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August 9, 2005
Workers repairing a sewage pipe in the old city of Jerusalem have discovered the biblical Pool of Siloam, a freshwater reservoir that was a major gathering place for ancient Jews making religious pilgrimages to the city and the reputed site where Jesus cured a man blind from birth, The Los Angeles Times reports.

The pool was fed by the now famous Hezekiah’s Tunnel and is “a much grander affair” than archeologists previously believed, with three tiers of stone stairs allowing easy access to the water, according to Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archeology Review, which reported the find Monday.

“Scholars have said that there wasn’t a Pool of Siloam and that John was using a religious conceit” to illustrate a point, said New Testament scholar James H. Charlesworth of the Princeton Theological Seminary. “Now we have found the Pool of Siloam… exactly where John said it was.”

A gospel that was thought to be “pure theology is now shown to be grounded in history,” he said.

The discovery puts a new spotlight on what is called the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, a trip that religious law required ancient Jews to make at least once a year, said archeologist Ronny Reich of the University of Haifa, who excavated the pool.

“Jesus was just another pilgrim coming to Jerusalem,” he said. “It would be natural to find him there.”

The newly discovered pool is less than 200 yards from another Pool of Siloam, this one a reconstruction built between A.D. 400 and 460 by the empress Eudocia of Byzantium, who oversaw the rebuilding of several Biblical sites.

Israel Today
Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has resigned from the government this afternoon (August 7).

“We have reached the moment of truth,” he told the Cabinet. “There is a way of reaching peace and security, but unilateral withdrawal—under terrorist fire—is not the way to do this. Withdrawing from Gaza will turn that area into a terror base that will endanger the country.”

Following his announcement, the Cabinet voted on the first phase of the withdrawal. In a 17-5 vote, they approved the destruction of Kfar Darom, Netzarim and Morag—the first communities to be leveled under the government’s plan. In addition to Netanyahu, the other four ministers voting against the plan were Livnat, Katz, Naveh and HaNegbi.

www.honestreporting.com
The latest case of media outlets disseminating a false claim of Israeli malevolence

The unreliability of Palestinian sources has long undermined the integrity of Mideast media coverage. In April 2002, Palestinian ‘eyewitness’ reports of an Israeli ‘massacre’ and ‘mass graves’ in Jenin were immediately transmitted and amplified around the world, but were later proven to be completely false.

This problem is still very much with us. Last month, AP and Reuters reported Palestinian prisoners’ claims that their Israeli guards tore up copies of the Koran to humiliate them. A Palestinian prisoner later admitted that she herself did the ripping.

And yesterday (July 20) Reuters, relying on unnamed Palestinian witnesses, reported that ‘Jewish settlers stabbed a Palestinian boy to death in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.’ The accusation gained traction when The New York Times included the Reuters report in its own daily dispatch.

But today it’s become clear that the boy’s assailants were Palestinian. Haaretz reported:

Palestinians initially claimed the boy was stabbed during a violent clash with settlers… Later, however, senior Palestinian figures told Israel Defense Forces figures the boy was likely murdered within the context of a clan feud.

Reuters itself now reports senior Palestinian officials acknowledging that ‘there is no evidence that settlers were behind the stabbing.’ [UPDATE: Palestinian police have arrested a Palestinian suspect in the murder.]

So we have yet another case of dubious Palestinian claims unquestionably disseminated by the western media, but later proven false. Of course, the false version remains part of the public record, and for one who doesn’t see the correction, the fabrication is the only version that sticks.

Media monitors EyeOnThePost caught a similar case this week, when the Washington Post reported that ‘more than a dozen bystanders were killed [by IDF fire], according to [Palestinian] hospital officials’. That report was never substantiated, never repeated elsewhere — and never corrected by the Post.

