Did Argentina's President Javier Milei call for the demolition of the al-Aqsa Mosque?

A lot of accounts on X (formerly Twitter) are reporting that Argentina's President Javier Milei has called for the “demolition” of the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam.

Many of them aren't providing a source, but this appears to be the video that's cited by those who do:

Here's a transcript of the English translation of Milei's remarks in the video above:

This story took place after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans. Rabbi Akiva and his colleagues were observing the Temple Mount in ruins and they saw a fox leave the Holiest of Holies in the Temple.

There could have been no more disheartening scene than that. In the face of this terrible scene, the rabbis cried in mourning, but Rabbi Akiva started to laugh. His colleagues asked how he could possibly laugh in the face of such a tragedy, to which Rabbi Akiva answered:

“There's a prophecy about the destruction that says that a fox will break into the Holiest of Holies. There is another prophecy that says that the same place will be rebuilt. Now that I see with my own eyes the first prophecy come true, I laugh in joy and full of hope as the second prophecy will surely come true.”

Milei seems to be reading an adaptation of—to quote an article by Rabbi Tzvi Pittinsky—a “Talmudic story which appears at the end of the Tractate Makkot 24b.”

Variations of this story appear on numerous other Jewish and/or Israeli websites:

Many accounts are saying that Milei:

…called for the demolition of Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, “in order to bring in the Messiah.”

The quotes around that “Messiah” part—combined with their pictures of Milei and lack of sourcing—give the impression that it's a direct quote of his.

However, as seen in the source video above, he does not appear to have said these words himself. (If anyone has another source where he does say it, please provide below.)

The fact that these accounts all say the same thing word for word suggests that they are all just copy-pasting from each other.

Some of the other accounts that repeated the aforementioned quote about “demolishing” the Al Aqsa Mosque “in order to bring in the Messiah” included this image:

It looks like a screenshot of the same video with a Hebrew caption below it, but most (if not all) of them fail to source it or explain what it says.

Examples:

According to Google Translate, the Hebrew text in this image contains the language about “demolishing the Al Aqsa Mosque to bring the Messiah.”

So this appears to be where that “quote” came from—the caption of this unsourced image.

(Again if anyone has contrary info, please provide.)

Hebrew to English translation provided by Google Translate

Even Daniel Seidemann, who—as seen in his viral post shown earlier—cited (but did not source) the image while using the “demolishing Al Aqsa in order to bring the Messiah” quote, ended up saying almost 15 hours later:

This post has been published by a number of news feeds. some generally reliable.

However there have been questions raised about the accuracy of the headline. The words of the President allude to the subject of the headline but are not a dirrct quote.

Treat this as unconfirmed

That follow-up post/caveat currently has 4K views and 16 likes, compared to the 638K views and 1,400+ likes for his original post.

None of this is to “defend” or absolve Milei, who appears to be a fervent Zionist and defender of Israel, even as they commit blatant genocide right in front of the world's eyes.

Here's Milei personally meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu this week, who calls Milei “a great friend of the Jewish state” (or, as many would call it, “the Zionist apartheid state committing genocide”):

Nor does this mean that Milei would not like to see a “Third Temple” built, or that he wasn't suggesting that with his Talmudic story (though it'd be helpful to hear what he said before and after that, if anyone can find the video of that).

The purpose of this thread is simply to establish what we know about what Milei did and didn't say, so that people can use that as a starting point for their analysis.

A version of this piece was originally posted as a thread on X today. For more reporting like this, please follow Decensored News on your favorite social media platforms, bookmark the website, and subscribe here on Substack: