Showing posts with label TEMPLE MOUNT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TEMPLE MOUNT. Show all posts

Friday, November 27, 2020

JORDAN WARNS ABOUT CHANGING STATUS OF TEMPLE MOUNT

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)

 DISEASES-ANIMAL TO HUMAN ( 500 million Dead )

REVELATION 6:7-8
7 And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse:(CHLORES GREEN) and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth,(2 billion) of (8 billion) to kill with sword,(WEAPONS)(500 million) and with hunger,(FAMINE)(500 million) and with death,(INCURABLE DISEASES)(500 million) and with the beasts of the earth.(ANIMAL TO HUMAN DISEASE)(500 million).

COVID 19 WORLD TOTALS AS OF MON NOV 23, 2020. CASES - 61,396,051 AND DEATHS - 1,439,585

Hospital heads said to unanimously agree Israel heading to 3rd wave of virus-In videoconference with Health Ministry chief, officials said to warn there will be a third, if not fourth, virus surge before vaccines end pandemic-By TOI staff-26 November 2020, 9:31 pm

Hospital heads in Israel unanimously agree that the country is heading into a third wave of coronavirus infections, a report said Thursday, after the nation surpassed 1,000 new daily cases for the first time in a month.According to the report by Channel 12 news, the hospital chiefs issued the warning in a videoconference meeting on Wednesday with Health Ministry Director-General Chezy Levy.The officials reportedly agreed they expect at least one more surge of infections, if not two, before the epidemic is brought to an end in Israel through a vaccination program.An unnamed source who attended the meeting told the network that all of the hospital chiefs agreed with the assessment that a surge in virus cases was on its way, and that the currently-low number of hospitalizations was only a result of the second national lockdown.Health Ministry Director-General Chezy Levy during a press conference in Jerusalem, on July 13, 2020. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)-The source said that Levy did not give his opinion on the matter.The warning from the health officials came as Israel surpassed 1,000 virus cases a day for the first time in a month, according to Health Ministry figures released Thursday morning.The milestone is the latest indication that the spread of the virus may be re-accelerating, even as the government pushes ahead with reopening the country from its second lockdown.There were 1,068 new cases diagnosed on Wednesday — 1.8 percent of the 60,463 test results returned, the ministry figures showed. The last time Israel saw daily cases above a thousand was October 22.After topping 9,000 on Wednesday for the first time in nearly three weeks, the active number of coronavirus cases in the country rose to 9,422 out of a total 332,317 cases since the pandemic’s beginning.Of those sick with COVID-19, 282 are in serious condition, of whom 122 people are on ventilators.A Magen David Adom worker takes a patient to the coronavirus unit at the Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem, on November 1, 2020. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)Despite the rising figures, cabinet ministers overnight approved a pilot plan to reopen 15 malls around the country.Outdoor market areas and some museums will also be allowed to reopen as part of the pilot plan, which aims to test the efficacy of virus safety guidelines.The malls will be allowed to open on Friday and remain open until December 6. The mall owners pushed to have the shops open by Friday to take advantage of Black Friday sales.Israel imposed a monthlong lockdown on September 18 that succeeded in bringing down surging infection rates but also paralyzed much of the economy and public life, as well as shuttering the entire education system. The government has since begun lifting the restrictions but health officials have sounded alarms as the drop in infection rates first slowed, and then reversed.Israelis stand in line outside a clothing shop advertising Black Friday sales in Tel Aviv, on November 25, 2020. (Miriam Alster/FLASH90)-Senior health officials have warned repeatedly about the necessity for a possible third national lockdown in Israel to contain the coronavirus, warning against further easing of restrictions until an additional drop in infections.The virus’s basic reproduction number — the average number of people each virus carrier infects — rose above 1 in the last days of October for the first time since the second national lockdown began to be rolled back earlier that month, and continued to rise before slackening slightly in early November.Figures released Wednesday, which were based on new case numbers from 10 days earlier due to the virus’s incubation period, showed the figure at 1.06.A basic reproduction number of over 1 indicates that case numbers will begin to expand exponentially.The coronavirus cabinet, a forum of ministers dealing with the outbreak, had initially decided that the lockdown exit should only start if the transmission rate is under 0.8. Under the Health Ministry’s plan, rollback measures are supposed to be halted if the rate rises. The government has ignored that benchmark, however, pressing on with easing restrictions.

 UAE-Israel tourism'As soon as we heard it's open, it went on our bucket list'-UAE welcomes Israeli tourists, but can they follow its authoritarian rules?-Groundbreaking peace deal rapidly grows kosher hospitality to make the Emirates a hot destination for wanderlust Sabras, but local Jews warn of strictly enforced social norms-By Sam Sokol-26 November 2020, 10:03 pm

JTA — Chevy Fleischman and a friend travel far from their home country of Israel each year to celebrate their birthdays together. Last year they flew to Morocco. The year before they had vacationed in Peru.For the next adventure Fleischman, an Orthodox mother of five, is hoping to visit a country that’s closer to home but Israelis couldn’t even enter until recently: the United Arab Emirates. She’s looking forward to lounging on the beach, exploring the streets of Dubai and enjoying views of the desert.She’s also excited to visit a place where she won’t have to lug a suitcase full of kosher food, as she has on previous trips. Dubai’s first kosher restaurant, Kaf, opened recently in the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. Multiple hotels are also offering kosher food.“We’ve wanted to go somewhere else in the Middle East for years, but I was born in Israel and couldn’t go places,” Fleischman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “We have been waiting for an opportunity to travel to [another] Mideast country and experience it, and as soon as we heard Dubai was going to open up, that was on our bucket list.”The UAE, a small and wealthy nation just over three hours away from Tel Aviv by air, is hoping to be the next hot tourist destination for Israelis. The two countries signed a normalization agreement on the White House lawn this year that allowed full diplomatic relations and trade between the countries. The treaty was a historic breakthrough in Israel’s decades-long quest for relations with the Arab world.Illustrative: Rabbi Yaakov Eisenstein (R) supervises the preparation of food Elli’s Kosher Kitchen, in Dubai, on October 5, 2020 (GIUSEPPE CACACE / AFP)-For ordinary Israelis, perhaps the biggest change is the added destination to their itineraries. Because Israel is so small, international travel is common, and Israelis love to take advantage of cheap flights to nearby Europe and elsewhere. Young Israelis recently discharged from the army often take longer trips to far-off places like India or South America.The UAE hopes to market itself as a cheap and easy option for a weekend getaway, especially as Israelis chafe at months of being cooped up at home. Israeli airlines have already registered significant interest from would-be travelers, and airlines are exploring the potential of the UAE as a spot for corporate retreats, group tours and package deals. An agreement waiving visa requirements between the two countries was signed in October, making it easier for Israelis to travel to the UAE than to the United States.The first planeload of Israeli tourists arrived in Dubai earlier this month. On Monday El Al, Israel’s national carrier, announced that it would be offering 14 flights to the UAE every week starting next month. Other airlines also plan to launch flights between the two countries beginning in December.It’s unclear how the pandemic and the economic crisis it sparked will affect tourism numbers. But some Israelis are already making plans.Illustrative: UAE delegates wave to the departing El Al plane at the end of the Israel-UAE normalization talks, with the US, in Abu Dhabi, September 1, 2020. (El Al spokesperson’s office)-“The people seem to be warm and friendly and [the] sights well worth seeing,” said Rona Michelson, an Israeli tour guide. “The Emirates look as if they have lots to offer.” Michelson said she is already planning a tour there but did not offer a detailed itinerary.Any tour would likely include the city’s major sightseeing and retail attractions, such as the Burj Khalifa, the Louvre Abu Dhabi art museum, the indoor Warner Bros. World theme park and the Dubai Mall, which boasts some 1,300 stores. Tourists may also visit the Palm Jumeirah archipelago, a chain of artificial islands.But some Israelis are wary of patronizing a constitutional monarchy known for its repression of civil liberties. According to a report this year by Human Rights Watch, freedom of expression in the UAE is limited and “especially in cases related to state security, individuals were at serious risk of arbitrary and incommunicado detention, torture, and ill-treatment, prolonged solitary confinement, and denial of access to legal assistance.”“Israelis do not understand that Emirati people are not like the Palestinian or Egyptian people they’ve come into contact with,” said Claire Blumenthal, a Jewish American who has lived in both countries for extended periods. “Drinking is not illegal, but if you’re in the street you cannot act as if you’ve had a drink. You’ll be fined and jailed.”Penalties for smoking weed can be even more severe, she said.“This is not Sinai,” she said, referencing the Egyptian desert adjacent to Israel where Israelis have long traveled to get high. “This is Dubai. You’ll get jail for life. While Dubai is a major party scene, you cannot do anything out in the open, and I need Israelis to know and understand the place they are going to.”A poster of a woman in headphones dancing is displayed on a wall at Dubai’s Jumeirah Beach Residence on November 16, 2020. (Giuseppe CACACE / AFP)-Traveling to the country may also pose a danger to women. In 2016, a British woman was arrested after reporting being raped by two of her countrymen while on vacation in Dubai. According to Human Rights Watch, “women who report rape can find themselves prosecuted for consensual sex instead” under an article of the UAE penal code that prohibits “indecent assault.”“Dubai struggles to maintain its promoted reputation of being tolerant, modern, progressive and focussed on happiness and positivity, while it regularly victimises women for reporting crime,” Radha Stirling, the founder of the advocacy group Detained in Dubai, wrote in the Independent, a British newspaper, in 2016. “All of the glamour, glitz and fireworks displays in the world press cannot disguise the negative image that incidences like this one generate.”Thani AlShirawi, a founding member of the recently established UAE-Israel Business Council, said the UAE is making an effort to teach its citizens “indoctrinated tolerance” toward foreign visitors, including Israelis. In addition to kosher food at hotels, an Emirati soccer team, Al-Nasr Dubai, just signed Dia Saba, who plays on the Israeli national team.AlShirawi believes Israelis will feel even more comfortable visiting his country than Egypt and Jordan, neighboring states with whom Israel has been at peace for decades, because Israel and the Emirates have never fought a war.Illustrative: Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi, left, greets UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan as German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas looks on during a visit of the Holocaust memorial prior to their historic meeting in Berlin, on October 6, 2020. (MICHELE TANTUSSI / POOL / AFP)“We have to give a lot of credit to our leadership because they have indoctrinated tolerance and to accept everybody,” he said.Members of the Jewish community in Dubai, which has remained mostly under the radar until recently and which is composed of expats from around the world, are also excited about the potential influx of Israelis. According to estimates, up to 1,500 Jews live in the UAE.“I think what we’ve done up until now is build the basic structure for Jewish communal life, but in the future the structure will be used to create a fully fledged and mature community,” Ross Kriel, president of the Jewish Council of the Emirates, said in August. “We imagine schools, a vibrant community center, multiple places of worship, kosher restaurants and all the dimensions of vibrant communal life.”Regardless of what the country offers, and when exactly they’ll be able to go, some Israelis are thrilled simply at the prospect of being able to travel to another country that is so close but had been closed off until this year.“I’m extremely excited about it [and] will fly at the first opportunity,” Yoni Mann, an American immigrant living in Jerusalem, told JTA. “It’s exciting to finally see what looks like a warm peace brewing with our Arab cousins.”

