 For more videos and people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. On November 28, Israeli President Isaac Herzog, along with settler leaders and security forces, stormed the Ibrahim Mosque in the city of Hebron. The visit to mark the occasion of the Jewish Festival of Hanukkah was widely criticized by Palestinian groups as well as by the Arab League. The Ibrahim Mosque has often been the site of Israeli aggression and many have alleged that Herzog's visit is yet another attempt to create facts on the ground. Why is the Ibrahim Mosque in the city of Hebron itself significant? What is the agenda of extremist Jewish settler groups and how is it supported by the so-called mainstream Israeli political establishment? Rania Khalik of Breakthrough News explains. So Israeli President Isaac Herzog storming the Ibrahim Mosque in Hebron was in order to light the first candle of Hanukkah and of course he was accompanied by Jewish settlers and Israeli police and this incident was significant for a number of reasons. First, it signifies his support for the extremist Jewish settlers in Hebron. Hebron is home to a couple hundred thousand Palestinians. It's actually the second largest city in the West Bank but the Palestinians who live there are basically at the mercy of core of a few hundred religious extremist Jewish settlers who are protected by the Israeli occupation forces and these settlers are vicious. They harass and assault Palestinians including or I should say especially children as they as they're on their way to school and they do this with total impunity which you know like they do this with total impunity but on top of this you know Palestinians who live in Hebron on top of being harassed by these settlers also have to deal with the sort of typical dynamics of the occupation which is you know curfews checkpoints land confiscations home demolitions and so on and these two enterprises the Israeli occupation through its military and the settlers they're not separate they work in tandem to control the land to push Palestinians off the land and Hebron is really like one of the most important reflections of this and in Hebron also there are segregated roads and even segregated sidewalks Palestinians there really have no rights. It's one of the most extreme examples of a this apartheid settler colonial system that Israel is opposed on Palestine and it's important to also note that with respect to the Ibrahimi Mosque in February of 1994 an extremist Israeli settler who's also American he's called Baruch Goldstein he lived in a nearby settlement full of extremist Jews in in Hebron called Kyriot Arba and in February 1994 he gunned down 24 Muslim worshipers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in the center of Hebron and and Goldstein it's important to also note that he was a kahanist meaning he followed the eliminationist genocidal ideas of the American Israeli Jewish extremist Meyer Kahanah he was a member of the party founded by Kahanah which is the Koch party it's a far right group that has so far right in extreme it's been classified by the US and the Israeli government as a terrorist group and there is a memorial to Meyer Kahanah in that Israeli Jewish settlement in Hebron called Kyriot Arba where Goldstein is also buried and actually worshiped it's become like a pilgrimage site for Jewish extremists and in the years following I raised this to say in the years following that 1994 massacre the Ibrahimi Mosque was split into two parts so it became like half mosque half synagogue and this further entrenched the Israeli occupation and the sort of extremist settler movement that seeks to wall off and ethnically cleanse Palestinians in the West Bank and so while mainstream Israeli society distances itself from these extremists they're these extremists these settlers are subsidized by the state and so to bring it back to what you asked me in the beginning you know the supposedly liberal president Isaac Herzog by visiting that mosque in Hebron that has all this historical baggage he's essentially endorsing that extremist settler movement and you know second this also shows that you know there really are no liberals in the Israeli government they've all across the political spectrum in Israel they've all embraced the religious settler far right even if they claim to be against it you know he was there again to light the first candle of Hanukkah at the Ibrahimi Mosque accompanied by settler leaders as well as members of the Knesset meanwhile Palestinians were banned from praying there the Ibrahimi Mosque is not the only religious site that has been the target of Israeli extremist groups the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem has also seen continuous invasions that have been supported by Israeli security forces some of these invaders have even conducted prayers on the site despite an explicit ban on the same how is Israel seeking to change the facts on the ground and create new facts at al-Aqsa what is the agenda of these extremist movements so the al-Aqsa mosque is an even more explosive issue at the moment and it absolutely has to do with facts on the ground you know al-Aqsa is the third holiest site in Islam religious Jews revered that area as well as being the site of the temple mount and the Zionist movement has used this religious reverence to push its settler colonial project with the goal of making Jerusalem where the al-Aqsa mosque is located the capital of their Jewish state but in order to do that you need to remove the Palestinians you know Palestinians were cleansed from West Jerusalem in 1948 during the Nakba but East Jerusalem is still very Palestinian and it's home and it's like I mentioned it's home to the al-Aqsa mosque so Israel has been attempting to what they call Judei's East Jerusalem by a number of methods you know evicting Palestinian families from their homes you know claiming that they don't have the proper deeds to them on like technical issues through home demolitions which Palestinians are often forced to perform on their own to their own homes and through subsidizing these extremist religious Jews to move into East Jerusalem and harass Palestinians and sometimes even take over their homes so this is the dynamic behind the removal of Palestinians in a place like for example Sheikh Jarrah which was the neighborhood that received you know worldwide attention earlier in 2021 ahead of the war on Gaza where Palestinian families were fighting Israel's attempt to evict them and replace them with Jewish settlers so this is all to say that Jewish settlers are Israel's shock troops and the ideology that moves them is to take over the al-Aqsa mosque demolish it and build in its place a third Jewish temple which would bring about the end times this is their ideology and they often stage these big provocations where they'll storm the mosque and the Israeli police then guard them while closing it off to Palestinians which upsets everybody across the region you know and these people are these these religious extremist Jews that I'm talking about they're part of a messianic movement called the temple movement and like I mentioned they want to demolish this mosque replace it with a third Jewish temple bring about the end times but they often obscure their their goal of demolishing the mosque by claiming that they just merely want more access for Jews to pray at the at the site and they frame it as this matter as this issue of equality in civil rights but really you know what these people are is I mean the best comparison to really help people understand is they're kind of like Jewish Taliban or like Jewish ISIS that's the level of extremism I'm talking about here so while the Israeli populace again doesn't necessarily agree while the Israeli mainstream I should say doesn't necessarily agree with this religious messianic theology they do support this movement as being some sort of like Jewish rights cause therefore it has the support of a lot of the population and of the Israeli government even those who consider themselves secular and liberal and this has essentially aligned the entire Israeli Jewish society with this extremist religious movement which again like with the settlers in Hebron it's just a religion religious extremism being used to further settler colonialism and we absolutely have to see it through that lens