Levi Strauss & Co., the jeans manufacturer that has long been a leader in corporate support for the homosexual activist movement, has come out with a new marketing scheme that may dupe consumers who buy their products into displaying support for same-sex “marriage.”

Company owned stores in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco will be displaying their summer line-up of jeans and shirts adorned with “White Knots for Equality,” a symbol that denotes support for homosexual “marriage.”

The symbol, a white ribbon tied in a knot, was developed by a California media company to capitalize on the opposition to the passage of Proposition 8, the California voter-approved constitutional marriage amendment. The knotted white cloth mimics the various ribbon campaigns such as the pink ribbon for breast cancer campaign.

Commenting on the company’s amalgamation of marketing and political activism, senior vice president for global creative services for Levi’s, Rene Holguin, said, “Our design team was seeking something that would resonate beyond just fashion but also fit with our white product theme.”

The staff members of the stores that are displaying the clothing with white knots have been instructed to engage customers with explanations of the homosexual agenda symbol, hoping that customers will be educated through an “informed conversation.”

“We have weekly calls with our store managers and we sent out detailed information about the White Knot organization and also ways in which we’re supporting marriage equality overall as a company,” Levi’s director of brand marketing and public relations, Erica Archambault, told the New York Times. She added that she wants sales staff “to be educated and able to have an informed conversation that’s more interactive than reading off a card or something.”

San Francisco-based Levi Strauss was the first Fortune 500 company to extend health benefits to homosexual couples and was a major financial supporter of the “No On Prop 8 Equality Business Council,” which was formed to oppose efforts to define marriage as being between one man and one woman in the California constitution.

The company gave $25,000 to Equality for All, the coalition leading the No on 8 campaign, while Robert Haas, the company’s chairman emeritus and his wife gave a further $100,000, according to a company spokesman.

A report by Business Wire states that the Levi Strauss Foundation announced yesterday that it will make a $25,000 donation to the National Center For Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and $25,000 to The San Francisco LGBT Community Center (“The Center”).

NCLR was the lead counsel on the effort to overturn Proposition 8 in the California Supreme Court.

“The Center” is a homosexual drop-in facility that “organizes and plans the political and cultural future for the LGBT community” in San Francisco.

- From Prophecy News Watch

A Christian Singaporean couple were found guilty of sedition on Thursday for distributing evangelical publications that cast Islam in a negative light, court officials said.

Ong Kian Cheong and his wife Dorothy Chan had been charged with distributing a seditious publication to two Muslims in October and March 2007 and sending a second such booklet to another Muslim in December that same year, a district court official told AFP.

The publications were found to have promoted feelings of ill-will and hostility between Christians and Muslims, the Straits Times said on its website.

A hearing was set for June 4 for mitigation pleas and sentencing.

The sedition charge carries a jail term of up to three years or a fine of up to 5,000 Singapore dollars (3,437 US) or both.

Singapore, a multi-racial island nation, clamps down hard on anyone seen to be inciting communal tensions.

In 2005, two ethnic Chinese men were jailed for anti-Muslim blogs.

- From Prophecy News Watch

At least two of the Muslim ex-convicts arrested last week in the Bronx on charges of planning to bomb synagogues and shoot down airplanes came to Islam while in prison. Their arrest has raised the point that America’s prison system often serves as Evangelism 101 for Islam.

A few years ago, I visited several Muslims in a state penitentiary in Culpeper, Va., and combed local mosques for former inmates to learn why so many prisoners choose Islam.

Dantes Augustin, a former Catholic, told me of a “humble, meek and very pious” Muslim prison chaplain he met in a federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pa. The chaplain took the time to explain the basics of the religion and Mr. Augustin converted within a year.

In Islam, he explained, “Cleanliness is highly recommended; you should not use profanity, you should be courteous. I always wanted to practice virtues and Islam gave me the tools.”

Mr. Augustin added, “I met Muslims from all over the world in American prisons: Indonesians, Palestinians, Egyptians, even Chinese. Islam is the fastest growing religion in prison because people there see it for what it really is.”

There are anywhere from 200,000 to 340,000 Muslim inmates in local, federal and state prisons, or 9 percent to 15 percent of the nation’s incarcerated population even though they are 2 percent of the total U.S. populace. The federal Bureau of Prisons told me Muslims comprised 5.7 percent of their inmates, and a spokeswoman for the District’s jail system told me 18 percent of its inmates were Muslim.

Prison is a fertile ground for inmates who already feel victimized by American society, according to Roy and Niger Innis of the Manhattan-based Congress of Racial Equality.

“Prison is the best recruitment ground imaginable,” Roy Innis said. “Young black men change their so-called white Christian slave names to a Muslim name. Then they are told it wasnt their crime, it was racism that put them in jail.”

Conversions to Islam, they said, are considered the ultimate rebellion against a white-controlled system. Black Christians, they added, are called traitors to their race and Christianity is labeled as a weak and powerless faith because of the killing of its founder. Islam, which honors Jesus as a prophet but denies that He rose from the dead, is portrayed as the religion of power.

“Criminals are made to feel they are political prisoners and revolutionaries in the criminal system,” Niger Innis said. “Once people are released, they go back to Watts or Harlem and integrate themselves into the black community. So, if they are part of a terrorist cell in prison, they spread that into the black community.”

Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society and the founder and former director of the National Islamic Prison Foundation, had a different read on why inmates convert.

“Islam is organized in prison; there’s prayer five times a day; and things that are organized run better,” he says. “There’s needs for boundaries and needs for certainties. Machismo has an important aspect in prisons and Islam has a strong concentration on being manly. That really resonates with people who come from homes without fathers around.”

- From Prophecy News Watch

Two experts, one a Christian the other a devout Muslim, are both wary of a plan in progress to establish the first four-year accredited Islamic college in the United States.

Both fear that the proposed school, which could open as soon as next fall, would promote the idea of the Islamic state.

“Certainly, an attempt at the formation of an accredited college by Muslim academics can be a good thing if it is founded in the ideas of freedom and liberty and against Islamism (political Islam),” said Dr. M. Zuhidi Jasser, founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), to The Christian Post.

“But I’m not convinced that this college will be creating anti-Islamist Muslims who will reform sharia (Islamic law) and bring Muslim thought into an era where religious law can be separated from government as the Establishment Clause mandates,” he added.

Jasser, who is a devout practicing Muslim American and a former physician to the U.S. Congress, pointed out that one of the college’s main scholars, Imam Zaid Shakir, had said in a 2006 New York Times story that he hopes the United States will one day be a Muslim country ruled by Islamic law.

The “primary root cause” of Islamic radicalism, stressed Jasser, is the mission to establish an Islamic state.

“The leadership of Zaytuna [College] seems to be all about political Islam with no public critique of the global mission of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist idealogies,” said Jasser, whose public critique of problems he sees in his faith has resulted in a backlash from the Muslim community.

He added, “I dream of the day where universities have established endowed chairs in the study of anti-Islamist studies from the viewpoint of freedom and with devout Muslims leading the charge and the academics.”

A group of American Muslims, including Zaid Shakir, is leading an effort to establish Zaytuna College, or what some call the “Muslim Georgetown.”

Shakir, who converted to Islam while serving in the U.S. Air Force, said the college will offer liberal arts education and Islamic studies, The Associated Press reported. The college plans to start with offering two majors: Arabic language and Islamic legal and theological studies.

In 1996, Shakir founded Zaytuna Institute based in Berkeley, Calif. The American Muslim imam, who now has tens of thousands of followers, was trained under Islamic scholars in North Africa and the Middle East for years after his conversion.

Shakir told the New York Times earlier that he wants the United States to be ruled by Islamic law “not by violent means, but by persuasion.”

Dr. William Wagner, author of How Islam Plans to Change the World, said he is not surprised about the plan to build a Muslim college in the United States. He said for years Islamists have planned to open universities in western countries.

“They see the value of education especially in educating their young leaders for eventual takeover of some western countries,” said Wagner, former professor of missions at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in San Francisco, to The Christian Post.

“Their strategy includes extensive student work in many U.S. universities and the start of a new university is only an extension of their main strategy,” he said.

Wagner served for over 30 years as a missionary in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa with the International Mission Board.

Currently, leaders of Zaytuna are in the midst of a fundraising campaign. They need $2 to $4 million to launch the school next year. A Zaytuna adviser told AP in a recent interview that the school will soon raise tens of millions of dollars to build a campus in the Bay area in the next few years.

- From Prophecy News Watch

Even though recent demographic study has revealed a great looming threat of demographic winter, the richest of the rich seem to believe that overpopulation is the top priority for their philanthropic endeavors. John Harlow writes today in The Times about a secret meeting of the global financial elite, convened by Microsoft mogul Bill Gates, at which attendees agreed that curbing the world’s population should be their top priority.

In “Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation,” Harlow recounts that a May 5 meeting took place in Manhattan that included “David Rockefeller Jr, the patriarch of America’s wealthiest dynasty, Warren Buffett and George Soros, the financiers, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, and the media moguls Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey.” Harlow notes that the general agreement that population control was a major priority came at Gates’ instigation.

Gates’ enthusiasm for population control comes as no surprise since he has himself admitted to being strongly influenced by the views of Thomas Malthus, the fear-mongering overpopulation guru of the late 18th century. He has also admitted that his father headed a local Planned Parenthood while he was growing up.

Of note, The Times reports that at the secret meeting, participants “discussed joining forces to overcome political and religious obstacles to change.”

The Times paraphrased the account given by one attendee of the secret meeting who spoke anonymously, saying, “a consensus emerged that they would back a strategy in which population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat.”

“This is something so nightmarish that everyone in this group agreed it needs big-brain answers,” said the guest. “They need to be independent of government agencies, which are unable to head off the disaster we all see looming.” In answer to a question about the secrecy, the guest replied, “They wanted to speak rich to rich without worrying anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting them as an alternative world government.”

In sharp contrast to the ideas of the billionaires, a recent film containing the views of some prominent demographers has sounded the alarm on underpopulation rather than overpopulation. Promoting the film ‘Demographic Winter’ at a recent event, celebrated columnist Don Feder said that the demographic problem of worldwide declining birthrates “could result in the greatest crisis humanity will confront in this century” as “all over the world, children are disappearing.”

Feder noted, “In 30 years, worldwide, birth rates have fallen by more than 50%. In 1979, the average woman on this planet had 6 children. Today, the average is 2.9 children, and falling.” He explained the situation noting, “demographers tell us that with a birthrate of 1.3, everything else being equal, a nation will lose half of its population every 45 years.”

