U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has come and gone but the dust is still swirling around Middle East sand storm in his wake. Biden, a close personal friend of Netanyahu, was sent by President Barack Obama, on a good will mission to clear the air with Netanyahu, kick off the long awaited proximity talks between Israel and the Palestinians and to make sure that Washington and Jerusalem are on the same page in the confrontation with Iran. And smack in the middle, the startling announcement by Israel's Interior Ministry that a planning committee had approved 1600 new housing in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo. Analyst David Essing is of the view that the insult to Biden, unintentional as it was, will paradoxically enable the Obama administration to exercise more leverage over the Israeli Prime Minister.

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March 11, 1948 - A car filled with explosives blew up in the courtyard of the Jewish Agency building in Jerusalem. 12 people were killed, among them Arie Leib Jaffe, one of the founders of the Zionist movement.

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In March 1921, twenty six years before the The United Nations General Assembly voted to partition Palestine,  Mr. Winston Churchill visited Palestine and met a delegation of Muslim leaders. They protested that the ultimate objective of political Zionism was to give the natural resources of Palestine to the Jews. They pointed out that the Arabs had occupied Palestine for over a thousand years. They asked Churchill to use his influence to correct what they considered a great injustice.

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Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has expressed concern over the failure of the international community to impose new sanctions while Iran is racing toward nuclear weapons. However, China declares she is still opposed, Russia may reconsider and the U.S. says it may take months before the UN Security Council takes action. Barring unforeseen circumstances in Iran, David Essing sees Israel waiting for the diplomatic effort to run its course before deciding what if anything she should do. Against this background, Israeli civilians are being reissued with gas masks.

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Levi Eshkol (Skolnik) Born on October 25th 1895, Served as the third Prime Minister of Israel from 1963 until his death from a heart attack in 1969. He was the first Israeli Prime Minister to die in office.

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 NATO forces waging the current campaign are discovering that Taliban forces in the Marjah region of Afghanistan are copying the Hamas tactics against the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza. The Islamist guerillas in Marjah are also exploiting innocent civilians as ' human shields' with some of them being killed and wounded in the cross-fire. U.S. Brig. Gen. Nicholson has been quoted as saying that despite precautions such casualties are inevitable. Ironically, Judge Richard Goldstone who accused the Israel Defense Forces of being guilty of war crimes and possibly 'crimes against humanity' in Gaza has said that the IDF should 'follow the example of the U.S. Forces fighting in Iraq and elsewhere. David Essing urges Judge Goldstone to 'join the dots' between the NATO warfare in Afghanistan and the IDF's 'Cast Lead' operation into Gaza to suppress the the rocketing of Israeli civilians.

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On the anniversary of the death of Israels former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, IsraCast brings you a reocrding of Egyptian President Sadat's and Israeli Prime Minister Begin's speech from the signing of the Peace Treaty between Israel and Egypt in Washington on 1979.

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'Ben-Yehuda Street incident' - IsraCast is publishing photos of the British car bombings in Jerusalem before the end of the mandate in 1948. 50 Jews were killed, with more than 100 injured. The photos were taken by the well known photographer David Rubinger.

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Who were the ten men and one woman who arrived discreetly at Dubai airport, tracked down Hamas kingpin Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, assassinated him in his hotel room and then departed all within nineteen hours. The fact that six of them traveled on fraudulent passports in the names of six British citizens now living in Israel pointed to the Mossad Secret Service known for its daring operations in the past. At Dubai's request, Interpol has issued warrants for the eleven suspects while British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has ordered a 'full investigation' after the summoning of the Israeli ambassador for an explanation at the Foreign Office. Israel is staying mum although quiet contacts will likely calm the diplomatic storm.

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The 'Tehran Children' was a group of about one thousand Jewish children, most of them orphans, who reached Palestine through Iran in February 1943. IsraCast brings you a sequence of photos which show the 'Tehran Children' arriving in Israel.

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 By enriching uranium from 3% to 20%, Iran appears to have startled most of the international community into finally believing that her ultimate goal is to acquire nuclear weapons. However China, which can cast a veto in the UN Security Council against stiffer sanctions, is still holding out. Amid the mounting tension, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will be flying to Moscow to discuss the situation with Russian leaders, while U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen flies to Israel. Meanwhile Brig.Gen.(res.) Uzi Eilam, a former top Israeli nuclear official, has contended that although Iran's move was dramatic, the Iranians apparently still do not have the required capability to build an atomic bomb.

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Avraham Stern was a Jewish urban revolutionary who founded and led the Zionist organization later known as Lehi, and was executed by British soldiers.

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 Fellow Knesset members, there is no more natural an occurrence than for the Knesset and all its factions to unite and mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the day of liberation for the Auschwitz extermination camp. The forces of evil sent tens of millions of people - Jews, Soviets, Poles, Gypsies, and political rivals - to an awful death. This wasn't a simple death, but an industry of death, which was borne of an ideology of hate, racism, and ethnic cleansing.

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 The U.S. announcement of a $6 billion arms sale to Taiwan could not have come at a worse time for President Barack Obama's attempt to rally UN Security Council backing for new sanctions against Iran. A former senior Israeli official in Washington says chances are now slimmer than ever of getting China's crucial support. Meanwhile, the U.S. is beefing up the missile defenses of four Gulf states as Iran launches a missile which could potentially reach America's eastern seaboard. Analyst David Essing assesses this and other developments over the past seven days.

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Abdullah II bin al-Hussein is the current King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. He ascended the throne on 7 February 1999 after the death of his father King Hussein. King Abdullah is a member of the Hashemite family and is reportedly a 43rd-generation direct descendant of Prophet Muhammad.

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