[VIDEO] Warning, Graphic Video: Four Soldiers Killed in Truck Attack
Posted: January 8, 2017 Filed under: Breaking News, Mediasphere, Terrorism | Tags: Hamas, ISIS, Islamism, Israel, Jerusalem, Jew, Jihadism, Jihadist, Truck Attack, video Leave a comment
Israel Fires: Tens of Thousands Flee; Arson Suspected
Posted: November 24, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Global, Mediasphere | Tags: Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel, Israeli settlement, Jerusalem, Middle East, Palestinians, Tel Aviv, The Jewish Home, United States, West Bank 1 CommentTens of thousands of people are being evacuated as wildfires rage through parts of the Israeli city of Haifa, the third largest in the country. On social media, the Arabic-language hashtag #Israel_on_fire began trending, with most tweets expressing pleasure over the outbreak.
Huge flames are being fanned by strong winds in residential areas in the north of the city of about 250,000.
“It’s likely that where it was arson, it goes in the direction of nationalistic. I don’t want to disturb the investigation.”
— Roni Alsheich
Fires are also threatening homes near Jerusalem and in the West Bank.
Israel’s police chief said arson was suspected in some cases and hinted that some of it could be politically motivated.
“It’s likely that where it was arson, it goes in the direction of nationalistic,” Roni Alsheich told reporters, adding: “I don’t want to disturb the investigation.”
“Haifa Mayor Yonah Yahav said there were indications that one of the fires started when ‘someone tossed a cigarette in an area full of oil and flammable fluids’ in an industrial zone.”
Education Minister Naftali Bennett, leader of the right-wing religious Jewish Home party, said on Twitter in Hebrew: “Only those to whom the country does not belong are capable of burning it.”
On social media, the Arabic-language hashtag #Israel_on_fire began trending, with most tweets expressing pleasure over the outbreak.
Haifa Mayor Yonah Yahav said there were indications that one of the fires started when “someone tossed a cigarette in an area full of oil and flammable fluids” in an industrial zone.
Four Palestinians have been arrested in connection with a fire near Jerusalem and are due to appear in court on suspicion of starting a bonfire negligently.

Months of dry weather have left the country vulnerable to fires – Reuters
“Four Palestinians have been arrested in connection with a fire near Jerusalem and are due to appear in court on suspicion of starting a bonfire negligently.”
The Palestinian Authority has offered to help Israel’s fire department, a senior Israeli security official told the BBC, but has not yet received a reply.
Meanwhile, hundreds of military reservists have been called up to help battle the three-day outbreak of fires. Read the rest of this entry »
Massive Fire Engulfs Historic Church on Orthodox Easter
Posted: May 2, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Religion, U.S. News | Tags: Easter, Eastern Orthodox Church, Episcopal Church (United States), Father Djokan Majstorovic, Greece, Holy Week, Jerusalem, Josip Broz Tito, New York City Fire Department, RUSSIA, Serbia, Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sava, Serbian Orthodox Church Leave a commentThe Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sava was consecrated in 1855 as an Episcopal church called Trinity Chapel. It has been Serbian Orthodox since the 1940s.
“To see it burning like that is such a shock. It’s just so sad. I can’t think of the words to express how I’m feeling.”
“For this to happen on such a holy day, I don’t know what to say,” said Alex Velic, a 31-year-old churchgoer, as enormous fireballs erupted from the shattered windows of the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sava on West 25th Street.
“To see it burning like that is such a shock. It’s just so sad,” he said. “I can’t think of the words to express how I’m feeling.”
A force of 170 firefighters responded to the fire, which started shortly before 7 p.m., FDNY officials said. Church officials and the FDNY both said there were no reports of major injuries, though three firefighters and a church caretaker had minor smoke inhalation.
“Nobody is hurt, everyone is safe,” explained Father Djokan Majstorovic, dean of the cathedral.

Photo: Peter Gerber
Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said there had been 700 people inside the church earlier in the day for the Orthodox Easter service. He added that the cause of the fire at the historic house of worship is still under investigation.
[Read the full story here, at the New York Post]
“It’s a very sad day today,” Nigro said. “They had their Mass at 10 a.m. and then a luncheon. The good news is that there was no one inside when the fire started and there are no injuries. One man is being checked out for smoke inhalation.” Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] EDUCATION: ‘I Want to Stab a Jew,’ Young Girl Tells Her Teacher Father
Posted: November 21, 2015 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Education, Religion, Terrorism, War Room | Tags: Auschwitz concentration camp, BBC, Extermination camp, Israel, Israel Defense Forces, Jerusalem, Jews, Palestinian people, The Times of Israel, West Bank 1 CommentA video posted by a Jordanian-Palestinian teacher on Facebook shows his young daughter holding a large knife and declaring, “I want to stab a Jew,” the watchdog group MEMRI reported, amid an ongoing surge of stabbings and other terror attacks by Palestinians on Israelis.
