Mideast’s Christians Are Losing Numbers and Sway

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Christians used to be a vital force in the Middle East. They dominated Lebanon and filled top jobs in the Palestinian movement. In Egypt, they were wealthy beyond their number. In Iraq, they packed the universities and professions. Across the region, their orientation was a vital link to the West, a counterpoint to prevailing trends.

But as Pope Benedict XVI wends his way across the Holy Land this week, he is addressing a dwindling and threatened Christian population driven to emigration by political violence, lack of economic opportunity and the rise of radical Islam. A region that a century ago was 20 percent Christian is about 5 percent today and dropping.

Since it was here that Jesus walked and Christianity was born, the papal visit highlights a prospect many consider deeply troubling for the globe’s largest faith, adhered to by a third of humanity — itsmost powerful and historic shrines could become museum relics with no connection to those who live among them.

“I fear the extinction of Christianity in Iraq and the Middle East,” the Rev. Jean Benjamin Sleiman, the Catholic archbishop of Baghdad, said in a comment echoed across the region.

The pope, in a Mass on Tuesday at the foot of the Mount of Olives, addressed “the tragic reality” of the “departure of so many members of the Christian community in recent years.”

He said: “While understandable reasons lead many, especially the young, to emigrate, this decision brings in its wake a great cultural and spiritual impoverishment to the city. Today I wish to repeat what I have said on other occasions: in the Holy Land there is room for everyone!”

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IDF Map Confirms Every Israeli is Under Missile Threat

The IDF’s Home Front Command has begun distribution of a color-coded map that divides Israel into regions based on the residents’ distance from the nearest terror army. The map provides graphic confirmation of the fact that every Israeli is under missile threat from either Hizbullah in the north or Hamas in Gaza, or from both.

The Home Front Command launched a public campaign centering on the map and the slogan “protect yourself right on time.” The campaign will culminate in the largest-ever nationwide emergency drill, dubbed “Turning Point 3,” which is scheduled for late May. The campaign includes TV and radio spots, magnetic maps for home refrigerators and information on the Command’s website.

The map divides Israel into 27 regions that are grouped into five ‘belts,’ based on the distance from Hizbullah’s missile array. The ‘belts’ are differentiated by the amount of time residents will have to scurry for shelter after a warning siren sounds. While the northernmost areas like Kiryat Shemona or the Golan Heights must find shelter immediately, the residents of Tel Aviv have the “luxury” of a two-minute interlude between the siren and the expected crash of missiles. Residents of Jerusalem and the south – all the way to Eilat – have three minutes.

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Peres: Sooner Or Later World Will Realize Iran’s Intentions

“Sooner or later, the world will realize that Iran wants to rule the Middle East and that it has colonial ambitions,” President Shimon Peres said as he left for a meeting with Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger today.

Peres added, “The collision between an Arab-Sunni Middle East and the Iranian minority that is seeking to control it is inevitable.”

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Iran Has 7,000 Centrifuges

Iran is now running 7,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges,a senior official said on Thursday, an announcement likely to increase Western concerns about the Islamic Republic’s disputed nuclear plans.

Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, also said it had obtained the technology to produce more “accurate” centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium.

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Abbas: No Mideast Peace Without Jerusalem as Palestinian Capital

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Saturday called Jerusalem “the key for peace” and said justice and peace would not come to the Middle East without “an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.”

Addressing an audience at the opening of an event celebrating Jerusalem’s role in Arab culture, Abbas reiterated calls for Israel to accept a two-state solution, vowing not to resume negotiations with Israel without an explicit Israeli recognition of previously signed agreements.

Abbas said that “any new Israeli government should reaffirm anew its commitment for peace by clearly accepting the two-state solution, the road map peace plan and all commitments reached in previously signed agreements.”

He also stressed that “without (Israel) halting all settlement activities, in Jerusalem and the rest of the occupied territories, there will not be serious and productive negotiations.”

Abbas stressed that the Palestinians want to reach “an effective truce” with Israel that would end bloodshed and hardships.

He called on Israel to stop the destruction of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the Palestinian territories, describing this policy as one of “ethnic cleansing.”

