A 56-year-old Jordanian Christian writer was shot to death outside a courthouse in Amman on Sunday as he prepared to face trial on charges of giving offense to Allah, the Jordanian state news agency Petra reported on Sunday.

Nahed Hattar was being charged for sharing a cartoon on his Facebook page that portrayed Allah in a manner that was considered offensive to Islam. The cartoon was titled, “God of Da’esh” — the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State terrorist organization.

It showed an Arab sheikh, “Abu Saleh” lying smoking in bed in a tent labeled “Paradise” with two women, directing Allah to clear the dishes, bring him wine and cashews, get a “servant” to clean the floor and put a door on the tent and knock before entering the next time.

Hattar explained he was sharing the cartoon to ridicule “terrorists and how they imagine Allah and paradise,” saying that “it does not insult Allah in any way.” He removed the cartoon from his Facebook page and apologized for posting it after it triggered a firestorm of outrage on social media from conservative Muslim Jordanians.

Jordan’s highest official religious fatwa authority had condemned Hattar for what it said was an “insult to the divine entity, Islam and religious symbols.”

Hattar was shot three times by an unidentified bearded gunman in his fifties wearing a traditional Arab dishashada — a garment worn by deeply observant Sunni Salafi Muslims who shun a Western lifestyle, according to international news agencies.

The shooter was alleged by a security source to be a 39-year-old Muslim preacher from a mosque in Amman. He was arrested “and investigations are ongoing,” according to Petra.

The shooting was immediately condemned by the Jordanian Government. Spokesperson Mohammad Momani said in a statement that followed the murder, “The law will be strictly enforced on the culprit who did this criminal act and will hit with an iron fist anyone who tries to harm state of law.”

Hattar had said he believed his Islamist opponents were using the cartoon and the outrage it triggered to settle their political scores with him. The writer was a supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and an activist fighting political, radical Islam. He was arrested August 13 and charged with contempt of religion and incitement of sectarian strife.

Jordan has been struggling to contend with internal struggles between its secular, moderate and extremist Islamist sectors, as well as the internecine conflicts arising between Jordanian citizens and Syrian refugees.

The growing majority of Arabs from the Palestinian Authority has also become a growing factor in the rising discontent of various factions. This population is comprised of those who fled their homes and moved to Jordan during the 1967 Six Day War as well as their children, grandchildren and great-children.

{Originally posted to the author’s eponymous website}

In a video message, he made the crazy charge that the goal of the Palestinians was “ethnic cleansing.” This atrocious sounding term usually refers to the actions of one ethnic group to not only kill members of another ethnic group, but to take over their land and destroy their homes, social centers, places of worship, and other evidence that they had ever lived there. Even cemeteries are not spared when it comes to ethnic cleansing.

How on Earth could the leader of Israel make such a pernicious accusation?

Because it’s already happened.

Just go back to 1948, not all that long ago. There are even Israelis who can testify to what happened.

That was the year that the Old City of Jerusalem was “ethnically cleansed” of its Jewish community, a community that had been living there for thousands of years. The city fell to the Jordanian Legion with help from local Arabs (who would later be called Palestinians).

Families who could trace their ancestry back through multiple generations of residency in Jerusalem found themselves targeted for destruction. Some were murdered, others were forced to leave their homes with nothing but the shirts on their backs.

Then their homes were destroyed. The synagogues, 58 of them, were ransacked. Every Jewish building was knocked down, burned, or otherwise destroyed. Even the ancient cemetery on the Mount of Olives was not spared. The place where Jews had been burying their dead for thousand of years was dug up and the grave stones used to pave roads.

“Ethnic Cleansing?” Could you find a better term for what happened to the Jews of Jerusalem in 1948.

Lest you think that these actions were one isolated example, look what happened in other areas that fell to the Arabs in 1948. Both the Jewish people and evidence of where they had lived was systematically destroyed.

There were three Jewish communities in the historic area of Judea known as Gush Etzion. These areas were besieged. The last stand of the Jews was the town of Kfar Etzion. They fought to the last bullet but where then forced to surrender.

Then they were collected and massacred. Not content to stop at murder, the homes, schools, and even agricultural fields were burned down. Again, the goal was to remove evidence that Jews had ever lived in the area.

“Ethnic Cleansing? To see that the Prime Minister was not so off-the-mark with his charge, a simple review of Israel’s history shows clearly that it has already happened once. If you listen to the anti-Jewish rhetoric of the Palestinian leaders, it appears that this is their goal once again.

So maybe rather than accusing the Prime Minister of demogeogary, those who condemned the Prime Minister should think about history. We have to ask why the U.S. State Department and

the U.N Secretary General were so quick to condemn Netanyahu while usually remaining silent about the extreme charges stemming from the Palestinian Authority.

