By Abra Forman, BREAKING ISRAEL NEWS

“And they that are far off shall come and build in the temple of Hashem and ye shall know that Hashem of hosts hath sent me unto you. And it shall come to pass if ye will diligently hearken to the voice of Hashem your God.” Zechariah 6:15 (The Israel Bible™)

The Islamic Waqf’s jurisdiction over the Temple Mount is over and Israel will now work to reestablish Jewish sovereignty over the holy site, said Knesset Member Ari Dichter (Likud) on Tuesday.

“Israel is the sovereign on the Temple Mount, period. The fact that the Waqf became a sovereign on the Temple Mount ended last Friday,” declared Dichter, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and former head of the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), on Israeli public radio, Israel National News reported.
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Officials slam Israeli ‘terrorist procedures’ in Old City after metal detectors, cameras installed; at least 15 injured in East Jerusalem night of unrest

BY TIMES OF ISRAEL

The Fatah movement, headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, called for a “Day of Rage” on Wednesday to protest new security measures installed by Israel at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem starting Sunday, two days after a terror attack by three Israeli-Arabs killed two Israeli police officers.

Following Friday’s terror attack, Israel closed the compound for the first time in decades, reopening it to Muslims on Sunday and to non-Muslims on Monday.

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Hungarian PM apologizes to Prime Minister for country’s conduct during the Holocaust. ‘Previous governments sinned when Jews not protected.’

ARUTZ SHEVA

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said today (Tuesday) at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that Hungary is aware of the dark chapter in its history that took place during the Holocaust.

“Previous governments of Hungary sinned during the Second World War when they did not protect the Jews, and we chose to cooperate with the Nazis instead of guarding the Jews,” he added.

He also addressed the problem of anti-Semitism in his country and said, “I made it clear to Netanyahu that my government will defend the Jews of the country and that I have zero tolerance for anti-Semitism.”
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A lot of elements are at stake in this crucial diplomatic visit, and it wasn’t smooth sailing before PM Benjamin Netanyahu set off to Budapest.

By Herb Keinon, JPOST

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu landed in Budapest on Monday, marking the first time a sitting Israeli prime minister has visited Hungary since the country emerged from Communist rule in 1989.

However, the run-up to the visit – Netanyahu will meet with Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, as well as take part in a summit of the four-country Visegrad group made up of Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia – has been anything but smooth.

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MOSAIC

In 1970, the Romanian-born Orthodox rabbi and theologian Eliezer Berkovits wrote an essay titled “Jewish Education in a World Adrift.” In it he called on Jews to resist the nihilism, boredom, and permissiveness of contemporary society, starting by bolstering Jewish schools. Mark Gottlieb discusses Berkovits’s novel approach to halakhah and Jewish thought and the relevance of the essay’s argument for the present day. (Interview by Jonathan Silver. Audio, 36 minutes.)

GO HERE TO LISTEN

‘The Palestinian issue is complicated,’ Netanyahu told the French president. Macron agreed but replied: ‘You’re making it more complicated by building in the settlements’

By Barak Ravid, HAARETZ

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to French President Emmanuel Macron during a memorial ceremony in honor of late former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, in Strasbourg, July 1, 2017. FRANCOIS LENOIR/REUTERS

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told French President Emmanuel Macron in their meeting Sunday that he was skeptical about the peace efforts being made by U.S. President Donald Trump, diplomatic sources familiar with the conversation told Haaretz.

During the meeting in Paris, Macron told Netanyahu that he supports Trump’s efforts and that the settlement-building plans that Israel has advanced in the past six months have made an already complicated situation that much harder, the sources said.

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Iran threatens to entrench military presence in Syria

By Herb Keinon and Michael Wilner, JPOST

Both the US and Russia said on Monday that they understand Israel’s concerns about a future Iranian presence in Syria, as Israeli officials spoke about the possibility that Israel might need to take military action to prevent Tehran from setting up permanent bases, ports and arms factories in Syria and Lebanon.

The threats came a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters in Paris that Israel was opposed to a cease-fire for southwestern Syria brokered by the US and Russia earlier this month, because it would allow a permanent Iranian presence in Syria, a distance of 20 kilometers from Israel’s border.
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Netanyahu voiced “total opposition” to the US-Russian ceasefire plan for SW Syria after a Hizballah elite force stayed on in “demilitarized” Daraa. Quneitra is next.

DEBKA

Israel waited 10 days from Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin’s announcement in Hamburg of their ceasefire plan for southwestern Syria along the borders with Jordan and Syria, before proclaiming its “total opposition” to the plan. On Sunday, July 16, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced publicly, after meeting President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, that the plan was unacceptable.

