Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA)

On the morning of Saturday, October 7, 2023, Palestinian arch-terrorist and the commander-in-chief of Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades, Mohammed Deif, festively heralded the opening of their brutal massacre of October 7, 2023, entitled “the Al-Aqsa Flood,” in which over a thousand Israeli citizens and foreign residents were cruelly and brutally murdered, raped, violated and kidnapped.

The decision to integrally link this horrific massacre with Islam’s third most Holy Site carried with it a clear and particular intent and message – to present Hamas, before the Islamic world, as the sole and most worthy defender of Islam’s holy sites, and in so doing to attract the support of all of Islam in the war against Israel and the Jews.

The nature of this incitement by Mohammed Deif, specifically aimed and oriented towards the Muslim world and even calling upon all Muslims as well as Muslim and Arab states to join the battle, included particularly bitter, false, and malicious accusations against Israel and Jews.

Deif’s words, as translated and reproduced in the “Palestinian Chronicle” and the “Middle East Monitor” on the morning of October 7, 2023, include:

Palestinian Chronicle¹:

The Israelis have “attacked (our) worshippers and desecrated Al-Aqsa (Mosque), and we have previously warned them. The enemy desecrated Al-Aqsa and dared to harm the Prophet’s path.

We have decided to put an end to all of the occupation’s crimes. The time is over for them (Israel) to (continue to) act without accountability. Thus, we announce the ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ operation, and in the first strike within 20 minutes, more than 5,000 rockets were launched.

Starting from today, security coordination (between Israel and the Palestinian Authority) ends. Today, the people reclaim their revolution, correct their path, and return to the march of return.

O, our people in Al-Quds (Occupied East Jerusalem), expel the (Israeli) occupiers and demolish the walls. O, our people in the interior (Palestine pre-48 regions), Al-Naqab (Negev), Al-Jalil (Galil), and the Triangle (Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarem), turn the land into flames beneath the feet of the occupiers.

O, our brothers in the Islamic resistance in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, today is the day when your resistance merges with the resistance of your brothers in Palestine. It is time for the Arab resistance to unite.

We call for mobilization towards Palestine. O, our brothers in Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, and the rest of the Arab countries, take action and heed the call. 

The era of (losing) bets has ended, and the occupation must be expelled.

O, our people in all Arab and Islamic countries, start marching (today), not tomorrow, and breach the borders and barriers. 

This is the day of the grand (plan) to end the occupation.

Today, whoever has a gun, let him bring it out; it’s time. Everyone should come out with their trucks, cars, or (fighting) tools. Today, history opens its most pure and honorable pages. 

Middle East Monitor²

…the Israeli occupation banned the Palestinian citizens from accessing the Al-Aqsa Mosque and allowed Israeli colonial settlers to defile the Muslim sacred site and conduct daily raids into the Muslim holy compound.

During such raids, Israeli colonial settlers performed religious rituals and prayers and blew the horn at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. They have declared their intentions to build their purported temple on the ruins of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

They also insulted our Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) inside the Al-Aqsa compound, tore up the Quran, and brought dogs into the Muslim sacred site.

Each day, the Israeli colonial settlers attempt to impose a new fait accompli on the ground, attack the Palestinian citizens of occupied Jerusalem, and steal their homes and property.

The Israeli occupation has desecrated the Al-Aqsa Mosque, from which the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) ascended to heaven on the Al-Isra wa Al-Mi’raj journey.

The Muslim religious element of this Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023, was even more blatant, obvious, and visible to all who witnessed the actual photographic images and footage during the day of the massacre. In such grim footage, filmed mainly by the body-cameras carried by the Hamas Nukhba terrorists themselves who carried out the outrages, each act of murder, rape, torture, dehumanizing individuals, as well as burning families, and destruction of homes, was proudly and gleefully accompanied by the exclamation “Allahu Akbar” (God is great).³

The fact that Hamas “celebrated” this massacre by glorifying and associating it with Islam’s third holiest Mosque, Al-Aqsa, and through associating each of their gruesome acts of terror with the praise of God is undoubtedly appalling in and of itself.

One might have expected that this shocking phenomenon would have generated weighty introspection and discomfort among Muslims throughout the world, as well as among the wider international community, regarding this juxtaposition of one of the most reprehensible acts of terror known to humanity, together with one of the most revered Muslimm Holy Sites and the Muslim praise to God.

It evidently did not.

