July 30, 2009
|
Tisha B' Av - The kings of the earth take their stand |
Psalms 2:12
Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way,
For His wrath may soon be kindled.
How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!
|
|
Luke 21:24b
...Jerusalem will be trampled under foot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
Zechariah 12:2-3
"Behold, I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that causes reeling to all the peoples around; and when the siege is against Jerusalem, it will also be against Judah. "It will come about in that day that I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples; all who lift it will be severely injured. And all the nations of the earth will be gathered against it.
Psalms 122:6a
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem
|
|
Psalms 2:1-4
Why are the nations in an uproar
And the peoples devising a vain thing?
The kings of the earth take their stand
And the rulers take counsel together
Against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying,
"Let us tear their fetters apart
And cast away their cords from us!"
He who sits in the heavens laughs,
The Lord scoffs at them.
Joel 3:1-2
"For behold, in those days and at that time,
When I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem,
I will gather all the nations
And bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat.
Then I will enter into judgment with them there
On behalf of My people and My inheritance, Israel,
Whom they have scattered among the nations;
And they have divided up My land.
Obadiah 1:15
"For the day of the LORD draws near on all the nations.
As you have done, it will be done to you.
Your dealings will return on your own head.
| |
|
|
|
| Shalom in Christ Jesus, |
 Ed Note: Tisha b'Av (fast of the ninth of Av) is on Thursday (Wednesday night), 9 Av 5769 (July 30, 2009)
This alert is, as much as
possible, is a comprehensive overview of recent happenings concerning the most
important nation ever in the history of mankind, Israel.
That is not my opinion, but
fact because the Word of God declares it. Most of the world, and even more
startlingly, most professing Christians deny this. How can this be when the
whole context and content of Scripture point to God working through this
nation? It is actually not that surprising when this same world and majority of
professing 'Christians' are blinded from understanding that same Word of God
that declares from start to finish the saving gospel of grace by faith in His
Son, The Lord Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man and fully an ethnic Hebrew,
also known as Yeshua Ha Mochiach (Jesus the Messiah).
This topic as most others
concerning the end times has become more difficult to follow as events have
sped up in recent times as the return of Christ grows closer. As I have stated
on many occasions previously, it used to be that incidents of significance
happened on a much more limited basis. Now they seem to be happening on a daily
if not hourly pace at times. The problem with this is that all we know (at the
specific moment) is that all the prophesied players are in place and in a state
of motion, but the significance does not immediately come to light.
We can look back at the
division of the biblical land of Israel in 1947 by Britain and the UN (by UN
resolution 181) before it's rebirth on May 14, 1948 and see a incredible and
direct fulfillment of Joel 3:2, and the rebirth itself was a direct fulfillment
of Isaiah 66:8. However, with today's fast paced events it can be nearly
impossible to decipher what is substantial or critical towards understanding
biblical prophecy and what is just background noise or worse, outright
deception. The clich� comes to mind, 'you can't see the forest for the trees'.
I pray this collection of
articles will help to keep you abreast of the some of the latest affairs of the
Middle East and as always prayerfully go before the Lord as ask Him to guide
you by His Spirit with all wisdom and knowledge on how you might minister to
others and keep your lamps filled with oil and shinning as the night draws
near.
May the Lord bless you and
keep you,
BE/\LERT!
Scott Brisk
|
Son of man, set your face toward Gog:
Worldwide Coalition, Media Putting Israel in Corner
|
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - July 21, 2009
France summoned Daniel Shek, the Israeli ambassador in Paris, to demand that Israel stop all building for Jews in eastern Jerusalem. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Tuesday afternoon. "The Israeli ambassador in Washington was summoned and the ambassador in Paris has now been summoned to the Foreign Ministry," Kouchner told reporters at a weekly news conference.
He was referring to Israeli Ambassador in Washington Michael Oren, who was reportedly summoned, although several media sources in the United States have contradicted the report, stating that his meeting with American government officials was part of routine discussions.
France's bold move, coupled with increasingly harsh criticism of Israel by Russia, have strengthened U.S. President Barack Obama's determination to enforce his demands that Israel stop construction for Jews. American officials said that the building activity is a negative factor on negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. Neither the State Department nor the White House has commented whether its demands extend to construction for Arabs.
The apparent restriction on Jews in effect would remove from negotiations the status of eastern Jerusalem, which was restored to the Jewish State in the Six-Day War 42 years ago. Hundreds of buildings in the area are owned by Jews who were forced to leave their homes under the British Mandate and during the War of Independence in 1948.
Foreign media also have joined the coalition, headlining on Tuesday a report that while Israelis in Judea and Samaria comprise 3.1 percent of the entire Israel population, the government allocates 4.1 percent of the budget for Jewish communities in the area. The report did not include the parts of Jerusalem that were restored to Israel in 1967 and where an additional 4 percent of the total population lives.
Russia has joined forces with President Obama. Its special Middle East envoy Alexander Salatanov, during at visit to Jordan, called for a "complete cessation" of what foreign media are increasingly calling "settlements' in eastern Jerusalem. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko demanded on Tuesday that "the settlement should be stopped immediately in line with the Roadmap," although the American plan does not stipulate a unilateral halt to construction. It states that the status of Jerusalem will be resolved by negotiations between the PA and Israel.
President Obama is sending U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell back to Israel this week and the Palestinian Authority in an effort to reach an understanding will all sides. Previous planned meetings with Israeli officials were postponed twice because of the wide gap while Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has made it clear that eastern Jerusalem is under Israeli sovereignty. ...
TIME magazine noted on Tuesday that it appears President Obama is moving towards a fixed timetable to resolve the conflict. However, it added, "The palpable distrust each side [Israel and the Palestinian Authority] has shown of the other during Obama's initial mediation effort casts a pall of doubt over their readiness to negotiate a deal.
The magazine reported that the Americans government is trying to seek concessions from the PA and the Arab world to pacify Israel, but the chances for success are slim while the PA enjoys the support of most of the world.
TIME added, "Whatever his intentions, [PA Chairman Mahmoud] Abbas' political weakness has effectively neutered him as an effective peace interlocutor.... Abbas is under pressure from Fatah leaders who openly challenge his fealty to Washington...." ...
Read Full Report
|
|
 |
Live Teaching Engagements
|
|
|
|
|
|
It's all about Jerusalem
|
'Obama' Think-Tank: Israel Should Cede Jerusalem Sovereignty
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hillel Fendel - July 1, 2009
A think tank which is arguably the most influential in Washington is proposing an "interim" neutral administration to govern Jerusalem instead of Israel. ...
Four weeks ago, CAP held a panel discussion based on the premise that the Old City of Jerusalem is the main impediment in finding a solution to the Israel-Arab problem in the Holy Land. Michael Bell, a former Canadian Ambassador to Jordan, Egypt and Israel, presented a plan entitled the Jerusalem Old City Initiative. The plan does not call for the internationalization of Jerusalem -- but is not far off from that. It recommends that both Israel and a future state of Palestine appoint a third-party administrator that would run and police the city.
Bell explained that the plan calls for an administration or regime that would govern the Old City of Jerusalem for an interim period, without either Israel or the PA giving up their demands for sovereignty: "Frankly, I don't think there's going to be any agreement on sovereignty. I think that the two sides need not cede their demands for sovereignty; these claims can remain exactly as they are today. The sides would simply agree to delay the implementation or assertion of these claims until after an agreement is reached. Until then, a special administration would be set up, with the two sides agreeing to set this up, at least on an interim basis. And what this would do ... would be to ensure dignity, human rights and equity for all living in the Old City, all visitors, and all pilgrims." ...
Read Full Report
US Policy: Jews in Eastern Jerusalem are Unwanted 'Settlers'
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - July 22, 2009
The United States State Department made it clear Tuesday that Jewish neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem are "settlements," which U.S. President Barack Obama has called "illegitimate."
U.S. officials previously have used the term "settlement" to describe the Har Homa neighborhood, opposite the neighborhood of Gilo on the southern end of Jerusalem. Like French Hill, Ramot and eastern Talpiot, it was restored to Israel in the Six Day War in 1967 and officially annexed to Jerusalem in 1980. Approximately 300,000 Jews live in these neighborhoods.
The Obama administration has not stated whether it makes a distinction between building in Har Homa and the other neighborhoods.
Reporters covering the daily State Department press briefing have recently asked tough-than-usual questions concerning what they see as the United States trying to determine the future borders of a Palestinian Authority state instead of allowing Israel and the PA to negotiate directly. ...
Read Full Report
Israel rejects US call to halt Jerusalem project
ASSOCIATED PRESS - By Amy Teibel - July 20, 2009
JERUSALEM - [...] On Sunday, Netanyahu told his Cabinet there would be no limits on Jewish construction anywhere in "unified Jerusalem."
"We cannot accept the fact that Jews wouldn't be entitled to live and buy anywhere in Jerusalem," Netanyahu declared, calling Israeli sovereignty over the entire city "indisputable."
"I can only imagine what would happen if someone suggested Jews could not live in certain neighborhoods in New York, London, Paris or Rome. There would certainly be a major international outcry," Netanyahu said.
The international community considers Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem to be settlements and an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking because they complicate a possible division of the city between Israelis and Palestinians. Israel does not regard them as settlements because it annexed east Jerusalem in 1967 after capturing it in June of that year.
East Jerusalem is an especially volatile issue because it is the site of key Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites. The Palestinians want the traditionally Arab sector of the city to be the capital of their future state. ...
Read Full Report
'Jerusalem Is Not a Settlement,' Netanyahu Reminds Obama Administration
CYBERCAST NEWS SERVICE (CNSN.com) [Media Research Center] - By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor - July 20, 2009
An already uneasy relationship between the U.S. and Israeli governments looks set to become significantly more chilly with the Obama administration's decision to challenge Israel's freedom of actions in its own capital.
With the exception of the dovish left wing, Israeli control over Jerusalem now and in the future enjoys support across the Israeli political spectrum; the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) wants the city - or at least the eastern portion - for its future capital. ...
It has been the policy of all Israeli governments, Netanyahu said, that "united Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people and of the State of Israel." ...
A dispute between the U.S. and its historically close Mideast ally has been brewing for months over the issue of construction work in Jewish towns in disputed territories - "illegal settlements" that Washington contends are an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace.
But taking issue with a planed apartment building in Jerusalem - on a site near Israeli government offices including its national police headquarters - goes a step further, essentially lining up with the Islamic world's contention that parts of Israel's capital constitute "settlements" in "occupied territory."
The Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported that Netanyahu had told his advisers Sunday that he was surprised at the U.S. demand, as he had made it clear to President Obama when they met in Washington in May that "Jerusalem is not a settlement, and it has nothing to do with discussions on a freeze." ...
Read Full Report
Peres Challenges Saudi King to Visit Jerusalem
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - July 1, 2009
President Shimon Peres, speaking at an interfaith conference in Kazakhstan, challenged Saudi Arabian King Abdullah to visit Jerusalem, which Muslims claim as their third holiest city. As the president spoke, the Iranian delegation walked out. Its representative explained, "Peres represents an abominable Zionist personality, and his place is not here."
The call to the Saudi king came one month after U.S. President Barack Obama, in his Cairo speech to the Muslim world, urged the Arab world to fly the Israeli flag, allow Israel's El Al airplanes to fly over their skies and recognize Jerusalem as the home of three faiths. "I call on his excellency, the king of Saudi Arabia, to meet wherever you wish, in Jerusalem, in Riyadh, in this beautiful country of Kazakhstan; we will be able to realize your vision" of peace, the president said.
