Hamas has repeatedly justified its October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel by arguing that it was seeking to defend the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest shrine in Islam, against attempts by Jews to take it over.
Hamas -- officially designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Israel, Paraguay, and the Organization of American States -- even named the attack, during which more than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals were murdered and thousands injured and tortured, after the mosque: "Operation Al-Aqsa Flood."
In 2024, Hamas published a statement in which it claimed that the attack was primarily the result of "the Israeli Judaization plans to the blessed al-Aqsa Mosque, its temporal and spatial division attempts, as well as the intensification of the Israeli settlers' incursions into the holy mosque."
More than two years after the October 7 massacre -- the worst crime committed against Jews since the Holocaust -- the Al-Aqsa Mosque remains intact, as tens of thousands of Muslims continue to visit it and pray there without being harassed.
On October 31, 2025, the Hamas-affiliated media website Quds Press reported:
"Tens of thousands of [Muslim] worshippers performed Friday prayers at the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque."
On January 9, 2026, the Muslim Brotherhood's Ikhwan Online website reported:
"Tens of thousands of Palestinians performed Friday prayers at the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and its courtyards."
Notably, Hamas describes itself as "one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine."
That such a large number of Muslims are able to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem every week shows that Hamas's claim that the Jews are desecrating the mosque and plotting to control it is another big lie produced by the terror group and its supporters.
It is worth noting that Jews do have a right to visit the Temple Mount, primarily because it is also the holiest site in Judaism, where the First and Second Temples once stood.
After the 1967 Six Day War, Israel asserted control over the Old City of Jerusalem, where the Temple Mount, together with the Al-Aqsa Mosque, are located. More significantly, the arrangement set up in 1967 allowed non-Muslims to visit the Temple Mount but restricted praying there to Muslims.
Ten days after the Six Day War, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, out of respect for Muslim concerns, forbade Jews to pray on the Temple Mount and proclaimed the Kingdom of Jordan the protector of the holy site.
Since 1967, non-Muslims, including Jews and Christians, have been touring only the grounds of the Temple Mount, but not inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
In recent years, however, Hamas and other Palestinians have been waging a campaign to protest visits by Jews to the Temple Mount. Palestinian officials and media outlets regularly and falsely portray the visits as "violent incursions by extremist Jewish settlers." It is worth recalling that to many Palestinians, all Jews in Israel are "settlers" and that, in their eyes, all of Israel is just one big settlement.
In 2015, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas began echoing the propaganda advice of Adolf Hitler's great ally, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, simply to claim that the Al-Aqsa Mosque was threatened, denouncing the visits by Jews to the Temple Mount. Abbas said:
"The Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher are ours. They are all ours, and they [Jews] have no right to defile them with their filthy feet. We salute every drop of blood spilled for the sake of Jerusalem. This blood is clean, pure blood, shed for the sake of Allah. Every martyr will be placed in Paradise, and all the wounded will be rewarded by Allah."
October 7 was not the first time that Hamas and other Palestinians have used the false claim about the Al-Aqsa Mosque as a pretext to attack Israel and murder Jews.
In 2000, the Palestinians made similar charges against Israel. They baselessly accused Israel of planning to desecrate the mosque and seize control of it. These false allegations led to the eruption of the Second Intifada, also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, which lasted from September 2000 to February 2005. Thousands of Israelis and Palestinians were killed during the violence, which included a massive wave of suicide bombings in major Israeli cities, including Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa. At the time, the Palestinians also sought to justify the killings by falsely and maliciously claiming that they had to take action to foil the Jews' alleged plots against the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
It should be emphasized here that the Jews touring the Temple Mount compound, like other non-Muslim tourists, do not set foot inside the mosque. This fact, however, has not stopped Palestinian officials and media outlets from regurgitating the lie that the Jews are "violently storming and defiling" the mosque.
It is abhorrent to see the Palestinians and many Muslims use a mosque -- especially falsely -- to justify terrorism and the murder of Jews. It is even more abhorrent to see Hamas and other Palestinians proudly name their dishonorable crimes after a mosque.
"The fact that Hamas 'celebrated' this [October 7] massacre by glorifying and associating it with Islam's third holiest Mosque, Al-Aqsa, and through associating each of their gruesome acts of terror with the praise of God is undoubtedly appalling in and of itself," remarked Alan Baker, Director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, who in 1993 helped negotiate and draft the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians. Baker added:
"One might have expected that this shocking phenomenon would have generated weighty introspection and discomfort among Muslims throughout the world, as well as among the wider international community, regarding this juxtaposition of one of the most reprehensible acts of terror known to humanity, together with one of the most revered Muslim Holy Sites and the Muslim praise to God. Indeed, one may well wonder how millions of Muslims worldwide are able to resignedly tolerate and live with the regrettable association and identification of one of their holiest religious sites with one of civilization's most cruel massacres? By any accepted and universal logic and reason, holy sites revered as such by all religions, and especially one of the most sacred and most central religious sites revered by Muslim worldwide, should signify peace, brotherhood, and love of humanity rather than wholesale murder, rape, and terror. One would hope that the majority of modern Muslims would be thoroughly shocked and alarmed by it. Regrettably, there appears to be no indication that any serious Muslim scholar, organization, or state, or, for that matter, any self-respecting non-Muslim state, international organization, or international leader, has thought it appropriate to object to and disassociate themselves from the juxtaposition of Islam, its holy sites, and the October 7 Hamas 'Al-Aqsa Flood' massacre."
By repeatedly invoking the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Palestinians aim to rally support from Muslims in the hope of recruiting them to the Jihad (holy war) to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamist state.
The long-familiar Palestinian campaign to destroy Israel continues to this day. Palestinian officials continue to repeat all the same fraudulent accusations. Unless this anti-Israel and anti-Jewish campaign stops, the next October 7-style massacre by Palestinians -- presumably what they would like, distracting from and derailing US President Donald J. Trump's attempts to rebuild Gaza without Palestinian leadership -- is just around the corner.
Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.
