RUTHFULLY YOURS

The demonstration was sparked by new security measures on Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which have now been removed.

Protesters also waved Palestinian and Turkish flags, a well as pictures of the al-Aksa mosque. Cries of “Allahu-akbar” can be heard in amateur footage of the protest.

Israeli flags were snatched from members of a small counter protest, with one being burnt. Police intervened as a second flag was trampled on.
Yiftah Curiel, a diplomat and spokesman for the embassy, slammed “thugs” flying terror flags and said demonstrators were “cheering on the bloodshed” after three Israelis were murdered in their homes in the West Bank on Friday.

The Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB) invited people to attend the so-called “Emergency Protest against Israeli aggressions in Jerusalem” in London on Facebook.
“Israeli government has closed al-Aksa Mosque, imposed tight security check on worshipers as part of its plans to seize the holy Muslim site”, they claimed on the event page.

The militant wing of Hezbollah is a banned terrorist organisation in the UK. However, the political wing is still legal, meaning police are powerless to remove Hezbollah flags if those flying them claim only to support part of the group.

Hundreds of flags of the terror group were on display at the anti-Israel al-Quds Day rally on London’s street in June.

Members of the Jewish community and Tory and UKIP members of the London Assembly slammed the Mayor, Sadiq Khan, for initially refusing to condemn the flags and push for them to be banned.

The Mayor later changed his position and now supports a ban.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah Party announced Saturday that the “campaign for Jerusalem has effectively begun, and will not stop until a Palestinian victory and the release of the holy sites from Israeli occupation.” Fatah demanded the removal of metal detectors and other security devices from the entrance to the Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount. A week earlier two Israeli policemen were killed by terrorists who had stashed their weapons inside the mosque.

The Fatah statement was illogical and hypocritical. Many mosques in Muslim-majority countries use the same security technology to protect worshipers, tourists and police. Yet Mr. Abbas managed to force the Israeli government to remove them. He did it by deflecting attention from the policemen’s murders and stoking fear of a religious conflagration with vast repercussions.

The Temple Mount crisis highlights with exceptional clarity three factors that explain why a steady 80% of Palestinians believe they can eliminate the Jewish state: Islamic doctrine, international succor and Israeli timidity.

Islam carries with it the expectation that any land once under Muslim control is an endowment that must inevitably revert to Muslim rule. The idea has abiding power: think of Osama bin Laden’s dream of resurrecting Andalusia and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s hopes of regaining influence over the Balkans. Palestinians consistently report their belief that the state of Israel will collapse within a few decades.

A confrontation over the Temple Mount uniquely excites this expectation because it reaches far beyond the local population to arouse the passions of many of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims. The most prominent Muslim leaders and institutions overwhelmingly supported Fatah’s position on the Temple Mount security provisions. Islamic voices outside the pro-Palestinian consensus are rare. Palestinians rejoice in their role as the tip of an enormous spear.

Palestinians’ illusions of might enjoy considerable international support. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization routinely passes critical resolutions aimed at Israel. Columbia University houses something called the Center for Palestine Studies. Major corporations such as Google and news organizations like the British Broadcasting Corp. pretend there’s a country called Palestine. Foreign aid has created a Palestinian pseudo-economy that in 2016 enjoyed a phenomenal 4.1% growth rate. CONTINUE AT SITE

On July 14, for the first time in decades, Israel closed the Temple Mount, a site holy to Jews, Muslims, and Christians, on a Friday—Islam’s holy day. The move was made after three Arab Israelis opened fire at the site, killing two Israeli policemen. The Muslim terrorists, Israeli citizens who had used automatic weapons that they apparently carried in a knapsack to the Temple Mount and hid at the holy site prior to the attack, were tracked down and killed by Israeli police. By Sunday, July 16, the Temple Mount had reopened, with temporary metal detectors and cameras in place to screen worshipers.

While Israelis initially considered the installation of magnometers and cameras a non-controversial step aimed at boosting security for all who pray at the site, others—Palestinian, Jordanian, and Muslim— condemned what they called Israel’s effort to change the site’s political status and consolidate control. The ensuing protests have left six dead in Israel— three Palestinian protesters and three Israeli settlers who were stabbed to death in their homes. On Monday evening, Israelis and Arab officials edged closer to a deal to resolve the crisis.