Muslims consider the Israeli capital to be their third holiest city, but its leaders rarely have visited there or anywhere else in Israel. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's only trip to Jerusalem was for the funeral of former Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin.
In his speech, President Peres told the audience, "We must stand up and retract fanaticism. Their god is not our god, the god of killers is not our god." ...
Read Full Report
Obama promises Arabs Jerusalem will be theirs
WORLDNETDAILY - By Aaron Klein - May 30, 2009
JERUSALEM - President Obama and his administration told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during a meeting last week the U.S. foresees the creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, according to a top PA official speaking to WND.
"The American administration was very friendly to the position of the PA," said Nimer Hamad, Abbas' senior political adviser.
"Abu Mazen (Abbas) heard from Obama and his administration in a very categorical way that a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital is in the American national and security interest," Hamad said.
Another PA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told WND today that Obama informed Abbas he would not let Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "get in the way" of normalizing U.S. relations with the Arab and greater Muslim world.
"We were told from this new administration they will not allow a Netanyahu government to hurt their efforts of rehabilitating U.S. relations with the Arab and Islamic world, which is a high priority of Obama," the official said, speaking during a visit to Cairo.
Read Full Report
|
Obama tells Jews to stop building in Jerusalem
'Not a single Jewish home without Obama's OK'
|
Official says U.S. guarantees make him confident Jews won't build in biblical territory
WORLDNETDAILY - By Aaron Klein - June 30, 2009
TEL AVIV - Not a single Jewish home will be built in the strategic West Bank without approval of the Obama administration and the Palestinians, Nimer Hamad, senior political adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told WND.
In spite of recent reports Israel will build 50 new homes in a northern West Bank Jewish community, Hamad said U.S. guarantees make him "confident" such housing will not actually be constructed.
"The guarantees we received from the U.S. make us confident all the talks about the 50 houses in Adam are only a piece of meat (Defense Minister Ehud) Barak threw to the settlers," Hamad said.
"I am not excited about these reports. I am confident no single housing will actually be built outside an agreement between the Palestinians, the Americans and the Israelis," he said. ...
Obama tells Jews to stop building in Jerusalem
Earlier this week, WND quoted a top PA negotiator stating the Obama administration told the Palestinians the "golden era" of Israeli construction in sections of Jerusalem and the strategic West Bank will soon come to an end.
"The U.S. assured us that for the first time since 1967, we are going into a period where there will not be allowed a single construction effort on the part of the Israelis in the settlements, including in Gush Etzion, Maale Adumum and eastern Jerusalem," said the negotiator, speaking from Ramallah on condition his name be withheld.
Read Full Report
|
Israel has already forfeited Jerusalem
|
Jews barred as U.S. helps Arabs fortify their presence in holy city
WORLDNETDAILY - By Aaron Klein - March 2, 2009
JERUSALEM - Sections of Jerusalem have essentially been forfeited on the ground to the Palestinian Authority, while Jews, including local landowners, are barred from entering parts of Israel's capital, a WND investigation has found.
The probe further determined the U.S. has been aiding the Palestinians in developing infrastructure in Jerusalem.
Also, it has emerged, the Israeli government has failed to stop Arabs from illegally building thousands of housing projects on Jerusalem land purchased and owned by a U.S. Jewish group for the express purpose of Jewish settlement, culminating in an Arab majority in the neighborhoods. ...
A tour of the three Jerusalem neighborhoods in question finds some surprising developments. Official PA logos and placards abound, including one glaring red street sign at the entrance to the neighborhoods warning Israelis to keep out. ...
Read Full Report
|
Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem
Jordan: Israel Faces War If It Does not Agree to Arab Term |
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - April 27, 2009
Israel faces all-out war within 18 months if it does not come to terms with the Arab world and allow the establishment of a new Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem, according to Jordan's King Abdullah II.
The Hashemite monarch also declared on America's Meet the Press television program Sunday that threats from Iran and Al Qaeda will fade away once Jerusalem is divided.
His position basically echoed the Palestinian Authority (PA) stand that its demands are a condition for peace and are not a matter for negotiation, despite diplomatic and media language about Israel and the PA each making concessions.
The king responded to virtually every question concerning the Middle East by pointing to Jerusalem. "In Arab and Muslim minds, the most emotional aspect is the Palestinian cause and that of Jerusalem. And from there leads all the other problems," he argued.
When program host David Gregory asked if it's not a "fantasy' to think that the problem of Al Qaeda will disappear so easily, the Jordanian monarch answered, "What -- what is Al Qaeda's platform is -- is the plight of the Palestinians in Jerusalem under occupation." ...
He followed the same track concerning Iran and "any crisis you want to talk about.... All roads lead back to Jerusalem." ...
Read Full Report
|
The 9th of Av
Tisha b'Av and Sovereignty On The Temple Mount
|
KOINONIA HOUSE - July 29, 2009
The Hebrew day of great tragedies, Tisha b'Av, falls at sundown this Wednesday, July 29. In remembrance, the Knesset has turned its focus to the Temple Mount, dominated by the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. While the Temple Mount is Judaism's holiest site, Jews are not permitted to worship on the mount itself for fear of inciting a riot by Muslims.
Tisha b'Av is simply Hebrew for the 9th day of the month of Av. Many disasters have befallen the Jews on this day throughout history. According to Jewish tradition, this was the day that God told the Children of Israel they were prohibited from entering the Promised Land because of disbelief. They were forced to wander in the desert forty more years until that adult generation had died out. That tragic day was just the beginning...
On the 9th of Av in:
- 586 BC, Solomon's Temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and the Babylonian captivity began;
- AD 70, the Second Temple, which stood during Christ's ministry, was destroyed by the Romans precisely as Jesus predicted in Luke 19;
- AD 135, the famous Bar Kokhba revolt was squelched when Bethar, the last Jewish stronghold, fell to the Romans;
- AD 136, the Roman Emperor Hadrian established a heathen temple to Jupiter on the site of the Jewish Temple. Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as a pagan city, and renamed the land as Palestina, to distance its Jewish heritage. The date when the Temple area was plowed under by the Romans was the 9th of Av.
The day has continued to be associated with grief for the Jewish people throughout history. For example, Pope Urban II declared the Crusades on the 9th of Av in 1242. The Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 on this day, and in 1942, the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were mass deported to the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland. Thus the 9th of Av, Tisha B'Av, has become a symbol of all the persecutions and misfortunes of the Jewish people, for the loss of their national independence and their sufferings in exile. Above all, it is a day of intense mourning for the destruction of the Temple.
This week, Israel's Knesset has taken a longing look once again toward the Temple Mount. Israel has technically controlled the site since the Six-Day War in 1967, but the Waqf, a Muslim council, manages the site. Israeli law is supposed to protect free access to the site, but the Israeli government enforces a ban on any non-Muslim prayer on the Temple Mount in order to avoid Muslim riots. The Knesset members took time this week to discuss the Temple Mount and the approach Israel should take on this holy site in today's world.
In the first session, Dr. Mordechai Keidar commented on the lack of a Palestinian connection to the Temple Mount, saying:
"Jerusalem does not appear in the Koran, not even once, not even in any one of the four different names the city has in Arabic. The struggle for Jerusalem is not territorial, it's theological. Is Judaism still a relevant religion, or do we give in to the Muslim claim that Judaism is no longer relevant? And that's why we heard from PA official Saeb Erekat not long ago that they will not recognize the State of Israel as a Jewish state even in 1000 years. Why is this? Because Judaism in their eyes is irrelevant, so how could a Jewish state be founded?"
Keidar also noted that the Palestinians are not moderate on the issue of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, but claim it as their own. He held up a PLO traditional garment, which bore the words, "Jerusalem is ours."
A Chabad rabbi who spoke argued that Israel would do well to lay a firm claim to sovereignty on the Temple Mount, believing that doing so would not harm Israel but would in fact win friends."When you tell the nations of the world the truth, not only will they stop fighting against you, but they'll even join forces with you," he explained.
East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount have been points of major contention in past efforts to negotiate a two-state agreement. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem, and the Jews do not want to give up this location that is so precious to Judaism. The world would never expect the Muslims to hand over control of the Kaaba in Mecca in order to keep peace, but the Jews are not free to worship on their holiest site because they fear Muslim violence. Knesset members spoke out in favor of educating people about the importance of the Temple Mount to Judaism.
Tisha b'Av is indeed a day of mourning. It is marked with sadness and fasting from food and drink. Observant Jews avoid bathing or washing clothes or enjoying entertainment like music or movies, and the Book of Lamentations is traditionally read both in the evening and during the day. On this day the Jews are reminded of their tragic history.
Yet, this day is also expressly linked with Israel's glorious destiny. The Jews also look forward to the ultimate rebuilding of the Temple, to a time when Tisha b'Av will become a day of joy and gladness (as it was foretold in Zechariah 8:19).
We do know that the Temple will be rebuilt because Jesus, John, and Paul all make reference to it. But we also know that this Temple will be desecrated by the Coming World Leader when he sets himself up to be worshiped. It is possible this prophetic event will also take place on Tisha b'Av - and may happen in the not-too-distant future.
Original Report
|
Tisha B'Av
|
KOINONIA HOUSE - By Chuck Missler - from the August 1997 Personal Update NewsJournal
On March 31, 1492, the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella issued a royal decree that all Jews must leave the Spanish territories within four months. If they were found in Spain after this period they were to be killed. This deadline was later postponed to August 3rd.
Boarding their ships before the deadline, at midnight August 2nd, Columbus and his crew set sail at dawn. On the Jewish calendar, it happened to be the 9th of Av, or Tisha B'Av.
This peculiar date on the Hebrew calendar seems to be a date of destiny. On the 9th of Av in the year 586 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Solomon's Temple and deported the inhabitants of Jerusalem to Babylon.1
In 70 A.D. the Romans destroyed the Second Temple, unknowingly fulfilling Jesus' predictions.2 Again, the date on the Hebrew calendar was the 9th of Av.3
After being delivered from Pharaoh's slavery in Egypt through the Red Sea, and arriving at Kadesh-Barnea but lacking the faith to enter the Promised Land, God decreed that that generation would never enter His Land. It seems that this, too, was on the 9th of Av.4
The famous Bar Kokhba revolt against the Romans was squelched when Bethar, the last stronghold of the Jewish leaders, fell in 135 A.D. The date was the 9th of Av.5
One year later, in 136, the Roman Emperor Hadrian established the heathen temple to Jupiter on the site of the Jewish Temple and rebuilt Jerusalem as a pagan city named Aelia Capitolina, and renamed the land as Palestina, to distance its Jewish heritage. (This attempt to disavow the land from its Jewish roots was echoed by the British in their labeling the land "Palestine.") The date when the Temple area was plowed under by the Romans was, again, the 9th of Av.
Thus the 9th of Av, Tisha B'Av, has become a symbol of all the persecutions and misfortunes of the Jewish people, for the loss of their national independence and their sufferings in exile. The numerous massacres of whole communities during the Crusades also intensified this association.
After the Babylonian exile, the Prophet Zechariah discusses the "Four Fasts": the Fast of the Fourth (month of Tammuz), the Fast of the Fifth (month of Av), the Fast of the Seventh (month of Tishri), and the Fast of the Tenth (month of Tevet). The Lord instructs them that, instead of a day of mourning, instead of fasting they should love truth and peace since the former days would ultimately become days of joy and gladness.
