“On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her,
I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations.
All who try to move it will injure themselves” Zech 12:3
ABBAS PUSHES FOR DEADLINES, DIVIDED JERUSALEM AT PEACE SUMMIT: With the upcoming French peace summit just days away, Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is pushing for fixed deadlines for a final status arrangement and establishment of a Palestinian state, including the convening of a special monitoring committee to enforce such “time caps”. Speaking at a gathering of Arab leaders in Cairo on Saturday, Abbas laid out PA demands for this week’s summit, including timetables for the creation of a Palestinian state – and the division of Jerusalem. According to Abbas, the borders of the new state must follow the 1949 Armistice lines – including in eastern Jerusalem – with only slight alterations. Abbas doubled down on his past refusal to recognize Israel as the Jewish homeland. The PA leader also demanded that all Arab prisoners [terrorists] held by Israel be freed as part of a final status arrangement. While Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu has rebuffed calls for Israel to participate in the peace summit, saying that only direct negotiations can solve the conflict, Abbas hopes to apply international pressure on Israel to abide by decisions reached at the meeting. (Arutz-7) “Devise your strategy, but it will be thwarted; propose your plan, but it will not stand, for God is with us.” Isa 8:10 Continue to intercede for PM Netanyahu and other Jewish state heads that they may have much needed strength and shrewdness, now, and in the coming days – also protection from both tremendous spiritual warfare and temporal pressures in their dealings with the Palestinians and the nations.
JNN REVIEW: ISRAEL CANNOT RETURN TO THE PRE-1967 BORDERS: Israel cannot return to the pre-1967 borders. It would leave the center of the country a mere nine miles wide and its borders indefensible. The Jewish State could be cut in two by an Arab tank charge in just minutes. Arab forces would be positioned all along Israel’s eastern border, along with the areas that contain the greatest concentration of Israel’s population, including Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa. Israel would be stripped of its protective Judea-Samaria mountain ranges. US Lieut.-General Thomas Kelly, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War, pointed out that Israel would be virtually indefensible without those mountainous areas.
An Israeli retreat to the pre-1967 borders would also mean the re-division of Jerusalem. The Arabs would gain control of the Old City section of Jerusalem (known as “east Jerusalem”), which includes the holiest sites in Judaism, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. That area also includes the historic Jewish Quarter and the Mount of Olives cemetery, which is the oldest Jewish cemetery in the world. An Israeli retreat to the indefensible pre-1967 borders would encourage further Arab attacks and lead to an all-out war. (Compiled by JNN editors)
PALESTINIANS REJECT NETANYAHU’S CALL FOR DIRECT PARIS TALKS: The Palestinians on rejected PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s call to hold direct talks in Paris under the auspices of the French government. “Direct negotiations with Mr. Netanyahu in the past have proven to be fruitless; why repeat the same mistakes?” said Jamal Dajani, the director of communications for Palestinian Authority PM Rami Hamdallah. “Actions speak louder than words,” Dajani said. “Mr. Netanyahu’s actions have shown that he’s more interested in building illegal settlements than in reaching peace.” He spoke in advance of Hamdallah’s scheduled meeting in Ramallah the following day with visiting French PM Manuel Valls, who is wrapping up a three-day trip to Israeli and the Palestinian territories. (J.Post)
A JNN REVIEW: THE PA’S IMPOSSIBLE DEMANDS FOR NEGOTIATING WITH ISRAEL: The Palestinian Authority at every juncture continues to place the same impossible demands upon Israel for progress in peace negotiations, which include the freezing of all expansion in many of the Jewish state’s most mature and thriving communities, and a return to unsafe borders. This is precisely what happened in the Gaza Strip, turning life into a nightmare for Israelis who lost livelihood, community and homes. All of these were given to their enemies in return for a false peace. Residents who presently live in Israel’s southern communities, now more conveniently located for terrorists assaults, often have their lives disrupted by bombardments of rocket attacks, and the threat of terrorist tunnels being build beneath their very houses and schools. The projectiles are launched from – and terrorist attack tunnels are built from – the Gaza Strip that Israel vacated; an area now occupied by terrorist entities the largest of which is Hamas. In addition to unreasonable demands on the part of Palestinian negotiators, when concessions are made on the part of Israel, (concessions which have been given numerous times), the Palestinian response is to squeeze, whine and demand for more and more and more. Meanwhile, PA leaders have not been willing – at any point – no not once – to make even a single small concession to the list of their irrational mandates, as a gesture of cooperation or good will with Israel. (JNN)
STUDY: JUST 25% OF ISRAELIS FEEL ‘SECURE’ IN THEIR DAILY LIVES: A National Emergency Authority (NEA) survey asked 500 respondents over 18 about the various issues related to Israeli emergency preparedness. 14% of respondents the NEA surveyed said they would evacuate their homes to another region in the event of a missile attack, but 40% said they would stay. Of those who would need to be evacuated, the majority would prefer to stay with relatives, whereas a small minority would prefer to go to an organized place for evacuees. 90% said they had chosen the space or room in advance where they would run in the event of a missile attack; 33% had partially stocked up with equipment and food in the event of another war; 9% had fully stocked up. The greater majority of Israelis were “highly” (43%) or “reasonably” (42%) familiar with emergency instructions issued by the Home Front Command (HFC). Despite the high level of preparedness overall, just 25% of Israelis say they feel secure in their daily lives. 41% say they feel either “slightly” secure, or not at all. Southern residents, surprisingly, felt more secure than northern Israelis when surveyed. And overall, 33% of Israelis said in the event of a massive missile attack, they would still go to work – although just 9% of parents would send their children to school. (Arutz-7)