An official in the party that accompanied him to the Elysée Palace explained to reporters that Israel objected to a truce that could be used as a vehicle for “perpetuating” Iran’s presence in Syria and on its own border. Iran is not just sending advisers to Syria, the official said, but large-scale military forces to establish in Syria an airbase for Iranian aircraft and a naval base for Iran’s navy.
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Al-Aqsa mosque was destroyed in an earthquake in 1927 • As it was being rebuilt, the British archaeologist Robert Hamilton documented the excavation of its foundations • He hid away the findings that the waqf found inconvenient • Today, thousands of findings, including a seal with the inscription “From Gibeon to the king” unearthed by Dr. Gabi Barkai and Zachi Dvira, shed light on the Temple Mount’s Jewish period • A peek back into history.

By Nadav Shragai,ISRAEL HAYOM 2012

“From Gibeon to the king” engraving on seventh century B.C.E. artifact found at Al-Aqsa mosque excavation. | Photo credit: Courtesy City of David Archives

In 1927, an earthquake struck Jerusalem, killing 130 people, wounding 450 and destroying or heavily damaging about 300 buildings, including Al-Aqsa mosque. The Muslim waqf, led by Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, began restoring the mosque. Robert Hamilton, the director of the antiquities department during the Mandatory period in pre-state Israel, spotted an opportunity in the midst of disaster.
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By Yoram Ettinger, ISRAEL HAYOM

Yoram Ettinger is a former ambassador and head of Second Thought: A U.S.-Israel Initiative.

In 2017, the national security interests of the U.S. and Israel have converged in an unprecedented manner in response to anti-U.S. Islamic terrorism; declining European posture of deterrence; drastic cuts in the U.S. defense budget; an increasingly unpredictable, dangerous globe; Israel’s surge of military and commercial capabilities and U.S.-Israel shared values.

Contrary to conventional wisdom — and traditional State Department policy — U.S.-Israel and U.S.-Arab relations are not a zero-sum game. This is currently demonstrated by enhanced U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation, concurrently with expanded security cooperation between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other pro-U.S. Arab countries, as well as stronger cooperation between the U.S. and those same Arab countries. Unlike the simplistic view of the Middle East, Arab policymakers are well aware of their priorities, especially when the radical Islamic machete is at their throats. They are consumed by internal and external intra-Muslim, intra-Arab violence, which have dominated the Arab agenda, prior to — and irrespective of — the Palestinian issue, which has never been a core cause of regional turbulence, a crown-jewel of Arab policymaking or the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

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By General James Conway, USMC, REAL CLEAR DEFENSE

For too long, Qatar has tried to get away with having its flag planted in two camps. Now, it must get off the fence.

In one camp are those nations, led by the U.S., opposing Islamic extremism and the terrorism it produces. Since 9/11, Qatar has generously supported this effort, allocating over a billion dollars to build two crucial American military facilities – al-Udeid Air Base and Central Command Forward Headquarters – outside Doha. It also spends billions on American military gear, with orders for billions more.

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Al MONITOR

Fatah-Egypt at “bone-breaking stage”

Adnan Abu Amer writes that “the relationship between Fatah and Egypt has reached the bone-breaking stage, especially with [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas as head of the movement.”

Abbas has played a weak hand as badly as one could imagine it being played. His plan to pressure Hamas by cutting both staff salaries and electricity in the Gaza Strip has earned him the wrath of the people there. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi rejected Abbas’ plan, contributing to a downward spiral in Fatah’s ties with Cairo.

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Arab sector warns metal detectors at Temple Mount will ‘only worsen conflict’

After a day full of violent clashes, the police believe that the opening of all the gates to the Temple Mount on Monday will lead to calm; however, senior members of the Arab public warn: ‘Metal detectors will drag us to places we do not want to reach. Anyone who wants to do harm can do so outside the Old City.’

By Thomas Lifson, AMERICAN THINKER

A reader strolling down the street in Chicago spotted a recruiting poster for “Activist Jobs,” a bit of an oxymoron. “Activism” by implication is volunteer work undertaken because the goal sought by the acts in question is so important to the “activist.”  Goal-oriented acts that are compensated are called “work,” not “activism.”  But in the photograph below, the two different categories of endeavor are conflated:

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By Tim Arango, NYT  July 15, 2017

Members of the Popular Mobilization Forces, a mostly Shiite militia group, at their post at the Iraqi border with Syria.

BAGHDAD — Walk into almost any market in Iraq and the shelves are filled with goods from Iran — milk, yogurt, chicken. Turn on the television and channel after channel broadcasts programs sympathetic to Iran.

A new building goes up? It is likely that the cement and bricks came from Iran. And when bored young Iraqi men take pills to get high, the illicit drugs are likely to have been smuggled across the porous Iranian border.

And that’s not even the half of it.
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