On what they call “Jerusalem Day”, the Old City is not celebrated, but desecrated. The Israeli Flag March, staged annually under the banner of nationalist pride, has degenerated into a spectacle of unrestrained hatred.
This year, it plummeted to new depths of depravity.
As Haaretz reported, Israeli youths marched through the Muslim Quarter chanting “Death to Arabs”, “Flatten Gaza” and “There’s no school in Gaza, there’s no children left”. Flagpoles were slammed against ancient doors, while marchers cursed the Prophet Muhammad and mocked the memory of Palestine.
Not a single person was arrested for incitement.
On Jerusalem Day, the law of incitement is effectively suspended. Hate becomes state-sanctioned. The slogans screamed are not cries against Hamas, but declarations of war on Arabs, on Muslims – on the very soul of the city.
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Contrary to claims that this is the work of a fringe, the reality is more disturbing. As Haaretz journalist Nir Hasson observes, it is not the racists who are marginal; it is those who refrain from joining them.
Even organisations aligned with the mainstream right, such as the Likud-affiliated Im Tirtzu, paraded banners declaring “No Nakba, No Victory”. This theatre of hate was funded directly by the Jerusalem Municipality, which allocated 700,000 shekels ($200,000) – without a public tender – to the march’s organisers.
Conquest and cleansing
This is no outburst. It is doctrine made flesh, the performance of a theology of supremacy. At its core lies a prophetic vision: not of peace or pluralism, but of conquest and cleansing.
One of the chief architects of this world view is Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, spiritual father of the “Hilltop Youth”, the settler militia responsible for deadly violence across the occupied West Bank. Ginsburgh has openly glorified Baruch Goldstein, who slaughtered 29 Palestinians during prayers at Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque in 1994. He has published works sanctioning the killing of non-Jewish women and children.
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Two decades ago, Ginsburgh delivered his now-infamous sermon, “Time to Crack the Nut”. In it, he likened Israel to a fruit encased in four “shells” – the secular state and its institutions – that once served a purpose, but now obstruct redemption.
These “shells” – the media, judiciary, government, and moral code of the army – must, he proclaimed, be destroyed. Only through their obliteration could the pure kernel of Jewish supremacy emerge and the messianic age be ushered in.
This is not chaos. It is execution.
The march of hate may thunder now, but it will fall silent. And on that day, Jerusalem will be free: of occupation, of bigotry, of racism
The chants that echoed through Jerusalem’s streets this year were not anomalies. They were symptoms of a regime that has shed its veneer of secular democracy. What remains is unvarnished messianic ethno-nationalism, apocalyptic in vision and genocidal in potential.
From far-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the fantasy is not whispered; it is broadcast. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, walked the underground “Pilgrim’s Path” beneath al-Haram al-Sharif and declared to yeshiva students: “You’ll go up from there [to the Temple].”
Smotrich was more explicit, as usual. On the same day, before a crowd of zealots, he announced: “With God’s help, we will expand Israel’s borders, bring about complete redemption, and rebuild the Temple here.”
The call to build the Third Temple in place of Al-Aqsa Mosque is not merely a breach of the status quo; it is a full declaration of religious war. And with it goes the illusion of coexistence. For the Zionist project is not only at war with Muslims, but it is also waging war on Christians. The Christian presence in Jerusalem – ancient, indigenous and sacred – is being systematically eradicated.
A new era
As early as 2023, months before 7 October, church leaders warned of escalating attacks, land grabs, and the impunity granted to those who commit them.
Father Don Binder of St George’s Cathedral declared: “The right-wing elements are out to Judaise the Old City.” Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa said 2024 was “the worst period I’ve ever lived in”. By 2025, Christians were being barred from attending Easter services and faced a steep rise in levels of harassment and vandalism.
These are not isolated acts of vandalism. They are part of a campaign. Zionism aims not only to dominate the city, but to erase its Arab, Islamic and Christian character.
Spitting on Christians is now called a “Jewish tradition” by no less than Ben Gvir. Churches are defiled, clergy assaulted, lands seized. What we are witnessing is not mere racism; it is Judaisation, a project to remake Jerusalem in the image of a supremacist ideology.
And yet, there exists another model – one rooted not in conquest, but in conscience. When Caliph Umar entered Jerusalem in the seventh century, he became the only Muslim ruler in history to travel to a city specifically to receive its keys, at the request of its Christian religious leader, Patriarch Sophronius. He refused to pray inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, fearing that Muslims might later seize it. Instead, he prayed on the steps outside and issued a decree forbidding its appropriation.
The new Muslim era in Jerusalem allowed Jews to live in the city again after being banned for decades under Byzantine rule. In his book A Brief History of Israel, author Bernard Reich noted: “At the outset of Islamic rule, Jewish settlement in Jerusalem was resumed, and the Jewish community was granted permission to live under ‘protection,’ the customary status of non-Muslims under Islamic rule, which safeguarded their lives, property, and freedom of worship in return for payment of special poll and land taxes.”
Centuries later, as Christian denominations quarrelled over custodianship, Sultan Saladin entrusted the keys of that same church to two Muslim families who, for more than 850 years, have continued to open and close its doors with humility and honour.
‘Crusader anxiety’
This is the Jerusalem that could be. A city of guardianship, not domination; of reverence, not erasure.
But the battle for Jerusalem’s soul is not over. It is the most consequential struggle of all, one waged between the conquerors and the indigenous; between the exclusionary and the inclusive; between a settler-colonial ideology that worships purity through violence, and a city whose greatness once lay in its sacred plurality.
There are parallels with the Crusades. In 1099, Crusader armies stormed Jerusalem and butchered thousands of Muslims and Jews. Today’s Zionists echo their logic, invoke their imagery, and follow their path. From Netanyahu’s Temple hints to Ginsburgh’s theology of annihilation, Crusaderism lives again.
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But Crusader kingdoms fall. Saladin freed Jerusalem from the Crusaders after eight decades of occupation, and the entire Crusader adventure in the region collapsed within two centuries, leaving behind deep scars, but also a strong, enduring resolve to resist invaders.
Israeli scholars themselves sense the comparison. Historian David Ohana writes that “Crusader anxiety” haunts the Israeli psyche – a hidden fear that Zionism, like its mediaeval predecessor, may one day end as if it had never been. And rightly so, for Jerusalem does not belong to those who defile it.
Gaza may burn. The occupied West Bank may bleed. But Jerusalem remains the crown. Zionism, no matter how brutal, cannot erase what history, geography and faith have forged. Palestine lives in the hearts of millions, and Jerusalem is not a periphery; it is the heart of the Arab and Muslim world.
No matter how many tunnels Zionists dig, how many flags they wave or how much hate they spew, Palestinians will continue to sing, as the Lebanese Christian diva Fairuz once sang: “O Jerusalem, O city of prayer. Our eyes are set upon you every day. We walk through the porticos of the temples, embrace the old churches, and take the sadness away from the mosques … O Jerusalem, by our hands, peace will return to you.”
The march of hate may thunder now, but it will fall silent. And on that day, Jerusalem will be free: of occupation, of bigotry, of racism. It will return to its people, its spirit unbroken, its sanctity undiminished.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
