Few Jordanians Will Mention "Israel"

Any Israeli trying to enter Jordan will be turned away at the border if he is wearing or carrying any Jewish religious paraphernalia. Jordanian authorities explain, that this behavior stems from - get this - "security concerns". Jews, after all, are prized targets for terrorists. By this reasoning, stopping people with overtly Jewish appearances, or who have Jewish ritual articles in their luggage, is a friendly gesture.

Another fact that demonstrates Jordan's inherent hatred of Jews is that during Jordan's occupation of the West Bank, the Jordanian kingdom undertook an unsuccessful attempt to make Jerusalem a Muslim city by forcing out approximately 10,000 Christian inhabitants. Remember, Jordan controlled the West Bank prior to 1967 and attacked Israeli population centers. Don't forget also that on July 20, 1951, King Abdullah of Jordan was assassinated. Do you know why? Simply, a Palestinian murderer who killed King Abdullah, was afraid that the old king would make a separate peace with Israel.

Here is another excellent example of Jew-hating indoctrinated Jordanians, who are entrenched so deeply into their Muslim identity politics, that they no longer comprehend why they should hate Jews, but hate them nonetheless. From Few Jordanians Will Mention "Israel":

As Israel celebrates its 60th anniversary, it is difficult to find people in Jordan who are willing to utter the word "Israel." For the majority of Jordanians I spoke to, all of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River is "Palestine," notwithstanding the existence of a 1994 peace agreement between Israel and Jordan. In Amman and its environs, many tourist shops sell coffee mugs with a map of the West Bank and Gaza, as well as Israel proper, with the word "Palestine" on it. The map has the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Netanya marked on it.

In the five-star Royal Amman Hotel, Mohammed Alkalq, who is studying hotel management and was raised in Jenin, in the West Bank, said he left Jenin because "there is no tourism in Palestine, because of the war there." When asked who the war is between, he answered, "Between Palestine and the Jews." When asked if he means that there is a war between Palestine and Israel, he refused to use the word "Israel." He answered, "No, between Palestine and the Jews."

The relatively few Jordanians I encountered who were willing to use the word "Israel" are not of Palestinian origin.

As Steven Plaut so articulately states,

the pro-Palestinian movement is nothing more than the 21st century's reincarnation of medieval anti-Semitism, complete with medieval anti-Jewish blood libels. People who claim to feel empathy for Palestinians are typically motivated by hatred of Jews. The reason the pro-Palestinian movement wants the Palestinians to have a state is because it understands that such a state will operate as an instrument to attack Israel, murder Jews and seek the annihilation of the Jewish state.

Once one understands this fundamental fact of life about the Middle East and about world political motivations, everything else makes sense. The mind-numbing stupidity of the world media mourning Arafat in great cries of anguish, the fawning toadying of political leaders, the maudlin outpouring of love for the cause of the fallen terrorist Nazi - all are understandable. There is nothing at all confusing about it. These people are not broadcasting their undying love of Palestinians, but rather their undying hatred of Jews.

The world actually understands that there is no such thing as a Palestinian nation. Palestinians are just Arabs who happen to live in the western section of Palestine, differing little from Syrians or Lebanese. Most of them are from families who migrated into Palestine from the time of the beginning of modern Zionism, when Jewish capital and human skills were making western Palestine a much more comfortable place to live for Arabs from the neighboring lands. To describe them as a nation is as persuasive as describing Michigan's Arab community as a new Detroitian nation in need of self-determination.

In 1948, the entire West Bank and the Gaza Strip were seized by Arab states, illegally occupied by Jordan and Egypt, in their war to extinguish the newly created state of Israel. The Arab countries could have unilaterally erected a Palestinian state any time between 1948 and 1967 had they wished to do so, and Israel could have had nothing to say about it. There was no Palestinian national movement at all demanding statehood in these areas. In the entire world, there was no demand for a right of the Palestinian people to erect a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Neither was there any demand for Palestinian self-determination east of the Jordan river. Transjordan was always as much Palestine as was the land west of the river, and the Palestinians have always been a demographic majority in Jordan (since its independence after World War I). So why have these East Bank Palestinians never felt the need for self-determination? Why have none of the caring supporters of Palestinians ever come out for a Palestinian state at least partly east of the Jordan River? Surely, establishing a state there, at least initially, must be much easier than doing so west of the Jordan; there are no pesky Israelis around.

