Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

The First Step Towards Building the Third Temple: a Synagogue on the Temple Mount
Dec 27th, 2016
CommentaryBreaking Israeli News
Categories: The Nation Of Israel

“Even them will I bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer; their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices shall be acceptable upon Mine altar; for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” Isaiah 56:7 - The Israel Bible

Yaakov Hayman, the head of Yishai, an NGO dedicated to reinstating Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, is preparing to submit a survey map to the Israeli government to build four synagogues, one in each corner of the Temple Mount compound, a critical turning point steering Israel in the right direction towards prayer at Judaism’s holiest site.

Legally, the government is required to permit Jews to pray at the site. In a 2015 case brought by Rabbi Yehuda Glick, now a member of the Likud party, the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court ruled that in accordance with Israel’s basic law that ensures freedom of worship for all religions, Jews must be permitted to pray on the Temple Mount.

In practice, Jews who ascend to the Temple Mount are antagonized by Islamic Waqf guards who closely monitor their every move. Any action that appears worshipful results in immediate expulsion.

At present, Christians too are forbidden from praying on the Temple Mount. True to the Bible’s vision of a House of Prayer for all Nations, Hayman believes “Anyone who doesn’t object to anyone else being on the Temple Mount should be allowed up there to pray”, he told Breaking Israel News.

Hayman believes he has the solution. According to Jewish tradition, the Temple was destroyed due to hatred between Jews. Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount is being prevented by hatred; the political agenda determined by Muslim violence. Hayman believes the answer is an outpouring of love for the Temple Mount that brings people together in prayer.

“A synagogue is the first step towards building the Third Temple”, Hayman explained. Quoting the book of Kings, he noted that the Temple was inaugurated not just as a place for sacrifices but mainly as a house of prayer.

Hayman cited the Mishna (oral law), which stated explicitly that there was a synagogue standing alongside the Temple. Hayman’s plan is to build four synagogues angled in to face the Holy of Holies. “The wall facing the Temple will be glass, so the people who can see the Temple while they are praying,” he explained.

“We need to get more Jews to go up to the Temple Mount,” Hayman urged. Unfortunately, Jewish visitation is severely limited. Over the past 12 months, only 14,000 Jews were permitted to visit the Temple Mount. “Last year, over 7 million Jews visited the Kotel (Western Wall), just a few yards away. When we have thousands of Jews going up every day, Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount will just naturally begin to happen.”

Surprisingly, Hayman is not a rabbi. More appropriate to his function, Hayman’s profession is developing and managing building projects. He approaches the holy endeavor like any other building project but construction on the Temple Mount poses a unique challenge.

“The first stage in any building project is surveying the land and getting the map accepted by the government as accurate and valid,” Hayman explained to Breaking Israel News. “This is usually simple, almost automatic. We surveyed the Temple Mount and submitted the map three years ago. It was the first time the Temple Mount had been measured since 1967.”

Upon conducting the research necessary to determine whether construction on the Temple Mount would be legal, “We discovered that the Temple Mount is not registered to anyone,” Hayman divulged to Breaking Israel News.

“Nonetheless, the survey was rejected by order of the Prime Minister’s office. They didn’t want to deal with it.”

Despite initial rejections, Hayman is preparing to submit the survey once again.

“My hope is that due to current events and slightly different leadership in the upper levels of government that it may get through this time,” Hyman said.

He explained that the UNESCO vote that granted a religious monopoly on the Temple Mount to the Muslims opened the door to last Friday’s UN Security Council vote that granted Judea, Samaria, and East Jerusalem to the Palestinians.

“If you don’t have sovereignty in your own holiest place, how can you demand sovereignty anywhere else?” Hayman asked rhetorically. “Building a synagogue on the Temple Mount can help Israel politically…I hope the government will understand that.”

In a rare show of unity in a profession trained in dialectic, rabbis from all sectors have voiced support for the construction. The seeds of the project were planted when Rabbi Shlomo Goren, the IDF’s Chief Rabbi, stood at the Kotel moments after it had been liberated from Jordan. Rabbi Goren organized several prayer sessions on the Temple Mount complete with Torah scrolls, but the government put a stop to them before he could see it through.

Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, called for the construction of a synagogue on the Temple Mount and now, his son, Safed’s Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, is working toward that goal as the president of Yishai.