The recent spate of violence is a grim reminder of age-old tensions—and yet, in Israel, an increasingly rare one. In a region beset by war and political turmoil, Israel—and its capital—have remained relatively calm. That’s thanks in part to radical changes in counterterrorism policing led by Major General Yoram Halevy, 54, commander of the Israeli Police’s Jerusalem district. One of the force’s most experienced officers, Halevy has for the past 17 months overseen the police’s counterterrorism mission in Jerusalem, including the roughly 5,000 members of the Israeli Police and Border Police operating in the city.

In an interview only days before the Temple Mount attack, he discussed some of his reforms publicly for the first time and explained why he thinks they are reducing both violence and civilian tolerance of it.

The numbers are impressive. In 2015, there were 33 stabbings in the city; this year, until the latest violence, there have been just six. In 2015, Jerusalem reported six deaths due to deliberate car-rammings; this year, one person has died in such incidents. While 43 terrorist attacks occurred in the city in 2015, only eight so far have taken place in 2017. Within the past year, stone-throwing incidents have dropped by 15 percent. Despite the Temple Mount attack, “these are dramatic reductions,” Halevy said.

Such a record under the most challenging of circumstances holds potentially valuable lessons for other cities targeted by terror. “Anyone can chase down and arrest terrorists. That’s the easy part,” said Halevy, the Jerusalem-born son of Iraqi Jews who speaks fluent Arabic and worked undercover for the police in the Palestinian community for several years. “Denying terrorists the civilian support they crave and need to operate is a far tougher challenge.”

The most effective way of defusing Palestinian hatred of the Israelis who, in their view, occupy their capital and country is to “empower the silent civilian majority which is sick and tired of the violence, but afraid to say so.” This, Halevy told me through a translator, though he speaks some English, is his overarching goal.

Few cities are as tempting a terrorist target as Jerusalem. Fought over for centuries, destroyed at least twice, besieged some 23 times, and recaptured 44 times, Jerusalem is the heart of the modern struggle between two peoples who claim the same land. The city remains demographically divided between Israelis concentrated in the west and Palestinians in the east. But it has not been physically split since the 1967 war, when Israel wrested control of East Jerusalem from Jordan, which still helps administer sensitive holy sites like the Temple Mount. As such, Jerusalem has been the scene of persistent protests, strikes, and terrorist attacks—even as 10 million tourists visit each year.

So, who is taking Abbas’s threats to suspend security cooperation with Israel seriously? Not Israel, not the Americans, and certainly not many Palestinians. Abbas is caught between two bad places — both of his very own making. On the one hand, he knows that security cooperation with Israel is his only insurance policy to remain in power and alive. On the other hand, Abbas is acutely aware of his status among many Palestinians, who would be more than happy to replace him with someone more… to their taste.

Palestinian intelligence chief Majed Faraj’s message was directed to the Israeli public with the goal of pressuring the Israeli government and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to cave in to Palestinian threats and remove the metal detectors. This is why Faraj chose an Israeli journalist who is known to be sympathetic to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership. Faraj and his boss — Abbas — wanted to scare the Israeli public and turn them against Netanyahu by telling them that Palestinians will stop security coordination with Israel unless the metal detectors were removed.

Abbas is still playing his old game. Out of one side of his mouth he claimed a desire for a peaceful solution to the metal detectors crisis, and out of the other side, he egged his people on to murder more and more Israelis. As it turns out, whether security coordination is “sacred” or “suspended,” Abbas is in it for one person only: himself.

The conflicting reports emerging from Ramallah concerning security coordination with Israel serve as yet another reminder of the Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders’ astounding hypocrisy.

Israel, for its part, has brushed aside reports about a suspension of the security coordination with the Palestinian Authority as yet another Abbas gimmick.

It is far from lost on Mahmoud Abbas and his PA that such security coordination is what stands between a very hungry Hamas and Abbas served up on toast for breakfast.

