Monday, May 12, 2014

Abstract of Israeli Palestinian conflict study using Effective Communication.

The Israeli Palestinian conflict remains unsolved for 65 years where two people are clashing against each others causing unrest in the Middle East. The objectives of this study are to access how effective communication can lead to peace process being successful in solving the Israeli Palestinian conflict and to analyse the factors that are obstacles for negotiation between Israel and Palestinian Authority. In conducting this research, an objective approach has been adopted to gather qualitative primary data through survey questionnaires for general public and interviews for politicians and diplomatic corps. The secondary data has been obtained at the archives of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affair in Israel, the Bar Ilan University of Israel and The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

It has been established that the barriers to effective communication in solving the Israeli Palestinian conflict are language, culture, religion, prejudice, stereotyping, lack of feedback, poor listening skills and wrong communication channel.  Therefore, to overcome these barriers, making unprecedented history in agreeing a peace process, both parties need to improve listening skills, avoid hatred and provocative language, intend face to face communication through meetings, use of negotiation, establish joint social exchange programmes, emphasise feedback, avoid information overload and there must be a flexibility in meeting goals and target of peace process. This study also led to the fact that there is a need to promote intercultural communication and interfaith dialogue.

Hence, it can be concluded that there is an immediate call for both Israel and Palestinian Authority to enter into direct negotiation to agree on the major bottom line of the conflict relating to border and territorial swapping, security arrangement, the refugee status and the future of Jerusalem to implement the ‘Two State Solution’. Therefore, with effective communication, both parties can make unprecedented peace as this would reduce the barriers considerably, paving the way to a permanent agreement that will have a domino effect in the region leading to solve also the Arab Israeli conflict as well.

Copyright:
Adi Sinclair Livni

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Les 10 faux pas des hommes

Les hommes veulent bien faire, mais en mode, malgré la bonne volonté globalement affichée, quelques fashion faux pas sont toujours à épingler. Voilàa les plus communs. Que les hommes prennent des notes, s'ils désirent être au top de la mode !


Les chaussettes dans les sandales : Certains vous diront que c'est parce qu'il fait froid. Mais s'il fait froid, autant mettre des chaussures. A ceux qui enfilent des chaussettes dans leurs sandales à la plage, qu'ils sachent que le sable dans les chaussettes est parfaitement inconfortable. Les voila punis par le bon Dieu pour ce terrible faux pas fashion.


Ne pas raser les zones difficiles : Les hommes qui sont perpétuellement en retard le matin laissent des poils dans les endroits difficiles. Ce n'est pas très sexy. Il faut prendre son temps pour atteindre tous les creux compliqués.


Afficher des marques : Certains hommes ressemblent à des publicités ambulantes tant ils portent de logos, de marques, des inscriptions sur leurs fringues.


Porter des chaussures de course hors de la salle de gym : Les tenues de sport ne devraient jamais être considérées comme une tenue acceptable pour la ville. Porter des baskets de course alors qu'on ne court pas n'est pas admis. On sait que vous avez sué dedans et ce n'est pas très ragoûtant. En plus, les baskets pour le sport sont loin d'être jolies. Efficaces, certes, mais jolies, non.


Le sac à dos : Quand l'homme est étudiant, le sac à dos est acceptable. Une fois qu'il a décroché un vrai job, celui qui garde son sac à dos est toujours considéré comme un gamin. Messieurs, si vous avez remplacé le T-shirt par une chemise, il s'agit de troquer votre accessoire d'ado contre une malette d'adulte. C'est comme ça que ça marche. Gardez le sac à dos pour le camping.


Ne pas assortir chaussures et vêtements : On évite les chaussures brunes avec le pantalon noir, merci.


Porter des vêtements trop amples : Pour une silhouette flatteuse, il faut porter des fringues à sa taille, c'est aussi simple que ça. Les T-shirt trop larges, les chemises mal coupées ne devraient pas se trouver dans votre garde-robe.


Le portefeuille dans la poche arrière du pantalon : Rien de tel pour déformer vos poches : le portefeuille à l'arrière, les clés devant, le téléphone portable de l'autre côté... Certains hommes ont assez de virilité pour porter un sac sans être ridicules. Les autres peuvent toujours porter une veste avec des poches à l'intérieur suffisamment grandes pour y caser tout ce qu'il faut.


Mal boutonner son veston : Un veston n'est pas une veste : on doit le boutonner correctement. Sur un veston avec deux boutons, fermer le bouton du haut, avec un vestion trois boutons, vous avez le choix : soit vous fermez les deux boutons du haut, soit vous fermez seulement celui du milieu. Peu importe le veston que vous portez : déboutonnez-le systématiquement quand vous vous asseyez.


Les chaussettes blanches dans des chaussures habillées : Les chaussettes blanches avaient la cote dans les années 90. Aujourd'hui, on se dit qu'elles devraient tout simplement être retirées de la vente. Les chaussures de ville se portent avec des chaussettes en coton fin, dans des teintes sombres. Sans discussion possible.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

New Revelation about 9/11 - The Iranian and Hezbullah Connection


In July of 2004, members of the National Commission established to look into the September 11 attacks were facing immense pressure. The target date for submitting the report the whole of America was waiting for had passed, and commission members were given a 60-day extension that was also about to expire. However, eight days before the final submission date, some commission members received word of new information; a real intelligence time bomb.

Commission members didn’t know what to do. On one hand, a whole new lead emerged; yet on the other hand, nobody could process this huge amount of information within days. At the end of the day, the commission chose a solution that turned out to be the worst of all: It crammed some of the information into three pages (pp. 240-242 in the report) written hectically, ignored most of the information, and in fact left the big question open.