Joshua Muravchik notes in his book, Covering the Intifada: How the Media Reported the Palestinian Uprising:

Journalists seem to follow a canon that says when two sides are fighting, it is their obligation to report equally and with equal credence what is said by each. But the quality of the information provided by the two sides in this conflict is highly asymmetrical. By this I mean simply that the Palestinians repeatedly lie.

The time has come for the major news outlets to institute a mandatory fact-checking period before promulgating dubious claims from Palestinian ‘eyewitnesses’ of supposed Israeli outrages.

The other issue here is the further erosion of Reuters’ credibility. This highly influential media outlet — whose staff members were caught last week cavorting with a Jenin terrorist in a ‘gag film’ — consistently demonstrates an eagerness to function as a pro-Palestinian mouthpiece.

August 5, 2005
By Hal Lindsey
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

King Fahd of Saudi Arabia died this week at about age 83 after having ruled the Saudi kingdom for 23 years, reported all the news accounts. Actually, Fahd ruled for about 13 years, suffering a stroke in 1995 that put Crown Prince Abdullah in charge of the day-to-day affairs of the kingdom.

King Fahd’s role for most of the last decade was not unlike that of the lead character in the movie, “Weekend at Bernie’s,” in which the king would be rolled out for some ceremonial meetings, during which a royal would bend as if listening to the king and then repeating what Fahd allegedly had said. With his death, Crown Prince Abdullah assumed the throne as King Abdullah.

Saudi Arabia is unique in that it is the only country in the world today named after its ruling family. In 1744, Muhammed al Saud entered into an agreement with Mahammad Abdel Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi sect of Islam, which is currently followed by Osama bin Laden and his cohorts. In effect, al Saud agreed to supply the generals for Wahhab’s jihad, Wahhab would supply the foot soldiers, and, together, they would rule the region.

By 1901, they had consolidated the Saudi peninsula, and by 1932 the state of Saudi Arabia was proclaimed. King Fahd was the son of Abdel Azziz al-Saud, first king and founder of the modern state.

What happens in Saudi Arabia is of critical importance to the United States thanks to America’s dependence on foreign oil. Five extended families in the Middle East own about 60 percent of the world’s oil. The Saud family, which rules Saudi Arabia, controls more than a third of that amount. The House of Saud is therefore, the fulcrum upon which the global economy teeters.

This has placed the world’s economy on a dangerously shaky foundation. King Fahd still has some 35 living brothers who are mostly elderly men. Between them, they have hundreds of sons, thousands of grandsons. Altogether, the Saudi Royal family is thought to have as many 10,000 princes. That number is expected to double in the next generation. After Abdel Aziz, the succession in the family has been horizontal. The crown passing from brother to brother. King Abdullah is in his 80s, and his reign is likely to be a short one. Quick successions in turn are bound to encourage and activate the younger aspirants to the throne.

Here are a few reasons why this fact causes U.S. policymakers some sleepless nights:

Saudi Arabia controls the largest share of the world’s oil and serves as the market regulator for the global petroleum industry.

No country is more dependent on Saudi oil that the United States. Shutting off the Saudi spigot would be devastating to both the U.S. and global economies. For decades, the majority of Saudis and surrounding Muslim countries have believed that a dysfunctional, out-of-touch and out-of-control royal family controls the Saudi oil reserves. They have hated them because they believe that the Saudi royal family is too liberal to be in charge of Islam’s holiest places and its wealth.

The Saudi royal family has had to placate the Wahabbi fundamentalists and to literally bribe them to keep from being overthrown.

News of Fahd’s death reveals how the world senses that there is the danger. Even though Abdullah ran the kingdom for the last decade, King Fahd’s death caused the price of oil to set a new record, reaching beyond the $62 per barrel mark. The oil dependent West realizes that any hint of problems with the line of succession could throw the world’s oil supplies into chaos.

With Fahd’s death, people are just now beginning to consider: What happens after King Abdullah?

