By Anshel Pfeffer 
Dr. Joel Mergui, the president of the umbrella organization of the Jewish community in Paris, said in an interview with Haaretz on Monday that he fears that a mass migration to Israel among French Jews could severely deplete the Paris community.
The fears Mergui expressed in his interview with Haaretz are held by quite a number of community leaders in the Jewish world, though few are willing to express them publicly.
"Out of 600,000 Jews living in France, only a third is in contact with the community, and educate their children in Jewish schools. A third is in the process of becoming assimilated, and another third is in the middle, on the fence - and we need to pull them in. All of the education of the Jewish community for years was based on ties and identification with Israel. My worry is that we succeeded too well, we worked so hard with the third of the community whose strong ties with Israel may possibly empty out the Paris community. This is not a fear of anti-Zionism," Mergui said.    
Mergui has a few surprising figures, even for those who are used to seeing Israel's beaches filled with ...   more »

by Gil Ronen
(IsraelNN.com) Seventy-eight members of India's Bnei Menashe community entered Israel by bus from Jordan on Thursday and 40 more were scheduled to arrive at Ben-Gurion Airport early Friday morning on an El Al flight from Mumbai (Bombay), according to Shavei Israel Chairman Michael Freund, whose organization organized the operation.
Freund said that the "Aliyah" (Jewish immigration to Israel) operation had been coordinated with all relevant government authorities. The Bnei Menashe entered Israel on tourist visas and will undergo conversion to Judaism in Israel. Then they will receive permanent status as citizens. These details were worked out in an agreement with the former Interior Minister, Meir Sheetrit, who is now Minister of Construction and Housing.
Bnei Menashe Children in Kiryat Arba
Yigal Henshin, the Bnei Menashe community's president, said Friday: "This is a historical day for us. We have come home."
The Bnei Menashe claim descent from the tribe of Menashe, one of the ten tribes exiled from the Land of Israel by the Assyrian empire over 2,700 years ago. They reside primarily in the two Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur, along the border with Burma and Bangladesh. In recent years alone, over 800 members of the ...   more »

George Conger,
Peace in the Middle East and the resolution of property and tax disputes with the Roman Catholic Church will top the agenda of President Shimon Peres's September 6 meeting with Pope Benedict XVI.
On Friday, Vatican Radio announced the two will meet next month at Castel Gandalfo, the Pope's summer palace outside Rome.
Peres will travel to Italy on September 5 and will also meet with his counterpart, President Giorgio Napolitano and Prime Minister Romano Prodi.
While the trip will be Peres' first since assuming the Presidency, as foreign minister and prime minister the veteran politician has been a frequent guest of the Vatican. In April 2006, while out of public office, he had a private meeting with Pope Benedict to discuss the political situation in the region.
Benedict wrote Peres in July, congratulating him on his election and stating that he hoped his presidency would serve as a vehicle for peace.
In Nov 2005 Benedict met with then President Moshe Katsav in Rome and the Israeli leader extended a formal invitation to visit Israel.
Benedict responded positively, but no date has yet been set. A papal visit to Israel is understood to be contingent on the successful ...   more »

Former Israeli Arab MK and Balad chairman, Azmi Bishara, accused by Israel of spying for Hezbollah during the Second Lebanon War told a Lebanese newspaper he will head an international push to try "the war criminals, Israel and America".
Bishara made the statement while touring south Lebanon, where he was hosted by Hezbollah's media division. He said Israel and the United States would be condemned for the damage they caused to Lebanon during last year's war.
On his tour, he visited Hezbollah battle headquarters north of the Israeli town of Avivim, and Bint Jbail where he laid wreaths on the graves of civilians killed in the fighting last summer. Bishara also visited Kfar Qana where an Israel Air Forces strike killed 29 in the community center during the Second Lebanon War.  
 Bishara called the attack on Kfar Qana the worst civilian slaughter since Deir Yassin in 1948, adding that these incidents made the "long-awaited agreement with the Zionist entity an impossibility".
In a speech Friday, Bishara praised Hezbollah saying it is now stronger than ever.
"Everybody envies the Lebanese for their resistance [Hezbollah] and its leadership, but I envy the resistance for its people," said Bishara, according to comments ...   more »

