BARAK MEETS ABBAS IN JORDAN IN SECRET “DIRECT TALKS”
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu (Arutz Sheva News)

Defense Minister Ehud Barak flew to Jordan twice this week—once to talk with King Abdullah and then return home to update Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and a second time for secret talks with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

No details of their conversation were revealed, according to Voice of Israel government radio, which first reported the “direct talks” that were held at an undisclosed private home on Sunday, five days before Prime Minister Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with Abbas in Washington. Labor Minister Yitzchak Herzog also met with King Abdullah in Jordan on Monday in a previously unreported visit.

Defense Minister Barak previously has said he routinely meets with PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, but this week’s meeting in Jordan is the first report in months of top-level direct discussions with Abbas. He has been insisting that Israel extend the 10-month building freeze of new homes for Jews in Judea and Samaria before face-to-face talks between the two sides.

U.S. President Barack Obama has pressured Abbas to give up his pre-condition, but the issue apparently will be top on the agenda in Washington.

The U.S. State Department continues to express optimism about the talks, telling reporters Monday that it does not expect “peace in one meeting” but that the direct talks scheduled for Thursday can serve as the “launch of a vigorous process” with the aim of reaching a final agreement on a new PA country within a year.

In what has become a diplomatic chess game with only a few pieces left on the board, Israel and the PA are in the same position of not wanting to be blamed for spoiling President Obama’s attempt to win political points.

Prime Minister Netanyahu is prepared to offer more “goodwill” gestures to the PA in return for Israel’s not extending the building freeze, according to Chinese news agency Xinhua. It reported Tuesday that the Prime Minister will offer to remove more security checkpoints in Judea and Samaria, free more PA prisoners and jailed terrorists and offer the PA control over a key route linking Ramallah with a new Arab city under construction. A nearby Jewish town would in effect fall under PA control if Israel relinquishes its sovereignty over the road.

Israel may propose a compromise to continue the building freeze only in areas outside of the large population centers of Jewish communities in Gush Etzion and in Betar Illit, Ariel and Maaleh Adumim. Abbas has built up expectations among his followers that he will accept only a full freeze that also includes parts of Jerusalem where the PA claims sovereignty.

Abbas warned in Ramallah Sunday, “Israel’s government would alone bear the responsibility of threatening the negotiations with failure and collapse if all forms of settlement expansions continue.”

DAVID & ISRAEL TOUR GROUP RETURN!
After enjoying two weeks in Israel (very hot!), 48 people have returned with great joy and blessing! The tour included four days in Tiberias, visiting all parts of the Galilee, and then six wonderful days in and around Jerusalem. The hotels were exceptionally good, and the food, of course, outstanding!!! Our Israeli tour guide has been with David for 38 years – Doron Heileger – and they have a special relationship together. The bus driver – Avi – is always a blessing – and the tour group enjoyed his playing of his accordion and singing praise songs together. The tour agency in Israel was again superb – SAR-EL Touring Agency – and stateside, the tour group was handled by Inspired Travel of Costa Mesa, CA.

The news from the Middle East is now focusing on the peace talks between the Palestinian Authority (Mahmoud Abbas) and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. In spite of USA leadership and promises, the talks do not stand a chance of succeeding as long as attitudes remain the same. The Islamic terrorist groups continue to threaten Israel with extinction and say that no peace arrangement is possible under the circumstances of a Jewish presence in the Land of Israel! The land of Israel was given to the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and is an “everlasting covenant” and completely unconditional, depending solely upon the faithfulness of God Himself.

It is obvious to most of us who visit Israel on a regualr basis that real peace will NOT come to the Middle East until the Prince of peace, our blessed Lord Yeshua returns! May that day come soon!

It will be good to return home, and to start preaching again at various prophecy conferences. During September David will be preaching at the following:
APPLETON, WISCONSIN
WINNIPEG, MANITOBA (CANADA)
MODESTO, CALIFORNIA

Your prayers are greatly appreciated and your financial support most needed at this time!
Love to you all from Israel – DAVID

ISRAEL’S NETANYAHU POISED TO TAKE OUT IRAN’S NUCLEAR SITES!
by George Will

When Israel declared independence in 1948, it had to use mostly small arms to repel attacks by six Arab armies. Today, however, Israel feels, and is, more menaced than it was then, or has been since. Hence the potentially world-shaking decision that will be made here, probably within two years.

To understand the man who will make it, begin with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s belief that stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program is integral to stopping the worldwide campaign to reverse 1948. It is, he says, a campaign to “put the Jew back to the status of a being that couldn’t defend himself — a perfect victim.”

