The policewoman wounded in the terror attack on Monday outside the Jerusalem Old City Flower Gate continues to be serious, but she has been stabilized.

She underwent operations at Sharei Tzedek hospital to stop the internal bleeding and the stab wounds to her spinal column.

A tour of about 100 Eretz Israel Lobby activists from central Israel, led by MK Yoav Kish (Likud) and MK Bezalel Smotrich (Habayit Hayehudi), was harassed and then physically attacked by a mixed group of leftwing Jewish activists and PA Arabs, when they visited the squatters’ enclave outside Susiya, in Area C, where the Supreme Court has ordered the Israeli government to demolish the illegal Arab shacks lean-to structures of the Nawaj’ah family, but work there is being delayed because of EU and US pressure. The leftwing and Arab demonstrators yelled anti-Israel slogans and waved signs condemning the Regavim movement, which is dedicated to enforcing court decisions against illegal Arab construction everywhere.

Eretz Israel Lobby Co-Chairman MK Kish said in a statement, “We witness today an irregular case of an illegal Palestinian takeover of the South Mount Hebron areas, a treasure trove of ancient Jewish settlement from more than 1,500 years ago. I focus all our forces and efforts to prevent this trend, and it will be stopped.”

Co-Chairman MK Smotrich said in a statement, “The illegal village of the Nawaj’ah family is a stain on the State of Israel. It’s a settlement of former Yatta Village residents who established themselves on State lands over two decades. The court has ruled time and again that these illegal dwellings must be evacuated and yet there’s no response. The US State Dept., in a rude and inappropriate intervention, demands that the State of Israel permit the illegal village to stay, and we have come today to protest this intervention in internal Israeli policy and to demand the immediate removal of this illegal village.”

Mount Hebron Regional Council Head Yochai Damari said there was a connection between the failure to enforce court decisions on the ground in Susiya and the revival of Arab terror attacks in Jerusalem and Hebron. And Regavim CEO Yehuda Eliyahu called on the Prime Minister not to surrender to the unacceptable pressures from abroad and to act in the best interests of the State of Israel while maintaining the rule of law.

{Originally posted to the Gatestone Institute website}

Lebanon has many problems, including sectarian divisions, Iranian influence, spillover from the Syrian civil war, the weakness of its army, the ineffectiveness of its politicians, and the very existence of Hizballah, but Israel’s existence next door is not one of them.

The animosity of Lebanon towards Israel continues today only because it provides a convenient excuse for Hizballah to maintain a formidable arsenal that it uses to control Lebanon and to help its allies in Syria.

Lebanon has a law forbidding its citizens from interacting with Israeli citizens. As Michael J. Totten wrote:

“Lebanese citizens aren’t allowed to have any communication of any kind with Israelis anywhere in the world. If citizens of the two countries meet, say, on a beach in Cyprus or in a bar in New York, the Lebanese risks prison just for saying hello.”

The Lebanese online news source NOW explains that law in detail. Even a dual citizen (of Lebanon and Canada for example) could be jailed for interacting in the most innocuous way with an Israeli.

The Lebanese delegation, for example, recently refused to share a bus with the Israeli delegation at this year’s Olympic Games in Rio, prompting the Israeli minister of culture and sports to describe the incident as, “anti-Semitism, pure and simple, and the worst kind of racism.” The incident was, however, hardly surprising, considering the history of Lebanese animosity towards Israel.

Only one of many incidents of pettiness and bigotry

The Olympics incident is unfortunately not unique.

Incidents in the entertainment industry have been just as visible. In Lebanon’s only attempt to enter the Eurovision song contest, its contestant Aline Lahoud was forced to withdraw in 2005 after Lebanon would not allow the program to be broadcast because it included a performance by an Israeli. Despite his huge popularity in Lebanon, the Jewish Moroccan-French comedian, Gad Elmaleh, was forced to cancel his performances at a 2009 Lebanese festival due to what Reina Sarkis, a Lebanese psychoanalyst living in France, described as Hizballah’s “intellectual terrorism”. In June 2010, a boycott targeted the British Rock band Placebo, performing in Lebanon, resulting in a lawsuit by the Lebanese concert promoter against the groups that organized the boycott. Popular Belgian-Italian singer Lara Fabian cancelled a concert in Lebanon in 2012, after she was the target of threats for supporting Israel.

