Israel expresses concern for Jews in Tunisia

As reported by Itamar Eichner of Ynet News, February 17, 2013:

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has instructed Israel's representatives abroad to ask the international community to pressure Tunisian government officials to safeguard the North African country's Jewish community, heritage and property.

The order was issued following fears for Tunisia's 2,000 Jews due to the hostile anti-Israel atmosphere in the country and anti-Semitic statements made by religious clerics.

Some 80 gravestones have been desecrated and plundered in Tunisia's Jewish cemeteries over the past month. Tunisian Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali condemned the desecration of the cemetery in the city of Sousse, noting that security forces were working to prevent additional attacks on Jewish tombs.

"There appears to be an increase in anti-Semitic statements among local religious clerics and cases of public incitement against Jews," says a report written by Gideon Bachar, head of the Foreign Ministry's Department for Combating Anti-Semitism.

"For example, when Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh's visited Tunisia in 2012, he was greeted by masses chanting, 'Kill the Jews.' Additional incidents included the torching of a Jewish synagogue, a demonstration outside the main synagogue in the city of Tunis, and the use of Israeli flags as a rag at the entrance to the toilet at the Tunis-Carthage Airport."

The report presents another example of incitement: A local imam called Ahmad al-Suhayli called to sterilize the wombs of Jewish women and asked God to destroy the "contemptible group of Jews."

The Foreign Ministry has instructed Israel's embassies in the United States, France, Britain, Germany and Italy to ask the countries' foreign ministries to relay Israel's demand that the Tunisian government must guarantee the Jewish community's safety.

They Israeli representatives were also instructed to ask the international community to publicly condemn the desecration of Jewish cemeteries.

Israel expects the European Union and its foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, to personally try to convince the Tunisians to reinforce security on the Jewish community and curb the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel incitement.

The Foreign Ministry has also distributed pictures and videos around the world of the desecration of the Jewish cemeteries.

Last year, Tunisia's Jews issued an official complaint about the chanting of anti-Semitic slogans, as reported by Agence France-Presse, April 3, 2012:

Tunisia's Jewish community said Wednesday it was making an official complaint over anti-Semitic slogans chanted at a protest demanding the imposition of sharia, or Islamic law, in the country.

"This is the third time this sort of thing has happened. It's too much. I can't accept it and that's why I'm lodging a complaint," Roger Bismuth, the representative of the Jewish community told AFP.

"Justice must be done," said Bismuth, who was received on Tuesday by Speaker Mustapha Ben Jafar.

Tunisia - a Muslim majority country of more than 10 million - is home to a Jewish minority of about 1,500.

The threats, some of them filmed on video, were made at a rally in Tunis on Sunday demanding that sharia become the main source of legislation in the new constitution currently being drafted, media reports said.

Similar incidents took place in January during a visit to Tunisia by Palestinian Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and in February during the visit of an Egyptian cleric.

The presidency of the National Constituent Assembly has voiced its "deep concern" and denounced the "slogans aimed at sowing discord within the Tunisian society of all races and backgrounds."

Viennese Jewish leader claims that anti-Semitism in Hungary is driving Jews into Austria

As reported by Jewish News One TV, February 5, 2013:

The leader of Vienna’s Jewish community says anti-Semitism in Hungary is causing an influx of Jewish immigrants to Austria.

Oskar Deutsch said he was pleased people were coming, but that the circumstances forcing Jews to leave Hungary were deeply troubling.

Austria’s Jewish community numbers approximately 8,000 people and is being joined in recent years by some 150 families annually fleeing from Hungary.

Hungary, which has a Jewish population of approximately 90,000, has been experiencing a wave of anti-Semitism after the ultra-nationalist party Jobbik picked up 47 seats in parliamentary elections in 2010.

The party provoked outrage when it recently called for a list of the country’s Jews to be drawn up as a matter of national security.

The party has also labeled Israel a "Nazi state" and accused Jews of controlling Hungary’s media and being responsible for the central European country’s economic woes.

Controversial genomic study supporting "Khazar Hypothesis" of origin of eastern European Jews comes under attack

This blogger has no expertise in the subjects of this post, but the fact that the study in question is being cited with approval by such "usual suspects" as "Dr." David Duke and Ted Pike and sites such as Stormfront automatically makes me skeptical of its conclusions.

As reported by Agence France-Presse, February 5, 2013:

Jews of European origin are a mix of ancestries, with many hailing from tribes in the Caucasus who converted to Judaism and created an empire that lasted half a millennium, according to a gene study.

The investigation, its author says, should settle a debate that has been roiling for more than two centuries.

Jews of European descent, often called Ashkenazim, account for some 90% of the more than 13 million Jews in the world today.

According to the so-called Rhineland Hypothesis, Ashkenazim descended from Jews who progressively fled Palestine after the Muslim conquest of 638 AD.

They settled in southern Europe and then, in the late Middle Ages, about 50,000 of them moved from the Rhineland in Germany into eastern Europe, according to the hypothesis.

But detractors say this idea is implausible.

Barring a miracle – which some supporters of the Rhineland Hypothesis have in fact suggested – the scenario would have been demographically impossible.

It would mean that the population of Eastern European Jews leapt from 50,000 in the 15th century to around eight million at the start of the 20th century.

That birth rate would have been 10 times greater than that of the local non-Jewish population. And it would have occurred despite economic hardship, disease, wars and pogroms that ravaged Jewish communities.

Seeking new light in the argument, a study published in the British journal Genome Biology and Evolution, compares the genomes of 1,287 unrelated individuals who hail from eight Jewish and 74 non-Jewish populations.

Geneticist Eran Elhaik of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, trawled through this small mountain of data in search of single changes in the DNA code that are linked to a group's geographical origins.

Such telltales have been used in past research to delve into the origins of the Basque people and the pygmy people of central Africa.

Among European Jews, Elhaik found ancestral signatures that pointed clearly to the Caucasus and also, but to a smaller degree, the Middle East.

The results, said Elhaik, give sound backing for the rival theory – the "Khazarian Hypothesis."

Under this concept, eastern European Jews descended from the Khazars, a hotchpotch of Turkic clans that settled the Caucasus in the early centuries AD and, influenced by Jews from Palestine, converted to Judaism in the 8th century.

The Judeo-Khazars built a flourishing empire, drawing in Jews from Mesopotamia and imperial Byzantium.

They became so successful that they sent offshoots into Hungary and Romania, planting the seeds of a great Diaspora.

But Khazaria collapsed in the 13th century when it was attacked by the Mongols and became weakened by outbreaks of the Black Death.

The Judeo-Khazars fled westwards, settling in the rising Polish Kingdom and in Hungary, where their skills in finance, economics and politics were in demand, and eventually spread to central and western Europe, according to the "Khazarian Hypothesis."

"We conclude that the genome of European Jews is a tapestry of ancient populations including Judaised Khazars, Greco-Roman Jews, Mesopotamian Jews and Judeans," says Elhaik.

"Their population structure was formed in the Caucasus and the banks of the Volga, with roots stretching to Canaan and the banks of the Jordan."

Many things are unknown about the Khazars, whose tribal confederation gathered Slavs, Scythians, Hunnic-Bulgars, Iranians, Alans and Turks.

But, argues Elhaik, the tale sketched in the genes is backed by archaeological findings, by Jewish literature that describes the Khazars' conversion to Judaism, and by language, too.

"Yiddish, the language of Central and Eastern European Jews, began as a Slavic language" before being reclassified as High German, he notes.

Another pointer is that European Jews and their ancestral groups in the Caucasus and Middle East share a relatively high risk of diseases such as cystic fibrosis.

The investigation should help fine-tune a fast-expanding branch of genomics, which looks at single-change DNA mutations that are linked with inherited disease, adds Elhaik.

Go here to see the full text of Dr. Elhaik's article.

Dr. Elhaik's study is coming under attack, such as in this column by Seth Frantzman in the Jerusalem Post, January 2, 2013:

A recent study (‘The missing link of Jewish European Ancestry’) published online by the Oxford journal Genome Biology and Evolution concluded that “the genome of European Jews is a tapestry of ancient populations including Judaized Khazars, Greco-Romans and Mesopotamian Jews, and Judeans, and their population structure was formed in the Caucasus and the banks of the Volga with roots stretching to Canaan and the banks of the Jordan.”

The article has been gaining some buzz in a variety of places, from neo-Nazi websites to radical left-wing blogs, as proof that the Jewish people are not a distinct “people” and that their origins are in the Caucuses, not the Middle East.

The author of the article, post-doctoral researcher Eran Elhaik of the Department of Mental Health at Johns Hopkins University, based his conclusion on what he describes as the “Khazar hypothesis,” which he accepts as a reasonable hypothesis that should be tested.

The Khazar theory for the origin of the Jews was invented by the womanizing communist intellectual Arthur Koestler in his 1976 book The Thirteenth Tribe. The Khazars, a Turkish polity that came to dominate the Caucuses in the 7th century, disappeared eventually several hundred years later, like many other tribal mini-states established in that area during the period. Some of the Khazar elite supposedly converted to Judaism.

Koestler wrote his book without historical training in the history of the Caucuses and primarily as an intellectual provocation about the history of the Jews.

