Archaeologists unearth ancient Bethlehem seal
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| JERUSALEM – Israeli archaeologists have discovered a 2,700-year-old seal that bears the inscription "Bethlehem," the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Wednesday, in what experts believe to be the oldest artifact with the name of Jesus' traditional birthplace. The tiny clay seal's existence and age provide vivid evidence that Bethlehem was not just the name of a fabled biblical town, but also a bustling place of trade linked to the nearby city of Jerusalem, archaeologists said. Eli Shukron, the authority's director of excavations, said the find was significant because it is the first time the name "Bethlehem" appears outside of a biblical... |
Casino owner warns of oversaturation on East Coast
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| Casinos are not like Starbucks stores: You really can’t have one on every corner. That’s the word from David Cordish, whose company is opening a huge new casino next month in Maryland. Yet Cordish warns that the expansion of casino gambling can’t go on unchecked forever. A big problem is the attitude of politicians nationwide who view casinos as free money. “I don’t know how we can control the politicians; they certainly don’t understand the word ‘oversaturation,’” Cordish said Thursday. “They think you can have casinos like Starbucks.”If that attitude continues, Cordish said, “it’s going to implode on them.” That... |
Church of Nativity Deportees Complain about Fate
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| Ten years have passed since the end of the 39-day IDF siege of the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, where 39 terrorists had holed up. The siege was ended through an agreement that involved exiling the terrorists to other countries. Bethlehem-based news agency Ma'an says the terrorists now feel "abandoned by the Palestinian Authority and all political factions." They have not been allowed to return to their families in Judea and Samaria, the agency notes. Deportees had planned to demonstrate on Thursday but canceled the protest to support the terrorists on hunger strike in Israeli jails, a spokesman for the... |
Bethlehem Governor Bans Israeli Imports
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| The governor of Bethlehem signed an order, on Sunday, banning the entry of Israeli agricultural products into the city, effective from May 1, Ma’an News Agency reported. Abdul-Fattah Hamayil gave orders to security services to enforce the ban and monitor all agricultural imports. Hamayil has also sought to ensure PA produce is not brought into the 47-year-old St. George Landmark Hotel in eastern Jerusalem. The decision follows the ban on Israeli-grown watermelons, onions, strawberries and potatoes implemented by PA Minister of Agriculture Ahmad Majdalani earlier this month, a press statement said. The ban, only the latest in a series of... |
Op-Ed: Did the "Palestinians" Kill Jesus?
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| A writer tells the members of the Christ at the Checkpoint organization that they really must be more consistent - and also accept the resulting conclusions. Dear Committee of “Christ at the Checkpoint” Conference, I recently read the written materials of your latest conference in March and was thunderstruck by the assumption (...it is not an assumption any more, but a dogma, in which everyone in your community has to believe) that Jewish people never lived here, and that the whole history of this land is Palestinian history. Mitri Raheb, in his article, plays with the idea of DNA matching:... |
Arab church that backs Israel shuttered by Palestinian Authority
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| By Ryan Jones.. The First Baptist Church in Bethlehem was ordered closed by the Palestinian Authority on Saturday, according to Rabbi Russell Resnik of the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations. Resnik reported the incident after meeting with Pastor Steven Khoury, the son of First Baptist’s head pastor, Naim Khoury. |
PA Declares Church in Bethlehem to be Unlawful
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| The Palestinian Authority declared a Baptist Church in Bethlehem to be unlawful and said that it will no longer receive rights as a religious institution, Algemeiner reported. This decision comes a week after Prime Minister Salam Fayyad told an audience of Evangelical Protestants that his government respected the rights of its Christian minorities. “They said that our legitimacy as a church from a governmental point of view is not approved,” said an assistant pastor at the First Baptist Church. “They said they will not recognize any legal paper work from our church. That includes birth certificates, wedding certificates and death... |
Israel and the plight of Mideast Christians
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| The church in Bethlehem had survived more than 1,000 years, through wars and conquests, but its future now seemed in jeopardy. Spray-painted all over its ancient stone walls were the Arabic letters for Hamas. The year was 1994 and the city was about to pass from Israeli to Palestinian control. I was meeting with the church's clergy as an Israeli government adviser on inter-religious affairs. They were despondent but too frightened to file a complaint. The same Hamas thugs who had desecrated their sanctuary were liable to take their lives. |
