Some Recent Developments

OUR THIRD HOLIEST SITE HAS BEEN 

ONCE AGAIN TURNED INTO A MOSQUE  

Swastikas painted on Joseph's Tomb

Headstone smashed, ... graffiti scrawled on wall

[I guess that UN speech was taken as a signal]

HORRIFIED WORSHIPPERS FOUND JOSEPH'S TOMB DEFACED AGAIN

Hundreds of worshippers who entered Joseph’s Tomb on Wednesday night were shocked to see the holy site desecrated, apparently by Arab residents of Shechem. More than 500 Jewish worshippers who had coordinated with the IDF for entry were granted special permission to visit the tomb of the Biblical Joseph in Shechem, in honor of the new month of Iyar and Independence Day.

In a WND exclusive interview, Tariq Tarawi, a Fatah lawmaker who in 2000 served as chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group in the vicinity of the tomb, said the Palestinians would "never" allow Israel to rebuild a yeshiva or synagogue at Joseph's Tomb. The Brigades carried out most of the attacks against the tomb site.

"A yeshiva is an institution," said Tarawi. "An institution can be the beginning of claiming rights and these claims can bring once again the Israeli army to establish a base in the place, and we cannot accept this. If the Jews try to build a yeshiva, we will shoot at them."

EGYPTIAN MP URGES PILGRIMAGE TO JERUSALEM

The world's Muslims should go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem to demonstrate that it is a Muslim city and the future capital of a Palestinian state, an Egyptian parliamentarian was quoted as saying Thursday. 

[the picture is of worshippers at mecca! just what we need in Yerushalayim!]

"Just as Muslims go on pilgrimage... to Mecca, they should also go to Jerusalem and to the Al-Aksa Mosque by the hundreds of thousands [?] every year," Minister of Religious Endowments Mohammed Hamdi Zaqzuq was quoted by the Al-Masri Al-Youm newspaper as saying. 

"We can show the whole world that Jerusalem is something that concerns all Muslims," Zaqzuq said. "I invite all Muslims... to go to Jerusalem, even with Israeli visas, and I know full well that I'm exposing myself to virulent attacks," by saying this, Zaqzuq told a conference entitled "Jerusalem from an Islamic point of view."

WORLD MUSTN'T PERMIT ANOTHER HOLOCAUST

Obama talks with Elie Wiesel, founding chairman of the US Holocaust Memorial, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, during the National Commemoration of the Days of Remembrance in the Capitol Rotunda.
Photo: AP
He also said: "We've seen it, in this century, in the mass graves and the ashes of villages burned to the ground and children used as soldiers and rape used as a weapon of war," . . . Obama said part of the responsibility for the Holocaust rests with people who "accepted the assigned role [?] of bystander . . . and called it a grim irony [?] that modern tools were used by the Nazis for barbaric savagery: "Science that can heal, used to kill. Education that can enlighten, used to rationalize away basic moral impulses."

ISRAEL PUTS IRAN ISSUE AHEAD OF PALESTINIANS
So says The Washington Post

JERUSALEM -- The new Israeli government will not move ahead on the core issues of peace talks with the Palestinians until it sees progress in U.S. efforts to stop Iran's suspected pursuit of a nuclear weapon and limit Tehran's rising influence in the region, according to top government officials familiar with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's developing policy on the issue. "It's a crucial condition if we want to move forward," said Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon, a member of the Israeli parliament and former ambassador to the United States. "If we want to have a real political process with the Palestinians, then you can't have the Iranians undermining and sabotaging."

"We have to be pretty careful how you approach that kind of connection," said a senior U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. "We are dealing with Iran because there are behaviors out there that are deeply troubling."