CONSERVATIVE CLERGY "PROTEST" SO GOD ANSWERS WITH AN EARTHQUAKE: IS THERE A CONNECTION???
Simshalom says: Do you think it's a "coincidence" that on the same day that Conservative clergy mainly from the USA meeting in Israel decide to hold a protest near the Western Wall, that a sudden ("LIGHT") EARTHQUAKE should hit Israel at the same time??? Decide for yourself:

Here is article number one:

Conservative rabbis protest segregation at Western Wall

By Daphna Berman, Haaretz Correspondent
http://www.haaretz.co.il/

"Two hundred Conservative rabbis from the Rabbinical Assembly (RA) gathered near the Western Wall (The Kotel) in Jerusalem on Tuesday to protest the expansion of the site's gender-segregated prayer sections.

Holding a banner reading "The Wall Belongs to Us All," they demonstrated against a construction project that will extend the men's and women's prayer sections a total of 600 square meters.

"Unilateral actions by those who view the area as their own private domain must not be allowed to stand," Rabbi Andrew Sacks, director of the RA of Israel said. "If we permit actions such as these, we will quickly find ourselves on a slippery slope toward losing our rights at Judaism's most holy site."

The demonstrators stood in the plaza near the Western Wall and were approached by police officers, who demanded that they disband. One protester said that he had been taken for questioning because a police officer had accused him of assault. "I didn't attack him - I was holding my tefillin [phylacteries] bag in my hand," insisted Baruch Zelicovich, a rabbi from Texas. "I'm not violent; I am a rabbi," he added.

A police spokesperson later denied Zelicovich's report and said that none of the protesters had been detained for questioning. "The police approached the group and explained to them that the Western Wall is a place of prayer, not protest," the spokesperson said. "It is possible that at some point, there was some talking [between the police and the protesters]."

The four-day rabbinical conference, which is being held this week in Jerusalem, drew 300 rabbis, most of whom came from North America. The RA represents over two million Jews worldwide."

And here is article number two:

Quake rocks Israel, neighbor countries
By Haaretz Service and agencies

"A moderate earthquake measuring 5 on the Richter scale rattled Israel and its Middle East neighbors at 10:20 A.M. Wednesday, sparking panic in many areas, but causing no injuries and only limited damage.

"We have not seen such a strong tremor here in recent years," said Infrastructure Minister Yossi Paritsky, who stressed that no infrastructure was damaged in the quake.

The quake rumbled for several seconds throughout Israel, knocking out wireless phone service, apparently due to a flood of phone calls. In the northern city of Acre, a building under construction collapsed.

The Education Ministry ordered schools to evacuate students to school yards until 12:30 P.M. as a safety precaution.

In Netanya, a contsruction worker was moderately injured after falling from a building on which he was working. He was taken to Laniado hospital for treatment.

"I said, oh God, stop, stop it, and I am still trembling," said one woman in Jerusalem. "I felt death and I said in a few more seconds the building will crash. I live on the third floor. I felt the building shaking."

At the Knesset, where the shaking of the structure was strongly felt, lawmakers sitting in committee meetings feared a large bomb had gone off and streamed out of the meeting rooms to gather in corridors.

In the Knesset plenum hall, an engineering crew found a crack in the decorative ceiling directly above the table at which cabinet members sit, Israel Radio reported. The earthquake occurred about a half hour before the ministers were to take their seats.

Elsewhere in the city, government offices were evacuated, for fear of further shocks, the radio said.

Near the epicenter of the quake at the northern tip of the Dead Sea, Shmuel Ba'agon of Kibbutz Kalia said, "The feeling was as though the earth had opened up its mouth and we were sliding into the Dead Sea."

The Magen David Adom rescue service said that there were no injuries in the incident, but that their operators had received many telephone calls asking for information on what had occurred, and that a number of people had been treated for anxiety.

Despite false reports of collapsed buildings, there were no reports of substantial damage.

"It was big, I felt it," said Yossi Shamir, who had been evacuated from an office in Jerusalem. "It was scary."

The region has a long record of destructive quakes. In 1927, a quake measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale killed more than 300 people and damaged more than 1,000 buildings in Jericho, Nablus, Jerusalem, Nazareth, Tiberias, Lod and Ramle.

The quake was felt for about 20 seconds in the Jordanian capital of Amman, sending frightened residents out of their homes.

It also was felt in Lebanon as well as the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israel is located along the Great Rift Valley, which runs for 4,800 kilometers between Syria and Mozambique and passes through the Dead Sea, below Jerusalem's eastern hills.

The fault line was caused by the separation of African and Eurasian tectonic plates 35 million years ago, a split that weakened the Earth's crust.

About 35 miles (55 kilometers) to the north, another fault line cuts the land east to west from the Mediterranean port of Haifa with the West Bank towns of Jenin and Nablus before reaching the Jordan River.

On Dec. 31, a small earthquake of magnitude 3.7 was measured in the Dead Sea region, but no damage was recorded. An earthquake of magnitude 3 is about the lowest that can be felt by people; a magnitude 4 quake can cause moderate damage.

Biblical prophets also foresaw destructive earthquakes, which they believed would herald a return of the Messiah.

The Hebrew prophet Zecharia predicted that Jerusalem's Mount of Olives would be cleft in two by a quake. The New Testament Book of Revelation predicts "a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth."

The Koran, the Muslim holy book, also predicts destructive earthquakes in the region.

Seismic monitoring

Israel's seismic monitoring activity is the responsibility of two bodies - the Geophysical Institute and the Israeli Geological Institute (IGI), both of which operate under the auspices of the National Infrastructure Ministry.

The Geophysical Institute is in charge of monitoring seismic activity, performing studies and surveys to reduce earthquake risk and maintaining the National Seismological Data Center.

The role of the Geological Institute is, on the basis of seismic and geological data collated, to try and predict where any major earthquake could come from.

The director of the Geological Institute, Dr. Amos Bein, believes that the greatest likelihood for a major quake in Israel is along the fault that starts at Emek Hula. The Geological Institute is able to predict the magnitude and frequency of these quakes, but not the exact time they will happen. According to the analyses of the data, a quake measuring at least 7 on the Richter Scale (stronger even than the Bam earthquake), can be expected in the region once every 100 or 150 years.

Dr. Bein stresses, however, that the magnitude of the quake is just one element in gauging risk. Another important element is how the country's infrastructure will hold out during the earthquake. The composition of the infrastructure could lead to a situation in which one area would see total devastation, where another would be relatively untouched.

In 1927, a strong quake hit Safed, almost completely wiping out the Jewish Quarter, but leaving the rest of the city untouched. In 1847, the coastal plane was hit by a strong quake. The only settlement to suffer any damage was Ramle. This is partly because the geological profile in a certain region may amplify the seismic signal caused by the earthquake, and partly because of the geological porousness of the region. If these factors are not taken into account during construction in high-risk areas, the buildings there can collapse like a house of cards when an earthquake hits."

- posted by Izak @ 6:30 AM