Chief Rabbi David Lau, generally considered to be moderate, stunned many last June when, in an interview on the televised Knesset Channel, he called for the construction of the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount.

“There’s room for Jews, there’s room for Christians, there’s room for everybody,” Rabbi Lau said to a shocked audience.

Obama's Abandonment of Israel Should Surprise Nobody
Dec 27th, 2016
CommentaryABRAHAM H. MILLER/JNS.ORG
Categories: The Nation Of Israel

The United Nations resolution condemning Israeli settlements comes in the wake of two other U.N. resolutions, passed by the UNESCO cultural body in October, that denied the historic and biblical relationship between the Jews and the land of Israel. 

The U.N. can pass resolutions, but it can neither change history nor alter reality.

For the American Jewish community that voted overwhelmingly not once, but twice for President Barack Obama, America's abstention and refusal to use its veto power on an anti-Israel measure at the U.N. was a betrayal of historic proportions. 

For the Jewish alt-left such as the New Israel Fund and J Street, which is supported by mega-donor George Soros, this was a stellar victory. 

They have clung to the myth that the settlements are obstacles to peace. They seem to have forgotten that Israel gave up Gaza in an anticipated exchange of land for peace while actually risking civil war and yielding land for rockets, missiles and underground terror attacks.

Obama's removal of the Zionist Organization of America from the table of Jewish advisers and replacing it with J Street was a mile marker on his road to perdition.

Indeed, many liberal Jews not only fail to understand the significance of Obama's abstention at the U.N., but some naively believe it will move forward the peace process. 

The absurdity of this position is revealed in the expectation that the Palestinians will now feel compelled to negotiate what the U.N. has already given them. 

According to the U.N., the Jewish section of eastern Jerusalem is now in Arab territory, as is the Western Wall. Indeed, even bustling portions of the economically thriving parts of main Jerusalem are probably east of the armistice line, according to some interpretations.

If anything, the Obama administration has further undermined any reasonable expectation that the Arab-Israeli conflict will be resolved through negotiations. 

No Palestinian negotiator can demand less than the U.N. has already given the Palestinians, and no Israeli can give away Israel's holiest sites or uproot the hundreds of thousands of settlers who dwell east of an armistice line that was never meant or expected to be a border. 

The U.N. resolution's de facto defining of a Palestinian state on the armistice line--the Auschwitz border, as Abba Eban so accurately called it--will never be accepted by Israel no matter how such "democratic" states as Russia, China and Venezuela vote. 

The Arabs have had ample opportunity to accept a state alongside a Jewish state going back to the late 1930s, and they have always said "no." The only reason to have a Palestinian state now is to put another Gaza on Israel's narrow 12-mile border. 

Israel will never accept the conditions of suicide Obama has created for it. But rest assured, Israelis will find in this U.N. resolution new motivation to continue to expand Israel into the disputed territories. 

In the words of Tzipi Hotovely, Israel's deputy foreign minister, "History shows there are events which create drastic changes in Israel's response. 

History will remember the U.N. Security Council's Resolution 2334 as the one which brought about Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. No decision will cause Israel to stop building on its own land."

Far from burnishing Obama's legacy, this leaves it in flames.

Netanyahu Defends Response to UN Vote: israel will not Turn the Other Cheek
Dec 27th, 2016
Daily NewsJpost
Categories: The Nation Of Israel

Prime Minister Netanyahu moved from an offensive to defensive posture on Monday regarding the UN Security Council vote, rebuffing criticism that his angry response was too aggressive and saying that Israel will not “turn the other cheek.”

During an event in Ma’alot-Tarshiha to launch a new socioeconomic plan for the Galilee, Netanyahu said he read criticism in the morning papers of his aggressive responses to the vote. This response included recalling Israel’s ambassadors to Senegal and New Zealand, summoning in for protests the ambassadors and representatives of all the UN Security Council states, canceling the scheduled visit this week of the Ukrainian prime minister and calling on his ministers to curtail visits to the 14 Security Council states that voted for the measure.

“Israel is a country with national pride and we do not turn the other cheek,” he said.

“This is a rational, aggressive and responsible response, the natural reaction of a healthy nation that is making clear to the nations of the world that what was done in the UN is unacceptable to it.”

Netanyahu said that this type of response has an “accumulative effect,” even if there will be other efforts to harm us in the course of the coming month. He was referring to concerns that the Obama administration may set forth parameters for a Middle East solution that Israel opposes and finds inimical to its interests.