STEVEN SPIELBERG, IN HARVARD COMMENCEMENT SPEECH, SAYS ANTI-SEMITISM ON THE RISE: Speaking at Harvard University’s commencement, filmmaker Steven Spielberg said he was “wrong” as a kid to think anti-Semitism “was fading.” Spielberg, told the graduates that the world “is full of monsters” espousing “racism, ethnic hatred, class hatred” and “religious hatred.” “As a kid, I was bullied for being Jewish,” Spielberg recalled in his speech. “This was upsetting, but compared to what my parents and grandparents had faced, it felt tame because we truly believed that anti-Semitism was fading. But we were wrong. Over the last two years, nearly 20,000 Jews have left Europe to find higher ground. And earlier this year, I was at the Israeli embassy when President Obama stated the sad truth. He said: ‘We must confront the reality that around the world, anti-Semitism is on the rise. We cannot deny it.’” The 69-year-old creator of award-winning films like “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan,” also spoke about his Shoah Foundation. The foundation has taken video testimonies of over 53,000 Holocaust survivors and witnesses in 63 countries since he founded it in 1994. (J. Post)
FORMER LONDON MAYOR KEN LIVINGSTONE FIRED FROM RADIO SHOW FOLLOWING HITLER COMMENTS: Controversial former mayor of London Ken Livingstone was fired from his radio broadcast show following comments he made last month claiming Adolf Hitler supported Zionism. Livingstone, who hosted a Saturday morning talk show on LBC Radio, was informed of the decision over the weekend by the station’s owner, Global Radio. On news of Livingstone’s abrupt termination, The Campaign Against Antisemitism hailed the decision, saying that they “applaud” Global Radio for taking appropriate action against the former UK Labour official. “The strongest response to racism is for society to shun racists, which is what LBC’s owner Global Radio has rightly done, and we applaud them for heeding our calls,” the statement said. “Having offended Jewish people, and others committed to decency and anti-racism, Ken Livingstone proceeded to repeat his comments as widely and frequently as possible in the media. Global has now removed his most prominent outlet for doing so,” it added. During an interview with the BBC last month, Livingstone, who served as London’s mayor from 2000 to 2008, said that Hitler supported Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.” The comments came one day after Labor MP Naz Shah was suspended by the Labor party for posting anti-Semitic tropes on social media. Soon after, the faction released a statement, saying that Livingstone had been suspended “for bringing the Party into disrepute.” (Jerusalem Post)
UK LABOR LEADER CORBYN IGNORED ISRAELI LABOR PARTY’S INVITE: British Labor Party MPs have expressed “shock” over the failure of the party to respond to an invitation by Israel’s Labor Party to visit the country, even as the UK party’s leader Jeremy Corbyn fends off accusations of anti-Semitism in his party’s senior ranks. In April 2015, Israel’s opposition leader Isaac Herzog responded furiously to the ongoing row over anti-Semitism in the British sister party, inviting its senior officials to visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem for a reminder of the results of anti-Semitism. In a lengthy Facebook post, Herzog slammed the “repulsive” comments made that month by Labor’s former London mayor Ken Livingstone, a Corbyn ally, who said that Hitler supported Zionism “before he went mad.” Herzog also castigated Livingstone’s “anti-Semitic colleague” MP Naz Shah, who posted a message on Facebook calling for the dismantling of the State of Israel, and pro-Hamas tweets and comparisons of Israelis to Hitler. Both have been suspended by the party. According to UK media sources, the Israeli party had “not had a reply” to Herzog’s letter. The dispute over anti-Semitism in Labor has been simmering for months – since Corbyn was elected party leader in September 2015 with a stream of party officials shown to have made anti-Semitic statements. Corbyn has himself been criticized in the past for referring to Lebanon’s powerful terror group Hezbollah as “friends” and urging dialogue with the Hamas Islamist terror group. Last week the UK Guardian cited Labor MPs who said Corbyn’s failure to respond bolstered the claim that he was responding inadequately to the anti-Semitism crisis. (Times of Israel)
PAKISTANI HUSBANDS CAN ‘LIGHTLY BEAT’ THEIR WIVES, ISLAMIC COUNCIL SAYS: The head of a powerful Islamic council is refusing to back down from a proposal that make it legal for husbands to “lightly beat” their wives in Pakistan, despite ridicule and revulsion including calls that maybe the clerics should stand for their own gentle smack down. Speaking to reporters, the chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology, Muhammad Kahn Sherani said, “A husband should be allowed to lightly beat his wife if she defies his commands and refuses to dress up as per his desires; turns down demand of intercourse, or does not take bath after menstrual periods. If you want her to mend her ways, you should first advise her. If she refuses, stop talking to her, stop sharing a bed with her, and if things do not change, get a bit strict,” Sherani said. If all else fails, he added, “hit her with light things but do not hit her on the face or private parts.” The council, also known as the CII and made up of Islamic clerics and scholars who advise Pakistani legislators, also said it was “un-Islamic” for women to leave an abusive relationship and seek refuge in a shelter. (Washington Post)
The suggestions, opinions and scripture references made by JNN writers and editors are based on the best information received.
Blessings from Jerusalem,
Barry Segal with the Editorial Staff
