Arrest Warrant for Suha Arafat

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/149275#.Tq8U13IVi-U
Tunisia Issues Arrest Warrant for Yasser Arafat's Widow
Tunisia has issued a warrant for the arrest of Suha Arafat, the widow of former PLO Chairman and chief terrorist Yasser Arafat.
Chana Ya'ar
Suha Arafat is wanted in Tunis in connection for her ties with the family of former President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, according to the AFP news agency, which quoted Tunisian media. She has denied the charges.
“Tunisia issued an [international] arrest warrant against Mrs. Arafat on suspicion of involvement in cases of financial corruption with the family of Ben Ali's wife,” said a spokesman for the country's Justice Ministry.
Suha Arafat and the president's wife, Leila Trabelsi, went into business together, setting up an international school in the city of Carthage.
The widow of the late terrorist chief, who died in 2004, became a Tunisian citizen after her husband's death.
However, friction developed between the two women, and in 2007, Suha Arafat's citizenship was revoked and she was declared persona non grata and forced out of the country. She owns a home in Malta, according to media reports.
Both Ben Ali and Trabelsi have since been convicted in absentia by Tunisia's transitional government of theft, corruption and other charges.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/145093#.Tq8VYHIVi-V
Tunisia Quickie Trial Unites Ben Ali and His Opponents

Even former Tunisian President Ben Ali's opponents have condemned the quick trial and conviction of Ben Ali and his wife.
Aryeh Ben Hayim
After a six-hour trial,  a Tunisian court sentenced the country’s ex-president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, and his wife, Leila Trabelsi, to 35 years each in prison and fines of nearly $66 million.

In the process, the Tunisian authorities have temporarily succeeded in uniting the deposed president and those who ousted him last January.
Bten Ali's opponents claim that they were not afforded the opportunity of chronicling for the historical records all the ex-president's  crimes. In any case, they say, the short six-hour trial was reminiscent of dictatorial regimes and not the promised democracy.

The trial reflected the fact that with all the talk about Tunisia originating the Arab spring, the government and the judiciary are still honeycombed with functionaries from the former regime.
Ben Ali, for the moment, is safely ensconced in Saudi Arabia, a country that will presumably ignore Tunisia's request for extradition. His lawyer called the trial a joke and said that therefore, the only proper response is laughter.
The authorities have replied that such a rapid trial is legal and as far as the crimes of the ex-president, this was just the appetizer. Ben Ali will still face charges on drugs, firearms and the theft of archaeological relics. For other crimes he will face a military tribunal - provided of course that he is pried away from Saudi Arabia.

The czdech PM about Arab Spring

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/149217#.Tq3YLHIVi-U
Arab Spring May Help Iran and Backfire on Supportive West
The Arab Spring uprisings, warmly praised by President Obama, may work to Iran’s advantage, warns the Czech Prime Minister.
Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
The Arab Spring uprisings, warmly praised by President Barack Obama, may work to Iran’s advantage, warns Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas.
"It is our Western interest that a possible increase of the Iranian influence is not misused against peaceful and liberal developments, that could otherwise happen in the Middle East," he told the annual event ‘EU-Washington Forum 2011’ of the European Union Institute for Security Studies in Washington.
Necas warned, "We must be aware that there is a huge difference between particular Arab nations," explaining that anti-Western rulers "have been more than ready to initiate bloodbaths in order to stay in power.
"So far, the net result of the ‘Arab Spring’ has been a weakening of Western influence in and on the Arab governments in the countries, which have already experienced the ‘Arab Spring", Necas said.
President Obama told British lords and ministers last May, What we are seeing in Tehran, in Tunis, in Tahrir Square, is a longing for the same freedoms that we take for granted," Obama said. "We can and must stand with those who so struggle."
President Obama applauded the Arab Spring uprisings that ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, formally an American ally but who was increasingly anti-Israel. His autocratic and ruthless rule has been replaced by a provisional military regime in Egypt that is openly anti-Israel and anti-American.
Earlier this month, President Obama welcomed Tunisian Prime Minister Beji Caid Essebsi, who was one of the leaders of the revolution.
Osama bin Laden also lauded the Arab Spring in an audio recording before the United States assassinated him.
"The sun of the revolution has risen from the Maghreb. The light of the revolution came from Tunisia. It has given the nation tranquility and made the faces of the people happy," bin Laden stated.
"Tunisia was the first but swiftly the knights of Egypt have taken a spark from the free people of Tunisia to Tahrir Square," he added. "It has made the rulers worried."
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/obamas_israel_doctrine.html

June 12, 2010
Obama's Israel Doctrine
By E.W. Jackson Sr.

When people say "I hate to say I told you so," they rarely mean it. What they really mean is, "I was right, and I am glad to tell you so." A year ago, I wrote,

Obama apparently sees the world and Israel from a Muslim perspective. Those who think clearly about these issues must conclude that President Obama is influenced by a quiet strain of anti-Semitism picked up from elements of the black community, leftist colleagues, Muslim associations and Jeremiah Wright. For the first time in her history, Israel may find the President of the United States openly siding with her enemies. Those who believe that Israel must be protected had better be ready for the fight.

I really do hate to say "I told you so." I did not vote for Barack Obama, but I hoped he would surprise me and not be the kind of president that his background portended. Most Americans, even those who didn't vote for him, wanted to believe that he would transcend the negative forces which might have influenced his thinking. Perhaps the anti-Semitism to which he had been exposed had not gotten into his intellectual DNA. He attempted to reassure us.

During his presidential campaign, Obama declared in a speech to AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) that Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of Israel. Within days of that speech, he reversed his position and said that what happens to Jerusalem is a matter of negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians. When Israel permitted the building of housing -- i.e., "settlements" -- in east Jerusalem, Obama condemned the activity and made a "settlement freeze" the prerequisite to resuming peace talks. When Netanyahu visited the White House after the "settlement" flap, Obama treated him like a child, leaving him in the White House basement. His positions and policies have turned out to mirror, and in some cases be more anti-Israel than, those of the Palestinians.

In his much-hyped speech in Cairo, reaching out to the "Muslim World," Obama drew a moral equivalence between the "suffering" of the Palestinians and the Holocaust against the Jewish people. He said, "Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust." But he went on to say, "On the other hand, it is also undeniable that Palestinians ... have suffered in pursuit of a homeland."

To equate these two vastly different historical realities borders on the delusional. There is no equivalence between a systematic effort to annihilate the entire Jewish people and the problem of "dislocation" -- as Obama refers to it -- of the Palestinians. If there is any similarity at all, it is that many Palestinians, like the Nazis, want to kill all Jews.

Article 7 of the Hamas Charter -- purported to be a quote from Mohammed -- says, "The Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews [killing the Jews]. When the Jews will hide behind stones and trees, the stones and trees will say, O Moslems, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." It is Palestinians who want to commit a holocaust against Israel. There is no such threat or desire on the part of Israel against the Palestinians. The Jewish nation simply wants to live in peace.

Helen Thomas, an Obama devotee, recently said the Jews need to "get the hell out of Palestine." Obama is silent. For years, Jews in Israel could hardly sleep for fear that Hamas rockets would land in their homes. Yet when Israel takes reasonable action to search ships to prevent weapons from entering Gaza, she is condemned. Obama is silent. Reuters doctored the pictures of the recent blockade confrontation -- editing out weapons in the hands of the ship's crew -- so as to perpetuate the narrative of Israeli aggression. Obama is silent. Perhaps if he had not spent twenty years in the church of a rabid anti-Semite, President Obama's muteness would not speak so loudly. However, given his close association with Islam and with one of Louis Farrakhan's best friends, his silence must be interpreted as consent. I wish I were wrong about this president, but facts are stubborn things.

Since I sounded the first warning a year ago, Iran is on the brink of having nuclear weapons, and enemies of the Jews have gotten the message that if they attack Israel, this president will do nothing about it. Relations between Israel and the U.S. are the most strained they've ever been, and they will remain tense until Obama is voted out of office. His foreign policy doctrine toward Israel boils down to four words: He doesn't like them. Therefore, things are going to get worse before they get better. Nonetheless, Israel is not alone and never will be. Her defenders will stay in the fight until every Jew sits under his own vine and his own fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.

E.W. Jackson, Sr. is the President of STAND (Staying True To America's National Destiny) and Bishop of Exodus Faith Ministries. E-mail him at stand@standamerica.us.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/archived-articles/../2010/06/obamas_israel_doctrine.html at October 28, 2011 - 06:11:11 PM CD

The Afghan 'Crucifix' that defies Copernicus

Rome was determined to exclude the Jews from the land of Judah, which by now was desolate of its sons. Even in the Galil the Gentiles had become very numerous. The old order, wherein Israel had been a people on its own land, was rapidly vanishing. In a few generations the entire Jewish community in the land of Israel would be destroyed, and the center of the Torah would shift to the far-off Bavel. This ancient Roman policy inspires the present political initiatives to prevent the Jews from settling in their God-given homeland. Keep in mind, emperor Hadrian ("may his bones be crushed") burned a Torah Scroll on the ruins of the Jerusalem temple

Fish Symbol was used as a derogatory slur against "Messiah" in conjunction with using the word "christos" as a mockery of "Messiah." Originally used as a symbol for the Babylonian fish-deity "Dagon" labeled with the phrase that made up the mystical name of "ICTHUS" which was one of the names of the Greek/Roman Sun-god called "Bacchus/Dionysus/Tammuz,"

The five Greek letters of "ICTHUS" mean "Iesous Christos Theou Uios Soter" translated as "Jesus Christ the Son of God the Savior" and reverenced by the Roman Catholic Church. "Iesous" is the name adapted from the name of the Greek goddess of healing "Iesos/Iaso," the daughter of Apollo, the Sun-deity linked to the Egyptian goddess "Isis" who had a son "Isu."

The first commandment the Jews were given as a people is the mitzvah of Rosh Chodesh, the New Moon: “And God said to Moses...in the land of Egypt ... This month is for you, the head of the months. First it is for you among the months of the year.” - Ex 12:1-2

This is a strange first commandment. You'd think the development of the calendar would only come after the establishment of the basic fundamentals like the Ten Commandments. And yet the Torah considers the process of establishing the new month as a major breakthrough in creating a nation. And what was wrong with the solar calendar that everyone else had been using? What is the significance of basing the Jewish calendar on the moon? Here is why.

