Levitt Letter Extra News

By Mark Levitt

Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah [and] against Jerusalem. And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it. Zechariah 12:2-3

Does it fulfill prophecy when a recent American president, a professed believer, carries a vendetta against Israel?

The slide show presentation at www.terrorismawareness.org/jimmy-carters-war by David Horowitz and based on the pamphlet by Jacob Laksin reviews and refutes the most persistent claims of anti-Semites and anti-Zionists who openly seek Israel’s destruction. How can a man so educated and influential fall for such propaganda—hook, line and sinker? It must be the work of the devil. Please see the presentation in its entirety as you will benefit from its visuals and maps. In case you can’t, we’ve posted its transcription below.

False Accusations

According to former president Jimmy Carter, Israel is the problem.
But: Israel is one-sixth of one-percent of the landmass of the Middle East. Israel’s population is two percent of the total population of the Middle East.

According to Jimmy Carter, the problem is that Israel seeks the “control and colonization of Palestinian land.” This statement is false.

The disputed land in the Middle East did not belong to the Arabs. For 400 years, it was ruled by the Turks. It was part of the Ottoman Empire (1553-1922). The European powers created Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel out of the ruins of the empire once ruled by the Ottoman Turks.

The Palestine Mandate was a British controlled portion of the Ottoman Empire. When Israel was created in 1948, the words ‘Palestine’ and ‘Palestinian’ did not refer to an Arab people or an Arab nation. The word Palestine is derived from the word “Philistine.” After conquering the land of Israel, the Romans renamed it after the biblical enemies of the Jews, the “Philistines,” who were not Arabs, but Greeks. The British violated the Mandate and, instead of giving it to the Jews, in 1922 gave 80% of it to the Hashemite Arabs. This later became Jordan.

According to former President Jimmy Carter, Israel is an apartheid state. This statement is false.

Israel is not an “apartheid state.” More than one million Arabs living in Israel enjoy the benefits and equal rights of the only free and democratic society in the Middle East. Israeli Arabs have more freedoms and civil rights than Arabs living in any Arab country.

According to Jimmy Carter, the security fence that Israel has built to keep terrorists out is a prison. This statement is false.

Israel’s security fence was not built to keep Palestinians in. It was built to keep Palestinian terrorists out. Since it was built, Israel’s security fence has reduced Palestinian attacks by 90%. This short segment of concrete wall [pictured] prevented Palestinian snipers from shooting at Israeli civilians. The fence Jimmy Carter wants Israel to take down is a humanitarian structure that has saved countless innocent lives.

According to Jimmy Carter, Israel has occupied Arab land in order to colonize it. This statement is false.

Every inch of territory that Israel’s armies have occupied was first used by the Arab states to conduct wars of aggression. The stated goal of these wars was to destroy Israel and push the Jews into the sea (in 1948, 1967, 1973, 2001 and 2006).

To prevent more attacks, Israeli troops occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, and Southern Lebanon in 1982. After the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, Israel withdrew most of its military from the West Bank. Without a peace agreement, Israel unilaterally and completely withdrew its troops from Southern Lebanon in 2000 and from Gaza in 2005.

Each time Israel withdrew its troops, the Palestinians responded by launching terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens. On Israel’s towns. On Israel’s schools. All these attempts to destroy Israel have been launched from the West Bank, Gaza, and Southern Lebanon.

Why is Jimmy Carter attacking the victims in the Middle East and making the tasks of the aggressors easier? In conducting his propaganda war against Israel, Jimmy Carter’s hands are not clean. Jimmy Carter has been receiving money from Arab patrons for years. The very Arabs who want to see Israel destroyed.

The Jimmy Carter Center is funded by tens of millions of dollars from Arab states that persecute women, homosexuals, and Christians, and want to see Israel destroyed. In 1993 Saudi King Fahd gave the Carter Center $7.6 million. He has given many more millions since then. The King’s high-living, Israel-hating nephew, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, has donated at least $5 million to the Jimmy Carter Center. Mayor Rudy Giuliani returned Prince Alwaleed’s gift. Jimmy Carter did not. And Carter has received million- dollar gifts from ten of Osama Bin Laden’s brothers, and from the Saudi Fund.

Jimmy Carter has also taken money from the United Arab Emirates, like Saudi Arabia, a rigid Islamic state run by dictators whose courts consider homosexuality a capital crime and regard women as a gender which should neither be seen nor heard. After receiving their money, Carter called the United Arab Emirates an “almost completely open and free society.” Having taken the Saudis’ money, Jimmy Carter claims that Saudi Arabia’s rulers are “moderate.”

In fact Saudi Arabia’s rulers

• fund the Islamist Jihadists against the West,
• deny women the right to appear in public “uncovered,”
• or drive a car,
• are among the leading funders of suicide bombers in Israel,
• are financial supporters of Hamas, whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and for world domination by radical Islam.

Defending Palestinian Terror

Jimmy Carter claims that he opposes terrorism. But only “after international laws and the goals of the Roadmap to Peace are accepted by Israel.” In other words, terrorist attacks are okay until Israel receives a seal of approval from Jimmy Carter.

In a 2007 interview on Al-Jazeera TV, Jimmy Carter declared that Palestinian missiles – all of which are fired at random into Israeli cities, towns and schools – should not be equated with terrorism.

