Libya joins UN Security Council
Libya — a former pariah state condemned by the U.S. as a sponsor of terrorism — won a seat on the United Nations Security Council Tuesday without opposition from the Bush administration…

Associated Press story at CBC News (dated October 16, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/GI)

Israel Struck Syrian Nuclear Project, Analysts Say
Israel’s air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports. The description of the target addresses one of the central mysteries surrounding the Sept. 6 attack, and suggests that Israel carried out the raid to demonstrate its determination to snuff out even a nascent nuclear project in a neighboring state. The Bush administration was divided at the time about the wisdom of Israel’s strike, American officials said, and some senior policy makers still regard the attack as premature…

From The New York Times (dated October 13, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/WT)

The Battle for Jerusalem Begins
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will put Jerusalem on the negotiating table as he hurtles toward a “joint declaration” with the Palestinian Authority ahead of next month’s U.S.-sponsored Mideast summit. The prime minister says that a joint declaration with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas prior to the summit will lead to direct negotiations. The Arabic Al Quds Al-Arabiya newspaper reported Monday morning that Olmert has now come to an agreement with Jordan that Arabs in eastern Jerusalem will be granted Jordanian citizenship. The plan would leave Jerusalem's Muslim holy sites under the control of the Hashemite kingdom, according to the report. Olmert vehemently denied the report…

From Arutz Sheva Israel National News (dated October 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/WT/RE)

Israel May OK Division of Jerusalem
A confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday that his government would support a division of Jerusalem, which is reportedly a key component of an Israeli-Palestinian declaration to be made at a U.S.-sponsored Mideast peace conference next month. As part of recent negotiations between the sides, Deputy Vice Prime Minister Haim Ramon has proposed turning over many of the Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem to the Palestinians…

Associated Press story at My Way News (dated October 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/WT/RE)

West Papua Delegation Donates Gold For Holy Temple
On Wednesday, the last day of the Sukkot festival, a 34-person delegation from West Papua presented a large amount of gold to be used in the building of the Holy Temple. The delegation, including representatives of the nation’s government, explained that they study the Bible regularly and recently came upon a verse in Zecharia (6:16) reading “And the distant ones will come and build the Temple of G-d.” They discussed the passage among themselves and decided that their faith obligates them to fulfill the verse…

From Arutz Sheva Israel National News (dated October 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/AP/RE)

'Dozens died in Syria-Iran missile test'
Proof of cooperation between Iran and Syria in the proliferation and development of weapons of mass destruction was brought to light Monday in Jane's Defence Weekly, which reported that dozens of Iranian engineers and 15 Syrian officers were killed in a July 23 accident in Syria. According to the report, cited by Channel 10, the joint Syrian-Iranian team was attempting to mount a chemical warhead on a Scud missile when the explosion occurred, spreading lethal chemical agents, including sarin nerve gas…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated September 18, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/WT)

Muslims caught red-handed destroying Temple artifacts
Islamic authorities using heavy machinery to dig on the Temple Mount – Judaism's holiest site – have been caught red-handed destroying Temple-era antiquities and what's believed to be a section of an outer wall of the Second Jewish Temple…

From WorldNetDaily (dated September 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/RE)

Putin praises strength of 'Warsaw Pact 2'
President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao…attend an unprecedented show of joint military force [Aug. 20] amid fears that the Russian leader is trying to turn an increasingly powerful central Asian alliance into a second Warsaw Pact…Founded in 2001, the SCO [Shanghai Cooperation Organization], which includes the four central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyztan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as well as China and Russia, is rapidly gaining a reputation as an anti-Western organization…Yet the SCO has wider ambitions. Pakistan, India and Mongolia all want to join - as does Iran, whose president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, attended the summit as guest of honour…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated August 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/AP/ME/WT)

'Reunion' of Priests Spurs Talk of Third Temple
What made this blessing at the Western Wall unique was that the service was among the opening ceremonies of the first international Kohen-Levi conference, "The Gathering of the Tribe," held this week in Jerusalem….Members of the Jewish priestly class came from near and far to participate in this unique "family reunion" of the sons of Aaron…[Many] came to learn exactly how to fulfill their divine ancestral duties for when the Third Holy Temple is built…In addition to seminars about purity laws for priests and the correct way to offer the blessing of the Kohanim, experts talked about recent DNA testing that validates the belief that today's Kohanim descend from one man who lived about 3,000 years ago, at the time of the Exodus -- namely, Aaron. Most Ashkenazi and Sephardi Kohanim in the world have a common set of genetic markers indicating their common origin…

Jewish Telegraphic Agency story at Jewish Exponent (dated July 26, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/RE)

Putin’s hostile course
At virtually every turn, Mr. Putin and the Russian leadership appear to be doing their best in ways large and small to marginalize and embarrass the United States and undercut U.S. foreign policy interests…

From The Washington Times (dated October 18, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/AP/ME/WT)

Rethinking the core issues
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is shuttling between Jerusalem and Ramallah to help Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams craft a joint declaration for the upcoming Annapolis summit that addresses the "core issues," particularly, - refugees - known as the Palestinian "right of return" - final borders, and Jerusalem… Israel is…mistaken to waste most of its diplomatic energy "killing" the Palestinian "right of return," when there is no danger that Israel will be forced to absorb millions of Arab refugees. Diplomatically, Israel has already won that battle. But on two other "core issues," borders and Jerusalem, that are no less critical to Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state, and are today in great peril, Israel has a bloody diplomatic fight ahead…

From Institute for Contemporary Affairs director Dan Diker in The Jerusalem Post (dated October 15, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/WT/RE)

Selling out Israel on the installment plan
Name one concession Israel has made in recent years that has been reciprocated by its sworn enemies. This is not a trick question. There are none. That's why next month's announced "Middle East Summit" in Annapolis, Md., should be viewed as one more installment payment in the sellout of Israel and of American interests in the Middle East. While the United States continues to struggle to shore up democracy in Iraq, the Bush administration — like administrations before it — proceeds in undermining the likelihood that the region's first democracy will endure. At every negotiating session, Israel is pressured into making concessions for "peace" and receives more war in response. Mostly this is because of the wishful thinking in the West that has replaced sound policy. Why should the Palestinians make concessions when they are drawing closer to their objective of eradicating Israel by throwing stones and bombs and stonewalling negotiations?...

From columnist Cal Thomas at Jewish World Review (dated October 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/WT)

Dutch researcher claims to confirm Queen Jezebel's seal
For some 40 years, one of the flashiest opal signets on display at the Israel Museum had remained without accurate historical context. Two weeks ago, Dutch researcher Marjo Korpel identified article IDAM 65-321 as the official seal of Queen Jezebel, one of the bible's most powerful and reviled women. Israeli archaeologists had suspected Jezebel was the owner ever since the seal was first documented in 1964…

From Haaretz (Tel Aviv) (dated October 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/RE)

A thundering silence on Temple Mount's depredation
The "Jewish State" is allowing Judaism's holiest site to have its priceless artifacts destroyed and nobody seems to care…

From Biblical Archaeology Review editor Hershel Shanks at Jewish World Review (dated September 10, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/RE)

Turkey's ruling party wins election
Turkey's Islamic-rooted ruling party won parliamentary elections by a wide margin Sunday, and the prime minister pledged to safeguard the country's secular traditions and do whatever the government deems necessary to fight separatist Kurdish rebels…

Associated Press story at Yahoo News (dated July 22, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME)

Olmert Reiterates Stance to Give Away Judea and Samaria
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reiterated his belief that Israel "needs to withdraw" from the biblical Jewish provinces of Judea and Samaria [known to most as the West Bank]…

From Arutz Sheva Israel National News (dated July 21, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/WT)

Israel frees 255 prisoners in bid to boost Abbas
Israel released 255 Palestinian prisoners on Friday as part of a series of goodwill gestures designed to bolster Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in his standoff against Hamas…

From CNN (dated July 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/WT)

Report: Christians crucified by terrorists in Iraq
Believers in Jesus said to be nailed to crosses, tied with ropes, set ablaze…

From WorldNetDaily (dated July 17, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Israelite priests hold first gathering since Temple era
Jews belonging to the Tribe of Levi, and particularly the Kohen [i.e., priest] clan, came together for a mass gathering in Jerusalem on Sunday. It was the first large-scale gathering of biblically-mandated Israelite priests since the time of the Second Temple. The gathering included lectures and seminars on the history and future of the Temple, and culminated with all of the participants declaring the priestly blessing over Israel from the Western Wall. Genetic research over the past several decades has succeeded in isolating a particular DNA signature shared by all members of the Tribe of Levi, making the reinstitution of Israel's priestly caste a relatively simple endeavor once the Temple is rebuilt.

From Israel Today (dated July 15, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/RE)

Germany Skeptical of EU Foreign Ministers' Middle East Initiative
Germany has criticized a call by 10 European foreign ministers to redefine EU objectives in the Middle East, including deploying in the Palestinian territories an international troop force armed with a "robust mandate"…

From Deutsch Welle (Germany) (dated July 12, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU/ME/WT)

Olmert allows Muslims to dig on Temple Mount
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has quietly granted the Waqf – the Muslim custodians of the Temple Mount – permission to dig unsupervised on the sacred site, WND has learned. The permission was granted in spite of longstanding fears from leading Israeli archeologists the Waqf might hide or dispose of Jewish Temple artifacts discovered during any Muslim digs. The last time the Waqf conducted an unsupervised excavation on the Temple Mount, in 1997, the Muslim custodians ultimately were caught by Israeli authorities disposing truckloads of Mount dirt that contained Jewish Temple artifacts…

From WorldNetDaily (dated July 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/RE)

Hamas’s plans for Temple Mount foiled
Hamas attempts to gain control of the Temple Mount and recruit new Israeli-Arab operatives in east Jerusalem have been foiled by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), a senior security official announced on Monday…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated July 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

[Israeli Minister] Lieberman wants NATO troops in Gaza
Minister for Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman discussed deploying NATO forces in the Gaza Strip in a meeting with NATO Deputy Secretary General Alessandro Minuto Rizzo in Brussels…

From Ynet News (dated June 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/EU/WT)

Israel braces for July war with up to five enemies
Israel is preparing for an imminent war with Iran, Syria and/or their non-state clients. Israeli military intelligence has projected that a major attack could come from any of five adversaries in the Middle East. Officials said such a strike could spark a war as early as July 2007…

From World Tribune (dated June 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/WT)

Look who's holding hostages again
How do you feel about the American hostages in Iran? No, not the guys back in the Seventies, the ones being held right now. What? You haven't heard about them? Odd that, isn't it? But they're there…

From columnist Mark Steyn at Jewish World Review (dated July 23, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (US/ME/WT)

How Empires End
Longtime critics of the [Iraq] war like Gen. William Odom say it is already lost, and fighting on will only further bleed the country and make the ultimate price even higher. The general may be right in saying it is time to cut our losses. But we should take a hard look at what those losses may be…

From columnist Patrick Buchanan at Human Events (dated July 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (US/ME/WT)

The Persistence of Islamic Slavery
Besides being practiced more or less openly today in Sudan and Mauritania, there is evidence that slavery still continues beneath the surface in some majority-Muslim countries as well -- notably Saudi Arabia, which only abolished slavery in 1962, Yemen and Oman, both of which ended legal slavery in 1970, and Niger, which didn’t abolish slavery until 2004. In Niger, the ban is widely ignored, and according to a Nigerian study, as many as one million people remain in bondage there. Slaves are bred, often raped, and generally treated like animals…

From Robert Spencer at FrontPage Magazine (dated July 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/AF/RE/MO)

Temple Mount travesty
A bulldozer was seen last week ripping up earth on the Temple Mount, at the Dome of the Rock platform. It slashed a long gash, purportedly to lay new electric cables. With crude, damaging handling, it exposed a largely gray deposit, which according to archeologists is a sure-fire indication of "archeologically significant" matter. Incomprehensibly, despite TV air-time and print space, these revelations by the Archeologists Committee for the Prevention of the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount (CPDATM) failed to cause much stir. The public has perhaps grown numb due to official abdication of control on the Mount. But the expedient turning of official blind eyes amounts to abetting the Wakf's ongoing construction at Judaism's most sacred site…This travesty was perpetrated with Israeli policemen stationed nearby. Archeological supervision was nowhere to be detected…The officers on hand, moreover, according to testimony by archeologist Prof. Yisrael Caspi, CPDATM head, forbade him from picking any remains out of the rubble. Caspi and other archeologists were warned that they had better not even try to bend down, lest they stretch out an arm to touch anything. A policeman was finally dispatched to maintain particular vigilance against Prof. Eilat Mazar, most suspected of a proclivity to lay a hand on a pottery shard. Speaking for the CPDATM, Mazar expressed "the deepest distress at the continued official disregard and disrespect for the incalculable archeological importance of the Temple Mount"…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated July 14, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/RE)

What We Pre-Empted
Given the problems and U.S. casualties in Iraq, polls show a large majority of the American people believe the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Yet if we imagine what the world would look like today if Saddam Hussein had not been deposed, it seems clear that almost no outcome in Iraq would be as adverse to the interests of the United States as today's world with Saddam still in power…

From American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Peter Wallison in The Wall Street Journal (dated July 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (US/ME/WT)

Iran’s Proxy War
Tehran is on the offensive against us throughout the Middle East. Will Congress respond?...

