JEWISH KING JESUS IS COMING AT THE RAPTURE FOR US IN THE CLOUDS-DON'T MISS IT FOR THE WORLD.THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY- WHEN THE PLAIN SENSE MAKES GOOD SENSE-SEEK NO OTHER SENSE-LEST YOU END UP IN NONSENSE.GET SAVED NOW- CALL ON JESUS TODAY.THE ONLY SAVIOR OF THE WHOLE EARTH - NO OTHER.
1 COR 15:23-JESUS THE FIRST FRUITS-CHRISTIANS RAPTURED TO JESUS-FIRST FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT-23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.ROMANS 8:23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.(THE PRE-TRIB RAPTURE)
LUKE 21:28-29
28 And when these things begin to come to pass,(ALL THE PROPHECY SIGNS FROM THE BIBLE) then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption (RAPTURE) draweth nigh.
29 And he spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree,(ISRAEL) and all the trees;(ALL INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES)
30 When they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand.(ISRAEL LITERALLY BECAME AND INDEPENDENT COUNTRY JUST BEFORE SUMMER IN MAY 14,1948.)
JOEL 2:3,30
3 A fire devoureth (ATOMIC BOMB) before them;(RUSSIAN-ARAB-MUSLIM ARMIES AGAINST ISRAEL) and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.
30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.(ATOMIC BOMB AFFECT)
ZECHARIAH 14:12-13
12 And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet,(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB) and their eyes shall consume away in their holes,(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB) and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB)(BECAUSE NUKES HAVE BEEN USED ON ISRAELS ENEMIES)(GOD PROTECTS ISRAEL AND ALWAYS WILL)
13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour.(1/2-3 BILLION DIE IN WW3)(THIS IS AN ATOMIC BOMB EFFECT)
EZEKIEL 20:47
47 And say to the forest of the south, Hear the word of the LORD; Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall devour every green tree in thee, and every dry tree: the flaming flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall be burned therein.
ZEPHANIAH 1:18
18 Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the LORD'S wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land.
MALACHI 4:1
1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven;(FROM ATOMIC BOMBS) and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
And here are the bounderies of the land that Israel will inherit either through war or peace or God in the future. God says its Israels land and only Israels land. They will have every inch God promised them of this land in the future.
Egypt east of the Nile River, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, The southern part of Turkey and the Western Half of Iraq west of the Euphrates. Gen 13:14-15, Psm 105:9,11, Gen 15:18, Exe 23:31, Num 34:1-12, Josh 1:4.ALL THIS LAND ISRAEL WILL DEFINATELY OWN IN THE FUTURE, ITS ISRAELS NOT ISHMAELS LAND.12 TRIBES INHERIT LAND IN THE FUTURE
Rivlin: Government must prioritize ‘unity of the Jewish people’-Amid fallout over cabinet decision to freeze Western Wall deal, president hails Diaspora’s ‘significant role’ in building Israel-By Alexander Fulbright June 29, 2017, 4:51 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
President Reuven Rivlin on Thursday urged the government to prioritize the “unity of the Jewish people” and retain its role as the state for all Jews, following the fallout from a recent cabinet decision freezing a deal establishing a pluralistic prayer section at the Western Wall.“The State of Israel is the state of all the Jewish People and will continue to be faithful to that commitment. Our fellow Jews in the Diaspora have an important and significant role in the building of the State of Israel,” the president said in an open letter.“This has always been so, and will continue to be so. The unity of the Jewish People must always remain an important aspiration of the governments of Israel.”In his letter, Rivlin also said while many Israelis and Diaspora Jews don’t see eye-to-eye on a number of issues, these “painful” differences must not undermine the understanding of the Western Wall’s importance for all Jews.“During this process we inevitably have to face difficult disputes among us, disputes that are both painful and yet very real, founded in genuine belief. Even so, we must remember that beyond the disagreements, we are all one family and that every Jew has a special place in their heart for the Kotel, the last remnant of our Holy Temple,” he said, using the Hebrew name for the Western Wall.Sunday’s cabinet decision to halt the January 2016 agreement establishing a pluralistic prayer area at the Western Wall has been met with widespread dismay from liberal groups and Diaspora Jews, with one prominent North American Jewish leader comparing the move to a “sucker punch.”In response to the decision, the Jewish Agency’s Board of Governors — which was meeting in Jerusalem this week — took the unprecedented step on Monday of calling on the government to reverse the move.The decision to freeze the agreement coincided with a High Court of Justice deadline for the state to respond to petitions on its failure to implement the agreement and construct the mixed-gender plaza near Robinson’s Arch by this week. On Wednesday, the High Court said a hearing will now be head in July.The move also came amid pressure from Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox lawmakers to dial back the plan to establish the egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall. Following the decision, a number of ultra-Orthodox lawmakers made statements questioning Reform and Conservative Jewry’s connection to the site, further adding to the tensions surrounding the cabinet decision.Despite the pushback, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defended the move, with an aide to the premier saying on Monday that it will in fact help push the deal forward, and that Netanyahu had no choice but to halt the agreement as a result of pressure from the ultra-Orthodox parties, whose support he needs to maintain his ruling coalition.Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
Interview-The peace process hasn’t brought peace. The case for moving on-In a new book, philosopher Micah Goodman seeks to upend the debate about the West Bank, by urging Israelis — left and right — to set aside their dreams-By Haviv Rettig Gur June 27, 2017, 9:01 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
The most popular new book in Israel is not a crime thriller, a romance or a military sci-fi romp, and contains not a single teenage wizard or vampire. It’s a political treatise written by a professor of medieval philosophy. And it’s making a lot of people very angry.Its author, Micah Goodman, is an affable 42-year-old famous among his students for his enthusiasm in the classroom. Courteous and disarmingly talkative, he seems an unlikely candidate for the role of iconoclastic upsetter of Israel’s frenetic national debate about the future of the West Bank.But upset he has. Over the past few weeks, Goodman’s Hebrew-language book “Milkud 67,” or “Catch-67,” a play on Joseph Heller’s iconic “Catch-22,” has angered some of the most respected dons on right and left. It drove the 75-year-old former general and prime minister Ehud Barak to pen his first-ever book review, a sprawling, scathing 4,000-word critique in Haaretz that depicts Goodman as “saturated with right-wing ideology.” And it drove the editor of the highbrow right-wing Makor Rishon newspaper, Hagai Segal, to write a column charging that Goodman was a closet leftist who had “adopted the left’s central moral premise – the claim of occupation.”It is being read in Israel’s halls of power — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was seen carrying it in the Knesset’s corridors with a bookmark peeking from its pages — and by many top officials involved in administering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. IDF Central Command chief Maj. Gen. Roni Numa bought copies for his top officers.But it isn’t just the elites who have taken notice. Since its publication in March, Goodman’s book has steadily risen in the bestseller lists and is now sitting pretty as the number 1 nonfiction book in the country.But what is it that’s so maddening — and so attractive — about this book? And why did it take a political outsider, a student of medieval philosophers, to tell Israelis something new about their endlessly debated and incessantly scrutinized predicament? -The catch-The book is written in clear and lucid prose, and wraps up quickly at page 166. That’s surprisingly short for what it attempts to accomplish: tracing the history and development of the defining fracture in Israeli political life across five decades — the question of what to do with the West Bank.The first third of the book, titled “Political ideologies in crisis,” offers a bird’s-eye view of the ideas behind what are today broadly referred to as Israel’s “right” and “left.” The second part, “Political arguments in crisis,” traces the political narratives that evolved from these ideologies, and how they crashed and collapsed in the face of hard, unexpected realities, leaving Israelis perplexed and despairing.The pro-settlement right, he explains, failed to convince most Israeli Jews that acquiring the land was worth the risk of becoming an ethnic minority — or even only a small majority — in their country. But it succeeded in instilling its second argument: that withdrawal from the West Bank, especially after the bitter experience of Gaza and Lebanon, would endanger Israelis.The peace-making left, meanwhile, failed to convince most Israelis — again, especially after bitter experiences such as the Second Intifada and the Gaza withdrawal — that its “religious” (in Goodman’s words) yearning for reconciliation was reciprocated on the other side. But it succeeded in its second argument: that Israel could not afford to absorb millions of Palestinians.Each side has lost the fight to impart its idealistic creed to the majority of the nation — but convinced the country of the urgency of its fears.There is deep empathy in the book for both stories, an empathy that led Barak to complain that Goodman was creating a “false equivalence.” The right-wing fear of withdrawal was a “tactical” issue that could be solved by security, technological and intelligence means, explained the former IDF chief of staff, while the left’s warning of losing the Jewish state through demographics could not be staved off by any measure other than withdrawal.Goodman’s response, also in the pages of Haaretz, is surprisingly simple and straightforward.He accused Barak of misunderstanding the problem, arguing that the left has failed not because it is wrong — there is no ruling in this book as to which side is correct — but because most Israelis, even among those who agree with its ideals, don’t trust its judgment.“For most Israelis,” Goodman wrote, “to deny the existential security danger of withdrawal from the territories sounds just as ridiculous as the denial of an existential demographic danger sounds to Barak… He expects Israelis to surrender their strategic judgment to a security figure… [But] for most Israelis, memories are more powerful than their impulse to obey. The territorial withdrawals that ended in the rise of new strategic threats are etched deeply into Israelis’ collective memory.”The exchange illustrates the deeper argument in the book. Goodman avoids taking sides between left and right not just because he respects both narratives — that respect, he believes, is fundamental to seriously analyzing their failures, and is why he devoted a third of his book to their intellectual underpinnings — but also because he is sick of them.That Barak, Israel’s last Labor prime minister, whose political demise in the inferno of the Second Intifada augured almost two decades of irrelevance for the left, still seems to believe he is arguing with some right-wing ideologue, rather than the sway-able but anxious majority in the center, is the real crisis of present-day Israel.The collapse of their respective idealistic visions heightened each camp’s fixation on its own fear, and destroyed the capacity of Israeli politics to carry on a serious discussion of the country’s predicament. As Goodman explains in the book, “The right asserts that if the left’s vision were realized, it would cause the complete collapse of the state. The left asserts that if the right’s vision were realized, it would cause the complete collapse of the state. How can you listen to someone whose vision means catastrophe for us all?”Without the capacity to listen — and, indeed, with the real possibility that both sides are right — Israeli political discourse can no longer address problems seriously, and resorts instead to acts of “identity declaration.”Fifty years on from the Six Day War, Israelis thus find themselves caught between two debilitating fears — fear of withdrawal and fear of remaining — and ill-served by a political class that shuns serious debate in favor of identity politics.That, in short, is the country’s collective national “catch-67.”-‘There is no solution’-The first chapter of part three, titled “The state and its dreams,” is a delicate and crucial chapter. Goodman is about to present his suggestion for a way forward in the conflict. But first, he has to ask Israelis to surrender something very precious: their dreams.He does so by telling them that the surrendering of dreams was among the primordial acts of Zionism, and that without it Zionism could not have achieved the establishment of the State of Israel.“When the idea of partitioning the land between Jews and Arabs was put on the agenda of the Zionist movement in the 1930s, it had steadfast opponents,” Goodman writes. “One of the most strident was Menahem Ussishkin [a prominent Zionist thinker and activist], who asked: ‘Is a nation permitted to surrender its birthright?’ And he answered: ‘We won’t.’”Ussishkin’s fear, Goodman explains, was not merely that the partition, which passed in the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947, would shrink the borders of the new Jewish state. Rather, the fear, “felt by many in the Zionist movement, was that the extreme territorial shriveling that the partition plan demanded from the Jews would cause a [commensurate] shriveling of their historical consciousness” — and at the most delicate moment of nation-building.Compromising on one’s dreams often means compromising on the meaning of one’s story and sense of purpose. For Ussishkin and others, it meant shrinking the very heart of the Zionist idea to fit the political exigencies of the moment.“I think [Israel’s first prime minister David] Ben-Gurion agreed with that,” Goodman said in a recent interview with The Times of Israel. “But he said, ‘Yeah, and we should do it anyway.’“Ben-Gurion realized that you have to give up many of your dreams to make the greater dream come true.” He surrendered his socialism, too — that is, his vision of the idealistic Zionist society of the future — in the service of a higher good. Thus he dismantled the socialist Palmah militia to secure a unified military and state, and sided with the US against the Soviets to ensure Israeli prosperity and safety. Even his secularism, a deep-seated rebellion against what he saw as the limited horizons and haplessness of the diasporic “old Jew,” was up for grabs when he handed the nation’s religious institutions to the ultra-Orthodox in 1937 in exchange for their support before the British Peel Commission, which was tasked with determining whether it was feasible to allow the establishment of a Jewish state.You have to reach page 127, after part two’s perilous journey through the agonizing implosion of Israeli political capacity, to reach Goodman’s earnest defense of abandoning one’s dreams — be it the fantasy of full, permanent control of the West Bank or the fantasy that peace is attainable between this generation of Israelis and Palestinians, or even the next.“There is no solution,” Goodman says. “If you’re willing to accept the fact that there is no solution, then you can start dealing with the problem.”He does not mince words about his frustration with the right and left on this point. “In Israel it usually goes like this: The left says there is a solution, by which they mean we need a big peace initiative to solve all our problems. The right says there isn’t a solution, so there’s nothing we should do except hang on to the status quo.“I think that’s a false dichotomy. I think there is no solution, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot we can do – precisely because there’s no solution.”It is only when old paradigms and dreams collapse that one is free to pursue new ones.The good news, in his view: “This book is mainly about Israelis, and Israelis have already done that. They have already abandoned the old dreams.“If the vision of the ‘Complete Land of Israel’ used to be part of the identity of so many Israelis, I don’t think it is anymore. If the dream of peace was treated on the Israeli left religiously, [as a line from the iconic ‘Song for Peace’ reads,] ‘Don’t say the day will come, bring the day.’ There was a sense of urgency. If history doesn’t lead toward peace, history has no meaning. But Israelis on the left aren’t there anymore.”About 70 percent of Israelis are “on the pragmatic side of Likud, Jewish Home, Labor, Yesh Atid, Kulanu. All these Israelis, their labels are weak and they’re open-minded, and they’re the ones my book isn’t challenging at all. It’s challenging people on the right and left, but most of the responses I’m getting is people saying, ‘Yeah, yeah, you’re describing me. You’re describing me.’”Most Israelis realize, he says, “that I’m not asking them to compromise their identity in order to have a future. We already compromised our identity. Most Israelis on the right want to stay in the West Bank for security reasons, not identity reasons. It’s not about sacred land, but about the unsacred [security realities of the] Middle East. Most Israelis on the left want to leave the West Bank not because of peace, which used to be part of their identity, but because of security, [in the sense of] securing our majority.”The dreams are spent, “but we didn’t cash that in.”It’s time to claim for ourselves the upside of abandoning those dreams, he insists. A pragmatic, wary Israeli polity must “find an intervention that will turn the conflict from one that will end our national life” — either through demographics or war — “to one that will be part of our life, like car accidents and crime and poverty, which will always be part of our life, and we have to minimize them and deal with them, but we accept the harsh fact that they will be part of our life.”This is not what Benjamin Netanyahu or Moshe Ya’alon have in the past referred to as “managing the conflict,” he adds quickly. “This is reorganizing it — in a way that ends the control over the Palestinian people without risking the Israeli people.”‘Why don’t we do them tomorrow morning?’The key lies in “thinking about this like we think about art, not like we think about religion. It’s not an all-or-nothing game. We have to think about it quantitatively. Instead of trying to end the conflict, can we shrink the size of the conflict? Instead of ending the occupation, can we shrink dramatically the amount of occupation? Instead of bringing peace, can we bring more peace? Let’s think about it in quantities.”The book is full of examples, including some buried in footnotes. He shares them eagerly in the interview.He says, for example, that Israel could “easily increase” the size of Palestinian-controlled Area A of the West Bank.“That would allow the Palestinian Authority to grow economically. Right now it can’t build homes outside Area A.” But according to Goodman, “If you make [another 20 percentage points] in [Israeli security-controlled] Area B into Area A and maybe add 20 more from C to A, you’ve grown Area A from 22% of the West Bank to 60%.“Second, invest a lot in a project that will connect by roads and bridges all the Palestinian population [centers]. So even if there’s no territorial contiguity, there’s movement contiguity. You can maximize that.“A third thing we can do: There are many neighborhoods in Jerusalem that no Jew ever thought were Jerusalem. There’s no strategic need [to retain them] and no historic religious need. There are three Jerusalems: historic Jerusalem is small — the Temple Mount, City of David, etc; Jordanian Jerusalem was larger; and then we annexed another 18 more [Palestinian] villages [beyond Jordanian East Jerusalem].