Yaakov Katz
Predicting that Israel's future wars will be characterized by unprecedented missile barrages, the IDF has decided to modify its missile defense doctrine and has changed its deployment of the Arrow missile in northern Israel, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
The changes to the Air Defense Forces' doctrine have been made over recent months amid rising and falling concerns over war with Syria, and as a result of lessons learned from the Second Lebanon War, during which some 4,000 missiles and rockets pounded the North.
"Our assumption is that the next war will be characterized by missile onslaughts, and lots of them," a high-ranking officer told the Post. "We can tell from the way our 'neighbors' are training that this is what they are planning and that we can expect a repeat of what happened during the Second Lebanon War."
Until now, the Arrow has been deployed in the Palmahim Air Force Base, as well as at an undisclosed site in northern Israel. The "thin deployment," as it was called, was implemented when the Arrow became fully operational in 2000 and when the doctrine was still based on the threat of Saddam Hussein's Scud missiles from the first Gulf ...   more »

By John Authers in New York
A week after the US Federal Reserve's decision to cut the rate at which it lends to banks, the move has yet to achieve its purpose of reviving global money markets.
Instead, the cut in the Fed's discount rate was followed by the most extreme panic in short-term money markets since, at least, the "Black Monday" stock market crash of October 1987.
The money markets spent the rest of the week slowly recovering, but by Friday the difficulties for many companies in raising short-term financing remained acute.
These difficulties, in turn, strengthened the belief that the central bank would be forced to intervene further by cutting the main Fed funds rate, at which banks lend to each other.
The market in Fed funds futures, which investors use to hedge against moves in the Fed funds rate, signalled throughout the week that such a cut was a certainty, and that a reduction from the current 5.25 per cent to 4.5 per cent was overwhelmingly likely by the end of the year.
The crisis of confidence in the money markets was most plainly visible in the prices of short-term Treasury bills, which are regarded as the ...   more »

A charter school has been ordered to temporarily suspend Hebrew classes while officials try to determine whether teachers are advocating the Jewish faith.
Broward Schools Superintendent James Notter sent a letter to officials at the Ben Gamla Charter School in Hollywood on Wednesday advising them to halt Hebrew classes until the school board could further examine the curriculum.
"If it comes up in the course of conversation, that is one thing but if it comes to promoting religion or proselytizing, we don't want it to happen," said Keith Bromery, a spokesman for the Broward schools.
Ben Gamla is in its first week of operation as the country's first Hebrew-language charter school, but school founder Peter Deutsch, a former Democratic congressman, said he told teachers Thursday to halt the classes. He said he shared Notter's aim to ensure religion doesn't enter a publicly funded school.
"His goal and my goal are really exactly the same," Deutsch said.
The ban on Hebrew will extend at least until Sept. 11, when the board next meets. Until then, time that would have been spent on language instruction will be used teaching Israeli geography and Jewish history and culture.
Deutsch said he believes the school ...   more »

Russia's recent moves, such as its joint military exercises with China, are a signal that Moscow is seeking to reclaim its status on the world stage. Its growing ties with Syria and Iran should be of concern to Israeli policymakers
Are we on the verge of a renewal of the Cold War?  
On the one hand, Russia, under Vladimir Putin's leadership and after years of international weakness, is trying to establish itself on the world stage through a demonstration of its military strength. On the other hand, today's Russia is not the Communist Soviet Union, which had a revolutionary ideology it looked to spread around the world.  
Just like the United States and its backyard – Latin America – Russia, with its assertive policy, is looking to make abundantly clear that the areas on its border are within its sphere of influence. This explains Russia's sensitivity to events in countries such as Georgia and Ukraine.  
It is obvious that Russia wants to send a clear a message: that Russia cannot be ignored. One of the major mistakes of western, and in particular American, foreign policy following the break up of the Soviet Union and Russia's weakness in ...   more »