Jimmy Carter and Yasser Arafat

No Arab leader benefited more from Carter’s support than the late Yasser Arafat. President Carter worked to legitimize Arafat’s organization, Fatah, despite its terrorist agendas.

“Yasser Arafat has generally taken a more moderate line.” — Jimmy Carter, 1985

“He’s explored all the possibilities to make progress toward a total peace settlement.” — Jimmy Carter on Yasser Arafat, 1990

“He has done everything possible…to promote the peace process.” – Jimmy Carter on Yasser Arafat, 1990

“Peace for us means the destruction of Israel.” — Yasser Arafat, 1980

“Martyrs, martyrs, martyrs…we want a million martyrs to march on Jerusalem.” — Yasser Arafat, 2002

Jimmy Carter’s Troubling Record on Peace

Jimmy Carter won a Nobel Peace prize — for attacking his own President in a time of war. Jimmy Carter’s attacks on Israel are also not made in a political vacuum.

“Israel must be wiped off the map.” — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 2005

“If they (Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”
– Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, 2002

“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
– Hamas Charter [in 2007 Hamas became the government of Gaza]

In the war against terror in the Middle East, former president Jimmy Carter has taken sides.  Disgracefully, he has taken the wrong side.

Zola Levitt Ministries reproduces this article not to endorse this position, but to give our readers–and anyone else who comes upon this posting–insight into the philosophy that seeks to control our Western culture. Our Judeo-Christian system is far superior to the one promoted by this author: Judeo-Christianity doesn’t need to beat its participants into submission.

By Maged Thabet Al-Kholidy, www.YemenTimes.com

This title may sound strange, but it’s actually not just a way to attract readers to the topic because I really do mean what it indicates. Violence is a broad term, especially when used regarding women. In this piece, I want to shed light on those instances where violence against women is a must.

First, we should know the meaning of the word violence. Longman’s Dictionary of Contemporary English defines violence as “behavior that is intended to hurt other people physically.” However, the term violence mustn’t be confused with other concepts and terms such as gender inequality or absence of women rights.

Occasionally – if not daily – we hear about events occurring in Islamic and Arab societies. Some human rights organizations recently have attacked violent acts against women, standing against any type of violence – even that between a father and daughter – and citing the cases of some women as examples.

Consequently, they offer solutions such as complaining to the police, taking revenge or leaving them men, who are either their husbands, fathers or brothers – with no exceptions.

One such case involved a woman whose husband allegedly had beaten her. Without revealing the husband’s reasons for doing so, such human rights organizations immediately urged the wife to complain to the police and the courts, while at the same time generalizing the instance and other similar solutions to any type of violence.

If a man and woman are husband and wife, the Qur’an provides solutions, firstly reaffirming any logical and acceptable reasons for such punishment. These solutions are in gradual phases and not just for women, but for men also.

For men, it begins with abandoning the marital bed, by opting to sleep elsewhere in the house. After this, they may discuss the matter with any respected person for the husband’s or the wife’s family, who could be in a position to advise the wife. If this also does not work, then the husband yields to beating the wife slightly. They do this because of a misunderstanding in the Quran, as the word says Darban, which is commonly understood today as beating. However, in Classic Arabic it means to set examples or to announce and proclaim. The more accurate meaning of this last one is that the husband finally has to set forth, to make a clear statement or proclamation, and if these measures fail, then divorce is preferable.

Similarly, wives may take actions such as abandoning the marital bed, following by leaving the husband’s home for that of their parents, brothers or any other relatives. They may do this more than once, but if such action fails, they may not continue to live with their husband and via their relatives, they may request a divorce.

Despite such instructions, beating is considered a type of violence, according to human rights organizations, which urge women to complain to the police. I just wonder what kind of families our societies would have if Muslim women started doing this regarding their husbands.

Relationships between fathers and daughters or sisters and brothers also provoke argument from human rights organizations, which propose the suggested solutions for all relationships. Personally, I don’t think fathers or brothers would undertake such behavior unless there was a reason for it.

Fathers are responsible for their daughters’ behavior, but human rights organizations deny this too. Brothers also should take action regarding their sisters’ behavior, especially if their parents are too old or dead. If a daughter or sister makes a mistake – especially a moral one – that negatively affects the entire family and its reputation, what’s the solution by such organizations?

According to them, women should complain to the courts about any type of violence against them. Likewise, should fathers and brothers complain to police if their daughters or sisters violate moral, Islamic or social norms?

Fathers should handle their daughters via any means that suits their mistake; thus, is it better to use violence to a certain limit or complain to the police? Shall such women then complain to the police against their fathers or brothers? It’s really amazing to hear this.

In some cases, violence is necessary, but there must be limits. Those “good human rights organizations” don’t make any exceptions in their solutions because their aim is to serve society. Will it be a better society once we see wives, mothers, sisters and daughters going from one police station and one court to another, complaining against their husbands, fathers, brothers and even sons?

As the proverb goes, “If the speaker is mad, the listener should be mindful.” This proverb is good advice for every man and woman not only to keep their ears open, but also to avoid the misleading propaganda of such organizations, whose surface aims hide other destructive ones to destroy society’s religious, social and moral norms. This matter requires consideration.

Dear readers – especially women – don’t think that I hate or am against women; rather, I simply mean to preserve the morals and principles with which Islam has honored us.

I hope my message is clear, since it’s really quite relevant to the future of our societies, which must be protected from any kind of cultural invasion.

