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)
LUKE 21:28-29
28 And when these things begin to come to pass,(ALL THE PROPHECY SIGNS FROM THE BIBLE) then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption (RAPTURE) draweth nigh.
29 And he spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree,(ISRAEL) and all the trees;(ALL INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES)
30 When they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand.(ISRAEL LITERALLY BECAME AND INDEPENDENT COUNTRY JUST BEFORE SUMMER IN MAY 14,1948.)
JOEL 2:3,30
3 A fire devoureth (ATOMIC BOMB) before them;(RUSSIAN-ARAB-MUSLIM ARMIES AGAINST ISRAEL) and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.
30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.(ATOMIC BOMB AFFECT)
ZECHARIAH 14:12-13
12 And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet,(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB) and their eyes shall consume away in their holes,(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB) and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB)(BECAUSE NUKES HAVE BEEN USED ON ISRAELS ENEMIES)(GOD PROTECTS ISRAEL AND ALWAYS WILL)
13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour.(1/2-3 BILLION DIE IN WW3)(THIS IS AN ATOMIC BOMB EFFECT)
EZEKIEL 20:47
47 And say to the forest of the south, Hear the word of the LORD; Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall devour every green tree in thee, and every dry tree: the flaming flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall be burned therein.
ZEPHANIAH 1:18
18 Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the LORD'S wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land.
MALACHI 4:1
1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven;(FROM ATOMIC BOMBS) and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
And here are the bounderies of the land that Israel will inherit either through war or peace or God in the future. God says its Israels land and only Israels land. They will have every inch God promised them of this land in the future.
Egypt east of the Nile River, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, The southern part of Turkey and the Western Half of Iraq west of the Euphrates. Gen 13:14-15, Psm 105:9,11, Gen 15:18, Exe 23:31, Num 34:1-12, Josh 1:4.ALL THIS LAND ISRAEL WILL DEFINATELY OWN IN THE FUTURE, ITS ISRAELS NOT ISHMAELS LAND.12 TRIBES INHERIT LAND IN THE FUTURE
European envoys complain to Israeli army over demolitions-Ambassadors from eight European states protest destruction of Bedouin caravans in letter to COGAT chief-By AFP July 19, 2016, 8:32 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
Eight European ambassadors have accused the Israeli army of displacing 75 Palestinian Bedouins in the occupied West Bank by confiscating caravans given to them by international donors.The ambassadors, who included Germany’s envoy, warned that policies targeting Bedouin communities could create a “coercive environment” forcing them to leave their areas.Such a scenario could result in forcible transfers, “which are considered a grave breach of international humanitarian law,” they said.In a joint letter to Major General Yoav Mordechai, head of the military body that coordinates Israeli activities in the West Bank and Gaza, the ambassadors said the confiscated caravans and materials had cost $64,500.“It is a serious concern that humanitarian assistance which is delivered under humanitarian principles be confiscated,” they said.As occupying power, they said, Israel is required to meet the basic needs of the population.“Relief items should not be requisitioned, confiscated, expropriated or interfered with,” they said.The caravans had been used as homes and a kindergarten by the Bedouin communities of Sateh Al-Bahir and Jabal Al-Baba, east of Jerusalem, which the diplomats said are among the most vulnerable in the West Bank.The signatories were the ambassadors of Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Ireland and Norway.The letter, dated July 7 but seen by AFP on Tuesday, comes amid increased tension over Israel’s demolition of foreign-funded structures for Palestinians in the West Bank.Earlier this year, the United Nations said Israel was demolishing Palestinian homes and other buildings constructed with international aid at an “alarming” rate.Mordechai’s department, known as COGAT, referred questions to Israel’s foreign ministry, which accused international donors of interfering.“Israel has a rule of law. Israel can’t accept illegal construction, be it by local elements or funded or aided by foreign elements,” the foreign ministry said in a statement to AFP.Under the 1990s Oslo peace accords, the Palestinian West Bank is divided into three areas.Area C, which accounts for about 60 percent of the territory, is under full Israeli control and it is nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain building permits there, UN officials say.So far in 2016, Israel has demolished 190 structures funded partly or fully by international donors in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, nearly double the 108 from all of 2015, according to UN figures seen by AFP.Israel argues that construction of shelters by donors in Area C is interference in its affairs.European diplomats argue that Israel has failed to abide by its legal obligations to Palestinians.
On Lebanon war anniversary, PM vows ‘iron fist’ response to attacks-Netanyahu calls Hamas, Hezbollah ‘forward bases of Iran’; Rivlin praises ordinary soldiers who overcame failures in preparedness-By Times of Israel staff and AFP July 19, 2016, 5:01 pm
Israel will offer a “powerful response” if it is attacked by terror groups Hezbollah or Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Tuesday at a ceremony marking 10 years since the Second Lebanon War.Netanyahu described the 2006 war as “a clash between an extremist terror organization with an Islamist ideology and a free democratic Israel.”“We are in a global battle. We are aware of the nature of the threats we face, and are preparing for any scenario,” he said at a ceremony at the Mount Herzl military cemetery.Hezbollah and Hamas, he said, “have established forward bases of Iran on our border. Everything that has happened in the Middle East in recent years is part of the same trend: radical Islamic terror that seeks to shatter liberty and culture with its sword thrusts.“This terror strikes not only Sarona or Otniel — it strikes in Paris and Nice, Brussels and Orlando. We are in a global campaign. Just as we are well aware of the character of the threats, so we are preparing for every contingency.”Israel was prepared for war, he said.“If the quiet is preserved, those who stand against us will also enjoy quiet. But if we must respond to aggression, the response will be powerful. Anyone who thinks they will find here a ‘spider’s web’ will come up against an ‘iron wall,’ and will feel an iron fist.”The Israeli premier was alluding to a 2000 speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, in which he called the Jewish state “feebler than a spider’s web.”The 2006 conflict erupted when Israel retaliated for a cross-border raid in which Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed three, and quickly spiralled into a fully fledged war.Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets into northern Israel, which carried out devastating strikes across Lebanon.Many people in Israel considered the massive ground and air war on Lebanon to be a failure because it did not halt Hezbollah rocket fire or recover the two captured soldiers.It lasted 34 days and led to the deaths of 1,200 people in Lebanon, mainly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.President Reuven Rivlin praised the IDF troops who fought in the 34-day conflict.It was the ordinary soldiers, he said, who “compensated for the failures and flaws exposed in preparedness. A war in which heroism and fortitude overcame what was found lacking in emergency stockpiles and equipment.”Despite widespread criticism in Israel of the conduct of the war, Hezbollah was defeated, Rivlin said, and the victory brought ten years of calm to the northern border.“Hezbollah received a severe blow during that battle,” he said. In the years since, “quiet has returned to the north, tourism is booming, and communities are growing.“But we must internalize the essence of the threat that we face, and listen at all times to the sounds of war bubbling beneath the deceptive calm. Hezbollah continues to rearm itself and it has not ceased in its efforts to destroy Israel.”
