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In September 2007, Israeli fighter jets destroyed a mysterious complex in the Syrian desert. The incident could have led to war, but it was hushed up by all sides. Was it a nuclear plant and who gave the orders for the strike? The mighty Euphrates river is the subject of the prophecies in the Bible's Book of Revelation, where it is written that the river will be the scene of the battle of Armageddon: "The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from...

In a front page Los Angeles Times article "Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Obama" , a going away party for Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian academic and activist with a long-record of anti-Israel action, Barack Obama gave a special tribute to Khalidi, his friend and frequent dinner companion. Then state senator Obama spoke warmly about the meals prepared by Khalidi's wife and credited his many talks with Khalidi as being:

History will record that 2,500 years of Jewish life in Yemen is now over. As The Wall Street Journal reported October 31, the US State Department has completed a clandestine operation which brought 60 of the country's remaining Jews to America. The newspaper quoted Yeshiva University's Hayim Tawil, a Yemeni Jewry expert, as issuing the certificate of death: "This is the end of the Jewish Diaspora of Yemen. That's it." As Israelis and Jews we earnestly appreciate the efforts of the Obama administration on behalf of our Yemeni brethren. THE RESCUE illuminates an often overlooked aspect of the 60-year-plus Arab-Israel...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has requested that the Defense and Transport ministries draw up alternative proposals, to be submitted in two weeks, for the construction of barriers along the border with Egypt as a preliminary move to limit access by illegal African migrants. This would entail building fences and installing a variety of electronic hurdles along selected "sensitive" stretches particularly prone to infiltration. These pilot impediments are to be linked up, over a number of years, so that much of the border is sealed off. It seems simple on paper, but the price is high and hermetic closure is impossible....

US President Obama has named retired Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska) to co-chair the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. Hagel, who will co-chair the board with former Sen. David Boren (D-Oklahoma) was considered a critic of Israel by many pro-Israel activists during his two terms in the Senate, which ended early this year. He told an Arab-American group in 2007 that his support for Israel was not "automatic," and in an interview for Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller's book said that "the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people" on Capitol Hill. He also was one of a handful of senators...

30-10-2009,08:47 www.qassam.ps/news-1975-Haniyeh_welcomes_US_shift_says_willing_to_talk.html Al Qassam Website/Agencies - There is nothing wrong with talking to the United States, de facto Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh told American delegates on a medical mission in Gaza on Wednesday. Hamas welcomes the new language of US President Barack Obama, Haniyeh added, but noted the administration must implement its plans so the Palestinian people can establish their state with Jerusalem as its capital. "I am convinced of the fairness of the rules of democracy, pluralism and the peaceful transfer of power in Palestine," he told the delegation, but noted the punishment the Palestinian people received when they...

Complete text: PM Netanyahu - Sec'y State Clinton press conference: Clinton: No pre-conditions for PA-Israel negotiations Clinton: Well, I would add just for context that what the Prime Minister is saying is historically accurate. There has never been a pre-condition, it's always been an issue within the negotiations. What the Prime Minister has offered in specifics of a restraint on the policy of settlements which he has just described - no new starts for example, is unprecedented in the context of prior-to negotiations. 31.10.09 PRESS CONFERENCE WITH PM NETANYAHU AND US SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON PM Netanyahu: It's my...

Palestinians on Sunday accused US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of undermining progress toward Mideast peace talks after she praised Israel for offering to curb some Jewish settlement construction

Ex-Egyptian Chief of Staff: Arabs will definitely defeat the Jews .

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday night rejected Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's demand that Israel freeze all settlement activity as a precondition to negotiations. Stopping construction in the settlements "has never been a precondition, it has always been an in issue within the negotiations," Clinton said at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. In a strong show of support for Israel, she said she approved of Netanyahu's decision to issue a moratorium on new construction permits. "What the prime minister has offered... a restraint on the policy of settlements, which he...

