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The deputy to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday that Iran was a friend of Israel, Iranian news agencies reported. "Iran wants no war with any country, and today Iran is friend of the United States and even Israel.... Our achievements belong to the whole world and should be used for expanding love and peace," said Iranian Vice President Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei, who is also head of the Cultural Heritage Organization. The Cultural Heritage Organization news agency quoted him as saying that even during the eight-year war against Iraq, Iran just defended itself against the military invasion by former Iraqi dictator...

The second matter at hand is the continued presence of American troops in Iraq. Israel is concerned a hasty withdrawal by the US will strengthen Iran and further destabilize the Middle East. Obama has promised voters that, if elected, he will immediately start implementing a 16-month timetable to withdraw all American troops from Iraq. The senator has said the war there cannot be won and US involvement in Iraq is what is preventing Washington from dealing with the Al-Qaeda terror threat on the Afghan-Pakistani border and the Iranian threat.

Like a bad dream, the gory images have come back to haunt the land of famished fields and parched valleys veiled in dense layers of dust. Just about when the picture of a woman — covered from head to toe in a blue burqa with a narrow screen in front of her stony eyes — shot in the back of her head was turning grainy, the nightmare revisited Ghazni city last week. Two women, wrapped in blue, were asked to kneel on the ground. And then a few fierce-looking men, with hate dripping from their eyes, nudged the women's bowed...

Critical talks in Switzerland over Iran's nuclear program began today with Iranian and United States officials making their highest-level diplomatic contacts since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Iran's top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana smiled as they posed for pictures before heading into the closed-door meetings which will include U.S. undersecretary William J. Burns, the State Department's No. 3 official.

Iran said on Friday it did not expect an attack from Israel or the United States triggered by the long-running dispute over its nuclear programme. "The possibility of such an attack (from Israel or the U.S.) is almost zero," Mottaki said, via a translator, in an interview with Turkish broadcaster NTV during a visit to Turkey. However, when asked whether it meant Iran was ready to freeze any expansion of its nuclear programme in return for the U.N. Security Council halting further sanctions measures against it, the source said "not at all".

Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....

I was privileged this week to preview, before its release to the public, what may well prove to be a masterpiece of the documentary film-making art—a new look at the Biblical story of the Exodus from Egypt in the light of contemporary archeology and politics in the Middle East. Filmmaker Tim Mahoney´s "The Exodus Conspiracy",[1] due to be released within a few months, seeks to demonstrate the historical accuracy of the Biblical narrative of the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt on the basis of recent archaeological discoveries and geographic explorations. A secondary thesis of the film is...

Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is slated to meet with Barack Obama. Photo: AP While the European leg of Barack Obama’s much-touted overseas trip will take him to nations where he’s vastly more popular than John McCain, Obama is not nearly as well liked in Israel. Polls there show Israelis prefer John McCain by as much as 20 percentage points.

Jerusalem — Israeli security officials have said that Samir Kantar, the Lebanese murderer who was freed in a prisoner exchange after nearly three decades behind bars, should now fear for his life. "Every terrorist who committed an act of terror against Israel, especially someone like Kantar, who killed a little child and two other people, is a target," an official said. Another security official told the Yediot Aharonot newspaper: "Now that he is out of jail, we have no obligation towards Kantar, a loathsome murderer whose accounts will be settled in the end." Mr. Kantar, who will be 46 next...

Al Qaeda in Israel? Say it isn't so! Israel Matzav:Six 'Israeli Arabs,' two from the north and four from 'east' Jerusalem, have been arrested and indicted for allegedly setting up an al-Qaeda cell in Jerusalem. One of the six - a student at Hebrew University - has been charged with attempting to assassinate President Bush during his visit here in May. The thing about the Israelis is that it seems that they know how to arrest guys like this, just not keep them locked up.

The Saudi king's talk of tolerance and moderation notwithstanding, the Jewish state is proving to be a divisive issue at the religious conference that the Saudi monarch has convened here. The conference, the theme of which is interfaith dialogue, is an effort by the Saudi monarch to foster more cordial relations between imams in his country and Christian and Jewish religious leaders in the West. The conference is also drawing notice because Abdullah, whose kingdom includes the sites of Islam's two holiest places, denounced religious extremism during his address on Wednesday to the Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish leaders...