American intelligence chief confirms
'people are alive' as a result of capture
President Bush with National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell
President Bush's top intelligence aide has confirmed that Iraqi terrorists have been captured coming into the United States from Mexico.
The confirmation comes from National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, who talked about the situation in an interview with the El Paso Times recently.
"Coming up through the Mexican border is a path," McConnell said. "Now, are they doing it in great numbers? No, because we're finding them and we're identifying them and we've got watch lists and we're keeping them at bay."
But, he said, "There are numerous situations where people are alive today because we caught them (terrorists)."  
Intelligence officials say the numbers and details of such situations are classified, but McConnell pointed as an example to Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, who entered the United States through Tijuana, Mexico, in 2001, and later pleaded guilty to helping raise money for Hezbollah, which has been designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization.
The goal, McConnell said, is for terrorists to gain admittance to the United States, and then produce "mass casualties."
"You've got committed leadership. You've got a ...   more »

  A federal civil rights lawsuit has been filed on behalf of a 67-year-old Georgia man who was arrested, held in jail for two days and convicted without being given access to a lawyer for passing out Gospel tracts on a public street.
The action was brought by the Alliance Defense Fund on behalf of Fredric Baumann, who was arrested on the orders of police chief Mike Eason.
The ADF said a Georgia Superior Court earlier this month agreed to its request to overturn the conviction of Baumann, "a Christian man whom Cumming police arrested in April for passing out religious literature on a public sidewalk."
"Christians have the same First Amendment rights as anyone else in America and cannot be treated as second-class citizens," ADF Senior Legal Counsel David Cortman said. "The government should not force them to get special permission before practicing their constitutional right to free speech.
"The fact that the court dismissed the charges against Mr. Baumann is not just significant for him but for all citizens who cherish their First Amendment rights," he said.
A spokesman in the Cumming police department told WND there would be no comment on the case.
The case bears a ...   more »

Two and one half millennia ago, a Hebrew prophet under forced exile to Babylon was given a panoramic vision of future history by God. The prophet, Daniel, recorded his visions in the book that bears his name.
Daniel's vision outlined the rise and fall of four successive world empires; the fall of Babylon to the Medo-Persians, which later fell to Alexander the Great's Greek Empire, which then fell to Rome. Daniel foretold Rome's collapse, and its subsequent revival, concurrently with the restoration of Israel, at some point in future history.
But when Daniel was given the vision of events in the last days, the prophet was staggered at what he witnessed. Imagine, for a moment, being someone living in the sixth century before Christ and being given a peek at the world as it exists today. Then, having seen the unimaginable, Daniel was instructed to write down what he saw.
When Daniel emerged from the vision, the angel instructed him, "But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase."
Daniel was dumbfounded.  
"Although I heard, I did not understand. Then I ...   more »

Speaking as an expert and a former hospital administrator with a masters degree in Health Care Administration (from the leading university in the field) and years of experience, I can tell you that the outfall from a national health care, single payer or government-mandated system is crystal clear – and it's frightening.
If we get universal national health care coverage (Hillarycare) and everyone has access to more or less FREE medical care, the demand for care will skyrocket. The supply will not, cannot, keep up. It's simple Economics 101 (which, it appears, none of our legislators have studied). Demand will outstrip supply.
Then, to control skyrocketing costs from skyrocketing demand, the government must set maximum payment levels that, just like today, will not cover the cost of providing health care people demand, deserve or what is good medical care. So, like in all the countries with socialized medicine, everyone goes on a waiting list; everyone suffers.  
Since the government won't pay doctors and other professionals what they want and deserve for their services, many talented, intelligent people will not go into medicine as a profession (no money in it) or will drop out, thus straining the supply side of ...   more »

By Pastor Chuck Baldwin
I just finished reading my current copy of The Times Examiner newspaper, which is published by my good friend Bob Dill in Greenville, South Carolina. This is an excellent independent paper that I can heartily recommend to my readers, by the way. I believe one hundred newspapers such as The Times Examiner would go a long way in helping to save this once-great republic. One does not have to live in Greenville to subscribe. I believe it is important that we support those brave, independent men who are fighting to preserve America's historic principles. Bob is doing just that through The Times Examiner newspaper.
Visit The Times Examiner.
In the Examiner, I could not help but notice the report which chronicles the release of a new film "on the life and faith of President Bush." The film is entitled "George W. Bush: FAITH in the White House." According to the report, the film claims that "not since Abe Lincoln has a sitting president talked so much about God as has President Bush."
The article also states, "Like no other president in the history of our nation, George W. Bush boldly, publicly, and genuinely lives out his ...   more »