“Let’s just declare that only Jordanian [East] Jerusalem is Jerusalem.” That would allow Israel to take advantage of a “symbolic gap: There’s a lot of Jerusalem that for Jews is not really Jerusalem but for Palestinians is Jerusalem. Meaning, there is room for some sort of deal where you move some neighborhoods of Jerusalem to the Palestinians.”It is here that the right gets livid and calls Goodman a leftist. Not only is he talking about concessions — he demands no reciprocity, no Palestinian peace for such extensive gestures.And that’s the point.“This is not for peace, but for just one thing: That this new entity that we’re expanding and strengthening has greater symbolic weight. I would like this conflict to be between two political entities and not between a political entity that’s in control of a people. I don’t want them as conquered, but as enemies from the outside.”Combine those ideas with, for example, “a deal with the Jordanians to create easier border crossings to Jordan, and perhaps even a dedicated Palestinian terminal in Amman airport, so they have an easier way to get out to the world,” and you’ve accomplished something that is emphatically in Israel’s interest, and helps Israel escape its catch-67: “Those four things alone dramatically minimize the occupation, the real-world occupation, but don’t risk Israelis. So why don’t we do them tomorrow morning?”The reason, he believes, is that “the left feels we need to keep those parts [of areas B or C] for the big peace deal, and the right feels we need them for settlements.” Israel is held back by failed ideologies, he argues, “not by things that actually bother Israelis.”There is already a Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank. “We don’t have to create it, only to increase it, to grow it and empower it so it will be what Henry Kissinger called an ‘almost state.’ It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better than what we have now.”-‘Listening to foreigners’-It may be short, but the book is by no means simple, and Goodman is not a simple thinker about the Israeli condition. He’s a research fellow at the left-leaning Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, and the founder and director of Ein Prat, a pluralistic and liberal academy in the West Bank settlement of Alon that offers Israelis in their twenties programs for studying and debating questions of Jewish thought and Israeli identity. Goodman’s own life straddles the boundaries he describes in the book.So he knows how his readers are likely to respond to his suggestions.“People on the left will say, ‘You still have occupation at the end of the day. You still have troops, you’re still occupying the land.’”His response is unequivocal: “I would freeze all settlements outside the settlement blocs. It’s important. Israelis and Palestinians are traumatized by Oslo. Israelis are traumatized that Oslo didn’t lead to peace, but to the Second Intifada. Palestinians are traumatized that the settlements grew dramatically during Oslo. So we all feel like we tricked each other. That’s why freezing settlements is so important. It shows this is not manipulation.”On the right, he adds, the sense of concessions without reciprocity will evoke the right’s own traumas from Oslo, and more recently from the 2005 Gaza Disengagement. The Israeli right (and many on the left) believes that every round of Israeli concessions resulted in an uptick in violence and a belief among the Palestinians that violence is the only way to drive ostensibly powerful Israel to a slow, steady retreat. For the right, that conviction that withdrawals breed war rather than peace turns any “pragmatist” in the Goodman mold into the very blinkered idealist he is railing against.And Goodman agrees.“I do not think this will end the conflict. It might amplify the conflict. And you know what? Bring it on.“I’m not for ending the conflict. It doesn’t seem possible. I want to reorganize the conflict. I want a conflict where there’s a political almost-state entity in front of me, and if that state will attack me, fine. I don’t want to control them, and I don’t want to be threatened by them. I can maximize these two needs by reducing by 80-90% the occupation, but I’m still in control” of the security situation on the ground. “That’s the main thing.”Will it explode in Israel’s face like Gaza after the Hamas takeover in 2007? “Probably.”“The precedent of Gaza should guide us, but not paralyze us. We can’t say, ‘Okay, there was a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza [that had negative outcomes] so we shouldn’t even consider anything unilateral.’ We should say, ‘We shouldn’t do anything unilateral like we did in Gaza.’”The Gaza withdrawal involved two fundamental Israeli mistakes that can serve as lessons for the West Bank, he argues.“First, we left the Philadelphi Corridor [the border between Gaza and Egypt], which people in the [IDF] General Staff said we shouldn’t do. [Then-prime minister Ariel] Sharon was still guided by the 1967 Green Line. He wanted to show the world that we left all the land behind the Green Line. It would have been a pain in the butt [to stay on that border], and soldiers would have died there, but we would have been able to block the link between Gaza and Tehran. So the [West Bank] parallel [to leaving the Philadelphi Corridor] would be a withdrawal from the Jordan Valley.”Second, “the parallel in Gaza to what I’m saying would have meant not evacuating the northern bloc [of settlements adjacent to the Israeli border]. There was no need to do that. Why did we do that? Those villages did not break Arab territorial contiguity. We probably had to remove Kfar Darom, of course, Morag, Netzarim [all settlements nestled between Palestinian cities]. The only consideration in withdrawal should be territorial contiguity, and leaving the IDF wherever it wants to remain.”It was Sharon’s concern for international opinion, “which became more important than the security factor,” that turned the withdrawal into a “disaster.”The mistake, in other words, “was listening to foreigners, and thinking that the Green Line gives us any legitimacy. The evidence suggests this isn’t true. When we protect ourselves from behind the Green Line, we’re still seen as war criminals. So the Green Line didn’t give us a lot in Gaza. But not staying in Philadelphi cost us a lot.”‘Handshake in the White House’-“Catch-67” is a Hebrew book written for Israelis, and Israelis have responded in dramatic fashion to its validation of their competing narratives and anxieties.But its popularity is also due in part to the way it distinguishes between Israeli interests and those of emotionally invested foreigners, the sort of eager meddlers Israelis no longer trust to bring either security or peace.“We don’t need a handshake in the White House,” Goodman asserts. “Let’s just do it. Instead of a grand deal, let’s do small deals here and there. We’ll open up land so Palestinians can build here, we’ll sign some investment deal there. We’ll encourage stability and international investments. There are actions we can take when we stop looking for the plan that will redeem us.“This is an 80-20 proposition. We grow their independence by 80%. We can’t give them the last 20% because that’s the part that threatens Israel. In the last 20% you’ll lose [the support of] Israelis. The Palestinians get 20% of the land for free [in the Area A expansion, if not 40%]. They don’t have to recognize Israel or give up the right of return or anything like that. It’s just a local deal, not a grand attempt to solve the conflict. There’s no memorandum of understanding, no ‘dawn of a new day.’ When Barak was elected [in 1999] he said, ‘This is a new age.’ This is not a new age. Whatever works — let’s do more of it.”The Palestinians can’t openly accept such a limited Israeli move, he knows, but it nevertheless would solve an acute problem for them as well: immigration.“Practically speaking, what would happen if there was a completely independent Palestinian state, right now, where they control the Jordan Valley? There are millions of refugees in the Middle East, many of them Palestinians. So what happens when the ethos of return meets the need of emigration [from their current countries]? They’d have to bring them in. It’s my guess — and it’s more than a guess; many Palestinians have told me this — that they can’t say to them, ‘No, you can’t come in.’ They’d want to say no, because Palestine would collapse if a million refugees were to come in.“But if they’re almost a state, with Israeli forces in the Jordan Valley…we can be the bad cop for them, saying ‘no.’ That’s the only way you could have a stable state.”-‘We can’t talk to them’-In the end, Goodman believes, it is in such quantitative improvements that any chance for a more comprehensive reconciliation and separation might be found.“We can’t talk to them. No interaction with them is a real interaction because of [the gap in] power. They’ll always react to power, either by over-laughing at my jokes or somehow pointedly showing me they don’t care about me. Power corrupts everything.“I want to have a conversation with them. I think as a Jew that there’s a reason why we’re in the Middle East. There’s a lot for us to learn from Islam and the Arabs. But there’s nothing we can do because there’s power there.“I wish there could be no conflict. If I could, I’d end the occupation. But because I can’t without risking Israelis, I want to minimize the power element. If I can reduce the occupation without risking Israelis, I choose that, and that’s the beginning of reconciliation.”He says the next words almost apologetically, as though unsure how this sliver of idealism was somehow allowed to creep into the discussion. “If we can achieve 40 years where Palestinians almost don’t experience occupation and Jews almost don’t experience terrorism, we’ve broken catch-67. Jews don’t live with anxiety, Palestinians don’t live with humiliation, and now, psychologically, the next generation can reach for reconciliation.”
Israel freezes visits to Hamas prisoners amid talks over troops’ remains-Terror group says move, demanded by lawmakers and relatives to up pressure as talks stall, is tantamount to declaration of war-By Avi Issacharoff and Times of Israel staff June 29, 2017, 3:22 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
Hamas on Thursday said that Israel had stopped allowing Gazan members of the terror group serving time in Israeli prisons to receive visits from family members, in a move intended to ramp up pressure amid negotiations for the return of three Israeli civilians and the bodies of two soldiers being held in the Strip.Hamas leaders condemned the move as “the beginning of a war against the prisoners.”“We will not allow this decision to stand, whatever the price may be,” they said in a statement.An Israeli prison official refused to confirm the policy change.Israel is holding some 150 Hamas security prisoners from Gaza. In the past, families of Palestinian inmates have been granted permits to cross from the Gaza Strip into Israel to visit them.The families of Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, two soldiers killed in Gaza during fighting in 2014, have urged Israel to disallow the visits as a means of pressuring Hamas to return the troops’ bodies and praised the reported move.praised the move.“We’ve been asking the government for two and a half years to apply pressure on Hamas in order to change the equation, to make them understand that holding IDF soldiers is a burden rather than an asset. Something is finally moving,” said Simcha Goldin, father of Hadar Goldin, according to the Ynet news site.Hamas is thought to also be holding three Israelis who crossed into Gaza.Talks over a possible swap have mostly stalled, and lawmakers recently joined calls to cut the visits.Earlier this month Likud MK Yoav Kisch led 40 parliamentarians who put their names to a letter demanding the government end the family visits until the soldiers are returned, the Hebrew Walla website reported at the time.The missive, signed by MKs from both the coalition and opposition, urged a policy of “a humanitarian step in exchange for a humanitarian step.”The MKs asked the government to send a message to Hamas that the return of the soldiers is a precondition for future humanitarian steps.“It is unreasonable for the Israeli government to decide on a series of humanitarian steps for Hamas in Gaza while it continues to hold our sons,” the wrote.“We call on the government to adopt the policy and as a first stage stop the visits by families from the Gaza Strip to prisoners,” the lawmakers wrote.On Tuesday, Channel 1 news reported that Israel and Hamas have been engaged in intensive indirect talks recently over the release of a number of Israeli nationals held captive by the terror group in Gaza.In addition to returning the missing soldiers, Israel has been seeking to reach a deal with the rulers of the Gaza Strip to secure the release of three Israeli men who crossed into the coastal territory of their own accord: Avraham Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, as well as Juma Ibrahim Abu Ghanima, whose presence in Gaza is unconfirmed.The talks, which are being mediated by an unnamed third party, have gathered momentum over the past two weeks, following the return of Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, from a visit to Egypt earlier this month, the report said.Hamas demands that Israel release all prisoners from the 2011 exchange for kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit who were rearrested in 2014 when three Israeli teens were abducted in the West Bank (it later emerged that they had been killed almost immediately) before any advancement in negotiations between the parties can take place.
Edelstein tells Moscow: Syria spillover a ‘red line’ for Israel-Meeting with Lavrov, Knesset speaker says Jerusalem won’t tolerate continued errant fire on its territory, asks Kremlin for help in retrieving soldiers’ remains from Hamas-By Marissa Newman June 29, 2017, 3:00 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
MOSCOW — Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein on Thursday warned Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that Israel would not tolerate continued stray fire from the Syria civil war on the Golan Heights, describing it as a “red line” for the Jewish state.Over the past week, errant fire from Syria struck the Golan Heights on at least four occasions, leading the IDF to target Syrian army installations, including in a strike on Saturday that reportedly killed two Syrian soldiers. Israel holds the Assad regime — which is supported by Russia and Iran in the conflict — responsible for all incidents originating from the war-torn country.In a meeting in Moscow’s Foreign Ministry, Edelstein said “fire, or what is being called ‘spillover fire,’ into Israeli territory is a red line that we will under no circumstances allow to be crossed, and we will not tolerate an Iranian presence on the border.”Israel fears the Islamic Republic, along with its proxies, will entrench its forces on its northern border, giving it greater access to attack the Jewish state.Edelstein did not say what other steps Israel would be willing to take to enforce its red line. Jerusalem has been careful to stay out of the Syrian fighting, beyond retaliatory strikes and reported airstrikes on alleged weapons transfers to terror group Hezbollah.Lavrov expressed “understanding” of Israel’s security concerns, Edelstein said after the meeting, though “not all gaps were closed” during the powwow.Edelstein also appealed to Lavrov to help Israel retrieve the bodies of two IDF soldiers killed in the 2014 Gaza war being held by the Hamas terror group in the coastal enclave. He left a packet of information with Lavrov on soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul — as well as IDF soldier Guy Hever, who went missing in 1997 on the Golan Heights.The Knesset speaker expressed concern over heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow, which he suggested could affect Israel.“The good relations between Moscow and Washington are essential for the peace of the world and certainly for the State of Israel,” he said.Welcoming Edelstein ahead of the meeting, Lavrov noted the “constant contact” between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel coordinates with Russia to carry out pinpoint strikes on Hezbollah arms convoys in Syria.Both Lavrov and Edelstein acknowledged warming ties between Moscow and Jerusalem on economic affairs, education, and parliamentary cooperation.The Knesset speaker was in Moscow for a three-day official visit at the invitation of Federation Council chairwoman Valentina Matviyenko.A former prisoner in Siberia for teaching Hebrew, Edelstein on Wednesday became the first Israeli to address the upper chamber of the Russian parliament.In his address to Russian lawmakers, the Knesset speaker outlined security threats facing Israel, from Hezbollah in the north to Hamas in the south.“Behind Hezbollah and Hamas stands Iran,” which aspires for regional expansion and “spreads its ideologies of hatred of mankind, which threaten all the nations of the world,” he said.
UN chief distances himself from Palestinian summit on 50 years of occupation-Spokesman for António Guterres says meeting, protested by Israel over alleged terror ties of 2 participants, has nothing to do with his office-By Stuart Winer June 29, 2017, 4:35 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres indicated that a summit organized by a pro-Palestinian UN group to mark five decades of Israeli control of the West Bank did not have the blessing of his office.Israel’s envoy to the UN Danny Danon had earlier protested to Guterres against the “United Nations Forum to Mark Fifty Years of Occupation” because, he said, some of the billed participants were from organizations with ties to Palestinian terror groups Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.The two-day meeting, beginning Thursday at UN headquarters in New York, was organized by the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.Answering questions about the forum, Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman for Guterres, said Wednesday that his office was “aware of the position of the Israeli Government.”“They’ve communicated with the Secretary‑General’s Office,” he said. “This is a meeting that is being organized by a committee of the membership. It is not something that is being sponsored by the Secretariat. I think any questions as to the invitees and the way the meeting is organized should be directed to the members of the committee.”On Wednesday Israel’s UN delegation said in a statement that “according to intelligence information” the Al Haq group “collaborates with the PFLP” and the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights Organization “works together regularly with the Hamas terrorist organization.”Representatives of Al Haq and the Al Mezan Center were scheduled to participate in the forum, the Israeli delegation said.Hamas and PFLP have both carried out numerous attacks on Israeli security forces and civilians. Most recently Hamas and the PFLP claimed responsibility for a June 16 shooting and knife attack outside the Old City in Jerusalem in which Israeli border policewoman Hadas Malka was stabbed to death.“The UN is colluding with supporters of terror seeking to harm Israel,” Danon said in the statement. “It is beyond comprehension that UN funds are supporting organizations which aid terrorists and incite against Israel. We call on the Secretary General to intervene immediately and prevent these individuals from appearing at the UN.”During the Wednesday press briefing Dujarric was also quizzed about a celebration event on Tuesday organized by Israel’s delegation at the UN’s New York headquarters to mark the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem following the June 1967 Six Day War during which Israel gained control of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and other territories.Durarric referred to his previous sentiments regarding the Palestinian summit and said, “As I answered…events organized by member states, whether collectively or one by one, those questions should be addressed to the member states.”According to the Israeli delegation, ambassadors and diplomats from around the world joined hundreds of participants from the pro-Israel community for the Israeli events, which included a performance by Israeli singer Sarit Hadad.