“Why do you want to stab the Jew?”
Abdulhaleem Abuesha, a teacher in the Madaba refugee camp in Jordan, posted the clip on Friday. MEMRI translated and highlighted it on Tuesday.
“Because he stole our land.”
After his daughter Rahf, standing in front of the refrigerator in the kitchen, declares her desire to stab a Jew, Abuesha asks, “Why do you want to stab the Jew?”
“With what do you want to stab them?”
“Because he stole our land,” she replies.
“With a knife.”
Her father confirms approvingly: “They stole our land.” He then asks, “With what do you want to stab them?” Read the rest of this entry »
David P. Goldman: Why France Will Do Nothing About the Paris Massacre
Posted: November 16, 2015 Filed under: Asia, France, Mediasphere, Terrorism, Think Tank, War Room | Tags: Al-Aqsa Mosque, Benjamin Netanyahu, Islamism, Israel, Israel Defense Forces, Israel Police, Israeli security forces, Jerusalem, Jihadism, Palestinian people, Paris Attacks, Second Intifada, West Bank Leave a commentFrance simply doesn’t have the stomach for it.
David P. Goldman writes: Ignored in news coverage of the Paris massacre is the single most pertinent piece of background: A 2014 opinion poll found that ISIS had an approval rating in France (at 16%) almost as high as President Francois Holland (at 18%). In the 18-to-24-year-old demographic, ISIS’ support jumped to 27%. Muslims comprise about a tenth of France’s population, so the results imply that ISIS had the support of the overwhelming majority of French Muslims (and especially Muslim youth), as well as the endorsement of a large part of the non-Muslim Left.
“Finding a needle in a haystack is possible only when the haystack helps you find the needles. The French authorities would have to persuade its own Muslim community to turn informer against its radicalized youth.”
Reporting the survey, conducted by the polling organization ICM for a Russian news service, Newsweek’s France correspondent Anne-Elizabeth Moutet wrote, “This is the ideology of young French Muslims from immigrant backgrounds, unemployment to the tune of 40%, who’ve been deluged by satellite TV and internet propaganda.”
“Muslim community leaders would have to fear the French state more than they fear their own radicals, and this would require a large number of arrests, deportations, and other coercive actions. In this case the situation would get worse before it got better.”
After last Friday’s massacres, to be sure, the flip-it-to-them attitude reflected in last year’s poll no doubt has attenuated somewhat. Nonetheless, it is clear that a very large proportion of French Muslims support the most extreme expression of radical Islam, offering the terrorists the opportunity to blend into a friendly milieu. The problem has gotten too big to be cured without a great deal of mess and pain. In the Gallic hedonistic calculus, a massacre or two per year is preferable to a breach of the tenuous social peace. And that is why France will do nothing.
That makes counter-terrorism challenging, but not impossible. There are two successful models for suppressing terrorists who enjoy the passive support of the ambient population: the French in Algeria and the Israelis after the Second Intifada of 2002. The first is infamous for the extensive use of torture and mass reprisals against civilians; the second succeeded on the strength of superb human as well as electronic intelligence and seamless integration of military, police and intelligence organizations. Israel reduced the number of Arab suicide bombings from 47 in 2002 with 238 dead to only 1 in 2007 with 3 dead.
Unlike the French in Algeria, Israel undid the Intifada entirely without the use of physical stress on prisoners. Israeli interrogation techniques do not require physical stress; humiliation is a more effective tool than pain with Arab suspects. Prior to 1999, Israeli security forces employed mild forms of enhanced interrogation (sleep deprivation, hooding, and so forth), but eschewed the practice afterwards. By contrast, the French Army shelled and bombed villages that gave refuge to the rebels of the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale, killing tens of thousands indiscriminately and forcing 2 million Algerians out of their homes.
