Leaders of Israel’s political factions were busy over the weekend, appearing at campaign events, giving interviews to media outlets and otherwise making a last-minute push to convince their supporters to go to the polls on Tuesday amidst fears of historically low turnout. Incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with Army Radio Monday morning saying, among other things, that he is prepared to annex Kiryat Arba and the Jewish areas of Hebron should he be re-elected. The pledge came a day after he presided over a Cabinet meeting symbolically held in the Jordan Valley.

US President Donald Trump Tweeted on Sunday evening that the US military is “locked and loaded” ready to respond to any further Iranian aggression following Saturday’s strike on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities which temporarily shut down 5.7 million barrels worth of production capacity, half of the Kingdom’s daily output and 5% of global output. Iranian officials angrily denied involvement in the attacks while begging to point out that the weekends events proved the need of the world for Iranian supplies and the inherent danger to the world economy of sanctioning the Islamic Republic.

Israeli sports fans had much to cheer about in recent days as Mark Mallar won the Gold Medal and set a new world record in the Men’s 400m Freestyle event last Tuesday at the 2019 World Para Swimming Championships in London. Then on Friday, Israel’s national Baseball team defeated France at the European Baseball Championship in Germany. The Israeli team finished the tournament in fourth place and earned a chance to compete in the WBSC Olympic Qualifying Tournament for European and African nations which be held this week in Italy.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu addressed a special meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Jeddah on Sunday, saying among other things that the plans recently put forward for Israel to annex West Bank settlement blocs and parts of the Jordan Valley were a “despicable” attempt by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to gain votes ahead of Tuesday’s elections. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz retorted that the regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “systematically violates human rights, brutally persecutes the Kurds, and supports the terrorists of Hamas. He is the last person who should be preaching morals to Israel.”

The spokesperson’s officer for Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv announced recently that an information mining tool built at the University and called ProtFus holds great promise in assisting researchers pursuing new treatments for various forms of cancer. In related news, engineers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology announced that they have developed a new hydrogen production technology which would improve production efficiency from approximately 75% to 98.7%, vastly reducing the amount of pollution caused by many industrial processes.

Beyond its unquestionable vitality for Israel’s security, the Jordan Valley in its full geographical scope can accommodate millions of Israelis and national infrastructure that cannot be compressed into the coastal plain. If PM Netanyahu’s declaration of sovereignty is not immediately borne out by a surge of building and focused governmental support, it will sputter and die.

Today is International Democracy Day and what better way to celebrate democracy than to vote in the upcoming Israeli elections? On Tuesday, September 17th, millions of Israelis will head to the polls and elect the parties which will make up the 22nd Knesset (Israeli parliament)! So what does the election process look like in ???????? and how is a government formed?

When 22-year-old Nicole Yoder first stepped off the plane at Ben-Gurion Airport in the early 1990s, she never imagined Israel would become her home. Nor could she have dreamed that more than 20 years later she would serve as Director of ICEJ Aid, a position she has held since 2006. Nicole’s experience echoes throughout the ICEJ family.