Contents:
Jerusalem News nos 541-570
Jerusalem News-541
Date: 10 Kislev 5767, 30 November 2006
Contents:
1. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have launched a joint military exercise
2. New Saudi force aims to prevent fatal stampedes at Mecca
3. Iran, Syria synchronizing air defense, signals intelligence to counter any U.S. attack
4. Milosevic Assassinated in UN Prison?
5. Guysen Israel News
1. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have launched a joint military exercise
From: imra@netvision.net.il
Subject: Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have launched a joint military exercise
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have launched a joint military exercise
ABU DHABI [MENL] -- Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have launched a joint military
exercise.
A statement by the Pakistan military said the two armies began the Sharp
Sword-2 exercise on Nov. 27 in Bahawalpur in the eastern Punjab province.
The statement said Sharp Sword, the latest in a series of joint maneuvers,
would last three weeks.
"Exercise Al Samsaam-2 [Sharp Sword] is a sequel to the series of exercises
that are routinely and periodically conducted between the two armed forces,"
the statement said.
The statement said the Royal Saudi Land Forces contributed a mechanized
force as well as aircraft to Sharp Sword. The Saudis were also said to have
sent armored units, artillery and anti-aircraft systems for the exercise.
--------------------------------------------
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il
2. New Saudi force aims to prevent fatal stampedes at Mecca
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/
ABU DHABI Saudi Arabia has organized a force to prevent stampedes at the annual Islamic pilgrimage. This was the second force created by the ministry to maintain order during the Haj. Every year, hundreds of people have been killed in stampedes that result from the stone-throwing ceremony at Jamrat.
3. Iran, Syria synchronizing air defense, signals intelligence to counter any U.S. attack
http://www.geostrategy-direct.com/geostrategy%2Ddirect/
LONDON Iran and Syria have begun an effort to ensure military interoperability. Western intelligence sources said the effort is meant to ensure that the two militaries could coordinate attacks, share information and launch joint ground and missile operations. The effort began in 2005 and was formalized in a defense cooperation accord signed last November.
4. Milosevic Assassinated in UN Prison?
A Death Designed for Shock Effect
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1148
DEBKAfile Special Report
March 11, 2006, 11:22 PM (GMT+02:00)
[Extracts Only]
Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, 64, was found dead in his cell at The Hague early Saturday, March 11. His lawyer Zdenko Tomanovic announced a few hours later that Milosevic had told him Friday that he feared he was being poisoned in the UN detention facility. He at once passed that information to the Russian embassy and now demanded that the official autopsy be conducted in Moscow, not The Hague.
The truth may never be known about the alleged poisoning claim.
The lawyer is in close touch with the Milosevic family in Moscow, who immediately announced their suspicion of foul play. The tribunal, they said was responsible for his death by refusing to let him have medical treatment for high blood pressure and a heart condition in Moscow.
Milosevic, extradited in 2001, chose to defend himself against 66 counts of war crimes and genocide in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s in a trial that dragged on more than four years, with endless delays, interruptions and grandstanding. The international justices promised a final decision this summer.
The manner of Milosevic’s death has opened two fronts:
(1. The Russians are on the spot. President Vladimir Putin faced the option of demanding the body be handed over for autopsy or the presence of a Russian pathologist at the post mortem.
It will be recalled that Russian opinion under Boris Yeltsin backed Milosevic in the Balkan Wars as a great Serbian patriot and admired his willingness to defy the Americans and the Europeans and fight a Muslim takeover of the Balkans. He also had the support of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Putin will not be happy about confronting the US and the European Union on this matter. For the West, the former Yugoslav president is a war criminal who plunged his country into four ruinous wars among Serbs, Bosnians and Croatians, and was responsible for 200,000 deaths and countless atrocities.
But Moscow is involved, whether it likes it or not.
(2. The second front concerns his funeral.
Held in Serbia, it would have to be a state even for a former president. However his widow and son are both wanted in Belgrade on criminal charges, Furthermore, he still has enough supporters at home to disrupt a funeral staged by his pro-Western successors. Given the enormous difficulties, burying him Russia makes the most sense and also fit in with the dead man’s wishes. A state funeral in Belgrade would mark the end of Serbia’s Milosevic era, a favor he is anxious to deny the incumbents, whereas a tomb in Russia would become a shrine for Serbian nationalists and keep alive their dream of a Greater Serbia.
Six days before the Serbian leader’s death, one his associates, the Serbian Croat Milan Babic, committed suicide in the same UN prison. He was serving a 13-year sentence on the charge of ethnic cleansing. The War Crimes Tribunal faces an awkward inquiry over the two Serbian deaths in UN custody in less than a week.
The conduct of the Milosevic trial bears comparison with the proceedings against Saddam Hussein in Baghdad both charging wily opponents with war crimes and genocide and both posing overwhelming difficulties for the prosecution. Learning from mistakes in the Milosevic case, US policy-makers narrowed down the charges against the former dictator of Iraq to a single provable count, instead of making the tribunal wallow through 66 charges, none of which have been proved beyond doubt.
5. Guysen Israel News
Extracts
[] 2006-11-29 , 8 Kislev 5767
18:45 [France] On the 23 November, people leaving a stadium were asked if they were Jewish. They were insulted, hit and pursued if they looked Jewish. The Representive Council for Jewish Institutions in France declared, "the people who attacked Jews at Saint-Cloud should not be seen as marginal, anomalous figures, but as guineau pigs for a new barbarism". (Guysen.Isra l.News)
16:12 Israel and Germany signed an agreement for youth exchanges today. The cooperation will lead to exchange visits between young people from both countries to strengthen ties and to allow a better knowledge of both cultures. (Guysen.Isra l.News)
11:44 59 years ago the UN voted for the creation of the Jewish State in Israel. Although it is an historic date it is not officially marked in Israel. On the 29 November 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the partition plan that provided for the creation of a Jewish State. 33 states voted for, 13 against and 10 abstained. (Guysen.Isra l.News)
[Brit-Am Remark: The Voting was in alphabetical order. The first country to vote was Afghanistan who said "No!".
The first country to say, "Yes!" was Australia.]
Jerusalem News-542
Date: 12 Kislev 5767, 3 December 2006
Contents:
1. George Bush a Second Churchill?
2. China on the Prowl in Arabia
3. US Favorite Nations: England, Canada and Israel
1. George Bush a Second Churchill?
From: Benayahu Zentgraf <ben@menorah.org.za>
Subject: Will George W. Bush follow in Churchill's footsteps?
Right On: Sound familiar, Mr. Bush?
Michael Freund, THE JERUSALEM POST Nov. 28, 2006
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1162378505302&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Extracts:
He was labeled a "hound," a "fool" and one whose "judgment is always at fault." Denigrated as "hopeless when in power," this wartime head of
government was scorned as being arrogant, ignorant and just about everything
else in between. His strategic judgment was called into question, his
military approach was belittled and maligned, and his own generals even
mocked him, accusing him of spouting "absurdities" and being oblivious to
detail.
Does any of this sound familiar, Mr. Bush? The subject of the vitriol
described above was none other than the fearless lion of Britain, Sir
Winston Churchill. That's right. The man now credited with saving Western
civilization from the Nazi onslaught was the target of ruthless censure and
disapproval.
His critics were fierce and unrelenting, but that did not stop this great
visionary from seeing beyond the headlines and standing up for what he knew
to be right.
The question now is: Will George W. Bush follow in this great man's
footsteps? The threat facing the Western world is no less urgent or grave
than it was in Churchill's day. Then the Nazi leader spoke openly of
murdering the Jews, and of conquering the world. Now the modern-day Hitler
of Persia vows to commit genocide and boasts that the West will soon falter
and collapse.
The only difference between the two is that while the Fuehrer could merely
dream of obtaining an atomic arsenal, the tyrant of Teheran is dangerously
close to getting one.
And the only person standing in his way, the one whom God Himself has given
the ability to stop him, is none other than the president of the United
States.
And as The New York Times reported on Monday, the bipartisan Iraq Study
Group headed by former US secretary of state James Baker will recommend that
Washington engage rogue states such as Iran and Syria and open a dialogue
with them. In other words, it is sounding more and more like 1940 all over
again.
WHEN WINSTON Churchill took office in May of that year, an emboldened
Germany was on the march and the pressure
to appease the Nazi dictator was at its peak. The British Foreign Secretary,
Lord Halifax, was a firm believer in negotiations, and he wanted nothing
more than to reach an understanding with Hitler, in the hope that such a
deal would hold.
But Churchill knew that the time for diplomacy had passed. He understood
that the Nazis would honor an accord only for as long as it might serve
their interests, and that they would not hesitate to break it in order to
achieve their destructive, long-term goals.
And so, virtually alone in his belief, Churchill pressed forward, convinced
that only by confronting the Nazis could the danger to his country, and the
world, be averted once and for all.
At a time when others were busy closing their eyes to the mounting threat,
Churchill bravely sounded the alarm and refused to back down, setting the
stage not for appeasement, but for victory. It is this approach, and this
approach alone, that should guide the US president in the weeks and months
ahead. Diplomacy has failed, and sanctions will not deter Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad from pursuing his aims. Military force is the only way to
prevent the ayatollahs from joining the nuclear club, and time is running
out if they are to be stopped.
THE SO-CALLED experts and realists are dead wrong when they predict that
military action against Iran would kindle a firestorm throughout the Middle
East. Precisely the opposite is true.
The reverberations of putting Iran in its place would be entirely positive,
and would be felt throughout the region.
Right now the radicals are emboldened because they sense that America is
weak and in retreat. Hence, they feel free to make mischief and continue
destabilizing the area.
What is needed now is decisive action, and fast, to slap them down and put
the radicals back in their place.
"Had Britain stopped fighting in May 1940, Hitler would have won his war,"
wrote historian John Lukacs in Five Days in London. "He was never closer to
victory." The same now holds true of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who may be just
months, or even weeks away from crossing the nuclear point of no return. It
was Churchill himself who once said, "I never worry about action, only
inaction." As a result, he led his nation and the civilized world to
victory.
Mr. President, may that now become your motto too.
2. China on the Prowl in Arabia
From: imra@netvision.net.il
Subject: New Saudi alignment with China may pose challenge to US
New Saudi alignment with China may pose challenge to US
Reuters - 02 December, 2006
www.gulfinthemedia.com/index.php?id=266130&news_type=Economy&lang=en
When Haytham Zam-zami began studying Chinese, the rising superpower had only
just begun to register on the horizon for Saudi Arabia.
Eight years later China is all the rage.
China's insatiable demand for oil - and Saudi Arabia's position as the
world's top exporter - have become the basis for a trade partnership that
analysts say could upset Riyadh's decades-old oil-for-security relationship
with Washington.
"We were the pioneers, the first group," says Zamzami, a chemical engineer
with state oil firm Saudi Aramco, which this month opened an office in the
Chinese business hub of Shanghai.
"The Chinese are a proud people, with a long history and glorious
civilisation behind them. Understanding them well will bring benefit to both
sides," he said.
Saudi Arabia has become the key regional player as China quietly moves onto
traditional US turf in the Middle East.
This new alignment has also seen China boosting ties with six booming Gulf
Arab states, including oil producers Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE. China
National Offshore Oil Co. (CNOOC) is in talks with Qatar for liquefied
natural gas supplies, PetroChina is studying plans with Kuwait to build a
refinery and petrochemical complex in South China, and Aramco is negotiating
refinery joint ventures in China.
China's economic thrust has coincided with a time when US prestige in the
Arab world is at a low ebb due to the Iraq war and US support for Israel.
In addition, once-cosy US-Saudi ties have not fully recovered from the shock
of the September 11 attacks in which 15 of the 19 suicide hijackers were
Saudis.