By Carrie Antlfinger, www.NYSun.com

Captain Scott Southworth expected to face violence, political strife, and blistering heat when he was deployed to one of Baghdad’s most dangerous areas.

But he didn’t expect Ala’a Eddeen.

Ala’a was 9 years old, strong of will but weak of body — he suffered from cerebral palsy and weighed just 55 pounds. He lived among about 20 kids with physical or mental disabilities at the Mother Teresa orphanage, under the care of nuns who preserved this small oasis in a dangerous place.

On September 6, 2003, halfway through his 13-month deployment, Captain Southworth and his military police unit paid a visit to the orphanage. They played and chatted with the children; Captain Southworth was talking with one little girl when Ala’a dragged his body to the soldier’s side.

Black haired and brown eyed, Ala’a spoke to the 31-year-old American in the limited English he had learned from the sisters. He recalled the bombs that struck government buildings across the Tigris River.

“Bomb-Bing! Bomb-Bing!” Ala’a said, raising and lowering his fist.

“I’m here now. You’re fine,” the captain said.

Over the next 10 months, the unit returned to the orphanage again and again. The soldiers would race kids in their wheelchairs, sit them in Humvees, and help the sisters feed them.

To Captain Southworth, Ala’a was like a little brother. But Ala’a — who had longed for a soldier to rescue him — secretly began referring to Captain Southworth as “Baba,” Arabic for “Daddy.”

Then, around Christmas, a sister told Captain Southworth that Ala’a was getting too big. He would have to move to a government-run facility within a year.

“Best case scenario was that he would stare at a blank wall for the rest of his life,” Captain Southworth said.

To this day, he recalls the moment when he resolved that that would not happen.

“I’ll adopt him,” he said.

Before Captain Southworth left for Iraq, he was chief of staff for a state representative. He was single, worked long days, and squeezed in his service as a national guardsman — military service was a family tradition. His great-great-great grandfather served in the Civil War, his grandfather in World War II, his father in Vietnam.

The family had lived in the tiny central Wisconsin city of New Lisbon for 150 years. Scott was raised as an evangelical Christian; he attended law school with a goal of public service, running unsuccessfully for state Assembly at the age of 25.

There were so many reasons why he couldn’t bring a handicapped Iraqi boy into his world.

He had no wife or home; he knew nothing of raising a disabled child; he had little money, and planned to run for district attorney in his home county.

Just as important, Iraqi law prohibits foreigners from adopting Iraqi children.

Captain Southworth prayed and talked with family and friends.

His mother, who had cared for many disabled children, explained the difficulty. She also told him to take one step at a time and let God work.

Captain Southworth’s decision was cemented in spring 2004, while he and his comrades watched Mel Gibson’s film, “The Passion of the Christ.” Jesus Christ’s sacrifice moved him. He imagined meeting Christ and Ala’a in heaven, where Ala’a asked: “Baba, why didn’t you ever come back to get me?”

“Everything that I came up with as a response I felt ashamed. I wouldn’t want to stand in the presence of Jesus and Ala’a and say those things to him.”

And so, in his last weeks in Iraq, Captain Southworth got approval from Iraq’s Minister of Labor to take Ala’a to America for medical care.

___________________

His parents had filed signatures so he wouldn’t miss the cutoff to run for district attorney. He knocked on doors, telling people he wanted to be tough on criminals who committed injustices against children.

He never mentioned his intention to adopt Ala’a.

He won office — securing a job and an income.

Everything seemed to be in place. But when Captain Southworth contacted an immigration attorney, he was told it would be nearly impossible to bring Ala’a to America

Undaunted, Captain Southworth and the attorney started the paperwork to bring Ala’a over on humanitarian parole, used for urgent reasons or significant public benefit.

A local doctor, a cerebral palsy expert, a Minneapolis hospital, all said they would provide Ala’a free care. Other letters of support came from a minister, the school district, the lieutenant governor, a congressman, chaplain, a sister at the orphanage, and an Iraqi doctor.

“We crossed political boundaries. We crossed religious boundaries. There was just a massive effort — all on behalf of this little boy who desperately needed people to actually take some action and not just feel sorry for him,” Captain Southworth says.

He mailed the packet on December 16, 2004, to the Department of Homeland Security.

On New Year’s Eve, his cell phone rang. It was Ala’a.

“What are you doing?” Scott asked him.

“I was praying,’” Ala’a responded.

“Well, what were you praying for?”

“I prayed that you would come to take me to America,” Ala’a said.

Captain Southworth almost dropped the phone. Ala’a knew nothing of his efforts, and he couldn’t tell him yet for fear that the boy might inadvertently tell the wrong person, upending the delicate process.

By mid-January, Homeland Security called Captain Southworth’s attorney to say it had approved humanitarian parole. Within three hours, Captain Southworth had plane tickets.

He hardly slept as he worked the phones to make arrangements, calling the American embassy, hotels, and the orphanage. His Iraqi translator agreed to risk his life to get Ala’a to the embassy to obtain documentation. Like a dream, all the pieces fell into place.

Captain Southworth returned to Iraq for the first time since a deployment that left him emotionally, physically, and spiritually exhausted.

His unit had trained Iraqi police from sunup to sundown; he had seen the devastation wrought by two car bombings, and counted dead bodies. Mortar and rocket attacks were routine. Some 20 in his unit had been wounded, and one died. He knew that nothing could be taken for granted in Baghdad.

