JEWISH KING JESUS IS COMING AT THE RAPTURE FOR US IN THE CLOUDS-DON'T MISS IT FOR THE WORLD.THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY- WHEN THE PLAIN SENSE MAKES GOOD SENSE-SEEK NO OTHER SENSE-LEST YOU END UP IN NONSENSE.GET SAVED NOW- CALL ON JESUS TODAY.THE ONLY SAVIOR OF THE WHOLE EARTH - NO OTHER. 1 COR 15:23-JESUS THE FIRST FRUITS-CHRISTIANS RAPTURED TO JESUS-FIRST FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT-23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.ROMANS 8:23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.(THE PRE-TRIB RAPTURE)
ISRAEL SATAN COMES AGAINST
1 CHRONICLES 21:1
1 And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.
GENESIS 12:1-3
1 Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I (GOD) will shew thee:
2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:
3 And I will bless them that bless thee,(ISRAELIS) and curse (DESTROY) him that curseth thee:(DESTROY THEM) and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
ISAIAH 41:11
11 Behold, all they that were incensed against thee (ISRAEL) shall be ashamed and confounded: they shall be as nothing;(DESTROYED) and they that strive with thee shall perish.(ISRAEL HATERS WILL BE TOTALLY DESTROYED)
ISRAELS TROUBLE
JEREMIAH 30:7
7 Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble;(ISRAEL) but he shall be saved out of it.
DANIEL 12:1,4
1 And at that time shall Michael(ISRAELS WAR ANGEL) stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people:(ISRAEL) and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation(May 14,48) even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.
4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro,(WORLD TRAVEL,IMMIGRATION) and knowledge shall be increased.(COMPUTERS,CHIP IMPLANTS ETC)
Church attackers claimed Islamic State link, France confirms-President Hollande says killing of priest in northern France a terror attack; Pope Francis denounces ‘absurd violence’-By AFP and Times of Israel staff July 26, 2016, 2:57 pm
French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday said the attackers at a northern France church, who slit the throat of an elderly priest, had “claimed to be from the Islamic State.”Hollande’s comments were the first official confirmation that the deadly attack on a church in the northern French town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray on Tuesday was a terror attack.“We are faced with a group which has declared war,” said Hollande, after noting the attackers’ allegiance with the jihadist group.Tuesday’s incident comes as France remains on high alert nearly two weeks after Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel plowed a truck into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day in the French Riviera city of Nice, killing 84 people and injuring over 300.The archbishop of the nearby city of Rouen, Dominique Lebrun, had named the murdered priest as 84-year-old Jacques Hamel. The two attackers were killed by police.Five people were inside the church when it came under attack, interior ministry spokesman Pierre Henry Brandet said. Three of the hostages were freed unharmed, and another was fighting for their life.Pope Francis on Tuesday condemned the “barbaric killing” of the elderly priest.“The pope… shares the pain and horror of this absurd violence,” Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said, adding that the attack created “immense pain and worry.”Francis issued “the most severe condemnation of all forms of hatred” and said he was appalled “because this horrific violence took place in a church, a sacred place” and involved the “barbaric” killing of a priest.The motivations for the hostage-taking were not yet clear, but the Paris prosecutor’s office said the case was being handled by anti-terrorism prosecutors.French Prime Minister Manuel Valls expressed his horror at what he called “a barbaric attack on a church.”“The whole of France and all Catholics are wounded. We will stand together,” he wrote on Twitter.The archbishop of Rouen, Dominique Lebrun, urged all non-believers to join those of the church in “calling to God.”“The Catholic Church can take up no other weapons than prayer and fraternity between men,” he said in a statement.French far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen wrote on Twitter that the “modus operandi obviously makes us fear a new attack from terrorist Islamists.”The Nice attack was the third major strike on France in 18 months and was claimed by the Islamic State group.Two attacks in Germany claimed by the Islamic State group since then have also increased jitters in Europe.After the attack in Nice, France extended for another six months until January a state of emergency giving police extra powers to carry out searches and place people under house arrest.It was the fourth time the security measures have been extended since Islamic State jihadists struck Paris in November, killing 130 people at restaurants, a concert hall and the national stadium.