As it turned out, the prominent building housing the National Security Agency’s headquarters in Fort Meade includes a particularly interesting room. In this room, the NSA accumulated tens of thousands of conversation records pertaining to one subject: The ties between Iran’s intelligence service and al-Qaeda from the 1990s to the eve of the 9/11 attacks. The piles of information included 75 intelligence documents characterized as critical to understanding the relationship between Tehran and al-Qaeda.

At the end of the day, the commission noted in its report that the issue deserves further scrutiny by the US Administration. However, such examination was not undertaken and may have never materialized. Indeed, this entire affair may have remained buried in the three abovementioned pages, had it not been for one brave woman: Ellen Saracini.

Saracini is not an intelligence analyst or counter-terrorism expert. She is the widow of pilot victor Saracini, the captain of the Boeing jet that took off from Boston aboard United flight 175, which was crashed into the southern tower. However, Ellen was unwilling to see the death of her husband and father of her two daughters end with yet another line in the commission’s report; she decided to seek justice on her own.

Saracini approached attorney Thomas Mellon, who specializes in lawsuits against large corporations. Mellon’s team members launched an investigation. They met potential witnesses, interviewed intelligence officials, CIA agents, Iranian defectors, a French judge and others. They even reached Israel in their search (in the interest of full disclosure, the writer of this article was also summoned to testify in the trial, as one of nine expert witnesses.)

The investigation kept progressing, diving deep into the dark corners of the global world of intelligence and terrorism. Ten years later, Mellon and his team are convinced that they possess the “smoking gun” that will tie Iran to the September 11 attacks.

The legal team drafted a huge lawsuit, recently submitted to the Manhattan District Court. What hides inside it is far from being routine. The lawsuit is premised on a dramatic charge: The responsibility for the 9/11 attacks lies not only with al-Qaeda, but also with Iran and Hezbollah, based on what attorneys say is clear, unequivocal evidence.

The case has far-reaching implications, which explain why the US government is not eager to look into the conversation records in the abovementioned NSA room. A ruling that Iran is linked to the attacks would pose a tough test to Administration officials: On the one hand, they would not be able to ignore such verdict. Yet on the other hand, what exactly will they do with it? Will they attack Iran, just as they invaded Afghanistan and Iraq?

The Sudan connection

The huge amount of evidence included in the lawsuit comes together to form a fascinating charge: Starting in the 1990s, Iran and Hezbollah helped Osama Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri create a new terror organization from scratch, to be headed by Afghanistan veterans and members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Iran trained group members, equipped them with advanced technological means, enabled them to move freely and provided them with plenty of terror-related expertise and experience accumulated by Hezbollah in its operations against Israel and the United States.

Later, according to the lawsuit, Iran assisted in the preparations ahead of September 11. Should Mellon and his team prove all of the above, everything we thought we knew about the terror offensive will change forever.

According to the lawsuit, the relationship between Iran and al-Qaeda was initiated in the early 1990s in Sudan. At the time, Sudan turned into the world’s second state, after Iran, to be ruled by radical Islam.

According to the testimonies of senior CIA officials, Iran’s President Rafsanjani, Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian and Revolutionary Guards Chief Mohsen Rezai visited Sudan. They were accompanied by a figure well-known to Israel’s intelligence services: Imad Mugniyah, the head of Hezbollah’s military wing (Mugniyah was assassinated in February of 2008 in an operation attributed to Israel.) All participants in the meeting pledged to assist the Sudanese regime and join forces with it in supporting other jihadist movements in the Middle East.

When it turned out that Sudan was emerging as a new terrorism theater, Israel’s intelligence agencies started to deploy human and electronic resources there. The file on developments in Sudan until 1996 is known in Israel as “Blue Smurfs” and contains a treasure trove of information about the seed that later became Global Jihad.

When Saracini’s attorneys sought the Israeli government’s assistance in receiving the Blue Smurfs file, they were told the information was acquired in cooperation with a foreign party, and that this information can only be shared with this party’s approval. Such authorization has not been given to this day.

What we are allowed to reveal here is that Israel’s intelligence officials identified at the time tight relations between radical Islamic terrorists in Egypt and Department 15 in Iran’s Intelligence Ministry. Notably, Department 15 is tasked with exporting the Islamic revolution to other Arab states.

Israel was also able to identify a prominent terror leader in Sudan. His name was Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian jihadist who served a prison term for his role in President Anwar Sadat’s assassination. Year later, Zawahiri’s name became known worldwide; he turned into al-Qaeda’s chief strategist, Bin Laden’s deputy and successor, and a man with a $25 million price tag on his head, courtesy of the FBI.

In April of 1991, Zawahiri secretly visited Iran and sought Iranian assistance for a Cairo revolution. The parties agreed on Iranian support for Zawahiri’s organization in the form of money and training. The terror leader sent many of his men to train in Iranian camps, mostly under the guidance of Lebanese Hezbollah members led by Imad Mugniyah.

During his visit to Iran, al-Zawahiri was convinced of the immense power of a suicide attack as an effective modus operandi. Years later he realized that if a suicide bomber is effective, a terrorist who crashes a Boeing aircraft into a tower would be much more effective.

Discovering Osama

Following further efforts, it turned out that an even bigger group of Muslim radicals was operating in Sudan alongside Zawahiri and his men. Some of them were veterans of the guerilla war initiated by America in Afghanistan against the Russian invasion in the 1980s.

Yet who was the leader of these Afghanistan veterans? How did he operate? Where was he getting his funding? Israel’s intelligence effort continued, and the name of a Saudi contractor who was expelled from his country started to surface, with his real estate work being used as cover for secret terror activity. The contractor’s name started to appear in intelligence reports: Osama Bin Laden. One of his construction companies was known as al-Qaeda (“The Base” in Arabic.)

