Chants of ‘death to Arabs,’ at Jerusalem Day march as Ben Gvir flies Israeli flag on Temple Mount |
Tens of thousands of ultra-nationalist Israeli youths marched through the Old City on Thursday, with cries of “Death to Arabs” and “May your villages burn,” during the nationalist Flag March, while far-right politicians raised the Israeli flag on the Temple Mount and called to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque and rebuild the Temple as they marked Jerusalem Day.
Jerusalem Day, which commemorates the reunification of the city under Israeli rule in the 1967 Six Day War, has largely become an event associated with the Religious Zionist community and the march, which runs through the Muslim Quarter and ends at the Western Wall, has frequently descended into violence amid anti-Arab and racist provocations.
This year was no different.
Several far-right politicians including Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir set the tone for the day, going up to the Temple Mount before the Flag March began. The ultranationalist police minister, who leads the Otzma Yehudit party, ascended the flashpoint site alongside his fellow party member MK Yitzhak Kroizer. The pair waved an Israeli flag in front of the Dome of the Rock shrine.
“We restored governance on the Temple Mount thanks to determination and deterrence. This year, Ramadan was the quietest, thanks to deterrence. The Temple Mount is in our hands,” Ben Gvir declared, before dancing and singing with the flag.
Kroizer was also seen prostrating toward the Dome of the Rock alongside his children and father, Yehuda Kroizer, a prominent Kahanist rabbi. “The time has come to get rid of all the mosques and work to construct the Temple!” Kroizer later wrote on Facebook.
The Temple Mount is the holiest place in Judaism, as the site of the two biblical temples. Known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, it is home to Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam, and the iconic Dome of the Rock shrine.
Though Jews are ostensibly barred from praying at the site, which is administered by the Jordanian-controlled Jerusalem Waqf, the Israeli police, under the auspices of Ben Gvir, have increasingly tolerated prayer there, sparking repeated condemnations from Arab countries.
The Temple Mount has often been a flashpoint for regional violence.
At the march, the anti-Arab chant “may your village burn” was heard many times throughout the day. Some young men passed out decals calling for Jewish settlement in Gaza, and many celebrants wore stickers calling for Palestinians to be expelled from the territory.
Marchers put up stickers on shuttered storefronts lauding the death penalty law championed by Ben Gvir, as well as the extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, who advocated the expulsion of Arabs from the historic land of Israel.
The handful of Palestinian residents who dared to open their shops in the........