Command the Raven

From Haaretz

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman responded Friday to the Quartet of Middle East peace mediators’ call to relaunch Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, saying that peace is not something which can be created artificially and with unrealistic timetables.

“Peace will be established through actions and not by force,” Lieberman told Belgium’s Jewish community ahead of his scheduled talks with the ministers of several European nations.

“The Quartet is ignoring the last 16 years of Israeli attempts, and is giving the Palestinians the impression that they can achieve their demands by continuing to refuse direct negotiations under false pretexts,” Lieberman said.

“The Israeli government has made many significant gestures. Now it’s the Palestinian’s turn to prove that they are really interested in negotiations,” Lieberman added.

The Quartet, which comprises members from Russia, the United States, the UN and the European Union, called Israel and the Palestinians to renew peace negotiations in order to achieve a two-state solution within 24 months. The members met in Moscow on Friday in an effort to defuse the latest crisis in peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians.

“The Quartet believes these negotiations should lead to a settlement, negotiated between the parties within 24 months, that ends the occupation that began in 1967 and results in the emergence of an independent, democratic and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbors,” said a joint statement read by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

“The Quartet reiterates that Arab-Israeli peace and the establishment of a peaceful state of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza is in the fundamental interest of the parties, of all states in the region, and of the international community,” said the statement. “In this regard the Quartet calls on all states to support dialogues between the parties.”

The mediators also called on Israel following their meeting to freeze all settlement activities and denounced its recent decision to approve construction of 1.600 new homes in East Jerusalem.

“The Quartet urges the government of Israel to freeze all settlement activities … and to refrain from demolitions and evictions,” according to the statement read by Ban. The statement also condemned Israel’s approval of the construction in East Jerusalem.

At the start of the talks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said: “All of us today hope to arrive at some common conclusions which will help to promote the beginning of a dialogue between the two sides.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in Moscow, discussed steps to improve the outlook for Israeli-Palestinian peace by telephone with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday.

Netanyahu’s spokesman Nir Chefetz said the Israeli leader had proposed some “mutual confidence-building steps” that both Israel and the Palestinians could take in the West Bank. He declined to spell these out.

Clinton met her Russian counterpart Lavrov, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Quartet Representative Tony Blair over a closed dinner on Thursday evening before Friday’s formal meeting.

No details of that meeting were disclosed.

“We intend to have a very broad-ranging discussion with our Quartet partners,” Clinton said at a joint news conference with Lavrov on Thursday. “Our goals remain the same. It is to re-launch negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians on a path that will lead to a two-state solution.”

The Quartet was formed in 2002 in Spain to assist in mediating an end to escalating violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It last met on the margins of the UN General Assembly in September.

But its results so far have been meagre, leading some analysts to dismiss it as an expensive club for diplomats.

Moscow had originally hoped to organise a full-scale international conference on the Middle East this year but the lack of progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace talks has forced Russia to settle instead for hosting a quartet meeting.

- From Prophecy News Watch

From JPost

American Jewish leaders are slamming a report by the Presbyterian Church USA that blames Israel for the “Palestinian resistance” and denounces companies doing business with Israel.

The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, which circulated a memo to its member agencies and board of directors Monday, said the biased report reduced the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a caricature, demonizing Israel and delegitimizing its right to exist as a Jewish state.

“It’s a highly-selective use of text, history and circumstances to form an anti-Israel narrative,” said JCPA vice president Ethan Felson. “They give significant voice to anti-Zionists, condemn companies that sell to Israel and allow for the demonization of Israel. That’s several red lines.”

The 172-page report, written by the church’s Middle East Study Committee, is to be debated at the church’s General Assembly this July. But Jewish leaders say its recommendations renew old tensions over the church’s previous divestment policies toward Israel, threatening Presbyterian-Jewish relations.

The current report charges the US government with “complicity in the Israeli occupation” and suggests that the government consider withholding aid to Israel until it agrees to stop building settlements. The report singles out Caterpillar, which manufactures construction equipment, for its “continued profit-making from non-peaceful use of its products.”

It also endorses the Kairos Palestine document, a manifesto by Christian Palestinians that calls for an end to Israel as a Jewish state and uses words like “evil” and “sin” to describe Israeli actions.

Rabbi Steve Gutow, president of JCPA, said in a statement that Jewish leaders were dismayed at the attempt to “delegitimize and demonize” Israel.

“We hope that before this report is brought for a vote at the church’s General Assembly, significant revisions are made,” he said, noting that the report threatened relations with the church.

Church leaders were not immediately available for comment Tuesday.

Last week, however, the Rev. Susan Andrews told The Jewish Week that “the recommendations we will be making are in keeping with our former statements and policies.”

The Presbyterian church raised the ire of the Jewish community in 2004, when the General Assembly approved faith-selective divestment from Israel. In 2006 and 2008, it retreated from its position.

This year’s report, which takes aim at companies doing business with Israel, “resurrects that thinking,” said Felson, referring to the 2004 position.

The current report frames Palestinian terror in the context of resistance, using words that are lifted almost directly from the Kairos document, he said.

“These are decisions that Presbyterians will need to reach about whether to receive a profoundly biased report, about whether to denounce a company, about whether to endorse a screed that demonizes Israel,” said Felson. “These moves seriously call into question the very nature of the Presbyterian-Jewish relationship.”

The memo outlines a dozen recommendations in the Presbyterian report that put the onus on Israel, including a comparison between Iranian and Israeli nuclear threats.

“It is very much a document that takes a side and doesn’t seem to care about doing it in a civil way,” said Felson.

Last week, the Anti-Defamation League called the report a “toxic mix of bad history, politically motivated distortions and offensive attacks on Judaism and Israel.”

ADL leaders said the church committee had failed to meet with mainstream American Jewish organizations, limiting itself to left-leaning groups.

“The Presbyterian Church USA, despite their resolution two years ago to take an even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has gone back on its word with this offensive and biased report,” Abraham Foxman, ADL’s national director, said in a statement.

- From Prophecy News Watch

From Israel National News

The Temple Mount Institute has filed suit in its fight for the right to sacrifice a sheep on the Temple Mount prior to Passover, as commanded in the Torah.

“The command to perform a Paschal [Passover] sacrifice is a positive commandment; the punishment for failing to perform it is ‘karet’ [lit. -- 'cut off', meaning that a person is cut off from the Nation of Israel], and it can be performed only on the day before Passover and only on the Temple Mount,” the organization explained in a petition to the Supreme Court. Fighting the group’s request are the Israel Police, who argue that the sacrifice would lead to Muslim riots and thus threaten public safety.

Jews have the right to offer animal sacrifices on the Temple Mount under Israeli law, the organization claimed. Israelis are guaranteed the right to freedom of worship, and Israel prides itself in allowing members of all faiths to access their holy sites.

In previous years, the court has ruled that the right to freedom of worship is outweighed by the consideration of public safety, and has forbidden the Paschal sacrifice.

The Temple Mount Institute also took the opportunity to take police to task for barring Jews and Christians from the Temple Mount following Muslim riots. “The Israel Police is giving rioters a ‘prize’ and encouraging them to hold violent riots and disturb the peace, on the one hand, and is discriminating against Jews and members of other faiths and trampling their human rights – the right to freedom of movement and freedom of worship – on the other,” the organization accused.

The Institute asked the court to order police to explain why Jews are barred from the mount when Muslims riot.

From Debka

Iran’s Lebanese proxy, the Hizballah militia, has set up a Palestinian operations unit for 2,000 new recruits from the Lebanese Fatah, who came over in recent days full armed with their commander Col. Munir Maqdah, an important handler of the Fatah terrorist apparatus on the West Bank.

Reporting this, debkafile’s military sources add: The first major Palestinian defection to the Shiite Hizballah has given Iran and its proxy a large foot inside Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah organization and swelled Hizballah’s fighting strength by some 15 percent.

Most of the defectors came from the big Ain Hilwa refugee town near the southern Lebanese port of Sidon.

Col. Munir Maqdah, commander of Fatah units in Ain Hilwa, carried the formal title of Commander of the Armed Struggle Units of Palestinian Forces in Lebanon.

Mahmoud Abbas reacted to the blow by signing orders expelling Maqdah from the Fatah along with dozens of Palestinians officers who followed him. He was forced to accept that Fatah-Lebanon’s 5,000-man fighting strength has been pared down to 3,000 and its top officer ranks depleted.

The biggest loss was Maqdah, who maintained close ties with the Palestinian terrorist sleeper cells in the West Bank towns of Nablus and Jenin - mainly by means of large dollops of cash. His networks and contacts are now available to Tehran.

The renegade officer also acted as liaison between Fatah and al Qaeda’s affiliates in Lebanon, such as Fatah al-Islam. His men took active part in more than one Katyusha rocket bombardment of northern Israel from South Lebanon.

- From Prophecy News Watch

From Debka

“Israel is one of our closest allies and we and the Israeli people have a special bond that’s not going to go away,” said President Barack Obama to Fox News Wednesday, March 17, after denying any crisis in the relationship. debkafile’s Washington sources note that denial makes a lot of sense for the president because it lets him off the hook for dealing with it.

However, in Jerusalem, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu called his inner cabinet into its second session on the crisis that same night. The seven ministers were asked to review the situation after President Obama and secretary of state Hillary Clinton turned down their initial proposals for easing the upset and laid down three pre-conditions for restoring normal relations with Jerusalem:

1. The Netanyahu government must extend the 10-month freeze on West Bank settlement construction to include East Jerusalem;
2. When the moratorium runs out in September, it must be renewed for the duration of peace negotiations with the Palestinians;
3. Israeli must make more concessions to the Palestinian Authority and its chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

The Israeli government was informed that until those conditions were met, its ministers would not be received in Washington by high-level American officials - a virtual boycott, which downgrades the normal diplomatic, strategic and security exchanges between the two administrations to the level of senators and the special Middle East envoy George Mitchell.

Netanyahu tried offering the Obama administration a number of compromise proposals, such as the suspension of construction in East Jerusalem and the city’s outlying Jewish suburbs until September, but they were rejected, as was an offer to prohibit further Jewish purchases of land and buildings in Jerusalem’s Arab districts during peace negotiations.

Obama and Clinton made it clear they would brook no departures from their three demands, which Israel is required to treat as an ultimatum.

Neither party to the difference has mentioned the US administration’s fourth condition for resuming normal relations: an Israeli commitment to refrain from attacking Iran’s nuclear program without prior US consent. Because that commitment has not been offered, administration officials are continuing to hammer Israel in every possible arena. Indeed, the gloves are now off in earnest for insinuations that Israel’s settlement policy is the root-cause of Iran’s drive for a nuclear bomb and of the conflicts endangering American lives in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Vice President Joe Biden launched this drive, when he reportedly attacked Netanyahu for the announcement of 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem by saying: “What you are doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

A much-admired American military figure, CENTCOM chief, Gen. David Petraeus, was the next US official to put this linkage into words. In his briefing to a Senate panel, he said Wednesday, March 16: Clearly the tensions on these issues with Israel have enormous effect on the strategic context in which we operate in the Central Command’s area of responsibility.”

The general denied he had as yet formally asked for the Palestinian territories to be transferred to his command, but added: “In fact, staff members at various times have discussed asking for the Palestinian territories to be added to CENTCOM’s turf.”

debkafile’s military sources explain that, if approved, this step would be tantamount to providing the Palestinians with an American military umbrella against Israel.

More than one friend of Israel demurred against the Petraeus suggestion.

Former presidential candidate, Republican Senator John McCain, caught on fast to the way the wind is blowing in Obama’s Washington: During his testimony, he put in: “Isn’t the issue not the issue of settlements as much as it is the existence of the state of Israel…? So maybe you could put it all into the larger context of what needs to be done to reduce tensions on the US’s closest ally and friend in many respects.”

The general did not rise to the senator’s challenge, except for a polite: “Absolutely true.”

Some of the more respectable US and British media are playing up the theme that Israel has shot itself in the foot and therefore deserves what’s coming, namely escalating punishment from the Obama administration.

- From Prophecy News Watch

From Jerusalem Post

The stupidest program the US government has ever undertaken”; that’s how I last year called American efforts to improve the Palestinian Authority military force. Slightly hyperbolic, yes, but the description fits because those efforts enhance the fighting power of enemies of the US and its Israeli ally.

First, a primer about the program, drawing on a recent Center of Near East Policy Research study by David Bedein and Arlene Kushner: Shortly after Yasser Arafat died in late 2004, the US government established the Office of the US Security Coordinator to reform, recruit, train and equip the PA militia (called the National Security Forces or Quwwat al-Amn al-Watani) and make them politically accountable.

For nearly all of its existence, the office has been headed by Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton. Since 2007, American taxpayers have funded it to the tune of $100 million a year. Many agencies of the US government have been involved in the program, including the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the Secret Service and branches of the military.

The PA militia has in total about 30,000 troops, of which four battalions comprising 2,100 troops have passed scrutiny for lack of criminal or terrorist ties and undergone 1,400 hours of training at an American facility in Jordan. There they study subjects ranging from small-unit tactics and crime-scene investigations to first aid and human rights law.

With Israeli permission, these troops have deployed in areas of Hebron, Jenin and Nablus. So far, this experiment has gone well, prompting widespread praise. Sen. John Kerry calls the program “extremely encouraging,” and Thomas Friedman of The New York Times discerns in the US-trained troops a possible “Palestinian peace partner for Israel” taking shape.

Looking ahead, however, I predict that those troops will more likely be a war partner than a peace partner for Israel. Consider their likely role in several scenarios:

• No Palestinian state: Dayton proudly calls the US-trained forces “founders of a Palestinian state,” a polity he expects to come into existence by 2011. What if – as has happened often before – the Palestinian state does not emerge on schedule? Dayton himself warns of “big risks,” presumably meaning that his freshly-minted troops would start directing their firepower against Israel.

• Palestinian state: The PA has never wavered in its goal of eliminating Israel, as the briefest glance at documentation collected by Palestinian Media Watch makes evident. Should the PA achieve statehood, it will certainly pursue its historic goal – only now equipped with a shiny new American-trained soldiery and arsenal.

• The PA defeats Hamas: For the same reason, in the unlikely event that the PA prevails over Hamas, its Gaza-based Islamist rival, it will by incorporating Hamas troops into its own militia and then order the combined troops to attack Israel. The rival organizations may differ in outlook, methods and personnel, but they share the overarching goal of eliminating Israel.

• Hamas defeats the PA: Should the PA succumb to Hamas, it will absorb at least some of “Dayton’s men” into its own militia and deploy them in the effort to eliminate the Jewish state.

• Hamas and PA cooperate: Even as Dayton imagines he is preparing a militia to fight Hamas, the PA leadership participates in Egyptian-sponsored talks with Hamas about power sharing – raising the specter that the US trained forces and Hamas will coordinate attacks on Israel.

The law of unintended consequences provides one temporary consolation: As Washington sponsors the PA forces and Teheran sponsors those of Hamas, Palestinian forces are more ideologically riven, perhaps weakening their overall ability to damage Israel.

Admittedly, Dayton’s men are behaving themselves at present. But whatever the future brings – state, no state, Hamas defeats the PA, the PA defeats Hamas or the two cooperate – these militiamen will eventually turn their guns against Israel. When that happens, Dayton and the geniuses idealistically building the forces of Israel’s enemy will likely shrug and say, “No one could have foreseen this outcome.”

Not so. Some of us foresee it and are warning against it. More deeply, some of us understand that the 1993 Oslo process did not end the Palestinian leadership’s drive to eliminate Israel.

The Dayton mission needs to be stopped before it does more harm. Congress should immediately cut all funding for the Office of the US Security Coordinator.

- From Prophecy News Watch

From Koinonia House

ISRAEL-US BOND ‘UNSHAKABLE’

US Vice President Joe Biden’s trip to Israel last week began peaceably enough. It ended badly, however, after Biden said he “condemned” Israel’s decision to continue building new housing units in East Jerusalem. After several days of coldness, Hillary Clinton today announced that relations between Israel and the United States were strong, saying, “We have a close, unshakable bond between the United States and Israel.”

Over a year has passed since Barack Obama took office as President of the United States, and during the past fourteen months, the President has not yet made a trip to Israel. He has visited a wide variety of countries, including Ghana, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Djibouti, and has even shaken the hand of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Yet, while Obama visited Israel in 2008 before the elections, he has not stopped into Jerusalem since.

