Washington, September 19 (ANI): A team of archaeologists has discovered a 2000-year-old Roman amphitheatre near Tiberias in Israel.
According to a report in the Haaretz newspaper, Archeologist, Doctor Valid Atrash, from the Israel Antiquities Authority, said that the remnants of the Roman amphitheatre peaks from 15 meters below ground.
The 1990 findings came as a surprise to the archeologists digging near Mount Berniki in the Tiberias hills as there are no references to such a place anywhere in scriptures.
Only at the beginning of 2009, 19-years after the primary discovery, did the uncovering of the theatre in its entirety begin.
The late Professor Izhar Hirshfeld and Yossi Stefanski, the archeologists heading the excavation, initially assessed the remains to belong to the 2nd or 3rd century CE, but quickly realized that they go all the way back to the beginning of the 1st century CE, closer to the founding of Tiberias.
“The most interesting thing about the amphitheatre is its Jewish context,” said Hirshfeld upon the discovery.
“Unlike Tzipori, which was a multi-cultural city, Tiberias was a Jewish city under Roman rule. The findings demonstrate the city’s pluralistic nature and cultural openness, a fact uncommon in those days,” Hirshfeld added.
According to Atrash, in light of the findings, Tiberias appears as particularly liberal for a city that was established over 2000 years ago.
He added that “the theatre was enormous, and being so it attracted a lot of attention. It seated over 7000 people, and appears to have been a prominent landmark for the entire area.”
Zohar Oved, Mayor of Tiberias, said that the discovery of the amphitheatre is undoubtedly “one of the most important findings in the history of the Jewish people” and is planned to open to the public as part of Tiberias archeological gardens in the near future. (ANI)
Palin e-mails show infighting with staff
Washington, July 2 (ANI): The tension between Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and top McCain campaign aides in the closing days of presidential campaign is elucidated in a profile in the new issue of Vanity Fair.
Internal campaign e-mails exchanged three weeks before Election Day, offer a rare look at just how frustrated the then Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin had become with the manner in which top McCain campaign aides were handling her candidacy.
The e-mails, obtained exclusively, also highlight the power struggle and thinly veiled acrimony that pervaded the relationship between Palin and the campaign’s chief strategist, Steve Schmidt.
CBS News’ Scott Conroy and special contributor Shushannah Walshe, who are writing a book about Palin, reveal how the mutual frustrations went even further than what has been disclosed so far.
The episode in question began when an investigative report published on the left-leaning Web site Salon.com raised questions about Palin’s relationship with members of the Alaska Independence Party (AIP) when she was mayor of Wasilla.
The AIP’s platform calls for a vote giving Alaskans the option to secede from the United States. It had already been widely known that Todd Palin was a registered member of the AIP from 1995 to 2002 and that Governor Palin had taped a recorded greeting at the party’s 2008 convention.
On the morning of October 15, Palin was aboard her campaign jet and en route to New Hampshire when she happened to catch a disparaging CNN segment that touted the Salon.com story, complete with a provocative graphic at the bottom of the screen reading, “The Palins And The Fringe”.
While shaking hands after a rally later that afternoon, someone on the rope line shouted a remark at Palin about the AIP, CBS News reported.
The comment set her off. She worried that the campaign was not sufficiently mitigating the issue of her alleged connection to the party, which despite a platform that harkens more to the Civil War than the 21st century, continued to play a serious role in Alaska politics.
Palin blasted out an e-mail with the subject line “Todd” to Schmidt, campaign manager Rick Davis and senior advisor Nicolle Wallace, copying her husband on the message.
Schmidt hit “reply to all” less than five minutes after Palin’s e-mail was sent. “Ignore it,” he wrote. “He was a member of the AIP? My understanding is yes. That is part of their platform. Do not engage the protestors. If a reporter asks say it is ridiculous. Todd loves America.” (ANI)