This has hit the oil-for-security "special relationship" long based on the
role of U.S. military forces as guarantor of Saudi Arabia's safety, largely
to protect huge Saudi oilfields.
Trade at $ 20 billion
Bilateral trade is expected to hit $ 20 billion for 2006, a 30 per cent rise
on the previous year, said Li Yanlin, China's trade attache in the Saudi
capital Riyadh.
"The economy is booming in both countries and Chinese production is getting
cheaper and better," he told Reuters, adding that in the last two years
Chinese firms have won some $ 4 billion in construction contracts.
Saudi Aramco was the largest supplier of oil to China for the last four
years, in addition to being the biggest supplier to India, Japan, South
Korea and Singapore.
China has even started discussions with Aramco to provide it with a
strategic oil reserve, opening up the possibility of future tension over
global access to Saudi crude oil.Chietigj Bajpaee, research associate at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., said
China risks being seen as trying to "lock up" Saudi oil at the expense of
Washington, or India, another Asian tiger economy with a billion-plus
population and a voracious appetite for oil.
"(China and the United States) have an increasingly symbiotic relationship,"
Bajpaee said. "This has led to fears in the United States that China is
encroaching into its 'sphere of influence' and undermining relations with
its traditional allies."
--------------------------------------------
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il
3. US Favorite Nations: England, Canada and Israel
Date: Sat, 02 Dec 2006 12:20:25 -0500 (EST)
From: imra@netvision.net.il
Subject: Poll find Americans have warmest feelings towards UK,
Canada and Israel
Extracts Only
November 30, 2006 - Americans Have Warmer Feelings Toward The World,
Quinnipiac University National Thermometer Finds; But Several Nations Still
Get The Cold Shoulder
www.quinnipiac.edu/x1284.xml?ReleaseID=993&What=&strArea=;&strTime=0
England, Canada and Israel remained the nations generating the warmest
feelings among Americans. Americans' warmth toward China, India and Israel
grew the most.
Iran and North Korea remain at the bottom of the rankings. North Korea, Iraq
and Venezuela were the nations whose ratings fell.
"Israel's rating of 68.2 is a substantial increase since the last survey,
and even more impressive when compared to its rating of 62.9 in the June
poll, which was before its war with Hezbollah in Lebanon," said Brown.
The nations and the mean score of the warmth of American voters' attitudes,
and in parentheses the mean score from August 28 are:
1) England - 78.9 (78.3)
2) Canada - 73.4 (71.7)
3) Israel - 68.2 (65.9)
4) Germany - 58.1 (first time included)
5) India - 56.6 (53.4)
6) Mexico - 51.4 (51.4)
7) United Nations - 50.4 (49.2)
8) Russia - 46.2 (45.5)
9) France - 44.6 (43.2)
10) China - 44.2 (39)
11) Saudi Arabia - 40.4 (38.2)
12) Venezuela - 30.9 (35.9)
13) Iraq - 25.9 (27.7)
14) Syria - 24.3 (21.7)
15) Palestinian Government - 23.8 (22.8)
16) Cuba - 24.1 (24)
17) Iran - 15.5 (13.9)
18) North Korea - 13.5 (15)
From November 13 - 19, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,623 registered
voters nationwide. The survey has a margin of error of +/- 2.4 percentage
points.
The Quinnipiac University Poll, directed by Douglas Schwartz, Ph.D.,
conducts public opinion surveys in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut,
Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio and nationwide as a public service and for
research. More data at www.quinnipiac.edu and click on Institutes and
Centers, or call (203) 582-5201
Full survey:
www.quinnipiac.edu/x1284.xml?ReleaseID=993&What=&strArea=;&strTime=0
--------------------------------------------
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il
Jerusalem News-543
Date: 13 Kislev 5767, 4 December 2006
Contents:
1. "A Welshman playing a Jew"
2. Will Saudia Arm the Sunnis in Iraq?
(a) Arab News Extract
(b) Debka Version
3. Archaeology: The Brit-Am Version of 9.31-32
4. Report: Arab, Jewish birthrates in Jerusalem equal for first time
5. Foreigners Vrs in USA in Iraq
1. "A Welshman playing a Jew"
http://www.thevillager.com/vil_95/playingshylocks.html
Playing Shylocks Jewish apologist
Royal Shakespeare companys Gareth Armstrong discusses his one-man portrayal of Tubal
By Jerry Tallmer
Extract:
The soups of the day, said the waiter, were chicken rice, potato leek and matzoh ball. Gareth Armstrong opted for the matzoh ball, I kid you not.
Sounds appropriate for a Welshman playing a Jew, he said.
During the give and take at the Y, a man -a lawyer in his 40s- stood up to say that The Merchant of Venice should never be played because it incited hatred.
He said that Shylock is more sinned against than sinning, and that all the other guys in the play are villains. "It was as if he was arguing with Shakespeare," said Armstrong. "I told him hed answered his own question."
Born June 26, 1948, in the Welsh mining town of Tedegar, Armstrong is now 56. His grandfather was a miner. His father was a Welsh-speaking Presbyterian minister.
"There's something about the Welsh and the Jews. They do say that Welsh is one of the lost tribes."
2. Will Saudia Arm the Sunnis in Iraq?
(a) Arab News Extract
ARAB NEWS (Saudi) 3 Dec.'06:"Post Article on Iraq Baseless: Kingdom", by
Siraj Wahab
QUOTE FROM TEXT: "Obaid said Saudi would intervene with funding and weaponry
to prevent Shiite
militias from attacking Iraq's Sunnis once the United States starts pulling
out"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EXCERPTS:
JEDDAH, 3 December 2006 - Saudi Arabia has strongly rejected...an article
carried by The Washington Post which alleged that the Kingdom would arm
Sunnis in Iraq in the event of a wider sectarian conflict in the US-occupied
country....Op-Ed piece written by Nawaf Obaid in the US daily on Wednesday.
"The writer does not represent any official agency in Saudi Arabia. What he
published is his own personal opinion and does not in any way represent the
policy or positions of the Kingdom," SPA quoted the official source as
saying. "Riyadh has always reiterated its support for Iraq's security, unity
and stability with all of its sectarian groups," the source added.. . .
.
In the article, Obaid said Saudi Arabia would intervene with funding and
weaponry to prevent Shiite militias from attacking Iraq's Sunnis once the
United States begins pulling out of Iraq.
"If the US pulls out leaving a security vacuum in Iraq... remaining on the
sidelines would be unacceptable to Saudi Arabia," wrote Obaid. "To turn a
blind eye to the massacre of Iraqi Sunnis would be to abandon the principles
upon which Saudi Arabia was founded. It would undermine the Kingdom's
credibility in the Sunni world and would be a capitulation to Iran's
militarist actions in the region.". . .
"King Abdullah is a sagacious leader. He would certainly not do anything
that would plunge the region into endless turmoil," ... . By virtue of
being the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, he represents all Muslims, not
just Shiite and Sunni," .... ..
"I know this article doesn't represent Saudi policies," said Iraqi Prime
Minister Nuri Al-Maliki on Thursday. "I am in contact with the Saudi
government and they realize the necessity of protecting the democratic
process."
====================================================================
Sue Lerner - Associate, IMRA
--------------------------------------------
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il
(b) Debka Version
http://www.debka.com/
Saudi Arabia denies truth of article by a Saudi security adviser suggesting the kingdom would back Iraqs Muslim Sunnis after the US pullout
December 2, 2006, 10:48 PM (GMT+02:00)
A former government spokesman, Nawaf Obaid, said Riyadh will use money, weapons or oil power to prevent Iraqi Sunnis from being massacred by Iranian-backed Shiite militias even at the risk of a regional war. Obaid says his views do not represent those of the Saudi government. Earlier, DEBKAfiles Middle East sources noted that he appears to speak for a group of very influential Saudis in Washington, including ambassador Prince Turki al-Faisal. US vice president Dick Cheney visited Riyadh Saturday, Nov. 25, ahead of the US presidents talks in Amman Wednesday and Thursday. Obaid listed Saudi options as being: providing assistance to Sunni military leaders primarily ex-Baathists leading the insurgency; establishing new Sunni brigades, or strangling Irans funding of Iraqs Shiites by boosting oil production and halving prices.
3. Archaeology: The Brit-Am Version of 9.31-32
From: david meadows <rogueclassicist@gmail.com>
================================================================
explorator 9.31-32 December 3, 2006
================================================================
================================================================
AFRICA
================================================================
Nice feature on petroglyphs in South Africa:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061122/lf_nm/safrica_rock_dc_1
On the treasures of Timbuktu:
http://www.smithsonianmagazine.org/issues/2006/december/timbuktu.php
================================================================
ANCIENT NEAR EAST AND EGYPT
================================================================
Did the Egyptians use concrete when building the pyramids? (didn't
someone else suggest this a while back?):
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/science/30cnd-pyramid.html
http://tinyurl.com/vbwom (KC Star)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2480751,00.html
They're talking (again) about sending a little robot up a shaft
of the Great Pyramid:
http://tinyurl.com/ym69tl (AFP via Yahoo)
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,20852379-1702,00.html
http://english.people.com.cn/200612/01/eng20061201_327276.html
http://tinyurl.com/yka2vo (IOL)
A sort of overviewish thing on what has been found at Tel Megiddo:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=789534
On peaches at Masada:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/794492.html
More on Qumran latrines:
http://tinyurl.com/yaeqbq (Sun)
Latest video at the Archaeology Channel is about mummy preparation:
http://www.archaeologychannel.org/
================================================================
ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME (AND CLASSICS)
================================================================
And, of course, there was that She-Wolf story:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/11/22/shewolf_arc.html
Interesting curse tablet from Leicester:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061130081359.htm
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-11/uol-uol112806.php
http://tinyurl.com/yfxuph (LA Times)
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006550819,00.html
Norwegians in the Legions?:
http://www.chnpress.com/news/?section=2&id=6838
================================================================
EUROPE AND THE UK (+ Ireland)
================================================================
More coverage of Stonehenge as an ancient Lourdes:
http://tinyurl.com/yzrmqa (Telegraph)
http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/06/11/29/10085841.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1961314,00.html
Vandal burial in Slovakia:
http://mujweb.atlas.cz/veda/archaeology/Tatry_find.htm
http://tinyurl.com/yzamx5 (Slovak (?), with photos)
http://www.sme.sk/c/2994753/germansky-tutanchamon-pod-tatrami.html
(ditto)
================================================================
NORTH AMERICA
================================================================
An interesting article on Desert Archaic Indians:
http://www.desertusa.com/ind1/ind_new/ind3.html
================================================================
OTHER ITEMS OF INTEREST
================================================================
An avalanche on Mount Etna some 8000 years b.p. appears to
have triggered a massive tsunami:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061128083754.htm
http://www.sys-con.com/read/307495.htm
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-12/01/content_5419215.htm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15971504/
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20061128-113115-5955r
And also on the natural disaster front ... an 18th century Icelandic
volcano eruption has been linked to famine in Egypt:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061121232204.htm
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn10649&feedId=online-news_rss20
One of the alchemists' secrets appears to have been cracked:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-11/ucl-2ct112006.php
A history of poisoning:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6569885
A 15th century drawing of Stonehenge:
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1957926,00.html
Tomb robbing in Israel and Palestine:
http://tinyurl.com/ymv5zb (Chronicle)
4. Report: Arab, Jewish birthrates in Jerusalem equal for first time
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/795830.html By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent
For the first time ever, in 2005 the Arab and Jewish birthrates in Jerusalem were equivalent at 3.9 children per woman. An American-Israeli research report recently submitted to Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski found that the Arab fertility rate in Jerusalem has dropped in recent years, while the fertility rate among Jewish women in the capital has risen.
