Vice President Joe Biden said Monday night, 18 April 2016, that Israeli PM Netanyahu's government was leading the country "in the wrong direction" hours after a bus bombing in Jerusalem wounded at least 21 people. In a speech to the Israel advocacy group J Street, Biden criticized Palestinian leaders, but saved his harshest words for Israeli officials. Biden expressed what he called the Obama administration’s "overwhelming frustration” with Israel. "The present course Israel’s on is not one that’s likely to secure its existence as a Jewish, democratic state – and we have to make sure that happens,” Biden said, before going on to criticize Israel over a host of issues. Despite a partial freeze on construction in Jewish communities in Judea & Samaria, Biden attacked Israeli actions over the Green Line and also openly expressed the hope that the Israeli left win back control of the Knesset. Biden did single out Palestinian leaders, including Mahmoud Abbas, for declining to condemn specific acts of terrorism carried out against Israelis. The White House on Tuesday, 19 April, backed the harsh remarks against Israel made by Vice President Joe Biden (Fox/INN) [Comment]

Minister of Tourism MK Yariv Levin announced a new initiative that could dramatically change tourism in Israel beginning this coming winter. According to the new plan, each airline that successfully opens a new flight to Ben Gurion Airport will receive a grant of 100 thousand euros. If each airline provides more and more flights, the grant will be increased to 300 thousand euros per year. The new plan comes as the Ministry of Tourism realized that airlines market tourist destinations far better than any government campaign. According to the estimates, the new plan will bring 80 additional direct flights from new destinations and increase the amount of tourists adding half a million tourists a year. In the past year, more than 3 million tourists visited Israel. The increase of tourists, especially during the winter season, is also expected to reduce the summer prices of resorts across Israel. (INN) [Comment]

A resolution adopted last Friday by the executive board of UNESCO, meeting in Paris, does not recognize a Jewish connection to the Western Wall and the Temple Mount and calls Israel an "occupying power." The measure refers to the Western Wall as Al-Buraq Plaza and to the Temple Mount as the Al-Aksa Mosque/Al-Haram Al Sharif. It also criticizes Israel for its decision to build an egalitarian prayer area in the Western Wall Plaza. Israeli PM Netanyahu responded the following day: "UNESCO ignores the unique historic connection of Judaism to the Temple Mount, where two temples stood for a thousand years and to which every Jew in the world has prayed for thousands of years. The UN is rewriting a basic part of human history." Despite being the holiest site in Judaism, the Temple Mount remains under Jordanian jurisdiction. Israeli police, in an attempt to appease the Muslim Waqf which was left in charge of the Temple Mount compound after the 1967 Six Day War, ban Jews from praying or performing any other form of worship at the site. (JTA/INN) [Comment]

Leading Jewish groups harshly denounced CNN on Monday, 18 April 2016, for failing to refer to a major bus bombing in Jerusalem as a terrorist attack. "There’s no excuse for this; hopefully it’s not part of a pattern,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of Jewish human rights group the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told media sources. Cooper was responding to CNN‘s coverage of an explosion on the number 12 bus as it drove through Jerusalem’s Talpiot neighborhood during rush hour. At least 21 people were wounded in the incident, two of them critically. Jerusalem Police Chief Yoram Levy soon confirmed, "There is no doubt that this is a terror attack.” But the leading CNN article reporting on the incident carried the headline, "Bus fire in Jerusalem injures at least 21, police say.” "CNN is an important news organization and it owes its readership, the victims and itself to get the story right,” Cooper said. (Algemeiner) [Comment]

Israel’s Cabinet convened its weekly meeting atop the Golan Heights on Sunday, 17 April 2016, so that PM Netanyahu could pointedly inform the world that, in light of the current situation in the region, there is no chance Israel will ever return the strategic plateau to Syrian control. "The time has come for the world to recognize our sovereignty here,” said Netanyahu. The international community needs to accept this.” The statement comes amid mounting assessments that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad will survive the ongoing civil war and maintain power in Damascus, largely thanks to the assistance of Iran and Russia. For nearly 20 years the Golan Heights was used as a platform to launch attacks on the Galilee region, before being captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War. Israel officially annexed the Golan in 1981, but came under heavy American pressure in the 1990s to relinquish control as a first step toward making peace with Syria and the broader Arab world. Had Israel succumbed to that pressure, its northern towns and cities would today be under tremendous and sustained threat from groups like ISIS and the various Al Qaeda-affiliated gangs fighting in Syria. (Israel Today) Continue to pray for wisdom and courage for Israel’s leaders not to bend to foreign demands to achieve a false peace with those who have no intention of relinquishing their hatred and violence towards the Jewish state. Intercede for the safety of Israel’s northern and southern borders. [Comment]

 Israel’s MK Haim Jelin, who formerly served as the head of the Eshkol Regional Council and is a resident of a Gaza border community, reacted to the IDF's uncovering of a Hamas tunnel stretching into Israel on Monday calling on Israel to work to destroy such tunnels, while also advancing a diplomatic initiative with Arab states on a parallel track. "This tunnel must be destroyed immediately, we shouldn't wait. We should destroy every tunnel that enters Israel and every tunnel we know they have started to build - just as we assassinate terror cells that are set to fire rockets into Israel." Jelin said that Hamas must be stopped from digging tunnels, calling on PM Netanyahu to take action. "Mr. Prime Minister, this is your responsibility. We are strong and prepared to take a lot, on one condition: that there will be a diplomatic horizon for the whole region. You need to hit them before they come out of the ground, and at the same time to initiate a long-term 'hudna' agreement with the moderate Arab states, the US[A] and Europe," he said, using the Arabic word for truce. (J.Post) [Comment]

Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett has applauded the IDF's success in locating and destroying a massive terrorist attack tunnel from Gaza into Israel, and warned of Hamas' continued motivation to launch a major attack. Bennett, who is also a member of the Security Cabinet, said Hamas' top priority was to carry out a multi-pronged, mass-casualty infiltration attack from Gaza into southern Israeli communities. "In the two years since Operation Protective Edge, Hamas was not deterred from re-intensifying its efforts. Despite the IDF destroying its entire attack tunnel capabilities - and foiling a massive planned attack against Israeli civilians - Bennett warned that Hamas had turned tunnel construction into a "national priority," and was investing massively in plans to launch an even greater attack.

"The time has come to internalize" the threat, he said. "Hamas' objective is to surprise us with a multi-front infiltration attack, including killings and kidnappings," he said, describing it as a "terrorist Yom Kippur War-type scenario." During the 1973 war, Israeli forces sustained serious casualties when Arab armies launched a surprise attack, capitalizing on the Israeli government's sense of complacency following its spectacular 1967 victory, before the IDF eventually recovered and pushed back to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Israel needs to prevent such a scenario recurring "at any price, and not to rely on Hamas being 'deterred'," he said. (Arutz-7) Pray according to scripture: "Keep me safe, Lord, from the hands of the wicked; protect me from the violent, who devise ways to trip my feet.” Ps 140:4 [Comment]

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday 15 April 2016, that the world's current refugee crisis, with more than 70 million displaced people, has become "totally unmanageable" and "uncontrollable." Speaking at the World Bank headquarters in Washington at a panel discussion on the refugee situation, Ban called for political solidarity as the world faces the "biggest refugee and displacement crisis of our time." World Bank President Jim Yong Kim told the panel "We can no longer wait for the humanitarian experts to do their work while we enter later at some point with our long-term solutions after months or sometimes after years. We know we can no longer wait as countries implode and say, ‘Well, this is not our job,’" he said. "So how do you solve this problem of so many refugees who don't have livelihoods, who don't have income, and at the same time not just simply burden a country like Jordan with debt?" Kim asked.

Queen Rania of Jordan said one out of every seven people in her country is a Syrian refugee. "To put that in context, if the United States received an equivalent influx, it will mean accommodating 50 million refugees. Think about that, 50 million. That's almost 2½ more Floridas, five Ohios, 10 South Carolinas," she said. Queen Rania said the refugee crisis was a global one, adding, "We are deluding ourselves if we think it can be contained. We know all too well in our interconnected world a crisis in one place is a crisis in all places." (VOA)

Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon welcomed the IDF's discovery of a terror tunnel Monday, 18 April 2016, noting it as a strategic step in defeating Hamas' war objectives. "We have no illusions about Hamas' intentions," said Ya’alon. "Even before Operation Protective Edge, and of course afterwards, we have been devoting considerable efforts - technological, operational, and intelligence - to detect tunnels in Gaza. In recent months, Hamas has experienced the effects of the collapse of tunnels they have dug - they have been killed on the job and now face exposure," he continued, adding that Hamas "can can draw conclusions, cease engaging in terror and we will be free to help improve the quality of life in Gaza and the welfare of the residents there. We do not want confrontation, but if Hamas tries to challenge the State of Israel and disrupt the lives of residents of communities near the Gaza Strip, it will be beaten with a very hard blow. We will not tolerate such attempts." (Arutz-7) Pray for the strongholds of deception, hatred and terrorist leadership to be broken over Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Intercede for strong government heads to be raised up who have a vision for building and strengthening the Gaza Strip society, rather than spending the billions of dollars of foreign aid, for decades poured into Hamas coffers, on devising means to destroy the Jewish State. [Comment]

It has been cleared for publication that the IDF recently discovered a terror tunnel from Gaza into southern Israel, marking the first such discovery since 2014's Operation Protective Edge. The tunnel was a particularly large and complex one; its route stretched along the eastern sector of the Gaza Strip all the way to southern Gaza, and crossed onto the Israeli side. At some points it reached as much as 30 meters in depth. After being discovered, IDF forces quickly mobilized to secure and neutralize it - though precisely how is under a gag order, as is the tunnel's exact route. A senior defense official said that the IDF's number one priority over the past year has been to locate such terror tunnels, which Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups in Gaza have been busily rebuilding since the 2014 war. Israel has repeatedly protested Hamas' use of international aid - particularly building materials - to rebuild its tunnel capabilities, while preventing the aid from reaching civilians in Gaza.

Palestinian media has been reporting intense IDF activity, including heavy digging equipment, along the border with Gaza for the past several days. The military source added that Israeli operations against the tunnels were being aided by revolutionary advanced technology, though he did not elaborate. The official explained that both locating and securing such tunnels is an extremely complex, demanding mission. Responding to the discovery, the IDF emphasized that Israel is not interested in an escalation, but will operate wherever and whenever necessary to neutralize potential threats to the citizens of Israel. (Arutz-7)