An IDF officer has released a report showing the number of IED attacks by Palestinians on Israelis has jumped ten fold in 2014.
The rise of 20 IEDs during 2014 compared to 2 in 2013 is indicative of a rise of across-the-board violence in the West Bank.
“The level of sophistication is not very high,” said Maj. Irad Hershkovitz, the demolitions officer of the Shomron Regional Brigade. “It’s not Yahya Ayyash. It’s not the Second Intifada. But there has been a very significant rise.”
Maj. Hershkovitz told the Times of Israel that most of the IEDs are explosives placed inside a cheap metal casing along with a watch or cell phone timer.
However, he said a crackdown has been taking place on bomb makers in the West Bank.
“The solution is the waves of arrests that we do,” he said, noting that the army is active in Area A, which is under full Palestinian control, and within the refugee camps surrounding Nablus. “There is not a night in which a few Palestinians are not arrested,” he said. “Nothing else can be done. That is what stops the wave of terror.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that if he was re-elected they would not be removing Israeli settlements from the West Bank.
“I don’t think withdrawing settlers is practical at the moment,” Netanyahu said. “I don’t think it will happen.”
Netanyahu continued his talk to say that he is still supportive of creation of a Palestinian state that he proposed in 2009 but that because of the actions of Palestinians, the plan is basically rendered meaningless.
The Prime Minister spoke about his issues with President Barack Obama but said that despite the actions of the Obama administration, there is a record amount of support for Israel among U.S. citizens.
Netanyahu said that the skyrocketing housing prices were the fault of previous Ehud Olmert. He said that during Olmert’s reign, the construction projects in Tel Aviv area came to a halt causing established property prices to jump.
A military court in Judea sentenced the mastermind of the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers to three life sentences.
Hussam Kawasameh was convicted last week for the planning and financing of the terrorist action. He also received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Hamas for his work in gathering weapons. He was also the one who hid the bodies and destroyed the evidence.
Prosecutors for the IDF said that Kawasameh did not see the boys as human beings and killed them simply because they were Jews.
The father of one of the victims said that his son was a good student who helped his siblings. Avraham Fraenkel said that his son Naftali wasn’t just murdered…but that he was used as an unwilling tool for terror as Kawasameh hid his body for 18 days.
Kawasameh did not speak at the hearing.
Schools have been shut down for at least three days across Jerusalem and many government offices are closing ahead of a massive blizzard that is expected to blanket the city in snow and ice.
The Israel Defense Forces are also moving to a heightened state of alert because of the storm, sending tanks into parts of northern Israel that could face being cut off because of high snowfall on roadways.
At least 1,000 soldiers have been deployed to northern Israel and Jerusalem to assist residents during the storm. The troops will make sure that all area hospitals will remain operational if doctors and nurses cannot make it into their offices because of the storm.
The front wave of the storm brought 45 mile per hour winds to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, downing trees across the region.
Last year a similar storm left wide areas with electricity, water or road access for days. The government will be shutting down major roadways ahead of the storm to avoid having vehicles trapped on the highway as they were in December 2013.
Residents have been spending the week stocking up on basic food supplies.
HarperCollins is on the defensive after the discovery they were selling an atlas of the Middle East that did not include Israel.
The Tablet, an international publication of the Catholic Church, discovered the atlas eliminating Israel. The atlas was sold to English speaking schools in Muslim-majority countries in the Persian Gulf.
HarperCollins recalled the atlas after the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales said they were harming the peace process.
“HarperCollins regrets the omission of the name Israel from their Collins Middle East Atlas. This product has now been removed from sale in all territories and all remaining stock will be pulped. HarperCollins sincerely apologizes for this omission and for any offence caused,” HarperCollins posted on their website.
“The publication of this atlas will confirm Israel’s belief that there exists a hostility towards their country from parts of the Arab world. It will not help to build up a spirit of trust leading to peaceful co-existence,” Bishop Declan Lang told The Tablet.
