JEWISH KING JESUS IS COMING AT THE RAPTURE FOR US IN THE CLOUDS-DON'T MISS IT FOR THE WORLD.THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY- WHEN THE PLAIN SENSE MAKES GOOD SENSE-SEEK NO OTHER SENSE-LEST YOU END UP IN NONSENSE.GET SAVED NOW- CALL ON JESUS TODAY.THE ONLY SAVIOR OF THE WHOLE EARTH - NO OTHER.
1 COR 15:23-JESUS THE FIRST FRUITS-CHRISTIANS RAPTURED TO JESUS-FIRST FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT-23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.ROMANS 8:23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.(THE PRE-TRIB RAPTURE)
LUKE 21:28-29
28 And when these things begin to come to pass,(ALL THE PROPHECY SIGNS FROM THE BIBLE) then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption (RAPTURE) draweth nigh.
29 And he spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree,(ISRAEL) and all the trees;(ALL INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES)
30 When they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand.(ISRAEL LITERALLY BECAME AND INDEPENDENT COUNTRY JUST BEFORE SUMMER IN MAY 14,1948.)
JOEL 2:3,30
3 A fire devoureth (ATOMIC BOMB) before them;(RUSSIAN-ARAB-MUSLIM ARMIES AGAINST ISRAEL) and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.
30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.(ATOMIC BOMB AFFECT)
ZECHARIAH 14:12-13
12 And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet,(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB) and their eyes shall consume away in their holes,(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB) and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB)(BECAUSE NUKES HAVE BEEN USED ON ISRAELS ENEMIES)(GOD PROTECTS ISRAEL AND ALWAYS WILL)
13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour.(1/2-3 BILLION DIE IN WW3)(THIS IS AN ATOMIC BOMB EFFECT)
EZEKIEL 20:47
47 And say to the forest of the south, Hear the word of the LORD; Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall devour every green tree in thee, and every dry tree: the flaming flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall be burned therein.
ZEPHANIAH 1:18
18 Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the LORD'S wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land.
MALACHI 4:1
1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven;(FROM ATOMIC BOMBS) and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
And here are the bounderies of the land that Israel will inherit either through war or peace or God in the future. God says its Israels land and only Israels land. They will have every inch God promised them of this land in the future.
Egypt east of the Nile River, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, The southern part of Turkey and the Western Half of Iraq west of the Euphrates. Gen 13:14-15, Psm 105:9,11, Gen 15:18, Exe 23:31, Num 34:1-12, Josh 1:4.ALL THIS LAND ISRAEL WILL DEFINATELY OWN IN THE FUTURE, ITS ISRAELS NOT ISHMAELS LAND.12 TRIBES INHERIT LAND IN THE FUTURE
Netanyahu moves to head off weakening of his Likud powers-Party’s secretariat, chaired by Minister Yisrael Katz, votes to impose oversight over PM’s campaign appointments and budget-By Times of Israel staff August 17, 2016, 2:51 pm
A sudden battle between two Likud heavyweights is raising speculation over a possible leadership contest in the ruling party in the next election cycle.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz to a meeting Wednesday, a day after Katz pushed through the party’s secretariat a series of decisions that weakened the position of the party chairmanship, held by Netanyahu.The meeting ended with a partial retreat by Katz, who agreed to suspend Tuesday’s decisions until the next secretariat meeting on Sunday, where members will vote to form a two-person committee consisting of Coalition Chairman MK David Bitan and attorney David Shomron to consider the new measures.At a secretariat meeting in the Maccabiyah Village in Ramat Gan Tuesday, some 100 members of the secretariat, among them cabinet ministers and MKs considered close to Netanyahu, voted to impose term limits on many of Likud’s officials — most of whom are appointed either directly or indirectly by the party leader — as well as to require that all outside advisers hired by the party be approved by the secretariat. Those include campaign managers traditionally brought in ahead of elections by Netanyahu.They also voted to appoint a special legal adviser for the secretariat who would operate separately from the party’s legal adviser, considered a confidant of Netanyahu.These procedural changes amount to placing dramatic new limits on Netanyahu’s ability to fill the key positions through which he runs the party’s messaging and policy.The Likud secretariat is the internal organ responsible for party operations, including staff, budget, regional offices and election campaign efforts. Katz is its chairman.Netanyahu’s allies in the party charged Katz with backhanded maneuvering on Tuesday and Wednesday, and called for Netanyahu to fire him from his two ministerial positions, transportation and intelligence. They claim a Katz adviser told the party’s internal court last week that the secretariat would delay the votes on the new measures.In WhatsApp groups and other online forums of Likud activists, Katz was accused of “treason” by Netanyahu supporters, who claimed he was attempting to undermine a Likud leader who had carried the party to three consecutive election