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xtruss · 2 months

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“On War Criminal, Terrorist Apartheid and Illegal Regime of Isra-hell,” Trump Is Even Worse Than ‘Genocidal Joe’ Biden

Donald Trump and his MAGA Cult of Christian Nationalists Would Never Force Isra-hell to Accept a Ceasefire — or a Palestinian State

— James Risen | March 4 2024 | The Intercept

Former U.S. President Donald Trump arrives during a “Get Out the Vote” rally in Greensboro, N.C., on March 2, 2024. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

To Understand The State of American Politics today when it comes to Gaza, Israel, and Palestine, just look at the very different ways in which the House of Representatives handled the cases of Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat, and Rep. Brian Mast, a Florida Republican.

Tlaib was punished for her views on Israel and the war in Gaza. Mast was not.

It’s not hard to figure out why.

Tlaib, the Only Palestinian American in Congress, was censured by the Republican-controlled House in November after she posted a video of protesters in Michigan chanting “From The River To The Sea, Palestine Will Be Free.” Israel’s supporters claim the chant is code for a desire to wipe the Jewish state off the map, but Tlaib responded that it was just “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction or hate.”

“I Can’t Believe I Have To Say This,” she added, “But Palestinian People Are Not Disposable.”

Tlaib’s censure was a symbolic act that has no substantive impact on her ability to function in Congress, but that wasn’t the point. House Republicans just wanted to embarrass her and politically marginalize any congressional support for the Palestinian people. House Democrats briefly sought to censure Mast for comparing Palestinians to the hundreds of thousands of German civilians carpet bombed into oblivion by the Allies in Nazi Germany during World War II. His implication was that Palestinians deserve to be obliterated for the crimes of Hamas, just as German civilians were annihilated for the crimes of Hitler and the Third Reich. “I would encourage the other side to not so lightly throw around the idea of innocent Palestinian civilians,” he said. “I don’t think we would so lightly throw around the term ‘innocent Nazi civilians’ during World War II.”

The motion to censure Mast was introduced in the House last November, at the same time the Republicans were going after Tlaib. But while the censure motion against Tlaib succeeded, the motion against Mast was quietly withdrawn.

Ever since, Mast has doubled down on his anti-Palestinian rhetoric without facing any consequences. He even wore an Israeli military uniform to a Republican conference meeting on Capitol Hill. When questioned about it by reporters, he said that since Tlaib displays a Palestinian flag outside her office, he thought he should wear his old Israel Defense Forces uniform. A U.S. Army veteran who lost both of his legs in Afghanistan in 2010, Mast briefly volunteered with the IDF in January 2015, performing support functions like packing medical kits. Virtually every other Republican in Congress shares Mast’s views and would gladly don an IDF uniform if they had one.

Earlier this year, Mast expanded on his comments about Palestinian civilians, saying that even Palestinian babies are not innocent and are thus legitimate targets. “It would be better if you kill all the terrorists and kill everyone who are supporters,” he told Code Pink protesters. When asked about images of Palestinian infants being killed in Israeli attacks, he said “these are not innocent Palestinian civilians.”

“From The River To The Sea, Palestine 🇵🇸 Will Be Free.”

The Contrasting Outcomes of the Tlaib and Mast cases highlight an undeniable fact: The American political establishment still strongly favors Israel over the Palestinians. But if Donald Trump gets back into the Oval Office, he and his MAGA Republicans like Brian Mast will be even worse.

Trump is a big fan of war crimes, especially against Muslims. During his first term, he intervened on behalf of Special Operations Chief Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL platoon leader convicted of posing for a photo with the body of dead Iraqi; another SEAL team member told investigators that Gallagher was “freaking evil,” but Trump said at a political rally that he was one of “our great fighters.” Trump also pardoned Blackwater contractors convicted of killing Iraqi civilians in a wild shooting spree in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. There is no chance that he would try to stop Israel from indiscriminately killing Palestinians.

After the October 7 Hamas attack, Trump was briefly critical of Netanyahu and blurted out that Hezbollah was “very smart.” Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed group designated a terrorist organization by the United States, has battled Israel on its northern border with Lebanon. Trump was immediately and roundly attacked by other Republicans for his comments, and he quickly renewed his long-standing pledge to align the United States fully with Israel. If he’s reelected, he will give Israel unalloyed support for all-out war, and he will do so with the wholehearted backing of the Republican Party.

Republicans’ support for Israel is matched or exceeded by their hatred for Palestinians. Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Montana Republican who was secretary of the interior in the Trump administration, has proposed legislation that would prevent Palestinians from entering the United States and trigger the mass deportation of those already here. It would ban those holding passports issued by the Palestinian Authority from obtaining U.S. visas, while mandating the removal of Palestinian passport holders already living here.

Many Republicans express their unwavering support for Israel in biblical and apocalyptic terms. Rep. Mike Johnson, a Christian evangelical, made his first public appearance after being elected House speaker last October at a conference of the Republican Jewish Coalition, where he said that “God is not done with Israel.”

It is dangerous to get between evangelicals and their theology. Trump recognizes their importance to his political success, and his support for Israel is a way to satisfy his evangelical Christian base. “No president has done more for Israel than I have,” Trump claimed in 2022. “Our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.”

At the 2016 Republican convention, Trump pushed through a provision in the party platform ending GOP support for a two-state solution and a Palestinian state. Now, Trump and Republicans agree with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he says that Israel can no longer agree to a two-state solution. “In any future arrangement … Israel needs security control over all territory west of the Jordan,” Netanyahu said in January. “This collides with the idea of sovereignty. What can you do? This truth I tell to our American friends, and I put the brakes on the attempt to coerce us to a reality that would endanger the state of Israel.”

That’s fine with Trump and Republicans like Brian Mast.

Although the Biden administration has bent over backward to support Israel, the president has said repeatedly in recent weeks that an independent Palestinian state is still possible. What’s more, political unrest within the Democratic Party is starting to have an impact on Biden, forcing changes in the White House’s approach to Israel. Over the weekend, Vice President Kamala Harris called for an immediate ceasefire; such new pressure from the Biden administration appears to be working, as Israel and Hamas now seem closer to an agreement.

