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1. The whole speculation by Peter Danzey that it is “probable” that the two witnesses of Rev 11 are the Father and the Holy Spirit (I don’t know of anyone else who has suggested this interpretation) is founded on multiple unproven assumptions and biblically inconsistent interpretations.
   
   
2. “Out of themselves” in Zech 4:12 cannot be proven from the Hebrew. When the various versions of the Bible are not in agreement on how to translate this phrase, it is better left alone, rather than basing an entire dogmatic doctrine on a “maybe/unlikely” rendering of the Hebrew.  That is a bad foundation to begin with.  The ESV for example, omits this phrase…
   KJV: Zec 4:12  And I answered again, and said unto him, What be these two olive branches which through the two golden pipes empty the golden oil out of themselves? 
   ESV: Zec 4:12  And a second time I answered and said to him, “What are these two branches of the olive trees, which are beside the two golden pipes from which the golden oil is poured out?” 
   
   If I pour oil out of myself, it still does not mean that I am the ultimate source of that oil (what do I have that I did not receive--- I Cor 4:7).  But, there are still many versions that don’t have that “out of themselves” rendering.  The Luther Bible doesn’t, and the Schlachter version of the German, also doesn’t.  To make a dogmatic stand on a controversial, and improbable rendering is not a good foundation for a doctrine.  Brenton’s English Septuagint doesn’t have it-- modern versions like the ESV and CEV, and even the NKJV don’t have it.
   
   The two words in question are in the Strong’s numbers H4480 and  H5921; both of which are vague and multi-meaning words.  We could not dogmatically take these as saying that the source is out of themselves.
   
   
3. Why would two divine theophanies need to be given anything or empowered? When comparing Zech 4 with Rev 11:3, instead of having the source of oil “out of themselves,” in Rev 11:3, the two witnesses are empowered/granted authority by the Lord.  This would be totally unnecessary if they were self-sufficient beings having the oil flowing “out of themselves.”  Rev 11:3 thus renders the “out of themselves”/divine witnesses viewpoint invalid.  
   
   
4. It assigns an insulting name to the Father and the Holy Spirit: To call the Father and the Holy Spirit “sons of oil” (The literal Hebrew rendering from Zechariah 4:14) doesn’t seem very honorific.  Here instead of being the source of the oil, they are in a subservient role to the oil, being “sons”—which is also another point against “out of themselves.”
   
   Zec 4:14  Then he said, “These are the two anointed ones [sons of oil] who stand by the Lord of the whole earth.” 
   
   Keil and Delitzsch write, “…the two sons of oil, that is to say, the representatives of the kingdom and priesthood, the divinely appointed organs through which the Spirit of God was communicated to the covenant nation.”
   
   
5. The verse people love to quote in this chapter is, “…Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.” In the divine witnesses interpretation of the Father and Holy Spirit providing oil, this should be “but by my spirit and by the Father.” In that interpretation the suppliers of the oil are the Father and the Spirit.  So, why is only the Spirit mentioned here, as the supplier in Zech 4:6?
   
   
6. Peter Danzey thinks that the Menorah in Zech 4 represents the Word of God, and that the olive branches supplying it are thus divine. Most Christian commentators would see the Menorah as Israel, and the two olive branches as two anointed representatives of Israel in leadership roles.  We see clearly in the book of Revelation that the candlesticks are the seven churches.  The same Greek word that is used in Rev 1, is the same Greek word that is used in Rev 11 of the two witnesses.  Regardless of the numbers—whether 7 or 2, etc. we see that they are members of the Church.  This shines light on the Zech 4 passage as well.  If the candlesticks are the Church in the NT, then the logical counterpart to this in the OT is Israel, not the Word of God as some commentators assert.  Thus Israel was being supplied by the two “sons of oil” or anointed ones—the representatives of God who were anointed, namely the king and the priest, who in turn were empowered by the Holy Spirit.  Please see Appendix A for commentators who see the Candlestick/ Menorah as Israel.
   
   
7. In the book of Zech we had ONE candlestick and TWO olive trees. But now in Rev we have TWO of each.  The TWO olive trees are a constant factor, which I believe to be “the representatives of the kingdom and priesthood [e.g. Zerubbabel and Joshua; Moses and Aaron; etc.]” in the words of the German commentators (and also in most Christian commentaries—not that commentaries are without fault, but let everything be confirmed by two or three witnesses—and all the more so if they are believers in the Messiah).  Why only one candlestick in Zech 4 if it represents God’s Word, but then two candlesticks in Rev 11—does it then represent the two testaments of the Word of God?  But, this is not consistent with what the book of Revelation itself says the candlesticks represent (Revelation 1:20).  If the Father and the Holy Spirit are both taking on the name “the Word of God” in Rev 11 (which is the name used by Jesus, so that is unwarranted), why were there not two candlesticks in Zech 4 (another inconsistency in this speculation built on many assumptions).  
   
   
8. Jesus' incarnation was prophesied hundreds of times in the Old Testament. If the Father and Holy Ghost are to be incarnated as the two witnesses, why are there no prophecies of this?  "Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets."  (Amos 3:7)
   
   
9. When was the Father ever sent in the Bible? In Revelation 11:10 the two witnesses are also called the two prophets.  True prophets are always sent by God.  In the Bible we have verses about Jesus being sent (Luke 4:18), and the Holy Ghost being sent for believers (John 15:26), but we do not see the Father ever being sent.  Also, although Jesus was called a prophet (Matthew 13:57; 14:5; 21:11; 21:46; Luke 7:16; 13:33; 24:19; John 4:19; 6:14; 7:40; 9:17), we do not see the Holy Ghost or the Father being called a prophet.  In Deuteronomy 18:18, we are to expect only one prophet who is "like unto Moses," which is Jesus, not three prophets like unto Moses.        
   
   
10. Rev 11 should be compared with Zech 2-4, not just 4 (no chapter breaks in the original texts). Taking the two olive trees and the two candlesticks to be two human representatives of the Church and Israel, just as Joshua and Zerubbabel were in the context of Zech chapters 2-4, considering that Zech 2 starts with "measuring" and Zech 4 ends with the two olive trees/branches, just as Rev 11:1 starts with "measuring" and continues with talking about the two olive trees. So, taking chapters 2-4 as one "unit" would include both Joshua and Zerubbabel in the topic at hand.  Why eliminate or ignore Joshua and Zerubbabel’s role in the context of Zech 2-4, since the majority of Christian commentators point to them as fulfilling the meaning of the olive trees?
    
    
11. Also, in the Bible God is not the Olive Tree, which the End Times Double Theophany view implies, but Israel is (Rom 11). There are no verses in the Bible comparing God to an olive tree, but there are verses comparing Israel or members of Israel to an olive tree.
    
    David compares himself to an olive tree:  Psa_52:8  But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God: I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever.
    
    Jacob under judgment was like the shaking of an olive tree:  Isa 17:6  Yet gleaning grapes shall be left in it, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof, saith the LORD God of Israel. 
    
    The people of Judah and Jerusalem were called an olive tree:  Jer 11:16  The LORD called thy name, A green olive tree, fair, and of goodly fruit: with the noise of a great tumult he hath kindled fire upon it, and the branches of it are broken. 
    
    Israel’s beauty shall be as the olive tree:  Hos 14:5-6  I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon.  His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon. 
    
    In Romans 11 Israel is the olive tree into which believers in the Messiah are grafted in.
    
    
12. If the End Times Double Theophany doctrine about Rev 11 is correct, which I don’t think it is, then why not just teach it openly, putting the sermon online? With any other biblical doctrine, preachers teach it openly. The fact that this has been kept somewhat secret, for five years or however long this has been believed, should say something (red flag).  It is a strange doctrine, and would rightly get a lot of naysayers from among biblically minded Christians if it were put on YouTube.  But, I’m actually glad a sermon of Rev 11 hasn’t been put online, because it would just cause confusion, instead of building people up with sound doctrine.
    
    
13. An End Times Double Theophany COULD NOT EVEN be considered a “type” of the Genesis 18-19 Abraham visitation (which in itself has not been proven to be a visitation by the trinity—most Christian scholars see this as Jesus appearing with two angels). In Rev 11 we don’t see three visitors--- which would be required to call this following a previous “type,” but rather only two visitors. So, Gen 18-19 is in a totally different category than Rev 11.
14. Also, in the incarnation of Jesus, the entire trinity was already involved—The Holy Spirit was present with Jesus, empowering Him for ministry, and Jesus listened to the Father’s voice, acting in accordance to His will. Why is there any need for the Father and Holy Spirit to come again separately in the role of prophets who are slain? This is not prophesied, nor is it foreshadowed in typology, nor is it in keeping with the consistently biblical roles within the trinity.
    
15. When does God the Father ever appear in a theophany in the Bible? We don’t see this. “Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, he hath seen the Father” (John 6:46).  Exodus 23:20 has been suggested by Peter Danzey, but this is an assumption without warrant.  Taking the entire context of that verse, beginning with Exodus chapter 19, we see that the Lord did come down (Jesus), but that the law was spoken “from heaven” (Exodus 20:22).  Whenever in the Bible we see the Lord speaking from heaven, it is usually the Father.  Even if he was speaking with Moses on the mountain, it does not mean that he was physically present.  God the Father is omnipresent, but His “base of operations” so to speak, is in heaven (“Our Father which are in heaven” --Matthew 6:9).
    
    In modern terms I could say that I hear someone’s voice from America, even though I live in Thailand.  Someone from America could call me on the phone, and though they are not physically present with me, I can hear their voice.  God’s “technology” is far beyond that, and He can speak “from heaven” even if He is not theophonically present.  Please see Appendix B.
16. In Rev 11:8, the KJV says “our Lord,” but many modern versions say “their Lord.” This is a debatable point based on which Greek texts are used, but if the modern texts are correct then it would be strange for “their Lord” to be in reference to the Father and Holy Spirit, meaning that Jesus would be the Lord of the Father and Holy Spirit. The final verse of Zech 4 in both Hebrew and in the LXX indicates that the Two are distinct from The Lord and not The Lord (lending credence to the translation of Rev 11:3 'their Lord'). However, Peter Danzey (although not KJV-only) believes that the Textus Receptus is more accurate, and doesn’t claim that the two witnesses called Jesus “their Lord.” 
17. The commentators Meyer and Bengel think that the two witnesses of Rev 11 will be crucified (please see Appendix C). This is definitely a possibility, but all of the other commentaries I checked do not mention this, and of note, none of the English translations say that the witnesses will be crucified. So, it is a possibility, but not an irrefutable point, seeing the way Greek scholars have omitted this in translating it into English.  Also, Peter Danzey’s particular view says the witnesses will be slain, but not crucified.  He thinks they will be slain, but that this is in no way related to the atonement.  He believes Jesus fully accomplished the atonement already. 
    
    
18. Why do the two witnesses in Rev 11:7 need to be killed by the beast? When Jesus became a man his death had a redemptive purpose. What is the purpose of the beast getting victory over the Father and the Holy Ghost?  Is it to fill up the people’s sins so that the full wrath of God can be poured out?  I don't see that as a satisfactory answer, because people already have plenty of sins and blasphemies without this one.  When some of Jesus’ disciples were crucified they proved their faithfulness and also confirmed the witness they gave about Jesus’ life.  But, what possible purpose could there be in the death of the Father and the Holy Spirit?  This is a strange doctrine that would give the enemies of the Jesus much fodder for accusation (Muslims already stumble at hearing that Jesus died on the cross, but that one is very much explainable).
    
    
19. Why would the Father and HS come in the character of Moses and Elijah? Moses said God would raise up a prophet like unto me (not three prophets like unto me).
20. Producing uncertainty in the Word of God: In the message, “Angels On Earth” by Peter Danzey (May 5^th, 2019), (Peter Danzey thinks Genesis 18 and 19 are related to the Rev 11 “probable” theophanies) at the 1:02 min. mark said, “Now, there is no doubt that there are some oddities if they are created angels, right? There are oddities, but if they are all Yahweh, there’s not one oddity.”
    
    If someone does not agree with the assumptions made in the previous message, it could leave them wondering if there are oddities in the Word of God.  Please see Appendix D for just a few of the assumptions made in that message. 

 

Appendix A

What Does the Menorah Represent?

1. In Rev 11:3-4 each of the two witnesses represents both an olive tree and a candlestick.
2. Rev 1:20 clearly states what category the candlestick belongs to—the Church. In that sense the two witnesses are members of Jesus’ Church having this characteristic as part of being a candlestick symbolically.
3. The witnesses are also represented by an olive tree, which in Scripture is overwhelmingly Israel or a member of Israel.
4. The two witnesses are thus members of both the Church and Israel—in other words they are Jewish Christians.
5. In the book of Revelation, the candlestick (Menorah) is in the category of the Church. The counterpart to this in the OT is Israel.  In Zech 4, there is only ONE candlestick (Israel), whereas in the NT, there are TWO, representing both Israel and the Church.
   
   

Why quote from Jewish commentators who think otherwise, when many of the Jews did not even recognize their own Messiah?  Commentators who have accepted their Messiah whether Jewish or Gentile, and who have the full light of the NT to understand the OT have greater authority here.  Christian commentators who say the Menorah is Israel… 

John Gill says, “This candlestick was set in the holy place, on the south side of it, opposite the shewbread table, Exo_26:35 and was typical of the church of God; so the candlesticks John had a vision of signify seven churches, Rev_1:13, the general use of which is, to hold forth light put into it, for it has none of itself, but what is put there by Christ…”

Keil and Delitzsch say, “As the Israelites were to prepare spiritual food in the shew-bread in the presence of Jehovah…. so also were they to present themselves continually to Jehovah in the burning lamps, as the vehicles and media of light, as a nation letting its light shine in the darkness of this world…. By the power of this Spirit, Israel, in covenant with the Lord, was to let its light shine, the light of its knowledge of God and spiritual illumination, before all the nations of the earth. In its seven arms the stamp of the covenant relationship was impressed upon the candlestick…. the olive-trees [of Zech 4] are the two sons of oil, that is to say, the representatives of the kingdom and priesthood, the divinely appointed organs through which the Spirit of God was communicated to the covenant nation [Israel, the Menorah].”

The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia says, “In Zechariah's vision of the golden candlestick (Zec_4:2), the seven lamps are fed by two olive trees which are interpreted to be “the two anointed ones,” Zerubbabel and Joshua - the civil and spiritual representatives of theocracy. The candlestick here, like the seven candlesticks in Rev_1:20, 21, symbolizes the church of God, then in its Old Testament form, the idea conveyed being that God's church is set to be a lightgiver in the world.”

Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown in their comment on Zech 4:2, say, “candlestick — symbolizing the Jewish theocracy; and ultimately, the Church of which the Jewish portion is to be the head: the light-bearer…”

The Cambridge Bible commentary says, “…the work in which he [Zerubbabel] was engaged, of restoring the material Temple and setting the golden candlestick in its place again, and so preparing the way, first for the Jewish Church, and then for the Christian Church, which that candlestick symbolised(Rev_1:20), to shine in the world, should be accomplished, not by human resources, but by the Spirit of God…”

Joseph Benson says, “And I said, Behold a candlestick of gold — This represented the church of God, Jewish and Christian, set up for the enlightening of this dark world, by diffusing the light of divine truth.”

The Sermon Bible says, “By the candelabrum was symbolised the Israelitish community, the nation of the old covenant, the people of theocracy. But Israel was itself a symbol and type; it was the visible manifestation of that invisible spiritual community, the Church of the living God, which embraces the faithful of all ages and places. It is represented as made of the most precious of metals, pure gold, to indicate the worth and excellence of that which God hath chosen for Himself as His special treasure; and it is represented as having seven lamps, to indicate that the Church is a luminous body, having light in itself, and appearing as the luminary from which proceeds light to the world.”

Nelson’s Complete Book of Bible Maps and Charts equates the lampstand of Zech 4 to Israel.

Bill Randles in the book “God Remembers:  The Visions and Words of the Prophet Zechariah,” says, “The candlestick is the symbol of the role of Israel as the witness to the Gentiles, and to the glory of the only true God.  Israel was the original ‘city of a hill’ referred to in the Sermon on the Mount.  Isaiah and Micah both feature visions of the nations streaming to Zion to come into the light of God’s salvation.”

Appendix B

Our Father Which Art in Heaven

In the book of Matthew especially there is an emphasis on God the Father being in heaven.  This is stated fifteen times in the book of Matthew!  We are supposed to direct our prayers to our Father in heaven (Matthew 6:9; Luke 11:2).  In both the OT and the NT we see that God spoke from heaven and heard prayers from heaven.  Four times it’s stated by Solomon that heaven is God’s dwelling place from which God would hear prayer—this is recorded twice so that it’s actually stated eight times in the Bible (I Kings 8 and 2 Chronicles 6).

 

Using the same two Hebrew words as in Solomon’s prayer (“shamayim” and “yashab”), God the Father is said to be sitting in the heavens and then setting His king (Jesus) on Zion (Psalm 2:4-6).  Twenty times in Scripture, God is called “the God of heaven.”

God sent rain from heaven, sometimes stopped the rain from heaven, looked down from heaven, sent bread from heaven, etc.

Voice From Heaven

God spoke to the children of Israel from heaven.  Moses was not excluded from this conversation in Exodus 20:22.  We consistently see especially in the NT, God the Father speaking from heaven.  God told Moses in Exodus 19:11 to get the people ready, because the Lord would be coming down (Just as in the NT Jesus is the One who declares and shows the ways of the Father, so in the OT, Jesus also did—John 1:18). 

In the book of John, it is said eight times that Jesus “came down/cometh down” from heaven.  We see various other times that Jesus “went down” in the OT, such as to the tower of Babel (Gen 11:5), to Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 18:21, which he did do before sending judgement in Gen 19:24).  And, it makes sense that in Exodus 3:8; 19:11; 19:18; 19:20 and 34:5, it is also Jesus, the Lord, who came down, not the Father.  The Father’s voice was heard from heaven, which is clearly stated in Ex 20:22, just as in modern times a person may call a friend half way around the world, and that friend can hear their voice, even if they are not physically present. 

We see consistently in Scripture that Jesus is the One who comes down in physical form and declares the ways of the Father, both in the OT and the NT, and that the Father operates from heaven, though He is omnipresent, just as Jesus and the Holy Spirit are also.

The Father Speaking From Heaven

---Exo 20:22  And the LORD said unto Moses, Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, Ye have seen that I have talked with you from heaven. 

---Neh 9:13  Thou camest down also upon mount Sinai, and spakest with them from heaven, and gavest them right judgments, and true laws, good statutes and commandments: 

---2Sa 22:14  The LORD thundered from heaven, and the most High uttered his voice. 

---Mat 3:17  And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. 

---Mar 1:11  And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. 

---Luk 3:22  And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased. 

---Joh 12:28  Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again. 

---2Pe 1:17  For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. 

2Pe 1:18  And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount. 

---Rev 10:4  And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not. 

---Rev 11:12  And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them. 

---Rev 14:2  And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps: 

---Rev 14:13  And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them. 

---Rev 18:4  And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. 

Fire From Heaven

Seeing that consistency in Scripture, it also makes sense that it was Jesus who visited Abraham on earth, and who was overseeing the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah on earth, while God the Father was in heaven:

--- Gen 19:24  Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; 

---2Ki 1:10;12;14…Fire fell twice, consuming those coming to get Elijah

---1Ch 21:26…on an altar David built to show him favor 

---2Ch 7:1…on the sacrifices made by Solomon, showing him favor

---Rev 20:9  And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. 

Appendix C

Commentators Who Think The Two Witnesses Will Be Crucified

Meyer wrote, “Again, the text itself shows this, partly by the καὶ before ὁ κύρ. αὐτ., partly by the expression ὁ κύρ. αὐτων. Both belong inwardly together; as the two witnesses, so also their Lord was there slain, crucified; the servants have suffered the same thing as their[2879] Lord.[2880] This is accordingly made prominent, because from this it becomes clear that the antichristian enmity of the great city remains always the same; with the same hatred as that wherewith they formerly once brought the Lord there to the cross, they now slay the two witnesses just because they are his witnesses.”

Bengel wrote, “In the text they are not said to lie. What, if you should suppose that they will be suspended, as their Lord also was suspended from the cross?.... Whether the city has the place of the cross within the walls at the present day, or has not (for travellers are at variance with one another, and those who deny it, do so with far greater appearance of truth), at the time of the witnesses, at least, it will undoubtedly have the place of the cross in the street, either within the walls or without”

Appendix D

The message, “Angels On Earth” (May 5^th, 2019) by Peter Danzey contains numerous assumptions.  The following is not a comprehensive list, just a few randomly chosen:

---“Malak” almost certainly means a divine being?

In Gen 19:1 two angels went down to Sodom (Malak- messenger/angel can be the angel of the Lord—Jesus.  But often times Malak is used in the OT not referring to a divine being at all—almost half of the times the KJV translates Malak it is messenger[s], ten times it’s used of angels plural and about five times of ambassadors—we cannot assume the use of Malak to mean a divine person).  Even if we limit the search to only the Pentateuch, which is an unreasonable limitation when we’re looking for the possible meanings of the word—the Pentateuch uses this word 39 times, 9 of which do not mean a divine being, and 4 of which are debatable (in the message only 3 uses of “Malak” are mentioned which are “ambiguous”).  To look only at the cases where “Malak” is a Christophany, and ignore literally over a hundred uses of “Malak” biases the hearers unreasonably. 

---The Hebrew word “shachah” (H7812) can only mean worship?

When Lot bowed to the ground before the two angels in Gen 19:1, it doesn't necessarily mean worship, as it could be a cultural practice of just honor, submission, and respect.  Using the same Hebrew word as in Gen 19:1, Jacob bowed to the ground before Esau in Gen 33:3, Ruth bowed to the ground before Boaz in Ruth 2:10, and the same is true of David before Jonathan, Abigail before David, and others.

---Only God can close the door?

We have angels opening doors in the NT.  Why can they not close a door if God commands them to this task?

---Angels cannot eat with people?

What verse prohibits this?

---God does not consult with people/angels (Gen 18:17-19)?

Jesus consulted with His disciples before feeding the masses miraculously.  Did He need to?  No, He didn’t.  He also asked other people questions of which He already knew the answer.  So, it’s not out of character in Gen 18 if these are angels Jesus is talking to.

---Angels cannot deviate from previous instructions (Gen 19:2-3; 17-22).

This assumes we know what the instructions were, which we don’t.  If a man sells some land, and goes through an agent, leaving the agent in charge and telling him you can lower the cost by xxxxx dollars if need be, the agent is still faithful if he sells the land on behalf of the man, lowering the cost to within what he specified.  Likewise God could have given instructions with caveats, knowing what Lot would ask for.  If the two “angels” are God, the following verse does not sound very sovereignly authoritative:  Gen 19:22  “Haste thee, escape thither; for I cannot do any thing till thou be come thither. Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.”

This message is a stepping stone to the Rev 11 double theophanies proposed by Peter Danzey, but a case that is based on unproven assumptions is not very convincing.  I didn’t take a lot of time to look into every point, but just the fact that there are the above unproven assumptions shows that it’s not a slam dunk case, especially when most Christian commentators would see Gen 18-19 as a theophany of Jesus appearing with two angels. 

The continued support and promotion by Bill Randles of various false teachers of serious false doctrines that Moriel finds heretical are of great concern to the Moriel board.

 

Read more here: http://herescope.blogspot.com/2019/07/civic-church-anti-semitism.html

Read more here: http://herescope.blogspot.com/2019/06/ethnos-dominionism.html

“Those who manipulate the organized habits and opinions of the masses constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of the country…. It remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world…. As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented.” ~Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928)[32]

Read more here: http://herescope.blogspot.com/2019/06/ethnos-vs-ethnos.html

Read more here: http://herescope.blogspot.com/2019/05/anti-semitism-and-rise-of-techno-media.html

Answer:

Blessings

The only commentaries on the inter-testamental apocryphal literature of which I am familiar are lexical commentaries focused on Greek grammar, vocabulary, and syntax .

As with the Septuagint, (LXX) , apocryphal literature is of value in understanding the New Testament in terms of literature and history. Unlike the LXX however, it is not canon and thus not a basis of doctrine.

Such books assist in understanding New Testament books from a literary and historical perspective which in turn as exegetical supppament, indirectly contributes to our grasp of doctrine.

Jesus for instance observed Chanukah in John chapter 10 ( translated ‘Feast of Dedication’). He knew and accepted that the prophetic predictions of Daniel have their fulfillment recorded in The Apocryphal books of I & II Maccabees, not in scripture. In the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 additionally, Jesus made it clear that the partially fulfilled predictions of Daniel with the ‘Abomination of Desolations' recorded in the Apocrypha was a type of the future apocalyptic prophetic predictions of the antichrist in The Book of Revelation and in 2 Thessalonians.

Thus, it is biblically important history necessary to comprehend future prophecy. 

Enoch is cited in the Epistle of Jude. One of the features most important about Enoch is that it is the Literary primer for the Book of Revelation showing how the literary genre of Hebrew apocalyptic literature from Daniel, Zechariah, Isaiah, Ezekiel etc, is translated into Greek apocalyptic and vocabulary 

where Sheol becomes hades, Leviathan becomes Apollyon etc. From a literary viewpoint, Enoch helps us make sense of certain Gospel portions , sections of Peter’s epistles, of Jude, and again The Book of Revelation in light of the Old Testament.

From a historical aspect, Enoch bears similarities to the Book of Jasher , to the ‘Antiquities’ of Josephus, and to certain early Mishnaic writings from early Mishna . In the Book of Acts for instance at Stephen’s apology in Acts 7 he begins with the saga of the Patriarch Abraham not in Haran where Genrsus commences it, but in Ur of the Chaldees. In Timothy Pail informs us that the names of Pharaoh’s magicians in Exodus were Janus and Jambres. In other words, The New Testament tells us that there were historical facts of some theological importance that , as with the story of the Maccabees, were recorded outside of the canon of scripture but which are necessary to correctly understand scripture. Another short Treatise like this is The Didache.

What is important to remember is that such books are of literary and historical value in contributing to properly interpreting The Word of God, but on their own are not a basis of doctrinal theology.

The only apocryphal commentaries I would have had use for are lexical academic commentaries of little use to readers not knowing Hebrew, Aramaic. and Greek. If you are competent in biblical languages however, please get back to us and I will suggest a few lexical commentaries. Not to sound arrogant, however the likelihood is that if you know biblical languages, you went to seminary and do not need to ask me what you already know. Therefore I assume you do not read biblical languages which the most serious commentaries on apocryphal books essentially require. 

In Jesus,

Jacob Prasch / Moriel

In the fall of 2018 David Nathan was dismissed from Moriel Ministries due to heretical teachings that included the affirmation that the blood of animals would atone for sin in the millennium apart from the blood of Christ and that believers can prescriptively anoint clothing with divine power for healing, going so far as to cite examples of people being “slain in the spirit” as a result of touching his jacket and tie quite as a matter of fact. He is on record as saying there will come a time when, “…the blood of Jesus Christ will not profit anyone anything.” There is no possible reality in which this statement is true. It is a demonstrable heresy that denies the gospel and every book of the bible in some way. In the wake of his dismissal, many were confused and upset. One such individual was Graham Baldwin who claims to have began independently “watching” the situation as he is supposedly a cult “expert”. Baldwin has produced a 3-part yellow journalism entry that sounds about as personal as any attack could. This so-called cult “expert” claims that Jacob Prasch is under investigation, but is he really?

 

More here:

Her mother is quite ill and now suffers with dementia. She doesn’t know any believers nearby to fellowship; please contact Moriel & Marg if you are a believer and can offer some fellowship

We specifically refer to internet posted material by the Catalyst organisation acting in apparent concert with the 'My Organizer' business enterprise of Stuart & Debora Menelaus of Fife, Scotland operating variously under the names of Bethel Communications and GV 24/7. Along with the continuing diatribe by someone using the pseudonym tbckwaii. Who does not have the credibility or courage to disclose who he really is.

We first of all note that the claim that Moriel is under investigation is in itself devoid of substance as there is and has been no investigation, criminal or otherwise, by any government , police, or judicial agency. It is a contrived and defamatory assertion. intended to give Catalyst kudos but shows them to be rather inept and foolish.

As senior police detectives we fundamentally reject such assertions directed against the Moriel Ministry and against Jacob Prasch as  bogus and having no merit nor actual evidence. We have all known Jacob Prasch personally and are well familiar with Moriel for a number of years and any inordinate activity either personal or financial would have been recognized by us, and detected by any police investigator over a period of time. There has been none however. From the perspective of a police investigation, these allegations appear manufactured and meritless and personally vindictive using immature bullying and harassment tactics falsely portrayed as qualified superiority. From the initial leading of the witness David Nathan on the GV247 program to the continued use of hearsay and conjecture by Catalyst, they have only made themselves look vindictive and motivated by spite. There is no evidence that would pass any criminal or civil threshold test, and they know it, otherwise they would have handed it over to a statutory authority .There is no justifiable or evidential basis for this continued attack by supposed Christian brethren harassment; there is nothing established on the basis of  any verifiable fact.

