Hamas issues special Hanukkah message to Jerusalem Muslims

Defending the Al-Aqsa Mosque from “Judaization” is a “religious and national requirement,” the terror group said.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Invoking the claim that Israel wants to “Judaize” the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, a Hamas official has called on Jerusalem Arabs to commit violence in order to “defend” their holy site on the eve of Hanukkah, Israel National News reported Tuesday.

Saying that “the occupation government and settler groups continue to harm” Muslim holy sites and “especially” Al-Aqsa, Hamas’s Jerusalem office head Haroun Nasser al-Din charged that they had “abominable plans” to turn the mosque “into a Jewish synagogue.”

In his announcement, made through the Palestinian news agency Quds Fars, al-Din said that “particularly the [Arab] residents of Jerusalem … will never allow the occupation to rob their mosque.”

They are “the tip of this spear and they are willing to sacrifice themselves” as they did in previous “uprisings,” he added, referring specifically to violent Palestinian riots in the capital in 1996, 2017, and 2021.

“The fight and the enlistment for al-Aqsa are religious, national, and moral requirements at this dangerous point for the Palestinian issue and the conspiracies that the occupation has begun to put in action,” he said.

Al-Din was defined as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the U.S. Department of the Treasury last December due to his activities in funding Hamas’ activities.

Both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority regularly attempt to inflame the Arab population by saying that “Al-Aqsa is in danger,” especially before Jewish holidays, when traffic to the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, increases.

These peaceful visits are often met with rioting by incited Arab youth, which is then turned into a narrative of “settlers storming the mosque” when the police must intervene to protect the visitors.

In September, before the Jewish High Holiday period, a senior member of Hamas threatened that “the continuation of the Zionist aggression and their brutality against Jerusalem and the holy shrines will be the cause of a major battle.”

Mahmoud al-Zahar’s warning came in response to Jewish groups calling for more Jews to visit the site where both Jewish Temples stood during the times of the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judea.

In February, ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Hamas’s since-assassinated leader Ismail Haniyeh called on Palestinian Arabs to “barricade themselves” inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque in order to break an alleged Israeli “siege” on the Temple Mount.