Thus saith the LORD of hosts; The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, shall be to the house of Judah joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts; therefore love the truth and peace. - Zechariah 8:19
(The Fast of the Fourth, the 17th of Tammuz, commemorated the occasion when Moses discovered them worshiping the golden calf and broke the two tables of the law. The Fast of the Seventh, the 3rd of Tishri, is the Fast of Gedaliah, commemorating the assassination of the governor appointed by Nebuchadnezzar to govern the Jews who remained in their homeland after the Temple had been destroyed in 586 B.C. The Fast of the Tenth, the 10th of Tevet, was for the day that Nebuchad-nezzar laid siege on Jerusalem.)
Since the regaining of the Old City-Biblical Jerusalem-in 1967, there have been subtle modifications, by some, to the traditional rituals associated with Tisha B'Av as a day of mourning. The Jews are in Eretz Israel, although the Temple is not (as yet) rebuilt.
This year, the "Ninth of Av" falls on August 12th, and our Jewish friends will be observing this unusual day of mourning-yet subtly tinged with joy and promise. (For some, a nine-day series of observances begins nine days earlier.6 ) The Sabbath before Tisha B'Av is called Shabbat Hazon, the Shabbat of Vision (from the comfort in Habakkuk 2:3). While the orthodox in Jerusalem will be circling the walls of the Old City to remind themselves of their tragic history, they will also be looking toward the ultimate rebuilding of the Temple.
We do know that the Temple will be rebuilt because Jesus, John, and Paul all make reference to it.7 But we also know that this Temple will be desecrated by the Coming World Leader when he sets himself up to be worshiped.8
Will this prophetic milestone event also turn out to be on Tisha B'Av? Is this also on our not-too-distant horizon? Let's just watch and see.
Original Report
Hundreds planning Temple Mount ascent
THE JERUSALEM POST [Mirkaei Tikshoret] - By Etgar Lefkovits - July 23, 2009
The Temple Mount Faithful is planning to conduct its annual march to the Temple Mount next week to protest the US demand to cease construction in east Jerusalem, its leader announced Thursday.
Gershon Salomon said that he hoped that this year hundreds would turn out for the Tisha Be'av event to protest US pressure to stop settlement activity, as well as building in eastern Jerusalem. In the past, the gatherings have attracted only a dozen or so participants.
The march by the fringe group, which is pending police approval, has been thwarted by police in years past, when Judaism's holiest site was closed off to non-Muslims on the fast day due to concerns of possible violence at the holy site.
"We're concerned that in the end, the Temple Mount will be part of a Palestinian state, with US backing," Salomon said. "We will say to [US President Barack] Obama, 'Get your hands off Jerusalem and the land of Israel!"
The planned event includes a morning protest outside the Temple Mount, as well as group ascent to the holy site.
Jerusalem Police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said Thursday that police will review any request for a demonstration next week.
The 25-hour fast day, the darkest day on the Jewish calendar, marks the destruction of the two ancient temples at the site.
The Islamic group which administers the ancient compound is vehemently opposed to the entry of nationalist Jews to the site.
Original Report
Temple Institute to Build Sacrificial Altar on Tisha B'av
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Yehudah Lev Kay - July 29, 2009
The Temple Institute will begin building the sacrificial altar on Thursday, Tisha B'av, a fast day when Jews mourn the destruction of the Temple some 2,000 years ago.
The sacrificial altar was located in the center of the Temple, and upon it the Kohanim (priests) offered the numerous voluntary and obligatory sacrifices commanded in the Bible.
The Temple Institute, which has already built many of the vessels for the Holy Temple, such as the ark and the menorah, has now embarked on a project to build the altar. Construction begins Thursday in Mitzpe Yericho (east of
Jerusalem) at 5:30 p.m. ...
Read Full Report
'The Temple Will Never be Rebuilt', Islamist Movement Says
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Yehudah Lev Kay - July 20, 2009
The deputy chief of the Islamist movement in Israel Kimal Al-Khatib told thousands of children in a Saturday Islamist protest on the Temple Mount that the Jewish Temple will never be rebuilt. His speech was published in the Jerusalem-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper Monday morning.
"If the Jews think that their mourning will end and they will rejoice by destroying the Al-Aqsa mosque and building their Temple, we say to them that their dream will not be fulfilled and they will continue to mourn. Al-Aqsa is for Muslims only," he said.
Al-Khatib was referring to the traditional period of mourning Jews commemorate every summer for the destruction of the Holy Temples on Tisha B'Av (The ninth of the Hebrew month of Av). The Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE by the Romans, while the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque were erected in 691 and 705 CE. ...
Read Full Report
PM delays discussion on Temple Mount project
YEDIOTH AHRONOTH [Yedioth Ahronoth Group - Private] - By Roni Sofer - July 23, 2009
Ynet learns Netanyahu canceled at last minute decisive discussion aimed at setting a date for start of construction of new Mugrabi Gatin Jerusalem. Security sources express their fear of violent outbreak on eve of Ramadan fast.
Read Full Report
|
Alan Dershowitz
He doesn't get it
|
THE SPECTATOR [Press Holdings/Barclay-LONDON] - By Melanie Phillips - July 3, 2009
The American lawyer Alan Dershowitz is one of the most prolific, high-profile and indefatiguable defenders of Israel and the Jewish people against the tidal wave of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish feeling currently coursing through the west. So a piece by him in the Wall Street Journal giving expression to the rising anxiety being felt about Obama by American Jews naturally arouses great interest.
But just like the majority of American Jews, getting on for 80 per cent of whom voted for Obama, he is a Democrat supporter who is incapable of acknowledging the truth about this President. For most American Jews, the horror of even entertaining the hypothetical possibility that they might ever in a million years have to vote for a Republican is so great they simply cannot see what is staring them in the face -- that this Democratic President is lethal for both Israel and the free world. And in this article Dershowitz shows that he too is just as blind.
Acknowledging the anxiety among some American Jews about Obama's attitude to Israel, Dershowitz concludes uneasily that there isn't really a problem here because all Obama is doing is putting pressure on Israel over the settlements, which most American Jews don't support anyway. But this is totally to miss the point. The pressure over the settlements per se is not the reason for the intense concern.
It is instead, first and foremost, the fact that Obama is treating Israel as if it is the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Obama thus inverts aggressor and victim, denying Israel's six-decade long victimisation and airbrushing out Arab aggression. The question remains: why has Obama chosen to pick a fight with Israel while soft-soaping Iran which is threatening it with genocide? The answer is obvious: Israel is to be used to buy off Iran just as Czechoslovakia was used at Munich. Indeed, I would say this is worse even than that, since I suspect that Obama - coming as he does from a radical leftist milieu, with vicious Israel-haters amongst his closest friends -- would be doing this to Israel even if Iran was not the problem that it is. ...
Read Full Report
|
Obama slammed as 'racist' at Jerusalem rally
|
'This insolence will bring about the downfall of the American leadership'
WORLDNETDAILY - By Aaron Klein - July 27, 2009
JERUSALEM - President Obama's policies against Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem and the strategic West Bank were slammed as "racist" today by participants in a rally drawing about 2,000 Israelis in front of the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem.
"George Mitchell go home!" yelled protestors in front of the U.S. government building.
Mitchell, Obama's envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is here discussing the American administration's call for a halt to all Jewish settlement activity, including natural growth or accommodating the needs of existing Jewish populations in the areas in question.
"Obama should not be pressing Israel to compromise and freeze building in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem," protest organizer Yaacov Steinberg told WND.
"All these steps in the past just brought more Palestinian terror and showed Israeli weakness," said Steinberg, director of a coalition of West Bank Jewish organizations.
Speaking at the rally, Rabbi Eliezer Waldman, who heads the prestigious "Nir" Torah seminary in the West Bank city of Kiryat Arba, called Obama a "racist."
"How dare he tell the Jews where they can or can't live! The era when Jews were banned from living in different places has ended," Waldman exclaimed.
"Obama beware. This insolence will bring about the downfall of the American leadership. Anyone who dares give an order to prevent Israeli life in Jerusalem or anywhere else in the land of Israel is destined to fall," he said.
Pinchas Wallerstein, director of the Yesha council of Jewish communities in the West Bank, told the crowds, "This week the American pressure reached new highs that are a shame to democratic societies."
Wallerstein was referring to the summoning of Israel's ambassador to Washington last week by the State Department to demand a Jewish construction project in eastern Jerusalem be immediately halted.
"It's absolutely an outrageously racist policy," Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, told WND. "Especially in light of how Obama should be sensitive when it comes to anything that would remotely constitute discrimination of people based on ethnicity or religion."
The construction project at the center of attention, financed by Miami Beach philanthropist Irving Moskowitz, is located just meters from Israel's national police headquarters and other government ministries. It is a few blocks from the country's prestigious Hebrew University, underscoring the centrality of the Jewish real estate being condemned by the U.S.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly rejected the State Department demand, telling a cabinet meeting Sunday that Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem was not a matter up for discussion.
"Imagine what would happen if someone were to suggest Jews could not live in or purchase [property] in certain neighborhoods in London, New York, Paris or Rome," he said.
"The international community would certainly raise protest. Likewise, we cannot accept such a ruling on East Jerusalem," Netanyahu told ministers.
In a statement released to WND, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, long considered one of the most powerful Jewish groups in the U.S., took strong issue with the U.S. demand against Jewish construction in Jerusalem.
"We find disturbing the objections raised to the proposed construction of residential units on property that was legally purchased and approved by the appropriate authorities. The area in question houses major Israeli governmental agencies, including the national police headquarters."
"The U.S. has in the past and recently raised objections to the removal of illegal structures built by Arabs in eastern Jerusalem even though they were built in violation of zoning and other requirements often on usurped land," read the statement.
The group's statement pointed out Moskowitz's housing project formerly was the house of the infamous mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who spent the war years in Berlin as a close ally of Adolf Hitler, aiding and abetting the Nazi extermination of Jews.
Al-Husseini was also linked to the 1929 massacre of Jews in Jerusalem and Hebron and to other acts of incitement that resulted in death and destruction in what was then called Palestine. Some Palestinians have expressed a desire to preserve the building as a tribute to Husseini.
Historically, there was never any separation between eastern and western Jerusalem. The terminology came after Jordan occupied the eastern section of the city, including the Temple Mount, from 1947 until it used the territory to attack the Jewish state in 1967. Israel reunited Jerusalem when it won the 1967 Six Day War.
Original Report
See Also:
Shepherd Hotel
THE DRY BONES BLOG - By Yaakov Kirschen - July 29, 2009
[...] "Al Husseini was the notorious Nazi who mixed Nazi propaganda and Islam. He was wanted for war crimes in Bosnia by Yugoslavia. His mix of militant propagandizing Islam was an inspiration for both Yasser Arafat and Saddam Husein: He was also a close relative of Yasser Arafat and grandfather of the current Temple Mount Mufti. ...
Read Full Report
|
'I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse.'
The Obama Strategy
|
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Shalom Freedman - July 24, 2009
In an insightful article on his FresnoZionism.org website, the political commentator Vic Rosenthal argues that the Obama Administration has, in effect, denied the Israeli government freedom of operation within areas taken in the 1967 Six-Day War. It has - without yet forcing a withdrawal - contracted Israel back into the '67 lines. This step is in accord with the major strategic operating principle of the Obama Administration in regard to Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, the Jewish world and the Muslim one.
The Administration's aim is to contract Israeli power and presence in the Middle East, and at the same time to contract the political strength of the Jewish people in the United States and the world. The corollary of that is his will and effort to increase, first of all, Palestinian Arab power in the Holy Land and, secondly, Islamic strength and confidence not only in the Middle East, but within the United States also. There have been many signs and much evidence of this.
