Archeologists find 120 coins from the Bar Kokhba Revolt era

Israeli archeologists unveiled never before seen historical artifacts from a recent discovery of a Judean Hills cave used by Jewish refugees during the Bar Kokhba rebellion in 132-35 CE. The findings were presented at a press conference held at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Wednesday morning.

The massive discovery marks the first time Israeli researchers have ever found a large hoard of ancient coins from this era. The gold, silver and bronze coins, 120 in all, were discovered in an undisclosed location within the 'Green Line' of Israel. The unlocking of the almost inaccessible cave also yielded iron weapons, storage jars, oil lamps, a juglet, a silver earring and a glass bottle.

The 20-meter deep cave and its bounty are continuing to be explored by Prof. Amos Frumkin and Boaz Langford of the Cave Research Unit in the Department of Geography of the Hebrew University and Dr. Boaz Zissu and Prof. Hanan Eshel of the Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University. The project is made possible with the support of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. The artifacts are believed to be solid evidence proving the theory that Jews found refuge in the Judean Hills during the time-period.

With this find, Prof. Zissu said that the distribution of the coins in the region helps to further "indicate the geographical extent of the Jewish presence outside of Jerusalem" during the Roman occupation of the land of Israel. Prof. Zissu further explained that "since there is not a definitive historian (from the era), we have to rely on the information we find from the coins and discoveries."

Prof. Frumkin added "this discovery verifies the assumption that the refugees of the revolt fled to caves in the center of a populated area in addition to the caves found in more isolated areas of the Judean desert." The researchers believe that the Judean Hills cave served as a hiding place, with its proximity to the ancient city of Betar, for a dozen or more Jewish fighters.

Prof. Frumkin theorises the possibility "that the occupants were of a special status" in relation to the strategic location of the cave, the weapons and the amount of money that was found.

Finding a cave of such magnitude explained Frumkin "provides the archaeological context of the people" who were at the time managing to re-establish Jewish sovereignty.

A majority of the discovered coins were in excellent condition, which helped the researchers delve deeper into the mysteries of the era. Most of the coins were originally Roman designed and manufactured. Thereafter, Jewish fighters pressed their own insignias into the coins. Leaders of the Jewish resistance imprinted and dated coins for each year of the rebellion with, for example, images of the exterior of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and poetry for reclaiming Jerusalem as a means for spreading the rebellion via currency.

The Bar Kokhba Revolt was fought against the Roman Empire and it was last of the Jewish-Roman wars. The revolt, led by Simon bar Kokhba, was meant to put down the Roman occupation of the land of Israel. Bar Kokhba managed to establish a Jewish state over parts of Judea, as Jews were banned from living in Jerusalem or visiting the site of the destroyed Second Temple. For almost two years until the Roman armies put down the resistance, Jewish resistance fighters inflicted heavy casualties upon the Roman army. Staggering estimates of the Jewish death toll exceed 500,000 civilian causalities and almost 1,000 towns destroyed by the Roman army. Many scholars view the Bar Kokhba Revolt as the beginning of the Jewish Diaspora.

Prof. Frumkin expects further discoveries in the area to surface but "none possibly on this scale." While the occupants of the cave were never to reclaim their belongings, the discovery of their items and future ones as well, are helping to unlock an almost 2,000 year-old unsolved history of the Jewish people in the land of Israel.

Israel will destroy Hamas if provoke

The head of the Defense Ministry's Diplomatic-Security Bureau said Tuesday that if Hamas was to make use of a much-boasted 60 km-range rocket Israel would "destroy it". Speaking at the International Institute for Counter – Terrorism's ninth conference, Amos Gilad said the organization could not be destroyed but that "it's possible to deal with the establishment".

"The good news is that there is deterrence before Hamas and Hezbollah, based on the image that Israel is intent on destroying each of them," Gilad added. He said Hamas had failed at its goal of keeping the Palestinian Authority from becoming the only caretaker of Palestinian statehood as well as that of capturing IDF soldiers during Operation Cast Lead. He also mentioned that Hamas had been working to keep rockets from being fired at Israel since the operation.
Gilad also elaborated on the connection between Iran and the terror organizations and explained that although suicide bombing in Israel had been weeded out, the organizations would still attempt to regain power through Tehran. "You can't even imagine what Iran does to help them," he said. "They send ships and weapons, and they have no financial trouble doing this."

He also warned that the threat from Hezbollah would become more severe if Iran managed to obtain nuclear weapons. "It won't be a terror threat but a military threat based on deterrence, and they will have a free hand in committing a large-scale terror attack without fear of an Israeli response," Gilad said.

But on an encouraging note, the bureau chief said Israel was backed by many Arab countries that also fear Iran would develop nukes. "Jordan is a model of the war on terror, and every day I am pleasantly surprised," he said. "We should learn from them."

He also praised Egypt to the same effect. "Egypt is a pillar of Middle Eastern leadership," Gilad said. "I think it is better to continue the stability rather than to progress to a democracy that does not suit the Middle East and could weaken the stability."

Poll shows surge of support for Israel in US

In stark contrast to the cable leaked last month by Israel's consul-general in Boston saying support for Israel in the US has declined, a recent poll for The Israel Project shows support has bounced back significantly after slipping in the aftermath of US President Barack Obama's Cairo speech.The poll, conducted by Neil Newhouse of Public Opinion Strategies and Stan Greenberg of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (GQRR), asked some 800 likely US voters the following question: "Thinking about the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in the Middle East, please tell me whether, in general, you consider yourself to be an Israel supporter, Palestinian supporter, or neither/undecided."

Some 59 percent of the respondents said they were Israel supporters, compared to 8 percent for the Palestinians. The poll was conducted by telephone from August 22 to 25. This was a considerable jump in support for Israel since June, following the US president's speech in Cairo, when the same question was asked by the same pollsters and Israel's support was only 49 percent.

The number of Americans who think America should support Israel over the Palestinians also increased considerably over the last two months, with 63 percent saying the US should support Israel, and 8% saying it should support the Palestinians. In June, that number was 44% for Israel, and 5% for the Palestinians.

In contrast to the June data, a majority of Americans now believe that Netanyahu's government is committed to reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians, while a majority do not believe either the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas, or Hamas, are committed to peace with Israel.

According to the poll, 57% of the public believes Israel is committed to peace, and 39% said they do not think the government is committed to an agreement. In June that number was 46% saying Israel was committed to peace, and 39% saying it was not. By contrast, only 36% of the respondents thought that the PA was committed to peace, and 30% believed Hams wanted an agreement.

In the poll Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu trailed Obama by only 3 points when the respondents asked whether they had a warm or cold attitude to a list of leaders. In this question, Obama received a score of 59, Netanyahu 56, Abbas 34 and Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got a score of 22.

In other survey findings, a majority of Americans disagree with Palestinian leaders' position not to start negotiations until Israel halts all construction on settlements. On the contrary, by a 72%-23% margin, Americans agree with Netanyahu's promise not to build any new settlements, while allowing Israel to accommodate for natural growth of existing settlements.

As a basis for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, fully 95% of Americans agree that Palestinians need to recognize Israel's right to exist and acknowledge its standing as a Jewish state.

Settlement was never a problem

Two weeks ago Interior Minister Eli Yishai caused a controversy when he said that Israel will continue to build in the E-1 area between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim even if the United States does not approve. His opinion was reinforced this week when former (and future?) Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee visited the area and declared his support for Israel to build homes anywhere in the land of Israel.

These are important declarations with pressure on Israel from the Obama administration to freeze building over the green line growing daily. The American President feels that he has the right to tell Israel where its citizens can and cannot live. He feels that while are Arabs are free to live in any corner of Jerusalem, the eastern part of the city should be ethnically cleansed of Jews - regardless of the law.

President Obama has misled the world into believing that conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians, Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria, and of course Iranian nuclear weapons, are all issues that can be resolved if Israel abandons the settlements. He could not be more wrong.

History shows that the conflict here in Israel is not over land, but has to do with the inability of our Arabs/Muslim neighbours to recognise that Jews and Christians have any claim, religious or historical, to the land of Israel. Time and time again throughout the Middle East, and even now in Asia, it becomes the goal of radical Muslims to destroy religious sites from other religions and build Mosques over them. From the destruction of Buddhist statues in Afghanistan to the constant religious battles in India, and back to the Middle East, this history repeats itself over and over again.

The first thing to note is that the conflict between Jews and Arabs in the land of Israel predates the settlement movement that started in 1967, and even pre-dates Israel's re-establishment as an independent state in 1948. There were pogroms that included the sadistic rape, murder, dismemberment, and burning of thousands of Jews and their properties here going back to the middle of the 19th century. There was no Israeli state, no settlements, and there was no "occupation" of an Arab people called Palestinians.

Next, it it important to point out that the Palestinian Arabs have been offered a state multiple times and rejected it outright, preferring to wage war on the Jews with the hopes of "throwing them into the sea." The entire land of the British mandate was designated as a Jewish state, and in contradiction to official British policy, 80% of the land was given to the Heshemite monarchy to establish the Kingdom of Jordan (which is now over 80% Palestinian.)

