Judy Bart Kancigor
Semifinal winners Evan Levy and Julie Hession with emcee Brian Malarkey (left) and Manischewitz VP of Marketing David Rossi (right).Don your aprons, light those ovens and…go!
Thirty contestants in last month’s Second Annual Simply Manischewitz Cook-Off semi-finals chopped, seared and sautéed their way for the chance to compete in the finals, to be held in New York on February 27. The grand prizewinner will take home a $25,000 prize package, including a GE Profile kitchen, cash and more.
Three semi-final events were held in Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Ten contestants in each area, selected from thousands of entrants, had one hour to prepare and serve their original recipes, each using at least one Manischewitz product and containing no more than eight ingredients.
As one of the judges in the Western competition held on December 20 at the Hilton Hotel in San Francisco, I sampled all the entries (yum!) and voted with my peers on taste, appearance, ease of preparation and originality.
Over 200 onlookers attended the event, free to the public, which included a kosher lunch and a first-hand look at the contestants as they donned their aprons and used their allotted hour to produce their ...   more »

Syrian foreign minister says his country to 'punish US' for decision to impose fresh sanctions against Syrian officials
Associated Press
Syrians are preparing to sue the United States for supplying weapons to Israel that later killed Syrians during the Second Lebanon War, said Syria's foreign minister, a day after Washington announced new sanctions against Damascus. 
Speaking at a press conference with his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, Walid Moallem promised that Syria would punish the US for its decision to impose fresh sanctions against Syrian officials.  
"This time I tell you we will punish the United States ... There are scores of Syrians who became victims during the Israeli war against Lebanon, they will file lawsuits against America," which provided Israel with the weapons, he said.  
'No country more corrupt than US'
On Wednesday, US President George W. Bush, in an executive order, said he was expanding sanctions against senior government officials in Syria and their associates deemed responsible for or to have benefited from public corruption. The order named no specific officials.  
A high ranking Syrian official on Thursday ridiculed Bush's decision, saying that a country occupying the land of others has no right to hurl accusations. ...   more »

By Caroline B. Glick      
It is quite possible that terror master Imad Mughniyah was not killed Tuesday night in Damascus for his past crimes, but to prevent him from carrying out additional attacks in the future.
On January 30, French security services raided a Paris apartment and arrested six Arab men. Three of the men — two Lebanese and one Syrian — were travelling on diplomatic passports. According to the Italian Libero newspaper, the six were members of a Hizbullah cell. Seized documents included tourist maps of Paris, London, Madrid, Berlin and Rome marked up with red highlighter to indicate routes, addresses, parking lots and "truck stopping points."The maps pointed to several routes to Vatican back entrances.
Libero's report explained that the "truck stopping points" aligned with information the French had received the week before from Beirut. There, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah convened a conference of his senior terror leaders where he ordered them to activate Hizbullah cells throughout Europe to kidnap senior European leaders.
The day of the arrests, French Defense Minister Herve Morin was meeting with his American counterpart Defense Secretary Robert Gates and with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington on a previously unannounced visit. ...   more »

by Hillel Fendel
(IsraelNN.com) One of the most venerated Sephardic Torah scholars in Israel, Rabbi Meir Mazuz of Bnei Brak, has written a letter to the political leaders of the Shas party, warning them against the mortal dangers to the State of Israel posed by the government of which they are a part.
The sharply worded letter by Rabbi Mazuz, head of the Kisei Rachamim yeshiva in Bnei Brak, demands that Shas immediately quit the government.  He also says that the Shas MKs must present to Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef - a former Chief Sephardic Rabbi and the spiritual leader of Shas - the "true and complete data regarding the diplomatic processes the government is weaving, which are damaging to the status of Jerusalem and bring closer the uprooting of the communities of Judea and Samaria."
Olmert and Barak do nothing "except for a targeted killing here and there every two months and then they go on to other things - and you [Shas] remain silent?!"
"We hear daily," Rabbi Mazuz writes, "from reliable sources that construction in Jerusalem has been stopped, and that [the government] has already (secretly) sold to the enemy many communities around Jerusalem.  The situation has become ...   more »

Southern residents to protest in Jerusalem Sunday during ministerial committee meeting called to rule on fortification of homes; Defense Minister Barak takes jab at Olmert, says he's puzzled by delay in transferring funds earmarked for fortification
Shmulik Hadad
Southern residents demand security: Residents of the southern Negev desert will be holding a demonstration outside the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem on Sunday.  
Local residents, headed by regional council head Alon Shuster, will be protesting while a ministerial committee headed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert convenes in order to rule on fortifying Sderot and Gaza-region homes.
Southern Protest  
"We will not accept any solution except for secured rooms," Shuster said.  
Barak: Puzzled by delay
Meanwhile, another conflict seems to be brewing between Olmert and Defense Minister Barak, who said he is puzzled by the continuing delay in handing over the NIS 300 million (roughly $70 million) earmarked for the fortification of Sderot and Gaza-region communities.
"We've head enough delays. That money should have been transferred a while ago," Barak said during closed-door conversations over the weekend. "I'm puzzled by the reasons for the continued delay."  
Olmert announced his intention to earmarked approximately NIS 320 million for the ...   more »

By Yoav Stern,
The Lebanese newspaper A-Safir reported Saturday that the Lebanon-based guerilla group Hezbollah has deployed 50,000 "activists" along the southern border with Israel and declared a state of high alert in southern Lebanon.
According to the report, the organization has also evacuated all buildings in the area designated for social or political purposes in recent days, in preparation for a confrontation with Israel in the wake of the assassination of Hezbollah terror chief Imad Mughniyah.
Mughniyah, the organization's deputy secretary general, was killed in a blast in an upscale Damascus neighborhood late Tuesday. On Thursday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah blamed Israel for the assassination and vowed to retaliate. Israel denied any involvement in the incident.
Meanwhile Saturday, another Lebanese newspaper reported that Lebanese officials believe a serious military confrontation with Israel will erupt in the near future.
According to a report in the Hezbollah-affiliated newspaper Al-Akhbar this possibility has been raised in intensive discussions being held between Hezbollah officials and Iranian and Syrian officials. The various militant Palestinian organizations have also declared a state of high alert, the report added.
Al-Akhbar also reported that Syrian investigators probing the assassination suspect that "official security organizations operating in Arab nations" ...   more »

Officials accused of quietly forming institutions in Israel's capital
By Aaron Klein
Jerusalem
JERUSALEM – The Palestinian Authority has been quietly attempting to establish elements of a functioning government in Jerusalem, WND has learned.
According to security officials, earlier this week Israeli police arrested Hatem Abdel Khader, a member of Palestinian Authority President Mahmad Abbas' Fatah party and a former member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, accusing him of setting up a Palestinian council in Jerusalem to attend to the needs of the city's Israeli Arab population.
Khader, who was released from custody after a few hours, also was accused of trying to set up a community police unit in Jerusalem that would answer to the PA.
In line with previous Israeli-Palestinian accords, the PA has been barred from conducting political activity in Jerusalem, although it maintained an office, called Orient House, in an eastern Jerusalem neighborhood that previously functioned as a de facto PA headquarters. 
Orient House was closed down by Israel in 2001 following a series of suicide bombings in Jerusalem and information Israel said indicated the House was used to plan and fund terrorism.
Thousands of documents and copies of bank certificates and checks captured by Israel ...   more »