Priest killed by knife-wielding assailants in French church-2 men shot dead by police after taking several hostages in Normandy region; motive unclear, but prosecutor treating incident as terror; second victim fighting for life-By Times of Israel staff and Agencies July 26, 2016, 12:03 pm-the times of israel
A priest was killed and another person critically injured on Tuesday after two men armed with knives took hostages at a church near the northern French city of Rouen, a police source said, amid speculation the attack could be related to Islamic terror.The French interior ministry said that two hostage-takers were killed by police in the attack in the town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray.The second hostage, apparently a parishioner, was “between life and death,” the interior ministry said.The motivations for the hostage-taking were not yet clear, but the Paris prosecutor’s office said the case had been handed to anti-terrorism judges for investigation.A source close the investigation said the priest, named as 84-year-old Jacques Hamel, had his throat slit in the attack.The incident comes as France remains on high alert nearly two weeks after Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel ploughed a truck into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day in the French Riviera city of Nice, killing 84 people and injuring over 300French President Francois Hollande, who is from Rouen, and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve were on their way to the scene, their offices said.In a statement, Prime Minister Manuel Valls expressed “horror at the barbaric attack on a church,” and church officials in France and elsewhere condemned the incident.Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said the RAID special intervention force was searching the church and its perimeter for possible explosives. Terrorism investigators have been summoned, he said.It was not clear how many people were in the church at the time of the attack, which reportedly came after the knifemen sneaked in through a back door as Hamel was giving morning mass.An official said five people were held during the standoff, including Hamel and parishioners.Police could not say what the motive for the attack was, but speculation was rampant it could be related to Islamist terror.According to Le Figaro, one hostage taker was bearded and was wearing a woolen cap worn by Muslim men.French media also reported the attackers yelled “Daesh” as they entered the church, though it’s not clear why they would announce themselves using a derogatory term for the Islamic State terror group.France is on edge following a string of terror attacks there and in Germany in recent weeks, including the truck attack in Nice and a suicide bombing in southern Germany Sunday night that wounded 15.Both attacks were claimed by the Islamic State.France last week voted to extend emergency laws aimed at preventing terror attacks.It was the fourth time the measures were extended since Islamic State jihadists struck Paris in November 2015, killing 130 people at restaurants, a concert hall and the national stadium.Hollande had planned to lift the measures on July 26 but changed tack after the Nice attack.
Bennett says PM in denial over Gaza tunnel preparations-Education minister says leadership must ‘learn from mistakes of the past’; Likud official brands comments a ‘total lie’-By Times of Israel staff July 26, 2016, 9:56 am
Education Minister Naftali Bennett accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Tuesday morning of refusing to learn from mistakes in the lead-up to the 2014 war with Gaza, a day after Netanyahu claimed to have been well-apprised of the threat of cross-border tunnels.“Every platoon leader draws conclusions at the end of an exercise in order to prevent future mistakes and to improve,” Bennett, who heads the right-wing Jewish Home party, wrote on Twitter. “What is true for an infantry division is doubly true for the diplomatic-security leadership of the State of Israel.”An unnamed Likud official later said Bennett’s accusations were a “total lie.”“Bennett’s comments sound nice. It’s a shame it’s a total lie,” the Likud official said.On Monday, Netanyahu told a group of military reporters that claims he had been caught unaware by attacks from Hamas into Israeli territory via an extensive tunnel system dug under a border fence were false.