Such incidents have occurred in academia as well. In March 2010, Palestinian scholar Sari Hanafi, a professor at the American University of Beirut, was verbally assaulted at the university by a crowd of nearly 300 for having worked with two Israeli scholars on a book, even though the book was critical of Israel.

Even Miss Lebanon 2014, Saly Greige, was implicated in this type of incident in 2015, when a photo of her was taken with Miss Israel, Miss Japan, and Miss Slovenia. Lebanese Tourism Minister Michel Pharaon launched a probe into what was considered an incident of national significance. Greige was allowed to keep her crown only after she made the implausible claim that the picture was taken against her will.

Religious officials are not immune either. In May 2014, Patriarch Bechara al-Rahi of the Maronite Church faced heavy criticism from politicians, and threats from Hizballah media mouthpieces, for his decision to accompany the Pope to Jerusalem. This was despite the fact that Maronite clergy are legally permitted to travel to Israel for ministry duties.

An unjustified hatred

Lebanon has no valid justification for its hatred towards Israel. The tiny “Shabaa Farms,” on the border with Israel, which is only 22 square kilometers in size, is often cited as a reason, but Syria also claims that same piece of land. Moreover, Israel is reported to be willing to evacuate it if it were to come under the control of UN peacekeepers. The “Shabaa Farms” is an excuse, not a reason.

Lebanon has suffered significant human and material losses as a result of its two wars with Israel after 1949; that would certainly be reason for animosity towards Israel, if it were not that Lebanon was mainly responsibility for both wars.

The first Israel-Lebanon war in 1982-1985 was an attempt by Israel to stop attacks against its citizens by Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). If Lebanon had better controlled the actions of the PLO on its own territory, that war would never have occurred.

The second Israel-Lebanon war in 2006 was an attempt by Israel to stop attacks against its citizens by the Lebanese Shi’ite militia, Hizballah. If Lebanon had disarmed Hizballah when it disarmed other militias after the 1975-1990 civil war, the second Israel-Lebanon war would never have occurred, either.

Lebanon, which has a weak army, might be considered a victim of circumstances beyond its control, but that is not the case. Lebanon has contributed immensely to its circumstances.

Lebanon chose to be part of the Arab coalition that rejected the 1947 UN Partition Plan and attacked Israel in 1948, thus creating the Palestinian refugee problem. Lebanon still chooses to keep Palestinians in camps with limited rights rather than to integrate them into Lebanese society, thus fostering Palestinian grievances and a desire for “revenge”. Lebanon also chose to allow the Palestinians in the country to form their own armed militias, which were a catalyst in the Lebanese civil war and resulted in PLO attacks on Israel.

Lebanon has yet to try reaching a permanent peace with Israel. Israel had hoped to sign a peace treaty with Bashir Gemayel, who was elected president of Lebanon in 1982, but who never became president because he was assassinated soon after his election. His older brother, Amin Gemayel, who was elected in his place, reached a limited agreement with Israel in May 1983 that fell far short of a full peace agreement, and obviously did not stop Hizballah attacks against Israel.

Lebanon’s provocations

In addition to failing to stop attacks, successive Lebanese governments have even encouraged hatred and violence against Israel.

In May 2008, Lebanon’s newly elected president, Michel Suleiman, praised Hizballah‘s fight against Israel. In July of that same year, the Lebanese government gave a hero’s welcome to Samir Kuntar, the cold-blooded murderer of an Israeli father and his three young children. Kuntar was welcomed in person by the three most important officials in the Lebanese government: President Michel Suleiman, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, and parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri. Kuntar became a Hizballah commander and was later killed in Syria by an IDF operation.

Lebanese governments have even made anti-Israel aggression their policy. In 2009, the cabinet issued a policy statement recognizing Hizballah’s “right to use arms against Israel,” despite the objections of some ministers who insisted that Hizballah’s “substantial arsenal … undermines the authority of the state”.

Again, in 2014, Lebanon’s government issued a policy statement claiming that “Lebanese citizens have the right to resist Israeli occupation and repel any Israeli attack”.

