Report: Iran-linked hackers shut down UK power plant

www.israelnationalnews.com/news/432083

The Telegraph reports that Iran-linked hackers shut down a small British power plant for four days in an unprecedented cyberattack.

A British power plant was forced offline for four days in what The Telegraph reported on Saturday was an unprecedented cyberattack linked to Iran.

The incident is believed to be the first known case in which hackers affiliated with the Iranian regime successfully shut down a power facility in Britain. Officials reportedly consider it the most successful cyberattack of its kind against UK energy infrastructure.

The attack occurred last month, around the same time as a series of cyberattacks against water infrastructure in the United States that affected 12 states and raised concerns at the White House, according to The Telegraph.

British officials have declined to identify the affected facility, citing security considerations. The plant is understood to have been relatively small, however, meaning the disruption did not threaten Britain's overall electricity supply or energy production. Staff worked for four days to restore the facility.

The government subsequently briefed the chief executives of power companies and contacted businesses with guidance and instructions on how to respond. The incident was also reported to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the public-facing cybersecurity arm of GCHQ.

The NCSC declined to comment specifically on the incident. British and US intelligence agencies have repeatedly warned that hackers linked to Russia, China, Iran and North Korea regularly target critical infrastructure and government systems.

Previous cyberattacks have disrupted NHS systems, schools and industrial operations, including manufacturing lines at Jaguar Land Rover. Foreign hackers have also stolen customer data from retailers and voter information from the Electoral Commission.

Despite those incidents, there had previously been no known case of a cyberattack bringing a British power plant to a standstill.

The attack does not appear to have been intended to cause widespread harm to the public and reportedly went largely unnoticed, according to The Telegraph. One possibility being examined is that the operation was intended to demonstrate that hackers connected to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps could penetrate British systems and disable sensitive infrastructure.

Britain has dozens of smaller power stations connected to the national grid. Many are gas-fired facilities that operate only intermittently, such as when low wind speeds reduce electricity generation. A prolonged shutdown at one such plant would not affect the wider grid, while some industrial sites and hospitals maintain independent generators.

The NCSC advised British organizations in March to reassess their cybersecurity measures amid the conflict. Its chief executive, Richard Horne, said in June that the agency had dealt with more than 200 attacks targeting critical national infrastructure during the previous year.

A Government source said, “We have thresholds for important generators to legally notify us of cyber activity, and this site is nowhere near. It’s a very small scale site, less than a rounding error compared to grid capacity."

A Government spokesman said, “The UK has a highly resilient energy system. We work closely with the energy sector to protect infrastructure and ensure the highest security standards. This story refers to an incident impacting a small-scale energy generator, and at no point was there a risk to the wider energy system."

Nihilism, anarchism, and radicalism in American politics

www.israelnationalnews.com/news/432080

The rise of the Democratic Socialists of America and its alliance with Radical Islam. Opinion.

 

 

Definitions

Nihilism rejects traditional morals, absolute truths, and religious beliefs.  

Anarchism views government and hierarchical authority as harmful, unnecessary, unjust and advocates for replacing the state and capitalist systems with stateless societies.

Radicalism rejects all hierarchical authority, the state, and capitalism and demands an immediate, root-and-branch dismantling of "coercive" institutions such as the police and army.

Hence the ideology, braggings and acts of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) who come to tear down the current political system of the United States, a country based on 250 years of established democratic liberal Western civilization. This civilization derived from the cultural legacies of ancient venerable Judeo-Christian spiritual and ethical ideas based on the Bible and the Greco-Roman philosophical and governmental systems.

 

Radical Islam seeks to transform society or politics by returning to foundational roots, rejecting Western or secular governance, and-in its most common contemporary usage-advocating or using violence to achieve political goals. A radical Islamist is an individual or group that believes Islam should guide all political, legal, and social systems, and seeks to overhaul existing secular or Westernized governments to establish a strict Islamic order. While some movements pursue this through peaceful political or social activism, others use militant or violent means.

