“It is not enough to wait and pray for the Third Temple,” the statement added. “It is a Biblical obligation to build it.” According to Rabbi Chaim Richman, the institute’s international director, the temple would stand in the present location of the Dome of the Rock, a Muslim shrine. Muslims revere the mount as the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary. That makes the concept anathema to the Islamic world and would likely spark widespread worldwide controversy if it ever got off the ground. Richman did not set a target date for breaking ground for the construction project. The temple will be built, he told JTA, when “the world will want us to build the temple.”

“The Jewish people have a responsibility to all of humanity, including Islam,” Richman said. “I don’t expect it to come about through any sort of confrontation or any sort of military maneuver. The Jews have to represent good in the world, light in the world.” The Indiegogo campaign is tied to the upcoming fast of Tisha b’Av, which mourns the First and Second Temples’ destruction. Richman quoted the verse in Isaiah calling the temple “a house of prayer for all nations.”

But recently, the Temple Mount has been the scene of confrontation. Palestinian groups have repeatedly protested Jewish groups visiting the mount in recent weeks. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told JTA that on Saturday, a group of Palestinian rioters burned and heavily damaged the police stand on the mount.

Referring to these incidents, Richman said the mount “is overrun by terrorists. This is a tangible fact.” He said rebuilding the temple is the next step to Israel’s current military operation in the Gaza Strip. “We cannot be the people we’re supposed to be without the Holy Temple,” he said. “So what if we root out the [Gaza] tunnels and missiles? Then what are we doing with our lives? The redemption of humanity is dependent on the Jewish people.”

Kerry himself, in a speech to the Center for American Progress, noted the criticism but did not give ground. "Make no mistake, when the people of Israel are rushing to bomb shelters, when innocent Israeli and Palestinian teenagers are abducted and murdered, when hundreds of innocent civilians have lost their lives, I will and we will make no apologies for our engagement," he said.

The coordinated pushback in Washington came amid growing US frustration with Israel as Palestinian civilian casualties mount amid a sustained Israeli air and ground war in the Gaza Strip. In recent days, US officials have been using subtle yet noticeably tougher language in pressing Israel to accept an immediate and unconditional humanitarian cease-fire. The US has made little progress in achieving that objective. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised speech Monday that his country must be ready for "a prolonged campaign" against Hamas in Gaza.

As Kerry returned from the region over the weekend, Israeli media commentators leveled almost nonstop criticism of his attempts to bring Qatar and Turkey — two countries viewed by Israel as strong Hamas supporters — into the cease-fire negotiations. Kerry was also accused of abandoning some of Israel's key demands during the negotiations, including demilitarizing Gaza.

In trying to implement the cease-fire over the weekend, "US Secretary of State of State John Kerry ruined everything," wrote columnist Ari Shavit in Monday's Haaretz, Israel's leading liberal newspaper. "Very senior officials in Jerusalem described the proposal that Kerry put on the table as a 'strategic terrorist attack.'"

A wiser course, which Kerry rejected in his hunt for a quick diplomatic solution, would have been to negotiate the cease-fire through the Palestinian Authority, as part of its future role as the government of Gaza. Hamas agreed last April to bring the authority back to Gaza as part of a unity agreement with Fatah that was brokered by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Kerry has been motivated by two understandable short-term needs: First, he wants to stop the horrific slaughter in Gaza, with its heavy loss of life among Palestinian civilians, including children. Second, he seeks to fulfill the instructions of President Obama, who wants an immediate cease-fire and has become skeptical about solving the knotted Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Kerry’s approach has ignited a firestorm in Israel, with commentators left and right accusing him of taking Hamas’s side and betraying Israel. That criticism is unfair, and it prompted a complaint Sunday from Obama in a phone call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Kerry’s mistake isn’t any bias against Israel but rather a bias in favor of an executable, short-term deal.

Friends we have been praying 3 times a day for 1,947 years for the reconstruction of the Temple. If only 1 person prayed 3 times a day for the last 1,947 years that would amount to 2,131,965 prayers for the rebuilding of the Temple! Since we know that millions of Jews in every generation have uttered these prayers, its number can only be counted like the stars in the sky and sand on the beaches of the earth. IF WE DO NOT TAKE PHYSICAL ACTIONS TO BUILD IT; IT WILL NEVER BE BUILT!!!