Politicians welcome Olmert parole, urge he be left in peace-Former PM to volunteer with charitable groups after he goes free Sunday, assuming no appeal by prosecution-By Stuart Winer and Times of Israel staff June 29, 2017, 12:56 pm
Politicians and former colleagues from both sides of the political divide on Thursday welcomed a parole board decision to grant an early release from prison to former prime minister Ehud Olmert, who is serving time for corruption.The board said Olmert had earned early release with his good behavior. Olmert, 71, who was premier between 2006 and 2009, has served 16 months out a 27-month sentence.Olmert’s attorney Shani Illouz said he was very pleased to be reuniting with his family soon.“The board accepted each and every one of our arguments,” she said. “Ehud Olmert will be released on Sunday.”Illouz explained that under the terms of the parole, Olmert will volunteer at two charity groups, Leket Israel, which collects food for the needy, and Ezra Lemarpeh, which assists the sick, the Hebrew news Ynet website reported.Olmert, she noted, asked to volunteer at the organizations even though he is not required to do so because of his age. The former prime minister will also make weekly visits to the prisoner rehabilitation authority and he must sign in with police twice a month, as is initially required of all paroled prisoners.“Other than that, there are no additional limitations,” Illouz said.Barring any unforeseen developments, Olmert will walk free on Sunday, said Prison Service spokesman Assaf Librati.Environmental Protection Minister Ze’ev Elkin welcomed the decision, saying Olmert has “paid his debt to society and anyone else in his position would have been released long ago.”Elkin, in the past a member of the Kadima party led by Olmert, denounced the State Prosecutor’s Office for considering lodging an appeal against the release, saying “the prosecutor’s desire to appeal and delay the immediate release without even studying the decision in depth, seems like a personal persecution of a man who made a large contribution to Israel.”It was not immediately clear if the prosecution would appeal the decision; it had until Thursday afternoon to notify the prison board.Opposition Zionist Union MK Tzipi Livni, who served as foreign minister under Olmert before he stepped down in 2009, praised the early release decision as “fitting.”Her fellow faction member MK Yoel Hasson said it was “a correct decision, legally and personally and I think also for the public.”Zionist Union MK Shelly Yachimovich tweeted that “I don’t oppose and I don’t welcome Olmert’s release. Yes, the obsessive attention on the bitter fate of a criminal from the [social] elite annoys me when there are many common criminals in prison.”Olmert was one of eight former officials and businessmen convicted in March 2014 in the Holyland real estate corruption case, which has been characterized as among the largest graft cases in Israel’s history.Zionist Union MK Amir Peretz, who served as defense minister in an Olmert-led coalition, also welcomed the development and said he hoped that the prosecutor wuold respect the decision and leave Olmert in peace.Olmert’s chances for early release were complicated over the last few weeks as he was accused of divulging of sensitive information in memoirs he is writing and sneaking a transcript out of prison.The prosecution had said the book Olmert is writing contains “sensitive security issues” and that his lawyer was caught leaving the prison with a chapter on “secret operations” not approved by the censor for publication.Illouz said the prison board found that Olmert had not been warned by prison authorities before writing the book that he could not send and receive sensitive material from his cell and therefore could not be faulted for the security lapse.“It [the board] ruled that if there was neglect, it shouldn’t be pushed onto the prisoner but that the prisoner service should review itself,” she said.The prosecution earlier asked police to open a criminal investigation into the matter and argued that it would be inappropriate to consider early release until the probe was completed and it was clear whether Olmert had engaged in illegal activity.Olmert has denied doing anything wrong.Police searched the offices of the Yedioth Books publishing house and the home of Yehuda Yaari, who is editing Olmert’s memoirs on behalf of the publisher, over the incident.Initially sentenced to 19 months in the Holyland case, in September 2016 Olmert was sentenced to an additional eight months behind bars for the so-called Talansky affair. In that case, a court upheld a 2015 conviction over his accepting envelopes full of cash from American businessman and fundraiser Morris Talansky, in exchange for political favors during his decade-long term as mayor from 1993 to 2003.AP contributed to this report.
Brazil denied 16,000 visas to Jews during Nazi regime — study-Holocaust expert says number of rejected requests could be even higher, as research only covered some of documents-By JTA June 29, 2017, 6:15 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
RIO DE JANEIRO — The Brazilian government denied some 16,000 visas to European Jews attempting to escape the Nazi regime, according to new research looking at thousands of Brazilian documents from the World War II era.The research was undertaken by Brazil’s Virtual Archives on Holocaust and Antisemitism Institute, or Arqshoah. It was made public for the first time last week in a documentary aired on Brazilian television.The figures were based on monthly reports sent by Brazilian diplomats in service in Germany and Nazi-occupied countries. They obeyed 26 secret memos that forbade the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to grant visas to during the terms of presidents Getulio Vargas and Eurico Gaspar Dutra between 1937 and 1950.“I believe the number could be much higher, since I researched only part of the documentation. Even after the news about the Holocaust was released, the Brazilian government continued to deny visas to survivors who, in many cases, obtained visas as Catholics,” historian and Holocaust expert Maria Luiza Tucci Carneiro told JTA.“Both the Vargas and Dutra governments were intolerant, with political actions marked by xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and nationalist sentiments that had serious consequences for Jews seeking a host country,” she said.The result of the extensive research became a one-hour-long documentary produced in both Brazil and Germany, named “Reporting Paths – Survivors of History,” aired by Brazilian television on June 22. In Europe, academics on Nazi education in German schools were consulted. In Brazil, several video testimonials were recorded.“Based on oral testimony, we found that many refugees or exiles in Brazil lost family members during the Holocaust because they did not receive visas from the Brazilian government between 1937-1945. Not even a request of the great scientist Albert Einstein was attended by the chancellor Oswaldo Aranha,” she said, in a reference to the Brazilian diplomat that presided over the United Nations General Assembly session that partitioned the British Mandate of Palestine into two states, Jewish and Arab, in 1947.The research led by Tucci Carneiro was backed by Sao Paulo University, one of Latin America’s most prestigious. She will present a book based on 6,000 diplomatic documents from the Nazi era at the Shoah Memorial in Paris on July 2.“Even those who survived the Nazi genocide faced difficulties in having their visas released or regularizing their citizenship after they entered as stateless. Symptoms of trauma and pain continue to mark the voices of these survivors whose trajectories are examples of courage and struggle for dignity in gloomy times,” she said.In January, Brazil’s President Michel Temer attended a service to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, held at the at the country’s largest synagogue, the 2,000-family Congregacao Israelita Paulista, affiliated with both the Conservative and Reform movements.“Remembering the Holocaust in all its pain and anguish is preparing the future. It stands to all of us as a lesson. One day may pass, one month may pass, years may pass, centuries may pass, we must remember the Holocaust for it’s a lesson for the future and for the present time,” Temer said.
Trump ridicules female TV host’s looks, calls her crazy-Trump tweets that he refused to meet MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski because she ‘was bleeding badly from a face-lift’-By Julie Bykowicz June 29, 2017, 5:50 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
WASHINGTON (AP) — US President Donald Trump ridiculed the looks and temperament of a female cable television host whose show he says he has stopped watching.In a series of tweets Thursday morning, the president went after Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, who have criticized Trump on their MSNBC show “Morning Joe.”“I heard poorly rated @Morning Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came…to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”Brzezinski responded on Twitter by posting a photograph of a Cheerios box that has the phrase “made for little hands.” That was a dig at Trump, who has long been sensitive about the size of his hands.I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don't watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017…to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017-The White House did not immediately respond to questions about the tweets, including what it was that set the president off.On their Wednesday show, Brzezinski and Scarborough roundly mocked Trump for displaying in several of his golf resorts a fake Time Magazine cover featuring himself.“That’s needy,” Brzezinski said on the show.About 15 minutes before the president himself tweeted, White House social media director Dan Scavino similarly attacked the hosts.“#DumbAsARockMika and lover #JealousJoe are lost, confused & saddened since @POTUS @realDonaldTrump stopped returning their calls! Unhinged,” Scavino wrote on his personal account.Trump was correct that the MSNBC hosts spent time at the president’s Florida resort, a visit that Scarborough said was to arrange a Trump interview.
REBUILT 3RD TEMPLE
REVELATION 11:1-2
1 And there was given me a(MEASURING) reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein.
2 But the court which is without the temple leave out,(TO THE WORLD NATIONS) and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.(JERUSALEM DIVIDED BUT THE 3RD TEMPLE ALLOWED TO BE REBUILT)
DANIEL 9:27
27 And he( THE ROMAN,EU PRESIDENT) shall confirm the covenant with many for one week:(1X7=7 YEARS) and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease,(3 1/2 yrs in TEMPLE SACRIFICES STOPPED) and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
MICAH 4:1-5
1 But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it.
2 And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
3 And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
4 But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of hosts hath spoken it.
5 For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the LORD our God for ever and ever.
DANIEL 11:31
31 And arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate.(3RD TEMPLE REBUILT)
DANIEL 12:11
11 And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away,(AT THE MIDPOINT OF THE TRIBULATION PERIOD)(3RD TEMPLE SACRIFICES STOPPED BY DICTATOR) and the abomination that maketh desolate set up,(TO WORSHIP THE DICTATOR OR DIE) there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days.(1,290 DAYS)(AN EXTRA 30 DAYS AT THE END OF THE 7 YEAR TRIBULATION PERIOD FOR JESUS TO DESTROY THE ARMIES AGAINST JERUSALEM.AND TO JUDGE THE SHEEP AND GOAT NATIONS OF MATTHEW 25:31-46-HOW THEY TREATED ISRAEL DURING THE 7 YEAR TRIBULATION PERIOD.AND THEN I BELIEVE JESUS WILL REBUILD THE 4TH TEMPLE 25 MILES FROM THE CURRENT TEMPLE MOUNT.AND THEN JESUS RULES FOR THE 1,000 YEARS-THEN FOREVER FROM THAT 4TH TEMPLE.)
MATTHEW 24:15-16
15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)(THE DICTATOR SITS IN THE REBUILT 3RD TEMPLE CALLING HIMSELF GOD AT THE MIDPOINT OR 3 1/2 YEAR PERIOD OF THE 7 YEAR TRIBULATION PERIOD.OR 7 YEAR PEACE TREATY BETWEEN ISRAEL-ARABS AND MANY OF DANIEL 9:27)
16 Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:
What color blue did King Solomon wear? New evidence tells us-Excavations of copper mines find earliest Israeli traces of dye used for prestigious garments for skilled workers-By Amanda Borschel-Dan June 28, 2017, 9:07 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
Preserved pieces of cloth from King Solomon’s time point to a colorful clothing palette for metalworkers in biblical era Timna. This is the earliest evidence of a plant-based dye in Israel, according to a study released on Wednesday.The arid desert conditions of Timna, found in Israel’s southern Negev desert, preserved the red and blue plant pigmentation found by archaeologists on dozens of fragments of 3,000-year-old textiles, according to a team of researchers from the Israel Antiquities Authority, Tel Aviv University and Bar-Ilan University.Since 2013, Dr. Erez Ben-Yosef of Tel Aviv University has directed excavations in the Timna Valley where his team has found textiles dating back to the Iron Age (11-10 centuries BCE). On some of the fragments, there is a decorative pattern of red and blue bands.In an article published Wednesday in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, the researchers hypothesize that the metalworkers, considered fine craftsmen, “were probably entitled to wear colorful clothing as a mark of their high status.”According to Ben-Yosef and the IAA’s Dr. Naama Sukenik, the findings indicate that the society at Timna, identified with the Kingdom of Edom, was hierarchical and included an upper class that had access to colorful, prestigious textiles.The concept of highly prized, skilled laborers flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which had supposed that slaves had largely manned the isolated copper mines.The dyes are mainly derived from two plants: the red from roots of madder; the blue from indigotin, which likely came from dyer’s woad. The process of creating and using the blue dye, according to the researchers, is a multi-day complex process involving reduction and oxidization.While the types of plants used for dyeing the cloth is unsurprising — both are among the most common plant dyes in the ancient world — the process of dyeing, called “true dye,” is sophisticated and exhibits professional skill. These weren’t garments to be donned by plebeians.As the textile pieces are kept under climate control conditions at the IAA, the team is exploring other open-ended questions such as Iron Age fashion and the status and technology involved in creating them.What is clear is that these were no ordinary shmattes.
Poll says most Israelis against Western Wall decision, conversion bill-Survey by religious pluralism advocacy group indicates that nearly two-thirds of Jewish respondents oppose the moves-By Tamar Pileggi June 29, 2017, 4:49 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
Two-thirds of Jewish Israelis oppose the recent cabinet decision to shelve a deal for pluralistic worship at the Western Wall and the coalition’s initial approval of a bill that would cement the ultra-Orthodox monopoly on conversions, a poll found Thursday.According to the survey conducted by Hiddush, a local organization that aims to advance religious pluralism in Israel, 63 percent of respondents said they disagreed with the decision to suspend the 2016 government-approved deal regarding the Jewish holy site, while 37% supported it.Broken down by parties within the coalition, the results show that supporters of ultra-Orthodox parties overwhelmingly (98%) approved of Sunday’s cabinet vote, while respondents affiliated with the mostly secular Kulanu and Yisrael Beytenu parties showed significantly less support at 16% and 20% respectively. Support among members of the nationalist-religious Jewish Home party and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party were split almost evenly.The Conversion Bill — the other controversial measure given approval by Netanyahu’s government this week — was almost equally unpopular with the majority of Jewish Israelis, the Hiddush survey found.According to the results, 64% of respondents said they opposed the bill, which would give the Chief Rabbinate the sole authority over conversions to Judaism in Israel, while 36% expressed support for the legislation.Responses similarly fell according to party affiliation: 94% of respondents who back ultra-Orthodox parties expressed support for the measure, Kulanu and Yisrael Beytenu voters showed significantly less support at 20% and 16% respectively, and 66% of respondents from the Jewish Home party expressed support. Likud voters more evenly split with 57% in favor and 43% opposed.In a statement, Hiddush president Rabbi Uri Regev said the results “prove how far the government has swerved away from the public will and the needs of the State of Israel. Instead, the government leaders act as puppets whose strings are being pulled by the anti-Zionist, ultra-Orthodox political parties.”The poll was conducted among a sample of 500 Jewish adults in Israel on June 27 by the Smith Institute. It has a 4.5% margin or error.Israel had approved a plan in January 2016 to officially recognize a separate, permanent, pluralistic prayer area at Robinson’s Arch adjacent to the main Western Wall prayer area, in a compromise reached after years of negotiations between liberal Israeli and American Jewish groups and the Israeli authorities. It gave non-Orthodox Jewish leaders a joint role in the oversight of the pluralistic site. Currently, a temporary prayer facility exists there.But the program was never implemented as powerful ultra-Orthodox members of Netanyahu’s coalition government raised objections to the decision after they had initially endorsed it. Under ultra-Orthodox management, the main Western Wall area is separated between men’s and women’s prayer sections.Netanyahu, trying to placate both his coalition partners and wealthy American Jewish donors, had promised a new $9 million plaza for mixed-gender prayer would be established.On Sunday, the cabinet froze the plan, and he ordered top aides to formulate a new one.This set off a cascade of criticism from liberal groups both in Israel and abroad. Liberal Jewish groups accused Netanyahu of scrapping the deal because of pressure from the two ultra-Orthodox parties that keep his narrow coalition afloat.They have already petitioned the Supreme Court to implement the decision and still hold out hope it will overturn Sunday’s decision.Times of Israel staff and AP contributed to this report.
Major US Jewish groups implore Netanyahu to ‘resolve’ Western Wall crisis-Conference of Presidents says decision is dividing community, warns ‘a lack of unity could lead to an erosion of support’ for Israel-By Eric Cortellessa June 28, 2017, 10:23 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
WASHINGTON — The leaders of two major Jewish organizations on Wednesday called for a “resolution” to the Israeli cabinet’s decision to freeze an agreement for a permanent pluralistic prayer section, jointly overseen by non-Orthodox religious Jewish groups, at the Western Wall.The cabinet move — which reneged on a January 2016 government-approved measure — has sparked a crisis between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition and Diaspora Jewry, many of whom affiliate with non-Orthodox Judaism and say this decision leaves them feeling unwelcome in the Jewish state.The chairman and executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Stephen Greenberg and Malcolm Hoenlein, respectively, sent a letter to the Israeli premier Wednesday pleading with him to settle the issue.The two said they sought “to convey what we have heard from our constituent organizations and from members of our community expressing concern about the decision taken by the government this past Sunday.”They went on to tell Netanyahu: “It is imperative that the government move expeditiously to address this matter and come up with a resolution that is equitable to all, as you sought to do in the agreement that was reached before.”Ron Lauder, who heads the World Jewish Congress, also put out a statement calling for a “resolution” to the problem, which he said was dividing the global Jewish community, although he did not directly address Netanyahu.“I am deeply perturbed by the divisiveness that has arisen in recent days over the controversy surrounding this sacred site,” he said. “I have received messages from leaders of Jewish communities around the world expressing deep concern about the current situation.”“For many of these communities, praying at the Western Wall is a rite of passage, and they are understandably anxious that they will not be welcome there,” he added. “I fervently hope that a resolution can be found in the interest of Jewish unity and in a spirit of mutual understanding.”Since the announcement Sunday, which came following pressure from Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox coalition allies to scrap the deal, an internecine dispute has erupted between the Israeli government and international Jewish organizations.Both the Jewish Agency and the Reform movement, which represents the largest denomination of American Jewry, cancelled scheduled meetings with the prime minister as a form of protest.Moreover, Natan Sharansky, who chairs the Jewish Agency, warned that Jewish communities and individuals might reconsider traveling or donating to Israel because of the decision.Indeed, there have been alleged threats of groups saying they will withhold financial contributions to Israel.In his first public speech since taking office on May 16, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said he heard such action was being considered, but did not identify any particular organization.“Yesterday, I heard something that I thought I’d never hear before. And I understand the source of the frustration and the source of the anger. But I heard a major Jewish organization say that they needed to rethink their support for the State of Israel,” he said at a B’nai B’rith journalism awards ceremony in Jerusalem.“That’s something unthinkable in my lifetime, up until yesterday. We have to do better. We must do better.”Greenberg and Hoenlein — whose non-profit comprises 51 national organizations — said this tumult was hurting Jewish unity and could result in a loss of backing for Israel.“Given all the challenges facing Israel and American Jewry, this is a time when ‘achdut,’ unity, is more important than ever,” the statement said. “A lack of unity could lead to an erosion of support, which has been identified by Israel’s National Security Council as a vital security asset for Israel.”They further asked Netanyahu to “convey the sense of urgency regarding this matter” to his cabinet “and all those in a position to help resolve this issue.”