victories.But Katz alone could not have passed those decisions. While he appeared to retreat somewhat Wednesday following the meeting with Netanyahu at the latter’s office in Jerusalem, Netanyahu will have to contend with the show of force Katz was able to muster at the secretariat meeting.According to a vote tally by the Walla news site, the secretariat members voting for the de facto weakening of Netanyahu’s powers included key ministers and MKs who are usually considered close to Netanyahu: Environmental Protection Minister Ze’ev Elkin, who also heads the party’s bureau, its chief policy-setting body; Bitan, the coalition chairman; Welfare Minister Haim Katz, who chairs the Central Committee; MKs Sharren Haskel and Nava Boker; and deputy ministers Jacky Levy and Ayoub Kara.Cabinet minister Tzachi Hanegbi was the lone political leader on the secretariat to oppose the move.Likud has a long tradition of unity behind its party leader. The party, including its predecessor Herut, has been led by just four people since the founding of the state in 1948: Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon and Netanyahu. It’s a tradition that contrasts with the major center-left party, Labor, which has seen 11 leadership changes in just the past 23 years.But Netanyahu has also faced numerous challenges to his iron control of party institutions, including from former Likud Central Committee chairman (and current UN ambassador) Danny Danon, who once sought to strip similar personnel and policymaking powers from the party leader and shift them to the roughly 4,000-member Central Committee, the party’s main deliberative body.Netanyahu’s long rule has also led some of Likud’s most popular leaders over the years to leave the party in frustration, including former minister Gideon Sa’ar, who has regularly criticized Netanyahu since resigning from politics in 2014, and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, one of Likud’s most popular ministers before he left the party to found his own party, winning 10 seats for his Kulanu list in the March 2015 elections.Katz and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan are currently seen as the most likely successors to Netanyahu, at least from within the party.But Katz has begun to buck against the same ceiling of Netanyahu’s efforts to quash popular opponents who might unseat him. While Netanyahu holds on to the prestigious Foreign Ministry post, saying he still hopes to entice opposition parties into his coalition by offering them the ministry, Katz has repeatedly demanded the portfolio for himself, and is widely seen in Likud as leading the current uprising in party institutions in a bid to get Netanyahu to hand him the ministry in order to quell the challenge.Among the key complaints about Netanyahu heard from party leaders past and present — including Sa’ar and Katz following the 2013 and 2015 elections, respectively — was the charge that Netanyahu’s tight control of the election campaign left other party heavyweights excluded from the electioneering limelight, and had the effect of leaving the party’s activist base and grassroots regional offices outside the campaign’s efforts.The critics found a champion in the party’s internal ombudsman, Shai Galili, who published a report on the 2015 campaign that charged that Netanyahu-appointed campaign manager Shlomo Filber, today the director general of the Netanyahu-led Communications Ministry, overspent on the campaign, incurring a deficit for the party of several million shekels.That report sparked calls in the Katz-chaired secretariat to impose tougher oversight over campaign staff and budgets once approved almost single-handedly by the party leader.
Police nab suspect in last week’s East Jerusalem attack-A-Tur resident believed to have stabbed seminary student with a ‘sharpened wooden plank’ outside grocery store-By Judah Ari Gross and Times of Israel staff August 17, 2016, 5:06 pm
A Palestinian teenager was arrested in connection with Thursday’s stabbing attack in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of A-Tur, the Shin Bet security agency announced Wednesday.The suspect has been identified by police as 19-year-old Ahmad Na’im A’shayer, a resident of A-Tur. He is also suspected of hurling firebombs and firecrackers at security services on April 15, the Shin Bet said.On August 11, the Jewish teenager was attacked at a grocery store near the Mount of Olives cemetery. His attacker approached him bare-handed, but picked up a “sharpened wooden plank” that was on the ground nearby, stabbing the teenager with it, police said.The injured teenager flagged down a vehicle and traveled to a nearby Border Police station. The officers quickly called the Magen David Adom rescue service and launched a search for the perpetrator.On Tuesday, police arrested A’shayer and have requested of the courts that he be kept in remand for at least the next eight days.The victim, who was reportedly a Jewish seminary student, was taken to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus, but has since been released.Since October, 35 Israelis and four foreign nationals have been killed in a wave of Palestinian stabbing, car-ramming, and shooting attacks. At least 214 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces in the same period, some two-thirds of them while carrying out attacks against Israelis, and the rest during clashes with troops, mostly in the West Bank, the IDF says.
