The Sarah Connor Chronicles started last week. I forgot. Thankfully, Fox has the pilot and current episode available for free. Click on the down arrow below the screen for the pilot episode, and then the plus sign to enlarge the screen. Or you can get it for free from AOL and, I presume, watch it on your HDTV.

I don’t care for the actress who plays Sarah Connor yet, but I suspect she’ll grow on me. Summer Glau of Firefly has a surprising role, and John Connor is played by the kid who played Zach (the cheerleader’s friend) on Heroes. Both of them are excellent.

C’mon, everyone. Watch the show. Run it up in the ratings. It’s on Monday nights at 9, to fill in the void left by Heroes. And you can catch up on the first two episodes.

Archeologists made another significant find in the City of David (literally and figuratively).

A stone seal bearing the name of one of the families who acted as servants in the First Temple and then returned to Jerusalem after being exiled to Babylonia has been uncovered in an archeological excavation in Jerusalem’s City of David, a prominent Israeli archeologist said Wednesday.

The 2,500-year-old black stone seal, which has the name “Temech” engraved on it, was found earlier this week amid stratified debris in the excavation under way just outside the Old City walls near the Dung Gate, said archeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar, who is leading the dig.

According to the Book of Nehemiah, the Temech family were servants of the First Temple and were sent into exile to Babylon following its destruction by the Babylonians in 586 BCE.

The family was among those who later returned to Jerusalem, the Bible recounts.

[...] The seal of one of the members of the Temech family was discovered just dozens of meters away from the Opel area, where the servants of the Temple, or “Nethinim,” lived in the time of Nehemiah, Mazar said.

“The seal of the Temech family gives us a direct connection between archeology and the biblical sources and serves as actual evidence of a family mentioned in the Bible,” she said. “One cannot help being astonished by the credibility of the biblical source as seen by the archaeological find.”

So much for the “Judaization” of Jerusalem, as the Palestinians call it. History once again shows whose city it was. And archeology is proving that there is more to the Bible than a collection of made-up stories, as some put it.

The AP has decided it can’t keep ignoring the rocket barrages landing on Israeli civilians, but it can equate them with the IDF taking out terrorists.

Hamas and Israel Trade Fire Over Gaza

Note the headline. Hamas is “trading fire,” even though Hamas is sending rockets into houses, and the IDF is sending rockets into cars driven by terrorist leaders or cars filled with terrorists on their way to or from launching attacks on Israel.

And now the lede, the first three to five paragraphs of which is published in the “World News” section of your local paper:

Militants in Hamas-ruled Gaza bombarded southern Israel with rockets Thursday and Israel pounded back with air and ground fire, the latest spate of violence that has pushed peace efforts to the sidelines.

Israeli leaders made clear they had no intention of pulling back until the rocket assaults on Israeli border communities halt.

Twenty-three Palestinians were killed in fierce clashes in the seaside territory on Tuesday and Wednesday, including the son of Gaza’s Hamas strongman, Mahmoud Zahar, and a 12-year-old boy who died along with his father and uncle in a bungled Israeli airstrike. A foreign volunteer on an Israeli border farm was killed by a Hamas sniper.

Note how the AP does not give you a true head count. Nineteen of those Palestinian deaths were terrorists. All Israeli casualties are civilian.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas’ bitter rival and Israel’s moderate partner in newly resumed peace talks, denounced what he called the Israeli “massacre” in Gaza.

Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rejects Israel’s right to exist, has intensified its direct involvement in the assaults on Israel as a result of the escalating violence. The group, which had let other militant factions take the lead in attacking Israel since it wrested control of Gaza in June, claimed it fired 24 rockets early Thursday, after launching 79 rockets and mortars on Wednesday.

The “escalating violence” is the IDF trying to stop terrorists firing rockets from Gaza that land in Israel and harm and kill Israeli civilians. The democratically elected government of the Palestinians has authorized war on Israel, but the news media refuse to call a war a war. And of course, they minimize the danger of the kassam rockets.

Militants have launched some 4,000 of the crude rockets and mortar rounds at southern Israel since Israel evacuated Gaza in the summer of 2005 after a 38-year occupation. The rockets have killed 12 people since 2001 and sown panic in border areas, where people are frequently forced to rush to take cover when sirens alert them to incoming projectiles.

Militants have been extending their reach as well, with one Iranian-made rocket recently traveling some 10 miles inside Israel’s borders.

Yeah, I’m thinking that a missile carrying explosives and ball-bearings that will be sent out with the force of a bullet may be something that induces panic. I still can’t get over how cavalier the media are over rockets raining on Sderot. I’d like to see the reporters stay in Sderot for a week and then write about how the missiles “sow panic.”

But then, just in case you haven’t missed the bias in their articles, you have the bias in their photo captions.