[Read the full story here, at Asia Times]
It also used extreme forms of torture to elicit information from captured FLN fighters. Popular revulsion against the conduct of the war brought down the Fourth Republic and returned Gen. Charles De Gaulle to the presidency. More than 90% of French voters backed Algeria’s independence in a 1962 referendum, and France voluntarily abandoned what it had won by brutal methods on the ground. Read the rest of this entry »
Report: Iran Transfers Millions to Hamas for Reconstruction of Tunnels
Posted: April 5, 2015 Filed under: Global, War Room | Tags: Hamas, Islamism, Israel, Jerusalem, Jerusalem Post, media, Militant islam, news, Palestine Leave a comment[VIDEO] Bunch of Monks in a Snowball Fight
Posted: February 25, 2015 Filed under: Art & Culture, Mediasphere | Tags: Activism, Bedouin, East Jerusalem, Israel, Israel Defense Forces, Jerusalem, Jerusalem Gate Hotel, media, Palestinian people, Snow, Snowball Fight, video, Weather forecasting 2 CommentsBlizzards are quite rare in Jerusalem, so when a recent storm dumped around ten inches of snow on the city, some people were pretty excited. Farther south in Israel, some communities got snow for the first time since the 1990s. (read more)
Islamic State Militant Extremist Thugs Threaten to Execute Japanese Hostages
Posted: January 20, 2015 Filed under: Breaking News, Religion, War Room | Tags: Beheading, Benjamin Netanyahu, East Jerusalem, Israel, Japan, Jerusalem, Jihadism, Middle East, murder, Prime Minister of Israel, Shinzō Abe, Terrorism 4 CommentsLONDON — A video posted online on Tuesday, purportedly by the Islamic State extremist group, depicted a black-clad militant with a knife threatening to kill two Japanese hostages within 72 hours unless the government in Tokyo paid a ransom of $200 million.
“To the Japanese public, just as how your government has made the foolish decision to pay 200 million to fight the Islamic State, you now have 72 hours to pressure your government in making a wise decision by paying the 200 million to save the lives of your citizens.”
— Masked Islamic State Militant
The video, which could not immediately be verified independently, showed two men, identified as Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa, kneeling on a rocky hillside, with the masked militant standing between them.
“Using human lives as a shield to make threats is an unforgivable terrorist act, and I am extremely indignant. I strongly demand that they be released unharmed immediately.”
— Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan
The militant linked the ransom demand to a Japanese offer of assistance to enemies of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, which controls a large amount of territory stretching from Syria into Iraq. The group says it is seeking to establish an Islamic caliphate and has previously shown videos of the beheading of two Americans, James Foley and Steven J. Sotloff, and two Britons, David Cawthorne Haines and Alan Henning.
From the Japan Times:
In an online video released Tuesday, the Islamic State group threatened to kill two Japanese citizens unless Tokyo pays a ransom of $200 million within 72 hours.
The hostage crisis developed as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was on the final leg of a six-day tour to the Middle East to pledge $200 million in non-military aid to countries in the region.
Abe vowed to save the men…(read more)
“To the Japanese public, just as how your government has made the foolish decision to pay 200 million to fight the Islamic State, you now have 72 hours to pressure your government in making a wise decision by paying the 200 million to save the lives of your citizens,” the masked man said in the video, speaking with what sounded like a British accent. “Otherwise this knife will become your nightmare.”
The masked man, whose voice, manner and attire resembled those of a person who appeared in earlier videos showing beheadings, did not specify a currency, but a subtitle in Arabic identified it as dollars.

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, speaks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a conference in Jerusalem, Sunday, Jan. 18, 2015. Abe is on his six-day visit to the Middle East. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan made the promise of nonmilitary assistance to foes of the Islamic State on Saturday during a visit to Cairo on a Middle East tour.
The hostages in the video wore orange jumpsuits, the attire of many of the group’s captives in previous videos. The threat thrust Japan into the sort of high-profile hostage dilemma that has vexed the United States and Britain, which both say they refuse to pay ransoms. Read the rest of this entry »
NY Daily News Nov 19 2014: ‘BUTCHERED’
Posted: November 18, 2014 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Global, Mediasphere, Religion, War Room | Tags: homicide, Islam, Jerusalem, Jihad, Massacre, New York City, New York Daily News, Palestinian, Slaughter, Synagogue, Terror, Terrorists Leave a commentThe New York Daily News has placed the Jerusalem massacre on it’s front page early this morning
Israel, Outside Jerusalem: The Only 9/11 Memorial in the Middle East
Posted: September 11, 2014 Filed under: Mediasphere | Tags: Avi Mayer, Gaza Strip, Hamas, Israel, Jerusalem, Middle East, September 11 2014, United States Leave a commentThis is Israel’s 9/11 Living Memorial outside Jerusalem, the only 9/11 memorial in the Middle East. #911anniversary pic.twitter.com/QE4pZS5KPX
— Avi Mayer (@AviMayer) September 11, 2014
[VIDEO] Arabs Celebrate Missile Strikes On Israeli Civilians
Posted: July 8, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, Global, Mediasphere, War Room | Tags: Abbas, Al-Aqsa Mosque, Gaza, Gaza Strip, Hamas, Israel, Israel Defense Forces, Israeli, Jerusalem, Temple Mount, Tuesday 1 CommentHundreds of Arabs flocked to the Temple Mount on Tuesday afternoon to celebrate the barrage of rockets upon Israel’s civilian population. The video, captioned in Arabic, reads “[c]elebrations at the Holy Al-Aqsa mosque after hearing the sounds of rockets explode in occupied Jerusalem.”
