Explained: The Israeli Extremists Who Want to Rebuild the Temple, and the Government Ministers Who Back Them - Israel News - Haaretz.com
Temple Mount Movement activists.Credit: Photos: Mark Neyman/ GPO; Olivier Fitoussi. Artwork: Anastasia Shub
It arrived last week, right on schedule – a yearly flier advertising "a live rehearsal of the Passover sacrifice." One might assume that the men featured on the brochure dressed in what appears to be ancient religious garments are the AI-generated result of someone's search for "modern-day high priests," but they're completely real.
Hailing from the most extreme factions of the Temple Movement, the umbrella term for the various groups that share the goal of reclaiming Jewish sovereignty over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the men in the photo have spent years studying the biblical instructions for preparing the special Passover offering at the Holy Temple – which last existed in the year 70.
They're sticklers down to the length of the knife cuts and the procedure for the blood that will be collected after the baby lamb has been ritually slaughtered. Their rehearsal is intended as a dry run, should their dream of rebuilding the Temple ever come to fruition.
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The event advertised in the flier promised to take place outside of Jerusalem, in Mitzpeh Yericho, an ultra-religious settlement in the West Bank, and not on Temple Mount. But another group of Temple activists stuck to a more ambitious plan, and were arrested on Monday for trying to sacrifice a goat on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. When they were released shortly after the arrest, they gloated about Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir intervening on their behalf.
Temple Movement activists at a Passover ceremony at the Temple Mount last year.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi
Is the Mitzpe Jerico event a sign that more moderate voices from the movement have finally prevailed? Or has Israel's hard-right government only emboldened activists to try to upend the tacit understanding that is keeping Jews' and Muslims' reluctant tolerance of each other's presence on the Temple Mount from devolving into an all-out war?
Below is a look at the past, present and future of the ever-growing Temple Movement and its quest to claim full ownership over one of the world's most sacred, and therefore contentious, plots of real estate.
The first 30 years: Status quo and secular nationalism
In 1967, just weeks after Israeli forces took the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa Mosque compound as part of its victory in the Six-Day War, then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, who personally oversaw the capture of East Jerusalem, announced that Israeli soldiers would vacate the Temple area and hand over supervision to the Jordan-appointed Waqf, a Muslim religious trust.
He also gave an order to evict any Jewish worshippers trying to pray on the Mount. Dayan's ruling is often referred to as the earliest formulation of the Temple Mount's status quo, the informal and fragile agreement stating that Muslims will pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, and Jews at the Western Wall, the portion of the Second Temple's retaining wall that remains today.
Standing at the Western Wall, Dayan proclaimed, "To our Arab neighbors we extend, especially at this hour, the hand of peace. To members of the other religions, Christians and Muslims, I hereby promise faithfully that their full freedom and all their religious rights will be preserved. We did not come to Jerusalem to conquer the holy places of others."
Far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir, now national security minister, visiting the Temple Mount in 2022.Credit: Sinan Abu Mayzer/Reuters
According to Tomer Persico, a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and a Rubinstein fellow at Reichman University, Dayan was able to avoid serious Jewish pushback because even after the recapture of the Mount, there was very little demand to put the site back into use. "The religious Zionists were interested in the Temple as a future utopian ideal," Persico says. "They didn't even believe that Jews were allowed on the Temple Mount at this point."
He adds: "Then there were the secular socialists who not only weren't drawn to the Temple, they were actively averse to the religious association with ascending the Mount."
Which left only one small group – right-wing secular revisionist Zionists. Among them was a man named Gershom Salomon. The entire Temple Movement can trace its origins back to him.
In 1958, taking part in sparring with the Syrian army in the Golan Heights, Salomon was badly wounded when an Israeli tank accidentally ran over his leg. After recovering, Salomon, though completely secular, claimed to have received divine intervention on the day he was wounded. The instruction: Lead the reconstruction of the Temple. So he formed the Temple Mount Faithful, which declared that it would intervene in negotiations between Jewish leaders and the Waqf over access and ownership of the Mount.
The movement's most significant gains of the last three decades have generally occurred as a reaction to developments in the peace process – a fear that Jews might lose access to holy sites.
