* Security increase in tense Hebron Israel has increased security in the West Bank city of Hebron ahead of a Jewish pilgrimage there.

* Abbas calls on Obama to implement Arab peace plan Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is asking US President-elect Barack Obama to implement an Arab peace plan as soon as he enters office.

* US forecasts: Iran will have makings of 3 A-bombs by end of 2009 The most up-to-date intelligence predictions of US nuclear experts is that by the end of 2009, Iran will have stocked enough weapons-grade fuel to build three nuclear bombs.

* ‘Hizbullah conducting drills in south’ Hizbullah has begun a series of military exercises on Saturday morning in the area south of the Litani River, in southern Lebanon.

* World economic situation ‘grim,’ says China’s Hu Chinese President Hu Jintao Friday warned the outlook for the world economy was not looking good.

* Syria: We won’t allow another IAEA visit A senior Syrian official on Friday all but ruled out new visits by UN inspectors probing allegations that his country had a covert program that could be used to make nuclear weapons.

* Iraqi parliament to vote on US pact Wednesday Iraq’s parliament will vote Wednesday on the proposed Iraq-U.S. security agreement that would allow American troops to stay in Iraq for three more years.

* Europe a ‘hobbled giant’ by 2025, US intelligence report predicts By 2025, the European Union will be a “hobbled giant” crippled by internal bickering and a eurosceptic citizenry.

* Somali pirates vow to defend boat Pirates in control of a Saudi oil tanker anchored off the Somali town of Haradheere have said that they will fight against any military attempt to free the vessel.

* Abbas Launches Unusual Peace Campaign Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has launched an unusual kind of peace campaign, by targeting the Israeli public with paid advertisements in major Hebrew-language newspapers to promote the Arab peace initiative.

By: Robert F. Worth – International Herald Tribune

On a Bekaa Valley playing field gilded by late-afternoon sun, hundreds of young men wearing Boy Scout-like uniforms and kerchiefs stand rigidly at attention as a military band plays, its marchers bearing aloft the distinctive yellow banner of Hezbollah, the militant Shiite movement.

They are adolescents – 17- or 18-year-old – but they have the stern faces of adult men, lightly bearded, some of them with dark spots in the center of their foreheads from bowing down in prayer. Each wears a tiny picture of Ayatollah Khomeini, the Shiite cleric who led the Iranian revolution in 1979, on his chest.

“You are our leader!” the boys chant in unison, as a Hezbollah official walks to a podium and addresses them with a Koranic invocation. “We are your men!”

This is the vanguard of Hezbollah’s youth movement, the Mahdi Scouts. Some of the graduates gathered at this ceremony will go on to join Hezbollah’s guerrilla army, fighting Israel in the hills of southern Lebanon. Others will work in the party’s bureaucracy. The rest will likely join the fast-growing and passionately loyal base of support that has made Hezbollah the most powerful political, military and social force in Lebanon.

At a time of religious revival across the Islamic world, intense piety among the young is nothing unusual. But in Lebanon, Hezbollah – which means the party of God – has marshaled these ambient energies for a highly political project: educating a younger generation to continue its military struggle against Israel. Hezbollah’s battlefield resilience has made it a model for other militant groups across the Middle East, including Hamas. And that success is due, in no small measure, to the party’s extraordinarily comprehensive array of religion-themed youth and recruitment programs.

There is a network of schools largely shielded from outsiders. There is a nationwide network of clerics who provide weekly religious lessons to young people on a neighborhood basis. There is a group for students at unaffiliated schools and colleges that presents Hezbollah to a wider audience. The party organizes non-Scout-related summer camps and field trips, and during Muslim religious holidays it arranges events to encourage young people to express their devotion in public and to perform charity work.

“It’s like a complete system, from primary school to university,” said Talal Atrissi, a political analyst at Lebanese University who has been studying Hezbollah for decades. “The goal is to prepare a generation that has deep religious faith and is also close to Hezbollah.”

Much of this activity is fueled by a broader Shiite religious resurgence in Lebanon that began after the Iranian revolution in 1979. But Hezbollah has gone further than any other organization in using this to build its own support base and to immunize Shiite youth from the temptations of Lebanon’s diverse and mostly secular society.

Hezbollah’s influence on Lebanese youth is very difficult to quantify because of the party’s extreme secrecy and the general absence of reliable statistics.