The real irony is this — democratic reforms are probably America’s worst-case scenario. Recent limited elections permitted by Abdullah demonstrated this danger. It revealed that if truly free elections were held in Saudi Arabia, America’s most important source of imported oil would be handed over to a democratically elected core of devout Wahabbi-following Islamic fundamentalists. And they are the principle source of al-Qaida’s manpower and funding. It would, in effect, hand over the strategic control of the global economy to Osama bin-Laden and his cohorts.

This would fit in with all the other biblical signs that we are indeed in the “last days.” Apart from some drastic reforms to this situation now, the world economy is in for some perilous and chaotic times in the near future.

Washington Times

A Washington conference of Christian and Jewish Zionists yesterday heard attacks on the U.S. “road map” for peace in the Middle East as a breach of a 4,000-year-old covenant between God and Israel.

“The land of Israel was originally owned by God,” said Gary Bauer, president of American Values and a Republican presidential contender in 2000. “Since He was the owner, only He could give it away. And He gave it to the Jewish people.”

Terrorists, he said, “don’t understand why Israel and the United States are joined at the heart.”

Called the “Interfaith Zionist Leadership Summit,” the conference attracted to the Omni Shoreham Hotel about 1,000 participants, who debated how evangelical Christians could best unite with Jews to support Israel.

A three-page statement was adopted, to be delivered to President Bush this week, demanding Palestinian concessions before Israel is asked to return to its pre-1967 borders, which would turn over the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority.

Calling the peace proposal “a Satanic road map,” Earl Cox, executive producer and host of Front Page Jerusalem, a radio program, asked, “Do any of you believe [Palestinian leader] Yasser Arafat will embrace traditional family values? There will be a mosque on all the holy sites. How can anyone who’s a Jew or a Christian support such a proposal?”

Evangelical Christians, estimated to number about 45 million in America, are a source of support for Israel, though to varying degrees.

Evangelical organizations represented at the conference included the Christian Coalition, the Christian Broadcasting Network and the Religious Roundtable. One organization distributed bumper stickers saying: “Pray that President Bush will honor God’s covenant with Israel.”

Frank Gaffney Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy, said the months before the November 2004 election are ideal for lobbying Mr. Bush on an issue important to his conservative base.

“This statement will be a shot across the bow for this president,” he said. Although he is subject to considerable pro-Palestinian pressure, he said, “George W. Bush, I think, is with us in his heart and in his soul.”

The conference, underwritten by a $100,000 grant from Zionist House, a Boston-based Jewish group, appeared to be closely balanced between Christians and Jews, with a slight Jewish majority. Theological differences were put aside by the speakers, such as Jan Willem van de Hoeven, the Dutch-born founder of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem.

“We may have disagreements about who [the Messiah] is,” Mr. van de Hoeven said, “but He is not coming back to a mosque but to a third temple.”

The remark alluded to prophecies of the Jews rebuilding their temple on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, replacing the Muslim Dome of the Rock. His words drew one of several standing ovations.

Several speakers talked of how to persuade Mr. Bush to stay firm on his nomination of Daniel Pipes, a scholar on Islam, as one of 15 directors of the U.S. Institute of Peace. The nomination, which has drawn ardent opposition from Islamic groups, must be confirmed by the Senate.

Mr. Pipes, a speaker at the conference, criticized Americans for political naivete.

“Why do we destroy our enemies and ask Israel to prop up its enemies?” he asked. “The assumption behind the road map is the Arabs have accepted Israel.”

A “change of heart” is needed among Palestinians, he said, “which is achieved by an Israeli victory and a Palestinian defeat.”

Moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would prompt that process, he said.

“It’s a marker saying Israel won the war in 1948 and Jerusalem has been its capital for 55 years and we might as well come to terms with its existence,” Mr. Pipes said.

About three dozen people protested outside the hotel.

“It involves fundamentalist Christians, who tend to be ethnocentric and racist, siding with Jews who practice the same policies in Israel,” said David Kirshbaum, representing SUSTAIN (Stop U.S. Tax-funded Aid to Israel Now). A group of ultra-Orthodox Jews, who oppose Israel’s existence on theological grounds, stood beside him.

