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Israel Today: Dozens of people were arrested and well over 100 injured when Jews and Arabs clashed on the streets of Jerusalem Thursday night.

Sporadic racial street violence has been escalating in the capital over the past several days (see related: The TikTok Intifada). On Thursday, the far-right group Lehava issued a call for its followers to gather at Damascus Gate, which is on the edge of Arab “East Jerusalem,” in a show of “national honor.”

“Because the Lord has sworn: the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.” Exodus 17:16 

Arab counter-protestors also gathered, as did hundreds of police officers tasked with keeping the two groups apart. Despite their best efforts, the police failed and the Jewish and Arab mobs did come to blows.

Most of the injuries, however, were the result of police trying to hold back the much larger Arab mob. Some 100 protestors and 20 police officers were injured in the clash. Dozens more, both Jews and Arabs, were arrested.

The mounting tension and escalating violence comes against the backdrop of upcoming Palestinian elections in which the Palestinian leadership is demanding that Israel permit the Arabs of Jerusalem to vote. Israel, which has annexed eastern Jerusalem, is adamantly opposed to such a move as it would legitimize Palestinian claims to the city.

The present violence bolsters the Palestinian leadership’s assertion that Jerusalem is a city divided and that its eastern half should be under Palestinian Arab governance. Read More

JNS: Two days before a Syrian surface-to-air missile flew into southern Israel in response to reported Israeli airstrikes on targets in the Damascus area, two suspicious Iranian cargo planes landed at Damascus International Airport, likely carrying advanced weapons, a former IDF intelligence officer has told JNS.

“And behold at eveningtide trouble; and before the morning he is not. This is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that rob us.” Isaiah 17:14

Early on Thursday morning, international media reports said that the Israeli Air Force hit a number of unknown targets in Syria, which triggered a Syrian SA-5 surface-to-air missile battery to fire on the Israeli aircraft.

Maj. (res.) Tal Beeri, director of the research department at the Alma research center, which uses open-source material to shed light on security threats to Israel emanating from Syria and Lebanon, spent 20 years in IDF intelligence specializing in Lebanon and Syria. He said that according to online public flight-tracking programs, the Iranian cargo planes landed at the Damascus airport on April 20.

“Those who follow Iranian cargo planes movements from Iran to Damascus are not surprised by airstrikes that follow them,” he said. “We don’t know what the specific target of the Israeli strike was, but I am certainly linking it to the arrival of the cargo planes,” added Beeri.

During the reported attack, as in many previous Israeli strikes, Syrian air-defense missile batteries launched interceptor missiles. Read More

Israel Hayom: A missile launched from Syria was fired into southern Israel early Thursday, setting off air raid sirens near the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center in the southern town of Dimona, the Israeli military said, adding that there was no damage despite an attempt to intercept the projectile. In response, it said it attacked the missile launcher and air-defense systems in neighboring Syria.

“The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.” Isaiah 17:1

The incident, marking the most serious violence between Israel and Syria in years, pointed to likely Iranian involvement. Iran, which maintains troops and proxies in Syria, has accused Israel of a series of attacks on its nuclear facilities, including sabotage at its Natanz nuclear facility on April 11, and vowed revenge. It also threatened to complicate US-led attempts to revive the international nuclear deal with Iran. Read More

Jewish Press: President Joe Biden is about to nominate the former Washington director of Human Rights Watch, Sarah Margon as the State Department’s assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor, Foreign Policy reported Thursday (Biden Looks to Progressive for Key Human Rights Post).

“For thus says the Lord of hosts: “He sent Me after glory, to the nations which plunder you; for he who touches you touches the apple of His eye.” Zechariah 2:8 KJV

Margon is an outspoken critic of authoritarian allies of the United States, most notably Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and has had a testy relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government as well.

In May 2019, Margon mobilized 17 Democratic lawmakers who wrote Netanyahu asking that he halt the deportation of Omar Shakir, a US citizen and director of the Human Rights Watch office for Israel and the Palestinian territories. Margon told the Washington Post at the time that “taking a stronger or more vocal stance on Omar’s likely deportation would run up against their policy of having no daylight between the Trump administration and prime minister Netanyahu,” and added: “It’s unfortunate because in doing that, they are really allowing the growing democratic deficit to go forward without comment.”

In November 2019, Israel’s High Court of Justice finally ruled that Shakir’s work permit not be renewed and that he should be deported from Israel, because he is a long-standing Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) activist and his role at HRW had been to advance BDS and related anti-Israel campaigns.