Ambassador Dan Shapiro visits the Solitaire vessel which is laying the pipeline for the Tamar gas field in the east basin of the Mediterranean. The “Solitaire” is the largest pipe-laying ship in the world at 300 meters long and 96,000 tones. When fully operational she has a crew of 420, a pipe carrying capacity of 22,000 tons and a pipe lay speed of more than 9 km a day.
In September of 2001, crowds of Arabs in numerous nations passed out candy and danced in the streets to celebrate the treacherous destruction of the World Trade Center. Israel’s Jewish National Fund, known for planting trees in Israel, dedicated a “Living Memorial” on November 12, 2009. You can see highlights of the opening ceremony and learn more in this four-minute video:
Anyone who doubts that Israel is a staunch ally of the U.S. should see this.
The Voice of the Martyrs, a group that monitors the persecution of Christians worldwide, has launched a petition campaign on behalf of a Pakistani mother convicted of blasphemy.
Asia Bibi is awaiting execution for defending her Christian faith to her Muslim co-workers.
The 45-year-old mother of five has been imprisoned for more than two years for violating Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.
VOM has already gathered more than 200,000 signatures through its online Call for Mercy petition.
“The story of this petition drive is an interesting one because it started not with American Christians, but with Pakistani Christians,” said Todd Nettleton, VOM director of media development.
The human rights group hopes to deliver 1 million signatures to the Pakistani embassy in Washington later this year.
“We don’t really address the issue of the blasphemy laws. We’re not attacking the Pakistani government,” Nettleton explained. “We’re simply saying this Christian wife and mother deserves to be reunited with her husband and with her children.”
“She doesn’t deserve to be executed,” he added.
VOM is also promoting Bibi’s freedom by launching a video contest. To participate, entrants post a video on YouTube about Bibi’s situation and the petition to free her.
The winner will receive a free trip to Washington, D.C., to help VOM deliver the signed petitions to the Pakistani embassy.
By P. David Hornik www.FrontPageMag.com
It’s been a bumpy road for the Palestinians lately.
Recent staged spectacles that were supposed to whip up sympathy for them and put Israel in a bad light again—the Nakba Day (May 15) and Naksa Day (June 4) marches on Israel’s borders, the flotilla, the flytilla—have been disappointments at best, if not outright flops. And the Palestinians’ long-hyped independent-statehood bid at the UN in September is meeting growing opposition from the West.
The Obama administration has signaled that it will veto the attempt in the Security Council. Germany and Italy have come out squarely against it, and 100 members of the European Parliament signed a letter decrying it, noting that “past agreements between the parties and international mediators clearly reject unilateral actions.”
A recent meeting of the Middle East Quartet —- the U.S., EU, UN, and Russia —- that was supposed to find a way to head off the Palestinians’ statehood bid and restart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, ended inconclusively. Two Israeli newspapers (Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post) say the sticking point was Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, in return for Israeli diplomatic concessions, with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov backing the Palestinians’ ongoing rock-solid refusal to take that seemingly innocuous step.
It all left the Palestinians very upset with the U.S. Reuters reported that
the Palestinian leadership, in unusually harsh criticism of Washington, on Tuesday held the United States responsible for “racist” Israeli policies it said had sabotaged the peace process. …
The Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) executive committee convened in Ramallah after a meeting in Washington of the Quartet…failed to announce any progress toward reviving peace talks. …
“The only option facing the world today, especially the United States, is to use all tools to oblige the occupiers to halt their racist, expansionary policy,” the PLO said in a statement released after its meeting.
“The United States bears the prime responsibility for the continuation of this racist (Israeli) policy,” it said.
Somehow the “peace” cadences are hard to detect here -— especially when you consider that “racist” Israel created the Palestinian Authority, has endured 17 years of terrorism from it without dissolving it, and last year froze the allegedly “expansionary” settlement construction for ten months in a fruitless bid to get the PA to discuss the two-state solution; and that the U.S., for its part, has showered the PA with $4 billion in aid since the mid-1990s and, particularly under Obama, for better or worse, made Palestinian statehood a central goal of its foreign policy.
But annoyance can run both ways, and many in the U.S. Congress are — finally — getting fed up with the Palestinian Authority. Recently, in a nonbinding resolution, the House voted 407-6 to suspend aid to the PA if it keeps refusing to negotiate with Israel. Legislators are also riled by the PA’s unilateral-statehood endeavor, recent cozying-up to Hamas, and other matters.
Trying to calm the winds, administration official Jacob Walles told a House panel, “our assistance to the Palestinian people is an important building block of our efforts to achieve a comprehensive peace in the Middle East that will allow all people there -— Israelis, Palestinians, and others -— to live their lives in peace, in dignity and in security.”
