Pompeo Pumped with BS

Here is the Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi speaking to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo:

as you know, for us in Jordan is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This is, we believe, the main cause of instability in the region, and its resolution is the key to achieving the lasting and comprehensive peace that we want.

That is BS.

The region is unstable due to: 

Iran supporting Shiites in Lebanon.
Iran supporting Shiites in Syria.
Iran supporting Shiites in Bahrain.
Iran supporting Shiites in Yemen.
Iraq collapsing.
Libya collapsing.
Jordan overwhelmed by refugees from Iraq and Syria.
Jordan threatened by Muslim Brotherhood.
Egypt threatened by Muslim Brotherhood.
Kurds attacked by Arabs.
Kurds attacked by Turks.
Yazidis attacked by Muslims.
Maronites oppressed by Muslims in Lebanon.
Christians persecuted in Egypt by Muslims.
Tunisia unsettled.
Morocco oppressing 

Oh, yes, Iran is trying to attack Israel and Arabs-called-Palestinians are refusing to negotiate a peace and even after a complete territorial disengagement from Gaza, Hamas is attacking Israel.  All that is not regional, however, but local.

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Best Wine Producer in Israel

I love headlines like this:

Psagot Winery overcomes the Earth’s elements to produce award-winning wine

It comes from an item that originates in London.

In a country with a hot climate, minimal rainfall and a shortage of indigenous wine grapes, setting up a vineyard in Israel doesn’t necessarily scream “success story”. Psagot Winery, however, has overcome all these challenges to rejuvenate the ancient tradition of Israeli wine making, thereby making it a true competitor against its Mediterranean rivals.

...Psagot Winery’s founder Yaakov Berg was keen to reawaken the ancient status that Israel once held...hard work eventually paid off, with a growing customer base worldwide. This year, moreover, Psagot Winery was included in the World Finance Fine Wine Report 2018 and received the award for Best Wine Producer in Israel, 2018. 

... 65 percent of Psagot’s wine is exported. Now an established international player, Psagot Winery is focusing on its long-term plans of expanding its portfolio to include white wine and sparkling wine.

Continue to learn about Psagot Winery in  Ya’acov Oryah's story here.

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Feith Keeping the Faith

Dougles Feith, 1997

Neither in Arab nor Jewish minds did Israel's pre-1967 boundaries ever represent a border between land to which the Jewish people have legitimate claims and land to which they have no such claims. No one intended those lines to divide a zone in which Jewish settlement was legal from one in which it is illegal. In fact, the 1949 Armistice Agreement between Israel and Transjordan (now Jordan) states that the boundary lines "are agreed upon by the Parties without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto." (At the Arab parties' insistence, each of the other three 1949 Armistice agreements contained a similar provision.)

This is why Arab-led efforts in the United Nations and elsewhere to characterize the settlements as illegal encroachments on Arab land have implications that reach far beyond the settlements as such.

Arab officials and scholars who argue that the West Bank and Gaza are "Arab territories" never do so by arguing that pre-1967 Israel is legitimately Jewish territory. To make that argument, they would have to hang more moral and legal significance on the 1949 Armistice Lines than could possibly be supported. The argument made to delegitimate Jewish settlements - that the territories are "Arab land" - is not made to distinguish land that is "Arab" from land that is "Jewish." On the contrary, it is designed to prove that Jews have no right to settle "Arab territory" that came under Israeli control in 1967 just as Jews had no right to settle "Arab territory" that came under Israeli control in 1948-49, at the Jewish state's inception.

Those who think the key to peace lies in Israel's delivering more land and power to Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority oppose settlements. Others, however, think a sovereign PLO-led ministate on the West Bank and Gaza Strip is likelier to produce violence and war than peace and security. This latter view aligns with the official analysis that for decades prevailed in the governments of the United States (both Republican and Democrat) and Israel (both Labor and Likud). Those who, despite the Oslo Accords, retain this view - and are concerned that such a ministate would threaten Israel and Jordan, serve as a base for terrorism and generally destabilize the region - see high value in the settlements. 

