Last Hanukkah, our Yeshiva, the Tiferet Yisrael yeshiva, hosted Rabbi Yaakov Ariel Shlita. The rabbi explained that just as the Greeks ostensibly fought the body of the people of Israel but their main goal was to make them forget their Torah, so Hamas fights to harm Judaism. Its motive is the Islamic religion and the religion commands them to attack the infidels.
Following the rabbi's path, one can advance and say that the heart of the struggle against the Greeks was the temple. That is why the sages commemorated the miracle of the war with the miracle of the oil tin, which expresses the preservation of the purity of the temple - which is the goal of the struggle and the main joy of the victory.
In the same sense, the heart of our struggle against Islam is the Temple Mount, on the place of the temple. The Muslim religion is the main obstacle, soon probably the only one, to the construction of the Third Temple. That is why the struggle against Islam will end on the day when our temple will be rebuilt in the exact same place where our previous temple was, following the 'internal recognition' of the nations of the world regarding the importance of the temple, as Rabbi Kook writes in Ein Aya.
But the religious aspect of the struggle has another facet. Professor Eliezer Sharki has been claiming for decades that according to the Koran the land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel, but in light of the fact that the people of Israel abandoned the tradition of their ancestors, the Palestinians claim that we are not the true Israelites.
When the people of Israel return to their roots, return to the heritage of their ancestors, God will grant us a complete and final victory over the Islamic nation, just as we won victory over the Greeks. That is why the Torah students of the People of Israel, the students of our yeshivas, are an integral part of the struggle. Their Torah study, with toil and effort, as it should be while their peers are sacrificing their lives on the battlefield, builds our national resilience, builds our weapons against Islam.
The head of our Yeshiva, a member of the Great High Court, Rabbi Zion Luz Shlita, told us after Simchat Torah that just as after the Yom Kippur War there was a crisis in the People of Israel, a crisis that gave birth to a teshuvah movement, so after the Swords of Iron war a mass teshuvah movement will be created.
The people of Israel understand that the struggle is against Judaism, and it will only end when the entire people of Israel return to their Judaism. This is our responsibility, the religious community. Not to leave the struggle to the military level only, but to understand the inner depth of the war.
The elimination of Hamas? For sure. Returning the captives? Without a doubt. Settlement in the strip that will protect the envelope settlement? A necessary conclusion. But all these are not enough. It is our responsibility, the keepers of the Torah and the mitzvot in the people of Israel, to leverage the war for a mass repentance movement among all the people of Israel, a movement that strives to resolve the conflict with the establishment of the Third Temple, soon, in our days, Amen. This is the final, true goal of the war.
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