It is clear that the Shiite religious schools, in which Hezbollah exercises a dominant influence, have grown over the past two decades from a mere handful into a major national network.

Hezbollah and its allies have also adapted and expanded religious rituals involving children, starting at ever-earlier ages. Women, who play a more prominent role in Hezbollah than they do in most other radical Islamic groups, are especially important in creating what is often called “the jihad atmosphere” among children.

As night fell in the southern Lebanese town of Jibchit , a lone woman in a black gown strode purposefully into the spotlight on a makeshift stage. Before her sat hundreds of Mahdi Scout parents, who had come to a central event of their young daughters’ lives.

“Welcome, welcome,” their host said. “We appreciate your presence here tonight. Your daughters are now putting on this angelic costume for the first time.”

Munira Halawi, a slim 23-year-old Hezbollah member with the direct gaze and passionate manner of an evangelist, was the master of ceremonies at a ritual known as a Takleef Shara’ee, or the holy responsibility, in which some 300 female Scouts aged 8 or 9 formally donned the hijab, or Islamic head scarf.

For the girls, the ritual was a moment of tremendous symbolic significance, marking the start of a deeper religious commitment and the approach of adulthood. These ceremonies, once rare, have become common in recent years.

It was a milestone as well for Halawi, who had been practicing with the girls for weeks: she was now a Qa’ida, a young female leader who helps supervise the education of younger girls.

Halawi is in some ways typical of the younger generation of female Hezbollah members. She grew up after Hezbollah and its allies had begun establishing what they called the hala islamiyya, or Islamic atmosphere, in Shiite Lebanon. She quickly became far more devout than her parents, who had grown up during an era when secular ideologies like pan-Arabism and Communism were popular. She married early and had the first of her two children before turning 17.

As Halawi finished her introduction, the girls began walking up the aisle toward the stage, dressed in silky white gowns with furry hoods. Bubbles descended from the wings. White smoke drifted up from a fog machine. A sound system played Hezbollah anthems sung by deep male voices. The parents applauded wildly.

The two-and-a-half hour ceremony that followed – in which the girls performed a play about the meaning of the hijab and a bearded Hezbollah cleric delivered a long political speech – was a concentrated dose of Hezbollah ideology, seamlessly blending millenarian Shiite doctrine with furious diatribes against Israel. Through it all, Halawi was the presiding figure on the stage, introducing each section of the evening and reciting Koranic verses and her own poetic homages to the veil.

A few days later, relaxing over tea at her sister’s house, Halawi expanded on the theme of the ceremony, still dressed in a black abaya. Religious education now begins much earlier than in her parents’ time, she explained. Islamic schools, some run by Hezbollah, begin Koranic lessons at the age of 4, and it is common for girls to start fasting and donning the veil at 8. In all this, the mother’s guidance is the key. “This is women’s jihad,” Halawi said.

From a distance, it resembles any other Boy Scouts camp.

But planted on sticks in the river, come two huge posters bearing the faces of Ayatollah Khomeini and Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah.

“Since 1985 we have managed to raise a good generation,” said Muhammad al-Akhdar, 25, a Scout leader. “We had 850 kids here this summer, ages 9 to 15.”

This camp is called Tyr fil Say, one of the sites in south Lebanon where the Mahdi Scouts train. Much of what they do is similar to Scouts’ activities the world over. Akhdar described some of the games the young Scouts play, including one where they divide into two teams – Americans and the Resistance – and try to throw one another into the river. The Mahdi Scouts also get visits from Hezbollah fighters, wearing camouflage and toting AK-47s, who talk about fighting Israel.

The Mahdi Scouts were founded in 1985, shortly after Hezbollah itself. Officially, the group is like any of the other 29 different scouts groups in Lebanon, many of which belong to political parties and serve as feeders for them.

But the Mahdi Scouts are much larger; with an estimated 60,000 children and scout leaders – six times the size of any other Lebanese scout group. Even their marching movements are more militaristic than the others, according to Mustafa Muhammad Abdel Rasoul, head of the Lebanese Scouts’ Union.

Because of the Scouts’ reputation as a feeder for Hezbollah’s armed militia, the party has become extremely guarded about the Scouts and rarely grants outsiders access to them.

“After age 16 the boys mostly go to resistance or military activities,” said Bilal Naim, who served as Hezbollah’s director for the Mahdi Scouts until last year.

