Category Archives: Israel

Names and Narrative: “Isolation”

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Words matter. They do more than describe reality. They shape it.

This week, the Palestinian Authority’s WAFA news agency reported that Israel had advanced a housing plan that would “further isolate Jerusalem from Bethlehem.”

The proposal involves building homes, roads, and infrastructure between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. In almost any other place on earth, connecting two urban areas with transportation and housing would be described as integration, development, or greater connectivity.

But not for West Bank Arabs. They object to more Jews living in the corridor connecting them.

In this narrative, Jewish presence itself is an obstacle, an impediment. Jewish life is redefined as separation.

The inversion is striking.

The 1947 UN Partition Plan once envisioned Jerusalem and Bethlehem as a single Corpus Separatum—an internationally administered area shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Whatever one thinks of that proposal, its premise was coexistence, not exclusion. Yet today, not only have the local Arabs refused coexistence, but so has the United Nations.

Contours from the 1947 Partition Plan which included Greater Bethlehem and Greater Jerusalem under a “Corpus Separatum”

Instead of asking how Jews and Arabs can both live, work, worship, and travel throughout the Jerusalem-Bethlehem region, many arguments begin with the assumption that Jewish communities are inherently illegitimate. Under that framework, the more Jews who live or travel there, the more “isolated” the majority-Arab areas are said to become.

“settlement expansion around the city is deepening its isolation” – United Nations January 20, 2026

That is a remarkable redefinition of language.

Connection becomes isolation. Coexistence becomes fragmentation.

When the Partition Plan was being conceived on February 18, 1947, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Ernest Bevin (1881-1951) said “for the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine.” Today, we are not only witnessing the continued entrenchment of that tenet, but the profound hostility to the basic presence of Jews.

Don’t let the word isolation fool you. It is not describing geography. It is describing Jews as obstacles, not neighbors.

Related:

Names and Narrative: “Right to Exist” (July 2026)

Genocide Math

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We know that every death is a tragedy. We all wish there wasn’t war. Yet wars happen.

There have been several attempts to portray the current Gazans war against Israel in various lights. Some people have used the civilian-to-death ratio in this war of roughly 2-to-1 as historically low compared to any urban combat in modern times, especially one in which the army hides underneath the homes and hospitals of the civilian population.

Here, we lay out the civilian death figures relative to other modern wars which had many civilian deaths.

Assuming:

  • 73,356 reported total deaths in Gaza from October 7, 2023 to August 2, 2026
  • 25,000 of those were Hamas or other militants (a rough figure supplied by the Israeli army in January 2026)
  • Civilian deaths = 48,356
  • Prewar population = 2.2 million
  • Duration = 34 months

The calculation is:

  • Overall civilian mortality: 48,356 ÷ 2,200,000 = 2.19% of Gaza’s population.
  • Average civilian mortality per month: 2.19% ÷ 34 = 0.055% per month.

That yields the following comparison:

CaseEstimated monthly percentage killedMultiple of Gaza civilian rate (0.055%/month)
Gaza [2023-present]0.055%1×
Guatemala (Ixil) [1981-3]0.10%1.8×
Darfur [2003-5]0.11%–0.17%2.0-3.1x
Roma genocide [1939-45]0.20%–0.69%3.6–12.5×
Anfal (Kurds) [1987-8]0.22%–0.44%4–8×
Ustaše genocide [1941-5]0.36%6.5×
Cambodia [1975-9]0.44%–0.59%8–10.7×
Rohingya [2017-8]at least 0.67%12.1×
Holodomor [1932-3]0.73%–1.04%13.2–18.9×
Holocaust [1941-5]1.32%24×
Yazidi genocide [2014-7]0.65%–2.5%11.8–45.4×
Rwanda [1994]13.8%–22%250.9–400×
Srebrenica (monthly equivalent) [1995]~80%~1,454×
Monthly toll of civilian deaths in wars over last 100 years, as a percentage of the total population, in comparison to current Gazan war against Israel
Yazidis are a non-Muslim ethnic group in and around Iraq targeted for persecution and annihilation by ISIS. They continue to suffer persecution from Muslims in Turkey and Iraq.