From U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) in The Wall Street Journal (dated July 6, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/WT)

Israeli and Palestinian authorities are failing to protect the Temple Mount
I don’t know who are worse: the Muslim religious authorities digging up Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, or the Israeli authorities who are allowing it to happen…

From Biblical Archaeology Review editor Hershel Shanks in The Wall Street Journal, reposted at Biblical Archaeology Society (dated July 18, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/RE)

Report: PM willing to return Golan for peace with Syria
A recent flurry of secret messages from Israel to Syria signaled Israel's willingness to give up the Golan Heights in return for a peace agreement…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated June 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/WT)

Palestinians say fed up with gunmen
For most Palestinians, black-hooded gunmen have long been respected symbols of resistance against Israeli occupation. Now, frequent internal fighting and lawlessness gripping the Palestinian territories have transformed the militants into no more than gangsters in the eyes of many of those who once saw them as heroes. "It's very ironic but I'm relieved the Israelis have started a bombing campaign. The gunmen killing each other on the streets were forced to go into hiding," said Mai, a Gaza housewife, referring to strikes aimed at halting rocket attacks on Israel…Legislator Nasser Jum'a, once a leading member of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade… said ordinary Palestinians were so fed up with the armed groups "they now wish the Israeli occupation would take over in Gaza or hope for the return of Jordanian rule in the West Bank" to get rid of them…

Reuters story at Yahoo News (dated June 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/WT)

[After threat] Putin offers radar site in Azerbaijan
Vladimir Putin, bitterly opposed to a U.S. missile shield in Europe, presented President Bush with a surprise counterproposal Thursday built around a Soviet-era radar system in Azerbaijan rather than new defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. Bush said it was an interesting suggestion and promised to consider it. Putin's formula would force a major rethinking of U.S. plans for defending Europe against attack from hostile regimes such as Iran or North Korea. While outright acceptance of Putin's idea appeared doubtful, the White House seemed eager to avoid further inflaming tensions by giving it short shrift. The Russian president said he would abandon his threat to retarget missiles on Europe — if Bush accepted the Kremlin's missile-defense proposal…

Associated Press story at Yahoo News (dated June 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU/ME/WT)

Iran president sees "countdown" to Israel's end
Iran's president said on Sunday the Lebanese and the Palestinians had pressed a "countdown button" to bring an end to Israel. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who triggered outrage in the West two years ago when he said Israel should be "wiped off the map", has often referred to the destruction of the Jewish state but says Iran is not a threat. "With God's help, the countdown button for the destruction of the Zionist regime has been pushed by the hands of the children of Lebanon and Palestine," Ahmadinejad said in a speech. "By God's will, we will witness the destruction of this regime in the near future," he said. He did not elaborate…

From Reuters (dated June 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/WT)

Gaza: Female TV staff get death threat
A radical Islamic group in the Gaza Strip issued a death threat over the weekend against women working for the official Palestinian Authority television station, accusing them of dressing immodestly and behaving in a way that violates the teachings of Islam. The threat, the first of its kind against female employees of Palestine TV, was made by the Righteous Swords of Islam, a relatively new group that is believed to have links with al-Qaida…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated June 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Palestinian Kindergarten Graduates Vow to Die for Allah
A televised graduation ceremony at a Palestinian kindergarten in Gaza shows little boys dressed in black masks, camouflage fatigues, carrying toy guns, and waving green Hamas flags. The children vow that their most "lofty aspiration" is death for the sake of Allah. The ceremony aired on Hamas' Al-Aqsa Television on Thursday…

From Cybercast News Service (dated June 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Spanish PM backs French plan for 'Mediterranean Union'
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Thursday that he backed a French proposal to set up a "Mediterranean Union" comprising nations from its northern and southern flank…

Agence France-Presse story at Expatica (dated May 31, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU/ME)

Vatican signals support for Turkey EU bid
The Vatican has indicated it supports Turkish EU accession and acknowledged Ankara's progress toward democracy at a time when clouds of doubt are gathering over Turkey enlargement inside the EU itself…

From EUObserver.com (dated May 31, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU/ME)

Russia wants control of downtown Jerusalem
Moscow is in negotiations to purchase a large section of downtown Jerusalem once controlled by the Russian government prior to Israel's rebirth in 1948…An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman stressed that Israel is not "selling" the land to Russia, but rather "returning" the area to its former owners - a very dangerous way of putting things considering the Arab claim to all of what is today the Jewish state…

From Israel Today (dated May 31, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/EU)

'EU should have more say at Rafah'
Israel has asked the European Union observer force at the Rafah border crossing to take upon itself wider authority, and on a parallel track Israel has asked Egypt to step up efforts to prevent Palestinian terrorists from crossing into Gaza…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated May 30, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/EU)

[Israel] Sabbath-Sunday Bill Survey Shows Support
[Member of the Israeli Knesset] Zevulun Orlev (NRP) has announced the findings of a poll showing 56% support amongst Israelis for his proposed legislation making Sunday a day of rest and allowing some public transportation and entertainment on the Sabbath. Orlev's bill would change the official approach to Sabbath as the country's day of rest… Orlev's bill, which he proposed last week, also calls for a second day of rest during the week - Sunday - during which businesses and offices would be closed…

From Arutz Sheva Israel National News (dated May 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/RE)

Ex-chief rabbi opposes new moves to visit Temple Mount
Former chief rabbi Abraham Shapira, responding to a visit to the Temple Mount this week by dozens of religious-Zionist rabbis, declared Wednesday that such visits remain forbidden for Jews… Perhaps the most significant ruling, though, came from Rabbi Yaakov Ariel - one of the leading halakhic figures in religious Zionist circles today and a candidate for the chief rabbinate. Ariel published his ruling Friday in Argaman, a journal for religious women, where he gave explicit permission to women to visit the Temple Mount if they immerse in a mikveh after completing their menstrual cycle. He also gave permission to brides to go on their wedding day, after immersion and before the marriage ceremony…

From Haaretz (Tel Aviv) (dated May 16, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/RE)

Rabbis Call for Temple Mount Visits
Close to 30 leading religious-Zionist rabbis visited the Temple Mount "in purity" on Sunday, after taking the necessary Halakhic [Jewish legal] precautions. The precautions involve immersing in a mikveh (ritual bath), taking off one's shoes, and clarifying the precise areas forbidden for entry - or else going only with a guide who knows the area. The visit was unique in that it marks the first time such a large group of rabbis ascended together to the holy site… [Rabbis consider that] biblical law forbids one from entering the holy areas of the Temple Mount, and some feel that the precise boundaries of those areas are not known. However, Rabbi Yisrael Ariel of the Temple Institute has shown that the rock under the Dome of the Rock is in fact the Holy of Holies, and most scholars agree… Last week, a group of over 40 rabbis signed a declaration calling upon the religious public - those who know the laws and restrictions - to frequent the permitted sites on the Temple Mount… Former Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, however, issued an opposite call, saying that visits to the Temple Mount could lead to the grave sin of entering forbidden sacred locations…

From Arutz Sheva Israel National News (dated May 13, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/RE)

Israel is doomed (again)
By any rational analysis of all the factors in play, Israel is doomed. Which is why the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War in 1967 has come at a propitious time. If Israel's position is precarious now, it seemed hopeless in the days leading up to that war…

From Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial page editor Paul Greenberg at Jewish World Review (dated June 6, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Water As The Source Of Life And Strife
The next major Middle East war could well be fought not over land, oil or religion -- the traditional causes of conflict to date -- but over water, a precious commodity becoming rarer by the day. Addressing top leaders in industry, business, banking and the media in his speech at the opening session of the World Economic Forum held on the shores of the Dead Sea last week, King Abdullah II of Jordan raised the alarm over the scarcity of water in the region and warned of the dire consequences for not only the developing nations, but the havoc water scarcity would have on the developed world as a whole…

United Press International story at TerraDaily (dated May 21, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/ND/WT)

Was Osama Right?
Islamists always believed the U.S. was weak. Recent political trends won't change their view…

From author Bernard Lewis in The Wall Street Journal (dated May 16, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (US/ME/RE/WT)

Israeli Envoy: Syrian Build-up - the Strongest Since 1973 War
Israel's Ambassador in Washington says Syria is developing its most serious threat against Israel since it attacked Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973…

From Arutz Sheva Israel National News (dated May 9, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (ME/WT)

King Herod's Tomb Unearthed Near Jerusalem, Expert Says
The tomb of King Herod the Great has been found on the sun-bleached slope of a desert mountain near Jerusalem, an Israeli archaeologist announced today. Hebrew University professor Ehud Netzer and colleagues say they solved one of Israel's great archaeological mysteries by unearthing the remains of Herod's grave, sarcophagus, and mausoleum at the Herodium complex…

From National Geographic News (dated May 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (ME/RE)

Congress: India Builds Military Ties With Iran
Congress has determined that India was developing military relations with Iran despite a nuclear agreement with the United States. Members of the House and Senate said India was establishing defense and military cooperation with Iran in wake of a U.S. nuclear agreement with New Dehli. They have raised the prospect that Iran could benefit from U.S. missile technology sold to India…

From Middle East Newsline (dated May 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (AP/ME/WT)

Putin not able to track all nukes
Russian President Vladimir Putin told President Bush he could not account for all of Moscow's nuclear weapons at the same time al Qaeda was seeking to purchase three Russian nuclear devices on the black market, former CIA Director George J. Tenet said…

From The Washington Times (dated May 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/AP/ME/WT)

Top Hamas official: Kill all Americans
Sheik Ahmad Bahr, acting Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, declared during a Friday sermon at a Sudan mosque that America and Israel will be annihilated and called upon Allah to kill Jews and Americans "to the very Last One"…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated May 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Report says terror attacks up sharply
Terrorist attacks worldwide shot up more than 25 percent last year, killing 40 percent more people than in 2005, particularly in Iraq where extremists used chemical weapons and suicide bombers to target crowds, the State Department said Monday…

Associated Press story at Yahoo News (dated April 30, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (GI/ME/WT)

Iran possibly months from making bomb
New reports indicate Tehran close to enriching weapons-grade uranium…

From WorldNetDaily (dated April 10, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (ME/WT)

Europe: Majority supports strike on Iran
Over half of Europeans would support a preemptive military strike to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, a poll released last week by a London think-tank reports…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated April 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/BR/ME/WT)

Iran, Syria Prepare for War in Mid-2007
Israel's intelligence community has assessed that Iran and Syria were preparing for war in mid-2007. Officials said the war was expected to be sparked by a U.S. strike on Iran's nuclear weapons facilities. At that point, they said, Iran, Syria and Hizbullah would also attack Israel with a range of missiles and rockets…

From Middle East Newsline (dated April 4, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (ME/WT)

Court prevents groups from sacrificing live animals at Temple Mount
In their efforts to sacrifice a live animal at the Temple Mount, the New Sanhedrin Council adopted an almost underground modus operandi. Rabbis Adin Steinsaltz, Israel Ariel, Yishai Baved and their associates secretly located a butcher, found a Cohen hailing from a lineage 1,000 years old and worked out a plan to quickly erect an alter on the Temple Mount. They tried to revive the customs of the ancient Sanhedrin tribunal, which was the highest judicial body for the Jewish people in Israel some 1,600 years ago. They sought to slaughter a sacrificial animal across from the Western Wall. The activists, who belong to various religious circles such as the Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement, also petitioned the High Court of Justice for the right to perform the ritual. Their plans were thwarted on Sunday when the court rejected their request, ruling that "the rights of the petitioners to practice their faith are outweighed by other considerations such as public order and safety." Despite the ruling, the followers decided to hold a colorful procession on Sunday in Jerusalem, heading to the Western Wall along with two sheep. The Temple Mount Movement followers present were joined by partners from the Temple Institute, which has for years prepared the traditional holy tools and utensils for the Third Temple, according to Torah specifications. The spectacular display did not, however, persuade authorities to allow the participants to perform the practice…

From Haaretz (Tel Aviv) (dated April 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (ME/RE)

First Temple wall found in City of David
A wall from the First Temple [period] was recently uncovered in Jerusalem's City of David, strengthening the claim that it is the site of the palace of King David, an Israeli archeologist said Thursday…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated March 29, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (ME/RE)

Towards a Totalitarian Europe
Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovksy has warned that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union. When people who have worked on higher levels in the EU system note similarities as well, it is time people start taking this idea seriously. In 2002 Louis Michel, the then Belgian minister of foreign affairs and today a member of the European Commission, told the Belgian parliament that the EU will eventually encompass North Africa and the Middle East as well as Europe…The Constitution will move even more power into the hands of the already powerful and unaccountable elites. The EUrocrats are basically saying that since somebody may conceivably threaten our democratic system at some point in the future, we might as well dismantle it now, in an orderly fashion. Moreover, whereas constitutions have traditionally outlined the basic workings of the state, the proposed European Constitution, running into hundreds of pages, betrays an almost sharia-like desire to regulate all aspects of life. It is an instrument of control, a blueprint for an authoritarian state. Nazi Germany was a totalitarian state, but such societies can also be transnational, as was the Soviet Union, which the EU resembles more than just superficially: An artificial superstate run by an authoritarian bureaucracy that overrides the will of the people and imposes its ideology on the populace. Are we back in the E.U.S.S.R? Although the EU, due to its transnational nature, most closely resembles the Soviet Union, there are also similarities with Nazi Germany. The EU was created by perfecting the Big Lie technique that was championed by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels: Serve people massive lies, so big that they cannot believe that anybody would lie about it, and they will believe them, at least for a while. It should also be mentioned that Adolf Hitler stated his admiration for the warlike nature of Islam. The admiration was mutual. Muhammad Amin al-Husayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem, was an Arab nationalist and passionate anti-Semite who cooperated closely with Nazi Germany during World War II. Later, leadership of Palestinian Arabs was transferred to Husayni’s nephew Yasser Arafat, a very dear friend of the EU, who in 2002 gave an interview in which he referred to "our hero al-Husayni." If the EU is supposed to protect us from the horrors of Nazi Germany, it is remarkable how many of its traits it is copying, such as flirting with Arab strongmen and admiration for Islam. The Muslim immigration the EU is promoting to Europe has triggered the largest wave of anti-Semitism since the rise of, well, Nazi Germany, and may yet force the remaining Jews to leave. That Europeans should support this organization to prevent a new totalitarian regime is a sick joke. The EU is a lot closer to totalitarian states than the supposedly evil nation states it is going to replace. Since there is no European demos, no pre-political loyalty or shared public community, and since legislate power has been transferred to the unelected EU Commission, there is no way the EU can function as a democracy in any meaningful sense of the term. The EU can only become one giant Yugoslavia, either ruled by an authoritarian oligarchy in the fashion of Tito, or fall apart into civil wars. The slow, but steady stifling of free speech through legislation and Muslim Jihad violence indicates an ominous trend: Europe is moving in a totalitarian direction…

From blogger Fjordman at The Brussels Journal (dated April 30, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/ME/RE/WT)

Failure to See Jihad for What It Is
Someday, when the war in Iraq has become a historical episode, we will tally up the lessons learned--if, that is, we ever learn any. Here are two worth mastering because failing to do so probably means we will no longer exist. Lesson 1. Nation-building in a war zone is nuts. Nation-building in an Islamic war zone is suicide…I hate to be the one to break it to Gen. Petraeus, not to mention President Bush, but the fact is, in an Islamic war zone, an "infidel" army just isn't going to win Islamic allegiance. There are many religious and cultural reasons I could offer in explanation, but instead I'll turn to the underreported story of the week: two findings contained within an extensive new poll of Muslim opinion conducted in four major Islamic countries, Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco and Pakistan. Accordingto WorldPublicOpinion.org, more than half of those polled in Indonesia, and three-quarters of those polled in Egypt, Morocco and Pakistan believe in the strict application of Shariah, or Islamic law. Nearly two-thirds of all respondents expressed their desire to see the Islamic world united in a caliphate. Which brings me to: Lesson 2. With numbers like these, portraying jihadist war goals (Shariah, caliphate) as belonging to a "tiny band of extremists" is nuts. Persisting in this PC fantasy as part of the narrative and strategy of the "war on terror" is suicidal. But such PC fantasy fuels hearts-and-minds efforts that go beyond "allegiance"-winning outposts in Iraq as the United States now weirdly cheers on world Islamization to curry Islamic favor…

By columnist Diana West in The Washington Times (dated April 27, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (ME/AP/RE/WT)

Hezbollah’s German Helpers
Holding currently both the E.U. and G-8 presidencies, Berlin would be in a strong position to head the fight against an organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the replacement of Lebanon's fragile democracy with a Tehran-backed Islamic state. So far, however, Germany has squandered this unique opportunity to push for a Hezbollah ban. Berlin's passivity is consistent with its tolerant approach toward the "Party of God" over the past two decades…Why does the German government tolerate [its] activities? First, the Hezbollah leadership in Beirut recognizes the value of a German safe haven. It demands that Hezbollah followers carefully obey German law, which Berlin claims they do "to a large extent." Experience from attacks in the U.S., Britain and elsewhere suggest, though, that terrorists follow the law up and until the point they decide to strike. Second, too many Germany policymakers uncritically accept the idea that there is supposedly a political Hezbollah -- an Islamist but legitimate movement independent of those Hezbollah terrorists who have murdered hundreds of people around the world. To believe that fairy tale, they even ignore Hezbollah's own words. As Mohammed Fannish, member of the "political bureau" of Hezbollah and former Lebanese energy minister put it in 2002: "I can state that there is no separating between Hezbollah's military and political arms"…

From European Foundation for Democracy senior fellow Alexander Ritzmann and Foundation for Defense of Democracies chief operating officer Mark Dubowitz in The Wall Street Journal (dated April 17, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/ME/WT)

The Long Road to Victory
The US's difficulties with confronting Iran have little to do with the decision to invade Iraq. Rather, America's feckless diplomacy toward Iran to date is the result of the administration's early misunderstanding of Iraq and of Iranian and Arab interests. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration identified certain basic guiding realities and missed others. First there was the issue of Arab tyranny…Yet recognizing this basic reality did not lead the administration to adopt appropriate policies…By pushing fast elections, the US entrapped itself. It inadvertently empowered its enemies and so was unable to embrace the duly elected governments. In opposing the forces it expended so much energy getting elected, the US was perceived as weak, foolish and hypocritical…As for the Arab world, the administration believes that since the Arabs oppose Iran's quest to become a regional nuclear power, they will help the US both in stabilizing Iraq and in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Here too, the administration confuses common interests with common agendas. The fact that the Arabs share common interests with the US does not make them allies. As a young Saudi imam put it this week to The Wall Street Journal, "We are waiting for the time to attack [the US]. Youth feel happy when the Taliban takes a town or when a helicopter comes down, killing Americans in Iraq. It is a very dangerous situation for the US in the whole Muslim world"…

From Jerusalem Post deputy managing editor Caroline Glick at Real Clear Politics (dated April 14, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (US/ME/RE/WT)

IDF intelligence: Iran, Hizbullah preparing for possible US strike
Head of military intelligence says Iran, Syria and Hizbullah preparing for possible confrontation with US this summer…

From Ynet News (dated April 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (ME/US/WT)

Sundering Jerusalem Is Explored: Israel’s Government Considering Plan Advanced by Riyadh
In a bid to open a channel to the Arabs, Israel's premier is embracing a long dormant Saudi peace proposal that would divide Jerusalem and could flood the Jewish state with Palestinian Arab refugees with family claims to land evacuated in the 1948 war that created the state. Speaking in Tel Aviv yesterday, Prime Minister Olmert said Israel was prepared to make "sweeping, painful, and tough concessions" in order to forge open contacts with Arab states that offered in 2002 to acknowledge Israel's right to exist in exchange for its full retreat from the territories it won in the 1967 war…

From The New York Sun (dated March 23, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (ME/WT)

Jews Revive the Sanhedrin with Plans for a Passover Sacrifice
In a donated apartment concealed among the narrow streets of the Jerusalem suburb of Nahlaot, 13 Orthodox Jewish men meet every Tuesday to debate matters of Jewish law. They are the management team of a larger developing Sanhedrin, or religious court, in Israel. And they plan to sacrifice sheep on the Temple Mount on the day before or one month after Passover, which starts at sundown April 2. Either date is permissible under Jewish law. "If the government will not resist," said Rabbi Dov Stein, 68, a member of the group, "we will do it"…The Passover sacrifice is the latest of more than 40 legal decisions issued by the modern Sanhedrin…Some Orthodox Jews see the Passover sacrifice on Jerusalem's Temple Mount -- one of the most disputed pieces of real estate on the planet -- as key to quickening redemption. The Sanhedrin bought a herd of 12 sheep -- 110-150 pounds each -- from a farm in southern Israel. Anyone wanting to eat of the sacrifice can pay seven shekels ($1.67) for an 8-10 gram slice, the minimum required by Jewish law, Stein said. The group is hoping to collect 30,000 signatures through its Web site to prove its influence to the Israeli authorities, and gain access to the Temple Mount area…

Religion News Service story at Beliefnet.com (dated March 22, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (ME/RE)

Solana: EU supports Syrian initiative to regain Golan Heights
The European Union supports Syria's goal of regaining the Golan Heights from Israel, the EU foreign policy chief said after meeting President Bashar Assad on Wednesday…

From Haaretz (Tel Aviv) (dated March 14)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/ME/WT)

Syria ready with bio-terror if U.S. hits Iran: Damascus reportedly hiding WMD among commercial pharmaceuticals
An American biodefense analyst living in Europe says if the U.S. invades Iran to halt its nuclear ambitions, Syria is ready to respond with weapons of mass destruction – specifically biological weapons…She anticipates a variation of smallpox is the biological agent Syria would utilize…[She] also told WND the North Koreans were working closely with the Syrians on their biological weapons program…

From author Jerome Corsi at WorldNetDaily (dated March 5, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (ME/AP/WT)

'Renew animal sacrifices on Mount' says radical rabbi
Member of Sanhedrin says sacrifices 'were not possible when the people of Israel were in the Diaspora, but now they are.' Adds: Jerusalem Temple should be rebuilt, Israeli government standing in our way…

From Ynet News (dated March 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (ME/RE)

Evil Americans, Poor Mullahs
Forty-eight percent of Germans think the United States is more dangerous than Iran, a new survey shows, with only 31 percent believing the opposite. Germans' fundamental hypocrisy about the US suggests that it's high time for a new bout of re-education…

From Der Spiegel Online Berlin bureau chief Claus Christian Malzahn (dated March 29, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/US/ME/WT)

Eurocrat empire building
The [EU] commissioners are not elected and are accountable to no one. This deliberate democratic deficit was built in as a structural feature of the EU. An unelected and unaccountable structure makes it easier to impose centrally driven change on a society… Paul-Henri Spaak, the Belgian foreign minister who authored the Rome treaty, dreamed of a European superstate. He hoped that such a state might one day become as powerful as the United States. [He said] "I think we have re-established the Roman Empire without a single shot being fired." Washington foolishly supported the European unification project. It failed to see that democratization and decentralization are far more likely to preserve peace than unification and centralization…Empires…are carnivorous monsters. They have to keep growing in order to avoid unraveling. Hence, they inevitably grow ever more totalitarian and expansionist. The EU is interfering more and more in the daily lives of its subjects. At the same time, its territory continues to expand, from the original six members to the present 27. By definition, there is no end to this process. The Leviathan has to be fed...Five years ago, Louis Michel, then the Belgian minister of foreign affairs and at present a member of the European Commission, told the Belgian parliament that eventually the EU will encompass the entire Mediterranean basin, including North Africa and the Middle East. Mr. Michel also posited that only by incorporating both Israel and Palestine into the EU will there be peace between them. The European-Mediterranean ("Euro-Med") partnership between the EU and the countries of the Maghreb (an Arab word meaning "the West" and denoting Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya -- the North African Muslim countries to the west of Egypt) was established specifically to promote the economic, cultural and political integration of the EU and the Maghreb countries…Theoretically the [EU] constitution should have been discarded after its rejection at the polls. The Europeanist politicians, however, refuse to accept the electorate's "no." "It has to be yes," they say, as they know that the empire will collapse if it cannot expand. They are now writing down a new and binding institutional framework, which, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel made clear, shall not be put before the electorate in a referendum. Empires cannot be democracies…

From Brussels Journal editor Paul Belien in The Washington Times (dated March 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/ME)

The Way the World Doesn't Work
It seems to me the elite internationalists are doing their darnedest to remake the world in a way that clearly doesn't work. Take, for example, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana's recent proclamation that his confederation of nations that brought us the two global wars of the 20th century will support Syria in efforts to regain the Golan Heights…There is a cacophony of international cries today for this land to be returned to Syria, from whom Israel captured it in the 1967 Six-Day War and again in 1973 after Syria briefly recaptured it and used the high ground for a massive armored assault on the Jewish state…But is it even accurate and proper to use the word "return" in this case? What is the history of the Golan? To whom does it rightfully belong? I'll bet it will surprise almost everyone reading this column today -- perhaps even many Israelis -- to learn that the Golan, which so many assume to be the undisputed territory of Syria, has been out of Damascus' control for far longer than it was within its control. It also might shock readers to learn how Syria gained control of the Golan Heights for the 19 years prior to 1967. Syria stole it -- at least part of it -- from Jews…

From WorldNetDaily editor and CEO Joseph Farah at Human Events Online (dated March 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (ME/EU/WT)

Just Like the Mullahs: Taking hostages is just standard operating procedure for Iran
The mullahs… took the hostages because that is what they do. They’ve been doing it for a long time…The Iranians have two basic reasons to take hostages. One is to break our will and drive us out of the region; the other is to trade their prey for their comrades now in our grip, of whom there is a significant number (several hundred Iranian intelligence and military officers have been captured in Iraq in recent months, according to good U.S. government sources). Why now? Because now is when they succeeded in doing it; they’ve been trying all along…

From columnist Michael Ledeen at Jewish World Review (dated March 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (ME/WT)

Mothballing the Fleet
Tony Blair’s getting angrier every day. But if past Iranian hostage takings are an indication, he may be upset for a while. The American-embassy hostages were held for 444 days, and the Israeli soldiers kidnapped last year by Iran’s Hezbollah puppets still aren’t free. Blair is threatening to escalate to a “different phase,” but Iran’s leadership knows something that most Americans don’t. Two months ago, Britain’s government announced plans to mothball almost half its naval fleet due to defense-budget cuts. Much of its existing navy is already so degraded; it would take over a year to get into action. According to the British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, senior naval officers say that the cuts “will turn Britain’s once-proud Navy into nothing more than a coastal defense force.” In fact, the British naval forces have been so neglected; the U.K. probably couldn’t pull off the Falkland Islands mission today. The world’s fifth-largest economy now supports an army that ranks 28th in size. What are they thinking? The 9/11 attacks should have been a wake-up call to our allies — but they seem to have had a tranquilizing effect instead…

From former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN) at National Review Online (dated March 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (ME/BR/WT)

Europe’s Stark Options
As the American columnist Dennis Prager sums them up, "It is difficult to imagine any other future scenario for Western Europe than its becoming Islamicized or having a civil war." Indeed, these two deeply unattractive alternative paths appear to define Europe's choices, with powerful forces pulling in the contrary directions of Muslims taking over or Muslims rejected, Europe an extension of North Africa or in a state of quasi-civil war…

From Mideast expert Daniel Pipes for National Interest (dated March-April 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/ME/RE/WT)

From Cold Peace to Cold War?: The Significance of Egypt’s Military Buildup
Since the 1978 Camp David Accords, the Egyptian government has undertaken extraordinary efforts to modernize its military with Western arms and weapon systems. By bolstering its armored corps, air force, and naval fleet with an array of U.S. military platforms, the Egyptian armed forces have emerged as one the region's most formidable forces. But as the post-Husni Mubarak era looms, questions abound. Who, precisely, is Egypt arming against, and why? Has Egypt attained operational parity with Israel? How will the military be affected by a succession crisis? Could Cairo's weapons arsenal fall into the hands of Islamists?...As the Egyptian armed forces continue to upgrade the quantity and quality of their military platforms to unparalleled heights--levels rivaling those of Israel--they have positioned themselves to be a major player on the Middle Eastern block. The path charted by Egypt during the coming years, though, will go a long way toward determining the significance of its meteoric rise from an archaic, Soviet-styled military to a Western-armed, twenty-first century juggernaut…

From American Enterprise Institute research assistant Jeffrey Azarva in The Middle East Review of International Affairs (dated March 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Let the Evidence Speak
In a recent Archaeological Views column [in Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR)], Michael Coogan counseled readers to question authority. He said we should “beware of an argument based on ‘authority.’” While I heartily agree with Coogan, I believe there are other examples of unscientific methodology being practiced in the fields of Palestinian archaeology and Biblical studies that are just as insidious. As one schooled in the scientific method, it disturbs me that, in addition to the say-so of esteemed authority figures, many times opinions are driven by preconceived notions, received knowledge (e.g., my professor told me such-and-such in graduate school), arguments from silence (thus-and-so has not been found to support a biblical statement—i.e., the Bible is guilty until proven innocent) or majority opinion. In an objective, scientific inquiry, conclusions must be based on evidence, and evidence alone. Take the matter of the historical accuracy of the Hebrew Bible. Most scholars are of the opinion that biblical history prior to the monarchy is myth and fable. This attitude is reflected in Views columns. Hendel stated, “Archaeological research has…secured the non-historicity of much of the Bible before the era of the kings.” Dever remarked, “there was no military conquest of Canaan.” Coogan expressed a similar view with regard to the conquest of Jericho, which I shall comment on below. How can we check the veracity of this supposition? If we are honest researchers using sound methodological principles, we need to examine the evidence, much of it documented in the pages of BAR, to see if it agrees or disagrees with the proposed hypothesis. Due to space limitations, we can consider but a few examples pertaining to Joshua and Judges, proceeding from the end of the Judges period backward in time…

Biblical Archaeology Review article from archaeologist Dr. Bryant Wood, reposted at Associates for Biblical Research (dated March 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (ME/RE)

The So-Called Jesus Family Tomb “Rediscovered” in Jerusalem
[There is a] new book by Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino, entitled The Jesus Family Tomb…[accompanied by a] documentary…on the Discovery Channel called "The Lost Tomb of Jesus"…I said in the title of this article, the "rediscovery" of the so-called tomb of Jesus' family because in 1996, the BBC ran an Easter special called "Heart of the Matter: The Body In Question" on the resurrection of Jesus. In this documentary they claimed that the ossuaries of Joseph, Mary and Jesus were found in 1980 and were sitting in the basement of the Department of Antiquities in Jerusalem…Jacobovici acknowledges this BBC broadcast in their [new] book…Now he claims to have more information that was not available in 1996 to prove his case, and has a different interpretation of some of the ossuaries. In the Forward to the [new] book, James Cameron describes the research as being done with "systematic rigor"…and called it "brilliant scholarly research" with conclusions that were "virtually irrefutable," "compelling," and "extremely convincing"…Is this the case, or is Cameron overstating his case?...

From Gordon Franz at Associates for Biblical Research (dated March 17, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (ME/RE)

'Jesus Tomb' Filmmakers Should Be Ashamed, Archeologist Says
The makers of a new documentary detailing the supposed discovery of Jesus' tomb should be ashamed of the inconsistencies and unscientific evidence they are reporting in the film, said the archeologist who oversaw the initial dig…

From Cybercast News Service (dated March 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (ME/RE)

Present-day Sanhedrin court seeks to revive ancient Temple rituals
The present-day Sanhedrin Court decided Tuesday to purchase a herd of sheep for ritual sacrifice at the site of the Temple on the eve of Passover, conditions on the Temple Mount permitting…

From Haaretz (Tel Aviv) (dated February 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (ME/RE)

Israelis Want To Be In EU
A full 75 percent of Israelis would like Israel to be part of the European Union, and 11 percent said they would leave Israel if they were granted EU citizenship, according to a new survey…

Ynet News story at TotallyJewish.com (dated February 22, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (ME/EU)

Arab League blasts Temple Mount dig for 'altering features' of Jerusalem
The Arab League chief on Saturday accused Israel of attempting to alter the features of Jerusalem with its ongoing construction and excavation work near the Mugrabi Gate to the Temple Mount, and urged the international community to intercede to stop the work…Moussa said, without elaborating, that the dig reflects Israeli attempts to tighten control over Jerusalem…In Jordan, Islamists called for holy war, or jihad, to save the mosque and vowed revolt against their Arab rulers if they do not protect the Jerusalem flashpoint site from Israeli actions…

From Haaretz (Tel Aviv) (dated February 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Israel to request upgrade in EU standing
Israel scheduled to request status equal to that of Switzerland and Norway…

From Ynet News (dated February 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (ME/EU)

Purim Replay
If you stop to consider, it might occur to you that there is something surreal about Purim this year [sunset Saturday, March 3, to sunset Sunday, March 4—anniversary of the celebration in the book of Esther]. It is almost as if we are witnessing "replay". Haman is once again in our midst, but this time he is called Ahmadinejad - same country, same place, same agenda. Today's Iran is Persia of yore, and even as the malevolent Haman schemed Holocaust - the "final solution", so too, his 21st century heir is orchestrating a plan to wipe Israel off the map. And even as the Jews in Shushan were divided, caught napping and assimilating into their secular culture, so today, our people are fragmented, sleeping, and succumbing to the enticements of society. To be sure, there is one huge difference between Shushan of old and the events of today - Esther and Mordechai are missing. There is no one to summon our people, to awaken them from their slumber and charge them with their Divine calling. There is no one to proclaim those two magic words, "Keemu V'Keeblu" - "Let us re-accept and re-commit to our Torah" - two magic words that resulted in a. nechapochu - "a miraculous turn-around", converting darkness into light, doom into blessing, culminating in the joyous festival of Purim. But worse still, today we find ourselves in an untenable situation. Not only do we have to deal with the Ahmadinejads of this generation - Hamas, Fatah, and all the other anti-Semites who are proliferating on every continent, but we have to deal with a scourge that is by far more menacing - those of our people who have become Jewish self-haters. And that is an evil that we cannot easily overcome, for the decay from within is by far more deadly than any onslaught from without. Our own people, members of the liberal left, have taken up the cause of those who would wipe us off the map…

From Esther Jungreis at the Jewish Advocate (dated February 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Tales from the Crypt, do we have the bones of Jesus
The last week in February started out with an incredible announcement. James Cameron (director of the film “Titanic”) and Simcha Jacobovici announced that they have found the bones of Jesus! At their news conference, they promoted their Discovery Channel special “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” that will air on March 4th and also promoted [a book on the subject]… The foundational claim is that they have discovered the family tomb of Jesus Christ. But is this really the tomb of Jesus or his family? There are many good reasons to believe this tomb has no relationship at all to Jesus and his family. Many are asking what to think about these claims. Therefore, I put together a quick two-page summary of some of the criticisms and concerns that surfaced in the first few hours after the announcement. Before we look at those criticisms, let’s first review the history of this tomb…

From theology professor and radio host Kerby Anderson at One News Now (dated February 27, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (ME/RE)

The Battle on the Temple Mount
A furor erupted in Jerusalem last week. It concerns the construction of a new walkway to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, intended to replace an earlier bridge that had collapsed. The only one that permits entry to the Mount for non-Muslims, via the Mughrabi Gate, the bridge is located near the Western Wall, and completely within Israeli jurisdiction…Islamic critics claimed that this work being done outside of the walls of the Temple Mount was an imminent threat to the al-Aksa Mosque on the Mount. Although the charge was baseless, Muslim organizations called for massive protests and there were also threats of violence…On this issue, as so many others in the past, Israelis and Arabs are on different pages. Yet we Israelis, largely blind to their perspective, continue to expect Arabs to function according to our terms, which are intended to be reasonable and conciliatory…But what is apparent now is that the head of the Islamic Movement, Kamal Khattib, has already declared that what the mayor proposes [i.e., a slowdown] is insufficient, and that only a complete cessation of the project will do. Clearly, he doesn't really care what the plans say. He will oppose them regardless of the facts…Almost certainly, it has nothing to do with stopping the construction of a walkway. The outrage over the walkway is only the latest front in the ongoing war against Israel. For Palestinian Arabs, nothing will truly suffice except total Israeli surrender…

From Jerusalem investigative writer Arlene Kushner at FrontPage Magazine (dated February 22, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Moscow-Tehran Ties
“The lion and the bear are hunting the eagle.” That's how a refugee from Tehran's reigning ayatollahs put it when he called me this week about recent developments in his homeland. The lion to which my friend referred was on the coat of arms of nearly every Persian king for more than a thousand years. The bear, of course, is imperial Russia. And we're the bird. It's an apt metaphor. Vladimir Putin, Moscow's current czar, is behaving like a bear awakened from hibernation — hungry and territorial. His recent words condemning U.S. foreign policy are mirrored by actions — both overt and covert — aimed at undermining U.S. national security. While eschewing animal symbols on their green, white and red flag, the Islamic radicals running Iran's theocracy act like lions on the prowl — dangerous to any prey. And while the simile is unlikely in nature — the lions and bears in my friend's parable have certainly teamed up to hunt the eagle. The only trouble with the allegory is that the United States is acting more like an ostrich than an eagle…

From Fox News commentator Lt. Col. Oliver North (dated February 22, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (EU/ME/WT)

The myth of Al Aqsa mosque
Presently, the Mullahs are calling for another "intifada" claiming that the Jews are undermining the Al Aksa Mosque and the place where their myths believe Mohammed launched himself into the Seventh Heaven. Where did this story come from? Does it meet any known time-line?...

From Middle East analyst Emanuel Winston at Israel Insider (dated February 13, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (ME/RE)

Egyptian MPs want nuclear bomb
In stormy Parliament session, many politicians call on government to 'change diplomatic language', work to obtain nuclear weapons, particularly after Olmert implied that Israel possesses such a bomb…

From Ynet News (dated February 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/WT)

40% of young UK Muslims want sharia law: Over a third say conversion from Islam should be 'punished by death'
[A recent survey] found evidence that young Muslims held more fundamentalist beliefs on key social and political issues than those over age 55. Forty percent of Muslims between aged 16 to 24 said they would prefer to live under sharia law in the UK, compared to only 17 percent of those over 55. Thirty-six percent of the younger group said a Muslim who converted to another religion should be "punished by death," while only 19 percent of the older group agreed. Thirteen percent of young Muslims surveyed said they "admired" organizations such as al-Qaida and others who were prepared to "fight the West"…

From WorldNetDaily (dated January 31, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (BR/RE/ME)

Lieberman pushes Israel to join EU
Stumbling blocks to European Union membership such as the possibility that Israel might have to drop its Law of Return or the fact that Israel is physically located on the Asian continent have not deterred Israel Beiteinu head and Minister for Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman from pushing to make what many would call a "pipe dream" into reality within the next five years. While the Israeli has not formally asked for membership in the 27 member body of European states and the EU does not view it as a possibility at this time, Lieberman has still put it high on his agenda for security, economic and cultural reasons…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated January 31, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/EU/WT)

How the 'axis' seeks the killer missile
North Korea and Iran are cooperating in developing long-range missiles, the deputy director of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency said yesterday…

From The Washington Times (dated January 30, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/AP/WT)

Iran prepared to provide security in Caucasus, C. Asia with Russia
Iran's foreign minister said Sunday the Islamic Republic is prepared together with Russia to provide security in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Secretary of Russia's Security Council Igor Ivanov is holding talks in Iran with the country's top officials. Manouchehr Mottaki said Iran and Russia could play an effective role in providing security in the region, especially in the Caucasus and Central Asia…

From Russian News and Information Agency Novosti (dated January 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/EU/AP/WT)

Iran prepares people for 'messiah miracles': Government broadcasts series on imminent appearance of apocalyptic Islamic 'Mahdi'
Official Iranian radio has completed broadcasting a lengthy series on the imminent appearance of a messianic figure who will defeat Islam's enemies and impose Islamic Shiite rule over the entire world – even speculating on specific dates the so-called "Mahdi" will be revealed. English-language transcripts of "The World Toward Illumination" programs can be found on the website of IRIB, a public broadcast arm of Tehran…

From WorldNetDaily (dated January 27, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Olmert's party proposes handing West Bank to Europe
A member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party yesterday proposed transferring control of the West Bank to a European task force until the establishment of a Palestinian state, at which time the strategic territory would be handed to security forces associated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The proposal comes after WND broke the story earlier this week that, according to top European and Egyptian diplomatic sources, Israel has been conducting behind-the-scene negotiations to hand over most of the West Bank to Abbas' security forces. The sources said the transfer of security control to Abbas would be coordinated by the European Union and Jordan…

From WorldNetDaily (dated January 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/EU/WT)

Israel pledges 'two-state solution'
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have pledged to forge a peace between their countries, calling the vision of two states, side by side, the only path…

Press Association story at Breitbart.com (dated January 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/WT)

Waiting for the Mahdi: Official Iranian Eschatology Outlined in Public Broadcasting Program in Iran
The website of the governmental Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) has posted a lengthy document titled "The World toward Illumination." The document is a transcript of an IRIB series on the imminent arrival of the Mahdi, the Twelfth or Hidden Imam, awaited by Shi'ites as the Messiah. The program describes in glowing terms the messianic age to be inaugurated by the Mahdi. He is to begin his uprising in Mecca, and then march on Iraq, where he will establish his "seat of world government" in the city of Kufa and subjugate the current world powers. This will be an age of unparalleled happiness; there will be completely new technologies at mankind's disposal, and "corruption, war, and rebellion will no longer exist." Neither will "liberal democratic civilization"…

From The Middle East Media Research Institute (dated January 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Iran: Israel, US will soon die
Israel and the United States will soon be destroyed, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday during a meeting with Syria's foreign minister…

From Ynet News (dated January 23, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/WT)

NSC seeks to place Israel in NATO
In an effort to establish more effective deterrence in the face of Iran's race to obtain nuclear weapons, [Israeli] government ministries are, for the first time, working on drafting a position paper that will include guidelines and a strategy for turning Israel into a full-fledged member of NATO, The Jerusalem Post has learned. The paper is being drafted by an interministerial committee made up of representatives from the Defense Ministry and the Foreign Ministry and headed by the National Security Council. The committee plans to complete the paper by the end of February and present it to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for approval…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated January 23, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/EU/WT)

Not This Time: Don't give up when victory is at hand
Certain parallels between Iraq and Vietnam are uncanny. A new general, David Petraeus, is taking over in Iraq with a credible new strategy, counterinsurgency. Four decades ago, General Creighton Abrams became the American commander in Vietnam, also with a new strategy. It called for taking and holding the villages and hamlets of South Vietnam. In a word, it was counterinsurgency, and it worked. Now in Iraq, Petraeus has as good a chance of success, starting with the pacification of Baghdad, as Abrams had. And the painful lesson of Vietnam applies in Iraq: Don't give up when victory is at hand. Those in Congress who advocate retreat in Iraq refuse to acknowledge this lesson. And they may have their way, whatever Petraeus accomplishes. With their calls for troop withdrawals and fund cutoffs and their antiwar resolutions, they have put America on a slippery slope in Iraq. And we know where it leads: to defeat while victory remains quite possible. This happened in six descending steps in Vietnam, and today's coalition in Congress of antiwar Democrats and vacillating Republicans has started pushing us down that dangerous slope…

From Weekly Standard co-editor Fred Barnes (dated February 5, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (US/ME/WT)

November 2008: America is nuked
Only two weeks after the elections in November of 2008, the United States of America, a nation of former greatness, lay in absolute desolate ruin. Within the previous 72 hours a series of eight successive, delayed nuclear devices had been detonated. Indescribably large portions of metro Washington, D.C., Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, and two thirds of the island of Manhattan have been turned into steaming craters. Millions are dead. President George W. Bush is in intensive care; two-thirds of the Cabinet, including the vice president, are missing or dead. President-elect Barack Obama faces the most enormous challenge of any incoming president in the history of the nation. But why? How did it happen? Turn back the clock to the week of Feb. 5, 2007. With a courageous handful of dissenting votes against the measures, the two houses of Congress purposefully ignore the pleas of Gen. David Petraeus and both pass non-binding resolutions that condemn the president's call for victory. One comes from the Democratic controlled House condemning the president, his plan and by implications the troops, and the other from a U.S. Senate that ceases to even feign any faint resemblance of standing for victory…As a nation our leaders had taken us from the shadows of Churchill to the defeat of Chamberlain. And what's worse is we had let them…

From columnist and radio host Kevin McCullough (dated February 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (US/ME/WT)

Israel’s Worst Nightmare: Israel cannot live with a nuclear Iran
A nuclear Iran could completely remake the region (not to mention imperil the Jewish state) merely by existing…And these terrifying scenarios exclude the most terrifying scenario of all: Iran uses its bomb. In a poll, 66 percent of Israelis said they believed Iran would drop a nuclear weapon on the Jewish state. Though defense experts are divided over the likelihood of an Iranian nuclear attack, every strategist we spoke with for this article considered the scenario plausible. "No one knows if Iran would use the bomb or not," says [current Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim] Sneh. "But I can't take the chance." The threat of a theologically motivated nuclear assault against Israel tends to be downplayed in the West; not so here…

From Jerusalem Shalem Center senior fellows Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael Oren in The New Republic, reposted at Aish.com (dated January 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Talking Ourselves Into Defeat: Profligate self-doubt can exact a price
The United States is talking itself into defeat in Iraq. Its political culture is now in a downward spiral of pessimism. In the halls of Congress, across endless newspaper columns, amid the punditocracy and on Sunday morning talk shows--all emit a Stygian gloom about America. Yes, on any given day on some discrete issue (Prime Minister Maliki's bona fides, for example), the criticism of the American role is not without justification. But the cumulative effect of this unremitting ill wind is corrosive. We are not only on the way to talking ourselves into defeat in Iraq but into a diminished international status that may be harder to recover than the doom mob imagines…

From Wall Street Journal deputy editor and columnist Daniel Henninger (dated January 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (US/ME/WT)

This Holocaust will be different
The Nazis, of course, industrialized mass murder. But still, the perpetrators had one-on-one contact with the victims…The second holocaust will be quite different. One bright morning, in five or 10 years, perhaps during a regional crisis, perhaps out of the blue, a day or a year or five years after Iran's acquisition of the Bomb, the mullahs in Qom will…give President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad…the go-ahead. The orders will go out and the Shihab III and IV missiles will take off for Tel Aviv, Beersheba, Haifa and Jerusalem, and probably some military sites, including Israel's half dozen air and (reported) nuclear missile bases. Some of the Shihabs will be nuclear-tipped, perhaps even with multiple warheads. Others will be dupes, packed merely with biological or chemical agents, or old newspapers, to draw off or confuse Israel's anti-missile batteries and Home Front Command units. With a country the size and shape of Israel (an elongated 20,000 square kilometers), probably four or five hits will suffice: No more Israel…No Iranian will see or touch an Israeli. It will be quite impersonal. Some of the dead will inevitably be Arab…It is doubtful whether such a mass killing of fellow Muslims will trouble Ahmadinejad and the mullahs. The Iranians don't especially like Arabs, especially Sunni Arabs, with whom they have intermittently warred for centuries. And they have a special contempt for the (Sunni) Palestinians who, after all, though initially outnumbering the Jews by more than 10 to 1, failed during the long conflict to prevent them from establishing their state or taking over all of Palestine. Besides, the Iranian leadership sees the destruction of Israel as a supreme divine command, as a herald of the second coming, and the Muslims dispatched collaterally as so many martyrs in the noble cause…A question may nevertheless arise in the Iranian councils: What about Jerusalem? After all, the city contains Islam's third holiest shrines (after Mecca and Medina), Al Aksa Mosque and the Mosque of Omar. But Ali Khamenei, the supreme spiritual leader, and Ahmadinejad most likely would reply much as they would to the wider question regarding the destruction and radioactive pollution of Palestine as a whole: The city, like the land, by God's grace, in 20 or 50 years' time, will recover. And it will be restored to Islam (and the Arabs). And the deeper pollution will have been eradicated…