And this:

THERE is yet another important issue in the negotiations: national rights. In debates over national-security policy, it is always useful to remind oneself of what one is aiming to secure. For a country like the United States or Israel, national security is far more than simply the physical survival of the citizenry. America is more than a land and a people: it is a society based on a constitution; it is an idea. Israel too is an idea. It is the fulfillment of the Zionist dream, the embodiment of the internationally recognized national rights of the Jewish people. When contemplating a proposed concession by Israel, it is not enough to ask whether that concession would endanger the state's physical security. It is altogether proper for Israelis to ask themselves also whether the concession involves an undue relinquishment of national rights. 

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The Ahed Fashion Line (and some dirty laundry)

There is a promotion campaign of Wear The Peace based on fashion to support issues of Arabs-called-Palestinians. Here's a previous blog post on the company.

The latest is in support of Ahed Tamimi.

We are excited to let you all know about our new collection.

Ahed Tamimi, the 17 year old child is currently serving an 8 month sentence in Palestine...$5 from ever piece from this collection will go to the legal center, Adalah, in Palestine. Adalah (“Justice” in Arabic) is an independent human rights organization and legal center. Adalah’s mission is to promote human rights for the Arab Minority in Palestine.

Here is the Ahed emblem:

 And here is the fashion model:

You'll notice the strategic placement of the emblem, the kaffiyeh as never worn in the Middle East and the slight display of near-pupik skin which probably would result in such a female being either stoned or groped in Gaza or Hebron.

And it's only $5:

There's also the Homeland Hatta:

One last word before you completely succumb to the fashion pieces and the models, Adalah, while working on behalf of "Palestinians", works in the State of Israel where it is a registered NGO.  Palestine doesn't really exist for there is but a Palestinian Authority.

So when you read above that Adalah works

to promote human rights for the Arab Minority in Palestine

Israel seems to been erased.

That's dirty laundry.

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Memo to IfNotNow

Dear IfNotNowOrg:

If you cannot take a stance on Zionism or the question of Jewish statehood, you cannot take one on the "Palestinians freedom and dignity...[and the] depriving them of civil, political and economic rights".

Zionists demand equality and right to self-liberation.

Arabs-called-Palestinians rejected partition plans in 1937 and 1947 while violently seeking the prevention of any Jewish political entity in any territory the international community guaranteed would be reconstituted as the Jewish national home based on the Jewish people's historic connection with same.

They continued that rejectionist position through the first 19 years of Jewish statehood and continued to do so as expressed in the Covenant of the PLO and that of the Hamas, at the September 1967 Khartoum Conference until the Oslo Accords.

These Accords went unfulfilled despite Israeli physical concessions. A further disengagement still did not satisfy Arab demands and they continue, until this day, to refuse to engage in meaningful negotiations even after a 10-month period of a construction moratorium.

A one-sided diplomatic game while terror and incitement continues is unacceptable and Jewish support for such delegitimizes any interference by groups such as IfNotNow.

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Map Error

If you go here, you will observe a map issued by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) which is the part of the United Nations Secretariat responsible for bringing together humanitarian actors to ensure a coherent response to emergencies. It's "local" branch is oPt which stands for "occupied Palestinian territory".

A section of the map:

There is an error there. No Shiloh.

Instead, Shvut Rachel has expanded to cover our territory.

Is OCHAoPt occupying?

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And What Do You Think of Haaretz?

Originally posted at Israel Blogger as The Paper for “Thinking People”

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Haaretz, the left-leaning, sorry, make that tumbling over, newspaper founded in 1919 is notorious for blatantly biased coverage of traditional Judaism, normative Zionism and anything that does not promote an extreme progressive, humanitarian and liberal outlook.

Here are CAMERA’s examples of what they found wrong in the pages and website of Haaretz.

