by Dr. Ben Weider
When the Ghetto walls came tumbling down.
Following in the wake of the Napoleon Wars (1804-1815) in which Napoleon conquered much of Europe, came the emancipation of the Jews of Western Europe. For hundreds of years the Jews had been economically and politically marginalized and physically confined to the ghettoes of Europe. After Napoleon, the Ghetto walls came down and the Jews of Western Europe were free to enter European society for the first time. For better and for worse, this represented one of the greatest periods of transformation for these Jewish communities. These new freedoms allowed the Jews of Europe to prosper and have tremendous impact on European society, but also led to a wave of secularization, assimilation and even conversion to Christianity.
August 15th is the birthday of Napoleon. The following article, written by Mr. Ben Weider, the president of the International Napoleonic Society ,gives us much food for thought about anti-Semitism, assimilation and Jewish identity in the world today.
One of the many contributions that Napoleon has made, and perhaps his most important and lasting one, was his Civil Code. This was written at a time in history when discrimination was rampant. It ...   more »

Senior IDF officers, government officials gather in Carmiel to honor IDF's Druze soldiers. Druze brigade to be presented with Commander in Chief's Citation for actions in Second Lebanon War
The IDF celebrated its Druze soldiers' day Sunday, honoring the 110,000 Druze soldiers in its ranks.  
The official military ceremony was held in Carmiel, where senior members of the government and the military spoke of the community's valuable contribution to the IDF.  
The IDF's Druze brigade is also to receive the Commander in Chief's Citation, for their actions in the Second Lebanon War.  
"It is our duty to serve our country and we take pride in it – that's the way I was brought up and that's the way I raised my children," Riad Assad, a Druze from Beit-Jan who served in the IDF in the 1970s and now has five sons serving in the army, told Ynet Sunday.  
The service, said Assad is somewhat of a way of life in his family: His eldest served is the Druze brigade as a paramedic, his second son serves in the regular army, his third son serves as a deputy company commander, his fourth son is on the last ...   more »

The rift between Hamas and Fatah, the bloody infighting and the apparent hopelessness of the current situation appear to have left Palestinians disillusioned and seeking alternatives. But from this chaos, a new group of moderates has arisen and announced plans to form a political party and possibly run in the elections. They aspire to be the Palestinian Kadima.
The group, which consists of 120 top businessmen and academics, is by Munib al-Masri, a well-known and respected billionaire from Nablus who is politically unaffiliated, according to the Jerusalem Post.
The members met for the first time this weekend in Ramallah, marking the first meeting of its kind in years.
"We want to offer the Palestinians something different and a new way," said a meeting attendee. "We are actually trying to set up a Palestinian version of the Israeli Kadima Party, which attracted voters from both Likud and Labor. We are aware of the fact that many Palestinians are disenchanted with Fatah and Hamas and would like to see a new party that can offer them a better future."
The group's primary goal is to reunite the Gaza Strip with Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), which were ripped apart by Hamas' ...   more »

Syria is planning to attack Israel, despite the contrary statements of Israeli leaders, insisted a leading military expert on Thursday.
Ron Ben-Yishai, the senior military analyst for Israel's Yediot Ahronot daily newspaper, wrote that Wednesday's closed-door security cabinet meeting in Jerusalem showed that the government is still concerned that Syria could launch a major missile assault on the Jewish state in the near future.
According to Ben-Yishai, Syria has constructed a massive missile array aimed at Israel on the portion of the Golan Heights still controlled by Damascus.
Other analysts and not a few military officials have warned over the past year that Syria plans to launch low-level Hizballah-style violence against the Israeli Golan Heights, and respond with a major missile assault when Israel retaliates as expected.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, meanwhile, continues to maintain his line that there will be no war with Syria in the near future, despite the fact that the government is holding regular meetings to prepare for just such an eventuality.
Original Source
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In Pakistan's newest hit song, produced in the tradition of "We Are The World," the nation's pop stars repudiate terrorism, and proclaim innocence for the nation's Islamic residents who oppose the violence they see being inflicted in the name of their religion.
The song, "Yeh Hum Naheen," is Urdu for "This is Not Us," and was turned from an idea into a YouTube video by Waseem Mahmood and his sons, Khurrum and Khaiyyam.
"This story that is being spread in our names is a lie … The name by which you know us we are not" are the lyrics.  
Fox News reports the Pakistan-born British man simply was responding to what "a lot of people have been demanding: They are Muslims declaring that those who use terror in the name of Islam are wrong."
The song is performed by top pop singers in Pakistan, and the video of the performance has been interspersed with shots of the ugly results of terrorism, and the dire headlines of its impact.
Also included are shots of the joyful and peaceful lives Pakistanis live.
The sons had told their father they were tired of being targeted in Britain by extremist Muslims who thought ...   more »

