Uri Ariel
Uri ArielYonatan Sindel / Flash 90

Lithuanian-Hareidi newspaper Yated Ne'eman accused Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel (Jewish Home) of exemplifying the "nationalist madness" of groups that insist on ascending to the Temple Mount, and compared those groups with the fanatical "biryonim" who refused to negotiate with the Romans and are blamed for hastening the fall of Jerusalem.

While the claim that Israel is trying to change the status quo on the Mount is false, the paper's editorial said, it is able to gain credence among Muslims because of the Jews who ascend the Mount. This, in turn, "gives the bloodthirsty terrorists the excuse to carry out savage attacks against Jews, and spread a red carpet at their feet, which becomes ever redder with blood when the spirits are inflamed."

Because of the Jewish pilgrims, the paper explained, "the nationalist war that is being waged in the region is turning into a religious war, but there is no Muslim in the world who, if he is convinced, rightly or not, that Jews intend to harm the Mount, will remain silent."

Those who ascend to the Mount turn life in this area to an experience akin to "sitting at the mouth of a volcano with bubbling lava inside it, which could burst at any possible moment."

"How much lack of sense and wisdom and how much lack of minimal responsibility are in Minister Uri Ariel's statement to the Makor Rishon weekend newspaper," in which he vowed to keep on ascending to the Mount and to bring as many Jews as possible with him.

When people like Ariel speak about "praying at the site most sacred to Judaism," the newspaper went on, "they are not really taking about prayer…but about pouring oil on the regional conflagration that burns without their help, and which originates from stupid pride in imagined independence and sovereignty."