Israel’s intelligence services discovered that Bin Laden joined forces with Zawahiri. During this period, the two grew much closer, with Zawahiri (a surgeon by training) also becoming Bin Laden’s personal physician. The new friendship prompted Bin Laden to send some of his senior aides for training in Tehran and in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon. The infrastructure for al-Qaeda’s establishment was now ready.

In 1998, an Egyptian-born US Marine called Ali Mohammed was detained on suspicion of involvement in blowing up America’s embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. In his testimony he confessed that in 1989 he traveled to Afghanistan and joined Islamic Jihad and Bin Laden. Mohammed said he trained al-Qaeda terrorists on using explosives as well as on intelligence-gathering techniques to be used in attacks on US targets.

Mohammed also testified that he personally handled security arrangements for a Sudan meeting between Hezbollah’s Mugniyah and Bin Laden. Following these meetings, Hezbollah provided al-Qaeda and Islamic Jihad with explosives training. Iran also used Hezbollah in order to provide explosive materials designed to resemble rocks. Israeli veterans of the Lebanon wars are well familiar with these bombs.

Mohammed testified that many of the training sessions were held in an Iranian camp run by the Intelligence Ministry. Based on information from the Blue Smurfs file, which was discovered in the NSA basement, the National Commission ruled that senior al-Qaeda members received training and advice from Hezbollah while in Sudan. These are important testimonies for Ellen Saracini. If Hezbollah equals Iran, and Bin Laden’s men were trained by Hezbollah, there is a basis to the charge about an Iran-al-Qaeda link.

The jihadist group identified in Sudan maintained close ties with Afghanistan veterans worldwide and tirelessly worked to form global networks and connections. “We felt that something very big was brewing there; something very different than anything we’ve seen before,” an Israeli intelligence official said. “This was not about a state dispatching terrorists, but rather, about an organization that seemingly created itself.” A short while later, a special intelligence desk was formed in Israel to deal with the subject. Indeed, the IDF Intelligence Branch and Mossad were the first to recognize the danger.

First burning tower

June 25, 1996. Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. A huge explosion shakes the Khobar Towers in this important oil city. Nineteen US troops are killed and some 500 are wounded. Perhaps this is where the 9/11 terrorists learned about the major effect of blowing up a tower. Officially, the perpetrators of this attack have not been identified to this day.

Yet the current trial includes testimony by then-FBI Director Louis Freeh, who asserts that the attack was an Iranian initiative carried out by Hezbollah in conjunction with al-Qaeda. Senior CIA officials said that the NSA possesses intercepted Bin Laden conversations that prove a direct link to the attack. Attorneys will be using this evidence in the trial to show that Iran was in the picture at the early stages of establishing al-Qaeda.

Mellon’s team elicited thousands of documents showing how Iran assisted al-Qaeda in becoming an effective, lethal terror group throughout the 1990s. According to US law, this would be enough to find Iranian authorities culpable and there would be no need to prove direct involvement in 9/11. However, Mellon’s team decided not to take any risks and to present the court with evidence which they say proves Tehran’s direct involvement in the terror attacks.

Early in the 9/11 commission’s work, it turned out that the issue of traveling and visas was a major component in the affair. According to the documents submitted to the court, an immense operation was managed prior to September 11 in order to facilitate the many trips required by the operation.

The reason is clear: Only a well-oiled arrangement of flights and secret border crossings could have enabled the terrorists to enter and exit the US and go to Afghanistan. Anyone who ever tried to get a US visa knows this is no simple matter. A passport stamp of a state on America’s list of terror-sponsors immediately turns one into a suspect.

So how did the 19 terrorists manage to enter the US after all? How could it be that US immigration officials in Germany and Saudi Arabia suspected nothing? The answer to these questions remained unknown, until the treasure trove was discovered at the NSA basement. As it turned out, many of the terrorists headed from Afghanistan to Iran, with Iranian officials ordering border control officers not to stamp these passports. The other terrorists passed through Beirut in their many trips, where Hezbollah officials similarly cared for them.

Mellon’s team hopes that this is where the “smoking gun” can be found, proving a direct link between Iran and 9/11. If Iran did not know about the attacks and was not involved in them, why did it keep its stamps off the terrorists’ passports?

Yet that’s not all. The intelligence information submitted to the court includes yet another “smoking gun”: In some of the flights, the terrorists were accompanied by figures whose names were identical to the aliases used by former Hezbollah “army chief” Imad Mugniyah and some of his close aides. This would be hard to dismiss as an “odd coincidence.”

The Iranian defectors

The materials gathered for the trial include three rare testimonies by three Iranian intelligence establishment defectors. They have been marked as witnesses X, Y and Z. Their videotaped testimonies offer a profound peek into the depths of the kingdom of evil. For long hours they recount their childhood and adolescence in Tehran and how they were hired for the prestigious posts in Iran’s spy agencies. Then, they start talking about the ties between Iran, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda.

Witness X testifies about Iran’s advance knowledge of the plan to crash passenger airliners into strategic targets in Washington and New York. He testifies that he was present at training facilities for Sunni terrorists in Iran and adds many details about the way Iran’s intelligence service utilizes legitimate Iranian organizations such as its airline and shipping company for terror aims.

Witness Y testifies about Imad Mugniyah’s personal involvement in training the September 11 hijackers and the shelter granted by Iran to al-Qaeda’s men after the attacks. Meanwhile, witness Z says that he was present in a series of meetings in Tehran involving senior al-Qaeda men, local intelligence officials and Mugniyah’s men in the months before the 9/11 attacks.