Dr. Maya Choshen of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, who edits the Statistical Yearbook of Jerusalem, confirmed that the data used to compare Jewish and Arab birthrates was accurate, but noted it only covered one year. "Statistical trends must be examined over a number of years before reaching conclusions," Choshen added.
The researchers Bennett Zimmerman, Roberta Seid, Michael Wise and Yoram Ettinger recommend annexing 100,000 Palestinians to Jerusalem in order to resolve the city's demographic problem. According to the four, as a result of annexing additional East Jerusalem territory leading toward Ma'aleh Adumim, Givat Ze'ev and Gush Etzion, the Jewish population will also increase by tens of thousands and negative Jewish emigration out of the capital will be reduced.
Advertisement
Recently, the political parties of Kadima and Labor have adopted the approach that outskirts of the city with large Arab populations should be removed from the Jerusalem jurisdiction to resolve the capital's demographic issues.
This could make the city a magnet for the Jewish population, tipping the demographic scales toward it. "Avoiding expanding city territory, due to concerns of a demographic burden, will increase the housing and employment burden and accelerate negative emigration out of Jerusalem," the report states.
The researchers reiterate previous findings that Jerusalem's key problem is negative Jewish emigration, which stems from tight housing and job markets. They attribute the distress to a lack of land for transportation infrastructure, which they say is only resolvable by doubling city jurisdiction.
In the 2000-2003 period, 63,000 residents left Jerusalem, while only 37,000 moved to the capital. In the past 25 years, 311,000 residents have moved away, while 208,000 Jews have changed their place of residence to the city.
5. Foreigners Vrs in USA in Iraq
CIA: Foreign terrorists only 3 percent of Iraq insurgency
http://www.geostrategy-direct.com/geostrategy%2Ddirect/
U.S. intelligence officials this week laid out the numbers of insurgents and foreign terrorists in Iraq, and revealed that the number of foreign terrorists working in Iraq is relatively small, although they include highly lethal suicide bombers.
CIA Director Michael Hayden told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the number of foreign terrorists is slightly more than 3 percent of the number of overall insurgents, with the majority being Iraqis.
I would agree that the rest of the fighters are from Iraq, he said noting that they are sectarian as opposed to Al Qaida.
A significant portion of the leadership of Al Qaida in Iraq is foreign, he said. And an overwhelming percentage of the suicide bombers are foreign. So they have an impact well beyond their numbers.
Jerusalem News-544
Date: 16 Kislev 5767, 6 December 2006
Contents:
1. URLs of Interest
2. IRELAND by Dr. Alex Grobman
3. Guysen Israel News: Tuesday
4. The Scotsman: In the land of kilts and Kiwis
5. SCOTS DOWN UNDER: THE FACTS
1. URLs of Interest
An Irishman who helped Jews in WW2
but also was concerned for the wellbeing of Nazi criminals
Hugh O'Flaherty
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_O%27Flaherty
Wannsee Conference by an Australian
http://www.holocaust.com.au/mm/f_plans.htm
The Jews of Ireland
by Robert Tracy
http://www.ucc.ie/icms/irishmigrationpolicy/Judaism%20The%20Jews%20of%20Ireland.htm
2. IRELAND by Dr. Alex Grobman
From: "Root & Branch Association, Ltd." <rb@rb.org.il>
[Extracts Only]:
IRELAND
Why Do Irish Academics Persist in advocating Boycott and Divesting from Israel?
Dr. Alex Grobman
YERUSHALIYIM, Israelite Tribal Territories of Judah and Benjamin, Kingdom of David and Solomon, United Israelite Kingdom of Judah and Joseph, Fourteenth Day, Ninth Month ("Kislev"), 5767; Yom Shlishi (Third Day of the Week/"Tues"-day, December 5, 2006), Root & Branch Information Services [mailto:rb@rb.org.il] [www.rb.org.il]:
Divestment campaigns are back in the news once again after a short lull. Their objective is to terminate university investments in Israel in order to impede the country's economic growth and development. By using "economic warfare", they want "to destroy Israel's economy", according to Fred Taub, president of Divestment Watch.
As part of this campaign, attempts are made to prevent Israeli academic and political leaders from speaking on university campuses. Another goal is to eliminate Israeli academic research funds since Israeli academics are viewed as key elements and "collaborators" of the Jewish state.
Irish academics are particularly adamant in boycotting Israeli academic institutions. In a letter to The Irish Times on September 12, 2006, 61 Irish professors urged academic institutions throughout the world to boycott Israeli institutions of higher education.
The Irish Embassy in Israel condemned the petition as "counterproductive", yet the Irish government has helped foster this enmity because of its own negative attitudes towards Israel. By examining the government's views toward the Jewish State, we can see how Irish academics reflect their own government's attitude toward Israel, and why they are so tenacious in advocating this boycott.
In "Ireland and the Palestine Question 1948-2004", professor Rory Miller explains that the Irish believe they possess a unique insight into the Arab/Israeli conflict because of their neutrality and their distinct "moral" position in the international arena.
Ireland granted Israel de facto recognition in 1949, but did not grant it de jure recognition until May, 1963. Part of the reason was Ireland's aversion toward partition, which was a result of its own fight for independence from Britain. The Irish saw partition as a cruel means of solving territorial disputes that would not bring peace.
An even more fundamental reason for Irish opposition to granting Israel recognition Miller suggests, was that from the late 1940's, the Irish clergy, political parties, the general public and the media have had a special interest in the Holy Land because of their concern about the Christian Holy Places, especially in Jerusalem.
The Vatican had supported the internationalization of the city and the holy sites, and the Irish were greatly influenced by the "Vatican factor", and adamant that the rights of Catholics be maintained.
Oil is an additional factor why the Irish side with the Arabs. Miller quotes The Irish Times in mid-1963 that "if it comes to a matter of competition for the friendship of Israel or the Arab League, nobody can doubt what the outcome will be: The oil-rich Arab states possess an attraction denied to Israel".
The rights of Arab refugees are another ongoing concern as was Israel's refusal to withdraw from the Golan Heights and the "occupied territories". Failure to resolve the refugee issue is viewed as the "greatest single obstacle", to peace in the region.
A further area of contention occurred after the Irish provided troops to serve first as U.N. observers and later as members of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (U.N.I.F.I.L.). Whenever there was a conflict between the Christian militias and Irish soldiers, the Irish blamed Israel.
This led Israeli Ambassador Shlomo Argov, Israeli Ambassador to Britain and Ireland, to wonder how people in Dublin could sit around "smugly" and "pass judgment" about events in another part of the world. He found it particularly difficult to understand how the Irish could be so "insensitive to the Christian minority in Lebanon", and later charged Ireland "of leading the pack in [the] constant flagellation of Israel".
Fred Taub points out, divestment campaigns are an attack on the U.S. "Foreign governments", he urges, "should not be allowed to dictate U.S. foreign policy", and they must not be permitted to promote the destruction of the economy of another democracy.
Israel's economy, Taub concludes, "has a direct impact on the U.S. economy because Israel is a key developer of new technologies, including in medicine, computers and even space exploration; not to mention that it is the democracy and free-market economy example for the Middle-East. The Arab boycott of Israel is the single biggest impediment to peace, as peace can not be sustained without economic cooperation".
Shavua Tov from New Milford,
Dr. Alex Grobman
3. Guysen Israel News: Tuesday
<webmaster@guysen.com>
[] 2006-12-04 , 13 Kislev 5767
23:50 Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, criticized UN General Secretary Kofi Annan's statement that the life of the Iraqis is worse today than under Saddam Hussein. Mr. Maliki said that Kofi Annan "embellished the regime of the Iraqi dictator known for his crimes against humanity". (Guysen.Isra l.News)
19:03 Divorced husbands are reneging on paying alimony to their ex-wives. The National Insurance Institute pays a minimal subsidy to divorced women whose husbands do not meet their obligations, which costs the State 10 million shekels. There are 24,000 recalcitrant ex-husbands. (Guysen.Isra l.News)
15:57 The dollar is continuing to fall. On Monday it was exchanged for 4.23 shekels, the lowest rate in five years. The euro however continues to rise, currently holding at 5.6632 shekels. (Guysen.Isra l.News)
15:10 More anti-semitism in France. A young group of students from a Jewish school in the 19th arrondissement in Paris were prevented by the driver from getting on bus 251 in Bobigny after he had noticed that they were wearing kippas [skull-caps]. The National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism is demanding that the Minister of Transport take disciplinary measures and press criminal charges against the driver. (Guysen.Isra l.News)
14:27 At the end of her visit to Yad Vashem, Segol ne Royal wrote in the book of gold, it is a deeply moving experience,one which makes you understand and share israel''s unbendable will and the desire for justice. Those who came back and rebuilt their roots, despite everything, are the true heroes of our time, thank you. The Socialist candidate to the Elysee [French Presidency] took part in a memorial ceremony and lit a flame for the memory of the 6 million Jews exterminated in the Shoah. (Guysen.Isra l.News)
07:58 Equality in fertility rates between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem. For the first time, Jewish and Arab women averaged 3.9 children in the capital. This was revealed in a study carried out by an Israeli-American group and presented Mayor Uuri Lupoliansky. The fertility rates of Arabs have dropped whilst that of Jewish women have increased. (Guysen.Isra l.News)
4. The Scotsman: In the land of kilts and Kiwis
http://heritage.scotsman.com/people.cfm?id=1794532006
NO SCOTS travelled further than those hardy and intrepid adventurers who headed to New Zealand. Sailing to the Antipodes meant a voyage of close to four months; a lengthy and hazardous trip, with some known to jump ship when the boats docked at the Cape of Good Hope.
Yet many Scots did make it after large-scale settlement began in 1839 under the New Zealand Company. In the 1860s, Scots accounted for 30 per cent of immigrants and, although accurate figures are hard to find, more than 800,000 people - about 20 per cent of today's 4.1 million population of New Zealand - are thought to claim Scottish roots.
The first Caledonian Society in New Zealand was formed in 1862, the first Burns Club in 1891. But there was much more to the Scots in New Zealand than the clubs and symbolic societies of home.
The Scots also took with them the legacy of the Enlightenment and a "love of learning" and became pivotal at all levels in New Zealand education; they established a university in Otago, provided most of the staff for Victoria University and set up a system of free education in Otago which became a prototype for the country.
Perhaps the most extraordinary story of the Scots in New Zealand centres on the small North Island community which has maintained a tradition of a Highland Games for more than 140 years.
Turakina has a population of fewer than 100, but for one day of the year, its population soars to 2,000 for the Turakina Highland Games.
The event started in 1863 and, while they were not the first Highland Games in New Zealand - there was an event in Wellington in 1848 - they have endured. The Turakina Caledonian Society currently has about 20 members, including the chief, Ewen Grant, and his wife, Roz, a farming couple whose son played rugby in the Borders.
Grant proudly explains his Scottish roots: "Alexander Grant came out on a ship, the Blenheim, to Wellington in 1840, then walked to Turakina in 1850. Roz married into the society, but had Scottish links in Grays, Sutherlands and Cruickshanks on her mother's side."
BRUCE CAMERON, A Turakina farmer, history graduate and bagpiper, says the Cameron link to the area is huge: "There are five Cameron families who have been in Turakina for 150 years and I come from two of them."
The Clan Cameron is a now a New Zealand-wide organisation.
People started arriving in Turakina when another Scotsman, Sir Donald McLean, began dividing up the land. Born in Tiree in 1820, he was brought up by his grandfather, a Presbyterian minister.