“Maps can be a very powerful tool in terms of de-legitimising ‘the other’ and can lead to confusion rather than clarity. We would be keen to see relevant bodies ensure that all atlases anywhere reflect the official UN position on nations, boundaries and all political features,” added Dr. Jane Clements, director of the Council of Christians and Jews.
Just days after the United Nations shut down Palestinian attempts to force the world to recognize them as a nation, the leadership of the Palestinian Authority are now attempting to attack Israel in an international court.
The Palestinians claim that Israel committed war crimes beginning on June 13, 2014, the day after three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered by Palestinian affiliated terrorists.
The move comes after Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas signed the ICC’s founding treaty and filed a formal request for Palestine to be considered a member state. It will take weeks for that process to be approved by the Court.
Palestine had been upgraded in a unanimous vote to “observer status” in December. The previous times Palestine has come after Israel at the ICC the cases have been dismissed because Palestine had no authority over the areas where they alleged crimes had taken place.
A PLO official told Haarets News Agency that it was important to get Palestine in the ICC because then civilian groups could file lawsuit after lawsuit against Israel.
A local chapter of the United Auto Workers has announced they are joining the boycott of Israel in support of the Palestinians.
UAW Local 2865, the union that represents teaching assistants at the University of California, voted to join the boycott on December 4th. The basis for their anti-Semitic decision was they claim Israel is launching “ongoing human rights violations” against Palestinians.
The margin of passage was 66% to 34%.
The ballot language passed by the group calls for the university and the UAW to “divest[ing] their investments, including pension funds, from Israeli state institutions and international companies complicit in severe and ongoing human rights violations as part of the Israeli oppression of Palestinian people.”
Officials admitted that only 2,168 of the 13,000 reported members of the chapter voted on the measure.
Officials at the United Nations say Palestinian leaders are quietly putting together a draft resolution that would recognize statehood for Palestine.
Despite opposition from Israel and U.S. officials, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he would be pushing forward with the resolution that calls for a peace deal with Israel within a year and an “end to occupation of Palestinian territories by 2017.”
“Today the Arab group will meet in New York, and we will submit the original draft resolution to the Security Council hoping to conclude the vote by tomorrow or the day after,” senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat told Reuters.
The crux of the resolution would be negotiations for the deal with Israel that would require the land captured by Israel in the 1967 war be returned to Palestine.
The proposal would also say that East Jerusalem is the capital of the Palestinian state and calls for an end to Israeli settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
“We will continue to rebuff vigorously attempts to force terms that would jeopardize our security,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
An ancient synagogue has been discovered in Magdala, Israel that archaeologists say may be a major part of Biblical history.
They believe that Jesus taught at the synagogue.
The discovery in Magdala is the latest in a series of ancient finds. The city is just five miles from the Biblical city of Capernaum. A first century A.D. boat, an ancient harbor and other Biblical times buildings have been found in the city.
“This stone is really unique, we’ve never excavated anything like it,” Dino Gorni of the Israeli Antiquities Authority said. “It took me three days to believe what I was seeing—that we are standing in a synagogue from the time that the temple in Jerusalem was functioning.”
Juan Solana of the Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center, says it’s impossible to believe Jesus did not go to that synagogue at some point.
“From the Jewish point of view, the position is clear,” Solana told WorldNetDaily. “It’s a first century synagogue, beautifully decorated, with pieces of art and an altar such has never been found in any other synagogue from that time. Never, ever.”
“From the Christian point of view, we cannot doubt that Jesus would have been there sometime,” he said. “The first Christian communities used to gather in the synagogues. They were observant Jews. So it’s clear that the first generation of Christians used to gather there.”
What an amazing year this has been! Just watching the world’s events unfold in the news is almost beyond the mind’s ability to comprehend. Do we really grasp that we are racing towards the complete fulfillment of ancient prophecies at break-neck speed? Biblical prophecies written in amazing detail and shrouded in mystery for a time are now being revealed. What was once cloudy is now clear – what was once a mystery is now revealed – what once felt so far off is now at the door. Continue reading →
