In 2013 alone the NII paid out NIS 453 million in benefits to victims and their families. Last night, at the start of Memorial Day, hundreds of victims of terrorism and their families came together for a special event in Jerusalem. This year's memorial service hit headlines in recent days, after some bereaved families called on those government officials - including the Prime Minister - who had voted in favor of the recent release of nearly one hundred convicted terrorist murderers as a "goodwill gesture" to the Palestinian Authority to avoid the commemorations.

"From a moral point of view, I would advise the ministers who voted in favor of [releasing terrorists] not to come to the cemeteries [for the memorial ceremonies]," Meirav Osher, whose father Avi Osher was murdered by an Arab terrorist in 1991, told Arutz Sheva. "They have no right to be there. You freed the murderers and we do not want to hear or see you. Leave us alone because you betrayed us and we are now walking around with terrible feelings. Do not come to the cemeteries. You aren’t wanted there," she declared.

Speaking at an event marking World Teachers' Day, which was broadcast on official PA TV, Tirawi declared, "not a centimeter of Jerusalem will be liberated unless every grain of Palestinian soil is soaked in the blood of its brave people." The statements were translated by Palestinian Media Watch.

Tirawi added that "negotiations will not bring Jerusalem back to us," but rather that "the struggle" is the path to conquering the 3,000-year-old capital of the Jewish people. Revealing the PA's true intentions, Tirawi noted, "we have conducted negotiations, while not laying down the rifle. It [the rifle] may be resting but we will not neglect our principles." "From fighting to Intifada, to popular resistance, to negotiations - but we will not abandon [our principles] - not in negotiations and not in any other way."

"I say, from a position of responsibility, the negotiations resulted in nothing except for the [release of the] prisoners," concluded Tirawi. Indeed, Nabil Shaath, a senior official of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), revealed in a November interview that the PA was only staying in the peace talks to release the jailed terrorists who were promised as a "gesture" for the talks. He is only one of a string of senior officials in Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to have made similar comments.

There are no restrictions for foreign investment in the country. Foreign investors can participate in the implementation of economic projects in Iran and benefit from the same advantages and privileges of Iranian investors, he explained. On April 8, high ranking Iranian and German economic officials attended an Iranian-German Business Conference, which was held in Berlin, aiming to explore ways to boost bilateral ties.

Iranian Industry, Mines, and Trade Minister Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh led the delegation which was comprised of the director of the Trade Promotion Organization of Iran, three deputy ministers, as well as 10 managers of key Iranian industrial enterprises. The conference was also attended by more than 300 managers of large German companies and economic enterprises.

On January 14, chairman of Iranian chamber of commerce Gholamhossein Shafei said expansion of trade ties between Iran and Germany will lead to sustainable political relations between the two countries. In a meeting with Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani on October 7, 2013, [German Ambassador to Iran] Freiherr von Ungern said that his country attaches great importance to economic relations with Iran.

Following the holy mass, Pope Francis will privately visit the Grotto of the Nativity. The Grotto is the crypt beneath the Church of the Nativity, and houses the specific site where Christianity believes Jesus was born.

After arriving at Mount Scopus in Jerusalem via Tel Aviv on Sunday afternoon, Pope Francis will lead an ecumenical meeting at the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher, representing a number of different churches. Located in the Old City of Jerusalem, Christian tradition considers the site the location of Jesus’ crucifixion and burial.

Pope Francis will begin Monday, the last day of his trip, at the Dome of the Rock. Located on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, the site is home to the Foundation Stone and is immensely significant to Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

After visiting the Dome of the Rock, Pope Francis will walk down to the Western Wall. Located at the foot of the Temple Mount, the Western Wall, or Kotel, is believed to be the last remnant of the Second Temple and is considered the holiest site in Jewish tradition.

