In Israel 60% of the public thinks Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should resign, compared to 31% who think he should stay and 9% who are unsure. Among coalition voters, 24% think he should resign and among opposition voters, 94% think he should resign. 

And 75% of the public supports the launching of a state commission of inquiry into the October 7 Hamas invasion onslaught; compared to just 15% of the public that backs Netanyahu’s opposition to such a probe until the Gaza war is over.

During the holy month of Ramadan last year, fears rose that the war in Gaza might turn the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City into a month-long epicenter of violence between demonstrating Muslims and Israeli police. Thank God that did not happen.

For Muslims, the mosque compound, home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, is the third-holiest site in Islam. It holds equal significance for Jews, who know it as the Temple Mount which was the site of prophet king Solomon’s First Temple, destroyed by Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar II in 587 B.C.E, and the Second Temple, rebuilt in the fifth century B.C.E and destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E.

During the British Mandate for Palestine, before the recreation of the state of Israel in 1948, there were “no specific demands or requests from the pre-state Jewish community in regard to the Mount,” said author Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer and founder of nongovernmental organization Terrestrial Jerusalem.

Even after the six day war in 1967, the Israeli Government did not claim sovereignty over the site. Now however, after the growing rise of Hamas violence, the ideological right wing in Israel view the failure to exercise sole sovereignty over the Temple Mount as the biggest blunder the Israel government has made since 1948. “

During the holy month of Ramadan this year we should be praying for a peaceful Ramadan.

For Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews the Holy Temple is far more important than the secular city of Jerusalem; just as for Muslims the Holy Ka’ba is more important than the city of Makkah, but ultra-Orthodox Jews also believe that the Holy Temple will only be rebuilt by God, and not by humans.

The name “Jerusalem” occurs 660 times in the Hebrew Bible. But Jerusalem existed as a pagan city for centuries before David conquered it, a decade or two........

© Eurasia Review