The paper, admittedly, is interesting, has a first class economics section, its literary supplement is on a high standard and everyone who thinks or wants to be anyone of power and status reads it. Of course, there really aren’t that many Israelis who subscribe. Its main clout is in its English-language edition which has hooked up with The Forward and the New York Times.

To be fair, it once interviewed me.  One of its stalwarts, Rogel Alpher, had me on his radio program and described me as “Yisrael Medad is a high-profile right-wing journalist and blogger.” I am on friendly terms with its owner and publisher, Amos Schocken, for who I served as a guide to Tel Shiloh where I live. Eli Pollak and I have published about its shortcomings in our Media Comment column at the Jerusalem Post, like here.

Its selling pitch is: “for the people who think”. It prides itself as serving and highlighting the “enlightened” public who are not fascists, racists, apartheidists and what not. It is solidly anti-government. So much so, that Menachem Begin once quipped, “the last time Haaretz published a pro-government editorial was when the British Mandate still existed.

On Thursday, April 26, the news leaked out of the tragedy of the hikers at Nahal Tzafit, south-west of the Dead Sea. Early information noted that the students were from a pre-army academy, or Mechina Kdam-Tzvait. As it happens, these “gap year’ educational institutions were initiated by religious Zionist circles to strengthen those in Jewish knowledge who had no intention of continuing their higher Bible and Talmudic studies and who were very serious of not only becoming a soldier in the IDF but becoming officers.

The First Report site run by Evgeny Zarovinsky noticed that since the specific academy had not been identified, many who were leaving comments at the Hebrew web site of the newspaper had assumed the swept-away youngsters were either religious or, “worse”, residents of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. He was astonished and pained at their content.

He posted a screenshot.

A sample of what “thinking people” think:

1.  The IDF does not need idiots…better these people do not enlist.

2.  God should save them. No, he shouldn’t really and not at the expense of the taxpayer either.

3.  Is this another national-religious adventure? Well, not to worry, now for certain the Rabbis will pray for them.

4.  They trusted in He Above, so let Him take care of them.

5.  What, God didn’t warn them about the dangers of the weather?

6.  The graduates of the pre-military academies bring with them to the IDF their idiocy and posing which gets us all in trouble.

7.  You should only know how much we hate you since Rabin’s murder.

8.  You religious people, you’re not forever protected. The next wave is coming.

9.  That’s what happens when you depend on someone who doesn’t exist.

I do not know if this is a representative sampling and it would be unfair to suggest so. As pseudonyms were used, I do not know if these are separate persons or one perhaps psychopath.

Nevertheless, someone felt “at home” at Haaretz and presumed he was “following the line”. And that he could post such trash with little impunity.

This type of thinking is not thoughtful. It is hateful ranting. And it is assisted by the opinions of its columnists Gideon Levy, Amira Hass, Bradley Burton, Chemi Shalev, Uri Misgav and Rogel Alpher.

How unfortunate for us.

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Another Letter That Was Not Published

On April 18th, I submitted this letter to the New York Times:

Ayman Oudeh, member of Israel's Knesset, writes that "Seventy years ago, the world changed" for his family ("Israel Celebrates Its Independence, We Mourn Our Loss", April 18). Nowhere in that article can one learn why that happened.  

Could it have been caused when the Arabs of Mandate Palestine, following their violent terror campaign against any Jewish national revival in their historic national homeland since 1920, rejected the UN-proposed partition plan of November 29, 1947 which the Zionists accepted? And then, on the morrow of that UN vote, initiated a war to eradicate the Jewish community? A war they lost? A war in which they inflicted heavy casualties and loss of Jewish communities and the ethnic cleansing of parts of the Mandate territory?

It was not published.

This one, from November 10, 2004 was:

To the Editor:

Thomas L. Friedman writes that if Yasir Arafat had "ever adopted the nonviolence of Gandhi," he would have had his Palestinian state -- "Israel's reckless settlements notwithstanding" ("Footprints in the Sand," column, Nov. 7). Mr. Friedman places the cart before the horse.