“Operation Protective Edge was not the Second Lebanon War,” Netanyahu said. “The claim that we were not prepared and we didn’t know about the tunnels is the opposite of the truth.”However, Bennett, who had loudly lobbied Netanyahu for a ground operation to destroy the tunnels during the early days of the nearly two-month war, countered that the prime minister was in denial.“Before the next conflict we are obligated to learn from the mistakes of the past and not to deny them. Drawing real conclusions is a sign of strength and self-confidence,” he wrote in a series of tweets. “Anyone who refuses to learn from the mistakes of the past is condemned to repeat them in the future.”Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid on Tuesday urged the government to make public a state comptroller report on the 50-day conflict.“There were serious failures in reporting to the security cabinet and in the decision-making process. I call upon the state comptroller to publish the report as soon as possible; the families deserve to know and the Israeli public deserves to know,” said Lapid.“The prime minister claimed yesterday there were no failures and no mistakes. I join the call by Education Minister Bennett who said to the prime minister that by denying mistakes and trying to hide faults we can’t learn the lessons of the operation,” he added.Netanyahu’s statement came in the wake of a demand from 32 bereaved families to set up an official inquiry into operational and planning failures before and during Operation Protective Edge, as Israel labeled the conflict.The families sent their demands in letters to both Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman.During the war, initially launched to stanch rocket fire from the Strip, Israeli troops destroyed some 50 tunnels in the Strip, a number of them reaching into Israel for the purpose of attacking troops and civilians, according to the IDF.Several soldiers were killed in a number of attacks by Hamas fighters emerging from tunnels inside Israeli territory.During the war, a number of military and political officials said that while they knew about the existence of tunnels, they were caught off guard by how extensive they were.“Of course we didn’t know all the details and how complex was the network below the ground. I don’t think we had the full picture,” former national security adviser Giora Eiland told Foreign Policy at the time.The prime minister has been repeatedly criticized by Bennett for purportedly failing to prepare Israeli forces effectively to tackle the tunnels, a number of which were discovered in the months before the war.Netanyahu insisted that the security cabinet discussed the tunnels as far back as January 2013, and has repeatedly since, amid indications that Hamas has begun rehabilitating its tunnel infrastructure.
Israel’s only mummy gets afterlife spotlight at Israel Museum-88 years after arriving from Alexandria, 2,200-year-old remains of Egyptian priest go on display in Jerusalem-By Ilan Ben Zion July 26, 2016, 1:24 pm-the times of israel
Alex’s toes poke out of his linen shroud. The chamber is dark and cool like a crypt. On the wall above him the unwavering gaze of his wooden sarcophagus glares downwards, its chest emblazoned with a mahogany-hued winged scarab, Khepri, symbol of rebirth.He lived and died in upper-class obscurity around 2,200 years ago, but Alex’s remains — the only mummy in Israel — star in an Israel Museum exhibit opening Tuesday.A century before Anthony and Cleopatra, when the Ptolemies ruled the Nile he lived as a priest in the city of Panopolis, modern-day Akhmim, in Upper Egypt. During his lifetime Alex was known as Iret-hor-iru — The Protective Eye of Horus — but got his modern moniker after he was donated to Jerusalem’s Pontifical Biblical Institute by Jesuits in Alexandria.Iret-hor-iru is “very well preserved” for his age, Israel Museum curator Galit Bennett-Dahan told The Times of Israel as the finishing touches were being put on the exhibit. “You can see that not only were whole bones preserved, but also teeth, ears, eyes, tissues in the thighs and hands.”After his demise, he underwent the traditional process of embalming and mummification. His internal organs were removed and placed in canopic jars, his brain was pulled out through his nose, his body was packed and covered with natron to dry it out and then wrapped in linen.In the lead-up to the exhibit, the Israel Museum teamed up with the Carmel Medical Center in Haifa and scientists from Tel Aviv University to get a better understanding of who Iret-hor-iru was, how he lived, and how he died. Contrary to what the priests at the institute