Israel

Tel Aviv [Israel], September 27 (ANI/TPS): A record number of Jews visited the Temple Mount during the past Jewish year, an organisation working to strengthen Jewish ties to the Jerusalem holy site announced on Thursday.

According to Beyadenu, a Jerusalem-based non-profit, 68,429 Jews ascended the Temple Mount, a 22 per cent increase compared to last year’s 56,057.

“This marks the highest number recorded since systematic documentation began — and likely the highest since the destruction of the Second Temple,” the organisation said.

Asked about the significance of the numbers, Beyadenu spokesperson Akiva Ariel told The Press Service of Israel, “The importance is that there is a change. There is a great awakening in the people of Israel. Once, talk about the Temple and the Temple Mount was attributed to supposedly extremist areas. Today, people talk about the Temple and breathe the Temple.”

The Temple Mount, where the First and Second Jewish Temples were built, is the holiest site in Judaism.

The delicate status quo governing the Temple Mount goes back to 1967, when Israel liberated Jerusalem’s Old City from Jordan during the Six-Day War. Fearing a religious war, then-defence minister Moshe Dayan agreed to let the Islamic Waqf, a Muslim trusteeship, continue managing the holy site’s day-to-day affairs, while Israel would maintain overall sovereignty and be responsible for security. The Waqf is overseen by the Jordanian monarchy.

According to the status quo, while non-Muslims are allowed to visit the Temple Mount, they are not permitted to pray there.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that Jewish prayer is not officially permitted at the site. However, the police, who are responsible for enforcing the ban, fall under the purview of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. He has advocated Jewish worship at the holy site for years. Ben-Gvir openly led Jewish prayers at the site in August during Tisha B’Av, a holiday marking the anniversaries of the destruction of both the First and Second Temples.

Rabbis are increasingly divided over Jews ascending the Temple Mount. For centuries, the widespread rabbinic consensus was that Jewish laws of ritual purity still apply to the site, restricting Jews from visiting. But in recent years, a growing number of rabbis have argued that ritual purity laws don’t apply to all sections of the holy site and encourage visits to permitted areas to maintain Jewish connections to the Temple Mount.

The Western Wall, the holiest spot where Jews can pray, is the only remnant of a retaining wall encircling the Temple Mount built by Herod the Great in the first century. (ANI/TPS)

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Tel Aviv [Israel], September 26 (ANI/TPS): Thursday night, Israeli forces operating in the Menashe area of southern Samaria eliminated a terrorist cell that IDF (Israel Defence Forces) said was planning to carry out an attack in the immediate future.

Members of the eliminated cell were affiliated with Islamic Jihad, including the terrorists Alaa Gawadet Bani Odeh and Muhammad Qassem Suleiman, terrorist operatives from the town of Tamun involved in promoting shooting attacks against Israeli forces and the planting of IEDs.

During the operation, the forces surrounded a building where the two terrorists were holed up, fired at it with machine guns and grenades, and killed the terrorists. (ANI/TPS)

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Tel Aviv [Israel], September 26 (ANI/TPS): The Israeli Air Force completed a broad wave of attacks on Houthi targets in the Sana’a area, deep in Yemen, on Thursday, the Israel Defence Forces confirmed.

Israeli aircraft struck “targets of the security and intelligence apparatus and the army of the Houthi terrorist regime,” the IDF said.

“Among the targets attacked were the Houthi General Staff Command Headquarters, complexes of the terrorist regime’s security and intelligence apparatus, the headquarters of the Houthi Military Information Department, and military camps where weapons and military operatives of the terrorist regime were identified in the Sana’a area.”

More than 20 people were injured–including two critically–by a Houthi drone strike on Eilat on Saturday.

“The Security and Intelligence Mechanism is one of the internal security mechanisms of the Houthi terrorist regime, which takes part in terrorist operations and contributes directly to promoting military activities against the State of Israel that undermine stability in the Middle East. It also engages in the suppression of opponents of the regime using political prisons and torture,” the IDF said. “The military camps that were attacked are used by the terrorist regime to store weapons and for planning and carrying out terrorist plots against the State of Israel.”

Since March 18, when Israel resumed its campaign against Hamas following a temporary cease-fire, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis have launched more than 70 ballistic missiles and over 25 drones at Israel. Most were either intercepted or fell short of Israeli territory. Since Hamas’s October 7 attack, the terror group has fired more than 200 missiles and 170 drones.

From bases along the Yemeni coast, the Iran-backed Houthis have attacked or harassed more than 100 ships in the Red Sea as they traversed the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a narrow maritime chokepoint between the Arabian Peninsula and Africa.

Much of the world’s oil passes through the Strait from the Indian Ocean toward the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea. The Houthi attacks have brought the Port of Eilat to a standstill.

Approximately 1,200 people were killed, and 252 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Of the 48 remaining hostages, about 20 are believed to be alive. (ANI/TPS)

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Tel Aviv [Israel], September 26 (ANI/TPS): The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) and Shin Bet (Israel’s anti-terror General Security Service) attacked the Shati area in Gaza and, in an airstrike, eliminated the terrorist Wael Matria, who served as commander of the Nahkba section in the Shati battalion of the Hamas terrorist organisation in the Gaza City area.

The terrorist Wael Matria took part in the raid on the Nahal Oz military outpost in the massacre on October 7, and as part of his role during the war, he promoted terrorist plots against IDF forces in the Gaza Strip. (ANI/TPS)

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