“Keeping the historical status quo and supporting equal rights for Christians, Muslims and Jews at these holy sites is vitally important to maintaining peace and de-escalating violence,” said Father Ioan Sauca, acting general secretary of the WCC. “Denying access to holy sites for thousands of people who have traveled far to pray is not only a violation of the rights of those individuals, but also a corrosive act in the midst of an already-fragile peace.”

Far from “denying access” to the Temple Mount, Israel decided to install metal detectors at the entrance to the holy site after Arab terrorists smuggled guns there on July 14 and embarked on a shooting spree that claimed the lives of two Druze-Israeli police officers. The Palestinian leadership, however, claimed the additional security measures were part of an Israeli attempt to change the status quo on the Temple Mount and called on all Muslims to take to the streets and riot.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center pointed out that security measures such as metal detectors are par for the course at religious sites all over the world, including Muslim holy sites. In 2015, Saudi Arabia introduced a range of new measures, including electronic bracelets, for Muslims making the Hajj pilgrimage to the religion’s holiest site in Mecca.

“The installation of metal detectors is taken for granted at the Vatican, at government offices, at every airport around the globe,” said Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, SWC’s Director of Interfaith Affairs. “They were first made necessary when Palestinians internationalized terrorism decades ago.” The WCC is renowned for its hostility towards the Jewish state, supporting “all non-violent efforts to end the occupation (including considering appropriate economic and other measures).”

Through its member groups, the WCC, which represents some 550 million Christians in 110 countries, oversees several campaigns aimed at delegitimizing the Jewish state, including organized tours of Israel with the purpose of gathering damning evidence of Israelis oppressing Palestinians. The WCC routinely makes charges of Israeli “apartheid,” “collective punishment,” “war crimes” against Palestinians, and “illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.”

The video of Shahin’s sermon was posted to the Islamic Center of Davis’s YouTube channel on Friday (update: the video has since been removed), and translated and excerpted by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), though portions of the sermon were delivered in English.

The topic of the sermon was the ongoing controversy at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where the Israeli government installed metal detectors at access points to the Al-Aqsa Mosque after a terrorist shot and killed two Druze Israeli soldiers earlier this month.

Jewish visitors to the nearby Western Wall have had to pass through metal detectors for decades, due to the security threat of terrorism. Nevertheless, the new metal detectors for Muslim worshippers have been whipped into a source of outrage among Palestinians and throughout the Muslim world.

Davis has been the site of other antisemitic incidents in the recent past, some evidently fueled by radical Islamic beliefs and affinity for the Hamas terrorist group. In 2015, Muslims students taunted Jewish students at a student government meeting by chanting “Allahu Akbar!” at them. One of the Muslim students involved later boasted that “Hamas and Sharia law have taken over UC Davis.”

Before the council met, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon told journalists that Israel is working to calm the situation in Jerusalem, but will do whatever it deems necessary to maintain security at the Temple Mount. “We will enable everybody to come and pray on the Temple Mount, but at the same time we will do whatever is necessary to maintain security,” he said.

“The Salomon family had gathered for the most joyous occasion, the birth of a new grandson. Instead, the night ended in a massacre,” he said, standing alongside a picture of the bloody floor of the family’s home. “They sat down to eat the Sabbath meal when the terrorist entered their home. He stabbed his victims to death, murdering Yosef, the 70-year-old grandfather, his daughter Haya, and his son Elad, all while the children were hidden in a room.”

“This attack is not an isolated incident. It is part of a wave of terror sweeping the free world by those brainwashed by hateful teachings,” he said. “They are taught that violence and coldblooded murder is holy. The Security Council must demand that [Palestinian Authority President] Mahmoud Abbas and the PA act immediately to end the terror and incitement before the lives of more innocent victims are lost.”

An earlier form of the sanctions legislation had sailed through the Senate with a 97-2 vote last month. But that legislation focused only on Russia and Iran. It then lost momentum in the House after representatives said they wanted to include North Korea. That conflict has been resolved, lawmakers say.

A vote is expected in the House on Tuesday. On the same day, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has scheduled a hearing on assessing US policy toward North Korea. "Those who threaten America and our interests should take notice — your actions have consequences," House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said in a tweet as news of the agreement emerged on Saturday.

