Levitt Letter Extra News

By Aviel Schneider, Israel Today

WAS IT STAGED? Mohammed al-Dura and his father in 2000
MEDIA MANIPULATION during the Second Lebanon War in 2006

Manipulation of a willing Arab and international media has long been a powerful tool in the hands of the Palestinians.

“The recent exposure of a media lie about the 12-year-old Palestinian boy Mohammed al-Dura needs to be studied by the foreign media,” says the head of Israel’s Government Press Office Danny Siemen. “The Palestinians use media manipulation as a strategic weapon to counter Israel’s military superiority and have been very successful in it.”

Al-Dura was back in the news after the French Court of Appeals overturned a lower court decision that found media critic Philippe Karsenty guilty of libel against the France 2 TV station and its Jerusalem correspondent Charles Enderlin. Karsenty accused them of deliberately misleading the world about the death of al-Dura at the start of the second Palestinian intifada (uprising) in Gaza in 2000.

“The verdict means France 2 broadcast a fake news report and that al-Dura’s shooting was a staged hoax,” Karsenty said.

Al-Dura became a “martyr” and enduring symbol of the Palestinian cause in TV footage broadcast around the world. The pictures of the boy and his father cowering helplessly in the crossfire of an Israeli-Palestinian gun battle threw Israel’s image into the gutter.

During the trial, France 2 was ordered to release the entire 27-minute video, in contrast to the 31 seconds shown at the time. In the last scene showing father and son, one can see that Mohammed is moving and undeniably alive.

Karsenty was suspicious about the original report which showed Mohammed in the arms of his father, the victim of “Israeli” fire. “Mohammed is dead, his father seriously wounded,” the report said.

“The pathologist indeed did a postmortem examination of a dead boy at 12 noon. But Mohammed al-Dura was supposedly shot at 3 p.m.!” Karsenty said. “The pictures taken in the morgue are totally different than pictures of Mohammed al-Dura. It is ridiculous.”

American professor Richard Landes examined the al-Dura case along with ballistics experts and dubbed it Pallywood.

“Palestinian cameramen and photographers work for foreign news networks and edit pictures with the aim of blackmailing Israel in the eyes of the world,” Siemen said.

This manipulation of the news influences the international community and has limited Israel in its war against Palestinian terror since the first intifada erupted in 1987. The fear of international condemnation paralyzes Israel and prevents it from taking effective action.

During the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006, the international media condemned Israel for the so-called “massacre” in the South Lebanese village of Kana (57 dead, including 21 children). The Israeli army determined that this was fabricated because the building collapsed seven hours after the air force bombed the area, giving civilians plenty of time to get out. The building wasn’t even directly hit, and some observers suggest that Hizbollah collected bodies of people killed in the war from a morgue, put them in the building and blew it up.

A few weeks earlier, in June 2006, pictures shocked the world when an Israeli shell was blamed for the killing of a Palestinian family of seven on a Gaza beach. But the footage appeared to be staged because no crater caused by a shell was seen in the area.

This year, a Palestinian mother and her four children were killed in Gaza, ostensibly by an Israeli tank shell. An army investigation determined that the shell hit two Hamas terrorists, and the blast from explosives they were carrying blew up the house.

In all of these cases, the damage to Israel had already been done by the time the truth came out. In fact, the truth is rarely reported because by then it’s “old news.”

“Israel is quickly blamed for the deaths of Palestinians,” said Siemen. “The foreign media do not verify the news and rely almost exclusively on Palestinian journalists with an agenda. Without a doubt, Palestinian journalists are using the foreign media in their struggle against Israel.”

ENDURING SYMBOL: From paintings to postage stamps, al-Dura is an enduring symbol of the Palestinian cause

By Amr Hamzawy, www.DailyStar.com (published in Lebanon, leading English language newspaper in the Middle East)

In Arab countries such as Morocco, Egypt, and Jordan, a burgeoning social crisis caused by out-of-control global inflationary pressures, a crippled welfare system, and persisting high levels of poverty and unemployment is further complicated by a broader political deterioration. Taken together, the social unrest and deteriorating politics call into question the prospects of stability in those countries.

Over the past two years, Egypt has come to be a case in point for the dangers inherent in that kind of development. In April 2008 a number of civil society organizations including independent unions, syndicates, and networks of young activists organized a national strike day to express their frustration with deteriorating social and economic conditions.

Workers’ strikes have become frequent in Egypt. Hundreds of strikes and protests have been carried out over the past two years, but none escalated to the levels of April’s. Inflation has been a problem for many years in Egypt.

The Mubarak regime has consistently tried to contain the situation through a combination of repressive and conciliatory measures. Yet the persistence of protest activities demonstrates the seriousness of popular discontent and the failure of both oppressive methods and minor peace-making concessions to mollify the public.

The Egyptian regime’s lack of an overall strategy to address the country’s enduring troubles extends far beyond the economic sphere. The regime seems to have abandoned the often-implemented option of using political reforms to defuse socioeconomic tensions.