In Israel itself, the United States is questioning and making problems for every small move the Israeli government makes. At the same time, the US is working on building a Palestinian military force under General Dayton which might well turn against Israel and its civilian population - as previous forces they built have done. The United States has worked toward free Palestinian movement within Judea and Samaria, and is pressuring Israel to surrender more and more territory to Fatah-run forces.
In regard to the Jewish-Islamic power balance, President Barack Obama was the first president to mention Muslim-Americans as a significant force in American life in his inaugural speech. He not only did this, but also subverted the Jews' traditional place and mentioned the Muslims immediately after the Christians. President Obama has also spoken of seven million Muslims in the United States, a questionable demographic figure, but one larger than the five and one-half million Jews.
In his famous Cairo speech, Obama promised to bring more and more Muslim students to the United States. Apparently, his belief is that this group, once in the United States, will become more amenable to democratic values and promoters of American-style freedom - rather than promoters of the jihadist ideology so many Muslim students already advocate on US campuses.
President Obama does not appear to be prejudiced against Jews as individuals. A disproportionate number of Jews have significant roles in his Administration. Obama is a self-made meritocrat who achieved what he has through his own remarkable abilities. He is a person who always looks for those outstanding individuals who can help him in his work.
However, on the issue of the global communal roles of Jews and Muslims, Obama is influenced not only by his personal background, but by the relative strengths, demographically and politically, of the two groups. There are, after all, over fifty Islamic nations clamoring for the disappearance, or at least contraction, of Israel and one small Jewish State striving to preserve and develop its ancestral homeland. The shift he has made and the trend he has adopted is in accord with the advice given by many of his "realist" and anti-Israel, left-wing political appointees. ...
Read Full Report
Also:
The Great Obama Shoe Photo Debate: What Was He Trying to Say?
See article and Pics Here
|
|
Obama Hilltop Project How West Bank Jews are defying Obama!
|
WORLDNETDAILY - By Aaron Klein - July 15, 2009
JERUSALEM - Activists here have launched a campaign using Barack Obama's name to construct Jewish housing projects on West Bank hilltops in defiance of the U.S. president's demands for a halt to all Jewish building in the strategic territory.
"Mr. President, your policy that aims to destroy the Jewish communities of Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem will no longer go unchallenged," states a press release from the Obama Hilltop Project. "We aim to rally the worldwide pro-Israel community to support the rebirth of these communities and counter your unjust, illegal policies."
The goal is to increase the Jewish presence in the West Bank, beginning with the re-establishment of the town of Homesh, which was one of four Jewish communities evacuated by Israel during the country's 2005 retreat from the Gaza Strip. ...
Now activists are looking for donations of any amount to help them expand Homesh, including a new hilltop community to be named after Obama.
Those making online donations are being encouraged to also send a formal letter to Obama making the White House aware of the effort to support Jewish growth in the West Bank. ...
Read Full Report
|
Out of Egypt: A Christian Analysis of Obama's Speech
|
A 4 part Christian analysis of President Barack Obama's recent speech in Egypt
BELIEVERS IN GRACE MINISTRIES - By Pastor Bill Randles
Excerpt:
"If you think Biblically,
then you can see the Biblical typologies over and over and over again.
What's going on with Obama
and the Clinton's before, especially Hillary.
Hillary and Obama are taking
the place of Herod and Pharaoh.
No new growth.
Of course, that seems
typical with them, because both are adamant abortion rights fanatics."
Video
Out of Egypt: A Christian Analysis of Obama's Speech Part I
Out of Egypt: A Christian Analysis of Obama's Speech Part II
Out of Egypt: A Christian Analysis of Obama's Speech Part III
Out of Egypt: A Christian Analysis of Obama's
Speech Part IV
Also:
Jewish response to Obama's Cairo speech.
Ed. Note: Although not a believer in his Messiah, very true concerning the land of Israel. Pray that this Rabbi will come to know Yeshua the only One who can save him and the only One that will bring peace.
BE/\LERT!
On June 4, 2009, President Barack H. Obama delivered a speech in Cairo, Egypt, that contained a distorted view of the Jewish people's historical ties to the land of their forefathers
See Video Here
|
|
Obama's Arabian Dreams
|
By Caroline Glick - June 6, 2009
US President Barack Obama claims to be a big fan of telling the truth. In media interviews ahead of his trip to Saudi Arabia and Egypt and during his big speech in Cairo on Thursday, he claimed that the centerpiece of his Middle East policy is his willingness to tell people hard truths.
Indeed, Obama made three references to the need to tell the truth in his so-called address to the Muslim world.
Unfortunately, for a speech billed as an exercise in truth telling, Obama's address fell short. Far from reflecting hard truths, Obama's speech reflected political convenience.
Obama's so-called hard truths for the Islamic world included statements about the need to fight so-called extremists; give equal rights to women; provide freedom of religion; and foster democracy. Unfortunately, all of his statements on these issues were nothing more than abstract, theoretical declarations devoid of policy prescriptions.
He spoke of the need to fight Islamic terrorists without mentioning that their intellectual, political and monetary foundations and support come from the very mosques, politicians and regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt that Obama extols as moderate and responsible.
He spoke of the need to grant equality to women without making mention of common Islamic practices like so-called honor killings, and female genital mutilation. He ignored the fact that throughout the lands of Islam women are denied basic legal and human rights. And then he qualified his statement by mendaciously claiming that women in the US similarly suffer from an equality deficit. In so discussing this issue, Obama sent the message that he couldn't care less about the plight of women in the Islamic world.
So, too, Obama spoke about the need for religious freedom but ignored Saudi Arabian religious apartheid. He talked about the blessings of democracy but ignored the problems of tyranny.
In short, Obama's "straight talk" to the Arab world, which began with his disingenuous claim that like America, Islam is committed to "justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings," was consciously and fundamentally fraudulent. And this fraud was advanced to facilitate his goal of placing the Islamic world on equal moral footing with the free world.
In a like manner, Obama's tough "truths" about Israel were marked by factual and moral dishonesty in the service of political ends.
On the surface, Obama seemed to scold the Muslim world for its all-pervasive Holocaust denial and craven Jew hatred. By asserting that Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism are wrong, he seemed to be upholding his earlier claim that America's ties to Israel are "unbreakable."
Unfortunately, a careful study of his statements shows that Obama was actually accepting the Arab view that Israel is a foreign - and therefore unjustifiable - intruder in the Arab world. Indeed, far from attacking their rejection of Israel, Obama legitimized it.
The basic Arab argument against Israel is that the only reason Israel was established was to sooth the guilty consciences of Europeans who were embarrassed about the Holocaust. By their telling, the Jews have no legal, historic or moral rights to the Land of Israel.
This argument is completely false. The international community recognized the legal, historic and moral rights of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel long before anyone had ever heard of Adolf Hitler. In 1922, the League of Nations mandated the "reconstitution" - not the creation - of the Jewish commonwealth in the Land of Israel in its historic borders on both sides of the Jordan River.
But in his self-described exercise in truth telling, Obama ignored this basic truth in favor of the Arab lie. He gave credence to this lie by stating wrongly that "the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history."
He then explicitly tied Israel's establishment to the Holocaust by moving to a self-serving history lesson about the genocide of European Jewry.
Even worse than his willful blindness to the historic, legal and moral justifications for Israel's rebirth, was Obama's characterization of Israel itself. Obama blithely, falsely and obnoxiously compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians to white American slave owners' treatment of their black slaves. He similarly cast Palestinian terrorists in the same morally pure category as slaves. Perhaps most repulsively, Obama elevated Palestinian terrorism to the moral heights of slave rebellions and the US civil rights movement by referring to it by its Arab euphemism, "resistance."
BUT AS disappointing and frankly obscene as Obama's rhetoric was, the policies he outlined were much worse. While prattling about how Islam and America are two sides of the same coin, Obama managed to spell out two clear policies. First, he announced that he will compel Israel to completely end all building for Jews in Judea, Samaria, and eastern, northern and southern Jerusalem. Second, he said that he will strive to convince Iran to substitute its nuclear weapons program with a nuclear energy program.
Obama argued that the first policy will facilitate peace and the second policy will prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Upon reflection, however, it is clear that neither of his policies can possibly achieve his stated aims. Indeed, their inability to accomplish the ends he claims he has adopted them to advance is so obvious, that it is worth considering what his actual rationale for adopting them may be.
The administration's policy toward Jewish building in Israel's heartland and capital city expose a massive level of hostility toward Israel. Not only does it fly in the face of explicit US commitments to Israel undertaken by the Bush administration, it contradicts a longstanding agreement between successive Israeli and American governments not to embarrass each other.
Moreover, the fact that the administration cannot stop attacking Israel about Jewish construction in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, but has nothing to say about Hizbullah's projected democratic takeover of Lebanon next week, Hamas's genocidal political platform, Fatah's involvement in terrorism, or North Korean ties to Iran and Syria, has egregious consequences for the prospects for peace in the region.
As Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas made clear in his interview last week with The Washington Post, in light of the administration's hostility toward Israel, the Palestinian Authority no longer feels it is necessary to make any concessions whatsoever to Israel. It needn't accept Israel's identity as a Jewish state. It needn't minimize in any way its demand that Israel commit demographic suicide by accepting millions of foreign, hostile Arabs as full citizens. And it needn't curtail its territorial demand that Israel contract to within indefensible borders.
In short, by attacking Israel and claiming that Israel is responsible for the absence of peace, the administration is encouraging the Palestinians and the Arab world as a whole to continue to reject Israel and to refuse to make peace with the Jewish state.
The Netanyahu government reportedly fears that Obama and his advisers have made such an issue of settlements because they seek to overthrow Israel's government and replace it with the more pliable Kadima party. Government sources note that White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel played a central role in destabilizing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's first government in 1999, when he served as an adviser to then president Bill Clinton. They also note that Emmanuel is currently working with leftist Israelis and American Jews associated with Kadima and the Democratic Party to discredit the government.
While there is little reason to doubt that the Obama administration would prefer a leftist government in Jerusalem, it is unlikely that the White House is attacking Israel primarily to advance this aim. This is first of all the case because today there is little danger that Netanyahu's coalition partners will abandon him.
Moreover, the Americans have no reason to believe that prospects for a peace deal would improve with a leftist government at the helm in Jerusalem. After all, despite its best efforts, the Kadima government was unable to make peace with the Palestinians, as was the Labor government before it. What the Palestinians have shown consistently since the failed 2000 Camp David summit is that there is no deal that Israel can offer them that they are willing to accept.
So if the aim of the administration in attacking Israel is neither to foster peace nor to bring down the Netanyahu government, what can explain its behavior?
The only reasonable explanation is that the administration is baiting Israel because it wishes to abandon the Jewish state as an ally in favor of warmer ties with the Arabs. It has chosen to attack Israel on the issue of Jewish construction because it believes that by concentrating on this issue, it will minimize the political price it will be forced to pay at home for jettisoning America's alliance with Israel. By claiming that he is only pressuring Israel to enable a peaceful "two-state solution," Obama assumes that he will be able to maintain his support base among American Jews who will overlook the underlying hostility his "pro-peace" stance papers over.
OBAMA'S POLICY toward Iran is a logical complement of his policy toward Israel. Just as there is no chance that he will bring Middle East peace closer by attacking Israel, so he will not prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons by offering the mullahs nuclear energy. The deal Obama is now proposing has been on the table since 2003, when Iran's nuclear program was first exposed. Over the past six years, the Iranians have repeatedly rejected it. Indeed, just last week they again announced that they reject it.
