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
Daughter of US Ambassador David Friedman makes aliyah-Talia Friedman, a nurse in her 20s, arrives in Tel Aviv on Tuesday morning; will also keep her American citizenship-By Raphael Ahren August 14, 2017, 11:52 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
The daughter of US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman is immigrating to Israel this week, The Times of Israel has learned.Talia Friedman, a nurse in her 20s, boarded an aliyah flight in New York on Monday and is expected to land in Tel Aviv early on Tuesday, the ambassador said.“As a father, I celebrate my daughter Talia’s realization of a life long dream to become part of the State of Israel,” Ambassador Friedman told The Times of Israel on Monday evening. “Our entire family is bursting with pride at Talia’s vision and determination to help strengthen Medinat Yisrael [the State of Israel] — one of America’s strongest and most important allies.She will be one of 233 new immigrants from North America arriving on a plane chartered by Nefesh B’Nefesh, a group promoting immigration to Israel. The newcomers will be welcomed with a ceremony at Ben Gurion Airport attended by senior officials from the Jewish Agency and the Immigration Ministry, as well as MP Yair Lapid.“Talia will retain her US citizenship and become part a vibrant group of American Israelis who do much to support both countries. We wish her, and her fellow olim (immigrants), tremendous success and inspiration in their respective journey,” the envoy said.Welcome to US Ambassador to #Israel David Friedman. First stop- a prayer at the #WesternWall pic.twitter.com/FTkzt2uQmA— USEmbassyTelAviv (@usembassyta) May 15, 2017-On March 15, Talia was the only of Friedman’s five children to accompany him when arrived in Israel and immediately headed to the Western Wall, and when he handed his letter of credence to President Reuven Rivlin a day later.It was not immediately clear what Talia’s plans were.Friedman is not the only member of US President Donald Trump’s team to have children moving to Israel this month. Jason Greenblatt, his special representative for international negotiations on Sunday tweeted that his triplets are headed to the Jewish state for a gap year program of Jewish studies.Sigh :( g'bye dinner 4 our triplets leaving next week 4 Israel gap year.Exciting but emotional #1/2EmptyNestSyndrome pic.twitter.com/iXrjb0WMXN— Jason D. Greenblatt (@JasonDovEsq) August 14, 2017-Friedman, a former Trump lawyer, already had deep ties to Israel. He was a donor, actively involved in supporting the West Bank Settlement of Beit El, and a homeowner in Jerusalem.He was also considered a contentious pick for the job due to comments he had made in the past — and for which he later apologized — comparing supporters of a left-wing Jewish group to “Jewish kapos” in the Holocaust, and for his active involvement in promoting settlements in the West Bank.His confirmation in the Senate by a 52-46 margin was the most closely contested vote ever on an envoy to Israel.
Yair Netanyahu says leftists more dangerous than neo-Nazis-Echoing Trump, PM’s son claims ‘thugs of Antifa and Black Lives Matter are getting stronger’ while Nazis are a thing of the past-By Times of Israel staff and AFP August 16, 2017, 1:49 pm
The son of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday said American left-wing groups are more dangerous than neo-Nazis.Weighing in on the weekend’s violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, during a far-right march, and US President Donald Trump’s controversial statements that “both sides were to blame” for the deadly incident, Yair Netanyahu said he was far more concerned by leftist organizations that have recently come into public focus.“To put things in perspective,” Netanyahu wrote on Facebook, “I’m a Jew, I’m an Israeli, the neo nazis scums [sic] in Virginia hate me and my country. But they belong to the past. Their breed is dying out.“However the thugs of Antifa and [Black Lives Matter] who hate my country (and America too in my view) just as much are getting stronger and stronger and becoming super dominant in American universities and public life.”The Israeli premier himself tweeted Tuesday that he was “outraged by expressions of anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism and racism. Everyone should oppose this hatred,” after he was criticized for staying silent on Charlottesville.In a response Wednesday afternoon to Yair Netanyahu’s comments, sources close to the prime minister said, “Yair is an adult and his views are his alone”Trump’s stance was also supported by Likud MK Oren Hazan, who said Tuesday that the president “is right. Violence and extremism on any side is forbidden and demands condemnation. That doesn’t matter to the bleeding hearts on the left and in the media. After all, they believe that only the right is extremist and violent.”Other Israeli politicians — from left and right — have been far more critical of Trump’s position, some more directly than others.Education Minister Naftali Bennett has called on US leaders to denounce the rally’s “displays of anti-Semitism.” Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked of Bennett’s Jewish Home party has urged prosecution of neo-Nazi activists.Yesh Atid chair MK Yair Lapid and Zionist Union number two MK Tzipi Livni explicitly criticized Trump’s equivalence.“There aren’t two sides,” Lapid said in a Wednesday statement. “When Neo-Nazis march in Charlottesville and scream slogans against Jews and in support of white supremacy, the condemnation has to be unambiguous. They represent hate and evil. Anyone who believes in the human spirit must stand against them without fear.”Livni said “When it comes to racism, anti-Semitism and Nazism, there are never two equal sides. There’s good and there’s evil. Period.”Trump sparked a political firestorm Tuesday when he doubled down on his initial response to the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville that ended in bloodshed, saying there was “blame on both sides.”The Republican president — who the previous day solemnly denounced racism and singled out the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis as “criminals and thugs” — also hit out at what he called the “alt-left” over the weekend melee.Trump has faced days of criticism from across the political spectrum over his reaction to Saturday’s unrest in the Virginia college town, where a rally by neo-Nazis and white supremacists over the removal of a Confederate statue erupted in clashes with counter-demonstrators.The violent fracas ended in bloodshed when a 20-year-old suspected Nazi sympathizer, James Fields, plowed his car into a crowd of anti-racism protesters, leaving one woman dead and 19 people injured.In a rowdy exchange with journalists at Trump Tower in New York, Trump made clear on Tuesday that he was fed up with continued questioning about the issue.“I think there is blame on both sides,” Trump said.As he spoke, his new White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, a former Marine general, appeared displeased during the president’s long tirade, standing rigidly.“You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now,” Trump continued. “What about the alt-left that came charging… at the, as you say, the alt-right? Do they have any semblance of guilt?… There are two sides to a story.”“What about the fact they came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do. As far as I am concerned, that was a horrible, horrible day,” Trump said.Trump’s comments were immediately welcomed by David Duke, a former “grand wizard” of the Ku Klux Klan and a key figure at Saturday’s rally.“Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists,” Duke tweeted.But on the political left, the president’s words were met with indignation.“Charlottesville violence was fueled by one side: white supremacists spreading racism, intolerance & intimidation. Those are the facts,” said Tim Kaine, a former Democratic vice presidential candidate and senator from Virginia.The state’s other Democratic senator, Mark Warner, tweeted: “No words.”Trump’s fellow Republicans also didn’t mince words.“We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive,” Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan wrote on Twitter.“This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity.”When asked why he waited until Monday to explicitly condemn hate groups present in Charlottesville, Trump said he wanted to be careful not to make a “quick statement” on Saturday without all the facts.“I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct,” Trump insisted.Trump called Fields, who has been charged with second-degree murder, a “disgrace to himself, his family and this country.”But he also said that while there were troublemakers at the rally, there were also many people there “to innocently protest and very legally protest” the removal of a “very important statue” of Confederate general Robert E Lee.“I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after?” he said angrily, referring to the fact they owned slaves.“Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? … You’re changing history. You’re changing culture.”
