Singer Madonna and actress Natalie Portman each is considering buying the $55 penthouse atop the Meier-on-Rothschild Tower in Tel Aviv, the London Daily Mail reported.

Madonna often has said how much she loves Israel, and she likes saying the word “kabbalah” so she can imagine she has some kind of Jewish mysticism to guide her.

Portman is Jewish, even if she does not fool around with Kabbalah. She was born in Jerusalem as Neta-Lee Hershlag, moved to the United States with her parents at the age of three and earned a degree in psychology from Harvard University, where she stood up for Israel in a letter to the university’s Crimson magazine.

She could have been one of Israel’s best-looking spokeswoman, having been a guest lecturer in Columbia University on terrorism and counter-terrorism, but Hollywood grabbed her, and she has won award after award.

That is why she is rich, and there is nothing like a $55 million penthouse n Tel Aviv to make a rich person “feel at home” at the expense of Jerusalem, where the best view overlooks the Western Wall and Temple Mount instead of the Mediterranean Sea.

Speaking of being rich, Madonna’s bank account would hardly even jingle if she took out $55 million to buy the penthouse in the 42-story building designed by prize-winning architect Richard Meier.

It features a private elevator, a huge entertaining area, private gym, cocktail bar, cinema and mini-spa.

Whether Madonna or Portman becomes Israel’s new resident remains to be seen.

Here is a  free tour of the luxury high-rise.

Israeli Arabs, Christians and Jews are no different when it comes to enjoying snow, which is always a holiday in Israel except for those in the Upper Golan Heights, where snow is a routine as sun in the summer.

But a snowball fight among Jews at the Western Wall Plaza is unimaginable. Even Haredim and women did not toss snow on each other on “white Friday,” which also was Rosh Chodesh, when Women of the Wall make their monthly pilgrimage to show they are different from Orthodox men who pray there every day.

Up on the Temple Mount’s Al Aqsa mosque compound the Muslims’ third holiest site, things were different, as seen in the video below.

Perhaps they simply were staying in shape to throw stones at Jews.

President Barack Obama is gearing up for a publicity blitz to undermine Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States and speech in Congress March 3, the Associated Press reported Friday evening.

The president’s advisers apparently have rejected an idea that Obama rebut Prime Minister’s speech that willow focus on the Iranian nuclear threat and the president’s softball approach towards Tehran.  A rebuttal could work in favor of Netanyahu, giving him press coverage that Obama wants to be negative. Obama might have a tough time proving that Netanyahu’s analysis is wrong.

The president has said he won’t meet Netanyahu because it is so close to elections in Israel that a meeting would be considered as interference in favor of him.

But interference is at the top of the agenda of the White House, which has made no secret that it would love to see an Israeli center-left coalition that endorses the “peace process” that even the Palestinian Authority has rejected but which remains has become a religious rite for Washington’s foreign policy gurus and their enthusiasts in Israel.

The Obama administration’s most obvious snubs of Netanyahu are its directing senior officials not to attend the speech and, so far, it’s not scheduling a leading name to speak at the annual AIPAC conference, which Netanyahu will address and which traditionally has been a political Super Bowl for Republican and Democratic candidates to outsmart each other in proving how much they love Israel.

The second-guessing is that President Obama will fulfill his political obligation by sending a third-level politician to speak. In 2012, the president address AIPAC but that was the year he was running for re-election. Biden appeared in 2013, and last year Kerry spoke.

Secretary of State John Kerry will be out of the country when Netanyahu speaks, but he hasn’t yet figured where to go. Ditto for Vice President Joe Biden, who will dutifully ditch his usual role of attending joint session of Congress, especially when a foreign leader is speaking.

Obama’s advisers have other tricks up their sleeves, according to the Associated Press.

Senior security officials might pop up on Sunday television news programs

The more that Obama can show that his relationship with the Netanyahu is bitter cold, the more the Herzog-Livni duo, which dubs their new merged parties as the “Zionist Camp, can win headlines by the eager Israeli establishment media that has gleefully sponsored the “Dump Bibi” campaign.