The sanctions bill "will hold Russia and Iran accountable for their destabilizing actions around the world," Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland said. "The legislation ensures that both the majority and minority are able to exercise our oversight role over the administration's implementation of sanctions." Lawmakers are looking to approve the sanctions before leaving Washington for the August recess.

And while it remained unclear if President Donald Trump would sign the bill if it reaches his desk, which is now likely, the loudest complaint about the bill to date has emerged not from the Oval Office, but from Brussels, after the EU once again urged (and warned, and threatened) US lawmakers to coordinate their anti-Russia actions with European partners, or else.

As Reuters reports, the European Union "sounded an alarm on Saturday" about moves in the US Congress to step up US sanctions on Russia, urging Washington to keep coordinating with its G7 partners.  In a statement by a spokeswoman after Republicans and Democrats in the US Congress reached a deal that could see new legislation pass, the European Commission warned of possibly "wide and indiscriminate" "unintended consequences", especially on the EU's efforts to diversify energy sources away from Russia, adding that "unilateral measures" by the US could undermine transatlantic unity.

Furthermore, Germany has already warned of "possible retaliation" if the United States moves to sanction German firms involved with building a new Baltic pipeline for Russian gas. EU diplomats are concerned that a German-US row over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline being built by Russia's state-owned Gazprom could complicate efforts in Brussels to forge an EU consensus on negotiating with Russia over the project.

But it wasn't just Russia and Europe eager to warn the US that any ongoing attempts to trap Trump into perpetuating the Deep State's Russian policies would backfire: ahead of Congress clearing all potential hurdles for the bill, a number of American multinationals – including ExxonMobil, General Electric and Boeing, as well as MasterCard and Visa – raised concerns that the punitive measures will ultimately harm their interests, rather than that of the Kremlin.

Without a doubt, we are in the midst of one of the largest stock market bubbles in US history, and many prominent investors are loudly warning of an imminent stock market collapse.  It doesn’t take a genius to see that this stock market bubble is going to end very badly just like all of the other stock market bubbles throughout history have, but if you could know the precise timing that it will end you could set yourself up financially for the rest of your life.

I want to be very clear about the fact that I do not know what will or will not happen by the end of October.  But one mystery investor is extremely convinced that market volatility is going to increase over the next few months, and if he is correct he will make an astounding amount of money. I will be watching to see what happens.  If this mystery investor is correct, it will essentially be like winning the lottery.

But just because he has made this wager does not mean that he has some special knowledge about what is going to happen. For example, just look at what Ruffer LLP has been doing. They are a $20 billion investment fund based in London, and they have been betting tens of millions of dollars on a stock market crash which has failed to materialize so far.  But even though they have lost so much money already, they continue to make extremely large bearish bets…

I can understand why Ruffer has been making these bets.  In a rational world, stocks would have already crashed long ago. The only way that stock prices have been able to continue to rise is because of unprecedented intervention by global central banks.  They have been pumping trillions of dollars into the financial markets, and this has essentially completely destroyed normal market forces.

The biggest players in this ongoing charade are the global central banks.  If they decide to keep pumping trillions of dollars into global financial markets, they may be able to keep the bubble going for a little while longer. But if at any point they decide to withdraw their artificial assistance, those that have placed huge bets against the market are going to make absolutely enormous piles of cash.

This has set off a crisis in the Holy City, where Friday prayers were canceled, and now a tense standoff exists after metal detectors were installed at the Aqsa Mosque compound, which threatens to kill off the already dying Middle East peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

So, yes, I get it: extremists don’t care about sacred places, and they will kill wherever they can get away with it. Still, this latest standoff in Jerusalem has deeply saddened me, and it makes me ask: why can’t we let sacred places just be sacred? Indeed, the Temple Mount has seen its share of violence before, and there have been both Muslims and Jews who have been victims of the violence. But, why does this have to be so?

And I am not blind to the fact that there still exists an intractable conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. I am not blind to the fact that there still exists a military occupation. Still, why can’t the Holy Places be somewhere Jews and Muslims can go to worship without harassment? Why can’t the Temple Mount be somewhere gunmen can’t attack, or security forces can’t fire tear gas and shoot rubber bullets?

Jews who visit the Temple Mount should not be harassed when going to pray at the Western Wall. Muslims wanting to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque should not have to be subjected to “security measures” and random closures of the mosque on Fridays to all men younger than 50. The word “Jerusalem” means the “City or Abode of Peace.” It needs to become one again today.