“IS fighters invaded Yazidi villages and towns in Northern Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan, rounding up men, women, and children. Yazidi men were ordered to convert to Islam; those who did not, and even some who did, were executed in mass graves. Yazidi women and girls were abducted and sold into sexual slavery, being forcibly “married” to jihadists and other individuals in Iraq, Syria, and other countries. Yazidi boys were also kidnapped by the Islamic State and sent to training camps, where they were indoctrinated into the group’s severe interpretation of Islam and trained to become soldiers. IS glorified its atrocities online in gruesome videos, propaganda magazines, and religious publications, emphasizing its commitment to eradicating Yazidi identity.” – Vicken Cheterian, “ISIS Genocide against the Yazidis and Mass Violence in the Middle East,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 48, no. 4 (2019): 1-7, doi:10.1080/13530194.2019.1683718.

Measured against the last century’s ethnic group civilian deaths, the war in Gaza has produced a far smaller death toll than the wars that shaped recent history. Yet few conflicts of comparable scale have generated such an extraordinary level of international media attention, UN action, street protests, and campus activism.

The conflict has spilled far beyond the battlefield. Around the world, Israelis and Jewish communities have increasingly become targets of hostility, harassment, and violence tied to the war. Whatever one’s views of the prosecution of the war, the global reaction has extended well beyond criticism of a government and the borders of Israel unlike every other conflict, raising profound questions about why this war has become so singular in international political and cultural life.

The numbers remind us that history matters. A world that loses its sense of proportion does not become more moral but selective, narrow and biased.

Related:

We Let Minorities Die In The Middle East (July 2025)

Stealing a People’s Past

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For generations, antisemitism sought to remove Jews from the future. Today, it increasingly seeks to remove them from the past.

That is the deeper significance of the growing campaign to recast Jewish history as Palestinian history. It is not simply a dispute over archaeology or competing national narratives. It is an effort to strip the Jewish people of their origins, their memory, and ultimately their legitimacy and basic human rights.

The examples are becoming impossible to ignore.

The Holocaust—the systematic murder of six million Jews—is routinely appropriated as a metaphor for Palestinian suffering. Jewish victims become a rhetorical device rather than a people with a unique history. The descendants of Holocaust survivors are cast as the new Nazis, while the actual genocide of European Jewry is emptied of its historical meaning.

Some Europeans have taken the Jewish girl, Anne Frank, and dressed her in an Arab kefiyeh as if she were a Palestinian Arab or would have supported the murder of Jews. During World War II, Anne hid in an attic while Nazis hunted her and other Jews for years, before the Nazis took her and murdered her in a concentration camp.

Now even Jesus is being rewritten.

Rather than acknowledging the historical reality that Jesus was a Jew who lived, taught, and died among the Jewish people in Judea, activists increasingly describe him as “Palestinian.” The purpose is to transplant one of history’s most influential Jews from the Jewish story into a Palestinian national narrative that not only didn’t exist in his lifetime, but Arabs didn’t invade the Jewish holy land until the seventh and eighth century CE, hundreds of years after Jesus lived.

The same pattern extends across nearly every cornerstone of Jewish civilization.

The First and Second Temples become myths or located in far-way lands. The Western Wall is detached from Jewish history. Jerusalem is reframed as an exclusively Muslim city. The Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs are recast. Ancient Israel is dismissed as colonial fiction. Hebrew becomes a borrowed language rather than the indigenous language of the Jewish people. Even Jewish holy sites are repeatedly described as exclusively Islamic or Christian.

United Nations 1949 map of of holy sites in Jerusalem lists the Jewish Temple Mount as only holy to Muslims

Each claim may appear isolated. Together they reveal a coherent project.

The goal is not simply to elevate a Palestinian Arab identity or an Islamic one. Every people is entitled to tell its own story. But no national movement has the right to build its identity by erasing another people’s history, heritage and human rights.

If a Palestinian Arab national identity is legitimate, it should be able to stand on its own. It shouldn’t require denying that Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel. It does not require pretending the Temples never stood in Jerusalem. It does not require transforming Jesus into an Arab. It wouldn’t require appropriating appropriating words and people from their national tragedies.

Anti-Israel author Susan Abulhawa repeatedly uses terms like “Holocaust” to turn Jews into Nazis, in an attempt at misdirection from the popular Palestinian Arab political-terrorist group Hamas, which are actual modern-day Nazis

Yet this pattern of historical theft has increasingly been accompanied by something darker: the revival of some of Europe’s oldest antisemitic ideas.

