The Bible Teaching Ministry of David Hocking
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Archive for January, 2012

NETANYAHU READY TO GO TO RAMALLAH

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

NETANYAHU READY TO GO TO RAMALLAH
by Chana Ya’ar (IsraelNationalNews)

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is “ready to go to Ramallah” to meet with Palestinian Authority / PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and open negotiations, according to an interview published Monday night by the PA-linked Ma’an news agency.

In Arabic-language comments typed live through the chat function on his official Facebook page, Netanyahu told Arab journalists, “We are completely serious about talks with the Palestinians, but unfortunately the Palestinian side refuses.”

The PLO called a halt to dialogue after the fifth and final meeting in a series of exploratory negotiations between Israeli envoy Yitzchak Molcho and PLO representative Saeb Erekat ended last Wednesday.

“Advancing negotiations is the only way towards peace,” he pointed out. “I want to talk with the Palestinians in order to open channels at all levels. This is in the Palestinians’ and the Arabs’ interest,” he continued.

“Israel can help develop the region economically, and wants to see a prosperous future for all countries in the region. I feel disappointed because peace treaties have not led to an economic boom for all. Economy is the outcome of relationships, and economic peace isn’t an alternative to political peace, but it helps,” he pointed out.

The Prime Minister added in response to a question about what he thinks Palestinians should do, “The Palestinian President should have continued with talks. This is what the international community wants both sides to do.”

In response to a question about the Arab Spring, Netanyahu commented that Israel was supportive of the democratic process. “There are misconceptions about Israel, and many Arabs do not know that the Arabs living in Israel serve in the government, in the parliament, and enjoy complete rights.

“The impression that Israel does not want peace is incorrect. We know the value of peace, and one of the obstacles is the misconception about Israel’s attitude toward peace.

Asked about Iran, Netanyahu pulled no punches:

“Iran is a threat to peace, to Israel, to the Arab countries, to the Middle East and to the whole world,” he wrote.

“They are arming terrorist organizations while they develop their nuclear power seeking to control the Middle East and the whole world.”

UNIVERSITY BLASTED FOR INTOLERANCE OF CHRISTIANITY

Monday, January 30th, 2012

UNIVERSITY BLASTED FOR INTOLERANCE OF CHRISTIANITY
by Zionica Press

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered a trial at the district level for a graduate level counseling student who was dismissed from her program for asking that a client with “gay” issues be referred to another counselor because as a Christian she could not affirm that lifestyle choice.

Officials at Eastern Michigan University took that action against Julea Ward, a student approaching the end of her degree program with a 3.91 grade point average, even though, as the appeals judges noted, the school’s own practices in fact permitted such referrals.

The result is that a jury needs to make a determination on whether officials at the school attacked Ward because of her Christian beliefs or not, the ruling said.

“What exactly did Ward do wrong in make the referral request? If one thing is clear after three years of classes, it is that Ward is acutely aware of her own values. The point of the referral request was to avoid imposing her values on gay and lesbian clients. And the referral request not only respected the diversity of practicum clients, but it also conveyed her willingness to counsel gay and lesbian clients about other issues – all but relationship issues – an attitude confirmed by her equivalent concern about counseling heterosexual clients about extra-marital sex and adultery in a values-affirming way,” said the opinion, written by Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton.

HAMAS GAZA CHIEF TO VISIT IRAN

Thursday, January 26th, 2012

HAMAS GAZA CHIEF TO VISIT IRAN
by Gavriel Queenann (IsraelNationalNews)

Hamas Gaza-chief Ismail Haniyeh indicated Wednesday he has added Iran to the itinerary of his international tour.

Hainyeh recently returned from the first leg of his tour to drum of support and funds for Hamas in Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan, and Turkey where Islamists have made major political gains in recent polls, especially after the Arab Spring.

Haniyeh is expected to depart for the Persian Gulf, where he will meet with officials in Qatar, Barain, and Iran, on January 30.

The addition of Iran to Haniyeh’s itinerary comes after Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent Haniyeh a letter on Tuesday congratulating him on the anniversary of Hamas’ victory over Fatah in its bloody June 2007 seizure of Gaza.

In the letter Ahmadinejad also invited Haniyeh to visit Tehran in what is widely seen as an attempt to thaw relations and solidify ties with the terror group after a row over Hamas’ open criticism of Iran-allied President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Tehran, which counts the Assad regime as a key ally in its regional axis of power, greatly reduced donations to the Hamas government in Gaza in pique. In the wake of cutting Hamas, has also found itself embroiled in a running feud with Shiite competitors in Gaza.

Hamas has moved to shut down foreign-funded Shiite outreach centers in Gaza in recent months, and has had a series of simmering confrontations with Shiite terror competitors, including Hizbullah.

