JERUSALEM– For the first time since the beginning of the Passover holiday, the Temple Mount was opened briefly to Jewish visitors and tourists on Sunday, April 20. The site had been closed last week on Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday because of violent Palestinian rioting.

On Saturday night, April 19, five Arabs carrying tear gas were arrested as they tried to access the holy site.

However, this Sunday morning, American Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and his family were able to experience two full minutes on the Temple Mount, considered to be one of Judaism’s holiest sites and where two Jewish Holy Temples stood for nearly a millennium.

The rabbi’s visit was cut short when violent rioting once again broke out on the holy site. The riots forced Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and his family, who were accompanied by Temple Institute International Director Rabbi Chaim Richman, off the site within two minutes of ascending.

Two police officers were injured in the confrontation, and 24 arrests have been made. Arab worshipers threw concrete blocks and rocks at Israeli police. The visit provided an opportunity for the influential American rabbi to join the struggle for Jewish prayer and presence on the Temple Mount. The Islamic Waqf, which was given administrative control of the mount following the Six Day War in 1967, bans Jewish prayer and worship.

Rabbi Meir Yaakov Soloveichik is a world renowned American Torah scholar, teacher and leader, who gave the invocation at the opening session of the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida. Son of Rabbi Eliyahu Soloveichik, grandson of the late Rabbi Ahron Soloveichik and the great nephew of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik – all of whom are credited for founding what has become the Modern Orthodoxy movement of Judaism.

He currently serves as rabbi of the Sephardic Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States.

“We are honored to welcome Rabbi Soloveichik,” said Temple Institute International Director Rabbi Chaim Richman. “His visit to the Temple Mount this morning was both spiritual and emotional for all involved. Above all else, his visit sends a strong message to World Jewry that we cannot abandon our holiest site.”

Commenting on today’s incident, Rabbi Soloveichik expressed his dismay at the current situation.

“Under the current circumstances, even to go to the Temple Mount for two minutes was a tremendous privilege,” said Rabbi Soloveichik. “I am very much in favor of ascending the Temple Mount according to Halacha [Jewish law] and after taking the appropriate halachic precautions. It is critical for Jews to understand the importance of the Temple Mount. I applaud the increasing number of Orthodox rabbis and heads of yeshivot that are going to the holy site, and I predict we will see even more Jews ascending in the future.”

Rabbis have been busy preparing the traditional Birkat Kohanim, the Blessing of the Priests, set for Thursday.

One of the most moving events in the entire holiday, Jews and Gentiles alike flock to the Western Wall from around the world to be present for the blessing.

The benediction is given solely by Jewish males who are descended from kohanim – those who are in the patriarchal line from members of the priestly class dating all the way back to the time of the ancient Holy Temples. Those who recite the blessing cover themselves (and any children they may have with them) with their prayer shawls, spreading out the shawl in such a way so that they are unseen by others as they recite the benediction.

The blessing at the Western Wall is recited during the morning service by thousands of Kohanim during Chol Hamoed, the intermediate days of the festival of Passover. It is also recited during the intermediate days of the festival of Sukkot.

Hundreds of thousands of Jews come to visit and pray at the Western Wall in the Old City in Jerusalem during this holiday, and many arrive only for the purpose of being present to receive this special blessing.

90% of Israeli Jews will participate in a Passover Seder, 80% of self-defined secular Jews said they believe in God, according to a study done by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics.

While 55% said they would make sure to only eat kosher during the entire holiday, nearly all said they would make sure to eat Matzah and only kosher food on Pesach night.

Those are some pretty good numbers.

Three Jewish families moved into the “Peace House” in Hebron Sunday after receiving approval from Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, five years after his predecessor in the Olmert government brutally expelled dozens of Jews from the building.

The entry of Jews, with the official backing of the Supreme Court, represents a turning point for the rights of Jews to live in Judea and Samaria and against the Palestinian Authority-media-political-judicial torture chamber that has mangled  normalcy to the point it cannot be identified..

A Jew, reportedly a religious American of Syrian descent whose ancestors escaped the Arab pogrom in Hebron in 1929, purchased the building seven years ago from Arabs for approximately $1 million.

The Arab seller, a Jordanian, had sold it through a third party and did not realize that the building eventually would end up in the hands of Jews. The Palestinian Authority, banking on Jordanian law, makes a sale of property to Jews punishable by death, one of their principles of being a “peace partner.”

The Peace House is a four-story building that housed 25 Jewish families and yeshiva students until the government ordered them out in 2008, less than year after the purchase, because the legality of the purchase was questioned and their presence was deemed as endangering security

The building is called the “Peace House,” but Israel’s center-left media have insisted on calling it the “The House of Contention,” past of their propaganda machine to show that anything that settlers do is harmful for peaceful relations with Arabs.

If the Jews simply would leave Hebron, and all of Judea and Samaria, and live in Tel Aviv and the Negev, there would be no problems.

That is the formula that has been marketed for decade, despite the War of Attrition on the 1960s when Arabs from Jordan and Egypt constantly attacked Jews, despite the  Six-Day War when seven Arab nations circled Israel like vultures ready to pounce, and despite the Israeli government’s expulsion of Jews from Gaza in 2005 to make Israel safe for Hamas to attack with tens of thousands of missiles.

Welcome to the “peace process.”