On the occasion of Israel’s 57th birthday, it is time for us to celebrate how far our nation has come in just over half a century. 57 years ago, we were struggling to keep our young nation alive. Today, we are thriving as a global leader in science, technology, medicine, culture, and much more.

In honor of 57 years, I wanted to share with you 57 of the many contributions that Israel and Israelis have made to the world.

The 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world’s population, can lay claim to the following:

1. The cell phone was first developed at the Motorola plant in Israel.
2. Most of the Windows NT and XP operating systems were developed by Microsoft-Israel.
3. The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel.
4. Both the Pentium-4 microprocessor for desktop computers and the Centrino processor for laptops were entirely designed, developed and produced in Israel.
5. Voice mail technology was developed in Israel. The Israeli company Amdocs is the largest company in the world in this field.
6. Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only foreign-based research and development facilities in Israel.
7. The program ICQ, which is the technological basis for AOL Instant Messenger, was developed in 1996 by four young Israelis.
8. Disk on Key — a portable, virtual hard disk — was developed by the Israeli company M-Systems.
9. Israel has the highest number of personal computers per capita in the world.
10. Israel has the highest number of university degrees per capita in the world.
11. Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin — 109 per 10,000 people — as well as one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed.
12. In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of startup companies in the world. In absolute terms, Israel has the largest number of startup companies than any other country in the world, except the US.
13. With more than 3,000 high-tech companies and startups, Israel has the highest concentration of hi-tech companies in the world — apart from Silicon Valley.
14. Israel is ranked #2 in the world for venture capital funds right behind the United States.
15. Outside the United States and Canada, Israel has the largest number of companies listed on NASDAQ.
16. Israel has the highest average living standards in the Middle East. The per capita income in 2000 was over $17,500, exceeding that of the United Kingdom.
17. On a per capita basis, Israel has the largest number of biotech startups.
18. Twenty four percent of Israel’s workforce holds university degrees — ranking third in the industrialized world, after the United States and Holland — and 12 percent hold advanced degrees.
19. Israel has the third highest rate of entrepreneurship — and the highest rate among women and among people over 55 in the world.
20. Relative to its population, Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation on earth.
21. Israel has the world’s second highest supply of new books per capita.
22. Israel has more museums per capita than any other country.
23. Israeli scientists developed the first fully computerized, no-radiation diagnostic instrumentation for breast cancer.
24. An Israeli company developed a computerized system for ensuring proper administration of medications, thus removing human error from medical treatment. Every year in U. S. hospitals 7,000 patients die from treatment mistakes.
25. Israel’s Given Imaging developed the PillCam — the first ingestible video camera, which is so small it fits inside a pill. Used to view the small intestine from the inside, the camera helps doctors diagnose cancer and digestive disorders.
26. Researchers in Israel developed a new device that directly helps the heart pump blood. The new device is synchronized with the heart’s mechanical operations through a sophisticated system of sensors.
27. Israel leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the workforce, with 145 per 10,000, as opposed to 85 in the U.S., over 70 in Japan, and less than 60 in Germany.
28. A new acne treatment developed in Israel causes acne bacteria to self-destruct — all without damaging surroundings skin or tissue.
29. An Israeli company was the first to develop and install a large-scale solar-powered and fully functional electricity generating plant in Southern California’s Mojave Desert.
30. The first computer anti-virus software package was developed in Israel back in the 1970′s.
