A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – The United Nations General Assembly passed six anti-Israel resolutions on Thursday, including a measure disavowing Israeli ties to Jerusalem and its holy sites.

Approved in a 151-6 vote with nine abstentions, the General Assembly resolution stated that “any actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power, to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the Holy City of Jerusalem are illegal and therefore null and void and have no validity whatsoever.”

The resolution was similar to previous Jerusalem-related measures passed in recent years by the UN cultural body UNESCO, which omitted the name “Temple Mount” and only used the Muslim term for the holy site, “Haram al-Sharif.” [ Source: Algemeiner (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – A top House Republican said Democrats need to make concessions that make them “wince” in order to get a vote on two Obamacare stabilization bills.

The comments from Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., Monday comes less than a week after the two bills looked headed for passage in the Senate after a deal to get Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, to support tax reform. But while President Trump and Senate GOP leadership gave support for the bills, such a commitment in the House has been lacking.

Cole, a member of the House’s whip team, said the two bills are going to be a tough sell to Republican as they’re currently written. [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – American embassies around the world have been warned by the State Department to increase security in the event that President Trump delivers an announcement saying the U.S. acknowledges Jerusalem is Israel’s capital later this week.

State Department officials have said the warning was issued in the past week, Politico reported Monday.

The status of Jerusalem is highly controversial, with both Israelis and Palestinians claiming it as their capital. The warning comes amid concern that recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel would anger the Arab world. [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The United States and South Korea went ahead with large-scale joint aerial drills on Monday, a move North Korea had said would push the Korean peninsula to “the brink of nuclear war”, ignoring calls from Russia and China to call them off.

The drills come a week after North Korea said it had tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States as part of a weapons program that it has conducted in defiance of international sanctions and condemnation.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said it was “regrettable” that all parties had not “grasped the window of opportunity” presented by two months of relative calm before the North’s most recent test. [ Source: Reuters (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The possibility that U.S. President Donald Trump may recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital has stirred opposition from U.S. and foreign officials who fear it could unleash violence.

Such a decision, which U.S. officials have said has not been finalized, would violate decades of U.S. policy not to take a stance on the fate of Jerusalem on the grounds that this was an issue Israelis and Palestinians should negotiate and decide.

If Trump made such a move, it could spark demonstrations or violence by Palestinians or by Muslims around the world, in part because of the sensitivity of the Jerusalem site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif. [ Source: Reuters (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Israel’s military struck a Syrian military installation on the outskirts of Damascus late Monday night, according to initial reports.

According to the reports out of Syria, the strike targeted the Jamarya military facility and research center, northwest of the Syrian capital.

“Israeli planes targeted the Jamarya region near Damascus including a scientific research center and warehouses where weapons and ammunition of the regime and its allies were stocked,” Rami Abdel Rahmane, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group told AFP. [ Source: Times of Israel (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat made an impassioned appeal to US President Donald Trump asking him to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and to move the US embassy to the city.

In a video released on social media Monday, Barkat is seen standing in front of the White House, where he thanked Trump for his “commitment and intention to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”

The mayor described Jerusalem as “the beating heart and soul of the Jewish people for more than 3,000 years,” and said that recognizing it as the capital “will send a very clear message to the world that the United States stands with the Jewish people and the State of Israel.” [ Source: Times of Israel (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The White House confirmed Monday that US President Donald Trump would let a deadline on signing a waiver to delay moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem pass without signing a new one, though it was not clear if an actual policy shift was in the offing.

A spokesperson for the Trump administration confirmed the president would not sign the six-month waiver by its Monday deadline.

“No action though will be taken on the waiver today and we will declare a decision on the waiver in the coming days,” Hogan Gidley said. [ Source: Times of Israel (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to President Donald Trump by allowing his latest travel ban targeting people from six Muslim-majority countries to go into full effect even as legal challenges continue in lower courts.

The court, with two of the nine justices dissenting, granted his administration’s request to lift two injunctions imposed by lower courts that had partially blocked the ban, which is the third version of a contentious policy that Trump first sought to implement a week after taking office in January.

The high court’s action means that the ban will now go fully into effect for people seeking to enter the United States from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and Chad. Lower courts had previously limited the scope of the ban to people without certain family or other connections to the United States. [ Source: Washington Free Beacon (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – US President Donald Trump could be eyeing an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal that would include transferring sections of the Sinai Desert from Egypt to a newly created Palestinian state, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm reported on Saturday.

The report comes one day before Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is expected to speak before the Saban Forum in Washington D.C. on US efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

According to the paper, Egypt would give up 720 kilometers in the area of Rafah and El Arish, where it links to the Gaza Strip along the Mediterranean Sea, thereby tripling the Gaza territory. [ Source: Jerusalem Post (Read More…) ]