Mike Hochman cannot wait till the first match of the new Israeli professional baseball league on Sunday
My name is Mike Hochman and I'm a player in the new Israel Baseball League. This league is the brainchild of Larry Baras, from Boston. He had the dream to create a professional baseball league in Israel years ago and, on June 24th, 2007, his dream comes to fruition.  
Players from all over the world were scouted and drafted in to this league. The hope is the talent level will be on par with 'A' Minor-league baseball. When I was perusing some of the other players and their bios I was a little taken aback.  
There are players from the Dominican Republic that are the "real-deal". Some of these guys have howitzers attached to their shoulders, jet-packs for legs, and the "pop" to crank out homers to all fields. I'm sure I'm going to see some fantastic athletic feats in the next couple of months.  
Why am I keeping this diary? Because I think the idea of pro-baseball in Israel is worth sharing. Baseball is unique to other sports; there is no clock, so the game unfolds at its own ...   more »

Rabbi Avraham Yosef, son of Shas’ spiritual leader, rules that children may not be named after the founder of Zionism, whom he defines as ‘evil’
A person’s name may not be changed under any circumstances, unless it is either "Herzl" or "Nimrod," in which case it must be changed, Rabbi Avraham Yosef ruled this week.  
During a radio show on which he replies to halachic questions, the rabbi, son of Shas’ spiritual leader Ovadia Yosef, was asked by a listener whether names should be changed if, for instance, the bride and her mother-in-law share the same name.  
The rabbi answered that a name must never be changed, though another name can be added to the first name, unless one carries the name of “an evil, indecent figure” like Herzl, the founder of Zionism, or the biblical Nimrod. “One must be careful not to name his children by these names,” Yosef stressed.   
The rabbi’s ruling, and his statement that Herzl was an evil person, is surprising in light of the fact that Yosef serves as the chief rabbi of the city of Holon on behalf of the Chief Rabbinate – an institution that is affiliated with the State ...   more »

Hamas will go after "Israeli spies" in Gaza and might use bombs in its struggle with Fatah in the West Bank, a leading Hamas hardliner in Gaza was quoted as saying Saturday.
The comments by Mahmoud Zahar, a founding member of Hamas, suggested that his group's offer of amnesty to Fatah members was not ironclad and that Hamas would try to destabilize the Fatah-controlled West Bank.
Zahar, who is close to the Hamas military wing, spoke in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel. His comments were published on the magazine's Web site.
Hamas: Fatah gave information to Israel
Zahar is widely seen as one of the key players in Hamas's violent takeover of Gaza in mid-June. He staunchly opposed the brief government coalition between Hamas and Fatah and leads the movement's hard-line wing.
In response to the takeover, the security forces of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas arrested scores of Hamas activists in the West Bank, and Fatah-allied gunmen seized others, in some cases shooting them in the legs.
Zahar said Hamas loyalists in the West Bank would defend themselves in the same way they had targeted Israel during years of the Palestinian uprising - with bombs and ...   more »

By Charles Krauthammer    
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
EDITOR'S NOTE: There is no sovereign state of "Palestine". The author, for reasons known only to him, has chosen to call territory won by Israel in a defensive war with this name.
Gaza is now run not by a conventional political party but by a movement that is revolutionary, Islamist and terrorist. Worse, Hamas is a client of Iran. Gaza now constitutes the farthest reach of the archipelago of Iranian proxies: Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Mahdi Army (among others) in Iraq and the Alawite regime of Syria.
This Islamist mini-replica of the Comintern is at war not just with Israel but with the moderate Arab states, who finally woke up to this threat last summer when they denounced Hezbollah for provoking the Lebanon war with Israel. The fall of Gaza is particularly terrifying to Egypt because Hamas is so closely affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, the chief Islamist threat to the secular-nationalist regime that has ruled Egypt since the revolution of 1952. Which is why Egypt has just invited Israeli, Jordanian and moderate Palestinian leaders to a summit next week — pointedly excluding and isolating Hamas.
The splitting of Palestine into ...   more »

By Barry Rubin      
A sobering article that the Bush administration, EU and any other would-be "humanitarian" should read
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | During World War One, Germany concluded that its chief ally, Austria-Hungary, was more of a burden than an asset. As one German official put it, being in that alliance was like being "shackled to a corpse."
And more than a century earlier, it was said of the doomed French dynasty, the Bourbons, that they learned nothing and forgot nothing.
Welcome to the alliance with Fatah, sort of Austria-Hungary and the Bourbons rolled up into one. The group is now ruler of a West Bank-only semi-state after Hamas captured the Gaza Strip from it. The United States is backing Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas with aid and probably military assistance. Israel's government will do everything possible to preserve that regime, too.
This is a completely logical policy decision. It makes perfect sense given the balance of forces and the overall situation. I understand why it is being done. The problem is that it isn't going to work very well, or at least only to a limited extent. And if we know that now, perhaps this fact should shape policy just ...   more »

Christian entertainment developers Cloud 9 Games Inc announced Wednesday the planned release of their first-ever Christian karaoke PC Game.
The “Heavenly Harmony Karaoke and Vocal Performance Game” will be released this August and will help serious singers to increase their vocal abilities through real-time feedback from the game. Through an intricate system that checks for tone and timing, participants will be able to receive serious critiques on what to improve.
"As a singer with Phillips, Craig and Dean for 16 years, I have often wondered, 'How would I do on American Idol?'” asked Dove Award-winning singer Randy Phillips in a statement. “Well, I don't have to wonder anymore. ‘Heavenly Harmony’ cued up a song for me and analysed my pitch as I sang. Amazing!"
The new creation features 25 of Christian music’s most recognisable songs – such as “Shout to the Lord", "I Can Only Imagine", “Praise the Lord" and "Amazing Grace" – of which vocalists can try their own renditions. The CD comes with a microphone that plugs directly into the computer, making it easy for players to jump right into the songs.
The game is meant for everyone, whether professional or simply a member of the local church ...   more »

Scientists have spotted a thick layer of melted rock beneath the Earth’s crust that could be part of a fluid band of hot magma circling the globe. The magma ring has until now remained a theory.
The molten-rock layer is 10 miles thick and can’t be seen, felt or smelt from the surface. Researchers Daniel Toffelmier and James Tyburczy of Arizona State University found the layer using a relatively new technique that measures changes in weak electrical currents flowing through the Earth’s mantle rock.
The current is created when the solar wind, a continuous flow of charged atomic particles emitted by the sun, interact with Earth’s magnetic field, called the magnetosphere.
The chemical make-up of the rocks affects their conductivity. By measuring changes in the current at different depths, the scientists were able to detect distinct rock layers, including the "invisible" magma layer.
“Rocks are semiconductors,” Tyburczy said. “And rocks with more hydrogen embedded in their structure conduct better, as do rocks that are partially molten.”
The discovery, detailed in the June 21 issue of the journal Nature, partially confirms a recent hypothesis by two Yale University geoscientists, which states that a band of molten magma circles the Earth about ...   more »

Diana West - A reader recently e-mailed me about casualties sustained by his nephew's Stryker unit in Iraq after an attack by an Iranian-manufactured IFD. "Why," he wrote, "are we not leveling the plants in Iran that manufacture these weapons?"
Well, that would make too much sense. It's obvious Iran is at war with us—and not just in Iraq, where its agents and proxies kill and maim Americans by arming and organizing some of our many foes there. Throughout the region, from Hamastan (Gaza) to Hezbollah-land (Lebanon) to Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic of Iran, along with Syria, is fighting against us, against our interests. But we pretend, as a matter of policy, not to notice.
Why?
I don't claim to know the whole answer, but fear must surely figure into it — fear of wider war, which I guess is natural, but also fear of a deeper truth, which is more difficult to overcome. That deeper truth starts with the realization that our strategic interests do not lie within the borders of Iraq. After all, what do we get even if the "surge" succeeds in establishing security in Baghdad and even if — and this is the ...   more »

Baghdad believers being terrorized for crime of Christianity
By Hannah Allam and Leila Fadel    
Is Islam incompatible with democracy, decency?
AGHDAD, Iraq — An al-Qaida-affiliated insurgent group is giving Christians in Baghdad a stark set of options: Convert to Islam, marry your daughters to our fighters, pay an Islamic tax or leave with only the clothes on your back.
A U.S. military official said American forces became aware of the threats only last month and now have erected barriers around the largest Christian enclave in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood in an effort to protect its residents.
Christians in Baghdad refuse to discuss the threats for fear of retribution. But in Syria, where thousands of Iraqi Christians have fled, tales abound of families that were killed or driven from their homes because they either refused or couldn't afford to pay the jizya, a tax usually levied on non-Muslim men of military age that's been part of Islam for more than 1,000 years.
"Two or three months ago, we heard we were going to be forcibly removed from Dora," said Rafah Elia Daoud, 53, who fled to Damascus, Syria's capital, on May 24. "Not everyone got a paper with the threat, but ...   more »

The 411-2 vote by the US House of Representatives to implore the UN Security Council to charge Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Genocide Convention represents a significant milestone in the campaign to use the instruments of international law against Teheran.
The legislation is nonbinding, but it clearly makes a legal determination that Ahmadinejad has engaged in "incitement to commit genocide" through his call that Israel be "wiped off the map."
The initiative to see the Iranian president indicted under the Genocide Convention began in New York on December 14, when former Canadian justice minister Irwin Cotler and Harvard Law Prof. Alan Dershowitz joined outgoing US ambassador to the UN John Bolton and an Israeli legal team at an event sponsored by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs at the New York Bar Association's offices.
Cotler's involvement was critical because, as Canada's attorney-general, he actually prosecuted Rwandan Hutus in Canada under the Genocide Convention for their involvement in broadcasting repeated calls over the radio for the massacres that led to the deaths of over 800,000 Rwandans, chiefly from the Tutsi tribe.
For Cotler, who still serves in the ...   more »