Emigrating to New South Wales in 1839, he moved the following year to New Zealand as an agent for a timber firm. Many Scots came to New Zealand on the Blenheim in 1840. It contained Highlanders and Paisley weavers and the names on the manifest reflect that diversity; MacDiarmid, Cameron, McCue, Fraser, Mann, MacKenzie and Rankin among them.
There were three churches in and around Turakina. The Episcopalian and Catholic churches both had Scottish and non- Scottish members, but the Presbyterian Church was firmly rooted in the Scottish community; until 1914 the minister was required to speak Gaelic.
The Scots brought with them farming skills - and distilling talents. In the 1860s, when the area was frontier territory, the Turakina Highlanders sold illicit whisky to soldiers garrisoned there and other migrants.
The Caledonian Society is not the only Scottish organisation in the Turakina area. There is a Burns Society and a piping club too - but the Highland Games are the highlight of the calendar.
Small gatherings led to the first official Turakina Highland Games in 1863. Running the Games is now the sole remit of the Turakina Caledonian Society on an entirely voluntary basis.
Members of the Clan Cameron are keen to develop stronger links between Scotland and the diaspora in New Zealand. Maisie Earle (ne Cameron), originally from Banavie near Fort William and the only woman to have been president of the Clan Cameron in New Zealand, made a submission to a Scottish Parliament investigation on promoting scotland worldwide. It detailed the Clan Cameron scheme for people aged 18-30 with family membership of Clan Cameron in Scotland or New Zealand.
"Young people work in the other country to further their career development and live with people in the community, usually Camerons," says Earle.
5. SCOTS DOWN UNDER: THE FACTS
http://heritage.scotsman.com/people.cfm?id=1794532006
DUNEDIN, on South Island [NZ], was the entry point for most 19th-century Scots. The city and its streets take their names from Edinburgh (Princes Street, Leith Street, Dundas Street) and there is a statue of Robert Burns in the centre.
Only 8,207 of 150,000 convicts transported to Australia were Scots. Political prisoners included the Scottish Martyrs, who inspired Burns's song Scots Wha' Hae.
From 1832-1850, 14,000 "assisted immigrants" arrived in Australia, including the Scottish Mechanics - 54 Scottish tradesmen and their families. Skilled labourers were needed and the government helped pay their passage. In the same period about 25,000 "free settlers", who paid their own way, came from Scotland.
The grandfather of the Australia-born newspaper baron Rupert Murdoch, the Rev James Murdoch, came from Stirling.
Australia's opera singer Dame Joan Sutherland was of Scots descent.
There are around 300 Scots-linked groups in Australia - and three out of the first six governors of Australia were Scots, including Lachlan Macquarie, known as the "father of Australia".
Jerusalem News-545
Date: 17 Kislev 5767, 8 December 2006
Contents:
1.Arutz Sheva News Thursday
[3. PLO CONTINUES ROLE AS SOURCE OF INTERNATIONAL TERROR
2. DNA: Saami (Lapps of Finland-Northern Europe)
have similar mtDNA (female) markers as Berbers of North Africa!
3. Brit-Am and the Golan Heights
1. Arutz Sheva News Thursday
http://www.IsraelNationalNews.com
December 07, 2006, 16 Kislev 5767
Editor: Hillel Fendel
[3. PLO CONTINUES ROLE AS SOURCE OF INTERNATIONAL TERROR
By Gil Zohar
Thirteen years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, the PLO remains
proud of its role as the source of global terror and an inspiration
for terrorists worldwide who have copied their techniques.
In a broadcast on Palestinian Authority TV on November 14, Ahmed Hales
Abu Maher - the Secretary of Fatah in the Gaza Strip - expressed pride
that the Fatah "gives daily examples" that the world has "imitated,"
from the participation of children in combat to the widespread use of
suicide bombers.
Oh warrior brothers, this is a nation that will never be broken, it
is a revolution that will never be defeated. This is a nation that
gives an example every day that is imitated across the world. We gave
the world the children of the RPG [Rocket Propelled Grenades], we gave
the world the children stone [-throwers], and we gave the world the
male and female Martyrdom-Seekers [suicide bombers]."
Palestinian Media Watch has documented dozens of
examples of the Palestinian Authority glorifying individual acts
of terrorism as well as the memory of terrorists past and present.
2.DNA: Saami (Lapps of Finland-Northern Europe)
have similar mtDNA (female) markers as Berbers of North Africa!
http://class.csuhayward.edu/faculty/gmiller/3710/DNA_PDFS/mtDNA/mtDNA_SaamiBerber.pdf
3. Brit-Am and the Golan Heights
The Golan Heights are being considered by a group of Ephraimites
as a possible location for the establishment of some type of settlement.
Brit-Am is not yet a party to these considerations and we have not yet
decided (if invited) if we should be.
For this reason in addition to their intrinsic importance
it is worth reading something about them.
Wikipedia: Golan Heights -Interesting Extracts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_Heights
The Golan Heights are surrounded by four countries: Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Israel.
The Golan Heights (Arabic: Ha bat al- l n, Hebrew: Ramat HaGolan) or Golan is a plateau on the border of Israel, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
The origin of the name "Golan" is from an ancient city mentioned in the Bible as a "City of Refuge" (see Golan). Eventually, Golan became known as the name of an informal geographic region stretching from that ancient biblical site west towards the Sea of Galilee. Additional names used in this context are Gaulanitis or Gaulonitis.
The name "Golan" has been adopted in Israeli culture to refer to that territory taken by Israel from Syria. The territory taken does not include all of the geographic or historic Golan; furthermore it does include areas belonging to other geographic regions, such as the Hermon and the Jordan Valley. The boundries of that territory are somewhat less rigid than the geographic definition; a sizable portion of the area conquered by Israel in 1967 was ceded to Syria after the Yom Kippur War.
The Golan is usually divided into three regions: northern (between Nahals Sa'ar and Gilabon), central (between Nahals Gilabon and Dilayot), and southern (between Nahal Dilayot and the Yarmouk Valley). The Golan Heights themselves are between 400 and 1,700 feet (120520 m) high.
In 2006 the Golan Heights had a population of approximately 36,000 people, consisting of approximately 19,000 Jewish settlers and 17,000 Druze residents. [
The area has been occupied by many civilizations. During the 3rd millennium BC the Amorites dominated and inhabited the Golan until the 2nd millennium, when the Arameans took over. Later known as Bashan, two tribes were associated with the region during the time of Joshua, the tribe of Dan - Deuteronomy Chapter 33:22:"And of Dan he said: Dan is a lion's whelp, that leapeth forth from Bashan" and Tribe of Manasseh. The city of Golan was used as as a city of refuge. King Solomon appointed 3 ministers in the region - 1 Kings Chapter 4:13:"the son of Geber, in Ramoth-gilead; to him pertained the villages of Jair the son of Manasseh, which are in Gilead; even to him pertained the region of Argob, which is in Bashan, threescore great cities with walls and brazen bars". After the split of the United Monarchy, the area was contested between the Kingdom of Israel (the northern of the two Jewish kingdoms existent at that time) and the Aramean kingdom from the 800s BC. King Ahab of Israel (reigned 874852 BC) defeated Ben-Hadad I in the southern Golan. According to Jewish law the Golan is regarded as part of Canaan which is holier than the parts on the otherwise eastern parts of the Jordan river [9].
In the 700s BC the Assyrians gained control of the area, but were later replaced by the Babylonian and the Persian Empire. In the 5th century BC, the region was settled by returning Jewish exiles from Babylonian Captivity.
The Golan Heights, along with the rest of the region, came under the control of Alexander the Great in 332 BC, following the Battle of Issus. Following Alexander's death, the Golan came under the domination of the Macedonian noble Seleucus and remained part of the Seleucid Empire for most of the next two centuries. It is during this period that the name Golan, previously that of a city mentioned in Deuteronomy, came to be applied to the entire region (Greek: Gaulanitis).
The Maccabean Revolt saw much action in the regions around the Golan and it is possible that the Jewish communities of the Golan were among those rescued by Judah Maccabee during his campaign in the Galilee and Gilead (Transjordan) mentioned in Chapter 5 of 1 Maccabees. The Golan, however, remained in Seleucid hands until the campaign of Alexander Jannaeus from 83-80 BC. Jannaeus established the city of Gamla in 81 BC as the Hasmonean capital for the region.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, Druze began to settle the northern Golan and the slopes of Mount Hermon. In the 16th century, the Ottoman Turks came in control of the area and remained so until the end of World War I.
The boundary between the forthcoming British and French mandates was defined in broad terms by the Franco-British Boundary Agreement of December 1920. The demarcation was completed March 7, 1923, several months before Britain and France assumed their Mandatory responsibilities.[10] This placed most of the Golan in the French sphere. ....The Golan Heights thus became part of the French Mandate of Syria. The territorial concessions that Britain made to the French did not pass without objection. President Woodrow Wilson cabled the following protest to the British Cabinet:
"The Zionist cause depends on rational northern and eastern boundaries for a self-maintaining, economic development of the country. This means, on the north, Palestine must include the Litani River and the watersheds of the Hermon, and on the east it must include the plains of the Jaulon and the Hauran. Narrower than this is a mutilation...I need not remind you that neither in this country nor in Paris has there been any opposition to the Zionist program, and to its realization the boundaries I have named are indispensable". [1]
When the French Mandate of Syria ended in 1944, The Golan Heights became part of the new independent state of Syria. They remained under Syrian control until 1967.
About 90% (80,000) of the Golan's inhabitants, mainly Druze Arabs and Circassians, fled or were expelled by Israeli forces during the Six-Day War.[5] For various political and security reasons, Israel has not allowed those who fled to return [12].
Israel began settling the Golan almost immediately following the war. Kibbutz Merom Golan was founded in July 1967. By 1970 there were 12 Jewish settlements on the Golan and in 2004 there were 34 settlements populated by around 18,000 people [13]. Today the Golan is firmly under Israeli control as part of the Jewish state.
During the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Syrian forces overran much of the southern Golan, before being pushed back by an Israeli counterattack. Israel and Syria signed a ceasefire agreement in 1974 that left almost all the Heights in Israeli hands, while returning a narrow demilitarized zone to Syrian control.
In general, Golan Jewish residents are perceived to be closer to the Israeli mainstream in terms of political alignment than Jewish residents of the West Bank. Jewish settlers on the Golan are called "mityashvin" - which has a ring of "pioneers", whereas Jewish settlers on the West Bank and Gaza are and were called "mitnachalim" which has a negative connotation in many Israelis' minds. [21]
The Golan Heights' administrative center, which is also its largest Israeli community, is the town of Qatzrin, built in the 1970s. There are another 19 moshavim and 10 kibbutzim.
There are also four Druze villages in the Northern part of the Golan Heights including Majdal Shams, and an Alawite village called Ghajar that stretches on both side of the Lebanese-Israeli border.
Qatzrin is regarded as "the capital of the Golan Heights" and as such hosts a large number of attractions. The ancient Talmudic village of Qisrin is fully excavated and one can tour the different houses in the village as well as the remains of a large synagogue. There is also an interactive movie experience about the Talmudic time within the compound. The Museum of Golan Antiquities hosts archaeological finds uncovered in the Golan Heights from prehistoric times. A special focus concerns Gamla and excavations of synagogues and Byzantine churches. Throughout the Golan Heights 29 ancient synagogues were found dating back to the Roman and Byzantine periods. Qatzrin is home to the Golan Heights Winery, a major winery of Israel and the mineral water plant of Mey Eden which derives its water from the spring of Salukiya in the Golan. One can tour these factories as well as factories of oil products and fruit products. It also has two open air strip malls one which holds the Kesem Hagolan or the "Golan Magic" a three-dimentional movie and model of the geography and history of the Golan Heights [22] [23] [24].