Following the attacks, many senior al-Qaeda men found shelter in Iran. Tehran denied their presence for some time and later admitted that hundreds of al-Qaeda members are in the country and are under “house arrest.” For the time being, Iranian authorities have not responded to the lawsuit, and as happened in many cases, the judges may hand down their decision in the presence of one side only. The court could order compensation funds to be taken from frozen Iranian accounts.

This month, Ellen Saracini marks the 10th anniversary of the 9/11attacks. Saracini, who is closely accompanied by two lawyers who invested a special effort in the investigation, Tom Mellon and Timothy Fleming, is working days and nights in promoting the lawsuit against Iran and in commemorating the 9/11 victims. She says that the families who filed the lawsuit have one objective in mind: “Preventing these barbarians from committing further attacks against the United States and further attacks against humanity.”

Source:
Ynet

Sunday, September 4, 2011

The Foreign Policy Problem

A famous Turkish proverb expresses similarities between relationship and a string – when a string is cut, it says, there is always a possibility to tie it again, but connecting both ends of the thread gives no option to avoid the knot. If that is the path Turkey chooses to take when it comes to Israel, Israel is in big trouble. But Turkey will not gain too much from the conflict either.

The Mavi Marmara affair was grasped as “The 9/11 of Israeli- Turkish relations,” a term used for manifesting the shock coming from Ankara after the incident. Despite all precautions, the Turks never dreamed the result of the flotilla would occur as they did.

The death of nine Turkish citizens from IDF-fire was taken as if it was a declaration of war. They were furious and made the Marmara incident a dead end for relations with Israel, unless the latter bowed down and apologized.

In addition, the Turks complained about extensive leaks of information in Israel (e.g. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s initial decision to apologize). Israel should have more carefully observed the importance the Turks attributed to the incident and its effect on bilateral ties. Israel should have also kept in mind two main things:

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and the AKP government are just part of the problem. Turkish society must be taken into consideration as well.

The responses following the Marmara raid were similar in all segments of Turkish society, creating a growing wave of criticism against Israel. True, AKP’s 2011 elections campaign was “Hedef 2023,” (Aim: 2023. Erdogan believes his government will still be ruling when the Turkish Republic celebrates its 100th anniversary) but no one can guarantee that of course. How can Israel bring back the Turks’ alliance as well as friendship on the day after Erdogan?

In the unusual diplomacy of the Middle East, especially when Israel can look at the great Turkish example, why does Jerusalem ignore the art of pragmatism? Why haven’t we learned from Erdogan how to negotiate and twist reality to satisfy our own needs and interests? Some believe that especially in this region, apologizing means humiliation, submission and a blow to “national pride.” But following the Turks, their famous pragmatism anchored in their days as an empire, did them only good. Why would Israel be interested in making it easier on Erdogan, who already called to lower the level of diplomatic relations in the past? Why should Israel give up on the staggering $2.6 billion the two nations exchange in trade every year? Why fall into the trap of Erdogan instead of learning from his tactic strategy? Israel must play a new, sharp, calculated game of diplomacy and let Turkey act first.

Israelmight emerge as the greater loser here, but Turkey will not carry the day either. Domestic criticism accompanied by heated rhetoric, coming especially from the opposition leading party CHP, on AKP’s decision, claiming that Erdogan’s “zero problem policy” does not prove itself on one hand, and the price, on the other hand, is just too high.

Turkey’s need for special military equipment required for combating the terrorist organization PKK, produced and made in Israel is a concern for Turkey, as well as losing trade and other options. Turkey’s current problems with Syria and the heated declarations against Turkey coming from Ahmadinejad, do not make the “zero problem policy” more relevant to this region.

Since AKP took control in Turkey, it has been trying to persuade the world, especially the West, that being at the same time a democratic and Muslim country is possible, Turkey has no tendencies of becoming “a second Iran” and that it can mediate between East and West. After downgrading the ties and threatening Israel with “extra measures,” Turkey will have to work harder on proving its “balanced policy” to us all.

Source:
Dr. Efrat Aviv

Sunday, August 21, 2011

The Game Blame

Egypt accuses Israel of not doing enough to keep the border safe; it hints at its intention to recall its ambassador from Tel Aviv to protest the casualties suffered in the course of Thursday’s terrorist attack on the road to Eilat.

Indeed a sorry attempt by the Supreme Military Council, which has been ruling Egypt since Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, to cover its failure to keep the peace in Sinai by throwing the blame on someone else – Israel of course – in a time honored Egyptian practice. It would have been too much to expect from the country whence the terrorists who carried out the attack came to say: “We are sorry; let us jointly investigate what happened so that it never happens again.”

A bare week ago, retired Egyptian generals were accusing that same Supreme Military Council of dangerously neglecting the situation in the Sinai Peninsula. They told the press that Egypt no longer controlled the area and that a state of emergency had to be declared immediately in Sinai in order to impose a curfew and facilitate the necessary steps by the army. What is happening in Sinai, said one of them, has crossed a red line and is threatening the security of Egypt. They added that a number of extremist Islamic organizations were acting with complete impunity and that the peninsula was in a state of anarchy.

These harsh accusations came in the wake of an increasing number of attacks carried out by unidentified forces on state institutions such as police stations, as well as no less than five attacks on the pipeline carrying Egyptian natural gas to Jordan and to Israel. The fifth attempt stopped the flow indefinitely, causing heavy financial losses to Egypt. It had became obvious to all that with the fall of Mubarak the central government had lost its grip on Sinai, and that the void had immediately been filled by elements hostile to Egypt and to Israel.

