KING JESUS IS COMING FOR US ANY TIME NOW. THE RAPTURE. BE PREPARED TO GO.
By Maayana Miskin-First Publish: 8/14/2013, 1:25 PM-israelnationalnews
President Shimon Peres welcomed the incoming Chief Rabbis
of Israel – Rabbi David Lau and Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef – in a ceremony
Wednesday morning at the President’s Residence. The two new Chief Rabbis
were officially sworn in to their new positions.The two rabbis will
jointly lead the Rabbinate, which is in charge of
marriage, divorce, burials and other life cycle events for Israeli
Jews.The outgoing Chief Rabbis of Israel, Rabbi Shlomo Amar and Rabbi
Yona
Metzger, were notably absent. Chief Rabbinate secretary Oded Weiner
said that the two had not been invited.Weiner did not give a reason for
the lack of an invite. Other sources
in the Chief Rabbinate accused Peres of rudely snubbing the outgoing
rabbis.“It’s a shame that tensions and disagreements between senior
rabbis
led to this insensitivity toward Rabbi Metzger and Rabbi Amar,” they
said.Other senior officials were invited to the ceremony, among them
Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Deputy Minister of Religious Affairs
Eli Ben-Dahan.Peres warmly welcomed the two incoming rabbis, and wished
them well
in their new roles. “The nation of Israel needs you, perhaps more than
ever,” he told them. “The nation thirsts for the kind face of Jewish
tradition.”“The people of Israel raise their eyes to you, to be reminded
of what
lies within them, in their past and future. The nation prays for a
respected, esteemed Rabbinate that will bring back the spirit of
greatness, and eternal values, to daily life,” he continued.“Know how to
bring people closer, how to respect differences, and how to hold the
Ten Commandments up high,” he told them.He added, “You have the great
privilege of bringing together brothers
who are religious and irreligious. Of bringing down barriers of
suspicion and division.”
Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) are set to begin today in Jerusalem.
The talks - between Israeli chief negotiator, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, and her PA counterpart Saeeb Erakat - are to be held in complete confidentiality, as US Secretary of State John Kerry promised would be the case when the decision to restart talks was announced. At this time it is not even known where or when the two will be meeting in the capital.The talks are set to take place against the backdrop of ongoing tension over Israeli building in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. Despite having been informed of the building prior to talks, and despite the fact that the construction will take place in areas which even the PA has accepted in previous negotiations will be within Israeli borders, Palestinian Authority officials and their supporters have expressed outrage at the plans.John Kerry said this morning that he has already spoken to Netanyahu and Livni about the building plans."Prime Minister Netanyahu was completely open with PA Chairman Abbas that he would be announcing some additional building in places that will not affect the peace map."Speaking to Israeli Army Radio he said that the US believes the announcement to build in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem were "the wrong step to take," but said that the administration also recognized the need to take Israeli concerns into account.Housing Minister Uri Ariel (Bayit Yehudi) maintained this morning that building in Judea and Samaria would continue."This is just the first step, and a small one at that.""We don't need to give excuses for building in the land of Israel," Ariel said to Army Radio, "The fact that there are negotiations is an issue in itself - and something about which I have my own opinions as well - but the attempt to connect the two issues is a mistake."PA official Ashraf al-Ajrami responded to the minister's statement, asking: "if you want to get to a two-state solution, why do you need to build in the West Bank [Judea and Samaria]? After that it will be more difficult for Israel to evacuate all the settlements, which shows that the Israeli government is not serious about peace talks."
Prisoner release
Another backdrop to the renewed talks was the release of 26 PA terrorists, many of whom were convicted of murdering Israeli civilians. 15 were transferred to Gaza, and another 11 were received by PA Chairman Abbas in Ramallah, to scenes of public jubilation.As the 11 terrorists who were freed to Ramallah arrived at their destination, they were welcomed by thousands of cheering PA Arabs and were escorted to the Muqataa compound, where they were greeted by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas himself."This is the first group," Abbas told the crowd at the official welcoming ceremony, according to AFP."We shall continue until we free all the prisoners from Israeli jails," he added.“Allah willing, all will return to us soon. We say to all prisoners in the jails: We will not rest until you are all with us," Abbas declared.The 26 terrorists who were released on Tuesday are the first group out of 104 terrorists that Israel agreed to release as a gesture to Abbas, in exchange for him resuming peace talks.