Jerusalem News-546
Date: 20 Kislev 5767, 11 December 2006
Contents:
1. Increase of anti-Jewish sentiment in Germany
2. Abortion Raises Risk of Miscarriage of Subsequent Pregnancy 60 Percent
3. Israel and the United Nations
4. DUTCH BANK DIVESTS ITS INTEREST IN JERUSALEM TRAIN
5. Archaeology: Brit-Am Edition of explorator 9.33
1. Increase of anti-Jewish sentiment in Germany
From: VOJ <mishal@mishal.org>
Subject: Israel_news_update
Voice of Judea Weekend News Update
#1- Germany, Never Again?
#1- Never Again?
Berlin public school attacks increase
Jewish schoolchildren increasingly are suffering anti-Semitic attacks
in Berlin public schools, observers said.
Most incidents involve either neo-Nazis or Muslim pupils, according
to a report Thursday in Der Spiegel Online magazine.
The word "Jew" increasingly is used as a curse, the report said.
Barbara Witting, director of the Jewish High School in Berlin, said
children have been transferring to the Jewish school to avoid
discrimination in public schools.
2. Abortion Raises Risk of Miscarriage of Subsequent Pregnancy 60 Percent
http://www.lifenews.com/nat2806.html
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
December 5, 2006
[]Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A team of British doctors has released the results of a new study showing that women who have an abortion run a higher risk of having a miscarriage in a subsequent pregnancy. The study also showed that women using in-vitro fertilization have higher miscarriage risks as well.
The doctors, affiliated with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the reasons behind the increased miscarriage risk were vague.
However, they confirmed that women who had had a previous abortion experienced a 60 percent higher risk of having a miscarriage in another pregnancy.
Women using the in-vitro technique had a 40 percent greater risk of suffering a miscarriage.
In the study, Dr. Noreen Maconochie examined data from 603 women between the ages of 18 and 55 who had experienced a miscarriage during the first 13 weeks of their pregnancy. They compared those results with 6,116 women whose pregnancies advanced beyond 13 weeks.
The team published their findings in the British Journal of Gynegology.
This isn't the first study to show that abortions adversely affect a woman's fertility as other research shows that abortion can lead to infertility by increasing the risk of miscarriages.
A 1986 report in the medical journal Epidemiology reveals women with a history of abortion have a greater risk of fetal loss than women who had no previous abortions. Women with two prior pregnancies carried to term and no abortions had the lowest risk, while women with two prior abortions had the highest risk.
Meanwhile, a 1991 British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology article revealed that women with a history of abortion had a 1.5-1.7 times higher risk of ectopic pregnancy than women who had previously carried a pregnancy to term.
3. Israel and the United Nations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_the_United_Nations
Extracts from Wikiepdia:
Critics who accuse the UN of anti-Israel prejudice cite what they see as a disproportionately long list of resolutions concerning Israel,[10] especially the 1975 Resolution 3379, which qualified Zionism as a form of racism (later revoked with Resolution 4686), and the complicity of UNIFIL in the October 2000 Lebanon abduction of three Israeli Engineering Corps soldiers, by Hezbollah. In September 2004, the bereaved families announced that they intended to sue the UN for its part in the abductions.
Starting in the mid-1970s, an Arab-Soviet-Third World bloc joined to form a pro-PLO lobby at the United Nations. This was particularly true in the General Assembly where these countries frequently voted together to pass resolutions attacking Israel and supporting the PLO.[11] An early example would be in 1975, soon after the award of permanent representative status to the PLO, at the instigation of the Arab states and the Soviet Bloc, the Assembly approved Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism and racism.[11]
U.S. Ambassador Daniel Moynihan called the resolution a reckless and obscene act.[12] Israeli Ambassador Chaim Herzog told his fellow delegates the resolution was based on hatred, falsehood and arrogance. Hitler, he declared, would have felt at home listening to the UN debate on the measure.[13]
In her June 21, 2004 speech [14] at a Conference on Confronting anti-Semitism: Education for Tolerance and Understanding sponsored by the United Nations Department of Information and in her articles [15], a human rights scholar and activist Anne Bayefsky, attending as representative of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, advocated the necessity of deep reforms within the UN and criticized some of the UN policies and practices:
There is only one entire UN Division devoted to a single group of people: the United Nations Division for Palestinian Rights [16] (created in 1977).
The only UN day dedicated to a specific people is November 29, the annual UN Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
There is only one refugee agency dedicated to a single refugee situation: UNRWA (in operation since 1950).
"The General Assembly operates through six committees of the whole. One of them, the Fourth Committee, routinely devotes 30 percent of its time to the condemnation of Israel."[17]
"The General Assembly emergency sessions... began in 1956, and since then six of the ten emergency sessions ever held, have been about Israel. The 10th such session began in 1997 and has been reconvened 13 times. ... a million dead in Rwanda or two million dead in Sudan might have warranted one General Assembly emergency session."[17]
"...the UN's primary human-rights body is the UN Human Rights Commission. 30% of the resolutions condemning specific states ever adopted over 40 years are directed at Israel." [17]
Anne Bayefsky acknowledges that "Israels policies are, of course, fair game for legitimate criticism. But the UNs outrage is grossly selective, especially when one considers the record of any number of other member nations."[18]
In April 2004, the UN special envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, told French radio listeners that "the great poison in the region" is Israeli "domination" and told American television viewers that the Israelis "are not interested in peace, no matter what you seem to believe in America".[19] [20] [21] [22] [23]
In August 2004, the United Nations Association of the United Kingdom (UNA-UK) published a report analyzing thirteen years of United Nations resolutions on the Arab-Israeli conflict. In light of the studys conclusions, Malcolm Harper, speaking on behalf of the UNA-UK (of which he was director until recently), called for an examination into how, if at all, the resolutions contribute to the Middle East peace process. The 76-page report [24] makes the following principal findings:
The texts of UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions are "often unbalanced in terms of the length of criticism and condemnation of Israeli actions in the Occupied Territories as against Palestinian actions such as suicide bombings."
The United Nations is "palpably more critical of Israeli policies and practices than it is of either Palestinian actions or the wider Arab world. However criticism is not necessarily the product of bias."
In resolutions of the UN General Assembly, "violence perpetrated against Israeli civilians, including the use of suicide bombers, is mentioned only a few times and then in only vague terms."
The report also stated "However, criticism is not necessarily a product of bias, and it is not the intention here to suggest that UNGA and UNSC reproaches of Israel stem from prejudice. From the perspective of the UN, Israel has repeatedly flouted fundamental UN tenets and ignored important decisions."
The event celebrating an annual "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" on November 29, 2005 was attended by Kofi Annan and other high-ranking diplomats. In his January 3, 2006 letter to Mr. Annan, the US ambassador John Bolton criticized the UN for promoting anti-Israel agenda and noted that the map prominently displayed at the event "erases the state of Israel" only days after Iran's leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech calling to wipe Israel off the map. The organizer of the "solidarity" event is the Division for Palestinian Rights (2004-2005 UN budget: $5,449,600[citation needed]). Other bodies include the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories ($254,500[citation needed]), the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People ($60,800[citation needed]), and the Information Activities on the Question of Palestine ($566,000[citation needed]). Similar funding has been approved for the next biannual budget.[citation needed]
Hugh Fitzgerald, a lecturer on the manipulation of language for political ends, wrote, "No matter what the subject ("racism" at Durban, the rights of women at Cairo) and no matter what morally moronic U.N. conference is held, it will always and everywhere turn absurdly into a bash-Israel event. Not a single word in Geneva, at the Human Rights Commission, about the grave mistreatment of Hindus and Christians in Pakistan, in Bangladesh, in Indonesia. Not a word about Muslim attacks on Buddhists in south Thailand. Not a word about the Muslim attacks for two decades in the Sudan -- or at least, not a word that stopped the genocide, if the Rapporteur for the situation in the southern Sudan, M. Biro, is to be believed."[25]
4. DUTCH BANK DIVESTS ITS INTEREST IN JERUSALEM TRAIN
http://israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=117109
15:10 Dec 10, '06 / 19 Kislev 5767
by Gil Zohar
Extracts
[] Jerusalem's light rail is the latest subject of the anti-Israel divestment campaign.
The Hague-based ASN Bank recently divested its holdings in the French firm Veolia Transport, which is a key part of the CityPass consortium building Jerusalem's light rapid transit system. The bank explained that the project "is not in line with the United Nation's demand to stop all support for Israel's settlement activities."
On November 22, the first track was laid on the tramway's 13.8 km Red Line, which will run from the Pisgat Ze'ev neighborhood in northern Jerusalem to Mount Herzl. That route crosses the 1949 armistice line that divided Jerusalem until 1967 into Israeli and Jordanian sectors, joining parts of the city that Israel annexed following the Six Day War. The state-of-the-art LRT is slated to open January 5, 2009.
ASN, which stands for Algemene Spaarbank Nederland (The General Savings Bank of the Netherlands), had held shares in Veolia, whose subsidiary Connex Israel has a 5 percent stake in the CityPass consortium. CityPass won the NIS 3.2 billion tender to build the tramline.
Founded in 1960, ASN is a medium-sized bank with 250,000 clients, deposits totaling two billion euros and investments totaling 900 million euros in 2005. It considers itself an "ethical bank," and is therefore committed to investing only in projects that do not infringe on human or animal rights or harm the environment.
In May 2006, several human rights organizations wrote to ASN claiming that Veolia's work on the LRT project violated international law because part of the railway will pass through "occupied territory" in East Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority also wrote to ASN, claiming that the railway's construction would have "devastating effects" on Arabs living in eastern Jerusalem, as it would connect the "illegal settlements" of Pisgat Ze'ev and N'vei Yaakov with the city center, and thereby sever the Arab-populated neighborhoods from Judea and Samaria.
The bank, together with the major Dutch non-governmental donor organization Interchurch Organization for Development Co-operation and the Amsterdam-based NGO "A Different Jewish Voice," urged the French multi-national corporation to end its involvement in the LRT project. Veolia replied that it was looking into the matter. "ASN Bank's criteria are not met by that answer," the bank responded. As a result, it decided last month to divest its shares in Veolia.
The Jerusalem Mass Transit System Project, which is jointly run by the Transportation Ministry and the Jerusalem Municipality, said ASN Bank's divestment was an internal CityPass affair, but stressed the LRT project is meant to serve all the city's residents, Jewish and Arab alike.
More investment and pensions funds in the Netherlands are expected to withdraw their money from Veolia, according to Adri Nieuwhof, a Dutch human rights activist who in the 1980s was involved in the Holland Committee on South Africa.
5. Archaeology: Brit-Am Edition of explorator 9.33
From: david meadows <rogueclassicist@gmail.com>
================================================================
explorator 9.33 December 10, 2006
================================================================
================================================================
ANCIENT NEAR EAST AND EGYPT
================================================================
Plenty of coverage of the discovery of a tomb of a sixth dynasty
doctor:
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1809452006
http://au.news.yahoo.com/061205/2/11o7p.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16065823/
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061205/sc_nm/egypt_mummy_dc
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061207/ap_on_sc/egypt_mummy_3
http://tinyurl.com/yev3fo (Reuters via Topix)
http://www.livescience.com/history/061206_ap_doctor_mummy.html
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/16180088.htm
http://tinyurl.com/ylltsk (JPost)
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7005782223
http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-12-06-voa63.cfm
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/bizarre/4383506.html (why bizarre?)