That is why peace process lovers Amir Peretz and Ehud Barak, defense ministers  in the corrupt Olmert government, did everything they could to keep the Jews out of the building. Barak brought in the goon squads to violently expel Jews who had been living in the Peace House. The police swarmed in after he tricked the Jews to believe negotiations would be held before any police action would take place.

The building has been bought in 2007. After the initial purchase, the courts played along with the Arabs and Peace Now, accepting their appeals and questioning the legality of the transaction, until finally deciding that a lower court would have to decide on who really owns the building, but until then, no one could live there.

A lower court ruled last year that the Jews indeed legally purchased the building, but that decision was appealed to the Supreme Court, which last month rejected the petition.

Since the Defense Minister is the ultimate authority in Judea and Samaria, at least until it is annexed and placed under Israeli sovereignty, court approval of the sale does not mean the Jewish owners could move in. Unlike Peretz and Barak, who made lives miserable for Jews before resorting to force, Ya’alon signed on the dotted line Sunday after the owners paid the final $300,000 that was owed to the Arab seller

The three-justice panel that ended the ordeal exhibited rare common sense. Justice Daphne Barak Erez, who is considered a liberal and  a court activist, wrote that both sides in the dispute have emotional and ideological issues, but they are not in the purview of the courts.

The picture above and the following five are incredible shots of IDF helicopters used in a variety of missions. These warplanes are ready to act on a moment’s notice to defend the State of Israel.

This helicopter took off after a visit from Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz to the snowy region. Mt. Hermon borders Syria and plays a strategic role in guarding Israel’s northern border.

A helicopter is waiting for takeoff during an aerial evacuation drill for the IDF’s Desert Reconnaissance Battalion, which is entirely comprised of Bedouin soldiers who volunteer for service in the IDF.

IDF and Hellenic Air Force both in the role of ally and enemy. The exercise also gave the IAF the chance to practice rescue missions while dealing with mountainous terrain and rapidly-changing weather.

These five helicopters display the principles of cooperation and coordination.

The soldiers practiced storming an area, and operating under bio-chemical attack and protecting a helicopter that was to land in an open field.

Aliyah to Israel increased by 14 percent from January to the end of March, with the most impressive numbers coming from Russia and France, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.

Russia led the aliyah number list with 899 new immigrants, followed by France with 802.

One veteran French immigrant told The Jewish Press that despite the flight to Israel from France, plagued by violent anti-Semitism, there is a far greater exodus of Jews to the United States and Canada.

The third largest source of new immigrants so far this year is the United States, from where 203 arrived, and another 23 came from Canada.

The total number of new immigrants for the first three months of this year is 3,623.

If you are looking for a hotel room for Passover in Mitzpeh Ramon in the Central Negev, start looking elsewhere.

Roman Abramovich, owner of Britain’s Chelsea soccer club, has booked all 111 rooms in the Beresheet Hotel in the mountain desert resort city, the London Daily Mail reported.

Abramovich reportedly will fly to Israel today (Sunday) in his private jet with Darya Zhukova and their children Aaron and Leah, and travel by limousine to the hotel.

The bill will come to approximately $450,000, not including tips. He will conduct the Passover Seder in a tent that was built for him at the Beresheet Hotel, which has a view of the Ramon Crater, the world’s largest crater created by erosion.

He can afford it. His personal wealth is estimated at  slightly more than $14 billion making him the 50th richest person in the world, according to Forbes.

The last time  Abramovich was in Israel for Passover was in 2009, when he rented out an entire floor of a hotel in Eilat.

The Daily Mail reported, “Abramovich is a frequent visitor to Israel. In the past year alone he has been to the country five times, including visits to technology incubators in Tel Aviv with a view to investing in high-tech startups and attending a fundraising event for an organization that carries out archeological excavations, which he supports financially.”

Card-carrying Israeli citizens in a totally Arab city in the western Galilee already are preparing celebrations for what they expect will be the return of their “heroes” who killed Israelis in terrorist attacks.

The United States is trying to work out a deal with Israel to allow freeing several Arab terrorists with Israeli citizenship in order to continue the so-called peace talks that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry resurrected last July. Key government Cabinet ministers have said they will quit their posts rather than vote to free the terrorists.

In the city of  Baqa al-Gharbiyye, located northwest of Netanya and almost adjacent to the western edge of Samaria, citizens already have posted a banner with a picture of four Arab-Israeli terrorists and a message, “Today you; tomorrow all the prisoners. You are returning heroes.”

That’s right, ”Heroes,”

Kerry not only expects Israel to free the murderers, but he also expects that the country swallow with pride such a humanitarian effort in which the Arabs learn, once again, that a murderer is a “hero” when he kills Jews.

The picture was posted on Facebook by Oren Tamam, brother of Moses  Tamam, who was murdered by Arab terrorists carrying Israeli citizenship.

The security fence, which has stopped almost all suicide bombers from crossing into major Israeli cities to blow up as many Jews as possible, separates Baqa al-Gharbiyye from its sister city in Samaria.

When Israeli negotiator Tzipi Livni was Foreign Minister in 2008, she raised the possibility of transferring Israeli Arab communities, including Baqa al-Garbiyye to the Palestinian Authority, which rejected the idea.

It is more than likely that the Arabs, too, would not want to be Palestinian Authority citizens because they would lose their welfare benefits as Israelis.

Moreover, it is lot easier to murder Jews when you have Israeli citizenship and live in the country, without having to cross a checkpoint and endure one of these “demeaning” inspections that are carried out at thousands of border crossings in the world.