Analysis-New government-backed conversion bill targets the Orthodox, not the Reform-Legislation at the heart of the flareup in Israel-Diaspora tensions will affect almost no one. So why is everyone so upset?-By Haviv Rettig Gur June 29, 2017, 1:59 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
American Jews are protesting two moves taken by the Israeli cabinet on Sunday: the cancellation of a Western Wall agreement, and the advancing of a new bill on conversion.Much of the energy in the protests by American Jewish leaders has focused on the Western Wall. The reason is simple: It’s a real-world symbol of attachment to the land of Israel, and the agreement’s surprise cancellation is a hard, clear stab in the back. To Americans, agreements are sacred. If compromises can be canceled willy-nilly, why make the sacrifices required to reach them in the first place? But the Wall controversy is, at the end of the day, about a symbol, however potent. It is in the conversion bill where the rubber hits the road in official Israel’s acceptance or rejection of American Jewish religion and identity. It is here where Haredi lawmakers seek to legislate the first clear rejection of “Reform” Judaism — what these lawmakers call “Reform” includes no small amount of Conservative and Orthodox — into Israel’s law books. It is no accident that Tzohar, an Israeli modern-Orthodox organization that unites the chief rabbis of many cities and towns around the country, is on the “Reform” side of the debate.On paper, the bill does very little. It says nothing at all about overseas conversions. It has nothing to do with conversions in Israel by Israeli citizens, including the hundreds of thousands of family members of Jews who are not themselves halachically Jewish. And it doesn’t concern non-citizens in Israel who seek to convert in the official state rabbinate framework.Who’s left? Only these: non-citizens living in Israel for an extended period who obtain Jewish conversions from private conversion courts.That’s not a lot of people, to put it mildly: tourists, perhaps African migrants, and very few others. Official figures, which are imperfect by virtue of the simple fact that these are conversions carried out beyond the scope of government agencies, estimate the figure in the very low dozens each year, if not in the single digits.Furthermore, there are many Israeli officials who support the bill for reasons that have nothing to do with Haredi culture wars or Reform views on halacha. In Israel, conversion by a non-citizen is not just a religious act, but confers on the individual the right to obtain citizenship. While Reform and Haredi leaders seem to think the bill is about them, about the battle for religious liberty or against heresy (respectively), many Israeli officials back the bill for a simpler reason: any process that confers automatic citizenship on a person, they feel, should be carried out under the auspices of the state.The bill’s own explanatory preface, from the draft version released on June 22, puts this argument above all others. “Given the significant ramifications of conversion in Israel vis-Ã -vis civil standing; out of consideration for appropriate public order [in Hebrew the term ‘public order’ is often used to mean a clear legal and bureaucratic order]; the need for close state oversight of an issue of such high public importance; the desire to prevent splintering the status [of Jews by making some eligible for citizenship and some not] and thus dividing the nation — the bill establishes that a conversion in Israel that has the power to confer rights, among them the rights granted under the Law of Return, is a conversion done under sponsorship of the state only, as opposed to conversion in various private frameworks that are not arranged and overseen [by the state].”And, finally, there is the simpler point of the current status quo. The Neeman Commission, appointed in June 1997 and headed by then-minister of finance Yaakov Neeman, established today’s policy: To wit, only Orthodox state institutions may carry out the conversions, but a shared Reform-Conservative-Orthodox education system would teach and prepare the converts. Thus are satisfied the state’s demand for oversight over what is not an exclusively religious act, but also a naturalization process, as well as the halachic demands of the Orthodox and the demand for recognition by the Reform and Conservative.The biggest compromise here, of course, came from the liberal streams, but the leaders of Reform and Conservative Jewry explained this to their constituencies in the late 1990s as a sacrifice made for the sake of Jewish unity.It is vital to understand that the Neeman proposals essentially established two different standards for Israeli recognition of conversions. Inside Israel, conversion would work on the Neeman model, with the Orthodox state rabbinate in control of the bottleneck of actually carrying out the conversions. Outside Israel, in a policy established by several High Court of Justice rulings and government decisions over the years, any conversion carried out in a “recognized Jewish community” that the community itself accepts as a valid conversion would be recognized by the State of Israel.Who does the “recognizing” of recognized communities? In most cases, the answer is the Jewish Agency, which is the closest institutional framework that can represent the Israeli state — roughly half the agency’s board is appointed by Israeli political parties approximately according to their size in the Knesset — and is also present in hundreds of communities throughout the Jewish world.So what happened? How would a conversion bill that would actually affect exceedingly few people threaten these longstanding compromises? The answer lies in the party that was left out of the Neeman compromise, but only realized that fact very recently: Israel’s Modern Orthodox.The Israeli side of the compromise, the Neeman framework, gives final say on a conversion to the ultra-Orthodox who control the Chief Rabbinate. The Diaspora side confers state recognition to all movements recognized by, well, themselves. After all, what does it mean for the Jewish Agency to recognize you? The Jewish Agency’s ecumenicism is borne out by the rest of its board beyond the Israeli political parties: the umbrella fundraising federations and organizations from around the world (through representatives from JFNA and Keren Hayesod), and direct representatives of the Orthodox, Conservative and Reform religious streams themselves.Israel’s Modern Orthodox, who often refer to themselves as dati leumi, or national-religious, do not fall under the broadminded openness granted overseas, because they don’t live overseas, nor under the exceedingly (and increasingly) restrictive standards imposed by the Haredim within Israel.And so, ironically, it is not the Reform or Conservative movements who threaten to topple the Neeman status quo, but these Modern Orthodox. Despairing of what they see as the Israeli Chief Rabbinate’s overly restrictive demands for converts — including those who are already citizens (thanks to the Law of Return, which confers citizenship on anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent), and so cannot be suspected of seeking to become Jews just to obtain an Israeli passport — the group of Orthodox rabbis organized under the Tzohar organization has convened its own conversion courts and begun converting individuals in Israel outside the auspices of state institutions.The state, of course, refused to recognize these “unsupervised” conversions when it came to granting citizenship. The rabbinate, which correctly viewed these conversions as direct challenges to its religious hegemony, refused to recognize them for the purposes of marriage, divorce or burial.The issue reached the High Court of Justice, which gave its ruling on March 31, 2016. The Law of Return, the court said, applied to anyone who was residing in Israel legally and had converted in a recognized Jewish community that was Orthodox. (This was not a statement against Reform conversions, but reflected the Court’s preference for limiting its rulings to the context of each case.) That is, the court applied to the private conversion courts in Israel the standards for recognizing conversions overseas.This is the essence of justice: universal applicability. It is not surprising that Supreme Court justices have a hard time sustaining two wholly different standards of state recognition, nor surprising that the attempt to maintain two different standards inevitably results in them bleeding into each other.The court explained that the government was never given the authority to make the distinction between state and private Orthodox conversions in Israel when it came to granting citizenship, and that only Knesset legislation could give it that power.And so the new conversion bill was born.That is, it was not born from the fact that the state doesn’t recognize conversions carried out by the Israeli Reform movement. Non-recognition of Reform conversions in Israel is part of the Neeman agreement to which the Reform movement itself is a signatory.It was born from the fact that the Haredi establishment has fought bitterly in the years since the Neeman Commission to push out of the official state bodies the very Modern Orthodox who once, in the days of the Neeman debates, saw themselves as part of a single unified “Orthodox” side to the controversy.The upshot is that on paper, Haredi lawmakers are right when they say they’re merely seeking to codify the agreed-upon Neeman compromise in legislation to protect it against court challenges.But the social and political context has changed. Neeman only works when the rabbinate, which is given the monopoly to convert, plays ball with the broader system of education and preparation run by a cross-section of religious movements. When the judges in the state conversion courts no longer accept converts trained by that system, the compromise becomes a straitjacket for everyone else.In talks held between Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, Tzohar founder Rabbi David Stav and Reform representatives on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Reform representatives were told that the bill does not actually reject their conversions. Their converts, as always, will be registered as Jews in the Interior Ministry’s population registry — and, as always, will emphatically not be registered as Jews in the rabbinate. That it would deny recognition also for the purposes of citizenship is hardly significant for the Reform, since the denial of citizenship to their private conversions was already the agreed-upon status quo.Some Israeli Reform officials were satisfied with that answer, according to sources. But American Jewish leaders are not.Steven Nasatir, the long-time head of the Chicago Jewish federation and one of the most influential and pro-Israel leaders in the American Jewish federation world, told The Times of Israel’s Raphael Ahren this week that “the federation in Chicago will not be hosting any member of Knesset that votes for this bill. None. They will not be welcome in our community.”He added: “We’re past the time when we’re standing and applauding and being nice because they’re members of Knesset or because they hold this position or that position. People who don’t have the understanding of what this bill means to the Jewish people — God bless ’em, but they’re not welcome in our community, period.”What bothers them about the bill? Are they worried about Tzohar’s status? Why protest so vociferously against legislation that only codifies the already-existing compromise? The answer lies in the stark difference between government decisions and Knesset legislation, and with the sheer scale of the compromise and sacrifice American Jewish leaders believe they made 20 years ago in the Neeman agreement.It’s one thing to agree to an unfair but nevertheless negotiated compromise for the sake of Jewish unity. It’s quite another for the parliament of Israel, in a majority vote for a government-backed bill (backing was granted officially in the Sunday vote), to declare for the first time, even if only in a limited way, that the Haredi rabbinate now polices the most fundamental promise made by the State of Israel to the world’s Jews: the right of return, the assurance that Israel belongs to them too.Israeli officials, including the prime minister, were understandably surprised by the fury of American Jewry in recent days. It is even true that many Israeli Reform leaders were surprised. Most do not grasp, even now, some of the most fundamental assumptions that underlie the American Jewish relationship with Israel.As long as the American Jewish voice remains a dormant spectator in the Israeli debates on Jewish identity, that’s not likely to change.
MIGRATING BIRDS IN ISRAEL EATS HUMANS FLESH FOR COMING AGAINST ISRAEL-JERUSALEM
EZEKIEL 39:11-12,18
11 And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will give unto Gog (RUSSIA/ARAB/MUSLIMS) a place there of graves in Israel, the valley of the passengers (EAST OF THE DEAD SEA IN JORDAN VALLEY) on the east of the sea: and it shall stop the noses of the passengers: and there shall they bury Gog (RUSSIAN) and all his multitude:(ARAB/MUSLIM HORDE) and they shall call it The valley of Hamongog.(BURIEL SITE OF THE 300 MILLION,RUSSIAN/ARAB/MUSLIMS)
12 And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of them, that they may cleanse the land.(OF ISRAEL)
16 And also the name of the city shall be Hamonah. Thus shall they cleanse the land.(OF THE ISRAEL-GOD HATERS)
EZEKIEL 39:17-21
17 And, thou son of man, thus saith the Lord GOD; Speak unto every feathered fowl, and to every beast of the field, Assemble yourselves, and come; gather yourselves on every side to my sacrifice that I do sacrifice for you, even a great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may eat flesh, and drink blood.(OF RUSSIAN/ISLAMIC HORDES AGAINST ISRAEL)
18 Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth, of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks, all of them fatlings of Bashan.
19 And ye shall eat fat till ye be full, and drink blood till ye be drunken, of my sacrifice which I have sacrificed for you.
20 Thus ye shall be filled at my table with horses and chariots, with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord GOD.
21 And I will set my glory among the heathen, and all the heathen shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid upon them.
22 So the house of Israel shall know that I am the LORD their God from that day and forward.
REVELATION 19:17-18
17 And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God;(AGAINST ALL NATIONS ARMIES THAT COME AGAINST JERUSALEM AND ISRAEL)
18 That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.
EZEKIEL 38:1-7
1 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
2 Son of man, set thy face against Gog,(RULER) the land of Magog,(RUSSIA) the chief prince of Meshech (MOSCOW) and Tubal,(TOBOLSK) and prophesy against him,
3 And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog,(LEADER OF RUSSIA) the chief prince of Meshech(MOSCOW) and Tubal:TOBOLSK)
4 And I (GOD) will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,(GOD FORCES THE RUSSIA-MUSLIMS TO MARCH) and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords:
5 Persia,(IRAN,IRAQ) Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet:
6 Gomer,(GERMANY) and all his bands; the house of Togarmah (TURKEY) of the north quarters, and all his bands: and many people with thee.(AFRICAN MUSLIMS,SUDAN,TUNESIA ETC)
7 Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them.
EZEKIEL 39:1-8
1 Therefore, thou son of man, prophesy against Gog,(LEADER OF RUSSIA) and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech (MOSCOW) and Tubal: (TUBOLSK)
2 And I will turn thee back,(RUSSIA-ARAB MUSLIM ISRAEL HATERS) and leave but the sixth part of thee,(5/6TH OR 300 MILLION DEAD RUSSIAN/ARAB/MUSLIMS I BELIEVE) and will cause thee to come up from the north parts,(RUSSIA) and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel:
3 And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand.
4 Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands,( ARABS) and the people that is with thee: I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field to be devoured.
5 Thou shalt fall upon the open field: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD.
6 And I will send a fire on Magog,(NUCLEAR ATOMIC BOMB) and among them that dwell carelessly in the isles: and they shall know that I am the LORD.
7 So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more: and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD, the Holy One in Israel.
8 Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord GOD; this is the day whereof I have spoken.
Iran targeted Star of David in ballistic missile test, Israel says-Israel complains to UN as satellite imagery shows impact crater from weapons test next to Jewish symbol target carved in the desert-By Times of Israel staff June 28, 2017, 7:19 pm
Iran used a Star of David as a target for missile test last year, Israel said Wednesday, distributing satellite images of the site to the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday.“This use of the Star of David as target practice is hateful and unacceptable,” Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon wrote in a complaint to the Council.Grainy photos provided to UN members showed what Danon said was the Jewish and Israeli symbol as the target in a test of a ballistic missile carried out last year with the impact crater visible next to it.“The missile launch is not only a direct violation of UNSCR 2231, but is also a clear evidence of Iran’s continued intention to harm the State of Israel,” Danon said, adding that “the targeting of a sacred symbol of Judaism is abhorrent.”“It is the Iranians who prop up the Assad regime as hundreds of thousands are killed, finance the terrorists of Hezbollah as they threaten the citizens of Israel, and support extremists and tyrants throughout the Middle East and around the world,” he added.Earlier this month Iran fired missiles at Syria, targeting Islamic State positions in the first missile attack by Iran outside its own territory in 30 years, since the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988.The medium-range ballistic missiles Iran said it fired at the eastern Syria’s Deir el-Zour region were ostensibly in retaliation for the twin terror attacks carried out by the group on June 7 in Tehran’s parliament, and at the grave of Ayatollah Khomeini in which 17 people were killed. Revolutionary Guards officials warned that other assaults on Iran would lead to similar retaliatory attacks, describing the missiles as a message to its enemies.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the attack, “I have one message for Iran: Don’t threaten Israel.”Iran has in the past test-fired missiles with anti-Israel messages written on them in Hebrew. In March 2016, it test-fired two ballistic missiles, which an Iranian news agency said were inscribed with the phrase “Israel must be wiped out.”After Iran test-fired a ballistic missile in January, the US-imposed sanctions on a number of entities involved in Iran’s ballistic missile program, and US President Donald Trump warned the Islamic Republic it had been “put on notice.”Although Iran maintains that the testing of ballistic missiles is not banned by the 2015 nuclear deal designed to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, the US said that the sanctions were imposed for Iran’s violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2331, which calls upon Iran “not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.”Since January’s test-firing of a ballistic missile, Iran has carried out a number of other tests of cruise and submarine-based missiles.Agencies contributed to this report.
