- David M. Weinberg
Color me amicably appreciative but stubbornly skeptical of the latest attempts to fashion fanciful diplomatic harmonies on Israel’s borders – an attitude born of hard-bitten experience.
Only the IDF, not international observers, will defang Hamas and Hezbollah.
Published in The Jerusalem Post, August 14, 2026; and Israel Hayom, August 16, 2026. Print-friendly copy
Israelis have every reason in the world to seriously doubt the American-hatched plans to bring peace to Israel’s southern and northern borders.
In both Gaza and Lebanon there are deeply entrenched, well-equipped, Iranian-backed terrorist armies arrayed against Israel. Nobody has yet met an Islamist truly willing to give up his weapons.
Now, you’ve got to give the Jared Kushner-driven American diplomacy some credit for trying to defang Hamas and Hezbollah and transform the regional security situation. Remember that nobody in Israel believed that Kushner and his team would be able to wedge Hamas into releasing all remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza. There was a one-in-one-thousand chance of that happening, and yet it did.
The new American plans are dreamy-delicious too, at least on paper – perhaps hallucinatory, perhaps possible.
Hamas is supposed to be stripped of its weapons (guns, rockets, missiles, underground bunkers and weapons storehouses, and terror attack tunnels) and Gaza is supposed to be demilitarized by an “International Stabilization Force” (ISF) of Moroccan, Albanian and other troops. Hamas rule is supposed to be replaced by a neutral (non-Hamas) “technocratic government.” Members of this government and its “new” police force are supposed to be “vetted” for their peaceful intentions.
Hezbollah in Lebanon is similarly, hypothetically, going to be “decommissioned” or driven out of southern Lebanon by the ghostly, Hezbollah-penetrated weakling army known as the “Lebanese Armed Forces.” This near-fictious force, overseen by international observers from the US and reportedly by Italy, Switzerland and Indonesia too, are to “verify” Hezbollah’s disarmament and disappearance.
This is notionally wonderful! But both Hamas and Hezbollah vociferously deny that they will disarm (except perhaps performatively, imaginarily, a bit for the cameras), and they certainly have not abandoned their declared ideological commitments to the destruction of Israel.
And none of the presumed peacekeepers, observers, verifiers, vetters, stabilizers, and guarantors are going to actually, militarily, kinetically confront Hamas and Hezbollah gunmen. Never ever, none of them, not with a single bullet, never mind with a company of commandos.
Worse still, even before implementation of the plan for Gaza gets going, the so-called US-led “Board of Peace” already is backsliding from the commitments it made to Israel in the 20-point plan signed last fall.
In the original plan (point 13) Hamas’ infrastructure was to be “destroyed and not rebuilt” and its weapons confiscated and put “permanently beyond use.”
However, article 8 of recently enunciated “road map” for implementation of the grand peace plan downgrades to a situation where weapons are to be “decommissioned and stored,” and only after establishment of a new “National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (a “technocratic” government staffed by people undoubtedly loyal to Hamas, after “vetting” by the plan’s guarantors like Hamas backers Qatar and Turkey).
“Destroyed” and removed from Gaza has become weapons “stored” in Gaza (meaning that the weapons will be accessible in future to Hamas, “subject to Palestinian law”), and the new governing body now precedes Hamas’ disarmament rather than following it.
Plus, there is a new invented category of weapons, “personal weapons” – whatever that means – which will be allowed to Gazans (Hamas chieftains, gorillas, goons, and the like), not confiscated.
Furthermore, the “stabilization force” is no longer defined as a “long term internal security solution working alongside Israel” but as a buffer force between Gaza and Israel (see article 12), meaning that it has no policing role versus Hamas but will be there to prevent the IDF from operating against terrorist threats as they develop; in other words, it will protect Hamas.
AGAIN, Hamas (like Hezbollah) has no intentions of voluntarily disarming itself, and no one other than Israel will truly do the necessary job. Nobody but the IDF is going to do battle with Hamas, and this must be a constant battle.
Alas, Israel already is being forced into a situation where the IDF’s hands are tied. Targeted strikes against Hamas commanders and even against heavily armed Hamas shock troops probing Israeli defenses along the Gaza borders have dropped over the past two weeks to almost zero. This, reportedly at the insistence of the US.
This is a major mistake. What disrupts the ability of terrorist organizations like Hamas to rebuild and conduct attacks on Israel is the constant pressure of targeted counterterrorist operations. As long as they live under a constant Israeli threat, the leaders and operatives of these genocidal gangs are forced to live as hunted men – in hiding, in restrictive operational settings.
Furthermore, to prevent a surprise attack against Israel, it is essential to deny the enemy the ability to organize and prepare. Halting or significantly reducing Israel’s counterterrorism operations gives the enemy the confidence and sense of immunity that it currently lacks.
According to reports, the 600 trucks a day of “reconstruction” and food supplies now going into Gaza are largely being “requestioned, “repurposed,” and otherwise “taxed” by Hamas for its military rebuilding. Hamas’ fighting force is apparently back at 40,000 strong.
Consequently, Israel needs to keep things simple. Kindly Kushner plans aside, and with best wishes for their success, Israel nevertheless must maintain freedom of action to conduct counterterrorism operations.
As a matter of principle and practical defense policy, Israel must forcefully respond to every attack or attempt to attack Israel, and it must interdict emerging security threats in real time – not “restrain” itself to “keep the peace process alive.”
Additionally, it cannot and must not withdraw from the security zones currently held before the terrorists have been totally disarmed and their organizations genuinely dismantled.
The containment policies of recent decades that prioritized restraint and diplomacy over enemy degradation and military triumph – failed. This approach allowed enemies to develop attack capabilities under the cover of diplomatic breathing time; what some Western officials mistakenly called periods of “stability.”
That approach blew-up in Israel’s face, with terror and invasion from the West Bank and Gaza and from Syria and Lebanon, and with the march of Iran’s nuclear bomb program to near completion and Iran’s ballistic missile array to near-annihilation-of-Israel potential.
Israel today understands that it must continue to make fierce and overwhelming moves against enemy strongholds from Gaza City to Beirut and Isfahan. Israel must attack, not defend. It must initiate, not respond. It must hunt down its enemies, not be hounded by them or be reined in by whimsical international agreements.
Israel must maintain a proactive defense posture including tactical and strategic ascendancy against enemies near and far.
On this, there is a broad consensus in Israel that crosses party lines. Gadi Eisencott and Naftali Bennett have been just as critical as Binyamin Netanyahu of the latest peace plan implementation proposals outlined by Nickolay Mladedov. With Hamas in the neighborhood, they know that the IDF must constantly be on the offensive. They know that Israeli public opinion won’t brook any compromise in this regard.
No Israeli leader can be anything but dubious, too, of the tactical LAF test-takeover of two tiny villages in southern Lebanon where Hezbollah used to be based until Israeli troops rooted them out the hard way.
The likelihood that this can be expanded to all southern Lebanon and hold for the long-term without challenge by Hezbollah and its Iranian patron is slim to nil, even with Italian, Swiss, and Indonesian observers. The pilot project is likely no more than a Lebanese public relations endeavor.
Remember UNIFIL, which still impotently and even harmfully hangs around the zone? Is the American team going to propose the evil supervision services of Turkey and Qatar (and perhaps al-Jolani’s Syria) in south Lebanon too?
Color me amicably appreciative but stubbornly skeptical of the latest attempts to fashion fanciful diplomatic harmonies on Israel’s borders – an attitude born of hard-bitten experience.
- David M. Weinberg
The organization has joined the Palestinians in erasure of Jewish history in Judea & Samaria and Jerusalem.
Published in The Jerusalem Post, August 7, 2026; and Israel Hayom, August 8, 2026. Print-friendly copy
ChatGPT-generated image.Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) are rich with Jewish national heritage sites. It is the Biblical heartland. The physical record of the Biblical narrative lies in the ground with thousands of known archaeological sites (and perhaps thousands yet more undocumented sites), providing incontrovertible evidence that connects the Jewish People to the Land of Israel.
This is precisely why ever since the start of the Oslo process the Palestinian Authority (PA) has acted to destroy archaeological sites in Judea and Samaria – purposefully plundering Jewish antiquities, razing historical Jewish sites, and working in international institutions to erase the Jewish/Israeli identity of such places.
This year the PA submitted a long list of obviously and undeniably Jewish historical sites to the World Heritage List at UNESCO, rebranding the sites as “Palestinian” or “Islamic” heritage locations while expunging any Jewish association to them. UNESCO appears to be slap happily going along with this political looting of Jewish/Israeli history.
Indeed, the bludgeon that the PA and its backers at UNESCO have taken to Jewish heritage sites in Israel is like the sledgehammer that ISIS took to world heritage sites such as Mosul and Nimrud in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria.
UNESCO essentially has become an agency of annihilation, a willing partner in a campaign of systematic Jewish identity erasure. This amounts to cultural genocide.
REMEMBER THAT, according to UNESCO, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is not really the Temple Mount. Back in 2018 that morally bankrupt international organization passed a series of nonsensical resolutions (proposed by PA dictator Mahmoud Abbas) declaring Jerusalem an exclusively Moslem heritage city and criminalizing Israel’s custodianship of the holy city.
The major vote was taken davka, specifically, on Chanukah, a Jewish holiday that marks the liberation and rededication of the Temple by the Maccabees in the second century BCE. Most European nations, those great paragons of “peace” and “love” for Jews, went along with that affront, either voting for or abstaining on the denialist resolutions.
They then doubled down on the perfidy by adopting in 2021 a similar resolution in the UN General Assembly which disavowed Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and called it solely by its Moslem name, al-Haram al-Sharif.
At Palestinian urging, UNESCO also has disgracefully declared Hebron and its Cave of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, and Tel Jericho, as “State of Palestine” heritage sites.
Last month, at the cultural-genocide bloody behest of that same so-called “state,” UNESCO declared Sebastia/Samaria – the capital of the biblical Kingdom of Israel – as a Palestinian-associated World Heritage site. This, despite ongoing PA looting of the site (which falls partially in Area A of Judea and Samaria) and its building of homes over the ancient Israelite, Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine relics.
Fortunately, Israel very recently begun to assert its rights at Sebastia by driving off the Palestinian marauders, resuming professional archaeological digs there, and beginning to invest in touristic development of the site.
Now, UNESCO is considering declaration of a series of 22 additional properties in Judea and Samaria as Palestinian cultural assets under the World Heritage Convention.
This outrageously includes sites of core Jewish patrimony like Qumran and its Dead Sea Scrolls, Herodian, Solomon’s Pools and the aqueducts leading to King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, Mount Gerizim, the Cave of Chariton, Tel Rumeida in Hebron, and the Hasmonean aqueducts in Wadi Qelt (Nahal Prat) with the Hasmonean palaces at the lower end of the wadi.
All these sites are in Israeli-controlled territory, and none bear a historical or cultural connection under any plausible claim to “Palestinian heritage.” The PA list includes ancient Christian sites as well such as the Saint Hilarion Monastery in Gaza, now politically, ridiculously repackaged as a “Palestinian heritage” site.
And of course, note this too: According to the PA and its UNESCO submissions, none of these sites are in the “Judean” desert or mountains – because using the true historical name of Judea would be an implicit acknowledgment of the Jewish People’s connection to the land.
To wipe away Jewish history, the PA has instead invented new terminology for the territory. Thus, Judea disappears from the narrative, replaced by fabricated labels such as “Al Bariyah – Desert and Monasteries.”
THIS JEWISH identity erasure campaign extends from historical denial to physical destruction. The PA owns a clear patten of archaeological persecution and demolition.
According to the valiant Israeli NGO “Preserving the Eternal,” 80% of the 400 or so most significant heritage sites in Judea and Samaria have been damaged by “industrial-scale” Palestinian looting and the use of heavy machinery to bulldoze archeological sites for roads, factories and “agricultural projects” – read: purposeful bowdlerization of anything Jewish. (The numbers are from a five-year-old report and probably much worse today.)
Three shocking examples pertain to the Temple Mount, Joshua’s Altar on Mount Ebal, and Solomon’s Pools.
In 1999, the PA-led Wakf conducted vast, illegal construction projects on the Temple Mount and beneath it, willfully destroying centuries of Jewish archaeological treasures. Four hundred trucks full of archaeologically rich soil were unceremoniously dumped by the Wakf into the Kidron Valley. Thousands of artifacts from the Temple periods have since been found through careful sifting of the debris by Israeli archaeologists.
On Mount Ebal near Nablus a large archaeological site identified by the late Prof. Adam Zartal as the altar of Joshua has been imperiled. (See the Book of Joshua chapter 8, where a dramatic ceremony reaffirming G-d’s covenant with the Jewish People was held in the area after the early stages of conquest of the Land of Israel).
The PA drew up plans to pave over the site with roads and 24 high-rise housing units, and in 2001 Palestinian contractors ground part of the ancient stone fencing at the site to make gravel for roads.
Recently, Israel halted renewed Palestinian attempts to vandalize the spot, and has approved establishment of a yeshiva and a settlement nearby that also will protect the archaeological site.
Another infuriating episode relates to the incredible aqueduct identified as King Solomon’s water system for Jerusalem. This runs from Hebron through Bethlehem to Jerusalem, including what is today termed “Solomon’s Pools” southwest of Bethlehem.
This marvel of ancient engineering, 40 km. long, is described in detail in the Bible, and the description matches the archaeological findings precisely. The pools and aqueducts survived 2,000 years of summer and winter and many invaders and predators – until the arrival of the Palestinian Authority.
In 2022, the PA dug an enormous 1,500 dunam quarry pit at Beit Fajar right through a section of the aqueduct. The quarrying caused irreversible damage to the aqueducts, with some 100 meters of tunnel and approximately 2,000 meters of the aqueduct on either side of the tunnel reduced to rubble.
Only recently has the government of Israel (finally!) stepped-in to prevent further damage to the relics and to develop the site for organized biblical tourism.
THE ISRAELI cabinet has just approved NIS 113 million in government funding for protection and development of 70 Judea and Samaria heritage sites. This budget allocation was advanced by Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu.
While insufficient given the scale of the challenge, this funding signals a shift in policy. Enforcement has increased, site development and public access have begun, and after decades of neglect and looting, long-buried historical treasures are being uncovered. The discoveries are significant, with the potential to reshape global scholarship on entire historical periods of importance to world heritage.
Some examples: At Hyrcania, near the Jerusalem-Dead Sea highway, a fortress marking the fall of the Hasmonean Kingdom is being revealed as a “mini-Masada,” complete with siege systems, underground chambers, inscriptions, and ritual baths.
At the Alexandrion fortress on Mount Sartaba, mentioned in the Mishna in connection with signal fires that inspired today’s Yom Haatzmaut torch-lighting ceremony, excavations are producing dramatic new findings too.
Every such archaeological excavation is a victory over Palestinian denialism and UNESCO’s ISIS-like efforts at Jewish erasure.
- David M. Weinberg
Wine Wonders in the Land of Israel. On the religious celebration of Tu Be’Av as the time of grape harvest, a time for recognition of God’s bounty. With some wine tasting recommendations too.
Published in The Jerusalem Post, July 31, 2026. Print-friendly copy
It is no surprise that the Jewish People’s return to its ancient homeland in Israel has entailed the reintroduction of grape-growing and quality winemaking. And it natural that the long-forgotten festival of Tu Be’Av (the fifteenth day of the month of Menachem Av), which was this week, be reintroduced in modern Israel.
No, I don’t mean the cheap celebration of Tu Be’Av as Jewish Valentine’s Day, a festival of love where according to the gods of modern marketing one is supposed to buy flowers, chocolate, and other trinkets for spouses and partners (although that is not a bad thing).
I mean, rather, the religious celebration of Tu Be’Av as the time of grape harvest, a time for recognition of God’s bounty. It is an occasion for renewed explorations of the connection between the Jewish People and their Patron in heaven as expressed by abundance and rootedness in the Land of Israel.
The background to this is Biblical. There are four basic agricultural products in Israel repeatedly mentioned in Scripture, and each is associated with one of the four major holidays.
Olives, harvested in autumn primarily for olive oil, are related to the fall festival of Sukkot (Tabernacles). Barley, harvested in the early spring, is tied to the spring festival of Pesach (Passover), and from which the Omer meal offering was sacrificed on the first day of the holiday in the Temple in Jerusalem.
Wheat, a summer harvest product, is bound to the summer festival of Shavuot (Pentacost), and from which the Shtei Halechem (two loaves) bread offering was held aloft and then eaten in the Temple on the holiday.
Where do grapes come in? Well grapes are for making wine, and wine has a Biblical holiday too: Tu B’Av, which occurs at the beginning of the grape harvest in July-August.
This is meant to mean much more than young women going out to dance in the vineyards on Tu Be’Av to find their shidduchim, marriage matches – as described in the Mishna (Tractate Taanit 4:8). That rabbinic teaching is the source of the ridiculous riff on Tu Be’Av as Valentine’s Day. The deeper meaning of the mishna is that the explosion of joy at grape harvest time is an opportunity for seeking closeness – with other Jews, with family, and with God.
Indeed, the Torah ties grapes to our two most basic relationships in this world: To the relationship between man and woman, and the relationship between man and God.
Between man and woman: Ishtecha kegefen poriya beyarketei betecha banecha keshitilei zeitim saviv shulchanecha (Psalms 128:3). Your wife is like a fruitful vine in the innermost parts of your house, and your children are like flowering olive plants gathered around your table. The most basic familial relationships are symbolized by wine and olives in plenty around the dinner table.
Between man and God: Elokim tzevaot shuv na habet mishamayim ureh ufkod gefen zot. Vechanah asher nateah yeminecha al ben imatzta lach (Psalms 80:15-16). We ask God, we beseech God, that He should look down from heaven and be mindful of His vine, of His stock which He Himself planted. That is the Jewish People. We are His stock, we are the vines that He planted and the branch that He has made strong for His own glory, for His own name in the world.
THERE are magnificent Biblical descriptions of festivity at the grape harvest (see for example Judges 9 and Isaiah 16). The harvesters would enter the vineyards in gladness (besimcha), and they would sing out and shout in joy (meranenim u’mre’im), in exultation (gil), with jubilant cries (hillulim), hollering hooray (heidad), and with song and harp (zemer and nevel). (Nevel is a play on words, because it means both a harp and a flask of wine.)
And in the modern Zionist era too there has been sensational celebration around the harvesting of grapes to produce wine. Consider, for example, this passage from the journal of one of the men who worked for Baron Rothschild back in 1890 at his new winery in Rishon LeZion when the first harvest was received.
The worker, David Yudelevich, relates the eruption of ecstasy. “The bell rang at 4 am to wake up the army of young men, women, and children armed with pruning shears. Their carts overflowing with grapes began streaming into the crushing vats, and they all sang: ‘Awaken, oh People of Israel, your youth has returned to the land, your redemption is near,’ followed by more song and dance.”
This is Biblical prophecy coming to fruition in our day. As Ezekiel (36:8) foretold in God’s name, in the time of redemption “You mountains of Israel shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit to My People Israel.” Two thousand years of desolation and devastation would come to an end.
Based on this verse, Rabbi Abba taught in the Talmud that “There is no greater revealed sign of redemption than the agricultural reblooming of the Land of Israel” (Tractate Sanhedrin 98a).
Jewish theology and law elevate wine one step further, giving it an important role in bringing the Divine Presence into this world. This is not possible, we are taught, when sadness and pain are the primary life experiences. Holiness in our lives and the Divine Presence in our world are only possible when we are happy.
Fortunately, “wine makes the heart of man glad, making the face even brighter than oil” (Psalms 104:15), and “wine cheers man and God” (Judges 9:12).
Drawing on these verses, the Talmud (Tractate Brachot 35a) rules that Ein omrim shirah ela al hayayin, that you cannot really give thanks to God unless you have a kos shel bracha, a glass of blessing, a goblet of wine, in hand.
This is where we get the use of wine for kiddush (sanctification) on Shabbat and holidays and at all Jewish life cycle events. This is also where we get the special formulations in Jewish law for benediction over wine: borei pri hagafen before drinking wine and al pri gafna after drinking wine. No other beverage is distinctively designated in this way.
FROM RECENT tastings, at the “Sommelier” professional trade fair in February and the “Israel Museum” public wine festival this week (held in Modiin), I came away convinced more than ever that wines made from “Mediterranean” varietals (grape types) are the wave of the future in this country (as opposed to the classic French Bordeaux and Burgundy varietals such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot). This means lighter wines similar to those made in other hot climates like southern France (Languedoc) and the Rhone Valley, as well as Spain and Italy.
Some of the outstanding Israeli red wines made in “Mediterranean” hand and style that I tasted and recommend are Bazak Syrah, Carmel Signature Guvrin (Petit Sirah), Flam Even Sapir (Syrah), Hayotzer Lyrica GSM (a Grenache-Syrah-Mourvèdre blend), Munitz Shaked (Marselan-Syrah-Argaman), Netofa Tel Qasser Red (Grenache-Syrah), Pinto Holot (Grenache-Petit Sirah-Syrah), Raziel (Syrah-Carignan), Recanati Atlier Syrah, Telem Rock and Stems (Syrah), Teperberg Legacy Petit Sirah, Tura Special Edition (Shiraz-Marselan-Merlot), and Vitkin Petit Sirah.
The writer is a WSET Level 3-accredited wine enthusiast, and he conducts wine tours and tutored tastings with Zionist/Jewish flavors.
- David M. Weinberg
On Jewish worship, mourning, and celebration on the Temple Mount; on my ascent to the Holy Mount this week. Time for establishment of a synagogue to solidify Jewish/Israeli rights on Har HaBayit!
Published in The Jerusalem Post July 24, 2026; and Israel Hayom July 25, 2026. Print-friendly copy
Earlier this week, on Wednesday the eve of Tisha BeAv (which is the day of Jewish national mourning for the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temples and 2,000 subsequent years of exile from Israel), I ascended the Temple Mount, Har HaBayit.
It was an opportunity to pray at the sacred-most site in the world for Jews, to mourn the many misfortunes of Jewish history, and to rejoice in the slow but inevitable Jewish return to makom haShechinah, the apex of God’s presence in the Land of Israel. A whirlwind mix of emotions.
I discovered a massive improvement in opportunities for Jewish/Israeli visitation of the site as compared to my previous journeys in 2022, and opportunities for yet more Jewish/Israeli rootedness on the holy mount. More on this below.
But first I had to answer for myself these questions: Is permissible under halacha (Jewish law) to ascend the Temple Mount, given the religious holiness of the site and the ritual impurity imputed by Orthodox Jewish tradition to all people in our day? Even if this is possible, am I worthy of making this pilgrimage? Is the ascent to the Temple Mount worthwhile and necessary? And might it be recklessly provocative from a diplomatic perspective?
My answers to these four questions: Yes, perhaps, definitely, and defiantly no.
Permissible: After four years of study with scholars, I am convinced that it is possible today to walk around the outskirts of the expansive Temple Mount plaza without transgressing Torah law – after appropriate ritual and devotional preparation and under the strict guidance of Torah sages.
(You avoid the raised platform on which the Dome of the Rock rests and adjacent sections, because according to halachic literature and modern research this is where the First and Second Temples and their courtyards were located.)
My guide this week was Rabbi Elisha Wolfson, who has published a comprehensive volume on the matter, and who leads a Torah study session on the mount every day. He calls himself Head of the Har HaBayit Kollel.
Leading figures that not only permit but mandate such visits include rabbis Avi Gisser, Dov Lior, Eliezer Melamed, Elyakim Levanon, Reem HaCohen, Shabtai Rappaport, Tamir Granot, Tzfania Drori, Yaakov Medan, Yehuda Shlush, Yitzhak Shilat, Yuval Sirlow, and Zeev Weitman.
Meritorious: I am less sure of my personal worthiness in approaching the Divine Presence on the Mount. But in daring to do so I am relying on the merits of my illustrious ancestors and saintly sons (all long-serving Israeli soldiers and yeshiva-trained scholars of upstanding character). Their virtues, and the sacrifices of so many Israelis in recent wars, give me confidence that the Heavens are smiling on reclamation of the Temple Mount; approving of every demonstration of increased Jewish devotion.
Worthwhile: Properly conducted, a visit to the Temple Mount can be an awe-inspiring experience. Theological anxiety and religious exhilaration pulse through the territory and concentrate the mind. The visit is an opportunity to focus one’s thoughts on the truly important things in life and to swiftly convey them to the Almighty.
(Of course, one can and should attempt to pierce the Heavens when supplicating in any synagogue and communing in any prayer quorum, anywhere. But believe me, the prayer experience on Har HaBayit is powerfully different. In Jewish thought, the gates of Heaven, the most direct pathway to the Divine Throne, are directly above the Temple Mount.)
The wonderful news here is that in recent years it has become possible for Jews to actually pray on Har HaBayit, and to quietly sing, dance, and study Torah a bit. There are even several abbreviated prayer services held twice a day on the mount with a pickup halachic quorum (a minyan).
Israeli police on the Temple Mount now allow Jews to bow in prayer too, even to prostrate themselves face down on the ground with full extension of the arms and legs – which was the prayer practice in ancient Temple times.
Over the centuries, genuflecting in this way (known as kri-ah and hishtachava-ya) has fallen out of use at Jewish places of worship worldwide. It is a ritual unique to the Temple Mount, reintroduced in our times.
This was new, strange, even scary for me. Full-scale prostration in prayer is a position of vulnerability and self-abnegation. And yet it was so uplifting.
Necessary: None of this was possible four years ago when I first visited the Mount as part of tour guide study group. (I highly recommend the intensive course of study about Har HaBayit open to any adult run by an organization called Capot HaManool, The Open Gate.)
Then, Jews had only limited visitation rights and were ushered in tiny groups by very nervous police in and out of the Mount as swiftly as possible. Prayer was forbidden, and religious garb like kippot and tzizit were inadvisable.
Back then, the Wakf and radical Islamic movements had rigged the Mount as a base of terror, with periodic “outbursts” of harassment and rock-throwing against visiting Jews, violence against Jews approaching prayer at the Western Wall below the Mount, and several terrorist murders using live ammunition launched from within the Moslem shrines on the Mount.
The flags of ISIS, Hamas, and Turkey flew brazenly on the Mount. Wildcat Wakf construction projects on the Mount and beneath it willfully destroyed centuries of Jewish archaeological treasures too.
Today, thanks to determined police and intelligence operations, the Temple Mount is calm. The radical Islamic gangs have been run off the reserve. And by showing up to visit in ever-growing numbers, the Jewish/Israeli public has pushed the Israeli government to assert its sovereign control, and to facilitate partial, restrained expressions of Jewish prayer.
Indeed, I found the atmosphere on the Temple Mount to be relaxed, even festive. The scent in the air was spiritual, not political. The police presence was significant but laid back and supportive.
I visited for almost two hours alongside several large groups of Israeli men, women, and children (even babies in strollers) – and there was not a whiff of protest in any direction. No Jews violated the rules (which, alas, still ban Jewish prayer books and the Bible from the Mount), and no Moslems said boo.
We brushed by a large group of Moslem school girls (and their female teachers) in full hijabs in the plaza adjacent to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, peacefully. No feathers were ruffled; no hard feelings were vented. The Arab/Islamic and Israeli/Jewish populations tolerated – or at least ignored – one other.
So no, I don’t think that Jewish visitation and prayer rights on Har HaBayit are recklessly provocative. They need not be a political flashpoint. In fact, I think that it is time to lay out a new diplomatic initiative for establishment of a synagogue to solidify Jewish/Israeli rights on Har HaBayit, hopefully through dialogue and even a regional consensus.
You see, one of the things you learn when visiting the Temple Mount, something unknown to most people, is that there is plenty of room up there, loads of undeveloped and even desolate sections of land on the vast Temple Mount Plaza.
A Jewish house of prayer could easily be built in the southeast or northeast precincts of the Mount without interfering in any way with Moslem shrines and prayer practices.
Several leading religious figures such as Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu of Safed are now backing this suggestion (which I first made in this newspaper 12 years ago). Space-sharing and time-sharing arrangements can calmly be crafted, such as those in place at Maarat HaMachpela, the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron.
Again, nobody needs to feel threatened by the presence of Jewish petitioners tucked-away in a corner of the holy mount – unless your opposition to Jewish visitation and prayer stems from wholesale denial of indigenous Jewish rights in Jerusalem and the Land of Israel.
On the way out of the Temple Mount plaza, I tore my shirt in sorrow for the destroyed First and Second Temples that once stood on the site – just as a Jewish mourner does upon the death of a close relative.
This tearing in grief, and my earlier prostration in prayer – both of which are called kri-ah in Hebrew (although spelled differently) – were formidable bookends of a compelling visit to the Temple Mount.
- David M. Weinberg
What the Israeli election campaign beginning this weekend is not about: Foreign and defense policy issues. It is important to recognize this and understand the reasons why this is so.
Published in The Jerusalem Post, July 17, 2026; and Israel Hayom, July 19, 2026. Print-friendly copy
Entering a 100-day election campaign this weekend, it is instructive to note what the coming Israeli vote is about and what it is not.
The election is mainly about government responsibility for the October 7, 2023 disastrous attack by Hamas and the government’s outrageous indulgences during wartime to the Ultra-Orthodox Israeli public.
The election is not about classic foreign and defense policy issues, because on these matters there is today a broad Israeli consensus. It is important to recognize this and understand the reasons why this is so.
The past three years of devastating enemy attacks on Israel taught Israelis an important lesson – which is the need to maintain a proactive defense posture including strategic ascendancy against enemies near and far.
Consequently, Israel will not return to the containment policies of recent decades that prioritized restraint and diplomacy over enemy degradation and military triumph. This approach allowed enemies to develop attack capabilities under the cover of diplomatic breathing time; what some Western officials mistakenly called periods of “stability.”
That approach blew-up in Israel’s face, with terror and invasion from the West Bank and Gaza and from Syria and Lebanon, and with the march of Iran’s nuclear bomb program to near completion and Iran’s ballistic missile array to near-annihilation-of-Israel potential.
Instead, Israel understands today that it must continue to make fierce and overwhelming moves against enemy strongholds from Sidon to Khan Yunis, and from Nablus to Isfahan. Israel will attack, not defend. It will initiate, not respond. It will hunt down its enemies, not be hounded by them.
Israel also has adopted a buffer-zone military strategy, with areas of long-term IDF control over borders where territory is dominated by Islamist-jihadist organizations. Behind the buffer zones now established in Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria is a set of ideas that identify a grim reality and provide a concrete and practical response.
Israelis also realize that this country’s neighbours will seek true reconciliation only when Jerusalem is strong. Additional Abraham Accord-style peace treaties are possible and desirable, but these will be based on muscular defense partnerships, not mushy notions of goodwill.