It took two startling developments to force the Supreme Military Council to finally act: a disciplined attack mounted on the El-Arish police station by a group of Islamist extremists (it failed) and the proclamation by the Salafist organizations of northern Sinai of their intention to set up Islamic courts to supplant state courts, and to use their armed militias numbering some 6,000 young members to enforce their decisions.

Taking the measure of the danger, the Supreme Military Council first tightened security around the Suez Canal and then, in coordination with Israel, sent troops to the area to restore order.

What happened Thursday on the road to Eilat is yet another demonstration of the state of anarchy in the peninsula. A group of some 20 terrorists from Gaza, equipped with large quantities of weapons and explosives, made its way to Sinai, probably through the smuggling tunnels, and was able to circulate on sovereign Egyptian soil for a week or more. What is clear is that the terrorists must have had logistic support from one or more extremist organizations active in Sinai. They had to obtain vehicles, food and water as well as to set up observation points on the road to Eilat which they intended to attack.

One can well ask how it was possible for them to do so without being seen by the Egyptians. There are thousands of members of the Mukhabarat and of the other security services in Sinai; how come the movements of such an large terrorist group, having to cover some 240 kilometers over several days, escaped their notice? What about the soldiers manning positions all along the border? How come they saw nothing? Could it be that there were some who decided to close their eyes – and maybe others who decided to help? That there was a massive failure on the Egyptian side is glaringly obvious – but the Supreme Military Council is busy trying to shift the blame.

Unfortunately, as was to be expected, there were demonstrations against Israel in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez. Calls were heard to expel the ambassador of Israel and even to sever relations between the two countries. It does seem as these demonstrations were primarily organized by the Muslim Brothers, who are now a legitimate political force in Egypt. Their spokesmen called for the severing of relations.

But two leading contenders for the presidency, former Arab League head Amr Moussa and former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, jumped on the bandwagon. Moussa demanded a “fitting reaction” and Baradei called for a suspension of relations. The Supreme Council appeared to have been swayed by the protests.

On a more promising note, the same Egyptian military commentators cautioned against listening to the mob and suggested strongly a more responsible attitude to avoid an open crisis with Israel. Gen. (ret.) Abdelmoneim Kato called for an immediate inquiry into the events, and for a measured reaction limited to diplomatic protests. He added that the Egyptian Army had to pursue its fight against troublemakers and to restore order in Sinai.

Another military commentator, Mohamed Gamal Edin Mazloum, said that in the present situation Egypt had no interest whatsoever in a crisis with Israel, a country which had done nothing more than to defend itself against an attack on the road to Eilat.

Egypt today is facing a major hurdle in Sinai, where there are many more Islamist extremists than in the past. Some come from Gaza, but there is a strong Iranian influence. There are elaborate smuggling networks bringing weapons, explosives and missiles from Iran and from Hezbollah to Gaza via Sudan and Sinai. Now that the central government is so weak, there is talk of setting up a “free Islamic zone” – similar to what happened in Afghanistan with al- Qaida – which would be a base for attacks against Israel as well as against Egypt itself and other neighboring nations.

Neither Israel nor Egypt has an interest in escalating the present incident. What must be done now is to refrain from inflammatory statements and to thoroughly investigate what happened and how it happened through coordinated, efforts. More than ever in these troubled times, peace is of paramount importance both to Egypt and to Israel.

Zvi Mazel is a former ambassador to Egypt, and a fellow of The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

In Israel, diggers unearth the Bible's bad guys

At the remains of an ancient metropolis in southern Israel, archaeologists are piecing together the history of a people remembered chiefly as the bad guys of the Hebrew Bible.

The city of Gath, where the annual digging season began this week, is helping scholars paint a more nuanced portrait of the Philistines, who appear in the biblical story as the perennial enemies of the Israelites.

Close to three millennia ago, Gath was on the frontier between the Philistines, who occupied the Mediterranean coastal plain, and the Israelites, who controlled the inland hills. The city's most famous resident, according to the Book of Samuel, was Goliath — the giant warrior improbably felled by the young shepherd David and his sling.

The Philistines "are the ultimate other, almost, in the biblical story," said Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University, the archaeologist in charge of the excavation.

The latest summer excavation season began this past week, with 100 diggers from Canada, South Korea, the United States and elsewhere, adding to the wealth of relics found at the site since Maier's project began in 1996.

In a square hole, several Philistine jugs nearly 3,000 years old were emerging from the soil. One painted shard just unearthed had a rust-red frame and a black spiral: a decoration common in ancient Greek art and a hint to the Philistines' origins in the Aegean.

The Philistines arrived by sea from the area of modern-day Greece around 1200 B.C. They went on to rule major ports at Ashkelon and Ashdod, now cities in Israel, and at Gaza, now part of the Palestinian territory known as the Gaza Strip.

At Gath, they settled on a site that had been inhabited since prehistoric times. Digs like this one have shown that though they adopted aspects of local culture, they did not forget their roots. Even five centuries after their arrival, for example, they were still worshipping gods with Greek names.

Archaeologists have found that the Philistine diet leaned heavily on grass pea lentils, an Aegean staple. Ancient bones discarded at the site show that they also ate pigs and dogs, unlike the neighboring Israelites, who deemed those animals unclean — restrictions that still exist in Jewish dietary law.

Diggers at Gath have also uncovered traces of a destruction of the city in the 9th century B.C., including a ditch and embankment built around the city by a besieging army — still visible as a dark line running across the surrounding hills.

The razing of Gath at that time appears to have been the work of the Aramean king Hazael in 830 B.C., an incident mentioned in the Book of Kings.

Gath's importance is that the "wonderful assemblage of material culture" uncovered there sheds light on how the Philistines lived in the 10th and 9th centuries B.C., said Seymour Gitin, director of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem and an expert on the Philistines.