In the past, Abbas has rightly and reasonably described security coordination with Israel as “sacred,” saying he will never succumb to pressure from Hamas and many Palestinians to stop working with Israel in the West Bank.

“I wish to say this openly – security coordination (with Israel) is sacred and will continue regardless of our political differences,” Abbas declared in 2014.

Abbas’s statement came amid reports that Israeli intelligence had thwarted a Hamas assassination plot against him in 2014.

Security coordination is indeed sacred for the Palestinian Authority president — not to mention his family members and senior officials, who without such cooperation would also be dead, imprisoned or forced into exile. Abbas has yet to recover from the nightmare of 2007, when Hamas brought about the collapse of his Palestinian Authority and violently seized control over the Gaza Strip. The last thing Abbas wants is a recurrence of that horrific scenario; thousands of his police officers and Fatah loyalists were severely humiliated, and many either lynched in public, thrown off the high floors of buildings, imprisoned, or forced either to surrender or flee to Israel and Egypt.

The latest fiasco pertaining to the issue of security coordination with Israel began on July 21, when Abbas announced his decision to “freeze contacts with the occupation state (Israel) on all levels.” Abbas’s announcement came during a meeting of Palestinian leaders in Ramallah to discuss the crisis surrounding Israel’s decision to install metal detectors at the entrance to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This decision came in response to a shooting attack on July 14 carried out by three Arab Israelis that resulted in the murder of two Israeli police officers.

The Solomon family was massacred Friday night as they celebrated Shabbat and the birth of their newest grandson in their home. They were massacred by a 19 year old jihadist who posted an explanation of his imminent act of barbarous murder against his Jewish neighbors on Facebook less that two hours before he stormed their home in Neve Tzuf.

The murderer used the same language as his”moderate” “pro-peace” “legitimate” leader, PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas who said that Jews pollute the Temple Mount with our “filthy feet.”

Ironically and appallingly, just last week the US State Department published a report blaming Israel for Palestinian terrorism and claiming that the PLO-led, and US-funded Palestinian Authority doesn’t incite terrorism and violence and hatred.

The State Department also opposes the Taylor Force bill which if passed — along the lines passed in the House of Representatives, (the Senate bill is an insult to our intelligence), would end US taxpayer subsidization of Palestinian terrorism to the tune of more than half a billion dollars a year.

The State Department — Tillerson included, apparently, doesn’t see anything wrong with the fact that the PA uses more than $300 million every year to pay people like the murderer who butchered the Solomons and their families.

Having murdered the Solomons in their home, this terrorist is guaranteed a lifetime salary and pension for his family that ensure them all an upper middle class economic status — courtesy of US taxpayers via the “moderate” PA, PLO, Abbas, terror machine.

I just gave my final speech in Australia and will be heading on to the US for a month from here.

It is my intention to use my time in the US to convince the Washington types that this appalling, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish policy of supporting people committed to our annihilation in the name of fake peace must end.

Enough is enough. This simply cannot continue. Jewish life is sacred, not worthless. It is time for the US to accept and base its policy on this basic, self-evident fact.

A Palestinian mother extolled her 19-year old son’s “accomplishment” in the name of Allah. She exclaimed: “Praise Allah. I am proud of my son. May Allah be pleased with him.” The mother was not celebrating her son’s graduation, new job, marriage, fatherhood or some other life-affirming event. Rather, she was celebrating the deaths that her terrorist offspring, Omar al-Abed, brought to a Jewish family on July 21st. The family was about to sit down for a Sabbath dinner and to celebrate the birth of a grandson that same day when the Palestinian terrorist prodigy invaded the family’s home. Wielding a knife, he proceeded to kill a grandfather, his daughter and his son, and to seriously wound the grandmother. The massacre ended only after a neighbor, who belongs to an elite IDF unit and was home on leave, heard cries for help from the house and shot the terrorist. Al-Abed was eventually handcuffed and taken to a hospital for treatment of his wounds.

The terrorist’s mother was joined in her celebration by Palestinians dancing in the street in Gaza. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh reportedly phoned Omar al-Abed’s father to congratulate him for what his son had done to bring “pride to the nation.”