Trump would never face such pro-Palestinian pressure from within the Republican Party. He and his MAGA cult of Christian nationalists would never force Israel to accept a ceasefire — or a Palestinian state. Mast has harshly attacked Biden for continuing to support a two-state solution, dismissing the idea by saying that “a Palestinian state would be run by terrorists.”

There are limits to Biden’s support for Netanyahu. Trump and the Republican Party have none.

#Forever Palestine 🇵🇸#“From The River To The Sea Palestine 🇵🇸 Will Be Free.”#Donald J. Trump #MAGA Cult of Christian Nationalists #War Criminal Terrorist Apartheid and Illegal Regime of Isra-hell

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xtruss · 2 months

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People have the first Fast-Breaking Dinner (Iftar) of the Muslim Holy Month of Ramadan among the rubbles of destroyed buildings in Rafah on May 11, 2024 amid ongoing “Terrorist, War Criminal, Fascist, Apartheid and Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Isra-hell’s” attacks on “Forever Palestine’s Gaza.”

#Forever Palestine 🇵🇸#Gaza #Holy Month of Ramadan #Muslims #First Iftar #Rafah #Rubbles #Terrorist War Criminal Fascist Apartheid and Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 Isra-hell

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xtruss · 24 days

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A new poll has found that a majority of voters in the UK support a ban on British arms sales to “Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, Apartheid, War Criminal Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗, Isra-hell,” while a similar majority believe that “Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, Apartheid, War Criminal Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Isra-hell’s” actions in Gaza are violating human rights.

The poll, commissioned by Action for Humanity and conducted by YouGov, found that 56 percent of UK voters are in favour of banning the export of arms to Israel, while only 17 percent are against such a ban.

59 percent of voters also believe “Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, Apartheid, War Criminal Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Isra-hell” is violating human rights in Gaza.

Among voters who plan to vote for the Labour Party, 71 percent back a ban on arms exports to Israel. For Conservative Party voters, that number is 38 percent - this is still larger than the number of Conservative voters who want to keep exporting arms to Israel, which was 36 percent.

On Wednesday, more than 600 prominent lawyers, academics and former judges signed a letter warning the UK government that its continued arming of Israel is breaching international law.

#Middle East Eye 👁️#News 🗞️#Forever Palestine 🇵🇸#Gaza Strip #Poll | UK 🇬🇧#“Terrorist Fascist Genocidal Apartheid War Criminal Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Isra-hell”

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xtruss · 1 month

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A Palestinian Family Breaks Iftar at the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound in Occupied East Jerusalem, Forever Palestine 🇵🇸, During the Holy Month of Ramadan, Where the “Terrorist, Fascist, War Criminal, Genocidal Isra-helli” Offensive on Palestine's Gaza has Silenced all the Festivities of the Holy Month, Leaving Only Space for Worship and Prayer.

#TRT World 🌎#Forever Palestine 🇵🇸#Al-Aqsa Mosque 🕌#East Jerusalem #Gaza #War on Gaza #Genocide in Gaza #Illegal Regime of the Terrorist | Fascist | War Criminal | Apartheid | Genocidal Isra-hell

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xtruss · 1 month

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Graffiti Artists in Egypt have adorned the streets of the Al Matareya district of Cairo with artwork showing their solidarity with the people of Palestine, as “Illegal Regime of Terrorist, Fascist, War Criminal, Apartheid, Genocidal and the Bastard Child of the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and the European Union: Isra-hell” continues its genocidal war on besieged Gaza. The graffiti contained praise for the people of Palestine and their resilience in the face of Israeli atrocities.

#Love For All: Forever Palestine 🇵🇸#Egypt 🇪🇬 | Graffiti Artists #Al Matareya District | Cairo | Egypt 🇪🇬#Illegal Regime of Terrorist Fascist War Criminal Apartheid and Genocidal Isra-hell

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xtruss · 2 months

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#United Nations 🇺🇳#Security Council #Resolution #Ceasefire #Gaza #Rafah #Forever Palestine 🇵🇸#Illegal Regime of the War Criminal Genocidal Terrorist Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 Apartheid Cunts: Isra-hell

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xtruss · 3 months

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xtruss · 6 days

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Google Employees Protest Over Company's Ties With “The Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid, ‘Illegal Occupier of the Forever Palestine 🇵🇸’, War Criminal Zionist 🐖 Isra-hell”

Protesters are urging Google, The Scrotums Licker of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗, to terminate its contract with Amazon for a cloud and machine learning project.

— Wednesday April 17, 2024

Protesting the company’s ties with Israel, Google employees held sit-ins at two of the tech giant's offices in California and New York City.

The Tuesday protests were led by a group called “No Tech For Apartheid,” which says it demands that Google and Amazon “drop their Nimbus contract with the Israeli government & military.”

In Sunnyvale, California, protesters pledged to stay until Google ends its $1.2 billion contract with Amazon, which would provide cloud services and data centres to Israel for the Nimbus project.

The protest was livestreamed on the group's Twitch channel.

About 10 hours into the protests, police arrested groups of employees in both New York and California, the group reported on X.

The protests also coincide with Israel’s continuing offensive on Gaza, which since last Oct. 7 has taken nearly 34,000 lives.

The Nimbus Project

Nimbus includes a cloud and machine learning system that enables data storage, collection, analysis, motif and feature identification from data, and prediction of potential data and motifs.

A $1.2 billion contract for the project was signed in April 2021 between Israel and Google and Amazon.

Israel announced in April 2021 that Google and Amazon won the massive state tender, allowing Israel to establish its local cloud storage server centres.

The system can collect all data sources provided by Israel and its military, including databases, resources, and even live observation sources such as street and drone cameras.

Critics argue that the project could help Israel continue its apartheid-like system of oppression, domination, and segregation of the Palestinian people.

Hours into the protests, police arrested groups of employees in both New York and California. Photo: Reuters

Google has laid off 20 more employees over their participation in protests against "Project Nimbus," the tech company's $1.2 billion deal to provide computing and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government. The latest layoffs bring the total number of terminated staff to close to 50 amid Israel's ongoing Gaza onslaught, which has killed over 34,000 Palestinians since October 7.