Of the 20% of the land remaining, the United Nations (League of Nations at the time) offered partition, half to the Palestinian Arabs, and half to the Jews. The Jews accepted the small and virtually indefensible borders and immediately established Israel. The Arabs rejected and sent 5 national armies and legions of Palestinian Arabs to destroy the new Jewish state. Thank G-d, the Jews won, and were happy to have a state even though it did not give them authority over its most holy sites in Jerusalem.

From 1948 until 1967, after every Jew living in east Jerusalem, the West Bank, or Gaza Strip, (places Jewish families have lived consistently since temple times) had been murdered or exiled; Israel still suffered hundreds of murderous attacks from the Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. From bus hijackings resulting in the murder of the passengers, to schools being raided by child murdering terrorists, shootings, bombings, kidnappings and more. All these attacks despite the fact that there was no occupation, no settlements, and the Arabs did not make a single attempt at establishing an independent state called Palestine.

In 1967, when the Arab countries called up their armies and pledged to throw Israel into the sea, Israel launched a pre-emptive attack destroying the Arab armies, and re-claiming the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Since then, Israel re-built Jewish towns (settlements) in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, re-establishing ancient Jewish communities from biblical places such as Hebron, Bet El, and Shilo, and Israel finally gained control over it's most holy site, the site of the ancient temple that Jews had been forbidden to visit since the Arabs controlled it in 1948. With Israeli control over all of Jerusalem, Christian and Jewish holy sites were restored and for the first time in many years, all religions had access to their holy sites.

To reiterate, these attacks had been going on all along, before the West Bank and Gaza Strip were "occupied." Throughout this war of terror, Israel has repeatedly tried negotiating with the Palestinian Arabs. They have been offered a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip 2 times by Israeli leaders, most famously by Prime Minister Ehud Barak who against the security interests of Israel offered them 97% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with a capital in east Jerusalem. The answer Israel received was a "no," and a wave of suicide bombings and shooting attacks that murdered and injured thousands of Israelis.

Despite the fact that the Palestinians continued to attack Israel, rejected every offer made to them, and refused to arrest a single terrorist, Israel decided to continue with the "peace process" by tearing down "settlements" which the Palestinians were now claiming was the biggest obstacle to peace. Israel tore down 22 Gaza Strip settlements and 4 West Bank settlements, evicting over 10,000 Jews from their homes and livelihoods. Instead of a thank you, Israel received 20,000 missiles, mortars, and bombs launched at it's civilian population, leading to the war in Gaza. If settlements were the real obstacle to peace, dismantling settlements should have advanced the peace process, not encouraged more war.

Still, after the tearing down of settlements pushed us further from peace then ever before, the world continues to claim that settlements are the biggest obstacle to peace, and demand that Israel stop building homes for its citizens.

The existence of this conflict long before any settlement was ever built on disputed land, and the intensifying of the conflict after some settlements were torn down prove that the Palestinians and the Arab/Muslim states that arm and support them are not fighting to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, but in place of all of Israel.

Even if the Palestinians were to disarm the terrorists and agree to a state to end the conflict, why must every Jewish home is evacuated? 80% of the Jewish homeland was already given to Jordan and the world is demanding that Israel split the remaining 20% with yet another new Arab state.

Why should this Arab state also be 100% ethnically cleansed of Jews while the Israel proper is still 25% Arab and any mention of these Israeli Arabs moving to a newly created Palestinian state is considered racist? Freezing the building of settlements and expelling Jews from their homes is a racist policy that will not solve this conflict.

Israel has a historical, moral, and biblical right to settle Jews anywhere in the land of Israel. The more settlements, the bigger the presence of the Israeli army, and the more stability that is brought to the region. Tearing down settlements does the opposite, leading to more war and death. Israel must continue to build Jewish settlements.

Archaeologists find 3,700-year-old wall in Jerusalem

Archaeologists digging in Jerusalem have uncovered a 3,700-year-old wall that is the oldest example of massive fortifications ever found in the city, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Wednesday. The 26-foot-high wall is believed to have been part of a protected passage built by ancient Canaanites from a hilltop fortress to a nearby spring that was the city's only water source and vulnerable to marauders.

The discovery marks the first time archaeologists have found such massive construction from before the time of Herod, the ruler behind numerous monumental projects in the city 2,000 years ago, and shows that Jerusalem of the Middle Bronze Age had a powerful population capable of complex building projects, said Ronny Reich, director of the excavation and an archaeology professor at the University of Haifa.