Egypt is trapped in an unenviable position, characterized by growing social unrest and political deterioration. Choices made by the Egyptian regime will most likely determine whether the current social convulsions will be followed by more instability or, if matters are handled prudently, sustainable recovery. In all likelihood, the option of moderating the perilous effects of economic strain by orchestrating a new wave of political reforms is one that the regime will hesitate to embrace at this stage. The concern that such openings might make worse the odds of the approaching presidential succession (Mubarak turned 80 on May 4 and his fifth terms ends in 2011) seems to surpass any other considerations.

The current resurgence of protest activism constitutes the one promising development in Egyptian political life. But progress on the street needs to be complemented by real progress in the performance of organized opposition forces in the political process. Notwithstanding the fact that this progress is largely predicated on the regime’s willingness to welcome the opposition’s input, it is also dependent on the quality of the opposition. Only through active, disciplined, credible, and committed participation in the political process can organized political forces in Egypt effectively advance the reform agenda and push for sensible and comprehensive policies that address the socioeconomic exigencies at hand.

****************
Amr Hamzawy is a distinguished Egyptian political scientist who contributes articles in Arabic to various academic journals. He also writes regularly for the Arab daily al-Hayat and the Egyptian daily al-Masry al Youm.

By Michael Green , THE JERUSALEM POST

As the smooth asphalt road running through the Negev community of Ashalim comes to a sudden end, forklifts stir up clouds of dust on the uneven dirt path and a plain, whitewashed house sits on a stony patch of earth. Here, a few kilometers northwest of Sde Boker, seeds of green are beginning to sprout in an unlikely place.

Stepping into the building from the dry heat of the desert, the temperature drops to an unseasonably cool - and certainly more comfortable - level. REAL Housing’s chairman Hy Brown says the building’s microclimate owes itself to insulation from its structured integrated paneling (SIP), as well as to the fact that the building is raised a few inches off the ground, allowing air to circulate around the house, cooling it down. The 70-square-meter prefabricated houses also incorporate geothermal heating and, when they hit the production line, will come standard with solar roof panels.

Originally designed to provide affordable housing in Israel’s undersupplied real estate market, the first prototype home from the fledgling REAL (Renewable Energy for Affordable Living) housing company could also offer homeowners a more environmentally sustainable choice.

“I didn’t set out to build solar power for Israel,” says Brown, whose previous projects include the World Trade Center and Disney World. “Originally, the thrust was to design affordable housing that could be built fast, not the environment. We were afraid to add innovations because we didn’t think we could get approval; but now we’re going full throttle to make them as sustainable as possible because we are getting government support,” says Brown.

“There are lots of reasons why Israel needs to build green,” believes Yehuda Olander, chairman of the Israeli chapter of the International Initiative for a Sustainable Built Environment (IISBE). “Israel needs to be part of the international challenge to global warming, even though it is a small country and its effect will not be so [significant]. But it is not just about global problems. The country has its local problems, too. Israel is very poor in terms of natural resources, for example oil, and… we are talking about 10 million people living here by 2020,” says Olander, who is also the manager of the Sharon District’s Regional Division for the Quality of the Environment.

The these of World Environment Day 2008, an annual event coordinated by the United Nations Environment Program that is intended to raise awareness about global environmental issues - “Toward a Low-Carbon Economy” - urges households across the world to “Kick the Habit” of using fossil fuel in a bid to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change.

In Israel, private households consume 30 percent of the country’s total electricity production and a similar proportion of fresh water, according to the Environmental Protection Ministry. Therefore, what people do at home, not to mention how their homes are designed, has a huge impact on climate change.

“Buildings consume 50 to 55% of the energy used nationally in developed countries,” says Michal Vital, green building planner and consultant. “[Energy] is not just consumed by cars or industry, and people aren’t aware of this.”

Commercial buildings eat up an additional 30% of Israel’s electricity, mainly for heating, cooling and lighting. But advocates for green construction say that if buildings were designed with a little bit of ecological know-how, energy-hungry heating and air conditioning - and the huge bills they incur - could become a thing of the past.

It has taken a while for the idea of environmental responsibility to catch on here, but it’s one that architects and local municipalities are now beginning to take seriously when planning new communities.

REAL’s lone prototype house, standing out like a sore thumb amid the portacabins and caravillas that surround it, echoes the wider story of environmentally sound architecture now taking root locally. Green building is beginning to shift from the margins to the mainstream and could be the future. But despite Israel’s being a world leader in environmentally friendly technologies such as solar power, green building remains in its infancy here.

Advocates, however, believe that green building has huge potential.

“It’s taking its first steps in Israel, it’s really like a baby now,” says Vital, adding that the demand for green building has moved beyond what she calls “hard-core” green activists.

Not far from Ashalim, at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s Sde Boker campus, “greening” the desert has taken root in a different form. The Desert Architecture and Urban Planning Unit of the Blaustein Institute for Desert Research has been at the forefront of developing solutions for human habitation in the harsh desert environment, which comprises some 65% of Israel’s total land mass. In the early 1990s, the first residents moved into the campus’s Neveh Zin solar neighborhood, designed to take advantage of the natural properties of the desert climate, promoting the use of passive heating and cooling mechanisms and minimizing energy use.