“There is no alternative to a determined response, because it creates the basis for different relations afterward,” Netanyahu said.

Referring to a headline Monday morning on the front page of Maariv, Netanyahu said that to describe Israel’s reaction as a “world war” was absurd. “I say enough with this Diaspora mentality,” Netanyahu said. “I say there is no diplomatic wisdom in being obsequious. Not only will our relations with the world not be harmed, in the long term they will only improve, because the nations of the world respect strong countries that stand up for themselves. They do not respect weak and obsequious countries that bow their heads.”

Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer, meanwhile, said Jerusalem has evidence Washington was behind the UN move, while Obama administration officials countered that runaway settlement activity gave the US no choice but to abstain.

Dermer, speaking on CNN, said that there is nothing new when the UN “gangs up” on Israel.

“What is new is that the United States did not stand up and oppose that gang-up,” he said. “And what is outrageous is that the United States was actually behind that gang-up. I think it was a really sad day and a shameful chapter in our relations.”

Dermer said Jerusalem has “clear evidence” of US involvement, and that it will be presented to the incoming Trump administration.

A few hours after that interview aired in the US, senior White House official Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, told Channel 2 that when the resolution came to a vote, “we decided not to support it, but to abstain, given our concerns about the trends on the ground.”

Rhodes said both US President Barack Obama and US Secretary of State John Kerry have been saying in hundreds of conversations and speeches that Israel’s settlement activities in the West Bank were making the two-state solution unachievable over time, and that if the trend continued “we could see further international steps against Israeli settlement activity.

“When we see laws aimed to legalize outposts, and when we see rhetoric that suggests this is the most pro-settlement Israeli government in history, and when we see facts on the ground – deep into the West Bank, beyond the separation barrier – we feel compelled to speak against those actions,” he said.

Lurking behind this war of words was the continued concern in Jerusalem that Obama would initiate another move against Israel before leaving office in a little less than a month.

Rhodes said he would not describe what was being planned as a new initiative.

"I think what Secretary Kerry will be doing is he will give a speech in which he will lay out a comprehensive vision for how we see the conflict being resolved; where we see things in 2016 as we unfortunately conclude our term in office without THERE being significant progress toward peace,? he said.

The concern in Jerusalem is that the parameters Kerry will lay out will be adopted as the new parameters for a resolution at a Middle East conference to be convened in Paris on January 15, and perhaps even formalized into yet another resolution that could be taken to the Security Council to essentially replace UN Security Council Resolution 242, which has been the basis of all peace efforts since 1967.

Netanyahu’s aggressive approach, meanwhile, has already engendered pushback, with Ukraine firing back at Jerusalem’s decision to cancel Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman’s scheduled visit by calling in Israel’s ambassador to Kiev for a clarification.

According to a statement put out by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Kiev expressed its “disappointment” to Ambassador Eliav Belotserkovsky at the “emotional reaction of some Israeli officials and politicians” following the passage of the resolution which Ukraine supported.

The statement said the two sides agreed to focus on the preparation of a number of “important bilateral events,” including the next round of negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement, as well as negotiations to liberalize air traffic between the two countries.

Groysman was scheduled to arrive on Wednesday. Jerusalem nixed the visit, however, because Ukraine was among the 14 states that voted for the measure. It also called in Kiev’s ambassador to protest the vote.

Late Sunday night, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying it is “confident that active and emotional internal debates in Israel will not impact traditionally friendly Ukrainian-Israeli relations, based on mutual respect and joint interests.

“Our country consistently advocates the respect for the international law by everyone and everywhere as [it] has experienced itself the tragic consequences brought [about] by its violation,” the statement read, in reference to Crimea. “That’s why our position was formed on the basis of our consistent line to ensure the respect for the international law by all its subjects.”

Diplomatic officials in Jerusalem said that the decision to cancel Groysman’s visit was part of a policy to send a signal to the world that Israel will begin extracting a price for countries that vote against it in critical votes in international forums.

Ukraine has one of the better voting records on Israel-related issues in Europe, generally abstaining or not being present for these votes.

For instance, it was not present when the UN General Assembly granted non-member observer state status to “Palestine” in 2012, and abstained when UNESCO accepted “Palestine” as a member in 2011.

