Jerusalem Watchman

Today, as midnight arrives in country after country, explosions of celebration are set to rend the skies, from over the Opera House in Sydney (GMT minus 10 hours) to over Pearl Harbor in Hawaii (GMT plus 10 hours).

Wherever the Gregorian calendar is held to, toasts will be drunk, fireworks fired, dances kicked off, resolutions [...]

This is an open letter to United Nations and European Union staff members posted in Jerusalem and Israel. Had I the funds I would print this and place it on every one of the myriad UN and EU vehicles driving around this city. Meanwhile hopefully someone will pick it up and pass it on.

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Dear [...]

“Now also many nations have gathered against you,
Who say, “Let her be defiled,
And let our eye look upon Zion.”
But they do not know the thoughts of the LORD,
Nor do they understand His counsel;
For He will gather them like sheaves to the threshing floor.
“Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion;
For I will make your horn [...]

Christian Americans, my friends over there tell me, are on the move. Like soldiers emerging shell-shocked from a battle where they have been bombarded with round after round of high explosive, they are starting to shake off the stupor created in the ten months since the US became the Obamanation.
Today is Thanksgiving. And today, as [...]

It’s never quiet in the Middle East, but sometimes the drums are muted. They roll like faraway thunder. You hear them, you know they are out there, but they’re not pressing in on your consciousness, not demanding your attention or causing you to act. Your life - our life - continues as normal.
This is both [...]

It’s been a long time coming.
For decades the United States of America has been edging away from its only real friend in the Middle East.
The relationship — which began tentatively at that brave moment when President Truman defied the ‘wise men” in his own administration and chose to recognize the newly born Jewish state; the [...]

US President Barack Obama stood in the General Assembly Hall at the United Nations last week, spelled out his goals of pursuing nuclear disarmament and preventing proliferation, and announced his intention to squeeze Israel hard to surrender the historical homeland of the Jewish people for the creation of an Arab state.
The United States has an [...]

On August 27 my family and I returned to Jerusalem from a summer vacation in central Europe. For a few glorious weeks we relished the cool days, the occasional, dramatic thunderstorm and bucketing rain that left the lush, deep-green vegetation streaming and dripping for hours.

With the drought, heat waves, grime and crush of Jerusalem far [...]

And the LORD said to Abraham:

“Lift your eyes now and look from the place where you are—northward, southward, eastward, and westward; for all the land which you see I give to you and your descendants forever. …  Arise, walk in the land through its length and its width, for I give it to you.” (Genesis [...]

Dear President Obama
You will just have heard Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deliver his speech, which as you know you are partially responsible for having pressed him into making.
Hopefully you will have heard his heartfelt appeal to the Arab world to grasp the hand that Israel has long held out for peace.
You will have heard [...]