From Ben-Gurion University history professor Benny Morris in The Jerusalem Post (dated January 18, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Boys of the Taliban
Just recently, the Taliban issued a new set of 30 rules to its fighters. Many of the instructions were to be expected…But there is a curious rule that the Western media has typically ignored. Rule No. 19 instructs that Taliban fighters must not take young boys without facial hair into their private quarters…Rule No. 19 obviously indicates that the sexual abuse of young boys is a prevalent and institutionalized phenomenon among the Taliban and that, for one reason or another, its widespread practice has become a problem….That a mass pathology such as this occurs in a culture which demonizes the female and her sexuality -- and puts her out of mind and sight -- is only to be expected. To be sure, it is a simple given that the religious male fanatic who flies into a violent rage even at the thought of an exposed woman’s ankle will also be, in some other dysfunctional and dark secret compartment of his fractured life, the person who leads some poor helpless young boy into his private chambers. The key issue here is that the demented sickness that underlies Rule No. 19 is by no means exclusive to the Taliban; it is a widespread phenomenon throughout Islamic-Arab culture and it lies, among other factors, at the root of that culture’s addiction to rage and its lust for violence, terror and suicide…In the dysfunctional and morbid paradigms of this culture, the idea of love is, obviously, completely absent from men's understanding of sexuality. Like the essence of Arab masculinity, it is reduced to a form of prison sex: hurting others with violence. A gigantic rupture inevitably develops between men and women, where no harmony, affection or equality is allowed to exist. The sexual confusion, humiliation, and repression that develop in the mindset of many males in this culture are excruciating. And it is no surprise that many of them find the only avenue for personal gratification in the act of sexually abusing young boys and, of course, in humiliating the foreign "enemy," whose masculinity must be violated at all costs -- just as theirs once was…

From Frontpage Magazine managing editor Jamie Glazov (dated January 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/RE/WT/MO)

Al-Qaeda 'rebuilding' in Pakistan
The head of US spying operations says the leaders of al-Qaeda have found a secure hideout in Pakistan from where they are rebuilding their strength. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said al-Qaeda was strengthening its ties across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. Pakistan rejected the comments, which are the most specific on the issue yet…

From BBC News (dated January 12, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (AP/ME/WT)

Ahmadinejad's nukes for U.S, not for Israel
There is hardly enough American political will to sustain the fight in Iraq, let alone political capital for a pre-emptive strike against Iran. Instead, it appears the free world's one remaining hope of neutralizing Iran's nuclear arsenal by force is Israel – the nation that launched a pre-emptive strike against Saddam Hussein's nuclear bomb factory in 1981. It's a matter of survival for Israel, we're told. After all, everyone is familiar with the bellicose mutterings of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel. Right? Maybe. Perhaps. Could be. Iran might indeed strike Israel with nuclear weapons if it ever had the chance. But, I think it's more likely Iran's determination to develop nuclear weapons is based on its desire to destroy "the Great Satan," not "the Little Satan." There are several reasons to make this judgment…

From WorldNetDaily editor and CEO Joseph Farah (dated January 18, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (US/ME/RE/WT)

Why Europe Abandoned Israel
To argue as the title of this article does, that Europe has abandoned Israel, is to suggest that it was once in its corner. And in fact, this is true…Today 40 years later, that residue of sympathy for the plucky underdog nation of Israel has disappeared…So why are the Europeans so hostile to Israel, and so sympathetic to the Palestinians? There are a number of factors that explain European behavior towards Israel. I have identified seven of them: 1) Europe's dependence on Middle East oil; 2) Europe's rivalry with the US; 3) The growing number of Muslims and their militancy; 4) The small number of Jews, and their passivity; 5) The role of elites in Europe's politics; 6) Europe's long term disease of anti-Semitism; and 7) The decline of Christianity in Europe…

From American Thinker chief political correspondent Richard Baehr (dated January 13, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (EU/ME)

Bush's ace up his sleeve
[President Bush is calling for] a "surge" of 21,500 troops, 15 percent of the U.S. forces already in Iraq, to pacify the capital. And even that troop commitment is "not open-ended." This is just not credible. For, if the situation is as dire as Bush says and the potential disaster as horrific as he describes, the logical course would be to treble the number of troops in Iraq and commit to fight indefinitely. How does one explain the disconnect? Is Bush absurdly exaggerating the consequences of a pullout? No…But Bush has to know the card he played is not going to save the pot into which he has plunged his legacy, the credibility of his country and America's standing as a superpower. Which leads me to believe Bush has yet another card to play, an ace up his sleeve. What might that be? Midway through his speech, almost as an aside, Bush made a pointed accusation at and issued a direct threat to – Tehran. To defend the "territorial integrity" of Iraq and stabilize "the region in the face of extremist challenge," Bush interjected, "begins with addressing Iran and Syria." "These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq." Now, any networks providing "advanced weaponry and training" to jihadists and insurgents are outside Iraq. Otherwise, they would have been neutralized by air strikes already. So, where are they? Answer: inside Syria and Iran. And Bush says we are going to "seek out and destroy" these networks. Which suggests to this writer that, while the "surge" is modest, Bush has in mind a different kind of escalation – widening the war by attacking the source of instability in the region: Tehran...

From columnist Patrick Buchanan at WorldNetDaily (dated January 12, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (US/ME/WT)

The consequences of failure in Iraq
What would be the consequences of an American withdrawal from Iraq, or a failed Iraq? The Iraq Study Group's report didn't address this. Here is what would happen: A genocidal, Sunni-Shiite clash as American convoys flee south…

From Weekly Standard contributing editor Reuel Marc Gerecht in Insight magazine (dated January 12, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (US/ME/WT)

The 800-Pound Guerrilla
Iran is fighting to defeat us in Iraq, and they have demonstrated time and again a determination to succeed. To top it all off, they are also seeking nuclear weapons. The only way to secure Iraq--and, more importantly, America--is to topple the Iranian regime. Tragically, nothing in Bush's new strategy indicates a plan to go as far as is needed…

From Allen Forkum at Cox & Forkum (dated January 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (US/ME/WT)

Tehran pollution kills 3,600 in a month
Air pollution has killed 3,600 people in just a month in the Iranian capital Tehran, an official said Tuesday, describing the city’s environmental situation as a “collective suicide”…He said that the deaths were caused by heart attacks brought on by the air pollution and that the smog was responsible for 80 percent of the fatal heart problems that month in Tehran, one of the world's most polluted cities… The new figures showed a sharp rise in pollution-related deaths in Iran, where 9,900 people died of pollution in the previous Iranian year (March 2005 to March 2006). Carbon monoxide from car exhausts is blamed for the majority of deaths by creating respiratory and cardiac problems in Tehran, which has 1.3 million ageing cars with poor fuel efficiency, spewing lethal gases into citizens' lungs…

Agence France-Presse story at TerraDaily (dated January 9, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (ME/ST)

U.S. Finds Iranian Evidence of Al Qaida Support
The U.S. military has found evidence that Iran helped train and equip Al Qaida's network in Iraq…

From Middle East Newsline (dated January 5, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (ME/WT)

Mubarak hints: We’ll develop nukes
During summit with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Egyptian president hints that if Iran attains nukes, Egypt will have to also in order to defend itself. Up until now Egypt has claimed its nuclear program was for energy purposes only …

From Ynet News (dated January 5, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (ME/WT)

Risk of collapse at Western Wall
Following report of risk of collapse, Western Wall authorities plan to demolish Mugrabi hill – Jews' only entrance to the Temple Mount, meaning Jews can no longer enter site…

From Ynet News (dated January 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (ME/RE)

Iran website heralding 'Mahdi' by springtime
State media: Shiite messiah to kill archenemy in Jerusalem, may arrive [with Jesus] during next equinox…

From WorldNetDaily (dated December 31, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Saddam death 'ends dark chapter'
Saddam Hussein's execution has closed a dark chapter in Iraq's history, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has said. Mr Maliki said the former leader had faced his fate "like all tyrants"…

From BBC News (dated December 30, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (ME/WT)

Jesus, Mahdi both coming, says Iran's Ahmadinejad
In a greeting to the world's Christians for the coming new year, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he expects both Jesus and the Shiite messianic figure, Imam Mahdi, to return and "wipe away oppression"… Ahmadinejad… sees his main mission, as he recounted in a Nov. 16, 2005, speech in Tehran, as to "pave the path for the glorious reappearance of Imam Mahdi, may Allah hasten his reappearance." With Iran's continued development of nuclear technology in defiance of the West, some analysts fear Ahmadinejad's intent is to trigger the kind of global conflagration he envisions will set the stage for the end of the world. Ahmadinejad hosted a conference last week examining whether the Nazi genocide took place, drawing Holocaust deniers from around the world. The Iranian president has described the Holocaust as a "myth" and called for Israel to be wiped off the map…

From WorldNetDaily (dated December 19, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

War with Iran is imminent
In addition to moving additional military forces into the region, President Bush is putting into place a new political and military command team, all in preparation for an expanded war in the Middle East…

From author Jerome Corsi at WorldNetDaily (dated January 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (ME/WT)

The War Against Global Jihadism
Given the stakes involved in this war and how little is known, even now, about what is at the core of this conflict, it is worth reviewing in some detail the nature of our enemy - including disaggregating who they are (Shia and Sunni extremists), what they believe and why they believe it, and the implications of that for America and the West…

From White House Office of Strategic Initiatives director Peter Wehner at Real Clear Politics (dated January 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (GI/ME/RE/WT)

[Saddam Execution] Botched
Of the 6 billion people on this earth, not one killed more people than Saddam Hussein. And not just killed, but tortured and mutilated -- doing so often with his own hands and for pleasure. It is quite a distinction to be the pre-eminent monster on the planet. If the death penalty was ever deserved, no one was more richly deserving than Saddam Hussein. For the Iraqi government to have botched both his trial and execution, therefore, and turned monster into victim, is not just a tragedy, but a crime -- against the new Iraq that Americans are dying for, and against justice itself…

From Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer at Townhall.com (dated January 5, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (ME/WT)

The Iranian who wants an apocalypse
Ahmadinejad is unique, not because of his pronouncements about Israel, which he wishes wiped off the face of the earth, but because he actively seeks to bring about an apocalyptic struggle between the righteous and the wicked to accelerate the return of the mahdi or Hidden Imam…

From Michael Burleigh in The Telegraph (London) (dated January 5, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

We need to be part of EU and NATO
I have recently suggested that it is in Israel's national interest to join the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)…My goal for Israel is to complete this global re-positioning within the coming five years…

From Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman (dated January 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (ME/EU)

Iran can still be stopped
The government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is rapidly leading Israel to a political and security downfall while Iran is racing towards achieving a nuclear weapons capability. While Iran's leaders are busy denying the Holocaust, they also continue to announce their intentions of wiping the State of Israel off the map. Israel is like a bus speeding towards an abyss. The bus driver is tired and helpless… What can we say about such words when even Olmert himself said similar things during an address he gave last year in the US: "We are tired of fighting. We are tired of being heroes. Tired of winning. Tired of beating our enemies." When even Israel's leadership sends out a message of fatigue and weakness, why should we be surprised that the world agrees? The main principle which we should follow is this: The key to promising the existence of Israel is developing strength…

From former Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu in The Jerusalem Post (dated January 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (ME/WT)

How the West Could Lose
After defeating fascists and communists, can the West now defeat the Islamists? On the face of it, its military preponderance makes victory seem inevitable. Even if Tehran acquires a nuclear weapon, Islamists have nothing like the military machine the Axis deployed in World War II, nor the Soviet Union during the cold war. What do the Islamists have to compare with the Wehrmacht or the Red Army? The SS or Spetznaz? The Gestapo or the KGB? Or, for that matter, to Auschwitz or the gulag? Yet, more than a few analysts, including myself, worry that it's not so simple. Islamists (defined as persons who demand to live by the sacred law of Islam, the Sharia) might in fact do better than the earlier totalitarians. They could even win. That's because, however strong the Western hardware, its software contains some potentially fatal bugs. Three of them – pacifism, self-hatred, complacency – deserve attention…

From Daniel Pipes in the New York Sun, reposted at The Middle East Forum (dated December 26, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (US/BR/ME/WT)

Motherless Russia
Previous would-be conquerors of Russia such as Napoleon and Hitler failed due to her harsh winters and inexhaustible supply of men. Contemporary conquerors, and there are two eyeing Russia hungrily, apparently will have only the winters with which to contend. Some think that France will be the first European country in modern times to be taken over by Muslims due to her very large, violent immigrant population and effeminate native populace. Others point to the Netherlands, from which native Dutch people are beginning to flee in the face of hostile Islamism among the immigrants in that densely-populated nation. But Russia--a huge nation with vast natural resources, thousands of nuclear warheads, and until recently a global superpower—-may be the first to go under. This seems possible even though Russia suffers little from the suicidal tolerance and multiculturalism that afflicts Western Europeans. All the would-be conquerors, tyrannical tsars, and sinister Communists could not destroy Russia. Yet there is a force more powerful than all these, a force which can overcome comparatively minor factors such as wealth, size, and military power, and that is demographics. And it is demographics that will deliver Russia into the hands of chaos, Islam, China, or most likely a combination of all three…

From Population Research Institute vice president Joseph D’Agostino at Right Bias (dated December 22, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (EU/AP/ME)

The chain of events matters
The conference of Holocaust deniers held in Teheran under the sponsorship of Iranian President Ahmadinejad was a provocation that compels us to respond to very strongly… If the conference were an isolated incident, we could perhaps dismiss it with contempt, as part of a bizarre phenomenon. But the moment it becomes a link in a chain of activities aimed at preparing the ground for Israel's destruction, we have no choice but to relate to the conference with all due gravity. Moreover, supporting the conference is not a lunatic-fringe neo-Nazi organization, but rather the fanatical government of a major and wealthy Middle Eastern Muslim country. And this is the chain: Iran provides the money, arms and instructors to Hizbullah in Lebanon. Iran supports Hamas in the territories. Iran manufactures long-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching any target in Israel. Iran is investing enormous resources to manufacture a nuclear device and is willing to take on the entire world to do so. The Iranian government is intensively involved in denying the Holocaust based on the assumption that the memory of the destruction of European Jewry gives Israel an umbrella - Europe's guilty conscience… As recently as a year or two ago, no one could have imagined that the president of any state in the world denying the Holocaust and calling for the destruction of Israel. Now, we find ourselves in the absurd situation of having to prove that the Holocaust is not a hoax and that the State of Israel has the right to exist…

From the Yad Vashem Council chairman in The Jerusalem Post (dated December 13, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

FAQ - The Shiites and the Sunnis
1) Who are the Sunnis and the Shiites?...