Underground barrier credited with growth in Israeli towns near Gaza-With attack tunnel threat being dealt with, communities outside the Strip are seeing a population surge, official says-By Agencies and Times of Israel staff August 16, 2017, 3:57 pm
KIBBUTZ NIRIM — Israeli communities in the vicinity of the Gaza Strip are enjoying a surge in growth thanks to the ongoing construction of an underground barrier along the border, with families now feeling safer to live in the area, a local council head said.Israel is pressing ahead with construction of the barrier, in an ambitious project meant to halt the threat of attack tunnels built by Hamas.Gadi Yarkoni, head of the local Eshkol regional council, said the project is a key reason that the area is now attracting young families, after a devastating war with Hamas three years ago.“I believe building the barrier is the right thing to do, to build in order to stop and to give an answer to the issue of the tunnels, and to the issue of the communities in the area,” he said. “The surge in development in this area is unbelievable.”Cranes and work crews are digging holes and installing sensors and other equipment for the structure, which is expected to stretch along the entire 60-kilometer (40-mile) border when it is complete.During the 2014 war, Hamas terrorists on several occasions made their way into Israel through a tunnel network dug below the border. Although they did not manage to reach civilian areas, the infiltrations terrified the local population. Israel destroyed 32 tunnels during that conflict, and since then has made neutralizing the tunnel threat a top priority.Israeli defense officials have said little about the new barrier project or how much of it has been completed. At one construction zone, a sign said “military zone — no passage,” and Associated Press reporters could not approach as cranes and bulldozers were at work.Last week, Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir, head of the army’s Southern Command, which is responsible for Gaza, told reporters the project would take about two years to complete.He said the barrier would stretch several meters above and below ground and be equipped with sophisticated sensors. It’s being built entirely on the Israeli side of the border, to avoid friction with Hamas.Atai Shelach, a retired colonel and former commander of the Israeli military’s “Yahalom” unit in charge of dismantling the terror tunnels, said the new barrier would be a game-changer, but would not solve the problem on its own.“It is part of a cocktail, or a combination of many other solutions,” he said. Neutralizing the tunnel threat will also require good intelligence and operational decisions by the army, he said. Otherwise, terrorists will eventually figure out how to get through.“That barrier can prevent war,” he said, because it will be harder for Hamas and other terror groups to “create surprises” that frighten Israeli residents.Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since the Islamist terror group seized control of Gaza from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007.While Hamas has largely respected a ceasefire that ended the last round of fighting in 2014, it is believed to be building new tunnels and re-arming in preparation for future conflict.Hamas seeks Israel’s destruction.“All the measures by the occupation on the border will not provide security for them,” said Hazem Qasem, a spokesman for the group. “As long as they occupy the Palestinian land and put a siege on our people in the Gaza Strip, the resistance will continue to possess all the means of force that enable it to defend the people against Israeli aggression,” he said.Israeli residents expressed mixed feelings about the new structure.Miriam Diener, a resident of Kibbutz Nirim, a communal farm near the Gaza border, said Israel must seek peace with its neighbors, and not just build new barriers.“No fence will solve the problems,” she said. “Only peace will bring the possibility of a good economy, good education, good hospitals, good health. That is what is needed.”But Shimon Avraham, another kibbutz resident, said the project will put people at ease after the terrifying experience of tunnel attacks.“Now it makes things feel calmer,” he said.
Computers over combat-Press highlights a decrease in the number of Israelis willing to serve in combat roles during their mandatory IDF service-By Tamar Pileggi August 16, 2017, 3:26 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
Apparently largely unfazed by US President Donald Trump’s contentious defense of white supremacist protesters in Virginia over the weekend, Israel’s print media on Wednesday is primarily concerned with a “worrying” new trend that has emerged among IDF recruits in recent years.Both the Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel Hayom dailies dedicate their front pages to a decrease in the number of young Israelis willing to serve in combat roles during their mandatory military service.Yedioth calls the nearly 2 percent drop in recruits seeking to enlist in combat units in 2017 a “worrying new trend” that is evidence of a larger shift in Israeli society.According to the paper, the decreased interest in combat units in recent years is primarily due to the “erosion of the warrior ethos” in Israel. Young cadets are increasingly seeking to enlist in technology, cyber defense units or other roles that allow them to serve closer to home and that provide them hands-on training in a marketable skill.In a column, Yedioth’s military correspondent Yossi Yehoshua warns the new data points to a growing rift between combat and noncombat soldiers.“Behind the trend is a rift between the technology units and combat soldiers that does not just affect their army service, but their reserve duty as well… When combat soldiers are released from active duty, they are faced with 20-plus years of reserve duty service, while their counterparts who serve in technology units only have to serve a few years if any.”He calls on the IDF to significantly raise the minimum salary of combat soldiers from the current NIS 1,620, ($448; non-combat soldiers currently receive NIS 1,200 or $331) in an effort to reverse the trend.Israel Hayom also leads its Wednesday paper with the recently released data from the IDF’s Manpower Directorate, though its coverage more heavily focuses on what it claims is the IDF’s “worried response.”Analyst Yoav Limor says the “‘migration’ in motivation that has been going on for several years necessitates a root canal and not a filling.”“This is more than just a military problem.. but a nationwide issue that requires a national response,” Limor writes. “The IDF along with the Education Ministry needs to examine whether in 2017 the ‘I’ trumps ‘us,’ and whether this is a specific problem, or a broader problem in Israeli society that is steadily spilling over into the IDF.”In contrast to Yedioth and Israel Hayom, Haaretz makes no mention of the latest data released by the IDF.Instead, the left-wing daily leads its front page with a report on the increased numbers of Syrian casualties caused by US-led coalition forces in recent months.Overall, the rate of killing in Syria has slowed in recent months, and as a result “the world is losing interest” in the bloody civil war, Zvi Bar’el reports.“The law of large numbers is at work when it comes to media coverage,” Bar’el writes. “They may report a few dead a day even when in reality there are dozens, as they get swallowed up in the huge total.”In its opinion pages, the daily continues its criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even though recent days saw no developments in the ongoing corruption investigations against him.In an op-ed, Bar’el slams Netanyahu’s recent solidarity rally as evidence of the prime minister’s “chronic and pathological panic” typically displayed by dictators and authoritarian leaders.“It’s a sickness that comes with the role and nurtures in the leader a fear of democratic processes,” Bar’el charges.Meanwhile, Haaretz’s Chemi Shalev criticizes Netanyahu’s “pathetic” rally in Tel Aviv last week as “grotesque and disturbing.”Shalev calls Netanyahu’s tendency to play the victim and to link his increasing isolation to hostile media coverage rather than his own shortcomings as a leader an “Israeli tragedy” that will eventually push Netanyahu to his “sad and sorry end.”
