Decolonizing My Zionist Mind

Originally published on Substack

This is a story of the journey of decolonizing my mind. Born and raised in a West Bank settlement, I inherited frameworks that kept me from seeing what’s real. This is about what opens up when you finally break free.

Al-Aqsa, one of the holiest mosques in Islam, is the Jewish Third Temple, and it has been for over a thousand years. We just haven’t recognized it yet. This isn’t a metaphor. It’s what becomes visible when you deprogram the colonial mindset and learn to see what’s already present instead of projecting what should be there.

If you only read this literally, you’ll miss the entire point. This is fundamentally about understanding the mechanism of changing how we see in order to change what we see. It’s about dismantling the frameworks that keep us from recognizing what’s in front of us, and what liberation feels like when we finally do.

I was taught my entire life that the Al-Aqsa mosque standing in Jerusalem needed to be removed for the Jewish Temple to be rebuilt. That the ground it stands on belongs to us by divine right, by ancient claims predating the mosque’s presence. That this functioning holy site, where countless people have prayed for generations, was an obstacle to our redemption.

The reality is that many practicing Jews are openly fantasizing about tearing down a holy structure belonging to another people. A place actively serving an entire people’s connection to the divine, dating back over a thousand years. Even calling it divine will. Since someone destroyed our Temple thousands of years before, we somehow reserved the right to see this one removed. A total erasure of a place where people worship every single day, replaced with ours.

To defend this belief meant actively upholding that our worship was more righteous, more important, even more human than theirs. That destroying an existing holy site was for our benefit, necessary, and even willed by God himself. I was conditioned to believe not only that this was acceptable, but that it was inevitable destiny.

When you inherit such a complete system for processing reality, rooted in ideology with structures determining who and what counts as sacred and worthy of protection, and who and what does not, it takes a very long time to question it. At such a young age, I couldn’t recognize this for the belief that it was. No one could when it is so systemically normalized. It was just the way things were.

These programs run deep. Fear programs. Control programs. Dehumanization programs. The logic that if the Torah justifies any claim to the land, it justifies total claim to all of it. These aren’t just abstract beliefs. They are the lived programs that exist in each one of us who inherited them, whether we’re conscious of them or not.

I had to face that, ultimately, these beliefs were mine. I was choosing to hold them. And I could choose differently.

To change your mind, you must deprogram it. Deprogramming means learning to question the framework itself, not just the conclusions but the structures underneath. The lens you were given to see through. The assumptions and biases built into every belief.

The thing you’ve been taught is the obstacle might actually be the way. You just can’t see it because you’re looking for something else entirely.

When you deprogram, what once seemed impossible can become glaringly obvious. New possibilities open up that the old framework made invisible.

Growing up in my community, we sang about rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem. In school, youth groups, yeshivas, on holidays, at weddings, in the military. We sang about the day redemption would come and the Third Temple would finally stand. I toured the Temple Institute where they showed us the vessels they’d prepared, the priestly garments recreated, the architectural plans for when the time comes. It was a common belief that the biggest mistake in the Six Day War was that we “didn’t go all the way” in liberating Jerusalem.

The Third Temple, in essence, was woven into everything. Our prayers, our songs, our identity as a people waiting to return. It’s in the glass we break at every Jewish wedding. It’s in our songs at Passover, at gatherings. It’s the thread that becomes the fabric of the stories making up our identity.

And central to that story was the problem of Al-Aqsa: a mosque reminding us of our defeat as a people, an obstacle to our redemption. That is what I was taught, and that logic was complete. This is our land, they are occupying what belongs to us, and for us to be redeemed the Temple must be rebuilt. We would wait in longing for as long as it took to see the erasure of the mosque and return of the Third Temple.

This is colonial programming. What’s here is inferior because it’s not ours. What exists doesn’t matter because we have a superior claim. These people aren’t real because they’re not us. Their continuous presence, their lived connection, their practice over generations doesn’t rise to the level of our ancient claim.

The colonial mind can never be at peace with what already exists because it’s always measuring reality against what it thinks should be there instead. It can’t recognize the sacred in what’s present because it’s too busy fantasizing about what it will build after the demolition phase.

The journey of seeing differently took years of learning to face my own shadows and projections, of seeing how I sought external answers to what needed to be worked on internally. Eventually I understood what I’d been blind to my entire life: the problem was in my belief that something outside of me needed to be different, to change for me to become whole.