thought, he wasn’t a teenage boy, nor did he live in the 4th century BCE, around the time Egypt fell to Alexander the Great.Radiocarbon dating of his linen wrappings found he died in the 2nd century BCE, and CT scans found he lived into his late 30s or early 40s, no small feat when infant mortality was rampant and a year-old child was expected to live until 40. He stood 5’5″ when he was alive — taller than average — but the desiccating embalming procedure left him a few inches shorter as the centuries passed.He still has most of his teeth, but suffered from cavities and receding gums, as well as osteoporosis. Like people nowadays, he indulged in too many carbs and spent too much time indoors.“Maybe he had a convenient life, because he didn’t work so hard,” she said.Arabic and French newspapers bunched up in the sarcophagus to protect the mummy during its journey to Jerusalem date to 1927 and 1928, confirming it arrived at the institute just after it opened in 1927. Since then it has remained in the institute’s modest and oft-overlooked archaeology museum next door to the King David Hotel.The one-room display runs parallel to the ongoing Pharaohs in Canaan exhibit that opened in March and explores Egypt’s political and cultural influences upon the Bronze and Iron Age Levant. Through Iret-hor-iru, the curators try to explain the ancient Egyptian perception of death, from embalming and mummification of the dead (both human and animal) to the spirit’s passage through the afterlife.Although his mummification techniques and burial style follow Egyptian custom, Iret-hor-iru’s Egypt was Hellenized, having been conquered by Alexander the Great’s armies over a century before. The Ptolemies respected local religion, and funerary traditions were preserved, albeit with the inclusion of Greek styles, the Israel Museum’s Bennett-Dahan explained. The painted plaque laid across his chest is distinctive of the Ptolemaic period, and his stylized death mask traditional. Both are relatively modest compared to the gilt grandeur of Tutankhamen, but typical of the more affluent.Accompanying Iret-hor-iru in his Israel Museum afterlife are an assortment of Hellenistic and Roman-era funerary masks that were placed over the face of the dead. Some, like that of Iret-hor-iru, are stylized, imitating the traditional Egyptian representation of the deceased, with almond eyes and a long wig. Others are realistic and strikingly beautiful portraits.Amulets in the shape of beasts and birds and crafted out of faience, ivory, gold or semiprecious stones were placed on the body to protect it in the afterlife. Today, they make up a kaleidoscopic menagerie accompanying Iret-hor-iru.The only other mummy in the room is that of an ibis, the bird considered holy to Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing and wisdom. A lifelike sarcophagus with the wading bird’s distinctive curved bill, enclosing the mummified remains of the sacred bird, was a gift to former deputy prime minister Moshe Dayan from Egyptian president Anwar Sadat after the signing of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty in 1979. Across the hall, in the Pharaoh in Canaan exhibit, the museum showcases a duplicate of the bent Canaanite scimitar given to Egypt by Israel in the same exchange.While the exhibit is by no means as exhaustive as that of the British Museum, or as glamorous as King Tut, it offers a clear, concise and humanizing insight into death on the Nile.————————Follow Ilan Ben Zion on Twitter and Facebook.
1 CHRONICLES 21:1
1 And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.
GENESIS 12:1-3
1 Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I (GOD) will shew thee:
2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:
3 And I will bless them that bless thee,(ISRAELIS) and curse (DESTROY) him that curseth thee:(DESTROY THEM) and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
ISAIAH 41:11
11 Behold, all they that were incensed against thee (ISRAEL) shall be ashamed and confounded: they shall be as nothing;(DESTROYED) and they that strive with thee shall perish.(ISRAEL HATERS WILL BE TOTALLY DESTROYED)
ISRAELS TROUBLE
JEREMIAH 30:7
7 Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble;(ISRAEL) but he shall be saved out of it.
DANIEL 12:1,4
1 And at that time shall Michael(ISRAELS WAR ANGEL) stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people:(ISRAEL) and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation(May 14,48) even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.