The Hamas Charter drew explicitly from antisemitic conspiracy theories and echoed themes long propagated by Nazi ideology. Since October 7, the world has again witnessed chants, slogans, and propaganda that do not merely oppose Israeli government policies but deny the legitimacy of Jewish peoplehood itself. Public figures, writers, and activists have too often trafficked in narratives that portray Jews not as an indigenous people with a continuous history, but as impostors who fabricated their past.

If Jews can be separated from Jerusalem, from the Temple, from Abraham and Sarah, from David, from Hebrew, from the Holocaust, and even from Jesus, then they become a people without roots. A nation without ancestors is easier to portray as foreign. A foreign people is easier to cast as colonizers. And colonizers, in the moral framework of today’s activists, can be removed. Should be removed.

Historical negation is not an academic exercise. It prepares the ground for political exclusion, eviction, and violence.

The attempt to steal Jewish history is not ultimately about the past. It is about deciding whether the Jewish people have any legitimate place in the future.

Related:

The Anti-Semitism In Anti-Zionism

Israel’s Response to the Ceuta Invasion

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For nearly three years, Spain positioned itself as one of Israel’s sharpest critics in Europe.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez repeatedly condemned Israel’s conduct in Gaza, recognized a Palestinian state, pressed for European measures against Israel, and framed the conflict primarily through the language of humanitarian obligation. Israeli officials responded that Spain had become increasingly detached from the security realities Israel faces and was rewarding Hamas diplomatically after October 7.

Then Spain found itself confronting a border crisis of its own.

An estimated 49,000 migrants surged into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta in a single day, overwhelming local authorities and forcing Spain to deploy troops to restore order. Overnight, the country’s political conversation shifted from humanitarian ideals to border control, sovereignty, and national security.

Israel noticed immediately.

Israeli officials pointed to Ceuta as evidence of something they had argued for years: it is easy to lecture another democracy about borders until your own border collapses.

Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon took aim at Spain for why it maintains a colony in Africa

There was an unmistakable sense of schadenfreude in parts of the Israeli reaction. The same government that had spent months criticizing Israel for emphasizing security suddenly found itself insisting that no sovereign nation can simply allow tens of thousands of people to cross its frontier without control.

Every democracy must balance compassion with sovereignty. Every democracy must decide whether humanitarian obligations can coexist with meaningful border enforcement. Israel has argued for years that they must. Spain is now discovering how difficult that balance becomes when events unfold on its own frontier.

There is another irony.

Spain’s immediate security now depends heavily on Morocco’s cooperation. Rabat’s willingness to police its side of the border has become essential to Spain’s stability. Yet Morocco chose a dramatically different path from Spain in its relationship with Israel. It joined the Abraham Accords, expanded security, intelligence, and economic cooperation with Israel, and demonstrated that pragmatic regional partnerships can coexist with support for Palestinian aspirations.

Spain and Morocco have moved in opposite diplomatic directions with Israel. Yet today Spain needs Morocco more than ever.

Israel’s ambassador to Spain declined to say whether its government supports Morroco taking over the Spanish enclaves in Africa.

Israel, however, should resist celebrating too loudly.

If Ceuta marks the beginning of sustained migration pressure into Europe, the political consequences are unlikely to stop with Spain. Across the continent, immigration has already fueled the growth of nationalist parties and intensified debates over identity, sovereignty, and integration. Another large migration wave could accelerate those trends even further.

History offers a warning for Jews.

Periods of political instability and polarization have rarely benefited Jewish communities. When societies become more fractured, antisemitism often finds new expression—from parts of the far right, from extremist Islamist movements, and from other ideological currents. Europe has already experienced a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents since October 7, 2023. Additional social upheaval could place Jewish communities under even greater pressure.

Israel can fairly point out the irony of Spain’s predicament. It can argue that Ceuta demonstrates the complexity of governing borders that are easier to criticize than to defend.

If Europe enters another prolonged period of political instability, no one should assume European Jews will remain untouched by the consequences. Those victims will not be amused by Israel nor protected by smug Israeli diplomats saying I told you so.

Changing the Map, Changing the Politics

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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as frozen. It isn’t.

Both Israelis and Palestinians appear to believe that now is NOT the moment for a final peace agreement. Instead of negotiating, each side is using this period to improve its position for whatever comes next.

They have adopted two very different strategies.