When he came to the part about the fall of the Khazar empire, he noted that “where the historians’ resources give out, legend and folklore provide useful hints.”

Based on his intellectual exercise, which was grounded in nothing more than whimsical thinking, Koestler concluded: “Here, then, we have the cradle of the numerically strongest and culturally dominant part of modern Jewry.”

Elhaik, whose previous articles have dealt with such subjects as the genome sequence of the Leafcutter ant, decided that he could use his background to divine the true origins of the Jewish people.

He analyzed data on 1,287 “unrelated individuals of 8 Jewish and 74 non-Jewish populations,” the article said.

“As Judeans and Khazars have been vanquished…contemporary Middle Eastern and Caucasian populations were used as surrogates,” Elhaik writes. “Palestinians were considered proto-Judeans” and Armenians and Georgians were considered “proto-Khazars because they emerged from the same cohort as Khazars.”

THE AUTHOR sets out with the claim that he is interested in studying the European Jewish link to the Khazars since European-descended Jews are the “largest ethno-religious aggregate of modern Jewish communities, accounting for nearly 90 percent of over 13 million Jews worldwide.”

The analysis then fits the model.

According to the author, some 70% of European Jews “and almost all Eastern European Jews cluster with Armenian, Georgian and Azerbaijani Jews.” Surprisingly some 15% of Central European Jews are similar to the Druse and Cypriots.

The author notes that “strong evidence” for the Khazar hypothesis is that Eastern European Jews closely resemble Jews from the Caucuses. “Because Caucasus populations remained isolated in the Caucasus region, and because there are no records of Caucasus populations mass-migrating to Eastern and Central Europe prior to the fall of Khazaria, these findings imply a shared origin for European Jews and Caucasus populations.”

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. However, in the case of Elhaik, the evidence is not only weak and misleading, it is based on numerous sources that are not historical, instead employing conjectures and leaps in logic, as well as claims that cannot be substantiated.

One of Elhaik’s very first claims, that “contemporary Eastern European Jews comprise the largest ethno-religious aggregate of modern Jewish communities, accounting for nearly 90% of over 13 million Jews worldwide” is said to be based on a publication by the United Jewish Communities in 2003, titled the “National Jewish Population Survey, 2000-01.”

Except this source deals with the demographics of Jews in the United States.

An inquiry with Dr. Elhaik resulted in a note that this was a mistake that would be corrected, and that the actual source should be Harry Ostrer’s 2001 paper in genetics, “A Genetic Profile of Contemporary Jewish Populations.”

Except Ostrer wrote that “contemporary Jewry is comprised of ~13 million people… Among the Jews of the United States, ~90% are of Ashkenazi origin.” So right from the beginning Elhaik has made a basic flaw in his use of sources, one that was neither caught by the editors of Genome Biology and Evolution, nor the peer reviewers of his paper.

Yet it is a claim that should have been caught, for most people who study Jews know that 90% of them are not Ashkenazi and their population is much more diverse than that presented by Elhaik.

However, the real flaws in this new research are historical. The author claims a massive knowledge of history that has major implications for his findings.

“There are no records of Caucasus populations mass-migrating to Eastern and Central Europe prior to the fall of Khazaria.”

The footnote for this is another genetic research study, but a claim like this requires historical knowledge of the Caucuses. In fact, the Caucuses were a place of great human movement from the 15th to 19th centuries. Cossacks, Circassians, Chechans, Tatars and numerous other groups roamed the region in the period, some of whom, like the Khazars, vanished to history.

The author claims that his evidence shows that “Judaized Greco-Roman male-driven migration directly to Khazaria is consistent with historical demographic migrations and could have created the observed pattern.” Following in the footsteps of Tel Aviv University academic Shlomo Sand’s work, The Invention of the Jewish People, Elhaik claims “no Jewish historiography was produced from the time of Josephus Flavius (1st century CE) to the 19th century.”

But the source, Sand, is not an expert on Jewish history in the period – his book, like Koester’s, was more a polemic.

Elhaik goes further, noting that “the religious conversion of the Khazars encompassed all the Empire’s citizens and subordinate tribes and lasted for the next 400 years…the Judeo- Khazars fled to Eastern Europe and later migrated to Central Europe and admixing with the neighboring populations.”

There is actually no evidence of this; the general view has been that only some of the Khazar elite converted to Judaism.

Yet Elhaik even claims to know the details of the Judeo-Khazar life. “After the decline of their Empire, the Judeo-Khazars refugees sought shelter in the emerging Polish Kingdom and other Eastern European communities, where their expertise in economics, finances, and politics were valued.”

The source for much of this is Koestler, passed off as fact with no mention that Koestler simply inferred most of it from his imagination and theories. The author argues that his study showed a remarkably “high genetic similarity” between Jews and Armenians, but not Georgians.

In order to explain similarities between Jews and Druse, the author argues that the Druse have “Turkish-Southern Caucuses origins… the genetic similarity between European Jews and Druse therefore supports the Khazarian Hypothesis.”

Yet the author is not a historian of the Druse, and has not investigated the Druse religion. He claims the Druse migrated to Syria and Palestine, but doesn’t bother to mention that they migrated from Egypt, not modern-day Turkey.

Still, the author is convinced that the Druse-Jewish connection “should not be confused with a Semitic origin,” – as evidently the author knows, without having genetically tested the Druse, that they are not Semites or Arabs.

Because the author believes his data shows that Jews are related to Armenians, he posits that “our findings support a largescale conversion scenario that influenced the majority of the [Khazar] population.”

THE TROUBLING issue with Elhaik’s paper is that it was accepted for publication by an academic journal. It is a problem because it becomes part of the historical record, so that the Koestler thesis can now be said to be supported by “genetic evidence.”

Commentators who have written about it now embrace the science as a “groundbreaking study.” Rev. Ted Pike posted an enthusiastic message on his blog noting that “new genetic research confirms Koestler’s Khazar theory.” Therefore, Pike concludes, the Jews “are proselytes who seized land in Palestine that never belonged to their true ancestors.”

But what is equally disturbing is that even the genetic evidence Elhaik presents is unclear. He argues that modern-day Ashkenazi Jews share around 30% of their ancestry with modern-day people in the Caucuses, such as Armenians. From this he postulates that Jews and Armenians share Khazar ancestry.

But one might equally conclude that in fact many Armenians are simply descended from Jews.

Similarly with the Druse, rather than concluding that the Druse have a convoluted Caucuses ancestry, one could note that many Druse share some genetics with Jews – since Jews and Druse once lived in similar areas in the Middle East, such as Alexandria, where they both were significant populations in the 11th century.

The author’s claim that there are “significantly smaller” genetic distances between Jews and Armenians and Georgians than between Jews and Palestinians, the Beduin and Jordanians, is based on the odd assumption that the Beduin in Jordan should necessarily share genetic material with Jews.

Why would modern-day Palestinians be any better stand-ins for 1st century Jews than, say, modern Jews? Why would anyone assume the Jews and Beduin are related? The data presented also doesn’t appear to show “significant” differences, with scores of .234 and .2387 provided as evidence of “genetic distance” between Caucuses and Middle Eastern origins of Jewish populations– without an explanation of the significance of the scores (i.e what is the score of a Japanese person and an Icelander?). The author also doesn’t include a dummy variable or control for the fact that neither the Beduin or Armenians are good stand-ins for Jewish ancestry.

If we think of the Elhaik study in another context, consider this: If one did a genetic study of African-Americans and white Americans and found that both of them share 30% of their ancestry with the British, one would not be correct in concluding that African-Americans have their origins in London.

Yet the author has seemingly made this leap of logic.

This points to the sad tragedy that due to an obsessive interest in the “true” origins of the Jewish people, all sorts of scientific norms are discarded in favor of embracing any wild theory.

That Elhaik, not previously an expert on Jewish genetics or history, can publish an academic paper “proving” the origins of the Jews, is evidence of this tendency.

March 7, 2026 update: As reported by Jo Elizabeth of All Israel News, March 7, 2026:

The theory that Jewish people are descended not from the 12 tribes of Israel but from an Eastern European kingdom called Khazar has been gaining traction again, but is there any truth to it?

Academic and specialist in Semitic languages, Dr. Michael G. Wechsler, has collated evidence pointing to the contrary, declaring the theory “scholastically debunked.” In a video released last Monday, Wechsler explains that this theory, lately promoted by the likes of Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, has been widely rejected by historians, archaeologists, linguists, and geneticists.

Proponents of the theory say the Khazars, a nomadic people group of central Asia who converted to Judaism around the 9th century, were the true ancestors of Ashkenazi Jews today. Wechsler highlights the 1972 book by Hoshaat Harkavi, “Arab Attitudes to Israel,” which describes how this claim has been “peddled in the Arab world as an ideological weapon, targeting the legitimacy of the state of Israel.”

Strangely, another book, “The Thirteenth Tribe” by Arthur Koestler in 1978, also endorsed this theory, despite Koestler being Jewish. He believed that distancing the Jewish people from the 12 tribes of Israel would deflect antisemitic hate, but in fact, it was antisemites who embraced the Khazar Theory with enthusiasm.