Here, too, to understand the president's actual goal it is necessary to search for the answers closer to home. Since Obama's policy has no chance of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, it is apparent that he has come to terms with the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran. In light of this, the most rational explanation for his policy of engagement is that he wishes to avoid being blamed when Iran emerges as a nuclear power in the coming months.
In reckoning with the Obama administration, it is imperative that the Netanyahu government and the public alike understand the true goals of its current policies. Happily, consistent polling data show that the overwhelming majority of Israelis realize that the White House is deeply hostile toward Israel. The data also show that the public approves of Netanyahu's handling of our relations with Washington.
Moving forward, the government must sustain this public awareness and support. By his words as well as by his deeds, not only has Obama shown that he is not a friend of Israel. He has shown that there is nothing that Israel can do to make him change his mind.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
Original Report
|
|
Poll: U.S. Image in Israel Suffers After Obama Cairo Speech
|
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By David Lev - July 26, 2009
A poll released last week shows that President Barack Obama's administration has improved the perception of the United States in countries all over the world -- except in Israel.
Respondents to a major poll taken by the U.S.-based Pew Research Center showed that America's image has improved, sometimes dramatically, in 25 countries around the world. In Western Europe, for example, where the countries polled were England, France, Germany and Spain, an average of 85.5 percent of respondents said that Obama would "do the right thing in world affairs," compared to an average of only 15 percent in the same countries that said this about former President George W. Bush in 2008.
Similar improvements to America's image were evident in the poll numbers in South America, Asia, and Africa. In China, Obama's 2009 rating approval was at 62 percent -- more than twice Bush's 2008 score. In Brazil the U.S. President had 76 percent approval, compared to 17 percent for his predecessor. In Kenya his approval percentage was 94 -- up from Bush's 72 in 2007.
In Muslim countries, too, Obama has improved America's image, although the majority in those countries still does not trust the U.S.
In Jordan, 30 percent of the populace said they believed Obama was on their side, while only 8 said the same thing about Bush in 2008. Thirty one percent in Jordan believe in Obama's foreign policy, up from 7 percent who believed in Bush's.
For the first time since the question was asked in the polls, Jordanians are more confident in an American president than in Osama Bin Laden - whomonly 28 percent are confident is fighting for their interests. Obama is also more popular than Bin Laden in a number
of other Muslim nations, including Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Nigeria and Indonesia. In Egypt, 42 percent believe in Obama's foreign policy efforts - far more than the 11 percent who said they believed in Bush's last year.
Downward turn in Israel
In Israel, however, the U.S. is seen as less trustworthy - and the poll pinpointed Obama's Cairo speech in June as the turning point. Before the poll, 76 percent of Israelis viewed the U.S. favorably, while after it, only 63 percent held that view. In addition, 60 percent of Israelis said they were confident in Obama's ability to lead before the speech - but afterwards, only 49 percent held that view. Still, 56 percent of Israelis agreed with the statement "Obama will do the right thing in world affairs" -- only 1 percent less than said the same thing about Bush last year.
Before the speech, 57 percent of Israelis also said they expected Obama would treat both sides fairly in the Middle East Conflict, a figure that sank by 10 percent after the speech. ...
Read Full Report
|
Obama wanted UN Flag to fly over Western Wall
Bibi Rejects Obama's 'UN Flag at Kotel'; Star of David to Remain
|
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - May 22, 2009
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu vowed at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva in Jerusalem Thursday night that the Israeli flag will continue to fly over the Western Wall (Kotel). The first prime minister in years to appear at the venerable yeshiva on Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day), he ignored U.S. President Barack Obama's apparent trial balloon that he wants to see the United Nations flag fly over the Old City holy sites.
Jordan's King Abdullah II said the president put forward the proposal during his visit to the White House last month. ...
Read Full Report
|
Obama's plan for Mideast peace: Strip Israel bare
|
Initiative leaves Jewish state with truncated, difficult-to-defend borders
WORLDNETDAILY - By Aaron Klein - April 16, 2009
TEL AVIV, Israel - The Obama administration has decided to base its approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on an Arab "peace" initiative, according to a source in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.
Defenders of Israel warn the so-called "Arab Peace Initiative" in its full form would leave the Jewish state with truncated, difficult-to-defend borders and could threaten Israel's Jewish character by compelling it to accept millions of foreign Arabs. ...
Following scores of denials he would trumpet the plan, Obama in January hailed the Arab initiative, which offers normalization of ties with the Jewish state in exchange for extreme Israeli concessions. In an interview with an Arab television network - his first formal interview as president - Obama stated:
"Well, here's what I think is important. Look at the proposal that was put forth by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. ... I might not agree with every aspect of the proposal, but it took great courage to put forward something that is as significant as that. I think that there are ideas across the region of how we might pursue peace. I do think that it is impossible for us to think only in terms of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and not think in terms of what's happening with Syria or Iran or Lebanon or Afghanistan and Pakistan."
The Arab Initiative, originally proposed by King Abdullah in 2002 and later adopted by the Arab League, states that Israel would receive "normal relations" with the Arab world in exchange for a full withdrawal from the entire Gaza Strip, West Bank, Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem, which includes the Temple Mount.
The West Bank contains important Jewish biblical sites and borders central Israeli population centers, while the Golan Heights looks down on Israeli civilian zones and was twice used by Syria to mount ground invasions into the Jewish state.
The Arab plan also demands the imposition of a non-binding U.N. resolution that calls for so-called Palestinian refugees who wish to move inside Israel to be permitted to do so at the "earliest practicable date." ...
Read Full Report
|
Netanyahu bows to Obama, accepts Palestinian "state"
|
REUTERS [Thomson-Reuters] - By Ori Lewis - June 15, 2009
RAMAT GAN, Israel - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded on Sunday to uncommon pressure from Washington by finally giving his endorsement -- with conditions -- to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
But in a speech answering President Barack Obama's address to the Arab world 10 days ago, the right-wing leader's defense of Jewish settlement on occupied land may fail to dispel tension with the White House, as the two men try to set new terms for the Middle East peace process in their first months in office.
Obama called Netanyahu's shift in position on Palestinian statehood as an "important step forward," even as aides to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were denouncing the speech as "sabotaging" negotiations by restating Israel's refusal to share the city of Jerusalem or accept Palestinian refugees.
Read Full Report
Netanyahu, First Time: '2-State Solution'
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Maayana Miskin - July 5, 2009
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu discussed his government's first 100 days in power on Sunday, and touted the "two-state solution" as an accomplishment. "We have brought about national agreement on the concept of two states for two peoples for the first time," he said.
Netanyahu credited his government with giving "real meaning" to the concept of "two states for two peoples" by insisting that Israel retain its status as a Jewish state under any agreement aimed at creating a demilitarized Arab state in Judea and Samaria.
The speech was the first time Netanyahu has used the term "two states for two peoples." Three weeks earlier he made headlines by using the phrase "Palestinian state" for the first time. ...
Read Full Report
|
|
The Kings of the Earth: The gall to tell Israel what to do
|
Sarkozy to Netanyahu: Get Rid of Lieberman ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Nissan Ratzlav-Katz - June 30, 2009
During their meeting last week in Paris, French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to replace Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman with opposition leader Tzipi Livni. Netanyahu's office declined comment, but the Foreign Ministry response was less diplomatic.
In addition to Netanyahu, three Israeli officials reportedly heard the undiplomatic statements by Sarkozy. ...
Read Full Report
Israel rejects Solana's call for deadline on Palestinian state
European Union's foreign policy chief urges Security Council to set tangible deadline for formation of Palestinian state, endorse overall solution for issues of border parameters, refugees, control over Jerusalem; Israel says proposal 'undermines peace efforts'
REUTERS [Thomson-Reuters] - By Roni Sofer - July 12, 2009
Jerusalem dismissed Sunday evening European Union Foreign Policy chief Javier Solana's call for the UN Security Council to recognize a Palestinian state by a certain deadline even if the Israelis and Palestinians have not reached agreement among themselves.
The Foreign Ministry released a statement saying "Resolutions 242 and 338 of the United Nations, the roadmap (peace plan) and agreements between Israel and the Palestinians all cautiously determine that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will only be reached through negotiations by the sides.
"Israel has declared its willingness for the immediate resumption of the peace talks with no preconditions. Any other approach, including one that calls for setting an artificial deadline for the negotiations, undermines the efforts to reach an agreement between (Israel and the Palestinian Authority)," the statement read. ...
The Palestinians have said they will not revive peace talks unless there is a halt to Israel's settlement activities in the West Bank: "After a fixed deadline, a UN Security Council resolution should proclaim the adoption of the two-state solution," Solana said, adding this should include border parameters, refugees, control over the city of Jerusalem and security arrangements.
"It would accept the Palestinian state as a full member of the UN, and set a calendar for implementation. It would mandate the resolution of other remaining territorial disputes and legitimize the end of claims," Solana went on.
Advocating a return to Israel's borders before the 1967 war with Egypt, Syria and Jordan in which it took the West Bank, Solana said mediators should set a timetable for a peace agreement.
Read Full Report
Obama: Pressure on Israel to Continue
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Nissan Ratzlav-Katz - July 14, 2009
U.S. President Barack Obama assured 15 leaders of Jewish American organizations of his commitment to Israel, but he also insisted he would continue to publicly press the Jewish State to conform to his vision of Middle East peace.
Hosting the Jewish delegates in the White House on Monday, Obama said that Israel needs "to engage in serious self-reflection" if it is to succeed in reaching a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The American president repeatedly made it clear that in his view this can only mean the creation of an Arab state within Israel's current borders. He presented the "two-state solution" as a solution he wishes to promote to deal with Israel's purportedly precarious demographic situation.
President Obama also said that he will continue to press his administration's demands on Israel urgently and publicly, regardless of opposition from the Netanyahu government. Keeping American disputes with Israel from the public eye, as he claimed was done in the past, has not served the interests of peace, Obama informed his guests. He likened this decision to the open and honest conversation needed among close friends. ...
Read Full Report
|
Woe is me, for I sojourn in Meshech,
For I dwell among the tents of Kedar!
Too long has my soul had its dwelling
With those who hate peace.
I am for peace, but when I speak,
They are for war. - Psalms 120:5-7
Saying, `Peace, peace,' but there is no peace.
|
Fatah: No Recognition of Israel - Ever
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Maayana Miskin - July 23, 2009
Senior members of Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah have announced that their group will never recognize Israel, and will continue to call for war against Israel. "Fatah does not recognize Israel's right to exist, nor have we ever asked others to do so," said senior Fatah member Rafik Natsheh, a close associate of Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Media reports, according to which Fatah has recognized Israel and has called on Hamas to do the same, are false, Natsheh said in an interview with the pan-Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi. "It's all media nonsense. We don't ask other factions to recognize Israel; we ourselves do not recognize Israel," he said.
Fatah controls the PA in Judea and Samaria, and is the party of Abbas. Unlike the rival breakaway PA led by Hamas in Gaza, the Fatah-led PA has agreed to recognize Israel, although it will not recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
The PA recognizes Israel because if it did not, it would not be able to "serve the Palestinian people," Natsheh explained. However, Fatah does not have such constraints.
Not only will Fatah never recognize Israel, but it will never end its call for armed struggle against Israel, he said. "Let those who are deluding themselves hear: this will never happen," he said.
A second senior Fatah member, Azzam el-Ahmed, agreed that Fatah would not drop its call to wage war on Israel. ...