His words would come as a surprise to Nir Nachshon, a 27-year-old Israeli man who was pulled out of his car and savagely beaten after mistakenly driving into the Palestinian Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya. With the Palestinian Authority saturated with anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic incitement, Israelis know that merely entering a Palestinian area means taking their life in their hands.
As Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, said, “The Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act [2006] requires the Palestinian Authority to stop incitement and recognize the Jewish state of Israel’s right to exist if it wants to keep receiving U.S. assistance. Given the Palestinian Authority’s record and given U.S. law, how can we justify continued assistance?”
Or as Rep. Ben Chandler, D-Ky, told Walles and other administration officials at the session: “Surely, you all can understand how that is troubling to people in Congress —- and frankly, I think, to the citizens of this country -— that we continue to provide substantial aid and we feel like we are not getting cooperation. That is the situation that I think a lot of us feel cannot continue and, at some point, we’re going to have to just say, you know, if you guys are not going to cooperate, we’re going to have to cut the aid off.”
With the Palestinians having fooled most of the people for so much time, could it be that their day in the sun is finally waning? It may be too soon to say so. But there are signs that the totally unwarranted spell they have cast for so long is starting to fray.
By Mike Tighe www.Newsmax.com
A U.S. State Department official expressed outrage and pressed Iran to reverse a court decision that gives an Iranian pastor an outrageous, and suicidal, choice: Reject his Christian faith, or die.
The 32-year-old pastor, Yosef Nadarkhani, was arrested in October 2009 for apostasy because he objected to the teaching of Islam to Christian children at Iranian schools. He was sentenced to death by hanging late last year, a verdict that he appealed to Iran’s Supreme Court.
In late June, the appeal appeared to have been granted, as his lawyer indicated to a news agency on July 3. But an Iranian human rights agency now says the ruling actually imposes the recant-or-die choice, according to CNSNews.com.
A U.S. State Department official issued a statement expressing dismay at the prospect:
“While Iran’s leaders hypocritically claim to promote tolerance, they continue to detain, imprison, harass, and abuse those who simply wish to worship the faith of their choosing,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. “We join the international community in continuing to call on the Iranian government to respect the fundamental rights of all its citizens and uphold its international commitments to protect them.”
The indictment against Nadarkhani, a father and evangelical pastor who became a Christian at age 19, accused him of organizing evangelistic meetings, sharing his faith, inviting others to convert, running a house church, and “denying Islamic values,” CNSNews reports.
After his death sentence, his appeal appeared to win a reversal of the fate of hanging.
But the victory was not as clear-cut as it seemed, and Nadarkhani now has been told that he may face new charges or the case could be returned to the original sentencing court in northern Iran’s Gilan province, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, an association that Iranian human rights advocates established in 2009.
Now, it appears that the Gilan court will “question the defendant again in order to determine whether he believes in Islam or not. If he is a Muslim, Yosef Nadarkhani must be released. If it is determined that he is a Christian, he may repent from his faith. Otherwise, if he insists on his beliefs, the death penalty must be carried out,” CNSNews quotes the agency as saying.
And the advocacy group Christian Solidarity Worldwide said, that, despite reports that the death sentence had been reversed, “in reality the Supreme Court appears to have added a precondition requiring him to renounce his faith, or face execution.”
Although Nadarkhani didn’t practice any faith before he became a Christian at 19, he was born to Muslim parents and Islamic law dictates that a child of Muslim parents is considered to be a Muslim.
Although apostasy is not an offense in the Iranian penal code, CNSNews reports that Iran’s constitution includes a clause demanding that, if a basis for a judicial ruling does not exist in the law, judges must turn to “reliable Islamic sources or a valid fatwa.”
The most recent execution of a Christian in Iran for his faith took place 21 years ago, when Assemblies of God Pastor Hussein Sodmand was hanged after refusing to recant, according to CNSNews.
By Lee Strobel blogs.wsj.com
It was the worst news I could get as an atheist: my agnostic wife had decided to become a Christian. Two words shot through my mind. The first was an expletive; the second was “divorce.”
I thought she was going to turn into a self-righteous holy roller. But over the following months, I was intrigued by the positive changes in her character and values. Finally, I decided to take my journalism and legal training (I was legal editor of the Chicago Tribune) and systematically investigate whether there was any credibility to Christianity.
Maybe, I figured, I could extricate her from this cult.
I quickly determined that the alleged resurrection of Jesus was the key. Anyone can claim to be divine, but if Jesus backed up his claim by returning from the dead, then that was awfully good evidence he was telling the truth.