His father and two brothers were Israeli cops; Raed took a very different path-The rise of Raed Salah, Israel’s Islamist leader who wants Jerusalem at the heart of a caliphate-The recently rearrested preacher has built a career ‘defending’ Al-Aqsa against Israel’s purported planned takeover, building vast support among Arab Israelis-By Dov Lieber August 16, 2017, 6:53 am-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
In 2001, Sheikh Raed Salah did something almost unheard of in the Arab world: He voluntarily relinquished power.Since 1989, he had served as mayor of Israel’s second-largest Arab city, Umm al-Fahm. He and his organization — the now-outlawed Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement — had transformed the city from a communist powerhouse into the center of Islamist life in Israel.But, he said, it was time for him to step away from politics and concentrate his energies on one particular goal — the defense of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem from an ostensible Israeli state plan to destroy it.On Tuesday morning, Salah was taken into custody by police on suspicion of incitement. Jewish Israeli politicians from the left and right celebrated the move, while Arab Israelis opposed it. If he is imprisoned, it will be his fourth stint in Israeli jail, his third for incitement charges.In 2015, his movement was outlawed over what Israel said was “a mendacious campaign of incitement under the heading ‘Al-Aqsa is in danger.’”Yet, since 2015, Salah has been gaining in popularity among Arab Israelis, according to one expert — and the more the security services are seen as persecuting him, the more he is perceived as a martyr sacrificing his freedom for Muslims’ most potent national-religious symbol between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.And outlawed or not, his movement continues to run nearly all of its activities in broad daylight, just under different names, the expert said.That the Al-Aqsa Mosque, located on the Temple Mount, needs defending at all is denied by Israel. Rather than planning to destroy or take control of the mosque, Jerusalem says it is vigorously defending the status quo at the site, which bars anyone not Muslim from praying there — including Jews, though it is their holiest place in the world. In 1967, Israel conquered the mount, only to immediately cede it back to Jordanian religious control in order to avoid a larger conflagration with the Muslim world.Yet in recent years, the idea that Al-Aqsa needs defending has been the stated reason for numerous terror attacks against Israelis, and it brought tens of thousands of Palestinians into the streets in July in order to protest metal detectors and cameras placed at entrances to the Temple Mount. For most Israelis, the new security measures were a logical response to a shooting attack by three Arab Israelis on July 14, in which the gunmen used weapons they had smuggled into the sacred compound to kill two policemen on duty just outside.The idea that “Al-Aqsa is in danger” is not new — it dates back to the 1920s, and continues to be propagated by all the major Palestinian political players including Hamas and Fatah. But experts interviewed by The Times of Israel said Salah has done more to spread and ostensibly legitimize the idea than any other person in history.Salah’s writings and speeches have spread to Muslim houses of study and prayer across the world, including in non-Muslim countries like Australia and Thailand. He is known worldwide as “Sheikh Al-Aqsa.”Outside the realm of politics, he has managed to foster the image of a humble public servant. He is seen as a pure-hearted and generous person with clean hands, unspoiled by politics, according to experts. Those who know him describe him as a man of considerable charisma, a natural-born leader. At protests, he can be seen standing quietly with folded arms, silently observing the events. But in front of the pulpit, he transforms into a fiery speaker.“I remember that he always had something special about him. A quiet leadership quality. He wasn’t someone that took leadership, but rather leadership came to him,” said Sa’id Abu Sharka, a cousin of Salah’s, in a 2012 documentary about the preacher.Hashem Abd al-Rahman, a former mayor of Umm al-Fahm who is close to Salah, said of the preacher in the same documentary, “If you sit with him for an hour or two, he doesn’t speak if there is no reason.”Salah dresses in common preacher’s garb, and in the winter, always wears the same worn-out gry coat.Despite the fact that he is seen as one of the greatest threats to Israel’s security, and is the leader of an outlawed Islamist movement, he lives off a meager government pension in a small home in Umm al-Fahm.-A brief history of Salah and his movement-Salah was born in 1958 in the town. His father was an Israeli police officer, and his two brothers also followed in their father’s footsteps. Salah, a father to eight children, took a different path.From 1977 to 1980 he studied Islamic law at Hebron University. Though his native Umm al-Fahm was a strong communist stronghold — like much of Arab-Israeli society at the time — he would soon join the nascent Islamic Movement, a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot akin to Hamas.After an initial period of violence, the Islamic Movement embraced a nonviolent activist approach throughout the 1980s, filling the institutional void left by the state with schools, health clinics, mosques and charities. By 1989, Salah was one of five mayoral candidates from the movement to win elections.The rise of Hamas in the late 1980s and the Oslo Peace Accords of the 1990s led to a split in the Islamic Movement.Salah, according to Israel, has close relations with Hamas. Indeed, in 2003 he was imprisoned for two years on charges of funneling millions of dollars to the Gaza-based terror group. He was also charged for being in contact with Nabil Mahzomah, an Arab Israeli accused of being an Iranian agent, who was living in Lebanon at the time.Salah opposed the peace talks that would eventually lead to the creation of the Palestinian Authority, while the Islamic Movement’s founder, Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish, remained committed to a political process until his death earlier this year.The official split had occurred in 1996, when the Islamic Movement ran in national elections, a move Salah deemed irreconcilable with Islamic law because it meant participating in the secular rule of law, according to a Brookings Institute report.Salah’s movement split off and became known as the Northern Islamic Movement. And almost immediately he began harnessing the incendiary power of the Al-Aqsa Mosque to rally support for his movement.The making of the ‘Al-Aqsa is in danger’ mantra-Salah’s Northern Islamic Movement held its first signature “Al-Aqsa is in danger” rally in 1996.It was attended by thousands in Umm al-Fahm. Only a year later, deadly riots would break out when the Palestinians accused Israel of trying to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound (Temple Mount) after a second exit was opened from the Western Wall Tunnels into the Old City’s Christian Quarter. Twenty-five soldiers and almost 100 Palestinians were killed. Immediately after the riots subsided, Salah hosted his second “Al-Aqsa is in danger” rally.Salah would continue to hold these rallies year after year, organized around the idea that Israel intended to destroy Islam’s third holiest site, at times drawing up to 70,000 attendees, until his movement was outlawed in 2015.With the issue of Al-Aqsa, Salah found “a vacuum and moved in. It was an issue no other Islamic group was dealing with,” said Professor Yitzhak Reiter, an expert on political conflict at sacred spaces, especially the Temple Mount, and the Israeli Islamist movement.Dr. Nohad ‘Ali, a sociologist at the Western Galilee College, head of the “Arab-Jewish-State” project at the Technion’s Samuel Neaman institute and a specialist on the Islamist movement in Israel, said Salah’s success stems from the fact that he managed to turn Al-Aqsa into “both a national and religious symbol.”From 1996 to 1998, Salah and his movement played a leading role in establishing two new mosques on the Temple Mount: one in the underground space known as Solomon’s Stables, in the southeastern corner of the mount, and the other in the space under the Al-Aqsa Mosque (or “ancient Al-Aqsa”).Salah mobilized the Arab Israeli community for the construction projects. Volunteers carried out the construction with materials that were donated, and the money for the project was raised through donations.