13 Thou shalt not kill.(Murder)(THAT INCLUDES ABORTION)

MATTHEW 18:6
6  But whoso shall offend (HURT) one of these little ones (CHILDREN) which believe in me,(JESUS) it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.(THATS THE DEATH PENALTY FOLKS)

EXODUS 21:12
12 He that smiteth (MURDER)a man,(OR BABY) so that he die, shall be surely put to death.(THATS THE DEATH PENALTY PEOPLE)

REVELATION 9:20-21
20 And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils,(OCCULT) and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:
21 Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries,(DRUG ADDICTIONS) nor of their fornication,(SEX OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE) nor of their thefts.(STEALING)

Israel’s Bank Hapoalim signs accords with Dubai, Abu Dhabi financial hubs-‘Historic’ agreements will enable the lender to give customers easier access to banks, investors, and tech firms that are part of the DIFC and ADGM financial centers-By SHOSHANNA SOLOMON-Today, 4:04 pm

Israel’s Bank Hapoalim Ltd. said Sunday it has signed “historic” agreements with two financial centers in the UAE, enabling the lender to give its customers easier access to the network of banks, investors, regulators and tech firms that are part of the financial centers.Hapoalim said it signed memorandums of understanding with the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), a financial center located on the Al Maryah Island in the capital city of the UAE, and with the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC).The centers are special economic zones that act as financial hubs for the Middle East, Africa and South Asia markets. They generally have their own independent, internationally regulated rules and judicial system, a common law framework, a global financial exchange, and a tax friendly regime. The districts house hundreds of financial institutions, including wealth funds and private investors as well as multinationals.The cooperation will enable Bank Hapoalim to offer its clients easier access to the UAE via the financial centers’ network of firms, and give entrepreneurs in the financial technologies sector access to the accelerator programs run by these centers, which will provide them with office space as well as connections to banks and financial institutions to test out their technologies.Head of business development division of ADGM Steve Barnet, right to left, Bank Hapoalim represntatives to the UAE Asaf Azulay and Karen Mazor and senior executive director, Capital Markets of ADGM, Wai Lum (Courtesy)-ADGM started operations in 2015 and has played a key role in branding Abu Dhabi as a global financial center that connects developing economies in the Middle East, Africa and the South of Asia to the rest of the world. There are more than 3,000 organizations and financial institutions operating from the center, including investment bodies and startups. The organization has signed 116 cooperation agreements with financial entities from across the world.DIFC, set up in 2004, was the first financial hub set up in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia region. It has 2,584 registered companies operating from the hub, among which are banks, investment firms and legal offices, with 25,600 employees.The accord will enable Bank Hapoalim to access banking and fintech opportunities in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia (MEASA) from Dubai, the DIFC said in a separate statement, adding that the sides will work together in sharing knowledge, hosting delegations and promoting industry events.Dov Kotler, the CEO of Bank Hapoalim, will be speaking at a fintech conference in Abu Dhabi on November 26, and the bank will be leading a business delegation to Dubai in December. As part of the visit, the bank’s officials and representatives of the DIFC will meet to finalize details of the cooperation.

PROOF HALF ON EARTH DIE DURING THE 7 YR TRIBULATION PERIOD (8 BILLION ON EARTH)

REVELATION 6:7-8 (8 BILLION- 2 BILLION = 6 BILLION)
7 And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse:(CHLORES GREEN) and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth,(2 BILLION) to kill with sword,(WEAPONS) and with hunger,(FAMINE) and with death,(INCURABLE DISEASES) and with the beasts of the earth.(ANIMAL TO HUMAN DISEASE).

REVELATION 9:15,18 (6 BILLION - 2 BILLION = 4 BILLION)
15 And the four(DEMONIC WAR) angels were loosed,
18 By these three was the third part of men killed,(2 BILLION) by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.(NUCLEAR ATOMIC BOMBS)

HALF OF EARTHS POPULATION DIE DURING THE 7 YR TRIBULATION.(THESE VERSES ARE JUDGEMENT SCRIPTURES NOT RAPTURE SCRIPTURES)

LUKE 17:34-37 (8 TOTAL BILLION - 4 BILLION DEAD IN TRIB = 4 BILLION TO JESUS KINGDOM) (HALF DIE DURING THE 7 YR TRIBULATION PERIOD JUST LIKE THE BIBLE SAYS)(GOD DOES NOT LIE)(AND NOTICE MOST DIE IN WAR AND DISEASES-NOT COMETS-ASTEROIDS-QUAKES OR TSUNAMIS)
34 I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken,(IN WW3 JUDGEMENT) and the other shall be left.(half earths population 4 billion die in the 7 yr trib)
35 Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken,(IN WW3 JUDGEMENT) and the other left.
36 Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken,(IN WW3 JUDGEMENT) and the other left.
37 And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.(Christians have new bodies,this is the people against Jerusalem during the 7 yr treaty)(Christians bodies are not being eaten by the birds).THESE ARE JUDGEMENT SCRIPTURES-NOT RAPTURE SCRIPTURES.BECAUSE NOT HALF OF PEOPLE ON EARTH ARE CHRISTIANS.AND THE CONTEXT IN LUKE 17 IS THE 7 YEAR TRIBULATION OR 7 YR TREATY PERIOD.WHICH IS JUDGEMENT ON THE EARTH.NOT 50% RAPTURED TO HEAVEN.

MATTHEW 24:37-42 (THESE ARE JUDGEMENT SCRIPTURES-SURE NOT RAPTURE SCRIPTURES)
37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,
39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
40 Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken,(IN WW3 JUDGEMENT) and the other left.41 Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken,(IN WW3 JUDGEMENT) and the other left.
42 Watch therefore:(FOR THE LAST DAYS SIGNS HAPPENING) for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.

AMERICA (POLITICAL BABYLON)(NUKED BY SNEAK ATTACK FROM RUSSIA)

IN REVELATION 17 & 18 IS THE DESTRUCTION OF THE RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL BABYLONS.IF YOU CAN NOT DECERN BETWEEN THE 2 BABYLONS IN REV 17 & 18.YOU WILL JUST THINK THEIR BOTH THE SAME.BUT NO-THERES A RELIGIOUS BABYLON (THE VATICAN IN REV 17)(AND THE POLITICAL BABYLON IN REV 18 (AMERICA OR NEW YORK TO BE EXACT)

ISAIAH 34:10
10  It (AMERICA-POLITICAL BABYLON) shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever.

JEREMIAH 51:29-32 (CYBER ATTACK 1ST)
29  And the land shall tremble and sorrow: for every purpose of the LORD shall be performed against Babylon,(AMERICA-NEW YORK) to make the land of Babylon (AMERICA) a desolation without an inhabitant.
30  The mighty men of Babylon (AMERICA) have forborn to fight, they have remained in their holds: their might hath failed; they became as women: they have burned her dwellingplaces; her bars are broken.
031  One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to shew the king of Babylon (NEW YORK) that his city is taken at one end,
32  And that the passages are stopped,(THE WAR COMPUTERS HACKED OR EMP'D) and the reeds they have burned with fire, and the men of war are affrighted.(DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO)

COMPLETE SILENCE AFTER AN EMP GOES OFF
REVELATION 8:1
1 And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.

JEREMIAH 50:3,24
3 For out of the north (RUSSIA) there cometh up a nation against her, which shall make her land desolate, and none shall dwell therein: they shall remove, they shall depart, both man and beast.
24 I have laid a snare for thee, and thou art also taken, O Babylon,(AMERICA) and thou wast not aware: thou art found, and also caught, because thou hast striven against the LORD. (RUSSIA A SNEAK CYBER,EMP ATTACK,THEN NUKE ATTACK ON AM

ArchaeologyOnly gold bead ever found in earth sifted from Temple Mount-Gold bead, apparently lost on Temple Mount 3,000 years ago, found by 9-year-old-When Binyamin Milt uncovered the bead as he sifted earth for Temple Mount Sifting Project, it was so well-preserved that archaeologists initially didn’t realize its unique nature-By Amanda Borschel-Dan-26 November 2020, 7:29 pm

A first ever First Temple-era gold granule bead was discovered during wet sifting of earth from the Temple Mount by a nine-year-old. Jerusalemite Binyamin Milt uncovered the perfectly preserved minute cylinder, created by four layers of tiny gold balls.The bead was in such outstanding condition that it was initially dismissed as a modern “invader” into the jumbled earth and artifact bucket that the Milt family was sifting.The family was sifting through dirt for the Temple Mount Sifting Project, which salvaged tons of dirt that were discarded in the Kidron Valley between 1996 and 1999 by the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement during a large-scale building project on the Temple Mount, a site holy to all three monotheistic religions. Volunteers have for the past 16 years been sorting through the jumble of debris and earth that was illegally excavated from the Temple Mount, the holiest place in Judaism and site of the third holiest shrine in Islam.Nine-year-old Milt found the bead in August, but its unique nature was only recognized recently, the Temple Mount Sifting Project said on Thursday, after project co-director Prof. Gabriel Barkay took a closer look. The dating of the bead has now been drastically adjusted back to the First Temple period, based on examples Barkay had excavated at Ketef Hinnom, located next to the Menachem Begin Center in Jerusalem.In the late 1970s, Barkay recovered several almost-identical silver beads that were manufactured using the same “granulation” technique as the newly found gold bead at the site where the silver priestly blessing scrolls — considered the oldest written example from the Hebrew Bible — were uncovered, along with troves of jewelry and other artifacts. According to Barkay, granulation is a decorative technique also known from Phoenician and Etruscan jewelry.9-year-old Binyamin Milt at the Jerusalem-based Temple Mount Sifting Project, August 2020. (courtesy)-Similar beads were also found at other Holy Land sites in contexts ranging from the 13th century BCE up to the 4th century BCE, with the overwhelming majority dating to the Iron Age (12th century BCE up to the 6th century BCE), according to the Sifting Project.Tel Aviv University Prof. Benjamin Sass said that such granule beads are known from the Late Bronze Age and even potentially from the Middle Bronze Age. They are found in all stages of the Iron Age, in the Helenistic era, through possibly the Roman era.Project co-director Zachi Dvira said that what makes this unique find even more curious is that it is extremely rare to find gold jewelry outside of graves or treasure troves.Dvira acknowledges that when looking at the tiny, 6 mm diameter and 4 mm high bead, “It’s difficult to explain why a bead is so interesting and important. But it’s very curious whose bead it was,” he explained to The Times of Israel. “It’s not like today when everyone can have gold jewelry, back then it was very rare, and not for the common people.”Gold jewelry was usually recycled from generation to generation, said Dvira, such that the discovery of even a small gold bead is rare in archaeological contexts.Archaeologist Zachi Dvira on the Temple Mount, June 18, 2018. (Amanda Borschel-Dan/Times of Israel)-Though the bead is itsy bitsy, he described it as “heavy” due to the purity of the metal and the highly specialized granulation methodology used to form it. This handmade bead is fashioned from four layers, each made of tiny gold balls that adhere to each other, but more simple examples were made of a single circular layer.According to Dvira, the process of granule formation used by artisans of the time was complex, involving several stages and a number of components. It requires the ability to melt the metal at high temperatures, and a high level of skill from the artisan. He told The Times of Israel it is still unclear whether this level of skill was found in the Land of Israel during the First Temple period, but that research is ongoing.To create the bead, Dvira said, “The granules are shaped from tiny metal pieces which are melted on a bed of charcoal or charcoal powder, which adsorbs air, preventing oxidation. Once the metal melts, [the] surface tension of the liquid creates ball-shaped drops. An alternative method involves dripping the liquid metal from a height into a bowl and constantly stirring the drops.”A First Temple-era gold bead discovered in earth from the Temple Mount Sifting Project. (courtesy)-The technique of wet sifting used by the project may be the key to the small bead’s discovery.“Because we are sifting, we find relatively a lot of jewelry,” said Dvira, but not a lot of gold, especially not from such an early period. In the past 15 years, through the help of some 200,000 paying volunteers, the project has recovered over 500,000 artifacts, including 5,000 coins, inscriptions, mountains of pottery, Egyptian-era cultic items, jewelry, and remnants of warfare.Dvira emphasized that the project is continuing its work at its new home at the Masu’ot Lookout in spite of the the coronavirus crisis, under the government social distancing guidelines (“Tav Sagol”) and through the help of American Friends of Beit Orot and the Israel Archaeology Foundation. The project works under the scientific auspices of Bar-Ilan University and a revolving staff of a dozen archaeologists supervise the volunteers working from the 20 tables set up for the wet sifting.Dvira is hopeful that the bead was part of a bracelet or necklace that may have left behind other beads.“If there’s a bead from gold, the person didn’t have just one bead, he or she had a whole piece of jewelry from gold,” Dvira said.