Last week, Vice President Joe Biden met with both Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with the intent to extend a warm hand to the United States’ greatest ally in the Middle East. In the beginning, all went well. During a joint press conference with Netanyahu on Tuesday, Biden praised Israel for restarting the peace process, and said, “There is no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security.” Netanyahu expressed thanks to the US for its leadership against Iran’s nuclear weapons program. “I very much appreciate the efforts of President Obama and the American government to lead the international community to place tough sanctions on Iran,” he said. Earlier that day, Biden had assured Peres that America was committed to Israel’s security.

Shortly thereafter, though, Israel announced that it was going ahead with plans to build 1600 new homes in East Jerusalem, a decision that was a surprise to Biden and apparently to Netanyahu as well. The Interior Ministry, run by the ultraorthodox, nationalist party Shas, made the announcement right during the middle Biden’s visit to the area. From Ramallah on Wednesday, Biden publicly criticized Israel’s decision to continue the building.

“Messages have been sent to Biden and the Americans that there was no intention to undermine him,” a senior Israeli official said. “We were genuinely surprised, just as surprised as the Americans.”

Netanyahu, however, has made no visible steps toward reversing the decision.  The Prime Minister has made clear on several occasions that the unity of Jerusalem is not negotiable. Last November, Netanyahu ordered a halt on building in the West Bank as part of an effort to resume peace talks, but has allowed new housing to be built in East Jerusalem despite the protests of the Palestinians.

The media have portrayed the incident as a major blunder on Israel’s part and a risk to US-Israeli relations. On Friday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized Israel for its bad timing and for endangering the upcoming peace negotiations with the Palestinians. She spent 43 minutes on the phone with Netanyahu expressing herself “bluntly” on the matter. “The announcement of the settlements on the very day that the vice president was there was insulting,” Clinton said in an interview with CNN Friday. “It was just really a very unfortunate and difficult moment for everyone…”

After the weekend, however, things seemed to calm down. Clinton affirmed on Tuesday that the US is completely committed to Israel’s security and assured all sides that the US remains a close ally of Israel.

The Obama Administration still wants Netanyahu to put a stop to building new housing units, but Netanyahu has not yet described how he is going to handle the situation. He did, however, respond to Clinton’s softened tone with a statement saying that he, “appreciates and respects the warm words” from Clinton on “the deep bond between the US and Israel, and on the US commitment to Israel’s security.”

In the US, however, Jewish groups argue that Clinton’s harsh words on Friday didn’t help the situation. The American Jewish Committee said that the “sustained harsh criticism of Israel by senior Administration officials is unprecedented and could leave the impression of a cooling of our nation’s relationship with Israel.”

Rep. Eric Cantor (Va.), the House’s only Jewish Republican, was also not pleased with the harsh criticism directed at Israel. “This attempt to curry favor with the Arabs by bullying Israel is not a wise move,” Cantor said.

Related Links:

• Biden: U.S. Will Always Stand By Those Who Take Risks For Peace - Haaretz
• With Subtle Shift In Nuance, Hillary Clinton Reiterates U.S. Stance On Israel - The Washington Post
• Biden Scolds Israel Over Settlement Plan - Reuters
• HIllary Clinton Rebukes Israel - The Washington Times

From EU Observer

Despite an intensive lobbying effort on the part of European Jewish groups, the European Parliament has endorsed the Goldstone report, the UN’s official investigation into the bombardment of the Gaza Strip in January 2009, a report that accuses Israel of war crimes and calls for the prosecution of Israeli officials in the Hague.

In a 335-to-287 vote splitting the house between left and right, MEPs backed a joint resolution from the centre left, far left, Greens and Liberals calling on the EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and the bloc’s member states to “publicly demand the implementation of the report’s recommendations and accountability for all violations of international law, including alleged war crimes.”

In April, 2009, a team of UN investigators headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone, a former member of the South African Constitutional Court and chief prosecutor with the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, was established to look into violations of international human rights law during the Gaza conflict in which Israeli forces killed over 1,400 Palestinians and Hamas killed 13 Israelis.

While the report found that both sides had committed war crimes, Tel Aviv has since attempted to rubbish the document, an effort that has met with success in the US Congress, which last November passed a resolution calling the report “irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy.”

EU parliamentary deputies in recent days have been inundated by lobbying emails from the European Jewish Congress over the vote. A spokesperson for the group told this website that it had been “definitely a really major effort by the EJC, but it’s only a work in progress and there’s still a lot of work to do.”

