Jerusalem News-398

Note our last posting was titled "Jerusalem News-394"
whereas it should have been
"Jerusalem News-397".

Jerusalem News-398
Contents:
1. Gina: Appreciation
2. Netanyahu Praises Sharon
3. History: Germany, Japan, and the USA
4. Irish Iron Age Bog Bodies
5. An Irish Archaeologist Appraises theBog Bodies Find

1. Gina: Appreciation
From: Gina Philp
Subject: Re: Jerusalem News-394 (i.e. 397)
#5 Expulsion from Spain..... WOW!!!!! What a great read!!

2. Netanyahu Praises Sharon

Netanyahu Comes to Praise Sharon
By STEVEN ERLANGER The New York Times January 10, 2006
www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/international/middleeast/10israel.html

TEL AVIV, Jan. 9 - Benjamin Netanyahu is saying nice things about Ariel
Sharon as the prime minister, in critical condition after a stroke, starts
to fade into history. But their own history has been far from affectionate,
marked by rivalry and even contempt.
With talk of that rivalry unseemly now - Mr. Sharon's health bulletins are
followed obsessively - Mr. Netanyahu, who is hoping to win election as prime
minister in March as leader of the right-wing Likud party, focuses not on
their disagreements but on their shared past.

His fondest memory of Mr. Sharon, he said in an interview on Monday in his
Tel Aviv campaign office, is his first. During the Middle East war in 1973,
Mr. Netanyahu and another future prime minister, Ehud Barak, met Mr. Sharon
in a small armored personnel carrier as he planned his daring crossing of
the Suez Canal that turned the tide of the war.

"Here we were, three future prime ministers, though no one knew it then, in
this small A.P.C.," Mr. Netanyahu said. "The meeting lasted maybe 10
minutes, but it was enough to form an indelible impression of this man and
his invaluable contributions to Israel and its wars."

All that, he said, made Mr. Sharon "one of the great generals that the
Jewish people and state have put up in modern times."

Had it looked as though Mr. Sharon would be able to run for re-election in
March, Mr. Netanyahu would have run against him arguing that Mr. Sharon had
damaged Israel's security by pulling out of Gaza. Instead, he is now
positioning himself as Mr. Sharon's former partner and heir apparent.

Just months ago, Mr. Netanyahu was accusing Mr. Sharon of having failed his
party and its principles by pulling Israeli settlers and troops out of Gaza.
Mr. Sharon, he said in late August, "has abandoned the way of Likud and
chose another way, the way of the left."

Mr. Sharon was no kinder. In a television interview at the time, he said of
Mr. Netanyahu: "To run this country, to deal with the most complex and
difficult problems, you need judgment and nerves of steel. He has neither.
In a situation of pressure, he gets stressed immediately. He panics and
loses control. I've seen him like that more than once, many times."

On Monday, in the interview, Mr. Netanyahu focused on his work as Mr.
Sharon's finance minister and lieutenant.

"We transformed Israel's economy from a monopolistic, high-tax, statist
economy into a more vibrant, free market one, and we rescued Israel from an
Argentinian-style collapse," Mr. Netanyahu said, noting that they had
challenged the unions, raised the
retirement age, opened up the banking market and endured a series of
strikes.

"It was a very important passage for Israel," he added, "and it was a real
partnership" between Mr. Sharon and himself. "Without that partnership, it
never would have happened."

Mr. Netanyahu and his allies were, of course, the main reasons that Mr.
Sharon decided to break with Likud and form a new centrist party, Kadima,
bringing some of Likud's best ministers with him.

But with Mr. Sharon lying incapacitated, Mr. Netanyahu stands to gain
politically from Israelis worried about security and the rising power of the
radical Palestinian movement Hamas. Mr. Netanyahu wants to bring a lot of
Likud voters who were tempted by Kadima and Mr. Sharon back into the fold
before the election. If he can, he could find himself back in government
even, just possibly, as prime minister.

Mr. Netanyahu refused to speak on the record about political strategies and
battles, saying he wanted to keep a public moratorium on political debate
while the country's proper focus was on Mr. Sharon's "battle for life."

But he portrayed himself as Mr. Sharon's most direct inheritor, especially
in the single issue that Israelis care most about: security and dealings
with the Palestinians.

Mr. Netanyahu broke with Mr. Sharon last summer. At the last minute, after
having led the rebels in Mr. Sharon's Likud Party who opposed the pullout,
Mr. Netanyahu suddenly quit the cabinet and his job as finance minister.

It was too late to stop the pullout, and Mr. Netanyahu was roundly
criticized for bad timing, poor judgment and even petulance, reminding
people of his decision in late 2000 not to challenge Mr. Sharon and to
forfeit the race for prime minister when Mr. Barak finally resigned, on the
theory that the coalition was too unstable.