Leading Arab countries have expressed serious worries to officials in the Obama administration that the president will make a “bad deal” with Iran over its nuclear program.

“At this stage, we prefer a collapse of the diplomatic process to a bad deal,” according to a Wall Street Journal report that quoted an Arab official.

Arab countries have long feared that a nuclear Iran would pave the way for the Islamic Republic to fulfill its dream-nightmare of turning the entire Middle East, after Israel is replaced by “Palestine,” into a Caliphate state.

Lurking beneath the concern of a nuclear Iran is a religious war. All of the major Arab countries, first and foremost Saudi Arabia, are led by Sunni Muslims. Iran is a Shi’ite Muslim regime. The two sects mix like TNT and a match.

If President Barack Obama wants to prevent a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, he won’t dare make a bad deal with Iran because doing so would put Saudi Arabia next in line.

Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence, said in November that. Riyadh will “seek to have the same terms [as Iran] in developing our nuclear energy.”

But if Obama gets “tough” and refuses to let Iran wiggle him around its nuclear finger, the Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu might look good.

That really puts the president in dilemma, forcing him to decide which is worse for American security – a nuclear Iran or another Netanyahu government.

The Palestinian Authority has renewed incitement over the Temple with accusations that Israel is guilty of “over 100 attacks” on the holy site, following nearly half a year of relative calm.

King Abdullah of Jordan and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met several months ago and each side took steps for calm and to end daily clashes on the holy sites and a spate of barbaric terrorist attacks on Jews.

Israeli ministers stopped uttering statements that Jews one day will rebuild the Third Temple, and they suddenly dropped off the front pages by not grabbing headlines with high-profile visits.

Jordan made it clear to the Palestinian Authority that the “status quo” allows Jews to visit the holy site, so long as they don’t pray there, and Palestinian Authority news agencies stopped reporting that Jews were “invading” and “storming the Temple Mount.

Things are way too calm for the Palestinian Authority, whose officials uttered several gems of incitement by Palestinian Authority officials this past month and which were translated and published by the Palestinian Media Watch, which summarized:

The three most important PA religious leaders have all stated this month that Al-Aqsa is threatened by Israel. This religious incitement in the name of the Al-Aqsa Mosque is exactly what Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party used to incite Palestinians to carry out acts of terror, including murder, during the recent two-month terror campaign in Jerusalem. During October and November 2014, Palestinians murdered 11 Israelis using guns, knives, and cars, and wounded dozens.

At that time, Palestinian Media Watch documented  that Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash acknowledged the PA leadership’s full endorsement of the killings:

‘We kiss every forehead, every hand and even every foot that carries out Ribat (religious conflict/ war over land claimed to be Islamic) at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and in Jerusalem.”

PA Mufti Sheikh Muhammad Hussein on February 12 that said that Israel aspires “to build the alleged Temple on the ruins of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Abbas’ Advisor on Religious and Islamic Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash, speaking a day earlier, said that UNESCO must prevent Israel from “destroying the human heritage in Jerusalem.”

The PA Minister of Religious Affairs Sheikh Yusuf Ida’is warned on February 5 that since January, Israel has carried out “over 100  attacks and incidents of desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Ibrahimi Mosque [Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron]” and that “the Al-Aqsa Mosque is in grave and direct danger and that with every sunrise, this danger grows.”

Muslim leaders are absolutely paranoid of Jews being near the Temple Mount.

The Mufti, in his remarks published in the Arabic edition of the Ma’an News Agency and translated by PMW, went ballistics over a sign showing Jews and others the direction to the Temple Mount. Ma’an wrote:

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Territories and Preacher at the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque Sheikh Muhammad Hussein warned about the placement of a sign by the occupation municipality near the Council Gate [entrance to the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount), with the inscription, ‘Temple Mount’ ….

The Mufti explained that with the elections of the occupation authorities approaching, all the parties are trying to draw the votes of the extreme right by increasing the attack on the Palestinian people and its holy places.