4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro,(WORLD TRAVEL,IMMIGRATION) and knowledge shall be increased.(COMPUTERS,CHIP IMPLANTS ETC)
Church attackers claimed Islamic State link, France confirms-President Hollande says killing of priest in northern France a terror attack; Pope Francis denounces ‘absurd violence’-By AFP and Times of Israel staff July 26, 2016, 2:57 pm
French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday said the attackers at a northern France church, who slit the throat of an elderly priest, had “claimed to be from the Islamic State.”Hollande’s comments were the first official confirmation that the deadly attack on a church in the northern French town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray on Tuesday was a terror attack.“We are faced with a group which has declared war,” said Hollande, after noting the attackers’ allegiance with the jihadist group.Tuesday’s incident comes as France remains on high alert nearly two weeks after Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel plowed a truck into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day in the French Riviera city of Nice, killing 84 people and injuring over 300.The archbishop of the nearby city of Rouen, Dominique Lebrun, had named the murdered priest as 84-year-old Jacques Hamel. The two attackers were killed by police.Five people were inside the church when it came under attack, interior ministry spokesman Pierre Henry Brandet said. Three of the hostages were freed unharmed, and another was fighting for their life.Pope Francis on Tuesday condemned the “barbaric killing” of the elderly priest.“The pope… shares the pain and horror of this absurd violence,” Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said, adding that the attack created “immense pain and worry.”Francis issued “the most severe condemnation of all forms of hatred” and said he was appalled “because this horrific violence took place in a church, a sacred place” and involved the “barbaric” killing of a priest.The motivations for the hostage-taking were not yet clear, but the Paris prosecutor’s office said the case was being handled by anti-terrorism prosecutors.French Prime Minister Manuel Valls expressed his horror at what he called “a barbaric attack on a church.”“The whole of France and all Catholics are wounded. We will stand together,” he wrote on Twitter.The archbishop of Rouen, Dominique Lebrun, urged all non-believers to join those of the church in “calling to God.”“The Catholic Church can take up no other weapons than prayer and fraternity between men,” he said in a statement.French far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen wrote on Twitter that the “modus operandi obviously makes us fear a new attack from terrorist Islamists.”The Nice attack was the third major strike on France in 18 months and was claimed by the Islamic State group.Two attacks in Germany claimed by the Islamic State group since then have also increased jitters in Europe.After the attack in Nice, France extended for another six months until January a state of emergency giving police extra powers to carry out searches and place people under house arrest.It was the fourth time the security measures have been extended since Islamic State jihadists struck Paris in November, killing 130 people at restaurants, a concert hall and the national stadium.
Priest killed by knife-wielding assailants in French church-2 men shot dead by police after taking several hostages in Normandy region; motive unclear, but prosecutor treating incident as terror; second victim fighting for life-By Times of Israel staff and Agencies July 26, 2016, 12:03 pm-the times of israel
A priest was killed and another person critically injured on Tuesday after two men armed with knives took hostages at a church near the northern French city of Rouen, a police source said, amid speculation the attack could be related to Islamic terror.The French interior ministry said that two hostage-takers were killed by police in the attack in the town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray.The second hostage, apparently a parishioner, was “between life and death,” the interior ministry said.The motivations for the hostage-taking were not yet clear, but the Paris prosecutor’s office said the case had been handed to anti-terrorism judges for investigation.A source close the investigation said the priest, named as 84-year-old Jacques Hamel, had his throat slit in the attack.The incident comes as France remains on high alert nearly two weeks after Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel ploughed a truck into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day in the French Riviera city of Nice, killing 84 people and injuring over 300French President Francois Hollande, who is from Rouen, and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve were on their way to the scene, their offices said.In a statement, Prime Minister Manuel Valls expressed “horror at the barbaric attack on a church,” and church officials in France and elsewhere condemned the incident.Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said the RAID special intervention force was searching the church and its perimeter for possible explosives. Terrorism investigators have been summoned, he said.It was not clear how many people were in the church at the time of the attack, which reportedly came after the knifemen sneaked in through a back door as Hamel was giving morning mass.An official said five people were held during the standoff, including Hamel and parishioners.Police could not say what the motive for the attack was, but speculation was rampant it could be related to Islamist terror.According to Le Figaro, one hostage taker was bearded and was wearing a woolen cap worn by Muslim men.French media also reported the attackers yelled “Daesh” as they entered the church, though it’s not clear why they would announce themselves using a derogatory term for the Islamic State terror group.France is on edge following a string of terror attacks there and in Germany in recent weeks, including the truck attack in Nice and a suicide bombing in southern Germany Sunday night that wounded 15.Both attacks were claimed by the Islamic State.France last week voted to extend emergency laws aimed at preventing terror attacks.It was the fourth time the measures were extended since Islamic State jihadists struck Paris in November 2015, killing 130 people at restaurants, a concert hall and the national stadium.Hollande had planned to lift the measures on July 26 but changed tack after the Nice attack.