So when he saw Ala’a in the airport for the first time since leaving Iraq, he was relieved.

“He was in my custody then. I could hug him. I could hold him. I could protect him.

“And forever started.”

They made it to Wisconsin late January 20, 2005. The next morning, Ala’a awoke to his first sight of snow.

He closed his eyes and grimaced.

“Baba! Baba! The water is getting all over me!”

“It’s not water, it’s snooooow,” Captain Southworth told him.

_________________

Police had found Ala’a abandoned on a Baghdad street when he around 3 years old. No one knows where he came from.

During his life in Iraq, Ala’a had seen a doctor 10 times. He surpassed that in his first six months in America.

Ala’a’s cerebral palsy causes low muscle tone, spastic muscles in the legs, arms, and face. It hinders him when he tries to crawl, walk, or grasp objects. He needs a wheelchair to get around, often rests his head on his shoulder, and can’t easily sit up.

Physical therapy has helped him control his head and other muscles. He can now maneuver his way out of his van seat and stabilize his legs on the ground.

“I’m not the same guy I used to be,” he says. He clearly has thrived. At 13, he’s doubled his weight to 111 pounds.

Ala’a’s condition doesn’t affect his mind, although he’s still childlike — he wants to be a Spiderman when he grows up.

Ala’a’s English has improved and he loves music and school, math and reading especially. He gets mad when snow keeps him home, even though it’s his second favorite thing, after his father.

At first, he didn’t want to talk about Iraq; he would grow angry when someone tried to talk to him in Arabic. But in the fall of 2006, Scott showed Ala’a’s classmates an Arabic version of “Sesame Street” and boasted how Ala’a knew two languages and could teach them.

Soon he was teaching his aide and his grandmother, LaVone.

LaVone is a fixture in Ala’a’s life, supporting her son as he juggles his career and fatherhood. One day, she asked Ala’a if he missed his friends in Iraq. Would he like to visit them?

Big tears filled his eyes.

“Well, honey, what’s the matter?” LaVone asked.

“Oh, no, Grandma. No. Baba says that I can come to live with him forever,” he pleaded.

“Oh, no, no,” he grandmother said, crying as well. “We would never take you back and leave you there forever. We want you to be Baba’s boy forever.”

_____________

Captain Southworth knew that once he got Ala’a out of Iraq, the hardest part would be over. Iraq had bigger problems to deal with than the whereabouts of a single orphan.

On June 4, Ala’a officially became Captain Southworth’s son. Though he was born in the spring of 1994, they decided to celebrate his birthday as the day they met — September 6.

Life has settled into a routine. Father and son have moved into a new house with an intercom system, a chair lift to the basement, and toilet handles. Captain Southworth showers him, brushes his teeth, and washes his hands. He has traded in his Chrysler Concorde for a minivan — it was too hard to lift his son out of the car.

In October, the Wisconsin’s deputy adjunct general gave Captain Southworth, now a major, permission to change units because of Ala’a. His former unit was going to Guantanamo Bay for a one-year deployment, and he didn’t want to leave his son behind, at least for now.

He hopes one day to marry his longtime girlfriend and have more children. He may run for Congress or governor someday — he’s already won re-election once, and plans to run again next fall.

Not everything is perfect. Ala’a never encountered thunderstorms in Baghdad, and the flash-boom reminds him of bombs. He is starting to get over it, although he still weeps during violent storms.

But Ala’a — who picked out his own name, which means to be near God — knows he’s where he belongs. Captain Southworth always says Ala’a picked him, not the other way around. They were brought together, Captain Southworth believes, by a “web of miracles.”

Ala’a likes to sing Sarah McLachlan’s song, “Ordinary Miracle,” from “Charlotte’s Web,” one of his favorite movies. His head and body lean to one side as he sings off-key.

“It’s just another ordinary miracle today. Life is like a gift they say. Wrapped up for you everyday.”

By Nicky Blackburn, www.Israel21c.com

For Prof. Beka Solomon it was obvious. If it isn’t possible to send drugs to the brain to treat Alzheimer’s disease the normal way because of the blood-brain barrier that prevents drugs from moving from the blood stream into the brain, then send them through the nose instead.

Solomon, of the Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology Department at Tel Aviv University, has been working in this field for the last 13 years after years of research in immunotherapy, and found in mouse trials that filamentous phages, a harmless bacterial virus found almost everywhere from the depths of the ocean to the lining of the stomach, can be an effective treatment against Alzheimer’s disease when carried to the brain through the nose.

Alzheimer’s is a debilitating disease that leads to progressive loss of memory and cognitive functions, and a great deal of suffering for both the person afflicted and their loved ones. In the U.S. alone, there are now more than five million people living with Alzheimer’s, but there is currently no drug on the market that can cure or effectively stop the progression of this disease.

The cause of this disease and other neurological diseases like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is widely concluded to be plaque formation, which causes inflammation in the brain. Up to now, scientists working on a cure for the disease have focused on dissolving and preventing plaque formation, but most have come up against two problems: firstly, the difficulty in developing drugs that pass through the highly selective blood-brain barrier; and secondly, unwanted side-effects of inflammation and hemorrhaging.

In her research, Solomon shows that by administering non-lytic filamentous phages in small doses through the nasal passages, the phages have a direct and rapid route to the brain. There they lock onto the extracellular plaques associated with Alzheimer’s and dissolve them, reducing inflammation in the brain without any side effects. The body then gets rid of the waste naturally.