Another difference from most scout groups lies in the program. Religious and moral instruction – rather than physical activity – occupy the vast bulk of the Mahdi Scouts’ curriculum, and the scout leaders adhere strictly to lessons outlined in books for each age group.

Those books, copies of which were provided to this reporter by a Hezbollah official, show an extraordinary focus on religious themes and a full-time preoccupation with Hezbollah’s military struggle against Israel.

The chapter titles, for the 12- to 14-year-old age group, include “Love and Hate in God,” “Know Your Enemy,” “Loyalty to the Leader” and “Facts about Jews.” Jews are described as cruel, corrupt, cowardly and deceitful, and they are called the killers of prophets.

In the West, the image of Hezbollah is often that of its bearded, young guerrilla fighters. But Hezbollah’s inner core of fighters and employees – its full-time members – is a far smaller group than its supporters. This broader category, covering the better part of Lebanon’s roughly one million Shiites, includes reservists, who will fight if needed; doctors and engineers, who contribute their skills; and mere sympathizers.

In that sense, a more representative figure of the party’s young following might be someone like Ali al-Sayyed. A quiet, clean-cut 24-year-old, Sayyed grew up in south Lebanon and now works as an accountant in Beirut. Hezbollah has offered him jobs, but he prefers to maintain his independence.

But his entire life has been lived in the shadow of Hezbollah. After school and during the summers, he was with the Mahdi Scouts. Later he became a scout leader.

He will not shake hands with women – and mentions his willingness to fight and die for Hezbollah as though it were a matter of course.

Yet Sayyed’s generation is also in many ways more exposed to the temptations of Lebanon’s secular society than its predecessors.

That shift is apparent even in Dahiya, the vast, crowded enclave on the southern edge of Beirut where most of Lebanon’s Shiites live, and where Hezbollah has its headquarters.

Once an austere ghetto where bearded men would chastise women who dared to appear in public without an Islamic head scarf, Dahiya is now a far more open place. There are Internet cafés, music and DVD shops, Chinese restaurants and an amusement park called Fantasy World. There is no public consumption of alcohol, but the streets are thick with satellite dishes and open-air television sets. Lingerie shops display posters of scantily clad models, and young women walk past in tight jeans, their hair uncovered.

The café where Sayyed was sitting was typical. Hezbollah banners were visible on the street outside, but on the inside young people sit at aluminum tables sipping cappuccinos, eating donuts and listening to their iPods.

“Hezbollah tries to keep the youth living in a religious atmosphere, but they can’t force them,” he said, gazing uneasily at the street outside.

Sayyed mentioned Rami Ollaik, a former Hezbollah firebrand who left the party and earlier this year published a book about his indoctrination and gradual disenchantment. The book recounts the author’s struggle to reconcile sexual yearnings with party discipline, and his disgust at the way party members manipulated religious doctrine to justify their encounters with prostitutes.

Hezbollah officials say they cannot coerce young people, because it would only create rebels. Instead, they leave them largely free in Lebanon’s pluralistic maze, trusting in the power of their religious training.

But there is a limit to Hezbollah’s flexibility. All young members and supporters are encouraged to develop a security sense, and are warned to beware of curious outsiders who may be spies.

After Sayyed had been talking to a foreign journalist in the coffee shop for more than an hour, a hard-looking young man at a neighboring table began staring at him. Suddenly looking nervous, Sayyed agreed to continue the conversation on the café’s second floor. But he seemed agitated, and later he repeatedly postponed another meeting.

Finally, he sent an apologetic e-mail message explaining that he would not be able to meet again.

“As you know, we live in a war with Israel and America,” he wrote in stumbling English, “and they want to war us (destroy) in all the way.”

* Peres warns evacuation of settlers may lead to civil war President Shimon Peres told members of the British Parliament Wednesday that Israel would have difficulty dismantling West Bank settlements without causing a civil war in Israel.

* Tens of Thousands Stream to Hevron as Peace House Showdown Looms Tens of thousands of Jewish believers are expected to stream into Hevron, the City of the Patriarchs, for Shabbat Chayei Sarah.

* Iraqis protest against troop deal Thousands of people have protested in Baghdad against a proposed deal to allow US troops to remain in Iraq once their UN mandate expires.

* IDF bracing for more Hebron violence Security forces were bracing for more violence in Hebron Friday as thousands of Jews were expected to descend on the West Bank city for Shabbat.

* US global dominance ‘set to wane’ US economic, military and political dominance is likely to decline over the next two decades.

