SWI NEWS: Tuesday, March 2, 2010 16 Adar, 5770
New Jerusalem Finds Point to the Temple Mount
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/insideisrael/2010/March/New-Jerusalem-Finds-Point-to-the-Temple-Mount/
THE CITY OF DAVID, Jerusalem - Ancient steps and a storm sewer dating back to King Herod are two of the recent finds in Jerusalem.
The discoveries help tell the story of the Jewish pilgrimage to the Temple in the time of Jesus.
“I was glad when they said to me let us go to the house of the Lord,” King David wrote in the Psalms.
Some 2,000 years ago, Jewish pilgrims might have recited this psalm of ascents as they climbed stairs on their way to worship at the Temple.
Three times a year, the Bible commanded the Jewish people to go up to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feasts of the Lord.
“They probably camped outside the city in the valleys in the Kidron Valley… came in the city through the southern gate into the pool to take a ritual bath and then went up to the Temple Mount to pay their respects to the God of Israel,” said Haifa University archaeologist Roni Reich.
The excavation is located just outside the City of David. Many believe the area was Jerusalem at the time of King David.
Recently archaeologists uncovered the other side of the broad stairway leading to the temple mount. Paved with large limestone blocks, it is thought to be about 140 feet wide and climbs less than a half mile uphill to the Temple Mount.
Reich said Jesus, too, most likely walked the steps.
Just outside is the pool of Siloam, where Jesus healed the blind man as mentioned in the gospel of John.
CBN News recently took a private look at the walkway and another discovery along side it — a giant storm sewer.
Some 800 feet long, the sewer paralleled the street from King Herod’s day above it. Every connection there indicates a street intersection on top. Ancient covered manholes lead into the sewer.
Hundreds of coins found there tell of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Broken places in the steps are believed to have been made by Roman soldiers trying to pull the fleeing Jews from beneath.
Reich said discoveries like this help fill in the historical picture.
“When we close a small white patch in our knowledge on things that we haven’t known before at all, then the contribution is much greater,” he said. “Then I’m happier and my colleagues are happier.”
‘Dubai ban on Israelis hits relations’
Talkbacks (1)
After announcing the ban on Israelis with dual nationality, Dubai’s police chief, Lt.-Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, said on Monday that authorities in the Gulf emirate would be on the lookout for “Jews.”
A Channel 2 News broadcast Monday night showed Tamim pointing at his own face and saying, “We know how to recognize them.” The United Arab Emirates will “deny entry to anyone suspected of having Israeli citizenship,” he said, adding that Israelis with dual nationality would be denied entry.
“We will not allow those who hold Israeli passports into the UAE no matter what other passport they have,” Tamim said. Police will “develop skills” to recognize Israelis by “physical features and the way they speak,” he claimed.
Responding to the decision, the Israeli diplomatic source said, “Of course this is very unfortunate. We were in the process of getting closer to the Gulf, a region which forms an antithesis to the extreme regime of Iran. We had a dialogue going, so this is a negative development.”
“While Israelis are not supposed to go to Dubai,” he added, “this will affect businesspeople who travel there.”
Dubai has become a popular destination for Israeli business travelers with dual nationality who specialize in the fields of agriculture, trade and shipping, among other sectors.
Last month, Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer played in a Dubai tennis tournament, a year after the event’s organizers were fined $300,000 for denying her a visa to participate in the international tournament, citing security concerns.
Senior Hamas terrorist Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was found dead in his hotel room on January 19. Dubai Police says he was killed in a Mossad assassination involving at least 27 suspects who entered the emirate on a variety of passports.
Meanwhile, British and Australian police investigators in Israel have “zero chance” of making significant progress in their investigations into the alleged use of false passports in the killing of senior Hamas terrorist Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last month, a former senior police officer told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
Former National Fraud Unit investigator Dep.-Cmdr. (ret.) Boaz Guttman, who served on the police force for 21 years and who has worked with Interpol and police forces from Britain, spoke hours after Australia announced that it would send Federal Police agents to Israel this week to investigate the use of forged Australian passports in Mabhouh’s slaying.
Britain’s Serious and Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) has two officers in Israel already waiting to interview British Israelis who will arrive at the British Consulate in Tel Aviv in the coming days to collect new biometric passports.
“They are very able and they have common sense. But this is a matter that cannot be resolved on a police level,” Guttman said, adding that the Israel Police and SOCA have enjoyed good levels of cooperation in the past.