For nearly two years, I explored the minutia of the historical data on whether Easter was myth or reality. I didn’t merely accept the New Testament at face value; I was determined only to consider facts that were well-supported historically. As my investigation unfolded, my atheism began to buckle.
Was Jesus really executed? In my opinion, the evidence is so strong that even atheist historian Gerd Lüdemann said his death by crucifixion was “indisputable.”
Was Jesus’ tomb empty? Scholar William Lane Craig points out that its location was known to Christians and non-Christians alike. So if it hadn’t been empty, it would have been impossible for a movement founded on the resurrection to have exploded into existence in the same city where Jesus had been publicly executed just a few weeks before.
Besides, even Jesus’ opponents implicitly admitted the tomb was vacant by saying that his body had been stolen. But nobody had a motive for taking the body, especially the disciples. They wouldn’t have been willing to die brutal martyrs’ deaths if they knew this was all a lie.
Did anyone see Jesus alive again? I have identified at least eight ancient sources, both inside and outside the New Testament, that in my view confirm the apostles’ conviction that they encountered the resurrected Christ. Repeatedly, these sources stood strong when I tried to discredit them.
Could these encounters have been hallucinations? No way, experts told me. Hallucinations occur in individual brains, like dreams, yet, according to the Bible, Jesus appeared to groups of people on three different occasions – including 500 at once!
Was this some other sort of vision, perhaps prompted by the apostles’ grief over their leader’s execution? This wouldn’t explain the dramatic conversion of Saul, an opponent of Christians, or James, the once-skeptical half-brother of Jesus.
Neither was primed for a vision, yet each saw the risen Jesus and later died proclaiming he had appeared to him. Besides, if these were visions, the body would still have been in the tomb.
Was the resurrection simply the recasting of ancient mythology, akin to the fanciful tales of Osiris or Mithras? If you want to see a historian laugh out loud, bring up that kind of pop-culture nonsense.
One by one, my objections evaporated. I read books by skeptics, but their counter-arguments crumbled under the weight of the historical data. No wonder atheists so often come up short in scholarly debates over the resurrection.
In the end, after I had thoroughly investigated the matter, I reached an unexpected conclusion: it would actually take more faith to maintain my atheism than to become a follower of Jesus.
And that’s why I’m now celebrating my 30th Easter as a Christian. Not because of wishful thinking, the fear of death, or the need for a psychological crutch, but because of the facts.
Associated Press –January 31, 2011
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s prime minister said Monday, January 31, his country’s primary concern in Egypt is that the current crisis could create a void in which Islamic militants step in and endanger decades of peaceful relations between the two countries.
Speaking at a joint news conference with visiting German chancellor Angela Merkel, Benjamin Netanyahu gave his most detailed assessment yet of the Egyptian unrest that threatens to topple President Hosni Mubarak, Israel’s strongest ally in the Arab world. “In a state of chaos, an organized Islamic group can take over a country. It has happened. It happened in Iran,” Netanyahu said. “A takeover of oppressive regimes of extreme Islam violates human rights, grinds them to dust … and in parallel also pose a terrible danger to peace and stability.”
It was Netanyahu’s most direct comment about the crisis in Egypt, which has triggered concerns about stability there and elsewhere in the region. Before, Netanyahu said only that he is “anxiously following” the situation, while stressing Israel’s commitment to peace with Cairo.
Egypt became the first Arab nation to sign a peace accord with Israel in 1979 and has strictly honored it. Mubarak has close ties to Israeli leaders and has acted as a bridge between Israel and the Palestinians to the broader Arab world.
Merkel also expressed concern about the deteriorating situation in Egypt. “Dialogue is necessary, freedom of thought is necessary, peaceful treatment of demonstrators is necessary,” she said.
Merkel and nine of her Cabinet ministers were in Israel for a special joint session, highlighting the two nations’ strong bond six decades after the Holocaust.
By David Waters, www.Newsweek.WashingtonPost.com
America’s largest Presbyterian denomination is preparing for a contentious General Assembly next month as delegates will be asked to consider approving a strongly worded report that calls on the U.S. to stop sending billions of dollars in aid to Israel until it changes its policy toward Palestinians.
“Israel has both the responsibility and the ability to reverse the course of the precipitous decline throughout the region,” states the 172-page report “Breaking Down Walls,” written by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s nine-member Middle East Study Committee.
The report will be considered by the denomination’s 219th General Assembly, meeting July 3-10 in Minneapolis. In 2004, the PC (U.S.A.) became the first mainline Protestant denomination to approve a policy of divestment from Israel. The policy was unpopular with many Presbyterians and was later rescinded.
