Quds in Arabic, Kodesh in Hebrew

America’s leading antisemitic pundit Tucker Carlson is out with an amusing new conspiracy theory. The real force behind the war in Iran is: The Chabad movement. You see, President Trump’s daughter and son in law, Ivanka and Jared Kushner, pray at a Chabad House in Washington DC. And Chabad believes deeply in the coming of the Messiah. And so, this war is designed to hasten the Messiah’s coming, destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque, and rebuild the Third Temple. Ergo, Chabad is behind it all! Or something like that.

It can be fun to come up with such salacious theories. For example: Carlson himself professes to be a Christian. Twenty years ago, he supported the Iraq war. Iraq is located in ancient Babylon. In Tucker’s Christian scriptures (The Book of Revelations), it says that Jesus will eventually confront Babylon. Could this be why Tucker supported that war?? I’m only asking questions…

It isn’t worth confronting conspiracy theorists with facts, because their bigotry is not based in fact to begin with. It might be worthwhile, however, to use this as an educational moment to remind ourselves what our own view on the Third Temple is. But first, we need to understand Iran’s view.

Iran’s terrorist arm is called the Quds Force. This is a reference to the Arabic term for Jerusalem, Al Quds, which means: “The Holy”. Arabic and Hebrew are related. Quds in Arabic is Kodesh in Hebrew. (The letters QDS here correspond to the Hebrew letters Kuf Dalet Shin). “Al Quds”, with the definite article, means: “HaKodesh”; as in: Ir HaKodesh, The Holy City, Yerushalayim. That is the ultimate aim of the terrorist Quds Force, which also controls Hezbollah and Hamas: to conquer Jerusalem by force. By the grace of God, the evil Quds Force is now being pounded by the heroic pilots of the American and Israeli Air Forces, the two strongest Air Forces in the Western world.

And how did Israel succeed in conquering Jerusalem in 1967? The Jewish State did not have any preexisting policy of taking Jerusalem by force. They took it in the context of an existential, defensive war which they hadn’t asked for. And so, it happened organically, due to historical circumstance, to fate, or, to those of us who are Religious Zionists: due........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)