Moshe Kantor, the president of the European Jewish Congress, which represents 42 Jewish organisations on the continent, warned in one letter: “It appears inconceivable that while the United Nations itself hasn’t yet officially adopted this report, the European Parliament, in this motion for a resolution, calls for and demands its implementation.”

He said that if the European Parliament backed the document, it would give it its most important international endorsement yet.

Mr Kantor travelled to Israel last week to meet with foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman to strategise over the vote.

On Tuesday afternoon, the level of lobbying had reached such an extent that Irish socialist MEP Proinsias de Rossa, the chair of the chamber’s Palestinian Legislative Council liaison delegation, sent around his own email encouraging deputies not to buckle under the pressure.

“You are being bombarded with mails at present seeking to undermine your support for the the Goldstone Report in the vote tomorrow,” he said.

“Tomorrow’s vote is a test of the credibility of this parliament’s commitment to human rights irrespective of political considerations,” he continued. “The joint resolution is a fair and balanced position negotiated by all the main political groups. I appeal to you to support it.”

All the major groups in the house had originally agreed to a compromise resolution on the subject in a meeting last Thursday, but by Monday, the centre-right grouping, the European People’s Party, which traditionally has been the most sympathetic to the Israeli perspective in the conflict, pulled out of the agreement, blocking the joint text.

In the end, even the EPP draft still endorsed the Goldstone report, but did not go so far as to criticise Israel’s blockade of supplies to the Gaza Strip or make mention of reported intimidation of NGOs in the wake of the conflict.

The resolution backed by the centre and left of the house however “expresses its concern about pressure placed on NGOs involved in the preparation of the Goldstone report and in follow-up investigations, and calls on authorities on all sides to refrain from any measures restricting the activities of these organisations.”

Close call

As recently as yesterday, the EJC thought it had won the lobbying battle. A report that appeared on Wednesday morning in Israeli daily Haaretz described how all the party grouping leaders had backtracked from their demands that the Goldstone recommendations be implemented as a result of lobbying by European Jewish leaders and that the EPP counter-resolution was most likely to be endorsed instead.

The EJC’s Mr Kantor said following the vote that his organisation was disappointed in the result and that it threatened EU participation in the Middle East peace process.

“Blaming the conflict and placing the onus for it on Israel, as the report does, will push the Palestinians further away from the negotiating table and make them more recalcitrant, believing they can use international bodies to fight Israel’s case rather than reaching a negotiated solution,” he said.

However, with over 45 percent of deputies voting against the resolution, he said he was pleased at his organisation’s efforts. “We can see our lobbying efforts bore fruit due to the fact that the resolution passed by only a narrow margin, and not the consensus that was expected,” Mr Kantor said. “This shows that we are on the right track.”

The Israeli mission to the EU called the result counterproductive towards reconciliation in the Middle East: “While the other players are striving to find ways to support the peace process, and as ‘proximity talks’ are about to start between Israel and the Palestinians, the European Parliament chooses to concentrate on a highly controversial issue, one that has already been deliberated in other fora.”

- From Prophecy News Watch

From Israel National News

British scientists have confirmed with DNA testing that an African tribe in northern South Africa that claims Semitic origins is telling the truth.

The Lemba, whose oral traditions state that their ancestors were Jews, practice customs that are remarkably similar to those of the House of Israel. They keep one day of the week holy, bless the new moon, circumcise their boys, slaughter meat in a ritual manner, avoid eating food with blood and do not eat pork. Some of the men wear yarmulkas (kippot), they strongly discourage marriage outside the tribe, and the custom of the tribe is to inscribe a Star of David on the gravestone of the deceased.

None of these practices are common among the peoples of Zimbabwe or South Africa.

The Lemba are also divided into 12 tribes, and among the Buba, the priestly class, was found the exact same DNA element as among those Jews of the priestly class elsewhere around the world.

A number of genetic studies have confirmed the findings. Initial research in 1996 indicated that more than half of the Lemba Y chromosomes (the male chromosome) are Semitic in origin. That study was followed by another in 2000, that reported more specifically that a significant group of Lemba males carry the “Cohen [Kohen] modal haplotype” (CHM) on the Y chromosome, which indicates the Y-DNA Haplogroup J found among Jews and some other populations across the Middle East.