- From Prophecy News Watch

In its June 2009 issue, National Geographic demonstrated just how far it is willing to go to scapegoat Israel for suffering in the Middle East. The magazine also showed how far it is willing to go to downplay the role Islam played in contributing to Christianity’s decline in the region. In an article written by Don Belt, the magazine’s senior editor for foreign affairs, National Geographic portrays the departure of Christians from the Holy Land as largely a consequence of Israeli (and American) policies in the region. The article offers no honest description of the well-documented mistreatment of Christians at the hands of Muslim majority populations in the Middle East.

The Crusades

Belt’s efforts to whitewash the role Islamic conquest played in the decline of Christianity in the Middle East becomes obvious in the third paragraph of the article which states that “it was during the Crusades (1095-1291) that Arab Christians, slaughtered along with Muslims by the crusaders and caught in the cross fire between Islam and the Christian West, began a long, steady retreat into the minority.”

In reality, Arab Christianity began its “long, steady retreat” into minority status hundreds of years before the European crusaders ever set foot in the Holy Land. As Bat Ye’or and other commentators have documented, the process of forced conversion and subjugation of Christians in the Middle East began soon after the death of Mohammed in 632. Ye’or writes that after unifying the Arabian Peninsula under Muslim rule, Abu Bakr, Mohammed’s successor, brought war to non-Muslims, including Christians, outside Arabia. In her book The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude (Farleigh Dickinson Press, 1996) Ye’or writes:

Arab idolaters had to choose between death or conversion; as for Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, if they paid tribute and accepted the conditions of conquest, they could buy back their right to live, freedom of worship and security of property.

In 640 the second caliph, Umar Ibn al-Khattab, drove the Jewish and Christian tributaries out of Hijasz by invoking the dhimma (contract) of Khaybar: the land belonged to Allah and his Envoy and the contract could be broken at the discretion of the imam, the religious and political leader of the umma [Muslim religious community] and the interpreter of Allah’s will. Umar also invoked the desire expressed by the Prophet on his deathbed: “Two religions should not co-exist within the Arabian peninsula.” (Page 39)
While Ye’or is careful to explain that the subjugation of peoples and faiths was part and parcel of life in the Middle East at the time and that offering conquered peoples a chance to convert to Islam “curbed the barbarity of war,” she also makes clear that Christianity declined under Muslim conquest in the region conducted under the rubric of jihad, or holy war against non-Muslims.

Instead of acknowledging this history, Belt portrays early Muslim history as a time of tolerance, describing the Levant’s history of “coexistence between Muslims and people of other faiths, which dates from the earliest days of Islam. When the Muslim Caliph Omar conquered Syria from the Byzantine Empire around 636, he protected the Christians under his rule, allowing them to keep their churches and worship as they pleased.”

Here again, Belt ignores an inconvenient truth: that by the eighth century Arab Muslim rulers used indigenous Christian communities as both a source of income and forced labor (slavery) in the Middle East, a policy that contributed to the decline of Christianity in the region. (For a detailed description of this process, consult Bat Ye’or’s The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, pages 100-140.)

Key passage

In one key passage, Belt lays out his agenda: Obscure the facts about where Christianity is growing in the Middle East (Israel), downplay and minimize the role Muslim extremism plays in marginalizing Christians in Palestinian society, and blame Western Christians for the misdeeds of Muslims in the region. In this passage, Belt writes:

For anyone living in Israel or the Palestinian territories, stress is the norm. But the 196,500 Palestinian and Israeli Arab Christians, who dropped from 13 percent of the population in 1894 to less than 2 percent today, occupy a uniquely oxygen-starved space between traumatized Israeli Jews and traumatized Palestinian Muslims, whose rising militancy is tied to regional Islamist movements that sometimes target Christians. In the past decade, “the situation for Arab Christians has gone rapidly downhill,” says Razek Siriani, a frank and lively man in his 40s who works for the Middle East Council of Churches in Aleppo, Syria. “We’re completely outnumbered and surrounded by angry voices,” he says. Western Christians have made matters worse, he argues, echoing a sentiment expressed by many Arab Christians. “It’s because of what Christians in the West, led by the U.S., have been doing in the East,” he says, ticking off the wars in Iraq Afghanistan, U.S. support for Israel, and the threats of “regime change” by the Bush Administration. “To many Muslims, especially the fanatics, this looks like the crusades all over again, a war against Islam waged by Christianity. Because we’re Christians, they see us as the enemy too. It’s guilt by association.”

The first problem with this passage is that it obscures the increase of the Christian population in Israel.

Belt is correct when he reports that the overall percentage of Christians in Israeli society has declined from what it was in the 1800s. Christians have become a smaller proportion of the population in Israel – not because they are leaving but because of the growth of Israel’s Jewish population. Israel is after all, the Jewish homeland. Despite this proportional decline, Israel’s Christian population has increased substantially in absolute numbers since its founding, a fact Belt does not acknowledge. As previous CAMERA analysis on this subject reveals, the population of Christians in Israel is currently increasing at a rater faster than that of Jews in Israel. Analyst Tamar Sternthal writes:

As documented in the Central Bureau of Statistics’ Statistical Abstract of Israel 2008 (Chart 2.2), in the last dozen years, Israel’s Christian population grew from 120,600 in 1995 to 151,600 in 2007, representing a growth rate of 25 percent. In fact, the Christian growth rate has outpaced the Jewish growth in Israel in the last 12 years! In 1995, there were 4,522,300 Jews in Israel, and in 2007 there were 5,478,200, representing a growth rate of 21 percent – 4 percent less than the Christian population grew during the same time.

