Has King David's Palace been found?

Eilat Mazar, 49, hails from Israel's archaeological elite. Her grandfather, Benjamin Mazar, headed excavations in the 1960s and 1970s of the earthen platform Jews refer to as the Temple Mount, which they believe to be the site of the first and second Jewish temples. Muslims also hold the site sacred as the Noble Sanctuary, from which they believe Muhammad ascended to heaven.

Do we not know this as a fact, or is this Palestinian revisionism creeping into the reporting?

Hilarious - What if Micahel Moore took on the Civil War? Turns out Bush isn't half the evil man that Lincoln was!

I can't explain why, but when VH1 airs a show called "So Jewtastic", it makes me a little uncomfortable.

I think John Kerry would make an excellent candidate for the Fatah party in Gaza.

It seems some party members came in with guns blazing to demand their party's primary polls be open after they came in with guns blazing and demanded the polls be closed.

Another one of our brave men and women in Iraq tells us that what we're doing there is right and to stay the course.

It’s sad that so many Iraqis and others are dying over here. However, when you discover you have cancer the treatment is always the same - attack it at the source. You don’t wait for it to spread. And when is the last time you heard a doctor putting a limited timetable on cancer therapy? I can picture it in my mind. “Mr. Smith, we have seen some progress with your tumor. It’s shrinking. But we need to move on now. The timetable for treating you has passed. Good luck.”

The truth is, that even if the doctor tells you the cancer is growing (which the Left believes) the correct action is to get more agressive and fight harder, not just give up and go home.

Israel: Gay marriage in the Holy Land?

Arab gays face forced hormone treatment

That pretty much sums up the cultural differences, doesn't it? Maybe we can get the UN to send a strongly worded statement to the UAE. That will make many people feel good so they can sleep well at night while Mengele-like medical procedures are performed on gays in the Arab world.

Pardon me if I paraphrase Martin Niemoeller.

First they came for the gays, and I did not speak out--
because I don't like the Israeli occupation;

Took the family to Fossil Rim Wildlife Center yesterday in Glen Rose, TX - great day trip from the Dallas area. I hadn't driven that far to the southwest since we moved here a few years ago - it's amazing how the terrain goes from brown and flat to (relatively) green and hilly in a relatively short time.

The NY Times gets the understatement of the day award.

Regarding the opening of the Rafah crossing which is now in the hands of the Palestinian Authority, it is said:

The Egyptians, who controlled Gaza from 1948 until the 1967 war, were requiring Palestinian men aged 18 to 40 to obtain visas before entering Egypt, Palestinian officials said. Egypt is likely to have economic as well as security concerns: many young Gazan men are unemployed, and some have links to militant groups.

Some? To me a fully-rostered baseball team is more than "some", so I don't know how many the Times considers "some".

Dare I mention that Hamas is considered a terrorist group even by the European Union, but that's not enough for the NY Times to stop calling them "militants".

One would think that an organization large enough to be of concern to various nation-states would consist of more than "some" people. If I were Israeli, there is no f-ing way I would go on vacation in Sinai again.

CNN's editors' wishes come out in their headlines:

Bullets fly over hang glider incursion
Israeli troops cover man's dash back across Palestinian border

Palestinian border?!? This incident didn't even happen in the West Bank or Gaza, but on the Israeli border with Lebanon. WTF? Thanks to Backspin.

As someone who does actually freak out whenever my wife or kids takes the last "whatever" I was saving from the pantry or the fridge, aish.com's Salomon Says has a great lesson about sharing.

Now that I'll be good, I guess I won't need go out and buy a lock for my Ben & Jerry's. Seriously.

Every once in a while I feel the urge to write on the parsha of the week, and given that I'm feeling a little bit under the weather and need to compensate for my failure to attend Kabalat Shabbat services - here it goes.

This week's parsha is Chayei Sarah - The Life of Sarah

My post has more to do with my eternal internal conflict between my respect for the Ortohodox (without wanting to be Orthodox) and my failure to understand Conservatism (although that's the movement with which I affiliate myself).

This is the opening line of the parsha transliterated from the Hebrew:

Vayihyu chayei Sarah me'ah shanah ve'esrim shanah vesheva shanim shnei chayei Sarah.