Ukraine also abstained on the two votes in UNESCO this year which expunged any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount.

Let the Headlines Speak
Dec 27th, 2016
Daily NewsFrom the Internet
Categories: Today's Headlines

3.3M earthquake strikes near Los Angeles
A 3.3 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast near Los Angeles on Tuesday morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The strike happened at 5:58 a.m. Eastern, according to the USGS. The earthquake took place 10 kilometers southwest of Malibu, California.  

GOP moves to block 'disorderly conduct' in House chamber
The House of Representatives will vote on new rules in January that include fines for members of Congress who take pictures or broadcast audio or video from the floor of the House chamber, in addition to other rules clarifying conduct seen as disorderly during Congressional sessions. In addition to fines, the legislation includes penalties for breaking new rules that include referrals to the House Committee on Ethics and other sanctions.  

ALIEN LIFE BOOST: 2017 could be the year we FINALLY confirm ET existence, say experts
With several probes around different planets and a rover on Mars, experts are hopeful that 2017 could finally be the year that humans discover life on other worlds. Scientists were excited earlier this year when strange signals were detected from deep space. While many experts state that it is likely to be another false alarm, there is hope that significant news will arise from it either way.  

The First Step Towards Building the Third Temple: A Synagogue on the Temple Mount
Yaakov Hayman, the head of Yishai, an NGO dedicated to reinstating Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, is preparing to submit a survey map to the Israeli government to build four synagogues, one in each corner of the Temple Mount compound, a critical turning point steering Israel in the right direction towards prayer at Judaism’s holiest site.  

Israel urges Jews to leave France as Benajmin Netanyahu continues to lash out after UN vote
Israel’s defence minister has urged French Jews to leave France and move to the Jewish state as the Israeli government continued to lash out at the international community in the wake of UN resolution criticising its settlements in the occupied West Bank. Four days after the US allowed the UN Security Council to censure Israeli settlement building, Israel’s government is on a heated rhetorical campaign against the 14 countries that voted against it.  

Russia calls U.S. move to better arm Syrian rebels a "hostile act"
Russia said on Tuesday that a U.S. decision to ease some restrictions on arming Syrian rebels had opened the way for deliveries of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, a move it said would directly threaten Russian forces in Syria.  

CHINA-CHONGQING-EARTHQUAKE
Pupils are evacuated to a playground after earthquake at Xichan Elementary School in Dazu District of Chongqing, southwest China, Dec. 27, 2016. A 4.8-magnitude earthquake hit Chongqing on Tuesday morning. So far, no casualties have been reported.  

Missing From The Fake News Debate: Evidence It Had Any Impact Photo of Peter Hasson Peter Hasson
As 2016 draws to a close, the ongoing debate regarding “fake news’ has pressed forward, but notably absent from the debate is any evidence that “fake news” impacted voters’ decisions on whom to vote for in last month’s election.  

Netanyahu defends response to UN vote: 'Israel will not turn the other cheek'
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved from an offensive to defensive posture on Monday regarding the UN Security Council vote, rebuffing criticism that his angry response was too aggressive and saying that Israel will not “turn the other cheek.”  

Russia calls U.S. move to supply Syria rebels weapons a hostile act
Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday it viewed a U.S. decision to ease restrictions on weapons supplies to Syrian rebels as a "hostile act" which threatened the safety of Russian warplanes and military personnel, the RIA news agency reported. RIA quoted the ministry as saying the administration of Barack Obama was attempting to complicate the situation in the world before Donald Trump took over the White House in January.  

Fears Growing Islamic State Successfully Weaponizing Refugees
Western security officials are increasingly worried that the Islamic State terror group may be a step ahead of their renewed efforts to stop terrorist infiltration of their countries. Fears once centered on IS using migrant and refugee flows to sneak in highly trained operatives bent on carrying out attacks. Now they have expanded to include an equally dangerous possibility.  

Monte dei Paschi sees funding gap grow
Italian lender Monte dei Paschi is facing a capital shortfall of €8.8bn (£7.5bn), higher than the €5bn previously estimated by the bank, the European Central Bank has said. It comes after Italy approved a €20bn fund to prop up its embattled banking sector on 23 December. Monte dei Paschi had asked for a capital injection to stay afloat.  

