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CAIRO — The Arab League labelled Shiite Muslim Hizbollah a terrorist organisation on Friday, Egyptian state media said, as tensions rise between Sunni and Shiite powers across the Middle East. Sectarian wars are raging in Syria, Yemen and Iraq, and the League has become a forum for the mostly Sunni Arab countries, led by Saudi Arabia, to air their grievances with Shiite power Iran, the major backer of Hizbollah and other Shiite groups in the region. "The Arab League foreign minister's committee has decided on Friday to consider Hizbollah a terrorist organisation," said a statement from the Arab League carried...

Prince Turki al-Faisal also lashes out at US president for accusing monarchy of fueling sectarian conflicts across Mideast A senior Saudi royal criticized President Barack Obama Monday for comments accusing the longtime US ally of feeding Middle East conflicts. Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, has long been a major ally of the United States but the relationship has deteriorated under Obama. Riyadh has been especially concerned by US support for Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers, fearing its regional rival will be emboldened. In an opinion piece published in Saudi newspapers, Prince Turki al-Faisal, the kingdom’s former intelligence...

JNS.org – The World Jewish Congress and the Israel Council on Foreign Relations hosted former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani in Jerusalem on Sunday. Giuliani praised Israel’s resilience during the 1990s surge of Palestinian terror attacks on buses in a speech to an audience that included Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, Israeli Minister for Social Equality Gila Gamliel, and the director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office, Eli Groner. Israeli resilience helped him lift the moral of New Yorkers following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, Giuliani said. “I came to Israel thinking I would lift morale, but I came back...

Voyage to prove pharaohs traded cocaine By Tom Leonard in New York Last Updated: 2:21am BST 30/05/2007 An adventurer who believes that ancient man regularly crossed the Atlantic Ocean 14,000 years ago plans to recreate such a voyage in a 41ft raft made of reeds and eucalyptus tree branches. Basing his theory on the thinnest of historical evidence, Dominique Gorlitz believes that the discovery of traces of tobacco and cocaine in the tomb of the pharaoh Rameses II proves that there was trade between the Old and New Worlds. He also claims that 14,000-year-old cave paintings in Spain show that,...

American Drugs in Egyptian MummiesS. A. Wells www.colostate.edu Abstract: The recent findings of cocaine, nicotine, and hashishin Egyptian mummies by Balabanova et. al. have been criticized on grounds that: contamination of the mummies may have occurred, improper techniques may have been used, chemical decomposition may have produced the compounds in question, recent mummies of drug users were mistakenly evaluated, that no similar cases are known of such compounds in long-dead bodies, and especially that pre-Columbian transoceanic voyages are highly speculative. These criticisms are each discussed in turn. Balabanova et. al. are shown to have used and confirmed their findings with...

Mummy Hair Reveals Drinking Habits By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News Sept. 23, 2004 Mummy hair has revealed the first direct evidence of alcohol consumption in ancient populations, according to new forensic research.The study, still in its preliminary stage, examined hair samples from spontaneously mummified remains discovered in one of the most arid regions of the world, the Atacama Desert of northern Chile and southern Peru. The research was presented at the 5th World Congress on Mummy Studies in Turin, Italy, this month. “ In modern human hair the levels would generally be in the ranges of social drinking, but we...

Obama became annoyed... President Obama’s favorite journalist Jeffrey Goldberg made headlines in Israel when The Atlantic published his latest article about the President. In his lengthy piece titled “The Obama Doctrine,” Goldberg gave an overview of Obama’s foreign policy and discussed the President’s disillusionment with the attempts to change the Middle East for the better. Yes, Obama really thought that his policies in this problematic region would bring a positive change when he entered the White House at the beginning of 2008. “This is the moment we must help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East,”...

Tunnels big enough to fit a truck have been discovered by the Egyptian military on the Sinai-Gaza border. These tunnels are allegedly the source of weapons being used by ISIS and Islamic Jihad in the peninsula, and point to a thriving weapons industry in the Strip. Hamas tunnel during Operation Protective Edge (Photo: Reuters) Hamas has been digging tunnels on the border of Egypt that are big enough to permit vehicles the size of trucks to go through, according to Egyptian security officials. Hamas tunnel exposed from the Egyptian side The tunnels connect the Gaza Strip with the Sinai Peninsula,...

If Israel does not take steps to separate from the Palestinians, Jews will continue to be killed in terror attacks and the two-state solution will be in danger, opposition leader Isaac Herzog told US Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday. Biden met with Herzog before concluding his three-day trip to Israel in a conversation that focused on the current wave of terror and on Biden's impressions on the Palestinian issue based on his talks with leaders during his visit. The US vice president's trip saw him meet both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas separately. Biden...

Seven Arab tunnel diggers were rescued by a search operation in Rafah city on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip Thursday, after Egyptian authorities had flooded a tunnel where they were working, Ma’an reported, citing Hamas security sources. Gazan authorities are searching for one worker who is believed to be still stuck inside the tunnel. The tunnel was flooded by Egyptian authorities who pumped seawater into it. Last month, according to Ma’an, the Egyptians destroyed another tunnel in the same manner, but no injuries were reported. Gaza Arabs have always relied on underground smuggling tunnels across the Egyptian border,...