The Battle of Bethlehem: 100 rival priests clash at church built to mark birth of Jesus
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| An extraordinary brawl between clergymen broke out yesterday at the very site where Jesus is said to have been born. The annual cleaning of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem descended into a battle between the rival Christian denominations that share it. Brooms, fists and vicious insults flew in all directions between 100 priests and monks dressed in their traditional robes. The fight ended only after Palestinian police, bending their heads to squeeze through the church’s low ‘door of humility’, rushed in with batons to restore order. The row is believed to have begun after a clergyman of one... |
Orthodox Priests Fighting In Church of the Nativity – A Personal Reflection (Cath Ortho Caucus)
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| The video below is sad and disturbing. More on that in a minute One of the more surprising, and personally saddest things I have encountered in my trips to the Holy Land, is the encounter with Orthodox clergy. While I had been trained to expect tensions between Jews and Arabs, my experience involving the Orthodox clergy was actually the most tense and shocking. It also surprised me since, speaking for myself, I have always had great admiration for the beautiful liturgies of the Orthodox. And, while I know little of the internal realities of those Churches, I have always hoped... |
Christians in the Middle East
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| Prof. Justus Reid Weiner discusses the situation regarding Christians living in Palestinian Authority controlled Bethlehem as opposed to those Christians living in Nazareth, Israel. |
Palestinian Arab Christmas Propaganda
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| Another anti-semitic invention to exploit the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem to propagate a lie:["More than a billion Christians around the world are about to celebrate Christmas, commemorating the birth of Jesus, the promised Messiah. There is one thing the Palestinian Arabs hope you all remember during those celebrations - that Jesus was, in fact, a Palestinian (Arab).It is nothing new for the Palestinians to claim that Jesus was a Palestinian. The Palestinian leadership gets in on the action all the time. Yasser Arafat used to openly declare as much as he kicked off Christmas from Bethlehem every year.Arafat... |
Oh Bethlehem A Son!
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| http://youtu.be/Isuu9EiFU_E |
Jihad Bells from Bethlehem
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| Jingle Bells Bethlehem style. Palestinian minister Fadiha with a special Christmas carol... |
How December 25 Became Christmas
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| On December 25, Christians around the world will gather to celebrate Jesus’ birth. Joyful carols, special liturgies, brightly wrapped gifts, festive foods—these all characterize the feast today, at least in the northern hemisphere. But just how did the Christmas festival originate? How did December 25 come to be associated with Jesus’ birthday? The Bible offers few clues: Celebrations of Jesus’ Nativity are not mentioned in the Gospels or Acts; the date is not given, not even the time of year. The biblical reference to shepherds tending their flocks at night when they hear the news of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:8)... |
Have Astronomers Found the Star of Bethlehem?
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| The modern search for the Star of Bethlehem began with Johannes Kepler (imperial astronomer for Rudolph II of Germany), who shortly before Christmas in 1603 observed a conjunction (pairing) of Jupiter with Saturn from his observatory in Prague. That this occurred in the constellation of Pisces he thought was important as well – perhaps recalling Rabbi Isaac Abarvanel's belief, noted in his 15th-century commentary on Daniel, that not only does a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn foretell important events, but in Pisces this holds a special significance for Israel; and such an event might even foretell the coming of the... |
Islamic discrimination and persecution of Christians Vs only free State [in the region]: Israel
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| Arab Islamic apartheid, discrimination, oppression, persecution against Christians Vs the only free State [in the region]: Israel---Christine M. Flowers: The very real persecution of Christians in the Arab worldSeptember 30, 2011IF THE "Arab Spring" bathed the Middle East in some much-needed sunlight, there's at least one group that sees ominous clouds on the not-so-distant horizon. That would be the region's embattled and apprehensive Christians, who've lived a kind of double life for many decades.While nominally citizens of the countries they inhabit, most non-Muslims, the majority of whom are Christian, are treated as second-class members of society because so many governments... |
PA Removes Jewish Tour Guide from Congressman’s Tour
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| Jordan closed Bethlehem to Christians from 1949 until 1967 when Israel opened the gates. Now the Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, prohibited a Jewish guide from attending a Congressman’s tour. Florida Republican and Tea Party member Allen West wrote his constituents after touring Israel earlier this month, “When we went to Bethlehem to visit the birthplace of Jesus- a Jew- our group was not allowed to have our regular Jewish guides or bus drivers because Israeli citizens are not allowed in Bethlehem or the ancient city of Jericho where the Bible teaches us that Joshua blew down the wall... |
