A little late, but we’re still pre-inauguration…

Remember the persistent media meme during the U.S. elections, how Israelis supported McCain by a three-to-one margin, how if Israel were the 51st State it would glow a deep and bloody red?

Lisa Goldman at On The Face provides some… um… actual numbers about Israeli opinion. Apparently the networks were oversampling the Nationalist-Religious sector – which despite making up a good portion of the American expat-oleh community, is still not representative of Israeli political leanings on the whole.

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Salon offers an entertaining review of the new film Antarctica. Apparently, the new film is pretty much just a walk onthe wild side for the more or less mainstream audience interested in gay sex in Tel Aviv.

If “The Bubble” worshiped a bit too studiously at the temple of “Sex and the City,” at least until its final and thoroughly implausible turn into tragic darkness, “Antarctica” seems to be a film made by blending “Melrose Place” and Stephen Frears’ 1987 boho sex romp “Sammy and Rosie Get Laid,” turning all the characters gay and Jewish, and setting them loose to hump each other like wild dogs. Admittedly, there have been worse ideas than that. Indeed, with its rampant and impressive displays of naked manflesh in action — perhaps there’s a combination of two male characters in this movie who don’t screw, but I’d need a chart to figure it out — it’s not surprising that “Antarctica” has been a sensation with gay audiences (and attracted a not-insignificant number of female eyeballs as well).

I dunno if it’s exactly the sort of thing I’d go to New York to see, but hey, maybe it’s your cup of tea. Enjoy…

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Sounds like the lead in to a joke, but it’s not.

Rabbi Shlomo Didi* knows Lake Kinneret well. As rabbi of the Jordan Valley and a resident of Tiberias, Didi has not only married couples beside the Kinneret, he has also offered prayers for rain along its shoreline, which has receded markedly.

On Monday Didi was again praying for rain - but this time, he was not alone. He was joined by Ian Clark, the priest of the Scottish church, and Muhammad Dahamshe, the Imam of Kafr Kana.

“A joint prayer does not consider differences of religion,” says Didi. “There is one god, we are all human beings and are all praying to the same god.”

“The dismal condition of the Kinneret threatens each and every one of us,” said Shimon Kipnis, general manager of the Scots Hotel, which initiated the joint prayer, and on whose beach the prayers were held. “We see how the shoreline is receding and that the water level is nearing the ‘black line.’ The purpose of this event was to unite all the religions and offer a joint prayer to the creator of the universe, that he bless us with a rainy season.”

Kipnis added that creating cooperation between the three religions was one of the hotel’s objectives, and that calling upon the representative clerics was a natural step.

“They were only too happy to accept my suggestion,” said Kipnis.

Dozens of artists who also participated in the event sat on the beach and painted the service.

“Rain is a blessing that brings joy, and we have to pray for it,” said Didi, who also serves as rabbi for the kibbutzim. Some of those present at the prayer service related Monday that the rabbi’s previous prayers had been answered, and were indeed followed by rainfall.

“We hope that his prayers will be answered this time, too.”

* not to be confused with this man

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Convening at the Ben Gurion University’s Sede Boqer campus on December 14-17, over 350 people from 40 countries are expected to meet and map out ways to combat desertification around the world. The four-day gathering is the largest international conference ever held in Israel focused on an...

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According to surveys, Petach Tikva is the number one destination for young couples purchasing apartments, with a population that is growing at an annual rate of 2.4 percent.  As part of a public improvement campaign before the recent municipal elections, the city began two new traffic circles. One...

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(Barak Obama meets Israel’s President Shimon Peres)Conferences on CSR, conferences for greening Islam, conferences honoring Al Gore. Israelis love them. And now that clean technology and energy is becoming a national priority (just ask Shimon Peres), green-themed conferences are popping up...

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Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, delivers his address at the memorial service for Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg at the Chabad House in Westwood California. Excerpts:

The world should be very clear – achieving martyrdom by killing innocent civilians is an abomination – it is a concept that desecrates religion, denigrates humankind, and defames G-d himself.

But it is not only the terrorists who bear the responsibility – it is the religious leaders who programmed them, inspired them, and sent them, who are equally culpable. Joseph Goebbels and Julius Streicher never killed anyone – but they were named as war criminals at Nuremberg because on a daily basis, they poisoned the minds of tens of millions of Germans. That is exactly what the Imams of the Islamic Fundamentalists do.

The world must not remain silent. We have the tools to at least do something. The United Nations must make suicide terror a priority. Why is it that the General Assembly can call special sessions on drug cartels, on AIDs, on disarmament, on apartheid – all crucial issues – but it has not yet called for a special session on the greatest crime of the 21st century – suicide terror?

