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Stand for Israel Blog

Everything the U.S. ever wanted to know about UAVs (unmanned drones), it learned from Israel

February 26, 2010

Earlier this week, we told you about Israel’s newly developed drone, The Eitan, the world’s largest un-manned aerial vehicle (UAV). (These are the drones that keep “eliminating” Taliban leaders and helping U.S. forces in Iraq without imperiling U.S. troops.)

What we didn’t tell you is that a significant part of the U.S. technology has come from Israel, which has been at the forefront of UAV development for decades. The U.S. Air Force did try using unmanned drones for reconnaissance in Vietnam, but eventually shut down all its UAV funding until Israel changed world opinion about UAVs in the early 1980s.

During the First Lebanon War in 1982, the IDF used small UAVs to trick radar installations into becoming active in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, thus revealing their locations. Once spotted, regular Israeli fighter places moved in to destroy the radar sites.

According to this interesting article in Popular Mechanics, the Bekaa Valley campaign convinced the Americans that UAVs had major potential. (They’re spending $5.4 billion on UAVs in this year alone!)

The article continues with specifics about how the Eitan might play into an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear installations:

The Eitan can carry a ton of payload and can reach Iran’s nuclear facilities, which the United Nations last week determined is hiding an active weapons program. But that does not mean these will be used as bombers. The IAF has been buying and upgrading airplanes specifically for long-distance strikes such as a potential attack against Iran. At least 50 F-15 Raam and F-16 Soufa aircraft have been converted by installing extra fuel tanks for greater range and countermeasures to defeat radar and missiles. So maybe the warplane/UAV tag team presented at the “operational acceptance ceremony” speaks to how manned and unmanned aircraft will work together on missions: The drone provides information while the manned airplanes drop the guided munitions.

Working from high altitudes, the Eitan will likely be used to provide prestrike information on targets, to eavesdrop on electronic communications and to send battle damage assessments back after an attack. It will also undoubtably be used to monitor any retaliation for the airstrike—seeking rocket launches and eavesdropping on Iran. The onboard power required to electronically jam radar and communications equipment is not in the Eitan, Israeli defense industry officials told the trade journal Defense News. But the ability to carry so much weight opens up questions about the drones’ ability to conduct long-range, high-risk bombing missions on their own.

Early literature suggested the Eitan would have a role in shooting down enemy missiles in flight as well as in bombing targets.

Bombing attempt at Cairo’s main synagogue

February 24, 2010

A clumsy attempt to bomb Cairo’s historic main synagogue failed Sunday when a make-shift explosive device in a suitcase failed to ignite fully after an assailant hurled it at the house of worship from window above it. There were no injuries or damage.

According to a police report, early Sunday morning, a man entered a hotel on the fourth floor of a building across from the synagogue, ostensibly to check in. As he was going through the process, he abruptly threw his suitcase out the window (toward the synagogue below).

The man’s suitcase held four containers of gasoline, each of which was attached to a glass bottle filled with sulfuric acid. Police theorized that the bottles of acid were meant to shatter on impact, thereby igniting the makeshift bomb. Instead, the bag fell onto the sidewalk in front of the hotel and briefly caught fire before being extinguished.

The synagogue, Shaar Shomayim (“Gates of Heaven”), was built in 1899 and was once the largest building on its main downtown street. Its style is intended to evoke the look of ancient Egyptian temples. See photos of the beautiful building and read about its history here.

Egypt was long home to a thriving Jewish community with a storied history that included some of the Jewish world’s greatest leaders, including Maimonides, the great 12th century philosopher who is still considered the premiere codifier of Jewish law. Prior to the establishment of Israel, the community numbered around 80,000 people.

The Jews were kicked out after the establishment of the modern state of Israel, however. According to Ha’aretz, only several dozen–mostly elderly–Jews remain in the country. A number of heavily guarded synagogues remain.

Israeli groups call on lovers of Israel around the world to mark first-ever “Temple Mount Awareness Day”

February 23, 2010

"A view of the Dome of the Rock sitting on top of the Temple Mount, with the new city of Jerusalem spreading behind it."

A coalition of Israeli organizations is calling on Jewish and gentile lovers of Israel to participate in next month’s first annual Temple Mount Awareness Day, set for Wednesday, March 16.

Jewish tradition identifies the Temple Mount as “Mt. Moriah,” the holiest spot in the world: It was there that both the first and second Temples stood; there where Abraham nearly sacrificed his son, Isaac; and is considered the spot where God’s Presence Dwells in this world.

The Mount is holy to Christians not only because of the Jewish roots of Christianity, but also because of the significant role the Temple played in the life of Jesus.

It is holy to Muslims not only because Muslim tradition incorporates the holy sites of other religions (and turns them into Islamic sites), but also because the Koran records that Mohamed ascended to heaven from there. The surface of the Mount–which was plowed down following the destruction of the second Temple in 70 A.D.–is now occupied by two Islamic shrines: The familiar gold-topped “Dome of the Rock” and the Al-Aksa Mosque, the black compound on the Mount’s southern end.

Although Israel regained control of the Temple Mount when Jerusalem was reunified following the Six-Day War, Israel immediately ceded effective power over it to the Islamic Waqf, the Muslim religious land trust. Since then, many Israelis charge, the Waqf has done all it can to undermine Jewish claims to the site and has imposed ludicrous restrictions on them (see this post about a bride arrested the day before her wedding for the “crime” of praying on the Mount).

The group organizing the Awareness Day–which is comprised mostly of organizations on the right–wants to raise awareness about the facts that “non-Moslems are denied the right to pray in groups, and even as individuals” and that Jews are especially subject to “constant degradation,” including being followed and harassed by police and Waqf guards when they attempt visits.

Organizers also want to call on the Prime Minister’s Office to include the Temple Mount among those sites of historical, cultural and religious significance to the Jewish people that will receive government protection and funds for the improvement of access, upkeep, and beautification of the sites.

Further, they want to condemn the Waqf for:

  • Illegal digs causing unparalleled destruction of archeological evidence of the Holy Temple and the historical Jewish presence on the Mount.
  • Endless incitement against the Jewish State and Nation from within the Mosques.
  • Physical attacks against Jews on the Mount and down below at the Western Wall

For more information, go here or visit the group’s facebook page here (be sure you’re logged into your facebook account when you click the link).

Israel Underground: History in the Dirt

In Israel, a land rich with Bible history, renovating your home can lead to archeological revelations.

That’s what happened this month to a couple in Jerusalem’s Old City. A white marble plaque was found that dates back 1100 years, according to Israeli archeologists. Hebrew University Professor Moshe Sharon traced it to 910, when the city was under Muslim rule.

For archeologists and students, Israel is an ideal location for an archeological dig, since interesting finds are everywhere. A few of the recent significant finds:

The Jaffa Gate

A Byzantine-era road in the heart of Jerusalem near the Jaffa Gate beneath present-day David Street was found by municipality workers. The find supports the Madaba Mosaic Map, the oldest known cartographic representation of Jerusalem dating from the 6th century A.D.

Subsequent to the discovery of the street, another Roman artifact was found nearby: an aqueduct from the days of King Herod.

But Jerusalem’s history goes back farther than the Romans. A few fortunate U.S. college students were involved in a  privately-funded excavation that discovered a 231-foot long, 20 foot-high section of stone wall near the Temple Mount. The wall, dating back to the time of King Solomon, was part of a city complex.

Volunteering on an archeology dig in Israel is an excellent way to gain a deeper appreciation of the country’s historical and Biblical context–something the students involved in the wall excavation no doubt discovered–but usually requires a lot of hard work and weather.

Then again–as others have discovered–sometimes, in Israel, archeology finds you.

New book explores long roots of Christian Zionism

February 17, 2010

While committed Christians know this to be bunk, much of the world thinks of “Zionism” as a pretty much purely Jewish phenomenon. A new book, Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews and the Idea of a Promised Land, is making the case in academia that Zionism has long belonged to believing Christians, as well as Jews, and that Christian dedication to a Jewish state in the Holy Land has a long history that goes back far from the modern era (contrary to the conventional wisdom, which says that it’s only modern Evangelicals who “discovered” Christian support for Israel).