#TRT World 🌎#News 🗞️#Google | The Scrotums Licker of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗#“The Terrorist Fascist Apartheid ‘Illegal Occupier of the Forever Palestine 🇵🇸’ War Criminal Zionist 🐖 Isra-hell”#Google Employees #Employees Layoffs | Against Protests #Deal with Zionist 🐖 | War Criminal | Illegal Regime | Isra-hell

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xtruss · 16 days

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Fuck You War Criminal, Complicit in Gaza Genocide and Demented Biden!

What About The Brazen Attack of the “Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, Apartheid, War Criminal and The Illegal Regime of The Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗, Isra-hell” on Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Syria?

The U.S. helped Israel "take down nearly all of the incoming drones and missiles," War Criminal, Complicit in Gaza Genocide and Demented President Biden said in a statement late Saturday evening. War Criminal, Complicit in Gaza Genocide and Demented Biden said his team will engage with the G7 leaders on Sunday to coordinate a "united diplomatic response to Iran's brazen attack."

The President also detailed his call with Isra-helli Terrorist Prime Minister Benjamin Satan-Yahu following the attacks, where War Criminal, Complicit in Gaza Genocide and Demented Biden said he reaffirmed America's "Ironclad commitment to the security of the Bastard Child of the United States and the Illegal Regime of the Zionist Terrorist 🐖 🐷 🐗, Genocidal , Fascist, War Criminal and Apartheid Isra-hell."

#War Criminal Complicit in Gaza Genocide and Demented President Biden #Iran’s 🇮🇷 Attack #“Terrorist Fascist Genocidal Apartheid War Criminal and The Illegal Regime of The Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Isra-hell

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xtruss · 16 days

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The UK Could Be Complicit in “Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, Apartheid, War Criminal and The Illegal Regime of The Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗’s, Isra-helli” War Crimes Through Its Continued Sale of Arms To The Country, Oxfam Has Warned.

"It is illegal, immoral and inconsistent for the UK to continue to sell arms to Israel, when it is clear that UK-made weapons and components are being used in serious violation of international humanitarian law - and after it imposed restrictions in previous escalations of violence when the scale of death and destruction had been lower," Aleema Shivji, Oxfam's chief impact officer, said on Friday.

"The people of Gaza are facing unprecedented levels of bloodshed, schools and hospitals are being deliberately targeted and starvation is being used as a weapon of war - what more suffering must they endure for the UK government to act?"

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xtruss · 18 days

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"This Criminal Occupation By ‘The Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, Apartheid, War Criminal Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Illegal Regime of Isra-hell’ Doesn’t Care About International Laws or Humanity, It Only Cares About Killing The Palestinian People."

Palestinians are recovering the bodies of those killed by Israel's two-week raid on al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, but identification is proving difficult because of the state of decomposition.

After Israeli forces withdrew from the hospital on April 1, 2024, teams from several government ministries have been deployed to al-Shifa to remove and identify bodies before burying them in cemeteries.

"We are now digging up all the martyrs that were executed by the [Israeli] army," Hussein Mahassen, ambulance director in the Gaza Strip, told Middle East Eye. "Our capacities are very limited, as we are working with just one bulldozer."

While it is unclear how many bodies have been buried in the hospital's yard, the Civil Defence said that they have recovered 409 bodies from the medical complex since the withdrawal of Israeli forces. Mahassen said his team expects to find between 200 and 300 bodies buried in the ground in al-Shifa, but cannot confirm this number.

Reports emerging from the hospital and its vicinity following the Israeli army's raid spoke of torture against detained Palestinians, with medical teams in al-Shifa currently documenting these cases.

"There are signs of torture on some of the arms and bodies we pulled out," Mahassen said. Medical and forensic teams said that their mission is particularly difficult because of the state of the remains.

Amira al-Safadi, a doctor at al-Shifa, said that some of the bodies were initially left to rot among people who were besieged in the hospital for days, before Israeli forces allowed them to buried.

Safadi herself was forced to stay in the hospital's reception with a group of people for two weeks. "Among the wounded that they brought down from the ICU to us, at the reception, around 16 died," she told MEE. "They laid dead with us for three days."

— ✍️ Mohammed al-Hajjar and Nader Durgham/Middle East Eye

#Middle East Eye 👁️#News 🗞️#Forever Palestine 🇵🇸 | Gaza | War Crimes in Gaza | Genocide in Gaza #‘The Terrorist Fascist Genocidal Apartheid War Criminal Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Illegal Regime of Isra-hell’

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xtruss · 21 days

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Thirty Years After Rwanda, Genocide Is Still A Problem From Hell! Mass Killings Are At Their Highest Level In Two Decades

— April 3rd, 2024

Victims of the Tutsi Massacre Inside the Church of Ntarama, Rwanda 🇷🇼. Photograph: Agostino Pacciani/Anzenberger/Eyevine

The Killing Started on April 7th 1994, as members of the presidential guard began assassinating opposition leaders and moderates in the government. Within hours the genocide of Rwanda’s minority Tutsis was under way. It was among the fastest mass killings in history: 100 days later three-quarters of Rwanda’s Tutsis, about 500,000 people, were dead. Most were killed not by the army but by ordinary Hutus, the majority group. “Neighbours hacked neighbours to death,” wrote Philip Gourevitch, an American journalist. “Doctors killed their patients, and schoolteachers killed their pupils.”

The roughly 2,500 United Nations peacekeepers in Rwanda did almost nothing. Agathe Uwilingiyimana, the moderate Hutu Prime Minister, was among the first to die. She had been guarded by 15 UN Peacekeepers, but they surrendered. Lando Ndasingwa, the Tutsi leader of the Liberal party, called the peacekeepers, saying that soldiers were preparing to attack his home. An officer promised to send a detachment, but was still on the phone when he heard gunfire. “It’s too late,” Lando said.

The world stood by and watched. Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian General commanding the Peacekeepers, was warned beforehand of the extermination plan. In a cable to Kofi Annan, then the UN’s peacekeeping chief, he said he planned to raid arms caches and pre-empt the genocide. Annan refused permission and ordered him to do nothing that “Might Lead to the Use of Force”. Three weeks into the genocide, the Security Council voted to withdraw all but about 270 peacekeeping troops. “This World Body Aided and Abetted Genocide,” the General later wrote.