Read Full Report
Fatah Official: "Our Goal is Not Peace, but Rather Palestine"
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hillel Fendel - July 13, 2009
"Our goal has never been peace," says a Fatah official in a PA TV panel. "Peace is a means; the goal is Palestine" - meaning the conquest of Israel.
Video: The clip from Palestinian Authority TV with English subtitles
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), directed by Itamar Marcus, reports on a panel discussion on a television program of the Fatah organization broadcast this past week. Headed by Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah is considered the more moderate wing of the Palestinian Authority, compared with Hamas. ...
Read Full Report
Hamas not even asked to recognize Israel
WORLDNETDAILY - By Aaron Klein - July 10, 2009
TEL AVIV - Hamas does not need to recognize Israel's existence as a precondition for joining a Palestinian unity government, a top member of the Palestinian Authority's negotiating team told WND.
"We are not demanding Hamas recognize the state of Israel. It's not even part of the talks. Even we as the Fatah movement didn't recognize the state of Israel," said the PA negotiator, speaking on condition of anonymity. ...
Read Full Report
PA to Name Streets After Terrorists in Israeli Prisons
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By David Lev - July 26, 2009
Dozens of streets in PA cities will be named for Arab terrorists in Israeli jails, commemorating their "heroic" actions.
Hundreds of streets, schools, and other institutions under the control of the Palestinian Authority are already named after "martyrs" - terrorists who were killed by the IDF when they attacked Israeli civilians. The PA now plans to commemorate the actions of terrorists who are still alive, serving sentences in Israeli prisons.
At least 100 streets in PA cities will be named for these terror prisoners, said PA Minister of Prisoner Affairs Issa Qaraqi announced last week. ...
Read Full Report
Hamas Shifts From Rockets to Culture War
NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Ethan Bronner - July 23, 2009
GAZA - Seven months after Israel started a fierce three-week military campaign here to stop rockets from being fired on its southern communities, Hamas has suspended its use of rockets and shifted focus to winning support at home and abroad through cultural initiatives and public relations.
The aim is to build what leaders here call a "culture of resistance," the topic of a recent two-day conference. In recent days, a play has been staged, a movie premiered, an art exhibit mounted, a book of poems published and a television series begun, most of it state-sponsored and all focused on the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. There are plans for a documentary competition. ...
Read Full Report
Israel Says Hizbullah Re-Taking Southern Lebanon
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Nissan Ratzlav-Katz - July 21, 2009
Israel has claimed, by way of a formal complaint to the United Nations on Monday, that Hizbullah is slowly re-exerting its control in Southern Lebanon by undermining the UN peacekeepers' mandate there. The Iran-backed terrorist organization has responded with charges that Israel is preparing to attack it.
In a letter written to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the president of the Security Council, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gabriella Shalev noted recent events in southern Lebanon which reflect the re-arming of Hizbullah terrorists and resistance to enforcement of Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the Second Lebanon War in 2006. ...
Read Full Report
Unresolved Issue of Hezbollah's Weapons Back in the Spotlight
CYBERCAST NEWS SERVICE (CNSN.com) [Media Research Center] - By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor - July 28, 2009
[...] Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates Monday that Israel was concerned about recent developments in southern Lebanon, where a large explosion two weeks ago revealed the presence of what Israel says was a Hezbollah weapons cache.
The blast took place in a village nine miles north of the Israeli border - and about three miles south of the Litani River. The existence of a cache south of the Litani would violate a U.N. Security Council resolution that brought an end to a month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006.
When members of the U.N.'s Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) went to investigate, more than 100 residents - reported by the Lebanese army to be Hezbollah supporters - attacked them, hurling rocks and preventing them from accessing the blast scene. Fourteen UNIFIL troops were lightly injured and several vehicles were damaged. ...
Read Full Report
Tension, Tank Movements and Jet Sorties on Northern Border
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu and Gil Ronen - July 28, 2009
[...] According to reports in Lebanese media, the Lebanese Army upped its state of alert after unusual Israeli tank movements were spotted.
Lebanese sources claimed that four Merkava tanks left their previous positions and moved towards a new IDF outpost located near the border. At the same time, six IAF fighter jets flew overhead in the skies of South Lebanon.
The tanks reportedly took up observation positions on the Lebanese border near the village of Shuba, opposite Arkoub. Lebanese sources said that the position encroaches on Lebanese territory and that a complaint against Israel has been filed with the United States and United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
Kuwaiti newspaper Al Siyassa reported that 150 Lebanese army soldiers and officers have entered into an agreement with Hizbullah, which is training them to operate Iranian missiles aimed at Israel. Both Hizbullah and Lebanon denied the report. ...
Read Full Report
|
|
PA Peace Plan: Iran to Share Rule over Temple Mount
|
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - May 21, 2009
Israel may find Iran as one of the administrators of the Temple Mount, according to a new Palestinian Authority plan reported Thursday by the Hebrew-language newspaper Haaretz.
PA sources said giving up claims to the Temple Mount and handing over control to the 57-member Saudi-based Islamic Conference Organization is conditional on Israel's agreeing to a final status agreement.
Iran, which is classified as Persian and not an Arab country, is part of the Islamic group.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has opposed agreeing to a new PA state without knowing ahead of time what it would entail.
The PA recently has escalated its propaganda campaign that disassociates the holy site from any connection with Judaism and claims it is solely a Muslim site.
A group of Arabs demonstrated at Shechem Gate in the Old City Thursday morning, shouting anti-Israeli slogans as Jews began celebrating Jerusalem Reunification Day.
Sovereignty over the Temple Mount, based in Jerusalem, has been one of the foundations for a new Arab country that the PA wants following the proposed expulsion of more than half a million Jews from Judea and Samaria, as well as from Jerusalem neighborhoods that were established after the 1967 Six-Day War.
The PA's official website as far back as 2005 rejected the Jewish connection with the Western Wall (Kotel), the remains of the wall that surrounded the Holy Temple area. Muslim legend claims that Mohammed tied his horse to the wall before ascending to heaven, even though the city of Jerusalem is not even mentioned in the Koran.
Writer Daniel Pipes several years offered one million dollars to anyone who can find the name "Jerusalem" explicitly written in the Koran.
The Israeli government initially ignored the PA propaganda campaign, but Rabbi Chaim Richman, director of the International Department of the of the Temple Institute in Jerusalem, warned in 2005 that the PA claims have "far reaching implications" for Israel.
Rabbi Richman said that the PA's denial of the Jewish Temple's existence "is part of a campaign to totally eradicate, erase, and destroy all Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, Jerusalem and the land of Israel." ...
Read Full Report
|
PM Netanyahu: Arab peace initiative can form basis for negotiations
|
BICOM [Britain Israel Communications & Research Centre Limited] - July 24, 2009
In a speech given at a reception marking an Egyptian national holiday yesterday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a message to the Arab world regarding his willingness to accept the Saudi peace initiative as a basis for regional negotiations for Middle East peace. "We appreciate the efforts by Arab states to advance the peace initiative," the prime minister said. "If these proposals are not final, they can create an atmosphere in which a comprehensive peace can be reached." Netanyahu was hinting at some aspects of the plan, like the vague proposals for a "just resolution" of the Palestinian refugee problem, which were unacceptable to Israel. Other issues, like the security arrangements Israel requires, were not included in the plan at all. Nonetheless, Netanyahu's statements are an important indication to Israel's seriousness in reaching out to the greater Arab world and inviting broad regional support for the bilateral diplomatic track between Israel and the Palestinian leadership.
Part of the current US diplomatic efforts aims to get Arab countries, specifically Saudi Arabia, to begin the normalisation process with Israel now, and not wait until the end of the process. US progress in getting the Arab states to make gestures now will be one of the topics of conversation when US Middle East envoy George Mitchell arrives in Jerusalem on Sunday for talks. US State Department spokesman J. Crowley said Thursday that Mitchell was first heading to Syria, for his second visit there since taking up his post in January. Mitchell's point man on Syria and Lebanon, Fred Hof, was in both Israel and Syria earlier this month, fueling speculation that the Obama administration was keen on jump-starting Israeli-Syrian negotiations. ...
Read Full Report
|
Saudi urges Obama to impose Mideast solution - paper
|
REUTERS [Thomson-Reuters] - June 7, 2009
RIYADH - King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has urged U.S. President Barack Obama to impose a solution on the festering Arab-Israeli conflict if necessary, a Saudi newspaper said on Sunday. Saudi Arabia and other Arab states want Obama to get tough with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has balked at Palestinian statehood and defied U.S. calls to halt the expansion of Jewish settlements. King Abdullah told Obama during his visit to Riyadh last week that Arab patience was wearing thin and that a solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict would be the "magic key" to all issues in the region, al-Hayat said, quoting what it called informed sources. "We want from you a serious participation to solve the Palestinian issue and impose the solution if necessary," the Saudi monarch told Obama, according to the paper, which is owned by a nephew of the monarch. It did not elaborate. Saudi Arabia was the driving force behind an Arab peace initiative first put forward by Arab states in 2002 offering Israel recognition in return for withdrawal from Arab land occupied in 1967 and a Palestinian state. ... Read Full Report
London Paper: Obama Gives Israel 2 Years to Implement 2 States ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hillel Fendel - June 9, 2009 London-based A-Sharq al-Awsat reports that U.S. President Barack Obama presented his version of peace in the Middle East to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during the latter's visit to Washington last month, as well as to two Eygptian officials. The plan reportedly calls for a process that will finalize a Palestinian state within two years. The Arabic newspaper quotes an unnamed source as saying Obama wants Netanyahu to respond to his plan within six weeks from Obama's famous address in Cairo last week. ... Read Full Report
|
Arab League Throws Cold Water on Pan-Muslim Peace with Israel
|
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - May 23, 2009
U.S. President Barack Obama's plans for a regional peace between Muslim countries and Israel received a jolt Saturday with Arab League secretary Amr Mussa's rejection of the reported offer of Jordan's King Abdullah II for a pan-Muslim peace with Israel.
The Jordanian monarch told the Times of London following his visit last month with President Obama that Israel would win the recognition of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) if it accepts the Saudi 2002 peace plan.
Mussa said after a meeting of OIC foreign ministers in Damascus Saturday, "This is not on the table. All talk of this is inaccurate."
He said that Muslim countries might recognize Israel if Israel were to accept the Saudi plan but added, "We do not see any progress in the current circumstances."
The Saudi plan calls for Israel to turn over to the Palestinian Authority all of the land that was restored to the Jewish State in the 1967 Six-Day War, including the Old City and neighborhoods in Jerusalem where more than 250,000 Jews live today. ...
Read Full Report
|
The Prince of the Kingdom of Persia
Israeli warships rehearse for Iran attack in Red Sea
|
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH [Barclay] - By Our Foreign Staff - July 16, 2009
Israeli warships have deployed to the Red Sea for what has been described as a rehearsal for a possible attack on Iran.
Israeli and Egyptian officials said two ships had sailed through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea.
Media reports in Israel said the two Saar-class missile ships had been sent as a "message" to the Tehran government, which has repeatedly issued threats against Israel and is developing nuclear technology believed by the West to be intended for atomic weapons programme. ...
Israel has also deployed a submarine using the Suez Canal, but it has since returned to the Mediterranean.
Defence experts in Israel said this week that the naval activity had been publicised with the intent of sending a message to Iran. ...
Read Full Report
Germany's BND denies report on Iran bomb timing
REUTERS [Thomson-Reuters] - July 15, 2009
BERLIN - Germany's foreign intelligence agency BND denied a report in a magazine on Wednesday that its experts believe Iran is capable of producing and testing an atomic bomb within six months.