Such defamatory claims moreover are readily off-set by a range of witnesses intimately familiar with Moriel and its director whose testimonies are uniformly an endorsement of honesty and good character.

It is our assessment as senior investigating police detectives from three different nations with lifetime careers investigation crime and fraud that no credible police agency or jurisdiction would lend credence to the demonstrably contorted insinuations and character assassination attempts found in these unsubstantiated charges aimed at Moriel Ministries and against Jacob Prasch. His integrity remains secure, but that of the afore mentioned must be considered tarnished.

Sincerely,

Sergeant Amos Farrell
Sr. Investigating Detective (ret.)
Scotland Yard
London, UK

Captain Michael Benade
Commanding Police Detective (ret.)
South Africa Police

Sergeant Michael Keaney
Senior Detective - Investigator
New Zealand Police

 

1. We would, in the first instance, encourage all interested parties to revisit Scriptures relating to the resolution of disputes, to matters of church discipline, and of dealing with false doctrine, in particular: Matthew 18:15-17; Romans 16:17,18; Galatians 6:1; 1Corinthians 6:1-8; 2Timothy 2:23-26; James 4:11; 2John: 9-11.
2. CMFI remains of the opinion that central to, and at the core of this dispute, remains the questionable teaching of David Nathan. Had Mr. Nathan responded quickly and privately to requests to clarify certain aspects of his doctrine, it is likely that the situation would not have escalated to current levels. Much of that which has followed has been a deflection away from the issue of doctrine to become an issue of behaviour. Whereas neither bad doctrine nor bad behaviour is condoned, many have lost sight of the fundamental issue at the core of the dispute.
3. In regard to bad behaviour, a difficulty in dealing with the ongoing dispute is that this is, for many of us, the first time we have had to process such a dispute taking place in such an open public forum, so widely available to many. The fact that opportunity exists to make derogatory and defamatory statements in a wide range of media, does not necessarily make it right to do so. The anonymity, easy access, and availability of a platform afforded by the internet is no excuse to disregard the authority of the Bible. There is much comment on this dispute, posted on the internet purporting to be godly, made by those who have not in every instance sought to follow Biblical procedure.
4. In regard to the internet and social media aspect of this dispute, CMFI is aware that certain of it's members, actively involved in Moriel Ministries, have previously offered to remove all inflammatory content from those sites for which it is responsible. In return, request was made for the other protagonists in the dispute to do likewise. This would have afforded some protection against further damage being done not only to the individuals concerned, but perhaps of greater importance to the wider church also. CMFI is given to understand that this offer was declined by those who continue to pursue certain CMFI members, not all of whom represent Moriel Ministries. CMFI is thankful that Moriel have desisted from retaliating against certain claims made against it, via the internet and social media, though it respects it's right to respond according to Biblical protocol.
5. In regard to certain of those claims. CMFI is not aware of any formal investigation being made against Moriel Ministries in any of the countries in which it operates. Furthermore, to the best of it's knowledge, Moriel Ministries continues to operate within the fiscal regulations of those countries in which it and it's associated organisations operate.
6. Further, CMFI does not believe that Moriel is a cult which venerates it's own leader. Not only does Moriel not have members, but it adheres to a statement of faith which is broadly that of most evangelical churches. Also, all CMFI members are required to agree with the CMFI statement of faith. Jesus Christ is central to that statement of faith.                
7. To those who would hold CMFI accountable for the behaviour of its members, we would point out that all para-church ministries are in the first instance accountable to their own board of trustees, and individuals are accountable to their own local church leadership. Where any member of CMFI is considered to be acting in a way that is prejudicial to the interests of CMFI, the CMFI Council will undertake any relevant action internally and privately, and is under no compulsion to make its findings public.

The CMFI Council

www.cmfi.org.uk

 

If Netanyahu is able to further cement his position as the second longest serving leader in Israeli history, coupled with unprecedented support from Washington, and a burgeoning relationship with Saudi Arabia and especially some of the Gulf states; we may see a final death blow to any notion of the two state solution agenda, involving land for peace which has been peddled by the international community since Oslo in 1993. Indeed, this process had already begun when Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital last year and then rather conveniently recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights three weeks before the election (thereby handing his ally an Ace). The next logical continuation of this sequence of events (after a win) would be for Netanyahu to seek a green light from Trump to annex at least those major settlement blocks in close proximity to the green line such as Gush Etzion.

Netanyahu has been posturing the promise of security at the forefront of his manifesto pledge. According to polls, after two Intifadas and near continuous low-level conflict the majority of Jewish Israelis are disillusioned by the prospects for peace. Instead they are resigned to transforming Israel into a fortress and view Netanyahu as the man who can deliver the goods. That is, until Ganz appeared on the scene as a viable contender and formed a centrist-left wing party to challenge Likud's grip on power. Akin to former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Ganz comes with stellar military credentials, being a former Chief of Staff. Previous electoral challengers to Netanyahu have been rebuffed as being soft on security. Obviously it is far more difficult to characterize Ganz in such a light. But that hasn't prevented Netanyahu from trying. He went as far as to insinuate that his opponent may be being black mailed by Iran after reportedly having his iPhone hacked by their subversive operatives.

In the international arena, if Likud wins Israel will become both more and less isolated. The existing natural ties between Trump and Netanyahu will presumably strengthen. Israel will likely continue to forge relationships with certain elements of the ruling classes of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states; especially in the face of continued Iranian belligerence and attempts to attain regional dominance over the Sunnis. Under Netenyahu’s leadership India has also recently emerged as a strategic partner, with Israeli arms sales being the bedrock of their cordial relations. This will probably continue. Conversely, Israel will likely become further alienated from the EU. This is in part due to the strained relations between the Trump administration and Brussels. But is further exacerbated by the EU’s opposition to Likud’s stance on settlement building. With Netanyahu plausibly emboldened by US support to accelerate such activity post - election victory, this animosity will increase.

Israel has been involved in a proxy war with Iran on three main fronts: Lebanon, Syria and Gaza. The IDF sustained a bloody nose at the hands of Iranian funded and directed Hizbollah in the summer of 2006, despite delivering significant damages to Hizbollah in return. Since then the northern border has largely remained quiet and Israel's efforts to contain the paramilitary group have mostly centered on supporting opposing Sunni forces in the ongoing Syrian Civil War.

In Syria, Israel has launched direct military strikes against Iranian assets. This low-level tussle may blow up into full scale conflict should Netanyahu win a further term. This is largely due to the fact that Assad, animated by Russia and Iran, has de-facto won the Civil War and Iran’s military presence in the country has become entrenched. Netanyahu has indicated that he is unwilling to accept such a state of affairs. There will also most likely be a major operation in Gaza; especially if there are further rocket attacks, like the ones we have witnessed recently.

The weak policy of Obama not keeping his "red line" warning to Syria, and the vacuum left by the Obama administration in Iraq that was filled by Isis whom Obama ridiculed as a mere "JV team", created a complicated mess inherited by Trump. Israel and the USA on one hand, as well as Syria and Iran backed by Putin on the other, were both pitted against an Isis that is now all but destroyed in Syria as Trump pledged. The three-way conflict thrust on Netanyahu and bequeathed to Trump however, further complicated by the ambiguous position of Turkey and Erdogan, engendered an insurmountable quagmire that left Assad in power despite the success in eradicating Isis. The Sunni Isis Caliphate was effectively replaced by a Shia Iranian nexus extending via Syria into Lebanon with adjuncts in Gaza.

On the financial front, in the absence of unforeseen circumstances the economy overall will continue to grow due to favorable free market policies championed by Netanyahu that attract foreign investment in terms of both capital and research and development -especially in the high-tech industry. Adversely, Chareidi participation in the workforce will remain stunted due to Likud being obliged to concede subsidies to this sector in order to retain the support of the religious parties in its coalition; thus demotivating this community from obtaining gainful employment.

Netanyahu has promised to reserve several seats in his coalition and cabinet posts for ultra nationalist parties who many would argue are opposed to the fundamental tenets of western democratic liberalism. Giving them such a platform may impact government policy vis a vis Israel’s Arab minority; as has arguably already been the case with the right wing coalition passing Israel’s Jewish nation state law last year. This piece of legislation defined Israel as a State for the Jewish people rather than for all its citizens. We may see additional comparable statutes promulgated by the Knesset following a Likud win.

SO MUCH HAPPENS IN THE NEWS EVENTS EVERY WEEK OF PROPHETIC IMPORTANCE. BUT HOW ISRAELI BELIEVERS EXPERIENCE AND VIEW THESE THING?

YESHUA TOLD US PLAINLY IN MATTHEW 10 THAT WE SHALL NOT FINNISH EVANGELIZING ISRAEL BEFORE HE RETURNS. PETER'S EPISTLE SAYS WE CAN HASTEN HIS COMING. CAN WE 'HASTEN THE SECOND COMING' OF YESHUA BY EVANGELIZING ISRAEL?

PLEASE JOIN US IN WELCOMING ISRAELI PASTOR YOSI OVADIA FROM GALILEE AS HE JOINS JACOB PRASCH IN EXPLORING '"THE BODY OF MESSIAH IN MODERN ISRAEL".
 

Moriel Northern Conference (Moriel's Israel Conference) see the posting on our itinerary site: https://bit.ly/2EGq2En
March 8th to 10th 2019

“The Body Of Messiah in Last Days Israel & Israel Today “
Speakers are...
Jacob Prasch & Pastor Yossi Ovadia from Israel.
£150 per person - all rooms ensuite (Cheques payable to Moriel Ministries).

Daresbury Hotel ( Britannia Hotels )
Daresbury Business Park, Daresbury,  Warrington, Cheshire WA4 4BB

For Booking Form please apply to Mrs Beryl Hunter 07894862590 (ring only Mon-Fri Up to 8pm ) bookings not taken weekends or late evenings

Email. lifeline.wigan2@btinternet.com
Bookings ONLY by booking form.

 

Closing date Feb 28th 2019.

Moriel TV has already ceased commenting on the David Nathan issue and we have ceased responding to his proponents and defenders such as Deborah and Stuart Menelaws though we stand by the factual accuracy of what had been reported.We reject as hyperbolic nonsense the hideous demands of Graham Baldwin & his Catalyst organization and the Menelaws of GV 24/7 framed in language that may legally constitute blackmail and urging litigation against us.

According to their website, Baldwin's 'Catalyst' "have no religious beliefs" and will represent anyone of any religion (Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist), or of any sexual orientation (heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian) claiming religious abuse for the suggested contribution of 50 British Pounds per hour, and say they are not a 'Christian' organization of saved believers in Christ.

Jacob Prasch moreover is not even on Social Media and is therefore in no position to 'e-stalk' or harass anyone. As the ROKU financial report of Moriel shows, no wages for Jacob Prasch appear in the audits of Moriel UK because Jacob does not receive any, nor any royalties, and all of our recorded materials are freely available at no cost on the Internet. We invite anyone to download any material of Moriel or Jacob Prasch free of charge, only requesting it not be edited or commercially sold. Giving it away is encouraged. Sadly however, contrary to our wishes, the Menelaws continue to commercially sell filmed material featuring Jacob Prasch.

Emails sent by us in response to vitriolic attacks against Moriel Ministries and Jacob Prasch claimed to be abusive by Mr. Baldwin and Menelaws have notably not been produced by them, essentially because read in context such do not exist. These are merely replies to hostile attacks upon us including libelous allegations of mental illness. Claims that expert opinion in documentaries are not paid is denied by the BBC & UK Channel 4, and the 'Daniel Connection' in which Jacob Prasch and other Christians appeared unsalaried was a movie with a plot and acting, not a documentary, and as reported, was commercially sold to Hollywood and to China. Unlike Moriel which publishes its audited financial records, the Menelaw's operations have not.

Moriel has declined to reply to more recent emails by David Nathan and Deborah Menelaws who seem pointlessly intent on keeping this monster alive. All that needs to be established doctrinally and otherwise has been stated and re-stated already and we do not intend to be participants in this Christ dishonoring religious charade triggered by such heresy as 'God The Father not being Creator', and those who defend such lies. For us it has been over for weeks.

Others wishing to drag it out, will continue to be ignored. while acting on behalf of Menelaws in a video produced by Menelaws we have been pronounced as 'unbelievers & pagan' by 'Catalyst', themselves professing to hold 'no religious beliefs' . They have threatened us with suing in rejection of 1 Corinthians 6, yet we challenge anyone to produce documented evidence that we, (or the threat victim Jacob Prasch), have ever threatened anyone. We have meanwhile thanked Bill Randles for his apologetic removal of a blog critical of Moriel & Jacob.

Sincerely,

Moriel Board

 

First EU country to legalise non-therapeutic abortion with no clinical warrant as a mere means of birth control by means of popular Public Referendum. The vote was a landslide.

First EU country to enact pro-radical Islamic anti Israel boycott bringing the promised curse of God on itself (Genesis 12:3). The Republic of Ireland is a nation that has truly gone from bad to worse , going from my fellow New Yorker De Valera cum 'Devilera'  to the Devil himself - from Maynooth to Mecca. Ireland has failed, and for political reasons categorically refused, to criminally prosecute a single Roman Catholic Bishop for illicitly conspiring to protect pedophile sex criminal priests , "christian" Brothers & nuns, despite the Dail formally establishing that every Irish Bishop is guilty of it. Yet it makes trade with Israel's biblical heartland a criminal act.

The Irish Left complains of  a 'British occupation' of Ulster claiming that history proves the Irish are the indigenous people, yet adapts a different standard when history and archaeology  (not to mention the scriptures including the four Gospels) prove that the Jews are the indigenous people of Bethlehem, Beth El, East Jerusalem, Shilo , Jericho & The West Bank. Whatever one's politics, there is no elective  abortion, same sex marriage, or anti Semitism in Northern Ireland (except of course in Andersontown, Short Strand, or up the Falls Road).

All you need is a feigned "Mea Culpa" , a stupid joke of a papal visit, and getting your shirts starched at a Magdallen laundry  in order to sweep sex crimes against children perpetrated by Roman Catholic clergy under the rug in Ireland.  But if their own children don't matter to the Irish government , why should Jewish or Arab children matter? My lunatic Fenian distant Irish cousins murdered Catholic and Protestant children alike in the Omagh bombing. I was in Australia at the time and I vividly recall watching the news report on TV of the funeral of a little  four year old Catholic girl murdered in Omagh, and I have likewise seen Arab as well as Jewish children murdered by Islamic terrorist bombing in Israel. Not a word from Frances Black.

Upwards of 350,000 Arabs killed by other Moslem Arabs in Syria alone, Hamas & Hizbollah persecuting and murdering Arab Christians as do Iran and Saudi Arabia, yet it is Israel with the best  Christian rights, women's rights, and over all human rights record in the Middle East that is singled out by the Irish government for bogus "war crimes". If the Dail wants to see real war crimes the FF , FG, Labour, & Sinn Fein  politicians should  go to Syria or Gaza or ask about the 3.3 million Christians slaughtered in a 14 year period by Islamic militias in Sudan. Where is the Irish boycott on Saudi oil or on Iran where 98% of the Christian pastors were hung? As a Christian I thank God that there is at least one nation in The Middle East where Christians are safe - and that nation is Israel.

Vradaker the Taoiseach should go the Middle East with one of his boyfriends and experience what is decreed by Islamic Sharia law for his homosexuality. He won't be returning to Dublin. Frances Black should do the same and see what happens to  feminist women in Islamic countries. I can almost hear her screaming now while they are mercilessly flogging her. Yet these hypocrites vilify Israel for standing up to this radical Islam that is steadily being imported into Ireland under EU immigration policies. But don't be fooled  - justice is coming (Obadiah 15).

We must pray for Ireland. The judgment of God is surely coming upon the land of my maternal ancestors. The moral avalanche into placing a benediction on everything from unnatural marital unions to the genocidal murder of the unborn to the serial  protection of sex pervert clergy guilty of the most heinous of crimes enacted  inside of  convents and confessionals against defenseless children, has now reached a new low. For the pedophile sagart Jesus said it would be better to be tossed off the dock in Dun Laohaire into the Irish Sea with a millstone around his neck. For those who curse the descendants of Abraham, Issac, & Jacob whom remain beloved for the sake of their patriarchs (Romans 11: 28), God has another impracatory guarantee. According to Zechariah 2:8, an increasingly God-less Ireland has now touched the  "Apple Of God's Own Eye", and I don't mean Patsy Fagan.

  Seamus Jacobus (aka: James Jacob Prasch)

Please watch it carefully and draw your own conclusions.

As you will be able to determine for yourself, this issue is not about the Millennium or differences of opinion on secondary issues, the primary issue is rather the Truth.

Allow me first on behalf of Moriel to please preface any comment by pointing out that we did not violate Titus 3:10 by failing to issue the "once, then twice" warning commanded in that verse. In fact, as he admits we warned David Nathan of this face to face in Los Angeles in May of this year pointing out our belief that the Millennial sacrifices are memorials of The Lord's death etc. to teach the Gospel to those born during that time who will not have a developed concept of sin in a restored earth as it was prior to Adam's sin (this was in addition to a brief chat on the Marriage Supper of The Lamb). Our view is the long-established doctrinal position of conservative Evangelical Pre-Millennialism.

On another video we have, David Nathan of course asserted that those not accepting his view cannot do so because they are Gentiles, when in fact Messianic Jewish scholars from Alfred Edersheim, David Baron, Dr. Louis Goldberg, Professor Dr. Michael Rydelnik, Dr. David Hocking, and Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum and a litany of others we could name hold the same precise doctrinal position in this regard as we do.

In any event, in Los Angeles David Nathan agreed to a retraction that was to be made available for the next edition of the Moriel periodical so we could lay the matter to rest.

We waited three months for what he said he would provide and he was back in South Africa for a portion of that time, but unfortunately it was never forthcoming. A second effort to remind him by email (of which we have a copy), but the deadline was missed and after 3 further months of very concerned and troubled believers contacting us from May to August we were forced to do as we did. Titus 3:10 was followed to the letter.

In the meantime, David's 'Foundation Principles' series also in the public domain which we were additionally accosted concerning came to light containing an index of what we can only consider to be errors, some of them egregious. We had no earlier notion that David held these views when he came into Moriel and we began promoting; something him for which we must accept partial responsibility, mandating a responsibility for us to correct it. At least three South African pastors have since contacted us informing us that they knew David Nathan taught serious error, (but there are others in addition). Three months is a long time and he was contacted a second time during this period. A charge of Titus 3:10 being violated is untrue.

Because we like David Nathan personally, this has been a very difficult episode. There are churches Moriel planted and others where I (Jacob Prasch) am a trustee and I have responsibilities before The Lord to these congregations to keep the Lord's Sheep away from dangerously false dogma, as do pastors who will one day give account for the welfare of His sheep to the Chief Shepherd (1 Peter 5:1-4).

A more comprehensive treatment of David Nathan's response will again appear in the rebuttal, suffice to say it is permeated with multiple demonstrable errors as shall be addressed.

This will be forwarded to David Nathan by Moriel.

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* While this is only one of the videos we have of David Nathan, it is self-explanatory. Note please that before what he presents as 'theory', David Nathan teaches at the 20 second mark that Redemption”, “Salvation by Faith", being filled with The Holy Spirit and being 'Born Again' will be "Finished". People born in the Millennium will be descendent from the survivors of the final 7 years of history (Daniel's 70th Week) and there is nothing in scripture to say these people won't need salvation or redemption and believers in the Millennium will most certainly be Spirit Filled (Just as the Apostles were after John Chapter 20 before Jesus ascended).

* David then goes on to teach that they will, instead of by redemption by Christ, obtain atonement by the blood of animals so that they can participate in "religious" rituals. This is of course impossible according to Hebrews 10:4 as the blood of these animals in Levitical sacrifice are in Greek are 'ADUNAMON" (devoid of any power; it is symbolic only). David also mis-defines the term "Atonement" (as invented by Wm. Tyndale) to be the translation of the Hebrew "Corban" instead of "Kapporah". As shall be noted in the rebuttal, in the verses in Ezekiel 44 & 45 David highlights is the infinitive "L'CAPER", not "L'HACRIV". I know David attended yeshiva in his youth and surely, he can read this for himself, so I am at a loss to explain his confusion. To sacrifice for sin and to cover sin (not cover up, but cover) because if the provision for the sin by another are two different terms entirely in Hebrew with two different meanings and no common 'shoresh' (root) linking them etymologically. What David so assertively teaches makes absolutely no linguistic sense whatsoever. Lay people may swallow it out of ignorance, but not anyone versed in the original languages.

* At the 14:55 mark David teaches, (by his own admission-speculatively) that heaven will not only be for those who are Born Again. Positively nothing in scripture however anywhere negates or reverses John 3:3.

* David's reasoning for the missing Holy Days in the Millennium is utterly mistaken. On the basis of The Book of Ezekiel, we can only be certain of Passover & Hag Matzot because The New Testament shows that Passover will have its Millennial culmination in the 'Marriage Supper of The Lamb' and of Hag Sukkot of which the Millennium is the fulfillment (Zech. 14). The others will have had their total fulfillment.
* David's "theory" that we as believers will not have access to eat of the Tree of Life in heaven is nearly as implausible as his reason for believing it. He conflates and confuses the Fruit (representing the Divine Nature in Christ; e.g. 'The Fruit of The Spirit') with the Leaves (good works). As we see in Jesus cursing the Fig Tree (in Judaism, both ancient & modern, the Fig Tree represents the Atz Hayim or Tree of Life). Jesus said that we most assuredly will eat of the Tree of Life in Heaven Revelation 22:14. Those who do not are the dogs, sorcerers, murderers, and idolaters outside of the city.

* David's teaching on this video that "no one will be Born Again after the rapture" is directly contradictory to Revelation 14:6. The Gospel being preached via angelic agency from midheaven at that time of God's wrath being released concurrent with the rapture is defined in that text as a Gospel that is 'Eternal' (eugalion aonion eugalesai). The Gospel of repentance, faith, and salvation will be preached and it is an 'eternal' message of salvation. Eternity is an all-encompassing term in both Greek and English and includes the Millennium. David Nathan's forceful assertions in this regard and the teaching of the plain meaning of text are mutually exclusive. The circumstances in which it is preached in a post grace environment will be very different, but the message itself will not be. David Nathan appears confused as to dispensations and their meaning. Not until the death & resurrection of Jesus and Pentecost did the season of Grace formally arrive. The Law was still in effect concurrent with the ministry of Jesus, yet He preached the Gospel announcing a coming age of grace before the age arrived (Matthew 4:23). The Law and its wrath moreover was concurrent with the preaching of the Gospel until climaxing in 70 AD/ CE. Isaiah 61: 1-2 (partially cited by Jesus in Luke 4 & Matt. 4) moreover, makes it clear that the proclaiming of the Gospel ('Besora' in Hebrew; 'Evangelion' in Septuagint & New Testament) encompasses both the Grace period and the time of divine vengeance. David's teaching that the Gospel message entailing Second Birth can only exist in an era of Grace is a not only a concept alien to scripture, but at odds with it.

David's teaching on this video that no one will be Born Again after the rapture is directly and mutually exclusively at odds that the Gospel preached by angelic agency from the air at that point will be "eternal'; there will be Salvation by faith etc.- howbeit in circumstances of unprecedented duress very different from the present time.

---

Neither I or Moriel, derives any pleasure from any of this, however we cannot allow the public impression that we agree with such horrible false teaching or allow believers in churches where we bear responsibility to be fed this brand of poison.

WATCH and HEAR DAVID NATHAN TEACH THESE THINGS BY CLICKING HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwjqvkLWfpM

 In 1973, aged 16 I answered an altar call by an American missionary preaching in my hometown. I really experienced the Lord Jesus working in my young life. being a Presbyterian at that time I was soon frustrated by the deadness of the church and found myself drawn to a group of Christian "hippies" from the Jesus movement and went about handing out tracts and singing from campers equipped with amplifiers and p.a. systems. I also visited many pentecostal tent meetings but quickly learned that white doves flying around the tents were the acts of men and not holy spirit manifestations. an older couple took a fancy to me and decided to lay hands on me to receive the gift of tongues. they pressed down upon my head so hard that I realised if I did not come up with something fast, I was going to pass through the pearly gates by virtue of a broken neck. I promptly recited my Latin amo,amas… which caused them to release my head and exhorted me to go home and practice my new gift.

By the time I left high school, I was little more than a sceptic and very disillusioned by all things Christian. I joined the South African police force instead of going to the army and after basic training found myself fighting in a bush war which few of us really understood other than it was supposedly preventing communism from taking over Namibia and eventually South Africa. after my second stint in the operational area, I was transferred to the narcotics section where I mostly did under-cover drug gang infiltrations and eventually transferred to the criminal bureau where I did C.S.I for about 26 years. in all of these years, I lived as a sinner yet the consciousness that I was lost never left me.  

in 1996 I was reading a book, "the final battle" by Hal Lindsey and clearly experienced a voice saying to me, "this is the last time!". I immediately knew that God was speaking to me but soon afterwards fell back to my former ways yet the experience haunted me. driven by a need to silence this inner voice I started seriously studying the meaning of life and began a quest to disprove the bible and Christianity. I read Stephen Hawking and other scientist but found they had little to nothing to offer. their postulations were absurd and empty. Egyptology and Hinduism was obviously such rubbish that I found it incredulous that people actually believed in those things. then I found the Apocrypha and my curiosity as to why they were excluded from the canon of scripture won me over to study them. these quaint writings intrigued me until I read the book of Nicodemus, about the trial of Jesus and I was deeply moved by the unfairness and lack of jurisprudence throughout this ordeal. as an expert state witness myself, I could appreciate the corruption of the Sanhedrin in framing Jesus and it actually caused me to weep for the first time in many years. I started reading the bible again and on 1 September 1998 my wife and I had a powerful encounter with the Lord Jesus in our home and we were born again.

A few weeks later a friend of mine gave me a VHS cassette and asked me to "see" what I could make of it. it was by one James Jacob Prasch and it turned our lives upside down and challenged us to pursue truth and not follow men. this I have done and later I met Jacob in person and became his friend and co-worker in the kingdom.

I am honoured to serve the Lord Jesus and to be entrusted with the Moriel South Africa administration.

 

 

We cannot however speak for David personally, and you will need to address any doctrinal questions to him and to 'Bread of Life' ministries. Attached below are the teaching materials by David Nathan that have been at issue. While we are agreement with some of it, certain aspects are incompatible with Moriel's understanding of scripture, statement of faith, and charter.

It is better if we decline further comment and allow David to speak for himself should you see fit to contact him with reference to his own theological positions. However, by way of clarification our positions in terms of doctrinal theology are incongruous with certain of David's positions as published in his Foundation Principles material attached below.

Without hostility or personal attack, we cannot endorse a teaching that urges believers to stand on a personal word from The Lord which he, like many others, defines as a Rhema (although Greek scholars dispute these definitions) in the same way they would stand on scripture, defined as Logos. Neither can we, (on the basis of Exodus chapter 30 and the absence of exegetical warrant in the New Testament) sanction David's understanding of "laying on of hands", although we do agree with the practice itself as mentioned in the Epistle to Timothy, and we do hold to Spirit Baptism as it is explained on the Moriel recorded teaching on 'Baptism'.

Another problematic issue has been David's view of atonement for sin in the Millennial reign of Christ being by Levitical sacrifice (which will be practiced at that time as a typological 'pedeon' to teach the Gospel to those born during that period), instead of by the blood of Christ. We expected David to retract this statement, which he had agree to do, (in accordance with the Epistle to The Hebrews that animal sacrifices can never atone for sin), but the retraction has not been forthcoming. David may and undoubtedly will respond to these matters for himself, however Moriel is simply going by what David published and recorded - that multiple believers on Facebook etc. have as a result, wrongly interpreted to be the doctrinal beliefs of Moriel. This compelled Moriel to clarify that such is not the case.

Again, we all stand united in our personal fondness of David and we freely acknowledge that many have been blessed by other aspects of his teaching ministry with which we are in agreement. We additionally once more thank David his administration work for Moriel in South Africa. It is Moriel hope that he will retract these doctrines which we only hold as erroneous.

Sincerely in Jesus,

Moriel Board

Update (Sept 5th, 2018). David responded to us.  Jacob Prasch has responded back  - please see here

Another activity for some batch of our children, we took them to a Christian fellowship, venue at Fiesta Community Homes, Subic Zambales. We let the children swim on swimming pool to refresh them from summer heat, eat lunch together as like at a picnic and hearing God's word delivered by Pastor Edwin. A Young Peoples Fellowship hosted by the church at San Felipe Zambales. Some of our young children attended on the fellowship and participated on the program activities.