With about 10 months left in office, President Barack Obama is considering unprecedented moves to implement a two-state solution, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Senior US officials revealed that the President is looking to initiate a final negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority using United Nations Security Council resolutions, a step that would obligate not only Israel and the Palestinian Authority, but effectively determine the direction of US policy for the president’s successor as well. The report comes ahead of Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel on Tuesday, where he is scheduled to meet with...

Egypt said Sunday that the bombing which killed the country's chief prosecutor last year was carried out by members of the now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood who had been trained in the Gaza Strip by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Egyptian Interior Minister Magdy Abdel-Ghaffar said dozens of people have been detained in connection to the killing of 65-year-old Hisham Barakat last June, the first assassination of a senior Egyptian official in 25 years. "Hamas trained, prepared, and oversaw the implementation" of the attack, he said in an address broadcast by state and private media, which also aired confessions by some of...

Archive photo of Navy Squadron 916. (photo credit:IDF SPOKESMAN’S UNIT) Hamas in Gaza has received Iranian operational instructions on how to prepare swarm-like boat attacks, and is preparing such capabilities for clashes with Israel, according to a senior naval source. The Israel Navy’s Squadron 916 of fast patrol boats, tasked with securing the coastline, is training and preparing itself for combat with Hamas, while keeping a close eye on sea movements around the Strip. “Hamas is building up its ability to cause much damage from sea-based attacks,” the navy source told The Jerusalem Post this week. “It is improving its...

Israel Reconsidering 2008 Purchase of U.S. Jets; Cabinet Mulls Cancelling Acquisition of Flawed Fighter-Jet Rejected By Most NATO Air Forces A welcome decision made back in 2008 to purchase U.S.-made Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) jets no longer appears very attractive in 2016 – and Israel is considering backtracking on it. So say Israeli government sources quoted by Middle East Newsline (MENL). For one thing, the much-touted JSF has some inherent flaws, such as inadequate range, weapons payload and stealth capability. In addition, the Americans refuse to share the JSF source code with Israel. Israel would not be able to modify...

BEIRUT -- A Saudi-dominated political bloc on Wednesday formally designated Lebanon's Hezbollah militia a terrorist organization, a move that signals dangerously escalating tensions between regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Gulf Cooperation Council's decision against the Iranian-allied group comes two weeks after Saudi Arabia canceled $4 billion aid package for strengthening Lebanese security services. Saudi Arabia and other GCC member states have advised their citizens to leave Lebanon. An announcement posted on the GCC website accused Hezbollah, a powerful Shiite Muslim movement, of unspecified hostile acts in the six states in the bloc: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,...

There was a lot of whining inside the beltway last March about whether then-House Speaker John Boehner broke diplomatic protocol by inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress without informing the White House. This was during the critical period a few months before the Senate weighed in on President Obama’s Iran nuclear agreement. The results are in: the Prime Minister’s speech will stand the test of time, while partisan hand-wringing will have nothing to do with the outcome of Iran’s nuclear development. Let’s review the record though to see how the political people in charge behave when something...

New review of Palestinian Authority textbooks finds systematic incitement against Jews, erasure of Israel continues. A review of dozens of Palestinian Authority educational books for the 2015-2016 school year found that the PA education system continues to encourage terror against Jews and completely ignores the Holocaust in history books discussing World War II. In addition, this year's textbooks continue to systematically erase the State of Israel from maps and texts. Gal Berger, a journalist focusing on Palestinian affairs with Reshet B, carried out a comprehensive investigation of about 70 textbooks for first through twelfth grades on the subjects of civics,...

Turkey finds itself in conflict with Russia and Iran, at odds with Egypt's Sisi and has lost its standing with NATO and the US. Even if Israel and Turkey soon announce an end to their diplomatic crisis, which began almost six years ago as a result of the Mavi Marmara flotilla ship incident, relations between the two countries will not go back to how they once were. The golden era of cooperation in the security and intelligence fields between the two countries up until a decade ago will certainly not come back. Turkey was a large and important market for...

Weapons factories producing makeshift firearms are becoming more common, Reuters reports. Israeli security officials have seen a rise in the number of weapon factories in Judea and Samaria, while experts familiar with the Palestinian Authority black market note the flood of locally produced of guns. While an authentic M-16 assault rifle costs upwards of $18,000 in the PA black market, guns produced in local metal foundries can be found costing as little as $500. A raid by Israeli security forces last week uncovered one such foundry, used to produce sniper rifles and pistols. Often times the weapons are domestic knockoffs...

Trump Gains Among Christians in the Middle East By Ray Hanania February 18, 2016 Donald Trump may have angered Muslims with his broad swipes at Islamic terrorism and violence, but he has garnered more positive sentiment from Christians in the Middle East. ...snip... Trump's comments have gained strong support among Arab Christians and Middle East Christians who feel as though mainstream Muslim activists have failed to fully confront extremists. Though Muslims reject the radicals' tactics of terrorism and violence, arguing that they twist the true face of Islam, their leadership fails in strategic communications. Trump is honest and compensates for...