Yasir Arafat adopted the path of terror and violence years before any Jewish community had been built in the disputed territories, indeed, years before those territories came under Israeli administration in 1967.

Yisrael Medad Shiloh, West Bank, Nov. 8, 2004

 And I have been quoted:

Yisrael Medad, a spokesman for the Yesha Council, the body that represents settlers, urged Mr. Olmert to focus initially on social issues, rather than push an evacuation plan that is certain to face resistance and create division among Israelis.

"We should say to Olmert: hold off for two years, fix up the economic and social problems, and then let's see where we are," said Mr. Medad, who lives in Shiloh, a settlement that is also beyond the separation barrier. "If you start to move against the communities here, you will get demonstrations and protests."            

And more than once as on July 20, 2006:

“We’ve given over territory so our Arab enemies can now hit Haifa,” said Yisrael Medad, a spokesman for the Yesha Council, the main group representing settlers. “To put them even closer, where they could literally hit us by spitting over the fence, would be crazy.” [think Gaza and it's Great Return March - YM]

“Unilateral moves will never work,” he added, “because if you don’t have a mechanism in place to maintain security, groups like Hamas and Hezbollah will simply say, ‘We don’t have an agreement with you, and we will do what we like.’ ” [which they have done after the disengagement - YM]

 Maybe, just perhaps, my opinions and analysis are just not what the NYT wants to be read?

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When Begin Assisted Ben-Gurion to Declare Statehood

Martin Kramer published an article on the crucial vote to establish the state of Israel in May 1948. It was crucial because B-G was not totally convinced he had a solid majority.  Some were wavering.

I left this comment

The vote itself was aided by Menachem Begin who was contacted by Eliezer Livneh and requested, in the name of Ben-Gurion to the object of assisting him overcome some of those who were wavering on the upcoming vote to declare statehood. As Begin writes on p. 478 in The Revolt (Futura Edition, 1980) which is the first paragraph in Chapter 30, Dawn, he had been in contact with the Hagana on the matter and notified them that the Irgun was prepared to pronounce statehood even without the official bodies. In the Hebrew edition, p. 504, there is this which doesn't appear in the English (לא בלי סיוענו הישיר) which reads "(not without our direct help)". A slogan had been published in the Herut underground paper, No, 93, April 1948, בדמנו ובנפשנו נקים את מדינתנו or, "With our blood and soul we will establish our state", page 4 that served as Ben-Gurion's 'proof'.
In Martin Sicker's article, "Pangs of the Messiah: The Troubled Birth of the Jewish State", we read: "On May 12, the National Administration voted 4 to 6 in favor of rejecting the truce, thereby effectively confirming the decision to proceed with the proclamation of the Jewish state on May 15. Several days before the vote, Ben-Gurion sent Eliezer Liebenstein [Livneh - YM] to see Begin. Begin later recalled: "He told me that Mr. Ben-Gurion 'appreciated very much' our proclamations demanding the establishment of a Jewish Government;".

which clarifies these following parts of Kramer's article:

According to the lore that would surround 1948, warnings like Marshall’s plunged some leaders of the yishuv into doubt. After all, until now the yishuv had faced only Palestinian Arab militias. If the Zionists declared a state, they would face invasion by Arab states...The most prominent waverer, according to lore, was Shertok himself....

...all in the room knew that if they didn’t declare the state, someone else would. In his book, Sharef noted the sense around the table that “any deferment might provoke internal dissension, which would be likely to impair the yishuv’s combative mood and the morale of its troops.” This “internal dissension” had an unspoken name: Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun, who had promised to declare a state if the People’s Administration didn’t.

In early May, Begin had published a notice including precisely this warning:
The Hebrew government will be established. There is no maybe—it will rise. If the official leadership establishes a government, we will back it. But if the government gives in to threats, our forces and the majority of the land’s youth will back the free government that will grow from the underground.
Begin thus prepared two alternative messages for broadcast on May 16: the first, professing loyalty to the state if Ben-Gurion declared one; the second, declaring a state himself if Ben-Gurion did not. Everyone in the room knew Begin’s intent. Bechor-Shalom Sheetrit (representing the Sephardim) put it bluntly: “We are alert to the street and we know the mood there. And if we now seem to go soft and retreat from what the street hopes from us, we’ll unleash war in the street.”

