megan jacobs
Despite the recent ruling by the Chief Rabbinate that Jews may not participate in any Christian events, Rabbis Shlomo Riskin and Benny Elon spoke in support of the Day of Prayer for the Peace of Jerusalem (DPPJ) on Sunday night at the Haas Promenade.
Organized by Rev. Robert Stearns of the group Eagles' Wings and Dr. Jack Hayford of The Church on the Way, DPPJ united over 150 nations and more than 150,000 churches worldwide in prayer. This year marks the fifth anniversary of the event in Jerusalem, coinciding with the end of Succot.
"Our best friends in the United States are Christians, offering love, friendship, and partnership. We would be foolish not to take advantage of it, especially during these troubled times," said Riskin.
Both Riskin and Elon credited the Christian community with not only helping Israel survive, but also vanquishing the threat of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and of radical Islam.
MK Elhanan Glazer, representing the Christian Allies Caucus, also praised the mutual effort against external threats to Israel, saying that "Christians support Israel because we have the same Book, the same God, and we both love that God more than all the oil in the ...   more »

During the recently concluded third season of renews excavations at Kibbutz Ramat Rachel on the southern edge of Jerusalem, archeologists made finds that shed a great deal of light on the site's past as a major administrative center during the biblical and pre-Islamic periods.
The director of the excavation told The Jerusalem Post that the goal was to expand on digs done at the site during the 1950s, which successfully uncovered a Byzantine church.
Prior to the Byzantine period, a newly discovered garden and sophisticated water system connected to a large palace-like building indicate the site was an important administrative center.
The suggested history of Ramat Rachel is that the location served as the seat of the Assyrian governor of Judea during the seventh century BC. Successive Persian and Greek rulers used the site for similar purposes, before it was destroyed when the Jews regained full sovereignty over their country under the Hasmonean dynasty. The Romans later built a large military camp at the site, which was later embellished by the Byzantines.
The digs at Ramat Rachel are being carried out jointly by Tel Aviv University and the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Three more seasons of excavations are currently ...   more »

Khaled Abu Toameh ,
The body of a Christian official who was kidnapped over the weekend was discovered in Gaza City early Sunday, Palestinian sources said.
The man was identified as Rami Ayyad, 31, director of The Teacher's Bookshop, which is operated by the Palestinian Bible Society.
Although no group claimed responsibility for the murder, a number of Christians in Gaza City told The Jerusalem Post that Ayyad had received several death threats in the past from radical Muslims who accused him of missionary activity.
His bookshop and the Palestinian Bible Society have been the targets of repeated attacks over the past two years.
They noted that attacks on members of the 2,500-strong Christian community in the Gaza Strip have increased in recent months, especially since Hamas took full control of the area.
Two weeks ago, an elderly Christian woman living in Gaza City was beaten and robbed by a masked man who accused her of being an "infidel." In Bethlehem, Palestinian Authority police are still investigating last week's stabbing of a 27-year-old Christian man, who was seriously wounded in the attack.
Shortly after the Hamas takeover, a local Christian school and a monastery were looted and set on fire. ...   more »

Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Sunday following a brief visit to Damascus. High on his agenda in Jerusalem will be Israel's air strike on Syria last month and the American Jewish community's stand on whether the World War I killing of Armenians constituted genocide.
Babacan arrived in Damascus on Saturday, and was scheduled to hold talks during his visit there with President Bashar Assad and Foreign Minister Farouk Shara.
His visit to Damascus came as ABC News quoted American officials over the weekend as saying that the IAF raid on Syria was planned for several months and was postponed a number of times due to heavy US pressure.
According to the report, Israel presented US officials with satellite imagery which clearly showed North Korean nuclear technology in a Syrian facility.
According to a US source, Washington officials were astonished by the imagery and by the fact US intelligence had not picked up on the facility previously.
"Israel tends to be very thorough about its intelligence coverage, particularly when it takes a major military step, so they would not have acted without data from several sources," said ABC News military consultant Tony Cordesman.
A ...   more »