Anti-Israel rhetoric also permeates the unelected civil service. In 2013, while discussing the influx of Syrian refugees into Lebanon, caused by the murderous Syrian regime and ISIS terrorists, Abbas Ibrahim, director-general of Lebanon’s General Security Department, insisted that, “Lebanon’s one and only enemy is Israel”.

Even some Christian politicians engage in such hateful speech. In 2015, Emile Lahoud, a former president of Lebanon, appeared on Iran’s Press TV, where he declared, “All our troubles come from Israel through the US.” The previous day, Michel Aoun, a former Lebanese Army Commander, declared on the same show his support for Hezbollah, calling Israel the “enemy”.

A divided Lebanon with no real autonomy

Despite Lebanon’s official encouragement of Hizballah, many Lebanese politicians would like Hizballah disarmed, and they have been saying so for a long time. They usually however also reaffirm Hizballah’s right to fight Israel, therefore undermining their own message.

Before he became Lebanon’s prime minister in 2009, following the assassination of his father, Saad Hariri expressed concerns about Hizballah’s arsenal. It was suspected at the time that his father, Rafik Hariri, had been assassinated by Hizballah, a suspicion later confirmed by a UN-backed tribunal. The young Hariri’s term ended in January 2011, due to pressure by Hizballah. In March 2011, tens of thousands of Lebanese demonstrators demanded that Hizballah be disarmed, chanting, “The people want the fall of arms”, but in June a new Hizballah-dominated government was announced.

Lebanese politicians discussed Hizballah’s arsenal again in 2012, because some felt that “many Lebanese have grown increasingly suspicious of Hezbollah’s weapons”.

In March 2013 and again in June 2013, Ziad Al-Kadri, a young parliamentarian in Hariri’s Sunni party, criticized Hizballah, accusing it of “seeking to make of Lebanon a liquidation field to settle regional scores”.

In August 2013, Lebanese Christian leader Samir Geagea, chairman of the Lebanese Forces (the organization once led by Bashir Gemayel), reacted to an anti-Israel speech by Hizballah’s leader, accusing him of “dragging the country into war against the wishes of its leaders”.

Lebanon has had a national unity government since February 2014 that includes members of Hizballah and members of Hariri’s party, but in January 2016, then Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi, a member of Hariri’s party, resigned. This followed Saudi Arabia’s cancellation of a deal worth $4 billion in support of the Lebanese army. The Saudi move resulted from Lebanon’s failure to support Saudi Arabia against Iran, the sponsor of Hizballah. Rifi said that Hizballah “is an armed party that is dominating the government’s decisions”.

In February 2016, Saad Hariri, who no longer resides in Lebanon, accused Hizballah of wanting to transform Lebanon into an “Iranian province”. The status of Lebanon as Iran’s cannon fodder was confirmed in July, when Hossein Salami, the second-in-command of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said, “In Lebanon, more than 100,000 Qasem missiles are ready for launch … ready to wipe out one malevolent and black spot from the political geography forever”.

Lebanon’s lack of autonomy was also confirmed by Marwan Hamade, a former Lebanese cabinet minister, and an ally of Rafik Hariri, who said that Lebanon had wanted to negotiate peace with Israel, but that all dialogue was blocked by Syria. Hamade said that, “While Hariri and his block wished to normalize and demilitarize Lebanon after Israel’s 2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon, Hezbollah and Syria wanted the opposite”.

Lebanon’s real problems

The rift between pro-Hizballah factions and anti-Hizballah factions is growing and is tearing Lebanon apart. Lebanon’s parliament has been unable to compromise on a new president after Michel Suleiman’s term expired in May 2014. Since the three most senior positions in Lebanese politics are constitutionally divided between a Christian president, a Sunni prime minister, and a Shiite parliamentary speaker, the stalemate means that for over two years, Christians have had no representative at that level.

However, Lebanon’s political dysfunction goes far beyond a constitutional crisis, and it affects the daily lives of Lebanese people. The New York Times reported

“With a new government dominated by allies of Hezbollah… censorship has been on the rise… Lebanon’s Sunni Muslims — traditionally moderate — have been increasingly challenged by extremists, including Salafi mullahs in Sidon and Al Qaeda in the northern city of Tripoli … Christian groups have also been joining the call for censorship”.