Related:

1. Simon Weisenthal Center

2. Pictures: Tears of the two-year-old boy trapped in Mumbai Jewish centreas his parents were murdered.

3. Video: "Ask for Death". (Two 11 year olds explain how their fondest wish is to die for Allah).

4. Recent coverage of the Mumbai Attacks: Mumbai attack - Analysis and Comments by Mark Steyn, Bill Roggio, and others & Videos

5. Newsvine links aggregator- selected articles by tag: Anti-Semitism, India, Islamic Extremism, Terrorism, More videos.

6. New Site: "Recommended Videos"

Vote for/Discuss on Newsvine
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As Green Prophet nears its first birthday, we’re are pleased to have brought you hundreds of stories about environmental issues and activism in Israel and the Middle East over the last 12 months.We’re glad to be playing our part in the mushrooming of environmental awareness in the...

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On my desk I have a little plaque that says:”Before you go to bed, give your troubles to God”. Everyone who read it said that they liked it.

Faith comes natural to all people. Otherwise, we wouldn’t step onto a plane. How do we know that the pilot is properly trained to fly the plane? How do we know that all parts of the plane are in working order? As a passenger I must believe that he knows what he is doing.

The question is where we invest our natural faith. Do we have faith in other people? Do we have faith in our own abilities? Or do we have faith in G-d?

Some people think the Bible is just a fairytale story. In Israel I was wondering how unbelievers explain the existence of all those biblical towns that have been there for thousands of years.

Today we seem to live in an age of anxiety, as the scenario the Bible predicted for the end times is being fulfilled before our eyes. Our faith is challenged, because the world doesn’t seem to make sense the way we thought it did. Our hearts become fearful. We look at things that happen around us with our natural eyes - the human viewpoint. Despair is rising within us.

Everyone has troubles. We face problems, affliction, suffering, and hardship. We need strength, endurance, and patience.

                 This is why we need to know how to trust in G-d’s promises.

Only when we see the things that happen around us through our spiritual eyes - from His divine viewpoint - can we experience inner peace and freedom from worry and anxiety.

How can we know his promises? Well, they are found in the Bible. – The more we study the scriptures, the more we increase our knowledge base about G-d and that causes our faith to grow. Since God is unchangeable, He will continue to be mindful of us in the future as He has been in the past. - God never takes back or changes His promises. It’s in the Bible, (Psalm 89:34), “I will not break my covenant or change what my lips have spoken.”

When reading our newspapers and watching television here in Israel it is easy to lose faith and see the miracle of modern Israel about to melt away.  But the newspapers and television cannot and will not portray the reality of Jewish faith.  

It was impossible to even dream that a Jewish State could be reborn in 1948.  It was a logical certainty that the June war of 1967 would see the Jewish State destroyed. Today it looks even worse; rockets are pointed at Israel from every surrounding state.

But G-d promised: “I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel; they will rebuild and inhabit the ruined cities; they will plant vineyards and drink their vine, cultivate gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant them on their own soil, no more to be uprooted from their land, which I gave them.” (Amos 9:15)

 The living G-d of Creation gave us a precious tool to enable us to live a good, happy and fulfilling life on this earth.  Faith in G-d is our most powerful weapon.

Dancing Camel, one of Tel Aviv’s great small, local breweries, makes absolutely delicious beer.  From Pomegranate Ale to Cherry Vanilla Stout… they know what they’re doing.  Coming from a female non-beer drinker, you can take my word for it.  I would never drink the stuff unless...

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Video: The siege is over. The police are now cleaning up:

Mumbai Attacks: Some Articles of Interest:

1. Bill Roggio's analysis of the Mumbai attack, the significant differences from previous attacks, and the wider implications:

The Mumbai attack is uniquely different from past terror strikes carried out by Islamic terrorists. Instead of one or more bombings at distinct sites, the Mumbai attackers struck throughout the city using military tactics. Instead of one or more bombings carried out over a short period of time, Mumbai is entering its third day of crisis.

An attack of this nature cannot be thrown together overnight. It requires planned, scouting, financing, training, and a support network to aid the fighters. Initial reports indicate the attacks originated from Pakistan, the hub of jihadi activity in South Asia. Few local terror groups have the capacity to pull of an attack such as this. (Read it all)

2. Mark Steyn- "It’s Not the Cold War-- Updating Strategy to Fight the Ideology":

What’s relevant about the Mumbai model is that it would work in just about any second-tier city in any democratic state: Seize multiple soft targets and overwhelm the municipal infrastructure to the point where any emergency plan will simply be swamped by the sheer scale of events. Try it in, say, Mayor Nagin’s New Orleans. All you need is the manpower. Given the numbers of gunmen, clearly there was a significant local component. On the other hand, whether or not Pakistan’s deeply sinister ISI had their fingerprints all over it, it would seem unlikely that there was no external involvement. After all, if you look at every jihad front from the London Tube bombings to the Iraqi insurgency, you’ll find local lads and wily outsiders: That’s pretty much a given.

