IRIS Blog

The story of Biblical Archeology has been a steady stream of Biblical confirmations in the face of scholarly skepticism:

A wall mentioned in the Bible's Book of Nehemiah and long sought by archaeologists apparently has been found, an Israeli archaeologist says.

A team of archaeologists discovered the wall in Jerusalem's ancient City of David during a rescue attempt on a tower that was in danger of collapse, said Eilat Mazar, head of the Institute of Archaeology at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem-based research and educational institute, and leader of the dig.

Artifacts including pottery shards and arrowheads found under the tower suggested that both the tower and the nearby wall are from the 5th century B.C., the time of Nehemiah, Mazar said this week. Scholars previously thought the wall dated to the Hasmonean period from about 142 B.C. to 37 B.C.

The findings suggest that the structure was actually part of the same city wall the Bible says Nehemiah rebuilt, Mazar said. The Book of Nehemiah gives a detailed description of construction of the walls, destroyed earlier by the Babylonians.

"We were amazed," she said, noting that the discovery was made at a time when many scholars argued that the wall did not exist.

"This was a great surprise. It was something we didn't plan," Mazar said.

The first phase of the dig, completed in 2005, uncovered what Mazar believes to be the remains of King David's palace, built by King Hiram of Tyre, and also mentioned in the Bible.

For months, there has been a missile fired from Gaza an average of every three hours. But if Israel tries to stop the rocket crews by entering Gaza, Fatah is promising to join with Hamas in battling Israel.

On the bright side, it helps in IDF planning to know where the two million bullets Israel gave Fatah last week will be allocated:

Fatah will fight alongside Hamas if and when the IDF launches a military operation in the Gaza Strip, a senior Fatah official in Gaza City said Thursday.

"Fatah won't remain idle in the face of an Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip," the official said. "We will definitely fight together with Hamas against the Israeli army. It's our duty to defend our people against the occupiers."

The Fatah official said his faction would place political differences aside and form a joint front against Israel if the IDF enters the Gaza Strip. "The homeland is more important than all our differences," he said.

The statements came amid reports that some Arab countries were planning to resume mediation efforts between Fatah and Hamas to avoid further deterioration in the aftermath of the Annapolis peace conference.

According to the reports, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have decided to invite representatives of Fatah and Hamas for talks on ways of ending their power struggle.

A senior Palestinian official who visited Cairo this week said the Egyptians and Saudis have reached the conclusion that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas won't be able to move forward with the peace talks with Israel without solving his problems with Hamas.

The entire peace process is built on the notion that Fatah needs to be strengthened in its battle against Hamas.

Sorry, but I won't be commenting much on Annapolis because I am allergic to lies. Once I saw Olmert and Abbas solemnly declare to stop terrorism and incitement to terror "on both sides," I had enough. Seeing Condaleeza Rice compare Israeli security measures to anti-Black discrimination in the American South and then repeat the canard that there are roads in the West Bank for Jews only put me out of action completely on this one.

Melanie Phillips, however, is made of stronger stuff than I:

You are the President of the United States. You are committed to a doctrine, shaped by 9/11, which says that never again will terror or illegitimate force be appeased. So what happens when you arrive at a formula to end the Middle East conflict called a ‘Road Map’ whose first requirement, that the Palestinians must dismantle their infrastructure of terror, is ignored by the Palestinians who continue to carry out rocket barrages and terrorist attacks and who make no attempt whatever to dismantle the said terror infrastructure? Why, you convene another conference where you announce a glorious new prospect for peace in which the parties solemnly pledge to respect their obligations under the Road Map! Oh, and also to

immediately launch good-faith bilateral negotiations in order to conclude a peace treaty, resolving all outstanding issues, including all core issues, without exception

So even though step one on the Road Map has been and is still being comprehensively ignored, that can be shelved under ‘meaningless platitudes’ along with the evidence of the continuing attacks; and Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah which is continuing to mount such attacks — indeed, has mounted even more of them than Hamas — will be engaged in ‘good faith’ negotiations with its victims about how many of its demands its victims will now be expected graciously to accommodate. You then congratulate both sides for their

strong leadership

and go on to say things which are either ridiculous or obnoxious. For example, that you are

determined to confront terrorism and incitement, whether committed by Palestinians or Israelis

So you think that annihilatory terror is the equivalent to the attempt by its victims to defend themselves against it, do you? You have simply lost your moral compass, along with your grip on reality. No wonder you are now happy to throw Israel to the wolves; no wonder you go on in that speech to get everything else so terribly wrong. You say:

President Abbas understands that a Palestinian state will not be born of terror, and that terrorism is the enemy standing in the way of a state.

Well actually it’s not just the terrorism which is sponsored in part by the Fatah offshoot the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, but the strategic aim of that terror which is openly espoused by Abbas’s Fatah, namely the destruction of Israel as demonstrated by the demand for mass Arab immigration into Israel, and the bald statement by chief negotiator Saeb Erekat earlier this month that the Palestinians would not recognise Israel as a Jewish state. Nevertheless, you go on to laud Abbas as a ‘responsible leader’ because

He and Prime Minister Fayyad have both declared, without hesitation, that they are opposed to terrorism and committed to peace. They're committed to turning these declarations into actions on the ground to combat terror.

They don’t say? A few days before Annapolis, Israeli Ido Zoldan was gunned down and murdered by Fatah terrorists. Fatah, not Hamas. Moreover, the reason they were able to murder him was almost certainly because, at America’s insistence, Israel had dismantled 24 security roadblocks — as one of those gestures of compromise and goodwill you insist must be made . But it’s ok, because you tell us that President Abbas and his government are

Standing against this dark vision.

Actually, through this lamentable episode it is you who have darkened an already bleak landscape. True, at least you didn’t throw Syria any further bones and instead wagged a finger at it over its interference in Lebanon. And all Condi's lethally fatuous 'final status' blatherings have bitten the dust. But the fact that you put that kind of pressure on Israel to commit national suicide remains a permanent stain on your record. Moreover, by resting the whole charade upon what is essentially untrue — treating Fatah as responsible interlocutors for peace, characterising ‘others’ as extremists and refusing to hold the belligerents of more than six decades to account for their refusal to this day to stop trying to eradicate the Jewish homeland — what you have re-started is not a peace process but a route to further bloodshed, misery and deep injustice.

We’ve all been here before. Annapolis is a re-run of the Madrid conference which ushered in the Oslo ‘peace’ process. The principal outcome of that was to reconfigure in the gullible western mind a genocidal project as a liberation movement, mightily arm the Palestinians with American and European money and enable them to slaughter more than a thousand Israeli innocents while reconfiguring Israel as the villain of the piece. But that whole process was due to the fact that, before 9/11, a lot of very silly people, including your predecessors, lived in cloud cuckoo-land.

One question, Mr President: what the hell has happened to you?

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is now denying her original complaint and has replaced it with politically correct gobbledygook:

The Foreign Ministry on Thursday denied earlier reports in The Washington Post according to which Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni had called on Arab delegates at the Annapolis conference to stop treating her "as a pariah" and asked them why no one would shake her hand or be seen speaking to her.

According to a transcript of the speech provided by the Foreign Ministry, Livni did not in fact say any of the statements attributed to her, but rather said:

"I have heard some say that Israel should not expect a handshake, and I will not ask for one. But let us imagine what might happen if the worst possible scenario occurs and there is a handshake between an Israeli leader and an Arab leader whose country has no diplomatic relations with Israel, and that handshake is broadcast around the world."

"Then the extremists in the Arab countries will understand that a new era is beginning, that the process is right and that it is being implemented in stages," continued the quote provided by the Foreign Ministry.

The statements previously attributed to Livni had reportedly been given to The Washington Post by Dutch European Affairs Minister Frans Timmermans....

Referring to the Arab delegates' attitude towards Livni, Timmermans said they "shun her like she is Count Dracula's younger sister."

Here is an apt quote on the topic from an actual Zionist statesman submitted by reader Dan Friedman:

It is incredible what political simpletons Jews are. They shut their eyes to one of the most elementary rules of life, that you must not "meet halfway" those who do not want to meet you.

--Ze'ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall (an absolute must-read), November 4, 1923

Ehud Olmert grew up in Nachalat Jabotinsky, which was founded by his followers.

Here's an account of the third night of rioting during the recent flare-up of the French Intifada:

Youths rampaged for a third night in the tough suburbs north of Paris and violence spread to a southern city late Tuesday as police struggled to contain rioters who have burned cars and buildings and — in an ominous turn — shot at officers.

A senior police union official warned that “urban guerrillas” had joined the unrest, saying the violence was worse than during three weeks of rioting that raged around French cities in 2005, when firearms were rarely used.

Bands of young people set more cars on fire in and around Villiers-le-Bel, the Paris suburb where the latest trouble first erupted, and 22 youths were taken into custody, the regional government said. In the southern city of Toulouse, 20 cars were set ablaze, and fires at two libraries were quickly brought under control, police said.