This has led “a parade of artists to leave the country.” The dysfunction even affects public health; garbage was not collected in Lebanon for almost a year, from July 2015 until March 2016, when a temporary solution was finally implemented.

In May 2016, popular Lebanese journalist Nadim Koteich revealed his support for Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, by tweeting that the war-ravaged Syrian city of Aleppo would have been better off under Israeli occupation. Koteich’s daring tweet (later deleted) demonstrates that despite Hizballah’s stranglehold on Lebanese politics, the irrational anti-Israel position of Lebanon is opposed by many of its people.

It is very likely that some of the nine athletes in the Lebanese Olympic delegation are not anti-Semites and would even welcome interaction with Israeli athletes. However, they also know the power of Hizballah and the consequences of challenging its authority.

The difficulties of Lebanon are much larger than the question of whether or not its athletes should avoid Israelis. The occupation by Israel of a disputed piece of land, the “Shabaa Farms” that is 0.2% of the size of Lebanon, hardly warrants the existence of an independent militia that is more powerful than the Lebanese army and that has undue and disproportional influence over the country.

If the Arab states, among them Lebanon, had not attacked the newly-independent Jewish state in 1948, and if Lebanon had prevented terrorist attacks from its territory against Israel, not one bullet would have been exchanged between the two countries. Today, Lebanon would be enjoying diplomatic relations with Israel, and the benefits of successful trade.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday held a meeting to assess the security situation ahead of the Tishrei holidays—Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot. Netanyahu called for in creased police presence, especially in the Old City and around the Temple Mount, directing “determined action” against any attempt to violate the public order there. In the case of Jews on the Temple Mount, these actions are normally determined by the Waqf agents, who are empowered to assess the level of spiritual engagement exerted by any Jew on the Temple Mount, and to decide whether said Jews have crossed the line and got dangerously close to their Father in Heaven.

Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered Knesset Speaker MK Yuli Edelstein to continue to prevent MKs and cabinet ministers from going up to the Temple Mount during this sensitive period, such sensitive period being defined as “always.”

The Prime Minister also directed that activity be increased against PA Arab incitement on social networks, including Facebook, with the goal of removing inflammatory content. He also instructed that a response team be established to refute disinformation about Israeli policy on the Temple Mount, such as the Jews are plotting to destroy the Al Aqsa mosque.

Netanyahu received an update on IDF operations and the reinforcement of units along the roads and inside Judea and Samaria communities.

Also participating in the meeting were Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, Israel Policy Deputy Inspector General Zohar Dvir, Jerusalem District Police Commander Yoram Halevy, the deputy Director of the ISA, an IDF representative and personnel from the National Security Council.

{Originally posted to the author’s website, FirstOne Through}

Palestinians Claim
of Israeli “Ethnic Cleansing”

In 2012, the acting-President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, stood at the United Nations and claimed that Israel was engaged in “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinian Arabs.  At first, he spoke about “ethnic cleansing” when Israel declared independence:

“The Palestinian people, who miraculously recovered from the ashes of Al-Nakba of 1948, which was intended to extinguish their being and to expel them in order to uproot and erase their presence, which was rooted in the depths of their land and depths of history. In those dark days, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were torn from their homes and displaced within and outside of their homeland, thrown from their beautiful, embracing, prosperous country to refugee camps in one of the most dreadful campaigns of ethnic cleansing and dispossession in modern history.”

Abbas neglected to say that the Palestinian Arabs left their homes while their fellow Arabs launched an attack on the nascent Jewish State to destroy it completely.  The Arabs failed in their genocidal quest.  Yet for its part, Israel granted all of the Arabs living in its territory full citizenship.  A complete inversion of his claim that Israel “intended to extinguish their [Arab] being and to expel them in order to uproot and erase their presence.”

Abbas continued to claim that Israel was engaged in “ethnic cleansing” to this day:

“We have not heard one word from any Israeli official expressing any sincere concern to save the peace process. On the contrary, our people have witnessed, and continue to witness, an unprecedented intensification of military assaults, the blockade, settlement activities and ethnic cleansing, particularly in Occupied East Jerusalem, and mass arrests, attacks by settlers and other practices by which this Israeli occupation is becoming synonymous with an apartheid system of colonial occupation, which institutionalizes the plague of racism and entrenches hatred and incitement.”

