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Ruth King

BRITISH MAJOR-GENERAL SIR CHARLES WILSON (1836-1905)- REPORTS ON PALESTINE 1899…****

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/
PLEASE SEE:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Exploration_Fund

The witness I call, British Major-General Sir Charles Wilson (1836-1905), was chairman of the Palestine Exploration Fund (its website is here), with which he had been long involved, for the last few years of his life.

In July 1899, as reported in the Jewish Chronicle (14 July 1899), he addressed the Fund’s Annual General Meeting in London, regarding his recent travels in the Holy Land:

“The lecturer said that the face of Palestine was changing very rapidly, and the change was due to various causes. The tomb-hunter, who had done such infinite harm in Egypt, was abroad in Palestine and destroying its antiquities. Another change was brought about by a revival of medievalism, which showed itself in a scrambling for holy places. The amount of building of monasteries which had gone on in the Holy Land during the past twenty years was extraordinary. There was scarcely an eminence which was not occupied. Great harm had also been done to the antiquities of the country in this way. Thus the foundations of a synagogue which he had disclosed at Tel Hum [Capernaum], in 1865, had been covered up again. A great change had also been brought about in the landscape of the country, which was due to the Jewish colonies. He was quite unprepared for the extraordinary improvement that the Jewish colonies had effected, turning deserts into gardens and waste places into cultivated fields. Ekron, especially, furnished a fine example of what was done by proper cultivation. [Emphasis added.] As colonists, the Jews showed themselves to be the equal of any people in the world (loud applause).

His visit to Moab and Edom had been a short one, but it enabled him to realise the main features of the country and its description in the Bible. He ascended Mount Pisgah, but, unfortunately, it had been raining, and the valley of the Jordan had been filled with steam, which obscured the view. The river Arnon, the northrn boundary of Moab, was the modern Wady-el-Mojib, which empties itself into the Dead Sea, about twenty-five miles south of Jericho. A journey along the high plateau brought them after a time to a plain, which must be “The Field of Moab,” mentioned in the Bible. One of the most interesting places in Moab was Kerak, where he came across an instance of the little care that the people of those parts evince for their dead. They let them lie about in the open to putrefy and be eaten by jackals. The Tomb of Noah, close to Kerak, was a place of pilgrimage much esteemed in the south of Palestine. Coming to the Biblical Tophel, the view of the Dead [Sea] from there was very beautiful. From the edge of the plateau they got an extraordinarily fine view of Mount Hor,in Edom. They entered Petra through the celebrated defile known as the Sik. They lodged in the Khasneh Phar’aun, the famous structure in which travellers sleep. From Petra they visited Mount Hor. Sir Charles exhibited on the screen a view of the interior of Aaron’s Tomb, this being the first photograph of the tomb that had ever been taken. They found a fragment of a Greek inscription in this tomb. The Turkish Pacha [sic] had mended the road all the way up to Mount Hor.”

On 14 December1899, Sir Charles spoke on the topic “Palestine of Today” to members of London’s Camera Club at their premises in Charing Cross Road.

ISNA HEAD SAYYID SYEED SPREADS TAQYYIA AT CHAUTAUQUA: MARY DESMOND SEE NOTE PLEASE

http://chqdaily.com/author/chqdaily/

WHAT IS GOING ON AT THE PRESTIGIOUS INSTITUTION….HAVE THEY BECOME AN ISLAMIC PUBLIC RELATIONS AGENCY? SMOOTH TALK BELIES AN ORGANIZATION THAT PROMOTES SHARIA….IF YOU CHOOSE SEND A RESPONSE TO THE EDITOR…..RSK

daily@ciweb.org

A few years ago, Sayyid M. Syeed, the national director of the Islamic Society of North America, was on his way to an interfaith meeting in Michigan during the holy month of Ramadan. While on the plane, Syeed began to consider how uncomfortable he would make his non-Muslim colleagues feel if he didn’t eat or drink with them. He then recalled that in the Quran, it says that a person may be exempt from fasting if they are traveling.