NOTICE THAT opposition figures now challenging Prime Minister Netanyahu for leadership of the country are not talking much about any of this, because they have nothing to say differently than him in this regard.
Neither Gadi Eisencott, Naftali Bennett, Benny Gantz, nor Yair Lapid would or could act otherwise if they sat in the prime minister’s chair. They would have to clobber Iran and Iran’s proxies (which includes most actors in the irredentist Palestinian national movement) no less than Netanyahu has. And they will have to resist international pressures on these matters no less than Netanyahu has.
They also know that Israeli public opinion won’t brook any weakness in these matters. Consider several recent Knesset decisions and declarations that were passed by overwhelming majorities; approved by crushing majorities that are so rare in the raucous and often-poisonous Israeli political playground.
In February 2024, 99 out of 120 members of Knesset – essentially representing the entire country aside from Israeli Arabs – voted to reject unilateral recognition by European and other countries of Palestinian statehood.
In July 2024, the Knesset issued a declaration by a 68-9 vote opposing Palestinian statehood all-together. The nine votes opposing the resolution came from the Knesset’s two Arab parties.
“The Israeli Knesset firmly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan [River]. The establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the Land of Israel will pose an existential danger to the State of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and destabilize the region. It will only be a short matter of time before Hamas takes over the Palestinian state and turns it into a radical Islamic terrorist base, working in coordination with the Iranian-led axis, to eliminate the State of Israel,” the declaration stated.
Indeed, recent polls indicate that 80% of Israelis, again basically the entire Jewish public, oppose the establishment of another Palestinian state beyond the ruinous one already extant in Gaza.
As a result, settlements in Judea and Samaria have manifestly become a consensus issue too. Israelis now understand that broad and deep settlement in Judea and Samaria is needed to torpedo the nightmare scenario of runaway Palestinian statehood.
This issue, which tore the Israeli public apart for four generations, has been resolved. Settlements are a security and Zionist asset, not a burden or a bar to peace.
Sure enough, and understandably so, settlements are not an issue in the coming election campaign. No mainstream Israeli politician is stupid enough to dredge-up stale paradigms about territorial withdrawals; to talk about tearing down the pioneering and more-important-than-ever settlement enterprise. (The muckraking “Democratic Party” leader Yair Golan, heir to the tiny extreme left Meretz Party voting public, is the exception to this rule.)
In fact, in July 2025 a majority of 71 out of 120 Knesset members from the coalition and opposition passed a non-binding resolution in favor of applying Israeli sovereignty to Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley. And I expect a next Israeli government – any government – to advance a declaration of Israeli sovereignty in at least Area C of these territories.
Congruous with this updated, necessarily tough, Israeli mindset on defense and national matters, the Knesset approved a law in March this year by a walloping vote of 93-0 (no objections or abstentions!) enabling the prosecution of Hamas’ Nukhba terrorists.
Indictments are expected in special military courts against more than 400 Hamas barbarians for crimes against the Jewish People, crimes against humanity, war crimes, murder, rape, abduction, and looting. The death penalty for convicted terrorists is explicitly an option, and this applies also to terrorists who killed Israeli hostages in captivity long after October 7.
The Israeli public demands no less. Protestations from the world against these trials and possible executions will fall on defiant and appropriately deaf Israeli ears.
ALAS, I sense that much of the international community and even the world Jewish community still does not comprehend the deep changes in national security thinking and practice that are now the rock-solid Israeli mainstream path, and which will not change much under the next Israeli government – whoever heads it.
Some highhanded politicians around the world refuse to consider the views of Israelis. They know better than Israelis how to secure this country. They flock to Israel to posture like peacocks and take this country’s leadership to task.
A classic example: The arrogant Rahm Emanuel, a US Democratic Party presidential candidate wannabe, who alighted in Tel Aviv last week to deride Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as a “drunk driver” and to dispense warmed-over, hackneyed advice from the dreadful playbook of his former boss. Like President Barack Obama, Emanuel only pretended to be upset about drawing away from Israel.
Emanuel is stuck in a world of double illusions – the illusion that his election will advance by bashing Israel, and the fantasy that Israel’s election can be swayed by pressure from abroad in favor of infirm foreign and defense policies. It would be smarter for world leaders to get used to a revamped Mideast strategic situation anchored by a hard-hitting, confident, and undivided Israel.
- David M. Weinberg
Israel must treat the drone threat as a national security priority, to be dealt with as a terrorist and military threat of the highest order – not as a mere “smuggling” problem. Hamas is planning a massive air assault.
Published in The Jerusalem Post, July 10, 2026; and Israel Hayom, July 12, 2026. Print-friendly copy
In January, I detailed how tens of thousands of weapons are smuggled into Israel every year through the Egyptian and Jordanian borders via organized smuggling networks using drones. The weapons flow into mixed Jewish-Arab cities and from there penetrate Judea and Samaria, fueling both organized crime and terrorist activity and blurring the line between them.
This vast smuggling of weapons into Israel by our enemies – perhaps 160,000 weapons a year, with Bedouin criminal and terrorist gangs in the lead – is no longer a marginal criminal phenomenon but a growing strategic threat that urgently demands a national response.
