With the Middle East in flames and Al-Aqsa under unprecedented threat, we are hurtling toward a dangerous tipping point.
SINCE the start of the genocide in the Gaza Strip, when the Israelis began bombing the besieged enclave with stunning ferocity, there was a belief that it surely could not continue for very long. Israelis had pounded Gaza before — multiple times — and had reached ceasefires after several days or weeks. Similarly, there would be a ceasefire within days, or at most weeks — so the thinking went. It could not continue for months, surely? However, in an unprecedented orgy of bloodshed, a meaningful ceasefire never came for the long-suffering people of Gaza. It has been years — years of watching a live-streamed genocide! We are now in March 2026, two and a half years since the start of the extermination campaign, and the Palestinians in Gaza are still evading bombs to this day, not knowing whether they will make it to the next morning.
This extreme, orgiastic violence, which began in the tiny enclave on the Mediterranean Sea, has spread like wildfire. It has engulfed Lebanon — which continues to burn to this day at a slightly lower intensity than Gaza — as well as Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Qatar, Iran, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and even the shores of Tunisia. What is worse, there is every indication that it will only spread further, engulf more countries, and increase in ferocity.
The Israeli rhetoric suggests so. As Iran continues to burn and suffer unimaginable losses as a result of the illegal and indiscriminate Israeli-American bombings, the Israeli leadership appears to have already set its sights on Turkey and potentially Pakistan thereafter.
Towards ‘the kingdom’
Commentators have speculated that the massive costs Iran is extracting from the aggressors by bombing American bases in the Persian Gulf and by choking the Strait of Hormuz, thereby sending oil prices soaring, will eventually lead to global diplomatic and domestic consumer pressure on the United States to halt its illegal war.
That is a fair interpretation of the issue at hand if one looks at the matter purely through the lens of economics and international relations. However, it does not tell the full story. Israel, which has always claimed its legitimacy on the basis of religion and religious texts, does not view the matter through the same lens. The Israeli leadership does not even attempt to hide it. Not only the supposed lunatics of the Israeli right wing, such as Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, but even the supposed leftists in Israeli politics have openly declared their fealty to the Biblical legitimacy for the theft of Arab lands to establish Greater Israel.
At the very start of the genocide, Netanyahu stated in no uncertain terms that the Palestinians were Amalek and thus fit for slaughter — man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey — as the Biblical verse about the treatment of Amalek prescribes. Last year, Netanyahu went a step further, telling an Israeli interviewer that he was waging a “spiritual war” in pursuit of Greater Israel.
Over the past few days, his genocidal rhetoric has been supercharged. While Shia factions in the Middle East, particularly in Iran, have largely been the bane of Israeli existence — refusing to bow down to the Jewish supremacy that many Arab Zionists of the Persian Gulf have accepted — they have therefore drawn Israeli ire. Netanyahu, for the past few weeks, has been raising the spectre of a non-existent “Sunni axis.”
He went a step further this week, declaring both sects “extremists” with the implication being perpetual warfare to root out all adherents of Islam from the region:
Extreme Islam — both Sunni and Shia — is a threat to the entire world, so we can’t assume this will solve itself, and we continue to strike our enemies over and over again.
Towards what end? Netanyahu provided the answer himself. Middle East Eye: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday said that Israel will “reach the kingdom” and make it to the “Messiah’s return”.
A long-term project
After two and a half years of constant bloodshed backed by religiously infused genocidal rhetoric, this cannot be brushed aside as fringe lunacy when such statements are made by the head of the Israeli state, which is built entirely on the supposed Biblical claim to Palestine and the wider Middle East.
There is an old video from November 1990 in which Netanyahu — then a first-time member of the Knesset and a rising star in Israeli politics — is seen meeting with the hugely influential rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, better known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
This is how the interaction between them unfolds:
Schneerson: “Since we last met, many things have progressed. What has not changed, however, is that Moshiach [the Messiah] still hasn’t come; so do something to hasten his coming.”
Netanyahu: “We are doing, we are doing.”