“I said to myself, I don’t have to fast, because I’m going from Washington to Michigan, and I will sit there, and I will also drink and eat, because Quran tells me,” he said.

When he arrived at the meeting, he had almost forgotten about his decision to partake in the meal.

“I didn’t see any water there, no coffee, no tea and even no lunch, then I realized what was happening,” Syeed said. “They were fasting in solidarity with me; and I didn’t have to fast.”

Syeed then decided that he would fast, in solidarity with the Christian leaders sitting around him.

“This is the kind of faith environment that we are building in America,” Syeed said.

JOSHUA RUBENSTEIN: THE NIGHT OF THE MURDERED POETS ***** SEE NOTE PLEASE

http://www.joshuarubenstein.com/stalinsecret/intro.html

THESE WERE THE WAGES OF COMMUNISM WHICH THE AMERICAN LEFT DEFENDED TO THEIR ETERNAL SHAME….RSK

Yiddish culture has not entirely disappeared, but it was sentenced to death twice, and each time the sentence was carried out. On the eve of World War II, millions of Yiddish speakers inhabited Jewish communities from Holland through Germany and Poland into the heart of the Soviet Union. Hitler did his best to annihilate every Jew his armies controlled. Individual Jews survived his onslaught, but their communities and unique culture were destroyed. Ironically, the country that saved millions of Jews and not so incidentally played the decisive role in stopping Hitler was the Soviet Union. And the Soviet Union had its own solution to the Jewish problem.

Stalin, like Lenin, expected that Soviet Jews would gradually disappear as the regime offered the carrot of modernization with the stick of forced assimilation. But by the end of his life Stalin could no longer constrain his murderous anti-Semitism and began a systematic assault on the leaders of Yiddish culture who were the primary vehicle for Jewish identity in the country. This campaign culminated on August 12, 1952 with multiple executions in the basement of Moscow’s Lubyanka prison.

Jewish communities across America have increasingly marked this event on August 12 of each year as the “Night of the Murdered Poets.” Convicted at a secret trial in the summer, all the defendants, except for the biologist Lina Shtern, were executed on a single night – twenty-four writers and poets (so it was believed), all men (so it was said) cut down by Stalin’s executioners in the basement of the notorious Lubyanka prison.

But because their trial was held in secret and the regime refused to confirm what actually happened for many years, myriad rumors obscured the nature of the case and the identity and number of the defendants. Today, years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the availability of previously closed archival material – including the trial transcript (which was published in Moscow in 1994) and the tireless research of several Russian and Israeli scholars who have discovered and published hundreds of documents relating to the case and even examined forty-two volumes of investigation records – the details of Stalin’s anti-Semitic star-chamber can be plainly and accurately described.

The trial did not involve twenty-five defendants. There were, in fact, fifteen defendants, all falsely charged with a range of capital offenses, from treason and espionage to bourgeois nationalism. While five prominent literary figures were among those indicted – the Yiddish poets Peretz Markish, David Hofshtein, and Itzik Fefer; the writer Leib Kvitko, who was known throughout the country for his children’s verse; and the distinguished novelist David Bergelson – the remaining ten defendants were not writers at all but connected in various ways to the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC).

HEATHER MAcDONALD: THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST POLICE”STOP AND FRISK” CHALLENGES SUCCESS AGAINST CRIME

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443404004577579490354672410.html
Crime in New York City has dropped 80% since the early 1990s, a decline unmatched anywhere in the country. The change has yielded an explosion of commerce in once forlorn neighborhoods, a boom in tourism, and a sharp rise in property values. Nowhere were the effects more dramatic than in the city’s poorest areas.
When the bullets stopped flying, entrepreneurs snapped up the vacant lots that had served as breeding grounds of crime. Senior citizens were able to visit friends without fear of getting mugged. Children could sleep in their own beds rather than in bathtubs, no longer needing shelter from stray gunfire. Target, Home Depot and other national chains moved into thoroughfares long ruled by drug gangs, providing jobs for local workers and giving residents retail choices taken for granted in middle-class neighborhoods.

