Former Foreign Ministry director general tells Ynet that Syria willing to abandon Iran camp in favor of alliance with moderate Arab nations – but only if supported by the US. Bush meanwhile refuses to talk to Damascus
Roee Nahmias
US President George W. Bush is to blame if Israel goes to war with Syria, former Foreign Ministry director-general Dr. Alon Lial charged on Sunday.  
Lial, who took part in secret talks with Syria in recent years, accused Bush of torpedoing efforts at diplomacy between the two Middle East nations.  
"(Prime Minister Ehud) Olmert and (Syrian President Bashar) Assad did their part. If a war breaks out this summer it's US President George Bush's fault, who is blocking the sides from advancing," Lial told Ynet.  
Lial said Bush refused to discuss with Assad a "major deal", by which Syria would "defect" from the Iranian camp in favor of the moderate Sunni alliance and the West. Thus there is no point in talking peace with Syria, Lial said, and tensions are only increasing towards a possible war this summer.  
"The situation is really starting to get dangerous," Lial said in conversation with Ynet. "Olmert has undergone a dramatic ...   more »

IAF holds drill with American pilots as 'part of multi-year working plan… for the purpose of mutual learning'
Israel's air force held a joint drill with visiting US pilots on Sunday, stirring interest in a region bracing for a possible armed showdown over Iran's nuclear program.  
An Israeli military spokeswoman said the exercise was "part of a multi-year working plan involving joint flights for the purpose of mutual learning" and would be held annually.  
Reports on the exercise were carried in Arab media, fueled by speculation that Israel or the United States could bomb Iran should UN Security Council sanctions fail to curb its nuclear program.  
An Israeli military source said the joint air force drill was "unconnected to the current situation in the country".  
Israel, believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal, sent planes to attack Iraq's main reactor in 1981. But analysts believe Iran's facilities are too dispersed, fortified and distant for Israel to take on alone.  
Alon Ben-David, Israel analyst for Jane's Defence Weekly, said the air force drill demonstrated recent Israeli efforts to boost military cooperation with friendly foreign states.  
"Israel has realized that the way forward is ...   more »

Badatz rabbis distribute message that 'all sinners' involved in Jerusalem pride march will 'feel a curse on their souls and evil will pursue them.' Orthodox community plans mass protest against parade next week; organizers expect 100,000 protestors
The Orthodox Righteous Court of Law (Badatz) have placed a curse on the organizers and particpicants in the gay pride parade scheduled to take place in Jerusalem next Thursday. The curse also applied to police forces that will secure the event.  
Rabbis from the Orthodox Edah Haredit sector (Badatz) published a message in Jerusalem on Sunday which read: "To all those involved,  
sinners in spirit, and whoever helps and protects them, may they feel a curse on their souls, may it plague them and may evil pursue them; they will not be acquitted of their transgressions from heavenly judgment."  
The Edah Haredit is an extreme body which has declared ideological warfare against the "heretic Zionist government." Its members shun Knesset votes, do not carry Israeli ID cards, and refuse allowances from the government budget.  
Edah Haredit rabbis warned Sunday that anyone who participates in the gay parade will be hurt "in body, soul and finances."  
The rabbis threatened ...   more »

The latest phase in Google's mission to organise the world's information — thousands of street-level photographs of major American cities — has raised questions that the search engine is invading people's privacy.

The new feature on Google's map service, called "Street View", was unveiled this week at the Where 2.0 conference in San Jose, California, but within hours of the photographs of downtown San Francisco and New York hitting the internet, bloggers were posting images of people, their faces visible, being arrested, sunbathing and urinating in public.

Posting on the website, Boing Boing, one resident of Berkeley, California, Mary Kalin-Casey said that she decided to see what her flat looked like on the site and was surprised to come across a highly detailed photograph of her cat, Monty, sitting in the window.

Expert View
 Given that British life is now essentially a series of Orwellian performances, I'm strangely unbothered by the privacy implications
Michael Parsons
The web is built on a lack of privacy
"I'm all for mapping, but this feature literally gives me the shakes," she wrote. "I feel like I need to close all my curtains now. I'm going to look into whether it's possible for a person ...   more »

Michael Smith
IRAN has threatened to launch a missile blitz against the Gulf states and plunge the entire Middle East into war if America attacks its nuclear facilities.
Admiral Ali Shamkhani, a senior defence adviser to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned that Gulf states providing the US with military cooperation would be the key targets of a barrage of ballistic missiles.
Shamkhani told the US journal Defense News that missiles would be launched not only at US military bases but also at strategic targets such as oil refineries and power stations.
Qatar, Bahrain and Oman all host important US bases and British forces are based in all three countries. Any Iranian attack would be bound to draw in the other Gulf Cooperation Council states: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.
The attacks on Arab states would be in addition to airstrikes on Israel, which have been threatened repeatedly. An Iranian foreign ministry official said: “The objective would be to overwhelm US missile defence systems with dozens and maybe hundreds of missiles fired simultaneously at specific targets.”
Shamkhani, a former Iranian defence minister, accused the Gulf states of “helping the US establish legitimacy for its anticipated aggression ...   more »

by David Suissa
Jew-haters of the world need to know that we have as much passion to defend Jewish lives as they have passion to destroy us.
I took a break from the hood the other night to speak to a large synagogue in Palos Verdes called Congregation Ner Tamid -- and I used a word that got me in trouble. The occasion was a showing of "Obsession" -- a documentary on the rise of radical Islam and the worldwide terror that has accompanied it -- and it was sponsored by CAMERA, an organization that counteracts anti-Israel bias in the mainstream media.
"Obsession" assaults you with the hatred that fuels the fire of radical Islam.
The film points out that the majority of Muslims are not radical Islamists, but when it hones in on the radicals, the words and images make your skin crawl.
You see an old sheik, speaking to what looks like 100,000 people, pulling out a sword and exhorting his screaming flock to kill every Jew they can find. One radical Muslim after another is shown giving motivational speeches on the fine art of Jew-hatred. And Jew-killing. Lots and lots of Jew-killing.
But here's the crazy part: ...   more »

'I will wait for the Lord, who hides His face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for Him.' Isaiah 8:17
In this verse we find a servant of the Lord waiting and looking for Him, not on behalf of himself, but on behalf of his people, from whom the Lord G-d of Israel was hiding His face.
Elijah was a man who was walking in the full light of G-d's countenance, and yet because of the sins of Israel's king and its leaders this caused the Lord to hide His face from the house of Jacob. What was Elijah to do? What are we called to do in times of darkness and distress like we live in today?
Should those of us who are seeking to walk according to G-d's ways be silent or self righteous believing this is just punishment for those who are sinning against G-d? No, we are called with tender hearts to think of their sad condition, and to go before the Lord in prayer to wait upon G-d on their behalf.
This is both a privilege and a great responsibility to wait upon the Lord and to stand in the gap before ...   more »

If President Bush follows through with his controversial plan to set up a defensive missile shield in two former Warsaw Pact countries, years from now historians will ask which came first: the missile shield to protect Western allies from rogue states, or a coalition of rogue states assembled by Russia to counter the missile shield proposed by the United States?
    Russia's President Vladimir Putin said he would respond to the U.S. plan by pointing Russian missiles at Western European cities. In the unlikely event this highly explosive tit-for-tat were to develop into a new arms race, Mr. Putin knows that despite Russia's newly found wealth thanks to the rising price of oil, Moscow would have a hard time matching the U.S. dollar for dollar.
    "The West does not have an effective strategy of dealing with the challenges posed by Russian President Vladimir Putin," said Andrei Illarionov, Mr. Putin's former economic adviser and G-8 sherpa, now a Cato Institute senior fellow.
    "Russians are not so stupid as to match the U.S. system-by-system because the U.S. has an economy that is 13 times bigger than Russia's economy," Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told United Press ...   more »

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin called on Sunday for the creation of a new world economic order that gives greater clout to fast-growing emerging nations.
Days after attending a Group of Eight summit in Germany, Putin suggested that club was outdated and failed to reflect a shift in economic power away from the industrialised West to countries like his own.
"If 50 years ago, 60 pct of the world's gross domestic product came from the G7, now it's the other way round, and 60 percent of the world's GDP is produced outside," Putin said in a speech to a major economic conference.
He also took aim at financial organisations such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, saying they were created in "a completely different reality" and had lost relevance in the fast-changing global economy.
Russia is enjoying an unprecedented spell of economic growth that has enabled it to pay down its foreign debts and accumulate foreign exchange reserves of over $400 billion -- the world's third largest.
Putin said the world needed to reduce its dependency on the dollar as a reserve currency, and plugged the rouble as one alternative. Russia abolished capital controls ...   more »