FLAME teaches us that

in 1948, the Palestinian State of Jordan, in an act of naked aggression, invaded the just-born state of Israel. It managed to occupy Judea/Samaria (the "West Bank") and the eastern part of Jerusalem. For the next 19 years, and until 1967 when the territory came under Israeli administration after the Six-day War, Judea/Samaria was part of the Kingdom of Jordan.

During that entire time, nothing was ever heard of "Palestinian" peoplehood. The thought of creating a second "Palestinian" state in the "West Bank," in addition to the Palestinian state of Jordan, did not occur to anyone — certainly not to the "Palestinians," not to any of the 22 Arab countries, and not to the rest of the world.

Remember, readers, the armies of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq invaded Israel with the declared intent of destroying it. Jews have always been forbidden to reside in Saudi Arabia and Jordan; there are no Jews in Libya; only under 100 in Egypt and Syria; and only around 17 remain in Iraq.

Jordan, originally named Trans-Jordan, is the partitioned land area that was allocated to the Arabs in 1948 when they refused the offer to have their own state.

Iran: Syria Arrests Saudi Official Over Mughniyeh Assassination

It wasn't the Mossad, Jew bashers, it was archetypical Muslim vs. Muslim carnage. From Iran: Syria Arrests Saudi Official Over Mughniyeh Assassination:

In a move that could have far reaching consequences, Syria arrested a Saudi official in connection with the assassination of top Hizbullah commander Imad Mughniyeh, Iran's semi-official Fars news agency reported Tuesday. A high-ranking defense official in Saudi Arabia's embassy in Damascus, who was connected to a Syrian woman in whose name the two explosives-laden cars used to kill Mughniyeh were registered, was arrested by Syrian security forces.

An Iranian source said locals with Syrian, Jordanian and Palestinian citizenships executed the operation. The men rented apartments near Mughniyeh's residence in Damascus and surveyed his activities from there.

Hamas Confiscates Jordanian Aid Sent to Gaza

As we deconstruct poverty and occupation as the root causes of Muslim terrorism, it becomes clear once again that the disease is within Islam itself. From Hamas Confiscates Jordanian Aid Sent to Gaza:

At least 10 trucks with humanitarian aid sent to the Gaza Strip by the Jordanian Red Crescent Society were confiscated by Hamas police shortly after the trucks entered the territory on Thursday evening, according to aid officials in Jerusalem. Eight trucks had food products and another two had medicines. They were reportedly taken to Hamas-run ministries.

Initial reports said the intended target of the aid was the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) in Gaza. Hamas and the PRCS had a run-in in the past, when the Islamic group diverted another aid convoy. A spokesman for the Hamas police in Gaza said that the number of trucks was in fact 14 and they would be "delivered to Palestinians in need in the Gaza Strip."

He added that Hamas was the responsible body in the territory and it would decide how to distribute the aid.

Who is George Habash?

George Habash was a palestinian who enjoyed murdering Jews. And now, at last, he's dead. From Terrorism's Christian Godfather: George Habash Dies :

You could call George Habash, a Palestinian leader who died in Amman on Saturday at the age of 82, the godfather of Middle East terrorism.

Habash's group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), pioneered the hijacking of airplanes as a Middle East terror tactic - one eventually employed by the al-Qaeda hijackers on 9/11 - way back in 1968 when three PFLP armed operatives commandeered an Israeli El Al airliner enroute from Rome to Tel Aviv. Checking in for a flight has never been the same since.

In 1970, PFLP terrorists hijacked four airliners at one time, flew three of them to Jordan, blew them up, and triggered the Black September civil war between Jordan's Hashemite monarchy and Palestinians.

In 1972, Japanese Red Army terrorists working with the PFLP massacred 24 people at Israel's international airport.