Turkish police in court for first Istanbul trial over coup plot
Twenty-nine police officers have gone on trial in a Turkish prison accused of trying to overthrow the government in the failed July coup. It is the first trial of alleged plotters to take place in Istanbul since the abortive coup. Turkey has arrested some 40,000 people and sacked even more after parts of the army and police tried to oust President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.  

High Court to hear petition for transparency for Israel’s secretive atomic agency
An NGO announced on Tuesday that the High Court of Justice will hear its petition to compel the secretive Israel Atomic Energy Commission to become more transparent through broad Knesset legislation. The hearing will be the first time in history that a judicial body will exercise oversight over the Israeli IAEC.  

US soldiers 'heading to the front line' in new Iraqi push against Islamic State in Mosul
Iraqi forces are preparing for a fresh push against Islamic State-held Mosul 'within several days' a US general has said, as American soldiers prepare to get closer to the front line than ever before in the two month campaign to take the jihadi stronghold.  

Earthquake recorded in Oman
A 5.7 magnitude earthquake hit Arab Sea on Monday morning at 11:26am 820 kilometers from Salalah, an official from Sultan Qaboos University Seismological Center said.  

Philippines battered by typhoon and earthquake
Manila/New Delhi, Dec 26 (IBNS): An earthquake measuring 5.2 on Richter scale hit the Philippines coast in the wee hours of Monday morning while Powerful typhoon Nock-Ten continues to batter the nation, according to media sources.  

Leah Remini challenges Church of Scientology to sue her over alleged lies
eah Remini isn’t backing down on her stance against Scientology. Amidst the success of her searing A&E docuseries Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, the actress and author could soon be living the harsh reality of the latter portion of the program’s title. During Friday’s episode of Larry King Now, Remini welcomed a lawsuit from members of the controversial religious organization, which she followed for 34 years between 1979 and 2013.  

Alaska volcano erupts, sends up ash cloud
A volcano in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands has erupted again. The Alaska Volcano Observatory says an eruption that produced ash started just after 2 p.m. Monday at Bogoslof (BOH-goh-slawf) volcano about 850 miles southwest of Anchorage.  

Bloody Year in Chicago Continues with 12 Killings Over Christmas Weekend
Two men gunned down on a porch in Chicago on Christmas Day were among 12 people slain in the city, where an epidemic of killings continued during the holiday weekend. The killings were among 27 shooting incidents occurred from Friday evening to Sunday evening, according to Chicago police. Police said 90 percent of the victims had gang affiliations.  

Pennsylvania professor under fire for 'white genocide' tweet
A Drexel University professor, whose tweet that he wanted a "white genocide" for Christmas sparked a fire storm of criticism from the school and social media users, said on Monday his comment was satirical.  

Generation Snowflake: Increasing Percentage of Young Adults Living With Parents
Dec 27th, 2016
CommentaryMICHAEL SNYDER/ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG
Categories: Contemporary Issues

Have we failed this generation of young adults by not equipping them to be able to handle the harsh realities of the real world?  

According to the Wall Street Journal, the percentage of Americans in the 18 to 34-year-old age bracket that are currently living with their parents hasn't been this high in 75 years.

At this point nearly 40 percent of our young adults in that age range are living at home, and many are concerned that this could have some alarming implications for the future of our nation.

In the United States today, more than 60 million people live in multi-generational households, and it is a good thing to have a tight family.  

But at some point young adults need to learn how to live their own independent lives, and in millions of cases this independence is being delayed or is never happening at all.

There are many factors involved in this trend.  First of all, there is truly a lack of good jobs despite what we are being told about an "economic recovery".  

Millions of young adults are graduating from college only to discover that there is a very limited number of good jobs available for our college graduates.  So some college graduates are able to secure the types of jobs that they were hoping for, but millions of others are not.

Normally when a recession ends, the percentage of young adults living with their parents starts to go back down.  But this has not happened this time around.  Instead, the percentage of young adults that live at home has just continued to rise...

The trend runs counter to that of previous economic cycles, when after a recession-related spike, the number of younger Americans living with relatives declined as the economy improved.

The result is that there is far less demand for housing than would be expected for the millennial generation, now the largest in U.S. history. The number of adults under age 30 has increased by 5 million over the last decade, but the number of households for that age group grew by just 200,000 over the same period, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Another major factor in all of this is the fact that Americans are getting married later in life than ever before and they are having fewer kids than previous generations.

