According to MEMRI, members of the group issued a call to the ‘Islamic nation’ and the army of Pakistan to liberate ‘al Quds’ (Jerusalem) from ‘Jewish filth.’

“Where is the Caliph of the Muslims? Don’t you care that the Jews are defiling the place of the Prophet’s nocturnal journey with their filth? The Jews are the most hostile people towards the believers… They conquered Jerusalem,” called the rally activists.

“O people of Pakistan! O people of Islam! The place of the Prophet’s ascent to Heaven is calling for your help! What are you doing? The Al Aqsa Mosque calls for your support! Will you heed the call?”

“O Pakistani Army! America wants to destroy you. America is your enemy. Free yourselves from subordination to it. This is the call of Hizb Al-Tahrir: Advance with your mighty army to Jerusalem. You are worthy of the honor of liberating it.”

The Holy See has no hard power. The Pope can’t tax or arrest the estimated 1.2 billion adherents of the Catholic Church. His only influence over them is voluntary, driven by powerful images and narratives of redemption and belonging. In an important sense, then, the Pope is a symbol, a stand-in for a higher reality, and all his statements and actions are consciously undertaken as part of his symbolic role.

So when the Palestinian Authority brought the Pope to a concrete-walled portion of Israel’s West Bank security fence, he was hardly confused by the intentions of his hosts. They wanted to create a symbol, and he, a master of symbolism, gave it to them willingly. The Pope’s visit, together with the repeated mention of the “State of Palestine” in Vatican press releases and in the pontiff’s own speeches, quickly set Twitter atwitter with the predictable cheering and hand-wringing.

Yet while the Palestinians claimed the Pope for their own, one Palestinian official noted to the press that the visit to the wall was engineered because the Pope’s Israeli itinerary included, for the first time, an explicit Vatican recognition of the justice of Zionism, in the form of the first papal visit to the tomb of Zionism’s founder Theodor Herzl — something no previous Pope, and no Palestinian leader, had done before.

And in the wake of the visit to the wall, the Pope was invited by Israel to the national memorial for terror victims — with Israeli leaders noting that over 1,000 Israelis were killed in Palestinian suicide bombings by the time the government decided to build fences and walls between Israelis and Palestinians.

This time, too, the Pope acquiesced, even delivering live on Israeli national TV news a brief but strident rejection of terrorism.

By the time he left the region on Tuesday, Pope Francis had gone out of his way to accept both sides’ narrative. Unlike previous Popes or more junior Vatican officials, Francis did not hedge or equivocate for a moment. He signalled without hesitation his belief that the Palestinians are traumatized by occupation and deserving of long-denied national freedom, and simultaneously that the Jews of Israel are victims of indiscriminate violence who also deserve to live as a free people in their land.

Pope Francis commented: “Every time we put behind us longstanding prejudices and find the courage to build new fraternal relationships, we confess that Christ is truly risen!”. Patriarch Bartholomew drew attention to a wider vision inspired by the place of the tomb of Christ: “history cannot be programmed; that the ultimate word in history does not belong to man, but to God. In vain did guards of the secular power watch over this tomb. In vain did they place a very large stone against the door of the tomb, so that none could roll it away.

“This Declaration sets the course once for more ecumenical activity in a number of areas, it places the Church of Christ at the heart of the world’s life in dialogue and activity, in mission and prayer. As a Greek-Catholic, it is heartening because it once again reminds the world that the Church of Christ cannot fully live unless she ‘breathes with both lungs’, as that famous phrase of the Melkite Patriarch Maximos IV puts it! In the West we have many Eastern Churches including those from the Middle East. Time to really get to know them!

Christ is Risen: He is Risen indeed!!”

Dore Gold, a key security advisor to PM Netanyahu, wrote a 2011 article entitled "The West Bank Airspace, the Forgotten Factor of Israeli Security," which iterated Langfan’s central point. "Indeed, Israeli security experts still insist that no matter where borders are ultimately drawn, Israel must control the airspace over the entire West Bank in any future peace arrangements. Brigadier General (reserve) Udi Dekel, who as a former air force officer headed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s negotiating team with the Palestinians, has made this very point.

He wrote a few months ago that Israel must have 'control over a unified airspace… which cannot be divided.' Gold concluded his 2011 article by echoing Langfan’s very words that Israel “must make absolutely certain that Israel retain control of the West Bank’s airspace, over which there is a strong security consensus that it must be retained by Israel and not divided with the Palestinians.”

Langfan simply observes, “Any Israeli security officer who thinks that the Palestinians will ‘agree’ to allowing Israel to ‘retain’ the airspace of the West Bank is delusional.”

Pope Francis was then addressed by Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, Rabbi of the Kotel and the Holy Sites, and heard him speak proudly of the Jews’ history, of their exile and redemption. “The Jerusalem you have arrived at, honored Pope, is not only the physical Jerusalem. It is also the Jerusalem of dreams; the dream of millions of Jews throughout two thousand long years of exile. Jerusalem is a dream that has been realized; we are still walking in it as dreamers, expecting the full realization of the dream,” said Rabbi Rabinowitz.

Relating to the destruction of the Second Temple, Rabbi Rabinowitz spoke of Titus’s Arch in Rome, which depicts the exile of the Jews. “It is true, Titus succeeded in taking the Menorah (candelabrum) and the tools of the Temple; but the light of faith, and the hope to return to the land of our fathers, he was not successful in extinguishing,” he remarked. “We have traveled a long road on the way home; we have journeyed from the four corners of the land.”