From Dean Barnett at Townhall.com (dated December 12, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (GI/ME/RE)

Why the Dead Sea is dying
Officials hope that the two-year feasibility study and environmental and social assessment will recommend a multibillion-dollar project to link the Dead Sea with the Red Sea, which lies 200km (125 miles) to the south, using a pipeline or canal to suck 1,900 million cubic metres (2.1 million cubic yards) of water annually from the Gulf of Aqaba. However, many people — including environmentalists and Israeli scientists living in the worst-affected areas — say that it is a costly extravaganza that fails to address the root cause and could ruin the very sea that they are trying to save…

From The Times (London) (dated December 9, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (ME/ST)

Baker Report Asks Israel to Give Up Land 'Vital To Survivability'
In exchange for Syrian help in calming the situation in Iraq, the Iraq Study Group is asking Israel to give up land "vital to its survivability," a senior Israeli lawmaker said Thursday…"The Golan Heights is extremely vital to Israel's survivability in the long term," he told Cybercast News Service…

From Cybercast News Service (dated December 7, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (US/ME/WT)

Follow God or vanish, Ahmadinejad tells West
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has warned Western leaders to follow the path of God or "vanish from the face of the earth"…

Agence France-Presse story at Breitbart.com (dated December 6, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (ME/RE/WT)

Rabbis urge Israelis to revolt against government
A group of prominent rabbinic leaders in Israel and abroad yesterday issued a call for Israeli citizens to launch a democratic uprising to bring down the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert…

From WorldNetDaily (dated December 6, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (ME/RE)

Al-Qaeda threatens Jordan's King Abdullah
Iraq's al-Qaeda publishes statement calling on supporters in Jordan to watch out for king, warns he will encounter the same fate as his great-grandfather, who was assassinated…

Agence France-Presse story at Ynet News (dated December 1, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (ME/WT)

Israeli high court orders 'gay marriage' recognition
Israel's Supreme Court Nov. 21 ordered the government to begin recognizing "gay marriages" from other countries, such as Canada. Although the decision doesn't give homosexual couples the ability to "marry" within Israel's borders, it nonetheless puts Israel at odds with countries such as Great Britain and the United States, neither of which recognizes foreign "gay marriages"…

From Baptist Press (dated November 21, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (ME/MO)

ISG must stand for, uh, Inane Strategy Guesswork
So there you have it: an Iraq "Support Group" that brings together the Arab League, the European Union, Iran, Russia, China and the U.N. And with support like that who needs lack of support?... Oh, but lest you think there are no minimum admission criteria to James Baker's "Support Group," relax, it's a very restricted membership: Arabs, Persians, Chinese commies, French obstructionists, Russian assassination squads. But no Jews. Even though Israel is the only country to be required to make specific concessions — return the Golan Heights, etc. Indeed, insofar as this document has any novelty value, it's in the Frankenstein-meets-the-Wolfman sense of a boffo convergence of hit franchises: a Vietnam bug-out, but with the Jews as the designated fall guys. Wow. That's what Hollywood would call "high concept"…

From columnist Mark Steyn at Jewish World Review (dated December 11, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (US/ME/WT)

Capitulation to terrorism
The Iraq Study Group report is in – and it holds no surprises. What should we expect from a group chaired by James Baker… who single-handedly reversed America's pro-freedom policies in the Middle East during his tenure as secretary of state under the president's father?…The "Baker Commission," as it should rightfully be called, came up with two major recommendations as far as I can see: Engage Iran and Syria in resolving the Iraq conflict; Fast-track the creation of a Palestinian state by carving up tiny Israel. Let's talk briefly about these two wacky ideas…

From WorldNetDaily editor and CEO Joseph Farah (dated December 8, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (US/ME/WT)

Withdraw to victory?
It is a time for truth. The strategic retreat recommended by Baker-Hamilton is not going to win this war, or end it well for the United States – it is going to advance the timetable of our impending defeat. When U.S. combat forces leave, Iraq is going to be lost to those who ran us out. Our friends there are going to endure what our abandoned friends in Vietnam and Cambodia endured. The forces of Islamic radicalism will be emboldened to take down our remaining allies in the Middle East. Our days as a superpower will be over. For it is the definition of a superpower that once it commits itself to a war, it does not lose the war…

From columnist Pat Buchanan at WorldNetDaily (dated December 8, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (US/ME/WT)

Our Unceasing Ambivalence : Why it's so hard to define victory in Iraq
Fear of [a global superpower’s] responsibility is what makes us ambivalent toward the idea of victory. Because victory is hegemonic, it mimics colonialism. A complete American victory in Iraq would put that nation--at least for a time--entirely under American power and sovereignty. We would in fact "own" the society as a colony. In today's international moral climate this would both undermine the legitimacy of our war effort and make an ongoing demand on our blood and treasure. If we are already a good ways down this road, complete victory would only take us further. Is it any wonder, then, that we have failed to completely win this war? Since World War II, American leaders--left and right--have worked out of an impossible double bind: They cannot afford to win the wars they fight. Thus the postmodern American war in which the world's greatest power deconstructs its own motives for fighting until losing becomes a better option than winning…

From The Wall Street Journal (dated December 8, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (US/ME/WT)

Jim Baker doesn't understand the stakes in Iraq
According to the New York Sun, “An expert adviser to the Baker-Hamilton commission expects the 10-person panel to recommend that the Bush administration pressure Israel to make concessions in a gambit to entice Syria and Iran to a regional conference”…It would…be a particularly contemptible confirmation of a line I heard Bernard Lewis, our greatest Middle Eastern scholar, use the other day—that “America is harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.” To punish your friends as a means of rewarding your enemies for killing your forces would seem to be an almost ludicrously parodic illustration of that dictum. In the end, America would be punishing itself. The world would understand that Vietnam is not the exception but the rule…

From columnist Mark Steyn in Insight magazine (dated December 4, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (US/ME/WT)

Sleeping giant
The United States has the most powerful army on the planet. But without the stomach for war, what good is it?...

From columnist Mark Steyn in the National Post (Canada) (dated November 18, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (US/ME/WT)

The Islamic Genocide Plan
The following words and pictures prove that radical Muslims have long dreamed, plotted, and demonstrated in favor of the annihilation of Israel and all the Jews in the world. Unfortunately, words and demonstrations are not where they are willing to stop…

From FrontPage Magazine (dated December 1, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (ME/RE/WT)

Ahmadinejad says Iran ready for 'final nuclear step'
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday said Iran was ready to take the "final step" in its nuclear programme, as he maintained his defiance in the face of possible UN sanctions against Tehran. "The enemies of the Iranian people must know that the Iranian people have taken their decision and will resist until the end," the semi-official Mehr agency quoted him as saying in a speech in Baneh in Kurdestan province. "In the nuclear case we are ready to take the final step and I hope that by the end of the year (Iranian year to March 2007) we will be able to hold the great celebration of Iran's nuclear right," he added…

Agence France-Presse story at SpaceWar (dated November 16, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (ME/WT)

Israel secretly studies 'bold' peace bid
Bedevilled by the continuing scourge of homemade Qassam rocket attacks, Israeli officials are believed to be exploring a new diplomatic overture that calls for the surrender of large swathes of the West Bank to a new Palestinian leadership in exchange for a decade-long ceasefire…

From the Toronto Star (dated November 16, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (ME/WT)

Iranian paper: Great war to wipe out Israel coming
Iranian newspapers Kehyan and and Resalat have urged Muslims around the world to prepare for a 'great war' to destroy the State of Israel…

From YnetNews (dated November 15, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (ME/WT)

Netanyahu: It's 1938 and Iran is Germany; Ahmadinejad is preparing another Holocaust
Drawing a direct analogy between Iran and Nazi Germany, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu asserted Monday that the Iranian nuclear program posed a threat not only to Israel, but to the entire western world. There was "still time," however, to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons, he said. "It's 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs," Netanyahu told delegates to the annual United Jewish Communities General Assembly, repeating the line several times, like a chorus, during his address. "Believe him and stop him," the opposition leader said of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "This is what we must do. Everything else pales before this." While the Iranian president "denies the Holocaust," Netanyahu said, "he is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state"…

From Haaretz (Tel Aviv) (dated November 14, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (ME/RE/WT)

Panel: Israel not ready for major earthquake
Geological experts said on Tuesday that a significant earthquake in the region could cause "catastrophic damage," leaving hundreds of thousands homeless and as many as 16,000 Israelis dead, Army Radio reported…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated November (dated November (dated November, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (ME/ND)

Ahmadinejad: Israel’s destruction near
According to the Iranian media Monday, Iranian President Mahoud Ahmadinejad declared that Israel was destined to ‘disappearance and destruction’ at a council meeting with Iranian ministers. “The western powers created the Zionist regime in order to expand their control of the area. This regime massacres Palestinians everyday, but since this regime is against nature, we will soon witness its disappearance and destruction,” Ahmadinejad said…

Agence France-Press story at YnetNews (dated November 13, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (ME/WT)

Blair - we must work with 'Axis of Evil' states
The first cracks in the united front over Iraq between Tony Blair and President Bush appeared last night as the Prime Minister offered Iran and Syria the prospect of dialogue over the future of Iraq and the Middle East…

From The Times (London) (dated November 13, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (US/BR/ME/WT)

Terrorists announce plans to attack U.S.
Four terror groups [in Israel], including militants from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party, which the U.S. considers moderate, warned today America is now officially a target for attacks both in the region and abroad…

From WorldNetDaily (dated November 12, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (US/ME/WT)

Most Germans Oppose Turkish Membership of EU, Survey Shows
Three in every five Germans oppose Turkish membership of the European Union, a twice-weekly survey by polling company FG Wahlen showed…

From Bloomberg (dated November 10, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (EU/ME)

'War within 10 months'
Israeli military assessment warns Syria, Hezbollah seeking to attack…

From WorldNetDaily (dated November 6, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (ME/WT)

Can the Iraqis Keep Their Republic?
We have given the Iraqis a republic and they do not appear able to keep it…

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer at Real Clear Politics (dated November 17, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (ME/RE)

Blair's desperate new plan for the Middle East
Now Saddam has been displaced by his former allies in the West, and — with bizarre irony — the Iranian regime that was his old nemesis may be invited in with Syria to carve up the spoils of his country. This approach, in which two countries once branded by the Bush White House as unambiguously evil miraculously become "part of the solution", defies any credible logic except that of ignominious desperation. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Washington and London are now so eager for a face-saving formula that would enable them to wash their hands of Iraq and its apparently intractable problems that they are prepared to retreat from positions which they had declared, only weeks ago, to be principled and unflinching. Instead of delivering ultimatums to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his nuclear ambitions, Britain and America are to offer him an invitation to play a larger and more influential role in global politics…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated November 14, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (US/BR/ME/WT)

U.S. must prove it's a staying power
We’re in a very dark place right now. It has been a long time since America unambiguously won a war, and to choose to lose Iraq would be an act of such parochial self-indulgence that the American moment would not endure, and would not deserve to. Europe is becoming semi-Muslim, Third World basket-case states are going nuclear, and, for all that 40 percent of planetary military spending, America can't muster the will to take on pipsqueak enemies. We think we can just call off the game early, and go back home and watch TV. It doesn't work like that. Whatever it started out as, Iraq is a test of American seriousness. And, if the Great Satan can't win in Vietnam or Iraq, where can it win? That's how China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela and a whole lot of others look at it. "These Colors Don't Run" is a fine T-shirt slogan, but in reality these colors have spent 40 years running from the jungles of Southeast Asia, the helicopters in the Persian desert, the streets of Mogadishu. ... To add the sands of Mesopotamia to the list will be an act of weakness from which America will never recover…

From columnist Mark Steyn in the Chicago Sun-Times (dated November 12, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (US/ME/WT)

Hamas Chief: Truce With Israel Is Over
Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal said Wednesday that a truce with Israel is finished and his group's militants can resume fighting following an Israeli tank attack that killed 18 Palestinians. Militants will answer the deaths with "deeds, not words," Mashaal told a news conference in the Syrian capital…

Associated Press story at My Way News (dated November 8, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (ME/WT)

Iran Forms Army of Suicide Troops
Iran has reported the formation of an army of suicide fighters. Iranian officials said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has recruited thousands of people and trained them for suicide missions. The officials said the recruits were taught how to blow themselves up in front of oncoming enemy main battle tanks and troop carriers as well as how to cross minefields…

From Middle East Newsline (dated November 8, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (ME/WT)

Blair bucks U.S. on Saddam execution
Tony Blair said Monday he opposes the death penalty for Saddam Hussein — a reluctant admission that on this issue, the British prime minister stands by colleagues in the European Union and not with his American allies. But EU opposition to the sentence seems to be more a reaffirmation of principles than a serious challenge that could affect the imposition of the sentence…

Associated Press story at Yahoo News (dated November 6, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (BR/ME/WT)

Six Arab states join rush to go nuclear
Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, UAE and Saudi Arabia seek atom technology…

From The Times (London) (dated November 4, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (ME/ST/WT)

Palestinian FM: Israel Is an Abomination That Will Disappear
Speaking at a rally in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, the Palestinian foreign minister [Mahmoud Zahar of Hamas] said Hamas would never accept Israel's existence. "We will never recognize Israel, and the end the {fate of} Zionists will be like that of the Crusaders, the Persians and the English, who left. We want all of Palestine, every centimeter, from the river to the sea, from Rosh Hanikra to Rafah. If we can form a state within the 1967 borders we will do so, but this doesn't mean that we will relinquish our right to every centimeter of Palestine's land," he said…

From Haaretz (dated October 21, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (ME/WT)

Iranian President: Israel will soon disappear
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says at Tehran pro-Palestinian rally, ‘Zionist regime, thank God, has lost all reason to exist; it was established in the heart of Islamic territory for one purpose – to pose a threat to the region through constant attacks and killings’…

From Ynet News (dated October 20, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (ME/WT)

Ahmadinejad: God told me we would win
Iranian president says has been in touch with God, who reassured him Tehran victory against West is guaranteed…

From Ynet News (dated October 16, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (ME/RE/WT)

Ahmadinejad's latest: 'Satan inspires Bush'
Tells Iranians they will be victorious over the West…

From WorldNetDaily (dated October 16, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (ME/RE/WT)

Ahmadinejad: Palestine is the Front Line
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared Thursday, "Palestine is the front line of the Islamic nations in their struggle against the aggressive superpowers." In a chilling prelude of what a nuclear Iran could bring, Ahamdinejad also told Hamas official Sa'eed Seeyam, "Iran has no problem transferring its successes and experience in any field to the Hamas government." Hamas has killed more Israelis than any other terrorist group, using suicide bomb attacks and other means to target civilians. Ahmadinejad praised the "victories" of Hamas and Hizbullah, saying, "Such victories have called the fake Zionist regime to challenge inside the occupied territory and have raised questions on the existence of this regime throughout the world, including Europe and the US"…

From Arutz Sheva Israel National News (dated October 13, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (ME/RE/WT)

Iran Transfers Millions to Mahdi Army
Iran has transferred millions of dollars as well as weapons and expertise to Iraq's Mahdi Army. Officials said the Mahdi Army has become a leading Iranian surrogate in Iraq. They said Mahdi fighters have been trained and equipped in Iran in a move meant to avoid deployment of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps soldiers in Iraq…

From Middle East Newsline (dated October 12, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (ME/WT)

Abbas: Recognizing Israel not required
Palestinian president talks of peace with Rice, but states opposite in Arabic interview…

WorldNetDaily story at Ynet News (dated October 11, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (ME/WT)

PM: North Korea nuclear test poses danger to world stability
Israel is concerned that North Korea will transfer materials and technology for the development of nuclear weapons to Iran, a senior Israeli official said Monday following a nuclear test carried out by North Korea…

From Haaretz (Tel Aviv) (dated October 10, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (AP/ME/WT)

British Historian Claims to Have Found the Temple Treasures
The Arch of Titus in Rome, erected shortly after the death of Titus who reigned as emperor from 79 to 81, clearly depicts Roman soldiers bearing on their shoulders the [Jerusalem temple’s] golden candelabrum, silver trumpets and bejewelled Table of the Divine Presence which the Roman emperor Vespasian and his son Titus carted back to Rome as trophies of war…But in a newly published book, British historian Sean Kingsley, basing himself on untapped historical texts and new archaeological sources, argues that the treasures were removed from Rome after the Vandal invasion of 455 CE. Kingsley, whose book God's Gold: The Quest for the Lost Temple Treasure of Jerusalem was released October 5 by John Murray, says that the loot was first taken to Carthage in Tunisia, then to Hippo Regius in Algeria, and on to Constantinople – today known as Istanbul, Turkey, before finally being returned to the Holy Land in the mid 6th century. At that time, the treasures were ultimately hidden in the Judean wilderness, beneath the remote Greek Orthodox Monastery of St. Theodosius, 12 km east of Bethlehem. It's a plausible argument that has almost messianic implications. If the Temple treasures were retrieved, the discovery could help lead to the actual rebuilding of the Temple, the resumption of biblical sacrifice – and the coming of the Messiah… [NOTE: Others argue that when the Sasanian Persians conquered Jerusalem in 614 they sold the sacred items as loot to the Jews, who soon afterward hid them somewhere in the Temple Mount.]