Most significant, more than 10,000 black and Hispanic males avoided the premature death that would have been their fate had New York’s homicide rate remained at its early-1990s apex. Blacks and Hispanics have made up 79% of the decline in homicide victims since 1993.

New York’s previously unimaginable status as America’s safest big city is now in jeopardy thanks to a rising campaign against its proactive style of policing. In 1994 the New York Police Department, led then by Commissioner William Bratton, embraced the revolutionary concept that the police could actually prevent crime, not just respond to it after the fact.

DANIEL MANDEL: ISRAEL SHOULD RETAKE PHILADELPHI

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=280989 Egyptian forces will be brutal on terrorists that attack them, but will not interfere with Hamas and other forces bringing weaponry into Gaza. Last week’s failed attack from the Sinai peninsula, in which terrorists killed Egyptian soldiers, was extraordinary. Terrorists operating out of Gaza do not usually attack Egyptians. They can obtain arms and […]

JANET LEVY: A MOSQUE IS NOT LIKE A CHURCH OR SYNAGOGUE

Articles: A Mosque Is Not Like a Church or a Synagogue#.UCfZMdqG5Ps.twitter

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/08/a_mosque_is_not_like_a_church_or_a_synagogue.html
The marked proliferation of mosques in the U.S. since 9/11 should raise a red flag for Americans. Recent controversies surrounding mega-mosque construction projects countrywide — many in locations with almost no Muslims to speak of — have grave implications for the future of these targeted communities and areas beyond.

Accelerated mosque-building — in Murfreesboro, Tennessee; Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Ground Zero, New York; and Santa Clara and Temecula, California, to name a few — carries significance beyond the mere construction of a collection of Muslim houses of worship. It represents yet another orchestrated effort to oust traditional American values and replace them with Islamic practices, laws, and beliefs.

Although most U.S. mosques heretofore have been built without resistance, the newly attendant controversies present speciously polarized views between, on the one hand, ostensibly welcoming, tolerant, multi-culti progressives who deny any possible radical agenda despite substantial evidence to the contrary in existing mosques and, on the other hand, so-called fearful, Islamophobic, ignorant bigots unwilling to embrace diversity. Mainstream media’s predominant point of view is that any opposition to mosque-building represents a blatant unwillingness to integrate Muslims into American communities. This view disallows the possibility that such objections represent appropriate, reasoned responses to an attempt to destroy America from within and supplant its culture with a supremacist, totalitarian, and misogynistic ideology.

Islamic terrorism expert Steven Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project for Terrorism, attributes the spate of mosque-building and land acquisition to the Muslim American Society (MAS), an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. Emerson contends that the MAS has been actively buying up property and establishing mosques to control the appointment of imams who “distribute the message they believe is necessary to spread Islam around the world.”

It should be noted that a mosque is totally unlike a church or a synagogue, entities that serve their communities under the law of the land and are both empowered and restrained under the First Amendment of the Constitution. Under the Establishment Clause of that amendment, the government is prohibited from establishing a state religion or conferring preferential treatment on one religion over another. Although the government may not interfere with religious beliefs and opinions, the proscription of religious practices is permissible, as in the examples of polygamy and human sacrifice.

In the U.S. and in other Western countries, Christians and Jews freely and critically choose their brand of theology from a multitude of ecclesiastic offerings and determine their individual levels of religious observance or none at all. The exercise of faith and the observance of faith-related practices occur across a broad spectrum of individual behaviors based solely on personal choice.

In Muslim countries, no separation exists between mosque and state. Islamic doctrine or sharia controls all aspects of a person’s existence, from the correct way to use the toilet to permissible forms of lying, or taquiya. For Muslims, Mohammed is the perfect man, whose every example must be emulated, even though by Western Judeo-Christian standards he was a mass murderer, pedophile, rapist, torturer, and looter. Furthermore, Islamic doctrine is immutable, and any criticism of the traditions and practices of Mohammed is considered apostasy, which is punishable by death.