Op-Ed-Who made the bomb? The full truth about Lockerbie is still not being told-As relatives of the 1 man convicted for blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 try to posthumously clear him, potentially crucial evidence of a Palestinian terrorist’s role is again withheld-By David Horovitz-26 November 2020, 12:12 pm

The bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988, remains the worst act of terrorism ever carried out in Britain. More than 30 years after the downing of the Boeing 747, with the loss of all 259 on board and 11 more on the ground, the question of who was responsible has never been fully and satisfactorily resolved.Only one man has ever been convicted in the case, a Libyan intelligence agent named Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who was jailed for life on 270 counts of murder by a Scottish court in 2001, released in 2009 because he had terminal cancer, and died in 2012. The court found that Megrahi purchased clothing in Malta that was packed into the Samsonite suitcase in which the bomb — a barometric pressure device built into a Toshiba radio-cassette recorder — was hidden, and that he placed the suitcase on a flight from Malta to London’s Heathrow Airport. At Heathrow, the suitcase was transferred to the New York-bound Pan Am flight, and the explosives then detonated a little more than half an hour after takeoff. His alleged Libyan co-conspirator Lamin Fhimah was acquitted in the 2001 trial. Nobody has been convicted for making the deadly device.Megrahi went to his grave protesting his innocence, and his family continues to fight to clear his name. This week, Scotland’s highest criminal court is hearing his relatives’ latest appeal against his conviction, after an independent review determined that he might have been the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Among other flaws, the defense is highlighting that the Maltese shopkeeper who identified Megrahi as the man who purchased the incriminating clothing in the suitcase, and whose evidence has always been controversial, was paid for his testimony, a fact that was not disclosed to the defense in the original trial.** An earlier version of this Editor’s Note was sent out Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.I have followed the Lockerbie case since the time of the bombing, when I was working for The Jerusalem Post as its London correspondent, and when I happened to see material in the early stages of the investigation that pointed not to Col. Gaddafi’s Libya, but rather to Iran and the Palestinian terrorist organization PFLP-GC — the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command. Earlier in 1988, the US Navy’s guided-missile cruiser USS Vincennes had shot down an Iran Air Airbus in the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 passengers and crew, in a tragic case of mistaken identity. The US said it had misidentified the civilian airliner as a fighter jet. Iran had promised to avenge the deaths. Ayatollah Khomeini had vowed that the skies would “rain blood.”Floral tributes laid at the memorial to the victims of Pan Am flight 103 bombing, in the garden of remembrance at Dryfesdale Cemetery, near Lockerbie, Scotland. December 21, 2018 (AP Photo/Scott Heppell)-The PFLP-GC was believed to have been paid $10 million to carry out the Lockerbie bombing; it certainly had the bomb-making expertise, having become notorious in the 1970s for a series of terrorist attacks on airplanes.Just weeks before the Lockerbie blast, four devices strikingly similar to the one that would soon be utilized to such devastating effect on Flight 103 had been found in the possession of PFLP-GC members arrested in a Frankfurt suburb. That PFLP-GC cell was reported at the time to have been planning to blow up planes heading to the US and Israel. Its bombs, like those the PFLP-GC had used in the past, and like the Lockerbie device, were detonated by a barometric pressure device and timer, activated when a plane reaches a certain altitude. A fifth bomb in the Frankfurt cell’s possession was said to have disappeared; this was presumed to be the device that blew up Flight 103.The Lockerbie investigators were initially following these leads; then they shifted their focus to Libya. In 2003, Gaddafi accepted responsibility for the bombing — though he denied ordering it — and paid compensation to the victims’ families, in accordance with UN demands for the lifting of sanctions on his country.The PFLP-GC’s bombmaker-Almost seven years ago, a colleague of mine at The Times of Israel noticed that a man named Marwan Khreesat, a Jordanian national, maintained an Arabic-language Facebook page in which he had taken to posting pictures of the Lockerbie bombing. Khreesat was the PFLP-GC’s bombmaker-in-chief, the alleged maker of those barometric-pressure devices. He was one of those who was arrested by the German authorities in Frankfurt, only to be inexplicably released soon afterward. Now he was promising to reveal the truth about Lockerbie — to “write about Pan Am 103,” including “who was on the flight and the circumstances of the incident.In his posts, Khreesat also connected himself to the bombing of an El Al plane from Rome to Tel Aviv in 1972, describing that attack as “a challenge to the Israeli intelligence agents who are responsible for searching luggage and everything that goes on a plane.” The 1972 El Al bomb — another barometric-pressure device — had been hidden in a record player that two British women were duped into carrying by two Arab men who were later arrested. Although the bomb exploded, the pilot was able to make an emergency landing. “It was a successful blow against the Israeli enemy,” Khreesat wrote in a March 14, 2014, Facebook post, in which he also described spending time with PFLP-GC chief Ahmed Jibril in Rome as they waited for the attack to unfold.In several 2013-4 Facebook posts relating to Lockerbie, Khreesat recalled his arrest two months before the bombing. He posted pictures of the destroyed cockpit of the 747 after the explosion, the painstakingly reconstructed parts of the plane wreckage, and a radio-cassette recorder like the one that held the bomb. He also asked a series of unanswered questions about the attack. “Who did the operation?” he mused in a post on the 25th anniversary of the blast. “Israel? Iran? Libya? Who carried the Toshiba explosive device [in which the bomb was hidden]?… Did the explosive device come from Malta airport like the American intelligence agencies say?… When will these riddles be solved.”A collection of Lockerbie-related pictures posted by Marwan Khreesat on his Facebook page-This week’s appeal by the Megrahi family was green-lighted by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in part because of “nondisclosure” of evidence to the defense team in the original trial. Some of that documentary evidence is widely reported to have been provided by Jordan’s late King Hussein and to not only to implicate the PFLP-GC in the Lockerbie atrocity, but to specify that Marwan Khreesat built the bomb.On Friday, however, the head of the Scottish judiciary, Lord Carloway, ruled that the documents must still be withheld on the grounds of national security. Accepting a secrecy order signed by British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, Carloway explained, “[Raab’s] clear view is [that the release of the documentation] would cause real harm to the national security of the UK because it would damage counter-terrorism liaison and intelligence gathering between the UK and other states… The documents had been provided in confidence to the government. Their disclosure would reduce the willingness of the state, which produced the documents, to confide information and to co-operate with the UK.”Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was found guilty of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and sentenced to life imprisonment, is greeted by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in Tripoli, Libya on August 21, 2009, following his release on compassionate grounds because he had terminal cancer. He died in May 2012 (photo credit: AP Photo/Jamahiriya Broadcasting via APTN)-It was ‘clear that Jibril prepared the operation’All manner of conspiracy theories surround the Lockerbie bombing, some of which do not rule out the involvement of Libya and Megrahi, most of which revolve around the fact that nobody has been prosecuted for making the bomb, and many of which focus on the PFLP-GC and Marwan Khreesat.Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to raise the question of the Lockerbie bombing with several former Israeli intelligence figures, who were in office at the time of the bombing and well aware of the activities of the PFLP-GC at the time. Two of them insisted without elaboration that “Libya did it” and brushed away further questions. A third, by contrast, told me it was “clear that Jibril prepared the operation.”Israel was “listening in” on the PFLP-GC during the months prior to Lockerbie, he said, and hearing about preparations for what “we thought was a plan to target an Israeli plane.” There was a “huge alert” in the Israeli security establishment because of indications that the PFLP-GC was about to strike, this source went on. “We told the British and the Americans what we knew, which was that there was an intention to hit an Israeli plane… We didn’t warn about a British or an American plane because we didn’t know that,” he said.A photo taken on December 22, 1988, shows local Lockerbie resident Robert Love (R) looking at one of the four engines of the Pan Am 747 Jumbo jet that exploded and crashed en route to New York with 259 passengers on board. (ROY LETKEY / AFP)-The new appeal hearing is expected to conclude this week, with a ruling at a later date. “It is submitted in this case that no reasonable jury, properly directed, could have returned the verdict that it did, namely the conviction of Mr. Megrahi,” the defense lawyer Claire Mitchell told the judges on Tuesday. But that argument will be harder to make without those “Jordanian” documents, which the defense has said are central to the appeal. If his relatives fail to have Megrahi’s conviction overturned, their allegation of a miscarriage of justice will linger.Marwan Khreesat died in 2016.His Facebook page is still online.But he never did tell the truth about Lockerbie.

THE FUTURE 7 YEARS OF HELL ON EARTH)

JOEL 3:2
2 I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people(ISRAEL) and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.(UPROOTED ISRAELIS AND DIVIDED JERUSALEM)(THIS BRINGS ON WW3 BECAUSE JERUSALEM IS DIVIDED,WARNING TO ARABS-MUSLIMS AND THE WORLD).

EEK OF DANIEL 9:27 WE KNOW ITS 7 YRS

Heres the scripture 1 week = 7 yrs Genesis 29:27-29
27 Fulfil her week, and we will give thee this also for the service which thou shalt serve with me yet seven other years.
28 And Jacob did so, and fulfilled her week:(7 YEARS) and he gave him Rachel his daughter to wife also.
29 And Laban gave to Rachel his daughter Bilhah his handmaid to be her maid.
DANIEL 11:21-2321 And in his estate shall stand up a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honour of the kingdom: but he shall come in peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries.
23 And after the league made with him he shall work deceitfully: for he shall come up, and shall become strong with a small people.
24 He shall enter peaceably even upon the fattest places of the province; and he shall do that which his fathers have not done, nor his fathers' fathers; he shall scatter among them the prey, and spoil, and riches: yea, and he shall forecast his devices against the strong holds, even for a time.

DANIEL 9:26-27
26 And after threescore and two weeks(62X7=434 YEARS+7X7=49 YEARS=TOTAL OF 69 WEEKS OR 483 YRS) shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary;(ROMAN LEADERS DESTROYED THE 2ND TEMPLE) and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.(THERE HAS TO BE 70 WEEKS OR 490 YRS TO FUFILL THE VISION AND PROPHECY OF DAN 9:24).(THE NEXT VERSE IS THAT 7 YR WEEK OR (70TH FINAL WEEK).
27 And he ( THE ROMAN,EU PRESIDENT) shall confirm the covenant (PEACE TREATY) 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 ANIMAL 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.

JEREMIAH 6:14
14 They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.

JEREMIAH 8:11
11 For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.

 1 THESSALONIANS 5:3
3 For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.

ISAIAH 33:8
8  The highways lie waste, the wayfaring man ceaseth: he hath broken the covenant,(7 YR TREATY) he hath despised the cities, he regardeth no man.(THE WORLD LEADER-WAR MONGER CALLS HIMSELF GOD)

JERUSALEM DIVIDED
GENESIS 25:20-26
20  And Isaac was forty years old (A BIBLE GENERATION NUMBER=1967 + 40=2007+) when he took Rebekah to wife, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Padanaram, the sister to Laban the Syrian.
21  And Isaac intreated the LORD for his wife, because she was barren: and the LORD was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.
22  And the children (2 NATIONS IN HER-ISRAEL-ARABS) struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to enquire of the LORD.
23  And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels;(ISRAEL AND THE ARABS) and the one people shall be stronger than the other people;(ISRAEL STRONGER THAN ARABS) and the elder shall serve the younger.(LITERALLY ISRAEL THE YOUNGER RULES (ISSAC)(JACOB-LATER NAME CHANGED TO ISRAEL) OVER THE OLDER ARABS (ISHMAEL)(ESAU)
24  And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb.
25  And the first came out red, all over like an hairy garment; and they called his name Esau.(THE OLDER AN ARAB)
26  And after that came his brother out, and his hand took hold on Esau's heel; and his name was called Jacob:(THE YOUNGER-ISRAELI) and Isaac was threescore (60) years old when she bare them.(1967 + 60=2027)(COULD BE THE LAST GENERATION WHEN JERUSALEM IS DIVIDED AMOUNG THE 2 TWINS)(THE 2 TWINS WANT JERUSALEM-THE DIVISION OF JERUSALEM TODAY)(AND WHOS IN CONTROL OF JERUSALEM TODAY-THE YOUNGER ISSAC-JACOB-ISRAEL)(AND WHO WANTS JERUSALEM DIVIDED-THE OLDER,ESAU-ISHMAEL (THE ARABS)

ISAIAH 28:14-19 (THIS IS THE 7 YR TREATY COVENANT OF DANIEL 9:27)
14 Wherefore hear the word of the LORD, ye scornful men, that rule this people which is in Jerusalem.
15 Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves:
16 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.17 Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place.
18 And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it.
19 From the time that it goeth forth it shall take you: for morning by morning shall it pass over, by day and by night: and it shall be a vexation only to understand the report.

DANIEL 8:23-25
23 And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king (EU DICTATOR) of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences,(FROM THE OCCULT) shall stand up.
24 And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power:(SATANS POWER) and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people.
25 And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes;(JESUS) but he shall be broken without hand.DANIEL 11:36-40
36 And the king shall do according to his will;(EU PRESIDENT) and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be done.
37 Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers,(THIS EU DICTATOR IS A EUROPEAN JEW) nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all.
38 But in his estate shall he honour the God of forces:(HES A MILITARY GINIUS) and a god whom his fathers knew not shall he honour with gold, and silver, and with precious stones, and pleasant things.
39 Thus shall he do in the most strong holds (CONTROL HEZBOLLAH,AL-QUAIDA MURDERERS ETC) with a strange god, whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory: and he shall cause them to rule over many,(HIS ARMY LEADERS) and shall divide the land for gain.
40 And at the time of the end shall the king of the south(EGYPT) push at him:(EU DICTATOR PROTECTING ISRAELS SECURITY) and the king of the north(RUSSIA) shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over.