“Everyone identified these mosques with Salah. He became a hero,” said Reiter, who is a professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Ashkelon Academic College and a researcher at the Jerusalem institute for policy and research.Salah was seen as preventing the establishment of a Jewish synagogue in those large empty spaces, which now host thousands of Muslims worshipers weekly.Salah at one point also tried to bring water from the holy Well of Zamzam in Mecca — thought by some to have special healing powers — to the cisterns of Al-Aqsa. This would have enhanced Al-Aqsa’s importance as a pilgrimage site, and Salah’s own status within the Muslim world.At the time he was building these mosques on the Temple Mount, Salah had his own office in the compound.Waqf officials told Reiter that they were powerless to stop Salah’s construction plans.In his speeches, Salah has professed his long-term hope that one day Jerusalem, with Al-Aqsa at its center, can be the heart of a future Islamic caliphate.The Jewish state, just like the Persians, the Romans, the Crusaders and the British, will be “vomited out” from the land, Salah has said.-The underground outlaws work in daylight-In 2015, Israel’s internal Shin Bet security agency recommended against outlawing the Northern Islamic movement. The Shin Bet was afraid that rather than the Islamist group, rather than being defanged, would simply move underground and become harder to track. And that is precisely what happened.“The majority of the movement’s activities continue to function,” stressed ‘Ali. “It’s still felt in the Arab streets daily,” he added.For every institution of the Islamic Movement that was banned, said ‘Ali, it has an alternative institution that continues to carry out the same functions. So for example, the monthly bulletin of the Islamic movement was closed, so another was opened in a different name. ‘Ali said the state knew full well this would occur, and a “quiet agreement” exists between the police and the movement.In every Arab town you still find weekly da’wa, or proselytism, sessions, ‘Ali said.The movement sends dozens of buses to Al-Aqsa weekly, and the outlawed Mourabitoun and Mourabitat groups — Muslim men and women that Israel said were paid by Salah’s movement to initiate provocations at the Temple Mount — continue to visit the holy site daily.The only difference in the outlawed group now, according to ‘Ali, is that it operates a little more “modestly,” eschewing grandiose events.Salah continues to give speeches in mosques and public events in the Arab/Muslim sectors. Earlier in August he visited a mourning tent of an Arab Israeli killed in Jaffa.After the shooting attack on the Temple Mount, Salah immediately took to the pulpit to blame Israel for deaths of the gunmen, whom he called “martyrs” and wished an afterlife in paradise.Sheikh Raed Salah, Leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel, Prays for the Terrorist "Martyrs" Who Carried Out the Jerusalem Attack pic.twitter.com/zRL6AvnXP4— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) July 16, 2017-‘Ali, who interviewed Salah regularly for his dissertation, argued, however, that Salah is well-known among Arab Israelis an opponent of violence.“I know for sure that he is against the use of weapons. He knows it is against the interests of the northern Islamic Movement,” said ‘Ali, adding that the gunmen harmed Salah’s movement rather than represented it.While ‘Ali could not recall any anti-violence statements made by Salah, he noted that the preacher signs onto the anti-violence declarations of the High Follow-Up Committee, an umbrella group for Arab-Israeli leadership.But powerful Israeli ministers were quick to the blame the July Temple Mount attack on Salah. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, who outlawed the movement, Intelligence and Transportation minister Yisrael Katz and Housing and Construction Minister Yoav Galant immediately called for his arrest.The July 14 attack on the Temple Mount compound “was exactly what the Shin Bet feared,” said Reiter.The shooters came from Salah’s hometown and professed to carry out the attack in order to defend Al-Aqsa.Muhammad Hamad Abdel Latif Jabarin, 19, the youngest of the three killers, had a number of posts on his Facebook page that showed he was interested in “freeing” the Al-Aqsa Mosque from Israeli control.One of Jabarin’s posts from July 2016 shows a picture of Salah next to the Temple Mount. The post reads: “Every year and the Al-Aqsa Mosque is closer to freedom.”How to contain Salah has been a conundrum facing Israeli security services since the early 2000s.Reiter said that in 2003 he was consulted by the Shin Bet about Salah’s movement. At that time, he said it was the Shin Bet that wanted to outlaw the Northern Islamic Movement, but the police opposed such a move.‘Ali said his most up-to-date and as-yet unpublished research shows Salah has only become more popular since his moment was outlawed.Half of Arab-Israelis identity with the Islamic Movement, as well as one-third of Christians, ‘Ali said, noting the Islamic Movement provides services to the entire Arab community, including help in restoring churches.Reiter believes the Shin Bet is currently operating similarly to the way the FBI did with the infamous Chicago crime boss Al Capone, “slowly gathering evidence in every field they can.”Salah ‘intentionally’ conflates peripheral opinions with government policy-At the beginning of the Second Intifada, in October 2000, 12 Arab Israelis, one Palestinian and one Israeli Jew were killed during clashes between Israeli police and Arab protesters.To probe these events, the Israeli government appointed a commission, the Or Commission, led by Supreme Court Justice Theodor Or.The commission, which also included former Nazareth District Court judge Hashem Khatib, pointed to Israel’s institutional discrimination against Arab citizens as a long-term cause for the violence.However, for the immediate cause of the violence, the commission pointed a finger at Salah and his movement.“In the Islamic Movement’s activity [with regard to the mount], more than in other areas, its strategy emerged clearly: escalating conflict, activism in the field, and agitating the public. The movement gave Al-Aqsa priority as a sensitive focal point for unifying the Muslims in Israel, and as a bridge to the Palestinian society in the territories and to the Islamic world as a whole,” the commission wrote.The commission noted that Salah and his followers may have had genuine cause for concern, with various rabbis and politicians broaching plans to build a synagogue on the holy site, and “extremist groups” engaging in symbolic acts of fulfilling the vision of rebuilding the Jewish Temple.But it argued that “Raed Salah went much further, since he acted to stir up the Arab public against a supposed intention of the Israeli government to replace the Al-Aqsa mosques with a Jewish Temple – an intention that had no connection whatsoever to reality.”Nadav Shragai, Israeli journalist and author of a booklet entitled, “The ‘Al-Aqsa Is in Danger’ Libel: The History of a Lie,” made a similar argument in an interview with The Times of Israel.“This libel [‘Al-Aqsa is in danger’] is not directed at the Temple Mount Institute or Yehuda Etzion,” a group and an activist advocating for Jewish sovereignty over the holy site.“It’s directly aimed at the Israeli state itself, against the state that has done all it can over the years to protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque, even though it meant harming the right of Jews on the site,” he said.-‘Sincere fear’-Nashat Aqtash, a media professor at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah, believes Al-Aqsa is in danger.“Many officials in the government, the settlers, all the Jewish terrorist groups are every day saying it’s about time to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque and build the Temple,” he told The Times of Israel recently.Aqtash reflects the majority Palestinian opinion. In one 2016 poll, over half of Palestinians said they believed Israel plans on destroying Al-Aqsa Mosque and replacing it with a Jewish Temple, while just nine percent said they believed Israel intends to keep the status quo.Sari Nusseibeh, a Palestinian professor of philosophy and former president of the Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, in an email response to The Times of Israel, said it wasn’t hard to explain why a majority of Palestinians think this way.He attributed the belief to “constant and growing noises and practices pointing to the desire to rebuild the Temple.”He provided one example from Arabic social media. In a popular clip, young ultra-Orthodox students, in response to questions from a teacher, say in unison that a third Temple will be built and Al-Aqsa Mosque will be destroyed.Nusseibeh said he believes all the conflict over the Temple Mount could be settled once “there is a peace agreement and each side could assuage their fears of the other.”Reiter argued transparency could help Israel alleviate the fears of Muslims.“We have to create a system to work on the process of getting accurate information and transparency to change these wrong beliefs in the Arab world,” he said.Reiter criticized right-wing Israeli politicians who in recent years have made public statements and actions that play into the hands of Salah’s campaign.“Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel conducted the priestly blessing on the Temple Mount and broadcast it to the public. What should Muslims think when seeing a cabinet member doing such things?” he asked.“The current situation is really complicated. It doesn’t work in our favor. We have to be wiser in future actions,” he said.