During the '70s and '80s, the then-distinctly non-Orthodox Temple Mount Faithful was the main group advocating for a Jewish takeover of the entire compound. But growing tensions with the more religious elements in the group eventually led to a split in 1987, with the ultra-Orthodox members leaving to form a new group, Movement for the Establishment of the Temple.
Eran Tzidkiyahu, a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a research fellow at the Forum for Regional Thinking, divides the history of the Temple Movement into two distinct periods of around 30 years each.
"The first 30 years were static, not a lot was accomplished, and their motivations were much more nationalistic in nature," Tzidkiyahu says. "Whereas in the last 30 years, as over 25 distinct organizations have formed, there has been a slow but constant march toward changing the status quo."
Whether trumpets or the method for ritual slaughter, Temple Mount activists are sticklers for detail.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi
The next 30 years: From fringe to mainstream
According to both Tzidkiyahu and Persico, the movement's most significant gains of the last three decades have generally occurred as a reaction to developments in the peace process, especially when withdrawing from land is at issue.
"We can trace this back all the way to Israel leaving Sinai [in 1982]," Tzidkiyahu says, "when the Jewish underground attempted and failed to blow up the Dome of the Rock. But we really see it significantly after the Oslo Accords in the '90s."
The accords established a framework for peace talks between Israel and the PLO including Palestinian self-governance in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Before the accords, the vast majority of Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox leaders, including the Chief Rabbinate, upheld Jewish law's prohibition against entering the area of the Temple without being "cleansed of the contamination of coming into contact with the deceased," a purification ritual that is no longer possible.
Yehudah Glick 'began using phrases like "human rights" and "freedom of worship." They understood that there needed to be concentric circles of support,' says Eran Tzidkiyahu of Hebrew University.
But after Oslo, when religious Zionists began to fear that negotiations with the Palestinians might lose them access to Jewish holy sites, the wind began to shift. In 1996, the Movement for Temple Renewal, one of the organizations under the Temple Movement umbrella, found an ally in the Yesha Rabbis Committee, which ruled that ascent to the Mount was permitted.
"By 1997," Tzidkiyahu notes, "the Yesha rabbis had issued their own independent decree compelling Jews to ascend to the Temple Mount, in defiance of the ruling of the Chief Rabbinate."
The next big jump in what Tzidkiyahu calls "the mainstream-ization" of the Temple Movement occurred in 2005, when then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced his plan to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza. It was around this time that a young, charismatic rabbi named Yehudah Glick came onto the scene.
Yehudah Glick campaigning in the run-up to the Likud primary in 2019. He was a lawmaker for the party from 2016 to 2019.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi
Yehudah Glick, the man who changed a movement
When Israel left Gaza, the American-born Glick, a low-level government official, promptly resigned in protest, turning his attention to an obscure right-wing settler group called the Temple Institute. Smart, passionate and fluent in both Hebrew and English, by the time Glick left the institute in 2009, he had become the face of the Temple Movement. He remains one of its most prominent members.
"Glick changed the language of the movement," Tzidkiyahu says. "He began to talk in terms of liberal values, using phrases like 'human rights' and 'freedom of worship.'"
His celebrity remained largely in-house until October 2014, when he was shot by a Palestinian man after giving a speech in Jerusalem advocating for Jewish worship on the Temple Mount. Glick lingered in critical condition for weeks before recovering.
The shooting marked a major turning point both for Glick and the movement. Whereas before, Israelis were generally dismissive of extremists like Glick and their provocations at a contentious holy site, now he was seen as a victim of Palestinian violence.
The police more or less look the other way, as does the Waqf. If they acknowledged what for them is a dramatic shift in the status quo, it would be like admitting defeat.
Haaretz's Nir Hasson
Glick and other leaders quickly realized that for Temple Mount activism to truly move into the mainstream they needed boots on the ground. "They understood that there needed to be concentric circles of support," Tzidkiyahu says.
"It was a nucleus of devoted activists, then a larger group of respected rabbis and lawmakers who condoned their activities – and most importantly, a wider base of people who either wanted to ascend the Temple Mount or supported the right of others to do so."
According to Tzidkiyahu, for the next decade or so, Temple Mount activists focused their outreach efforts on ensuring that any visit to the site would be uncontroversial. "They did lots of work coordinating with the police," he says. "They wanted to make sure that when people went up, especially for the first time, there were no arrests, no shouting."