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, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.
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)

Jordan warns against changing status of Temple Mt., after Netanyahu’s Saudi trip-Jordanian ex-aides say Israel could seek to hand custodianship of the Jerusalem holy site to Saudi Arabia, in effort to secure ‘the big prize’ of normalization-By TOI staff-NOV 27,20-Today, 5:25 am

Jordan said it opposes any effort to change the status quo at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City, following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to Saudi Arabia this week.In a statement Wednesday, the Jordanian foreign ministry said it rejects “attempts to alter the historical and legal status quo” at the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif or Al-Aqsa Mosque.“The kingdom will continue its efforts to protect and care for the mosque, and preserve the rights of all Muslims to it in compliance with the Hashemite custodianship of Jerusalem’s Muslim and Christian holy sites,” spokesman Daifallah al-Fayez said, according to the Guardian.The comments came after Netanyahu held talks Sunday with Saudi Arabia’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Saudi Red Sea city of Neom, along with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, reportedly including discussions on Iran and normalization.The warming ties between Jerusalem and Riyadh are raising concerns in Amman that Israel could seek to shift custodianship over the Temple Mount from the Jordanians to the Saudis. Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy has been custodian of the site since 1924.The Waqf, a Jordanian-appointed council, oversees Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. It claims exclusive authority over the Temple Mount compound and says it is not subject to Israeli jurisdiction. Tensions often escalate at the site.“Historically, the religious aspect was key in the legitimacy of the ruler and the Hashemites, after leaving Hejaz, derive their legitimacy from Jerusalem,” Adnan Abu-Odeh, a former senior aide to King Abdullah and his father Hussein, told the Guardian.“Israel practices pressure and extortion over Jordan with the custodianship matter and they threaten to give it to the Saudis and it is not far fetched, and I believe his majesty the king understands that,” he added.Echoing that sentiment, ex-foreign minister Jawad Anani said Saudi Arabia was “the big prize” for Netanyahu.“Many Jordanians … [are] being vigilant about this. Netanyahu … might find it to be worthwhile giving this to the Saudi royal family rather than keep it with the Hashemites because that would probably bring him the prize he’s seeking, which is open and declared normalization with Saudi Arabia,” Anani said.Though such a move could lead to improved ties with Saudi Arabia, former British diplomat Sir John Jenkins warned of the possible security consequences for Israel.“It would radically crush the Hashemite monarchy and it would change the guarantee of sorts that Jordan has been providing for Israeli and regional security. It would be like throwing a grenade into a crowded room,” Jenkins, who was consul general in East Jerusalem and ambassador in Riyadh, told the newspaper.He also noted the possible appeal to the Saudis.“Iran has always challenged them on the legitimacy of their custodianship of Mecca and Medina. If they were to add a third shrine to their list, it could enhance their claims to be the absolute leaders of the Islamic world,” he said.Last year, Jordan’s King Abdullah II said he’s under pressure to alter his country’s historic role as custodian of the Jerusalem holy sites, but that he won’t change his position.“I will never change my position toward Jerusalem in my life,” Abdullah said at the time. “All my people are with me.”He did not specify what kind of pressure he was encountering.Jordan’s role as custodian was enshrined by the landmark Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement in 1994.Agencies contributed to this report.

Annexation currently not on the table, UK envoy Hotovely says-In first appearance with her Emirati and Bahraini colleagues, settlement advocate-turned diplomat says Israeli-Palestinian conflict needs to be ‘solved by direct dialogue’By Raphael Ahren-26 November 2020, 12:05 pm

The annexation of parts of the West Bank is not currently on the agenda, Israeli Ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely said Wednesday during a first public appearance with her counterparts from the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.During a webinar about the so-called Abraham Accords between those countries and Israel, the moderator asked Mansoor Abulhoul and Sheikh Fawaz bin Mohamed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, the Emirati and Bahraini envoys to London, respectively, if an Israeli annexation would damage their countries’ diplomatic ties with Jerusalem.Before any of them could answer, Hotovely replied: “I think we should discuss that when it will be on the diplomatic table. It’s not.”The moderator, veteran UK journalist and politician Lord Daniel Finkelstein, accepted that reply and moved on to other questions.Hotovely, a former lawmaker for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, drew notice as one of Israel’s most prominent champions of the settlement movement. She was one of the first lawmakers to advocate for the annexation of the entire West Bank.Before she arrived in Britain to assume the ambassador post last month, she served as minister for settlement affairs, a position in which she continued to endorse plans to unilaterally apply sovereignty over large parts of the West Bank.Parts of Israel’s far-right are calling on Netanyahu to advance the annexation of at least parts of the West Bank before US President Donald Trump leaves the White House on January 20, as his successor, Joe Biden, is expected to block any such moves.Until August, Netanyahu had been vowing to unilaterally apply sovereignty over the entire Jordan Valley and all settlements across the West Bank, as envisioned by the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan the White House published earlier this year. But he agreed to temporarily suspend the plan as part of a US-brokered deal that saw the UAE fully normalize diplomatic relations with Israel.During the 75-minute webinar, hosted by the London-based Anglo-Israel Association, Hotovely did not otherwise address the issue of sovereignty. Her colleague from Abu Dhabi, on the other hand, cited several times the suspension of Netanyahu’s annexation bid in exchange for his government agreeing to normalize relations with Israel.“We’re determined to usher [in] a new era of peace in the Middle East. That is the urgent demand of our young people, who according to all opinion polls want to live in a functioning, stable and prosperous region,” Abulhoul said. “The decades of not talking to each other did not service the cause of peace. Already, we have seen how engagement with Israel allowed us to take the issue of annexation off the table — that preserved the two-state solution as a viable option.”The UAE’s commitment to the Palestinian cause remains firm, he stressed. “We still believe it is essential to help end this tragic dispute; that means a just settlement based on a two-state solution.”The UAE never said that the accords are a substitute for restarting Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Abulhoul said. “Those talks of course have to come back, and progress on the matter must derive from direct dialogue between the Israelis and the Palestinians themselves. But certainly the accords will allow us to push for that outcome from our much more powerful position.”The Israeli-Palestinian should be solved by direct dialogueHistorically, it has been Arab states with diplomatic ties to Israel — Egypt and Jordan — that had the biggest influence over the Middle East peace process, he posited.“Once Palestinians will recognize the tangible benefits that have come from suspension of annexation [they] will come to understand and appreciate that countries that have a functioning relationship will have leverage and will be in a better place to help and support the Palestinians in coming years. But they must of course decide how they want us to help them.”Hotovely concurred. “You will be surprised I agree with Ambassador Mansour about the fact that [the Israeli-Palestinian] should be solved by direct dialogue,” she said.The international community needs to realize that neither the United Nations nor any other multilateral forum can solve the issue on behalf of the two sides, as long as the Palestinians refuse to negotiate with Israel, she added.Al-Khalifa, the Bahraini ambassador, also emphasized his government’s abiding commitment to the Palestinian cause. The Abraham Accords are the path to a better future for the entire Middle East, but “at the heart of this must be a resolution of this Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one based on a two-state solution that secures the rights of the Palestinian people,” he said.A pleasure participating in the @AngloIsraelAssn’s webinar today on the Abraham Accords & future of our region with my colleagues Ambassadors @MansoorAbulhoul & @TzipiHotovely. This was our first public engagement in the UK, looking forward to more constructive engagement. pic.twitter.com/njhsx5ulq1 — Fawaz Al Khalifa (@fawaz_alkhalifa) November 25, 2020All three ambassadors went to considerable lengths to highlight the positive aspects of the Abraham Accords and the dividends they each expect from their respective normalization agreements, stressing the rapid speed in which former enemies have become friends.“We are determined to build a warm peace. We want a deep relationship accompanying all aspects of national life. That means people-to-people contacts at all levels,” Abulhoul said.Hotovely certified that the new partnership amounts to a “warm peace,” adding that it symbolizes “a real shift in the region.”

PA says it conveyed to Biden administration interest in return to peace talks-Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki says Ramallah is in indirect contact with incoming Biden team, expresses cautious optimism about US president-elect-By Aaron Boxerman-26 November 2020, 11:35 pm

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki told the Mediterranean Dialogues Forum on Thursday night that the PA had indirectly informed US President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming administration of its willingness to return to negotiations with Israel on the basis of international law resolutions.“Right now, we are sending clear messages, not only to the Israelis and to the Biden administration, but also to the Europeans and many others, that the Palestinians are ready to reengage completely, with Israel, in renewing negotiations with no preconditions, as long as such renewal is based on already recognized terms of reference — meaning UN resolutions, the Arab Peace Initiative, and international law,” al-Maliki said.It was not clear how the message had been conveyed, as al-Maliki later clarified the PA is only in indirect communication with the Biden transition team.“We indirectly have had contacts with his team, and we are hopeful that we will be able to reengage again with the new administration in Washington on January 20,” al-Maliki said.Then-US vice president Joe Biden, left, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, right, at the presidential compound in Ramallah, West Bank, March 9, 2016. (Debbie Hill, Pool via AP)Fatah deputy chief Mahmoud al-Aloul, a close confidante of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, told Voice of Palestine Radio on Monday that the PA had reached “a number of understandings” with the incoming administration’s transition team. Al-Aloul declined to comment further in his interview, saying that he did not want to rush matters.An Abbas spokesperson had said a week after Biden’s victory was called that the PA was willing to return to negotiations with Israel, as long as President Donald Trump’s controversial peace plan was dropped and both parties returned to negotiations “from the point where they last stopped.”Palestinian Authority officials had been openly hoping for Trump to be defeated by Biden. The PA consistently charged that the Trump administration was lopsidedly biased toward Israel, and severed all dealings with it after it recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017. The Trump administration, in turn, saw Ramallah as intransigent and unwilling to compromise.“We cut all ties with the Trump administration. We refused to take their phone calls for the last three years, and we paid the price for that,” al-Maliki said.Biden has promised to reverse several Trump administration policies that angered Ramallah, including restoring aid to Palestinian refugees and their descendants which the Trump administration cut in 2017. Biden is expected to oppose Israeli government efforts to annex parts of the West Bank, but not to reverse the Jerusalem recognition and embassy move.Al-Maliki stressed in his remarks Thursday night that he was cautiously optimistic about a Biden presidency.Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki attends the opening session of the Arab foreign ministers meeting ahead of the Arab Summit, in Tunis, March 29, 2019. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)“What we have read and heard in statements from Vice President-elect Kamala Harris regarding a rapprochement with the Palestinian Authority… has really demonstrated to us that there are enough reasons for us to reengage with the administration the moment they take office,” al-Maliki said, referring to an interview Harris gave with an Arab-American news outlet in October.In the aftermath of Biden’s victory, the PA also renewed its ties with Israel. Ramallah had severed all contacts with Jerusalem in the aftermath of Israel’s declared intention to annex parts of the West Bank in accordance with Trump’s controversial peace plan. That plan has since been shelved as Israel reached normalization deals with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan.“Our stance was clear: As long as there was an intention to annex, the Palestinian leadership considered itself absolved of its agreements with Israel,” Hussein al-Sheikh, a close confidant of PA President Abbas said in an interview with official Palestinian TV.Al-Sheikh contended that the decision to renew ties came in the aftermath of a written commitment by Israel to uphold its prior agreements with the Palestinians, which the PA has contended forecloses the possibility for annexation. Al-Maliki, however, explicitly connected the decision to return to coordination with Israel with the White House’s expected change in occupants.Hussein al-Sheikh, a close confidant of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, speaking on Palestine TV, the official PA channel. (Screenshot: Palestine TV)-“The fact also that we have renewed our financial and security coordination with Israel recently, we consider that an encouragement for the new administration to move forward in that direction,” al-Maliki said.But given the coronavirus pandemic and domestic turmoil roiling the United States, al-Maliki said he recognized that the Palestinian cause was unlikely to be at the top of the incoming administration’s list of priorities.“We know that the Biden administration is likely to be focused on internal rather than external matters,” al-Maliki said.While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with the US President-elect last week, Abbas has yet to hold a phone call with Biden. Al-Maliki said Ramallah has submitted a request for such a conversation.“We have asked for a phone call between President Abbas and President-elect Biden. We have asked for a specific date and time for such a phone call to take place,” al-Maliki said.