* Olmert heads to Washington for farewell meeting with outgoing Bush Under the cloud of an increasing Iranian nuclear threat and escalating violence in Gaza, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert heads to Washington Saturday.

* Hezbollah’s foundation is built on youth On a Bekaa Valley playing field gilded by late-afternoon sun, hundreds of young men wearing Boy Scout-like uniforms and kerchiefs stand rigidly at attention as a military band plays, its marchers bearing aloft the distinctive yellow banner of Hezbollah.

* U.S.: IAEA report strengthens fears Syria engaged in covert nuke program The United States said on Friday the first independent monitoring report on an alleged Syrian nuclear site had hardened suspicions that Syria was building a covert reactor.

* Ashkenazi: Our Goal is to Defeat Global Terror IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi spoke at a NATO conference in Brussels on Thursday morning on the subject of terrorism.

* A state within a state has arisen in the territories A new custom has come to the country: High Court rulings are one thing, reality is another.

By: Anshel Pfeffer – Haaretz

President Shimon Peres told members of the British Parliament Wednesday that Israel would have difficulty dismantling West Bank settlements without causing a civil war in Israel.

On the second day of his state visit to Britain, Peres Wednesday became the first Israeli leader to address members of both houses of Parliament in the House of Lords’ Robing room.

“The State of Israel began to take shape as Great Britain, under the leadership of Winston Churchill, saved the world from the Nazi threat. It was a time when many countries closed their gates to Holocaust survivors,” Peres said.

“My family arrived in Israel when it was still under British mandate. In our pockets were British Palestinian passports. In our hearts was the Balfour declaration. Israel would not have a vibrant democracy if it hadn’t been for the British legacy.”

While Peres spoke, some 20 pro-Palestinian protesters called on Britain not to maintain ties with the “apartheid state” Israel and the “war criminal” Peres.

A larger demonstration was held outside Oxford University’s theater on Tuesday, when Peres’ speech on ‘Peace and Globalization” was disrupted by some 150 anti-Israel protesters.

Some of the demonstrating students entered the lecture hall, which was open to all students, and interrupted Peres’ speech repeatedly, protesting Israel’s conduct in the territories.

The protesting students were removed, except for one who approached the president, but were silenced by a majority of the audience while the president carried on with his speech.

In his address to the parliament members, Peres said he “responded positively” to the Arab peace initiative. “However, it should be clear that agreement can not be achieved by a simple ‘take-it-or-leave it’ offer. We couldn’t accept all the articles of the Arab Initiative. The truth is that it’s hard to answer all demands at a time when some parties in the region reject peace. Hamas violently rejects compromise. It continues to fire rockets at Israeli civilians. We can understand land for peace but will not accept land in return for rocket fire.”

Peres also said he believed an agreement could be reached with Saudi King Abdullah but was not sure Abdullah was ready to push for peace, at this time, with all the force of his kingdom.

Peres is scheduled to visit Buckingham Palace Thursday and meet Queen Elizabeth II, who will bestow an honorary knighthood on him. He will also meet with Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

* Iran reported to have enough fuel for nuclear weapon Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb.

* Abdullah holds secret summit with Olmert, Barak Jordan’s King Abdullah summoned Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to his palace in Amman.

* Recession fears hit stock markets European and Asian markets have fallen sharply on fears that the world economy will enter a protracted downturn.

* The Peta principal The coffin lay open in the middle of Times Square. Inside, naked and very much alive, Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

* Al-Qaeda vows to hurt Obama’s US A statement purporting to be from the second-in-command of Islamic militant network al-Qaeda has called on Muslims to harm “criminal” America.

* Peres: Iran wants Mideast religious bloc “The Iranian leadership’s grand design is to convert the Middle East into one religious bloc.”

* Analysis: American Jews Vote their Religion: Liberalism Based on their vote, American Jews either don’t care about Israel or are fooling themselves.

* Putin vows to prevent ‘collapse’ Russia’s government will do “everything” it can to prevent another financial collapse in the country.

* Iran blocks access to over five million websites Iran has blocked access to more than five million Internet sites, whose content is mostly perceived as immoral and anti-social.

* King Herod’s VIP Room for Theatergoers Discovered Hebrew University’s Archaeological Institute announced on Wednesday additional discoveries in Herod’s grave, located 9 miles south of Jerusalem.