Israel’s strategy is physical.

The settlement movement is racing to create new facts on the ground – approving settlements, establishing outposts, extending infrastructure, and expanding the Israeli presence in disputed territory of Judea and Samaria. The calculation is straightforward: when negotiations eventually resume, the map itself will have changed.

The pace has been striking.

ACTION20252026 (through April)What it Measures
Official settlements approved5434 additional approvals (bringing the current government’s total to 102 since January 2023)Government approval of new settlements or legalization of existing communities.
New unauthorized outposts established86Total outposts reached 363, with 212 created under the current governmentNew communities established before formal authorization.
Agricultural (herding) outposts60Continued expansionAgricultural communities that often extend practical control over large surrounding areas through grazing, roads, fencing, and infrastructure.
Outposts established in Judea and Samaria since 1991, according to Peace Now

Every month that passes without negotiations leaves more roads, homes, infrastructure, and communities for future negotiators to contend with.

New communities in Judea and Samaria approved by Israel according to Peace Now

The Palestinian strategy is political.

Rather than altering the geography, Palestinian leaders have concentrated on shifting international opinion. They have sought additional recognition from foreign governments, expanded support within international organizations, pursued legal and diplomatic campaigns against Israel, and strengthened ties with constituencies – particularly within the U.S. Democratic Party – that may wield greater influence under a future American administration. Their calculation is equally straightforward: when negotiations eventually resume, the political environment will have changed.

That effort has also produced measurable gains.

Diplomatic MilestoneSince October 7, 2023Why It Matters
New recognitions (2024)Norway, Ireland, Spain, Slovenia, Armenia, Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad & TobagoExpanded formal recognition beyond the Global South.
Major Western powers (2025)France, United Kingdom, Canada, AustraliaFirst major Western/G7 countries to recognize Palestine, signaling a shift among traditional allies of Israel.
International legal initiativesExpandedIncreased reliance on the UN, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court to advance Palestinian objectives.
Political supportIncreasedGrowing support in parts of Europe and among segments of the U.S. Democratic Party.

Measured by their own objectives, both sides can point to progress. Israel has expanded its physical footprint while the Palestinians have expanded their diplomatic footprint. One strategy seeks to change the map while the other seeks to change the politics surrounding the map.

What is striking is what neither side is emphasizing.

Neither is devoting comparable energy to the difficult work of strengthening governance at home: confronting corruption, reforming institutions, addressing political dysfunction, or building the domestic political consensus that any lasting agreement would ultimately require.

Instead, each is attempting to improve its negotiating position by changing the external environment. It is a race between geography and diplomacy.

The next round of negotiations will not begin where the last one ended. It will begin with a new map and a new political landscape.

The Guardian’s Vilification of Jews on the Temple Mount

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Thousands of Jews visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem this week during normal visiting hours on Tisha B’Av, the day commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Jewish Temples that once stood on that very site.

That is the basic fact. Everything that follows depends on how news organizations chose to describe it.

OutletWho?PlaceAction
The Guardian“Jewish extremists“; “far-right” ministers“Al-Aqsa mosque compound”“Storm”
Reuters“Israel’s Ben Gvir”; “National Security Minister”“Al-Aqsa Mosque compound” (also notes Jews call it the Temple Mount in article)“Visits”
Haaretz“Far right Israeli acitivists““Al-Aqsa/Temple Mount Compound”“Visit”
Arab & Palestinian media“Settlers,” “far-right” or “extremists““Al-Aqsa Mosque““Raid” / “Storm“

The pattern is clear. The same event is transformed through language in the Muslim and Arab world: Temple Mount becomes Al-Aqsa; Jewish worshippers become “settlers” or “extremists”; a regulated religious visit during visiting hours becomes a “raid” or “storming.” And the results are laid out as “very dangerous” and “the global community has a shared responsibility to prevent Netanyahu’s ‘provocative acts.'”

This has a long ugly history and is expected in the radical Muslim press.

What is becoming more commonplace is for Europe to join this antisemitic framing. The United Kingdom’s The Guardian reported on the visit with the shrill tone and narrative of the Islamic world in a news article, not an opinion piece.

The visitors did not storm the site. They entered through Israeli security during established visiting hours. The Jews never entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque itself. They visited the Temple Mount – the holiest place in Judaism and site of the First and Second Jewish Temples – on a Jewish holiday about that specific location.