That would include the era of the kingdom ruled from Jerusalem by David and Solomon, if such a kingdom existed as described in the Bible. Other Philistine sites have provided archaeologists with information about earlier and later times but not much from that key period.

"Gath fills a very important gap in our understanding of Philistine history," Gitin said.

In 604 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon invaded and put the Philistines' cities to the sword. There is no remnant of them after that.

Crusaders arriving from Europe in 1099 built a fortress on the remains of Gath, and later the site became home to an Arab village, Tel el-Safi, which emptied during the war surrounding Israel's creation in 1948. Today Gath is in a national park.

An Israeli town founded in 1955 several miles to the south, Kiryat Gat, was named after Gath based on a misidentification of a different ruin as the Philistine city.

The memory of the Philistines — or a somewhat one-sided version — was preserved in the Hebrew Bible.

The hero Samson, who married a Philistine woman, skirmished with them repeatedly before being betrayed and taken, blinded and bound, to their temple at Gaza. There, the story goes, he broke free and shattered two support pillars, bringing the temple down and killing everyone inside, including himself.

One intriguing find at Gath is the remains of a large structure, possibly a temple, with two pillars. Maeir has suggested that this might have been a known design element in Philistine temple architecture when it was written into the Samson story.

Diggers at Gath have also found shards preserving names similar to Goliath — an Indo-European name, not a Semitic one of the kind that would have been used by the local Canaanites or Israelites. These finds show the Philistines indeed used such names and suggest that this detail, too, might be drawn from an accurate picture of their society.

The findings at the site support the idea that the Goliath story faithfully reflects something of the geopolitical reality of the period, Maeir said — the often violent interaction of the powerful Philistines of Gath with the kings of Jerusalem in the frontier zone between them.

"It doesn't mean that we're one day going to find a skull with a hole in its head from the stone that David slung at him, but it nevertheless tells that this reflects a cultural milieu that was actually there at the time," Maeir said.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Rosslyn Chapel

The Rosslyn Chapel or the Collegiate Chapel of St Mathew, as it was to have been, was founded in 1446 by Sir William St Clair, third and last St Clair Prince of Orkney. It is in fact only part of the choir of what was intended to be a larger cruciform building with a tower at its centre.


More than thirty-seven collegiate churches were built in Scotland between the reigns of James I and James IV (1406-1513). They were secular foundations intended to spread intellectual and spiritual knowledge, and the extravagance of their construction depended on the wealth of their founder.

After Sir William died in 1484, he was buried in the unfinished Chapel and the larger building he had planned was never completed. But the foundations of the nave have been excavated in the nineteenth century and found to extend ninety-one feet beyond the Chapel's original west door, under the existing baptistery and churchyard.

What was built however is extraordinary enough, 'This building, I believe, may be pronounced unique, and I am confident it will be found curious, elaborate and singularly interesting, impossible to designate by any given or familiar term' wrote Britton on his Architectural Antiquities of Britain (1812), adding somewhat despairingly that its 'variety and eccentricity are not to be defined by any words of common acceptation'.

The principal authority on the history of the Chapel and the Sinclair/ St Clair family is Father Richard Augustine Hay, Canon of St Genevieve in Paris and Prior of St Piermont. He examined historical records and charters of the St Clairs and completed a three-volume study in 1700, parts of which were published in 1835 as “A genealogy of the Sainte-claires of Rosslyn”. His research was timely, since the original documents subsequently disappeared.

Of the founder Father Hay said this: 'Prince William, his age creeping on him, came to consider how he had spent his times past, and how he was to spend his remaining days. Therefore, to the end, that he might not seem altogether unthankful to God for the benefices he received from Him, it came into his mind to build a house for God's service, of most curious work, that might be done with greater glory and splendour he caused artificers to be brought from other regions and foreign kingdoms and caused daily to be abundance of all kinds of workmen present as masons, carpenters, smiths, barrowmen and quarries... the foundation of this work he caused to be lain in the year of our Lord 1446, and to the end, the work might be more rare, first he caused draughts [plans] to be drawn upon Eastland boards [imported Baltic timber], and he made the carpenters carve them according to the draughts thereon and he gave them to for patterns to the masons, that they might cut the like in stone and because he thought the masons had not a convenient place to lodge in...He made them build the town of Rolsine, now Rosslyn- that is now extant and gave everyone a house and lands. He rewarded the masons according to their degree, as to the Master Mason; he gave nearly £40 yearly, and to everyone of the rest, £10...

Sir William's son and successor to the Barony of Rosslyn, Sir Oliver St Clair, roofed the choir with its stone vault but did no more to fulfil his father's original design.

The Chapel was generously endowed by the founder, with provision for a provost, six prebendaries and two choristers, and in 1523 by his grandson, also Sir William, with land for dwelling houses and gardens. On February 26th 1571, however, just forty-eight years after his last endowment, there is a record of the provost and prebendaries resigning because of the endowments being taken by 'force and violence' into secular hands as the effects of the Reformation took hold.

The Presbytery records of Dalkeith reveal that in 1589 William Knox, brother of John Knox and minister of Cockpen, was censured 'for baptising the Laird of Rosling's bairne' in Rosslyn Chapel, which was described as a 'house and monument of idolatrie, and not ane place appointit for teiching the word and ministratioun of ye sacrementis'.

The following year, the Presbytery forbade Mr George Ramsay, minister of Lasswade, from burying the wife of a later Oliver St Clair in the Chapel. The St Clairs had not yet succumbed to the Reformation.