28 And when these things begin to come to pass,(ALL THE PROPHECY SIGNS FROM THE BIBLE) then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption (RAPTURE) draweth nigh.
29 And he spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree,(ISRAEL) and all the trees;(ALL INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES)
30 When they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand.(ISRAEL LITERALLY BECAME AND INDEPENDENT COUNTRY JUST BEFORE SUMMER IN MAY 14,1948.)
JOEL 2:3,30
3 A fire devoureth (ATOMIC BOMB) before them;(RUSSIAN-ARAB-MUSLIM ARMIES AGAINST ISRAEL) and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.
30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.(ATOMIC BOMB AFFECT)
ZECHARIAH 14:12-13
12 And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet,(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB) and their eyes shall consume away in their holes,(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB) and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB)(BECAUSE NUKES HAVE BEEN USED ON ISRAELS ENEMIES)(GOD PROTECTS ISRAEL AND ALWAYS WILL)
13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour.(1/2-3 BILLION DIE IN WW3)(THIS IS AN ATOMIC BOMB EFFECT)
EZEKIEL 20:47
47 And say to the forest of the south, Hear the word of the LORD; Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall devour every green tree in thee, and every dry tree: the flaming flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall be burned therein.
ZEPHANIAH 1:18
18 Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the LORD'S wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land.
MALACHI 4:1
1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven;(FROM ATOMIC BOMBS) and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
And here are the bounderies of the land that Israel will inherit either through war or peace or God in the future. God says its Israels land and only Israels land. They will have every inch God promised them of this land in the future.
Egypt east of the Nile River, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, The southern part of Turkey and the Western Half of Iraq west of the Euphrates. Gen 13:14-15, Psm 105:9,11, Gen 15:18, Exe 23:31, Num 34:1-12, Josh 1:4.ALL THIS LAND ISRAEL WILL DEFINATELY OWN IN THE FUTURE, ITS ISRAELS NOT ISHMAELS LAND.12 TRIBES INHERIT LAND IN THE FUTURE
Rivlin: Government must prioritize ‘unity of the Jewish people’-Amid fallout over cabinet decision to freeze Western Wall deal, president hails Diaspora’s ‘significant role’ in building Israel-By Alexander Fulbright June 29, 2017, 4:51 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
President Reuven Rivlin on Thursday urged the government to prioritize the “unity of the Jewish people” and retain its role as the state for all Jews, following the fallout from a recent cabinet decision freezing a deal establishing a pluralistic prayer section at the Western Wall.“The State of Israel is the state of all the Jewish People and will continue to be faithful to that commitment. Our fellow Jews in the Diaspora have an important and significant role in the building of the State of Israel,” the president said in an open letter.“This has always been so, and will continue to be so. The unity of the Jewish People must always remain an important aspiration of the governments of Israel.”In his letter, Rivlin also said while many Israelis and Diaspora Jews don’t see eye-to-eye on a number of issues, these “painful” differences must not undermine the understanding of the Western Wall’s importance for all Jews.“During this process we inevitably have to face difficult disputes among us, disputes that are both painful and yet very real, founded in genuine belief. Even so, we must remember that beyond the disagreements, we are all one family and that every Jew has a special place in their heart for the Kotel, the last remnant of our Holy Temple,” he said, using the Hebrew name for the Western Wall.Sunday’s cabinet decision to halt the January 2016 agreement establishing a pluralistic prayer area at the Western Wall has been met with widespread dismay from liberal groups and Diaspora Jews, with one prominent North American Jewish leader comparing the move to a “sucker punch.”In response to the decision, the Jewish Agency’s Board of Governors — which was meeting in Jerusalem this week — took the unprecedented step on Monday of calling on the government to reverse the move.The decision to freeze the agreement coincided with a High Court of Justice deadline for the state to respond to petitions on its failure to implement the agreement and construct the mixed-gender plaza near Robinson’s Arch by this week. On Wednesday, the High Court said a hearing will now be head in July.The move also came amid pressure from Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox lawmakers to dial back the plan to establish the egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall. Following the decision, a number of ultra-Orthodox lawmakers made statements questioning Reform and Conservative Jewry’s connection to the site, further adding to the tensions surrounding the cabinet decision.Despite the pushback, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defended the move, with an aide to the premier saying on Monday that it will in fact help push the deal forward, and that Netanyahu had no choice but to halt the agreement as a result of pressure from the ultra-Orthodox parties, whose support he needs to maintain his ruling coalition.Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
Interview-The peace process hasn’t brought peace. The case for moving on-In a new book, philosopher Micah Goodman seeks to upend the debate about the West Bank, by urging Israelis — left and right — to set aside their dreams-By Haviv Rettig Gur June 27, 2017, 9:01 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
The most popular new book in Israel is not a crime thriller, a romance or a military sci-fi romp, and contains not a single teenage wizard or vampire. It’s a political treatise written by a professor of medieval philosophy. And it’s making a lot of people very angry.Its author, Micah Goodman, is an affable 42-year-old famous among his students for his enthusiasm in the classroom. Courteous and disarmingly talkative, he seems an unlikely candidate for the role of iconoclastic upsetter of Israel’s frenetic national debate about the future of the West Bank.But upset he has. Over the past few weeks, Goodman’s Hebrew-language book “Milkud 67,” or “Catch-67,” a play on Joseph Heller’s iconic “Catch-22,” has angered some of the most respected dons on right and left. It drove the 75-year-old former general and prime minister Ehud Barak to pen his first-ever book review, a sprawling, scathing 4,000-word critique in Haaretz that depicts Goodman as “saturated with right-wing ideology.” And it drove the editor of the highbrow right-wing Makor Rishon newspaper, Hagai Segal, to write a column charging that Goodman was a closet leftist who had “adopted the left’s central moral premise – the claim of occupation.”It is being read in Israel’s halls of power — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was seen carrying it in the Knesset’s corridors with a bookmark peeking from its pages — and by many top officials involved in administering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. IDF Central Command chief Maj. Gen. Roni Numa bought copies for his top officers.But it isn’t just the elites who have taken notice. Since its publication in March, Goodman’s book has steadily risen in the bestseller lists and is now sitting pretty as the number 1 nonfiction book in the country.But what is it that’s so maddening — and so attractive — about this book? And why did it take a political outsider, a student of medieval philosophers, to tell Israelis something new about their endlessly debated and incessantly scrutinized predicament? -The catch-The book is written in clear and lucid prose, and wraps up quickly at page 166. That’s surprisingly short for what it attempts to accomplish: tracing the history and development of the defining fracture in Israeli political life across five decades — the question of what to do with the West Bank.The first third of the book, titled “Political ideologies in crisis,” offers a bird’s-eye view of the ideas behind what are today broadly referred to as Israel’s “right” and “left.” The second part, “Political arguments in crisis,” traces the political narratives that evolved from these ideologies, and how they crashed and collapsed in the face of hard, unexpected realities, leaving Israelis perplexed and despairing.The pro-settlement right, he explains, failed to convince most Israeli Jews that acquiring the land was worth the risk of becoming an ethnic minority — or even only a small majority — in their country. But it succeeded in instilling its second argument: that withdrawal from the West Bank, especially after the bitter experience of Gaza and Lebanon, would endanger Israelis.The peace-making left, meanwhile, failed to convince most Israelis — again, especially after bitter experiences such as the Second Intifada and the Gaza withdrawal — that its “religious” (in Goodman’s words) yearning for reconciliation was reciprocated on the other side. But it succeeded in its second argument: that Israel could not afford to absorb millions of Palestinians.Each side has lost the fight to impart its idealistic creed to the majority of the nation — but convinced the country of the urgency of its fears.There is deep empathy in the book for both stories, an empathy that led Barak to complain that Goodman was creating a “false equivalence.” The right-wing fear of withdrawal was a “tactical” issue that could be solved by security, technological and intelligence means, explained the former IDF chief of staff, while the left’s warning of losing the Jewish state through demographics could not be staved off by any measure other than withdrawal.Goodman’s response, also in the pages of Haaretz, is surprisingly simple and straightforward.He accused Barak of misunderstanding the problem, arguing that the left has failed not because it is wrong — there is no ruling in this book as to which side is correct — but because most Israelis, even among those who agree with its ideals, don’t trust its judgment.“For most Israelis,” Goodman wrote, “to deny the existential security danger of withdrawal from the territories sounds just as ridiculous as the denial of an existential demographic danger sounds to Barak… He expects Israelis to surrender their strategic judgment to a security figure… [But] for most Israelis, memories are more powerful than their impulse to obey. The territorial withdrawals that ended in the rise of new strategic threats are etched deeply into Israelis’ collective memory.”The exchange illustrates the deeper argument in the book. Goodman avoids taking sides between left and right not just because he respects both narratives — that respect, he believes, is fundamental to seriously analyzing their failures, and is why he devoted a third of his book to their intellectual underpinnings — but also because he is sick of them.That Barak, Israel’s last Labor prime minister, whose political demise in the inferno of the Second Intifada augured almost two decades of irrelevance for the left, still seems to believe he is arguing with some right-wing ideologue, rather than the sway-able but anxious majority in the center, is the real crisis of present-day Israel.The collapse of their respective idealistic visions heightened each camp’s fixation on its own fear, and destroyed the capacity of Israeli politics to carry on a serious discussion of the country’s predicament. As Goodman explains in the book, “The right asserts that if the left’s vision were realized, it would cause the complete collapse of the state. The left asserts that if the right’s vision were realized, it would cause the complete collapse of the state. How can you listen to someone whose vision means catastrophe for us all?”Without the capacity to listen — and, indeed, with the real possibility that both sides are right — Israeli political discourse can no longer address problems seriously, and resorts instead to acts of “identity declaration.”Fifty years on from the Six Day War, Israelis thus find themselves caught between two debilitating fears — fear of withdrawal and fear of remaining — and ill-served by a political class that shuns serious debate in favor of identity politics.That, in short, is the country’s collective national “catch-67.”-‘There is no solution’-The first chapter of part three, titled “The state and its dreams,” is a delicate and crucial chapter. Goodman is about to present his suggestion for a way forward in the conflict. But first, he has to ask Israelis to surrender something very precious: their dreams.He does so by telling them that the surrendering of dreams was among the primordial acts of Zionism, and that without it Zionism could not have achieved the establishment of the State of Israel.“When the idea of partitioning the land between Jews and Arabs was put on the agenda of the Zionist movement in the 1930s, it had steadfast opponents,” Goodman writes. “One of the most strident was Menahem Ussishkin [a prominent Zionist thinker and activist], who asked: ‘Is a nation permitted to surrender its birthright?’ And he answered: ‘We won’t.’”Ussishkin’s fear, Goodman explains, was not merely that the partition, which passed in the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947, would shrink the borders of the new Jewish state. Rather, the fear, “felt by many in the Zionist movement, was that the extreme territorial shriveling that the partition plan demanded from the Jews would cause a [commensurate] shriveling of their historical consciousness” — and at the most delicate moment of nation-building.Compromising on one’s dreams often means compromising on the meaning of one’s story and sense of purpose. For Ussishkin and others, it meant shrinking the very heart of the Zionist idea to fit the political exigencies of the moment.“I think [Israel’s first prime minister David] Ben-Gurion agreed with that,” Goodman said in a recent interview with The Times of Israel. “But he said, ‘Yeah, and we should do it anyway.’“Ben-Gurion realized that you have to give up many of your dreams to make the greater dream come true.” He surrendered his socialism, too — that is, his vision of the idealistic Zionist society of the future — in the service of a higher good. Thus he dismantled the socialist Palmah militia to secure a unified military and state, and sided with the US against the Soviets to ensure Israeli prosperity and safety. Even his secularism, a deep-seated rebellion against what he saw as the limited horizons and haplessness of the diasporic “old Jew,” was up for grabs when he handed the nation’s religious institutions to the ultra-Orthodox in 1937 in exchange for their support before the British Peel Commission, which was tasked with determining whether it was feasible to allow the establishment of a Jewish state.You have to reach page 127, after part two’s perilous journey through the agonizing implosion of Israeli political capacity, to reach Goodman’s earnest defense of abandoning one’s dreams — be it the fantasy of full, permanent control of the West Bank or the fantasy that peace is attainable between this generation of Israelis and Palestinians, or even the next.“There is no solution,” Goodman says. “If you’re willing to accept the fact that there is no solution, then you can start dealing with the problem.”He does not mince words about his frustration with the right and left on this point. “In Israel it usually goes like this: The left says there is a solution, by which they mean we need a big peace initiative to solve all our problems. The right says there isn’t a solution, so there’s nothing we should do except hang on to the status quo.“I think that’s a false dichotomy. I think there is no solution, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot we can do – precisely because there’s no solution.”It is only when old paradigms and dreams collapse that one is free to pursue new ones.The good news, in his view: “This book is mainly about Israelis, and Israelis have already done that. They have already abandoned the old dreams.“If the vision of the ‘Complete Land of Israel’ used to be part of the identity of so many Israelis, I don’t think it is anymore. If the dream of peace was treated on the Israeli left religiously, [as a line from the iconic ‘Song for Peace’ reads,] ‘Don’t say the day will come, bring the day.’ There was a sense of urgency. If history doesn’t lead toward peace, history has no meaning. But Israelis on the left aren’t there anymore.”About 70 percent of Israelis are “on the pragmatic side of Likud, Jewish Home, Labor, Yesh Atid, Kulanu. All these Israelis, their labels are weak and they’re open-minded, and they’re the ones my book isn’t challenging at all. It’s challenging people on the right and left, but most of the responses I’m getting is people saying, ‘Yeah, yeah, you’re describing me. You’re describing me.’”Most Israelis realize, he says, “that I’m not asking them to compromise their identity in order to have a future. We already compromised our identity. Most Israelis on the right want to stay in the West Bank for security reasons, not identity reasons. It’s not about sacred land, but about the unsacred [security realities of the] Middle East. Most Israelis on the left want to leave the West Bank not because of peace, which used to be part of their identity, but because of security, [in the sense of] securing our majority.”The dreams are spent, “but we didn’t cash that in.”It’s time to claim for ourselves the upside of abandoning those dreams, he insists. A pragmatic, wary Israeli polity must “find an intervention that will turn the conflict from one that will end our national life” — either through demographics or war — “to one that will be part of our life, like car accidents and crime and poverty, which will always be part of our life, and we have to minimize them and deal with them, but we accept the harsh fact that they will be part of our life.”This is not what Benjamin Netanyahu or Moshe Ya’alon have in the past referred to as “managing the conflict,” he adds quickly. “This is reorganizing it — in a way that ends the control over the Palestinian people without risking the Israeli people.”‘Why don’t we do them tomorrow morning?’The key lies in “thinking about this like we think about art, not like we think about religion. It’s not an all-or-nothing game. We have to think about it quantitatively. Instead of trying to end the conflict, can we shrink the size of the conflict? Instead of ending the occupation, can we shrink dramatically the amount of occupation? Instead of bringing peace, can we bring more peace? Let’s think about it in quantities.”The book is full of examples, including some buried in footnotes. He shares them eagerly in the interview.He says, for example, that Israel could “easily increase” the size of Palestinian-controlled Area A of the West Bank.“That would allow the Palestinian Authority to grow economically. Right now it can’t build homes outside Area A.” But according to Goodman, “If you make [another 20 percentage points] in [Israeli security-controlled] Area B into Area A and maybe add 20 more from C to A, you’ve grown Area A from 22% of the West Bank to 60%.“Second, invest a lot in a project that will connect by roads and bridges all the Palestinian population [centers]. So even if there’s no territorial contiguity, there’s movement contiguity. You can maximize that.“A third thing we can do: There are many neighborhoods in Jerusalem that no Jew ever thought were Jerusalem. There’s no strategic need [to retain them] and no historic religious need. There are three Jerusalems: historic Jerusalem is small — the Temple Mount, City of David, etc; Jordanian Jerusalem was larger; and then we annexed another 18 more [Palestinian] villages [beyond Jordanian East Jerusalem].