The Saudi Arabian delegate to the United Nations claimed that the theory “negated Israel’s right to exist," and neo-Nazi magazine, "The Thunderbolt"declared it the “political bombshell of the century” (Scammell, Michael. Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic, 2009, p. 547). Today, the theory is popular among Palestinians, with the Palestinian Authority. President Mahmoud Abbas, religious leaders, and the media have all reinforced these claims.

The theory suggests that after the fall of the Khazar Empire in the latter half of the 10th century, the converted Khazars emigrated to Europe, establishing what is known as Ashkenazi European Jewry today, despite the fact that Jews had long been living in Europe before the Khazar Empire's dissolution.

Wechsler points out that the majority of Israeli Jews today are, in any case, not Ashkenazi but descended from Mizrachi and Sephardi Jews, “who have an established and well documented history in the Middle East and Mediterranean basin, including the land of Israel,” and blasted the Khazar Theory as “soundly disproven by the meticulous work of manifold scholars and scientists.”

Summarizing the main reasons for its rejection, Wechsler first outlines the unreliability of the few historical sources that might support the claim. He refers to “a handful of references in Muslim Arabic works, which were either contemporaneous with the Khazar Empire or composed soon after it was conquered by Svyatoslav of Rus around 970 CE,” which he says are based on “rumor and hearsay.”

There are also two Hebrew documents, a letter by the supposed king of the Khazars to the prominent Andalusian Jew Ḥasdai ibn Shapruṭ and an account of the Khazars' supposed conversion, which he says contradict each other and have been rightly judged to be pseudepigraphal.

Wechsler then argues that the notable silence from other classical Muslim historians and geographers, as well as from contemporary Jewish and Christian sources, also undermines the theory. That the Khazars existed is documented; that they were Jewish, not so much.

Professor Charles Stampper wrote, "In addition to this broad textual silence, there is no material evidence for the conversion of the Kazars to Judaism, or even for the presence of a significant Jewish community in Khazar lands.”

As an expert in Semitic languages, Wechsler also notes the absence of linguistic elements linking Ashkenazi Jews to the Khazars.
Neither the Germanic Yiddish language nor Jewish names show any influence from Central Asian languages. Rather, the linguistic roots support the veracity of the “long accepted scholarly view that Ashkenazi or European Jewry arose through migration up the Italian peninsula into the trading cities of the Rhine Valley, whence, after adopting the German stock of Yiddish, they eventually branched out into Europe and eastward into Russia,” he says.

The way Khazars are recorded as bowing prostrate to honor other men also casts serious doubt on claims that they had converted to Judaism, since Jews refuse to bow to anyone except God, which is what got Mordechai in such trouble in the biblical book of Esther.

A Jewish commentary by Saadia Gaon from around 935 C.E. states of the Khazars, "before the man of the best qualities among them, they do indeed prostrate themselves and worship him." Not exactly kosher.

In addition to all this historical evidence, Wechsler also cites proof that there is no meaningful genetic connection between Ashkenazi Jews and the Khazari people. He states that a 2012 paper, which made the link, has been rejected by the majority of geneticists because of several severe methodological flaws,” since it uses Caucasians, Armenians, and Georgians as DNA proxies for the long-gone Khazars, “despite there being no proven link between these groups.”

Conversely, he presents a plethora of work on Jewish genome history by other researchers, including some of the field's leading geneticists such as Harry Ostrer, Michael Hammer, Gil Atzmon, and Doron Behar, saying their work consistently confirmed Behar’s conclusion that “Ashkenazi Jews share the greatest genetic ancestry with other Jewish populations,” which trace back to the Levant.

“Even if there were some partial genetic link between the Khazars and Ashkenazi Jewry,” says Wechsler, “this would not matter since the borders of Jewish ethnicity have always been permeable to inclusion by means of conversion.”

He continues, “The theoretical infusion of Khazar DNA into the collective Jewish genome would have no more bearing on the issue of collective Jewish indigeneity to the land of Israel than the actual infusion of Arab DNA into the collective Egyptian genome has on the issue of collective Egyptian indigeneity to Egypt,” before outlining the many different ethnic backgrounds that make up the Palestinian populace today.

Wechsler believes that the Khazar Theory, so often wielded against Jewish claims to indigeneity to the land of Israel, is roundly debunked due to its lack of strong historical, linguistic, archaeological, and genetic evidence. “Even if partial Khazar ancestry existed, it would not invalidate Jewish identity or indigeneity,” he concludes.

New evidence of complexity in various creatures shows God's greatness as creator

Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. Revelation 4:11

As reported by Sally Appert in The Epoch Times, February 5, 2013:

Common moles can smell in stereo

Go here for the full text of the original article cited in the item above.

As reported by Ms. Appert in The Epoch Times, February 7, 2013:

Salmon use magnetic map to find rivers

Go here for the abstract of the original article cited in the item above.

Research on the sleeping patterns of seals has not only uncovered interesting information about the brains of seals, but may be useful in aiding sleep treatments for humans, as reported by Michelle McQuigge of Canadian Press on February 19, 2013. Go here for the abstract of the original article cited in this item.

Of course, evolutionists would have us believe that all the complexity in these creatures is the product of blind, random chance-given enough time.

Mississippi outlaws slavery--in 2013

More than 147 years after it became part of the Constitution of the United States, Mississippi has finaly ratified the 13th Amendment, which reads;
1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Of course, the moment the amendment obtained the ratification by the legislatures of the 3/4 of the states required, it became part of the Constitution and was the law of he land in all states, not just those that had voted to ratify it. That is, slavery became illegal in Mississippi on December 6, 1865 whether or not the state legislature voted to ratify it. If anyone was in doubt about that, those doubts have now been removed (and fugitive slaves can now return to Mississippi in safety).

As reported by Jerry Mitchell of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, February 17, 2013:

Oscar-nominated “Lincoln,” which depicts the political fight to pass the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, played a role in Mississippi officially ratifying the amendment this month — a century and a half later.

The story opens, not surprisingly, in a movie theater.

Last November, Dr. Ranjan Batra, associate professor of neurobiology and anatomical sciences at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, saw the Steven Spielberg film and wondered afterward what happened when the states voted on ratification.

That night, Batra — a native of India who became a U.S. citizen in 2008 — went on the usconstitution.net website, learning the rest of the story.

After Congress voted for the 13th Amendment in January 1864, the measure went to the states for ratification.

On Dec. 6, 1865, the amendment received the three-fourths' vote it needed when Georgia became the 27th state to ratify it. States that rejected the measure included Delaware, Kentucky, New Jersey and Mississippi.

In the months and years that followed, states continued to ratify the amendment, including those that had initially rejected it. New Jersey ratified the amendment in 1866, Delaware in 1901 and Kentucky in 1976.

But there was an asterisk beside Mississippi. A note read: “Mississippi ratified the amendment in 1995, but because the state never officially notified the US Archivist, the ratification is not official.”

The next day, Batra spoke with Ken Sullivan, an anatomical material specialist for UMC’s body donation program.

When Batra mentioned Mississippi had never ratified the amendment, Sullivan responded that he remembered state lawmakers had voted to ratify the amendment in 1995, when he was a senior at Crystal Springs High School.

Batra shared what he had read online, and Sullivan started researching.

He telephoned the National Archives’ Office of the Federal Register, confirmed Mississippi had yet to officially ratify the amendment and found out what paperwork was needed.

That weekend, Sullivan took his wife, Kris, to see “Lincoln,” which details the 16th president’s fight to abolish slavery once and for all.

“People stood up and applauded at the end of it,” he said. “That’s the first time I ever saw an audience do that.”

Sullivan had tears in his eyes, overwhelmed.

He knew he would do what he could to ensure his native state officially ratified the amendment. “I felt very connected to the history,” he said.

He tracked down a copy of the 1995 Senate resolution, introduced by state Sen. Hillman Frazier, D-Jackson, who had been upset to learn Mississippi was the only state that had never ratified the 13th Amendment.

The resolution passed both the Mississippi Senate and House.

“It was unanimous,” Frazier recalled. “Some didn’t vote, but we didn’t receive a ‘nay’ vote.”

The last paragraph of the resolution called on the secretary of state to send a copy to the Office of the Federal Register.

Why the copy was never sent in 1995 remains unknown.

“What an amendment to have an error in filing,” said Dick Molpus, who served then as secretary of state. “Thanks to Ken Sullivan for being a good citizen in bringing this oversight to light, so it can be corrected.”

That “Lincoln” played a role pleases him, he said. “It was one of the most inspirational movies I’ve ever seen.”

After seeing the film, Sullivan contacted the office of Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, who agreed to file the paperwork and make it official.

On Jan. 30, Hosemann sent the Office of the Federal Register a copy of the 1995 Senate resolution, adopted by both the Mississippi Senate and House.

On Feb. 7, Charles A. Barth, director of the Federal Register, wrote back that he had received the resolution: “With this action, the State of Mississippi has ratified the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.”

Frazier remarked, “We’re very deliberate in our state. We finally got it right.”
Hosemann said he is glad to see the chapter closed, adding, “It was long overdue.”

