Arabs freaking out over a dvar Torah in this week's parasha

Arutz-7 published a d'var Torah this week by prominent Religious Zionist Rabbi Melamed, where he encourages Israeli Jews to have more children and for diaspora Jews to move to Israel, because he says the more Jews in the land, the more peace there will be.

In one part of the essay that mentions this week's Torah portion he says, 

Why were the borders of the land reduced in Parashat Masei?

The borders of the Land of Israel are from the [Nile] River to the Euphrates River. However, in practice, in Parashat Masei, when God commanded Israel to occupy the land and settle it, he commanded to conquer only the western side of the Jordan. Because the mitzvot of settling the land must be fulfilled according to the ability of the people of Israel. And since the number of Israel was not sufficient to settle the whole Land of Israel, the mitzvah was to first conquer the more sacred part, to the west of thee Jordan. And only after they multiply, they would be able to gradually expand towards the eastern Jordan and all the territories of the Promised Land of Israel (Ramban Bamidbar  21:21; Malbim ibid.).

Therefore, from the beginning, Israel did not intend to conquer the land of Sihon and Og, and only after they did not accept the peace offer and went to war against Israel, the people of Israel conquered their land. And there was still no intention to settle there, so when the sons of Reuven and Gad asked to cross the Jordan, Moses was very careful about them, but in retrospect he granted their request after they promised to be pioneers in conquering most of the land. In practice, there were not enough  Jews to enter the Western Jordan, and it remained sovereign enclaves of Gentiles there, who caused great trouble to Israel for about four hundred years, as recounted in the Book of Judges.

Rabbi Melamed is saying that God Himself commanded the Israelites to only conquer the land to the west of the Jordan, and not the entire expansive borders, because there simply weren't enough of them to effectively rule a larger area - and even the parts of Transjordan that they settled was a cause of problems since they didn't have enough people. Certainly it is not desirable today to conquer much of the Arab world. 

Arab media is looking at this article and saying,

Rabbi to the Jews: They multiplied so that we fight Egypt and Iraq and control the Nile and the Euphrates 

The extremist Jewish rabbi , Eliezer Melamed, claimed that the borders of the Israeli occupation should extend from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq, to ​​repeat the occupation narratives that prove Tel Aviv's desire to dominate the Arab region .  

Which he is hardly saying - he is complaining that we do not have enough Jews to even control the entire area west of the Jordan properly! Nowhere does he call for a war with Egypt and Iraq!

Now, other Arab sites are chiming in about the "racist" rabbi who merely quoted the Torah about the ideal borders of Israel that no one is calling for today. 

Usually, when these kinds of things happen -and they happen pretty often - it is a secular Israeli newspaper that misinterprets the words of some rabbi to make him sound racist. Here, apparently the Arab media themselves decided to interpret the d'var Torah in an entirely wrong way - because they know no one will fact check them.

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Jordan is officially antisemitic, confiscating any Jewish objects at the borders with Israel

From Arutz-7:

Members of an Israeli delegation were denied entry into Jordan Tuesday, after border guards refused to allow those wearing Jewish garb from entering the country.

The incident occurred at the Rabin border crossing in Eilat, on the border with the Jordanian port city of Aqaba, when a delegation of Israeli municipal leaders tried to enter the Hashemite kingdom for an educational tour.

Jordanian border officials ordered the delegation members to lift up their shirts, so that the guards could see if they were wearing any religious Jewish garments underneath.

Tour participants who were not wearing identifiably Jewish garb, such as kippot (yarmulkes) or tzitzit (a four-cornered, fringed traditional Jewish garment) were permitted to cross the border, while those who were wearing religious garments were refused entry.

One participant told Israel Hayom that a Jordanian border guard took his kippah and threw it in the trash.

These are not the actions of an overzealous security guard. Stories like this pop up every few months. Official Jordanian policy is to confiscate any object that is remotely Jewish at the border with Israel, even if they are hidden within luggage.

Even non-Jews who cross from Israel to Jordan have their Jewish-themed souvenirs confiscated. 

The official reason? This is done for the visitors' own safety.

That excuse is itself fascinating. Jews have traveled to other Muslim-majority countries, even those with no diplomatic relations with Israel, with their kipot and tallitot and tefillin with no issues. Only Jordan claims that the mere whiff of Judaism could whip its citizens into a murderous frenzy. And only Jordan blames the Jews for upsetting their Muslim residents by merely existing as Jews.

The blatantly antisemitic policy has been in place since at least 2015. Jordanians have complained bitterly when they see photos of religious Jews praying at the "Tomb of Aaron":

However, it appears that some Hasidic groups have managed to arrange trips specifically to visit and pray at that spot - on the Breslov Hasidic website they have a poster for a planned three day trip last summer, and they claim they have visited every year without incident, although they admit to having had to curtail some of their activities due to Jordanian concerns. But their annual trip originates from Israel.

