Free Republic

In 1948, the armies of seven Arab nations invaded Israel. They failed to wipe out the newly reborn nation, but Jordan occupied part of Jerusalem and ethnically cleansed its Jews. Among the former Jewish neighborhoods was a small area named Shimon HaTzadik or Simon the Righteous after a high priest who became famous for talking Alexander the Great out of putting up an idol in the Temple. The Arab Muslim colonists who had occupied the area however called it Sheikh Jarrah after an associate of the Iraqi invader Saladin. Saladin had invaded Israel some 1500 years after Shimon HaTzadik’s death....

The exceptionally vicious condemnation of Israel with regard to housing construction in the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem is not merely misguided, but also reflects irrational bias. Incidentally, this behavior also has many ominous parallels to the inhumane incarceration of Jonathan Pollard, despite pleas for the commutation of his sentence from all sectors of American society. The harsh outburst relates to a 2,600-unit housing project planned as an extension of an exclusively Jewish neighborhood adjacent to the suburb of Talpiot and Kibbutz Ramat Rahel, both within the Green Line. It incorporates primarily barren land on which Ethiopian and Russian immigrants had...

As Gaza terrorists breached the ceasefire and renewed their rocket fire on Israeli civilian centers Tuesday, Arab terrorists in the Israeli capital of Jerusalem apparently didn't want to be left out of the action. Two molotov cocktail attacks were launched in the eastern part of Jerusalem late Tuesday night. In the first incident two firebombs were hurled at an Egged bus driving on Yericho Road towards Moti Gur St., which passes adjacent to the Old City to the east. One of the two molotov cocktails exploded on impact, setting the bus on fire. No injuries were caused, but the bus...

A Jewish family finally succeeds in moving into one room of a house owned by Jews but occupied by Arabs in the Silwan Valley. Seven years after a court ruling that supported Jewish ownership, police escorted the family into their room separated by barbed wire and sheets of metal from the rest of the building, the Bethlehem-based Ma'an news agency reported Monday. The Arab Hamdallah family still is resisting orders to leave the entire house, which was bought by an orthodox Jewish group more than a century ago and was re-sold in 1990 when U.S. philanthropist Irvin Moskowitz bought the...

NOTE: THIS IS THE NEW ISRAEL-RELATED THREAD Note The following news brief is a quote: Report: IDF attacks targets in south, central Gaza Strip Published: 08.17.10, 23:45 / Israel News Palestinians reported that the IDF had fired towards open ground in Khan Younis and attacked the smuggling tunnels in the south of the Gaza Strip. No injuries were reported. Two IDF soldiers were lightly wounded Tuesday morning from shells fired into the western Negev. (Ali Waked)

The Mount of Olives is located east of the Old City across the Kidron Valley. It offers a magnificent view of Jerusalem because its summit is 300 feet higher than the city. One can also see the Judean Hills as far as the Dead Sea and the mountains of Moab on the east side. It also demarcates the watershed. The Dead Sea is twenty two miles away to the south east along the Kidron Valley. It is along this valley that water flows down to the Dead sea and pilgrims historically have travelled up to the Holy City. The City...

# An imbalanced EU position paper on Jerusalem written in December 2008, and recently leaked to the media, completely ignores Israel's historical and legal rights to its capital. The EU attack refers primarily to the City of David, located just beyond Jerusalem's Old City walls, an area identified by archaeologists and historians as the location of King David's capital some 3,000 years ago. Archaeological excavations took place there during Ottoman rule, as well as under the ensuing British Mandatory rule, and they have continued under Israeli rule as well. # About 20 years ago a wave of new, illegal construction...