This week, on a tour of the Negev and in discussion with officers of a new IDF “war room” tasked with this gargantuan problem, I learned that the threat is far worse, for two reasons.
First, it turns out that the threat is not just the smuggling of weapons over Israel’s borders via drones – some of which can carry 150 kilograms of arms – but the drones themselves. Via cutouts, the Bedouin terrorist and criminal gangs are buying hundreds, perhaps thousands of drones abroad and in Israel – yes, in Israel! – and flying them into Gaza with or without carrying contraband. Hamas is stockpiling these drones, apparently for a next assault into Israel.
In other words, the “threat assessment” that Israel must be prepared for at some point in the not-too-distant future is a Hamas attack via masses, perhaps thousands, of armed drones exploding simultaneously and continuously into IDF camps, bases and airfields, at sites of strategic infrastructure, and into civilian neighborhoods. The Nukhba raiders can then hit the ground after drone devastation from the air.
Everybody knows what difficulty the IDF is having interdicting a few Hezbollah explosive drone attacks per month against Israeli troops in Lebanon and along the border with Lebanon.
Imagine an attack, G-d forbid, along the lines of the massive and ruinous drone war underway between Russia and the Ukraine – where an estimated 70% of the one-to-two million casualties over the past five years have been wrought by drone attacks!
SECOND, Israel’s defense establishment is not geared to truly tackling this problem, and its efforts thus far run from weak to ridiculous.
By the IDF’s own assessment, there are ten to 100 drone smuggling attempts every day across some 400 kilometers of border (Gaza, Sinai, and the Jordan Velley). The IDF has caught a grand total of 15 smuggling cells and 300 drones over the past six months (mainly drone flights into Gaza and from Gaza). There are no more than 15 of these smugglers now sitting in Israeli jails, many of them minors who will be swiftly released.
There are many reasons for this paltry operational and prosecutorial haul.
The Bedouin gangs in Israel behind the criminal and terrorist operations described here are well-organized with sophisticated intelligence networks (they know exactly where IDF forces are patrolling and where not); they purposefully employ minors (who don’t look suspicious and when caught, get off quickly); and their wealth allows for many bribes to be paid along the way, including to unsuspecting and underhanded Israelis.
One drone haul alone can bring in half-a-million shekels of profit. There is a lot of Iranian money fueling the whole venture too.
On top of that, Israel doesn’t currently have the technology, nor has it devoted the necessary operational bandwidth, to surveil and tactically interdict the drone flights or to penetrate the Bedouin gangs that operate them.
At least 20 different Israeli military, intelligence, technological, and legal agencies need to be involved in a national coordinated effort to end the drone threat – and there is little such coordination.
And at the moment, none of the relevant agencies see interdiction of the drone threat as their main responsibility. They each have so many other tasks to handle and thus point the finger of blame at one another, unsurprisingly. (That is the nature of such large security bureaucracies.)
The IDF, for example, argues that its main responsibility and focus is protection of Israelis towns and civilians in the Gaza envelope as well as elimination of Hamas leaders and military infrastructures in Gaza – not running after drones and Bedouin gangs in the Negev.
Moreover, the IDF is prohibited by law from shooting at Israeli citizens such as Negev Bedouin. So, it can’t fire from attack helicopters at Bedouin criminals even in hot pursuit of a gang engaged in real-time smuggling/terrorist activity. Efforts to have the open-fire regulations adjusted to allow the IDF a freer hand have been impeded by the IDF judge advocate general and Israel’s attorney general.
The law is weak too. Until recently, the smuggling described here was prosecutable only as a violation of civilian border/customs law. It was only three months ago that the law was amended to identify smuggling and outlaw drone smuggling as hardcore terrorist activity, with expanded penalties – thanks to MK Amit Halevi (with input from my think tank, the Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy).
SPECIAL attention needs to be given to the weapons smuggling situation across the Jordanian border – Israel’s longest and least protected – which may be even worse than the situation in the Negev. It is fine that Israel is finally building a NIS 5.2 billion ($1.4 billion) 425-kilometer (265-mile) security barrier along the Jordan border from the Sea of Galilee all the way down to Eilat. But this cannot be effective when only one division of IDF troops holds down the Jordanian border from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, and only one division patrols the Arava from the Dead Sea down to Eilat.
This is the place to mention and praise the government’s recent establishment of a national task force and Defense Ministry/IDF command center to build new layers of civilian defense in the Jordan Valley via beefed up settlement, agriculture, and new communities with young people – on the principle that “settlement equals security.” This includes establishment of “National Mission Hubs” such as pre-military academies, Nahal pioneer youth outposts, student villages, and service-year organizations.
THE BOTTOM line is that Israel must designate the drone threat as a national security priority, to be dealt with as a terrorist and military threat of the highest order – not as a mere “smuggling” problem.
It should establish task forces at the ministerial level and at executive levels managed by the National Security Council to coordinate between the police, army, intelligence services, justice ministry and prosecution, etc. – not just rely on a small war room in the south.
The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee should establish a dedicated subcommittee to ride herd on this matter (something that my colleagues have suggested to committee chairman MK Boaz Bismuth).
More aggressive action may be necessary too, like attacking the smuggling/terrorist gangs in neighboring states (in Egypt and Jordan).
All this requires operational and technological resources, with budget for manpower that is both beefy and brainy. The sooner the better.