Engineers succeed in miniaturizing T-Ray scanners

Another technological advance for the surveillance society, as reported by Naveen Athrappully of The Epoch Times, February 13, 2013 (updated February 21, 2013):

A pair of electrical engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has developed tiny, inexpensive silicon microchips that can generate and radiate high-frequency electromagnetic waves called terahertz (THz) waves or T-Rays that penetrates materials without the ionizing damage of X-rays.

Application of this technology ranges from security and communication to health care and gaming. T-Rays can sense every molecule and so can detect cancer cells, hunt for explosive devices, concealed weapons and drugs and can even measure the fat content in a chicken. “We are not just talking about a potential. We have actually demonstrated that this works,” says Ali Hajimiri, one of the engineers. “The first time we saw the actual images, it took our breath away.”

The problem with T-Ray scanners till now has been that they are huge, requiring lasers and many lenses to focus light, and cooling equipment to keep everything at operating temperatures. But the Caltech duo has managed to miniaturize a T-Ray imager cheaply.

“Using the same low-cost, integrated-circuit technology that’s used to make the microchips found in our cell phones and notepads today, we have made a silicon chip that can operate at nearly 300 times their speed,” says Hajimiri. “These chips will enable a new generation of extremely versatile sensors.”

Hajimiri, a professor at Caltech, and Kaushik Sengupta (PhD ’12) describe the work in the December issue of IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

Silicon chips are not designed to operate at terahertz frequencies, and the team had to harness the collective strength of many transistors operating in unison to boost the strength of the signal. “Traditionally, people have tried to make these technologies work at very high frequencies, with large elements producing the power. Think of these as elephants,” says Hajimiri. “Nowadays we can make a very large number of transistors that individually are not very powerful, but when combined and working in unison, can do a lot more. If these elements are synchronized—like an army of ants—they can do everything that the elephant does and then some.”

The many challenges the team faced were met with a strong determination to see the project through to its end and an ability to view things differently. “We had to take a step back and ask, ‘Can we do this in a different way?’” says Sengupta. “Our chips are an example of the kind of innovations that can be unearthed if we blur the partitions between traditional ways of thinking about integrated circuits, electromagnetics, antennae, and the applied sciences. It is a holistic solution.”

The question that remains is whether we have the responsibility to utilize this new technology in a way that benefits mankind. Or will it be used to further degradation?

The article by Messrs. Hajimiri and Sengupta can be found here, but only a quick abstract is available to non-menbers.

British government tells pet owners to have microchips implanted in their dogs--or else

As reported by Alex Johnston of The Epoch Times, February 7, 2013 (updated February 11, 2013):

All dogs in the United Kingdom must be implanted with microchips within the next few years, authorities said this week, adding that pet owners who refuse to comply will be served up a heavy fine.

Environment Secretary Owen Paterson said that the microchips, which will have to be implanted in the dogs by April 2016, will allow the animals to be more easily traced back to their owners if they get lost, or could allow owners to be held accountable if the dog misbehaves. Paterson said that the chips would also take the pressure off animal shelters.

“It’s a shame that in a nation of dog lovers, thousands of dogs are roaming the streets or stuck in kennels because the owner cannot be tracked down. I am determined to put an end to this and ease the pressure on charities and councils to find new homes for these dogs,” Paterson said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Microchipping is a simple solution that gives peace of mind to owners. It makes it easier to get their pet back if it strays and easier to trace if it’s stolen. The generous support of Dogs Trust will mean that this valuable service can be offered for free to pet owners across the country,” Paterson continued.

There are some 8 million pet dogs in the U.K., with around 60 percent of them already implanted with microchips. The chips go underneath the skin between the shoulder blades.

By 2016, police will be granted the ability to check dogs to see if they have the chips. Owners who do not get their dogs chipped will be hit with fines for as much as $800.

Paterson said that more than 100,000 dogs are dumped or lost each year in the U.K., costing taxpayers some $89 million to deal with them. The chips will help these dogs be found and reunited with their owners more quickly, he stressed...

When the practice of implanting microchips in dogs started to catch on in the early 1990s, it was promoted as a technology that would be useful in finding dogs that were lost, although not many dogs wander 200 miles away from home (the range of the devices in those days). In 20 years the technology has gone from convenient to compulsory. I don't object to microchips being implanted in dogs--it's the compulsory aspect of it that bothers me. And it's only a matter of time before microchips will be implanted in people, with the authorities claiming that it's for their own good and the good of society.

One of the reasons I believe in a pre-millennial, pre-Tribulation rapture is that it would best explain the behaviour of the Christ-rejecting world of the end times. Imagine if you will, that you're a non-Christian, and a pre-millennial, pre-Tribulation rapture of untold numbers of Christians has just occurred. You won't believe that what has happened is the rapture, because God will send those remaining on Earth a strong delusion, that they should believe a lie (II Thessalonians 2:11). The sudden disappearance, without a trace, of a large number of people at the same time, will possibly be attributed to extraterrestrials, enlightened spirit beings, or perhaps to a "harmonic convergence" of people thinking the right thoughts. Those left behind will likely believe that they are the "good guys," and that those who disappeared were the "bad guys"--narrow-minded fundamentalist Christians whose opposition to the new cosmic consciousness was creating negative vibrations and was preventing the introduction of the New Age. They were taken away either for re-education, or maybe just taken away, period, and now the New Age of peace and harmony can begin.

Whatever the explanation, you'll probably still feel anxiety over the mass disappearance, especially over the fact that there are no clues as to where these people have gone. If only there were some way of tracing their whereabouts...

Of course, there is this microchip technology that has been around for a few decades, and it has been used on dogs, but only a relative handful of people have used it. However, the recent vanishing of a significant percentage of the population makes you think that if it happened once it could happen again, and if it does, you want those left behind to be able to detect where you've gone. You therefore abandon whatever resistance you had to the idea of having a tracking device placed into your body, and decide to accept a mark in your right hand or forehead, unaware that you're helping to fulfil the prophecy of Revelation 13:16.

110 years ago: Kaiser Wilhelm II expresses his religious views

Much of the content of this post is taken from the book Evangelist of Race: The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain by Geoffrey G. Field, published by Columbia University Press in 1981.

Theologians taking an increasingly liberal and allegorical view of the Bible, especially the Old Testament; a form of replacement theology; an identification of Christianity with the interests of one's own nation, and a mystical view of that nation and its leaders in God's unfolding plan--if those sound like things that are present in the early 21st century, they were also present in the early 20th century--in Germany.

As Germany's head of state from 1888-1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859-1941) was also the head of the nation's Lutheran church. In the early 1900s Kaiser Wilhelm became a great admirer of the ideas of Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927), a native of England who had moved to Germany as a young man and had become a firm Germanophile. The book by Mr. Chamberlain that ttracted the admiration of the Kaiser was titled Die Grundlagen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, published in Germany in 1899 and published in English in 1910 under the title The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century.

Chamberlain's aim in the Foundations was to substantiate two fundamental convictions--that humanity was divided into distinct races which differed in their physical structure and mental and moral capacities, and that the struggle and interaction of these races was the main propelling force of history and the key to understanding cultural, political, and social development...His book was designed to show the Germanic or Teutonic race as the main architect of modern European civilization. (Field, p. 180).

So taken was the Kaiser with Mr. Chamberlain and his magnum opus that he wrote the following in a letter to Mr. Chamberlain on December 31, 1901 (Field, p. 253):

Truly, let us thank Him up there, that he still views us Germans with such favor; for God sent your book to the German people and you personally to me. You were chosen by Him to be my ally and I shall thank Him eternally that He did so...The German Michael is waking up and that is good for him, then he will be on the alert and will achieve something; and once he has begun to work he will accomplish more than anyone else...Once the Teutonic Catholics have been brought by you into the open conflict between Teutons and Catholics, that is "Romans," then they wil be "awakened" and will "know" that which the father confessors have been trying to hide from them--that they are being kept in humiliating subjection to "Rome" as an instrument against "Germany"...And now, for the New Year 1902, I wish God's blessing and Christ's strength to you my comrade-in-arms and ally in the struggle for the Teutons against Rome, Jerusalem etc. The feeling of fighting for a cause that is absolutely good and holy carries the guarantee of victory.

According to Professor Field (p. 253):

With good reason did one close aide of Wilhelm regret that "religion and mysticism are now playing an increasingly large part in the Emperor's speeches."

At the time that Mr. Chamberlain's book was attracting attention, a liberal view of the Bible was becoming more popular in Germany. In January 1902, an Assyriologist named Freidrich Delitzsch delivered an address to the German Oriental Society titled Babel und Bibel (Babylon and the Bible), in which he argued the cultural superiority of ancient Babylon over Israel, and that evidence from recent excavations at Nineveh and Babylon showed strong Babylonian influences over Israel. Mr. Delitzsch also argued that the monotheism of the Old Testament was largely borrowed from Babylonian sources. Kaiser Wilhelm invited Mr. Delitzsch to a private audience a month later and was shocked by the professor's rejection of the deity of Jesus Christ and the divine inspiration of the Old Testament (Field, p. 255).