Moriel Ministries brought again a blessings for the children through Moriel Give a Gifts school supplies and school uniforms. The parents were thankful and the children were happy and ready excited to go to school on June 4. The gifts encourages the children not only in secular school but also in Sunday School.

The children are familiar on Moriel Give a Gifts because they received it on a regular basis, like this coming rainy season they are expecting Moriel gifts- umbrellas and raincoats. We're teaching the children that all the blessings we received belongs to God, to Jesus Christ our Lord and from your abundant heart the blessings flows and we be always thankful deep in heart. Thank you very much for all the blessings, may God continue to bless you.

Please let we know the update of our concern on the residential lot.

Thank you.

Sincerely,in Christ

Ptr. Paul

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Bookings for the Moriel Hayes Conference will only be taken from April through to October.

Bookings for Moriel Northern Conference will only be taken from December to February.

This is so bookings do not overlap and gives us time to Visit Israel in our Ministry Work with Lechlcha.

All bookings for both Conferences are now via Peter & Beryl Hunter. lifeline.wigan2@btinternet.com Mobile- 07894862590

Mana and Daeng’s Baptism

Mana and Daeng have been nominal believers for several years now, but just in the last year have really gotten serious about their walk with the Lord.  Khae has been teaching her and her daughter twice a week, and I’ve been teaching Mana and another man twice a week.   It is a joy to see them walking with the Lord and leading their children to know the Lord also.

Pat’s Decision and Baptism

Pat is the young lady who recently had a baby.  As a young mother who was not planning to become a mother, she has really taken good responsibility for her daughter and not just left her at the government orphanage or worse.  With this new responsibility she also seems to be thinking more clearly about her life and about her relationship with God.  Pat has been coming to learn the Bible with us for several years now, but for a while was tempted away by the video game shop and preferring her cell phone to coming and studying the Bible and English.  Khae has also started going to her house to teach her twice a week.  Last month Khae asked her directly what she believes.  Her answer was non-committal.  But, then a few days later she saw a ghost and then prayed to Jesus for protection and felt peace.  After that time she became much more interested in the Bible and even asked to be baptized.  That was another blessed day.  Praise be to God for this!

Woman on the Beast

While here, David also asked me about an idol that is seen some places here.  I put together a short article about that, attached here.

May God lead each of you and bless you in the New Year for His glory.

Thanks be to God for His love and reconciliation through Jesus!

Peace in Christ,

Scott, Khae, and Micahberekiah.

 

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http://pulpitandpen.org/2017/12/23/tim-keller-helps-the-new-yorker-siphon-off-support-from-republicans/

RC Sproul was a genuine Calvinist in the Covenant theology sense that John Calvin was, in effect equating Baptism with circumcision and sprinkling infants etc. He was not a mere adherent to the 'TULIP' of The Remonstrance of Dort. He was additionally a staunch cessationist. These, of course, are doctrinal positions we at Moriel do not share, but still his dogma was by no means all erroneous and RC Sproul could indeed be a voice for scriptural orthodoxy in an age of compromise and apostasy.

While we did not hold a very positive view of RC Sproul doctrinally or theologically overall, he was to his credit and by God's grace not ecumenical and we appreciated his strong positions on intelligent design, pro-life opposition to non-therapeutic abortion, and above all we must pay tribute to his firm position on the inerrancy of scripture as God's infallible and inspired Word in opposition to the satanically inspired quagmire of higher critical theological liberalism that he very correctly and often nobly challenged.

We must not be hypocritical in eulogizing him; RC Sproul admittedly was not a great champion of truth to us or anything like it - his pneumatology was flawed and infant baptism is fundamentally unscriptural. Yet Dr Sproul certainly was not devoid of his areas of personal virtue. In addition to his negative points of doctrine theologically, as a conservative Evangelical scholar he most definitely also exhibited better points in the sphere of apologetics in particularly We do believe him to have been a brother in Christ, (how be it one with whom we often disagreed as well as at other times found ourselves agreeing with). Our prayers are with his family at this time.

When we meet Jesus face to face, Jesus will surely straighten out all of our imperfect doctrines.

(JJ Prasch/ Moriel)

I hope Sizer at least paid his shameless patsy Jews For Jesus stooges a generous honorarium for their PR services when they ignored the official position they once published by Moishe Rosen in their newsletter calling 'anti Zionism the mere current expression of anti Semitism' and pandered to Stephen Sizer to the public assassination of their testimony for Yeshua to the Jewish community. Politicians are, by definition, hypocrites. So are Richard Harvey, Susan Perlman, and Jews For Jesus. The Jewish community, the rabbinic establishment, and Jewish community media outlets all propagate the idea that Jewish believers in Jesus as Messiah have joined the ranks of historical "Christian" Jew hatred and anti Semitism as a tactic to discourage Jewish consideration of the claims of Jesus. By virtue of their sickening actions Jews for Jesus are out to prove them right

'Jews for Jesus' are no longer "for Jesus".  Jews for Jesus are for themselves. They are plainly and primarily about theocratic politics and fundraising - not about the cause of the Gospel to lost Jewish souls because they have categorically proven themselves to be quite willing to sacrifice their testimony to the Jewish people for the sake of such church politics and fund raising. I hope the theocratic socializing and honorariums are worth it. Having assassinated their own witness for Yeshua to the Jewish community they are no longer witnesses to the Jews but demonstrable, and some would say, paid suckers for Stephen Sizer.

Citing a recent article concerning the correspondence to a true Christian Zionist who both stands with Israel and with the cause of Israel's salvation; a brother of the kind castigated by Sizer and Jeremy Corbyn. Cast your minds back a few years, and you’ll remember that the Church of England decided to investigate Stephen Sizer, after he had:

• Commended a call for the Jews to “get the Hell out of Palestine“
• Suggestedthat the Jews were behind 9/11
• Cited Holocaust denier Dale Crowley
• CitedHolocaust denier Michael Hoffman
• Cited9/11 “truther” Michael Collins defending Holocaust denier Dale Crowley
• Travelled to Iran as a guestof the Iranian regime, having been invited by the same man who previously invited Robert Faurisson on an expenses-paid tour
• Spoke at an IHRC conference aiming towards “a new liberation theology on Palestine” – alongside Rima Fakhry of Hezbollah and terror advocate Achmad Cassiem
• Shared a platformwith Holocaust denier Fred Tobin
• Supported the IHH flotilla
• Proposed a boycott of Greeceafter they blocked another Gaza flotilla
• Hosted a speakerat his church who thinks suicide bombers are martyrs
• Agreed that Hamas had every rightto “hit back” against the West
• Linkedto antisemitic website The Ugly Truth
• Joined with with Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, commander of Hezbollah’s armed forces in Southern Lebanon
• Joined with with the Blood Libel Sheikh, Raed Salah, whom Jeremy Corbyn brought into Parliament
• Joined  with the granddaughter of Ayatollah Khomeini, Zahra Mostafavi
• Toured Malaysiaspeaking about Palestine , following an invite from a Holocaust denier
• Posted a linkto Veterans Today, which dismisses the Holocaust as an “Israeli psy-ops operation”, denies the gas chambers, defends Hitler, sneers at “the Jewish crooks on Wall Street”, publishes pieces by Gilad Atzmon, and says of the Jews, “they should wholly be burnt in ovens”.
• Posted a blog link to the Palestine Telegraph, which supported the writingsof ex-KKK leader David Duke.

Here was Corbyn’s spirited defense of Stephen Sizer, in a letter to Sizer’s bishop back in 2012

Dear Right Reverend Christopher Hill

I am sorry to hear that problems have arisen, for Reverend Stephen Sizer, at least in part due to a technical oversight in terms of computer links, though I understand that the problem has now been rectified. I hope it was no more complicated than that.

Reverend Stephen Sizer seems to have come under attack by certain individuals intent on discrediting the excellent work that Stephen does in highlighting the injustices of the Palestinian Israeli situation, in particular by his very thorough analysis of “Christian Zionism”. Might I suggest that such criticism is part of a wider pattern of demonising those who dare to stand up and speak out against Zionism, a philosophy that precludes the existence of the state of Palestine?

Your own expertise, wisdom and experience will, I am sure, allow you to appreciate just how much distance exists between anti Semitism, anti Zionism, and anti Israeli government actions for that matter. Overzealous critics find it convenient to conflate them all. Active and well informed individuals such as Reverend Stephen Sizer, withstand a considerable amount of inappropriate criticism. Indeed many MPs and Peers are also attacked.

The internet is a complicated piece of technology and with the best will in the world, imperfect links are made and one would have to spend 8 hours a day “surfing” the net just to be 100% certain one’s views to not become contaminated in any way at all. Even then, connections can inadvertently be made.

I do hope you’ll take the above into consideration when meeting with Reverend Stephen Sizer today, for I do admire the excellent work that he does and personally, I would give no credence at all to any claims that he is anti-Semitic.

With kind regards

Jeremy Corbyn MP
Islington North

 

Draw your own conclusions.

 

A statement by the Bishop of Guildford, Andrew Watson, re: Stephen Sizer
Date: 10 March 2017
A statement by the Bishop of Guildford, Andrew Watson.  

“I have become aware that Dr Stephen Sizer has again contravened the agreement he made in February 2015 just five weeks before his planned retirement on Easter Sunday, 16 April 2017. Needless to say I am very disappointed by Dr Sizer’s actions.

“Dr Sizer admits that material shared on his Facebook page in the past two weeks has breached our agreement, and so I have required him to cease all preaching, teaching and leading of services with immediate effect. He will also desist from all use of social media until his retirement takes effect.

“To allow the parish of Virginia Water to say a proper goodbye, I have conceded that Dr Sizer leads ministry over the Easter weekend.”

There are about 1.4 million Arabs in Israel, and they should be thanking God for the privilege they have. ‚   Here are some of the reasons:

• In Israel they can live without fear, under rule of law (not sharia law!).
• They can get justice.
• They can find jobs and make a living.
• They can and do get plenty of free medical treatment.
• Their children can go to school, college and university.
• Adults who never had the chance can learn to read and write, including the women!
• They can buy property and build homes.
• They get social security benefits.
• They can choose NOT to go to a mosque without being hunted down by religious police.
• The women can drive cars without being dragged out and beaten.
• The women can wear sunglasses to protect their eyes (unlike in some Arab nations).
• Even the girls can enter the professions.
• The women can dress as they choose, and even allow people to see their faces! ‚   ‚   Wow, whatever next?
• The women can walk down the street without a male relative.
• Arabs can ‚   vote in truly free and un-corrupt elections.
• They can even stand for office and be elected! ‚   Some Arabs have been elected to the highest body in the land, the Knesset.
• And they can voice their true opinions. ‚   Try that in an Arab country if you disagree with the ruling elite.
• They can change their religion without being beheaded, as they are in Islamic towns and cities on Fridays.
• They can keep their hands and feet, and not have them amputated by sharia courts (unlike the young girl who ran up to us in Morocco crying and holding out the stumps of her wrists).

In fact, the only place Islamics find real ‚  freedom is outside of their own Islamic countries, which is why they flood into the West.

I say all this to show that I am well informed in Middle Eastern affairs and that, for that reason, I am shocked and disheartened by the EUSA motion and vote. I am shocked for a simple reason: there is not, and has never been, a system of apartheid in Israel. That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality by any Edinburgh student, should he or she choose to visit Israel to see for themselves.

Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that those members of EUSA who voted for this motion are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, and that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby.

Being anti-Israel is not in itself objectionable. But I'm not talking about ordinary criticism of Israel. I'm speaking of a hatred that permits itself no boundaries in the lies and myths it pours out. Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a 'Nazi' state. In what sense is this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The einzatsgruppen? The SS? The N ƒ ¼remberg Laws? The Final Solution?

None of these things nor anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel, precisely because the Jews, more than anyone on earth, understand what Nazism stood for. It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza (or elsewhere). Where? When? No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt it deserves. But calling Jews Nazis, and saying they have committed a Holocaust is as basic a way to subvert historical fact as anything I can think of.

Likewise apartheid. For apartheid to exist, there would have to be a situation that closely resembled things in South Africa under the apartheid regime.

Unfortunately for those who believe this, a weekend in any part of Israel would be enough to show how ridiculous the claim is. That a body of university students actually fell for this and votedon it is a sad comment on the state of modern education. The most obvious focus for apartheid would be the country's 20% Arab population.

Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jews or anyone else; Muslims have the same rights as Jews or Christians; Baha'is, severely persecuted in Iran, flourish in Israel, where they have their world centre; Ahmadi Muslims, severely persecuted in Pakistan and elsewhere, are kept safe by Israel; the holy places of all religions are protected under a specific Israeli law. Arabs form 20% of the university population (an exact echo of their percentage in the general population). In Iran, the Baha'is (the largest religious minority) are forbidden to study in any university or to run their own universities: why aren't your members boycotting Iran?

Arabs in Israel can go anywhere they want, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa. They use public transport, they eat in restaurants, they go to swimming pools, they use libraries, they go to cinemas alongside Jews - something no blacks could do in South Africa. Israeli hospitals not only treat Jews and Arabs, they also treat Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank. On the same wards, in the same operating theatres.

In Israel, women have the same rights as men: there is no gender apartheid. Gay men and women face no restrictions, and Palestinian gays often escape into Israel, knowing they may be killed at home. It seems bizarre to me that LGBT groups call for a boycott of Israel and say nothing about countries like Iran, where gay men are hanged or stoned to death. That illustrates a mindset that beggars belief. Intelligent students thinking it's better to be silent about regimes that kill gay people, but good to condemn the only country in the Middle East that rescues and protects gay people. Is that supposed to be a sick joke?

University is supposed to be about learning to use your brain, to think rationally, to examine evidence, to reach conclusions based on solid evidence, to compare sources, to weigh up one view against one or more others. If the best Edinburgh can now produce are students who have no idea how to do any of these things, then the future is bleak.

I do not object to well documented criticism of Israel. I do object when supposedly intelligent people single the Jewish state out above states that are horrific in their treatment of their populations. We are going through the biggest upheaval in the Middle East since the 7th and 8th centuries, and it's clear that Arabs and Iranians are rebelling against terrifying regimesthat fight back by killing their own citizens. Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, do not rebel (though they are free to protest). Yet Edinburgh students mount no demonstrations and call for no boycotts against Libya, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Iran. They prefer to make false accusations against one of the world's freest countries, the only country in the Middle East that has taken in Darfur refugees, the only country in the Middle East that gives refuge to gay men and women, the only country in the Middle East that protects the Baha'is.... Need I go on? The imbalance is perceptible, and it sheds no credit on anyone who voted for this boycott.

I ask you to show some common sense. Get information from the Israeli embassy. As for some speakers. Listen to more than one side. Do not make your minds up until you have given a fair hearing to both parties.You have a duty to your students, and that is to protect them from one-sided argument. They are not at university to be propagandized. And they are certainly not there to be tricked into anti-Semitism by punishing one country among all the countries of the world, which happens to be the only Jewish state. If there had been a single Jewish state in the 1930s (which, sadly, there was not), don't you think Adolf Hitler would have decided to boycott it? Of course he would, and he would not have stopped the family: re. Your generation has a duty to ensure that the perennial racism of anti-Semitism never sets down roots among you.

Today, however, there are clear signs that it has done so and is putting down more. You have a chance to avert a very great evil, simply by using reason and a sense of fair play. Please tell me that this makes sense to me. I have given you some of the evidence. It's up to you to find out more.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Denis MacEoin

Yes God freed them in 1948, because that is God's land and no one else's.

And He will soon return to free whoever is still remaining at His second coming.

Until then my heart grieves for all of Israel to recgconize their Messiah that was hung on a tree for us all.

Y'shu, Jesus, Our Lord and our God.

Let's keep praying for Israel as never before.....

Jesus open the eyes of your people to recognize you before the destruction begins.

I know you will when you return, but have mercy and save many before that happens Lord.

Thank you Jesus. Amen

Grace and peace to you who are Christ Jesus

The document misreported an interview with one of the participants, English social worker Miranda Pinch, claiming that she had been told by the head teacher of a school in Hebron that some children had been sexually abused.

In a statement which apologises "unreservedly" for the mistake, the charity said:

"The children had in fact been subjected to verbal sexual harassment, which is clearly different, from both settlers and Israeli soldiers.

"This was an unwitting mistake on Christian Aid’s part and we apologise for the misrepresentation of what had taken place.

"Christian Aid has interviewed the head teacher, who has confirmed that teenage girls had suffered verbal sexual harassment while passing through a nearby army checkpoint."

The Charity Commission said concerns have been raised with it about the mistake and that it was "currently assessing what regulatory concern there may be for the Commission".

EDITORIALS
NYDailyNews.com
Monday, March 29th 2010

The grotesquely misnamed United Nations Human Rights Council has topped its own high standard of absurd lies about Israel - this time resurrecting the medieval blood libel against Jews with a medical twist.

The council has posted on its Web site a venomous letter from an anti-Israel organization called EAFORD, the International Organization for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which is just as grotesquely misnamed as the council itself.

EAFORD, a nonprofit founded in Libya and granted UN accreditation in 1981, has one consuming obsession: to brand Israel a criminal state.

EAFORD's statement, with the council's imprimatur, accuses Israel of plucking organs of "dead, kidnapped and killed Palestinians" in a conspiracy involving "Israeli physicians, medical centers, rabbis and the Israeli Army."

Such is the nature of the Human Rights Council. It legitimizes outrageous, inflammatory lies about Israel while ordering Hillel Neuer of UN Watch to refrain from using the word "regime" when talking about Iran. It ceaseslessly attacks the only democracy in the Middle East while turning a blind eye to genocide, female genital mutilation and human trafficking elsewhere.

Passover, the Jewish festival of freedom, begins at sundown tonight. This would be the perfect time for the Obama administration, which has suffered from the delusion that the council can be reformed, to call it out for the hatemongering farce that it is.

Source http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/03/29/2010-03-29_propagating_hate.html

The UN Watch letter that exposed the blood libel follows below.

March 24, 2010

Dear Mr. President,
Dear Madam High Commissioner,

As a human rights NGO dedicated to combating racism, UN Watch is alarmed to discover that the UN Human Rights Council, together with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, has, however unwittingly, helped to propagate an anti-Semitic blood libel by publishing it as an official United Nations document (A/HRC/13/NGO/23), which is now being distributed to country delegates"”under the same Agenda Item in which they will soon vote on the Goldstone Report.

We call upon you to immediately cease circulating this racist, hateful and inflammatory text to the ambassadors and other delegates of the Human Rights Council; to gather up and destroy all existing copies; and to remove it from the Human Rights Council website.

The document in question is A/HRC/13/NGO/23, entitled "Israeli Illegal Trafficking in Organs of Dead and Kidnapped Palestinian Victims." It was submitted by the "International Organization for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination," also known as EAFORD. As shown on its website (www.eaford.org), the raison d’etre of this UN-accredited organization is to accuse Israel of being a racist state. (The website also links to a video on U.S. action in Iraq, which it describes as a "Holocaust.")

The statement begins by accusing Israel of "ethnic cleansing and massacres," creating the "largest open-air prison in the world," perpetrating "economic genocide," and having "let loose hordes of marauding gangs of Israeli illegal settlers" in order to "launch pogroms against Palestinians."

It then proceeds to the principal charge: "Now it is the turn of the dead, kidnapped and killed Palestinians. Their human organs, as reported in the press, can be a source of immense wealth through illegal trafficking in the world market. Israeli physicians, medical centers, rabbis and the Israeli army may be involved, according to reports published in the Swedish press and criminal investigations in the United States."

It goes on: "After Israeli physicians remove organs they think marketable, the soldiers bury the bodies in graves that carry only numbers and no names, or place them in sealed caskets and deliver them under curfew conditions to the families and supervise the digging of the graves and burial."

Finally, the statement concludes by calling on "physicians, medical centers and associations everywhere to condemn and boycott Israeli physicians and medical centers."

Your Excellencies, the accusation that the Jewish state and its doctors are engaged in a racist campaign to steal Palestinian organs has no basis in fact or reality, and is nothing less than the repackaging of the medieval blood libel that was used over centuries to incite anti-Semitic hatred, violence and pogroms against Jews.

The United Nations cannot allow itself to aid or abet such blatant incitement to racism. Given that the Office of the High Commissioner carefully screens all submissions before deciding to publish them"”indeed, our own submissions to this session were edited to remove certain words referring to regimes such as Iran and Libya"”we are deeply disappointed that this hateful text was accepted for publication as an official UN document, and that it is now being distributed as such within the Human Rights Council chamber.

We urge you to take immediate action in accordance with the principles of human rights, equality and anti-racism upon which the United Nations was founded.

Respectfully,

Hillel C. Neuer
Executive Director
UN Watch
Geneva, Switzerland

The PA official's claim follows a meeting in Jordan last week between PA President Mahmoud Abbas and George Mitchell, Obama's envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At a press conference immediately following the meeting, Abbas declared the Palestinian "right" to "resistance" against Israel.

The U.S. has come down hard on a decision by the Jerusalem municipality to approve 1,600 new homes in Ramat Shlomo, an already-existing Jewish community in eastern Jerusalem. The decision was made public during Vice President Joe Biden's visit to the region earlier this month.

The Palestinians claim eastern Jerusalem as their future capital, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear he does not intend to give up the Jewish sections of the city.

Netanyahu has stated that he had not been aware of the decision to build in Ramat Shlomo and that the announcement was not timed to coincide with Biden's visit.

Still, Obama senior adviser David Axelrod called the Ramat Shlomo announcement an "insult." Other administration officials called the Jewish neighborhood expansion an impediment to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Yesterday, Netanyahu's office made public a U.S. demand for a four-month freeze of Jewish construction in Jewish neighborhoods of eastern Jerusalem. In exchange for the freeze, the U.S. said it would coax Abbas to hold direct negotiations with Netanyahu regarding the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The Palestinians have been engaged in riots and street violence targeting Jews in Jerusalem.

Two weeks ago, Israel rededicated an ancient synagogue in the main Jewish quarter of the Old City. The structure had been badly damaged by Jordanian forces that overran the Jewish Quarter in the 1948 Middle East war.

The Hurva synagogue is hundreds of feet from the Western Wall and is in no way connected to the Temple Mount. Israel did not conduct heavy construction on the synagogue, a structure that had been in the Jewish quarter since the second century.

Still, the PA and Hamas claimed Israel's rededication ceremony was a threat to the al-Aqsa Mosque. Hamas called for a "day of rage," prompting Palestinians throughout eastern Jerusalem to hurl stones at police. There were also reports of rocks and Molotov cocktails aimed at Israeli buses.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=134569

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The frosty Obama/Netanyahu personal relations is a result of a crisis which was manufactured by Barack Obama as a way to isolate the Jewish State and serve it up on a silver platter to his allies in the Muslim world. Yes I know the President keeps talking about the "shared interests" and "friendship" but this President is an expert in saying one thing and doing another.

The official story, the one you hear in the press, is the U.S. wants a freeze on new housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank as a way to bring Palestinians back to the bargaining table for renewed peace talks. The truth is that these housing developments started decades before Bibi took over as PM in 2009 and negotiations were taking place all during that period.

Obama is pressuring Israel despite the fact that last year Mahmoud Abbas declared in the Washington Post that he would never recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and that he would not lift a finger to peacemaking. Abbas basically said that Bibi would capitulate or he would wait until a Bibi/Obama split brings down the Netanyahu government.

Obama is putting the entire burden on Israel and the "settlements". No reciprocal demand is made of the Palestinians.

In his demands Obama has refused to recognize existing agreements between the two countries saying that Israel would ‚   be permitted to expand existing communities. In fact the Obama administration refused to admit they ever existed. ‚   That lie was refuted by was disputed by former Asst. Secretary of State Elliot Abrams who negotiated that agreement with Israel:

Please click here for the rest of the story.

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FAIR USE NOTICE: This article contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use", you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

The announcement that Israel intends to build a housing complex in a neighbourhood that is part of East Jerusalem.

The result: Vice President Biden was said to be greatly embarrassed by this announcement as he had just arrived in Israel in an attempt to encourage both Israel and the Palestinians to re-enter peace negotiations.

Now if this was a planned insult to Biden and the USA one could understand it.

If it was a deliberate attempt to throw a rock under the peace process, again we could see and understand America's ire and the subsequent Palestinian riots that followed.

However, neither is true.

It was an ill-timed announcement by a lesser official in Netanyahu's government. That is for sure.

BUT the announcement should not have caused such an earthquake response from America and the PA.

Why?

Because everyone; the Americans and the Palestinians, know full well that such building endevours have been going on in this same neighbourhood for the last 4 decades!

AND even more amazing; they all know that under any and every past and present peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians it has been agreed that this area would always be a part of Israel in any future two state solution!!

So they would still be building in Israel not a future Palestinian state! Everyone agrees.

So why the vitriolic response from the USA and the Palestinians?

I believe this has shown the Obama administration's true colours and their anti-Israel policies and pro-Palestinian / Arab kow-towing.

Today 75% of Congress called on Secretary of State Clinton and Obama to "cool it" regarding Israel and to make a behind closed doors peace with Netanyahu.

Maybe they will, maybe they will not. But if one takes a look at the list of regular visitors to the White House in recent months you will see the administration is taking a very disturbing anti-American, anti-Israel route. Read the list here.

And as such placing itself on a collision course with the God of Israel.

Not because Israel is always right. But because as in most instances, and especially in this recent case, Israel has once more been attacked without cause.

This is nothing other than the handywork of Satan himself who is seeking the destruction of the Jewish state. And in attempting to fulfill his diabolical plans he uses fallen mankind.

This is the land to which in future days the Messiah Yeshua Himself will return to defend his people when as the prophet Zechariah says "All nations shall come against Jerusalem." (Zechariah 14:1-5).

The Palestinians for their part, in seeing the American response and changing attitude toward Israel, have smelt blood and believe the new administration is openly against the Jewish state and its demise is near. So they join in the hunt and begin to riot.

They ponder why the Americans are dragging their feet in allowing any solid concrete action against Iran and her nuclear plans against Israel.

Could the USA think-tank be considering the possibility of Iran destroying Israel then America, holding its hands up in mock horror deals with Iran to stop it becoming a danger to the USA's Arab (read "oil producing") friends?

Thus America becomes the saviour of the Middle East and prevents a possible World War and at the same time, by proxy, rids the world of the Israel problem.

All under a President who refuses to show his original birth certificate, who bows to the King of Saudi Arabia; something no Western leader has ever, ever done, and has questionable guests at the White House many of whom have been anti-USA in the past. Read the list here

Speculation, I know, and I hope I am wrong. But certainly the Bible tells us plainly that when Antichrist appears the world will turn against Israel.

I am NOT saying Obama IS the Antichrist. But he could be preparing the world for the Antichrist's anti-Israel, anti-christian time of the Great Tribulation.

It appears those days may not be too distant.

May Messiah bless you.

03/17/2010 17:42
AsiaNews.it

Palestinian Authority shuts down the only Christian TV broadcaster in the Territories
After 14 years on the air, the government shuts down the only Palestinian Christian TV station. Located about 350 metres from Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, the station broadcast shows with social, religious, economic and cultural content. Its general manager tells AsiaNews the order is unfair, stressing the high regard in which viewers held the station.

Bethlehem (AsiaNews) "“ The Palestinian National Authority has shut down Al-Mahed "Nativity" TV for operating without a licence. Samir Qumsieh, owner and general manager of the Christian broadcaster, slammed the decision. After 14 years on the air and despite a long list of "thank you letters" by grateful viewers, Palestinian police raided the broadcaster’s offices yesterday at 2 pm. Waving an order by the Interior Ministry, they put the station off the air. Contacted by AsiaNews, Mr Qumsieh said he was baffled by the order, which for him was "unjustified".

Located on high ground at about 350 metres from the Church of Nativity, in Bethlehem, Al-Mahed "Nativity" TV was for years the "only Christian voice" among Palestinian media.

It broadcast programmes in all sorts of domains, from education to the environment, from politics to local culture and society, as well as programmes with a religious content: masses, prayers and the most important celebrations on the liturgical calendar. Its audience was not limited to Christians but included Muslims as well.

According to unconfirmed reports that reached AsiaNews, the closure appears to be financially motivated. Palestinian authorities demanded money, a "licence" that was not paid.

In a letter addressed to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, Mr Qumsieh slammed the unjustified closure of the Christian TV station because of the "lack of a licence".

He said that 14 years of broadcasting earned the station the gratitude of viewers as demonstrated by the many thank you letters and e-mails, worthy of a "Guinness world record".