After he quit the cabinet this summer, Mr. Netanyahu challenged Mr. Sharon
for leadership of Likud and lost. But then Mr. Sharon abandoned the party
anyway, forming Kadima and leaving Mr. Netanyahu the head of a right-wing
rump that looked in the polls to fall from 40 of Parliament's 120 seats to
barely 10 or 11.

But presuming Mr. Sharon is no longer a political factor, Mr. Netanyahu's
chances look improved in what has become a paler universe. Just 56, he is
still the most seasoned of the party leaders, and with Mr. Sharon absent,
the only one who has been prime minister. And he is widely regarded, even by
those who detest him, as one of Israel's best campaigners, with a quick,
articulate tongue and an even quicker counterpunch.

Mr. Netanyahu will emphasize that when he was prime minister, from May 1996
until May 1999, the number of terrorist attacks and suicide bombings was
quite low. He was elected in 1996 on a promise of security in the face of
suicide bombings that hurt the chances of the former Labor Party leader
Shimon Peres.

Mr. Netanyahu will repeat his mantra that the Palestinians will receive land
from Israel only in return for tangible acts, like the dismantling of
terrorist organizations and infrastructure, as called for under the first
stage of the peace plan known as the road map. He will remind voters that he
is willing to use disproportionate force if necessary as a deterrent to
attacks on Israelis, and he will use the expected strong showing of Hamas in
the Palestinian elections this month, and the spread of Islamic-based
terrorism to regional countries like Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria, as a
key part of his campaign.

Mr. Netanyahu has purged his Likud of an extreme right-wing group and says
he is eliminating the criminal elements from the party.
Asked if he must move Likud to the center, where Mr. Sharon wanted to bring
it, he said, "My job is not so much to move Likud as to articulate where
Likud is, where it's already moved."

His objection to the Gaza pullout, he insists today, was not to leaving Gaza
but to the manner in which it was done. "It's not a fundamental error to
leave Gaza, and I never said that," he said. "I said it's the way you leave
that counts, so that you leave and yet you take something when you go, so
you don't allow Hamas to claim a victory."

Already, initial polls show Likud getting not 10 or 11 but 17 seats, though
still behind Labor.

Mr. Netanyahu says he has learned much from Mr. Sharon. "I learned how to
wait - Sharon is very patient - and how to hold back from the media and the
importance of taking care of people," he said. "Sharon paid attention to
them; he spent an enormous amount of his time smoothing feathers. He could
drop you - he tasted revenge cold - but he was very patient and didn't move
until he had to."

Mr. Netanyahu, in his way, seemed to be savoring his memories. "He was a
master tactician," he said with some awe. "He took that from the
battlefield."

--------------------------------------------
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il

3. History: Germany, Japan, and the USA
An URL about German Nazis and American Finance with links to notes about
Japan etc. Good information some of which should perhaps be treated with
reservation, e.g. before WW11 investment in Germany by investment firms
did not necessarily mean support for what later became the Government programs.
http://www.spitfirelist.com/Books/INTRODUCTION.html

4. Irish Iron Age Bog Bodies
BBC NEWS
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4589638.stm
Iron Age 'bog bodies' unveiled
Archaeologists have unveiled two Iron Age "bog bodies" which were found in the Republic of Ireland.
The bodies, which are both male and have been dated to more than 2,000 years old, probably belong to the victims of a ritual sacrifice.
In common with other bog bodies, they show signs of having been tortured before their deaths.
Details of the finds are outlined in a BBC Timewatch documentary to be screened on 20 January.
My belief is that these burials are offerings to the gods of fertility by kings to ensure a successful reign
Ned Kelly, National Museum of Ireland
The first body dropped off a peat cutting machine in February 2003 in Clonycavan, near Dublin. The forearms, hands and lower abdomen are missing, believed to have been hacked off by the machine.
The second was found in May the same year in Croghan, just 25 miles (40km) from Clonycavan.
Old Croghan Man, as it has become known, was missing a head and lower limbs. It was discovered by workmen clearing a drainage ditch through a peat bog.
Although the police were initially called in, an inspection by the state pathologist confirmed that this was an archaeological case.
Both bodies were subsequently taken to the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin.
A team of experts from the UK and Ireland has been examining the bodies to learn how they lived and died.
Radiocarbon dating, for example, would show that both had died at similar times - around 2,300 years ago.
One of the experts is Don Brothwell, the York University archaeologist who led the scientific investigation of Lindow Man, the bog body found in Cheshire in 1984.
Hundreds of bodies have been recovered from peat wetlands across Northern Europe. The earliest accounts date back to the 18th Century. The unique chemistry of peat bogs essentially mummifies bodies.
Summer death
The peat-building sphagnum moss embeds remains in cold, acid and oxygen-free conditions that immobilise bacteria.
"The way peat wetlands preserve bodies has been described as a process of 'slow-cooking' which tans them dark brown," Timewatch producer John Hayes-Fisher told the BBC News website.
Clonycavan man was a young male no more than 5ft 2in tall (1.6m). Beneath his hair, which retains its unusual "raised" style, was a massive wound caused by heavy cutting object that smashed open his skull.
Chemical analysis of the hair showed that Clonycavan man's diet was rich in vegetables in the months leading up to his death, suggesting he died in summer.
It also revealed that he had been using a type of Iron Age hair gel; a vegetable plant oil mixed with a resin that had probably come from south-western France or Spain.