While still professing to be a devout Lutheran, the Kaiser, under the influence of the ideas of Mr. Chamberlain, was gradually changing his religious views. A year after his original lecture, Mr. Delitzsch addressed the German Oriental Society, and criticized churches and schools for resisting "science" concerning the Old Testament. The Oriental Society's president, Admiral Hollmann, was sensitive to the criticism coming from Bible-believing Christians, and requested Kaiser Wilhelm's formal permission before publishing Professor Delitzsch's views in the society's bulletin. The Kaiser, who was having trouble clarifying his views, received a lengthy letter from Mr. Chamberlain, who argued that God's revelation in history was continuous and not limited to Israel, and that in the modern age, "Germany had a special mission: to rediscover and safeguard the vital essence of Christianity" (Field, p. 257).

Influenced by Mr. Chamberlain's letter, the Kaiser wrote his reply to Admiral Hollmann on February 15, 1903. Quoting Professor Field (pp. 257-258):

Wilhelm's letter to Hollman endeavored to harmonize these ideas with a somewhat more orthodox position; the result was confusing, but illustrative of the intellectual transition he was making. He reproached Delitzsch for his polemical style and for disturbing the faith of many contemporaries, and went on to discuss two forms of revelation--"historical" and "purely religious, preparing the way for the future Messiah." The first was almost pure Chamberlain: there was a continuous revelation in history in figures like Hammurabi (the hero of Delitzsch), Homer, Charlemagne, Luther, Shakespeare, Goethe, Kant, and Kaiser Wilhelm I. For the sake of orthodoxy he added Abraham and Moses to the list. God, Wilhelm claimed, guided mankind's advance by "donating" to nations the great intellects of the world; he also "revealed himself differently to the different races according to their position and rank in the scale of civilization." With his description of the second, "more religious," form of revelation, Wilhelm attempted to draw closer to orthodox Protestants and fulfill his obligations as head of the church. Here he declared that a single thread of revelation ran from Abraham and Moses, through the Prophets and the Psalmists to Christ himself. Abraham's race was portrayed as "ever trying to hold fast to their monotheism" under repeated and heavy pressures, and protected by God until the heralded Messiah appeared. In the latter parts of the letter, however, Wilhelm returned to Chamberlain, borrowing ideas and extracting whole phrases to argue that sections of the Old Testament were historical and "did not reveal God's word." Their value was symbolic only. From his constant repetition of the word "perhaps," it seems that Wilhelm both sensed his own underlying confusion and wished somehow to soften the contrast between himself and Protestant orthodoxy. Nonetheless he pressed on with a Chamberlain-style conclusion reaffirming faith in the "one and only God," recognizing that modern research would alter perceptions of the Old Testament and predicting (in words drawn from Chamberlain) "that much of the nimbus of the chosen people [the Jews] will thereby disappear.

Published on February 19, 1903, the Kaiser's letter caused an uproar. Some conservative circles saw it as marking a breach with...liberal Protestant theology, although they disapproved of the new direction Wilhelm had taken. Very few contemporaries suspected the influence of Chamberlain...

For all his influence over the Kaiser's letter, Mr. Chamberlain took exception to much of it, denying that Abraham was a historical figure at all and objecting to the idea that Abraham was a herald of Christ. Mr. Chamberlain also disputed that the Jews had developed a true monotheism (Field, p. 259).

Again quoting Professor Field (pp. 259-260):

Under Chamberlain's guidance Wilhelm's opinions gradually shifted from Lutheranism to a racist Germanic Christianity; the Hollmann letter marks a stage in this journey. Moreover, the unrelenting hostility toward Catholicism and Judaism that fills this correspondence offers a vivid illustration of how closely the German state was identified with Protestantism and how deeply ingrained was repugnance to genuine religious pluralism in the highest circles of the land.

The humiliation of defeat in war and the social disintegration of the Reich in 1918 reinforced the worst racial fears of Wilhelm and Chamberlain. In its last decade their correspondence moved in that strange paranoid world of collapsed empires, Bolsehvik terror, Jewish and Freemason conspiracies, and secret hopes for a new crusade against the forces of racial decay and materialism that is so characteristic of the writings and letters of the extreme right in the postwar era. Wilhelm blamed the Jews for Germany's defeat, his own exile, and the Weimar Republic, and accepted the notorious Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as an accurate description of their unwavering conspiratorial resolve. His letters, very disjointed in thought, violent in rhetoric, and punctuated by scores of exclamation marks, reveal a mind derailed, a fertile intelligence brought--on the subjects of race and religion at least--to the borders of insanity. He continued to read Chamberlain and was enthralled by Mensch und Gott in 1921. By this time he had abandoned Abraham and the Old Testament altogether--his world, like that of Chamberlain, was one massive struggle, a vast theodicy of German and Jew.

Mr. Chamberlain became an early and enthusiastic supporter of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, especially after Mr. Hitler paid a visit to Mr. Chamberlain, then in failing health, at his home in Bayreuth in 1923. Although he was a man of the Second Reich, Mr. Chamberlain is often thought of as a spiritual father of the Third Reich, and the Nazis paid tribute to his influence on his death. Mr. Hitler paid a last visit to Mr. Chamberlain shortly before his passing, and attended his funeral (as did Prince August Wilhelm, son of the former Kaiser) (Field, pp. 432-445).

40 years ago: Richard Nixon phones Billy Graham

On February 21, 1973, Richard Nixon, a month into his second term as 37th President of the United States of America, telephoned evangelist Billy Graham. I refer the reader to my earlier post, which includes a link to the recording of the conversation. To this blogger the most interesting aspect of the conversation between America's highest officeholder and her most famous evangelist isn't what was discussed, but what wasn't discussed, particularly the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision on January 22, 1973, which effectively legalized abortion throughout the United States--not a word about it in this conversation.

25 years ago: Jimmy Swaggart admits to sin and resigns from his ministry

Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?
Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God?
For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written. Romans 2:22-24

Now the overseer must be above reproach...temperate, self-controlled, respectable...
...He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil's trap. I Timothy 3:1,7 (NIV)

...but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge. Hebrews 13:4b

It's hard to believe that 25 years have passed since the "televangelist wars." On February 21, 1988, Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, addressing an audience of 6,000 at his Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, resigned from his ministry, admitted an unspecified sin, and asked for forgiveness. The following day, leaders of the Family Worship Center barred Rev. Swaggart from the pulpit for three months and imposed a two-year period of rehabilitation after seeing photographic evidence that the Assemblies of God pastor had been less than faithful in living up to his marriage vows.



Mr. Swaggart had loudly (and correctly) denounced the sin of televangelist Jim Bakker when his ministry had been brought down in a sex scandal the previous year. Mr. Swaggart had also accused fellow Assemblies of God pastor Marvin Gorman of adultery. Mr. Gorman had responded by hiring a private detective, who obtained photographs of Mr. Swaggart at a motel in New Orleans frequently used by prostitutes. Mr. Gorman handed the evidence over to Assemblies of God leaders.

Mr. Swaggart's lachrymose performance was so impressive it even fooled this blogger into believing that he was sincere in his repentance--until he refused to accept the discipline meted out by his church, arguing that it would cripple his ministry and his Bible college. On April 8, 1988, the Assemblies of God defrocked Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, and he resigned from the church. Obviously, Mr. Swaggart didn’t think that the standards laid down in the Bible applied to him, so he took his balls and went home.

Mr. Swaggart decided to continue in the ministry, becoming a non-denominational Pentecostal pastor and turning Family Worship Center into a non-denominational church. He was caught with another prostitute in 1991, and stepped down from his leadership position temporarily. In 2013, Family Worship Center is still in business, with Jimmy Swaggart's name prominently displayed at the top of the home page.

This punk will likely have a career in politics

Austin Krause (remember that name) seems to have the appropriate attitude for a future politician. I suspect that it was his attitude that led to a reduction in his playing time. As reported by Matt Steichen of The Farmington Independent, February 13, 2013:

Farmington goaltender Austin Krause wanted to celebrate Senior Night his own way, and it's landed him a 10-day suspension.

Krause purposely scored a goal into his own net, then showed his middle finger in the direction of the coaching staff and gave a salute before leaving the ice in the third period of Tuesday's Senior Night hockey game at Schmitz-Maki Arena.

The Farmington school district responded to the incident with a statement on its website Wednesday afternoon.

“This action has had a[n] immediate and dramatic impact on the Farmington boys hockey team and the entire Farmington community. The district is taking the proper steps to investigate the incident and will take appropriate action in line with school policy. Student privacy regulations prevent any further release of information regarding this matter.

“Our focus is on in supporting the players and coaches in our hockey program and the successful completion of their season.”

Krause's goal, scored with 3:13 remaining in the third period, tied the game 2-2. Chaska scored again about a minute later against the Tigers' third-string goalie and went on to win 3-2.

Krause posted on Facebook after the game that he had had a running dispute with head coach Keith Revels and other members of the Farmington coaching staff over playing time, and had talked with his teammates about his plan to score an own-goal before the game.

On his Facebook page, Krause wrote:

“They played this sophomore goalie for the starter, he was terrible, I would try and talk to the coaches about this and tell them I want playing time but they never really listen to me or gave me a chance to show them that I'm a better goalie but still wouldn't trust me so I had it it with I asked a few of my players if they care if I did it and they didn't care they thought it would be funny so at the third period they dumped it in I stopped it put in my net started to skate off then flicked the coaches not the team the coaches then I saluted them then got off.”