On the Chabad website, the line is translated as follows:

And the life of Sarah was one hundred years and twenty years and seven years; [these were] the years of the life of Sarah.

In Etz Hayim, the new standard Conservative chumash, the line is translated thusly:

Sarah's lifetime - the span of Sarah's life - came to one hundred and twenty-seven years.

Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of Hebrew can see that the Chabad translation is more exact than the Eyz Hayim translation. The name Sarah clearly comes at the beginning and end of the phrase and not one time right after the other. In addition, it is obvious that a form of shana (year) is used three times, not once as in the Conservative translation.

In fact, the writing of Sarah's age as "one hundred years and twenty years and seven years" leads you to ask, why would this be written this way?", whereas the Etz Hayim translation instigates no discussion at all.

The funny thing is that Etz Hayim provides a midrash on the topic anyway as follows: Sarah retained the innocence of a seven year old when she was twenty and the beauty of a twenty year old when she was one hundred. Chabad quotes the Midrash the other way around - Sarah retained the beauty of a seven year old when she was twenty and the innocence of a twenty year old when she was one hundred. An OU website confirms the Chabad understanding.

Therefore, not only does the Conservative movement provide it's congregants with a less-meaningful, simplified translation, but the commentary it provides is totally backwards.

I imagine that the vast majority of Conservative Jews who bother to read the Chumash at all wouldn't ever notice this, but the fact that our religion is based on this book, gives me considerable pause when I hear the "we're just more modern" mantra from Conservative leadership.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

There seems to be some more "the President is hiding documents" talk on the web, due to an article in the National Journal, a publication with which I was not previously familiar.

Powerline, of course, is on the case. What I don't understand for the life of me are the following:

The September 21, 2001, briefing was prepared at the request of the president, who was eager in the days following the terrorist attacks to learn all that he could about any possible connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Why would the President need to request something that's produced every day (and has been for years)?

Indeed, the existence of the September 21 PDB was not disclosed to the Intelligence Committee until the summer of 2004, according to congressional sources.

How is it possible that the they were unaware of the existence of a doucment that's produced daily? Isn't that like saying that they were unaware that there was an issue of the NY Times prepared on September 21?

Am I missing something?

If this is the kind of obnoxious bullying that the liberals were worried about, I'm proud to call myself "not liberal".

US pressures UN to condemn Hizbullah

Following intense US pressure, the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday issued an unprecedented condemnation of Monday's Hizbullah attacks on northern Israel.

This condemnation - slamming Hizbullah by name for "acts of hatred" - marked the first time the Security Council has ever reprimanded Hizbullah for cross-border attacks on Israel. The condemnation followed by two days a failed attempt to get a condemnation issued on Monday, the day of the attack, when Algeria came out against any mention of Hizbullah in the statement.

When asked what changed from Monday to Wednesday, one diplomatic official replied: "John Bolton," a reference to the US ambassador to the UN. Bolton lobbied vigorously for the passage of the statement.

I've spent much of the last five plus years watching kids cartoons and programs as my little ones grow up. Dragontales, Dora the Explorer, Caillou, etc. The characters may differ in each program, but the message is always the same - love, caring, sharing, etc. Any "bad" charaters stop their evil ways by just the good guys telling them "no don't do that" or inviting them to their Super Silly Fiestas.

My five year old has recently found the Boomerang channel which plays all the cartoons from when I was growing up. Popeye, Tom and Jerry, Bugs Bunny. The Claasics. You know, people (and animals) just beating the sh*t out of each other for 10 minutes straight. I just saw one "bad" character eat a grenade and have all his teeth fall out.

I'm not really sure which is worse for my kids, but I have been feminized enough by society to be uncomfortable watching the Boomerang stuff with them.

Well, at least it's not this - Barney as Tupac.

Now it may very well be that the Nation of Islam never had control over Michael Jackson's business affiars. But I have no doubt that they have exerted some control over his mind.

Jewish group demands apology from Jackson

LOS ANGELES - The Anti-Defamation League on Wednesday demanded an apology from Michael Jackson after ABC aired what was said to be a telephone answering-machine message in which the pop star referred to Jews as “leeches”....

A transcript provided by King’s office quotes Jackson as saying: “They suck them like leeches. ... They start out the most popular person in the world, make a lot of money, big house, cars and everything and end up penniless. It’s a conspiracy. The Jews do it on purpose.”