Overlooking the breathtaking Zin Valley, Neveh Zin’s public gardens, featuring drought- and salinity-resistant plants, are kept to a minimum around the 80 carefully designed detached houses whose common geometry and character allow them to fit into the desert, both esthetically and ecologically. The single-family homes incorporate the concept of “solar and wind rights,” ensuring that they receive the maximum amount of sunshine possible when the sun is at its lowest altitude during the cold winter months, while maximizing the cooling power of the wind in the summer, explains Isaac Meir, chair of BGU’s Department of Man in the Desert.

“We want summer night winds because they are cool and permeate the built environment, flushing out the heat accumulated in the day. By taking into account the altitude of the sun, we can define the distance needed between two buildings to ensure they won’t shade each other in the winter,” says Meir, who is working with the Housing and Construction Ministry to develop an environmentally responsible housing cluster in Beersheba’s Ramot neighborhood.

“What we are doing with this specific cluster is trying to incorporate the same logic and environmental strategies from Neveh Zin [in] something much more urban, with [buildings of] five or six stories, the type of apartment blocks that developers like to market in cities,” he says.

With 1,000 housing units, a school, synagogues and commercial areas planned, the Ramot project marks one of the largest of its kind in Israel. But it’s still on the drawing board, lagging years behind the establishment of Neveh Zin.

“It takes time for new strategies to percolate down to professionals on the one hand and decision-makers on the other,” says Meir. “I think the Housing Ministry is realizing the importance of developing homes that are more environmentally friendly, user-friendly and less resource-intensive.”

Olander believes that the slow development of green building in Israel stems partly from the problem that, until recently, there had been no definition of what exactly constituted a “green building.” To help catalyze the relationship between architecture and ecology in the country, IISBE Israel was established four years ago and was a key player in getting the first official guidelines for green building in Israel off the ground.

In November 2005, the Standards Institute of Israel published the Israel Standard 5281 for Buildings with Reduced Environmental Impact (commonly known as the “Green Buildings” standard), which addresses energy, water, land and other environmental issues, including air quality and the building process. Homes and offices in Israel can now proudly wear the “green building” label if they score 55 or more out of 100 points (over 75 qualifies a structure as an “outstanding green building”) by meeting the standards’ conditions.

Vital believes it’s a good thing that Israel now has a green building standard but argues that much of the responsibility for ensuring progress in this field lies with lawmakers. “I don’t mean the Knesset. If municipalities put green demands into city plans, architects will have to follow them to have permission to build,” she says.

“Who’s interested in green building? Local governments, not [the] national government. Local governments are trying to bring citizens to… live in their cities and they want them to be happy living there,” says Olander, He adds that the Kfar Saba Municipality has already planned a 5,000-unit “green neighborhood” and that there is talk of building 10,000 green housing units in north Tel Aviv’s Sde Dov district. In addition, he believes there is interest in green building in Petah Tikva, Ra’anana and Jerusalem.

“In the United States, the national government didn’t take action to save energy or promote green building - the local governments did it instead.” Olander points out.

But one man’s palace can be another man’s pollution as the developers of Eden Hills, a new community under construction in the Elah Valley, south of Beit Shemesh, know all too well. The first building at the project, which is set to be the last new town built in central Israel, was inaugurated by Housing Minister Zeev Boim last month, following 18 years of delays and setbacks.

Developer Jake Leibowitz describes Eden Hills as his “vision of an ecological village,” which will include environmentally friendly innovations such as solar power, geothermal technology and water purification.

But Michelle Levine, spokesperson for the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, describes Eden Hills as an “ecological catastrophe” because it runs close to Israel’s primary wildlife corridor, a natural migratory path for flora and fauna. Following interventions from the SPNI and other green groups, the regional planning council ordered a reduction in the size of the development; but Levine argues that the development should never have been given the go-ahead in the first place.

“Eden Hills is extraneous, does not abide by Israel 2020, and is in essence a bigger disaster to the environment than their [water] and solar power schemes could ever hope to rectify,” she says, adding that the National Planning Council had mistakenly approved the community without waiting for the Environmental Impact Report. The “Israel 2020″ master plan for the country in the 21st century recommends that sustainable development be based on the “prevention of new settlements and increased density of existing ones… and emphasis on green buffers, open spaces and the preservation of heritage and nature values.”

“No new community can call itself an ‘environmental’ community. We have gone past the point where we can build more communities. There’s only so much green space we can take up in Israel,” she declares.

But what about residents of the rest of the country, who live in houses that have been standing for decades?

“It’s very important not only to make new houses environmentally friendly but also to improve existing homes,” agrees Olander, adding that Standard 5281 can also be applied when renovating houses. “Our association [IISBE Israel] is trying to get the information to everyone. To save important resources like energy and water, you don’t need to build a new house, you can be greener in your behavior too.”