“Let’s just declare that only Jordanian [East] Jerusalem is Jerusalem.” That would allow Israel to take advantage of a “symbolic gap: There’s a lot of Jerusalem that for Jews is not really Jerusalem but for Palestinians is Jerusalem. Meaning, there is room for some sort of deal where you move some neighborhoods of Jerusalem to the Palestinians.”It is here that the right gets livid and calls Goodman a leftist. Not only is he talking about concessions — he demands no reciprocity, no Palestinian peace for such extensive gestures.And that’s the point.“This is not for peace, but for just one thing: That this new entity that we’re expanding and strengthening has greater symbolic weight. I would like this conflict to be between two political entities and not between a political entity that’s in control of a people. I don’t want them as conquered, but as enemies from the outside.”Combine those ideas with, for example, “a deal with the Jordanians to create easier border crossings to Jordan, and perhaps even a dedicated Palestinian terminal in Amman airport, so they have an easier way to get out to the world,” and you’ve accomplished something that is emphatically in Israel’s interest, and helps Israel escape its catch-67: “Those four things alone dramatically minimize the occupation, the real-world occupation, but don’t risk Israelis. So why don’t we do them tomorrow morning?”The reason, he believes, is that “the left feels we need to keep those parts [of areas B or C] for the big peace deal, and the right feels we need them for settlements.” Israel is held back by failed ideologies, he argues, “not by things that actually bother Israelis.”There is already a Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank. “We don’t have to create it, only to increase it, to grow it and empower it so it will be what Henry Kissinger called an ‘almost state.’ It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better than what we have now.”-‘Listening to foreigners’-It may be short, but the book is by no means simple, and Goodman is not a simple thinker about the Israeli condition. He’s a research fellow at the left-leaning Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, and the founder and director of Ein Prat, a pluralistic and liberal academy in the West Bank settlement of Alon that offers Israelis in their twenties programs for studying and debating questions of Jewish thought and Israeli identity. Goodman’s own life straddles the boundaries he describes in the book.So he knows how his readers are likely to respond to his suggestions.“People on the left will say, ‘You still have occupation at the end of the day. You still have troops, you’re still occupying the land.’”His response is unequivocal: “I would freeze all settlements outside the settlement blocs. It’s important. Israelis and Palestinians are traumatized by Oslo. Israelis are traumatized that Oslo didn’t lead to peace, but to the Second Intifada. Palestinians are traumatized that the settlements grew dramatically during Oslo. So we all feel like we tricked each other. That’s why freezing settlements is so important. It shows this is not manipulation.”On the right, he adds, the sense of concessions without reciprocity will evoke the right’s own traumas from Oslo, and more recently from the 2005 Gaza Disengagement. The Israeli right (and many on the left) believes that every round of Israeli concessions resulted in an uptick in violence and a belief among the Palestinians that violence is the only way to drive ostensibly powerful Israel to a slow, steady retreat. For the right, that conviction that withdrawals breed war rather than peace turns any “pragmatist” in the Goodman mold into the very blinkered idealist he is railing against.And Goodman agrees.“I do not think this will end the conflict. It might amplify the conflict. And you know what? Bring it on.“I’m not for ending the conflict. It doesn’t seem possible. I want to reorganize the conflict. I want a conflict where there’s a political almost-state entity in front of me, and if that state will attack me, fine. I don’t want to control them, and I don’t want to be threatened by them. I can maximize these two needs by reducing by 80-90% the occupation, but I’m still in control” of the security situation on the ground. “That’s the main thing.”Will it explode in Israel’s face like Gaza after the Hamas takeover in 2007? “Probably.”“The precedent of Gaza should guide us, but not paralyze us. We can’t say, ‘Okay, there was a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza [that had negative outcomes] so we shouldn’t even consider anything unilateral.’ We should say, ‘We shouldn’t do anything unilateral like we did in Gaza.’”The Gaza withdrawal involved two fundamental Israeli mistakes that can serve as lessons for the West Bank, he argues.“First, we left the Philadelphi Corridor [the border between Gaza and Egypt], which people in the [IDF] General Staff said we shouldn’t do. [Then-prime minister Ariel] Sharon was still guided by the 1967 Green Line. He wanted to show the world that we left all the land behind the Green Line. It would have been a pain in the butt [to stay on that border], and soldiers would have died there, but we would have been able to block the link between Gaza and Tehran. So the [West Bank] parallel [to leaving the Philadelphi Corridor] would be a withdrawal from the Jordan Valley.”Second, “the parallel in Gaza to what I’m saying would have meant not evacuating the northern bloc [of settlements adjacent to the Israeli border]. There was no need to do that. Why did we do that? Those villages did not break Arab territorial contiguity. We probably had to remove Kfar Darom, of course, Morag, Netzarim [all settlements nestled between Palestinian cities]. The only consideration in withdrawal should be territorial contiguity, and leaving the IDF wherever it wants to remain.”It was Sharon’s concern for international opinion, “which became more important than the security factor,” that turned the withdrawal into a “disaster.”The mistake, in other words, “was listening to foreigners, and thinking that the Green Line gives us any legitimacy. The evidence suggests this isn’t true. When we protect ourselves from behind the Green Line, we’re still seen as war criminals. So the Green Line didn’t give us a lot in Gaza. But not staying in Philadelphi cost us a lot.”‘Handshake in the White House’-“Catch-67” is a Hebrew book written for Israelis, and Israelis have responded in dramatic fashion to its validation of their competing narratives and anxieties.But its popularity is also due in part to the way it distinguishes between Israeli interests and those of emotionally invested foreigners, the sort of eager meddlers Israelis no longer trust to bring either security or peace.“We don’t need a handshake in the White House,” Goodman asserts. “Let’s just do it. Instead of a grand deal, let’s do small deals here and there. We’ll open up land so Palestinians can build here, we’ll sign some investment deal there. We’ll encourage stability and international investments. There are actions we can take when we stop looking for the plan that will redeem us.“This is an 80-20 proposition. We grow their independence by 80%. We can’t give them the last 20% because that’s the part that threatens Israel. In the last 20% you’ll lose [the support of] Israelis. The Palestinians get 20% of the land for free [in the Area A expansion, if not 40%]. They don’t have to recognize Israel or give up the right of return or anything like that. It’s just a local deal, not a grand attempt to solve the conflict. There’s no memorandum of understanding, no ‘dawn of a new day.’ When Barak was elected [in 1999] he said, ‘This is a new age.’ This is not a new age. Whatever works — let’s do more of it.”The Palestinians can’t openly accept such a limited Israeli move, he knows, but it nevertheless would solve an acute problem for them as well: immigration.“Practically speaking, what would happen if there was a completely independent Palestinian state, right now, where they control the Jordan Valley? There are millions of refugees in the Middle East, many of them Palestinians. So what happens when the ethos of return meets the need of emigration [from their current countries]? They’d have to bring them in. It’s my guess — and it’s more than a guess; many Palestinians have told me this — that they can’t say to them, ‘No, you can’t come in.’ They’d want to say no, because Palestine would collapse if a million refugees were to come in.“But if they’re almost a state, with Israeli forces in the Jordan Valley…we can be the bad cop for them, saying ‘no.’ That’s the only way you could have a stable state.”-‘We can’t talk to them’-In the end, Goodman believes, it is in such quantitative improvements that any chance for a more comprehensive reconciliation and separation might be found.“We can’t talk to them. No interaction with them is a real interaction because of [the gap in] power. They’ll always react to power, either by over-laughing at my jokes or somehow pointedly showing me they don’t care about me. Power corrupts everything.“I want to have a conversation with them. I think as a Jew that there’s a reason why we’re in the Middle East. There’s a lot for us to learn from Islam and the Arabs. But there’s nothing we can do because there’s power there.“I wish there could be no conflict. If I could, I’d end the occupation. But because I can’t without risking Israelis, I want to minimize the power element. If I can reduce the occupation without risking Israelis, I choose that, and that’s the beginning of reconciliation.”He says the next words almost apologetically, as though unsure how this sliver of idealism was somehow allowed to creep into the discussion. “If we can achieve 40 years where Palestinians almost don’t experience occupation and Jews almost don’t experience terrorism, we’ve broken catch-67. Jews don’t live with anxiety, Palestinians don’t live with humiliation, and now, psychologically, the next generation can reach for reconciliation.”
Israel freezes visits to Hamas prisoners amid talks over troops’ remains-Terror group says move, demanded by lawmakers and relatives to up pressure as talks stall, is tantamount to declaration of war-By Avi Issacharoff and Times of Israel staff June 29, 2017, 3:22 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
Hamas on Thursday said that Israel had stopped allowing Gazan members of the terror group serving time in Israeli prisons to receive visits from family members, in a move intended to ramp up pressure amid negotiations for the return of three Israeli civilians and the bodies of two soldiers being held in the Strip.Hamas leaders condemned the move as “the beginning of a war against the prisoners.”“We will not allow this decision to stand, whatever the price may be,” they said in a statement.An Israeli prison official refused to confirm the policy change.Israel is holding some 150 Hamas security prisoners from Gaza. In the past, families of Palestinian inmates have been granted permits to cross from the Gaza Strip into Israel to visit them.The families of Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, two soldiers killed in Gaza during fighting in 2014, have urged Israel to disallow the visits as a means of pressuring Hamas to return the troops’ bodies and praised the reported move.praised the move.“We’ve been asking the government for two and a half years to apply pressure on Hamas in order to change the equation, to make them understand that holding IDF soldiers is a burden rather than an asset. Something is finally moving,” said Simcha Goldin, father of Hadar Goldin, according to the Ynet news site.Hamas is thought to also be holding three Israelis who crossed into Gaza.Talks over a possible swap have mostly stalled, and lawmakers recently joined calls to cut the visits.Earlier this month Likud MK Yoav Kisch led 40 parliamentarians who put their names to a letter demanding the government end the family visits until the soldiers are returned, the Hebrew Walla website reported at the time.The missive, signed by MKs from both the coalition and opposition, urged a policy of “a humanitarian step in exchange for a humanitarian step.”The MKs asked the government to send a message to Hamas that the return of the soldiers is a precondition for future humanitarian steps.“It is unreasonable for the Israeli government to decide on a series of humanitarian steps for Hamas in Gaza while it continues to hold our sons,” the wrote.“We call on the government to adopt the policy and as a first stage stop the visits by families from the Gaza Strip to prisoners,” the lawmakers wrote.On Tuesday, Channel 1 news reported that Israel and Hamas have been engaged in intensive indirect talks recently over the release of a number of Israeli nationals held captive by the terror group in Gaza.In addition to returning the missing soldiers, Israel has been seeking to reach a deal with the rulers of the Gaza Strip to secure the release of three Israeli men who crossed into the coastal territory of their own accord: Avraham Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, as well as Juma Ibrahim Abu Ghanima, whose presence in Gaza is unconfirmed.The talks, which are being mediated by an unnamed third party, have gathered momentum over the past two weeks, following the return of Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, from a visit to Egypt earlier this month, the report said.Hamas demands that Israel release all prisoners from the 2011 exchange for kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit who were rearrested in 2014 when three Israeli teens were abducted in the West Bank (it later emerged that they had been killed almost immediately) before any advancement in negotiations between the parties can take place.
Edelstein tells Moscow: Syria spillover a ‘red line’ for Israel-Meeting with Lavrov, Knesset speaker says Jerusalem won’t tolerate continued errant fire on its territory, asks Kremlin for help in retrieving soldiers’ remains from Hamas-By Marissa Newman June 29, 2017, 3:00 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
MOSCOW — Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein on Thursday warned Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that Israel would not tolerate continued stray fire from the Syria civil war on the Golan Heights, describing it as a “red line” for the Jewish state.Over the past week, errant fire from Syria struck the Golan Heights on at least four occasions, leading the IDF to target Syrian army installations, including in a strike on Saturday that reportedly killed two Syrian soldiers. Israel holds the Assad regime — which is supported by Russia and Iran in the conflict — responsible for all incidents originating from the war-torn country.In a meeting in Moscow’s Foreign Ministry, Edelstein said “fire, or what is being called ‘spillover fire,’ into Israeli territory is a red line that we will under no circumstances allow to be crossed, and we will not tolerate an Iranian presence on the border.”Israel fears the Islamic Republic, along with its proxies, will entrench its forces on its northern border, giving it greater access to attack the Jewish state.Edelstein did not say what other steps Israel would be willing to take to enforce its red line. Jerusalem has been careful to stay out of the Syrian fighting, beyond retaliatory strikes and reported airstrikes on alleged weapons transfers to terror group Hezbollah.Lavrov expressed “understanding” of Israel’s security concerns, Edelstein said after the meeting, though “not all gaps were closed” during the powwow.Edelstein also appealed to Lavrov to help Israel retrieve the bodies of two IDF soldiers killed in the 2014 Gaza war being held by the Hamas terror group in the coastal enclave. He left a packet of information with Lavrov on soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul — as well as IDF soldier Guy Hever, who went missing in 1997 on the Golan Heights.The Knesset speaker expressed concern over heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow, which he suggested could affect Israel.“The good relations between Moscow and Washington are essential for the peace of the world and certainly for the State of Israel,” he said.Welcoming Edelstein ahead of the meeting, Lavrov noted the “constant contact” between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel coordinates with Russia to carry out pinpoint strikes on Hezbollah arms convoys in Syria.Both Lavrov and Edelstein acknowledged warming ties between Moscow and Jerusalem on economic affairs, education, and parliamentary cooperation.The Knesset speaker was in Moscow for a three-day official visit at the invitation of Federation Council chairwoman Valentina Matviyenko.A former prisoner in Siberia for teaching Hebrew, Edelstein on Wednesday became the first Israeli to address the upper chamber of the Russian parliament.In his address to Russian lawmakers, the Knesset speaker outlined security threats facing Israel, from Hezbollah in the north to Hamas in the south.“Behind Hezbollah and Hamas stands Iran,” which aspires for regional expansion and “spreads its ideologies of hatred of mankind, which threaten all the nations of the world,” he said.
UN chief distances himself from Palestinian summit on 50 years of occupation-Spokesman for António Guterres says meeting, protested by Israel over alleged terror ties of 2 participants, has nothing to do with his office-By Stuart Winer June 29, 2017, 4:35 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres indicated that a summit organized by a pro-Palestinian UN group to mark five decades of Israeli control of the West Bank did not have the blessing of his office.Israel’s envoy to the UN Danny Danon had earlier protested to Guterres against the “United Nations Forum to Mark Fifty Years of Occupation” because, he said, some of the billed participants were from organizations with ties to Palestinian terror groups Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.The two-day meeting, beginning Thursday at UN headquarters in New York, was organized by the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.Answering questions about the forum, Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman for Guterres, said Wednesday that his office was “aware of the position of the Israeli Government.”“They’ve communicated with the Secretary‑General’s Office,” he said. “This is a meeting that is being organized by a committee of the membership. It is not something that is being sponsored by the Secretariat. I think any questions as to the invitees and the way the meeting is organized should be directed to the members of the committee.”On Wednesday Israel’s UN delegation said in a statement that “according to intelligence information” the Al Haq group “collaborates with the PFLP” and the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights Organization “works together regularly with the Hamas terrorist organization.”Representatives of Al Haq and the Al Mezan Center were scheduled to participate in the forum, the Israeli delegation said.Hamas and PFLP have both carried out numerous attacks on Israeli security forces and civilians. Most recently Hamas and the PFLP claimed responsibility for a June 16 shooting and knife attack outside the Old City in Jerusalem in which Israeli border policewoman Hadas Malka was stabbed to death.“The UN is colluding with supporters of terror seeking to harm Israel,” Danon said in the statement. “It is beyond comprehension that UN funds are supporting organizations which aid terrorists and incite against Israel. We call on the Secretary General to intervene immediately and prevent these individuals from appearing at the UN.”During the Wednesday press briefing Dujarric was also quizzed about a celebration event on Tuesday organized by Israel’s delegation at the UN’s New York headquarters to mark the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem following the June 1967 Six Day War during which Israel gained control of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and other territories.Durarric referred to his previous sentiments regarding the Palestinian summit and said, “As I answered…events organized by member states, whether collectively or one by one, those questions should be addressed to the member states.”According to the Israeli delegation, ambassadors and diplomats from around the world joined hundreds of participants from the pro-Israel community for the Israeli events, which included a performance by Israeli singer Sarit Hadad.