Franz Cumont in his Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans wrote: “From astronomical speculations the Chaldeans had deduced a whole system of religious dogmas. The sun, set in the midst of the superimposed planets, regulates their harmonious movements. As its heat impels them forward, then draws them back, it is constantly influencing, according to its various aspects, the direction of their course and their action upon the earth. Fiery heart of the world, it vivifies the whole of this great organism, and as the stars obey its command, it reigns supreme over the universe. The radiance of its splendor illuminates the divine immensity of the heavens, but at the same time in its brilliance there is intelligence; it is the origin of all reason, and, as a tireless sower it scatters unceasingly on the world below the seeds of a harvest of souls. Our brief life is but a particular form of the universal life…This “theology”, gradually, imposed on mankind the cult of the “Invincible Sun” as the master of all nature, creator and preserver of men.” By the First Century, the mystery religions of the Babylonians were centered primarily in Rome! Early records mention this transference of pagan religion from Asia right to the city of Rome. The First Century book by Virgil, The Aeneid, in imperial times became a type of Roman "Bible." Prudentius, an ancient Roman himself, says that there wasn’t a single pagan deity that did not in the end find its headquarters at Rome. Now, this Babylonian god, known in Greece as "the sin-bearer..."http://www.bibletruth.cc/Body_The_Messiahs_Name.htm
The Babylonian III Reich was again crushing the peoples under her foot (Rev. 17:5)


Baal, Bel, Babylon are all interrelated words pertaining to chief Sun-deities of pagan Sun-worship. Baal, exactly like Jupiter, means to "shine," also used for "Lord/husband." Bel is another name for Satan. Babylon was the ancient Canaanite city where Sun-worship began and from there spread to all ancient cultures of the world and remains in the world today as the counterfeit religion of Satan under the guise of the Roman Catholic Church and its off-shoot religions (daughters) including Christianity. SIMON MAGUS, a Samaritan sorcerer was the one bringing "Christianity" to Rome in the guise of the old Babylonian mystery religions.
* Hosea 2:17 states, "I will remove the names of the Ba'als from her lips, no longer will their names be invoked," (NIV). In the Bible the "wise king Solomon" is portrayed as "whoring after" the Tyrian fire and sun god Moloch/Molech/Baal. In Jeremiah 19:5-6 we read, “They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal which I commended not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind: Therefore.... this place shall no more be called Tophet, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter.”

The Kaaba~Mecca~Muslim~Shiva~Satan~CONNECTED ...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF39l0ev_Gc Feb 20, 2011 - 7 min - Uploaded by BannednFlagged
if u say palestinian baal is similar to shiva,i have been to baal beck which is in lebanon...baal was worshipped yes but he was a …

Watching this video keep in mind, that the word ‘ALLAH’ itself is Sanskrit. In Sanskrit
language Allah, Akka and Amba are synonyms. They signify a goddess or mother. The term ‘ALLAH’
forms part of Sanskrit chants invoking goddess Durga, also known as Bhavani, Chandi and
Mahishasurmardini. The Islamic word for God is., therefore, not an innovation but the ancient Sanskrit appellation retained and continued by Islam. Allah means mother or goddess and mother goddess.

The logo of the Polish church radio station named Maryja after the Virgin Mary shows Mary with Jesus in the middle of Copernicus's concentric circles, in perfect harmony with Allah-Durga-Bhavani-Chandi and, last but not the least, with Virgil's Virgin giving birth to the “boy” who was expected to introduce Saturnia Regna i.e. the era, or New Global Order of peace and communism. (See, The Manchurian President) The ancient name of Rome was Saturnia, the city of Saturn. Saturn was the “father of gods”, also called the Father of Zeus (Jupiter) Saturn was also known as Kronos and he was known as the first King of Babylon. Hislop in his The Two Babylons quotes Eusebius who stated that “Saturn or Belus was the first king of Baylon.

The Greek sun god Zeus was the god Paul worshiped: "For by him we have life and move and exist, even as certain ones of the poets among YOU have said, ‘For we are also his progeny.’"(Acts 17:28)

Please note the Stoic Pantheists that Paul quotes from:

(Cleanthes' Hymn to Zeus) "For we are Thy offspring, taking the image only of Thy voice, as many mortal things as live and move upon the earth." (Aratus' Phænomena 'Natural Appearances') "For every street, every market-place is full of Zeus. Even the sea and the harbour are full of this deity. Everywhere everyone is indebted to Zeus. For we are indeed his offspring."

Who appeared on the Road to Damascus: Jesus or Dionysus?

“At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining around me... And when we were all fallen to the earth I heard a voice speaking unto me...it is hard to kick against the goads” (KJV Acts 26:13-14). In Euripides the persecuted god is Dionysus, and his persecutor is Pentheus, king of Thebes. Just like Jesus, Dionysus calls his persecutor to account: “You disregard my words of warning ... and kick against necessity (literally 'against the goads') a man defying god”.The only peculiar thing is that Jesus should quote a Greek proverb to Paul while speaking Aramaic (“in the Hebrew language”) (Uta Ranke-Heinemann, Putting away Childish Things. . HarperSanFrancisko 1994, p. 163)

Zeus is Michelangelo's God in the Sistine Chapel:
http://youregiftbasket.com/images/oceanic/7848.jpg
CREATION OF MAN II STATUE FIGURINE ~ Museum Replicas - Greek Mythology collectibles

http://www.terminartors.com/files/artworks/3/8/8/38816/Michelangelo-Creation_of_Adam_detail-1508-1512-II.jpg

A few lines from M. Capella’s Ode to the Sun found in his general compilation of scientific knowledge entitled The Marriage of Mercury and Philology (De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercuri) unveils the religion hidden behind the solar calendar:

“Latium invokes thee, Sol, because thou alone art in honor, after the Father*, the centre of light; and they affirm that thy sacred head bears a golden brightness in twelve rays, because thou formest that number of months and that number of hours.” *That explains the title of book Jesus, the Sun of God by David Fiedeler.

M. Capella's book De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercuri is highly praised in Copernicus' book because Copernicus, like M. Capella, believed that the sun is a god. Copernicus's sun god is Dante Aligheri's “Jove crucified for mankind”. And Jove/Jupiter was the god of Virgil's heliocentric system presented in his Georgica: Quid faciat laetas segetes, quo sidere terram vertere- Maecenas, ulmisque vitis conveniat (Virgil Georgica, 1-2;1-4)

http://c.imagehost.org/0699/islamic_20caligraphy_20Allah_208.jpg
http://www.mygen.com/images/Phoenician_Sun_Priestess.jpg

“In the center of all rests the Sun. For who would place this lamp of a very beautiful temple in another or better place than this from which it can illuminate everything at the same time? As a matter of fact, not unhappily do some call it the lantern, others, the mind, and still others, the Leader of the World. Trismegistus calls it ‘visible God’; Sophocles’ Electra, ‘that which gazes upon all things.’ And so the sun, as if resting on a kingly throne, governs the family of stars (like Zeus pater) which wheel around.” (De revol. bk.2, 10) Pythagoras likened the universe to the family sired by the sun god.


The AIDS Epidemic Confirms the Truth of the Revealed Torah

Encyclopedia Britannica calls Moses “This former stammering murderer”* because he dared to kill a sadistic slave master thus preventing a senseless murder of a helpless human being. But can a slave be considered a human being in the context of Malthus's Essay on Population? Prophet Isaiah disagrees with the editors of EB: “For with stammering lips and with a strange tongue shall it (knowledge) be spoken to this people.” (Is 28:11-12) Because as professor Jacob Needleman observed in his book What is God (p. 185): “One cannot think about God in the same way that one thinks about scientific problems, psychological theories, or logical proofs.” Because as the same prophet Isaiah teaches: “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Is 55:8-9) Prof. Christopher Hitchens describes the authors of the Bible as “crude, uncultured human mamals” (102). Please note the solar cross on the British flag.

56.000 new AIDS infections every year in USA alone
Whereas the gods of Olympus, including the sun god, Apollo, tirelessly pursued beautiful boys, like Ganymede or women, the God of Sinai watched over widows and orphans. R. Ingersoll charged Moses with vulgarity (!) and thundered that the Bible “has made colleges and universities the teachers of error and the haters of science.” At the same time Rudolph Virchow known as the father of Modern Pathology insisted, “Moses was the greatest hygienist the world has seen; he taught in its essentials nearly every principle of hygiene now practiced.” He knew that fecal matter may be deadly and that explains his harsh laws against homosexual practices. It is not a question of freedom, but of social hygiene! Nobody lives separated from other members of a society. How is AIDS, in social interactions, different from tuberculosis?

And consider the feeling of moral superiority of the editors of the EB in the context of well-known historical fact:
“London Foundling Hospital, which after open admissions in 1756 was to accept some 15,000 children over the next 4 years, was called by one of its governors a “slaughterhouse of infants” because the mortality there was nearly equal to its admissions. The physician W.B. Ryan wrote in 1862 that not only is infanticide not considered by the general public “in the same light” as other murders, but there is no other crime that “meets with so much sympathy.” The British Malthusians taught the world how to feel sympathy for “slaughterhouses of infants.”
The Malthusian-Darwinian “Ten Commandments”

Inspired by the gloomy Report of Rome, a man who identified himself as Mr. R. C. Christian, a pseudonym with symbolic meaning,built in Georgia a huge monument known now as The Georgia Guidestones warning the world population that scarce resources of the earth can support no more than 500.000.000 people and thus suggesting unavoidable mass extermination of people. This seems to be the only logical conclusion if you reject the God of the Bible who creates and maintains the world and who promised to Abraham as many people as the stars in heaven. The apostle of the Gentiles Paul rejected the Law and proclaimed instead the Gentile Christianity advertised now by an official Vatican publication, Guide to the Vatican Museums (Gestione Vendita Publicazioni Musei Vaticani, Citta del Vaticano. 1979)
www.crystalinks.com/gaguidestones.html

“On your journey to the grave did you walk, did you talk with the Lord”?
http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/10/24/59274153.html
http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/10/24/59222975.html

Science is the ground on which Jews and Aryans are going to stake their final battle

Fritsch's Beweismaterial gegen Jahwe is to “prove” that the real basis for the Old Testament is the destruction of the Indo-Germanic cultivators of the land by Semitic invaders. In Alfred Rosenberg's impenetrable The Myth of the 20th Century the Nordic blood constitutes that mystery which has supplanted and surmounted the Old Sacraments” .Writing in 1881, Wagner suggest that Christ himself was not a biologically Jewish and that Aryan blood ran in his veins. http://johnmeunier.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/last-temptation-of-christ.jpg
Jesus rejected the Devil's offer: “Go away devil, Thou must worship YHWH your God.” Messengers are inferior to those who sent them and Jesus was the messenger of God: “What I {Jesus} speak, therefore, I speak just as the Father has told me.” (John 12:50 NRSV) One of the most interesting transformations has been from the Jesus whom Ernest Renan (1823-92) stated in his famous Life (1863) that fundamentally there was nothing Jewish, to the full acknowledged Jewishness of Jesus in recent scholarship.
The Afghan Crucifix which Restores Yahshua to his People

The Roman persecution was so intense that Rabbi Akiva had to go to Babylon to declare a leap-year (Mishna: Yevamos 122A), Because this was at that time not possible to do in any land under Roman domination (this was before Trajan conquered Babylon in the year 115 CE). And for that “crime” Rabbi Akiva was also crucified; he offended the official Roman sun god Sol Invictus. Tyndale who translated the Bible from Hebrew into English was imprisoned near Brussels and interrogated by theologians from Louvain; he was garroted and his corpse burnt in October 1536.