The trigger for this latest spurt of violence was said to be Israel’s decision to install metal detectors at the entrances leading to the Temple Mount. Israel took this action in response to the killings by terrorists on July 14th of two Israeli police officers guarding the holy site. The murders were carried out by Arab Israeli citizens who used guns previously smuggled into the compound. Israel installed metal detectors to prevent any further smuggling of arms.

Palestinian violence has been spreading since then, resulting in the deaths of four Palestinian rioters in confrontations with Israeli security forces trying to restore calm.

The spiraling violence is being spurred on by Muslim religious leaders and Palestinian officials claiming that Israel’s security actions were defiling the Al Aqsa mosque situated on the Temple Mount. Omar al-Abed picked up on this theme in the “will” he posted on Facebook three hours before his cowardly attack. He said he was acting against “the sons of apes and pigs who defile Al Aqsa.” Hoping for martyrdom, he posted: “I will go to heaven. How sweet death is for the sake of God, his prophet and for Al-Aqsa mosque.” The 19-year old terrorist, who is the apple of his mother’s eye, did not get his wish and will now have to answer for his crimes. No doubt, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will reward the terrorist’s family with a generous stipend while he remains in Israeli custody. That’s the way Abbas operates.

After first mouthing an insincere condemnation of the murderous attack on the police guarding the Temple Mount, Abbas has exploited the situation ever since. He announced that he was going to suspend all contacts with Israel until the metal detectors were removed. Abbas reached out to the United States and the so-called “international community” to pressure Israel into cancelling its heightened security measures. He reportedly said that unless Israel backed down, tensions over access to the holy site could spiral out of control. The United Nations Security Council is meeting in closed session Monday morning to discuss the crisis. Sweden, Egypt and France requested the special meeting. None of these countries have supported Israel in dealing with the ever present threat of Palestinian terrorism. They have bought into the Palestinians’ victimhood narrative.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government has been holding firm so far on its latest security measures. Tzachi Hanegbi, the minister for regional development and a senior member of the ruling Likud party, told Army Radio: “They (metal detectors) will remain. The murderers will never tell us how to search the murderers. If they (Palestinians) do not want to enter the mosque, then let them not enter the mosque.”

However, there is some division within the Israeli government on the utility of the metal detectors. Senior security officials have reportedly warned that the potential danger the metal detectors may pose in being used as a pretext for widespread violence may outweigh their usefulness. Thus, the government could be preparing a way to replace the metal detectors with a less controversial alternative. Israel has begun installing sophisticated security cameras at one of the entrances. While security officials have told Israeli media that the cameras are meant to complement the metal detectors, not replace them, the cameras may provide the Israeli government with a face saving way to defuse the immediate crisis. Prime Minister Netanyahu hinted as much when he said at his weekly cabinet meeting, “The only thing we want is to ensure no one can again take weapons in and carry out another attack. We’re willing to examine alternatives to the metal detectors, so long as the alternative ensures the prevention of the next attack.”

Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), has announced that Palestinian leadership will freeze all contact with Israel, including crucial security coordination. On Friday, a Palestinian terrorist killed three Israelis, including a 70-year-old man, in their home in the West Bank. On Facebook, the attacker posted: “They desecrate Al-Aqsa & you sleep. They declared war on Allah & all I have is a knife.” Hamas applauded the attack as “heroic,” and a Fatah-affiliated militia also praised it. On Sunday night, a Jordanian man stabbed a security guard with a screwdriver at the Israeli embassy in Amman. On Monday, yet another terrorist stabbed an Israeli in the neck and torso, and then told police he “did it for al-Aqsa.” Meanwhile, violence rages across East Jerusalem and the West Bank as Palestinian rioters clash with Israeli police. Three Palestinians have already died. Hundreds are injured. More bad news arrives each hour.

What in the world is going on?