In his new suburban American home, Shaker Yakub, a Yemeni Jew, folded a large scarf in half, wrapped it around his head and tucked in his spiraling side curls. "This is how I passed for a Muslim," said the 59-year-old father of seven, improvising a turban that hid his black skullcap. The ploy enabled Mr. Yakub and half a dozen members of his family to slip undetected out of their native town of Raida, Yemen, and travel to the capital 50 miles to the south. There, they met U.S. State Department officials conducting a clandestine operation to bring some of...

The postcard from the Home Front Command that recently arrived in my mailbox looks like an ad from the Ministry of Tourism. A map of Israel is divided by color into six regions, each symbolized by an upbeat drawing: a smiling camel in the Negev desert, a skier in the Golan Heights. In fact, each region signifies the amount of time residents will have to seek shelter from an impending missile attack. If you live along the Gaza border, you have 15 seconds after the siren sounds. Jerusalemites get a full three minutes. But as the regions move farther north,...

It's been another dreadful week in the war of civilizations. On Sunday, 153 people were killed and more than 500 wounded in back-to-back car bombings in Baghdad. On Tuesday in Kabul, five UN staffers and three Afghans were killed in an attack on a UN guesthouse. And on Wednesday in Pakistan, 100 people - mostly women and children - were killed and 160 wounded in a shopping district bombing in Peshawar. The week also saw 24 American service personnel killed in Afghanistan, making 58 fatalities for the month - the deadliest since 9/11. This is a war of civilizations in...

In the wake of the Goldstone Report and amid the nuclear threat from Iran, 10 state senators, through the American-Israel Friendship League and the National Conference of State Legislatures, are on a study tour of Israel. With a jam-packed itinerary, the NCSL delegation is meeting with officials such as Ron Dermer, senior adviser to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and Daniel Taub, director-general of the Foreign Ministry's Law Division. No. 1 on the meeting agenda? Goldstone. According to Georgia State Sen. Don Balfour, president of the NCSL, the Goldstone document is misunderstood in the United States. "Yesterday we had a meeting...

ZOA To President Obama: Rescind Appointment Of Anti-Israel, Anti-Iran Sanctions Fmr. Sen. Hagel To Intelligence Panel For annotated version www.zoa.org/sitedocuments/pressrelease_view.asp?pressreleaseID=1737 NEWS RELEASE Zionist Organization of America Jacob & Libby Goodman ZOA House, 4 East 34th Street, New York, N.Y. 10016 (212) 481-1500 Fax: (212) 481-1515 email@zoa.org www.zoa.org October 29, 2009 Contact Morton A. Klein at: 917-974-8795 or 212-481-1500 Attn: NEWS EDITOR ZOA TO PRESIDENT OBAMA: RESCIND APPOINTMENT OF ANTI-ISRAEL, ANTI-IRAN SANCTIONS FMR. SEN. HAGEL TO INTELLIGENCE PANEL The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has called upon President Barack Obama to rescind his appointment of retired anti-Israel, anti-Iran sanctions Republican Senator...

(IsraelNN.com) Former minister Rafi Eitan, who recruited Jonathan Pollard as a spy for Israel in the US, expressed regret over the espionage debacle in an interview on Channel 2. "I admit the failure and I regret it,” he said. In an interview to Maariv in 2008, Eitan said that the US intelligence services made a joint decision not to permit Pollard ever to be released until the end of his life. “The reason isn't Pollard. It's Israel... It's connected to the relationship system between the American intelligence services and the state of Israel.” Eitan went on to confirm that the...

What do US citizens living in the Jewish state think of the organization? Recently, this newspaper took a rather benign approach to J Street, recognizing its right to criticize Israel and its policies, and suggesting that Ambassador to the US Michael Oren should have consented to appear at J Street's current conference in Washington to "challenge the organization," rather than reject its invitation ("Miles from Main Street," editorial, October 23). The homepage of J Street at www.jstreet.org Photo: Screenshot As chairman of the American Israeli Action Coalition (AIAC), an organization that seeks to represent the 250,000 Americans living in Israel,...