Since 1949, when there were 34,000 Christians in Israel, the population has grown 345 percent.

Clearly, Israel’s population of Christians is growing substantially. Why does Belt omit this fact?

Another problem with Belt’s analysis is that it portrays Christians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as caught between two local parties – traumatized Israeli Jews and traumatized Palestinian Muslims – who are equally responsible for the suffering of Christians in Palestinian society. Numerous sources – which have largely been ignored or dismissed by the human rights and peacemaking communities in the West – have shown that the mistreatment of Christians in Palestinian society is rooted in a religiously-based ideology that calls for the subjugation of non-Muslims in Muslim majority society. For example, in 2005, Justus Reid Weiner invoked the phrase “imperfect citizenship” to describe the precarious position Christians endured in Palestinian society as a result of the Muslim influence on Palestinian governance and law. He writes:

As long as the religious factor influences the Muslim concept of citizenship, it will remain a particular problem for Christians, as Muslim culture only grants the rights and benefits of full citizenship to followers of Islam.

While Weiner reports that Muslim hostility toward Christians has increased since 9/11, the fact remains that the subjugation of Christians in the Middle East has roots much deeper than 9/11, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and U.S. support for Israel. Religious and ethnic minorities are badly treated throughout the Middle East and when it comes to human rights and civil liberties, Arabs, whether Christian or Muslim, enjoy more rights in Israel than they do in Arab-majority states throughout the region.

National Geographic’s attempt to blame the decline of Christianity in Palestinian society on Israel is also evident in the captions to the photos displayed along with the cover story. Underneath a photo of barbed wired in the West Bank, a caption reads “Christian farmers lost their olive groves when Israelis built a fence around a settlement.” Another caption quotes a Christian in Bethlehem as saying “Under Israel occupation, normal life is impossible.”

Nowhere in the article is there any testimony about the harassment of Christians in Palestinian society. Nor is there any explanation why Israel built the security barrier and instituted checkpoints. The security barrier and the checkpoints were put in place for a reason which Belt cannot be bothered to acknowledge – Palestinian terrorism. At what point will the Christians start holding terrorists responsible for the construction of the security barrier and the checkpoints in the West Bank?

Exaggerating Christian Influence

Belt also exaggerates the role Christianity plays in the Middle East, invoking the quote from a Syrian monk who says

… Muslims are us. This is the lesson the West has yet to learn and that Arab Christians are uniquely qualified to teach. They are the last, vital link between the Christian West and the Arab Muslim world. If Arab Christians were to disappear, the two sides would drift even further apart than they already are. They are the go-betweens.
Here Belt proffers a well-worn trope of Arab Christians serving as “go-betweens” between Muslims in the Middle East and Christians in the West. But Arab Christians have barely any influence among their Muslim brethren. Their main influence is on Christians in the U.S. and Europe.

For example, Bernard Lewis, in Semites And Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice (W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), offers a detailed narrative about how Christian churches in the Middle East and the governments of the countries in which they were located worked to dissuade the Vatican from removing the deicide charge (the notion that the Jews are collectively responsible for the death of Christ) from the theology of the Roman Catholic Church in the 1960s. Fortunately, these negative efforts failed to prevent landmark theological changes that have fostered improved Catholic-Jewish relations in the years since.

Another example of the “influence” of Arab Christians is the work of Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center. This organization has little, if any ability to constrain suicide attacks against Israel, but does condemn Israel to American audiences at numerous conferences. To be sure, the group’s founder, Anglican Priest Naim Ateek, condemns suicide bombings – in English – to audiences of Western Christians (people who are not likely candidates for perpetrating suicide attacks), but his influence over Hamas is minimal at best.

If Arab Christians are go-betweens, their influence is one way – from the Middle East to the West. Their ability to moderate political life and reduce violence in Muslim-majority countries in the region is miniscule.

Attacks on Palestinian Christians Omitted

While Belt acknowledges the hostility between Muslims and Christians in Lebanon in an extended interview with a Maronite Christian who worries about being outgunned by Shiite Militias, he fails to mention the mistreatment of Christians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by the Muslim majority. There is no lack of information on this subject, just a lack of Palestinian Christians willing to be quoted publicly about it. Khaled Abu Toameh, a Palestinian Muslim journalist who has covered the problem extensively for the Jerusalem Post, recently wrote the following for the Hudson Institute:

Christian families have long been complaining of intimidation and land theft by Muslims, especially those working for the Palestinian Authority.

Many Christians in Bethlehem and the nearby [Christian] towns of Bet Sahour and Beit Jalla have repeatedly complained that Muslims have been seizing their lands either by force or through forged documents. . . .

Moreover, several Christian women living in these areas have complained about verbal and sexual assaults by Muslim men.

Over the past few years, a number of Christian businessmen told me that they were forced to shut down their businesses because they could no longer afford to pay “protection” money to local Muslim gangs.