In the old days, people got married young and they set up their own households even if they were dirt poor.  But these days we have hordes of single young adults that are perfectly content to sit at home and sponge off of Mommy and Daddy.

There seems to be a real lack of toughness to this generation of young adults, and many that have perceived this lack of toughness have resorted to referring to them as "Generation Snowflake".  Over the past 12 months this term has become so common that the Guardian has dubbed it "the defining insult of 2016"...

Until very recently, to call someone a snowflake would have involved the word "generation", too, as it was typically used to describe, or insult, a person in their late teens or early 20s. At the start of November, the Collins English Dictionary added "snowflake generation" to its words of the year list, where it sits alongside other vogue-ish new additions such as "Brexit" and "hygge". The Collins definition is as follows: 

"The young adults of the 2010s, viewed as being less resilient and more prone to taking offence than previous generations". Depending on what you read, being part of the "snowflake generation" may be as benign as taking selfies or talking about feelings too much, or it may infer a sense of entitlement, an untamed narcissism, or a form of identity politics that is resistant to free speech.

The phrase came to prominence in the UK at the beginning of 2016, after Claire Fox, director of the thinktank Institute of Ideas, used it in her book I Find That Offensive to address a generation of young people whom she calls "easily offended and thin-skinned".

Of course there are exceptions.  I have some close friends that are young adults in this age range, and they are extraordinary people.

But overall, we seem to have dramatically failed this generation.  Maybe it is because we tend to baby our children from a very early age, and we want to protect them from danger so much that we never allow them to be exposed to the challenges that they need to face in order to toughen up and mature.

And it certainly doesn't help that many of our young adults enter "the real world" already drowning in tens of thousands of dollars of debt.  

According to CNN, about 70 percent of all college graduates in the U.S. will leave school with student loan debt, and the average loan balance for those college graduates is approximately $28,950.  

Paying off student loan debt can be extremely painful, and it can be financially crippling for young people that are just trying to start their new lives.

When our high school kids are looking toward the future, we very much encourage them to go to the very best schools that they can possibly get into, and we tell them to not even worry about the cost.  

We promise them that there will be plenty of good jobs once they graduate, and we push them into these loans without even warning them to consider the future implications.

Facebook Fact Checkers - New Arbiters of Truth All Lean Left
Dec 27th, 2016
CommentaryPNW STAFF
Categories: Contemporary Issues

After an election cycle plagued by widely believed "fake news" stories from both the left and the right, Facebook has announced its plan to employ official 'fact checkers'. 

\News stories appearing in the Facebook feed for a user will have a button that a user can click to report the news as fake. 

The reported new items will then be examined by the third-party fact checkers who will imbed a tag marking the story as disputed and with a link to support the claim. 

The idea could be a fine way to improve Facebook as a news platform, but all of the third-party fact checkers Facebook has announced have shown strong left-wing bias. 

Just as "fact checking" by many major media companies has become code for "left-wing spin", Facebook looks poised to continue the trend, but on a truly massive scale. 

A Pew Research Center study in January 2016 found that 35% of Americans 18-29 considered social media to be the most helpful source of information on the election. 

Without a doubt this number rose over the past year and there are many millions more of all ages read and forward news articles with little thought to their veracity. 

In fact, readers of all ages have been found in numerous studies to be astonishingly bad at determining fact from fiction in news articles, a challenge made even greater in the past year with news stories that stretch credulity.

The reliance on social sharing of news from lesser-known sites allowed fake news to flourish, with some fake news site reportedly bringing their creators upwards for $30 thousand per month through advertising revenue. 

The response of left-leaning publications and websites such as CNN, Washington Post and Snopes has been to issue fact checks, though with a clearly liberal bias. Now this bias is set to be applied to articles published in conservative publications as well.

The initial five "fact checking" organizations that Facebook has declared as third-party arbitrators of truth are Snopes, PolitiFact, Factcheck.org, ABC News, and the Associated Press. 

Despite past conflicts of interest and a demonstrated history of their fact checkers blogging for liberal causes, there has been no attempt, thus far, to employ fact checkers from across the political spectrum.

Facebook VP Adam Mosseri wrote last week on the Facebook news blog, "We'll use the reports from our community, along with other signals, to send stories to these organizations. 

If the fact checking organizations identify a story as fake, it will get flagged as disputed and there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why." 