Despite falling out over the Syrian civil war, Iran and Hamas are
still apparently cooperating in order to facilitate attacks against
Israel, and to challenge the authority of the Fatah party of Mahmoud
Abbas in Judea and Samaria.A report by Stratfor has outlined how the Iranian regime is
making use of Syrian proxies in the region to transfer weapons to Hamas
cells in Judea and Samaria. This despite the fact that Hamas has aligned
itself with the Sunni opposition to the Iranian-backed regime of Syrian
President Bashar el-Assad.
In recent days, Jordanian authorities have intercepted two separate groups of arms smugglers attempting to transfer weapons and drugs from Syria, including anti-tank weapons and surface-to-air missiles. Jordan has become a major supply route for weapons headed to rebels inside Syria - the movement of those particular weapons caught the attention of Jordanian authorities, as the smugglers were heading in the opposite direction, making their way southwards.Security in Jordan is tight as the jittery kingdom seeks to maintain its delicate balancing act between the Syrian regime on the one hand, and the surrounding Arab states which oppose it on the other - all the while conscious of the threats to its own authority by locally-based Islamist and other opposition groups.But according to the report, the smugglers were not interested in either the Syrian civil war or the Jordanian government. Intelligence sources claim the men arrested were Palestinian Authority Arabs from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) - a leftist terrorist group closely affiliated with the Syrian regime, and which has been involved in fighting on the regime's behalf in Syria.According to unnamed sources, the weapons were heading towards the Hebron Hills region of Judea, in Israel, where support for Hamas is particularly strong despite the crackdown on Hamas' network in Judea and Samaria by the dominant Fatah party. These various factions are apparently cooperating in an attempt to help Hamas stockpile weapons in the region to enable them to attack neighboring Israeli military and civilian targets, and challenge the rule of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.The cooperation between Sunni Islamist Hamas, Shia Islamist Iran and the secular Arab nationalist PFLP-GC - at a time of bloody sectarian conflict - underlines how such groups are still willing to cooperate when it comes to attacking Israel, despite their insurmountable ideological differences and regardless of public disputes.Hamas in particular has been willing to compromise on its ideological solidarity with Iran's Sunni enemies in Syria and the Gulf (Hamas' leadership recently aligned itself with chief Muslim Brotherhood patron and nemesis of the Iranian regime, Qatar.) Hamas has received generous Iranian support in the past, although that support was lessened considerably after the two sides fell out over the Syrian civil war. But now more than ever, with the fall of its allies the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas is acutely aware of its growing isolation, and has turned to Iran for help.For their part, the Iranian regime and its Syrian allies are desperately attempting to gain a foothold in the region, which has turned increasingly hostile over the sectarian-fueled conflict in Syria.In the midst of this sometimes confusing tangle of competing ideologies and alliances of convenience, one thing remains clear: hatred of Israel is still one thing practically all sides can agree upon.
By Ari Soffer-First Publish: 8/14/2013, 7:35 PM-israelnationalnews
In the last few minutes, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has
claimed the bombing attack which injured four Israeli soldiers on the
border with Lebanon last week, saying his party "will face" any further
border violations by the Jewish state.The Lebanese army had claimed that
the four soldiers were located 400 meters inside Lebanese territory
when the blast occurred."An explosion took place and the soldiers were
wounded, with blood
found at the scene. A military committee has opened an investigation in
coordination with UNIFIL, " the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon,
it said.In a defiant statement Wednesday, Nasrallah echoed that
sentiment,
pledging to "confront any crossing of Israelis into Lebanese
territories.""We took the decision to target Israelis in Labbouneh
because the
border is under the control of the Lebanese army and the state," he
said, claiming that "The incidence was an intended operation and did not
happen by coincidence."The IDF Spokesman's Unit said that the explosion
occurred “in the
course of activity that took place tonight on the northern border.” The
soldiers were taken to hospital for treatment.Israeli Defense Minister
Moshe Yaalon confirmed the blast, and said
the army was "investigating the incident, to see if it was an old bomb,
(or) a new bomb… But this operation was of course carried out in a
responsible manner."
Nasrallah answered that particular question, stating that:"What happened in Labbouneh took place under the sight of the resistances' fighters and we already knew Israelis would cross, which is why we planted explosive devices there. It is a newly planted explosive device and not a remnant of the July 2006 war."
Peres Welcomes New Chief Rabbis, Snubs Old Ones
Peres welcomes new Chief Rabbis of Israel in formal ceremony; outgoing Chief Rabbis not invited.