But we’re in danger of missing the forest for the trees. The forest is the ideology. It’s the ideology that determines whether you can find enough young hotshot guys in the neighborhood willing to strap on a suicide belt . . . or, if active terrorists are a bit thin on the ground, whether you can count at least on some degree of broader support on the ground

This isn’t law enforcement but an ideological assault — and we’re fighting the symptoms not the cause. Islamic imperialists want an Islamic society, not just in Palestine and Kashmir but in the Netherlands and Britain, too. Their chances of getting it will be determined by the ideology’s advance among the general Muslim population, and the general Muslim population’s demographic advance among everybody else. (Complete Article)

3. Scene of Unimaginable Carnage Inside Taj Majal Hotel:

The scene Saturday night inside the Taj Majal hotel was one of unimaginable carnage in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist onslaught across Mumbai.

Two Indian commandos told FOX News that 150 bodies still were inside the hotel, and dead victims were found all over the hotel, on all five floors.

The terrorists used incendiary bombs, or grenades thrown on gas or fuel canisters, indicating they had access to the Taj hotel in advance, though the Taj Majal hotel denies any staffers were involved. ...

The siege was particularly troubling because “they didn’t spare women or children.” (cont'd)

4. Mumbai horror: Rescue workers shocked by Chabad massacre site

5. Mumbai photographer: "I wish I'd had a gun, not a camera. Armed police would not fire back"

It is the photograph that has dominated the world's front pages, casting an astonishing light on the fresh-faced killers who brought terror to the heart of India's most vibrant city. Now it can be revealed how the astonishing picture came to be taken by a newspaper photographer who hid inside a train carriage as gunfire erupted all around him.

But what angered Mr D'Souza almost as much were the masses of armed police hiding in the area who simply refused to shoot back. "There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything," he said. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back." (Read it all)

6. July '08: Article about India's relatively ineffectual responses to jihadi terror:

Delhi Carries a Small Stick

Israel bombs the Osirak nuclear research facility in Iraq in 1981 after alleges that Iraq is using the facility to develop a nuclear weapons program. China seizes and dismantles a United States EP-3 aircraft after it allegedly ventures into Chinese airspace in 2001. The US invades Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

And then there is India. An attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001; hijacking of Indian Airlines 814 to Afghanistan in 1999, which was released only after the exchange of three terrorists, including one who was later responsible for the execution of US journalist Daniel Pearl; terrorist attacks in Jaipur in May 2008, Hyderabad in August 2007, Mumbai in July 2006, Varanasi in March 2006, Bangalore in December 2005, Delhi in October 2005 and Ayodhya in July 2005; a recent surge in infiltration across the Line of Control in Kashmir; and this week's attack on the Indian Embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul.

India's reaction: point fingers at political opponents and turn the other cheek. (cont'd)

7. Sept. '08: India seeks IDF help in Kashmir conflict

8. A look at major attacks in India since 1993

9. July '08: Two years later, Mumbai blasts still cause pain

MUMBAI, India — Nearly every day for the past two years, two mothers have sat at their sons' bedsides and repeated almost the same words. "It's time to go home," they tell the young men. "Don't you want to leave the hospital?"Mumbai's top neurosurgeons tell them not to expect replies. Both mothers pray their children will emerge from the severely brain-damaged states they were plunged into after bombs ripped through seven commuter trains in Mumbai two years ago. The July 11, 2006, bombings killed 187 people and injured more than 800. (cont'd)

10. Discussion of British Muslims reaction to the Mumbai Massacres (Video).

11. Mumbai terrorists were'funded by cash raised in UK mosques'

12. News reporters brought hidden cameras into several mosques in the U. K. and recorded the goings-on. What they discovered is quite shocking. Video: Undercover Mosque.

13. July '08: Almost a third of British Muslim students believe killing in the name of Islam can be justified, according to a poll. (The study also found that two in five Muslims at university support the incorporation of Islamic sharia codes into British law).

14. Apr. '08: U.K. monitoring 30 U.K. terrorism plots

15. Oct. '08: Terror threat in UK 'approaching critical'

Newsvine Link Aggregator: India, Pakistan, Terrorism, U.K., More Videos,

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The financial crisis is hurting Americans, but months before the hit fuel costs were already gouging into people’s pockets. Some were forced to carpool to work, others took the bus or train. While creative forms of public transportation help deal with times of fiscal uncertainty (we...