Also during this time, the Temple Movement began to gain legitimacy in the Knesset. "It sometimes gets overlooked, but just before Glick gave his speech before he was shot, Miri Regev, who was at the same conference, gave a similar speech," Tzidkiyahu says, referring to the culture minister at the time, a firebrand Likud politician.
He adds: "At that time, you also have [then-Public Security Minister] Gilad Erdan attempting to reverse Temple Mount security policies that limit Jewish worship. And then, of course, there was Glick himself," who was a Likud lawmaker from 2016 to 2019.
Miri Regev and Glick at a conference devoted to the Temple Mount in 2014.Credit: Emil Salman
2015: The fruits of their labors
Around 2015, "for the first time, security officials began employing collective restrictions on Muslims based on, for example, age or gender," Tzidkiyahu says. "And they started imposing sweeping limitations on Muslim access to the compound, as opposed to situation-specific security assessments."
And just as it was becoming more challenging for Muslims to enter the compound, it got easier for Jews. Haaretz journalist Nir Hasson has been covering the Temple Mount and its activists for years.
He notes that in 2017, two policemen were killed by Arab-Israeli assailants on the Mount. "This was a major turning point in terms of how the police treated both Jewish and Muslim worshippers," Hasson says.
As a result of the killings, the Israeli authorities installed metal detectors at the Mount's entrances as a security measure. For Muslim worshippers, this breached the status quo, leading to rioting in and around the Old City and a call by the Waqf to boycott prayer at the compound until the metal detectors were removed.
The Palestinians, especially those from East Jerusalem, established as part of their identity a duty to protect Al-Aqsa from infidels.
Tomer Persico of Reichman University
They were removed – two weeks later. During that time, some Jews capitalized on the less-visited Mount to begin quietly praying there. "It was a small window. But once they started, it became hard to reverse. This is how the status quo works," Hasson says.
"Then, around three years ago, the police really began letting Jewish worshippers pray. Not with a cantor, and not with ritual objects like a prayer book, but early in the morning, in the southeast corner of the complex, you can find Jewish people praying there."
It was merely an unspoken understanding; there was no change in the law. "The police more or less look the other way, as does the Waqf," Hasson says. "If they acknowledged what for them is a dramatic shift in the status quo, it would be like admitting defeat. So they prefer to ignore it."
Red Heifers imported to Israel, last month. For a sacrifice, the activists need a completely blemish-free red heifer with no more than two non-red hairs on its body.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi
The extremists of the extremists
The Temple Movement now contains pockets of extremists for whom just praying at the Mount isn't nearly enough. They have set their sights on a higher goal: the rebuilding of the Temple.
After the First Temple was destroyed in 586 B.C.E. and the Second Temple in 70 C.E., Jewish hopes for rebuilding the structure were expressed as part of a yearning for a future Messianic Era. The Third Temple would be the central symbol of redemption and divine presence.
But the most fanatical groups in the Temple Movement – the Movement for the Establishment of the Temple, for example – aim to reverse the order of events. They hope to usher in the Messianic Era by rebuilding the Temple based on specifications laid out in the Torah and subsequent rabbinic works.
These groups focus much of their efforts on recreating all the material elements for a Third Temple to be functional. This endeavor has received generous backing from a succession of American-Jewish – and more recently – Christian-Zionist donors, on top of funding from the Israeli government.
Every year, members of these groups also attempt to turn their sacrifice rehearsals into reality by bringing a baby goat up to the Mount for ritual slaughter. In 2022, the group Returning to the Mount offered a cash prize for anyone who smuggled a lamb up to the site and performed the traditional Passover rite.
But no one has made it past the guards at the Mugrabi Gate that leads to the Mount. When people are caught, they are either arrested or banned from the Temple Mount for life, or both.
And one more thing stands between these fringe groups and a Third Temple: They need a completely blemish-free red heifer with no more than two non-red hairs on its body. Plus it must be older than 3 years old and must never have given birth or been milked or yoked. Its ashes are the elusive ingredient for the purification ritual that no one has done in 2,000 years.