Now the time has come to physically prepare so that we may be shown a good sign! I call upon each and every one of you to take a moment and stop crying over the Temple and start doing something to rebuild it! THE DEBATE IS FINISHED - WE ARE BUILDING THE TEMPLE!!!

Youssef - who left Hamas and converted to Christianity after becoming disillusioned and serving for a period as an Israeli spy - added that there was no way for Israel to reach any kind of compromise with Hamas, whose very charter calls for the destruction of the State of Israel and whose leaders have repeatedly called for the extermination of the Jewish people.

"Hamas is not seeking coexistence and compromise - Hamas is seeking conquest and taking over," Yousef insisted. But he went further to describe Hamas as part of an imperialist force seeking to establish an Islamic super-state - much like the so-called "Islamic State", formerly known as ISIS, which seized control of much of Iraq and Syria.

"The destruction of the State of Israel is not Hamas's final destination. Hamas's final destination is building the Islamic khlifa (Caliphate) - which means an Islamic state on the rubble of every other civilization. These are the ultimate goals of the movement." Yousef recalled how he was taught "since the age of five" that establishing an Islamic state couldn't be achieved "without shedding innocent blood", and expressed pity for the children of Gaza who, he said, have little choice but to follow Hamas.

Among the most shocking aspects of Lloyds’ behaviour is that much of it took place after the 2008 banking collapse, when it depended for its very existence on taxpayer support. By a breathtaking twist, its traders even tried to rig the rescue fund — the Bank of England’s Special Liquidity Scheme. And since we still own 25 per cent of Lloyds’ shares, the British people are ultimately losers from yesterday’s thumping cash penalty.

Yesterday, Mark Carney said Lloyds’ behaviour was ‘clearly unlawful and may amount to criminal conduct on the part of the individuals involved’. This is very strong and explicit language, especially coming from the Governor of the Bank of England. It brands the staff of one of the largest financial institutions in this country as lawbreakers, as also were those involved in the Libor scandal at Barclays, RBS, JP Morgan, Citigroup and all the other big names that have paid fines.

But if those who ran the Libor rackets were lawbreakers, why has nobody been in the dock at the Old Bailey? Come to that, why has not a single banker since the crash of 2008 yet gone behind bars for committing deceits which brought the financial system of the Western world to its knees?

If an editor can go to prison, a bank boss should do likewise if he or she is found to have presided over a culture of criminality, such as Mark Carney identifies at Lloyds in the context of the Libor scandal. The financial services industry has become such a central part of our economy, with such power over all our lives, that it is essential we should regain control of its affairs and enforce justice against its villains. We must find means to police wrongdoing that seems endemic through the system.

Kerry’s mistakes are embarrassing. A senior official in Washington on Sunday rushed to explain to Israeli reporters that the framework — the key terms of which were first published by The Times of Israel, and which then appeared in full on other media outlets — was but a draft that summed up a series of consultations between Kerry and the foreign ministers of Qatar and Turkey, Khalid al-Attiyah and Ahmet Davutoglu. But this is where the mistake begins: The US administration gambled on the camp that supports Hamas, bankrolls it and pushes it to go on shooting.

Kerry and his staff made an outrageous decision to turn their backs on the Egyptian framework for a ceasefire in a manner that encouraged Hamas to continue shooting rockets. This first mistake was exposed by none other than the political leader of the organization, Khaled Mashaal, who said in a press conference in Doha, the Qatari capital, that Kerry had turned to al-Attiyah and Davutoglu two days after the Israeli operation in Gaza began and asked them to push for a ceasefire. At the time, Kerry knew full well that a major Egyptian effort was underway to persuade Hamas to stop firing immediately. By turning to Doha and Ankara behind the backs of Cairo and Jerusalem, Washington — no doubt unintentionally — strengthened Hamas’s resolve against Egypt and Israel.

But the mistakes didn’t stop there. The farce continued with the amateurish draft that was immediately rejected by Israel’s security cabinet; it then reached new heights on Saturday in Paris, when Kerry decided to participate in an international summit on Gaza, attended by his new friends al-Attiyah and Davutoglu as well as the foreign ministers of the European Union, but not by a few players that Kerry apparently perceives as marginal – representatives of Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and, of course, Israel.