At the opening of the Knesset Winter Session, Likud Chairman Binyamin Netanyahu lashed out at the government's policy, claiming that its strategy would eventually lead to an Iranian terrorist presence in Jerusalem and the rest of Israel.
"The unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon created an Iranian outpost - from which Israel is being attacked - in the North, and the unilateral pullout from Gaza created a second Iranian base in Gaza, 'Hamastan,'" Netanyahu said. "And now the government is planning a third withdrawal - from Judea and Samaria - that will lead to a third Iranian outpost."
Netanyahu quoted statements made by Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert before the withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza, respectively, saying the two had promised security, while Israel was in actuality served with aggression and terror.
"Giving Hamas half of Jerusalem will make the rest of Jerusalem unlivable," Netanyahu said. "Giving up Judea and Samaria will transfer the areas controlling the coastal plain into the hands of Hamas, leading to Kassams…on Tel Aviv."
"According to the government's plans, Israel will pull back to the 67' borders. Obviously, this is the plan and any attempts to disguise it are futile," he said. "We ...   more »

by Hana Levi Julian
(IsraelNN.com) Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will put Jerusalem on the negotiating table as he hurtles toward a “joint declaration” with the Palestinian Authority ahead of next month’s U.S.-sponsored Mideast summit. The prime minister says that a joint declaration with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas prior to the summit will lead to direct negotiations.
The Arabic Al Quds Al-Arabiya newspaper reported Monday morning that Olmert has now come to an agreement with Jordan that Arabs in eastern Jerusalem will be granted Jordanian citizenship. The plan would leave Jerusalem's Muslim holy sites under the control of the Hashemite kingdom, according to the report.
Olmert vehemently denied the report in a statement issued by the Prime Minister's Office. "The idea never existed," said the statement.
Vice Prime Minister Chaim Ramon, the Prime Minister's close aide and friend, however, has been pushing for the division of Jerusalem.  Ramon has been promoting his own plan to hand half of the city over to the Palestinian Authority (PA), not to Jordan.
Ramon also publicly backed an arrangement for sovereignty over Jerusalem's Old City. Only regarding the Jewish Quarter did Ramon state it would remain under Israeli rule. But Monday morning he cautioned that ...   more »

JERUSALEM (AP) - Senior Israeli officials expressed support Monday for the transfer of Arab parts of Jerusalem to Palestinian control, offering a concession on one of the most contentious issues in the Mideast conflict. The offer appeared to fall short of Palestinian calls for a full Israeli withdrawal from key areas of the holy city.
The officials spoke as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were to begin talks in Jerusalem to work out a joint document they hope to issue at a U.S.-sponsored peace conference next month. The meetings were closed.
Ahead of the talks, a confidant of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he has proposed in recent talks with Palestinian officials to turn over areas of east Jerusalem to the Palestinians. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war, as capital of a future independent state.
Deputy Vice Premier Haim Ramon's proposal marked a potentially significant Israeli concession. Israel has annexed east Jerusalem and claims all of the city as its undivided capital.
But the Israeli transfer would not include the Old City and surrounding neighborhoods, Ramon said. These are the key disputed areas, since the Old City contains the holiest site in Judaism, the ...   more »

JPost staff and Gil Hoffman
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office on Monday morning denied the report in Al-Quds al-Arabi that he and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had agreed to transfer the Temple Mount's holy sites to Jordanian custody.
The Prime Minister's Office said that no agreement had been reached on the holy sites in Jerusalem.
According to the report in the London-based newspaper, Olmert and Abbas had agreed that the Temple Mount sites would be under Jordanian jurisdiction in a final peace deal, and Jordanian citizenship would be granted to 90,000 east Jerusalem residents.
The report also said it was likely that a supreme supervisory commission would be established, which would include representatives from the UN, Egypt, Jordan, Israel and the PA.
The report drew strong criticism form the right-wing.
MK Uri Ariel (NU/NRP) said: "If the report is true, the Israeli government has stripped itself of any linkage to Zionism or its Jewish roots."
"The Olmert government is trying to destroy the dreams of thousands of generations who have dreamed and worked to return the Jewish people to its land, continued Ariel, vowing: "we wont let him succeed."
Ariel's party colleague MK Aryeh Eldad said that if Israel ...   more »