Days after Netanyahu met crown prince on trip to Saudi-‘Until King Salman has gone,’ no progress on Israel-Saudi normalization – report-Source tells Israeli TV that cooperation against Iran will increase, but monarch at odds with the crown prince on public ties with Jewish state-By TOI staff-NOV 27,20-Today, 1:13 am

No progress toward normalized ties with Saudi Arabia will be made so long as King Salman remains in power, according to an unnamed “senior Israeli source” who is familiar with the interactions between the two countries, Channel 12 news reported Thursday.The source told the outlet that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had a “very warm meeting” in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, in what was the first publicly reported meeting between the two.However, “Israel understands that there will not be a breakthrough with the Saudis in the near future” because King Salman “takes a diametrically opposite stance” on the matter of normalization with Israel to that of his son, the report said.Therefore, the source said, it was understood that “progress will only be possible after King Salman has gone.”Saudi King Salman in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on March 26, 2020. (Saudi Press Agency via AP)-Despite that, “cooperation against the joint enemy Iran” will increase, as will bilateral trade between the two nations.The source also said that flights from Israel’s national carrier El Al will not overfly Saudi Arabia in the near future. In September, the kingdom approved the use of its airspace for Israeli flights to and from the UAE, a decision announced the day after Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, met with Prince Mohammed in Riyadh.The Wall Street Journal reported in September that the Saudi king remains committed to a boycott of Israel coupled with a strong stance in favor of the Palestinian demand for an independent state, while the crown prince is open to normalization with the Jewish state and the business opportunities it could bring as well as public coordination in the struggle against Iran.Nonetheless, Trump predicted before the US presidential elections that Saudi Arabia would be one of up to 10 more countries to normalize ties with Israel in the near future.Riyadh’s crown prince and Netanyahu held unprecedented talks late Sunday in the Saudi Red Sea city of Neom, along with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, reportedly including discussions on Iran and normalization.US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, L, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrive to make a joint statement after meeting in Jerusalem on November 19, 2020. (Maya Alleruzzo / POOL / AFP)-The Kan public broadcaster and Channel 12 both quoted an unnamed senior Israeli official Monday evening as saying that no breakthrough was expected anytime soon.“Despite the efforts by Netanyahu and Pompeo to convince them, the Saudis made clear that, at the moment, they are not ready to take the extra step. That’s why no additional [normalization] ceremony can be expected in the near future,” an official told Channel 12.“No breakthrough toward an agreement is expected. It won’t happen so fast,” Kan cited an official as saying.A Saudi government adviser confirmed the meeting and the trip to The Wall Street Journal, saying that the meeting, which had lasted several hours, focused on Iran and the establishment of diplomatic ties between Riyadh and Jerusalem, but did not yield substantial agreements.Education Minister Yoav Gallant also confirmed the trip, calling it “an amazing achievement.”However, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan denied that Netanyahu or any other officials from the Jewish state had taken part in a meeting with the crown prince, in a tweet issued several hours after the reports started circulating.“I have seen press reports about a purported meeting between HRH the Crown Prince and Israeli officials during the recent visit by @SecPompeo. No such meeting occurred. The only officials present were American and Saudi,” he wrote.Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attends a virtual G-20 summit held over video conferencing, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, November 22, 2020. (Bandar Aljaloud/Saudi Royal Palace via AP)-Channel 12 quoted Israeli sources as saying the Saudis were angry that news of the meeting had been leaked. However, the Ynet news site earlier quoted two officials involved in the talks as saying the Saudi crown prince had not objected to the meeting being publicized.Netanyahu’s office has not commented on the reported trip and meeting, but the premier did not deny that the meeting took place, while making a cryptic statement at the outset of his Likud party’s weekly faction meeting.“I have not commented on such matters for years and I am not going to start now,” he said, when asked directly about the trip by his coalition chief, Likud MK Miki Zohar. “For years I haven’t spared any effort to strengthen Israel and broaden the circle of peace.”Bahrain, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates have reached deals to normalize ties with Israel in recent months, though a similar agreement with Saudi Arabia so far has remained out of reach.Bahrain normalizing ties suggested at least a Saudi acquiescence to the idea, as the island kingdom relies on Riyadh.Israel has long had clandestine ties with Gulf Arab states that have strengthened in recent years, as they have confronted a shared threat in Iran.Agencies contributed to this report.

Rivlin hosts delegation from Bahrain led by member of royal family-Group visiting Israel to promote tolerance is headed by Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa Al Khalifa of the King Hamad Global Center for Peaceful Coexistence-By TOI staff-NOV 27,20-Today, 12:23 am

President Reuven Rivlin on Thursday hosted a visiting delegation from Bahrain that was in Israel to promote coexistence, led by a member of the kingdom’s royal family, the president’s office said in a statement.The visit by a group from the King Hamad Global Center for Peaceful Coexistence came in the wake of Israel and Bahrain establishing diplomatic ties in September.They were led by Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, who in addition to being president of the center’s board of directors is also a member of the Bahraini royal family.“Both Israel and Bahrain value freedom of religion and tolerance, and see the different communities that make up their societies as a source of strength,” Rivlin told the delegation at the president’s residence in Jerusalem.“As His Majesty King Hamad said so beautifully in his declaration, religion must be a power for harmony and cooperation around the world,” Rivlin said. “We must not allow religion to be an excuse for violence.”The president expressed thanks to Bahrain for the support it gives to the kingdom’s Jewish community and “its steadfast position against all forms of antisemitism,” the statement said.Following their meeting, the visitors presented Rivlin with a Hebrew copy of a 2017 declaration by Bahrain’s king in support of interreligious tolerance and coexistence.The delegation’s trip to Israel followed the first-ever visit by a Bahraini foreign minister to the Jewish state last week. Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani was in the country along with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.At a joint press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, al-Zayani called for the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Rivlin also hosted al-Zayani during his time in Israel.From left to right: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani at the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem. (Amos Ben Gershom/GPO)-Since establishing diplomatic ties, Israel and Bahrain have reached an agreement to open reciprocal embassies.Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates signed the so-called Abraham Accords and a “Declaration of Peace” with Israel at a September 15 ceremony at the White House.On October 25, al-Zayani signed eight bilateral agreements, including a “Joint Communiqué on the establishment of diplomatic, peaceful, and friendly relations” with Israel during a ceremony in Manama.Thursday saw the first commercial flight between Dubai and Tel Aviv.Since the historic Abraham Accords agreement, Sudan has followed suit and agreed to forge ties with Israel.The agreements shattered a longstanding Arab consensus that there should be no normalization with Israel until it reaches a comprehensive peace deal with the Palestinians.Several Gulf Arab states have for years been quietly building relations with Israel on the basis of shared animosity toward Iran, with the US supporting the process.Regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia has so far refrained from formalizing ties with Israel, but has given the green light to overflights from the Jewish state, in an implicit sign of approval. On Monday, Netanyahu reportedly flew to Saudi Arabia for a three-way meeting with the kingdom’s de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman and Pompeo, although no agreement on normalization was reached.The secret visit was only revealed in the media after Netanyahu had already returned to Israel. The premier’s office hasn’t confirmed it.

SIGNS OF THE END OF THE AGE (NOT THE WORLD) THE WORLD GOES ON FOREVER.

GENESIS 1:5,145 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:(ISRAELS HOLY DAYS AND SABBATH STARTS AT 6PM) And for SIGNS (PROPHECY SIGNS TO HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE, OUR DAY)
SIGNS IN THE SUN, MOON AND STARS-CHEMICAL WEAPONS

LUKE 21:11
11 And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences;(BIOLOGICAL/CHEMICAL/NUCLEAR) and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.

LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun,(HEATING UP-SOLAR ECLIPSES) and in the moon,(MAN ON THE MOON-LUNAR ECLIPSES) and in the stars;(ASTEROIDS-PROPHECY SIGNS) and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear,(TORNADOES,HURRICANES,STORMS) and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth:(DESTRUCTION) for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.(FROM QUAKES,NUKES ETC)
REVELATION 16:21 80-120LB HAIL ON HUMANS
21And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent:(80-120 LBS) and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great.

Heavy rainfall causes flooding, damage in coastal cities-As downpours continue, parts of Israel see the rainiest month on record for November since 1994; storm expected to let up over the weekend-By TOI staff-NOV 27,20-Today, 2:54 am

Heavy rainfall on Thursday caused extensive flooding and damage in several Israeli coastal cities, with the continued downpours making this November the rainiest in some parts of the country in over a quarter century.Among the worst hit areas were Hod Hasharon, Herzliya, Ashkelon and Nahariya, all of which have recorded over 100 millimeters of rain since a bout of stormy weather began Wednesday. Dozens of people trapped in cars or buildings by the rainfall were rescued Thursday, according to Channel 12 news.“I think we are very lucky that there were no casualties,” Hod Hasharon Mayor Amir Kohavi told Channel 13 news. “It’s customary to blame the infrastructure, but in the last two years millions of shekels were invested in infrastructure.”Kohavi blamed the flooding on climate change and “unrestrained building” in recent years that he said reduced drainage areas. — TheMarker (@TheMarker) November 26, 2020-However, some Hod Hasharon residents said the municipality was at fault.“The drains were clogged, I’m sure,” Itzik Gutterman told the Ynet news site after his car got stuck on a flooded street, requiring his son to come and rescue him.The northern city of Nahariya also saw major flooding and some 10 people trapped in ground floor apartments were rescued, Channel 12 said.With Thursday’s rain, some areas of Israel experienced the wettest month of November since 1994.The storm front was expected to let up in the coming days, with only intermittent rain forecast on Friday and Saturday.Last winter, downpours in northern Israel broke a 51-year record within a two-week period. The generous rainfall in the north raised the level of the Sea of Galilee to its highest in decades and ended a five-year drought that plagued the country.The Agriculture Ministry announced in August that it would be investing NIS 146 million ($43 million) in an upgrade of drainage facilities across the country, although it was unclear how much had been implemented ahead of the winter.Scientists have warned that climate change will lead to less rain in Israel but to more extreme downpour events.

OZONE DEPLETION JUDGEMENT ON THE EARTH DUE TO SIN

ISAIAH 30:26-27
26 Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold,(7X OR 7-DEGREES HOTTER) as the light of seven days, in the day that the LORD bindeth up the breach of his people,(ISRAEL) and healeth the stroke of their wound.
27 Behold, the name of the LORD cometh from far, burning with his anger, and the burden thereof is heavy: his lips are full of indignation, and his tongue as a devouring fire:

MATTHEW 24:21-22,221 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.
22 And except those days should be shortened,(DAY LIGHT HOURS SHORTENED) there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake (ISRAELS SAKE) those days shall be shortened (Daylight hours shortened)(THE ASTEROID HITS EARTH HERE)
29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:
 
REVELATION 16:7-9
7 And I heard another out of the altar say, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments.
8 And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire.
9 And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory.

 

Thursday, November 19, 2020

USA PASSES LAW BDS IS ANTI-SEMETIC (WAY TO GO AGAIN DONALD JOHN TRUMP FOR ISRAEL)

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)

DISEASES-ANIMAL TO HUMAN ( 500 million Dead )

REVELATION 6:7-8
7 And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse:(CHLORES GREEN) and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth,(2 billion) of (8 billion) to kill with sword,(WEAPONS)(500 million) and with hunger,(FAMINE)(500 million) and with death,(INCURABLE DISEASES)(500 million) and with the beasts of the earth.(ANIMAL TO HUMAN DISEASE)(500 million).

