Netanyahu Threatens to Retaliate if Palestinians Declare Statehood
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to retaliate if Palestinians declare a unilateral state, saying such a move would unravel existing agreements with the Israelis.
Netanyahu’s stern comments come the same day that a senior Palestinian official told Fox News they are considering a U.N. resolution to declare a Palestinian state. Palestinian officials had said Sunday they were preparing to ask the United Nations to endorse an independent state without Israel’s consent because they were losing faith in the peace talks.
But Netanyahu, speaking at the Saban Forum in Jerusalem, said there is “no substitute” for negotiations.
“Any unilateral action would only unravel the framework of agreements between us and can only lead to one-sided steps on the part of Israel,” he said. He did not elaborate further.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=34191a3d-088b-4424-ab7c-dab92638108c)
US Generals Flood Israel for Exercise Against Specific Threats
An unprecedented number of American generals, along with 1,400 U.S. army soldiers, are participating with top IDF brass in the high-level Juniper Cobra military exercise that one U.S. Navy commander said is aimed at “specific threats.” Public affairs officials interrupted the naval commander in order to divert the conversation from the scenario of Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities and defending itself from a counter-attack.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=cb3e8d43-39e3-41c6-84ab-3eb13275ecab)
Netanyahu Asks U.N. ‘Have You No Shame’
A very moving speech by Benyamin Netanyahu – Earlier this afternoon, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu gave a stirring speech in which he called the United Nations to task for legitimizing the Holocaust-denying Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and for sanctioning a report charging Israelis with war crimes for defending themselves against terrorism from Gaza.
Early in the speech, he held up a copy of the meeting minutes of the 1942 conference in Wannsee in which Germans made plans to exterminate the Jews, and asked, “Is this protocol a lie?” Then he held up the original construction plans from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, which he received on a recent trip to Germany, and asked, “Are these plans of the camp where one million Jews were murdered a lie too?”
Netanyahu commended those who walked out on or boycotted the Ahmadinejad speech to the chamber yesterday, then continued: “But for those who stayed – I say on behalf of the Jewish people, my people and decent people everywhere – have you no shame? No decency? What a disgrace, what a mockery of the charter of the UN.”
Suddenly, Netanyahu Is Popular and Obama Is Not
Later this month, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, U.S. President Barack Obama will take the podium at the United Nations General Assembly and, flanked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, declare the resumption of the Middle East peace process.
He will set an ambitious goal: to achieve, within two years, a “comprehensive regional peace” that will end the Israeli-Arab conflict and replace it with new and friendly relations between the states and peoples of the region. In contrast to his immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, who instructed the parties to talk and asked only that they report to him on the results, Obama intends to be involved: His emissaries will sit in the conference room and put forward compromise proposals and solutions.
Obama will have to work hard to persuade people that with him it will be different, that peace is possible, that a Palestinian state will be established, that the Syrians will return to the Golan Heights and Israel will dwell in the region in safety – and all of this by September 2011.
Advertisement
After another decade of wars and disappointments, it’s tough to sell the “New Middle East” in a new wrapping to cynical populations that have long since lost all belief in impassioned speeches promising peace and change. But Obama’s declaration will have immediate strategic importance. By presenting a two-year timetable for the peace agreements, the president will make it clear that dealing with Iran is more urgent than establishing an independent Palestine alongside Israel.
That will be a major diplomatic achievement for Netanyahu. In his visit to the White House in May, the prime minister’s main aim was to persuade Obama of “Iran first and the Palestinians afterward.” It was convenient at the time for Obama to present a disagreement with Netanyahu in order to strengthen U.S. credibility in the Arab world. One hundred days later, it turns out that on the crucial issue – setting the foreign affairs agenda – Netanyahu’s view prevailed.
Russian Subs Patrolling Off East Coast of U.S.
A pair of nuclear-powered Russian attack submarines has been patrolling off the eastern seaboard of the United States in recent days, a rare mission that has raised concerns inside the Pentagon and intelligence agencies about a more assertive stance by the Russian military.
The episode has echoes of the cold war era, when the United States and the Soviet Union regularly parked submarines off each other’s coasts to steal military secrets, track the movements of their underwater fleets and be poised for war.
But the collapse of the Soviet Union all but eliminated the ability of the Russian Navy to operate far from home ports, making the current submarine patrols thousands of miles from Russia more surprising for military officials and defense policy experts.
Charter School’s Use of Bible Ignites Firestorm
August 5, 2009 by admin
Filed under Moral Decay
A new charter school planning to open this fall in Idaho has come under fire since it publicly announced one of the textbooks students will be using is the Bible.
Unlike a typical public school, the Nampa Classical Academy has the freedom under Idaho’s Public Charter School Commission to develop its own curriculum. Students will be taught, for example, Latin and Western civilization, but it’s the school’s choice to use the Bible as a historical and literary text that has ignited a public firestorm.
At a meeting of the Public Charter School Commission, parents stood and argued for and against allowing the Bible to be used in the school.
The American Civil Liberties Union plans to launch an investigation.
“Our main concern is the separation of church and state and that the state is not funding or endorsing a specific religion,” Monica Hopkins, director of the ACLU of Idaho told the Idaho Press-Tribune.
The Public Charter School Commission has directed staff to review the legality of using the Bible in charter schools.
Even Idaho’s Deputy Attorney General Jennifer Swartz, according to the Press-Tribune, has raised concerns that the Bible – even if it used in a purely secular manner – may not be allowed in the classroom under the Idaho Constitution.
via Charter school’s use of Bible ignites public firestorm.