Even if they don’t, the media who report their remarks have a responsibility to tell their readers why the accusation of “ethnic cleansing” is not so off base.

It would be refreshing to see the media report “Prime Minister Netanyahu has accused the Palestinians of seeking to ethnically cleanse the area of Jews, something that happened in 1948…” Rather than merely reinforcing the anti-Israel sentiment carried by much of the world, it would help explain why Israelis are so worried about the “peace process.”

The two main concerns Jordan’s King Abdullah II Ibn Al Hussein brought up in his speech before the UN assembly this week were the need to halt the spread of terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere, and his country’s dire need for help in caring for millions of Syrian refugees that have crossed over from the civil war next door. The king ended his eloquent speech with a scant reference to the Israeli-PA conflict, cautioning that “no injustice has spread more bitter fruit than the denial of a Palestinian State,” and stressing that “Israel has to embrace peace or eventually be engulfed in a sea of hatred.”

Meanwhile, it’s been Jordan being engulfed, as the ISIS hordes have been hammering at its borders from several directions, leaving only one safe border, the one with those bitter fruits of the Israeli-PA conflict. Or, as His Majesty described it, the outlaws of Islam — the “khawarej” — have murdered, plundered, exploited children and rejected the equality of women before God. But he insisted that it was crucial to recognize the difference between that image of Islam and what the religion really teaches.

“False perceptions of Islam and of Muslims will fuel the terrorists’ agenda of a global struggle by polarizing and factionalizing societies, East and West,” the king warned. Islam teaches that all humanity is equal in dignity and that there is no distinction between different nations, regions or races, he said, but the khawarej deliberately hide such truths in order to drive Muslims and non-Muslims apart. “We cannot allow this to happen,” he warned. He explained that those radical outlaws do not exist on the fringes of Islam, but outside it altogether. A new mind-set, new partnerships and reformed methodologies would be needed to confront such a non-traditional enemy. For Muslims it is, first and foremost, a fight for their future.

Admirably truthful and useful ideas, which is why one must wonder how come the king is recommending that, while the rest of the world should be combating these radicals, Israel, his only safe neighbor, should embrace peace with them. It may have to do with the fact that Jordan’s population is 80% “Palestinian,” meaning it is made up of the indefinable hordes who flooded the area from all over the Middle East starting in the 1920s, seeking jobs and safety alongside the Zionist enterprise and under the rule of the British Mandate. Jordan has become a home to many of them who fled Israel during the 1948-49 war, just as it became a home to an estimated 400,000 of them who were deported by Kuwait after the Gulf War of 1991. Indeed, the close to two million refugees who have been invading Jordan in the past five years are no more “Syrian” than the others are “Palestinian.” Those national definitions are synthetic, Western inventions imposed on a region that lives by tribalism.

That was the real message the Jordanian king was sharing with the world in NY City this week, as he put it bluntly in his speech before the Leaders’ Summit on Refugees, co-hosted by the US, Jordan, Mexico, Canada, Sweden, Germany and Ethiopia.

“For many years, our country’s security and stability and our citizens’ generous compassion have led desperate refugees to our doors,” King Abdullah II told the summit. “In the past five years the Syrian crisis has sent Jordan’s burden skyrocketing. Some 2.5 million Syrians have crossed into Jordan since 2011. Today we are hosting 1.5 million Syrians, one for every five of our own citizens. Across my country, Jordanians are suffering. No one is justified in questioning our commitment and sacrifices. The economic and social impact has shocked every sector, every community; and it has set back the strides of our economy and has created tremendous problems in our development, job growth and debt reduction. We are spending a quarter of our national budget on refugee-related costs.”

Noting that “all countries agree that the Syrian refugee crisis will be with us all for years to come,” the king warned that “if regional refugee hosts are abandoned and left to fail, the need won’t disappear. The crisis will simply spread further, prolonging the time it takes to end this ordeal. The cost in human suffering will be unspeakable.”

Which is why the takeaway from King Abdullah II’s speech is not about his faint call on Israel to be more peaceful with its terrorist neighbors, but a cry for help in managing the Arab hordes on either side of his gates.

Voting for the parliamentary elections in Jordan started across the Kingdom at 7 AM Tuesday and will continue until 7 PM, with a total of 490,240 Jordanians having voted by noon, Jordan Times reported. The number of eligible voters stands at 4,130,145, according to the Independent Election Commission (IEC).

The Jordanian elections were announced after parliament was dissolved by King Abdullah II on May 29, with the King appointing Hani Al-Mulki as interim Prime Minister following the resignation of Abdullah Ensour.

