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2,000-year-old fortress unearthed in Jerusalem after century-long search

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.

Settlements and the Zionist vision : Moshe Dann ****

“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.

John Hinderaker :Academic Liberals Say: Shred the Constitution!

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?

Stabbing Israelis – Palestinian Jihadi “Resistance”: Rachel Ehrenfeld

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.

The Final Hijra: A Warning on the Refugee Crisis By Andrew Bieszad

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.

Stephen Coughlin on ‘Catastrophic Failure’ — on The Glazov Gang

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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Why Palestinians Do Not Want Cameras on the Temple Mount by Khaled Abu Toameh

The Palestinian Authority (PA) will continue to work against having cameras in the hope of preventing the world from seeing what is really happening at the site and undermining Jordan’s “custodianship” over Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem.

Another reason the Palestinians oppose King Abdullah’s idea is their fear that cameras would expose that Palestinians have been smuggling stones, firebombs and pipe bombs into the Al-Aqsa Mosque for the past two years.

The cameras are also likely to refute the claim that Jews are “violently invading” Al-Aqsa Mosque and holding prayers on the Temple Mount. The cameras will show that Jews do not enter Al-Aqsa Mosque, as Palestinians have been claiming. Needless to say, no Jewish visitors have been caught trying to smuggle weapons into the holy site.

It remains to be seen how Secretary Kerry, who brokered the camera deal between Israel and Jordan, will react to the latest Palestinian Authority escalation of tensions. If Kerry fails to pressure the PA to stop its incitement and attempts to exclude the Jordanians from playing any positive role, the current wave of knife attacks against Jews will continue.

Why is the Palestinian Authority (PA) opposed to Jordan’s proposal to install surveillance cameras at Jerusalem’s Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount), sacred to Christians, Muslims and Jews?

China’s Children and Climate Change — the Left Is against Them Both By Jeremy Carl

They came for Feng Jianmei without warning. She was seven months pregnant. They kidnapped her, strapped her down, and killed her unborn child because she and her husband could not pay their fine. “They” were Chinese government officials, and their tactics were standard practice in China since the implementation of the one-child policy in 1979. Unlike so many instances of this practice, which typically occur in shadows, this one, committed in 2011, broke into international news after a photo of the distraught mother holding her dead baby was posted on a popular Chinese blog.

When China announced the end of its one-child policy last week, the general response from the mainstream media was positive, with many articles appropriately and unequivocally condemning the policy and praising its demise (though not enough stories noted that the Chinese government will continue to control the basic reproductive status of its citizens who wish to have more than two children).

But amid the general approbation, several stories in the mainstream media have partially and in some cases wholly justified the coercive and Orwellian policy, which caused millions of forced and sex-selective abortions, almost 200 million sterilizations, an epidemic of child kidnapping, and the abandonment of girl babies. Furthermore, to judge from both mainstream media sources and the most-recommended-reader views expressed at some top liberal websites, many liberals, when freed by the anonymity of Internet commentary, actually endorse China’s barbaric policies, in the name of their alleged environmental and climate benefits.

Oh-oh! NASA study finds Antarctic ice cap growing By Thomas Lifson

Florida is supposed to be underwater soon, thanks to CO2. That’s one of the scary things that warmists firmly predict as “settled science,” in order to get billions of dollars a year in government research support and all those crony capitalist subsidies for their friends. You see, the polar ice caps are supposed to be melting thanks to the rise in temperatures (that haven’t risen for 18 years now – until you “adjust” the data, that is).

The word didn’t get out fast enough to some scientists that their data needed “adjustment,” and somehow the following made it past the peer reviewers. From the Christian Science Monitor:

In a paper published in the Journal of Glaciology on Friday, researchers from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of Maryland in College Park, and the engineering firm Sigma Space Corporation offer a new analysis of satellite data that show a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001 in the Antarctic ice sheet.

That gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008. (snip)

For now, the study authors say, these findings challenge current explanations for sea level rise, much of which is attributed to melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.

“The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away,” said Dr. Zwally.

Islam in British Prisons By Johanna Markind

Recent media reports of government investigations indicate that throughout the United Kingdom’s category A prisons — those holding the most serious offenders — of Belmarsh, Long Lartin, Woodhill, and Whitemoor, gangs of Islamist extremists intimidate non-Muslim prisoners. Muslim inmates pressure non-Muslims to convert and extort money from prisoners who do not. It is unclear how long the problem has been going on. Media previously reported about pressure to convert three and a half years ago.

According to the UK’s Independent Monitoring Board, Muslims are overrepresented in Whitemoor prison, a maximum security facility holding about 450 inmates. Muslims make up about half of the total population of that facility. The board also noted, Muslim gangs make up the “biggest power bloc,” and “some prisoners and staff found the Muslim presence overwhelming.”