Iran defends secret document easing nuke program restrictions-FM Zarif says paper obtained by AP that shows Iran will be able to get within 6 months of a bomb in a decade is a ‘matter of pride’-By AP and Raphael Ahren July 19, 2016, 2:49 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
TEHRAN — Iran’s foreign minister on Tuesday defended a nuclear deal provision that allows Tehran to begin ramping up its nuclear program after 10 years, a day after the secret document was revealed, leading to concerns over the effectiveness of the landmark nuclear deal.Mohammad Javad Zarif said the document, submitted by Iran to the International Atomic Energy Agency and outlining plans to expand Iran’s uranium enrichment program, was a “matter of pride.”He said it was created by Iran’s “negotiators and experts.”Zarif’s remarks, carried by the semi-official Fars news agency on Tuesday, followed revelations the day before of the confidential document — an add-on agreement to the nuclear deal signed last year with world powers — that Iran gave the IAEA.The document, obtained by The Associated Press in Vienna, outlines Tehran’s plans to expand its uranium enrichment program after the first 10 years of the nuclear deal, essentially allowing it to get within six months or less of building a nuclear weapon well before the deal’s 15-year expiration date.The document is the only part linked to last year’s deal between Iran and six foreign powers that hasn’t been made public. It was given to the AP by a diplomat whose work has focused on Iran’s nuclear program for more than a decade, and its authenticity was confirmed by another diplomat who possesses the same document.In response, a senior Israeli official told The Times of Israel that Jerusalem’s greatest concern about the nuclear deal with Iran “was and remains that after about 10 years, it would leave Iran with an industrial uranium enrichment capacity that would enable the regime to produce the fuel for many nuclear bombs in a very short time.”The nuclear agreement “removes the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program based on dates certain, rather than on changes in Iran’s aggressive behavior, including its support for terrorism around the world,” the senior official said. “The deal doesn’t solve the Iranian nuclear problem, but rather delays and intensifies it.”Centrifuges churn out uranium to levels that can range from suitability as reactor fuel and for medical and research purposes to much higher levels, for the core of a nuclear warhead. From year 11 to 13, says the document, Iran can install centrifuges up to five times as efficient as the 5,060 machines it is now restricted to using.Those new models will be fewer in number than those being used now, ranging between 2,500 and 3,500, depending on their efficiency, according to the document. But because they are more effective, they will allow Iran to enrich at more than twice the rate it is doing now.The US says the Iran nuclear agreement is tailored to ensure that Iran would need at least 12 months to “break out” and make enough weapons-grade uranium for at least one weapon.But based on a comparison of outputs between the old and newer machines, if the enrichment rate doubles, that breakout time would be reduced to six months, or even less if the efficiency is more than double, a possibility the document allows for.The document also allowed Iran to greatly expand its work with centrifuges that are even more advanced, including large-scale testing in preparation for the deal’s expiry 15 years after its implementation on January 18, 2016.Iran has insisted it is not interested in nuclear weapons, and the pact is being closely monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA said Tehran has essentially kept to its commitments since the agreement was implemented, a little more than six months after Iran and the six powers finalized it on July 14, 2015.Speaking a few days ago on the anniversary of the deal, US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry praised the deal.“As of today, one year later, a program that so many people said will not work, a program that people said is absolutely doomed to see cheating and be broken and will make the world more dangerous, has, in fact, made the world safer, lived up to its expectations, and thus far produced an ability to be able to create a peaceful nuclear program with Iran living up to its part of this bargain and obligation,” said Kerry, one of the main architects of the accord.“The Iran deal has succeeded in rolling back Iran’s nuclear program, avoiding further conflict and making us safer,” Obama said in a statement released by the White House on Thursday.
Russian synagogue with dark past invites Pokemon hunters-Gamers invited to catch animated creatures in St. Petersburg ‘meeting place where fun is permissible’-By Cnaan Liphshiz July 19, 2016, 8:05 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
JTA — As the Pokemon Go phenomenon grows, some institutions connected to European Jewry’s darkest hour have taken precautions against it.The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum in Poland has banned the addictive smartphone game, in which players viewing their environments through their device’s camera run in search of animated figures that the game’s application superimposes on the video feed in real time.Citing the need to respect the memory of the dead, the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC also asked visitors to refrain from playing the game, which has tens of millions of players since its release this month by the gaming giant Nintendo.But in Russia, one Jewish institution with a troubled past is taking the opposite approach. In St. Petersburg, the Russian city’s main synagogue and Jewish community center is doing its best to lure players to the building’s majestic interior — by offering a bottle of kosher wine to anyone who catches a Pokemon there.The first winner was Daniel Gurevich, a local Jew whose Pokemon hunt last week at the Grand Choral Synagogue of St. Petersburg was the second time he ever visited the place, according to a report Monday by Jewish News Petersburg.Shuttered by communists in 1930 and destroyed almost completely by Nazi artillery during the vicious fight for Leningrad during World War II, it was rebuilt in the 1940s but was allowed to function only as a sham shul — a prop in the Soviet Union’s propaganda about its citizens nonexistent freedoms.Gurevich told the news site that he came to the synagogue after its staff posted an invitation to Pokemon hunters on the synagogue’s Facebook page, which local media quickly reported. “I was rollerblading nearby, I opened the news [on the smartphone] and saw that the synagogue wants me to come and look for Pokemons. Immediately I went and caught one. It’s great that our synagogue is on the crest of fashion,” he said.A spokesperson for the synagogue told the news site that joining the Pokemon craze has roots in Jewish tradition.“Any more-or-less knowledgeable person will tell you that the synagogue is no temple, it’s a meeting place where fun is permissible within reason and we see this in the Purim parties and children’s games. We very much want the youth to know: The synagogue is a modern place, not a boring one,” said the spokesperson.Unlike some synagogues, the Choral shul complex indeed functions as much a community center as a house of worship. Completed in 1888 after eight years of construction, it is one of Europe’s largest synagogues, and has many rooms and event halls. The synagogue’s kosher cafeteria, which has a WiFi connection, has many young regulars, who work on laptops there or meet up at cultural events and Q&A session organized for members of the community.The synagogue was closed down in 1930 for several years under orders from the communist government, which back then had a semi-official policy of anti-Semitism in addition to its restrictive approach to organized religion in general. Famously, KGB agents used to spy on the few Jews who dared go to shul during communism from a building opposite the Choral synagogue, where the KGB had a special window installed to survey the entrance door.