New Chief Rabbis in the President's Residence-Israel news photo: Hezki Ezra
The escapist
How Livni spent a morning talking about religion but thinking about negotiations, and the rest of the day succesfully avoiding reporters
August 14, 2013, 11:05 pm
0-The Times of Israel
Wednesday’s round of negotiations was to focus
mostly on technical issues — where to meet and which issues to discuss
when — but Livni would go into the talks following a stormy few days
that saw Israel first announce new settlement construction and then
release 26 Palestinians terrorists as a controversial gesture to
Ramallah, a less than encouraging context.Most of her own morning speech was dedicated
to issues of religion and state, exhorting Lau and Yosef to be the chief
rabbis of the entire people of Israel as opposed to only their
ultra-Orthodox constituencies. The peace talks were absent from the
ceremony until, concluding her 10-minute remarks, Livni briefly
suggested that her struggle for a more pluralistic and open-minded Chief
Rabbinate is actually linked to the negotiations: she needs to emerge
victorious from both fights to ensure Israel remains a Jewish and
democratic state.“It’s not enough to live in peace with our
neighbors if we don’t have peace among ourselves,” she told the crowd,
mostly men in black hats. “May we have the wisdom to take the right
decisions and may we have the strength to execute them,” she implored,
“with unity among the entire people of Israel.”
President
Shimon Peres raises a toast with incoming chief rabbis, Chief Ashkenazi
Rabbi David Lau (R) and Chief Sephardic Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, during
their swearing in ceremony (photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Asked by reporters after the ceremony whether
this Israeli government is capable of delivering a peace agreement,
despite the opposition of its far-right flank, Livni broadcast a message
of moderate optimism. “We are committed to making the effort, for the
sake of the people of Israel state of Israel and it’s values. It’s going
to be complex and complicated, but I don’t intend to give up,” she
said, and disappeared.Where to, nobody knew. To avoid excessive
media attention disturbing Wednesday’s talks, the sides had agreed to
keep both time and place a secret. Israeli officials usually can’t keep
mum for very long, but this time nobody leaked, and so reporters hoping
to see Livni and her co-negotiator, Isaac Molcho, walk into the room
with their Palestinian counterparts, Erekat and Mohammed Shtayyeh, had
some guesswork to do.
A camera waiting for Tzipi Livni and Saeb Erekat to arrive in front of the King David Hotel (photo credit: Times of Israel)
In the hours after Livni’s appearance at the
President’s Residence, rumors abounded. Half a dozen journalists prowled
in and around the nearby King David Hotel, suspecting the talks would
be held there, as had been suggested by some. A handful of reporters had
been there since the early morning. But perhaps the King David location
was leaked to mislead the press? And even if the King David was indeed the
venue, would our peacemakers enter via the main lobby or sneak in
through the back door, from the parking lot? Or maybe they were meeting
in the David Citadel, the Inbal, or another hotel in the area? The
American Colony? Surely not. Tel Aviv? “Somehow, everyone heard the rumor that it’s
here, everyone but us,” said a security guard at the Inbal. A few
reporters had come and gone during the day, he added.Nobody really knew anything, not even the
reporters who usually know such things, and so I decided my best bet was
to stick with the venerable KD.Hotel staff had told me they were “not
allowed” to say anything about peace negotiations, which seemingly
confirmed my hunch. Reporters from Reuters, the Associated Press,
Al-Jazeera and other news outlets had also bet the historic hotel was
the obvious choice, and had cameras across the street from the main
entrance… and aimed at the parking lot.
Isaac Molcho, left, Tzipi Livni and Saeb Erekat meeting Wednesday. (Screenshot/ Channel 2)
Israeli television stations, also left in the
dark, struck a deal beforehand: since no one know where the talks would
be, each would send a camera team to a likely location, and whoever won
the jackpot would share the spoils with the others. Israel’s
Russian-language Channel 9 was assigned to the King David, and its
diplomatic correspondent thought she understood from conversations with
hotel staff that the meeting would start there around 4 p.m.In fact, the talks began only about three
hours later. In the event, not one reporter caught Livni and Erekat
entering the room together. While the talks were ongoing, the Government
Press Office sent some footage from the beginning of the meeting to the
main television stations, so they could run a few seconds during the
evening news. And still no one knew where Livni and Erekat were
hunkering down.
Secrecy, Secretary Kerry had assured us two
weeks ago, is one of the pillars of this extraordinarily ambitious new
peace bid. No photo-ops, no press conferences, and not one morsel of
hard information — unless or until the secretary deems it fit to speak
out.“Why? To allow the teams to work together, and not think about the
media waiting outside,” Livni’s spokesperson, Mia Bengel, tweeted once the talks had gotten underway.Conducting serious final-status negotiations
far away from the media — and thus the scrutiny of all-knowing pundits,
and the pressures of public opinion — is designed to allow the would-be
peacemakers to focus on substance rather than soundbites.Even a frustrated journalist might grudgingly
admit this could be a good thing. If, that is, a rather unlikely
hush-hush approach enables the justice minister and her Palestinian
interlocutor to attain an utterly improbable result: a nine-month blitz
to the promised end-of-conflict accord.