It’s hard to say what caused the Obama administration to join forces with the Muslim Brotherhood of all camps — loyally represented by Turkey and Qatar — and turn its back on the movement’s sworn enemy, the Egyptian government. The best case scenario is that it might have been amateurism or a misreading of the situation. In a less ideal scenario, Washington decided to forge an alliance with organizations and entities that would be happy to see Israel disappear from the map. I prefer to bet on the first option, the one that was discussed with such ridicule by the senior Israeli and Palestinian officials — that Kerry just doesn’t understand who’s playing against whom in the Wild Mideast.

Every nation has a story. Israel's is that Arabs have long been unwilling to negotiate with the Jewish state, and that terrorists among the Palestinians want to destroy it. For decades, three significant factors helped make this the dominant Middle East narrative. First, it's correct, at least when applied to the dangerous minority of Palestinians. Second, elite opinion-makers, including journalists and politicians in the West, embraced and amplified the Israeli case. Finally, public opinion in the West, and particularly in the United States, firmly supported Israel.

In the United States, younger Americans are far less likely to say Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip are justified. According to Gallup, these are the percentages of Americans who support the Israeli position, grouped by age: 55 percent of those over 65; 53 percent of those between 50 and 64; 36 percent of those 30-49; and just 25 percent of those 18-29.

Again, none of this is intended to suggest that Israel should bow to Hamas's demands. Israelis must defend themselves. Neither is this a case for or against Israel completing its current mission to shutter terrorists' tunnels and silence the rockets. Rather, it's a warning that Israel's decades-old public relations and political dominance is coming to an end unless the nation's leaders change the narrative and reset their strategic position with moderate Palestinians.

Now, organizations like the Telos Group and the large Christian nonprofit World Vision have joined a small army of ministers and Christian opinion-makers working to reorient Evangelicals’ stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — producing documentaries about the plight of Palestinian Christians, providing theological rationale for a more “balanced” view of the issue, and taking Evangelicals on trips to the Middle East.

The campaign has alarmed America’s most committed Christian supporters of Israel, who acknowledge their rivals’ message is gaining momentum within the church. Support for Israel is weakening among evangelical Christians, prompting a new struggle for the hearts and minds of younger members of America’s largest pro-Israel demographic group.

You may find such calculations callous. They certainly pale in comparison to heart-wrenching photos of dead children on the beach. But they matter a whole lot: If you’ve ever read Robert Caro’s The Power Broker, or played Sim City, or just looked out of your window and paid attention to your city’s changing skyline, you know that urban leaders are measured not by what they say but by what they build. And Hamas, almost exclusively, chose to build tunnels, bunkers, and launching pads for missiles.

Now, from a purely military point of view, there is something brilliant about transforming a strip of coastal farmland into a giant concrete aircraft carrier that’s impossible for your enemy to sink. But the idea that Hamas’ tunnels are intended to promote the welfare of Gaza’s 1.8 million civilians, who are forced to live on deck as rockets are fired, is bunk. If the tunnels were truly lifelines for Gazans, as Western apologists occasionally argue, one might expect any reasonably responsible leadership to avoid firing barrages of rockets at civilians inside Israel.

We are left with a harsh realization that makes so many of us, good liberal Jews reared on the principle that nothing stands outside the realm of reason, deeply uncomfortable: There’s no negotiating with Hamas. Not because of some lofty and abstract principle — we don’t negotiate with terrorists! — but because Hamas isn’t here to talk or build or heal the wounded people of Gaza. The organization’s raison d’etre is killing people in order to bring about the rule of its fundamentalist and radically intolerant brand of Islam — they shoot Jews, and they also shoot anyone else the organizations doesn’t like, including Egyptian soldiers, gays, and political opponents from other Palestinian factions.

Anyone with a genuine commitment to human rights — not to mention sympathy for the Palestinian cause — should join Israel in its efforts to rid the world of such sheer evil and topple Hamas. To leave Hamas in power is not a moderate solution to anything. It is to become complicit in the agenda and the actions of a terrorist organization in inflicting terrible and continuing pain not only on its neighbors but also on its own people.