Schneerson: “Apparently, it is not enough, since many hours have already passed today and he is still not here… but there are still a few hours left in the day, so try still for today.”
Netanyahu: “Yes.”
The imminent threat to Al-Aqsa Mosque
This language of “Messiah’s return” and reaching “the kingdom” is drawn straight from Jewish eschatology, according to which Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest mosque in Islam, will be brought down to make way for the Jews to build the so-called Third Temple in its place. Behind this unholy quest, evangelical Christians in the Trump administration, such as Mike “it would be fine if they [Israel] took it all” Huckabee and Paula White, have thrown their lot.
The dangers to the mosque have been escalating for years. Despite the Zionist stooges in the Jordanian kingdom being the official custodians of the holy site, Israelis have de facto control over it. They decide how many Muslims can pray in their mosque and at what times. They allow extremist Jews to carry out provocative rituals inside the mosque complex under full state protection, much to the chagrin of Muslims.
This year, the Israeli control over the mosque has escalated even further. In the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, Israelis have completely locked down the mosque, preventingany prayers from taking place. For the past two weeks, there have been none of the five daily prayers, the nightly taraweeh prayers of Ramadan, or the possibility of itikaf — a Ramadan-specific prayer for which worshippers stay inside the mosque. Remarkably, while the mosque has been locked off to Muslims under the pretext of security concerns, Israel allowed Jews to celebrate Purim across Jerusalem.
‘The nature of the conflict’
As Hamas pointed out on Friday, these extreme measures during the holy month are a first since 1967, adding that these decisions clearly reveal “the nature of the conflict.”
On International Quds Day, the nature of the conflict is clearly revealed, as the war and escalation in the region coincide with a dangerous escalation in Palestine, reaching the point of closing the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque to worshippers during the month of Ramadan for the first time since 1967.
Jewish control over the mosque is now operating at full intensity.
Unlike the compromised Arab leadership of the Gulf states, the leadership of the resistance factions across the Middle East has been alert to the Israeli designs for the mosque and the wider region.
In his Al-Quds Day remarks this Thursday, Ansarallah chief Sayyed Abdul Malik Badr al-Din al-Houthi did not pull any punches when he outlined the Israeli plans for Al-Aqsa. “The Jewish Zionist danger seeks to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque and establish Greater Israel through the occupation of the countries of the region and full control over them,” al-Houthi said in an hour-long speech. “The Jewish Zionist danger targets Islam, Muslims, and Islamic holy sites.”
He went on to add:
The Zionist goals are openly expressed by the enemies themselves in official statements concerning their plan to establish Greater Israel and reshape the Middle East.
The aggressive American movement against our Islamic nation participates with the Jewish Zionist enemy in all its crimes.
The American position is not merely a political position; the American position is a Zionist position.
The West, foremost among them America, holds the belief that Christ will return after the Jews succeed in establishing Greater Israel and within a framework where they will be able to control the world.
The elimination of Muslims and their removal is a central point for the Zionists in achieving their ambition.
The Qur’an devotes considerable attention to speaking about the enemies of Muslims, especially the main enemies who are the most hostile and the most dangerous to this nation.
Later in his speech, al-Houthi emphasised the same point that Hamas made in its statement:
The nature of the conflict with the enemies is not merely a military conflict; they operate widely to mislead the Islamic nation on all levels.
The leaders of the resistance factions are the ones actually fighting these aggressive forces on the battlefields across the Middle East. It is safe to place more trust in their words than in anyone else’s. And they have emphasised over and over again that what we are witnessing is “not merely a military conflict.”
This multi-front war of annihilation continues to escalate. On Thursday, the United States deployed thousands more troops to the region. “Around 2,500 U.S. Marines are heading for the Middle East, along with a Navy amphibious warship,” PBS reported.