Nihilists, anarchists, radicals - disguised as the Democratic Socialists of America

The DSA cloak themselves in the words "Democratic" when in fact they rely on mob rule, mass-manipulation, hysteria, class warfare and race baiting. They are not merely "social democrats" in the calm Western European sense of the term, but in truth they are more proactive Marxist, Leninist, Trotskyist, and Maoist from the education they got in left-leaning colleges and universities that shaped their outlook and practices.

The last thing they value is good old America which they seek to turn into a "people's republic" or even an "Islamic republic" more along the lines of Soviet Russia and Communist China.

And, yes, they admire the Islamic Republic of Iran especially because it arrogantly defies America and the West.

And yes, they speak American English beautifully and know how to smile wide for the TV and news cameras. They have mastered the art of sound bites and know how to project themselves and their ideas on Tik-Tok and Instagram and on YouTube and Facebook. In short they are masters of propaganda and know how to sway the minds of the mindless masses.

And they are dangerous people simply by virtue of being die-hard nihilists, anarchists and radicals in a de facto alliance with radical Islam.

American academia embraces Marxists

Following the end of the Second World War in 1945, for some or other reason higher education in America became the home base of varieties of leftists, Marxist and Communist academics who slowly but surely poisoned the minds of younger generations until producing the current crop of DSA-like left wing radicals.

What on Earth were American colleges and universities thinking when they hired untold numbers of left-wing ultra-liberal professors and lecturers steeped in the writings of Marx and Trotsky, who admired Lenin and Mao? Supposedly there was the McCarthy era that rooted out Communists in the politics of America but instead many left wing intellectuals found a haven and burrowed themselves deeply into the vast porous American college and university system and did their damage from there.

New departments of African and Asian studies became the cover for hiring all sorts of dubious academics who admired Third World anti-colonialist liberationist movements that had been backed and trained by the USSR and Communist China, and the liberationist methodologies in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Che Guevara may have died but the spirit of his ideas did not and was carried forth by the ultra-leftist professors on American campuses. That now bears fruit in the popularity and rise of the DSA.

How the West learned to love Arabs and Islam

The roots of all this goes back to days when European countries colonised swaths of Africa and Asia. A sub-culture arose among the elites of the colonial European powers of admiration for the colonised people and of taking on a romanticized adoption of their ways. During the First World War 1914-1918 this took on geo-political significance when the the British deployed the Arab-loving Lawrence of Arabia to raise up an Arab army to revolt against the Ottoman Turks.

This created a partnership between the British and the Hashemites, who were first in Arabia and then got Transjordan as a compensation prize from the British. Capitalist America was not far behind when President Franklin Roosevelt joined with the house of Saud to kick out the Hashemites and their British backers, and replace them with the cooperative and compliant fanatically Muslim Saudis making a compact to extract and sell Saudi Arabian oil.

The German Nazis were more than eager to welcome the Mufti of Jerusalem in devising the Final Solution during the Holocaust that would keep Jews out of then British controlled Palestine. The Nazis even recruited Muslims from the Balkans to create special Muslim SS battalions to fight for them. After first backing Israel for a short while,in 1948 the Soviets led by Russia switched to arming Arab client states to the teeth in order to help them destroy Israel. Many among the Arab states too, became radical Arab "socialists" such as Egypt, Syria, Iraq.

Basically it was during the twentieth century that the British, Americans, Germans, the French (especially under Vichy), and Russia, joined arms and worked in harmony with their various Arab Muslim partners and client states across North Africa and the Middle East. That is the deeper level beginning of the union of the West, that was nominally Christian and the Arabs of the East who were Muslims.

Whereas in previous centuries Christian domains and Islamic powers were constant rivals at war with each other, starting in the twentieth century they became partners instead. Predictably, this new development of cross cultural civilisational "entente" and new found "love" worked against the Jews both in Europe and in Arab countries and then against modern Israel.