EVEN THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES ARE SUCK HOLING UP TO SODOMITE RAINBOW GROUPERS. THIS IS GETTING VERY BAD.
IDF mulls cutting ties with rabbi who called gays ‘deviants’-Yigal Levinstein, head of a prestigious premilitary academy, claimed the gay rights movement has ‘infiltrated the army’-By Times of Israel staff July 19, 2016, 4:38 pm
The IDF is considering severing its ties to a prominent religious-Zionist rabbi who referred to homosexuals as “deviants.”Last week, Rabbi Yigal Levinstein, who co-heads a pre-army religious academy in the West Bank settlement of Eli, was filmed saying in an address to a Jewish law convention that “under the framework of pluralism, soldiers and officers are taught to refer to [LGBT people] as ‘proud,’ but I don’t dare call them that…. ‘Deviants’ is what I call them,” he said.In a video of his lecture, Levinstein could be seen stating: “There is a crazy movement of people who have simply lost the normalcy of life. This group is making the state crazy and is infiltrating the army with all its might. Nobody dares to open his mouth or make a sound against them. In the army training camp they gave lectures on deviancy.”Levinstein’s speech — which also referred to Reform Jewry as an offshoot of Christianity — sparked a firestorm, with politicians, other rabbis, and former students rushing to condemn his stance.On Tuesday, the head of the IDF’s Manpower Directorate, Maj. Gen. Hagai Topolanski, canceled a visit to Levinstein’s academy scheduled for that day.Topolanski has also ordered a review of the army’s invitation to Levinstein to speak before troops, effectively freezing the rabbi’s work with the army or Defense Ministry, Channel 2 reported.On Monday, the division in the Defense Ministry responsible for the premilitary academies issued a statement “vigorously condemning” the rabbi’s comments, and “demanded clarifications from the academy.”Also Monday, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan of the Likud party and Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who heads the religious-nationalist Jewish Home party, joined the fray.“This is not the way of religious Zionism,” Bennett said. “Jewish law was meant to establish what is forbidden and what is permitted. It was not meant to be a divisive tool to mark people and communities. You cannot call an entire community derogatory names and hide behind [Jewish law].“It is true, there are clear, unquestionable prohibitions in the Torah,” he added. “However, we do not remove from our midst everyone who fails to uphold a commandment in the Torah. That is not our way.”Erdan linked Levinstein’s comments to the gay pride parade in Jerusalem, scheduled for Thursday.“How dangerous these comments are,” he said. “How cautious we must be, in order not to plant any ideas in the head of some crazy zealot.”Erdan was alluding to the murder of 16-year-old Shira Banki at last year’s parade in the capital. The killer, Yishai Schlissel, an ultra-Orthodox Jew who had just been released from prison for a nearly identical crime, has since been sentenced to life.“A year ago, I dismissed officers who were responsible for the security failures at the march. But for the parents and loved ones of Shira Banki, it is too late,” continued Erdan. “Let us not lose ourselves. Let’s respect every person, their choices, identity, beliefs. I believe that this is also the role of rabbis. This is the Judaism in whose light I follow.”The Israeli Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Association, known commonly as the Aguda, filed a police complaint on Sunday against Levinstein for incitement.Levinstein is affiliated with the Bnei David yeshiva in Eli. The one-year yeshiva program combines traditional religious study with preparation for army service. Bnei David was the first pre-army training program of its kind, and is still one of the most prestigious.Ramat Gan Chief Rabbi Yaakov Ariel defended Levinstein’s comments on Sunday. He said Levinstein may have used too-blunt language, but agreed with the basic message.Homosexuals are “disabled, suffering from real problems that must be cured through psychological treatment and medication,” the Ynet news site reported him as saying.Ariel added that “a normal family is a father, mother and children. An abnormal family is a family that isn’t proper and correct. It has psychological problems.”Rabbi Benny Lau, another prominent religious-Zionist rabbi, whose cousin David Lau is the chief rabbi of Israel, denounced Levinstein.“Who gave you permission to insult them? In the name of which Torah do you act like this?” he demanded in a video uploaded to Facebook.Lau spoke of an incident two years ago when Levinstein spoke to students at Jerusalem’s Himmelfarb boys’ high school and mockingly compared gay people to animals. Lau recounted that “there was a student there at the back who ran out of the hall at the moment that you told your terrible joke. He intended to kill himself. They prevented him. One year ago… the same student said that he heard you making fun of him and he wanted to kill himself again.”Many of Levinstein’s former students have written harshly against him on Facebook, including some who have come out as gay since leaving his yeshiva.Last week saw an outcry at the cancellation of Beersheba’s first-ever pride parade over threats, and the appointment of Rabbi Col. Eyal Karim as head of the military rabbinate despite his having made statements in the past that many interpreted as sexist, homophobic and racist.