No free individual will exists or is allowed when it comes to practices and observances. Sharia must be strictly followed. A mosque is a symbol of this ultimate authority and serves the function of organizing every aspect of life in a Muslim community.

BRUCE KESLER: CAMPUS HATE SPEECH AND SPEECH CODES

http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/20356-Campus-Hate-Speech-and-Speech-Codes.html
Campus Hate Speech and Speech Codes

Many of the finest and most honest minds – conservative and liberal — in and out of academia have argued, and sometimes succeeded, that campus speech codes often cross the line to suppression of First Amendment freedom of speech. The excesses in the wording of such codes, their arbitrary and often biased application, and the fear of usurping a constitutional right, together send chills up the spine.
Nonetheless, in court cases, private colleges have more leeway to enact speech codes than do public colleges, as they are not as subject to the First Amendment prohibition on government interfering with free speech. In the face of opposition to speech codes per se colleges, both public and private, have turned to anti-harassment policies. These seemingly turn the offense from the speech to the impact on those sensitive, and in effect make judging the offense even more subjective. Alongside, many campuses have instituted judgment procedures that deny those charged from confronting their accuser or, in some cases, even appearing to defend themselves. In many cases, those supporting such near star-chamber exercises in speech or behavioral prejudice are those judging for the kangaroo procedures. And, alongside these, liberal and leftist faculty have denied tenure or opposed research by those who have empirically challenged cherished thoughts or prejudices.

So, understandably so, any further enlargement of speech codes or definition of hate speech raises hackles among almost all those who have battled the present excesses. Further, most opponents have cause for little faith that in the prevailing leftist or hypocritical atmosphere on campuses that an enlargement to anti-Israel speech and actions that are anti-semitic would be enforced or fairly.
The occasion for the current discussion is the report by members of the University of California Advisory Council on Campus Climate, Culture, and Inclusion task force on Jewish students (which I reported here). It recommends that a definition of anti-Semitism like that of the European Union be adopted to provide guidelines and current anti-harassment policies be enlarged to contain such guidelines.

RUTHIE BLUM: EGYPT GETS TOUGH, ISRAEL GETS BLAMED

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=2389

Egypt gets tough; Israel gets blamed

The Sinai Peninsula is burning this week, and not only because of the oppressive desert heat. Egypt has deployed troops, tanks, armored cars and attack helicopters to the ostensibly “demilitarized” zone, in efforts to snuff out — and stamp out — what the foreign press calls “militants.”

These “militants” are actually terrorists with blood on their hands and jihad in their hearts. But let’s not nitpick over terminology.

Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi is not concerning himself with linguistic nuances. He is busy giving orders to track down and kill anybody suspected of having a part in the massacre of 16 border policemen whose throats were slit and torsos riddled with bullets just as they finished breaking their daily Ramadan fast.

He is also letting his army loose on the area to signal to all radical Islamist groups who are not under his direct control that there is a new sheriff in town — one who knows their tricks inside and out.

These terrorists include members of Hamas, who have been running the show ever since Israel relinquished control of the Philadelphi Corridor (a narrow strip of land situated along the border between Egypt and Gaza), as part of the 2005 disengagement from Gaza. In the absence of Israeli security and settlements in the Gaza Strip, and with lax policing on the part of Egypt along its own border with the radical Palestinian enclave, a vacuum was created.

This vacuum enabled Palestinian terrorists from Gaza to build tunnels to Sinai, virtually unhindered. The tunnels became the conduit for the smuggling of contraband, such as drugs, and for massive amounts of weaponry. Israel’s attempts to put a stop to this were not fruitful, and members of the Egyptian police were undoubtedly getting their palms greased by drug lords and terrorists on either side of the tunnels, to keep them looking the other way.