Rise of radical Arabs and Islam in America

Now turn to modern America in the twenty first century, where you have the union of the ultra left wing of the American political spectrum joining forces with radical Islamists to create a united front through the DSA, not just against the traditional American Democrat party but going much further by spouting anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic, and anti-American viewpoints and a willingness to take to the streets and storm the barricades to get their way.

All this in spite of the atrocities committed by fanatical radical Muslims on 9/11. America forgets and forgives succumbing to political amnesia. Coincidentally some in the American radical right wing political spectrum are also receiving Arab funding and becoming pro-Arab, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. 

More ominously, the DSA crowd has been determined and learned how to use the very American political system itself - one that they despise - to get elected to office all over America in all branches of the government. Hence the rise of young radical left-wing Muslims, educated by American Marxists and left wing academics of all sorts and varieties. Be they of Egyptian, Pakistani, Somalian, Palestinian parentage or not, they have learned the tricks of the trade in American politics, know how to beat the American political system and get elected even though they are dyed in the wool nihilists, anarchists, radicals as well as radical Islamist, and dare one say "arsonists", openly spouting anti-American and anti-Israel points of view without any guilt.

In fact they are convinced that they are on the right side of history which empowers and emboldens them to even greater heights of nihilism, anarchism, radicalism and promoting the world outlook of radical Islam. 

Under presidents Clinton, Obama, Biden the United States admitted millions of Arab Islamic refugees from the Middle East, fleeing the collapse and instability in countries such as Iraq and Syria, who then settled mainly in the large urban centers of America and almost to a man vote for DSA-like candidates. While the mainstream of America was worried about the influx of refugees from Central and South America, in the meantime, under the radar, US presidents Clinton-Obama-Biden sneaked in millions of Arab Muslims while nobody was paying attention. Now we are reaping the whirlwinds from those misguided actions.

 

Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin was born to Holocaust survivor parents in Israel, grew up in South Africa, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is an alumnus of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin and of Teachers College-Columbia University. He heads the Jewish Professionals Institute dedicated to Jewish Adult Education and Outreach - Kiruv Rechokim. He was the Director of the Belzer Chasidim's Sinai Heritage Center of Manhattan 1988-1995, a Trustee of AJOP 1994-1997 and founder of American Friends of South African Jewish Education 1995-2015. He is the author of The Second World War and Jewish Education in America: The Fall and Rise of Orthodoxy. izakrudomin@gmail.com

Pigeons trained to tell Monet from Picasso

https://scienceblog.com/m-pigeons-were-trained-to-tell-a-monet-from-a-picasso-and-then-did-something-odder-shown-paintings-they-had-never-seen-they-sorted-cezanne-with-the-monets-and-braque-with-the-picasso/

Pigeons were trained to tell a Monet from a Picasso, and then did something odder — shown paintings they had never seen, they sorted Cezanne with the Monets and Braque with the Picassos.

The birds had grasped something deeper than memorization—a visual principle that let them recognize artistic style in works they'd never encountered.

A pigeon sits in a box, facing a small screen. A Monet appears, the bird pecks a key, and a pellet of food drops. A Picasso appears, the bird pecks, and nothing comes. Do that a few hundred times and the pigeon learns the rule: peck for a Monet, ignore a Picasso. That much is ordinary animal training. The strange part came later, when the birds were shown paintings nobody had ever put in front of them.

We are not psychologists or scientists, and what follows is a reading of one experiment and the debate around it, not a claim about how minds work. It’s a single study from 1995, taken seriously but not treated as the last word.

What the pigeons were trained to do

The experiment came from Keio University in Tokyo. In 1995, Shigeru Watanabe, Junko Sakamoto and Masumi Wakita published a study in which pigeons learned to tell color slides of Monet paintings from Picasso paintings. It later won a 1995 Ig Nobel Prize in psychology, the prize that goes to work that makes people laugh and then makes them think.

