Israel’s Chief Rabbinate issued a position statement to the High Court of Justice on Monday declaring that the court has no jurisdiction concerning prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City. The statement threatened to ratchet up already fraught tensions with the Reform and Conservative streams of Judaism which have very small numbers of followers in Israel but which form the overwhelming majority of Jews in North America.

Officials in South Africa have recently made public statements that Pretoria will not send an official delegation to the upcoming Africa-Israel summit scheduled for the end of October in Lomé, Togo. Although, no official confirmation one way or the other has been received by the organizers of the summit, South Africa’s policy under president Jacob Zuma has been very hostile towards Israel and has included moves to actively block efforts to build closer ties with African countries.

The Lebanese Shi’ite terror militia Hezbollah has reportedly made great progress in its technical abilities during the last several years of fighting in Syria’s civil war, with reports emerging this week that it has begun to use tactical drones against its opponents in that conflict. The drones were deployed this week during Hezbollah battles against the Islamic State (IS) terror militia near the Lebanese border, with impressive tactical results.

A train line linking central Jerusalem with Tel Aviv which promises to massively decrease congestion on Route 1 completed a major milestone on Sunday when the first successful test run was made, clocking in at 28 minutes, less than half the time it usually takes for the same trip to be made by bus. The route is scheduled to be fully operational by April 2018 and “will completely change the relationship between Jerusalem and the rest of the country,” said Transportation Minister Israel Katz.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry marked “World Humanitarian Day” over the weekend by posting a video highlighting humanitarian aid projects Israel has sponsored and/or participated in around the world. The latest such project has been the dispatching of several tons of food aid to Sierra Leone following mudslides which devastated large sections of the capital city of Freetown.

Gathering IRGC frustrations over liberal domestic trends could eventually prompt dramatic intervention, with troubling regional consequences for the United States and its allies. The recent IRGC targeting of universities, with their so-called Westernized humanities agenda, and a “liberalizing culture” instigated from abroad could stir movement toward a second cultural revolution in Iran.

Luba Mayekiso, the National Director of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem in South Africa, explains how Israeli innovation can revolutionize Africa.