By: David Bedein
Jerusalem - Yesterday, following the weekly Israel government cabinet meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert dispatched cabinet secretary Oved Yehezkel and his official spokesman Yaakov Galanati to brief the press about the steps that will lead to the Annapolis Middle East Summit on Nov. 26.
Mr. Olmert's spokespeople emphasized that the Israeli government did not expect to reach any agreement with the Palestinians at the summit and that that the "only thing that would happen there would be declarations," adding that "Israel will announce its recognition of a Palestinian Arab national state alongside an Israeli Jewish national state, with Israel formally accepting the road map."
That road map was presented in May 2003 by then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and then-White House National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to Israel and the Palestinians and adopted by the Israeli cabinet under then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
As a reminder, the Israeli government had added to its acceptance of the road map a statement that "in the first phase of the plan and as a condition for progress to the second phase, the Palestinians will complete the dismantling of terrorist organizations (Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front, the Democratic ...   more »

Elyakim Haetzni
Yedioth Ahronoth
Ramat Mamre POB 2066
tel,: 02-9961878
fax: 02-9963001
Kiriat Arba 90100
e-mail: ehaetzni@netvision.net.il
October 27, 2007
            In the play “The Visit of the Old Lady” by the Swiss writer Friedrich Durrenmatt, a forsaken and poor town is visited by a woman billionaire, who was born there. In expectation of a generous donation that will save them, they hold a reception for her, with a starring role reserved for a respectable merchant who was her childhood friend, but who, when she became pregnant from him, denied his paternity. The girl fled, and from a house of prostitution in Hamburg, she was married by an Armenian tycoon, and now she controls an empire. She brings with her a magnificent coffin, and she asks the town policeman, if he knows how to look away; the priest, if he consoles those condemned to death; and with the physician, she took an interest in a death certificate with the false cause of death: "heart attack." The woman's proposal to the city was blunt and simple: a billion in exchange for murdering the man who hurt her. At first, disgusted, they reject this, but the billion is inviting. People bought luxury ...   more »

Linda Heard -
If the US and Russia continue a course of mutual belligerency — albeit gloved — the road to Armageddon will be short.
The West must understand that Russia newly flushed with energy wealth is no longer an underdog but a major world player. Russia, in its turn, must quit sending its bombers to tease Western countries. The US should come to terms with the fact it's no longer the only policeman on the block.
People are generally given to shrugging off mentions of a third world war. This is mainly because the next one could be mankind's last. Those who sprinkle their speeches or articles with dire warnings of a massive nuclear conflagration are often written off as scaremongers. Those who lived through the horrors of World War II and later witnessed the battered planet coming together to draft the Geneva Conventions and form the United Nations had hope that we had truly learned our lesson. Never again!
Surely it is inconceivable that world leaders would be prepared to put their nations on a suicidal collision course for any reason. Indeed, even during the most critical periods of the 45-year-long Cold War between the former Soviet Union ...   more »

Mohammed Assadi
A Palestinian boy looks from the window of his house in the southern Gaza strip October 30, 2007. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa  
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinians will not pursue peace talks with Israel without an agreed timeline for reaching a deal on statehood, chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qurie said on Tuesday.
"The Israeli prime minister had announced that he will not accept a timeline, and we say we won't accept negotiations without a timeline. We do not want to go to open negotiations," Qurie told reporters.
He made the comments ahead of a planned visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank at the weekend by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is preparing the ground for a U.S.-led Middle East conference in late November or early December.
Western and Israeli officials have described a two-track process coming out of the Annapolis, Maryland meeting: the start of formal talks over a Palestinian state and a push to implement the first phase of a long-stalled "road map" peace plan.
The officials said Washington was considering holding a large follow-up meeting in mid-2008, bringing the two tracks together in a way that the Palestinians hope will culminate ...   more »

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has demanded Israel open its nuclear facilities to inspection by the UN nuclear watchdog and dismantle its weapons programme.
The security situation in the Middle East continues to pose a major threat to international peace and stability due to Israel's insistence on keeping its nuclear weapons and their delivery systems, Ahmed Abdulla Ali Al Ketbi, member of the UAE delegation, has told a UN General Assembly panel, WAM news agency reported Tuesday.
Ketbi decried as double standard the exemption to Israel -- which has not signed the NPT -- from inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and said this has led to a dangerous security imbalance in the region.'This (the exemption) has contributed in one way or another to the irresponsible development of Israel's nuclear weapons, and encouragement of some other states, in the context of their concept of security deterrence, to acquire dangerous nuclear weapons,' Ketbi said.
'In spite of the confidence-building measures taken by Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates, particularly in the area of disarmament of weapons of mass destruction, the security situation in the Middle East continues to pose a major threat to international peace, security and stability,' ...   more »

yaakov katz,
A large-scale IDF operation against Palestinian rocket squads in Gaza was drawing near, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Tuesday.
"Every day that passes brings us closer to a broad operation in Gaza," Barak told Army Radio.
"We are not happy to do it, we're not rushing to do it, and we'll be happy if circumstances succeed in preventing it," he said. "But the time is approaching when we'll have to undertake a broad operation in Gaza."
Meanwhile, Hamas terror chief Muhammad Deif was quoted as saying that Hamas would soon strike "deep inside Israel."
Hamas official Sheikh Ahmad Hamdan of Khan Yunis said Tuesday that he recently met with Deif in the fugitive's hiding place. According to Hamdan, Deif, leader of Hamas's Izzadin a-Kassam armed wing, told him that in the next few weeks, his group would initiate an attack against the "Israeli occupation, and not remain on the defensive."
Deif, wanted by Israel for planning and executing numerous terror attacks, has eluded capture for years. In July 2006, he was wounded in an IAF strike on a house in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City. Palestinian sources reported that nine members of the same family were ...   more »

2007 marks 40 years since the launch of the movement to free Soviet Jewry, one of the defining developments in the Jewish world in the second half of the 20th century. In its honor, the US Senate will vote this week on a resolution commemorating the movement's founding following the Six Day War.
"Forty years ago, in the depths of the Cold War, Americans from all walks of life came together to stand in solidarity with Soviet Jewry during its darkest hour," Sen. Joe Lieberman (Ind.-Connecticut), who co-authored the bill with Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, said this week. "Organizations like the National Council of Soviet Jewry gave voice to the voiceless millions of people trapped behind the Iron Curtain."
The movement's success, the liberation of Soviet Jews from totalitarian communism, was the final stage of a dramatic reorientation of world Jewry. The exit of an estimated million and a half Jews, two-thirds to Israel and the rest mainly to North America, marks the most recent major exodus of Jews from Europe. In its wake, a Europe that began the 20th century as home to 85 percent-90% of the world's Jews finds itself at the start of this century ...   more »

WASHINGTON — The Democrat-controlled Congress is examining a request to develop a new bomb designed for a U.S. air strike on Iran.
The Bush administration wants $88 million for the production of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP. The 30,000-pound conventional bomb, meant for deployment by the B-2 aircraft, would be the most powerful bunker-buster ever designed.
Analysts agree that MOP was designed to destroy Iranian and North Korean underground facilities, such as Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment plant, Middle East Newsline reported. The bomb was said to be able to penetrate more than 65 meters of earth.
"It'll go through it like a hot knife through butter," John Pike, a leading U.S. weapons analyst, told Congressional Quarterly.
Darfur force 'may be' operational by early 2008     
The administration did not explain the use of MOP. A White House statement cited "an urgent operational need from theater commanders" in its funding request to modify B-2s to carry MOP.
"We are not authorizing Bush to use a 30,000-pound bunker buster," Rep. Jim McDermott, a Washington Democrat, said, according to the Congressional Quarterly report. "They've been banging the drums the same way as they did in 2002 with Iraq."
MOP has been ...   more »

Chad Groening 
A defense analyst says even though Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a splash at the U.N. and at Columbia University during a recent trip to the U.S., he is apparently facing serious political problems at home.
Greg Copley, president of the International Strategic Studies Association, says the Russians are very concerned about the stability of their neighbor to the south. According to the defense analyst, events of the past few weeks have really started to unravel Ahmadinejad's hold on power.
"They have isolated Ahmadinejad from the military. So basically Ahmadinejad is on the defensive; the clerics are trying to close ranks," he says. "That doesn't mean that even the clerics who are opposed to Ahmadinejad [are] good guys, from the sense of being allies or potential allies of the west or the United States or even the Iranian people -- they are not. However, they are more cautious than Ahmadinejad, whom they regard as being reckless."
Coplet contends Ahmadinejad is clearly on the defensive trying to stop Grand Ayatollah Ali Khameni and former president Akbar Rafsanjani from removing him from office.
Original Source

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By: Newsmax Staff 
An item buried in President Bush’s latest request for $190 billion in emergency war funding offers telling evidence that the U.S. could be preparing an attack on Iran.
The Defense Department has asked for $88 million to retrofit B-2 Stealth bombers so they can carry a 30,000-pound “bunker buster” bomb called the massive ordnance penetrator (MOP), which has the capacity to destroy deep underground targets.
The Administration says the request is in response to an “urgent operational need from theater commanders.”
Some observers might conclude that the Pentagon is seeking weaponry to strike Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida in their caves in Afghanistan.
But as Gerard Baker, U.S. editor of the Times of London, points out in the New York Post, that would not require Stealth bombers.
“The Americans own the skies over Afghanistan and Iraq and could, if they wished, blanket the two countries with all manner of bombardment from a few thousand feet in broad daylight,” Baker notes.
Instead, the more likely targets are the subterranean nuclear enrichment facilities in Iran, according to Baker, who writes:
“The debate in Washington about what to do with the increasingly recalcitrant and self-confident Iranian regime has taken a ...   more »

Crystal Cathedral conference accused of twisting biblical Christianity
Crystal Cathedral
It's an all-star conference set for the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif., Jan. 17-19.
Former President George H.W. Bush will speak.
Chuck Colson will make a presentation.
Larry King will be there.
Rupert Murdoch will address attendees.
Ben Stein will appear.
And Kay Warren, wife of Saddleback Church mega-pastor Rick Warren, will join Robert Schuller, the white-haired, bespectacled purveyor of "possibility thinking."
What could such a diverse group have in common? What's the topic?
Well, it's a little vague.
It's called the "Rethink Conference," and Schuller promises 30 "Aha!" moments from the 30 different speakers confirmed for the event.
Not everyone is thrilled about this meeting of the minds. Some, including Christian author and former New Age devotee Warren Smith, suspect an agenda to subvert the church – to take the focus off biblical truth and absolutes.
"From my perspective as a former New Age follower, I believe that Robert Schuller's mission has always been to 'rethink' and 'change' biblical Christianity into something 'new' – as in New Age/New Spirituality," he says.
Smith's "Deceived on Purpose: The New Age Implications of the Purpose-Driven Church" documents Schuller's contacts and endorsements ...   more »

by Chuck Baldwin
I was honored to speak before the National Committee of the Constitution Party on Thursday, October 25, 2007 in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Today's column is a condensed version of that address.
Daniel Webster is regarded as perhaps America's most notable jurist. Webster said, "Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster, and what has happened once in 6000 years may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world."
He also said, "The hand that destroys the Constitution rends our Union asunder forever."
Please remember that this is the same Daniel Webster who said: "If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and our posterity neglect its instruction and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity."
You see how Daniel Webster (like most of America's founders) was a man with deeply-held Christian convictions. He believed the Bible. He was a devout believer. And he found no ...   more »

By ANDREW PARKER  
A SCHOOL was yesterday accused of MAKING teachers dress up as Asians for a day – to celebrate a Muslim festival.
Kids at the 257-pupil primary have also been told to don ethnic garb even though most are Christians.
The morning assembly will be open to all parents – but dads are BARRED from a women-only party in the afternoon because Muslim husbands object to wives mixing with other men.
Just two members of staff – a part-time teacher and a teaching assistant – are Muslim.
Embrace
Yesterday a relative of one of the 39 others said: “Staff have got to go along with it – or let’s face it, they would be branded racist.
“Who would put their job on the line? They have been told they have to embrace the day to show their diversity. But they are not all happy.”
The day aims to belatedly mark Eid, the end of Ramadan.
Sally Bloomer, head of Rufford primary school in Lye, West Midlands, insisted: “I have not heard of any complaints.
“It’s all part of a diversity project to promote multi-culturalism.”
Original Source


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