The setup was simple. Eight pigeons were split into two groups. One group got food for pecking at a Monet and nothing for a Picasso; the other group had it the other way around. Each artist was represented by ten paintings in training. The birds learned it fast, reaching over 90 percent accuracy.

But if that were the whole story, it would just show that a pigeon can be trained to react to a specific set of images. Neat, but not puzzling.

The part that’s genuinely odd

When the researchers showed the birds Monet and Picasso paintings that had never appeared in training, the pigeons still sorted them correctly. So they weren’t just memorizing ten pictures.

Then it went further. Shown work by painters the birds had never seen at all, the pigeons filed Cezanne and Renoir with the Monets, and Braque and Matisse with the Picassos.

That grouping isn’t random. Cezanne and Renoir belong to the broad family of Impressionism, alongside Monet; Braque helped found Cubism with Picasso. The birds put each newcomer on the side an art historian would choose, without ever being told a name or a movement.

What the birds were sorting on

Not names. Not intent. Not the story behind a French garden or a fractured guitar. A pigeon has no access to any of that. Whatever it was doing had to run entirely on what was visible on the surface of the image: edges, color, brightness, texture, how shapes were arranged.

One extra finding sharpens this. When the researchers turned Monet’s paintings upside down, the birds got worse at telling them apart. Flip a Picasso, and they didn’t care. The authors’ best guess, again cautious, was that the birds may have been picking up on recognizable objects in the Impressionist paintings, objects that look wrong upside down, while the Cubist images were already jumbled enough that orientation made no difference.

Whether any of this counts as real “categorization” is what other researchers questioned. In a 1998 response, Jos Monen, Eli Brenner and Jenny Reynaerts argued that studying categorization only makes sense if the animal could actually have the information used to define the groups. Their point: a bird sorting by color and brightness is not the same as a bird grasping a concept called “Impressionism.” You have to rule out simple visual cues, they said, before claiming the bird learned a concept. This is a live disagreement, not a settled result.

What this does and doesn’t tell us about style

It would be easy to read the study as a put-down, as if it reduces a Monet to a bundle of edges a bird can peck at. We don’t think that’s the fair reading. What the pigeons found is that the surface of a Monet and the surface of a Cezanne share something measurable, something steady enough to carry over to a painter they’d never seen. That shared signal is real. It’s in the paint. The birds found it without any of the meaning we attach to it.

The same trainability later turned to a serious use. In 2015, a team including Richard Levenson and Edward Wasserman trained pigeons to tell harmless breast tissue images from cancerous ones. According to the University of Iowa, individual birds reached nearly 85 percent accuracy, and a group of four pooled together did even better. A bird that can spot the visual signature of a cancer cell is running the same basic trick as a bird that files Braque with Picasso: pulling a pattern out of images and applying it to new ones.

Which leaves a good question open. When we say two paintings share a “style,” part of what we mean is a pattern in the image itself, a fingerprint of color, edge and texture that repeats from one canvas to the next. A pigeon can find that fingerprint. What it can’t find is everything else we mean by style: the intent, the history, the argument a painter is having with the painters before them. The experiment didn’t shrink the art. It showed how much of style sits right there on the surface, available to any eye careful enough to look, even one that will never know whose name is in the corner.

https://scienceblog.com/m-pigeons-were-trained-to-tell-a-monet-from-a-picasso-and-then-did-something-odder-shown-paintings-they-had-never-seen-they-sorted-cezanne-with-the-monets-and-braque-with-the-picasso/

     Monet

     Picasso

     Cezanne

                              Renoir

                       Braque

                             Matisse

The Mask of NATO Has Fallen: Turkey is revealed as a mortal threat to Israel and the West

www.israelnationalnews.com/news/432042

Turkey under Erdogan is not a democratic bridge between East and West, nor is it a reliable pillar of transatlantic security; it is an expansionist, authoritarian power fundamentally hostile to democratic governance, Western values, and the existence of Israel in the Middle East. Another wake up call. Opinion by Fern Sidman

For nearly half a century, the political capitals of the Western world have indulged in an unpardonable strategic delusion. They have meticulously maintained the comfortable fiction that Turkey is an indispensable, if somewhat recalcitrant, North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally. They have systematically turned a blind eye to imperialist expansionism, systemic domestic tyranny, and the methodical projection of radical Islamist influence across the globe.