COVID 19 WORLD TOTALS AS OF THU NOV 19, 2020. CASES - 57,085,770 AND DEATHS - 1,362,742

Denmark says mink coronavirus strain ‘most likely eradicated’-Culling all of its 15-17 million minks, country’s health ministry says no case of mutated strain has been detected since September 15-By AFP and TOI STAFF-NOV 19,20-Today, 3:07 pm

A mutated version of the new coronavirus detected in Danish minks that raised concerns about the effectiveness of a future vaccine has likely been eradicated, Denmark’s health ministry said Thursday.“There have been no new cases of the ‘Cluster 5’ mink mutation since September 15, which has led the Danish infectious disease authority SSI to conclude that this variant has most likely been eradicated,” the ministry said in a statement, after the government ordered a cull of all the country’s 15 to 17 million minks in a bid to halt the spread of the variant.The government said most of the strict restrictions it had imposed on November 5 on seven municipalities in the North Jutland region, home to 280,000 people, would be lifted on Friday.They had originally been due to stay in place until December 3.All minks in the seven municipalities have been culled, totaling 10.2 million, and the slaughter is still ongoing in other parts of the country.With three times more minks than people, the Scandinavian country is the world’s biggest exporter, selling pelts for around 670 million euros ($792 million) annually, and the second-biggest producer behind China.Mink are buried in a mass grave as Danish health authorities, assisted by members of the Danish Armed Forces, dispose of the animals near Holstebro, Denmark, November 9 2020. (Morten Stricker/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)-The variant strain was feared at one point to have reached Israel after COVID-19 cases were detected among Israelis returning from Denmark. However, no cases of the mink mutation were identified among them.Viruses such as the novel coronavirus that emerged in China late last year mutate constantly and new variants are not necessarily worse than the previous ones. The mutations have even helped researchers track the sources of outbreaks in various countries.So far, no study has shown newer SARS-Cov-2 variants to be more contagious or dangerous than their predecessors.The contamination of minks is not new, with breeders in several countries, including the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United States, reporting cases. A few cases of humans being infected by minks have also been reported.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: STEP UNDERMINES FIGHT ON ANTI-SEMITISM-BDS outraged by ‘fraudulent,’ ‘McCarthyite’ US declaration it is anti-Semitic-After Pompeo announces crackdown, Palestinian-led boycott movement says ‘fanatic Trump-Netanyahu alliance’ is revising the definition of anti-Jewish bias-By TOI STAFF and RAPHAEL AHREN-NOV 19,20-Today, 3:05 pm

The anti-Israel boycott movement and some international rights activists on Thursday condemned the US declaration that it will formally designate BDS anti-Semitic and immediately start cracking down on groups affiliated with it.US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the announcement as he stood alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Jerusalem, calling the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement a “cancer” and promising to withdraw US government funding from groups that engage in BDS conduct.Pompeo later tweeted that he was directing Elan Carr, the US envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, “to identify organizations engaged in politically motivated actions intended to penalize or limit commercial relations with Israel.”He also said the US would recognize exports from West Bank settlements as “made in Israel.” He made that announcement while making a visit to the Psagot Winery, which is located in the West Bank, marking the first time an American secretary of state visited an Israeli settlement.“It’s quite ironic that the Trump Administration, prompted by Israel’s apartheid regime, continues to enable and normalize white supremacy and antisemitism in the US and worldwide while simultaneously smearing BDS, a leading Palestinian-led human rights movement and its millions of supporters worldwide as ‘antisemitic,’” the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the movement’s coordinating body, said in a statement.“BDS has consistently and categorically rejected all forms of racism, including anti-Jewish racism, as a matter of principle,” it said.“The fanatic Trump-Netanyahu alliance is intentionally conflating opposition to Israel’s regime of occupation, colonization and apartheid… with anti-Jewish racism… in order to suppress advocacy of Palestinian rights under international law,” the statement said.“This fraudulent revision of the definition of antisemitism has been condemned by dozens of Jewish groups worldwide and by hundreds of leading Jewish and Israeli scholars, including world authorities on antisemitism and the Holocaust.“With our many partners, we shall resist these McCarthyite attempts to intimidate and bully Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights defenders into accepting Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism as fate,” it said.Human Rights Watch argued that Washington’s step was “undermining” the fight against anti-Semitism.“Instead of combatting systemic racism and far-right extremism in the United States, the Trump administration is undermining the common fight against the scourge of anti-Semitism by equating it with peaceful advocacy of boycotts,” said Eric Goldstein, the group’s acting Middle East and North Africa director.“Americans have a long history of supporting peaceful boycotts to promote social justice and human rights, like the civil rights boycotts in Mississippi or those against apartheid in South Africa. The Trump administration has no business trying to tar groups because they back boycotts,” he added.Pompeo said earlier, during a statement to the press alongside Netanyahu, that he wanted to make “one announcement with respect to a decision by the State Department that we will regard the global anti-Israel BDS campaign as anti-Semitic.”“I know this may sound simple to you, Mr. Prime Minister, it seems like a statement of fact, but I want you to know that we will immediately take steps to identify organizations that engage in hateful BDS conduct and withdraw US government support for such groups. The time is right,” Pompeo declared.At that point, Netanyahu interrupted the US top diplomat’s comments, saying, “It doesn’t sound simple, it sounds simply wonderful.”“Look,” Pompeo went on, “we want to stand with all other nations that recognize the BDS movement for the cancer that it is. And we’re committed to combating it. Our record speaks for itself. During the Trump administration, America stands with Israel like never before.”BDS, which stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, is not a registered organization but rather a term for a worldwide movement of pro-Palestinian activists who embrace economic sanctions against Israel as the best nonviolent means to fight what they consider unjust policies of the government in Jerusalem.Leading European politicians have rejected the BDS movement on ideological grounds but have stopped short of banning it due to free speech laws.In May 2019, the German Bundestag passed with a large majority a resolution denouncing BDS, describing its methods as anti-Semitic and reminiscent of Nazi-era calls to boycott Jews.The motion called on the German government not to support events organized by BDS or groups that actively pursue its aims, and vowed that parliament wouldn’t finance any projects that call for a boycott of Israel or actively support the movement.The German motion stated that “the pattern of argument and methods of the BDS movement are anti-Semitic.”

Latest tunnel was Hamas’s deepest; it’s not what worries Israel most about Gaza-The IDF regards the Strip as calm for now, but a perpetual potential powder keg, and Southern Command deems most rounds of fighting in past 2.5 years to have been failures-By JUDAH ARI GROSS-NOV 19,20-Today, 6:34 pm

The Gaza Strip is a powder keg, alternately relatively calm and getting ready to blow. It is ruled by an authoritarian terrorist group, and it has an incredibly poor economy, limited access to electricity and virtually no potable water sources and only now is starting to be able to treat its sewage. It is struggling to contain a coronavirus outbreak, which the Israeli military believes is worse than the already-bad official tally indicates. And this situation does not appear likely to improve anytime soon.While the threats from Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iranian proxies in Syria are considered far more significant in terms of their potential damage to Israel, the Israel Defense Forces views the likelihood for conflict to be much greater with terror groups in Gaza.To that end, the bulk of the IDF Southern Command’s time is dedicated to preparing for the next war under an updated fighting approach dubbed Spirit of the South — Ru’ah Darom, in Hebrew — which is meant to end the conflict more quickly and effectively than previous strategies, relying on massive barrages to rapidly knock out enemy capabilities, improved use of intelligence and fast raids instead of longer ground maneuvers that would leave troops more vulnerable to attack.In addition to these preparations, Israel has also nearly completed construction of an underground concrete barrier studded with sensors around the Gaza Strip to detect tunnels from the enclave, a move that is expected to deny Hamas a powerful weapon in any future war.Multi-tiered defense-Last month, the IDF uncovered a Hamas attack tunnel using its new detection system, which is due to be fully constructed in March 2021. According to the military, the 2-kilometer tunnel was the deepest one ever dug by the terror group, dozens of meters below ground. The passage extended from the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis under the border into an area of Israeli territory that lies on the Gaza side of the subterranean barrier.For the IDF, which is confident in its new tunnel-busting prowess, this is not a major source of concern; indeed, the army sees Hamas’s tunneling efforts as serving only to drain the terror group’s resources as it digs deeper and deeper into the earth in what is expected to be a fruitless endeavor.The military is also developing a new multi-tiered defense system around the Gaza Strip, dubbed “Smart and Lethal Border,” which relies on advanced radar and optical sensors to detect intruders and on remote-controlled, armed vehicles and drones to inspect suspected border breaches, as well as physical barriers. Using these unmanned systems allows the military to scale back the number of troops needed and keep those soldiers that are required out of harm’s way, deploying them only for more complicated missions that require a human touch.This project is currently being tested on a six-kilometer stretch of the northern Gaza border. The pilot program should be completed in the next few months and will then be expanded to the entire 51-kilometer border.In addition to these efforts, the IDF is seeking to preemptively destroy the weapons and military infrastructure of terror groups in the Strip, keeping them from feeling sufficiently confident in their ability to wage war against Israel.Unmanned vehicles patrol the Gaza border on November 17, 2020. (Israel Defense Forces)-Though the military believes it will fare well in a war against Hamas, a future fight is not currently designed to fundamentally alter the situation in the Gaza Strip. Israel still prefers to have Hamas, which is officially dedicated to the Jewish state’s destruction, in charge of the enclave over the potential for chaos and complications in the Strip should Hamas be fully overthrown.Endless flare-ups spell trouble-The IDF also wants to keep even these smaller conflicts to a minimum, preventing them from turning into something like the 11 two-day battles that it has fought in Gaza over the past two and a half years.The IDF Southern Command sees those rounds of fighting in 2018, 2019, and 2020 as having ultimately been a failure. Typically those exchanges began following some type of violent incident along the border, leading to a strong response by the IDF, prompting rocket fire from Gaza, leading to an IDF response, and so on. After a day or two, a ceasefire would be unofficially declared.Israel and terror groups in the Strip fought nearly a dozen of these rounds from mid-2018 to today, the latest of them in February. In each of these, tens or hundreds of rockets and mortar shells were fired at Israeli cities and towns, and the IDF retaliated with dozens of airstrikes.To the IDF, The Times of Israel has learned, those rounds of fighting were fundamentally pointless — save for one last November, dubbed Operation Black Belt, which was kicked off with the killing of Islamic Jihad senior commander Baha Abu al-Ata and led to a wide campaign against the Iran-backed terror group, which the military believes has deterred it from the types of attacks that it had been carrying out until then. Vide: Despite internal pressure to mark the first anniversary of Abu al-Ata’s death with an attack on Israel, no such assault took place.With the exception of that campaign, the remaining 10 or so rounds of fighting were not found to have significantly advanced Israel’s goal. They were financially costly due to the large number of Iron Dome interceptor missiles used to shoot down incoming projectiles and large amounts of munitions used on targets that could easily be reconstructed; and the large number of interceptions by the Iron Dome — 245 in 2018, 481 in 2019 and 82 so far in 2020 — also provided critical intelligence to Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, and through them to Tehran.By reviewing the Iron Dome’s performance during these battles, the terror groups could potentially identify weaknesses in the system that could be exploited in future combat.It is not immediately clear how the IDF plans to act differently in light of this determination, though an indication can be found in the events of this August when despite growing tensions and violence along the border, as well as rocket fire at southern Israel, no intensive battle took place, and Israel and Hamas instead brokered a truce that has lasted — more or less — until now.This picture shows lightning above buildings during a thunderstorm in Gaza City, early on November 15, 2020. (Mahmud Hams / AFP)-That calm was broken last Sunday when two rockets were fired toward central Israel. Hamas quickly sent word to Israel that the projectiles were not launched deliberately, but were the result of a technical malfunction — they were triggered by a lightning strike. As the IDF did not see indications that Hamas was looking for a fight and in light of the strange hour of the attack — shortly after 2 a.m. — the military has generally accepted this explanation, though it continues to monitor the situation to see if the rockets were in fact fired intentionally.Long-term ceasefire unlikely-Though negotiations are ongoing to broker a long-term, comprehensive ceasefire with Hamas, the military believes that these talks — like those that preceding them — will ultimately reach an impasse and break down, The Times of Israel has learned. Hamas is unlikely to give up its arms and abandon the so-called “resistance,” which is its raison d’être; and Jerusalem is not prepared to offer major concessions until that happens, believing — justifiably — that Hamas would take advantage of any significant reduction in the blockade on Gaza to expand its war against Israel.The military similarly does not have high expectations for an agreement to secure the release of the remains of two fallen IDF soldiers and two live Israeli civilians who are currently being held by Hamas in Gaza, as the terror group is unlikely to do so without Israel agreeing to set free its operatives, something Jerusalem is unlikely to do.With little hope for a major change in the dynamic in Gaza, the IDF and the Defense Ministry’s coordinator of government activities in the territories (COGAT) is therefore working to improve conditions in the Strip — to a certain extent — seeing that as a way to keep the situation calm.This includes encouraging Qatar to continue sending economic aid to the Gaza Strip and other international organizations to also provide humanitarian assistance to the beleaguered enclave.In recent days, the Strip has seen a major spike in coronavirus cases, with nearly a quarter of tests coming back positive, bringing the total number of active cases in Gaza up to 3,806, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.The IDF believes that this figure is significantly lower than the true number, with people in Gaza too scared to get tested. Despite efforts made by Hamas and the international community to better prepare Gaza for an outbreak — nearly doubling the number of ventilators, increasing testing capability to 3,000 per day, and adding 500 hospital beds — the Strip’s health care system could easily be overrun, a situation with significant national security implications for Israel.