“Modern Science is only the capstone of a long philosophical maturation that includes evolutionists from Aristotle to Kant to Hegel, and their students from Pharaoh to Nero to Hitler.” (Stars and Idolatry)
"The moon, from the angle of the esoteric knower, is simply an obstruction in space, an undesirable form which must some day disappear." - (Alice Bailey or, a British Leni Riefenstahl). It's not quite comfortable to be a Torah Jew these days... It never was in the Holy Roman Empire.

http://www.freakingnews.com/pictures/17000/AFGHAN-CRUCIFIX-17060.jpg
http://rexcurry.net/yarek-oath-circumcision-jesus-chartre-mezizah.jpg
Cross was used as a symbol of the Babylonian/Chaldean Sun-god, the mystical "Tau." The original form of the "T" became the emblem of the Greek/Roman Sun-god "Tammuz."

Surprised by the star behind Yahshua's head on the disc of the moon? Don't be. The Russian Professor of astronomy A.B. Arkhipov in his book Nyerazgadannye Tainy Vsyelennoy (The Unsolved Secrets of the Universe) published in Moscow (2004 ISBN 5-94538-446-1) among the lunar marvels mentions the following astronomical events described in ancient chronicles:
1048 The Armenian Chronicle of Etaum Patmich of the 13th century reads: “In that year, on May 14, in the early night during the New Moon a star was visible on the disc of the Moon. According to Armenian astronomers Barsegyan and Parsamyan an attempt to identify this star with the supernova of 1054 means stretching the truth.
1064 “In those days a star of unusual brightness appeared within the circle of the moon after a few days following her moving away from the sun. J. Malvesius Chronicon (Muratori L.A. Retum Italicarium scriptores. Lib. 14. Milan, 1729, p. 873)
W.S. Cameron's Lunar transient phenomena catalog (NSSDC/WDC-A-R&S 78-03, Greenbelt: NASA, 1978, p. 109) mentions that on March 5, 1587 many people saw a star within the circle of the Moon “exactly between the edges of her horns,” and a similar event as depicted by the pre-Columbian astronomers of Peru.
Cultural blindspots prevent people from seeing things that are perfectly obvious in other cultures. Furthermore, even within a culture that is capable of perceiving something, individuals usually cannot see things until they are educated to them Exactly, like Moses was educating his people by giving them the ordinance to look out for the New Moons.
And God said: 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years...(Gen 1:14)

So try it for yourself and you'll see with your naked eyes. You'll see the blue sky through the “cutout” of the new moon, and sometimes the black part of it, which, obviously blocks the view of the blue sky, but not always, contrary to Galileo's claim. And then, you will be bound to ask yourself the question, is Venus a body too if I can see blue sky through the cutout of its crescent. And then, maybe, you will admit that the earth created by G-d as our homeland is totally unique in the Universe. Exactly, like the Torah claims. Everything up there is to remind us of times, and seasons, and years and of other events important for our lives. Because it is us who pass away not time; we will pass away even in rockets speeding as fast as light.
Copernicus Recanted his Pagan Solar Religion
http://www.copernicus.net/images/copernicus/copernicus%20portraits/10021879l.jpg
A portrait of repenting Copernicus from E. Reinhold collection has Copernicus saying: My hope is in God Jesus and the caption reads: Dominus Nicolaus Copernicus, sacerdos (priest) and canonicus (canon)
Reinhold catalogued a large number of stars. His publications on astronomy include a commentary (1542, 1553) on Georg Purbach's Theoricae novae planetarum. Reinhold knew about Copernicus and his heliocentric ideas prior to the publication of De revolutionibis and made a favourable reference to him in his commentary on Purbach. However, Reinhold (like other astronomers before Kepler and Galileo) translated Copernicus' mathematical methods back into a geocentric system, rejecting heliocentric cosmology on physical and theological grounds.

Click to see such an extraordinary Torah Moon with three stars visible through its “body”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_i3ERPsLzY&NR=1

Roman Pytel, Ph.D., poles4 israel, romanpytel.blogspot.com

Russian Support for Kurdish leader Ocalan

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20111020/167909454.html
20:44 20/10/2011
A controversial Russian politician and former State Duma heavyweight announced in Moscow on Thursday the creation of a Russian public movement to support jailed Kurdish militant leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Alexei Mitrofanov, known for colorful public antics outside the political arena, said the primary goal of his new pro-Ocalan "committee" was to push for the release of "World Prisoner Number One," as well as to draw public attention to the humanitarian aspect of the conflict between the Turkish government and Kurdish militants.
The announcement came a day after 24 Turkish soldiers were killed in a series of attacks by fighters from Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), one of the worst one-time losses for the Turkish military since the beginning the PKK's armed struggle against the Turkish state in the mid-1980s.
Ocalan, 63, who is viewed by most Turks as a "terrorist" responsible for the deaths of thousands of troops and civilians, has been serving a life sentence in a prison on an island near Istanbul. He was originally sentenced to death in 1999 after being captured in Kenya earlier that year. That verdict was commuted to a life sentence three years later, when Turkey abolished the death penalty as part of its efforts to secure European Union membership.
Ocalan founded the PKK, which Turkey, the United States and European Union view as a terrorist organization, in 1978, six years before the group launched what was to become a full-fledged armed struggle for an independent Kurdish state. The conflict has since claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people, many of them civilians, both Turkish and Kurdish. During the trial, Ocalan admitted to the violent nature of the PKK and pleaded for mercy.
There has been no reaction to Mitrofanov's initiative from the Turkish authorities. A written request for comments sent to the Russian Foreign Ministry was not answered as of late Thursday.
Political analyst Viktor Nadein-Rayevsky from the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of World Economy and International Relations said Turkey has always reacted "very negatively" to initiatives like this.
"The Turks treat those who support Kurds very badly," he said.
Turkey is Russia's major trade partner and the second largest importer of Russian natural gas after Germany. Ankara is yet to agree to the construction in the Turkish territory of a section of the South Stream pipeline designed to transport Russian gas under the Black Sea to central and southern Europe bypassing Ukraine.
Late last month, Turkish state energy company Botas said it was not going to extend one of its contracts with Russian energy giant Gazprom on the annual supply of 6 billion cubic meters of Russian gas, after Moscow failed to agree to cut gas prices. Gazprom has now to agree with private Turkish companies to purchase its fuel in order to recover the losses.
The former Soviet Union supported the Kurdish rebel cause and PKK members were "quite active" in Russia before the Soviet collapse, Nadein-Rayevsky said. But Russian leaders have since distanced Moscow from the Kurds and have condemned PKK attacks, he said.
After being expelled from Syria under pressure from Turkey in 1998, Ocalan sought refuge in Russia but was rejected.
Mitrofanov complained on Wednesday of a lack of understanding among the Russian leadership that the Kurdish factor "will have a very big influence" on the future political situation in the Middle East. One of his committee's goals is to "prove" that the Kurdish issue should be treated as a "priority," he said.
Middle East expert Yevgeny Satanovsky rejected suggestions that there were up to 500,000 Kurds in Russia, saying the Kurdish diaspora in the country has no more than 15,000 members.
"Politician Alexei Mitrofanov has the right to demand freedom for anyone," he said. "It's not his problem how it will affect our relations with Turkey - we have the president, the prime minister and the foreign minister, as well as other people who deal with foreign policy for this."
In a statement passed through his lawyers last May, Ocalan threatened the Turkish government with "great war" unless Ankara launches "meaningful" talks with Kurdish groups within a few weeks. Wednesday's attacks were the latest in a series of deadly assaults on Turkish troops carried out by PKK fighters in the past few months.
The Turkish army responded to the attacks by launching airstrikes against PKK camps in northern Iraq and sent troops across the border to punish the insurgents.
In late February, the PKK announced that it was abrogating its unilateral ceasefire declared in August 2010, citing the Turkish government's reluctance to make concessions to Kurdish demands.
MOSCOW, October 20 (RIA Novosti)