The Buba clan carried most of the CMH markers among the Lemba, similar to other Jewish groups around the world where the males of the priestly class, the Kohenim, carry the CHM marker. Lemba tradition states that it was the Buba clan that had a “leadership role in bringing the Lemba out of Israel” and into southern Africa.

The oral tradition handed down among the Yemenite Jews is similar, stating that after the expulsion following the destruction of the First Temple, the Levi’im (assistant priests) and Kohenim fled towards Yemen; the group then split, with some continuing on towards the south, in the direction of Africa.

The University of London’s Professor Tudor Parfitt , who spent six months living with the tribe, and 20 years researching their people, expressed his amazement in an interview this week with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

“This was amazing,” Parfitt said. “It looks as if the Jewish priesthood continued in the West by people called Cohen, and in the same way it was continued by the priestly clan of the Lemba. They have a common ancestor who geneticists say lived about 3,000 years ago somewhere in north Arabia, which is the time of Moses and Aaron, when the Jewish priesthood started.”

The Lemba tradition states that their ancestors fled the Holy Land some 2,500 years ago, traveling first to “Sen’a” and then south to Africa. Their sacred prayer language is comprised of a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic.

The tribe, approximately 80,000 strong, lives in central Zimbabwe and the northern part of South Africa, and prizes above all its holiest object: the ngoma lungundu, “the drum that thunders.” According to tribal leaders, it is this, a wooden replica of the Biblical Ark of the Covenant, that connects the Lemba to their Jewish ancestry.

The oral traditions regarding the ngoma lungundu said it had been used in battles, and thus was rebuilt several times, possibly from original remnants, Parfitt explained. He added that the replica that recently went on display at the Harare museum, about 700 years old, is “the closest descendant of the Ark that we know of.”

The Lemba people of today, however, are Christians and Muslims, although many define their ties to Judaism as their “culture.”

- From Prophecy News Watch

From Canada Free Press

“I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem” —Vice President Joseph Robinette Biden, March 09, 2010

For nearly twenty years the great sham of the Middle East Peace Process has dragged on. And this despicable scam has consisted of only one policy, only one platform and only one plan. Pressuring Israel for more concessions.

Year in and year out, new peace conferences were declared and new plans for peace were hammered out. All of them had one thing in common, they carved up Israel for a non-existent peace. When Arafat and his gang of terrorists made a concession, it was to demand 5 percent less of Israel in the current phase of negotiations. When Israel made a concession, it was to turn over another 10 percent of land to its worst enemies in this phase of negotiations… in exchange for them putting off their demands for that 5 percent into the next phase of the negotiations. And this sick charade in which Israel gave and the terrorists took was the peace process.

While this great surrender process was going on, outside the bombs went on exploding, tearing apart buses, restaurants, malls and families—the politicians and diplomats in charge excused the terrorists and damned Israel if it so much as lifted a finger to defend itself, or erected a single checkpoint to catch at least one of the terrorists on the way to kill a dozen people in Jerusalem.

And now finally the Vice President of the United States arrives in Israel to reaffirm his absolute commitment to Israel’s security, a commitment he and just about every other politician who let that phrase trip lightly off their lips, honors by pressing Israel to surrender again the terrorists. He arrives and condemns the greatest impediment to peace. Jewish families living in the capital of their own nation.

Biden did not take the time to condemn Abbas for his failure to hold elections, for his attendance at a funeral for the terrorists in his own militia who murdered an Israeli Rabbi, for his violation of the Gaza Jericho agreement or for his recent threats of a Holy War against Israel. Not even the Palestinian Authority naming a municipal square two days ago after Dalal Mughrabi, one of the Coastal Road Massacre bus hijackers, resulted in any statements of condemnation. Let us for a moment balance the horrifying scene of Jews moving into new apartments in Jerusalem, vs the Coastal Road Massacre in which Fatah terrorists murdered Gail Rubin, an American nature photographer, hijacked a bus, and murdered 38 passengers, 13 of them only children.