Thirty years later, the Rwandan Genocide is remembered as one of two events in the 1990s that prodded a guilt-ridden world to pledge never again to stand aside and allow mass atrocities. The other was the massacre by Bosnian Serbs of thousands of Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica the following year. In 2005 the un General Assembly unanimously adopted the principle that all countries have a “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) people from genocide and war crimes, by force if necessary. The dream was that from Rwanda’s horrors would emerge a well-policed world.

Instead the nightmare has continued. In Ethiopia, Myanmar, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, Global Powers have done almost nothing as millions have been bombed, gassed and starved. The war in Gaza, too, has brought tensions between principles and geopolitics to a head, with bitter claims and counterclaims about Hamas’s atrocities and the legality of Illegal Regime of the Terrorist, Genocidal, Illegal Occupier, Fascist, War Criminal Zionist 🐖 Israel’s destructive six-month-long military campaign, which have played out in the media, diplomacy and international courts.

To understand how the global push to prevent mass killings collapsed (and whether it can be revived), it helps to start with Rwanda, which strengthened the case of global human-rights advocates, and then to examine how cynical realpolitik made a comeback.

Chart: The Economist

The early 1990s were hopeful years. The end of the cold war allowed democracy to blossom in eastern Europe and in Africa. The first Gulf war ejected Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait and signalled that wars of expansion would not be tolerated. Western powers led by America sent troops into famine-struck Somalia to guard a humanitarian mission under attack by warlords, showing that they cared not just about oil but about the welfare of the starving. The spread of liberal democracy seemed unstoppable.

Yet reality had a vote. Six months before the genocide in Rwanda, America pulled out of Somalia after 18 of its commandos were killed in Mogadishu, the capital. The battle cast a long shadow: un peacekeepers in Bosnia were instructed not to respond forcefully when fired on, for fear that they “cross the Mogadishu line” and become embroiled in the fighting. Bill Clinton, America’s president, turned against peacekeeping operations unless they involved America’s national interests.

Rwanda did not. State Department lawyers warned officials not to call the atrocities there a genocide, lest it commit the government to “actually do something”. Britain’s ambassador to the un warned against “promising what we could not deliver” in terms of protecting civilians.

Still, when the horror of the genocide became clear, Western voters and political elites were revolted by this cold-hearted calculus. Samantha Power, a former journalist who now heads America’s aid agency, recounts in her memoir that President George W. Bush scribbled “not on my watch” on a memo summarising an article she had written about America’s failure to act in Rwanda. “You had a generation of politicians like Tony Blair, David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy in France, who had seen their predecessors’ failings, and that shaped their responses to later crises,” says Richard Gowan, a veteran un-watcher in New York with the International Crisis Group (ICG), a think-tank. In 2000 Mr Blair, Britain’s prime minister, sent troops into Sierra Leone, stopping rebels who were chopping off people’s hands.

Standing in the way of such interventions was the doctrine that countries should not interfere in each other’s internal affairs. The un’s charter, signed in 1945, forbade meddling in “matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state”. Though its Security Council could authorise force, this was intended as a response to aggression, not to prevent atrocities. Newly independent African countries had had their fill of colonial powers trampling on their sovereignty. In 1963, when they formed the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the members committed themselves to “Non-Interference”.

Rwanda shook that belief. In 2003 the African Union (au), the oau’s successor, gave itself the power to intervene to prevent grave crimes. Others went further: America, Britain and several other Western countries began claiming the right to use force unilaterally without the authority of the Security Council, which they argued had become paralysed because each of its five permanent members—America, Britain, China, France and the Soviet Union (now Russia)—has veto power. In a speech in Chicago in 1999, “War Criminal Bloody British Bastard Blair” outlined a doctrine of just wars “based not on any territorial ambitions but on values”. He insisted the world could not simply allow mass murder. That doctrine has since become policy. In 2018 the British government reserved the right to prevent atrocities without the Security Council’s authorisation, if its paralysis would lead to “grave consequences” for civilian populations.

Angels With F-16s

All this converged into a current of thought known as “liberal interventionism”. In Kosovo in 1999 North Atlantic Terrorist Organization (NATO) bombed what was then part of Serbia, Without Security Council Authorization, to stop a genocide against ethnic Albanians. An international commission subsequently judged the bombing campaign “Illegal” but nonetheless “Legitimate” because there was no other way to stop the killing of civilians. Yet many were unsettled that powerful countries were arrogating the authority to bomb others in the name of human rights. Weaker states worried it would excuse “neocolonial” interference.

Annan, by then the un’s secretary general, tried to reconcile sovereignty and protection of civilians. In 2000 he asked: “If humanitarian intervention is indeed an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica?” The answer was R2P, which tried to reconcile the aspirations of liberal interventionists with the worries of weak states. The R2P resolution, passed unanimously by the un in 2005, held that countries had a responsibility to intervene, but only when authorised by the Security Council. A British historian, Sir Martin Gilbert, called it “the most significant adjustment to national sovereignty in 360 years”. That goes too far, thinks Gareth Evans, a former foreign minister of Australia and one of the founders of R2P. Nonetheless, he calls it “a wildly successful enterprise”.

Mr Evans argues that R2P created a new norm: no official today can openly shrug off genocide for reasons of state, as Henry Kissinger, then America’s secretary of state, did while cosying up to Cambodia’s Khmers Rouges in 1975. Meanwhile, since Rwanda almost all un forces have been ordered to protect civilians—though they are seldom given enough troops to do so, says Alan Doss, who ran such missions in Liberia and Congo. Critics counter that R2P creates no binding obligations on countries. The doctrine is a “slogan...enthusiastically avowed by states but one devoid of substance”, says Aidan Hehir of the University of Westminster.

In early 2011, in the first real-world test of R2P, the Security Council approved the use of force by nato to protect civilians in Libya. (It did so again two weeks later in Ivory Coast.) “I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action,” President Barack Obama said. Crucially, the council’s three rotating African members (Gabon, Nigeria and South Africa) broke with the au and supported the resolution. But not everyone was enthusiastic. John Bolton, a Republican former diplomat, had called R2P “a gauzy, limitless doctrine” whose greatest danger was not that it might fail, but that it might succeed and lead to ever more foreign entanglements.