The new report doesn’t call for divestment, but it does urge the U.S. to halt aid to Israel until the Israeli government ends the expansion of settlements in Palestinian territories, ceases its occupation” of Gaza, and relocates “Israel’s separation barrier” to spots outside of Palestinian territories.
“A just and lasting peace and security for the Palestinians is possible when the occupation has ended and Israel does not need to resort to military force to maintain its illegal land possession. If there were no occupation, there would be no Palestinian resistance. If there was no Palestinian resistance, Israelis could live in peace and security.”
“We also call upon the various Palestinian political factions to negotiate a unified government prepared to recognize Israel’s existence. We proclaim our alarm and dismay–both over the increasingly rapid exodus of Christians from Israel/Palestine caused by anti-Palestinian discrimination and oppression, the growth of Islamic and Jewish fundamentalism, and the occupation-related absence of economic opportunity; and also over the exodus of Christians from other parts of the region caused by various military, economic, religious, and cultural factors. And we oppose the government of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, its sponsorship of international guerrilla warfare, and the threat these pose both to Israel and to Arab states.”
The report is drawing sharp criticism from Jewish groups and praise from Palestinian Muslim and Christian organizations.
The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism adopted a resolution last week, claiming that the report is “distinctly one-sided, traffics in troubling theology, misrepresents Jewish history, and “describes Israel as the occupying army and the major impediment to peace without acknowledging that the Israeli government has the ethical imperative to defend its citizens from terrorist infiltration.”
Rev. Richard Toll, chair of the group Friends of Sabeel North America, which supports Palestinian Christians protesting the occupation, praised the report.
“The Presbyterian Church in the United States has been a leader in confronting the issues of the illegal occupation of the Palestinian land by the state of Israel,” Toll told the Louisville Courier-Journal. “It is important and timely … that Presbyterians stand up for their previous resolutions and challenge other churches and all Americans to nonviolently resist the occupation.”
Several mainline Protestant denominations have issued critical statements about Israeli policies in Palestinian territories, and taken actions to support Palestinians. Evangelical denominations, meanwhile, tend to take the opposite view, strongly supporting Israel and its policies, primarily because of biblical passages that that link Israel’s survival to the Second Coming of Jesus..
In the run-up to the General Assembly, the PC (U.S.A.) study committee issued separate explanatory letters to Presbyterians, “American Jewish friends,” and “American Muslim friends.”
“We deeply value our relationships with Jews and Muslims in the United States, Israel, and the predominantly Muslim countries of the Middle East,” states the report. “Yet the bonds of friendship must neither prevent us from speaking nor limit our empathy for the suffering of others. Inaction and silence on our part enable actions we oppose and consequences we grieve.”
The Canadian Bontan Oil and Gas Company, which has been exploring for natural gas off the coast of Israel, announced recently that it had found prospective resources of up to 6 trillion cubic feet [TCF]of natural gas in Mira and Sarah Prospects off the country’s coast.
As defined on the company’s website, prospective resources are “those quantities of petroleum estimated, as of a given date, to be potentially recoverable from undiscovered accumulations by application of future development projects. “
The two finds could be worth upwards of $6 billion.
The Canadian company “will have an indirect 71.625% interest in these prospects via its 75% equity interest in the Israel Petroleum Company which has acquired a 95.5% interest in the drilling licenses as well as an adjoining exploration permit from the current operator subject to approval by the Government of Israel,” a press release on its Website announced.
The evaluation report, conducted by Chapman Petroleum Engineering stated, “Based on our analysis, after consideration of risk, we have concluded that the potential of these prospects is of sufficient merit to justify the work program being proposed, and we therefore recommend and support the Company’s participation.”
The top-find estimates are a best-case scenario, with “the best estimate [for the Mira Prospect] of gross prospective sales gas resources at 4.24 TCF and for the Sarah Prospect, the best estimate of gross prospective sales gas resources is 1.47 TCF.
By Michael Schneider, www.IsraelToday.co.il
Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics has released the following figures for 2008:
1. 1,970 newborn boys and 515 girls were given the name Noam. Among girls, Noa continues to be the most popular name.
2. Young people in a young state: There were 2,453,140 Israelis under the age of 1—a third of the total population.
3. 156,900 babies were born.
4. Following Noam, which means “pleasant,” the most popular names for boys in Israel are: Itai, Daniel, David, Idan, Moshe, Yosef, and Yonatan.
5. Following Noa, the most popular names for girls are: Shira, Yael, Tamar, Maya, Talia, Hila, Michal, and Adi.
6. Arab boys are often called by variants of the name Mohammed: Mahmoud, Ahmad, Muhamed.
7. Popular names among Arab girls are Hala, Nur, and Miriam.
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