More coverage of the theory that concrete was used in the construction
of the pyramids:
http://tinyurl.com/yzwhxk
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061209122918.htm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2480751,00.html
Sacrificial altars from Yemen:
http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=1005&p=lastpage&a=1
Berkeley has cancelled its Israel program:
http://www.insidebayarea.com/trivalleyherald/localnews/ci_4768112
Jerusalem News-547
Date: 21 Kislev 5767, 12 December 2006
1. Anti-Americans on the March
2. Commandment to build the Temple
3. ANTI-SEMITISM AT GERMAN SCHOOLS
4. News Site of Interest
5. Quotation
1. Anti-Americans on the March
http://www.israelunitycoalition.org/news/article.php?id=573
Andrew Higgins - Dec 09, 2006
Wall Street Journal
[Extracts Only]
AYTAROUN, LEBANON -- Ibrahim Sayid was raised a Muslim, but he put his faith in class struggle, not Allah. He joined the Lebanese Communist Party at the age of 16. As a medical student in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, he cursed Mikhail Gorbachev as a "traitor" for jettisoning Marxism.
Today, back in his home village just a few hundred yards from Israel, Dr. Sayid, 44, still has little time for Islam. He is married to a Christian and shuns the local mosque, badly damaged when Israeli troops stormed into Lebanon this summer.
Instead of communism, he has embraced a new cause: Hezbollah, the militia and social movement rooted in Shiite Islam. The Party of God, as it is translated into English, is led by turbaned clerics and aided by the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has ruthlessly persecuted communists.
"We all have the same goals," explains Dr. Sayid, who now works in a Hezbollah clinic. The first of these goals is "resistance" against Israel, which during the summer war battled Hezbollah militiamen just outside Dr. Sayid's village. He says resistance also has a broader target: America, its allies in the Arab world and beyond, and global capitalism.
When the Cold War ended a decade and a half ago with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mr. Sayid and others like him around the world mourned the apparent triumph of U.S. military, economic and ideological might. Many Americans rejoiced, with some embracing the theory that the demise of Marxism marked "the end of history," a period when ideological conflicts would give way to a world united in acceptance of a model typified by the U.S.
Al Qaeda's attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001 didn't fundamentally alter this conviction. Political Islam was seen as a grave threat but seemed limited in its appeal by its dependence on religious zeal. Such assumptions are now under strain as secular rebels, antiglobalization militants and other strains of revolt rally to the banner of "resistance" offered by Islamist groups such as Hezbollah.
Religion, excoriated by Karl Marx as the "opiate of the masses," has become a great mobilizing force -- even for zealous atheists. The phenomenon extends beyond the Middle East to Europe, Latin America and Africa, too. Causes that a few years ago seemed moribund or at least pass -- socialism, Third World solidarity, strident anti-Americanism -- have been injected with the fervor, though rarely the actual faith, of Islamic radicalism.
"We are all here to fight American hegemony," Naim Qassem, Hezbollah's deputy chief, told hundreds of secular activists from around the world who gathered last month in a Beirut conference center. They were there to celebrate his Islamic movement's "divine victory" over Israel this summer and cheer a broader battle against America's vision for the world. Mr. Qassem was dressed in flowing robes and a cleric's turban. Many in his audience wore T-shirts or badges featuring portraits of Che Guevara, clenched fists and other emblems of secular radical chic.
Adding to its revolutionary cachet, Hezbollah is now battling to oust Lebanon's pro-American government. Along with assorted allies, the Islamist group staged a huge peaceful rally in central Beirut Dec. 1 and is the driving force behind a mass sit-in near the offices of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, a pro-business former banker. The protesters, encamped in tents for a week now, vow to stay until the government falls. Stoking fears the showdown may spiral into serious violence, Hezbollah has called for another mass demonstration Sunday.
Some of Hezbollah's biggest fans are in Europe. There, the hard left, demoralized by the collapse of communism, has found new energy, siding with Islamist militants in Lebanon, in Iraq and in a wider campaign against what they see as an American plot to impose unrestrained free-market capitalism.
"We are all Hezbollah now," read posters carried through London this summer during an antiwar protest march. Earlier, London Mayor Ken Livingston, once known as "Red Ken," invited a controversial Egyptian cleric to the British capital, arguing that his views have been distorted by the West.
In deeply Roman Catholic Latin America, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has become the exemplar of a new populism that sees common cause with Iran and Hezbollah. Mr. Chvez, re-elected in a landslide last Sunday, has met Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad several times and this summer was given the Islamic Republic Medal, Iran's highest honor. Amid the rubble of Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, portraits of Mr. Chvez now hang alongside pictures of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah put them up after Mr. Chvez denounced President Bush as the devil in a September speech to the UN. "Gracias Chvez," they say.
Africa, too, is boarding the bandwagon. A summit of the 53-nation African Union this summer in Gambia featured two special guests: Mr. Chavez and Mr. Ahmadinejad. Back in Tehran, Mr. Ahmadinejad in November hosted Zimbabwe's authoritarian Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, an erstwhile devotee of Mao Zedong. Fulminating against President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Mr. Mugabe said likeminded countries must "fight against these evil men and their evil systems."
Mainstream left-of-center parties still generally shun Islamists but chunks of their support base don't. Mr. Blair in Britain, for example, has come under fire within his own Labour Party for supporting President Bush's troubled Middle East policy, which critics say demonizes Islamist groups. In Spain, the socialist prime minister, Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero, has reached out to Muslims, propounding what he calls "an alliance of civilizations" and voicing sympathy for Hamas and Hezbollah. He has good relations with Mr. Chvez, Fidel Castro of Cuba and Bolivia's populist leader, Evo Morales.
At the Beirut conference last month, a Mexican Marxist denounced America for "colonizing" New Mexico. A South Korean foe of free trade raged against American beef. A Turk fumed about American military bases. A Frenchman denounced American genetically engineered foods and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. There were even a few Americans. One thundered against big business, another against the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
An American who traveled to Beirut in November to cheer Hezbollah, who identified himself as Bill Cecil, summed up the appeal of Islamism to non-Muslims: "Your enemy is our enemy; your victory is our victory," he told a conference. Mr. Cecil, an activist for a radical group in New York, later appeared as a guest on the breakfast show of Hezbollah's television station, al-Manar. America, he told a veiled female presenter, is "not a democracy ... but a dictatorship of giant corporations." America "needs a government that provides for the people like Hezbollah helps people here."
Nowhere is the Islamist-leftist axis more potent than in Lebanon. The three-day Beirut jamboree, which featured fiery anti-American oratory and field trips to buildings bombed by Israel, was hosted jointly by Hezbollah and the Lebanese Communist Party, once-bitter enemies now united by what they proclaim as common goals.
Sitting beneath a portrait of Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara in his Beirut office, Khaled Hadadeh, the general secretary of the Lebanese communists, admits that Hezbollah and the Communist Party hated each other for years. "We started out in blood," says Mr. Hadadeh, a Sunni Muslim by birth but now a firm atheist. Che Guevara, he says, "is our symbol, like Jesus Christ or Mohammed."
Hostility to Israel and the U.S. now trumps past differences. The Communist Party disbanded its own armed wing at the end of Lebanon's civil war in 1990, but 12 of its members died fighting alongside Hezbollah this summer, Mr. Hadadeh says. Piled in the corner of his office are trophies of this summer's war: an Israeli army helmet, an Israeli rifle and a Hebrew newspaper.
Mr. Hadadeh says he has met Mr. Nasrallah 15 times and admires him greatly. At their most recent meeting in a secret location this fall, he says, they discussed not just the recent war with Israel but also the need to develop "a counter-project to the neo-liberal model," the free-market policies backed by Washington.
Part of Hezbollah's appeal lies in its tactical flexibility. Unlike many Sunni Muslim radical groups such as al Qaeda, which denounce non-Muslims and even many fellow Muslims as heretics who must be shunned or punished, Hezbollah's Shiite leadership doesn't care if its allies include atheists, Mr. Fayad says. "That is their problem not ours," he says, so long as "we have the same political position."
Among those grappling with this new perception of reality is Joseph Samaha, a secular Christian, former radical socialist and one of Lebanon's most-thoughtful intellectuals. Over the summer he became editor in chief of Al Akhbar, a new newspaper sympathetic to Hezbollah. He scoffs at Westerners who cheer radical Islam as "nave." But he concedes that Islamists now represent the only viable alternative to corrupt, authoritarian regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. "It is sad, but it is like that," he says.
For much of the 20th century, however, the left and Islam were bitter enemies. Spain's right-wing dictator, Gen. Francisco Franco, recruited Moroccan Muslims to fight Soviet-backed foes in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. In 1962, Saudi Arabia, worried by Egypt's tilt toward Moscow, created the Muslim World League to rally Islam against communism. Three years later, Islamic groups in Indonesia joined in an army-led mass slaughter of communists. Anticommunist fervor reached its peak in the 1980s, when thousands of Muslims flocked to Afghanistan to battle the Soviet occupiers.
Much the same enmity existed in Lebanon. When Dr. Sayid, the surgeon, first joined the Lebanese Communist Party in the late 1970s, Mr. Nasrallah, now Hezbollah's leader, also was getting into politics -- partly out of disgust at the spread of atheistic communism.
In an autobiographical account of his early years published in an Iranian newspaper, Mr. Nasrallah recounts how his own village was "turning into an area for the activity of intellectuals, Marxists and especially supporters of the Lebanese Communist Party." He left the village and joined a group called Amal, a Shiite organization.
Iran's Islamic revolution of February 1979 and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of that year soured communist-Islamist relations further, provoking often-bloody clashes in Lebanon and elsewhere.
Iran's new Islamic government launched a brutal crackdown on the Soviet-backed Tudeh party, a leftist group that had helped topple the American-backed Shah. And Iran sent Revolutionary Guard zealots to Lebanon to help set up Hezbollah and injected the new group with their own fierce enmity to atheism and communism.
Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 accelerated the rise of Islamist groups. It uprooted Yasser Arafat's secular Palestine Liberation Organization, which had bases in Lebanon, and left Hezbollah as the main force of "resistance."
Dr. Sayid moved to Minsk in the then-Soviet republic of Belarus to study medicine. He says he went there as a true believer and was appalled when Mr. Gorbachev began his program of "perestroika," or economic restructuring, and the Soviet system started to unravel. The reforms, he says, were a "counter-revolution."
In Lebanon, meanwhile, a vicious civil war raged. Moscow put its weight behind the nominally socialist and mostly secular forces of Walid Jumblatt, leader of the country's small Druze sect, an offshoot of Islam. In Dr. Sayid's village and other areas of southern Lebanon, previously strong support for the Lebanese Communist Party wilted as Hezbollah became the dominant force. Hezbollah's reputation was boosted by its fierce resistance to Israel and its provision of medical care and other services.
In its first public manifesto issued in 1985, Hezbollah declared itself hostile to "both the USSR and the U.S., both capitalism and communism, for both are incapable of laying the foundations for a just society." Though focused on the struggle with Israel, the manifesto also sought a wider audience, addressed to "all the Oppressed of Lebanon and the World." Eventually the Lebanese Communists began cooperating with Hezbollah, attracted mainly by its power but also finding common cause in its emphasis on championing the poor.
Amid the unraveling of the Soviet Union, few outside Lebanon paid much attention to the global pretensions of Hezbollah. Then came the al Qaeda attacks on America of 2001. Washington, traumatized, launched a "war on terror" against what it viewed as a small group of homicidal religious zealots.
As anger at the U.S. mounted in 2003 ahead of the invasion in Iraq, the snowballing antiwar movement took on a curious aspect, particularly in Europe: an alliance of forces that previously loathed each other.