But the murder of Israelis never “undermines the trust we need right now”. Only Jews living in East Jerusalem can do that. Not Israelis, Jews, for if Arab citizens of Israel were moving into new buildings in East Jerusalem, Biden and the media would not be condemning Israel for it. It is precisely Jews that are the problem for the Obama Administration and its Media-Government Complex. Just as they were a problem for Hitler and Stalin. Just as they have always been a problem for would-be tyrants.

There are, of course, no worries about whether Israel will trust Abbas and his Fatah gang. As if anybody in their right mind would, after nearly two decades of terrorism that followed the ballyhooed signing of the Peace Accords and the famous handshake overseen by a smiling Clinton. After violating nearly every agreement he ever signed with Israel, Arafat unleashed a wave of terror, while pocketing a fortune in foreign aid. And after every bombing, the same despicable conglomeration of diplomats and politicians and diplopols that form the “World Community” pointed Israel to the negotiating table. Their only solution, then as now, was more concessions; by Israel to the terrorists—of course.

And so here we are in the splendid year 2010, 5770 in the Hebrew calendar, and 1431 in the Muslim calendar. In a few months it will be 43 years since the Liberation of Jerusalem. Since Jews returned to the Old City they were ethnically cleansed from by Muslim soldiers. And today the Hurva synagogue, twice destroyed by Muslims, has been completely reconstructed. In 1948 the Jordanian command expelled the Jews from East Jerusalem and destroyed the Hurva synagogue, vowing that the Jews would never return. And today in the year 2010, the Vice President of the United States comes on a mission to carry on their work. That of the dynamiters and the bombers and the expellers.

This is where nearly two decades of negotiations have brought us. In the early nineties, Israel was discussing the status of certain West Bank towns. Today, Israel is being warned against allowing Jews to live in Jerusalem. Tomorrow… I would dearly like to say that the possibilities are endless, but there are only so many parts of Israel where Jews still live, and no doubt the eager ethnic cleansers in the Obama Administration and the EU have plans for them, too.

And so the Middle East Peace Scam marches on. There is a great deal of preparation for intense rounds of negotiations at which it will be determined what else Israel must give for there to be no peace. East Jerusalem will naturally end up on the table soon enough. Meanwhile the entire farce has less legal basis than a kangaroo court and all the consistency of a drunken liar on the witness stand.

Today there are three Palestinian states. One in Jordan, divided to create an Arab State in the bygone days of the Palestine Mandate; A second state in Gaza, which is ruled over by Hamas as part of the spoils from their war with Fatah; A third state in the West Bank ruled over by Abbas and Fatah, even though his term ended and there have been no new elections. Out of this hodgepodge, Israel is expected to negotiate, even though Hamas refuses to negotiate any permanent peace agreement, and Fatah has no legal authority to represent anyone.

You will not, of course, hear about any of this in the media, which is still busy being outraged by the thought of Jews living in Jerusalem. When they’re not being outraged by the thought of Israel treating Rachel’s Tomb as a heritage site. After all, the Prime Minister of Turkey has declared that Rachel’s Tomb is not Jewish, but Islamic. Just as all of Israel is Islamic. Just as all of the world is Islamic. But the world isn’t paying attention. The world is certain that the rage and violence of a billion Muslims can be calmed with some Jewish land and Jewish blood. Just as the rage and violence of Nazism could be calmed with some Czech land and blood.

But why listen to me? Listen instead to the soothing words of Ahmad Bahar, the Speaker of the Palestinian Authority Parliament.

“Make us victorious over the infidel people… Allah, take hold of the Jews and their allies, Allah, take hold of the Americans and their allies… Allah, count them and kill them to the last one and don’t leave even one.”

Ah, but you say it’s about “the occupation”. And there will be peace when the terrorists have all the land they feel they’re entitled to. But… no.

“Our enmity with the Jews is a matter of faith, more than an enmity owing to occupation and the land.”

Oh yes, there will be peace when they have all the land that they feel Muslims are entitled to. And this is the scope of their territorial demands.

“Soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, like Constantinople was conquered, according to the prophecy of our prophet Muhammad. Their capital will be the first post of the Islamic conquests that will spread all over Europe then it will turn to the two Americas and even to Eastern Europe.”

But don’t worry. Joseph Biden is deeply committed to fighting against Jewish families living in Jerusalem. And the Middle East Peace Scam marches on.

- From Prophecy News Watch