In his letter to the authorities, he said that he "would not beg" to have the station re-opened. The "ingratitude" shown to him is "unacceptable by any religion, logic or conscience".

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No, none of those incidents were described as insults. Nothing that Muslim countries did to mock, humiliate and murder Americans were even noticed at all. None of them produced furious condemnations from the White House or two hours of Hillary Clinton screeching on the phone at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. So what did Israel do that was so awful, so horrible and terrible? It built houses. Yes, civilian houses. Not army bases or nuclear missiles or walls. Houses.

Israel approved a construction project to build housing for its own people, in its own capitol city, Jerusalem. Some of the housing will be built in the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood, situated around the grave of Shimon the Righteous, a Jewish religious figure famed for rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. A neighborhood where Jews have lived for over a century. As well as Ramat Shlomo, a thriving neighborhood with thousands of Jewish families living in it.

Please click here for the rest of the story.

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They say that the aim of this conference is to:

...equip the global church to understand Scripture as it relates to the Palestinian context, and to discuss the theological importance of Peace and Justice in an Evangelical context.

Our hope is to provide a forum for evangelicals who take the Bible seriously to prayerfully seek a well-informed awareness of issues of peace, justice and reconciliation which are contextually sensitive as well profound to scriptural scholarship.

-www.christatthecheckpoint.com

The speakers at this conference are listed here:
http://www.christatthecheckpoint.com/speakers.html

Today's keynote speakers may seem like a particularly surprising combo, but really this is no surprise. They are listed as Lynne Hybels and Tony Campolo.

Lynne Hybels, of course, is the wife of Bill Hybels of Willow Creek church and Willow Creek Association (which most seeker friendly churches today are members of). Besides partnering with the Tutus and the Warrens in social justice and world peace endeavours, Mr. Hybels has had the anti-semetic Jimmy Carter in to speak, as well as Tony Blair and Bono (Mr. COEXIST), etc. You may recall that Mr. Hybels is also a signatory of"¦

This "Common Word Between You and Us", complete with its own website and heavy hitting endorsements from the misguided likes of Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, Leith Anderson, and Jim Wallis of the religious left, has proven to be more of a sophisticated anti-Israel propaganda tool than legitimate Inter-Faith dialogue.

-'A Common Word' -- Inter-Faith Dialogue or Propaganda Tool?
[www.christiannewswire.com]

Mrs. Hybels has also signed something:

"Something called the Christians Support Bold Action for Holy Land Peace campaign was launched; a letter signed by 50 leaders included Tony Campolo, Joel Hunter (president of the NAE); Bill and Lynne Hybels; Richard Mouw, President of Fuller; and David Neff, editor-in-chief CT.
This, my friends, represents a thrust deep into the heart of evangelicalism, so long a community that by and large supported Israel. That support is no longer guaranteed, and the presence of Hunter and Hybels cements the fact."

-The Crusades
[www.prophecymatters.com]

As far as Mr. Campolo goes, well, besides his contemplative, mystical, Ancient Roman Catholic spirituality, centering prayer side, he seems to think that Israel is "stealing" their own land"¦

Listen to Tony Campolo in Bethlehem, over breakfast at the Christ at the Checkpoint conference, where just a few days ago he said this:

Sizer: "What's wrong with the settlements and the wall and so on, is that for security?"
Campolo: "Well, you're stealing land I mean, I mean, let me put it this way, the Bible says 'thou shall not steal,' you're stealing land! Do I have to be more specific? Hehe..what do you want me to say, nice diplomatic words?"

-Tony Campolo on the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
http://vimeo.com/10149203

Campolo's hope for this conference that is going on right now is that they will come up with a new way of thinking.

There is more on Campolo’s theology regarding Israel here:

Tony Campolo: Misinformed, bad theology
www.wnd.com

Tony might benefit by taking a closer look at the what the Bible says on this subject regarding The Land of Israel and To whom does it belong.

Other speakers at this conference include Brother Andrew, and Stephen Sizer.

Unfortunately, Brother Andrew has recently become somewhat imbalanced. Jacob Prasch writes that he...

"joins the Stephen Sizer and Gary Burge chorus of turning a deaf ear to the persecuted Christians in the surrounding Islamic countries to instead stupidly focus on the one nation in the region fully protecting the human rights and religious liberty of Arab Christians "“ Israel."

-Brother Andrew and Light Force
The Sorry Saga of a Has Been
[moriel.org]

Burge and Sizer are, of course, also speakers at this conference. There is so much anti-Israel stuff on the internet associated with Mr. Sizer and his [rotten] fruit, I simply don't know where to start. Here’s the scoop on Sizer's theology (he’s the one who interviewed Campolo in the video above):

Anti-Zionist Stephen Sizer
en.wikipedia.org

The Size of the Stephen Sizer Theology
moriel.org

Calvin L. Smith: Stephen Sizer as Anti-Replacement Theology Champion?
www.calvinlsmith.com

Police visit to Seismic Shock blogger after "harassment" complaint "“ the context
onlinejournalismblog.com

Stephen Sizer Complains to Police About Blogger
www.camera.org

Stephen Sizer and the Sons of Menelaus
moriel.org

He’s No "Sinner", He’s a False Prophet
www.moriel.org

Stephen Sizer Contra Melanie Philips
www.moriel.org

Response To Stephen Sizer’s Open Letter
moriel.org

Like I said, I don't know much about these things, but it appears to me that there is a battle going on within the ranks of those who claim to be the Bible believing body of Christ. It's not only over emerging church heretical things, or the six days of creation thing, and end time things, but also about what the Bible says about Israel. Are they all important? I think so, because they are all about taking God's Word at face value. Many reading this may disagree, but that's what I see.

As the friend who sent me the e-mail this morning said:

"just how much of such 'poking the finger in the pupil (apple) of God's eye' is He going to take from his "Body""

[*Disclaimer: As always, unless otherwise stated, the views expressed on the little brown blog are the personal opinions, rantings, and meanderings of this blogger.]

The Cave of the Patriarch in Hebron - burial place of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob and Leah - and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem joined a list of 150 other historical and biblical sites that Israel will give priority to for renovation and preservation.

But because Hebron and Bethlehem are under Palestinian Authority control, the decision has angered the Arab world and prompted threats of "holy war," even by "moderate" Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
That has led international leaders to condemn Israel's decision to officially recognize two sites so sacred to the Jewish people. Though few in Israel expected the US to join in on the latest bash-fest.

Nevertheless, US State Department spokesman Mark Toner labeled Israel's heritage site list a "provocation" and an obstacle to peace.

Israelis have explained that by constantly reprimanding Israel in such terms, the US, the ostensible overseer of peace efforts in the region, is the one making peace more difficult by giving the Palestinians the justification they need to never make true peace with the Jewish state.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday responded to the mounting international criticism by pointing out that being added to the heritage list simply means that those sites will receive more attention in terms of preservation, including the Muslim areas at the Cave of the Patriarchs.

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Mosab Hassan Yousef, 30, said that his decision to abandon his Muslim faith and denounce his father's organisation had exposed his family to persecution in his home town of Ramallah and endangered his own life.

... "˜I’m not afraid of them, especially as I know that I'm doing the right thing, and I don't see them as my enemies,’ he said. "˜I do think about this a lot. But what are they going to do? Are they going to kill me? If they want to kill me, let them do it. I'm not going to stop anyone. It's going to be my freedom.’

... Mr Yousef said that his doubts about Islam and Hamas crystallised when he realised not all Hamas leaders were like his father, a moderate who he describes as "˜open-minded, very humble and honest’. Mr Yousef said that he was appalled by the brutality of the movement, including the suicide bombers seeking glory through jihad. "˜Hamas, they are using civilians' lives, they are using children, they are using the suffering of people every day to achieve their goals. And this is what I hate,’ he said.

But now we learn that his courage and his principles extended far further than this. As Ha’aretz reports, for ten years Yousef worked for the Israeli security service Shin Bet for whom the intelligence he provided saved countless lives from human bomb attacks:

During the second intifada, intelligence Yousef supplied led to the arrests of a number of high-ranking Palestinian figures responsible for planning deadly suicide bombings... Loai [Yousef’s Shin Bet handler] makes no secret of his admiration for his former source. "˜The amazing thing is that none of his actions were done for money,’ he says. "˜He did things he believed in. He wanted to save lives. His grasp of intelligence matters was just as good as ours - the ideas, the insights. One insight of his was worth 1,000 hours of thought by top experts.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

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Together, they make up the text of the Song of the Sea, sung by jubilant Israelites after fleeing slavery in Egypt and witnessing the destruction of the pharaoh's armies in the Red Sea.

"The enemy said: 'I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil. My lust shall be satisfied upon them, I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them,'" reads the song, which appears in the Book of Exodus. "Thou didst blow thy wind, the sea covered them. They sank like lead in the mighty waters."

An exhibit at Israel's national museum dedicated to the Song of the Sea is now bringing together the two long-separated pieces.

One page of the song, known as the Ashkar manuscript, was previously housed in a rare books library at Duke University in North Carolina and was first displayed at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in 2007.

That's when a photograph of the manuscript in a local newspaper caught the eye of two Israeli paleographers, Mordechay Mishor and Edna Engel, who noticed it resembled a different page of Hebrew writing known as the London manuscript, presently part of the private collection of Stephan Loewentheil of New York.

"The uniformity of the letters, the structure of the text, and the techniques used by the scribe ... it made it very clear to me," Engel said.

The relationship would not be so clear to a casual observer. The Ashkar manuscript has been so blackened by exposure to the elements that the text is all but invisible, while the London manuscript is legible and far better preserved. But after close study of ultraviolet images, the experts were able to confirm that the texts were not only written by the same scribe, but were also part of the same scroll.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

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A 3,000-year-old defensive wall possibly built by King Solomon has been unearthed in Jerusalem, according to the Israeli archaeologist who led the excavation. The discovery appears to validate a Bible passage, she says.

The tenth-century B.C. wall is 230 feet (70 meters) long and about 6 meters (20 feet) tall. It stands along what was then the edge of Jerusalem"”between the Temple Mount, still Jerusalem's paramount landmark, and the ancient City of David, today a modern-day Arab neighborhood called Silwan.

The stone barrier is part of a defensive complex that includes a gatehouse, an adjacent building, and a guard tower, which has been only partially excavated, according to Eilat Mazar, who led the dig for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Over the years, the structures have been partially demolished"”their building materials scavenged for later structures"”and what remained was buried under rubble, Mazar said.

The Bible's First Book of Kings"”widely believed to have been written centuries after the time period in question"”says Solomon, king of Israel, built a defensive wall in Jerusalem. The new discovery is the first archaeological evidence of this structure, Mazar says.

(Related: "King Solomon's Mines Rediscovered?")

Bearing Out a Bible Passage?

Ancient artifacts found in and around the complex pointed Mazar to the tenth-century B.C. date.

"We don't have many kings during the tenth century that could have built such a structure, basically just David and Solomon," she said.

According to the Bible, King David, of David-and-Goliath fame, was the father of King Solomon, who is said to have built the First Temple of Jerusalem on the Temple Mount.

Ceramics found near the wall helped narrow the date down, being of a level of sophistication common to the second half of the tenth century B.C."”King Solomon's time, according to Mazar.

Three-foot-tall (one-meter-tall) earthenware storage vessels were found near the gatehouse, one of them with a Hebrew inscription indicating the container belonged to a high-ranking government official.

Figurines typical of tenth-century B.C. Jerusalem"”including four-legged animals and large-breasted women likely symbolizing fertility"”were also uncovered, as were jar handles bearing impressions reading "to the king" and various Hebrew names, she said.

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Yad L’Achim’s Facebook page ‚  state: The Jewish soul is a precious, all-too-rare resource, and we are not prepared to give up on even a single one. .. There are no "lost causes." Yad ‚  L’Achim will continue its rescue activities, together with its efforts at Jewish outreach, as long as the problem of missionaries and Jewish-Arab marriage"¦" ‚   ‚   ‚  Yad L’Achim really believes it has soul rights on all Jews and will do anything to bring ‚  secular, atheist, Reform, agnostic, ‚  Messianic ‚  Jewish souls to Orthodox Judaism, and the Rebbe!

Yad L’Achim have been linked to the Ami-bomber by Teitel ‚  himself who claims he was one of their volunteer activists, a claim Yad ‚  L’Achim are predictably quick to refute. However such was the case when Yad L’Achim switched stories when a Chabadnik ‚  Yad L’Achim volunteer ‚  Raphael Miriashvili, 25, of Lod was found murdered in Israel.

Artovski is no stranger to both sides of the law and knows the terrain well.

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Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize ... She was not selected.

Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming.

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated with the German and Russian Peoples looking the other way!

Now, more than ever, with Iraq , Iran , and others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it's imperative to make sure the world never forgets, because there are others who would like to do it again.

The terrible disastrous earthquake in Haiti has generated responses from many nations. The US has sent supplies and personnel, Britain sent 64 firemen and 8 volunteers, France sent troops for Search and Rescue. Many large and wealthy nations of the world sent money. The Arab and Moslem world nothing.

Israel, a nation of 7.5 million people has sent a team of 220 people that includes Medical personnel and will establish the largest field hospital in Haiti, treating up to 5000 people a day, an experienced Search and Rescue team and medical supplies. As in previous earthquake disasters, such as in Gujarat India in 2001 and in Turkey, in the bombings in Kenya, Israel has been one of the most generous givers of aid and assistance

Turkey seems to have forgotten this help as its extreme Moslem Government is cozying up to Iran.

Judge Goldstone, where are you now? Eating your heart out and hanging your head down in shame I hope.

The favorite occupation in the UN is Israel bashing. More resolutions have been passed condemning Israel than all the so called democratic nations such as Sudan, China, Russia and others for their crimes against their minorities.

I think it is time that the world should know about Israel's disproportionate response.

Particularly serious is the fact - revealed by Yuval Azoulay in the October 2 edition of the Hebrew-language Haaretz Magazine - that behind the threats, the spreading of harmful rumors and harassment are not only the thugs of Yad L'Achim, but top Interior Ministry officials.

The officials, including Amos Arbel, head of the Population Administration in Tel Aviv, received information on the private lives of individuals described as "members of a messianic cult." On the pretext of counteracting "missionaries" who had "acted against the Jewish people," these officials trampled on people's basic rights.

It's hard to believe - a government agency tasked with delivering public services to citizens (mainly granting permits) is persecuting people for their opinions and beliefs while leaning on an extremist, violent organization. The infuriating interrogation of the university student Barbara Ludwig for alleged missionary work and the fact that her personal file (which was supposed to be classified) was transferred to Yad L'Achim is a blatant violation of Israel's Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty.

The organization's shady links with the establishment are not new - for years, its activists have provided information to rabbinical courts seeking to stick their hands into sensitive cases at the Social Affairs Ministry. More than once the group has enjoyed the assistance of ultra-Orthodox politicians such as Menachem Porush, who as deputy social affairs minister in 1991 wrote to a court pleading for mercy toward the group's activists who had kidnapped an orphan from relatives who were "not religious enough." But the Interior Ministry employees' collaboration with the group outdoes even that abhorrent precedent.

The government must call its employees to order immediately, to explain to Interior Minister Eli Yishai that he is not responsible for maintaining the purity of the Jewish race according to the formula of ultra-Orthodox zealots, and that any collaboration with Yad L'Achim is, in effect, a grave instance of persecution.

Amos Arbel, head of the Population Administration in Tel Aviv ... is persecuting people for their opinions and beliefs...

Menachem Porush ... wrote to a court pleading for mercy toward the group's activists who had kidnapped an orphan from relatives who were "not religious enough"

The government must explain to Interior Minister Eli Yishai that any collaboration with Yad L'Achim is, in effect, a grave instance of persecution.

Arad persecution.

Have a short and brutal year", was the 'greeting' Yoyakim got from an anonymous caller, on the Jewish 2009 New Year, Rosh-Hashanah. The man on the other end of the line hung-up the phone after that. since then, quite a few
things happened:

One of the main leaders in the hate-filled harassments against the believers in Arad for the last 5 years, the chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Arad, died just before 'Yom Kippur'. He is the one who stood in front of Poly Sigulim's private house in 2004
with 250 demonstrators and compared the believers in Yeshua to Israel's worst enemies.

About 3 weeks ago, around the same time, on the 24th of September, 2009, Rebecca and Barry Punchard, a believing couple here in Arad, who have been sticking their necks out for the Sudanese refugees, were on their way again to help these people in Arad. These Sudanese are very much despised in this little town, for taking all the jobs around, mainly in the hotels, as cheap labour, and unfortunately, are being accused of anything and everything except for murder.

Barry and Rebecca have been helping them, since they were cheated many times by real estate agencies for instance, who have threatened not once to throw a Sudanese family out of the apartment for supposedly not paying their bills. On this day, the 24th of September, Rebecca was going to translate for a group of Sudanese women who were trying to get to the Mayor, who had promised on TV to help them in the past, to stop them from being thrown out of an apartment, which they were using as a kindergarten. Rebecca had also invited a TV reporter. He couldn ‚ ¹t come and asked them to film instead of him.

This is where the whole mess started. It is hard to put it all in order, since so many things happened so quickly and horribly, but we will try and be concise.

Rebecca and the group were met by the police, including the head of the police, who found out somehow that they were going to the Mayor. They were told very sternly that they were not allowed to demonstrate.

Still they were going to try and talk with the Mayor. At the Town Hall they were met by the police again, who this time were very angry and told them to leave. Rebecca tried to talk to the head of the police, who in the past seemed very nice, to try and explain the urgency of the matter for the mothers, whose kids would not have a place to gather in the mornings while mothers are at work. The response was very stern again, and so they left. What Barry and Rebecca weren't realizing was that the funeral march of the chief Arad rabbi, who died, was supposed to pass in that very area. It seems like an unfortunate co-incidence.

They arrived at the kindergarten, only to find out their stuff was already being thrown out by someone who came to renovate. Barry Punchard was there with a friend, filming. They had not been there for a few minutes, when a whole load of policemen swarmed in.

Sudanese women were dragged out of the kindergarten by their hair. One of the police men was making racist remarks about the Sudanese. There were cries and screams. A big guy dressed in civilian clothes stood in front of Barry and demanded the camera. Barry refused. He was pushed violently. Some Sudanese women came to his help, screaming in distress, and they were beaten. In the local news papers police claims one of the Sudanese women beat the chief of police with some kind of a board. Barry was taken to the police station, but not before he managed to hand the camera over to Rebecca. Rebecca gave the camera to a friend that was there, but the police demanded it off him. Rebecca was told to make her own way to the police station, since she had her little toddler and her 9 year old daughter with her. She was threatened they were going to deport Barry for supposedly not having a valid visa. She put her daughters in the care of her friend, and made her way to the police. Some Sudanese were arrested, including a pregnant woman [9th month], who was put in hand cuffs. At the police station, Rebecca saw Barry cuffed hand and foot. Barry testifies he was beaten again at the police station, while he was cuffed. She tried to talk to him but was aggressively told to stay away.

While she was investigated, a police man erased out of her mobile phone clips she managed to film of what happened. She was then arrested for incitement to terror and violence. She insisted on making contact with a lawyer. They tried to put her off by telling her it was a 'long procedure'. Finally she managed to make contact. Barry was made to sign a statement in
Hebrew, a language he does not understand. Since Barry suffers from hernia, he was taken to the emergency to be checked. His hernia wasn't hurt by the beating, but they took him cuffed hand and foot to the hospital, like a criminal. While he was in jail, Barry was made to take off his hernia belt again and again. He now suffers from pain because of that.

We were just on our way up North when all this was happening. Yo-Yakim got a call, demanding he comes and takes 'his friends stuff' from the police station'. When Yo-Yakim said he was up North, the policeman wished him a good time and put the phone down. We frantically tried to make contact with Barry and Rebecca, but of course, they couldn't talk with us. They were both taken to jail. Rebecca testifies the jail was horrible. She was put into a dark room. When her eyes got used to the dark, she saw old food on the beds, garbage over flowing. The toilet was dirty, the towel was mouldy, the sheets were filthy, and the mattresses were full of bed bugs.

A woman in the cell said no one came to clean in the five days she had been there. It was cold, but Rebecca tried to remember she was there because she helped other people. She also thought of the chances she had during the day, to tell the people who handled her along the way to the jail, and asked her why she was being arrested, about the ill treatment the Sudanese are suffering.

The next day she was put before a judge, who wasn't convinced that she was justly put in jail. The policeman representing the police, the same one who made racist remarks against the Sudanese, said he had a letter which he had not read yet from the Mayor's secretary, which would surely support his case. He handed it over to the judge to be read. The judge smiled a little and asked the policeman if he knew what he had just done. He then asked the policeman to read the letter. In it, the secretary of the Mayor was describing Rebecca's good deeds and practical help for the Sudanese. The judge described it as an excellent civilian example.

The police claimed at the court they didn ‚ ¹t know at all whether they were holding on to Barry ‚ ¹s video camera which had the whole event documented.

Rebecca was released to house arrest for five days, Barry was released to house arrest on bail by Pastor Howard Bass from Beer-Sheva for twelve days. Barry, who is 67, has a hard time digesting all of this. In the past, Barry went to the most remote places in Russia to bring Jewish people to the promised land. Now this.

In actual fact, the police were helping the owner of the flat that the Sudanese were renting, to throw them out, which is against the law. We were expecting things to get worse. We were not expecting it to come from those who are supposed to keep order. Now we are witnessing very negative articles in the local newspapers with twisted information claiming some kind of conspiracy between the "missionaries" and the unwanted Sudanese work seekers" (they don't call them "refugees" any more).

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But just like the majority of American Jews, getting on for 80 per cent of whom voted for Obama, he is a Democrat supporter who is incapable of acknowledging the truth about this President. For most American Jews, the horror of even entertaining the hypothetical possibility that they might ever in a million years have to vote for a Republican is so great they simply cannot see what is staring them in the face -- that this Democratic President is lethal for both Israel and the free world. And in this article Dershowitz shows that he too is just as blind.

Acknowledging the anxiety among some American Jews about Obama’s attitude to Israel, Dershowitz concludes uneasily that there isn’t really a problem here because all Obama is doing is putting pressure on Israel over the settlements, which most American Jews don’t support anyway. But this is totally to miss the point. The pressure over the settlements per se is not the reason for the intense concern.

It is instead, first and foremost, the fact that Obama is treating Israel as if it is the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Obama thus inverts aggressor and victim, denying Israel’s six-decade long victimisation and airbrushing out Arab aggression. The question remains: why has Obama chosen to pick a fight with Israel while soft-soaping Iran which is threatening it with genocide? The answer is obvious: Israel is to be used to buy off Iran just as Czechoslovakia was used at Munich. Indeed, I would say this is worse even than that, since I suspect that Obama "“ coming as he does from a radical leftist milieu, with vicious Israel-haters amongst his closest friends -- would be doing this to Israel even if Iran was not the problem that it is.

In any event, the double standard is egregious. Obama has torn up his previous understandings with Israel over the settlements while putting no pressure at all on the Palestinians, even though since they are the regional aggressor there can be no peace unless they end their aggression and certainly not until they accept Israel as a Jewish state, which they have said explicitly they will never do. On this, Obama is totally silent. So too is Dershowitz. That’s some omission.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

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On Holocaust Memorial Day 2008, a group of just under 100 people -- Londoners and a few visitors -- took a guided tour of the old Jewish East End. They visited, among other sites of interest, the birthplace of my old chum Lionel Bart, the author of Oliver! Three generations of schoolchildren have grown up singing Bart's lyric:

Consider yourself
At 'ome!
Consider yourself
One of the family!

Those few dozen London Jews considered themselves at 'ome. But they weren't. Not any more. The tour was abruptly terminated when the group was pelted with stones, thrown by "youths"-- or to be slightly less evasive, in the current euphemism of Fleet Street, "Asian" youths. "If you go any further, you'll die," they shouted, in between the flying rubble.

A New Yorker who had just moved to Britain to start a job at the Metropolitan University had her head cut open and had to be taken to the Royal London Hospital at Whitechapel, causing her to miss the Holocaust Day "interfaith memorial service" at the East London Central Synagogue. Her friend, Eric Litwack from Canada, was also struck but did not require stitches. But if you hadn't recently landed at Heathrow, it wasn't that big a deal, not these days: Nobody was killed or permanently disfigured. And given the number of Jewish community events that now require security, perhaps Her Majesty's Constabulary was right and these Londoners walking the streets of their own city would have been better advised to do so behind a police escort.

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A European Holocaust Memorial Day on which Jews are stoned sounds like a parody of the old joke that the Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz. According to a 2005 poll by the University of Bielefeld, 62 percent of Germans "are sick of all the harping on about German crimes against the Jews""”which is a cheerfully straightforward way of putting it. Nevertheless, when it comes to "harping on," these days it's the Jews who are mostly on the receiving end. While we're reprising old gags, here's one a reader reminded me of a couple of years ago, during Israel's famously "disproportionate" incursion into Lebanon: One day the U.N. Secretary General proposes that, in the interest of global peace and harmony, the world's soccer players should come together and form one United Nations global soccer team.

"Great idea," says his deputy. "Er, but who would we play?"

"Israel, of course."

Ha-ha. It always had a grain of truth, now it's the whole loaf.

Fashions do change. But however Israel changes, this fashion won't.

"Israel is unfashionable," a Continental foreign minister said to me a decade back. "But maybe Israel will change, and then fashions will change." Fashions do change. But however Israel changes, this fashion won't. The shift of most (non-American) Western opinion against the Jewish state that began in the 1970s was, as my Continental politician had it, simply a reflection of casting: Israel was no longer the underdog but the overdog, and why would that appeal to a post-war polytechnic Euro Left unburdened by Holocaust guilt?

Fair enough. Fashions change. But the new Judenhass is not a fashion, simply a stark reality that will metastasize in the years ahead and leave Israel isolated in the international "community" in ways that will make the first decade of this century seem like the good old days.

A few months after the curtailed Holocaust Day tour, I found myself in that particular corner of Tower Hamlets for the first time in years. Specifically, on Cable Street"”the scene of a famous battle in 1936, when Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, in a crude exercise of political muscle, determined to march through the heart of Jewish East London. They were turned back by a mob of local Jews, Irish Catholic dockers, and Communist agitators, all standing under the Spanish Civil War slogan: "No Pasaran." They shall not pass.

From "No Pasaran" to "If you go any further, you'll die" is a story not primarily of anti-Semitism but of unprecedented demographic transformation. Beyond the fashionable "anti-Zionism" of the Euro Left is a starker reality: The demographic energy not just in Lionel Bart's East End but in almost every Western European country is "Asian." Which is to say, Muslim. A recent government statistical survey reported that the United Kingdom's Muslim population is increasing ten times faster than the general population. Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, and many other Continental cities from Scandinavia to the C ƒ ´te d'Azur will reach majority Muslim status in the next few years.

Brussels has a Socialist mayor, which isn't that surprising, but he presides over a caucus a majority of whose members are Muslim, which might yet surprise those who think we're dealing with some slow, gradual, way-off-in-the-future process here. But so goes Christendom at the dawn of the third millennium: the ruling party of the capital city of the European Union is mostly Muslim.

There are generally two responses to this trend: The first is that it's like a cast change in Cats or, perhaps more precisely, David Merrick's all-black production of Hello, Dolly! Carol Channing and her pasty prancing waiters are replaced by Pearl Bailey and her ebony chorus, but otherwise the show is unchanged. Same set, same words, same arrangements: France will still be France, Germany Germany, Belgium Belgium.

The second response is that the Islamicization of Europe entails certain consequences, and it might be worth exploring what these might be. There are already many points of cultural friction -- from British banks' abolition of children's "piggy banks" to the enjoining of public doughnut consumption by Brussels police during Ramadan. And yet on one issue there is remarkable comity between the aging ethnic Europeans and their young surging Muslim populations: A famous poll a couple of years back found that 59 percent of Europeans regard Israel as the greatest threat to world peace.

Fifty-nine percent? What is wrong with the rest of you? Hey, relax: In Germany, it was 65 percent; Austria, 69 percent; the Netherlands, 74 percent. For purposes of comparison, in a recent poll of Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates -- i.e., the "moderate" Arab world -- 79 percent of respondents regard Israel as the greatest threat to world peace. As far as I know, in the last year or two, they haven't re-tested that question in Europe, possibly in case Israel now scores as a higher threat level in the Netherlands than in Yemen.