Despite detente, Erdogan may find Israel too good a scapegoat to resist-Turkish leader can be expected to cite main suspect Fethullah Gülen’s past links to Israeli dignitaries, Bar-Ilan scholar Efrat Aviv says-By Raphael Ahren July 19, 2016, 4:28 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is likely to start blaming Israel for the attempted coup that threatened to depose him over the weekend, due to a perceived connection between the Jewish state and the cleric he accuses of instigating the putsch, a leading Israeli expert on Turkey said.Erdogan blames the Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, now in exile in Pennsylvania, for instigating the failed coup. Gülen, who denies the allegations, has had ties with various Jewish groups and in the 1990s met with Israel’s chief rabbi and a senior Israeli diplomat.“Even though Turkish and Israeli leaders are saying that the coup won’t affect the rapprochement between the two countries, in my mind it’s just a question of time until Erdogan starts talking about Israel in the context of the coup,” Bar-Ilan University’s Efrat Aviv told The Times of Israel on Tuesday.The Turkish president might wait until the normalization process between Ankara and Jerusalem has been concluded before publicly scapegoating Israel, surmised Aviv, who focuses her research on modern Turkey and Gülen’s spiritual movement. “But I have no doubt that this will happen. I don’t think that Erdogan will accept Israel with open arms.”On June 29, the Israeli government approved a reconciliation deal with Turkey outlining a course of action that would end the six-year standoff between Ankara and Israel, at the end of which the two countries will exchange ambassadors.The agreement stipulates that before full diplomatic relations are restored, the Turkish parliament has to pass a law protecting IDF troops who participated in the 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla, that killed 10 Turks, from criminal and civil claims. Senior officials in both countries have asserted that the failed coup attempt in no way stands in the way of the normalization process. Currently it is unclear, however, when the Turkish parliament will vote on the matter.“The normalization of our relations with Israel will not be adversely affected by this event,” said Özdem Sanberk, a former Turkish top diplomat and chief foreign policy adviser to prime minister Turgut Özal. “Regarding the decision by the parliament of the laws concerning the normalization deal, no one can anticipate the attitude of the parliament as it is a sovereign organ of the state.”While it is obvious that Erdogan’s popularity will increase in the aftermath of the attempted putsch, “it is too early to make pessimistic scenarios for the future,” Sandberk told The Times of Israel.Populist politicians in Turkey tend to blame either Israel or a Jewish conspiracy for most evils befalling their country, said Aykan Erdemir, who served as a member of parliament for the opposition CHP party from 2011 until 2015. “Thanks to the ongoing Turkish-Israeli normalization, Israel and Jews were spared from such hate speech and scapegoating this time.”However, he added, “since the failed coup attempt, there is a dramatic rise in vigilantism and Islamist hate speech on Turkish streets. It is only a matter of time [before] the crowds scapegoat minorities.”Supporters of Erdogan’s AKP party “could take advantage of the current unrest and mobilization to propagate anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic messages,” Erdemir, who is currently a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, told The Times of Israel on Saturday.-The Gülen movement’s Israel connection-Aviv, who teaches at Bar-Ilan’s Middle Eastern studies department and is a fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, has done extensive research into the moderate Islamic Gülen movement and its connection to Israel and the global Jewish community.In an article she published in Turkish Policy Quarterly six years ago, she researched Fethullah Gülen’s interfaith outreach, which included meetings with several Jewish groups both in Turkey and the US.“Gülen sees great importance in disseminating tolerance because of the fact that the world is a global village, and it is imperative to lay the foundation for communication without making distinctions between Christians, Jews, Atheists or Buddhists,” she wrote.“Because of this approach, of perceiving dialogue as both a religious and a moral-national-social obligation, Gülen met with countless leaders and key people from the three religions during the 1990s. He met with Jewish leaders, both secular and religious, inside and outside of Turkey, in order to promote dialogue between Judaism and Islam.”In the late 1990s, the reclusive imam met at least twice with senior delegations from the Anti-Defamation League, which at the time was headed by Abraham Foxman, according to Aviv.“Gülen talked about his moderation regarding Islam, the Jews, Israel, and expressed reasonable and non-extremist views,” Kenneth Jacobson, who currently serves as the ADL’s deputy national director, recalled in 2005 about his first personal encounter with Gülen in New Jersey. “It was a very good meeting, very friendly.”Jacobson’s second meeting with Gülen took place in 1998 at Gülen’s initiative — and at his Istanbul residence — and was also attended by then-chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Leon Levy, Aviv writes.“We met, and it was another pleasant encounter. We were given gifts,” Jacobson recalled, adding that Gülen reiterated his message of moderation. “He presented himself as someone that cares about moderation in Turkey and cares about a moderate Islam and as someone interested in good relations with Israel and the Jews.”In 1998, Gülen met with Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi Doron in Istanbul, a televised visit that came about at the initiative of the cultural attaché in the Israeli consulate. “This was the first time that a chief rabbi came on an official visit from Israel to Turkey, and the second visit of a chief rabbi in a Muslim country,” according to Aviv.Israel’s consul-general to Istanbul at the time, Eli Shaked, participated in the meeting.“The Israeli Foreign Ministry thought that a meeting with Gülen could help quell the hatred and resistance to Israel and/or Jews, and therefore they authorized it,” Aviv wrote. Bakshi-Doron had a different plan: he sought to ask for the cleric’s help in freeing Iranian Jews imprisoned for alleged espionage. Gülen declined the request, arguing that he has no ties to Iran.During the meeting, Gülen said he wanted to open a Muslim school in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The chief rabbi agreed in principle, but the initiative was rejected by the government, according to Aviv. Gülen was also reported to have been interested in visiting Israel, but the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem did not authorize the plan.During a rare interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2010, Gülen criticized the organizers of the Gaza-bound flotilla for not having secured Israel’s okay for embarking as “a sign of defying authority, and will not lead to fruitful matters.”Immediately after this weekend’s failed coup, Erdogan blamed members of Gülen’s movement, referring to it as “Gulenist Terrorist Organization” and threatening harsh punishment, including the reinstatement of the death penalty. On Wednesday, Turkey will submit to the US an official extradition request for the 75-year-old cleric.