Calling thousands of Jewish worshippers “extremists” because they ascended Judaism’s holiest site on Tisha B’Av is itself an extraordinary editorial choice. The remarkable inversion is that the descendants of the people whose temples stood there are portrayed as intruders, while their religious observance is framed as an act of aggression.

Newspapers do not report that Muslims “stormed Mecca” during the Hajj or that Christians “stormed” the Vatican during Easter. Yet when Jews gather at Judaism’s holiest site, peaceful pilgrimage suddenly becomes an extremist assault.

This is especially troubling in Britain, where antisemitism has surged since October 7. British officials have repeatedly warned that the demonization of Israel spills into the demonization of British Jews, while chants of “jihad” and “intifada” have echoed through the country’s streets. The concern is no longer theoretical. Britain’s deadliest recent synagogue attack was carried out by an Islamic State adherent whose communications revealed deeply antisemitic views. More than half of Britain’s recorded antisemitic incidents in 2025 referenced Israel, “Palestine,” Hamas or the Gaza war.

The Guardian is not simply another British newspaper. It is one of the world’s most influential English-language news organizations, with most of its readership now outside Britain, including Ireland and Australia. Its reporting helps shape how millions understand events in Israel. Media watchdogs including CAMERA and HonestReporting have repeatedly criticized its language and framing on Israel and Jerusalem. Yet despite years of such criticism—and against the backdrop of rising antisemitism and repeated attacks on Jews in Britain—the newspaper chose to describe Jews observing one of Judaism’s most solemn days at their holiest site as fanatical Jews coming for Islamic holy sites. That framing does not remain confined to Britain. It travels with The Guardian‘s global audience.

Journalism’s first obligation is to help readers understand reality before interpreting it. When The Guardian abandons that duty in favor of inflammatory framing, it bears responsibility for contributing to the climate of hostility that encourages anti-Jewish hatred and violence.

ACTION ITEM

Contact The Guardian either through guardian.letters@theguardian.com or guardian.readers@theguardian.com and voicemail +44 (0)20 3353 4736 and opinion@theguardian.com

Related articles:

Storming Words, Not Mosques (April 2026)

The Dangerous ‘Settlers Storming Al Aqsa’ Fiction (October 2023)

Will This Be the Last Fast of Tisha B’Av?

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For nearly 2,000 years, Jews have fasted on Tisha B’Av to mourn the destruction of the First and Second Temples, the loss of Jewish sovereignty, exile from Jerusalem, and a long chain of national tragedies.

Jewish tradition also teaches that the fast will not last forever. The prophet Zechariah envisioned a day when the fasts commemorating Jerusalem’s destruction would become days of “joy and gladness and cheerful festivals.” Many rabbis have understood that era to arrive with the rebuilding of the Temple.

No one knows when that day will come.

Yet the last century has witnessed changes that generations of Jews scarcely dared imagine.

The Jewish people returned to their ancestral homeland. The State of Israel was reborn (1948). Jerusalem was reunited under Jewish sovereignty (1967). For the first time in nearly two thousand years, Israel is home to the world’s largest Jewish population (2012).

Israel has also become increasingly accepted by its Arab and Muslim neighbors, establishing diplomatic relations with Egypt (1979), Jordan (1994), the United Arab Emirates (2020), Bahrain (2020), Morocco (2020), Sudan (2020, pending implementation), and Kosovo (2021). Meanwhile, the United States (2018), Guatemala (2018), Honduras (2021), Kosovo (2021), Papua New Guinea (2023), Paraguay (2024), and Fiji (2024) have moved their embassies to Jerusalem, while other countries (Slovenia and Nauru) are considering doing the same.

Last year (2025), more than 75,000 Jews ascended the Temple Mount – a modern record that would have been unimaginable only a generation ago.

The Golden Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City exterior wall (photo: First One through)

The Temple remains unbuilt and Tisha B’Av remains a day of mourning.

But it does raise a question that previous generations could scarcely have imagined asking: Will this be the last Tisha B’Av fast?

Perhaps Jews a century from now will still be asking the same question. Or perhaps they will look back and realize that ours was among the last generations to mourn the destruction rather than celebrate the restoration.

For almost two thousand years, that possibility seemed unimaginable. Today, it no longer does.

