This issue includes the EU’s economic war on Israel, the impending Israeli-Iranian showdown, a brief look at Tisha B’Av, Hamas’s new rockets, Egypt’s new interim cabinet and more.
OUR ISRAELI CONNECTION
News from the Jerusalem Prayer Team
The European Union has Declared Economic War on Israel. In a move designed to cause Israel great financial hardship, the EU voted on July 16th to forbid all twenty-eight members from having any interaction with Israeli territories outside the original 1949 lines. This would include, according to news sources, “cooperating, transferring funds, giving scholarships or research grants to organizations or individuals based in Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem, and even the Golan Heights.” The instructions target 2014-2020 and went into effect July 18th. The decision dictates that Israel must disavow “settlements” that are not part of the 1949 mandate.
Israel is reacting with a mixture of disbelief and outrage to the announcement that both Iran and Syria are running for seats on the United Nations Human Rights Council. Read more.
Has the End Game Begun? Privately, Senior Israeli Officials Warn War with Iran Could Come in 2013
Joel Rosenberg reports: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is beginning to prepare the public in Israel and around the world for a “military option.” This is why he appeared on CBS’s “Face The Nation” on Sunday (see excerpt of transcript on the blog). The PM called the Iranian a “messianic, apocalyptic” regime bent on genocide, a reference to the Shia eschatology Khamenei holds that Iran must annihilate Israel and the U.S. to usher in the reign of the Twelfth Imam. Netanyahu also called the incoming Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, a “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” who has bragged in the past about negotiating with the West while secretly advancing nuclear enrichment. What’s more, Netanyahu vowed not to “wait too long” to stop Iran.
Today we Mourn with the Jewish People on Tisha B’Av
CUFI reports: Today [Tuesday], Jewish people around the world are mourning the destruction of the first and second temples that were destroyed on the same day, on the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av, about 656 years apart. The 9th of Av was also the day that the Jews were expelled from England in 1290, the day that King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expelled the Jews from Spain in 1492 and the beginning of the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942.
News from the Israel Project
Iran’s installation of advanced nuclear infrastructure, including IR-2m centrifuges, risks enabling the regime to go nuclear “within a few weeks” once a political decision has been made to do so, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister spoke on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday and emphasized that Iran would not “be allowed to cross the “red line” on enrichment that he had established at the United Nations last September.
Hamas is manufacturing and testing rockets – including a Gaza version of the advanced Iranian Fajr-5 – capable of striking
Israel’s densely packed population centers, risking another conflict like Israel’s November Operation Pillar of Defense, which Jerusalem launched after several months in which Hamas steadily increased the amount and sophistication of weapons it fired at Israeli infrastructure and civilians.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Turkish media Sunday that former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi is still “my president,” and that the army’s actions against Morsi – which came in response to the largest national anti-government demonstrations in the history of humanity – “ignor[ed] the Egyptian people.”Erdogan was an early and consistent supporter of Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood-linked government, and Ankara reacted to Morsi’s removal with outrage.
IT’S NEWS TO ME
Egypt’s New Interim Cabinet Sworn In; Includes Christians, Women
Breaking Christian News reports: Egypt’s first interim government officials were sworn in today in a move that reflects a stark difference from ex-President Mohamed Morsi’s prior cabinet. According to an AFP report, none of the appointed ministers are affiliated to any Islamist party or movement. The new government is led by Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi, said to be an economist, and women have been appointed to three ministries, including the Information and Health ministries-the most women to be appointed into top level government positions in recent Egyptian history. Three Christians are also said to be in the new government, with one of them also being a woman-Environment Minister Laila Rashed Iskander. Not surprisingly, the Muslim Brotherhood has issued a statement saying they reject the new 35-member cabinet’s authority and legitimacy. Read more.
Britain Denies Robert Spencer Entrance
David Horowitz reports: We [The Freedom Center] got proof of the ongoing assault against the truth last week when our own Robert Spencer, authoritative voice on FrontPageMagazine and editor of JihadWatch,received a letter from the British Home Office notifying him that he would not be allowed to enter England.”Your presence here is not conducive to the public good,” the letter said. Robert’s colleague Pamela Geller got the same message. Why had Spencer and Geller scheduled a trip to England? To lay a wreath at a memorial service for British soldier Lee Rigby, who was beheaded by a pair Islamic jihadists on a London street on May 22.
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