Abbas’ adviser al-Habbash also spun out of control over the “threatening” sign and “warned of the severity of the escalatory measure implemented by the Israeli occupation municipality crews, in placing a sign in Arabic, Hebrew and English calling the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque “the Temple of Solomon.”

Al-Habbash said that Israel’s changing of names in the Holy City “is a kind of intentional falsification of history and heritage, and a desperate attempt to deny the [city's] Arab and Islamic character and force a new, invented character – the Jewish character. He noted that this was a most dangerous step, heralding grave consequences. “

Photo Essay: Shabbos Will Be White in Israel

This is not a snowstorm. This is a blizzard, even by New York’s standards.

More than a foot of snow has fallen in Jerusalem and Gush Etzion, three inches in Arad, and even Be’er Sheva saw the white stuff that will leave most of the north and half of the center covered in white on Shabbat.

High winds whipped the snow into drifts and downed several power lines.

Jerusalem is without bus service, and the two main highways from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem are closed, as are many roads in the Golan Heights, the Upper Galilee, the road from Gush Etzion to Jerusalem, and part of the highway north of Be’er Sheva

Power blackouts were reported in several parts of the country, and schools wereclosed from the north to Dimona.

Part of the main highway north of Be’er Sheva was closed because of ice on the road.

Snow fell, without accumulation, in Carmel for the first time in 20 years.

Snow will turn to rain in most of the country by Friday afternoon, but freezing temperatures will turn many roads to ice overnight.

Temperatures will rise slightly on Sunday and sharply on Monday and Tuesday, melting away much of the snow.

Later next week, weather models indicate that Israel is on target for more heavy rain, without snow, except on the Hermon ski slopes.

If you don;t believe snow fell on Carmiel, several miles east of Haifa, and Dimona, east of Be’er Sheva, here is proof from two YouTube videos.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is so eager to win positive publicity that his office issued an official press release Thursday to show how he took time out to phone officials  about the snowstorm bearing down on Israel.

The Prime Minister, besides trying to win re-election, has to worry about Kerry, Obama, the ISIS, Syria, Hamas, Abbas, Hezbollah and his upcoming speech in Congress, but that does not prevent him from taking the helm when snow comes.

One might think that the police need the Prime Minister of Israel to tell them to make the salt trucks are ready to roll. Ditto for the Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, Israel Police Commissioner Insp.-Gen. Yochanan Danino, Home Front Command Maj.-Gen. Eyal Eisenberg and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, all of whom Netanyahu’s office said were consulted in a conversation.

Netanyahu declared to the officials, for the entire nation to hear:

The supreme goal for everyone is to save lives and facilitate essential services for residents in storm-affected areas.

That must be a big relief to Israelis, who now know that the Prime Minister is in charge of the war against snow, which Israel always loses because this is not New York, Chicago, Boston, Moscow  or Montreal. Actually, the opposite is true.

If we need the Prime Minister of Israel to tell the police , the Hem Front Command, the mayor of Jerusalem and the IDF to make sure the snow plows are in good shape, we might as well pack up and start over again in Uganda,.

This election campaign is so personal, so nasty, so lacking of any true discussion of serious issues and so disgusting, that every party leader is taking credit for everything from sunrise to the appearance of the new moon.

Yair Lapid, head of the Yesh Atid party, has bragged about he is responsible for the reduction of water and electricity rates, which is a joke since the tariffs are determined by bureaucratic experts and not political pressure.

Tzipi Livni, whose HaTnuah party was so pitiful that she had to merge with the Labor party to save her political face as well as that of her new partner Yitzhack Herzog, claims that Netanyahu freed terrorists and that she is tough on Hamas.

It was Livni, like almost every other leader, who also agreed to free terrorists, and it was Tzipi Livni, who was Foreign Minister in the Olmert administration, who agreed to a “cease-fire” with Hamas to end the three-week Operation Cast Lead campaign against missile and rocket attacks from Gaza.

And it was Livni, two years earlier, who compromised Israel by accepting a toothless United Nations resolution to end the 34-day Second Lebanon War against Hezbollah.