To be sure, there are occasional arcane points of dispute: one recalls, in the wake of the July 7 bombings, the then London Mayor Ken Livingstone's somewhat tortured attempts to explain why blowing up buses in Tel Aviv is entirely legitimate whereas blowing up buses in Bloomsbury is not. Yet these are minimal bumps on a smooth glide path: The more Europe's Muslim population grows, the more restive and disassimilated it becomes, the more enthusiastically the establishment embraces "anti-Zionism," as if the sinister Jewess is the last virgin left to toss in the volcano -- which, given the 13-year old "chavs" and "slappers" face down in pools of their own vomit in most British shopping centers of a Friday afternoon, may indeed be the case. For today's Jews, unlike on Cable Street in 1936, there are no Catholic dockworkers or Communist agitators to stand shoulder to shoulder. In post-Christian Europe, there aren't a lot of the former (practicing Catholics or practicing dockers), and as for the intellectual Left, it's more enthusiastic in its support of Hamas than many Gazans.

To which there are many Israelis who would brusquely reply: So what? Pity the poor Jew who has ever relied on European "friends." Yet there is a difference of scale between the well-established faculty-lounge disdain for "Israeli apartheid" and a mass psychosis so universal it's part of the air you breathe. For a glimpse of the future, consider the (for the moment) bizarre circumstances of the recent Davis Cup First Round matches in Sweden. They had been scheduled long ago to be played in the Baltiska Hallen stadium in Malmo. Who knew which team the Swedes would draw? Could have been Chile, could have been Serbia. Alas, it was Israel.

Malmo is Sweden's most Muslim city, and citing security concerns, the local council ordered the three days of tennis to be played behind closed doors. Imagine being Amir Hadad and Andy Ram, the Israeli doubles players, or Simon Aspelin and Robert Lindstedt, the Swedes. This was supposed to be their big day. But the vast stadium is empty, except for a few sports reporters and team officials. And just outside the perimeter up to 10,000 demonstrators are chanting, "Stop the match!" and maybe, a little deeper into the throng, they're shouting, "We want to kill all Jews worldwide" (as demonstrators in Copenhagen, just across the water, declared just a few weeks earlier). Did Aspelin and Lindstedt wonder why they couldn't have drawn some less controversial team, like Zimbabwe or Sudan? By all accounts, it was a fine match, thrilling and graceful, with good sportsmanship on both sides. Surely, such splendid tennis could have won over the mob, and newspapers would have reported that by the end of the match the Israeli players had the crowd with them all the way. But they shook 'em off at Helsingborg.

Do you remember the "road map" summit held in Jordan just after the U.S. invasion of Iraq? It seemed a big deal at the time: The leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the U.S. president, all the A-list dictators of the Arab League. Inside the swank resort, it was all very collegial, smiles and handshakes. Outside, flags fluttered -- Jordan's, America's, Saudi Arabia's, Egypt's, Palestine's. But not Israel's. King Abdullah of Jordan had concluded it would be too provocative to advertise the Zionist Entity's presence on Jordanian soil even at a summit supposedly boasting they were all on the same page. Malmo's tennis match observed the same conventions: I'm sure the Swedish tennis wallahs were very gracious hosts behind the walls of the stockade, and the unmarked car to the airport was top of the line. How smoothly the furtive maneuvers of the Middle East transfer to the wider world.

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When Western governments are as reluctant as King Abdullah to fly the Star of David, those among the citizenry who choose to do so have a hard time. In Britain in January, while "pro-Palestinian" demonstrators were permitted to dress up as hook-nosed Jews drinking the blood of Arab babies, the police ordered counter-protesters to put away their Israeli flags. In Alberta, in the heart of Calgary's Jewish neighborhood, the flag of Hizballah (supposedly a proscribed terrorist organization) was proudly waved by demonstrators, but one solitary Israeli flag was deemed a threat to the Queen's peace and officers told the brave fellow holding it to put it away or be arrested for "inciting public disorder." In Germany, a student in Duisburg put the Star of David in the window of an upstairs apartment on the day of a march by the Islamist group Milli G ƒ ¶r ƒ ¼s, only to have the cops smash his door down and remove the flag. He's now trying to get the police to pay for a new door. Ah, those Jews. It's always about money, isn't it?

Peter, the student in Duisberg, says he likes to display the Israeli flag because anti-Semitism in Europe is worse than at any other time since the Second World War. Which is true. But, if you look at it from the authorities' point of view, it's not about Jew-hatred; it's a simple numbers game. If a statistically insignificant Jewish population gets upset, big deal. If the far larger Muslim population -- and, in some French cities, the youth population (i.e., the demographic that riots) is already pushing 50 percent -- you have a serious public-order threat on your hands. We're beyond the anti-Semitic and into the ad hoc utilitarian: The King Abdullah approach will seem like the sensible way to avoid trouble. To modify the UN joke: Whom won't we play? Israel, of course. Not in public.

One Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago, a group wearing "BOYCOTT ISRAEL" T-shirts entered a French branch of Carrefour, the world's largest supermarket chain, and announced themselves. They then systematically advanced down every aisle examining every product, seizing all the items made in Israel and piling them into carts to take away and destroy. Judging from the video they made, the protesters were mostly Muslim immigrants and a few French leftists. But more relevant was the passivity of everyone else in the store, both staff and shoppers, all of whom stood idly by as private property was ransacked and smashed, and many of whom when invited to comment expressed support for the destruction. "South Africa started to shake once all countries started to boycott their products," one elderly lady customer said. "So what you're doing, I find it good."

Others may find Germany in the "˜30s the more instructive comparison. "It isn't silent majorities that drive things, but vocal minorities," the Canadian public intellectual George Jonas recently wrote. "Don't count heads; count decibels. All entities"”the United States, the Western world, the Arab street"”have prevailing moods, and it's prevailing moods that define aggregates at any given time." Last December, in a well-planned attack on iconic Bombay landmarks symbolizing power and wealth, Pakistani terrorists nevertheless found time to divert one-fifth of their manpower to torturing and killing a handful of obscure Jews helping the city's poor in a nondescript building. If this was a territorial dispute over Kashmir, why kill the only rabbi in Bombay? Because Pakistani Islam has been in effect Arabized. Demographically, in Europe and elsewhere, Islam has the numbers. But ideologically, radical Islam has the decibels -- in Turkey, in the Balkans, in Western Europe.

And the prevailing mood in much of the world makes Israel an easy sacrifice. Long before Muslims are a statistical majority, there will be three permanent members of the Security Council"”Britain, France, Russia"”for whom the accommodation of Islam is a domestic political imperative.

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On the heels of his call for the incorporation of Sharia within British law, the Archbishop of Canterbury gave an interview to the Muslim News praising Islam for making "a very significant contribution to getting a debate about religion into public life." Well, that's one way of putting it. The urge to look on the bright side of its own remorseless cultural retreat will intensify: Once Europeans have accepted a not entirely voluntary biculturalism, they will see no reason why Israel should not do the same, and they will embrace a one-state, one-man, one-vote solution for the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.

The Muslim world has spent decades peddling the notion that the reason a vast oil-rich region stretching thousands of miles is politically deformed and mired in grim psychoses is all because of a tiny strip of turf barely wider than my New Hampshire township. It will make an ever more convenient scapegoat for the problems of a far vaster territory from the mountains of Morne to the Urals. There was a fair bit of this in the days after 9/11. As Richard Ingrams wrote on the following weekend in the London i>Observer: "Who will dare to damn Israel?"

Well, take a number and get in line. The dust had barely settled on the London Tube bombings before a reader named Derrick Green sent me a congratulatory e-mail: "I bet you Jewish supremacists think it is Christmas come early, don't you? Incredibly, you are now going to get your own way even more than you did before, and the British people are going to be dragged into more wars for Israel."

In London, the highest number of Jews is found in the 50-54 age group; the highest number of Muslims are found in the four-years-and-under category.

So it will go. British, European, and even American troops will withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, and a bomb will go off in Madrid or Hamburg or Manchester, and there will be nothing left to blame except Israeli "disproportion." For the remnants of European Jewry, the already discernible migration of French Jews to Quebec, Florida, and elsewhere will accelerate. There are about 150,000 Jews in London today -- it's the thirteenth biggest Jewish city in the world. But there are approximately one million Muslims. The highest number of Jews is found in the 50-54 age group; the highest number of Muslims are found in the four-years-and-under category. By 2025, there will be Jews in Israel, and Jews in America, but not in many other places. Even as the legitimacy of a Jewish state is rejected, the Jewish diaspora -- the Jewish presence in the wider world -- will shrivel.

And then, to modify Richard Ingrams, who will dare not to damn Israel? There'll still be a Holocaust Memorial Day, mainly for the pleasures it affords to chastise the new Nazis. As Anthony Lipmann, the Anglican son of an Auschwitz survivor, wrote in 2005: "When on 27 January I take my mother's arm -- tattoo number A-25466 -- I will think not just of the crematoria and the cattle trucks but of Darfur, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Jenin, Fallujah." Jenin?

You can see why they'll keep Holocaust Day on the calendar: In an age when politicians are indifferent or downright hostile to Israel's "right to exist," it's useful to be able to say, "But some of my best photo-ops are Jewish."

The joke about Mandatory Palestine was that it was the twice-promised land. But isn't that Europe, too? And perhaps Russia and maybe Canada, a little ways down the line? Two cultures jostling within the same piece of real estate. Not long ago, I found myself watching the video of another "pro-Palestinian" protest in central London with the Metropolitan Police retreating up St. James's Street to Piccadilly in the face of a mob hurling traffic cones and jeering, "Run, run, you cowards!" and "Allahu akbar!" You would think the deluded multi-culti progressives would understand: In the end, this isn't about Gaza, this isn't about the Middle East; it's about them. It may be some consolation to an ever-lonelier Israel that, in one of history's bleaker jests, in the coming Europe the Europeans will be the new Jews.

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Barack Hussein Obama

• A member of a racist church with a racist pastor whom Obama called 'family' who preached "God Damn America" to which he contributed $500 in tax deductible gifts weekly. At the same time Obama mocked and denounced others for holding onto their faith while his faith is a church that preaches racial hatred and prays for America's damnation.
• Who proclaimed June Gay & Lesbian Pride Month (Romans 1: 26-27).
• Who has lied, lied, and lied again. Promising change and that no legislation would not be pre-published on The White House website Obama instead gave the most massive mound of deficit and debt built budget to congress the night before the vote , quadrupling the already horrific Bush deficits. This proven liar is an out of control economic mad man. The Word of God warns of those who become rich by borrowing (Habakuk 2:6).
• Who is the best friend that abortion and late term abortion has ever had (Luke 1:44).
• Who now licks the boots of radical Islam in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, deliberately mute on the subject of moslem human rights abuses and oblivious to the cries of the persecuted church.
• Who puts nearly another $1 billion dollars on the US tax payer credit card to fund UN projects in Gaza knowing very well that the administration of such projects is funding terrorist HAMAS.
• Who now bullies Israel , the archaeologically proven indigenous people of the land insisting they have no right to their native land, but must pander to the demands of Islam (Genesis 12: 3).

BECAUSE OF THESE THINGS THE JUDGMENT OF GOD WILL COME !

Nations get the leaders they serve and America has provoked the judgment of God.

Please Dear God may Your judgment rather fall on Barack Obama and his administration instead of the foolish backslidden nation that chose this evil son of Lucifer. May the God who establishes and removes leaders please remove this one quickly. ‚   (DANIEL 2:21).

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Obama tells Jews to stop building homes "“ in Israel!

Posted: June 28, 2009
7:07 pm Eastern
By Aaron Klein

JERUSALEM "“ The Obama administration told the Palestinian Authority the "golden era" of Israeli construction in sections of Jerusalem and the strategic West Bank will soon come to an end, a top PA negotiator told WND.

"The U.S. assured us that for the first time since 1967, we are going into a period where there will not be allowed a single construction effort on the part of the Israelis in the settlements, including in Gush Etzion, Maale Adumum and eastern Jerusalem," said the negotiator, speaking from Ramallah on condition his name be withheld.

Maale Adumim is located in eastern Jerusalem. Israel reunited the eastern and western sections of Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Six Day War. Eastern Jerusalem, claimed by the PA for a future state, includes the Temple Mount.
The negotiator told WND the positions of the PA and U.S. regarding ongoing Jewish construction in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem "are closer than ever."

"The U.S. used to differentiate between natural grown and adding new communities. Not anymore. No construction will be allowed, not even natural growth," the PA negotiator said.

"Natural growth" means adding additional housing to existing communities to accommodate the needs of a growing population.
(Story continues below)

The negotiator spoke yesterday just before Defense Minister Ehud Barak took off for Washington, D.C., for meetings with the Obama administration.

The negotiator claimed that while Barak might reach an understanding with the U.S. regarding possible West Bank movements, such a deal would be for Israeli political purposes and wouldn't translate into actual Jewish construction on the ground.

The Obama administration recently demanded Israel halt all settlement activity, including natural growth, in apparent abrogation of a deal made by President Bush to allow for natural growth.

The deal was forged just prior to Israel's 2005 retreat from the Gaza Strip. It was confirmed by Sharon aide Dov Weissglas in 2005, and in a Wall Street Journal column last week by Elliott Abrams, a former deputy national security adviser to Bush who reportedly negotiated the arrangement. The deal was in line with an official letter from Bush the year before stating Israel cannot be expected to withdraw from the entire West Bank and that the Jewish state would retain major settlement blocs there.

The West Bank borders major Israeli cities and is within rocket firing range of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Israel's international
airport.

Military strategists long have estimated Israel must maintain the West Bank to defend itself from any ground invasion. Terrorist groups have warned if Israel withdraws, they will launch rockets from the West Bank into Israeli cities.

Click here for the rest of the story.

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So is the United States. Here and there a few dozens, here and there a few hundreds. Have they evaporated because it is Tehran and not here?

All the peace-loving and justice-loving Europeans, British professors in search of freedom and equality, the friends filling the newspapers, magazines and various academic journals with various demands for boycotting Israel, defaming Zionism and blaming us and it for all the ills and woes of the world-could it be that they have taken a long summer vacation? Now of all times, when the Basij hooligans have begun to slaughter innocent civilians in the city squares of Tehran? Aren't they connected to the Internet? Don't they have YouTube? Has a terrible virus struck down their computer? Have their justice glands been removed in a complicated surgical procedure (to be re-implanted successfully for the next confrontation in Gaza)? How can it be that when a Jew kills a Muslim, the entire world boils, and when extremist Islam slaughters its citizens, whose sole sin is the aspiration to freedom, the world is silent?

Imagine that this were not happening now in Tehran, but rather here. Let ‚ ¹s say in Nablus. Spontaneous demonstrations of Palestinians turning into an ongoing bloodbath. Border Policemen armed with knives, on motorcycles, butchering demonstrators. A young woman downed by a sniper in midday, dying before the cameras. Actually, why imagine? We can just recall what happened with the child Mohammed a-Dura. How the affair (which was very harsh, admittedly) swept the world from one end to another. The fact that a later independent investigative report raised tough questions as to the identity of the weapon from which a-Dura was shot, did not make a difference to anyone. The Zionists were to blame, and that was that.

And where are the world's leaders? Where is the wondrous rhetorical ability of Barack Obama? Where has his sublime vocabulary gone? Where is the desire, that is supposed to be built into all American presidents, to defend and act on behalf of freedom seekers around the globe? What is this stammering?

A source who is connected to the Iranian and security situation, said yesterday that if Obama had shown on the Iranian matter a quarter of the determination with which he assaulted the settlements in the territories, everything would have looked different. The demonstrators in Iran are desperate for help," said the man, who served in very senior positions for many years, they need to know that they have backing, that there is an entire world that supports them, but instead they see indifference. And this is happening at such a critical stage of this battle for the soul of Iran and the freedom of the Iranian people. It's sad."

Or the European Union, for example. The organization that speaks of justice and peace all year round. Why should its leaders not declare clearly that the world wants to see a democratic and free Iran, and support it unreservedly? Could it be that the tongue of too many Europeans is still connected to dark places? The pathetic excuse that such support would give Khamenei and Ahmadinejad an excuse to call the demonstrators ‚ ³Western agents, ‚ ² does not hold water. They call them "Western agents" in any case, so what difference does it make?

To think that just six months ago, when Europe was flooded with demonstrations against Israel, leftists and Islamists raised pictures of Nasrallah, the prot ƒ ©g ƒ © of the ayatollah regime. The fact that this was a benighted regime did not trouble them. This is madness, but it is sinking in and influencing the weary West. If there is a truly free world here, let it appear immediately! And impose sanctions, for example, on those who slaughter the members of their own people. Just as it imposed them on North Korea, or on the military regime in Burma.

It is only a question of will, not of ability.

Apparently, something happens to the global adherence to justice and equality, when it comes to Iran. The oppression is overt and known. The Internet era broadcasts everything live, and it is all for the better.

Hooligans acting on behalf of the regime shoot and stab masses of demonstrators, who cry out for freedom.

Is anything more needed? Apparently it is. Because it is to no avail. The West remains indifferent. Obama is polite. Why shouldn ‚ ¹t he be, after all, he aspires to a dialogue with the ayatollahs. And that is very fine and good, the problem is that at this stage there is no dialogue, but there is death and murder on the streets. At this stage, one must forget the rules of etiquette for a moment. The voices being heard from Obama elicit concern that we are actually dealing with a new version of Chamberlain. Being conciliatory is a positive trait, particularly when it follows the clumsy bellicosity of George Bush, but when conciliation becomes blindness, we have a problem.

The courageous voice of Angela Merkel, who issued yesterday a firm statement of support for the Iranian people and its right to freedom, is in the meantime a lone voice in the Western wilderness. It is only a shame that she has not announced an economic boycott, in light of the fact that this is the European country that is most invested in building infrastructure in Iran.

She was joined by British Foreign Secretary Miliband. It is little, it is late, it is not enough. Millions of freedom seekers have taken to the streets in Iran, and the West is straddling the fence, one leg here, the other leg there. There is a different Islam. This is already clear today.

Even in Iran. There are millions of Muslims who support freedom, human rights, equality for women. These millions loathe Khamenei, Chavez and Nasrallah too. But part of the global left wing prefers the ayatollah regime over them. The main thing is for them to raise flags against Israel and America.

The question is why the democrats, the liberals, and Obama, Blair and Sarkozy, are continuing to sit on the fence. This is not a fence of separation, it is a fence of shame

Israel Resource News Agency
Beit Agron International Press Center
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Tel. (+972-2) 530-0125 or
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Stop the War statement on the crisis in Iran

The crisis unfolding in Iran must not become the pretext for renewed intervention by the USA or Britain in the region, nor for a whipping up of further tension around Iran ‚ ¹s nuclear programme.
The responsibility of the anti-war movement is first of all to oppose the role of the British government in the region, and to prevent its posturing being used as a pretence to justify a US or Israeli military attack against Iran, an attack which would have catastrophic results for the whole Middle East, and the Iranian people first of all.

The Stop the War Coalition believes that resolving the crisis is the right and responsibility of the Iranian people alone, and that external interference can play no positive role particularly interference by those powers which have laid waste to neighbouring Iraq in a lawless war and occupation, and which unfailingly support Israeli aggression in the region.

It would be wrong for us to take any position on the disputed outcome of the Iranian presidential election. We do, however, support the right to demonstrate peacefully, just as we support the Iranian people ‚ ¹s right to political, trade union and other civil freedoms and to struggle to achieve them. We unequivocally condemn the shooting of protesters and other violations of democratic liberties by the Iranian government.

We note the anger displayed by many Iranians against the British government.

These sentiments reflect Britain's shameful history in the country, from overthrowing the democratic regime of Mossadeq in 1952, to its stalwart support for the Shah's despotism and its support for Saddam Hussein in his aggression against the Islamic Republic in the 1980s.

This anger can only be exacerbated by British interference in the present crisis. The British government remained silent when its ally Hosni Mubarak falsified election results in Egypt, and it has refused to deal with democratically-elected leaders in the Palestine Authority and in Lebanon.
The government supports the Saudi kleptocracy, which does not need to manipulate elections because they are never held there.

The British and US governments wish to see regime change in Iran in order to dominate the Middle East and its resources and leave Israel as the region's unchallenged military superpower. And a government which ignored millions of its own people marching against its planned war against Iraq is in no position to lecture others on democratic attitudes.

In expressing our solidarity with all the Iranian people striving for a democratic outcome to the crisis in their country, the Coalition will support demonstrations and initiatives which reflect these principles.

Note: This is a draft statement by the officers of Stop the War Coalition, which will be put for endorsement to Stop the War's National Steering Committee on Saturday 27 June 2009
office@stopwar.org.uk

In either case, Carter is destined to continue his encouragement of the outlawed terrorist organization Hamas to pursue its murderous policies aimed primarily at civilians.

During his recent foray into Gaza "” where Carter publically called upon the United States to remove the Iranian backed, Muslim Brotherhood affiliated, Hamas from the list of known terrorist organizations "” he managed to be the only observer of Mideast politics to believe the absolutely phony and poorly staged "falling out" between Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and his Deputy Moussa Abu Marzook.

What Carter interpreted as a sign of Hamas' moderation was in fact a clumsy tactical move to make that organization appear moderate by spinning off its terrorist operational arm into a subsidiary organization so that when the next series of terror attacks occur they will have a degree of deniability for the actions they launch.

This is an old tactic taken directly from the terrorist playbook of the late Yassir Arafat during the course of his murderous existence.

It also comes at a time when multiple reports, and statements by his own advisers, have indicated that Obama intends to negotiate with Hamas. In fact, some reports say that Carter was delivering that message from Obama.

Then came the staged "roadside bomb" incident where Hamas announced it had discovered and neutralized a bomb along Carter's motorcade route. Of course he was deeply grateful for their vigilance, professionalism, and concern for his safety.

Again he stood alone in being so gullible as to defy belief among virtually all observers of his trip. Everyone else was convinced that Hamas planted the "bomb" themselves to then act as hero by finding it. Hamas literally saw Carter coming.

Let us not forget that Carter also urged Hamas to recognize the right of Israel to exist. Can we now get Carter to urge Obama to recognize Israel's right to exist? To his chagrin, Hamas categorically rejected Israel's right to exist when a senior Hamas official announced, "Recognizing Israel is completely unacceptable."

Undaunted by these obvious facts concerning the violent and implacable nature of his Hamas friends, Carter is still insisting that U.S. and U.N. sanctions against Hamas be lifted and they be rewarded for their vile rejectionist stance "” after all the people in Gaza who freely elected them are suffering under their policies.

Alas, it is such a pity that Carter's favorite terrorist organization has the bad taste to actually do what they say they believe in.

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The call included a freeze of "natural growth" construction, with the quartet also urging the Israeli government to dismantle settlement outposts erected since March 2001.

The meetings took place in Italy, as foreign ministers of the Group of Eight countries met to discuss various issues - mainly recent events in Iran.

G8 nations also called on Israelis and Palestinians to renew direct negotiations over all disputed issues.

US Mideast envoy George Mitchell and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon were among the participants at the Quartet meeting.

A range of Arab League nations will join a follow-on session Friday afternoon. Israel was not invited, but the Italian Foreign Ministry said that the decision was made by the Quartet, not Italy.

On Thursday, former deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams insisted that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was wrong in saying that the Bush administration's tacit agreements with Israel on construction in the settlements did not exist.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday squarely called for a complete halt to the construction during a meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Paris. The prime minister reiterated that Israel would not build any new settlements or expropriate land to expand existing ones, but at the same time would allow for natural growth to let Jewish residents of the West Bank live normal lives.

AP contributed to this report.

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Jews have been physically attacked, schools targeted and cemeteries desecrated.

"I was in the synagogue a few months ago when one of the members came in visibly shaken: somebody had just shouted at him, "˜It’s a pity Hitler didn’t finish the job’," the Chief Rabbi said.

Although the new "mutation" was different from the anti-Semitism promoted by Hitler, it was dangerous because it was international, he said. "The internet means that we no longer have national cultures; we have global cultures and the new anti-Semitism is very much a phenomenon of the global culture."

Whereas in the past, hatred was focused against Judaism as a religion or Jews as a race, the focus this time was on Jews as a nation. The rise in the number of attacks in January took place at the same time as Israel’s assault on Hamas in Gaza.

"It begins as anti-Zionism "” but it is never merely anti-Zionism when it attacks synagogues or Jewish schools," Sir Jonathan said. "In the post-Holocaust world the single greatest source of authority is human rights "” therefore the new anti-Semitism is constructed in the language of human rights."

In a new book, Future Tense, he describes a "virulent new strain of anti-Semitism". A worrying alliance had developed between radical Islamists and anti-globalisation protesters, he said.

The UN had also fanned the flames. At the World Conference against Racism in Durban in 2001, he said, "Israel was accused of the five cardinal sins against human rights "” racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and attempted genocide. So the old myths are recycled they are alive and well but they are done in a new kind of vocabulary."

The media should also be more careful in coverage of the Middle East: "I do think too little of the history has been set out and people don’t really understand what’s at stake, so the Jewish community has felt quite vulnerable because of that."

Asked whether he thought the BBC had shown anti-Israeli bias, he replied: "No comment."

Sir Jonathan said that the mood had changed after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001. His daughter, who at the time was studying at the London School of Economics, "had gone to an anti-globalisation rally which quickly turned into a diatribe against Israel and Jews. She came home weeping and said, "˜Dad they hate us’. I never expected that to happen in the 21st century," he said.

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FAIR USE NOTICE: This article contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use", you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Obama equated the Holocaust to Palestinian "dislocation." In his words: "The Jewish people were persecuted. "¦anti-Semitism "¦culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust"¦. Six million Jews were killed"¦. On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people "” Muslims and Christians "” have suffered in pursuit of a homeland." This parallelism amounts to the fictitious Arab narrative that the deliberate mass murder of six million Jews for the crime of being Jewish is analogous to a Jewish-driven violation of Palestinian rights.

Speaking in an Arab country to Arabs and Muslims, Obama pointedly singled out European responsibility for the Holocaust "” "anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust." In other contexts, the European emphasis would be a curiosity. In Egypt, it was no accident. The Arab storyline has always been that Arabs have been forced to suffer the creation of Israel for a European crime.

In fact, Obama's Egyptian hosts would have been only too familiar with Arab anti-Semitism during World War II (and beyond). After all, Obama was speaking in the country that schooled and later welcomed back Grand Mufti Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini as a national hero. This was the man who spent the war years in Berlin as Hitler's guest facilitating the murder of Jews.

Obama thought he would prove his even-handedness towards Israel by boasting of Friday's trip to a concentration camp and rejecting Holocaust denial. In this context, however, the move of doing Jews these supposed favors appears to be cynical political opportunism, especially having just set the Holocaust side-by-side with the "suffering" and "pain" of Palestinians "for more than 60 years." After all, the president made no emotive references to the "intolerable" "suffering" of Israeli victims of Arab terror "for more than 60 years." The word "terrorism" never left his lips. Far from bolstering the fight against terror and the anti-Semitism driving it, such maneuvers embolden more hate and violence against Israelis.

Instead, Obama sought Arab and Muslim approbation by drawing a moral equivalence between those who have rejected Israel from the outset (and still seek its outright destruction or a "right of return" intended to terminate a Jewish majority) and the Jews who have kept them at bay since May 14, 1948. In his words: "There has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history"¦. It's easy to point fingers "” for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought about by Israel's founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks." Calling the Israeli-Arab conflict a "stalemate" represents an abysmal failure to acknowledge historical reality. The modern state of Israel emerged after an internationally approved partition plan of November 1947 that would have created two states, one Jewish and one Arab; this plan was accepted by Jews and rejected by Arabs. One people has always been prepared to live in peace, and the other has chosen war in 1948 and 1956 and 1967 and 1973 and 1982, and renewed terrorism after its every loss.

Bereft of the most basic understanding of Judaism and Jewish history, Obama claimed that "the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied," for "around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries." A Jewish homeland in Israel is not rooted in tragedy or in centuries of persecution around the world. It is rooted in a wondrous, unbroken, and spiritual relationship to the land of Israel and to Jerusalem for thousands of years. Coupled with the president's stress on "European responsibility" for the Holocaust, his words reinforced the lethal belief that Israel is the creature of transplanted, alien Jews.

Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people went farther. Israelis have come to occupy territory in response to Arab-initiated wars of intended annihilation, but Obama analogized Palestinian "daily humiliations "¦that come with occupation" to the "humiliation of segregation" of black slaves in America and the "moral authority" of "people from South Africa." His Arab audience understood that the president of the United States had just given a nod to the single most potent defamation of the Jewish state today "” the allegation that Israel is a racist, apartheid state.

After expressing his belief in a moral equivalence between the claims of Palestinians and the claims of the victims of slavery and apartheid, Obama juxtaposed his admission of Israel's "right to exist" with his assertion that "the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements." Every word of this speech was carefully weighed. It was therefore no mishap that for the first time a U.S. president has denied the legitimacy of Israeli settlements, period. Such an assertion abrogates every agreement between Arabs and Israelis, which have always left the ultimate determination of which settlements will stay or go to a bilateral peace process and final status negotiations. Even the Roadmap reads: "Phase III: Permanent Status Agreement and End of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict "¦a final, permanent status resolution "¦on borders, Jerusalem, refugees, settlements."