Dismembered body
Old Croghan man was also young - probably in his early to mid 20s - but much taller than his counterpart from 25 miles away. Scientists worked out from the length of his arms that he would have stood around 6ft 6in tall (2.0m).
He had been horrifically tortured before death. His nipples had been cut and he had been stabbed in the ribs. A cut on his arm suggested he had tried to defend himself during the attack that ended his life.
The young man was later beheaded and dismembered. Hazel ropes were passed through his arms before he was buried in the bog.
Food remains in his stomach show that Old Croghan man had eaten milk and cereals before he died. But chemical analysis of his nails showed that he had more meat in his diet than Clonycavan man.
This suggests that he died in a colder season than Clonycavan man, when vegetables were more scarce. It may also explain why his remains are better preserved.

Hopeful offering
The researchers used digital technology to reconstruct the distorted face of Clonycavan man.
From his studies on these bog bodies and others, Ned Kelly, keeper of Irish antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland, has developed a new theory which explains why so many remains are buried on important political or royal boundaries.

"My belief is that these burials are offerings to the gods of fertility by kings to ensure a successful reign," Mr Kelly told the BBC's Timewatch programme.

"Bodies are placed in the borders immediately surrounding royal land or on tribal boundaries to ensure a good yield of corn and milk throughout the reign of the king."

5. An Irish Archaeologist Appraises theBog Bodies Find
Stiof MacAmhalghaidh (Iron-Age-Ireland@yahoogroups.com) Commentary:
The biggest curiosity is the use of resin from Maritime Pine, apparently from
Iberia [Spanish and Portuguese Peninsula], to hold up the hair of one of the bodies.
No way that this could have
arrived in Ireland by any sensible route other than northwards by sea direct
from western Iberia. That this individual was recovered from a bog in the Irish
midlands is equally intriguing. He was not dumped in a bog in the south or west
of the island, where we might expect trade ships to make landfall. By what route
did this material travel through Ireland? Up into the Irish sea to the east
coast perhaps? Or up the Shannon into the heart of Ireland? It also raises the
presence of the skull of a Barbary ape at Emain Macha, coming from even further
south, but the same general direction, and dating to (approximately) the same era
of Ireland's iron age.

The stature of one of the bodies (given at 6'6") is also remarkable, showing
clearly that this was either an exceptionally tall individual (and perhaps used
for the killing for this reason, though what the significance of his height here
would be is a matter for debate).

We can also consider the point made that these were clearly members of some
elite group or a specially pampered group as shown by the condition of their
bodies (young, very healthy and well-fed, hands and nails showing no signs of
wear at all). Were they pampered because they were in line for such a
sacrificial role, or because they were royalty who did not do any physical work?
That latter option raises questions too... would a royal not be expected to lead
forces into battle & thus have to gain military skills, risk injuries etc?
Apparently not.

Both bodies, it was also noted (in the Irish Times articles at least), were
deposited on what are known to have been important boundary areas in later
periods (like 1000+ years later... wow). The strong suggestion is that these
boundaries applied at this period also. It is also noted that the majority of
other such bodies in Ireland and many 'ritual deposits' in watery places, eg
gold, etc were also in such 'boundary areas', raising the distinct possibility
that, if this observation is valid (and I think it does need strenuous
testing... how about it, folks?), deposits of precious items, be they artefacts
or sacrificed people, were made at border areas, probably to signify the
sacredness of those borderlands, or to give them some sort of protection.

