Now in Power, Israel's Messianic Far-right Is Dead Serious About Rebuilding the Temple

That process was perceived as one-directional – hence the disbelief of the Gaza Strip settlers until the last minute that their evacuation would actually be implemented. That event itself caused a deep rupture of consciousness, which is characteristic of messianic movements that get a punch in the face from reality.

The response to the crisis was complex. Some of the believers revised their attitude toward the state and toward the notion of mamlakhtiyut (overarching, all-inclusive statehood). The state's creation was no longer perceived as sacred, and the attitude toward it, and in particular toward the army, which expresses the centrality of the state, turned critical.

A second group, which includes Yehuda Etzion, one of the ideologues of the Jewish Underground, relates to the Temple Mount as a manifestation of the new national identity, in which the religious element is deeply intertwined. Its members believe that the activity of the underground was overly hasty, that first it was necessary to prepare secular public opinion for the messianic process. "To settle in the hearts" was this group's slogan. They formed religious "core groups" in mixed (Jewish-Arab) cities and in secular neighborhoods in the heart of the country.

A third group maintained that because the process of establishing settlements in Judea and Samaria had not stopped, and that in fact left-leaning governments, the army and various public bodies (such as the Israel Electric Corporation, the national water company Mekorot, the Jewish National Fund) were continuing to assist the settlement project, the focus of activity should be shifted to a different arena: the Temple Mount.

The Jewish Underground had failed to blow up the mosque, it was explained, because they had acted prematurely, before public opinion had been properly prepared. Still, the efforts did not cease: On the eve of the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip there was an additional failed attempt to organize the act by a radical group, including the use of Law anti-tank missiles.

Another important turning point in the movement to build a Third Temple involved the right-wing activist Yehuda Glick. The fact that he was shot by a Palestinian would-be assassin, in 2014, elevated his status and brought him into the 20th Knesset as a Likud MK. The affable, American-born Glick, a former director of the Temple Institute, grasped that the way to implant the Temple issue in the hearts of secular Jews was not by means of religious – or even national – arguments. Instead, their own mode of thought should be used, namely the discourse of rights.

He arrived at a dual conclusion. First, not to talk about the Temple at all, but to make do with the demand that Jews be permitted Jews to pray on the Temple Mount. Second, to draw on the argument of universal rights. Will Jews be permitted to pray everywhere in the world, except for at the site most sacred to them? And in any case, we don't want to downgrade the rights of the Muslims, heaven forbid, only to let the Jews do what's permitted to the Muslims.

One of the revolutionary transformations was the reversal in the official position of the religious Zionist movement. Whereas in the past religious Zionism had supported the rabbinic prohibition, still in place, against visiting the Temple Mount for reasons of impurity, it now forsook this approach. In the present decade, even Haredi (Jewish ultra-Orthodox) groups that had espoused an even sharper stance against visiting the Temple Mount, started to support this.

The result: From just a few visits in the past, 2023 saw visits and prayers by more than 50,000 Jews (according to the organization Beyadenu [In Our Hands]: Returning to the Temple Mount), all under the auspices of the government, under the leadership of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Visiting the Temple Mount is one thing, but practical preparations to build and operate a new Temple it are something else altogether. Over the years the kohanim (Jews who trace their lineage back to the biblical priestly class), who are supposed to assume those roles, have been preparing and training for the day at the Temple Institute.

Their garments have been sewn, the musical instruments and their work utensils have been crafted, all according to the precise instructions laid out in the Torah. The altar has already been built – it is stored in a secret location – and a beit midrash (study hall), in which the rules of the Temple Mount and the Temple will be taught, already exists.

In an interview, architect Yoram Ginsberg described his master plan for the new Temple and the Temple Institute (the latter situated nearby in the Jewish Quarter), noted that the structure will have a heating system and underground parking. Visitors to the institute see a physical model of the Temple as it is depicted in the prophecies of Ezekiel; a Lego model of the Temple can be purchased in the institute's store. The institute is currently recruiting kohanim, aged 14 and up, who will be authorized to slaughter animals for sacrifice.

What had been the main problem to date – finding a red heifer for immolation, whose ashes can be used to purify the Children of Israel and enable them to ascend to the Mount – is also about to be resolved. After a large number of failed attempts to breed a proper heifer, both in Israel and in the United States, a herd containing a number of such animals is currently being raised at a secret location in the Golan Heights. It's a complicated procedure. If two years pass and no more than two hairs that are not red are found on the body of the intended heifer, it will be declared by the institute as the first red heifer to have existed since the Second Temple era.

In the next stage the animal will be slaughtered and burned and its ashes will be mixed with water – at which point, finally, after 2,000 years, believing Jews will be able to cleanse themselves of the impurity of the dead via the water and ascend freely to all parts of the Temple Mount.

Support for the Temple Mount movement has gained increasing public legitimacy over the past two decades. Michael Ben-Ari, a disciple of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who is active in Temple Mount organizations, was elected to the Knesset in 2009 on the National Union slate. He was followed into the Knesset by Moshe Feiglin (Likud). Subsequently, Miri Regev (Likud) established a Temple Mount Directorate which, she said, "will bring about a change in the public discourse regarding our attachment to the Temple Mount."

The legitimization surged in the current Knesset, with a massive presence of Temple Mount activists or their descendants among the MKs of Ben-Gvir's Otzma Yehudit party. At their head is the person who is the great hope of the Temple Mount organizations: Ben-Gvir himself, also a Kahane disciple, and the man who just this week declared his aspiration to establish a synagogue at the site.