Written by Shalom Goldman, a professor of Hebrew and Middle Eastern studies at Emory University in Atlanta, the book traces the history of Christian Zionism, which has been embraced at various times by Catholics and Protestants, liberals and conservatives, reformers and traditionalists. Included among the history are stories of the Vatican and Israel and–unexpectedly–Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov (author of Lolita, among other controversial modern classics).

Goldman’s work challenges the conventional wisdom (already rebutted in Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren’s Power, Faith and Fantasy) that the modern Zionist movement is nearly exclusively Jewish, and that its history is “one in which Christians do not appear except as antagonists. … Goldman makes the case for a wider and more inclusive history, one that brings the substantial Christian involvement with Zionism–most recently by American evangelical Protestants–into the light.”

Read an excerpt here.

The unknown airlift

February 3, 2010

Lovers of Israel usually know about the daring airlifts that brought tens of thousands of Jews home to Israel from Arab countries, often in secret and in the dark of night. Lesser known is another daring airlift that brought home natives of Israel, but these weren’t Jews — they were fallow deer, a type of deer once indigenous to Israel that had disappeared from the Holy Land by the time the modern state of Israel was re-founded.

The 1978 Iranian “deerlift” remains one of the most daring feats and biggest successes of one Israeli general who retired from the military and applied his battlefield zeal to Israel’s then-burgeoning conservationist movement, according to a fascinating piece in the Wall Street Journal.

A Bibilical Animal

The Five Books of Moses set out dietary laws that govern what sorts of animals observant Jews may or may not eat. In Leviticus 11:3 and Deuteronomy 14:6, the Torah explains that animals that chew their cud and have cloven hoofs are kosher and animals lacking both signs are not kosher, and therefore cannot be eaten. Deer are among those permitted by the Bible:

These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, the deer, the gazelle, the roe deer, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope and the mountain sheep. You may eat any animal that has a split hoof divided in two and that chews the cud. However, of those that chew the cud or that have a split hoof completely divided you may not eat the camel, the rabbit or the coney. Although they chew the cud, they do not have a split hoof; they are ceremonially unclean for you. The pig is also unclean; although it has a split hoof, it does not chew the cud. You are not to eat their meat or touch their carcasses.

(Rules governing fish and fowl also are covered in the same sections.)

Over the years, some of those animals once abundant in the Holy Land–including the fallow deer–were hunted to extinction or otherwise disappeared from the borders of ancient Israel. In the late 1950s, however, the species was rediscovered in Iran. Says the WSJ:

The Persian fallow deer stands about 3 feet tall at the shoulder, with a tawny coat, white spots and flattened antlers like those of a small moose. In the book of Deuteronomy, the deer was listed as one of the hoofed animals the Hebrews were allowed to eat. The Book of Kings says the animal was tithed to King Solomon by his subjects.

A General’s mission

Gen. Avraham Yoffe, commander of the army division that captured Sharm al-Sheikh in 1956, had been named head of the newly created Israeli Nature and Parks Authority. In the mid 1970s, he began courting Iranian officials, including the brother of the Shah, the then-leader of the Persian state.

Yoffe eventually got permission to capture a few of the fallow deer and re-introduce them to Israel, but his own health and the then-simmering Muslim revolution stymied efforts to get the deer back to Israel. As the Ayatollah Khomeini prepared to wrest power from the Shah, Israeli officials were (appropriately) more concerned with the fate of Iranian Jews than with a few deer. But Yoffee remained focused on the Biblical animal:

At the Israeli Embassy in Tehran, diplomats and intelligence agents were frantically shredding documents and trying to evacuate the 1,700 Israelis living in Iran, says Mr. Segev. For Gen. Yoffe, the clock was ticking since his deal for the deer would collapse with the shah’s government.

At pretty much the last moment, the General–working with Mike Van Grevenbroek, a Dutch zoologist living in Israel–was able to capture 4 deer and, using fake documents showing that they were going to Holland (since the ayatollahs were, er, less friendly to Israel than the Shah had been), got them airlifted home.

Thirty years later, several more of the fallow deer have just been taken from a nature reserve near Haifa in and released into the Judean hills around Jerusalem, where they’ve joined a herd of a few dozen that’s been living there for the past few decades.

In Jerusalem itself, residents can occasionally glimpse the deer running through the long greenbelt that begins with the enormous Gan Sacher park in central Jerusalem and runs south toward the Malcha area, where the Jerusalem mall and a large technology park are located.