The prophecy itself says the Temple will be a house of prayer for all people, not just one tribe. When I sat with this, I saw what I’d never recognized before. The possibility that what I thought was the problem wasn’t a problem at all. That a shift in perception could change not only my belief but lived reality for the better.

Before the shift began, I never empathized with what Muslims must feel. Praying in a holy space your family has connected to for centuries while the people holding power look at you like you’re temporary, invisible, and an obstacle to be removed. Instead of offering respect, we offered envy and desire for conquest.

The blasphemy wasn’t in the presence of Palestinians in a place we felt entitled to. It was in our gaze that saw this ancient holy site as some prize to win.

Somewhere along the way, we took a vision of universal inclusion and turned it into tribal exclusion. This isn’t unique to one ideology. It’s what happens when ego corrupts what’s sacred. It takes longing and turns it into grasping. It takes belonging and turns it into domination. It weaponizes what was meant to unite.

For two thousand years, Jews have mourned the destruction of the Temple. First the Babylonians destroyed it, then the Romans destroyed the second. Ever since, we’ve been waiting for the third. We were taught that the Third Temple marks redemption, that when it is rebuilt, everything will finally be whole.

This subconscious program says that you will never be whole until the external conditions are met. The programming becomes so engrained you don’t even recognize it as a belief anymore. It’s just a fact.

It was only in beginning to question the underlying structures of my programming and where these beliefs came from that I eventually understood what the Third Temple even was.

The Temple is an inner experience, not a building. It’s a state of consciousness, a connection that happens inside you. Yes, there is a physical space where people connect. But the essence is not in the walls or who controls them. It is the inner experience itself.

I started understanding that the destruction of our historic Jewish temples wasn’t the loss we thought to be grieving forever. It was our invitation to spiritually internalize what was once external. To stop looking for the sacred inside a building and start building the Temple within.

The temple we’re waiting for is in the consciousness we cultivate and the peace we create inside ourselves. The redemption being sought isn’t a future event when land is conquered and a structure is erected. It’s available right now, in how we show up, in what we recognize as sacred, in whether we can be at peace without needing to control what is outside.

When the inner temple is destroyed, when we’re fragmented and waiting for some external condition to make us whole, we look out and see destruction. We see obstacles. We see what needs to be removed before peace can finally come.

We’re taught there must be war before the messiah can save us. But the war is projection. When you’re at war inside, you see war outside. When you believe you need saving, you create the conditions that require it.

But no building outside can fill the hole inside. We think the Third Temple will bring redemption, but redemption isn’t out there.

When the inner temple is rebuilt, when we cultivate actual peace instead of waiting for it to arrive, when we recognize the full humanity of others instead of seeing them as obstacles, everything outside of us changes. We stop projecting our inner war onto the world and start recognizing what’s been here all along: a pathway to true peace that can only come from choosing to love, not hate, what is in front of us.

This is what I learned through my own collapse, through facing my own betrayal, through losing everything I thought I was and having to rebuild myself. Once that work begins, once you do the work inside, there’s no need to destroy anything. Not to find love and not to connect to God. We simply recognize the love and divine in what is already present.

When I finally did that inner work, I started recognizing it everywhere.

I recognized it in Al-Aqsa.

Every day, people pray at Al-Aqsa. They practice devotion in a way that mirrors what the Temple always was.

Islam means submission. Not as a label but as a state of being. A heart that bows to the divine. Muslims built the Third Temple. People devoted to and aligned with the one true God. That’s what it represented. That’s what it still represents.

We claim to worship the same God. Yet in the name of God, we are prepared to destroy a house of God.

That’s the fragmentation of the colonial mind. It splits what’s whole into us and them, sacred and profane, chosen and other. It creates separation where there is unity. That’s what these programs do. They make you believe you’re righteous while your fundamental position requires erasure.

Al-Aqsa already fulfills what the Temple was meant to be. Not in the form the ego expected, but in function, in essence, in practice. I couldn’t recognize it before because I was looking for what I thought should be there instead of seeing what is.

Al-Aqsa became a mirror. It shows whether one is seeking God or seeking power and calling it God.

Free Palestine is not just about liberation from occupation. It’s about liberating our own minds from everything we thought was true. From the stories that shaped how we see reality. From the framework we inherited that determines who belongs, what’s sacred, what’s possible. From the conditioning that makes domination feel like devotion.