This Oliver St Clair was repeatedly warned to destroy the altars in the Chapel and in1592 was summoned to appear before the General Assembly and threatened with excommunication if the altars remained standing after August 17th, 1592. On August 31st, the same George Ramsay reported that 'the altars of Roslene were haille demolishit'. From that time the Chapel ceased to be used as a house of prayer and soon fell into disrepair.

In 1650, during the Civil War, Cromwell's troops under General Monk attacked the castle and his horses were stabled in the Chapel. On December 11th, 1688, shortly after the protestant William of Orange had landed in England and displaced the Catholic James II, a mob from Edinburgh and some of the villagers from Roslin entered and damaged the Chapel. Their object was to destroy the furniture and vestments, which were now regarded as Popish and idolatrous.

The Chapel remained abandoned until 1736, when St James St Clair glazed the windows for the first time, repaired the roof, and re-laid the floor with flagstones. The boundary wall was also built at this time.

When Dorothy Wordsworth visited the Chapel on September 17th, 1807, she remarked: 'Went to view the inside of the Chapel of Rosslyn, which is kept locked up, and so preserved from the injuries it might otherwise receive from idle boys, but as nothing is done to keep it together, it must, in the end, fall. The architecture within is exquisitely beautiful.'

Further repairs to the Chapel were undertaken at the beginning of the nineteenth century and in 1861 it was agreed by James Alexander, 3rd Earl of Rosslyn, that Sunday services should begin again. He instructed the Edinburgh architect David Bryce to carry out restoration work. The carvings in the Lady Chapel were attended to; stones were re-laid in the crypt and an altar established there. The Bishop of Edinburgh rededicated the Chapel on Tuesday April 22nd, 1862, and the Bishop of Brechin preached from the text, 'Our Lord, I have loved the habitation of thy house, and the place where thine honour dwelleth' (Psalms xxvi, v8).

The Reverend R. Cole, then resident military chaplain at Greenlaw Barracks near Penicuick, became private chaplain to the Earl. Lady Helen Wedderburn, daughter of the 7th Earl of Airlie, who lived nearby at Rosebank, organised a subscription from which some of the interior fittings were provided.

In 1880-1, Francis Robert, 4th Earl of Rosslyn, added the apse to serve as a baptistry with an organ loft above. The work is by Andrew Kerr. The Earl also filled the baptistry arch with the handsome oak tracery, which can be seen today, decorated with his crest. Together with the two Chapel doors, this is the only wood used in the construction of the building.

The cost of the work was seven hundred and fifty eight pounds, eight shillings and six pennies, with a further thirty four pounds and eighteen shillings to Andrew Kerr for fees. Kerr told the Earl that a party of visitors 'had remarked that it was wonderful that such young men should be entrusted to execute such carving,' to which the estate factor 'very coolly replied, that it was not wonderful here, as the finest pillar in the Chapel was the work of an apprentice boy.'

The Earl was happy with the work and in a letter to Kerr on November 16th, wrote: ' I must say that the author pronounces your building a complete success.'

In 1915, a report on the fabric by Sir Robert Lorimer observed: ' The stone work of the Chapel is in fairly good order and requires very little done to it... a few of the stones are crumbling but not to the extent to cause any alarm. The condition of the roof is not satisfactory... and there are a number of gaps and cracks all over.' He recommended that the exterior of the roof be covered with asphalt and this was carried out.

In 1942 the Chapel was almost closed for a second time when a government official called Robertson wrote to the Minister of Labour, Ernest Bevin MP, 'that the Episcopalian Church at Roslin was almost empty every Sunday... on a recent Sunday there was a congregation of only two, and apart from the Clergyman's labour there must be other workers employed in cleaning and looking after the church and I suggest that steps are taken to close it down.'

A copy of the letter was sent to Gwilym Lloyd George MP, the Minister of Fuel, who in turn wrote to the Secretary of State for Scotland in the following terms; 'I enclose a copy of a letter from David Robertson which causes me considerable embarrassment, who am I, a Welshman, that I should do anything that might imperil the eternal salvation of one Scottish Episcopalian. In any case, from the fuel point of view, I doubt whether I would be justified in securing a small economy of fuel in this world at the possible cost of a disproportionate expenditure of it on myself in the next.' The Chapel remained open.

Further work was carried out by Anthony 6th Earl of Rosslyn, in the 1950's when the crypt roof was repaired and the interior carvings cleaned by hand over a period of several years. He also added the stained glass windows in the baptistry. A report of May 1954 from the Ancient Monuments Branch of the Ministry of Works records that 'surfaces covered with green algae will be scrubbed down with stiff bristle brushes... using a solution of 880 ammonia and water. Water will then be used copiously until the surfaces are clean and free from dirt and vegetation. Flaky patches will be sealed off... Hollow areas in ornament will receive special treatment by grouting... and when the surfaces are thoroughly dry they will be hardened with silica fluoride of magnesium at a rate of 1lb per two gallons of water.'

This work was in accordance with the thinking of the time but not, unfortunately, with current conservation philosophy. The effect of the magnesium fluoride - a cementitious slurry - was to seal the internal surface of the masonry with an impermeable coating, so that the stone became saturated with water containing soluble pollutants. In addition, the coldness of the wet stone encouraged condensation. A report in 1995 confirmed that damage was occurring and that humidity in the Chapel was very high. It recommended that steps should be taken to dry out the saturated masonry, remove if possible the cementitious coating, and restore the permeability of the richly carved inner surfaces of the Chapel.

In March 1997, a freestanding steel structure was erected to cover the Chapel. It will enable the stone fabric of the roof vaults to dry outwards, away from the carved interior surfaces. In due course the bituminous felt, asphalt and concrete coverings of the stone roof vaults would be removed to assist this process. Stone and mortar repairs to the external walls, pinnacles, and buttresses, renewal of the rainwater disposal arrangements, repairs to the stained glass, and appropriate repair and conservation of the interior are all required. The coverings over the stone vaulted roofs will be renewed in lead and ways of removing the cementitious slurry are being investigated, in order that this magnificent building can be preserved for future generations to use and admire.

