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Israel has rejected an immediate 48-hour cease-fire with Hamas, saying it will push ahead with its military assault on the Gaza Strip. Israeli officials say Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his defense and foreign ministers made the decision after discussing the French-proposed truce during a meeting overnight. Israeli war planes continued their assault on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip for a fifth-day Wednesday, despite mounting international pressure for an end to the violence. Officials say the missiles hit Hamas government buildings and tunnels used to smuggle food and weapons into Gaza from Egypt. Hamas also is continuing to fire...

COLMES: What should happen next? JOHN BOLTON: Well, I think this depends on what the government of Israel wants to do. I must say, I have flashbacks to the summer of 2006. The Israeli rhetoric is pretty intense. Defense Minister Ehud Barak saying this is going to be a fight to the death with Hamas. Much as government leaders in 2006 said they were going to eliminate Hezbollah. It's a risky proposition for Israel not to carry through on that because Hezbollah in the view of many emerged as the victim in that war simply by surviving, and Hamas might...

Arabs, mainly immigrants from Palestine, are expressing their frustration and anger over President-elect Barack Obama's silence over Israeli strikes on Gaza Strip and asserting that this shows that there would be little change in the pro-Tel Aviv policies of the US. In television interviews, they did not buy Obama's argument that there is only one president at a time, pointing out that he had been speaking about what he would do about economy and on terrorist attacks on Mumbai. But analysts say that the comparison with Mumbai attacks is not correct as currently diplomatic efforts are being made to pacify...

WASHINGTON: As Israel kept up its string of attacks on Gaza for a fourth day that has killed hundreds and injured hundreds more through air attacks, US President George W. Bush leaned on Palestinian leaders to urge Hamas to stop firing rockets into Israel. Israel has said it will not cease its assault until Hamas stops firing missiles into its territory. White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said yesterday in Crawford, Texas that Bush telephoned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to discuss a “sustainable cease-fire” in the Gaza Strip. “They agreed that for any cease-fire to be...

A bottle of flammable liquid was hurled at one of Chicago's oldest synagogues, catching fire but not causing major damage. No one was injured in the incident early Monday at Temple Sholom of Chicago. Chicago police and the Chicago fire department are investigating the arson as a hate crime. No one was in custody Monday. Police officer Daniel O'Brien says the fire burned itself out and never ignited the North Side building. He says investigators are working to get surveillance equipment from the area. Roger Rudich, president of the temple, says the arson was unsettling but not damaging.

Hillary Clinton is forming a 'hit squad' of special envoys who will be sent to the world's troublespots to try to prevent conflict breaking out. The diplomats will form the spearhead of the US state department as the new secretary of state seeks a bigger role for her office in Barack Obama's new government. The former first lady has wasted no time as she begins building up her team in preparation for taking over as America's most senior diplomat from Condoleezza Rice next month. Hillary Clinton with President Elect Barack Obama. Sources say that the former first lady is seeking...

Hamas flexed its muscles Tuesday night and fired two rockets into Beersheba as Defense Minister Ehud Barak asked for government approval to call up an additional 2,500 reservists ahead of a planned ground operation in the Gaza Strip. One of the Katyusha rockets struck a kindergarten in Beersheba, causing damage. Another rocket hit outside the city in an open field. The IDF bombed the launcher of the Grad-model rockets afterward, as well as the cell responsible. The army said it successfully hit its target. Defense officials had warned that Hamas had the ability to fire rockets into Beersheba - located...

The Jerusalem Post reported on Monday that Israeli Defense Forces aircraft bombed suspected Hamas terror laboratories located at the Hamas-run Islamic University of Gaza (IUG). According to the article, IUG professors were using the labs to build explosives for the terrorist organization. A BBC report confirmed that the IUG science building was the target of the Israeli retaliatory strikes. Thus far unreported is that the IUG science and technology lab was financed and constructed with the assistance of the Dublin, Ohio-based Arab Student Aid International (ASAI). In fact, the IUG website has a page dedicated to ASAI’s ongoing contributions to...

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As Israel continues to bomb the Hamas in the Gaza section of Palestine , Muslims in London have taken to the streets in protest. They are of course calling for Israel to stop killing their terrorist brothers. Since Israel is continuing with their military operations, the Muslim protesters have turned to rioting.

Injured Palestinian girl: Hamas is the cause of all wars Hot Air A haunting clip from an outfit that specializes in them: Portrait of a human shield, her four-year-old sister one of 60 civilians killed...