Stiof

Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 11:15:29 +0200

Jerusalem News-399
Contents:
1. ISRAELI GOAT FIGHTS TERROR
2. Historical and Archaeological Interest
3. New Compass Points to Jerusalem
4. Cats, dogs flee Palestinian rockets
5. Bob Davis: Jews in England

1. ISRAELI GOAT FIGHTS TERROR

Anti-terror goat: It may sound like a prank, but 29-year-old dog trainer Geva Zin from Kibbutz Lahav in the south is in fact training a goat to detect explosives, Israel's leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported Sunday [Jan 8].
Zin is trying to solve a problem that has been troubling IDF soldiers and American fighters in Iraq: How to detect explosive materials hidden on one's body, as in the case when dealing with suicide bombers.
Explosive-sniffing dogs may be the obvious solution, yet using a dog in Muslim societies would be problematic and offensive to the local population.
Zin, who runs a kennel in Kibbutz Lahav, has already trained dogs and even pigs to sniff out explosive materials and uncover mines. Following reports on Zin's success in training pigs for such mission, military officials turned to him with a request to train animals that would be less problematic in the eyes of Muslims.
According to Zin, the problem is critical in countries that suffer from increasing Islamic terrorism, such as Iraq, Chechnya, and some Middle Eastern nations.
"When I served as a dog trainer in the army, there was a problem of getting dogs into certain vehicles due to the presence of Islamic holy books in the car. The placing of dogs in homes also provoked fury and anger among people who were not involved in terrorism and were merely screened. Compared to that, a goat is a very friendly animal and it is accepted in the Muslim world," Zin said.
His breakthrough came with a young goat he was raising, Lalosha, who is able to sniff out explosives. The minute she identifies explosive material, she sits down, giving a signal to a soldier next to her that the individual in question must be carefully checked.
(By Zvi Alush. Ynet. January 9., 2006)

2. Historical and Archaeological Interest
An article in "BeSheva" (12.1.06) with Professor Mordecai Keslo
who specializes in Archaeological Botany. He said that findings
of grain from the Middle Bronze Period (approximate time of the
Patriarchs) showed a connection with the Greek Aegean area.
Professor Keslo also identified the zebu with the animal known in the
Mishna as a "KO" and he said that from this name the English word "cow"
is derived.

3. New Compass Points to Jerusalem
Religious Jews and many Christians endeavor to face Jerusalem when praying.
Within Jerusalem they try to face in the direction of the Temple Mount.
The Jerusalem Post (13.1.06) reports that
<<a New Jersey-born Yeshiva student who goes only by the name "Moshe">>
has invented the world's first and only "Jerusalem Compass" "that points to Jerusalem
and the Temple Mount from anywhere on earth".

4. Cats, dogs flee Palestinian rockets
Southern communitiy's security chief says pets frightened by Qassam attacks
Shmulik Hadad YNET 17 January 2006
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3201399,00.html
A Qassam rocket landed Monday evening in an Israeli community north of Gaza.
According to the community's security chief, dogs and many cats have escaped
the area because "they hear the explosion in a much louder way and it
frightens them. They're simply getting out of here."
The "Red Dawn" rocket alert system identified the rocket launch and an
explosion was heard in the area shortly thereafter. On Sunday night, in
almost precisely the same spot, two rockets landed close to the same
community. One landed near the community's greenhouses.
The security chief added the atmosphere in the small community was
depressed.
"One of the recent phenomena is the behavior of the pets, cats and dogs that
have fled. There are many notices about cats and dogs that have disappeared.
I remember my dog, which to my sorrow was run over, used to panic every time
a Qassam rocket landed. I had to hold him almost forcefully so that he
wouldn't go outside," he said.

The security chief added that "the truth has to be told. People here are
simply scared. Nobody goes out in the evening, and I think we'll start to
see families leaving this summer already. Everyone who rents here and can
leave is already planning on doing so. There is a feeling of helplessness,
it's clear to us that nothing is being done to solve the problem.We feel
like we are the country's sieve."
The last round of Qassam rocket attacks took place at the end of the week,
when four rockets landed last Friday in the Yad Mordecahi and Zikim region.
There were no injuries or damage reported, and the IDF fired back artillery
rounds at rocket launching sites.
In Sderot, residents said that once again, locals were unable to tell
whether the explosions they heard were caused by Qassams or IDF fire.

5. Bob Davis: Jews in England
From: Bob Davis <bdavis@paxkom.net>
Subject: RE: Readmission of Jews to England. 350 year aniversary.
Dear Yair
For interest, 2006 is the 350th anniversary of the readmission of the
Jews to England. "Jews were welcomed by Cromwell in 1656," reads a new
guide to Jewish cultural events in London.
http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/culture/jewish_london/index.jsp
"Throughout 2006, we pay special tribute to their heritage, presence and
future in Britain."
The celebrations in London include two public conferences will debate
the question "Why Did Cromwell Take Us Back?". The Arts Council has
funded a new play; the Greater London authority is considering an autumn
event in Trafalgar Square in the centre of London, complete with giant
menorah; and Tate Modern art gallery plans to host an anniversary
concert.
Note: some dispute exists among historians about the paperwork
surrounding this event 350 years ago, but we are celebrating it anyway!
Kind regards

Bob Davis