In 1976, the PFLP's last hijacking ended in the daring rescue by Israeli counter-terrorism commandos in Entebbe, Uganda.

Habash succeeded in raising awareness of the Palestinian cause, yet his extreme, vengeful methods also helped drench it in blood, and likely brought Palestinians no closer to freedom and dignity.

Rot in hell, pathogen.

Interview: David Raab, Author of 'Terror in Black September'

Via INN:

Author David Raab, who survived one of history’s most audacious terrorist acts, spoke with Israel National Radio’s Eve Harrow about his new book, “Terror in Black September.”

Raab spoke about his decision, years later, to compile archived documents and testimony surrounding the three-week drama of being held as a hostage by PLO terrorists in Jordan in 1970. He also revealed a result of the hijackings the terrorists never intended: Aliyah (Jewish immigration to Israel).

“The situation in Jordan then was very similar to what was going on in Gaza just a few months ago, with the Palestinian Authority nominally in charge but in fact Hamas running rampant through the streets, running its own checkpoints and basically a state within a state,” Raab explains of the political environment surrounding the episode. “In 1970, Yasser Arafat and the PLO were playing [the Hamas] role and King Hussein was at his wits end.”

On Sunday, September 6, 1970, 17-year-old Raab, his mother and his four younger siblings boarded a plane in Tel Aviv after spending the summer in Israel. TWA flight 741 was heading back to the US when it had to make a stop in Germany. “In those days planes couldn’t make it all the way across the pond so we landed at Frankfurt to refuel and pick up more passengers,” Raab recalls. “A few minutes out of Frankfurt we heard a scream from the back and a man and a woman, the woman carrying two hand grenades, ran down the aisle. We had been hijacked and the plane was turned around.”

Click here to read the whole interview.

Israel destroys synagogue near Judaism's 2nd holiest site

Israeli security forces today, under orders from the detestable Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, amassed in Hebron – the world's oldest Jewish city – where they destroyed a synagogue and forcibly evicted two Jewish families from a Jewish-owned market place located within the city's Jewish community.

Two Jewish families. In the meantime, arab squatters infest the Holy City of Hebron, but the diseased Israel government evicts two Jewish families. Never before in history has there been a nation that evicts its own citizens in order to pander to its enemies.

Hebron is home to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the second holiest site in Judaism. The tomb is believed to be the resting place of the biblical patriarchs and matriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah.

More than 3,000 Israeli solders and police officers surrounded a key section of Hebron's Jewish community today to expel the two Jewish families. The government maintains their residency in Hebron is illegal, since the families' arrival wasn't coordinated with the Israeli military. The families say they moved in after the military reneged on an agreement.

The families' eviction was widely regarded in Israel as the opening salvo of more planned major evacuations of Jews living in the West Bank's biblical Jewish communities.

How the Six-Day War Reshaped the Mideast

From How the Six-Day War Reshaped the Mideast:

The great irony of the Six-Day War of 1967 was that it began with a hoax - a piece of faulty Soviet intelligence given to the Egyptians. On May 13, the Soviet ambassador to Cairo informed the Egyptians that Israel was massing "10 to 12 brigades" on the Syrian border in preparation for a big push against the radical regime in Damascus. In response to that Soviet report, Nasser mobilized his troops on May 14 and dispatched them into the Sinai. The casus belli would come on May 22, when Nasser announced the closing of the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping. Euphoria gripped the Arab world; Nasser hadn't fired a shot, but great gains had come his way. On May 30, King Hussein of Jordan rushed to Cairo to place his army under Egyptian command.

At the remove of four decades, we should not overdo the importance of that Soviet report about the phantom Israeli brigades. At the heart of the war lay the willful Arab refusal to accept Israel's legitimacy and statehood. Israel's victory in 1967 delivered a message: that the state that had fought its way into the world in 1948 is there to stay.

Contributing Editor Fouad Ajami is Majid Khadduri professor of Middle East studies at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and author, most recently, of The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq.

