UPDATES 7 pm Israel time, Monday, May 12 2014:
**The endless stream of Palestinian terrorism continues with another missile from Gaza striking southern Israel this morning in the Chof Ashkelon region, and another Hamas plot to kidnap an Israeli soldier thwarted by the Shin Bet.
This particular plot was actually formed by two Hamas terrorists currently serving time in an Israeli prison for murdering an Israeli soldier back in 1996, and another Hamas prisoner in the same prison. From prison, these three enlisted a relative of two of the prisoners to buy weapons and train terrorists for the specific kidnapping attack.
That relative succeeded in recruiting two more terrorists and paid them from money supplied by a Saudi citizen.
Apparently, all six of these terrorists had no problem communicating with each other. Not only did the Hamas prisoners have cellphones smuggled to them in prison, but also they communicated plans through letters ferried in and out of the prison by family members.
Unbelievable.
**It is now being reported that when PM Netanyahu returns from Japan, the “Mavi Marmara” agreement with Turkey will go forward. Turkey will be allowed to provide “humanitarian” supplies to Hamas in Gaza, and Israel will unbelievably pay $21 million dollars to a fund in Turkey for distribution to the families of Turkish terrorists who were killed on the IHH Turkish terrorist ship Mavi Marmara.
Ironically, it was revealed today that the European Court of Human Rights has just ordered Turkey to pay 90 million Euros ($123 million dollars) to Cyprus for its 1974 invasion of Cyprus. 30 million of the Euros are to be paid to relatives of those Greek Cypriots who are still “missing” (they are long dead of course), and the other 60 million Euros are to be paid to the “enclaved Greek-Cypriot residents of the Karpas peninsula.”
It is simply flabbergasting that just as Turkish aggression is being punished by Europe, Israel is rewarding it.
**President Shimon Peres is in Norway–one of the most anti-Israel places on the planet– to speak at a dinner tonight extolling the Nobel Peace Prize. Of course it was the Oslo Accords Agreement between Yitzhak Rabin, Peres, and Yasser Arafat that led to all three absurdly winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.
Speaking at a synagogue yesterday, the always flatulent Peres fondly recalled Norway’s involvement in those Accords remarking that “I have good memories from Oslo.”
Israelis have no such good memories from Oslo.
The “peace” Oslo produced resulted in 169 Palestinian suicide bombers blowing more than 1100 Israeli men, women, and children to pieces over the next decade and a half. The Oslo Accords sponsored by Norway may have given a Nobel Peace Prize to Shimon Peres, but they were a tragic, unmitigated disaster for Israel.
**It is beginning to appear as if the upcoming Israeli presidential election may be postponed for six months.
The basic story seems to be that PM Netanyahu’s dislike for and fear of the probable next President, Reuvin Rivlin, knows no bounds. Netanyahu is particularly afraid that if Rivlin is president at the time of the next election, he would choose someone other than him (Netanyahu) to form a new coalition government.
Thus, Netanyahu wants to postpone the upcoming presidential election, and have the Knesset pass a Basic Law taking away the President’s ability to choose the person to form a coalition government (in effect that person becomes the next Prime Minister) after a general election. The new law would specify that the leader of the largest party would automatically become the Prime Minister.
Even though Netanyahu is being assailed from all sides about the proposed postponement and change in the law, he seems determined to proceed and is even returning from Japan a day early to lobby for it among current coalition members.
Your humble servant finds all of Netanyahu’s machinations unseemly and shortsighted. Has he already forgotten that two elections ago Tzipi Livni would have automatically become Prime Minister under his proposed new law because her Kadima party won the most seats?
TODAY’S BLOG:
Israelstreet continues with Part 3 of our blog series on the Dome of the Rock and the false picture it portrays of a “Muslim Jerusalem”.
In part one, your humble servant expressed the idea that the international media use continual pictures of the Dome to perpetuate the false conception of a “Muslim Jerusalem.” I argued that we need to see the Dome through the history of what happened at the site.
In part two, we learned about the Jewish connection to the “Rock”–hereafter called in this blog by its Jewish name the “Foundation Stone.” We saw that from time immemorial, Jews have revered the Foundation Stone as the first part of the world that God created; as the site of the material from which Adam was created; as the place where Cain, Abel, and Noah made sacrifices to God; and the place where Abraham readied to sacrifice his son Isaac.
Today, in part three, we continue where we stopped yesterday, in or around the year 950 BCE when Solomon built the First Jewish Temple.
An artist’s rendering of how the First Jewish Temple would look if it were still on the Temple Mount today (graphic: www.solomonstemple.com).
That Temple, the dimensions of which are precisely described in the Tanach (2nd Chronicles), housed an inner building inside which the Holy of Holies was located. Here is an artist’s rendering based on measurements given in the Tanakh:
Note that these two images are of the same building. The image on top is a side view: the object in the Holy of Holies is the Ark of the Covenant. The image on the bottom is an overhead view. Graphics source: Wikipedia.
Solomon placed the Holy of Holies with the Ark of the Covenant atop the Foundation Stone–thereby cementing for all time, the Foundation Stone’s importance as the holiest place in Judaism.
From 1 Kings 8:
Imputable to this phenomena, barren grown-ups male have the capacity viagra on line icks.org to keep up erection amid the intercourse. Albuterol is also taken by athletes to speed up their fat burning process or enhance performance in sports, particularly through aiding recovery after exercise, and also helps commander viagra the liver to detoxify the blood. You can buy Mast Mood capsule and http://icks.org/n/data/ijks/1482461222_add_file_4.pdf levitra prescription Night Fire capsule daily two times with milk or water daily for at least 3 to 4 months in a regular course so that you can make your kid a responsible driver. These buying tadalafil tablets signs of physical health may be the early warning signals of the impending diseases which might occur in near of distant future.
Note what appear to be cuts on the Foundation Stone. Some of these man-made cuts were made by the Crusaders when they captured Jerusalem in 1099 CE.
But not all.
Some date back to 950 BCE.
As archaeologist Leen Ritmeyer has pointed out, several sections of the Foundation Stone are flat with a north to south width of 6 cubits, which is precisely the width that the Jewish Mishnah says is the width of a wall of the Holy of Holies--the enclosure that housed the Ark of the Covenant.
And lest you think that this has no significance for today, think about why Jews pray at the Kotel. The answer is that they pray there is because it is the closest we can get to the Foundation Stone around which stood the Holy of Holies and on which rested the Ark of the Covenant.
You might also think about this the next time you read in this blog or elsewhere that another Jew has been arrested by the Jerusalem Police for trying to pray on the Temple Mount.
And so we bring our blog today to an end–to resume this series tomorrow a little more than 350 years later when the First Jewish Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians. Even when we get to that point, we will still be almost 1200 years from when the Dome of the Rock was built.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.