Sides stay mum as peace talks get underway
Day after prisoner release, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators meet in the capital for second round of negotiations
August 14, 2013, 8:59 pm
0-the times of israel
Speaking at a swearing-in ceremony for the
chief rabbi Wednesday morning, Livni told reporters: “We are committed
to making the effort, for the sake of the people the State of Israel and
its values. It’s going to be complex and complicated, but I’m not ready
to give up.”Earlier Wednesday, Science Minister Yaakov
Peri, who formerly headed the Shin Bet internal security service, told
Army Radio of the mixed feelings he has over the prisoner release
that will see a total of over a hundred convicted Palestinians set free
in four phases as the talks progress.“Out of the 104 prisoners that are
to be
released, I was personally involved in, or directed, the capture of 92
of them, so these are not easy times for me and for the families [of the
victims],” he said. “But that is part of the price in the quest for
peace.”Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon from the
Likud party argued that Israelis today would not accept a peace proposal
made by Netanyahu predecessor Ehud Olmert.Such an agreement “will not
win support, not
just from me, but also from the Likud and, I think, most of the nation,”
Danon told Israel Radio.The talks are so far keeping to a schedule
hammered out two weeks ago in Washington during a first round of talks
that laid down a nine-month timetable
to reach an agreement. However, there is pessimism on both sides as to
what they will achieve.“We set ourselves nine months and we will try
and reach something with the Palestinians,” an Army Radio report quoted
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on Wednesday. “In the meantime we’ve been
trying for 20 years since Oslo, 20 years of conflict, and you can hear
in my tone the skepticism, but we decided to give this a chance.”
Meanwhile, Shtayyeh criticized Housing and
Construction Minister Uri Ariel’s announcement on Sunday of the
construction of 1,187 new housing units in East Jerusalem and the West
Bank.Israel’s move proved “it wasn’t serious about negotiations”
and was instead trying “to topple the foundations of the solution,
which is establishing a Palestinian state in the ’67 borders,” he said,
according to a report from Israel Radio.
Even before the announcement of the
construction plans, Erekat had already said in an interview with Reuters
this week that the settlements could force him and his team “to leave
the negotiating table.”
“If the Israeli government believes that every
week they’re going to cross a red line by settlement activity, if they
go with this behavior, what they’re advertising is the unsustainability
of the negotiations,” Erekat said.
On Tuesday, the Housing Ministry confirmed that it had secretly approved a further 900 housing units in East Jerusalem,
scrambling the US secretary of state to play down the significance of
the construction plans that, he said, the Palestinians were well aware
of in advance.Trying to salvage the US-brokered peace talks,
Kerry spoke Tuesday to reporters while on a trip to Brazil and said
that although it would be better if Israel didn’t make such announcements during the peace talks,
he did not think they would threaten the second round of talks. Kerry
revealed Tuesday night that Netanyahu told him and Abbas in advance of
Israel’s intention to announce additional building “in places that would
not affect the peace map.”AP contributed to this report.Israel-PA Talks to Begin Today in Jerusalem
Amid
an air of secrecy, Israeli and Palestinian Authority chief negotiators
are set to begin renewed "peace talks" in Israel's capital.-By Ari Soffer-First Publish: 8/14/2013, 3:28 PM-israelnationalnews
John Kerry meeting with Israeli officials, May 2013-Flash 90
The talks - between Israeli chief negotiator, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, and her PA counterpart Saeeb Erakat - are to be held in complete confidentiality, as US Secretary of State John Kerry promised would be the case when the decision to restart talks was announced. At this time it is not even known where or when the two will be meeting in the capital.The talks are set to take place against the backdrop of ongoing tension over Israeli building in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. Despite having been informed of the building prior to talks, and despite the fact that the construction will take place in areas which even the PA has accepted in previous negotiations will be within Israeli borders, Palestinian Authority officials and their supporters have expressed outrage at the plans.John Kerry said this morning that he has already spoken to Netanyahu and Livni about the building plans."Prime Minister Netanyahu was completely open with PA Chairman Abbas that he would be announcing some additional building in places that will not affect the peace map."Speaking to Israeli Army Radio he said that the US believes the announcement to build in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem were "the wrong step to take," but said that the administration also recognized the need to take Israeli concerns into account.Housing Minister Uri Ariel (Bayit Yehudi) maintained this morning that building in Judea and Samaria would continue."This is just the first step, and a small one at that.""We don't need to give excuses for building in the land of Israel," Ariel said to Army Radio, "The fact that there are negotiations is an issue in itself - and something about which I have my own opinions as well - but the attempt to connect the two issues is a mistake."PA official Ashraf al-Ajrami responded to the minister's statement, asking: "if you want to get to a two-state solution, why do you need to build in the West Bank [Judea and Samaria]? After that it will be more difficult for Israel to evacuate all the settlements, which shows that the Israeli government is not serious about peace talks."