By: Louis Rene Beres – The Jerusalem Post

In urgent matters of national survival and geopolitics, words matter. The still generally unchallenged language referring provocatively to an Israeli “Occupation” always overlooks the pertinent and incontestable history of the West Bank (Judea/Samaria) and Gaza.

A topographical map of Israel, delineating the 1967 borders.
Photo: Courtesy

Perhaps the most evident omission concerns the unwitting manner in which these “Territories” fell into Israel’s hands in the first place. It is simply and widely disregarded that “occupation” followed the multi-state Arab aggression of 1967 – one never disguised by Egypt, Syria or Jordan.

A sovereign state of Palestine did not exist before 1967 or 1948. Nor was a state of Palestine ever promised by UN Security Council Resolution 242. Contrary to popular understanding, a state of Palestine has never existed. Never.

Even as a nonstate legal entity, “Palestine” ceased to exist in 1948, when Great Britain relinquished its League of Nations mandate. During the 1948-49 Israeli War of Independence (a war of survival fought because the entire Arab world had rejected the authoritative United Nations resolution creating a Jewish state), the West Bank and Gaza came under the illegal control of Jordan and Egypt respectively. These Arab conquests did not put an end to an already-existing state or to an ongoing trust territory. What these aggressions did accomplish was the effective prevention, sui generis, of a state of Palestine. The original hopes for Palestine were dashed, therefore, not by the new Jewish state or by its supporters, but by the Arab states, especially Jordan and Egypt.

LET US return to an earlier history. From the Biblical Period (ca. 1350 BCE to 586 BCE) to the British Mandate (1918 – 1948), the land named by the Romans after the ancient Philistines was controlled only by non-Palestinian elements. Significantly, however, a continuous chain of Jewish possession of the land was legally recognized after World War I, at the San Remo Peace Conference of April 1920. There, a binding treaty was signed in which Great Britain was given mandatory authority over “Palestine” (the area had been ruled by the Ottoman Turks since 1516) to prepare it to become the “national home for the Jewish People.” Palestine, according to the Treaty, comprised territories encompassing what are now the states of Jordan and Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza. Present-day Israel comprises only 22 percent of Palestine as defined and ratified at the San Remo Peace Conference.

In 1922, Great Britain unilaterally and without any lawful authority split off 78 percent of the lands promised to the Jews – all of Palestine east of the Jordan River – and gave it to Abdullah, the non-Palestinian son of the Sharif of Mecca. Eastern Palestine now took the name Transjordan, which it retained until April 1949, when it was renamed as Jordan. From the moment of its creation, Transjordan was closed to all Jewish migration and settlement, a clear betrayal of the British promise in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and a patent contravention of its Mandatory obligations under international law.

On July 20, 1951, a Palestinian Arab assassinated King Abdullah for the latter’s hostility to Palestinian aspirations and concerns. Regarding these aspirations, Jordan’s “moderate” King Hussein – 19 years later, during September 1970 – brutally murdered thousands of defenseless Palestinians under his jurisdiction.

IN 1947, several years prior to Abdullah’s killing, the newly-formed United Nations, rather than designate the entire land west of the Jordan River as the long-promised Jewish national homeland, enacted a second partition. Curiously, considering that this second fission again gave complete advantage to Arab interests, Jewish leaders accepted the painful judgment. The Arab states did not. On May 15, 1948, exactly 24 hours after the State of Israel came into existence, Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, declared to a tiny new country founded upon the ashes of the Holocaust: “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre.”

This unambiguous declaration has been at the very heart of all subsequent Arab orientations toward Israel, including those of “moderate” Fatah. Even by the strict legal standards of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Arab actions and attitudes toward the microscopic Jewish state in their midst has remained patently genocidal. For some reason, this persistence has repeatedly been made to appear benign.

IN 1967, almost 20 years after Israel’s entry into the community of nations, the Jewish state, as a result of its unexpected military victory over Arab aggressor states, gained unintended control over the West Bank and Gaza. Although the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war is codified in the UN Charter, there existed no authoritative sovereign to whom the Territories could be “returned.” Israel could hardly have been expected to transfer them back to Jordan and Egypt, which had exercised unauthorized and terribly cruel control since the Arab-initiated war of “extermination” in 1948-49. Moreover, the idea of Palestinian “self-determination” had only just begun to emerge after the Six Day War, and – significantly – had not even been included in UN Security Council Resolution 242, which was adopted on November 22, 1967.