Finally, some sanity in the legal system, a decision which will be applauded by all (including many Muslims) who don't want to die in a jihad attack:

U.S. immigration authorities acted constitutionally when they subjected dozens of people returning from an Islamic convention in Canada to frisking and fingerprinting, screening tactics usually reserved for people suspected of being terrorists, a three-judge appeals court said Monday in New York.

And the most that the Olmert administration can do is kvetch with press releases like this one. Former IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon was correct in saying that:

One must be blind not to see that dividing the capital will bring the neighborhoods of Jerusalem, government ministries and schools into the range of Kassam rockets

One must be blind not to see that the rockets will continue to improve in range and payload unless something is done to stop the ones firing them.

Ehud Olmert is laying the groundwork for a division of Jerusalem, which may be a bluff of such magnitude that it actually causes relief when his land concession turns out to be "only" the West Bank.

However, he has already undermined Israel's raison d'etre, that it represents Zionism as a vital expression of the Jewish People. Zion is, of course, a synonym for Jerusalem. Practically, Israel derives its legitimacy as a nation-state because it is the caretaker of the Jewish homeland and its capital, and permits any Jew to take advantage of the Law of Return. Not surprisingly, Olmert's Interior Minister has spoken out against the Law of Return, but this has not been well-publicized (see: 'Israel Should No Longer Grant Automatic Citizenship to Jews').

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert informed American Jewish leaders Monday that Jews outside of Israel have no right to intervene in any decision regarding the status of Jerusalem.

Olmert declared at a news conference Monday following his meeting with leaders of U.S. Jewish communities that "the government of Israel has a sovereign right to negotiate anything on behalf of Israel," making it clear that Jews outside of Israel had no right to participate in decisions about the future of Jerusalem. The prime minister told reporters that the issue had "been determined long ago."

His remarks were seen as a slap to American Jewish leaders who oppose tentative plans by the Olmert administration to put Jerusalem on the negotiating table.

Rabbi Pesach Lerner, Vice President of the National Council of Young Israel, told hundreds of Jews in Chicago Monday night that "Yerushalayim is not for discussion, Yerushalayim is not for sale, Yerushalayim must remain undivided forever." Participants at the prayer vigil were led by the rabbis of the community in chanting tehillim (psalms) and speaking out against the division of Jerusalem and the Land of Israel. A statement sent to the media noted that "for at least one night both the Religious Zionist/Modern Orthodox and Aguda communities stood side by side to pray for what most matters."

The prime minister's statement also did not seem to take into account a declaration that was made decades ago by his predecessor, a founding father and the first Prime Minister of the State of Israel, David Ben Gurion during a session of the first Knesset in Tel Aviv.

"The attempt to sever Jewish Jerusalem from the State of Israel," warned Ben Gurion in 1949, "will not advance the cause of peace in the Middle East or in Jerusalem itself. Israelis will give their lives to hold on to Jerusalem, just as the British would for London, the Russians for Moscow and the Americans for Washington."

This is a good try by Ben Gurion, but a terrible understatement. The analogy is "Jews will give their lives to hold on to Jerusalem just as Muslims would for Mecca." Some British alive today probably have the opportunity to experience the loss of London, and British will not mourn for thousands of years over it and base their lives around a return to it.

The Orthodox Union (OU) immediately responded to the prime minister's remarks with a statement saying it did not intend to dictate policy to Israel, but expressed its "resolute stand" that all Jews in the world have a share in "the holy city of Jerusalem."

Agudath Israel of America adopted a resolution Sunday at its 85th national convention in Connecticut bluntly stating "Israel should not relinquish parts of Jerusalem to Palestinian sovereignty, and the American government should not pressure the Israeli government into doing so."

Both statements echoed an assertion published on the website of the Coordinating Council on Jerusalem which states unequivocally that "World Jewry opposes Israeli negotiations which would include any discussion of ceding sovereignty over part or all of Jerusalem."

The group soberly notes in its statement that this is "the first time since the establishment of the State of Israel that a significant group of American Jewish organizations have created a broad united front to pursue a policy directly involving Israel that is based on an explicit principle that supercedes deference to the sitting Israeli government."

Olmert has lost his mandate to continue as Prime Minister in Israel by virtue of public opinion surveys. All the more so, has no legitimacy to place Israel in existential danger, which the majority of voters believe. All the more so, he has no right to place the essence of World Jewry on the negotiating table.

Olmert has egregiously violated all democratic norms. It is time for Israelis to repossess the trust given to him, and not by waiting passively to see what damage he does before the next election.