Occupy Wall Street's anti-semitism

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/10737#.TqCIUXJiK-U
Dear Good Liberal People Who Are Unconcerned With Occupy Wall Street’s Naked Anti-Semitism,
I am writing to you about a “contagious” and dangerous plague of “hatred” that threatens the survival of the Jews, the Jewish state, and of all civilization.
Even if you are not Jewish, even if you do not support Israel, you should see Gloria Greenfield’s Unmasked: Judeophobia  This film directly concerns you. It is the visual antidote to this false hatred, which visually through the internet, in films, in the media, emblazoned on t-shirts and signs at every rally (no matter the topic) scapegoats Jews for the world’s every sorrow.
The Big Lies against the Jewish people — really, Blood Libels — are perpetrated and paid for by the very people who are committing the most horrifying crimes against their own people and humanity as a whole.
I’m with Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel whose words open this compelling and important film: afraid. For example, I have been told that very few Jews went uptown to confront the three day hate-fest against Israel which went on at Columbia in preparation for Israel Apartheid week.
However, many New York City Jews and human rights activists of all ages are visiting or helping the Occupy Wall Street activists in Zucotti Park, perhaps an idealistic group which has, unfortunately, and increasingly been inundated with the hardcore Marxists who [2] display anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish slogans [3].
Wiesel never expected to see the return of anti-Semitism in his lifetime — and with such a vengeance. Both Israel and America represent civilization at its imperfect but democratic best; both are universally “hated.” As such “hatred” escalates and “globalizes,” it invariably leads to pogroms, massacres, Embassy and airplane hijackings, which in turn, are viewed as justified acts of “self-defense” against capitalist and colonial bloodsuckers, child killers, mass rapists, and racists.
Greenfield’s film carefully, patiently, artfully exposes and stands against this surreal increase in Jew-hatred (“Judeophobia”), and explains why it is a threat to Western civilization.
Unmasked presents 50 of the most sober, principled thinkers of our time – I am honored and humbled to be among them – all of whom understand that it is crucial to tell the truth about the massive misinformation campaign against the Jews and the West, and that we must do so with courage and boldness.
We — and the filmmaker who is also the producer of The Case for Israel – believe that it is late, but never too late to do so. True, the demonization of Jews, Israel, and America has gone viral. Human mobs are “surging” across Israel’s borders and are “occupying” public spaces around the world in jihadic-like fashion.
Greenfield’s experts also understand that Jews are being blamed for the exact crimes committed by the Arabs and “Palestinians” against their own people and against the Jewish state.
At this moment in history, Greenfield’s on-camera Talking Heads are the witnesses for the defense. They explain that everything you have been told about the matter is demonstrably false, diabolically Orwellian, and dangerous to civilization.
One cannot stop watching the film. The music engages us, the manuscripts, lithographs, film footage, stills, are shocking, tragic, illuminating, beautiful, important, haunting. We have not seen many of these images before. Taken all together, they are entered into evidence. The amount of information packed into this fast-paced documentary is astounding.
For example, the film shows us medieval images of the Crucifixion, which visually remind us that until the Vatican “pardoned” the Jews in 1965 we were hated as Christ killers.
And, then there are the countless covers of that long-exposed forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (which was copied from a tract against Napoleon Bonaparte)– pamphlet after pamphlet, in German, Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Hindi — alleged proof that Judaism or Zionism is a powerful world conspiracy.
We see Yasser Arafat’s venerable ancestor, the Mufti of Jerusalem, shaking hands with Herr Hitler. We see brave pioneers in Israel who, only three years after “standing eyeball to eyeball with Death in Auschwitz,” (Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ words in this film), actually won the 1948 war of independence against seven Arab armies.
We see Chaim Herzog, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations from 1975-1978, as he addresses the U.N., describing it, presciently, as the “world center of Anti-Semitism.” We see the iconic photo of a Jewish child and woman holding their hands up in surrender as the Nazis force them out of the Warsaw ghetto — and, we see how modern-day “Palestinian” cartoonists have turned the Jewish child into an Arab child wearing a keffiyeh; the formerly Nazi soldiers now sport stars of David on their helmets.
We also see countless Nazi-era and contemporary Muslim cartoons in which Jews are portrayed as vulture-like child killers, big nosed greedy bankers, disgusting octopuses and disease-spreading vermin. This anti-Semitism is not learned from the West. It is indigenous to Islam. In fact, Muslims forced Jews to wear distinctive dress and insignia many centuries before the Nazi era. If this startles you awake, wait for what’s coming next.
Unmasked then shows us the Parisian mobs, (leftists and Islamists,) crying “Death to the Jews” in 2001. We see and hear angry, hate-choked speeches delivered on American campuses which characterize Israel as a “Nazi, Apartheid” state.
We see Israeli soldiers confiscating 50 tons of ship-borne weapons in 2010 — weapons which included rockets with the capacity to attack the Israeli Navy and even more sites in civilian Israel.
We see what really happened when armed Turkish mercenaries violated international law and attacked Israeli soldiers on the Mavi Marmara. We are reminded that Israel was condemned for exercising its legal right to self-defense, and that Israel brings all goods and supplies into Gaza after first checking for weapons. The “blockade” of Gaza exists to keep weapons out that are being expressly brought in to exterminate Israelis.
When I ran into anti-Semitism in the early 1970s, I at first believed it could be contained, even resolved, if Israel only Did Something Else.
I was wrong. No matter what else or what more Israel did or could do would ever have been enough. Israel’s crime is an essential and existential one. It exists. This is unforgivable. It remains a permanent offense to Arabs and Muslims.
In 2000, when Arafat launched his Second Intifada, I knew that Wiesel’s bloody beast was back. In 2003, I published a book about it: The New Anti-Semitism: The Current Crisis and What We Must Do About It. 
What I first began writing and talking about nearly a decade ago has here been brought to life, expanded, and dramatically enacted in this film.
Many people still say: If Israel had only made peace with the “Palestinians”—but this is a solution which was never meant to work because the “Palestinians” are a fantasy.
For the record: Israel has indeed tried to make peace [6] with her Arab neighbors, including the “Palestinians.” As this film makes clear, an increasingly Islamist Arab and Muslim world, is not only anti-Israel. It is also anti-American and anti-infidel. Just this week, Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh described the prisoner exchange (1 kidnapped Israel soldier for 1,027 legally tried and convicted mass terrorist killers as due to “Allah;” God rescued these heroes and God will lead us to victory against the Jews. Hamas believes they are engaged in a religious war, not a war merely for territory.
Nevertheless, our daily reality world-wide has become thoroughly Palestinianized.“Palestinians” are now the world’s symbol for all wrongly oppressed innocents. Thus, barbaric terrorists are viewed as justified freedom-fighters, “insurgents,” “militants,” “heroes,” not only by other Islamists but by many of the allegedly “good people” in the West. Europeans who resent having to feel guilty about their murder of six million Jews were quick to view Israelis as the “new Nazis.” They also hoped that this good faith effort would spare them from the hostile Islamists who now populate Europe, many of whom live in hostile, parallel communities. World activists who miss having South African apartheid as an organizing issue have somehow decided that Israel is the new “apartheid” regime.
Such activists do not want to understand that Islam, not Israel, is the largest practitioner of both gender and religious apartheid in the world. In addition, no one (and here I include the world’s professors, scholars, writers, and journalists), wants to acknowledge that Muslim and other non-western countries have a long and horrifying history of racism, imperialism, colonialism, slavery, and genocide. Unlike the West, Muslim leaders have not allowed any abolitionist movements to flourish and they are in no way apologetic for their past. Telling such truths [7] has not only become “politically incorrect” but in many countries in Europe it is tried as a crime. In Muslim countries such truth telling is a capital offense.
In 1979 when Muslim Wahabi Salafists led by the Bedouin Juhayman took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca they held it for more than a month. Even though the Saudi Princes kept the matter under wraps, wild rumors spread. The Pakistani and Iranian (Khomeini’s) media blamed “The Americans and the Zionist Jews” for taking over the Grand Mosque. This led to the torching of the American Embassy in Islamabad and the American Cultural Center in Lahore and to the murder of two American Marines. The Saudi Princes insisted that there was no foreign involvement and blamed local Islamic deviants. It made no difference.
Khomeini’s spin on things was repeated in Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt. Unlike the Pakistani police, the Indian and Turkish police protected the American Consulate in Calcutta. Interestingly, Pope John Paul II was about to speak at a Christian Orthodox conference in Turkey. At the time, one Turkish radical, Mehmet Ali Agca, escaped from prison. Agca and other Turkish Islamists insisted that the Pope was part of the “infidel plot against Mecca and all of Islam.” They demanded that the Pope call off his visit.
A year and a half later, it was none other than Agca who tried to assassinate the Pope at the Vatican in Rome. These connections were made clear to me in John Behling’s important and unpublished Mss about Islam and Terrorism.
Thus, on the wings of false rumor, embassies and consulates were torched. Rumor runs riot among largely illiterate, impoverished people, but also among highly indoctrinated peoples who are trapped within closed, totalitarian societies.
Imagine the effect of a film or even a cartoon, which visually shows them Israeli soldiers (falsely) murdering Arab babies for their blood. Jews as rodents and monkeys. An entire movie that fictionalized an Israeli massacre, which never took place in Jenin. Round-the-world imaginary footage of the Israeli murder of a young boy, Mohamed al-Dura — a murder that never took place.
But, one has seen it. It is so “real” it must be true. Imagine the effect of such films on westerners who are affluent and educated, but whose professors have insisted that such lies are pure truth.
This is precisely why Greenfield’s film is so important. Both the East and the West have been inundated with images and films which portray Israeli massacres and child murders which never took place. Greenfield fights such visual lies on their own turf, and in a medium that is treasured more than books currently are.
Although I have dealt with anti-Semitism since the early 1970s when it manifested mainly amongst leftists and feminists in the West, in terms of expertise, I am the new kid on the block. In addition to the invaluable footage and images, Unmasked also has a truly all-star cast of speakers who have devoted their lives and careers to Israel advocacy and/or to the study of anti-Semitism: Irwin Cotler, Alan Dershowitz, Manfred Gerstenfeld, Jeffrey Herf, Matthias Kunzel, Alvin Rosenfeld, Barry Rubin, Jonathan Sacks, Shimon Samuels, Natan Sharansky, Charles Small, Gerald Steinberg, and Robert Wistrich, among many others.
In addition, the Intifada of 2000 called into service intellectuals, politicians, lawyers, professors, human rights activists, and journalists who felt compelled to use their analytic skills against a possible catastrophe. Included here (and also on camera) are Caroline Glick, Richard Landes, Andrea Levin, Itamar Marcus, Fiamma Nirenstein, Melanie Phillips, Bret Stephens, Ruth Wisse — and myself.
All these people, (and many more beloved bloggers who are not on camera) are, in reality, part of an Internet Defense Force in formation. If Israeli politicians really understood that the hottest war is the battle of ideas they would long ago have opened a Ministry of Propaganda—and by propaganda, I mean a Ministry of Truth Telling amidst the Big Lies.
Why are the philanthropists not funding the first-ever Jewish al-Jazeera global network? We would not be covering Jewish subjects only nor would only Jews be allowed to work with us. The monied “princes” of Qatar are funding a very glossy Al-Jazeera in English (channel 92 in my Manhattan apartment), which runs 24/7 with very few commercials. We need to be able to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help us God, something that we can no longer do on the airwaves and campuses, or at the United Nations or at human rights organizations. Any further delay in this matter will prove tragic.
I have been monitoring Al-Jazeera in English. It is good — very good. And now it has just “covered” the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange. It did so utterly and entirely from the “Palestinian” and Hamas’s point of view. All those Americans who are watching this station for its rather amazing coverage of human trafficking, sex slavery, sports in Australia, New Zealand, and England, African anti-poverty projects, and breaking news all over South America, Asia,and the Arab Middle East, etc. will gradually, over time, be persuaded that Israel is evil and that the “Palestinians” are justified.
Gloria Greenfield, her production company, Doc Emet, and her supporters are to be commended for bringing such eloquent voices together.
Allow me to end with the closing words of Rabbi Sacks who views the Jewish people as a “symbol of hope for every small country, for every persecuted people… Jews, having been through as close as you get to ‘hell on earth,’ have come through, have not looked back, have looked forward, have not nurtured feelings of resentment and revenge, have gone out and built the future. And if that is not a testament to the power of faith, I don’t know what is…”
Sincerely,
Phyllis Chesler