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German Jewry Leadership, Then and Now

Now:

German Jewish leader advises against wearing yarmulkes in cities
Warning by Josef Schuster, head of Central Council of Jews in Germany, follows assault by Syrian asylum-seeker on Arab Israeli wearing skullcap in Berlin

Then, from Robert Weltsch in the Juedische Rundschau, No. 27, April 4, 1933

The first of April, 1933, will remain an important date in the history of German Jewry – indeed, in the history of the entire Jewish people.. Many Jews suffered a crushing experience on Saturday. Suddenly they were revealed as Jews, not as a matter of inner avowal, not in loyalty to their own community, not in pride in a great past and great achievements, but by the impress of a red placard with a yellow patch...It was intended as dishonor. Jews, take it up, the Shield of David, and wear it with pride!...

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Chaim Weizman on the Old-New Diasporism

I caught this in Rick Richman's new book, Racing Against History, on the visits of three Zionist leaders to America in 1940.

Chaim Weizmann wrote the following in 1937 as an observation of American Jews

and is as relevant now as it was then.

As the Shappell Foundation site highlights,

Weizmann also assails the temerity and faithlessness of the “assimilated Jew.” With American Jewry clearly in his sights, he blasts these Jews as thinking of themselves as Americans and not Jews. Their religion, he sniffs, is “a poor imitation of Protestantism. It has nothing in it of the austerity, severity and the real tradition of Jewry sanctified by so much martyrdom.” These people will send money, but Palestine is a challenge to them: “It stirs some memories… that they have tried to bury under their American civilization.

and as seen above, he emphasizes something quite familiar nowadays

"They fasten on the Arab problem which offers them a sort of escape from their Jewish consciousness; they are mostly useless to us, if not harmful.” 

Nothing new under the sun for those who promote Diasporism.

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Samaria?

Yes, "Samaria":

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Reaction to Natalie Portman (An Artistic Work-In-Progress)

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From her statement:

My decision not to attend the Genesis Prize ceremony has been mischaracterized by others. Let me speak for myself. I chose not to attend because...the mistreatment of those suffering from today’s atrocities is simply not in line with my Jewish values. Because I care about Israel, I must stand up against violence, corruption, inequality, and abuse of power.

P.S.  Atrocity is an extremely cruel, violent, or shocking act; a shockingly bad or atrocious act, object, or situation and, most relevant, (usually pl) acts of extreme cruelty, esp against prisoners or civilians in wartime.

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The IDF vs. Gaza's "Great Return" March

The fourth Friday of the "Great Return" March from Gaza, April 20, whereby many thousands of Arabs are attempting to breach the border with Israel and in the process are shooting, tossing firebombs, damaging the fence itself, flying kites with molotov cocktails attached and other violent acts, has finished.  The IDF made a special effort to warn people not to approach the fence.

Yesterday's claimed injuries and fatalities were:

4 Civilians, including [1] Child, and Wounding 274, including 41 Children, 6 Women and 1 Journalist

I found there this cumulative table:

Let's retrace:


On 13 April 2018...2 Palestinian civilians were killed...393 Palestinian civilians, including 67 children, 10 women, 4 journalists and 3 paramedics were wounded

On 06 April 2018...9 Palestinian civilians, including 2 children and a journalist, were killed while 3 other civilians succumbed to their wounds they sustained on the first Friday of the Return March. Moreover, 608 others, including 80 children, 8 women, 4 journalists and 6 paramedics, sustained wounds...

and on 30 March 2018...13 Palestinian civilians, including a child, were killed on the same day, while 1067 others, including 208 children and 40 women, sustained wounds...

Obviously, either IDF snipers are improving their technical capabilities, or there is less smoke or the Gazans are getting more careful, the drop in the statistics of dead and wounded is quite impressive.