In the event, what was to have been R2P’s vindication proved its undoing. At first the bombing in Libya worked, preventing a massacre of civilians in Benghazi, a city in the country’s east. Yet Britain and France then stretched the authority granted by the Security Council and toppled Muammar Qaddafi, Libya’s dictator. The subsequent civil war destabilised the entire region. That dampened the West’s enthusiasm for intervention. It also revived “long-held suspicions of the motivations behind Western interventions in Africa”, argues Karen Smith of Leiden University, a former un special adviser on R2P. African supporters of the doctrine, such as South Africa, turned into sceptics. “Good intentions do not automatically shape good outcomes,” Ramesh Thakur, a former un official and an architect of R2P, wrote after the effort in Libya went sour. “On the contrary, there is no humanitarian crisis so grave that an outside military intervention cannot make it worse.”

For many, mission creep in Libya was the original sin that undermined R2P. “It’s when things started to fall apart,” laments Mr Evans. Yet even had the Libyan campaign succeeded, the doctrine would probably have stumbled. Western publics were tiring of the decade-long “war on terror” and unsuccessful efforts at building liberal democracies in countries that did not seem to want them. “We now have a generation of politicians who have been shaped by the failure of intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan,” says the icg’s Mr Gowan.

That became clear in 2013 when Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, dropped nerve gas on civilians. By then Mr Obama had grown sceptical about using force; he spoke of red lines but did little when they were crossed. Other Western powers were no more eager to act. Inaction, it turned out, has costs too. By 2023 Syria’s civil war had claimed perhaps 350,000 lives and displaced roughly half of the population, sending waves of refugees into neighbouring countries and Europe.

A Boy Sits Among the Rubble after Terrorist , Fascist, Genocidal, War Criminal, Apartheid Zionist 🐖 Israeli Airstrike in Maghazi Refugee Camp, Gaza, Forever Palestine 🇵🇸. Whose responsibility is it to protect him?photograph: xinhua/eyevine

The Security Council was hamstrung by geopolitical rivalry. Some point to the problem of the “Great-Power Perpetrator”, in which a permanent member of the council itself commits atrocities. Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, and Ukraine in 2014 and on a bigger scale in 2022; it has been mainly interested in undermining the council. Between 2011 and 2022 it vetoed 17 resolutions on Syria, and it has blocked any action on Ukraine. China has been reluctant to approve actions to prevent atrocities, perhaps because it reserves the right to abuse its own citizens. On Syria it voted with Russia, insisting that sanctions would abridge the country’s sovereignty.

The failure to act in Syria has been followed by passivity in the face of atrocities elsewhere. In 2017 government forces in Myanmar began killing and raping Rohingyas, a long-persecuted Muslim minority group, in what the un and America have branded genocide. Again the Security Council was powerless, as China and Russia prevented it from issuing even mild statements of concern.

In 2020 civil war broke out in Ethiopia. Government forces sealed off Tigray, a northern region, and deliberately starved its roughly 6m people. By the war’s end two years later some 600,000 are thought to have died, nearly all of them civilians. The Security Council stayed almost completely silent. Russia and China were not the only obstacles: the au dropped its policy of “non-indifference” to war crimes and sided with the Ethiopian government, blocking efforts to raise the conflict before the council. As a result, “the atrocity-prevention toolbox for Africa is likely to remain shut, its tools quietly rusting away,” wrote Alex de Waal of Tufts University.

The situation is being repeated today in Sudan, where civil war risks causing the world’s biggest famine, with at least 25m people in need of food. Much of the blame lies with the Sudanese Armed Forces, which have blocked the flow of aid into areas controlled by their enemy, the Rapid Support Forces, a group of rebellious paramilitaries. They, in turn, are accused of genocidal killings. For almost a year Russia and China blocked even calls for a ceasefire. The wider world has been indifferent. “We seem to be rapidly unlearning the lessons of Rwanda,” says Mr Gowan.

This is the backdrop for the claims and counterclaims in the Middle East. After Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, killing and abducting 1,400 people, mainly civilians, the West affirmed Israel’s legitimate right to self-defence. Yet worldwide protests erupted almost immediately against Israel, and have spread as its military campaign has killed around 33,000 civilians and fighters in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health authority.

Tell It To The Judge

From one perspective the conflict has triggered a renaissance in the use of international law to curtail violence. The Security Council has proved ineffective, with America, China and Russia blocking each other’s resolutions (although on March 25th America allowed one to pass, calling for a ceasefire and the release of Hamas’s hostages). But several countries have turned to international courts. South Africa asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to order Israel to halt its military operations, invoking the Genocide Convention, which Israel has signed. It also filed complaints at the International Criminal Court (ICC), a different court in The Hague that can arraign individuals. (This was quite a turnabout: South Africa had flirted with quitting the icc to avoid honouring its arrest warrants.) While the trial at the ICJ continues, it has ordered Israel to take steps including providing humanitarian aid, on the basis that it is “plausible” that it is breaching the Genocide Convention. Israel says it is complying with the order; many dispute that.

Yet from another viewpoint the ICJ case illuminates the shortcomings of international law in an age of bitter geopolitical divides. The ICJ has no jurisdiction over war crimes other than genocide, which encourages complainants to allege genocide even when the facts do not support it. That cheapens the taboo against genocide and discredits the court. The ICJ case has disillusioned some Western countries. America says the allegation of genocide is “meritless”, and Britain says South Africa’s decision to bring the case was “Wrong and Provocative” and that Illegal Regime of the Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, Apartheid War Criminal Zionist 🐖 Isra-hell’s actions cannot be described as genocide. For its part, China, usually a foe of international courts’ ordering countries around, has opportunistically decided it likes the claims against Illegal Regime of the Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, Apartheid War Criminal Zionist 🐖 Isra-hell. The case will take years to resolve and the ICJ cannot compel compliance with its orders without the help of the Security Council, which is split.

Is there still hope for a credible and universal doctrine to prevent mass killings? Mr Evans thinks so, and that current conflicts may alert the midsize powers of the new multipolar world to the need to prevent atrocities. That seems more a wish than a prediction: his memoir, published in 2017, is titled “Incorrigible Optimist”. But it is hard to disagree with his aspiration. “We can’t afford to let the flame die,” he says. ■

— This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline "Ever Again"

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xtruss · 24 days

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Holy War: Red Cows, Gaza and the End of the World

— Published: April 05, 2024 | Newsweek

It is said that this is where the world began—and perhaps where it will end.