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Iran Nuclear Threat

A top Israeli general says Iran is capable of producing a nuclear bomb.

Israel’s military intelligence chief told the country’s Cabinet that Iran has crossed the “technological threshold” of nuclear capability. Major-General Amos Yadlin said this does not mean that Iran actually has an atomic bomb, but that it has the expertise and materials needed to build one.

So how long would it take Iran to acquire the bomb? Israeli analyst Barry Rubin says time is running out.

“There is a big gap between material and bomb,” said Barry Rubin. “But basically, people who are well-informed estimate that Iran will need between 15 months to over three years.”

Rubin says that is a significant timetable considering there is a new administration in Washington, and in a few weeks, there is due to be a new government in Israel.

“We are entering a period in which we can assume that during the administration of this president of the United States and during the term of this prime minister of Israel, Iran will obtain nuclear weapons and those governments will have to make major decisions,” he said.

Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. But Israel has grown increasingly alarmed about Iran’s intentions since 2005, when the Iranian president threatened to wipe the Jewish state “off the map.”

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EMP Attack: Overlooked Catastrophe

When Iran successfully launched its first domestically made satellite into orbit on Feb. 1, U.S. State Department official Robert Wood said Iran’s activities could “possibly lead to the development of ballistic missiles” and were of “great concern.”

French Foreign Ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said France was “very concerned” about the launch.

UK Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell said the launch underlined the UK’s “serious concerns about Iran’s intentions.” Then they resumed their focus on their various economic implosions where “concerned” had been elevated to “alarmed.”

What continues to astonish me is how little Western nations seem to grasp the tremendous danger that Iran is signaling in plain view. I have produced at least two television shows and as many articles in which I sought to warn of Iran’s intention to use its rapidly developing nuclear warheads in an EMP attack against Israel, the EU and the U.S.

In an article I wrote for WorldNetDaily in July 2007, I noted a 1998 Iranian missile test that “failed, detonating some 40 seconds after launch after reaching an altitude of 180 miles. This is the approximate ideal altitude to detonate a nuclear warhead for an EMP attack on a country.”

I was astonished at how little attention Western military planners gave Iran’s successful satellite launch. What little attention it did get focused on the probability that Iran could use the satellite launch technology to build an ICBM.

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Jews Facing Increased Challenges and Threats

Representatives of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (JPPPI) briefed the cabinet at its weekly meeting Sunday on their 2008 assessment, presenting a particularly bleak forecast.

According to the assessment, Israel and the Jewish people are facing a wide array of challenges and threats, including a new US administration, a continuing erosion in the US’s global position, the strengthening of Iran, the use of Israel as a pretext for the dissemination of a new anti-Semitism, and the economic crisis and consequent blow to Jews’ economic status.

The report pointed to the overall decline in the United States’ status during 2008 as impacting worldwide Jewry.

The simultaneous strengthening of an axis advocating the annihilation of Israel, led by Iran, is threatening the image of the Jewish state as a haven for the Jewish people, the report said.

“Israel is becoming a mainstay for the proliferation of ‘new Anti-Semitism,’” it stated. “This harms Israel’s ’soft power’ and the image of the Jewish people as a whole.”

Additionally, the report said the global economic crisis may challenge the political power of Jews in the West.

“The assessment is not particularly encouraging from the socioeconomic point of view,” the report went on to explain. It noted that “the economic crisis has dealt a serious blow to Jewish wealth and, along with the Madoff fraud, has severely damaged philanthropist activity and has exacerbated the danger of rising traditional anti-Semitism. Budgetary problems could adversely affect the ability to manage community life and education systems in various locations abroad, given intensified competition over allocations and the channeling of donations outside the community.”

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U.S. Intelligence Official - This Is Just The Beginning

Northeast Intelligence Network director Doug Hagmann interviewed a highly-placed U.S. intelligence official late yesterday who not only confirmed rumors about escalated and more intensive Israeli military operations against the Muslim terrorists in Gaza, warned of the increasing probability of abandonment of Israel by the U.S. and other Western countries based on what he termed “malicious intelligence.”

“Remember that term,” advised this well-placed intelligence official, “you’ll be hearing it again.”