SYRIAN GOVERNMENT CONDEMNS 'PROVOCATIVE, CRIMINAL' TRIP-Pompeo makes unprecedented Golan Heights visit: ‘This is Israel’Secretary tours Syrian border with Israeli counterpart, scoffs at US elites and ‘salons of Europe’ who want Assad to control strategic ridge; is briefed on Iran’s influence in area-By AGENCIES and TOI STAFF-NOV 19,20-Today, 7:52 pm

Mike Pompeo on Thursday became the first US secretary of state to visit the Golan Heights, hours after becoming the first to visit a West Bank settlement.Pompeo toured parts of the Golan on Israel’s border with Syria under heavy security aboard a Blackhawk helicopter, alongside Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi.“You can’t stand here and stare out at what’s across the border and deny the central thing that President Donald Trump recognized, what the previous presidents have refused to do,” Pompeo said, referring to Trump’s decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty in the area last year.This is a part of Israel and central part of Israel,” Pompeo said.He condemned what he described as calls from “the salons in Europe and in the elite institutions in America,” for Israel to return the Golan to Syria, which the Jewish state captured in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed.“Imagine with [Syrian President Bashar] Assad in control of this place, the risk of the harm to the West and to Israel,” Pompeo said.The Syrian government condemned the “provocative step before the end of the Trump administration’s term, and a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic,” according to a foreign ministry statement, carried by state news agency SANA.“Syria affirms that such criminal visits encourage [Israel] to continue its dangerous hostile approach.”Ashkenazi praised Pompeo for recognizing “the strategic importance of the Golan Heights,” saying that because Pompeo has served as head of the Central Intelligence Agency, “he knows the facts, but he insisted to come, to see first hand.”While in the Golan, Pompeo received a military briefing and met with Avigdor Kahalani, a famous tank commander who fought there in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, with the US secretary of state saying he learned about the battles there when he was a cadet at West Point.The visit came days after military engineers discovered and disarmed explosives in Israeli territory along the border, prompting retaliatory strikes by the Israel Defense Forces on targets linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards and the Syrian military around Damascus.The IDF on Thursday blamed the mines on a unit of the IRGC’s Quds Force, whose former commander Qassem Soleimani was killed in Baghdad this January by a US airstrike.Ashkenazi said Pompeo was briefed about the security situation on Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Syria, “about Iranian influence, its allies in Syria and about Hezbollah.”“I stressed that we won’t tolerate any violation of sovereignty in any area… or Iranian entrenchment, certainly not near the border,” tweeted Ashkenazi, a former IDF chief of staff.He also said the strikes were meant to send a “clear message” to Iran and its allies, adding that Israel holds the Syrian regime responsible for any attacks from its territory.Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi, left, speaks alongside US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo after a security briefing on Mount Bental in the Golan Heights, near the Israeli-Syrian border, November 19, 2020. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, Pool)-Before touring the Golan with Ashkenazi, Pompeo visited a West Bank winery, the first time a top American diplomat has visited an Israeli settlement.The vineyard near the Israeli settlement of Psagot had named one of its wines after Pompeo, a salute to his announcement last year that the Trump administration would no longer see Israeli settlements in the West Bank as contrary to international law.In a statement after the visit, Pompeo said the US will label exports from Jewish settlements as Israeli.-Israeli winemaker Yaakov Berg holds a bottle of his red blend named after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the Psagot Winery in the settlers industrial park of Sha’ar Binyamin (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP)-Pompeo earlier Thursday announced another policy, stating that from now Washington would designate as “anti-Semitic” the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, which seeks to isolate Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians.Israel sees BDS as a strategic threat and has long accused it of anti-Semitism, and a law passed in 2017 allows Israel to ban foreigners with links to BDS from entering the country. Activists strongly deny the charge, comparing the embargo to the economic isolation that helped bring down apartheid in South Africa.Following the Thursday morning press conference, Pompeo toured the City of David archeological site, located in East Jerusalem just outside the walls of the Old City, posting images from the visit to his official Twitter feed.Pompeo — who has so far backed Trump in his refusal to concede defeat to US President-elect Joe Biden — is on what is likely his final Europe and Middle East tour in the post.He had no scheduled meetings with Palestinian leaders, who have strongly rejected Trump’s stance on the decades-old conflict, including Washington’s recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.

In major shift, Pompeo says US to label settlement products ‘Made in Israel’-Unclear whether White House was consulted before secretary of state announced change, which marks latest American endorsement of Israeli presence beyond Green Line-By JACOB MAGID-NOV 19,20-Today, 7:04 pm

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday announced new guidelines that will require goods made in Israeli controlled areas of the West Bank to be labeled as “Made in Israel,” following an unprecedented visit to a settlement winery on Thursday afternoon.Until now, US policy has required products made in the West Bank to be labeled as such. But with Pompeo’s newly announced rules, which he said were “consistent with our reality-based foreign policy approach,” all producers within areas where Israel exercises authority — most notably Area C under the Oslo Accords – will be required to mark goods as ’Israel,’ ’Product of Israel,’ or ‘Made in Israel’ when exporting to the United States.The announcement appeared to indicate that the policy would also cover goods made in Palestinian villages within Area C, where Israel exercises both civilian and security control. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for clarification of the matter. Roughly 150,000 Palestinians are believed to live in Area C, which includes all Israeli settlements and covers about 60 percent of the West Bank’s The statement from Pompeo said the new policy “recognizes that Area C producers operate within the economic and administrative framework of Israel and their goods should be treated accordingly.”Pompeo said it would “eliminate the confusion” that may have been caused by the old policy, which in labeling all West Bank exports as having been made there, did not differentiate whether the producers were Israeli or Palestinian.US exports made in Areas A and B of the West Bank, under Palestinian Authority control, must still be marked as “Made in the West Bank.”“We will no longer accept “West Bank/Gaza” or similar markings, in recognition that Gaza and the West Bank are politically and administratively separate and should be treated accordingly,” the State Department announcement said.Pompeo insisted that the US still remains committed to achieving “sustainable peace” and will “continue to oppose those countries and international institutions which delegitimize or penalize Israel and Israeli producers in the West Bank through malicious measures that fail to recognize the reality on the ground.”The concluding remark of the statement appeared to take a direct shot at the European Union, which has led a policy obliging all 28 member states to label exports produced in Israeli towns beyond the Green Line as having been made in the settlements.Pompeo’s Twitter account posted several photos from the secretary of state’s visit to Psagot, including a picture of a nearby Palestinian village. That tweet was deleted less than an hour after it went up and replaced with an updated version without the picture of the Palestinian town.It had been US policy since 1967 to differentiate between Israel and the territories it captured in the Six Day War. A 1995 Treasury Department guidance requiring goods from the West Bank or Gaza Strip to be labeled as such still remains in force. The directive was republished in 2016 by the Obama administration, which warned that labeling goods as “made in Israel” could lead to fines.The new US doctrine appears to fall in line with existing Israeli policy, which similarly does not differentiate between goods produced on either side of the Green Line.According to the Walla news site, the new policy had been pushed by Pompeo and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who has extensive ties to the settlement movement, having once served as the chairman of the American Friends of Beit El Institutions.“It’s unclear if the White House approved or even knew the announcement was coming,” Walla reported.It is also unclear whether such a policy will hold under the incoming Biden administration.Pompeo and Friedman are believed to run a more radical line on Israel within the administration, while Senior Adviser Jared Kushner and Special Envoy for International Negotiations Avi Berkowitz have pushed more moderate proposals on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.The two flanks came at odds in January when, after US President Donald Trump unveiled his peace plan which envisioned Israel eventually annexing all West Bank settlements, Friedman told reporters that Jerusalem had Washington’s blessing to move forward with the step immediately.Within hours though, Kushner put the breaks on the idea, clarifying that such a move would take time and would require a joint US-Israeli mapping team to demarcate the exact borders of the controversial move.After six months went by with little progress made, Kushner led a team of US negotiators that saw Israel shelve its plan to annex some 30 percent of the West Bank — covering all the settlements and the Jordan Valley — as a condition of the normalization treaty with the United Arab Emirates. While both Israeli and US officials have insisted that annexation is not off the table for good, sources with direct knowledge of the matter told The Times of Israel that Kushner committed to not backing the move until at least 2024. With Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in this month’s presidential election, prospects of US approval for annexation have dimmed further.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) greets US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as he arrives at the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem on November 18, 2020. (Amos Ben Gershom/GPO)-The vast majority of the international community views Israeli settlements as illegal, but the Trump administration has taken several steps to shift US policy on the matter. Last year, Pompeo repudiated a 1978 State Department legal opinion maintaining that civilian settlements in the Palestinian territories are “inconsistent with international law.”Last month, Friedman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed an agreement removing all previous geographic restrictions from their scientific cooperation.Pompeo met with Netanyahu on Thursday morning in Jerusalem and updated the premier on his plan to announce the policy shift on labeling for settlement exports, Walla reported.The doctrine appears to clash with the views of President-elect Joe Biden, who has long been a critic of Israeli settlement expansion, saying it places the viability of a two-state solution at risk. Biden has also spoken out against Netanyahu’s annexation plans. The Biden transition team declined to comment on the matter.“The president-elect firmly believes in the principle that there must be only one president at a time guiding our country’s foreign policy and national security as he is focused on preparing to govern,” a spokesman said.PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said in a statement that Pompeo’s announcement “blatantly violates international law.” He dismissed the policy change — along with the secretary of state’s visit to Psagot — as yet another biased, pro-Israeli move by the Trump administration.The Israel director for the liberal lobby J Street said in a statement that Pompeo was “cooperating with the BDS movement” by refusing to differentiate between either side of the Green Line, thereby allowing Israel’s detractors to morph the two as well and deem Israel on both sides of the line as illegitimate.“Instead of protecting Israeli exports, Pompeo’s decision could hurt them,” Adina Vogel-Ayalon said.Jill Jacobs, who runs the Tru’ah organization of progressive rabbis in North America, also blasted the policy change, tweeting “Who needs Netanyahu to annex Area C when the US government does it for him?”“In Area C, Israeli citizens live under Israeli law; Palestinians live under occupation,” she wrote. “Annexation means either making Palestinians citizens of Israel or having 2 systems of law for 2 ppl inside state.”For its part, the Yesha umbrella council of settler mayors lauded the move, calling it “an important milestone in the fight against the international boycott [of Israel] and the BDS movement.”“The decision recognizes the reality on the ground that Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley are integral parts of the State of Israel,” the group added, referring to the West Bank by its biblical names.Diaspora Affairs Minister Omer Yankelevich from the Blue and White party lauded the decision, telling Army Radio that West Bank settlements are as much part of Israel as anywhere else in the country.She also tweeted a photo of herself in the southern West Bank settlement of Sussiya holding a bottle of wine made in the nearby settlement of Yatir. “From today — made in Israel! Thank you Secretary of State Mike Pompeo,” the minister wrote.Pompeo earlier Thursday announced another new policy, stating that from now on Washington would designate as “anti-Semitic” the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, which seeks to isolate Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians, and would take practical steps against BDS groups.Pompeo’s visit to the Psagot winery in the central West Bank was the first time a secretary of state had visited an Israeli settlement. Pompeo later made his way to the Golan Heights, in another first for a top US diplomat.Netanyahu thanked Pompeo for his “unwavering support” of Israel, first as CIA director and then as secretary of state, saying that under US President Donald Trump the US-Israeli relationship had “reached unprecedented heights.”

Senior Israeli and PA officials meet, agree on transfer of critical tax revenue-Palestinian Authority will officially return to accepting monthly transfers of taxes that Israel collects on its behalf, which constitute over 60 percent of PA budget-By AARON BOXERMAN-NOV 19,20-Today, 6:34 pm

Senior Israeli and Palestinian officials tasked with handling coordination between the two sides held their first public meeting Thursday since Ramallah severed ties in May, the Palestinian Authority official tasked with managing relations with Israel said in a statement.“Today I held a meeting with the Israeli side. We emphasized that the bilateral agreements signed, which are based on international law, are what governs this relationship,” Hussein al-Sheikh said in a tweetAl-Sheikh said the Palestinians had reached an agreement with Israel which will see the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues that Israel collects on its behalf.The PA cut off relations in protest of a since-shelved Israeli plan to annex parts of the West Bank.Al-Sheikh announced that Ramallah was renewing its ties with Israel on Tuesday night, ending a six-month-long crisis that saw coordination between Israel and the Palestinians collapse and hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civil servants go without their salaries.The shift came after the US presidential election was won by Democratic challenger Joe Biden, who Ramallah anticipates will prove more empathetic to their cause than President Donald Trump. The PA severed all dealings with the Trump administration three years ago, after he recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the US embassy there.Al-Sheikh said he had met with Israel’s military liaison to the Palestinians, Major-General Kamal Abu Rukun.Abu Rukun’s office, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, declined to comment on the meeting on the record.Palestinian officials are reportedly changing strategy following Biden’s victory, in an effort to reverse the harsh punitive measures the Trump administration applied to Ramallah.“This, for us, is not just a window, it’s a gate through which we can re-establish our relationship with the United States,” Al-Sheikh told Palestine TV on Tuesday night.Ramallah reportedly quietly returned its ambassadors to the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain recently, after having recalled them in protest of the countries’ decision to normalize ties with Israel.It is also considering reforming its controversial policy of paying salaries to Palestinians convicted by Israel of security offenses and terrorism. The prisoner issue has long hampered the PA’s diplomatic efforts in Washington, and Israel has repeatedly invoked the terror funding to criticize Ramallah in international forums.The PA announced in early June that it would refuse to accept the monthly transfer of over $100 million as part of ending coordination with Israel. The revenues constituted over 60 percent of Ramallah’s 2019 budget.With the PA facing a massive fiscal crisis, hundreds of thousands of public-sector employees — some 15 to 20 percent of the PA’s economy, according to an assessment by the World Bank — did not receive full salaries for nearly five months.While a report carried by the WAFA official news agency described the funds as “withheld,” Israeli officials have repeatedly said that they were willing to transfer the funds but the Palestinians refused to accept them.A Palestinian Finance Ministry spokesperson confirmed to The Times of Israel that the Ministry had not yet received the tax revenues and that a new date to pay out the salaries of PA civil servants was yet to be set.The Civil Affairs Commission did not respond to a request for comment as to when the funds would be transferred.