At a big Islamic festival this summer supported by London's mayor, Mr. Livingston, Islamist activists and left-wing politicians declared their solidarity. "Muslims and the left must and can come together, because we face the same enemies -- imperialism, colonialism and racism," said Redmond O'Neill, a senior aide to Mr. Livingston.
In Aytaroun, the Lebanese village near the border with Israel, Dr. Sayid, the Soviet-trained physician, has abandoned the socialist dreams of his youth. Communism, he concedes, "is not going to take root in this soil."
He has quit the Communist Party and now serves Hezbollah, working at a Hezbollah hospital bedecked with Islamic inscriptions and portraits of Iranian ayatollahs. When the war started this summer, his wife, an Orthodox Christian from Belarus, and three children left for her homeland. Dr. Sayid stayed behind to treat the injured, including Hezbollah fighters.
On a recent afternoon, Dr. Sayid sat with a group of Hezbollah activists in the office of the local mayor, also of Hezbollah. The mayor was wounded in the leg during the war and Mr. Sayid has been treating him.
One of the group showed off pictures of Hezbollah's "divine victory" -- an Israeli tank on its side, an Israeli warship in flames. Dr. Sayid says he is "not fully in agreement" with Hezbollah. But he believes it can succeed where communism failed. "It is strong. People support it." Hezbollah, he says, "shows the world America is wrong."
2. Commandment to build the Temple
The Temple - Beis ha-Bechirah
http://www.torah.org/
We are commanded to make a house [i.e., a Temple] for Ha-Shem [the Almighty], as it
says "And they shall make Me a Sanctuary" (Ex. 25:8). Since the time of David it is forbidden to make this Temple anywhere but on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem,
as it says
"And David said: This is the house of Ha-Shem the G-d" (I Chronicles 22:1)
and it says "
This is My eternal resting place" (Psalms 132:14).
The Sanctuary and the city of
Jerusalem were sanctified by Solomon; they remain holy even when the
Temple does not exist. They can be added to only by a king, a prophet, and
a Sanhedrin. We are commanded to respect the Temple, as it says
"And you
shall fear My Sanctuary" (Lev. 19:30; 26:2).
Important: Brit-Am is responsible for the heading which is deliberately provocative.
In practice most of the Orthodox Jews would be against building the
Temple at this stage unless certain conditions arise which are unlikely to do
so at present.
Nevertheless, it is something to think about.
3. ANTI-SEMITISM AT GERMAN SCHOOLS
SOURCE http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,453402,00.html
ANTI-SEMITISM AT GERMAN SCHOOLS: Insults Against Jews on the Rise
By Bjrn Hengst and Jan Friedmann / SPIEGEL ONLINE / December 8, 2006
Right-wing adolescents and young Muslims are displaying levels of
anti-Semitism that were long considered unthinkable in Germany. At many
German schools, the word "Jew" is becoming an insult again. German
politicians don't seem to know how to respond.
The Jewish High School in Berlin's central Mitte district resembles a
high-security ward. Those who want to access the imposing old building on
Grosse Hamburger Strasse have to pass through a meticulous security check.
The building is surrounded by a fence several meters high and video
cameras register every move. Policemen stand guard in front of the
building.
"We're no ghetto," school director Barbara Wittig clarifies. "We offer
those children protection who have to fear discrimination at other
schools," she adds. And such cases have increased dramatically in the past
two years. "I always though Jews were integrated into German society,"
says Wittig. "I would never have thought it possible for anti-Semitism to
express itself as virulently as it has recently."
As of this week, Wittig's students have included two girls who
previously attended the public, non-confessional Lina-Morgenstern High
School in Berlin's Kreuzberg neighborhood. Their woes attracted
considerable public attention. For months, one of the two girls, who is 14
years old, suffered anti-Semitic insults from adolescents with an Arab
background. They also beat her and spat on her. Walking to school became
like running the gauntlet for her. Her tormentors would hide in wait for
her and chase her through the streets. In the end the girl had to be given
police protection on her way to school.
Anti-Semitism on the rise
These events in Kreuzberg represent an especially drastic example, but
they're not the exception. Berlin's state parliament lists 62 reported
cases under the category "(right-wing) extremism" in its study "Indicators
of Violence at Berlin's Schools, 2004/2005." That's a steep increase in
comparison with the previous year, when only 39 cases were registered. The
category "(right-wing) extremism" includes "anti-Semitic, racist /
xenophobic and right-wing extremist remarks" by children and adolescents,
in addition to remarks that "incite racial hatred or express
fundamentalist / Islamist fundamentalist views."
One high school student in Berlin's Steglitz-Zehlendorf district said in
class: "All Jews must be gassed." Students in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg
district locked another student inside the chemistry lab and said: "Now
we'll turn on the gas." A non-German child at an elementary school in
Treptow-Kpenick insulted his teacher by calling her a "Jew," a "witch"
and a "sea cow." When a teaching aid in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg tried to
settle an argument between students, he was told: "Piss off, Jew!"
And the surge of anti-Semitism seems to be growing. In November,
Berlin's public authorities had already registered more cases of
anti-Semitism than during the entire previous year. A recent study by the
European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) also criticized
cases of anti-Semitism, racism and right-wing extremism at German
schools.
Right-wing extremists take up Nazi slogans
This week, in the town of Grimmen in West Pomerania, right-wing
adolescents mobilized against an exhibition on Anne Frank, disparaging her
diary as a forgery. In October, several adolescents in Parey, a town in
Germany's Saxony-Anhalt region, forced their 16- year- old classmate to
walk across the school yard wearing a large sign during lunch break. The
sign read: "In this town I'm the biggest swine / Because of the Jewish
friends of mine." It's a phrase from the Nazi era, used to humiliate
people with Jewish friends.
A teacher intervened, took the sign away and called the police. The
students responsible for the incident, who are aged between 14 and 16, are
under criminal investigation. The charges are incitement of racial hatred,
coercion and defamation. One of the students is also accused of assault.
4. News Site of Interest
http://thedailyworldaffairsreport.blogspot.com/
Oil producers shun dollar
Oil producing countries have reduced their exposure to the dollar to the lowest level in two years and shifted oil income into euros, yen and sterling, according to new data from the Bank for International Settlements.
5. Quotation
Enthusiasm and persistence can make an average person superior. Indifference and lethargy can make a superior person average.
William Ward.
Jerusalem News-548
Date: 22 Kislev 5767, 13 December 2006
Contents:
1. Dead Sea Project Planned
2. USA Warns Syria and Iran over Lebanon
3. Martial Arts Notes
(a) Dr. Richard Griffiths: Shamgar's ox-goad and the martial arts
(b) Martial Arts: Advice to Young People
(c) Scott Sullivan
1. Dead Sea Project Planned
From: imra@netvision.net.il
Subject: Excerpts:Re-emergence of Red Sea -Dead Sea canal project.
ARAB NEWS (Saudi) 11 Dec.'06:"Accord on Canal Study to Save Dead Sea"by
Abdul Jalil Mustafa "
Extracts:
AMMAN, 11 December 2006 - Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority
yesterday launched a feasibility study to help save the rapidly vanishing
Dead Sea, a joint statement said.
The Jordanian government is pushing ahead with efforts to enlist world
support for a controversial project envisaging the establishment of a
multibillion-dollar canal between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea despite
criticism at home.
Considered the first step to save the Dead Sea from drying up in less than
50 years, the study will examine the economic and environmental effects of
establishing a 200-kilometre pipeline to transfer Red Sea water into the
Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, according to Jordanian officials.
France, The Netherlands, Japan and the United States will finance the
two-year study estimated to cost around $15 million. It will be managed by
the World Bank, the statement said. The study will examine the feasibility
of building a canal to channel water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, where
the level has been falling by about a meter (more than three feet) each
year, it said.
The agreement was reached between Jordan's Water Minister Zafer Al-Aalem,
Israeli Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer and Mohammed Mustafa,
the economic adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Also present at the meeting on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea were
representatives of the World Bank, Europe, Japan and North America.
"The meeting, hosted by the Jordanian government, launched a feasibility
study and environment and social assessment for the Red Sea-Dead Sea water
conveyance study," the study said.
The meeting capped more than three years of talks between Jordanian, Israeli
and Palestinian experts to prepare and finalize the study's terms of
reference.
"The significance of this joint study is not merely its importance in
restoring the well-being of the Dead Sea and the producing of fresh water,"
Alaam said.
The Palestinian representative said "immediate attention to the current
crisis of the Dead Sea is urgent and important."
But Jordan's Islamic-led opposition rejects the project, dubbing it a
"political move" that has the primary aim of promoting normalization of ties
with the Jewish state.
"A technical study already conducted has shown that the project involves
political, economic, environmental and geological perils to Jordan," he
said.
In addition to preserving the Dead Sea, the project involves the
construction of a hydroelectric power plant and a desalination facility,
with an estimated cost of two billion dollars, he added. Environmentalists
have expressed concern over the project on the grounds that the consistency
of the Dead Sea would be irreversibly altered if normal sea water is allowed
to flow into it.
The Dead Sea's salt concentration is about 33 percent, compared with three
percent in the Mediterranean.
--------------------------------------------
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il
Rice warns Syria and Iran over Lebanon protests
Rice makes it clear that US, international community couldn't ever tolerate
"reassertion of Syrian authority in Lebanon." She adds that Syria and Iran
must not think that Lebanon's future is up for negotiation. On Iran she says
she is optimistic about UN Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on
nuclear-aspiring state
2. USA Warns Syria and Iran over Lebanon
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3338880,00.html
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Syria and Iran in an exclusive
interview with AFP that the "future of Lebanon is not an issue for
negotiation."
In an exclusive interview with AFP, Rice rejected mounting calls to deal
directly with Damascus and Tehran as part of efforts to end the crisis in
Iraq and said the two states should have no doubts about Washington's
commitment to the embattled government of Lebanon.
"In no way is the US going to get into a situation where it is even a
conceivable notion on the part of Syria or Iran that the future of Lebanon
would somehow be compromised for other interests of the US," she said.
"I want to make it very clear that the future of Lebanon is not an issue for
negotiation with anybody," she said.
3. Martial Arts Notes
(a) Dr. Richard Griffiths: Shamgar's ox-goad and the martial arts
I listened to a very stirring sermon a few weeks ago on Shamgar. Shamgar was out farming, obeying God's command, while the other Israelites were in hiding when he was attacked by the Philistines. He slays 600 of them with an ox-goad. At first glance an ox-goad seems an unlikely weapon yet many ancient peoples have developed very effective fighting systems with staffs. One wonders if Shamgar like the people of Okinawa (who used farming instruments against the Japanese) was practicing with the ox-goad and developing his own very lethal martial art. I am sure God intervened but God also often seems to intervene to stamp his approval on diligence, ingenuity and courage.
Dr. Richard Griffiths
Shamgar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Philistines from the maritime plain had made incursions into the Hebrew upland for the purposes of plunder, when Shamgar, the son of Anath (Hebrew ש גר בן־ע ת), otherwise unknown, headed an uprising for the purpose of freeing the land from this oppression. Shamgar repelled the invasion by slaying 600 men with an ox goad, a formidable weapon sometimes ten feet long. He was probably contemporary for a time with Deborah and Barak (Judg. 3:31; 5:6).
An ox goad is traditionally a wooden stick or pole with a pointed tip.
Some are reported to have been 8 to 10 feet long, others 5 to 7 feet. The goad is cited as the origin of two units of measurement: the rod, which is 16.5 feet; and the goad, which is 4.5 feet. Some were 2 inches in diameter at the thickest end; others were 6 inches.
Ploughing with oxen. A miniature from an early-sixteenth-century manuscript held at the British Museum. The ploughman on the right appears to carry a goad. The ox on the left appears to react to it. Note the flat blade at the other end of the goad.
