Advertisement
Canada markets closed
  • S&P/TSX

    22,167.03
    +59.95 (+0.27%)
     
  • S&P 500

    5,254.35
    +5.86 (+0.11%)
     
  • DOW

    39,807.37
    +47.29 (+0.12%)
     
  • CAD/USD

    0.7381
    -0.0005 (-0.07%)
     
  • CRUDE OIL

    83.11
    -0.06 (-0.07%)
     
  • Bitcoin CAD

    95,540.16
    +1,114.43 (+1.18%)
     
  • CMC Crypto 200

    885.54
    0.00 (0.00%)
     
  • GOLD FUTURES

    2,254.80
    +16.40 (+0.73%)
     
  • RUSSELL 2000

    2,124.55
    +10.20 (+0.48%)
     
  • 10-Yr Bond

    4.2060
    +0.0100 (+0.24%)
     
  • NASDAQ

    16,379.46
    -20.06 (-0.12%)
     
  • VOLATILITY

    13.01
    +0.23 (+1.80%)
     
  • FTSE

    7,952.62
    +20.64 (+0.26%)
     
  • NIKKEI 225

    40,344.02
    +175.95 (+0.44%)
     
  • CAD/EUR

    0.6844
    +0.0001 (+0.01%)
     

The violence that began at Jerusalem’s ancient holy sites is driven by a distinctly modern zeal

<span>Photograph: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images</span>
Photograph: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images

On Monday, an apocalyptic video from Jerusalem began to circulate on social media. In the background, it showed a large fire raging on the site Muslims call al-Aqsa or al-Haram al-Sharif, and Jews call the Temple Mount. A tree was ablaze next to al-Aqsa mosque (some blamed Israeli police stun grenades, others blamed Palestinians shooting fireworks, perhaps aiming at Jewish worshippers). Below, the large plaza of the Western Wall was full with young Jewish Israelis, identified with the religious Zionist right, celebrating “Jerusalem Day” (marking the occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967). They were cheering at the sight of the fire, singing an anthem of vengeance popular in extreme-right circles. The lyrics are the words of Samson, just before he pulled down the pillars of the Temple in Gaza: “O God, that I may with one blow take vengeance on the Philistines for my two eyes!” The Israeli teenagers, visibly ecstatic, jumped up and down and shouted: “May their name be effaced!”

This is not the first time that the holy sites have been ground zero for a major violent escalation in the conflict, and it is therefore tempting to interpret this vengeful frenzy as merely the latest eruption of an atavistic devotion to ancient stones, one bound to spiral out of control. But this is a misleading story: the political significance of these places – and their very meaning – has changed dramatically over the past century, particularly for Jewish Israelis.

Judaism, as it developed in antiquity and the middle ages, is a religion shaped by the absence of the Temple – destroyed by the Romans in 70CE. And while Jewish prayers speak about yearning for its reestablishment, the biblical practices associated with the Temple (such as animal sacrifice) are antithetical to the praxis and spirit of Judaism. The Western Wall (part of the supporting wall of Herod’s Temple) is sacred as a remnant – a symbol of the destruction that shaped Judaism. The current site has been venerated by Jews since the 16th century. By the 19th century, it was the most important Jewish site of pilgrimage and worship, but for the Zionist movement, it represented an ideological conundrum.

ADVERTISEMENT

The modern Jewish national movement, calling for a return to Zion, wanted to reclaim the wall. From the early 20th century, Zionist leaders called to “redeem” it by purchasing the houses in its vicinity and paving a plaza for worshippers. They sought to transform it into a monument of national revival. But the wall itself, as a remnant of the destroyed Temple’s compound, was a symbol of ruin, and nothing could change that fact. For Judaism, the wall was a constant reminder of God’s exile – an exile that the modern Zionist promise to “ingather the Jewish Diasporas” could not overcome. This simple and insurmountable contradiction has never ceased to haunt the Zionist engagement with the wall.

This ambivalence was noticeable in early Zionist attitudes. The wall was largely absent from early Zionist iconography, and appeared (if at all) as a metaphor for destruction, contrasted with symbols of Zionist revival such as the agricultural colonies. The Labour-dominated Zionist movement sought to harness Jewish religious symbols in favour of secular nationalism, but was strongly opposed to ideas of the reconstruction of the Temple. So much that, as historian Hillel Cohen revealed, in 1931 the Zionist Hagana militia murdered a Jew who planned to blow up the Islamic sites of the Haram.