“The filamentous phages have a nanotubular appearance which is very similar in shape to amyloid fibrils, the main component of amyloid plaque, which is the plaque linked to Alzheimer’s,” explains Solomon, who recently presented her findings at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Canada.

Solomon first began thinking about sending phages through the nasal passages because the plaque that causes Alzheimer’s first appears in the olfactory bulb. As a result, one of the early symptoms of this devastating disease is loss of smell.

To test her hypothesis, Solomon and her colleagues treated 150 mice with the phage intranasally for 12 months. They found the mice that had exhibited the symptoms of Alzheimer’s regained their sense of smell and also showed memory and cognitive improvement. After one year of treatment, they had 80 percent fewer plaques than untreated mice.

The phages were eliminated from the brain and secreted from the body in urine and feces. The researchers saw no adverse effects in the peripheral organs — the kidneys, liver, lungs, and spleen biology were all normal.

“The mice showed very nice recovery of their cognitive function,” says Solomon, who emigrated with her family from Romania to Israel about 40 years ago. “We saw a reduction in the amyloid plaque and a reduction in brain inflammation. Afterward the phages were eliminated naturally from the body through the kidneys without any adverse side-effects.”

“This is a potential breakthrough, but it needs to be proved further,” Solomon told ISRAEL21c. “Bateriophages are one of the most numerous life forms on earth and mammalian organisms are very frequently exposed to interactions with them. We know for instance that they are a very important part of the natural flora of the gut and research groups all over the world have developed classic phage therapy as an alternative to antibiotics. We are used to living with them, it’s not unusual, but to take them to the brain in unusual. This is the first attempt to use phages as a treatment for Alzheimer’s.”

Ramot, the commercial arm of Tel Aviv University is now planning to commercialize Solomon’s research and has licensed the technology to a startup company.

“Beka is a real pioneer in developing an immunotherapeutic approach for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease,” says Irit Ben-Chlouch, director of business development, life sciences at Ramot. “She was the first to show the disease can be treated using antibodies and, as the main focus of her lab, has developed several different breakthrough approaches.”

In the meantime, Solomon plans to continue with her research, which she regards as a platform technology. She and fellow researchers at the university are now exploring whether this intranasal administration of filamentous phages can also be used to help patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease and Huntingdon’s disease.

She is also exploring the possibility of adding medicines, such as anti-inflammation agents to the phages, to bring the brain additional therapeutic medicines.

By Judy Siegel-Itzkovich , www.JPost.com

If you “sleep on it” by taking a daytime siesta, you may find that the nap speeds up the consolidation of your long-term memory, according to new research conducted at the University of Haifa’s Center for Brain and Behavior Research.

A 90-minute nap during the day is enough to quicken the storage of long-term memory, said Prof. Avi Karni and Dr. Maria Korman, who have just published their research in the prestigious journal Nature Neuroscience.

“We still don’t know the exact mechanism of the memory process that occurs during sleep, but the results of this research suggest the possibility that it is possible to speed up memory consolidation, and in the future we may be able to do it artificially,” said Karni.

Long-term memory doesn’t disappear for many years or perhaps at all. It is divided into two types: memories of “what” (for example, what happened yesterday or what one remembers from an article you read yesterday) and memories of “how to” (for example: how to read Hebrew, drive, play basketball or play the piano).

In this new research, which was conducted in cooperation with the Sheba Medical Center’s sleep lab and psychology researchers at the University of Montreal, it was revealed that a daytime nap changes the course of memory consolidation in the brain. Two groups of participants practiced a repeated motor activity that consisted of bringing the thumb and a finger together in a specific sequence. The research examined the “how to” aspect of memory in the participants’ ability to perform the task quickly and in the correct sequence. One of the groups was allowed to nap for 90 minutes after learning the task, while the other group stayed awake.

The group that slept in the afternoon showed a distinct improvement in their task performance by that evening, as opposed to the awake group, which did not show any improvement. Following a whole night’s sleep, both groups exhibited the same skill level. “This part of the research showed that a daytime nap speeds up performance improvement in the brain. After a night’s sleep, the two groups were at the same level, but the group that slept in the afternoon improved much faster than the group that stayed awake,” Karni said.

A second experiment showed that another aspect of memory consolidation is also accelerated by sleep. It was previously shown that during the six to eight hours after completing an effective practice session, the neural process of “how to” memory consolidation is susceptible to interference, such that if, for example, one learns or performs a second, different task, one’s brain will not be able successfully to remember the first trained task.

A third group of participants in the Haifa study learned a different thumb-to-finger movement sequence two hours after practicing the first task. As the second task was introduced at the beginning of the six-to-eight-hour period during which the brain consolidates memories, the second task disturbed the memory consolidation process, and this group did not show any improvement in their ability to perform the task, neither in the evening of that day nor on the following morning. However, when a fourth group of participants was allowed a 90-minute nap between learning the first set of movements and the second, they did not show much improvement in the evening. The next morning, these participants showed a marked improvement of their performance, as if there had been no interference at all.

“This part of the study demonstrated, for the first time, that daytime sleep can shorten the time in which “how to” memory becomes immune to interference and forgetting. Instead of six to eight hours, the brain consolidated the memory during the 90-minute nap,” said Karni - who added that while this study demonstrates that memory consolidation is accelerated during daytime sleep, it is still unclear which mechanisms sleep accelerates in the process.

