Rock-thrower sentenced for killing Israeli man and son
(JNS.org) Israel’s Ofer Base Military Court on Wednesday sentenced Waal al-Arja, a former officer in the Palestinian Authority’s security forces who was convicted of the 2011 murders of 30-year-old Asher Palmer and his year-old son Yonatan, to two consecutive life terms with an additional 58 years, Israel Hayom reported.
In early April, the court convicted Arja of two counts of murder for having thrown a rock at the Palmers’ car, causing it to crash, with fatal results. He was also convicted of 22 counts of attempted murder over a series of stone-throwing incidents on Route 60 in Judea and Samaria.
Arja drove up to Palmer’s car, which was traveling from Kiryat Arba to Jerusalem, and threw a large rock at it. The rock shattered Palmer’s windshield and hit him in the face, causing him to lose control of the vehicle, which swerved and overturned, landing on the side of the road. Palmer and his son were killed on impact.
Murder convictions in cases involving the stoning of cars traveling across Judea and Samaria are rare, but Military Judge Maj. Amir Dahan said that in Arja’s case the prosecution “proved that he had the intent and means to kill.”
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Yadlin: Iran has crossed the nuclear red line
(JNS.org) Former Israel Defense Forces military intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin believes that Iran has crossed the “red line” for nuclear enrichment established by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu late last year.
“Despite all of the attempts made to stop the nuclear program, no one is able to stop the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program,” Yadlin said Tuesday at a Tel Aviv conference for the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), which he heads, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Yadlin later clarified that if Iran continues its present path, it will definitively cross the red line later this year.
“If Iran continues to enrich uranium at its current rate, toward the end of the year it will cross the red line in a clear manner,” he said.
Netanyahu has defined that his red line for Iran would be the possession of 250kg of uranium enriched past the 20 percent mark. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a report in February that Iran already possesses 167kg of highly enriched uranium.
Meanwhile, Iran is also in the process of upgrading its main uranium enrichment facilities, in defiance of the international community. Technicians in Iran are installing new high-tech machines to replace the more than 12,000 older and more inefficient ones. The technicians have tripled installation of the machines in the past three months to 600, the Associated Press reported.
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‘Lost Tribe of Israel’ in Papua New Guinea?
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) The scholar known internationally as the “British Indiana Jones” has tracked a tribal people identifying itself as a “Lost Tribe of Israel” in a remote corner of Papua New Guinea.
Florida International University religious studies professor Tudor Parfitt recently conducted an expedition to Papua New Guinea, where he studies the Gogodala, a tribe of former cannibals who believe they are one the Lost Tribes, according to a Florida International University press release.
The Gogodala are now hunter-gatherers in western Papua New Guinea with very little connection to the outside world. But from the very first encounters with western explorers in the 17th century, the idea took root that ancient Israelite communities were to be found in the islands of the Pacific. Australian missionaries later went on to further propagate the idea.
A decade ago, at the request of tribe leaders, Parfitt conducted DNA testing on the Gogodala to see if he could establish any link to the Middle East. The tests were inconclusive. Nonetheless, the Gogodala have continued to embrace Judaism. During his most recent visit, Parfitt was surprised to see how the Jewish practice had developed in the tribe.
“The bedrock of the religious identity of the Gogodala remains in some respects, their traditional belief system, upon which has been grafted Christianity, which was introduced to the tribe in the 1950s by missionaries,” Parfitt said. “On top of that has been grafted a kind of Judaism. More and more of the Gogodala wear yarmulkes [kippot] and prayer shawls. They’ve started celebrating Jewish holidays and they are using more Hebrew.”
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Marathon suspect interested in ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’
(JNS.org) The former brother-in-law of Boston Marathon explosions suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev said in an interview that the bomber was interested in reading the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
“He never said he hated America or he hated the Jews,” Elmirza Khozhugov, Tamerlan’s ex-brother-in-law, told the Associated Press. “But he was fairly aggressive toward the policies of the U.S. toward countries with Muslim populations. He disliked the wars.”
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an anti-Semitic hoax, first published in Russia in 1903, that describes Jewish plans for global domination. The book has become a favorite of anti-Semites and purportedly influenced Adolf Hitler’s views on the Jewish people.
Meanwhile, federal investigators are attempting to piece together how Tamerlan and his brother Dzhokhar became exposed to radical Islam.
According to interviews with family members, Tamerlan was possibly first exposed to radical Islam by an Armenian convert to Islam man named Misha, who may have attended the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge, Mass., with Tamerlan.
“I heard about nobody else but this convert,” Tamerlan’s uncle, Ruslan Tsnari, told the Associated Press. “The seed for changing his views was planted right there in Cambridge.”
The head of the Boston-based advocacy and watchdog group Americans for Peace and Tolerance, Dr. Charles Jacobs, who has investigated Boston mosques for possible ties to radical Islamic preachers and groups for more than a decade, says the Islamic Society of Boston may have played a role in the radicalization of the Boston Marathon explosions suspects.
“We don’t know where these boys were radicalized, but this mosque has a curriculum that radicalizes people. Other people have been radicalized there,” Jacobs told USA Today.
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Kidnapped Syrian Christian archbishops freed
(JNS.org) Two Syrian Christian archbishops have reportedly been freed after being kidnapped at gunpoint outside their home in Aleppo a day earlier, Al Jazeera reported.
Bishop Yohanna Ibrahim, head of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Aleppo, and Bishop Boulos Yaziji, head of the Greek Orthodox Church in Aleppo, the largest Christian denomination in Syria, were kidnapped after their driver was killed. The two Christian leaders were reportedly on a humanitarian mission at the time.
It is unclear who was behind the abduction. The rebels and the Syrian government blamed each other.
L’Oeuvre d’Orient, a Christian humanitarian and advocacy group that is active in Syria, also confirmed the archbishops’ release in a statement.
“While L’Oeuvre d’Orient rejoices at the news of their release, it deplores the murder of the driver,” the advocacy group said in a statement.
But despite the some reports of the archbishops being freed, the New York Times reported that the main Syrian rebel group, National Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, said the archbishops are still being held.
Syrian Christians, who comprise 10 percent of Syria’s estimated population of 22 million, have been put into a difficult situation by the civil war. On one hand, many support the rebellion against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. But at the same time, under Assad they were a protected minority. Many Christians fear that if Assad is overthrown and replaced by Islamists, they will face greater persecution.
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Preceding provided by JNS.org