Kurds kill Turkish Security Forces

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-10/19/c_131200697.htm
ANKARA, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- Twenty-four members of the Turkish security forces were killed and 18 others injured in Turkey's southeastern province of Hakkari early on Wednesday in simultaneous attacks carried out by the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), the private Dogan news agency reported.
PKK rebels attacked several military and police buildings and killed 24 soldiers and police officers in several locations in the predominately Kurdish province near the Iraqi border, a day after they killed five police officers and three civilians in Bitlis province in southeastern Turkey, the report said.
A Kurdish news agency said the Turkish forces has crossed into Iraq in pursuit of the PKK members, who has recently intensified attacks on Turkish troops, police and civilians. Turkish officials vowed to reciprocate with absolute determination.
Listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, the PKK took up arms in 1984 to create an ethnic homeland in southeastern Turkey. More than 40,000 people have been killed in conflicts involving the PKK during the past over two decades.

US Troops in Africa

http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/10/19/58994871.html
U.S. President Barack Obama’s last Friday’s decision to send 100 American troopsto Uganda has sent waves over the political space both in the U.S. and abroad. The move seems to be quite justifiable since the primary adversary of American military “advisors” will be the so called Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which has been operating in Uganda and several neighboring countries for over 20 years and is known for mass murders, rapes, abductions, arsons and other crimes.
What does not allow one to acknowledge that the U.S. military mission is a purely humanitarian character aimed at protecting the civilian population, is a series of facts related to the whole story. First, the LRA today is at its weakest point in the last 15 years. The Ugandan army has been launching relatively successful operations against the guerillas and now they are smaller in numbers than 10 years ago, scattered and based mostly in the Central African Republic and South Sudan rather than in Uganda itself.
Second, all previous and present U.S. military operations abroad have shown that the issue of “human rights” and similar slogans are raised selectively, whenever there is a need for the U.S. to establish its presence in this or that part of the world. This was the case with Afghanistan and Iraq; this is the case with Libya and the prospective cases of Syria and Iran. The main thing based in the core of all these current or prospective military actions is oil. And whatever the U.S. diplomats in Uganda might say trying to deny the obvious U.S. commercial interest does not sound true.
This fact is not only dawning upon outside observers, but even on such U.S. mainstream politicians as, for example, Senator John McCain. Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, he warned the administration to be careful and to remember the failed missions of the kind in Somalia or Lebanon.
“I worry about, with the best of intentions, that we somehow get engaged in a commitment that we can't get out of,” said Senator McCain.
In fact, “a commitment the U.S. can’t get out of” is probably the least desired thing for President Obama. Three years ago, he was elected bearing the image of a dove of peace and promising to end the two wars - in Afghanistan and Iraq. None of the two is over, a third one in Libya is going on at full scale and two others – in Syria and Iran – are looming. Now, why Uganda?
Oil is the primary reason, but not the only one. For a decade or more, Africa has been largely neglected by the U.S. foreign policy. Being preoccupied with the “Big Middle East”, successive administrations did not have the time, resources, power and intention to handle the problems of the “Black Continent”. To fill the vacuum, China and lately India were only eager to replace the U.S. as the main partner of Africa. And instead of their American counterparts and competitors, the method used by the two emerging powers was that of “soft power” rather than blunt military pressure.
Such a policy has yielded its results and now Obama is frantically trying to reverse the tendency. But sending 100 troops is hardly an adequate answer to billions of dollars worth of Chinese and Indian investments.
More so, one has to agree with Senator McCain that such an engagement will be difficult to get out of. He said he remembers Somalia and Lebanon, but the Vietnam War veteran might as well remember more distant times.
It is worth reminding that the Vietnam War also started from sending advisors. What it ended in is too is too well known. If Barack Obama wishes to be remembered as the President who launched the biggest number of wars in American history, he has all the right to proceed with widening military presence in Uganda and elsewhere. But it is highly doubtful that this is really his intention. Rather, the force of inertia of the whole machine forces him into reckless adventure like the one in Uganda.


http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-10/19/c_131201009.htm

NAIROBI, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- The Kenyan government said on Wednesday it is not at war with Somalia but helping its neighbor to stabilize the security situation in that Horn of Africa country.
Kenyan Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka said the ongoing operation by the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia and the Kenyan military is aimed at guaranteeing the security of the people of Somalia, Kenyans and foreign visitors.
He assured tourists visiting the country that they are safe, and that Kenya's security agencies are working round the clock to protect them.
"It is gratifying to note that our tourism sector is recognized as one of the key pillars that will spur our economy towards Kenya' s long term economic blue print, the Kenya Vision 2030," he said at the Magical Kenya Tourism and Travel Expo held in Nairobi.
The expo, which is the first to be held in the country, brings together over 150 travel trade partners from 23 countries.
Musyoka said the event was being held at a time when the country's tourism sector is experiencing remarkable upward growth earning the country a total of 737.4 million U.S. dollars.
The east African nation has enhanced security around the Kenyan capital, Nairobi and its environs following the threats issued by Somalia's terrorist group Al-Shabaab of revenge attacks as the Kenyan troops advance deep into the Somali territory to raid the insurgents.
Al-Shabaab issued a warning of retaliatory attacks against Kenya following the latter's decision to send troops into the neighboring Somalia to hunt down and eliminate the Islamist group that has been accused of masterminding kidnappings and cross- border attacks.
The authorities have consequently published emergency telephone contacts to the members of the public to report anything that may be of security concern.
Nairobi police chief Anthony Kibuchi told the media on Tuesday that security measures have been put in place to secure the city.
"It all starts with us and we must defeat these criminals threatening our peace. Let everyone be vigilant all the time," he added.
But Musyoka said Kenyans should invest in serious marketing and add value to the existing array of dormant tourist attractions so as to boost and expand the industry.
The vice president said the tourism sector's contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) currently stands at between 12 and 17 percent, adding that it is possible to push it to 50 percent if people are ready to invest in serious marketing. "This is the time to expand into business tourism, sports tourism and cultural tourism, conferencing and water sports," he noted.
Musyoka said the expo is vital as it will allow the local tourism trade and the public to have an opportunity to interact with the tourism trade partners on a one-to-one basis.
The vice president noted that the government is re-engineering the key tourist products and attractions in order to make the country a unique tourist destination which he said could be attributed to the huge investments in the infrastructure projects such as the expansion and modernization of airports and roads.
He singled out the Isiolo Tourist Resort City located along the proposed Lamu-Isiolo Northern Corridor and the Techno-polis City at Konza that will be connected to Nairobi and the airport through a fast mass transit train system as some of the programs designed to boost the tourism sector.
Musyoka said in the past few years President Mwai Kibaki had directed the relevant government agencies to pursue expansion strategies for tourism beyond the country's traditional markets of Europe and the United States. "Our net in tourism has been cast wider to include the Asian Sub- continent, South Africa, Eastern Europe, the Far East, Russia and the African Continent," he said.
The vice president said the new Tourism Act 2011 which was signed into law recently will provide sustainable growth of a well regulated tourism sector and assured investors of the safety of their investments.
On the same occasion, Minister for Tourism Najib Balala assured that roads in Amboseli and Masai Mara National Parks will soon be improved to ensure local and international tourists access the areas without any problems.
The minister noted that 2011 is the year of tourism, saying Kenya expects over 1.3 million tourist arrivals.

The War in the pages of history books

Dear DHFC Supporter:

A new and different kind of war is being waged against Israel—a war as deadly as the one in which terrorist rockets rain down on Israeli citizens and suicide bombers attempt to cross into their daily lives.

This other war is a war of words and books. It is being waged by pro-Palestinian journalists, academics and Biblical scholars in the west who not only deny Israel's right to exist today but also deny that Jews have any history in the Middle East at all! It sounds preposterous, but as noted Middle East scholar David Meir-Levi shows in his ground breaking new pamphlet Stolen History: How the Palestinians and their Allies Attack Israel's Right to Exist by Erasing its Past, this is exactly what is happening.

You see, the war for Israel's survival is being fought in the Negev, Gaza, the West Bank, the Lebanon border; in the U.S. Congress and the United Nations. But it is also being fought in the pages of history books now being written and in lectures now being given in college classrooms around the country where the existence of a historical Jewish presence in the Middle East is subjected to denial and erasure.

That's why we have to put Stolen History into the hands of students and help them challenge their professors to make it part of the curriculum. We're also arranging a national campus speaking tour for David Meir Levi, who will debate left wing academics who have signed onto this attempt to erase Jewish history. But our budget for this project is modest. We need to raise $75,000 in by midnight tomorrow to counter the lies about Jewish history—that's less than 48 hours from now!

Please follow this link right now to make a tax-deductible contribution of $50, $100, or even $500—whatever you can afford—and we will send a free copy of Stolen History.

Because there never was a "Palestine" or a "Palestinian people," those who promote the notion of a homeland where the Palestinians have lived from "time immemorial" must create a faux-history to give their claims credibility. What could be easier than simply stealing Israel's history, thereby gaining the added dividend of erasing the Jewish state from the history of the region and the world? This is what pro-Palestinian academics and intellectuals, in collaboration with Arab politicians, are now doing—denying evidence of all things Jewish in the Land of Israel and filling in the blanks they create with a fictitious narrative of an ancient "Palestinian people" who controlled the land of Canaan.

