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Unearthed: the humble origins of world diplomacy By David Keys, Archaeology Correspondent 19 January 2003 Archaeologists have discovered evidence of an invasion of the Middle East by one of the world's first superpowers, which destroyed much of the region 33 centuries ago. Under the ruins of a 3,800-year-old royal palace in western Syria they have found part of an ancient diplomatic and administrative library, the most important archaeological discovery of its kind for more than 20 years. Accounts on clay tablets describe the region's conquest by one of the Bronze Age's superpowers, the Hittite Empire, in 1340BC. This helped to...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem The Trees of The Bible Joel 1 A Call to Repentence New International Version (NIV) 12 The vine is dried up     and the fig tree is withered; the pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree—     all the trees of the field—are dried up. Surely the people’s joy     is withered away. A Call to Lamentation 13 Put on sackcloth, you priests, and mourn;     wail, you who minister before the altar. Come, spend the night in sackcloth,     you who minister before my God; for the grain offerings and drink offerings     are withheld from the house of your...

The brutal winter ebbs at last, giving way to the season of hope, deliverance and renewal. The celebrations of Passover and Easter, marking the beginning of spring, overlap this year, as they often do. Jewish children practice reciting the four questions and dream of finding the hidden Passover mazoh. Christian children celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, decorating eggs and hiding them for a hunt. Nature awakens, and suddenly all things look possible again. Just not for a lasting peace in the Middle East. President Obama, with Secretary of State John F. Kerry as his messenger and chief instigator, badly misjudged...

No devotee of Yes Minister, yesteryear’s BBC’s classic, can forget St. Edward’s Hospital – that spanking new cutting edge facility that had no patients or medical personnel. Nonetheless, St. Edward’s hustled and bustled, a veritable hive of activity and creative energy. For 15-months since its much-ballyhooed inauguration, an administrative staff of 500 bureaucrats filled the hospital’s offices, pushed papers and generated red tape. Sounds exaggerated? A bit over-the-top for real life? Not really. John Kerry’s peace project, for example, replicates the parody’s blueprints with mind-blowing precision. It is for diplomacy what St. Edward’s was for health care – an incredible...

Under pressure from Arab nations, the United Nations Human Rights Council has rejected a U.S.-backed choice to replace its outgoing point man on Palestine, and is now eyeing two candidates who share a long history of alleged anti-Israel bias. The current front-runner to replace Richard Falk, a 9/11 truther who once praised Ayatollah Khomeinei and was reliably anti-Israel while serving as the council's special rapporteur on Palestinian rights, is Christine Chinkin, a law professor at the London School of Economics. Chinkin authored the Goldstone report, an infamous UN study on the Gaza conflict that was repudiated by Israel. A dark...

Between having Republican presidential candidates fly to Las Vegas to kiss his ring, billionaire Sheldon Adelson has managed to fit in time to talk Sen. Lindsey Graham into sponsoring a bill banning Internet gambling. As you may know, Sheldon Adelson is a CASINO OWNER. Internet gambling would compete with his casino business.

An American commentator who appeared on state-owned Iranian Press TV suggested that Israel was responsible for the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which went missing on March 8. “Why are they giving us photoshopped pictures of Iranian passengers?” said Barrett, referring to the two Iranian nationals who boarded the flight with stolen passports. “Obviously there was some kind of a set-up to try to blame this on Iran,” he continued. “Precisely what that is we don’t know, but the Israelis have been using their assets, including the head of El-Al security, who was a 9/11 suspect – he lives...

Republicans, I come in peace.Until very recently, Rand Paul’s project of insinuating himself comfortably within the Republican Party, and positioning himself as a plausible presidential nominee, had gone along with remarkable ease. Yes, the author of his campaign book turned out to be an unreconstructed neo-Confederate. That was a speed bump. (Who among us has not entrusted the explication of his worldview to a man who has cheered on the assassination of President Lincoln?) Paul had staged a masterful piece of political theater with his marathon Senate speech denouncing the Obama administration’s drone policy. He has assembled a top-tier campaign...

Balaclava-clad far-right paramilitaries fire into the air at the funeral in Ukraine of an anti-government protestor. This is not a tribute to a fellow right-wing nationalist, but to a Jewish construction worker, Alexander Scherbanyuk. Of the approximately 100 people killed during the protests in Kiev that swept Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich from power in February, three were Jews, according to Vyacheslav Likhachev, a Ukrainian anti-Semitism expert. The same day, snipers in Kiev killed two more Jewish anti-government protesters, Josef Shiling, a 61-year-old construction worker from Drogobych and Evgeniy Kotlyar, a 33-year old ecological activist from Kharkiv. Each of the three...

