No matter what the city will eventually look like, Israel is the right choice to control the Old City because only Israel is willing to protect the religious freedom of Jews, Christians and Muslims

It came as no surprise that the Palestinian leadership responded angrily to US President Donald Trump’s recognition of the obvious reality that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital.

But beyond the usual “day of rage,” rockets shot at Israeli preschools and firebombs thrown at passing Israeli civilians’ cars, the Palestinian Authority decided to make like the Grinch and steal Christmas, only proving that Trump was right not to fold to the whims of the side that has a pattern of violating religious freedoms, when it comes to a city holy to three religions.

Bethlehem, thought to be Jesus’ birthplace, and Ramallah, the de facto Palestinian capital, turned off their Christmas lights within an hour of Trump’s announcement.

In Nazareth, the town where Jesus is thought to have grown up, now the largest Arab city in Israel, the Muslim mayor scaled back Christmas celebrations in identification with the Palestinians.

And ahead of US Vice President Mike Pence’s planned visit to Jerusalem this week, now postponed, Adeeb Joudeh, the Muslim man whose family has held the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for generations, announced that he wouldn’t let Pence, a devout Evangelical Christian, enter.

This tactic of protesting by denying Christians their Christmas celebrations reaffirms that Trump did the right thing in declaring Jerusalem Israel’s capital, and for his administration to say last Friday that it envisions the Western Wall within Israeli Jerusalem in a final-status deal.

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The Likud’s director of International Relations provided Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party with information about American-Hungarian Jewish billionaire George Soros, that was used towards an ongoing pre-election campaign accused of being antisemitic.

“I sent Orban information about what Soros does in Israel about six months ago,” Likud International Relations Director Eli Hazan told The Jerusalem Post Monday. “We see Soros as a dangerous man who does unfair and indecent things.”

Hazan claimed that Soros supported V15, an organization that sought to topple Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the 2015 election, but that it was kept secret because “Zionist Union voters wouldn’t like that someone who’s anti-Zionist supports them.”

The Likud official also said Soros “supports organizations that undermine Zionism in Israel and help terrorists and infiltrators,” a term used by the Right to describe migrants.

Several weeks after Hazan said he had sent the details, the Hungarian government launched a campaign against Soros, which made waves around the world and faced accusations of antisemitism.

The campaign against Soros’ stance on immigration showed him laughing, alongside the words “Let’s not leave Soros the last laugh,” and reportedly spurred incidents of antisemitic graffiti on the posters throughout the country.

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Every once in a while, a Knesset member will wake up or come out of a meeting to find his or her phone overloaded with thousands of messages, all saying pretty much the same thing, usually calling to vote a certain way.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis, Kulanu MKs Rachel Azaria and Roi Folkmann, MK Yoav Kisch of the Likud and others in the coalition faced that reality Sunday when secularist advocacy group Be Free Israel disseminated their private cell phone numbers and told supporters to accuse them of “closing Israel on Shabbat.”

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“We will put ‘made in Israel’ on countless screens around the world.”

Jason Isaacs (right) and Ori Pfeffer on the set of the US TV show ‘Dig.’  (photo credit: RONEN AKERMAN/USA NETWORK)

Anyone who’s been to Dubrovnik in Croatia in recent years can see how the HBO series Game of Thrones, part of which was filmed there, has impacted the city.

Dubrovnik’s Old City, its central tourist attraction, is filled with themed souvenir shops, and has a thriving cottage industry of Game of Thrones tours, where visitors can follow along with Cersei’s walk of shame, or sit on the balcony of the castle where Joffrey’s wedding was filmed, or see the site of the fight between The Mountain and Oberyn Martell. Tourism has gone up so much in Dubrovnik that the city has decided to cap the number of people who can enter each day.

Now imagine if the Game of Thrones effect came to Jerusalem, or if James Bond or Ethan Hunt of Mission: Impossible were filmed dashing from rooftop to rooftop in Acre.

That is the vision Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Michael Oren has had in mind in recent months, while working on creating the conditions necessary to attract major Hollywood and Bollywood studios to what he is calling “Holy-wood.”

Oren posited that the plan will have a massive, positive impact on Israel’s public diplomacy, which will “break BDS and other attempts to delegitimize and isolate us.

“We will put ‘made in Israel’ on countless screens around the world,” Oren said.

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When Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman called to boycott Arab businesses in the Wadi Ara area Sunday, he appeared to have opened himself up to some legal troubles – but he probably doesn’t need to be concerned.

After all, Israel has a law against boycotts, which allows their victims to open civil suits against individuals or groups calling for them, if the victims can prove damages.

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This is the second time in as many weeks that Netanyahu showed he’ll do what he can to keep the coalition together when he has had opportunities to call an election.

Political commentators were having déjà vu Sunday morning, and for a brief moment it seemed like we might have an election soon – until Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put the kibosh on the idea.