While it is true that the Palestinian Authority does not have an official policy of persecution against Christians, it is also true that this authority has not done enough to provide the Christian population with a sense of security and stability.

In addition, Christians continue to complain about discrimination when it comes to employment in the public sector. Since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority 15 years ago, not a single Christian was ever appointed to a senior security post. Although Bethlehem has a Christian mayor, the governor, who is more senior than him, remains a Muslim.
Toameh is not the only source of this type of information. Harry de Quetteville reported the following Sept. 9, 2005 in The Daily Telegraph (London):

Christians in the Holy Land have handed a dossier detailing incidents of violence and intimidation by Muslim extremists to Church leaders in Jerusalem, one of whom said it was time for Christians to “raise our voices” against the sectarian violence.

The dossier includes 93 alleged incidents of abuse by an “Islamic fundamentalist mafia” against Palestinian Christians, who accused the Palestinian Authority of doing nothing to stop the attacks.

The dossier also includes a list of 140 cases of apparent land theft, in which Christians in the West Bank were allegedly forced off their land by gangs backed by corrupt judicial officials. . . .

The alleged attacks on Christians have come despite repeated appeals to the Palestinian Authority to rein in Muslim gangs.

A spokesman for the Apostolic Delegate, the Pope’s envoy to Jerusalem, said nothing had been done to tackle the problem. “The Apostolic Delegate presented a list of all the problems to Mr [Yasser] Arafat before he died,” he said. “He promised a lot but he did very little.”

In the offices of his tiny Christian television station in Bethlehem, Samir Qumsieh said this week that Christian appeals to Mr Arafat’s successor as Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, had also gone unheeded.

“At least Arafat responded,” he said, “Abbas does not answer our letters.”

Nowhere is any of this mentioned in Belt’s article, possibly because no one is willing to be quoted on these issues. Paul Merkley, author of Christian Attitudes Towards the State of Israel (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001) reports that after the Oslo Accords, Palestinian Christians were very reluctant to publicly criticize the Palestinian Authority. On page 81 Merkley writes:

It is very difficult to get at all the truth about life for Christians under the Palestinian Authority. The official Palestinian press speaks of the unqualified enthusiasm for the new situation, which extends to the whole Christian community. Arab Christian spokesmen insist that relations between Christian and Muslim Palestinians have never been better. But there is a compelling body of evidence indicating that Christians are now facing many more obstacles to the free exercise of their faith than they ever endured under direct Israeli rule. Designated spokesmen for the various Christian communities all insist that they have no concern for the future of Christianity in a Muslim state.
The story is a bit different, Merkley reports, when one speaks to the lay members of the Christian community.

In my own conversations with Palestinian Christians who were not designated spokespersons for their church communities, I was told of abandonment of the ordinary Christians by the political opportunists who are leaders of their congregations. According to [Judith] Sudilosky [an Israeli journalist]: “Privately, Arab Christians will say what they dare not say publically: that most Christians would rather live under Israeli authority than risk living under another Moslem regime.” Yossi Klein Halevi quotes one of the few remaining Christian merchants in the Christian quarter: “Our leaders are liars: They tell the newspapers that everything is OK. But when Christians go to the market, they’re afraid to wear their crosses.” (Page 84).

Dubious Testimony

Belt does include testimony from a pseudonymous couple as they celebrate Easter, who like the leaders of the Palestinian Christian community, apparently say very little about the Muslim majority, but a lot about the hated state of Israel. Belt, who assigns them the names “Mark” and “Lisa,” reports the following:

This is the first Easter, ever, that Mark has been allowed to spend with the family in Jerusalem. He is from Bethlehem, in the West Bank, so his identity papers are from the Palestinian Authority; he needs a permit from Israel to visit. Lisa, whose family lives in the Old City, holds an Israeli ID. So although they’ve been married for five years and rent this apartment in the Jerusalem suburbs, under Israeli law they can’t reside under the same roof. Mark lives with his parents in Bethlehem, which is six miles away but might as well be a hundred, lying on the far side of an Israeli checkpoint and the 24-foot-high concrete barrier known as the Wall.

Yes, it is sad that the couple cannot live together in Jerusalem. But it’s also unreasonable to expect that “Mark” would be given citizenship or residency based on his marriage to Lisa. Israel, like most other countries, including the United States, proffers residency and citizenship to foreigners after an extensive application process. Marriage alone does not guarantee the right to residency or citizenship, as Belt seems to suggest it should. If the couple were interested in living together, it is very likely “Lisa” could move to Bethlehem without any difficulty. Yes, she could very well lose her Israeli identification papers and the fact that she has not made that sacrifice indicates that Israeli residency, even for a Palestinian Christian is valuable enough to endure separation from her husband. Why? One likely reason is that as a Christian in Israel she enjoys rights that she would not enjoy in the Fatah-controlled West Bank. Belt, however, fails to address any of this, but provides the reader with a narrative that portrays Israel as denying a married couple the right to live together.

Belt fails to provide his readers with an important part of the story. Prior to the Second Intifada, passage between Israel and the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was much easier than it is today. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians worked legally (and illegally) in Israel, and made up a significant part of the Israeli labor force. The suicide attacks which took place during the Second Intifada had a two-fold impact. First, they prompted Israelis to institute stricter security measures such as the security barrier and the checkpoints. Second, they reduced the numbers of Palestinian workers in Israel. In other words, what Belt is leaving out, is that Palestinian terrorism played a substantial role in making passage between Bethlehem and Jerusalem difficult for the married couple he is describing.