28 And when these things begin to come to pass,(ALL THE PROPHECY SIGNS FROM THE BIBLE) then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption (RAPTURE) draweth nigh.
29 And he spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree,(ISRAEL) and all the trees;(ALL INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES)
30 When they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand.(ISRAEL LITERALLY BECAME AND INDEPENDENT COUNTRY JUST BEFORE SUMMER IN MAY 14,1948.)
JOEL 2:3,30
3 A fire devoureth (ATOMIC BOMB) before them;(RUSSIAN-ARAB-MUSLIM ARMIES AGAINST ISRAEL) and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.
30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.(ATOMIC BOMB AFFECT)
ZECHARIAH 14:12-13
12 And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet,(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB) and their eyes shall consume away in their holes,(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB) and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB)(BECAUSE NUKES HAVE BEEN USED ON ISRAELS ENEMIES)(GOD PROTECTS ISRAEL AND ALWAYS WILL)
13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour.(1/2-3 BILLION DIE IN WW3)(THIS IS AN ATOMIC BOMB EFFECT)
EZEKIEL 20:47
47 And say to the forest of the south, Hear the word of the LORD; Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall devour every green tree in thee, and every dry tree: the flaming flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall be burned therein.
ZEPHANIAH 1:18
18 Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the LORD'S wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land.
MALACHI 4:1
1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven;(FROM ATOMIC BOMBS) and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
And here are the bounderies of the land that Israel will inherit either through war or peace or God in the future. God says its Israels land and only Israels land. They will have every inch God promised them of this land in the future.
Egypt east of the Nile River, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, The southern part of Turkey and the Western Half of Iraq west of the Euphrates. Gen 13:14-15, Psm 105:9,11, Gen 15:18, Exe 23:31, Num 34:1-12, Josh 1:4.ALL THIS LAND ISRAEL WILL DEFINATELY OWN IN THE FUTURE, ITS ISRAELS NOT ISHMAELS LAND.12 TRIBES INHERIT LAND IN THE FUTURE
European envoys complain to Israeli army over demolitions-Ambassadors from eight European states protest destruction of Bedouin caravans in letter to COGAT chief-By AFP July 19, 2016, 8:32 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
Eight European ambassadors have accused the Israeli army of displacing 75 Palestinian Bedouins in the occupied West Bank by confiscating caravans given to them by international donors.The ambassadors, who included Germany’s envoy, warned that policies targeting Bedouin communities could create a “coercive environment” forcing them to leave their areas.Such a scenario could result in forcible transfers, “which are considered a grave breach of international humanitarian law,” they said.In a joint letter to Major General Yoav Mordechai, head of the military body that coordinates Israeli activities in the West Bank and Gaza, the ambassadors said the confiscated caravans and materials had cost $64,500.“It is a serious concern that humanitarian assistance which is delivered under humanitarian principles be confiscated,” they said.As occupying power, they said, Israel is required to meet the basic needs of the population.“Relief items should not be requisitioned, confiscated, expropriated or interfered with,” they said.The caravans had been used as homes and a kindergarten by the Bedouin communities of Sateh Al-Bahir and Jabal Al-Baba, east of Jerusalem, which the diplomats said are among the most vulnerable in the West Bank.The signatories were the ambassadors of Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Ireland and Norway.The letter, dated July 7 but seen by AFP on Tuesday, comes amid increased tension over Israel’s demolition of foreign-funded structures for Palestinians in the West Bank.Earlier this year, the United Nations said Israel was demolishing Palestinian homes and other buildings constructed with international aid at an “alarming” rate.Mordechai’s department, known as COGAT, referred questions to Israel’s foreign ministry, which accused international donors of interfering.“Israel has a rule of law. Israel can’t accept illegal construction, be it by local elements or funded or aided by foreign elements,” the foreign ministry said in a statement to AFP.Under the 1990s Oslo peace accords, the Palestinian West Bank is divided into three areas.Area C, which accounts for about 60 percent of the territory, is under full Israeli control and it is nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain building permits there, UN officials say.So far in 2016, Israel has demolished 190 structures funded partly or fully by international donors in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, nearly double the 108 from all of 2015, according to UN figures seen by AFP.Israel argues that construction of shelters by donors in Area C is interference in its affairs.European diplomats argue that Israel has failed to abide by its legal obligations to Palestinians.
On Lebanon war anniversary, PM vows ‘iron fist’ response to attacks-Netanyahu calls Hamas, Hezbollah ‘forward bases of Iran’; Rivlin praises ordinary soldiers who overcame failures in preparedness-By Times of Israel staff and AFP July 19, 2016, 5:01 pm
Israel will offer a “powerful response” if it is attacked by terror groups Hezbollah or Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Tuesday at a ceremony marking 10 years since the Second Lebanon War.Netanyahu described the 2006 war as “a clash between an extremist terror organization with an Islamist ideology and a free democratic Israel.”“We are in a global battle. We are aware of the nature of the threats we face, and are preparing for any scenario,” he said at a ceremony at the Mount Herzl military cemetery.Hezbollah and Hamas, he said, “have established forward bases of Iran on our border. Everything that has happened in the Middle East in recent years is part of the same trend: radical Islamic terror that seeks to shatter liberty and culture with its sword thrusts.“This terror strikes not only Sarona or Otniel — it strikes in Paris and Nice, Brussels and Orlando. We are in a global campaign. Just as we are well aware of the character of the threats, so we are preparing for every contingency.”Israel was prepared for war, he said.“If the quiet is preserved, those who stand against us will also enjoy quiet. But if we must respond to aggression, the response will be powerful. Anyone who thinks they will find here a ‘spider’s web’ will come up against an ‘iron wall,’ and will feel an iron fist.”The Israeli premier was alluding to a 2000 speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, in which he called the Jewish state “feebler than a spider’s web.”The 2006 conflict erupted when Israel retaliated for a cross-border raid in which Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed three, and quickly spiralled into a fully fledged war.Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets into northern Israel, which carried out devastating strikes across Lebanon.Many people in Israel considered the massive ground and air war on Lebanon to be a failure because it did not halt Hezbollah rocket fire or recover the two captured soldiers.It lasted 34 days and led to the deaths of 1,200 people in Lebanon, mainly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.President Reuven Rivlin praised the IDF troops who fought in the 34-day conflict.It was the ordinary soldiers, he said, who “compensated for the failures and flaws exposed in preparedness. A war in which heroism and fortitude overcame what was found lacking in emergency stockpiles and equipment.”Despite widespread criticism in Israel of the conduct of the war, Hezbollah was defeated, Rivlin said, and the victory brought ten years of calm to the northern border.“Hezbollah received a severe blow during that battle,” he said. In the years since, “quiet has returned to the north, tourism is booming, and communities are growing.“But we must internalize the essence of the threat that we face, and listen at all times to the sounds of war bubbling beneath the deceptive calm. Hezbollah continues to rearm itself and it has not ceased in its efforts to destroy Israel.”