Following his visit to the Temple Mount, Pope Francis will lay a wreath at Mount Herzl, Israel’s national cemetery. The cemetery holds the graves of prominent Zionist and Israeli leaders, as well as fallen Christian, Muslim and Druze soldiers.

Pope Francis will then visit Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial and museum. Located on Mount Herzl, Yad Vashem commemorates the victims of the Holocaust, as well as the righteous gentiles who attempted to save Nazi targets. Pope Francis will be the third pope to visit the site.

Pope Francis will then meet with President Shimon Peres at the Presidential Residence in Jerusalem. Located in the Talbiya neighborhood, the Presidential Residence hosts the head of state of Israel – a ceremonial and apolitical role.

Pope Francis will conclude his trip with a holy mass in the Room of the Cenacle in Jerusalem. Located on Mount Zion, Christian tradition holds the room as the site of The Last Supper and various other important events in the New Testament.

“In Gaza, I see orphans who have sprouted wings. In Gaza, there are great and proud men, whose feet are firmly planted in the ground, who have realized that darkness and the Jewish state would vanish, and that the morning sun will rise on Palestine,” said Al-Danna. “We will return to the sea of Jaffa, to the sands of Haifa, to the palm trees of Beit Shean, and to the hills of Lod and Ramla. We in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque await the legions of the conquerors. We await the armies from Tunisia, from Jordan, from Egypt, from Iraq, from the Maghreb, and from the Hijaz,” he declared.

“We await a Muslim leader, whose voice we yearn to hear, shouting to the liberating armies in the Al-Aqsa Mosque courtyard: You must say the afternoon prayer only in Safed, Haifa, or Jaffa. You must say the afternoon prayer only in Lod and Ramla.” A member of the crowd can be heard responding with, “Allahu Akbar”. These comments by the imam are just the latest example of the ongoing incitement against Israel by Arabs, much of which has been reported by MEMRI, Palestinian Media Watch and Arutz Sheva.

Such incitement ranges from the glorification of Nazism and the lionization of Adolf Hitler, to programs on official PA television featuring heavily-stereotyped Jews as villains (and encouraging violence against them), and various TV and radio shows which literally wipe the Jewish state off the map. In addition, top officials in Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party have openly supported Hamas’s efforts to kidnap Israeli soldiers. One of these officials, Abbas Zaki, recently declared that "Allah will gather [Israelis] so that we can kill them."

One of the departed heads said she had been the victim of an “attempted coup” by “dementors [evil characters]” and people “working against me, overtly and covertly”. The entire governing body at another Bradford secondary school has been sacked by the local council as it attempts to tackle the problem. Senior Department for Education sources said that coordinated attempts to undermine secular heads had occurred or were suspected in at least five places across the UK – Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester, and the London boroughs of Waltham Forest and Tower Hamlets.

In video footage seen by the Telegraph, the man accused of being at the centre of the Bradford plot, Faisal Khan, describes how he and his colleagues have worked for a “number of years” to “change the head teacher” at schools in the city, adding: “We have to do that for every single school… we have to be there, on governing bodies, because that’s what it’s all about… It’s time we took these schools back.” Mr Khan, a councillor formerly for George Galloway’s Respect party, now sitting as an independent, insisted last night that his sole motive in removing head teachers was driving up standards and said he had no wish to “Islamise” schools.

Park View, Nansen and Oldknow are highly likely to be placed in special measures by Ofsted, with their governors and leadership removed, after inspectors found evidence that they had been heavily “Islamised”, with girls made to sit at the back of the class, sex education curtailed, GCSE syllabuses “restricted in line with a conservative Islamic teaching” and an extremist preacher invited to address pupils at assembly.

Mr Faraz, brother of a convicted terrorist, is also administrator of a group known as “Educational Activists” which pursues what he called an “Islamising agenda” in schools. Mr Akmal, Mr da Costa and Mr Alam are co-directors of a group called the Muslim Parents’ Association. All four men have close links to the al-Hijrah Trust.