Hamas bars PA from organizing elections in Gaza Khaled Abu Toameh , THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 29, 2009 www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1256740790254&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull Hamas announced on Wednesday that it won't allow the Palestinian Authority Central Elections Committee to start preparations in the Gaza Strip for holding new presidential and parliamentary elections on January 24, 2010. Hamas's decision to ban the vote in the Gaza Strip raises doubts regarding PA President Mahmoud Abbas's ability to hold the elections on time. Hamas and other Palestinian factions have also declared their intention to boycott the vote, leaving Abbas's Fatah faction alone in the race. Hamas spokesman Sami...

U.S. President Barack Obama has videotaped a message to be shown Saturday night at the annual memorial ceremony for Yitzhak Rabin in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv. The message will relate to the murdered prime minister's legacy and the need to advance the peace process. It was prepared in response to a request from Rabin's daughter, Dalia Rabin. This is another step in Obama's attempt to speak directly to the Israeli public in light of the very low level of support he has among the Israeli public. Several polls over the past few months show the American president has won...

TASMANIAN police are tackling a "new generation" of street drugs, which are being made in a bid to circumvent existing laws. Police said there had been a dramatic shift in the past year towards a new type of party drug with the street name of Israeli's. The drugs are sold in capsule form and contain derivatives of methcathinone, a psychoative stimulant, the Department of Police and Emergency Management's annual report says. The report says the drugs have been produced "in an attempt to circumvent existing legislation". Southern Drug Investigation Services chief Ian Lindsay said police became aware of the drug...

The UNHRC endorsed Goldstone's Gaza report and I, for once, am happy for this just and timely decision. However, it is clearly not enough, as there are still criminals walking among us, some of whom are even occupying key positions in the US and European governments. To fix this unbearable situation, in which criminals are not persecuted simply because of the high positions they occupy, I would like to propose for the Human Rights Council to start from the very head of the pyramid of power, to set an example for all other would-be war criminals. And what example could...

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is quietly laying the groundwork for long-range strategy that could be used to contain a nuclear-equipped Iran and deter its leaders from using atomic weapons. U.S. officials insist they are not resigned to a nuclear Iran and are pressing negotiations to prevent it from joining the world's nuclear club. But at the same time, the administration has set in place the building blocks of policies to contend with an Iran armed with atomic weapons. Those elements, former officials and analysts said, include the newly revised defense shield for Europe and deeper defense ties to Gulf...

Exporting Terror by Ari Bussel October, 2009: Pakistani Military Headquarters in Islamabad attacked, the guard post at one of the entrances was breached and both civilians and officers were taken hostage. After a standoff, commandos were able to rescue most alive. This major security lapse and embarrassment is being investigated. A breach of security in Iraq allowed car bombs to be set off moments apart near the Ministry of Justice and the Baghdad Provincial Council, killing more than 150. An investigation began. A homicide bomber blew himself at a meeting in South East Iran, killing 42 people, including the Revolutionary...

Can it be that we won't have Mahmoud Abbas to "kick around" much longer? Abbas is fed up - with Israel, with Hamas, and with the Obama administration for not delivering Binyamin Netanyahu prostrate. Abbas reportedly told President Barack Obama that he would not be a candidate in the next Palestinian elections he's called for on January 24 unless Israel capitulated to his demands. He supposedly told aides: "Let the Palestinian people go to elections. If it wants to elect Hamas, let it. If it wants to elect Fatah, let it. What will be is what will be, that's not...

Chaos is the only term that can describe the events taking place in Jerusalem these past few days and it doesn’t look like the mayhem will subside anytime soon. Israeli police are in an all out battle with masked Palestinian protesters as stun grenades, stones, petrol bombs and plastic chairs are raining from the sky. The fact that this World War III type of scene is happening outside one of Jerusalem’s most holy shrines shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to those who are familiar with the history between these two enemies. As Israeli riot police tried to extinguish...