Trump initially said that the Iranian operation would take no more than a few days. He has continuously revised that time frame, even suggesting that it could be another of the trademark “forever” American wars. This rhetoric, however, is not causing Iran to cower in fear. It has continued attacking American naval assets and bases in the region and has been striking Israel regularly with missile attacks, showing no sign of depletion in its arsenal or in the morale of its people demanding revenge for the Israeli-American crimes against them.
Mainstream press, and even alternative media commentators, have blamed the current mess on the incompetence of the Trump administration and his acolytes. However, that analysis again elides the “nature of the conflict.” No matter how dimwitted Trump, his cabinet, and his generals may be, it would be underestimating them to suggest that they did not foresee Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz and attacking American bases in the region — threats it explicitly made in the lead-up to the illegal war imposed on it. Just days before the attack, Iran conducted live-fire military drillsin the Strait of Hormuz, and the spokesman of its foreign ministry posted photos of himself overlooking the strait to send a not-so-subtle message to the aggressors.
Similarly, it was easy to predict that a deeply religious society would seethe with anger and demand revenge at the unjust killing of its spiritual leader. All of this was predictable and foreseeable. Yet the illegal Israeli-American attack took place. Instead of questioning the intelligence of the actors behind these moves, it is wiser to examine their motives — just as all resistance factions in the Middle East do.
No way out
With a deeply compromised and remarkably thin-skinned White House incumbent, pro-Israel henchmen — including his son-in-law Kushner, whom one FBI confidential human source (CHS) described as “the real brains behind [Trump’s] organisation and his Presidency” — seemingly dictating American foreign policy, a war with no popular support that is hitting the pockets of American taxpayers, and as Iran continues to inflict heavy losses, events could unravel rapidly — if they have not already.
As the war expands across the region and the costs continue to mount, the strategic calculations of the actors involved are also shifting. When wars reach this stage — when neither side can secure a decisive victory through conventional means and when political leaders have tied their legitimacy to total victory — the spectrum of possibilities begins to widen dramatically. What was once unthinkable gradually becomes discussable, and what is discussable eventually becomes plausible, especially when wars are fought for a supposed higher purpose.
Seeing no way out, dropping nuclear weapons on Iran does not seem beyond the realms of possibility. To compound the horrors, Israelis may even destroy the now-emptied Al-Aqsa Mosque, as one rabbi has suggested.
Dr. Abdallah Marouf, Palestinian academic and former Media and Public Relations Officer at Al-Aqsa, has raised the alarm bells about the imminent threat to the historic mosque. “I have never been so sure that there is an imminent, great danger to Al-Aqsa, as I am these days,” Dr. Marouf said in a podcast appearance published on Friday. “I have been working at Masjid Al-Aqsa for more than 28-29 years, I never felt that there is a very close and imminent danger to the entity of Al-Aqsa Mosque as I am feeling now. It has never been so imminent, it has never been so clear to us that Al-Aqsa Mosque is in great danger of being lost completely from the hands of Muslims as it is now under this government, under these fanatics who are now ruling Israel.”
While it may sound implausible, it would be characteristic of the Israelis in power, who have been openly broadcasting such views and talking end times. It does not take much to interpret their language. For those convinced that they are in a battle that will decide whether they achieve salvation or eternal damnation, the price of oil and gas, and the complete halt of international shipping, are minor inconveniences, not worthy of concern or attention. In their calculations, they have built their stairway to heaven while the rest of us will rot in hell when the world is engulfed in a mushroom cloud. These are not normal times, and these are not rational actors. We are staring into the abyss.
Despite the ongoing unprecedented carnage in the Middle East, there are no mass mobilisations like those seen during the initial months of the Gaza genocide. People appear to have been ground down by the relentless stream of violence they have witnessed for nearly two and a half years live on their phones, unable to stem the staggering loss of innocent lives despite their efforts.
“Indeed, falsehood is bound to vanish.”
This is no time for despair. The flames engulfing the Middle East, the threats to Al-Aqsa, and the looming possibility of a nuclear strike on Iran are a warning: if we do nothing, the apocalypse the child‑raping, cannibalising, genocidal lunatics in power are driving will spare no one. Our collective future is at stake.