While all figures of dead and wounded must be treated with certain circumspection and even doubt, especially as regards the number of injured, and to the identity label of "journalists", it should be obvious that the "Great March" is but a great demarche by Hamas to hide their goals of Israel's extinction as a Jewish state which the world press and diplomatic echelons refuse to counter.

And it isn't working except as a propaganda tool.

For example, so tweeted Nickolay Mladenov, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process:

It is OUTRAGEOUS to shoot at children! How does the killing of a child in #Gaza today help #peace? It doesn’t! It fuels anger and breeds more killing. #Children must be protected from #violence, not exposed to it, not killed! This tragic incident must be investigated.

That is propping up propaganda*.  As a friend of mine tweeted back:

The age of criminal responsibility in Bulgaria is 14.

and I tweeted: 

I want to know too what exactly were the circumstances of what this 15 yr old was doing there? Was he playing with fire? Was he easily identifiable as 15 yrs old or perhaps his age wasn't on his forehead & he was engaged in endangering actions?

Is it not outrageous to swarm attack a border? Seek to breach it?

Until the "international community" and "human rights groups" align themselves with facts and truths, their emotions are not enough to solve problems.

_________

*

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Rooted Cosmopolitans

I tweeted on April 16, in response to yet another IfNotNow demo on behalf of the terrorist Hamas-sponsored Great March on Israel's Gaza boundary that they were

rootless cosmopolitans

and took flack. That that was an anti-Semitic term. An anti-Semitic slur. A slur against Diaspora activists.

It seems that I was slightly in error.

There do exist Jews who are rooted cosmopolitans, or at least more precisely, promoters of such. They are Diaspora-rooted.

Jane Eisner, the Forward’s editor-in-chief, has now published

It’s Time For Israel To Recognize That Diaspora Jews Are Already Home

Here are some extracts of yet another attempt to slow down Zionism, block it, halt it and recreate a Diaspora existence:

...the relationship between the world’s two largest Jewish communities [Israel and America] is growing more and more strained...I’m going to offer an alternative idea:...let’s acknowledge and celebrate their separate identities and embark on a new kind of relationship. To begin with, let’s leave behind the outdated notion of “Diaspora.”

I do not suggest that the two parties should divorce...We turn away from [Israel] at our peril, and our detriment.

...We need a new vocabulary, one that reflects a more egalitarian relationship...

...North American Jews stress personal morality and social ethics; Israeli Jews focus on history and destiny....

...Israelis can learn from us about living in pluralistic [mixed marriages?] families and communities, and developing innovative [anti-traditionalist?] expressions of Jewish faith and culture...

...I suggest that those of us in the Diaspora think of ourselves as being at home...While we live as equal Jewish citizens here.

Well, Jane, you seem to denounce the current parameters of Israel-Diaspora relations, even while distorting their reality, and you  justify a new situation that will only increase the ongoing dissolution of Diaspora Jewry.  You seek to create an equality between a Diaspora existence and that which is one of a homeland where, in Judaism, tithes are taken, where the soil possesses a form of sanctity, where all the elements of the Bible make sense: spiritually, geographically, agriculturally and even environmentally.

She, of course, casts blame on Netanyahu for most of this but also makes a bizarre claim that Israel's doesn't promote Hebrew-language studies. First of all, it does. Secondly, and before 1948, Jews learned Hebrew....how? Jews don't have a peoplehood obligation to know their native tongue? How do they read the Siddur? Wait, they still do read it, yes?

Representatives and leaders of the Diaspora Jewry, in the form of those who seek to dilute traditions, values and practices and demand equal standing as in the matter of the Western Wall as if that site is a political plaything, are on an ego trip not realizing that without Israel, their status would be one of precariousness and their security even less.

They seek to root their cosmopolitanism, that is, their desire to be not citizens of Israel but of the world, by negatively portraying Israel. They seek to reject the specific national identity of the Jew and thereby escape an political problem these few have with Israel.