“Without belittling their capabilities, all of this is a show put on for domestic consumption by Britain and Australia, to show that they are doing something,” Guttman said. “It is a waste of Australian and British taxpayers’ money,” he added.
“Dubai police does not have serious evidence that can be presented to a court [linking Israel to Mabhouh’s death],” Guttman continued.
“Investigators can’t march into the office of the Israel Police inspector-general and show him a copy of the Sunday Times newspaper.
“Rumors don’t count as evidence,” he said.
“If Britain and Australia are sending a few officers to Israel, it shows that this is not a serious investigation. I can’t see how they will make any progress,” he added.
Based on his past experience in working with Interpol, Guttman said, Interpol members investigating the assassination likely have access to one another’s case material.
Guttman added that foreign police officers could interview citizens of their countries within their embassies without obtaining permission from Israel’s Ministry of Interior, but said that if they wished to conduct the questioning on Israeli soil, they would require approval as well as an Israel Police escort.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Dubai Police believe at least two suspected Mossad agents travelled to the US using a British and an Irish passport.
“All of them … These are agents for the Mossad, we know this,” Dubai Police chief Lt.-Gen. Tamim said, according to the London Times. “They travelled to European countries and to the US using the same documents they used to enter here,” he added.
Also on Monday, Dubai Police revised its list of suspected assassins once again, adding a 27th suspect, though it did not name the latest addition.
Intelligence Veteran: Al-Mabhouh Hit Team was Aware of Cameras
(IsraelNN.com) The security camera footage of the assassins who eliminated Hamas terrorist Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh did not surprise the operation’s planners, according to Menachem Landau, a former senior officer in the Israel Security Agency (also known as Shin Bet).
Speaking to Arutz Sheva’s Hebrew news magazine, Landau was careful to note that he does not know who carried out the assassination, but said that “there is no doubt that whoever did it is a professional.”
“He did a good job,” he added. The speculation that Mossad was behind the operation improved Mossad’s status, Landau estimated: “Ambiguousness is power,” he said. “It undoubtedly raises the level of deterrence.”
“All the people who yammer, I would say, about the matter, saying there was a foul-up – are talking nonsense,” he said. “When you prepare for an operation of this sort – any organization that prepares for this kind of operation, it is not as if someone gets up in the morning and gets on a plane and does what he does.”
‘A very nice success’
Landau said that preparations for an operation such as this include checking out the territory, collecting information and determining which paths of arrival and escape are optimal. Regarding the security footage and passport photos which allegedly embarrassed Mossad, Landau opined that the photos had been altered in advance: “I have no doubt that whoever did this knew that there are cameras, and I have no doubt that all of the people and photographs that we see are not look alikes of the original subjects…you definitely do not have the real names.”
The operation, he summed up, was “a very nice success.”
Landau served in the ISA for 32 years and reached a rank comparable to that of a major general in the IDF. The ISA operates primarily within Israel, including Judea and Samaria, while Mossad operates in other countries.
More Violence at Holy Site in Jerusalem
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/insideisrael/2010/March/More-Violence-at-Holy-Site-in-Jerusalem/
Tensions are high in Jerusalem after the latest round of violence at the Temple Mount, a contested holy site.
Palestinian protestors threw rocks at tourists over the weekend, and Israeli riot police were called in.
For Jews it’s the site of two Biblical temples. Muslims claim it’s Islam’s third holiest site.
The Israeli government recently added two West Bank shrines to their list of national heritage sites, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are buried, and Rachel’s Tomb outside Bethlehem. Muslims responded with riots.
Heavy rains bring Israel’s Sea of Galilee above ‘red line’
PA: Keep Hebron cave off heritage list
Talkbacks (24)
To protest the inclusion of the West Bank sites the PA believes will one day be part of its future state, it moved its weekly cabinet meeting from Ramallah to Hebron on Monday.
In a statement that it released after its meeting, the PA said that this decision was against international law.
“These sites are an inseparable part of Palestinian land which has been occupied since 1967. The PA has turned to all the international bodies to demand that it oppose Israel’s decision and cause its abolishment,” said the PA.
The PA also spoke of its opposition to Israeli actions in east Jerusalem, including its construction of Jewish homes and demolition of Palestinian homes there as well as the steps it took Sunday to quell Palestinian rioters on the Temple Mount.
It also turned to the European Union to ask that it help stop Jewish construction in east Jerusalem.
On Monday the EU said that Israel was harming the peace process.
A spokesman for Catherine Ashton, the EU policy chief said in a statement that she regarded the addition of the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb “as detrimental to the attempts to re-launch peace negotiations. The EU calls on Israel to refrain from provocative acts.”