He added: “My hockey season is over. I did it for myself. (Like my status) if you think the coaches should quit:)”

The incident was caught on video by FHS student Alex Kelly, a friend of Krause, who was told by Krause to "have (his) camera ready" according to Kelly's mother, Jodi. The original video got over 20,000 hits on Youtube by Wednesday morning before Kelly complied with a school administrator's request to take it down. However, new versions of the video were soon picked up by Yahoo, USA Today and Deadspin. The version above was uploaded by YouTube user KODKIDZ.

The incident set off conversations and arguments on various social media websites and internet message boards about what actions are appropriate for high school athletes when dealing with disagreements with coaches.

Marty Gliva, Facebook: “Can't say I support what Krause did. I didn't start, or really even play that much my senior year of lacrosse, because there were sophomores and juniors who were better than me, but I still tried my hardest whenever I did. Obviously, I wasn't the biggest fan of my coaches either, but your team isn't about your coaches, it's about your team. And when I got to play on senior night, I scored on the other teams goal, not my own...”

...Parents also speculated that the coaching staff’s motivation is preparing the program for its debut in the South Suburban Conference in 2014-15.

“Parents have talked to the coaches and they said they don’t make decisions based on the individual, but based on the entire team,” they said. “I said that I thought they were making decisions based on the 2014 team and they didn’t agree with that.”

Another parent, who also wished to remain anonymous, disagreed and said the younger players had earned the varsity playing time, and give the team the best chance to win.

“The coaching staff can’t look that far into the future, otherwise they won’t have a job. They have to play to win today... The younger players are clearly qualified players and they’ve earned their playing time based on how they’ve done in tryouts and in games. The young players' presence has a lot to do with the team having the record that it does," he said. “(Coach Revels) has unequivocally not been unfair. I recognize there’s going to be resentment when kids move up a level, but it’s a reality of varsity sports.”

Another parent agreed, saying, "It's a life lesson that your kids need to learn. What Austin did was all for himself and not his team. He didn't hurt the coaches, he hurt the players he grew up playing hockey with who were out there battling for 46 minutes to win a hockey game and he flushed in down the toilet with one selfish act."

Krause played 492 minutes in goal this season and had a record of 5-4-1 as the starter. His goals-against average was 2.8 and he stopped 87.7 percent of opponents’ shots. Sophomore Gage Overby has logged about 548 minutes while earning a 5-5 record, a 2.42 goals-against average and a 90.1 save percentage. Nick Schoening has played 203 minutes in goal and has a 2.76 goals-against average and a 1-3 record.

Truth in advertising proves fatal for the customers of Heart Attack Grill

For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: Proverbs 23:21a

It can be said of this restaurant that its casualties died doing something they really loved. As reported by Paul Takahashi the Las Vegas Sun, February 11, 2013:

The second unofficial spokesman for the Heart Attack Grill in downtown Las Vegas has died from an apparent heart attack.

John Alleman suffered a heart attack last week as he waited at the bus stop in front of the restaurant, located inside the Neonopolis at Fremont Street and Las Vegas Boulevard.

Alleman was taken off life support shortly after 1 p.m. on Monday, said restaurant owner Jon Basso. He was 52.

"He lived a very full life," said Basso, who seemed shaken when reached by phone Monday evening. "He will be missed."

The Pennsylvania native is survived by his only family, his brother Paul. Basso said Alleman had a genetic predisposition for cardiac problems, as both of his parents died of heart attacks in their 50s.

Basso recalled Alleman as a fun-loving man who loved the Heart Attack Grill. The medically themed restaurant is famous for its high-fat menu that includes a record-breaking 9,982-calorie, 3-pound Quadruple Bypass Burger. The grill's slogan is "Taste worth dying for."

Since the restaurant opened in October 2011, Basso said Alleman would stand outside its doors every day, coaxing customers in. Soon enough, Alleman became a fixture at the restaurant he loved, Basso said.

When he wasn't working security at an abandoned high-rise construction site on the Strip, Alleman could be found at the grill, talking with customers and eating a burger.

"He never missed a day, even on Christmas," Basso said. "People just loved him. He connected with people in a real way."

Although he was never on the restaurant's payroll, Alleman was everywhere else. His caricature, "Patient John," graces the front of Heart Attack Grill's menu, clothing line and merchandise.

From time to time, "Doctor Jon" Basso said he would offer a free meal and drink for Alleman's troubles. He always declined, Basso said.

"He never wanted a handout from anyone. He always insisted on paying," Basso said. "He lived, ate and breathed the Heart Attack Grill."

Alleman is the second unofficial spokesman to die in the restaurant's nearly two-year history in Las Vegas. In March 2011, Blair River — known as the Grill's "Gentle Giant" — died of flu-related pneumonia, Basso said at the time. The 575-pound spokesman was just 29.

Since then, the Heart Attack Grill had a spate of health-related incidents that seem to live up to the restaurant's fated name.

In February 2012, one man was stricken with what was believed to be a heart problem while eating a Triple Bypass Burger. Two months later, a woman suffered from a similar medical problem while reportedly eating a Double Bypass Burger. It was unclear at the time if her medical issue was related to the food.

Alleman, who weighed about 180 pounds, is proof that heart attacks could happen to anyone, Basso said.

"Heart attacks aren't a laughing matter," he said. "You don't have to be tremendously old or fat. You can be in your 30s and 40s and die of a heart attack."

Although Alleman's death was a "wake-up call," Basso said he won't stop serving Flatliner Fries and the world's "most calorific burger" as long as the public has an appetite for them. The restaurant will have a new spokesman or woman when they find someone with as much passion for burgers as Alleman, Basso said.

"The grill is where you can be yourself. We accept people as they are," Basso said. "(Alleman's death) isn't going to stop us from what we're doing. People have got to live their lives."

A positive example of a Christian whose values are reflected in his business

Providing for honest things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men. II Corinthians 8:21

A good news item for a change: Armour Shield Roofing, a business located in London, Ontario, won the Better Business Bureau of Western Ontario 's Integrity Award for 2012, after having twice previously been a finalist for the award. The company is owned by Assaad Eldik, a friend of mine from my days at the University of Western Ontario in 1987-88 when we were in a Bible study together. The picture accompanying the London Free Press article shows that Assaad has lost some hair in the 25 years since I last saw him--but then, so have I. Congratulations, Assaad, and keep up the good work.

10 years ago: The death of Hugh Trevor-Roper

Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! Isaiah 5:21

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, Romans 1:22

On January 26, 2003, British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper died at the age of 89. Mr. Trevor-Roper was reputed to be an expert on 17th-century Britain and Nazi Germany, but was exposed as a fool when he vouched for the authenticity of the "Hitler diaries" in the early 1980s, which were exposed as a hoax. Mr. Trevor-Roper mocked Christian belief in the truth of the history recorded in the Bible--a period of history that wasn't his specialty--but he couldn't recognize the fraudulence of documents from a very recent period of history that was his specialty.

100 years ago: The birth of Cleon Skousen

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?
And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? II Corinthians 6:14-15

On January 20, 1913, political theorist W. Cleon Skousen was born in the Raymond, Alberta; a lifelong Mormon, he grew up in California. Mr. Skousen was an FBI agent from 1940-1951, and police chief of Salt Lake City from 1956-1960. He was a supporter of the John Birch Society and made his name writing and speaking against Communism and the New World Order. His best-known book was The Naked Communist (1958); other books of his included The Naked Capitalist (1970); The Five Thousand Year Leap (1981); and The Cleansing of America (2010). He died in Salt Lake City on January 9, 2006, 11 days before his 93rd birthday. Mr. Skousen's views have been embraced by some--including Mormons such as Glenn Beck--and denounced by many others.

I heard Mr. Skousen speak on the campus of the University of Alberta on May 5, 1983, following Eldridge Cleaver in an appearance sponsored by the Freemen Institute (now known as the National Center for Constitutional Studies). I had read a newspaper item sometime earlier stating that Mr. Cleaver, a former leader of the Black Panther movement in the United States and a professing Christian by the late 1970s, was flirting with Mormonism (strange, given the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' historic attitude toward blacks); indeed, seven months after his Edmonton appearance, Mr. Cleaver was baptized as a Mormon, and was apparently still a member at the time of his death at the age of 62 on May 1, 1998. Mr. Cleaver's conversion to Mormonism didn't have any apparent influence on his behaviour, since he developed a cocaine addiction and had numerous brushes with the law. As I recall his speech at the U of A, his message consisted mainly of how he became disillusioned with Communism after spending time in societies dominated by it. There was nothing in his address that mainstream conservatives would have disagreed with.

I'd never heard of Mr. Skousen or the Freemen Institute, but as I recall, the FI billed itself as an organization interested in promoting constitutional government. I don't remember much of Mr. Skousen's talk, but if I recall correctly it seemed to focus mainly on things that would have been of interest to Americans, and seemed somewhat inapplicable to Canada. I started to suspect that the Freemen Institute was a Mormon front, and that suspicion was heightened by a look at the audience, which consisted mostly of young people who had a "Mormon look" about them--better-groomed and better-dressed than average, looking as though they had stepped out of a television show from the 1950s.