Gil Peled, an architect and green building consultant, acknowledges that while it is much easier to design ecologically sensitive buildings if starting from scratch, constructing homes on a small scale could actually be less sustainable than building within existing urban areas.

“Detached housing is, by definition, un-ecological,” he argues, noting the additional roads, land and infrastructure needed, as well as its impact on wildlife. “Everybody wants a detached house on half a dunam (1.23 acres) - that’s the dream; but we just don’t have enough land,” says Peled, whose Eco-Housing Pilot Project has successfully “greened” the 10-family Jerusalem apartment building in which he lives without resorting to technological fixes. “Motivation is the most resource-saving device. If you have energy-efficient light bulbs but leave them on all day, you’re not saving anything,” he says. Since 2002, he explains, the use of energy and water in his building, as well as its production of waste, has been slashed by 30%-50% by initiatives that include recycling, energy-efficient appliances and rainwater collection.

But despite people’s best intentions, going green doesn’t come cheap. A typical Israeli family thinking of switching to clean electricity would have to invest at least NIS 70,000 in photovoltaic (PV) panels to harness the sun’s energy. Alon Tamari, CEO of SolarPower Israel, says that most Israelis using PV cells are doing so for ideological reasons. However, there could be a surge in demand following the announcement of a long-awaited government incentive program to subsidize households’ production of their own solar power.

The Greek firm Solar Energy Hellas has developed a prototype “Energy Autonomous Building” that aims to supply all a building’s energy needs from the sun alone. The firm is working with Israel solar power company Chromagen to bring the technology across the Mediterranean. However, the building requires a 30% to 35% higher capital investment than standard buildings.

Speaking last month at Bar-Ilan University’s Conference for Green Industry and Building, Dr. Alexis Faisis, a mechanical engineer at Solar Energy Hellas, explained that incorporating “passive measures” can eradicate the need to switch on energy-consuming heaters or air conditioners in the first place. Effective design of home insulation, walls and windows can slash the amount of energy needed to heat and cool by between 50% and 70%, he says.

“Passive systems save money, which can then be spent on the best possible active energy system. If you take the right measures, you can afford photovoltaics,” notes Faisis.

He believes that Energy Autonomous Buildings are “100% feasible” in Israel but is frank about the motives behind the development of such structures: “The designs are not based on a client’s ecological concerns; they are based on profitability. I’m sad to say that money drives the world, and ecological concerns are a by-product of economic benefits.”

In other words, saving the environment can also mean saving shekels. Olander, who predicts that the price of water will rise in the near future, says that homeowners who invest in making their property “green” can recoup their outlay in four or five years.

“In my opinion, to build a green building in the long term will not cost more than the price of an average building today,” he says. “Today we need to pay for experts or trained architects, but in the future it will be something that every part of the team will have knowledge of.”

If the predictions by Olander and others are to be believed, green housing in the future might not be for environmental activists or the wealthy alone.

“A rich person can buy solar panels, but [the same goal can be reached by] reducing the size of windows, changing the directions or shading buildings with trees,” says Vital. “Not everything has to cost money. It’s possible to be green by being clever.”

By Abe Selig, THE JERUSALEM POST

‘They will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” Thus is the prophecy of Isaiah, the eighth-century BCE prophet who preached a message of universal peace, and whose lips, according to biblical sources, were divinely anointed with fire.

As the Jewish people mark Shavuot, the celebration of receiving the Torah from God, the Israel Museum is proudly displaying Isaiah’s scroll, one of the world’s oldest known scrolls, and the most complete Dead Sea scroll ever found.

Discovered by a Bedouin shepherd in the Qumran caves near the Dead Sea, the scroll dates from about 100 BCE, and is thus 1,000 years older than the oldest Hebrew biblical manuscript known prior to its discovery. Besides this initial manuscript, some 20 additional, but fragmented, copies of Isaiah were discovered at Qumran, shedding light on the details surrounding the Land of Israel during the Second Temple Period, among other things.

On a long, complicated journey from the hands of the Bedouin shepherd, the scroll, along with three others, passed through many hands, traveling the Middle East, from Israel and Lebanon to Syria, and on to New York. On June 1, 1954, an advertisement appeared in the Wall Street Journal under the category “Miscellaneous For Sale,” which read: “‘The Four Dead Sea Scrolls’ Biblical Manuscripts, dating back to at least 200 BC, are for sale. This would be an ideal gift to an educational or religious institution by an individual or group. Box F 206.”

Yigael Yadin, son of the great Israeli archaeologist Eleazar Sukenik, was in New York at the time, saw the ad and immediately began pursuing the scrolls through secret negotiations (the Jordanian government was claiming rights to all scrolls found at Qumran). After purchasing them for $250,000, the scrolls wound up at the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, about 100 kilometers from where they had originally been found.

SINCE THEN, however, the scroll has been displayed to the public only once, from 1965-67, as part of the original design concept for the Shrine of the Book. Due to conservation requirements aimed at the scrolls’ long-term preservation, scroll sections are rotated on a regular basis in the shrine, limiting the time the parchments come into contact with light and oxygen.