Pro-Palestinian activist group denies compiling data on Jewish students at US campuses-Two US Jewish groups also reject the claim; MKs were told Students for Justice in Palestine ‘marks out’ Jewish students-By Times of Israel staff August 17, 2016, 6:42 pm
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a pro-Palestinian student advocacy group, denied that it has been compiling data on Jewish students on college campuses in North America. Two pro-Israel groups active on campus also said they had no knowledge of such behavior.Their comments came after Israel Radio reported on Tuesday that information on the alleged SJP activity was presented to members of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, which met to discuss efforts to boycott Israel by anti-Israel groups at US colleges. The radio report, which The Times of Israel subsequently reported, said the committee had vowed to work against the marking out of Jewish students.Knesset member Anat Berko (Likud), one of the MKs who initiated the session, specified in an Israel Radio interview after the committee meeting that SJP has been collecting information on where Jews live at New York University among others. Asked by the (Hebrew-language) interviewer (at approx 23:00) about the “personal marking out of Jewish students,” Berko said the committee was told “about the marking out of Jewish dorms, of rooms of Jewish students (on campus), for example at New York University and other campuses.” She cited information from Miluimnikim BaHazit (Reservists On Duty), a pro-Israel advocacy group of IDF veterans.The National Students for Justice in Palestine later told The Forward it had “never heard of such cases,” but said “all SJP chapters on campuses across the country are autonomously run.”“However, as a national organization, NSJP is firmly against all forms of bigotry, including anti-Semitism,” the group added.The Forward also said officials from the Zionist Organization of America and StandWithUs, which work to combat anti-Semitism on college campuses, knew nothing of any such activity.An aide to Berko told The Times of Israel on Wednesday that Berko did not specify that SJP was compiling “lists,” as The Times of Israel reported MKs were told, but insisted it was “collecting information on where Jewish students live,” and that there had been several incidents in which “eviction notices” were placed in dormitories where Jewish students live — not necessarily Jewish-only residences, the aide said, but residences where “there are mezuzas” and it is clear that Jews live there.The aide cited incidents at New York University and a campus in Connecticut where “eviction notices” were posted in such residences, telling the students they had days to get out, and referencing Israeli military actions against Palestinians. A report in the Israel Hayom newspaper in June quoted a Jewish student, Nadav Alkoby, at a Florida campus describing a similar incident. “SJP activists hung the signs on our dorm doors and on the Sabbath elevator during the exam period,” he said.Berko also said in the radio interview Tuesday that it had become almost impossible for speakers like herself to address students on campus in the United States without enduring protests and worse. “There is no academic freedom… no freedom of expression” on university campuses in the west in general, and the US in particular, said Berko.The head of the committee, Likud MK Avi Dichter, said Tuesday Israel “has a commitment [to protect] every Jew when they are attacked for being a Jew,” and pledged Israel would help combat campus efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state.This piece was updated on August 17, including with reported comments by National Students for Justice in Palestine.