Mr. Skousen and the Freemen Institute were popular with some Christians and political conservatives at the time, and some Christians were appearing at conferences sponsored by FI (as well as with the Unification Church ("Moonie") front organization CAUSA International, perhaps unwittingly (the Freemen Institute, like a typical front, didn't come right out and say that it was a Mormon front organization). This sort of fellowship with unbelievers on the basis of similarity of political views is in disobedience to scripture, and should be avoided by Christians, regardless of how worthwhile the cause appears to be. Such forbidden fellowship may have affected the results of a few elections in the last few decades, but it hasn't resulted in a more godly society.

Israeli scholar completes 30-year mission to "fix" textual errors in Old Testament

Another backlog item, as reported by Associated Press, August 10, 2012:

For the past 30 years, Israeli Judaic scholar Menachem Cohen has been on a mission of biblical proportions: Correcting all known textual errors in Jewish scripture to produce a truly definitive edition of the Old Testament.

Though his edits won't mean much to the average reader – they focus primarily on grammatical blemishes and an intricate set of biblical symbols – it marks the first major overhaul of the Hebrew Bible in nearly 500 years.

Poring over thousands of medieval manuscripts, the 84-year-old Cohen identified 1,500 inaccuracies in the Hebrew language texts that have been corrected in his completed 21-volume set. The final chapter is set to be published next year.

The massive project highlights how Judaism venerates each tiny biblical calligraphic notation as a way of ensuring that communities around the world use precisely the same version of the holy book.

According to Jewish law, a Torah scroll is considered void if even a single letter is incorrect or misplaced. Cohen does not call for changes in the writing of the sacred Torah scrolls used in Jewish rites, which would likely set off a firestorm of objection and criticism. Instead, he is aiming for accuracy in versions used for study by the Hebrew-reading masses.

For the people of the book, Cohen said, there was no higher calling.

"The people of Israel took upon themselves, at least in theory, one version of the Bible, down to its last letter," Cohen said, in his office at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv.

The last man to undertake the challenge was Jacob Ben-Hayim, who published the Mikraot Gedolot, or Great Scriptures, in Venice in 1525. His version, which unified the religion's varying texts and commentaries under a single umbrella, has remained the standard for generations, appearing to this day on bookshelves of observant Jews the world over.

Since Ben-Hayim had to rely on inferior manuscripts and commentaries, numerous inaccuracies crept in and were magnified in subsequent editions.

The errors have no bearing on the Bible's stories and alter nothing in its meaning. Instead, for example, in some places the markers used to denote vowels in Hebrew are incorrect; or a letter in a word may be wrong, often the result of a centuries old transcription error. Some of the fixes are in the notations used for cantillation, the text's ritual chants.

Almost none of the errors Cohen found are in the sacred Torah scrolls, since they do not include vowel markings or cantillation notations.

Cohen said unity and accuracy were of particular importance to distinguish the sacred Jewish text from those sects that broke away from Judaism, namely Christians and Samaritans.

To achieve his goal, Cohen relied primarily on the Aleppo Codex, the 1,000-year-old parchment text considered to be the most accurate copy of the Bible. For centuries it was guarded in a grotto in the great synagogue of Aleppo, Syria, out of reach of most scholars like Ben-Hayim. In 1947, a Syrian mob burned the synagogue, and the Codex briefly disappeared before most of it was smuggled into Israel a decade later.

Now digitized, the Codex, also known as the Crown, provided Cohen with a template from which to work.

But because about a third of the Codex – nearly 200 pages – remains missing, Cohen had to recreate the five books of Moses based on trends he observed in the Codex as well as from other sources, such as the 11th-century Leningrad Codex, considered the second-most authoritative version of the Jewish Bible.

Cohen also included the most comprehensive commentaries available, most notably that of 11th-century Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, known as Rashi.

The result is the completion of Ben-Hayim's work.

"It was amazing to me that for 500 years, people didn't sense the errors," said Cohen, who wears a knitted skullcap and a gray goatee. "They just assumed that everything was fine, but in practice everything was not fine."

The Hebrew University Bible Project in Jerusalem has also been working on a scientific edition of the Hebrew Bible, but theirs is directed toward scholars, while Cohen's output is aimed at wider consumption.

Rafael Zer, the project's editorial coordinator, called Cohen's work "quasi-scientific" because it presents a final product and does not provide the reader a way of seeing how it was reached. He credits Cohen for bringing an exact biblical text to the general public but said it "comes at the expense of absolute accuracy and an absolute scientific edition."

With the assistance of his son Shmuel, a computer programmer, Cohen launched a digital version he hopes will become a benchmark of the Israeli education system. He said his ultimate goal was to "correct the past and prepare for the future."

As a former teacher, Cohen said he took particular pride in a sophisticated search engine that allows even novices to explore his work with ease. He called computers a "third revolution" to affect Jewish scripture, following the shift from scrolls to bound books and the advent of the printing press.

"I want the Bible to be user-friendly," said Cohen, a grandfather of eight. "Today, we can create sources of information and searches that allow you to get an answer to everything you are wondering."

Israeli ultra-Orthodox politicians seek to broaden house of worship tax exemption to include all religions

Another backlog item, as reported by Aviel Magnezi of Ynet News, August 12, 2012:

It is not every day the representatives of one religion speak up for other religions. Following a petition to the Supreme Court about favoring synagogues over other religions' houses of prayer, Orthodox members of Knesset issued an amendment to the law last week.

In early 2012, The Jerusalem Institute of Justice, providing legal and public advocacy for marginalized communities in Israel, petitioned the Supreme Court to address discrimination in tax exemptions for tabernacles.

The petition stated that while all houses of worship are exempt from municipal tax, only synagogues get tax exemptions for halls outside the main house of prayer, whereas mosques and churches that include other structures on their premises must pay municipal taxes for those structures.

Shortly after the petition was filed, Knesset representatives turned to the Supreme Court, stating that Shas MK Nissim Zeev and Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism have issued a bill that offers exemption from municipal tax to additional property of all places of worship of all religions.

The petitioners demanded that until the discriminatory law is addressed, synagogues' tax exemption must be revoked. Zeev and Gafni emended the law, and the Knesset approved the amendment, promoting religious equality, though probably upsetting municipalities' tax balances.

Following the amendment, petitioners are about to file a motion to close the petition.

"Christian" Jim Wallis takes issue with pro-Israel ad

I've always suspected Jim Wallis, "spiritual advisor" to White House occupant B. Hussein Obama, of being a Communist, and I've never believed he was a Christian. It's a measure of how astray evangelicalism has gone in recent decades that while Mr. Wallis's pro-Communist and anti-American views haven't changed, evangelicalism has rapidly moved leftward to catch up to him, hence the label "evangelical" is now often applied to Mr. Wallis.

Another backlog item, as reported by Jewish Telegraphic Agency, October 7, 2012:

A Jewish group and a Christian group are hanging ads in the New York subway system urging tolerance.

The ads being placed by Rabbis for Human Rights-North America and Sojourners, led by the Christian author and social justice advocate Jim Wallis, will go up on Monday and aim to counter a pro-Israel advertisement that reads "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”

The ad by Rabbis for Human Rights reads, “In the choice between love and hate, choose love. Help stop bigotry against our Muslim neighbors.” The Sojourners ad says, “Love your Muslim neighbors.”

The ads reportedly will be hung near the anti-jihad ads in the same Manhattan subway stations, according to The New York Times.

A federal judge last Friday ordered the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority to hang the pro-Israel ad sponsored by Pamela Geller, the founder, editor and publisher of AtlasShrugs.com and executive director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative.

"Christian"-Jewish Roundtable talks cancelled because of dispute over Israel

Another backlog item, as reported by Associated Press, October 19, 2012:

Major American Jewish organizations said Wednesday they have cancelled talks with liberal Protestant leaders after the churches sought an investigation of US military aid to Israel.

The American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, and Conservative and Reform Jewish movements are among those withdrawing from the national Christian-Jewish Roundtable.

The dialogue group was founded in 2004 to ease tensions over escalating church protests against Israeli policy in the Palestinian territories.

The Jewish groups announced their decision in response to a request by several mainline Protestant leaders for Congress to re-evaluate US military aid to the Jewish state.

The church leaders said in an October 5 letter to Congress that Israel was guilty of widespread human rights violations against Palestinians that violated US legal standards for recipients of military aid.

Rabbi Steven Wernick, chief executive of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism called the claims "repugnant, regrettable and morally misguided." The American Jewish Committee, a co-founder of the dialogue group, has requested a meeting with senior church leaders to "determine a more positive path forward."

ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman said, "In light of the failure of any of the church leaders to reach out to us, we have decided not to attend this interfaith meeting. The blatant lack of sensitivity by the Protestant dialogue partners we had been planning to meet with has seriously damaged the foundation for mutual respect, which is essential for meaningful interfaith dialogue.”

The church leaders seeking the congressional hearings represent some of the largest mainline Protestant groups in the United States. They include Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; Gradye Parsons, a top executive of the Presbyterian Church (USA); Rosemarie Wenner, president of the United Methodist Council of Bishops; and Peg Birk, leader of the National Council of Churches.