Friends in Washington send me e-mails: They want to know if Israel is getting ready to bomb Iran's nuclear installations. This is the Bush Era: If you will it, no Middle East war is impossible. And in the last few weeks, there has been a gale of hints, threats, and leaks. U.S. officials, none named, told The New York Times that an Israeli military exercise last month was "a rehearsal" for striking Iran. Shaul Mofaz, the remarkably mediocre ex-military chief of staff campaigning to succeed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said that an Israeli attack was "unavoidable." A notoriously unreliable reporter...

Today, Lebanon’s March 14th movement cast itself into an abyss of moral depravity that the bloc’s supporters — myself included — never thought possible. The exchange this morning of bodies for terrorists between Israel and Hezbollah presented March 14’s leaders with what should have been an easy choice: applaud the return to Lebanon of a grotesque child-murderer; say nothing; or denounce him and Hezbollah’s freelance deal-making, which made his return possible. Two of March 14th’s leaders — Fouad Siniora, the Sunni prime minister of Lebanon, and Walid Jumblatt, the leader of Lebanon’s Druze, both of whom are embraced as American...

A Shia imam in Saudi Arabia has declared his support for Iran and called on supporters to send money to the country to help it fight against the United States and Israel. "We stand by Iran and we will do everything to support this country," said Shia imam Namer Baqer al-Namer during a sermon he gave at the Imam Hussein mosque in the eastern village al-Awamiya on Friday. The sermon was published on the imam's Internet site on Tuesday. A Saudi citizen, al-Namer said that he felt very close to Iran for his Shia belief and called on the faithful...

(IsraelNN.com) The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and Israeli police have arrested and charged six Israeli-Arabs, among them Hebrew University students, for planning an Al-Qaeda attack on a senior US official. The group, including four residents of eastern Jerusalem, are suspected of operating an al-Qaeda cell in Israel's capital and planning to shoot down a helicopter carrying a senior US official. The six suspects were identified by police as: Ibrahim Nashef, 22, of Tayibe: Physics and computer sciences student at the Hebrew University; Muhammad Najem, 24, of Nazareth: Chemistry student at the Hebrew University; Anas Shawiki, 21, of the Jerusalem...

The gentleman who was one of the five live persons (and 199 cadavers, some held for 30 years) Israel traded for the bodies of two of its soldiers is in the news. He vows to continue the struggle. Well, last time he shot a civilian father in front of his 4-year girl, and then crushed her skull with his rifle butt. What a hero! What a blow for the oppressed Palestinians! May we suggest a Nobel Peace Prize for the gentleman? A trifling honor we shall no doubt will have to beg him to accept. So, good buddy good pal,...

Israel, Ireland, and International Law by: Daniel Smith, July 18, 2008 Experts on Middle Eastern nuclear affairs met July 14 at the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) to discuss the September 2007 Israeli airstrike against Syria. Daryl Kimball, Executive Director of the Arms Control Association, described the event as “troubling”; David Albright and Avner Cohen discussed the “strange” and “bizarre” issues surrounding the event. Albright is the President of the Institute for Science and International Security and Dr. Cohen is a Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Dr. Cohen encapsulated the chief concern among the panelists: the...

ISRAEL will almost surely attack Iran’s nuclear sites in the next four to seven months — and the leaders in Washington and even Tehran should hope that the attack will be successful enough to cause at least a significant delay in the Iranian production schedule, if not complete destruction, of that country’s nuclear program. Because if the attack fails, the Middle East will almost certainly face a nuclear war — either through a subsequent pre-emptive Israeli nuclear strike or a nuclear exchange shortly after Iran gets the bomb. It is in the interest of neither Iran nor the United States...

TEHRAN (FNA) - Iran's Air Force chief announced that the Islamic Republic has successfully launched the production line of radar-evading "stealth" fighter jets. Brigadier General Ahmad Mighani was quoted by press tv as saying Tuesday that the new jets would significantly enhance the Air Force's combat and defensive capabilities. Iran has recently started manufacturing superior "Quick Reaction" tanks to increase its defense self-sufficiency. Iran has also developed an electro-optical surveillance system that acts as a viable alternative when radars fail to cover a particular range. "We have upgraded our air force fleet, radar-systems, and missile systems over the past few...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel accused six Arabs on Friday of trying to set up an al Qaeda cell in Israel and said one of them had proposed attacking helicopters used during a visit by President George W. Bush. Israel's Shin Bet counter-intelligence agency said one of the suspects had used his mobile phone to film helicopters at a sports stadium in Jerusalem that was used as a landing site for Bush's delegation. The suspect then posted queries on Web sites frequented by al Qaeda operatives, asking for guidance on how to shoot down the helicopters, the agency said in a...