The preservation efforts that have gone into the scroll have been intense, with experts conducting the process in a dark room with climate-controlled air.

“After you get used to the darkness, the eye adapts itself,” Michael Magen says of the work he does as head of the Paper Conservation Lab at the Israel Museum. He explains that his work is “preventive conservation,” aimed at facilitating the longevity of the scroll’s parchment, which is made from animal skin.

“This is different from active conservation, which aims to repair or patch an object,” Magen says. “The scroll does have some fractures, but we preferred to leave it in its state, and not change its condition at all.”

Magen and his team have identified the possible factors that might affect the scroll’s parchment, and they have come up with ways to block them.

“While on display, the scroll is subject to more light than usual,” Magen says. “We put it behind bullet-proof glass and installed a data logger to monitor the temperature and humidity inside, and we are constantly checking on it to keep the parchment stabilized.”

But the laborious efforts that go into the scroll’s preservation, and the possible damage that its display could cause, beg the question: Why? Why go to the trouble of displaying a rare and valuable artifact such as the Isaiah Scroll, when doing so might damage its condition and expose it to harm?

“I think when you are in front of the scroll, you can imagine the person behind the scroll,” says Adolfo Roitman, curator of the Isaiah Scroll exhibit at the museum. “You can imagine the person who was writing it 2,000 years ago.”

Roitman explains that through its display, the scroll is fulfilling its prophecy.

“The Isaiah Scroll plays such an important role in both Judaism and Christianity, I see the exhibit, and the Shrine, as a place of encounter for people from different denominations and races - a sort of institute for universal peace. It’s not just a display,” Roitman says. “It’s a ground from which we can build understanding.”

Accordingly, Isaiah’s words serve to promote their theme, so many years after they were spoken, hidden away and discovered again in the caves at Qumran. Possibly, through its current display, the message will take hold, and swords will be beaten into plowshares as the teachings of war become the teachings of peace.

Janet L. Folger, www.worldnetdaily.com

As I wrote about in my book, The Criminalization of Christianity, Jeffrey Satinover, who holds an M.D. from Princeton and doctorates from Yale, MIT, and Harvard, was on my radio program one day and I asked him about where we are in history. He explained that according to the “Babylonian Talmud” – the book of rabbis’ interpretation of the scriptures 1,000 years before Christ, there was only one time in history that reflects where we are right now. There was only one time in history, according to these writings, where men were given in marriage to men, and women given in marriage to women.

Want to venture a guess as to when? No, it wasn’t in Sodom and Gomorrah, although that was my guess. Homosexuality was rampant there, of course, but according to the Talmud, not homosexual “marriage.” What about ancient Greece? Rome? No. Babylon? No again. The one time in history when homosexual “marriage” was practiced was … during the days of Noah. And according to Satinover, that’s what the “Babylonian Talmud” attributes as the final straw that led to the Flood.

On my Faith2Action radio program, Rabbi Aryeh Spero verified this to be true.

Rabbi Spero spoke of God’s compassion before the Flood, in hopes people would repent and turn back to His ways. He showed patience for hundreds of years.

But, he said, the Talmud’s writings reveal that “before the Flood people started to write marriage contracts between men, in other words, homosexual ‘marriage,’ which is more than homosexual activity – it’s giving an official state stamp of approval, a sanctification … of homosexual partnership.”

In fact, he said, “the writings indicated that it wasn’t even so much the ’straw that broke the camel’s back,’ but that the sin in and of itself is so contrary to why God created the world, so contrary to the order of God’s nature, that God said then and there ‘I have to start all over … to annihilate the world and start from the beginning. …’”

Rabbi Spero went on to say, “Even in ancient Greece they did not write marriage contracts between men. There was homosexuality, and it was wrong, but there was not an official ‘blessed’ policy. … Marriage is ’sanctification’ (not simply a partnership).” He said to confer the title of sanctification and holiness upon this behavior is “probably one of the greatest sins of all that one does against God’s plan for this world.”

The one time it happened was: “During the days of Noah.” When I first heard this, my mind immediately went to a verse I’ve heard many times but never with such relevance. The verse is found in Matthew 24:37. It reads:

As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. – Mathew 24:37 (NIV)

I used to read this verse and think: It was bad at lots of points in history; it doesn’t necessarily mean now, but if these Jewish writings are true, we are uniquely like the “days of Noah” right now – and only right now.

But it can’t be yet, you say. You have a lot going on in your life? You’re getting married? Here’s how the New Living Translation describes that very sentiment in Luke:

When the Son of Man returns, the world will be like the people were in Noah’s day. In those days before the Flood, the people enjoyed banquets and parties and weddings right up to the time Noah entered his boat, and the flood came to destroy them all. – Luke 17:26-27

Happily going about as if everything was fine was what they did, too.

