Visiting the Western Wall, and the al-Aqsa Mosque, as a Muslim Woman

In light of the latest outbursts of violence in Jerusalem, Qanta Ahmed reflects on visiting the Temple Mount and the spirit of intolerance that dominates much of contemporary Islam:

My first visit to al-Aqsa, and to the Dome, and to the Western Wall was in the month of May just two years ago. Because I am privileged in the eyes of Israel as a Muslim, I could visit, and worship at all three, while I could not offer the same opportunity to a Jew. . . [Yet] I still feel the sharp rejection of the bearded sentry at the Dome of the Rock, [and] my humiliation as the sentry challenged and rankly tested evidence of my Islamic identity. . . .

The experience tainted my entire visit to the Dome of the Rock. Even deep inside the cave within the Rock, as I prayed, the harassment continued. As [my guide] stood respectfully to one side to avoid observing my prayer (as is customary for a Muslim man) he was ceaselessly heckled by boorish Muslim women chastising him for not praying.

Later, approaching the Kotel with my handwritten page-long prayer, I was struck by the contrast, the quiet acceptance among Jewish women I was afforded. Women who asked not whom I worshiped, nor how I prayed, but merely understood through my gestures my desire. For them it was enough that I wished to stand among them as we prayed to our Maker. . . . I invited no harassment, no scrutiny, no challenge, no rancor. . . .

By contrast, the territorial and ruthless domination of the public space, of public worship, of external religiosity, is a hallmark of Islamism. The policing of belief, and that of believers, is an archetypal feature. Forbidding worshippers from entering holy sites in Islam, including non-conforming or pluralist Muslims who reject both the ideology and accouterments of Islamism, is an impassioned pastime of fervent Islamists who foolishly believe [that] only they are the arbiters of faith [and] only they the guardians to our Creator.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: High Holidays, Islam, Judaism, Prayer, Religion & Holidays, Temple Mount, Western Wall

 

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF