by Rabbi Shraga Simmons
Everything you need to know about the Festival of Lights.
Chanukah, the Festival of Lights, begins on the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kislev, and lasts for eight days. On the secular calendar, Chanukah generally falls out in December.
This primer will explore:
(1) A Bit of History
(2) Lighting Instructions
(3) Other Customs
(1) A Bit of History
The Hebrew word Chanukah means "dedication." In the 2nd century BCE, during the time of the Second Holy Temple, the Syrian-Greek regime of Antiochus sought to pull Jews away from Judaism, with the hopes of assimilating them into Greek culture. Antiochus outlawed Jewish observance -- including circumcision, Shabbat, and Torah study -- under penalty of death. As well, many Jews -- called Hellenists -- began to assimilate into Greek culture, taking on Greek names and marrying non-Jews. This began to decay the foundation of Jewish life and practice.
When the Greeks challenged the Jews to sacrifice a pig to a Greek god, a few courageous Jews took to the hills of Judea in open revolt against this threat to Jewish life. Led by Matitiyahu, and later his son Judah the Maccabee, this small band of ...   more »

By MATTI FRIEDMAN
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli archaeologists uncovered a 2,000-year-old mansion believed to have been home to Queen Helene of Adiabene, whose clan ruled a region now in Iraq.
The remains of the building were unearthed just outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City, underneath layers of a more recent settlement that was hidden until recently under the asphalt of a small parking lot in east Jerusalem.
Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast War. Palestinians see the eastern part of the city as capital of a future state.
The dig site is in the Arab neighborhood of Silwan, built on a slope that houses the most ancient remnants of settlement in Jerusalem and is known to scholars as the City of David.
The building, which includes storerooms, living quarters and ritual baths, is by far the largest and most elaborate structure discovered by archaeologists in the City of David area, which was home 2,000 years ago almost exclusively to the city's poor.
Jewish historian Josephus Flavius mentions just one wealthy family living there - the family of Queen Helene.
There is a "high probability" the mansion belonged to Helene's family, Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist Doron ...   more »

As city's mayor, Olmert allowed 100,000 illegal Arab squatters
By Aaron Klein
JERUSALEM – During 10 years as mayor of Jerusalem, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert instructed city workers not to take action against hundreds of illegal Arab building projects throughout eastern sections of Jerusalem, allegedly telling municipal workers the area one day would be handed to the Palestinians, according to former workers speaking to WND.
The workers charge Olmert even instructed city officials to delete files documenting illegal Arab construction of housing units in eastern Jerusalem. Those units currently house an estimated 100,000 Arabs, say the workers.
Olmert was Jerusalem mayor from 1993 to 2003. As mayor he made repeated public statements calling Jerusalem the "eternal and undivided capital" of Israel.
But at last week's U.S.-sponsored Annapolis summit, Olmert committed to work toward an agreement with the Palestinians before President Bush leaves office next year, with Israel widely expected to evacuate large swaths of the West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem.
In a speech at the summit, Olmert alluded to evacuating the West Bank and perhaps eastern Jerusalem, both of which were recaptured by Israel in 1967.
"The negotiations will address all of the issues which we have thus ...   more »

Aftershocks will reverberate for months, if not years, from this week’s bombshell American intelligence report on Iranian nuclear ambitions. Whenever the dust finally settles, though, the news won’t be good.
In the short run, the report effectively rules out a military strike against Iran. That’s a good thing, given the terrifying fallout — waves of terrorism, oil shortages, economic chaos — that would follow an attack. But in the long run, trouble looms. America’s international credibility, or what’s left of it, will crumble. The post-Iraq rehabilitation of the Western democratic alliance will stall, and the Iranian mullahs and their terrorist confederates will find their credit rising. None of that is welcome news to friends of liberal democracy and human rights.
However things shake out, it must be remembered that the fault isn’t in the new information disclosed this week. The problem is the bad policies that the new information upends. The policies must be changed, not the facts.
In finding that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago, the spy agencies have seemingly discredited a central item on the Bush administration’s agenda. Our government has been insisting that Iran’s nuclear program represents an imminent threat to global security. ...   more »

Some analysts say Tehran may feel free to interfere in the Mideast, but a few are relieved that chances of a U.S. attack have dimmed.
By Jeffrey Fleishman
CAIRO — The dwindling possibility of a U.S. attack on Iran is changing the dynamics of Middle East politics and raising Arab concern that Tehran may now feel emboldened to strengthen its military, increase its support for Islamic radicals and exert more influence in the region's troubled countries.
Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations opposed military action against Iran's nuclear program. But, analysts said, those governments were privately relieved that U.S. threats helped to further preoccupy Tehran, which had irritated much of the Arab world with its deep involvement in the politics of Iraq and Lebanon and support for the radical Palestinian group Hamas.
The U.S. intelligence report released Monday, which says Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program, has eased international pressure for sanctions and invigorated the Islamic Republic's hard-liners. This comes as the Arab world has been trying to counter Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rhetoric and his government's influence over the presidential turmoil in Lebanon, the politics in Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
The report did not ...   more »

By: Kenneth R. Timmerman
A highly controversial, 150 page National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear programs was coordinated and written by former State Department political and intelligence analysts — not by more seasoned members of the U.S. intelligence community, Newsmax has learned.
Its most dramatic conclusion — that Iran shut down its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure — is based on a single, unvetted source who provided information to a foreign intelligence service and has not been interviewed directly by the United States.
Newsmax sources in Tehran believe that Washington has fallen for “a deliberate disinformation campaign” cooked up by the Revolutionary Guards, who laundered fake information and fed it to the United States through Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers posing as senior diplomats in Europe.
Dangerous Game
The National Intelligence Council, which produced the NIE, is chaired by Thomas Fingar, “a State Department intelligence analyst with no known overseas experience who briefly headed the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research,” I wrote in my book "Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender." [Editor's Note: Get "Shadow Warriors" free — go here now.]
Fingar was a key partner ...   more »

By Alan W. Dowd
“Here’s what we know,” President George W. Bush began in response to a question about the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran. “We know that they’re still trying to learn how to enrich uranium. We know that enriching uranium is an important step in a country who wants to develop a weapon. We know they had a program. We know the program is halted.”
If the intelligence is right this time, then this last piece of information is good news.
But there’s more to the story, as National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley explained a day earlier. “The intelligence community says they do not know whether Iran currently intends to develop nuclear weapons,” he cautioned, adding, “The risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapons remains a very serious problem.” He then cited the NIE to underscore his point: “Iranian entities are continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons if a decision is made to do so.”
In other words, although the clandestine program was apparently halted in 2003, none of America’s 16 intelligence agencies can determine if it’s dead or dormant. “Halted” means paused, and paused means ...   more »

By Joseph Farah
Michael Savage, one of the most popular radio talk-show hosts in America, is being targeted for an advertiser boycott by the Council on American-Islamic Relations for referring to the Quran as "a book of hate."
Now, predictably, Savage is being accused of promoting "hate" by making this observation.
But, the question remains, who's right?
You be the judge.
The following are direct quotes from the Quran and the Hadith: Quran 4:89: "They (infidels) desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah's way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper." Quran 8:12: "Instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers;" Quran 2:191: "... kill the disbelievers wherever we find them …"
Quran 22:19-22: "… for them (the unbelievers) garments of fire shall be cut and there shall be poured over their heads boiling water whereby whatever is in their bowels and skin shall be dissolved and they will be punished with hooked iron rods."
Quran 8:12: "Your ...   more »

By Karen Dorn Steele
Crosses will be removed from badges worn by Spokane Police chaplains under terms of an out-of-court settlement between the city and a former Lutheran pastor-turned-atheist who sued over the government agency’s use of the insignias and Christian prayers.
Additionally, lawyers from the Center for Justice who represented former pastor Ray Ideus will get $1,000.
“It’s a milestone,” said Ideus, who volunteers eight hours a week with the police department. “It’s very important that they’ll have to take that cross off. It’s not a Christian police department. The chaplains have to minister to all faiths – and non-faiths,” Ideus said.
The chaplains’ badges previously contained the city of Spokane seal and a Christian/Latin cross. Spokane Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick informed the Spokane City Council of the settlement in a report to the council Monday night.
Ideus, 75, said Tuesday he’s happy about the settlement of his lawsuit, filed in January 2006 in U.S. District Court in Spokane.
His lawsuit claimed that the police department’s use of the Christian cross is an “impermissible incorporation of a particular religious symbol in a government insignia.”
Assistant City Attorney Rocky Treppiedi countersued Ideus for filing a lawsuit that he considered “false, ...   more »

Paul Jeeves
OVERWORKED nurses have been ordered to stop all medical work five times every day to move Muslim patients’ beds so they face towards Mecca.
The lengthy procedure, which also includes providing fresh bathing water, is creating turmoil among overstretched staff on bustling NHS wards.
But despite the havoc, Mid- Yorkshire NHS Trust says the rule must be instigated whenever possible to ensure Muslim patients have “a more comfortable stay in hospital”.
And a taxpayer-funded training programme for several hundred hospital staff has begun to ensure that all are familiar with the workings of the Muslim faith.
The scheme is initially being run at Dewsbury and District Hospital, West Yorkshire, but is set to be introduced at other hospitals in the new year.
It comes on the back of the introduction in some NHS hospitals last year of Burka-style gowns for Muslim patients who did not wish medical staff to see their face while operating or caring for them.
Last night critics slammed the procedure and claimed the NHS would be better off investing its resources in tackling killer superbugs such as C.diff and MRSA.
One experienced nurse working at Dewsbury said: “It would be easier to create Muslim-only ...   more »

By: Sylvia Hubbard 
Having an abortion raises a woman’s risk of breast cancer by at least 30 percent, and is fueling an “epidemic” of the often fatal disease, according to British researchers.
According to a new study published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, young women who had an abortion before having a child are at the greatest risk for developing breast cancer.
The study’s lead author Patrick Carroll calls abortion the single “best predictor” of breast cancer trends.
“An abortion in a young woman who has never had a child has a carcinogenic effect because it leaves breast cells in a state of interrupted hormonal development in which they are more susceptible,” says Carroll, director of research at PAPRI (Pension and Population Research Institute) in London.
The study adds fuel to the already fiery debate between abortion-rights advocates who believe the option to terminate a pregnancy is a basic right, and abortion foes who believe the procedure is morally and ethically wrong.
Abortion-rights proponents argue Carroll’s findings are weak and deny there is a connection between the rise in breast cancer and an increase in abortions.
“This is an issue that opponents of [abortion] have been publicizing ...   more »