Understanding these mechanisms, the researchers said, could enable the development of methods to accelerate memory consolidation in adults and create stable memories within a short time. Until then, if you need to memorize something quickly or if your schedule is filled with different activities that require learning “how to” do things, it is worth finding the time for an afternoon nap.

By Jeffrey Goldberg, www.nytimes.com

One day in Damascus not long ago, I visited the under-stocked gift shop of the Sheraton Hotel, looking for something to read. There wasn’t much: pre-owned Grishams, a hagiography of former Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, an early Bill O’Reilly (go figure) and a paperback copy of “The International Jew,” published in 2000 in Beirut. “The International Jew” is a collection of columns exposing the putative role of Jews in such fields as international finance, world governance and bootlegging. “Wherever the seat of power may be, thither they swarm obsequiously,” the book states. These columns, which are based on the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” — they are a plagiary of a forgery, in other words — were first published in Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent more than 80 years ago.

Next to “The International Jew” was a copy of “The Bible Came From Arabia,” a piece of twaddle that suggests the Jews are not Jews and Israel isn’t Israel. And then there was a pamphlet called “Secrets of the Talmud.” Not knowing these secrets (I was raised Reform), I started reading. The Talmud apparently teaches Jews how best to demolish the world economy and gives Jews the right to take non-Jewish women as slaves and rape them.

The anti-Semitic worldview, generally speaking, is fantastically stupid. If its propagandists actually understood the chosen people, they would know, for instance, that no one, not the chief of Mossad, not even the president of Hadassah, could persuade 4,000 Jews to stay home from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. (“And why should I listen to you?” would have been the near-universal rebuttal to the call.) Anti-Semitic conspiracy literature not only posits crude and senseless ideas, but also tends to be riddled with typos, repetitions and gross errors of grammar, and for this and other reasons I occasionally have trouble taking it seriously.

The German scholar Matthias Küntzel tells us this is a mistake. He takes anti-Semitism, and in particular its most potent current strain, Muslim anti-Semitism, very seriously indeed. His bracing, even startling, book, “Jihad and Jew-Hatred” (translated by Colin Meade), reminds us that it is perilous to ignore idiotic ideas if these idiotic ideas are broadly, and fervently, believed. And across the Muslim world, the very worst ideas about Jews — intricate, outlandish conspiracy theories about their malevolent and absolute power over world affairs — have become scandalously ubiquitous. Hezbollah and Hamas, to name two prominent examples, understand the world largely through the prism of Jewish power. Hezbollah officials employ language that shamelessly echoes Nazi propaganda, describing Jews as parasites and tumors and prescribing the murder of Jews as a kind of chemotherapy.

The question is not only why, of course, but how: how did these ideas, especially those that portray Jews as all-powerful, work their way into modern-day Islamist discourse? The notion of the Jew as malevolently omnipotent is not a traditional Muslim notion. Jews do not come off well in the Koran — they connive and scheme and reject the message of the Prophet Mohammed — but they are shown to be, above all else, defeated. Mohammed, we read, conquered the Jews in battle and set them wandering. In subsequent centuries Jews lived among Muslims, and it is true that their experience was generally healthier than that of their brethren in Christendom, but only so long as they knew their place; they were ruled and taxed as second-class citizens and were often debased by statute. In the Jim Crow Middle East, no one believed the Jews were in control.

Obviously, then, these modern-day ideas about Jewish power were imported from Europe, and Küntzel makes a bold and consequential argument: the dissemination of European models of anti-Semitism among Muslims was not haphazard, but an actual project of the Nazi Party, meant to turn Muslims against Jews and Zionism. He says that in the years before World War II, two Muslim leaders in particular willingly and knowingly carried Nazi ideology directly to the Muslim masses. They were Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, and the Egyptian proto-Islamist Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. The story of the mufti is a familiar one: he was the leader of the Arabs in Palestine, and Palestine’s leading anti-Jewish agitator. He eventually embraced the Nazis and spent most of the war in Berlin, recruiting Bosnian Muslims for the SS and agitating for the harshest possible measures against Jews. Küntzel writes that the mufti became upset with Himmler in 1943, when he sought to trade 5,000 Jewish children for 20,000 German prisoners. Himmler came around to the mufti’s thinking, and the children were gassed.

Hassan al-Banna did not embrace Nazism in the same uncomplicated manner, but through the 1930s, his movement, aided by the Germans, led the drive against not only political Zionism but Jews in general. “This burgeoning Islamist movement was subsidized with German funds,” Küntzel writes. “These contributions enabled the Muslim Brotherhood to set up a printing plant with 24 employees and use the most up-to-date propaganda methods.” The Muslim Brotherhood, Küntzel goes on, was a crucial distributor of Arabic translations of “Mein Kampf” and the “Protocols.” Across the Arab world, he states, Nazi methods and ideology whipped up anti-Zionist fervor, and the effects of this concerted campaign are still being felt today.

Küntzel marshals impressive evidence to back his case, but he sometimes oversimplifies. One doesn’t have to be soft on Germany to believe it was organic Muslim ideas as well as Nazi ideas that led to the spread of anti-Semitism in the Middle East. In his effort to blame Germany for Muslim anti-Semitism, he overreaches. “While Khomeini was certainly not an acolyte of Hitler, it is not unreasonable to suppose that his anti-Jewish outlook … had been shaped during the 1930s,” Küntzel says, citing, in a footnote, an article he himself wrote. He also oversimplifies the Israeli-Arab conflict. Jews today have actual power in the Middle East, and Israel is not innocent of excess and cruelty.

