J6D Newsblog

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The remains of the southern wall of Jerusalem that was built by the Hasmonean kings during the time of the Second Temple have been uncovered on Mount Zion, the Antiquities Authority announced Wednesday.

The 2,100-year-old wall, which was destroyed during the Great Revolt against the Romans that began in 66 CE, is located just outside the present-day walls of the Old City and abuts the Catholic cemetery built in the last century where Righteous Gentile Oskar Schindler is buried.

The sturdy wall, which is believed to have run 6 km. around Jerusalem, was previously exposed by an American archeologist at the end of the 19th century, the state run archeological body said.

The Israeli archeologist who started the ongoing excavation a year-and-a-half ago also uncovered the remains of a city wall from the Byzantine Period (324-640 CE) that was built on top of the Second Temple wall at a time when ancient Jerusalem reached its largest size after its southward expansion.

“In the Second Temple period the city, with the Temple at its center, was a focal point for Jewish pilgrimage from all over the ancient world, and in the Byzantine period it attracted Christian pilgrims who came in the footsteps of the story of the life and death of their messiah,” said Yehiel Zelinger, the excavation’s director.

He said the builders of the Byzantine wall were unaware of the existence of the earlier structure, yet they placed their wall precisely along the same route due to its advantageous location for the defense of the city.

The Second Temple Period wall, which was built without mortar, was “amazingly” well-preserved today to the height of three meters, more than 2,000 years after it was constructed, Zelinger said.

He voiced the hope that the First Temple wall would be uncovered next.

The excavation was initiated as part of a plan to build a promenade along the southern side of Mount Zion.

The promenade, which is expected to become a major tourist attraction when it is completed in the next few years, will run alongside parts of the newly exposed ancient wall.

The ancient walls were found by cross-referencing the detailed plans and maps of an excavation carried out in the 1890s by the Palestine Exploration Fund under the direction of archeologist Frederick Jones Bliss and his assistant Archibald Dickie with updated maps of the area.

“We knew that the walls were here somewhere but we didn’t know exactly where,” Zelinger said.

During the dig, the Israeli archeologists also found “souvenirs” left behind by the 19th century excavators: a laborer’s shoes, the top of a gas light that was used to illuminate the tunnels, and fragments of Czech beer and wine bottles from 120 years ago.

The site, which will be open the public in the coming years, will be accessible to visitors for a sneak preview late on Thursday afternoon ahead of an archeological conference being held that evening at the nearby City of David.

The dig was carried out with the financial support of the City of David Foundation, which aims to settle Jews throughout east Jerusalem.

“This is one of the most beautiful and complete sections of construction in the Hasmonean building style to be found in Jerusalem,” Zelinger said.

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The Iranian nuclear program is a dangerous gamble which may lead to a “catastrophic” Israeli military strike, French President Nicholas Sarkozy warned on Thursday.

“Iran is taking a very big chance when it continues with the process of attaining nuclear weapons - and on that we are certain,” Sarkozy said during a press conference in Damascus. “We may wake up to the day when Israel - regardless of who is in charge - attacks.”

“The question here is not whether an attack of this sort is legitimate or worthwhile,” he continued. “The question is what will be done in that instance.”

“It would be a catastrophe and we must prevent it,” Sarkozy concluded.

The French president spoke at a news conference which marked the opening of a summit in Damascus with the leaders of Syria, Turkey and Qatar to discuss Mideast stability and peace. After arriving in Damascus on Wednesday, Sarkozy encouraged Syrian President Bashar Assad to persuade its ally Iran to cooperate with the international community and end its nuclear standoff.

“Iran must not have a nuclear weapon. … Nuclear weapons in Iran are a threat to peace in the region and the world. Everybody, in their own way, should get the message through,” Sarkozy said. ……….

http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=17077

A member of the European Union parliament this week criticized the practice of pouring European funds into the Palestinian Authority, insisting that it was only perpetuating the conflict by creating a welfare state.

Writing in London’s Daily Telegraph, MP Daniel Hannan noted that “a welfare state is…the perfect terrorist habitat.”