Prisoner release
Another backdrop to the renewed talks was the release of 26 PA terrorists, many of whom were convicted of murdering Israeli civilians. 15 were transferred to Gaza, and another 11 were received by PA Chairman Abbas in Ramallah, to scenes of public jubilation.As the 11 terrorists who were freed to Ramallah arrived at their destination, they were welcomed by thousands of cheering PA Arabs and were escorted to the Muqataa compound, where they were greeted by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas himself."This is the first group," Abbas told the crowd at the official welcoming ceremony, according to AFP."We shall continue until we free all the prisoners from Israeli jails," he added.“Allah willing, all will return to us soon. We say to all prisoners in the jails: We will not rest until you are all with us," Abbas declared.The 26 terrorists who were released on Tuesday are the first group out of 104 terrorists that Israel agreed to release as a gesture to Abbas, in exchange for him resuming peace talks.
Hamas, Iran Putting Aside their Differences to Fight Israel
Public
dispute over Syrian civil war has not prevented cooperation when it
comes to attacking Israel, according to a recent report.-By Ari Soffer-First Publish: 8/14/2013, 5:56 PM-israelnationalnews
Hamas terrorists (illustration)-Flash 90
In recent days, Jordanian authorities have intercepted two separate groups of arms smugglers attempting to transfer weapons and drugs from Syria, including anti-tank weapons and surface-to-air missiles. Jordan has become a major supply route for weapons headed to rebels inside Syria - the movement of those particular weapons caught the attention of Jordanian authorities, as the smugglers were heading in the opposite direction, making their way southwards.Security in Jordan is tight as the jittery kingdom seeks to maintain its delicate balancing act between the Syrian regime on the one hand, and the surrounding Arab states which oppose it on the other - all the while conscious of the threats to its own authority by locally-based Islamist and other opposition groups.But according to the report, the smugglers were not interested in either the Syrian civil war or the Jordanian government. Intelligence sources claim the men arrested were Palestinian Authority Arabs from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) - a leftist terrorist group closely affiliated with the Syrian regime, and which has been involved in fighting on the regime's behalf in Syria.According to unnamed sources, the weapons were heading towards the Hebron Hills region of Judea, in Israel, where support for Hamas is particularly strong despite the crackdown on Hamas' network in Judea and Samaria by the dominant Fatah party. These various factions are apparently cooperating in an attempt to help Hamas stockpile weapons in the region to enable them to attack neighboring Israeli military and civilian targets, and challenge the rule of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.The cooperation between Sunni Islamist Hamas, Shia Islamist Iran and the secular Arab nationalist PFLP-GC - at a time of bloody sectarian conflict - underlines how such groups are still willing to cooperate when it comes to attacking Israel, despite their insurmountable ideological differences and regardless of public disputes.Hamas in particular has been willing to compromise on its ideological solidarity with Iran's Sunni enemies in Syria and the Gulf (Hamas' leadership recently aligned itself with chief Muslim Brotherhood patron and nemesis of the Iranian regime, Qatar.) Hamas has received generous Iranian support in the past, although that support was lessened considerably after the two sides fell out over the Syrian civil war. But now more than ever, with the fall of its allies the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas is acutely aware of its growing isolation, and has turned to Iran for help.For their part, the Iranian regime and its Syrian allies are desperately attempting to gain a foothold in the region, which has turned increasingly hostile over the sectarian-fueled conflict in Syria.In the midst of this sometimes confusing tangle of competing ideologies and alliances of convenience, one thing remains clear: hatred of Israel is still one thing practically all sides can agree upon.
Hezbollah Chief Claims Last Week's Attack on IDF Soldiers
In interview with al-Mayadeen TV, Hassan Nasrallah claims bombing which injured four IDF soldiers.
Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah-AFP photo
Nasrallah answered that particular question, stating that:"What happened in Labbouneh took place under the sight of the resistances' fighters and we already knew Israelis would cross, which is why we planted explosive devices there. It is a newly planted explosive device and not a remnant of the July 2006 war."
