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Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem The Trees of The Bible 1 Kings 9:11 The Building of The Temple New International Version (NIV) 11 King Solomon gave twenty towns in Galilee to Hiram king of Tyre, because Hiram had supplied him with all the cedar and juniper and gold he wanted.

Far be it from me to defend Putin’s annexation of Crimea, which had been part of another country, the Ukraine. And most of reasons Putin and his gang trot out in defence of the heist is hogwash. But the Americans brought this on themselves and not just Obama, the most incompetent president in the history of that country, and as far as foreign policy goes, the most untrustworthy Israel should pay attention, not so much to Russia, but to the Americans, because they are stuck in our craw as well. When the Soviet Union fell, the Ukraine was a nuclear...

Police have “lost control of the Temple Mount,” Temple activists charged Monday morning, on the eve of Pesach. Dozens of Hamas men have taken over the Mount, waving Hamas flags, and are “not allowing Jews and tourists into the Mount,” said the activists. […] The Temple organizations called for the police commissioner to resign, following his failures on the Temple Mount. …

U.S. officials angry over Israel's lack of condemnation of Russia. Israeli policy is driven by its own security interests and does not need to be identical to that of the U.S., a senior defense official said Sunday in response to Haaretz's report that White House and State Department officials in Washington have built up a great deal of anger over Jerusalem's "neutrality" regarding Russia's invasion of the Crimean Peninsula. Senior figures in the Obama administration have expressed great disappointment with the lack of support from Israel for the American position on the Ukraine crisis and with the fact that the...

US officials expressed anger over Israel's policy of "non-interference" with the Russian annexation of the Crimea; Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported. A US official told the paper that the White House was disappointed with Israel's absence from the UN General Assembly meeting two weeks ago to vote on condemning Russia's military invasion of the Crimea and call to maintain Ukraine's territorial integrity. "We have been consulting closely on Ukraine not only with our partners and allies around the world. Obviously we are looking to the entire international community to condemn Russia's actions and to support Ukraine, so we were surprised...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem The Trees of The Bible Song of Songs 2 Apple Tree New International Version (NIV) She 2 I am a rose of Sharon,    a lily of the valleys. He 2 Like a lily among thorns    is my darling among the young women. She 3 Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest    is my beloved among the young men.I delight to sit in his shade,    and his fruit is sweet to my taste.4 Let him lead me to the banquet hall,    and let his banner over me be love.5 Strengthen me with raisins,    refresh me with apples,    for I am faint with love.6 His...

And so, the five surrounding Arab nations attacked Israel and were defeated in a war that was costly and difficult for everyone, resulting in about 800,000 Jewish refugees who fled from the neighboring Muslim countries and about 600,000 Arab refugees who fled from the war on Israel. What happened to those refugees? Most of the Jewish refugees were absorbed by the fledgling State of Israel; the Arab refugees were not absorbed by their neighboring countries. Why? Because they were used as human pawns against Israel, to the point that in 1959, the Arab League passed Resolution 1457: “The Arab countries...

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...