The current spate of violence started last week, when Palestinian terrorists smuggled guns into the Temple Mount. The guns were then used to murder two Israeli-Arab police officers guarding one of the entrances to the al-Aqsa mosque. Afterward, the attackers ran back to the Temple Mount plaza to engage in an open gun battle. (This was all the more shocking since the Temple Mount, home to al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, is considered the third-holiest site for Muslims and the holiest site for Jews.)

In response, the Israelis temporarily closed the Temple Mount for a police investigation. The site was later re-opened with metal detectors and security cameras installed at its entrances. That Israeli response — not the Palestinian smuggling of weapons, not the Palestinian attack, not the shooting that followed — was then deemed an outrageous desecration of the holy site by Palestinians and their leaders.

It’s worth noting that metal detectors and other security measures are common at holy sites around the world. Everyone passes through them to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, for example. It is also worth noting that the status quo at the Temple Mount discriminates against Jews, who are forbidden from praying there. In 2014, Abbas even called on Palestinians to prevent all Jews from entering the Temple Mount. Before 1967, the Jordanians did just that, blocking Jews from their faith’s holiest site.

But no matter. Abbas’s Fatah party told its followers to “Set out for the al-Aqsa Mosque” on Facebook, initiating riots and clashes with Israeli police. Videos, however, showed large crowds of Palestinians chanting slogans against President Abbas, who is widely perceived as weak. Eager to fight that perception, Fatah’s Revolutionary Council, chaired by Abbas, escalated the situation by declaring Wednesday a “day of rage,” calling for mass demonstrations at al-Aqsa and throughout the suburbs of Jerusalem. Abbas has since placed responsibility for the resulting violence on the Israeli government, of course.

Remember, these are the Palestinian “moderates.”

Senior PA clerics have also done their share to stoke tensions and incite violence, as the Middle East Media Research Institute has shown over the last few days. PA and Jerusalem mufti Sheikh Muhammad Hussein banned Muslim worshippers from passing through the metal detectors on the way to al-Aqsa. “The prayer of anyone entering the al-Aqsa mosque via the metal detectors is null and void,” he said last Monday. On Thursday, the PA’s minister of religion, Yousef Ida’is, declared that, “The continued damage to the holy places requires exceptional activity by the Muslim Arabs.” The words “exceptional activity” are rather open to interpretation; others aren’t. On its official Facebook page, a Fatah branch posted: “Rage Jerusalem — the Intifada will continue, the revolution will continue to Jerusalem.”

On Friday, the city’s Muslim leadership closed all mosques, telling parishioners to go to the Temple Mount in order to form a volatile mob.

Following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, armchair pundits determined that the age of the tank as king of the battlefield had come to an ignominious end. They argued that the introduction of anti-tank guided missiles rendered the tank obsolete. How wrong they were. Several post-war studies of the conflict demonstrated that the tank was still indispensable to modern warfare and when employed in a combined arms manner with artillery and mechanized infantry, still reigned supreme.

Israel learned many lessons from the Yom Kippur War and incorporated those lessons into the development of its own indigenous tank, the Merkava (Chariot). The Merkava 1 entered service with the Israel Defense Forces in 1978 and first saw action in 1982 during Operation Peace for Galilee when it engaged and destroyed no fewer than nine Soviet-made, Syrian T-72 tanks without sustaining a single loss. It also reportedly succeeded in downing a Syrian anti-tank helicopter with its main gun.

Since that time, the Merkava has undergone several modifications and improvements, the latest iteration of which is the Merkava 4. The Merkava 4 is considered by armored warfare experts to be among the finest tanks in the world, and in terms of crew survivability, the safest.

In the summer of 2006, Israel was forced to go to war again, this time with the notorious terrorist organization Hezbollah. On July 12, two Israeli reservists were killed and their bodies snatched during a Hezbollah cross-border attack. Israel could not allow the outrage to go unanswered and decided to launch an offensive against Hezbollah. Nearly 400 Merkava tanks, mostly of the older II and III variants, were haphazardly deployed in the latter stages of the 34-day conflict.

During the course of the war, Hezbollah guerrillas fired thousands of anti-tank missiles – from the first generation Sagger to the highly advanced Kornet – at static Israeli infantry and tanks but only succeeding in damaging some 40 tanks and of these, there were only 20 penetrations. Despite these encouraging numbers, so-called experts began to once again challenge the utility of the tank and its place in modern warfare.