Jerusalem rabbis: Limit grooms’ alimony vow to 1 million shekels-Rabbincal court’s quest to cap prenuptial pledges comes as another group tries to make it easier for women to get divorces-By JTA and Times of Israel staff August 17, 2016, 6:11 pm
The Jerusalem Rabbinical Court asked the country’s Chief Rabbinate to set a limit of 1 million shekels on the prenuptial agreement that obligates Jewish grooms to compensate their wives in case of a divorce.The unusual request earlier this month comes in the wake of a divorce in which a woman demanded that her ex-husband pay her NIS 555,555 (roughly $145,000) because that was the sum he pledged to pay on his ketuba — the marriage contract required by Orthodox Jewish law, the Hebrew-language NRG news website reported Monday.Her ex-husband argued he made the pledge as a testament of his love and appreciation for her, not thinking it would be legally binding. But in Israel, where rabbinical and other religious tribunals act as family courts within the framework of the judiciary, ketubas are admissible as an official contract.Many grooms pledge astronomical sums they could not possibly afford, attaching numerous zeros after the number 18, which is numerologically equivalent to the Hebrew word for life, or the 555,555 figure, which is also seen as auspicious among Sephardic Jews. The custom of reading out the ketuba to the wedding guests during the ceremony adds incentive to name high figures, which the rabbinical court defined as unrealistic.The panel of three rabbinical judges, known as dayanaim, that reviewed that specific divorce case was divided, with one judge ruling in favor of the ex-wife’s demand, while his colleagues determined the ex-husband should not have to pay the full sum. The rabbinical court, or beit din, finally awarded the woman the equivalent of NIS 120,000 ($31,600) from her ex-husband.In the Jerusalem beit din’s request to the rabbinate to set a NIS 1 million cap on ketuba pledges, the judges demonstrated that unrealistic pledges date back centuries. They quoted a senior dayan in Morocco, Rabbi Shaul Even Danan, who denounced the custom 200 years ago.“The unwanted addition to custom of the inflated ketubas, which has spread through our lands reaching the millions, has become a laughable matter. Paupers without so much as a slice of bread to their name cannot be trusted to pay even a fraction of what they commit to paying — an action which is tantamount to lying outright,” he wrote.Separately, the Tzohar Rabbinical Organization announced on Friday an intensified campaign to encourage marrying couples to sign a prenuptial agreement that is compliant with halacha, Orthodox Jewish law, and designed to prevent situations where husbands refuse to divorce their wives. The document is in addition to the ketuba.The campaign, which was announced ahead of Tu B’Av, a holiday known as the “Jewish Day of Love,” which this year will fall on Friday, comes amid an escalation in punishments given out by rabbinical courts to intransigent husbands who abuse the fact that, under Jewish law, a man must consent to divorcing his wife in order for the contract to be nullified.Women who are refused a religious divorce, known as a get in Hebrew, are referred to as agunot, meaning “chained” or “anchored” in Hebrew meaning.Agunot are not eligible to remarry under Jewish law, and any children they have with other men are in turn also ineligible to marry.The Tzohar prenuptial agreement empowers the rabbinical judges who recognize it to nullify a marriage based on the man’s signed statement in advance that he consents to give his wife a get if requested to do so. Some 1,000 couples in Israel have signed the Tzohar contract.In recent months, Israeli rabbinical courts have published the names of intransigent husbands to publicly shame them and slapped long prison terms on them, including a record five-year term earlier this month. In another precedent, the country’s highest rabbinical court recently sentenced a man to 30 days in prison for encouraging his son not to divorce the son’s disabled wife.
Cold comfort from Anjem Choudary conviction-August 17, 2016, 11:58 am-MARK GARDNER-JEWISHNEWSONLINE
Anjem Choudary, Britain’s most notorious Jihadist rabble rouser, has – at long last – been found guilty of “inviting support for a proscribed terrorist organisation”. On the surface, it looks like good news, but look deeper and it is hard to take much comfort.CST has been raising strong concerns about Choudary and his predecessors for over 25 years, warning the authorities that open incitement for Jihadist extremism and terrorism was causing not only antisemitism, but all manner of radicalism that could literally explode against the British public at any time in the future: as it is still doing, both here and across western Europe, fuelled by events in Syria, Iraq and beyond.The 1990s were especially frustrating for CST. Colleagues and I would go to meetings at Scotland Yard and warn about the fully public Jihadist incitement that was increasingly building on university campuses, and on the streets of London, Manchester, Luton and elsewhere throughout the UK. We were always politely heard, but it was hard to escape the feeling that nobody actually believed such terrorism would occur here: not even as France was suffering Algerian Jihadist terrorism, part facilitated from Finsbury Park mosque.I would emerge from those Police meetings with Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics from the song Blinded by the Light, ringing in my ears, “Scotland Yard was trying hard, sent some dude with a calling card, he said ‘do what you like but don’t do it here’ ”.Then again, perhaps that was very unfair, with occasional nods and winks hinting that the authorities (understandably) wanted to keep the danger where it was most visible. It is an old problem: crack down and you risk sending the danger properly underground, where you risk losing all sight until it is too late. CST’s perspective was that this only stored up more trouble for the future. Leave terrorist sympathisers in full view and how many people will flock to their flag, and how many others will hear the message, softening them up for future recruitment? After the 9/11 terror attacks in America, we thought things would finally change, but they didn’t really. Instead, it took another four years and the 7/7 attacks in London for that to happen. The public groups led by men like Anjem Choudary and his predecessor Omar Bakri Mohamed (now in Lebanon) underwent various changes and various banning orders. Over time, their activities became more secretive, but the sheer quantity of British Jihadis literally passing through such groups is impossible to ignore.Perhaps the reason Choudary got away with it for so long is because he was actually innocent, in the sense that he did always manage to dance on the very edge of the law (he is a solicitor by trade and obviously a very clever man). It is, however, hard to shake the suspicion that he has only now been convicted, because the danger he has posed in recent months or years, demonstrably outweighs whatever intelligence benefits were believed to be being gained by letting him stay at large. If so, this would be very worrying, because it would be a sign that the danger posed here and now by British Jihadists has never been higher.