Bennett says PM in denial over Gaza tunnel preparations-Education minister says leadership must ‘learn from mistakes of the past’; Likud official brands comments a ‘total lie’-By Times of Israel staff July 26, 2016, 9:56 am
Education Minister Naftali Bennett accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Tuesday morning of refusing to learn from mistakes in the lead-up to the 2014 war with Gaza, a day after Netanyahu claimed to have been well-apprised of the threat of cross-border tunnels.“Every platoon leader draws conclusions at the end of an exercise in order to prevent future mistakes and to improve,” Bennett, who heads the right-wing Jewish Home party, wrote on Twitter. “What is true for an infantry division is doubly true for the diplomatic-security leadership of the State of Israel.”An unnamed Likud official later said Bennett’s accusations were a “total lie.”“Bennett’s comments sound nice. It’s a shame it’s a total lie,” the Likud official said.On Monday, Netanyahu told a group of military reporters that claims he had been caught unaware by attacks from Hamas into Israeli territory via an extensive tunnel system dug under a border fence were false.“Operation Protective Edge was not the Second Lebanon War,” Netanyahu said. “The claim that we were not prepared and we didn’t know about the tunnels is the opposite of the truth.”However, Bennett, who had loudly lobbied Netanyahu for a ground operation to destroy the tunnels during the early days of the nearly two-month war, countered that the prime minister was in denial.“Before the next conflict we are obligated to learn from the mistakes of the past and not to deny them. Drawing real conclusions is a sign of strength and self-confidence,” he wrote in a series of tweets. “Anyone who refuses to learn from the mistakes of the past is condemned to repeat them in the future.”Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid on Tuesday urged the government to make public a state comptroller report on the 50-day conflict.“There were serious failures in reporting to the security cabinet and in the decision-making process. I call upon the state comptroller to publish the report as soon as possible; the families deserve to know and the Israeli public deserves to know,” said Lapid.“The prime minister claimed yesterday there were no failures and no mistakes. I join the call by Education Minister Bennett who said to the prime minister that by denying mistakes and trying to hide faults we can’t learn the lessons of the operation,” he added.Netanyahu’s statement came in the wake of a demand from 32 bereaved families to set up an official inquiry into operational and planning failures before and during Operation Protective Edge, as Israel labeled the conflict.The families sent their demands in letters to both Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman.During the war, initially launched to stanch rocket fire from the Strip, Israeli troops destroyed some 50 tunnels in the Strip, a number of them reaching into Israel for the purpose of attacking troops and civilians, according to the IDF.Several soldiers were killed in a number of attacks by Hamas fighters emerging from tunnels inside Israeli territory.During the war, a number of military and political officials said that while they knew about the existence of tunnels, they were caught off guard by how extensive they were.“Of course we didn’t know all the details and how complex was the network below the ground. I don’t think we had the full picture,” former national security adviser Giora Eiland told Foreign Policy at the time.The prime minister has been repeatedly criticized by Bennett for purportedly failing to prepare Israeli forces effectively to tackle the tunnels, a number of which were discovered in the months before the war.Netanyahu insisted that the security cabinet discussed the tunnels as far back as January 2013, and has repeatedly since, amid indications that Hamas has begun rehabilitating its tunnel infrastructure.