For Israel, There Was No Peace Before The Land

From the great Charles Krauthammer:

There has hardly been an Arab peace plan in the past 40 years -- including the current Saudi version -- that does not demand a return to the status quo of June 4, 1967. Why is that date so sacred? Because it was the day before the outbreak of the Six Day War in which Israel scored one of the most stunning victories of the 20th century. The Arabs have spent four decades trying to undo its consequences.

The real anniversary of the war should be now, three weeks earlier. On May 16, 1967, Egyptian President Gamal Nasser demanded the evacuation from the Sinai Peninsula of the U.N. buffer force that had kept Israel and Egypt at peace for 10 years. The U.N. complied, at which point Nasser imposed a naval blockade of Israel's only outlet to the south, the port of Eilat -- an open act of war.

How Egypt came to this reckless provocation is a complicated tale (chronicled in Michael Oren's magisterial history "Six Days of War'') of aggressive intent compounded with fateful disinformation. An urgent and false Soviet warning that Israel was preparing to attack Syria led to a cascade of intra-Arab maneuvers that in turn led Nasser, the champion of pan-Arabism, to mortally confront Israel with
a remilitarized Sinai and a southern blockade.

Why is this still important? Because that three-week period between May 16 and June 5 helps explain Israel's 40-year reluctance to give up the fruits of the Six Day War -- the Sinai, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza -- in return for paper guarantees of peace. Israel had similar guarantees from the 1956 Suez War, after which it evacuated the Sinai in return for that U.N. buffer force and for assurances from the Western powers of free passage through the Straits of Tiran.

All this disappeared with a wave of Nasser's hand. During those three interminable weeks, President Lyndon Johnson tried to rustle up an armada of countries to run the blockade and open Israel's south. The effort failed dismally.

It is hard to exaggerate what it was like for Israel in those three weeks. Egypt, already in an alliance with Syria, formed an emergency military pact with Jordan. Iraq, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Libya and Morocco began sending forces to join the coming fight. With troops and armor massing on Israel's every frontier,
jubilant broadcasts in every Arab capital hailed the imminent final war for the extermination of Israel. "We shall destroy Israel and its inhabitants,'' declared PLO head Ahmed Shuqayri, "and as for the survivors -- if there are any -- the boats are ready to deport them.''

For Israel, the waiting was excruciating and debilitating. Israel's citizen army had to be mobilized. As its soldiers waited on the various fronts for the world to rescue the nation from peril, Israeli society ground to a halt and its economy began bleeding to death. Army Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin, later to be hailed as a war hero and even later as a martyred man of peace, had a nervous breakdown. He was incapacitated to the point of incoherence by the unbearable tension of waiting with the life of his country in the balance.

We know the rest of the story. Rabin recovered in time to lead Israel to victory. But we forget how perilous was Israel's condition. The victory hinged on a successful attack on Egypt's air force on the morning of June 5. It was a gamble of astonishing proportions. Israel sent the bulk of its 200-plane air force on the mission, fully exposed to antiaircraft fire and missiles. Had they been detected and the force destroyed, the number of planes remaining behind to defend the Israeli homeland -- its cities and civilians -- from the Arab air forces' combined 900 planes was ... 12.

We also forget that Israel's occupation of the West Bank was entirely unsought. Israel begged Jordan's King Hussein to stay out of the conflict. Engaged in fierce combat with a numerically superior Egypt, Israel had no desire to open a new front just yards from Jewish Jerusalem and just miles from Tel Aviv. But Nasser personally told Hussein that Egypt had destroyed Israel's air force and airfields and that total victory was at hand. Hussein could not resist the temptation to join the fight. He joined. He lost.

The world will soon be awash with 40th anniversary retrospectives on the war -- and on the peace of the ages that awaits if Israel would only return to June 4, 1967. But Israelis are cautious. They remember the terror of that unbearable May when, with Israel possessing no occupied territories whatsoever, the entire Arab world was furiously preparing Israel's imminent extinction. And the world did nothing.