So there is a little more to this story; perhaps organized tour groups arranged through some Jordanian travel agents are allowed. 

Also, I have not seen anyone mention that Jews flying to Amman being harassed for wearing kipot or tzitzit.

But the official stated policy remains one of explicit antisemitism. 

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Ben-Gvir's visit to the Temple Mount is the definition of fake news - because nothing happened, but the players WANT drama

Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the Temple Mount today to mark the Jewish observance of the 10th of Tevet fast day.

He didn't even pray there, as far as I can tell from reports.

He has visited the site before without incident. Other ministers have visited the site without incident. Between 50,000 and 60,000 Jews visited the Temple Mount in 2022, according to Palestinian sources.

So what exactly makes this a major news story? Nothing happened that hasn't happened many times before without incident. The only thing slightly out of the ordinary is that there was more security than usual, which makes sense given the threats by jihadists.

This is a perfect example of terrorist supporters manufacturing a crisis, inciting Muslims into a frenzy, and the media happily doing their part to promote the idea that an utterly normal event is a precursor to an apocalypse.

The story isn't the visit. 

The story is the incitement and the threats which are independent of anything Israel does or doesn't do. The story is the attempt for Palestinians to impose their own rules on Jews and Israel by using dire threats of war and a new intifada.

Everyone has a script in this play, and everyone plays their own role that matches their agendas. 

For the New York Times, it was to describe the visit as a hugely provocative insult to Palestinians in paragraph 1, before admitting that nothing actually happened in paragraph 2:

In one of his first acts as Israel’s minister of national security, the ultranationalist Itamar Ben-Gvir made a provocative visit to a Jerusalem holy site that is sacred to Jews and Muslims early Tuesday under heavy guard, defying threats of violent repercussions from the militant group Hamas and eliciting a furious reaction from the Palestinian leadership.

The visit to the site, a frequent flash point in the Old City of Jerusalem where past Israeli actions have set off broader conflagrations, was the first by a high-level Israeli official in years, and passed without incident. 

No, past Israeli actions haven't set off broader conflagrations. They were used as excuses for broader conflagrations.  

In the case of former prime minister Yair Lapid, this was an opportunity to act counter to the interests of Israel, warning against the visit and saying that if Ben-Gvir visits, "people will die." But as a politician, he is more interested in bringing down the current government than in doing what is best for Israel. (And Netanyahu acted exactly the same when he led the opposition in the Knesset.)

In the case of reporter Barak Ravid, he immediately asked US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides for his reaction. Nides did his part by implying (but not saying) that the US was unhappy with the visit, saying, “To be very clear - we want to preserve status quo and actions that prevent that are unacceptable. We have been very clear in our conversations with the Israeli government on this issue.” Since this visit didn't change the status quo, I'm not sure why Nides said that - whether it was a warning or an implication that this visit was more than it was. I don't know the exact question Nides was answering, so it is possible he was not referring to the visit altogether, and this was Ravid's implication. His job depends on juicy quotes.

In the case of Arutz-7, they chose to interpret Nides' comments as a direct "slam" of the visit. Because that sells papers. 

In the case of the Palestinian Authority, this was an opportunity to issue more threats. The PA spent yesterday telling its people that a Ben Gvir visit would be an insult to Islam, and today they are telling their people that it was an grave insult to Islam. 

For terror groups, yesterday they warned that such a visit would ignite a religious war and an explosion over the region, and today they are calling for exactly that response - showing that it wasn't a warning but a desire.

For Palestinians, I cannot find any spontaneous protests about the visit. I'm sure that the interested parties are planning these "spontaneous" protests in the coming hours, though. Because that is their role in this play.

Just because nothing happened doesn't mean that the actors don't want to work.

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Palestinians freak out over a cell phone playing a shofar blast on the Temple Mount

Arutz-7 reports:

On Sunday morning, former Knesset member Yehuda Glick visited the Temple Mount and was detained by police after broadcasting the sound of the shofar (a ram's horn, blown daily in the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah, the Day of Judgment) via his cell phone.

Documentation from the scene shows Glick broadcasting the shofar blast via what appears to be a YouTube application, and a police officer approaching him just minutes later, and detaining him.

That ten second video has already caused hours of angst from Palestinian politicians and media, who are reporting the event as if Glick actually blew a shofar.