For their part, the Arab states convened a summit in Khartoum in August 1967, concluding: “No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it….” The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed three years earlier, in 1964, before there were any “Israeli Occupied Territories.” Exactly what was it, therefore, that the PLO sought to “liberate” between 1964 and 1967?

This question should now be raised in connection with the US-sponsored “Road Map To Peace in the Middle East,” a twisted cartography leading to “Palestine.”

This has been a very brief account of essential historic reasons why the so-called “Palestinian Territories” are not occupied by Israel. Several other equally valid reasons stem from Israel’s inherent legal right to security and self-defense. International law is not a suicide pact. Because a Palestinian state would severely threaten the very existence of Israel – a fact that remains altogether unhidden in Arab media and governments – the Jewish State is under no binding obligation to end a falsely alleged “Occupation.” No state can ever be required to accept complicity in its own dismemberment and annihilation.

Both Israel and the United States will soon have new leadership. Neither Jerusalem nor Washington should be deceived by the so-called “Road Map To Peace in the Middle East,” a twisted bit of highway that makes entirely inaccurate claims about “Palestinian Territories” and “Israeli Occupation.” For substantially documented reasons of history and national security, it is imperative that a twenty-third Arab state never be carved out of the still-living body of Israel.

If anyone should still have doubts about Palestinian intentions, they need look only to former Prime Minister Sharon’s “disengagement” from Gaza, an area that is now used by Hamas to stage rocket attacks upon Israeli noncombatants, and by al-Qaeda to mount future terrorist operations against American cities.

The writer, a professor of International Law at Purdue University, is the author of many books and articles dealing with military affairs and international law.

* Former IDF Chief of Staff: ‘Land for Peace Brought Wars’ Moshe Ya’alon, a former IDF Chief of Staff who this week joined the Likud party, declared Wednesday morning that the “land for peace” policy he once backed has proven that giving up Jewish land to Arabs brings war.

* ‘Israeli Air Force is ready to deal with Iran’ “We are ready to do whatever is demanded of us” in order to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

* Tensions high in Hebron; Settlers gird for battle Heading for a clash? Settlers are girding for battle over a disputed Hebron home slated to be evacuated in the next few hours in line with a High Court of Justice ruling.

* Israel ‘occupies’ no Arab territories In urgent matters of national survival and geopolitics, words matter. The still generally unchallenged language referring provocatively to an Israeli “Occupation” always overlooks the pertinent and incontestable history of the West Bank.

* Settler rabbi: The State of Israel is an enemy of the people “The state of Israel has become the enemy of the people and the land of Israel,” settler rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe said.

* PA to reach out to Israelis with ads endorsing Arab peace plan The Palestinians are reaching out to the Israeli public to drum up support for a land-for-peace plan backed by the Arab world.

* Beijing propaganda chief hatches plan to combat age of internet news China’s propaganda officials are experimenting with a revolutionary new policy to manage their message in the age of the internet: reporting the news as it happens.

* Germany-Egypt sub sale worries Israel Israel is increasingly concerned that Germany might sell Dolphin-class submarines to Egypt.

* International concern grows over piracy Days after pirates seized a Saudi-owned supertanker carrying more than $100 million worth of crude oil, the Indian Navy said on Wednesday that one of its warships had fought a four-to-five-hour battle.

* France wants post-EU presidency financial summit France has unveiled plans for a post-French EU presidency financial summit.

By: Etgar Lefkovits – The Jerusalem Post

The photo archives of a British archeologist who carried out the only archeological excavation ever undertaken at the Temple Mount’s Aksa Mosque show a Byzantine mosaic floor underneath the mosque that was likely the remains of a church or a monastery, an Israeli archeologist said on Sunday.

Excavations under the Aksa Mosque in the 1930s, photographs of which were recently uncovered, revealed a Byzantine mosaic floor.
Photo: Courtesy of Israel Antiquities Authority.

The excavation was carried out in the 1930s by R.W. Hamilton, director of the British Mandate Antiquities Department, in coordination with the Wakf Islamic Trust that administers the compound, following earthquakes that badly damaged the mosque in 1927 and 1937.

In conjunction with the Wakf’s construction and repair work carried out between 1938 and 1942, Hamilton excavated under the mosque’s piers, and documented all his work related to the mosque in The Structural History of the Aqsa Mosque.

