Netanyahu is not cooperating.

The Palestinian Authority accepts a one-state solution with Israel on the condition that everyone lives equally in the state, but Israel does not accept this, the recently appointed Deputy to PA President Mahmoud Abbas said. MORE

Catholic League
POPE PIUS IX By Robert P. Lockwood
Pope Pius IX  Steven Spielberg movie on Jewish Boy

Pope Pius IX life was deleted so that you can read about the story of a young Jewish boy taken from the home of his parents during the papacy of Pius IX to be raised as a Catholic. I added the Spielberg commentary since he’s doing a movie on this. Continue reading →

Suffer little children?  Can we trust Queer loving Steven to tell the truth?

BOLOGNA, Italy (RNS)  It was a heart-wrenching story that bitterly divided Catholics and Jews in Italy and provoked an international scandal more than 150 years ago.

Edgardo Mortara, a Jewish boy from Bologna, was secretly baptized by a maid when he fell ill and then forcibly removed from his family in 1858 at age 6 and raised as a Catholic with the blessing of Pope Pius IX. MORE

Pope Francis’ recent decision to allow Mahmoud Abbas to set up an embassy in the Holy See raises questions about just how serious the Vatican is in its efforts to abide by the teachings of Nostra Aetate, a Papal Encyclical issued by Pope Paul VI in 1965. MORE

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has often stated that he would try to convince the new American administration to reopen the nuclear agreement that was signed between Iran and the six world powers in July 2015. He even told CBS last December that he has at least “five ideas” on how to facilitate the reopening of the agreement. Evidently he will share his ideas in February with US President Donald Trump in a meeting that will take place between them in Washington. MORE

Quoting unnamed Israeli Foreign Ministry officials, Channel 2 news said intended ambassador David Friedman, who has said he looks forward to working from the US embassy in Jerusalem, might instead merely work from the city with a small staff, while the Tel Aviv embassy remains intact and most of its operations and staff stay there.

The report noted that building contractors in neighborhoods near the existing consulate in Talpiot have received calls recently from would-be buyers seeking luxury homes for Americans. MORE

The resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank could be the most expensive vote ever taken at the United Nations.

The Obama administration ignited an uproar on the right Friday after refusing to veto Resolution 2234, sending U.S.-Israeli relations into a tailspin and fueling calls from key Republicans and conservative leaders to strike back by pulling U.S. funding. MORE

Boorey Deutsch can’t keep track of the number of people he knew who died by suicide or overdose this year.

Four were close friends. One of them hung himself; one drove the wrong way on the highway and two overdosed. Others he knew in passing. MORE

The last time the Jewish holiday crossed over with Christmas was 2011. That year, Dec. 25 fell roughly in the middle of the Festival of Lights, as it will again in 2019. Rarer are the years when Hanukkah starts precisely on Christmas Day, as they did in 2005 and 1959 before that. MORE

Claims are being made that a biblical storm cloud of dust and rain was ‘sent by God’ to act as a barrier between Israel and ISIS .

The huge storm allegedly stopped on the border of Syria, and was ‘unable’ to enter Israel’s Golan Heights region. MORE

At a post-election celebration in Israel, members of the Republican Party branch in that country gathered to discuss how their efforts contributed to Donald Trump’s victory on November 8. On hand were the president of the Republican group, Marc Zell, Tzvika Brot, Ariel Sander, and others. Zell said that despite the important contribution of Israeli-American voters to Trump’s victory, there were too few absentee ballots cast from Israel to alter the outcome of the election. But Trump’s popularity in Israel did persuade non-Jewish voters in the U.S. to pull the lever for the New Yorker, said Zell. MORE

STOCKHOLM –  Norway’s state Lutheran Church has condemned the anti-Jewish legacy of Martin Luther, the 16th century German theologian who started the Protestant Reformation.

In a statement issued Friday ahead of next year’s 500-year anniversary of the Reformation, the Church of Norway’s General Synod said some of Luther’s writings were later used in anti-Semitic propaganda, including in Nazi Germany. MORE

The 500th anniversary of the Reformation would be the “perfect time” for Protestant leaders to recognize and apologize for the “horrific antisemitism” of their movement’s founder Martin Luther, an official with a leading US-based Jewish human rights organization told The Algemeiner on Monday. MORE

I wonder if Obama had anything to do with this? 

One of the world’s most important religious sites and Judaism’s holiest site, Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and Western Wall, were reclassified as an exclusively Muslim shrine Thursday after a United Nations organization adopted a polarizing resolution that denies Jewish connection to the site. MORE

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is a church in decline but one whose enthusiasm for attacks on Israel never wanes.

The decline is very clear in the numbers. When formed in 1988, the ELCA had over 5 million members, but it is now down to about 3.8 million—down over a fourth. The number of member churches is similarly in decline. MORE