Temple Mount pilgrimage in the name of human rights: the use of piety practice and liberal discourse to carry out proxy-state conquest

Abstract

ABSTRACTSince 2010, Jewish pilgrimage to the Temple Mount/Haram ash-Sharif compound has become an increasingly popular practice within Israeli society. On the Temple Mount, pilgrimage guides and their Jewish participants subjectively perform Israeli state sovereignty, carrying out a proxy-state attempt at land annexation through the format of a piety ritual. During pilgrimages, Temple Mount tour guides filter down a new discursive regime to participants, helping them to frame their act of conquest in the language of the liberal state, claiming that Jewish access to the Temple Mount is matter of ‘human rights’ and ‘religious freedom’. Today, Temple Mount pilgrimage is becoming a public ritual of liberal-settler colonial comportment, where Jewish pilgrims act on behalf of the state, laying claim to the Temple Mount by constituting themselves as human rights victims, and strategically inverting the relationship between settler and native. On the Temple Mount, religious piety and liberal ideologies conjoin, supporting forms of settler colonial domination in Israel/Palestine.