In the letter to Congress, the Christian leaders said both Israelis and Palestinians share responsibility for the conflict in the region, and church leaders acknowledged the suffering of both groups. But the leaders said, "we have also witnessed widespread Israeli human rights violations committed against Palestinians."

Arguing that US military aid to Israel was "sustaining the conflict and undermining the long-term security interests of both Israelis and Palestinians," church leaders said Congress should investigate whether Israel has violated the human rights standards set by the Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Export Control Act.

The Christian-Jewish Roundtable was scheduled to meet next Monday. Tony Kireopoulos, an interfaith leader for the New York-based National Council of Churches, said Wednesday that the organizations were "disappointed that the meeting wasn't going forward" and they hoped to restart the dialogue.

The US Episcopal Church, also a member of the interreligious dialogue, didn't endorse the Protestant statement to Congress. Alexander Baumgarten, the Episcopal public policy director, said the request for congressional hearings was not in line with Episcopal policy.

As reported by Neil Rubin of Jewish Telegraphic Agency, October 15, 2012 (updated October 17, 2012):

On Wednesday, Jewish groups unilaterally pulled out of an upcoming annual Christian-Jewish roundtable meeting, saying the Oct. 22-23 forum was no longer viable. Earlier in the week, the Anti-Defamation League had announced that it would skip the meeting and called on representatives from other Jewish groups to follow suit.

The Jewish groups -- the American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith International, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly, the Union for Reform Judaism and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism -- wrote to their Christian colleagues that the letter to lawmakers “represents an escalation in activity that the Jewish participants feel precludes a business-as-usual approach.” They called for senior leadership of Jewish and the Christian groups to meet to “determine a more positive path forward for our communities.”

In addition to its content, Jewish groups were upset that they had no advance warning of the letter and that it was released on the first day of a two-day Jewish holiday, when most Jewish organizations were closed in observance of Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah...

...Saying “there’s been a betrayal of trust,” Ethan Felson, vice president and general counsel of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs umbrella group told JTA, “We have to discern if there’s a positive path forward.”

The Protestants’ letter, sent to every member of Congress, was signed by leaders of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Methodist Church, the National Council of Churches USA and the United Church of Christ.

Saying they have “witnessed the pain and suffering” of both Israelis and Palestinians, the signers said that “unconditional U.S. military assistance to Israel has contributed to this deterioration, sustaining the conflict and undermining the long-term security interests of both Israelis and Palestinians.”

The letter called for the launching of “an immediate investigation into possible violations by Israel” of agreements with Washington for alleged illegal use of U.S.-sold weapons against Palestinians. The signers also asked for “regular reporting on compliance and the withholding of military aid for non-compliance.”

In the past, many of these same church leaders have sent notes to Congress criticizing specific Israeli efforts, particularly settlement building. However, this is the first salvo against the $3 billion annual U.S. aid package to Israel.

A number of mainline Protestant churches have had fights at recent conventions over boycotting products made in the West Bank, divesting in companies doing business with Israel or harshly criticizing Israel’s rule of the West Bank.

This summer, the Presbyterian Church (USA) rejected divestment from companies doing business with Israeli security forces in the West Bank by a 333-331 vote. A similar call was defeated more decisively at a Methodist assembly in May. And in September, the Quaker group Friends Fiduciary Corporation voted to remove a French and an American company from its financial portfolio over what it said was the companies’ involvement with Israel’s occupation of Palestinian areas.

Rabbi Noam Marans, director of interreligious and intergroup relations for the American Jewish Committee, and a co-chair of the roundtable, initially told JTA earlier this week that boycotting the meeting was not the right response, despite the legitimate anger of Jewish groups.

However, on Wednesday he said, “Unfortunately, some Christian leaders chose to take their anger regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Washington without any warning to Jewish partners in the roundtable. We need to meet to reset the framework for ongoing dialogue that has and can produce positive results.”

Felson said JCPA is considering asking Congress to investigate delegitimizers of Israel and to issue a resolution against their efforts. Suggesting that American Jewish groups could retaliate by advocating against U.S. aid to the Palestinians, Felson said the signers of the letter are “opening up a Pandora’s box.”

In the meantime, Marans said Jewish groups should continue pursuing local Christian-Jewish ties in other venues.

“Liberal Protestants live side by side with Jews, and rabbis have relationships with local ministers," Marans said. "Once the antipathy toward Israel of some national leaders is communicated in the context of these relationships, the local religious leadership is heard from and communicates to their national leadership their concerns.

"The Jewish community understands that the overwhelming majority of Americans and American Christians understand that Israel must defend itself and that Israel is not an aggressor, that Israel is on the front lines of terrorism and has modeled how to create a balance between security and concern for the individual rights of all of the inhabitants.”

Indeed, some Presbyterians are openly angry with their leader, the Rev. Grayde Parsons, who signed the letter to Congress.

"We know there's a very small, very vocal group in the Presbyterian Church that wants to see Israel punished," said the Rev. John Wimberly, co-moderator of an unofficial group called Presbyterians for Middle East Peace. "We think we represent the 70 percent of Presbyterians polled in 2009 who said that maintaining a strong diplomatic and military relationship with Israel should be a U.S. priority."

He said Parsons’ signing of the letter “makes a lot of people mad and a larger number of people embarrassed."

Parsons did not return JTA's calls for comment.

David Brog, executive director of Christians United for Israel, a largely evangelical group often billed as the Christian AIPAC, called the move by the mainline Protestant churches to reach out to Congress an “accelerating trend” with a message for the Jewish community.

“This should be a wake-up call,” said Brog, who is Jewish. “Christians will be involved in Israel and the Middle East whether Jews accept that or not. We cannot take Christian support for Israel for granted. We have to actively engage our Christian neighbors and take the case to them, so that when they are active on this issue they support Israel.”

As reported by JTA on October 17, 2012:

...Rachel Lerner, vice president of the J Street Educational Fund, wrote last Friday on the Daily Beast website that her liberal pro-Israel group “opposes proposals to condition or cut security assistance to Israel.” She added, however, that J Street shared the Christian leaders’ “concern that conditions in the region are deteriorating to the point where they `threaten to lead the region further away from the realization of a just peace.’ ”

Lerner called for American Jews to put "at least as much energy and effort" into pushing for a two-state solution as they are putting into fighting such letters, of which she said there would be more.

Also, a dozen Jewish clergy allied with Jewish Voice for Peace praised the Protestants’ leaders call. Many of the organization's members have called for boycotts of Israel.

“It is altogether appropriate -- and in fact essential -- for Congress to ensure that Israel is not in violation of any U.S. laws or policies that regulate the use of U.S. supplied weapons,” said the statement signed by 10 rabbis, two rabbinical students and a cantor.

Welsh Muslim woman sentenced to life in prison for beating her 7-year-old son to death because he was slow in memorizing the Qur'an

As reported by Liz Keen of Wales News, January 7, 2013:

A mother collapsed in the dock of Cardiff Crown Court after being jailed for life for brutally murdering her seven-year-old son then trying to burn his body.

Maths graduate Sara Ege, 33, first swayed and then fell to floor, just seconds after the judge Mr Justice Wyn Williams announced she would serve a minimum of 17 years behind bars for cruelly beating the little boy when he failed to learn the Koran fast enough.

As she was picked up and helped to her feet by two female dock officers to be led away to the cells, her parents, visting Cardiff from their home in India, both became upset.

Her father, a businessman and retired antique dealer covered his mouth with a hankerchief and sat shaking his head, while her mother, who had arranged her wedding into a Cardiff family, which the judge said she had found difficult, wept.

Sara Ege herself, described as a devoted mother who only wanted her best for her child had been in tears throughout the half-hour sentencing hearing following her conviction a month ago for murder and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

She had denied both offences and blamed others for the violence and the fire at the family in Severn Road, Canton in July 2010.

Her little boy, city primary school pupil Yaseen Ali Ege was at first believed to have died in the blaze which started in his bedroom but was later discovered to have suffered catastrophic internal injuries.

The judge today said he believed she had beaten the little boy, sometimes with a large wooden pestle, over a period of three months as he struggled to learn the Koran to please her.

He told her: "Yaseen must have failed in some way that day and that failure was the trigger for the (final) beating you inflicted."

In confessions Ege made to police but retracted she said her child had collapsed in front of her, still reciting the holy verses as he died.

For the entire article, see pages 1, 2, and 3.

Bethlehem Roman Catholic patriarch celebrates Palestinian "state"

This will really help Roman Catholic-Jewish relations--as reported by Associated Press, December 24, 2012:

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — The top Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land has celebrated the United Nations’ recent recognition of a Palestinian state in his annual pre-Christmas remarks.

Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal told followers at the patriarchate's headquarters in Jerusalem on Monday that they were celebrating “two occasions, the birth of Christ our Lord and the birth of the state of Palestine.”

From Jerusalem, Twal set off in a procession for the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Jesus’ traditional birthplace.

There, he was reminded that life on the ground for Palestinians has not really changed since the statehood recognition last month.

He had to enter the biblical city through a massive metal gate in the barrier of towering concrete slabs Israel built between Jerusalem and Bethlehem during a wave of Palestinian attacks in the last decade.