Furthermore, the idea that Jews are not permitted to live in any territory that might become part of a future Palestinian state means only one thing: apartheid Palestine. Twenty percent of Israel's population,1.5 million people, are Arab (with more democratic rights than in any Arab state). But the notion of any Jewish presence in Palestinian territory is allegedly an abomination. Why should a future transfer of governmental authority mean "no Jews allowed"?

But judging by Obama's speech, only one "dislocation" counts. After placing the Holocaust side-by-side with the Palestinian "pain of dislocation," he ignored the dislocation of 800,000 Jewish refugees from all over the Arab Middle East in response to the creation of Israel.

Jewish refugees from Arab intolerance were not the only human-rights casualties the president chose to dismiss. Three different times Obama defended the right of Muslim women to cover up their bodies. Never once did he mention the right of Muslim women to refuse to cover up their bodies "” a right denied on pain of arrest and death by many of the very communities he was addressing. In the name of "freedom of religion" he chose to "welcome efforts like Saudi Arabian King Abdullah's interfaith dialogue." The Saudi Arabian government criminalizes the public practice of any religion but Islam. This manufactured human-rights fantasy has done a tremendous disservice to the oppressed across the Arab and Muslim world.

President Obama's meticulously planned and executed Egyptian speech marks the lowest point in the U.S. presidency's understanding and appreciation of the Jewish state, its history, and its people's future. Added to his administration's evident infirmity on Iran, the speech of June 4, 2009, by the supposed leader of the free world will be remembered as a major decline in human history.

President Barack Hussein Obama has traveled to Cairo and other nations deliberately emphasizing his middle name, Hussein, in an effort to win Muslim support. What is ironic is that President Barack Hussein Obama did not allow the media to use his middle name, Hussein, during the elections and disavowed his Muslim roots. In America if someone used his middle name, Hussein, they were considered "out of bounds." But, in recent weeks he seemed to have re-discovered his Muslim roots and has transformed himself into a Muslim in order to win the favor of the Muslim world.

Obama is seeking a "new way forward" with the Muslim world. But, unfortunately that "new way forward" means turning his back on Israel. President Barack Obama is now bragging about his Muslim heritage. Yet, during the campaign his "handlers" accused anyone who talked about his Muslim roots as trying to scare people. During his speech at Cairo University, after quoting a verse from the Koran, Obama said he firmly believed the interests shared between Americans and Muslims are much stronger than those forces driving us apart. Part of that conviction, he said, is "rooted in my own experience." What experience is that? During the election he claimed to have prayed to Christ to forgive him for his sins.

Obama said, "I’m a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and at the fall of dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith. "¦ So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed." Again, he never spoke like this during his campaign. As to his "work in the Chicago communities," he was a community organizer for openly atheistic and socialist groups who employed the radical socialist Saul Alinsky’s, outlined in his book Rules for Radicals who the atheistic radical dedicated to "Lucifer the first radical."

Obama speaking at the Turkish parliament in Ankara, was introduced by his full name, Barack Hussein Obama. But, he would not allow that name to be mentioned in the U.S. Obama said, "The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country"”I know, because I am one of them." But, at Rick Warren’s Church, Obama said he was a Christian and now he reverses himself and calls himself a Muslim. The entire Muslim world believes he is a Muslim and the Communist world believes he is a fellow "Comrade" in the world socialist revolution. This is why Hugo Chavez of Venezuela gave him a gift which was written by the Communist leader Lenin. Lenin was the Communist leader who was responsible for the death of around 100 million people.

While overseas, President Obama exaggerated this supposed Islamic enrichment of American civilization. "If you actually took the number of Muslim Americans," he said in an interview in the lead-up to his speech in Egypt, "we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world." Now that statement is absolutely ridiculous! According to statistics, the U.S. would rank somewhere between 34th and 48th on the list. The Muslim population in America is estimated to be somewhere between 1.8 and 6 million, which is much less than 1 percent of the total number of Muslims worldwide.

Obama addressed the "Islamic world" from Cairo. Obama’s appearance gave credibility to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and other terrorist groups. Among the guests Washington invited to Obama’s Cairo speech were members of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). The Muslim Brotherhood is a reported by intelligence sources as a known terrorist group. President Obama said that Iran should have the right to develop nuclear power"”so long as it’s peaceful. How could that be peaceful if Iran has threatened over and over again to wipe Israel off of the face of the map. Iran holds conferences claiming the Holocaust never happened. The Iranian nuclear program is moving full speed ahead. Behind the scenes the Obama Administration is telling Netanyahu that Israel will have to accept a nuclear Iran.

Israel rightly perceives a nuclear Iran as an existential threat to its very existence. As such, Israel is going to be forced to fly over Iran and destroy their nuclear production plants. Israel has no other choice, it is either that or face extinction. There is a prophetic convergence of factors on the horizon. A perfect prophetic storm, if you will. First, of all the Taliban will probably take control of Pakistan giving al Qaeda 80-100 nukes. In addition, Pakistan is a far more powerful nation that Iran and 175 million people live there.

Behind the scenes the U.S. State Department is pressuring Israel to not only accept a two-state solution, but Obama and the EU want the Palestinians to control Jerusalem. This was the reason the Pope traveled to the City of David. The Vatican has an interest in controlling an "international Jerusalem" under the authority of the Palestinians. The Book of Daniel talks about a coming clash between the European "king of the north" and the Iran-led "king of the south" involving Jerusalem. President Obama has said America "does not accept the l continued Israeli settlements." I had a private meeting with the former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, where he assured me Israel would not give away land for peace. Yet, Ehud Olmert, with U.S. pressure offered Mahmoud Abbas, a Palestinian State last year. But Abbas and the Islamic world believe that with the U.S. under Obama they can get a nuclear Iran, total control of Jerusalem and much more terroritory than was offered before!

Despite the fact that Obama visited some of the concentration camps of the Holocaust and rightly rebuked any nation that would choose to ignore the historical evidence of the Holocaust. The reality is that the foreign policy of the America, EU, Germany, Russia, China, Great Britain, France and other nations are setting the stage for a second Holocaust. Like Adolph Hitler, who very clearly outlined in advance what he planned to do in his book Mein Kampf, militant Islam, Iran, al Qaeda and the Palestinians have outlined very clearly in advance what they plan to do with Israel. Once the balance of power is changed through al Qaeda controlling nuclear weapons through Pakistan and Iran developing nuclear weapons, a Holocaust is in the making. These militant Islamic groups have said it over and over again what their precise intentions are and that is the total destruction of the nation of Israel.

Once the balance of power is changed, they will either fire nuclear missiles into Israeli cities like Tel Aviv or they will use terrorist surrogates to smuggle in some kind of suitcase nuke. The terrorists will no longer be outside of Israel. Once the two-state solution is implemented the Islamic terrorists will bring WMD’s into the very heart of Israel and like the suicide bombers they will detonate these nuclear weapons in act of worship to Allah.

Netanyahu will conduct a pre-emptive strike before this occurs. But, a flying over Iran and dropping bunker-busting bombs on Iranian nuclear production facilities is going to provoke a counter reaction. Despite the problems with George W. Bush, the militant Islamic world was kept in check by their fear that Bush was fully capable of pulling the nuclear trigger. This is why Dick Cheney rebuked Obama publicly over the Obama Administration’s denial that we are still in a war against terrorism. The new American strategy toward militant Islam being presented by President Obama simply reflects the deeply misguided perception by the Council on Foreign Relations, the EU, Soros, Rockefeller, Kissinger and other advocates of globalism. The CFR, the State Department and globalists falsely assume that because they are pragmatists and motivated by profit, that militant Islam is motivated by pragmatism and economics. To a certain degree that is true when you are talking about the more rational leaders of Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. But, let us never forget that there are jihadists who are quite capable of sacrificing millions of their own citizens in a war against Israel and the United States. Like the Third Reich and Hitler, these people are not primarily motivated by economics and pragmatism. They truly believe that they are being guided by Allah to provoke Armageddon so that the 12th Imam or Islamic Messiah can return. Ahmadinejad, like Hitler before him, has told us exactly what he is going to do with nuclear weapons. He has said, he is going to "wipe" Israel "off the map" and to create a "world without America." In plain language that means extreme economic warfare, WMD’s or an Electro Magnetic Pulse Weapon.

"Ahmadinejad has repeatedly said, "Do you know why we wish for chaos at any price?" Hearing no responses, he said: "Because, after the chaos, we can see the greatness of Allah." Chaos is central to Ahmadinejad's religious beliefs. He believes, as many militant Shiites do, that the Twelfth Imam, or "Mahdi," a messianic figure from the ninth century, will soon reappear to signal the end of the modern world and the onset of Islamic justice over all the earth. Ahmadinejad believes he has been called to herald the Mahdi." Unless this is confronted by world leaders who see reality clearly, another Holocaust is on its way.

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Paul McGuire is an author of 16 books and conference speaker. www.paulmcguire.com

The Crusades

Belt’s efforts to whitewash the role Islamic conquest played in the decline of Christianity in the Middle East becomes obvious in the third paragraph of the article which states that "it was during the Crusades (1095-1291) that Arab Christians, slaughtered along with Muslims by the crusaders and caught in the cross fire between Islam and the Christian West, began a long, steady retreat into the minority."

In reality, Arab Christianity began its "long, steady retreat" into minority status hundreds of years before the European crusaders ever set foot in the Holy Land. As Bat Ye’or and other commentators have documented, the process of forced conversion and subjugation of Christians in the Middle East began soon after the death of Mohammed in 632. Ye’or writes that after unifying the Arabian Peninsula under Muslim rule, Abu Bakr, Mohammed’s successor, brought war to non-Muslims, including Christians, outside Arabia. In her book The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude (Farleigh Dickinson Press, 1996) Ye’or writes:

Arab idolaters had to choose between death or conversion; as for Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, if they paid tribute and accepted the conditions of conquest, they could buy back their right to live, freedom of worship and security of property.

In 640 the second caliph, Umar Ibn al-Khattab, drove the Jewish and Christian tributaries out of Hijasz by invoking the dhimma (contract) of Khaybar: the land belonged to Allah and his Envoy and the contract could be broken at the discretion of the imam, the religious and political leader of the umma [Muslim religious community] and the interpreter of Allah’s will. Umar also invoked the desire expressed by the Prophet on his deathbed: "Two religions should not co-exist within the Arabian peninsula." (Page 39)

While Ye’or is careful to explain that the subjugation of peoples and faiths was part and parcel of life in the Middle East at the time and that offering conquered peoples a chance to convert to Islam "curbed the barbarity of war," she also makes clear that Christianity declined under Muslim conquest in the region conducted under the rubric of jihad, or holy war against non-Muslims.

Instead of acknowledging this history, Belt portrays early Muslim history as a time of tolerance, describing the Levant’s history of "coexistence between Muslims and people of other faiths, which dates from the earliest days of Islam. When the Muslim Caliph Omar conquered Syria from the Byzantine Empire around 636, he protected the Christians under his rule, allowing them to keep their churches and worship as they pleased."

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But the first obligation in the Road Map was laid upon the Palestinians -- to dismantle their infrastructure of terror. It was their failure to meet that first obligation, without which the rest of the Road Map could not be implemented, which led to its collapse as a strategy. Yet Obama appears to think that the only obligations which must be met are those which apply to Israel, with the Palestinians apparently getting a free pass.

This is of course all of a piece with his belief that Israel is the cause of the Middle East impasse which would be solved by the creation of a state of Palestine. The fact that even now Fatah states explicitly that it won’t accept the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, let alone Hamas repeatedly restating its intention to destroy Israel and kill every Jew, is not, in Obama’s mind, the real obstacle to a solution. Not only does Obama not see the creation of "˜Hamastan’ in the West Bank as an obstacle -- ‚  he sees instead the refusal to treat Hamas as part of the solution as an obstacle. Accordingly, he presents as the obstacle not the people continuing to wage war but the country that is the victim of that war "“ which he blames for not agreeing to destroy its own security.

The irrationality and injustice of this is manifest on every level. But what cannot be stressed enough is the way both Obama and the "˜progressive’ legions behind him have made as their rallying cry support for a proposed racist and religiously exclusionary state that denies civil rights for all. Those screaming "˜apartheid’ at Israel are demanding the establishment of a putative Palestine state which would allow no Jews to live there, let alone enjoy the equal civil and human rights afforded to Arab citizens of Israel. As the former CIA Director James Woolsey is reported to have observed earlier this month:

...the world has a tendency to "˜define deviancy down for non-Jews.’ As a result, governments around the world, including the Obama administration, never even mention the possibility that Jews should be able to enjoy the same rights and privileges in any future Palestinian polity that Israeli Arabs exercise today in the Jewish state.

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More ominously, Glick reports (likely from sources high up in the Israeli government) that the Obama administration has all but accepted as irreversible and unavoidable fact that Iran will soon develop nuclear weapons. She writes, ""¦we have learned that the [Obama] administration has made its peace with Iran’s nuclear aspirations. Senior administration officials acknowledge as much in off-record briefings. It is true, they say, that Iran may exploit its future talks with the US to run down the clock before they test a nuclear weapon. But, they add, if that happens, the US will simply have to live with a nuclear-armed mullocracy."

She goes on to write that the Obama administration is desperate to stop Israel from attacking Iran writing that "as far as the [Obama] administration is concerned, if Israel could just leave Iran’s nuclear installations alone, Iran would behave itself." She notes that American officials would regard any harm to American interests that flowed from an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities as Israel’s doing, not Iran’s.

In classic Stockholm Syndrome fashion, the Obama administration is empathizing more with the Iranian leaders who are holding Israel hostage than with the nation that may be wiped off the map if Iran acquires the bomb.

Obama’s end-of-the-year deadline for Iranian talks aimed at stopping its progress toward nuclear weapons is just window dressing without the threat of military action. As Metternich wrote "diplomacy without force is like music without instruments." By warning only of possible strengthening of economic sanctions if the talks do not progress, Obama is making an empty threat. The sanctions will likely have no effect because Russia and China will not let the United Nations act as it must if it is to deter Iranian nuclear weapons.

All this means is that Israel’s life is in danger. If Iran gets the bomb, it will use it to kill six million Jews. No threat of retaliation will make the slightest difference. One cannot deter a suicide bomber with the threat of death. Nor can one deter a theocracy bent on meriting admission to heaven and its virgins by one glorious act of violence. Iran would probably not launch the bomb itself, anyway, but would give it to its puppet terrorists to send to Israel so it could deny responsibility. Obama, bent on appeasement, would likely not retaliate with nuclear weapons. And Israel will be dead and gone.

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In a ‚  video clip ‚  of a ‚  televised sermon ‚  broadcast on Al Aqsa (Hamas) TV on April 24, the unidentified cleric declared, "True foundation and education start in the mosques"¦ " ‚  A transcript of the sermon, in subtitles, ‚  was provided by the Washington-based media watchdog organization, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW).

The point made by the cleric underscores the importance of security measures carried out by Israel Police on Fridays at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, especially during periods of tension, prior to Israeli national and Jewish holidays, or immediately following terror attacks.

"Do you realize what the mosque is? It is a prime factory educating men to fear and please Allah; [it is] the prime factory for educating Jihad fighters," the cleric continued in the video clip.

"The mosque is the life of Muslims, and the symbol of their courage and honor," he said.

Even a Muslim Fetus is Committed to Jihad

During his sermon, the cleric also explained that even a Muslim fetus is not free of the obligation to make war.

"The Palestinian fetus in its mother’s womb, the Muslim fetus throughout the world in its mother’s womb, call [on Muslims] to unite through fear of Allah, through pleasing him, and through choosing Jihad and Resistance [terror]," he proclaimed.

Women ‚  almost never prevented from attending services at the Al Aqsa mosque ‚  in Jerusalem ‚  Temple Mount, regardless of the security restrictions set for Muslim men.

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Jones is quoted in the telegram as saying that the United States, European Union and moderate Arab states must redefine "˜a satisfactory endgame solution.’ The U.S. national security adviser did not mention Israel as party to these consultations.

Of course not. If you are going to throw a country under the bus, you don’t invite it to discuss the manner of its destruction with the assassins who are co-coordinating the crime. As I said here months ago, the appointment of Jones and the elevation of his post of National Security Adviser at the expense of the Secretary of State was all part of the strategy to centralize power in the hands of those who want to do Israel harm.

On Tuesday, Vice-President Joe Biden and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry turned the thumbscrews tighter, telling Israel to stop building more settlements, dismantle existing outposts and allow Palestinians freedom of movement.

This is all not only evil but exceptionally stupid. The idea that a Palestine state will help build a coalition against Iran is demonstrably absurd. The Arab states are beside themselves with anxiety about Iran. They want it to be attacked and its nuclear program stopped. They are desperately fearful that the Obama administration might have decided that it can live with a nuclear Iran.

The idea that if a Palestine state comes into being it will be easier to handle Iran is the opposite of the case: a Palestine state will be Iran, in the sense that it will be run by Hamas as a proxy for the Islamic Republic. The idea that a Palestine state will not compromise Israel’s security is ludicrous.

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A number of new hate thresholds were crossed. There were much-increased public expressions of equating Israel with Nazi Germany. Calls for the murder of Jews abounded for the first time in demonstrations in Germany, as well as in the United States. Prominent politicians, including the Norwegian finance minister, marched in such protests. There are indications that a variety of Muslim bodies, including mosque organizations, had planned these events well in advance.

A number of actions by various independent Muslim bodies in several Western countries manifested their desire to conquer the public square and, at the same time, remove Jewish and Israeli identities from it. This development is relevant not only to Jews but also to the general public. Those who want to impose themselves in the public domain today at the expense of Jews, are likely to do so tomorrow at the expense of others.

The Gaza war has shown once again that Israel can cope with the many military challenges it faces. On the other hand, the problems of the asymmetric verbal war conducted against it by circles from the United Nations, several Western political parties, media, academe, NGOs, and many others have never been properly analyzed by the Israeli authorities. Understanding how this anti-Israeli propaganda functions, and internally interacts, is necessary for gradually building adequate defenses in this area as well.

Introduction

During Israel's Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, which lasted from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009, anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli manifestations reached post-Second World War highs. One indicator of the growth in expressed hate is that during this period the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Britain increased eightfold to 220 compared to the same period a year earlier. ‚   :"(Community Security Trust, Antisemitic Incidents and Threats to British Jews Arising from the Gaza Crisis, ‚   Update 4, 21 January 2009)": ‚   Estimates of the Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism put the worldwide increase of anti-Semitic incidents at 300 percent. ‚   :"(Report: Expect Sharp Rise in Anti-Semitism, JTA, 25 January 2009.)": Hate emails to the umbrella body of the Jewish community in Germany were up 40 percent. They now stand at 200-300 per week. ‚   :"( Holocaust-Gedenken ohne Zentralrat der Juden, ‚   Die Welt, 27 January 2009. German)":

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Clinton, on her first visit to Israel since being appointed by President Barack Obama, spent the day holding talks with the country's outgoing and incoming leadership.

While her mission was diplomatically touted as a "familiarization tour" whose purpose was to introduce herself to regional leaders and listen to their ideas rather than bombard them with her own, the former first lady left no doubt that she has come here to get things going and expects Israel to tow the line.

"The road ahead, we acknowledge, is a difficult one, but there is no time to waste," she said.

"The United States will be vigorously engaged in the pursuit of a two-state solution every step of the way."

Twenty-four hours earlier, those United States - under its new administration with its "new" approach to Middle East peace making - had laid out 900 million dollars to get its program up and running.

Along with Arab and other world leaders, Clinton spent the day Monday at Sharm e-Sheikh pledging 5.5 billion financial aid to the Arabs who have dedicated their lives to establishing a state on Jewish lands at Israel's expense.

Addressing the news corps, Clinton said: "We are committed to a two-state solution. I feel passionate about this ... it's not just part of my portfolio."

"The assistance we are offering is integral to our broader goals of a comprehensive peace and a two state solution."

And again: "By providing humanitarian assistance to Gaza, we also aim to foster conditions in which a Palestinian state can be fully realised."

The left-wing Israeli daily Ha'aretz called Clinton's Tuesday afternoon meeting with Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu, the most important of her engagements with the Israeli side.

After that meeting "Bibi," who believes the two-state-solution is no solution at all, but rather a threat to Israel, said diplomatically that he and Clinton had found "common ground"

But for Clinton there is no common ground, and no getting away from, the creation of Palestine in Samaria, Judea and Gaza.

"It is our assessment that eventually, the inevitability of working towards a two-state solution is inescapable," she said.

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The convoy reached the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing on Sunday, but was delayed due to the Egyptian security forces' objection to the delivery of non-medical aid. The activists spent the night in El-Arish, where locals reportedly pelted them with stones and sprayed anti-Hamas graffiti on their cars.

Eventually, an agreement was made with Egypt, whereby some of the non-medial supplies - including electrical generators and the fire engine - were unloaded and were to be transferred via the Egyptian Red Cross through border crossings under Israel's control after being checked by the IDF.

A Hamas border official said about 50 British and Scottish volunteers and 100 vehicles carrying food, clothing and medicine had passed through the Rafah terminal. Galloway said 300 British citizens and 200 Libyans would be entering Gaza.

After entering the Strip, Galloway called the aid "a drop in the ocean," but said the trip was to send a message that "the lifeline from Britain to Gaza is in."

He vowed that more such aid convoys would follow and that Gazans should not feel they were alone.

"I have entered Palestine many times but the most emotional of these is after the 22-day genocidal aggression against the Palestinian people," he told reporters.

Receiving the activists, Ahmed Kurd, Hamas's minister of social affairs, thanked Galloway for the "noble goodwill gesture" and called the lawmaker a "hero."

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Durban I was a stage for anti-Semitism and vitriolic condemnation of Israel and Israel alone. No other country was chastised for acts of racism, not even Darfur, where the genocide continues. Israel was the only country which was ‚  criticized and the criticism included even its right to exist as a Jewish nation. ‚   Although the Durban Declaration makes no reference to the many countries which are now or are becoming Muslim, it calls a homeland for the Jewish people as "racist" by definition. Congress called the conference a forum for "attacking Israel, promoting anti-Semitism, and undermining the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." (H.Res. 1361) The anti-Semitism was so flagrant that Colin Powell led a walk out and the U.S. has voted against all U.N. measures which contain elements of the Durban Declaration.

What will make Durban II any better? Nothing. The ‚  State Department ‚  equivocates ‚  that it will engage in the ‚  preparation stages of the conference and perhaps not the conference itself, yet all U.N. nations who attend the preparatory meetings have agreed to "reaffirm the Durban Declaration". U.S. participation cannot change the objective of Durban II, which is ‚  "to foster the implementation of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action." It is a done deal. ‚  When the European Union attempted to remove some incendiary paragraphs against Israel, Pakistan replied that those paragraphs were going to remain since they were part of the first Durban Declaration and Program of Action. "May I remind - we are not here to renegotiate the Durban Declaration and it is already there; we are at the Review Conference and we cannot renegotiate." ‚   Plans for Durbin II have been underway for several years, and a last minute proposal by the U.S. may, at best, remove one or two inflammatory passages but not the core purpose of the event: promoting anti-Semitism.

Durbin II is likely to be worse than Durbin I. Whereas the first conference developed into a orgy of hate speech, the next conference states on its official website that its mission is to "...accelerate progress towards the implementation of measures adopted in 2001." That is, Durban II is where words of hate towards Israel ‚  will be translated into actions. If there is any doubt about the motives of the conference, one needs to look at the preparatory committee, chaired by Libya and Iran, neither of which is likely to give up its goal of destroying the State of Israel.

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The London-based Community Security Trust reported Friday that after Israel's counterterrorist Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, the incidence rose to more than six times the number of attacks that were carried out in the same period just a year earlier.

The organization, which tracks anti-Semitic incidents and tries to maintain security for the Jewish community in Britain, released the report in advance of an international conference focusing on how to deal with anti-Semitism, slated to be held Monday in London.

According to the report, in the four weeks following the start of the operation on December 27 there were 250 attacks, as opposed to 40 recorded for the same period in 2007-2008.

Among the incidents were physical assaults, verbal attacks, Jewish property damaged, threats, hate mail and anti-Semitic graffiti.

London police confirmed a rise in anti-Semitism, and said that in the period from December 27 to February 3, they recorded three times as many incidents as were reported a year earlier. Some of the increase, they said, came due to a change in record-keeping methods; however, they note that the data speaks for itself.

French Jews Afraid to Walk the Streets
Friday also marked the three-year anniversary since the murder of 23-year-old Ilan Halimi, a Parisian Jew who died in France after being kidnapped and brutally tortured by an anti-Semitic gang.

Since Halimi's death, things have only gotten worse, according to Serge Benhaim, president of a Jewish community in the French capital.

"Almost every day we witness severe racially motivated incidents, and tension has only intensified after the operation in Gaza," Benhaim told journalists. "We don't take the train after 7:00 p.m., we wear a skullcap only under a hat and our youths don't wander the streets late at night anymore," he added.

The suspects in Halimi's murder are expected to go on trial next month, and the Jewish community has already been warned to keep a low profile, according to Benhaim, who said Jews in Paris are "preparing for the worst. Unfortunately, Halimi's murder probably won't be the last," he said.

More than 100 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in France during the period between December 27, when Operation Cast Lead began, and the end of January 2009, according to the country's Representative Council of Jewish Institutions. That was compared to a total of 250 anti-Semitic incidents recorded during the entire 12-month period from January to December 2007.

Organization president Richard Prasquier told journalists last month that he and several other Jewish community leaders met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy to ask for his intervention. "He told us that he would do more to find a solution to this problem," Prasquier said.

Meanwhile, six weeks ago Michael Benhamou became the next victim of French anti-Semitic brutality when he was attacked by three "Arab-looking men" on the Parisian metro while on his way home. The attackers cursed him, threatened to kill him and then beat him up. Benhamou was hospitalized for four days with multiple facial fractures, including a broken nose.

His attackers disappeared, and no arrests have been made. "We can't count on the police," said the young victim. "Nothing has changed here since Ilan's murder. There is no place for Jews in France; we can't keep living here with these acts of barbarism. I already told my girlfriend that we are going to make aliyah. There's nothing left for us here; I want my child to be a sabra."

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According to the report, this will be the second time COSATU's affiliate, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU,) refuses to unload goods from or destined to "dictatorial and oppressive rogue states," which include Israel, Zimbabwe and Swaziland.

A statement issued by COSATU said "This follows the decision by COSATU to strengthen the campaign in South Africa for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against apartheid Israel."

A series of protests were also scheduled to take place in major South African cities starting Thursday, and several parliament members and senior union leaders are expected to attend.

The statement, issued by COSATU, the Palestine Solidarity Committee and the Young Communist League recalled the successful boycotts imposed against South Africa during the apartheid era.

"We call on other workers and unions to follow suit and to do all that is necessary to ensure that they boycott all goods to and from Israel until Palestine is free.

"We also welcome statements by various South African Jews of conscience who have dissociated themselves from the genocide in Gaza," the statement said.

The South African Jewish Board of Deputies, however, told the Daily News it was more likely that COSATU was more concerned with upcoming national elections than the state of the Palestinian people.

"COSATU wants to show its muscle and the elections are getting closer, so it is easy to bash a foreign state," said board chairman Zev Krengel.

"It is a pity COSATU cannot show the same solidarity with its own brothers in the African continent. More than 3 000 people in Zimbabwe have died of cholera, yet we do not see any protest about that."

Krengel also said that a boycott would have little economic effect on Israel, and would prove to be unproductive.

"As South Africans, we have been a nation which talks and reconciles. This is not helping at all, and does not help the Palestinians," he said.

COSATU spokesman Patrick Craven rejected claims that the decision to boycott Israeli ships was influenced by elections, saying "The ultimate aim is to give the Palestinians independence and a sovereign state in which to live. This particular action goes beyond simple verbal denunciations."

Williamson is a Holocaust denier, and has repeatedly said that the gas chambers did not exist and that no more than 300,000 Jews were killed during World War II, mostly of starvation. In addition, Williamson has declared that the Jews are plotting to take over the world, and that the U.S. and Israel were behind 9/11.

In an interview with Swedish television conducted last November but broadcast last week, Williamson said that he believed that there were "no gas chambers."

"Between 200,000-300,000 perished in Nazi concentration camps, but not one of them by gassing in a gas chamber," he said, adding, "I believe that the historical evidence is hugely against 6 million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler."