Haifa, Israel - Of all the stops on Barack Obama’s upcoming swing through Europe and the Middle East, it is his visit to Israel that has received the most attention, but not because of his popularity here. Polls indicate that Israelis evince some of the lowest levels of support for Obama of any country in the world. In France and Germany, both stops on Obama’s tour, respectively 65% and 67% of the population has said that they would vote for him if they could. By contrast, in Israel, where he is due for 24 hours on July 22 to July...

What can you say about a people who welcome a child murderer as a hero? Most Americans are familiar with the brutal murder of wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer on the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985. Terrorists led by Abu Abbas (who was later given safe haven in Baghdad by Saddam Hussein) took the ship captive and threw Klinghoffer overboard. But few recall that the ship was seized to bargain for the release of, among others, Samir Kuntar from an Israeli prison. Kuntar had taken part in an earlier terror attack. In 1979, as a 16-year-old, he and four others had...

Under the Heading THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES (THINGS TO COME, A Journal of Biblical Literature, Book One, Volume I, For July 1894, p.17) JEWISH LITERATURE A PALESTINE literature has sprung up, and books, pamphlets, and newspapers are taken up with this now all-absorbing theme. JEWISH SOCIETIES The whole nation [The United Kingdom] is honeycombed with societies having different names, but one object, viz., The Colonization of Palestine. 1. THE CHOVEVI SION is perhaps the largest. Its name means The Lover of Sion, and is from the word [Sorry, I can’t reproduce the Hebrew script], Chavav, which occurs only once...

Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, who stands a good chance of becoming prime minister shortly after September's Kadima primary, defended his hawkish statements about a prospective attack on Iran this week in an interview with The Jerusalem Post. Mofaz was blamed for a record rise in gas prices worldwide after he told Yediot Aharonot on June 6 that Israel would attack Iran if it did not cease nuclear development. The newspaper quoted him as saying that the sanctions against Iran were ineffective and therefore "there will be no choice but to attack Iran to halt the Iranian nuclear program."

It has become fashionable to look to the lessons of the peace process in Northern Ireland as holding insights for other areas of conflict in the world. However, this has been done in an uncritical way, often more focused on contemporary agendas than on the core realities unique to the region, which do not necessarily translate elsewhere. In some instances, the willingness of a state to negotiate might encourage the terrorists to believe that their opponents are ready to concede – even when this is not the case. In June-July 1972, for example, top IRA operatives were flown to...

New York, NY — Pawleys Island, S.C. – Here in the Carolina “Low Country,” there is considerable consternation about this week’s meeting in Switzerland between U.S. and Iranian diplomats. Such confusion is understandable given the longstanding Bush administration policy against such meetings, recent events in that part of the world – and the way in which the State Department and White House announced the July 19 get together. In short, what has been happening in that part of the world and what Washington is now saying just doesn’t match. That’s a very dangerous combination. Last summer, the government of Israel...

LEBANON'S new telecommunications minister has accused Israel of bombarding Lebanese people with threatening phone calls, a day after a controversial prisoner swap between Israel and Hezbollah. "Hundreds of people throughout Lebanon received threatening phone calls on their landlines from Israel,'' Gibran Bassil said overnight. "The phone would ring, the person would answer and they would hear a message saying, 'This is from the state of Israel. Abandon Hezbollah or there will be another war, like there was in 2006,''' he said. Mr Bassil, a member of the Free Patriotic Movement, the main Christian party in the Syrian-backed opposition, said he...

Former IDF Chief Rabbi: Bodies' Abuse Made ID Difficult 14 Tammuz 5768, 17 July 08 09:23by (IsraelNN.com) As Israel buries her fallen sons, harsh questions and details are arising from the exchange which took place yesterday. According to Israeli officials, the bodies were received in a severely-damaged state which may have lengthened the confirmation of their identities. Former IDF Medical Corps and Chief Military Rabbinate officials have noted the tragic expertise Israel has gathered in years of conflict, but remained shocked by what they saw yesterday at the Rosh HaNikra border crossing.  Rabbi Yisrael Weiss, former Chief Rabbi of the IDF, who was present...

For two years, the father of Israeli soldier Eldad Regev never lost hope that his son might return home alive. But on Wednesday morning, sitting with his wife and relatives, Tzvi Regev watched on TV as a Lebanese vehicle pulled up at the Israeli border post. Red Cross workers unloaded two black lacquered coffins, confirming the terrible truth: Eldad Regev was dead.