The contempt “Lisa” and her family have for Israel is revealed when Belt describes “Mark’s” washing the family car on Easter.

Right on cue, with a playful flourish, Mark squeezes the nozzle on the hose. Nothing comes out. He checks the faucet, squeezes again. Still nothing. So there he stands, empty hose in hand, in front of his kids, his neighbors, and a visitor from oversees. “I guess they’ve opened the pipes to the settlements,” he says quietly, gesturing to the hundreds of new Israeli housing units climbing up the hills nearby. “No more [water] for us.” Lisa is still trying to explain this to the kids as the car pulls away from the curb.

I hate the Israelis,” Lisa says one day, out of the blue. “I really hate them. We all hate them. I think even Nate’s [her son] starting to hate them.”
Given that Belt offers no evidence to suggest that he has confirmed for himself that “Mark” was unable to wash his car because water was being shipped to Israeli settlements, it is entirely possible that the event was staged for his benefit. It would not be the first time. Hamas staged “blackouts” in the Gaza Strip in 2008, and French filmmaker Pierre Rehov has documented in his movie The Road to Jenin how Palestinian officials encouraged sources to fabricate stories about delays at checkpoints for the benefit of Western journalists. And there is ample evidence to indicate that much of the footage broadcast from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is staged to portray Palestinians as suffering under the lash of Israeli oppression. (For more on this issue see Richard Landes’ website, www.seconddraft.org.)

Regardless of what caused the apparent lack of water, Belt fails to report that Israel has been subject to a serious drought in the past few years. In January 2009, the Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli experts predicted a water shortage for the upcoming summer because of a lack of rainfall. Clearly, there is more to this story than Belt reports, but the car-washing episode was apparently too good to check. Belt himself reports the feelings of hate members of the family openly express for Israel, giving him good reason to question their story, but instead of doing his job as a journalist, he passes on their innuendo without challenge.

This highly distorted and deceptive rendition of Christian difficulties in the Middle East is not worthy of National Geographic.

- From Prophecy News Watch

Most Americans know at least one person who has had an abortion, and most of them say the person’s experience was a generally negative one, according to a new poll.

Of the 68 percent who told polling company, inc./WomanTrend that they know someone who has had an abortion, 55 percent said the abortion was a negative experience while 33 percent said it was a positive experience.

Moreover, 53 percent said they believe abortion is “almost always a bad thing” for a woman while 13 percent said it was “almost always a good thing.” Twenty-one percent, meanwhile, said it was neither bad nor good and 13 percent said they do not know or refused to answer.

Despite this, a vast majority of Americans support a woman’s right to have an abortion, though few (15 percent) would support it past the third month of pregnancy and for reasons other than rape, incest or to save the life of the mother.

But when probed about late-term abortions – abortions in the 7th, 8th, and 9th months of pregnancies – most (82 percent) said they would be opposed to the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice who supports such abortions.

The majority of Americans (71 percent) also would oppose a nominee who favors using tax dollars to pay for abortions in the United States and most (75 percent) would oppose a nominee who favors eliminating virtually all laws restricting abortion, including laws requiring parental notice for minors wanting to obtain abortions.

“By overwhelming majorities, Democrats, Republicans and Independents agreed that judges should exercise restraint and check their own beliefs and predispositions at the courthouse door,” noted Dr. Charmaine Yoest, president and CEO of Americans United for Life, which the poll was conducted on behalf of.

“They agreed on upholding common sense abortion regulations already in place in the states, including parental consent laws, and objecting to late-term abortions and taxpayer-funded abortions in the U.S. and overseas. Further, this consensus was held even among Americans who self-described themselves as ‘pro-choice,’” she observed.

Notably, of those polled, 32 percent considered themselves to be Republicans, 38 percent considered themselves to be Democrats, while 22 percent considered themselves to be Independents.

Furthermore, 41 percent had voted for Barack Obama during the presidential election while 36 percent had voted for John McCain. And 44 percent said they consider themselves conservatives, 20 percent liberals, and 28 percent moderates.

“Significantly, the majority of Americans of all political and ideological cohorts expressed opposition to a suggested federal law that abolishes restrictions on abortions (including 93% of Republicans, 69% of Independents, and 72% of Democrats, 88% of conservatives, 77% of moderates, and 62% of liberals.),” reported Yoest.

That suggested law, as Yoest pointed out, is the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), a bill that President Obama had vowed to sign into law and one that the U.S. Supreme Court may have to rule on in the not-so-far future.

“Fully nine-in-ten Americans who identified with a pro-life position on the six-point scale (90%) and 65% who selected a pro-choice stance on the same spectrum were dissatisfied with this potential legislation,” Yoest added.

Americans United for Life has submitted the findings of the May 17-18 poll to the nation’s senators as they consider the president’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor of New York.

Though the federal judge’s record on abortion is limited, she has been drawn concern over her “very liberal judicial philosophy.”

“President Obama promised us a jurist committed to the ‘rule of law,’ but, instead, he appears to have nominated a legislator to the Supreme Court,” commented Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

Still, a key GOP senator has conceded Wednesday that Republicans see little chance of blocking Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination since Democrats control the Senate.