Hizbullah has been a staunch proponent of the Assad regime and has been widely accused of sending fighters to aid in quashing protests in the country – a charge Hizbullah denies

NO IRAN NUKE THIS YEAR – MAYBE NEXT YEAR!

Thursday, January 26th, 2012

NO IRAN NUKE THIS YEAR – MAYBE NEXT YEAR!
by David Lev (Arutz Sheva News)

A Washington thinktank’s new report says that Iran is not likely to move towards developing nuclear weapons – at least for the coming year. The report released Wednesday by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) says that Iran’s uranium enrichment capability is limited, and was unable to grow sufficiently over the next year to allow Tehran to freely develop a nuclear bomb.

However, the report says, Western officials should not take too much comfort from this scenario – because it is unlikely to last. While it is true and important that there are no indications that Iran has made a decision to actually construct a nuclear weapon, such a statement does not accurately portray the real concern about Iran’s nuclear program and progress,” says the report, authored by a team headed by ISIS head David Albright, “Iran has already made a series of important decisions that would give it the ability to quickly make nuclear weapons.”

Iran’s main thrust, according to the report, seems to be developing a system whereby it could quickly assemble a nuclear weapon when it wanted. Recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports indicate that this is indeed what Iran is doing. “If Iran’s ability to quickly build nuclear weapons increases during the next few years, this will only shorten the period of time between taking a decision to build a bomb and constructing one,” the report says.

The report says that it is not too late to halt, or at least regulate, the Iranian nuclear program, via diplomacy, sanctions, or other non-military means. But time is growing short: “Eschewing strengthened non-military options in the form of pressure and sanctions ignores this shortening timeline and makes it more likely that Iran will progress in its hedging strategy, augmenting the chance for armed conflict,” says the report. “As Iran’s timeline to nuclear weapons decreases, however, there is an inversely increased urgency to find this resolution. It is unwise to measure this level of urgency by relying on the fact that there remains no evidence that Iran has taken the last step to actually construct a nuclear explosive device.”

The West must take advantage of the fact that Iran is still hedging on making a final decision, the report adds. “Whether or not Iran will ultimately build nuclear weapons depends greatly on what is done now. Given Iran’s steady, albeit slow progress, downplaying the threat can end up serving to undermine the development of non-military methods to keep Iran from building nuclear weapons.”

STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS AND REBUTTAL – A CLEAR CHOICE!

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS AND REBUTTAL – A CLEAR CHOICE!
by Dr. Amiel Ungar

President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address was light on foreign policy while Indiana Governor Mitch Daniel’s rebuttal omitted the issue entirely.

Both the Democrats and Republicans realize that the 2012 presidential election will be contested on domestic policy.

Obama took credit for withdrawing American troops from Iraq and for the start of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. He tried to surround it with a sense of triumphalism, giving a pat on the back to the Armed Forces.

He also took credit for the imminent demise of the Assad regime, although his Administration had initially tried to engage it.

On domestic issues, two contrasting approaches emerged. Obama, aside from the ritual references about cutting red tape, views the federal government as the ultimate protector of America’s citizens. It was the American government that preserved and nurtured the automobile industry. The American government, via taxation policy, will penalize companies that outsource jobs and reward companies that bring jobs back. It will give an even bigger boost to high-tech industries and environmentally friendly ones.

The federal government will protect the United States against unfair trade practices by countries such as China. Obama announced the creation of a Trade Enforcement Unit.

The federal government will ensure quality education and make attendance through high school mandatory. At the same time it will protect Americans from spiraling tuition costs and higher education by penalizing universities that hike tuition costs to an unbearable extent.

The federal government will protect its citizens from the financial institutions, be it the banks who offered mortgages that could not be repaid or credit card companies that encouraged irresponsible borrowing. These institutions, rather than people who live beyond their means and eschew thrift, will be held responsible.

Given all its missions and responsibilities, the government requires more income. That income can only come from increased and more equitable taxation. Obama believes that millionaires must be in the 30% tax bracket.

Fortuitously for Obama, Mitt Romney disclosed his tax returns revealing that he paid 15% on a multimillion dollar income. It was necessary to support the 98% against the 2%

If you make under $250,000 a year, like 98 percent of American families, your taxes shouldn’t go up. You’re the ones struggling with rising costs and stagnant wages. You’re the ones who need relief.

The Republican approach, as enunciated by Mitch Daniels ,views government as a problem rather than the solution. Perhaps the most important line in the Daniels speech was his reference to “the President’s grand experiment in trickle-down government.”

Here, Daniels attempted cleverly to turn an argument by the economic left against it. The left denounces trickle-down economics according to which if you allow people to get rich, everybody will eventually receive crumbs off the table. Daniels claims that a rich government that “spends one of every $4 in the entire economy” is not going to make the people richer, but plunge the United States into the same situation as “Greece, Spain and other European countries now facing economic catastrophe.”