Iran defends secret document easing nuke program restrictions-FM Zarif says paper obtained by AP that shows Iran will be able to get within 6 months of a bomb in a decade is a ‘matter of pride’-By AP and Raphael Ahren July 19, 2016, 2:49 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
TEHRAN — Iran’s foreign minister on Tuesday defended a nuclear deal provision that allows Tehran to begin ramping up its nuclear program after 10 years, a day after the secret document was revealed, leading to concerns over the effectiveness of the landmark nuclear deal.Mohammad Javad Zarif said the document, submitted by Iran to the International Atomic Energy Agency and outlining plans to expand Iran’s uranium enrichment program, was a “matter of pride.”He said it was created by Iran’s “negotiators and experts.”Zarif’s remarks, carried by the semi-official Fars news agency on Tuesday, followed revelations the day before of the confidential document — an add-on agreement to the nuclear deal signed last year with world powers — that Iran gave the IAEA.The document, obtained by The Associated Press in Vienna, outlines Tehran’s plans to expand its uranium enrichment program after the first 10 years of the nuclear deal, essentially allowing it to get within six months or less of building a nuclear weapon well before the deal’s 15-year expiration date.The document is the only part linked to last year’s deal between Iran and six foreign powers that hasn’t been made public. It was given to the AP by a diplomat whose work has focused on Iran’s nuclear program for more than a decade, and its authenticity was confirmed by another diplomat who possesses the same document.In response, a senior Israeli official told The Times of Israel that Jerusalem’s greatest concern about the nuclear deal with Iran “was and remains that after about 10 years, it would leave Iran with an industrial uranium enrichment capacity that would enable the regime to produce the fuel for many nuclear bombs in a very short time.”The nuclear agreement “removes the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program based on dates certain, rather than on changes in Iran’s aggressive behavior, including its support for terrorism around the world,” the senior official said. “The deal doesn’t solve the Iranian nuclear problem, but rather delays and intensifies it.”Centrifuges churn out uranium to levels that can range from suitability as reactor fuel and for medical and research purposes to much higher levels, for the core of a nuclear warhead. From year 11 to 13, says the document, Iran can install centrifuges up to five times as efficient as the 5,060 machines it is now restricted to using.Those new models will be fewer in number than those being used now, ranging between 2,500 and 3,500, depending on their efficiency, according to the document. But because they are more effective, they will allow Iran to enrich at more than twice the rate it is doing now.The US says the Iran nuclear agreement is tailored to ensure that Iran would need at least 12 months to “break out” and make enough weapons-grade uranium for at least one weapon.But based on a comparison of outputs between the old and newer machines, if the enrichment rate doubles, that breakout time would be reduced to six months, or even less if the efficiency is more than double, a possibility the document allows for.The document also allowed Iran to greatly expand its work with centrifuges that are even more advanced, including large-scale testing in preparation for the deal’s expiry 15 years after its implementation on January 18, 2016.Iran has insisted it is not interested in nuclear weapons, and the pact is being closely monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA said Tehran has essentially kept to its commitments since the agreement was implemented, a little more than six months after Iran and the six powers finalized it on July 14, 2015.Speaking a few days ago on the anniversary of the deal, US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry praised the deal.“As of today, one year later, a program that so many people said will not work, a program that people said is absolutely doomed to see cheating and be broken and will make the world more dangerous, has, in fact, made the world safer, lived up to its expectations, and thus far produced an ability to be able to create a peaceful nuclear program with Iran living up to its part of this bargain and obligation,” said Kerry, one of the main architects of the accord.“The Iran deal has succeeded in rolling back Iran’s nuclear program, avoiding further conflict and making us safer,” Obama said in a statement released by the White House on Thursday.
Russian synagogue with dark past invites Pokemon hunters-Gamers invited to catch animated creatures in St. Petersburg ‘meeting place where fun is permissible’-By Cnaan Liphshiz July 19, 2016, 8:05 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
JTA — As the Pokemon Go phenomenon grows, some institutions connected to European Jewry’s darkest hour have taken precautions against it.The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum in Poland has banned the addictive smartphone game, in which players viewing their environments through their device’s camera run in search of animated figures that the game’s application superimposes on the video feed in real time.Citing the need to respect the memory of the dead, the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC also asked visitors to refrain from playing the game, which has tens of millions of players since its release this month by the gaming giant Nintendo.But in Russia, one Jewish institution with a troubled past is taking the opposite approach. In St. Petersburg, the Russian city’s main synagogue and Jewish community center is doing its best to lure players to the building’s majestic interior — by offering a bottle of kosher wine to anyone who catches a Pokemon there.The first winner was Daniel Gurevich, a local Jew whose Pokemon hunt last week at the Grand Choral Synagogue of St. Petersburg was the second time he ever visited the place, according to a report Monday by Jewish News Petersburg.Shuttered by communists in 1930 and destroyed almost completely by Nazi artillery during the vicious fight for Leningrad during World War II, it was rebuilt in the 1940s but was allowed to function only as a sham shul — a prop in the Soviet Union’s propaganda about its citizens nonexistent freedoms.Gurevich told the news site that he came to the synagogue after its staff posted an invitation to Pokemon hunters on the synagogue’s Facebook page, which local media quickly reported. “I was rollerblading nearby, I opened the news [on the smartphone] and saw that the synagogue wants me to come and look for Pokemons. Immediately I went and caught one. It’s great that our synagogue is on the crest of fashion,” he said.A spokesperson for the synagogue told the news site that joining the Pokemon craze has roots in Jewish tradition.“Any more-or-less knowledgeable person will tell you that the synagogue is no temple, it’s a meeting place where fun is permissible within reason and we see this in the Purim parties and children’s games. We very much want the youth to know: The synagogue is a modern place, not a boring one,” said the spokesperson.Unlike some synagogues, the Choral shul complex indeed functions as much a community center as a house of worship. Completed in 1888 after eight years of construction, it is one of Europe’s largest synagogues, and has many rooms and event halls. The synagogue’s kosher cafeteria, which has a WiFi connection, has many young regulars, who work on laptops there or meet up at cultural events and Q&A session organized for members of the community.The synagogue was closed down in 1930 for several years under orders from the communist government, which back then had a semi-official policy of anti-Semitism in addition to its restrictive approach to organized religion in general. Famously, KGB agents used to spy on the few Jews who dared go to shul during communism from a building opposite the Choral synagogue, where the KGB had a special window installed to survey the entrance door.