Israeli urgently orders two stealth corvettes from Germany DEBKAfile Special Report October 27, 2009, 5:55 PM (GMT+02:00) DEBKAfile's military sources report that the two corvettes are needed to meet the build-up of Iranian submarines and Syria warships in the Mediterranean Sea and defend coastal infrastructure facilities such as power stations and naval bases which Israel intelligence fears will be at risk in a regional war. The order placed during Israeli chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi's three-day visit to Berlin this week as guest of the German high command surprised the defense ministry. Germany is contributing 500 million euros...

'There is no doubt he is our friend," Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, says of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, even as he accuses Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman of threatening to use nuclear weapons against Gaza. These outrageous assertions point to the profound change of orientation by Turkey's government - for six decades the West's closest Muslim ally - since Erdogan's AK party came to power in 2002. Three events this past month reveal the extent of that change. The first came on October 11 with the news that the Turkish military - a long-time bastion of secularism and advocate...

(IsraelNN.com) The self-proclaimed pro-Israel J Street lobby opened its nationwide conference this week, trying to survive a growing tide of American Jews who oppose its anti-Israeli government policies. Speaking at the opening of its three-day conference this week in Washington, the group's director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, declared that J Street is “defining support for the creation of a Palestinian state as a core pro-Israel position.” He claimed wide backing for its policies despite the boycott of the conference by Michael Oren, the Israel Ambassador to Washington. Also absent were dozens of Congress members, concerned with the organization’s pro-Arab position and its...

American Muslim leaders at the J Street Conference this week know exactly what J Street's real agenda is: bringing about a distancing in US-Israel relations and besmirching the mainstream Jewish community, under the guise of morality and justice. The pious spiritual claptrap that characterizes J Street's conference in Washington this week is both a conceit and a new form of Jewish apostasy. Conference speakers earnestly broadcast their "profound" Jewish and "spiritual" identities in order to besmirch the mainstream Jewish community and engender a distancing in US-Israel relations. This certainly does not fool the American Muslim leaders who are speaking at...

If world powers are not successful in efforts to contain the Iranian nuclear threat, an Israeli strike on Iran could become a reality, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said during a visit to Beirut, the Daily Telegraph reported Monday. The French foreign minister suggested that time was indeed short for a solution to the Iranian threat. "There is the time that Israel will offer us before reacting, because Israel will react as soon as they know clearly that there is a threat." "Israel will not tolerate an Iranian bomb. We know that, all of us," said Kouchner, adding that for...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran wants major amendments within the framework of a U.N. nuclear fuel deal which it broadly accepts, state media said, a move that could unravel the plan and expose Tehran to the threat of harsher sanctions. The European Union's foreign policy chief said on Tuesday there was no need to rework the U.N. draft and he and France's foreign minister suggested Tehran would rekindle demands for tougher international sanctions if it tried to undo the plan. Among the central planks of the plan opposed by Iran -- but requested by the West to cut the risk of...

(IsraelNN.com) Terrorists in southern Lebanon fired a Katyusha rocket on the Upper Galilee around 7 p.m. (1 p.m. EDT). No one was wounded and no damage was reported, but a fire broke out at the site of the explosion. Lebanese sources reported that the IDF retaliated with artillery fire, but Israel has not confirmed the report. The explosion occurred near Kiryat Shmona, and police and civil defense authorities are searching for the point of impact. Lebanese authorities confirmed that the rocket was fired from a village near the Israeli border.

[+] JERUSALEM, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Israeli authorities demolished two Palestinian homes near Arab East Jerusalem on Tuesday, ignoring international concern about the practice. Israel's Jerusalem municipality said the houses were built without permits. Palestinians say such permission is impossible to obtain and accuse Israel of using demolitions to tighten its hold on occupied territory in and around Jerusalem. "This is part of the Israeli plan to disrupt the demographic balance," Hatem Abdel-Qader, in charge of Jerusalem affairs in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement. Jerusalem is at the centre of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and the United States, seeking to...