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
Daughter of US Ambassador David Friedman makes aliyah-Talia Friedman, a nurse in her 20s, arrives in Tel Aviv on Tuesday morning; will also keep her American citizenship-By Raphael Ahren August 14, 2017, 11:52 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
The daughter of US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman is immigrating to Israel this week, The Times of Israel has learned.Talia Friedman, a nurse in her 20s, boarded an aliyah flight in New York on Monday and is expected to land in Tel Aviv early on Tuesday, the ambassador said.“As a father, I celebrate my daughter Talia’s realization of a life long dream to become part of the State of Israel,” Ambassador Friedman told The Times of Israel on Monday evening. “Our entire family is bursting with pride at Talia’s vision and determination to help strengthen Medinat Yisrael [the State of Israel] — one of America’s strongest and most important allies.She will be one of 233 new immigrants from North America arriving on a plane chartered by Nefesh B’Nefesh, a group promoting immigration to Israel. The newcomers will be welcomed with a ceremony at Ben Gurion Airport attended by senior officials from the Jewish Agency and the Immigration Ministry, as well as MP Yair Lapid.“Talia will retain her US citizenship and become part a vibrant group of American Israelis who do much to support both countries. We wish her, and her fellow olim (immigrants), tremendous success and inspiration in their respective journey,” the envoy said.Welcome to US Ambassador to #Israel David Friedman. First stop- a prayer at the #WesternWall pic.twitter.com/FTkzt2uQmA— USEmbassyTelAviv (@usembassyta) May 15, 2017-On March 15, Talia was the only of Friedman’s five children to accompany him when arrived in Israel and immediately headed to the Western Wall, and when he handed his letter of credence to President Reuven Rivlin a day later.It was not immediately clear what Talia’s plans were.Friedman is not the only member of US President Donald Trump’s team to have children moving to Israel this month. Jason Greenblatt, his special representative for international negotiations on Sunday tweeted that his triplets are headed to the Jewish state for a gap year program of Jewish studies.Sigh :( g'bye dinner 4 our triplets leaving next week 4 Israel gap year.Exciting but emotional #1/2EmptyNestSyndrome pic.twitter.com/iXrjb0WMXN— Jason D. Greenblatt (@JasonDovEsq) August 14, 2017-Friedman, a former Trump lawyer, already had deep ties to Israel. He was a donor, actively involved in supporting the West Bank Settlement of Beit El, and a homeowner in Jerusalem.He was also considered a contentious pick for the job due to comments he had made in the past — and for which he later apologized — comparing supporters of a left-wing Jewish group to “Jewish kapos” in the Holocaust, and for his active involvement in promoting settlements in the West Bank.His confirmation in the Senate by a 52-46 margin was the most closely contested vote ever on an envoy to Israel.
Yair Netanyahu says leftists more dangerous than neo-Nazis-Echoing Trump, PM’s son claims ‘thugs of Antifa and Black Lives Matter are getting stronger’ while Nazis are a thing of the past-By Times of Israel staff and AFP August 16, 2017, 1:49 pm
The son of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday said American left-wing groups are more dangerous than neo-Nazis.Weighing in on the weekend’s violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, during a far-right march, and US President Donald Trump’s controversial statements that “both sides were to blame” for the deadly incident, Yair Netanyahu said he was far more concerned by leftist organizations that have recently come into public focus.“To put things in perspective,” Netanyahu wrote on Facebook, “I’m a Jew, I’m an Israeli, the neo nazis scums [sic] in Virginia hate me and my country. But they belong to the past. Their breed is dying out.“However the thugs of Antifa and [Black Lives Matter] who hate my country (and America too in my view) just as much are getting stronger and stronger and becoming super dominant in American universities and public life.”The Israeli premier himself tweeted Tuesday that he was “outraged by expressions of anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism and racism. Everyone should oppose this hatred,” after he was criticized for staying silent on Charlottesville.In a response Wednesday afternoon to Yair Netanyahu’s comments, sources close to the prime minister said, “Yair is an adult and his views are his alone”Trump’s stance was also supported by Likud MK Oren Hazan, who said Tuesday that the president “is right. Violence and extremism on any side is forbidden and demands condemnation. That doesn’t matter to the bleeding hearts on the left and in the media. After all, they believe that only the right is extremist and violent.”Other Israeli politicians — from left and right — have been far more critical of Trump’s position, some more directly than others.Education Minister Naftali Bennett has called on US leaders to denounce the rally’s “displays of anti-Semitism.” Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked of Bennett’s Jewish Home party has urged prosecution of neo-Nazi activists.Yesh Atid chair MK Yair Lapid and Zionist Union number two MK Tzipi Livni explicitly criticized Trump’s equivalence.“There aren’t two sides,” Lapid said in a Wednesday statement. “When Neo-Nazis march in Charlottesville and scream slogans against Jews and in support of white supremacy, the condemnation has to be unambiguous. They represent hate and evil. Anyone who believes in the human spirit must stand against them without fear.”Livni said “When it comes to racism, anti-Semitism and Nazism, there are never two equal sides. There’s good and there’s evil. Period.”Trump sparked a political firestorm Tuesday when he doubled down on his initial response to the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville that ended in bloodshed, saying there was “blame on both sides.”The Republican president — who the previous day solemnly denounced racism and singled out the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis as “criminals and thugs” — also hit out at what he called the “alt-left” over the weekend melee.Trump has faced days of criticism from across the political spectrum over his reaction to Saturday’s unrest in the Virginia college town, where a rally by neo-Nazis and white supremacists over the removal of a Confederate statue erupted in clashes with counter-demonstrators.The violent fracas ended in bloodshed when a 20-year-old suspected Nazi sympathizer, James Fields, plowed his car into a crowd of anti-racism protesters, leaving one woman dead and 19 people injured.In a rowdy exchange with journalists at Trump Tower in New York, Trump made clear on Tuesday that he was fed up with continued questioning about the issue.“I think there is blame on both sides,” Trump said.As he spoke, his new White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, a former Marine general, appeared displeased during the president’s long tirade, standing rigidly.“You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now,” Trump continued. “What about the alt-left that came charging… at the, as you say, the alt-right? Do they have any semblance of guilt?… There are two sides to a story.”“What about the fact they came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do. As far as I am concerned, that was a horrible, horrible day,” Trump said.Trump’s comments were immediately welcomed by David Duke, a former “grand wizard” of the Ku Klux Klan and a key figure at Saturday’s rally.“Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists,” Duke tweeted.But on the political left, the president’s words were met with indignation.“Charlottesville violence was fueled by one side: white supremacists spreading racism, intolerance & intimidation. Those are the facts,” said Tim Kaine, a former Democratic vice presidential candidate and senator from Virginia.The state’s other Democratic senator, Mark Warner, tweeted: “No words.”Trump’s fellow Republicans also didn’t mince words.“We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive,” Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan wrote on Twitter.“This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity.”When asked why he waited until Monday to explicitly condemn hate groups present in Charlottesville, Trump said he wanted to be careful not to make a “quick statement” on Saturday without all the facts.“I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct,” Trump insisted.Trump called Fields, who has been charged with second-degree murder, a “disgrace to himself, his family and this country.”But he also said that while there were troublemakers at the rally, there were also many people there “to innocently protest and very legally protest” the removal of a “very important statue” of Confederate general Robert E Lee.“I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after?” he said angrily, referring to the fact they owned slaves.“Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? … You’re changing history. You’re changing culture.”