Still, Küntzel is right to state that we are witnessing a terrible explosion of anti-Jewish hatred in the Middle East, and he is right to be shocked. His invaluable contribution, in fact, is his capacity to be shocked by the rhetoric of hate and by its consequences. The former Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi once told me that “the question is not what the Germans did to the Jews, but what the Jews did to the Germans.” The Jews, he said, deserved their punishment. Küntzel argues that we should see men like Rantisi for what they are: heirs to the mufti, and heirs to the Nazis.

By Stan Goodenough, www.IsraelInsider.com

“O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, get thee up on a high mountain; O thou that tellest good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, “Behold, your God!” (Isaiah 40:9)

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings glad tidings of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns!” (Isaiah 52:7)

This year, Israel celebrates the 60th anniversary of its miraculous rebirth. That it has survived to reach this year must really stick in the craw of the devil and of all those who have sought to be useful to him in trying to bring about the destruction of the Jewish state.

Some people think Israel is spelled I-S-R-A-E-L and Jew is spelled J-E-W.

They’d be wrong on both counts. Both “Israel” and “Jew” are spelled: M-I-R-A-C-L-E.

There is no getting away from it. That the Jews still exist as a nation; that Israel still exists as a state flies in the face of all probability.

They survive against all the odds.

Take the Jews:

Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, the Crusades, the blood libels, the expulsions, the pogroms, the Inquisition, the Holocaust — the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob survived them all. And it’s not only that millions of Jews survived, but that they survived as a nation, intact for centuries, scattered across the face of the earth, without the physical borders of their ancient homeland to secure them and keep them together.

Two thousand years ago they were driven out of their land and chased by the sword, the plague, hatred, and prejudice into a long, dark tunnel of relentless tribulation without any apparent light at the end to give them hope.

Sixty years ago they emerged, only a remnant, but a remnant clinging fiercely and resolutely to the Jewishness from which gentile nation after gentile nation, preacher after preacher, and pope after pope had sought to sever them. The Jews had survived. They had their faith, their language, and their homeland back again.

And take Israel:

With the resurrection of their national homeland the world’s Jews finally had a haven state to which they could return, in which they could gather, regroup, consolidate their nationhood, and defend themselves.

Satan had frantically tried to foil Israel’s rebirth, using the massive might of the British Empire to prevent the Jews from returning home, while setting up Hitler to exterminate them in the gas chambers of the Third Reich.

He failed, but he did not give up.

His efforts to wipe out the Jews, now conveniently gathered together in one land, have continued around the clock from within minutes of David Ben Gurion’s reading out Israel’s Declaration of Independence in Tel Aviv on May 15, 1948 until the present day.

Since being born out of the ashes of Auschwitz and in the crucible of its self-defense War of Independence in which it was massively outnumbered and overwhelmingly outgunned, Israel went on to experience miracle after miracle that ensured its could see its 10th, 20th, 30th, 40th, and 50th birthdays.

Israel survived the Sinai Campaign of 1956, the Six Day War of 1967, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the Peace for Galilee (First Lebanon) War of 1982, the First Gulf War of 1991, and the Second Lebanon War of 2006. And between all these wars it endured unrelenting Arab terrorism from the PLO fedayeen out of Gaza, Jordan, and Lebanon; the Iranian-created Hezbollah in Lebanon; the homegrown and imported “Palestinians” in the first and second intifadas; Fatah, Hamas, the PFLP, Palestine Islamic Jihad— the list of enemies goes on and on. Israel has survived them all.

In 2006, a Christian California filmmaker produced the 13-part docudrama series, “Against All Odds.” It has been screened in the United States by local churches and on the TBN; according to the website, www.AgainstAllOddsTV.com, it will be screened by PBS.

Bill McKay, the producer, told me why he made the series:

“Since, the Six Day War, the world’s press has taken a decidedly pro-Arab position. Much of what is written in the press and the images seen on TV are positioned to influence public opinion against the right of the Jews to live in peace in the land of their fathers. Thus, I thought it was time to tell the Israeli story, not from point-counterpoint position, but from the heart to the heart. This is why we are bringing to life the miracles of modern Israel.

“We have heard from Orthodox Jews to Bible-believing Christians … who are genuinely moved by the reality that the God of the Old Testament is performing the same miracles to keep Israel alive and well.”

Each gripping episode of “Against All Odds” begins with the words:

“In the year 70 AD, Roman legions sacked and burned Jerusalem. Israel would remain a nation in exile for nearly 2,000 years. But in the aftermath of World War II, the People of the Book returned home. Israel’s rebirth and survival in the 20th century has often been called a miracle. Those who were there cite their own experiences as proof…. These are their stories.”

Investigative journalist Michael Greenspan describes some of the thoughts that went through his mind when producer Bill McKay asked him to consider presenting the series.

“A production company in L.A. was doing a film about unexplainable phenomena during Israel’s wars. Some of the stories were actually being called ‘miracles.’ They wanted to know if I was interested…. Personally, I find it hard to believe in miracles….

“There are no logical answers. Some say these things can only be explained as miracles. But are they? I decided to take the assignment.”