The cavernous main auditorium of Jerusalem's International Convention Center has seen a number of gatherings with the participation of thousands of Temple Mount devotees and supporters of the movement, including leading politicians, among them cabinet ministers and MKs. Millions of shekels and dollars flow into the movement from Israel and abroad, not least from Christian fundamentalist groups.

There is widespread support, declarative and financial, from governmental and public organizations, in some cases overtly, but also covertly, in indirect ways (for example, some young women do National Service, in lieu of serving in the military, in the Temple Institute).

The many organizations that advocate for the Temple Mount display a diversity of views. The group headed by Prof. Hillel Weiss is calling for the Al-Aqsa Mosque to be demolished already now and for Temple construction to commence apace. In 2004, Weiss established the "New Sanhedrin," which is meant to supplant the Knesset and "whose purpose is to become the source of authority of the Jewish people, contrary to the conventional position of the left, that the State of Israel is the source of that authority," he said.

Religious literature is replete with essays, newspapers and pamphlets explaining how Israeli democracy needs to be overhauled and transformed from a "kingdom of heresy" into a "holy kingdom" or a "kingdom of kohanim."

However, what most of the Temple Mount faithful groups have in common, and which is concealed from the general public, is the theory of stages. At present the task is to get as many Jews as possible to visit the Mount. Then, to conduct organized prayer there by authority and with permission.

When a similar demand was put forward regarding the Tomb of the Patriarchs, in Hebron, after the Six-Day War, it was vehemently opposed by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. He realized that the encounter of Jewish and Muslim worshippers there would generate clashes. Jewish prayer was allowed after Dayan retired from the public arena, and one of the results was the February 1994 massacre perpetrated against Muslim worshippers by Baruch Goldstein, the hero of Ben-Gvir's dreams.

After Jews are permitted to pray openly on the Mount, an explicit demand will be put forward to erect a synagogue next to the mosque. In the final stage the mosque will be demolished and the Temple built in its stead. Social media abounds with simulations and detailed proposals prepared by architects for the new Temple.

The "moderates" claim that it will be a house of worship for all nations. That too is a deception, and the moderates are simply less ready to admit it. The Third Temple will be earmarked solely for the members of the Chosen People. Its Priests and Levites will slaughter animals there day in and day out, as described by Yishai Sarid in his dystopian novel "The Third Temple" (English translation due this November). The scorched meat is intended for the God of the chosen people and for the supremacist Jews.

It wasn't until 1988 that Gush Emunim revealed, for the first time since its founding 14 years earlier, its conviction that the final goal of the State of Israel is not to serve as a safe haven for the Jewish people, but to have a spiritual-moral goal: establishment of the Priestly Kingdom. Thus today, concealed within the innocent demand to allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, is the great plan: to build the Temple, which is intended to be the ultimate expression of Jewish sovereignty.

Dr. Tomer Persico, one of the most assiduous researchers of the messianic movement, terms this approach the "nationalization of sanctity," in his important Hebrew-language article "Beyadenu Hakhol," published in 2017 in Makor Rishon. Anyone who doesn't grasp this, who isn't keeping track of the project's steady and rapid realization – anyone who says, "What does Ben-Gvir want, after all? Just for Jews to be allowed to visit the Temple Mount and pray there. Doesn't that sound logical?" – has been ensnared in the trap.

Itamar Ben-Gvir is closely connected to the Temple Mount Faithful group. As he himself states: "Although I didn't grow up in a religious home, but rather a traditionalist one, nevertheless the Temple Mount always seemed to me to be a basic element in Judaism, in nationalism, in our right to this land. I joined the late Gershon Salomon's Temple Mount Faithful, and I promised myself that we will never leave that good mount, but will promote it, explain its importance, go up to it over and over… Every time I go up to the Mount I see the progress, the gradual improvement there in terms of Israel's redemption – little by little" (from a Hebrew-language opinion piece, "The Temple Mount: Symbol of Our Existence Here," which Ben-Gvir published last year in Makor Rishon).

In the eyes of the Temple Mount organizations, Ben-Gvir appears to be the embodiment of a wonderful dream, the powerful implementer of the vision propounded by Salomon, its chief progenitor. As the Temple Mount researcher Nadav Shragai notes, "Gershon Salomon, who until a quarter of a century ago was identified more than anyone else with the Jewish struggle for the Temple Mount, passed away in the midst of the Jewish revolution there: quiet prayers, with a minyan [prayer quorum] that is held every day on the eastern side of the Mount, with police authorization and supervision."

Last year, as noted, more than 50,000 Jews visited the site. Ben-Gvir himself has visited the Temple Mount several times this year, and it's not surprising that the police, under his ministerial supervision, allowed it, though they have the authority to cut off access to the Mount if they anticipate violence.

"A period of a miracle," National Missions Minister Orit Strock termed the grim days after October 7 and the ongoing war. Indeed, for many from the extremist movements, the time of Ben-Gvir is a time of miracle and opportunity. The theory of stages intended to establish the Temple at any price, is already operational, and as Ben-Gvir said, "I see the progress."

Many of Ben-Gvir's supporters, both in the IDF and in the country's outlying areas, see him as a distinguished leader, a strong person who will restore security and national pride to a people in the grip of a crisis, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed in this. But they don't understand his final goals. Those who do not struggle vigorously today will in the future face the coming stages, until the final stage. And that will happen very soon. Long before the advent of the Messiah.

Yoram Peri is professor emeritus of Israel studies at the University of Maryland; Gabi Weimann is a professor of political communication in the School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy of Reichman University.