Israeli youths take cover in a concrete shelter after a red alert alarm was sounded for possible incoming rockets from inside Gaza in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, Wednesday Jan. 16, 2008. Islamic militants, enraged by the deaths of 19 Palestinians a day earlier, barraged southern Israel with rocket and mortar fire. In border communities in southern Israel, the siren warning of rocket attacks rang repeatedly as 21 rockets and mortars were fired, the Israeli military said. No serious injuries or damage were reported. Residents of Sderot, a town of 20,000 that is a frequent target, stayed off the streets as sirens blared.

No context. The implication is that Israel simply killed 19 Palestinians when in fact, most of them were terrorists. The civilians were killed because, well, the terrorists hide, train, and live among civilians—a violation of the Geneva protocols, but that’s never mentioned either. Not that I expect them to be fair. And if a missile should hit an Israeli and kill him or her? Well, we won’t hear about that until after we’ve heard about how Hamas was only shooting them in “revenge” for the “deaths” of however many Palestinians the editors decide to put in the article. They’re fond of adding days, adding the phrase “the worst incident since XXXX,” and other modifiers to make the Israeli death count for less.

We’re rather used to it by now.

The Thai satellite company that was beaming Al-Manar, Hezbullah’s propaganda channel, to Asian nations, has pulled the plug on Chipmunk Cheeks and his sermons of hate.

A Thai satellite company said Wednesday it stopped airing broadcasts of the Al-Manar television channel after learning it was tied to Hizbullah, a company spokesman said.

The broadcasts of Al-Manar were halted last Friday after just three days of a “test run” beamed through THAICOM satellites, said Piyanuch Sujpluem, a spokeswoman for Shin Satellite Public Company.

Piyanuch said the contract with Al-Manar was a purely commercial deal “without knowledge that such a station had connections to a terrorist group.” She said the deal was terminated after the company found out about the channel’s background from foreign media.

And a big fat cheer to Shin, as well as The Media Line and the JP.

The Media Line, a nonprofit news group focused on Middle East coverage, and The Jerusalem Post reported last week that the THAICOM satellite was beaming the channel to Asia, Australia, the Middle East and most of Europe.

The Jerusalem Post quoted the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in Israel as saying the Thai satellites had “significantly boosted the resonance of Al-Manar’s propaganda messages around the world after other satellites had stopped airing the channel.”

The center is a nongovernmental group tied to Israel’s intelligence community.

Wow. A win against terrorist propaganda. That seems to be more and more of a rarity these days.

via memeorandum

McClatchey’s Washington Bureau provides an analysis of President Bush’s recent tour of the Middle East, Bush departs Mideast with few apparent gains, experts say

President Bush wraps up a weeklong tour of the Middle East Wednesday, leaving many Mideast political observers mystified as to the purpose of the visit and doubtful that the president made inroads on his twin campaigns for Arab-Israeli peace and isolation for Iran.Bush is heading back to Washington mostly empty-handed, said several analysts and politicians throughout the region. Arab critics deemed Bush’s peace efforts unrealistic, his anti-Iran tirades dangerous, his praise of authoritarian governments disappointing and his defense of civil liberties ironic.

I guess the “experts” of the headline are “Arab critics.” I’m not aware of any tirades the President threw on his trip. Are warnings about Iran’s threat to the region so unreasonable?

And, since the Arab critics were the focus of the story we get this bit of nonsense.

The challenges were evident Tuesday. The Israeli military carried out an operation in Gaza that killed at least 18 Palestinians, including the 24-year-old son of Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar, in the most violent day since the militant group seized control last year. Separately, a Palestinian sniper killed a young farmer from Ecuador who was working on an Israeli kibbutz near the border with Gaza.Palestinians warned that the military raid could sour their talks with Israelis and undermine the momentum from Bush’s visit to lead both parties back to the negotiating table.

“Skepticism on all sides is enormous,” said Nicholas Pelham, a Jerusalem-based senior analyst with the International Crisis Group.

What’s missing? Well for one thing the constant missile attacks from Gaza into Israel. And to quote the Palestinian warning about Israel’s self-defense is to credit the “moderate” Mahmoud Abbas when he is declaring his lot with the terrorists of Hamas.

I agree that President Bush’s trip didn’t accomplish much. But it’s largely because the so-called pro-American Arab states are more interested in appeasing Iran than in cooperating with the United States. This analysis is less a criticism of Bush than an apology for America’s Arab “allies.”

UPDATE: Daniel Pipes essentially criticizes President Bush for the same things from the other side. He gives President Bush credit for having good ideas in 4 areas: Radical Islam, pre-emptive war, and the Arab-Israeli conflict and democracy. He finds the President wanting in all four areas despite some promising starts. The end result Pipes laments is:

I respect Bush’s benign motivation and good intentions while mourning his having squandered a record-breaking 90 percent job-approval rating following 9/11 and his bequeathing to the next president a polarized electorate, a military reluctant to use force against Iran, Hamas ruling Gaza, an Iraqi disaster-in-waiting, radical Islam on the ascendant, and unprecedented levels of global anti-Americanism.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.