EVEN THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES ARE SUCK HOLING UP TO SODOMITE RAINBOW GROUPERS. THIS IS GETTING VERY BAD.
IDF mulls cutting ties with rabbi who called gays ‘deviants’-Yigal Levinstein, head of a prestigious premilitary academy, claimed the gay rights movement has ‘infiltrated the army’-By Times of Israel staff July 19, 2016, 4:38 pm
The IDF is considering severing its ties to a prominent religious-Zionist rabbi who referred to homosexuals as “deviants.”Last week, Rabbi Yigal Levinstein, who co-heads a pre-army religious academy in the West Bank settlement of Eli, was filmed saying in an address to a Jewish law convention that “under the framework of pluralism, soldiers and officers are taught to refer to [LGBT people] as ‘proud,’ but I don’t dare call them that…. ‘Deviants’ is what I call them,” he said.In a video of his lecture, Levinstein could be seen stating: “There is a crazy movement of people who have simply lost the normalcy of life. This group is making the state crazy and is infiltrating the army with all its might. Nobody dares to open his mouth or make a sound against them. In the army training camp they gave lectures on deviancy.”Levinstein’s speech — which also referred to Reform Jewry as an offshoot of Christianity — sparked a firestorm, with politicians, other rabbis, and former students rushing to condemn his stance.On Tuesday, the head of the IDF’s Manpower Directorate, Maj. Gen. Hagai Topolanski, canceled a visit to Levinstein’s academy scheduled for that day.Topolanski has also ordered a review of the army’s invitation to Levinstein to speak before troops, effectively freezing the rabbi’s work with the army or Defense Ministry, Channel 2 reported.On Monday, the division in the Defense Ministry responsible for the premilitary academies issued a statement “vigorously condemning” the rabbi’s comments, and “demanded clarifications from the academy.”Also Monday, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan of the Likud party and Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who heads the religious-nationalist Jewish Home party, joined the fray.“This is not the way of religious Zionism,” Bennett said. “Jewish law was meant to establish what is forbidden and what is permitted. It was not meant to be a divisive tool to mark people and communities. You cannot call an entire community derogatory names and hide behind [Jewish law].“It is true, there are clear, unquestionable prohibitions in the Torah,” he added. “However, we do not remove from our midst everyone who fails to uphold a commandment in the Torah. That is not our way.”Erdan linked Levinstein’s comments to the gay pride parade in Jerusalem, scheduled for Thursday.“How dangerous these comments are,” he said. “How cautious we must be, in order not to plant any ideas in the head of some crazy zealot.”Erdan was alluding to the murder of 16-year-old Shira Banki at last year’s parade in the capital. The killer, Yishai Schlissel, an ultra-Orthodox Jew who had just been released from prison for a nearly identical crime, has since been sentenced to life.“A year ago, I dismissed officers who were responsible for the security failures at the march. But for the parents and loved ones of Shira Banki, it is too late,” continued Erdan. “Let us not lose ourselves. Let’s respect every person, their choices, identity, beliefs. I believe that this is also the role of rabbis. This is the Judaism in whose light I follow.”The Israeli Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Association, known commonly as the Aguda, filed a police complaint on Sunday against Levinstein for incitement.Levinstein is affiliated with the Bnei David yeshiva in Eli. The one-year yeshiva program combines traditional religious study with preparation for army service. Bnei David was the first pre-army training program of its kind, and is still one of the most prestigious.Ramat Gan Chief Rabbi Yaakov Ariel defended Levinstein’s comments on Sunday. He said Levinstein may have used too-blunt language, but agreed with the basic message.Homosexuals are “disabled, suffering from real problems that must be cured through psychological treatment and medication,” the Ynet news site reported him as saying.Ariel added that “a normal family is a father, mother and children. An abnormal family is a family that isn’t proper and correct. It has psychological problems.”Rabbi Benny Lau, another prominent religious-Zionist rabbi, whose cousin David Lau is the chief rabbi of Israel, denounced Levinstein.“Who gave you permission to insult them? In the name of which Torah do you act like this?” he demanded in a video uploaded to Facebook.Lau spoke of an incident two years ago when Levinstein spoke to students at Jerusalem’s Himmelfarb boys’ high school and mockingly compared gay people to animals. Lau recounted that “there was a student there at the back who ran out of the hall at the moment that you told your terrible joke. He intended to kill himself. They prevented him. One year ago… the same student said that he heard you making fun of him and he wanted to kill himself again.”Many of Levinstein’s former students have written harshly against him on Facebook, including some who have come out as gay since leaving his yeshiva.Last week saw an outcry at the cancellation of Beersheba’s first-ever pride parade over threats, and the appointment of Rabbi Col. Eyal Karim as head of the military rabbinate despite his having made statements in the past that many interpreted as sexist, homophobic and racist.