The Vessels We Carry

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There is something profoundly human about gathering related things into a single vessel.

We do it with photo albums, where a lifetime of moments is gathered into one book. We do it with museums, where centuries of artifacts are brought together under one roof.

The Jewish calendar does the same with time.

Tisha B’Av is not merely the anniversary of the destruction of the First and Second Temples. Over centuries it became the vessel into which Jewish history poured its sorrows – from the destruction of the Temples to the expulsions from England and Spain, to catastrophes that culminated in the Holocaust. Generations found in Tisha B’Av a place large enough to hold them all.

The Nuremberg Chronicle showing the destruction of Jerusalem

The Temple Mount in Jerusalem became another vessel. Of place.

For much of history, Jerusalem was known as the city of the Jewish Temple. But over time it gathered far more meaning. It became the location of the near sacrifice of Isaac, the destination of pilgrimage, the focus of exile, and the direction toward which Jews have prayed for thousands of years.

Other faiths also poured meaning into Jerusalem. Christians revere it as the place of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. Muslims honor it as the destination of Muhammad’s Night Journey. Layer upon layer, century upon century, Jerusalem became more than a city. It became a vessel carrying humanity’s deepest convictions, hopes, and conflicts.

Temple Mount at dawn (photo: First One Through)

And then there is a unique people.

The Jewish people became a vessel unlike any other. Across thousands of years they carried covenant, exile, learning, persecution, survival, and hope. They preserved ancient language, sacred texts, melodies, customs, and memory across continents and generations. They became the vessel through which memory survived when kingdoms fell, empires vanished, and even the Temple itself lay in ruins.

Every vessel carries something. Some carry water. Some carry treasure. Some carry ashes. The greatest vessels carry what cannot be touched: memory, identity, covenant, and hope.

And that is what the Jewish people, Jerusalem, and Tisha B’Av have become. Three vessels in one elaborate story.

Every generation poured something more into those vessels: not only grief, but hope.

Within them rests the hope captured in the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah: that the Jewish people will live as a free people in their own land, with Jerusalem at its heart.

And on Tisha B’Av in particular, the vessel holds one additional hope above all others: the rebuilding of the Beit HaMikdash. Not because Jews long merely for stones and walls, but because it represents the restoration of wholeness – between God and humanity, a people and their land, memory and redemption.

Every Tisha B’Av, Jews gather into one day the grief of centuries, turn toward one city, and renew one hope. As they do, they recognize that this is more than a story of three fused vessels. It is that together they carry one enduring promise.

Every Jewish Holiday Leads Back to Jerusalem

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For many people, Jewish holidays are family traditions: apples and honey on Rosh Hashanah, a Passover Seder, Hanukkah candles, or a sukkah in the backyard. Yet beneath these customs lies the deeper reality that every major Jewish holiday is connected in some way to the Temple in Jerusalem.

The Temple was not simply a house of worship. It was the spiritual, national, and legal center of Jewish life. Pilgrimages, sacrifices, priestly service, national assemblies, and the calendar itself revolved around Jerusalem. Even after the Temple’s destruction in 70CE, the holidays preserved its memory and continue to point toward it.

Rosh Hashanah marks the Jewish New Year and the sounding of the shofar. In Temple times, witnesses testified before the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem to establish the new month, and the shofar echoed through the Temple courts. Today, Jews still pray that God’s kingship will once again be recognized from Zion.

Yom Kippur is inseparable from the Temple. The High Priest entered the Holy of Holies only once a year to seek atonement for the nation. Modern synagogue services painstakingly recount the Temple ritual, preserving the memory of the day’s most sacred service.

Sukkot was one of the three pilgrimage festivals when Jews ascended to Jerusalem. The Temple hosted the joyous water-drawing ceremony (Simchat Beit HaShoeva), accompanied by music, dancing, and water libations on the altar. Rabbinic tradition describes it as one of the greatest celebrations ever witnessed.

Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah conclude the festival cycle begun at the Temple with Sukkot. While Simchat Torah developed later, it celebrates the Torah that was publicly taught and read in Jerusalem.

“Ki mitzion tetze torah” (כִּי מִצִּיּוֹן תֵּצֵא תוֹרָה). “For instruction shall come forth from Zion, The word of God from Jerusalem.” – Isaiah (Chapter 2, Verse 3)

Hanukkah commemorates the rededication of the Second Temple after it was reclaimed from the Seleucid Greeks. Every candle recalls the restoration of Jewish worship in Jerusalem.