A global Islamic movement that wants bring Muslims back to the roots of their religion drew a crowd of more than 10,000 at a rally Saturday and denounced the moderate Palestinian Authority leadership in the West Bank as infidels.
However, the Liberation Party espouses non-violent change, and PA security officials said they would not restrict the movement's activities as long as it does not resort to violence.
The movement's annual rally was held at a time of heightened tension between the Hamas and the moderate Fatah movement of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas seized control of Gaza in June, and Abbas' security forces cracked down on Hamas in the West Bank in response.
The Liberation Party, founded in 1953 by a Palestinian cleric in Jerusalem, calls for re-establishing the caliphate, or Islamic state, across the Muslim world.
Saturday's rally was held on the sports field of the Quaker-run Friends School, a private English-speaking school. "The caliphate is coming," read a large poster on the wall of the field.
Several tents were set up, and speakers explained in detail what an Islamic state would look like. They said 13 ministries would be established, including for media and foreign affairs.
In a ...   more »

August 10, 2007 (InfoWorld) -- The Federation for Identity and Cross-Credentialing Systems (FiXs) -- a little-known group of nonprofits, government contractors, commercial entities, and government agencies -- has just unveiled a first-of-its-kind global infrastructure to support distributed, integrated identity management and cross-credentialing across organizations. The implementation combines several existing security technologies along with a set of trusted models, policies, and operating rules to insure the accurate identity of personnel accessing physical sites or logical systems.
Already in a pilot mode at a handful of government agencies and defense contractors, the FiXs identity management initiative does not have a hard date for broad deployment, although the impediments do not appear to be technical. "The cultural gap with the public in general is still too wide," said Dr. Mike Mestrovich, president of FiXs. "I think there would have to be a public consensus to move us in that direction and I don't see that happening until at least 2009 or beyond."
Founded in 2004 and based in Fairfax, Va., FiXs counts among its members the Department of Defense, Wells Fargo, Lockheed Martin, EDS, and several others. Modeled after secure electronic payment systems and initially implemented by the DOD's Defense Manpower Data Center ...   more »

By RICHARD LARDNER      
  WASHINGTON (AP) - Frequent tours for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have stressed the all-volunteer force and made it worth considering a return to a military draft, President Bush's new war adviser said Friday.
"I think it makes sense to certainly onsider it," Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said in an interview with National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."
"And I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table. But ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation's security by one means or another," Lute added in his first interview since he was confirmed by the Senate in June.
President Nixon abolished the draft in 1973. Restoring it, Lute said, would be a "major policy shift" and Bush has made it clear that he doesn't think it's necessary.
The repeated deployments affect not only the troops but their families, who can influence whether a service member decides to stay in the military, Lute said.
"There's both a personal dimension of this, where this kind of stress plays out across dinner tables and in living room conversations within these families," he said. "And ultimately, the health ...   more »