Lebanese murderer Samir Kuntar one day after his release from an Israeli prison promised to continue on the path of jihad against the Jewish state. Israel said he wouldn’t get the opportunity. Kuntar and the four Hizballah militants released with him attended a special prayer service on Thursday at the graveside of slain Hizballah operational chief Imad Mughniyah, who masterminded an untold number of attacks against Israel and Jewish targets abroad.

The Bush Administration’s sudden willingness to engage Iran in direct diplomatic talks even as Tehran presses ahead with its nuclear program is the source of much consternation in Jerusalem. Earlier this week, Washington announced that its third highest diplomat, Undersecretary of State William Burns, would join upcoming negotiations with Iranian nuclear negotiators. The US had previously refused to talk directly with Iran until the latter agreed to halt its uranium enrichment efforts.

An Israeli attack on Iran seems inevitable. If it succeeds, it will return to Israel its deterrent power and send a clear message to the saber-rattling jihadists that they were too early in beginning the countdown for the disappearance of the Jewish state. If it fails, or fails to achieve the majority of its objectives, it could amount to an act of national suicide. Fanatical Muslims on every side will be encouraged by the failure and outcome of an Iranian retaliation which would cause heavy damage to the whole center of our country. Iran would unquestionably be joined by its...

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday I wonder whether the US administration even noticed the statement made by a senior Lebanese cleric last week: that Hizbullah will liberate seven abandoned Shi'ite villages located in pre-1967 Israel. I certainly hope so - because this comment epitomizes what is wrong with Washington's policy of pressing Israel to cede Shaba Farms to Lebanon. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday Photo: AP Shaba, located where Israel, Syria and Lebanon meet, was excluded from Israel's 2000 pullout from Lebanon because UN mapping experts ruled that it was Syrian rather than Lebanese....

Pat Buchanan says Israeli "Fifth Column" stirring up war with Iran Pat Buchanan has been going from bad to worse, suggesting that the war against Hitler was unnecessary, and now charging that "Israel and its Fifth Column in this city seek to stampede us into war with Iran."Fifth Column. The term comes from the Spanish Civil War. The Nationalist General Emilio Mola said he had four columns approaching the city, and a fifth column already inside the city. The Fifth Column, then, would undermine the enemy from within, by spying, sabotage, etc.So Pat Buchanan is saying that Israel is actually...

THE "LOST" TEN TRIBES In a recent discussion of the subject, by P. Asmussim, in a German periodical, the writer shows that the ten tribes never were "lost." Both in the Books of Kings and in the Assyrian inscriptions we have records of the deportations of the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom, and in leading particulars the accounts agree. In 734 Tiglath-Pileser led into captivity the people of Gilead and of Galilee, and the districts of Issachar, Zebulon, Asher, Naphtali, Northern Dan, Eastern Manasseh and Gad were incorporated into the Assyrian monarchy. The last king of Israel accordingly ruled over...

Israeli civilians are unprepared for nonconventional attacks, warned prominent members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Tuesday afternoon, blasting the defense establishment for ignoring calls to fix the situation. According to Steinitz, between four million and five million gas mask sets are currently sitting in warehouses awaiting distribution. The Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee has already threatened sanctions against the defense establishment if it does not hand out the equipment.

US may sell shore-hugging combat ships to Israel Wed Jul 16, 2008 5:59pm EDT WASHINGTON, July 16 (Reuters) - The Pentagon has notified Congress of the possible sale to Israel of shore-hugging combat ships, spare parts, software and other goods and services worth as much as $1.9 billion. The main contractors for the deal would be Lockheed Martin (LMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), General Dynamics (GD.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Raytheon (RTN.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which oversees foreign arms sales, said on Wednesday. Israel has requested permission to buy up...

Israel and Hezbollah completed the prisoner swap Wednesday: Hezbollah returned the bodies of abducted Israel Defense Forces soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, while Israel handed over terrorist Samir Kuntar and four Hezbollah militants, as well as 197 bodies. Now that the exchange has taken place, the Israeli defense establishment is worried that Hezbollah may seek a calculated escalation along the Lebanese border, and try to disrupt Israel Air Force flyovers in Lebanese airspace. Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah ended his public reclusion for a few minutes Wednesday, appearing in person at the Beirut celebration for the freed prisoners. Nasrallah...

Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah is the most admired leader among the Arab public, a survey released Wednesday showed. Twenty-six percent of respondents in six countries selected Nasrallah as their most admired leader, compared to 16% who chose Syrian President Bashar Assad and 10% who picked Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to the survey published by the the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution in Washington. The poll was published the same day Israel completed a lopsided prisoner swap with Hizbullah that is likely to further boost Nasrallah's standing in the Arab world. The Shi'ite Hizbullah leader was also the top...

TODAY, Israel is set to undertake an incredibly wrongheaded prisoner exchange with the terrorist group Hezbollah. It's just the latest move in a troubling trend of unequal deals between the Jewish state and its declared enemies. The swap, approved overwhelmingly by the Israeli cabinet, has the Israelis handing over five Lebanese prisoners, including the notorious terrorist Samir Kuntar, plus the bodies of 199 Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorists. In exchange, it will get two soldiers captured by Hezbollah in the summer of 2006 - though it's widely expected that it will only receive their remains - plus an 80-page Hezbollah report...

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Five Lebanese freed from captivity in Israel were flown to a heroes' welcome in Beirut on Wednesday after Hezbollah returned the bodies of two Israeli soldiers seized in a cross-border raid in 2006.

If they knew the full story of unintended consequences, Arabs might think twice about hailing as a hero the Lebanese terrorist who bashed a little girl's head against a rock and is being released by Israel in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers. The terrorist is Samir Kuntar. He was captured after he and three other Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) operatives landed on an Israel beach in 1979. During the attack, Kuntar smashed a 4-year-old girl's head against a rock, killing her. He also killed her father. The girl's 2-year-old sister was accidentally suffocated by her mother, who...

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh on Wednesday said that Israel’s willingness to release a blood-soaked killer like Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar in exchange for the corpses of two Israeli soldiers would significantly raise the price Jerusalem must pay for the freedom of abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Commander of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari said his troops are getting more prepared to face "asymmetrical" security, political, cultural and military threats, the official IRNA news agency reported Wednesday. Addressing a group of IRGC officials on Tuesday, Jafari said enemies of Iran "are not capable of posing any direct threat or taking open action" against the Islamic Republic. "The U.S. and Israel have become aware of their weakness against our country and due to the same reason they try to put Iran under pressure through different sanctions," he said.

Israel National News - With the prisoner exchange with Hizbullah approaching its tragic climax, dozens of news crews at Rosh HaNikra and throughout the country are broadcasting the reactions of observers to the latest developments. The bitterly contested prisoner exchange is developing into one of Israel's most riveting and painful episodes, while Hizbullah and the PA celebrate victory and renew their threat to kidnap more IDF soldiers. The conclusion of the prisoner exchange began Tuesday night with the release of child-murderer Samir Kuntar and four of his co-terrorists, and continued through Wednesday morning with the release of the coffins of...

Two years after Israeli reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were abducted by Hezbollah guerillas in a cross-border raid, coffins said to contain their bodies were taken to the Lebanese side of its border with Israel as part of a prisoner exchange to bring them home. The swap, overwhelmingly approved Tuesday by the cabinet, began at around 9 A.M. Wednesday at the Rosh Hanikra crossing, under the auspices of the International Red Cross Committee. A convoy carrying the bodies of the two Israelis reached the Rosh Hanikra crossing on the Lebanese side of the border at about 8:30 A.M., where...

President George W Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official.

I got married last week. Hence my absence from this space for the first time in seven years. It was a beautiful wedding in Acre, Israel, overlooking the ocean at sunset. My father wrote the music for the processional, which brought everyone to tears. My bride looked stunning, of course. We broke the glass, we danced, we ate and we celebrated until deep into the night. Outside the wedding hall stood a guard. Every wedding in Israel requires an armed guard to prevent terrorist attacks. Only the armed guards prevent the infliction of mass casualties at joyous events; only the...

Palestinian contributions to the world Posted: July 04, 20082:34 am Eastern © 2008  Yesterday morning, I listened to Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman describe the terrorist attack in Jerusalem in which a Palestinian construction worker suddenly turned the bulldozer he was driving into traffic, crushing everything (and everyone) in its path.The attack took place on one of Jerusalem's busiest streets. Ambassador Gillerman noted sarcastically that the driver "courteously" stopped to let a car pull in front of him, which he then ran over and crushed, killing a woman and her baby. In another car, a woman threw her baby out the car...

Liberated after six years of jungle captivity, Franco-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt exclaimed: "I think only the Israelis can possibly pull off something like this." If only.