Possibly hinting to Christian persecution, Rabbi Rabinowitz said: “For two thousand years we have had our fill of scorn and sadness, but every day we prayed and believed ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’ We merited a great miracle to return here after a long exile and a horrifying Holocaust. Thank God, the People of Israel live on, in the Land of Israel.”

Parallel to the Pope’s visit, The Temple Institute in Jerusalem, which educates about the Temple and actually prepares for the building of the Third Temple, released a statement demanding that the Pope return the vessels of the Temple. Under the title ‘Give Back the Vessels’, the statement read: “Today the Pope is in Jerusalem, and we demand: Return at once the Holy Temple vessels stolen by Titus in 70 CE and later hidden away in the Vatican where they have remained for over 1000 years. In your own words, Pope Francis, the situation is “increasingly unacceptable.” Return the stolen vessels at once!”

Artifacts said to be transferred to the religious city-state via the Roman Emperor include the shulchan (Showbread table), the menorah (candelabra), several priestly garments, and others. More than just an 1800 year-old report, there is recent evidence that the Vatican still has these vessels in its possession, he argued, citing the testimony of several 19th and twentieth century Rabbis.

Rabbi Shtenzel spoke at length about the personal experiences of Rabbi Israel Miller, a Satmar Hasid from Jerusalem who visited the Vatican and stated that he had seen several of the Temple vessels in person, and of former Religious Affairs Minister Professor Shimon Shitrit, who stated several years ago that Italian academics had contacted him about the vessels. The information later led to a diplomatic falling-out between the Religious Affairs Ministry and Pope John Paul II; yet the Vatican still remains quiet over the fate of the vessels.

Rabbi Shtenzel argues that the Israeli government is too passive in its handling of the issue of the vessels, choosing to smooth over relations instead of demanding answers on the objects which could spark the building of a Third Temple.

The Rabbi also turned to religious leaders, as well, noting that while meeting with the Pope - who, by traditional Jewish laws, represents an idolatrous sect - is problematic, the issue of the whereabouts of the Temple vessels is too urgent to overlook. He stated that if the Vatican continues to deny involvement with the Second Temple artifacts, Israel should turn to more meaningful channels to procure them.

Pope Francis knows full well where the vessels are, the Rabbi claimed, lamenting that "diplomatic evasion" is the status quo. The Vatican is concerned, according to Shtenzel, that they will be brought to the Hague over the issue and be forced to give the artifacts back to the Jewish people.

Jerusalem's mayor, Nir Barkat, also spoke at the Jerusalem Day ceremony, where he placed an emphasis on the unique role of the city in Jewish and Israeli identity. "The first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, said that 'if there is a soul to Israel - Jerusalem is the soul of Israel'," Barkat noted. "Jerusalem has become once again, in recent years, not only Israel's soul - but Israel's beating heart."

"Jerusalem is once again becoming increasingly relevant to the people of Israel," he added. "The Zionist movement is back again in Jerusalem, where young people are taking responsibility for the direction and influence of the Jewish people in the future."

"We can see that young people are beginning to believe in Jerusalem again," the mayor reflected. "The polls reflect that Jerusalem is a city where the residents are most satisfied in this country."

Following the elections MEPs are pushing to install Jean-Claude Juncker, one of the last prominent supporters of a United States of Europe, as president of the European Commission. Mr Cameron clashed with François Hollande, the French president, who has refused to accept that his crushing European election defeat at the hands of Marine Le Pen's Front National mean that the EU should scale back ambitions to create a deeper political union. "They did not vote against Europe but for a Europe that works," he said. "There are some countries that don't want any of the candidates."

The EU assembly has insisted that Mr Juncker should get the job because he was the spitzenkandidat, or leading candidate, of the European People's Party (EPP) which won most seats in Europe-wide elections. Following Mr Cameron's warning that appointing the former leader of Luxembourg would fuel the wave of popular hostility that swept UKIP and the French Front National to victory in European elections last weekend, Angela Merkel backed away from Mr Juncker.

Quietly knifing Mr Juncker, who she has previously given lukewarm support to, the German chancellor warned that there was no legal basis for him to automatically get the job. The Lisbon Treaty only requires European leaders to "take account" of EU elections and does not allow MEPs to nominate a candidate. "As a member of the EPP, I supported Jean-Claude Juncker as our candidate for the presidency of the European Commission and I haven't forgotten that. But I still have to respect the treaty. You can't break a treaty for party political promises," she said after five hours of talks. "So we do have to look at a somewhat broader tableau of suitable persons."

A statement agreed by EU leaders did not mention Mr Juncker by name after Hungary, Sweden, Holland, Denmark and Italy swung behind Mr Cameron to stop the power of choosing who serves in the EU's top job being taken away from heads of government and given to MEPs. The parliament's other main candidates are Martin Schulz, the Socialist German speaker of the parliament and Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister and leader of the European liberals. All are federalists and are virtually unknown outside Brussels or their native countries.

There may be a further shaking of heads when they discover one of the participants at the heavily fortified, five-star Marriott Hotel in Copenhagen, Denmark, will be Keith Alexander, the former director of the National Security Agency (NSA), which was embarrassed by the mass-surveillance revelations leaked by Edward Snowden. In fairness to the Bilderberg, the organisers of this year’s conference – which starts on Thursday – have made efforts to be more transparent by publishing a list of all the prime ministers, chief executives and military chiefs in attendance, as well as the topics up for discussion.

Despite its new efforts at transparency, the conference is still acutely sensitive about radical infiltration. On Tuesday night, three journalists – self-styled “InfoWarriors” – were arrested by Danish police after they tried to ambush the organisers outside the Marriott.