Once an article has been flagged as disputed, with its corresponding red badge, it will be barred from receiving advertising revenue.

With the possibility of marking perfectly legitimate opposing views as disputed or fake and allowing outrageous liberal spin to pass unscathed, it isn't hard to imagine how the system can be abused. 

It also isn't hard to find recent examples of fact checking already being used blatantly to manipulate the political discourse.

One example is the "pants on fire" rating that PolitiFact awarded Donald Trump's statement that "crime is rising". PolitiFact based its rating on the steady drop in crime from 1993 to 2014. 

As pointed out by the American Enterprise Institute, preliminary data from 2015 do show a rise in crime across many statistical ranges. 

Yet, PolitiFact refused to retract its rating and still argued that Trump's statement was false because he made it with "sweeping rhetoric about a nation in decline" and had not qualified his statement with "recently" or "in the past year." 

With such a standard, even true statements can be labeled false if insufficient context is supplied in what amounts to nit picking rather than fact checking.

There are numerous instances of completely false news stories in the past year that were made up out of whole cloth, and the benefit of flagging those stories should be clear to all. 

Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton selling weapons to ISIS are two egregious examples, but there were dozens more every day of the campaign, and more than a few received tens of millions of views and shares on social media. 

Consider, instead, an example of 'fact checking' applied to actual true statements from Donald Trump used to label him a liar.

In an almost satirical example, CNN and NBC labeled as false Trump's claims that Clinton had "acid washed" her 33,000 emails. 

Clearly this was a metaphor for her use of data cleaning applications, specifically a secure delete program known as BleachBit, and the statement was entirely true. However, it was marked as false since Clinton's team did not "use a corrosive chemical". 

Deliberately ignoring the legitimate use of metaphor, nitpicking irrelevant details and taking text out of context can be used to twist fact into fiction and back again as many times as it serves their agenda.

Given the track record of the mainstream media with respect to fact checking, it is cause for alarm that they will be given the keys to the Facebook kingdom with its user base now at around 1.89 billion. 

With more people turning to Facebook as their filter for news, the ability of these so-called fact checkers to enforce liberal bias can only become more pronounced.

10 Previous Times America Faced Major Disaster After Attempting to Divide Israel
Dec 27th, 2016
CommentaryMICHAEL SNYDER/ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG
Categories: Warning

Because Barack Obama has cursed Israel at the United Nations, America is now under a curse. Friday's stunning betrayal of Israel at the UN Security Council is making headlines all over the planet, but the truth is that what Obama has just done is far more serious than most people would dare to imagine. 

Over the past several decades, whenever the U.S. government has taken a major step toward the division of the land of Israel it has resulted in a major disaster hitting the United States. 

This keeps happening over and over again, and yet our leaders never seem to learn. And despite the fact that President-elect Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and prominent members of both parties in Congress strongly urged Obama to veto Security Council resolution 2334, he went ahead and let it pass anyway.

Because the United States has veto power on the UN Security Council, nothing can get passed without our support. And it has been the policy of the U.S. government for decades to veto all anti-Israel resolutions that come before the Security Council.

But this time around, it appears that the Obama administration was working very hard behind the scenes to get this resolution pushed through the Security Council before the end of Obama's term. At least that is what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is claiming...

"From the information that we have, we have no doubt that the Obama administration initiated it, stood behind it, coordinated on the wording and demanded that it be passed," Netanyahu said in a statement. "This is, of course, in complete contradiction of the traditional American policy that was committed to not trying to dictate terms for a permanent agreement, like any issue related to them in the Security Council, and, of course, the explicit commitment of President Obama himself, in 2011, to refrain from such steps."

I am sure that there will be a tremendous amount of debate about to what extent the U.S. was involved in creating and drafting this resolution, but there is one thing that is exceedingly clear.

The ultimate decision as to whether or not this resolution would be adopted was in the hands of one man. Barack Obama knew very well that he had this power, and in the end he ultimately decided to betray Israel.

And now that our government has cursed Israel at the UN, our entire nation will be cursed as a result.

In the Scriptures we are repeatedly told that God will bless those that bless Israel and will curse those that curse Israel. 

When Barack Obama blocked a similar resolution that France wanted to submit for a vote in September 2015, it resulted in America being blessed, and we definitely have been blessed over the past 16 months.