Today’s Middle East, he says, reflects two developments. One is the rise of Iran and militant Islam since the 1979 revolution, which led to al-Qaida, Hamas, and Hezbollah. The other development is the multiplying threat of missile warfare.

Now Israel faces a third threat, the campaign to delegitimize it in order to extinguish its capacity for self-defense.

After two uniquely perilous millennia for Jews, the creation of Israel meant, Netanyahu says, “the capacity for self-defense restored to the Jewish people.” But note, he says, the reflexive worldwide chorus of condemnation when Israel responded with force to rocket barrages from Gaza and from southern Lebanon. There is, he believes, a crystallizing consensus that “Israel is not allowed to exercise self-defense.”

From 1948 through 1973, he says, enemies tried to “eliminate Israel by conventional warfare.” Having failed, they tried to demoralize and paralyze Israel with suicide bombers and other terrorism. “We put up a fence,” Netanyahu says. “Now they have rockets that go over the fence.” Israel’s military, which has stressed offense as a solution to the nation’s lack of strategic depth, now stresses missile defense.

That, however, cannot cope with Hamas’ tens of thousands of rockets in Gaza and Hezbollah’s 60,000 in southern Lebanon. There, U.N. resolution 1701, promulgated after the 2006 war, has been predictably farcical. This was supposed to inhibit the arming of Hizbullah and prevent its operations south of the Litani River.

Since 2006, Hizbullah’s rocket arsenal has tripled and its operations mock resolution 1701. Hizbullah, learning from Hamas, now places rockets near schools and hospitals, certain that Israel’s next response to indiscriminate aggression will turn the world media into a force multiplier for the aggressors.

Any Israeli self-defense anywhere is automatically judged “disproportionate.” Israel knows this as it watches Iran.

Last year was Barack Obama’s wasted year of “engaging” Iran. This led to sanctions that are unlikely to ever become sufficiently potent. With Russia, China, and Turkey being uncooperative, Iran is hardly “isolated.” The Iranian democracy movement probably cannot quickly achieve regime change. It took Solidarity 10 years to do so against a Polish regime less brutally repressive than Iran’s.

Hillary Clinton’s words about extending a “defense umbrella over the region” imply, to Israelis, fatalism about a nuclear Iran. As for deterrence working against a nuclear-armed regime steeped in an ideology of martyrdom, remember: In 1980, Ayatollah Khomeini said: “We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”

You say, that was long ago? Israel says, this is now:

Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, says Israel is the “enemy of God.” Tehran, proclaiming that the Holocaust never happened and vowing to complete it, sent an ambassador to Poland who in 2006 wanted to measure the ovens at Auschwitz to prove them inadequate for genocide. Iran’s former President, Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is considered a “moderate” by people for whom believing is seeing, calls Israel a “one-bomb country.”

If Iran were to “wipe the Zionist entity off the map,” as it vows to do, it would, Netanyahu believes, achieve a regional “dominance not seen since Alexander.” Netanyahu does not say Israel will, if necessary, act alone to prevent this. Or does he?

He says CIA Director Leon Panetta is “about right” in saying Iran can be a nuclear power in two years. He says 1948 meant this: “For the first time in 2,000 years, a sovereign Jewish people could defend itself against attack.” And he says: “The tragic history of the powerlessness of our people explains why the Jewish people need a sovereign power of self-defense.” If Israel strikes Iran, the world will not be able to say it was not warned.

IRAN LAUNCHES HOLOCAUST-DENIAL CARTOON SITE!
by Hillel Fendel (IsraelNationalNews)

A new website in Iran depicts the Holocaust as seen through Iranian eyes – cartoons, mockery, denial claims, and a dedication to “all those killed in the name of the Holocaust.”

The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC) reports that the new, extensive website, holocartoons.com, is in the form of a comic book in three languages: Persian, English and Arabic. It begins by stating that it is dedicated to “all those who were killed by those using the Holocaust excuse.”

Claims that the Holocaust either never happened or was exaggerated, long familiar on the Iranian scene, are presented in detail, as are allegations that Israel simply used the Holocaust concept to kill Arabs and take over what was then Palestine.

Mockery is the website’s overriding theme, both in the illustrations and the content. An example: “One day, when Hitler woke up, he decided to suffocate six million Jews. Unfortunately, only 5.4 million Jews were living in Europe, so he invited another 600,000 into Europe, and they arrived within a few days.”