Politicians welcome Olmert parole, urge he be left in peace-Former PM to volunteer with charitable groups after he goes free Sunday, assuming no appeal by prosecution-By Stuart Winer and Times of Israel staff June 29, 2017, 12:56 pm
Politicians and former colleagues from both sides of the political divide on Thursday welcomed a parole board decision to grant an early release from prison to former prime minister Ehud Olmert, who is serving time for corruption.The board said Olmert had earned early release with his good behavior. Olmert, 71, who was premier between 2006 and 2009, has served 16 months out a 27-month sentence.Olmert’s attorney Shani Illouz said he was very pleased to be reuniting with his family soon.“The board accepted each and every one of our arguments,” she said. “Ehud Olmert will be released on Sunday.”Illouz explained that under the terms of the parole, Olmert will volunteer at two charity groups, Leket Israel, which collects food for the needy, and Ezra Lemarpeh, which assists the sick, the Hebrew news Ynet website reported.Olmert, she noted, asked to volunteer at the organizations even though he is not required to do so because of his age. The former prime minister will also make weekly visits to the prisoner rehabilitation authority and he must sign in with police twice a month, as is initially required of all paroled prisoners.“Other than that, there are no additional limitations,” Illouz said.Barring any unforeseen developments, Olmert will walk free on Sunday, said Prison Service spokesman Assaf Librati.Environmental Protection Minister Ze’ev Elkin welcomed the decision, saying Olmert has “paid his debt to society and anyone else in his position would have been released long ago.”Elkin, in the past a member of the Kadima party led by Olmert, denounced the State Prosecutor’s Office for considering lodging an appeal against the release, saying “the prosecutor’s desire to appeal and delay the immediate release without even studying the decision in depth, seems like a personal persecution of a man who made a large contribution to Israel.”It was not immediately clear if the prosecution would appeal the decision; it had until Thursday afternoon to notify the prison board.Opposition Zionist Union MK Tzipi Livni, who served as foreign minister under Olmert before he stepped down in 2009, praised the early release decision as “fitting.”Her fellow faction member MK Yoel Hasson said it was “a correct decision, legally and personally and I think also for the public.”Zionist Union MK Shelly Yachimovich tweeted that “I don’t oppose and I don’t welcome Olmert’s release. Yes, the obsessive attention on the bitter fate of a criminal from the [social] elite annoys me when there are many common criminals in prison.”Olmert was one of eight former officials and businessmen convicted in March 2014 in the Holyland real estate corruption case, which has been characterized as among the largest graft cases in Israel’s history.Zionist Union MK Amir Peretz, who served as defense minister in an Olmert-led coalition, also welcomed the development and said he hoped that the prosecutor wuold respect the decision and leave Olmert in peace.Olmert’s chances for early release were complicated over the last few weeks as he was accused of divulging of sensitive information in memoirs he is writing and sneaking a transcript out of prison.The prosecution had said the book Olmert is writing contains “sensitive security issues” and that his lawyer was caught leaving the prison with a chapter on “secret operations” not approved by the censor for publication.Illouz said the prison board found that Olmert had not been warned by prison authorities before writing the book that he could not send and receive sensitive material from his cell and therefore could not be faulted for the security lapse.“It [the board] ruled that if there was neglect, it shouldn’t be pushed onto the prisoner but that the prisoner service should review itself,” she said.The prosecution earlier asked police to open a criminal investigation into the matter and argued that it would be inappropriate to consider early release until the probe was completed and it was clear whether Olmert had engaged in illegal activity.Olmert has denied doing anything wrong.Police searched the offices of the Yedioth Books publishing house and the home of Yehuda Yaari, who is editing Olmert’s memoirs on behalf of the publisher, over the incident.Initially sentenced to 19 months in the Holyland case, in September 2016 Olmert was sentenced to an additional eight months behind bars for the so-called Talansky affair. In that case, a court upheld a 2015 conviction over his accepting envelopes full of cash from American businessman and fundraiser Morris Talansky, in exchange for political favors during his decade-long term as mayor from 1993 to 2003.AP contributed to this report.
Brazil denied 16,000 visas to Jews during Nazi regime — study-Holocaust expert says number of rejected requests could be even higher, as research only covered some of documents-By JTA June 29, 2017, 6:15 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
RIO DE JANEIRO — The Brazilian government denied some 16,000 visas to European Jews attempting to escape the Nazi regime, according to new research looking at thousands of Brazilian documents from the World War II era.The research was undertaken by Brazil’s Virtual Archives on Holocaust and Antisemitism Institute, or Arqshoah. It was made public for the first time last week in a documentary aired on Brazilian television.The figures were based on monthly reports sent by Brazilian diplomats in service in Germany and Nazi-occupied countries. They obeyed 26 secret memos that forbade the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to grant visas to during the terms of presidents Getulio Vargas and Eurico Gaspar Dutra between 1937 and 1950.“I believe the number could be much higher, since I researched only part of the documentation. Even after the news about the Holocaust was released, the Brazilian government continued to deny visas to survivors who, in many cases, obtained visas as Catholics,” historian and Holocaust expert Maria Luiza Tucci Carneiro told JTA.“Both the Vargas and Dutra governments were intolerant, with political actions marked by xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and nationalist sentiments that had serious consequences for Jews seeking a host country,” she said.The result of the extensive research became a one-hour-long documentary produced in both Brazil and Germany, named “Reporting Paths – Survivors of History,” aired by Brazilian television on June 22. In Europe, academics on Nazi education in German schools were consulted. In Brazil, several video testimonials were recorded.“Based on oral testimony, we found that many refugees or exiles in Brazil lost family members during the Holocaust because they did not receive visas from the Brazilian government between 1937-1945. Not even a request of the great scientist Albert Einstein was attended by the chancellor Oswaldo Aranha,” she said, in a reference to the Brazilian diplomat that presided over the United Nations General Assembly session that partitioned the British Mandate of Palestine into two states, Jewish and Arab, in 1947.The research led by Tucci Carneiro was backed by Sao Paulo University, one of Latin America’s most prestigious. She will present a book based on 6,000 diplomatic documents from the Nazi era at the Shoah Memorial in Paris on July 2.“Even those who survived the Nazi genocide faced difficulties in having their visas released or regularizing their citizenship after they entered as stateless. Symptoms of trauma and pain continue to mark the voices of these survivors whose trajectories are examples of courage and struggle for dignity in gloomy times,” she said.In January, Brazil’s President Michel Temer attended a service to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, held at the at the country’s largest synagogue, the 2,000-family Congregacao Israelita Paulista, affiliated with both the Conservative and Reform movements.“Remembering the Holocaust in all its pain and anguish is preparing the future. It stands to all of us as a lesson. One day may pass, one month may pass, years may pass, centuries may pass, we must remember the Holocaust for it’s a lesson for the future and for the present time,” Temer said.
Trump ridicules female TV host’s looks, calls her crazy-Trump tweets that he refused to meet MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski because she ‘was bleeding badly from a face-lift’-By Julie Bykowicz June 29, 2017, 5:50 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
WASHINGTON (AP) — US President Donald Trump ridiculed the looks and temperament of a female cable television host whose show he says he has stopped watching.In a series of tweets Thursday morning, the president went after Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, who have criticized Trump on their MSNBC show “Morning Joe.”“I heard poorly rated @Morning Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came…to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”Brzezinski responded on Twitter by posting a photograph of a Cheerios box that has the phrase “made for little hands.” That was a dig at Trump, who has long been sensitive about the size of his hands.I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don't watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017…to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017-The White House did not immediately respond to questions about the tweets, including what it was that set the president off.On their Wednesday show, Brzezinski and Scarborough roundly mocked Trump for displaying in several of his golf resorts a fake Time Magazine cover featuring himself.“That’s needy,” Brzezinski said on the show.About 15 minutes before the president himself tweeted, White House social media director Dan Scavino similarly attacked the hosts.“#DumbAsARockMika and lover #JealousJoe are lost, confused & saddened since @POTUS @realDonaldTrump stopped returning their calls! Unhinged,” Scavino wrote on his personal account.Trump was correct that the MSNBC hosts spent time at the president’s Florida resort, a visit that Scarborough said was to arrange a Trump interview.
REBUILT 3RD TEMPLE
REVELATION 11:1-2
1 And there was given me a(MEASURING) reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein.
2 But the court which is without the temple leave out,(TO THE WORLD NATIONS) and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.(JERUSALEM DIVIDED BUT THE 3RD TEMPLE ALLOWED TO BE REBUILT)
DANIEL 9:27
27 And he( THE ROMAN,EU PRESIDENT) shall confirm the covenant with many for one week:(1X7=7 YEARS) and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease,(3 1/2 yrs in TEMPLE SACRIFICES STOPPED) and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
MICAH 4:1-5
1 But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it.
2 And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
3 And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
4 But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of hosts hath spoken it.
5 For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the LORD our God for ever and ever.
DANIEL 11:31
31 And arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate.(3RD TEMPLE REBUILT)
DANIEL 12:11
11 And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away,(AT THE MIDPOINT OF THE TRIBULATION PERIOD)(3RD TEMPLE SACRIFICES STOPPED BY DICTATOR) and the abomination that maketh desolate set up,(TO WORSHIP THE DICTATOR OR DIE) there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days.(1,290 DAYS)(AN EXTRA 30 DAYS AT THE END OF THE 7 YEAR TRIBULATION PERIOD FOR JESUS TO DESTROY THE ARMIES AGAINST JERUSALEM.AND TO JUDGE THE SHEEP AND GOAT NATIONS OF MATTHEW 25:31-46-HOW THEY TREATED ISRAEL DURING THE 7 YEAR TRIBULATION PERIOD.AND THEN I BELIEVE JESUS WILL REBUILD THE 4TH TEMPLE 25 MILES FROM THE CURRENT TEMPLE MOUNT.AND THEN JESUS RULES FOR THE 1,000 YEARS-THEN FOREVER FROM THAT 4TH TEMPLE.)
MATTHEW 24:15-16
15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)(THE DICTATOR SITS IN THE REBUILT 3RD TEMPLE CALLING HIMSELF GOD AT THE MIDPOINT OR 3 1/2 YEAR PERIOD OF THE 7 YEAR TRIBULATION PERIOD.OR 7 YEAR PEACE TREATY BETWEEN ISRAEL-ARABS AND MANY OF DANIEL 9:27)
16 Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:
What color blue did King Solomon wear? New evidence tells us-Excavations of copper mines find earliest Israeli traces of dye used for prestigious garments for skilled workers-By Amanda Borschel-Dan June 28, 2017, 9:07 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
Preserved pieces of cloth from King Solomon’s time point to a colorful clothing palette for metalworkers in biblical era Timna. This is the earliest evidence of a plant-based dye in Israel, according to a study released on Wednesday.The arid desert conditions of Timna, found in Israel’s southern Negev desert, preserved the red and blue plant pigmentation found by archaeologists on dozens of fragments of 3,000-year-old textiles, according to a team of researchers from the Israel Antiquities Authority, Tel Aviv University and Bar-Ilan University.Since 2013, Dr. Erez Ben-Yosef of Tel Aviv University has directed excavations in the Timna Valley where his team has found textiles dating back to the Iron Age (11-10 centuries BCE). On some of the fragments, there is a decorative pattern of red and blue bands.In an article published Wednesday in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, the researchers hypothesize that the metalworkers, considered fine craftsmen, “were probably entitled to wear colorful clothing as a mark of their high status.”According to Ben-Yosef and the IAA’s Dr. Naama Sukenik, the findings indicate that the society at Timna, identified with the Kingdom of Edom, was hierarchical and included an upper class that had access to colorful, prestigious textiles.The concept of highly prized, skilled laborers flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which had supposed that slaves had largely manned the isolated copper mines.The dyes are mainly derived from two plants: the red from roots of madder; the blue from indigotin, which likely came from dyer’s woad. The process of creating and using the blue dye, according to the researchers, is a multi-day complex process involving reduction and oxidization.While the types of plants used for dyeing the cloth is unsurprising — both are among the most common plant dyes in the ancient world — the process of dyeing, called “true dye,” is sophisticated and exhibits professional skill. These weren’t garments to be donned by plebeians.As the textile pieces are kept under climate control conditions at the IAA, the team is exploring other open-ended questions such as Iron Age fashion and the status and technology involved in creating them.What is clear is that these were no ordinary shmattes.
Poll says most Israelis against Western Wall decision, conversion bill-Survey by religious pluralism advocacy group indicates that nearly two-thirds of Jewish respondents oppose the moves-By Tamar Pileggi June 29, 2017, 4:49 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
Two-thirds of Jewish Israelis oppose the recent cabinet decision to shelve a deal for pluralistic worship at the Western Wall and the coalition’s initial approval of a bill that would cement the ultra-Orthodox monopoly on conversions, a poll found Thursday.According to the survey conducted by Hiddush, a local organization that aims to advance religious pluralism in Israel, 63 percent of respondents said they disagreed with the decision to suspend the 2016 government-approved deal regarding the Jewish holy site, while 37% supported it.Broken down by parties within the coalition, the results show that supporters of ultra-Orthodox parties overwhelmingly (98%) approved of Sunday’s cabinet vote, while respondents affiliated with the mostly secular Kulanu and Yisrael Beytenu parties showed significantly less support at 16% and 20% respectively. Support among members of the nationalist-religious Jewish Home party and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party were split almost evenly.The Conversion Bill — the other controversial measure given approval by Netanyahu’s government this week — was almost equally unpopular with the majority of Jewish Israelis, the Hiddush survey found.According to the results, 64% of respondents said they opposed the bill, which would give the Chief Rabbinate the sole authority over conversions to Judaism in Israel, while 36% expressed support for the legislation.Responses similarly fell according to party affiliation: 94% of respondents who back ultra-Orthodox parties expressed support for the measure, Kulanu and Yisrael Beytenu voters showed significantly less support at 20% and 16% respectively, and 66% of respondents from the Jewish Home party expressed support. Likud voters more evenly split with 57% in favor and 43% opposed.In a statement, Hiddush president Rabbi Uri Regev said the results “prove how far the government has swerved away from the public will and the needs of the State of Israel. Instead, the government leaders act as puppets whose strings are being pulled by the anti-Zionist, ultra-Orthodox political parties.”The poll was conducted among a sample of 500 Jewish adults in Israel on June 27 by the Smith Institute. It has a 4.5% margin or error.Israel had approved a plan in January 2016 to officially recognize a separate, permanent, pluralistic prayer area at Robinson’s Arch adjacent to the main Western Wall prayer area, in a compromise reached after years of negotiations between liberal Israeli and American Jewish groups and the Israeli authorities. It gave non-Orthodox Jewish leaders a joint role in the oversight of the pluralistic site. Currently, a temporary prayer facility exists there.But the program was never implemented as powerful ultra-Orthodox members of Netanyahu’s coalition government raised objections to the decision after they had initially endorsed it. Under ultra-Orthodox management, the main Western Wall area is separated between men’s and women’s prayer sections.Netanyahu, trying to placate both his coalition partners and wealthy American Jewish donors, had promised a new $9 million plaza for mixed-gender prayer would be established.On Sunday, the cabinet froze the plan, and he ordered top aides to formulate a new one.This set off a cascade of criticism from liberal groups both in Israel and abroad. Liberal Jewish groups accused Netanyahu of scrapping the deal because of pressure from the two ultra-Orthodox parties that keep his narrow coalition afloat.They have already petitioned the Supreme Court to implement the decision and still hold out hope it will overturn Sunday’s decision.Times of Israel staff and AP contributed to this report.
Major US Jewish groups implore Netanyahu to ‘resolve’ Western Wall crisis-Conference of Presidents says decision is dividing community, warns ‘a lack of unity could lead to an erosion of support’ for Israel-By Eric Cortellessa June 28, 2017, 10:23 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
WASHINGTON — The leaders of two major Jewish organizations on Wednesday called for a “resolution” to the Israeli cabinet’s decision to freeze an agreement for a permanent pluralistic prayer section, jointly overseen by non-Orthodox religious Jewish groups, at the Western Wall.The cabinet move — which reneged on a January 2016 government-approved measure — has sparked a crisis between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition and Diaspora Jewry, many of whom affiliate with non-Orthodox Judaism and say this decision leaves them feeling unwelcome in the Jewish state.The chairman and executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Stephen Greenberg and Malcolm Hoenlein, respectively, sent a letter to the Israeli premier Wednesday pleading with him to settle the issue.The two said they sought “to convey what we have heard from our constituent organizations and from members of our community expressing concern about the decision taken by the government this past Sunday.”They went on to tell Netanyahu: “It is imperative that the government move expeditiously to address this matter and come up with a resolution that is equitable to all, as you sought to do in the agreement that was reached before.”Ron Lauder, who heads the World Jewish Congress, also put out a statement calling for a “resolution” to the problem, which he said was dividing the global Jewish community, although he did not directly address Netanyahu.“I am deeply perturbed by the divisiveness that has arisen in recent days over the controversy surrounding this sacred site,” he said. “I have received messages from leaders of Jewish communities around the world expressing deep concern about the current situation.”“For many of these communities, praying at the Western Wall is a rite of passage, and they are understandably anxious that they will not be welcome there,” he added. “I fervently hope that a resolution can be found in the interest of Jewish unity and in a spirit of mutual understanding.”Since the announcement Sunday, which came following pressure from Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox coalition allies to scrap the deal, an internecine dispute has erupted between the Israeli government and international Jewish organizations.Both the Jewish Agency and the Reform movement, which represents the largest denomination of American Jewry, cancelled scheduled meetings with the prime minister as a form of protest.Moreover, Natan Sharansky, who chairs the Jewish Agency, warned that Jewish communities and individuals might reconsider traveling or donating to Israel because of the decision.Indeed, there have been alleged threats of groups saying they will withhold financial contributions to Israel.In his first public speech since taking office on May 16, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said he heard such action was being considered, but did not identify any particular organization.“Yesterday, I heard something that I thought I’d never hear before. And I understand the source of the frustration and the source of the anger. But I heard a major Jewish organization say that they needed to rethink their support for the State of Israel,” he said at a B’nai B’rith journalism awards ceremony in Jerusalem.“That’s something unthinkable in my lifetime, up until yesterday. We have to do better. We must do better.”Greenberg and Hoenlein — whose non-profit comprises 51 national organizations — said this tumult was hurting Jewish unity and could result in a loss of backing for Israel.“Given all the challenges facing Israel and American Jewry, this is a time when ‘achdut,’ unity, is more important than ever,” the statement said. “A lack of unity could lead to an erosion of support, which has been identified by Israel’s National Security Council as a vital security asset for Israel.”They further asked Netanyahu to “convey the sense of urgency regarding this matter” to his cabinet “and all those in a position to help resolve this issue.”
