting and arming JSIL while bombing ISIL? Ofer Winter is #JSIL and, according to Max, he is extremely popular in Israel today. Didn’t we make ISIL and JSIL happen?
What is clear to me is that first, denial of Palestinians is paramount to these messianic extremists. Therefore, genocide of Palestinians and genocidal beliefs against Muslims are inculcated and nurtured in the minds of these people who say it’s all about democracy, song and dance… but they deny the indigenous rights to life of the indigenous people and call for more killing of the “terrorists”, never acknowledging that it is their conscripted IOF that is the “terrorist” force.