Back to Middle Ages

Williamson has had a long history of Holocaust denial. In a 1989 sermon in Sherbrooke, Canada, Williamson said that "there was not one Jew killed in the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies. The Jews created the Holocaust so we would prostrate ourselves on our knees before them and approve of their new State of Israel... Jews made up the Holocaust, Protestants get their orders from the devil, and the Vatican has sold its soul to liberalism." In dozens of sermons and letters, Richardson reiterated the same theme, adding that Hitler "liberated" Germany from the Jews.

Richardson advocates a return to the Middle Ages, with the Inquisition the preferred model of the Catholic relationship to Jews. "As Catholic faith goes up, so Jewish power goes down, while as Catholic faith goes down, so Jewish power goes up. In the Catholic Middle Ages, the Jews were relatively impotent to harm Christendom. But as Catholics have grown over the centuries weaker and weaker in the faith, especially since Vatican II, so the Jews have come closer and closer to fulfilling their substitute-Messianic drive towards world dominion... When Spanish Catholics were truly Catholic, God granted them by 1492 to reconquer Spain from the Arabs, and then granted them to create a Catholic empire in the Americas."

Jewish community officials have expressed serious concerns over the Pope's move. Rabbi Shmuel Ricardo Di Segni, the Chief Rabbi of Rome, told reporters that the rehabilitation of Williamson opens "a deep wound" in Catholic-Jewish relations.

The Anti-Defamation League, an anti-Semitism watchdog group, said that the reinstatement "could become a source of great tension between Catholics and Jews." The umbrella group of Jewish communities in France called Williamson "a contemptible liar whose sole objective is to reawaken centuries-old hatred against the Jews."

In a report, Reuters quoted Mordechai Lewy, Israel's ambassador to the Vatican, as saying that Israel "has no intention of interfering in the internal workings of the Catholic Church. However, the eagerness to bring a Holocaust denier back into the Church will cast a shadow on relations between Jews and the Catholic Church."

A Vatican spokesman said that the lifting of the ban had nothing to do with Williamson's views. "It has nothing to do with the personal opinions of a person, which are open to criticism, but are not pertinent to this decree."

Original Report

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Three years ago the fanatical Islamic group Hamas took control over Gaza from the Palestinian Authority, has been backed by every radical Moslem regime in the world from Iran to Hezbollah and, since the Egyptians closed the border crossing from southern Gaza into Egypt, Hamas has dug a network of tunnels into Egypt and has been smuggling weapons, explosives and rockets into Gaza. Now that's another story altogether. Egypt is a sovereign nation, where in the world does Hamas get weapons from? The Egyptians are not selling them (or are they) Just where do they come from? Is there a "Guns R Us" in the Sinai?

Two weeks ago, the Israeli Government has been giving out numerous warnings not just to Hamas in Gaza but also to the European Community, the United States, and yes, the Arab world, that Israel was about to retaliate. Even a live interview was held by PM Olmert on an Arab network warning Hamas that there will be a lot of blood and destruction in Gaza if the rockets don't cease. Hamas basically said "Bring it on". So, that's what the Israelis did. I had a feeling something would happen soon when my daughter's leave was cut short by a phone call. She serves in the Air force as part of the ground crew for F16 fighter planes. What a job for a 19-year-old girl. The Israel Air Force went in swift and hard. With pinpoint accuracy, they hit many Hamas related targets trying to keep in mind and avoid civilian casualties. Unfortunately, Hamas knows that Israelis avoid civilian areas and intentionally place their weapons in densely populated areas or basements of schools, Mosques and even hospitals.

The air and ground attack is still going. Hundreds of armed Hamas terrorists have been killed and, at least 100 captured. Munitions storage areas have been destroyed, smuggling tunnels bombed but, of course, all the film footage coming out of Gaza is of woman and children casualties. The world is upside-down in demanding that Israel stop the "atrocities" and "genocide". They tend to forget that the purpose of Hamas rocket attacks into Israeli towns and cities is to intentionally kill as many innocent Jews as possible.

Bradley Burston, a writer for Haaretz newspaper in Israel has written an analogy, an analogy that's probably been going through many people's minds. This is basically, what he's written:

A fanatical religious party wins an election in a county of northern Mexico fights a civil war against the Federal government and takes control of the area.

They now demand the return of all occupied territory taken by the United States - California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and Colorado.

They fire homemade rockets and more sophisticated rockets smuggled in from Iran and China into U.S. major cities of the southwest putting 1/7th of the population of the entire United States in danger. All schools are forced to shut down and when people hear "Code Red" on the radio and town loudspeakers they have 15 seconds to find shelter. This goes on several times a day shutting down businesses, ruining the economy and basically living in fear.

This has now become reality in southern Israel. Now you tell me...what nation would put up with this?

OH NO!! CODE RED! CODE RED! ‚   You now have 15 seconds to run for shelter!

Have a nice day,
Ronnie Cohen

"There is no chance. Is there any chance for fire to co-exist with the water?" said Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of one of the group's founding members.

Yousef added: "It's not about Israel, it's not about Hamas: it's about both ideologies."

Yousef, son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, one of the most influential leaders of the militant group, said the organization betrays the Palestinian cause and tortures its own members.

" ¢ Video: Click here for more on FOX News' special Escape from Hamas.

Hamas, formed in the late 1980's as an outgrowth of the Palestinian branch of the radical Muslim Brotherhood, is considered a terror organization by the U.S. government. Hamas seized power in the Gaza strip in 2007 in a violent coup against the more moderate Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas.

Yousef said he was indoctrinated at an early age to use violence to challenge Israeli control in the region. As a teenager he moved up within the organization and became the leader of the radical Islamic Youth Movement that fought Israeli tanks and troops in the streets, celebrated suicide bombings and recruited young men to the cause.

Yousef, 30, said he realized the true nature of Hamas and radical Islam during a stint in an Israeli prison. He renounced his Muslim faith, left his family behind in Ramallah and converted to Christianity.

"Islam is not the word of God," said Yousef. "If you want to be offended it's your problem. But you know something? Go study. Think for a second that I might be right. So wake up, look at your path, see where you're going. Are you really going to heaven with 72 virgins after you kill yourself and kill another 20 people?"

Yousef has sought asylum in the United States and now attends an evangelical Christian church in San Diego, Calif.

"The Hamas leadership, including my father, they're responsible; they're responsible for all the violence that happened from the organization. I know they describe it as reaction to Israeli aggression, but still, they are part of it and they had to make decisions in those operations against Israel (for) which there was the killing of many civilians."

Yousef talks more about his extraordinary story of faith, courage, violence and betrayal in a FOX News documentary, "Escape From Hamas," hosted by Bill Hemmer.

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There is a third aspect of the Israeli retreat from Gaza and northern Samaria that to date has not garnered any significant public attention. That issue is the impact of the operation on the Israel Defense Forces. Given that the IDF is the national organization charged with ensuring Israel's survival, anything that happens to the IDF has direct consequences for Israel's national security. And so it is worth considering what, if any, impact the operation has had on the IDF.

Disturbingly, the military's organizational behavior since the withdrawal from Gaza, as manifested in operations on the ground and in statements by senior commanders, indicates that the withdrawal of IDF forces from Gaza has harmed the IDF's self-assessment and its understanding of its mission.

This troubling situation is most clearly evident in Southern Command. That command devoted itself last year almost entirely to the non-military task of preparing and carrying out the uprooting of the Jewish communities from Gaza. Now it is contending with the new threats that have emerged along Israel's long border with Egypt and in the Gaza Strip since it completed that mission.

As the daily Kassam rocket and mortar strikes on Ashkelon, Sderot and the rest of the Israeli communities bordering Gaza have shown, since the withdrawal, Southern Command has failed in its mission to provide security to southern Israel.

Last Thursday afternoon, OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Yoav Galant briefed military reporters in Tel Aviv. The day before the briefing, Ashkelon's industrial area - home to some of Israel's most vital national infrastructures - was struck by Kassam rockets. That attack on the industrial area was launched from Gaza right after the IDF declared the successful conclusion of "Operation Lightning Strike." That operation was supposed to prevent the shooting of Kassam rockets on southern Israel.

As well, last Thursday morning, soldiers from the Givati Brigade killed two terrorists who attacked them with rifle fire from the Erez crossing where Gazan workers enter Israel.

Addressing reporters, Galant declared that on the one hand, "Israeli bloodshed will not be met with silence." On the other hand, he said, "I can't say that we have a perfect response for the Kassam rockets, but our operations are effective. The Palestinians think twice before they shoot."

Galant brushed off the fact that the Palestinians are lobbing rockets and mortars at Israel on a daily basis in spite of the IDF's "effective" responses, by saying: "You have to look at the glass as half full. It could be better, it could be worse."

Finally, one week after the Palestinians voted Hamas into office, the commander who holds direct responsibility for the security of southern Israel said: "With our departure from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians were given the chance to choose a new path. Instead of fighting, I hope that they will choose the path of hope and of fighting terror."

What Galant's statements make clear is that in its post-withdrawal operations against Palestinian attacks, the IDF is simply ignoring its duty to secure the country. Galant's basic message last Thursday was that rather than do its job or admit that in the absence of ground forces in Gaza it cannot do its job, the IDF excuses its failure to protect the country with hollow and pathetic political slogans. Most depressingly, the IDF does this with the full expectation that the Israeli public will not notice the fact that our army is unable or unwilling to uphold its basic obligation to the nation.

In an interview Wednesday with the Ynet Web site, a high-ranking officer in Central Command said that over the past year the IDF had prevented 10 Palestinian shooting attacks on Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood. He also revealed that Palestinians in the Bethlehem district possess mortars.

The officer seemed to be using his interview as a way to beg the government and his commanders not to take away his forces' freedom of activity in the Bethlehem district. In his words, "There is a threat of gunfire attacks on Gilo, but we have an effective answer to that threat as long as we retain the freedom to act and collect intelligence in Bethlehem. Today we have freedom of action in the city, but there are mortars moving around in Bethlehem. There are attempts to transfer know-how, attempts to transfer missiles. We also see attempts to connect the area to northern Samaria and Gaza, and by that I mean in terms of weaponry, know-how and personnel."

Yet, in seeming disregard to this rising terror threat, the officer said the IDF's major activities in 2006 in the Bethlehem-Gush Etzion area would center around two issues: the construction of the security fence against the backdrop of both Arab and Jewish opposition to the project; and contending with the Hamas takeover of the Palestinian Authority.

It was difficult not to despair after reading that officer's interview. There are mortars at the gates of Jerusalem and the IDF has made guarding a fence its first priority for 2006. It seemed apparent from his remarks that this commander himself is aware of the absurdity of the IDF's operational priorities.

It is not the army's job to guard fences. The army's duty is to secure the state and its citizens. Against the emerging mortar and rocket threat to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv from Hamas-ruled Judea and Samaria - a threat that this officer claims finds its origins in the territories the IDF vacated last summer - what this officer most fears is that he will be ordered to retreat.

The officer's conflation of Israeli and Palestinian opponents of the security fence around Gush Etzion echoes the statements made by OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh after the violent clashes between police and civilians at Amona two weeks ago. There Naveh drew parallels between the Jewish protesters and Palestinian terrorists who fight IDF forces in Palestinian cities. Both officers' statements expose a deep confusion about the role of the IDF.

Last week, a US Army commander, who observed the events in Amona from afar, shared with me his deep concern for the future of the IDF. In his words, "The Israeli army will not be able to survive as an effective fighting force if it continues to place itself in the middle of the mainstream political debate in Israel. It cannot survive if it allows itself to confuse the Israeli public with Israel's enemies."

At the same time as they confuse the government's political opposition with Israel's enemies, IDF commanders also actively deny the threat Israel's enemies constitute for the country. On Tuesday, in his first appearance before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, incoming OC Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin said Hamas was now trying to decide whether it would form a moderate or radical government. He added that the key question was whether Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas would restrain Hamas by forming a dictatorial government, or whether he would attempt to reach agreements with Hamas as had been his wont until now.

In so relating to the Hamas takeover of the PA, Yadlin echoed statements by other IDF commanders and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz regarding the possibility of separating the Hamas government from Palestinian society. By framing Israel's strategic predicament in this fashion, IDF commanders are making it all but impossible for the public to recognize the fact that it is not just terrorist organizations that are waging this war against the country. Palestinian society as a whole is warring against Israel. That was the message of the Palestinian elections, which brought Hamas to power. And so the question of what sort of government Hamas will form and what Abbas's relationship to that government will be is strategically irrelevant.

Perhaps the most remarkable recent example of the confusion that has plagued the IDF since the withdrawal from Gaza was the joint press conference Mofaz held with IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz on Monday. The two heads of Israel's defense establishment announced that they were cutting the length of compulsory military service for male IDF conscripts from 36 months to 28-32 months.

It should be recalled that in August 2000, as IDF chief of General Staff, Mofaz gave the same announcement at a press conference with then prime minister and defense minister Ehud Barak. The next month the Palestinians launched their terror war. Given the precedent, the beginning of the next big round of the Palestinian terror war may be set to begin next month.

The fact that the Palestinian war is a societal war that threatens the existence of Israel was given disturbing _expression on Wednesday when the heads of the Israeli Arab political parties announced in a press conference that that they were unifying their Knesset lists in an alliance against the "Zionist political parties."

Ibrahim Sarsour, the head of the Islamic Movement's southern branch, who now heads the unified list, declared unabashedly that the Israeli Arab public supports the Palestinian and global jihad forces working to destroy Israel and take over the Western world. In his words: "The entire Arab public, but especially the Muslim public, is in the crosshairs. It is the target of a global attack. As the Islamic Movement, we wish to see the establishment of the Islamic caliphate without borders, and this is what scares the West."

Sarsour applauded the Palestinians for electing Hamas, saying: "The Palestinian people did not choose the Hamas movement in order to add another tragedy to the tragedies it has already undergone, but in order to reap achievements."

The threats Israel faces, as a frontline state in the global jihad are exacerbated with every retreat and statement of defeatism by Israeli political leaders and military commanders. To surmount these threats, Israel needs an army that is capable of contending with the reality of war that characterizes our times.

Over the past year and a half, the government has forced the IDF to occupy itself with missions that are unrelated or counterproductive to its core duty of defending the country and its citizens. The removal of its forces from Gaza last summer has made the IDF's duty to secure southern Israel impossible to fulfill. But rather than admit that the limitations the government has placed on its operations have made it impossible for the military to defend the country, IDF commanders take sides in political disputes and make excuses for their failures.

There can be little doubt that the withdrawal from Gaza had a terrible impact on the IDF. It can only be hoped that the General Staff will pull itself together and face reality before the next round of war begins so that it can adequately prepare our soldiers and our society for the challenges that await us.

The Palestinian Authority has announced that it was granting honorary citizenship to two Arab terrorists who killed Israelis - a Lebanese terrorist, Samir Quntar, and Jordanian terrorist, Sultan Al-Ajaluni. Both are serving life sentences in Israeli jails.

In 1979 Lebanese terrorist Samir Quntar murdered Danny Haran and his four-year-old daughter, Einat. Danny's daughter Yael, aged two, suffocated while hiding in a crawl space with her mother Quntar is serving multiple life sentences totaling 542 years in prison.

Smadar Haran, wife and mother of the murder victims, described the murder in the Washington Post in 2003:

"It was a murder of unimaginable cruelty. It had been a peaceful Sabbath day. My husband, Danny, and I had picnicked with our little girls, Einat, 4, and Yael, 2, on the beach. Around midnight . the terrorists burst into our building. Danny helped our neighbor climb into a crawl space above our bedroom; I went in behind her with Yael in my arms. Danny grabbed Einat and was dashing out the front door when the terrorists came crashing into our flat. They held Danny and Einat . I will never forget the joy and the hatred in the terrorists voices as they swaggered about hunting for us, firing their guns and throwing grenades. .

As I lay there, I remembered my mother telling me how she had hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust. "This is just like what happened to my mother," I thought. .. The terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach. There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then he smashed my little girl's skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Quntar."
[*Smadar Haran Kaiser, Washington Post, May 18, 2003*]

This is the Samir Quntar who last week was granted honorary Palestinian citizenship. Palestinian organizations responded with applause to this announcement:

Here's the Palestinian comment:

"The "friends of the prisoners" organization sees the decision, of the present [Fatah led] government, to award Palestinian citizenship to two ‚  Arab prisoners - Samir Quntar from Lebanon and Sultan Al-Ajaluni from Jordan - an act of Palestinian national obligation and in dedication to this honoredhistory, that the Arab prisoners have provided to the Palestinian issue."
[*Al-Quds, Mar. 7, 2006*]

"The Palestinian Liberation Front, through general secretariat member, Dr. Wasil Abu Yusuf, praised the government's decision. to award the imprisoned fighters, Sarmir Quntar and Sultan Al-Ajaluni , honorary citizenship and Palestinian citizenship as an act of dedication to their struggle and their heroic suffering in the occupation's prisons.
[*Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Mar. 8, 2006*]

"The Palestinian Popular Committees expressed their appreciation for the government's decision to award the two imprisoned fighters, Sarmir Quntar and Sultan Al-Ajaluni, honorary citizenship and Palestinian citizenship as an act of dedication to their struggle and their heroic sufferings in the occupation's prisons.
[*Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Mar. 9, 2006*]

From PMW archives: Sarmir Quntar - for years a Palestinian hero*

PATV and PA leaders have long seen Quntar as a hero. His picture is repeatedly shown on TV and he was proclaimed the "model warrior," "brave," and a "leader" and "head" of the prisoners.

PA Minister of Prisoners, Hisham Abdul Razeq, defined Quntar as the leader of the prisoners:

The torch of freedom [that] was lifted by our heroic prisoners and headed by the great warrior Samir Quntar...and our thanks to you.
[*PATV, Aug. 15, 2004*]

Prominent PA TV broadcaster Muhammad Albaz:

"Here before us is the picture of the great Lebanese Palestinian warrior Samir Quntar. A thousand blessings to the warrior Samir Quntar [the audience claps] and to his family in Lebanon and to this hero who was sentenced to 576 year [in prison] and this is the evil and this is Israeli democracy.
[*PATV, Aug. 25, 2004*]

PA TV extolled him:

"Quntar is a model of a brilliant warrior - who believes in his goals, knows his way, and perseveres in achieving those goals...."
[*PATV, Aug. 18, 2004*]

Another TV broadcaster referred to him as a leader:

"The leader Samir Quntar, our wish for him is that he will soon be released."
[*PATV, Aug. 18, 2004*]

A broadcast describing Quntar's life defines his murder as "brave:

"He was sentenced to 542 years in prison for committing the brave Nahariya action in Palestine (note-Israel city of Nahariya is defined as ' Palestine.')
[*PATV, Aug. 18, 2004*]

Palestinian demonstrators supporting a prisoner hunger strike singled out Quntar as a model to be followed:

"We bless the family members of Samir Quntar, we are with you. He is your son but he is also our son, the son of Palestine. We ask of Allah, that there will be 100 more Samir Quntars, 1,000 more Samir Quntars, 1,000,000 more Samir Quntars, that do and act for the Palestinian issue.
[*PATV, Aug. 18, 2004*]

Finally it should be noted that this act of granting honorary Palestinian citizenship to Quntar was done by the present Fatah headed government. The Hamas led government has not yet been appointed.

Naturally- no BBC comment!

The February 6 divestment vote, which was backed by current Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, was "a most regrettable and one-sided statement," Lord Carey said, and one that "ignores the trauma of ordinary Jewish people" in Israel subjected to terrorist attacks.

Lord Carey joined Jewish leaders protesting the vote by the General Synod, the church's legislature, to adopt a "morally responsible investment in the Palestinian occupied territories and, in particular, to disinvest from companies profiting from the illegal occupation, such as Caterpillar Inc., until they change their policies."

The church's call to pressure Caterpillar and other multi-nationals to withdraw from the territories was a "one-eyed" response that "only rebukes one side," Lord Carey said, and displayed the church's "propensity to reduce complex issues to black and white."

Jon Benjamin, the chief executive officer of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, branded the synod vote "simplistic" and "unbalanced."

"What it shows is that the thinking of people who support these resolutions is not very sophisticated," he said. There were sound reasons why the Israeli government had adopted its security policies, but these were never "aired or discussed" by the synod, Benjamin said.

During the one-hour debate that preceded the vote, a letter from the Anglican bishop in Jerusalem, the Rt. Rev. Riah Abu al-Assal, condemning the Israeli government's use of Caterpillar tractors to demolish Palestinian homes was read to the synod.

The bishop of Chelmsford, the Rt. Rev. John Gladwin, said he held Israel responsible for the worsening plight of Palestinian Christians, telling the synod, "Caterpillar may be a company being used for dreadful purposes across the world, but the problem is not Caterpillar. The problem is the situation in the Middle East and the government of Israel."

The chairman of the Council of Christians and Jews, the Rt. Rev. Christopher Herbert, bishop of St. Albans, disagreed and objected to the disinvestment call, telling the synod it was "unbalanced" and failed to reflect the complexity of the situation. A counter motion offered by the pro-Israel pressure group "Anglicans for Israel" was not presented to the synod, as time was called on the debate after one hour.

The synod adopted the motion by a show of hands, with Archbishop Williams voting in favor, and the archbishop of York, John Sentamu, abstaining.

Dr. Irene Lancaster, of the Center for Jewish Studies at Manchester University, said the vote marked "a very black day for Anglican-Jewish relations."

"The Jewish community will have to reconsider their attitude to interfaith work with the Anglican community," she said, adding, "The writing is on the wall for the Jews of Great Britain, 350 years after they settled here."

The symbolism of this vote was that "Israel will be criticized regardless of what happens," Benjamin said. In the mind of the Church of England, "nothing Israel ever will do will be right, while nothing the Palestinians will do will ever be wrong," he charged.

In other words, Ahmadinejad's call for the destruction of Israel was nothing new but conforms to a well-established pattern of regime rhetoric and ambition. "Death to Israel!" has been a rallying cry for the past quarter-century. Mr. Ahmadinejad quoted Ayatollah Khomeini, its founder, in his call on October 26 for genocidal war against Jews: "The regime occupying Jerusalem must be eliminated from the pages of history," Khomeini said decades ago. Mr. Ahmadinejad lauded this hideous goal as "very wise."

In December 2001, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former Iranian president and still powerful political figure, laid the groundwork for an exchange of nuclear weapons with Israel: "If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel but the same thing would just produce minor damages in the Muslim world."

In like spirit, a Shahab-3 ballistic missile (capable of reaching Israel) paraded in Tehran last month bore the slogan "Israel Should Be Wiped Off the Map."

The threats by Messrs. Khamenei and Rafsanjani prompted yawns but Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement roused an uproar.

The U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan, expressed "dismay," the U.N. Security Council unanimously condemned it, and the European Union condemned it "in the strongest terms." Prime Minister Martin of Candida deemed it "beyond the pale," Prime Minister Blair of Britain expressed "revulsion," and the French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, announced that "for France, the right for Israel to exist should not be contested." Le Monde called the speech a "cause for serious alarm," Die Welt dubbed it "verbal terrorism," and a London Sun headline proclaimed Ahmadinejad the "most evil man in the world."

The governments of Turkey, Russia, and China, among others, expressly condemned the statement. Maryam Rajavi of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a leading opposition group, demanded that the European Union rid the region of the "hydra of terrorism and fundamentalism" in Tehran. Even the Palestinian Authority's Saeb Erekat spoke against Mr. Ahmadinejad: "Palestinians recognize the right of the state of Israel to exist, and I reject his comments." The Cairene daily Al-Ahram dismissed his statement as "fanatical" and spelling disaster for Arabs.

Iranians were surprised and suspicious. Why, some asked, did the mere reiteration of long-standing policy prompt an avalanche of outraged foreign reactions?

In a constructive spirit, I offer them four reasons. First, Mr. Ahmadinejad's virulent character gives the threats against Israel added credibility. Second, he in subsequent days defiantly repeated and elaborated on his threats. Third, he added an aggressive coda to the usual formulation, warning Muslims who recognize Israel that they "will burn in the fire of the Islamic umma [nation]."

This directly targets the Palestinians and several Arab states, but especially neighboring Pakistan. Just a month before Mr. Ahmadinejad spoke, the Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, stated that "Israel rightly desires security." He envisioned the opening of embassies in Israel by Muslim countries like Pakistan as a "signal for peace." Mr. Ahmadinejad perhaps indicated an intent to confront Pakistan over relations with Israel.

Finally, Israelis estimate that the Iranians could, within six months, have the means to build an atomic bomb. Mr. Ahmadinejad implicitly confirmed this rapid timetable when he warned that after just "a short period " ¦ the process of the elimination of the Zionist regime will be smooth and simple." The imminence of a nuclear-armed Iran transforms "Death to Israel" from an empty slogan into the potential premise for a nuclear assault on the Jewish state, perhaps relying on Mr. Rafsanjani's genocidal thinking.

Ironically, Mr. Ahmadinejad's candor has had positive effects, reminding the world of his regime's unremitting bellicosity, its rank anti-Semitism, and its dangerous arsenal. As Tony Blair noted, Mr. Ahmadinejad's threats raise the question, "When are you going to do something about this?" And Mr. Blair later warned Tehran with some menace against its becoming a "threat to our world security." His alarm needs to translate into action, and urgently so.

We are on notice. Will we act in time?

The reason for the assault? A Muslim woman from Dair Jarir, Hiyam Ajaj, 23, fell in love with her Christian boss, Mehdi Khouriyye, owner of a tailor shop in Taybeh. The couple maintained a clandestine two-year affair and she became pregnant in about March 2005. When her family learned of her condition, it murdered her. That was on about Sep. 1; unsatisfied even with this "honor killing" " ” for Islamic law strictly forbids non-Muslim males to have sexual relations with Muslim females " ” the Ajaj men sought vengeance against Khouriyye and his family.

They took it two days later in an assault on Taybeh. The Ajajs and their friends broke into houses and stole furniture, jewelry, and electrical appliances. They threw Molotov cocktails at some buildings and poured kerosene on others, then torched them. The damage included at least 16 houses, some stores, a farm, and a gas station. The assailants vandalized cars, looted extensively, and destroyed a statue of the Virgin Mary.

"It was like a war," one Taybeh resident told The Jerusalem Post. Hours passed before the Palestinian Authority security and fire services arrived. The fifteen assailants spent only a few hours in police detention, then were released. As for Khouriyye, the Palestinian police arrested him, kept him jail, and (his family says) have repeatedly beat him.

As the news service Adnkronos International notes, for Palestinian Christians "the fact that the Muslim aggressors have been released while the Christian tailor-shop owner is still being held, at best symbolizes the PA's indifference to the plight of Palestinian Christians, at worst shows it is taking sides against them."

A cousin, Suleiman Khouriyye, pointed to his burned house. "They did this because we're Christians. They did this because we are the weaker ones." The Khouriyyes and others recall the assailants shouting Allahu Akbar and anti-Christian slogans: "Burn the infidels, burn the Crusaders." To which, an unrepentant cousin of Hiyam Ajaj replied, "We burned their houses because they dishonored our family, not because they are Christians."

This assault fits a larger pattern. According to the Catholic Custodian of the Holy Land, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Christians in the Bethlehem region alone have suffered 93 cases of injustice in 2000-04. In the worst of these, in 2002, Muslims murdered the two Amre sisters, 17 and 19 years old, whom they called prostitutes. A post-mortem, however, showed the teenagers to have been virgins " ” and to have been tortured on their genitals.

"Almost every day " ” I repeat, almost every day " ” our communities are harassed by the Islamic extremists in these regions," Pizzaballa says. "And if it's not the members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, there are clashes with " ¦ the Palestinian Authority." In addition to the Islamists, a "Muslim land mafia" is said to operate. With PA complicity. it threatens Christian land and house owners, often succeeding to compel them to abandon their properties.

The campaign of persecution has succeeded. Even as the Christian population of Israel grows, that of the Palestinian Authority shrinks precipitously. Bethlehem and Nazareth, historic Christian towns for nearly two millennia, are now primarily Muslim. In 1922, Christians outnumbered Muslims in Jerusalem; today, Christians amount to a mere 2 percent of that city's population.

"Is Christian life liable to be reduced to empty church buildings and a congregation-less hierarchy with no flock in the birthplace of Christianity?" So asks Daphne Tsimhoni in the Middle East Quarterly. It is hard to see what will prevent that ghost-like future from coming into existence.

One factor that could help prevent this dismal outcome would be for mainline Protestant churches to speak out against Palestinian Muslims for tormenting and expelling Palestinian Christians. To date, unfortunately, the Episcopalian, Evangelical Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, as well as the United Church of Christ, have ignored the problem.

Instead, they pursue the self-indulgent path of venting moral outrage against the Israeli bystander and even withdrawing their investment funds from it. As they obsess with Israel but stay silent about Christianity dying in its birthplace one wonders what it will take to awaken them.