To read more about the deer and about the general, who died in 1983, read the rest of the WSJ article here.

We’re shivering over here, but the water’s fiiiiine in Tel Aviv

January 11, 2010

A beach in Tel Aviv is full of folks enjoying the winter warmth. (ISRANET)

Much of the U.S. and Europe are suffering through record-breaking cold spells (the snow looks like styrofoam here in the American mid-West), but it’s balmy in the Holy Land: Israel is experiencing a slight heat wave, even, with temperatures in the mid- to high- 70s. The beaches in Tel Aviv, where these photos were taken over the weekend, have been full.

A man kicks a soccer ball on the Tel Aviv beach (ISRANET).

Although many think of Israel as a proverbial desert–think the Sahara–its geography is not only not purely desert-like, but is tremendously varied for such a small country. It may be smaller than New Jersey, but it has enough climates for a small continent.

Tel Aviv and its densely populated surroundings–which Israelis call “HaMercaz,” or “the center of the country”–run along the Mediterranean coast in the middle of the state. All of the coastal cities–which also include Ashdod, Ashkelon, Herzylia, Netanya, and others–are indeed hot, but aren’t deserts at all. They’re almost always sunny, temperate in the winter and blazingly hot in the summer, and always humid. They’re more tropical than Saharan. Those areas are far more like the Greek isles than they are deserts.

A man and two kids in the Mediterranean surf. (ISRANET)

Jerusalem, on the other hand, sits high in the Judean hills and has a very different climate. Jerusalem can get very hot in the summer, but is not humid. (Anyone who compares Jerusalem to real desert cities–think Phoenix–would never call it “dry,” though its certainly more dry than American East coast cities.) It also can get quite chilly in winter, though the real cold stems from the fact that many buildings are either not heated or very poorly heated.

The traditional Jerusalem architecture took weather into account (staying cool during the summer and retaining warmth in the winter) but the frugalityand utilitarian bureaucracy of the early Israeli (socialist) governments built buildings that were cheap to built but neither dissipated summer heat nor retained it during the winter. It can snow, but does so rarely.

The hills of the Golan Heights are lush and green in winter, looking down toward the Sea of Galilee. (Photo by John LaRue)

The real issue, though, is the lack of 24-hour heat in buildings. Some apartments– especially newer ones–are equipped with heating systems, though many buildings turn heating on only for a few hours a day. Other apartments have no heating built in at all. Either way, people supplement with electric heaters or portable kerosene radiators. How often and how long one runs the heaters depends on how much one is willing to pay — it gets expensive quickly.

Westerners spending a winter in Jerusalem have to adjust for dressing for winter–even when they’re inside. Usually, it’s chilly enough to need a coat in the morning, warms up during the day, and then gets cool enough that you need a sweater or real coat at night. But it’s often colder inside than it is outside, since the concrete and stone walls get cold and don’t warm up. (Again, thank you, socialist bureaucrats.)

Haifa, on the other hand, sits on the coast about an hour’s drive north of Tel Aviv; the city climbs from the beach all the way up to the top of the hills on the northern slope of the Carmel Mountains (the neighborhoods at the top are comparatively tony). Because of the altitude, the weather at Haifa’s top can be closer to that of Jerusalem than Tel Aviv.

Plateaus in the Judean desert near the Dead Sea. (Photo by John LaRue)

There are real deserts in Israel, such as the Jordan Valley that runs south of the Sea of Galilee toward the Judean desert, which stretches east of Jerusalem toward the Jordan River, as well as the Negev, the souther part of the country stretching from Beer Sheva to the southern resort of Eilat. Much of the rest of Israel–and most of what is inside the “Green Line” (the area Israel controlled prior to the 1967 Six-Day war, when it gained control of the West Bank and Gaza)–was, in fact, desertified for centuries. The early modern Zionists–Jews who came to the Holy Land in the wave of emigration that began in the mid- to late-1800s–put tremendous effort into “reclaiming” the land or “making the desert bloom.”