“This is just the beginning,” stated this intelligence official, who wished to remain anonymous. This official stated that the possibility for a much more protracted ground war is more likely today than at any other time in the past, adding that Israel is exercising her right to protect herself from her enemies in Gaza. But there is a catch, noted this official, and a big one at that:

Israel could be about to lose the support of the United States.

“I have every reason to believe, based on what I’ve seen at my level of [security] clearance especially over the last several years, that Israel will soon be completely on their own… or worse.” When asked what could be worse than losing the support of the United States, he stated: “when our administration provides more support to Arab countries [with] financial and military aid, undercutting Israel’s defense efforts all while pushing Israel to succumb to the pressure of unreasonable demands designed to end with their political annihilation as a nation.”

According to this official, the U.S. has been slowly proceeding down this road. He cited the 2005 surrender of Gush Katif to the Palestinian Authority as one critical example of the slow dismantlement of Israel as a viable nation. “Despite critical intelligence outlining in every possible manner imaginable that this would be a disastrous move leading to the events we are seeing today, it was done anyway,” he stated.

“We are seeing the very scenario play out today that was outlined in intelligence briefs three and four years ago. Knowing that, there is something very wrong with this picture,” he stated.

via U.S. Intelligence Official about Israel: “This is just the beginning” | Northeast Intelligence Network.

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• Israel Versus Hamas: How to Shape a Cease-Fire

Gaza Rockets Put Israel’s Dimona Nuclear Plant In Battle Zone

There were growing fears in Israel last night that Hamas missiles could threaten its top-secret nuclear facility at Dimona.

Rocket attacks from Gaza have forced Israelis to flee in ever greater numbers and military chiefs have been shaken by the size and sophistication of the militant group’s arsenal.

In Beersheba, until a few days ago a sleepy desert town in southern Israel, there is little sign of the 186,000 inhabitants. Schools are closed and the streets of shuttered shops echo with the howl of sirens warning of incoming rockets.

Israeli planes, meanwhile, began a new stage yesterday in their offensive on Gaza, killing Nizar Rayyan, a senior Hamas official. The one-tonne bomb in Jabaliya is also understood to have killed two of his four wives and four of his twelve children. More than 400 Palestinians have been killed in the six days of Israeli attacks.

Despite a diplomatic mission by Tzipi Livni, the Israeli Foreign Minister, to Paris, the Israeli army continued to muster thousands of troops and scores of tanks along Gaza’s border for a possible ground offensive. Israel’s airstrikes are designed to blunt Hamas’s capacity to fire its new Grad missiles deep into its territory. The weapons are smuggled in through tunnels and by sea, replacing homemade Qassam rockets.

Israeli officials say that Hamas has also acquired dozens of Iranian-made Fajr-3 missiles with an even longer range. Many fear that as the group acquires ever more sophisticated weaponry it is only a matter of time before the nuclear installation at Dimona, 20 miles east of Beersheba, falls within its sights. Dimona houses Israel’s only nuclear reactor and is believed to be where nuclear warheads are stored.

via  - Times Online.

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• Leaflets warn Gazans to get out of harm’s way

Israel Ground Assault On The Gaza Strip Looks Increasingly Possible

At least 307 people have now been killed since Israeli bombers began carrying out strikes on the highly populated territory, Palestinian emergency services have said.

Around 1,000 more including civilians and children caught up in the carnage are said to have been wounded.

Israel launched the offensive to stop Gaza’s militant body Hamas firing rocket attacks into the southern part of the Jewish state.

The offensive has escalated sharply since a six-month ceasefire agreement expired last week.

Israeli airstrikes targeted a government building for the first time this morning bombing the Interior Ministry, Hamas said.

The attack follows a new wave of air strikes that began last night, in which key Hamas targets were hit.

The Islamic University, a centre of cultural significance, was pummelled with bombs.

Airstrikes showered 40 smuggling tunnels running under the border with Egypt, destroying a crucial lifeline to the outside world, and a jail was heavily hit.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband said an “urgent ceasefire” is needed to stop “massive loss of life” in the territory.