The pre-eminent scholar of the Middle East, Bernard Lewis, says the Annapolis conference is "foredoomed":

Is the Israel-Palestine Conflict about the Size of Israel, or About Its Existence?

PLO and other Palestinian spokesmen have, from time to time, given formal indications of recognition of Israel in their diplomatic discourse in foreign languages. But that's not the message delivered at home in Arabic, in everything from primary school textbooks to political speeches and religious sermons. Here the terms used in Arabic denote, not the end of hostilities, but an armistice or truce, until such time that the war against Israel can be resumed with better prospects for success. Without genuine acceptance of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, as the more than 20 members of the Arab League exist as Arab states, or the much larger number of members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference exist as Islamic states, peace cannot be negotiated.

A good example of how this problem affects negotiation is the much-discussed refugee question. During the fighting in 1947-1948, about three-fourths of a million Arabs fled or were driven (both are true in different places) from Israel and found refuge in the neighboring Arab countries. In the same period and after, a slightly greater number of Jews fled or were driven from Arab countries, first from the Arab-controlled part of mandatory Palestine (where not a single Jew was permitted to remain), then from the Arab countries where they and their ancestors had lived for centuries, or in some places for millennia. Most Jewish refugees found their way to Israel.

What happened was thus, in effect, an exchange of populations not unlike that which took place in the Indian subcontinent in the previous year, when British India was split into India and Pakistan. Millions of refugees fled or were driven both ways - Hindus and others from Pakistan to India, Muslims from India to Pakistan. Another example was Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, when the Soviets annexed a large piece of eastern Poland and compensated the Poles with a slice of eastern Germany. This too led to a massive refugee movement - Poles fled or were driven from the Soviet Union into Poland, Germans fled or were driven from Poland into Germany.

The government of Jordan granted Palestinian Arabs a form of citizenship, but kept them in refugee camps. In the other Arab countries, they were and remained stateless aliens without rights or opportunities, maintained by UN funding. Paradoxically, if a Palestinian fled to Britain or America, he was eligible for naturalization after five years, and his locally-born children were citizens by birth. If he went to Syria, Lebanon or Iraq, he and his descendants remained stateless, now entering the fourth or fifth generation.

The reason for this has been stated by various Arab spokesmen. It is the need to preserve the Palestinians as a separate entity until the time when they will return and reclaim the whole of Palestine; that is to say, all of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Israel. The demand for the "return" of the refugees, in other words, means the destruction of Israel. This is highly unlikely to be approved by any Israeli government.

Which brings us back to the Annapolis summit. If the issue is not the size of Israel, but its existence, negotiations are foredoomed. And in light of the past record, it is clear that is and will remain the issue, until the Arab leadership either achieves or renounces its purpose - to destroy Israel. Both seem equally unlikely for the time being.

Olmert has stated that Israel is ready for "painful concessions" at the current Annapolis conference, which include the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem.

Unfortunately Israel's security establishment does not seem to be terribly ready.

Limiting IDF West Bank Operations Increases Rocket Threat on Tel Aviv

The Shin Bet and IDF agree that if the IDF stops operating in West Bank towns, the PA will not be able to impose order there and it would take just a few months for an effective infrastructure to develop in those towns for producing Kassam rockets that would threaten Israel's Sharon and Dan regions.

Ya'alon Warns Against East Jerusalem Pullout

An Israeli withdrawal from Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem as part of a peace treaty with the Palestinians would put the whole city within range of Palestinian rocket fire, former chief of staff Lt.-Gen. (Res.) Moshe Ya'alon said Sunday. "One must be blind not to see that dividing the capital will bring the neighborhoods of Jerusalem, government ministries and schools into the range of Kassam rockets," Ya'alon said at a Jerusalem rally against the division of Jerusalem organized by the One Jerusalem organization.

Mahmoud Abbas, Yassir Arafat's deputy of four decades, has made one innovation on his mentor's playbook. Arafat used to stage photo-ops of Hamas arrests, and then release them after the permanent concessions were received from Israel. Abbas has released them before the end of the peace negotiations:

The majority of Hamas detainees arrested by PA President Mahmoud Abbas's security forces in the West Bank since June have been released, sources close to Hamas have told The Jerusalem Post.

According to the sources, not a single Hamas detainee has been put on trial so far.

In a bid to defuse tensions with Hamas on the eve of the peace conference in Annapolis, the Palestinian Authority on Sunday also released three Hamas members from prison.

The decision to release the Hamas men was taken by the PA leadership in Ramallah shortly before Abbas and members of the Palestinian negotiating team headed to the US to participate in the conference.