Today, that luxury of strategic willful blindness is utterly shattered.

Decades of unheeded warnings have given way to an undeniable, overwhelming body of evidence. Turkey is no longer merely a "difficult NATO ally"; it is actively running a coordinated, multi-front campaign with Islamist education networks, influence operations in Washington, funding of Western voices to undermine United States policy, military positioning in Syria, and new alliances designed to encircle Israel.

The geographical epicenter of these early warnings remains Cyprus, which has been shouting this alarm since 1974 while most of the West ignored it. The fifty-two year illegal occupation of Cyprus stands as the first solid, unmistakable proof of Ankara’s revanchist ambitions. Yet, Western policymakers repeatedly looked the other way, choosing short-term transactional pragmatism over moral and strategic clarity.

The catastrophic consequences of that institutional cowardice are now laid bare across the entire international landscape, from the Mediterranean basin to the corridors of power in Western capitals.

When sovereign territory was annexed and its indigenous population displaced, the international community responded with muted diplomatic platitudes. That original sin of appeasement signaled to Ankara that Western commitments to territorial integrity and international law were entirely negotiable.

Under the autocratic, dictatorial rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has been systematically transformed from a secular republic into a centralized engine for ideological subversion and state-sponsored extremism.

Domestically, the regime has instituted a brutal reign of terror, marked by the systematic jailing and torture of journalists, political opponents, human rights advocates, and all dissenting voices who dare to challenge the state narrative. Freedom of the press has been totally eradicated, replaced by state-controlled media organs that broadcast hostility toward Western democratic institutions daily. The Turkish judiciary has been thoroughly purged of independent magistrates and re-engineered into an instrument of executive coercion.

Dissidents inside the country face indefinite detention under draconian anti-terror statutes, while those abroad are subjected to global harassment, rendition operations, and state-sanctioned intimidation campaigns. Externally, the regime aggressively exports this totalitarian ideology using massive allocations of state funds.

Consider the Turkish Maarif Foundation, an entity created directly by parliamentary statute to project political Islam across the globe. The Maarif Foundation has seized over 160 Gulen schools across dozens of countries and turned them into an Islamist school empire. This is political Islam exported with state money, a vast indoctrination infrastructure operating under the guise of international pedagogy.

Cyprus warned about this institutional expansionism for years, but foreign chancelleries dismissed the alerts, consistently choosing to look the other way while Ankara constructed a global ideological network. These academic institutions do not merely teach curriculum; they serve as regional hubs for ideological recruiting, state intelligence gathering, and the methodical cultivation of future political elites loyal to Ankara's pan-Islamist vision.

Simultaneously, Erdogan’s state apparatus has deployed its vast financial resources to conduct aggressive, covert influence operations explicitly aimed at dismantling American foreign policy in the Middle East. According to intelligence disclosures, a Central Intelligence Agency source revealed to political activist Laura Loomer that the Erdogan administration specifically directed spending to at least one female and one male podcaster to undermine the Trump administration’s Middle East agenda.

This targeted propaganda offensive is merely one facet of a much broader, highly sophisticated apparatus. Turkey remains the largest financier of the Muslim Brotherhood, and it is not a conspiracy theory-don't be fooled, it is documented influence work engineered to alter the strategic orientation of the Western world from within. By channeling vast sums through non-transparency conduits, front organizations, and compliant media figures, Ankara seeks to shape public discourse, erode Western support for traditional regional allies, and manipulate domestic political debates inside sovereign democratic states.