I'd ask Michael Jackson's security detail what they think, but I imagine they wouldn't welcome the question.

David Ignatius of the Washington Post is apparently not paying attention to what President Bush has been saying and thereby gives the impression that all of Iraq is now at odds with him.

So Iraq's Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds finally found something they can agree on. They are jointly demanding that the United States set a timetable for withdrawal of its troops from their country. That's hardly the rallying cry the Bush administration might have hoped for, but perhaps it could provide a base line for stabilizing Iraq.

Just this morning his own paper reported the following from Reuters:

Bush has consistently said that U.S. forces would stand down when Iraqi forces stand up. He hinted at the possibility of a troop drawdown on Sunday in Beijing. "As the Iraqi security forces gain strength and experience we can lessen our troop presence in the country without losing our capability to effectively defeat the terrorists," Bush told reporters.

Seems then that the Iraqis were parroting the President's desire. Not only that, in the second paragraph of Ignatius' article he reports the following:

According to an account in the Arabic daily Al Hayat, sources at the conference said they wanted the withdrawal to take place over the next two years. That's not very different from the gradual pullout that U.S. military planners have been discussing.

This is what happens when a "reporter" throws his liberal bias into what is purportedly a news piece. Perhaps a better headline might have read:


IRAQIS AGREE WITH BUSH POLICY TO GRADUALLY DECREASE US PRESENCE

All bow to Norm. There exists no clearer voice of reason on the war.

All those who, in opposing the war, claimed to have the interests of Iraq and the Iraqis at heart should be calling, not for a timetable of withdrawal, but for getting behind the effort to ensure a successful democratic transition in Iraq. Getting behind it - in the sense of actively debating how that battle can now best be fought, previous errors best be corrected and remedied, the expertise and resources of other members of the community of nations most effectively be drawn on, and so forth. A common discourse, in other words, across those who supported and those who opposed the war, and for the sake of common liberal and democratic objectives in Iraq. That would be quite something, no?

Compare this to the insight we get at DailyKos.

Saddam tortured, we torture. Saddam used WP chemical weapons against insurgents and civilians, we use WP chemical weapons against insurgents and civilians.

Saddam's Iraq and Bush's America - same thing. Right.

Hizbollah launched a sustained attack against Israeli soldiers and civilians across the internationally recognized border with Lebanon. The Jerusalem Post reports 11 Israeli soldiers wounded and 4 terrorists killed.

Somebody saw this coming.

Mr. Mofaz added there are dozens of other intelligence warnings pointing to terrorist activities, as well as information that Hizbullah is planning a qualitative terror attack against Israel. - Nov. 20, 2005 (yesterday)

Actually, later that afternoon, Israel's leaders were getting ready.

No news of these attacks in the U.S media that I can find.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Sha'ul Mofaz took part in a security briefing Sunday afternoon in response to intelligence information about irregular Hizbullah maneuvers in the Har Dov region.

The IDF raised the alert along Israel's northern border with Lebanon two weeks ago due to concern over attacks from the Hizbullah terror group. Precautionary measures went so far as to limit hiking near the border for fear of kidnappings.

More on the point raised in the previous post. Unless you go to the Washington Times or even Al-Jazeera, you have no idea that 100,000-200,000 Jordanians (this in a country with only 5 million people to begin with) went to the streets to protest against Al-Qaeda in general and al-Zarqawi more specifically.

"I came specifically to say to those terrorists and al-Zarqawi that we are all united against them. We do not want them on our land," said Ghazi al-Hajjaj, 43, who journeyed from Tafila, 183km south of Amman, to attend the rally.

Palestinians from Jordan's 13 refugee camps also took part in the protest.

In al-Zarqawi's hometown of Zarqa, 27km northeast of Amman, dozens of angry members of his al-Khalayleh tribe held a rally, pledging allegiance to King Abdullah II and denouncing their infamous son.

"If my son was a terrorist, I wouldn't hesitate to kill him," said Musa al-Khalayleh, who said he spoke on behalf of the tribe.

Tens if not hundreds of thousands of Arabs protesting against an enemy that we're at war against and neither the Washington Post, LA Times or CNN has thought this important enough to waste precious internet space.

More on the demonstrations here.