Iran

When the President of Iran speaks at a conference called "The World without Zionism"  and in his speech he says "Israel must be wiped off the map"  we have a big problem. ‚   Then when you consider that Iran in most likelihood has the nuclear bomb and the delivery system to send it to Tel-Aviv the problem gets even larger. ‚   Can you amagine the worlds reaction if Sharon said that about Iran? ‚   With the help of Russia, North Korea, China and Pakistan Iranians are most likely ready to attack Israel at any given moment and we know it, as does the rest of the world. ‚   With oil prices at the highest in history they certainly have the money to buy whatever they want in the way of weapons, and you can be sure that the above mentioned countries will sell them anything they want for a price.

The world has also witnessed the parades in Iran where they have shown off their new missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons to Israel or even Europe for that matter but written on the sides of the missiles are slogans that say "for the destruction of Israel" . ‚   I don’t think you have to be a master Politician to see we are in trouble here in Israel.

Since Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon the Iranian backed Hizbullah has been building up missiles bases and now have a reported 13,000 missiles ready to be fired at Israel whenever Iran decides it’s time, many with chemical warheads. ‚   All this of course has been designed to come together at the precise time to destroy Israel. ‚   Iran and Syria have agreed that if either is attacked by the US or Israel the other would come to their rescue.

Syria

To add insult to injury Syria has just purchased the Iskander SS-26 missiles from Russia with a 400 km range, putting two thirds of Israel in range, these missiles are capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and are very accurate. ‚   For the past couple years Syria who has no real love for the "Palestinians"  has been training thousands of them out of the Lebanon refugee camps too fight Israel. ‚   It has been reported that they have recently moved a very large number of them to their southern borders making even the Lebanon army nervous.

Bashar Assad (President of Syria) and Mahmoud Abbas (President of a place that doesn’t even exist on any map) both are in serious trouble with their own people. ‚   And when these Arab leaders find themselves in trouble they always react by starting a war, it is a mentality flaw but one that seems to keep them in power. ‚   As usual the Saudis are paying the bill for any Arab terrorist group who will wage war with Israel. ‚   Abbas has brought truck loads of highly sophisticated weapons into Gaza through the open border with Egypt in preparations for the big war with Israel, thanks to Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush and their Disengagement.

In the mean time Egypt is making unprecedented gestures of peace and good relations with Israel, and if you know as we do what their State controlled newspapers say every day you know something is terribly wrong with this picture. ‚   Mubarak (Egyptian President) has a very long memory and wants revenge for the 1967 and the 1973 wars, on my last trip to Cairo you could see the destroyed Egyptian tanks in the desert from the 67 6-day war, they leave them there as a reminder.

The Palestinians have re-armed thanks to Bush and Sharon Disengagement from Gaza and with the help of the Egyptians. ‚   It is also known that thousands of al-Qaida fighters have inter into Gaza through the open borders with Egypt. ‚   Now Sharon has allow the Egyptian navy, supplied by the USA to come all the way up to the border at Askelon putting Te-Aviv within range of their missiles and guns. ‚   Now that Egypt has access into Gaza and Sharon has allowed them to increase their military presence in the Sinai right up to the Israeli border, again thanks to the pressure from George W. Bush, Egypt is very dangerously close to us with more military power then they have ever had before thanks again to George W. Bush.

Now The Good News

These Islamic devils can’t win, not even with the help of Russia, North Korea, China and George W. Bush, how do I know, I read the Book, the one God inspired called the Holy Bible. ‚   As for Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria and Egypt, Israel will turn them into a glass factory. ‚   Israel will be here when it is all over for I know where Yeshua will plant His Feet, and it will not be in a land controlled by Islamic devils, but by Jews the same Jews God chose to be here for end time purposes. ‚   You see we have God’s Word on that and God cannot lie. ‚  And after Russia finally gives up supplying these Islamic devils with weapons to destroy Israel with and decides to do it themselves, then we will see the hand of God like no man has ever seen it before, for He will destroy the enemies of His Holy City Jerusalem in the mountains of the north. ‚   How do I know that because God said so and He cannot lie.

God is in control not man

If we allow our attention to be distracted by carnal or temporal fears we will miss the calling of God in our lives. ‚   We must know that to live with fear is to deny God’s love, and to refuse to allow Him to be God in our lives is too give the evil one victory, we simply must overcome and in the days ahead that will only be possible with the presence of the Ruach Ha Koddesh (Holy Spirit) in our lives.

The only safe place on earth for a Jew in the coming days will be Israel, and those who have reason after reason not to make Aliyah will pay a terrible price, God is calling all Jews to come home, now.

God has called this Ministry and others to prepare for the soon coming mass Aliyah of Jews from Europe and elsewhere. ‚   He has touched His people around the world to support ministries that will bless the Apple of His eye, and those who hear His call will be blessed beyond description. ‚   Gen. 12:3.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, for our son Joel and all the IDF soldiers. ‚   Pray for all those who have come to fight the Islamic enemy. ‚   Pray for this Ministry and your part in it.

JUST before he was given the boot by President Bush, Yasser Arafat made an extraordinary offer - extraordinary because it was not one of the specific demands Bush was about to make, extraordinary because Arafat acknowledged a hidden horror: the indoctrination of the delusional young people who carry out suicide bombings.

In a six-page private memorandum he sent to President Bush and Arab capitals outlining his 100-day plan for reform, Arafat said he would "renounce fanaticism in the educational curricula and spread the spirit of democracy and enlightenment and openness".

There is a lot under the stone Arafat has lifted. Fanaticism has been bred into the suicide murderers and millions of young people throughout the Arab nations with scant attention by media, governments, academia and churches in the civilised world.

The Palestinian schools, financed by Europe, are open sewers in terms of the hatred they see - hatred not just of Israel, but of all Jews and all their friends.

Dr Ahmad Abu Halabiya, former acting rector of the Islamic University in Gaza, speaks the message: "Wherever you are, kill the Jews, the Americans who are like them and those who stand by them."

Teaching hate: Arafat admits indoctrination

Arab leaders come to Washington and London and Geneva with formulas for peace, while at home they feed their populations with similar incitements.

It means that even if by some miracle there is agreement on the shape of a Palestinian state, there will be no peace in the Middle East for a generation.

The Israelis may forget or forgive the suicide assassins; the Palestinians may put behind them the humiliations of occupation.

But the political conflict over Palestine is only one aspect of the fanaticism that has been fomented.

It adds up to the dehumanisation of all Jews and it has been manufactured and propagated throughout the Middle East and South Asia on a scale and intensity that is utterly unprecedented.

Fanatics: Members of Hamas burn Star of David flag

This is something relatively new in the Islamic world. There was more tolerance for Jews in the Islamic empire than ever there
was in Christian Europe.

I was aware, as we all are, that the Palestinians hate the state of
Israel. What has surprised me is the virulence of this new anti-Semitism through all the Muslim countries.

It is frenzied, vociferous, paranoid, vicious and prolific, and is only incidentally connected to the Palestinian conflict.

Everyone talking about Palestine or terrorism is talking in a vacuum, for nothing can be understood without a proper appreciation of the way minds have been poisoned.

A single skinhead assault on a synagogue in Europe is news, but not the unremitting daily assault on Jews waged from Morocco to Cairo to Damascus, from Baghdad to Teheran, the Gaza Strip to Karachi.

What we are up against is best illustrated by what the Jews did to the World Trade Center.

Everyone in the Muslim world knows that September 11 was a Jewish plot to pave the way for a joint Israeli-US military operation against not just Osama bin Laden and the Taliban but also Islamic militants in Palestine.

On the day of the bombing, 4,000 Jews were absent from the World Trade Center; they had been tipped off.

I thought this canard had long ago vanished up its own orifice, but it was being retailed with all sincerity by a Pakistani taxi driver last week in New York.

Millions believe this rubbish, as a Gallup Poll has found after questioning people in nine predominantly Islamic countries - Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, Turkey, Lebanon, Morocco, Kuwait, Jordan and Saudi Arabia - representing about half the world's Muslim population.

Some 67 per cent found the attacks morally unjustified, which is something - why not 100 per cent? But they were also asked if they believed reports that groups of Arabs carried out the bombings.

Only in West-aligned Turkey was the answer Yes, but it was close; 46 per cent to 43 per cent.

In all the other eight Islamic countries, the populations rejected the idea that Arabs or al-Qa'ida were responsible. Who could be naive/crazy/malign/misguided enough to disseminate such fabrications?

The effluent is from official sources, newspapers, and television in Arab states, from schools and government-funded mosques, from Arab columnists and editorial writers, cartoonists, clerics and intellectuals, from websites that trail into an infinity of iniquity.

CNN will film American bomb damage in Afghanistan; al-Jazeera and the Middle East stations would never dream of talking to the orphans and widows whose loved ones were blown apart by a suicide bomber.

How could people be so susceptible to misinformation? Well, conspiracy theories simplify a complex world. But there is another explanation for the potency of lies today. It is the aura of authenticity provided by technology, by the Internet.

A Pakistani editor explaining why he printed the 9/11 conspiracy lie said: "When you see something on a computer you tend to believe it is true."

The smear that defiles the Jews who died in the World Trade Center owes its original currency in September 2001 to a website called InformationTimes.com, an "independent news and information service" whose address was given as the Press Building in Washington.

I thought it worth asking the editor in chief, Syed Adeeb, for the evidence.

He told me his source was the TV station Al-Manar, in the Lebanon. When I asked if he had any qualms about relying on Al-Manar because it was a mouthpiece for the terrorist group Hezbollah, Adeeb's reply was: "Well it is a very popular station."

At the end of the line of incendiary headlines and careless propagation of e-mail there is Danny Pearl, tortured and butchered because he was a Jew and a reporter.

Unfortunately, reporting and comment in the West all too often, with the best of motives, ingenuously reinforce the anti-Semitic mindset.

Take the battle of Jenin. The presumption in the feeding frenzy in the best newspapers in Europe and in hours and hours of television was that the Palestinian stories of 3,000 killed and buried in secret mass graves must be true.

The Guardian was even moved to write the editorial opinion that Israel's attacks on Jenin were "every bit as repellent" as Osama bin Laden's attack on New York on September 11.

Every bit as repellent? Did we miss something? In fact, there was no massacre, no mass graves. Human Rights Watch has since put the death toll at 54.

To describe suicide bombers as "martyrs", as a recent British headline did, is to endorse a barbarity; it is a defamation of historic martyrs who gave their lives to save others, not to kill randomly for financial reward for their families.

The fanaticism Arafat offers to renounce - as a bargaining chip, not a moral principle - is the fanaticism stimulated by his Palestinian Authority which, among other enlightenments, makes educational films of little girls singing their dedication to martyrdom.

It is hard looking for sanity to put in the picture. I thought it might be found in the Department of Psychiatry at Ein Shams University in Cairo.

Well, here is Dr Adel Sadeq on suicide bombers: "As a professional psychiatrist, I say that the height of bliss comes with the end of the countdown: 'ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one'.

"When the martyr reaches 'one' and he explodes, he has a sense of himself flying, because he knows for certain that he is not dead. It is a transition to another, more beautiful world.

"None in the Western world sacrifices his life for his homeland. If his homeland is drowning, he is the first to jump ship. In our culture it is different - this is the only Arab weapon there is and anyone who says otherwise is a conspirator."

The Muslim world's relentless caricatures of the Jew are boringly on the same one note; Jews are always dirty, hook-nosed, money-grabbing, vindictive and scheming parasites.

They are barbarians who deliberately spread vice, drugs and prostitution and poison water.

Apart from the volume and intensity of the multi-media global campaign, there has been an ominous change in political direction.

Arab frustration with the recognition of the state of Israel after the Second World War has for decades been expressed as 'why should the Arabs have to compensate the Jews for the Holocaust that was perpetrated by the Europeans?'

Today the theme is that the Holocaust is a Zionist invention. It is expressed with a vehemence as astounding as the contempt for scholarship.

A typical columnist in Al-Akhbar, the Egyptian Government daily, on April 29: "The entire matter (the Holocaust), as many French and British scientists have proven, is nothing more than a huge Israeli plot aimed at extorting the German Government in particular and the European countries."

By comparison with the phantasmagoria, it seems a small matter that without exception Palestinian school textbooks supplied by the PA Authority, and funded by Europe, have no space in the maps for the sovereign state of Israel, no mention of its five million people, no recognition of the Jews' historic links to Jerusalem.

The Palestinian claim to statehood is unanswerable, and with wiser leadership it would have been flourishing for years. It is tragic that the cause is now being so ruthlessly exploited with Jew as a codeword for extremist incitement of hatred of America and the West.

This is jihad. It is aimed at us all, at Europeans who "look like" Americans because they believe in liberal democracy and are infected by American culture. But its first victims are the Palestinians and the frustrated masses of the Muslim world.

Their leaders have led them into ignominy in three wars. They have failed to reform their corrupt and incompetent societies.

Habits of mind tending to approve terror are becoming ingrained in the Muslim world, sanctioned by the lethargy and prejudice in Europe: Those Palestinians who danced for joy on September 11 were not al-Qa'ida, but their acceptance of terror as a substitute for politics does not augur well for the future of their country or the possibilities of peaceful political dialogue in any of the Arab states.

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This article is abridged from a Harold Evans lecture prepared for the 30th anniversary of Index On Censorship.

"I think he'll be remembered as the conscience of the Holocaust. In a way he became the permanent representative of the victims of the Holocaust, determined to bring the perpetrators of the greatest crime to justice," Hier told The Associated Press.

A survivor of five Nazi death camps, Wiesenthal changed his life's mission after the war, dedicating himself to tracking down Nazi war criminals and to being a voice for the 6 million Jews who died during the onslaught. He himself lost 89 relatives in the Holocaust.

Wiesenthal spent more than 50 years hunting Nazi war criminals, speaking out against neo-Nazism and racism, and remembering the Jewish experience as a lesson for humanity. Through his work, he said, some 1,100 Nazi war criminals were brought to justice.

"When history looks back I want people to know the Nazis weren't able to kill millions of people and get away with it," he once said.

Calls of condolences poured into Wiesenthal's office in Vienna, where one of his longtime assistants, Trudi Mergili, struggled to deal with her grief.

"It was expected," she said. "But it is still so hard."

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said Wiesenthal "brought justice to those who had escaped justice."

"He acted on behalf of 6 million people who could no longer defend themselves," ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Tuesday. "The state of Israel, the Jewish people and all those who oppose racism recognized Simon Wiesenthal's unique contribution to making our planet a better place."

Austria's parliament speaker said "an important voice for remembrance and humanity has been silenced."

Wiesenthal was first sent to a concentration camp in 1941, outside Lviv, Ukraine. In October 1943, he escaped from the Ostbahn camp just before the Germans began killing all the inmates. He was recaptured in June 1944 and sent back to Janwska, but escaped death as his SS guards retreated with their prisoners from the Soviet Red Army.

Wiesenthal's quest began after the Americans liberated the Mauthausen death camp in Austria where Wiesenthal was a prisoner in May 1945. It was his fifth death camp among the dozen Nazi camps in which he was imprisoned, and he weighed just 99 pounds when he was freed. He said he quickly realized "there is no freedom without justice," and decided to dedicate "a few years" to that mission.

"It became decades," he added.

Even after turning 90, Wiesenthal continued to remind and to warn. While appalled at atrocities committed by Serbs against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in the 1990s, he said no one should confuse the tragedy there with the Holocaust.

"We are living in a time of the trivialization of the word 'Holocaust,'" he told AP in 1999. "What happened to the Jews cannot be compared with all the other crimes. Every Jew had a death sentence without a date."

Wiesenthal's life spanned a violent century.

He was born on Dec. 31, 1908, to Jewish merchants at Buczacs, a small town near the present-day Ukrainian city of Lviv in what was then the Austro-Hungarian empire. He studied in Prague and Warsaw and in 1932 received a degree in civil engineering.

He apprenticed as a building engineer in Russia before returning to Lviv to open an architectural office. Then the Russians and the Germans occupied Lviv and the terror began.

After the war, working first with the Americans and later from a cramped Vienna apartment packed with documents, Wiesenthal tirelessly pursued fugitive war criminals.

He was perhaps best known for his role in tracking down Eichmann, who organized the extermination of the Jews. Eichmann was found in Argentina, abducted by Israeli agents in 1960, tried and hanged for crimes committed against the Jews.

Wiesenthal often was accused of exaggerating his role in Eichmann's capture. He did not claim sole responsibility, but said he knew by 1954 where Eichmann was.

Eichmann's capture "was a teamwork of many who did not know each other," Wiesenthal told the AP in 1972. "I do not know if and to what extent reports I sent to Israel were used."

Among others Wiesenthal tracked down was Austrian policeman Karl Silberbauer, who he believed arrested the Dutch teenager Anne Frank and sent her to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where she died.

Wiesenthal decided to pursue Silberbauer in 1958 after a youth told him he did not believe in Frank's existence and murder, but would if Wiesenthal could find the man who arrested her. His five-year search resulted in Silberbauer's 1963 capture.

Wiesenthal did not bring to justice one prime target " ” Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous "Angel of Death" of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Mengele died in South America after eluding capture for decades.

Wiesenthal's long quest for justice also stirred controversy.

In Austria, which took decades to acknowledge its own role in Nazi crimes, Wiesenthal was ignored and often insulted before being honored for his work when he was in his 80s.

In 1975, then-Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, himself a Jew, suggested Wiesenthal was part of a "certain mafia" seeking to besmirch Austria. Kreisky even claimed Wiesenthal collaborated with Nazis to survive.

Ironically, it was the furor over Kurt Waldheim, who became president in 1986 despite lying about his past as an officer in Hitler's army, that gave Wiesenthal stature in Austria.

Wiesenthal's failure to condemn Waldheim as a war criminal drew international ire and conflict with American Jewish groups. But it made Austrians realize that the Nazi hunter did not condemn everybody who took part in the Nazi war effort.

Wiesenthal did repeatedly demand Waldheim's resignation, seeing him as a symbol of those who suppressed Austria's role as part of Hitler's German war and death machine. But he turned up no proof of widespread allegations that Waldheim was an accessory to war crimes.

Wiesenthal's work exposed him to danger.

His house and office have been guarded by an armed police officer since June 1982, when a bomb exploded at his front door, causing severe damage but resulting in no injuries, according to the Wiesenthal Center Web site. One German and several Austrian neo-Nazis were arrested.

He pursued his crusade of remembrance into old age with the vigor of youth, with patience and determination. But as he entered his 90s, he worried that his mission would die with him.

"I think in a way the world owes him and his memory a tremendous amount of gratitude," Hier said.

Wiesenthal earned many awards, including Austria's Golden Decoration of Merit, which was presented by President Heinz Fischer at Wiesenthal's home in June. He also wrote several books, including his memoirs, "The Murderers Among Us," in 1967, and worked regularly at the small downtown office of his Jewish Documentation Center even after turning 90.

"The most important thing I have done is to fight against forgetting and to keep remembrance alive," he said in the 1999 interview with the AP. "It is very important to let people know that our enemies are not forgotten."

Wiesenthal's wife, Cyla, whom he married in 1936, died in November 2003.

A memorial service was to be held in Vienna's central cemetery on Wednesday. Funeral services will be in Israel, Mergili said.

Associated Press reporter Ian Gregor contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

"Our position regarding the West Bank and east Jerusalem is identical - they are occupied territories, and the future of Jerusalem will also be discussed in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians," Mr. Otte told Al-Quds, a Jerusalem-based Arabic-language newspaper.

Otte dismissed statements by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that Israel will retain large blocs of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria in any permanent arrangement with the Palestinian Authority. Such commitments, the European Union envoy asserted, are nothing more than "spin" intended for internal Israeli consumption.

The EU also does not take seriously Israel's demand that the PA fulfill its commitments to disarm Arab terrorist groups. According to the Al-Quds interview, Mr. Otte said the EU does not demand that the PA confront terrorist groups militarily, or that the PA initiate a civil war in order to carry out its obligations.

In June, Mr. Otte defended European Union contacts with Hamas representatives, despite the organization being listed as a terrorist organization in EU countries, by saying that "if they are duly elected in free and fair elections under international supervision, you have to know what to do with elected representatives."

How prophetic these words have become. The Jewish community in Britain is alarmed by the increasing anti-Semitism in the Anglican Church, much of it based on ignorance. For instance, many people outside the Jewish community really believe that Israel, a country the size of Wales, is, as Dr Sacks said, "responsible for the evils of the world", while Jewish people know only too well that, as 0.5 per cent of the population, "they are so powerless that they can be attacked with impunity".

To many British Jews, segments of the media, including the BBC, The Guardian and The Independent, constantly misrepresent Israel. These misrepresentations then affect other organisations.

First, there was the Association of University Teachers (AUT), which called for a boycott of two Israeli universities. Now the Anglican Consultative Council, in what the journalist Melanie Phillips has called "the Church’s AUT moment", said that it "welcomes" the Anglican Peace and Justice Network’s statement on Israel (News, 1 July; 5 August).

Jewish institutions and individuals have been discussing how they are affected by media reporting. Last week, the Community Security Trust, which advises and represents the Jewish community on security and anti-Semitism, asked me to tell the Church Times that:

"It frequently appears that there are no limits to the hatred and bias that can be expressed against Israel or Zionism. Anti-Semites take comfort from this hatred, and regard it as a cue to attack Jews at random here in Britain. Anti-Semitic incidents’ levels since the year 2000 have been the worst recorded in decades. The rise in incidents is appalling. This would have been unthinkable just a few years ago."

The Board of Deputies described its concern at the fact that "In 2004, there were 532 anti-Semitic incidents in the UK, which was a 42 per cent increase on the figures for 2003, which was a substantial increase on the figures for 2002."

THE BBC apologised when the Scottish hymn-writer, the Revd Dr John Bell of the Iona Community, "made two factual mistakes" about the Israeli army on the Radio 4’s Thought for the Day in February.

This was a wake-up call for the Jewish community, even though Christian aid agencies and "peace groups" have for a long time appeared to us to be attacking Israel, and ignoring attempts to hear other points of view. Individual Jews have reported experiencing violent verbal attacks during public pro-Palestinian meetings held in church buildings.

Joanne Green, a Jewish journalist, said: "Despite the BBC charter, I can’t think of any programmes that are critical of the Palestinians, despite their kangaroo courts, public hangings, threats to journalists, incitement to racial and religious hatred, corruption, and threats to destroy Israel.

"Also, as an active member of the Council of Christians and Jews, I feel betrayed by the Anglican Church. All those receptions at St James’s Palace and earnest tributes from church leaders regretting their millennia-long persecution of the Jews don’t mean anything any more. When Jews need real recognition of the danger they are in, where is the Church? Aligning themselves with those who want to wipe Israel from the face of the earth, after it was they who were responsible for the Holocaust. Forgive them, Lord, for they probably do know exactly what they do. How dare the Church lecture Jews on morality."

Many people mention the Church’s apparent silence in the face of the growing attacks on the British Jewish community. For one seasoned American journalist and Episcopalian cleric: "In Britain, there is a degree of open anti-Semitism that would be unthinkable in the USA. The C of E has been complicit in this, both by keeping silent, and by not cracking down on its members who cross the line in their advocacy of the Palestinian cause, and fall into Jew-baiting."

Canon Andrew White, CEO of the Foundation for Reconciliation in the Middle East, agrees. "Is there a new anti-Semitism?" he asks. "For Jews, disinvestment [in Israel] is not just anti-Zionism, but anti-Semitism. Christians defend their position by saying they are against Israel, not the Jews. Yet there is no call by the Christians to disinvest from countries where Christians are persecuted, or banned. Israel is viewed as the evil nation, that evil democratic nation " ” that just happens to be the only homeland for the Jewish people in the world.

"Now that there is an acute awareness of the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism, the Christian world needs to wake up to the fact that more Jews have been killed by Christians than by Muslims. It is no longer sufficient for the Church to blame Israel for its own anti-Semitism. The replacement theology that laid the ground for nearly two millennia of anti-Judaic polemic is on its way back. This time, it is dressed up as concern for the Palestinians."

Benjamin, a 32-year-old Jew, who stayed at my house last Shabbat, en route to an International Council of Christians and Jews convention, said: "Christians are encouraged to love their enemies. We are no longer the enemy, just irrelevant; no longer the enemy, just the object of hate and vilification."

For, as the Holocaust author Raoul Hillberg has said: "There is a straight line from " ˜You have no right to live among us as Jews’ to " ˜You have no right to live among us’ to " ˜You have no right to live.’"

Dr Irene Lancaster is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester, the author of works on Jewish history and the Bible, and an Orthodox Jew engaged in interfaith work with the Anglican Church and others.

In a better world, the PLO chief would have met his end on a gallows, hanged for mass murder much as the Nazi chiefs were hanged at Nuremberg. In a better world, the French president would not have paid a visit to the bedside of such a monster. In a better world, George Bush would not have said, on hearing the first reports that Arafat had died, "God bless his soul."

God bless his soul? What a grotesque idea! Bless the soul of the man who brought modern terrorism to the world? Who sent his agents to slaughter athletes at the Olympics, blow airliners out of the sky, bomb schools and pizzerias, machine-gun passengers in airline terminals? Who lied, cheated, and stole without compunction? Who inculcated the vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich? Human beings might stoop to bless a creature so evil -- as indeed Arafat was blessed, with money, deference, even a Nobel Prize -- but God, I am quite sure, will damn him for eternity.

Arafat always inspired flights of nonsense from Western journalists, and his last two weeks were no exception.

Derek Brown wrote in The Guardian that Arafat's "undisputed courage as a guerrilla leader" was exceeded only "by his extraordinary courage" as a peace negotiator. But it is an odd kind of courage that expresses itself in shooting unarmed victims -- or in signing peace accords and then flagrantly violating their terms.

Another commentator, columnist Gwynne Dyer, asked, "So what did Arafat do right?" The answer: He drew worldwide attention to the Palestinian cause, "for the most part by successful acts of terror." In other words, butchering innocent human beings was "right," since it served an ulterior political motive. No doubt that thought brings daily comfort to all those who were forced to bury a child, parent, or spouse because of Arafat's "successful" terrorism.

Some journalists couldn't wait for Arafat's actual death to begin weeping for him. Take the BBC's Barbara Plett, who burst into tears on the day he was airlifted out of the West Bank. "When the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound," Plett reported from Ramallah, "I started to cry." Normal people don't weep for brutal murderers, but Plett made it clear that her empathy for Arafat -- whom she praised as "a symbol of Palestinian unity, steadfastness, and resistance" -- was heartfelt:

"I remember well when the Israelis re-conquered the West Bank more than two years ago, how they drove their tanks and bulldozers into Mr. Arafat's headquarters, trapping him in a few rooms, and throwing a military curtain around Ramallah. I remember how Palestinians admired his refusal to flee under fire. They told me: `Our leader is sharing our pain, we are all under the same siege.' And so was I." Such is the state of journalism at the BBC, whose reporters do not seem to have any trouble reporting, dry-eyed, on the plight of Arafat's victims. (That is, when they mention them -- which Plett's teary bon voyage to Arafat did not.)

And what about those victims? Why were they scarcely remembered in this Arafat death watch?

How is it possible to reflect on Arafat's most enduring legacy -- the rise of modern terrorism -- without recalling the legions of men, women, and children whose lives he and his followers destroyed? If Osama bin Laden were on his deathbed, would we neglect to mention all those he murdered on 9/11?

It would take an encyclopedia to catalog all of the evil Arafat committed. But that is no excuse for not trying to recall at least some of it.

Perhaps his signal contribution to the practice of political terror was the introduction of warfare against children. On one black date in May 1974, three PLO terrorists slipped from Lebanon into the northern Israeli town of Ma'alot. They murdered two parents and a child whom they found at home, then seized a local school, taking more than 100 boys and girls hostage and threatening to kill them unless a number of imprisoned terrorists were released. When Israeli troops attempted a rescue, the terrorists exploded hand grenades and opened fire on the students. By the time the horror ended, 25 people were dead; 21 of them were children.

Thirty years later, no one speaks of Ma'alot anymore. The dead children have been forgotten. Everyone knows Arafat's name, but who ever recalls the names of his victims?

So let us recall them: Ilana Turgeman. Rachel Aputa. Yocheved Mazoz. Sarah Ben-Shim'on. Yona Sabag. Yafa Cohen. Shoshana Cohen. Michal Sitrok. Malka Amrosy. Aviva Saada. Yocheved Diyi. Yaakov Levi. Yaakov Kabla. Rina Cohen. Ilana Ne'eman. Sarah Madar. Tamar Dahan. Sarah Soper. Lili Morad. David Madar. Yehudit Madar. The 21 dead children of Ma'alot -- 21 of the thousands of who died at Arafat's command.