The reach of Ankara’s lobbying machinery in the capital of the United States has reached unprecedented, alarming proportions. Look at Washington today: American-Turkish non-governmental organizations logged 85 contacts with politicians, media, and people around prominent political commentator Tucker Carlson.

Erdogan’s machine has spent years building exactly the relationships needed for sanctions relief, fighter jets, and an end to support for the Kurds. The "shadow over Washington" is no longer subtle; it is an aggressive lobbying force working around the clock to neutralize American power while securing advanced weaponry like F-35 stealth fighters for a regime actively working against Western strategic interests. This coercive influence apparatus operates across congressional offices, influential think tanks, commercial entities, and public relations firms, ensuring that Turkish state priorities receive a favorable hearing regardless of which political party holds power in the White House or Congress.

Most dangerously, Turkey has established itself as the primary state sponsor and safe haven for Hamas terrorists, openly hosting its operational leaders, providing financial pipelines, issuing citizenships, providing diplomatic passports, and endorsing their ultimate objective: the total destruction of the State of Israel.

High-ranking commanders of terrorist networks operate openly out of offices in Istanbul, coordinating logistics, laundering money through Turkish banking institutions, and planning lethal operations with total state immunity.

Erdogan’s rhetoric and state policy do not merely criticize Israeli defensive actions; they actively champion the total annihilation of the Jewish state, offering material aid, intelligence support, and diplomatic cover to jihadist factions dedicated to mass murder and destabilization. By granting official state legitimacy to groups designated as terrorist organizations by the United States and the European Union, Ankara has effectively aligned its national defense strategy with the foot soldiers of radical violent extremism.

On the ground, this ideological enmity has manifested as a direct, aggressive military escalation aimed at altering the regional balance of power. Turkey is expanding its military presence across Syria and pushing as close to Israel as possible. The geopolitical intent behind these troop movements is transparent to any serious military analyst.

Through the establishment of illegal occupation zones, fortified outposts, and the integration of radical Syrian militias into auxiliary forces, Ankara is creating an unyielding territorial foothold. Israel’s targeted strike on Abu Dhur airport in Idlib was a warning shot across the Turkish bow, not a Syrian one. It was a direct, unambiguous signal that Jerusalem recognizes the encroaching menace on its northern border and will not permit an aggressive military cordon to tighten around its territory.

Furthermore, the Mecca joint defense agreement signed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan represents the opening move of an encirclement strategy, with Lebanon serving as the northern gateway to encircle the Jewish state and isolate it from regional partners. This multilateral defense framework seeks to consolidate military capabilities, share advanced technology, and project collective power across traditional geopolitical fault lines.

While Egypt rightfully refused to participate in this hostile arrangement, the map is not theoretical; it represents an active blueprint for geopolitical dominance. By establishing forward operating capabilities and securing maritime corridors across the Eastern Mediterranean, Turkey aims to sever Israel's strategic access to Europe and dominate energy reserves throughout the region.

It is crucial to recognize the unique and unprecedented nature of the Turkish threat compared to historical adversaries in the region. Iran’s regime is ideological, battered, and its proxies have been hammered by relentless military countermeasures. Iran operates from a position of economic isolation and structural military vulnerability.

Turkey is something else entirely though: a NATO member, Islamist projector, Washington lobbyist, and now regional coordinator. It leverages its formal inclusion in the Western security alliance as an impenetrable shield to insulate itself from accountability while sabotaging Western security priorities from the inside. It exploits the consensus-based decision-making structures of NATO to block vital cooperative initiatives, delay alliance expansion, and extort diplomatic concessions from sovereign partners. It demands access to fifth-generation F-35 fighters, demands that international economic sanctions be lifted, and demands that the West abandon the Kurds-all while it constructs the next corridor of Islamist hegemony.

The evidence is no longer hidden in classified intelligence briefings or restricted to diplomatic cables; the rest is now completely public: schools, money, lobbying, bases, and military pacts. The historical record is crystal clear, extending from the occupied towns of Northern Cyprus to the halls of the United States Congress and the battlefields of northern Syria.