He insisted Tel Aviv must abide by its “humanitarian obligations” and Prime Minister Gordon Brown shared his “grave concern” over the situation.

A ground invasion by Israel looks increasingly possible after an approval by Israel’s Cabinet to call in 6,500 reserve soldiers.

The country has also doubled the number of troops on the Gaza border since Saturday and deployed heavy artillery.

via Sky News.

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• Israel demands monitors as part of a Gaza truce

Iran Now Capable of One Nuclear Bomb - Israel Readies Military

Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make a single nuclear bomb, according to atomic experts analyzing the latest report from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

To date, Iran had enriched about 1,400 pounds of low-enriched uranium suitable for nuclear fuel, according to two confidential reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Several experts told The Times the milestone was enough for a bomb, but Iran would have to further purify the uranium fuel and put it into a warhead design — a technical advance that experts in the West are unsure Iran has been able to achieve.

“They clearly have enough material for a bomb,” Richard L. Garwin, a top nuclear physicist who helped invent the hydrogen bomb and has advised Washington for decades, told the newspaper. “They know how to do the enrichment. Whether they know how to design a bomb, well, that’s another matter.”

The report found the Islamic Republic was installing, or preparing to install, thousands more of the machines that spin uranium gas to enrich it — with the target of 9,000 centrifuges by next year.

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The Israeli Air Force is ready to attack Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons project if diplomacy fails to persuade the Islamic Republic to halt uranium enrichment, said Commander Ido Nehushtan in an interview published Tuesday.

“We are prepared and ready to do whatever Israel needs us to do and if this is the mission we’re given then we are ready,” Nehushtan told German magazine Der Spiegel.

A strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities “is a political decision,” the IAF commander said, “but if I understand it correctly, all options are on the table … The Air Force is a very robust and flexible force. We are ready to do whatever is demanded of us.”

Asked if the Israeli military would be able to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, which are spread around the country, with some built underground, Nehushtan said, “Please understand that I do not want to get into details. I can only say this: It is not a technical or logistical question.”

While Israel has fought all its immediate Arab neighbors, its pilots have had limited capabilities to carry out missions as far away as Iran. A strike on Iraq’s sole nuclear reactor in 1981 was an extraordinary exception at the time but analysts say the F-16I has made long-distance strikes more possible.
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Obama Pledges State to Palestinian Leader - WND

President-elect Barack Obama today phoned Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and pledged to work to establish a Palestinian state as soon as possible, a senior PA negotiator told WND.

“Obama expressed his full support for a Palestinian state. He told the president (Abbas) he will continue to promote the peace process, which will end with a two-state solution,” said the PA’s second most senior negotiator, Saeb Erekat.

“Obama said he will keep working in collaboration with the Israeli government and PA to reach a final solution. He said he’ll do everything in his power to help create a Palestinian state as soon as we can,” Erekat told WND.

It was the first phone call between Abbas and Obama, Erekat added.

Obama’s transition spokesman Nick Shapiro did not immediately return a WND e-mail and phone request seeking comment.

The call comes two weeks after a reported flair-up on Election Day in which a senior Palestinian official told WND the Obama campaign urged Palestinian officials to deny an Arab media report that the then-Democratic nominee confided to Palestinian leadership that he supports their right to a capital in eastern Jerusalem.

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Iran Test-fires New Missile, Israel, US Bases Within Reach

Iran said it test-fired a new generation of surface-to-surface missile on Wednesday and was ready to defend itself against any attacker.

Defence Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said the Sejil missile had ‘extremely high capabilities’ and was only intended for defensive purposes.

He said it had a range of close to 2,000 kilometres. That would enable it to reach Israel and US bases in the Gulf. “This missile test is in the framework of Iran’s deterrent doctrine,” the IRNA news agency quoted him as saying. “It will only land on the heads of those enemies,” said Najjar, without mentioning any country by name.

The US denounced Iran’s claimed missile test and warned Tehran to halt its ballistic missile programme ‘immediately’ amid a nuclear dispute with the West.

“We’ve consistently pointed out that Iran’s missile programme is a concern and this testing is another reminder of the importance of establishing a missile defence site in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend the US and Europe against a threat that is developing in Iran,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters. agencies

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