That will not work. It never has.

^

Who Rules the Temple Mount?

As we all know, the (in)famous June 1967 arrangement of Moshe Dayan, then Defense Minister, the "status quo", set a policy that while Israel asserted sovereignty over the site, the practical day-to-day administration is in the hands of the Waqf.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expanded on that, in a statement that explicitly downgraded the status of Jews there when he declared

“Israel reaffirms its commitment to upholding unchanged the status quo of the Temple Mount, in word and in practice. Israel will continue to enforce its longstanding policy: Muslims pray on the Temple Mount; non-Muslims visit the Temple Mount.”

That was in late October 2015. It was thought that those words were said to placate Jordan's King Abdullah and US Secretary of State John Kerry as part of the failed surveillance camera deal.  The cameras were never affixed and neither the US or Jordan paid for that whereas that statement was a significant yielding up of rights which until then had never been so starkly spelled out.

In that connection, it has been pointed out that the next attempt to assure security at the site but also to collect proof who initiated the violence, who had stored weapons of various sorts in the mosques and who was cooperating with terrorists and rabble-rousers which was the metal detectors of summer 2017, was foiled because:

the Palestinian and Muslim discourse the central issue is the need to combat what they believe to be guiding the Israeli policy, namely, the Jewish (or Zionist or settler) effort to take over the holy compound that includes the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and to destroy the mosque and the Dome of the Rock so as to turn the Temple Mount into a place of Jewish prayer. Hence, the Palestinians and the Muslims did not see the installation of the metal detectors as a measure to improve security, but instead, as an obvious way to prepare the groundwork for changing the status quo and thereby advancing the objective that they ascribe to the Jews.

Before then we had statements such as these regarding the nature of the "status quo":

Netanyahu’s spokesman, Mark Regev, said on Thursday: “At last night’s security consultation, the prime minister made it clear that there will be no change in the status quo on the Temple Mount and that whoever expresses a different opinion is presenting a personal view and not the policy of the government.”

Regev said Netanyahu had made the comment at a meeting with security officials late on Wednesday. 

That was in November 2014.  The headline interpreted Netanyahu:

Binyamin Netanyahu rejects calls to let Jews pray at Jerusalem holy site

As Nadav Shragai wrote, it was obvious by then that

the old status quo has been greatly degraded, increasing Muslim control and status on the Mount and greatly undermining the status of Jews and the State of Israel on the Mount.

How degraded has it become?

This past Holocaust Day fell on a Thursday and according to the standing arrangements, Jews and other non-Muslim tourists should have been able to enter the holy compound. But they couldn't because of a Muslim holiday (I discussed that in detail here). But what was clear was that the Palestinian Authority celebrated that holiday on Thursday night-Friday and so the Mount should have been open, at least for morning visiting hours.

A letter from the Israel Police received by Michael Puah who complained explains the situation. The holiday was celebrated on Thursday in Jordan and so, the Temple Mount was closed to all non-Muslims:

If my understanding is correct, the Temple Mount basically is Jordanian property which Israel simply guards and assures that its Muslim status remains supreme and primary. Jordan customs are to be taken into consideration above all other regimes, including the Palestinian Authority (I presume because of the March 2013 agreement) and, of course, that of Israel. That agreement reads in the preamble of:

The continuity of Hashemite King of Jordan's custodianship of the holy sites since 1924 makes His Majesty more able to maintain the holy sites and to preserve Al Masjid Al Aqsa (Al Haram Al Sharif)

Jordan rules and pushes anti-Israel resolutions in such international bodies as UNESCO.

Jordan also is a signatory to a peace treaty with Israel which states in Article 9 that it will:

provide freedom of access to places of religious and historical significance...promote interfaith relations among the three monotheistic religions, with the aim of working towards religious understanding, moral commitment, freedom of religious worship, and tolerance and peace.

That has never happened.  And Israel has never, to my knowledge, complained about Jordanian moves on the matter.

Jordan rules.

^