The true epicenter of the war in the Holy Land is not the devastated Gaza Strip, under Israeli assault since Hamas' bloody raid last October sparked the region's deadliest conflict in decades. It is a few dozen miles away in Jerusalem, at the holiest and most fiercely contested hilltop on Earth. The war has increased religious tensions and given new impetus to a group of Jews and their evangelical Christian allies who are set on rebuilding an ancient temple where millennium-old Islamic shrines now stand—a suggestion that arouses the horror not only of Palestinians and Muslims worldwide, but of many Jews in Israel and around the globe as well as that of would-be Middle East peacemakers.

Third Temple advocates have been preparing for the day when the temple can be rebuilt, complete with rabbinically-certified red cows shipped from Texas for use in sacrificial purification rituals. The architectural designs are all ready, along the lines of the detailed Biblical descriptions. Robes have been woven and utensils assembled to Biblical specifications for ceremonies at the planned temple.

Red heifer at the Israeli settlement of Shiloh in the occupied West Bank. Five of the unblemished red cows were flown from Texas for possible use in eventual sacrificial rites associated with building a new Jewish temple. Matthew Tostevin

Messianic Jewish supporters believe the rebuilding of the temple, rather than being divisive, would fulfil Biblical prophecy to bring an era of peace with the temple as "a house of prayer for all nations." Christian backers, meanwhile, believe it would be an important step towards the Second Coming of Jesus and an apocalyptic last battle with the Antichrist.

"Our holy warriors who are fighting in Gaza are actually fighting for the building of the Temple," one Jewish prayer leader pronounced recently on a controversial visit to the believed site of two previous Jewish temples in Jerusalem.

Standing before the Dome of the Rock, the gleaming Islamic shrine that has sat for more than 1,300 years on the same contested spot, Marina Sokol, an Israeli mother whose son was killed fighting Hamas in Gaza, proclaimed: "The war we are waging is a war for the Temple Mount."

In their war to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic state, Hamas leaders also readily draw on the symbolism of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary). It is the third holiest site in Islam with its Al-Aqsa Mosque as well as being the holiest site in Judaism. "This round of conflict is being waged by the resistance under the name 'Al-Aqsa Flood.' It is not for the sake of Gaza or the West Bank, but rather for the sake of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa," Hamas spokesperson Bassem Naim told Newsweek.

Hamas killed about 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped more than 200 in its unprecedented October 7 attack, according to Israeli figures. Israel's ensuing offensive against Hamas has so far killed over 32,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to Hamas authorities there. They do not say how many of those were combatants. Israel said at least 13,000 of them were.

Flood

Hamas has long put the fight against "Judaization" of holy sites high on its list of reasons for seeking to destroy Israel.

During the ongoing holy month of Ramadan, Hamas leaders again urged Palestinians to rally to the 36-acre holy site, scene of frequent confrontations in the past, and spark for wider violence. Israel has restricted the number of worshippers in the name of security concerns, drawing complaints from Palestinians of unfair treatment and of breaking longstanding agreements.

A religious Jew looks at the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine in Jerusalem. Groups who believe in building a Third Temple say the Dome of the Rock stands on the exact spot where it must be built. Photo credit: Matthew Tostevin

Israel's government has set its three war aims in Gaza as destroying Hamas, bringing home the hostages that remain and ensuring that the territory can no longer pose a threat—aims that have widespread support among Israeli Jews. But the hope that the conflict might be a step to the rebuilding of the temple also resonates for Third Temple advocates, who form part of a fringe that has gained strength under the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"The Holy Temple - Now, More than Ever!" said a social media post from the Temple Institute, one of the leading groups seeking to promote interest in rebuilding the temple.

"We're all looking forward to the day after Israel's defeat of all our enemies. Building the Holy Temple, 'a house of prayer for all nations,' (Isaiah 56:7) is the only peace plan that can & will succeed!" said the institute, which in the past was reported to have received some state funding, but says it no longer does.

"The Muslims correctly understand the historical and religious significance of the Temple Mount for the Jewish people and therefore focus their incitement on the Temple Mount," Yitzchak Reuven, director of the Temple Institute's international department, told Newsweek. "In effect, the war in Gaza is very much a war over the Temple Mount."

An Israeli government spokesperson acknowledged Newsweek's questions but did not respond by time of publication.

For Palestinians, the growing Jewish religious activity at the site is already a step towards cataclysm.

"These are the seeds of conflict and the seeds of the type of fire that could burn the entire Middle East," Palestinian academic Adnan Joulani told Newsweek. "This is the most dangerous plot of land to play with."

The Palestinian Authority, which runs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and seeks a state alongside Israel, did not respond to a request for comment.

According to Jewish tradition, the place known as Mount Moriah is where the world was created. This was where Abraham offered his son as a sacrifice. For Jews and Christians that son was Isaac, whereas most Muslim sources say it was Ishmael. This was where King Solomon built the First Temple, destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC. It's thought the Second Temple was built 70 years later—the temple from which Christians believe Jesus drove out the moneychangers. That temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

For Muslims, the site is where Muhammad made a miraculous night journey from Mecca before ascending to heaven. Muhammad and his early followers turned here for prayer before they turned to Mecca. The Dome of the Rock was built little over 50 years after Muhammad's death in 632 AD. In the Middle Ages, some Muslims, Jews, and Christians believed the gold-domed and elaborately tiled structure actually was Solomon's Temple.

Palestinian Muslims pray outside the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque compound on March 11, 2024. The site is the third holiest in Islam as well as the holiest for Jews, who know it as the Temple Mount. Photo credit: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP

Outliers

A call to rebuild the temple is part of the daily prayers of religious Jews. But those actively seeking to make it happen are outliers within a religious nationalist movement that sees a God-given right over all the land from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea—a belief which has helped drive settlement of the occupied West Bank since the 1967 Middle East War. Still a tiny minority, Third Temple advocates gained momentum as Israeli politics swung towards the religious right under Netanyahu.