The search for such a red heifer has included a failed attempt at in vitro fertilization in 2015. But during the 2020 calving season, five promising candidates were found in Texas by Byron Stinson, an evangelical Christian involved in the search.
The COVID-19 pandemic, which reduced the number of farmhands working, inadvertently allowed these heifers to remain unnoticed. The five cows made it to Israel but did not meet the standards of the rabbinical authorities from the Temple Institute, and the search for the Holy Cow continues.
Palestinian women reading the Quran at the Dome of the Rock during Ramadan earlier this month.Credit: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP
Palestinian response
According to Persico, the Palestinians' relationship with Haram al-Sharif, as they call the Temple Mount, dates all the way back to the 12th century when the Muslim leader Saladin, a Kurd, recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders. He then brought people from Morocco and Kurdistan to settle around Haram al-Sharif in the area known as the Mugrabi neighborhood.
"From that point, the Palestinians, especially those from East Jerusalem, established as part of their identity a duty to protect Al-Aqsa from infidels," Persico says. "And this is why even the smallest shift in the status quo can cause such violent protests. Because even today, these moves are seen as a direct attack not only on their religion, but on their national identity."
Persico argues that the Palestinians' relationship to the status quo is in some ways a mirror image of the Jews'. "It gets talked about a lot less," he says. "But the Palestinians have also made certain inroads to changes in the status quo in their favor. Nevertheless, there is a persistent feeling among Palestinians that they are constantly losing ground."
Back in 2017, Tzidkiyahu told Haaretz about another critical aspect of the Palestinian connection to Haram al-Sharif. "It's the only place where there is a certain degree of freedom and independence for Palestinians," he said, "because it's the place where Israeli sovereignty is at its most imperfect and the Israeli occupation is less present. … This is precisely what the Palestinians feel that they are losing – not only their national symbol, but also their personal expanse of freedom, to which they are connected not only at the religious level, but also at the individual level."
Itamar Ben-Gvir heading for the Temple Mount in 2022.Credit: Ohad Zwigenberg
Temple Movement activists in the government
For almost its entire existence, Temple Movement activists have viewed the Israeli government as an obstacle on their path toward Jewish sovereignty on the Temple Mount.
But that changed in 2022 when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formed the most far-right government in Israel's history, including several ministers who were, at the very least, Temple Movement-adjacent if not full members. No one fits this description more than National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose wife Ayala is an active member of the Temple Movement.
Since coming to power, Ben-Gvir has relentlessly pursued a pro-Jewish agenda regarding the Mount, visiting the site several times and calling for sweeping changes to the status quo, with only Netanyahu standing in his way.
On the one hand, as Hasson has reported, Netanyahu has, perhaps surprisingly, done a fairly good job of keeping Ben-Gvir and other Temple fundamentalists in check. "He actually has a long history of keeping things calm," Hasson says. "And this year, all eyes were on Netanyahu on Ramadan."
Ben-Gvir wanted to impose limits on which Muslims would be allowed to pray at Al-Aqsa during the Muslim holy month, which security officials warned would lead to disaster. "Ultimately, Netanyahu didn't give in to Ben-Gvir's demands and we had one of the quietest Ramadans in years," Hasson says.
But these small gains have been swallowed up by the security minister's larger mission. Ben-Gvir is "an agent of chaos," as Tzidkiyahu puts it. "He thrives on creating as much drama as possible."
Ben-Gvir doesn't just go quietly up to the Temple Mount, a point raised by all three experts interviewed for this article. "He loudly announces it with the most racist, incendiary statements possible," Tzidkiyahu says. "And with the control he has over the police, he's directly responsible for the leniency that Jews who try to pray on the Temple Mount are afforded."
And so, emboldened by broad support among not necessarily religious Israelis, the increasing number of Jews visiting the Mount – 30,000 last year alone – political endorsements and security officials allowing brazen violations of the rules, the gap between the murky status quo and actual events on the Mount is widening. And Temple Movement extremists don't seem to be letting up.
"My real fear is something we've seen before," Persico says. "I worry that if a new peace process makes headway, either with Palestinians becoming citizens of Israel or a two-state solution, extremists in the Temple Movement will do what they have always done any time there is a step toward peace: attempt to derail it by any means necessary."