The Palestinian ministry of foreign affairs issued a statement with its usual run-on sentences:

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants condemns in the strongest terms the incursions of settlers and extremist Jews into the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, which take place daily and in two time periods under the supervision, organization and protection of the occupying state and its various arms, and the extremist settlement associations that boast daily and reveal their plans targeting Al-Aqsa Mosque and building the alleged temple in its place, including the storming that occurred yesterday, led by the extremist rabbi Yehuda Glick and his feet blowing the trumpet during his storming of the mosque and spreading provocative pictures on several Israeli platforms, in addition to these groups dancing and singing loudly and performing Talmudic rituals in the mosque’s courtyards, and the campaign of targeting and the continuous expulsion of his guards and the Islamic Endowment Department on the way to withdraw more of its powers and obstructing the performance of its legal, religious and administrative duties towards the mosque.The Ministry considers with great seriousness the process of blowing the trumpet and considers it a dangerous escalation in the continuous Israeli aggression on Al-Aqsa Mosque in order to establish its temporal division in preparation for its spatial division, if not an attempt to impose full Israeli control over it and demolish it and build the alleged temple in its place, it considers this escalation an integral part of the Judaization operations Jerusalem, and one of the episodes of its annexation to the occupying state, changing its landmarks and its legal, historical and demographic location, completely separating it from its Palestinian surroundings and linking it to the Israeli depth, as it is an extension of the occupation’s open war on Christian and Islamic holy sites, cemeteries, and archaeological, historical and cultural sites in the Holy City, and falls within an official Israeli policy aimed at resolving the future of the holy city unilaterally and by the power of the occupation and in favor of its expansionist colonial ambitions, which leads to stifling any opportunity for the embodiment of the State of Palestine on the ground with its capital, East Jerusalem.

Notice that they don't mention that Glick was detained for playing the recording - or that the volume of the video was minuscule compared to the Waqf loudspeakers that blast five times a day.

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem also condemned the fictional blowing of the shofar.

Palestinian media certainly accepted the ministry's assertion that a shofar was blown along with a call to demolish Al Aqsa with these sorts of article illustrations:

In other "Al Aqsa is in danger" news, there will be a meeting between Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian president Sisi today. The Palestinian envoy to Cairo said that a number of topics will be addressed:

He stressed that Tel Aviv wants to divide Al-Aqsa in terms of time and space between Muslims and Jews, pointing out that East Jerusalem is exposed to the implementation of Judaization schemes, and Al-Aqsa Mosque is subjected to daily incursions by settlers who practice dancing and striptease (nudity) in the courtyards of Al-Aqsa.

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Expert says the Palestinians smashed the bullet that killed Shireen Abu Akleh before handing it over

On Monday, when the US said that the bullet that was said to have killed Shireen Abu Akleh was too deformed to allow a proper forensics exam, I tweeted this graphic as a joke:

It looks like it wasn't a joke.

From Arutz-7:

Leading physicist and ballistic expert Nahum Shahaf, who refuted the story of 12-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah being shot by IDF soldiers in the opening days of the Second Intifada, discussed the US State Department's announcement that it was not possible to determine who killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh as she was recording a firefight between IDF soldiers and terrorists in Jenin on May 11, 2022.

Shahaf points out that "the bullet underwent a severe transformation at the hands of a hammer that created a deep depression in its back, which cannot be formed by the projectile's movement alone", noting that while the Americans ruled that it was impossible to determine who was behind Abu Aqleh's death, they ended up stating that it was likely the result of IDF fire - a fact pointing to the investigators' anti-Semitic bias.

Regarding alterations made to the bullet prior to the PA allowing foreign experts to analyze it, Shahaf says he can detect streaks of crushing as well as an internal depression, which can only be produced by a hammer of enormous weight. The squeezing in question was performed on the back of the bullet and not its front, which smashes on impact.  

It does not appear that Shahaf is on the team that is investigating the shooting, so I am assuming that he is basing this on the photo of the bullet that Al Jazeera published, claiming it was the one that killed Abu Akleh.

If you look at it, it indeed looks like someone took a hammer to it.

 I cannot imagine how the back of a bullet could be crushed like that only from gunfire, especially given how dense bullets are. Here is a cross section of a M855A1 bullet typically used with an M4:

It would take enormous pressure to flatten that.

To my understanding, the back of the bullet is where the striations would be seen that can match the bullet to a test round from a weapon. If someone wanted to make a bullet impossible to match, the back of the bullet is exactly what they would want to tamper with.

Keep in mind that without comparing the bullet handed over to an X-ray of the bullet in Abu Akleh's head, it is impossible to know whether this is even the correct bullet to begin with.  We have seen absolutely no evidence of even a modicum of professionalism from the Palestinian side to prove a chain of custody of the bullet. Again, I am no expert, but I would have thought that the front of the bullet would be more deformed ("mushroomed") from hitting her skull and the inside of her helmet than the photo here shows.

(h/t Andrew)

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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