Underground barrier credited with growth in Israeli towns near Gaza-With attack tunnel threat being dealt with, communities outside the Strip are seeing a population surge, official says-By Agencies and Times of Israel staff August 16, 2017, 3:57 pm
KIBBUTZ NIRIM — Israeli communities in the vicinity of the Gaza Strip are enjoying a surge in growth thanks to the ongoing construction of an underground barrier along the border, with families now feeling safer to live in the area, a local council head said.Israel is pressing ahead with construction of the barrier, in an ambitious project meant to halt the threat of attack tunnels built by Hamas.Gadi Yarkoni, head of the local Eshkol regional council, said the project is a key reason that the area is now attracting young families, after a devastating war with Hamas three years ago.“I believe building the barrier is the right thing to do, to build in order to stop and to give an answer to the issue of the tunnels, and to the issue of the communities in the area,” he said. “The surge in development in this area is unbelievable.”Cranes and work crews are digging holes and installing sensors and other equipment for the structure, which is expected to stretch along the entire 60-kilometer (40-mile) border when it is complete.During the 2014 war, Hamas terrorists on several occasions made their way into Israel through a tunnel network dug below the border. Although they did not manage to reach civilian areas, the infiltrations terrified the local population. Israel destroyed 32 tunnels during that conflict, and since then has made neutralizing the tunnel threat a top priority.Israeli defense officials have said little about the new barrier project or how much of it has been completed. At one construction zone, a sign said “military zone — no passage,” and Associated Press reporters could not approach as cranes and bulldozers were at work.Last week, Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir, head of the army’s Southern Command, which is responsible for Gaza, told reporters the project would take about two years to complete.He said the barrier would stretch several meters above and below ground and be equipped with sophisticated sensors. It’s being built entirely on the Israeli side of the border, to avoid friction with Hamas.Atai Shelach, a retired colonel and former commander of the Israeli military’s “Yahalom” unit in charge of dismantling the terror tunnels, said the new barrier would be a game-changer, but would not solve the problem on its own.“It is part of a cocktail, or a combination of many other solutions,” he said. Neutralizing the tunnel threat will also require good intelligence and operational decisions by the army, he said. Otherwise, terrorists will eventually figure out how to get through.“That barrier can prevent war,” he said, because it will be harder for Hamas and other terror groups to “create surprises” that frighten Israeli residents.Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since the Islamist terror group seized control of Gaza from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007.While Hamas has largely respected a ceasefire that ended the last round of fighting in 2014, it is believed to be building new tunnels and re-arming in preparation for future conflict.Hamas seeks Israel’s destruction.“All the measures by the occupation on the border will not provide security for them,” said Hazem Qasem, a spokesman for the group. “As long as they occupy the Palestinian land and put a siege on our people in the Gaza Strip, the resistance will continue to possess all the means of force that enable it to defend the people against Israeli aggression,” he said.Israeli residents expressed mixed feelings about the new structure.Miriam Diener, a resident of Kibbutz Nirim, a communal farm near the Gaza border, said Israel must seek peace with its neighbors, and not just build new barriers.“No fence will solve the problems,” she said. “Only peace will bring the possibility of a good economy, good education, good hospitals, good health. That is what is needed.”But Shimon Avraham, another kibbutz resident, said the project will put people at ease after the terrifying experience of tunnel attacks.“Now it makes things feel calmer,” he said.
Computers over combat-Press highlights a decrease in the number of Israelis willing to serve in combat roles during their mandatory IDF service-By Tamar Pileggi August 16, 2017, 3:26 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
Apparently largely unfazed by US President Donald Trump’s contentious defense of white supremacist protesters in Virginia over the weekend, Israel’s print media on Wednesday is primarily concerned with a “worrying” new trend that has emerged among IDF recruits in recent years.Both the Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel Hayom dailies dedicate their front pages to a decrease in the number of young Israelis willing to serve in combat roles during their mandatory military service.Yedioth calls the nearly 2 percent drop in recruits seeking to enlist in combat units in 2017 a “worrying new trend” that is evidence of a larger shift in Israeli society.According to the paper, the decreased interest in combat units in recent years is primarily due to the “erosion of the warrior ethos” in Israel. Young cadets are increasingly seeking to enlist in technology, cyber defense units or other roles that allow them to serve closer to home and that provide them hands-on training in a marketable skill.In a column, Yedioth’s military correspondent Yossi Yehoshua warns the new data points to a growing rift between combat and noncombat soldiers.“Behind the trend is a rift between the technology units and combat soldiers that does not just affect their army service, but their reserve duty as well… When combat soldiers are released from active duty, they are faced with 20-plus years of reserve duty service, while their counterparts who serve in technology units only have to serve a few years if any.”He calls on the IDF to significantly raise the minimum salary of combat soldiers from the current NIS 1,620, ($448; non-combat soldiers currently receive NIS 1,200 or $331) in an effort to reverse the trend.Israel Hayom also leads its Wednesday paper with the recently released data from the IDF’s Manpower Directorate, though its coverage more heavily focuses on what it claims is the IDF’s “worried response.”Analyst Yoav Limor says the “‘migration’ in motivation that has been going on for several years necessitates a root canal and not a filling.”“This is more than just a military problem.. but a nationwide issue that requires a national response,” Limor writes. “The IDF along with the Education Ministry needs to examine whether in 2017 the ‘I’ trumps ‘us,’ and whether this is a specific problem, or a broader problem in Israeli society that is steadily spilling over into the IDF.”In contrast to Yedioth and Israel Hayom, Haaretz makes no mention of the latest data released by the IDF.Instead, the left-wing daily leads its front page with a report on the increased numbers of Syrian casualties caused by US-led coalition forces in recent months.Overall, the rate of killing in Syria has slowed in recent months, and as a result “the world is losing interest” in the bloody civil war, Zvi Bar’el reports.“The law of large numbers is at work when it comes to media coverage,” Bar’el writes. “They may report a few dead a day even when in reality there are dozens, as they get swallowed up in the huge total.”In its opinion pages, the daily continues its criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even though recent days saw no developments in the ongoing corruption investigations against him.In an op-ed, Bar’el slams Netanyahu’s recent solidarity rally as evidence of the prime minister’s “chronic and pathological panic” typically displayed by dictators and authoritarian leaders.“It’s a sickness that comes with the role and nurtures in the leader a fear of democratic processes,” Bar’el charges.Meanwhile, Haaretz’s Chemi Shalev criticizes Netanyahu’s “pathetic” rally in Tel Aviv last week as “grotesque and disturbing.”Shalev calls Netanyahu’s tendency to play the victim and to link his increasing isolation to hostile media coverage rather than his own shortcomings as a leader an “Israeli tragedy” that will eventually push Netanyahu to his “sad and sorry end.”