Hamilton also uncovered the Byzantine mosaic floor and beneath it a mikva (ritual bath) from the Second Temple period, which he pointedly did not include in the publication about the mosque, but instead photographed and labeled in a file about the mosque, archeologist Zachi Zweig said on Sunday.

Zweig uncovered the photographs in the British archeological archives that are kept at the Antiquities Authority in Jerusalem.

The Byzantine mosaic floor, which was uncovered under the Umayyad level of the mosque, is “without a doubt” the remains of a public building – likely a church – which predated the mosque, Zweig said in an address at a Bar-Ilan University archeological conference.

A similar mosaic can be found at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, he said.

“The existence of a public building from the Byzantine period on the Temple Mount is very surprising in light of the fact that we do not have records of such constructions in historical texts,” Zweig said.

Over the last several years, numerous marble church chancel screens have been uncovered by Zweig and Bar-Ilan University archeologist Dr. Gabriel Barkay from rubble that was dug up during Waqf construction at the site in the last decade and dumped in the Kidron Valley.

The mosaic found on the Temple Mount is dated to the fifth to seventh centuries, said Dr. Rina Talgam, a mosaic expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

“We were very surprised by the discovery of such a mosaic on the Temple Mount,” Talgam said, noting that it contradicted the testimony of pilgrims who described the site as deserted in the Byzantine period and was also unlikely to have been part of the earliest mosque at the site, in the Early Islamic period, since that structure was made of wood.

“The simple mosaic pictured does not give us a hint that it was certainly part of a church but it very well could have been part of a hostel or some other nondescript structure,” she said.

Since the establishment of the state, no archeological excavations have been held on the Temple Mount, in keeping with religious sensitivities of both Muslims and Jews.

“It is hard to establish with certainty that this was indeed the site of a church, but without a doubt it served as a public building and was likely either a church or a monastery,” Barkay said.

He called the discovery of the photographs in the British archives both a “sensational” and “important” find.

“This changes the whole history of the Temple Mount during the Byzantine period as we knew it,” he said.

By: Claude Salhani – News World Communications Inc.

Religion throughout the ages has been the catalyst of numerous wars, conflicts, civil wars and ethno-political violence. In all probability more people have been killed in the name of God than for any political cause. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to use religion as a means to combat conflict.

Jewish, Muslim and Christian sacred texts all contain sections that support and justify warfare as a means to achieve certain goals; and religion is used to convince violent activists and their supporters that their violence is justifiable and even sanctioned by their God. Photo shows part of an exposition on display at St. Petersburg’s museum of wax figures depicting an Inquisition interrogation. (ITAR-TASS via Newscom)

None of the three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity or Islam – known as the Abrahamic religions as all three derive from Abraham, or Ibrahim in Arabic – are immune to having been at one time or another responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people, if not more.

In a special report published by the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), Susan Thistlethwaite professor of theology and former president of the Chicago Theological Seminary, and Glen Stassen professor of Christian ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., shed greater insight on both views: religion as a cause of war and peace.

The scholars note that “Jewish, Muslim and Christian sacred texts all contain sections that support and justify warfare as a means to achieve certain goals.” They add: “…these texts have served as the basis to legitimate violent campaigns against other faith communities.”

Indeed, if certain elements within Islam today are resorting to extreme violence to achieve their political goals, it is by no means the first time in history that religious dogma leads to killing on a large scale, and in so doing abuse the name of God. In these instances religion is used to convince both themselves as well as their followers that the violence they are resorting to is justifiable and even sanctioned by their God.

While much of the world today struggles to understand the violence deriving from Takfiri Salafists within Islam, Christianity and Judaism have had their share of violence, too.

Consider Spain’s inquisition in 1478, which according to official Spanish archives 2,000 people were burned alive; 44,674 were judged, of which 826 were burned at the stake. Or for example, the holy crusade ordered by Pope Innocent III to wipe out the Cathars in the French city of Beziers in 1210. When Arnaud Amaury, who commanded the papal force besieging Beziers sent a message to the pope asking how they could differentiate the Cathars from the Catholics, the pope replied: “Kill them all, the Lord will sort his own.”

As for the Old Testament, it is filled with stories of bloody battles and revenge and slaughter. One story of particular interest is the reference to the Amalekites, a tribe whom the Jewish Encyclopedia refers to as “a nomadic nation south of Palestine.” They go on to describe them as “not Arabs, but of a stock related to the Edomites [consequently also to the Hebrews].” After a series of battles with the Hebrew tribes, “… the Lord said to Moses, “Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.”