"The Third Temple movement have a lot of power. They are in the government, they are having a lot of support, something they never had before," said Yonatan Mizrachi of the Peace Now group, part of a once influential left-wing peace movement that has itself been pushed to the margins, particularly since the Hamas attack. "Twenty years ago, even the settlers tried to avoid dealing with the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. There were only a few people, a few dozen, and today we're talking about a movement," he told Newsweek. "A very loud movement, but still a minority."

Outside Israel, the movement has little traction.

"First of all, 90 percent of American Jews have no concept of a Third Temple in any traditional way," said Rabbi Asher Lopatin, director of community relations at the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor, Michigan. "The other 10 percent who are Orthodox or Traditional are almost entirely of the opinion that the Third Temple will be rebuilt only after the Mashiach (Messiah) comes and there is world peace," he told Newsweek. "Ultra-Orthodox Jews believe that only God will build the Third Temple."

The Third Temple activists in Israel distance themselves from the most extreme radicals, such as the underground group whose members were arrested in 1984 with an alleged plan to blow up the Muslim sites. Many Third Temple activists assert that ultimately Muslims themselves will ask for the temple to be built in fulfilment of divine will.

Third Temple activist Melissa Jane Kronfeld in Jerusalem on December 3, 2023. Advocates of rebuilding the temple where Muslim shrines now stand are a small minority. Photo credit: Matthew Tostevin

"Oh, we definitely need to get rid of the Dome of the Rock," said Melissa Jane Kronfeld, who came to Israel from New York and is as a vocal supporter of the movement. "I actually think it should be moved and preserved into a beautiful museum somewhere," she said. "It's not part of the plan," she told Newsweek. "God laid out exactly what the temple is supposed to be."

She and others are not fazed by the challenges over removing one of the world's most iconic structures. In addition to being an architectural emblem of Jerusalem, the Dome of the Rock is a symbol of the state long sought by Palestinians with Jerusalem as its capital. Israel also claims Jerusalem as its capital. The Dome of the Rock is part of the same compound as the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is not itself on the land where the temples are thought to have stood.

"We will defend the mosque to the very end," said Abu Ibrahim, a retired taxi driver, on the stone plaza outside the mosque. He took a bullet through the leg during riots in 1990 when Palestinians feared a takeover by Third Temple activists. At least 17 Palestinians were killed at the time. "It is an Islamic place and not a Jewish one," he said. "They have no right to pray here."

Prayers

The struggle over prayer rights is happening right now.

Every morning that visits by non-Muslims are allowed, groups of religious Jews gather at the one gate through which they are permitted to visit. Every morning, an Israeli police officer tells them that they are not allowed to pray on the Temple Mount. Every morning, they go up under police escort and pray there, reciting from their mobile phones.

"Those who say prayers aren't happening here aren't the ones who are coming up with us," said Kronfeld, whose group, High On The Har, encourages visitors.

Jewish worshippers pray under police guard at the Temple Mount, which Muslims know as Al Haram Ash Sharif (The Noble Sanctuary). The holy site is one of the most contested on earth. Photo credit: Matthew Tostevin

The legal situation for prayers is complicated. After Israel captured the site in the 1967 war, it ignored the suggestion of the army's then-chief rabbi to blow up the Dome of the Rock and clear the way for the Third Temple. Instead, the government chose to retain a "status quo" with administration under an Islamic Waqf that bans prayer by anyone except Muslims. Although Israel's Supreme Court has ruled that Jews have the right to pray there, it also said that the right can be limited in the public interest—as in, to avoid inflaming the situation. Visits by non-Muslims are not allowed on Fridays: the day of the main Muslim prayers, or on the Jewish Sabbath. They are also curtailed during Ramadan and other Muslim holidays.

The status quo has come under strain as Israeli politics has shifted. Hardline Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir made the point of proclaiming Israeli ownership during controversial visits last year, drawing furious responses from Palestinian groups, including Hamas. The security ministry did not respond to a Newsweek request for comment.

Palestinians complain that their own prayer rights are being restricted by the Israelis, particularly since the war in Gaza.

"They are changing the status quo and creating a new agenda," Palestinian political scientist Mahdi Abdul Hadi, a member of the Waqf council, told Newsweek.

Trouble at the site quickly fires up the region. It helped to trigger the second Palestinian Intifada in 2000 as the uprising derailed peace talks. In 2021, Israeli police stormed the compound after stone-throwing protests over Ramadan prayer restrictions. The result: 11 days of fighting between Hamas and Israel, and an inexorable step towards the latest conflict.

"This is a symbol for us. We have a holy duty to save it," said Palestinian shoe seller Sami Taim, who at 24 is too young to be allowed inside the compound most of the time by the Israeli border police who patrol the Old City. "We will never give up," he told Newsweek.

A model of the Dome of the Rock Islamic shrine on top of a pile of spices in a Jerusalem market. The shrine and the Al Aqsa Mosque compound where it stands are not only holy for Muslims, but are also symbols of Palestinian aspiration for statehood. Photo credit: Matthew Tostevin

While Israeli Jews agree on the holiness of the site, there is no unified view of what should be done there in a society that has its own deep divisions among the religious; between the religious and secular; between left and right; and between Israelis whose ancestors immigrated from different parts of the world.

"The fact that our enemies recognise the importance of this place and we don't is literally the tragedy of a generation," lamented one young prayer leader during a prayer at the site one Sunday for a dozen or so people, some of whom visit several times a day.

By contrast, Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef has said that any Jew who even visits the site is sinning—not to even mention seeking to build a Third Temple. He sent a stern letter to Ben-Gvir after his visit.

Even on the religious right, some are wary of the Third Temple movement in fear that it could undermine the immediate push for prayer rights at the holy site.

"I pray every single day for a Third Temple, but there's a difference in this time and in these generations from the practical step that we want," said Yishai Fleisher, international spokesperson for the Jewish community of Hebron, scene of frequent confrontations between Jewish settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank.

"Nobody is offering up a bill to build a Third Temple, but we do want it to be open on the Sabbath," he told Newsweek.

Israeli Divisions

A poll in 2022 found that 50 percent of Israeli Jews favored allowing Jewish prayers at the Temple Mount, with 40 percent against. But only 12 percent saw prayer at the site as a religious commandment: for the rest, it was to demonstrate sovereignty. Among secular Jews, 39 percent opposed allowing prayers because of the potential reaction from the Muslim world.