As the Knesset geared up for a final vote on the much-disputed police recommendations bill, the situation seemed more and more like the votes on another ultra-controversial bill in 2014 – the Israel Hayom bill.

That legislation would have outlawed the dissemination of free, daily newspapers and, just like the police recommendations bill, was viewed as a personal piece of legislation to help Netanyahu avoid an indictment, or at least more damaging leaks to the press. The Israel Hayom bill was also personally targeted at Netanyahu, but with the opposite aim – to hurt him by shutting down the newspaper owned by his ally, Sheldon Adelson, which gives him overwhelmingly positive coverage.

In that case, Netanyahu’s Likud party supported the bill, while more and more coalition members began distancing themselves from it. Then, Netanyahu vehemently opposed the proposal, while more and more members of his previous coalition supported it – so much so that it even passed a preliminary reading.

Netanyahu later admitted that one of the reasons he called the 2015 election, less than two years after the previous one, was to stop the Israel Hayom bill.

But this time, as the prospects of the police recommendations bill grew bleaker throughout the day, Netanyahu didn’t pull the trigger. This time, he backed down.

“I asked… to make sure the bill will be worded so that it doesn’t apply to the investigation of my matters,” Netanyahu wrote.

And that’s how, in a 166-word Facebook post, Netanyahu cooled down the political atmosphere.

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A large part of the current tension between US Jewry and Israel is over liberal values, with non-Orthodox Americans demanding that Israel show respect for their egalitarianism.

Why aren’t US Jewish organizational leaders practicing what they preach in an area in which they have a direct and decisive influence?

The heads of the Jewish Agency in the US and the Jewish Federations of North America gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a shortlist of six candidates for the job – as reported exclusively by The Jerusalem Post – which included diplomats and politicians of varying levels of qualification.

The candidates on the shortlist had something in common: they’re all men.

The Jewish Agency “connect[s] the global Jewish family, bringing Jews to Israel, and Israel to Jews,” according to its website. But the shortlist of nominees for the role of the head of the Jewish Agency executive raises questions as to whether the organization’s patrons expect it to connect with all Jews, or only half.

It’s not that they should pick a chairwoman just for the sake of picking a woman. But not to have even one woman under consideration is simply insulting to half of world Jewry.

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In this week’s Torah portion, Vayetze, begins with the words “and Ya’acov went out,” referring to Jacob the Patriarch leaving Beersheba.

On Friday, Israeli politics’ Ya’acov, as in Health Minister Ya’acov Litzman, made a dramatic exit of his own, from the coalition.

Technically, Litzman hasn’t resigned yet – he said on Friday he would do so if rail repairs were done by Jewish workers on Shabbat.

But, because the work happened on Saturday night, his resignation seemed like a foregone conclusion.

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Acclaimed journalist Sivan Rahav-Meir, author of the new ‘#Parasha,’ gave up most of her reporting career to spread the news about the weekly Torah portion.

Host: Let’s meet the most influential woman in the media, Sivan Rahav-Meir.

Rahav-Meir: A little correction, I’m also an author – I wrote #Parasha and The Burning Snapchat…

Let’s discuss the issue that we’re all concerned about

– Yes, parashat Va’era.

I was thinking of the ‘submarines affair.’

The public is sick of what’s been discussed to death, like submarines, etc. It’s more important to talk about something refreshing – like the weekly Torah portion.

I disagree.

That’s how divisions are created in the nation. When I say something and you disagree with me, it harms our unity.

That’s not a real conversation with acclaimed journalist and author Sivan Rahav-Meir, but you’d be forgiven for thinking it was.

Minutes after she sat down to speak with The Jerusalem Post about her best-selling book #Parasha: Weekly Insights from a Leading Israeli Journalist, newly translated into English, hit comic sketch show Eretz Nehederet spoofed her for the first time. (“The Burning Snapchat” is not a real book.)

Rahav-Meir takes the ribbing in stride. At her weekly Torah class in Jerusalem, which is open to the public and has hundreds of attendees each week, she showed the class a cartoon by Haaretz’s Amos Biderman, which depicts her as a news anchor announcing “our reporter, Moses.”

Both Eretz Nehederet and Biderman were spot-on. Like the parody version of Rahav-Meir, the real one talks like a consummate newswoman who’s simply shifted focus.

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Anyone heading into the Knesset midday Monday witnessed an unusual site: A costumed buxom blonde woman traipsing around the traffic circle near the entrance to the legislature.

Even more unusual: She plans to run for prime minister.

The real-life cartoon character danced around on the grass, and tried to climb up the Menorah statue at the center of the complex, hoisting a leg up.

She was not to be allowed to visit the legislature, since with her breasts and vagina in full view, she certainly did not fit the dress code.

“I haven’t had any plastic surgery – this is all real,” the cartoon character said, gesturing.

That seemingly cartoon-like woman is Shoshka.

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