Iran presidential candidate: US attack risks ‘full-fledged war’-Hossein Dehghan warns limited, tactical conflict could escalate into ‘comprehensive crisis’ that world cannot stand; warns Israel’s expanding presence could be ‘strategic mistake’By NASSER KARIMI and JON GAMBRELL-nov 19,20-Today, 4:58 pm  0

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — An adviser to Iran’s supreme leader who is a possible 2021 presidential candidate has warned that any American attack on the Islamic Republic could set off a “full-fledged war” in the Mideast in the waning days of the Trump administration.Speaking to The Associated Press, Hossein Dehghan struck a hardline tone familiar to those in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, a force he long served in before becoming a defense minister under President Hassan Rouhani.A soldier has yet to serve as Iran’s top civilian leader since its 1979 Islamic Revolution, in part over the initial suspicion that its conventional military forces remained loyal to the toppled shah. But hardliners in recent years openly have suggested Iran move toward a military dictatorship given its economic problems and threats from abroad, particularly after US President Donald Trump pulled America out of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.“We don’t welcome a crisis. We don’t welcome war. We are not after starting a war,” Dehghan said Wednesday. “But we are not after negotiations for the sake of negotiations either.”Dehghan, 63, described himself as a “nationalist” with “no conventional political tendency” during an interview in his wood-paneled office in downtown Tehran. He’s one of many likely to register to run in the June 18 election as Rouhani is term-limited from running again. Others likely include a young technocrat with ties to Iranian intelligence and former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.Dehghan’s military service came under presidencies representative of the groups that largely compose Iran’s tightly controlled political arena — reformists who seek to slowly change Iran’s theocracy from within, hardliners who want to strengthen the theocracy and the relative moderates between. Those calling for radical change are barred from running for office by Iran’s powerful constitutional watchdog known as the Guardian Council, which serves under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.While discussing the world Iran finds itself in, Dehghan’s points mirrored many of Khamenei’s. The former head of the Guard’s air force who achieved the rank of brigadier general said any negotiations with the West could not include Iran’s ballistic missiles, which he described as a “deterrent” to Tehran’s adversaries.Propaganda involving Iran’s missile program has surged in recent weeks. The front page of the English-language Tehran Times on Wednesday showed a map of Iran’s missile ranges with red stars marking American bases across the region under the words “Back off!” printed in big, bold letters. A headline above warned Iran would respond to “any melancholy adventure by Trump.”“The Islamic Republic of Iran will not negotiate its defensive power… with anybody under any circumstances,” Dehghan said. “Missiles are a symbol of the massive potential that is in our experts, young people and industrial centers.”Dehghan warned against any American military escalation in Trump’s final weeks in office.“A limited, tactical conflict can turn into a full-fledged war,” he said. “Definitely, the United States, the region and the world cannot stand such a comprehensive crisis.”US President-elect Joe Biden has said he’s willing to return to the nuclear deal, which saw sanctions on Iran lifted in exchange for Tehran limiting its uranium enrichment, if Iran first complies with its limits. Since Trump’s withdrawal, Iran has gone beyond all the deal’s restrictions while still allowing United Nations nuclear inspectors to work in the country. Dehghan said those UN checks should continue so long as an inspector is not a “spy.”In the time since, an advanced centrifuge assembly plant at Iran’s Natanz nuclear site exploded and caught fire in July. Dehghan said that reconstruction at Natanz was ongoing after satellite photos showed new construction at the site. He described the incident as “industrial sabotage.”“Those who were in charge of installing some devices possibly made some changes there that led to the explosion,” Dehghan said, without elaborating.A Dehghan presidency likely would be looked upon with suspicion in Washington and Paris. As a young commander in the Guard, Dehghan oversaw its operations in Lebanon and Syria between 1982 and 1984, according to an official biography given to Iran’s parliament in 2013. Israel, Iran’s archenemy in the Mideast, had just invaded Lebanon amid that country’s civil war.In 1983, a suicide bomber in a truck loaded with military-grade explosives attacked a US Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American troops and 58 French soldiers. While Iran long has denied being involved, a US District Court judge found Tehran responsible in 2003. That ruling said Iran’s ambassador to Syria at the time called “a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and instructed him to instigate the Marine barracks bombing.”Dehghan vehemently denied he was involved in the bombing, though he was the Guard’s top commander there at the time.“The US tries to link anything happening in the world to someone in Iran,” he said. “Do they really have evidence? Why do they link it to me?”While stressing he wanted to avoid conflict, Dehghan claimed Israel was expanding its presence in the Mideast and warned that could turn into a “strategic mistake.” Israel just reached normalization deals with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.“It is opening an extensive front,” he said. “Just imagine every Israeli in any military base can be a target for groups who are opposed to Israel.”Dehghan also said Iran continues to seek the expulsion of all American forces from the region as revenge for the US drone strike in Baghdad that killed Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of its expeditionary Quds Force in January. That strike saw Iran launch a retaliatory ballistic missile strike on US troops in Iraq that injured dozens and nearly sparked a war.Iran’s retaliatory strikes were a mere “initial slap,” Dehghan said. And there would be no easy return to negotiations with the US in part due to that, he added.“We do not seek a situation in which (the other party) buys time to weaken our nation,” he said.

IMF urges Israel government to promptly pass 2021 budget-A budget would help prioritize spending, prepare economy for growth; steps taken to stem pandemic’s economic fallout have been ‘appropriate,’ but risks remain ‘unprecedented’-By SHOSHANNA SOLOMON-today, 4:44 pm  0

The International Monetary Fund on Thursday called on the Israeli government to quickly pass a budget for 2021 to help position the economy for growth.A “prompt passage” of the budget would “help prioritize spending, position the economy for growth, and reduce economic uncertainty associated with the pandemic,” IMF officials wrote in an initial summary of the 2020 report on the Israeli economy presented to the Bank of Israel on Thursday. A final report is expected in December.Political tensions between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition partners, headed by Benny Gantz, have prevented the passage of the 2020 and 2021 budgets.In the report, the IMF said that policy measures implemented by Israel to contain the economic fallout from the pandemic have managed to calm markets and “limit the damage” to the economy.Even so, the outlook remains challenging, “risks are unprecedented” and gross domestic product is projected to contract, with unemployment likely to remain in the double digits.As the pandemic struck and social distancing requirements caused the economy to shut down, “an appropriately large fiscal package has aided the economy,” the authors said.This, together with monetary policies and the resilience stemming from Israel’s tech sector, has caused real output to contract “less than in other advanced economies so far in 2020,” the report said. Israel’s economy is expected to contract this year by 5%, S&P estimated earlier this month.Even so, unemployment, including those who were placed on unpaid leave, is likely to remain in the double digits, and the greater number of jobless among lower-income workers is likely to even further worsen the nation’s already high income inequality, the report said.Recovery is projected to start in 2021, the report said, but social distancing will likely continue to constrain domestic demand and impede GDP growth.More than 320,000 people have caught the coronavirus, which has claimed 2,700 deaths. Lockdowns introduced in March and September contained the spread of the virus but, together with social distancing, suppressed economic activity throughout 2020, the report said.Israel should continue its fiscal support policies in the 2021 budget, the report recommended, especially if the pandemic persists and partial lockdown measures are extended longer than envisaged.Authorities should consider additional funding for health services, extending unemployment benefits beyond mid-2021 and providing further grants for the self-employed, should the pandemic persist.Any eventual withdrawal of fiscal support “should be timed carefully, given the challenging outlook,” the report said.Fiscal policy should continue to prioritize health spending and gradually become more targeted. Funding should be channeled to ensure adequate hospital capacity, testing and tracing and to address other urgent needs.Beyond health, the government should focus on setting out labor market policies to improve job prospects for the unemployed.As the economy recovers and stimulus measures expire, the deficit is expected to decline, but the government will still need to address the higher debt levels accumulated during the crisis, to ensure it is “more firmly on a downward path.”“Tax reforms should be at the core of this effort,” the report said.As the pandemic struck-As the pandemic struck, Israeli authorities “mounted a large and rapid response to mitigate the impact of the pandemic.”The Bank of Israel launched “sizeable measures” to provide liquidity, prevent a credit crunch and ease access to financial services and credit, including for small businesses and households.Besides lower interest rates, the measures included programs to buy government and corporate bonds and funding to banks to extend loans to small and medium enterprises. Intervention in the foreign exchange market reduced pressures on the shekel, while the easing of requirements on banks allowed the lenders to support the economy.Several fiscal stimulus packages reaching 15.25 percent of GDP (of which 10.25% of GDP was planned for 2020) were also approved, including support for healthcare, benefits for unemployed and furloughed workers, grants for the self-employed and households, guaranteed loans for companies, and infrastructure support.Extending policies ‘remains appropriate’The IMF said that the “decisive” monetary policy measures taken by the Bank of Israel have helped provide market liquidity and sustain the flow of credit to households and businesses.The measures eased early pressures on exchange rates, bond yields, and corporate spreads.Extending the current set of policies “remains appropriate” at this time, the report said, given low near-term inflation expectations, growth projected to be below potential, and uncertainties regarding the duration of renewed lockdowns.Hard-hit firms and households should also continue to get financial aid, but criteria may need to be gradually adjusted and tightened to target viable firms, the report said.The importance of reforms-The government must also set out structural policies that should aim to “limit long-term scarring, strengthen the resilience of the economy, and promote inclusiveness.” The focus should be on labor policies and investment in human capital and infrastructure.These structural policies should include setting out programs to facilitate reemployment, efficiently reallocate workers from sectors and businesses that downsize, and mitigate the negative impact of the pandemic on low-income workers. Together with vocational training, these reforms “should promote reskilling and upskilling, encourage job search and reduce hiring costs.”Expanding digitalization, reforming education and boosting investment are other structural steps that the government needs to take.Policies that broaden digital penetration have “very high potential to increase knowledge diffusion and productivity, mitigate skill shortages, and improve the reach and effectiveness of government services,” the report said.And because the lockdowns have created educational setbacks that could have lasting productivity and inequality implications, students must be trained in math, sciences and tech subjects to arm them with “marketable skills” for an increasingly digitized world.Public investment, particularly in health care, transportation and digitalization infrastructure can create jobs, “mitigate the drop in demand, and encourage private investment, which has declined amidst low business confidence.” Public investment projects can also strengthen crisis resilience, the report said.Though Israel entered pandemic strong, risks are ‘unprecedented’Before the pandemic struck, real annual GDP growth in Israel was around 3.25% percent and the current account averaged 3.5% of GDP in the last 5 years. Unemployment had reached 3.6% at the end of 2019 — the lowest rate in the last two decades.Looking ahead, the “risks are unprecedented,” the report said. “In the near term, the evolution of the pandemic is expected to have a major impact on the economic outlook. Early widespread distribution of an effective vaccine would lead to a faster-than-projected recovery. However, an escalation of the pandemic could require a prolonged use of containment measures and social distancing, bringing further disruptions to economic activity.”Geopolitical risks, while still significant, have become more balanced, especially after the recent bilateral accords between Israel and Gulf nations, the report said.

13 Thou shalt not kill.(Murder)(THAT INCLUDES ABORTION)

MATTHEW 18:6
6  But whoso shall offend (HURT) one of these little ones (CHILDREN) which believe in me,(JESUS) it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.(THATS THE DEATH PENALTY FOLKS)

EXODUS 21:12
12 He that smiteth (MURDER)a man,(OR BABY) so that he die, shall be surely put to death.(THATS THE DEATH PENALTY PEOPLE)

REVELATION 9:20-21
20 And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils,(OCCULT) and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:
21 Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries,(DRUG ADDICTIONS) nor of their fornication,(SEX OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE) nor of their thefts.(STEALING)

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