You don’t like this possibility? Don’t even believe in the Flood? Doesn’t matter. Some things are true whether you believe them or not. How can you be sure? There’s a way. Did you know that about one-fourth of the Bible is prophecy? A quarter of the Bible is a lot – it’s a big book. And did you know God’s standard? Perfection. That means that if even one of those prophecies is wrong, you can discount the whole thing. Kind of like a prophet who makes a false prediction – that made him a false prophet and a candidate for stoning. Did you know that 4,000 prophecies in that Bible have already come true down to the last detail? That leaves about 1,000 left to be fulfilled – those are the ones regarding the last days before the return of Christ, which are being checked off the list right now.

If 4,000 out of 5,000 prophecies have already occurred exactly as the Bible predicted they would, you might want to pay attention to the rest.

Why am I sounding the alarm? Here’s why:

But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, and the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at the watchman’s hand. – Ezekiel 33:6

I’m praying and working to protect marriage not only because I care about marriage, but because I care about civilization. And, if we obey God, he just may spare us from the judgment we deserve.

www.iht.com

Archaeologists in Jordan have discovered a cave underneath one of the world’s oldest churches that may have once been an even more ancient site of Christian worship.

Archaeologist Abdel-Qader Hussein, head of the Rihab Center for Archaeological Studies, says the cave was unearthed in the northern Jordanian city of Rihab after three months of excavation and shows evidence of early Christian rituals.

The cave lies under St. Georgeous church, built in 230 A.D., making it one of the oldest churches in the world, along with one unearthed in the Jordanian southern port of Aqaba in 1998 and another in Israel discovered in 2005.

Hussein said there was evidence that the underground cave was used as a church by 70 disciples of Jesus in the first century after Christ’s death, which would make it the oldest Christian site of worship in the world.

He described a circular worship area with stone seats separated from a living area that had a long tunnel leading to a source of water. He said the early Christians hid there from persecution.

A mosaic inscription on the floor of the later church of St. Georgeous above refers to “the 70 beloved by God and the divine” who founded the worship there.

Thomas Parker, a historian at the University of North Carolina-Raleigh, who led the discovery of the church in Aqaba, said that while he hadn’t seen the Rihab site, any such claim should be taken with a degree of caution.

“An extraordinary claim like this requires extraordinary evidence,” he said. “We need to see the artifacts and dating evidence to suggest such an occupation in the 1st century A.D.”

Archimandrite Nektarious, Bishop Deputy of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in Amman hailed the discovery, calling it an “important milestone for Christians all around the world and right here at home.”

“It confirms that Christians in this region are not strangers,” he said. “They are real citizens who have always had roots in this region from those days until the present.”

By Jamie Glazov, www.FrontPageMagazine.com

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Abul Kasem, an ex-Muslim who is the author of hundreds of articles and several books on Islam including, Women in Islam. He was a contributor to the book Leaving Islam – Apostates Speak Out as well as to Beyond Jihad: Critical Views From Inside Islam.

FP: Abul Kasem, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Kasem: Thank you Jamie. I am glad to be back.

FP: We’re here today to discuss how women are considered to be domestic animals in Islam and are to be treated as such.

Let’s begin with the origins of this value system in connection to women in Islam.

Muhammad’s last instruction to Muslim men was to beat women and treat them as domestic animals, correct? Can you tell us about this last instruction and its context?

Kasem: Sure Jamie. In AH 10 (Islamic calender), that is, in 632CE Muhammad made his formal pilgrimage to Mecca. This was the only, the first and the last haj Muhammad had done. Having taught his followers the rituals of haj, and having performed them himself, in the valley of Arafat, Muhammad addressed them in an impassioned speech. This was his last speech, and accordingly, in the Islamic annals it is recorded as the farewell (Hajjtul wida) speech. Sourcing a long chain of narrators, Tabari, the most eminent Islamic historian writes (the full text):

Ibn Humayd—Salamah—Ibn Ishaq—‘Abdallah b. Abi Najih:

Reference:
Al-Tabari, Abu Ja’far Muhammad b. Jarir. The History of al-Tabari. Vol.IX: The Last Years of the Prophet. Translated and annotated by Ismail K. Poonawala. State University of NewYork Press, Albany, 1990. (Pages 112-114. Bold emphasis is mine)

FP: Well I don’t really see how there can be any confusion over interpretation here, it appears pretty clear.

Kasem: Well yes, in the few words above, the most hallowed speech by Muhammad, he had clearly described women as domestic animals, and instructed their husbands to beat them if they suspect that their wives’ behavior are not to their satisfaction. Please note that those were Muhammad’s last decrees to Muslim husbands. Every Muslim husband is duty bound by those instructions of Muhammad.

FP: What have Muslim scholars said about these words?

Kasem: Let’s tale a look at what ibn Ishaq, the most authentic biographer of Muhammad, wrote about Muhammad’s last words on women during his farewell speech:

You have rights over your wives and they have rights over you. You have the right that they should not defile your bed and that they should not behave with open unseemliness. If they do, God allows you to put them in separate rooms and to beat them but not with severity. If they refrain from these things they have the right to their food and clothing with kindness. Lay injunctions on women kindly, for they are prisoners with you having no control- of their persons. You have taken them only as a trust from God, and you have the enjoyment of their persons by the words of God, so understand (T. and listen to) my words, O men, for I have told you. I have left with you something which if you will hold fast to it you will never fall into error—a plain indication, the book of God and the practice of His prophet, so give good heed to what I say.

