This issue reports on a Hamas leader’s son’s conversion to Christianity, an amazing First Temple archaeological find, more.

OUR ISRAELI CONNECTION

David Zauber reports
Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of the top Hamas leader in the West Bank who made waves in 2008 by revealing he is a convert to the Christian faith, is about to publish a startling new book recounting how he also served for 10 years as a top agent of Israeli intelligence. Yousef fled the West Bank in 2007 and emerged a year later as a young Christian and novice surfer in California, far away from his father Sheikh Hassan Yousef, one of the founders of the Islamist terror militia. Ha’aretz reported on Wednesday that he will also reveal in a book due out next week the invaluable assistance he provided for the Shin Bet security agency by exposing terrorist cells and helping to thwart dozens of suicide bombings as well as assassination attempts on Israeli leaders.

An ancient massive wall and other stone fortifications recently uncovered on the edge of Jerusalem’s Old City date back 3,000 years to the First Temple period, around the time of King Solomon, archeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar said at the site on Monday. One section of the city’s outer wall revealed in her recent digs measured 70 meters long and 6 meters high. “This is the first time a structure has been found that could conform to descriptions of King Solomon’s construction in Jerusalem,” Mazar says. The excavations were conducted in the Ophel area between the City of David and the southern retaining wall of the Temple Mount, and further confirm the biblical accounts of Israel’s early kings building their capital in Jerusalem. Archaeologists, students and volunteers found remnants of a city attesting to complex engineering with an inner gatehouse for access into a royal quarter, with a royal structure adjoining the gatehouse and a corner tower overlooking the Kidron Valley.

A Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations Exec issued a statement on February 23, urging the Presbyterian Church (USA) not to take a strong anti-Israel position as its General Assembly Mission Council (GAMC) convenes in Louisville, KY, Feb. 23-25. The position is being promoted by the denomination’s Israel-Palestine Mission Network (IPMN), whose blog, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, “has hosted anti-Semitic videos and material from Muslim terrorist groups.”

IT’S NEWS TO ME

David Zauber reports
Former Palestinian intelligence official Fahmi Shabaneh, who recently went into hiding after he exposed serious instances of theft and corruption in the Palestinian Authority, told The Jerusalem Post this week that the PA has done nothing yet to stop the graft and donor nations have also failed to react. “Don’t the Americans, Europeans and Arabs care about their money that is being stolen?” asked an exasperated Shabaneh. “If they continue to turn a blind eye to the corruption of the Palestinian Authority, Hamas will eventually take over the West Bank the same way they took the Gaza Strip.” Shebaneh”s revelation that the chief-of-staff to PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas had solicited sex from a Christian Arab woman in exchange for a government job has been an embarrassing scandal for the PA, but the financial fraud has been largely ignored.

Seemingly not content with its already extensive anti-Israel activism, the Swiss-based World Council of Churches, comprised of over 300 denominations, is highlighting a new anti-Israel initiative. The WCC’s blandly but revealingly named “Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum” (PIEF) has just unveiled its own website and newsletter, presumably in a new wave of protest against “The Occupation.”

The Israel Project reports
Palestinian leaders reacted this week with promises of violence to the Israeli cabinet’s decision to include two holy sites in the West Bank as part of a comprehensive plan to preserve Israel’s national heritage and religious sites. Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza, urged Palestinians to unleash a new intifada (uprising) in response to the decision. “Jerusalem is ours, the land is ours, and God is with us,” Haniyeh said. “We will not accept these decisions and they will have no ramifications.”

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE

“We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions
that correspond with them.” ~ Abigail Adams