The year 2000 saw the Trust embark on a second phase of work. Funded jointly by The National Heritage Lottery Fund, The Eastern Scotland European Partnership, Historic Scotland and the Rosslyn Chapel Trust, this phase has a number of elements. Essential stabilisation works to the east boundary walls will protect the Chapel. A new roof of Caithness slate has been placed over the existing Crypt roof, and the Priest's Cell and two more modern buildings beside the Crypt have been made functional. The stairs to the Crypt have been repaired and the access to the Crypt is now both safer and more of an experience. Work has also been carried out to improve the electrical services in the Chapel, repairs to the wooden screen at the west end, and our interpretation of Rosslyn's story.


The Genealogical Part

William Sinclair of the St. Clair family, a Scottish noble family descended from Norman knights and linked to the Knights Templar, designed the chapel. Construction of the chapel began in 1440, and the chapel was officially founded in 1446. Construction lasted for forty years.

Some authors have theorised that the Chapel's west wall is actually a model of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and is part of the structure by design, rather than proof of another intended stage of building, which would have made the site about the size of a Cathedral.

In September 2005 a musical cipher hidden in mystical symbols carved into the stone ceiling of Rosslyn Chapel was reported as being unravelled by Scottish composer Stuart Mitchell. His feat was hailed by experts as a stroke of genius.

The codes were hidden in 213 cubes in the ceiling of the chapel, where parts of the film of Dan Brown's best-seller The Da Vinci Code were shot. Each cube contained different patterns to form an unusual 6ý-minute piece of music for 13 medieval players.

The unusual sound has been of great spiritual significance to those who built the chapel. The melody was unravelled after Mr Mitchell discovered the stones at the bottom of each of 12 pillars inside the chapel formed a cadence (three chords at the end of a piece of music) of which there were only three types in the 15th century.

Mr Mitchell said the music sounded like a nursery rhyme. "Everyone wants to hear something miraculous but William Sinclair, who designed the chapel, was an architect, not a musician," he said. "It is evident from the nursery rhyme style of the music that he could not play very well. It is in triple time, sounds childlike and is based on plain chant which was the common form of rhythm of the time." The strange combination of instruments in the piece includes bagpipes, whistles, trumpet, a medieval mouth piano, guitar and singers.

The chapel is famous for its connections to Freemasonry and its attendant rituals. This was first publicised by Knight and Lomas, but it is also found in works by Michael Baigent and Leigh and Tim Wallace Murphy (circa 1990), and the connections entered mainstream consciousness when named in the novel The Da Vinci Code for its links to the Holy Grail. I want to emphasise that the Holy Grail was never brought to the Chapel, but Her memories. The Sinclairs are hereditary lords of the Chapel and this truth cannot be denied.

The Scottish NGO The Friends of Rosslyn, which own the land surrounding the Chapel and the Rosslyn Chapel Trust which administers the Chapel, have both published a number of books and literature on the Chapel.

Certainly the Chapel is used by the modern Knights Templar for 'investiture' ceremonies, and because of its connection to one of the more famous freemasons (William Sinclair) and also due to the Masonic architecture and symbolism featured on the Chapel walls, many Freemasons from all over the world visit it. Certain points in its architecture are quite indicative of a Masonic, and Templar, connection.

In addition, the Chapel was used by Freemasons and Knights Templar and stationed at Rosslyn Chapel, journeyed to North America long before Columbus. This claim is based on several points:

1. Some of what appear to be the oldest graveyards in Nova Scotia (which means New Scotland) have Masonic symbols and Crusader crosses on them;

2. The Westford Knight is a rock engraving in Massachusetts showing a Scottish knight, linked to the Henry Sinclair party, with the Clan Gunn markings;

3. Most importantly, Rosslyn Chapel, although completed six years before Columbus' voyage, has stone carvings in it of plants unique to the Western hemisphere.

Because of its rumored connections with Freemasonry, the chapel has inevitably become listed as one of the possible final resting places of The Holy Grail. This is a possibility based on legends of 'Secret Vaults' and the possibility that the similarities between Rosslyn and the Temple of Jerusalem might be more than cosmetic.

The White Lady of Rosslyn Castle is said to hide a secret worth 'millions of pounds' - and some have suggested that this could be The Grail or instructions on how to find it.

St Clair legend suggests that there are three big medieval chests (probably the size of steamer trunks) buried somewhere on the property, and this has inevitably led to various theories as to the chests' contents. Past scanning and excavations in or near the Chapel have not yielded any such chests.

Sealed chambers under the basement of the chapel, however, have yet to be excavated for fear of collapse of the entire structure. These chambers are filled with pure white Arabic sand -- rumored to have been brought to the chapel by the Knights Templar from the Dome of the Rock -- and ultrasonic scans have revealed six leaden vaults within the sand.

It should be noted that it is only the Ruined Wall that is based on the Temple of Jerusalem - the chapel itself most closely resembles the East Quire of Glasgow Cathedral. The Chapel is famous for its two pillars: the Apprentice Pillar and the Master Pillar which, though next to each other, are carved differently. Masonic Architects believe these structures could signify the pillars of Boaz and Jachin.

Most interestingly are the (pictorial) references to the Key of Hiram, a significant piece of Masonic legend in the wall carvings, and in depictions of the New World, purportedly showing maize and aloe vera plants about a century before the discovery of North America, suggesting pre-Columbus travel there (the La Merika theory).