I had to free my own mind from the belief that my redemption required their erasure. That my wholeness depended on their removal. That my connection to God required control over what was built. That my belonging to the land meant they couldn’t belong. That my ancient claim made theirs temporary. That my people’s suffering justified their oppression.

This is what decolonizing the mind means. Recognizing that these programs, these fear-based beliefs, these control mechanisms live in each of us individually. They lived in me. I had the fear programs, the superiority programs, the dehumanization programs. And I had to face them, understand where they came from, and choose to release them. Otherwise, I would just keep projecting them outward, never understanding the source.

Living in fear is a choice. That choice makes us act in certain ways. And when we don’t do the work to face our fear, to understand it, to let it go, we keep creating more fear. We keep seeing enemies where there are people.

When Palestine is free, when the people who pray at Al-Aqsa are no longer displaced, erased, controlled, or silenced, what’s been there all along can finally be recognized without distortion. Not as a threat. But as what it’s always been. And once that oppression ends, once the power dynamic dissolves, a possibility opens up. A meeting in the sharedness. Not as conqueror and conquered, but as people who can recognize what’s sacred together. Who can belong to the same land without one needing to erase the other.

You cannot experience unity while dividing what’s sacred. You cannot recognize the Temple while believing it must be rebuilt through force.

The real exile is not from the land. It’s living trapped in these programs. Separated from truth by the frameworks we inherited.

This meeting can only happen after we stop projecting our need for control onto what’s already there. After we can approach without needing to dominate. That’s our responsibility. That’s not possible while we hold all the power and they are caged. But it’s what becomes possible when we finally let go.

Al-Aqsa represents resistance to the colonial programs. To fear, control, and domination disguised as devotion. It holds to what is real despite overwhelming pressure to surrender it. It stands for liberation. Not just from physical occupation, but from the colonial mindset itself.

Recognizing Al-Aqsa as the Third Temple means facing those programs. Doing the inner work. Rebuilding the temple within. Releasing the fear-based conditioning, and decolonizing your mind.

When you do that work, when you deprogram those inherited frameworks, something becomes clear: the only thing that exists is the present. The Third Temple is here. It’s here right now. It always has been. We just couldn’t see it because we were looking through the lens of what we thought should be instead of recognizing what is.

When you change the way you see, you change what you see. The shift happens inside first. And then the outside reveals itself as it’s always been.

To recognize Al-Aqsa as the Third Temple is to grieve what I thought was true, to embrace what is, to finally come home, not to a building, but to reality itself.

To recognize that those who have never left that practice, who pray there every day, were already there, already living what I thought I was waiting for, for generations.

This realization collapsed the entire framework I was raised in. If the Temple is already alive in Al-Aqsa, then redemption was never about conquest. It was always about recognition.

Al-Aqsa became a test. It revealed whether I was seeing through the eyes of domination or through the eyes of humility.

I understand some might read this as abandonment of my tradition. I understand why it might feel that way.

But what opened up for me was a return to the deeper truths that have always been at the heart of the tradition, before they were obscured by ego, nationalism, and the need to control.

I’m not asking anyone to abandon their connection. I’m extending an invitation to consider a different lens through which to see it. To rebuild it inside yourself first. And then to look at what’s already in the world with new eyes. Not changing what is, but changing how you perceive what is.

This work is hard. Decolonizing these inherited frameworks means letting go of everything. The security of knowing, of being right, of belonging to the in-group. It means facing your fear programs, your control programs, your beliefs about who you are and what you deserve. It means recognizing that those beliefs are yours, that you’re choosing them, and that you can choose differently.

But on the other side is liberation. The kind that changes how you experience every moment.

For all those stuck in the belief that you’ll never be whole until some external condition is met, the invitation is to see what it feels like to be at peace with what is, rather than at war with what isn’t. That shift is available right now. In this present moment.

When you do that inner work, when you stop trying to force things into the form you expect, you start recognizing where they already live. In places you were taught to dismiss. In people you were taught to see as enemies. In everyone, and in everything.

The Temple is not something we lost that we need to get back. It’s something we forgot how to recognize.

And Al-Aqsa has been showing the way all along. The Third Temple stands. It has stood for over a thousand years. Redemption is not waiting for us to conquer. It’s waiting for us to see.

لَا إِلٰهَ إِلَّا الله
אין עוד מלבדו