IDF planners saw things differently. They went back to the drawing board in an effort to draw conclusions from the performance of the Merkava and tactics employed by its crew members.

With at least 1/3 of its fighting force permanently stationed in Syria, the probability of Hezbollah initiating war against Israel in the near future is low. Even in the absence of the Syrian conflict, Hezbollah will soon not forget the thrashing it took at the hands of the IDF during the 2006 campaign. Nevertheless, most experts agree that the next Lebanon war is not a question of if, but when, and when it does begin, Israel’s latest Merkava variant, the vaunted Merkava 4 will be in the thick of it.

Straight from the Jerusalem Boardroom #221, July 21, 2017 http://bit.ly/2vqdYQu

According to the June 15, 2017 Wall Street Journal, six Israeli startups (three in the cybersecurity sector) are among the top 25 tech companies, which may be the global leaders of tomorrow.

2. According to Forbes Magazine, Israel has become a cybersecurity powerhouse, creating more than 300 cybersecurity startups, exporting in 2016 $6.5BN in cybersecurity products, convincing more than 30 multinationals to establish local research & development centers in Israel and attracting foreign investors. According to Forbes, there are six reasons leading to Israel’s prominence in the world of cybersecurity: the close government-military-business-academia interaction; government support of early-stage cybersecurity startups; Israel’s military as a startup incubator and accelerator, combining research and operation; investing in human capital (e.g., cybersecurity is an elective high school matriculation exam, and operating six university cybersecurity research centers); Israel’s overall inter-disciplined and diverse human factor enhanced through military service and interaction with global giants; Israel’s constant need to defy security and commercial odds.

3. Enhancing the mutually-beneficial, two-way-street US-Israel cooperation, a cybersecurity bilateral working group was established by the Trump Administration, aimed at combatting cyber offensives. Tom Bossert, White House homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, stated: “Israel’s agility in developing solutions will innovate cyber defenses that the US can test in Israel and bring back to America….”

4. During the first half of 2017 – in addition to Intel’s March 2017 acquisition of Israel’s Mobileye for $15.3BN – Israeli hightech companies were acquired by foreign companies for a total sum of $1.8BN. For example, Symantec, the Mountain View, CA software security and storage systems giant, acquired Israel’s FireGlass and Skycare (cybersecurity) for $250MN each (Globes, July 13, 2017).

5. During the second quarter of 2017, $1.3BN were invested in Israeli startups, mostly by foreign investors, second highest quarter in the last five years, compared to $1.1BN in the first quarter, as well as the fourth quarter of 2016, and $1.7BN in the second quarter of 2016. For instance, the Japanese giant SoftBank invested $100MN in Israel’s cybersecurity, Cybereason, and Johnson & Johnson led a $12MN round by Israel’s medical/nutritional tech, Day Two. Israel’s venture capital fund, Qumra, raised $115MN for its second fund, mostly from US and European Family Offices (Globes, July 20).

6. Intel is bolstering its operations in Israel – over and beyond its 10,000 employees, four R&D centers, two manufacturing plants and $4BN annual exports out of Israel – leveraging Israel’s cybersecurity added-value. Intel has recently expanded its Israel Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, partnering with Illusive Networks, a cybersecurity startup, and Israel’s Team8, a cybersecurity powerhouse, which has developed close contacts with Microsoft, Cisco, Qualcomm, ATT&T, Nokia, Mitsui and Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, aiming to develop cutting edge cybersecurity technologies.

7. India-Israel trade balance surged from $200MN in 1992 to over $4BN in 2016.

According to the Executive Editor of Business India (published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies), “this sliver of a country [Israel] of 8.4 million is a leading innovation hub with the highest density of startups and venture capital in the world. It has more NASDAQ-listed companies than any other country save the US and China – more than India, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong combined. The total market capitalization of these Israeli companies exceeds $85BN…. Israeli companies either pioneered or were among the first to commercialize firewalls (CheckPoint), voicemail (Comverse), USB flash drives (M-Systems), VoIP (Vocaltec) and digital printing (Indigo).