Indeed, one may well wonder how millions of Muslims worldwide are able to resignedly tolerate and live with the regrettable association and identification of one of their holiest religious sites with one of civilization’s most cruel massacres?

By any accepted and universal logic and reason, holy sites revered as such by all religions, and especially one of the most sacred and most central religious sites revered by Muslim worldwide, should signify peace, brotherhood, and love of humanity rather than wholesale murder, rape, and terror.

The basic norms and values of religion inherent in the various Biblical, Koranic, or other scriptures and sources would assume that the aim of religion—all and any religion—is for humankind to live at peace, in dignity, and in harmony with God and with humanity and not serve as a source of constant and unending conflict.

Some might even believe that among various sects in Islam and possibly in other religions, the targeting of Jews has, throughout history and even today, not been considered to be incompatible with this juxtaposition of terror and religion.

However, one would hope that the majority of modern Muslims would be thoroughly shocked and alarmed by it.

Regrettably, there appears to be no indication that any serious Muslim scholar, organization, or state, or, for that matter, any self-respecting non-Muslim state, international organization, or international leader, has thought it appropriate to object to and disassociate themselves from the juxtaposition of Islam, its holy sites, and the October 7 Hamas “Al-Aqsa Flood” massacre.

The opposite is the case.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, consistently initiates, dictates, sanctions, and personally incites pernicious, antisemitic weekly sermons by Iranian religious leaders (Imams) and military commanders, as well as his own statements. Such declarations include calls to “mobilize the whole Islamic world for a sharp confrontation with the Zionist regime…. If we abide by the Koran, all of us should mobilize to kill.”⁴

Further examples of more recent official Iranian antisemitism include a toxic speech on October 25, 2023, by senior Iranian cleric and preacher Alireza Panahyan, who broadcast throughout the Iranian media calling for Muslims and Christians to “eliminate the Jews as the global strategy of Muslims.”

Similarly, on October 27, 2020, the Imam of Gorgan, the capital of Golestan Province, described Jews as “animals in human form” and the worst enemy of the Muslims.”

On February 28, 2024, General Azim Ibrahim Poor, the commander of the Consciousness Command in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, stated, inter alia, at the Bahoner University in Kerman:

Know the devil. Know that the true worshippers of Satan are the Jewish rabbis who established the triangle of money, power, and deception. Today, we are the greatest enemy of the Jews in the world, and we face the enemy…. Today, 45 years have passed since the Islamic Revolution, and we have been fighting with Jews for 45 years.

General Azim Ibrahim Poor also accused the Jews of:

taking their children as a kind of organ supply facility for rabbis and great Jews; every time one of the greatest Jews needs an organ transplant, the Jews kill children who have grown up and give their organs to that Jew…. The Jews know that there are verses in the real Bible that say that the Iranians will exterminate the Jews….⁵

The Status Quo as a Cause for Incitement and Violence

From time immemorial, throughout history, and sadly up to the present day, religion, religious practice, religious sites, and rights of worship have figured and continue to figure as significant and sometimes sole factors causing, affecting, and influencing internecine friction, violence, bloodshed, international crises, and disputes throughout the world.

Thus, calls by international leaders, expressed in numerous international declarations, conventions, and resolutions, for “interreligious understanding and dialogue” are, at best, nothing more than a naive and lofty yet wholly unrealistic ideal and, at worst, utter ignorance, naivete, and/or ill-advised political correctness.

In fact, it is religion itself and its associated issues of rights of worship and modes of practice that serve as one of the central instigating or causative factors in local and international conflicts and the basic cause behind incitement to internecine violence.

In many instances, religious practices and observances at major religious sites and shrines are based strictly and uncompromisingly on historical determinations, customs, and practices that have been given the revered and even irreversible and holy stature of a “status quo.”

Such determinations, customs, and practices were developed and established to address the specific historical circumstances relevant at the time of their establishment. But by accepted norms and standards of interreligious tolerance and human rights, they are inherently discriminatory and run counter to such norms.

Status Quo on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount

One of the most striking examples of such a historical and irreversible “status quo” causing endless incitement to hatred, strife, and violence between religious faiths, communities, and states is Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, in which the Al-Aqsa Mosque is located, and which has weathered innumerable conflicts and holy wars from time immemorial between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.

A historic status quo such as that existing at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, perpetuating an ancient and outdated social structure that no longer exists, practicing religious discrimination and denying or restricting rights of worship, and serving as a magnet for ongoing religious incitement, should logically no longer be relevant and should not be tolerated in modern international society.