In a powerful, moving and effective way, “Against All Odds” proclaims loudly to the people of Israel: Behold your God.

It is He who has brought them back home, and it is He who has promised to keep them in their land even if the whole world musters itself together to get them out.

Along with Israel, all those who love the God of this ancient and modern land and its modern and ancient people, will rejoice at the double miracle of their survival. And we will declare our faith in the glorious future and hope that lies ahead for them.

Am Yisrael Chai! Hallelujah!

A Sign of Life from Gilad Shalit Received by Israel
By Hana Levi Julian, www.IsraelNN.com

Israel has received a sign of life from kidnapped IDF Corporal Gilad Shalit, according to the daily Hebrew newspaper Maariv.

Egyptian officials involved in talks between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization said the letter was checked and found to be authentic. It was passed to Shalit’s family, said the source.

Shalit was kidnapped in June 2006 by Hamas terrorists, the same organization whose paramilitia operatives one year later wrested control over Gaza from the rival Fatah faction that currently leading the Palestinian Authority.

The sources said the letter intensified efforts to negotiate with Hamas, which has demanded the release of thousands of terrorists, in exchange for Shalit’s freedom. Many of the requested terrorists were directly involved in the murders of Israeli citizens, and have thus been classified as having “blood on their hands.”

But Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has decided to relax the standards by which terrorists are categorized as having such bloody hands. Thereby Olmert can broaden the eligibility for release among the thousands of PA terrorists held in Israeli jails, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Olmert met Sunday to discuss his decision with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Public Security Minister and former head of the General Security Service (Shin Bet) Avi Dichter, former Shin Bet director Ami Ayalon, Environment Minister and former deputy Shin Bet head Gideon Ezra, Vice Premier Chaim Ramon, Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

The current definition of the term includes terrorists who have masterminded, ordered and organized deadly attacks on Israeli citizens as well as those who physically prepared and carried out the attacks.

General Security Services (Shin Bet) director Yuval Diskin vehemently opposed the move. Israel’s representative in talks with the terrorists, Ofer Dekel, is the one who recommended it.

Diskin warned that releasing prisoners with “blood on their hands” would result in increased terrorist attacks, increase Hamas’s standing among PA residents, and thereby weaken Fatah leader and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s control over the population.

A senior government official said that even if Israel made the concession, “The road ahead is still very long. Hamas has high demands to which we have no intention of conceding.”

The State of Israel has so far not agreed to release terrorists classified as having “blood on their hands.”

Archeologist Revises Read of Ancient Seal Inscription
By Etgar Lefkovits, www.JPost.com

A prominent Israeli archeologist said February 4 that she has revised her reading of an inscription on an ancient seal uncovered in an archeological excavation in Jerusalem’s City of David after various scholars around the world critiqued her original interpretation of the name on the seal. [This updates a story found on page 20 of the March 2008 Levitt Letter.]

Photo:Edwin Trebels courtesy of Dr. Eilat Mazar

The 2,500 year-old black stone seal was found in January 2008 amid stratified layers of debris in the excavation under way just outside the Old City walls near the Dung Gate, said archeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar, who is leading the dig.

Mazar had originally read the name on the seal as “Temech,” and suggested that it belonged to the family of that name mentioned in the Book of Nehemiah.

But after the find was first reported in The Jerusalem Post, various epigraphers around the world said Mazar had erred by reading the inscription on the seal straight on (from right to left) rather than backwards (from left to right), as a result of the fact that a seal creates a mirror image when used to inscribe a piece of clay.

The critics, including the European scholar Peter van der Veen, as well as the epigrapher Ryan Byrne, co-director of the Tel Dan excavations, suggested in Internet blogs that the correct reading of the seal is actually “Shlomit,” also a biblical name.

Mazar said Monday that she accepted the reading of “Shlomit” on the ancient seal, and added that she appreciated the scholarly research on the issue.

“We are involved in research, not in proving our own opinions,” Mazar said.

She noted that the name Shlomit was known in the period from which the seal dated, and that other contemporary seals had been found that bore names of women who held official status in the administration.

It was not clear whether the name on the seal had any connection to the daughter of Zerubbabel, mentioned in 1 Chronicles 3:19, since the name was apparently common in the period.

The grandson of Judean King Jehoachin, Zerubbabel, led the first band of Jews who returned from the Babylonian captivity, and laid the foundation of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

“What we can say for sure is that this woman was an important woman in the society,” Mazar said.

The seal, which portrays a common and popular cultic scene, was bought in Babylon and dates to 538-445 BCE, Mazar said.

In contrast, Byrne suggested that a date in the late seventh or early sixth century was more probable, noting that scene was typical of the Iron Age Levant and that there was no reason to surmise the seal had been made in Babylon.

The 2.1 X 1.8 cm elliptical seal is engraved with two bearded priests standing on either side of an incense alter with their hands raised in a position of worship.

A crescent moon, the symbol of the chief Babylonian god Sin, appears on the top of the altar, Mazar said.

The fact that this cultic scene relates to a Babylonian god seemed not to have disturbed the Jews that used the seal, she added.

Mazar gained international prominence for her recent excavation that may have uncovered the biblical palace of King David.

The three-year-old east Jerusalem dig is being sponsored by the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem research institute, where Mazar serves as a senior fellow, and the City of David Foundation, which promotes Jewish settlement throughout east Jerusalem.