One of the ‘great archaeological riddles in the history of Jerusalem’ is solved.
Acra fortification, built by Hanukkah villain Antiochus IV Epiphanes, maintained Seleucid Greek control over Temple until its conquest by Hasmoneans in 141 BCE.In what archaeologists are describing as “a solution to one of the great archaeological riddles in the history of Jerusalem,” researchers with the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Tuesday that they have found the remnants of a fortress used by the Seleucid Greek king Antiochus Epiphanes in his siege of Jerusalem in 168 BCE.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s visit to Moscow last month appears born of the confidence that no one would depose him in his absence.
It completes Vladimir Putin’s cycle of Middle Eastern visitors: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, plus Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a NATO partner; Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, a long-time American partner; and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, president of Egypt, which has not had Russian interlocutors since the Yom Kippur War.
After his meeting with Assad, Putin called Erdogan, King Salman of Saudi Arabia, and el-Sisi, as well as King Abdullah II of Jordan to update them.
It is unsurprising that Arab leaders and Israel, traditional American allies, are listening carefully to Putin. Even Afghanistan and Pakistan are making overtures to the Kremlin and requesting military hardware.
It behooves the American government to understand Russia’s strategy – not to agree with it, not necessarily to cooperate with it or with him, but to understand the logic behind it, which is not altogether contrary to American interests.
“If removing settlements won’t bring peace or end terrorism and violence, won’t insure regional security or stability, and won’t satisfy Arabs, including Palestinians – why promote it?”
By definition, Zionism means support for the State of Israel. But for Liberal/ Progressive Zionists, primarily Reform and Reconstructionist leaders, academics and communal leaders in North America, and many secular Israelis, that does not include Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, the “settlements.”
Although traditional Zionism is based on the right of the Jewish people to rebuild a homeland in Eretz Yisrael/Palestine and support for the establishment of the State of Israel, Liberal/Progressive Zionists have quite literally drawn the line – the one that was part of the armistice agreements of 1949 which Israel signed with Jordan, Egypt and Syria.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/11/academic-liberals-say-shred-the-constitution.php
With the release of this video by Project Veritas, the academic left is officially beyond parody. A Project Veritas volunteer poses as a student at Vassar and Oberlin who has been “triggered” by seeing a copy of the Constitution. The sight of the dreaded Constitution has caused her to suffer panic attacks and to feel “unsafe.”
These complaints are met with sympathy by “equal opportunity” officers at Vassar and multiple professors at Oberlin. What would make this poor student feel better about her traumatic encounter with the Constitution? A shredder! Seriously. You have to see it to believe it.
Why on Earth would any parent send his child to these schools, even if they were free?
http://acdemocracy.org/stabbing-israelis-palestinian-jihadi-resistance/
Some Israel’s top terrorism experts are strangely echoing secretary of State John Kerry statements that the recent wave of Palestinian terrorism is secular and nationalistic in nature, the result of Palestinian frustration with the “occupation.” All the while, both competing Palestinian political factions, Hamas and the PLO, use religious slogans to incite more violence in support of the al-Aqsa mosque in al-Quds (Arabic for Jerusalem), Intefada.
On September 16, two days after four Palestinians stoned an Israeli car in Jerusalem, causing the death the Israeli driver and wounding his passengers, two women, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmud Abbas evoked the Islam to justify the attack: “We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem. This is pure blood, clean blood, blood on its way to Allah. With the help of Allah, every martyr will be in heaven, and every wounded will get his reward,” he encouraged the viewers of Palestinian TV.
Andrew Bieszad has an MA in Islamic Studies from Hartford Seminary with concentration in the Islamic equivalent of Dogmatic Theology. He is the author of Lions of the Faith: Saints, Blesseds, and Heroes of the Catholic Faith in the Struggle with Islam. He is a sought after writer and speaker on Islamic topics.
It has been fourteen years since Muslim terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the religion of Islam was made visible to the American public. At the time, there were already many small and medium-size Muslim-only enclaves in many major western European cities – places where if a non-Muslim entered, he would most likely not return. The Internet was still young and far from ubiquitous. YouTube did not exist. Neither did Facebook or Twitter. Cell phone video was still a few years off, which is why we have so little footage of the actual events of that morning. Considering the blood-drenched deluge of social-media driven ISIS propaganda we face today, it’s hard to believe how minimal our exposure to Islamic terror actually was on that fateful day. But as we watched the planes crash into the World Trade Center, as we watched the towers fall again and again on cable news, then-president George W. Bush declared that America “saw evil” and would hunt down terrorists wherever they could be found.
http://jamieglazov.com/2015/11/03/stephen-coughlin-on-catastrophic-failure-on-the-glazov-gang/
This special edition of The Glazov Gang was joined by Stephen Coughlin, the co-founder of UnconstrainedAnalytics.org and the author of the new book, Catastrophic Failure.
He came on the show to discuss his book and How American Leadership is Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad.
Don’t miss it!
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