Tu BiShvat, the New Year for Trees, determined agricultural laws whose tithes and first fruits were ultimately brought to the Temple.

Purim is the only holiday without a direct Temple ritual, yet its story ensured the survival of the Jewish people who would rebuild and worship in the Second Temple. Jerusalem itself celebrates Purim a day later, preserving its ancient status as a walled city.

Passover was the greatest pilgrimage festival. Hundreds of thousands ascended to Jerusalem to offer the Passover sacrifice before gathering in homes throughout the city for the Seder. Even today Jews conclude the Seder with the words, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

Tens of thousands of Jews at the Kotel Plaza in the Old City of Jerusalem during Passover, as they cannot ascend to the Temple Mount today

Shavuot celebrated the first fruits brought to the Temple in elaborate processions from across the Land of Israel. Farmers entered Jerusalem carrying decorated baskets while choirs sang Psalms of thanksgiving.

Tisha B’Av mourns above all the destruction of both the First and Second Temples. It is the day on which Jews sit on the floor, recite Lamentations, and remember the loss of Jerusalem’s spiritual heart.

Even holidays with no formal Temple ceremony ultimately orbit Jerusalem. They celebrate the survival of the Jewish people, the covenant, the Land of Israel, and the hope of restoration.

Jerusalem is not merely Judaism’s holiest city; it is the organizing principle of the Jewish calendar itself. The cycle of holidays begins and ends with memories of Temple worship, pilgrimages, offerings, repentance, thanksgiving, and national gathering in one place.

For centuries Jews prayed facing Jerusalem, broke a glass at weddings to remember its destruction, left part of a home unfinished in mourning, and ended the Passover Seder and Yom Kippur with the same aspiration: “Next year in Jerusalem.”

The Jewish calendar is more than a record of sacred time. It is a map whose destination is Jerusalem, carrying the memory of the Temple from one generation to the next.

Related articles:

The Prayer That Never Left Jerusalem (May 2026)

Stop With the Hanukkah Miracle and Declare the Hanukkah MESSAGE (December 2025)

Eight Attestations On Jerusalem (December 2021)

The OIC’s Hamas Exception

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Founded in 1969, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is a coalition of 57 Muslim-majority nations, making it the second-largest intergovernmental organization in the world after the United Nations. Stretching from Morocco to Indonesia, and from Kazakhstan to Nigeria, it represents roughly a quarter of the world’s countries and speaks collectively on issues affecting the Muslim world.

OIC Member states

One of the organization’s longstanding positions is that extremist groups claiming to act in the name of Islam do not represent Islam. Over the years, the OIC has repeatedly condemned organizations such as:

  • ISIS (Daesh) — for attacks across Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Nigeria, all OIC member states.
  • Al-Qaeda — for attacks in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, and other Muslim-majority countries.
  • Boko Haram — for its insurgency in Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon.
  • Al-Shabaab — for attacks centered in Somalia and extending into neighboring countries.
  • ISIS-K (Islamic State Khorasan Province) — for terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
  • Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — for its campaign against the government and civilians of Pakistan.

The common thread is unmistakable. Every one of these organizations has waged war against governments, civilians, or institutions in Muslim-majority countries, mostly members of the OIC itself.

The OIC has consistently argued that Muslims have been among the principal victims of jihadist terrorism. These groups bomb mosques, seek to overthrow Muslim governments, and destabilize OIC member states are denounced as terrorists and rejected as contrary to Islam.

Yet one jihadi terrorist groups is not called out. It is embraced.

Hamas is an Islamist movement whose founding charter and rhetoric have long drawn on jihadist themes and whose October 7, 2023, attack deliberately targeted civilians. Nevertheless, the OIC has not designated Hamas as a terrorist organization or issued the kind of sweeping institutional condemnations that it has directed at ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab, ISIS-K, or TTP.

The most obvious distinction is not the use of Islamist ideology or armed violence. It is the target: Israel, the Jewish State.

For an organization that frequently states that terrorism has no religion and that Muslims are among terrorism’s greatest victims, its record reveals a clear pattern. When jihadist groups attack the Muslim world, the OIC is unequivocal in its condemnation. When an Islamist movement wages jihad against the Jewish state, the organization’s response is support.