“Israeli startups have also driven innovation across all major technology sectors, as in the cases of Amdocs and Comverse in telecommunications applications, Verint and NICE in contact center applications, Mercury in information technology (IT) management, Check Point in security, DSPG in semiconductors and Mellanox in Infiniband…. Israel has proportionately more scientists and tech professionals than any other country. Almost 40% of Israeli hightech employees are engaged in R&D for [over 200] major global tech companies that have subsidiaries or research centers in Israel. These include Intel, Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Facebook, Applied Materials, Apple, IBM, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Oracle and Motorola….

“Israel is a country 0.63% the size of India. Its population is 0.64% that of India and its GDP $297BN to India’s $2.25TN, but its GDP per capita is $34,000 to India’s $6,700…. With India its largest arms client, Israel netted its biggest-ever defense contract in April, 2017 when India awarded Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) contracts totaling almost $2BN [medium-range surface-to-air missiles, air and missile defense systems and a long range SAM air and missile defense systems for India’s aircraft carrier]…. India buys from Israel military hardware worth an average of over $1BN annually… Israeli technologies can be used to boost the development of India’s critical sectors, including food security, water management and efficiency, cyberspace and data protection, e-learning and innovation and digitalization…. 21 memoranda-of-understanding were recently concluded between Indian and Israeli academic institutions….”

For years, the most delicate dispute in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the status of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The Al Aqsa Mosque sits on the spot from which Muslims believe Mohammed ascended to heaven. At its base are the remains of the outer wall of the second Jewish Temple.

This is why Friday’s terror attack on this sacred ground is so important.

It’s hard to think of a worse debasement of a holy place than for armed gunmen in the middle of a shooting spree to flee to it for sanctuary. Add to this the fact the Jerusalem police now say there were guns hidden in the Temple Mount complex at the time.

All of this challenges a prevailing Palestinian narrative about the Al Aqsa Mosque: that Jews are a threat to its preservation. You hear it in the speeches of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, in which he falsely claims Jewish settlers are building tunnels underneath the Temple Mount. He complains of “dirty feet” stepping on this holy ground.

When former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount in 2000, Palestinians were so angered that it sparked the second intifada. Later that year, Yasser Arafat formed a militia called Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade to kill Jews at random in the name of reclaiming the holy site.

Now it should be said that Al Aqsa Mosque, believed to be built in 690, has endured the crusades, British colonization and Israeli statehood. In the 1980s, a group of Jewish terrorists plotted to blow it up, but they never followed through. When Israel won the land that includes the Temple Mount in the 1967 Six-Day War, it decided to allow a religious trust called the Jordanian Waqf to remain the administrators of the site.

Now we have an atrocity that threatened the mosque’s worshippers. The real threat to the Mosque on Friday did not come from Jewish settlers, but from Israeli Arabs. So it’s important to examine the response from Palestinian leaders.

Let’s start with Abbas. He was forceful in his condemnation of the act, noting that there is no room for violence in such a holy place. Other members of his party, Fatah, were also quick to denounce. And Ayman Odeh, the head of Israel’s largest Arab political party, condemned all armed struggle from Israeli Arabs against Israel in the wake of the attack.

That’s pretty good. But by Monday the old patterns emerged. Fatah called this week for a “day of rage.” Was this to protest the gunmen who entered the noble sanctuary or those mourning their deaths? No. This protest is aimed at Israel for erecting metal detectors at the entrance of the Temple Mount compound after the shootings.

The most telling response, however, came from Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated group that rules Gaza. A spokesman for the group, Sami Abu Zuhi, said on Friday the attack “was a natural response to Israeli terrorism and their defilement of the Al Aqsa mosque.”

Now there are many things one can say about Hamas. They are killers, of course. They are also fanatics. Hamas favors the imposition of Islamic law on the people of Gaza. The group was responsible for changing the tenor of the Palestinian national liberation movement in the 1980s and 1990s, from largely an anti-colonialist struggle to a kind of holy war to reclaim Jerusalem.