He insisted that there is a direct connection between the fact that the Palestinians “receive more assistance, per capita, than any other people on Earth, and live in one of its most violent spaces.”

Hannan said that as long as the Palestinians “remain trapped in the squalor of dependency,” they will be left free to formulate and act upon violent ideologies instead of building their own economic future.

In addition to being politically foolish, Hannan also explained that EU financial aid to a Palestinian Authority that includes, and is in fact dominated by, Hamas is illegal.

“Many of the PA’s officials are Hamas militants, whose salaries are being paid while they serve their sentences in Israeli jails,” Hannan noted. “Under Brussels rules, funding such an organization is a criminal offense.”

The EU has given the Palestinian Authority $500 million this year, and recently approved an additional $80 million.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3591864,00.html

The Likud said in response to Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s statements regarding the possibility of Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods becoming part of a future Palestinian capital: “Jerusalem must remain under Israeli sovereignty, both for security reasons and national ones.

“Any territory ceded to the Palestinians will become a base for terrorism, from which they will launch attacks on the rest of the city,” the party said in a statement.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=73969

In what some may view as a complete turning of the tables, several major Palestinian terrorist organizations this past weekend staged what they called military training exercises on the grounds of Gush Katif, the former slate of Jewish communities inside the Gaza Strip that were uprooted by Israel three years ago.

The exercises were aimed at preparing for attacks against Israel, said terrorist leaders.

“The old (Jewish) settlements gave the Palestinian resistance enough space to have big trainings. We never had this space and these possibilities when the Zionists were in Gaza,” Abu Muhammad, a senior Gaza-based leader of the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization, told WND in an interview.

“The resistance is having a second benefit from chasing the Jews from Gaza. [This weekend’s exercise] was proof of the big victory, using land they were occupying for training in preparing us for our next great victory,” Abu Muhammad said.

The terrorist said there were currently “serious bases, serious camps, storage for arms and tools” now located in Gush Katif.

On Saturday, Islamic Jihad staged a military parade in Gush Katif that reportedly included training drills for group members.

Abu Muhammad said those drills stressed Hezbollah-like guerilla operations, such as exercises in raiding Israel’s border with Gaza and kidnapping of Israeli troops; shooting practice using automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs; and explosives testing.

He said Islamic Jihad was using a cease-fire with Israel, forged last June, to stock up on weapons and increase the range of the group’s rockets, which for three years have devastated Jewish towns located near Gaza.

He claimed his group now possesses “hundreds” of improved rockets that place “all the Israelis south” within range.

Also this weekend, the Popular Resistance Committees terrorist organization showcased its own training in the evacuated Gaza Jewish town of Kfar Darom, which previously housed tree-lined Jewish streets replete with synagogues and Jewish seminaries.

Notable about the Committees training was that it included dozens of boys between the ages of nine and twelve, according to Committees leaders.

The Ynetnews Israeli website featured an interview with one young Committees recruit, an 11-year-old boy named Muhammad pictured holding an assault rifle.

“I am learning how to fight the Jews and kill Jewish children,” Muhammad told Ynetnews. “I would rather die fighting the occupation than die at home from a missile, which is what happened to hundreds of Palestinian children.”

Committees terror group spokesman Muhammad Abdel-Al, also known as Abu Abir, told WND yesterday his group was not brainwashing children.

“We are not educating them on hatred. This is our strategy – to turn all the Palestinian people into weapons of resistance,” Abdel-Al said when questioned about his group’s use of boys.

Israel evacuated Gush Katif’s nearly 10,000 Jewish residents during the country’s retreat under fire from the Gaza Strip in August 2005. Following Israel’s capture of Gaza in the 1967 Six Day War, during which Egypt used the territory to attack the Jewish state, successive Israeli governments over the years urged thousands of Israelis to move to Gaza and build communities there.

Prior to Israel’s 2005 retreat, many Palestinian terror groups announced they would use the territory to stage attacks against Israel.

For the past three years, thousands of rockets have been fired by Palestinians in Gaza aimed at nearby Jewish communities.

http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=17058

A major Dutch newspaper reported on Monday that the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD recently pulled all of its operatives out of Iran after learning that an American air strike on Iranian nuclear and missile production facilities is imminent.

Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported that AIVD had previously been conducting a very successful sabotage operation against Iran’s production of medium and long-range missiles.

According to the report, AIVD pulled out of Iran after being warned that the country’s missile factories would be among the targets hit by unmanned American bombers “within weeks.”

While the report did not mention any potential Israeli involvement in the impending US military strike, Israel’s Ma’ariv daily newspaper reported on Friday that Jerusalem had reached a strategic decision to deny Iran nuclear weapons at all costs and by any means.

The Ma’ariv report stated that independent of other efforts by Western powers, Israel had begun preparations for its own possible strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Responding to the latest reports, the deputy chief of staff of the Iranian military, General Masoud Jazayeri, said on Saturday that any attack on his nation would result in World War III.

Speaking to Iran’s IRNA news agency, Jazayeri warned that in the event of an attack on Iran, Israel and the US “will be eliminated before anything.”

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/152256
Hizbullah has gone “from having 14,000 missiles on the eve of the Second Lebanon War to 40,000 missiles and this time they cover not just the area up to Hadera but also Arad, Dimona, Yerucham, and with much heavier payloads [than the ones it had in 2006],” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Sunday on Channel 2.

Barak said that “Resolution 1701 is, operationally speaking, a failure.” He added: “Hizbullah is getting stronger inside Lebanon, strengthening dramatically… it has never gotten stronger as fast as it did after the war in Lebanon and the resolution which was intended to stop it from getting stronger.”

http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=73965

After months of denials the status of Jerusalem is on the table during negotiations, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office today confirmed to WND that a mechanism has been created to deal with the issue of the holy city in U.S.-backed Israeli-Palestinian talks aimed at creating a Palestinian state by the end of the year.

“Of all the final status core issues, the issue of Jerusalem is probably the most difficult and unlike some of the other issues, we have yet to start negotiating the future of Jerusalem. Therefore in order to not let the process fall victim to its weakest link, we have the establishment of an agreed upon mechanism that would continue to deal with Jerusalem. That mechanism was created in such a way that it would address the concern of both sides,” Mark Regev, Olmert’s spokesman, told WND.

Regev would not detail which mechanism had purportedly been created to discuss Jerusalem.

According to senior Israeli and Palestinian diplomatic sources, both sides are already negotiating Jerusalem, with Palestinian officials claiming the talks are in advance stages.

Regev commented amid news media reports here today stating Olmert presented Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas with a plan for international parties to contribute proposals on how both sides should negotiate the status of Jerusalem. Olmert and Abbas met for a round of advanced talks today.

According to Olmert’s proposal, a five-year timetable will be set out for completing a settlement on Jerusalem…………..

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/08/29/cnrussia129.xml
Fears are mounting that Russia may restrict oil deliveries to Western Europe over coming days, in response to the threat of EU sanctions and Nato naval actions in the Black Sea.

Any such move would be a dramatic escalation of the Georgia crisis and play havoc with the oil markets.

Reports have begun to circulate in Moscow that Russian oil companies are under orders from the Kremlin to prepare for a supply cut to Germany and Poland through the Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline. It is believed that executives from lead-producer LUKoil have been put on weekend alert.

“They have been told to be ready to cut off supplies as soon as Monday,” claimed a high-level business source, speaking to The Daily Telegraph. Any move would be timed to coincide with an emergency EU summit in Brussels, where possible sanctions against Russia are on the agenda………..

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1015869.html
The Russian navy will make more use of Syrian ports as part of increased military presence in the Mediterranean, a Russian diplomat said on Wednesday.

The announcement comes as tensions rise between Moscow and the West over Russia’s role in Georgia. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad backed Russia’s recent offensive on Georgia in support of a separatist province during a visit to Russia last week.

“Our Navy presence in the Mediterranean will increase,” Igor Belyaev, the Russian charge d’affaires, told reporters in the Syrian capital. “Russian vessels will be visiting Syria and other friendly ports more frequently. The visits are continuing.” ………….