NASA expresses interest in Israel helping with manned mission to Mars
(JNS.org) America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to send a manned mission to Mars in the 2030s, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said Monday during a visit to Israel.
Accompanied by Israeli Science, Technology and Space Minister Ofir Akunis and Givatayim Mayor Ran Konik, Bolden toured the Givatayim Observatory on Monday. The NASA chief said that international cooperation would be needed for manned missions to Mars to succeed, and that he is interested in exploring how Israel could help the effort.
Akunis, who expressed hope that NASA would include an Israeli astronaut on an upcoming mission to the International Space Station, told Israel Hayom that Bolden’s visit “is important and will increase the cooperation between Israel and the United States.”
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Trove of Hasmonean-era coins discovered in Israel
(JNS.org) Sixteen silver coins featuring kings from the Hasmonean era have been unearthed at an ancient Judean estate near Modi’in. The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said Tuesday that the coins were deliberately hidden by the occupants of the estate to make sure the “treasure” did not fall into the wrong hands.
Avraham Tendler, who was in charge of the excavation, said, “This is a rare cache of silver coins from the Hasmonean period comprising shekels and half-shekels that were minted in the city of Tyre and bear the images of the king, Antiochus VII, and his brother Demetrius II.”
“The cache that we found is compelling evidence that one of the members of the estate who had saved his income for months needed to leave the house for some unknown reason,” said Tendler. “He buried his money in the hope of coming back and collecting it, but was apparently unfortunate and never returned. It is exciting to think that the coin hoard was waiting here 2,140 years until we exposed it.”
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Organization collects 93,000 signatures affirming eternal unity of Jerusalem
(JNS.org) In honor of Jerusalem Day, a collection of more than 93,000 signatures from around the world reaffirming the “Jerusalem Covenant” was presented to Member of Knesset Rabbi Yehuda Glick (Likud) for his efforts to reconnect the Jewish people with the Temple Mount.
The Jerusalem Covenant, which proclaims the eternal unity of Jerusalem and its status as the biblical and political capital of Israel, was originally written in 1992 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Jerusalem’s reunification during the 1967 Six-Day War. In 2013, Israel365—an organization that “promotes the beauty and religious significance of Israel to friends and supporters around the world”—launched a project to garner signatures reaffirming the Jerusalem Covenant.
“This is so exciting, holding a book with almost 100,000 signatures of people from all over the world, who signed their name on the Jerusalem Covenant,” Glick said. “Jerusalem is the city of peace, and here we see the words of the prophets materializing and becoming a reality, all nations coming together and signing the Jerusalem Covenant between God and Jerusalem and the world.”
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Arab League chief says U.S. toned down French peace initiative’s communique
(JNS.org) Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby said that the American delegation led by Secretary of State John Kerry played a role in toning down a final joint communique during the recently held French peace summit on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“It changed things and softened its tone,” Elaraby told the London-based Arabic-daily newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, explaining that the communique “could have been more firm, but the Americans objected.”
According to Elaraby, Kerry opposed a stronger tone in the final communique regarding time limits of any future peace talks and United Nations resolutions serving as a basis for negotiations.
The summit was supposed to conclude with a strong communique on the future direction of a two-state solution and peace negotiations, but ultimately produced a fairly generic statement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian leaders were invited to the summit.
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