28 And when these things begin to come to pass,(ALL THE PROPHECY SIGNS FROM THE BIBLE) then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption (RAPTURE) draweth nigh.
29 And he spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree,(ISRAEL) and all the trees;(ALL INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES)
30 When they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand.(ISRAEL LITERALLY BECAME AND INDEPENDENT COUNTRY JUST BEFORE SUMMER IN MAY 14,1948.)
JOEL 2:3,30
3 A fire devoureth (ATOMIC BOMB) before them;(RUSSIAN-ARAB-MUSLIM ARMIES AGAINST ISRAEL) and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.
30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.(ATOMIC BOMB AFFECT)
ZECHARIAH 14:12-13
12 And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet,(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB) and their eyes shall consume away in their holes,(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB) and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB)(BECAUSE NUKES HAVE BEEN USED ON ISRAELS ENEMIES)(GOD PROTECTS ISRAEL AND ALWAYS WILL)
13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour.(1/2-3 BILLION DIE IN WW3)(THIS IS AN ATOMIC BOMB EFFECT)
EZEKIEL 20:47
47 And say to the forest of the south, Hear the word of the LORD; Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall devour every green tree in thee, and every dry tree: the flaming flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall be burned therein.
ZEPHANIAH 1:18
18 Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the LORD'S wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land.
MALACHI 4:1
1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven;(FROM ATOMIC BOMBS) and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
And here are the bounderies of the land that Israel will inherit either through war or peace or God in the future. God says its Israels land and only Israels land. They will have every inch God promised them of this land in the future.
Egypt east of the Nile River, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, The southern part of Turkey and the Western Half of Iraq west of the Euphrates. Gen 13:14-15, Psm 105:9,11, Gen 15:18, Exe 23:31, Num 34:1-12, Josh 1:4.ALL THIS LAND ISRAEL WILL DEFINATELY OWN IN THE FUTURE, ITS ISRAELS NOT ISHMAELS LAND.12 TRIBES INHERIT LAND IN THE FUTURE
Netanyahu moves to head off weakening of his Likud powers-Party’s secretariat, chaired by Minister Yisrael Katz, votes to impose oversight over PM’s campaign appointments and budget-By Times of Israel staff August 17, 2016, 2:51 pm
A sudden battle between two Likud heavyweights is raising speculation over a possible leadership contest in the ruling party in the next election cycle.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz to a meeting Wednesday, a day after Katz pushed through the party’s secretariat a series of decisions that weakened the position of the party chairmanship, held by Netanyahu.The meeting ended with a partial retreat by Katz, who agreed to suspend Tuesday’s decisions until the next secretariat meeting on Sunday, where members will vote to form a two-person committee consisting of Coalition Chairman MK David Bitan and attorney David Shomron to consider the new measures.At a secretariat meeting in the Maccabiyah Village in Ramat Gan Tuesday, some 100 members of the secretariat, among them cabinet ministers and MKs considered close to Netanyahu, voted to impose term limits on many of Likud’s officials — most of whom are appointed either directly or indirectly by the party leader — as well as to require that all outside advisers hired by the party be approved by the secretariat. Those include campaign managers traditionally brought in ahead of elections by Netanyahu.They also voted to appoint a special legal adviser for the secretariat who would operate separately from the party’s legal adviser, considered a confidant of Netanyahu.These procedural changes amount to placing dramatic new limits on Netanyahu’s ability to fill the key positions through which he runs the party’s messaging and policy.The Likud secretariat is the internal organ responsible for party operations, including staff, budget, regional offices and election campaign efforts. Katz is its chairman.Netanyahu’s allies in the party charged Katz with backhanded maneuvering on Tuesday and Wednesday, and called for Netanyahu to fire him from his two ministerial positions, transportation and intelligence. They claim a Katz adviser told the party’s internal court last week that the secretariat would delay the votes on the new measures.In WhatsApp groups and other online forums of Likud activists, Katz was accused of “treason” by Netanyahu supporters, who claimed he was attempting to undermine a Likud leader who had carried the party to three consecutive election victories.But Katz alone could not have passed those decisions. While he appeared to retreat somewhat Wednesday following the meeting with Netanyahu at the latter’s office in Jerusalem, Netanyahu will have to contend with the show of force Katz was able to muster at the secretariat meeting.According