The wall dates to the 17th century BC, when Jerusalem was a small, fortified enclave controlled by the Canaanites, one of the peoples the Bible says lived in the Holy Land before the Hebrew conquest. The kingdom thought to have been ruled from Jerusalem by the biblical King David is usually dated to at least seven centuries later.

Lieberman sets off to Africa

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who has taken himself out of the current diplomatic mix with the US and the Palestinians and wants the Foreign Ministry to focus on areas it has long given low priority, will embark today on a nine-day, five-country tour of Africa. This will be the first visit by an Israeli foreign minister to sub-Saharan Africa, excluding Ethiopia, since David Levy went to Nigeria in 1991. An Israeli prime minister has not visited sub-Saharan Africa since Yitzhak Shamir went in 1988.

Lieberman, who recently returned from a trip to South America, where he was the first Israeli foreign minister to visit in 22 years, will visit Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda. Lieberman said the visit was part of his plan to open "new directions" for Israeli diplomacy. "Israel has been absent for many years from entire regions of the world, and during my visit to South America I felt the great importance that the host countries attributed to these visits, as well as the visit's significant contribution to bilateral relations," he said in a statement.

Likewise, he said, the visit to Africa would improve Israel's standing in the international forums in which African nations have a significant presence. One senior Foreign Ministry official noted that since Lieberman has taken himself and the Foreign Ministry out of the diplomatic process currently taking place with the US and the Palestinians, he needs to find other venues on which to focus his and the ministry's energies. At the same time the official admitted that Israel had pretty much ignored Africa over the last three decades.

Lieberman's visit comes just two days after Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said Israel was causing all of Africa's woes. According to an AFP report, Gaddafi - speaking to some 30 African leaders gathered at a special African Union summit in Tripoli Monday to mark 40 years of his rule - said Israel was "behind all of Africa's conflicts." He demanded the closure of all Israeli embassies across Africa, describing Israel as a "gang" and saying it used "the protection of minorities as an excuse to launch conflicts."

Foreign Ministry spokesmen Yigal Palmor responded by saying Gaddafi was a "clown" whose declarations "no one in the world took seriously. I am sure no one was impressed by his bullying," he said. At the same time, however, Libya does exert its influence in part of Africa, and the lack of ties with nearby Mali, Niger and Chad is attributed in Israel to Gaddafi's influence. Likewise the Libyan leader has been able to pressure a number of African states, according to Israeli officials, to vote in favour of anti-Israeli resolutions in various international bodies.

Lieberman said one of the issues he will raise in his talks with African leaders will be Teheran's efforts to make inroads into the continent; efforts that - with the exception of Sudan - Israeli officials say have not yet proven overly successful.

Lieberman will be accompanied by 20 businessmen in the fields of energy, agriculture, water, communications and military industries, as well as senior officials from the Finance Ministry, Defense Ministry and National Security Council.

The trip will begin in Ethiopia and end in Uganda, where the foreign minister will take part in a memorial ceremony for those killed during Israel's raid on Entebbe in 1976. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's brother Yonatan, three hostages and 45 Ugandan soldiers were killed during the operation that freed some 105 hostages from a hijacked Air France plane. A fourth hostage, 75-year-old Dora Bloch, was killed by then Ugandan president Idi Amin's soldiers in a nearby hospital.

Mosquito Bites and why some people are immune?

If you're one of those people whom mosquitoes tend to favour, maybe it's because you aren't sufficiently stressed-out. Insects have very keen powers of smell that direct them to their targets. But for researchers trying to figure out what attracts or repels the pests, sorting through the 300 to 400 distinct chemical odours that the human body produces has proved daunting.

Now scientists at Rothamsted Research in the U.K. have been making headway at understanding why some people can end up with dozens of bites after a backyard barbecue, while others remain unscathed. The researchers have identified a handful of the body's chemical odours—some of which may be related to stress—that are present in significantly larger concentrations in people that the bugs are happier to leave alone. If efforts to synthesize these particular chemicals are successful, the result could be an all-natural mosquito repellent that is more effective and safer than products currently available.

"Mosquitoes fly through an aerial soup of chemicals, but can home in on those that draw them to humans," says James Logan, a researcher at Rothamsted, one of the world's oldest agricultural-research institutions. But when the combination of human odors is wrong, he says, "the mosquito fails to recognize this signal as a potential blood meal."