The Nasdaq Biotech Index had beautifully shot up along an exponential curve. Then the hot air hissed out of it, and it swooned 21% in six weeks. In the social media space, the bloodletting has been ugly. The Social Media ETF SOCL is down 23.4%, but stronger stocks like Facebook (down 16% from its high a month ago) paper over individual fiascos, like Twitter, which has plummeted 48% from its peak last year to below its IPO price. Other momentum stocks are getting annihilated: Amazon down 25% since January, Netflix down 27% in just two months. From their peaks, Pandora crashed 39%, Gogo 63%, and Imperva, a Big Data security outfit, 65%.

Then there’s the “Cloud,” the single most hyped miracle-sector last year. Escalator up, elevator down. Workday, which sells cloud-based corporate software, went public in late 2012 and soared. Two months ago, it sprung a leak and the hot air hissed out of it. It’s down 36%. Veeve, which sells cloud-based healthcare software, has crashed 60% from its November high, shortly after it had gone public. Salesforce is down 22%. ServiceNow lost 30% over the past two weeks. LinkedIn reported a loss after hours on Thursday and got hammered. It’s now down 40% from its peak last September. Jive Software is down 71% from its high in 2012.

Parts of the market have already tumbled. Momentum stock traders have taken a drubbing, and some of those who trade on margin received margin calls and were forced to sell, and others dumped their positions to avoid getting wiped out. It’s bloody out there, in momentum stocks. They’re the ones that go first. And the last two times, they didn’t go solo. That’s how it always starts: with a deadly mix. Home sales are collapsing while inventories are soaring in six housing markets that had been white-hot just a few months ago.

The US attorney for the Southern District of New York recently mocked the silly claims of gloom and doom:

“Companies, especially financial institutions, will do almost anything to avoid a tough enforcement action and therefore have a natural and powerful incentive to make prosecutors believe that death or dire consequences await,” he said. “I have heard assertions made with great force and passion that if we take any criminal action, the skies will darken; the oceans will rise; nuclear winter will be upon us; and the world as we know it will end.”

As we’ve repeatedly noted, this is wholly untrue. Indeed, prosecuting the individual Wall Street executives who knowingly committed criminal fraud won’t harm the economy. After all, the main driver of economic growth is a strong rule of law. And numerous Nobel prize winning economists have said that prosecuting Wall Street white collar is necessary for a prosperous economy.

The prospect is causing jitters not only among the big wigs in Brussels but also among many of Europe’s mainstream political parties, whose oligopoly on political power faces a serious threat for the first time in decades. Calculations by the Open Europe think tank suggest that hardline sceptics could take as many as 218 of the 751 seats available in the European Parliament.

In the UK, poll research shows that the most pro-European Westminster grouping – the Liberal Democrats – is about to have its European Parliamentary representation completely decimated. Indeed, so threatened do the three establishment parties in the UK feel by Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party (UKip) that they hit back this week with a cross-party campaign to condemn it as “Euracist”, an ingenious combination of the two words “Europe” and “Racist”.

The episode serves as a timely reminder of just how dumbed down the inhabitants of Westminster have become. For not only does their latest sound bite imply that Europeans are now a common, unified race – anthropology clearly not being the UK political caste’s strong point – but it also suggests that Farage’s party is actually “racist” towards all members of this new race, including, one would assume, Britons themselves.

The problem for Cameron and, by extension, his party, is that most people – even many dyed-in-the-wool Tory voters – no longer believe him. Once-bitten, twice-shy voters still remember his “cast-iron” pledge, while in opposition, to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty – a pledge that turned out to be not-quite-so-cast-iron once in government. In short, an increasing number of UK voters no longer believe that any of the three mainstream parties offer any real protection against the EU’s plans for full-spectral dominance of the continent. And it’s not just in Britain: across the continent, voters are looking to the fringes for alternatives to Brussels’ authoritarian, technocratic model of governance.