to a vote tally by the Walla news site, the secretariat members voting for the de facto weakening of Netanyahu’s powers included key ministers and MKs who are usually considered close to Netanyahu: Environmental Protection Minister Ze’ev Elkin, who also heads the party’s bureau, its chief policy-setting body; Bitan, the coalition chairman; Welfare Minister Haim Katz, who chairs the Central Committee; MKs Sharren Haskel and Nava Boker; and deputy ministers Jacky Levy and Ayoub Kara.Cabinet minister Tzachi Hanegbi was the lone political leader on the secretariat to oppose the move.Likud has a long tradition of unity behind its party leader. The party, including its predecessor Herut, has been led by just four people since the founding of the state in 1948: Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon and Netanyahu. It’s a tradition that contrasts with the major center-left party, Labor, which has seen 11 leadership changes in just the past 23 years.But Netanyahu has also faced numerous challenges to his iron control of party institutions, including from former Likud Central Committee chairman (and current UN ambassador) Danny Danon, who once sought to strip similar personnel and policymaking powers from the party leader and shift them to the roughly 4,000-member Central Committee, the party’s main deliberative body.Netanyahu’s long rule has also led some of Likud’s most popular leaders over the years to leave the party in frustration, including former minister Gideon Sa’ar, who has regularly criticized Netanyahu since resigning from politics in 2014, and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, one of Likud’s most popular ministers before he left the party to found his own party, winning 10 seats for his Kulanu list in the March 2015 elections.Katz and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan are currently seen as the most likely successors to Netanyahu, at least from within the party.But Katz has begun to buck against the same ceiling of Netanyahu’s efforts to quash popular opponents who might unseat him. While Netanyahu holds on to the prestigious Foreign Ministry post, saying he still hopes to entice opposition parties into his coalition by offering them the ministry, Katz has repeatedly demanded the portfolio for himself, and is widely seen in Likud as leading the current uprising in party institutions in a bid to get Netanyahu to hand him the ministry in order to quell the challenge.Among the key complaints about Netanyahu heard from party leaders past and present — including Sa’ar and Katz following the 2013 and 2015 elections, respectively — was the charge that Netanyahu’s tight control of the election campaign left other party heavyweights excluded from the electioneering limelight, and had the effect of leaving the party’s activist base and grassroots regional offices outside the campaign’s efforts.The critics found a champion in the party’s internal ombudsman, Shai Galili, who published a report on the 2015 campaign that charged that Netanyahu-appointed campaign manager Shlomo Filber, today the director general of the Netanyahu-led Communications Ministry, overspent on the campaign, incurring a deficit for the party of several million shekels.That report sparked calls in the Katz-chaired secretariat to impose tougher oversight over campaign staff and budgets once approved almost single-handedly by the party leader.
Police nab suspect in last week’s East Jerusalem attack-A-Tur resident believed to have stabbed seminary student with a ‘sharpened wooden plank’ outside grocery store-By Judah Ari Gross and Times of Israel staff August 17, 2016, 5:06 pm
A Palestinian teenager was arrested in connection with Thursday’s stabbing attack in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of A-Tur, the Shin Bet security agency announced Wednesday.The suspect has been identified by police as 19-year-old Ahmad Na’im A’shayer, a resident of A-Tur. He is also suspected of hurling firebombs and firecrackers at security services on April 15, the Shin Bet said.On August 11, the Jewish teenager was attacked at a grocery store near the Mount of Olives cemetery. His attacker approached him bare-handed, but picked up a “sharpened wooden plank” that was on the ground nearby, stabbing the teenager with it, police said.The injured teenager flagged down a vehicle and traveled to a nearby Border Police station. The officers quickly called the Magen David Adom rescue service and launched a search for the perpetrator.On Tuesday, police arrested A’shayer and have requested of the courts that he be kept in remand for at least the next eight days.The victim, who was reportedly a Jewish seminary student, was taken to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus, but has since been released.Since October, 35 Israelis and four foreign nationals have been killed in a wave of Palestinian stabbing, car-ramming, and shooting attacks. At least 214 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces in the same period, some two-thirds of them while carrying out attacks against Israelis, and the rest during clashes with troops, mostly in the West Bank, the IDF says.