31. Major law enforcement agencies use Israeli technologies to monitor voices and messages on conventional phones, mobile phones and e-mails.
32. An Israeli company, Teva, is the world’s largest generic pharmaceutical company.
33. A new brain implant has been developed in Israel that can lower the risk of stroke by diverting blood clots away from sensitive areas of the brain.
34. IBM scientists in Israel are playing a vital role in a massive project of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) to discover the origins of life on earth.
35. Israeli software company Check Point is the global leader in Virtual Private Network (VPN) and firewall technologies.
36. Israeli company Elta is responsible for the world’s first civilian aircraft equipped with technology designed to protect airliners from a missile attack.
37. Mashav, the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s Center for International Cooperation has trained over 200,000 international aid workers that have traveled to dozens of countries to help with medicine, agriculture, disaster relief, and many other issues.
38. Israel has, for many years, held the world record in milk production.
39. Rummikub, the third highest selling board game in the world, is manufactured in a family-run plant in the small southern Israeli town of Arad.
40. Drip irrigation — the system that is based on using plastic pipes that release small amounts of water next to crops or plants — was developed by the Israeli engineer Simcha Blas in the 1970′s. The invention caused a revolution in agriculture.
41. A design submitted by Israeli-born Michael Arad has been chosen for the World Trade Center Memorial, from amongst 5,000 entries from around the world.
42. Israeli company Retalix created the grocery scanners used at such stores as Costco, Albertson’s, and 7-11, as well as 25,000 additional stores and quick-service restaurants throughout the United States.
43. Primate research at Hebrew University is leading to the development of a robotic arm that can respond to the brain commands of a paralyzed person.
44. Two Israeli researchers are generating cancer-killing molecules that will recognize cancerous cells and target them aggressively, while not affecting normal cells.
45. Israeli researchers developed a novel stem cell therapy to treat Parkinson’s Disease — using a patient’s own bone marrow stem cells to produce the missing chemical that enables restoration of motor movement.
46. Israeli company Silent Communications has developed a type of silent conversation system for cell phones, so users can carry on conversations without saying a word.
47. The Israeli company Wondernet is currently dominating the world market in document signature authentication, with its unique scientific method of verifying handwritten signatures.
48. Israeli Professor Yehuda Finkelstein has discovered the cause of and cure for halitosis (bad breath).
49. Cherry tomatoes were originally supposed to be a snack when they were designed by a group of scientists led by professor Nahum Keidar from the agriculture faculty at the Weizmann Institute of Science, with the cooperation of the Israeli company Zera.
50. The Quicktionary, a pen size scanner that scans a word or a sentence and translates it to a different language, was developed by the Wizcom Company, based in Jerusalem.
51. Professor Ehud Keinan from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology developed a pen that identifies an improvised explosive.
52. The Israeli company Insightec developed an ultrasound system for removing tumors without surgery.
53. Researchers at the Technion have developed an antibiotic that destroys anthrax bacteria as well as the toxins it secretes into the bloodstream of the infected body.
54. Epilady, an electric hair removal system, was developed by Yair Dar and Shimon Yahav from the Goshrim Kibbutz.
55. The sun-heated water tank, a device that converts solar energy into thermal energy and that saves about 4% of the national energy supply, was developed by an engineer from Jerusalem.
56. Dr. Gal Yadid, Dr. Rachel Mayan, and Professor Abraham Weizmann from Bar Ilan University developed a form of drug rehabilitation using a natural steroid that is inserted into the brain and develops a resistance for the drugs.
57. Alon Moses from Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem and Imanuel Hensky and Carlos Hidelgo-Grass from Hebrew University decoded the mechanism for Streptococcus A.

