The Hand of God Or . . . ?

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12 Av 5778

24 July 2018

The News on the Israeli Street

Palestinian terror in the last 24 hours . . .

In Judea and Samaria:

During the past two weeks, israelstreet has focused on the terror along the Gaza border. However throughout this period, Palestinian terror has continued apace throughout Judea and Samaria as well.

Yesterday alone there were more than 30 “rock” and Molotov attacks reported by citizens on the ground to hakolhayehudi, Rescue Judea and Samaria, Rescue 443 and rotter.

Twenty of these locations were: the Farsa Junction, El Khader, the Tunnel Checkpoint, Karmi Tzur, the Horseshoe Junction, Migdalim, Givat Assaf, Al Muayyir, Abud Bypass, Naaleh, Postal Junction, Gush Etzion, on the road between Gush Etzion and Hevron, Hizma, Tekoa, near Nabi Saleh, Hawara, near Beit El, Yitzhar, and Qalandiya.

On the Gaza border:

Never mind that Palestinian terrorists attacked all along the Gaza border fence yesterday, Israel opened all crossings. This is a picture of new, imported cars, lined up at the Erez Crossing waiting to be delivered to the “poor” Palestinians in Gaza.

Now that there is a “ceasefire” and Israel has given the Palestinian terrorists in Gaza multiple concessions, life returned to “normal” along the border fence.

There were multiple attempts to breach the security barrier; in the most egregious effort, a squad of more than 20 terrorists attempted to cut the barbed wire east of Gaza City. They were repelled by IDF gunfire.

As for the supposedly non-existent incendiary launches and fires caused by them, there were multiple ones yesterday. The largest fire occurred in the Dorot Forest located off Route 334 near Sderot.

The Magic Wand (aka David’s Sling) was not magical yesterday . . .

According to the IDF, two SS-21 missiles fired by the Syrian Army at Syrian rebels nearly reached Israel yesterday. Alarms went off all over the Golan and even beyond.

For the first time, the Magic Wand was used to try to shoot down incoming missiles.

It missed.

By luck, one of the missiles exploded less than a kilometer from the border.

Regular readers will remember that the Magic Wand is part of Israel’s supposed multi-layer missile defense. It is supposed to the mid-layer: between the lower level Iron Dome which deals with mortars, Qassams, and Grads–and the upper level Arrow 2 and 3 which is supposed to deal with long-range missiles.

The initial assessment is that the Magic Wand missile failed to intercept the SS-21 because of a “technical error”–not a human one. Whatever the reason, the failure of the Magic Wand does not bode well for the future.

The Trump effect takes hold . . .

Reports out of Gaza yesterday indicated that there were mass protests at the office of UNRWA headquarters. “Hundreds” of agency staff workers were protesting against the reduction in UNRWA jobs and services caused by the Trump Administration’s admirable decision to cut money to the abominable organization.

Regular readers of israelstreet know that your humble servant would like nothing better than to see UNRWA eliminated altogether.

The LGBT protests across the country . . .

If you read the Israeli news, you know that there have been significant LGBT protests in Israel for the last few days–centered in Tel Aviv where some 60,000 gathered in Rabin Square two nights ago.

What are they protesting?

They are upset over the new “surrogacy law” which permits single women to hire or obtain volunteer women to be surrogate mothers, but not single men.

Not single gay men or single heterosexual men.

Originally, PM Netanyahu had agreed to include single men in the law, but at the last minute decided to withdraw his support for men with the promise that they would be included when the law is amended the Fall.

Why did Netanyahu withdraw his support? Obviously it was because of pressure from the orthodox community.

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However, a compromise with the Orthodox was reached on a related subject yesterday when Interior Minister Deri ruled that the Ministry of the Interior will now issue birth certificates to adopted children of gay couples with lists the names of the two “parents”–but will not list the name of a “father” and “mother.”

It would not come as a great surprise to see the LGBT community to hit the streets again to protest Deri’s decision.

TODAY’S BLOG:

The Hand of God Or . . . ?

The stone that fell out of the Wall.

In case you missed the news,  a 100 kilogram, square Herodian era stone fell out of the southern part of the Western Wall at around 4:15 am yesterday morning just after the end of Tisha B’Av. It fell directly onto the prayer platform in the egalitarian (read: Reform and Conservative) section.

It turns out that an orthodox woman was actually praying alone on the platform, but the stone missed her.

The orthodox woman praying in the egalitarian section. Many orthodox like to pray in the section–almost no Reform or Conservative Jews do, especially very early in the morning or late at night.

What was visually remarkable about the incident was the way that it looks like the stone was actually pushed out of its place. You can watch it happen here: stone falls out.

So the question is: what caused the stone to fall?

Many orthodox looking at the video today believe that it was the hand G-d who was showing displeasure at the Reform and Conservative movements, and displeasure at the government for trying to appease them. 

Well . . . your humble servant doesn’t pretend to know what God is thinking.

Meanwhile, other theories emerged yesterday. One is that moisture from the museum under the Al-Aqsa Mosque has loosened the stones and may actually lead to a total collapse of the southern wall. It should be remembered that the lower stones of Wall were built as a retaining wall for the Temple Mount platform by Herod.

To put it a different way, if the stones under the Mosque go, so will the Mosque.

Perhaps the hand of God . . .?

Another theory comes from archaeologists working at the Mount who have long warned that many of the stones on the wall are cracked–some so badly that grasses and even bushes grow inside the cracks further cracking them. Anybody who has been to the Wall has seen the cracks and plants.

More than this, you will notice that the stone that fell (or was pushed?) was located directly above one of two long horizontal grooves in the Wall which were probably carved out to anchor wooden beams at some point in history. That carving action may also have destabilized the Wall because the stones are merely stacked on top of each other and held together by weight–not attached to each other by some other means.

These archaeologists are warning today that a stone or stones could fall from all sections of the Wall at any time, and the government needs to act now to assess the damage and provide support.

So, your humble servant leaves it to you, dear reader, to decide what happened at the Kotel very early yesterday morning.

Addendum.

Additional information concerning the death of Staff Sgt. Aviv Levy at the hands of a Palestinian sniper on the Gaza border three days ago.

Two days ago, we reported news from Israeli television which indicated that the bullet that killed Staff Sgt. Aviv Levy did not actually penetrate the ceramic “bulletproof” vest that he was wearing. The reports from various journalists indicated that he was killed by the concussive impact of the bullet–and that the bullet was fired from an Iranian-made sniper rifle.

As more information has become available it appears that both pieces of this information were incorrect.

Not only did the bullet pierce the ceramic vest, but also field tests carried out in the aftermath of Levy’s death showed that bullets easily penetrated other ceramic vests. Now, it is clear that none of the bulletproof vests worn by IDF soldiers are in fact bulletproof.

More than this, there is apparent evidence that the bullet was actually fired from an American-made Barrett sniper rifle–probably the Barrett M107 that uses .50 caliber ammunition.