Strains are evident at the site itself. Impatient police guards chivvy the Jewish worshippers along. One secular officer draws a severe rebuke from Kronfeld when he lights up a cigarette and flicks ash on the ancient stones.

The relationship between Israeli governments and the Third Temple movement has also been equivocal—at times dismissive, but with supporters also courted for political advantage. In 2013, Israel's Army Radio revealed that the Temple Institute had been getting state funding for its cultural and educational work, although it now says it gets no government help and relies on donations and sales from its museum and gift shop.

Postcards sold by the Temple Institute in Jerusalem give an artist's impression of the Third Temple. War in Gaza has given new impetus to a small group of Jews seeking to build a temple where Muslim shrines now stand. Photo credit: Matthew Tostevin

In the Old City's Jewish Quarter, the institute's displays feature robes made using Biblical-era dyes and yarn that have been prepared for the eventual ceremonies at the temple. There is an altar and a solid gold menorah. The gift shop sells postcards with an artist's impression of the Jerusalem of the future, with pilgrims heading to a Third Temple that has replaced the Dome of the Rock.

"Most physical preparations have already been made," the institute's Reuven said. "The Temple vessels have been recreated. The Temple Institute has also recreated the garments of the high priest as well as the other priests. A modest scale-sized altar has also been made, which can easily be transported to its intended location on the Temple Mount."

"While we make every effort in our limited ability to kindle interest in building the temple, the rebuilding of the temple is not a Temple Institute project. Such a monumental effort would need to be based on broad support from the people of Israel and members of the international community," he added.

Evangelical Link

Non-Jews are among the most fervent supporters of the Third Temple: they are Christians who anticipate the Second Coming of Jesus before a Day of Judgment—a view of the End Times that is, in fact, broadly shared with Muslims.

One of those believers is Byron Stinson, a soft-spoken Texan and self-proclaimed Judeo-Christian who splits his time between the U.S. and Israel and is dedicated to helping "the fathers of the faith" build a new temple.

"This is God's plan," he told Newsweek by phone from his truck rolling across Texas. "It's being lived out right now right in front of our eyes."

Stinson helped secure five red heifers in Texas and ship them over in 2022. The cattle are needed for a purifying ceremony for the temple (sacrificial knives are on display at the Temple Institute). Not any red cows will do. They must be "without defect or blemish" (Numbers 19) and must never have worked. It was not cheap getting them to Israel: they had to be transported as pets aboard an American Airlines Boeing 777.

Once the ceremony has been performed and the ashes of a red heifer are mixed with herbs and the waters of Jerusalem's Gihon Spring, the purifying mix can last hundreds of years, Stinson said. But he reckoned 20 or 30 years would be enough for the temple.

"When we see the temple there, I'm expecting repentance, and then joy, and then celebration of the power of God, because he is showing the world that he is God," Stinson said. "It's not like it'll happen in one day, in my opinion, but it will happen."

Holy Cows

A red heifers looks from its pen at Shiloh in the West Bank on December 7, 2023. The red cows were brought from Texas for rites associated with the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Photo credit: Matthew Tostevin

For now, home for the cows is a metal shed more than 7,000 miles from their Texas birthplace at the Israeli settlement of Shiloh in the West Bank. They look out from their straw-lined pen with gentle eyes, offering up muzzles in the hope of petting or treats. Rabbis inspect them occasionally to ensure they have no white hairs.

There is symbolism to having the red heifers in Shiloh. According to believers, this is where the tabernacle—a portable forerunner of the temple—stood for more than 300 years. In the Bible, Shiloh was Israel's first capital. Now, it is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and violence in the West Bank has intensified along with the Gaza war.

Shiloh is one of the settlements that have long been seen by Palestinians and negotiators as among the biggest obstacles to a peace agreement and as illegal under international law—a view challenged by Israel. Those settlements are now home to more than half a million people. Netanyahu, a longstanding opponent of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, planted an olive tree at Shiloh in 2019. A plaque says the tree he planted "symbolizes our hold on the ground of our homeland." Olive trees can live for thousands of years.

Long Fight

Third Temple advocates point out to those who question their ambitions that the idea of Israel itself is not much more than a century old and few believed in it when Theodor Herzl founded his movement to promote Zionism in the 19th century.

The religious dimension to the conflict and the vision of a multi-generational struggle—on top of nationalism, claims to land and the basic survival sought by all parties—further confound would-be peacemakers such as the successive U.S. administrations that have called for a two-state solution with Israelis and Palestinians splitting the land.

"Westerners have difficulties accepting this type of prism to conflict," said Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security. "It's a misconception to believe that the Americans will suggest some kind of wonderful agreement and pour money on us, on them. It's nonsense."

Prospects for such an agreement appear to have receded further during the Gaza war, with Netanyahu categorically rejecting U.S. President Joe Biden's calls to back one. Support for a two-state solution had been flagging even before October 7, but a Gallup poll at the end of 2023 said it stood at 25 percent in Israel compared to 61 percent in 2012. Support among the Palestinians has also tumbled from a decade ago, although a survey in March showed that it had nearly doubled in Gaza to 62 percent since December while still only 34 percent in the West Bank.

The absence of a deal for a Palestinian state suits Third Temple advocates. Some activists believe the trauma of the Hamas attack on October 7 and the war that followed will push Israelis further towards a stronger claim to the holy sites—if only from security concerns rather than from religious convictions.

Although the war has prompted accusations from left wingers that Israel's rightward tilt and neglect of peacemaking helped to bring the conflict about, it was far right and religious parties that made notable gains in recent municipal elections in Jerusalem, the first vote since the war.

Third Temple activists sense new momentum.

"I'm always told the Third Temple is going to destablize the Middle East and it's going to start a war. Well, I'm pretty sure the war is already here and the Middle East is pretty destabilized," said Kronfeld. "I like to think about it the other way. What if the Third Temple is the answer? What if it's what brings the peace and stabilizes the region?"

Visitors in front of the holy site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Al Haram Ash Sharif in Jerusalem. The site is one of the most fiercely contested on earth and is the epicenter of the Middle East conflict. Photo credit: Matthew Tostevin

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