It's a dilemma for mainstream Israelis: How to resist capitulating to Arab violence on the Temple Mount - driven by irrational fears of Zionist plots against it - while not encouraging marginal Jewish groups who feverishly yearn to make the Arabs' worst nightmares come true? Israel's "Third Templars" don't seem to care about the consequences of stoking an apocalyptic religious war with Islamic civilization - 56 countries, 1.57 billion faithful, most of them currently on the sidelines of the Arab-Israel conflict. Jewish tradition holds that the Mount, site of Solomon's Temple (and the Ark of the Covenant) and later the...

Major Adrian Agassi did not make the connection between the Bible, the land and the Jews when, fresh out of university, he left England for Israel in search of his roots. He was not even a practising Jew. But over the past quarter of a century, the Israeli army lawyer and then military judge at the forefront of arguably the most significant battle in the occupied West Bank – the confiscation of Palestinian land for the construction of Jewish settlements – has come to see himself as in service of a higher duty. In an unusually frank interview, which offers...

FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU Arab prof: 'Blowing oneself up' OK in Tel Aviv But asserts suicide bombings against Saudis not legitimate Posted: October 26, 2009 10:16 pm Eastern By Aaron Klein © 2009 WorldNetDaily JERUSALEM – Suicide bombings are OK in Tel Aviv, Israel, but not in Saudi Arabia, declared a Saudi professor speaking on Arab satellite television. "Someone who blows himself up amidst the enemy is different from someone who blows himself up in a safe place. Blowing oneself up in Tel Aviv is not like blowing oneself up in Riyadh," stated Saudi University professor Salman Al-Abdali on Iqra...

Actions and Consequences by Ari Bussel “Protecting evil and elevating it over good is the surest path to destruction. When civilization stresses the rights of the perpetrators more of those of the victims, the balance of humanity will be thrown off and civilization will crumble.” Norma Zager The current generation in Israel hardly remembers what its founders have known. Many do not even fathom the wisdom to study their own core values, dismissing their eternal code of ethics as archaic, lacking modern luster or being ultra-religious (thus possibly poisonous or infectious). Israel needs to go back to basics. It is...

The appointment of Senator George Mitchell as special envoy to the Middle East in January 2009 elicited great expectations for progress on the Israeli-Palestinian track, particularly since the new American president, Barack Obama, eloquently communicated his intent to renew peace negotiations and end them successfully within his first term in office. After nine months and many trips to the Middle East, a plethora of meetings with the leaders in the region and even an Obama-Netanyahu-Abbas summit in New York last month, Senator Mitchell seems unable to report success to his boss. There are several reasons for this outcome, some conjectural...

J Street's university arm has dropped the "pro-Israel" part of the left-wing US lobby's "pro-Israel, pro-peace" slogan to avoid alienating students. That decision was part of the message conveyed to young activists who attended a special weekend program for students ahead of J Street's first annual conference, which began on Sunday. Students are seen as a key component of the 18-month-old organization's constituency base and the conference itself. The multi-day event has incorporated new technology and interactive forums to harness their energy and garner feedback from the audience, which swelled to 1,500 on Monday and created overflow plenary and breakout...

The US will continue pressing for a deal to get Israel and the Palestinian Authority back to the negotiating table, despite concerns in Jerusalem that Friday's announcement of PA elections in January makes the likelihood of starting negotiations now even more remote. US Middle East envoy George Mitchell is expected back in the region by the end of the week, to continue, as one diplomatic official said, "pushing the rock." The US, he said, has made clear that it will do so until - perhaps because of a change of conditions - the rock actually moves. For the time being,...

TORONTO - Hasbara at York, a pro-Israel group at York University, announced on Wednesday that it will create a task force in response to an incident in February in which students at the school were forced to take refuge in the Hillel office as protesters banged on its glass doors, chanting anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slogans. The York University campus in Canada. Photo: Courtesy "Die, bitch, go back to Israel," and, "Die, Jew, get the hell off campus," they called out. That incident and others prompted the university administration to have a Task Force on Student Life, Learning and Community "review...

