“We are committed, Tzipi Livni and I, to preserve Jerusalem as our capital, and to ensure its future and to preserve this holy place, and to ensure that we maintain Jerusalem,” Herzog declared. “We will do everything so that it is not torn and divided, we will strive for its social character and for the fact that Jerusalem is not just stones.”

Livni echoed Herzog’s vow to keep the plaza under Israeli control.“We commit that — no matter what — it will remain ours, of the Jewish people, that it will remain under the jurisdiction of the state of Israel,” she said. The fate of the Old City of Jerusalem is one of the issues at the heart of the right-left divide of Israeli politics and peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

Muslim extremists have been upping their violent campaign against Jewish visits to the Temple Mount in recent months, claiming that the presence of religious Jews is tantamount to an "invasion" which "defiles" the Al Aqsa mosque complex there. But while the sight of Jews quietly touring the Temple Mount is considered a "provocation" (Jews are forbidden to pray there, despite it being Judaism's holiest site, as authorities fear an Islamist backlash), the use of the Al Aqsa mosque for an extreme sport is apparently no problem for the Waqf Islamic trust which administers the site.

A video uploaded to YouTube Sunday shows a man giving a public "Parkour" performance on top of the mosque, clambering and leaping around the top of the structure as crowds of Muslim visitors look on. The tame response of Muslim worshipers stands in sharp contrast to the overt aggression often faced by Jewish visitors, who on occasion have been physically attacked by Islamists just for being there.

Jewish Temple Mount activists have lamented the way in which Muslim worshipers treated the site in the past, particularly the use of the Temple Mount plaza as a soccer pitch.

The event was made possible by Israel’s reinstating a policy allowing hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza to visit the Temple Mount every Friday for weekly Muslim prayer services. Following the 2007 Hamas takeover of Gaza, Israel stopped allowing weekly visits by Muslim worshippers. In October, the government inexplicably reversed that decision.

The Temple Mount of late has been increasingly used as a platform from which to call for the eradication of Israel and support for radical jihadist groups like ISIS.

Verbal and even physical attacks, over the past few months, are on the rise, for example, arson attacks against mosques. Muslims are being submitted to massive pressure: Parallel to the "war on terror," unleashed after 9/11, Islamophobic propaganda significantly intensified also in Germany, including government measures such as indiscriminate dragnets against Muslims.

Right-wing extremist organizations are increasingly expressing their racism with the more fashionable Islamophobia, while Islamophobic prejudices are beginning to take deep root in the German population. According to a recent survey, such positions have led to a greater "readiness for action."

Yet if the Vatican has long practiced a methodical, discreet brand of diplomacy, what has changed under Francis — or has been restored — is a vision of diplomatic boldness, a willingness to take risks and insert the Vatican into diplomatic disputes, especially where it can act as an independent broker.

Even as the Vatican has spent decades building trust in Cuba, and working steadily to break down the impasse with the United States, it was Francis who took the fateful risks — writing secret letters to President Obama and President Raúl Castro of Cuba, and then offering the Vatican for a secret and critical meeting between both sides in October.

The comparison now cited by many analysts is with Pope John Paul II. If the two popes are not always simpatico on ideology, both men have understood how to use the papacy in a global media age and use the power of personal biography to help position the Vatican as a neutral broker.

Yet, judging from his itinerary, Francis is pushing to establish the Vatican as a trusted diplomatic broker. In less than two years as pope, he has already traveled to the Middle East, Turkey, South Korea, Brazil, Albania, France and the Italian island of Lampedusa, where he called attention to the plight of migrants. Next month, he will travel to Sri Lanka and the Philippines, and next fall he will make his first visit to the United States.

Cardinal Jaime Ortega, the archbishop of Havana, is credited with adroitly navigating the difficult role of defending the church against government persecution, even as he kept contacts alive with the Cuban authorities. In the end, though, it was Francis who helped engineer the final breakthrough. “Francis has brought back the Holy See on the international stage,” said Marco Politi, an author and veteran Vatican analyst.

In his words to the German Church leaders, the Pope said half a century of significant progress in the dialogue between Lutherans and Catholics is grounded in sincere friendship and growing cooperation between the two communities. He said the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, signed 15 years ago in the Bavarian city of Augsburg, is a milestone which enables us to continue with confidence along the ecumenical journey which St John Paul II described as an essential task of the Catholic Church.