[See Also: President Abbas’ Advisor Urges Palestinians To Murder Israelis]
[VIDEO] What’s More Fun Than a Scientific Analysis of Solar Flare? Solar Flare Analysis by Cuckoo-Bananas Religious Cult Member Warning of Demonic Witchcraft Ceremonies and One-World Locust Army Takeover!
Posted: June 13, 2014 Filed under: Global, Humor, Science & Technology, Space & Aviation | Tags: Coronal mass ejection, Cult, Delusion, Earth, Global Positioning System, Jerusalem, Mental Illness, NASA, Paranoia, Religious Extremism, Solar cycle 24, Solar flare, Space Weather Prediction Center, YouTube 1 CommentNote, it looks normal, credible, reasonable, and semi-scientific, until about 4:40 (skip ahead to the good part) then the wheels come off, and the narrator reveals the truths from the secret chambers! Here are a few highlights. Listen as he correlates current solar flare activity to an event “this past weekend” when…
“…the Pope, and his bunch, was over in Jerusalem, bein’ where they shouldn’t be…”
“we’re seeing the move of the Locust Army guys, encapsulating the world religions..”
“…what we’re gonna see also, is that they get the religious sector involved, they will pull the political sector also, so that the One-World Locust Army will have a complete takeover.”
“They’re bringing them together in the place, where we saw the demonic witchcraft ceremonies..”
“I’ve been warning you the spread of this Locust Army…”
“The whole world will see through the Pope world TV system..”
X FLARE WATCH! LOCUST ARMY ADVANCING RAPIDLY! TIME TO FREAK OUT, MAN!
Leadership: A Charming Pair of Bad-Asses
Posted: May 27, 2014 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel, Jerusalem, John Kerry, Middle East, Prime Minister of Israel, Ted Cruz, United States 2 CommentsHonored to have the opportunity to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin @Netanyahu while visiting Jerusalem. pic.twitter.com/MJVBo8KXy4
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) May 27, 2014

Vatican Calls on Israel to Safeguard Holy Sites
Posted: May 8, 2014 Filed under: Global, War Room | Tags: Arab, Catholic Church, Holy Land, Holy See, Israel, Jerusalem, Micky Rosenfeld, West Bank 1 CommentAP 5/8/2014 7:44:07 PM
JERUSALEM (AP) — The Roman Catholic official in charge of the Vatican‘s properties in the Holy Land on Thursday urged Israel to safeguard Christian holy sites, following a number of vandalism attacks on churches and monasteries ahead of a visit by Pope Francis.
Vandals have recently scribbled anti-Arab and anti-Christian graffiti on several Christian holy sites and properties, including an attack this week on the Vatican’s Notre Dame Center in Jerusalem.
Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency says it fears there could be similar attacks as the pope’s visit approaches at the end of the month. He is scheduled to visit Jordan, the West Bank and Israel from May 24 to 26.
The “Custody of the Holy Land” issued a statement expressing concern about the attacks and said the uptick in violence appeared to be connected to the visit. It called on Israel to “work urgently against extremist elements” to ensure peace and safeguard Christian holy places. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Jerusalem: Police and Protesters Clash at Al-Aqsa Mosque
Posted: April 20, 2014 Filed under: Global, Mediasphere | Tags: al-Aqsa, Al-Aqsa Mosque, Israel, Israeli, Jerusalem, Muslim, Palestinian people, Temple Mount, West Bank, YouTube 2 CommentsPalestinian protesters have again clashed with Israeli riot police near the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
Police say the protesters began throwing stones and firecrackers at a group of visitors, prompting the authorities to respond with stun grenades and rubber bullets.
He is Risen! What Christians Believe About Easter, and Why
Posted: April 20, 2014 Filed under: Art & Culture, Education, History | Tags: Bible, Christian, Christianity, Easter, Good Friday, Gospel of Luke, History, Jerusalem, Jesus, Ken Klukowski, Mary Magdalene, Palm Sunday, Scripture 5 Comments“Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”
—Luke 24:5–6 (ESV)
For Breitbart.com, Ken Klukowski writes: “He is risen!” For centuries, it was proclaimed in the streets on Easter morning. It was a way that Christians identified each other on this day, as another Christian hearing it would respond, “He is risen indeed!”