The report, in German weekly Stern, cited BND experts as saying Iran had mastered the enrichment technology necessary to make a bomb and had enough centrifuges to make weaponised uranium.
It quoted one expert at the agency as saying: "If they wanted to, they could detonate an atomic bomb in half a year's time."
But a BND spokesman said the article did not reflect the view of the agency, which is that Iran would not be able to produce an atomic bomb for years. ...
Read Full Report
World may back Iran op as part of deal
THE JERUSALEM POST [Mirkaei Tikshoret] - By JPost.com Staff - July 16, 2009
A deal taking shape between Israel and Western leaders will facilitate international support for an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities in exchange for concessions in peace negotiations with the Palestinians and Arab neighbors, The Times reported Thursday.
According to one British official quoted by the paper, such an understanding could allow an Israeli attack "within the year."
The report in the UK paper quoted unnamed diplomats as saying Israel was prepared to offer concessions on the formation of a Palestinian state as well as on its settlement policy and "issues" with Arab neighbors, in exchange for international backing for an Israeli operation in Iran.
"Israel has chosen to place the Iranian threat over its settlements," one senior European diplomat said. ...
Read Full Report
Gadhafi says Iran nuclear program to be supported
ASSOCIATED PRESS - July 15, 2009
SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt - Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi says Iran should be encouraged to pursue its nuclear program as long as it is for peaceful purposes.
Gadhafi was addressing Wednesday's opening session of a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik. The 118-nation group includes Iran.
He said it is "unjust" to stop Iran from enriching uranium for peaceful purposes, but that it must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.
The United States and Israel say Iran is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran denies the charge, saying its program is for generating power. ...
Read Full Report
See Also:
New Status in Africa Empowers an Ever-Eccentric Qaddafi
Full Report Posted on the Be Alert! Blog
|
Mixed Signals
'No US green light for attacking Iran'
|
THE JERUSALEM POST [Mirkaei Tikshoret] - By JPost.com Staff - July 7, 2009
- US VP Joe Biden to ABC NEWS: The US "cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do,"
- US President Barack Obama: Asked by CNN whether Washington had given Israel a green light for such an attack, Obama answered: "Absolutely not."
US President Barack Obama on Tuesday strongly denied that the United States had given Israel an approval to strike Iran's nuclear facilities.
Asked by CNN whether Washington had given Israel a green light for such an attack, Obama answered: "Absolutely not."
In the interview, which was broadcast from Russia, where Obama is on an official visit, he added: "We can't dictate to other countries what their security interests are.
"What is also true is, it is the policy of the United States to try to resolve the issue of Iran's nuclear capabilities," Obama said.
This would be achieved "through diplomatic channels," he added.
On Sunday, US Vice President Joe Biden was asked on ABC's 'This Week' whether the US would stand in the way militarily if the Israelis decided they needed to take out Iran's nuclear program.
The US "cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do," he said.
"Israel can determine for itself - it's a sovereign nation - what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else," he said.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly, however, denied that the vice president was giving Israel American approval for an attack on Iran. ...
Read Full Report
Saudis give nod to Israeli raid on Iran
THE TIMES of LONDON [News Corporation/Murdoch] - By Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv and Sarah Baxter - July 5, 2009
The head of Mossad, Israel's overseas intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran's nuclear sites.
Earlier this year Meir Dagan, Mossad's director since 2002, held secret talks with Saudi officials to discuss the possibility.
The Israeli press has already carried unconfirmed reports that high-ranking officials, including Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister, held meetings with Saudi colleagues. The reports were denied by Saudi officials.
"The Saudis have tacitly agreed to the Israeli air force flying through their airspace on a mission which is supposed to be in the common interests of both Israel and Saudi Arabia," a diplomatic source said last week.
Although the countries have no formal diplomatic relations, an Israeli defence source confirmed that Mossad maintained "working relations" with the Saudis.
John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations who recently visited the Gulf, said it was "entirely logical" for the Israelis to use Saudi airspace.
Bolton, who has talked to several Arab leaders, added: "None of them would say anything about it publicly but they would certainly acquiesce in an overflight if the Israelis didn't trumpet it as a big success."
Arab states would condemn a raid when they spoke at the UN but would be privately relieved to see the threat of an Iranian bomb removed, he said.
Referring to the Israeli attack on an alleged Syrian nuclear facility in 2007, Bolton added: "To this day, the Israelis haven't admitted the specifics but there's one less nuclear facility in Syria . . ."
Recent developments have underscored concerns among moderate Sunni Arab states about the stability of the repressive Shi'ite regime in Tehran and have increased fears that it may emerge as a belligerent nuclear power.
"The Saudis are very concerned about an Iranian nuclear bomb, even more than the Israelis," said a former head of research in Israeli intelligence. ...
Read Full Report
Israel Unhappy with Clinton Remarks on Defense Vs. Iran
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Gil Ronen - July 22, 2009
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that if Iran continued with its nuclear program despite President Barack Obama's overtures, her country would respond by increasing its military aid to friendly nations in the region.
Israel, which prefers an offensive approach to the Iranian danger rather than a defensive one, was unhappy with the remarks.
In 2007, the U.S. agreed to provide weapons worth at least $16 billion to its allies in the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Clinton said this could be taken a step further and the U.S. could choose to further "upgrade the defense of our partners in the region".
"If the US extends a defense umbrella over the region, if we do even more to support the military capacity of those in the Gulf, it's unlikely that Iran will be any stronger or safer because they won't be able to intimidate and dominate as they apparently believe they can once they have a nuclear weapon," said Mrs. Clinton in Thailand, ahead of an Asian security conference to be held in the Thai resort of Phuket. ...
Read Full Report
Hillary Clinton: Iran's pursuit of nukes 'futile'
THE POLITICO [Allbritton Communications Co] - By Mike Allen & Daniel Libit - July 26, 2009
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that Iran will never achieve its goal of obtaining a nuclear weapon, declaring to Tehran: "Your pursuit is futile."
"What we want to do is to send a message to whoever is making these decisions, that if you're pursuing nuclear weapons for the purpose of intimidating, of projecting your power, we're not going to let that happen," Clinton said.
"First, we're going to do everything we can to prevent you from ever getting a nuclear weapon. But your pursuit is futile, because we will never let Iran - nuclear-armed, not nuclear-armed - it is something that we view with great concern, and that's why we're doing everything we can to prevent that from ever happening. ... We believe, as a matter of policy, it is unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons."
As a security summit in Thailand earlier this week, Clinton raised the possibility of a "defense umbrella" over the Middle East to protect other nations from a nuclear-armed Iran, marking the first time a senior administration official has publicly broached the prospect of the Persian nation succeeding in building a nuclear weapon. ...
Read Full Report
|
Netanyahu adviser raises "MAD" nuclear scenario
|
REUTERS [Thomson-Reuters] - July 9, 2009
JERUSALEM - Israel must have "tremendously powerful" weapons to deter a nuclear attack or destroy an enemy that dares to launch an atomic strike, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted on Thursday as saying.
National security adviser Uzi Arad, in comments to Haaretz newspaper, appeared to allude to what is widely believed to be Israel's own nuclear arsenal and a standing policy of "mutually assured destruction" (MAD). He warned other countries they could bring about their own devastation if they launched an attack.
Israel has never confirmed it has atomic arms.
In excerpts on Haaretz's English-language website of an interview to be published on Friday, Arad said he feared that if Iran became a nuclear power, five or six other states in the Middle East would follow suit. He called such a prospect a "nightmare" for Israel.
"The defensive might we have must be improved and become tremendously powerful, and create a situation in which no one will dare to realise the ability to harm us," Arad said.
"And if they do dare, we will exact a full price, so that they too will not survive."
Israel has three German-made submarines that are widely assumed to carry nuclear missiles.
One of the submarines sailed from the Mediterranean, via the Suez Canal, to Israel's Red Sea port of Eilat last week, in what officials called a signal to Iran of the long reach of its arsenal. ...
Read Full Report
|
Obama lifts ban on Syrian air industry
|
Middle East regime in open military alliance with Iran
WORLDNETDAILY - By Aaron Klein - July 28, 2009
TEL AVIV - The U.S. will seek sanctions waivers to export aircraft and other equipment to Syria, U.S. officials confirmed today.
Syria is in an open military alliance with Iran. It hosts the chiefs of several major Palestinian terrorist organizations. The country is accused of aiding the insurgency against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yesterday, Imad Mustafa, the Syrian envoy to the U.S., said the Obama administration had lifted a ban imposed in 2004 on exporting goods to the Syrian Aviation Industry. He said the message was delivered to Syrian President Bashar Assad by George Mitchell, Obama's envoy to the Middle East.
Today, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly confirmed Sen. Mitchell "told President Assad that the U.S. would process all eligible applications for export licenses as quickly as possible." ...
Read Full Report
Syria Forfeits Golan on a Silver Platter: Make it Gold
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - July 7, 2009
Foreign Minister Walid Muallem sarcastically agreed with President Shimon Peres's statement Monday that Israel will not hand over the strategic Golan Heights to Damascus on a "silver platter." He responded Tuesday morning that "silver" was not good enough and demanded, "We want to receive the Golan on a gold platter." ...
Read Full Report
Assad Vows to Recapture the Golan Heights
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hana Levi Julian - April 2, 2009
Syrian President Bashar Assad has vowed to recapture the Golan Heights one way or another, and reaffirmed his nation's relationship with the Hizbullah terrorist organization.
In an interview published Thursday in the Kuwaiti newspaper a-Sharq, Assad promised to take the Golan from Israel. "There is no escaping the fact that the day will come when we will free the Golan, through peace or through war," he was quoted as saying. "When a citizen loses hope, he will turn to the path of resistance in one form or the other." ...
Read Full Report
|
Russia-Iran Naval Maneuvers Begin in Caspian Sea
|
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hana Levi Julian - July 29, 2009
Russia is joining up with Iran for joint naval exercises for the first time ever, according to the Iranian Mehr News Agency.
The joint Russian-Iranian naval maneuvers, which were announced Wednesday, are taking place this week in the Caspian Sea.
The report, which could not be independently confirmed, quoted a senior Iranian ports authority official who said the drill was aimed at preventing pollution and improving search and rescue operations coordination between the two nations.
However, the maneuver, involving some 30 vessels, is seen by some analysts as a way to join forces against the U.S., which the Asia Times referred to as "the intrusive Western superpower."
Entitled "Regional Collaboration for a Secure and Clean Caspian," the two-day drill quietly combines military objectives with environmental goals. A 1921 Iran-Russia friendship agreement was the legal foundation for the present naval cooperation between the two countries, according to political analyst Kaveh L. Afrasiabi.
Russia has been instrumental in protecting Iran from further sanctions by the United Nations Security Council due to its defiance of a U.N. mandate to end its nuclear development program. ...
Read Full Report
Russia builds key naval HQ in Syria: Missile presence worries Israel
DEBKAFILE - July 21, 2009
A high-ranking Russian navy source reported July 21 that the Soviet-era naval maintenance base near Tartus in Syria is to be expanded and modernized to become "fully operational." DEBKAfile's military sources report that Russian is building the facility up as its main sea base for operations in four seas: The Atlantic and Indian Oceans and the Mediterranean and Red Seas. The upgrade of Russian port facilities at Tartus, its only foothold in the Mediterranean, will automatically enhance Moscow's strategic interests in Syria and Bashar Assad's regime.