His father and two brothers were Israeli cops; Raed took a very different path-The rise of Raed Salah, Israel’s Islamist leader who wants Jerusalem at the heart of a caliphate-The recently rearrested preacher has built a career ‘defending’ Al-Aqsa against Israel’s purported planned takeover, building vast support among Arab Israelis-By Dov Lieber August 16, 2017, 6:53 am-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
In 2001, Sheikh Raed Salah did something almost unheard of in the Arab world: He voluntarily relinquished power.Since 1989, he had served as mayor of Israel’s second-largest Arab city, Umm al-Fahm. He and his organization — the now-outlawed Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement — had transformed the city from a communist powerhouse into the center of Islamist life in Israel.But, he said, it was time for him to step away from politics and concentrate his energies on one particular goal — the defense of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem from an ostensible Israeli state plan to destroy it.On Tuesday morning, Salah was taken into custody by police on suspicion of incitement. Jewish Israeli politicians from the left and right celebrated the move, while Arab Israelis opposed it. If he is imprisoned, it will be his fourth stint in Israeli jail, his third for incitement charges.In 2015, his movement was outlawed over what Israel said was “a mendacious campaign of incitement under the heading ‘Al-Aqsa is in danger.’”Yet, since 2015, Salah has been gaining in popularity among Arab Israelis, according to one expert — and the more the security services are seen as persecuting him, the more he is perceived as a martyr sacrificing his freedom for Muslims’ most potent national-religious symbol between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.And outlawed or not, his movement continues to run nearly all of its activities in broad daylight, just under different names, the expert said.That the Al-Aqsa Mosque, located on the Temple Mount, needs defending at all is denied by Israel. Rather than planning to destroy or take control of the mosque, Jerusalem says it is vigorously defending the status quo at the site, which bars anyone not Muslim from praying there — including Jews, though it is their holiest place in the world. In 1967, Israel conquered the mount, only to immediately cede it back to Jordanian religious control in order to avoid a larger conflagration with the Muslim world.Yet in recent years, the idea that Al-Aqsa needs defending has been the stated reason for numerous terror attacks against Israelis, and it brought tens of thousands of Palestinians into the streets in July in order to protest metal detectors and cameras placed at entrances to the Temple Mount. For most Israelis, the new security measures were a logical response to a shooting attack by three Arab Israelis on July 14, in which the gunmen used weapons they had smuggled into the sacred compound to kill two policemen on duty just outside.The idea that “Al-Aqsa is in danger” is not new — it dates back to the 1920s, and continues to be propagated by all the major Palestinian political players including Hamas and Fatah. But experts interviewed by The Times of Israel said Salah has done more to spread and ostensibly legitimize the idea than any other person in history.Salah’s writings and speeches have spread to Muslim houses of study and prayer across the world, including in non-Muslim countries like Australia and Thailand. He is known worldwide as “Sheikh Al-Aqsa.”Outside the realm of politics, he has managed to foster the image of a humble public servant. He is seen as a pure-hearted and generous person with clean hands, unspoiled by politics, according to experts. Those who know him describe him as a man of considerable charisma, a natural-born leader. At protests, he can be seen standing quietly with folded arms, silently observing the events. But in front of the pulpit, he transforms into a fiery speaker.“I remember that he always had something special about him. A quiet leadership quality. He wasn’t someone that took leadership, but rather leadership came to him,” said Sa’id Abu Sharka, a cousin of Salah’s, in a 2012 documentary about the preacher.Hashem Abd al-Rahman, a former mayor of Umm al-Fahm who is close to Salah, said of the preacher in the same documentary, “If you sit with him for an hour or two, he doesn’t speak if there is no reason.”Salah dresses in common preacher’s garb, and in the winter, always wears the same worn-out gry coat.Despite the fact that he is seen as one of the greatest threats to Israel’s security, and is the leader of an outlawed Islamist movement, he lives off a meager government pension in a small home in Umm al-Fahm.-A brief history of Salah and his movement-Salah was born in 1958 in the town. His father was an Israeli police officer, and his two brothers also followed in their father’s footsteps. Salah, a father to eight children, took a different path.From 1977 to 1980 he studied Islamic law at Hebron University. Though his native Umm al-Fahm was a strong communist stronghold — like much of Arab-Israeli society at the time — he would soon join the nascent Islamic Movement, a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot akin to Hamas.After an initial period of violence, the Islamic Movement embraced a nonviolent activist approach throughout the 1980s, filling the institutional void left by the state with schools, health clinics, mosques and charities. By 1989, Salah was one of five mayoral candidates from the movement to win elections.The rise of Hamas in the late 1980s and the Oslo Peace Accords of the 1990s led to a split in the Islamic Movement.Salah, according to Israel, has close relations with Hamas. Indeed, in 2003 he was imprisoned for two years on charges of funneling millions of dollars to the Gaza-based terror group. He was also charged for being in contact with Nabil Mahzomah, an Arab Israeli accused of being an Iranian agent, who was living in Lebanon at the time.Salah opposed the peace talks that would eventually lead to the creation of the Palestinian Authority, while the Islamic Movement’s founder, Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish, remained committed to a political process until his death earlier this year.The official split had occurred in 1996, when the Islamic Movement ran in national elections, a move Salah deemed irreconcilable with Islamic law because it meant participating in the secular rule of law, according to a Brookings Institute report.Salah’s movement split off and became known as the Northern Islamic Movement. And almost immediately he began harnessing the incendiary power of the Al-Aqsa Mosque to rally support for his movement.The making of the ‘Al-Aqsa is in danger’ mantra-Salah’s Northern Islamic Movement held its first signature “Al-Aqsa is in danger” rally in 1996.It was attended by thousands in Umm al-Fahm. Only a year later, deadly riots would break out when the Palestinians accused Israel of trying to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound (Temple Mount) after a second exit was opened from the Western Wall Tunnels into the Old City’s Christian Quarter. Twenty-five soldiers and almost 100 Palestinians were killed. Immediately after the riots subsided, Salah hosted his second “Al-Aqsa is in danger” rally.Salah would continue to hold these rallies year after year, organized around the idea that Israel intended to destroy Islam’s third holiest site, at times drawing up to 70,000 attendees, until his movement was outlawed in 2015.With the issue of Al-Aqsa, Salah found “a vacuum and moved in. It was an issue no other Islamic group was dealing with,” said Professor Yitzhak Reiter, an expert on political conflict at sacred spaces, especially the Temple Mount, and the Israeli Islamist movement.Dr. Nohad ‘Ali, a sociologist at the Western Galilee College, head of the “Arab-Jewish-State” project at the Technion’s Samuel Neaman institute and a specialist on the Islamist movement in Israel, said Salah’s success stems from the fact that he managed to turn Al-Aqsa into “both a national and religious symbol.”From 1996 to 1998, Salah and his movement played a leading role in establishing two new mosques on the Temple Mount: one in the underground space known as Solomon’s Stables, in the southeastern corner of the mount, and the other in the space under the Al-Aqsa Mosque (or “ancient Al-Aqsa”).Salah mobilized the Arab Israeli community for the construction projects. Volunteers carried out the construction with materials that were donated, and the money for the project was raised through donations.