Jerusalem Post

For anyone who may have needed more proof, the terror attacks that terror war is well under way.

It may not involve the kinds of massive armies and casualty figures that characterized the first two world wars, or the massive nuclear arsenals that marked the Cold War. Of these global conflicts, what the civilized world faces now is morally, intellectually, and strategically most like the challenge it faced 66 years ago.

Morally, the people who in recent years attacked thousands of innocent people from New York, Moscow and Bombay to Madrid, Nairobi and Jerusalem, can claim as much as they want that they are merely out to further this or that particular cause; the fact is that theirs is not a response to any human being’s actions or inactions, but an urge to eradicate God’s most essential command to the crown of His creation: Thou shalt not murder.

Back when Nazism first voiced its ideas many in the international community also scoffed, whether out of astonishment at the Nazis’ intellectual absurdity or out of the delusion that they were confined to a distant land.

Ultimately, it became universally understood that at stake was an attack on the rest of mankind’s pretension to be better than animals.

Intellectually, the world must now overcome what it initially failed to overcome back in the 1930s, namely the denial that it is actually under attack. We in Israel know how difficult it is for peace-seeking people to internalize that someone not only hates them, but will deliberately target the weakest and most vulnerable in their midst.

But as former Mossad head Efraim Halevy argues in this newspaper, the world’s leaders will have to make millions understand they are in a war, even though it is one that is not waged continuously or in conventional battlefields. Here, too, Israel can offer some valuable experience: The more the public understands what it is facing, the more efficiently it will handle the terror challenge, beginning with security checks in public places and culminating in treatment of victims at bombing sites.

In this regard, Britain’s poised, orderly and disciplined handling of Thursday’s attacks was reminiscent of the way it handled World War II’s air raids, and should serve as an example to others, including Israelis.

Yet the most practical analogy to World War II is neither moral nor psychological but strategic, in terms of both the threat and its remedy.

The threat posed by Islamist fanaticism is to the very fabric that keeps the international system together. If it is up to the terrorists, incumbent governments will cease to rule, secular laws will cease to be obeyed, and trade and dialogue will grind to a halt. There is no way the international community can, or will, agree to any of this.

The remedy must therefore constitute a long-term effort that only begins with the world’s leading secret services and armies.

Even more fundamentally, the peoples who languish under the thumb of dictators who support terrorism must see that they are not alone, and they are backed unequivocally by those who deeply believe in the two values that author Amos Oz once said are the only ones worth killing and dying for: life and freedom.

The barbaric attacks on London came a day after Prime Minister Tony Blair, in celebrating the British capital’s selection as host of the 2012 Olympics, hailed its multiculturalism. The timing helped illustrate that London’s exemplary reconciliation of myriad cultures, races and faiths, is just what terrorists felt compelled to destroy.

The attackers would, of course, like gullible Westerners to think that they struck because of Britain’s presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in both countries the people have been given a chance to express their own views, in the kind of free elections that the Islamists are fighting against. In turning out massively for both elections, Afghanis and Iraqis have effectively told the world that in the war between terror and life, they, the Muslim masses, are on the side of life.

Sooner or later they will be joined in that reckoning with those in the West who have yet to understand where history has now arrived. Only then will the end of this world war’s beginning have arrived.

By Matthew Tostevin Reuters

Israel will by next year become home to the largest Jewish community in the world for the first time, surpassing the Jewish population in the United States, a think tank said on Tuesday.

Not for nearly 2,000 years has the Holy Land been home to the globe’s biggest Jewish community.

The report from the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute said the Jewish population of Israel was about 5.24 million and of the United States some 5.28 million, but the balance was shifting quickly.

“The Jewish community in Israel is the most vibrant in the world,” said Avinoam Bar-Yosef, director general of the Jerusalem-based JPPPI. “In the U.S., the community has been stagnant by numbers for many years,” he told Reuters.

Although immigration to Israel has dropped, especially since a Palestinian uprising blew up in 2000, the birth rate of Israeli Jews is much higher than abroad — each woman has an average of up to 2.7 children.

There are also fewer marriages between Jews and non-Jews in Israel than in communities abroad.

The last time this region was home to the world’s largest Jewish community was in the 1st century, when the Romans put down a rebellion and much of the Jewish population scattered.

The report from the pro-immigration think tank predicted the Jewish population of Israel would grow to 6.23 million by 2020 from 650,000 when the state was founded in 1948. The world’s Jewish population would grow to 13.5 million from 13 million