Western leaders can no longer claim ignorance nor hide behind the bureaucratic inertia of cold war alliance structures. The foundational assumptions that guided Western policy toward Ankara for the past seventy years have proven utterly false. Turkey under Erdogan is not a democratic bridge between East and West, nor is it a reliable pillar of transatlantic security; it is an expansionist, authoritarian power fundamentally hostile to democratic governance, Western values, and the existence of sovereign partners in the Middle East.

The question is no longer whether Turkey is dangerous; it is whether the West will keep pretending it is an ally while the facts pile up. To continue granting NATO legitimacy, military technology, state-of-the-art intelligence, and diplomatic protection to Erdogan's despotic regime is an act of strategic suicide for the Western world and a direct, existential threat to the survival of Israel.

The time for diplomatic appeasement, transactional compromises, and willful blindness has passed. Western nations must confront the reality of the Turkish threat, revoke privileged defense access, enforce rigorous economic countermeasures, and dismantle the influence networks operating within their own borders before the strategic damage becomes irreversible.

Fern Sidman, a former NY correspondent for Arutz Sheva, is the current editor-in-chief of The Jewish Voice, a New York based publication. Her writings can be accessed at tjvnews.com

Ancient Jerusalem Water System

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/432036

Ancient Jerusalem water system opens to visitors

Solomon's Pools takes a major step toward opening to the public, offering visitors a rare look at the ancient system that supplied Jerusalem during the Second Temple period

     Solomon's Pools

The Efrat Local Council, in cooperation with the Etzion Regional Brigade, has successfully completed the first pilot program allowing organized tour groups to visit Solomon's Pools.

Until now, bringing groups into the site required complex coordination. However, following a government decision allocating 10 million shekels to make the site permanently accessible, a new framework has been introduced.

At the current stage, predetermined dates are being announced - currently once a week - allowing groups to enter with advance registration through travel agents, educational tour organizations, and tour guides. The ultimate goal is to open the site freely to the public every day.

Efrat Council head Dov Shefler explained: "For two years, we have worked in close cooperation with the military to bring groups into this important site, but that is not enough for it to become a genuine tourist attraction that realizes the enormous tourism potential of the water system that supplied Jerusalem during the Second Temple period. An event organized by the local council is nice and important, but that is not tourism. Our role as a local authority is to remove obstacles and allow the tourism market to do its job.

"Therefore, we recently coordinated with the Etzion Brigade Commander to publish dates, currently once a week, on which travel agents, educational tour organizations, and tour guides will be able to bring organized groups into the Solomon's Pools complex. This is only the first stage, with the ultimate goal of reaching a situation in which the site is freely open to visitors every day."

The council's tourism adviser, Hezki Betzalel, noted that two groups from educational institutions participated in the first tour, alongside a group of tourists from the US.

The largest group in the pilot was organized by the Harei Gofna educational institute in Neve Tzuf and was guided by Dr. Azriel Yechezkel, who researched the ancient water system as part of his doctoral studies.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/432036

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/166627

Passover Hike to Solomon’s Pools

Solomon’s Pools supplied water to Jerusalem for nearly 2,000 years.

     Lower Pool

The ancient set of pools supplied the Jewish capital with drinking water for centuries

Solomon’s Pools are comprised of five monumental Herodian pools and an aqueduct which fed water to the city of Jerusalem for nearly 2,000 years. 

They are located in south-central Judea about 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) southwest of Bethlehem.

Roman engineers under King Herod created the underground tunnel feeding the upper pool -- the aqueduct -- in connection with Herod's improvements to the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

The upgrades were so sophisticated and so well-constructed that the system worked all the way through the centuries – until 1971 – when modern plumbing took over for the ancients.

“Finally, under IDF security we are able to return to the beloved lands of our heritage surrendered to the Palestinian Authority after the Oslo Accords."

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/166627