If Obama claims credit for saving the auto industry, Daniels reminds him of “all those stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew.”

Obama claims that energy production surged under his leadership. Daniels claimed that if energy made progress, it was despite the obstacles that Obama posed by caving in to his environmentalist supporters – and most recently, by blocking the Keystone Pipeline.

“The extremism that stifles the development of homegrown energy, or cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands, or jacks up consumer utility bills for no improvement in either human health or world temperature, is a pro-poverty policy.

Responding to the populist Obama thrust, pitting the wealthy 2% against the 98%, Daniels argued that the burden on the wealthy should be felt in entitlements rather than in taxation. The government, instead of taking more from the wealthy, should give them less – for example, in reform of the Social Security and Medicare system

The dumb way is to raise rates in a broken, grossly complex tax system, choking off growth without bringing in the revenues we need to meet our debts. The better course is to stop sending the wealthy benefits they do not need

Daniels contended that the concept of the government as protector had gone overboard:
In word and deed, the President and his allies tell us that we just cannot handle ourselves in this complex, perilous world without their benevolent protection. Left to ourselves, we might pick the wrong health insurance, the wrong mortgage, the wrong school for our kids; why, unless they stop us, we might pick the wrong light bulb.

The State of Union address and the Republican rebuttal have presented a clear choice to the American voter.

The writer is a political scientist who is Arutz Sheva’s Global Agenda analyst. He is featured regularly in the Hebrew press, including BeSheva and in the Jerusalem Report.

EU JEWISH LEADER: “IRAN IS AN EVIL KINGDOM!”

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

EU JEWISH LEADER: “IRAN IS AN EVIL KINGDOM!”
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu (IsraelNationalNews)

Iran is an “evil kingdom,” European Jewish Congress president Dr. Moshe Kantor told the European Parliament on International Holocaust Remembrance Day Tuesday.

It was the third year both bodies jointly observed the memorial day, which falls on the same day as the liberation of the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz, which Dr. Kantor noted was called by Holocaust survivor and writer Yehiel Dinur a “different planet, a planet of the ashes.”

Dr. Kantor warned that “it is our human nature to distance ourselves from evil, to avoid its confrontation, and to use the filter of our human memory to protect ourselves and distance ourselves from it by retaining our memories of the good and limiting our memories of the evil and painful….

“We have learned only too well how that ‘different planet’ is not on a different planet at all, but exists here, on earth…

“Today we look to the East, to Iran, and we face again a new regime of evil that abuses its own citizens, that threatens to annihilate a democratic state, the only state of the Jewish people, and that threatens world peace and the very destruction of western civilization. We dare not delude ourselves, imagining that this kingdom of evil is somehow far away, of another planet, or will just fade away; we cannot afford to ever again lose our own planet.”

PLO REFUSES MORE MEETINGS WITH ISRAEL AFTER 5 TALKS IN AMMAN!

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

PLO REFUSES MORE MEETINGS WITH ISRAEL AFTER 5 TALKS IN AMMAN!
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu (Arutz Sheva News)

The PLO has refused to continue talks with Israel after five meetings in Amman between Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and Israeli representative Yitzchak Molcho. The two men are scheduled to meet for the fifth and allegedly final time Wednesday, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Bethelehem-based Ma’an news agency.

Wednesday’s meeting, sponsored by Jordan and the European Union, is a final attempt to get direct final status talks between Israel and the PA back on track, and sort out the unresolved core issues.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton arrived at Ben Gurion International Airport Tuesday and is expected to do what she can to exert pressure on both Israel and PLO officials to renew the talks before the January 26 deadline set by international mediators to reach a compromise.

PLO official Hanna Amirah was quoted by Ma’an as saying “the Palestinian leadership would not take a decision to extend negotiations with the Israeli side because the Netanyahu government ‘doesn’t seek at this stage to achieve any positive progress in the peace process with the Palestinian Authority.’”

However, Erekat – a member of the Fatah terror faction’s Central committee — used the previous meeting to negotiate the release of all PA terrorist prisoners currently incarcerated in Israeli jails, rather than to focus his efforts on discussing the core issues relating to Israel-PA statehood.

Among the issues Erekat raised at the last meeting was advocating for the release of Hamas legislator Aziz Dweik, who had been recently arrested by Israeli security forces.

PA sources confirmed Wednesday the meeting in Amman would be the last, despite “huge pressure” by the Quartet of peacekeeping nations – the U.S., Russia, the United Nations and the European Union – to continue the process.

Before and after every meeting, PA officials had expressed pessimism about the process, telling reporters it was unlikely talks would continue beyond the deadline. Officials made it clear from the outset their presence at the table in Amman came entirely in response to the request of Jordan’s King Abdullah II.