Jordanian Opposition Blasts Visit by Israeli Peace Activists

From Jordanian Opposition Blasts Visit by Israeli Peace Activists:

A coalition of Jordanian opposition parties and trade unions Thursday condemned a planned visit by 50 Israeli peace activists for a meeting with Jordanian opinion leaders. The Executive Committee for Confronting Normalization with Israel urged a cessation of all forms of normalization of ties with Israel.

40th Anniversary of the Reunification of Jerusalem

Via Israel HighWay:

Most Jews in Israel and throughout the world barely remember a time when the Old City of Jerusalem and the rest of east Jerusalem were not an important part of the fabric of the city and the country. For 19 years, from the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 until the Six Day War in 1967, Jerusalem was a city divided by barbed wire and dangerous "no-man’s land" running roughly north to south separating the Jewish people from the Old City of Jerusalem. The Old City, the City of David, was the cornerstone of 2,000 years of Jewish longing for Zion. The long-held dream of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel was finally achieved, but the heart of the land was at once visibly close and miles away.

When Israel was born in 1948, its citizens and armed forces were unable to defend the Old City, and it fell to the Jordanian Legion. Jews were cut off from their holiest sites in Jerusalem, including the Kotel (Western Wall), the City of David just outside the Old City Walls, Mt. Scopus and the ancient Mount of Olives cemetery.

Throughout this time the Jewish character of the Old City was systematically destroyed by the Jordanian government. Thousands of Jewish residents of east Jerusalem and the Old City were driven from their homes. Fifty-eight Jerusalem synagogues, including some that were hundreds of years old, were destroyed or ruined and others were turned into barns for animals or public bathrooms. The entire Jewish Quarter was destroyed, houses were built immediately adjacent to the Kotel and all access to the ancient city was completely denied to Jews. Then suddenly, in the middle of the Six Day War, Israel found itself, unexpectedly, in control of the Old City.

With the news that Israel had taken control of the Old City and east Jerusalem, Israelis from all over the country began flocking to the Kotel to celebrate their young country’s miraculous victory. With Israeli sovereignty in all of Jerusalem, the holy sites of the world’s three great monotheistic faiths were opened to all, as they had never been under centuries of Muslim rule.

Now, 40 years later, many Israelis don’t know an Israel without a united Jerusalem offering free access to the Kotel and the important cultural and historic sites in the Old City. What was once "no man's land" dividing Israeli west Jerusalem from Jordanian-controlled east Jerusalem is now home to many landmarks and tourist attractions. One such place is the Haas Promenade, the first stop for many tour groups because of its scenic overlook of the entire Jerusalem panorama.

In recent years, Jerusalem has struggled as a growing and modern city. The city's narrow and winding streets are often snarled with traffic, and the city center, the site of frequent terrorist attacks during the Second Intifada, has struggled to keep shoppers and to attract people seeking entertainment who favor the modern indoor mall on the outskirts of the city. However, the city is in the midst of a major building campaign centered around the Jerusalem light rail system which will connect the outlying neighborhoods of the city with the center of town. The light rail, with its signature "Bridge of Strings" at the entrance to the city, will serve as a catalyst for new pedestrian malls, shopping areas and a reduction of traffic in and around the city center.

However, everything is not settled. To this day, 40 years after the unification of the city and almost 60 years after the founding of the State of Israel, the world refuses to fully accept Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Children born in Jerusalem to American parents are issued U.S. passports with the country of birth left blank. For decades, only two countries, Costa Rica and El Salvador, maintained their Israeli embassies in Jerusalem, and both of those countries announced last year that they would be moving their embassies to Tel Aviv.

The issue of Jerusalem has played a significant role in various diplomatic discussions in recent years and remains a key "final status" issue in the on-again, off-again talks between Israel and the Palestinians. The Oslo Accords, the negotiations at Camp David and the other interim discussions have all touched on the future of Jerusalem but opted to postpone the discussion. This year’s controversy over the Mugrabi Gate excavations shows just how sensitive an issue Jerusalem can be. The Mugrabi Gate serves as the entry point to the Temple Mount for all non-Muslim visitors. The bridge was built after the Six Day War to bring visitors to the Temple Mount. Recently it was heavily damaged during torrential rainstorms, and Jerusalem city architects ruled that is must be replaced with a more permanent and safer structure. In February, initial excavations of the site for the new bridge brought a swirl of controversy from the Muslim world, with Muslim and Arab leaders accusing Israel of seeking to undermine mosques on the Mount. Israel defended the decision to rebuild by inviting inspectors from various countries to observe and inspect the area themselves. A UN ruling on the incident cleared Israel of wrongdoing, acknowledging that they had acted with professionalism.