Ayman- al Zawahri: Israel Must Be Wiped Off Map
Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaida’s second-in-command, said on Monday that Israel should be wiped off the map and described the Jewish state as a crime against Muslims.
Zawahri also accused US President Barack Obama of conducting a policy on Israeli-Palestinian issues that was bound to end in failure for the Palestinians, Reuters reported, saying that Obama wanted a Palestinian state that would serve as “an extension of the CIA.”
“Israel is a crime that should be removed,” the news agency quoted Zawahri as saying in an interview with al Qaida’s media arm As-Sahab, posted on an Islamist website on Monday.
Al-Qaida has repeatedly lashed out at Obama since he was elected, a move some analysts believe indicates the terrorist organization is worried he will be effective in improving the US image in the Muslim world.
“His bloody messages were received and are still being received by Muslims, and they will not be concealed by public relations campaigns or by farcical visits or elegant words,” Zawahri said of Obama’s speech in Cairo in early June.
via Ayman- al Zawahri: Israel must be wiped off map | International | Jerusalem Post.
Netanyahu Tells U.S. Thanks, We’ll Govern Ourselves
In a statement to WND, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office today objected to U.S. condemnation of the Israeli government for enforcing property law in Jerusalem by evicting Arabs from a Jewish housing complex they purportedly had been illegally occupying for almost a century.
“The eviction yesterday in Jerusalem was a result of a ruling by our Supreme Court that had to decide in a dispute between two parties over the legal control of a property,” Netanyahu’s spokesman, Mark Regev, told WND.
Continued Regev: “The Supreme Court ruled for one side and not the other. In all democracies the rulings of the courts must be upheld, and it is incumbent on the executive branch to implement such decisions.”
Regev said the Israeli Supreme Court “is renowned internationally for both its independence and its professionalism. There are countless examples of the Supreme Court ruling in favor of the Palestinians in land disputes.”
Is Krakatoa Volcano Preparing To Rock The World
Bright orange lava spews up into the air, dark smoke mingles with the clouds and the gloomy night takes on an ominous red glow.
Towering 1,200ft above the tropical stillness of the Sunda Strait in Indonesia, one of the most terrifying volcanoes the world has ever known has begun to stir once more.
Almost 126 years to the day since Krakatoa first showed signs of an imminent eruption, stunning pictures released this week prove that the remnant of this once-enormous volcano is bubbling, boiling and brimming over.
With an explosive force 13,000 times the power of the atomic bomb that annihilated Hiroshima, the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa killed more than 36,000 people and radically altered global weather and temperatures for years afterwards.
The eruption was so violent and catastrophic that no active volcano in modern times has come close to rivalling it, not even the spectacular eruption of Mount St Helens in the U.S. in 1980. Now, almost a century-and-a-half on, are we about to experience the horrors of Krakatoa once again?
‘Volcanic prediction is getting better,’ says Professor Jon Davidson, chair of Earth Science at Durham University and a volcanologist who has studied Krakatoa first-hand. ‘But we are never going to be able to fully predict big and unusual eruptions, precisely because they are unusual.’
Yet there is little doubt that if Krakatoa were to erupt again with such force and fury, the impact would be far more devastating than that which was experienced in the 19th century.
Official records of the time show that the 1883 eruption, together with an enormous tsunami it generated, destroyed 165 villages and towns, seriously damaged a further 132 and killed 36,417 people outright.
Nearly 150 years on, the region where Krakatoa is situated between the islands of Java and Sumatra in the Indonesian archipelago is more densely populated, with small farmers drawn to the rich and fertile volcanic soils of the area. It is not inconceivable that hundreds of thousands of people could be killed if there were another massive eruption.
Read Full Article – See Photos
Temple Institute Will Begin Building Sacrificial Altar Thursday
The Temple Institute will begin building the sacrificial altar on Thursday, Tisha B’av, a fast day when Jews mourn the destruction of the Temple some 2,000 years ago.
The sacrificial altar was located in the center of the Temple, and upon it the Kohanim (priests) offered the numerous voluntary and obligatory sacrifices commanded in the Bible.
The Temple Institute, which has already built many of the vessels for the Holy Temple, such as the ark and the menorah, has now embarked on a project to build the altar. Construction begins Thursday in Mitzpe Yericho (east of Jerusalem) at 5:30 p.m.%ad%
“Unfortunately, we cannot currently build the altar in its proper place, on the Temple Mount,” Temple Institute director Yehudah Glick said. “We are building an altar of the minimum possible size so that we will be able to transport it to the Temple when it is rebuilt.”
Even a minimum size altar will work out to be approximately 2 meters tall, 3 meters long, and 3 meters wide. Workers have collected around 10 cubic meters of rocks weighing several tons already.
The rocks were gathered from the Dead Sea area and wrapped individually to assure they remain whole and are not touched by metal, as the Bible requires.
“The Torah says that no iron tools should be used on the altar’s stones,” Glick explained. “The altar represents a connection to life and to the creation of the world. Iron is the opposite – it is used to build tools of war, death, and destruction.”
The stones will be cemented together with a mixture of sand, clay, tar, and asphalt. Researchers from the Temple Institute visited the Finish glass factory near Yerucham to learn how to create a mixture which would remain as cool as possible under the altar’s unremitting fires and protect the Kohanim, who always worked in the Temple barefoot.