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Hundreds of thousands have lost their lives and 2.5 million people have been displaced from their homes in Darfur. Here is the story of 2 refugees, survivors of the Genocide in Darfur, which found a safe haven in Israel. (Hat tip: Israeli Girl/G.I.Y.U.S.)

Related Video- "Neighborhood Bully"

"Ingenuity, creativity, and guts have sustained this People longer than any other identifiable group of people in existence today.

The only thing that may have outdone this is their sensitivity to needs of others.

After lengthy research, the amount of material uncovered attesting to the generosity and deep feelings of love for their fellow man, is staggering - much more than could ever be stuffed into 1 video on YouTube.

So here, with the help of Bob Dylan and his Neighborhood Bully, is an attempt to show what cannot even be described as the "tip of the iceberg."

Who would have thought that such a small country, bound with so many problems of its own would have time to even think about problems of others, let alone actually be permanently organized to specifically be on hand when emergency assistance is needed.

Is there any other country in the world that can show such a "resume'"? The funny thing is (am not sure that is the right word) that they do not ask for anything in return - only respect as human beings - and even that, sad to say, is too much.

Even the numerous countries that this "Bully" has selflessly raced to provide with humanitarian aid in times of chaotic turmoil and strife, fail to speak up in public on Her behalf.

What a strange phenomenon . . .

Russia, Mexico, Ecuador, Turkey, Greece, Chile, Kenya, El Salvador, Sri Lanka, and many others - all recipients of vital emergency assistance from the "Neighborhood Bully" - it must be supposed that they simply wish not to upset the well established myth, born of lies and deceit successfully creating (as was/is the purpose) in the eyes of the world, the image that is known as the "Neighborhood Bully."

Related Articles:

1. Israel Creating Unnecessary Drama- Zionists "Trying to Damage Sudan's International Reputation"

2. UN to Darfur: These people can’t stay in camps forever

“People are not dying of starvation,” he said. But “the problem is that people have been in camps for four or five years now,” he told reporters. “We need to find some solutions quickly so we don’t have to go on doing this indefinitely,” Holmes added.

3. Egyptians "lynch" 4 Sudanese trying to cross border ("These are not men- they are animals")

4. Arabs Capture Black Slaves In The Sudan

5. African and Islamic States Support Sudan’s Call to End UN Rights Investigation

6. How The Left Embraced The Genocide In Darfur

7. Appeasement in Darfur

8. Why Iran and Hamas Adore Darfur's Genocidal Dictator

9. China, Russia faulted for Sudan arms sales

10. Doubts do not end with Darfur (China's role)

Resources:

1. Genocide Intervention Network - Have a Hand in Stopping Genocide

2. DarfurScores.org - Calling on Congress to Take Action

3. Sudan Watch

Newsvine Link Aggregator: Darfur, Israel, More videos.

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We’ve already written about Israel’s eco tourism industry being developed in 2009, and even about new eco study abroad options in Israel for overseas college students who want to make their positive green mark here.And for the Israelis who want to explore their home in an...

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Israel may soon have its first green airport. The Israel Airports Authority (IAA) has ordered the management of Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv to draw up a plan transforming Ben Gurion into “a leader in environmental protection.”The plan must provide solutions for the reduction of air...

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Although I’ve only been in Israel for a few months, it didn’t take me long to notice how popular and celebrated art is in Tel-Aviv and the rest of Israel. One of the few perks of my coveted fine art degree is an eye for clever artistic work, and Israel has more than its fair share. New artists are continuously sprouting up, and to reach a larger audience they have taken up blogging as well…

Case in point; meet Carol Feldman, born and raised in Oklahoma, USA. She moved to Tel-Aviv 5 years ago in 2003 with her husband and daughter, and has recently launched her paintings straight into the blogosphere. Carol works from life and from reference photos, capturing with paint and pencil the subtle splendor of everyday life here in Israel. Carol quickly found a community through her blog, and fans quickly found her (including me)!

As an artist myself, albeit in my pre-fame stage of life, its very rewarding to see regular folks with a forgotten talent find an artistic renaissance on the web. The publishing power of blogs gives power back to the individual artists, and they are hopping on board.. Blogging about art: blog + art =…  blarting! Hmm, no, doesn’t sound pompous enough. What would the guys in the turtlenecks and black berets say?

To see more of Carol’s jaw-dropping watercolors, check out her blog: Drawing Tel-Aviv. Enjoy!

In the Bible, Lot is well known because his wife (Irit) looked back at Sodom when angels were pulling them out of the city (even though the angels had specifically told her not to look back).  As punishment, she turned into a pillar of salt.  Luckily, things have since changed.  Lot Spa Hotel in...

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