Video response to "Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem"
NOTE: 'Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem' has since been removed from YouTube due to "terms of use violation." UPDATE: I made a video response to Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem which I wrote about in my previous entry. I asked some of my fellow students at Bar-Ilan University what they thought of Obama's speech. Everyone in the video is a first or second year student of Political Science and\or Communications. Not surprisingly, all of the students had different things to say. Some liked Obama more, some liked him less, but they all had complex opinions that were based on legitimate facts and ideas. Not one of them made a racist comment. I think that this video shows how wrong Dana and Blumenthal are. Some major differences between the videos:
Check it out:: My friends are the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East
NOTE: 'Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem' has since been removed from YouTube due to "terms of use violation." UPDATE: I made a video response to the video I mention in this entry. Check it out! Sometimes, when someone says or does something idiotic, even if you find it personally offensive, the best policy is to ignore it. However, when it gets over 200,000 (and rising) hits on YouTube within four days, it's hard to ignore. " Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem" is not a video that I could just live with. Sometimes, when someone says or does something idiotic, even if you find it personally offensive, the best policy is to ignore it. However, when it gets over 200,000 (and rising) hits on YouTube within four days, it's hard to ignore. " I was trolling the internet the other day, looking at some of my favorite blogs, when I came across an interesting video. Max Blumenthal, a blogger on several left-wing websites who recently wrote a book slamming the Republican Party, decided to post what he called "the most shocking footage I have ever filmed." Blumenthal went around the Ben Yehuda Street area in Jerusalem with Joseph Dana (an American-born Israeli who writes a pro-Arab blog) after Barack Obama addressed the Muslim world in Cairo. They interviewed young people in bars and cafes on their reactions to the speech. Most of the people in the video are American, dressed like frat-boys, and visibly inebriated. The Swine Flu: A user's guide
Swine-flu mania has struck fear in the hearts of health-conscious humans worldwide. Newspapers are full of warnings and photographs of faces covered by surgical masks. In Israel, four cases have already been found, and flights are still coming in from Mexico. While the media seems sufficiently nervous, I look around campus and fail to see even one paper mask. Life is continuing as usual - a very scary fact, indeed. Perhaps Israelis think that if they don't eat pork, they're safe, but as Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman pointed out, this is really the Mexican flu, and since there are so many Mexicans in Israel, NO ONE IS SAFE. In order to relieve the panic, I've written a short guide on how to avoid the Swine Flu in Israel: Why the Orthodox make aliyah - the true story
The Jerusalem Post recently published an article entitled Why Do The Orthodox Make Aliyah, in which Yizhar Hess, executive director and CEO of the Masorti (conservative) Movement gave attempted to answer that question, despite the fact that he himself is not Orthodox. According to Hess, Orthodox people are encouraged to move to Israel because the religious institutions are Orthodox. For example, only Orthodox conversions and marriages are accepted by the state. As an Orthodox person, I have two major problems with Hess's explanation. Neither I nor any of the olim I know came to Israel because Orthodox rabbis are officially recognized, and just because someone is Orthodox doesn't mean that he or she identifies with the religious status quo in Israel. Israel is not the problem
A few days ago, Pulitzer-Prize winning author and activist Alice Walker visited Gaza with Code Pink, a group that describes itself as "a grassroots peace and social justice movement." Sitting with a group of hijab-wearing women, she called upon the Obama administration to change the narrative the USA follows when it comes to Israel. "We were indoctrinated to the song in that film Exodus, you know, 'this land belongs to us, this land is our land,' meaning the Israelis, the Jews," she said. Walker believes that most Americans do not know about the "plight" of the Arabs. "I think all of us have an opportunity here to just say what we believe, which is... we think stealing land is wrong," she explained (while sitting on land Israel gave to the Arabs three and a half years ago, in exchange for a daily barrage of rocket attacks). Understanding Israeli election ads
Picture this: You're watching Channel 1, the government-sanctioned, commercial-free channel. On your screen, a man in a suit and tie climbs onto a diving board. Next to the pool, a man in a T-shirt reads the newspaper. The camera pans back to the man on the diving board as he unzips his fly and starts to urinate. On the other guy's head. The announcer says: "Don't let them pee on us anymore. Vote P. For our children's future." Wake up and vote!
Election season is nigh, and one topic is on the mind of all the students here at Bar-Ilan: Finals! February 10, Election Day, falls in the middle of chufshat semester [semester break], the month-long period at the end of each semester, in which there is no class, but there are tests to take and papers to turn in almost every day. I'm sure that the government's election committee didn't take this fact into consideration, but the juxtaposition of these two events has had some interesting results. College campuses are traditionally hubs of political activity, but the one I'm on isn't. At first, the operation in Gaza stole the election's thunder. Now that that's over with, exams have taken its place. Instead of political events, there was a program explaining to first-year students how tests work. Instead of going to rallies, students are going to the library. Study groups have replaced political parties. Hanukka and the 'Sylvester'
Hanukka was in the air. Here in Israel, the bakeries were filled with donuts, the supermarkets strategically placed chocolate coins in every checkout lane, and I heard latkes sizzling in my dorm's kitchen. Bar-Ilan, where I study, stopped classes early every day to let students go home and light the menorah. There were events on campus every night, and when I stayed late at work in the Student Union, the bookkeeper lit candles in his office. It was the Hanukka I always dreamed of; I celebrated with the whole country. And yet, something was missing. As I wrote this blog post on December 25, I was filled with Jewish guilt. Less than a month after I wrote about being proud of living a country with holidays and a heritage I feel personally connected to, I find myself debating that exact topic. The truth is inconvenient in Israel tooGrowing up, I was always taught to care about the environment. Going green is definitely a part of American popular culture. As a child, I watched "Captain Planet," a television show about a superhero who foiled the plots of polluters. "Litterbug" was the last thing you wanted to be called on the playground. The local government required that families separate paper, plastic and glass when they took out the trash. Everyone knows what the "recycle" symbol looks like, because they went to Earth Day assemblies in school. Thanksgiving is not my holiday
This past Thursday was Thanksgiving in America. I started thinking about what Thanksgiving is all about while I was working at my part-time job, rather than having the weekend off. Growing up, the fourth Thursday in November meant two things to me: waking up early to watch the parade on TV, and getting ready to bargain-shop the next day. Some years, my sister and I would go to see the latest blockbuster movie. If I was celebrating with my mother's side of the family, we'd get together in the evening for dinner at our favorite deli in Manhattan. If I was celebrating with my father's side, we'd go to my grandmother's house to eat a more traditional Thanksgiving meal in the early afternoon - that was catered by our favorite deli in New Jersey. |
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