From Arutz Sheva Israel National News (dated October 8, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (ME/RE)

Turkey’s EU bid
The long-term future of Turkey, an important American ally in a tough neighborhood, as a secular, Western-oriented Islamic democracy could be substantially undermined by the rejection of its bid for membership in the European Union. The outcome of that process, however, is looking considerably bleaker than it did when accession talks began in October 2005. In a report to be released today, the European Commission criticizes Turkey on civil-rights reforms, including preserving the freedom of speech and curtailing torture, and meeting EU stipulations with regards to the divided island of Cyprus. The critical report will certainly be used to build a diplomatic case against Turkish membership, which could take a serious turn for the worse with a suspension of accession talks at the EU summit in December. Popular support for the process on both sides has dwindled…

From The Washington Times (dated November 8, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (EU/ME)

Why Israel will go to war again – soon
There will soon be another war in the Middle East, this time a renewal of the conflict between the Israel Defence Force (IDF) and Hizbollah. The conflict is inevitable and unavoidable. It will come about because Israel cannot tolerate the rebuilding of Hizbollah's fortified zone in south Lebanon, from which last year it launched its missile bombardment of northern Israel. Hizbollah has now reconstructed the fortified zone and is replenishing its stocks of missiles there. Hamas is also creating a fortified zone in the Gaza Strip and building up its stocks of missiles. Israel, therefore, faces missile attack on two fronts. When the Israel general staff decides the threat has become intolerable, it will strike…

From John Keegan in The Telegraph (London) (dated November 3, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (ME/WT)

Apocalypse imminent? Look around you
Speaking of Messiah, a recent survey carried out by the Smith Institute for the country's largest daily newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, showed that a clear majority of Israelis believe he will come to rescue the country in its darkest hour, as the ancient prophets foretold. Although the same poll showed that only one-third of the Jewish population bothers to visit a synagogue on a regular basis, a full 71 percent believe that the God of Israel actually exists. On top of that, 57 percent think that the long-expected Messiah will appear one day in Jerusalem. Most added that they are aware of the apocalyptic prophecies that strongly indicate that the day of his arrival may be drawing very near. In light of this decade's horrific Palestinian terrorist attrition war that has so far taken the lives of over 1,000 Israelis and the latest Lebanon conflict with Iran's proxy force that snuffed out another 160 lives and left the northern third of the country reeling from daily rocket bombardments, it is no surprise that 39 percent of the poll respondents testified that they have become closer to their ancestral faith in recent years. Only 9 percent said the decade's dramatic events have driven them further from God…

From David Dolan at WorldNetDaily (dated October 12, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (ME/RE/WT)

A Second Look at the “Alexander Son of Simon” Ossuary: Did It Hold Father and Son?
We all know that things don’t always turn out to be “as advertised.” Once in a while, though, they can turn out to be even better! This may prove to be the case with an intriguing ossuary (a stone bone box) highlighted in the article I wrote for Biblical Archaeology Review called “Treasures in the Storeroom: The Family Tomb of Simon of Cyrene” (July/August 2003). This late Second Temple period burial chest bears the inscription “Alexander (son) of Simon,” an exact parallel to the individuals named in the New Testament, in Mark 15:21: Simon of Cyrene, the man who carried Jesus’ cross, and his son Alexander. In the BAR article, I suggested that the person whose remains were in the ossuary was very likely the son of the Biblical Simon. From further study of the ossuary, I now believe that it may well have held not only the remains of Alexander, but also those of the Biblical figure himself—Simon of Cyrene…

From Tom Powers at Biblical Archaeology Society (dated September 26, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (ME/RE)

From Uranium Enrichment to Bomb in 12 months, Expert Saysm
From the time Iran masters the enrichment of uranium, it could be as little as 12 months until the Islamic Republic is able to field an operational nuclear weapon, an Israeli professor said this week…

From Cybercast News Service (dated September 21, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (ME/WT)

Iran leader's U.N. finale reveals apocalyptic view
At U.N., Ahmadinejad makes illusion to return of messianic Islamic 'madhi'…

From WorldNetDaily (dated September 21, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (ME/RE/WT)

Turkey will not join EU by 2020, most Europeans predict
A minority of around one third of Europeans believes Turkey and Ukraine will be members of the EU by 2020, a new German study has revealed. But EU citizens believe that by that time, the bloc will have a new treaty…

From EUObserver (dated September 21, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/ME)

Hugo Chavez Calls Bush 'Devil' at U.N. [and Bush’s prior remarks]
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took his verbal battle with the United States to the floor of the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday, calling President Bush "the devil." The impassioned speech by the leftist leader came a day after Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sparred over Tehran's disputed nuclear program but managed to avoid a personal encounter…Bush tried to advance his campaign for democracy in the Middle East during his address to the General Assembly on Tuesday, saying extremists were trying to justify their violence by falsely claiming the U.S. is waging war on Islam. He singled out Iran and Syria as sponsors of terrorism. Bush also pointed to Tehran's rejection of a Security Council demand to stop enriching uranium by Aug. 31 or face the possibility of sanctions. But he addressed his remarks to the Iranian people in a clear insult to the government. "The greatest obstacle to this future is that your rulers have chosen to deny you liberty and to use your nation's resources to fund terrorism and fuel extremism and pursue nuclear weapons," the U.S. leader said. "Iran must abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions," he said. "Despite what the regime tells you, we have no objection to Iran's pursuit of a truly peaceful nuclear power program." He said he hoped to see "the day when you can live in freedom, and America and Iran can be good friends and close partners in the cause of peace." Ahmadinejad took the podium hours later, denouncing U.S. policies in Iraq and Lebanon and accusing Washington of abusing its power in the Security Council to punish others while protecting its own interests and allies…

From NewsMax (dated September 20, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (US/LA/ME)

German Parliament Approves UN Naval Force for Lebanon
Germany's lower house of parliament approved deployment of a naval force to patrol Lebanon's coastline as part of the United Nations-led mission to police a cease-fire between Israel and the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah militia. The naval mission, the first German deployment to the Middle East since the end of World War II, was backed by 442 lawmakers, with 152 against and five abstentions. As many as 2,400 German personnel will now be deployed to the region, backed by a one- year mandate expiring Aug. 31, 2007. The mission brings the number of German soldiers serving overseas to above 10,000 for the first time in postwar history…

From Bloomberg (dated September 20, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/ME/WT)

Muslims demand pope convert to Islam
'Religion of peace' threatens destruction otherwise…Christian churches in the Middle East are vandalized, a Catholic nun in Africa is killed and Muslims have demanded that the pope convert to Islam – all because he read a quote from a medieval text that described Islam as "evil and inhuman." The pope has issued an apology for even referencing the historic text, emphasized that those views are not his, but still many in the Islamic world are demanding blood…

From WorldNetDaily (dated September 19, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/ME/RE/WT)

Violent Muslim Reaction Justifies Pope's Stated Concerns, Cardinal Says
As the Vatican continues trying to placate Muslims angered by Pope Benedict XVI's recent remarks, a senior Catholic leader has said the violent response justified the concern the pope had been expressing in the first place. Citing threats of violence against the pope in Somalia and Iraq, Archbishop of Sydney Cardinal George Pell said "the violent reactions ... showed the link for many Islamists between religion and violence, their refusal to respond to criticism with rational arguments, but only with demonstrations, threats and actual violence"…

From Cybercast News Service (dated September 19, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/ME/RE/WT)

China ups Lebanon force to 1,000
China will increase its peacekeeping presence in Lebanon to 1,000 troops, Premier Wen Jiabao has confirmed. The move would make China one of the largest contributors to a strengthened UN force designed to keep the peace. It would also signal that China, now the world's fourth largest economy, was starting to lift its diplomacy in areas it had previously not seen as vital…

From BBC News (dated September 18, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (AP/ME/WT)

Anti-U.S. allies back Iran nukes
Developing countries yesterday wrapped up a multinational summit with North Korea charging that U.S. threats drove it to acquire deterrent atomic weapons and Iran winning solid support for its nuclear ambitions. Iran, Venezuela and Cuba joined North Korea in leading efforts to forge an anti-U.S. alliance. Summit leaders, in a statement on Iran, "reaffirmed the basic and inalienable right of all states to develop research, production and use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes"…

From The Washington Times (dated September 17, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (US/AP/ME/LA/WT)

Darfur death toll appears vastly underestimated
The death toll in the Darfur region of Sudan in 2005 was an order of magnitude greater than that estimated by the US State Department, according to a new estimate of the extent of the genocide…"It is likely that the number of deaths for this conflict in Greater Darfur is higher than 200,000 individuals, and it is possible that the death toll is much higher"…

From NewScientist.com news service (dated September 14, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (ME/WT)

'Gaza preparing for war'
Hezbollah aiding Palestinians in 'turning Strip into south Lebanon'…

From WorldNetDaily (dated September 7, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (ME/WT)

Translating the Pope
Extremist Muslims have found another excuse to bloody the streets, this time over a quotation from a lecture Pope Benedict XVI delivered last week at the University of Regensburg in Germany. My guess is that not many of the outraged Muslims have actually read the lecture -- it's not the sort of thing one lightly skims between effigy-burnings…Contrary to what fanatics have insisted, the pope was as critical of the West as of Islam, if not more so. While Islam suffers faith without reason, he said that Western culture suffers from reason without faith. His point was that the two cultures cannot enter into a productive dialogue unless they both recognize that faith and reason are inextricably bound. Islam has to drop its sword and the West has to make room for the divine…How interesting that the emperor and the Persian could debate these issues several centuries ago, but 21st-century man is driven mad by ideas that challenge him…

From columnist Kathleen Parker at Real Clear Politics (dated September 20, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/RE/ME/WT)

The Pope's Big Mistake: Invoking Past Conflict
Yes, the embattled Pope deserves impassioned support from all people of decency and good will and, yes, the pathetically predictable Islamic over-reaction to his recent words demonstrates once again the primitive, tribal, insecure essence of the so-called "Religion of Peace." Muslim crazies, always searching for some new basis to encourage fanatical hostility toward the West, distorted the Pontiff's substantive, thoughtful address at the University of Regensburg by ripping a single quotation wholly out of context and imputing to Benedict himself some incidental sentiments communicated by his Medieval source. Nevertheless, by choosing to cite that source in the first place, Pope Benedict made one crucial mistake: by discussing the conflict between Islam and Christianity in a fourteenth century context he provided the nostalgic perspective that the Islamists relish, and that all "infidels" (Christians, Jews and others) should scrupulously avoid…

From radio host and columnist Michael Medved at Townhall.com (dated September 20, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/RE/ME/WT)

Jihad Enablers: The pope, the protesters & White Guilt
Why Pope Benedict quoted Manuel is hotly debated. But one explicit reason was to enunciate the Church’s opposition to using faith to justify violence or intolerance. And this is where the hilarity comes in. A Pakistani foreign-ministry spokeswoman responded: “Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence”…And just this week, clerics in Gaza reportedly suggested that the pope convert to Islam to save his own life. But let us not dare suggest that even a whiff of intolerance can be detected in the Islamic world. If you say otherwise, I will cut off your head. It may be amusing to note how so many Muslims are eager to confirm a stereotype in the process of denouncing that very stereotype, but it’s not so funny when they put their jihad where the mouth is. Churches were attacked in the West Bank and a nun in Somalia was murdered, allegedly in reaction to the pope’s comments. Al Qaeda’s franchise in Iraq announced “We shall break the cross and spill the wine. ... God will (help) Muslims to conquer Rome. ... (May) God enable us to slit their throats.” But this isn’t primarily about al Qaeda or even the war on terror. Note that the parliaments and governments of Islamic nations — our allies in the war on terror — have been at the forefront of the anti-pope backlash…

From National Review Online editor Jonah Goldberg (dated September 20, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/RE/ME/WT)

The rage of Islam
To bank the firestorm ignited by his address in Regensburg, Germany, Pope Benedict XVI declared himself "deeply sorry" for the effect his remarks have had on the Muslim world. The words of the Byzantine emperor he quoted, Benedict explained, were "from a Medieval text which do not in any way express my personal thoughts." The pope's subject was the "profound harmony" of biblical truth and Greek thought. No conflict exists, he argued, between true faith and right reason. Contending violence is the antithesis of reason, he cited the "erudite Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus," during a siege of Constantinople, between A.D. 1394 and 1402. Benedict's words merit being put into context…

From columnist Pat Buchanan at WorldNetDaily (dated September 19, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/RE/ME/WT)

Tears in the Darfur dust: Sudan backed by Arabs, Beijing
Where does Sudan one of Africa’s poorest countries, get the diplomatic clout to block humanitarian aid and world outrage in the midst of a widely acknowledged crisis? The easy answer is support in the Arab world which while uncomfortable with many of the tactics of the Khartoum rulers, often view the issue as Western- inspired interference in an brother Islamic country. Another compelling reason remains black gold, Oil! And here the People’s Republic of China just coincidently happens to be one of Sudan’s major partners in petroleum exploration and imports 7 percent of its oil from Sudan. In other words, Khartoum can rest assured of Beijing’s support and veto in the UN Security Council. This provides the Khartoum rulers with a political platinum plan for stonewalling…

From World Tribune UN correspondent John Metzler (dated September 18, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (ME/AP/WT)