These ruins in the ancient city of Beit Shean in the Jordan Valley are surrounded by green hills (so it must be winter!). (Photo by John LaRue)

The northern heart of the country–the area around the Sea of Galilee and the Jezreel Valley–had turned into swamps and treeless wilderness, while the lush coastline was wind-swept sand dunes. The Zionist settlers drained the swamps, irrigated the deserts, and reclaimed the land. Today, one can almost see the “green line” – because the areas controlled by the Israeli government turned from beige to green. (The Jewish National Fund was particularly instrumental in this.)

Winter is Israel’s rainy season, which runs roughly from the end of Sukkot (the feast of Tabernacles, which is in the fall) through Passover, which is in the spring. It almost never rains outside the season, which means that one can leave furniture or clothing outside from April through September and never worry about it getting rained upon (though dew accumulates).

It also means that Israel’s “green” season is reversed. Most Americans are accustomed to blooms in early spring, lushness through autumn, and then ”fall foliage” fading to bleak winter. Not so in Israel — winter rains bring lushness and verdant vibrance to the coastal and northern areas (the Sea of Galilee and the Jezreel valley), as well as wildflowers and relative green to the rest of the country.

Pottery shard strengthens case for David’s kingdom

January 10, 2010

A pottery shard uncovered in an archaeological dig in Israel’s Elah Valley (which lies between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv roughly in the area of the modern city of Beit Shemesh) may provide important information in the ongoing academic dispute over whether or not the Biblical account of the Holy Land’s history can be considered accurate.

The shard’s inscription is earliest known Hebrew writing, the University of Haifa’s Prof. Gershon Galil says. The inscription itself was written in ink on a 15 cm X 16.5 cm trapezoid pottery shard. The inscription will likely become part of the academic debate over whether the kingdom of King David existed.

In recent decades, different schools of archaeology have battled over the “historicity” of the Bible, whether or not it can be considered a reliable source of information. Those who say it is unreliable–called Biblical Minimalists–have been ascendant (and they have focused especially on David and the 10th century BCE). Some recent discoveries have called their theories into question, though, including the large stone structure unearthed by archaeologist Eilat Mazar, which she believes is King David’s palace.

While people of faith won’t be moved by whether or not academics believe in the veracity of the Biblical account, the ongoing research not only affects many unsure of their beliefs. It also profoundly affects attempts by Palestinians to erase Jewish claims to the Holy Land.

PA would not do well on a game show

January 9, 2010

What was that TV game show that Monty Hall hosted? Where contestants got to choose “Door Number 1″ OR “Door Number 2.” No one ever got to say, “Monty, I’ll take both doors!” Or, after finding out that there was a goat and a spokesmodel in a “Heidi” costume behind the door they picked, no one got to say, “Monty! I don’t want the goat — I want ‘Door Number 2′ now!”

Wouldn’t have worked on TV, but apparently it works in the Middle East “peace process.”

“We want to resume the talks from the point where they ended in December 2008,” Chief Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat announced recently,which means that he wants the new Israeli government’s opening offer to include everything the PA rejected from previous Israeli government (which was, er, voted out of office).

“We have every right to talk about a Palestinian state within the June 4, 1967 borders, including Jerusalem,” Erekat avowed.

Um, not really. The Palestinians could have had a state many times over, if they’d decided to accept Israeli peace offers. Instead, they usually decided to attack and kill a bunch of Jews, and eventually would be pushed even further back by the IDF. Israel is the only country that is expected to offer ever greater concession after concession in response to the most violent of rejections:

  • In 1937, the Peel Commission proposed the partition of Palestine and the creation of an Arab state.
  • In 1939, the British White Paper proposed the creation of an Arab state alone, but the Arabs rejected the plan.
  • In 1947, the UN would have created an even larger Arab state as part of its partition plan. Israel accepted the plan; Arab states attacked when Israel declared independence.
  • The 1979 Egypt-Israel peace negotiations offered the Palestinians autonomy, which would almost certainly have led to full independence.
  • The Oslo process that began in 1993 was leading toward the creation of a Palestinian state before the Palestinian-sponsored terror scuttled the agreements.
  • In 2000, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to create a Palestinian state, but Yasser Arafat rejected the deal.
  • In addition, from 1948 to 1967, Israel did not control the West Bank. The Palestinians could have demanded an independent state from the Jordanians.

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