A deal has been reached between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to extend US-brokered peace talks, according to Middle Eastern news outlet Al-Arabiya. As part of the deal, Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard is to be freed from his 27-year detention in the US while the contentious fourth set of Palestinian prisoners are to be released.

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem The Trees of The Bible Ecclesiastes 12:5 Almond Tree New Living Translation Remember him before you become fearful of falling and worry about danger in the streets; before your hair turns white like an almond tree in bloom, and you drag along without energy like a dying grasshopper, and the caperberry no longer inspires sexual desire. Remember him before you near the grave, your everlasting home, when the mourners will weep at your funeral.

Let’s set aside the moral issue that it’s wrong to negotiate with terrorists and the practical issue that negotiating with terrorists encourages more terrorism. Those are both right and obvious, but there’s also a third issue. Negotiating with terrorists doesn’t work unless they intend to stop being terrorists. The peace process between Israel and the PLO has never worked and will never work because the members of the terrorist group never intended to stop being terrorists. The PLO yammers on about Palestine, a country that never existed and a name that has nothing to do with the Arab conquerors they...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem The Trees of The Bible Psalm 137 Willow Tree New International Version (NIV) 1. By the rivers of Babylon, here we sat down and wept, When we remembered Zion. 2. Upon the willows in the midst of it We hung our harps. 3. For there our captors demanded of us songs, And our tormentors mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion.” 4. How can we sing the LORD’S song In a foreign land? 5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, May my right hand forget her skill. 6 May my...

Wind Shield radar to be carried into enemy territory, track the sources of incoming rocket, missile and mortar fire.

Chris Matthews for an interview on Hardball Wednesday and made some news by saying he does not think the United States should bomb Iran even if they were to succeed in building an operational nuclear weapon. This statement differs not only from recent comments made by former Vice President Dick Cheney but also from the stated position of President Barack Obama. “I never have felt that Israel had a capability militarily to go 1,200 miles or more and bomb Iran effectively and then return back to Israel,” said of Cheney’s suggestion that Israel could attack Iran unilaterally. “The only country...

Archaeologists unearth 3,300-year-old coffin at Tel Shadud thought to hold Canaanite official in service of Egyptian pharaoh :snip: Found alongside the new sarcophagus was a scarab seal ring encased in gold, carved with the name of Pharaoh Seti I, who ruled ancient Egypt in the 13th century BC. Seti I conquered the region of today's Israel in the first year of his reign in order to secure Egyptian trade routes and collect taxes for Egypt, said Ron Beeri, an archaeologist who participated in the dig. The man buried in the sarcophagus might have been a tax collector for the pharaoh,...

What, if anything, do "we" now stand for and why?An article published on April 9th by the Gatestone Institute International Policy Council is titled U.S.: The Great Problem that Needs to be Solved. Written by Elliot Abrams, it contends that the problem has at its center the world view of President Obama. His world view is based primarily on ideology rather than reality; its bases are evident in all that He and His minions do and fail to do. The problem also impacts domestic policy, implemented by Executive Decree when He "won't wait." If the Democrats control neither house of the Congress following the November elections, there...

WASHINGTON — — When has a secretary of state been involved in so many disastrous, self-initiated negotiations? First, John Kerry convenes — against all advice and holding no cards — Geneva negotiations to resolve the Syria conflict and supposedly remove Bashar Assad from power. The talks collapse in acrimony and confusion. Kerry's response? A second Geneva conference that — surprise! — breaks up in acrimony and confusion. Then, even as Russian special forces are taking over Crimea, Kerry goes chasing after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov — first to Paris, then Rome, then London — offering a diplomatic "off-ramp." Lavrov...

Every time Kerry opens his mouth about his Peace Talks Follies, he only makes things worse, especially for himself. Israel’s announcement last week of new homes for a southern Jerusalem neighborhood in an area claimed by the Palestinian Authority was the trigger that caused the blow-up in the American-led effort to extend peace talks, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told a Senate committee Tuesday. He told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that after Israel refused to release a fourth batch of terrorists, and then followed that decision with the housing tender in the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem, “poof, that...

Bennett fires back at Kerry, no apology for building in Jerusalem, which 'is no poof, it's Zionism.' Economics Minister Naftali Bennett fired back at US Secretary of State John Kerry's accusations before the Senate on Tuesday, where he blamed Israel for responsibility over the collapse of the peace talks. Kerry criticized Israel, saying "700 settlement units were announced in Jerusalem, and 'poof'...that was sort of the moment." His comment referred to a reissued call for tenders on over 700 housing units in the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo last Tuesday. A construction freeze on Jewish building in Jerusalem, Judea and...