But the senator, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, said Republicans were ready to raise pointed questions about whether Sotomayor, the first Hispanic nominee to the high court, would let her personal life color her legal opinions – and whether that’s appropriate for a Supreme Court justice.

“We have an absolute constitutional duty to make sure that any nominee, no matter what their background and what kind of life story they have, that we examine that so the American people can know that the person we give a lifetime appointment to … will be faithful to the law and not allow their personal views to influence decision-making,” the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee said in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show.

Sotomayor’s Capitol Hill debut could come as early as next week.

- From Prophecy News Watch

A San Diego pastor and his wife claim they were interrogated by a county official and warned they will face escalating fines if they continue to hold Bible studies in their home.

The couple, whose names are being withheld until a demand letter can be filed on their behalf, told their attorney a county government employee knocked on their door on Good Friday, asking a litany of questions about their Tuesday night Bible studies, which are attended by approximately 15 people.

“Do you have a regular weekly meeting in your home? Do you sing? Do you say ‘amen’?” the official reportedly asked. “Do you say, ‘Praise the Lord’?”

The pastor’s wife answered yes.

She says she was then told, however, that she must stop holding “religious assemblies” until she and her husband obtain a Major Use Permit from the county, a permit that often involves traffic and environmental studies, compliance with parking and sidewalk regulations and costs that top tens of thousands of dollars.

And if they fail to pay for the MUP, the county official reportedly warned, the couple will be charged escalating fines beginning at $100, then $200, $500, $1000, “and then it will get ugly.”

Dean Broyles of the Western Center for Law & Policy, which has been retained to represent the couple, told WND the county’s action not only violates religious land-use laws but also assaults both the First Amendment’s freedom of assembly and freedom of religion.

“The First Amendment, in part, reads, ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’” Broyles said. “And that’s the key part: ‘prohibiting the free exercise.’ We believe this is a substantial government burden on the free exercise of religion.”

He continued, “If one’s home is one’s castle, certainly you would the think the free exercise of religion, of all places, could occur in the home.”

Broyles confirmed the county official followed through on his threat. The pastor and his wife received a written warning ordering the couple to “cease/stop religious assembly on parcel or obtain a major use permit.”

“The Western Center for Law and Policy is troubled by this draconian move to suppress home Bible studies,” said the law center in a statement. “If the current trends in our nation continue, churches may be forced underground. If that happens, believers will once again be forced to meet in homes. If homes are already closed by the government to assembly and worship, where then will Christians meet?”

On a personal note, Broyles added, “I’ve been leading Bible studies in my home for 13 years in San Diego County, and I personally believe that home fellowship Bible studies are the past and future of the church. … If you look at China, the church grew from home Bible studies. I’m deeply concerned that if in the U.S. we are not able to meet in our homes and freely practice our religion, then we may be worse off than China.”

Broyles also explained to WND that oppressive governments, such as communist China or Nazi Germany, worked to repress home fellowships, labeling them the “underground church” or “subversive groups,” legally compelling Christians to meet only in sanctioned, government-controlled “official” churches.

“Therein lies my concern,” Broyles said. “If people can’t practice their religious beliefs in the privacy of their own homes with a few of their friends, that’s an egregious First Amendment violation.”

WND contacted a spokeswoman for San Diego County, who acknowledged the description of the incident seemed “bizarre,” but who was unable to locate the details of the account. She simply could not provide comment yet, she said, until she could become familiar with the case.

Broyles said the WCLP is nearly ready to file a demand letter with the county to release the pastor and his wife from the requirement to obtain the expensive permit. If the county refuses, Broyles said, the WCLP will consider a lawsuit in federal court.

Broyles also told WND the pastor and his wife are continuing to hold the Bible study in their home.

- From Prophecy News Watch

It’s the year 2030. As a soldier enters a crowded marketplace, sensors mounted on his helmet automatically scan faces in the crowd, identifying a known insurgent; a cursor in the heads-up display highlights the target and cues the weapon, which can be set to stun or kill; a simple voice command unlocks the trigger.

Aided by “smart drugs,” enhanced with prosthetics, and protected by a lightweight suit of armor, this soldier of the future possesses near super-human capabilities and weapons that would make even Iron Man jealous. He’s suited up in an “exoskeleton” – essentially a Storm Trooper-esque external shell – that allows him to carry heavy loads. Electronics integrated in his outfit allow for simultaneous language translation, automatic identification of potential foes, and video-game-like targeting. If the soldier is tired, overworked, or injured, neural and physiological sensors automatically send an alert to headquarters.

It’s all part of the Army’s starry-eyed vision of grunts 20 years from now, and it’s just one aspect of the Pentagon’s ambitious thinking about technologies that will transform the way the military fights. There are also plans for advanced robotic aircraft; missiles that travel seven times the speed of sound; and ship- and aircraft-based laser weapons that could blast missiles out of the sky.

These aren’t fantasy. Many of these technologies are plausible, or in development. Whether the military can afford them is an entirely different question.

Each branch of the military has its own plans, but the Army concept of tomorrow’s soldier borrows heavily from nearly every genre of science fiction. Dubbed “Future Soldier 2030,” the vision is the brainchild of the Natick Soldier Systems Center in Massachusetts, an Army organization responsible for researching and developing new technologies for the individual fighter.