Reference: Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad b. Yasr, Sirat Rasul Allah. Translated in English by A. Guillaume. First published by Oxford University Press, London in 1955. Fifteenth reprint by Oxford University Press, Karachi, Pakistan, 2001. (p.651. Bold emphasis is mine.)

FP: So what are we to gather from all of this?

Kasem: What we are to gather is that there is not much difference between Tabari’s version and Ibn Ishaq’s. In Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad considered women to be prisoners in the hands of men, quite similar to domestic animals who are prisoners in the hands of their owners.

Those words of Muhammad should not surprise us. In a few ahadith we note that Muhammad likened women to dogs, camels, asses…and so on, all domestic animals.

FP: Some examples?

Kasem: Here are a few sample ahadith:

Aisha complained that Muhammad’s followers made women like dogs and asses…Sahih Muslim, 4.1039

If there is a bad luck in anything then it is horse, the abode and the woman… Sahih Muslim, 26.5528, 5529

A prayer is annulled by a passing woman, a dog and a monkey…Sahih Bukhari, 1.9.490, 493,498

Women, houses and horses are evil omens…Sahih Bukhari, 7.62.30, 31, 32

An ass, a woman and a black dog annuls a prayer…Sunaan Nasai, 1.753

A menstruating woman and a dog cuts off a prayer…Sunaan Abu Dawud, 2.0703

Either a dog, an ass, a pig, a Jew, a Magian and a woman cuts off a prayer…Sunaan Abu Dawud, 2.0704

Women, slaves and camels are the same; must seek Allah’s refuge from all these…Sunaan Abu Dawud, 11.2155

A house, a horse and a woman is an evil omen; a mat in a house is better than a barren woman…Sunaan Abu Dawud, 3.29.3911

A black dog is satan; a black dog or a donkey or a woman cancels a prayer…Sunaan ibn Majah, 2.952

Beat your wives if they commit sinful acts; women are captives of their husbands…Sunaan ibn Majah, 3.1851

A woman is a property; a righteous woman is the best property…Sunaan ibn Majah, 3.1855 (Please note: a pregnant camel during Muhammad’s time was the best property)

Seek refuge from a woman, a servant and cattle—they are evils…Sunaan ibn Majah , 3.1918

Muhammad’s final sermon—beat women…Sunaan ibn Majah , 4.3074

Women are your prisoners, treat them well, if necessary beat them but not severely…Tirmidhi, 104

FP: I think it becomes clear what the roots are to the violent oppression of women in Islam. We welcome readers to watch our film on this depressing phenomenon. http://www.terrorismawareness.org/videos/108/the-violent-oppression-of-women-in-islam/

Abul Kasem, thank you for joining us today and for revealing to us some of the historical roots to Islamic gender apartheid.

Kasem: Thank you, Jamie.

****************
Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine’s managing editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in U.S. and Canadian foreign policy.

By Zafrir Rinat, www.Haaretz.com

The wait is over: after months of campaigning, the hoopoe has beat out nine other finalists to secure the title of Israel’s state bird.

The hoopoe (duhifat, in Hebrew) won 35 percent of the votes, beating out the warbler (ten percent) and the finch (9.8 percent).

The national bird selection process was sponsored by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI). Voters chose from a list of 10 species on the SPNI website.

Surveys show that 46 percent of the votes for the winning bird came from Israel Defense Forces soldiers.

Dr. Yossi Leshem, the Tel Aviv University ornithologist who helped initiate the campaign to choose a state bird, said that the election of city birds is next on the agenda. Tel Aviv has already announced that it will adopt the swallow as its municipal avian mascot and set up nest installations around the city.

By Hana Levi Julian, www.IsraelNN.com

Close to 300,000 tourists streamed into Israel this past May, breaking all records, according to the Tourism Ministry. The number of visitors was 5 percen higher than the previous record, set in the year 2000.

The projected total tourism for 2008 will be almost 3,000,000 visitors to the Jewish State.

Tourism Ministry Director-General Sha’ul Tzemach commented that the rise could have far-reaching positive effects, noting that “with the continuing growth pattern, this contribution will be felt in all aspects of the tourism industry.”

Israeli Tourist Sites Uploaded to Tourism Ministry Website
New maps of Israel and major tourism sites and cities were uploaded to the Ministry of Tourism website, www.goisrael.com/tourism_eng. The new service allows for navigation and printing of the maps, which display major tourist sites marked in English.

Included are beautiful new maps of Israel, Christian sites, and the cities of Jerusalem, Tiberias, Eilat, Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Netanya. In addition, the ministry has uploaded another 200 photographs, adding them to the existing 1800 photos available for downloading from the site, which can be searched by name or keyword. More photos will be added in the coming months, said the ministry.

The Tourism Ministry’s website attracts more than a quarter of a million hits a month and is translated into 11 different languages, including English, Russian, French, German, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Italian, German and Hebrew. It is also in the process of being translated into other languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Korean and Portuguese.