Large Israeli forces - tanks, infantry, engineer corps, artillery, and more - are waiting just outside Gaza for the order to enter. It is felt that the great successes of the three-day air campaign have begun - or are soon to begin - yielding diminishing returns, and that a ground offensive will be necessary. The precise objectives of such an attack have not been publicized, however, other than the neutralization of rocket-launching sites. Strategic terror points, including mosques that shelter weapons and ammunition, will also be targeted. "We will reach places [in Gaza] that the Palestinians never expected," an unidentified...

30 December 2008 | 18:04 -> 21:05 | Source: B92, Beta, Tanjug KOSOVSKA MITROVICA -- After two Albanians stabbed a 16-year-old Serb with a knife in Kosovska Mitrovica this afternoon and incidents that ensued, the situation is now calm. Automatic gunfire was heard as an Albanian-owned store was set on fire near the bridge on the Ibar River which divides Kosovska Mitrovica into its northern, predominantly Serb, and southern, Albanian part. The victim, Nikola Božović, was taken to hospital with a 10-centimeter stab wound apparently in the lumbar area of his back. Doctor Trajče Bogeski said that the boy was...

Violent confrontations broke out at the Israeli Embassy in London today as up to 1,500 protesters against Israel's Gaza campaign gathered in a vociferous demonstration. Campaign supporters, Palestinians and British Muslims stood on the pavement of High Street Kensington, west London, and chanted in unison: “Five, six, seven, eight - Israel is a terror state.” Riot police were brought in to control the crowd, some of whom turned violent. Witnesses said some protestors were forcibly removed and others were seen with bloodied faces as violence erupted. One campaigner was seen throwing a bag and what appeared to be a book...

MUMBAI - Ajmal Amir Kasab, the sole surviving member of the 10-man team of Pakistani gunmen that left hundreds dead or wounded after a bloody three day rampage in Mumbai, today blamed the mayhem on an "email mixup" that left him and his colleagues unaware that Barack Obama had won election as President of the United States. "What? Oh bloody hell, now you tell me," said Kasab, as he was led away in handcuffs by Indian security forces. Kasab, 21, apologized to Indian President Pratibha Patil, explaining that no one in his group had known about the recent U.S. election...

(IsraelNN.com) The verse in the Torah that was shot up by Mumbai terrorists reads: "The Almighty spoke to Moses after the death of Aaron's two sons…." It is from Leviticus [VaYikra], Chapter 16, Verse 1. The damaged Torah scroll was discovered when officials examined the Chabad House following the massacre of six Israelis by the Muslim terrorists who staged the mass slaughter at least 10 different places Wednesday night. They saw bullet holes in the Holy Ark where the scroll was kept and then examined it to see if it had been damaged. The verse refers to Nadav and Avihu,...

Iran poses the greatest foreign policy challenge to the new president with Tehran on course to produce a nuclear bomb in the first year of an Obama administration, an unprecedented coalition of top think tanks warned yesterday. Barack Obama must follow through on his promises of direct talks with Tehran and engage the Middle East region as a whole if he is to halt a looming crisis that could be revisited on the United States, the experts warned. “Diplomacy is not guaranteed to work: it is not,” Richard Hass, one of the authors said. “But the other options – military...

The Manmohan Singh government is weighing various options including a strike on Pakistan to dismantle its terror bases in response to the recent Mumbai terror attack. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee today hinted about military option when he told a news channel, “As and when it takes place, people will come to know, it’s not publicised. Every sovereign country has the right to protect its territorial integrity and take appropriate action and when it feels necessary to take that appropriate action.” “What will be done, time will show and you will come to know,” Mukherjee earlier told reporters on the...

Islamic terrorists and their handlers have always claimed that their problem is with Zionists, not with Jews. The Neturey Karta sect (who dress and talk like hassidic Jews, but are no more than an aberrant abomination, a cruel mockery of what Judaism is) attack Zionism, while claiming that the world truly loves Jews as they embrace and kiss the putrid little maggot Ahmedinajad. It seems that most latent (and not so latent) subtle antisemites claim the supposed moral high ground of anti-Zionism as opposed to the obvious prejudice of antisemitim. I am a Jew, a devout Orthodox Jew, and I’m...

ANTI-TERROR police hope to participate in role-reversal sessions with Muslims in an attempt to ease concerns about the "harassment" of Scottish Asians travelling through Glasgow Airport. The away-days are designed to improve relations between police and the Muslim community and reach a common understanding about the need to question people at the airport. The move, based on a pilot scheme south of the Border called Operation Nicole, is among a raft of proposals that the country's head of anti-terrorism will put to aggrieved Muslims, who say they are continually harassed by repeated interrogations when they arrive in Scotland from Pakistan....