It clearly never occurred to the Egyptian police that they, one day, would end up being targeted by those very terrorists, and murdered by those very arms. After all, whatever the internecine strife among the neighboring Arab populations to the south of the Jewish state, they all hated Israel.

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: ROMNEY VS. OBAMA…REAGAN VS. CARTER REDUX

By mid October in 1980 Carter had closed the gap in the early lead of Ronald Reagan.

Carter, was defensive and stopped holding White House press conferences.He raised questions about Reagan’s competency, portrayed him as an extremist who would split the nation along racial and religious lines. Carter pummeled Reagan taking the heat and the attention off his own dismal record in domestic as well as foreign policy.

Reagan became more focused in his attacks on Carter and the enormous differences in their agendas. Carter supported crippling environmental regulations; claimed that the economy was “recovering” with starts in housing and business. Reagan countered that environmental laws were hampering the economy and slowing job growth. He vowed to cut taxes, shrink government and balance the budget.

His famous line when challenged was:

“Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his”

The polls were jumping all over the place. The liberal media was in high gear painting Reagan as a warmonger and lightweight. Reagan rebounded in the debate of October 28, 1980.

When Jimmy brought up Reagan’s long standing opposition to Medicare, Regan delivered the blow to the solar plexus of the Democratic platform:

“Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was?”

The rest is history.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL: MICHAEL ORDMAN

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now

· Israeli stem cells have saved the life of another patient with bone marrow failure.
· Israeli treatment success for epilepsy that does not respond to medication.
· The Israeli government is paying Israeli companies to employ Israeli Arabs.
· Israeli broadcast communications technology is a winner at the London Olympics.
· An Israeli firm will employ hundreds to make bio fuels in Mississippi.
· Two Israeli mothers have invented a unique biodegradable packaging material.
· For the first time, a Pakistani media company is translating an Israeli news feed into Urdu.

Page Down for more details on these and other good news stories from Israel.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Pluristem saves another bone marrow patient. PLX stem cell therapy by Israel’s Pluristem Therapeutics saved a 54-year old Israeli woman with lymphoma cancer and terminal bone marrow failure at Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital. The patient failed to respond to chemotherapy or bone marrow transplants. She has now been discharged from the hospital. In May, Pluristem saved a 7-year-old girl with an aplastic bone marrow.
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000771854&fid=1725

Good results from initial pulmonary fibrosis trials. Pluristem Therapeutics positive results in pre-clinical test of its PLacental eXpanded (PLX) stem cells for the treatment of pulmonary fibrosis. It reduced pulmonary fibrosis (scarring of the lung tissue) and improved lung function in interstitial lung disease (ILD).
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000770385&fid=1725

Caesarean at 30 weeks saves baby and mother. (Thanks to Israel21c) A routine ultrasound scan discovered that an unborn baby had a blockage in its breathing passage. Surgeons at Israel’s Sheba medical centre performed a rare operation on the baby while it was still attached to its mother by its umbilical cord.
http://israel21c.org/news/israeli-doctors-perform-surgery-on-baby-still-attached-to-placenta/

Record 30 cornea transplants. Normally surgeons at the Rabin Medical Centre – Beilinson campus perform 10 transplants a month. But in July, they tripled the number of operations to restore the sight of patients. This is another positive result of the new ADI organ donor cards that more and more Israelis have signed up to.
http://www.jpost.com/Health/Article.aspx?id=279774

Can prayer prevent Alzheimer’s? A new joint American-Israeli study has found that praying regularly can reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by 50%. Spiritual well-being slows progression of the disease by reducing stress levels. Memorising prayers helps cognitive function. (And maybe other factors?)
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Controls/SendFriend.ashx?print=1&type=0&item=158642

Deep Brain Stimulation stops epileptic seizures. Professor Itzak Fried of Sourasky Medical Center implanted electrodes deep inside the brain of a patient with intractable epilepsy (does not respond to medication). So far, the treatment has been a complete success. There are some 20,000 Israelis with intractable epilepsy.
http://www.jpost.com/Health/Article.aspx?id=280200