The Russian source said that the 50 naval personnel and three berthing floats currently deployed at Tartus with accommodation for up a dozen warships will be beefed up with a new berthing float delivered by two tugboats from the Black Sea Fleet. DEBKAfile's sources disclose that those warships will include large vessels such as the nuclear-armed guided missile cruiser Peter the Great and the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, which called in at Tartus in January. ...
Read Full Report
Russia's first Persian Gulf naval presence coordinated with Tehran
DEBKAFILE - June 2, 2009
Russian warships are due to call Wednesday, May 27, at the Bahrain port of Manama, seat of the US Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf, DEBKAfile's military sources reveal. They will be following in the wake of the Russian vessels already docked at the Omani port of Salalah, the first to avail themselves of facilities at Gulf ports.
Their arrival is fully coordinated between the Russian and Iranian naval commands.
According to our sources, this is the first time a Russian flotilla will have taken on provisions and fuel at the same Gulf ports which hitherto serviced only the US Navy. Moscow has thus gained its first maritime foothold in the Persian Gulf. ...
DEBKAfile's military sources report that the Russians, like the Iranians, cover their stealthy advance into new waters by apparent movements for joining the international task force combating Somali pirates. While Iranian warships have taken up positions in the Gulf of Aden, the Russians are moving naval units southeast into the Persian Gulf. ...
Russian and Iranian naval movements in the two strategic seas are clearly synchronized at the highest levels in Tehran and Moscow.
Our military analysts find Russia and Iran seizing the moment for supplanting positions held exclusively by the US and other western fleets. They are taking advantage of two developments:
1. The number of US warships maintained in the Gulf has been reduced to its lowest level in two years; President Obama quietly reduced their presence near Iran's shores in order to generate a positive atmosphere for the coming US dialogue with the Islamic Republic. Not a single US aircraft carrier is consequently to be found anywhere in the Gulf region.
2. Monday, May 25, President Nicolas Sarkozy inaugurated France's first naval facility in the Gulf in Abu Dhabi. The Russian and Iranian policy-makers see no reason why Moscow cannot set up a military presence in the region if Paris can.
Read Full Report
|
|
600,000 Jews in Yesha, Eastern Jerusalem May Stymie US Plans
|
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - July 29, 2009 July 27, 2009
There are now more than 600,000 Jews living in Yesha (Judea and Samaria) and various neighborhoods of Jerusalem, including eastern Jerusalem, and sections in the north and south of the capital that were restored to the Jewish State in the Six-Day War in 1967 - but which the United States never has recognized as part of Israel. The Obama administration, continuing a change that began last when Condoleezza Rice was Secretary of State, has labeled the neighborhoods, such as Har Homa and Gilo, as "settlements."
The number of Jews living in Judea and Samaria alone has crossed 300,000, and the growth rate by the end of the year is likely to reach five percent or more, creating an obstacle to U.S. President Barack Obama's campaign against the communities as "illegitimate." ...
The move to Judea and Samaria probably would be higher, but American-imposed building restrictions have prevented people from building their own houses. Real estate agents have reported that prices for the remaining empty houses have soared as people race to move into the remaining supply of housing.
More Jews also are moving into eastern Jerusalem, where the U.S. has concentrated efforts to impose a building freeze. Approximately 300 families, most of them with several children, are living in several neighborhoods, some of them where Jews owned homes nearly 100 years ago but were expelled by the British during Arab pogroms in the period of the British Mandate. Hundreds of other families were forced to leave the Old City when it fell during the War of Independence in 1948.
National Union party chairman MK Yaakov Katz (Ketzaleh) responded to the Civil Administration statistics by calling on every Jewish family to "give birth to an additional child this year as a Zionist response to the decrees of Barack Hussein Obama."
Read Full Report
|
Sharia:
Arab Group Pushing for Islamic Law in Judea and Samaria
|
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Zalman Nelson - July 8, 2009
The Hizb ut Tahrir Islamic fundamentalist movement has become active among Palestinian Authority Arabs in Judea and Samaria, pushing a message that only restoring the Islamic caliphate and the rule of Islamic law, not Fatah or Hamas, holds the answer for the region.
According to National Public Radio (NPR), the group is arranging rallies and drumming up support while dodging security forces loyal to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who see the group as a threat.
"The coming of the caliphate threatens the Palestinian Authority regime and threatens the American interests in the area," said Hizb ut Tahrir supporter Osama al-Ansari from Hebron, "They are harassing us because a caliphate will not provide for the existence of the Palestinian Authority."
Besides not recognizing the authority of the PA or Hamas, the group also does not accept democracy or the concept of the modern nation-state. While the group officially rejects violence, various counterterrorism agencies have argued that radical ideology such as that of Hizb ut Tahrir can be linked to terrorist attacks. ...
"It seems that everything is going out of control for the Palestinian Authority," Shaheen said. "The Tahrir party is getting more popular in the West Bank and is trying to fill the vacuum that took place after the weakness of Fatah itself."
Read Full Report
Report: Gaza Religious Police Now Official
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Maayana Miskin - July 5, 2009
A violent group calling itself "The Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice" has carried out attacks in Gaza since shortly after Hamas took over the area in mid-2007. Now a female Arab journalist reports that the "unaffiliated" group is clearly an official branch of Hamas, charged with enforcing the group's strict interpretation of Islamic law.
The journalist, Asma abu-Ghul, told Al-Arabiya that she was stopped by the committee's policemen at the beach. Ghul said she was detained for allegedly laughing too loudly and appearing in public with uncovered hair.
The "prevention of vice" police body reports directly to Hamas's Ministry of Waqf Affairs, Ghul said. The force is increasingly visible on the streets of Gaza, she reported, and its officers patrol public beaches and parks as well as businesses such as restaurants and coffee shops. ...
Read Full Report
Expose: Sweden Funds Radical Arabs
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - July 6, 2009
Sweden, which took over the presidency of the European Union last week, funds radical pro-Arab and anti-Zionist groups, according to the Israeli based NGO Monitor, headed by Prof. Gerald Steinberg, chairman of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University.
NGO Monitor charged that Sweden cannot "play a positive role as a European leader" unless it changes it funding policies.
Sweden has not commented on the report, which shows that its Swedish International Cooperation Agency (SIDA) has donated millions of dollars to non-government organizations (NGOs) that ostensibly promote peace but which encourage anti-Israel activities. SIDA's website claims that funding for joint Israeli and Palestinian human rights campaigns "has helped to increase public support for a peaceful solution in both Israel and Palestine." ...
Read Full Report
Gazans flock to Hamas-run religious summer camps
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE - June 17, 2009
GAZA CITY - Summer has arrived, school's out, and on the carpeted floor of a Gaza City mosque Ala al-Ramalawi is reciting the Koran to a group of 12-year-old girls in colourful veils.
For most of Gaza's children summer camp still means swimming, horseback riding and campfire songs.
But the number of children attending Hamas-run religious camps has soared in the two years since the group seized power, reflecting the growing religious awareness among the enclave's impoverished residents. ...
Read Full Report
|
|
Obama's 'Outreach to Muslims' Prompts Mass Koran Distribution
|
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - June 29, 2009
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), whose officials in the past have been convicted for being associated with Muslim terrorist groups, said it will announce at a news conference Tuesday that it is launching an "education campaign" and will distribute 100,000 copies of the Koran to local, state and national leaders. The books will provide an English translation and commentary.
CAIR said the distribution is prompted by U.S. President Barack Obama's recent speech in Cairo, in which he said he wants to reach out to Muslims throughout the world. He praised the Muslim community in the U.S, whose values he said incorporate tenets of Islam. President Obama, whose father was a Muslim, quoted the Koran four times in his speech in Cairo and used the word "violence" instead of "terror" in his reference to extremists.
"Through this ground-breaking outreach initiative, we hope not only to educate policy-makers and opinion leaders about Islam, but also to provide an opportunity for American Muslims to reach out to their fellow citizens of other faiths," said CAIR board chairman, North Carolina State Senator Larry Shaw. ...
Read Full Report
|
|
Ban considering fining Israel for Gaza damage
|
YEDIOTH AHRONOTH [Yedioth Ahronoth Group - Private] - By Yitzhak Benhorin - June 12, 2009
WASHINGTON - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday it was "critical" that Israel halt all settlement activity. He added that he was considering fining the state $11 million for damage it did to UN facilities during the Gaza war.
Ban says the fine was recommended by a committee elected to investigate damage done by the IDF to UN structures during Operation Cast Lead.
Regarding the settlements he said, "The UN position is well known. It is critical that Israel freeze settlement expansion and dismantle outposts as the Quartet, and more recently US President (Barack) Obama, have asked," he told a press conference in New York. ...
Great EU expectations
Earlier in the day visiting EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana urged Netanyahu to commit to the concept of a Palestinian state being created alongside Israel.
"I would like to hear a speech in which there's a commitment of the government to the two-state solution, a commitment of the government on the question of settlements and a commitment to re-initiate relations with the Palestinians," he told journalists.
Reuters and AFP contributed to this report
Read Full Report
|
Election Iran:
Arab States Aligned With U.S. Savor Turmoil in Iran
|
NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Michael Slackman - June 24, 2009
CAIRO - The rancorous dispute over Iran's presidential election could turn into a win-win for Arab leaders aligned with Washington who in the past have complained bitterly that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was destabilizing the region and meddling in Arab affairs, political analysts and former officials around the region said.
The good-news thinking goes like this: With Mr. Ahmadinejad remaining in office, there is less chance of substantially improved relations between Tehran and Washington, something America's Arab allies feared would undermine their interests. At the same time, the electoral conflict may have weakened Iran's leadership at home and abroad, forcing it to focus more on domestic stability, political analysts and former officials said. ...
One gauge of how Arab leaders are reacting to the Iran crisis is their silence. Officials seem eager to avoid even the appearance that they are trying to influence the outcome, political analysts said. The state-controlled media outlets around the region have also been relatively low key in their coverage. ...
Read Full Report
Muted UN Response to Iran Crackdown
CYBERCAST NEWS SERVICE (CNSN.com) [Media Research Center] - By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor - June 26, 2009
Two weeks after Iran's bitterly disputed election, despite days of protests, state violence and a rising death toll, the United Nations Security Council remains silent and the world body's Human Rights Council has not called a meeting.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's position on the crisis has also provoked comment. It was only after a full week of street demonstrations and the deaths last Saturday of at least 10 protestors that he put out a statement, on Monday, declaring himself to be "dismayed by the post-election violence, particularly the use of force against civilians, which has led to the loss of life and injuries."
He urged "an immediate stop to the arrests, threats and use of force."
The Security Council, meanwhile, has not met to discuss the election or ensuing violent crackdown.
Asked Thursday whether the U.S. may pursue the matter at the Security Council, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said only that the administration was "discussing a lot of different options multilaterally and within the government." He said the subject would come up during multilateral meetings in Italy and Greece.
A meeting of the Group of Eight foreign ministers in currently underway in Trieste, Italy. The Greek island of Corfu hosts an Organization for Security and Cooperation gathering and a NATO-Russia meeting this weekend.
But with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warning his G8 counterparts against isolating Tehran - he called Iran's contested election "an exercise in democracy" - a tough-worded statement from that quarter seems unlikely. ...
Read Full Report
|
|
|
|
FAIR USE NOTICE
This Email newsletter contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml . If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Important Disclaimer
Moriel Ministries does not necessarily endorse everything that is transmitted to our email groups, as being completely trustworthy or godly as some items are drawn from secular sources. Nor does it suggest in any way that any individual or organization mentioned should be followed or given any special credence. Be Alert! is for the dissemination of information only and godly discretion must be applied by recipients to every transmission received by them, from us. |
|
|
