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Tagged ‘Kach‘

The Importance of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the War on Palestine

The existence and importance of the Al-Aqsa Mosque is largely unknown to the West. Thus, the significance of the name chosen for the Oct 7, 2023 “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”, is also largely lost on a Western populace. Yet, the background here is vitally important.

Israel’s Minister of National Security Ben Gvir and his depraved Kahanist followers are pushing toward an all-out bloodbath, holy war. Since Oct 7th, over 190,000 Israelis have filed for weapons licenses, with Gvir’s goal of arming Israel civilians en masse. “Ben Gvir then called ‘on everyone who is eligible’ to ‘go arm yourself’ with a ‘life-saving weapon.’ The month before Benjamin Netanyahu’s government came to power, Ben Gvir was filmed on the streets of occupied Jerusalem waving a pistol and calling on settlers to shoot unarmed Palestinians.” [Source: The Cradle] Prior to October 7, 2023, Ben Gvir, with his ultranationalist allies and Kahanist disciples, have been deliberately and increasingly antagonizing Palestinians and Muslims who consider the mosque to be Islam’s third holiest place after Mecca and Medina. The latest provocation occurred on October 4, 2023, when Israeli settlers storm Al-Aqsa Mosque complex on fifth day of Sukkot.

The following is an excerpt from the article What Does Israel’s New Government Mean for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict? published January 5, 2023:

Swiftly on the heels of the government’s swearing in, and in the face of warnings from the United States, the international community, and Israel’s own security establishment, Ben Gvir chose to message his long-stated position that “Israel is the owner of the Temple Mount” by paying a heavily secured visit to the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif.

Parsing technicalities surrounding provocations in a conflict cauldron is a dangerous game, particularly at a site as storied a flashpoint as the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount. For Palestinians, Christian and Muslim alike, Al Aqsa mosque is considered their most powerful national symbol, making visits expressly intended to display Israeli sovereignty a potent provocation. It is in this vein that Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted on maintaining the status quo, as recently as 2020 noting that ‘Jewish prayer at the Temple Mount, though it sounds like a reasonable thing, I know it would have ignited the Middle East … There’s a limit. There are things that I’m not willing to do to win an election.’…

March 14, 2021: “Israel police stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem on Monday morning as hardline Israelis prepared to parade through Old City in an annual flag-waving march.” More than 100 Palestinians were killed. (Image: GETTY)

Within hours of Ben Gvir’s visit and a UAE condemnation, Netanyahu’s planned upcoming official visit to the UAE was postponed. Subsequently, the UAE has joined with China in calling for an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss concerns over these latest Jerusalem developments. Meanwhile, Jordan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned Israel’s ambassador to the Hashemite Kingdom to explain the provocation, Egypt and Turkey have both registered objection, and Saudi Arabia, the normalization “prize” Netanyahu most seeks, joined the chorus of condemnation in characterizing Ben Gvir’s visit as a “storming” of the Al-Aqsa.

The extent to which this vocal condemnation from Arab partners can serve to rein in the more extreme impulses of the Israeli government remains to be seen. Normalization with the Arab world is deeply popular among Israelis, but Netanyahu’s most extreme coalition partners on whom he relies are driven more by their annexationist and Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif sovereignty goals than by the lure of regional normalization or fear of the international community’s condemnation.

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Jan 3, 2023: ‘Unprecedented provocation’: Israeli ultranationalist minister visits Al-Aqsa mosque’

Watch: Understanding the Depraved & Growing Kahanist Ideology Within the Netanyahu Govt

Jun 3, 2022 BUSBOYS AND POETS

WATCH: “KAHANISTAN: How the Jewish far-right remade the mainstream”

 

The coalition government of Israel consists of seven parties—Likud, United Torah Judaism, Shas, Religious Zionist Party, Otzma Yehudit, Noam and National Unity— it is led by Benjamin Netanyahu, who has taken office as the Prime Minister of Israel for the sixth time.