After the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, Israeli officials were in direct control of the holy sites. They pledged to maintain the status quo on the Haram, which remained under effective Palestinian Muslim control. When it came to the Western Wall, the desire to make the site into a national Jewish monument was finally achieved. Within days, the Mughrabi Quarter, a medieval neighbourhood that stood next to the wall, was entirely depopulated and razed to the ground to make room for a huge plaza. From a hidden wall, seen only from close proximity, it became a monumental stage, used not only for prayer but also for state and military ceremonies.

But the transformation did not resolve the basic contradictions embedded in the wall, and indeed has only served to accentuate them. Now much more than before, the wall’s liminal position as a sharp border between Jews (below) and Muslims (above), between ruin (the wall) and redemption (the unattainable Temple Mount), was rendered visible. The wall remains a memorial of destruction, a site of absence, while the Muslim sites loom from above.

After 1967, the secular Labour movement lost its position as the Zionist vanguard. Religious settlers claimed the language of Zionism as they spearheaded the colonisation of the occupied territories. The secular-Zionist project of “normalisation” – making Jews a territorial nation “like any other” – was overtaken from within by those who continued the colonising mission, but interpreted the biblical promise of the land literally as manifest destiny. In that context, the holy sites – now under Israeli control – assumed a new meaning, and became a new frontier. Some religious Zionists were no longer content with the Western Wall, given that the Temple Mount was within reach.

In the 1980s, there were two attempts by Jewish militant groups to blow up the Islamic sites on the Haram. Since then, the Temple Mount Faithful, calling for Israel to assert Jewish control of the Haram, has grown from a tiny fringe group to a movement with political backing. The Temple Institute in the Old City, funded partly by the Israeli government, produces ritual objects for the Temple, in anticipation of its reconstruction, while performances of simulated ritual sacrifices by priests in white robes are held annually before Passover, in close proximity to the Haram al-Sharif. Such practices represent no less than a reinvention of Judaism – given that it has been shaped for 2,000 years by the Temple’s destruction. These activities remain minority pursuits; more popular are frequent group visits of religious Jews to the Mount, despite Palestinian protests. Orthodox rabbis had long forbidden visits to the compound because of its sanctity. But more and more rabbinic authorities have lifted the ban, and these visits assume ritual significance, even though, formally, Jewish prayer remains forbidden, in keeping with the status quo.

In the last few years, Jewish supremacism has emerged as a hegemonic ideology that legitimises Israeli control over the entire country, from the river to the sea. For the Israeli radical right, Israel’s inability or unwillingness to take complete control over the Haram is a symptom of “weak sovereignty”. This frustration accentuates the theological insufficiency of the Wall – as the site of permanent ruin and absence – and turns the attention to the Temple Mount.

The ongoing Palestinian presence in al-Aqsa Mosque therefore appears as the last significant obstacle to Israeli domination – the site has huge mobilising force among ordinary Palestinians who come to defend it in their thousands in times such as this, and it is no surprise that Hamas sought to associate itself with its defence, through the firing of rockets from Gaza.

Palestinians remain in control of the country’s holiest place for Muslims and Jews, not through military force or diplomatic negotiations, but simply by continuing to be there, with the moral authority that confers.

The Haram al-Sharif thus represents a symbolic challenge to Jewish-Israeli hegemony that is far more significant than the weakened Palestinian Authority or Hamas’s rockets. This may explain the violence of the Israeli police in storming the mosque, and the high number of injuries among Muslim worshippers this week – just as it explains the crowd of young Israelis singing genocidal songs of vengeance as fires burn on the Haram al-Sharif. But what has gone largely unremarked is the extent to which these events signal the emergence of a version of Judaism that fetishises rock and soil – and pursues a fantasy of redemption in the physical takeover of the Temple’s site. For now, such an apocalyptic scenario is still unlikely. But already the events of this week – with the country engulfed by an unprecedented wave of vigilante violence that threatens to explode into civil war – are a demonstration of how dangerous this trend has already become.

  • Yair Wallach is a senior lecturer in Israeli studies and head of the Centre for Jewish Studies at SOAS, the University of London