The idea driving this vision is a “soldier as a system,” a sort of man-as-machine concept that looks at soldiers as you would an aircraft or tank. “We’re building an F-16 [fighter] on legs,” says Natick’s Dutch DeGay. Does that vision run the risk of making soldier look like some sort of science fiction villain? DeGay notes the Army is aware of this potential pitfall: “We work hard to be cognizant of what the overall ensemble looks like.” While some of the technologies are already under development – prototype exoskeletons exist, for example – others, such as an elaborate, light-weight power system needed to power all these fancy gadgets, are still many years away. There are also some provocative ideas behind the plans: the Army envisions “neural prosthetics” and drugs that aid cognitive ability. Such things may be “controversial now, but perhaps ubiquitous in 2030,” officials note.

With all those advanced sensors, electronics, and weapons systems, such a suit, the Army realizes, would be a potential bonanza for enemies if captured. For that possibility, the Army has another solution: If a soldier is killed, the outfit will “zeroize” itself – that is, wipe out its own electronic systems – so the equipment can’t be exploited by enemy forces.

Beyond individual soldiers, the Pentagon has other big ideas: the Air Force, for example, is working on a hypersonic missile that could strike anywhere in the world in less than an hour; a prototype, dubbed the X-51 “waverider,” will be flight tested later this year. Laser weapons are also popular. The Pentagon plans for a megawatt-class laser that would fit on the nose cone of a Boeing 747 and capable of blasting North Korean or Iranian ballistic missiles out of the sky. After over a decade of work, the Pentagon plans to finally test the weapon against missiles later this year. The Navy is also working on its own missile-blasting weapon that would go on ships, called the Free Electron Laser.

Another major initiative for the future is replacing manned aircraft with drones. In Pakistan, for example, armed Predator drones are conducting air strikes that would have once been carried out only by piloted aircraft. But these unmanned aircraft are still ultimately controlled by human operators. In the pipeline are armed drones that could operate with no human intervention. Northrop Grumman is working on a Navy-funded project called the X-47B, which would take off and land from carriers ships, and Boeing recently unveiled Phantom Ray, another unmanned combat aircraft that the company hopes will interest the Air Force.

This is not to say that that the future military will necessarily be equipped with the latest and greatest in weaponry. With the costs of weapons skyrocketing, and the Pentagon under pressure to fund ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of the military’s big ideas have simply proved too costly. The Army’s Future Combat System, a $160 billion program that included robots, sensors, drones and ground vehicles, is now slated for cancellation.

Likewise, the Navy’s dreams for its future fleet have been dramatically scaled back. And the Air Force’s plans for a new bomber are also on the chopping block, another victim of the latest round of cutbacks in the new Pentagon budget. Even equipment for the commander-in-chief is in jeopardy: the Navy recently canceled plans to buy a fleet of new presidential helicopters.

So how much, for example, would the outfit for the future soldier of 2030 cost and can the Army really afford it? The Army won’t say. Although many of the component technologies are under development through various research efforts, the Army isn’t actually putting any money into the full ensemble yet. But history may be a guide. One of the Army’s more recent attempts to create a high-technology soldier outfit, called the “Land Warrior System,” produced mixed results and a price tag of over $30,000 each. After spending over 10 years and half a billion dollars, the Army was forced to scale back or cancel many of the technologies.

That brings to mind an old joke that cynics use about all-ambitious technologies, be they laser weapons, hypersonic missiles, or super-human soldier suits: These are the weapons of the future – and they always will be.

- From Prophecy News Watch

The Church of Scotland’s General Assembly has upheld the appointment of a gay minister to an Aberdeen church.

After more than four hours of debate last night, the General Assembly voted by 326 to 267 in support of the Rev Scott Rennie.

Rev Rennie’s appointment to Queen’s Cross was backed by most of the church’s members and the Aberdeen Presbytery but faced strong opposition from conservatives within Queen’s Cross and the wider Kirk.

Rev Rennie told Sky News that there were “many” gay ministers in the Church and that homosexuality did not contradict Scripture.

“We don’t stone women, we don’t stone adulterers, we’ve moved on from that,” he said. “The living word is Jesus and I think the question is, what would Jesus have done?”

Spokesman for the evangelical group Forward Together, the Rev Ian Watson, expressed his disappointment at the vote on BBC Radio Scotland on Sunday.

He said the Church could not adopt a “pick and mix attitude” to Scripture and said he would wait until Monday to reassess his relationship with the Church.

“We haven’t moved. We still adhere to the Westminster confession of faith … We’ve been where the Church has been since the Reformation,” he said.

More than 5,000 Church members reportedly signed a petition calling for the General Assembly to overturn the appointment of Rev Rennie, who plans to live in the manse with his male partner.

The Fellowship of Confessing Churches, a fellowship of conservative congregations in the Church of Scotland, said his appointment would “publicly declare such [homosexual] behaviour as acceptable and honourable for a leader in Christ’s church”.

“This would mark a historic departure for our Church from the teaching of the Christian faith, and a radical deviation from the clear Scriptural pattern that recognises the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman as the only proper place for sexual intimacy – a pattern which our Church has hitherto always publicly affirmed,” the fellowship said in a statement ahead of the vote.

Rev Rennie, who was previously married and has a child, is currently at Brechin Cathedral where he has been for the last 10 years.

- From Prophecy News Watch