These elections are the first since 1989 to be held primarily under a form of proportional representation, following electoral reforms announced in 2015. Earlier elections were held under the “one-man one-vote” system, designed to curb the power of Islamic political parties after they obtained 22 seats out of 80 in 1989. The Tuesday vote is monitored by dozens of international observers. The 2015 reforms have led to opposition parties agreeing to participate in this election, including the Islamic Action Front, which boycotted multiple previous elections. According to reports, in order to reduce the IAF influence in these elections the Jordanian government has fomented splits in the Muslim Brotherhood, complete with the seizure of Muslim Brotherhood properties and the defection of hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood figures to form a new, supposedly more moderate party.

The elected lower house of Jordan’s parliament is constrained by an upper house of equal legislative responsibility whose members are chosen by the King. While the lower house can initiate legislation, it must then be approved by the senate and the King. If the King returns the law unapproved, it must gain approval from two-thirds of both the house and the senate to go into effect. The King appoints a Prime Minister and Cabinet from the lower house, but he is not required to consult parliament on his choice or choose the leader of the largest party for PM. Cabinet reshuffling by the King within a single parliament are frequent, used to reward loyal MPs and to counter public dissent, as the King can shift blame for issues to the previous Cabinet. The King can dissolve parliament before the end of its term if he desires early elections, or suspend parliament entirely and rule by decree, which has been done twice in the 21st century, from 2001–2003 and 2009–2010.

Maj. Gen. Atef Saudi, Director of Jordan’s Public Security Department (PSD), said that no major security incidents were reported so far.

The Jordanian Foreign Ministry condemned the killing of their citizen, Sayid Amro, who traveled to Jerusalem and committed a terror attack on Friday.

The terrorist’s family in Jordan is demanding his body be returned from Israel, according to a YNet report.

Amro attempted to stab some policeman at Jerusalem’s Old City Damascus Gate (Sha’ar Shechem).

He yelled “Allahu Achbar” during his stabbing attack and wounded one policeman.

The police then shot the terrorist to death.

Aerial photographs shot by a drone operated by Rahaf, a company specializing in photography and documentation projects from the air, show the dreaded “Kinneret Island,” which appears in Israel’s northern lake whenever the dry season claims significant portions of the lake’s water.

According to Pinhas Green, Deputy CEO of the Kinneret Authority, “since the beginning of summer the Kinneret level has gone down by 40 inches, placing it at 14.76 inches below the lowest red line. The level is very low. The drought arrived early this year. … We should all pray for an exceptionally rainy winter.”

To be full, the Kinneret is currently missing 180 inches (38 ft.).

Israel transports water from Lake Kinneret, or the Sea of Galilee, to the population centers of Israel, as well as to Jordan. The lake supplies only about 10% of Israel’s drinking water needs, but under the terms of the Israel–Jordan peace treaty, Israel also supplies 50,000,000 cubic meters (1,765,733,336 cubic feet) of water annually from the lake to Jordan. In recent years the Israeli government has made extensive investments in water reclamation and desalination infrastructure in the country. This has allowed it to significantly reduce the amount of water pumped from the lake annually in an effort to restore and improve its ecological environment, as well as respond to some of the most extreme drought conditions in hundreds of years which the lake’s intake basin has frequently experienced since 1998.

It is expected that in 2016 only about 25,000,000 cubic meters (880,000,000 cubic feet) of water will be drawn from the lake for Israeli domestic consumption.

Jordan, on the other hand (the folks who gave you the Islamic Waqf on Temple Mount), which hasn’t made an investment in water preservation, will continue to receive more than a billion and a half cubic feet of water every year.

On August 20, JewishPress.com first reported on Iranian military reinforcements entering Quneitra on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.

Syrian sources said the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were replacing Syrian regime troops. The Iranians were being positioned there to allegedly attack the Syrian city of Daraa, near Jordan’s border.

At the same time, there was concern that the Iranian troops, once in place, would first attack Syrian rebel forces on the Golan Heights – and that Daraa was just an excuse to position them there to attack the rebels, and more significantly, to embed Iranian troops alongside the Israeli border on the Golan Heights.

There are estimates that as many as 60,000 Iranian troops are fighting in Syria.

On Monday, the official Iranian Islamic regime news outlet, FARS, claimed that the troops being stationed in Quneitra are Hezbollah and Syrian regime troops.

The report says, “Hezbollah has deployed a large number of its forces at Quneitra passage which has connected the Syrian territories to the occupied Golan.”

Both Syrian and Iranian news sources agree that forces supporting Assad are massing near Israel’s border on the Golan Heights in order to attack the Syria rebels positioned on the Golan Heights, but they apparently disagree on the identity of which of those allies of Assad it actually is.

In the past, Hezbollah operatives trying to set up terror networks on the Golan Heights have been attacked and killed, presumably by Israel.

It’s unknown which report is more accurate as to the makeup of the forces in Quneitra, are they Hezbollah terrorists or Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards – or perhaps both?

Israel has previously stated that Iranian troops along its borders is a red line that it won’t accept.