But now that Barack Obama has reversed course and has betrayed Israel, we will most assuredly be cursed. In the days ahead we will see how this plays out, and perhaps we can get some hints about what may happen by reviewing recent history.

There have literally been dozens of instances in recent decades when the U.S. has been hit by some sort of immediate disaster when it has made a move toward the dividing of the land of Israel. 

The following are ten of the most prominent examples that stand out to me...

#1 The last time the U.S. government refused to veto an anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council was in 1979. On March 22nd, 1979 the Carter administration chose not to veto UN Resolution 446. 

Four days after that on March 26th, the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty was signed in Washington. As a result of that treaty, Israel gave up a tremendous amount of territory. Two days later, on March 28th, the worst nuclear power plant disaster in U.S. history made headlines all over the globe. The following comes from Wikipedia...

The Three Mile Island accident was a partial nuclear meltdown that occurred on March 28, 1979, in reactor number 2 of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station (TMI-2) in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, United States. It was the most significant accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant history.[2] The incident was rated a five on the seven-point International Nuclear Event Scale: Accident With Wider Consequences.[3][4]

#2 On October 30th, 1991 President George H. W. Bush opened the Madrid Peace Conference which brought Israelis and Palestinians together to negotiate for the very first time. 

In his opening speech, Bush told Israel that "territorial compromise is essential for peace". At the exact same time, "the Perfect Storm" was brewing in the north Atlantic. 

This legendary storm traveled 1000 miles the wrong direction and sent 35 foot waves slamming directly into President Bush's home in Kennebunkport, Maine.

#3 On August 23rd, 1992 the Madrid Peace Conference moved to Washington D.C., and the very next day Hurricane Andrew made landfall in Florida causing 30 billion dollars in damage. It was the worst natural disaster up to that time in U.S. history.

#4 On January 16th, 1994 President Clinton met with President Assad of Syria to discuss the possibility of Israel giving up the Golan Heights. Within 24 hours, the devastating Northridge earthquake hit southern California. It was the second worst natural disaster up to that time in U.S. history.

#5 On January 21st, 1998 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the White House but received a very cold reception. In fact, President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright actually refused to have lunch with him. That exact same day the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, sending the Clinton presidency into a tailspin from which it would never recover.

#6 On September 28th, 1998 Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was working on finalizing a plan which would have had Israel give up approximately 13 percent of Judea and Samaria. On that precise day, Hurricane George slammed into the Gulf Coast with wind gusts of up to 175 miles an hour.

#7 On May 3rd, 1999 Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was supposed to hold a press conference to declare the creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as the capital. 

On that precise day, the most powerful tornadoes ever recorded in the U.S. ripped through Oklahoma and Kansas. At one point one of the tornadoes actually had a recorded wind speed of 316 miles an hour.

#8 On April 30th, 2003, "the Road Map to Peace" that had been developed by the so-called "Quartet" was presented to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon by U.S. Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer. 

Over the next seven days, the U.S. was hit by a staggering 412 tornadoes. It was the largest tornado cluster ever recorded up to that time.

#9 In 2005, President George W. Bush (the son of George H. W. Bush) convinced Israel that it was necessary to remove all of the Jewish settlers out of Gaza and turn it over entirely to the Palestinians. 

According to the New York Times, the very last of the settlers were evacuated on August 23, 2005. On that precise day, a storm that would be given the name "Katrina" started forming over the Bahamas. 

The city of New Orleans still has not fully recovered from the damage that storm caused, and it ranked as the costliest natural disaster in all of U.S. history up to that time.

#10 On May 19th, 2011 Barack Obama told Israel that there must be a return to the pre-1967 borders. Three days later on May 22nd a half-mile wide EF-5 multiple-vortex tornado ripped through Joplin, Missouri. According to Wikipedia, it was "the costliest single tornado in U.S. history."

The UN Security Council resolution that was passed on Friday is the biggest betrayal of Israel in modern history. As I explained in my last article, I believe that America's reprieve is now over and all hell is about to break loose in this country.

When Barack Obama blocked the UN Security Council from dividing the land of Israel in September 2015, according to the Word of God we should have been blessed as a nation as a result, and we were blessed.

But now Barack Obama has cursed Israel by stabbing them in the back at the United Nations, and according to the Word of God we should be cursed as a nation as a result.

And as surely as I am writing this article, we will be cursed.