“The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.” (Exodus 17).

“God declared war on them for all time,” said Robert Eisen, professor of religion and director of the Judaic studies program at George Washington University.

As Mohammed Abu-Nimer director of the Peacebuilding and Development Institute at Washington’s American University, said, “while the main theme in Islam is one of moderation,” often “priests, rabbis and imams preach hate.”

The paradox in Israel as Eisen pointed out is that religion is not the only cause of violence in Israel today, seeing that most Israelis are secular. Ironically, Zionism, which started out as a secular, leftist movement has turned more and more toward religion. “Religious Zionists have become a very dangerous group,” said Eisen. Religious Zionists enjoy strong support among Orthodox Jews and Evangelical Christians in the United States.

One can find a similarity with the Palestinians, too. The Palestinian resistance which began as a secular movement has turned more and more toward religion. In fact, many of the most radical leaders of the Palestinian revolution were Christian: George Habbash, the founder of the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Nayef Hawatmeh, founder of the communist-leaning Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, as were numerous high ranking members of Yasser Arafat‘s Fatah Movement.

“The whole world could blow up because of this issue,” said Eisen.

However, as the USIP special reports states, “Many of the passages from sacred texts in all three religious traditions that are misused in contemporary situations to support violence and war are taken out of context, interpreted in historically inaccurate ways.”

The report continues: “There are also a great many teachings and ethical imperatives within Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptures that promote peace and present the means to achieve it.

“These include mandates to strive for political, social and economic justice; tolerant intercommunal coexistence; and nonviolent conflict resolution.”

The USIP report was the result of the work of eight Muslim, six Jewish and eight Christian scholars who were surprised to discover just how much overlap existed in their conclusions on the use of Abrahamic religions’ peacemaking programs.

That, of course, was the easy part. The hard work begins now, trying to convince the masses as many turn more and more toward religion, as has been the case in with religious Zionism, politicized Islam and Evangelical Christian fundamentalism.

The good news is that common ground can be found between the three Abrahamic religions and utilized as an alternative to war.

By: Middle East Times – News World Communications Inc.

Since the demise of the Ottoman Empire at the close of the First World War, Turkey, under the leadership of Mustapha Kemal, or as he was better known, Ataturk, withdrew the country into itself. The father of modern-day Turkey wanted to pull the country out of the Levant and attach it to Europe, something successive prime ministers have since been working to achieve.

TURKEY’S MAN — A parachute carrying a portrait of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the revered founder of modern Turkey, during a ceremony celebrating the Republic Day in Ankara on Oct. 29. (Xinhua/Photoshot via Newscom)

Ataturk changed many aspects of Turkey, from the alphabet, adopting the Latin alphabet to the detriment of the Arabic one. He banned the fez for men and the veil for women and did all that he could to Europeanize the country. He also elected to “distance” Turkey from Levantine politics.

And for the most part, he was successful, and with few exceptions, so were his successors. Although Turkey was, and remains, an ardent supporter of NATO, since the collapse of Ottoman rule, the country has managed to stay largely out of international intrigue.

Turkey took part in the Korean War, (officially known as a “police action”), and as prime minister at the time, Bulent Ecevit ordered Turkish troops to invade northern Cyprus in 1974 (or as the invasion was called by the Turks, “the intervention”) in order to protect Turkish Cypriots after a coup by right wingers in the Greek part of the island were suspected of wanting to unite the island to Greece.

But in the last few years we have seen Turkey beginning to emerge from its shell and play a greater role in regional politics. Among other major tasks, the most prominent of its new attempts at conflict resolution is playing the part of middleman between Syria and Israel.

And as a country straddling two cultures, sitting at the crossroads of Islam, Christianity and Judaism, Turkey finds itself today in a unique position to help bridge the East-West and the Judeo-Christian-Muslim divide.

Turkey, perhaps more so than any other country is better prepared to understand the region’s needs in conflict resolution.

“Turkey is a country becoming more active in global politics,” said Recep Tayyip Erdogan, during an appearance at Washington’s National Press Club last week.

The Turkish prime minister welcomed the changes promised by U.S. President-elect Barack Obama and said that further change was needed to reduce world poverty, injustice and ignorance, three scourges of the modern world, and which Erdogan called “our common enemy.” And if left to percolate, the Turkish prime minister said could easily transform into hatred. And from hatred to terrorism it’s a very short ride.