Archive for December, 2008

  Natural disasters killed over 220,000 people in 2008, making it one of the most devastating years on record and underlining the need for a global climate deal, the world's number two reinsurer said Monday.
Although the number of natural disasters was lower than in 2007, the catastrophes that occurred proved to be more destructive in...
Read more »

Children's worldview determined by 14,000 hours in classrooms
You've heard all about the disputes: "Silent Night" banned at the "holiday" program, artistic references to the Bible censored and faith-inclusive children's programs facing discrimination.
Now some people are fed up with public school treatment of Christianity and have launched a campaign calling for a rescue of kids from government...
Read more »

by Marcia Segelstein 
Conservative columnist Tony Blankley writes about some disturbing information he came across while researching a new book about the distortion of history and religion in textbooks.
The Council on Islamic Education is the primary Islamic group that vets textbooks in the U.S.  The head of that group calls his work a “bloodless revolution inside...
Read more »

 By John Terrett, in Doha, Qatar  
Work has begun on the construction of Qatar's first purpose-built church in the desert outside Doha, the country's capital.
Although the country's native inhabitants are entirely Muslim - and are prohibited by law from converting to another faith - the new Catholic church will cater to the large number of...
Read more »

Crowds of thousands swept into the streets of cities around the Middle East Sunday to shout down Israel's air assault on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip.
From Lebanon to Iran, Israel's adversaries used the weekend assault to marshal crowds out onto the streets for noisy demonstrations. And among regional allies there was also discontent: Turkey's Prime...
Read more »

December 28, 2008
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak:
Mr. Barak, as I've written you previously, the suffering of Israel's
citizens cannot go on, however, the Palestinians are eager to pull the
IDF into attacking as has been seen by the 'photo ops' coming out of
Gaza showing the Hamas carrying the dead on stretchers...
Read more »

Herb Keinon
The Foreign Ministry launched a public relations blitz Saturday to counter the pictures coming out of Gaza, stressing that the goal of the operation was to strike a major blow to Hamas‚ terror infrastructure and protect Israeli citizens.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and spokespeople from the Foreign Ministry, the Prime Minister's Office and the...
Read more »

Abraham Bell
International law authorizes Israel to initiate military countermeasures in Gaza. If Gaza is seen as having independent sovereignty, Israel's use of force is permissible on the grounds of self-defense. If Gaza is seen as lacking any independent sovereignty, Israel's use of military force is permissible as in other non-international conflicts.
The rule of "distinction" includes...
Read more »

 by Moshe Phillips
The convictions of the five terrorists who plotted to murder American soldiers at Fort Dix in 2007 should cause some much needed attention to be placed on the danger we face from terrorists working as taxi drivers.
Faten Shnewer, the mother of defendant Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, has received international media attention in the aftermath...
Read more »

Ze’ev Maghen
Eradicating the “Little Satan”"
The accession of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been accompanied by a sharp transformation in the Iranian attitude to, and depiction of, the state of Israel. This change includes not only an amplification of the traditional hostility toward the Jewish polity, but also—most ominously—a...
Read more »