Pro-Palestinian activist group denies compiling data on Jewish students at US campuses-Two US Jewish groups also reject the claim; MKs were told Students for Justice in Palestine ‘marks out’ Jewish students-By Times of Israel staff August 17, 2016, 6:42 pm
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a pro-Palestinian student advocacy group, denied that it has been compiling data on Jewish students on college campuses in North America. Two pro-Israel groups active on campus also said they had no knowledge of such behavior.Their comments came after Israel Radio reported on Tuesday that information on the alleged SJP activity was presented to members of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, which met to discuss efforts to boycott Israel by anti-Israel groups at US colleges. The radio report, which The Times of Israel subsequently reported, said the committee had vowed to work against the marking out of Jewish students.Knesset member Anat Berko (Likud), one of the MKs who initiated the session, specified in an Israel Radio interview after the committee meeting that SJP has been collecting information on where Jews live at New York University among others. Asked by the (Hebrew-language) interviewer (at approx 23:00) about the “personal marking out of Jewish students,” Berko said the committee was told “about the marking out of Jewish dorms, of rooms of Jewish students (on campus), for example at New York University and other campuses.” She cited information from Miluimnikim BaHazit (Reservists On Duty), a pro-Israel advocacy group of IDF veterans.The National Students for Justice in Palestine later told The Forward it had “never heard of such cases,” but said “all SJP chapters on campuses across the country are autonomously run.”“However, as a national organization, NSJP is firmly against all forms of bigotry, including anti-Semitism,” the group added.The Forward also said officials from the Zionist Organization of America and StandWithUs, which work to combat anti-Semitism on college campuses, knew nothing of any such activity.An aide to Berko told The Times of Israel on Wednesday that Berko did not specify that SJP was compiling “lists,” as The Times of Israel reported MKs were told, but insisted it was “collecting information on where Jewish students live,” and that there had been several incidents in which “eviction notices” were placed in dormitories where Jewish students live — not necessarily Jewish-only residences, the aide said, but residences where “there are mezuzas” and it is clear that Jews live there.The aide cited incidents at New York University and a campus in Connecticut where “eviction notices” were posted in such residences, telling the students they had days to get out, and referencing Israeli military actions against Palestinians. A report in the Israel Hayom newspaper in June quoted a Jewish student, Nadav Alkoby, at a Florida campus describing a similar incident. “SJP activists hung the signs on our dorm doors and on the Sabbath elevator during the exam period,” he said.Berko also said in the radio interview Tuesday that it had become almost impossible for speakers like herself to address students on campus in the United States without enduring protests and worse. “There is no academic freedom… no freedom of expression” on university campuses in the west in general, and the US in particular, said Berko.The head of the committee, Likud MK Avi Dichter, said Tuesday Israel “has a commitment [to protect] every Jew when they are attacked for being a Jew,” and pledged Israel would help combat campus efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state.This piece was updated on August 17, including with reported comments by National Students for Justice in Palestine.
Jerusalem rabbis: Limit grooms’ alimony vow to 1 million shekels-Rabbincal court’s quest to cap prenuptial pledges comes as another group tries to make it easier for women to get divorces-By JTA and Times of Israel staff August 17, 2016, 6:11 pm
The Jerusalem Rabbinical Court asked the country’s Chief Rabbinate to set a limit of 1 million shekels on the prenuptial agreement that obligates Jewish grooms to compensate their wives in case of a divorce.The unusual request earlier this month comes in the wake of a divorce in which a woman demanded that her ex-husband pay her NIS 555,555 (roughly $145,000) because that was the sum he pledged to pay on his ketuba — the marriage contract required by Orthodox Jewish law, the Hebrew-language NRG news website reported Monday.Her ex-husband argued he made the pledge as a testament of his love and appreciation for her, not thinking it would be legally binding. But in Israel, where rabbinical and other religious tribunals act as family courts within the framework of the judiciary, ketubas are admissible as an official contract.Many grooms pledge astronomical sums they could not possibly afford, attaching numerous zeros after the number 18, which is numerologically equivalent to the Hebrew word for life, or the 555,555 figure, which is also seen as auspicious among Sephardic Jews. The custom of reading out the ketuba to the wedding guests during the ceremony adds incentive to name high figures, which the rabbinical court defined as unrealistic.The panel of three rabbinical judges, known as dayanaim, that reviewed that specific divorce case was divided, with one judge ruling in favor of the ex-wife’s demand, while his colleagues determined the ex-husband should not have to pay the full sum. The rabbinical court, or beit din, finally awarded the woman the equivalent of NIS 120,000 ($31,600) from her ex-husband.In the Jerusalem beit din’s request to the rabbinate to set a NIS 1 million cap on ketuba pledges, the judges demonstrated that unrealistic pledges date back centuries. They quoted a senior dayan in Morocco, Rabbi Shaul Even Danan, who denounced the custom 200 years ago.