Since the sites were placed on the list on February 21, Palestinians have clashed with the IDF in Hebron. Clashes were more intense for the first five days, and since then have dwindled down to small incidents of rock throwing.
According to AP, a group of settler youths, some as young as 4 years old, threw rocks and cursed at Palestinians.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has warned that placing West Bank sites on the heritage list could lead to a religious war.
But Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad told AP, “We are not going to be drawn into a cycle of violence. We are fully determined, and we count on our people understanding fully well that the best response to this … is to stay focused” on state-building.
The cave where the biblical forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are buried is sacred to both Jews and Muslims, both of whom pray in separate sections of the complex.
Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, said he hoped the present tension over Rachel’s Tomb and the Tomb of the Patriarchs was just a “rough moment, a hiccup” that could be overcome on the way to renewing Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.Kerry, at a Jerusalem press conference on Monday, said that access to the sites – which he said were important to Jewish and Moslem understanding of their “history, culture and religions” — was shared.
Saying that he thought what Netanyahu did was “understandable” within the context of trying to “preserve and renew” the Jewish components of the sites, Kerry added that “the timing and manner of the announcement needs to be taken into account in the future context of trying to move people to dialogue.”
Kerry said that the move “certainly lends itself to misinterpretation without adequate explanation, and I think there is an explanation, and I think you have to be carful with these things. My caution as we go forward is we have to be thoughtful about everything we say and do so we keep a dialogue on track.”
Regarding that dialogue, Kerry, after meeting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Monday and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday in Amman, said he was “convinced that there is a willingness in both governments to try to move forward in respect to dialogue.”
Kerry said that he was hopeful that over the next weeks and months “the process can reach a critical point where it is possible for our administration in Washington and the government here to announce something positive.” He gave no details or timetable.
A weekend of heavy rain across Israel brought the Sea of Galilee, Israel’s main fresh water reservoir, up above its “red line” for the first time in over a year.
The red line indicated the level at which Israel should seriously consider halting the pumping of water from the Sea of Galilee in order to avoid permanent environmental damage to the lake.
But the ongoing needs of the populace outweighed the dangers to the lake, and pumping reluctantly continued, even after the Sea of Galilee dropped below the red line in early 2009.
Later in the year, the government set a new “black line” at 215 meters below sea level, at which point water could under no circumstances be drawn from the lake. At the start of winter, the lake was only half a meter from the black line.
But the weekend downpour, which hit the hardest in northern Israel, added more than 10 centimeters to the lake. Together with the rest of the winter rainfall, and the expected runoff from the snow accumulated on Mt. Hermon, the Sea of Galilee is now safely above the red line, for the time being.
Israeli defense officials on Sunday warned that Jerusalem and the rest of Judea and Samaria are teetering on the brink of a new Palestinian explosion of violence, and charged “moderate” Palestinian leaders like Prime Minister Salam Fayyad with fueling the unrest.
Four Israeli police officers were wounded on Sunday while battling rioting Muslims atop Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. The Muslims had attacked Jews and Christians visiting the site in protest over Israel’s decision to add the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem to its list of national heritage sites.
A day later, an Israeli security guard was shot and wounded in the nearby Jerusalem village of Silwan, known to Jews as the City of David.
Hebron and Bethlehem are today both under Palestinian Authority control, and the Palestinians, together with much of the international community, have condemned the Jewish state’s decisions to officially recognize historical ties to those areas.
Fayyad has publicly labeled the decision a “provocation,” and Israeli officials charge that behind the scenes he and other Palestinian leaders are encouraging Palestinian youth to take part in anti-Israel demonstrations using low-level violence.
That would fit with Fayyad’s previous assessment that the Palestinians should return to “popular uprising” in place of organized terrorism, even while pushing for more Israeli concessions at the negotiating table.
Fearful of playing into Fayyad’s hands, Israeli security forces have been instructed to practice extreme restraint in the face of Palestinians wielding stones, firebombs and even small arms. Riots in Hebron, Bethlehem and at the Temple Mount on Sunday have been put down with only minimal injuries.
But that didn’t stop Jordan’s King Abdullah II, another regional “moderate,” from attempting to make the issue cause for a broad Arab and international campaign against Israel.
Meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Amman on Sunday, Abdullah described the Israeli police’s defense of Christians and Jews atop the Temple Mount as “aggression” and a “dangerous provocation.”
Abdullah urged the international community to mobilize against what he called Israel’s attempts to overrun Muslim holy sites.