“Everyone identified these mosques with Salah. He became a hero,” said Reiter, who is a professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Ashkelon Academic College and a researcher at the Jerusalem institute for policy and research.Salah was seen as preventing the establishment of a Jewish synagogue in those large empty spaces, which now host thousands of Muslims worshipers weekly.Salah at one point also tried to bring water from the holy Well of Zamzam in Mecca — thought by some to have special healing powers — to the cisterns of Al-Aqsa. This would have enhanced Al-Aqsa’s importance as a pilgrimage site, and Salah’s own status within the Muslim world.At the time he was building these mosques on the Temple Mount, Salah had his own office in the compound.Waqf officials told Reiter that they were powerless to stop Salah’s construction plans.In his speeches, Salah has professed his long-term hope that one day Jerusalem, with Al-Aqsa at its center, can be the heart of a future Islamic caliphate.The Jewish state, just like the Persians, the Romans, the Crusaders and the British, will be “vomited out” from the land, Salah has said.-The underground outlaws work in daylight-In 2015, Israel’s internal Shin Bet security agency recommended against outlawing the Northern Islamic movement. The Shin Bet was afraid that rather than the Islamist group, rather than being defanged, would simply move underground and become harder to track. And that is precisely what happened.“The majority of the movement’s activities continue to function,” stressed ‘Ali. “It’s still felt in the Arab streets daily,” he added.For every institution of the Islamic Movement that was banned, said ‘Ali, it has an alternative institution that continues to carry out the same functions. So for example, the monthly bulletin of the Islamic movement was closed, so another was opened in a different name. ‘Ali said the state knew full well this would occur, and a “quiet agreement” exists between the police and the movement.In every Arab town you still find weekly da’wa, or proselytism, sessions, ‘Ali said.The movement sends dozens of buses to Al-Aqsa weekly, and the outlawed Mourabitoun and Mourabitat groups — Muslim men and women that Israel said were paid by Salah’s movement to initiate provocations at the Temple Mount — continue to visit the holy site daily.The only difference in the outlawed group now, according to ‘Ali, is that it operates a little more “modestly,” eschewing grandiose events.Salah continues to give speeches in mosques and public events in the Arab/Muslim sectors. Earlier in August he visited a mourning tent of an Arab Israeli killed in Jaffa.After the shooting attack on the Temple Mount, Salah immediately took to the pulpit to blame Israel for deaths of the gunmen, whom he called “martyrs” and wished an afterlife in paradise.Sheikh Raed Salah, Leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel, Prays for the Terrorist "Martyrs" Who Carried Out the Jerusalem Attack pic.twitter.com/zRL6AvnXP4— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) July 16, 2017-‘Ali, who interviewed Salah regularly for his dissertation, argued, however, that Salah is well-known among Arab Israelis an opponent of violence.“I know for sure that he is against the use of weapons. He knows it is against the interests of the northern Islamic Movement,” said ‘Ali, adding that the gunmen harmed Salah’s movement rather than represented it.While ‘Ali could not recall any anti-violence statements made by Salah, he noted that the preacher signs onto the anti-violence declarations of the High Follow-Up Committee, an umbrella group for Arab-Israeli leadership.But powerful Israeli ministers were quick to the blame the July Temple Mount attack on Salah. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, who outlawed the movement, Intelligence and Transportation minister Yisrael Katz and Housing and Construction Minister Yoav Galant immediately called for his arrest.The July 14 attack on the Temple Mount compound “was exactly what the Shin Bet feared,” said Reiter.The shooters came from Salah’s hometown and professed to carry out the attack in order to defend Al-Aqsa.Muhammad Hamad Abdel Latif Jabarin, 19, the youngest of the three killers, had a number of posts on his Facebook page that showed he was interested in “freeing” the Al-Aqsa Mosque from Israeli control.One of Jabarin’s posts from July 2016 shows a picture of Salah next to the Temple Mount. The post reads: “Every year and the Al-Aqsa Mosque is closer to freedom.”How to contain Salah has been a conundrum facing Israeli security services since the early 2000s.Reiter said that in 2003 he was consulted by the Shin Bet about Salah’s movement. At that time, he said it was the Shin Bet that wanted to outlaw the Northern Islamic Movement, but the police opposed such a move.‘Ali said his most up-to-date and as-yet unpublished research shows Salah has only become more popular since his moment was outlawed.Half of Arab-Israelis identity with the Islamic Movement, as well as one-third of Christians, ‘Ali said, noting the Islamic Movement provides services to the entire Arab community, including help in restoring churches.Reiter believes the Shin Bet is currently operating similarly to the way the FBI did with the infamous Chicago crime boss Al Capone, “slowly gathering evidence in every field they can.”Salah ‘intentionally’ conflates peripheral opinions with government policy-At the beginning of the Second Intifada, in October 2000, 12 Arab Israelis, one Palestinian and one Israeli Jew were killed during clashes between Israeli police and Arab protesters.To probe these events, the Israeli government appointed a commission, the Or Commission, led by Supreme Court Justice Theodor Or.The commission, which also included former Nazareth District Court judge Hashem Khatib, pointed to Israel’s institutional discrimination against Arab citizens as a long-term cause for the violence.However, for the immediate cause of the violence, the commission pointed a finger at Salah and his movement.“In the Islamic Movement’s activity [with regard to the mount], more than in other areas, its strategy emerged clearly: escalating conflict, activism in the field, and agitating the public. The movement gave Al-Aqsa priority as a sensitive focal point for unifying the Muslims in Israel, and as a bridge to the Palestinian society in the territories and to the Islamic world as a whole,” the commission wrote.The commission noted that Salah and his followers may have had genuine cause for concern, with various rabbis and politicians broaching plans to build a synagogue on the holy site, and “extremist groups” engaging in symbolic acts of fulfilling the vision of rebuilding the Jewish Temple.But it argued that “Raed Salah went much further, since he acted to stir up the Arab public against a supposed intention of the Israeli government to replace the Al-Aqsa mosques with a Jewish Temple – an intention that had no connection whatsoever to reality.”Nadav Shragai, Israeli journalist and author of a booklet entitled, “The ‘Al-Aqsa Is in Danger’ Libel: The History of a Lie,” made a similar argument in an interview with The Times of Israel.“This libel [‘Al-Aqsa is in danger’] is not directed at the Temple Mount Institute or Yehuda Etzion,” a group and an activist advocating for Jewish sovereignty over the holy site.“It’s directly aimed at the Israeli state itself, against the state that has done all it can over the years to protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque, even though it meant harming the right of Jews on the site,” he said.-‘Sincere fear’-Nashat Aqtash, a media professor at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah, believes Al-Aqsa is in danger.“Many officials in the government, the settlers, all the Jewish terrorist groups are every day saying it’s about time to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque and build the Temple,” he told The Times of Israel recently.Aqtash reflects the majority Palestinian opinion. In one 2016 poll, over half of Palestinians said they believed Israel plans on destroying Al-Aqsa Mosque and replacing it with a Jewish Temple, while just nine percent said they believed Israel intends to keep the status quo.Sari Nusseibeh, a Palestinian professor of philosophy and former president of the Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, in an email response to The Times of Israel, said it wasn’t hard to explain why a majority of Palestinians think this way.He attributed the belief to “constant and growing noises and practices pointing to the desire to rebuild the Temple.”He provided one example from Arabic social media. In a popular clip, young ultra-Orthodox students, in response to questions from a teacher, say in unison that a third Temple will be built and Al-Aqsa Mosque will be destroyed.Nusseibeh said he believes all the conflict over the Temple Mount could be settled once “there is a peace agreement and each side could assuage their fears of the other.”Reiter argued transparency could help Israel alleviate the fears of Muslims.“We have to create a system to work on the process of getting accurate information and transparency to change these wrong beliefs in the Arab world,” he said.Reiter criticized right-wing Israeli politicians who in recent years have made public statements and actions that play into the hands of Salah’s campaign.“Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel conducted the priestly blessing on the Temple Mount and broadcast it to the public. What should Muslims think when seeing a cabinet member doing such things?” he asked.“The current situation is really complicated. It doesn’t work in our favor. We have to be wiser in future actions,” he said.