What is the future of Jerusalem? Will it remain the undivided capital of Israel or will the world demand official Palestinian sovereignty in parts of the Holy City? The answers to these questions remain unclear to all; but on this, the 40th Yom Yerushalayim, we should all stop to appreciate the Eternal City.

Take Action:

* Celebrate Yom Yerushalayim on May 16.
- Put an Israeli flag on your window or porch.
- Wear an Israeli flag pin.
* Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Attend a special service at your school or synagogue to mark the miracle of Jerusalem's reunification.
* Write a letter to your congressmen, senator, President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanded that the American Embassy be moved to Jerusalem.

* Watch these video clips on Jerusalem:

- Jerusalem of Gold
- Matisyahu's Tribute to Jerusalem

Click here to listen to a live broadcast of the liberation of the Old City on June 7, 1967.

Jordan quietly gaining Temple Mount control

Be berry, berry qwiet. Don't look now, but Jordan wants to resume its re-occupation of Jerusalem that it had previously occupied from 1948 to 1967, where no Muslim, Jew, or Christian was allowed to pray, with no peep of outrage from the international community. Yet, when Jews are in their indigenous homeland, and open up the Temple Mount so that Muslim, Jew and Christian could pray, the world is infuriated. Arab occupation of Jewish land = good. Jewish occupation of Jewish land = bad. That's Arabist logic for you. Not surprising from a culture whose greatest gift to civilization is their claim to inventing the number zero. From WND:

Jordan has been quietly purchasing real estate surrounding the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in hopes of gaining more control over the area accessing the holy site, according to Palestinian and Israeli officials.

The officials confirmed to WND the Jordanian Kingdom has been using shell companies during the past year to purchase several apartments and shops located at key peripheral sections of the Temple Mount.

The officials said Jordan also set up a commission to use the companies to petition mostly Arab landowners adjacent to eastern sections of the Temple Mount to sell their properties. They said profits from sales at any purchased shops would be reinvested to buy more real estate near the Mount and in eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods. The shell companies at times have presented themselves as acting on behalf of the Waqf, the Muslim custodians of the Temple Mount, WND has learned.

Sheik Azzam Khateeb, who was installed last month as the new manager of the Waqf, is known to be close to the Jordanian monarchy. The previous Waqf manager, Sheik Adnon Husseini, was loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party and had relations with Israel and some Jewish groups.

The Israeli and Palestinian officials said Jordan recently placed a bid to purchase Jerusalem's Intercontinental Hotel, which is situated on an important road that leads to an ancient cemetery on the Mount of Olives, adjacent to the Temple Mount. Informed sources tell WND the hotel is owned by groups representing the Israeli government and is leased every 10 years to a new company. The last lease was signed in 1997 and expires later this year. It was not immediately clear whether Jordan's bid was accepted.

The Mount of Olives is site of many biblical events and is considered important to Judaism and Christianity.

Real estate ownership in Jerusalem's Old City is widely considered a sensitive matter. Previous Israeli-Palestinian peace proposals tentatively divided parts of the city based on Jewish or Arab residence.

Jordan previously controlled eastern Jerusalem and the Temple Mount from 1948 until Israel liberated the territory in the 1967 Six Day War. During the period of Jordanian control, Jews were barred from the Western Wall and Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest sites, and hundreds of synagogues were destroyed. Jordan constructed a road to the Intercontinental Hotel that stretched across the Mount of Olives, bulldozing hundreds of Jewish gravestones.