Noting how the bells in all cathedrals across Germany were rung last month to mark the 50th anniversary of the Vatican II decree on ecumenism, the Pope said we must celebrate past progress, while looking towards the future with hope. While the goal of full unity sometimes seems to be clouded by different views of the nature of Church, Pope Francis said we must never resign ourselves but rather be focused on the next step forward.

Finally Pope Francis looked ahead to the fifth centenary of the Reformation which Lutherans and Catholics will be commemorating together in 2017, not as “a triumphalistic celebration”, but as a “profession of our common faith in the One, Triune God”. He said may this event encourage us all, with the help of God and the support of the Holy Spirit, to take further steps towards reconciliation and unity.

In many ways the story could hardly be a better metaphor for American foreign policy in the past few years. After almost a decade of reckless, ham-fisted over-stretch under George W Bush — typified by this month’s appalling revelations about the CIA’s torture programme — the US has turned inwards. Obama’s policy in Syria and Ukraine has been a shambles, his attitude to Russia is dithering and pusillanimous, and he seems entirely bereft of ideas about how to fight back against the jihadists of Islamic State. In this context, therefore, Sony’s surrender to the North Koreans merely looks like more of the same.

Until a year ago, Ukraine remained non-aligned between the two great European powers. But the EU wanted its land, its 48 million people (such a reservoir of cheap labour!) its Black Sea coast, its coal and its wheat. So first, it spent £300 million (some of it yours) on anti-Russian ‘civil society’ groups in Ukraine. Then EU and Nato politicians broke all the rules of diplomacy and descended on Kiev to take sides with demonstrators who demanded that Ukraine align itself with the EU.

Imagine how you’d feel if Russian politicians had appeared in Edinburgh in September urging the Scots to vote for independence, or if Russian money had been used to fund pro-independence organisations. Then a violent crowd (20 police officers died at its hands, according to the UN) drove the elected president from office, in violation of the Ukrainian constitution.

During all this process, Ukraine remained what it had been from the start – horrendously corrupt and dominated by shady oligarchs, pretty much like Russia. If you didn’t want to take sides in this mess, I wouldn’t at all blame you. But most people seem to be doing so. If anyone really is trying to punish the Russian people for being patriotic, by debauching the rouble, I cannot imagine anything more irresponsible. It was the destruction of the German mark in 1922, and the wipeout of the middle class that resulted, which led directly to Hitler.

Stupid, ill-informed people nowadays like to compare Mr Putin with Hitler. I warn them and you that, if we succeed in overthrowing Mr Putin by unleashing hyper-inflation in Russia, we may find out what a Russian Hitler is really like. And that a war in Europe is anything but fun. So, as it’s almost Christmas, let us sing with some attention that bleakest and yet loveliest of carols, It Came Upon The Midnight Clear, stressing the lines that run ‘Man at war with man hears not the love song which they bring. Oh, hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing’.

Or gloat at your peril over the scenes of panic in Moscow.

Again, we hear in the news that the Israeli police have arrested a Jewish man who tried taking a candle onto the Temple Mount during Hanukkah. Forty-seven years after the liberation of the Mount by the IDF, what does the famous quote by General Motta Gur mean – Har Habayit Beyadeinu, “the Temple Mount is in our hands”? As we light Hanukkah candles each night of the holiday of Hanukkah, we say blessings thanking God for His miracles in those days – the days of the Maccabees – and at this time.

I think that the time has come that the State of Israel apply full Israeli sovereignty on the most holy place for the Jewish people, and allow Jews freedom of prayer on the Temple Mount. That would be a true expression of the miracles that took place in those days and at this time. Chag sameach.

Analysts have pointed out that the two designs hew very closely to two Lockheed Martin products — the F-35 joint strike fighter and the company’s radar offering for the Air Force’s Three Dimensional Expeditionary Long-Range Radar (3DELRR) competition, respectively. Reports of a major cyber breach of Lockheed’s programs by Chinese hackers have been around since April 2009, and a general consensus has emerged across industry that China’s military has benefited from that information.

That kind of infiltration is costing US industries billions of dollars, warned Brett Lambert, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for manufacturing and industrial base policy, during November’s NATO Industry Forum in Split, Croatia. “No one has been hit harder on a seismic scale than US industry,” he said, citing estimates that the US has lost $300 billion in intellectual property, with much of it coming from the defense industry.