Israel’s only mummy gets afterlife spotlight at Israel Museum-88 years after arriving from Alexandria, 2,200-year-old remains of Egyptian priest go on display in Jerusalem-By Ilan Ben Zion July 26, 2016, 1:24 pm-the times of israel
Alex’s toes poke out of his linen shroud. The chamber is dark and cool like a crypt. On the wall above him the unwavering gaze of his wooden sarcophagus glares downwards, its chest emblazoned with a mahogany-hued winged scarab, Khepri, symbol of rebirth.He lived and died in upper-class obscurity around 2,200 years ago, but Alex’s remains — the only mummy in Israel — star in an Israel Museum exhibit opening Tuesday.A century before Anthony and Cleopatra, when the Ptolemies ruled the Nile he lived as a priest in the city of Panopolis, modern-day Akhmim, in Upper Egypt. During his lifetime Alex was known as Iret-hor-iru — The Protective Eye of Horus — but got his modern moniker after he was donated to Jerusalem’s Pontifical Biblical Institute by Jesuits in Alexandria.Iret-hor-iru is “very well preserved” for his age, Israel Museum curator Galit Bennett-Dahan told The Times of Israel as the finishing touches were being put on the exhibit. “You can see that not only were whole bones preserved, but also teeth, ears, eyes, tissues in the thighs and hands.”After his demise, he underwent the traditional process of embalming and mummification. His internal organs were removed and placed in canopic jars, his brain was pulled out through his nose, his body was packed and covered with natron to dry it out and then wrapped in linen.In the lead-up to the exhibit, the Israel Museum teamed up with the Carmel Medical Center in Haifa and scientists from Tel Aviv University to get a better understanding of who Iret-hor-iru was, how he lived, and how he died. Contrary to what the priests at the institute thought, he wasn’t a teenage boy, nor did he live in the 4th century BCE, around the time Egypt fell to Alexander the Great.Radiocarbon dating of his linen wrappings found he died in the 2nd century BCE, and CT scans found he lived into his late 30s or early 40s, no small feat when infant mortality was rampant and a year-old child was expected to live until 40. He stood 5’5″ when he was alive — taller than average — but the desiccating embalming procedure left him a few inches shorter as the centuries passed.He still has most of his teeth, but suffered from cavities and receding gums, as well as osteoporosis. Like people nowadays, he indulged in too many carbs and spent too much time indoors.“Maybe he had a convenient life, because he didn’t work so hard,” she said.Arabic and French newspapers bunched up in the sarcophagus to protect the mummy during its journey to Jerusalem date to 1927 and 1928, confirming it arrived at the institute just after it opened in 1927. Since then it has remained in the institute’s modest and oft-overlooked archaeology museum next door to the King David Hotel.The one-room display runs parallel to the ongoing Pharaohs in Canaan exhibit that opened in March and explores Egypt’s political and cultural influences upon the Bronze and Iron Age Levant. Through Iret-hor-iru, the curators try to explain the ancient Egyptian perception of death, from embalming and mummification of the dead (both human and animal) to the spirit’s passage through the afterlife.Although his mummification techniques and burial style follow Egyptian custom, Iret-hor-iru’s Egypt was Hellenized, having been conquered by Alexander the Great’s armies over a century before. The Ptolemies respected local religion, and funerary traditions were preserved, albeit with the inclusion of Greek styles, the Israel Museum’s Bennett-Dahan explained. The painted plaque laid across his chest is distinctive of the Ptolemaic period, and his stylized death mask traditional. Both are relatively modest compared to the gilt grandeur of Tutankhamen, but typical of the more affluent.Accompanying Iret-hor-iru in his Israel Museum afterlife are an assortment of Hellenistic and Roman-era funerary masks that were placed over the face of the dead. Some, like that of Iret-hor-iru, are stylized, imitating the traditional Egyptian representation of the deceased, with almond eyes and a long wig. Others are realistic and strikingly beautiful portraits.Amulets in the shape of beasts and birds and crafted out of faience, ivory, gold or semiprecious stones were placed on the body to protect it in the afterlife. Today, they make up a kaleidoscopic menagerie accompanying Iret-hor-iru.The only other mummy in the room is that of an ibis, the bird considered holy to Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing and wisdom. A lifelike sarcophagus with the wading bird’s distinctive curved bill, enclosing the mummified remains of the sacred bird, was a gift to former deputy prime minister Moshe Dayan from Egyptian president Anwar Sadat after the signing of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty in 1979. Across the hall, in the Pharaoh in Canaan exhibit, the museum showcases a duplicate of the bent Canaanite scimitar given to Egypt by Israel in the same exchange.While the exhibit is by no means as exhaustive as that of the British Museum, or as glamorous as King Tut, it offers a clear, concise and humanizing insight into death on the Nile.————————Follow Ilan Ben Zion on Twitter and Facebook.
via EVENTS IN TIME (BIBLE PROPHECY LITERALLY FULFILLED)(BY GOD) http://ift.tt/2aJ6LBa
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