We must fight back! That's why I'm asking you to help the Freedom Center reach our goal by making the most generous contribution you can afford right now. Don't forget that all contributions are tax-deductible and we'll rush you a free copy of Stolen History!

As Meir Levi shows in Stolen History, while this Orwellian fiction may be transparent—a fraud comparable to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion—much of the world accommodates the deception. But we will not stand by and allow this malicious fraud to take hold.

This war is one we cannot afford to lose. It is a war not only for Israel's survival but for truth itself. Please follow this link right now to make the most generous contribution you can afford to help us raise $75,000 by midnight tomorrow so we can launch this campaign. Time is running out, so please act now.

Thank you again for all your support.

Sincerely,

David Horowitz
President & Founder

Kenyan troops adv ance 120 km deep inside Somalia

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-10/18/c_131198721.htm
NAIROBI, Oct. 18 (Xinhua) -- Kenyan troops are making further advances some 120 kilometers deep inside Somalia to seize the rebel-held town of Afmadow, military officials confirmed on Tuesday.
Military Operations Information Officer Major Emmanuel Chirchir said the soldiers will soon capture the town which has been surrounded by al Shabaab fighters blamed for spate of abductions involving foreigners in Kenya.
"Our troops are advancing towards the Afmadow very soon and our activities will be concentrated in this town," Chirchir told Xinhua by telephone on Tuesday.
However, local officials said the progress of Kenya and Somali troops has been slowed by muddy terrain after heavy rain.
"It rained heavily near the Kenya-Somalia border but we hope the military operation will advance inside Somalia," said a military official on condition of anonymity.
The operation continued as tension remained high at the border between Kenya and Somalia where Nairobi's troops launched an offensive against Shebaab rebels on Sunday.
The Somali militant group, al Shabaab, has warned Kenya to withdraw its troops from Somalia, or face a serious conflict.
The Kenyan government launched the military operation dubbed Linda Nchi (Protect the country) in response to several cross- border abductions it blames on al Shabaab.
However, the Islamist group has denied being responsible for the recent kidnapping of two aid workers.
The warning promoted the Kenyan police to caution Nairobi residents to be careful as they go about their businesses in the city center.
They, however, assured that detectives have been mobilized to ensure security all the time in the city center following the threats.
Top on the list of areas the militant groups may target are public places like shopping malls, bus termini, market places, passenger services vehicles and office blocks.
The onslaught continued as the authorities arrested two British nationals as they were trying to cross the border into Somalia. The pair, originally from Welsh capital Cardiff were questioned and are now under investigation.
The pair were held close to the border with Somalia where a British woman Judith Tebbut was kidnapped and her husband David shot dead at their holiday resort last month.
It also comes after two Spanish aid workers were kidnapped from the Dadaab refugee camp and a French was taken from another resort.
Police in Wales are reportedly liaising with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the British Embassy in Nairobi over the arrests.
The Foreign Office said it was aware "of reports of two British nationals detained in Kenya on Oct. 16 and we are seeking normal consular access".
"South Wales Police are currently in liaison with the Kenyan authorities in respect of two British nationals who have been detained near to the border with Somalia. The identities of these persons have yet to be formally confirmed, both are believed to be from the Cardiff area. The families of these persons have been notified," the police reportedly said in a statement.
The East African nation continued to flex its aerial military prowess as it reportedly launched air strikes on the Somali towns of Afmadow and Qoqani, the strategic al Shabaab strongholds, pushing its assault deeper toward central Somalia.
Kenya also announced it was ready to fight al Shabaab to its logical conclusion, adding that the military offensive against the terror group would continue until the militia are subdued.
Kenyan troops combed villages in Somalia in hot pursuit of the militia with armored vehicles, as its fighter jets overflew the enemy's territory.
Witnesses said they saw dozens of Kenyan military vehicles pouring over the border, backed by planes and helicopters even as reports said al Shabaab, which denies kidnapping Kenyans and foreigners, had amassed more men to back up its militia in Afmadow where they were being pinned down by the heavy firepower of the Kenya army and air force.
Al Shabaab militants had been gathering around the town since Monday but no clash between them and Kenyan forces had been reported.
Eyewitnesses say al Shabaab officials have forced truck owners to hand over their vehicles so that fighters can be moved towards Afmadow.
Afmadow is about 90 km on the main road north of the port city of Kismayo, al Shabaab 's main economic power base.

Gilad at last Home

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/148889#.Tp24T3JiK-U

A teary-eyed Israel, headed by the Shalit family, welcomed Gilad back home to Israel Tuesday after 1,941 days in captivity at the hands of Hamas and allied terrorists, some of whom continued to urge more kidnappings. He is undergoing medical tests before returning to his family home in the Galilee.

The soldier, who had changed into an IDF uniform, met his parents at the Tel Nof Air Force base near Tel Aviv after being initially received by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz.

The happiness, considered the fulfillment of the mitzvah of bringing back a Jew from captivity ,was mixed with the pain and fear that more Israelis will be murdered by the 1,027 terrorists and security prisoners who were freed in exchange for Shalit. That mitzvah hedged by halakha which is against redeeming a captive if it leads to more captives being taken.

In Gaza and Ramallah, thousands of Arabs wildly celebrated the return of the first batch of terrorists to Judea and Samaria. Others are to be deported.
Hamas leaders, including one of those released from jail, continued to call for more kidnappings of Israeli soldiers to gain the freedom of terrorists who were not included in the swap.

Yehiye Sinwar, who was freed by Israel after being sentenced for kidnapping and killing two soldiers, told Hamas television, "We shall spare no efforts to liberate the rest of our brothers and sisters. We urge the Al Qassam Brigades to kidnap more soldiers to exchange them for the freedom of our loved ones who are still behind bars".

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas showed willingness to unite with Hamas as he agreed to share the stage with the terrorist group’s local leaders during a welcoming ceremony in Ramallah.

ASEAN countries welcome China's initiative for 10+1 cultural ministerial meetings

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-10/17/c_131196545.htm
CHONGQING, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- China and ASEAN countries will see closer cultural cooperation, as the two sides made a decision to schedule cultural ministerial meetings at the ongoing 12th Asia Arts Festival in southwest China's Chongqing municipality.
The consensus to hold regular ministerial meetings was reached based on China's proposal at the China and ASEAN (10+1) Cultural Ministerial Meeting on Oct. 10.
The future China and ASEAN (10+1) cultural ministerial meetings, in comparison with the existing cultural ministerial meeting of ASEAN and China, Japan and South Korea (10+3), will allow exchanges between China and ASEAN member countries to be more targeted and direct, said Arief Maulana, culture officer of the ASEAN Secretariat.
The previous cultural exchanges between China and the Association of Southwest Asian Nations (ASEAN) were conducted within the 10+3 framework, which had several limitations.
"Previous cooperation relied on individual projects, rather than a stable mechanism," Maulana said. "ASEAN countries want to learn about China's best practices in cultural heritage protection, cultural industry development and cultural policy-making."
"The establishment of the 10+1 mechanism will not only promote cultural protection, but also help spread our culture to regions outside Asia," Maulana said.
The 10+1 cultural ministerial meeting on Oct. 10 is part of a 10-day arts festival that will run from Oct. 10 to 20, marking the 20th anniversary of the establishment of dialogues between China and the ASEAN.
The festival, hosted by China's Ministry of Culture, includes a range of events, such as the Asian Culture Forum, during which the Chongqing Declaration was reached.
The Chongqing Declaration, issued at the closing ceremony of the Asian Culture Forum, states that cultural and art institutions from Asian countries should carry out further dialogues and cooperation and effectively make use of different cultural resources to promote the development of Asian culture and arts.
"The launch of the Asian Culture Forum has expanded cultural communication forms among Asian countries from communication between artists to large-scale exchanges between research institutions and organizations," said Wang Chen, an official with the Bureau for External Cultural Relations under China's Culture Ministry.
Based on the consensus reached at the Oct. 10 ministerial meeting, China and ASEAN are dedicated to advancing their cooperation to a more pragmatic level.
"It is now time for more practical cooperation and ASEAN countries would like to see a concrete action plan in cultural cooperation," said Wang.
He proposed that China and ASEAN further collaborate in cultural heritage preservation, the construction of a cultural resource database and personnel training.
The current task is to decide on the details of the 10+1 mechanism, such as the frequency and schedule for holding ministerial meetings, as well as priorities for future cooperation, said Maulana.
Maulana added that ASEAN would like more support from China in the development of small- and medium-sized companies in the cultural industry.
For ASEAN countries, the establishment of the 10+1 mechanism means that cultural exchanges will be a "two-way street," said Felipe de Leon, chairman of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts of the Philippines.
Indonesia hopes to enhance cultural exchanges with China and protect Asian cultural diversities against threats posed by globalization, said Agus Sartono, Indonesia's deputy coordinating minister for people's welfare.
"Singapore wants to strengthen cooperation with China in traditional arts, such as martial arts, and invite Chinese artists to Singapore so that local fans can get a better understanding of traditional culture," said Sim Gim Guan, deputy secretary of Singapore's Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts.
The first official meeting of China and ASEAN (10+1) cultural ministers will be held in Singapore in 2012.