Despite detente, Erdogan may find Israel too good a scapegoat to resist-Turkish leader can be expected to cite main suspect Fethullah Gülen’s past links to Israeli dignitaries, Bar-Ilan scholar Efrat Aviv says-By Raphael Ahren July 19, 2016, 4:28 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is likely to start blaming Israel for the attempted coup that threatened to depose him over the weekend, due to a perceived connection between the Jewish state and the cleric he accuses of instigating the putsch, a leading Israeli expert on Turkey said.Erdogan blames the Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, now in exile in Pennsylvania, for instigating the failed coup. Gülen, who denies the allegations, has had ties with various Jewish groups and in the 1990s met with Israel’s chief rabbi and a senior Israeli diplomat.“Even though Turkish and Israeli leaders are saying that the coup won’t affect the rapprochement between the two countries, in my mind it’s just a question of time until Erdogan starts talking about Israel in the context of the coup,” Bar-Ilan University’s Efrat Aviv told The Times of Israel on Tuesday.The Turkish president might wait until the normalization process between Ankara and Jerusalem has been concluded before publicly scapegoating Israel, surmised Aviv, who focuses her research on modern Turkey and Gülen’s spiritual movement. “But I have no doubt that this will happen. I don’t think that Erdogan will accept Israel with open arms.”On June 29, the Israeli government approved a reconciliation deal with Turkey outlining a course of action that would end the six-year standoff between Ankara and Israel, at the end of which the two countries will exchange ambassadors.The agreement stipulates that before full diplomatic relations are restored, the Turkish parliament has to pass a law protecting IDF troops who participated in the 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla, that killed 10 Turks, from criminal and civil claims. Senior officials in both countries have asserted that the failed coup attempt in no way stands in the way of the normalization process. Currently it is unclear, however, when the Turkish parliament will vote on the matter.“The normalization of our relations with Israel will not be adversely affected by this event,” said Özdem Sanberk, a former Turkish top diplomat and chief foreign policy adviser to prime minister Turgut Özal. “Regarding the decision by the parliament of the laws concerning the normalization deal, no one can anticipate the attitude of the parliament as it is a sovereign organ of the state.”While it is obvious that Erdogan’s popularity will increase in the aftermath of the attempted putsch, “it is too early to make pessimistic scenarios for the future,” Sandberk told The Times of Israel.Populist politicians in Turkey tend to blame either Israel or a Jewish conspiracy for most evils befalling their country, said Aykan Erdemir, who served as a member of parliament for the opposition CHP party from 2011 until 2015. “Thanks to the ongoing Turkish-Israeli normalization, Israel and Jews were spared from such hate speech and scapegoating this time.”However, he added, “since the failed coup attempt, there is a dramatic rise in vigilantism and Islamist hate speech on Turkish streets. It is only a matter of time [before] the crowds scapegoat minorities.”Supporters of Erdogan’s AKP party “could take advantage of the current unrest and mobilization to propagate anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic messages,” Erdemir, who is currently a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, told The Times of Israel on Saturday.-The Gülen movement’s Israel connection-Aviv, who teaches at Bar-Ilan’s Middle Eastern studies department and is a fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, has done extensive research into the moderate Islamic Gülen movement and its connection to Israel and the global Jewish community.In an article she published in Turkish Policy Quarterly six years ago, she researched Fethullah Gülen’s interfaith outreach, which included meetings with several Jewish groups both in Turkey and the US.“Gülen sees great importance in disseminating tolerance because of the fact that the world is a global village, and it is imperative to lay the foundation for communication without making distinctions between Christians, Jews, Atheists or Buddhists,” she wrote.“Because of this approach, of perceiving dialogue as both a religious and a moral-national-social obligation, Gülen met with countless leaders and key people from the three religions during the 1990s. He met with Jewish leaders, both secular and religious, inside and outside of Turkey, in order to promote dialogue between Judaism and Islam.”In the late 1990s, the reclusive imam met at least twice with senior delegations from the Anti-Defamation League, which at the time was headed by Abraham Foxman, according to Aviv.“Gülen talked about his moderation regarding Islam, the Jews, Israel, and expressed reasonable and non-extremist views,” Kenneth Jacobson, who currently serves as the ADL’s deputy national director, recalled in 2005 about his first personal encounter with Gülen in New Jersey. “It was a very good meeting, very friendly.”Jacobson’s second meeting with Gülen took place in 1998 at Gülen’s initiative — and at his Istanbul residence — and was also attended by then-chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Leon Levy, Aviv writes.“We met, and it was another pleasant encounter. We were given gifts,” Jacobson recalled, adding that Gülen reiterated his message of moderation. “He presented himself as someone that cares about moderation in Turkey and cares about a moderate Islam and as someone interested in good relations with Israel and the Jews.”In 1998, Gülen met with Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi Doron in Istanbul, a televised visit that came about at the initiative of the cultural attaché in the Israeli consulate. “This was the first time that a chief rabbi came on an official visit from Israel to Turkey, and the second visit of a chief rabbi in a Muslim country,” according to Aviv.Israel’s consul-general to Istanbul at the time, Eli Shaked, participated in the meeting.“The Israeli Foreign Ministry thought that a meeting with Gülen could help quell the hatred and resistance to Israel and/or Jews, and therefore they authorized it,” Aviv wrote. Bakshi-Doron had a different plan: he sought to ask for the cleric’s help in freeing Iranian Jews imprisoned for alleged espionage. Gülen declined the request, arguing that he has no ties to Iran.During the meeting, Gülen said he wanted to open a Muslim school in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The chief rabbi agreed in principle, but the initiative was rejected by the government, according to Aviv. Gülen was also reported to have been interested in visiting Israel, but the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem did not authorize the plan.During a rare interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2010, Gülen criticized the organizers of the Gaza-bound flotilla for not having secured Israel’s okay for embarking as “a sign of defying authority, and will not lead to fruitful matters.”Immediately after this weekend’s failed coup, Erdogan blamed members of Gülen’s movement, referring to it as “Gulenist Terrorist Organization” and threatening harsh punishment, including the reinstatement of the death penalty. On Wednesday, Turkey will submit to the US an official extradition request for the 75-year-old cleric.
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