Abbas conveniently neglected to mention the hundreds of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel throughout 2012. He also neglected to mention that Israel left Gaza in 2005, allowing the Palestinian Arabs to rule themselves for the first time in hundreds of years.

No matter.  The people at the United Nations gave Abbas a standing ovation.

United Nations Claim
of Israeli “Ethnic Cleansing”

In 2014, the “Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories” (yes, that’s an actual title) whose job it is to report on Israelis, declared that Israel was committing “ethnic cleansing” in East Jerusalem.

“The continued pattern of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem combined with forcible eviction of long residing Palestinians are creating an intolerable situation that can only be described, in its cumulative impact, as a form of ethnic cleansing.”

The facts are the exact opposite: the Arabs in Jerusalem are growing faster than the non-Arab population.

As detailed in “Arabs in Jerusalem,” the Arab population in Jerusalem now stands at 36% of the city, up from 26% when the city was reunited in 1967.  From 1967 to 2011, the Arab population in the city grew by 5.7 times, while the Jewish population in the Israeli capital only grew by 3.4 times over the same period.

No matter the facts. “The Special Rappoteur “called on the Council to undertake efforts to have the UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), assess allegations that the prolonged occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem possess elements of “colonialism,” “apartheid” and ‘ethnic cleansing.’”

No comments from United States or anyone else about the absurd and caustic statements, nor on the lunatic who made them (who incidentally, is a big 9/11 conspiracy theorist).

Israeli Prime Minister Claims
of Palestinian “Ethnic Cleansing”

In September 2016, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the Palestinians of “ethnically cleansing” Jews from their historic homeland of Judea and Samaria / the West Bank.  Netanyahu made his statement because Abbas has stated he cannot accept a single Israeli living in a new state of Palestine.

Netanyahu did not even bring up a variety of other Palestinian Authority laws, as detailed in “Abbas Knows Racism,” such as:

• Palestinian Authority law that condemns any Arab that sells land to a Jew to death.
• Palestinian universities bar entry to Jews

The origins of Arab ethnic cleansing of Jews dates back decades, to when the Jordanians illegally annexed eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1950 and expelled all of the Jews from the area.  Jordan then passed a citizenship law in 1954 that specifically EXCLUDED Jews from being granted citizenship in their own homeland.

“Any person who, not being Jewish, possessed Palestinian nationality before 15 May 1948 and was a regular resident in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan between 20 December 1949 and 16 February 1954″ (Article 3)

So what was the world reaction when Netanyahu finally stated some clear and obvious facts?  Condemnation.

The spokesperson for the US State Department responded to the Netanyahu video: “We believe that using that type of terminology is inappropriate and unhelpful.”

When Abbas heard that Netanyahu used the “ethnic cleansing” charge, Abbas doubled-down by saying again that Israel uses “ethnic cleansing” against the Palestinians.

No comment from the State Department about Abbas’s use of the term.

The current United States administration and United Nations have no time or interest for Israelis stating simple truths. It would appear, that if you want the world to agree and applaud, you would best be served by denying facts like the Palestinian Arabs.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Palestinians of Today and the Holocaust

The Long History of Dictating Where Jews Can Live Continues

The UN Fails on its Own Measures to address the Conditions Conducive to the Spread of Terrorism

Names and Narrative: Genocide / Intifada

The Left-Wing’s Two State Solution: 1.5 States for Arabs, 0.5 for Jews

The US State Department Does Not Want Israel to Fight Terrorism

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Israel is a country accused of many things by many people. Personally, I find it most painful when the accusation is that of racism and when the accusers are fellow Jews. Sadly, this is what is happening in the course of a PR campaign that started with the best of intentions.

In 2015, the government of Israel passed a cabinet decision to facilitate the immigration of a number of Ethiopian citizens with family relations in Israel and with claims of Jewish lineage. Many of these Ethiopians had attended educational institutions run by the Jewish Agency or by American NGOs and, as a result, developed a strong attachment to Israel and to Judaism.

These Ethiopians were found not to be eligible for aliyah under the Law of Return, which requires that one be born to at least one Jewish grandparent, but in view of their family ties to Israelis and their humanitarian plight – stuck in limbo between the lives they had left behind in Ethiopia and the lives they aspired to live in Israel – it was decided to bring them to Israel and grant them full rights as olim.