Pro-Israel Activists Take on SJP at Columbia University

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/148822#.Tpxp5nJiK-U
Tensions flared between dozens of pro-Israel demonstrators and members of “Students for Justice in Palestine” on Sunday afternoon outside of Columbia University.
It was the third and final day of the 2011 National Students for Justice in Palestine “teach-in”, organized by members to prepare for their upcoming Israel Apartheid Week events across college campuses throughout North America.
Holding aloft both Israeli and American flags and signs saying, “SJP Brings Stealth Jihad to Columbia University”, “Stop Hamas Terror Against Jews and Christians” and “Occupy Columbia With Truth and Justice - Not Lies and Anti-Israel Incitement”, the pro-Israel supporters represented such organizations as Americans For a Safe Israel (AFSI), the National Conference of Jewish Affairs (NCJA), Amcha - Coalition for Jewish Concerns, and the Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam (HRCARI).
Rancorous debates and raucous arguments broke out between the two sides as the Zionist contingent engaged the SJP members as they exited the university on the corner of 116th Street and Broadway.
“Our conference is about advocating for human rights in Palestine. Our Palestinian brothers and sisters are being subjected to the most severe degree of oppression on a daily basis by the Israeli colonialists and occupiers and we are here to put forth our message that a Jewish state is a fundamentally racist concept as are the apartheid practices of that state,” said Amina Fayyid, an SJP student organizer.
According to the SJP web site, one of the objectives of the conference is to “facilitate and support the advancement of existing campaigns and the development of new campaigns with particular (but not exclusive) emphasis on Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of Israel.” Among the multifarious seminars and workshops taking place at the conference is one entitled “Indigenous Struggles: situating Palestine as a settler-colonial project”, which ostensibly explores “understanding Palestine within comparative settler colonial framework while seeking to re-align the Palestinian movement within a universal history of decolonization, and imagining new possibilities for Palestinian resistance, solidarity and common struggle.”
Helen Freedman, executive director of Americans For A Safe Israel (AFSI), said, “Israel is the only stable democracy in the Middle East and these student activists know very well that Palestinians living in Israel have a much better lifestyle than they would in any other Arab country; yet their goal in organizing such a conference is perpetuate the myths, incessant lies and blatant distortions that they use in their quest to demonize Israel. What we are witnessing here today is nothing short of the most egregious form of anti-Semitism cloaked in the clever subterfuge of anti-Zionism.”
Taking aim at Columbia University for allowing their campus to be used for the conference, Glenn Richter, former chairman of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry movement and the current director of Amcha -CJC said, “This university has a long and shameful tradition of anti-Semitic policies, dating back over 70 years ago when brave students protested against the pro-Nazi policies of the institution’s heavy-handed president, Nicholas Murray Butler. Butler then had a leader of the protests expelled. Today we are here protesting against a different form of racist ideology, commonly known as Islamo-fascism.”
Calling the members of SJP “Islamo-Fascists For An Arab Only Palestine”, the Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam issued a flyer declaring that the motivation for the conference was predicated on “bigotry, violence and genocide against the Jewish people.”  Dr. Marvin Belsky, a retired New York City physician and spokesman for HRCARI said, “In Israel, Christians, Muslims and gays have full human rights, protection and dignity. Arabic and Hebrew are the official languages and Arabs who comprise over 1.2 million citizens serve in government, as well as assuming positions as judges, doctors, ambassadors and police and Israel remains a refuge for the world’s oppressed from Asia to Africa.”
Larry Domnitch, a prolific author, academic and historian, said he came “to express my support for Israel in the face of so much misinformation that is being disseminated on this campus and others as well. In a few weeks will be the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration which expressed the inherent and historical right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. 94 years later that right is still being contested.”
Julian Rappaport, one of the demonstrators engaging with passers-by at the university’s gate, contended that the anti-Israel conference inside was not an expression of free speech, but “to give only one, incorrect side of the picture. Columbia has the responsibility to be more critical of what's going on.”
During a heated confrontation with an SJP member who called for “the complete obliteration of the racist Zionist entity,” Mr. Rappaport was arrested by police for allegedly kicking the student and was charged with disorderly conduct. He was released soon thereafter and returned to the demonstration.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/148832#.TpxrDXJiK-U

The international media is deeply interested in the impending release of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit on Tuesday.
Jerusalem Capital Studios (JCS), Israel’s leading news production firm in the Middle East, will transmit live broadcasts of the events surrounding Shalit’s return to various foreign news networks around the world.  Much of the media interest comes from French television networks, as Shalit has both Israeli and French citizenship.
JCS will film the different events surrounding Shalit’s release using their television production facilities in both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The firm will then transmit news footage via satellite to various television networks including The European Broadcasting Union, Israeli networks and international news clientele.  JCS’s client base includes CNN, Fox News, ABC, NBC, ITN, RAI, Sky, CCTV, ZDF, ARD, France 24 and more.
At the same time, the firm will run two additional central broadcasts in Mizpe Hila, where the Shalit family lives and to where Gilad will return home.
According to Hanani Rapaport, the CEO of JCS, the overwhelming interest from the international press stems from the fact that such a significant and central event in Israel’s recent history has not been recorded since the unfolding events surrounding the Turkish flotilla in June 2010. 

The Jewish Conspiracy: Occupy Wall Street

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/148795#.TprkzXJiK-U
Protesters worldwide on Saturday launched demonstrations against bankers, financiers and politicians. Organizers accuse them of ruining global economies and condemning millions to poverty and hardship through greed, Australia's News.com.au reported.
Inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement that started in September, protests started Saturday in New Zealand, continued in Rome, and are planned to ripple round the world to Alaska via Frankfurt, London, Washington and New York.
Riot police in many cities are reportedly gearing up for the protests as well. Cities such as London and Athens have seen violent confrontations with demonstrators this year, but it was impossible to say how many people would actually turn out due to organizers' reliance on social media websites.
"I've been waiting for this protest for a long time, since 2008," Daniel Schreiber, 28, an editor in Berlin, told Reuters. "I was always wondering why people aren't outraged and why nothing has happened and finally, three years later, it's happening."
New Zealand and Australia were the first countries where demonstrations were staged, where some 3,000 protesters gathered peacefully in Aukland, while most of traditionally reserved Asia was quiet. 
"I think people want real democracy," Nick Carson, a spokesman for OccupyMelbourne.Org, told reporters as about 1,000 gathered in the Australian city.
But few, if any, in the Occupy movement seem to have a clear answer as to just what 'real democracy' is.
In London, WikiLeaks founder and self-branded information anarchist Julian Assange addressed a sea of people outside Paternoster Square behind a line of riot police. As Assange tried to quiet the crowd, rows of protesters fell to their knees screaming "Let Jesus speak!"
“This movement is not about the destruction of law, it is about the construction of law,” Assange told those assembled without bothering to explain what new law was being constructed. “I just wanted to say, we are all individuals.” 
Ronan McNern, 36, an activist working to support the Occupy movement, insisted to a Newsweek reporter that the protesters did have a plan, but when pressed had no details. 
"But there is a plan," He said while dizzyingly insisting the movement was leaderless on purpose. “We need a new movement. That movement doesn’t know what it is yet, but this is the beginning.” 
But while the protests began peacefully, AFP reported the protests turned violent in Rome, where demonstrators turned on police after smashing bank and storefront windows and setting cars on fire in a historic piazza.
Italian news agency ANSA said 70 people were hurt in the clashes, three of whom were in serious condition.
AFP said the violence appeared to stem from an isolated group of protesters among tens of thousands of largely peaceful demonstrators who marched in Rome yesterday. As the violent clashes raged, some peaceful protesters were reportedly forced to take refuge on the steps of St. John Lateran basilica and within the church itself.
As chants of “Here Comes the Ethical Revolution,” “We Are the 99 Percent,” “Cameron Must Go,” and “Goldman Sachs Is the Work of the Devil” resounded around the world,  few had any idea where the protest was going - including the protesters themselves.

The ”Jewish Conspiracy” theme is becoming more popular in the Occupy Wall Street protests. YouTube video: Almost all judges are Jewish.
[youtube:125509]
“The people who run Wall Street are guilty of crimes against humanity,” stated a black American protester. “A small ethnic group consists of…almost all bankers on Wall Street are Jewish.
“There is a conspiracy in this country, and Jews control the media, the finances…. The Jews represent two percent of the population…and have pooled their money together to take control of Americans finances….
“Almost all of the federal judges are Jewish.”
He also charged that both the Democratic and Republican parties based their campaigns to “appease Jewish Americans because Jewish money controls American politics….
"It is a conspiracy that everyone is afraid to talk about.”

Making Case Against Palestinian Statehood

http://www.jpost.com/Features/FrontLines/Article.aspx?id=241660

Some eyebrows were raised in September when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was not seated behind Israel’s desk in the UN General Assembly when US President Barack Obama addressed the gathering.

Odd, some said, that Netanyahu – in New York for the meeting – did not feel compelled to be in the audience when Obama spoke, delivering what turned out to be the most pro-Israeli address of his tenure. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was there to applaud, to be sure, but not Netanyahu.

Netanyahu, instead, was during that moment meeting with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.

In normal times, opting for a tête-à-tête with the leader of Colombia over showing respect to the president of the United States, would seem a rather unusual choice. But these are not normal times, at least not at the UN where a Security Council committee of experts is expected to present their initial findings next week on whether “Palestine” should become the 194th UN member state.

The time-slot that Obama spoke in was the only time Santos had available for a meeting with Netanyahu, and the US administration – as keen as Israel that seven Security Council countries either vote against or abstain on the PA’s statehood measure so Washington does not have to use its veto to block it – reacted with understanding to Netanyahu’s nonattendance. Colombia was the only South American country that did not follow Brazil’s lead last year and recognize a Palestinian state.

The meeting with Santos, according to diplomatic officials, went very well, with Netanyahu emerging with a sense that Bogota – with close ties both with Jerusalem and Washington – would not support the Palestinian effort.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, however, is not convinced, and this week flew to Colombia to meet with Santos and press his bid, trying to sway that country to join China, Russia, India, South Africa, Brazil and Lebanon in the Security Council in supporting the move. He needs nine of 15 Security Council votes in order to trigger a US veto, a move that – while not having much practical meaning since the motion would fail because of the US veto – would give him an important moral and symbolic victory.

From Colombia, Abbas flew to Paris and a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. His foreign minister, Riyad al-Malki, was scheduled to go to Portugal and Bosnia-Herzegovina, two other Security Council nations.

France, while calling for the UN General Assembly to upgrade the Palestinians from observer to non-state member has so-far balked at supporting the full member bid through the Security Council.

One Western diplomat told The Jerusalem Post that in the final analysis all four EU countries on the Security Council – the permanent members France and Britain, as well as temporary members Germany and Portugal – will not support the bid.

Bosnia-Herzegovina, an EU “potential candidate state” not keen on splitting ranks with the body it wants to join, is expected to follow what the other EU countries do. Add in the US and Colombia, and the move is blocked. And that is even before the votes of Gabon and Nigeria are counted in.

At least on paper.

In the three weeks since Abbas announced his bid, he and Malki – perhaps a signal that the Palestinians are not as confident in winning the nine necessary votes as they say they are – have been peripatetic, travelling from country to country to win over votes. Netanyahu and Lieberman, on the other hand, have over the last few weeks been largely sedentary, leaving the work to Israel’s envoys and ambassadors.