Another page states: “Did the Holocaust happen only during World War Two? No, before that, six million Jews died of hunger and poverty during World War One, but because no one paid any attention, they let themselves be gassed to death again by the Nazis.”

The website takes the familiar approach of accusing Israel of using the Holocaust for the formation of the renewed Jewish State: “Jewish artists re-built the gas chambers, using their mental talents and their imagination… The German government asked the Jews to take everything it had, but the Jews agreed to take only $100 billion, and contributed the rest to their god.”

The site also mocks Jewish claims that Moslems in then-Palestine collaborated with the Nazis: “Researchers have proven that the Great Mufti in Jerusalem looked at Hitler’s picture three times during the war, and therefore Palestine belongs to the Jews.”

ITIC states that this new Iranian website “is yet another expression of the country’s policy of Holocaust denial, and plays a central role in the Iranian regime’s attempt to de-legitimize Israel and deny the historical-moral basis of Zionism. Holocaust denial has been very familiar in Iran since the Islamic Revolution there, but it has increased significantly ever since Mahmoud Ahmedinajad was elected president in 2005.” Since his election, ITIC notes, Iran has held an exhibit of Holocaust denial cartoons and has officially sponsored a Holocaust denial conference.

JERUSALEM MUFTI: WATCH OUT FOR RELIGIOUS WAR!
by Hillel Fendel (IsraelNationalNews)

Is a Moslem cleric making one war-provoking statement too many? Jerusalem Mufti Muhammad Hussein says Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, Hevron could start a religious war.

Muhammad Hussein, known as the “Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine,” calls on all Moslems to take action to save the “holy places” and to support the Palestinian intifada. In keeping with the recent Moslem line that Judaism is barely linked with the Holy Land, Hussein says that Israel is “working subversively to take over Moslem holy sites,” Arab affairs correspondent Dalit HaLevi reports.

Speaking with the Arabic-language internet site Ilaf on Tuesday, Hussein said that Israel has invested great efforts to erase the Islamic characteristics of Jerusalem, Hevron and other cities, in order to falsely prove Judaism’s connection with these places.

Just a few decades ago, however, it was Jerusalem’s Supreme Moslem Council (Waqf) itself that debunked the Arab Moslem position that the Temple Mount is not Jewish. The Waqf published a Temple Mount guide in 1925 in which it stated clearly that the site’s “identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which ‘David built there an altar unto the L-rd…’”, citing the source in II Samuel 24,25.

The pamphlet also makes reference to the underground area in the south-east corner of the Mount, which it refers to as Solomon’s Stables. “Little is known for certain of the history of the chamber itself,” the guide reads. “It dates probably as far back as the construction of Solomon’s Temple. According to Josephus, it was in existence and was used as a place of refuge by the Jews at the time of the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus in the year 70 A.D.”

Muhammed Hussein also now denies that Hevron, where the Patriarch Abraham purchased what is now the Machpelah Cave and the area around it, and Bethlehem, where the Patriach Jacob buried his wife, the Matriarch Rachel, are Jewish sites.

He said that the recent Israeli decision to include them in the list of special Jewish legacy sites is an “attempt to take over the religious places and create facts on the ground… We are now in a period of war – not one with tanks and rockets, but one of religion, faith, and distorting Islamic history and tradition… This proves that Israel has no cultural roots in this land.”

Hussein added that all Moslems must know that Israel is preparing to “annex the Al-Aqsa Mosque (on the Temple Mount) in order to demolish it and build the fake Holy Temple in its place… This is taking place in the framework of the plan by the Zionist enemy to Judaize Jerusalem…”

Palestinian Media Watch, which monitors and publicizes anti-Israel incitement in the Palestinian Authority’s media and schools, explains, “The Israeli and world media keep portraying reality as if the PA has peaceful intentions. However, the PA school books and media are full of incitement to hate and violence, glorification of terrorists, denial of Israel’s right to exist as well as demonization of Jews and Israelis… The only answer to these hate messages is to expose them – even if it is again and again – in whatever versions they appear, so that we do not become immune to them. Unless hate education and incitement is stopped, it will destroy any chance for peace.”

IAF STRIKES GAZA WEAPONS FACTORY, TUNNELS IN RESPONSE TO TERROR!
by Chana Ya’ar (Arutz Sheva News)

Israel Air Force fighter pilots destroyed a variety of carefully selected terrorist targets in Gaza overnight in retaliation for a spate of terror attacks on Jewish communities in the western Negev, including two mortars fired at Israel from the region earlier in the day, and two Kassam rockets fired Monday.