[edit] Biblical usage
Easton's Bible Dictionary says that the ox goad is "mentioned only in Judges 3:31, the weapon with which Shamgar (q.v.) slew six hundred Philistines." (see also Strong's H4451) and quotes from "Porter's Syria, etc." that "The ploughman still carries his goad, a weapon apparently more fitted for the hand of the soldier than the peaceful husbandman. The one I saw was of the 'oak of Bashan', and measured upwards of ten feet in length. At one end was an iron spear, and at the other a piece of the same metal flattened. One can well understand how a warrior might use such a weapon with effect in the battle-field"
The flat blade was likely used to clean caked mud off the plough and suchlike.
However, goads are mentioned in two other places in the Bible: I Samuel 13:21 and Ecclesiastes 12:11 (Strong's H1861). The word "pricks", meaning a goad, is used in Acts 9:5 and 26:14 (King James Version), see also Strong's G2759 and Road to Damascus.
According to the Jewish Encyclopedia article on Plowing:
"The plower holds in his right hand the plow-handle and the guiding-rope, and in his left the ox-goad ("malmad"; Judges iii. 31; I Sam. xiii. 21). To one end of the latter is attached an iron point, with which the oxen are goaded to quicken their pace, and to the other end is fastened a small iron shovel which is used to remove the earth clinging to the plowshare."
This entry incorporates text from the public domain Easton's Bible Dictionary, originally published in 1897.
[edit] Goad for elephants: the ankus
An ankus is a hooked goad for controlling an elephant. See ankus for more information.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goad"
Categories: Articles lacking sources from July 200
(b) Martial Arts: Advice to Young People
A lot of us do not work with our hands or get around physically very much.
We need exercise.
Sport is positive since it contributes to physical and mental health
and provides needed social interaction.
Learning a martial art can be useful.
This does not have to be dangerous and if done properly
a participant may be even less prone to injury than in most other sports.
Which martial art you learn depends upon your physical build and psychological disposition.
A very important factor is availability.
Will it be easy for you to attend lessons? Are the lessons frequent enough?
Can you learn from the teacher available?
Rabbi Avraham Feld of Maccabee Institute and Brit-Am Counsellor
was a champion wrestler in his youth.
Rabbi Feld has had much experience in the field of self-defence.
One of his projects at present is teaching groups of youths in need
the basics of self-defence bringing some of them to a high level.
All other things being equal he says that the optimum
course of learning would include a combination of Siamese (Thai) Kick-boxing
and one of the grappling arts such as judo or wrestling.
Rabbi Feld has also prepared an interesting article concerning Martial Arts, Fighting Skills, and the Bible.
Yehonatan Davidiy (son of Yair Davidiy) was advised by an expert in the IDF
that for quick effective results a young male of average health
should learn Siamese Boxing. In fact his words were:
"Only Siamese Boxing!"
I myself was always reasonably healthy but suffered from severe limitations
of physical co-ordination. I tried a few martial arts and found that Siamese
Boxing was the best for me. It is very basic, provides effective self-defence
skills, a quick boost in physical stamina, and allows for speedy advancement
according to individual ability.
In its western version it lacks the trappings and rigmarole associated with most Asian martial arts
and which I found inhibiting.
I learnt mostly with the Benny Cogan Team in Jerusalem.
(c) Scott Sullivan
We were sent the note below.
How they got our address we do not know.
We have no contact with these people, cannot vouch for them,
and are not receiving any benefit from them.
All we know is what we see on their web site
and it looks impressive enough.
Hi,
My name is Scott Sullivan and I teach Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai
seminars both across the U.S. and internationally. I found your email
address listed on a martial arts related site. I don't know if your
training group or school is interested or not, but I give a good
percentage back to the host for hosting either a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or
Muay Thai seminar. If this sounds like something useful to you, contact us
or check out our website for more information:
Muay Thai - http://www.bambammartialarts.com/muaythaisem.htm
BJJ - http://www.bambammartialarts.com/bjjsem.htm
Looking forward to meeting with you and training together,
Scott
Scott M. Sullivan
Bam Bam Martial Arts
1132 Colquitt St
Houston TX 77006
713.807.8802
www.bambammartialarts.com
Jerusalem News-549
Date: 23 Kislev 5767, 14 December 2006
Contents:
1. Winston Churchill Painting Sells for Record Sum
2. Pictures by Winston Churchill
3. Denial of Holocaust nothing new in Iran
Ties to Hitler led to plots against British and Jews
1. Winston Churchill Painting Sells for Record Sum
http://israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=117343
10:21 Dec 13, '06 / 22 Kislev 5767
(IsraelNN.com) An oil painting of a Moroccan landscape by former British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill sold for 612,500 in auction at Sotheby's in London Monday. The figure was far in excess of the painting's estimated price tag of 250,000.
View of Tinherir shows the bend of a shallow river in Marrakech, with palm trees and mountains in the background. It is believed to date from from January 1951, during one of Churchill's frequent visits to Morocco and shortly before his re-election to Downing Street after the fall of Clement Attlee's postwar Labour government.
2. Pictures by Winston Churchill
Portrait of Winston Churchill by Sir John Lavery, 1921
3.
Denial of Holocaust nothing new in Iran
Ties to Hitler led to plots against British and Jews
Edwin Black
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/01/08/INGODGH99Q1.DTL&type=printable
San Francisco Chronicle
Extracts Only:
The president of Iran need only look to his country's Hitler-era past to discover that Iran and Iranians were strongly connected to the Holocaust and the Hitler regime, as was the entire Islamic world under the leadership of the mufti of Jerusalem.
Iran's axis with the Third Reich began during the prewar years, when it welcomed Nazi Gestapo agents and other operatives to Tehran, allowing them to use the city as a base for Middle East agitation against the British and the region's Jews.
Key among these German agents was Fritz Grobba, Berlin's envoy to the Middle East, who was often called "the German Lawrence," because he promised a Pan-Islamic state stretching from Casablanca to Tehran.
Relations between Berlin and Tehran were strong from the moment Hitler came to power in 1933. At that time, Reza Shah Pahlavi's nation was known as Persia. The shah became a stalwart admirer of Hitler, Nazism and the concept of the Aryan master race. He also sought the Reich's help in reducing British petro-political domination.
So intense was the shah's identification with the Third Reich that in 1935 he renamed his ancient country "Iran," which in Farsi means Aryan and refers to the Proto-Indo-European lineage that Nazi racial theorists and Persian ethnologists cherished.
Shortly after World War II broke out in 1939, the Mufti of Jerusalem crafted a strategic alliance with Hitler to exchange Iraqi oil for active Arab and Islamic participation in the murder of Jews in the Mideast and Eastern Europe. This was predicated on support for a pan-Arab state and Arab control over Palestine.
During the war years, Iran became a haven for Gestapo agents. It was from Iran that the seeds of the abortive 1941 pro-Nazi coup in Baghdad were planted. After Churchill's forces booted the Nazis out of Iraq in June 1941, German aircrews supporting Nazi bombers escaped across Iraq's northern border back into Iran.
Likewise, the mufti of Jerusalem was spirited across the border to Tehran, where he continued to call for the destruction of the Jews and the defeat of the British.
His venomous rhetoric filled the newspapers and radio broadcasts in Tehran. The mufti was a vocal opponent of allowing Jewish refugees to be transported or ransomed into Jewish Palestine. Instead, he wanted them shipped to the gas chambers of Poland.
In the summer of 1941, the mufti, with the support of key Iranian military and government leaders, advocated implementing in Iran what had failed months earlier in Iraq. The plan once again was for a total diversion of oil from the Allies to the Nazis, in exchange for the accelerated destruction of the Jews in Eastern Europe and the Nazis' support for an Arab state. Through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., Iran had already been supplying Hitler's forces in occupied Czechoslovakia and Austria.
In October 1941, British, USSR other allied forces invaded Iran to break up the Iran-Nazi alliance. Pro-Nazi generals and ministers were arrested, and the shah's son was installed in power. The mufti scampered into the Italian embassy, where he shaved his beard and dyed his hair. In this disguise, he was allowed to leave the country along with the rest of the Italian delegation.
Once the mufti relocated permanently to Berlin, where he established his own Reich-supported "bureau," he was given airtime on Radio Berlin. From Berlin and other fascist capitals in Europe, the mufti continued to agitate for international Jewish destruction, as well as a pan-Islamic alliance with the Nazi regime.
He called upon all Muslims to "kill the Jews wherever you see them." In Tehran's marketplace, it was common to see placards that declared, "In heaven, Allah is your master. On Earth, it is Adolf Hitler."
When the mufti raised three divisions of Islamic Waffen SS to undertake cruel operations in Bosnia, among the 30,000 killers were some volunteer contingents from Iran. Iranian Nazis, along with the other Muslim Waffen SS, operated under the direct supervision of Heinrich Himmler and were responsible for barbarous actions against Jews and others in Bosnia. Recruitment for the murderous "Handschar Divisions" was done openly in Iran.
Since the shah's downfall, Iran has become a center for organized international Holocaust denial and has helped elevate the endeavor from fringe hate speech to a state-approved pseudo-intellectual debate.
In international forums and on state-controlled radio, Iranian university experts and journalists help validate the revisionist views that Jews were never gassed or murdered in great numbers during the Holocaust.
Indeed, Iran has become a refuge for the biggest names in European Holocaust denial.
Jerusalem News-550
Date: 26 Kislev 5767, 17 December 2006
Contents:
1. Sudanese woman: Arabs murder, Israel defends
2. Head Shapes and Environment
3. The Reds are coming and gone
1. Sudanese woman: Arabs murder, Israel defends
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3337609,00.html
Roee Nahmias
Extracts Only:
VIDEO - The moderate voice of Islam has been heard once again on Arab media, and it appears Israelis can add some of Sudan's population to the list of its new friends.
Taraji Mustafa, a Sudanese human rights activist living in Canada, recently said in an interview with the al-Arabiya network, "Ever since I announced the establishment of the fellowship association between Israel and Sudan, the phone in my house hasn't stopped ringing for two days.
"The response was amazing, from all around the world as well as from Sudan. I got calls from many students and citizens, as well as lawyers who said that they plan to sue the Sudanese government for noting in its passport that citizens are allowed to travel to all countries in the world apart from Israel, thus preventing a large number of its Christian and Muslim citizens from visiting Jerusalem," she added.
Racist attitude
"We were able to meet good people of the Israeli people and I am here to say clearly all traditions and stereotypes I heard about Jews and Israelis were erroneous," she said.
"Today there is a Sudanese exiles in Israel who are being protected, and this while we were massacred in Cairo, assassinated in Iraq or expelled from Jordan," she added.
And what about Arabs? "Over the years that passed since we joined the Arab League and won our independence the Arabs failed to give us the feeling that we are Arabs. They always they had an attitude towards the Sudanese people based on stereotypes," she charged.
"The Arabs are involved in what is happening in Sudan in favor of the tyrant regimes and I don't want to remind you of the disappearance of thousands of members of the opposition in Cairo and the assassinations," she said.
She blamed the Arab media of fanning racist attitudes towards the Sudanese, citing that black actors always play the role of waiters, chauffeurs and goalkeepers in Egyptian movies.
Mustafa told al-Arabiya's internet Web site that the setting up of the friendship union was a response to the Arabs' disregard of the crisis in the Darfur region, and to end Sudan's "unfounded enmity towards Israel."
2. Head Shapes and Environment
Cranial morphology and population history
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/
posted by Dienekes on Friday, December 08, 2006
Extracts Only
Cranial morphology has been used to determine patterns of population history, but it is not "neutral" but is correlated with climate. For examp