Israel’s leaders met the heads of the Security Council countries at the UN, and Lieberman visited Bosnia-Herzegovina twice over the last year. But Netanyahu and Lieberman are not currently engaged in any personal full-court press.

What Lieberman did do this week, however, was circulate a document to Israel’s representatives abroad drawn up by the ministry’s legal department that succinctly outlines the legal arguments against granting the Palestinians’ UN state membership.

This paper will serve as a basis for legal arguments against the move.

“The Palestinian request for membership in the United Nations, which was submitted to the Secretary-General on September 23, 2011 implies that a Palestinian state already, somehow, exists,” reads the document.

“The request asked to build upon this supposedly existing status to request membership in the United Nations. However, based on both traditional and contemporary legal and tangible tests, it is clear that while one day the Palestinian state could come into existence, today the Palestinian entity has not achieved the status of statehood.”

The six-page document obtained by the Post argues that “from a legal perspective, currently, the Palestinians fail the traditional test for statehood” and do not meet at least two of the four prerequisites for statehood accepted in international law: a permanent population and a defined territory.

The document cites even those supporting Palestinian statehood as saying they are currently not ready. For instance, one Oxford professor, Guy Goodwin-Gil, wrote a legal opinion for the Palestinians saying that “Until such a time as a final settlement is agreed [between Israel and the Palestinians], the putative State of Palestine will have no territory over which it exercises effective sovereignty, its borders will be indeterminate or disputed, its population, actual and potential, undetermined... While it may be an observer state in the United Nations, it will fall short of meeting the internationally agreed criteria of statehood.”

Regarding the issue of a state representing a permanent population, the Foreign Ministry’s paper argues the Palestinians have been ambiguous about “which group of people would constitute the permanent population of their state.”

“The Palestinians seem to be seeking to establish a new state and at the same time preserve the status of Palestinians living in the diaspora as so-called ‘refugees,’” according to the paper.

“As part of this effort, they have presented contradictory positions, wanting to continue to represent all Palestinians on refugee related claims, but, at the same time, stating that they do not intend to grant citizenship to members of the Palestinian diaspora. This internal contradiction – as a state can only represent the claims of its own citizens – necessarily leads to ambiguity on the population issue.” The document argues that the refugee issue is one of the core issues that need to be resolved in any final status agreement.

“By establishing a state, the Palestinians could offer citizenship to all Palestinians, thus ending their refugee problem, as all of the Palestinian diaspora could have a state of nationality,” the paper reads. “However, in a recent interview in the Lebanese newspaper, The Daily Star, Abdullah Abdullah, Palestinian ambassador to Lebanon, said that the new Palestinian state would not recognize refugees living in the West Bank and Gaza as citizens and would ‘absolutely not’ be issuing Palestinian passports to refugees.” In other words, Palestinians living in West Bank and Gaza refugee camps – in places such as Balata, Dehaishe, Kalandiya, Bureij and Nuseirat – would not become citizens of the new Palestinian state.

According to the document, the current “vocal internal disagreement” among Palestinians themselves on who would constitute the citizens of a future Palestinian state undermines “one of the basic criteria of statehood.” Regarding the need for an aspiring state to have “effective control” over the territory it claims as its own, the report argues it is “difficult” to say the Palestinians “meet the most basic test of effective governmental control of the territories they are claiming within their state.”

Hamas, the paper states, continues to exercise full control of the Gaza Strip, and Israel effectively retains full control over the 60% of the territory in the West Bank classified as Area C.

“Despite the signing by Fatah and Hamas of a so-called “Reconciliation Agreement” in May 2011, nothing has changed in practice,” the paper states. “Palestinian Authority leadership, which submitted the UN request for membership, is completely excluded from responsibility in Gaza and retains no control” there.

To illustrate the point, the paper points out that all security authorities and police in Gaza are controlled by Hamas. Even Abbas himself has been unable to visit there since Hamas seized control in 2007.

In addition, the PA cannot hold elections there since Hamas has “repeatedly prevented visits of electoral commissions to Gaza to allow for preparations for an electoral process.”

The document further illustrates the lack of PA control over Gaza by pointing out that Palestinian state building measures enacted by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, including judicial and legal reforms widely praised by the international community, “have been limited exclusively to the West Bank.” The paper also argues the Palestinian economic dependence on international aid and its need for Israeli practical and logistical support in economic matters shows it does not effectively control the territory it claims for its state, and also raises questions about the future state’s viability.

In addition to more traditional criteria for statehood, recently additional criteria have been added that should be considered before granting statehood status, the paper argues, such as whether the demand for recognition is based upon a lawful claim, and whether the new state would be both willing and able to abide by international law and protect human rights.

Regarding a lawful claim of statehood, the paper says “it is a generally accepted principle that in order to qualify for recognition, a state must emerge from an agreed and legal process and not by taking advantage of its own violation or breach of an international rule or agreement.” This is clearly not the case here, the document asserts, since a unilateral Palestinian bid for statehood – bypassing negotiations with Israel – is a breach of the 1995 Interim Agreement that determined that “all final status issues (including borders, Jerusalem, settlements, security, refugees and water) are to be settled by Israel and the Palestinians in a negotiated and mutually-agreed manner, and that neither party is to act unilaterally to change the status of the West Bank or Gaza.”

In addition, the paper stated various international frameworks from UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 all the way up through the Road Map and recent Quartet declarations “are built upon the principle that resolution of the conflict and peace is to be achieved through negotiations between the two parties and the conclusion of a mutually-agreed settlement. Therefore, the current Palestinian bid for recognition as a state should be rejected as based upon a breach of accepted and binding legal and political frameworks.”

As to a commitment to international law, human rights and global peace, the document asserts that an aspiring state’s willingness and ability to undertake peaceful relations and observe international law is a prerequisite for statehood recognition and is seen as such by the UN’s own charter.

“With Hamas, a recognized terrorist organization, continuing to violently control the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians clearly do not meet the UN Charter criteria,” the document asserts. “Hamas is certainly not ‘peaceloving,’ and so long as the terrorist organization, which continues to call for Israel’s destruction, remains in exclusive control of the Gaza Strip, there is no way that the Palestinian leadership will be able to carry out the UN Charter’s most basic obligations as they are unable to control the terror activity of Hamas.” Furthermore, the PA cannot guarantee basic universal rights and freedoms.

“The current state of human rights and freedom of speech in the Gaza Strip, the silencing of political opposition (including the violent crackdown on Fatah representatives) and the dysfunctional judiciary in the Gaza Strip all point to limitations on the ability of the Palestinians to guarantee compliance with international law,” the paper states.

And finally, the document asserts, “recent statements have called for the omission of Jews in a future Palestinian state. In late May, President Abbas told the Arab League that such a state should be free of all Israelis. On September 1, the PLO representative to the United States was quoted that no Jews should live in this state as ‘it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated.’ This position underlines a basic lack of tolerance and democratic values and a current failure to protect and uphold universal legal norms and principles.”

Those are Israel’s arguments. The degree to which they are resonating abroad, however, remains an open question.

Occupy Judaism

“We chose to erect and occupy our sukkah here at Zuccotti Park,” a statement from Occupy Judaism read regarding the New York succah at the protests. “There is no better place to celebrate the festival of Succot this year than right here at Occupy Wall Street. We stand in solidarity with all those who are challenging the inequitable distribution of resources in our country, who dare to dream of a more just and compassionate society.”

“There are a lot of Jews who have been really affected by the economy,” Rabbi Alana Suskin, a participant in Occupy DC, said. “There may be one synagogue in the country where no one has lost their jobs. Jews also have their poor. It’s the unspoken elephant in the room. Not everybody’s well off. Probably most Jews are part of the 99 percent.”

Allegations have been made by some, including New York Times columnist David Brooks, that the Occupy movements are anti-Semitic. Suskin said such concerns were effectively defused by the reaction she and other organizers had to their efforts to erect a succah for the holiday in the Occupy protests in the nation’s capital.
When her group approached organizers about building a succah in McPherson Square in DC, Suskin said, the organizers “were thrilled, and we received offers of help and supplies.”

Occupy Wall Street and its regional cohorts, Suskin said, are an “American movement for justice, and as far as I can see the people around us recognize that Jews are Americans just as they are, and there isn't, as far as I can tell, any evidence that the 1% term is any kind of coded message about Jews.”

In fact, organizers said, the protests afford American Jews an opportunity to rethink their relationship to their own religion. One of the organizers of Occupy Judaism, Daniel Sieradski, was involved in putting together the New York Kol Nidre service by the protest site which attracted between 700 and 1000 participants last week. Siedradski called such services “civil disobedient davening.”

“It started with one tweet and got 1,000 people,” Sieradski said, saying that New York’s Kol Nidre Occupy service was traditional egalitarian, and included secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews alike.

Sieradski calls the Occupy movements “one of the most exciting things to happen in American Judaism.”

“We're giving people an outlet through which to express their Jewish values that no other Jewish institution has been able to provide them with,” Sieradski said, adding that he hopes that the long term momentum of the movement will lead Jews to “occupy our own Jewish institutions, rendering them responsive and accountable to the needs of the community.”

“Most Jewish institutions are dominated by their wealthiest donors, whose views might not be in line with that of the wider Jewish community,” Sieradski said. “It’s our community and our tradition as much as it is anybody's, and they need to make space for us.”

Ideally, Sieradski said, the Occupy Judaism movement will have the effect of “making our tradition a living, breathing justice movement.”

“These may be traditional rituals,” Sieradski said of endeavors like the Kol Nidre services and Succot being erected in protests nationwide, “but in the context of admonitions of the prophets and American Jewish history, they are an opportunity to create consistency between our beliefs, our heritage, our practice and our values.”

One of many Facebook pages erected to coordinate Succot celebrations at the Occupy protests is Los Angeles’ “Not Just A Sukkah: A JUST Sukkah at Occupy LA.” Citing the charge of Isaiah, the page reads, “There is no more important time than right now to be present, really present, in the streets of the United States to decry the injustice of those who are suffering under crushing debt, foreclosure, lack of health care; to decry the injustice that the one percent who brought the economy down are still in their offices 'earning' bonuses while the other ninety-nine percent of us are trying to figure out how to make it to the end of the month.”