David Bogner
OK, truth be told, I didn't actually take a taxi to the capital of Hezbollah-land. But judging by the number of cabs who flatly refused to take me from Beer Sheva to my home in Efrat the other night, you would have thought that Lebanon was indeed my destination.
It was about 10:00PM and I had long since missed my regular carpool home. Under normal circumstances I would have either stayed over in a Beer Sheva hotel or tried to hitchhike home. But seeing as it was very late and I needed to be in Jerusalem first thing in the morning, I decided to treat myself to a rare taxi ride home.
That’s when the fun began.
Each call to the taxi dispatcher went something like this:
Dispatcher: Hallow!
Me: Hi, I need a taxi to come to [name of my company].
Dispatcher: No problem, where are you going?
Me: Efrat... In Gush Etzion.
Dispatcher: No problem... someone will be right there
Within a few minutes a taxi would pull up and the driver would ask "Where did you say you needed to go?" I would tell him, which resulted in him saying he had to check with ...   more »

by Hillel Fendel
(IsraelNN.com) Haifa's long-time Chief Rabbi She'ar-Yashuv Cohen, who has taken part in many interfaith conferences and gatherings with Moslem religious leaders, says he's trying to gather support for a synagogue on the Temple Mount.
Rabbi Cohen, son of the late renowned Torah scholar known as the Nazir, Rabbi David Cohen, chairs the Chief Rabbinate Council for the Establishment of a Synagogue on the Temple Mount.  Speaking on a special Temple Mount radio program on Voice of Israel's Moreshet (Tradition)-channel this week, he said he is working in the United States to amass support for the project. 
Other rabbis have also called for the construction of a Jewish prayer site on the Temple Mount.  Former Chief Sephardic Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu is among them, though he has not campaigned for this cause.  Other members on the Chief Rabbinate committee are Be'er Sheva's Chief Rabbi Yehuda Deri and Tzfat's Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu.
Jewish Temple Mount supporters greeted Rabbi Cohen's announcement with enthusiasm.  The Movement for the Establishment of the Temple declared, "The holiday of Chanukah, commemorating the liberation and purification of the Mount and the Temple, is the perfect time for the establishment of a prayer site for the ...   more »

Nicolas Sarkozy
French President Nicolas Sarkozy claims there will be a risk of war with Iran if Israel believes Tehran 'is threatening its security'.
In an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Sarkozy said France was more worried about tensions between Iran and Israel than between Iran and the United States.
Sarkozy said he was never in favor of war, adding that 'the problem for us is not so much the risk that the Americans could launch a military attack' but that the Israelis consider their security threatened.
Despite a recent report by the US intelligence community reaffirming that Iran was not pursuing a military nuclear program, Sarkozy claimed that the general belief was that the country's nuclear activities had no civilian explanation.
"The only debate is whether they will have military capability in one year or in five years," Sarkozy concluded.
Although the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) confirmed the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear activities, hawkish US politicians continue to threaten Tehran with a new round of sanctions and military attacks.
Original Source
 

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Documents detail ex-Israeli leader's deal handing Judaism's holiest site to Yasser Arafat
By Aaron Klein
Temple Mount
JERUSALEM – In spite of longstanding denials by top officials here, the Israeli government in 2000 agreed to relinquish the Temple Mount – Judaism's holiest site – to the Palestinians during U.S.-backed negotiations, according to declassified documents made public today.
The information comes as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert earlier this month denied talks started at November's Annapolis summit would lead to Israel giving up its sovereignty over the Temple Mount, while chief Palestinian negotiators tell WND the Jewish state already agreed to forfeit Judaism's holiest site to a coalition of Arab countries.
According to declassified Israeli government documents published today by Israel's Haaretz newspaper, during U.S.-led negotiations in 2000 at Camp David, Ehud Barak, then prime minister, agreed sovereignty over the Temple Mount would be either "ambiguous" or control would be determined based on the bond of each party to the site. The Palestinians would therefore control the upper sections of the Mount, which houses the Al Aqsa Mosque and also is the site of the First and Second Jewish Temples.
The 2000 negotiations fell through after Palestinian President Yasser Arafat rejected an ...   more »

Country's former president tells WND he sees growing trend of persecution
By Aaron Klein
Former Lebanon President Amin Gemayel
Today's deadly bombing targeting a top Lebanese army general was a bid by anti-government elements to destabilize the country and delay presidential elections and may be part of a general campaign to intimidate Lebanon's Christian population, former Lebanese president Amin Gemayel told WND during an exclusive interview today.
"While we don't know who specifically carried out the bombing, it was for sure connected to delaying parliament electing a new president, prolonging the political vacuum and creating constitutional and security chaos in the country," said Gemayel, speaking from his home in Lebanon.
Today's blast, the latest in a string of political assassinations to rock Lebanon, killed top Lebanese Army Gen. François al-Hajj and his body guard and wounded at least eight others. According to reports, a 77-pound bomb in a parked BMW sedan exploded as al-Hajj drove past on his way to work at the defense ministry in an eastern Beirut neighborhood.
Hajj was seen as a leading contender to take over as army chief from Gen. Michel Suleiman should parliament elect Suleiman as president in a much-delayed vote now slated for ...   more »

Terror leader boasts as city official steps down in wake of massive rocket attack
By Aaron Klein
JERUSALEM – The resignation today of a battered Israeli city's mayor in the wake of a massive salvo of Palestinian rocket fire is a "huge victory for the Palestinian resistance" and "proof our attacks pay off," a top terror leader told WND in an interview.
Muhammad Abdel-Al, spokesman and a senior leader of the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees, warned if Israel pressed ahead with a threatened large-scale, anti-rocket operation in the Gaza Strip his terror group will "fire rockets until all the Zionists in Sderot run away thousands of yards from their homes."
Palestinians in Gaza today fired at least 18 rockets into Sderot, a town of nearly 23,000 residents located about three miles from the Gaza Strip. Five people were lightly injured by the attack, including one girl, who was hit by shrapnel.
Abdel-Al's Committees took responsibility for the rocket salvo along with the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad terror group.
After the first eight rockets struck his town, Sderot's mayor Eli Moyal announced his resignation in protest of what he said was the Israeli government's "failure" to protect the city.
"I cannot take ...   more »

"Israel has the best pilots and best air force in the world. The world's nations know about the air force and its operational abilities much more than Israel's residents - and this is how it should be," President Shimon Peres said during a visit in the air force base in Hazerim, Wednesday.
The president was given an outline of the force from IAF commander in chief Major General Eliezer Shkedi, sat in a warplane's cockpit and was given an explanation of its capabilities.
Original Source
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Syrian President Bashar Assad rejected claims that Syria's alliance with Iran had been weakened by Damascus' participation in last month's US-sponsored Mideast peace conference, saying Thursday that the two countries' ties will never be shaken.
Assad made the comments as he inaugurated two joint Syrian-Iranian industrial projects - factories for cars and cement. He was joined at the ceremonies by the Iranian industry and housing ministers.
The November conference in Annapolis, Maryland, which relaunched Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, was widely seen as also aimed at isolating Iran by bringing together Arab nations. US officials have expressed hopes that Syria's attendance would mark a start to easing it out of its alliance with Teheran.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other top officials denounced the conference, and some officials expressed surprise over Syria's participation - though none directly criticized it.
Speaking at the auto factory, Assad said, "inaugurating this plant in partnership with our Iranian brothers and officials is a response to those who tried to circulate (reports) ... that relations between the two countries have been shaken."
"I confirm, on this occasion, that relations will not be shaken for any reason or under any circumstance," Assad said at the factory in Hasya, ...   more »