Yehuda Etzion (; born 1951) is an Israeli religious right-wing activist and the founder of Hai Vekayam, a group dedicated to allowing Jewish prayer on the

Temple Mount The Temple Mount (), also known as the Noble Sanctuary (Arabic: الحرم الشريف, 'Haram al-Sharif'), and sometimes as Jerusalem's holy esplanade, is a hill in the Old City of Jerusalem, Old City of Jerusalem that has been venerated as a ...

. He was a member of the

Jewish Underground The Jewish Underground ( ''HaMakhteret HaYehudit''), or in abbreviated form, simply Makhteret,David S. New''Holy War: The Rise of Militant Christian, Jewish and Islamic Fundamentalism,'' McFarland, 2001, p. 143. was a radical right-wing fundamenta ...

and participated in a plot to blow up the

Dome of the Rock The Dome of the Rock () is an Islamic shrine at the center of the Al-Aqsa mosque compound on the Temple Mount in the Old City (Jerusalem), Old City of Jerusalem. It is the world's oldest surviving work of Islamic architecture, the List_of_the_ol ...

, for which he was arrested and imprisoned in 1984 for acts of terrorism.

Personal life

Etzion was born in 1951 in

kibbutz A kibbutz ( / , ; : kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1910, was Degania Alef, Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economi ...

Ein Tzurim Ein Tzurim (, ''lit.'' Rock Spring) is a religious kibbutz in southern Israel. Located south of Kiryat Malakhi, it falls under the jurisdiction of Shafir Regional Council and is a member of the Religious Kibbutz Movement. In it had a populati ...

. His father, Abraham Mintz, was a member of Lehi. He was a member of

Bnei Akiva Bnei Akiva (, , "Children of Akiva") is the largest religious Zionist youth movement in the world, with over 125,000 members in 42 countries. It was first established in Mandatory Palestine in 1929, advocating the values of Torah and labor. Bne ...

, and studied at

Yeshivat Har Etzion Yeshivat Har Etzion (YHE; ), commonly known in English as "Gush" and in Hebrew as "Yeshivat HaGush", is a Hesder yeshiva located in Alon Shvut, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. It is considered one of the leading institutions of advanced T ...

Alon Shvut Alon Shvut () is an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, established in June 1970 over lands confiscated from the nearby State of Palestine, Palestinian town of Khirbet Beit Zakariyyah. It is part of the Gush Etzion, Etzion bloc of the West Ban ...

. He was a founder of

Gush Emunim Gush Emunim (, lit. "Bloc of the Faithful") was an Israeli ultranationalist religious Zionist Orthodox Jewish right-wing fundamentalist activist movement committed to establishing Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the Golan ...

, and helped found

Ofra Ofra () is an Israeli settlement located in the northern Israeli occupied territories, Israeli-occupied West Bank. Located on the main road between Jerusalem and Nablus (Route 60), it falls under the jurisdiction of Mateh Binyamin Regional Counc ...

, where he now lives. Etzion speaks

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

Jewish Underground

Following the 1979

Egypt–Israel peace treaty The Egypt–Israel peace treaty was signed in Washington, D.C., United States, on 26 March 1979, following the 1978 Camp David Accords. The Egypt–Israel treaty was signed by Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt, and Menachem Begin, Prime Minist ...

, Etzion began to lose faith in the Israeli government. Inspired by the deathbed request of his mentor Shabtai Ben-Dov, he hatched a plot to blow up the

. He and co-conspirator Menachem Livni hoped that destroying the Dome of the Rock would trigger a war between Israel and her Arab neighbors, from which only Israel would emerge victorious. This would trigger the building of the

third temple The "Third Temple" (, , ) refers to a hypothetical rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem. It would succeed the First Temple and the Second Temple, the former having been destroyed during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in and the latter having bee ...

and a recreation of the kingdom of Israel. Etzion's preparations to blow up the Dome of the Rock included studying its defenses, drawing maps, acquiring aerial photos and collecting relevant intelligence. Before his arrest in the spring of 1984, Etzion had acquired four major explosive devices (20 kilograms each) that were intended to bring down the four pillars of the Dome as well as twelve medium-sized explosive devices (7 kilograms each) that would bring down the twelve columns surrounding the Dome. In an interview with

Ari Shavit Ari Shavit (; born 16 November 1957) is an Israeli reporter and writer. Shavit was a senior correspondent at the left-of-center Israeli newspaper ''Haaretz'' before he resigned when a pattern of sexual misconduct came to public attention. A se ...

, Etzion said of the preparations: "In my mind I already saw the Dome collapsing on itself with a huge cloud of rising dust. And then the confusion stops and Israel's stuttering stops and there is clarity at last as one chapter ends and another begins." Etzion has said he was fascinated by the

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

since childhood and that he became fixated on the need to reclaim it after the

Six Day War The Six-Day War, also known as the June War, 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab states, primarily Egypt, Syria, and Jordan from 5 to 10June 1967. Military hostilities broke ...

broke out. "The Temple Mount is the focal point of the land. But it is in the hands of

gentile ''Gentile'' () is a word that today usually means someone who is not Jewish. Other groups that claim Israelite heritage, notably Mormons, have historically used the term ''gentile'' to describe outsiders. More rarely, the term is used as a synony ...

s. As long as the

Al-Aqsa mosque The Aqsa Mosque, also known as the Qibli Mosque or Qibli Chapel is the main congregational mosque or Musalla, prayer hall in the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in the Old City (Jerusalem), Old City of Jerusalem. In some sources the building is also n ...

and the Omar mosque stand on the Temple Mount, there can be no salvation for Israel."

Current activities

Etzion founded Hai Vekayam, a group dedicated to allowing Jewish prayer on the

against Israeli Government restrictions and majority rabbinical opinion that Jews' entry to the site is forbidden. On several occasions, the group has organized

civil disobedience Civil disobedience is the active and professed refusal of a citizenship, citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders, or commands of a government (or any other authority). By some definitions, civil disobedience has to be nonviolent to be cal ...

wherein its members, wearing Jewish prayer shawls, attempt to ascend to the mount to pray. He also organizes annual recreations of the paschal sacrifice the day before

Passover Passover, also called Pesach (; ), is a major Jewish holidays, Jewish holiday and one of the Three Pilgrimage Festivals. It celebrates the Exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Biblical Egypt, Egypt. According to the Book of Exodus, God in ...

in the

Abu Tor Abu Tor, also Abu Thor or ath-Thori, (; , lit. Arabic meaning "Father of the Bull"; In Hebrew also called גבעת חנניה (Giv'at Hanania), lit. " Hananiah's hill") is a mixed Jewish and Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem, built on a pro ...

neighborhood of

. Etzion has published the collected writings of Shabtai Ben-Dov.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Etzion, Yehuda 1951 births Living people Jewish terrorism Israeli settlers Members of the Jewish Underground Yeshivat Kfar HaRoeh alumni Prisoners and detainees of Israel