Such a phenomenon is distinctly and blatantly incompatible with accepted international norms and concepts of equality, human rights, freedom of religion and worship, interreligious and intercultural dialogue, tolerance, understanding, and cooperation.

As has been proven by the “Al-Aqsa Flood,” the continued usage of an ancient status quo serves as an inevitable cause of ongoing internecine strife, incitement, and hysteric violence.⁶

Jerusalem

With its long history and holy sites, Jerusalem undoubtedly represents one of the most complex, unique, passionate, and explosive issues that have, literally from time immemorial, beleaguered the world in general and the Middle East in particular.⁷

Jerusalem and its holy sites have posed and continue to pose an intractable dilemma, whether one traces Jerusalem to biblical times or to the Christian Crusades of the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries, in which European Christian states sought to secure control of those holy sites considered sacred by both Christians and Muslims.

Disputes regarding control, governance, and daily maintenance on the Temple Mount have always existed and continue up to the present day.⁸

The Connection Between the “Al-Aqsa Flood” and the Status Quo on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount

As is evident from the “Al-Aqsa Flood” denomination, Jerusalem and its holy sites are of great importance far beyond immediate questions of right of worship, territorial control, legal and administrative authority, public order, or their substantial economic and touristic potential.

Indeed, the title “Al-Aqsa Flood” was generated by the Hamas terror organization in the context of the oft-repeated and patently false Arab accusation and cause of incitement claiming that “Al Aqsa is in danger.”⁹

As pointed out at length in the article by Nadav Shragai, this fictional and empty but ominous catchphrase has repeatedly and historically served the Arab world, and more recently Hamas, in its attempts to mobilize Jerusalem as a magnet for uniting Muslims behind their campaign to delegitimize and even to eliminate Israel and to claim leadership in the Arab world.

International Support for the Temple Mount Status Quo as a Source of Encouragement for the Hamas “Al-Aqsa Flood”

Western democracies, whether out of political correctness vis-à-vis the Muslim world or fear of religious and social sensitivities, have consistently accepted, acknowledged, and given credence to this anachronistic status quo despite its being wholly at odds with the developing 20th– and 21st-century international notions of equality, human rights, and liberalism.

Increasingly, progressive, liberal, and democratic societies and bodies in the international community, including the United States, the UK, and other European states, as well as international and regional organizations and bodies, have consistently overlooked and ignored its inherently discriminatory nature, accepting and perpetuating it in a cynical demonstration of double standards.

This is evident from a long series of international decisions and resolutions sustaining the status quo, including the U.S. formal declaration dated December 6, 2017, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city, in which President Trump called on all parties “to maintain the status quo at Jerusalem’s holy sites, including the Temple Mount, also known as Haram al-Sharif.”¹⁰

As could have been expected, the U.S. declaration elicited a series of predictable if superfluous responses by a choir composed of the United Nations, the European Union, European leaders, and Christian church leaders, all calling for respecting Jerusalem’s status quo according to the relevant UN resolutions regarding the city.¹¹

It is indeed regrettable that those states, international organizations, and churches, in parroting their long-established political positions regarding Jerusalem and in glibly and automatically echoing their support for the status quo, chose to do so without realizing the inherent conflict between such a policy viewpoint and current international practice that they systematically advocate in the field of human rights.

They also did so without realizing that such recognition would ultimately serve to fuel Hamas’s appalling adoption of Al-Aqsa as the theme and slogan for their October 7, 2023 “Al-Aqsa Flood” massacre.

Conclusion

The juxtaposition of the religion of Islam with the October 7 massacre and its fruition in the form of one of the cruelest massacres since the Holocaust should be treated by the international community as an ominous precedent.

This is primarily because Iran has served as the religious and political inspiration and chief financier and weapons provider to Jihadist terror groups, including Hamas, Hizbullah, and the Houthi terror regime in Yemen. Such state-inspired support of terror coupled with religion is fatal.

The continued pampering of the Muslim world by democratic Western countries, whether out of political correctness or false sensitivity or fear, together with the Western tendency to appease the various Muslim Jihadi terror organizations and even to attempt to formalize them within the international community bodies, will surely backfire, as the world has seen with the “Al-Aqsa Flood.”

It remains to be seen if the international community will learn anything from this and reach the necessary conclusions before it is too late.

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Notes