Muslims Continue Pushing Christians Out of Bethlehem
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| The Muslim Fatah-controlled authority in Judea and Samaria is encouraging a "sharp demographic shift" in Bethlehem, where the Christian population went from a 60 percent majority in 1990 to a 40 percent minority in 2000, to about 15 percent of the city's total population today. It is estimated that, for the past seven years, more than one thousand Christians have been emigrating from the Bethlehem area annually and that only 10,000 to 13,000 Christians remain in the city. International human rights lawyer Justus Reid Weiner, who teaches at Hebrew University, told the Jerusalem Institute for Global Jewish Affairs that, under... |
Sarah Palin aborts visit to Bethlehem
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| Sarah Palin has emerged at the centre of a potentially embarrassing mystery when she abruptly aborted a visit to Bethlehem just yards from an Israeli checkpoint guarding the entrance to the city of Christ's birth. Mrs Palin, whose trip to the Holy Land is being seen as an attempt to burnish her foreign policy credentials ahead of a possible presidential bid, had been planning to tour Christian sites before holding evening talks with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. Bethlehem was supposed to be her first stop of the day, according to a leaked copy of her schedule. .... It... |
After Cleansing Bethlehem of Christians, PA Plays Jesus Card
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| When Christmas comes around, the Palestinian Authority looks for ways to incite Christian hatred of Jews worldwide. This year, the Jew-baiting has taken the form of a report by AFP regarding a Jewish town's opposition to Christmas trees and a book that calls Jesus "the first Palestinian martyr." While carrying the anti-Jewish Christmas tree story, world media neglected to note that the PA has been brutally and systematically driving out its Christian population - in Bethlehem and elsewhere - through torture and murder. Depicting Israel in the role of Dr. Seuss's "Grinch who stole Christmas," AFP sadly reported that "there... |
The Cross is Banned in Bethlehem, and Christians inthe Middle East are Under Seige
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| We are far too accustomed to thinking that the Middle East is populated only by Muslims and a few Jews. There are Christians living there, too, often beleaguered and under attack. Here are three stories that remind us during this Christmas season that life for Christians in the Holy Land during this Holy Season can be particularly perilous. First, we learn that the cross, the very symbol of Christianity, has basically been abolished from Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. “This Christmas in Bethlehem, the cross has been banned from souvenirs for tourists and pilgrims in the Holy Land. Some textile... |
The Cross is Banned in Bethlehem
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
Posted by admin / Under Bethlehem
| We are far too accustomed to thinking that the Middle East is populated only by Muslims and a few Jews. There are Christians living there, too, often beleaguered and under attack. Here are three stories that remind us during this Christmas season that life for Christians in the Holy Land during this Holy Season can be particularly perilous. First, we learn that the cross, the very symbol of Christianity, has basically been abolished from Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. “This Christmas in Bethlehem, the cross has been banned from souvenirs for tourists and pilgrims in the Holy Land. Some textile... |
Christmas in Bethlehem: the cross banished from souvenirs
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| This Christmas in Bethlehem, the cross has been banned from souvenirs for tourists and pilgrims in the Holy Land... Samir Qumsieh, journalist and director of the Catholic television station Al-Mahed Nativity TV in Bethlehem, said: "I want to launch a campaign to urge people not to buy these products - he says - because the removal of the cross is an intimidation against Christians, it is like saying that Jesus was never crucified. " Qumsieh points out that from 2002 to 2010 the Christian population of Bethlehem has dropped from over 18 thousand to 11 thousand people... Only 15,400 Christians... |
The Bethlehem Christmas Shepherds: Migdal Eder
Tuesday 29th of May 2012 08:07:28 AM
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| Migal Eder-"Tower of the flocks"Alfred Edersheim, author of the excellent "Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah", wrote the following: "And yet Jewish tradition may here prove both illustrative and helpful. That the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem, was a settled conviction. "Equally so, was the belief , that He was to be revealed from Migdal Eder, 'the tower of the flock.' This Migdal Eder was not the watchtower for the ordinary flocks which pastured on the barren sheepground beyond Bethlehem, but lay close to the town, on the road to Jerusalem." "A passage in the Mishnah leads to... |
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