Writing about Israeli blogs for the Guardian

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Writing about Israeli blogs for the Guardian

I’m writing a series of articles for the Guardian’s newsblog about Israeli political bloggers and what they’re saying about the upcoming national elections. Each post will cover a different demographic / political orientation. The first one, If bloggers were representative of the mainstream, was published today. The article starts like this:

Assuming the polls are accurate – and they have been quite consistent – Israeli voters are poised to elect a rightwing government in next week’s elections. But if bloggers were representative of the mainstream, Israel’s next government would probably be a Jewish-Arab coalition of socialists, social democrats and environmentalists.

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This entry was written by Lisa Goldman and posted on February 3, 2009 at 5:58 pm and filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment(Latest is displayed first) or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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8 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

this doesnt account for all those hard core beitar north american olim bloggers that beat war drums and calmly produce posts that are supposed to make us look like a suburb of syracuse ny with all the mod cons and fast food you can get..

not to mention some heavily nationalistic russian bloggers who champion israel beitenu all the way..

i think its an incomplete account.

@lirun: You are right: it is an incomplete account. That’s ’cause it’s the first of four articles (see intro). Regarding Anglo bloggers, see the seventh paragraph: “English-language Israeli bloggers tend to be heavily weighted with new immigrants whose political opinions are to the right of the mainstream, so I have taken the following sampling from the Hebrew blogosphere, which is larger and more active.” Lisa

1. lirun
on February 3rd, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Loved it. I wish I could read Hebrew blogs, they sound much more interesting than most English blogs, which are, by and large, heinous and creepy.

Does anyone produce some sort of digest of hebrew blogs? (hint, hint?

2. Mo-ha-med
on February 3rd, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Lisa,

Cheers for the Hebrew blog coverage…I noticed the paragraph, and I was bobbing my head as I reached that portion. You’re not going to get much clarity from the new olim, fresh of the plane (boat) kind of people. We used to say the same thing about new expats up here.

3. Adam Daniel Mezei
on February 3rd, 2009 at 11:50 pm
any stats on how many english and how many hebrew blogs?

@lirun: just go over to the English aggregator and count ‘em. There are a couple dozen blogs in English – and only a few are updated regularly. Then go over to notes.co.il. the marker cafe, hahem, blogli, nana blogs and tapuz. There are hundreds. And that doesn’t include the Hebrew blogs on Wordpress. Lisa

4. lirun
on February 4th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Your article was quite interesting. It’s unfortunate my Hebrew’s not good enough to read the Hebrew-language blogs, but I’m glad you occasionally translate some of them.

So, a question – what proportion of the Hebrew blogs could be considered representative of the “mainstream”? It seems to me that the English-language blogosphere in Israel is inherently limited – i.e. – a greater proportion of national religious/settlers among the Anglo bloggers than in the population as a whole, but then so are the blogs that you mention in your article – much more left-wing in security, social, and economic matters than the population as a whole. Or does this “silent majority” not seem to be very interested in blogging?

@Raeefa: You ask good questions. Unfortunately I don’t know of any studies on Israeli bloggers. But I can tell you that most Israeli bloggers (Hebrew) don’t blog about politics at all. That is an accurate reflection of Israeli society, which, over the past eight years, went from being exhausted by politics to cynical and/or indifferent. Lisa

5. Raeefa
on February 4th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
not all blogs appear on the aggregators..

but i get your point

6. lirun
on February 5th, 2009 at 1:03 am
Hi Lisa,

I liked your post about the Israeli blogosphere, but I feel compelled to inform you about a mistake you made in identifying one of your sources.
Dr. Yodan Rofe is a professor of architectere and urban design who specializes in sustainable architecture, that’s his real name, it’s not a nick (Juden Rofeh — clever, but wrong).
He is not religious, but secular. His father, Alexander Rofe was a professor of Biblical Studies at the Hebrew University (where I got a degree many years ago). Might explain how he got his unique name. “Yodan” has Talmudic origins.

Ilana

@Ilana: thanks you so much for the correction. That is what happens when I work too quickly. I wish I could correct the Guardian piece retroactively, but at least your comment will be here for the record. Lisa

7. Ilana Goldberg
on February 8th, 2009 at 6:57 am
Excellent article. Just don’t read the comments to anything Israel-related on the Guardian website. People go a little crazy from all corners.

8. Elianah
on February 9th, 2009 at 1:50 am