(Sept. 28, 2026 / JNS)
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, while visiting the Temple Mount on Monday during Sukkot, declared that despite the “enormous pain” brought on by the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, there is much to celebrate since that tragic event.
“Hamas wanted to defeat us. They called it [the Hamas invasion] the ‘Al-Aqsa Flood,’” Ben-Gvir said. “But today, we are the masters of the house on the Temple Mount.”
(Al-Aqsa is an Arabic term for the Temple Mount.)
Ben-Gvir also said Israel is “the master of the house in the prisons,” referring to tougher restrictions he placed on the living arrangements of security prisoners in 2023. He reduced shower times, closed prison bakeries and banned family visits. His separate ban on visits by Knesset members to prisoners was overturned by Israel’s Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, in April 2026. “We turned their terrorists’ lives into hell,” he said.
The minister also spoke of his effort to loosen licensing laws to increase the number of guns in civilian hands. He expanded the number of localities where residents are eligible for gun licenses from six in 2021 to 126 in 2026. “We handed out weapons and set up rapid-response squads,” he said. “Three years later, the people of Israel are heading toward total victory.”
Ben-Gvir concluded, “And on this holiday, I am praying here on the Temple Mount, in the most important place, for total victory, for complete redemption, for death to all the terrorists, and for sovereignty here in the most important place for the Jewish people. They wanted to win. We defeated them, first and foremost here on the Temple Mount.”