Persecution Growing: U.S. To Condemn Israel At UNSC Meeting On Temple Mount

US to condemn Israel at UN Security Council meeting on Temple Mount

Batya Jerenberg

The United States is expected to join other countries condemning Israel at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting Thursday that is convening to discuss the brief visit of a Jewish minister to the Temple Mount earlier this week.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the Temple Minutes for some 15 minutes early Tuesday morning in a show of Israeli sovereignty, after his prior announcement that he would ascend the holiest site in Judaism led Hamas to threaten violence over such a “Zionist aggression.”

While the visit passed on the almost-empty Mount without incident, a diplomatic uproar ensued, with country after country denouncing it and the UAE and China demanding that the UNSC convene on the matter.

The U.S. joined European allies such as Great Britain and France in labeling the walk a threat to the “status quo” that was “unacceptable,” and the administration’s anger would be reflected at the UNSC, State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters.

“We stand firmly for the preservation of the historic status quo with respect to the holy sites in Jerusalem. Any unilateral action that departs from that historic status quo is unacceptable,” he said, adding that “we will be ready to reiterate our views to our fellow Security Council members” when it meets Thursday.

Some Arab states, including those at peace with Israel such as Jordan and Bahrain, deliberately mischaracterized the visit as “storming al-Aqsa Mosque” and “a violation of international law,” among other extreme descriptions.

Israel’s new government rejected the wave of condemnations, with the Prime Minister’s Office immediately putting out a statement saying, “Under the status quo, ministers have gone up to the Temple Mount in recent years, including Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan; therefore, the claim that a change has been made in the status quo is without foundation.”

Erdan himself, who is currently Israel’s ambassador to the UN, slammed the Security Council meeting Wednesday as “ridiculous and unnecessary,” saying that it was taking place “only because the UN is a distorted and biased body in which Israel is discriminated against.”

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Berkeley’s Jewish-Free Zones Are Worse Than You Think

Kenneth L. Marcus

Berkeley Law’s students have institutionalized an ancient ideology of hate, incorporating it into the legal DNA of their major identity groups. In doing so, they have embodied this bigotry in a dangerous new form of silencing and exclusion.

As Berkeley’s administration has conceded, nine Berkeley Law student groups amended their bylaws this academic year to prohibit Zionist speakers. It is important to be perfectly clear about what this means.  An expert on real estate law would not be permitted to impart real estate expertise to any of these groups if they also support the existence of one Jewish state among 22 Arab countries in the Middle East.  An expert in Title IX could not come speak to the women’s law group if they also support the right for Jewish liberation after thousands of years of anti-Jewish persecution and annihilation.  An expert in the legality of gay marriage or gender discrimination employment law could not speak to the LGBTQ+ group.

Berkeley’s administration rationalizes, rather obscenely, that Jewish students can join these groups as members even if not as speakers. If the first nine rows of the bus are barred to Jews, it shouldn’t matter that Jews get to sit in the back.

The truth, in fact, is the opposite of what Berkeley’s administration maintains. I have understated the case, not overstated it. To begin with, most of these groups incorporated the discriminatory provisions into their constitutions, not only their bylaws. That is to say, they baked anti-Zionism into their most basic charters. It is now as fundamental to their operations as, say, how they select officers.

Worse, they did this to advance the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. They are not only banning pro-Israel speakers. Their new constitutional provision dedicates these groups to “wholly boycotting, sanctioning, and divesting funds from institutions, organizations, companies, and any entity that participates in or is directly/indirectly complicit in the occupation of the Palestinian territories and/or supports the actions of the apartheid state of Israel.”

They are not, however, boycotting only Israel. They are boycotting American Jews.

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‘Pathological obsession’: Senator Cruz rips Biden over Israel condemnation

World Israel News Staff

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Wednesday attacked the Biden administration’s “pathological obsession” with undermining Israel was endangering U.S. national security, following the U.S.’ condemnation of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s visit to the Temple Mount.

“A visit by a minister from Israel’s government to a site inside Israel is not a change in any status quo arrangement, and it should not be controversial for a Jew to visit the holiest site in Judaism,” Cruz, a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, said in a statement released on Twitter.

“The statements from the Biden White House and State Department, which suggest otherwise, will further destabilize the Middle East and risk inciting terrorism. They convince Palestinian officials that compromise is unnecessary because Democrat administrations will coerce our Israeli allies into making dangerous concessions.”

The Biden administration has “consistently sought to undermine Israel’s security and sovereignty over its territory,” Cruz claimed.

He listed several apparent affronts by the administration towards Israel, including, its refusal to use the term “Abraham Accords” coined by the Trump administration; seeking to reopen a Palestinian consulate in Israel’s capital of Jerusalem after the Trump administration shuttered it; “unleash[ing] the FBI against the Israeli army, and publicly ostracizing parts of Israel’s democratically-elected government.”

“Meanwhile, the administration is pouring over a billion dollars into Palestinian areas and bringing officials from the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization to Washington, D.C. Now it is doubling down on these disastrous policies,” he concluded.