Jordan the past few months has boosted its public profile on the Temple Mount. The appointment of Khateeb as the new Waqf manager for the Temple Mount was widely seen as a nod to Jordan.

Gall of the Hashemites

More proof that anti-Zionism is racism. An excellent article from the excellent New York Sun, Gall of the Hashemites:

Jordan's King Abdullah II, speaking before a joint meeting of Congress Wednesday, seemed to blame Israel for all the world's problems. "The denial of justice and peace in Palestine," the king said, "is the core issue. And this core issue is not only producing severe consequences for our region, it is producing severe consequences for our world."

Balderdash is the kindest way to describe it. If the terrorists are upset about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, why are they setting off bombs in Indonesia and Spain and Saudi Arabia and Iraq, which are hardly in the vanguard of support for Israel? Given that the terrorists state publicly that their end goal is to make all of Europe and America subject to Islamic law, why should we believe that in fact they have the far more modest goal of merely seizing land belonging to the Jewish state?

The gall of the son of King Hussein, who perpetrated what the Arabs call Black September on the Palestinians [when Jordan expelled the PLO in 1970], to lecture the Americans on Palestinian Arab dispossession is astounding. Abdullah well knows that Jordan controlled the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967. If the Palestinian Arabs were dispossessed during that period, it was no one's fault but the Hashemites', who didn't exactly use those decades to establish a Palestinian Arab state.

Abdullah made reference to a Saudi proposal from 2002 that he described as the "Arab Peace Initiative." That plan would be more accurately described as the Arab Destruction of Israel Initiative. Its aim was to give the Palestinian Arabs half of the Israeli capital of Jerusalem, [force an Israeli] retreat to militarily indefensible borders, and absorb within those borders enough Arab "refugees" so that its character as a Jewish state would be eradicated.

One of the effects of the Islamist terrorist onslaught of recent years is that more Americans have thought more deeply about these matters. They will not be gulled by a foreign potentate
offering up Israel as a scapegoat for troubles that originate with the failings of the Arab and Islamic world and their nondemocratic leaders, Abdullah among them.

Jordanian Islamists Accused of Plot to Assassinate Bush

From Jordanian Islamists Accused of Plot to Assassinate Bush:

Jordan on Wednesday put on trial three suspected Islamists for conspiring to assassinate President George W. Bush when he visited the country last year, as part of a previously undisclosed plot to bomb the U.S. and Danish embassies.

Byzantine arch found at site of renovated Jerusalem synagogue

A high arch which had been part of the skyline of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City in Jerusalem since the Six Day War has recently disappeared. It belonged to the Hurva Synagogue, Israel's grandest, most important synagogue until the War of Independence.

The arch, a remnant of the synagogue bombed by the Jordanians in 1948, was removed due to the renovation and reconstruction of the synagogue now in progress.

Excavations at the site, directed by archaeologists Hillel Geva and Oren Gutfeld, have exposed findings from various periods of the synagogue's history. The most significant is an entire arch standing along remnants of a stone-paved street from the Byzantine period, which split from the Cardo (one of Jerusalem's main streets during the Roman and Byzantine period) and ascended east to the center of the Jewish Quarter. The arch - 3.7 meters wide, 1.3 meters thick and five meters high - is built of one row of large hewn stones. Geva believes it formed the entrance gate to the Byzantine street.

"This arch is unique, because in excavations there so far only wide domes that walled the shops along the Byzantine Cardo were found," says Geva. "It shows where the street split from the Cardo, and has been recovered intact."

Yuval Baruch, the archaeologist of the Jerusalem District of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), also believes "this is a rare and important finding."

The excavations, which began in 2003, also unearthed structures and pottery from the First Temple period, remnants of rooms from the Herodian period (Second Temple), burnt wooden logs (evidence of fire that took place after the destruction of the Second Temple), and three plastered ritual baths carved in rock from the Second Temple period.

The diggers also found a small weapons arsenal, where defenders of the Jewish Quarter stashed mortar shells and grenades during the Independence War.

