Iranian Leaders Continue to Threaten Israel

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave another bizarre speech on Tuesday in which he demanded, among other things, the “complete liberation” of the Levant from what he described as the “tumor” of Israel. Standing with him on the platform as he spoke was “moderate” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman told Army Radio that he is unconcerned with recent bellicose statements by Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Lebanese Shi’ite terror militia Hezbollah, saying “I advise him to continue sitting there in his bunker, making these small cameos. I don’t intend to have any kind of public argument with him.” On Wednesday, unconfirmed reports indicated that Israeli aircraft struck a Hezbollah weapons convoy inside Syria.

Tuesday’s sentencing by a military court of Sgt. Elor Azaria to 18 months in prison and demotion to private following his conviction of manslaughter charges for his killing of Abdel Fatah al-Sharif, a Palestinian terrorist who was wounded and immobilized by the time Azaria arrived at the scene of the attack he had carried out in Hebron last summer, has elicited vastly different reactions in different sectors of Israeli society. The Arab-Israeli population has largely dismissed the sentence as a slap on the wrist while among the Jewish population there is a more mixed reaction, from agreement that the sentence was too lenient to condemnation that it was so harsh.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement Tuesday condemning the cancelation of Ambassador to Ireland Ze’ev Boker presentation Monday evening at Trinity College in Dublin because of the actions of a  mob of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) supporters. A group calling itself “Students for a Just Palestine” held an hour-long protest outside the building where Boker was scheduled to speak even before he arrived, chanting anti-Israel slogans and refusing supplications by University officials and the police to calm down and allow the event to continue.

In order to formulate a different policy on Iran, the Trump administration must confirm the following basic assumptions: a) rejection of the Obama administration’s assumption that there is no alternative to an agreement; this assumption paralyzed the previous administration; b) the alternative to the existing agreement, should Iran pull out of it, is the restoration of significant sanctions and a credible military option.

The inscriptions were uncovered during rehabilitation and conservation work implemented in the ancient synagogue. Based on a preliminary analysis it seems that these are dedicatory inscriptions honoring donors who contributed to the synagogue.