Jesus is Lord, A Worshipping Christian’s Blog

More than 200 people from a group of thousands in India that believes it is one of the “lost tribes” of Israel paid an emotional first visit to the Western Wall after arriving here last week, fulfilling for many a lifelong dream of returning to what they consider their homeland.

Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based organization led by American Michael Freund, hopes to bring to the Jewish state the remaining 7,000 Indian citizens who believe they are the Bnei Menashe, the descendants of Manasseh, one of biblical patriarch Joseph’s two sons and a grandson of Jacob, the man whose name was changed to Israel.

The tribe lives in the two Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur, to which they claim to have been exiled from Israel more than 2,700 years ago by the Assyrian empire.

Last week, WND reported 230 Bnei Menashe touched down in Israel and made their way to a Shavei Israel absorption center in northern Israel, where they will study Hebrew and Judaism.

Original Link

Update at Bottom

This news just came in. I don’t have details yet, but I’ll post more about it as details become available.

***Update 08:25 CDT 09/10/07:***

Mexico Oil Pipeline Blasts Believed to Be Sabotage

MEXICO CITY — Six explosions ripped apart pipelines for Mexico’s state oil monopoly early Monday, the company said. The blasts were believed to be sabotage and 12,000 people were evacuated afterward.

A small, left-wing guerrilla group claimed to have attacked a major gas pipeline for the Mexican state oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, in July and at the time at least a dozen major companies were forced to suspend or scale back operations.

Pemex issued a statement saying it believed Monday’s explosions were also sabotage. Government officials said 12,000 people were evacuated after the blasts.

The Muslim squatters on Temple Mount continue to use any method necessary to erase all signs that a Jewish Temple existed there. Their latest atrocity centers around a “utility repair” dig using heavy equipment. Now what makes this bad is that as the Muslims tear into the mount with this heavy equipment, they are going out of their way to destroy any First and Second Temple artifacts. To compound this rape of Temple Mount, they are refusing to allow any archaeologist or media to view their work. They are doing this with the full knowledge and support of the Israeli government.

JERUSALEM – Prominent archaeologists, some Jewish leaders and former Israeli politicians are petitioning Israel’s supreme court to immediately halt a dig Islamic authorities are conducting on the Temple Mount – Judaism’s holiest site – that is said to be destroying antiquities and what archaeologists believe is a wall from the Second Jewish Temple.

The Israeli government has not stopped Islamic authorities from blasting a massive trench on the Mount and has barred archaeologists from inspecting the Temple-era wall, believed to be from the outer courtyard of the Second Temple.

The wall reportedly has been pulverized by bulldozers operated by the Waqf, the Mount’s Muslim custodians. If verified, the wall would be the most significant Jewish Temple find in history.

Yesterday’s court petition against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, other cabinet ministers and Israel’s Antiquities Authority, explains Second Temple courtyards and artifacts are located within a few feet of ground level. It maintains the Waqf dig – a trench 1,300 feet long and five feet deep – has destroyed or damaged priceless archaeological artifacts from the first and second Temple periods.

Last month, the Waqf was given permission by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to use bulldozers and other heavy equipment to dig a massive trench it claims is necessary to replace electrical cables outside mosques on the site. The dig, which extends to most of the periphery of the Mount, is being protected by the Israeli police and is supposed to be supervised by the Israeli government’s Antiquities Authority.

Earlier this month, after bulldozers dug a trench 1,300 feet long and five feet deep, the Muslim diggers came across a wall Israeli archaeologists believe may be remains of an area of the Second Jewish Temple known as the woman’s courtyard.

WND last week obtained a photograph of the massive Waqf trench. In view in the picture are concrete slabs broken by Waqf bulldozers and a chopped up carved stone believed to be of Jewish Temple-era antiquity.

Third-generation Temple Mount archaeologist Eilat Mazar analyzed the photo and said the damaged stone displays elements of the second Temple era and might be part of the Jewish Temple wall Israeli archaeologists charge the Waqf has been attempting to destroy. She said in order to certify the stone in the photo, she would need to personally inspect it.

Mazar is also a fellow at Israel’s Shalem Center and member of the Public Committee for Prevention of the Destruction of Antiquities on Temple Mount. Her much-discussed discovery in the City of David, a neighborhood just south of Jerusalem’s Old City Walls, is a massive building dating to the 10th century B.C. It is believed to be the remains of the palace of biblical King David, the second leader of a united kingdom of Israel, who ruled from around 1005 to 965 B.C.

Israel, though, is blocking leading archeologists from surveying the massive damage Islamic authorities are accused of causing to what may be the outer wall of the Second Jewish Temple.

“The Antiquities Authority tells us to coordinate with the police. The police send us back to the Antiquities Authority,” said Mazar.

The Antiquities Authority did not return repeated requests for comment.

“It’s crucial this wall is inspected,” the archaeologist said. “The Temple Mount ground level is only slightly above the original Temple Mount platform, meaning anything found is likely from the Temple itself.”

Original Link.

More exciting archaeological finds in Jerusalem from the Second Temple era. Despite the lie the Muslims try to spread about there never being a Jewish Temple on Temple Mount in Jerusalem, historical documents and archeology continue to prove that the Muslims are the chronic lairs they appear to be.

JERUSALEM (Sept. 9) - Under threat from Romans ransacking Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, many of the city’s Jewish residents crowded into an underground drainage channel to hide and later flee the chaos through Jerusalem’s southern end unnoticed.

The ancient tunnel was recently discovered buried beneath rubble, a monument to one of the great dramatic scenes of the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70 A.D.

The channel was dug beneath what would become the main road of Jerusalem, the archaeology dig’s directors, Ronny Reich of the University of Haifa and Eli Shukron of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said Sunday. Shukron said excavators looking for the road happened upon a small drainage channel that led them to the discovery of the massive tunnel two weeks ago.

But what makes the channel doubly significant is its role as an escape hatch for Jews desperate to flee the conquering Romans, the dig’s directors said.

The Second Temple was the center of Jewish worship during the second Jewish Commonwealth, which spanned the six centuries preceding the Roman conquest of Jerusalem. Its expansion was the most famous construction project of Herod, the Jewish proxy ruler of the Holy Land under imperial Roman occupation from 37 B.C.

As the temple was being destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D., numerous people took shelter in the drainage channel and lived inside it until they fled Jerusalem through its southern end, the historian Josephus Flavius wrote in “The War of the Jews.”

“It was a place where people hid and fled to from burning, destroyed Jerusalem,” Shukron said.

Tens of thousands of people lived in Jerusalem at the time, but it is not clear how many used the channel to escape, he said.

About 100 yards of the channel have been uncovered so far. Reich estimates its total length will reach more than a half-mile, stretching north from the Shiloah Pool at Jerusalem’s southern end to the disputed holy shrine known to Jews as Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Al Aqsa Mosque compound. The shrine is the site of the two biblical Jewish temples.

Archeologists think the tunnel leads to the Kidron River, which empties into the Dead Sea.

Original Link.