The decision was taken in spite of Hamas's increased threats, in the past few days, to foil the peace conference.

Why would Abbas do this if there is a "civil war" occurring between Fatah and Hamas?

While the political echelon is regularly engaged in undermining Israel's security, the IDF is essentially a separate operation with a very right-wing mandate, and one which has been quite successfully discharged:

At least four Palestinians were killed by the IDF in two separate incidents in Gaza on Monday.

The IAF said it targeted rocket launching squads in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanun. According to Palestinian sources, at least two operatives were killed and three other Palestinians were wounded.

In another incident, two armed Palestinians were killed near the Erez crossing after they attempted to lay explosive devices in the area.

Earlier on Monday, several rockets fired from the Gaza Strip landed in the western Negev....

On Sunday, the IDF killed three Palestinians in counter-terror operations in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. A member of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in Tulkarm was killed by an undercover Border Police unit and another wanted man was wounded when the pair tried evading capture....

The Border Police unit was involved in a gun battle against what police said were members of the Fatah-affiliated organization. One operative, Muhammad Kuzah, was killed. Police said that Kuzah was involved in a number of shooting incidents in the Tulkarm area and had planted what they described as "very strong explosive devices" targeting Israelis.

Israel is now negotiating with Fatah to hand over territory in exchange for a pledge of peace, probably identical to the ones pledged at previous signing ceremonies.

The French Intifada never ended; it simply leveled off at a jaw-dropping 14 police officers injured per day (that's 2,500 annually) the last I saw it mentioned in any news source.

Today it is back in the news because "youths" on a stolen motorcycle died in a traffic accident involving a police car. So they burned a police station and ransacked another, among other things:

Dozens of youths clashed with police and set fire to buildings in a Paris suburb on Sunday after two teenagers were killed in a crash with a police car.

The pair were riding on a stolen motorcycle when the accident happened on Sunday in the town of Villiers-le-Bel, north of Paris, a police union source said.

France’s worst urban unrest in 40 years broke out in the northeastern Paris suburb of Clichy-Sous-Bois in November 2005, after two teenagers died electrocuted in an electricity sub-station after apparently fleeing police.

The circumstances in this case, however, were different.

“It was not a chase but apparently a traffic accident,” a police source said.

The town’s police station caught fire and that of the neighbouring town, Arnouville-les-Gonesse, was ransacked, the local authority said. A Villiers garage was set ablaze and fires were put out before they could spread in a neighbouring garage and a petrol station in the same town.

Attacking police is a theme of the French Intifada. See, for example, this story: Muslims Beat Paris Police.

It is important to point out the evil of our Islamist enemy, because the mainstream media typically engages in moral equivalence:

Three suspected al Qaeda militants, including two sisters, beheaded their uncle and his wife, forcing the couple's children to watch, Iraqi police said on Friday.

The militants considered that school guard Youssef al-Hayali was an infidel because he did not pray and wore western-style trousers, they told police interrogators after being arrested in Diyala province northwest of Baghdad.

To live in Israel is truly to live the Bible. Here media bias and corruption is expressed in religious terms:

Former IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Moshe Yaalon accuses the media of protecting politicians who adopt left-wing policies.

In an interview with Army Radio on Sunday morning, Yaalon said, "Politicians have learned that if they go towards steps such as disengagement, convergence [i.e., withdrawal from Judea and Samaria], and folding, then the central current of public dialogue - and I'm talking chiefly about the media - will raise them up."

Yaalon was the Chief of Staff from 2002 until 2005. Then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Defense Minister Sha'ul Mofaz did not extend Yaalon's three-year term, in a departure from custom, and he concluded his term in June 2005, just 11 weeks before the expulsion/withdrawal from Jewish Gaza began. Yaalon had expressed some opposition to the plan.

"The phrase 'to etrog a politician' [meaning, to treat him very protectively, as one does with an etrog fruit during the Sukkot holiday] is not something I made up," Yaalon said. "It was made up by a journalist [Amnon Abramovitch]. I call upon some of those who are thought to be leading journalists - and there is no small degree of corruption there [in the media] that, I feel, causes politicians to understand that if they want to be 'etrog-ed' and 'forgiven' in matters of substance and professional failures, it’s a good idea for them to take certain approaches."

Without ever mentioning Prime Minister Olmert's name, Yaalon said, "I definitely think we are now in a similar instance."

During Bibi Netanyahu's leadership, any trivial "ta'am lifgam" (literally "a bad taste," used in considerations of whether food is kosher) was hyped by the media.