Analysis-New government-backed conversion bill targets the Orthodox, not the Reform-Legislation at the heart of the flareup in Israel-Diaspora tensions will affect almost no one. So why is everyone so upset?-By Haviv Rettig Gur June 29, 2017, 1:59 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
American Jews are protesting two moves taken by the Israeli cabinet on Sunday: the cancellation of a Western Wall agreement, and the advancing of a new bill on conversion.Much of the energy in the protests by American Jewish leaders has focused on the Western Wall. The reason is simple: It’s a real-world symbol of attachment to the land of Israel, and the agreement’s surprise cancellation is a hard, clear stab in the back. To Americans, agreements are sacred. If compromises can be canceled willy-nilly, why make the sacrifices required to reach them in the first place? But the Wall controversy is, at the end of the day, about a symbol, however potent. It is in the conversion bill where the rubber hits the road in official Israel’s acceptance or rejection of American Jewish religion and identity. It is here where Haredi lawmakers seek to legislate the first clear rejection of “Reform” Judaism — what these lawmakers call “Reform” includes no small amount of Conservative and Orthodox — into Israel’s law books. It is no accident that Tzohar, an Israeli modern-Orthodox organization that unites the chief rabbis of many cities and towns around the country, is on the “Reform” side of the debate.On paper, the bill does very little. It says nothing at all about overseas conversions. It has nothing to do with conversions in Israel by Israeli citizens, including the hundreds of thousands of family members of Jews who are not themselves halachically Jewish. And it doesn’t concern non-citizens in Israel who seek to convert in the official state rabbinate framework.Who’s left? Only these: non-citizens living in Israel for an extended period who obtain Jewish conversions from private conversion courts.That’s not a lot of people, to put it mildly: tourists, perhaps African migrants, and very few others. Official figures, which are imperfect by virtue of the simple fact that these are conversions carried out beyond the scope of government agencies, estimate the figure in the very low dozens each year, if not in the single digits.Furthermore, there are many Israeli officials who support the bill for reasons that have nothing to do with Haredi culture wars or Reform views on halacha. In Israel, conversion by a non-citizen is not just a religious act, but confers on the individual the right to obtain citizenship. While Reform and Haredi leaders seem to think the bill is about them, about the battle for religious liberty or against heresy (respectively), many Israeli officials back the bill for a simpler reason: any process that confers automatic citizenship on a person, they feel, should be carried out under the auspices of the state.The bill’s own explanatory preface, from the draft version released on June 22, puts this argument above all others. “Given the significant ramifications of conversion in Israel vis-Ã -vis civil standing; out of consideration for appropriate public order [in Hebrew the term ‘public order’ is often used to mean a clear legal and bureaucratic order]; the need for close state oversight of an issue of such high public importance; the desire to prevent splintering the status [of Jews by making some eligible for citizenship and some not] and thus dividing the nation — the bill establishes that a conversion in Israel that has the power to confer rights, among them the rights granted under the Law of Return, is a conversion done under sponsorship of the state only, as opposed to conversion in various private frameworks that are not arranged and overseen [by the state].”And, finally, there is the simpler point of the current status quo. The Neeman Commission, appointed in June 1997 and headed by then-minister of finance Yaakov Neeman, established today’s policy: To wit, only Orthodox state institutions may carry out the conversions, but a shared Reform-Conservative-Orthodox education system would teach and prepare the converts. Thus are satisfied the state’s demand for oversight over what is not an exclusively religious act, but also a naturalization process, as well as the halachic demands of the Orthodox and the demand for recognition by the Reform and Conservative.The biggest compromise here, of course, came from the liberal streams, but the leaders of Reform and Conservative Jewry explained this to their constituencies in the late 1990s as a sacrifice made for the sake of Jewish unity.It is vital to understand that the Neeman proposals essentially established two different standards for Israeli recognition of conversions. Inside Israel, conversion would work on the Neeman model, with the Orthodox state rabbinate in control of the bottleneck of actually carrying out the conversions. Outside Israel, in a policy established by several High Court of Justice rulings and government decisions over the years, any conversion carried out in a “recognized Jewish community” that the community itself accepts as a valid conversion would be recognized by the State of Israel.Who does the “recognizing” of recognized communities? In most cases, the answer is the Jewish Agency, which is the closest institutional framework that can represent the Israeli state — roughly half the agency’s board is appointed by Israeli political parties approximately according to their size in the Knesset — and is also present in hundreds of communities throughout the Jewish world.So what happened? How would a conversion bill that would actually affect exceedingly few people threaten these longstanding compromises? The answer lies in the party that was left out of the Neeman compromise, but only realized that fact very recently: Israel’s Modern Orthodox.The Israeli side of the compromise, the Neeman framework, gives final say on a conversion to the ultra-Orthodox who control the Chief Rabbinate. The Diaspora side confers state recognition to all movements recognized by, well, themselves. After all, what does it mean for the Jewish Agency to recognize you? The Jewish Agency’s ecumenicism is borne out by the rest of its board beyond the Israeli political parties: the umbrella fundraising federations and organizations from around the world (through representatives from JFNA and Keren Hayesod), and direct representatives of the Orthodox, Conservative and Reform religious streams themselves.Israel’s Modern Orthodox, who often refer to themselves as dati leumi, or national-religious, do not fall under the broadminded openness granted overseas, because they don’t live overseas, nor under the exceedingly (and increasingly) restrictive standards imposed by the Haredim within Israel.And so, ironically, it is not the Reform or Conservative movements who threaten to topple the Neeman status quo, but these Modern Orthodox. Despairing of what they see as the Israeli Chief Rabbinate’s overly restrictive demands for converts — including those who are already citizens (thanks to the Law of Return, which confers citizenship on anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent), and so cannot be suspected of seeking to become Jews just to obtain an Israeli passport — the group of Orthodox rabbis organized under the Tzohar organization has convened its own conversion courts and begun converting individuals in Israel outside the auspices of state institutions.The state, of course, refused to recognize these “unsupervised” conversions when it came to granting citizenship. The rabbinate, which correctly viewed these conversions as direct challenges to its religious hegemony, refused to recognize them for the purposes of marriage, divorce or burial.The issue reached the High Court of Justice, which gave its ruling on March 31, 2016. The Law of Return, the court said, applied to anyone who was residing in Israel legally and had converted in a recognized Jewish community that was Orthodox. (This was not a statement against Reform conversions, but reflected the Court’s preference for limiting its rulings to the context of each case.) That is, the court applied to the private conversion courts in Israel the standards for recognizing conversions overseas.This is the essence of justice: universal applicability. It is not surprising that Supreme Court justices have a hard time sustaining two wholly different standards of state recognition, nor surprising that the attempt to maintain two different standards inevitably results in them bleeding into each other.The court explained that the government was never given the authority to make the distinction between state and private Orthodox conversions in Israel when it came to granting citizenship, and that only Knesset legislation could give it that power.And so the new conversion bill was born.That is, it was not born from the fact that the state doesn’t recognize conversions carried out by the Israeli Reform movement. Non-recognition of Reform conversions in Israel is part of the Neeman agreement to which the Reform movement itself is a signatory.It was born from the fact that the Haredi establishment has fought bitterly in the years since the Neeman Commission to push out of the official state bodies the very Modern Orthodox who once, in the days of the Neeman debates, saw themselves as part of a single unified “Orthodox” side to the controversy.The upshot is that on paper, Haredi lawmakers are right when they say they’re merely seeking to codify the agreed-upon Neeman compromise in legislation to protect it against court challenges.But the social and political context has changed. Neeman only works when the rabbinate, which is given the monopoly to convert, plays ball with the broader system of education and preparation run by a cross-section of religious movements. When the judges in the state conversion courts no longer accept converts trained by that system, the compromise becomes a straitjacket for everyone else.In talks held between Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, Tzohar founder Rabbi David Stav and Reform representatives on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Reform representatives were told that the bill does not actually reject their conversions. Their converts, as always, will be registered as Jews in the Interior Ministry’s population registry — and, as always, will emphatically not be registered as Jews in the rabbinate. That it would deny recognition also for the purposes of citizenship is hardly significant for the Reform, since the denial of citizenship to their private conversions was already the agreed-upon status quo.Some Israeli Reform officials were satisfied with that answer, according to sources. But American Jewish leaders are not.Steven Nasatir, the long-time head of the Chicago Jewish federation and one of the most influential and pro-Israel leaders in the American Jewish federation world, told The Times of Israel’s Raphael Ahren this week that “the federation in Chicago will not be hosting any member of Knesset that votes for this bill. None. They will not be welcome in our community.”He added: “We’re past the time when we’re standing and applauding and being nice because they’re members of Knesset or because they hold this position or that position. People who don’t have the understanding of what this bill means to the Jewish people — God bless ’em, but they’re not welcome in our community, period.”What bothers them about the bill? Are they worried about Tzohar’s status? Why protest so vociferously against legislation that only codifies the already-existing compromise? The answer lies in the stark difference between government decisions and Knesset legislation, and with the sheer scale of the compromise and sacrifice American Jewish leaders believe they made 20 years ago in the Neeman agreement.It’s one thing to agree to an unfair but nevertheless negotiated compromise for the sake of Jewish unity. It’s quite another for the parliament of Israel, in a majority vote for a government-backed bill (backing was granted officially in the Sunday vote), to declare for the first time, even if only in a limited way, that the Haredi rabbinate now polices the most fundamental promise made by the State of Israel to the world’s Jews: the right of return, the assurance that Israel belongs to them too.Israeli officials, including the prime minister, were understandably surprised by the fury of American Jewry in recent days. It is even true that many Israeli Reform leaders were surprised. Most do not grasp, even now, some of the most fundamental assumptions that underlie the American Jewish relationship with Israel.As long as the American Jewish voice remains a dormant spectator in the Israeli debates on Jewish identity, that’s not likely to change.
MIGRATING BIRDS IN ISRAEL EATS HUMANS FLESH FOR COMING AGAINST ISRAEL-JERUSALEM
EZEKIEL 39:11-12,18
11 And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will give unto Gog (RUSSIA/ARAB/MUSLIMS) a place there of graves in Israel, the valley of the passengers (EAST OF THE DEAD SEA IN JORDAN VALLEY) on the east of the sea: and it shall stop the noses of the passengers: and there shall they bury Gog (RUSSIAN) and all his multitude:(ARAB/MUSLIM HORDE) and they shall call it The valley of Hamongog.(BURIEL SITE OF THE 300 MILLION,RUSSIAN/ARAB/MUSLIMS)
12 And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of them, that they may cleanse the land.(OF ISRAEL)
16 And also the name of the city shall be Hamonah. Thus shall they cleanse the land.(OF THE ISRAEL-GOD HATERS)
EZEKIEL 39:17-21
17 And, thou son of man, thus saith the Lord GOD; Speak unto every feathered fowl, and to every beast of the field, Assemble yourselves, and come; gather yourselves on every side to my sacrifice that I do sacrifice for you, even a great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may eat flesh, and drink blood.(OF RUSSIAN/ISLAMIC HORDES AGAINST ISRAEL)
18 Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth, of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks, all of them fatlings of Bashan.
19 And ye shall eat fat till ye be full, and drink blood till ye be drunken, of my sacrifice which I have sacrificed for you.
20 Thus ye shall be filled at my table with horses and chariots, with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord GOD.
21 And I will set my glory among the heathen, and all the heathen shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid upon them.
22 So the house of Israel shall know that I am the LORD their God from that day and forward.
REVELATION 19:17-18
17 And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God;(AGAINST ALL NATIONS ARMIES THAT COME AGAINST JERUSALEM AND ISRAEL)
18 That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.
EZEKIEL 38:1-7
1 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
2 Son of man, set thy face against Gog,(RULER) the land of Magog,(RUSSIA) the chief prince of Meshech (MOSCOW) and Tubal,(TOBOLSK) and prophesy against him,
3 And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog,(LEADER OF RUSSIA) the chief prince of Meshech(MOSCOW) and Tubal:TOBOLSK)
4 And I (GOD) will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,(GOD FORCES THE RUSSIA-MUSLIMS TO MARCH) and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords:
5 Persia,(IRAN,IRAQ) Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet:
6 Gomer,(GERMANY) and all his bands; the house of Togarmah (TURKEY) of the north quarters, and all his bands: and many people with thee.(AFRICAN MUSLIMS,SUDAN,TUNESIA ETC)
7 Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them.
EZEKIEL 39:1-8
1 Therefore, thou son of man, prophesy against Gog,(LEADER OF RUSSIA) and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech (MOSCOW) and Tubal: (TUBOLSK)
2 And I will turn thee back,(RUSSIA-ARAB MUSLIM ISRAEL HATERS) and leave but the sixth part of thee,(5/6TH OR 300 MILLION DEAD RUSSIAN/ARAB/MUSLIMS I BELIEVE) and will cause thee to come up from the north parts,(RUSSIA) and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel:
3 And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand.
4 Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands,( ARABS) and the people that is with thee: I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field to be devoured.
5 Thou shalt fall upon the open field: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD.
6 And I will send a fire on Magog,(NUCLEAR ATOMIC BOMB) and among them that dwell carelessly in the isles: and they shall know that I am the LORD.
7 So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more: and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD, the Holy One in Israel.
8 Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord GOD; this is the day whereof I have spoken.
Iran targeted Star of David in ballistic missile test, Israel says-Israel complains to UN as satellite imagery shows impact crater from weapons test next to Jewish symbol target carved in the desert-By Times of Israel staff June 28, 2017, 7:19 pm
Iran used a Star of David as a target for missile test last year, Israel said Wednesday, distributing satellite images of the site to the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday.“This use of the Star of David as target practice is hateful and unacceptable,” Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon wrote in a complaint to the Council.Grainy photos provided to UN members showed what Danon said was the Jewish and Israeli symbol as the target in a test of a ballistic missile carried out last year with the impact crater visible next to it.“The missile launch is not only a direct violation of UNSCR 2231, but is also a clear evidence of Iran’s continued intention to harm the State of Israel,” Danon said, adding that “the targeting of a sacred symbol of Judaism is abhorrent.”“It is the Iranians who prop up the Assad regime as hundreds of thousands are killed, finance the terrorists of Hezbollah as they threaten the citizens of Israel, and support extremists and tyrants throughout the Middle East and around the world,” he added.Earlier this month Iran fired missiles at Syria, targeting Islamic State positions in the first missile attack by Iran outside its own territory in 30 years, since the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988.The medium-range ballistic missiles Iran said it fired at the eastern Syria’s Deir el-Zour region were ostensibly in retaliation for the twin terror attacks carried out by the group on June 7 in Tehran’s parliament, and at the grave of Ayatollah Khomeini in which 17 people were killed. Revolutionary Guards officials warned that other assaults on Iran would lead to similar retaliatory attacks, describing the missiles as a message to its enemies.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the attack, “I have one message for Iran: Don’t threaten Israel.”Iran has in the past test-fired missiles with anti-Israel messages written on them in Hebrew. In March 2016, it test-fired two ballistic missiles, which an Iranian news agency said were inscribed with the phrase “Israel must be wiped out.”After Iran test-fired a ballistic missile in January, the US-imposed sanctions on a number of entities involved in Iran’s ballistic missile program, and US President Donald Trump warned the Islamic Republic it had been “put on notice.”Although Iran maintains that the testing of ballistic missiles is not banned by the 2015 nuclear deal designed to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, the US said that the sanctions were imposed for Iran’s violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2331, which calls upon Iran “not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.”Since January’s test-firing of a ballistic missile, Iran has carried out a number of other tests of cruise and submarine-based missiles.Agencies contributed to this report.