“The unwanted addition to custom of the inflated ketubas, which has spread through our lands reaching the millions, has become a laughable matter. Paupers without so much as a slice of bread to their name cannot be trusted to pay even a fraction of what they commit to paying — an action which is tantamount to lying outright,” he wrote.Separately, the Tzohar Rabbinical Organization announced on Friday an intensified campaign to encourage marrying couples to sign a prenuptial agreement that is compliant with halacha, Orthodox Jewish law, and designed to prevent situations where husbands refuse to divorce their wives. The document is in addition to the ketuba.The campaign, which was announced ahead of Tu B’Av, a holiday known as the “Jewish Day of Love,” which this year will fall on Friday, comes amid an escalation in punishments given out by rabbinical courts to intransigent husbands who abuse the fact that, under Jewish law, a man must consent to divorcing his wife in order for the contract to be nullified.Women who are refused a religious divorce, known as a get in Hebrew, are referred to as agunot, meaning “chained” or “anchored” in Hebrew meaning.Agunot are not eligible to remarry under Jewish law, and any children they have with other men are in turn also ineligible to marry.The Tzohar prenuptial agreement empowers the rabbinical judges who recognize it to nullify a marriage based on the man’s signed statement in advance that he consents to give his wife a get if requested to do so. Some 1,000 couples in Israel have signed the Tzohar contract.In recent months, Israeli rabbinical courts have published the names of intransigent husbands to publicly shame them and slapped long prison terms on them, including a record five-year term earlier this month. In another precedent, the country’s highest rabbinical court recently sentenced a man to 30 days in prison for encouraging his son not to divorce the son’s disabled wife.
Cold comfort from Anjem Choudary conviction-August 17, 2016, 11:58 am-MARK GARDNER-JEWISHNEWSONLINE
Anjem Choudary, Britain’s most notorious Jihadist rabble rouser, has – at long last – been found guilty of “inviting support for a proscribed terrorist organisation”. On the surface, it looks like good news, but look deeper and it is hard to take much comfort.CST has been raising strong concerns about Choudary and his predecessors for over 25 years, warning the authorities that open incitement for Jihadist extremism and terrorism was causing not only antisemitism, but all manner of radicalism that could literally explode against the British public at any time in the future: as it is still doing, both here and across western Europe, fuelled by events in Syria, Iraq and beyond.The 1990s were especially frustrating for CST. Colleagues and I would go to meetings at Scotland Yard and warn about the fully public Jihadist incitement that was increasingly building on university campuses, and on the streets of London, Manchester, Luton and elsewhere throughout the UK. We were always politely heard, but it was hard to escape the feeling that nobody actually believed such terrorism would occur here: not even as France was suffering Algerian Jihadist terrorism, part facilitated from Finsbury Park mosque.I would emerge from those Police meetings with Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics from the song Blinded by the Light, ringing in my ears, “Scotland Yard was trying hard, sent some dude with a calling card, he said ‘do what you like but don’t do it here’ ”.Then again, perhaps that was very unfair, with occasional nods and winks hinting that the authorities (understandably) wanted to keep the danger where it was most visible. It is an old problem: crack down and you risk sending the danger properly underground, where you risk losing all sight until it is too late. CST’s perspective was that this only stored up more trouble for the future. Leave terrorist sympathisers in full view and how many people will flock to their flag, and how many others will hear the message, softening them up for future recruitment? After the 9/11 terror attacks in America, we thought things would finally change, but they didn’t really. Instead, it took another four years and the 7/7 attacks in London for that to happen. The public groups led by men like Anjem Choudary and his predecessor Omar Bakri Mohamed (now in Lebanon) underwent various changes and various banning orders. Over time, their activities became more secretive, but the sheer quantity of British Jihadis literally passing through such groups is impossible to ignore.Perhaps the reason Choudary got away with it for so long is because he was actually innocent, in the sense that he did always manage to dance on the very edge of the law (he is a solicitor by trade and obviously a very clever man). It is, however, hard to shake the suspicion that he has only now been convicted, because the danger he has posed in recent months or years, demonstrably outweighs whatever intelligence benefits were believed to be being gained by letting him stay at large. If so, this would be very worrying, because it would be a sign that the danger posed here and now by British Jihadists has never been higher.