When months went by and the decision remained unimplemented, a petition began to circulate calling on the prime minister to make good on his government’s pledge (something the Israeli government has since begun to do). The petition, circulated by Dr. David Elcott, was a model example of the compassion and concern for the suffering of others that embodies the best of Jewish tradition. The distress and frustration of these Ethiopians and their sincere desire to join their relatives in the Jewish state are very real and deserving of our urgent attention.

But then things took an ugly turn. Some of the campaign’s advocates began insinuating that the campaign for the Ethiopians in question was a campaign against racism and that the racists were Israeli officials. These advocates compared their campaign to the civil rights movement against Jim Crow laws in the U.S. and to the Black Lives Matter movement. In particular, they targeted young American Jews with these messages – meeting with Birthright groups before their first trip to Israel and leading them to believe that the only difference between the Ethiopians in question and Russian olim (even those who are not Jewish according to halacha) was the color of their skin.

In order to create the false impression of racism, these advocates concealed the fact that this last group of Ethiopians, unlike the Ethiopians who made aliyah in the heroic operations of the 1990s, did not meet the criteria of the Law of Return. They stated that their campaign was necessary to prevent Israel from discriminating against people on the basis of their skin color. Many leaders they spoke to came to believe the delay in the implementation of the decision from 2015 was indeed informed by racism.

As is so often the case, an initiative launched to promote a just and worthy end was before long compromised by wrongful means. In this case, the end of hastening the government decision from 2015 is just and worthy. The means of wielding the accusation of racism to intimidate the state of Israel and American Jewish leadership is unforgivable.

I must confess a personal reason for finding this tactic so objectionable. As I told The Jewish Press in an interview earlier this year (“At The End of the Day, We Only Have Each Other,” June 24), in the 1960s my father came from Africa to Israel, making it his one and only home. He converted to Judaism and served in the army.

My African heritage is an important part of who I am and I have always been very proud of it. I have not often encountered racism, but when I have, it has made me angry beyond words.

Because I care a great deal about genuine manifestations of racism, I am revolted by the use of the language of the struggle for racial justice as a casual rhetorical flourish or as a PR foil.

As a Jew, I would bristle if I were to see someone using false accusations of anti-Semitism as a means to promote their end. It discredits and undermines our struggle against true appearances of that age-old hatred. Equally, as an African I am furious to see false insinuations of racism exploited in what could otherwise be a noble campaign for a deserving cause.

But there are two more important reasons why this move is so deplorable.

First, painting Israel as tarnished by racism alienates young American Jews who care strongly about racial justice. There are enough groups out there trying to drive a wedge between Jews in America and Jews in Israel without Jewish leaders acting to the same effect.

Second, this tactic plays right into the hands of those haters who regularly accuse Israel, and by extension all Jews who identify with Israel, of being racists.

The infamous UN resolution equating Zionism with racism has long been repealed, but that perverse calumny is still alive and well.

When a Jewish leader gives an interview to an international news agency and implicitly attributes systemic racial bias to the Jewish state, it can only be a matter of time before his words will be hurled back at Jewish students on campus, exhorting them to renounce any attachment to the Jewish state.

Playing this game may yield some results in the short term for the campaign, but its harm is tenfold and will come back to haunt us all.

Their will be a nationwide drill on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016, to be held throughout Israel.

Sirens will be sounded at 11:11 AM and 7:15 PM in the Jerusalem area – other locations might be at different times.

As part of the drill, resident should be aware of how long they have to enter the nearest bomb shelter.

On Tuesday, September 20, 2016, sirens will be activated throughout Israel as part of a national emergency exercise.

At 11:11 the sirens will be sounded in the Jerusalem district for half a minute with a rising and falling tone and then at 19:15 sirens will be activated again as part of an evening exercise.

Notices of the exercise will be publicized immediately upon the activation of the siren in all of the different media by the Army’s Home Command.

The Home Command calls upon the entire population to take an active part in the exercise and to perform what is necessary upon hearing the siren.

For your convenience, visit the link for the guidelines.

Dear Residents, please pass along this information to all the members of your family in order to avoid panic during the exercise.