The Otzma Yehudit party is led by Itamar Ben Gvir. Ben-Gvir, the National Security Minister of Israel, is an influential Kach activist whose media popularity and following is growing. He is a lawyer who has been convicted of incitement to racism and supporting a terrorist organization. Prior to the Israel elections held on November 1, 2022, the possibility that the extreme far-right Otzma Yehudit party could become part of the coalition government set off alarm bells and dire warnings from many Israeli citizens, Jewish citizens abroad, and international leaders with knowledge of the Otzma Yehudit, its leader Ben-Gvir, and it’s depraved Kahanist ideology. It is expected that Ben-Gvir will become a senior partner in Israel’s next government.

Above, October 20, 2022, Jewish News: Where is the Outrage? 

The Otzmah Yehudit party is derived from Kach. It is extraordinary to note that Kach is designated as a terrorist organization by Canada, EU, Japan, the US – and Israel. On May 20, 2022, the United States removed Kach from its list of foreign terror organizations.

The Kach political party in Israel is designated a terrorist organization by Israel, Canada, Japan, the European Union, and, until May, 2022, the United States. Kach and Kahane Chai were officially banned as fringe political parties in 1994 in accordance with Israel’s 1948 anti-terrorism laws, after leading figures expressed support for Baruch Goldstein, a right-wing extremist who massacred 29 Palestinians at the Cave of the Patriarchs in February 1994. Meir Kahane, the founder of the Kahanist movement, was assassinated in Manhattan in 1990. [Source

“Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Committee member Hussein al-Sheikh has addressed a letter of protest to President Joe Biden after the US State Department revoked the designation of the inactive, far-right Israeli Kach, or Kahane Chai, group as a foreign terrorist organization.” May 26, 2022: Zionists Protest Against Israeli-Palestinian Peace Accords (Photo by Lee Corkran/Sygma via Getty Images). 

 

On Nov 10, 2022, spokesperson for the US State Department, Ned Price, was asked during a briefing for a comment on Ben-Gvir’s participation in a ceremony honouring late Kach leader, Rabbi Meir Kahane. Price stated: “Celebrating the legacy of a terrorist organization is abhorrent. There is no other word for it. It is abhorrent.” 

Above video (September 20, 2022) and photo: Popular satire show “Eretz Nehederet” (A Wonderful Land) aired a musical skit that implicitly compared far-right Israeli politician Itamar Ben Gvir with Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. The song-and-dance number was based on the iconic “Springtime for Hitler” number from Mel Brooks’s 1967 film “The Producers,” which features actors in a staged musical, led by a flamboyant Hitler, singing joyfully about the impending Nazi occupation of Europe. [Source

The Times of Israel summarized some of prominent policy positions of the party: “encouraging Arab citizens of Israel to emigrate; annexing the West Bank without affording Palestinians the right to vote or other civil rights; imposing the death penalty for terrorists; using live fire against Palestinian rioters; immunity from prosecution for IDF soldiers for military actions they carry out; overhauling the legal system, crimping the High Court’s ability to strike down legislation and giving the government the ability to pack the bench with ideological compatriots.”

A number of Kach disciples including Ben-Gvir became founding members and spokespeople for the  Levhava movement, a far-right, Jewish supremacist organization that strictly opposes “Jewish assimilation” via Jewish-Arab intermarriage. [May 30, 2022: “Lehava is an anti-miscegenation and anti-homosexual organization that regularly employs violence mostly against Arab men.”] Lehava’s CEO is Bentzi Gopstein, another disciple of Meir Kahane. Lehava is closely associated with Otzma Yehudit, sharing the same headquarters. In 2014 police raided their offices. The following year it was reported that Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon was considering an attempt to categorize Lehava as a terrorist organization. In 2022, Israel Defense Minister Benny Gantz echoed that the “time has come” to consider Lehava be designated a terrorist organization. [Source]

Today, the grotesque Kahanist ideology serves as both the heartbeat and guiding light for the third largest political force in Israel. 

Today, we bear witness the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestine, with every horrific act streamed across social media platforms, for the entire world in watch in real time. We bear witness to genocide. “Never again” is an empty phrase. Dead-eyed, colonized subjects yawn. Empire ticks another box. It instructs its media apparatus to move the collective gaze to Taylor Swift and other insignificant headlines and “news” stories that compete within the vast spectacle of trivial prattle.

The following is a must watch critical lecture at Busboys and Poets in Arlington, Virginia, USA, on 11.5.2022 given by investigative journalist David Sheen. The event was sponsored by Al-Awda, the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation and American Muslims for Palestine.