A year and a half ago he was a fringe Temple Mount activist expected to die, the victim of a point-blank assassination attempt.
This week he entered the Knesset, the ruling Likud party’s replacement legislator for outgoing Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.
Yehuda Glick’s arrival in the halls of Israel’s parliament reflects the growing reception of his push for Jews’ right to visit and worship on the Temple Mount. Between 2009 and 2014, Jewish visits to the site nearly doubled.
Glick has been barred from the mount — revered by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary — and was even charged with assault there (the charges were dropped). Glick and his fellow religious activists see his accession to the Knesset as a victory for a just cause following his brush with death. Critics, however, say the power he wields could exacerbate tensions at a regional flashpoint.
Just hours before his Knesset swearing-in on May 23, Glick visited the Temple Mount again, prompting a scolding from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who told him, “This is the last time you do this to me.”
The Temple Mount is under Israeli sovereignty, but under a deal following Israel’s 1967 takeover of the site it is run by the Islamic Waqf, a Jordanian body. Muslims generally have full access to the site and the exclusive right to pray there. Jews can ascend the mount only during limited visiting hours and are forbidden from doing anything resembling worship such as kneeling, singing, dancing or rending their clothes.
Glick, 50, is the director of Haliba, an organization that brings Jewish groups to visit the Temple Mount and fights for Jews’ right to pray there. Previously, Glick headed the Temple Institute, a group that builds vessels for animal sacrifice and commissions architectural plans for a future Third Temple on the mount.
Glick’s critics and supporters alike praise him as a gentle and benign man who seems sincerely interested in enabling members of all religions to coexist on the mount. A 2014 video shows him happily reciting a prayer in Arabic with Muslim worshippers.
Analysts say Glick’s activism, however well intentioned, could empower extremists and heighten an already explosive mood on the mount. Palestinian leaders have accused Israel’s government of planning to change the site’s fragile status quo, which Israeli leaders fervently deny. The recent wave of Palestinian stabbing attacks in Israel began following riots and clashes on the mount.
“He’s part of a movement that deals in pyromania,” said Daniel Seidmann, an attorney and expert on Jerusalem’s geopolitics. “There are few threats that create a clear and present danger to the most vital interests of Israel more than a radical change on the Temple Mount.”
But David Haivri, a spokesman for Israeli settlements in the northern West Bank and a friend of Glick’s, called him “very lovable.” Haivri said that while Glick focuses on a combative issue, he comes at it in a warm and accessible way.
Glick was born in Brooklyn, New York, moved to Israel at 9 and now lives in the West Bank settlement of Otniel. He attributes his use of the language of civil rights and equality to his American upbringing. Prior to his Temple Mount activism, he worked for nearly a decade in the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, quitting in protest of Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.
He became a symbol of the Jewish Temple Mount movement after a Palestinian gunman shot him three times in October 2014. Two months later, he competed in Likud’s primaries, winning the 33rd spot on the slate, a position reserved for an Israeli settler.