The Hurva's renovation ended a prolonged architectural argument about how to reconstruct the synagogue, which was the center of cultural and spiritual life in Israel and the Jewish Quarter in the second half of the 19th Century and first half of the 20th. Ultimately, architect Nahum Meltzer's plan to reconstruct the original synagogue was adopted.

The courtyard was purchased 306 years ago by Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid (Segal), who arrived from Poland with 300 of his students. It sat adjacent to the Ramban Synagogue, built some 430 years earlier and was closed by the Ottomans in 1589. The Ashkenazi community in the Old City numbered a mere few hundred people in those days and Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid and his students' coming caused much commotion. He died five days later.

His followers began building a yeshiva and synagogue in the courtyard, but the construction was not completed. The Jews were late returning the loan to the Arabs for the project and in 1721 the Arabs burned the uncompleted synagogue and the 40 Torah books it housed. The site remained desolate for 140 years, thus acquiring the name "hurva" (the wreck). A new synagogue was built there by the disciples of the Vilna Gaon in 1864.

The Hurva then became the most splendid synagogue in Israel and hosted important Jewish events until the 1930s. Two days after conquering the quarter in 1948, the Jordanians bombed the synagogue and the Jordanian commander reported to headquarters: "For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews' return here impossible."

Keyword: Archaelogy

Spiegel Interview with Jordan's King Abdullah II

Here is an interview, conducted and published in Spiegel, with Jordan's King Abdullah II who discusses the way out of the chaotic situation in Iraq, successes in the war against terror and the necessity of negotiations with Tehran's mullahs. An excerpt (emphasis mine):

SPIEGEL: Your Majesty, the terrorist Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi posed a threat not only to Iraq, but also to your country. Now he is dead. Has the Middle East become a safer place?

King Abdullah II: One chapter was closed, but terrorism and extremism are going to continue. Al-Zarqawi will be replaced by somebody else, whoever it will be. Obviously for Jordanians because of the murder of 60 people here ...

SPIEGEL: ... in November, when suicide bombers attacked three hotels in Amman.

King Abdullah: It brings us a closure and a reason to move on. That part may be over. But it's a tactical game in the fight against terrorism. At the end of the day we want to bring stability and hope to Iraq. That's the only way to defeat terrorism.

SPIEGEL: Is it true that Jordanian intelligence played a decisive role in tracking al-Zarqawi down?

King Abdullah II: We have played a role and this is not something new. We have been working with the international community not only in relation to al-Zarqawi, but in tracking down many other terrorists as well. Historically, with Germany we have done a lot of close work. This was part of a global strategy.

"A global strategy." Yeah, as long as no one asks Israel her opinion, the prognosis for peace is good.

The disputed territories never belonged to the "Palestinians"

The disputed - or as Jew-haters like to say - the "occupied" territories never belonged to the "Palestinians".

Never.

These areas only came into Israeli possession as a result of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon converging on Israel's border in 1967 - in what came to be known as the Six Day War - a war which the Arabs once again initiated with the singular goal to destroy all of Israel and all the Jews within.

It was a war started by Arabs and once again lost by Arabs and as a result, Israel took control of the land.

And I'll throw in an extra fun fact here; Judea, Samaria (the "West Bank") and Gaza are all mentioned in our Torah and were originally inhabited by our Jewish forefathers. Gaza is mentioned in several places in the Torah including Judges 1:18. Judea is first mentioned in our Torah in the book of Joshua.

Judea and Samaria were both renamed by our Arab enemies - Judea is now named the "West Bank", a phrase created by King Hussein of Jordan after the war in 1948 when he declared that Jordan would annex that area. The term "West Bank" stayed with the media, unchallenged, for the past 37 years. If you look on a map, the "West Bank" is eastern Israel.

And what is east of Israel?

Jordan, originally named Trans-Jordan, which is the partitioned land area that was allocated to the Arabs in 1948 when they refused the offer to have their own state.

Sisters axed in Muslim 'honor killing'

Two sisters were hacked to death by their Muslim brothers in Jordan in an "honor killing" that came one day after the country's parliament rejected a bill imposing tougher sentences for the crime.

Leave it to Cleaver