Easter was the hope of an eternal existence, and one that has baffled scholars for centuries to explain. It’s hard to come up with a theory that explains it all away.
There was a sizeable group of men and women, whose leader claimed to be divine. They saw their leader arrested, tortured with a series of savage punishments that often proved deadly in their own right, nailed to a wooden cross through his hands and feet by professional executioners who crucified convicts on a regular basis, hung on that cross for hours until he was dead, then one soldier thrust a spear into his chest to confirm his demise before taking him down. The soldiers involved in this process would themselves be executed if a person handed over to them for termination was let go alive, so they tended to be thorough. After that point, his body was wrapped in burial clothes and he was put in a tomb under guard. His followers fled in fear and despair.
Then three days later they say they saw him, and spent time with him over a period of days. They said they spoke with him, ate food with him, and walked with him. Then they say he was taken up before their eyes into heaven. And for the rest of their lives, they would travel the known world heedless of any dangers, talking about Jesus Christ and writing the New Testament of the Bible. They were persecuted and executed one by one, yet still continued with unabated zeal for decades until their last breath. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] ‘Incomprehensible’: Convicted Terrorist Worked as Obamacare Navigator
Posted: February 27, 2014 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Illinois, Israel, Jerusalem, nationalreview, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act 2 CommentsWoman involved in deadly terror bombings kept her past secret from authorities in President’s home state
For National Review Online, Jillian Kay Melchior writes: A terrorist from Jordan briefly worked as an Obamacare navigator in Illinois while authorities remained unaware of her conviction for involvement in a deadly grocery store bombing and two other attacks.
Rasmieh Yousef Odeh was convicted in Israel for her role in several bombings, including the 1969 attack on an upscale Shufersol grocery store, which killed two Hebrew University students who had stopped in to buy groceries for a hiking trip in the Jerusalem hills. Leon Kanner and Eddie Joffe were killed by a bomb hidden in a candy box tucked on a shelf, which also injured nine or 10 others, according to a website maintained by the Israeli government to commemorate terror victims.
Dazed and Confucius: Nine common myths about China
Posted: October 5, 2013 Filed under: Asia, China, Global, History | Tags: Beijing, Britain, China, Chinese Whispers, Confucius, Jerusalem, John Quincy Adams, Opium War, Qianlong Emperor, Sigmund Freud 1 Comment
Myth: The Chinese all speak the same language – most Chinese use local dialects, and even different languages from Mandarin (AFP/Getty Images)
Ben Chu writes: Chinese Whispers was once a party game. A message would be relayed in hushed tones through a long line of people and emerge at the other end amusingly garbled. Most of us have found alternative amusements nowadays, but the name survives as a figure of speech; an idiom used to signify how facts or a story tend to get twisted over time and distance.
Why ‘Chinese’ though? There seem to be no concrete answers. One theory has it that messages relayed between the lonely watchtowers of the Great Wall suffered this kind of distortion. Another is that China was once a byword for misunderstanding and confusion in the West, something to do with the supposed ‘inscrutability’ of the Chinese. It doesn’t seem to be a very old usage, with the first references only appearing in the middle of the 20th century. But whatever the provenance of Chinese Whispers, there’s something rather appropriate about the name.

Myth: China has an unstoppable economy – in order to continue growing, China needs to enact fundamental economic reforms and it is far from certain that the reformers will prevail (Getty Images)
China has always loomed large in the Western imagination because it provides a handy screen on to which we can project our dreams and nightmares. First the dreams. The Jesuit missionaries of the 16th century projected China as a country in which men like them achieved, promoted as councillors to emperors, ignoring (or perhaps ignorant of) the fact that the ostensibly meritocratic, imperial exam system was riven with corruption and nepotism. That tradition of wishful projection continues today.
Many executives of Western multinationals talk of China as a new capitalist Jerusalem, a land of eternally high GDP growth, the biggest untapped consumer market on the planet, the place where the state sees its proper function as to help the private sector to make money. Of course, occasionally they will come up against an awkward fact that challenges this dream – reports of baby milk formula adulterated with a harmful chemical by a Chinese manufacturer, for instance, or a corruption scandal – but these are seen as tests of faith to be overcome. They cannot be permitted to interfere with the glorious vision.
Then there are the China nightmares. The French philosopher Montesquieu, in the 18th century, reviled China as a country where there reigned “a spirit of servitude”. In a similar vein, the Victorians projected China as a place where intellectual progress had come to a pathetic stop. What they were both doing was imagining China as the very antithesis of everything they wanted their own nations to be: free, vigorous and expansive. Read the rest of this entry »