PLO and PA officials will discuss the matter after PA/PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas returns from his tour of Europe. “The Arab follow-up committee will also convene on Feb. 29 to discuss peace negotiations with Israel,” Ma’an reported.

EREKAT: RELEASE TERROR PRISONERS, NO MATTER WHOM THEY KILLED!

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

EREKAT: RELEASE TERROR PRISONERS, NO MATTER WHOM THEY KILLED!
by Elad Benari (Arutz Sheva News)

Saeb Erekat, member of the Fatah Central Committee and the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator, on Monday called on the international community to immediately intervene to release all Palestinian Authority Arab prisoners currently in Israeli jails.

According to a press release published by his office and quoted by the PA-based WAFA news agency, Erekat called for the release of 25 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, prisoners arrested before May of 1994, women, children, the ill and senior prisoners.

Erekat, who has recently been conducting negotiations in Amman with Israeli negotiator Yitzchak Molcho, appears to have called for the release of these terrorists from Israeli prisons, regardless of whom they murdered. His statement on Monday came after he used the meeting with Molcho to demand that Israel release Hamas lawmaker Aziz Duwaik, parliamentary speaker for the Palestinian Legislative Council.

Duwaik was arrested at a security checkpoint near Ramallah on Thursday. Israel alleges that he was involved in terror activities.

Erekat also restated the January 26 deadline set by the Quartet for the parties to present proposals on security and borders in order to return to the negotiations table, adding that Israel would close the door to resuming final status negotiations if it did not uphold its obligations.

Although he did not specify which obligations he was referring to, he likely meant the PA’s constant demands that Israel release all Arab terrorists held in Israeli prisons, agree to the pre-1967 lines as borders for a future PA state, and freeze construction in Judea, Samaria, and east Jerusalem, before talks resume.

Last week, the PA rejected a request by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to extend the deadline, saying that extending the deadline is “useless” because “Israel doesn’t appear to be serious, so time extension will not add any value to the status quo.”

Netanyahu stated last week that PA officials “have no interest in restarting peace negotiations.”

“For the last three years, the Palestinians have refused to enter negotiations, thinking they could impose preconditions upon us,” Netanyahu told Israeli lawmakers in a closed parliamentary meeting, referring to the ever-changing demands exemplified by chief negotiator Erekat’s statement

“OBAMA PRESIDENCY HAS HARMED ISRAEL,” SAYS ISRAELI OFFICIAL!

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

“OBAMA PRESIDENCY HAS HARMED ISRAEL.” SAYS ISRAELI OFFICIAL!
by Ryan Jones (Israel Today News)

Former USA Ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman firmly stated last week that Barack Obama’s time in the White House has caused great harm to Israel.

At a time when libelous accusations and efforts to delegitimize Israel are peaking, Obama’s “weakness” has meant that “Israel has to keep apologizing for itself all the time,” Gillerman said during a panel discussion at the annual Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO) conference in Tel Aviv.

“We shouldn’t have to be on the defensive,” Gillerman added.

Gillerman went on to note that the ongoing turmoil and regime changes in the Middle East were all the more reason to replace Obama with a stronger President in the upcoming US Presidential election. Israeli officials have been critical of Obama’s response and approach to the takeover by forces such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which they have labeled as everything from lackadaisical to appeasing.

Obama has been far more unpopular with average Israelis than any US President before him. Most Israelis believe Obama wants them to take unreasonable risks for peace with the Palestinians, and that in the event of a major attack on Israel, Obama would abandon the US commitment to defend the Jewish State.

REPUBLICANS DOWNPLAY “ONE ISRAEL” RESOLUTION!

Monday, January 23rd, 2012

REPUBLICANS DOWNPLAY “ONE ISRAEL” RESOLUTION!
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu (IsraelNationalNews)

The Republican National Committee last week passed a resolution supporting “a united Israel governed under one law for all people,” interpreted by many as rejecting a Palestinian Authority state.

“Members of this body support Israel in their natural and God-given right of self-governance and self-defense upon their own lands, recognizing that Israel is neither an attacking force nor an occupier of the lands of others; and that peace can be afforded the region only through a united Israel governed under one law for all people,” the resolution stated.

The statements reflect strong endorsements of Israel by several Republican party presidential hopefuls, particularly Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.

National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer quickly issued a statement that “the only thing that matters is what’s in our platform,” which will be composed at the national convention this summer. He emphasized that the resolution is non-binding.

However, the declaration, non-binding or not, reflects a growing sentiment in the Republican party, if not among some Democrats, that the Palestinian Authority’s insistence that Israel accept all of its demands without compromise precludes its being trusted to establish another Arab state in the Middle East without creating a threat to Israel’s existence.

The National Committee resolution also called on state legislatures to declare Israel’s right to sovereignty over its land. Last year, South Carolina was the first state to declare that all of the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish state.


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