There are six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination to him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and they that soweth discord among brethren.
– King Solomon, Proverbs
I remember a few months ago reading an intriguing article on Breitbart.com about Amsterdam's red light district which recently unveil a bronze statue. You may say big deal, Ellis! Amsterdam is a very old European city and has perhaps hundreds if not thousands of statues all over the country. I would then say you have deduced correctly dear reader, but this statute is very different from the ones erected to Holland's best and brightest sons of a bygone era.
Who, you may ask, is the statute dedicated? Not Rembrandt, not William I of Orange, not Erasmus, not Grotius, not Spinoza, not Van Gogh, nay, this statute is to none other than the prostitute and to the ancient, glorious art of prostitution. And not just prostitution in Holland, but this statute memorializes prostitutes all over the world. Take that, Spinoza!  
Yes, but ...   more »

Buoyed up by the triumphs of Hizballah’s war offensive against Israel in 2006 and Hamas’ takeover of Gaza, the clerical rulers of Tehran have invested so heavily in their expanding power structure across the region that a fiasco could push their regime and military prop, the fierce Revolutionary Guards, into a perilous slide at home. To play it safe, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Iran sources reveal they have hatched a plan to replace the vacillating figure in Damascus with a puppet at their beck and call, modeled on Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut.
Thus far, Assad has not strayed too far from the guidelines he and his Iranian allies laid down together, but Tehran can never be sure when he might swerve from the straight and narrow to make his peace with the Americans. The can only guarantee Syria stays in their pockets by installing a pro-Iran loyalist in the presidential palace in Damascus.
Sources close to Persian Gulf rulers believe that if Tehran opts for this course, its chosen instrument for throwing up a military ruler would be the Syrian armed forces, on the assumption that a general has the best chance of unifying the country and its ethnic and religious minorities ...   more »

 Quiz time: Which Middle Eastern country disappeared from the map not long ago for more than six months?
Answer: Kuwait, which disappeared from August 1990 to February 1991, becoming Iraq's 19th province. This brutal conquest by Saddam Hussein culminated intermittent Iraqi claims going back to the 1930s. Restoring Kuwait's sovereignty required a huge American-led expeditionary force of more than half a million soldiers.
This history comes to mind because an Iranian spokesman recently enunciated a somewhat similar threat against Bahrain. Hossein Shariatmadari, an associate of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and editor of the daily newspaper Kayhan, published an op-ed on July 9 in which he claimed: "Bahrain is part of Iran's soil, having been separated from it through an illegal conspiracy [spawned] by ... Shah [Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, along with] the American and British governments." Referring to Bahrain's majority Shiite population, Mr. Shariatmadari went on to claim, without any proof: "The principal demand of the Bahraini people today is to return this province … to its mother, Islamic Iran."
These comments, the Middle East Media and Research Institute (MEMRI) reports, "caused a storm in Bahrain," with protesters outside the Iranian Embassy, severe statements by the government, alarmed resolutions ...   more »

By Jerome R. Corsi
A Texas congressman is leading discussions with the White House to develop a military plan to assist Mexico in the war President Felipe Calderón is waging against the drug cartels.
Yolanda Urrabazo, spokeswoman for Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, told WND the discussions involve the possibility of utilizing the U.S. military directly in the effort in addition to providing military assistance.
The Bush administration is considering a multi-year multi-million dollar military assistance package that could include telephone-tapping equipment, Blackhawk helicopters, radar to track drug shipments and training, according to the Associated Press.
Until now, there has been no mention that the assistance might include direct U.S. military involvement in Mexico.
Urrabazo also confirmed to WND that the issue of involving the U.S. military and providing military assistance to Mexico would be on the agenda of the upcoming third summit of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP, scheduled Aug. 20-21 in Montebello, Quebec.
Cuellar's district includes Laredo, Texas, which has been considered ground zero for spillover of the Mexican drug war into the U.S..
On Jan 17, Cuellar filed H.R. 502, entitled the "Prosperous and Secure Neighbor Alliance Act of 2007," which originally proposed ...   more »

Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced what he called a vast programme to upgrade the country's missile defence system.
Visiting a new radar early-warning station near St Petersburg, Mr Putin said it was the first step in a major construction project lasting till 2015.
Russia has grave concerns about plans to deploy parts of a new US missile defence system in Eastern Europe.
Mr Putin has warned that Russia will take measures to counter the plan.
The US insists its programme is aimed to deal with threats from countries such as Iran and North Korea, and says Russia should have nothing to fear.
Russia has offered a compromise solution, which would allow the US to share use of a radar installation in Azerbaijan.
Mr Putin described the new early-warning station - at Lekhtusi, 50km north of St Petersburg - as "the first step in the implementation of a major early-warning programme up to the year 2015".
The station was built in just 18 months and opened in December last year.
It replaces the Soviet Union's Skrunda radar station in Latvia, which was dismantled in 1998.
A similar installation is under construction at Armavir in southern Russia.
Original Source


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The issue of where to take a stand concerning the Land and People of Israel continues to divide Christians who choose to reinterpret the scriptures through liberal and socialist lenses from those who insist that the Bible is the unchanging Word of God.
In a letter published in the Sunday edition of the New York Times, 34 self-styled "evangelical leaders" wrote to US President George W. Bush, urging him to forge ahead with his plan to implement a "two state solution" to the "Palestinian"-Israeli conflict.
The document appears to have been drawn up in reaction to the statements of high-profile evangelicals like John Hagee who have recently asserted anew that tens of millions of American evangelicals identify themselves as Christian Zionists and oppose the globally-supported effort to establish an Arab state on the biblical heartland and national cradle of the Jewish people.
Twisting both the meaning of scripture and historic fact to support their position, the signatories to the letter -- who claimed to speak on behalf of "large numbers of evangelicals throughout the US" -- sought to "encourage" Bush with the assertion that not "all American evangelicals are opposed to a two-state solution and creation of a new Palestinian ...   more »

We have been immersed in ceremonies, exhibits, films, TV talk shows, and even an evening of religious rock singers lauding the people of Gush Katif who were expelled two years ago from our homes and communities. We went to some of these events, choosing those most meaningful to us despite the extraordinarily hot and humid weather. We must not allow the people of Israel to forget.
Last Saturday night the program, ?Diary', was shown on Israel Broadcasting Association TV Channel 1. I walked with the crew near the kassam rocket display in Sderot. "This is the direct result of our expulsion from Gush Katif" I explained. "Freedom for the Arabs to commit wholesale attacks on Israel and its people."
The farmers of Gush Katif have finally taken to the streets. A hunger strike near the Knesset brought the plight of our growers to the people of Israel. Two years later they are still without land, homes and employment.
On the IBA English News one of our farmers, Avraham Sher, spoke of his imminent expulsion from Kibbutz Carmia where he and other Gush Katif farmers have been living. The government's two year contract with the kibbutz is over and the sides ...   more »

Unverified report by Jerusalem-based website of al-Qaeda plot to plant dirty bombs in New York City leads to increased deployment of radiological sensors on vehicles, boats, helicopters, checkpoints throughout the city
New York police stepped up security throughout Manhattan and at bridges and tunnels on Friday in response to an internet report - which authorities said they could not verify - that al-Qaeda might be plotting to detonate a dirty bomb in the city. 
Interview  
DEBKAfile editor says New York at risk / Jonathan Weber  
Illusions? Conspiracies? DEBKAfile editor refutes claims against his site in interview with Ynet following terror alert that put New York police in a panic; warns that Big Apple has much to fear
Full story    
The report triggering the security hike came from Israeli website www.Debka.com, which reported that there has been a rush of electronic chatter on al-Qaeda sites, one saying there would be an attack "by means of trucks loaded with radio-active material against America's biggest city and financial nerve center."  
Another al-Qaeda message mentioned New York, Los Angeles and Miami as targets, the Jerusalem-based DEBKAfile reported.
Security guards at improvised roadbloak in NY (archive photo: AFP) 
New York ...   more »