(IsraelNN.com) Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has sent multiple messages to United States President Barack Obama threatening to quit, Channel 10 news reported Monday night. Abbas blamed Israel and the U.S. for pushing him to desperation, saying negotiations with Israel were at a stand-still and Obama had “abandoned” him. Abbas also mentioned the serious hit to his popularity caused by the delay of a United Nations vote on the Goldstone Report. The report accused Israel of war crimes in connection with the three-week Cast Lead counterterror offensive in Gaza. Obama responded to the threats by calling Abbas and calming him,...

When America entered the war in Vietnam, Ho Chi Min said that it would be a long war and that the communists would win by using propaganda in the media and the universities. He was correct. It is time to take stock in the war between Israelis and the Palestinians and deal with some forbidden subjects. Israel is losing the propaganda war, hasbarah, and for a very good reason. Israel is not in the hasbarah game, unless one counts belated responses to the Palestinians' propaganda offensives. Pierre Rehov, a Moroccan French Jew, is a documentary filmmaker. He claims that the...

Iran's nuclear weapons development continues apace, threatening the security of its neighbors and the international community. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, more than 60 percent of the American public believes preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons warrants military action.

Leah Rabin, the late widow of assassinated premier Yitzhak Rabin, used words such as "nightmare," "monstrosity," "corrupt" and "liar" to describe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in letters she wrote over a decade ago that have recently been obtained by Haaretz.

Israel says PM did not consult Obama ahead of trip because meeting on peace process unnecessary. WASHINGTON – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's intention to visit Washington for the annual UJC General Assembly has surprised many on Capitol Hill and was apparently not coordinated with the Obama administration. An American source told Ynet Sunday that news of the visit had been received with reserved astonishment. The Obama administration has not yet responded to questions of whether a meeting with Netanyahu was forthcoming due to their surprise over the unscheduled visit. On the other hand, failure to invite Netanyahu to the White...

Following a day of clashes between security forces and Arab rioters in Jerusalem, Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal on Sunday evening stated that the fate of the capital would be determined by force, not negotiations. "The fate of Jerusalem will be determined only by confrontation and not by the negotiating tables," Mashaal said in a speech, according to Channel 10. "The Israelis want to divide al-Aqsa Mosque, and this is not all. They want to hold their religious ceremonies in the mosque … in preparation for demolishing it and building their temple there," he reportedly said. Israel is interested in...

Israeli police firing stun grenades faced off Sunday against masked Palestinian protesters hurling stones and plastic chairs outside the Holy Land's most volatile shrine, where past violence has escalated into prolonged conflict. A wall of Israeli riot police behind plexiglass shields marched toward young men covering their faces with T-shirts and scarves, sending many of them running for cover into the Al-Aqsa mosque, one of the Islamic structures in the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. They remained holed up in the mosque with police outside for several hours until dispersing...

If, to paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, diplomacy is war by other means, then just as armies are called upon to concentrate their efforts and resources where they can do the most good for their cause, so governments must utilize their diplomatic resources - whether plentiful or scarce - to advance their most important national interests. The Palestinians and the Iranians have formidable diplomatic resources at their disposal. Both the Palestinians and Iran can expect to receive the support of automatic majorities at the UN for everything they do. And today most international diplomacy is conducted under the aegis of the...

JERUSALEM – Israeli forces stormed Jerusalem's holiest shrine Sunday, firing stun grenades to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing Palestinian protesters in a fresh eruption of violence at the most volatile spot in the Holy Land. A wall of Israeli riot police behind plexiglass shields closed in on the crowd, sending many protesters — overwhelmingly young men — running for cover into the black-domed Al-Aqsa mosque. The mosque is one part of the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. Dozens of protesters remained holed up inside the mosque for several hours, occasionally opening...