Two IDF soldiers were wounded in Tuesday morning’s mortar fire while troops carried out engineering tasks along the Gaza security fence. The Salah ad-Din Brigades military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) terrorist group subsequently claimed responsibility for the attack.

The PRC is one of three groups whose operatives carried out the June 25, 2006 kidnapping of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, who is still being held captive by the ruling Hamas terrorist organization.

In response to the attack, the IAF carried out air strikes on a weapons factory in central Gaza, two smuggler tunnels, and a terrorist tunnel in the southern part of the region.

On Monday, Gaza terrorists launched a Kassam rocket barrage that struck Jewish communities in the Eshkol Regional Council district.

“The IDF remains committed to protecting the citizens of Israel and will continue to act against terror,” said the IDF Spokesman in a statement. “The IDF holds Hamas solely responsible for terror emanating from the Gaza Strip.”

More than 115 rockets and mortars have been fired at Israel from Gaza since January. Over 420 rockets were launched from the region at the Jewish State since the end of Israel’s three-week counter-terrorist war, in the winter of 2008-2009, Operation Cast Lead.

PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY READY FOR TALKS BUT KEEPS UP “ISRAEL POISONED ARAFAT” LIBEL!
by Eli Stutz courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch

As the PA gears up for talks with Israel, a Palestinian Media Watch report reveals that it continues to promote the libel that Israel poisoned Yasser Arafat, in an attempt to establish him as a national martyr and create an environment of hate. PMW says the libel includes charges that the United States encouraged Israel to poison Arafat.

PMW Director Itamar Marcus told Israel National News, “We hear children in Palestinian-controlled regions referring to this libel regularly. It appears everywhere, and the idea is to make Arafat into a martyr. All this hate material is not just isolated name calling. It’s being built into a basic part of Palestinian identity. It is being blended together into a comprehensive attempt at delegitimizing Israel.”

Marcus had insights into the nature of the libel itself. “We believe that poisoning specifically was chosen as the charge because in the Hadith (writings on Mohammed), Mohammed is said to have been killed by poisoning, and we think that there is an attempt to raise Arafat to that tremendous status level of Mohammed,” he said.

The PLO claims Arafat was killed with the “approval and help of the United States.” Palestinian Media Watch has for years documented this recurring libel, which is spread by PA and Fatah leaders, academics and clerics. It is even disseminated through cultural events and media messages for children.

The following accusation that Israel killed Arafat, written by a Fatah member of the PLO’s Palestinian National Council, appeared this week in the official PA daily newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, as translated by PMW:

Khaled Mismar, member of the PLO’s Palestinian National Council:
“In 2003 Israel, with the support of the new American Administration of President Bush, laid oppressive siege to our late symbol, Yasser Arafat, until they got him with poison, since they weren’t able to kill him using their tanks, which besieged his home in Ramallah. The details of the story are known to everyone, young and old, among our Palestinian people and throughout the world.”
(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 10, 2010)

Nashat Al-Aqatsh, a lecturer at Bir-Zeit University, said in July while discussing the peace process:
“In the past Israel claimed no Palestinian partner existed, and they (Israel) killed the late Palestinian President, Yasser Arafat.”
[PA TV (Fatah), July 27, 2010]

Earlier this summer, in a dramatic performance at a PLO cultural festival, two young Palestinian boys lamented Arafat’s death, and compared his death at the hands of the Jews to the death of Jesus:
Boy 1 (addressing Arafat): “Father, Father the Elder (Arafat). Why did it happen this way? Why did it happen this way? Death chose you, and you did not complete the path.”

Boy 2: “Do not ask why it happened this way. Yesterday they crucified Jesus; today they poisoned the Father, the Elder (Arafat).”

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The facts are that Arafat did NOT die of poison but of “AIDS.” To associate this ungodly, immoral, murderous terrorist with our blessed Lord Yeshua is the height of blasphemy and attack upon Christians everywhere!)

PA GOVERNMENT SUPPORTS VIOLENCE AGAINST ISRAELI CITIZENS!
by Chana Ya’ar (Arutz Sheva News)

The Palestinian Authority is continuing to express its support for violence against Israeli citizens in Arabic-language media, despite English-language propaganda insisting the PA wants peace. The interview, broadcast August 6 on PA TV (Fatah), was translated by the media watchdog Palestinian Media Watch (PMW).

Senior Fatah Central Committee member Jibril Rajoub, a leading PA government official, reiterated the faction’s support for “armed struggle” in the interview. “At the sixth Fatah Conference, we affirmed the struggle in all its forms, including resistance and the armed struggle… We agreed on it unanimously, about both the movement’s aims and its principles, including the resistance and the armed struggle,” he said.