The phenomenon that some people are more prone to mosquito bites than others is well documented. In the 1990s, chemist Ulrich Bernier, now at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, began looking for what he calls the "magic compounds" that attract mosquitoes. His research helped to show that mosquitoes are attracted to humans by blends of common chemicals such as carbon dioxide, released from the skin and by exhaling, and lactic acid, which is present on the skin, especially when we exercise. But none of the known attractant chemicals explained why mosquitoes preferred some people to others. Rothamsted's Dr. Logan says the answer isn't to be found in attractant chemicals. He and colleagues observed that everyone produces chemicals that mosquitoes like, but those who are unattractive to mosquitoes produce more of certain chemicals that repel them.

Misguided Mosquitoes
"The repellents were what made the difference," says Dr. Logan, who is interested in the study of how animals communicate using smell. These chemicals may cloud or mask the attractive chemicals, or may disable mosquitoes from being able to detect those attractive odours, he suggests. Besides delivering annoying bites, mosquitoes cause hundreds of millions of cases of disease each year. As many as 500 million cases of malaria are contracted globally each year, and more than one million people die from it, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Mosquitoes can also spread West Nile virus, dengue fever, yellow fever and other illnesses. Currently the most effective repellents on the market often contain a chemical known as DEET, which has been associated in some studies with potential safety concerns, such as cancer and Gulf War syndrome. It also damages materials made of plastic. The federal Environmental Protection Agency has determined that DEET, when used as directed, is safe.

The Rothamsted team set out to get the mosquitoes' viewpoint. The researchers separated human volunteers into two groups—those who were attractive to mosquitoes and those who weren't. They then put each of the volunteers into body-size foil bags for two hours to collect their body odours. Using a machine known as a chromatograph, the scientists were able to separate the chemicals. They then tested each of them to see how the mosquitoes responded. By attaching microelectrodes to the insects' antennae, the researchers could measure the electrical impulses that are generated when mosquitoes recognize a chemical.

Dr. Logan and his team have found only a small number of body chemicals—seven or eight—that were present in significantly different quantities between those people who were attractive to mosquitoes and those who weren't. They then put their findings to the test. For this they used a so-called Y-tube olfactometer that allows mosquitoes to make a choice and fly toward or away from an individual's hand. After applying the chemicals thought to be repellent on the hands of individuals known to be attractive, Dr. Logan found that the bugs either flew in the opposite direction or weren't motivated by the person's smell to fly at all.

The chemicals were then tested to determine their impact on actual biting behaviour. Volunteers put their arms in a box containing mosquitoes, one arm coated with repellent chemicals and the other without, to see if the arm without the coating got bitten more.

Significant Repellency
The group's latest paper, published in March in the Journal of Medical Entomology, identified two compounds with "significant repellency." One of the compounds, 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-one, is a skin-derived compound that has the odour of toned-down nail-polish remover, according to George Preti, an organic chemist at the Monell Chemical Senses Centre in Philadelphia, who is involved in a separate line of research into insect-biting behaviour. The other, identified in the paper as geranylacetone, has a pleasant odour, though there is some question about whether the chemical is formed by the human biochemical process or is picked up in the environment, Dr. Preti says.

Dr. Logan declined to comment about the specific chemicals because of proprietary concerns. He says the findings have been patented and the group is working with a commercial company to develop the compounds into a usable insect repellent. One issue that still needs to be resolved: how to develop a formulation of the repellent chemicals that will stay on the skin, rather than quickly evaporating as they do naturally. The hope is to get a product to market within a year or two, he says.

Some of the chemicals researchers identified are believed to be related to stress, Dr. Logan says. Previous research has shown that these particular chemicals could be converted from certain other molecules and this could be as a result of oxidation in the body at times of stress, he says. However, it's not clear if the chemicals observed by the Rothamsted researchers were created in this way, and research is continuing to answer this and other questions.

Dr. Logan suggests that mosquitoes may deem hosts that emit more of these chemicals to be diseased or injured and "not a good quality blood meal." Proteins in the blood are necessary for female mosquitoes to produce fertile eggs, and Dr. Logan says it might be evolutionarily advantageous for mosquitoes to detect and avoid such people.

Other Research
Other research includes an effort by scientists at the University of California, Riverside, who published a paper in the journal Nature last week identifying a recently discovered class of molecules that inhibit fruit flies' and mosquitoes' ability to detect carbon dioxide. Mosquitoes can detect carbon dioxide emissions from long ranges, so turning off the ability to detect the gas, perhaps by releasing the inhibiting molecules into the environment, may be a way of keeping the bugs at bay, the researchers suggest. Another team, at the Monell Chemical Senses Centre, is launching a study into whether the taste of human skin and blood are related to the insects' interest in biting certain individuals.