NYTimes has an interesting article about an ancient graveyard uncovered in Ur.

I thought one part of the article was strange.

Ritual killing associated with a royal death was practiced by other ancient cultures, archaeologists say, and raises a question: Why would anyone, knowing their probable fate, choose a life as a court attendant?

“It’s almost like mass murder and hard for us to understand,” Dr. Monge said. “But in the culture these were positions of great honor, and you lived well in the court, so it was a trade-off. Besides, the movement into the next world was not for them necessarily something to fear.”

Why is the archaeologists assuming they had much of a choice?

Shabbat Shalom

Israel passes "Bathroom Break" Law.

And just in time too. It's tough to hold it in between blog posts.

Usually we have to suffer through just the month of November when the media gets on their high horse and starts to deride, castigate and attack everyone who rightfully opposed/opposes the views of Rabin and the disaster that Oslo brought on us.

But RabinFest is like XMas. Some people can't wait for it to happen. Every year the decorations go up earlier, the sales begin sooner, and the music starts streaming from the radio long before the season begins.

Haaretz has the honor of being the first online media outlet to kick off RabinFest early this year, with their article "Rabin's widow describes Netanyahu as a 'nightmare' in decade-old letter".

Apparently its going to be a long November.

Update: Lurker said I missed stuff from yesterday, and even last month, but my find best captures the RabinFest spirit.

Is Ariel Sharon awaking from his coma?

Mixed reports are coming from his doctors, friends, and family.

But if he were (and wasn't an awake vegetable), what would he see? How would he see the changes he wrought, and the disasters he brought down us?

Would he do Tshuva? Would he try to fix it? Would he try to make it worse?

There was a tongue-in-cheek post (and it's somewhere on the Muqata blog if you care to find it) years ago discussing just that. The scenario was that Sharon returned from his coma (and Heaven) repentant in every way.

Your thoughts?

In honor of Parshat Noach.

Hattip: JerusalemCop

Unless you're living under a rock, you'd know that the Obama adminstration has targeted Fox News as the enemy.

They're knowingly involved with Post-American activities because "their programming is geared toward making money," according to senior Obama advisor David Axelrod.

After all, making money is anti-American.

In fact, it's only something that the Obama campaign war chest manager is allowed to do, not a news agency.

I wonder how CNN pays the bills in Obama's America.


Living in Israel and watching CNN's reporting on local events that I'm involved in or close to, I find it amusing that Obama's stafft would essentially claim that CNN's News reporting is objective and they don't heavily inject their own political opinions into the News reports through their selective phrasing and selective reporting.

But hey, those opinions are closer to theirs, so that's OK. And they won't ask him the really tough questions. And we've seen enough to know that Obama and his administration don't like the really tough questions (you know, any question that questions the President, or "fact-checking").

Karl Rove, a Fox News contributor and former White House adviser to President George W. Bush, pointed out something amusing. President Richard Nixon also had certain journalists on his "enemies list."

It's probably in part due to our hopeful optimism that has kept the Jewish people going these past 2000 years in Galus, while the practicality of a few of us is what has protected us from that same hopeful optimism.

InJerusalem this weekend had a long article about a group of Palestinians and Israelis who meet regularly to learn about each other as human beings, and not discuss politics.

Here are a few interesting excerpts from the article.

At least once a month, Palestinian lawyer Abed Eriqat, 29, passes through the one exit out of Abu Dis where there is no security barrier, gritting his teeth at the soldiers manning the checkpoint on the road where most of his life he had traveled freely to neighboring Jerusalem.

If you didn't know why Eriqat needs to now go through a check point, the article clarifies it for us:

Abu Dis is generally considered a hotbed for extremists. Three suicide bombers during the intifada came from the village, and Al-Quds University was known for supporting groups affiliated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The campus was also home to the Abu-Jihad Museum honoring Palestinian "martyrs" and had just celebrated a week-long event honoring the life of the late Palestinian engineer of the suicide bomb, Yahya Ayyash.

But obviously that is past history, and with Peace in the air, what Ereqat describes next shouldn't be happening.

To help him get through the wait and then interrogation, moments that he describes as the most humiliating and hopeless of his life, he sometimes uses an unusual tactic: remembering meetings with Israelis, even settlers, as a source of hope.

He's going to get a Peace Hug, so that's enough to get him through the trauma.

Yet just the other day Arutz-7 happens to have published a related article.

Israeli forces recently discovered a weapons lab in the village of Abu Dis, east of Jerusalem. Three Palestinian Authority men have been arrested on suspicion of using the lab to build bombs and weapons for attacks on Israeli citizens.

Military officials believe the discovery of the weapons lab led to the prevention of terrorist attacks. The lab is part of a larger effort to carry out attacks in the greater Jerusalem area, they warned.

I can comfortably live with Palestinian lawyer Abed Eriqat feeling moments that he describes as the most humiliating and hopeless of his life, because those few moments of his discomfort protect the rest of us, naive Israelis included, from Palestinian suicide bombers and terrorists from Eriqat's village of Abu Dis.

I wonder if they'll discuss that at their next group hug.



By the way, here are some other statements and comments about Abed Eriqat, co-director of Peace Now's Youth Dialogue program:

"Abed grew up throwing stones at Israeli soldiers in the little village of Abu Dis in the West Bank."

But Eriqat is now much more intelligent about that now, as he apparently realized it's futility.

Instead he's chosen a new tactic to get Jews out of the Land of Israel.

He finds that "engaging with Israeli partners for peace is a more constructive form of resistance. " as "working with Israelis... to advocate for peace is a form of "resistance" to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank."

God protect us from naive Israelis and Palestinians terrorists and "resisters".

There's no denying it. Turkey is going Islamic (or at least it appears to want to go that way).

No longer concerned about their relationship with Israel, particularly after the Israelis voted with their feet and stopped visiting when the Turks couldn't stop mouthing off against Israel, Turkey is going out full force against Israel with the wildest of accusations.

The question, as always, is "Why now?".

Despite their desire to be full fledged members of the EU, and their newly inked peace treaty with the Armenians (which will last only as long as no one yells "genocide" in a closed theater), Turkey is still a long way off from EU membership with their conflict with Greece, and their latest NATO snafu hovering overhead like a dark cloud (and don't even think of mentioning Kurdish separatists).

And now they are building ties with Syria too with their open borders agreement.

Wow. Turkey does have a lot of owning up to do. Perhaps it's given up and has decided that Islam is the way to go?

Or maybe in the bigger picture, it sees ties with Iran and Syria as more valuable than ties with a weak US (the EU is going Moslem anyway).

I read two interesting article lately in respectable papers.

The first is that scientist have figured out how to (theoretically) accelerate objects to near light speeds, and as a result also create anti-Gravity fields that push other objects away. This based on a nearly forgotten theory from the 1920s. Another group of scientists is claiming they one can create the anti-Gravity field at just 10% of the speed of light if done correctly.

The second is that Higgs Bosons don't want to be discovered, and their independent existence is so abhorrent to nature, that they ripple backwards in time and self-sabotage the tools needed to create them.

Science can be pretty cool sometimes.

As regular readers know I like to take my family to visit various "hot spots" in Greater Israel. While not the first time I was there, Nadia Matar invited me up to the Eitam Hill today where they would be giving out awards and certificates to new Olim moving to the Yishuvim.

During the speeches someone began to praise Nadia.

All the time people say, "What can I do, I'm just one person," and "How can we fight the system, there are so few of us."

It was just over 15 years ago, right after Oslo, when whatever land didn't have a Jewish home on it would be transferred into Area A.

So Nadia got up, gathered a few women (and a couple of men) and climbed up three empty, barren hilltops. Those hilltops where in danger of being handed over to the PA terrorists.

They sat there. They built temporary structures. They fought.

Today, those formerly empty, barren hilltops are the neighborhoods Zayit, Tamar, and Dagan - home to thousands of Jews.

Today, the Eitam hill is barren and empty, but in 15 years from now, maybe it will be those Olim who received certificates and awards today that will be living there with their families.

Truly an inspiring thought.

Here is a list of other prizes we expect to see President Obama winning in the coming weeks:

Pulitzer Prize: For his future autobiography about his current presidency.

Oscar: For starring in the movie based on his autobiography that he will be writing in 4 years from now.

X-Prize: For his radical breakthrough in next generation health care.

Feel free to add your own...

We'd like to thank the millions of Jews around the world who participated in Operation: "Every Succah an Outpost".

Thanks to you, this Sukkot was a great success and the world was shown that Jews all over the world support the Zionist Enterprise.

There is no bigger joke than this.

Obama, who has done nothing of note in his life besides winning the US Presidential election has also won the Nobel Peace Prize.

If you thought the Nobel Peace Prize proved worthless after Arafat got it, then this is just the nail in the coffin.

It's no joke that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. It's the Nobel Peace Prize that has become a joke.

Yet another Israeli has one a Nobel Prize, nearly double that of the entire number of Muslims and Arabs who have won the prize (total 5). And she is also a Jew, so that comes out to around 35 times the number of Muslims and Arabs who have won a Nobel Prize.

Congratulations Ada Yonath.

Arabs in Jerusalem have been rioting after creating rumors that Jews were planning on taking over the Temple Mount.

How I wish that were true.

Globes is reporting that Jordan is planning on building the (first phase of the) Red-Dead Canal on it's own, with no participation from Israel or the PA.

Personally I'm glad that Israel isn't participating in this project, because we gain nothing of value out of it. Not water. Not electricity. Not jobs. Not tourist attractions. Not peace.

I have repeatedly said that if a project like this is to be undertaken, then it must be a Med-Dead Canal - in which case Israel gains electricity, water, jobs, and a tourist attraction.

But I guess that was too much to ask.