“The armed struggle, as we see it, is not an aim; it is not a hike or a pleasure cruise. Armed resistance has circumstances, considerations, and factors – whether national, regional or international. It must cause pain to the Occupation; it must be connected to a political platform,” Rajoub explained.

Former PA Prime Minister Ahmad Qureia (Abu Ala), who currently serves as the PA’s chief negotiator, said in an interview published one day earlier in the London-based Arabic daily newspaper Al Sharq Al-Awsat that “all options are open,” including armed resistance.

“Negotiators, political activity, popular activity, and armed resistance… we must continue with it,” Qureia said, adding that all of the options were viable. “And if resistance gives me benefit without costing me, yes,” that option is also a good one, he said.

Both men echoed sentiments expressed earlier in the summer by Nabil Shaath, a member of the PA Parliament, a Fatah “Commissioner of Foreign Relations” and a member of the Fatah Central Committee.

In two separate interviews with Arabic-language media in June (Al-Dustur daily newspaper in Jordan, and Al-Hayat Al-Jadida in the PA), Shaath underscored the PA’s commitment to violence against Israel.

“The Palestinian people have the right to defend itself, and it has the right to act in the way of the armed struggle. We have acted in this way for 100 years,” he said in the interview with Al-Hayat Al-Jadida. “Fatah led the armed struggle for 23 years, and Hamas adopted it for 15 years. We are proud of all of our Shahids (martyrs) and it is our right to return to the armed conflict whenever we view that as being in our people’s interest.”

CENTRAL ISRAEL OIL DISCOVERY: 1.5 BILLION BARRELS!
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu (Arutz Sheva News)

Estimates of the amount of oil in the Rosh HaAyin discovery have risen to 1.5 billion barrels, and there is more oil off-shore, but it is not yet known how much of the “black gold” can be extracted for commercial use.

The new estimate, along with the gas and oil finds off the Mediterranean Coast, raise the likelihood that Israel will be self-sufficient for energy for the next three decades and even become an exporter of gas. The amount of oil at Rosh HaAyin represents a tiny percentage of Israel’s oil consumption, but development is continuing in the area as well as in the Dead Sea.

Economists have noted that the discoveries will have a huge impact on society, creating more jobs and strengthening the shekel against world currencies.

Investors in the project at Rosh HaAyin, located on the edge of Samaria and several miles east of Tel Aviv, have been waiting anxiously for months for news about the amounts oil underground at the Megged 5 oil well. The full engineering report will not be available until mid-September, but the company has decided to adopt the recommendation in the initial report.

Oil samples were found as having high quality with very little sulfur, and the amount of water in the samples was less than 10 percent.

It added, “A reasonable estimate of the amount of oil…is 1.525 billion barrels of oil” but warned that the final estimates may be lower, with a chance that they could even be higher. The report does not include estimate of other sections in the field.

Previous reports estimated that daily production could reach 382 barrels a day. The latest company statement said it will not be known before next month the new estimated production rate, but it should reach at least 450 barrels a day.

ISRAEL, GREECE DRAW CLOSER, BIBI VISITS ATHENS!
by Maayana Miskin (Arutz Sheva News)

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu traveled to Greece today, making him the first sitting Israeli Prime Minister to visit the country. His trip follows Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou’s visit to Israel in July.

In July, Netanyahu said Israel and Greece would undergo “a major upgrade in relations” that would include closer ties in finance, tourism and technology.

During this latest meeting, Netanyahu and Papandreou will the possibility of forging defense ties, officials said.

Israel’s tighter ties with Greece come on the heels of a crisis in Israeli ties with Turkey, which has been increasingly critical of Israeli policy under the Erdogan administration. In late May several members of the pro-terror Turkish group IHH were killed in a shootout with Israeli soldiers as they attempted to break through the naval blockade on Gaza. The incident led Ankara to recall its Ambassador.

Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev said the Prime Minister’s visit reflected a “new dynamism in Israel-Greek relations.”

Many have attributed the “new dynamism” to the breakdown of ties with Turkey, saying that Israel is seeking new Mediterranean allies. Greece, which has historically had a hostile relationship with Turkey, apparently also sees an advantage in drawing a traditional Turkish ally closer.

Former Foreign Ministry Director Alon Liel gave a more simple explanation for Netanyahu’s trip. Speaking to Bloomberg.com, Liel said, “Israel is not so popular these days, so if you’re invited to go visit a full member of the European Union like Greece, why not?”