By Ruchama King Feuerman, www.aish.com

In Israel’s darkest moment, outnumbered and surrounded by enemies, an old woman sees what no one else can see.

The Six Day War had ended. The generals assembled the commanders and foot soldiers for a customary review and analysis of the battle. After the military questions had been asked, and the investigative committee was about to disperse, a commanding officer pointed to one of the soldiers. “Wait a minute. I have a question for you. Yes, you, the soldier who put up the flag on the Temple Mount.”

The soldier nodded.

“Where did you get an Israeli flag, and why did you put it up?”

The soldier spread out his hands and smiled, a gesture that indicated that here was more than just a one sentence response. He told the following story:

The night before the Old City was liberated, a contingent of soldiers fighting near the Old City took cover in a shelter in a Jerusalem neighborhood. Hordes of children, mothers, old men and women packed inside the bunker alongside the soldiers. People looked frightened and bereft. The government had imposed a news black-out so that the Arab countries wouldn’t be able to figure out their positions. And the news — originating from Jordan, Egypt and Syria — was enough to induce hysteria: calls from Saudi King Faisal for the total elimination of Israel, calls from every Arab country to push the fledgling country into the sea.

Things looked so bad, Israelis famously converted public parks into mass graves, in preparation for the expected casualties. (Israel’s Chief of Staff, Yitzchak Rabin, had even suffered a nervous breakdown.)

As the soldier sat there in the bunker, hopeless and uncertain, he saw an old woman slowly make her way over to him. “Excuse me,” she said, standing at his side. She held a satchel in her arms.

He lifted his eyes. “Yes, Doda. Tell me, what is it?”

“Tomorrow you’ll go to the Old City and you’ll go to the Kotel [Western Wall].”

He shook his head at the absurdity. He said, “No, we won’t.” There were no army plans to liberate the Old City. First, they were fighting just to hold their positions. Also, overtaking the Old City would entail hand-to-hand combat which was greatly feared: Many people would die. Moreover, any bombardment of the Old City might demolish even more of the holy sites than had already been destroyed by the Jordanians. He tried to explain all of this.

The old woman looked at him, steady-eyed. “No, you will go,” she said, not as if she were trying to convince him, but as if relaying simple facts.

He shrugged. An old woman’s delusions. He wasn’t going to argue with her.
Before he turned away, she said, “I have a favor to ask you.” She reached into her satchel and took out an Israeli flag. From the way she touched it, it was clear the flag had some personal meaning for her. Had she made it? Perhaps it had been draped over a loved one’s grave? But what was she now saying? “When you go, please take this flag, and when you get to the Temple Mount, I want you to hang it up there.” She held out the flag.

The soldier repeated, “We’re not going into the Old City.”

“You’re going,” she said. Again, she held out her arm.

A thought struck him. “I can’t take it,” he told her. “It’s against army regulations.”

“It’ll be all right. Just take it.”

“I’ll get in trouble. You’re only allowed to carry a few specified items.”
Please,” she said hoarsely. “Do me this favor.”

He shrugged again. Why was he arguing with this old woman? Let him take the flag, let him make an old woman feel good. He could always get rid of it later.

The next day, the Israeli army, contrary to everyone’s expectations, took the Old City. Sure enough, the soldier’s unit ended up at the Temple Mount. As he and the other soldiers came close to the Western Wall, he suddenly remembered the flag and the old woman’s words. Yes, he would do it, he would! He enlisted two buddies, and together they draped the flag over the grating on the upper left most side of the Kotel, and there they hoisted and hung the Israel flag.

The commanding officer conducting the investigation said to the soldier, “And what were you thinking when you put up that flag?”

The soldier said, “I was thinking that this was the answer to 2,000 years of Jewish suffering.”

And so ends the story of the soldier, our hero.

But there’s an unsung hero, too. What about the old woman who supplied the flag? One wishes the investigating officers had tracked her down. What did she have in mind as she entered a shelter with an Israeli flag in her satchel? And who was she, anyway? The only identifying feature is that she was old and carried a bag. But her advanced age already tells us plenty: that she knew something about Jewish history, probably having personally lived through it…World War I, Arab attacks, the Holocaust, the War of Independence, 1956. What hadn’t she seen?

There, in Israel’s darkest moment, outnumbered and surrounded by enemies, terrified that the next morning there will be no Israel, the old woman sees what no one else can see, what no one else is capable of conceiving. She insists on her vision, she practically browbeats the soldier into carrying out her plan. We’ll never know how she knew, only that, like many Jewish women before her — the Matriarchs, the midwives in Egypt, the righteous women in the desert — she just knew. There are two kinds of prophecy. One that predicts the future, and one that makes the future.

Ruchama King Feuerman, MFA, was the winner of the Christopher Isherwood Fellowship Prize for Fiction 2007. She is the editor of a brand-new collection: Everyone’s Got A Story – 41 short stories from a new generation of Jewish writers (Judaica Press).