Finding All Of 'The Good News' On Freebies
I will discuss one more indication of the sorry plight of The [New York] Times. This indication came to me while reading an article by Melvin Rhodes, entitled "Radical Islam: An Arc of Extremism That Threatens the Globe: In an Aug. 1 speech, British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned of an 'arc of extremism' that extends across much of the Islamic world posing a very real threat to Western civilization. How great is this threat, and where is it leading?" The article appeared in a magazine entitled The Good News: A Magazine of Understanding (September/October 2006). What struck me is that this magazine delivers more value, more insight and more honest reporting than The New York Times, which is quite expensive, and especially so considering it is so loaded with biased journalism that you can hardly believe a syllable of it. It is worthless to anyone except those who want to track and respond to its biased journalism, or write books on the subject (for example, Bob Kohn's Journalistic Fraud: How the New York Times Distorts the News and Why It Can No Longer Be Trusted (2003)). But here's a magazine few of you have probably ever heard of, a magazine that is distributed free of charge, yet it easily outdoes The Times. It is easy to be better than the Times, but the bottom line is still quite remarkable - a freebie way outscoring an expensive daily. Let me tell you a little about that article in a free publication, which puts The Times to shame…

From journalist Herb Denenberg in The Evening Bulletin (Philadelphia)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (US/ME/WT/RE)

From bad to worse
Sudan’s government rejects both African Union peacekeepers and UN soldiers in Darfur. With a military offensive underway, the situation in the region looks more dreadful than ever…

From The Economist (dated September 4, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (GI/ME/WT)

Turkey EU talks could be heading for breakdown, says report
EU negotiations with Turkey are heading for a major crisis this autumn, predicts a new report, with only the political will of the main players able to keep relations on track. The 52-page report by the Brussels-based Friends of Europe think tank suggests that there are four possible scenarios awaiting Turkey – that talks will get fully back on track; that there is only a partial derailment of talks; that there is a significant slowing down in talks or that talks stop altogether. Of the four, the author indicates that the last two scenarios are the most likely as Turkey, facing elections next year, has backed itself into a corner on the Cyprus issue and the EU has four member states prepared to play brinkmanship with the state of negotiations…

From EUObserver.com (dated September 4, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (EU/ME)

EU Warns Against Quickly Imposing Sanctions on Iran
European leaders have expressed regret about Iran's refusal to suspend uranium enrichment work, but they say it is too early to decide on possible sanctions. France's Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin Friday called for more dialogue after Iran rejected a U.N. Security Council deadline Thursday to suspend enrichment activities…President Bush said there must be consequences for what he called Iran's defiance. He stressed that Iran cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon…

From VOA News (dated September 1, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (EU/ME/WT)

Bolton: Unanimity Not Necessary on Iran
Iran remained defiant Thursday as a U.N. deadline arrived for it to halt uranium enrichment, and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said unanimity among the Security Council was not needed to take action against Tehran…

Associated Press story at Breitbart.com (dated August 31, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (ME/WT)

U.S. military sees Iran's nuke bomb 5 years away
The U.S. military is operating under the assumption that Iran is five to eight years away from being able to build its first nuclear weapon, a time span that explains a general lack of urgency within the Bush administration to use air strikes to disable Tehran's atomic program. Defense sources…said that while the five-year window provides President Bush additional time to decide on whether to launch military strikes, they suspect it underestimates Iran's determination to build a bomb as quickly as possible…

From The Washington Times (dated August 31, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (ME/WT)

Iran, Syria Attempting to Re-Arm Hizballah, Israel Says
Iran and Syria are doing all they can to try to re-arm Hizballah despite an Israeli air and sea blockade, Israel said on Thursday…United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan spent this week here in the region urging Israel - first from Lebanon, then from Jerusalem and on Thursday from Amman, Jordan - to lift its air and sea blockade of Lebanon. Israel imposed the air and sea blockade seven weeks ago at the beginning of the war with Hizballah, to prevent weapons from being transferred to the organization, which is funded and supplied by Syria and Iran. Now Israel is reluctant to give up that control unless international forces are in place that will control the ports and stop the flow of weapons…

From Cybercast News Service (dated August 31, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (ME/WT)

Syria, Venezuela against 'imperialism'
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez received a hero's welcome in Syria, where he said Wednesday that the two countries will "build a new world" free of U.S. domination and vowed to one day "dig the grave of U.S. imperialism"…His visit was the latest in a series of international stops where he has trumpeted his opposition to Washington's global influence and advanced what he calls a "multi-polar" vision of world affairs. His trips also coincide with Venezuela's push to win a rotating seat on the U.N. Security Council, over U.S. opposition…

Associated Press story in the San Francisco Chronicle (dated August 30, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (ME/LA/WT)

EU to commit biggest force in its history to keep the peace
The European Union is to mount the biggest military operation in its history after agreeing yesterday to commit more than 7,000 ground troops for a United Nations mission policing the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire. The EU, at a meeting of its foreign ministers in Brussels, also agreed to send a further 2,000 specialist forces, mainly providing naval and air support…Its willingness to commit troops demonstrates that the EU is capable of military deployments independent of the US…

From The Guardian (Manchester, England) (dated August 26, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (EU/ME/WT)

How Israel causes Mideast conflict
The truth is that Israel has compromised too much… What would you say if I told you al-Qaida believes God gave the Jewish people an eternal covenant with the "Promised Land"? Would you say I was nuts? How about if I told you al-Qaida believes this contract between God and the Jewish people has been abrogated only because Israel has not been determined enough to defeat its enemies in obedience to God? Would it change your opinion of the Middle East dynamic if you learned that al-Qaida believes Israel's compromises with and concessions to its enemies persuades al-Qaida that it is unworthy of fulfilling God's covenant with the Jews? I'm not going to give you my opinion about this. I'm going to give you al-Qaida's verbatim analysis. But before I do, let me summarize it for you: Israel's "sin" is in not fearing God. Israel lacks the faith to fight for the land God bequeathed it. The Jews are willing to compromise with God's promise by giving up the land of Israel piece by piece. That's what al-Qaida believes, according to a report it issued just over a year ago…The voices of international appeasement continue to advise Israel to accommodate the enemies who seek to destroy the Jews and Western civilization. It has not worked and it will not work. In fact, as al-Qaida's warped theologians illustrate, it will have just the opposite of the intended effect. Compromise will always convince Israel's enemies that it is weak, disobedient to God, unworthy of His promises and ripe for destruction. And that's why I, too, believe Israel remains its own worst enemy. That is how Israel continues to worsen conflict in the Middle East, to make escalating violence inevitable, to engender more contempt and hate from its enemies. How? By not obeying God – by not believing in the Divine promises that made it a nation and by putting its faith in man rather than the Creator of the universe. If Israel truly wants to understand its enemies, if it truly wants their respect, it is pushing all the wrong buttons…

From WorldNetDaily editor and CEO Joseph Farah (dated September 6, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (ME/RE/WT)

Countdown to Genocide
After the United States helped broker a Darfur peace deal in May, the United Nations promised to come to the rescue with a peacekeeping force capable of enforcing the accord. But, as Darfur faded from public consciousness, the world body has again proven itself utterly ineffective. As the feeble and largely symbolic African Union force (itself indifferent at best to the continuing rapes and murders) prepares to leave the region in five weeks, Darfur is on the brink of massive human killing with no international force forthcoming…Sudan seems intent on accelerating the massacre in Darfur: the government has actually proposed that the African Union troops depart when their mandate expires, to be replaced by 10,000 troops from the same Sudanese army that created the Janjaweed in the first place. Thus is set in place the most massive calculated campaign of slaughter, rape, and displacement since the Rwandan genocide…

From Peter Pham and Michael Krauss at Tech Central Daily (dated September 6, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (ME/WT)

“Lebanese Security” Is the Pretext for the Naval Babel around Lebanon’s Shores
The extraordinary buildup of European naval and military strength in and around Lebanon’s shores is way out of proportion for the task the European contingents of expanded UNIFIL have undertaken: to create a buffer between Israel and Hizballah. Close investigation by DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources discloses that “Lebanese security” and peacemaking is not the object of the exercise. It is linked to the general anticipation of a military clash between the United States and Israel, on one side, and Iran and possibly Syria on the other, some time from now until November. This expectation has brought together the greatest sea and air armada Europe has ever assembled at any point on earth since World War II: two carriers with 75 fighter-bombers, spy planes and helicopters on their decks; 15 warships of various types – 7 French, 5 Italian, 2-3 Green, 3-5 German, and five American; thousands of Marines – French, Italian and German, as well as 1,800 US Marines. It is improbably billed as support for a mere 7,000 European soldiers who are deployed in Lebanon to prevent the dwindling Israeli force of 4-5,000 soldiers and some 15-16,000 Hizballah militiamen from coming to blows as well as for humanitarian odd jobs. A Western military expert remarked to DEBKAfile that the European naval forces cruising off Lebanese shores are roughly ten times as much as the UNIFIL contingents require as cover, especially when UNIFIL’s duties are strictly non-combat. After all, none of the UN contingents will be engaged in disarming Hizballah or blocking the flow of weapons incoming from Syria and Iran. So, if not for Lebanon, what is this fine array of naval power really there for? First, according to our military sources, the European participants feel the need of a strong naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean to prevent a possible Iranian-US-Israeli war igniting an Iranian long-range Shahab missile attack on Europe; second, as a deterrent to dissuade Syria and Hizballah from opening a second front against Americans and Israel from their eastern Mediterranean coasts. Numbers alone do not do justice to the immense operational capabilities and firepower amassed opposite Lebanon…

From DEBKAfile (dated September 4, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (EU/ME/WT)

Symposium: Ahmadinejad’s Armageddon
The Iranian Mullahs either already have, or will very soon be in possession of, nuclear weapons. This reality is horrifying in the context of Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s verbalized fantasy of annihilating Israel. Part of this fantasy, and also the inspiration for it, is the apocalyptic world vision of Ahmadinejad -- and of many of his co-rulers. This vision involves the Islamic Shiite belief in the return of the Hidden Imam…Who exactly is the Hidden Imam? How and why does his supposed return inspire the nuclear Mullahs’ visions of annihilating Israel and, eventually, the rest of the non-Islamic world? Does Ahmadinejad believe that “speeding things up” in terms of the usage of nuclear weapons will hasten the return of the Hidden Imam? To discuss these and other questions with us today, we have assembled a distinguished panel of experts… [Andrew] Bostom: … Allow me to highlight a relevant area of emphasis not yet discussed: the centrality of the Jews to Muslim eschatology…In Muslim eschatology Jews are described as adherents of the DajjÇl—the Muslim equivalent of the Anti-Christ—and as per another tradition, the DajjÇl is in fact Jewish. At his appearance, other traditions state that the DajjÇl will be accompanied by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan wrapped in their robes, and armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil. When the DajjÇl is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered— everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharkad tree. Thus, according to a canonical hadith, (Sahih Muslim, Book 40, Number 6985), if a Jew seeks refuge under a tree or a stone, these objects will be able to speak to tell a Muslim: “There is a Jew behind me; come and kill him!”…Not only are the Jews vanquished in the eschatological war, but they will serve as ransom for the Muslims in the fires of hell. The sins of certain Muslims will weigh on them like mountains, but on the day of resurrection, these sins will be lifted and laid upon the Jews. Hence one can better understand the obsessive fixation on the Jews in both Shi’ite and Sunni eschatology, and the obvious connection to the ongoing jihad being waged to destroy Israel…

From FrontPage Magazine (dated September 4, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (ME/RE/WT)

Excess Baggage: The U.N. can't possibly stop Iran
Despite last week's United Nations deadline for Iran to give up its nuclear bomb program, Iran has done no such thing. The next diplomatic move is supposed to be for the U.N. to impose sanctions on Iran. That won't work, either…

From journalist Claudia Rosett in The Wall Street Journal (dated September 3, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (GI/ME/WT)

Why abduct us? We cede our values for free
Did you see that video of the two Fox journalists announcing they'd converted to Islam? The larger problem, it seems to me, is that much of the rest of the Western media have also converted to Islam, and there seems to be no way to get them to convert back to journalism…For the Fox journalists and the Western media who reported their release, what's the big deal? Wear robes, change your name to Khaled, go on camera and drop Allah's name hither and yon: If that's your ticket out, seize it. Everyone'll know it's just a sham. But that's not how the al-Jazeera audience sees it. If you're a Muslim, the video is anything but meaningless. Not even the dumbest jihadist believes these infidels are suddenly true believers. Rather, it confirms the central truth Osama and the mullahs have been peddling -- that the West is weak, that there's nothing -- no core, no bedrock -- nothing it's not willing to trade…In the Muslim world, they watch the Centanni/Wiig video and see men so in love with the present, the now, that they will do or say anything to live in the moment. And they draw their own conclusions -- that these men are easier to force into the car than that 16-year-old girl in Sydney was. It doesn't matter how "understandable" Centanni and Wiig's actions are to us, what the target audience understands is quite different: that there is nothing we're willing to die for. And, to the Islamist mind, a society with nothing to die for is already dead…

From columnist Mark Steyn in the Chicago Sun-Times (dated September 3, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (US/ME/RE/WT)

Fanatical Islam's Marriage to Red China
As the sane world watches Iranian leadership develop nukes, world-altering events are in the making. Fanatical Islam has temporarily entered into a marriage of convenience with People’s Republic of China Communist dictators. This is bad…

From author Ed Timperlake at Human Events Online (dated September 1, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (ME/AP/RE/WT)

Nasrallah: Why is Israel so mad?
Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah said in an interview on Lebanese television last week that he never dreamed taking Israeli soldiers hostage would start a war… Let's recap the actual history, since the revisionists are already hard at work changing the story. First, according to the U.N., the taking of hostages is a recognized international war crime…

From Hal Lindsey at WorldNetDaily (dated September 1, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (ME/WT)

This is Your Gazan Conversion
The forced conversion of two television journalists to Islam is nothing new – except for the use of videotape and the celebrity value in play. The jihad of today is actually very old, and embedded in the very foundations of Islam…

From author Andrew Bostom at The American Thinker (dated August 29, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (ME/RE/WT)

Achilles' Heel
Our Thought For The Day comes from Steve Centanni, the Fox News reporter freed over the weekend by his captors in Gaza: "We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. Don't get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it." Before their release, Mr Centanni and his cameraman, Olaf Wiig, had appeared on camera in Islamic robes, sitting cross-legged, and had read from scripts announcing that they had become observant Muslims and asking Bush and Blair to do likewise. "Islam is not just meant for some people. It is the true religion for all people at all times," said Mr Centanni. "I changed my name to Khaled. I have embraced Islam and say the word Allah." Earlier, his captors released a statement saying the two men had been offered a choice between a) conversion to Islam; b) the jizya (the tax paid by non-Muslims to their Muslim masters); or c) war. There was no none-of-the-above box. "They chose Islam," said the spokesperson for the group, "and that is a gift God gives whom He chooses" — even if circumstances occasionally oblige Him to give it to you down the barrel of a gun… But Centanni and Wiig's brief interlude as practicing Muslims is revealing in a larger sense. Ever since 9/11, the western multicultural mindset has been desperately trying to swaddle Islam within the fluffy quilt of diversity. It's "just" another religion, like the Congregationalists and Episcopalians. To be sure, it's got a few hotheads, but haven't we all? Sticking with this line requires an awful lot of brushing under the carpet and there's so much under there by now it looks like a broadloomed Himalayas. For a start, you can't help noticing the traffic is mostly one-way…

From columnist Mark Steyn in The New York Sun (dated August 28, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (ME/RE/WT)